Lacking Variety
March 29th, 2007 by screenwriterguy
Am I the only person who finds Variety really annoying?
Last year, I had a subscription to The Hollywood Reporter. When it ran out, I took advantage of a frequent flier miles program to get Daily Variety. Hundreds of dollars worth of magazine for free. Hooray. And I do read it. I know that I have to read the trades if I want to work in the entertainment industry.
But I roll my eyes every time.
My take? Making up words doesn’t make you cool. I don’t go to Mickey D’s, I don’t have Farvegnugen, and I don’t want you read how the new prexy at Alphabet decided when a skein will bow. OK, maybe someone somewhere finds these shortcut nicknames useful. But it’s downright inefficient to say something like “tenpercentery” instead of “agency.” Thirteen letters instead of six, to convince me you’re hip?
I think I could handle the pseudo-jargon if Variety would concede one thing: Please, Variety, use articles in your sentences. In the English language, we expect “the,” “a,” and “an” before our nouns. The front page of today’s edition, for example, reads as such:
“Warner Bros. TV has reupped its overall deal with producers Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen. Two-year pact covers the duo’s production…” Etc., etc.”
THE two-year pact! Every single time I read a second paragraph in Variety without the article, I find it jarring. Every time. One shouldn’t jar one’s reader over a triviality. That’s a little something we writers call “bad writing.”
Posted in General Musings |
Mar 29th 2007 at 9:09 am
Variety is the one paper that seems to very aggressively stick to a style that it developed decades upon decades ago. The New York Times theater critic wrote about it in a book called Ghost Light. The odd thing is that Variety seems to value this language style as a “brand.” That’s our shtick, man! I guess when your paper has a virtual monopoly (don’t expect the Hollywood Reporter to be around much longer) and you cater to a very, very, very niche audience, you don’t have to worry about cultural trends, such as “modern language” or “grammar.”
Prexy! Ankles! Tyro!
Mar 31st 2007 at 5:24 pm
bwhahaha - very funny post!
I read Variety every day — as well as Hollywood Reporter — not quite sure why, their coverage is virtually identical for every story — strangely enough though, I do like the bigger pages of Variety - not sure what that’s about. The writing style is strange - but I always chalked it up to the short attention span in Hollywood — that everyone just wants the ‘evelyn wood speed reading’ version of their news — every other word or so — just so long as they get the general gist. In fact, that’s oftentimes how I find myself reading it.