Film Spectator (1927-1928)

July 23, 1927 THE FILM SPECTATOR Page Seven perfect script. It makes the cost absolute. Producers who are bellyaching about high costs should cease making » further asses of themselves by dabbling at reforms in a manner that reveals their abysmal ignorance of what they are trying to reform. If they reversed their mental process and thought of the story first and money last there would be no waste. Consider the way they go at things ■ now. Lasky decides that Moritz Stiller is to do an Emil Jannings picture at a cost of a quarter million dollars. This is the annual budget, prepared a year before the shooting is to begin on that particular picture. As there is no story in sight how, I ask you, can Jesse know it is going to take a quarter million dollars to make a picture from it? But a shooting date is fixed. It is decided that, say, Louise Dresser and Gustav von Seyffertitz are to support Jannings. They are engaged to start at a certain time, and they go on the pay-roll at that time, even if it be weeks before shooting begins, the reason for the delay being the difficulty in gfetting the story ready, although the studio knew one year ahead that such a picture was to be made. If all the thought had been put on the story from the first everything else could have slipped into its place without any lost motion and without any waste of money. Any one with brains enough to grasp the fundamentals of the business does not need to be told that it simply is a business of telling stories on the screen, “ and that the story therefore must be the all-important thing. Producers lack the necessary brains. They seem to think that the screen industry is something that God provided for the purpose of taking care of their relatives. • « * * Should Fight Until Reforms Instituted But out of the present turmoil will emerge a greatly improved screen art if full advantage be taken of the opportunity the turmoil offers. Before the supervisor system was inaugurated pictures averaged much higher than they do now. They have been growing worse steadily as the full effect of the system manifested itself. Few pictures have any literary merit and still fewer contain any notable acting. Yet there are many excellent writers in Hollywood and still more excellent actors. The positions of the writer and actor will be improved when pictures are produced properly. Inefficiency is rooted so strongly that improving conditions will be a long process, but it is worth undertaking. Those who will gain materially from the recognition of the value of brains, and those whose only interest is the improvement of pictures, should unite forces and give producers no rest until reforms are instituted. The brains of the industry did not invite the present fight. The producers started it and abandoned it only when they realized that the only outcome would be the exposure of their own incompetence. It should not be allowed to rest where it is. The screen is a glorious art, but will achieve its destiny only by fighting its way through the managerial stupidity that now * retards its development. A producer can prosper permanently only to the extent that his pictures have merit, but apparently the only method by which he can be made to realize it is by clubbing him into insensibility and injecting the knowledge into him while he is unconscious. . He must be made to realize that the screen is a literary art and that literary minds must make their impress on its output. We never will have perfect pictures on the screen until we have perfect pictures on paper, and only authors can write them perfectly. And they can write them perfectly only when they are rid of ignorant supervision. The story must be recognized as the only thing that matters. At the present time Metro has so many contract players on its pay-roll that stories must be written to fit actors. Not until actors are made to fit stories can we have better pictures. If Metro retained only its stars and had all the rest of Hollywood in which to look for its supporting players it would be saving a tremendous sum every week and at the same time would be giving us much better pictures. The initial mistake of the producers was to lift screen entertainment out of the twenty-five cent class. That is all anyone should pay to see a picture. But as long as the universal charge is about twice that sum writers, actors and directors are entitled to twice a normal wage and should be alert to resist any further effort of the producers to make them the first victims of a return to normal conditions. Ordinarily I would be the last person to advocate a state of warfare in any industry, but with the welfare of the screen as an art as my first consideration, my advice to the writers and actors would be to give chase to the retreating producers and keep up the fight until reforms are instituted. H. L. Mencken writes me that the East is interested very much in the salary cut comedy. Producers have informed the outside world that those who actually make the pictures are paid too highly. It is only fair to present both sides of the case. The outside world should be informed of the incompetence of the producers. Writers and actors should unite to spread the information. I would not advise directors to join such a movement. The more sanely the industry is conducted, the less important will their position in it become. * * * It’s Going to Be a Tough Proposition WHEN one considers the mental caliber of the producers, who must be made to see virtue in a suggested remedy before it can be applied, it seems to be a hopeless task to endeavor to introduce sanity into the making of pictures. Their total inability to grasp the fundamentals of their business is the greatest stumbling block in the way of reform. Schenck, Lasky and Mayer think they know all about everything that enters into the making of their product. A merely ignorant man may be taught something; the one who confuses ignorance with knowledge is a difficult proposition. The last point that the producers will yield is that literary minds should dominate the creative end of this purely literary art. Most of our screen executives resent the brains of the writers and envy them their culture. Their money gives them contact with an art too subtle for them to understand, but by association with which they hope to rise to a social level that God failed to equip them for. It is going to be difficult to persuade them that it is not their money that makes pictures successes, that the whole industry rests upon the brains of authors. The queer thing about it is that the money-loving producers can not see that they would make much more money if they would permit pictures to be made sensibly. As I have said previously, perfect scripts would automatically cure the