The Uses Of Enchantment - Bruno Bettelheim

Bart Oliver · 05 March, 2006, 05:09:26 PM

My thoughts exactly.

Bart Oliver · 05 March, 2006, 05:14:29 PM

My thoughts exactly.

It just seems to me like another form of exploitation- like the casting couch but for aspiring screen writers.

GordonR · 05 March, 2006, 05:30:19 PM

Yeah. Alex Cox used to write a really good column for the BBC Films site, and said that these guys are basically scam artists, part of a luctrative side-industry (that, he thought, also includes the producers of "specialised screenwriting software") out to exploit wannabe-writers for every cent they've got.

Quirkafleeg · 05 March, 2006, 05:44:01 PM

McKee is god! And everyone knows you need 'special software' to be a proper screenwriter...

Link: http://film.guardian.co.uk/oscars2006/story/0,,1722026,00.html" target="_blank">And the Award doesnt go to

GordonR · 05 March, 2006, 05:48:20 PM

Link: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0571210/" target="_blank">'...since Aristotle ' - Oh, really?

pauljholden · 05 March, 2006, 05:55:51 PM

To be fair to him, there are a couple of points in the article where he more or less admits that he performs no useful function...

"but I know perfectly well that these are extremely talented people. With or without me, I think they would have achieved what they achieved."

"I teach what used to be common knowledge,"

"... I was no Ingmar Bergman, and I never would be. I just didn't have that genius."

- pj

GordonR · 05 March, 2006, 06:09:35 PM

Exception: William Goldman. A great writer (he's won real awards, and everything) and with a track record that commands a little more respect (Butch & Sundance, All The President's Men, A Bridge Too Far, Heat, Marathon Man, Misery) than episodes of Columbo and a Bibilical mini-series for German TV.

Doesn't do the $500/day seminar thing, and his two books to date - Adventures in the Screen Trade and Which Lie Did I just Tell? - are great reads, moreautobiography and casual insights revealed than "secrets of the three-act route to riches revealed!" and far more entertaining than McKee's turgid Story book.

Quirkafleeg · 05 March, 2006, 06:22:18 PM

>Adventures in the Screen Trade and Which Lie Did I just Tell?

I re-read that few years ago and it's a touch of class ('Nobody knows anything')

pauljholden · 05 March, 2006, 10:56:29 PM

Some FREE software. Now you too can write a screen play and make a fortune.

http://celtx.com/download'>CLTX Screen writing software

Tiplodocus · 08 March, 2006, 05:25:20 AM

I'm a big fan of those two Goldman books (though WHICH LIE DID I TELL rer#trod some ground of the original). He also says my favourite thing about ENDINGS. And everytime I watch a film and think; "That ending was rubbish" (which happens increasingly these days), I wonder how he'd have written it.

There's a great sequence in one of them where he had to write a title sequence for a Paul Newman film - the running time was short and they needed a couple of extra minutes. The stuff he wrote is utterly masterful in telling you (visually) so much about Paul Newman's character that I keep nicking bits of it to put in my rejected scripts.