Tell Me a Story (That I Haven’t Heard Before) : Script Recycling Poses a Threat to Originality

The news today is not good for writers of original stories. Two reports suggest that those of us who like to think we’ve got a story in our heads that hasn’t been done to death should start thinking about another profession.

In New York, there’s a “new” production called “CBS Live.” It’s not really new, though, since it is a live staging of old scripts from “The Honeymooners” and “I Love Lucy” (“When Stage, Television Collide,” Calendar, Nov. 30). It follows in the footsteps of live stagings of scripts from “The Brady Bunch” and a musical version of “Gilligan’s Island.”

The other news is the big grosses taken in by “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.” What these two reports have in common is that they illustrate the trend in the entertainment industry away from originality.

Producing original works requires risk, and we are not in a risk-taking age. Why take a chance if you don’t have to? Producers have discovered they no longer need to rely on untested artists. Instead, they can conduct audience surveys, test-market rough cuts, find out what the public wants and tell a writer to give them that.

But that’s not all they can do to hedge their bets. They can also package brand names that have proven track records with audiences. While certain actors and directors have long been viewed as attractive commodities, it is only in recent years that scripts have come to be seen as franchises.

In the world of film, this philosophy of safety has resulted in the current epidemic of sequelitis. A variation is going on in the theater but with more menacing consequences. Movie sequels at least start with an original first film. But these days we get hardly any original plays.

While theater has treated its new playwrights as stepchildren since at least the ‘70s, it is now getting closer and closer to abandoning them altogether. The “plays” that get produced are often an endless stream of musicals assembled out of the pieces of past musicals or musical works (“Crazy for You,” “Five Guys Named Moe,” “Jelly’s Last Jam,” “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ”); docudrama-type entertainments that retell stories from the lives of brand-name celebrities (“Tru,” “Assassins,” “Lonesome Highway,” “The Will Rogers Follies”); one-person shows that rely on the performer’s appeal over that of the script (“Spic-o-Rama,” “Fire in the Rain,” “Barbara Cook”), and revivals, revivals, revivals (“The Most Happy Fella,” “Guys and Dolls,” “The Vortex”).

Add to this the wholesale use of already-written scripts from another medium, and there is hardly any need for a playwright with originality. Why would producers choose to risk money on a new play when they can get an almost sure return on investment by backing a brand-name show, one that audiences not only know but love?

The scripts for shows such as “Honeymooners” and “Lucy” are little masterpieces of plotting, character, dialogue. Each is a lesson in good playwriting. The value of the shows to a producer, however, lies not in their mastery or craftsmanship but in their familiarity.

As the financial risks of theater become steeper, the chances of truly original writing getting produced become less and less. The little money there is gets invested in the brand names, the safe bets. Great works of theatrical imagination and vision such as “Angels in America” and “Six Degrees of Separation” have become rare. Los Angeles was graced to have both at the same time, but when will the like be seen again?

As a student in a USC television writing class, I was told that the point of television is to make audiences comfortable. It is important in TV writing to reaffirm what people already know, to avoid the unfamiliar. As an avid television watcher, I understand this appeal to comfort in order to get people to tune in week after week.

I think we should want more from theater and film. The great works, from “Antigone” through “Othello” to “Death of a Salesman” and “Waiting for Godot,” from “City Lights” and “Birth of a Nation” to “2001” and “Glengarry Glen Ross,” all have in common individuality, revelation, ambition. If the new generation of writers grows up with the idea that the kind of writing that makes good television will also suit films and theater, our film and theater will lose any possibility of greatness that still remains.

“Home Alone” was a good enough movie. Its sequel, though, offers nothing of originality at all. “I Love Lucy” and “The Honeymooners” were great television. But they can only hope to be mediocre, if profitable, theater.

Profit may be what entertainment is about. But after we have recycled all the old brand names, where will the profits come from? By relying more and more on what worked in the past, we may be losing any sense of where our future is coming from.