Out o' the Loop
I think it was the late '90s when William F. Buckley admitted he'd never heard of the television show Friends. My admiration of him grew.
I bring this up because my screenwriting friend Ham of Bone called and said the deterioration of popular culture has been swifter than we'd imagined, probably because we are increasingly disconnected from it. Bone and I are getting to play that "old fogey" role we'd admired from afar -- elitists not through effort but by standing still while the culture collapses around us. A sort of accidental competence. Competence by walking around.
Bone submitted three plays for an annual contest that Matt Damon sponsors and part of the entry requirement is a "peer review". Which means that for every one he submits he has to read three.
He says they stink. Woefully. One was a period piece set in 1928 and it's "f--k this" and "f--k that", a six year old child uses the Lord's name in vain, another uses the term no-brainer (which sounds anachronistic to me but I may be wrong). Another screenplay sounds like a beer commercial: "...and three hotties open an ice cold beer and they get splashed by a wave which glistened against their chests..." The screenplays are supposed to be PG13, so how does a menage à trois fit?
I told him that if the culture declines much more we'll look pretty good by comparison. "But who will read?" he said. Good point. A decent blacksmith isn't too useful these days.
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