After hearing Robert "Adaptation" McKee's splendid, virtuoso fulmination against the state of Hollywood/European cinema last year, people who give screenwriting lectures I review are always going to be at a disadvantage. McKee's hilariously excoriated The English Patient, Titanic and other "perfectly suck-awful" products of the media-industrial complex. "My idea of hell's watching Moulin Rouge on loop".

Linda Aronson had some snappy quips: "Unfortunately, if you pay peanuts you tend to get monkeys – and angry monkeys at that – so pay sensibly", on dealing with writers. On the three-act structure: "I call it the graph of the audience's potential boredom". She had some other salient points to share, like "Rewriting is inevitable, but unfocussed rewriting is a waste of time and money and kills a project" and not to waste time on mediocrity. "How much life have you got?"

Aronson, an Australian screenwriter (Paul Cox's Kostas), playwright and novelist, was brought to New Zealand by the New Zealand Writers Foundation, SPADA and the Film Commission. Aronson used The Insider as her model piece of bad writing, arguing the film wasn't really about Russell Crowe's tobacco industry whistleblower, was too focused on Al Pacino's journalist and had a "redundant" opening. Some of her criticism – like the use of Arab music – was cogent enough. Aronson pointed out her journalist friend "thinks this is the best film in the world". I rate it, too.

Aronson presented a traditional, linear way of looking at things – the audience seemed to find this three-hour lecture a useful primer – but my tastes are more non-linear and outré. Aronson spoke a lot about "the spark" something that makes a film or idea hot. Unfortunately, though I thought her talk was reasonably interesting, it didn't really spark.—AB

» Victoria University | Thursday 14 April, 2005