Keith Watanabe * NET 2.0

by reading this you probably realize that i'm not a fan of current television broadcasts (minus the japanese ones). i would call most of the current television series "commercial." not in the sense that it's supported by commercials, nor that they're produced by big companies. but that they're souless, meaningless, and provide little social value (decadence is the first word that comes to mind). but my feeling is that the writing that goes into these shows are a result of mass marketing efforts to reach as many viewers as possible based on surveys and research. take a look at movies these days. they cater to some crowd. more than that though they have formulas. all these elements make current writing lacking in appeal for me. so what *IS* good writing then (for me at least)? i'm a firm believer that good writing is extremely selfish, attempts to please no one but the writer, and is extraordinarily personal. my friend from college, John Cann, once told me that true art is that feeling of the unexplainable, the notion of something deep within you that you can't just seem to tell another person, yet requires release. This is why I say the current writing has no soul. There's no personality in it. It's so formulaic that you already know what to expect without having been told the ending (pop music is the same way). Occasionally, you do have avant garde elements like in movies such as Lost in Translation or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But those have to do more with the way things are shot. The stories aren't as linear nor formulaic, but they're still missing something....an edge. my writing is, of course, attempts to address all those elements that i feel is lacking. there might be a structure in that i want to reach a conclusion at a certain point, that i want things to climax and that characters should experience growth. in between those elements, comes a rawness in my writing that involves sloppiness and a goal of not having the perfect dialogue. in other words, things are more natural. i think one of the best compliments i received from a friend whom i sent one of my (unfinished) scripts to was that the speech seemed normal/natural. in other words, you can hear two people discussing things the way i write it down. my dialogue is logical. i try to put myself in the speaker's shoes. or i relocate my mind as if being part of that conversation. it's a fantasy in some way. the hardest conversations are the ones where i really can't fantasize. the other thing about my writing is that i like to present a social issue (or many). the problem is that i feel as though people don't listen to me, so the only way to get my point across is to contextualize it through a story. if i wrote pure expository, i would sound like a whiney little bitch. with a story, i can show people what i see in this world. the viewpoint is narrow, but i need that to demonstrate my argument. and of course i heavily personalize my story. because the main character must involve me. i've found that it's nearly impossible writing a character that isn't me or an extension of my personality. creating other characters is not a problem, but it's my reflection off of them that creates this world. it is this element which i believe makes writing (at least mine) unique. it's not simply about the structure of a story, but the elements in the world that *I* find fascinating. i do think that society does care about these issues as well which makes my writing seem stronger. so why would my writing overtake something say the 40 Year Old Virgin or Stealth? you might argue that someone decided that it might, indeed, be someoene's story. Or that in the case of Stealth, someone was a big fan of fighter planes. but that doesn't necessarily *JUST* make the whole story (not to mention that Stealth is a shitty rehash of the far superior Macross Plus). in the case of the 40 Year Old Virgin, it sounds like a bad running joke some guys on the Sunset Strip had while drinking latte at the local Coffee Bean shop. i find in both cases that neither having anything social to say. yeah the whole 1984 Big Brother theme reprises itself in yet another form to create technophobia along with masturbatory special effects. but it's renewed. how does it address anything today? i mean, how poignant is it? they use North Korea like a Bush buzzword. in a few years, Bush will be gone (the world prays!) and the issue of North Korea would lose prominence. it just shows how transient that form of writing is since it attempts to discuss future events alongside what seems to be a modern crisis. but there's of course little explaination detailing how we got to that point (after all, it's just a movie). on the other hand, the 40 Year Old Virgin is just....pathetic. Densha Otoko would be comparable because you had this pathetic being that finds true love. however, despite being a comedy, it takes itself quite seriously and knows how to return to several important issues. it does address a contemporary phenomenon in Japan, but it's really much more than that. it talks about the mentality of a nation as well as entire subculture (or two). also, it's based on a true story (i still argue someone wrote about me...) which makes it even more relevant. whereas the 40 Year Old Virgin seems to exist solely for the purpose of making fun of blokes who never had sex. this comparison between to similar ideas show where Dante's opinion of comedy over tragedy is dead wrong. either way, for aspiring writers my advice to you is that you abandon what they teach you in college or whatever institution attempts to make you conform. you can learn basic rules but why follow them? i think they're only there to help literary critics identify elements in the story. good writing should be natural and flow from your gut, not the grammar you write, not the size of your vocabulary, not the similarity in prose to Shakespeare. besides if you followed these rules, how would you find your true voice in writing?