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RICHARD RORTY, INNOVATION STRATEGIES & MOVIE INSPIRATION Robert Stewart Watson BA (Tasmania) BA (Griffith) Grad. Dip. (Canberra) Advanced Cert. (Zhongshan) Cert. (NTNU) Thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirement of the degree Master of Arts (Research) Film & Creative Writing, Creative Industries Queensland University of Technology 2010 Supervisors: Geoff Portmann, Susan Carson KEYWORDS “Richard Rorty” Aristotle movie innovation strategy inspiration pragmatism poetics ethics conversation screenwriter writer producer action “redescribe injustice” "film editor" screenplay adaptation development "The President's Daughter" Notation Australia "mixed economy" "motion picture" authorship philosophy liberation character cinema ABSTRACT Movie innovation is a conversation between screenwriters and producers in our mixed economy – a concept of innovation supported by Richard Rorty and Aristole's Poetics. During innovation conversations, inspired writers describe fresh movie actions to empathetic producers. Some inspired actions may confuse. Writers and producers use strategies to inquire about confusing actions. This Australian study redescribes 25 writer-producer strategies in the one place for the first time. It adds a new strategy. And, with more evidence than the current literature, it investigates writer inspiration, which drives film innovation. It reports inspiration in pioneering, verifiable detail. ii CONTENTS 1. Pragmatist Movie Strategies, Inspiration and Conversations 1 2. Richard Rorty, Pragmatists and Movie Innovation 17 3. Five Uses of Innovation Language 40 4. Rorty, Aristotle and Movie Actions 50 5. Contemporary Writer-Producer Attitudes 87 6. Inspiration 121 7. 75 Movie Inspirations 144 8. Conclusions 162 Appendix: Asking Movie Writers in Detail (abridged) 176 Filmography – Bibliography – Abbreviations 186 iii FIGURES & TABLES 1.1 Conversation C 3.1 The President's Daughter dailies 4.1 Triangulated characters 4.2 Better or worse than nowadays 4.3 Do character 4.4 Pursue happiness 4.5 Weave relationships 4.6 Story and plot 4.7 13 Aristotelian Strategies 5.1 A Concordance of Aristotelian Strategies 5.2 Syd Field's Screenplay Paradigm 5.3 Favourite Conventions - Archetypes 5.4 Liberation and Affection Plotlines 5.5 Campbell's Negotiated Shadowlands 5.6 Vogler's Phantom Climax and B-M-E Climax 6.1 Conversation C and Mrs. Robinson's Stroke 6.2 Ext. Parking Garage - Day 6.3 Notation garage C@! L(!..D) C(airport) C%+L 0! . D@ #? 6.4 Action and Inspiration Spreadsheet - Extract 6.5 Field Concordance: 'Get Experience' vs. 'Favour Conventions' 7.1 Political Characteristics 7.2 75 Movie Inspirations 9.1 New Movies and Inspirations Statement of Original Authorship The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made. Signature Date (c) Robert Watson 2004, 2009. All rights in all media reserved. If you wish to use this work please contact the author. \www.townidea.com tel au +61 (0) 418 488 581 iv 'It's not your job to be as confused as Nigel' (Reiner 1984) 'we stay in business by arguing with one another' (Rorty 2006d) v 1 PRAGMATIST MOVIE STRATEGIES, INSPIRATION & CONVERSATION Movie Writer Inspiration and Producer Innovation People lead their lives at various distances from movie innovation. Few people write, perform, make and manage movies. We might call these workers screenwriters, actors, filmmakers and producers, respectively. Of this small group of screen workers, some screenwriters are inspired to innovate new movies and some producers successfully manage inspired writers. This thesis explores the process of inspired writer-producer innovation, which brings movies into the world. Most people – including screen workers – derive many personal opinions and shared knowledge from movies, news programs and real drama as witnessed in their lives. These people – the majority of people in the world – are named audience here. Most of us are audience. We selectively interpret our lives and other's lives, as contemplated in web videos, cinemas and in real life. We adjust our beliefs from what we observe. Over our entire lives, most audiences interpret screen actions daily, yet, utterly mute, we never communicate – in this, our major language of consumption. Historically, medieval illiterate cultures believed their clerics' sermons and symbols read aloud, but serfs rarely learned to create in the 1 hierarchy’s text language. Today, given the choice of consuming a movie, or learning to write and make movies, most contemporary audiences happily consume and, struck dumb, we never express our screen beliefs. But some of our vast world audience does desire to express thoughts in our shared language of consumption. We not only consume the screen, we also enjoy imagining, writing, funding, performing, recording, publicising and showing new movie stories. Such production is a team effort. Teams usually include: writers and producers who imagine and plan movies; actors and crew who perform and record movies; and distributors and exhibitors who publicise and show movies to audiences. Usually, it is the people at the beginning of this creative, storytelling chain – the screenwriters – who are most associated with inspiration. Screenwriters, like prophets, are inspired. They imagine new movies, new screen actions and beliefs. Identifying who innovates is tricky. Writers, not directors, imaginatively create movies as screen properties. Directors then realize the imagined movie from the writer's property. Hence this thesis on innovation examines writers. Unions credit up to three writers per US movie. Fourth and lesser screenwriters take producer credits. In Australia, creative executives who select and develop writers inside the studio system do not even get a minor credit on the movies they develop. Yet studio administrators and investors lavish large producer credits on themselves. This injustice indicates the low status of innovation. Julie Sandor's pioneering research analyzes such writer-producer roles (Sandor 2001:105) but she was embargoed on the creative details (the business secrets) of movie innovation. This thesis reveals what Sandor could not print. All screenwriters begin as producers: they manage their own script editing and finances until a specialist producer joins them. 1990's House Of Cards 2 screenwriter Andrew Davies initially had conversations with himself, as writer-producer: 'I had to learn to bounce ideas off myself' (Frensham 1996:31). Many writers are life-long producers, such as Tina Fey, Matt Damon and William Shakespeare. For the purposes of this thesis, the name producer is especially applied to creative producers (whether credited or uncredited) who work on screenplay innovation with inspired writers (credited or uncredited). Other roles – financiers, bureaucrats, line producers, managers and executive producers are not studied here. Nor does the study redescribe serial, non- resolving or soliciting screen genres, nor propaganda theatre, which are ways of thinking somewhat removed from movie innovation research. But this movie thesis is immediately relevant to the following: the study of ethical leadership and corruption; the study of hybridized personal-social philosophies; the study of complex real-life drama scenarios; the study of history, politics, culture and personal relationships; entertainment business; computer games development; the study of short films; and the study of all genres, and all budgets, of feature movies. Usually, whoever imagines a new movie first - the writer - takes their work to a creative producer who is a creative and trustworthy person. This producer champions the writer, imagines her whole movie, and thinks about the story strategically. This person might be a director, script reader, editor, family, financier, companion, or studio creative executive; but, critically, they organise the writer's breakthrough ideas into a value-added movie product and they manage the writer. Innovation is about having, and managing, 'breakthrough ideas' according to the Australian Government (2006:1). Most audience cultures care not for innovation and breakthrough ideas. 3 Most audiences care only about consuming the innovators' products. Sadly, in the four years before this research, Australian movie innovation diminished, as shown by dwindling movie productions like the tragic Eucalyptus (Bennett & Taylor 2005; NKU 2005:1), while our foreign movie consumption greatly expanded. Australians ignored local writer- producer innovation and incurred debt to purchase or download more enjoyable imports (AFC 2004d:1; Bodey 2007:34). Bucking this trend, this study redescribes successful writer and producer innovation. For people honestly yearning to reach a movie audience with a new product, I hope there are useful productivity ideas here. The contemporary ideas here include innovation as conversation; and research as redescription. These are pragmatist ideas from Richard Rorty (born 1931 – died 2007). Rorty's great relevance for movies is that he champions the screen, and literature, as cutting edges of Western thought. He radically shifted to pragmatist literary criticism in 1982, leaving analytic philosophy at Princeton University to champion pragmatist philosophy of literature at University of Virginia. (Pragmatists expand the meaning of conversation,