A Hollywood Story – 11

How’s your Hollywood Story coming? Have you found a story? A genre? If comedy interests you, stay tuned, because this week we’re going to talk about another comedic film, The Artist [2011], written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius.

Last week, in looking at Sullivan’s Travels, we talked about how comedies don’t win the big awards—in fact, films about Hollywood don’t generally win awards either. But The Artist, a comedy about the silent era in Hollywood, won tons of awards—including the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Oh, and did I mention it’s a French film? And it’s shot in black and white? Plus it’s SILENT?

That’s right, a film about the silent movie era in Hollywood that is itself a silent film. It seemed to have everything going against it… and yet, and yet… it’s delightful.

Personally, I’m not sure it was the best film of the year—I would have picked Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris or Tate Taylor’s adaptation of The Help—but that’s just me. In any case, The Artist was both a critical and commercial success and it had all that French/silent baggage going for it.

So what’s the deal? What did it do that made it so endearing to moviegoers?

First, it let us get lost in a world we don’t really know. None of us lived during the era of silent movies, and very few of us have probably ever seen a silent movie on the big screen. Unless you really work to find a movie-house that shows silent films, you don’t have an idea of what they were like. And that world of silent movies was fascinating—as we know from films made about Chaplin and others in the era. The Artist takes us back to that time and it has the genius to do so by MAKING us experience the kind of film its characters are involved in—the silent era.

Second, The Artist is just plain quirky fun.

Third, the film is a bit of a satire, but a bit of a melodrama—and it straddles both with such grace and ease.

The reason I wanted to talk about The Artist, is that it’s creator went WAAAAYYYYYYY against the odds in making this film. I very much doubt this film could have been made in America. In fact, I’d love to see a film about a modern-day writer/director who wants to make a silent film—can’t imagine the Hollywood of today would stand for it. I mean, their bean-counters will no doubt step in and say no one wants to see silent movies, etc., etc.

But the French leave their creators alone and just let them create—way more than Hollywood studios do. Consequently, you get a gem like The Artist.

So ask yourself—is there some weird, off-beat, totally noncommercial idea that you have that you REALLY want to write? If The Artist is an example, maybe you should give that idea a try? As I’ve said before, it’s just words on paper, so why not?

See what new kind of comedy YOU can produce.

Copyright © Diane Lake

19May19

Email Diane a question to Diane@DianeLake.com