6/26/23
Newsletter #378
The Crack of Dawn
I feel a bit like Rip van Winkle in that I lost a big hunk of time in my life. In Rip’s case he drank some mysterious liquor, fell asleep, then awoke 20 years later. In my case, due to a broken heart, a bad work experience, and a deep dissatisfaction with movies, music, and the arts in general, I too drank a mysterious liquor (in my case it was called vodka) a lot. That was in 2006, and I didn’t quit drinking until Jan. 3, 2020, so I feel like I sort of lost 14 years in an alcoholic haze. There’s nothing new or special about that, but I honestly missed some serious shit that came down.
As I sat here for all those years drinking, I also obsessively watched another movie I hadn’t seen every day. Since I have a list of all of the movies I’ve ever seen (meaning, entirely through from beginning to end); if I watched a movie I hadn’t seen before, I got to put it on the list. At the end of 2022 I have seen 5, 431 movies. Nobody can say that I’ve wasted my life. Therefore, even though I was drinking all the liquor down in Costa Rica, I was still accomplishing something: I was keeping up. I watched every new movie that looked any good at all, and seemed like it might be nominated for an Oscar. Anyway, even though I had become a sodden reprobate, I remained current in my film viewing. And in a state of inebriated horror, I watched movies just get worse and worse and worse. Unfathomably bad.
Looking back now in my sobriety, I see that two distinctly named periods in art, and society, occurred while I was watching, but no longer cared enough to look for definitions, let alone motivations. These movements were: Post-Irony and Meta-Modernism, and though I was watching nonstop movies, I was otherwise paying no attention at all.
In the course of my musings here in Crack of Dawn (I now abbreviate it as, COD), and the various challenges of writing and telling stories, from my perspective, I waxed rhapsodically about the beauty of irony, and the difficulty of achieving it. When I wrote that, however many newsletters ago, I had still not understood the concept of post-Irony, nor had I even given it a second thought. Now, caught in this horrible state of sober clarity, and putting 2 and 2 together, the reason I couldn’t find any irony in all those movies I watched, as hard as I tried, was because, drunken asshole, we are in a state of post-Irony. I was searching in vain for irony in movies all made in a post-Irony world. That, my friends, is somewhat ironic, and a tribute to booze.
So, I’ve got this website, Beckerfilms.com, that’s been up since 1998. It’s presently not being handled by its webmaster, Gerry Kissell, who is being a jerk, but that’s another story. Part of my reasoning for having the site was to share my painfully hard-earned insight on narrative storytelling, screenwriting, and direction. At Beckerfilms we had an exceptionally active and exciting Q&A for at least five years, and there are literally tens of thousands of legitimate inquiries about storytelling, and me explaining to the best of my ability, then someone whom I’ve never met telling me that they know everything about three-act storytelling, except that three-act storytelling is for fag squares, and why don’t I go fuck myself? I know that in 25 years I’ve had a great impact on screenwriting. Not.
Although it may not seem like it – which is part of the trick – I do have a point.
Perhaps 200 newsletters ago, in my innocence and ignorance, I explained irony, and my love of it, my aspiration toward doing it better, and examples in movies that impress me. I did not think for a second, “I am preaching irony in a post-Ironic world.”
Here’s the thing: having irony in a story is better than not having it. That which is understandably better, is out of style?
Quality cannot be out of style; only the attainment of it. My desire to see a good movie has no season; it’s eternal. Hollywood/the filmmakers of the world, cannot fulfill my desire because – are you ready? This is earthshaking – they’re too fucking stupid; they don’t have the ability; and it has nothing to do with technology. And though these youngsters, with their tats, and piercings, and other desperate cries for individuality, think they’re cool; they’re simply dumber than the people who came before them. It’s happened before in history several times. We still don’t know how the Greeks made some of their pottery 2,500 years ago.
Irony, a simple enough concept — take as an example, every episode of The Twilight Zone — is now over the heads of all Americans, and I will be so bold as to say, everyone in the fucking world. We are not in the Post-Irony Era because we’re cool (as QT would have you believe); we’re in it because we’re too dumb to understand it. And we think we’re too cool to be sincere, so we don’t have to try. And being sincere is not a natural emotion — and nobody believes it. Therefore, it’s the hardest thing for a writer, a director, or an actor to pull off. If you say we’re in the Post Irony Era, you are really saying we are in the Post Quality Era, because the participants are too lazy, too pampered, too willfully uninspired, to put in the time and effort it takes to create that which has undeniable quality. Our society, and I include the world, is not interested in quality, or God forbid, sincerity, right now.
I’ve come back to writer/director George Seaton a number of times because he’s been forgotten. He wrote and directed Miracle on 34th Street (1947), which really isn’t one of my favorites of his movies – though it’s an exceptional Christmas movie – it was a huge hit, it was nominated for Best Picture, and it won a bunch of Oscars, and it’s a B+ movie; it’s not an A-production. I’m not looking it up, but it’s probably one of Maureen O’Hara’s few leading parts (I love her); she was usually second-billed to someone like, memorably, John Wayne. In Miracle she’s paired with John Payne, who is good enough, didn’t make it, and his name is ridiculous. But where George Seaton always excelled was with the supporting parts. In this case, the film is happily stolen by 9-year-old Natalie Wood and Oscar-winner Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle. [I have another whole COD on Edmund Gwenn]. The film also won a short-lived writing category Oscar that intrigues me – Original Story – given to Valentine Davies. By my understanding, that is not a person writing a story, or treatment, as they call them. What it usually means is that Valentine Davies, or whomever, wrote a script where they liked the story and concept, but didn’t like the writing. Buy the script (they get a Story credit) and bring in a better writer. Enter George Seaton, who also directed.
Part of my interest in George Seaton is that he grew up in Detroit, and started on Detroit radio in the 1930s, which also intrigues me.
But my point is that George Seaton was a master storyteller by being sincere, and ironic, and I admire him greatly for those abilities. The skeptical Natalie Wood against the brilliantly sincere Edmund Gwenn is breathtaking.
So then Meta-modern equals insincere? And that’s supposed to be cool? Yes, sincerity done poorly sucks, that’s why they call it insincerity. However, done well, that’s when art enters the picture.
The sun has risen and new day has dawned.
I am taking the first 366 newsletters, which somehow seems like a whole thing to me, and publishing it as a book. "The Crack of Dawn, Anthology: Year One." My slogan will be, "It used to be free, you schmuck. Now it's $29.95." 366 newsletters came out to over 275,000 words, which is longer than the longest Harry Potter book, which is "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" (no, I didn't read it) at 257,000 words that came to 766 pages. So, my book will be near 800 pages. Think of it? In 20 years, I'll have a trillion words, and a zillion pages, and it will be the longest book in history.
Realized you've been putting COD out for over a year now. It's always a treat to read these, it's become the equivalent of my morning newspaper. And must say, I've always appreciated your screenwriting advice over the years. Have I put it to use and made anything great? No, but I'm not dead yet!