Why we’re doing a series on 80s movies
Yes, back in the 80s, they used to make movies with scenes like this:
From the 1987 actioner Extreme Prejudice. That was the year I broke into Hollywood, so I was pretty well steeped in movies from that decade. And while there were plenty of over-the-top scenes from over-the-top movies from that era, the 80s concretized the presence of High Concept in Hollywood mind think — for better or worse.
Here we are in 2013. We may think we’ve gotten all fancy with CGI, FX and 3D with eye candy apoppin’ scene after scene. We may believe we have become sophisticated in our tastes, seeking out dark heroes and nuanced tales. But here’s the reality:
High concept ain’t goin’ nowhere in Hollywood.
This is especially true in the spec script and pitch markets where a project’s story concept represents its first level of sell to a buyer.
If you doubt me, consider just a few of the non-sequel, non-franchise movies that have fared well at the box office this year: World War Z, The Heat, Meet the Millers, The Conjuring, Identity Thief, Now You See Me, and This is the End. All of them high concept.
Therefore it behooves us occasionally to be reminded of this state of affairs. And what better way to do this than to immerse ourselves for one solid month in movies from the highest of high concept decades: The 80s.
First, let’s talk about the concept of high concept. Here is a lecture excerpt from my Core II: Concept class:
Most people in Hollywood would probably define ‘high concept’ this way: A story that can be summed up in 1–2 lines. However just because you can summarize a story in a few lines does not necessarily mean it’s a high concept. For example the description, “A manipulative woman and a roguish man carry on a turbulent love affair in the American South during the Civil War and Reconstruction” does not make Gone With The Wind a high concept movie. It isn’t. In fact the film is in some ways the antithesis of high concept because it is a sprawling epoch featuring dozens of characters, numerous semi-independent subplots, and a multitude of themes. It’s also proof a movie does not have to be a high concept to be both great and successful.
No, in defining ‘high concept,’ we need to be more specific: A story idea that can be summed up in 1–2 lines. A high concept movie must have a clean, simple, and basic idea.
We can even go more granular by talking about story-conceit, which I would define as the “central premise of the story.” With the movie K-9, it was the premise of a human cop teamed up with a dog cop. With Inception, it’s the premise that people can enter into other people’s dream states. With Groundhog Day, it’s the premise that someone has to relive a day over and over again.
Almost invariably, the key to a great high concept is its central premise, its story-conceit. Happy to discuss these ideas in comments today and throughout December.
In this post dated November 22, I invited members of the GITS community to select an 80s movie and write a guest post about it. Those guest posts begin today with the very next item to go live in an hour. To see a list of the movies volunteered by readers, you can go here. If you are interested in contributing, you will find a template in that post which I ask you to use. If you do wish to participate, hurry because we already have 29 dates booked, only room for 2 more.
A few of the selected movies are not particularly high concept, but most of them are. Thus, this is a good opportunity to delve into the essence of high concept as well as reflect upon a decade of movies that while not being close to the quality of, say, the 70s, still is important in large part due to a model of project acquisition and development that is very much in play to this day in Hollywood.
See you here in an hour for the start of a new GITS series: Classic 80s Movies!
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