A big important Hollywood screenwriter says some things that are very similar to things I like to say.

If you’re a movie fan or movie blogger, you probably know John August’s great screenwriting site. He provides deep insight into the movie industry, the development process, the studio system and a lot more. Personally, I wish he’d write more posts in which he provides alternative answers to the insipid questions posted to Parade magazine, but that’s just me.

Quint at AICN recently ran an interview with August and actor Ryan Reynolds in support of the pair’s movie The Nines, a film which marks August’s directorial debut. In an early response in the interview, August says the following (the emphasis is mine):

I think, when you make a studio movie, everyone sort of has to like it and so you have to rub off all of those sharp edges, so that everyone likes it and gets it and feels really happy about the movie they saw as the end credits are rolling…There’s that sense of expectations of, from watching the trailer, you have to know exactly what the movie is and then you watch the movie and it’s exactly what you thought you were going to watch…

Of course he’s talking about the process of making an offbeat, convention-bending movie – but really what I get from this is what’s wrong with movie marketing anymore. There’s this effort to tell everything and give all the best bits away in the trailer and other collateral so that the audience knows exactly what they’re going to get. The studios must have performed market research that has told them that a majority of the audience wants this, wants to know all of the movie’s high points, punchlines and best sequences so that they know what’s coming when the lights go down. And I think that the response must have been overwhelmingly weighted this way because all of the studios are doing this.

I find that fact miserably sad, and inconvenient. Unfortunate, stupid and death for cinematic innovation.

The Nines did not enjoy a wide release – which August laments here – but I can imagine it finding more success on DVD. In the true spirit of concientious blogging, August offers his screenplay for download on his site, and I definitely recommend reading it if you didn’t see the movie. It’s a really good, entertaining read – compelling, innovative and truly intriguing. I thought that it wasn’t entirely successful; the payoff isn’t wholly satisfying on the page – but it sticks with you and makes you want to think about it and figure it out some more.

One way in which it totally succeeds: it made me miss the days that I did nothing else but read scripts all day.