I can’t tell you who coined the phrase but it’s apt in so much of the modern “entertainment” options. Even in so-called action films, instead of having the characters taking full advantage of the visual medium and engaging us with action, they stand around and talk. They have multi-million dollar budgets and stellar casts but somehow all the writers/directors can think to do is have them talking at each other. It’s even worse than some novels’ expository info dumps, because there you can at least skim the pages until the action starts. Comics and graphic novels, even those who are supposedly centered around “action” superheroes, prefer to have talking heads** instead of dynamic battles. (The only dynamics they seem to be interested in is who can they race-bend or gender flip.)
In these shows, the directors/writers believe that we want to watch two people talking at each other with their faces twitching and pointing their menacing eyes at each other. Great for comic effect or as an homage to the cheesy old films that used those kinds of camera close-ups*. I just watched a movie where they employed the awful, dreaded info dump to catch the viewer up on a place’s history, but at least it was funny because the guy never said a word and just kind of ignored the person doing the telling.
It’s maddening, but worst of all, it’s flat out boring.
It’s kind of up there with a lot of current movie/series writers having NO IDEA HOW to “show, don’t tell”. Instead of proving by a character’s actions that she’s smart and amazing, or having her prove it to herself through the story arc, they have another character tell her how awesome she is from the get-go. The writers completely circumvent the character’s story arc, and they’ve even twisted the stories that previously had the arc into modern tripe.
Ugh, I could go on. But I will spare you.
Instead, I’d like to propose a solution. It’s pretty easy, and I’ve already mentioned it, but in case you missed it:
SHOW DON’T TELL.
Don’t say “She’s a lush”. Show her being tossed out of the bar at 0200, staggering to stand up and forgetting which way home is.
Don’t say “he’s kind”. Show him offering to help a young mother when he sees her wrestling with a grocery cart and baby carriage.
Don’t say “The organization is greedy”. Show a fleet of wrecking balls and construction vehicles with their logo on it pulling into the neighborhood, lead by a limo with a guy in a slick suit climbing out and giving orders before he even bothers to address the worried residents of the tenement block.
Frankly, I think the stories fall flat because the current writers are so conflict-averse that they can’t even write it into a plot. Can anyone tell me what reason there is for a story to even exist if there’s no conflict and no plot? Anyone?
Addendum: I’ll be fair. The talking-head thing isn’t a new phenomenon. There are some older ones out there just as bad. I’d never really seen Lonesome Dove back in the 80s, so I took a chance to watch it when it came on recently. Standing around talking. I could only take about 30 minutes of it. The most amusing part were the young pigs looking for a biscuit breakfast, and who dutifully went away with empty bellies when told the food was for the humans. And Jeremiah Johnson? The bear fight scene, early in the movie, was the only tolerable part of the film. Proof that “visually stunning” does not make up for lack of coherent plot, or even a narrative.
*Was it just me, or did you hear that cheesy “Wah-wah-wah” from the old Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns just now?
**Talking heads not Talking Heads. I like Talking Heads. (I would have provided a link, but the only sites seem to be disconnected, belonging to some camera aficionado or wiki, and I’d rather not.)
T. R. Neff - Author 