Kenneth Atchity's Blog, page 100

How to Write a Pilot for a Television Series By: Yvonne Grace

A well-written pilot for a television series opens the door to the world you want to explore further. Yvonne Grace shares tips to set up your storylines, create jump off points for your characters and grab a producer’s attention.

Writers working with me at Script Advice Towers, learn very early on that I am obsessed with structure. This is a good thing, because storytelling for Television is entirely dominated by this knotty problem. A weakly structured series storyline will not deliver the emotional clout nor the dramatic impact required to make a dent in the story hungry mind of the savvy series binge watcher.

So, first, nail your structure. I have blogged about this here.

Once you have the series arcs down in broad stroke, you will be able to tackle the pilot with confidence.

I strongly suggest starting with the series outline of your TV idea before you hit the script writing stage. This is because at all times, when writing for television, you need to be aware of the series elements of your story and each episode, although important in their own right, must also link and connect with the episodes following on after—like the beads in a necklace.

The first 10 pages are crucial in the writing of any pilot for television. I outline six essential elements to the construction of your first pages below, but also keep these headings by your writing desk, as a reminder to ensure you have the key facets in your pilot:

DRAW IN YOUR AUDIENCE—remember the visuals!

ENGAGE THEM—plant the story seeds here.

HOLD THEM—explore character and introduce intrigue or questions.

CHALLENGE—deliver a great plot twist or observation via character.

PUSH ON—use the pace of this reveal to move the narrative onwards.

OPEN WITH A STRONG VISUAL
The story is starting. Set the scene.

Geography; a panoramic landscape or a cosy tete a tete in a suburban sitting room, a graveside, a roof top, or the inside of a rapidly packed suitcase, begins the story for you.

You may need to establish the way a character behaves, or show the essential dynamic between a family. Do this visually. This visual can be a strong natural image, or series of images, or it can be an action packed traveling sequence or we could be following your main character at their job, but in this visual, we need to see the essential elements of what you will be exploring later.

Start the audience wondering what’s going to happen.

Examples of visual starts in scripts, picked as randomly as possible:

Roof tops of a Northern town. We pick up a central character putting the bins out. They look up and we see what they see; their ex wife doing the same; they stare across the cobbles at each other. Coronation Street.

Wind swept moorland and a galloping horse. A man is riding very fast to somewhere but we can be sure it will be where the next bit of the story will start so we are keen for him to get there. Poldark.

A man stands in a desert in his underpants. He is holding a gun. There’s a Winnibego next to him. It looks very hot and he looks very upset. Breaking Bad.

Two elderly people in a cafe. Quintessentially English. Their conversation soon encompasses their respective spouses and off spring. They appear to be strangers at first but we realise they are actually flirting. Last Tango In Halifax.

The back garden of a local house in rural Yorkshire, grumpy Cop realises there’s nothing she can do about the mauled sheep found dying on the nice old lady’s neatly mowed lawn. She accepts a cup of tea and when the lady pops back to her kitchen, she staves the sheep’s head in with a brick. Happy Valley.

A jaded journalist is a reluctant part of a discussion panel for a room full of young journalists and students on the nature of America and its place in world politics. He sees his ex in the audience with a prompt card. He decides to tell the truth. The News Room.

CRACK INTO CHARACTER
Every second counts on the screen; translate that directly to the page—there should be no extraneous action or dialogue in your pilot and this is even more important in the first 10 pages.
Motivate dialogue by subtext.

The subtext  will push the narrative forward. It is not only what a character says that is important in informing us about them. It is how they say it. So remember the action; ‘see’ how your characters move and interact.

START THE PLOT MOVING
If the subtext is deep and solid in all your characters’ motivation, you will no problem moving the plot forward. But it is essential that you keep up the pace here. In the first ten pages the plot; or text, motivated by the subtext of your characters must get to a point whereby your audience will want to get to the next 10 minutes. So you need to set up the main frame of your story in these pages and also introduce a twist, or an added point of engagement that will jettison the narrative forward.

SET UP THE DESIRED GOAL
All your characters want something. Set this up in the first ten pages.

ADD THE OPPOSITION TO THAT GOAL
The truth and therefore the point of dramatic engagement from both your reader and ultimately your audience, will come from the interplay between what your character wants and how you, the writer choses to stop them getting it.

WRITE AUTHENTICALLY
Write from your own personal centre of truth. We all have emotions, conceits, ideas and mantras that we follow in life. Things that matter to us.

Writers need to tap into that complex, dense, often not very savoury centre of ‘us’ and then the story unfolds in a truthful way, then the real connections can be made between those that create these scenarios for our screens and those that watch them.

We are in the business of bringing a 360 degree experience to the audience. So if you don’t personally feel it. They won’t.

Tap into what you know about your world. Not what you think we want to know.

Beyond the first 10 pages mark, if you’ve got the key elements in place, your pilot should have a strong sense of place, the characters will be established and the key story elements will have been seeded. There will also be a sense of tone and pace to this script – even at this early stage.

THE FIVE ACTS:

Television stories are most often constructed in a five act format. However, nothing is truly set in stone here. I am of the school of thought that does not hold to a prescriptive view of the act structure. Nothing is guaranteed to make me want to put my head in the paper shredder more than a script that has clearly been written to a formula. Audiences (like your reader) are sophisticated in terms of story appreciation. If the story has a natural pace, if the scenes engage and the narrative is moving across your time frame then you can be confident your act structure is working.

ACT ONE: Set up, seed story points, use the five pointers for your first ten pages, move the plot on.

ACT TWO: Establish a twist part way which will lead to ….

ACT THREE: Explore what you have set up, build your various story lines to peaks—so there is a sense of climax and don’t forget the pay off, which is the down ward slope of your story ‘peak’.

ACT FOUR: Pulling everything together now, with a twist to create ….

ACT FIVE: Now build to the end point and the crucial ‘out’.

The Pilot is the first step along the series path for your Producer and also ultimately your audience.

Written well, it opens the door to the world you want to explore further. Here, you will set up your storylines, create jump off points for your characters, set them on course, establish the world in which your characters live, and begin to explore the message that you are presenting through your interplay between the text and the subtext. The Pilot is the first step along the series path for your Producer and also ultimately your audience.

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What Stands in the Way of Achieving Your Dreams?

How to Quit Your Day Job and Live Out Your Dreams based on my own experience and that of others.

One of my favorite stories…I was on Dr. Joyce Brothers television show years ago with a couple of other people and one of them who was a man who was then in his 80’s and had just received his law degree from The University of Chicago. He told her that he was standing in line for registration four years earlier and one of the young people in line behind him said “Sir, are you sure you’re in the right line?” And he said “And I turned around and I said what line should I be in?”

And I thought “That is America. That’s the essence of America,” you are in whatever line you want to be in this country. And he fearlessly walked up and stood in the line and got his law degree at the age of 86 or whatever he was. And to me, what stands in people’s way is fear and their friends inflict it on them.One of the chapters in my book has to do with distinguishing between friends and friendly associates because when I left the academic world I had a few friends and I had lots of friendly associates. I learned the difference when I decided to leave because I retained a few friends. But most everybody I did not retain as friends because they thought I was absolutely crazy. They either thought that in kind of a benign way or they were just extremely angry that I was leaving a tenured position.They thought that was completely ungrateful and crazy. I can also say that they were fearful about it and I knew them well enough to know that they were envious. They wished they could do it but they wouldn’t do it because they were set in their ways. 

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WHAT’S NEEDED IS MAGIC: WRITING ADVICE FROM HARUKI MURAKAMI

Read.

I think the first task for the aspiring novelist is to read tons of novels. Sorry to start with such a commonplace observation, but no training is more crucial. To write a novel, you must first understand at a physical level how one is put together . . . It is especially important to plow through as many novels as you can while you are still young. Everything you can get your hands on—great novels, not-so-great novels, crappy novels, it doesn’t matter (at all!) as long as you keep reading. Absorb as many stories as you physically can. Introduce yourself to lots of great writing. To lots of mediocre writing too. This is your most important task.

–from Murakami’s 2015 essay “So What Shall I Write About?,” tr. Ted Goossen


Take the old words and make them new again.

One of my all-time favorite jazz pianists is Thelonious Monk. Once, when someone asked him how he managed to get a certain special sound out of the piano, Monk pointed to the keyboard and said: “It can’t be any new note. When you look at the keyboard, all the notes are there already. But if you mean a note enough, it will sound different. You got to pick the notes you really mean!”

I often recall these words when I am writing, and I think to myself, “It’s true. There aren’t any new words. Our job is to give new meanings and special overtones to absolutely ordinary words.” I find the thought reassuring. It means that vast, unknown stretches still lie before us, fertile territories just waiting for us to cultivate them.

–from Murakami’s 2007 essay “Jazz Messenger“

Explain yourself clearly.

[When I write,] I get some images and I connect one piece to another. That’s the story line. Then I explain the story line to the reader. You should be very kind when you explain something. If you think, It’s okay; I know that, it’s a very arrogant thing. Easy words and good metaphors; good allegory. So that’s what I do. I explain very carefully and clearly.

–in a 2004 interview with John Wray for The Paris Review/em>

Share your dreams.

Dreaming is the day job of novelists, but sharing our dreams is a still more important task for us. We cannot be novelists without this sense of sharing something.

–from Murakami’s 2011 acceptance speech for the Catalunya International Prize

Write to find out.

I myself, as I’m writing, don’t know who did it. The readers and I are on the same ground. When I start to write a story, I don’t know the conclusion at all and I don’t know what’s going to happen next. If there is a murder case as the first thing, I don’t know who the killer is. I write the book because I would like to find out. If I know who the killer is, there’s no purpose to writing the story.

–in a 2004 interview with John Wray for The Paris Review/em>

Hoard stuff to put in your novel.

Remember that scene in Steven Spielberg’s film E.T. where E.T. assembles a transmitting device from the junk he pulls out of his garage? There’s an umbrella, a floor lamp, pots and pans, a record player─it’s been a long time since I saw the movie, so I can’t recall everything, but he manages to throw all those household items together in such a way that the contraption works well enough to communicate with his home planet thousands of light years away. I got a big kick out of that scene when I saw it in a movie theater, but it strikes me now that putting together a good novel is much the same thing. The key component is not the quality of the materials─what’s needed is magic. If that magic is present, the most basic daily matters and the plainest language can be turned into a device of surprising sophistication.

First and foremost, though, is what’s packed away in your garage. Magic can’t work if your garage is empty. You’ve got to stash away a lot of junk to use if and when E.T. comes calling!

–from Murakami’s 2015 essay “So What Shall I Write About?,” tr. Ted Goossen

Repetition helps.

When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at four a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at nine p.m. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long—six months to a year—requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.

–in a 2004 interview with John Wray for The Paris Review/em>

Focus on one thing at a time.

If I’m asked what the next most important quality is for a novelist [after talent], that’s easy too: focus—the ability to concentrate all your limited talents on whatever’s critical at the moment. Without that you can’t accomplish anything of value, while, if you can focus effectively, you’ll be able to compensate for an erratic talent or even a shortage of it. . . Even a novelist who has a lot of talent and a mind full of great new ideas probably can’t write a thing if, for instance, he’s suffering a lot of pain from a cavity.

–from What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Although I compose essays as well as works of fiction, unless circumstances dictate otherwise, I avoid working on anything else when I am writing a novel . . . Of course, there is no rule that says that the same material can’t be used in an essay and a story, but I have found that doubling up like that somehow weakens my fiction.

–from Murakami’s 2015 essay “So What Shall I Write About?,” tr. Ted Goossen

Cultivate endurance.

After focus, the next most important thing for a novelist is, hands down, endurance. If you concentrate on writing three or four hours a day and feel tired after a week of this, you’re not going to be able to write a long work. What’s needed for a writer of fiction—at least one who hopes to write a novel—is the energy to focus every day for half a year, or a year, or two years. You can compare it to breathing.

–from What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Experiment with language

It is the inherent right of all writers to experiment with the possibilities of language in every way they can imagine—without that adventurous spirit, nothing new can ever be born.

–from “The Birth of My Kitchen Table Fiction,” tr. Ted Goossen, 2015

Have confidence.

The most important thing is confidence. You have to believe you have the ability to tell the story, to strike the vein of water, to make the pieces of the puzzle fit together. Without that confidence, you can’t go anywhere. It’s like boxing. Once you climb into the ring, you can’t back out. You have to fight until the match is over.

–from a 1992 lecture at Berkeley, as transcribed in Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words, Jay Rubin

Write on the side of the egg.

[This] is something that I always keep in mind while I am writing fiction. I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper and paste it to the wall: Rather, it is carved into the wall of my mind, and it goes something like this:

“Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.”

Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?

–from Murakami’s 2009 Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech

Observe your world.

Reflect on what you see. Remember, though, that to reflect is not to rush to determine the rights and wrongs or merits and demerits of what and whom you are observing. Try to consciously refrain from value judgments—don’t rush to conclusions. What’s important is not arriving at clear conclusions but retaining the specifics of a certain situation . . . I strive to retain as complete an image as possible of the scene I have observed, the person I have met, the experience I have undergone, regarding it as a singular “sample,” a kind of test case as it were. I can go back and look at it again later, when my feelings have settled down and there is less urgency, this time inspecting it from a variety of angles. Finally, if and when it seems called for, I can draw my own conclusions.

–from Murakami’s 2015 essay “So What Shall I Write About?,” tr. Ted Goossen

Try not to hurt anyone.

I keep in mind to “not have the pen get too mighty” when I write. I choose my words so the least amount of people get hurt, but that’s also hard to achieve. No matter what is written, there is a chance of someone getting hurt or offending someone. Keeping all that in mind, I try as much as I can to write something that will not hurt anyone. This is a moral every writer should follow.

–from Murakami’s 2015 advice column

Take your readers on a journey.

As I wrote A Wild Sheep Chase, I came to feel strongly that a story, a monogatari, is not something you create. It is something that you pull out of yourself. The story is already there, inside you. You can’t make it, you can only bring it out. This is true for me, at least: it is the story’s spontaneity. For me, a story is a vehicle that takes the reader somewhere. Whatever information you may try to convey, whatever you may try to open the reader’s emotions to, the first thing you have to do is get that reader into the vehicle. And the vehicle–the story–the monogatari–must have the power to make people believe. These above all are the conditions that a story must fulfill.

–from a 1992 lecture at Berkeley, as transcribed in Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words, Jay Rubin

Write to shed light on human beings.

I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on The System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I fully believe it is the novelist’s job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories—stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.

–from Murakami’s 2009 Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech

No matter what, it all has to start with talent. . . 

In every interview I’m asked what’s the most important quality a novelist has to have. It’s pretty obvious: talent. No matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist. This is more of a prerequisite than a necessary quality. If you don’t have any fuel, even the best car won’t run.

–from What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Writing is similar to trying to seduce a woman. A lot has to do with practice, but mostly it’s innate. Anyway, good luck.

–from Murakami’s 2015 advice column

. . . unless you work really hard!

Writers who are blessed with inborn talent can write easily, no matter what they do—or don’t do. Like water from a natural spring, the sentences just well up, and with little or no effort these writers can complete a work. Unfortunately, I don’t fall into that category. I have to pound away at a rock with a chisel and dig out a deep hole before I can locate the source of my creativity. Every time I begin a new novel, I have to dredge out another hole. But, as I’ve sustained this kind of life over many years, I’ve become quite efficient, both technically and physically, at opening those holes in the rock and locating new water veins. As soon as I notice one source drying up, I move on to another. If people who rely on a natural spring of talent suddenly find they’ve exhausted their source, they’re in trouble.

In other words, let’s face it: life is basically unfair. But, even in a situation that’s unfair, I think it’s possible to seek out a kind of fairness.

–from Murakami’s 2008 essay “The Running Novelist,” tr. Philip Gabriel

Compiled by  By Emily Temple 
for Literary Hub

Lisa Lucas, National Book Foundation: Stop Saying Books Are Dead. They’re More Alive Than Ever

Lisa Lucas is the executive director of the National Book Foundation, the presenter of the National Book Awards and a non-profit that celebrates the best literature in America, expands its audience, and ensures that books have a prominent place in American culture

“The book is dead,” is a refrain I hear constantly. I’ll run into people on the subway, in a taxi, in an airport, or wherever I might be and when I tell them what I do, they ask me “do people even still read anymore?” This simple question implies the very work I do at the National Book Foundation may not be worthwhile—or even possible. It’s generally a casual statement, a throwaway remark, a comment repeated so often that it’s taken as fact. The book is obviously dead, or at least dying, right?

False. When people tell me that fighting for books is fighting a futile battle, that’s the moment my optimism kicks in. That’s the moment I power up my very deepest belief in literature. A person who wants to challenge or lament the death of reading with me is a person looking for a fight and, I think, a person who wants to be convinced otherwise. This gives me hope. I’m here for this fight.

Not long ago, I came across an article with the headline “Reading is a rapidly depleting form of entertainment,” which cited recent findings from Pew Research Center that 24% of Americans didn’t read a book in 2017. Now, what I saw was that 76% of Americans did read a book. The reality is that if 76% of any population is participating in a single activity then you are surrounded by people doing that very thing. The article said that books are dying; the research said—to me, at least—that we are a nation of readers.

The glass is far more than half full. After more than a decade of decline, the number of independent bookstores is on the rise — despite the dominance of online retailers. The American Booksellers Association, which promotes independent bookstores, says its membership grew for the ninth year in a row in 2018. Sales of physical books have increased every year since 2013, and were up 1.3% in 2018 compared to the previous year.

Of course, we know that everyone doesn’t read, and we didn’t need a poll to tell us. But we do need to better understand who reads and why and how to encourage them to read more and more joyfully. We need to figure out who has been left out of the conversation around books and welcome them into the fold with open arms. And so the job of people like me is to widen the audience and make sure that books remain steadfastly relevant to our culture. At the Foundation, we bring authors from around the nation to meet would-be readers on their home turf, distribute books to young people living in housing projects, and celebrate diverse, wide-ranging, excellent work on our largest stage at the National Book Awards.

My colleagues at publishers, libraries, bookstores and literary non-profits share these challenges. We all need to figure out how to make more seats at the table. Our job is to build readers. And while some might consider this work an uphill journey, we do this every day because the profound pleasures of a good book are for everyone, everywhere.

Storytelling is fundamental to human beings. It is how we explore and make sense of this world and understand one another. Because books absorb us and harness our imaginations, they are an essential medium for storytelling—as well as a satisfying one. The idea that these benefits and pleasures are for a limited subset of any given population is dangerous. Books are not exclusive.

Literature strengthens our imagination. If we all have the tools to try to imagine a better world, we’re already halfway there. Each day, there are more books being published that speak to every kind of person, from every kind of place. And I believe readers can be built—because I know we have an unlimited number of invitations to this party.

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MEGheads - this one is for you!

Support through PATREON if you'd like: https://www.patreon.com/CinemaWins

Mike Rowe A Guy Walks into a Bar...

So I’m at the bar last night, waiting for my drink to arrive, when the man beside me orders a “Clint.”
“A Clint?” says the bartender.

The man reaches into his pocket and offers the bartender a business card. The bartender examines the card and nods his head.

“One Clint, coming up!”

I turn to the man beside me, who appears to be the same age as my father. “It’s none of my business,” I say, “but what the hell is a Clint?”

The man smiles and hands me his card. “Keep it,” he says. “Might come in handy sometime.”

On the business card, are the ingredients for a very specific drink. I am intrigued, not only by the drink, but by the man who carries a card with instructions for bartenders to properly mix the cocktail he desires.

“Campari?” I say. “Interesting.”

“Don’t knock it till you try it.”

“May I assume you’re the Clint for which the drink is named?” I ask.

“You may,” says Clint.

“And may I further assume you’re a man who has grown weary of describing a drink no one has ever heard of?"

“You may,” says Clint.

We shake hands, and I make no further assumptions about the man with a taste for pink cocktails. We chat some more though, and I soon learn that Clint has spent his life in law enforcement. Specifically, I learn that he worked with the secret service.

“Interesting,” I said. “Did you know John Barletta?” John is the only secret service guy I’d ever met. He guarded Reagan for years. I met him at the ranch once.

“Sure,” said Clint. I knew John very well. Good man. Died not too long ago.”

“Yeah,” I said. "I heard that. Did you read his book, Riding with Reagan?"

“Sure did,” said Clint. “He was devoted to the Reagans. Absolutely devoted.” Clint raised his pink drink to John Barletta, and we drank to his memory.

“Were you involved with Reagan?” I asked.

“No, I was done by then. My last guy was Ford.”

“Your last guy?” I asked.

“Yeah, I guarded Nixon before that.”

“Really?”

“And Johnson before that.”

“Yeah?”

“And Kennedy before that.”

“You’re kidding,” I said.

“No. I actually started with Eisenhower.”

“Wow,” I said. “Five Presidents? You must have some stories.”

Suffice it to say, he does. Turns out, the man sipping the pink cocktail with yours truly is the agent who threw himself over Jackie Kennedy in 1963, two seconds after her husband was assassinated in Dallas. Clint was not only there - he was in the middle of it. All of it.

Last night, I came home and read up on Clint Hill. This President’s Day, I encourage you to do the same. His story is incredible. https://clinthillsecretservice.com/ Better yet, download the #1 New York Times Best Seller about his remarkable life, Five Presidents. That's what I'm going to do. Then, I’m going to make myself a Clint, and think not just about the Presidents we remember on this day, but of the men and women who risk their lives protecting them.

Carry on, Clint Hill.
Carry on.

Mike

via Facebook
Mike Rowe@TheRealMikeRowe

Camille Paglia: Sexism and the 'Star Is Born' Films

The academic, author and cultural critic analyzes the four versions of the tragic love story and finds one a "feminist landmark" and Bradley Cooper’s to be "a misogynous disgrace."

A Star Is Born, with its symmetrical plotline of rising and falling stars, is Hollywood's canonical myth-saga, capturing both the glory and cruelty of the modern entertainment industry.

The fourth version of A Star Is Born, directed by Bradley Cooper and starring himself and Lady Gaga, has been nominated for eight Oscars at this year's Academy Awards. How does this movie treat our red-hot theme of women's aspirations and achievement? Surprisingly, despite its progressive gestures toward masculine sensitivity and transgender inclusiveness, this A Star Is Born is the most sexist film of the entire series.

In Cooper's film, the epic Hollywood story has been hijacked by camera-hogging male vanity, curtailing the magnificent classic role of the ascending woman star who painfully eclipses her self-destructive, alcoholic husband. What the script has stingily left to Gaga to play is not leading lady material. Her performance has never belonged in the best actress category because Cooper demoted her to supporting actress from the start.

Particularly outrageous amid the overpraise of Cooper's film has been denigration of the previous, 1976 version, with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, from whose performance Cooper heavily borrowed. Except, that is, for Kristofferson's robust sexy allure: With his greasy hair, hobo beard and chronic slump, Cooper scarcely manages more than two facial expressions (dull and duller) throughout.

The dynasty of A Star Is Born began with What Price Hollywood? (1932), in which a waitress (Constance Bennett) is discovered by an alcoholic movie director, who steers her to Tinseltown fame at a time when the phenomenon of movie stardom was barely two decades old.

Janet Gaynor, the heroine of the first A Star Is Born (1937), had won the very first Oscar for best actress for 1927. The girliest of the four, she was already 30 when the movie was shot, which explains why we sometimes feel a strain in her miming of fragile innocence. However, Gaynor's Esther Blodgett is gritty with ambition, inspired by the movie magazines she devours in her North Dakota farmhouse.

In the wake of American women winning the vote after World War I, the film foregrounds the then-new theme of female careerism. Esther rejects marriage and motherhood as her only choice: "I'm going to be somebody!" Overarching the film is her outspoken grandmother, a formidable dowager played by May Robson, who supports her drive to succeed and identifies it with her own generation of pioneer women who braved immense hardships. At the end, the grandmother, stronger than the heroine's dead spouse, reappears and plants her female flag in Hollywood, forcing Esther (now Vicki Lester) to embrace her professional dominance.

The film explores the unresolved conflicts still experienced by many women in balancing home and work. Most studio-era movies showed women eagerly surrendering their job for a wedding ring. A trace of this remains in the first A Star Is Born in Vicki's decision to abandon her career to care for her husband (Fredric March), who is struggling with substance abuse. But in a heroic gender reversal, he frees her by sacrificing himself, walking into the sea at Malibu.

Oscars: How Did 'A Star Is Born' Become a Longshot for Best Picture?
From its opening panorama of the glittering lights of Los Angeles, the 1937 film exhilaratingly documents the sights, rituals and churning mechanism of the movie industry, from clapper boards, screen tests and Central Casting to premieres, awards shows and mobs of ruthless fans (who tear off Vicki's veil at her husband's funeral).

Clinically inspected and processed by the brusquely efficient makeup and publicity departments, Vicki emerges with a new name and life story. She has become that supreme artifact, the movie star. All this sweeping expansiveness — the wilderness through which the fairy-tale heroine apprehensively makes her way — is missing from the disjointed Cooper film, which claustrophobically contracts to Jackson Maine's stalled relationships with other men. The ravenous industry in which Ally (Gaga) rises is hardly glimpsed.

The Judy Garland version (1954), like the Gaynor film, has a tremendous sense of place. It begins with the thrilling magnitude of spotlights, clogged streets and surging crowds at Los Angeles' Shrine Auditorium, palpably vibrating with the excitement of old Hollywood. Compare this riveting specificity to the fogginess of the Cooper film, where we're never sure where we are. (Does Jackson live in Laurel Canyon or Santa Barbara? Does Ally live in New York or the San Fernando Valley? If the latter, why is she taking a jet plane to see Jackson's show, which is presumably in L.A.?)

The Shrine event is shockingly disrupted by drunken, belligerent Norman Maine (James Mason), who lurches through a backstage bevy of ballerinas and showgirls. Unsparingly presenting Maine as arrogant with male privilege, the script prepares the way for the tragic intensity of the love story. In contrast, Cooper upgrades himself to lovable stumbling klutz, merely drawing a few hard glances from fellow musicians. He thus defeats the entire redemptive pattern of the three earlier films.

What astonishes about the Garland version is how often she appears in daringly half-male clothing with a butch haircut. This film's Norman Maine, whose predatory womanizing is seen at the Coconut Grove club, zeroes in on Garland's Esther in androgynous mode — a man's bow tie and long tuxedo jacket flashing pert legs and high heels. Directed by openly gay George Cukor, the movie suggests a hidden sexual fluidity in Norman, also shown when he enthusiastically subs as Esther's makeup and hairstylist.

In the Cooper film, in contrast, Jackson fails to recognize a false eyebrow and ickily peels it off Ally's forehead like a parasitic slug. Inexplicably, Cooper sets the scene in a glossily sanitized drag bar while missing a huge opportunity to showcase Lady Gaga in drag — as in Marlene Dietrich's swaggering cabaret style.

The tour de force of the Garland Star is her epochal performance of "The Man That Got Away," a torch song that became an anthem for gay men in the pre-Stonewall era. Here we see the supranormal power of the true star: Garland's petite body literally throbs with profound passion, repeatedly arcing from soft to loud and back. A gifted performer operating at this level of near-mystical inspiration has entered an abstract realm beyond gender.

In the third A Star Is Born (1976), John Norman Howard (Kristofferson) is a rock star, while Esther Hoffman (Streisand) fronts a biracial trio, the Oreos. One of the greatest romantic scenes in film history is achieved by Streisand and Kristofferson when he charismatically improvises lyrics to her exquisite piano riff ("Lost Inside of You"). Two minds and bodies meld, as the locale shifts to a candlelit bathtub, where Esther flips sex roles by rouging John Norman's cheeks and tenderly tagging his eyebrow with transgender glitter.

Cooper's Jackson generates credibly hard-edged guitar rock in scenes filmed at several music festivals, but they are less well photographed than those at Arizona's Sun Devil Stadium in the Streisand film. Furthermore, the overall soundtrack of the new A Star Is Born is bland and forced. Gaga's pop singing still lacks subtlety and finesse. She and her hard-core fans mistake applause-milking bellowing for emotional authenticity. Truly great singers, from Aretha Franklin to Adele, know how to express and temper emotion at high volume.

A harrowing highlight of the series is the ritual humiliation of the leading man. The Gaynor and Garland films are gut-wrenching in showing the cold contempt of other men for a wounded alpha male as he tumbles down to become a mere adjunct to a more successful woman. The public scenes at Santa Anita racetrack, where Norman is shunned, derided and slugged to the floor are unforgettable, as are the private scenes where he is idly housebound and painfully called "Mr. Lester" by a delivery man.

Barging drunk into the Academy Awards banquet, Norman ruins Vicki's supreme moment with his bitter rant against Hollywood. In the first two films, he inadvertently slaps her, drawing gasps from the crowd — a fiasco that starts his slide toward suicide. In the Streisand film, a decade after the birth of second-wave feminism, the venue switches to the Grammy Awards and, significantly, there is no physical blow.

At the Grammys in Cooper's film, the tipsy Jackson simply slips en route to the stage with Ally. And it all ends in infantile passivity: Jackson pisses his pants in full view of the audience. This ugly scene, which reduces a triumphant career woman to a gal pal awkwardly hiding a urine spill with a flap of her gown, is a misogynous disgrace.

In retrospect, we can now fully recognize Streisand's A Star Is Born as a feminist landmark. Wandering into a low-rent club, rowdy John Norman is instantly attracted to her Esther when she sticks a mic under his nose and sternly rebukes him, "You're blowing my act." Garland's androgynous costumes are revamped by Streisand's gender-bending outfits ("from her closet," say the credits), including a belted Cossack shirt with high boots.

Finding John Norman in bed with a groupie, Esther says in white-hot fury, "You can trash your life, but you're not going to trash mine," then speeds to the game room to smash his liquor bottles with a pool cue, in spectacular close-up. After his death in a James Dean-like car crash, Esther (introduced as "Esther Hoffman Howard," rejecting the previous films' female erasure of "Mrs. Norman Maine") reappears for an operatic solo of grief, defiance and transcendence.

Streisand takes the audience prisoner in this almost unendurably protracted single take, a raw assertion of female ego and power. Then the credits flash with her multiple roles, starting with executive producer. Streisand was setting the terms for the new frontier: women in Hollywood seizing control of their own creative universe.

Camille Paglia's most recent book is Provocations: Collected Essays on Art, Feminism, Politics, Sex, and Education.  Read more