Scriptwriting Secrets from... Belgium?!?

Review: Secrets of Action Screenwriting by William C. Martell (Kindle, Nook)

2012-01-19T14:07:00.002+01:00

Over a decade ago, William C. Martell published the first edition of Secrets of Action Screenwriting to great success. The book sold out - became a collector's item, even, commanding impressive prices from used book sellers - and was truly innovative. This was the first time a working screenwriter revealed his personal tricks, rules, and insights for writing screenplays in his favorite genre - and in which he had known a lot of success. Never before had a screenwriting manual focused on one genre alone. And never before had a screenwriting manual gone in for a toolbox approach.

When we learned in the past few years that a second edition of Action Screenwriting was in the works, excitement ran high. And around Christmas 2011, the perfect present for screenwriters everywhere was released in electronic book format. Yes, it's too bad we can't hold the second edition in our hands and smother its blue cover with hugs and kisses, but on the positive side, the book is not hindered by page limitations (it's over twice the size of the original) and it can be updated by the author. In fact, it already has been. Your book will only get better and better over the years.

So what riches hide between these electronic covers? I'm not going to do a comparison review, as that's fairly pointless- much of the original material has been revised or tweaked. So we're getting both a thorough revision of the original and a book's worth of new material in one tidy package.

Bill Martell's main emphasis is that action movies are all about characters first, and big set-pieces second. It's something that Hollywood - both big- and low-budget Hollywood - tends to forget to it's own detriment, because all of the classic action movies have a strong emotional/character driven component to put all the pyrotechnics and brawling in context. There are many good examples from the author's own screenplays - many of which unfortunately were cut out by idiot directors, producers and/or actors.

Secondly, the most important thing for an action movie story to work is the villain's plan. Unlike 'normal' screenwriting theory tells us, the villain is the most active character in an action movie and the hero is reactive, trying to stop the villain from achieving his/her dastardly goal. Time spent on devising a good 'bad' plan for an action screenplay is time very well spent.

Apart from the literally hundreds of suggestions and examples for tweaking clichés, piling up the suspense and tension, and getting character across without dialogue (among many, many others), this is also the first time Bill Martell reveals his relatively new concept of 'The thematic'. Useful for every type of screenplay, it's a unifying element of the script and probably the closest Martell has gotten to a 'high concept screenwriting theory', like Field's Paradigm and Snyder's Save The Cat structure. The concept is very well illustrated here in an in-depth examination of Minority Report, but personally I hope it'll be the subject of a future Blue Book, or heck, an entire real-world dead tree book even, as it's a very deep subject which can be explored even further.

The book is extremely up to date, going right up to MI:4 Ghost Protocol, though to be honest many of the best examples come from older films, with Die Hard still taking the top spot.

We're also introduced to a very good technique for understanding screenplay construction: Bill Martell advises the reader to do a timeline for their favourite films. This means dividing the film in 5 minute increments, and noting what story beat occurs on those minutes. In the supplimental section, Martell includes scans of several timelines he made long ago, some of films he analyzed to get a grip on their inner workings, some of his own screenplays. It's extremely rare we get to see actual work-in-progress documents from working screenwriters, so make the most of this golden opportunity.

It should be clear by now that if you're in the least bit interested in writing an action screenplay, you NEED this book. And even if you're not, there's so much good, common sense advice within these pages you'll be glad you read them.
There were quite a few typos when the e-book was first released, but it has been regularly updated since then, so the majority of them - if not all - have already been corrected. In any case: my highest recommendation.

You can get the Kindle version here:

And if you're feeling nostalgic and want to splurge on a collector's item:

Review: Blue Book #10 : Dialogue Secrets by William Martell

2011-11-06T23:29:00.007+01:00

Great dialogue is one of the best weapons in a screenwriter's armory to seduce actors into wanting to play a role. So it's imperative that you master this skill. Plus - writing great dialogue, though often hard work, is also just plain fun. Run-of-the-mill or bad dialogue? Not so much.

So Bill Martell's third Blue Book to be converted into Kindle- and Nookdom, is just what the doctor ordered if you're trying to improve your dialogue writing. Now consisting of 40 tips (almost double the amount of the print version), the book also has a few extra dialogue-related essays as well as a detailed look at some brilliantly written scenes, to show you how it is done by the masters.

If you want to write great dialogue, you must of course know how to distinguish it from bad dialogue. Dialogue Secrets has you covered. Several of the tips examine the most current mistakes writers make when writing dialogue - as well as a few more esoteric ones.

The biggest problems you're usually faced with are exposition in dialogue, and making sure the individual voice of the character comes through. Exposition can be a hassle in many ways - characters explaining who they are and what the situation is to each other (when they both already know), or being used as an infodump to reveal the research which the writer has painstakingly assembled to name but two. But rest assured, there are many strategies on offer to avoid these pitfalls, and each chapter comes with an exercise in order to help you actually acquire the necesary skill set.

As for making the characters sound like the individuals they are, this is illustrated beautifully in my favourite tip. Bill describes a couple of dozen barista's he knows in LA. All doing the same job, all having a totally different outlook and personality. What's so good about this section, is that it becomes clear how easily you can paint a portrait of a character in one or two sentences. And if you do the exercise (writing a very short conversation with each of the individuals described in the tip, in such a way that their personality shines through), you will be doing yourself and your writing a world of good.

You'll also learn aout the importance of vocabulary, bumper sticker lines, nexus words, the three-line rule, and much, much more. Subtext in dialogue is also discussed several times, and Bill provides a perfect example to illustrate just how subtext works. Unfortunately (one of the very few flaws of the book), the example is repeated verbatim at least three times.

There's also a section on cursing - definitely the first time that's been given a chapter of its own in a screenwriting manual!

And finally, there are dialogue excerpts from Notorious, Psycho, Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday and, for a more modern approach, Kenneth Lonergan's You Can Count On Me. All of these are discussed in depth.

Bottom line: you get almost 200 pages of practical and often surprising advice, for a measly $2.99. That must be one of the best deals on the internet right now. And you can get it right here:

(Although as I post this today, November 17 2011, there's no pricing information up at the Amazon site. Go figure...)

Review: The Story Book by David Baboulene (Dream Engine Media/Kindle)

2011-10-30T09:11:00.004+01:00

A second UK offering up for review now: David Baboulene's The Story Book. Mr. Baboulene is a writer of novels, children's books, scripts - and he's actually doing a PhD. on subtext in storytelling as well!

So how does this book stack up against other story-centered tomes?

First, you need to know the book isn't specifically about screenwriting, but talks about story in all (or most) forms of fiction. However, screenwriting is a very big part of the equation, as the central example used to illustrate the theoretical principles is Back To The Future. And that's a very good choice - though as mainstream Hollywood as you can get, BTTF is extremely well-constructed and has many different levels which all influence each other constantly.

Second, mr. Baboulene throws a big frag grenade at the beginning, causing shock and awe no doubt, when he states that you need to disregard structure when you're creating your story. For starting out with a set structural model may be like forcing a square peg in a round hole. It limits your creativity and may 'disfigure' your story from the start.

Wow, heady stuff. I can hear a bunch of writers whooping with glee and another bunch raging in disbelief.

Do not despair, fellow structuralists - story structure still has a very important part to play and the book also spends a lot of time discussing it in detail. However, in the author's view, the structural model should be applied after the fact of story creation, in order to make sure you tell the story as well as possible, hit all your emotional moments with maximum efficiency, and engage your audience to the utmost. So in fact you get the best of both worlds.

Another crucial point in this approach to story us the use of subtext. Subtext, the story underneath the story, is a crucial element for telling a great story, as mr. Baboulene sees it. And the way to achieve subtext is to work with knowledge gaps - which can operate on several levels. Between the characters, between the audience and the characters, the audience and the writer... all is examined in depth and eminently practical. The research Mr. Baboulene has done for his PhD thesis suggests that the more subtext is present in a story, the higher it is rated by the public. So if you ever needed any encouragement to start mastering subtext...

Other chapters consider the plot vs. character divide (hint: there isn't one), dialogue, the story development process (which offers a way of working any writer can adopt), story analysis, and the commercial realities facing authors and screenwriters today.

To round things off, you get six interviews with professional writers (screenwriter Bob Gale, dramatist Willy Russell, novelist Lee Child and the late, lamented sitcom god John Sullivan), actor Mark Williams (best known internationally for his role of Arthur Weasley in the Harry Potter movies) and publisher Stewart Ferris. Each interview is in-depth and first-rate, and together they provide a wonderful spectrum of approaches to storytelling. Often the advice is totally contradictory - and totally correct in each case.

One of the high points of the book for me is the analysis of one very short scene from Back To The Future. It's barely one minute of screen time, but as David Baboulene conclusively proves in analyzing it, it's chock-full of layers, subtext and has a very strong dramatic structure as well. This is exactly the kind of analysis which students of writing need.

The book is available in hardcopy here:

or at a ridiulously low price for the Kindle version here:

So you basically can't go wrong, and have no reason not to check this book out. As for me, I'm eagerly awaiting the results of mr. Baboulene's PhD thesis. An understanding of story theory that moves beyond Aristotle, Propp and McKee... Sounds good to me!

Review: Scriptwriting - The Mechanics by Guy Meredith

2011-10-16T16:19:00.004+02:00

Guy Meredith has earned his screenwriting and script doctoring spurs both in the UK and abroad. Apart from writing everything under the dramatic sun (radio scripts, TV drama and comedy, features, documentaries, stage plaus), he's also been an educator, giving seminars at the BBC, several universities and all across Europe (he was attached to the late and lamented Pilots program). And he's been nominated for a slew of awards.

In Scriptwriting: The Mechanics, Meredith has committed his hard-earned writing wisdom to E-paper for all eternity. It's a relatively short book, coming in at just over 140 pages, at a relatively high price for an 'e-book only' release. But as there's no filler and quite a few topics are examined which show up only rarely in most other screenwriting one-stop manuals, you don't have to worry about getting a bad deal. On the contrary, for new writers especially the information provided in here will allow you to make giant steps forward in your understanding of the art and craft of good (and preferably great) screenwriting.

So, what does the book cover? Well, starting out with the age-old question 'what should I write about', it goes on to define the four story elements (world, characters, plot and tone of the story).
This is followed by an extensive section on character, where special attention is paid to image - self-image, the image presented to others, and the image the character projects unconciously. This is really excellent stuff, and one of the reasons that the work of great British TV screenwriters (Paul Abbott, Jimmy McGovern, Andrew Davies...) comes across as so rich and true to life in the depiction of the characters.
The chapter about inner contradictions in your characters is also pure gold, as is the material about motive and motivation. Essential concepts which are all too often ignored or handled badly, sometimes even by professional writers.

Structure is examined at length. Yes, it's the three-act structure again, but mr. Meredith puts a number of plot points in each act which are different from but comparable to those you'll find in Save The Cat!. It's another good variation on the theme, which will be of great help to new writers and offers an interesting alternative option to more experienced writers looking for some new wrinkles.

And you also get chapters voice-over and flashback, scene construction dialogue, misundertanding and deception, superior and inferior position (of the audience and the characters among each other), and - a first, I think - there's a whole chapter devoted to URST! And if you don't know what URST is - go and buy the e-book, already! It'll tell you everything you ever wanted to know but were afraid to ask.

So, in short, a first-rate British contribution to screenwriting literature, and especially worthwhile for new and intermediate screenwriters. And you can get it right here:

Point Blank (A Bout Portant): Life's Full of Consequence, That Ol' Devil Consequence...

2011-10-12T11:27:00.003+02:00

Point Blank has nothing to do with the Lee Marvin cult classic. It's an action-thriller (with the emphasis on the action) with a very strong premise: a male nurse's pregnant wife is kidnapped, and he has to free a mysterious wounded patient from hospital or his spouse and child will die. The nurse liberates the patient (a professional thief), committing several crimes in the process, and finds himself hunted by the police and by hitmen who desperately want to eliminate the thief. Together, both wanted men must find the evidence that will exonerate the thief from a murder charge (though he slaughters several people in the course of the movie) and reunite the nurse with his beloved.

So far, so good. The film starts off very well, has a fast pace, effective performances, and good editing - despite lots of hand-held camera-work, the action is hard-hitting and easy to follow.So why isn't this an all-time genre classic?

Ta-daa... it's all in the writing.

So what goes wrong? After all, the basic set-up is effective, and the first act (this is a French movie with a very clear traditional structure) expertly cuts between the criminal elements, the blissful domesticity of the hero and the traumatic results of the inciting incident (the kidnapping of the wife).

One big reason. But I'll have to SPOIL some elements of the film to illustrate my point. So - SPOILERS AHEAD!

Deep in the second act, our protagonists find the snitch who has set up the thief. A vigorous torture session later, the (grotesquely obese and nearly naked) snitch has spilled the beans and explained the plot. The thief wants to kill the snitch for revenge, and the nurse intervenes. 'You don't have to do this!' - you know the drill. The thief lets himself be convinced, turns away - only to turn back before leaving the room and firing several bullets into the snitch's head and gut. The nurse shakes his head in desperate disgust...... and that's it.

It's not referred to again, the relationship doesn't change, there's no confrontation about the thief's way of handling things or the morality of the act. An empty effect. Yes, it's true that the thief is a hardened and cruel criminal who is supposed to be hypercool, and the nurse is a carer and not a killer, so the actions of both men are true to their characters. But it's a moment which loses all emotional resonance when you realize the matter is dropped as soon as we hit the next scene.

What is the net result? Writer-director Fred Cavayé & writer Guillaume Lemans show that they're dragging their characters through the plot without it impacting them on a fundamental psychological level. By which I mean that in order to truly engage your audience with your main characters, you have to be aware of how events will impact them beyond their surface level. How their emotions are triggered, how these influence their behaviour... Probably the only time you can get away safely with ignoring this is if your character is a cool, dispassionate professional who remains calm and methodical under the most extreme circumstances.

On the other hand, if you are ignoring the emotional impact on your characters of the events that take place, you are basically sending a subliminal message that your story isn't grounded in psychological reality.

On to the next major script problem.

Our protagonists discover that the needed evidence and the pregnant wife are stashed within a police station (the villains are murderous corrupt cops on the take). They need to get into the police station but can't just walk in there. So they need a cunning plan. Cut to our thief visiting every ethnic crime lord in Paris, and getting their co-operation. All criminal organizations launch a crime wave which completely swamps the police. Hundreds of thefts, assaults, robberies, sackjackings and carjackings are pulled off simultaneously, and in the resulting chaos, our 'heroes' sneak into the police station where much mayhem ensues.

Excuse me? You cause havoc and rioting throughout a major city (or part of it), claiming hundreds of innocent victims, just so you can sneak into police headquarters to save your own butt? And our hero nurse just goes along with this outlandish and fairly ridiculous scheme, without even putting up token resistance??

What's happening here is that the writers come up with an original and inventive idea, that's never or rarely been seen before. But there's a reason why this is so.

It's highly unlikely that anything like this could ever work in reality, so there's a credibility gap you have to bridge. But there's also the question of the moral implications of the act, and the way in which it impacts the audience. In order for both 'heroes' to reach their goal, they unleash suffering on a mass of innocent people, who correspond with a part of the demographic of the target audience of the film. (it aims both at the general, middle class audience and at urban youths).

This means a part of your audience is no longer enjoying the ride, carefree, but suddenly realizes that they are considered as acceptable collateral damage by the protagonists and the filmmakers. Making it very hard to empathize with your protagonists, just before you enter the climactic sequence.

It is, once again, a lack of paying attention to consequence. This time, not to the way the events in the movie should impact and shape the evolution of the characters, but to the way plot events impact the emotions of a part of the audience.

Of course, wild, unpredictable, somewhat controversial or shocking plot developments are often beneficial to a movie. They keep things fresh (a rare commodity these days) and open up new possibilities for storytelling in general. But if you alienate part of your core audience in a resolutely commercial movie, (note I do mean alienate, not challenge) you are behaving irresponsibly as a storyteller. And you flirt with disaster, as chances are that your film will take a major beating at the box office.

So - be aware that actions have consequences. Realize what these consequences are, and implement them in the script in order to increase its verisimilitude. And realize what the emotional consequences arefor your intended audience, and that these consequences are what you intend to achieve. Otherwise, you risk losing your audience forever. As a consequence.

Swooni: Q&A with screenwriter Michel Sabbe

2011-09-29T12:40:00.003+02:00

The Flemish movie Swooni, directed by Kate Beels and written by Michel Sabbe (and, in earlier drafts, novelist Annelies Verbeke), is doing the rounds of the festival ciruit right now and garnering quite a lot of praise. A multiplot movie telling the stories of six people (three couples) whose fates intersect on a sweltering summer's day in a luxurious hotel in Brussels, Swooni boasts a very smartly constructed screenplay which manages to combine a lot of very disparate story strands and themes into a satisfying, emotionally affecting and accesible whole. I sat down with screenwriter Michel Sabbe to ask him about the writing of the film, and he gave one of the most detailed and insightful interviews on the writing of a particular movie I've ever been privileged to read. Hope you enjoy it too - there's a lot of great material here. SPOILERS AHEAD - but in any discussion of a screenplay, that can't be avoided.

How did 'Swooni' come to be, and at what time did you get involved with the project?

‘Swooni’ came to be at the initiative of its producer, Peter Bouckaert. He had read ‘Slaap’, Annelies Verbeke’s debut novel and at about the same time (this must have been around 2004-5) Kaat Beels had directed ‘Cologne’, a short that did very well on the festival circuit. Peter thought Annelies and Kaat shared a certain sensibility and he believed that if he put the two together, something surprising might happen. They ultimately came up with the six characters which form the backbone of the film. I became involved in late 2008, after Annelies had left the project to pursue writing her next novel. Kaat and I had worked together on a tv-series called ‘Jes’ and we clicked so she asked me to have a look at the screenplay. And the rest, as they say, is history.

What changes did you propose to the script? What were the main problems which you had to solve?

Annelies had already written a number of drafts and I could immediately see that she and Kaat had created some very rich characters. Characters good actors could really sink their teeth in. They all had clear dramatic goals which grabbed your interest as a reader: two refugees, a father and a son, separated on their perilous journey to Belgium, now searching for each other; a woman, desperate for a child of her own; her mother, desperate to reconnect with her daughter; and a middle-aged woman trying to decide whether or not to leave her loving husband.

Any multiplot-movie faces the same kind of problems:
1) how to keep all the balls in the air simultaneously. The trick is to make sure all of the stories have equal weight. One should not dominate the others, otherwise you’ll end up with an unbalanced piece and the loyalties of the audience will not be equally divided between the stories (which will translate to people telling you they liked one story far more than the others).
2) how to interlock the storylines without it seeming arbitrary and built on that dreaded word: ‘coincidence’. Or rather: coincidences that would seem all too convenient.
3) thematic unity. If you present several stories together, the whole must be greater than the sum of its parts. Through contrast or similarity or simply by interlocking, the stories must present you with a theme. And that theme must be clear, it can’t just be intuitive.

Upon reading two of the existing drafts, I made a couple of recommendations. First, to set all of the action in the hotel (which was already a location in some of the later scenes in the script). If we gave all the characters a reason to be in the hotel at the beginning of the movie, then they could run into each other without anyone questioning it. Because running into people you don’t know is exactly what happens in a hotel. From that I also suggested the action take no longer than 24 hours. I reasoned that keeping all of these very different people together in this one spot for longer than that would be stretching credulity. Also, telescoping the action like this would put the characters in a pressure cooker – which is always interesting. These seem like simple suggestions, but they would have great consequences (the occupation of some of the characters would have to be changed and it also meant that some of the story material could no longer be told and would have to move to the backstory). I also felt that one of the stories – Anna and Hendrik’s marital problems – lacked some urgency compared to the others. This was later solved by having Anna’s lover present her with an ultimatum.

I have to stress that Annelies had done a stellar job of getting the screenplay to where it was when I became involved. It’s a rare gift to be able to work with material this rich. I feel very privileged Annelies, Kaat and Peter allowed me to fool around with it. (And Annelies hasn’t run me over yet )

Who came up with the title Swooni, and why? (I used to think it was the name of the African boy when the film was first announced)

I don’t know whether Annelies or Kaat came up with the title, but as far as I know, the piece was always called ‘Swooni’. It means ‘land of milk and honey’ in one of the Bantu languages, which is exactly what Joyeux and Amadou hope to find in Western Europe. In the film of course, the title comes from Joyeux’ misreading of the name of the hotel on the postcard his father shows him.

What method did you use to structure the screenplay, as it's a multi-plot film focusing on adventures of six characters?

Let’s issue a SPOILER ALERT for those who haven’t seen the film yet (shame on you!), because talking structure will inevitably lead to giving away some of the plot.

Structuring a multi-plot is a major pain, because you have to do the work x times (x being the number of stories you have) and then you still have to provide a sort of super-structure to fit them in. You don’t have to be crazy to attempt this, but it certainly helps! There’s three main stories in ‘Swooni’ (we’re not counting subplots), so that means having to break down all three of them into acts and sequences. As to the super-structure: I always knew Amadou’s arrival in the hotel would bring things to the boil and give me a third act. Having set the whole thing in the hotel also meant that I wouldn’t be able to show the second act of the father-son story. In Annelies’ version there were sequences showing Amadou’s escape from a detention centre and Joyeux roaming the streets of Brussels looking for his father. I would still love to see that movie some day, but we simply didn’t have the space for it here. (The first act of the father-son story is told in flash backs, of which more later). So that left me with two stories to structure. The first sequence of these was easy: everybody needs to arrive at the hotel. (Well, I say ‘easy’ – you try introducing a dozen or so distinct characters in the space of 10 minutes! This was probably the sequence that got rewritten the most…)

Then it struck me that the starting points of the two stories were in opposition to each other. Whereas Hendrik and Anna enter the hotel ‘together’, Violette and Vicky haven’t seen each other for 10 years and couldn’t be further apart. It just felt very natural for the two stories to progress ‘in opposition’ as well. So, in the first half of the second act, while Vicky and Violette slowly come closer together (with Joyeux acting as a catalyst), Hendrik and Anna drift further and further apart. Once you reach the middle of the movie, Vicky, Violette and Joyeux have formed a sort of surrogate (albeit doomed) family unit playing puzzles together. Meanwhile, Anna has abandoned Hendrik at the wedding reception to go knock on the door of room 105 (I refrained from calling it room 101, but only just…) In the second half of act 2, you have the opposite movement. By the second act climax, the precarious bond between Vicky and her mother has been broken while Hendrik and Anna find themselves spooning each other on the bed. Both are of course what you would call ‘false endings’. In the case of Anna and Hendrik you get a ‘false dawn’, suggesting all’s well that ends well. While it seems like an ‘apparent death’ for the relationship between Violette and her daughter Vicky. Those false endings get turned on their head again in the third act, using the resolution of the Amadou-Joyeux story as a catalyst. Is that technical enough for you, Wout?

When structuring a multi-plot, the notion of a ‘controlling idea’ becomes – to my mind at least – even more important. This of course goes to the question of ‘theme’. ‘Swooni’ was structured around the notion of the ‘pyramid of needs’. At the bottom of said pyramid you will find the people whose basic needs – food, water, shelter – have not been met. These would include Joyeux and Amadou. Above them, you’ll find the people who are lacking in affection and human warmth. You could put Vicky and Violette into this bracket. You could say they are lonely people. At the very top of the pyramid, you’ll find people whose every need has been met, but who still struggle with something which we could summarize as: ‘is that all there is?’-syndrome. That’s where we’d put Anna and Hendrik. They ‘enjoy’ the luxury of an existential crisis. By putting all three levels together and by showing that - to the characters at least – the problems on each level feel every bit as acute or urgent, hopefully some interesting questions will be raised in the mind of the audience.

How closely did you work with director Kaat Beels, both during the writing process and once shooting had started?

Kaat and I had worked closely before on ‘Jes’, so we had already established a relationship of mutual trust before embarking on this venture. So it was a pretty easygoing relationship. Whenever I turned in a draft, we got together, usually with Peter, and discussed what was working and what was not. I can’t really recall any major disagreements along the way. It was clear we were all heading in the same direction and it was just a case of getting the script to where it had to be.

Kaat is pretty open as a director. She knows what she wants, but she’ll always invite people’s opinions. So I found myself consulted and kept abreast pretty much throughout the process (which is a surefire way to stroke a writer’s ego!). I visited the set a couple of times and saw some of the rushes – even from a couple of shots I could tell that Kaat and her D.O.P. (Frank van den Eeden) had managed to put a lot of emotion in their images. I was present at the test-screenings and I got invited into the editing room, which is still an all too rare privilege for writers. (And it shouldn’t be, as editing is the final stage of the writing process and one that I personally am fascinated with).

What (major) differences are there between the shooting script and the final released movie? Why were these changes made?

Other than the usual trimming of scenes, there’s only a couple of minor changes and one big one. Some changes had practical reasons. For instance, Vicky pretending to herself that she’s pregnant and then pulling a cushion from under her frock just proved impossibly cumbersome. So a different approach was sought to key us in to her ‘want’.
The scene in which Vicky calls to inquire whether uncle Joseph works at the hotel or not was moved forward – it now happens before she puts Joyeux to bed. This had the crucial effect of making her look less calculated. Because of that, the effect of a later scene in which she tells Joyeux a truly horrible lie is much bigger – and the audience doesn’t feel alienated from her.
One scene in which Hendrik tried to seduce Anna donning a traditional Greek outfit was cut – it just slowed things down and wasn’t needed. Then we come to the major change, which we’ll deal with below.

I found the scene in the script with the tramp to be quite risky, starting out as a cliché and then being succesfully turned on its head a few scenes later. Who thought of this idea? Was it always the intention to play with the audiences' expectations here, or did this approach grow gradually?

For those who have seen the film but haven’t read the screenplay, this will be an odd question as there is no ‘tramp’-scene in the movie. It stayed in until quite late in the game, but ultimately it was cut. So let me describe what happens in the scene. We’re at the wedding and the film has gone deeper and deeper into a dreamlike state as the afternoon and the night progress. Anna smoked some dope earlier and now notices a tramp, scrounging food off the tables. She sits down next to the man and, needing someone to talk to, she makes what amounts to a full confession to this stranger. He looks a little non-plussed and tells her to go back to the party and to enjoy herself. She feels this is wise advise and gives him 50 euros. Later, the tramp drinks form someone’s glass and a scuffle ensues. The bride intervenes and reveals the tramp to be an actor whose presence is meant to make the guests reflect upon their good fortune. Anna realizes she has just made her confession to a fraud and flees the party followed by Hendrik.

The origins of the scene are quite simple: I once attended a wedding where something very similar transpired. So I used it. The scene was rewritten a couple of times, mainly trying to find the correct way of introducing the tramp, and it was shot and edited into the movie. At the test screenings, the scene worked just fine. Anna’s punchline – complaining that she’d given the guy 50 euros – got a big laugh. Even the fact that we were introducing a new character this late in the game (near the end of act 2) didn’t seem to be a problem. But we could feel the film dragged a little when really it should have been accelerating towards its second act climax. The problem turned out to be the confession scene. It was perfectly acted, perfectly fine as a scene. But it was also superfluous. Everything in it had already been told by the scene on the dancefloor between Hendrik and Anna, a scene without any dialogue. It was possible to ‘read over’ that scene in the script, but it certainly isn’t possible to deny its impact when you see it come alive with the actors (stellar performances by Sara Deroo and Geert van Rampelberg) and the music (Melody Gardot crooning ‘Our love is Easy’). So we had to kill this particular ‘darling’ (both Kaat and I were fans of the scene). Cutting the tramp-scene out meant the other scenes in the final sequence of act 2 needed some rearranging. I feel we should credit editor Philippe Ravoet for finding the solution which so effortlessly brings us from the wedding to the heartbreaking bedroom scene between Hendrik and Anna. (You see? Editing = rewriting).

What was/were the biggest lesson(s) you learned as a screenwriter on this project?

Patience? And that the check will have run out long before the movie ever hits the screen?  On a more serious note: I’ve learned that the movie on the screen will always be different from the movie you see in your head while you’re writing and that that’s a good thing. You WANT the director to put his or her interpretation on the piece. It’s part of what breathes life into what are in effect only words on a page. (Of course, you also want it to be the RIGHT interpretation )

Did you put this screenplay through any European development programmes? If so, what was your experience?

As you know, I’m a big fan of development programmes (full disclosure: Wout and I met a decade ago on the now sadly defunct North by North West workshop). ‘Swooni’ didn’t go through the traditional screenplay development workshops such as the Mediterranean Film Institute (to which I am devoted), but it did go through the EAVE-workshop. EAVE is a workshop geared towards producers, but it does have a story-development segment. Which means producer Peter Bouckaert and myself had a couple of meetings with script-doctor Martin Daniel. Even though these were short meetings (an hour and a half or so each), they were very useful. For instance: in my first draft, all the refugee scenes in the container were front loaded. They opened the movie. That wrongfooted the reader into thinking this was going to be a movie about two refugees. It was Martin’s idea to use them as flashbacks throughout the movie which works very well (and it also serves to keep the Amadou-character alive in the mind of the audience during the second act). Perhaps controversially for a writer, attending a producer’s workshop meant I also gained some sympathy for the plight of the producer!

Review: Blue Book #7: Creating strong Protagonists by Willial C. Martell (Kindle)

2011-09-29T12:31:00.000+02:00

The second in the long line of Bill Martell's legendary blue books to be transposed to the e-book medium, Creating Strong Protagonists tells you everything you need to know about - well, creating strong protagonists. Luckily, you won't find anything as sheepish as that previous sentence in the book. On the contrary, Martell digs deep into how to make your protagonist come alive, be (and remain) active and, very importantly, be unique. And Martell's central message is that how deeper you look into yourself, your own traits, strengths, weaknesses and fears, the more real and convincing your characters will be. You really need to be able to take a long, hard look at yourself in order to create characters which resonate and transcend the archetype or the cliché, and whose behaviour, no matter how off-the-wall at times, will strike an audience as real. Martell provides many examples, techniques and insights to help writers (both beginners and veterans, because just about every screenwriter on the planet can benefit from this material) achieve these goals. And there is also a good helping of assignments to get you to practice these concepts and use them in your writing. There's also a lot of great advice on keeping the protagonist active throughout the story. And for those of us who find this occasionally difficult to accomplish, the in-depth investigation of the main reasons for protagonist passivity will prove to be very helpful and inspiring. Some readers might take umbrage (love that word) with Bill Martell's strong insistence on there only being one protagonist in a movie, and come up with examples where this is not the case. Not to worry - in the supplemental material, you will find a lot of tips about writing about group protagonists. There are far fewer typos in this Blue Book than in its predecessor, and only one instance of material being repeated verbatim. Extremely small niggles which do not distract from the value of the book in the slightest. All I can say is - get this book NOW and let's hope the other Blue Books get converted to e-book format as quickly as humanly possible! You can get it here:

Good High Concept vs. Bad High Concept

2011-08-29T20:56:00.004+02:00

In his e-book Your Idea Machine, Bill Martell talks at length about high concept, and what makes for succesful high concept screenplays (as well as what doesn't). And with the current glut of box office disasters, it's obviously way past time that Hollywood starts to take notice and learn the difference.

A high concept idea for a movie is one where the story is the star. Just mentioning it immediately conjures up a strong image of what the movie is about, and what you can expect to see. But some high concept ideas cannot fulfill their promise. Case in point: Cowboys and Aliens.

What images does this title conjure up? I would venture either a few heroic cowboys plugging a Giger-type aliens full of holes with their six-shooters, or the same bunch of heroic cowboys in a shootout with technologically highly advanced aliens who wield rayguns.

The promise of this concept appeals to the 10-year old boy in the (largely male) demographic the movie wants to appeal to. You can create a mash-up between your favorite toys! Monsters and sheriffs and shotguns, oh my. But... what about the story?

Cowboys and Indians are largely matched in strength (in typical western movies, anyway). Cowboys and aliens - not so much. The aliens are either superhuman monsters, or technologically so advanced their science looks like magic to the Wild West gunslingers. So how do you solve the inequality between the protagonists (cowboys) and antagonists (aliens) in this conflict?

By cheating.

The hero of the piece is a man suffering from amnesia, who wears a hi-tech bracelet around his wrist. Which proves to be mighty handy when the aliens appear at the end of act 1 to attack the town.

You're already betraying your high concept idea from the start. This isn't Cowboys and Aliens, this is Supercowboy vs. Aliens. And that's not what the title promises.

But as the story progresses, more time is spent in act two on typical western obstacles (outlaws, Apaches...) than on fights with aliens. There's also the mystery woman with a Big Secret (which turns it into even less of a straight cowboys vs. aliens-affair). And the big finale goes on forever without ever being really thrilling.

One of the complaints against the movie is that it's not fun enough, it takes its ludicrous concept too seriously without providing any depth or theme. But would this concept work better if it were just 'fun'?

There's a movie out there that tried to provide exactly that: the Japanese low-budget fightfest Ninja vs. Aliens. A clan of ninjas encounter an alien in a forest, fight (and kill) it several times, it takes over a village and sends zombie-like slaves against them, and after 90 minutes of deliberate nonsense, bad comedy, weak gross-out effects and occasional good martial artistry, the alien is finally defeated. This movie does give you exactly what it promises -

And it ends up being boring as hell anyway. Because the basic concept is just too limited to sustain 90 minutes of story. Granted, the ultra-low budget and shoddy filmmaking doesn't help. But it's also pretty hard to imagine a story set in Tokugawa Japan featuring Ninja clans, shogunate politics, and an alien invasion which also has to function as a wild martial arts ride, and have it make sense and some sort of emotional impact.

Ultimately, a concept like Cowboys and Aliens turns out to be deceptive. Take the concept at face value, and you're left with a mix which doesn't make dramatic sense. Treat it seriously, and you lose the (imagined) thrills associated with the concept. Go for the thrills alone, and you run a huge risk of repetition and a story so shallow it doesn't engage the audience.

To sum up: Good high concept provides you with a visceral image to excite the imagination of the audience, but has enough dimensions to allow for emotional, thematic and narrative depth. And the crucial element, I think, is character. Die Hard's high concept (a lone cop battles a gang of international terrorists in a hi-tech building in order to save his estranged wife who has been taken hostage) puts the emphasis on the type of central character and the emotional bedrock which will anchor the action and suspense.

Bad high concept provides you with an exciting image, and nothing else. Cowboys and Aliens doesn't give you any clue about the characters involved (beyond the visual archetypes), the stakes of the conflict, or its context. And that's why it is so hard to come up with a story for it which works and will deliver an emotionally satisfying filmgoing experience.

(by the way, the movie is based on the Orci/Kurtzman/Lindelof script. The earlier version by Donelly and Oppenheimer is very different with totally different characters, tries to incorporate more western tropes into the narrative and increase the 'fun' factor, but still doesn't manage to overcome the limitations of the concept.)

Review: Your Idea Machine by William C. Martell (Screenwriting Blue Book e-book for Kindle or Nook)

2011-08-26T19:25:00.002+02:00

Bill Martell's Secrets of Action Screenwriting (second edition is imminent. Yay!!) is one of the great practical screenwriting books of all time. But apart from this, his script tips, blog posts, articles for Script Magazine and his CD classes, Bill also has his series of 'Blue Books'. Too much material for an article, not enough for a full book release, they are perfectly suited to e-readers.

And luckily, Bill has now got round to converting the Blue Books to e-book status. Updating and expanding them in the process, and adding some bonus material, so that- hey presto - they are 'real' books after all. He's even going to finish the complete series - on his website a few of the books still have 'coming soon'-status.

Ypur Idea Machine is exactly that. Page after page is filled with techniques for generating ideas, both the Big Ones which can anchor a complete script, and the myriad small ones needed to spruce up the script. The book starts out with a list of places to look for ideas, and goes on to cover high concept in depth, conflict, techniques to use in order to make the ideas you come up with work even better. And each chapter has assignments to get you working out those idea muscles - for the more you train them, the stronger they get and the more ideas you generate. This is all inspiring, exciting material which you can return to time and again when you're stuck for inspiration.

The bonus materials include articles on High Concept and budget, the Martell method for coming up with stories, which ensures that even your most testosterone-fuelled action-fest will be rooted in the psychological realm, and the ever-present fear that someone is going to steal your idea.

Now, is the book perfect? Well, I have one caveat and two minor niggles to mention. The caveat: the book is resolutely skewed towards the commercial end of film-making. So if you're an avowed Indie-writer only interested in very small and personal stories, you can definitely use and benefit from the techniques presented here, but you may not agree with the mindset of the author.
The niggles: there are quite a lot of typos, and a few garbled sentences. Nothing major, but noticeable. And there's a bit too much verbatim repetition in the chapter on conflict.

But neither of these detract from the sheer quality of the information Bill Martell shares with the world. Every screenwriter (and let's face it, most writers of fiction in general) will benefit from reading and using this book. Getting it really is a no-brainer.

And you can purchase the book right here:

Review: The Serious Guide to Joke Writing: How To Say Something Funny About Anything by Sally Holloway (Book Shaker, 2010)

2011-08-21T20:31:00.004+02:00

This is an incredibly generous book. Sally Holloway is a British stand-up comedienne who had to retire for health reasons and has focused on joke writing and teaching it ever since.

And in The Serious Guide to Joke Writing, she basically gives us her entire joke-writing course. All that is missing is a talented, charismatic teacher and a bunch of largely like-minded fellow students in the room with you.

The book outlines her course, which features a different technique for joke writing every week, starting from the simplest forms of puns and wordplay, all the way to subjecting the topic of your jokes to the Surreal Inquisition. Each of these practical chapters, complete with exercises, is interspersed with more introspective headings which delve into the mindset you need to succeed as a joke writer.

Ms. Holloway has a very enjoyable and clear writing style which makes the book a breeze and a delight to read. The classroom chapters are written as if they were the summary of an actual evening of teaching, which makes them come really alive.

Just when you think that all these 'jokestorming' techniques are well and good, but there's also the matter of how to get your jokes on paper in the best possible wording, and you'd like some information on that as well, up pops a chapter full of 'rules' (which, Ms. Holloway immediately points out, are often completely contradictory) on just this topic. The book finishes off with a case study where the author had to come up with a number of jokes on a very uninspiring topic, at a time she'd had to take care of her mother.

The Serious Guide to Joke Writing is an inspiring, insightful,entertaining and amusing book, and it's hard to see how it could ever be bettered. Anyone interested in being a joke writer or a stand-up comedian should definitely get it and use it. Sitcom writers may also benefit from the techniques though, as Ms. Holloway points out, in sitcom the laughs need to come from the characters, and this runs counter to many of the more cerebral joke writing techniques.

You can get the book here. Trust me, you'll be very glad you did (and so will Sally Holloway).

The Serious Guide to Writing Jokes

Review: Memo From The Story Dept. (Christopher Vogler and David Mckenna, MWP, 2011)

2011-08-16T11:01:00.002+02:00

This is one writing manual which is guaranteed to attract a lot of attention, as it's the follow-up to Chris Vogler's seminal The Writer's Journey. But Mr. Vogler's not alone: He brought his friend David Mckenna (stage director, script reader, acting coach and educator, among others) along for the ride.

Unlike Journey, this book doesn't focus on one theoretical construct but is more of a grab bag of techniques, theories and experiences which Vogler and McKenna have found of great value over the years. They explicitly state the book is a toolbox, and it will only reveal its full value if these tools are actually applied to writing.

There is some revisiting of the Hero's Journey, but not too much and one of the things people sometimes struggled with is addressed explicitly, namely how to apply the Hero Myth to mainly psychological storylines. Vogler and McKenna also make it clear that the Hero's Journey is a structural model that works for many stories but isn't the only option and may in fact not be the ideal choice in some cases. This type of information is very important for beginning screenwriters to have, because they might otherwise feel 'obliged' to shoehorn every type of story material into one structural model. (And the original Memo that updated and streamlined Joseph Campbell's work for screenwriting purposes is also included.)

So what else is in here? Chris Vogler goes beyond Campbell to include the work of Vladimir Propp, the Russian structuralist who focused on the morphology of fairy tales. This is interesting stuff which could have been expanded upon, as a sort of alternative to the Hero's Journey.

Vogler also delves into the roots of Greek comic plays by presenting Theophrastus' The Characters, sketches of archetypes dating back to Ancient Greece which have been used in comedy ever since. In keeping with the theatrical/comedy theme, he also includes a chapter on vaudeville, of all things. But he manages to draw a clear connection between the lost art of putting together a succesful vaudeville bill (deciding which performers go on when, how to alternate the intensity and the emotional curve of the evening's entertainment) and creating the emotional roller coaster of a succesful screenplay.

David Mckenna's contributions stress the importance of knowing what your characters want and need, and environmental facts (date, location, social environment, religious environment, political environment, and economic environment) which he recommends analyzing in depth. Now, this the work a director does to interpret a script, and personally I find these exercises running counter to the writing process. Your mileage my vary, however, and it's certainly possible to apply these techniques to a finished first draft in order to get a clearer view of the themes and connections you've put into the material. Or, to discover that you can actually strengthen the internal unity of your script by reinforcing themes on all of these levels.

The book is well-written, clear and a comfortable read. Each chapter is followed by a response from the other co-author, which establishes a conversational style. However, very little of importance is said in these responses, so frankly I could have done without them.

This book isn't the gamechanger Writer's Journey was, but then it isn't supposed to be. It's very good supplemental material, tackling some important points which weren't touched on in the original book. To be fair, many of these topics have already been treated in other screenwriting manuals, so this book will be most valuable to beginning students of screenwriting. However, the chapters on Propp and Theophrastus are new and worthwhile additions to screenwriting lore.

District 9

2010-05-13T22:52:00.003+02:00

Hey, we're back from the blogging graveyard! Miracles do happen...

What brought about this resurrection? The South-African science fiction film District 9 (not to be confused with Nine or District 13, respectively a modern Fellini-based musical and Luc Besson-produced urban tripe with a few redeeming action scenes).
District 9 succeeds at a lot of things: it has great special effects, a very well-realized alien race (no Star Trek wrinkled forehead aliens here), a clear message, visceral action scenes and more than a dollop of gore, and very good acting from the lead, Sharlto Copey.

Yet is it a classic? I don't think so, though it could have been.

SPOILERS AHEAD... You have been warned.

One of the reasons that District 9 isn't as powerful as it should be is because of the narrative choice made in the beginning of the film.

District 9 shows us what would happen if a mothership full of stranded aliens would appear above Johannesburg. The aliens, nicknamed Prawns for their appearance, are locked in camps and basically stripped of all rights. To introduce us to the complex situation, the film starts off as if it were a documentary. It shows the arrival of the ship, the discovery of the aliens, features several experts who comment on various aspects of the situation (economic, social, judicial, biological...). Slowly, a theme emerges: a certain Wikus van der Merwe, who we have seen as an ineffectual bureaucrat, is apparently missing and considered a traitor to the human race by many.

We then follow Wikus on the ill-fated operation in which the Prawns were served notice that they would be removed to another camp, far from Johannesburg, the following day. All of this is still documentary-style, with Wikus constantly explaining to the camera crew that follows him everything that goes on and is discovered during the operation.

On the one hand, choosing a documentary framework for this story aids in delivering the exposition. A lot of information is not dramatized but explained to the audience directly. But because the film copies the style of a television documentary, this doesn't throw us out of the movie. We know the genre, know how information is conveyed and accept it. So a complex situation is spelled out fairly swiftly, aided by strong visuals, and the need for people to explain a situation they're all aware of to each other is removed.

On the other hand, it makes it fairly hard to become emotionally involved with the story. For quite a while, we're left wondering what the film is going to be about, and we don't connect to van der Merwe until well into the second act.

Things go wrong for van der Merwe when he is exposed accidentally to an alien liquid, which starts a physical transformation in him. The liquid was actually intended to be used as fuel by an alien scientist (we suppose), named Christopher Johnson by the humans, in order to start the mothership up again. When van der Merwe starts changing, he becomes a guinea pig for his company, MNU, which also manufactures weapons and wants to discover a way to have the Prawn weapons function for humans as well. Wikus is the perfect test subject, but is treated horribly and he escapes, finally finding refuge with Christopher Johnson and collaborating with him to get the alien liquid back in exchange for a promise to cure him of the transformation.

It's only from the moment where van der Merwe starts to change, that we're in a 'normal' film story. There's a clear protagonist, he has a goal and is faced with a lot of opposition. And to be fair, we do care about the protagonist once he begins to suffer mightily. This is also the point in the film where the documentary angle all but disappears.

It does return, however, at the very end, when van der Merwe's final fate is once again related documentary-style.

There are two problems with this, from the writing point of view:

1) as stated above, the beginning of the film doesn't draw the audience in emotionally

2) the shift in point-of-view doesn't strengthen the narrative. Even during the documentary section, we cut away a few times to the aliens gathering the liquid/fuel for their escape attempt. And these scenes are 'normal', not part of the documentary. Similarly, we follow van der Merwe together with the documentary crew, until the consequences of his accident start to play up. Then, we're following him as the protagonist of the movie, yet at the very end, all of a sudden, the documentary is 'back'. So, is what we've seen part of the documentary or not? It's a radical shift in storytelling POV (from a very detached third person overview to a very intense first person experience) which doesn't really help the movie that much. Choosing to stick with the documentary angle would have probably made the film too 'intellectual' - by which I mean, appealing only to the intelligence of the audience, not (or insufficiently) to their emotions.
Choosing to tell it as a 'straight' story, without framework, however, would have made that emotional connection from the start. Yes, the exposition challenge would have been huge (though to be honest, we learn very little about the aliens and their society during the film), but the emotional pay-off would have made it all worthwhile.

If anything, this shows how important POV is in screenwriting, and flipping from one narrative POV to another without a very compelling reason to do so is detrimental to the whole.

Another problem with the film is that Wikus has two 'idiot plot' moments which stand out as a sore thumb. First, when he's told by the alien that his cure will take three years, he reacts as we all would (ahem): he knocks him out and steals his shuttle to the mothership. What he hopes to accomplish there, or how he intends to cure himself of his condition is unclear. But it's a moment which is necessary for the escape attempt to go haywire and the bad guys to find the good guys.
A second moment comes a little later when Wikus has acquired a mech suit full of weapons. Does he attack the mercenaries who threaten him? No, he begs for his life and runs away (even though he's got more firepower on board than an aircraft carrier). Only to turn back a minute later when he hears the villainous mercs are going to kill Christopher. One might argue that van der Merwe is an ordinary man with no combat experience, and that his behaviour is therefore logical and well-founded. True, but one minute later he does a complete about-turn and valiantly slaughters dozens of bad guys in creative ways, and holds them off in order to let Christopher fulfill his mission, even though this act will doom him. There's just not enough time to make this change seem credible, though the vigorous action keeps the audience entertained enough not to ponder the point too much.

Add to this some major plot holes (such as, why do the aliens seem to be superhumanly powerful one moment and total wimps the next, or why don't they rebel against humanity when there are illegal stockpiles of alien weaponry all over the district), and the end result is a film with many qualities, but which is dragged down just a bit too much by its screenwriting flaws.

The Trouble With Harry - some thoughts on adaptation after watching Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

2010-02-27T10:36:00.002+01:00

Adapting something like the Harry Potter novels is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it's a high-profile job and box office is guaranteed. On the other hand, the huge and rabid fan following of the books makes it all but impossible to truly adapt the source material to the movie format. Instead, you're forced to translate the story as literally as possible. And with the Harry Potter books, that translation isn't easy at all.

J.K. Rowling uses a fairly rigid formula in most of the series (the exceptions being books 5 and 7). The events take place over one school year, which is a very long time frame for a movie. Moreover, this also means that plotwise, the action is often quite sparse, as whatever problem confronts Harry and his pals can only be laid to rest after several months. In a novel, skillfully told, that doesn't have to be a problem. But in a film, the lack of definite forward momentum presents a real obstacle to good storytelling, especially in adventure-type genres.

So when it comes to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the weakest novel in the series by far (though more on this later), the limitations of this type of approach take centre stage. I'm assuming you've seen the film or read the book, so I'll spoil 'episode VI'. I'll try to avoid spoilage of book 7 though be warned that it might not be completely possible.

There are only three important events in the narrative: Snape is revealed to be a traitor in league with the Dark Lord, Harry and Dumbledore discover the secret of Voldemort's Power, and Snape kills Dumbledore as the latter is attacked by the Death Eaters. The rest of the book and film are filled with incidents, some of which are amusing, some of which amount to very little. Romance rears its ugly head, and just as with Lord of the Rings, the author's choices about who pairs off with whom are debatable at best. Moreover, the treatment of love is especially child-like and immature in both episodes VI and VII, especially if you keep in mind we're dealing with 16 to 17 year-olds now. And when translated to the screen, these uninvolving romances fall even flatter than they did in the novel. Bizarrely, one scene (not in the book) in the opening sequence of the film shows Harry being hit on by a lovely waitress, and showing every intention of taking up her not-so-subtle invitation. To have him revert to the romantic awareness level of an 8-year old is even less plausible because of that scene.

Now, as I mentioned, there are only three important events in the story, and one of these, Snape's treachery, is revealed straightway. The second and third major events both take place in act III. So here you are faced with two acts in which the storyline barely moves forward. Worse - for a very long time, the audience doesn't even know what the dramatic goals of the story are. We know the Death Eaters are planning to assassinate Dumbledore, but that plotline is kept very much in the background until the end. Harry, Hermione and Ron aren't allowed to discover anything except for 'there are mysterious going-ons going on'. Only neart the end of act two/beginning of act III is Harry given a clear mission by Dumbledore, which leads to the discovery of Voldemort's secret (he's split his soul into seven pieces and is immortal unless all of these shards are destroyed).

The problem here is that there's no reason (logically or dramatically) why Harry didn't get that mission in act 1. It would have made no difference for him - but the film would have been barely 40 minutes long. So the need to stay true to the original plotting of the narrative results in a fundamentally, even fatally flawed film.

This is made even more obvious by some scenes which end too soon, others which go on for too long and still others which seem to be pointless. Much of this is a question of choices made in the editing suite, not in the script per se - but it's obvious the weakness of the central narrative line affected the entire production.

The film version does solve one of the biggest flaws of the book, though. In the nove, Dumbledore tells Harry early on that he's not going to keep secrets from him anymore, from now on he'll be treated like an adult and told everything that's going on. Well and good, but Dumbledore straightaway keeps secrets from Harry all through the novel and this leads directly to his death. Dumbledore becomes as stupid as the Jedi in the Star Wars-prequel trilogy. In the film, this early scene is simply cut, so Dumbledore doesn't lose the respect of the audience. In fact, it's suggested that he's got a master plan which we and Harry aren't completely privy to.

And to be fair, the weaknesses in the novel (the aformentioned Dumbledorian stupidity, Snape's reveal which turns the character into a cliché) are all set-ups for book VII. In fact, book VII places the events of book VI in a completely different light, and 'fixes' everything. However, this invalidates book VI even more as an independent entity, of course.

At least the adaptation of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows won't be facing the same problem. The big challenge will be to find room for all the major events, even taking into account that the book will be turned into two movies. I'm really wondering how they're going to put the 150+-page climax on the screen...

Review: Save The Cat Strikes Back!

2010-02-26T10:44:00.002+01:00

Yes, we're back from the blogging graveyard!

And with a review of the final volume in the Save The Cat-trilogy no less.

When Blake Snyder died suddenly late last year, his death sent a shockwave through the international screenwriting community. Blake was well on his way to giving Robert McKee a run for his money as the most influential (and busy) screenwriting guru in the world.

Save The Cat! has become the go-to screenwriting paradigm for an impressive number of writers. Book 1 introduced the model, book 2 was Blake's type on genres (though it's really about story patterns, genres is a misnomer in this case).

Book three is less focused on one topic than its predecessors, but that's not a bad thing in this case. The book really consists of two parts. In the first half, the theoretical model is expanded, and Blake adds a lot of insights he'd gathered during the last few years, teaching all over the world. The second half is practical advice on getting and maintaining a career in screenwriting.

The first half of the book contains the most universally applicable material. There's some great stuff about what makes for a really good logline, the structural model is expanded, especially in acts 1 and 3, and there's a lot of advice on straightening the spine of your story. This is all good stuff, and useful, even though I disagree with Blake's structural analysis of a couple of important movies (Die Hard and Alien.

The second half of the book is obviously intended for people breaking into and/or getting through the door in Hollywood. What's interesting about these chapters is that they're very up-to-date at the moment, showing how the business is involving. Blake emphasizes playing nice and being a helpful member of the team, which is good advice but on the other hand it does very much accept the situation as it is, and this type of approach will of course not lead in any way to improving the system.

The final chapter is about Blake's own story, and I liked this one very much. I'll admit to finding his relentlessly optimistic tone occasionally wearying and grating, but after reading how he came to adopt this attitude after a life-changing event, I find myself admiring the man for breaking out of a downward spiral of negativity.

But most of all I admire Blake Snyder for being a writer and teacher who was constantly learning, and who thrived on the exchanging of ideas and opinions. There are other gurus who finalize their concept or text, and repeat it verbatim, year in year out, brooking neither discussion nor dissention. Blake, on the other hand, kept evolving and improving his material. And it's a great pity we will never have the opportunity to learn what discoveries he might have made in the decades to come.

In case you were still wondering, I highly recommend the book, and the easiest way you can get it is here:

www.blakesnyder.com

Disagreeing with Robert McKee in public

2009-11-03T15:29:00.003+01:00

An excellent interview with Robert McKee on this site:

">Sramanitra.com Robert Mckee Interview

Not a writing site, but an Indian site about enterpreneurship, of all things. The topic is the crisis of content which is affecting mainstream Hollywood productions, but it quickly addresses the art vs. business dichotomy and regional versus international storytelling. The interview is notable for talking about screenwriting and storytelling from a different perspective than usual, and because site owner Sramana Mitra disagrees with Mr. Mckee during most of the interview (must be quite a novel situation for him, I suspect).

Whatever Works (Woody Allen, 2009) - Whatever Doesn't

2009-10-31T20:33:00.003+01:00

After his European sojourns, Woody Allen returns to New York and to his earlier favourite topics: misanthropic Jewish liberal intellectuals and the beautiful, young, pliant girls who fall for them. It's been done in Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah And Her Sisters, heck, even in Bananas - so this should be a return to greatness, right?

Wrong.

And for very basic reasons which have everything to do with screenwriting (though the casting may also be somewhat responsible).

A short synopsis: Boris Yelnikov (Larry David), a misanthropic physicist reduced to teaching kids chess for a living (whilst bullying his charges mercilessly) encounters a Southern waif one evening and allows himself to be convinced to take her in. She's sweet but stupid, and he teaches her his views on life, love, the universe and everything. After a while they get married, and everything is swell, until her mother shows up, having been deserted by her husband. The mother is a Christian fundamentalist who hates Boris, but she quickly becomes seduced by New York when she finds fame as a photographer, and ends up living with two men.
Then the husband shows up, similarly fundamentalist and anti-Boris, but when he discovers how his ex-wife has changed, he ends up bemoaning his fate in a bar where he meets a gay man and admits he's been gay all along too.
Boris' wife, in the meantime, meets an attractive actor who is interested in her, goes to bed with him, and divorces Boris, who tries to commit suicide but lands on a woman who turns out to be his ideal mate, even though she's a psychic (something he as a rational scientist has great aversion to). Bottom line: life is short, so do whatever works to make you happy and find love.

Let's take the flaws of the movie in ascending order of severity.

First, there's expositional, explicitly on the nose dialog. And not a little, either. People are extremely literal and literate in analyzing themselves and each other, and it comes across as fake. To be fair, this has been the case in earlier Woody Allen films as well, but there he was able to sell it better, somehow. If only by using more hesitations and stammering in the delivery of the lines.

Secondly, several characters go through huge arcs - but at an incredible speed. While the mother has some screen time to go from fundamentalist to hedonist, it's still far from convincing. And the father literally changes his entire belief system and sexual orientation in the course of one scene! It's impossible to take this even remotely seriously. Similarly, Boris' wife immediately sleeps with the actor after meeting him, and this one encounter is enough for her to immediately ditch Boris (to be fair, he immediately throws her out upon learning of her infidelity, but she doesn't to anything to change his mind - even though she's been the one who's initiated the entire romance). Because so many characters change so unconvincingly during the film (especially its second act), the audience is no longer engaged with the proceedings. And the plot suffers too, as there is no driving conflict, no extra complications added to the situation - just vignettes to prove the theory 'whatever works'.

But most importantly of all, Whatever Works is sabotaged by its protagonist. Boris Yelnikov has a lot in common with earlier Allen characters - he's neurotic with a morbid fear of death, he's bitingly sarcastic (whatever the film's flaws, it does have a couple of very good one-liners), his marriage has been a disaster, he likes old jazz, classical music, Fred Astaire, and he finds himself involved with a beautiful, loving young woman who eventually deserts him.

However, Boris is different from previous Allen characters (both played by him and other actors) in that he is invulnerable. He's a loud bully, proclaiming his distaste of anyone and everything around him - and he's right. Not only in his own mind, but the story constantly proves him to be right too. In the end, he even proves to the audience (which he addresses throughout the film, and only he can see) that he's a genius because he sees the whole picture (i.e. that he's part of a movie).

In the past, Allen has been quite aggressive too in his comedies, especially towards the objects of his affection, but his own neurotic, cowardly persona softened the blow and made it look like the defense mechanism of a character suffering from an inferiority complex. Now, Boris towers above all those around him, spewing his hate and never being corrected, whether by other characters or fate. He doesn't really change (even when he's in love he's still the same miserable curmudgeon), and he isn't really a character you like to spend much time with. In casting Larry David, whose style of comedy is abrasive and confrontational, Allen has compounded the problem. The part fits David very well - but it amplifies his most obnoxious tendencies. Even in Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David is often in the wrong (though he never thinks so, obviously).

In this movie, we get to see just how irritating a protagonist can be who is invulnerable. Sure, Boris gets so depressed he attempts suicide after the break-up but once again, that's handled in just one scene - and as a surprise, without any build-up towards that act. He finally comes across as an obnoxious, bossy bully who needs to be taken down a peg or two. And if that's the character who is your window into the story, it's no wonder the film really doesn't work as a whole.

The Simon Beaufoy secret

2009-10-13T20:38:00.005+02:00

Simon Beaufoy is one of the most interesting screenwriters active today.

His work has been both massively succesful, turning uncommercial concepts into award-winning megahits (which, because of the lower budget, turn out to be extremely lucrative), and he's also written very personal scripts which didn't attract a huge audience. And the films made from his scripts are wildly different in tone.

So what's his secret ingredient?

Looking at The Full Monty and Slumdog Millionaire, and comparing them to a recent in-production script, Salmon Fishing In The Yemen, we find there is a common ingredient.

Simon Beaufoy manages to turn his underdog lead characters into Heroes.

Heroes in the literal sense of the word: characters who are willing to sacrifice themselves for a commendable goal.

The unemployed men are willing to sacrifice their sense of dignity and power in order to get out of the disastrous situations they find themselves in at the beginning of the story. And they are rewarded by the adoration of an audience of women who appreciate their bravery in displaying themselves as sexual objects. THey rediscover a sense of self-worth and selfrespect by risking all.

In Slumdog Millionaire, a young man without any formal education or social status gambles all by appearing on the quiz show which can make dreams come true. His dream is to escape with the love of his life, Latika, and he is determined not to let anything or anyone stand in his way. From a textbook underdog character, he is transformed into a Hero for the ages. And his goal - true, eternal love - is the highest to which human beings can aspire. Interestingly, the huge love story which drives the narrative is not really present in the original novel (which is more of a collection of short stories rather than one strong plot). And in the screenplay, the mythological nature of the love story is made even more clear than in the movie. In a deleted sequence, Jamal gets to watch an open-air performance of the opera Orfeo e Eurydice at the Taj Mahal, and he finds himself spellbound by the story of the hero who travels to the Underworld to bring back the woman he loves. Which just happens to be the task which Jamal will undertake too.

In Salmon Fishing, another adaptation of a novel, everything turns around the apparently mad desire of a Yemenite sheik to introduce salmon fishing to the Middle East. The lead character is a repressed government scientist trapped in a loveless marriage with a very careerist wife, who is ordered to assist the sheik in developing his scheme. The scientist refuses at first, is forced into complying, and meets with the sheik who turns out not to be a mad tyrant but a visionary who hopes to bring peace to the region. The scientist, who is all about facts and figures, starts to learn the value of faith from the sheik, and also falls in love with the exceptionally beautiful young woman who is the liaison between the sheik's British real estate developers and the government.

Once again, Beaufoy adds the power of Myth to his writing to transcend its origins and give it far greater resonance. The science vs. faith dichotomy is present in the original novel, but more as a philosophical debate - the finale is also far more ironic in its impact, even though the event which takes place in book and film is basically the same. And the romance element also ends on a totally different note: realistically in the novel, and in the script - well, I won't spoil it for you but when you look at Beaufoy's track record it's pretty easy to guess in what direction he takes it.

Now, what is interesting is that Salmon Fishing In The Yemen becomes a note-perfect example of the Hero's Journey structural paradigm - whereas the book is told in a number of letters, e-mails, reports and the like. It's a fractured way of telling the story, forcing the reader to puzzle everything together.

So the secret of Simon Beaufoy's success, apart from his skill at crafting likeable characters and being a very efficient and smart storyteller, is the ability
to imbue his underdog characters and their everyday struggle with a sense of Mythical Grandeur. He manages to inject this larger-than-life quality in stories which are essentially small, intimate and realistic in nature. And even though the sense of reality may be diminished at times, the power of mythological archetypes and fairy tales ensures the scripts (and the resulting movies) resonate very deeply with their often massive audiences.

Storytelling and Entre Les Murs (Laurent Cantet)

2009-10-03T22:33:00.004+02:00

Entre Les Murs, which won the Palme d'Or in Cannes in 2008, is a very interesting film which breaks most of the screenwriting rules and yet is riveting from the first minute to the last.

The screenplay, written by the director Laurent Cantet and the main actor, François Bégaudeau, is based on Bégaudeau's autobiographical book chronicling his experiences as a teacher in Paris.

Bégaudeau plays François Marin, a French teacher in a Parisian school with an ethincally very diverse population.
The film never leaves the school: we know nothing about the characters except for what we see of them within the scholarly environment. We have no idea about Marin's personal life, his relationships, his troubles outside of the workplace.

Though the film covers an entire school year, there is no major plotline which develops as its driving force, and we don't really get much of a sense of time passing. There's no structural model with clearly discernible turning points or story pattern with

And character arcs are conspicuous by their complete absence. Marin doesn't change his approach to teaching, even though it's only intermittently succesful. Nor does he get to understand his pupils better, no matter how hard he tries, or does he effect a miraculous change in one or more of them. And there's certainly no uplifting moral victory anywhere in sight at the end of the film.

So what does this film have that makes it so compelling?

Two things. The first is realism: the script was workshopped and improvised over a period of about a year with teenagers who basically play themselves (all but two use their own names in the film) and who attend the sort of school portrayed in the film. Bégaudeau naturally is totally convincing as a real teacher. The class sequences are so true to life they seem to be part of a documentary. By contrast, the scenes of the teachers among themselves feel (slightly) more staged.

The second thing? Conflict.

The film is filled to the brim with it. The class sequences are a never-ending confrontation between the well-meaning teacher who tries to interest his pupils in the topics he teaches them, and looks for ways to link it to their own experiences; and the pupils who for the most part seem to resist learning anything at all to the best of their ability, and who freely vent their disrespect of their teacher and their racist feelings towards each other. Though there is no sensationalism whatsoever (no headline-worthy excesses of violence), these sequences are unsettling by their intensity and their truthfulness.

But even the scenes outside of the classroom nearly all have some sort of conflict (teachers vs. parents, teachers vs. the principal, teachers squabbling amongst themselves...). Though these scenes are far less intense than the classroom scenes, they certainly aren't flat or harmonious.

I don't want to imply there is absolutely no plot in Entre Les Murs - the strongest narrative thread concerns a rebellious African pupil, Souleyman, whose seething anger and resentment boil over near the end of the film when Marin gets mad at the girls who, as class represetatives, have leaked end-of-term results to their classmates. There's an altercation in class, Souleyman faces the disciplinary board and is expelled from school, possible to be sent back to his homeland, Mali, by his dad.

But this is told more as an incident, a sequence of events which follow each other chronologically rather than as the strongly causal narrative we find in, say, Dead Poets' Society. In the climactic hearing, Marin is silent the entire time and Souleyman only translates his mother's heartfelt but misguided plea in favour of her son. So there is no ultimate effort by the parties involved in the conflict to triumph.

Of course the conditions in which this script was created are fairly unique, and will rarely if ever be available to other writers. But the film serves as an object lesson to the power of conflict to carry a film, even in the face of the absense of a strong conflict or traditional story patterns.

DVD Review: The Write Environment - Damon Lindelof

2009-09-24T19:59:00.003+02:00

This installment of the Write Environment-series will make Lost-fans very happy. And even for those who do not count themselves as Adepts of the Island, this interview will prove very enlightening. I'm no big Lost-fan - season 1 went too slowly for me and season 2 seemed to lose its way, though by now it's back on track. But it's a hugely complicated series to run, and Lindelof provides an excellent look into the inner workings of the Lost writing process.

He's also refreshingly honest, claiming that in his opinion the series would have been better at 80 episodes rather than at 123, and admitting there were filler episodes in the first two seasons. And it is revealed that there was an idea about what the island was from the start, but that the exact nature of what it is has evolved over the years, though it's still connected to that original concept.

Other topics covered are Lindelof's career, his comic book scripting (and he makes a great point about the difference between screenwriting and writing for comic books), and the Star Trek relaunch.

This disc runs slightly shorter than the others in the series, but it's all excellent stuff.

Protagonist, antagonist & genre

2009-09-07T11:48:00.002+02:00

As I mentioned in the review of Reflections of the Shadow, Steven De Souza causes a major scriptwriting uproar by stating in his interview that in genre scripts (action horror, science fiction, perhaps also comedy) the villain of the piece is really the protagonist, instead of the hero fulfilling this role.

Whoa. That kind of sort of invalidates a whole bunch of books and classes right there! But is this statement correct?

De Souza's argument is that in genre scripts, the villain is the active character and the hero is reacting to the actions the villain takes to achieve his/her nefarious goal. And as we all know, the protagonist is the character who is active and drives the story forward.

And when we consider genre movies, we find that in many, many cases it is correct that the villain of the piece is the one who remains active. In Die Hard, obviously, the driving force is the villain's plan. Likewise, all Bond movies start off with a villain with a nefarious master plan committing a criminal act in order to set the plan in motion. The shark in Jaws decides to eat people and continues to do so, always having Chief Brody play catch-up. In Star Wars, the Empire is poised to destroy the Rebellion once and for all, and continues to execute its ostensibly last major assault.

However, if we look at other genres, we find the picture to be less clear-cut. In several Westerns, spaghetti and otherwise, the hero is on the trail of bandits (he might be a lawman or a bounty hunter), and so he's the one hunting down the quarry.
In A Fistful of Dollars, Clint Eastwood arrives in a rundown village run by two clans of criminals living in an uneasy state of equilibrium, and he decides to upset the apple cart and play off both gangs against each other, ultimately eliminating them both. He enters a stable situation and conciously goes about upsetting it.

Similarly, in a lot of police thrillers, the hero is working to catch a killer or unravel a mystery, and often it is this investigation that causes the bad guy to have to take additional steps in order to evade pursuit.
And quite a few horror films have a monster which is unleashed by someone either trying to control and use forbidden knowledge, or by someone innocently breaking some taboo or rule. So there the villain is only activated later in the story - at times quite late, even - and often isn't the real driving force behind the conflict.

It's clear that this 'villain is protagonist'-theory isn't applicable in all cases, even in genre scripts. But there's more.

The protagonist is traditionally described as the active character who takes all the most important decisions in the script. AND - this is really crucial - he or she is the character the audience identifies with and who we 'become' while watching the film.
And there's the missing element in De Souza's claim. Yes, Hans Grüber may be the one who is constantly active in Die Hard, forcing John McClane to react - but while we love watching Grüber, a very well-developed villain played to perfection by Alan Rickman, we certainly don't ever want to be him. Generally speaking, there is no audience identification with the villain of the piece by the mass audience.

Sure, there are some individuals who do identify more with villainous characters, and in some movie series, especially of the horror genre, the villain becomes the main attraction, and the audience doesn't come to watch evil get its comeuppance once again, but to see what gruesome and revolting kills the villain will come up with next (the Saw-, Nightmare on Elm Street- and Friday the 13th-series come to mind). But apart from these exceptions, the villain is not the one who engages the audience's emotions and imagination.

Also, we must not lose track of the fact that the protagonist is the character making the most important decisions during the story, and that the development of their character arc forms the structural spine of the story. In Die Hard, John McClane makes all the important decisions. If he decided to surrender, or to back down and wait everything out, the master plan would go off without a hitch. The fact that he decides to interfere and to keep on interfering, proves that he is the most important character in the entire story.

So, whereas in genre scripts your villain can and usually should be the most active character, the hero remains the protagonist because of the fact that they are always the character through whose eyes we experience the story and who we are emotionally connected to; and because their personal evolution is the foundation of the script's structure. The only time this 'rule' truly does not apply is when you make the villain the focus of your story, and you are presenting the events from his point-of-view.

Book Review: Reflections of the Shadow: Creating Memorable Heroes and Villains for Film and TV by Jeffrey Hirschberg (Michael Wiese Press)

2009-09-04T13:58:00.002+02:00

As the title indicates, this book focuses on creating powerful and memorable protagonists and antagonists. Jeffrey Hirschberg starts off with analyzing what makes a hero and a villain, and then illustrates his findings with portraits of ten unforgettable heroes and villains. Heroes include Peter Parker, Rick Blaine, Atticus Finch and Indiana Jones among others, while the villains count Darth Vader, Hans Gruber, nurse Ratched and the Joker in his most recent screen outing among their lot.

The second part of the book starts off with a number of shortish but excellent interviews with screenwriters David Koepp, Steven de Souza, David Franzoni and James Dearden about their heroic and villainous creations. Hirschberg then offers help in developing your own villains and heroes and proposes his Persona-tool to aid with the job (a character-building list of questions). He then compares the 'treks' of the hero and the villain in a couple of films, applying their development to the three-act structure, and his finishes off (somewhat incongruously) with his 11 Laws of Storytelling which obviously cover a far wider range of topics.

Hirschberg writes in a very accessible style, and this book can also be read and enjoyed by film buffs who want to know more about how movies are put together. There are some interesting analyses to be found here, and Hirschberg's definition of what constitutes a villain and a hero can be applied practically to any script development process. His concept that villains are basically outsiders who want to belong but are inherently unable to is well supported by the examples he gives here, though there have also been villains who are part of society and authority and who find their power base there (the Emperor from Star Wars is a good example).

I must single out the description of Indiana Jones as a great hero though, as Hirschberg doesn't mention one of Jones' most important aspects: he is extremely unlucky and extremely lucky at the same time, rarely wins a fight by himself, and at times he's more of a parody of the idealized square-jawed hero rather than the real deal. Personally, I think that James Bond is a far more interesting hero figure to examine than Indiana Jones, but even so, I was disappointed that this apparent dichotomy in the character was simply ignored.

Steven De Souza in his interview mentions something which turns conventional screenwriting wisdom on its head: he claims that in genre screenwriting, the villain is the protagonist (the active character) whereas the hero, who generally reacts to the misdeeds of the villain, is actually the antagonist! Later on in the book, Hirschberg follows this train of thought in a couple of the three-act analyses he does. I'm going to write a blog post about this, as it definitely bears looking into; but no matter whether you agree with this or not, it does point out that in a good genre film, the villain must be active throughout the script.

I feel that Reflections of the Shadow is best suited to screenwriting students and beginning writers overall, as the concepts discussed here will be most valuable to people still learning the screenwriting ropes and coming to terms with some of the basic concepts of storytelling and development. The interview section is valuable for any writer regardless of level - it is for me without a doubt the highlight of the book.

You can get it here:

Coming up in September...

2009-09-01T19:37:00.002+02:00

On September 9, next Wednesday, I'm scheduled to hold a talk on television comedy for the Scenaristengilde at the Huis van de Vlaamse Film, Bisschofsheimlaan 38, 1000 Brussels. It starts at 8 pm and is followed by a Q&A session.

And at the end of this month, I'm starting the second session of my screenwriting basics course at Miles Academy in Vilvoorde (100m from the train station). Beginning on Saturday September 29, this course will run until November 21 in 7 day-long sessions, and will provide a very thorough look at all the fundamental elements of screenwriting. More information can be found over at the Miles Academy website. Hope to see you there!

DVD Review: The Write Environment

2009-08-24T22:27:00.002+02:00

Okay, apologies again for leaving the blog dormant for so long, but I've been busy (and still am) writing a monster of an article about writing the miniseries, and until that's finished (early next week, I hope!) I'll be forced to keep things fairly quiet on this front.

However, let's weigh in with another Write Environment DVD review, this time featuring Heroes head honcho Tim Kring.

The interview takes us through Kring's entire career: he didn't start out planning to be a writer (shades of George Lucas there), then one job for a Knight Rider episode led him into the freelance writing game which meant writing movies-of-the-week for television for a number of years.
Later on Kring moved into series television, writing for Chicago Hope among others, which led him to create Crossing Jordan, which ran for 6 seasons, and then achieve a huge success with the first season of Heroes.

The first part of the interview is not that riveting, to be honest - but once it hits the 20-minute mark it becomes very good indeed. Kring gives some very honest advice and opinions on the business(if you're an outsider and you're thinking of pitching the next Heroes to a network? Forget it, can't be done), and he offers some excellent insights into what makes a serialized show like Heroes work, and what he and his writing team had to learn in order to make it a success. Pacing is incredibly important - and it's ironic, then, that the lack of good pacing basically ruined the second season.
Another very interesting part is where Kring discusses how the show's enormous appetite for story material didn't lead to the writers running out of gas and ideas, but on the contrary kept generating new possibilities and options all the way through. Great advice many shows could benefit from!

So, after a fairly slow opening this turns into one of the most interesting and thought-provoking releases in the series. And one I have no qualms about recommending to anyone interested in contemporary television writing techniques.

The Curious Narrative of Benjamin Button

2009-08-12T09:52:00.002+02:00

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is an interesting film to look at for writers, because it's one of the few mainstream Hollywood films to 'disobey' some of the cardinal rules of screenwriting. But how succesful is it in doing so?

The film is based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald but obviously credited writers Eric Roth and Robin Swicord (there have been many others during the development phase, including Charlie Kaufman) have created a ton of extra material, as there's a framing story which takes place during Hurricane Katrina, and Benjamin Button's life lasts from 1918 to 2003, whereas Fitzgerald died in 1940 and had his protagonist born in 1860 - in Baltimore.

I'll try to focus on the storytelling aspects of the film and leave the other factors out of it as much as possible. Just to get a few things out of the way, the film looks amazing, digital effects are used (as with Forrest Gump) not to create empty spectacle but to tell a story in live-action which would have been impossible to do without the use of CGI, the make-up making Brad Pitt and Catherine Blanchett look old never looks real (sorry, make-up department, I know you've won an Oscar for this, but it just wasn't convincing) and Pitt and certainly Blanchett are miscast.

So onto the film. And of course major SPOILERS! If you haven't yet seen this and intend to go into it 'virginally', stop reading now.

The curiousness of Benjamin Button is that he is born as an ancient baby, and grows younger all the time. So we have a protagonist who suffers from a unique predicament, which is never explained except in terms of magic realism (the story of the clock which ran backwards). Mentally though, he ages normally - at first he's a child trapped in an invalid body, at the end he suffers from dementia while looking like a child and, finally, becoming a real baby.

The film chooses to use a framing story in which a dying elderly woman, in hospital in New Orleans, asks her daughter to read her from a diary - the diary of Benjamin Button. We shift from present to past quite regularly.

Let's focus on this framing device first. In the beginning of the script, there is absolutely no conflict between mother and daughter. She tries to comfort her mother and does whatever she can to please her - i.e. she reads to her from the book.
At first we don't quite know the relationship between Benjamin and , but we surmise they must have been lovers, so it's no great surprise when this turns out to be the case. So there's no mystery and no conflict - the only element of suspense is the arrival of the hurricane - and that only because we know what happened to New Orleans in real life. To be honest, there doesn't seem to be any compelling narrative or thematic reason to use Hurricane Katrina in this film.
Only during the last third of the film is there any conflict when the daughter discovers Benjamin is her real father, and he deserted her when she was only one years of age. She's angry at her mother for making her find out the truth like this, but it lasts just a few moments (the time to try and light a cigarette), before she's okay again and continues reading from the diary.

Benjamin is born on the last day of the First World War. His mother dies in childbirth, and his horrified father leaves him at a nursing home for the elderly which seems to be run by Blacks (the entire film completely sidesteps the racism issue). Benjamin is taken in by a young woman, Queenie, who becomes his de facto mother.

Benjamin grows up among the elderly, so he doesn't stand out. Bit by bit, he is cured of his arthritis and learns how to walk after visiting a prayer meeting. Soon he meets Daisy, a little girl at the time, and falls in love right off the bat. However, they're far too young to stay together forever at this point, so first he goes off to work on a tugboat with an alcoholic Irish captain, sees action in World War II, learns the identity of his real father and inherits their button factory, meets Daisy again who is now a ballerina and temporarily no longer interested in him, sails the open seas with his father's yacht... and finally, in 1962, Daisy returns to him after she's recuperated from a traffic accident that has left her unable to dance again.

So what's wrong with this picture so far (we're now two thirds into the movie)?

Benjamin Button is a protagonist who has it extremely easy.

At no time in the narrative is he thrust into a direct conflict. His youth is ironically fairly idyllic, he becomes rich through no effort of his own, the woman he loves finally comes to him of her own accord. And when earlier on she treats him badly, he just takes it with the same air of benevolent detachment which seems to be his only emotional state for most of the film.

In fact, Benjamin almost seems to be a Buddhist sage at times, though unlike Forrest Gump he doesn't really create major changes in the people he encounters throughout his life. He's more of an observer, even when he takes action (as when he decides to go and work for Captain Mike).

So the film's narrative thrust is hampered by a protagonist who, though he doesn't exactly doesn't want anything (he wants Daisy), does precious little to get to his goal. Good things come to those who wait seems to be the unstated theme of the film - but that's not exactly conducive to keeping the audience emotionally involved.

Moreover, two thirds along the way Benjamin gets his goal - a relationship with Daisy. At this point, the narrative slows to a complete halt.
However, soon after it starts up again, with the first real problem for Benjamin since the film began.
Daisy becomes pregnant, and Benjamin is afraid he won't be able to function as a father because of his condition. He doesn't want Daisy to have to take care of two infants at the same time. So strong is his fear, that he leaves Daisy and his daughter, Caroline, shortly after her first birthday, before she can remember him.

I don't know whether Eric Roth was responsible for this structural twist, but it resembles the narrative of Forrest Gump very much. Forrest also gets his girl long before the end of the film, happiness is achieved, and then she turns out to have AIDS and dies.

In both films, a new problem pops up to give the third act a totally new narrative drive which comes out of nowhere. And here, it doesn't really work.

When Benjamin leaves his wife and daughter, he acts as a coward, even though the film tries to put another spin on his decision. But it's not even a remotely logical decision: when he runs away, Benjamin is approximately fifty years old, which means he's about thirty. So he has at least 15 years to be with his daughter, all the time in the world to explain what's going on with him (except for his father at birth, no one in the film ever reacts to Benjamin's condition as something appalling, horrifying or unacceptable, why should his daughter be any different?). And by the time he does regress, his daughter would be an adult herself and be able to help Daisy look after her dad.

Sure, there is a heartbreaking moment when the adult Caroline discovers all the birthday cards Benjamin wrote to her but never sent; but his "sacrifice", such as it is, comes across as shallow and selfish, rather than as a noble gesture. Moreover, we've never seen Benjamin upset or moved, not even at Queenie's funeral, and he considered her as his real mother. So why would he get so upset about his perceived inability to be a father?

The reason is: there has to be a plot. Although this film is largely character-focused, at this point all psychological realism or logic is ignored in order to have something happen to the main character. Because otherwise, he'd just have stayed with Daisy and Caroline, and there would have been nothing left to tell at all in either storyline up till the moment of his encroaching dementia and his death.

Interestingly, the original short story has Benjamin born as a mental adult, and he regresses to a child and eventually a newlyborn infant on both the physical and mental level. In his youth, his dad forces him to go to school and play with children even though he'd rather smoke cigars and ponder philosophy; when his wife gets older, he becomes disenchanted with her and leaves to fight in a war; and as he becomes a child again, he goes to kindergarten together with his grandson and finally shows interest in toys and games. It's a far more conflict-laden way of handling the material, and one cannot help but wonder why all these ideas were ditched.

Instead, we have - two storylines with nearly no conflict, and that conflict only coming in the third act of each story
- a largely non-active main character who almost never initiates action
- an epic love story in which one of the characters (Daisy) is actively unlikeable and not very interesting, making us wonder why Benjamin is so besotted with her
- a major decision by the main character which alienates him emotionally from the viewer.

On top of this, there's the matter of theme. Though many themes are mentioned throughout the film (you can do anything, fate cannot be escaped so just accept it), there doesn't seem to be one theme that binds everything together - and certainly not a theme which could only be told with precisely these characters in exactly these conditions. There is no pressing reason why Hurricane Katrina should be the backdrop of the framing story; and there is no big theme or metaphor which needs the reverse aging idea to be communicated to the audience. In Forrest Gump, the theme and the narrative did fit together. Here, it's almost like we're being offered a semi-sequel which doesn't really make sense. Benjamin Button is to Forrest Gump what Evan Almighty is to Bruce Almighty...

Could the narrative have worked better than it does now, even with the same non-active protagonist? I think it could have. There's one sequence (Daisy's car accident) which has a playfulness in the storytelling which reminded me of Amélie Poulain (another film with a very passive protagonist, and not one of my favourites though it probably is one of yours). It shows every detail which lead up to the accident and then also shows how it could have been avoided. If there had been (far) more risk-taking of this nature, the film would constantly have received energy from its narrative unpredictability.

Another way to render the narrative more powerful would have been to tell less and show more. The diary becomes a crutch. For instance, when Benjamin leaves his family, we don't see him suffer, have scenes where we see him regret his decision, or whatever. We just see a travelogue of India and then, somewhat later, a scene where he returns to Daisy for no special reason except to show Brad Pitt as a glowing twenty-year old. By jumping through time, and having the events in the story continually told to us even when they're being shown, the narrative keeps us at an arm's length even when we should be totally entranced by the 'great love story to transcend the ages' which it tries to sell us. But when your female character is cold and selfish and your lovable hero deserts the people who need him most, that sort of becomes a lost cause.

DVD Review: The Write Environment: Sam Simon

2009-08-09T13:17:00.002+02:00

Sam Simon may not be a household name to everyone, but his career is second to none.

He's worked on Taxi (becoming the showrunner in its final seasons), Cheers, The Tracey Ullman Show, The Drew Carey Show, The George Carlin Show and a little animated series you may have heard about once - The Simpsons. Add 9 Emmy's and 13 nominations to the mix and you have a career most writers don't even dare dream about.

On top of which he's running a dog foundation, he's Jennifer Tilly's ex-husband and he's a world-class poker player.

Truth be told, the two latter aspects of Simon's life aren't mentioned on this DVD. But as you may imagine there are more than enough topics to talk about which are of interest to screenwriters everywhere.

Simon entered the TV world via animation (he was a cartoonist in college), and from there on managed the incredible feat to write a spec script for Taxi which was immediately bought and produced.

On The Simpsons, he was responsible for developing several of the extra characters which make up the tapestry of Springfield. His observations about the difference in writing for an animated sitcom vs. a traditional one are quite interesting. There is no mention, however, of his leaving the show in 1993 (although his name remains on the credits and he still earns a lot of money from the show).

Throughout the DVD, Simon remains a friendly, soft-spoken and generous interview subject. The only person who he is not too enthusiastic about is Family Guy's head honcho Seth McFarlane, because of the similarities between the two series. It was quite surprising, then, to read a Sam Simon interview in which he admitted to becoming a monster while running a show, and it eventually made him quit the business.

If you're interested in any of the shows Simon worked on or ran, this DVD is definitely worth getting. To be fair, I should mention that there aren't as many immediately applicable insights or tips to be found here as on some of the others in the series.

Interview: Dirk Nielandt, writer of 'De Texasrakkers'

2009-08-05T14:21:00.006+02:00

Dirk Nielandt is primarily known in Flanders as an author of children's books, and the last few years he's been quite active as a writer for television as well. Recently he added a major feather to his cap when he became the writer for the very succesful Flemish animated feature De Texasrakkers. Dirk graciously consentend to an interview, and shared his experiences on writing the first Flemish 3-D computer-animated feature with us and, through the magic of the internet, the world...

1) How did you get approached to write the script for Texasrakkers?

I was working on a television project for Skyline Productions, the production company of De Texasrakkers (Texas Rangers), when Eric Wirix (ceo Skyline and producer of Texasrakkers) and Mark Mertens (director of Texasrakkers) came up with the idea to make an animatied tvseries with Suske and Wiske (in UK known as Spike & Suzy or Bob & Bobette in French) as main characters.

For those who don’t live around here: Suske and Wiske are comic book characters that are world famous in Belgium and Holland. They have been popular since the fifties. Generation after generation grew up with their adventures.

Willy Vandersteen (1913-1990), the spiritual father of Suske and Wiske, sold millions and millions comic books of his action-adventure-comedy characters, and entertained whole generations with brilliant and often hilarious storytelling. Until today the books remain popular and are rock-solid sellers.

I was (and still am) not only a huge fan of Suske and Wiske, but also worked for some years as editor-in-chief of Suske en Wiske Weekblad, a weekly comic magazine. I also wrote ‘Suske en Wiske’-books for kids who are just learning to read. So I knew the world of Willy Vandersteen and ‘Suske en Wiske’ quite well. I was happy and honoured when I was invited to participate in the brainstorm sessions for the animated tv series.

2) You mention an animated tv-series, but Texasrakkers is a 85 minute 3D-animated feature film!

Yeah, right. We kicked off brainstorming for a tv-serie, then started to develop a 50-minute tv-movie that could be divided into 5 episodes of ten minutes each.
Then the decision was made to go all the way for a feature. I guess the project grew and the ambitions grew. Things kept moving. That was fun. We also started develop
ping a completely different story for the feature. It was like starting from scratch after months of working on the tv series, but on the other hand it wasn’t, because talking and writing the television movie prepared us for the more serious work.

3) You're a writer of children's books and a scriptwriter for television. Was it difficult to make the transition to writing the screenplay for an animated feature? Did you have to learn/use new skills as a writer?

It certainly is something completely different, so I definitely had to use different skills. Fortunately a year before we started writing I participated in a screenwriting development course (North by Northwest in Denmark) where I developed a feature screenplay for an animated feature, based on one of my own children's books. I worked under the supervision of Hollywood animation-screenwriter Philippe Lazebnik (Prince of Egypt, co-writer of Shrek, etc). In the end that script didn’t get produced, but I certainly learned very useful skills that helped me during the development of Texasrakkers.

4) 'De Texasrakkers' is an adaptation of a comic book. At first sight, this would seem to lend itself extremely well to a movie adaptation. What turned out to be the biggest difference between the two media for you?

The biggest difference is ‘structure’. Some comic books are written in a structure that is easily transferable to a moviestructure, but Texasrakkers isn’t :-)

And that’s understandable. You should know that the original book was published in 1959 and its structure was dictated by the fact that it was a newspaper comic. Every day the newspaper published an episode of Suske and Wiske a the length of half a page in the book. Ususally this meant that Vandersteen wrote and drew half a page a day. He produced four Suske en Wiske albums a year. Even for that time it was a hell of job. There was no time to start structuring the whole story before starting. The story was developed day after day after day after...

Vandersteen was a man with a very rich imagination. He was a brilliant storyteller. To keep his newspaperreaders hooked, he ended every daily epsiode with a cliffhanger. Usually every daily episode also contained a joke. This meant that in the end, when the story was published as a book, the structure was... eh... non-existant. That didn’t disturb the Suske and Wiske-readers at all. On the contrary. It made Vandersteens work original and funny and witty and wonderfully chaotic. It is part of the charm of his work. His stories were wild, funny, exciting and very original.

But unfortunately this structure (or the absence of structure) could not be transferred to the big screen. The flow of the book would not work for a feature. So we had to re-think the structure completely. We had to re-think the plot all over. The only thing we wanted to keep by all means was the soul of the album, the spirit of Vandersteen, his unique voice of storytelling. That was quite a challenge, but it was also part of the fun of writing this movie. How to translate the magic of Willy Vandersteen to a modern feature that would still fascinate an audience that is less familiar with the early Suskes en Wiskes descending from their parents childhood.

5) Why did you choose the Texasrakkers?

Good question. There are 300 Suske and Wiske albums to choose from (300+ by now), so which story to choose... That was a hard one.

One thing we were absolutely convinced of was that it had to be a Willy Vandersteen story. It had to be a story he wrote. Not that his succesors didn’t do a great job, but Vandersteen is the founding father. He has written the ultimate Suskes en Wiskes. So it had to be one of his stories, which limited our range of choice. I don’t remember exactly how long the remaining list still was, but it was still huge (sigh).

Another important issue to take into account was that almost every adult in Belgium and Holland has his or her favourite album(s). Almost everyone has a couple of Suske en Wiske-books that transports them back to the magical age of 10-12 years old. So for every story we choose, we had to disappoint a lot of people who would absolutely be sure we made the wrong choice because album nr 98 or nr. 123 or nr. 44 or ... is in their memories the most fantastic, faboulous, wonderful Suske and Wiske-story of their childhood.

Mission impossible? It was Eric Wirix who had the idea to choose a genre story. Some of the most popular albums were stories based on popular Hollywood films of that time. Suske and Wiske covered almost every film genre: sci-fi, action, romantic comedy, you name it! James Bond, Planet of the Apes, etc. So we decided to start with a genre that is more or less the father of all movie genres: the western. And look... Suske en Wiske en de Texasrakkers, a real western, was in our top 10 list anyway...

6)Was there sufficient material in the original book to fill the movie? Or did you have to cut things or add material to get the right length for the film?

There was enough material. We had to kill plenty of darlings (the rock that threatened to destroy Dark City, for those who remember the book) in order to make the story work properly. We also had to cut some characters that were too archaic (the story is from 1959, remember). But the album was so rich and contained so much material that there was plenty to fill the movie.

7) Did you collaborate mainly with the director, or with the animators as well? Did they have specific demands you had to take into account?

From the beginning of the writing process I collaborated with both producer Eric Wirix as well as the director Mark Mertens. We held brainstorm sessions at the Skyline office on a regular basis. After these sessions I went home to write and rewrite. Some weeks later we sat together again and discussed the new outline, treatment or synopsis, depending the stage of development we were in. The first draft was really the result of the collaboration of this small writing team, all die-hard fans of Suske en Wiske. We continued working like this until we had a first draft that everybody was happy with.

Then my work was done. Guy Mortier, the ex-editor-in-chief of the weekly magazine Humo, well known for his sharp and witty pen, polished the script, spiced it up with great jokes and sharpened the characters. I think he did a great job.

After that the actors started working with the script. The voices were recorded and once that was done the team of animators started to work. I didn’t have contact with the animators at all (and there is no reason why I should have). More then 100 animators were working on it in Liège and Luxembourg. A hell of a job for the two directors Mark Mertens and Wim Bien. They supervised, directed, managed this huge team. Quite an acrobatic job. It took them a lot of stress and a couple of sleepless nights, but they did great!

8) Did you have to include a lot of visual information in this script which you wouldn't normally do?

No. Perhaps because one of the directors was part of the writing team, he filled in the sets and visualized it in 3D. No need for me to put it in the script. But I also think it is a misunderstanding that scripts for animated features automatically need more visual information. We didn’t create a completely new world that needed to be described. It was the Wild West, how much description does that need? It was also an action movie, with some serious action and fight scenes. Obviously those scenes didn’t need dialogue but a detailed description of the action.

9) The climax of the comic book features a deus ex machina - did you keep this or was it changed for the film?

A deux ex machina in a family film is a disaster, a rip-off and absolutely not done. As mentioned before, we re-thought the main plot of the story. We turned it into a western with a who-is-the-bad-guy-behind-the-mask-(a wodunit)-plot. ‘Who is Jim Parasijt really?’ is the question that is pushing the story forward in the second and third act. The answer to that question had to be a surprise ànd had to make sense in the end.
I’m not gonna spoil the fun for those who haven’t seen the movie yet (go and see it!!), but I think we succeeded in avoiding to rip off the audience with a deus ex machina and still surprise them with the answer to this main question.

10) Were you able to keep a lot of the original dialogue, or did you have to do a lot of work to make it work in the screenplay context?

Some verbal jokes were kept, but as most of the scènes in the movie are different from the book, most of the dialogue is different too. And anyway... dialogue, how we speak, use of words has changed a lot since 1959, so obviously it was updated.

11) What was the most difficult thing about writing this screenplay?

Re-structuring a story that was written in the fifties to a modern well-structured screenplay that kept the original soul of the album and would honour the work of Vandersteen.
We also never lost focus that we had to respect the memories of all the Suske en Wiske-fans. Lots of them are very protective of their heroes and we didn’t want to shock them by creating something very different from the original characters.

12) And what was the most rewarding?

Seeing the result of all this labour on the big screen and listening to the reactions of the kids and their parents. It’s great when they laugh when they’re supposed to laugh, thrill when they‘re supposed to be thrilled and leave at the end of the movie with a big smile on their face.

This movie is really the accomplishment of a big team. Writers, producer, directors, animators, actors, designers etc all put a lot of time and energy in this project. All for the love of Willy Vandersteen's work, trying to capture his spirit and update it for the screen. It was fun working on it and right now I’m hoping we can start writing the sequel;-)...

Best of luck with that, and a big thank you to Dirk for taking the time to talk to us and let us know what it's like to work on a major animated feature!

DVD Review: The Write Environment: Joss Whedon

2009-08-03T21:50:00.002+02:00

The first DVD in the series cleverly features Joss Whedon, probably the writer/showrunner with the most extensive and loyal fanbase in all of television.
Will loyal Whedonites get their money's worth from this interview with their idol?

Well of course they will. Joss Whedon is not only a writer with a very identifiable voice, he's also an excellent raconteur who somehow masters the art of being both arrogant and humble at the same time.

The interview takes place at his home, in his writing room, which naturally is a treasure trove for fanboys and -girls. The interview is wide-ranging, touching upon all parts of Whedon's career (writing for movies, television, comics, and producing and directing). We learn the identity of his favourite character (in a way), he discusses how and why he resurrected Colossus in his Astonishing X-Men run, he talks about the upsides and downsides of script-doctoring in Hollywood and reveals why he no longer does it.

Along the way there are plenty of humorous anecdotes, several nuggets of wisdom for writers to ponder (for instance, the difference between writing for television and writing for film is discussed, as is Whedon's dislike of 'reset' television, and his predilection for mixing genres (and it's not done on a whim or just to be 'interesting').

In short, an excellent and entertaining way to spend approximately an hour in the company of one of television writing's true originals, and an absolute must-have for anyone who is even just a tiny-little-bit of a Whedon fan.

DVD review - The Write Environment: Phil Rosenthal (Everybody Loves Raymond)

2009-08-01T17:56:00.003+02:00

You might be familiar with the 'Dialogue' DVD series, in which movie screenwriters are interviewed about their career and their craft. Well, you may be interested to know that there is now a complementary series available, namely The Write Environment, which does the same for television writing. Each DVD features a show runner being interviewed in his writing environment by Jeffrey Berman, who's also the executive producer for the series. I'll be reviewing every installment as I watch them, so you can decide whether the disk should be in your collection of screenwriting resources or not.

The first disc I watched features Phil Rosenthal, the showrunner of Everybody Loves Raymond. The interview takes place in his guest house, which gives the entire proceedings a relaxed atmosphere. However, there's plenty of excellent advice on sitcom writing to be found here.

Rosenthal is (naturally) a funny man, with a fine line in self-deprecating humour. He also comes across as a genuinely nice person - in fact, some colleagues at work have visited the Raymond writer's room when the show was still being aired and told me that Rosenthal actually sent his writers home at a normal time, so they could interact with their families and have the necessary experiences to fuel their writing.

This relates to one of Rosenthal's main points: for him, 'write what you know' is essential. Since you are unique as a writer and a person, tell stories about your experiences, as they are what sets you apart from your colleagues (and rivals).

Another very important element of the success of Raymond is the relatability of the characters. This is NOT the same as likeability - the characters may be mean or selfish, but the audience can understand their attitude, or recognize it in themselves or the people around them. Rosenthal says he's even received letters from people from Sri Lanka telling him their parents are just like Ray's...

All in all, a very good interview and a very interesting disc for anyone interested in learning more about classic American-style sitcom.

And you can get this DVD and the others from the series right here:

The Screenwriter's Store

Back at last! With another installment of How I Do It

2009-07-31T10:12:00.003+02:00

Sorry for leaving the blog unattended for so long, but I had a lot of urgent screenwriting to do!

That's done now, so I can finally spend some more time on the blog again.

So, with no further ado, a new practical (I hope) writing tip!

While writing the current script, there was one scene which gave me problems. Of course, it was the most crucial scene in the script.

During this scene, the protagonist of the episode, who has been a relentless womanizer and visitor of night clubs and expensive brothels all his life, has to realize that since he's always paid for love and affection, it's possible that most if not all of it has not been sincere. This is supposed to lead to the crisis of the entire episode and it's the final nail in his coffin, as all what he thougt to have accomplished in life is shown in previous scenes to be hollow and worthless (yes, it IS a comedy, folks).

The problem with the scene was that I knew what the emotional trajectory had to be, and I had a clear idea of the stops along the way. But when I started writing it, it just felt wrong. All the necessary elements were in the scene, but the order in which they showed up (the way I structured the scene) just didn't convince at all.

Looking back at what I got, one of the problems was that as I was building the main spine of the scene, I introduced a tangential element which was related to the spine (the most important love affair the character had had during the series), but which took over once it was introduced. And once that 'bit' was finished, it proved to be extremely hard to return to the original throughline.
On the other hand, just deleting the element wasn't a solution either, as it was something which had to be dealt with or the loyal fans in the audience would wonder why it hadn't been talked about.

So the way I finally cracked it was to go back to the beginning of the scene (again, as I'd tried several different versions already) and wrote a long version - a version which was deliberately too long for the finished script, but where I made sure that I put in every little step of the psychological process the protagonist had to go through.

As the context of the scene was an interview about the protagonist's love life, I also had to make sure that the character doing the interview managed to

I also made sure that the tangent wasn't introduced at a point where it derailed the scene, but at the moment where it amplified and complemented the main thrust of the scene.

Then, it was just a question of cutting back the excess dialogue and exposition. It's amazing to discover just how much material you can cut without losing the point you need to make. However, you usually do need to spell matters out first, before discovering the more concise version which is the right one.

The Perils of Preaching

2009-07-21T11:23:00.004+02:00

All screenwriters have probably been bombarded with the golden rule: don't preach in your script - or, in (probably) Samuel Goldwyn's immortal words: if you want to send a message, use Western Union.

This is one of those rules which you don't want to be true, but when you break it you realize just how valid and universal it is. Yet some filmmakers still persist in doing so - and the finished product, whether film or TV show, always suffers as a result.

Case in point, the Dutch political comedy Vox Populi, which I watched yesterday.

Vox Populi is about a radical left-wing politician, leader of the fictitious Red-Green Party, who is doing very badly in the polls. Largely because of the presence of a populist right-wing party with an explicit anti-Moslem message.
He then meets the father of his future son-in-law, who is a blue-collar car salesman, politically incorrect, often aggressive but fundametally honest and warm-hearted guy. Though shocked by the raunchy humour and crass comments of his new near-relative, he realizes some of them have some merit and he starts parroting them to the media.

The result is that he becomes extremely popular (except with his parliamentary colleagues and his existing voters) and his party, which was on the verge of disappearing, shoots to the top of the polls.

The film actually muddles this set-up by having the politician be manipulated by an ex-Yougoslavian son-in-law of the car salesman, who has made a bet with his brother(?) that he's going to make the Red-Green Party the biggest political party in Holland come the election. There's never any real pay-off of this extra level in the plot.

Anyway, eventually our 'hero' is caught on tape telling a raunchy anti-Moslem joke, an extremist faction wants to kill him, and he has to go live in a safe house. Just before the general election, he decides to address the nation, and gives a long speech to the nation.

And here, of course, he stops being a character and becomes the mouthpiece for writer/director Eddy Terstall. He denounces his own behaviour, dissects the problems in contemporary Dutch society and declares he is leaving politics and the country, but imparts his wishlist of how Holland should face the challenges it is confronted with now, like a wise old man providing life lessons for his wayward pupils.

Of course, this is an inherently non-dramatic situation. That's one handicap. But more problematically, what the character says, does not correspond with how he has behaved throughout the movie.

He's been a hypocrite through and through (relentless womanizer, recreational drug user, liar, narcissist), and the audience has never got a really good handle on what he actually does believe in apart from his original ideals. And to have such a character suddenly declare the moral message of the film, without any clear indication of how he acquired these insights, just undermines whatever the filmmaker tries to say.

To attempt to make the turnabout of the protagonist slightly acceptable, the character declares before delivering his message that he's had a lot of time to think in his safehouse and has come to realize some things... and no, it doesn't work.

The regrettable thing is that, with a different approach to the plot, the same message could have been put across. In a far more convincing manner. How? By dramatizing the content of the message. By creating situations, dilemmas and conflicts which put the main character through the wringer, and force him to make a difficult choice, the result of which shows his true character and makes it clear to the audience what the filmmaker wants to get across.

Why, you can even have big message-laden speeches if you really want - as long as you put them in a dramatic context. Preston Sturges was a master at this - check the finale of Hail The Conquering Hero, for instance.

Or, sabotage the big speech, because of the dramatic context it is placed in, as is the case in The China Syndrome, when Jack Lemmon's character finally gets the chance to air the truth on television.

But whatever you do, don't get the character up on a soapbox, and definitely don't have him come to certain conclusions or assume the moral high ground when throughout the entire film his mentality and behaviour have been diametrically opposed to what you want to convey. You're just going to ruin whatever effect you're hoping to achieve.

Book Review: Inside Story - The Power of the Transformational Arc (Dara Marks)

2009-07-16T20:15:00.002+02:00

Dara Marks has been one of the most prominent script doctors in Hollywood for years. A good thing, then, that she's decided to write down her theories and share them with the world, so that every screenwriter can benefit from her approach.

Since the subtitle of the book is The Power of the Transformational Arc, it's pretty clear from the start what Ms. Marks' main focus is going to be. And you may think 'Hey, I know about that stuff already'. And you'd be right - you do know about the concept.

However, you do not know how Dara Marks approaches it. And even though I've read literally hundreds of screenwriting books, and some of the concepts used here were very close to some of the material in Keith Cunningham's The Soul of Screenwriting, reviewed here a couple of weeks ago, I still learned quite a lot from this book.

Or rather, the new concepts (or, more correctly, the new dimensions added to concepts) are explained so well and convincingly that you immediately take them on board. This, to me, is the mark of a truly effective screenwriting manual - after one read, you have the concepts down pat to a degree that you can immediately start applying them to your work.

The first part of the book looks at the central concepts in Ms. Marks' theory; the second part then applies them to screenplay structure.

As we're talking about the transformational arc, it's no surprise that much of the theory is about defining and using the fatal flaw in the main character. What makes Ms. Marks' approach particularly useful is that she stresses that the fatal flaw must be intimately related to the main conflict of the script. In so many flawed (pun intended) scripts, the protagonist has to overcome a weakness which bears no relation to the external story goal. The result is that the transformation of the protagonist is gratuitous and clichéed. When the transformational arc does coincide with the story goal, it becomes an indispensible part of the storytelling experience (Casablanca, anyone?).

There's also a lot of good material about creating characters and about finding (and using) the theme for your story. The book also takes the three-pronged approach we found in Soul of Screenwriting: the A-story is the external conflict, the B-story is the internal conflict within the protagonist which leads to the transformation (or, in a tragedy, to the lack of same) and the C-story is about the relationships the protagonist is involved in, and how they are affected/changed by the transformative process. It's very good to have these things spelled out so clearly, because especially this third level is overlooked far too often by screenwriters.

The example films used here are three big movies from the '80s: Romancing The Stone, Lethal Weapon and Ordinary People. These films were chosen for a very good reason: they each have a different approach to their protagonists. Romancing has the traditional single protagonist, Lethal has co-protagonists and Ordinary has a group as the protagonist (the family).

This is probably the thing in the book I'll be most grateful to Dara Marks for, for the rest of my writing life: yes, you can have more than one protagonist. What really matters is the goal - if two people work together towards the same goal, they are co-protagonists (all the buddy movies). And if a group of people are working towards the same goal, the group is the protagonist of the story.

This is such a breakthrough in thinking about screenplay writing, it cannot be emphasized enough. It absolutely helped me conceptually with a script idea which I'm convinced is extremely powerful, but which confused me structurally because, as it's about a family in dire peril, I couldn't get a handle on who the protagonist was going to be. Because each family member took the spotlight at different points during the story. Now, considering them as a single entity striving towards a common goal, things are falling into place very nicely.

Oh, and there's much, much more on how to apply this concept practically in the book. Don't worry, I didn't spoil it for you, I just gave you a little taste of what's in store.

The second part on screenwriting structure is both surprising and traditional. Very traditional, indeed, because where structural points are concerned, Ms. Marks harks back to Syd Field in a pretty basic form: two plot points and a midpoint, that's all you get.

However, she adds a lot of content to the model. Not in terms of 'points to hit', but in how she describes what is happening to your protagonist during each act (act 2 is, once again, divided into two parts). The transformational process is described in painstaking detail.

The graphical representation of the screenplay is quite different from what we usually see - instead of a mountainous range, it's a bell curve, created by folding open a circle. Each quadrant of the circle (an act) has its own descriptor to indicate how the protagonist is 'feeling' with regards to the transformation at that point. So it's quite clear, visually speaking, though I personally don't like that the third act is on the same level as the first act. However, no one ever wrote a bad (or a good) screenplay because of a visual representation of a story structure, so this is merely a personal nitpick.

Throughout the book, the writing style is excellent: professional in tone, but very clear and easy to read without ever feeling dumbed down. It's a perfect example of a textbook, combining readability with content. There are some spiritual passages in the book, but they are never overbearing or preachy, and quite limited in number. Interestingly, though Ms. Marks has a Ph.D in mythology, there's very little Joseph Campbell in this book, and no explicit mention of the Hero's Journey whatsoever.

There's but one thing I truly disagree with in here (well, two things - I really really really don't like the ending of The Piano), and that's the analysis of Million Dollar Baby. I think the shift in the third act of that film is a stroke of genius, turning what seemed to be a very good version of a formulaic story we'd seen many times before(rags to riches) into a scarily realistic tragedy. Ms. Marks finds the shift too far removed from the story of the previous acts, and claims that Hilary Swank is the protagonist up to that point - but she's really not, it's Clint's story all the way. As the third act makes poignantly clear.

But this quibble aside (and who knows, you might agree more with her analysis than with mine), I wholeheartedly recommend this book to any screenwriter. And especially for beginners, this should be the second, third or fourth book you read when you're starting out. Because it will teach you a lot of important concepts which you will need to use in some form or another throughout your entire career, and it does so in an exemplary manner.

So, what are you waiting for? Get it here:

You'll be glad you did.

Know Your Ending

2009-07-11T19:54:00.003+02:00

What do we mean exactly by 'know your ending'? Is it just 'James Bond foils Goldinger's plan and kills him'? Or do you need to know more? And how does knowing the ending help you construct your screenplay? Doesn't that take all the fun out of it?

Let's tackle this last question first. There are some writers out there, who do not outline in any way, and who do not want to know where they're going when they start out on the journey. And a very small number of them actually succeed in finishing their scripts and getting them filmed. They are either natural storytellers who just know how to tell good stories well, or they are idiosyncratic writers who have established close partnerships with directors and/or producers who share their same aesthetic - and in many cases they are actually writer-directors.

For the huge majority of writers though, knowing where you're going to is actuallu a prerequisite for finishing the script. It focuses the mind, helps you invent characters, incidents, thematic images etc. and it allows you to build a story with definite forward movement because you know where you're going.

And as for the fun being taken out of it if you know your destination - well, don't forget that during the writing process, you can change your mind whenever you want about what the ending should be. In fact, in many cases it will! And the journey to the ending will definitely add so many details, so much knowledge and so many opportunities to your story, that it will evolve naturally into something different than what you first imagined it would be.

Now, on to the meat of the question - when do you know your ending?

First, when we talk about the ending, in this case we mean the climax, i.e. the moment at which the dramatic question which powers the script is answered. To take Star Wars as an example, the dramatic question there is: will Luke Skywalker succeed in defeating the Empire? The answer to that question is: yes. That's a no-brainer.

Casablanca has a trickier dramatic question to answer: will Rick get Ilsa back? Here you have more options as a writer. Yes, she goes back to her true love, no, she stays with her husband, no, he dies, no, she dies, no, her husband dies and she becomes a nun out of guilt, yes, but Victor comes along for the ride and they go through life as a happy threesome... So answering your dramatic question in this case is quintessential to being able to write a compelling script.

So depending on the story you're telling, this basic answer can be quite hard to determine. And determine it you must, to know how you're going to build up to that answer.

Secondly, once you have your central answer to the dramatic question, you need to know some details about your climax. Not just the 'what', but also the 'how'.

To take the Star Wars example again: Luke will defeat the evil plans of the Empire, but the modalities of this event could have been totally different. There could have been an infiltration of the Death Star, or a strike on the governmental buildings on Coruscant, Grand Moff Tarkin could have been assassinated which might have thrown the entire military operation in disarray, Luke could have faced off against Vader face-to-face... Instead, Lucas chose to build the climax around a bombing run, and made Luke's choosing the Force over technology the crucial moment which cemented his internal transformation.

But as I mentioned earlier, it's perfectly natural for the 'how' (and occassionally the 'what' as well) to change during the writing process. In the case of Star Wars, George Lucas had developed several completely different drafts over the years before settling on the story he finally shot. (Many elements of the earlier incarnations of the story -unfortunately- showed up in the Prequel trilogy.)

Looking at Casablanca's climax, the importance of knowing your theme becomes especially clear. If, say, Rick had sold Victor out to the Nazis and remained in Casablanca together with Ilsa, the theme of the film would have been that true love is more important than moral integrity, or the end justifies the means. If Rick helped Victor escape but then told him that Ilsa was staying with him, that would be another theme altogether. The actual ending cements the theme that altruism (in this case also linked strongly to patriotism) is the highest ideal. A different climax means your story has a different underlying message.

So, knowing your ending means knowing how you are answering the central dramatic question, and how your protagonist and antagonist are going to interact during the climax of the story. And ideally it also means knowing the theme your story expresses, and expressing it through the details of the climax - though in quite a few cases, you will only discover your real theme in the course of the writing process.

We Get Requests - Getting past Go (or Act One, to be precise)

2009-07-08T17:09:00.002+02:00

Here it is - the first topic suggested by a reader of the blog!

And it's about a situation I've found myself into more than once. I just hope that my musings and suggestions on the matter are of interest and can help you out somewhat!

When I was a kid, I loved writing stories. It was one of my favourite pastimes.

Well... I loved writing the BEGINNING of stories.

You see, I was going to be this amazing science fiction author, and I had a couple of books full of pulp magazine covers of the '20s and '30s - wonderfully evocative pieces of popular art which couldn't help but get the heart and imagination of a twelve-year old pumping. And these covers inspired me to dream up my literary masterpieces.

Except...

As soon as I sat down at the typewriter (my god, was I ever that young??), and started typing away, by the time I reached the end of the first page, I had a 'far better' idea for another story. Which I started right away - this was the one I was going to tell, no matter what!!

Except... ad infinitum.

More than thirty years later, I still struggle with the same problem. Not when working on a TV series, but when working on my own spec projects and ideas. I'll go over the same part of the story ad infinitum, and end up with nothing but a first act that's all dressed up and has nowhere to go.

So what's at the root of this problem?

There are a few causes. First and foremost: FEAR.

Fear of failure makes us subconsciously sabotage our own projects. How does this work? Well, if you don't finish something, no one can reject it... (I actually pulled this stunt some 10 years ago, when I had the opportunity to write the pilot script for a new comedy series I'd developed with a producer for the network... stupid, stupid, stupid)

How to overcome this - well, apart from realizing the psychological mechanism at work in yourself and then getting REALLY ANGRY about it, the best ways I have found are 1) get a definite deadline, so you're forced to get on with things

OR
2) get a writing partner. If you're working on a script with two people, there will always be at least one to keep things moving - even if only by goading the other half of the partnership into action. The very fact that someone else is counting on you to write the stuff, is a great motivator.

If you don't want a writing partner, a reading partner or some sort of coach could also do the trick - although you have to be careful with giving someone access to your script or story before it's finished. Because then another self-destructive psychological mechanism can come into play: you've already told your story, the creative urge to communicate has been sated, and you let the project drop because 'it's been done'.

Now, on the level of writing the script, there's also a reason why you can't get past Act One: you haven't done sufficient homework.

It's relatively easy to have an idea for a great opening to a movie, or to invent an inciting incident/plot start which really upsets someone's apple cart and has great promise for becoming an exciting, engaging screenplay.

It's far, far harder to think of an amazing finale for a movie. How many times have you come up with an incredible climax, and then thought 'hmmm, what story would fit this ending'? I'm betting it's a very rare occurence. (granted, if you're dreaming up a new Bond or Indy or Godzilla adventure, you might have more chance of this).

And that's pretty easy to explain. Dreaming up a climax means that you're answering a dramatic question. Which is very difficult if you don't know what that question is and who or what it involves.

Conversely, coming up with a basic dramatic question is far easier. It's also the logical starting point for the creative experience.

And it's easy to get lost in the excitement of the moment. At times, it may seem as if all the parts of the script puzzle are falling into place automatically. But certain aspects of the puzzle don't come quite that easily.

Most importantly: how unique is your protagonist? Has s/he got a real personality, with quirks, flaws, dreams, needs and goals? Or is he just Generic White Male Heroic Tween #245 who's only fit for the lead in Transformers 3 - It Gets Worse?

And secondly: what's the theme of your story? And does the psychological make-up of your main character fit this theme? Similarly, what about the antagonist - how is s/he related to the theme and the values it expresses?

The reader who asked me to tackle this topic said that he once he hit Act 2, all he could come up with were clichés or things he'd seen before or considered trite. That, to me, seems like proof that the above elements probably weren't considered sufficiently in order to create a unique and original story (no matter what the genre).

Then again, another good reason for getting stuck once you're past act One is that you don't know your ending, or not well enough - or that the ending you've considered is not the correct one for your story. And once again, this means doing the necessary preliminary work (and it's intimately linked to the previously mentioned elements) before trying to complete your story.

Something which can help you overcome this problem is using a very detailed structural model, such as provided in the Contour software or Blake Snyder's Save The Cat. Because these models are so elaborate and at times very specific, they may help you formulate concrete answers to the story questions
which elude you. However, this won't work for everyone - it depends on how your creative process works. Some people will feel too constrained by this approach, while for others it will unlock ideas they didn't even know they could have.

But, to sum up, in order to get past Act One, you must:

- Know your protagonist (and to a very slightly lesser degree your antagonist)
- Know your theme
- Know your ending!!!

Good luck!

The Trouble With Sequels - The Sequel

2009-07-05T23:10:00.006+02:00

Yesterday, we looked at sequels which don't work as well as the film which started the franchise. But of course, there are more than a few examples of sequels which do work as well as (or sometimes even better than) the original film in the series.

So how do these films manage to succeed where others fail? And do they have certain elements in common?

First up, the (original) Star Wars Trilogy.

In Star Wars, Luke Skywalker goes on a very explicit Hero's Journey, moving from callow innocent to seasoned warrior with a special gift (The Force) and a destiny - resurrecting the Jedi.

In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke turns out not to be the perfect warrior yet- he's just begun mastering Jedi skills, and is sent to Yoda to complete his training. Impatient and headstrong, Luke is not a perfect student, and he rushes off to do battle with Darth Vader long before Yoda thinks he's ready for it. The result is a resounding defeat and the loss of his hand.
So in this sequel, we see the continuation of Luke's growing process - and this time, impatience and stubbornness, two facets of his character which weren't really important in the first film, provide the inner conflict in an organic and believable way.

In Return of the Jedi, Luke has become a full-fledged Jedi, and goes to face his enemies (Vader and the Emperor) on more-or-less equal footing. Seen over the course of the three films, this is the culmination of his apprenticeship; in the film itself, however, Luke has almost no arc left, and his story (except for the finale of the climax sequence) is mainly played out on the external level. Small wonder Return of the Jedi is the weakest of the original trilogy.

Still, what we have here is a transformational arc which takes three films to complete (as they forge one BIG story). This is why it's possible for Lucas, Kasdan and company to keep the audience interested in the way Luke's story is played out. Similarly, Frodo's inner journey in The Lord of the Rings takes the three books and movies to explore completely - and Harry Potter keeps maturing and learning different life lessons over the course of seven books and probably eight films.

Okay, that's trilogies, which tell one story over several instalments. But what about straight-up sequels to a first film which completely finishes its arc?

Let's take a look at Back To The Future. In the first film, Marty McFly faces two problems: stuck in the '50s on the day his parents met, he has to get them together even though his mom has the hots for him; and secondly, he has to return to the '80s.
He succeeds at both tasks, and in doing so transforms the people he's met, resulting in a totally different present when he returns to 1984. Marty himself, though, doesn't change much during the film - he's more of a catalyst protagonist than someone who goes through an arc.

In the second film of the series, Marty suddenly has an important flaw: whenever someone challenges him, he has to take up the challenge - even if it's really stupid or dangerous to do so - because he can't bear to be thought a coward. This button gets pushed several times in the film, and leads to disastrous results. And it's a flaw which doesn't get resolved in the film, either (and it's perfectly acceptable and believable that this is the case).

Now, this flaw fit the character of Marty McFly so well, that the first time I saw the sequel, I was convinced it had been present in the first film as well, and I was flabbergasted when I discovered it wasn't. So that's some really clever and well-done character development: adding a new aspect of the character which feels as if it's been there forever.

In the third film, Marty's flaw finally gets 'cured' back in the Wild West, when he finally realizes it's better to be alive and thought to be 'chicken' by folks who don't really matter, than to be a dead would-be hero. As the problem wasn't solved in part 2, having the arc close in part 3 works - though there is a certain amount of repetitiveness creeping into the whole endeavour.

And then there are the first three Rocky films: in part one Rocky triumphs over his own limitations, but doesn't win the championship; in part 2, he gets another shot at the championship against the same opponent, and this time he wins - the lessons learned in the first film leading him to (wish fulfillment) triumph. And in the third film, he's let success go to his head, which leads to him losing his fighting edge and the moral and psychological strength he had developed. After having everything taken away from him, he has to come back from the pits of despair and reclaim his abilities. Part 4 eschews any real arc and just has the best American boxer beating on the best Soviet boxer in a purely external conflict.

Finally, there's still another option: the movie series with the 'unchanging' hero. James Bond pre-Brosnan, Indiana Jones, Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan... The character is fully formed from the moment we meet him, has a number of quirks and flaws in place which will remain with him throughout the series. The character's attractive to the audience 'as is'. This method can work very well - in fact, all episodic television is based on it. If the lead character is exciting/intriguing/interesting enough, we want to see him go through his paces again time after time after time.

The trick here is to make the character seem rich enough psychologically so that internal transformations aren't necessary to keep us emotionally invested in the proceedings. And to be sure that the storytelling is so strong and inventive that the external storyline is entertaining and exciting enough to entrance the audience.

Quite often, this translates into a (very effective) formula which can be repeated ad inifitum, providing the same type of thrills for its target audience - and if you look at the success of series like House, M.D., getting the formula right is a recipe for long-lasting success. And this formulaic approach doesn't even necessarily mean you're producing an inferior product - House, M.D. is a very effective cross-fertilization of the whodunit story mechanic with the hospital series, for instance, with excellent performances and very effective humorous dialogue.

(As an aside, the reason the Brosnan Bonds don't do the transformational arc succesfully is because they just add random flaws to the character which don't really fit the Bond image.
In Goldeneye, he feels guilty for years because he couldn't rescue his friend/colleague from the Russians. Bond, feeling guilty without doing anything about it? Really?
In Tomorrow Never Dies, he meets an ex-girlfriend he ran away from because things got too serious. Bond the wimpy commitmentphobe, really?
In The World Is Not Enough, he falls in love with the villainess and has to choose between loving her and saving M. In Bond's world, that's not even close to a dilemma.
And in Die Another Day, he has to piece himself together again after having been captured and tortured by the North Koreans for months on end - a process which takes as long as getting a shave and a haircut. All these elements are either tacked on to the character or not really investigated in any depth, with the result that they weaken the quintessential nature of the Bond Archetype.)

So the solution to keeping your sequels as fresh and exciting as the original are:

- tell one larger story over several installments, which keeps your protagonist growing and transforming throughout

- add new but organic flaws to your protagonist and make sure this new internal plot matches your external plot (which might be somewhat more formulaic in nature)

- Have your main character evolve organically from film to film, so that the new adventure is caused by or influences his/her current state of being

- keep your protagonist unchanged but make him/her an emotionally rich character, and either tell only an external story or have him/her go through challenges time and again which fail to change them (the latter applies to comedies, primarily)

And above all - realize that sometimes a character is used up, and either has to be changed fundamentally or should be allowed to retire gracefully in the collective subconcious of global pop culture.
Good luck convincing the bean counters of this, though...

Just a note about comments

2009-07-04T18:39:00.001+02:00

Anonymous comments have now been enabled. So post away without any cumbersome logging-in procedure!

The Trouble With Sequels

2009-07-04T12:44:00.002+02:00

While reading Dara Marks' Inside Story (review coming up as soon as I finish it), it suddenly struck me why so many sequels don't deliver the goods, despite bigger budgets, more pyrotechnics, SFX, gory kills or extreme comedy situations (since most sequels fall into the action, science fiction, horror and comedy genres).

And the reason is: the story of the protagonist has been told.

In the original film, both the character, the plot lines (external and internal), and the specific style of the film (and this can include the basic formula on which the sequels will be based) are new. The external plot and the internal plot (external conflict and the transformational arc of the protagonist) generally reinforce each other. And the protagonist is transformed at the end of the movie, meaning that his/her main flaw has been adressed and overcome.

Which means that in a sequel, a crucial part of the attractiveness of the original film is no longer available for storytelling purposes (unless the same pyschological problem is rehashed literally).

What remains are the external elements of the original. Which are amped up to eleven, in an attempt to provide the same visceral thrills as the original film - but only more so. However, what made the original special was the interplay between the two levels of storytelling (and, quite probably, the thematic level as well).

So the result in most cases is (literally) more of the same, yet simultaneously less of the same.

The Die Hard series is a perfect example of this phenomenon.

In Die Hard, John McClane has to save his wife from the terrorists who have taken the Nakatomi building hostage. In doing so, and facing the reality he may never see her again, he realizes that he was mainly at fault in their marital crisis. When they are reunited in the climax, it's clear to the audience that this couple has gone through hell and has come out on the other side reinforced and more 'together' than ever before.

In Die Harder, McClane's wife is up in an aeroplane while terrorists have taken the airport hostage. He has to save her once again, but this time there's no internal struggle to engage the audience. The McClane marriage is safe and sound, and the threat against it is purely physical.

In Die Hard With A Vengeance, the internal flaw is back - with a vengeance. The McClane marriage is over, John is now a drunken wreck of a cop who has to save the city of New York which has more or less been taken hostage by a group of terrorists. The internal flaw here is only active in the beginning of the movie, however - once the action starts, McClane sobers up almost instantaneously and performs at peak potential throughout the adventure. And the climax and theme of the film have no connection with his new psychological weakness. Let's not forget that the film was based on a script which had nothing to do with the Die Hard series, and was shoehorned into it at some phase during its development. This may very well explain why there's no satisfactory arc for the McClane character.

In Die Hard 4.0, finally, all attempts at transformation have been abandoned. McClane is an invincible superhero masquerading as an everyday Joe from the start. He starts out as a concerned parent and ends up as a concerned parent. In fact, the character doing the transforming in this film is the sidekick - the irresponsible young hacker who learns to take responsibility for his actions.

So we see that only in the first film there was an actual integration of the external and the internal plots (and to be honest, the integration wasn't 100% perfect - though good enough to give the film its extra emotional and psychological richness).

Of course, seeing McClane patch things up with his wife four times in a row also wouldn't have worked. So, frankly, the sequels were doomed from the start to be inferior to the original - not because of the action being less spectacular (if anything, it got to be far TOO spectacular), but because of the humanity of the protagonist getting lost from the first sequel on out. Because his story had already been told.

And it was precisely this element of humanity which made John McClane such a compelling protagonist, and which catapulted Bruce Willis out of the ranks of 'TV stars making a failed bid for movie stardom' to one of the most succesful and popular film stars of the '90s.

An Interview with martial artist/choreographer/writer/stand-up comedian (and more!) John Kreng - Part 2

2009-06-28T21:48:00.004+02:00

Welcome to part 2 of the mammoth John Kreng interview. Coming up: lots of stuff that DIDN'T make it into John's enormous book, his views on what makes a good and a bad fight scene and his dream projects (which in this case will have to remain 'The Impossible Dream' unless someone perfects time travel in the next few years). Read on, True Believer!

Did you ever consider moving to Hong Kong to join the film industry there?

Yes. I am working on several projects and once they come to fruition I will let you people know about it. What I learned while writing my book is that by being Asian-American, I have been straddling both cultures all of my life. Which is why I felt uniquely qualified to write the book explaining styles of fighting in film for both Eastern and Western cultures. I hated it growing up and felt that I stood out like a leper at a fashion show because I just wanted to blend in and belong. But growing up, it has definitely paid off for me working in the film industry, because I have been able to understand both sides of the ocean when working on a film.

If a Western director wants a Hong Kong style fight, I can explain to them what each move means and the significance of why I am choreographing the fights in a certain way. I have also been able to help some Hong Kong Fight Directors who come here to work on American films, teaching them some Western pop culture history with regards to the history of the film and the actors they might be working with, so they can get a better idea of what they are doing.

At what point in your career did the idea for your book take shape? How much time did you spend writing it?

My friend Jeremy Cantor just finished writing a book on computer animation for short films, and his publisher was looking to expand into theatrical titles. We both went to the same karate school together, getting our black belts around the same time, and we also went to art school together. It was his suggestion to me and then to the publishers that I was the one to write the book.

The book took a little over 3 years to complete. It took that long because I had to define a process for creating a fight scene and determine the necessary elements that make an effective fight scene. I had to develop theories and ideas that had to work with almost every fight scene across the board. That was what took me so long. I would bounce my ideas off Jeff Imada and sometimes James Lew to see if they would hold up under their many years of experience. Some theories sank while others floated. Of course, I kept the ones that floated. They both knew me before I got into stunts and thought they were just being nice at times. But I knew I was onto something when I started talking to Vic Armstrong and Richard Norton, whom I did not know before the book, showing him part of my first chapter and they both told me that they really liked what I had written so far.

What are the biggest 'mistakes' or weaknesses that plague action and fight scenes nowadays?
Too much hand held- jittery camera work and getting it much too close so that the fight scene looks very vague. Also terrible editing of action sequences where the action does not make sense. My friends hate to see action films with me, because I usually end up complaining about the action scenes and that you could not see what was choreographed because of the shaky cam and/or epilepsy inducing editing work.

I couldn't agree with you more.

The general excuse the filmmakers use for doing this is because they want to get the audience emotionally into the fight as if they were present in the action, which is why they get in too close and create an artificial emotion with the shaky hand held shots and manic editing. They are thinking the audience will get bored with longer takes, but the choreography and acting end up suffering because of it. The problem is you do not see the cause and effect between the fighters on screen and cannot really appreciate the screen fighter’s skills. This was done in the 80’s when an actor was not very well coordinated and did not look effective on screen. But with today’s film budget and prep time, there is really no excuse for it.

A great example of what I am pointing out is in The Last Samurai, when Tom Cruise kills the multiple attackers in the streets of Japan at night with his samurai sword. The hype that came with the film was that he trained for over 6 months to prepare for the scene. But when you look at the scene, it was so heavily edited you could not tell how long he trained because you could not really see anything. The camera was too tight on Cruise, you could not see who was attacking him, while the editing was so quick and choppy, you didn’t have any visual idea what he was happening at all.

How would you like it if you were watching a basketball game where the cameraman is running up and down the court with a shaky hand held camera doing extremely tight close ups on Kobe Bryant’s or Lebron James’ shoulder or elbow as they quickly and deftly slice their way through their opponents and do an amazing slam dunk? Can you imagine seeing that for a whole game? It gets frustrating because the audience really does not see or witness the action unravelling before their eyes. But we get this all the time in Hollywood when it comes to action.

The sad thing I see is, I am beginning to see this trend happen in some films from Hong Kong and China copying this “so called style” of camera work and editing to capture action. Producers and filmmakers will always come up with the “catch all” answer by saying “Well, it made ‘X millions of dollars’ in the box office!” I feel they fail to realize you cannot substitute aesthetics for box office receipts. Film critics complain about this all the time in their reviews. But this all falls onto deaf ears.

It’s pretty frustrating because action films are my favorite genre. I always have high hopes for a big blockbuster action film coming out of Hollywood, that it will have well choreographed, shot, and edited action sequences. About 9 times out of 10 I walk out of the theater disappointed with how an action scene was finally presented. What makes it EVEN MORE frustrating is when I see an action film where the story and acting are incredible... completely drawing me in… but then the action sequences totally suck because of the reasons I just mentioned earlier! It’s like they don’t care about and treat the action like it’s an afterthought. It can be a curse or a blessing. A curse because I know all the stupid camera and editing tricks they keep doing repeatedly. But a blessing when you finally see a great fight scene put together. But that’s getting more and more rare these days.

I also feel part of the problem is they do not teach students how to shoot action scenes in film school. They are only taught how to shoot dialogue with other non-action scenes. Then the students try to shoot their action scene as if it was a dialogue sequence – camera left- camera right- and a master, thinking it will come out right in editing. This might happen only if it is a simple brawl. Unfortunately, it is usually not that simple and when they get out in the real world to shoot their own films, they are screwed and are left to their own devices to figure it out for themselves. I can only hope colleges that have film studies departments can use books like mine in their curriculum to help them out and give them some type of insight as to what is involved when shooting action.

What does your perfect fight scene look like, and why?

A perfect fight scene should advance the story and impact all the characters involved including peripheral ones who were not directly involved in the fight.
A great fight scene is also an integral part of the story and not included as a gratuitous scene.
Visually it should tell a non-verbal story where the techniques and style of the fight meshes with the story and the characters and you are able to appreciate the fight because you get to see it unravel right before your eyes with great camera angles and slick editing you don’t even notice. Also no shaky hand held cameras and choppy editing that can possibly take away from the emotional impact of the fight scenes. Can you tell this is a thorn on my side with me?

How hard is it for a fight choreographer or a stunt coordinator to protect their vision of the action scene? And can anything be done about it?

It depends on the fight choreographer’s relationship with the director, producer, director of photography, and editor. In the West, there is nothing that can be done about it because it is a directors and producers medium. Unless you have a good relationship with the Producer, Director and especially the Editor, you might get a chance to go in there and make suggestions as to how to put the fight scene together. If not, they can do whatever they want to it without having to refer to you.

In Hong Kong, the Fight Director has total control over what and how they shoot the action. Fans over there are well educated enough to will go to see a movie just because of the fight director. A lot has to change in the pecking order for a Fight Choreographer to have that type of autonomy here in Hollywood.

The book covers a lot of ground - but is there anything that got cut before publication?

The book only covers about 1/3 of what I really wanted to discuss with fight choreography for film and TV. I was going to go into more detail about how a technique and style can help tell a story. The history section was going to go more in depth about Women in action, the influence of Japanese films on fight choreography, and the history and use of CGI in a fight scene.

I am hoping that the book does well so it can merit an update of the book. But the book now has to do well in order to justify a 2nd edition. So PLEASE go out and buy a copy so I can write a 2nd edition!

You heard the man, folks!! Could you specify the cultural difference in appreciating fight scenes in movies in the West and in Asia?

Well, first off the martial arts are an integral part of Asian history. Whereas in the West the martial arts is more generally treated like something one does for leisure or a hobby. Firearms are illegal in almost all Asian countries, so unarmed self-defense is more important and emphasized , whereas we have the right to bear arms in the U.S.- so the concept of self-defense is much different.

Spiritually there is a huge difference between East and West and it shows in the training where in the East you “look within” for the answers like you see in many kung fu movies. That concept is absent in western martial arts films in the West because of the dominant Christian influence. In the West, using martial arts in a film is often seen as an exotic way for a character to beat someone up; whereas in Asia, a martial arts style is stylized to each character to show their intent and distinct personalities.

In Asia (especially with the kung fu movie archetype), the hero grows and matures because of the training. In the West, it is more of an issue of retribution, where the hero usually does not change that much from the beginning to the end except gives the villain their comeuppance from the hero. And because of these differences we see the differences in how the martial arts is portrayed in film on both sides of the ocean.

When it comes to execution of the action… In Hong Kong they are performing the actual stunt while filming it. But in the West, we are creating the illusion of doing the actual stunt or fight. The Hong Kong stuntmen are more like daredevils than stuntmen in their mentality. Because of safety regulations in the US, we cannot do what they are doing. This is very apparent when you watch a lot of Hong Kong action films in the 80’s to the mid 90’s. Since their films are usually lower in budget (compared to Hollywood), they have learned to be economical but more effective with their time and how they shoot action.

Oftentimes they edit the action in camera. That means they shoot only what they know they need for their action scenes. They are not afraid to “cross the line” especially when the room or environment is already established in the shot. In the West, we tend to overshoot the action from different angles and let the editor piece together the action. The problem with this is you don’t always get the right angles that you will need to get the fight to look right.

What I learned while writing my book was that the more successful action films are a representation of the times while being the collective hopes and dreams of the people of that country. It is sometimes also how a country wants them to be perceived in an almost mythical way.

It's often said (for instance by French film director and Hong Kong cinema fanatic Christophe Gans) that in Western films, the story stops when a fight scene occurs, while in Chinese film the fight scene actually develops the story. Do you agree with this statement in principle? If not, why not?

I cannot say I completely agree with that but I do agree with it when it comes to todays big budget studio action films. It has definitely been a trend for at least the last 15 years and I feel it is rapidly getting worse because Hollywood became more technology co-dependent on CGI, shaky camera moves, and rapid fire editing to enthrall an audience. The studios have turned action films into this senseless rollercoaster ride when after you leave the theater you really don’t know what you saw let alone know what the film was about. Nothing sticks to you emotionally because most of them are void of it.

This is why I like and appreciate lot of older films that have action or fight scenes in Spartacus, Emperor of the North, The 9th Configuration, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Blackboard Jungle, From Russia With Love, and Goldfinger. These films have some of the best fight and action scenes that still hold their own to this day. All of the action scenes were well integrated into the story and did not stop the story but actually advanced it.

Can you give an example of a gratuitous fight scene which you still enjoy because of the spectacle, skill of the performers or creativity involved in the choreography?

The striptease fight scene in Firecracker with Jillian Kessner in the factory was pretty gratuitous. Unfortunately I did not like it for the choreography but thought the ingenuity as to how she lost her clothes throughout the fight as pretty funny, gratuitous, and a spectacle…it also helped that she was pretty hot! You don’t know how many times I’ve had her image painted on the back of my eye lids when I was growing up! (Laughs)

For me anything that is gratuitous takes me out of the film. The final fight scene in Equilibrium where they combined gun fighting with Wing Chun style hand trapping was very clever and unique and also fit into the universe that was created with the story like the gun kata, etc. Really cool stuff! My friend Jeff Imada told me he choreographed those moves in pre-production but could not stay on as the Stunt Coordinator once production started.

However the director’s follow-up Ultraviolet really disappointed me because I thought, here was a director who” got it” and understood how fight choreography could be unique, different, and add to the mythos of the film. But Ultraviolet showed how Hong Kong-style fights do not work all the time. They were just boring and didn’t really have a real purpose for being so long. There was no authentic emotional conflict going on during the action sequences and it was too much about the cool wu-shu moves that had no emotions behind them. It was senseless and had no individual spirit to it as Equilibrium did.

Likewise, can you give an example of a fight scene which you used to like but now, with all your experience as a stunt performer, choreographer and storyteller, no longer hold in such high esteem?

Many of the Western made martial arts films in the 70’s to the mid 90’s. It was a time when producers would just hire martial artists who they saw at a tournament or a school they knew near them. But they had no real theatrical combat experience, nor did they know how to tell a non-verbal story with their choreography. It really shows when you look at those films today, especially when you compare them to the Hong Kong fight choreographers during that time period.

Even though they might have varied the techniques from fight to fight, the real problem was that it was very one-step sparring like. They looked very rehearsed and did not have any real kinetic energy and emotion to them, because the cadence and timing of all the fights were the same, all using full beats in their timing. Subtlety was not a part of the vocabulary back then. Fakes and blocks are non-existent too. It’s like listening to a lecture given by someone who talks at a same monotone level without any change in tone, emotion, and direction. Eventually you will lose attention and nod off! That’s not good!

The other problem with martial arts fights in the west is that they also abide by the rule of the brawl, where every technique either makes contact or is thrown to knock the opponent out with one strike. In addition, the fighters hardly block anything and just stand there and get hit as if it was a sadistic macho contest to see who can absorb the most amounts of hits. It’s pretty ridiculous when you really look at it.

I used to like the fight scene in The Warriors between the Baseball Furies and The Warriors before I professionally got into fight choreography. But after seeing it again, I realized they used the same technique (swinging the bat in a downward fashion at the opponent’s head only to be blocked) from different angles to make it look like a continuous fight. The lead up to the fight was great much like a samurai film, but the actual fight and pay-off left me high and dry.

Aesthetically the fight was monotonous and made no real strategic or practical sense as to why they made those choices. When you think about it, this tells the audience the fighters have no practical experience or common sense in a fight. However I feel the fight in the subway station restroom was much better in comparison because it had a lot of variety, was very clever, and did not repeat themselves with the same techniques.

In many ways the screenwriter and the fight choreographer find themselves in a similar situation in Western film- and TV-making: they can only hope that their original vision is translated (and occasionally improved, though far more often the opposite happens) acurately and respectfully on the screen. Do you think there is a way for writers to help fight choreographers with their work?

It’s not really a screenwriter’s job to choreograph a fight scene describing technique for technique, but it would help if they described the different emotions and any character traits (physical and emotional) that they feel might be exposed during the fight. If they described the fight blow for blow it would take up valuable space on the page where they could use it for something else. If the screenwriter can tell us the reason of the fight and the emotional intent behind it that would make a huge difference in how we put together a fight scene.

Can you tell us a little more about how Enter The Grill Master came about?

Grillmaster was one of the earlier films I worked on where I was a stunt coordinator/fight choreographer. We hired some great screen fighters for this short film. 2 of them were graduates of Yusaki Kurata‘s Action Club in Japan and were incredible to work with and made my job very easy. Another is a good friend, Jo Eric Mercado, a Tae Kwon Do black belt who had some incredible kicking skills. We had a lot of fun on that set. I learned a lot about how to work with actors who are not martial artists on that film. You have to teach them with a shorthand approach where you only teach them what they need to know. We shot it at an incredibly unusually hot time of the year (over 100 degrees) in the San Fernando Valley in the course of 2 or 3 weekends with another 3 weekends of rehearsal.

The main problem was getting the lead actor ready for the part because he only trained with me twice for about an hour each time and had no idea as to what would lay ahead. But to be honest, I feel it all worked out for the better because he did not look like a martial arts master which made it more comical.

This job immediately led to me working as a stunt coordinator/fight choreographer on 3 films for Roger Corman’s studio- Hard As Nails, Shakedown, and The Haunting of Slaughter Studios. I feel it is there was where I began to come into my own as a fight choreographer and stunt coordinator.

Readers can check out the great Fu and goofy comedy of Enter The Grill Master right here.

Enter The Grill Master | Movies & TV | SPIKE.com

And here's the music video full of behind-the-scenes material:

But back to you, John. What are the main challenges for a fight choreographer?

Here is a list of the main challenges that confront a fight choreographer in no real order of importance…

TIME- Often times a fight choreographer is given little time to put together a fight scene. Sure Yuen Woo Ping is given 6 months to train the lead actors for The Matrix, but that is much more the exception than the rule. If fight choreographers were given more time to choreograph AND shoot a fight scene, we would probably get better looking fights. This rule also includes working on an action film, because they feel the dialogue is more important. You are lucky if you are able to get all the necessary angles to edit the fight scene effectively. Time is always one of the things you will not have on your side as a fight choreographer because there’s always something that eats into your schedule, making you lose essential time.

AVAILIBILITY OF LOCATION- often times you won’t be able to see the place you will be doing the fight scene when you are first choreographing it. So this also cuts into the time you are given to put your fights together.

COVERING ANGLES- in the West we can only suggest to the DP the angles to shoot. We can only hope the DP knows the right angles that makes the action look effective. Great angles makes the techniques pop and you have to have a good eye and know what angles work and what angles make your fights look flat.

MULTIPLE TAKES- If you have a DP that is not experienced at shooting fight scenes then chances are he will have to shoot a fight several times in order to get in sync with the stuntmen. The problem is that the more takes he has to shoot for each scene, the more tired the stuntmen will get. After several takes of the same fight, they will start to look sloppy and inconsistent.

It would save time and energy help if the DP would start to watch the end of rehearsals once they have the fight scene down so they can begin to get in synch with the fighters and start to block where they think they will place the camera and what angles they want to use.

I was working on a shoot once where the DP said he had shot a lot of action. We were shooting the fight scene and he was not in sync with the fighters. We consistently had to have several takes from each angle before he was able to finally get it right. Then after he got it right, he wanted to have several re-shoots for safety. This was pissing off the stuntmen when they all knew they were all hitting their marks, and wanted to move on because they were getting tired and it was getting late. This was not good and you don’t want a set full of pissed off stuntmen mad at you.

I later found out later the DP’s only experience with shooting action was with cars for commercials and where he shot lots of footage so the editor could edit what they felt was right. That was his approach with the fight scene and he did not seem to care that he was burning out the stuntmen and was wondering why they could not do the same fight after the 7th or 8th take going at it full speed! The lesson here is just because you shoot one type of action does not mean you can shoot all types of action.

You also work (or have worked?) in the video game industry. What games have you worked on? Did you manage to put your ideas on fight choreography to use in the game development, or conversely did the game development lead to new insights with regards to your choreography work?

I was the stunt coordinator for Full Spectrum Warrior and was associate producer as well as mo cap performer for several characters on Art of Fighting. Choreographing fight scenes for video games is much more hard work than for films. Simply because of all the variables involved with the characters and you need to film (or capture) all of them with motion capture. So you are essentially doing 3-10 times the work you would on a film, depending on the characters and the possibilities of each character involved.

Finally - if money and cast were no object, do you have a dream movie project?

OK you asked for it. This one is really going out on a limb. I am taking 'if the cast were no object…'. Turn back time and get Bruce Lee back to have him to finish Game of Death with all the actors and athletes he wanted in the film. I would also like to see how he would have done The Silent Flute. I thought Circle of Iron was pretty lame as far as the fights were concerned and really want to see what Bruce would have done with it. The other projects I have are just that…a secret… for now!

Thanks a million, John, for taking all this time out to answer my questions in such depth - and good luck with your secret projects!!
And for anyone who's interested in finding out more about John's approach to the art of film choreography, here's the link once again where you can get it:

An Interview with martial artist/choreographer/writer/stand-up comedian (and more!) John Kreng - Part 1

2009-06-28T20:09:00.005+02:00

A couple of months ago, I reviewed John Kreng's book Fight Choreography: The Art of Non-Verbal Dialogue on this blog. Thanks to the miracle of Facebook, I managed to contact mr. Kreng, and after reading the review he very graciously agreed to do an e-mail interview - and here it is! John went so far beyond the call of duty, I've split the interview up in two parts as there's almost as much to read here as in his book!!!
Clear the dojo, make sure you have ample time to read this and crank up either your Enter The Dragon soundtrack or Under The General's Marching Orders - better known in the West as the Wong Fei Hung-theme, amply featured in the Once Upon A Time In China-series.

To start, a very important and essential question: if you, Jet Lee, Jackie Chan and Donnie Yen were locked in a room and had to fight to the death, who would win?!??

On any given day any of these guys would take the prize. But I do know one thing for certain… I would be the first person to be trembling in a puddle of my own piss while looking for a way to burrow myself out of there! LOL! And by the way… Why didn’t you also include James Ryan, Kurt Thomas, Jillian Kessner, David Bradley, Michael Dudikoff, the 3 Ninja kids, Billy Zabka, Ralph Macchio, Johnny Yune, Bruce Li, Bruce Lo, Bruce Le, and all the other Bruce clones??? Come on Wout... share the love, brother! (Laughs)

Well, I thought the room was crowded enough with just the four of you, but I guess the more the merrier (and I totally should have included Sammo Hung in that group)! Back to more serious matters: How did you get started as a martial artist and what styles did you learn?

I was always interested in the martial arts as a kid when I would watch James Bond films and the Green Hornet TV series with Bruce Lee. There is a science and a belief system within the martial arts that always intrigued me. I started in martial arts when I was a kid about to go into Junior High School (7th grade) because I felt like I was going to be a little fish in a bigger pond. We heard rumors that people we knew were getting beat up and harassed and I was afraid.

I was always interested in taking lessons but didn’t know much about it and what one might have to do to take lessons. This was right before the kung fu boom in the 70’s when martial arts was still considered “exotic” and kind of cultish and kids classes were not the bread and butter of a martial arts school like they are today. This was also a time when it was not as commercialized, genericized, and commonly accepted in the West as it is today.

The year before I started taking lessons, I was visiting my relatives who escaped from Vietnam during the previous year and several of them were black belts who were living in France as refugees. One of my cousins came home with bruises on the arms and I asked them what happened. He told me he was free-sparring with a friend of his. It was a strange concept to have a “friendly fight with a friend.” To me (at that time) it was a contradiction in so many ways. He explained what free-sparring was about where you are testing your abilities in a non-rehearsed but controlled situation where you do not try to destroy your opponent. He then told me what the training entailed when you first started out without any of the “smoke and mirrors” by taking the mystery out of it and what I would learn and how it could change my approach to life in a positive way. He continued to tell me that many of my cousins had previously trained and many were black belts and encouraged me to take it up. That really opened my eyes because he did not overexaggerate or tell me any tall tales about his experiences.

Coming back to the States, I was determined to learn, but my mom never had the money for my lessons. So I was stuck with introductory lessons for several years as a birthday present. In-between those times I would actively seek out anyone who I knew trained or knew anything about martial arts and I would ask them to teach me what they knew.

My first style I learned as a kid was Tae Kwon Do. At first, it was a pretty traumatic experience for me because up to that point, I was the last kid picked for team sports and with Sensei looking over and scrutinizing every move I made it a very uncomfortable experience. Needless to say, I was not a natural at it and was extremely un-coordinated when I first started. I could not do the simple twisting type punches from your hip that all karate styles do. My teacher was one of those strict traditionalists who used negative reinforcement to motivate you. He told me that I should not buy a gi because he did not think I would not make it past my first belt exam. Unfortunately, it created doubt in my mom and she thought that I might not be good at this and we did not continue with him and waste his time and her money.
But I was determined to stick to it and I was going to get it, which I did by training diligently by myself all summer. I would study Aikido for several years and various different styles in-between. Then I finally stuck to a school and got my black belts in Tang Soo Do and Te-Katana Jujitsu. Over the years, I have learned many different styles and am not locked down in one particular ideology of a style. I appreciate every style and system that I have learned because they all have a different approach to combat and life. But don’t ever ask me to do a karate twisting punch! I’m in therapy because of that! (Laughs)

But as a kid and in my teen years, I had aspirations of being a great tournament fighter and eventually get into movies. I went to Los Angeles for the summer before I graduated high school to visit family and was able to scope out the place. I asked a tour guide (who was an actor) if he could give me advice. He asked me what my specialty was? I told him I was a martial artist and that I wanted to be the next Bruce Lee! He laughed to himself and told me I was in the wrong city for that type of stuff. See, this was when Hollywood looked upon the martial arts film genre as just a small notch above porno movies. So, I had to think of a way to come back out to L.A. but with some other talent that could be marketable. Little did I know that it be stand up comedy that got me back out to Hollywood several years later.

Have you added any styles to your curriculum since you became a fight choreographer?

Yes! Whenever I get a chance to I will take the time to learn something new. The more you study the martial arts the more you realize that you really don’t know that much especially when you stray outside of your base style. You’ve got to understand several different approaches/styles to a fight because every style has their individual strengths and flaws. What if you were a pure Tae Kwon Do stylist and were asked to choreograph a fight scene where the director wanted a high level of grappling? You would either lose the gig or do a really bad job with it.

It’s not like it was back in the 70’s and 80’s where a fight choreographer was only adept in one style and used a slightly modified version of one-step sparring as their form of fight choreography, where the transitions were made with a right handed lunge punch. What made the one-step sparring approach to fight choreography so terrible was that the cadence and timing was almost the same for each fight. Very boring! I feel the influence in the mid-to-late 90’s changed all that with Yuen Woo Ping in The Matrix, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Sammo Hung (with his TV show Martial Law) leading to the acceptance of Hong Kong style film fighting in the American mainstream films.

I feel a fight choreographer should constantly seek new ways to express visually through non-verbal dialogue a.k.a. fight choreography. I watch many different types of sports on TV where physical contact is involved to see how the players make contact under the rules of that specific game, like Australian rules football, the Thai game of seepak takraw, rugby, ice hockey fights, etc.

I will always keep my ear to the ground to check out action films from all over the world to see how they choose to express themselves. For example, I saw Ong Bak for a little over 2 years before it ever got noticed here in America.

I was on a guest panel at a film festival and a writer/director (who wrote and directed action films) said he only watches what comes out of the West and does not understand the Hong Kong style of fight choreography and thinks it was bull crap. He continued to say that he was only into realistic fights and does not believe in wires, anything exotic, or impractical and fights should be short and quick. I really wanted to tell him, “Well, what about the sword fights in the swashbuckler movies? They can be as long as kung fu movie fights! We don’t understand the subtleties but we still enjoy them?” I bit my tongue until it bled and did not say anything to the guy. But I thought to myself afterwards, 'How sad was that?' That this guy only limits himself to one way of physical expression when there’s so much out there that you can creatively draw from. It’s like eating steak and potatoes every night for dinner for the rest of your life. He was pretty arrogant if you ask me.

You became a stand-up comedian - when did that come about and how difficult was it to break into that scene?

To make a long story even LONGER… I was competing at a karate tournament at Madison Square Garden in NYC and I wondered to myself, 'Gee, is there something else I can do with my life other than this?', because martial arts was ALL that I knew and was good at, but I knew there was a huge expansive life outside of the dojo. I was a huge martial arts geek. I read almost every magazine and book and saw almost every martial arts movie that was out there.
A few months later, I was competing at another tournament and I tore my groin muscle. I went to several doctors and they told me that they would have to do surgery and afterwards one leg would be shorter than the other and I would be lucky if I could touch my toes and I would not be able to do martial arts EVER again! That scared the living hell out of me… but something told me not to do the surgery. So the lesson here is be careful what you ask for!

At the time, I was confused, restless, and did not know what I wanted to do with my life now that martial arts were no longer a part of it. It left a huge void that I now had to figure out how to fill. I went back to college to figure out what I was going to do with myself now. I changed majors often. I was a psychology major… then social sciences… then math… then computer science… then I finally became an art major. But the problem was that I could not draw (but I always had a deep desire to learn)! However my counselor told me they had classes where you could learn. I immediately learned after my first class that it was a frame of mind on how you saw things and the more your trained the better your skills would get. Studying art is where I would learn visual balance, composition, presentation, aesthetics, etc. (which I would later use with my thought process in how I constructed my fight choreography).

After several semesters being an art major I began to get restless and impatient because the projects as you advanced would get longer and longer. I needed some immediate gratification. Yeah, I’m an adrenaline junkie or I’ve got A.D.D. or both!

When I was in training in the martial arts, I was often the class clown by pulling pranks on my instructors (thank God they all had a great sense of humor) and fellow students. This attitude bled over into my art classes. I get bored very easily so it got out of hand one day and my art teacher, Mr. Forsythe, told me that I had to do something about it and felt it was a waste of energy to spend it on disrupting a classroom. He took out the newspaper and showed me an ad where a local comedy club was having open mike night for amateur comedians.

So I went and checked out the room and eventually got the courage to perform by going and having some of my close friends help encourage me to get up there. My first couple times up on stage were excruciatingly painful… not just for me… but for the audience as well! I think being dragged through a field of broken glass then jumping in a pool of salt water would’ve been much more enjoyable for them! But I knew deep down inside that if I stuck to it I would be good at it, and I did.

It took me close to a year of bad nights to get the hang of it, but I jumped into stand-up as passionately as I had into the martial arts. There were no classes to take so it was a constant trial by fire. I read and studied the history of stand-up comedy while watching, studying, and dissecting all of the great stand up comedians figuring out what they contributed to the art form. I quickly began to realize that fighting in martial arts had many similarities with stand-up. Like reading and sizing up an audience/opponent to know what they might fall for. Setting an audience/opponent up with a joke/technique and hitting them with a technique/punch-line they never expected.

I decided to fully commit to comedy when I was up in NYC studying art at Parsons School of Design, and felt that I could not fully express myself through stand-up. One night after class, I was at The Bottom Line watching Billy Crystal record a special. Watching him perfom changed my mind, so I finished up the semester and went home knowing this was what I was going to do. Boy, was my mom pissed! She was not pleased that I became an art major but I was going over the deep end when I told her I was going to tell jokes to strangers and try to get paid for it!

About a year later, I moved out to Los Angeles and I was accepted to The Comedy Store in Hollywood about 6 months later. I was there for a little over 10 years and learned so much . I was talking to Charlie Hill, a fellow comedian who I worked with back then and he told me that we both played at the hardest club in the world and survived to talk about it. This was because on any given night the line up would include Richard Pryor, Robin Williams, Andrew Dice Clay, Sam Kinison, Eddie Murphy, Jim Carrey, Chris Rock, etc. These are comedians who sell out theaters on a daily basis and then I had to follow them. The other comedians would sit in back of the club to see if I would sink or swim. It was like going to comedy college and I learned from the best. Sometimes I drowned, sometimes I would be able to turn the audience around and keep the momentum of the room going.

I did stand up professionally for about 14 years and had 3 national TV appearances and traveled across the U.S. as a headliner. I learned a lot of life lessons while doing stand-up. I remember briefly talking with George Carlin and he told me, “The more you know about yourself and the world around you, along with your life experiences- the more material you can take up on stage.” Looking back I realized I got into stand-up because I needed to do it. At the time it was the only way I could happily express myself.

When and how did you become a professional fight choreographer?
A good friend of mine that I competed against on the tournament circuit when I was younger, Stuart Quan (R.I.P.), was hired to be a fight choreographer on a small independent movie called A Party Called Earth sometime in the late 80’s. He couldn’t do the job, so he recommended me. That was my first job as a fight choreographer. I look back at it and kind of cringe at it because of my limited understanding of what fight choreography was at the time because it looked very one-step sparring-like.

That experience made me step back and think more about what I could do as a choreographer and my knowledge as a martial artist, realizing there was a huge chasm between both skill sets that I needed to bridge. Then I would work on other films as a screen fighter and realized that I had a deeper understanding of how a fight visually should look through my art school background, but I didn’t know how to marry the two just quite yet. Even thought I worked on The Master (starring Jet Li)a year or so earlier, I still could not grasp the concept of what I needed to do to orchestrate a fight scene.

Around this time, I also became very good friends with Jeff Imada, a Stunt Coordinator and martial artist. We were both members of a laserdisc store in L.A. Chinatown where we would rent the latest films from Hong Kong that weren’t available in U.S. mainstream stores. He would always ask me what good laserdiscs to rent and then ask me why I thought the action was good. So I described to him what I thought made them stand out. When I saw him next, I would ask him if he felt I was right about my description/critique of the action and he would give me his opinions of them. This went on for a while and it was through these conversations with Jeff that he really helped develop my critical eye towards action instead of “oooh-ing and ahh-ing” at anything that looked cool.

Then I got work from TC Media as a freelance journalist where I had the opportunity to interview Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan, and Yuen Woo Ping among others. I asked them questions about what they do and their creative process when I came to fights. This always fascinated me because I feel artists like them can create something from nothing.

It was also during this time I became friends with a filmmaker, Ron Strong, who is also known as a “walking film encyclopedia.” He’s helped refined my film education, sending me further down the cineaste rabbit hole. I’ve had countless conversations with Jeff and Ron about filmmaking and fight choreography over the years that have been extremely invaluable to me.

Then all this led to the point where I had to “do” instead of just “know.” Inside, I was percolating- nervous about if I could do this or not but wanting the chance to prove it to myself that I can actually do this. I was very restless at this time yet nervous whether I was able to do it or not. Then it wasn’t long before I got the job to choreograph the fight scenes for Enter The Grillmaster.

At what time did your interest in the storytelling aspect of creating a fight scene really take off?

Before I was choreographing my own stuff, I sensed a difference between choreographers, but could not structurally or technically point out what made that difference in their choreography. But whenever I saw a fight scene choreographed by people like Sammo Hung and Yuen Woo Ping, I was always on the edge of my seat, though I could not tell you what it was that they did to get that type of reaction from me. I did know I always wanted to do that myself.

That’s what made me think real hard after I worked on A Party Called Earth, because I was not really satisfied with what I did on it because it was not very natural-looking. I was very disappointed with myself and what I did with it, so I decided to put fight choreography on the back burner and focus more on being a professional stand-up because that was already heating up.

I decided to be proactive about learning to tell a story around 1990, when I was still professionally performing stand-up in Los Angeles, I got to a point where I was seen by lots of producers and talent agents who would frequently come to The Comedy Store looking for future talent. The producers told me that there was nothing as far as roles or anything really comedic for Asians. The only thing that was always available was the stereotypes of how Hollywood saw Asians at the time… the one dimensional characters - tourists with camera, refugees, convenience store owners, etc.

I was not really interested in doing that, which was why I loved doing stand-up because I felt I was breaking the stereotype by telling funny stories of how I saw the world without being unnecessarily demeaning to myself or the Asian culture. So I decided to learn how to write scripts by taking classes at UCLA Extension. There I learned the 3-act structure of story.

One of the classes I took was with Neill Hicks who specializes in writing action films. It was while taking his classes I learned and understood the 3-act structure of an action film and how important the emotional lead up to and action scene was.

Bruce Lee had this saying that went something like this... “Before I was into the martial arts, a kick was just a kick and a punch was just a punch. When I studied martial arts a kick was more than a kick and a punch was more than a punch. After I understood the concepts of the martial arts, a kick was just a kick, and a punch was just a punch.”

If you go on YouTube or any user online site where you can post your homemade fight scenes, you will see many martial artists who put up their fight scenes. You will notice a good majority of them are stuck on exotic or cool moves where “the technique is more than a technique.” Until the fight choreographer gets over the infatuation of the cool move in the fight, you cannot tell a story nor can you add natural personality to the fight because you are still concerned about the “ooh’s and ahh’s” instead of the emotional content of the fight scene.

If you look at Bruce’s fights and break them down, they are very simple in comparison to someone like Tony Jaa or Jackie Chan. But Bruce’s fights emotionally sucked you in. There was a lot of personality to them. He was in the moment with those fight scenes and you could feel it. Many people tried to copy Bruce’s techniques and his mannerisms in their films, thinking that was what made him unique. But they really miss the point because it’s not about the technique, but expressing the character through the fight scene that tells the story, while trying not to be trapped in the miasma of the technique.

How well do you feel have you been able to implement this in the work you've done?

I am very critical of my work and I often times see the flaws on the film and what could’ve made it better before I am able to ever celebrate anything I’ve ever done. I am too much of a perfectionist. Which is why I am going to direct my own short film sometime this fall.

You were a stuntman in The Master, Jet Li's first America-based film. What were the main lessons you took away from that experience?

This job was a miracle to me. A year earlier, I was at the Comedy Store working as a stand-up comedian. But there was a part of me that missed doing martial arts, but I could not because of my torn groin. I soon met Dr. Bloomquist, a chiropractor who said he could get my leg back together without surgery and he promised that I would be better than I was before my injury about 4 years earlier. Well, I was in intense holistic physical therapy for about 6-8 months. Then one day he told me that I could train again. I started training again and my skills started coming back to me pretty quickly. I am very grateful for him to get me back in shape in such a quick time. It was a real miracle. The first lesson here is that you have to believe in the impossible and that anything can happen if you put your mind to it. You also have to have the right people by your side that believe in you sometimes more than you do yourself, and that was Dr. Bloomquist.

It wasn’t long after that I met Roberta Chin who worked for Golden Harvest. She came down and saw me perform at The Comedy Store and we were talking about me possibly going to Hong Kong to perform my comedy where I would do half of it in Chinese and the other half in English and record it and possibly selling it to HBO. Unfortunately, the project did not come to fruition so she asked if I would be interested in auditioning for a movie she was producing. I wasn’t told who the director or the stars would be. She knew that I was a huge Hong Kong movie fan and I eventually got a part in it being a gang member.

The Master was my first ever job as a stuntman. It was much like on the job training for me. Many people turn their nose up to that film, but many don’t remember that it was one of Jet’s first films outside of Mainland China and he was still learning how to act and fight on film. This film was where I learned my screen fighting skills and began to understand how to construct a fight scene for film.

I learned that a fight scene is very organic in nature and the way they put fights together was through trying it out to see if it looks and feels right for the scene and then putting it together to make one cohesive piece. You have to know that I was in heaven there seeing how a Hong Kong style fight scene was created! We shot about 8 different fight scenes for that one scene and what you saw in the movie was a culmination of all those fights edited together. If you watch carefully you will see me dressed as three different people in that fight scene by the abandoned trolley station.

One of the lessons I learned was that if you are a martial artist and you have never worked on a set before, you have to be open-minded and flexible to what the fight director asks you do. It does not matter how many black belts or championships you have won, it still does not make you a filmmaker.

The reason I say this is because several stuntmen who were hired were real martial artists who did not understand how to fight on film. I kept my mouth shut because I wanted to learn and was one of the few on the set who knew who Jet Li, Brandy Yuen- the fight director, and Tsui Hark were and already admired their work. I just watched them work and did anything they told me to do. But I watched these guys continually put their foot in their mouths telling the fight director, “That would not work because a martial artist would not do that in real life!” They forget we are creating a fantasy and are hired to be stuntmen and not martial artists!

That’s one of the main handicaps in hiring a martial artist who has never worked on a film set, no matter how good you might think they are. They have a learning curve that could seriously take up a fight director's already hectic schedule. I’ve seen it happen often because they might be the star black belt of the dojo, or won some tournament, and they expect to be treated the same way on the set. Or maybe they don’t understand why they need to alter/stylize their techniques so it can read on film because they have been doing the same techniques repetitiously for many years, they feel awkward when they have to change it for film.

To a martial artist who has never been on a set before, it’s much like landing on a strange planet with different customs and ways of acting. My advice is to sit off on the side, shut up, watch, and learn. And when you are asked to do something… do it. But if you need to ask why you are doing something try not to come across like an arrogant fool. I’ve seen this happen too many times on sets and they end up not getting hired again because Hollywood is a very small town and everybody knows everybody and if you act like an idiot on a set word spreads around very quickly and they end up blowing off a potential career. Also do your homework and learn some stage or film combat skills by someone who has worked on a set as a stuntman or take a class before you walk onto a set.

When I worked on this film there were no real film stunt or film fighting schools around so I had to learn on the set. Master Yuen had a team of Hong Kong stuntmen and each of us were assigned our own personal stuntman to learn from. Brandy and his team would put together a fight scene and we had to watch our own assigned stuntman and see what they did as they went through the fight scene they choreographed. Then we would come in and copy exactly what they did… or at least try to.

We’d run through it several times while our own Hong Kong stuntman would give us pointers in-between each dry run to make it look better. Then they would each take us off to the side to clean things up if we needed to. I was fascinated at how quick they worked in putting together a fight scene. I was glad they worked fast because each fight was different from the previous and each one required something completely different from me.

It was with Master Yuen’s stunt team that I learned how important it was to stylize the techniques and how important reactions were and how our job as stuntmen was to make the star look as good as possible by how we sold the hits and reactions to whatever he threw at us. The hard part about working on a Hong Kong film with Jet was that he hit REALLY HARD!

If you notice many Hong Kong films during this time their angles never lied showing actual contact being made. Jet’s blows felt like as if I was jumping off a two story building and landing on the side of my face! And it wasn’t like you did this only one time! We had to do it over and over again! And remember we had to do about 8 different fights. Standing there as a sitting duck, exposed, and getting hit with a 25 lb sledge hammer over and over again! (Laughs)

I felt and heard my bones and tendons make a crunch noise every time Jet made contact on my body. I’ve been hit many times before in my career as a martial artist, but never as hard as Jet would hit me. He knew how to torque his body in a way that whatever he did, it would be the strongest. During one take, he hit me so hard the complete left side of my body went numb! Each time he hit me I thought to myself, “This is the end of my life as I know it! Please say we can go onto the next scene!” Then Tsui Hark would yell, “Cut! OK, let’s do it again!”

Tears would run down my eyes as my body was screaming at me for subjecting it to this bizarre and sadistic brand of torture. There was a lot of praying coming from me in-between takes, hoping we could move onto the next scene and a whole lot of cussing and crying when I or another stuntman would mess up a take and we would have to do the whole fight all over again!

One of the most important lessons I learned from this shoot was that the director really has to know what they want before they shoot their action scenes. These guys knew what they wanted with each fight scene and they often “edited in camera.” Every now and then they would shoot a master shot to cut into. You always hear directors say, let’s shoot this all in master shots from several different angles and then “fix it in post.” To be honest, I feel the director is being very lazy or they simply do not know what they want and are leaving it all up to the editor. That’s like throwing up all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle up in the air hoping that when it all hits the ground that it will be nicely put together. Just like your other shots in your film, you’ve got to know what shots you want before you shoot if you want your action to come out right.

The experience was not what I expected at all, but to be honest I did not know what I was expecting and I was grateful for the whole experience. We spent most of the time searching for techniques that would make everyone look good and have the maximum impact. The more we worked with the stunt team, the more they would understand our strengths and weaknesses. The stunt team would always push us further to see if we could do more than what they already knew we were capable of. It was like searching for buried treasure in us all.

After we wrapped the fight scene, I was laid up in bed for a week and could not move. I was one big throbbing bruise….yeah, not a pretty sight. I remember I had to do a set at The Comedy Store the night we finished all the fight scenes. As I was headed down to the club, I could feel different parts of my body cramping up and the adrenaline rush was no longer in my veins and I started to feel every hit I took from Jet. I usually am an animated performer on stage, moving back and forth on stage like a caged animal ready to pounce on the audience. However, it would not be so that night. I just sat on the stool because I could not hold myself up for any length of time. Let’s just say my set much more like a mellow “fireside chat” that night. Thank God my wife (at the time) was driving, or else I would have never made it home that night!

That experience on the film stuck with me for a very long time. I would find myself thinking about my experiences on that set and what I learned from it and what I would hypothetically do if I were in Master Yuen’s situation. I feel it was the foundation for me to build on for my career as a fight choreographer. It wasn’t long after this that I ended up getting work on Hook which was a stroll through the park in comparison.

Did you have a lot of contact with Tsui Hark? How was he to work with?
The contact I had with Tsui Hark was pretty minimal. I would take direction from the Hong Kong stunt crew during rehearsal and then from Tsui Hark when we were in front of the camera. The stunt crew would also come by in-between takes and give us quick pointers to make our techniques, reactions, or falls better. These guys were really good and quick. I do remember we had one small break in-between fights and I told Tsui Hark that I loved what he did with ZU WARRIORS OF THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN. He was shocked I even knew about it. I told him I would go to Chinatown and buy videotapes of all the good martial arts movies. There was a time I had well over 700videotapes in my collection.

Was there a 'Western-style' script for The Master or did it get changed all the time during production?
I don’t know. There must’ve been, but I was never given a script to the film. All I knew was that I was a gang member and was harassing the three Hispanic kids when Jet comes in to beat us all up.

That's it for part one of the interview, folks - part 2 is coming up tomorrow, taking us through the rest of John's career, and going into depth about his theories, likes and dislikes with regards to screen choreography. Trust me - it's great stuff!

And anyone who wants to see Jet Li beat John up (and see an interview with John recalling the occasion as well as the stunt that almost killed him), can get the Hong Kong Legends DVD of The Master right here:

And if you want to be impressed by John's abilities as a martial artist, stunt performer AND choreographer, check out his demo reel!

Book Review: The Soul of Screenwriting: On Writing Dramatic Truth, and Knowing Yourself (Keith Cunningham)

2009-06-21T18:26:00.004+02:00

This is one serious book. 472 pages long, and filled to the brim with mythology, psychology, theology, philosophy, screenwriting theory and practice, and a new structural model (as well as several other new or re-interpreted concepts). More than enough material, then, to keep you busy for ages.

Keith Cunningham is an American screenwriter and script consultant who, together with screenwriter Tom Schlesinger, has been active internationally teaching seminars, working with screenwriters and developing film and television projects in around the globe. One of Cunningham's main assets is that he personally knew Jospeh Campbell - and much of this book is inspired by Campbell's theories.

Which may give the impression it is similar to Chris Vogler's The Writer's Journey. But in fact, it's almost a 'correction' of the popular Hero's Journey model that has become popular in screenwriting and filmmaking circles. Cunningham goes back to the source, and also examines the difference between the Hero's Journey and the way screenplay stories are told and structured.

Campbell isn't the only major influence present in this book - psychologist Jean Houston also inspired Cunningham in developing his approach to screenwriting. Not only does he go into great detail about the act of creation and the obstacles, both interior and exterior, which the screenwriter must face and overcome on the mental level, he also provides several excersises, sometimes directly adapted from Ms. Houston's work, which are intended to help writers get more insights and control over their imaginative and creative processes.

And this mythological/psychological approach works: I've never yet read a screenwriting manual which helped me get as many realizations and insights about myself as this one - and not just on matters of creativity, either.

For those writers who want to know what the book and method offers that they can use immediately, the main concepts introduced here are the Story Molecule - a representation of the three dimensions of storytelling - the inner world, emotional network and external story - and the Sixteen Story Steps, the new structural model which is the culmination of the book. We'll get to this model later.

But don't be mislead into thinking that there's nothing else that is new in here. The Soul of Screenwriting very much builds on concepts and ideas that went before, and extends, challenges or improves on them. This doesn't mean you have to agree with everything Cunningham says in the book, but at the very least it's almost always solid food for thought.

I must admit I was quite gratified to discover some ideas I've been thinking about for the past few years, such as drawing a parallell between screenwriting and composing music, also pop up in this book.

The interweaving of the three dimensions of storytelling is talked about at length, and it's an element which has rarely been discussed before (and certainly not in this much depth). Just thinking about how you handle this in your own scripts will often help you identify your own blind spots - you may be excellent at crafting the outer story, but neglect the emotional network, for instance. And by paying more attention to this level, the overall quality of your scripts cannot help but increase.

Cunningham works with the three-act structure, though the second-act split is given so much emphasis that one may wonder why he and his partner don't just bite the bullet and call it four acts. Each act gets its own 'descriptor', so the writer knows what function the act plays in the telling of the story. These descriptors are based on the work of Howard Suber, whose book The Power of Screenwriting I've reviewed a few years back.

The Sixteen Story Steps are the main innovation here. The story steps are neither plot points or sequences: they embody storytelling functions. And they are not isolated 'points', incidents between which the writer must find material to 'fill up' the empty pages. Instead, they are complete parts of the story, with their own dramatic curve which corresponds to the Aristotelian plot curve). They also do not correspond to the sequences of the Frank Daniel method - there's no set length for each story step. However, according to Cunningham, these steps are all necessary to provide for a fully satisfactory storytelling experience. There are no examples of films which omit some of the steps, unfortunately.

The film used to illustrate the model is The Piano. An interesting choice, and a very good analysis, though my fundamental problems with the ending of the film aren't adressed - though some other plot weaknesses are discussed frankly.

What about the system itself? Well, as Keith Cunningham says, it is a new approach, and the two great advantages are that it really covers the entirety of the script (no working towards a certain point, but flowing naturally from one section into another), and that there are no 'breaks' when developing the story in this way.
Some of the Story Steps are already present in other models, at least conceptually, so that lessens the learning curve to an extent.

The only thing I'm not sure about is that this method of strucuting the script and telling the story is universally applicable, or whether it is primarily suited to decidedly character-driven, more personal scripts with an art house factor. It certainly is applicable to The Piano, but it might have been a good idea to analyze three to five other films in very different genres with the same model.

Now, please understand I'm not saying the model is NOT universally applicable, and there are several other movies which are referenced continuously throughout the book which are very different from The Piano (Witness, the mediocre and largely forgotten buddy-action comedy Midnight Run, The Talented Mr. Ripley). I just think the book would have benefited from a few more complete analyses to show how the model works fully in very different genres and registers. It would help make it state its case even more powerfully (maybe something for a second edition?).

Be warned, this is not a light read - it takes effort to absorb the material in here. In fact, this is a book to study, to come back to, to practice with - a true learning tool.
It is, however, also not a book I would recommend to absolute beginners - it might scare them off because of the density of information. But for anyone with a certain basic knowledge (and beyond) of screenwriting principles, The Soul of Screenwriting will at the very least make you think long and hard about yourself and why you write the way you do, and possibly have a long-lasting impact on your approach to and methodology of screenwriting.

You can get it here:

A Little Question For My Readers

2009-06-20T23:21:00.002+02:00

It's come to my attention that this blog is steadily gathering a following - which makes me very happy indeed!

But the one thing lacking as yet is... comments.

So please, if you agree, disagree, want to know more, have your own stories/opinions/experiences and want to air them - please do. This blog is here for all of you - I'm just trying to add some information to the communal knowledge of screenwriting, provide you with interesting reviews, provide you with insights, tips and tricks which may one day come in handy in your own writing and, of course, entertain you as well.

And to get the ball rolling, here's a question for all of you:

are there any specific topics you'd like to see treated here on the blog? Reviews of certain films, scripts, handbooks...? Please do let me know, and I'll try to accommodate as many of your requests as possible.

Coming very soon: the review of a MONSTER of a screenwriting manual. Keith Cunningham's The Soul Of Screenwriting.

Le Silence De Lorna (2008): Storytelling and Audience Awareness

2009-06-17T16:10:00.004+02:00

In the previous post on this blog, I looked at when answers should be given to the audience, and in what cases it is necessary to postpone them. This basically comes down to controlling the awareness of the audience - how much do they know about what's going on in the world of your script.

There are basically three options in this regard: - inferior awareness of the audience (the audience knows less than your characters)
- equal awareness of the audience (the audience knows exactly what the protagonist knows, and no more, so both are surprised equally at unforeseen twists)
- superior awareness of the audience (the necessary element for dramatic irony, the audience can either worry about the protagonist as they know what problems are in store, or enjoy the confusions and/or delusions the characters operate under)

All of these are powerful storytelling tools and should be used with sufficient deliberation. Use them well, and you give your script a great boost in effectiveness; use them badly and you can risk losing your audience altogether.

And in the Dardenne Brothers' Le Silence De Lorna, you have an excellent example of both extremes.

Oh, yes, of course SPOILERS ABOUND from now on!

As the film opens, we're introduced to Albanian girl Lorna, living in Belgium with a junkie, Claudy, whom she seems to detest, and working at a dry cleaning shop. We don't really know too much details about her situation until she has a conversation with a cab driver, Fabio, who she seems to be working with. We learn she's only married to Claudy because she wants to get the Belgian nationality, she has to have this nationality in order to marry a Russian man (presumably a gangster) so he can get the Belgian nationality as well, and, most importantly of all, if Claudy kicks his heroin habit they're going to kill him with an overdose.

So our initial impression of Lorna changes completely from this moment on, and more importantly, every scene she now shares with Claudy (who is a mess, trying to go cold turkey and begging Lorna for help is now abuzz with subtext. It's a real shot in the arm for the film, and a beautiful example of how well superior awareness of the audience works.

Later on, Lorna wants to save Claudy's life and tries to get a divorce from him (she's already got her Belgian passport by now) so he won't have to die - he was told that he'd get extra money at the time of the divorce by the gangsters. This finally leads to them having sex and sort of falling in love, symbolized by Lorna suddenly running after Claudy who's riding a bycicle and indulging in a moment of unpremeditated playfulness.

The very next moment, we see Lorna picking out clothes for Claudy - but we're not at a shop, we're at a morgue, Claudy has been murdered by Fabio and his gang, Lorna has already identified Claudy (we never see his body) and the audience is totally confused. We're suddenly placed in a position of inferior awareness, and it takes some time to solve the puzzle of just what took place.

And by that time, you're out of the movie.

An emotional journey, presented very realistically with no Hollywoodian flourishes nor showy experimental gimmicks, suddenly becomes an intellectual puzzle. And once the audience has solved it, they have to make an effort to become as emotionally invested in the film as they were before.

And the brothers don't quit there - they pull the same stunt later on in the film. Lorna is saving all her money to buy a snack bar with her Albanian boyfriend, Sokol.
She actually buys a property in the course of the second half of the film. Later on, though, the Russian doesn't trust her anymore and the deal is called off, which results in her having to cancel the loan and the sale, paying Fabio the money he gave her as an advance on her earnings, and reimbursing Sokol for his part of their savings (which also signals the end of their relationship). But we don't get to see the Russian calling everything off, Lorna learning about this, her having to go back to the bank and getting the loan canceled... all perfectly valid, dramatically interesting material which wouldn't have made the film feel 'artificial' or 'Hollywoodian' in any way.

Instead we pick up the story from the moment where Lorna has to pay the men their money back, and we hear about everything what happened - but once again, we're taken out of the flow of the story and it takes time before we make sense of everything that happened. It's a very deliberate storytelling choice, and I can't for the life of me figure out any valid reason for doing so - a film which was excellent in its first half struggles to keep our emotional engagement in the second half. To a degree, it does keep it - but the power and the emotional resonance of the first half are greatly reduced.

And somehow I doubt very much that this was the intention of the writer/directors...

Questions and Answers - more on the basic building blocks of every screenplay

2009-06-11T15:08:00.003+02:00

Now that we know that questions, questions and more questions are the basic building blocks of every screenplay, writing one may seem very simple. Just ask yourself the right questions, provide a good answer, let that be the basis of the next question and repeat ad infinitum until you hit fadeout - and you've answered the Main Dramatic Question that fuels the entire script.

Piece of cake, right?

Hardly.

Because there's another aspect of the 'question game' we haven't touched on much, but which is equally important to the final success of your script.

And that is: how do you tranfer these questions to the minds of your audience?

Which basically means: how do you get them to ask the same questions (more or less) which you used while writing the script?

And that's not all. Just as important is this consideration:

When do you give your audience the answer to the questions the script poses?

Let's look at these elements one at a time.

How do you get the audience to ask the sames questions you've used to contruct the script?
By engaging them fully with your characters and storyline. If your audience is 'with you', they will want to know the answers to the questions you are (subconciously) implanting in their minds. By subconsciously, I mean that the audience isn't actively sitting there spelling out the questions one by one; rather, the fact that they're anxiously awaiting to discover how things turn out, is the factual proof that your questions are shared by them.

What happens when the audience is NOT asking the same questions you've used to build the screenplay (and you're expecting them to ask)?

Quite simple - you lose your audience.

A good example of a filmmaker who takes his screenplays in directions the (Western) audience doesn't expect or like at all is (in)famous Hong Kong director/producer/writer/actor Wong Jing. Several of his films follow the following structure:

Act 1: a supremely talented Hero is challenged by a nefarious Villain, and the stakes are high. Action and/or cool moments abound.
Act 2: the Hero has been laid low by the Villain or by Fate, and the narrative is taken over by a comedic character (either another major star or someone Wong Jing is trying to turn into a big box office draw) and the main storyline is completely forgotten. Episodic hijinks replace a strong cause-and-effect storyline.
Act 3: the Hero has recovered and has the big showdown with the Villain. Action and/or cool moments abound once again.

This structure can be seen very clearly in God of Gamblers, where super-gambler Chow Yun Fat loses his memory due to a prank caused by small fry gangster Andy Lau, and spends the main part of the movie parodying Rain Man, and in New Legend of Shaolin where Jet Lee and his son escape the destruction of Shaolin Temple, become bodyguards for a merchant who is being conned by a mother/daughter duo and spend most of the film dealing with this silly subplot, and finally face off against the monstrous traitor responsible for the destruction of Shaolin Temple.
A Western audience expects the film to follow through on the promises of the first act, and completely loses interest in the middle portion of the film. The local audiences, though, enjoy the switch in genre and seem to have had no problems with these movies which offer 'a bit of everything' rather than one solid dramatic throughline.

An example of a movie where the audience does stay right with the characters, even though the storyline goes into a completely new direction in Act 2, is Some Like It Hot. The conflict set up in Act 1 is that Joe and Jerry, hapless jazz musicians, witness the Saint Valentine's Massacre and have to escape the clutches of the Mob. So they dress up like women and join an all-girl orchestra.

In Act 2, the Mob disappears completely from the story. Instead, we first see Joe and Jerry (or Josephine and Daphne) getting used to life as girls among the girls, and Joe falling in lust with singer Sugar, but unable to do anything about (as he's supposed to be a girl too). The second half of the act shows how Joe masquerades as a male millionaire in Florida in order to get Sugar into bed. The external plotline (on the run from the Mob) only reappears in Act 3 (in fact, the appearance of the gangsters at the hotel in Florida is plot point 2), and it serves to put extra pressure on the romance plot (which structurally speaking is the main storyline of the film).
It's a testament to the exceptional screenwriting and storytelling skills of Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond that the audience doesn't mind this switch in story focus - but rather goes right along for the ride.

The second point we need to look at is: when do you provide the answers to the questions?

One may wonder why this is such a crucial matter. Well, let me illustrate it in a somewhat irreverent manner:

Q: How do you keep an idiot in suspense?

A: I'll tell you tomorrow.

What does this joke teach us? That as long as the answer hasn't been provided, we're kept in suspense - i.e. we feel tension, we want the release of the answer, and we stay hooked.

So knowing just when to provide an answer to your audience, knowing when to hold back, and also being able to determine which answers should be given straightaway and which should be held back are fundamental skills of every good storyteller.

Now, for some questions it's obvious when you need to answer them:

- the Main Dramatic Question gets answered in the climax, near the end of Act 3. Answer it sooner and you lose your audience, don't answer it and you not only don't have a climax but you have a truly open ending where your audience doesn't know how things will turn out (and that may be a valid storytelling choice in some cases - just don't do it out of laziness or because you can't decide which ending would be best and so you give none at all).

- The Act questions get their answer at the act climax.

- It then follows that the sequence questions will get answered at the climactic moment of each sequence.

- And each scene question is naturally answered at the end of the scene.

So providing an answer to a structural question always corresponds with the climax of that structural element. Whether it be the main throughline of the entire script, an act, a sequence or a scene. Getting the answer, then, is always a high point, and a release of tension - which is always the function of a climactic scene.

It also follows, then, that as long as the answer is delayed, the suspense and tension mount. And (depending on genre) the longer you keep this going, the more intense will be the desire of the audience to have the tension be released.

A good example of this is the scene from The Apartment I described in the previous post. It could also have been constructed as follows: Jack Lemmon enters Fred MacMurray's office, MacMurray immediately confronts him with the question - if I give you a promotion, can I then get sole rights to your apartment, and Lemmon answers yes. Same story point, same question/answer system, but almost zero tension, far less character reveals and no subtext. And a much less interesting scene.

For other, smaller answers which have less structural importance (though I think we've just discovered that all answers provided in a script are structural in nature), the same basic rule applies: provide the answer, and tension is relieved for the audience. Deny the answer, and the tension increases.

It also follows that if you were to write an experimental/non-traditional script, where you do nothing but provide questions without ever answering any of them (if that were theoretically possible), you would raise the tension level in your audience to untold heights. But unrelenting tension is unhealthy (why do people burn out due to stress? Because the mounting tension proves to be too much for their mental and physical capacities to bear), so this would alienate a very large majority of your audience. The frustration at never getting an answer would outweigh the pleasure of the suspense, and the lack of certainty would make it impossible for the audience to place everything in a framework which makes sense of it all. Not to mention, finally, that a story crafted in such a way would run totally contrary in intent to what stories are meant to do - which is to provide us with a way to look at and understand reality and our inner selves.

Well, I have to admit I didn't realize that when I started this post it would take me this far! Seems like I'm definitely on to something here - and that this aspect of screenwriting (and storytelling in general) definitely deserves to be examined in more detail, in order to increase its practical value for writers everywhere.

Questions, questions, questions!

2009-06-10T20:15:00.002+02:00

When you get down to the very heart of it, constructing a screenplay comes down to asking a lot of questions, and providing the answers.

And the result of each answer is that another question is generated.

This, then, is the chain of cause and effect which underlies all mainstream screenplays and teleplays.

At the most fundamental, atomic level, every question used to construct - with the exception of the main dramatic question, which needs yes or no as an answer - comes down to this :

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Answer that, and ask the question again. Keep repeating until you hit the end of your story.

Let's face it, that's what any screenwriter does day in, day out...

Of course, it's not quite that simple, or literally anyone could do it. And we all know that's definitely NOT the case.

There are several levels of questions at play here:

- the main dramatic question which forms the spine of the entire story (e.g. Will Luke Skywalker be able to defeat the Empire by blowing up the Death Star?)

- the questions governing each act (generally three)

- the questions governing each sequence (generally between eight and fifteen)

- the questions behind each scene

- the questions inside each scene

To illustrate the difference between the latter two levels, let's take a look at the scene in The Apartment where Jack Lemmon is summoned to the office of Fred MacMurray for the first time. The question behind the scene is: Will Lemmon get a promotion from his boss, who's been hearing nothing but good things about him from all his superiors?

The way the scene plays out, however, plays upon our expectations. MacMurray first acts friendly in a non-commital way to Lemmon, then confronts him with the fact he's been 'renting out' his apartment to his superiors so they can take their mistresses there. The tone becomes accusatory, Lemmon gets the impression he's overplayed his hand and promises not continue his 'immoral' practices. Then MacMurray hits him with the kicker - he wants to be the only one with access to Lemmon's apartment, in exchange for a serious promotion.

So within this scene, the questions raised and answered include - will MacMurray believe the positive reports he's had about Lemmon? NO.
Why is he so hostile towards Lemmon? BECAUSE HE KNOWS ABOUT THE APARTMENT AND WHAT GOES ON THERE.
What is Lemmon going to do now? HE APOLOGIZES AND PROMISES TO QUIT RENTING OUT HIS APARTMENT IMMEDIATELY.
Is MacMurray going to fire Lemmon over the business with the apartment? NO
Why not? BECAUSE HE WANTS TO HAVE SOLE RIGHTS TO IT
What's in it for Lemmon? A BIG PROMOTION
Does he agree to the deal? YOU BETCHA

So you can see how this system operates. It's all about action/reaction, and the strong causality which is part and parcel of mainstream screenwriting is a direct consequence of this approach. A logical, sense-making answer is desired to each question. A nonsensical answer would take things into a completely surreal direction (for instance, if the answer to What's in it for Lemmon would be HE BECOMES A TRANSSEXUAL WEREWOLF IN THE LATE ROMAN EMPIRE, that would be completely jarring on just about every level for the audience).

However, if you are deliberately trying to be non-conventional, using this question/answer technique and coming up with weird or shocking answers may be a way to help you conceive and write your script, given that there are no other structural models you can follow.

Now, where things get more complicated is that there are several levels of storytelling going on simultaneously throughout every script.
You have an external plot (the story of the film, e.g. Die Hard: will McClane be able to defeat the terrorists and save his wife - oh, and the other hostages as well?) and an internal plot (will McClane be able to change enough so he can mend his relationship with his wife), as well as several subplots.

And in each one of these plots, many of which run concurrently, you have this system of question and answer going on. Often, both the external and the internal plot will develop at the same time during the storytelling (i.e. an event will impact both the external plot, moving our protagonist closer to his goal, and the internal plot, charting his personal evolution).

And in order for the script to work on every level, the questions-and-answers on each of them have to maintain the string of causality. Which is just a fancy way of saying that the events (answers) must be believable and logical all the way through on each level. So the steps the protagonist has to go through in order to achieve his/her goal have to make sense. And the steps in their personal, psychological evolution have to make sense as well.

And, finally and most importantly, the interaction between both levels needs to - guess what - make sense. Sorry I couldn't be more creative in how I worded that phrase. Yet it's true - if there's no causal connection between your outer and your inner plot, the script (and the resulting movie or episode) will feel artificial and dishonest.

As a sidenote, in movies where the lead character doesn't evolve at all, and has no flaws, there's really no question-and-answer on the psychological level. Our guy or gal is (nearly) perfect and the events in the external plot do nothing to influence his/her inner self. This can be found in many science fiction movies from the '50s and '60s, and a very recent example is Shia LeBoeuf's main character in Michael Bay's Transformers movie. A more boring hero has rarely graced the screen.

So, to recapitulate:

- your screenplay is a succession of questions and answers
- these questions and answers are active on different levels, both separately and simultaneously
- keeping the chain of causality between these questions and answers is of primary importance.

Frankly, it all does boil down to 'What happens next?' But your answer has to keep your audience - script reader/editor, producer, director, actors, and the viewers - emotionally and logically satisfied all the way through.

Of course, there's another aspect to this question & answer-mechanism - and that's how they relate to the audience. But that's a topic for a future post.

Did I Miss The Memo? Thoughts On Recent Cutting-Edge Sitcom Trends

2009-06-05T23:12:00.005+02:00

Just wondering...

In an episode of the second season of the acclaimed dark BBC comedy Pulling (up for an attempted remake in the States any moment now), drunken slut primary school teacher Karen takes a revolting-looking cat as a pet. Turns out the animal is sickly (great cat casting by the way, very convincing), and her friends Donna and Louise tell her they'll help pay the veterinarian bill.

So the cat has cancer and needs a £700 operation. Which the girls all consider far too expensive, and Karen asks the vet to kill the cat - and that's too expensive as well.

Cut to a scene where a crying Karen holds the cat down in the garden, while Louise is going to bash its brains out with a brick. Except she misses, and has to hit the cat several times.

Since when did this become funny? Killing a sick, suffering creature in a painful, protracted way? We are supposed to laugh because the clumsy slags don't succeed in putting the cat out of its misery straightaway? (For the record, the scene doesn't show the cat killing, there is no blood involved, nor are there any sound effects of the cat yowling in pain - it's put on screen as tastefully as possible).

I've been in a similar position twice in my life - I've had to kill two blackbirds which had been mortally wounded by cats. The first time, I tried to smash its head with a shovel and missed - and the resulting situation was horrific, very painful for the poor bird I was trying to help and totally upsetting for me. The second time I went for a hopefully swifter decapitation approach, and while that worked, it took far longer than I expected.

Point is, neither situation was remotely funny. And I'd NEVER think of using them as material for comedy, because doing that would not be 'true' - it would not be true to how I experienced the situation, and there certainly wasn't anything remotely amusing about the suffering the birds experienced - mercifully brief though it was.

But apparently I'm becoming more and more of a living fossil in this regard. And no, this doesn't mean I only enjoy twee, safe, innocuous comedy - which is the immediate counterattack you get from fans of pitch-black comedy. As if there isn't an ocean of shades of grey between the two extremes!

No, what bothers me is that the element of empathy has been all but 'exorcised' from modern cutting-edge comedy series (and stand-up as well, but that's not relevant to the current discussion). Bullying, hurting, insulting and humiliating people (and occasionally animals) is presented as funny in and of itself. There's no criticism of society anymore - except perhaps that people who try to be polite and civilized to one another deserve everything they get.

I simply happen to dislike bullies very much - one of the reasons why don't like Abbott and Costello much, beyond their wordplay sketches. All too often, Abbott bullies Costello succesfully, and the little guy has no defense against the manipulations of his mean 'older brother'. Funny? No, tragic.

The perpetrators of these transgressive behaviours are rarely if ever punished for them anymore. Sure, they're basically unhappy, they're stuck in their self-destructive ruts and do not and cannot change for the better (or the series would be over), yet the audience is invited to laugh with them at their victims as much as they are invited to laugh at them. Many of the lead characters in these series are invulnerable, almost - yes, they're damaged goods, but the events which they encounter in the series don't seem to affect them beyond the moment in which they happen.

And the people who are on the receiving end of their shenanigans quite often are guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There's no retribution involved (as there was when Fawlty 'accidentally' smacked the snotty kid, for instance) - to use a deliberately inflammatory metaphor, they're like mugging victims. They get assaulted through no fault of their own, and the perpetrators don't give a rat's ass about the damage they do - in fact they revel in it.

Of course, we must put this in perspective: cutting-edge comedy series generally have minute audiences. They do very well in the media and in awards, however - because they are innovative, they do stretch the boundaries of the genre and they are often (though not always) quite well-written and acted. Pitchblack comedy isn't the mainstream (yet), but naturally it influences the mainstream gradually.

Now, once again, I'm not saying that this new approach to comedy has no value or should not exist. I just regret that it has lost almost all sense of empathy and humanism, and that this very lack is often applauded as a great step forward.

And it's really, fundamentally not.

How To Make A Gag Work Better

2009-06-05T21:28:00.003+02:00

In the comedy script I just finished, I had a button for a scene which wasn't really working.

The situation is the following: wifey has a new boss, who gave her a major promotion despite the fact she hasn't got any kind of degree. She's in awe of the new boss (an attractive, charming slimeball) and throughout the scene she's singing his praises extravagantly.

Hubby is feeding the toddler, and getting more and more fed up by the minute by her platonic crush on her boss - and the way she's running off at the mouth about it.

So finally he says to the toddler - and here's where this becomes harder to follow for our non-Flemish and Dutch readers, as a cultural reference is coming up - 'Oh no, Paulien (her name)! Mommy's changed into Kabouter Kwebbel (a female character from a wildly popular local kids' show Kabouter Plop, she's a female Gnome who talks and talks and talks... Gnome Motormouth or Blabbermouth would be an approximate translation).

I'll provide a picture of her here for reference:

Never thought I'd be putting up pictures like that on any blog of mine...

Anyway, this shuts wifey up. But while the reference is in character, widely understood and sufficiently insulting, the way the line is written doesn't make it work as a button (end-beat) for the scene. It's too soft, doesn't provide enough of a strong resolution to the conflict present in the scene. Basically, it's lacking in energy.

So how did I fix this?

I had hubby interrupt wifey in a far more active mode, not telling his daughter what mommy had changed into, but first exclaiming in mock shock and horror: 'Oh no, Paulien!' Which is unexpected, provides tension and a sense of suspense - what's going on, why the alarm, both in the wifey character and in the audience. And then he continues in the same fake-panicky tone 'Mommy's turned into Gnome Blabbermouth!' The exaggeration imbues the whole exchange with energy, and gives the actor something to do.

So if a gag doesn't work quite well enough, play around with it - setting, delivery, context... And try to find a more energetic, extroverted way of putting it across. Often you will discover that there's another approach to the same material that gives it the necessary zing. And if not - there's always room for one more gag in the Kill-Your-Darlings graveyard.

Which, ironically, is where this scene is headed - in the script-editing stage, it was decided to cut it, and move part of the info to an earlier scene. Not because it was bad, but because the script was too long (as always) and because cutting this scene allowed a rearranging of other scenes which resulted in the story-time taking two less days (which means two less costume changes for the cast, less delay on the set and less money needed for costuming - so everyone's happy).

To Boldly Go Where Everyone Has Gone Before - thoughts on the new Trek film

2009-05-28T21:29:00.003+02:00

SPOILERS ABOUND!!!!

You know, the new Trek movie is pretty much like MI:3.

When that came out, the reviews were largely positive. Now, it's all but forgotten.

It had a gripping opening scene - just as Trek does.

But the intensity of that opening scene is never matched again - just as in MI:3.

Here are some things the new Trek isn't:

- boring
- badly acted
- emotionally engaging
- thought-provoking
- exciting

When I say the film isn't exciting, that doesn't mean there's no action (there is) or spectacle (there is - though not as much as the opening scene suggests there will be). There is. But there's nothing - literally nothing - we haven't seen before, and done better.

There are many problems with the script of the film. Orci and Kurtzmann got a geek's dream job - play in the Trek universe, without having to stick too much to established rules - and they turned it into a workmanlike piece. An assembly-line summer movie, without any of the aspects which made Star Trek different from other science fiction franchises.

(To be fair, most of the previous Trek films haven't been able to achieve this either. For some reason, Trek's strongest points seem very hard to translate to the big screen).

So, what are these problems?

1) Predictability. There's a ton of really predictable moments and scenes in this film. For instance, Scotty beams Kirk and Spock into the Romulan vessel, into an area he supposes is a storage hold, so they should be safe when they arrive.

Guess what happens???

That's right, they are surrounded by Romulans when they arrive and immediately have to get into a firefight.

When Kirk and Sulu go to stop the Romulan drill, Sulu, who has claimed to be an advanced hand-to-hand combat expert, is asked by Kirk what his style is. 'Fencing', Sulu answers in a guilty tone of voice. So what happens when they get into a fight with the Romulan soldiers on the drill???

That's right, Sulu's fencing ability saves the day. He even has an impressive-looking retractable sword with him. So why didn't he mention that before? Because the writers and director wanted to achieve an effect.

All through the film, we get these little snippets and situations which have been done to death. I'm not asking for a Nouvelle Vague or a Jim Jarmusch approach - just an attempt, at least, to avoid clichés once in a while?

2) Pointless 'excitement': when Kirk and Scotty beam aboard the Enterprise surreptitously, Scotty ends up in a water tube and Kirk has to get him out. This takes up a few minutes of screen time. Is this why we're watching Trek films? To see Scotty in a comedy danger sequence without any point or sense of danger?

Kirk gets to hang from ledges in several fight sequences (he also never wins a single hand-to-hand fight in the film). We KNOW he's not going to fall, and he doesn't. So why keep on using this old, tired gambit if you're not going to do something new and surprising with it (as, for instance, in In The Line Of Fire)?

3) Plot Holes the size of Supernovas.

Nero, the Romulan miner, witnesses the death of the planet Romulus in the future (because of a supernova) and decides that Spock is responsible (he was on his way with a 'cure' for the supernova but got there just too late). So what does he do when he arrives in the past? He's going to kill Spock and destroy every planet in the federation. Only it takes 25 years for Spock to arrive in the past.

What would you do if you were Nero?

That's right, you'd hang around for 25 years doing absolutely nothing. But you'd still be as angry and insanely obsessed as you were on the very first day you arrived here. (Oh, you wouldn't have gone to the Romulan Empire to tell them your tale of woe and enlist their aid in your quest for vengeance either.)

Never mind that Nero could have destroyed the entire Federation by the time Spock got to the present of the film...

And why is Nero going to destroy the Federation?

Well, because... because... just because he can. Sure, he gives some sort of explanation but it's totally inconsequential.

4) Lack of emotional impact.

Nero kills Kirk's dad, destroys Vulcan and causes the death of Spock's mother, before his very eyes.
And, you know... who cares? You'd think this would give the writers powerful material for scenes of almost Shakesperean intensity. But while these elements get touched on, they just don't resonate. Primarily because the characters of Kirk and Spock aren't given emotional moments where we can empathize with their loss. There isn't even a 'How can you be so cold and unfeeling? Your mother died, you green-blooded freak!' 'Grief is highly illogical'-type of exchange.

Just compare the scenes in The Search For Spock where Kirk learns the Klingon villain has killed his son. There, the death counts for something.

And it's not just in the personal relationships that emotional resonance is missing.
Vulcan, one of the mainstays of Trek lore is destroyed by Nero. It gets a nice special effect shot - but how about making this a sequence? How about showing everyday Vulcans suddenly faced with their world literally collapsing in on them? This is a tragedy on an epic scale, but we see almost nothing of it. Worse, what we have seen of the Vulcans makes them utterly unlikeable. So we don't even care about this planetary catastrophe.

5) Lack of internal logic and consistency.

I've already given the Sulu example earlier.

Scotty is turned into an utter buffoon. Why would anyone want him aboard their spaceship?
Same thing with Checkov - far too young and klutzy. The secondary characters have a bit more face time than in the original series - but instead of deepening the characters (so they are more like the cast of The Next Generation, a group of equally interesting individuals) they are turned into comedy caricatures.

With the exception of Uhura, who is not turned into a joke. But apart from translating one important message and being Spock's main squeeze, she still doesn't get to do anything of note in the film.

Young Spock is challenged on Vulcan by a trio of bullies for the 35th time, who want to get an emotional response from him. So they insult his mother and father. Spock immediately attacks them.

Why does this not make sense?

- this is the 35th time they bother Spock, and only now do they get the bright idea of insulting his mother and father???
- Disliking Spock because of his race is racist, and illogical - and is an emotional response. Yet no one seems to realize or notice this.
So what makes the Vulcans interesting - their logical reactions which differ from our 'normal'emotional ones - is handled in a completely wrong way.

I guess that's enough examples (though the awfulness of Old Spock's expositionary monologue should be mentioned as well. A perfect example of how NOT to do it).

One thing I did like about the film is that we finally get to see some huge alien monsters on a planet - about time too. Though why the biggest monster spends all of its screen time blowing hot air into Kirk's face instead of just eating him is another mystery.

Now, some online screenwriting master gurus have bemoaned the fact that this film isn't about anything. I think that's not the right way to put it. The film IS about something: revenge. Kirk wants revenge for his dead dad, Spock gets a reason for revenge, Nero is motivated solely by a (misplaced) desire for revenge.

What you DON'T get, is a look at what revenge does to a person. The theme is there, it's just not examined in any way.

In closing, for all the people and critics who like the film, I would like to ask one question:

- If this were the launch of Star Trek instead of a reboot, would the franchise take off on the strength of this film alone?

I don't know about you, but I'm very sure about my answer.

In honor of Star Wars opening 32 years ago...

2009-05-25T23:25:00.004+02:00

... I'd like to post the following link to a site I just discovered full of Star Wars/George Lucas goodies:

Supershadow

And of special interest to all screenwriters is the following page: the super secret plot formula of all Star Wars films - revealed!!!

By the way, if you're looking for good new Star Wars material, there's nothing better on the market than Star Wars Legacy, the comic book series published by Dark Horse and written by John Ostrander. Now THAT would be worthy of a new trilogy.

See for yourself:

Films/scripts to learn from

2009-05-25T22:44:00.005+02:00

Here are some of my favourite films/scripts to use in studying screenwriting.

1) Miller's Crossing: the Coen's best ever. Gets absolutely everything right.

2) Some Like It Hot: Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond at their best - though recent changes in the law in Belgium and select other countries have made the funniest scene of the movie outdated.

3) Die Hard: though written by committee, just about the ultimate 'traditional' Hollywood movie. One of the best to illustrate screenplay structure.

4) Million Dollar Baby: another very well executed traditional screenplay structure with a third act which goes completely in a different direction from what you'd expect.

5) Casablanca: just because. It's Casablanca, man!

6) Star Wars: not a great script but a very effective teaching tool for illustrating the Hero's Journey and sequence building.

7) Strangers On A Train: brilliant subtext from almost the very first scene. Hitchcock and Chandler hated each other but created movie magic.

8) Bullets Over Broadway: not my favourite Woody Allen movie (that would be Love And Death) but a very well done comedy with a lot of well-observed jokes about writers and actors.

9) Career Girls: A Mike Leigh film with flashbacks and a structuring event (a weekend spent together) rather than a clear 3-act structure. Off-beat and interesting and with great quirky character work.

10) On Connaît La Chanson/Same Old Song: French multiplot comedy with lip-synched French popular songs by New Waver pioneer Alain Resnais in his (much) later years. A very good use of multiple but connected plotlines and an excellent example of the effective use of theme in a script: each character in the movie lies to themselves (and to others as well, but primarily to themselves), yet at no time does this come across as forced or artificial.

There are many, many more out there, of course, but these 10 have all been used with great success in my courses. Watch, rewatch, study, learn and assimilate!

Script Development Software Review: Contour for Windows

2009-05-22T16:21:00.007+02:00

Contour For Windows is a software program which offers you a structural model to follow in developing your screenplay idea. It belongs to the same category as John Truby's Blockbuster and Blake Snyder's Save The Cat software.

Like Blockbuster did until John Truby published his book, Contour actually presents a screenwriting theoretical model which cannot be found elsewhere than in the software. Developed by Jeff Schechter, the screenwriter who previously had created the Totally Write script development program, Contour is published by Mariner Software. Schechter is a succesful screenwriter, and the model on which Contour is built is the structural model he used while writing his scripts.

Contour was originally a Mac app, but the Windows version under review here swiftly followed. The Mac version seamlessly integrates with Montage, Mariner's screenplay formatting software. Apart from this, though, the Windows version has everything the Mac version has.

Contour basically helps you develop your story from basic logline to very detailed step outline or treatment. I'll take you through the process so you can get a feel for how the software works.

Contour starts you off by having you answer 4 questions about your script. As these can be found on the website, I don't think I'll ruin anything by listing them here:

1) Who is your main character?
2) What is he trying to accomplish?
3) Who is trying to stop him?
4) What will happen if he fails?

The answers to these four questions are then linked together in a logline following a specific formula. This logline acts as the lynchpin of your entire script, and the formula is intended to ensure you do not lose track of the basic elements and their relationship to one another. Note that this logline, though a single sentence, can be fairly long.

Once you have the logline, it's time to look at the arc of your main character. According to Schecht, people in real life live by six archetypes: Innocent, Orphan, Magician, Wanderer, Martyr and Warrior. In Contour, four of these are used to chart the development of the main character: Orphan, Wanderer, Warrior and Martyr. Each corresponds with either an act or half an act. The manual and the software explain these archetypes and what they mean for the character's development in detail. What is not explained, however, is why the other two archetypes are not used in the main character's arc. Nor do we get any information about what these archetypes represent and how they differ from the other four.

In any case, you now fill in how your main character acts and develops during each of these four stages. This gives you a good idea of how your character is going to evolve and will help you decide on the correct steps to take along the way to make certain the character arc happens the way you want it to.

Then it's time to get to the real meat and potatoes of the program: structuring your story. Here, you basically have two options with which to start: you can either immediately try to start filling in the plot points in the main window, or you can click on the Guide tab, which will bring up 12 sequences, each with a page count and a specific title (for instance: If Life Gives You Lemons...) which indicates what type of events are supposed to happen at this point in the model.

The manual recommends you start out with using the Guide to chart the overall story, and then to go into greater detail by filling in the plot points. But you can also just go to the plot points immediately. If you then open the Guide when your script project is loaded, you'll discover that their description has been added into the Guide as well.

And there are a lot of plot points: 44 to be precise. This makes Contour the most detailed screenplay structure model of all.

Now, for some writers out there this will be heaven: it's literally impossible to get lost in the story development stage (once you've decided on the way you're going to tell your story and develop the main conflict) with this many road signs to guide you to your destination. If you do get stuck, it's because you're still not sure where you want to go.

Other screenwriters will consider this to be the death of all creative endeavour, and refuse to shackle their genius in such a mechanical manner.

What do I think? For me, this type of approach works, as long as I can 'get behind' the system. Some screenplay models feel very natural to me, others seem to be more artificial, the result of someone deliberately looking for a new approach.

Can I get behind Contour's model? I'll go into this in more detail later on, when I recount my experience with the program, but fundamentally I'd say yes. Not that I don't have a few questions or quibbles here and there, nor have I been able to internalize the model like I have done with the Syd Field/Aristotle hybrid or the Hero's Journey. But that's because it's new, it's BIG, and the software is here to take you by the hand and lead you through all the steps in a painless manner.

The 44 plot points are divided as follows: 12 in act 1, 14 in act 2 part I, 14 in act 2 part II and (only) 4 in act 3.

The plot points in act 1 are very detailed. They really tell you what sort of event should take place at this point in the story (though rest assured, these descriptions are still wide-ranging enough to account for literally thousands of variations, if not more).

Once you get to act 2, though, big surprise: the plot points are no longer detailed. They form a continous dialectic, and following them will make sure that there are more than enough obstacles and twists in your story to keep it from being too linear and monotonous. But after the great detail in act 1, the change is jarring at first. I must point out, however, that there are a lot of suggestions on what type of events usually happen at this point in the script, so you're not left to flounder. It's just a very different approach from act 1, and to be honest, if I'd developed this software I'd have tried to go for more specific plot points throughout the script.

However, on the Contour forum, Jeff Schechter has explained his reasoning behind this: to him it's the perfect balance between being too restrictive/controlling and having such a detailed model.

And I have to admit, to my own surprise even - it works.

I decided to test the Contour model by putting a high concept comedy idea I had just come up with into it, and see how far I got by just following the steps one after another.

The opening parts (questions, archetypes, formula) of the program came quite quickly and easily - only the four archetypes took some thinking because it was an approach I wasn't used to, and the explanations in the software itself (I hadn't looked at the 81-page manual yet - and 81 pages for this type of program is very reasonable) were clear enough to help me wrap my head around the concepts.

Then I started on the plot points. Without thinking things through, and actually using a story which wasn't a perfect fit for Contour's model. And I just flew through the first act - things fell into place at an amazing speed, the plot points stimulated my imagination to come up with concrete information - this approach really worked for me.

Then came the dreaded second act, and the huge amount of less defined plot points. I'll admit I felt some trepidation when I started out - but it turned out to be (largely) unnecessary. Once I got into the flow of things (and read the description of the sequence content as well as the act overview) I found that I could keep the story going. I was near the midpoint when I stopped my first session - and all this without ever sitting down, brainstorming or spending weeks coming up with sufficient ideas to start building the story.

The second and third session went better than expected, though here of course my improvisational approach started causing problems. Getting to the third act proved to be more difficult - but only because of my deliberate lack of preparation, this was merely a test of the new system. If I had put the usual amount of preparatory work into the project, I would probably have finished the outline in two session at most, and I'd have an extremely detailed workable basis for writing a scenic synopsis or treatment. So yes, Contour's approach works, and it forces the writer to come up with a lot of specific incidents and twists to keep the narrative going. That's a very good thing.

I must also mention there's an idea tab, where you can store ideas that come to you at any time. Unlike the other tabs, this one isn't linked to a particular project, but

The Contour model is not only explained in the manual and in the software itself, but the program also contains 14 script analyses using the theoretical framework. These include recent megahits like The Dark Knight and Slumdog Millionaire, so it's really up-to-date in this respect. Seeing the model applied to these films is a potent training tool. And if these 14 examples aren't enough, Jeff Schechter regularly analyzes more movies in the Contour way at his blog, Contour At The Movies. And if you want to know even more, check out the Contour forum at Mariner Software.

So, to sum up: Contour succeeds admirably at what it sets out to do. I've not yet had any technical hassles with the app, and I've found it to be a well-thought out, effective aid in developing a screenplay story. It's not for every movie - it won't do multiple storyline-films like Crash, and it's also not suited to highly experimental screenwriting attempts - but then, what structural model ever is? Best of all, you can try it out for free for 30 days, to see whether it works for you. If you're excited by the thought of getting your hands on the most detailed and extensive screenplay structure yet, I absolutely recommend you give it a try. I'm certainly glad I did - and I haven't yet used the system to its fullest capacity. A download sets you back $44.99, and you can get it here from Mariner Software.

Script/Film comparison: The Band Wagon

2009-05-21T14:09:00.002+02:00

Writing the screenplay for a musical must be a fairly frustrating experience. You provide the narrative framework, but everything which really makes the genre worth doing (the musical numbers) is out of your hands.

Musicals (and now I'm talking about the Golden Age Hollywood musical, not the recent permutations of the form) are also generally considered as having uninteresting plots, cardboard characters and all-round weak scripts. These accusations are not unfounded, unfortunately - but the musical is in fact one of the genres where the psychology of the characters can be examined in depth most easily.

Songs (especially when integrated with the storyline) are in fact a version of the classical monologue. The character expresses what s/he is feeling, and why - it's a window into their mind. However, in most musical screenplays the lyrics of the songs are not provided by the screenwriter. So the screenwriter is in fact blocked from using this potential goldmine - unless he's either the lyricist as well (a rare occurrence) or the script is built up around a library of existing songs.

The Band Wagon, written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, is usually considered the best Hollywood musical together with Singin' In The Rain (written by the same duo), and in any case is counted as Fred Astaire's overall best film. So an opportunity to read this script and compare it to the finished film is a great way to see what a classic movie musical looks like on the page and how the numbers are integrated (or not) into the script.

A quick recap of the story: Tony Hunter (Fred Astaire), a once famous song-and-dance man, returns to New York to star in a Broadway show written by his friends Les and Lily Marton (Oscar Levant and Nanette Fabray). They have attracted the attention of genius theatre producer/director/actor Jeffrey Cordova (Jack Buchanan), who thinks their light-hearted revue shows parallells with Faust, and sets about remodelling it to fit his artistic vision. Tony is paired with ballerina Gabrielle Gerard (Cyd Charisse), who is the girlfriend of the pretentious choreographer of the show. Tony and Gabrielle start off hating each other, but as the show spins out of control, they grow closer. Opening night is a disaster, Tony takes over and returns the show to its roots (with Cordova's full support) and it becomes a huge hit. Oh, and he gets the girl as well.

What makes The Band Wagon as effective as it is, is obviously the quality of the musical numbers. The basic storyline is very straightforward, even almost simplistic. The romance is almost perfunctory - Tony never gets to confront Paul over Gaby, doesn't (need to) engage in shenanigans to break up the couple or win her heart (it just happens naturally).

However, the script manages to lift the material above the ordinary in two ways. One, Tony Hunter is very close to Astaire himself (except that when he was making Band Wagon, Astaire was more popular than ever). The struggle of a formerly famous star to keep up with contemporary developments, and his frustration at discovering that his style of working and performing is no longer relevant, provide one of the main areas of conflict.

Secondly, the script pokes fun at the world of showbiz and the way 'genius' directors build up their own mystique and legend, even if it turns out to be disastrous for the production they are mounting. Comden and Green were intimately familiar with both Broadway and Hollywood, had written theatre shows and film scripts, and performed comedy revues as well. So their lampooning of the showbiz world is accurate and funny. They've even written a version of themselves into the script (Les and Lily), and here too their personal experience gives more weight to these sidekick characters.

As for the comparisons between the script and the film:

The script I've read differs in quite a few details from the finished film, though the storyline and characters remain the same.

It's a fairly short script (87 pages) while the film is nearer to 2 hours - of course the Girl Hunt Ballet number by itself lasts for 17 minutes, so the usual page count/film length rules don't apply in this case.

The script opens in a very interesting fashion, with a cinema audience looking at us, the real audience. They're watching Tony Hunter's films (which we don't see, though we hear music and tap dancing), with huge enthusiasm at first, especially when he dances with Penny Robbins (a Ginger Rogers reference); as time passes, she eclipses him in popularity (we gauge all this from the reactions of the movie audience) and finally the movie audience wonders 'Tony Hunter? Who's Tony Hunter?' when his name appears on the screen.

Why was this cut? Probably because it may have been a little too confusing or self-conscious a gimmick to open the film with - and also because the same point (Tony is no longer a star) is made in the following scenes which are in the final film - the auction of Tony's paraphernalia, and Tony in the train hearing two travelers discuss how he's washed up.

The first number of the film, By Myself, follows shortly after. The script mentions the song which is sung, and the surroundings (Grand Central Station).
That's it. The only hint about staging is that he enters the Waiting Room as the song ends.

The next scene, where Tony meets Les and Lily, is fundamentally the same in the film though there are many dialogue changes. Tony makes to kiss both Lily and Les in the script, Les' hypochondriac nature is emphasized far more and his catchphrase (I can stand anything except...) is not yet present. The Shine On Your Shoes-number which follows is coupled with another song (New Sun In The Sky), and it is given to the three characters (instead of just Tony in the film). Interestingly, the final moment of the routine, where the mystery machine opens, playing music and setting off fireworks, is here as well, though it's described as a pinball machine here (and now I really have to lay off mentioning all the little details or this post will be longer than the Bible).

With regards to the songs, it's interesting to see that most of the songs in the script were put in another place and context in the film, cut completely or filmed and then deleted from the final film (a crime against cinema, if you ask me). An example of the latter case is the song Gotta Bran' New Suit, in which Tony shows Les and Lily a routine he made up for one of their songs only to be told it's no longer in the show after he finishes with a big flourish.

An example of songs being switched around is the famous Triplets number, performed by Astaire, Fabray and Buchanan in the film: here, it's in the party sequence after the disastrous opening night, and it's done by Tony, Les and Lily. In the film, it was replaced in that scene by I Love Louisa, and the triplet act was put into the revamped show.

Many of the songs which were dropped were probably new songs by the songwriting team of Schwartz and Dietz (most of the score consisted of their old songs from the ealry '30s). There's one very big number featuring Jeff Cordova which would have come at the moment where the rehearsal goes wrong because of all the smoke bombs, where he explains that 'That's What You Go Out Of Town For', listing all the things that can go wrong in a show. In fact the only new Schwartz and Dietz song to be used in the final film is That's Entertainment, which became hugely famous when it was used for the eponymous MGM musical compilation film in the '70s.

With regards to the characters and their conflicts, Gabrielle's lover and master Paul gets more lines, but is even more actively dislikeable than in the film. As the script never gets to grips with putting the romance in the centre of the narrative, it's understandable that the part was reduced - however, in the final film Paul is such a non-entity that he barely registers. There's one very clever scene in the script where Paul choreographs a routine for Tony, giving him very simple steps, and then has the chorus do an incredibly difficult and spectacular routine so as to completely humiliate his romantic rival. It's too bad this wasn't kept, as it makes the conflict more active and uses the language of the musical to develop the conflict.

The Band Wagon is explicitly written in two acts, with every scene numbered as in a play (e.g. Act 1, scene 10). The second act is shorter in page count than the first, and the romance between Tony and Gabrielle only becomes active in the second half of the script (it starts somewhat sooner in the film, but not too much). The act break, by the way, is the moment when Tony, having had enough of Jeff's pretentious 'High Art' and feeling totally out of his depth, runs off and quits the show. The first moment where Tony and Gaby start falling in love, the wonderful Dancing In The Dark number (already present in the script), takes place on page 63 of an 87-page script! That's very late indeed.

Another element which was changed in the final film was the Les/Lily plot. They were apparently intended to get into a big relationship crisis because of the events surrounding the show, and then finally make up again after the opening night disaster. In the film, nothing of this subplot remains, and Les and Lily don't have any kind of arc. But actually that's an improvement, as the subplot is developed so badly in the script it doesn't even register, despite them getting a few scenes to themselves including a bedroom quarrel.

By the way, in the script we get to see a little more of the actual play that is being performed - the Astaire/Buchanan duet actually had a scene leading into it where they both learn that the object of their affection is going to marry a third man, giving a rationalisation for the song title, I Guess I'll Have To Change My Plans.

The end of the script is probably the weakest part. Much of it is similar to the film - the show's a big hit, Tony expects a celebration but everyone seems to have deserted him, when he leaves his dressing room he suddenly walks into a surprise party for him and Gaby declares her love for him - but the details differ. For some bizarre reason, Gaby disguises herself as a cleaning woman in order to surprise Tony, and when discovered she serenades him with an 'updated' version of the By Myself number, after which everyone pops out to congratulate the happy couple and sing That's Entertainment once again. It simply doesn't work at all. It also shows that, though it has no narrative value in the film, the Girl Hunt ballet actually functions as the climax of the film. Everything which comes after it (the resolution of the romance plot) is just the resolution, and is sort of throwaway. The main question of the script is: will the show be a success, and performing the big number answers that question in the positive. But it's a different way of resolving the big dramatic question, as there's no real conflict here, no confrontation between two forces with opposing goals.

Get your dose of Hollywood goodness here (region 1)

or here (region 2)

And if you want to know more about Fred Astaire's life and career, this is the best book on the subject currently:

And just because I feel like it, here's Dancing In The Dark! Enjoy!

The Narrative Rule That Is Never Broken (Except For Once In Hudson Hawk)

2009-05-18T19:28:00.003+02:00

I found this rule in an English book on spy novels (a history of the genre, not a writing guide) back in the early '80s - the title and the author have escaped me.

However, the rule holds up in about every type of narrative (film, TV, literature...), even today.

The rule is this:

Betrayal is loved; the traitor is hated.

In other words, treachery and betrayal are a narrative element much beloved by audiences all over the world. Certainly in spy thrillers, you cannot have enough betrayal, so to speak.

However, the character performing the betrayal is not so lucky. For some basic psychological reason, the traitor is always punished, usually by death.

It doesn't matter whether the traitor is on the side of the villains or on the side of the angels - retribution always seems to follow. The villainous traitor always gets his/her comeuppance somehow; the goody-two-shoes traitor is invariably found out by the bad guys and usually 'rewarded' with a fate worse than death.

You may doubt the universality of this rule, but try it yourself - you will be amazed to discover in how many films and novels this narrative gambit appears.

The one exception to the rule is in Bruce Willis' vanity action comedy Hudson Hawk. Bruce's partner Danny Aiello betrays him in the course of the film, and dies soon after. However, at the very end of the film, Aiello pops up unharmed. But it's a sort of post-modern gag: the explanation Aiello gives for his survival is so incredibly far-fetched, that both the characters in the film and the audience are supposed to realize this is a narrative cheat in order to ensure a completely happy ending.

The fact that only the notorious Hudson Hawk (a misguided movie if ever there was one) dared to challenge this convention should act as a warning to screenwriters who would like to attempt the same feat. Which is not to say it shouldn't or couldn't be done - only that you'll have to fight an enormously powerful 'cliché' (for want of a better word) which seems to have a deep-rooted psychological foundation.

But pulling it off succesfully would enrich the narrative vocabulary for storytellers everywhere, as breaking this narrative shape could be re-used time and again (unlike, say, the rule breaking in Psycho which is basically one-trick ponies. Kill your protagonist off halfway through the film, and the audience reaction will be: 'Hey, that's just a Psycho rip-off!')

The One Emotion Your Protagonist Should Never Have...

2009-05-16T22:39:00.003+02:00

There's one emotion which is a complete turn-off in movies and TV series. Let your protagonist indulge in it, and you are guaranteed to lose the symapthy (and even empathy) of your audience straightaway.

Funnily enough, it's a quite common condition, which most people have experienced at some time in their life (and some even specialize in it).

That emotion is: Self-pity.

For some reason, there is hardly anything as off-putting as seeing a main character feeling sorry for himself. It just makes you want to slap him upside the head and yell at him to pull his act together. Even if you're prone to the occassional bout of self-pity in real life, to see it enacted on the screen is a highly irritating experience.

For reasons of drama, self-pity is a pitfall as well. A protagonist who feels sorry for himself is a protagonist who stops acting, who doesn't try to change his situation or achieve a goal any longer. He basically stops the forward momentum of the narrative stone dead.

This is not to say the character cannot react to a certain situation by feeling desperate, or wronged, or that you cannot have him or her lament his fate - but that must be a momentary thing. A short lull, catching of breath, before the quest continues.

Now, you will rarely see a self-pitying protagonist on the screen - most scripts in which they feature will never make it to anything resembling the production stage.

So you might wonder - if we never get to see it, is the anti-self-pity bias wrong, perhaps? Might it not reveal new psychological vistas for us to explore?

Well, luckily there's a movie which proves my point (and dispelled any doubts I might have had myself on the subject). It's not a good movie, and it's definitely obscure in the West. It's called What A Hero! and stars Hong Kong top idol Andy Lau, who isn't just Hong Kong's most popular singer but who has starred in just about every genre of film except for erotica.

What A Hero! (1992) is a sort of action comedy - it's about the rivalry between two police teams, one led by Andy Lau, the other by Roy Cheung. Their rivalry doesn't just extend to the professional level, they're both expert kung fu fighters as well (in the movie, not in real life) and they are going to participate in a big tournament. So far, so good.
There are some bad guys running around Hong Kong, Andy and his team manage to arrest them but Roy manages to take the credit and unjustly is seen as a hero.

And what does Andy do?

He goes off to sulk for thirty minutes of a 90-minute film.

That's right. For what amounts to the second half of the second act, our hero quits his job, hides away in his house, and looks wistfully off-camera as a few cloying Canto-pop ballads assault our ears.

And while the film was nowhere near a classic up to this point, there were a few amusing scenes, a couple of snippets of decent action, and a plot which, though clichéd, at least offered the anticipation of some good action scenes.

Finally, the pleading of Andy's mom and his girlfriend (Maggie Cheung) causes him to see the error of his ways, and it's off to the kung fu competition for him. But by this time no one cares any more - and the competition itself offers no quality action which might have slightly redeemed the whole enterprise - but that's beside the point (and it means you don't have to scour the internet to get your hands on this film - as I once did, a decade ago). The point is that a reasonably entertaining potboiler suddenly becomes one of the most boring films you could imagine, and every emotional involvement with the hero is cut short.

So, self-pity: save it for real life, and keep it out of your scripts!

How I Do It: Spicing Up Scenes

2009-05-15T20:23:00.002+02:00

Finally in the throes of writing a TV comedy script again, I immediately came up against the following... well, problem is a bit of an overstatement. Challenge, shall we say.

The first scene of the screenplay was all exposition in the synopsis. It's a short set-up scene of one of the two plotlines in the episode: a woman drops her infant off at her mother for babysitting purposes, because she's got to go in to work unexpectedly. The company has a new CEO and his reputation is that he's an indiscriminate firer of employees every time he changes company. Our woman protagonist is doubly worried because she hasn't got a diploma, so she fears her days are numbered. The scene then ends with a mild mother-daughter gag.

So. Necessary info. But very dry. And I thought I'd spruce it up with sufficient zingers and one-liners once I started writing the dialogue.

Except that I didn't. The one-liners refused to show up. The scene was functional but, well, dull as hell.

On the other hand, I didn't want to make it into a bigger deal than it was - it's just a set-up scene which needs to get the ball rolling, and then make room for bigger and better things.

After thinking about it for a little while, I decided to have the mother still be sleepy when her daughter arrives with the little kid. A little better (there's some conflict involved as well as some potential for humour and interesting little bits of business), but it didn't really do much. Still, it was a start.

So in the next pass, I decided to make the mother REALLY sleepy. And she wasn't expecting company. And then her daughter bursts in like a tornado, almost gives her a heart attack and causes her to spill her coffee all over the breakfast table.

Which immediately gives me a physical gag to open with, an attitude for both characters (tired and then disgruntled because of the disturbance for the mother, nervous and edgy for the daughter), and some more opportunities for movement and business (the mother cleans up the mess during the following dialogue).

A better start, but not enough to fill the entire scene, naturally.

So I took the nervousness of the daughter and upped it - she's no longer reasonably nervous, she's panicky and because of her insecurity, she gets into a typical (and rationally pointless) family argument with her mother about her lack of higher education. The argument allows me to reveal some character information which helps to illuminate the characters in more depth.

I still got all the necessary information in the scene, but by now it's come alive, has several comedic things going on, and it's no longer as static as it originally was. It won't be a classic, but now the exposition is hidden much better and there are several opportunities for solid laughs.

So, to recapitulate - if you need to spice up a scene in a comedy script, be sure to:

- give all characters in the scene a clear (and preferably conflicting) attitude
- look for possibilities for physical humour which arise naturally from your setting
- put the characters into some sort of conflict (a conflict which may be unrelated to the information the scene needs to deliver, by the way)
- think about giving the actors possibilities for bits of business by having the characters do things, be active throughout the scene. This can inspire the actors and the director during the rehearsal period - they may even come up with several physical gags themselves which you as a writer couldn't have foreseen due to you not being on the set and interacting directly with it physically.

Do be sure not to let these 'extras' obscure the purpose of the scene and the information the audience needs to capture in order to follow the rest of the episode, though. I'm not turning this scene into a big set-piece - but I'm turning an ordinary expository scene into something entertaining and (hopefully) amusing.

I'm No Superman - thoughts on the season 8 finale of Scrubs

2009-05-13T21:21:00.005+02:00

This special hour-long episode which brought season 8 to a close, also bids goodbye to series lead J.D. Dorian (Zach Braff) and was intended to serve as a possible series finale as well.

Scrubs has never been a runaway ratings hit, but it was one of the first single-camera comedy shows, and one of the best. It managed to combine character comedy, surreal humour (both in fantasy sequences and real life) and poignant moments of strong, hones emotion in a particularly effective way. Set in Sacred Heart Hospital, Scrubs doesn't avoid the painful parts of the job, and still it manages to be wacky, funny and joyful too. It's a very impressive balancing act, though in recent seasons it's not always been able to get the ingredients quite right. Season 8 has been very enjoyable on the whole, however, give or take a few less inspired outings.

So let's take a look at how this farewell to Zach Braff was constructed narratively.

The episode, written and directed by show creator Bill Lawrence, does not go for the big shock or spectacle. It focuses very tightly on the saying goodbye-theme. This means that it's not a big, high-concept episode like the musical one or the homage to the Wizard of Oz, but it's centered by some very real, recognizable emotions. And it resolves a number of lingering plot strands and relationships with regards to J.D.

In short, it's a totally character-centric finale, and as such it's full of pay-offs and callbacks which long-time fans of the series will definitely enjoy.

The episode has quite a number of plotlines developing throughout:

- Eliott (Sarah Chalke) sneak-moving in with J.D. by bringing her furniture and stuff over in secret;
- J.D. expecting a huge send-off from everyone at the hospital (which is basically the A story of the episode);
- Turk (Donald Faison) giving J.D. the big goodbye gesture way too soon, so they have to keep that initial 'goodbye intensity' up all day each time they meet;
- J.D. being confronted by the Janitor (Neil Flynn) once more about the penny he stuck in the door in the pilot episode;
- Dr. Kelso (Ken Jenkins) deciding to get back into being a doctor, but no longer at the hospital and no longer as an administrator;
- J.D. trying to get Dr. Cox (John C. McGinley) to finally admit he likes him before he leaves the hospital;
- J.D. dealing with an elderly female patient who turns out to have Huntingdon's disease, and with her son who now has to face the possibility he carries the same (genetic) disease;
- And a few minor elements such as Jordan (Christa Miller) saying goodbye to J.D., Carla (Reyes) finally getting an answer about whether Turk loves her more than J.D. or vice versa and Ted (Sam Lloyd) getting thoughts stuck in his head.

As you can see, that's a lot of story material to work with, yet it's all thematically related. Even the medical plotline is worked into J.D.'s psychological state. The decision of the son, Dan, not to have the test for Huntingdon's done yet because he doesn't want his future to be closed off and determined by a bad test result, inspires J.D. to accept that his future is still open and free at the end of the episode - though I must say I didn't quite feel the link between these two elements to work.

Strangely enough though, the episode is fairly short - less than 40 minutes of actual material, the remaining time at the end taken up by outtakes.

Structurally, the episode is interesting because it starts on a high (J.D.'s arrival at the hospital and the big goodbye moment with Turk). And things go steadily downhill from there, as J.D. doesn't get what he want (a huge send-off by everyone) in the hospital - though he does get a few warm personal goodbyes).

The first half of the episode is all about J.D. waiting for people to say goodbye to him and make a big show of his leaving. This culminates in a midpoint where the huge banner Turk made for him has already been usurped not once but twice to say goodbye to other people (including Dr. Kelso).

The midpoint causes J.D. to decide to alter his approach: if people don't give him what he want, he'll go and ask for it - and especially from Perry Cox, who has already brushed him off with a 'sorry, no can do'-speech.

But this approach only leads to more disappointment and Cox-fueled humiliation. J.D. also is faced with Elliot and Turk simultaneously apologizing for respectively moving in with him behind his back and saying goodbye too soon. There are a few warm moments with Carla and the Janitor (J.D. finally learns his name - or so he thinks), before J.D. finally sees his dream come true and gets to hear Perry's real feelings towards him when he scolds new intern Sunny for disparaging J.D. - a great moment which is both truly touching and very funny when J.D. forces Perry into a hug and tells him he smells of a father figure.

This last scene is actually a great example of NOT using subtext for a change: Perry states his feelings forcefully and clearly, as does J.D., and it feels completely right. And it also elevates the effectiveness of the subtext of Cox's usual insulting tirades against J.D.

Of course, there must be some sort of big communal goodbye to the star of the series in the episode, and Bill Lawrence falls back on J.D.'s hyperactive imagination to come up with a very original and poignant scene where J.D., reminiscing about 'the people we let into our life', meets a host of characters from past episodes (plus a few current ones like Ted and his Peons and Todd) as he walks to the exit. These include his brother, past girlfriends, colleagues, patients (including a few deceased ones)... It's a scene particularly rich for long-time fans, and it has tons of call-backs to previous episodes.

When J.D. reaches the exit, all these 'spectres of episodes past' vanish, and he looks towards the future, seeing it projected on the big banner Turk made for him. It includes J.D. and Elliott getting married, christmases spent with Turk, Carla and Dr. Cox, J.D.'s son getting engaged to Turk's daughter and so on. It's a happy future, and while it's totally imaginary, J.D. tells us there's no reason why his fantasies couldn't come true - just this once.

There's not a lot of big external conflict in the episode - the main drive is J.D. wanting to see his expectations met. It doesn't really happen, but he achieves closure on a personal level and leaves the hospital a better man and a more complete human being. Looking for external validation, he instead discovers he doesn't need it anymore.

The episode is a warm, emotional and funny send-off for J.D., which shows us how much the character has grown AND how much he has remained the same over the years (he's still infuriatingly immature some of the time, but it's no longer the core of who he is). The closure with regards to the simmering long-time subplots or running gags is extremely satisfying.

It's not an episode to recommend to Scrubs virgins, as they'll miss too many references and recurring jokes. But on its own terms, it's a very succesful goodbye to one of television comedy's most endearing lead characters.

(FYI: there's still talk of a possible 9th season being produced, and even the possibility that Braff will return to the series occassionally is being discussed seriously. But if this doesn't come to pass, the series went out on a high note.)

Script Review: Law-Abiding Citizen (Frank Darabont draft, previous draft by Kurt Wimmer)

2009-05-11T13:41:00.002+02:00

After reading a rave review of this script over at Scriptshadow, I decided to take a look at this Kurt Wimmer/Frank Darabont-penned thriller to see whether I could get equally enthused. Note that this is not the shooting script - there has been a more recent David Ayer version as well.

Did I? Ah ah - that would be telling... Wait and see.

Spoilers, as always, will follow so read at your own risk.

Law-Abiding Citizen starts off with a man, Benson Clyde, calling the authorities after discovering his wife and child murdered at home. We swiftly meet our protagonist, Nick Price, one of the District Attorneys handling the case, and learn that the killers have been arrested but will probably win a trial because of a lack of admittable evidence. However, one of the killers wants to squeal on the other in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Clyde is adamant both killers have to go to trial, but the D.A.'s decide to go with the immunity option - like this they are at least certain of one conviction.

Ten years later, the convicted felon is to be executed, but his execution (by injected poison) goes 'wrong' when he's injected with another substance that causes him to die a hideous, extremely painful death. Price and his colleagues can't figure out how the 'sabotage' was performed, and decide to go and look for the other killer to interrogate him. The man escapes the police, however, with the help of an unknown man who turns out to be Benson Clyde. He subdues the killer and gives him the full Dexter treatment. Then he mails a DVD of the slaughter to Nick Price's 10-year old daughter, traumatizing her for life.

Analysis of the DVD leads the police to Clyde's farm, and he's duly arrested - but doesn't seem to care. In fact, he demands to be released - he's going to play the system like the system played him ten years ago. A game of wits begins between Price and Clyde, with Clyde first demanding luxury items in his cell in exchange for every part of his confession. But then the stakes increase when Clyde kills his cellmate and lands in solitary. His aim is not just to walk away free but taking vengeance on everyone - policeman, attorney, D.A., Mayor - who he deems responsible for the miscarriage of justice he suffered.

Price finds out that Clyde used to be a spy, specializing in inventing methods for killing people, and that he's a chess-playing genius who thinks twenty moves ahead of his opponent. And just how deadly an opponent he is becomes clear when he carries out every threat succesfully, even though he's behind bars. The death count rises like mad, and Price finds himself totally stumped - until one of his assistents finds the missing bit of information needed for Price to turn the tables on Clyde. But will it be enough to stop Clyde's final act of revenge - which targets the Mayor?

WRITING STYLE

Two things immediately strike you when reading this script:

- none of the characters is described in any detail whatsoever

- there are a great amount of camera directions.

The latter makes sense since Frank Darabont apparently was slated to direct the film (no longer the case). The former is obviously an attempt at keeping all casting options open for the film : Nick Price, our hero, could literally be played by any leading man, from Hugh Jackman to Denzel Washington (and even Michael Douglas could probably still pull him off). At the moment, Jamie Foxx is attached to the film to play Nick Price, and Gerald Butler will play Benson Clyde.
I must say, though, that this 'anonymous' handling of the characters somehow lessens the identification with them, especially in the first twenty or thirty pages of the script.

No Shane Black-isms here - just effective, atmospheric stage directions. The feeling of dread and paranoia, evoked by the plot, is nicely reinforced by the tone of the writing.

STRUCTURE

This script has a very traditional three-act structure, with very clear act breaks and an effective midpoint (Clyde kills his cellmate) which signals a new, deadlier stage of the game between the main characters.
What's interesting about the second act is that it basically starts with a high point (the arrest of Benson Clyde) and then relentlessly goes from bad to worse for the good guys. There's not a single moment where they manage to turn the tide or get ahead of the villain. Even after they've been told about him and his abilities by another spy, they're still unable to use this information to their advantage.

This script is also totally pushed along by the antagonist. Nick Price is a totally reactive protagonist because all he can do is react to the moves made by his opponent. Only in the late third act does he finally take the initiative and actively tries to outsmart Clyde.

CHARACTERS

You will have noticed I only mentioned two names in the synopsis of the plot. There's a good reason for that. The only two characters in the script with any resonance are Nick Price and (especially) Benson Clyde. All others (wives, daughters, policemen, assistant D.A.'s, criminals, you name it) are quite bland. Don't get me wrong, their dialogue is all right, the parts are solid, but they are unmemorable. There is only one character with a specific characteristic (bad eyesight), all others are well-written clichés.

Nick Price isn't that fantastic either, but that's part of the suspense: he's a good guy, pretty smart, tenacious, but in no way extraordinary. And he's facing an extraordinary opponent. So the stakes are very high and the odds are very much against him. It's a role a star can make his own, by imbuing it with his own charisma - but as a lead character, he's pretty uninteresting.

Of course Benson Clyde makes up for this. We first see him as a distraught victim, begging for justice - but when he returns ten years later, he's superhumanly intelligent, utterly ruthless, sadistic, invincible - and yet there are a few key moments in the script where he reveals his human side during his confrontations with Price. He has pretentions of Hannibal Lecterism but unlike Lecter he still has a (wounded) heart. And though we detest him for the crimes he commits and the innocents he targets, we continue to feel his pain almost all the way through the script.

Some of the most powerful character scenes in the script are the conversations between Price and Benson. But at the same time, I remained disappointed - I was hoping for more. A deeper philosophical discussion, a more layered insight into Clyde's character, a more interesting plan (by which I mean his goal, not the way he intends to achieve it)... Even a stronger tie between the two men. What's on the page is very good, but it's just missing a little something to make it magical.

Of course, the problem is that Clyde is so damn incredible, the story becomes very hard to swallow. It's all 'just' possible, there's no magic or mutant powers (though in the beginning I wasn't sure whether this was going to turn into a horror movie), but it's very very very unlikely that any of the events engineered by Clyde could come to pass. And the way the clue is found which turns the tables on him is probably too easy - someone who thinks as far ahead as Clyde should definitely have had a back-up plan to bury that information.

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS

This version of Law-Abiding Citizen has a number of strong points: an impressive, all-powerful villain, some great set-pieces (the murder of the assistant D.A.'s is a real 'Oh, shit!'-moment, for instance), and the general feeling of dread and doom is realized very well. On the minus side, the plot is extremely far-fetched and there are serious plot holes at times (if there had been guards or cameras to watch Clyde in solitary, he could never have pulled off the stunts he did - so why wasn't he kept under surveillance 24/7? Especially once he started carrying out his threats?). And the secondary characters are too bland to make much of an impression.
If one can keep suspending one's disbelief, this is an enjoyable thriller - but it's definitely flawed. Still, you can learn a lot from studying how the big set-pieces are written and constructed, for in these sequences the script absolutely achieves the goals it aims for.

Book Review: Story and Character: Interviews with British Screenwriters (edited by Alistair Owen)

2009-05-10T14:11:00.004+02:00

Despite the UK being very influential and important in the global screenwriting arena, there haven't been very many books concentrating on the British screenwriter and letting him/her tell their side of the story. Luckily, Story and Character does just that.

Though the book isn't terribly recent (it was published in 2003 and most of the interviews were taken in 2001 - 2002), the selection of the writers hasn't dated one bit. In fact, this distance at times makes it even more interesting. We hear Richard Curtis talking about his next project, which became Love, Actually; and we share Simon Beaufoy's frustration when faced with the inevitable expectations of a follow-up hit to The Full Monty, whereas Beaufoy was only interested in telling some highly personal, very art-housey projects. And obviously he's still doing that, having written a little-seen Danny Boyle movie about an impoverished low-caste Indian participating on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? What was it called again... Oh yes, Slumdog Millionaire or something.

The writers interviewed are:

Rupert Walters (who wrote for Disney among others and adapted a book for John Woo)
Lee Hall (Billy Elliot)
Richard Curtis (4 weddings, Mr. Bean, Blackadder etc.)
Frank Cottrell Boyce (one of Michael Winterbottom's main writers)
Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (who have been writing crappy Bond films since The World Is Not Enough)
Shawn Slovo (South African screenwriter of A World Apart and Captain Corelli's Mandolin)
William Boyd (succesful novelist, also became a screenwriter and director)
Hossein Amini (Iranian-born writer of Jude and The Wings of a Dove)
Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty, Slumdog Millionaire).

Alistair Owen proves to be an excellent interviewer. Each and every one of the interviews is interesting all the way through, even those of the writers you don't really know much about.

Some highlights include Richard Curtis admitting he doesn't know a lot about structure, and Purvis and Wade constantly finishing each other's sentences.

Many of these writers also worked in America, with varying degrees of success, and as such the book also offers a lot of interesting comparisons between the mindsets of the British and the American film world.

There's also a lot more reticence towards screenwriting manuals and courses in these interviews than are normally found in interviews with American writers, although this attitude may have shifted over the years.

The only negative I can mention is that there haven't been any sequels to Story and Character. And there damn well should have been, as it would have been fascinating to get an updated look at the state of British screenwriting every two years or so. In any case, highly recommended reading for everyone with an interest in screenwriting in Britain.

You can get it here:

Book review: I Followed My Bliss To Bankruptcy - What I Wish I Knew Before I Moved To Hollywood

2009-05-09T21:08:00.003+02:00

Cautionary tales ahoy!

What I Wish I Knew Before I Moved To Hollywood is a guide to life in the movie capital of the world which pulls no punches. In fact, it's downright disheartening.

Written by T.R. Locke, an unsuccesful screenwriter/succesful real estate agent and sometime actor, this is the first guide which really tells it as it is. Locke describes the mentality that fuels Hollywood (it's a business first, second and last), dispels a lot of myths about the screenwriting life and the image Hollywood puts out (they're not looking for originality, they're looking for something that they're sure will work because it has worked before), and skewers the psychological mindset prevalent in Hollywood relationships (shallow, fake and 'user'-friendly).

And worst of all - it's not even about talent. The streets are drowning in talent in L.A. It's about politics, and people thinking they can make money from you.

Locke freely admits that this book would have been totally different in tone if he'd made a million-dollar sale. But as this hasn't yet come to pass, he can speak his mind freely about all the traps and pitfalls L.A. has to offer. Locke uses his personal story as a background for all the advice, and it's quite a story in itself. As a kid, he was a very gifted liar, later he became a minister and worked with Chicago gangs, then he became a real estate agent, did very well for himself and lost almost everything when the internet bubble went 'pop' on the Stock Exchange.

After having winning a semi-final place in a screenwriting competition he decided to travel to L.A. with his wife, got an agent, lawyer and manager, did the rounds, took meeting after meeting after meeting - and finally went bankrupt, ended up in a depression and separated from his wife (they're back together again, luckily). So he's experienced the challenges and dangers of Hollywood life first hand. There are also a few very entertaining anecdotes where he blows up at producers and tells them exactly what he thinks of them - not good for your career but quite empowering at the time.

The book isn't intended to stop people from following their bliss, but it is intended as a wake-up call. If you decide you can't take the kind of treatment described in these pages (and that's not at all a weird or ridiculous decision, quite the contrary), it's probably better to stay away from Tinseltown. On the other hand, if these stories don't scare you off or even help you see a way to exploit the system, you may well have what it takes to survive and even prosper there. You may not be a terribly nice person, but... them's the breaks.

In order to broaden the relevance of the book, Locke has also interviewed a number of professionals in film and music (he's obviously got good connections to the music biz as well) who did make it, and asks them to reveal the info they wish they'd known before they started out on their career. Since these people did make it to the top of their chosen field, they're generally a bit more positive, but there are sufficient serious warnings here as well.

T.R. Locke writes in an engaging, breezy style which makes the book a good and fluent read. Most of the info is relevant to screenwriters, though there's also quite a lot of info for actors and singers/musicians. Anyone thinking of hitching their wagon to a star and travelling across the continent/globe to L.A. with dreams of making it huge as a screenwriter would do well to check this book out - and it's probably even more of an eye-opener for non-American readers.

Get it at:

Name Your Link

Han Solo, Knight of the Round Table? The two types of hero examined

2009-05-07T21:19:00.008+02:00

When we take a look at the Hero (using the most traditional definition of the word) in Western storytelling, we come to the conclusion that they basically all belong to two archetypes.

Namely: King Arthur and Lancelot.

King Arthur brought civilization and stability to England by personally defeating evil ursurpers and pagan kingdoms. His Knights of the Round Table were the epitome of chivalry and rode all through the land, righting wrongs, protecting the innocent and furthering the glory of their liege and God. He belonged to civilization, was an integral part of it.

Lancelot was an outsider. He was born in Brittany, in the magical forest of Broceliande, and his mother was a nymph (clear evidence of Lancelot originally being a Celtic mythical hero or demi-god). He was not just the best knight, he was superhumanly strong and capable. Lancelot traveled to Camelot to offer his services to Arthur, and became the greatest Knight of the Round Table. But his background was very different from the world Arthur had made. Lancelot came from the other, magical world, but he thought that Arthur's civilization was worth defending and protecting.

Of course, Arthur and Lancelot fell out over Guinevere, and the resulting rift precipitated the destruction of Camelot and Arthur's utopia.

Okay, what does this have to do with screenwriting (apart from Arthurian Epics which aren't really in vogue right now)?

These two archetypal approaches to heroism can be found in just about any genre of film. And they still hold their power to this day. (Note: they don't have to be encountered together - they can appear and function separately just as well).

Consider Stagecoach: a small pocket of civilization (the stagecoach with its occupants) travels through a Chaos wilderland. They encounter danger at every turn - but luckily they also encounter the Ringo Kid (John Wayne), an outlaw (= someone not of civilization) who has the strengh and skills to get them through this magical land and protect them against its dangers (especially the bloodthirsty Native American tribes).

Consider Casablanca (a perfect example): Victor Lazlo (Paul Henreid) is a heroic resistance fighter who is instrumental in organizing the fight against the Nazis. Rick Blaine (aw come on, everyone knows who played that role) hides out in the wasteland, creating his little fiefdom and refusing to get involved in the struggle between Good and Evil because of his broken heart - but once that problem's taken care of, he rejoins the fight and helps Lazlo escape to freedom.

The example of Casablanca is quite important because it puts another aspect of the dichotomy between these two heroes in the spotlight : the Arthur figure has zero sex appeal. Victor Lazlo (a far more handsome man than Blaine) is a father, a teacher, an intellectual, a creature of spirit. Rick is dangerous, unpredictable, sexy, attractive on an animal level.

And this is a recurring aspect of the Lancelot character. Being part of the World of Chaos, Lancelot draws much of his power from it, and he also has some of its characteristics. The Lancelot hero is sexy (even if, like Dirty Harry, he's not looking for sex or love at all). The Lancelot hero has greater skills and abilities than the people of the civilized world. But the Lancelot hero is (usually) maladjusted in some way. He may like civilization, admire it, even become a part of it in some cases - but he'll never fit in completely. And in some cases (John Wayne in The Searchers, for instance) he'll leave once his job is done, belonging to the world of Chaos and Magic too much to ever adjust to the rules and laws which are necessary to keep civilization afloat.

Want more proof? Star Wars. Luke Skywalker is honourable, brave, gets a magic sword (a clear Excalibur-substitute), and personifies the Light Side of the Force (all that is good and noble in the Star Wars universe). He's also completely desexualized, especially in the second and the third film of the trilogy: the girl he sort of flirts with not only chooses his best friend over him but turns out to be his twin sister!

On the other hand, we have Han Solo: a smuggler and outlaw, selfish, with no high-blown moral standards except for loyalty to his friends - occassionally, a great pilot and clever rogue, at home in the dangerous galaxy of the Empire - and he shoots first. And he's the heartthrob of the trilogy.

Now, the King Arthur-type hero was far more prevalent in the first half of the twentieth century - the upright lawman, the incorruptible policeman, the heroic soldier embodying all that is best about his country. As time passed, the Lancelot archetype took over almost completely (all the rebellious cop, loners, maladjusted mavericks etc. we've been presented with). The big shift probably started with the beginning of the Bond series: here we have a perfect Lancelot figure who was as mean and dangerous as his foes (Bond's callous extermination of his enemies in Doctor No was very shocking at the time).

Another interesting aspect of the Lancelot hero is that he is usually not perfect, has major flaws which either need correcting or not - but it does make him far more of an effective candidate for a character arc.

The Arthur hero often starts out in a position of weakness (slave, poor farmer, orphan) and needs to learn a set of skills in order to fulfill his destiny, but characterwise he's usually pretty perfect to start with. He's the 'shining example' of a society, while the Lancelot is the 'bad boy with a heart of gold'. Since character arcs have become so important in screenwriting the last 40 years, it's no surprise that the Lancelot archetype has become dominant. Of course that's not the only reason - the big changes society underwent during the late 1960s - early 1970s, with their distrust of authority and the values of the previous generations, made a rebelling hero figure all the more attractive and believable.

Incidentally, Arthur's character arc only activates near the end of the Arthurian cycle, when Lancelot and Guinevere have become lovers, and Arthur is consumed by bitterness and jealousy towards them and turns into a tyrant instead of a good king - and then reclaims his heroic status as the story ends.

Even though Lancelot is the flavour of the past decennia, don't count Arthur out completely, though. It's still very much possible to make the Arthur archetype exciting and inspiring, though it's harder to pull off. But if you want proof:
A truly Arthurian hero of (fairly) recent times is none other than ST:TNG's Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

So, when you're developing your Hero - know which archetype you're using, play to its strengths - and be sure to play around with it to make it unique.

Script Review: Green Lantern (Berlanti/Green/Guggenheim version)

2009-05-06T20:07:00.003+02:00

Green Lantern is one of DC comics major superheroes, though he's never been quite as popular as Superman and Batman. That may very well change, as Warner's is mounting a major media offensive to put Green Lantern in the spotlight, with the movie as the centrepiece.

I don't know whether this is the shooting draft, though I think it is, but it's recent (early 2008) and Marc Guggenheim is very active in both television and comics at the moment (he's one of the current Spider-Man writers and has written for Law and Order and CSI Miami, among others).

For those of you who do not know what a Green Lantern is: the Green Lanterns are an intergalactic police force, who possess rings with which they can create almost anything. They're powered by willpower, and have to recharge their rings every day with the aid of a... green lantern, which is connected to the power battery on the planet Oa. Here the Green Lantern Corps has its headquarters and their creators, the Guardians, watch over the galaxy. Every space sector has their own Green Lantern, and obviously the movie (and the comic books) focus on the Green Lantern of Earth, who is (at the moment, anyway, there have been a few others) Hal Jordan.

Spoilers will follow, unavoidably. But I'll try to keep them to a minimum.

At 12 years of age, Hal Jordan loses his dad, a jet pilot, in an accident with an experimental plane. 15 years later, Jordan is a jet pilot as well, but he's cocky, selfish, and rebellious, much to the chagrin of his boss and ex-girlfriend, Carol Ferris, who runs Ferris Airplanes together with her father.

Elsewhere, an alien Green Lantern, Abin Sur, is attacked by a monstrous enemy of the Corps, Legion. Abin Sur is mortally wounded but manages to crash his space ship on Earth. His ring flies off to look for a successor and chooses Hal Jordan.
Jordan and his best friend, Tom Kumalku, find the spaceship and Jordan gets some Green Lantern information before Abin Sur finally dies.

Later, during a date with Carol, Jordan is attacked by the boyfriend of one of his one-night stands, and the powers of the ring suddenly spring to life. And soon after, he's whisked away to Oa, where he meets the Guardians and several other Lanterns, including Sinestro, Abin Sur's best friend and the most revered Lantern of the Corps, and the impressive alien drill sergeant Kilowog.

Jordan's rebellious ways soon have him saying no to the Corps mentality though, and he returns to Earth determined not to have anything to do with the Lanterns.

Meanwhile, Abin Sur's space ship has been discovered and a scientist, Hector Hammond, is infected with a particle of Legion. This causes him to keep mutating throughout the script, and to develop enormous powers of telepathy, telekinesis and mind control. As Hammond is a mean, screwed-up wreck of a man, this spells no good for the people of Earth...

Jordan is forced to become Green Lantern at an air show when Hammond (unbeknownst to anyone there) takes over the jet plane his father is flying in and tries to cause a major disaster. Green Lantern saves the day (and Carol Ferris), and this becomes the impetus for Hal to throw himself into superheroing full-time. He also takes the time to romance Carol in his Green Lantern identity (the ring provides a costume and mask).

The rest of the Corps, meanwhile, mount an attack on Legion and subdue the creature, though at great cost.

Eventually, Green Lantern confronts Hector Hammond for the first time, and is defeated. He returns to Oa to ask for help in handling the supervillain, but the Guardians insist he finishes his training first. Disgusted by their bureaucracy, Jordan quits the Corps just as Legion breaks loose and causes havoc. And back on Earth, Hammond keeps getting more powerful and targets his dad and Carol Ferris again...

REVIEW

Green Lantern simply is a superhero movie script done right. Respectful of the original material (the script is full of little touches which will delight DC comic fans), keeping the origin story true to the comic book, and wholeheartedly embracing the superhero ethos and aesthetic. Reading the script, with all its colourful and spectacular visuals, the pure fun of traditional superhero comics at their best comes shining through.

Stage directions are vibrant, very visual, and drive the action forward. The reader is engaged, but not in a way which pulls you out of the reading experience (except when profanity is used, as it's completely absent in the dialogue. It's fairly jarring in this case). While reading the script, you can just imagine the special effects, and they promise to be truly awe-inspiring. It's an excellent example of 'a really good read'.

It's also interesting to note that on a couple of occasions references are already being made to possible prequels and sequels to the film... I haven't encountered that before.

Hal Jordan's character is an excellent part. He's seriously flawed, but in such a way that the character remains attractive to the audience, even when his behaviour is foolish or self-destructive. We also get the feeling he doesn't want to hurt the people around him, but he's incapable of not doing so because of his own inner pain. This is definitely not a film in which the villains are more interesting than the hero.

Which is not to say that the villains are slouches. Legion is a big, invincible alien entity, while Hector Hammond is a sleazy, insecure man with a big chip on his shoulder and a very bad relationship with his Senator father. When he gets powers, he uses them to get back at the world and everyone who's ever caused him pain. As his powers grow, so he keeps mutating and his actions become more and more evil - a nice correlation of outer and inner corruption. And there's a nice balance at work between Hal and Hector: both suddenly come into great power, both are unhappy and are emotionally messed up, but Hal comes to use his abilities to make things right while Hector uses them to lash out at the world. It's in this contrast that the fundamental truth of both characters is revealed.

One of the things which impressed me the most upon reading is how exciting and interesting the first act is - although Hal Jordan performs no superheroics whatsoever. Instead, we get:
- the opening introduction to the Green Lanterns and their world
- Abin Sur fighting Legion
- the death of Hal Jordan's father
- Adult Hal defeating 3 automated warplanes by extremely reckless flying during a demonstration at Ferris Airplanes
- Abin Sur crashing into Earth, and the ring looking for a new bearer (passing a certain bespectacled journalist from the Daily Planet along the way) and finding Hal Jordan
- the introduction of Hector Hammond, his autopsy of Abin Sur's corpse and his discovery of the Legion fragment

And mixed in with these sequences we get Hal Jordan's family and the introduction of Sinestro as well.

So the first act basically continually keeps moving, weaving several strands of narrative, all of which engage the interest, reveal character and set up the rest of the film.

I have some concerns about act 3 though: there really are three climaxes - fighting Legion on Oa, defeating Hector Hammond, and saving Carol without the power of the ring. The final climax is the end of Hal Jordan's personal story (going from self-centered semi-jerk to a true, self-sufficient hero). However, the resolution of the Legion storyline is the biggest bang in the script, and there's a real danger of the rest of the act being overshadowed by it. Moreover, Hal Jordan has proven to be a true hero before, so it doesn't really feel as if this final climactic development is all that necessary. It might have been preferable to combine the plotlines of both villains more strongly so the climax could intertwine the two.

I also found Hal quitting the Corps twice was a bit too much, especially because it basically was for the same reason (he didn't want to go through the training process, the first time because he's too rebellious, the second time because he has a villain to stop). It's actually too bad that Hal doesn't train in this film, as Kilowog is such a great character in the comics.

Despite these minor niggles, Green Lantern is one of the best superhero scripts I've yet encountered. It has all the potential for being a major blockbuster, and it could easily launch a movie franchise (as is clearly intended). It's slated for Winter 2010 and I'll be eagerly awaiting its release!

Script Review: Blood And Bone

2009-05-04T15:48:00.003+02:00

In keeping with the John Kreng book review, here's a look at the screenplay for an out-and-out action fight film.

Blood and Bone is a upcoming martial arts/fight film, starring Michael Jai White, written by Michael Andrews and directed by Ben Ramsey (who also revised the script). If the film does well, it could become a franchise.

A short plot summary:

After showing us just how damn tough he is in an opening fight scene in jail, ex-con Isaiah Bone finds himself back on the streets. Renting a room from a single woman who looks after abandoned children, Tamara, he proceeds to attend an underground fighting competition. He hooks up with Pinball, one of the fight promotors, who's not doing too well as his fighters all get demolished by the Hammer Man, a steroid-pumped monster owned by Afro-American gangster James. Bone wants to fight Hammer Man, but has to move up through the ranks before he's allowed his shot at the big guy. Which isn't much of a problem, as Bone turns out to be completely invincible.
Once Bone gets in the ring with the Hammer Man, he wastes no time in completely demolishing his opponent.

James takes it all in stride, though, and invites Pinball and Bone to his home. Even when Bone shows too much interest in James' beautiful but drugged-out girlfriend Angela, James keeps his cool with him. And for a reason: James wants to get into an international underground fighting organisation, where fighters battle to the death for the amusement of the extremely rich and expecially powerful, and he wants Bone to be his fighter. Bone is offered Angela as an enticement, and promises to think it over.

Now the plot thickens: it turns out that Bone was in jail with Angela's ex-husband, who was set up for the murder of Bone's twin brother by James. His first action is to take Angela to a rehab center, and once she's clean and sober he's going to help her get her son back (one of the kids living with Tamara). In the meantime, James goes to the Scottish arms dealer McVeigh, his contact man in the world of international underground fighting, and gets him to set up a fight between Bone and the deadliest fighter on the planet, Price. It also turns out that James is the real killer of Bone's brother and responsible for many other atrocities, all carried out at the behest of McVeigh.

Bone has an unpleasant surprise for James, though, when he informs him he won't be fighting for him. James goes mad with rage, but Bone and Pinball take out all of his goons and come for him once he's alone. Bone fights James and overcomes him, and forces him to take him to McVeigh so he can get his revenge. But in order to get to McVeigh, Bone has to go through Price first...

Plot/Structure

What struck me when reading the script is how much it reminded me of Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider. Though it doesn't come across in the above synopsis, for a while the script insinuates that Bone is a dead man come back to life to get revenge (which would explain his invincibility, but on the other hand would make the story far less exciting). The twin brother reveal is a bit hard to believe (the brother is called Jack Preacher, and it's never clear whether that's just a nickname or his given name), but it does pull the film back from the brink of the supernatural.

Plotwise, the film follows a fairly predictable but efficient path. The originality lies primarily in the way the characters are portrayed. Sure, there are clichés (the fate of Roberto, the elderly man who stands up to the criminal gangs in the neighbourhood can be guessed from his first appearance), but there are sufficient surprises as well - plus some neat 'whoa! Cool!!'-moments in the action sequences.

The biggest surprise comes at the beginning of act 3, when Bone refuses to be James' fighter. I had expected him to agree and use this as the way to get to the main boss villain. It also made sense as he obviously knew who he was looking for, and it fit the pattern for 'ring fighting movies'. The twist sort of throws the narrative flow out of whack, but it straightens out soon enough when we see how James and Bone come after one another. There's even a nice twist with Angela's rehab.

Structurally, the film has its classic three acts. The first act builds up the tension around Bone become an underground fighter nicely. After the short prologue, we don't see him fight again until the act 1 climax. But there have been a few other bouts and the introduction of the Hammer Man (who we erroneously surmise to become the big opponent for Bone) ensures that the stakes are present and that the suspense mounts almost constantly.

The only minus is that the final big fight, pitting Price versus Bone, isn't emotionally as powerful as the fight between Bone and James a bit earlier in the film (also the only weapon duel in the film, which makes for a nice change of pace). In the finished film, this may not prove to be a problem if the choreography and fight performances are excellent.

Characters

Bone is an effective protagonist: mysterious, brave, with a dark secret (which isn't revealed completely in the script), an incredible fighter, and someone with a very strong moral centre. No character arc here, but the mystery of character is used instead to keep us engaged and fascinated. And it works. With the right actor (and Michael Jai White is certainly capable of selling this part), the character can really come alive.

The strongest part of the script is the main antagonist, James, though. He's got pretentions of gentility, is refined, cultured, won't use profanity or have it used around him - but he's also a raving psychopath who kills people as soon as looking at them, and in extremely savage ways as well. One very strong scene is where James and his goons go to have dinner with a white lawyer friend. At first, everything is fine and it's a surprise for the reader that James has this warm, human side to him - and suddenly, without any warning, he savagely attacks the man and beats him to death. Worse, when the man's girlfriend tries to intervene, he bites a chunk out of her cheek. It's a truly shocking scene which perfectly illustrates the character's schizoid personality.

James' disintegration when Bone turns the table on him, is expertly done as well: gradually he loses his composure, starting to curse and lashing out at anyone around him.

The female roles (Angela and Tamara) are less developed, but do have a few good scenes and character moments which provide them with more depth. Pinball is the archetypal 'funny sidekick' so prevalent in these pictures, especially for the urban market - but this time the character actually is amusing and sufficiently likeable to earn the fact that he's around for the entire duration of the script.

The one role which I had some problems with is McVeigh. Not that the character is badly written per se, but he's a Glaswegian gangster who made it to international arms dealer. Someone like that HAS to be tougher than hell as the Glasgow crime scene is probably the roughest in the UK. Here though, the character becomes too sophisticated and the epilogue, which has a 'fate worse than death' in store for him, doesn't quite ring true. Also because the men who are intent on doing him harm had all been killed by Bone in the opening scene...

ACTION

As this is a fight film, the description of the action scenes is an important part of the reading experience. Strangely enough, the level of detail differs greatly from scene to scene.

Bone is an extremely effective fighter who often manages to take out an opponent with one single move. In a number of cases, the information you get is limited to this ('Bone takes the man out with a highly effective lethal move'). In a number of other cases, the exact move is described. But in the big fight scenes, detail is lacking, and no progress is described in the fight development. These scenes sometimes also fall back on Shane Black-isms - the final fight is described as the greatest martial arts scene in film history. Really? Better than the finale of Drunken Master 2? This kind of superlative boasting takes you right out of the narrative as a reader. Luckily this won't be a problem for the cinema audience. Still, a bit more storytelling in this moment would not have gone amiss.

Blood and Bone is what it is: an urban martial arts film, tailored to the talents of its lead performer for who this may turn out to be a breakout role. It follows the rules of the genre with conviction, and adds an extra dimension (without transcending the genre) by virtue of its character work. It's a good example of a martial arts script with extra depth and emotional layering.

Filmmaking resource: MakingOf

2009-04-30T13:13:00.003+02:00

Here's a new and very interesting site, created by Natalie Portman and producer Christine Aylward, which provides a window into what goes on behind the scenes of the moviemaking progress. It looks great - and it's only in Beta, so who knows what's still to come.

Check it out at:

Making Of