I watch/read/listen to more than my fair share of moviemaking theory. Be it books, movie commentary, screenwriting podcasts, etc...

And there are several touchstones of the biz that I don't tend to agree with. Perhaps I'm just naïve, but I think there's some bad tradition in there too.

The one that keeps coming up recently is "Efficiency". Something along the lines of "Cut everything out of your story/screenplay unless it advances the plot." Or "If you have two scenes that only advance the plot in one way, try to combine them so that you have one scene that advances the plot in two ways."

We watched a movie recently from which the writer/director said that he had to cut his favourite scene in the interest of efficiency. He said it was extremely moving and that the actor just hit it out of the park... but that he really needed to cut those 3 minutes from the runtime and that this scene didn't really advance the plot so it had to go! The interviewer agreed that it did indeed have to go.

What, really? If it's a great scene, and it's well acted and it works on your emotions... why in the world would you cut it?

They seem to be saying: "emotion is only good when it serves the plot." Whereas I would say: "the only reason you need a plot is to help you create strong emotion." If you have a bit of raw human emotion and you've somehow managed to get an audience to see it without unneccisarily driving the plot through it, then I say "Good for you!"

This actually part of my grand theory on why the second part of trilogies are often the best... It's because they are free to go explore emotions, emotional content without worrying about starting or wrapping up a plot! When part 3 rolls around, and it's all "back to business" that usually isn't nearly as interesting or "good" as the poetic meandering of part 2. (But enough there, I have another thread for that.)

Those of you who have opinions: Do you agree or disagree? Is efficiency an almighty story god to whom we must sacrifice the best parts of our story so that the rest of it may live? Or are Hollywood screenwriters nuts?