Instead of a moldy rutabaga

Really I crack myself up sometimes. I mean seriously, who am I to have such strong opinions about writing and story. Me with my one and only option cheque for 1$ stuck up on my book case with a bit of sticky tape. After a morning spent giving notes for favours it seems particularly hilarious that I’m still, at 7 pm at night, fuming over the issue of voice over in film scripts.

Just in case you’ve never heard me say it out loud before, here it is. Voiceover is the refuge of the lazy writer. Or the addition of a spectacularly insecure director or producer who doesn’t trust the very expensive team of artists and craftspeople they’ve hired to express the story in the glorious visual aural literary medium that is film.

I read this same sentiment once in one of my hundred books on screenwriting and I do so wish I could remember which A-list screenwriter to attribute the quote to, but, I don’t. Which is sad because sometimes I feel like I’m standing alone, screaming it into the teeth of a hurricane force wind with fellow writers and film business folks lined up like pilgrims in front of a pilloried (your word for the day) harlot chucking rotten root vegetables at me chanting the names of successful and highly touted films that use the medium. And I don’t care if that is a dreadful run-on sentence that needs an editor. Get your own blog.

You really think you are Robert Redford and your script the next A River Runs Through It? Okay, maybe you are but if you’re going to get the voice over by me man you better be chucking the Oscar or Golden Globe at me instead of a moldy rutabaga.

You see the great glory of film is when the music, words, acting, visuals, camera movement, casting, costuming all become a greater synthesis – you know the whole becomes greater than the sum of their parts. It is possible. Just layering good acting and nice visuals with a poetic voice over is self-indulgent crap. Sorry too harsh. It is what I call “young man” writing which is actually separate and distinct from “young woman” writing which has its own pitfalls.

Young man writing is self-indulgent and masturbatory while young woman writing tends to innumerable cups of tea and tedious descriptions of the actions of other people not on the screen to trustworthy confidantes. Certainly a place for both voices in the cannon of our craft, but really people. Look at not only what you are writing but how you are writing. Go ahead and chuck the moldy rutabagas if you must but be brave enough to have the tosser taunt me in his own voice.