Great article, Charles. Thanks for it. (also I love that you're using the link created by Last Week Tonight)

I was just talking about this the other day with a friend from film school. You can't be taught much more than the basics. Definitions of plot, character, etc. If there was a formula, everybody and their mothers would be screenwriters. Much more useful it is to watch as much movie and TV as you can get your hands on and absorb what works and what doesn't for you, and build some style from there.

these were nice. thanks for sharing!

RE the gender in awards, for some years now I've wanted to see a best female director category in the academy awards. At least the public would have to hear about five to eight big time female directors every year. It would be great to see men and women having a fair fight in a single category, but that seems a bit too utopic for the current times. In almost 100 years, only four women were ever nominated to the category and only one won. I don't think that's changing anytime soon, not without and even bigger re-estruturation of the inner workings of the academy.

The author of the video seems to have had a pretty neat couple of years there in his teens. I know I came out a complete wreck after watching The Perks for the first time, to the point where I barely could speak about it, because it rang so true to me. it was one of the first films to do that. I watched it again in the theater that same week, went on to buy the book and lose nights of sleep reading it, and it's still where I retreat to when times get the hardest - not out of nostalgia, but because that narrator still sounds like a friend to me. And, to appropriate an argument the videomaker seems so drawn to - most of my friends feel the same.
I think it's awful when movies play teens like light-headed dummies. I hated being seen like that as a teenager, even as a kid, and it feeds into that condescension so particular to the way adults treat their kids, it even has it's own name - patronizing. Kids hurt. Teens hurt. They have issues and problems and these things feel like the world to them, and I'd rather watch a movie that respects that instead of one that downplays it like it's nothing.

One thought: I believe these are times in which every external stimulus seems to be aimed at dividing us. In every which place you look there seems to be some way of thinking being propagated that divides people instead of uniting them. Empathy is lacking. Nobody's into sitting and talking to each other anymore. Any difference of opinion is enough to label your neighbor your enemy, and to try to shut them down.
In times like these, unity is disruption. Being graceful enough to stand and promise not to perpetuate these cycles, is resolve.
Insanity remains the expectation of different results without a change of method.