When Writers Went Wrong

 

A friend and I were exchanging insights on recent books we read when she brought up Night Film: A Novel, a murder mystery, investigated by a divorced, middle aged, veteran reporter named Scott, and his two young sidekicks, a man and a woman. My friend loved the book, but she pointed out a few oddities. The author, Marisha Pessl, penned a scene when the protagonist first meets the young woman. Scott blathers on about her lipstick and makeup as well as lengthy commentary concerning her clothes. When he meets the young man, he elaborated on how gorgeous he is. My friend claimed,

“Men don’t say that.”

I had to agree. Sometimes authors relate a little too much to their protagonists and tend to make them like themselves. Male authors make female characters unrealistically promiscuous or aggressive while female authors make men impossibly sensitive or introspective.

My father, a well read, high school educated factory worker, was proud that he had the lowest membership number in the local public library. From an early age, he embraced books as his companions, preferring their company over a night out with his friends. When his buds came knocking at the door, my father would be comfortably seated in a chair with some good fiction in hand as he would tell my grandmother to say he wasn’t home. He much preferred reading above anything else in life.

My father never let all that reading educate him though. Like most blue collar, unionized workers in New England, he would often espouse mildly racist or misogynistic ideas. At first when I was young, I just went along with it. After college and a stint in the military, I saw things differently. When my father retired and got clear of his job, he saw the world differently as well.

But for most of his life he was fond of saying that woman authors couldn’t write believable dialog. I’m sure with his vast experience reading bestsellers, he likely came across a book or two in which a woman wrote some crappy dialog. It is in moments like this that the sum total of one’s being is measured against the steadily increasing yardstick of civility. So some woman authors gummed up some scenes. That doesn’t mean, as my father often decreed, that all woman authors can’t write good dialog.

My father would thoughtfully explain his point of view to anyone proffering a novel written by a woman. The librarians at our local library would remain silent as my father rejected their reading suggestions based on the biology of the author. He knew that it angered them and to a degree embarrassed me, but that was his opinion, and back then you were entitled to believe as you wished no matter how ignorant it was.

I thought of my father’s sentiments when reading J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Specifically, in Goblet of Fire when Harry and Ron are using Hermione as a go between during a spat in which the two were not speaking to each other. Men are not well versed in the art of cold shoulder. My mother graduated from Harvard with a degree in Ignoring People in the Same Room with honors. She taught my oldest sister so well that for my entire adult life one of them was always mad at me. Sadly, Rowling herself said that she went by "J.K." to mask her identity as a woman because many people don't like reading female authors.

Men are unconcerned with drama and will almost never act on emotion. We're mostly interested in more rudimentary things like women's anatomy and how long it's been since the last time we got any. Eve Plumb and Maureen McCormick of Brady Bunch fame hated each other on and off screen leading to the iconic line,

"Marcia, Marcia, Marcia."

 

Fans of The Brady Bunch probably are unaware that the onscreen conflict was in fact inspired by a real, ongoing spat between the two. The feud started when Eve grew jealous that Maureen’s character was romantically linked with teen heartthrob Desi Arnaz Jr. In contrast, the Brady brothers, Peter and Greg, were best buds off-screen. As proof of their lasting friendship, Christopher Knight and Barry Williams attended each other’s wedding ceremonies. So it’s doubtful that Ron would be so jealous of Harry that he wouldn’t speak to him. Just doesn't happen.

When I heard lyrics from Blank Space by Taylor Swift in which the popular singer wrote,

 “Boys only want love if it’s torture.”

I thought of my father’s assertion concerning women penning dialog. Boys are much more sophomoric than Taylor’s assessment. In fact, drama is just what we don’t want. Guys are simpletons who respond mechanically to biological coding. If men got involved in drama the human race would be one of those dead end branches on the evolutionary tree like the dodo bird which got nixed by nature. I suspect that Taylor Swift is a hugely complicated woman based on her immense success and subsequent wealth. I also bet she has stuffed animals in her bedroom.

Recently, I was surfing through the thousands of cable channels looking for something to mindlessly watch when I stumbled across an episode of Twilight written by Stephenie Meyer. Edward, a vampire, and Jacob, a werewolf, were both discussing in depth their feelings about Bella as she slept. This ran against my evolutionary instincts as a man. Two dude bros interested in the same girl are not going to tell each other how they feel. They’re more likely going to discuss what seasonal sport activity is currently featured on ESPN. I know they're both superhuman, mystical beings and all, but I think that would make them supernaturally horny, not sensitive soy boys blathering about their emotional state. I would guess that if the two rivals were alone then the vampire would comment excessively about Bella's menstrual cycle and the werewolf would express his dominance at a particular sexual position. That would capture the true jerk nature of youthful men.

Much later in life, my father learned to appreciate people for their individual uniqueness, although he never shed his negative opinion of female authors. Back then, people were not inclined to trigger on ignorant ideas as tolerance, even for stupidity, was a measure of civility. When I'm taking in a movie and evaluating the efficacy of the female characters, I think less about who the author is and instead apply the Bechdel test, that is,

1. The movie has to have at least two women in it,
2. who talk to each other,
3. about something besides a man.

The test evaluates the depth of the story, not merely the tally of actors by biology. Today, the focus is getting more roles for strong female protagonists without ensuring that such roles are relevant. While watching Charlize Theron mindlessly kick copious ass in Atomic Blonde which is based on a spy novel by Kurt Johnstad, I noted in one scene as the protagonist struts on the streets of a nameless European city that she exclaims to a male cohort,

"I don't trust you as far as I can throw you."

Clever dialog unfolding a story is unnecessary in film today where computer graphics enthralls our eyes while bypassing our ears. Watching the trailer for DeadPool, Ryan Reynolds wrote and delivered this line,

"We have to go home now."

That's dialog worthy of a movie snippet designed to make us want to part with an Andrew Jackson? My all time favorite stinker of a movie is Good Will Hunting, which everyone loved before it was revealed that the film was a project led by that fat bastard Harvey Weinstein when he worked for Miramax. The bar scene when Will mixes it up with a student over an article they both read always struck me as inane. The dude says,

"You’ll be serving my kids fries in a drive through on our way to a skiing trip." Will retorts, "That may be, but least I won’t be unoriginal."

This is a perfect example of what is called "stilted dialog," a common screenwriting criticism. I've written the only negative critique of Good Will Hunting which is often flagged by websites that inspect text for plagiarism. I speculate that students assigned to write a review of that movie, farted out by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, are copying my sentiments.

Writing well is a dying art. It's fading from our life as did many things made by craftsman long gone. As their skill was replaced by automation and superficial reproduction, we eventually accepted what we had as all that there is. My father was a skilled silversmith whose life work involved crafting intricate patterns for silverware that no one wants today. And as such, the demand for quality storytelling is fading as computer graphics with action packed sequences take center stage.

Bad writing does not discriminate, but eventually, no one will know the difference.