Hi all, and welcome to another offering on the wrestling world. Apologies for it being a while, but it’s funny how things turn out – a recent cold has given me a chance to belt this one out as I lie in bed next to my laptop! Regular readers will have noticed that I have tended to avoid tackling a number of the big issues that have happened in the last few months, Chris Benoit’s death and the explosive revelations of the recent steroid scandal amongst them. This has been a conscious choice because I think having to write about what has been perhaps the most depressing time in wrestling in the last couple of decades, I can see myself wondering if I really wanted to write about it any more. Maybe I will address them all collectively some time in the future, but for now I’m going to do what I feel I do best and discuss my views on a separate issue that has been a factor in this industry for some time.
So for this week, whether it be the delirium of my fever or just because I fancy a change, I’m going to start with a fairly outlandish statement completely away from the most talked about topics in the industry today, and that I think goes against the general consensus of the Internet Wrestling Community and then I will attempt to justify it. Don’t think I’m just saying it for effect either, this is genuinely how I feel on the subject too.
The “Hollywood” writers brought in by the WWE are not the scourge of the show that they have been made out to be over the last few years. They could in fact be the greatest thing to ever happen to the business.
A tall order you might think, but I’m an optimist so here goes. Admittedly those of you who have read of these “Hollywood” writers Vince McMahon has brought in over the last few years no doubt associate them at least in part with the continued decline in weekly programme quality, which has in my opinion been on a downward trend arguably since the demise of WCW or maybe even slightly sooner. Other factors have been fellow causes too, but this was always considered a big one. The motive behind bringing them in is perfectly clear, hiring people who are capable of writing good story arcs. After all, if it has become the norm for wrestlers to need to act as well as wrestle, then you need good writing to let the acting truly shine. If you have great wrestlers who can deliver great matches and couple them with writers who can provide them with new, imaginative and well constructed feuds, then you have yourselves a winning formula.
Of course, to date things haven’t quite worked out like that. Stories often have a habit of feeling rather flat, they can be poorly delivered and we just can’t get into many of the new characters that have been pushed our way. Not to mention that story arcs (their overall plot from start to finish) are frequently stretched over too long a time frame, or conversely rivalries don’t get time to build properly and are often just hurled together, air time attributed to different parts of the card are often grossly disproportionate and promos involving high card talent seem to go on forever.
Now you would think that this rather damns my initial statement, but it is important to separate between symptoms and causes of lower show quality, namely what problems are through poor execution and what is through bad production or even bad business choices instead.
It has often been rumoured for example that a number of writers who have come in and then subsequently been let go simply did not know what they were doing because they lacked understanding of the industry. Well, this is of course going to be somewhat of a problem. As with most jobs it always helps to know a bit about who it is you work for before you get there, but consider this – the people they are working with (the McMahon’s, retired wrestlers turned bookers and veteran promoters) have literally decades of experience EACH within the industry. Is it really fair to compare them to anywhere near that level of knowledge? The WWE accuse us of knowing nothing and we are pretty die hard fans, so what hope does a writer who does a little bit of reading up before hand have? They need to be given real time to be taught the ropes of the industry and to settle in, but instead many are turfed out faster than they can say “So how do you do that fake blood coming out of your head?” It’s funny but it kind of mirrors the way characters are treated on TV these days. They churn them out and if they aren’t an instant hit, they are released within months. They are rarely given a chance to grow and put what skills they actually have to use.
Sometimes, stories get scuppered by the fundamental element of all entertainment – Cash. Suppose you are writing a successful storyline for the WWE and this happens. Say the two stars you have written for are set to end their feud at Wrestlemania tomorrow. It’s been an intense couple of months in the build up to it since the Royal Rumble and both ratings and buy rates have gone through the roof. The McMahon’s are delighted and attribute it primarily to this feud, which has been moved much further up the card than anticipated. Of course it’s the talents that get most of the credit for pulling it off, but those in the know recognise that you more than did your bit to get things like they are. You challenged the wrestlers with an interesting premise, you wrote them deep, intense but effective promos that they could relate to and stuck firmly to a plan you had mapped out week by week, show by show until it would all end at the Granddaddy of Them All. Then you get a call from the Big Cheese himself:
“Hey Champ, it’s Vince McMahon here. How you feeling? Yeah, that’s great. Listen, I love what you’ve done with these guys and the figures haven’t been this good in years, so why stop giving the fans what they want? I now want you to help keep this feud going until Summerslam. We’ll make millions!”
“Er… OK”
“Great! I want to get right back into it as soon as Raw the night after Mania. Can you do that?”
“Well, I don’t know, I mean I’ve got 48 hours to prepare for another 5 months writing for these guys, and frankly I wrote this story to be done after ‘Mania. I don’t know where we can take it…”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll think of something, Champ. You need to learn to think on your feet in this business anyway.”
“Do you have any ideas where you’d like me to take it?”
“No no, I’ll leave that with you. I’ll spare you a few minutes tomorrow to give me a brief outline OK? We’ll have a proper sit down after Raw some time next week. All good? Great! Bye!”
Do you see what I mean? But the trouble is for both sides, it’s perfectly reasonable to think like they do. Writers make a story with a beginning, middle and an ending. Once you reach that ending that’s it. But you can only find out if it’s been working once you start getting feedback. It’s only natural for the Corporate side to want to extend a money-making feud but if you’ve reached the end of your story what can you do? It’s not like you can come up with a new story because that cheapens the old one! So you extend the ending simply by saying “Oh, these two still hate each other and aren’t done yet” and the audience looks at the heavens and cry “Still???” and that’s when a feud overruns. Like I said, it’s nobody’s fault, it’s just the two goals – making good stories and making lots of money – are just plain incompatible in a situation like that. It would be too difficult to make arcs with built in extension plans and there’s no guarantee that every story is a hit – it still depends on the chemistry between the wrestlers after all. The writer in the situation above has little choice but to come up with something and this is the best that they can do. Ultimately, I don’t feel it’s their fault.
But I always believe they are a useful asset to own because they possess an understanding that ex-wrestlers and businessmen won’t necessarily have. What is it? It’s what they were hired for in the first place – WRITING.
Writing isn’t just about coming up with an interesting story and building a structure for how you are going to tell it. It’s also about shaping your characters such that their actions allow the story to unfold in a feasible way. This is a common way for a character to lose credibility. For example, if a character (say John Cena or Stone Cold) is usually so quick to come out and interrupt the show when someone says or does something they don’t like, then why do they wait five minutes whilst a Diva gets beaten up by some heel? Sure it allows the heel to look bad, but it flies in the face of everything the face stands for!
Further more, I don’t know about you, but I oftentimes get the feeling that shows are written and outcomes determined based simply on what is convenient and not based on a character’s reason for “being”. Forgive me, but I’m about to go a little deep here. I promise to keep it brief!
We all know that the wrestlers are playing parts as gimmicks. But is that gimmick an extension of their true self? Or is it something completely different and outlandish? I don’t think Mark Calloway walks around his street telling the neighbours he doesn’t like to Rest In Peace, nor does he kneel in front of an urn he keeps on top of his fire place, but the Undertaker partakes in that sort of activity. They are vastly different people and so Calloway is in effect performing something known as Character Acting. It’s nothing like his real self so when his music hits and the bell rings he transforms into a completely different man.
But compare this to someone like Chris Irvine, who loves his rock music and entertaining as best he can. He’s eloquent and witty, much like his wrestling persona “Y2J” Chris Jericho. In the words of Jim Cornette he simply takes his own personality and “turns the volume way up”. Because of this, he effectively lives in the character’s own psyche all day every day. Sure there are some differences, that’s to be expected, but the differences are more subtle than you get in the previous example and in many respects The Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla is a more believable human being. This is known in some circles as Method Acting.
It takes a writer to understand these aspects of a character’s reason for being, their motivation if you will, and write a storyline or continuation of a storyline accordingly. Individual wrestler’s themselves may well chip in quite rightly on occasion and say “I just don’t know if it’s something I (my character) would do…” but other wrestlers (or at least ex-wrestlers) are more likely to book it based on either the character they used to be or worse still based on no character at all. It’s these contradictions and faults in logic and forgetting memories of previous events that hurt the credibility of the writing and it’s the little things like these that can make such a difference.
Now I know what many of you are thinking. Hang on, “Hollywood” writers have been around a while now in the WWE, why is this sort of stuff still happening? Again it’s because at the end of the day they are not given the chance to make these calls because constraints are put on them by those higher up. In the same way that it is argued matches take time and you can’t just put two wrestlers together and expect a dream match to materialise, similarly a story can rarely just work overnight, nor can two characters develop a sudden reason to severely dislike each other. But if ever they want to get their story arc quality back on track, perhaps the best solution is to simply sit back and let the “Hollywood” writers do what they do best and just write. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
The “Hollywood” writers brought in by the WWE are not the scourge of the show that they have been made out to be over the last few years. They could in fact be the greatest thing to ever happen to the business.
Just sit them down, give them a blank page and ask them one simple question. What’s my motivation here?”
Just a thought…
Remember, there’s a big difference between writing (constructing a storyline) and booking (constructing a match), but if you guys have any comments, agreeing or disagreeing, with what I have to say, please feel free to get in touch at stuart_black@hotmail.com as I am always happy to hear your thoughts.
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