Storyteller’s Rulebook: Culture Changes
The most shocking thing about this movie, of course, is what it tells us about how much the cultural conversation has transformed in the 28 years since Shakespeare in Love was released. That movie (which I like a lot) was a frothy concoction, saying, “Oh, those great men who cheated on their wives, weren’t they such delightful little scamps?” In this movie, even though there’s no indication here he was adulterous, the theme is clearly, “Fuck the great men, what about the wives and children who deserve our real sympathy??” As it turns out, this question, too, can create great movies.
Who the heroes and villains are is always changing in the public mind. In the time I was selling screenplays, I wrote some early scripts about awkward guys who couldn’t get laid. When I started, that was still seen as an inherently sympathetic trait. Then the cultural conversation shifted, and such men began to be regarded as villains, or at least creeps. So much for those screenplays.
Culture changes, and novelists/playwrights/screenwriters (Hamnet has now been a book, a play and a screenplay, all quite successful) have to change with the times. Always ask yourself, who are the new heroes? What undervalued perspectives are now valued? Who can I celebrate that wasn’t celebrated before? And who can I no longer celebrate?
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