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There Are Only Two Film Genres: Good Movies and Bad Movies
Create a solid story and everything else falls into line.
Perhaps twenty years ago my wife and I went to a multiplex to see the then-current Woody Allen picture. Upon arriving at the theaters, alas, we realized we had come to the wrong location.
There wasn’t sufficient time to get to the proper multiplex, so we decided to see whatever appeared to be the least awful movie at the current location.
We chose The Shawshank Redemption.
Shawshank… could be said to be something of a genre picture, couldn’t it? Isn’t it a ‘prison picture?’
The last thing we wanted to see was a prison picture.
First, in it there were likely to be no women.
For another, there would surely be the familiar prison fare: cons, guards, bars, barbed wire, concrete, asphalt, fences, chains, walls, shadows, a venal warden, a modern day stand-in for James Cagney growling and spitting, threatening the warden, vowing through clenched teeth, “I’m gonna break outta this joint!”
Reluctantly, we slipped into the auditorium screening Shawshank….
We loved it!
Notwithstanding Tim Robbins’s low-volume mumbling — given the fees he’s paid can’t he speak up? — The Shawshank Redemption is rather a splendid film. However overlong, it nevertheless creates characters worth caring about. There is a well wrought through-line, a spine for the story that unifies and integrates all the elements, that intrigues and worries the viewer in the best way.
Viewing this ‘prison picture’ reminded me of one of my central screenwriting principles: Genre is bullshit.
I hold that there are but two genres: 1) good movies; 2) bad movies.
I read a book recently treating ‘genre screenwriting.’ Here is some advice the author provides for screenwriters working on a Thriller. Use cliffhangers, exploit secrets, invent twists and turns. Here is advice for the writers of Action-Adventure scripts: give your protagonist a clear goal, make your antagonist three dimensional, and give the antagonist a strong goal too. Here’s…
