Writing the Photoplay

by J. Berg Esenwein; Arthur Leeds

Lynching: Lynching is only permissible when the incident happens in the days when Lynch Law was the only law, i.e., in the early days of the Far West when the Vigilantes were the only effective means of enforcing order.

2. Other Objectionable Subjects

The foregoing, of course, is not a complete list, as points are coming up continually. For instance, scenes showing kidnapping are forbidden by the police of many cities, and the introduction of that form of crime into a film story is frowned upon by the National Board. The point is that scenes of crime and violence are not absolutely barred, nor are offenses against the moral law, but where permitted these must not be presented offensively, and they must be essential to the story, rather than the purpose of the play. This is a difficult point which nothing but common sense and experience can perfectly interpret.

As an example, a story written about a murder or a robbery will not be passed, but such an incident may be allowed in a story in which it is not the leading feature. In any event, the incident must serve to point a moral and not serve as a spectacle.

Another thing to remember is that—aside from the moving-pictures exhibited in the various "regular" theatres—dozens of incidents which are shown on the regular stage without being questioned in any way, would never be allowed on the screen. This is partly due to the fact that such a large percentage of the attendants of moving-picture theatres are children and undiscriminating adults. The writer of fiction entering the field of photoplay writing will do well to bear this further fact in mind: the very incident that might be the means of selling a story to a certain magazine might be the cause of a rejection if introduced into a moving-picture plot. The photoplay has standards all its own.

"One type of the unpleasant drama," says a writer in the Photoplay Magazine, "is the kind showing scenes of drinking and wild debauchery, where some character becomes drunk and slinks home to his sickly wife, beats her, and then, finally, after reaching the last stages of becoming a sot, suddenly braces up and reforms." The same writer also remarks: "The only time that murder should be shown, and that very delicately, is either in a detective drama or else in good tragedy, where the removal of some character is essential to the plot." "Every one of Shakespeare's tragedies tells of crime," says an editorial in The Moving Picture World, "but does not exploit it, and never revels in the harrowing details to produce a thrill."

It is not to be denied that careless and unthinking directors are responsible for a good deal of what is objectionable on the screen. At the same time—and this is especially true of comedy subjects—the director is merely, as a rule, carrying out the author's suggestions, if not his actual directions. The best way is not to give the director the opportunity to adopt objectionable features—leave even questionable incidents out of your photoplay.

For example, the elopement is legitimate moving-picture material, provided it is not introduced in such a way as to instill mischief into the minds of young men and women. At least one picture was produced a year or so ago which showed two high-school girls eloping with a couple of young rakes who in another part of the photoplay "registered" that they were by no means the kind of young men who would ever have received the sanction of the girls' parents to marry their daughters. Such a picture may have been conceived innocently enough, but as a subject that would be shown to thousands of young people all over the world it was decidedly deserving of censure. And yet some of the very incidents that served to make the picture doubly objectionable in the eyes of grown people, especially fathers and mothers, might have been the result of the director's unthinkingly adding certain scenes that served to portray young men in a bad light—incidents which were not even thought of by the author when he planned his picture of a youthful escapade. We sympathize with the lovers when Dorothy's father refuses to let her marry Jack, to whom she is plainly devoted. But when, in another scene, we see Jack wasting his time in pool-rooms or lounging in a saloon, we give the father credit for being a good judge of character, and not simply a harsh and stubborn guardian.

Writers should remember that even though a film is passed by the National Board, if it gets into a city in which the local censorship board objects to one or two scenes, these scenes will be literally cut out for exhibition in that city. Afterwards, they may be put back; but if this happens in several communities, the film is likely to be shortened by many feet, since in cutting and re-splicing each cut means the loss of at least two "frames," or pictures, and even more if the operator does not know his business—not to mention the loss of the actual scenes cut out. Suppose that two or three of a writer's "strong" scenes are cut when his picture is shown—in Detroit, for instance—the result on the screen is more likely to become an illogical and incoherent jumble than the powerful "drama with a punch" he had intended it to be. But "Censorship realizes," says Mr. A.W. Thomas, in the Photoplay Magazine, "as does every editor and author, that morality is to be desired, and to this end, crime or suggestion of crime is presented, as a rule, to convey the moral. 'Crime for crime's sake' is to be condemned. Sensationalism and forbidden themes are seldom seen nowadays."

Aside from murder and suicide, why is it that so many young authors imagine that to be strong a story must have at least one violent or tragic death-scene? That there are hundreds of gripping stories, pictures with the biggest kind of "punch," in which no death or suggestion of death is shown, is well-known to every photoplay patron whose mind and heart are in good working order. And yet editors are every day returning scripts in which a murder, a suicide, a death as the result of a duel, or a death arising from disease or accident, is shown—all for no other reason than that the writer imagines he is thereby producing a strong drama.