Memos to Hollywood

Last Friday, the New York Times published a series of "Memos to Hollywood," drafted by its two major film critics, A.O. Scott, and Manohla Dargis. Here is the link if you want to read all them, but what follows are some of my favorites:

To: The M.P.A.A. Ratings Board
From: A.O.S.
What the heck? “Some language”? “Thematic content”? “Dangerous situations”? Yes, it’s hard to keep up with substance abuse, sexual mores, violent behavior and Anglo-Saxon idioms, but come on. What started out 40 years ago as a common-sense, informative alternative to censorship has turned into a maze of mystifications and technicalities, wherein perfectly wholesome dramas are stigmatized while violent, sadistic trash merits an implicit seal of approval. Stop trying to read our minds or guess our values: just give us clear, rational and consistent information

To: Filmakers, especially under 40
From: M.D.
The tripod is your friend. Few filmmakers can pull off florid handheld camerawork because most aren’t saying all that much through their visuals, handheld or not. (Also: Shaking the camera does not create realism.) Though it’s a cliché of contemporary cinema, fiction and nonfiction both, handheld camerawork that calls aggressive attention to itself tends to make empty images seem even emptier. If you want us to notice your cinematography, make sure you have something to say, like the French filmmaker Olivier Assayas ("Demonlover"), whose restlessly moving images convey a searching intelligence. He isn’t just waving the camera around; he’s saying something about the world and the people in it.

To: Members of the Writers Guild of America
Cc: M. Night Shyamalan
From: A.O.S.
You may think that slipping a doozy of a third-act surprise into your screenplay — a shocking twist that no one could possibly see coming — might make you look smart and the audience feel dumb, but please consider that the reverse might actually be the case.

To: Hollywood
From: A.O.S. & M.D.
Yes, green is good. But there is no ecological benefit in recycling intellectual properties or in treating pop-culture treasures like so much scrap material. Let us read our comic books and watch our DVDs of old movies and television shows and try to capture our imaginations with something new. So, enough with the serial killers (unless you’re David Fincher); period dramas; movies in which children die or are endangered; (bad) literary adaptations; superhero epics; tween-pop exploitation vehicles; scenes with bubble-breasted women working the pole in strip clubs; shady ladies with hearts of gold; Google Earth-like zoom-ins of the world; sensitive Nazis; sexy Nazis; Nazis period; dysfunctional families; dysfunctional families with guns; suburban ennui; suburban ennui with guns; wisecracking teenagers; loser dudes scoring with hot women who would never give them the time of day even if they were drunk out of their minds or too young to know any better (hello, Judd Apatow!); feature films that should have been sketch comedy routines; shopping montages; makeover montages; bromances (unless the guys get it on with each other); flopping penises; spray-on tans; Kate Hudson; PG-13 horror remakes; or anything that uses any of the “classic” songs that we are sick of hearing. What’s left? We don’t know. Isn’t that your job?