Ask Mick LaSalle: Are there any original script ideas left?
Dear Mick LaSalle: Are there any original script ideas left? At which point do you start thinking less of a film because it reminds you of another you have seen?
Mick Hansen, Anchorage Dear Mick Hansen: Almost never. It’s very bad when critics start seeing everything in terms of something else they’ve already seen. It makes for tiresome writing, and it comes from an unsophisticated understanding of how stories work. Of course, stories are often similar to each other. But if you ask people when they think movies were original, they usually give you a date somewhere around the time they were 20 years old, when the kinds of stories they saw in movies were no more original than they are today, just original to their own experience.
The real issue is how well the story is executed, and whether there is anything behind it, something living, passionate and inspired. Needless to say, the rebooting of every comic book series ever imagined is getting sickening, and if filmmakers steal an entire story from an earlier source, without acknowledgment, and then screw it up, that’s not good, either. (I’m thinking here of “Self/Less.”) But blatant examples aside, watching movies and recoiling every time some plot element reminds you of something you’ve already seen is a great way to never again enjoy a new movie. Hi Mick: The movie “Casting By” makes a case for adding “Casting” to the Oscar categories. Does this aspect of the filmmaking process ever come to mind as you watch a film you’re going to review?
Webb Johnson, Fairfield Dear Webb: It most often comes to mind in a negative way, because casting, when it’s good, has a way of seeming inevitable, when it’s anything but that. I suppose the casting that I think about most in a positive way is the all-too famous example of “The Godfather,” in which Marlon Brando and James Caan, who seemed as authentically Italian American as drag queens seem female, somehow were better in their respective roles than, say, Anthony Quinn and Robert De Niro might have been playing those same roles realistically. The thing about casting — and this is something I live with, not as a critic but as the husband of a playwright — is that usually no one is perfectly right, and so casting is a matter of deciding which aspects you just can’t live without. For a great tutorial on the torments of casting, check out the extras on the Criterion disc for “Rebecca,” in which a half dozen actresses audition for the lead role, with each of them bringing a special quality. Alfred Hitchcock eventually went with Joan Fontaine, but there was nothing obvious in the choice. He could have gone another way. Dear Mick: Do you ever read what other respected critics say about a particular movie and reconsider your stance, if not publicly, then in private?
Larry Snyder, Berkeley Dear Larry: I don’t usually read what other critics have to say about movies I’ve reviewed, not that I avoid them, just that once I’m done writing about a movie, I’ve pretty much exhausted my interest in it. However, when I do read reviews that I disagree with, I usually don’t feel that other critics are wrong or right, just valuing things I didn’t think important or discounting things I found essential. In other words, we saw the same film and understood it, but we had a different point of view. Months or years later, I might change my mind about a picture — I’m not averse to changing my mind about anything. But seeing that 75 percent of critics disagree with me about something doesn’t make me reconsider my own opinion. After all, I’m not a physicist making grand hypotheses about the nature of the universe. I’m a film critic, and I just saw the movie a week ago. How could I not know what I think?