Junkyard Wolf's Junkyard: "Adversity" and Creativity

I was just going through this review of the Hollywood classic "Casablanca", when one of the last few paragraphs jumped out at me.

The indeterminacy of the ending has has been exaggerated by stories suggesting that the filmmakers were uncertain which of the two men Ilsa would wind up with. These are apparently myths; the Production Code of the day would not have allowed an ending fundamentally different from what the film gives us. What was debated was how to engineer the bittersweet ending in a dramatically and emotionally satisfying way.

There's something to think about. Because the Production Code would not allow an ending wherein a married woman runs off with another man, the makers of Casablanca were forced to find a way to make the ending satisfying despite spending the entire film flirting with adultery. The result is one of the greatest endings in Hollywood history.

When I read stuff like this, I keep getting validated in my practice of almost never watching local films commercially. I loved watching Casablanca, which was the product of a time that had a Production Code. It was far superior to almost any movie produced well after that code was abolished. (Its counterpart in greatness, Citizen Kane, was also made in the same era under the same guidelines.)

Here, we don't have a Production Code. Short of blatant nudes, we've allowed practically anything we could think of in our films. And yet, for all that freedom, we've produced nothing like Casablanca. Not even close.

It seems that creativity needs adversity to blossom. Where creativity is untrammeled, it loses its edge. Gold must go through fire, after all. When we can all take the easy route and just vomit our work unto any media, why be creative?

So, how do our filmmakers address our creativity deficit? By trying to remove the very thing that can force them to be creative. They're decrying the relatively tame MTRCB as "fascist". Good going, fags.

When the makers of Casablanca were forced to be creative, they didn't resolve it by crying out that the Production Code was "fascist". They went out and finished one of the greatest movies of all time. It only further highlights how lame, inbred and insular our local auteur wannabes are.

"I know what will make my movie the best ever! That boob I'll show for twenty minutes straight! Screw you, MTRCB fascist pigs! Lolz!! Manrique's gonna suck my balls."