THE MOVING PICTURES
An assignment once given my class called for a story based on this
simple germ: “A servant kills his master.” To my great astonishment I
found that fully seventy-five per cent. of the class had decided, as if
by agreement, that the servant must be either a Japanese or a Chinaman.
Why? The students themselves could not explain it, but I could. I had
observed this unison of plot conception many times before. They had all
drawn their inspiration from the same inexhaustible source--the moving
pictures. In all probability not a single student had ever employed
or seen his or her friends employ a Japanese or Chinese servant. If
they had ever employed a servant at all, it was most likely some
negro girl, and yet their fancy had taken them to the Asiatics. For
every one has surely noticed that in the moving pictures the lowly
individual who carries the master’s suitcase is always an Asiatic
valet. It is fashionable and ethical. The laborer, the servant, is
nearly always a foreigner, the American is the “boss,” the domineering
chap who wears the full-dress suit and faces the camera with a
compelling, clean-shaven chin. The drowsy members of our A. F. of L.
and the weak-eyed bookkeepers and typists filling the galleries of our
motion-picture houses must feel highly flattered as they applaud the
shadows of their dreams projected on the screen. What has plausibility
to do with the “Eighth Art”? And who is naïve enough to expect to find
it there?
Yet to the student of the modern American short story, and novel
as well, the moving pictures must come in for a great share of
consideration. This institution exerts a tremendous influence on the
trend of our fiction, determining both its form and substance. It is no
longer a secret that most of our prominent fiction-writers who still
are unattached to some studio are writing stories for the magazines
with a view to their ultimate adaptation for the screen. A number of
magazine publishers maintain brokerage departments where the stories
appearing in their publications are sold to film manufacturers and the
profits thus realized divided with the authors or quietly deposited to
their own accounts. The editors of these magazines are instructed to
keep an eye on moving-picture possibilities of manuscripts submitted
to them. The remuneration involved is so alluring that even the best
writers with high literary traditions behind them are fast succumbing.
But whereas these old writers for the most part have already done
their best work and have spent themselves, so that their loss to
American letters is not very serious, the effect of the moving-pictures
urge upon the young author is truly disastrous.
To write for the screen as it is at present managed requires neither
art nor knowledge. Writers with any literary compunctions cannot hope
to succeed in a field which demands a complete distortion of all
values. What is required is the ability to supply some acrobatically
inclined matinée idols and curly-haired ingénues with fast-moving
vehicles to display their “stunts.” It presupposes an intimate
acquaintance with the peculiar talents of each star. If a star can
swim and dive and ride horse-back and jump off a running train and
dance gracefully opportunities must be provided in the scenario for the
parading of these talents. If another can wear pretty clothes daintily
or has pretty dimples on her knees or looks particularly charming
in the uniform of a maid or a governess the scenario writer must be
governed accordingly in constructing his story. It is precisely because
no one outside of a studio can have such an intimate knowledge of the
abilities of the various stars featured by a producing company that
staffs are employed to rewrite and prepare for production every script
purchased from an outsider.
The moving-picture industry is almost entirely dominated by investors
who are as far from literature as the average would-be story writer is
from being featured in the pages of the _Cosmopolitan_. Their concern
is solely with the box-office. They will purvey anything that will
yield the desired dividends. Manifestly to apply the word “art” to an
industry with such mercenaries at its helm is to cover the word with
mud, unless we stretch the term to include the art of making money. As
Channing Pollock, in a “Plain Talk About the Movies,”[12] once said:
“One of the troubles with the regular theatre is its conviction that
the possession of a hundred thousand dollars turns a laundryman into a
littérateur.” The remark is still more pungently apposite to the cinema
theatre. The ignorance of the rich investors controlling the destinies
of the moving-picture industry is truly stupendous. An anecdote current
among scenario editors and vouched for by one of them as an actual
happening throws a pitiless light on this prevailing trait. When
several years ago the craze of adapting Dickens’ novels for the screen
was on, the president of a large film corporation one day stormed into
his scenario editor’s office and demanded to know why Dickens’ work had
been permitted to go to a rival company. The editor defended himself
by saying that some of Dickens’ work could still be got. “See to it,
then,” the great man ordered. “Wire Mr. Dickens that hereafter we want
his entire output!”
And these intellectual giants are influencing the output of our
Dickenses! The singularly few exceptions in the industry are powerless
to change the state of affairs. They are either smothered by the
great ones or are tolerated because they are so insignificant. And
these great ones have decreed that adaptations of stage successes,
old classics, best sellers, and magazine stories are more desirable
wares than original stories written especially for the screen. The
governing factor, of course, is the previous advertising that these
adapted stories have had without cost to the film producers. Story
values are the least consideration. Our public is so amusement-hungry
and so well-trained that it will consume anything. Besides, the star is
ninety per cent. of the show anyhow--people go to see the celebrated
So-and-so rather than the vehicle in which So-and-so appears--otherwise
the magnates would not pay five hundred dollars for a story and fifty
thousand dollars for a star’s performance in it.
The fact, however, that moving-picture producers are not purchasing
original scenarios does not deter the numerous literary schools of the
country from offering instruction in photoplay writing. The advertising
matter of these schools is as optimistic as ever. “Makes $50,000 a
year by writing for the screen,” reads one headline. “Moving-picture
stories in demand everywhere!” reads another. Then the information is
generously volunteered that a certain scenario writer in a California
studio is earning fifty thousand dollars a year; another twenty-five
thousand; and countless others between five and ten thousand.
Convincing proof is presented that no education or previous experience
is necessary; that one farmer in the backwoods of Washington or Oregon
or on the prairies of Illinois has sold a scenario for eighteen hundred
and fifty dollars; that one woman who was never graduated from a public
school has written a masterpiece in her spare time between cooking her
victuals and tending to her seven children and an invalid husband, and
that as a result of her exploit she has now paid off the mortgage on
her house and is experimenting with the mechanism of a Dodge car.
This alluring prospect of becoming affluent via a course in photoplay
writing is held out not only by the average correspondence school but
also by not a few of our dignified institutions of learning. There is
no excuse for offering any instruction in an art that is on such a low
plane of development, except, perhaps, that of elevating it, which is
not an aim avowed by any of these institutions; and, besides, mere
honesty alone ought to compel even the most enterprising trustee or
administrator to reach the simple conclusion that since the demand
for original photoplays is practically non-existent, as far as the
novice is concerned, it is useless to manufacture photoplaywrights. The
refusal to accept such a logical conclusion results in disappointments
and heartaches and the upsetting of normal useful careers. A glimpse
at the record of original scenarios purchased by some of our leading
producers even as far back as 1918, when the policy of using
adaptations only was not yet rigidly adhered to, proves conclusively
the extent of the market. The American Film Company purchased only
fifteen scenarios during the entire year. The National Studios--twelve.
William S. Hart--eight. The Fairbanks Studio--six. The Dorothy Gish
Company--four. Mary Pickford--one. The Chaplin Studio--one.[13]
When it is considered that some of our ablest fictionists and
dramatists have been writing photoplays and that some of these accepted
scenarios were written for particular stars and often sent direct to
them or to their directors, the chances of the obscure novice, even the
most meritorious one, are far from glorious indeed. And since 1918 the
policy of adaptations only has been enforced more stringently--almost
to the complete exclusion of the original script submitted by the
outsider. A few producing companies have frankly admitted, in the
various writers’ magazines, that they do not even read manuscripts
submitted by unknown outsiders.
But while the great mass of aspirants may not be aware of the true
state of conditions our more or less successful writers know it full
well. The Authors’ League and the Pen Women’s League and the various
Writers’ Clubs throughout the country have all discussed and analyzed
the moving-pictures market, and their members are taking means to meet
its eccentric exactions. Why write a story in photoplay continuity or
even detailed synopsis form only to have it returned from the Coast
most likely unread, when the same material can be written up in a
short story or a novelette, its serial rights sold to a magazine and
its photoplay rights reserved and offered to a film company which is
then sure to accord it a friendly reading? As a matter of record the
price paid for photoplay rights to a magazine story is usually twice
and sometimes tenfold the price paid for an original story written
especially for the screen. Part of this extra compensation is probably
for the advertising value of the story, and part for the judgment of
the magazine editor which the film magnates are more inclined to accept
than that of their own hired editors.
That fiction writers are taking advantage of this unusual opportunity
to sell their work twice is an absolute certainty. “In fact, as several
writers remarked at the Writers’ Club dinner, a large percentage of
the present-day magazine stories are written--planned and plotted--with
the screen directly in mind.... It is well known, on the inside of
the game, that successful fictionists plan every situation and bit of
dialogue in certain stories, visualizing, as they write, the way those
situations will, as they hope, work out on the screen.”[14] And again:
“Today, among the more successful writers of action-stories for the
magazines, there exists the feeling that it is a criminal waste of
time to write originals for the screen. Their method is deliberately
to plan their fiction ... so that it will actually contain abundant
photoplay material, while yet being properly balanced up with the
necessary word-painting and dialogue which good fiction demands. In
other words, they systematically plan their fiction to make its picture
possibilities ‘hit the producer in the eye’ the first time he--or his
scenario editor--reads it.... Almost nine-tenths of the pictures shown
today are adaptations of successful fiction stories or stage plays. If
you doubt that, watch the productions in your theatres and note their
origin.”[15]
What this “systematic planning” results in is self-evident. The
moving-picture story and the fiction story are two different products.
Their technique is different. The photoplay is pantomime pure and
simple. Ideas and emotions can only be expressed by means of gestures
and facial contortions, with the aid of a schoolboy subtitle flashed
on the screen. Literary style, psychologic delineation, and nice
subtleties of thought and emotion cannot be transmitted. The plot must
unfold rapidly and teem with surprising and tense situations. The
actors must have something _to do_ every second. To write a fiction
story with photoplay possibilities requires a careful selection of
theme and plot. Unlike the magazines, which run in types, each catering
to a particular group of temperamental and intellectual stratum of
our people, the moving pictures depend for success upon the approval
of the Ladies’ Auxiliary Society and the Chew Tobacco Club of Dead
Hollow as well as upon Greenwich Village and the bourgeois Philistines
of our metropolises. No theme must be used that might give offense to
any of these patrons; all must be kept satisfied so that a continuance
of their patronage may be insured. It is also apparent that the pale,
quiet story which does not depend upon action for its “punch” must be
entirely sacrificed, since it cannot possibly have any moving-picture
adaptability. Only the swift-moving, red-blooded plot can be utilized.
Needless to suggest that our story writers are well aware of these
limitations. The fact that their work is adapted almost wholesale into
photoplays speaks eloquently for their knowledge on this score.
Needless to suggest, also, that they have become expert mechanics in
the way of constructing a fiction story so that it will be certain
to “hit the producer in the eye.” They have learned that “the
photoplaywright depends upon his ability to _think_ and _write_ in
action.”[16] And they have learned to think and write in action. They
have also taken to heart the dictum regarding theme. “In selecting
your theme, ask yourself if either dialogue or description may not be
really required to bring out the theme satisfactorily. If such is the
case, abandon the theme. The few inserts permitted cannot be relied
upon to give much aid--the chief reliance _must_ be pantomime.”[17] It
is only natural, then, for our writers to eschew the unadaptable theme
altogether.
That the bulk of our magazine fiction is, therefore, not magazine
fiction at all, but merely disguised moving-picture stories is a fact
that has found entirely too little general publicity. A moving-picture
story differs from a fiction story not only in matter of technique
and theme barred by limitations of technique but also in many other
respects. As we have seen, because of the general appeal of the moving
pictures certain themes that might offend any part of the great
public must be avoided. Obviously this results in the humiliating
condition of degenerating to the standard of the lowest patron, of
courting his approval as the final goal of successful authorship. But
should, perchance, an author with a virile conscience bolt the ranks
of the meek conformists and yet, by dint of extraordinarily fortunate
circumstances, break through with his product, the power of the various
Boards of Censorship must be reckoned with.
There are, of course, official, semi-official and unofficial censors
presiding over the production of our magazine fiction, too. But while
a revolting author may take his work to some less respectable magazine
and thus save his soul, no such outlet exists for the photoplaywright.
His work must be so harmless that it will pass not only the National
Board of Censorship but also the various State and city boards,
otherwise no enterprising producer will risk his money producing it.
The experienced photoplaywright, then, studies the proscriptions of
the various boards and keeps himself informed of all their decisions.
He knows, for instance, that crime must be treated cautiously, and it
must always be punished in the end; that the National Board will not
pass a picture in which there is a suicide, that burglary may be shown,
but not by what means it is committed; that flirtations with women of
easy virtue are banned; that lynching scenes are permissible only when
the picture is laid in places where no other law exists; that scenes
showing kidnapping do not always “get by”; that elopements must be
handled delicately; that, in short, the effect of the picture on the
young, the evil-minded, and the weak-minded must always be carefully
gaged.
The experienced photoplaywright also knows of all important precedents
established by the censors. He knows that Shakespeare’s plays have
not gotten by unscathed; that “Macbeth” was deemed too full of crime
and “Romeo and Juliet” too full of love; that a kiss between the two
youngsters in the latter play was limited to three feet; that Eugene
Walter’s “Easiest Way” could not be exhibited in the sovereign State of
Pennsylvania because the Board of Censors of that State had condemned
it “in accordance with Section 6 of the Act.... Because it deals
with prostitution”; that in O. Henry’s “Past One at Rooney’s” such
sub-titles as “At one end was a human pianola with drugged eyes,” and
“I know how bad it looked--me smokin’ and comin’ in here. But I’ll
promise you, Eddie--I’ll give up cigarettes and stay home every night
if you want me to” were deleted; etc., etc. And above all he knows that
religious and political views must never be expressed. Furthermore,
that if he breaks the last law and does essay to express any views at
all, they must be the worn-out popular views that even the humblest
deacon or the mistress of the little red schoolhouse back home might be
gladdened with, because they have been cherishing them as an heritage
from their ancient forbears.
Thus the influence of the moving pictures on the bulk of our magazine
and even book fiction. It is a moving-picture fiction, “strong,”
fast-moving, startling, full of cheap ideas and a gushy hackneyed
idealism, written largely by photoplaywrights who use the fiction
medium simply because it enables them to exact a higher price for their
product, and catering to a photoplay public. For this moving-picture
influence extends not only to the makers of stories but to the general
reading public as well. It tames it, if indeed it need any taming,
molds it, forms it into a hardened cast with a definite æstheticism
which it carries from the cinema house to _Happy Stories_ and _Virile
Stories_ and _Goody Stories_ and back again. There are traditional
themes, traditional views and a traditional treatment, in spite of the
loud cry for novelty, and any theme, view or treatment violating the
tradition, should it succeed to get by the vigilantes higher up, has to
brave a combat with this traditional moving-picture taste.
The young story writer, like his more mature brother or sister, is
infected with this influence and from the very beginning of his
career looks askance at any doctrine that conflicts with his proud
æstheticism. But in our profession it is seldom that he is required to
be false to the culture of the screen. Our textbooks and the bombastic
dogmas they largely exploit are themselves for the most part a product
of the same culture. He is told to think in terms of action rather than
in terms of idea and character. He is trained in the construction and
management of situation and incident until, although not consciously
intending to, he is able, like his more successful colleagues, to
turn out passable photoplay material. Small wonder that most of our
short stories abound in wooden characters, clumsily moving about on
well-oiled springs, thinking stereotyped thoughts and talking wooden
dialogue. The atmosphere fanning upon them has the hot fetid tang of
the darkened-theatre air.
When told to write a story the student almost without hesitation
betakes himself to his supreme source for plot material. It matters
little that this material itself merely represents the adaptation
of some fiction story. The moving pictures today could be used as
another illustration of Emerson’s theory of circles, or is it merely
a modification of the delightful pastime of see-saw of which we were
so fond in our childhood? The scenario writer adapts the magazine
story and the magazine story writer adapts the photoplay story, etc.,
etc., ad infinitum. Of course the disguising twist often goes with it,
but the material nevertheless basically remains the same. And, as a
matter of fact, from the point of view of salability the method is not
without merit, everybody involved--the scenario editor, the producer,
the public--recognizes in the revamped material an old friend, and, if
the revamping has been done dexterously and ingeniously, glories in
its novel familiarity. The failures employing this method are confined
mainly to two classes of students--those who are temperamentally
entirely out of tune with the moving-picture traditions, a small
minority to be sure, and those who, though favorably attuned to the
spirit of the silver sheet, fail to acquire the knack of giving their
work the necessary disguising twist which passes for the much-vaunted
novelty.
Admitting that it would be extremely difficult and perhaps even
futile to attempt to wean the young student-majority away from the
well-assimilated influence of the show house, one cannot avoid
speculation upon what could be made by a serious-minded critical
teaching profession of the open-minded minority diffidently seeking
encouragement in their desire to follow newer traditions or to give
birth to still newer ones. If for one chapter in our texts or for one
semester in our institutions of learning the joy of creating for the
mere love of it, for the sheer beauty of it, had been glorified as we
glorify popularity and commercial success, what a buoyancy of spirit we
could have engendered, what a fluttering of young wings!
For two years in succession a young woman came to my classes and
each year she dropped out before the expiration of the term sending
me a note of despair. She had traveled extensively through Europe
and the Orient as well as through North and South America and she
had accumulated a fund of experience to draw on for material. She
tried hard to imprison it in story form but the finished product
lacked thrill and suspense and airiness. She received nothing but the
cold platitudes of printed rejection slips, while other students--as
innocent of any knowledge of life as a fluffy ingénue capering through
five reels of silent drama--who modeled their work along the lines
of _Popular Stories_ and the _Jolly Book Magazine_ and the latest
releases, and seasoned it with a generous dash of O. Henryism,
occasionally displayed fair-sized checks. She worked away despondently
and each succeeding story tended to prove that the text we were using
and the current magazines we were studying were helping her but little.
There was a heaviness, almost an eeriness, permeating her work, and yet
it was a heaviness somewhat akin to that which permeates the work of
Thomas Hardy. She admitted that most of the magazines we were studying
bored her, that she preferred “Beyond the Horizon” and “John Ferguson”
to “Irene” and “The Passing Show.” I advised her to write sombre
tragedy, yes, morbid stuff. She produced a passably good story. It was
rejected by the first magazine she sent it to with a personal letter
expressing the editors’ regrets at their inability to accept such an
interesting story, but they never purchased “depressing” material.
Wouldn’t she be kind enough to let them see something else of her work,
something in much lighter vein? She refused to try another market,
insisting that she had known all along that she could not write.
All the writers’ magazines she had read and even our own textbook
declared most emphatically that “morbid” stories were not wanted. She
discontinued her studies.
The next year she came back. “I can’t help writing,” she apologized.
“I simply can’t resist the impulse to write. I don’t care if I don’t
sell, I am going to write just for myself--whatever I like. I merely
want you to see what I am doing.” A few months later she sold a tragic
little tale to an unpopular little periodical. But she did not take
advantage of this, her first success. Soon her work began to show
labored flippancy and attempted ingenuity, and it looked ludicrously
pathetic--a Hawthorne austerity with an H. C. Witwer lightness; the
combination was irritably grotesque. Before the end of the year she
dropped out again. And now she is back once more. Whether she will ever
be able to cut away entirely from the cords of a moving-picture impulse
only time can tell.
This case is a mild example of the struggle now waged with a sinister
environment alien to all literary aspiration except for immediate gain
by many lonely souls. Their resistance could be materially strengthened
by sympathetic guidance. Contrary to the proverbial jibes of the cynics
the literary aspirant is far from possessing an over-abundance of
confidence. Intelligent persistence is a rare quality, not to be found
among too many. The mediocre aspirant either soon deserts the ranks or
begins to turn out salable wares. And the person with a genuine case
of divine afflatus also either leaves the ranks with a curse in his
heart or finally learns to turn out regulation material and becomes a
cynic for life. Cynicism may be a much more admirable attitude than
open-mouthed subservience, but it is not always conducive to sturdy
accomplishment. Often it is a sense of surrender. And since missions
seem to be such a popular necessity among our pedagogues and literary
clergy, what could be a more worthy one than the saving of these lonely
strugglers from life-long cynicism? But that requires, first of all,
an intelligent and fearless weighing of the forces on either side and
the rolling up of greater support on the side of the weaker. Truth and
spontaneity are struggling against stifling commercialism and artifice;
against a hostile environment resting complacently on old dilapidated
dogmas, and chuckling contentedly with its moving-picture standards of
life, art, and literature,--its moving-picture civilization.