Interviews with Digital Media Thought Leaders

Stories Abide

Podcast Audio | Posted by Phil Leigh on October 24, 2009

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Phil Leigh

Inexorable expansion of the Internet results in a lockstep growth in anxiety about threatened obsolescence among incumbent media participants. Yet whatever the changes affecting media, storytelling remains the timeless value.

Even before humanity learned how to record them, the Greek Myths were passed down from generation-to-generation by oral repetition. Itinerate poets travelled around the Eastern Mediterranean retelling the stories of The Iliad and The Odyssey before Homer wrote them down about 3,000 years ago. While the media changed from spoken word to written text, the public appetite for stories was undiminished and may have even accelerated.

Sometimes new media tells a story better than the old way, sometimes just about as well, and sometimes worse. Many of the screenplays of popular movies are based on earlier novels. Almost by habit, those who had read the novels often advise us that the book is better than the movie.

A good example is Bonfire of the Vanities. Many consider it to be one of Tom Wolfe’s best novels and it was hugely popular. Yet as a movie it flopped at both the box office and by critical acclaim. Failure of the movie is odd considering the strength of the story and crew for the film. The director had earlier hits such as Scarface and The Untouchables. The cast included Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Kim Cattrall, Melanie Griffith, and Alan King.

However, sometimes new media tells the story just about as well as the prior method. For example the film version of Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides seemed to measure-up to the novel. Perhaps it was partly because it was the only time that Conroy wrote his own screenplay, but Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand played the lead characters about as I had imagined them.

Finally, there are times when newer media tells the story better as in the 1960 film Home from the Hill. Based on a novel by a now nearly forgotten Texas author named William Humphrey, Vincent Minnelli used his actors with skill to draw the audience into the thoughts and emotions of the on-screen personalities. The screenplay added a character thereby changing the plot, but the changes seemed consistent with the author’s intent and augmented his message.

Veteran actors Robert Mitchum and Eleanor Parker seemed born for the roles. Like Ann Margaret in Bye Bye Birdie, George Hamilton provided a debut performance in Home from the Hill that he never came close to matching in his long subsequent career. Similarly, a youthful George Peppard’s acting was never better.

In short, from childhood onward we reflect an insatiable hunger when we request “tell me a story.” Whatever the medium, a narrative can be adapted to fit into it with greater or lesser results, depending upon how well the creator uses the capabilities of the medium.