From: wojdylo@maths.uwa.oz.au (INFIDEL)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: A Reply to Professor McCarthy's query on films
Date: 14 Sep 1992 07:18:06 GMT
Organization: The University of Westrn Australia
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: madvax.maths.uwa.oz.au



John McCarthy writes:

>Characters in movies don't waste time reading books or newspapers or
>watching TV.  Lacks cinematic values, I believe they'd say.

A few counterexamples from the (non-empty) set of "recent top-rate films":

1)  Wim Wender's first film, "Wrong Turn": the central character is a
writer; he reads a book at the start and elsewhere. The film is based on
Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship".

2) Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Decalog - part 3" has, as a central
character, a bookish girl who gets herself into trouble when trying to
escape from her parents' influence.

3) Most of the characters in Andrei Tarkovsky's films are book readers
even though they might not be seen to read a book "during the film".
(Yes I'm being provocative -- any guesses as to how this can be
plausible?)


As for recent Hollywood films, I wouldn't know to tell you the truth, I
tend to give most of them a miss. Of the ones that I've seen, it's
pretty clear that John's observation is plausible, in its literal 
interpretation as well as a metaphysical one.

There are several interesting points to be raised in replying to John's
observation, although I'm not quite sure whether I can couch them in
terms arithmetical enough for John's tastes.  

One is : does the character explicitly have to read a book during a film
in order to serve as a counterexample to JMC? What is JMC lamenting: is
it the lack of book-reading screen role-models , or is it the lack of
thoughtful, "literate and literary" people on the screen? Or, in
deference to the "cinematic value" part of John's observation, is John
lamenting the fact that  written forms (novel, newspaper etc.) have
different constraints on what can be meaningfully expressed than the
audiovisual form of film?

Of course, if by "film" John really means "backyard home video" then
there's no reason why we can't have a four hundred and thirty hour film of 
John or any of his AI colleagues reading Stroustrup's latest book on C++.

However, once we have accepted that filming Professor McCarthy reading page
two of Bjarne Stroustrup's book offers the artistic mind no
information further to what has already been captured during the filming
of the reading of page one of the book, it releases the filmmaker from
the burden of having to keep Professor McCarthy for the great length of
time required to read the other 400 pages or so -- at least. Us
filmmakers have that problem with Stars, as I am finding out. 

Moreover, there are only four or five useful angles to film Professor
McCarthy's act that would give justice to that greying scalp of his, and
these are used up in approximately 30 seconds, even in highly charged,
dramatic moments; in that time, assuming I call the clapperboard with
John already wearing his looking glass, only a sentence or two would be
completed before the end of the take. 

Even more important than these technical considerations is the meaning
attached to the act as it appears on the screen, bounded by a
rectangular frame. An outsider who knows nothing about the significance
of C++ or arithmetic sees only a white-haired old gentleman with a
lilly-white beardlet wearing an Uncle Sam lapel badge hunched over
something that could be a book. So what. Some interest must be generated
by the context: maybe the book contains KGB code that those dahhm
russkies are gonna use to infiltrate the Pentagon. Maybe it's the
gentleman's -- whoever he is -- father's Will and Testament, and the
moment has human value. Etc. etc. In any case, John McCarthy stops being
John McCarthy, and the book is no longer Stroustrup's tome on C++. And
reading the book is no longer the central aim of the segment; in fact, the 
aim is to connect with something else in the film. To the artistic mind,
making this connection requires little film-time; too long and the
moment is overdefined. 

That's why you don't see much book-reading even in the best of films.
*Especially* in the best of films.


John Wojdylo
Melbourne 
September 1992