Most of the time, it’s the writer who makes a movie work. It’s no surprise to me that the scripts to Raiders and Empire were both written by the same guy —Lawrence Kasdan, the great wit behind The Big Chill and Body Heat. Does this portend great things for Troy, whose scribe David Benioff last wrote the compelling 25th Hour? Probably not, if the preview’s dialogue is any indication, but the important thing is that Benioff’s working at Hollywood’s heart, and that can only strengthen the system.

The importance of quality writing may be why those gross-out comedies that you praise are sometimes the best product of the summer—their imaginative excesses often require more creativity than one needs to write dialogue of the “It’s gonna blow!” variety. In the summer of ’98, the only two movies that I paid to see twice were extreme comedies—There’s Something About Mary and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (which, admittedly, was an arthouse pukefest, rather than a mainstream one). And two of the best things about the summer of ’99 were American Pie and the South Park movie.

There isn’t any shortage of intelligence in Hollywood; there’s just a shortage of talent. Harvard’s contribution to the summer scene has made that blindingly clear; we’ve spawned the presumably intelligent writers and/or directors of XXX, The Fast and the Furious, Wild Wild West, Terminator 3, Cats and Dogs, Bruce Almighty, Daddy Day Care, Blue Crush, Halloween: Resurrection and more. Hollywood needs to weed out all of its dead wood, be they Harvard-trained or not, and find writers who can make some kind of memorable contribution to the medium. I wish we could just create twenty clones of William Goldman in his prime and thirty clones of Aaron Sorkin and then let the fifty of them write the entire summer crop, but life doesn’t work that way.

BEN B. CHUNG: Hey Ben. I fully agree that the writer is most often responsible for a film’s quality. I find it almost impossible to enjoy a movie based on acting, cinematography or editing alone; alternately, a solid script can salvage even the most scantily budgeted, poorly acted production. As Sam Huntington might say, if films were chili, the cast and crew would simply be ingredients that could only enrich the essential tomato stock of the screenplay.

So if writers are so crucial to a film’s artistic success, and artistic success sometimes correlates with Oscars, which studios have a thing for, why aren’t there nearly enough of them to go around? It’s logical that for such an involved, multi-tiered process as direction, only a few individuals might rise above the fray and establish themselves in the critical limelight. But there are hundreds of decent novelists churning out product on a weekly basis, and yet consistently accomplished screenwriters are few and far between.

I suspect that this is largely due to the marginalization of the screenwriter in Hollywood. Once in a blue moon, a writer will become something of a household name, but this usually requires them to either simultaneously dabble in direction or actually write themselves into their screenplays. Granted, writers are not particularly a most glamorous, lovable bunch, but Ang Lee, Ridley Scott and Steven Spielberg did not achieve superstar status with their chiseled jawbones.

There’s also the obvious consideration of the lack of artistic control often presented the writer. After the script is composed and put into production, the writer is rarely allowed to offer his or her input on a set. This might explain why writer-directors (David Gordon Green, Sofia Coppola and their ilk) often produce the most satisfying works; their undiluted vision makes for the most sound, unified art.

Anyhow, I must admit I am fairly pleased that the sequel craze has been toned down for this summer, and though I’m hardly looking forward to any of the epics Hollywood is attempting to ram down our throats this summer, I think we can all agree on one thing: the all-powerful hotness of Keira Knightley in a leather bondage outfit, sporting Celtic tattoos and one big-ass sword. Bring it on, Keira.

—Staff writer Ben Soskin can be reached at bsoskin@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Ben B. Chung can be reached at bchung@fas.harvard.edu.