Reality shows, video games, YouTube and other forms of electronic distribution are killing the Hollywood story, the plot-driven narrative that has been the backbone of movies and TV dramas since, well, both were invented.

Movies increasingly are displays of visual virtuosity and technology, where the story becomes secondary. Video games usually have a non-linear plot. Reality TV is booming at the expense of scripted dramas. These days, almost anyone can become a do-it-yourself writer/filmmaker, as the 65,000 new videos uploaded on YouTube every day attest.

And “old” Hollywood doesn’t understand new media, because the film business today is dominated by men—executives and filmmakers- who are 60-plus.

That was the thrust of a provocative article by Michael Wolff in the March issue of Vanity Fair, headed The Plot Sickens. Wolff does have an impressive resume: Vanity Fair columnist since 2004, author of the books Burn Rate : How I Survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet; Autumn of the Moguls : My Misadventures with the Titans, Poseurs, and Money Guys Who Mastered and Messed up Big Media; White Kids; and Where We Stand.

And he’s writing yet another biography of Rupert Murdoch, capped off by the mogul’s recent $US5 billion takeover of the venerable publishing company Dow Jones, which is due out next year.

So his views can’t dismissed lightly, although I can and will take issue with some of his assumptions.

He writes: “Hollywood product itself is remade, reduced to clips, bites, fractals, and mixes. Sitting through an entire feature film more and more feels like an unreasonable commitment. (We use DVRs to fast-forward, to pause, to hold for some other time—anything not to have to watch something from beginning to end.) The narrative is disposable.

“Video games, whose 2007 receipts of $8.7 billion rival Hollywood’s $9.7 billion box-office take, are anarchically un-plotted. And while Hollywood is getting larger and larger fees from licensing its characters (born of those tortured three acts) for video games, the more video games become the entertainment model, the less patience my son and his friends will invariably have for conventional story lines.

“Not only is reality TV a network solution for lowering costs, but it works too because it busts scripted, plotted formulas. As cheaper reality television has replaced much more expensive scripted shows, this has produced an ever growing population of writers who will never work again—writers who have been trained to write for a medium, network television, that effectively no longer exists.

“Studios are increasingly aware that the Internet is filled with writers—or, if not writers, some new creative species—working for cheap. But, at the same time, nobody, writers or executives, remotely has an idea about how to do what they do, how to apply their trade—creating these elaborate, hoary, three-act or four-act divided-at-the-midpoint stories—in a new form with a new means of distribution for an audience that seems more and more to want some radically different thing.

“If you don’t have story, that great collaboration of writers, re-writers, directors, producers, agents, executives, publicists, managers, stars, and the retinues—however painful and abusive and exploitive that process might be—do you have Hollywood?”

He thinks not, at least in its present form. I don’t doubt the business is changing fast and adapting to a new media distribution and consumption paradigm—sadly, that means fewer studios and people losing their jobs, with New Line being absorbed into Warner Bros. as the latest casualty.

But I’d argue strongly that the primacy of the story, interpreted by flesh and blood actors (CGI-created characters haven’t replaced them- yet) will still underpin the vast majority of theatrical films, which will continue to be seen first where they’re meant to be showcased, in cinemas, no matter how much the ensuing windows change or shrink.

Look at the nominees for best film at this year’s Academy Awards. Would Wolff or anyone else suggest there was an under-developed plot in No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Juno, Michael Clayton and Atonement?

Or that these other contenders for various Oscars lacked strong, compelling narratives: Into the Wild, In the Valley of Elah, Ratatouille, American Gangster, The Bourne Ultimatum, Elizabeth: The Golden Age and Charlie Wilson’s War?

Try telling Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, the Coen brothers, Clint Eastwood, George Miller, Peter Weir, Paul Thomas Anderson, Paul Haggis and a host of other filmmakers that they’ve lost the plot with any of the films they bring to the screen.

(It’s harder to defend, I must admit, recent visual effects-heavy, plot-lite spectacles such as Roland Emmerich’s 10,000 B.C. and Doug Liman’s Jumper).

At the risk of an in-house plug, series such as Dexter, The Riches and Meadowlands on the SHOWCASE channel demonstrate that TV dramas filled with plots and characters that are highly original, even daring, are alive and well.

Wolff’s essay concludes: “The epochal point is that Hollywood, which has been the centre of the culture, the coolest place, the ruler of the Zeitgeist, is out of it. It’s on the industrial sidelines. It’s just a bunch of crabby managers and a sullen workforce in a dysfunctional relationship in a declining industry, quarrelling over an ever smaller piece of the pie.”

Wrong, Michael. Hollywood has too much money, talent, history, infrastructure and influence at stake to wither and die.

And as consumers migrate towards more interactive and mobile technology, the smart creatives will still find ways to tell stories to entertain and enthral audiences, just as they’ve done for more than 100 years.

Last year Peter Guber, uber-producer and Professor at the UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television, set out what he described as the four truths in the art of storytelling. To paraphrase him, they are:

• Truth in the storyteller, so that he or she speaks honestly and candidly to the hearts of the audience.
• Truth to the audience, to ensure the story’s ending is emotionally fulfilling, an experience worth owning, a great ‘a ha!’
• Truth to the moment, so the storyteller senses the needs and emotional and mental state of the current audience and adapts accordingly.
• Truth to the mission, meaning the story is true to some mission or cause.

That sounds idealistic, even a little grandiose. But it reflects the passion and commitment that the best writers, storytellers, have shown through the years. As much in 2008 as at any other time, I suggest.