Robert Altman Interesting quote...

[Alex]

"I care more about an actors behavior in the story than the story itself."

Wow.

[etimh]

He's said on several occasions that he doesn't care about stories at all. Kind of refreshing if you ask me. I'm sick of "stories."

Tim

[Alex]

The movie "Clerks" comes to mind as being an exact replica of what Altman is talking about, characters and their actions and reactions matter more than there actually being a story.

The right combination of character development through situations the actors are thrust into can create the storyline. I would say that Larry David (creator of Seinfeld) who currently stars in "Curb Your Enthusiasm" is all about how characters behave in a situation versus storyline. However usually each episode is able to to take two, three, or four different actor situations and magically weave them together in the final scene in a humorous way.

The Larry David effect is discontinuous scenes that end up coming full circle, in essence weaving a story from a pile of thread. Probably low budget filmmaking benefits most from this concept of character development because it can keep the budget down if the audience embraces the actors in a movie rather than budget driven special effects and ornate movie sets.

The storyline is essential to keeping the audiences interest up, but characterization at the expense of story development can carry a movie quite far, as Clerks demonstrates.