True Hollywood

22 February 2010

A US professor [Sidney Perkowitz, a member of the Science and Entertainment Exchange]… has won backing from a number of his peers after creating a set of guidelines for Hollywood. The proposals are intended to curb the film industry’s worst abuses of science by confining scriptwriters to plotlines that embrace the suspension of disbelief but stop short of demanding it in every scene. Guidelines themselves don’t seem to be online anywhere. Meanwhile the Science & Entertainment Exchange website, describes it as a program of the National Academy of Sciences, “providing entertainment industry professionals with access to top scientists and engineers to help bring the reality of cutting-edge science to creative and engaging storylines”.

Amusing to think that what’s wrong with Hollywood movies is the science – and the idea that fixing the science would somehow make the movies better is completely hilarious. What I’m left wondering about now is how other interest groups and areas of intellectual speciality could offer their services to film writers and producers in order to secure more accurate representation. We can imagine a lobby group of office workers or the homeless for example, or perhaps human beings in general could get together as a lobbying group to provide information about the reality of human existence in service of more creative and engaging storylines.

Haunted too by the idea that only when Holywood is 100% accurate on all topics will we be able to sleep comfortably in our beds (or cinema seats).

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Nice presentation from Sydney Padua at The Story conference last week about her great Lovelace and Babbage webcomic, which included diagrams like the one half way down this page.