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Jane Fisher's avatar

I’ve read that Netflix often gives writers notes telling them to dumb down their scripts and narrate the action (having the dialogue describe what is happening), so that people can view the movies as “background “.

So Hamlets’ soliloquy would begin:

“To be or not to be, I ask you, the skull of my dear departed friend…”

Quite an improvement, don’t you think?

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Tom Welsh's avatar

Nice one! Then there is this, from very long ago when the world was young and (somewhat) innocent:

"Well, frankly, the problem as I see it at this moment in time is whether I should just lie down under all this hassle and let them walk all over me, or whether I should just say OK, I get the message, and do myself in. I mean, let's face it, I'm in a no-win situation, and quite honestly, I'm so stuffed up to here with the whole stupid mess that I can tell you I've just got a good mind to take the quick way out. That's the bottom line. The only problem is, what happens if I find that when I've bumped myself off there's some kind of a, you know, all that mystical stuff about when you die, you might find you're still - know what I mean?"

- Hamlet’s Soliloquy, as it might be rendered in modern English (Prince Charles, presentation of the Thomas Cranmer Schools Prize, St James, Garlickhythe, London, 19th December 1989)

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The Radical Individualist's avatar

I read that, and heard Al Pachino saying it. Surely we could revise Hamlet into another episode of the Godfather series...

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Feral Finster's avatar

Ever read "The Skinhead Hamlet"?

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Tom Welsh's avatar

I hadn’t. But thanks for the introduction. To tell the truth, I still haven’t - I got the gist within the first 3 pages or so… 8-)

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David1701's avatar

Okay! We need to jump on this and start making Shakespeare of this caliber for Netflix. It could be the ultimate satire/parody. But we have to play it completely straight

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mimi's avatar

Nitpick here: Hamlet's soliloquy was not addressed to his departed friend Yorick. "Alas, poor Yorick" was later in the play.

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Jane Fisher's avatar

I knew that when I wrote it, but writing it last night as we were about to lose an hour, I didn’t want to lose any more time coming up with a more accurate example.

As a fellow nitpicker, I apologize.

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mimi's avatar

I hate losing that hour, no idea why we still have to do it.

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jabster's avatar

Bob and Doug McKenzie did Strange Brew 40 years ago, basically Hamlet from the perspective of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

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Mary Gildea's avatar

“He would exit stage left in search of a more bearable environment….” - great allusion (and deep dive) into Shakepeare’s play The Winter’s Tale. Stage direction in Act III: “Exit, pursued by a bear.”

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Catherine Briggs's avatar

Got on here to type the same comment! I'm glad someone else made that connection

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Mary Gildea's avatar

Like minds! ❤️

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Eileen Theologus's avatar

Sorry about the typos but it’s really difficult for seniors in 2025 to understand things like IP or multimodal content

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kurisupi_rtf's avatar

Hey Eileen, I am from Gen Z and I had to do some research to figure out what he meant. Ted could definitely be a bit clearer in this article! From my understanding (note that I could be wrong about all of this), IP in this case means "intellectual property" and multimodal content (I think) refers to a vast library of media (the "content") composed of multiple forms of (that is, "multimodal") art or communication. Basically, in my understanding, big corporations are acquiring massive amounts of artwork, literature, music, etc., and rebranding it all as "IP" and "multimodal content" in order to make it easily sellable to vast audiences with limited attention spans (and thereby own the consumers, too). These are the lengths they need to go to to keep competing now. Of course, rebranding art and communications as "IP" and "content" makes it much easier for corporations to control it, but it also completely destroys the value and creativity of all of that good stuff for everyone. So yeah, mainstream American culture is being fried. Man, being an artist in this timeline sucks!! Perhaps I should protest graffiti all over the Amazon HQ (just kidding-ish)...

[For the sake of clarity, the last two sentences are a joke, not an actual complaint—any dissatisfaction of mine is expressed through my drawings and music.]

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Treekllr's avatar

Being an artist nowadays sucks?(im not an artist) I think you mean being an artist trying to get paid sucks. But hasnt that generally been the case? Isnt that just part of the eternal struggle between art and life? Was it better before?(remember, before gave us the disney casting couch, and countless other things nobody liked)

Life is hard man. A hard life makes good art. There is no other way

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kurisupi_rtf's avatar

No, that last part is a joke, a means to express my frustration with society as a whole (outside of my artwork). As it is said in my favourite poem — "I know this life is hard now... But what are you trying to be free of? The living? ... Love is for the ones who love the work."

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Treekllr's avatar

Oh thats a good line, im sure ill be using it in the future, ty!

Who is the poet?

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kurisupi_rtf's avatar

Sorry, I should have cited his name! The poem is called "For A Student Who Used AI To Write A Paper", written by Joseph Fasano. Here's a link: https://poets.org/poem/student-who-used-ai-write-paper

Man, I complain about work being stolen and then I do the same thing! I need to be more careful.

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Treekllr's avatar

Thats definitely a good poem. The context the title provides makes it even more so, though the lines are very relevant in a more general way as well. Succinctly conveys an idea ive come to adopt in life, and struggled to put words to.

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Russ Paladino's avatar

As an artist (again?), I’ve finally come to the realization that art has nothing at all to do with money or making a living. I cannot describe how freeing it is to accept this.

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Starry Gordon's avatar

Look, it's capitalism. Capitalism doesn't care about how you _feel_ about things, or what you want, or what you do, the question is whether you can _monetize_ it. It you can monetize it, you can turn it into power, in the form of more capital. Since most people, and certainly the bigdeals, worship capital, there is certainly no serious interest in anything else. A few people have questioned this arrangement -- or I should say religion -- but they are considered crazy if not profoundly dangerous by everyone else. So apparently most of you are stuck with it, maybe forever. And here's the real kicker: it didn't fall from Mars. _You_ chose it!

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kurisupi_rtf's avatar

Oh, trust me, I am aware of capitalism and what it entails — better to be considered dangerous (why should I care anyway?) than to roll onto my back and partake in such gluttony. Of course, there is no way to fully decouple myself from capitalism in this society if I want to survive, but if artwork is now part of a collective movement to survive together beyond capitalism, then it's my duty to partake in it.

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Kaleberg's avatar

Capitalism may monetize it, but other societies with other economic systems create art for their own currency. Have you ever seen East Side Story, a documentary about the eastern bloc's film industry? There's a hilarious section, inserted by the documentary makers, with hand carts full of film canisters being delivered to satisfy production quotas. Taking the money out doesn't make great art. (Some of the movie excerpts were pretty funny, though. There was a production number involving tractors and the East German answer to Doris Day was just as cute though less iconoclastic.)

P.S. When I first heard about quota movies, those films required by various European nations to balance Hollywood movies with local product, Altavista led me to pages of nudie films complete with warnings about adult content.

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Jane Baker's avatar

What happened to copyright?

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Kaleberg's avatar

Intellectual property and multimodal content have been around forever. I live in the Pacific Northwest where the tribes each own stories that only they can retell. The characters, their representations and other elements of their stories are all vested with the same IP interest regardless of mode of expression.

It was like this in ancient Greece where they would invent gods like Apollo as marketing ventures. They would write the story, the one of Apollo notably has him traveling the Aegean visiting cities where future pilgrims might reside. Hey, call out to Columbus, Ohio! They built a theme park with a temple, gardens and rituals. There could be other temples to Apollo, but the primary site controlled the IP which included the stories, written, spoken or acted, representations in various media and so on.

You can argue that a lot of those stories were mediocre, and that mediocrity flowed from their base creation in political ambition and pious greed. You may even be right. Not all political and religious art is particularly good. Even less of it resonates with modern audiences. Hollywood has never made a good version of the Popul Vuh, the Gilgamesh saga or any of the Norse sagas for that matter.

Still, there's nothing hard to understand once one has definitions in hand.

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James Suntres's avatar

I don’t think it’s quite the same thing. I’ll agree that, in Antiquity, someone with an entrepreneurial spirit, something the Ancient Greeks definitely had, would concoct a story that Apollo or Hermes or whatever god or goddess, was seen at some particular location, where a temple would be built. If you pilgrim leave your offerings, the god or goddess will be beneficent towards you. People made money from such endeavours and still do. However, Apollo or Artemis or Hera were not the IP of anyone.

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Kaleberg's avatar

Why weren't they intellectual property? They had a clear owner even after they were co-opted by the Romans who added their own layers. There were enforced restrictions on their use. There was an official canon, also enforced.

I'm curious as to what the differences that disqualify them from being considered intellectual property.

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Tom Welsh's avatar

"As the sociologist Georg Simmel wrote over a century ago, if you make money the center of your value system, then finally you have no value system, because money is not a value". 

– Morris Berman, “The Moral Order”, Counterpunch 8-10 February 2013. http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/08/the-moral-order/

I believe the fundamental issue is that those corporate apparatchiks and their bosses have abstracted the glorious world down to one thin dimension: cash. They might as well be dead; but, unfortunately for the rest of us, they remain in our world, endlessly pulling strings and comparing bank accounts.

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Starry Gordon's avatar

Well, that's what Marx predicted in the _Communist Manifesto_, where he says that in liberalism, the relations between one human and another will be reduced to "the cash nexus." But it's not just "the corporate apparatchiks" doing it, is it? We have two big political parties in the US, and innumerable religions and cultural institutions, and all of them are governed by "the cash nexus." Money is the name of the game, and if you don't subscribed to the game, it will be brought to you in no uncertain terms.

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Lauri Niskasaari's avatar

I just watched Gladiator II and was highly disappointed. Script was predictable, CGI was horrible and I didn't even bother to check all the historical inaccuracies. After the movie I felt the movie was made to watch while scanning your tiktok feed. I suppose this is what Hollywood wants now instead giving people something to truly enjoy about.

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Alex Valentine's avatar

Yep, me too re Gladiator II. Stopped watching at 20 minutes when it became obvious it was just another lame vehicle for viewer manipulation. SO MANY new shows/movies are like this--I always fantasize when quitting a one early that an executive gets a middle-finger popping up on his computer, just to let him know. If only...

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Dheep''s avatar

Agree. It wasn't all that great. Certainly missing much from the 1st Gladiator

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Lauri Niskasaari's avatar

I watched the whole pathetic piece and quessed how it ends in first 20. That middle finger would be so frigging awesome 😂

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Jane Baker's avatar

Maybe because it knows people will be scrolling on their phone and going into the kitchen to find something to eat and talking a call from a friend etc......

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Kaleberg's avatar

So, the video equivalent of AM radio.

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JBird4049's avatar

>>>After the movie I felt the movie was made to watch while scanning your tiktok feed.

Well, it’s all just content, isn’t?

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Lauri Niskasaari's avatar

Sure is, the content is getting worse by year though.

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Bobby Lime's avatar

Now is the winter of our diss content.

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mimi's avatar
Mar 9Edited

My brother-in-law liked it because the body count was greater than in the original. I guess he's the kind of viewer that Hollywood wants.

My husband and I thought it was terrible.

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Lauri Niskasaari's avatar

Violence in movies can be used to add depth to the story if used correctly. In this one it was more like: "Let's just kill all these guys & girls because why the heck not!"...

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Kaleberg's avatar

According to A Compendium of Unmitigated Pedantry, a blog by an expert in ancient military history, Gladiator 2 was obviously an attempt to set up a Gladiator franchise. The ACOUP review skewers the military and crowd control aspects and notes the racism and mischaracterizations that many critics have glossed over. He pointed out how they produced a weaker version of the original Gladiator story but introduced new characters and set it up for a continuing franchise. They such a muck of it, he doubts we'll see a Gladiator 3.

The guy writing ACOUP has nothing against movie adaptations. His take on some of the apparently idiotic military logic in The Two Towers movie accepts that it was all about having at least one cinematic female story thread. This was in an article on orc command structure, so theres that.

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Lauri Niskasaari's avatar

Now that you said it, makes perfect sense. It was a 'cheap version' of the first one in every aspect. By the way, now I see similarities to star wars. I loved the original star wars (IV, 1977). Now, when Star wars force awakens (VII, 2015) came out, most my friends and movie critics praised it. I was like 'did I just watch a lame version of the original one?'

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Kaleberg's avatar

Yes, you did. The Star Wars franchise has been caught in a rut for decades now. They seem to have one story and keep reusing it. I think they've gone back to that well a few times too many.

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Kate Stanton's avatar

Those sharks though! 😒I left needing answers about what was real in Ancient Rome and what was Hollywood…

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Lauri Niskasaari's avatar

It's better to read about ancient Rome rather than trust Hollywood to do it. Even the first gladiator was historically too inaccurate. But still, the first one was entertaining and one of my favorite movies.

History of Rome is fascinating and it's downfall seems like current state of the world aka bread and circuses.

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Joe Donatelli's avatar

Feel blessed to live in Cleveland (hey - words you don't often hear) because we have Playhouse Square, the Cleveland Orchestra, and Blossom Music Center, and some great museums -- all of which center on performance or art, phenomenons that will outlive "content." Content is a choice.

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Kate Stanton's avatar

How is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame these days? A musician friend of mine is visiting from Germany this summer & I was thinking of taking her there. I haven’t been since 2004.

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Joe Donatelli's avatar

Always a good visit, especially if you're into the new exhibits. Right now it's Bon Jovi and Pink Floyd's The Wall wall from Berlin. Not sure how long those stick around. In the summer, it's always nice to hot Nuevo, which is a little pricy but has great views and good salsas.

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Raphael Pazos's avatar

Since we are playing the "What if" game, I do not think Shakespeare would go indie. He was a man of his time, commercially speaking, as far as we know. Prince and Taylor Swift, from their point of view, are artists, as best as they can. Same as Hans Zimmer or John Williams. Just maybe, Shakespeare would be similar to Daniel Day Lewis or Spike Lee or Jordan Peele, working alongside producers to get his art made but, on his own terms, and succeeding at it.

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Tonioconni's avatar

That’s a different angle than Shakespeare going indie which in my opinion might be the most interesting thing to do in the area of artistic control. It would work as well 👍👍

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Sam's avatar

It would be very interesting to get your view of the experience at the management consulting firm Bain. It would provide context to the newbies seeking this coveted career path today. As I remember from reading the 1997 book, “Dangerous Company: The Consulting Powerhouses and the Businesses They Save and Ruin”, Bain was described as being more business culty. Even in wardrobes, suits were the norm, but at Bain it was taken to an even more conformist level.

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Matt's avatar

Yes I would defs like to hear the “unbelievable” stories of “Ted versus [cult-adjacent] Bain”

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Alma Drake's avatar

I'm reading a book I'm 90% sure you recommended, Ted, The Master and His Emissary, by the enviably named Iain McGilchrist. It occurred to me the other day that AI is the left-hemisphere of the brain. It knows stuff, it has loads of data and all the words, but it can't create anything because it doesn't have capacity for inspiration or even genuine curiosity. There's no recipe for that. I have joined a little troupe of community singers called the Family Folk Machine that started off small and has grown like gangbusters in the past couple years. It's a little piece of heaven. We do what we do purely and entirely for the lovely of music. It's bliss. And our audience is growing like gangbusters, too, because people are in fact starving for real, inspired music. I'm band director and lead a group of songwriters who create original work for us. This is the most rewarding musical work I have ever done. AI can't compete.

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Su Terry's avatar

Exactly. Brava!

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Harry Onickel's avatar

I had multimodal content once. Antibiotics took care of it.

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Jim Wood's avatar

I am a record producer, studio musician, and fiddler. I now operate my own recording studio and work with indy artists, but I was born in Nashville and worked in the Music City machinery for years. I started in the business in the late 1970s and worked in Nashville until the late 1990s. When I started my career, the industry was largely centered around finding great songs. By the time I cashed in my chips in 1999, it was all about controlling the publishing and other bean counter activities. I have often said that if Hank Williams were to show up on Music Row today with his guitar and a brief case filled with those one hundred and some odd songs that constitute the core vocabulary of country music, he literally would not be able to get in the door of one single publishing company because without an appointment, the secretary would not "buzz him in" the locked (both literally and metaphorically) front door.

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David Perlmutter's avatar

My superhero characters certainly believe Hollywood-type filmmakers are "fucking idiots": https://davidperlmutter.substack.com/p/film-flam

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Frank Tarczynski's avatar

And this is why I watch movies on TCM every night. It’s like a history lesson: seeing what movies used to be like. It’s sad to see what’s happened to TV and Film.

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Cheryl's avatar

I became very sensitive to IP issues a decade and a half ago because of owning a yarn shop! Customers couldn't understand why I wouldn't just make a photocopy (or later, take a picture) of a pattern, rather than pay for it. I viewed my job as the last line of defense for creatives. Anyway, "content providers" don't care about editors, don't care about a decent story, don't care about the art itself. They only care about screens running their images--I almost said they care about eyeballs but they don't! The "content" doesn't even require eyeballs since it's designed to be played while someone is also on their phones looking at something else. Depressing.

I shared some of your ideas with my 23 yo daughter when we were talking about overlong movies a couple of days ago. She feels like they are taking advantage of people (probably right) but also now understands her preference for 80s-90s romcoms above all others.

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Michael Kupperburg's avatar

Rod Serling, of Twilight Zone, once said, The day producers and actors were paid more than writers was the day Hollywood went downhill. Ultimately, it is the story we go for, not the special effects, the sounds, the music, but the story. That is ignored today, alas.

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David Watts Barton's avatar

I read nearly all of your posts, every day, you're amazing. But the lingo got a little thick here...when you say "IP," to what are you referring? IP address? "Evergreen IPs"? Not following. Good work getting Shakespeare and Prince into the same post, though...

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John Lumgair's avatar

I had someone pitch my show to the streamers, and they said they not interested in original IP, which is telling! But I keep finding myself recounting the situation and forgetting to explain what IP means, we can easily forget that we have learned a bunch of jargon.

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Joseph Pack's avatar

Intellectual Property

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David Watts Barton's avatar

Oh, DUH! Thanks...

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