New Fad of Studios & Production Companies

Conversely (or should I say perversely?) there's a disturbing new fad of studios, production companies and even (most tragically) filmmakers themselves slathering a bad Betty Crocker frosting of V.O. onto everything -- whether a movie needs it or not. A good deal of it reeks of hasty retrofitting in post-production (during editing) or being force-fed into later drafts -- and with every new release this sorry trend seems to be growing.

New Fad of Studios & Production Companies 

All this reeks of developmental paranoia, the bald fear that if one popcorn-belching fishhead out in Movieland isn't spoon-fed every last story point then that fishhead might discuss their epic lack of comprehension online with another fishhead who's similarly flummoxed, and a grass-roots tsunami of dim-witted displeasure might arise to collapse a film's box office receipts.

 

Pretty condescending take, don't you think? Completely lacking trust in the average moviegoer's intelligence... which directly translates to calling you and me and everyone else paying $14 a ticket "stupid" (a.k.a. "a fishhead"). Consider this. During the Golden Age of intelligent American cinema in the 1970's, you didn't have theaters being shuttered because The Godfather's storytelling was too sublime or Dog Day Afternoon's personal relationships too challenging for John Q. Moviegoer to decipher, did you? These films strove for excellence, and the studios and distributors did just fine, thank you, winning many an Oscar in the process.

 

By today's hand-wringing standards, Chinatown's legendary "She's my sister... (SLAP!) She's my daughter... (SLAP!) She's my sister and my daughter" scene would be anxiously rewritten to spell everything out -- "My father had non-consensual vaginal intercourse with me and I gave birth to an illegitimate child because of it!"

 

Jake Gittes' would promptly repeat the exact same information in NEW VOICE OVER to ensure EVERYBODY got it, no matter what -- "Mrs. Mullray said her father had inappropriately diddled her youthful shunt, and that the little strumpet being hidden in the house was the product of his foul, incestuous lust..."

 

Simple physics -- when you dumb anything down far enough to ensure the LCD "gets it" without the slightest struggle you irrevocably damage the quality of your product (see "Education in America" file). Yes -- from time to time paying adults will wait for the dumbest kid in class, but given any choice at all we damned well won't seek the experience out.

 

When measured statistically on the Stanford-Binet, people in 1975 were just as dumb -- or as smart -- as they are now. So why are so many shot callers in today's Hollywood so insistent their product be rendered so stupefyingly obvious?

 

Let me personalize the damage this can do to a somewhat healthy human brain. Bored out of my skull the other night and determined not to text around for cut-rate hallucinogens, I V.O.D'd a cruddy low-budget comedy, perfectly aware it was going to suck donkey balls and wildly disappoint (for the masochistic-minded readers out there, it rhymes with Better Life Through Chemistry. RottenTomatoes -- 17%).

 

Yet even then, expectations already lowered to the floorboards, the movie doubled-down its own idiocy by slapping the limpest, lamest, most pointless voice over in the history of limp, lame, pointless voice overs onto its agonizing ninety-one minute running time. A legit Hollywood legend -- and Oscar-winner no less -- was somehow Shanghaied into doing the honors, and I'm sure they loathed laying down the track every bit as much as the six or seven paying viewers worldwide hated listening to it.

 

What made it worse than the everyday shitty V.O.? For starters, it was even more shallow, unfunny and uninspired than average -- commonplace but still unforgivable cinematic sins circa 2014. Next there was my shocking realization that its inclusion was completely unnecessary. You heard me right. Not a single word helped -- or even helped excuse -- the so-called story. That Hollywood legend could've been reading adorable pet posts from Aww Reddit for all the difference it made. The V.O. didn't better define the characters (using the term loosely), didn't give additional insight into the paint-by-numbers plot, didn't point out a single thematic subtext worthy of serious contemplation, and certainly didn't attempt to bewitch and/or beguile the viewer with poetry-for-poetry's sake.

 

None of what was scripted in V.O. bettered the movie. Quite literally, you could've pulled the entire V.O. track, start to finish, and no discernable difference would be apparent to the viewer. None. Nada. Zilch.

 

Once I grasped this, I was swept with panic. Why had they done this? Was it some brave new mind-fuck being pioneered on behalf of marketing bots everywhere? Padding a shitty project with hastily-scripted V.O. to give the impression so much more was going on than actually was? Cinematically stuffing saline falsies into an Angelyne-sized boulder-holder in some foul attempt to make this runny-nosed anorexic seem deliciously full-figured? Or was it simply those responsible for this mind-dulling turd deciding Better Living needed an after-the-fact V.O. because, well, all the other uninspired, unsuccessful comedies out there had one too?

 

All of these answers are pretty frightening, and I fell to my knees, praying like hell this wasn't some new trend and that I'd never again have to witness such a vulgar, low-brow theatrical bra-stuffing. Right then it hit me -- scoring some bathtub blotter or MDMA-sautéed 'shrooms was far healthier for my brain than this movie and I invoked the full weight of social media to try and rectify that mistake pronto.

 

Having narrowly survived the VOD's attempted lobotomy, here's my sincere suggestion to aspiring writers of all stripes --