Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

Fryxell-Sealey Patrick Brendan asks “You got me through the hell that is factory thirdshift. Bless you for that. My question is why do you think there are so few movies and art forms that deals with factory work. I have my answer would love to hear yours.”

My guess, and this is totally a guess, having done zero research on the subject, is that writers don’t tend to work factory jobs. It isn’t their world, and they don’t know much about it, so you don’t see many works about factory life. By the same token, not many factory workers set out to write books and screenplays. It isn’t just factory work. New York and Los Angeles are overrepresented in movies and television by an amazing amount, far more than their populations alone would merit.

Basically, writers and other artists are limited by what they know. It is difficult to create something about what you don’t know and most people wouldn’t ever think to do it, because they don’t know anything about.