When you become a parent someday and have kids of your own, you're views might change. As a scriptwriter with 2 daughters aged 10 and 12, I am very careful what I write so that my audience doesn't exclude my own children. Besides, does your film really need swearing and nudity to be interesting?

i think the answer to that is no, because no films really need nudity or swaering, its the quality of acting and the script not whats in it

?url?www.youtube.com/rsteenoven?/url?

My mother doens't like swearing or gore in movies but that never occured to me while writing screenplays because if the swearing is essential to a character or scene I'll put it in. On the other hand sex and nudity are out because I can't really justify either with the stories I write.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

I know where your coming from, I still live with my mom and her fiance (who's more like a step dad) I dont like the thought of either of them reading what I am writting. For me I feel sort of self Conscious when I think about them reading it. For me I draw a lot from personal experiences and some of the characters personalities are also drawn from real people. Which means that they will be identifying these traits. I dont really hide things from my parents but the thought of them reading what I am writting is a horrible one. As far as I know I'm the only person that has read my screen play, and thats the way that I prefer it to remain until I am going over it with my actors. My mom knows that theres lots of violence in my screen play, but I dont think that she understands how much bad language is in it aswell as other things, such as the representation of drugs ( My parents disagree with the idea of drugs being used recriationaly). I'd emagine that when youve made your film you will be hesitant to show her. But you should explain to her exactly whats in it so shes prepared. Also I think you should remind her that its not real (In mine om going to use friends of mine and people that she will recognise, and she'll see them in a light that she would wish she didnt). I feel the same but the way we gota look at is like this, If we can present it to them then we can present it to any one. Cleary.

www.myspace.com/holteendproductions

My parents have seen all the shorts I've produced, including a series where my brother is portrayed as a hobo who gets smothered to death by an overzealous documentary host. They've seen me and my S.O. recreationally swearing like the F word is a conjunction. They've seen our balls-to-the-wall stunt guys throw themselves in harms way with seemingly no regard for their personal safety.

Their reaction? Same as you would expect from any rational viewer. They have their favourite moments and the things they didn't like, but never picked out anything content-wise that they though "oh no our boy isn't innocent" or whatever, rather if they picked up oon a flawed edit or bad acting, that's what they notice.

Morgneto, Master of Morgnetism

my brother is portrayed as a hobo who gets smothered to death by an overzealous documentary host.

That sounds pretty funny.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

quote:

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Originally posted by tomjscott

When you become a parent someday and have kids of your own, you're views might change. As a scriptwriter with 2 daughters aged 10 and 12, I am very careful what I write so that my audience doesn't exclude my own children. Besides, does your film really need swearing and nudity to be interesting?

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I think it depends on the genre and story. Shrek? No way is nudity or swearing needed nor appropriate. A drama about the Mafia and hits-- most likely swearing lends reality to suspension of disbelief vital to the story. A relationship movie or a movie about infidelity will probably benefit from nudity for sex scenes. A movie like Lost and Delirious exploring lesbian relationships and the homophobia that surrounds that, perhaps with tragic consequences? Some swearing and definitely nudity are almost essential to such a movie. Got a family? Take the kids to see Shrek. A couple of guy friends out for an action movie-- off to the Mafia crime Lord movie. Not religious with morality hang-ups, looking for a movie to think about sexuality issues? Off to the store to rent Lost and Delirious (two thumbs up, five stars out of five by the way).
?Beowulf
Linux, the choice of a GNU generation.
http://subzerolinux.org

Well, it's your decision what type of movie you will make. There's no law or basic necessity to write or produce any particular type of movie. You can spend your whole career making good, wholesome, family movies and never have excessive violence, swearing, or nudity. So, technically, yes, some themes naturally need such content, but do such themes "need" to be explored? I don't believe so. We don't actually need to make mafia crime lord movies. Sorry, but we just don't.

quote:

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Originally posted by tomjscott

Well, it's your decision what type of movie you will make. There's no law or basic necessity to write or produce any particular type of movie. You can spend your whole career making good, wholesome, family movies and never have excessive violence, swearing, or nudity. So, technically, yes, some themes naturally need such content, but do such themes "need" to be explored? I don't believe so. We don't actually need to make mafia crime lord movies. Sorry, but we just don't.

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Hollywood and the populace of billions of viewers disagree with you, as judged by our willingness to pay at the box office or DVD rental store. Each person has their own moral and ethical boundaries and belief systems which affect what they are comfortable watching, or in our case creating/filming/writing. I have no problem with crime lord movies, or hack and hack Lord of the Rings battles for Middle Earth; but I will not watch nor would I enjoy chainsaw massacre or Saw or Hostile movies-- that is my boundary. But violence, and nudity, and bad language is part of our heritage, and a huge part of almost all of human religious mythology (Christianity need only look to their own mythology for incredibly violent sexuality and torture-- Moses and his God condoning the raping and taking of young female sex slaves from people the Hebrews slew, and tales of mythical saviors crucified in torturous agony-- it fits with human history and mythological roots of our ancient cultures ?read Joseph Campbell?).

Linux, the choice of a GNU generation.
http://subzerolinux.org

Beowulf, Hollywood and the populace of billions of viewers may want to see gore but they do not necessarily want to see gore written by you. You've turned the debate from one of your personal feelings about writing what your mom might not like into some kind of 'the world demands violence" deal.

I don't buy that angle. The writer of shrek, Finding Nemo, and Pirates of the Caribean all made a lot of money. The list is very extensive of G and PG movies that did very well.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

quote:

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Originally posted by rjschwarz

my brother is portrayed as a hobo who gets smothered to death by an overzealous documentary host.

That sounds pretty funny.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

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In retrospect (it was a few years ago), I think the description might be funnier than the actual video. You can find it ?url="http://www.ice.org.nz/movies/gary2.html"?here?/url?, or the re-shoot (which I think is better but loses some of the spontenaity since the first was one-take and unscripted) over ?url="http://www.ice.org.nz/movies/gary2a.html"?here?/url?.

Morgneto, Master of Morgnetism

quote:

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Originally posted by rjschwarz

Beowulf, Hollywood and the populace of billions of viewers may want to see gore but they do not necessarily want to see gore written by you. You've turned the debate from one of your personal feelings about writing what your mom might not like into some kind of 'the world demands violence" deal.

I don't buy that angle. The writer of shrek, Finding Nemo, and Pirates of the Caribean all made a lot of money. The list is very extensive of G and PG movies that did very well.

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You do not have to buy that angle, but you have missed my point. I am not arguing for my skills, my writing (which you have not even seen btw, so that seems like a cheap shot on your part to claim my writing is unworthy), but the point in general (I love debating ethics and morality as you can tell by my lengthy posts, lol).

Hollywood (not me) writes and sells gore, nudity, sex, and billions enjoy watching it. Write a tale of six teens stranded in a mansion, having sex, getting killed off one by one, and it is almost guaranteed success-- at least as a B movie.

Hollywood also writes G and PG and billions enjoy watching that. To each his own--that is my point. Different populations, different subgroups. My point is in response to another poster who stated there was no need for violence and sex in movies; my point is that there is a need for that by some subpopulations of viewers, because hollywood and viewers, and ticket sales, say otherwise.

It is wrong for some people to dictate their personal morality and ethics onto the globe because of their ?I suspect religious? belief systems that prevent them from being open to the possibility that billions of people have other tastes, have no hangups about e.g. sex and violence in cinema. Sex and violence in cinema is fiction, it is not meant to dictate nor promote it, just use it as a storytelling tool, perhaps to strengthen the movie theme or move the plot along. If I am going to write a story exploring the heartaches of a bisexual relationship and the homophobia involved, or a story of infidelity, I am guessing nudity and some swearing might be needed in the story. A story about a murder, solving the mystery, finding who is the murderer-- I can likely leave out nudity and swearing if it is not appropriate to a scene. So it depends on the story, the theme, the plot. To say nudity, sex, violence have NO place in stories (which was said by earlier posters in this thread) seems to me to be coming from someone who is saying that not from a viewpoint of storytelling but from a viewpoint of their personal moralities (which I suspect come out of religious beliefs but that is not needed to make the point; but that is why I illustrated the point that even religion, e.g. the Judeo-Christian bible, has a great deal of sex, violence, and swearing in it, especially violence, but also rape and pillaging--so apparently even sex, violence, and swearing were needed by the Writer of all time, to write His story).
?Beowulf
http://borealpictures.com

quote:

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Originally posted by Morgneto

In retrospect (it was a few years ago), I think the description might be funnier than the actual video. You can find it ?url="http://www.ice.org.nz/movies/gary2.html"?here?/url?, or the re-shoot (which I think is better but loses some of the spontenaity since the first was one-take and unscripted) over ?url="http://www.ice.org.nz/movies/gary2a.html"?here?/url?.

Morgneto, Master of Morgnetism

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Hahah love the typical new zealand cameraman bit, classic.

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There's daggers in mens' smiles

Cheers 🙂 I was Typical NZ Cameraman #2, if anyone's interested.

Morgneto, Master of Morgnetism