Living the Romantic Comedy:

You never do see it coming, I suppose. One minute you're striding down the the bustling corridor of our culture's present moment with all the conviction of the young and the savvy, and the next second you're crumpled in a dining room table chair, winded, suddenly become an O.F. (Old Fogey, or if you prefer, Old Fart).

It happened last night. I can only hope it was a temporary condition, but it feels psychically equivalent to the onslaught of a degenerative disease -- signaled by a little tremor in my personal Force -- because I sense I did cross a great divide, and it may well be that there's no going back.

Dinner party in Santa Monica. My host, a movie producer, mused that life with Netflix had effectively removed an entire aspect of the moviegoing experience for his kids, one that he and I, being of a certain generation, shared but that's hard to come by today: the significance, the set-apart importance that a film could have, when you could only go to a theater to see it, and see it with an audience -- when the movie's inacessibility and one-time-only-ness allowed the experience to resonate with much more force.

Amidst today's movie saturation (DVD, iPod, multiplex, et al ), the concept of "double bill" is meaningless. You can flip from a movie on cable to the disc in your player in every which way of temporal configuration -- grazing in a field of movie fare in your own back yard, whenever you need a cinematic snack. The subtle but pervasive result is a lowering of intensity in the nature of the movie viewing experience. Whereas in my day (are you feeling me now, that vibe of O.F. in the air?), there was almost something religious about the pilgrimage to revival/art houses like New York's long-gone Thalia, New Yorker, and the Bleecker Street Cinema, to see for the first time say, Bergman's Wild Strawberries paired with Fellini's 8 1/2.

My host had just been to a Preston Sturges night at the local Aero Theater, and one thing he reported about his Lady Eve revisit really said hello to me. Sitting in that lovingly renovated emporium before a pristine print, he'd especially enjoyed the unique sensation of laughing with a whole lot of fellow humans, en masse. I totally get this -- there's nothing like the helium lift of losing it with a crowd of like-laughing people. There's a certain kind of warmth generated by that kind of communion you simply don't get at your desk with a portable DVD player in your face.

And it doesn't have to be about laughs. I think one of the reasons I liked Match Point as much as I did was for one moment -- a shot of a thrown key taking an unexpected trajectory -- when the entire packed-house audience I was with gasped or went "oh!" at the crucial plot significance of this event... and followed it with a quiet little wave of chuckles, as we acknowledged what we'd just all done together.

Anyway, in talking about this -- that erosion in movie uniqueness brought on by today's movie ubiquity, and the loss of "movie fun" found only in theaters -- I realize I've stepped out of 2006's preferred cultural mode: smaller, faster, easier to come by. And I also know that what sets me apart from okay, I'll say it: the kids these days, is that when I think "movie theater" I'm literally and figuratively thinking about something that's nearly extinct.

Most of today's multiplex theaters are such a nightmare (from commercials to wacked technology to the sticky floor and those goons on all sides of you) that it's no wonder their biz is going south. My friend Gilbert was at a movie last week where a woman in the next seat started talking from the trailers on, intending to describe everything she was seeing to her apparently something-challenged companion, and when he asked her to desist, she indignantly informed him, "I paid my money! I can talk as much as I want to!"

But once upon a time there were movie theaters you looked forward to hanging out in. Believe it or not. And there was something inherently dramatic about those tacitly hallowed interiors that imbues one's memories of Things That Happened At the Movies with a peculiarly romantic cast. At home after the dinner party, I found myself running my own inner screen montage sequence of memorable moments I've spent in movie houses, like one I blogged about here. This, I guess, is what O.F.s do.

Being somewhat more specifically obsessive, I then accompanied my morning shower with a reverie made up of scenes from movies that have movies and/or movie theaters in them. They ought to get that guy, whose name I can't come up with -- hope someone will help me here (note the tell-tale O.F. indicator, missing brain cells) -- who does those brilliant Oscar show montage reels that zip through 80 years of cinema in 3 minutes? He or somebody like him could create a substantive visual essay on such movie theater scenes from movies.

Before they do, here's a quick little still-ie on Hitchcock's use of theater and movie theater scenes, including most notably, his great "real-life criminal on the run, lose with a gun in the middle of movie" sequence from Saboteur. But there's so many cool ones! From Sullivan's Travels toThe Purple Rose of Cairo to The Last Picture Show... Man, that's an imaginary movie documentary I'd like to see.

And having just seen The New World, I'm also totally in accord with Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum's recent neat What I Love column piece, "Bigger and Better," in which she noted: "There's nothing to match the emotional power of gazing at a wide shot on a big movie-theater screen." Indeed, there are many modern-day directors still consciously making movies (e.g. that one with the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood) which are meant to be, demand to be seen in their properly larger-than-life form.

Which is why I'm happy to be able to wind up with what the good news is -- at least for Los Angelenos, though I gather this is a grass roots movement with some equivalence in other towns. They haven't torn all the Old Great Ones down yet, and in fact there's a series run here every summer by the L.A. Conservancy where you can see classic widescreen movies in some of our still extant, aptly named movie palaces: The Last Remaining Seats.

It's a little like getting into a luxurious time machine. I'll never forget an enchanted morning spent wandering through the vast, quiet, ghostly interiors of the Los Angeles Theater at 615 South Broadway with friend David Berman, who docents tours to the historical-treasure movie theaters of downtown L.A. It was an amazement, from the gild embroidery on the mammoth curtain to the intricate tiles on the bathroom floors. And it's one among many scheduled stops you can make on such tours (David also recommends this book by Conser and Berger, if you'd prefer an armchair visit).

Meanwhile, I'll wager that one of the upsides of being an O.F. is the privilege of thumbing one's nose at technological progress and convenience. For the moment -- at least until I snap out of it and head for Best Buy, to rejoin this year in progress and start downloading pocket-sized cinematic treats -- I'm enjoying the long-gone movie theater interiors of my mind. I think no matter what our age is, there's always a held seat on the aisle for us there, in the rapture of the deep big dark.

Screenplays come in all shapes, sizes and sensibilities. Some read like lean, mean machines, fueled with just enough tight, right detail to make for a vivid ride. Others are almost like novels in movie drag, cramming the pages with observation, philosophy and atmosphere. Most fall somewhere in between, and there are innumerable ways to personalize the form. Sometimes a seemingly overloaded narrative actually gets across a compelling voice; sometimes a "less is more" style ends up conveying merely less.

Among all the myriad approaches -- I once read a script where every single line of narrative was literally one line (meaning, no sentence "broke" at the margin, needing to continue in the line below) -- I've noticed that screenwriters break down into two subtle but distinct camps. One kind of screenwriter focuses on a more traditional method of storytelling, that's reminiscent of playwriting, teleplays and fiction. The other tells a story the way a movie would tell it -- the writer consciously uses filmic techniques, overtly or subliminally, to replicate the filmmaking experience in the read.

Obviously plenty of screenwriters do a bit of both. But generally speaking, one school of screenwriting thought seems to leave the realization of the writer's vision to the director... and the other actually attempts to manifest a personal vision in visual and aural ways, on the page -- in a sense "pre-directing" the story.

You can see the difference in the work of pros. Ron Bass (the king of ellipses and Oscar-winner for Rain Man) writes amazingly acute character details into his scripts, but rarely creates memorable, visually inventive cinematic conceits; the Coen Brothers, as you'd expect, write scenes that sometimes read like scripted storyboards. Tarantino is surprisingly spare and sparse on the page (though you can feel his jagged editing rhythms implied) since he's probably got the movie in his mind, while Anthony Minghella is lyric, poetic, wonderfully adept at painting pictures with a few deftly written phrases.

In screenwriting classes and textbooks, some confusion abounds in the "supposed to/not supposed to" of this issue. There are some who believe that messing with film technique in a screenplay is the worst conceivable way to go, since one could be stepping on the toes of a director or any other creative element interested in the project. But I think the only thing that's really a no-no in this regard it to use actual camera terms in your narrative. It's true that a director (or a reader) doesn't want to read "from close-up, we zoom out to wide angle and pan left to reveal..." in a script, because yes, you've just alienated a director who abhors zooms, and why are you telling him how to do his job, plus you've pissed off the professional reader who perceives such kibbitzing as the province of film-geek amateurs, and you've yanked any reader right out of the story.

But this isn't what I'm talking about, when I say that effective screenwriting really does enable a reader to "see the movie," as in Robert Towne's famous quote: When I write a screenplay I describe a movie that's already been shot. I'm talking about using the medium conceptually -- writing scenes that are conceived cinematically, that use the possibilities inherent in the medium, to tell a story.

Case in point. I just did notes on a studio project where the female protagonist had a series of blind dates in a number of foreign locales. As the current writer had it, there was a brief montage of date after date, speeding up into "a dizzying succession of images." Well, okay, for starters. But what am I really seeing on screen? And what do I get out such a generic montage, beyond a very general "all this dating made her dizzy?" I was surprised by what struck me as lazy screenwriting, given such a rich opportunity for visual fun.

Why not play with the possibilities, thinking "movie?" The point of the sequence is that these dates have no real effect on Jane, who's just going through the motions. So I suggested setting up a scene with Jane across a table from a Date at an outdoor cafe, locking down that frame, and by use of either cuts or dissolves and possible blue screen backgrounds, changing the locales behind them, while the man opposite Jane morphs each time into another nationality or type... and Jane stays the same in her little black dress.

By thus doing "6 countries in 12 seconds" you'd be letting the audience in on the joke, and you could cover a lot of ground (and reduce production costs) while still fulfilling the "exotic locale" eye candy expectations, especially if you have Jane sit down at the table in Zurich, and 6 countries later, get up from it in Jerusalem. There are any number of witty cinematic ways to get Jane from one place to another. Quick cuts: She calls for the check in French -- in German -- in Greek -- maybe top the bit with Jane, fatigued and not fluent, making the universal sign for "check!" Or do a montage of national dishes being set before her, from a British crumpet to flaming Albanian cheese... Only minor set dressing required, and more fun for the audience.

When the Coens write "A car bursts through the curtain of snow" (Fargo) or Minghella notes "Hana is caught by the stray shafts of moonlight" (The English Patient), they're forging images made with color and light, which I like to think of as "emotion pictures." But cinematic storytelling is also about bigger filmic ideas, like the famous cut in The Graduate that has Ben Braddock dive onto the raft in his dad's pool... and land atop Mrs. Robinson in their hotel bed. Only in a movie can you have that kind of visceral manipulation of time and space to vividly express a metaphor.

So if you're writing a movie, you might as well use the medium. Asking yourself, how "movie" is this scene? is a smart idea, because the goal of any screenplay is to get the reader to see the movie. Just as I'm always suggesting that student screenwriters take an acting class so they'll understand more about what kinds of writing works for actors, it stands to reason that screenwriters should take film courses so they'll understand how filmmakers think, and utilize those techniques in their work.

You can take a sort of crash course in this approach by reading Jennifer Van Sijll's Cinematic Storytelling. Or you could take a crash course -- it's a 4-day intensive workshop -- with yours truly, at the UCLA Extension Writers' Program 2006 Writers Studio in Westwood next week, Thursday Feb. 9th through Sunday Feb. 12th.

I've been teaching Cinematic Storytelling at the Program for about 7 or 8 years now, and the 4-day version's intense immersion in learning about "how to write The Movie" has proven to be extremely effective. People walk in writing one way, and they tend to walk out a few days later with many more tools at their disposal. This year my guest speaker is writer/director Henry Bromell (Panic, Last Call), and we'll be looking at excerpts from his work specifically to see how what he imagined on the page got realized accordingly on the screen.

You might want to check out the other courses being offered at this year's Studio, since there's 9 other talented instructors on board, including friends Barbara Abercrombie and Steve Mazur (Liar, Liar).

And while we're on the subject of writing courses, my friend Deborah Brown is offering a weekend of seminars that's more directly apropos to this blog's bailiwick. Just in time for Valentine's Day, you can explore Love, Lust and Longing: Writing Cupid's Arrows (a one-day seminar on Saturday Feb. 11th) and/or What's Love Got to Do With It? Writing the Wounded Heart (a one-day seminar on Sunday Feb. 12th) with an inspiring teacher (and award-winning poet) who's got tips for creative writers and screenwriters alike (email: [email protected] for details).

How about a story of love, lust and longing told in vividly cinematic emotion pictures? Hmmm. Sounds like the sort of thing that I for one would pay to see.