Richard Schickel, in the Gannett Center Journal (Summer 1989), Columbia Univ., 2950 The Story Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10027.
Consider the life cycle of a Hollywood film today. It begins with the selling of a brief story "concept" over drinks in Los Angeles and ends some years later as "word of mouth," when one moviegoer delivers a plot summary to her neighbor over the backyard fence.
All this talk of stories is a delusion, writes Schickel, a Time film critic. The tra- ditional...