Month: July 2013

Suderman points to it, a formula that “lays out, on a page-by-page basis, exactly what should happen when in a screenplay”:

[I]t came from a screenplay guidebook, Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need. In the book, author Blake Snyder, a successful spec screenwriter who became an influential screenplay guru, preaches a variant on the basic three-act structure that has dominated blockbuster filmmaking since the late 1970s.

When Snyder published his book in 2005, it was as if an explosion ripped through Hollywood. The book offered something previous screenplay guru tomes didn’t. Instead of a broad overview of how a screen story fits together, his book broke down the three-act structure into a detailed “beat sheet”: 15 key story “beats”—pivotal events that have to happen—and then gave each of those beats a name and a screenplay page number. Given that each page of a screenplay is expected to equal a minute of film, this makes Snyder’s guide essentially a minute-to-minute movie formula.

McArdle hates that so many contemporary, formulaic movies are targeted at male adolescents:

I watch movies from decades past, like “Chariots of Fire” or the “Killing Fields” or “Sophie’s Choice,” and I’m struck that few of them could ever be made now; they’re both too slow, and too subtle. (Note: none of these movies is particularly subtle.) For that matter, as the Official Blog Spouse points out, “Jurassic Park” might not get made now; there’s almost no action in the first hour, and it definitely doesn’t conform to Blake Snyder’s formula. Steven Spielberg recently told a film school class that “Lincoln” was “this close” to premiering on HBO. If Steven Spielberg can’t get a movie made because he’s insufficiently formulaic, Hollywood has an enormous problem.

Alyssa also thinks the studios need to diversify:

I wonder if part of the problem, and one of the reasons we see fewer of the lower-priced movies aimed at adult audiences instead of attempts to pull in teenagers and young men, is that studios have gotten into the habit of wanting the same outcome from every film, rather than understanding that their slate of films can function like a stock portfolio, the profits from some bigger profits fueling smaller movies that could have a longer critical and commercial shelf life.

Douthat defines “libertarian populism” as a political orientation that “sees the cause of limited government as a means not only to safeguarding liberty, but to unwinding webs of privilege and rent-seeking and enabling true equality of opportunity as well.” Wilkinson doubts it will catch on:

I see two problems. First, right-wing populism in America has always amounted to white identity politics, which is why the only notable libertarian-leaning politicians to generate real excitement among conservative voters have risen to prominence through alliances with racist and nativist movements. Ron Paul’s racist newsletters were not incidental to his later success, and it comes as little surprise that a man styling himself a “Southern Avenger” numbers among Rand Paul’s top aides. This is what actually-existing right-wing libertarian populism looks like, and that’s what it needs to look like if it is to remain popular, or right-wing. Second, political parties are coalitions of interests, and the Republican Party is the party of the rich, as well as the ideological champion of big business. A principled anti-corporatist, pro-working-class agenda stands as much chance in the GOP as a principled anti-public-sector-union stance in the Democratic Party. It simply makes no sense.

Douthat defends the movement:

[T]he idea of “an effort to make the GOP no longer the party of the rich, in both reality and perception,” as [Tim] Carney puts it, doesn’t seem impossibly far fetched right now. Not because it wouldn’t be wrenching in various ways (it would), not because it wouldn’t cut against the party’s historical identity (it would), but because parties want to win elections, and it isn’t obvious what other course a G.O.P. that hopes to win again should take.

Obama’s second term crash with non-college whites could create an opening, I suppose. And Larison adds that libertarian populism is “virtually the only alternative on offer arguing that there is something fundamentally wrong with the party’s current economic agenda”:

Parties are coalitions of interests, and Republicans rely on the votes of a lot of people whose interests are currently neglected by the party’s policy agenda. One reason that the GOP can be “the party of the rich” while relying on the votes of working- and middle-class voters is that it portrays its reliable support for corporate interests as a defense of free markets, entrepreneurship, and small businesses. One virtue of a libertarian populist agenda is that it exposes this fraud and presents an alternative that is still potentially palatable to a conservative electorate.

Barro feels that Chris Christie is the GOP’s best bet for 2016:

If you’re a political party whose problem is that your appeal is not broad enough, nominating the candidate with broad appeal should be a no-brainer.

Christie is sure to face conservative resistance over substantive policy issues (like his acceptance of the Medicaid expansion) and stylistic ones (like his literal embrace of President Obama last October). But his actions that have antagonized conservative base voters are the same ones that allow Christie to maintain a broad appeal.

And Christie seems to be sufficiently conservative for the Republicans who follow his governing actions most closely. Ninety-six percent of Republicans in New Jersey approve of the job he’s doing as Governor, according to a June Quinnipiac poll.

Yglesias doubts that Christie could run successfully as a moderate. He notes the last two GOP nominees could have touted their moderate credentials:

[C]ompared to their major rivals both Mitt Romney and John McCain were the moderates in the field. But while both Romney and McCain had some major moments of moderation in their records, they didn’t have any moderation in their platforms as presidential candidates. The deal struck by party leaders in both cases was basically we’ll overlook a record of heterodoxy in exchange for clear indications that you plan to govern in a totally orthodox manner. It would have been child’s play for Romney to draw a contrast between the pragmatic, ideologically flexible, “get things done” approach he took as Governor of Massachusetts and the uncompromising conservatism and obstructionism of the hideously unpopular Boehner/McConnell GOP but Romney chose not to draw that contrast because despite Romney’s personal record the Romney operation was founded on orthodoxy.

Meanwhile, Kornacki points out that, should he run, Christie would face a tough choice over whether to remain governor or not:

If the polls are right and Chris Christie wins a lopsided reelection victory this fall, it will put the New Jersey governor in position to seek the presidency in 2016. That’s the conventional wisdom, at least, and there’s plenty to be said for it. After all, by racking up a big margin in a deeply blue state, Christie would be making a powerful statement to Republicans across the country about his electability.

What’s not getting much attention is the flip-side: the severe consequences that winning a second term as governor could have for Christie’s ability to raise money for a national campaign – and the possibility that he might be compelled to resign his office during his second term if he’s going to seek the White House.

In totalitarian states, it is not unusual to see public officials mouth official slogans and mantras that they do not fully believe in. It’s part of the kabuki dance required to maintain the status quo ideology that undergirds the entire polity. In democracies, there is, of course, no threat of physical coercion or imprisonment or torture or assassination if someone actually speaks truth to power, or simply speaks their mind. There is merely a reverse impulse against truth-telling: ambition. And since Robert Bork testified honestly in front of the Senate, and was effectively hounded from smeared by Ted Kennedy for doing so, no appointee has said anything but the minimal amount of horseshit to survive the process. Nomination hearings are a farce, an orchestrated dance of deception and banality, signifying nothing but grease on the political pole.

And so it’s as unsurprising as it is repellent to read Samantha Power’s testimony yesterday, in which she basically said anything she thought she needed to get approved, regardless of her past views, worldview, passion and intelligence. In that eternal contest between ambition and principles, there was, it turns out, no contest. Just capitulation to the powers that be. The main threat was from the neocons:

Mort Klein, head of the Zionist Organization of America, the nation’s oldest pro-Israel group, said he opposes Power’s appointment based on a 2002 comment she made suggesting the U.S. stop spending money on the Israeli military and instead invest billions of dollars in a new Palestinian state. Power recommended the U.S. send “a mammoth protection force” in order to create a “military presence” in Israel and rationalized that the move would alienate a powerful pro-Israel lobby in the U.S. which she referred to as “a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import.”

Yet yesterday, she all but sounded like a member of Netanyahu’s cabinet. David Rieff is as dismayed as I am:

Hers was, to put it mildly, a supremely chameleon-like performance.

In addressing Wyoming senator John Barrasso’s anxieties about recent UN efforts to forge a treaty on the international trade in small arms and the effect it might have on the virtually unfettered right of U.S. citizens to own rifles and pistols, Power was quick to concur that the Second Amendment was sacrosanct. On Israel, about which in some of her earlier journalism she had been somewhat critical, Power’s testimony was, to the senators’ evident satisfaction, so stridently one-sided as to be almost wholly indistinguishable from the talking points of Israeli diplomats.

Her prepared statement emphasized the United States had “no greater friend in the world than the State of Israel,” when a more clear-eyed assessment surely would be that it is the other way around. And she went on to say that addressing the “disproportionate” critical focus on Israel would be a central priority for her. Later, in an answer to a question, Power opined that the real reason Israel is so often singled out for such criticism at the UN is because “50 percent of the countries [there] are not democratic.”

Who came up with that? Charles Krauthammer? Bill Kristol? But it was what Rand Paul rightly called non-responsive responses that stick in the throat. Rieff again:

Power conceded at the hearing that her “perspective” on a number of important questions had been changed by “serving in the executive branch.” But whatever her real views now are, they were nowhere in evidence either in her prepared statement or in her responses to senators’ questions.

Senate hearings are, effectively, a tragicomedy of vacuity. But boy, did Samantha Power know her part well.

(Photo: Samantha Power, the nominee to be the U.S. representative to the United Nations, testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on July 17, 2013. Power has received broad bipartisan support for her nomination. By Win McNamee/Getty Images)