IF YOU PRETEND THE CHARACTERS CANT SPEAK, AND WRITE A SILENT MOVIE, YOU WILL BE WRITING GREAT DRAMA.

We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,’ we call it ‘concern for commercial viability.

The conscious mind is going to suggest the obvious, the cliché, because these things have offered the security of having succeeded in the past.

Almost all movie scripts contain material that cannot be filmed.

It is not the constitutional prerogative of the Government to determine needs.

Any claim to actual identification as a drama must rest upon the construction of a plot independent of the assignment of affliction to the protagonist.

"Based on a true story" is a come-on, the aesthetic equivalent of "no loan request refused." For, at best, the creator has fashioned a film based on his understanding of, interpretation of, and reduction of the report of an actual occurrence.