By Celebrated playwright and Oscar-winning screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan’s screen works have ranged from writing/directing “Manchester by the Sea” and “Margaret” to co-writing the live-action “The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle” and comedy “Gangs of New York”.
Recently he was in Portugal giving a masterclass to cinema students and gave a lengthy interview with Observador (via WoR) where he spoke about the problems with current Hollywood filmmaking.
Intriguingly Lonergan didn’t have much to say about superhero films or moan about sequels/reboots. Rather, his aim was towards more serious, dramatic and prestige fare and claims movies these days are more occupied with messaging than entertainment. He says:
“We are in the era of ‘messages’ through fiction. It’s a very irritating time, I hope it stops. The problem is with people who say they are always on the right side.
Propaganda makes bad films. American cinema should steer far away from that – when political agendas get involved in cinema then it becomes too simplistic. The films become an opinion and not a story.
Having a point of view is different from conveying a message through a film. You are then forced to manipulate the characters and make them say things they shouldn’t be saying.
A political film can do a great service, but it has to be good… Right now we’re in the age of messaging, and the stuff is bad. It seems to me that people are getting fed up.”
This follows in the wake of comments from Disney CEO Bob Iger a few months back about a plan to “focus on entertaining, and not messages” with their upcoming works.
The post Lonergan On ‘Hollywood Propaganda’ Films appeared first on Dark Horizons.
