In response to yesterday's DEXTER blog comes this interesting letter from a friendly correspondent, who works in the film business and wishes to remain anonymous:
I have no interest in the show DEXTER, but your description of it immediately made me think of a wildly common thread in scripts that get greenlighted and fail because the subtext is aimed at people in the movie business, not a general audience. People in Hollywood love to think of themselves as utterly ruthless and amoral, yet also brilliant and unconventional, their genius allowing them to suspend all need for common decency.
Thus, suits are always pushing ugly projects about people gleefully screwing each other over, while audiences are simply repelled by such stuff, because the average person takes it for granted that you have to develop some degree of empathy and cooperation with those around you if you're going to survive in the real world. Power fantasies and meglomania simply don't push you ahead when you're working in an office or on an assembly line. (They don't do much for you in Hollywood either, except that the jerks at the top love to feel that's what got them ahead, instead of the toadying and deference to established power that actually opened doors for them when they started out.)
That might help [you to] focus what sounds like an otherwise unfathomable premise, apparently aimed at status-driven people who lack any ability to deal with others from a position of parity.
-- Name Withheld by Request
Los Angeles, CA
