Limited liability corporations first came into use during the 18th and 19th centuries. They were designed to deal with the myriad of limits exceeded by our culture’s social and economic system.
The Railroads and other early corporations were simply too big and too technical to be built or insured by the incorporator’s investments alone. When corporations failed, as they often did, the incorporators did not have the wealth to cover the damage. No one did. Thus, a limit was placed on the investor’s liability, on the amount of damage for which they could be held liable.
Limited liability has allowed several generations of corporation owners to economically, psychologically, and legally ignore the limits of toxics, fisheries depletion, debt, and so on.
To expect corporations to function any differently is to engage in make-believe. We may as well expect a clock to cook, a car to give birth, or a gun to plant flowers. The specific and explicit function of for-profit corporations is to amass wealth. The function is not to guarantee that children are raised in environments free of toxic chemicals, nor to respect the autonomy or existence of indigenous peoples, not to protect the vocational or personal integrity of workers, nor to design safe modes of transportation, nor to support life on this planet. Nor is the function to serve communities. It never has been and never will be.
To expect corporations to do anything other than amass wealth is to ignore our culture’s entire history, current practices, current power structure and its system of rewards. It is to ignore everything we know about behavior modification: we reward those investing in or running corporations for what they do, and can therefore expect them to do it again. To expect those who hide behind corporate shields to do otherwise is delusional.
Limited liability corporations are institutions created explicitly to separate humans from the effects of their actions–making them, by definition, inhuman and inhumane. To the degree that we desire to live in a human and humane world–and, really, to the degree that we wish to survive–limited liabilty corporations need to be eliminated.
[This article first appeared in the March 2003 issue of the Ecologist.]
Start with the title. – The first exposure anyone else will ever have to your story is the title; therefore, you may want to consider starting there yourself, especially given today’s keyword culture and infinite movie databases. Let the title give birth to a poster; which is the visual metaphor to define your story and introduce the conflict. Craft a good tag-line to introduce your theme. Now you’re thinking like a producer, and those are the guys who sign the checks. If you can’t imagine a good title, picture a good movie poster, or think of a tag-line… Stop now. Don’t write a screenplay. Words and pictures are the vocabulary of cinema. If you can’t think of a combination that’ll get you excited–save yourself the cost of an abortion–don’t let that bastard premise out of your notebook.
Use word pictures, not words. – Show. Do not tell. Remember, it’s a screenplay. People call them scripts, but that word includes a lot of stuff. This is a screenplay. It will play on a screen. Screens use pictures to talk. This is the vocabulary you have chosen. Respect it. Word pictures are not about the words, but about the images they foster in our imaginations. If an author chooses words the audience is unfamiliar with, the audience is reminded they are reading. Eliminate this. Use the journalists vocabulary that Hemingway favored. Let people get lost in your story, not the vocabulary you’ve cultivated since being bottle-fed on Berenstain Bears books.
There is no camera. – You are a writer. Put down the camera. Focus on creating word pictures to be photographed. Inspire people to make the movie, don’t tell them what it is.
Do not use adverbs and gerunds. – Keep the story sharp and snappy. Get in. Get out. Screenplays sell ideas to people who make movies. Activate their imaginations. Don’t waste their time. There is no use or time for modifiers and passive voices. Don’t get weighed down with grammar–simply try avoiding the “ly” or “ing”. Problem solved.
Plays use Acts, while movies use Sequences. – The Beginning, the Middle, and the End; are not synonymous with Act I, Act II, Act III. There are no curtains in movies. There are reel changes. Write for the medium. Pull up the scene selection menu on a DVD and tell me where it lists the acts. Okay. Now, tell me where this scene selection menu actually lists the scenes. It doesn’t. Those chapters are sequences, and there’s probably 18-21 of them. To create a beginning-middle-end, divide by the number three.
Cliches kill, but archetypes are immortal. - Both occur often, or are–at the very least–consistently recurrent; therefore, what is the distinction between the two? Simple. One is boring. Don’t be that guy.
Details–fire for effect only. - If you need to know all the details, write a novel. If you need to see them all, direct the movie. Screenplays don’t have the time or space for details, but our definitions of reality are very closely tied to them, and a story loses a sense of authenticity without them; therefore–details are important. Indeed, the details in a screenplay are analogous to salt in cooking–and should be used accordingly. Writer beware!
If you’re not cutting gold, the whole thing is shit. - David Mamet likes to cut the best scene from each of his screenplays, but he’s a pussy. This shit is pass/fail and it’s a crazy-competitive market. In every screenplay, there needs to be enough ideas for five movies.If you can’t fill the space, the idea is vacant.
The reader is smarter than you, but only knows what you’ve revealed. - Respect! Until they understand you, no one knows what you’re talking about.No one has to listen to you. Everyone is busy. Take responsibility for the reader’s experience. You will be rewarded.
Feeling like the world is becoming less friendly? Social theorist Jonathan Zittrain begs to difffer. The Internet, he suggests, is made up of millions of disinterested acts of kindness, curiosity and trust.
Today, I have a ticket. Tomorrow, I redeem it for a flight to LAX. Ten days in LA. I’ve never been to a film festival. This one is called Action On Film Festival. Catchy title. It’s the kind of title that makes you think, “They’ll like High School Shooter.” That was a few months ago, when I submitted the script.
Yesterday, I got a letter. The script is a top five finalist in two categories: Best Script and Best Dialogue. Yesterday, I bought a round trip from New York to Los Angeles. Ten days in LA? I have zero nerves about the festival. I am anxious about LA. All those goddamn people… Breathe. I tell myself to carry a camera. It will protect me from all the people and turn them into subjects. I like to study the world. It makes me feel safer to see all the dirt. Today, I will pack my camera.
I put the camera in my carry-on. Everything is in my carry-on. I have been living out of a photographer’s bag for two year’s now. It carries everything. I would make a list, but I don’t like to talk about feelings as it hurts my image; therefore, I will not make a list. This backpack carries all of my shit. I don’t need anything else. I am mobile. I am ready to drop-in. I have spent some time in different zones. I have collected little piles of shit in each of those zones. Some of them are in storage units that I make a monthly payment on, but everything I need is in this backpack. I do not need anything else. This is it.
Today, I am distilled. Tomorrow, I will begin to build. I have no expectations. I deny them. I choose goals. I’ve never been to a film festival. Let’s see what happens.
The ashes of American flags,
Taste like the first few drags,
Of neatly rolled zig-zags.
My Favorite Narcotic
I pinned this flag to my house in Truckee when I began writing my first novel. The flag was new when I pinned it to the cedar siding. For nearly two years I would pass this flag everyday without a thought. I finished the book. I moved back East. I photographed this flag while touring with Mathematicians. We stayed at my old house during our Northern California dates. The flag was still pinned to that cedar siding. It was red, white and blue when I pinned it there.
Why am I a filmmaker? A film festival asked me to answer this question in 250 words. I wrote a one page manifesto, but shortly after finishing that, I experienced a compulsion to tell that story with pictures.
To this film festival, I have submitted Broken Helmets. It is a biographical screenplay telling the story of my friends and I. It is a personal narrative intended to understand what happened during a five year period that I survived. Broken Helmets is a true story. It was the easiest thing I’ve ever written. It was the most painful thing I’ve ever written.
I made this short, because I was reading my manifesto and the moment I began reading it – Missing by Bruce Springsteen started. It wrecked me. I know why I need to make movies. This short is my cinematic manifesto and your introduction to my story. It is a first draft, but you don’t get to ski every line twice – so enough bullkit. Start the movie.
