It's interesting how much television has changed over the years. I feel like after watching this and other re-runs that throughout the late 1990s-2000s there was a true shift in television. With the popularity of soaps and stuff, it was easy to get away with more exposition, but now that people have bigger TVs and better technology, they are expecting more cinematic fare. Shows are smarter. CG has made it easier to show the Bigfoots and aliens. Do you think that's why reboots like "Charlie's Angels," "Bionic Woman" and "Knight Rider" all failed?

Haha! I love this, Scott! And being a writer, I'm going to steal: "Exposition equals death." Fair warning, LOL. I think the reason why "The Artist" was such a huge hit last year was that it was a piano on the head about this very point. Show don't tell. Peace!

This clip triggered serious 70's flashbacks for me... wow. Scott, do you have any idea what episode this was from or how late in the run of the show it might have been? (Bigfoot plus aliens plus time travel feels a bit late-season shark-jumpy to me, at least out of context--even for the Six Million Dollar Man.) My first impression: Lee Majors commits 100% to that cheesy dialogue. Hats off to him. (Acting straight in something cheeseball is way harder than playing Hamlet or King Lear.) It occurred to me that the scene tries to do some exposition things right: - Steve Austin doesn't just dump the exposition. He resists and they have to worm it out of him. - He has an agenda: he's trying to convince them to help him. He's telling characters in the scene, not the audience. - There's conflict: they don't believe (or trust) him and he's trying to persuade them. - There's high stakes: he needs their support to find the mcguffin and save the world. I suspect it really isn't the worst exposition ever. Alan D--I find a lot of those reboots fail (and spinoffs, too) because the people remaking the shows fail to understand and appreciate what made the original version succeed in the first place. With the same character dynamics and story engine, you could reboot most of those shows today and make them work with (almost) the same low tech, provided you first found the heart of the show. (I just finished Tom Benedek's online TV writing course at Screenwriting Master Class, and there was some fascinating course materials on "the heart of the show", btw--I highly recommend the class if that's a topic that interests you.) I think we need "Exposition Equals Death" on T-shirts, too... ;)

Sorry if this comes across as mean (it'll get nicer as you read on), but exposition certainly does NOT equal death. To me, that just seems like a cheap film school explanation. And it's something I hear too often from writers whose scripts are plainly no good. There's a good reason that only 500 scripts are optioned/sold every year, while 100,000 are registered with the WGA and millions are started and abandoned. It's not who you know, where you are, or any of that. It's poor storytelling, plainly and simply. And "show, don't tell", as advice, is just as bad. You SHOULD tell! Tell your story with either words or images, but certainly tell it! Ideally, you should figure out how to "show AND tell". Ever heard the term "payoff"? Exposition is the "comprehensive description and explanation of an idea or theory in which the background to the main conflict is introduced". It's information! It's conflict! It's character! Story without information, conflict, and character is what equals death... Ted Griffin once told me that the secret to writing is understanding rhythm and release. Give information that's relevant to your characters and plot, and pay it off. If your information isn't relevant to your plot or characters, it's (obviously) irrelevant to your story... And THAT is when you get these terrible examples that feel "exposition-y". A great example: "The Godfather", when Michael tells Kay the story about his father and Luca Brasi at the wedding... It's nothing more than a character sitting down with another, while he tells a story about (a) some background of his father; (b) the family business; and (c) the type of man Luca Brasi is. But then we learn THE MOST IMPORTANT THEMATIC ELEMENT IN THE ENTIRE SAGA!!!! "That's my family Kay, that's not me." Each of these elements in Michael's story are successfully shared as spoken (not shown) exposition... And they're paid off. 1) Half of the second movie explains Vito's rise as the the godfather; 2) throughout the whole movie, we're slowly let into the world of the cosa nostra; 3) Luca Brasi, after seen as this thug and killer, is violently strangled to death -- the physical presence of the family is harmed; and 4) we later learn that Don Vito's ONE WISH for Michael was that he didn't become a part of the family business. Michael as a character, as the catalyst for the epic story, starts by letting an outsider in on some of the most intimate details of his family and personal life. And the huge character arc of it all is that Michael starts the film by saying he's completely different than his family, and the last scene is his final indoctrination into the life, as the door closes, and we (as the audience) are no longer welcome into the world of Michael and the family, only to later get lines like, "Don't ask me about my business, Kay." Not-so-great example: Any move with "expendable" in the title. And if I'm not mistaken, there is very little (if any) exposition in movies like this. As a writer, it's your job to tell a great story! But even if you have a great story with great characters, it has to be TOLD. Larry Kasdan included the exposition that Indy hates snakes before he dropped Indy to the temple with 5,000 snakes... Andy Dufresne had to be shown killing his wife before he later confessed to actually doing it to Red -- he knew he was never getting out, other than to dig... Not to mention, a oft-despised voice-over from Red, reminding us that he told Andy it would take years to dig out with a rock hammer. This is all exposition -- well-used exposition. Shoot, all of "Forrest Gump" is exposition, showing the story of this less-than-intelligent young man, who doesn't have much control over the "plot" he follows in life, until you get to the final moments, when you see into Forrest's soul, and it's all paid off. He sees his son for the first time and says, "Is he... is he like [touches his chest]?" And it's so powerful because, after three hours, you learn that this sweet man has known who and what he is the whole time, and he's so scared that his son might be like him... I feel that adages, like the above ones, are directly conflicting with the ONLY rule any writer should ever obey -- to write "a good story, well told".

Bigfoot . . . Boron 3 . . . Aliens . . . NOW IT ALL MAKES SENSE! . . . and remember that episode of "Frasier" when Frasier Crane threw a fundraiser for the Senatorial candidate, and the two men stepped out onto the balcony, overlooking Seattle? Then the candidate expressed his gratitude to Dr. Crane, especially because after the aliens abducted him, his life became a holy terror? And now, with Frasier's help and support, he has headed back in the right direction? Of course! Now I get it :-) John A

Matt, as acknowledged, the adage "Exposition equals death" is hyperbolic, but I like it as a reminder to remember to handle exposition with great care and thought. Also I think you'll enjoy the follow-up post tomorrow that gets into some of the ways to look at and manage exposition to maximize its benefit within the narrative. You are right: All stories have exposition. Often lots and lots of exposition. The spirit of my posts on the matter is coming from these experiences: (1) A considerable amount of my effort in working with college students is to make them aware that dialogue, while a necessary tool, is almost always secondary to scene description / action in terms of driving the narrative. Movies are primarily a visual medium. This is even MORE important with the new paradigm where 70% of box office derives from international markets. Dialogue is cultural specific and may not translate as well overseas, whereas a car blowing up is... well... universal. So I have a heightened sensitivity when it comes to talking head scenes doing an info-dump because I see it too much with my students [at least early on before I school them otherwise]. (2) All exposition is not equal. Some of it, like when Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark explains about the Ark of the Covenant is one thing. That's fascinating, thus can work well as an exposition scene [notably buttressed by visual images such as drawings on the chalkboard, the lithograph in the Bible]. But details about a computer program, not so much. We have to be aware of the 'good' kind of exposition and the 'bad' kind of exposition, then deal with them accordingly. (3) Perhaps the main thing is simply to raise awareness about the NEED to handle exposition well. All too often, writers just insert it into a scene without thinking about how to enhance the entertainment value. If writers would think CINEMATICALLY, they could make exposition that much more effective. For example, the shooting script The Shawshank Redemption starts out with Andy outside the cabin where his wife and lover are having sex, then cuts to the courtroom with Andy on trial. How much better is the movie which INTERCUTS the two, not REPEATING the information AND using voice-over narration and flashbacks to great effect to convey all of that exposition in a cinematic way. Likewise when Tommy relates the confession of Elmo Blatch, instead of just hearing Tommy recite the information, the movie cuts to Elmo himself providing his slimy recitation of the events, again a cinematic treatment of exposition. At the end of the day, I do not believe exposition is inherently bad, but I see enough scripts where it's handled poorly or without any imagination to know it is an issue that should be elevated in terms of public discourse. That's why I created my 1-week class called Handling Exposition and why I raise the subject here. Moreover there ARE ways to handle exposition that make it much more effective, even entertaining. Thanks for your comments. They stand as a necessary reminder about how important exposition is. Would that all of us put some additional thought into how we handle exposition in our scripts and especially think about it in cinematic terms.

Alan, there has been a harmonic convergence of sorts in TV, not only the fact that people have big-ass sets in their living rooms nowadadys in hi def, but also because so many movie writers have shifted over to writing TV, having brought with them cinematic sensibilities. Hence Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, etc. As to why reboots of 70s series like Charlies Angels, Bionic Woman and Knight Rider failed? Perhaps they were so specific to that time and era. We live in a 'darker' era it seems to me -- generalization I know, but if you look at the spec scripts that have sold in the last 2-3 years, lots of edgy action, action thriller, thriller. Those 70s series just may not be translatable to current sensibilities.

I was particularly pleased to find this clip because Lee Majors played a cop in Trojan War. The name on his uniform: Austin.

That is too fantastic.

Toss in the Illuminati and the Trilateral Commission, then you've got every base covered!

You're a saint and gentleman for your extended hand to the screenwriting community, Scott. Aside from my Craig-Mazin-esque umbrage toward the subject, I agree entirely with what you said and am indeed an advocate of compelling visual imagery and using exposition adroitly. Thanks for your time and guidance!

"Exposition equals death" even if you're the SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN