So let’s put down our remotes and our phones for a sec and thank them.
“To make a great film you need three things – the script, the script and the script.”
– Alfred Hitchcock, Director
What do your favorite movies of all time all have in common? Most of them had scripts. And those scripts came from, drumroll please……writers. Specifically, screenwriters. Although Chester & Friends tends to focus more on commercial projects, we also understand the importance of creating a narrative, and of the place that feature productions have in our minds, hearts and culture. To that end, we would like to take a moment today to recognize all the hardworking screenwriters out there working their fingers to the bone, on laptops and legal pads and journals and napkins—just so you can spend 15 minutes browsing what to watch on your streaming service of choice, only to move on to your second favorite streaming service and then back again, repeating the same process several times in what psychologists call “the Content Indecision Loop.”*
Creative ideas don’t work on a 9 to 5 schedule, and rarely do these people. Some of our favorite screenwriters include Noah Baumbach, The Coen Brothers, Stanley Kubrick, Judd Apatow, Harold Ramis, Aaron Sorkin, The Farrelly brothers, and, the universal favorite in the Chester & Friends office, Wes Anderson (even if we can’t all agree on his best film). The next time you can’t think of what to watch, do yourself a favor and search for a film with a script written by any of these people. Or, better yet, google your favorite film and discover who wrote the script—and seek out other works by that same person. And save yourself from the indecision.
“[Screenwriters are] a hugely undervalued asset in Hollywood: they’re architects, they make us look good, often times their jobs are very hard…They’re alone in rooms in their underwear, weeping softly with their tears working as lube for their old fashioned typewriter machines. So I accept this on the screenwriters’ behalf.”
– Ryan Reynolds, Actor
*Not really, I made that up.