The Visionary Screenwriter - Part Two

It's a lot in the details...

We live in a different world than even five years ago. It’s 2011 and the items that have gone by the wayside in the last decade are too numerous to name. What I would like to call your attention to, though, is the ways in which we’ve really changed our lifestyles so much that when something about it appears, it dates a film immediately because of its appearance.

Phones. Nobody uses phones anymore. Gasp. That is nobody uses a phone to talk on anymore. (Case in point, even the old newspapers are saying good-bye to their chums: Don't Call Me, I won't Call You) 

I was watching “When Harry Met Sally” just a few nights ago and I was shocked by how much screen time was taken up by Harry and Sally talking on the phone to each other and their friends. Split screen? Are you kidding? In the recent “Wall Street II” movie one of the trailer-worthy funny moments is when Gordon Gecko gets his bulky, ancient cell phone back from his jailer.

If I were to write a scene with a phone in it, it would be only for comic relief about how stupid talking on the phone feels anymore. Yet movies released today still are rampant with phone talking scenes. Get over it. If you have any phone scenes in your script, seriously consider another way to convey that communication.

Newspapers are another thing that will be gone in a few years. I remember telling a twenty-something to look up an article for me in a newspaper. I handed the thing to her, and her reaction was actually disgust, "Why do I have to touch this? I get ink all over my hands. I'll go look it up on the web." This was a few years AGO.

The bookstore is a location that will quickly be obsolete. When the second largest chain Borders has declared bankruptcy because they failed to get on the electronic reader bandwagon, then you have to think where will bookstores be in five or ten years? Libraries are likely to be very limited or gone due to a number of factors. First, they are having their funding cut. Second, they are quickly jumping on to electronic borrowing. Three, who goes to the library anymore? Certainly not kids, who can research in 10 minutes what their parents researched over 10 hours in the book stacks.  

So, you’re looking for the cute meet spot? Try  "Idea Tourism" by Seth Godin, as a starting place, or maybe try getting out of the house and away from your laptop once in a while. See, you do it, too. The fact is that we are more connected to each other than ever before, and also more isolated than ever before. There are stories in that dichotomy. Look for them. These are the stories that will be the contemporary phenomenon in just a few years.

Now, say you are writing a story that takes place twenty years ago, or that you do have flashbacks, be particularly aware of how the lifestyle of twenty years ago, day-to-day, was so different. Typewriters, Walkmans, VCRs, a million remote controls, stick shift cars and uncomfortable office chairs are just a few of the things we had always around us and that are now gone forever. It isn’t just about hairstyles and music. Details are what make those places and people come alive.

Let’s say you’re writing a science fiction story. Puh-lease read some eBooks and articles about upcoming trends and try to extrapolate even beyond them. Be a visionary. It’s not so amazing that someone is carrying around an  iPad™ on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise® anymore, ya' know? You have to go further than we’ve gone, and further than the closest visions of the future take us.

To be a visionary screenwriter, you have to not only have great stories, you have to have great details.