We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
DRAMATURGY 55
critical acclaim— but died in the box office. Its people were depicted in shades of gray. It was real. But the audience stayed away in droves because it did not give them what they seek in all Westerns— escape.
The moral is this: Forget about any ideas you may have about doing something new and different if you are ever assigned to do a Western picture. Not that this is a common occurrence, for most Western screen plays are written by specialists willing to accept seasonal employment. Westerns are shot only in the outdoors when the weather is clement enough to warrant continuous days of shooting.
But if you can turn out reasonably different variations on the same theme pattern; if you are hep to cowboy lingo (and it must be authentic, and not of the Coney Island variety) ; if you are conversant with the mores of the old West; if you have seen sufficient hoss oprys and read enough Western novels to be able to limn Western characters with reasonable likenesses of same; if you are quick on the typewriter trigger finger and can turn out a Western opus in, at most, two weeks; if you know some of the many methods for cutting production costs; if you have a faculty for visualizing and for depicting exciting horse chases; if you can remember not to permit cowboys to fire their six-shooters more than six times without reloading; if you are able to write scene after scene without resorting to action-impeding dialogue; if you are aware of the limitations of a horse's mentality so that you do not give it too many script lines to read; if you can remember that cowboys are sexless, silent, strong men of impeccable scruples; if you are willing and able to forget that you are a creative writer, and to compose drivel of the corniest kind— then you should be able to make a pretty good living.
The gimmick
The search for the weenie is not confined to serials and Westerns alone. Known variously as the "gimmick," "old switcheroo," "weenie," "boff," "yak," "topper," "twist," "routine," "formula," "heart," and "bleeder," this device is used in other types of pictures. It is simply an arbitrary reversal of the usual elements in a situation