Like movies? I do. Are you a discerning moviegoer? You should be. Stephen King writes about his love of the cinema. It helped form his imagination. Gathering from his success with the written word, King paid attention to dialog in the movies. Rule of thumb: If movies open with an over-long car chase or drop a demolition derby in the middle, screenwriters ran out of words. Shame. Well-written scripts stand out, even if audiences are unaware of the way words move the story. I grumble at poorly written scripts for television movies or Hollywood blockbusters. Special effects and beautiful stars easily wow Americans, but intelligent scripts go a long way in carrying a movie. Movies these days are dumbed down to audiences, but that's no excuse for grossness, juvenile dialog and repetitious profanity. You listening, Marty Scorsese? The Cohen brothers, no strangers to profanity, rescue their films with imaginative dialog. Their remake of "True Grit" was a masterpiece of scriptwriting. It doesn't sound like it was crafted by committee. Stephen King used movies to escape his surroundings, but he learned by listening to the way dialog was used. He may have immersed himself in much of the horror film schlock billed at his local theater, but it was not only images that fired his imagination. See a movie. Enjoy some popcorn. Have a soda. Pay attention to the spoken word.
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