Richard S. Wheeler certainly isn’t afraid of controversy. After laying the blame for the decline of the mass-market paperbacks on the quality of the novels, today on his new blog he makes much the same argument about the movie business.
fiction is not the only type of storytelling in decline. After
adjusting for inflation, Hollywood’s annual gross from feature films
had declined every year since 1970. As is true of novels, this decline
has occurred during a time of rapid population growth. Plainly, there
is a deepening disconnect between storytellers of all sorts, and those
who buy our stories.
In the case of the movie business, I’m not sure storytellers are to blame as much as aggressive creative meddling by non-writers… studio execs who "develop" scripts to death. Literally.
What are your thoughts?
Elsewhere
Ex Mea Sententia has a pet peeve about usage:
…one of my biggest pet peeves is when people needlessly use the word “literally” in all their conversations. Is it because they feel intelligent for using a nine letter multisyllabic word over and o…
Something is to blame. Every year, they brag about the increase in box office revenue while the price of my movie tickets goes up a buck. I dont’ buy it for a minute since I’m going to see fewer movies then I was several years ago.