That fiction writers are taking advantage of this unusual opportunity to sell their work twice is an absolute certainty. “In fact, as several writers remarked at the Writers’ Club dinner, a large percentage of the present-day magazine stories are written—planned and plotted—with the screen directly in mind.... It is well known, on the inside of the game, that successful fictionists plan every situation and bit of dialogue in certain stories, visualizing, as they write, the way those situations will, as they hope, work out on the screen.”[14] And again: “Today, among the more successful writers of action-stories for the magazines, there exists the feeling that it is a criminal waste of time to write originals for the screen. Their method is deliberately to plan their fiction ... so that it will actually contain abundant photoplay material, while yet being properly balanced up with the necessary word-painting and dialogue which good fiction demands. In other words, they systematically plan their fiction to make its picture possibilities ‘hit the producer in the eye’ the first time he—or his scenario editor—reads it.... Almost nine-tenths of the pictures shown today are adaptations of successful fiction stories or stage plays. If you doubt that, watch the productions in your theatres and note their origin.”[15]
What this “systematic planning” results in is self-evident. The moving-picture story and the fiction story are two different products. Their technique is different. The photoplay is pantomime pure and simple. Ideas and emotions can only be expressed by means of gestures and facial contortions, with the aid of a schoolboy subtitle flashed on the screen. Literary style, psychologic delineation, and nice subtleties of thought and emotion cannot be transmitted. The plot must unfold rapidly and teem with surprising and tense situations. The actors must have something to do every second. To write a fiction story with photoplay possibilities requires a careful selection of theme and plot. Unlike the magazines, which run in types, each catering to a particular group of temperamental and intellectual stratum of our people, the moving pictures depend for success upon the approval of the Ladies’ Auxiliary Society and the Chew Tobacco Club of Dead Hollow as well as upon Greenwich Village and the bourgeois Philistines of our metropolises. No theme must be used that might give offense to any of these patrons; all must be kept satisfied so that a continuance of their patronage may be insured. It is also apparent that the pale, quiet story which does not depend upon action for its “punch” must be entirely sacrificed, since it cannot possibly have any moving-picture adaptability. Only the swift-moving, red-blooded plot can be utilized.
Needless to suggest that our story writers are well aware of these limitations. The fact that their work is adapted almost wholesale into photoplays speaks eloquently for their knowledge on this score. Needless to suggest, also, that they have become expert mechanics in the way of constructing a fiction story so that it will be certain to “hit the producer in the eye.” They have learned that “the photoplaywright depends upon his ability to think and write in action.”[16] And they have learned to think and write in action. They have also taken to heart the dictum regarding theme. “In selecting your theme, ask yourself if either dialogue or description may not be really required to bring out the theme satisfactorily. If such is the case, abandon the theme. The few inserts permitted cannot be relied upon to give much aid—the chief reliance must be pantomime.”[17] It is only natural, then, for our writers to eschew the unadaptable theme altogether.
That the bulk of our magazine fiction is, therefore, not magazine fiction at all, but merely disguised moving-picture stories is a fact that has found entirely too little general publicity. A moving-picture story differs from a fiction story not only in matter of technique and theme barred by limitations of technique but also in many other respects. As we have seen, because of the general appeal of the moving pictures certain themes that might offend any part of the great public must be avoided. Obviously this results in the humiliating condition of degenerating to the standard of the lowest patron, of courting his approval as the final goal of successful authorship. But should, perchance, an author with a virile conscience bolt the ranks of the meek conformists and yet, by dint of extraordinarily fortunate circumstances, break through with his product, the power of the various Boards of Censorship must be reckoned with.
There are, of course, official, semi-official and unofficial censors presiding over the production of our magazine fiction, too. But while a revolting author may take his work to some less respectable magazine and thus save his soul, no such outlet exists for the photoplaywright. His work must be so harmless that it will pass not only the National Board of Censorship but also the various State and city boards, otherwise no enterprising producer will risk his money producing it. The experienced photoplaywright, then, studies the proscriptions of the various boards and keeps himself informed of all their decisions. He knows, for instance, that crime must be treated cautiously, and it must always be punished in the end; that the National Board will not pass a picture in which there is a suicide, that burglary may be shown, but not by what means it is committed; that flirtations with women of easy virtue are banned; that lynching scenes are permissible only when the picture is laid in places where no other law exists; that scenes showing kidnapping do not always “get by”; that elopements must be handled delicately; that, in short, the effect of the picture on the young, the evil-minded, and the weak-minded must always be carefully gaged.
The experienced photoplaywright also knows of all important precedents established by the censors. He knows that Shakespeare’s plays have not gotten by unscathed; that “Macbeth” was deemed too full of crime and “Romeo and Juliet” too full of love; that a kiss between the two youngsters in the latter play was limited to three feet; that Eugene Walter’s “Easiest Way” could not be exhibited in the sovereign State of Pennsylvania because the Board of Censors of that State had condemned it “in accordance with Section 6 of the Act.... Because it deals with prostitution”; that in O. Henry’s “Past One at Rooney’s” such sub-titles as “At one end was a human pianola with drugged eyes,” and “I know how bad it looked—me smokin’ and comin’ in here. But I’ll promise you, Eddie—I’ll give up cigarettes and stay home every night if you want me to” were deleted; etc., etc. And above all he knows that religious and political views must never be expressed. Furthermore, that if he breaks the last law and does essay to express any views at all, they must be the worn-out popular views that even the humblest deacon or the mistress of the little red schoolhouse back home might be gladdened with, because they have been cherishing them as an heritage from their ancient forbears.
Thus the influence of the moving pictures on the bulk of our magazine and even book fiction. It is a moving-picture fiction, “strong,” fast-moving, startling, full of cheap ideas and a gushy hackneyed idealism, written largely by photoplaywrights who use the fiction medium simply because it enables them to exact a higher price for their product, and catering to a photoplay public. For this moving-picture influence extends not only to the makers of stories but to the general reading public as well. It tames it, if indeed it need any taming, molds it, forms it into a hardened cast with a definite æstheticism which it carries from the cinema house to Happy Stories and Virile Stories and Goody Stories and back again. There are traditional themes, traditional views and a traditional treatment, in spite of the loud cry for novelty, and any theme, view or treatment violating the tradition, should it succeed to get by the vigilantes higher up, has to brave a combat with this traditional moving-picture taste.
The young story writer, like his more mature brother or sister, is infected with this influence and from the very beginning of his career looks askance at any doctrine that conflicts with his proud æstheticism. But in our profession it is seldom that he is required to be false to the culture of the screen. Our textbooks and the bombastic dogmas they largely exploit are themselves for the most part a product of the same culture. He is told to think in terms of action rather than in terms of idea and character. He is trained in the construction and management of situation and incident until, although not consciously intending to, he is able, like his more successful colleagues, to turn out passable photoplay material. Small wonder that most of our short stories abound in wooden characters, clumsily moving about on well-oiled springs, thinking stereotyped thoughts and talking wooden dialogue. The atmosphere fanning upon them has the hot fetid tang of the darkened-theatre air.
When told to write a story the student almost without hesitation betakes himself to his supreme source for plot material. It matters little that this material itself merely represents the adaptation of some fiction story. The moving pictures today could be used as another illustration of Emerson’s theory of circles, or is it merely a modification of the delightful pastime of see-saw of which we were so fond in our childhood? The scenario writer adapts the magazine story and the magazine story writer adapts the photoplay story, etc., etc., ad infinitum. Of course the disguising twist often goes with it, but the material nevertheless basically remains the same. And, as a matter of fact, from the point of view of salability the method is not without merit, everybody involved—the scenario editor, the producer, the public—recognizes in the revamped material an old friend, and, if the revamping has been done dexterously and ingeniously, glories in its novel familiarity. The failures employing this method are confined mainly to two classes of students—those who are temperamentally entirely out of tune with the moving-picture traditions, a small minority to be sure, and those who, though favorably attuned to the spirit of the silver sheet, fail to acquire the knack of giving their work the necessary disguising twist which passes for the much-vaunted novelty.
Admitting that it would be extremely difficult and perhaps even futile to attempt to wean the young student-majority away from the well-assimilated influence of the show house, one cannot avoid speculation upon what could be made by a serious-minded critical teaching profession of the open-minded minority diffidently seeking encouragement in their desire to follow newer traditions or to give birth to still newer ones. If for one chapter in our texts or for one semester in our institutions of learning the joy of creating for the mere love of it, for the sheer beauty of it, had been glorified as we glorify popularity and commercial success, what a buoyancy of spirit we could have engendered, what a fluttering of young wings!