The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1915-02-28
~ CARL Q. BORG

is the scenario writer. / have been
scenario editor here for FIVE years, and
during that time every person in the
United States above the age Of twelve
has submitted one or more manu
scripts to me.
Everybody in the United States
writes photoplays now. I don't know
why people should look upon the writ
ing Of ~photoplays as a means Of maxi
ing easy money. 1t requires educa-
ton. technique, imagination. ingenuity
and intelligence 10 write a p~hotoplay.
and those people who would spend
four years learning how to become
bricklayers, or three years to become
iathers, expect to become motion pic
ture playwrights over night.
.It is almost m%addening to read
some of the scripts that come in
and read them I must, every last one
Of them. because you never al tell
but what the impossible will! happen,
ana SOTntpouy HiiSht H"'S al Nv"
DO you see these three manuscripts?"
he said, picking up three businesslike
and neat documents. "These are h
result of a weeks reading-out Of six
hundred submitted. And even these
are not accepted-they are only being
kept for a ~rereading."
rs there really any market for the
~photoplays OF outsiders-1 mean for
writer's not on the staff of the motion
picture producer"
is there, Why, the one big prob
,em that threatens this business is the
.ack Of new ideas. l write scripts
myself. there are two other editors
here who write scripts, and the
strain is so great that Ne would gladly
auit it If some decent ideas would only
come in with any kind of regularity.
But they don't"
But the s.x hundred! Do you
mean TO say that there are no new
Geas in them?'
That's right. We get in on an
average six hundred scripts a week.
We reread, on IN average of l per
cent, six, and accept, on an average Of
une-third of ! per cent, two-and there
sou are. They come from all over,
he country, the city, the town. even
from sailors on board ship: but they
contain no new IDEAS.
There are seven basic themes, just
as there are seven notes of music and
seven colors in the spectrum. and
there are enough variations of these
themes to make billions of photoplays,
and some time l am going to write
them myself, when | get sick of read
ing other peoples manuscripts
What are the seven themes?"
We'll, there are the triangle, the re-
generation, the lost child, the revenge,
&c., &C." he Went on, naming ten. 1T
makes no difference, there are only
seven basic themes" he insisted when
this was pointed out, And you ought
TO see some of the variations we get
m" he hurried on. "They all run in
the same train of thought, and most
Of them employ the SAINT means, And
the greatest of these is the locket."
The locket?"
"Yes-you've seen it.. 1t used TO be
popular. The elderly mar comes into
the squalid tenement. sees a young
woman wearing a lockct, and says;
Where did you get that locket?' 1T
was my mothers she says gently,
Flash iocket. Don't you know me,
me chelld?-I'm your father The
thunder you are, she lays, n they
clinch. Slow fade.
Here's one he said, opening the
drawer OF his desk and taking out a
manuscript, that has a scene where
IA" hero is supposed to enter. looking
rs II he had just had a secret confer
'nce with the heroine. Can you beat
IL"
And it's all true. The scenario edi-
tor OF another large concern said sub
sthntially the anne things. He de-
AIRED that he and his associates read
Ron