Rage Against The Page

UPDATE, March 2012: New TED 2012 Talk by Andrew Stanton, covering much of the same material recorded here. READABILITY TIP:  For easier reading and to prevent eye strain, narrow the width of your browser tab to reflow the text into shorter lines. I recommend a words-per-line count of 12 to 15. As soon as I found it on Google Video, I knew I would have to transcribe it. Here is all of Andrew Stanton's keynote from Screenwriting Expo 5 (2006). He named it: "Understanding Story: or My Journey of Pain." I have not transcribed the Q&A that followed the keynote. Perhaps I will tackle it one day. Not for a while -- this transcription consumed quite a few of my nights, and I'm happy to be done with it. And now that I can look at it from head to toe, I can see it was worth every coffee-fueled keystroke. With Stanton's experiences and lessons to guide us, we cannot fail to become better storytellers. Note: Andrew talks FAST, so this transcript ...

I can't take it any more. I just can't. Quantum of Solace was the last straw. It's the latest 'blender-cam' action film to confuse rapid cutting with excitement. Fast editing does not equal excitement. Oh, it does... sometimes, when used sparingly the way a surgeon uses special-purpose forceps or when a flutist uses a particular breathing technique. Over the last decade, when it comes to the art of film editing, the word 'sparingly' has been gradually pushed further and further back into a dark corner of the dictionary, somewhere behind 'acrocephalic' (having a pointy head) and in front of 'zenzizenzizenzic' (a number raised to the eighth power) . Before anyone knew, the word had disappeared entirely. No one realised it has been taken out back and quietly shot in the head by a secret society of Hollywood editors. There is no correlation between excitement on screen and cuts-per-second. I don't care if you're an editor and your...