[JamesP81]

In the vast majority of Hollyweird products, sex, violence, and fowl language serves no purpose in plot.

I hear you. They do things in movies just because they can. I understand why Saving Private Ryan was a violent movie; you couldn't tell the story accurately without it (and it is definitely a story worth telling). But other movies they have sex and violence just to revel in it.

I am an aspiring writer and I deal with the issue a bit myself. The badguys in my book are really, really evil. I have to balance between being too gratuitous and being too sanitary. Truly evil characters can't be nice; otherwise they wouldn't be evil.

[orionblamblam]

> Truly evil characters can't be nice; otherwise they wouldn't be evil.

Oh, I dunno. Slavering death machines are useful, but for *true* evil, you have to have the "looks friendly, smiles a lot and is darned polite" type of evil.