Ways To Ruin Your Film: Blair Witch Syndrome

OK, you've got a bare-bones script, a small crew ready to work, and some talent on set. To be honest, your script isn't that good so you've given your actors permission and even encouragement to improvise based on the scenario of the scene. I mean, they're actors and they know the characters, right? Why even bother writing a full script anyway?

So you spend your shoot day going all Dogme 95 with it and you're swept by the powerful emotions coming from your talent. You're so excited that you're having a hard time containing your bowels. You thump yourself on the chest, proclaim yourself the next John Cassavetes, and call it a wrap.

Your movie comes out and all anyone sees of your genius is 90 minutes of people yelling at each other. 90 solid fucking minutes of circular argumentative yelling. Shit, if that's what people wanted to see, they could wait until Thanksgiving and announce to the family that they're getting a sex-change and joining the Moonies.

This was how I felt while and after seeing that god-awful, overrated piece of crap known as The Blair Witch Project. If you remember, three annoying film students go into the woods looking for a ghost, yell at each other for 90 minutes, and then finally die in a totally anti-climactic way. Here's a sample part of the film:

Annoying Film Student: Where's the fucking map?

Another Annoying Film Student: I don't have the fucking map!

Third Annoying Film Student: (with beard) I threw the fucking map away!

Annoying Film Student: WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO THAT FOR?

Another Annoying Film Student: SEE!? I DIDN'T HAVE THE GODDAMNED MAP!

Annoying Film Student: FUCK YOU!

Another Annoying Film Student: WHAT? NO, FUCK YOU AND YOUR FUCKING MAP!

Third Annoying Film Student: (with beard) FUCK THE BOTH OF YOU IN THE FUCKING NECK!

Lather, rinse, and repeat for 85 more minutes.

It was with The Blair Witch Project that I first discovered Blair Witch Syndrome. I remember watching an interview on Good Morning America where the two "filmmakers" were talking about their film and priding themselves on how great they were for setting up situations in the woods for their cast to come across and improvise about. Hence, the pointless yelling about a small, inconsequential pile of rocks outside of their tent in one scene.

The problem of Blair Witch is that of actors who have no ability to improvise. Unfortunately, not every actor can improvise worth a damn. Usually, with bad improv actors, scenes become quite circular as the point of the scene gets lost and the audience gets bored. Blair Witch could've done much, much better had the filmmakers casted actors who could actually improvise worth a damn. Maybe then the film would've really been spooky and I wouldn't have been dreaming about throwing those rocks at the cast and directors. (Yep, Blair Witch Project had two assholes directing it.)

There are plenty of wonderful, improvised films out there. The movies of John Cassavetes, Mike Leigh, and the Dogme work of Lars Von Trier serving as wonderful examples. Of course, these films had top notch talent and lots of rehearsals before the shoot so everything was worked out.

Thankfully, Blair Witch Syndrome is a rare condition that not many films suffer. The reasons for this are that the majority of sufferers are first-time filmmakers and those filmmakers are usually really wedded to their scripts to even entertain the notion of letting the actors improvise the whole flick.

Ways To Ruin Your Film: Alcoholics

While recently watching the very fun movie, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, I was ticked off at what I consider one of the worst clichés ever: The struggling alcoholic.

Here's the example from Dirty Mary Crazy Larry: Deke (Adam Roarke) is holding the wife and daughter of a supermarket manager hostage while Larry (Peter Fonda) collects the money. While waiting for Larry to call, we get a beautiful use of the Kuleshov Effect:

CU of Deke looking at something.
CU of a few bottles of liquor and glasses.
CU of Deke still looking.

Within those three shots, we instantly know that Deke is supposed to be an alkie and is struggling with staying sober. We can also safely assume that in some point during the film, Deke will also be very tempted to take a drink, but most likely will choose sobriety at the last moment of a long, internal struggle. If we're especially lucky, we'll be treated to a shot of Deke throwing the glass against the wall and wiping cold sweat from his brow.

Okay, we don't get the glass smashing, but we get everything else.

The biggest problem with most movies that include an alcoholic character is that the film doesn't benefit from the addition. Making a character a recovering alkie is a cheap and easy way to give that character "dimension". In Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, Deke's character doesn't really have any depth to him. He's obviously the brains of the operation and he keeps their car running with his mechanical expertise, but outside of that, there's nothing to his character that hints to his humanity. Well, instead of trying to figure out how to improve the character and make him fuller, why not just say that he has a drinking problem? We'll show him struggling with it a couple of times and we're good to go.

At one point in the film, Larry decides to wait out the cops. They hide out at a bar. A bar. If you have an alcoholic friend, the last place you're taking him is a bar. That is, unless you really need that obligatory scene of the alcoholic struggling with the urge to drink.

If you have a character that's a little flat and you need to give them some depth, find something that may have more relevance to the story's theme. Maybe you have a character in a romantic comedy where the theme is that we have to open ourselves up to people to find love and fulfillment. Let's say this character is the buddy of the film's hero, but aside from some comedic dialogue, there's nothing being added here. Well, you could cop out and make him a struggling alcoholic complete with cool glass-smashing scene, or you could have him be someone who lost the love of his life because he was always so guarded, yet he never learned the error of his ways, so he advises the hero to close himself off.

If you have to have an alcoholic character, please make the addiction relevant to the story. Look at films like The Verdict and Clean & Sober for references to this.

Ways To Ruin Your Film: DJ Characters

There are multitudes of ways that one can totally fuck up a flick. Some are obvious, like casting the producer’s girlfriend for the lead role, but there are other ways that aren’t as obvious. These choices are sure to take the film down a notch or two in greatness. That’s what this series is about.

The Fog. Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. Vanishing Point. The Warriors. Psycho IV. Not the worst movies ever made, but certainly not the best. There’s something that they all have in common that hindered their potential. Can you guess what it is?

They all had radio DJ characters.

A film is about spectacle. It’s action. What does a DJ do? They sit. And talk. They talk a fucking lot. You can’t even say that the set it great. It’s a table with a microphone.

There’s nothing wrong with a lot of dialogue in a film. However, even the most talkative of films set their dialogue among scenes of some interest. Kevin Smith films set dialogue-heavy scenes in retail or work environments so that the characters actually have something to do while talking. (A good example of this “business” is the scene where Jack Lemmon reveals his past infidelities to Bruce Davidson over breakfast in Altman’s Short Cuts.)

A DJ sits by their self and has a one-sided conversation.

When it comes to having a DJ character, one has a few options. One can make them an actual player in the plot or keep them on as pure commentary. Let’s look at the above-mentioned films and see how their DJs play out.

The Fog


The Fog has what is probably the best use of a DJ character in a film. This film is Stevie’s (Adrienne Barbeau) story. She’s a single mom who just happens to DJ in an old lighthouse, which just happens to give her the first views of that weird fog rolling in. She’s also among the first to learn of the fog’s malevolence, causing her to strive towards protecting her son. We actually care about her character. Although there’s too much solo yakking, but at least her job and character works in the film.


The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 also takes its DJ, Stretch (Caroline Williams), and makes her a player in the events. However, the poor characterization keeps her from being worth watching. There is no character. She’s just a catalyst to get Dennis Hopper involved. If only Hopper had been involved earlier, we wouldn’t have to sit through so many boring scenes of talking to a microphone.

For all the flaws apparent in Chainsaw 2, their DJ is utilized better than in The Warriors and Vanishing Point. In these two films, the DJ acts more like a Greek Chorus telling you what you’ve just seen.

Vanishing Point



The worst of the two films is Vanishing Point and the ineptness of adding a character like Super Soul (Cleavon Little). Here we have a DJ who hears about the film’s high-speed chase on a police scanner and then just assumes that the driver, Kowalski (Barry Newman), is listening only to Super Soul’s broadcast. Quite an assumption for a DJ in a storefront radio station in some small town, but of course, he is blind, so how is he to know he works in a dump?

Super Soul proceeds to pass information to Kowalski in the broadcast. If that wasn’t bad enough, Super Soul starts to act like he has some psychic knowledge of Kowalski’s situation. At one point, the technician asks Super if he’s ready to say what he has to say to Kowalski. “I am,” Super replies, “but he ain’t ready yet.” Of course, Super Soul IS blind, and you know, the movies like for us to believe that the blind possess amazing sensory perception. Maybe Super could smell meth-popping Kowalski from two states away.

Of course, Super Soul never actually meets Kowalski, not does he ever do more than talk in a microphone. He dances like he’s having an epileptic fit for a bit, but that’s mot much better.

The Warriors



In The Warriors, the DJ is never personified. All we see is a mouth, a microphone, and occasionally a reel of tape. Here, the film at least sets up the DJ as a provider of information about the gangs over the airwaves. For us, she’s just a stylish exposition device. What keeps her from hurting the movie too much is that instead of trying to make her a player in the plot, she serves as a transitional device between the episodes in the film. It’s a nice touch, but highly unnecessary.

Psycho IV

The absolute worst use of a DJ ever is in the film, Psycho IV. This is the crappy sequel where Norman talks to a radio shrink throughout the whole goddamned movie. This DJ (CCH Pounder) is nothing more than a convenient confessional so we can endure boring scene after boring scene of Norman’s childhood. Yes, this film is set up like a clip show. Talk, flash back, more talk, more flashbacks. The DJ has no characterization.

One would wonder why the filmmakers didn’t just make a prequel instead. Of course, you wouldn’t then have the sadly-pigeonholed Anthony Perkins on the phone for 90 solid minutes.

In almost every instance, the DJ character is a band-aid of a plot device to keep things moving forward. If the film can not survive without an airwave Greek Chorus, then the script should be rewritten to work without one. A character must act and this isn’t possible talking into a microphone for scene after scene.