Screenwriting isn't the same thing as poetry - it's certainly not the same thing as *written* poetry (as opposed to spoken word) A good line for the stage or the screen is not the same thing as a good line that still seems really cool and deep when written out in text
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Every generation develops a new set of tricks to try to escape the cliches of the previous generation that now make everything the old masters wrote look mawkish and overwrought Today's "patient etherized upon a table" is tomorrow's "O little fire-folk sitting on the stair!"
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Anyway this is me telling you, as someone who has a smidge of education in "real writers" and "real literature" and all that shit, to please just shut the fuck up
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I'm not sure I'd say "What is grief but love persevering?" is a *perfect* line but it's a very good line It does exactly what it needs to do in that scene and it gives the actor exactly what he needs
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And whatever smarter, cooler, deeper line you're imagining in its place almost certainly *would not work* and would be objectively bad, by virtue of calling attention to the writer's jadedness with "cliches" and insecure desperation to seem "subversive"
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(The best line I have ever personally heard about grief is not this line It's a line from something you've never heard of and it's just someone saying "Well... maybe he doesn't *want* to be happy")
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(By itself, it's not a very interesting line at all and *of course* the concept it's describing is extremely simple and obvious But as the final emotional beat in a scene it rattled me really hard I flash back to it when looking at my own self-sabotage all the time)
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