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Coen Brothers' Movies

The movies of the Coen Brothers, such as Fargo, Barton Fink, Raising Arizona, O Brother Where Art Thou, and Intolerable Cruelty, have given me a lot of kicks over the years. No doubt they will have other successes in the future. There is something they could do to ensure that, and it ties in with writing in general, not just movies.

Critics praise the scripts of Coen Brothers movies for being quirky, offbeat, or for breaking Hollywood formulas with surprises. But these things are both good and bad. A movie is interesting because the viewer is caught up in the dilemmas and conflicts of characters that the viewer cares about. If a speech or a plot twist becomes too offbeat, the viewer can no longer believe it. "Witty" dialogue can be so overdone that it seems contrived. Surprises become ends in themselves. The writing ceases to be about a character and becomes a character itself. 

In other words their scripts are examples of what Strunk and White, in the "Elements of Style," would call "overwriting." Point #1 in their Approach to Style, the last chapter, is for the author to put himself in the background. 

Self-consciousness can be a problem in many forms of communication. At a party you can always tell who is afflicted by this: he is standing alone in the corner. A self-conscious speaker causes the audience to squirm uncomfortably. Most painful of all is the stand-up comedian who is paralyzed by a need to seem funny. Mark Twain wrote an essay on how to tell a funny story; he warned the reader that looking like you were trying to be funny was the kiss of death.

Movies will sometimes sell themselves with the latest sexpot bombshell star of the moment; she tries so hard to be sexy that she succeeds only in boring the men in the audience, despite her perfect looks.

George Orwell wrote an essay, entitled "Why I Write." In it he claimed that no matter how egoistic a writer's motivation might be, nothing worth reading will result unless the author practices self-abnegation.

These authors are probably correct in believing that readers or viewers resent the egoistic intrusions of authors and scriptwriters. The audience feels most inspired when a story helps them connect with a Truth that exists widely and profoundly, yet is usually obscured by the clutter and trivialities of daily life. It is Reality and Truth, not the writer himself, who deserves top billing.

In case you're wondering, none of these strictures apply to blog-writers, at least to the unpaid ones. We have a right to be self-indulgent.

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