Movies are too violent and they need sex

Movies are too violent because violence in movies is easy to do and boring to watch. And by easy to do I don't mean easy to commit to film--the people who coordinate fights and car chases and plane crashes and alien attacks are absolute stone cold geniuses at what they do.

The people who are fucking lazy are the writers. Honestly, what does an action scene do to move a story ahead? Nothing. What does it do for a characters' journey? Nothing. What does it do for the movie itself? Take up a chunk of time that now doesn't need to be filled with character and story.

And you know why? Because character and story are hard things to write. And it's easy to write an action scene.

[snip]

Action sequences are the junk food in any writer's kitchen. That's not to say there aren't good action sequences--ones that literally take your breath away--but those are few and far between.

[snip]

And shouldn't the point of action sequences be excitement? No one wants to admit that--but violence in film is supposed to be EXCITING. It rarely is. But that doesn't stop people from jamming a movie full of it for no reason other than lazy writing.

And thus boring the shit out of us.

Which brings me to part number two: sex.

It's fascinating, really...In real life, very few of us want to be in a car chase or be shot at by alien invaders, and yet our movies are full of this stuff. On the other hand, all of us want to have sex--but you can't find it on film*. Not good sex, anyway.

-- Josh Friedman on The Toilet of Mickey Rourke

Great stuff. Read it. Now. Cause I'm too busy at work drinking scotch [from a glass now, but for a while it was straight for the bottle on my desk] and writing my weeklies to write my second entry on Screencoding. But I will... soon.

Personally, I find this kind of vindicating because the science-fiction script I've been writing for like, er, 2 years nowish has zero alien invaders, or car chases, or action sequences or even that much science. While there is war but we only see it in a disconnected, fragmented way - its about how the characters *react* to that war, rather than the war per se. There is sex though. A surprising amount, really. But not sex like its normally see in science-fiction movies, which functions as an act of defiance. Rather, its sex between people who love each other or, at the very least, love each other. Y'know, what normal people (or so I hear). If it ever gets into prodution, the characters won't be artificially 'hiding' themselves under the bed covers. No sirree. Its got to be real - saggy asses, love handles, boobs, pubic hair - you know, FRENCH. Anyway, there you go...

* In American Films, which is what Josh is talking about.