It's the Story, Stupid. - Review - book review

Reason, August, 2000 by Steve Kurtz

Now there's good Hollywood and there's bad Hollywood, and Goldman wants good Hollywood, but I'm not sure there's room in his aesthetic for anything else. Goldman himself differentiates between Hollywood and independent films by saying the former "reassures" while the latter "unsettles." That's not necessarily wrong, but another difference may be more important: In a Hollywood movie, everything is there to serve the story. Independent films, on the other hand, often stop to explore a character or a moment without it needing to mean anything bigger.

There's nothing wrong with either ethos. When the interlocking parts of a Hollywood film fall into place in ways you didn't see coming, the movie sings. And when an independent film takes some time out from the demands of the plot, you can have beauty. But done poorly, the Hollywood film can seem mechanical, the independent film boring.

But Goldman doesn't even seem aware that a Hollywood filmmaker could go for anything other than what he prescribes. This is odd, since he started working in Hollywood in a period, the late '60s and early '70s, when many mainstream films were loosely structured, even experimental. It wasn't unusual then to start with interesting characters and let their natural interaction be the plot. Blockbusters like Star Wars (1977) changed how Hollywood does business, but Goldman, who feels such movies are cartoonish, would nevertheless limit films to basic and formulaic rules of his own.

How many times in a Hollywood film do we see something that seems like an interesting character touch only for it to become a mechanical plot point? If you're introduced to a character performing magic tricks for kids in the park, you may think it's a nice grace note, but by the third act, you can bet she's gonna use her talents to get out of a scrape. Even ideas that were once exciting or fun become clich[acute{e}]s. If the cops have the bad guy's house surrounded and they're about to make a bust, check your watch. If it's only an hour into the film, either it's the wrong place or the bad guy has already gone and the house is booby-trapped. Or if the film is almost over, and a villain (but not the chief villain) has the hero at gunpoint, out of nowhere a shot will suddenly ring out. The hero's friend or girlfriend (whom we're supposed to have forgotten about) just saved the day. Often, the villain will obligingly fall out of frame so we can see this character, still aiming the smoking gun.

Goldman recognizes the hazard of predictability. As he puts it, a good story should be both satisfying and surprising. (Maybe all art should.) But what Goldman doesn't see is that putting in something beautiful or fun, without a larger purpose, can work. Films such as Pulp Fiction (1994), Trainspotting (1995), and Being John Malkovich (1999) break plenty of rules--characters aren't conventionally sympathetic, plot twists aren't "properly" prepared for--but they have such constant invention and lively dialogue that they're better than all but a handful of Hollywood products. On the other hand, countless action films have followed the template of Die Hard (1988) and have mostly been bad copies of a good formula.