story. If, after it has been accepted, the director
chooses to stage it with more than ordinary care and expense, so much
the better. But the director and not the author will be the one to
decide how it is to be staged. If the story is good, it will not be
slighted in its production.

CHAPTER XVI

WHAT YOU SHOULD NOT WRITE

_1. The Work of the Censors_

From the time that you begin to write moving-picture plays, one
important fact must be borne constantly in mind: The National Board of
Censorship inspects and passes on all films before they are permitted
to be released, and this Board will not pass any subject it considers
objectionable. It is not our province to discuss the methods of the
censors in making decisions, though in some sections the local board
carries the censorship idea to extremes, even barring some subjects
that have already passed the National Board. It is safe to say,
however, that the folly of hacking to pieces a film portraying
Shakespeare's tragedy of "Macbeth," on the ground that it contained
too many scenes showing murder and other crimes, will soon become
apparent even to over-zealous police and other censors of certain
cities. As Mr. W. Stephen Bush writes in _The Moving Picture World_:
"A very small and a very short-sighted minority of motion picture
manufacturers, together with occasional lapses of National
Censorship," are responsible for the exceedingly silly and
presumptuous system now existent in some localities.

It is because of this "small and short-sighted minority" that we offer
this advice: Write as your conscience and a sense of decency as an
individual and as a good citizen dictate. The chances are that then
your photoplay will meet with no serious objection. Do not introduce a
crime-scene into your picture simply because when you saw a similar
scene in a photoplay it aroused a moment's thrill among the
spectators. The fact that it passed the National Board and the local
censorship committee--if your city has one--does _not_ mean that it is
the kind of picture the better class of theatre patrons want, and the
better class ought to be set up in your mind as the judges of all you
write. A bad example will not justify you in writing a play containing
objectionable scenes. The safe ground is the best ground because it is
right.

The following list of features disapproved by the National Board of
Censorship gives a good general idea of the things that may be
regarded a