Video: “Words”

“I think it’s time to renew our romance with the word.” — Steven Spielberg

In 1987, the Writers Guild Foundation released this video called “WORDS” featuring some of film’s greatest dialogue, all written by HUMAN BEINGS (aka screenwriters). Watch and be inspired!

Check out this comment in the video by Steven Spielberg:

“I think in our romance with technology and our excitement in exploring all the possibilities of film and video, I think we’ve partially lost something we now have to reclaim. I think it’s time to renew our romance with the word.”

In the face of the emergence of generative artificial intelligence, I think Spielberg’s words ring especially true: romance with the word.

Does A.I. have a passion for words? Does it love language? Can it generate anything akin to romance?

Those questions remain … but not for human writers.

Writers have a lifelong affair with words. We are enchanted by them and the power they can create when put together into sentences … paragraphs … pages … and scenes. We have an emotional connection to what we write.

Screenwriters don’t need to renew a romance with words … because we’ve always been in love with them.

It’s our passion for storytelling, that emotional resonance with the stories we write that causes words to lift up off the page and into the imagination of the reader.

It’s how we make the audience care.

Watch the video and be reminded of that simple fact.