That's sick! When??? :o) Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
-----Original Message----- From: "Martin Baxter" <truthseeker...@lycos.com> Date: Thu, 09 Jul 2009 08:34:10 To: <scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com> Subject: [RE][scifinoir2] The man who invented the Hollywood schlock machine. Who's up for an exhumation and a kangaroo trial? ---------[ Received Mail Content ]---------- Subject : [scifinoir2] The man who invented the Hollywood schlock machine. Date : Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:36:52 -0000 From : "ravenadal" <ravena...@yahoo.com> To : scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com http://www.slate.com/id/2221392/ The King of All Formulas The incredible true story of the man who invented the Hollywood schlock machine. By Paul Collins Posted Monday, July 6, 2009, at 7:02 AM ET The Proposal is formulaic. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is formulaic. Imagine That is formulaic. Even Up is "progressively more formulaic." But who came up with the formula? If you want the human embodiment of Hollywood predictability, you can't do better than Wycliffe A. Hill. A profoundly obscure writer of silent five-reelers, Hill is also the unheralded inventor of something more enduring: the attempt to engineer movies that will bring "the most satisfaction to the largest number of peoplethe mob, in other words." It was a notion borne of failure. After a hard-knocks apprenticeship in a Manhattan literary agency, Hill went to Hollywood in 1915, where his first movie pitch was summarily shot down by Cecil B. DeMille. The problem? No plot. "A dramatic plot," DeMille's brother patiently explained to Hill, "is where someone wants something, something stands in the way of his getting it, he tries to get it and either does or does not." DeMille's prodding was perfectly timed; Hill wandered into a bookshop and found the new translation of French critic Georges Polti's Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations. If you've ever endured a teacher bloviating on how there are only really X number of plots in literature, blame Polti. A theatre critic, he gamely ran with the claim that Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi had once succeeded in isolating 36 "tragic situations" that formed the building blocks of drama. (Naturally, Gozzi then lost his list.) Polti had a recent and lesser-known work that had not yet been translated, The Art of Inventing Characters, which handily presented 36 archetypes. While Polti's books were largely descriptive, Hill hit upon a notion: What if they were combined and made prescriptive? What if together they made a formula? Hill's Ten Million Photoplay Plots: The Master Key to All Dramatic Plots, a byzantine matrix of characters and conflicts designed to create endless plot combinations, was so novel when it debuted in 1919 that the slim guide sold for an eye-popping $5. Quietly lifting from Polti, Hill created mix-and-match lists of characters, settings, and dramatic situations. (An old man wrongfully accused of a mine explosion + seeks refuge from a band of outlaws + with a woman whose house he enters for a hiding place. + ) It was the perfect instrument for the silent movies being churned out on Hollywood lots. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQdwk8Yntds
