In a message dated 2/24/09 2:21:17 PM, [email protected] writes:
> So we can then ask how much more a writer might have accomplished if > copyrights had not enabled money making to be a (distracting) possibility. > What do you have in mind with the word 'accomplished' there? What is "accomplished" if a playwright writes a play that is never performed and never published? Imagine a playwright who is undeterred by the fact that if he writes a play with, say, 24 characters (FRONT PAGE, McArthur & Hecht, 1928 had that many) it will never be produced. Undistracted by the desire to make money, or to allow any producer to make money, let's say he writes 15 such 24-character plays in his lifetime. Let's say he dies, and his daughter has to go through his things so she can clear out his garret. She finds a stack of his scripts, each one with several dozen rejection slips from producers, all of them saying the cast size makes production utterly impossible. She can't determine if any of the producers ever read even a single one of the scripts. She notices the date on the latest one is fourteen years ago. The daughter, always rankled by her Princeton-grad father who stayed for twenty-five years at a non-demanding nine-to-five job at the Post Office so he'd never have to take work home and could spend all his free waking hours writing "impossible" plays, now throws the fifteen scripts in the garbage. Regardless of how we might judge the quality the scripts if we'd ever read them, what would you say he "accomplished" thanks to his being undistracted by the possibility of making money? P.S. About your judgmental remark on Andrew Lloyd Webber: "(and think of what Webber could have written if he hadn't been so dedicated to making cheesy hit musicals.)" Well, I suppose it's possible he might have done what Leonard Bernstein did: write symphonies that no one listens to anymore. If only Bernstein hadn't wasted his time on the likes of WEST SIDE STORY, ON THE TOWN, and WONDERFUL TOWN, he might have written more such symphonies. Do you have any idea what Webber wrote in the "classical vein"? I would trade a hundred of his "Requiem" for the music in his best musicals. Do you disdain all musicals as "cheesy"? ************** You're invited to Hollywood's biggest party: Get Oscars updates, red carpet pics and more at Moviefone. (http://movies.aol.com/oscars-academy-awards?ncid=emlcntusmovi00000001)
