Some say we didn’t have “Passion of the Christ” and “Fahrenheit 911”… some blame high gas prices and high movie ticket prices… some point to the advent of the home theatre with flat panel TVs and studio quality sound systems… some say video games, the Internet and 100’s of cable TV channels have expanded entertainment offerings… hmmm, from point of view, I have to say, “WAKE UP… it’s the story, stupid!”

We are so bombarded with marketing for everything under the sun that our eyes and ears… and noses have become very discerning at smelling a movie flop a million miles away. With so many remakes, old TV shows turned into movies and effects filled movies with no plot to speak of, I know why my movie intake has declined.

The last two movies I saw, “The Wedding Crashers” and “Hustle and Flow”, couldn’t be on farther ends of the spectrum in terms of Hollywood vs. Indie but both were very well done and came through on the feel that their advertising purported them to be. But for every movie such as those, there are ten that don’t even come close to hitting the bull’s eye or come through on the marketing that supported it. Hollywood needs to learn that there shouldn’t be an inverse relationship between the size of the budget/number of special effects vs. plot, structure and STORY.

As I re-write my script, I keep telling myself that “It’s the story, stupid” (yeah, I have a tendency to call myself stupid during script re-writes) that will make my script stand out against the rest and attach the people I need attached to get it made. Maybe Hollywood should start telling itself that too…