Having spent the day generating assessment data through assessment, talking about educational measures and outcomes with educators, and then grading student work through the small hours of the night, I am confronted, as I am at this time every year, with how difficult teaching is, how insufficient grading itself is as a measure of human achievement and how impossible (illusory, self-delusional), how meager it all is in comparison to the very real and complex lives of these human beings playing the role of student, all of whom are passing through trials, many of whom are doing their best, most of whom will get far away from this moment, as I will, and not remember very well the heartache that got them there.
But fortunately, at least for now, the art of teaching wins out, and I will ply the craft again come fall, and for awhile it will feel like it’s about us, about something that actual humans do together because its something solely good to do. They will learn what they will, most of independent of anything I do, so, or intend.
Unfortunately, this is not as true for filmmakers, whose trade is even more metric-driven and money-obsessed. Money is no more a reliable gauge of quality than grades, I suspect, but everyone has their bottom lines to improve, and so it is, as this NY Times article details, studios are now consulting data even as storylines are being shaped.
Bowling scenes tend to pop up in films that fizzle, Mr. Bruzzese, 39, continued. Therefore it is statistically unwise to include one in your script. “A cursed superhero never sells as well as a guardian superhero,” one like Superman who acts as a protector, he added.
His recommendations, delivered in a 20- to 30-page report, might range from minor tightening to substantial rewrites: more people would relate to this character if she had a sympathetic sidekick, for instance.
Script “doctors,” as Hollywood refers to writing consultants, have long worked quietly on movie assembly lines. But many top screenwriters — the kind who attain exalted status in the industry, even if they remain largely unknown to the multiplex masses — reject Mr. Bruzzese’s statistical intrusion into their craft.
I was just standing at a urinal a few days ago saying, “I think I’d make a good script doctor,” although I have no data to support that assertion, and upon reading this am sure I would not want to even test it if that means being a tool to a studio on behalf of aggregate consumer data. I’m sure the day I’m asked to teach in service to numbers instead of souls would also be among my last. There is always bowling; one is always safe from change in a bowling alley.