[WRITING THRILLER & ACTION-ADVENTURE FILMS with NEILL D. HICKS]

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After many years of being lambasted in the bare-knuckle pugilism of teaching screenwriting, I began to learn to see the sucker punch wind-up headed my way. Nevertheless, I get flattened every now and then when I'm out of the ring and have my guard down.

The sucker punch usually starts out with a kind of doe-eyed wonderment delivered by a beautiful dame that's calculated to draw chumps like me in close. Not infrequently, though, it's interposed by a nifty gem of erudite discernment that catches my intellectual fascination. A couple of weeks ago I even got canvasbacked through e-mail.

One way or another, the set up for the knock-out is always some version of, "What did you think of __________?" Now, whether you're a professional screenwriter or an amateur, you've probably also been set up for this clobber. Maybe it was at a party with non-writer friends, or over Thanksgiving dinner with all the relatives, including the high school kid who just made his first home video cult classic.

In any case, the blank can be filled in any movie you like because the particular film doesn't matter. What matters is that the questioner the assassin - loves this film, cherishes it, has incorporated this movie into his or her inner self so intensely that it courses through the veins like life's blood.

On the other hand, caught off guard, egocentric Kid Screenwriter believes he has been asked to express his hard-won professional expertise. "Well, I think it had some interesting moments, but the overall structure failed to hold together as a satisfying story and left far too many unanswered questions about the characters' motivations."

WHAM! The questioner cuts loose with the roundhouse. "I loved that movie. It meant so much to me. It changed my life," and several other passionate variations. By the time the questioner is finished trouncing me, the rest of the class has concluded that I am a callous inquisitor who responds to movies only as some diabolical pathologist dismembering their dreams. Me, I stepped blindly right into the sucker punch, caught it on the chin, and went down for the count.

In one large lecture class I taught, a woman in the very top row of the amphitheater asked my opinion of Forest Gump. Squeezing on my critical brakes until the linings were red hot, I allowed as how I'd enjoyed the picture, although I wished it were a good forty-five minutes shorter. What troubled me about the movie, I mused aloud, was the near-religious social phenomenon of dimwit-as-hero that seemed to have swept the country.

The class fell deathly silent. They saw the punch coming that I in my na�e professorial role was completely oblivious to. There was a rustle in the top row of the gallery as the questioner arduously hauled herself up on her crutches and loudly proclaimed that I was insensitive to the needs of the handicapped.

BAM! Out like a light.

As much as I'm addicted to writing, I take every chance I can to push back from this keyboard and ride my horse up into the hills as far away from Show Business as I can get. Up there, people don't care much about Hollywood, though they may get in to see a movie every now and then. Naturally, though, when The Horse Whisperer came out, just about all of them lined up to get tickets.

I do not know what the original script or scripts for this film looked like, and from all reports you couldn't make me read the book with a gun to my head, but for confused, unfocused, corporate produced balderdash, this film is pure, Grade-A horse hockey. Nonetheless

Horse people love this film. It is about horses.

Women love this film. It is about romance.

Environmentalists love this film. It is about the unspoiled west.

New Age devotees love this film. It is about the metaphysics of genuine communication with our fellow animals. (I've got news for you. Hunkering in the grass next to a horse in your snazzy Bloomingdale's shirt is not going to communicate much of anything to him.)

So what is The Horse Whisperer about? God only knows, but don't tell any of these folks that it's a badly constructed script with no coherent story. You will not just be sucker punched, but boot stomped face down into the nearest pee spot.

Physicians and attorneys always prefer you came to the office to discuss your case rather than do so at a party. Screenwriters would be wise to adopt the same professional distance because you'll certainly come away with fewer broken noses and black eyes.

In the classroom, after years of picking myself up off the floor, I finally learned a truth from my colleague Dennis Palumbo (My Favorite Year), who now practices as a psychotherapist. What those students in my classes are asking for is not my expertise in the critical analysis of a film so that they might increase their expressive skills as writers. No, they are asking for approval. They are seeking the acceptance by a parent of their self-image. And if they don't get it, they're ready to punch me in the nose. Those people at the party who just loved Horse Whisperer, and dozens of other iconographic but story-bereft movies bring their own poignancy to an emblematic imagery that merely confirms a significance they already hold.

At the party, you probably should keep your mouth shut and save your teeth. In the classroom, however, the appropriate Socratic dodge and feint against the sucker punch is, "What did you like about _________?" Chances are, the assassin is going to do a lot of pussyfooting around, but being rocked back on his heels may be just the unexpected parry that sets him on the path to becoming a real writer.