Or as my father often, and far more pithily, puts it when gathering tools for his latest project: You're better looking at it than looking for it.
]]>http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/56148615-78/marx-groucho-opera-brothers.html.csp
"A Night at the Opera," written by James Kevin McGuinness, was adapted for film by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind. To ensure the movie’s "laugh-worthiness" before committing any schtick to celluloid, Thalberg sent the script for a trial run in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Salt Lake City.
"We are kicking ourselves we didn’t think of this before," Groucho said in the April 13 Salt Lake Tribune. "A successful comedy depends almost entirely upon audience reaction, and if anyone tells you he can sit in Hollywood and judge in advance how much Salt Lake or any other city is going to laugh at any given ‘gag’ — don’t hesitate, put in a hurry call for the psychopathic ward. We expect our greatest help from Salt Lake, for it is our first stop … and we will get a definite idea of the script’s value."
Ryskind attended the weeklong performances at the Orpheum’s 1,160-seat vaudeville house. The Tribune ran ads: "The Marx Bros., on the Stage, in Person." Tickets for the matinee sold for 40 cents, 55 cents for evenings and kids got in for a dime. The theater was packed.
Ryskind recorded audiences’ reactions, timed laughs, analyzed groans and reworked the script for the next day’s show.
That April 17, The Tribune reported failed gags were "‘blue-penciled’ so that by the time the organization has been around the four-city circuit, the writers and producers will know pretty well just what and what not to include in the final script for a bang-up picture."
The film was a $3 million hit — and Groucho’s favorite.
There's a big difference between testing your material and selling out. I wish more movies scripts were tested artistically instead of as marketing exercises.
]]>Why is that the only conclusion you would leap to?
]]>BTW - I keep mentioning teens because this has been and remains a critical age for establishing brand/personal preferences.
]]>I have just returned from a business trip of the awake-at-4:15am-three-countries-in-two-days variety, but will respond in more detail tomorrow!
@dirk.bruere - Indeed - my guess about the 90% was dead wrong, and arguably in a way that shows they're smarter than I expected. Turns out that reports of the "YouTube generation" only having an attention span of 20 seconds are dead wrong, at least for drama - given a modicum of storytelling people are happy to let a plot develop for at least a few minutes before turning off.
@gmuir77 - wow, I did not know that at all! There is nothing new under the sun...
]]>They took this script back to the studio, ran through it again on set to allow the film crew to stop laughing so hard they shook the cameras... and then on the next take they ad-libbed AND IT STILL WORKED. That's genius.
]]>@justin.boden - It made me question a lot of the conventional wisdom around making movies for the Web, certainly. Currently the craft of making streaming entertainment is in its infancy, and the craft of making streaming drama for YouTube (as opposed to curated platforms like Netflix) is even more so. I think a lot of people, including myself, are prone to extrapolating from data taken from video as a whole, and failing to remember that audience reactions will be vastly different between an amusing video of a cat and a 20-minute dramatic fiction.
]]>I am, of course, guilty of this (for values of "guilty of this" anyway). Near my Mother's house, there is a civic gallery which contains, amongst other things, a collection of portraits of Victorian gentlemen, some "Arcadian landscapes", and Dali's "Christ of St John of the Cross". Not being interested in the brushwork of Victorian portrait painters working in oils I tend to virtually ignore the portraits, stop and physically look at the landscapes, and spend several minutes on the Dali.
What this actually proves is that, for a portrait to interest me, it probably needs to be of someone I recognise rather than some rich businessman or landowner who died maybe 70 years before I was born, but that similar contraints don't actually apply to other forms of paintings or, to the same extent, to newer works.
Perhaps you could put this argument about taking the subjects of paintings into account to your friend?
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