Skip to main content
Close

Movie Originality: Creation Requires Influence

By Andrew Watson · February 28, 2012

Now that The Artist has bulldozed its way into Oscar glory, it would be quite a good idea to brace ourselves for the inevitable. Wagers, bets, or sweepstakes will be placed on the number of black and white (and/or silent) films that are suddenly shunted into development, akin to the retooling of almost every single action film once the Bourne Ultimatum appeared with shaky cams and occasionally incomprehensible sequences. Originality has long been considering a dying trait in the Hollywood system, becoming more and more lost to imitations, sequels, adaptations of books, adaptations of foreign films and the bizarre adaptation of board games. The question I find myself needing to ask is: Why aren’t we doing it more?

The Artist reminds me of another piece I had just seen days ago. Kirby Ferguson’s excellent Vimeo documentary Everything is a Remix is an eye-opening account of how very few new ideas actually find their way to the surface, ploughing through the back catalogue of Led Zeppelin, George Lucas’ Star Wars and even the zenith of technology that is Apple inc to show that most of their best works came from other sources. In his tightly edited essay, he concludes that creation requires influence, that influence often takes the form of works, inventions and even the words of people that have come before, and that those works are transformed into something original. He even supplements his work with a five minute video detailing every single film that Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, Vol. 1 & Vol. 2 references, replicating shots from retro Japanese samurai movies and lines of dialogue from Quentin’s previous films.

While I might sound facetious when I ask for more copying, the point I am trying to make is that underneath the surface of any film is a series of scenes, lines and motifs that have existed in hundreds of films that have preceded it. Screenwriter Blake Snyder in his book Save the Cat! mentions in passing a screenwriting genre he likes to call “Monster in the House” in which a monster is introduced into a confined space and a “sin” by the victims gets them into a whole heap of trouble. The book states two examples of films that to his mind have identical storylines: Jaws and Fatal Attraction. In Jaws, the confines of a small beach community come under threat from a murderous shark after the greedy town commit the “sin” of keeping everything under wraps.  In Fatal Attraction, the confines of a marriage come under threat from an unstable woman after Michael Douglas commits the “sin” of having an affair. Although their genres would probably be considered at opposite poles of the thriller genre, their three key elements are the same.

Those two may be a Hollywood summer blockbuster and a suspense thriller, but what about Oscar bait? What about The Artist? Putting aside its silent film origins and the whole Kim Novak controversy, the film’s story tells us volumes. The Artist centres around an actor whose livelihood is put at risk by the invention of a new technology: Sound. This is very much at odds with The Kings Speech, a film about a king whose country is put at risk by the invention of a new technology: Sound. The Artist might be a highly unique and incredible experience, but if you break down the composition, you can see some pretty recognisable gears and cogs at work. What makes it a unique and memorable experience is what it does with those gears. Hazanavicius takes a fairly standard redemption story, sets it in the silent era of filmmaking, and takes inspiration from the real life stories of actors fading out of view. Even the bit of The Artist that is unique is taken from similar events that have already happened.

Which is what creativity is, taking standard forms of screenwriting and adding ideas and experiences that haven’t yet been captured on film. It’s important to learn what genres work with audiences, to keep reading and watching classic films to learn what ideas could be re-mined and what has become overused. It is Hazanavicius love of the silent film era that gave him the inspiration of making another one. The Coen Brothers’ love of The Big Sleep inspired them to make The Big Lebowski. Christopher Nolan’s gadget-filled Batman owes nods to the Bond Films. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel; you just need to find ways to improve it.