Another quiet week
It is interesting, the process of filmmaking. No one ever does it in a vacuum. It’s a group effort, no matter how much it seems like the writer’s work or the director’s work, or the actor’s work.
And each one understands their own little piece of the puzzle. The product manager says “less locations – too much budget” and a good writer (as I hope I am) says, “okey-doke” and starts consolidating scenes.
Or the director says “What about another action sequence in this area, it’s a bit slow paced.” and the writer says “No problemo! Coming right up!”
But when someone suggests swapping genders on one of the main characters, then sometimes the writer has to exlpain why this is a bad idea. No matter what people today like to think, men and women are not interchangeable, and a swap like that isn’t a simple rearranging of pronouns and a change from “Bernard” to “Bernice”.
A good relationship story is built with specific things in mind – from the similarities that could bring the characters together to the obstacles that must be overcome. The primary obstacles may be differences in age, gender, ethnic/religious background, sexual orientation, political rivalry, etc.
A good relationship will be imbued with the elements it has chosen to revolve around – and to change a core element (such as, in this case, gender) means rewriting much of the interaction, regardless of whether a male could speak lines written for a female, or vice versa.
There are many other reasons beyond that to veto such a change, and most of those are actually far more compelling, on a grand scale, but this one is more interesting from a writing viewpoint, and thus more attractive to ponder.
