Where did all the good stories go?

It is a question that has bugged me for a long time. I am a storyteller (filmmaker), and I enjoy a good story. Part of me wonders if I enjoyed them more when I was a kid, or if they were just more films that relied on originality over big-budget.

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I have seen a few films that were really original. But for me, they're few and far between. I liked Frequency with Dennis Quaid and Jim Caviezel. It was labeld as a thriller but mixed drama and comedy into it. You fell in love with the charecters, and yet alot of the story is a father and son speaking over a ham radio through time. You could tell the film hinged its sucess on a well written screenplay.

I also like M. Night Shyamalan's Signs. Originally I held back from watching the film because I knew he had made The Sixth Sense. I didn't just want to watch something to scare me, I wanted something with depth. All anyone seemed to talk about with The Sixth Sense was how it creeped them out. I want to see a film that uses all of my emotions. Someone mentioned that I needed to see Signs, watched it late at night, cried, laughed, got spooked a few times... and at the end almost applauded if it wasn't for the fact that my family were all sleeping.

We all have different types of stories that we like to see as films or TV shows. What prompts you to hope in your car and go to the movie theater or rent a DVD Blu-ray? Have you seen something worth watching again, and again, and agan until you break it? Have you seen something that leaves images in your mind for days as you day dream about the story? Film is the ultimate collabrotive artform. Shouldn't it be the ultimate experience?