SONDHEIM WEEK: SEND IN THE CLOWNS

"Send in the Clowns" is Sondheim's most famous song, one that has been sung more times than any of us can count (including many times by Dame Judi Dench, pictured above). It comes from his 1973 musical A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, with book by Hugh Wheeler.

The Set Up: Although it doesn't occur (at first) in the 11 o'clock number slot, "Clowns" really is that number. The musical tells the story of a late middle aged man Fredrik married to a much younger woman Anne who struggles to be honest about that he's way too old for Anne and in fact that he still really loves his ex Desiree. 

Desiree sings "Clowns" in Act II after Fredrik reveals that while he loves her, he won't leave Anne. It's basically a chance for her to grieve over the fact that she still loves him.

The Performance: I'd like to show you a version of the song happening in the course of the musical rather than as a concert performance, which takes the moment out of any sense of story. 

But I couldn't find a good in-show version. So I've given you the next best thing, Bernadette Peters performing the song accompanied by Sondheim himself.

The Storytelling: 

1) The Power of a Great Log Line

There's nothing so satisfying either for writer or audience as a turn of phrase that perfectly captures a moment or a character. Nothing quite so useful, either: at one and the same time a phrase like that becomes a shorthand that people will remember, and  it plants a seed that slowly flowers in our hearts after we've read it.

"Send in the Clowns" is one of the greats in this regard. In just four words the phrase captures exactly the wistful,"What a fool am I" feelings in Desiree at this point. And each successive reference back to it only seems to lend the moment more power. 

To find these kinds of perfect word choices is very much a "final polish" kind of activity, which means they often get overlooked. But the rewards  of finding just the right words to capture a moment can be truly great.  

(Fun fact: Sondheim didn't even come up with "Clowns" until they were about to start out of town previews.)

2) Don't Be Afraid to Wait for More

When I was rewatching the performance I was surprised to discover that it ends a verse later than I remembered. Having asked again and again for someone to send in the clowns, the punchline of the song would seem to be "Don't bother, they're here" aka, Oh wait, it's us, we're the messy ones here. 

The song could have ended well on that note of self-realization and recrimination. But Sondheim comes back with one last verse, where the clowns themselves are no longer showing up. "Oh well, maybe next year," Desiree sings. 

You wouldn't think the song could get sadder than the realization of one's foolishness, but in fact being abandoned and alone leaves us feeling far worse. 

For me that last verse is a great reminder that no matter how convinced I may be that I know where a scene or episode should land, that it's worth exploring what happens if you take the scene a further moment or beat. Maybe we discover we were right, the scene should end back there. But sometimes maybe we discover that in fact there's a whole layer of character and emotion waiting.

 NEXT WEEK: FX's great show POSE returns on Sunday, May 2nd. Next week I'm going to look at some of my favorite episodes from the first two seasons. It's such a tremendous show... 

SONDHEIM WEEK: ON THE STEPS OF THE PALACE

 

"On the Steps of the Palace" is Cinderella's signature song from the first act of the Sondheim/James Lapine fairy tale musical INTO THE WOODS.

The Set Up: Cinderella walks around stage singing about how she doesn't know what to do about the Prince, which would seem like not a terribly great choice to write about in terms of storytelling, because it is literally the definition of Telling vs. Showing, and yet it's one of the best songs in the show. How does Sondheim do it?

The Performance: Everything about the film version of INTO THE WOODS is inferior to the theatrical version, except for this song sung by Anna Kendrick, which is staged in a way that I wish every future performance of the show would copy. 

 The Storytelling:

1) Weave Exposition into Action

The big change that the film version makes to the original staging is that it sets the song not after Cinderella has already left her shoe on the steps, but in the actual moment of that decision, with the Prince literally just steps behind her. 

The effect of that is to put Cinderella into a situation of urgency. She's in a freeze frame sort of moment, yes, but for how long? She must make a choice, and she must do it right now. 

The problem with information dump moments is they tend to kill the forward momentum of a story. By putting Cindy's big question in the present tense, and giving her an onscreen ticking clock in the form of Chris Pine's very handsome stockinged gams, we avoid that problem, entirely. She's not telling us something. She's struggling with something.

2) Let Your Words Sparkle

Musicals live and die on word choice. Alliteration, rhyme scheme, word play--these are essential qualities of most good songs for the stage.  And also, these are things that if you do them in your film or TV script, they will stand out, and oftentimes not in a good way. 

In a way it's the writing equivalent of the difference between acting for stage and screen. On stage, you have to make your performance big so that it reaches even to the people in the back row. But onscreen just a glance can often be enough to convey a ton of emotions. And big dramatic facial expressions look ridiculous. 

I'm a believer in alliteration in pretty much any circumstance, but in general when you're writing for the camera if you use too much word play you'll take the audience out of that blessed moment of escape and transportation you've made for them. 

But having said that, Sondheim's wordplay in "Steps" does highlight the power to be found in the right word. I watched a bunch of different versions of this scene before choosing the film version, and in every one, the audience laughs when Cinderella says the word "goo". In part it's a very satisfying play on the rhyme Sondheim has going at that moment. But it's also just a wonderfully specific word. It paints the picture. 

Earlier in the song she talks about "prying up her shoes". Prying, again, is a strong word, one that gives a more detailed image of her action than say, "pulled" or "grabbed".

When you dig for the right words, or the right rhythm of words, you create opportunities for little moments of surprise and delight in the audience. And much as I was saying about "I'm Still Here", the craftsmanship of a well written line is itself a gift that an audience will relish.

My one serious reservation about the film version of this song, in fact, is that it alters one of Sondheim's most satisfying lines to hear sung: "But then what if he knew who you were when you know that you're not what he thinks that he wants." 

It doesn't do it justice to write it out. Here it is performed by Kim Crosby from the original Broadway show. The moment in question occurs at about 43 seconds.

3) Make the Ending Unexpected and Inevitably

The best endings often have two seemingly contradictory qualities: You don't see them coming, but also in retrospect you can't imagine them having played out any other way. It's hard to to pull off, but when you do to my mind it's maybe the most satisfying storytelling magic trick of all.

And Sondheim does a brilliant job of it here. After two and a half minutes of Cindy telling us she just can't decide between letting herself be caught by the Prince and fleeing to her sad but predicable life, we may not know what she's going to decide, but we know what her two options are. 

To suddenly at the end introduce a third possibility is completely unexpected. It's what every comedian aims at--to train us to look or think in one way, so that we won't see them coming from another direction in the punchline.

And yet the fact that Cindy's third option is the very thing she's been doing in front of us all along also makes it in retrospect the definition of inevitable. Over the course of the song she's shown no sign of starting to lean one way or another. Given that, the only legitimate option for her character is not to decide.

SONDHEIM WEEK: JOHANNA (QUARTET)

"Johanna (Quartet)" is  a song from Sondheim's 1979 classic SWEENEY TODD, with book by Hugh Wheeler. 

The Set Up: (This'll take a minute.) SWEENEY TODD tells the story of a London barber named Benjamin Barker transported to Australia on trumped up charges by local Judge Turpin, who is obsessed with Barker's wife Lucy. As the show opens fifteen years have passed. Barker returns to learn Lucy committed suicide after having been raped at a party by the Judge, and the Judge is now caring for/creeping on their daughter Johanna. 

Barker, now taking the name Sweeney Todd, set ups to kill the Judge, while a sailor on the boat that brought him back plots a way to free Johanna from the Judge's clutches. 

At the end of Act One Anthony has messed up Todd's initial plan to kill the Judge, making a reunion with his daughter seem impossible, and Todd has decided to go in with his landlord Mrs. Lovett on murdering clients and turning them into meat pies while he waits for another shot at the Judge. 

After the Act II opening spectacle of the two of them doing just that, "Johanna" has us catching up with Anthony, Johanna, Todd and an unnamed beggar lady, who seems to represent the threat of being discovered, but in fact is actually none other than Lucy, Barker's wife.

The Performance: For me, there is the original production with Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury, and then there is everything else. But I found this concert version online starring opera singer Bryn Terfel as Sweeney and Audra McDonald as the Beggar Woman, and it is exceptional.

Terfel has me literally crying at the end. (I have no idea what that says about me.)

The Storytelling:   

1) Audiences Appreciate a Vacuum

Much like "Ladies Who Lunch", part of what makes this song so great is the choice to write away from the emotions of the moment rather than into them. Sweeney has lost everything, including it would seem his damn mind, and yet what he's singing is this very beautiful, in some ways happy song of goodbye to his daughter.

The distance between what's he singing and the multiple murders we see him committing makes the song very funny. (In most staged productions when he cuts a customer's throat blood spurts and a hole opens in the floor through which the body slides down into the basement to Mrs. Lovett. It is AMAZING.)

It also lends it unexpected pathos. It's like that old director's tip to actors to never cry. Every tear that you withhold is a tear that the audience will shed. The more Sweeney stays away from the grief and horror of the moment, the more we feel it.

2) Taking a Beat to Breathe Can Draw Us In Deeper

Even though there are things happening in this song--Anthony is trying to figure out how to get to Johanna; Beggar Lady is trying to call attention to what's going on at the pie shop; and Sweeney is murdering people--really this is a Catch Your Breath song, a moment the plot pauses and we get to just catch up with our characters, see where they're at in light of everything that's happened and where they're planning to go. 

In film and TV we don't often take many moments like this. Especially on television we have so little time to work with. Every moment is super precious. 

But watching "Johanna" what I note is how taking that time also gives us a chance to catch up with ourselves and how we're feeling about what's going on. And as we do so we're paradoxically drawn in deeper. Prior to that song Todd is a dangerous and hilarious nutcase and Anthony a naive prat. After it we care about them more deeply, and the others too. 

(It's interesting that Mrs. Lovett is given no part in this song. It makes sense--through her lies and manipulation of Todd she is another villain in the story. Sondheim doesn't want us to invest in her further.)

Again, it can seem harder to pull these kinds of moments off in film and television. But I find if I step back and consider what are some of my all time favorite TV/film moments, or just the beats that I liked most in the last thing I watched, a lot of the time they end up being moments like this, where the writers lead us away from the plot to someplace quiet or unexpected.

As I'm writing this my mind immediately goes to this incredible moment at the end of the first episode of the last season of FRINGE where Walter, overwhelmed by the distopia he finds himself in, can't sleep. And then this happens:

It's a moment that is completely unnecessary to the story. It almost feels tacked on. But my God is it powerful. (The ep is written by J.H. Wyman.)

3) Parallel Stories Add Layers

"Johanna" isn't quite Shakespeare, but it does have that quality of parallel stories which bring one another out that is such a classic Shakespeare move. We've got Anthony and Sweeney with their radically different takes on Johanna; at the end as Sweeney sings "Goodbye" Anthony overlaps with "I'll free you".

Meanwhile the Beggar Woman (aka Lucy) cries out about the horrors happening at the bakehouse, which seems like a whole other topic entirely, except that in the end Sweeney will almost kill Johanna there, and does kill Lucy.  Each of their stories is really commenting on the others, and expands the ways that we think about each of them. And the fact that we won't fully appreciate all of that until the very end when the Beggar Woman's identity is revealed gives this moment a whole other layer entirely. 

(For those who love J.J. Abrams mystery boxes, I point to the Beggar Woman as an example of how much more is possible when you choose not to front load the mystery.)

SONDHEIM WEEK: I'M STILL HERE

"I'm Still Here", from Sondheim's 1971 show FOLLIES (with book by James Goldman), is one of Sondheim's most well known and most often sung pieces, a bring-the-house-down showstopper. 

 The Set-Up: Movie and TV star Carlotta Campion is one of a group of former Follies girls who have gathered together with their spouses to say goodbye to the soon-to-be-demolished theatre where they all performed as young women. 

Campion is in fact just a minor character in the musical, but its Follies-style revue structure gives each character a song of their own.

The Performance: There's many performances of this song to choose from. I'm going to post Christine Baranski's version here at the top. It's not the best looking, but for another reason that I'll mention below I think it's the best to see. But I'll also post Elaine Paige's performance from an actual full-on production at the bottom. 

 

The Storytelling: I debated doing "I'm Still Here" after "The Ladies Who Lunch" (or at all). While thematically they're opposites--"Ladies" about the seeming inescapability of despair and "Here" about the refusal to do so--the two songs use a nearly identical structure of stanzas which each offer details around different elements of the theme. 

Despite that similarity, I decided to do "Here" because it is such a major song in Sondheim's catalog. And as it turns out I think the insights to be gained from it actually prove to be a little different.

1) The Power of Repetition on a Journey

In "Here", each stanza takes on a different aspect of the hardship of a life in theatre -- the poverty; having to deal with fads; fucking up your own life; and the whiplash rollercoaster ride of success and failure. But unlike "Ladies", the elements collected here do not just represent an aggregate of assortments. Sondheim sees the stanzas as walking the audience through the journey of a performer over time. You show up with nothing and struggle to live with that while you look for work; eventually you find your way into some success, but also lots of opportunity for self-destruction; and no matter what success you eventually achieve, eventually you're back to dealing with the fact that no one remembers you. 

At the same time, the song doesn't telegraph that journey. There's no overt sense of one thing following upon the next. Some performances make an effort to make that clear; that's why I chose Baranski's version. Her Carlotta is clearly drunk and kind of pathetic. And slowly over the course of the song she gets more confident, until she is belting out that ending like nobody's business. But Paige offers far less of that--and most versions follow her, not Baranski.

What the song does do is make the title its persistent refrain. 21 times in the piece, in fact, Carlotta sings some version of it: "I'm Still Here";"and I'm here" or "but I'm here."

On the face of it that repetition seems like it should translate to a sense of endless stasis, not progress. But in fact the repetition trains us to look forward to each next use. What else has this actress been through that she refuses to let condemn her? 

And the words become like a pebble rolling down a mountain, gaining momentum simply by virtue of being said again and again. Even as her circumstances actually grow more dire -- at the end she's forgotten again -- by the time we get there her refusal to quit has created a sense of triumph rather than collapse.

2) Bookends Satisfy

The song's last stanza begins the very same way the first stanza did, "Good Times and Bum Times, I've Seen Them All..." And that kind of bookending has interesting uses. 

First of all, it's a signpost telling us that we're at the end, which generates further anticipation (while also undercutting any sense of boredom that might be waiting in the wings within us). It's basically a way of signalling This is it, everybody, Big Finish. 

Pointing back to the beginning also naturally creates a sense of journey. You can't be back where you started if you didn't go somewhere in between. Much like the classic hero story, where the hero having been on their quest comes home again with new skills and perspective to bring to bear on life there, ending a story as you began it gives a sense of culmination and of a final gift to be bestowed. 

Lastly, I find there's something just deeply satisfying about ending where you started. It has a feeling of craftsmanship or artful planning that speaks to us on a subconscious level.  It's the same thing as looking at a handmade chair or a bespoke suit; even if I'm not savvy enough to appreciate fully what I'm looking at, still the object itself generates a great appreciation. 

Craftsmanship always improves our sense of the stories and world before us.

SONDHEIM WEEK: THE LADIES WHO LUNCH

This week is a crazy experiment that should work because Stephen Sondheim is a master storyteller, but may not because I am a mere mortal. At the least you'll have gotten to see five great performances, at least one of which left me in tears yesterday when I discovered it (and when you find out which one it may very well make you question who exactly it is you're chosen to spend your time reading). 

We start with "The Ladies Who Lunch" from Sondheim's 1970 musical Company  (book by George Furth), which is the show's 11 o'clock number and an emotional hurricane. 

The Set-Up: Our protagonist Bobby, who has turned 35 and is terrified of commitment, is out for drinks with the older Joanne, who has been divorced many times and in some ways is an image of Bobby's possible future, hard drinking, cynical and emotionally scarred. As her husband Larry gets out on the dance floor offstage, Joanne sings this song to Bobby. 

The Performance: The song has been sung by all the greats, but to my mind there's nobody better than the lady that originated the role, Elaine Stritch. Here she is at Carnegie Hall almost 30 years later (!).

The structure of the song follows a pattern Sondheim uses in a number of his bigger songs--rather than telling a story per se, each stanza provides a different riff on the same theme, in this case, that all those East Side upper class women you see with all their money and opportunity are living lives of emptiness and desperation. 

The Storytelling: You could write whole books about this performance and Sondheim's songwriting. But here are three things that stand out to me: 

1) You Get More Miles from Going the Opposite Direction

The song is offered as a toast to women, a time for praise. But in fact every single line is a switchblade cut of ironic devastation.

It's so tempting to have characters pour out their hearts. It can feel so cathartic to write that, too. But when characters refuse that call and go the opposite way--speak positively in the face of pain; express loathing through love--it gives them depth, layers, room to move. We are able to get to the insane screaming ending of the piece only because Sondheim allows Joanne to start from such a different, seemingly deached place.

2) Make it Personal

"Ladies who Lunch" is in many ways an observation song. Joanne paints detailed pictures of the horror shows she's witnessed.

But if it were only that, the song probably wouldn't work. Because it's the same thing over and over. At some point, we get it. Who cares?

The reason we stay invested is precisely because Joanne's own internal sense of horror is slowly revealed. Some of that is about performance choices, like the insane scream that Stritch offers the end of the fourth verse, or the way she delivers that last line "Rise!" over and over. 

But it's also the fact that Sondheim has her singing "Rise" a hundred times in a row in the first place, like a record that keeps skipping; or the little comments where she lets the irony slip and says exactly what she means--"too busy to know they're fools" (end of stanza three) or that incredible depth charge moment at the end of stanza five: "Look into their eyes and you'll see what they know/Everybody dies." 

At this point it's very clear, Joanne is singing from her own experience. The song is doing more than pointed observations; it's this incredible woman's slow motion existential shriek of horror. 

The fact that immediately after the song she makes a hard pass at Bobby is the period at the end of the sentence, her latest attempt to escape the nightmare for a moment and feel something. 

 

Patti LuPone in the 2020 (and hopefully 2021) production 

3) Let Your Characters Get Ugly

It's so natural as a writer to protect your characters. They're our babies. We want them to be smart, pretty and well taken care of, and so we make things easier on them than they should be, or we try to polish them up and make them look nicer than they are so they won't get picked on at school. 

But in practice that's a terrible choice. Protecting your characters makes the stakes low and the conflicts unimportant (or undermined). And allowing your characters to get ugly actually makes them accessible.  The audience goes nuts at the end of the song precisely because Stritch was willing to be that vulnerable with us on stage. 

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAYS 2021: DRIVEWAYS DOESN'T NEED AN ANTAGONIST

Happy Academy Awards Day!

On this day when we celebrate great filmmaking and storytelling, and having written about most of the nominated scripts, I wanted to shine a light on a film that got overlooked, the Brian Dennehy vehicle DRIVEWAYS, which tells the story of a young mother, Kathy (Hong Chau), who arrives in town with her shy 8 year old son Cody (Lucas Jaye) to clean our her deceased sister's house, and the elderly next door neighbor Del (Dennehy) who befriends Cody. 

Written by Hannah Bos and Paul Thurteen, the script is really bold for its defiance of the typical storytelling structures.  There is no antagonist in the film, and also no real conflict between any of the characters. At the very start Dennehy’s Korean War veteran Del watches the Korean-American Kathy and Cody trying to make their way and it looks for a moment like this might be another GRAN TURINO.  But that’s really just our natural impulse to look for conflict at work. 

 

In terms of a problem that drives the action of the film, there’s really just the slow and mostly uneventful process of cleaning out Kathy’s sister’s house, and Del and Cody's developing friendship. The closest the film has a low point is Cody yelling “No” and running out of the house when he finds out Del’s daughter is moving him to Seattle.

 

And yet for all this the film breathes with a great and quiet life. Which is crazy. That should not work.

 The longer the movie went on the more I found myself wondering, how can does this movie have me so completely hooked when it lacks so many of the things the standard stories rely on?

 

Here’s the thing that struck me: Every character has a hole, something missing in their lives. Kathy has not only lost her sister, she has no sense of who she was. When they arrive and she discovers her sister was a hoarder, it's devastating to her. It only accentuates that sense of absence.

 

Cody has no friends, and not a lot of skills in dealing with social interactions. And much like Kathy, as the movie first progresses that problem only becomes more acute. When he spends time with the neighbor’s grandchildren, two little monsters who like to wrestle and drink sugar, at the very moment it looks like things are going to take a more predictable turn – they force him to wrestle, nightmares ensue – instead he anxiety-vomits (it's a thing) and runs home.

 

Kathy and Cody also clearly struggle with making ends meet and having any kind of life. Meanwhile Del meanwhile struggles silently with the absence of his wife and also the fact that with her gone he suddenly realizes his entire life has now more or less passed.

 

In every story our characters have some kind of hole. And one way or another, that drives their action. But where the typical path is that they make choices to fill or face that hole, DRIVEWAYS instead allows each character to see and respond to the other’s emptiness. Kathy tries to help Cody. Del befriends Cody. Cody asks Del about Vera.

 

And it’s in taking what seem like these sideways steps of helping each other that they each get activated into new life. Cody has the confidence to reach out to the nice kids who like manga – and who at the start got him interested in reading it. Kathy asks Del to tell her about her sister, and ends up deciding to move into her house. And in the film’s gorgeous, unexpected ending, Del opens up and talks to Cody about his life, which has had a bit more pain and loss in it than we’ve known.

 

(When the film suddenly ends after he finishes, as Cody puts his arm around him, I have to say I got a little giddy. There’s nothing so exciting as seeing a story hit its landing in a way you could never have seen coming.)

 

One of the things that was drilled into us in film school was that you want conflict in every scene. Where there is no conflict, there’s probably not much going on. For me, DRIVEWAYS is a great reminder that while that may often be true, that doesn’t mean you need external sources of conflict, aka a villain or a “problem”. The holes in your character’s lives are conflict enough.

 

And the thing that happens when you trust that is not only that a different kind of structure and story has the chance to grow, but you may perhaps end up bringing to light the fragility we all experience in our lives, and give us some hope that it’s precisely these quiet, unseen struggles that make us each so incredibly beautiful. 

STARTING TOMORROW: A WEEK OF SONDHEIM!

 

 

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: SOUL KEEPS SWITCHING THINGS UP

In my last day looking at Oscar nominated scripts, I wanted to shift from best adapted screenplay to a script that has fascinated me, that of animated feature nominee SOUL. 

Written by Pete Docter, Mike Jones and Kemp Powers, SOUL tells the story of jazz musician/middle school teacher Joe Gardner, who ends up in a coma just as he's about to get his big break as a musician, and ends up in heaven trying to find his way back to his body with the help of 22, a soul that for some reason is resisting being born on Earth. 

When I watch a feature, I'm always trying to break down the script into smaller units. You've got your big picture Poles of the Tent moments: the Problem; the Acceptance of the Quest to Solve the Problem; the Midpoint; the Lowpoint; the Climax. 

But I like to drill down a lot farther than that when I can. Every script is different, but as a starting point I try to think in terms of seven or eight chunks. Two in the first act; four in the second; and one-two in the last. And what defines a "chunk" for me is a problem or goal--over 10-15 minutes a character goes from having a problem, to complications that arise from the quest to solve that problem, to some kind of resolution, which creates a new problem or next step. 

This is Screenwriting 101, and again sometimes--in fact in some of my favorite scripts, like this year's DRIVEWAYS (which I'm going to post about over the weekend) -- this structure doesn't quite fit. But I do find it very useful both as a way of trying to understand a film as I'm watching it, and as a way of thinking about how to build a feature. That second act especially can be so daunting. When I can break it down to a set of four or maybe discrete chunks, with a goal the character is pursuing in each, it becomes much more manageable. (Sometimes I give each chunk a title as well. Anything to help me keep my eye on the ball as I'm working in that unit.)

For me, what makes SOUL so fascinating structurally is that its chunks are each so dramatically different from one another. The settings, the problems and the goal all change dramatically from unit to unit. 

In a nutshell, here's the film. 

1. Joe looks for his big shot, unexpectedly gets it, but then in the process of seeing it through is injured and in a coma. 
2. Now in the Great Before, Joe struggles to find his way home before he's sucked into the Great Beyond. In the end his efforts bring him to the attention of the management and he is made a mentor.
   
3. Now a mentor, Joe agrees to find his mentee 22 a spark of passion that will earn them a pass he can use to get back to Earth. Though Joe fails to help 22 find their spark, 22 helps him to find a way back to Earth. But in the end 22 ends up in his body and him in his cat's. 
4. Now back on Earth, Joe struggles to make things right. But as he does so 22 discovers they like being alive, only to have to give it up so Joe can live again. 
5. Now finally back on Earth in his body, Joe gets the life that he always wanted, only to discover that actually 22 was onto something with her enthusiasm for just living, and that they deserve their chance on Earth.
   
6. Joe sacrifices his future to go back to the Great Before, where he fights to rescue 22 from being a lost soul so that they can finally begin a life on Earth. 

As I say, most scripts have one version or another of a chunk or multi-unit structure. But rarely are those chunks so clear one from the other as in SOUL.

It's worth noting, up until the very end, Joe's goal never changes. He's always trying to get back to his life and opportunity.

But with each new section of that quest, new complications get added--mostly in the form of 22 --that instead of ever getting resolved, only get more complicated themselves. 

 In this way SOUL is very different than a Fetch Quest movie. It's not like Joe has three things he has to accomplish, and then he'll get what he wants--a structure that's easy to lay out, super easy to understand (which can also make the viewing very satisfying), but doesn't feel organic.

Instead, in most of the beats of SOUL Joe actually accomplishes what wants, but then with that come unintended consequences, e.g. he's now responsible for 22; he's put in the wrong body; 22 doesn't want to leave Earth after all. 

It gives the story a great natural fluidity. Also it keeps things from every getting stale, or feeling like they ever could. 

Takeaway Question: What are the main chunks of your story? What's the protagonist's goal in each unit? And what are the goals of the other main characters -- the villain, the second protagonist, the sidekick?

 ++

Over the Weekend I'm going to post something about DRIVEWAYS, which I really do think is one of the best scripts of the year. It has a lot in common with MINARI, actually, but with less need to hit the standard structural beats. 

Next week: I love the musicals of Stephen Sondheim. In honor of his 91st birthday earlier this month, each day I'm going to pick one favorite Sondheim song and see if there's not something to learn about story from it. 

I have no idea if it'll work or just be mostly god sondheim is so cool u guys. We shall see!

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY 2021: ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI TELLS A STORY

This week I'm looking at some storytelling takeaways from the 2021 Oscar Nominees for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Near the climax of Kemp Powers' adaptation of his stage play ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI, Malcolm X tells the story of seeing Sam Cooke perform in Boston. It's a high point of the film, and a master class in how to deliver a story onscreen.

Some of the Elements that Make it Work So Well:

1. It Emerges Out of Conflict: When you're telling a story onscreen, the first hurdle is how to tell it without killing the forward momentum of the story. How to make it seem like the next step forward in the narrative, rather than some sort of interruption (or worse, a transparent attempt by the writer to insert exposition that they think we need). 

The way that Powers overcomes that hurdle is by telling the story in the context of the deep conflict between Malcolm and Sam, a reality Powers highlights with the way he begins the scene. Malcolm asks Sam whether he remembers the first time they met. And what does Sam respond: "I'm tired of answering your questions." Just like that, this is not some stop along the way or exposition drop, but part of the ongoing conflict between them.

2. It's Radically Different Than Anything That Has Come Before It: Once the four men arrive at the hotel room for their night together, the film proceeds in real time. And mostly they stay in the room. All of which creates a sense of them and us being trapped. When Malcolm goes to call Betty, or Sam and Cassius take off to get a drink it's immediately exciting just for the momentary change it offers. But the Sam in Boston scene is the only moment that we truly escape the constraints of time and space that have been set up. That sudden freedom makes us as an audience that much more ready to be receptive to the power of the scene.

 

 

3. It Quietly Uses Cassius To Move Things Along: Even while most of the scene is happening in flashback, still Malcolm is the one narrating the events. There's some beautiful prose in there, but even so, that's a lot of one person talking. Also, there are moments in any story where you really need someone else to help get you to the next beat, a Prompter. 

 

And at each of those points, Powers uses Cassius: He's the one that insists Malcolm tell the story. When things are looking ugly at the concert, he's the one that wants to know what happened. And at the end he's the one to provide a reaction to what they've heard -- "That was really something" -- which both puts a period at the end of the sentence and allows Malcolm to offer his own final, emotional response. It's just a detail of the overall story, but it's an important one.  

 

4. It Blends Past and Present in Useful Ways: For the most part the scene cuts simply back and forth between past and present. But at a couple moments Powers unexpectedly merges the two timelines: when things are looking bad for Sam, we hear Malcolm in narration say "This young brother is fitting to get himself killed", while onscreen we're seeing Malcolm say the same thing to the guards around him. It's just a detail, but it adds to the humor of the moment. 

 

Then once Sam has the crowd doing the beat for "Chain Gang", the scene once again cuts back to the hotel room, and we discover that Malcolm and Cassius are themselves moving and singing right along with the crowd. Which becomes another way of making the story feel relevant to the present, rather than some kind of nostalgic interruption. That song is not just happening the past, it's happening in this hotel room right now. 

 

 

5. It's Revelatory of Both Characters: The story is ostensibly about Sam--his courage and also the power of his talent. But as it goes on it's very clearly a story about Malcolm too. In part, it's about his enormous admiration for Sam, which we learn early on not only from how many times he's seen Sam perform, but from the poetry of thatmic-caress comment. But then as the Chain Gang moment starts to happen, we watch Malcolm look on with a flickering combination of child-like delight and  intense interest. It's clear if he had a note pad on him he would have been writing down what he was seeing. 

 

Sam's moment becomes a glimpse of what Malcolm wants to be a part of himself, and of the power of the black community when they come together. And when we return to the present we see all of that playing once again on Malcolm's face. It serves as a final blurring of past and present, and one that's meant to make it clear one more time that none of this story was a distraction from the journey we've been on the last 90 minutes. It's an intrinsic part of it. 

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I could go on. I love the moment near the end where we unexpectedly pull back through the crowd to where Malcolm is, and discover that in fact you can't even hear Sam any more. The power of the moment is in the community, not the man.

Also, the whole "Chain Gang" moment is a process story--you build the elements one by one and it's only at the end that you know what you have. In other words, it takes us on a whole journey of its own.

 

And in a way even as it stands on its own, the scene also works as a stage setter for the final scene, where Sam sings "A Change is Gonna Come" on The Tonight Show.  Part of that is just the fact that they're both scenes in which Sam is performing. But having walked with Malcolm through the Boston story and experienced for ourselves what Sam can do, we're also primed to receive that final scene in bigger way. 

In a sense we the audience are now the crowd, living that moment with him and then sent out of the theatre into the world to share what we've experienced. 

Takeaway Question: Does your script involve any sort of storytelling? If so, what are you doing to make it feel organic and relevant to the ongoing story, rather than an interruption or pause? 

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY 2021: THE FATHER HAS A POINT OF VIEW

This week I'm looking at some storytelling takeaways from the 2021 Oscar Nominees for Best Adapted Screenplay. 

Have you seen THE FATHER? If you haven't, please go watch it before reading this. 

(I realize it sounds like I'm talking about a Marvel TV show rather than the story of an old man with dementia and the daughter trying to figure out what to do with him. But trust me, though it has no capes or tights, this isn't a movie you want spoiled.)

I think I might have mentioned a couple months ago that I recently got to interview a comic book writer who was given the opportunity early in his career to work on a book with a Major Comic Book Writing Genius. Mostly his job was to do the dialogue pass, while the MCBWG did plots and the final pass. 

But every once in a while my friend The Then Newbie got the chance to actually do the plots and dialogue all himself. And he found it a frustrating experience. Even when he felt like his storytelling was good, it all still seemed grossly inadequate to what the MCBWG was accomplishing in other issues. 

For the longest time, he couldn't figure out why that was. Then it dawned on him: In the issues that he got to write, he was telling his stories fine, but the camera was in a sense always neutral. The story was in effect just the series of things that passed "onscreen". 

Meanwhile, when the MCBWG wrote, events never "just happened". He always had a  specific and unusual angle on them.

Stories of people struggling with dementia are pretty familiar at this point. In fact there's another film on the topic out right now, SUPERNOVA, which stars Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth as a married couple and is absolutely wonderful. 

What makes THE FATHER stand out is its point of view. Rather than showing us a man struggling with dementia, writers Florian Zeller--who also wrote the play--and Christopher Hampton bring us into that experience in a radical way. 

After taking a good long time to set up our main characters Anthony and Anne and their conflict --he's starting to lose it and keeps driving away caretakers; she's moving to Paris to be with this man she met--we suddenly introduce Paul, who has somehow broken into Anthony's house and won't leave and what is his game.

But then it turns out it's not Anthony's house, it's Paul's, and he's married to Anne, oh and by the way she's played by a completely different person now, and that whole first scene never happened. Or did it?

And before we can get any kind of answers about any of that the writers lead down us this rabbit hole of a day in which each scene makes sense on its own, but then it turns out they're happening out of order, then start to overlap upon themselves, and finally culminate in that insane dining room Möbius strip moment where the scene somehow ends where it began.  

So it's not just not the characters and events that are coming unglued, it's the passage of time itself.

 

And in the midst of all that we're also getting a few strange and nightmarish beats with Anne that make you wonder whether it might actually be that she's the one that's having the delusions, not her dad.  (Those beats are really interesting to think about in terms of point of view: at every other point we experience what Anthony is experiencing. To add in these scenes is like giving us our own personal experience of dislocation and dementia.)

How do you tell a story? What THE FATHER and movies like it remind us is that  there are many interesting ways beyond the default of letting the story "tell itself".

Takeaway Question: In my story are the scenes simply passing before us on screen? What is my point of view? 

 

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY 2021: NOMADLAND REFUSES TO BACK DOWN

This week I'm looking at some storytelling takeaways from the 2021 Oscar Nominees for Best Adapted Screenplay. 

"What does your character want?" You hear that all the time. What's the thing that drives them? It's the engine of the story, so you want to get it right. 

Except, in some of the best stories end up the protagonist has a goal that doesn't seem to make sense at all. NEBRASKA's Woody Grant insisting on traveling from Montana to Nebraska because he misunderstands a Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes package to mean he has won a million dollars; CRAZY EX-GIRLFRIEND's Rebecca Bunch moving across the country on the off-chance she can convince the boy she loved one summer in middle school to go out with her; even Hamlet basically deciding in light of the reveal that his uncle murdered his dad to spend three hours just, I don't know, thinking about it?--these are absurd missions. And you assume the story is going to pretty quickly become something else, because how could it sustain itself on this?

But it turns out a fool committing scene in, scene out on their errand ends up not only working, it makes them and their mission more compelling. It's almost like the foolishness of what they're chasing itself creates its own ever-strengthening gravity, until we are all in on their mission. Hell, we invest all the time in characters going around murdering people or dressing like spandex animals; why not a story about someone who is GOING TO HAVE JOSH NO MATTER WHAT BUT YES, THANK YOU FOR YOUR FEEDBACK BYEEEEE. 

In NOMADLAND, adapted by Chloe Zhao from Jessica Bruder's non-fiction work Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st Century,  protagonist Fern (Frances McDormand) has one driving desire: to be left alone to live the way she wants. And once again, on the surface that doesn't seem like it'll be enough, or like that's really her goal. Maybe that's what she thinks she wants, but come on, you and I both know what she really wants is to work through the trauma of having lost her husband, her job and her home and start over. 

David Straithairn's David is set up as the embodiment of that endgame: he's been living the same life as she has, he's a nice guy, he's eventually got a nice family to welcome her into. OF COURSE that's where this movie is going. 

Except Zhao refuses that narrative entirely. In choice after choice Fern opts to live alone, in her van, no matter not only who questions it and what they're offering but maybe even her happiness. It's what she wants, and also what she needs. (So often the friction that pulls the story forward particularly in the latter half lies in the difference between what a character wants and needs. But not here.)

There's a great line near the end of the film. Fern has gone to see Bob Wells, sort of the nomad wise man, who she met early on. "You are not required to get over the traumas of your life," he tells her, in what amounts to an enormous fuck you to most of Hollywood storytelling about both trauma victims and women. "It's okay if you can't or you don't."

That's Fern's desire in a nutshell--to not get over it, to not get past it, but just to live in the way that she wants, even if she could have more some other way. It makes no sense from the outside, and yet that's exactly why it makes such a compelling movie. 

Takeaway Question: What is the most interesting version of what my character wants? 

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY 2021: THE WHITE TIGER THROWS A HEAD FAKE

This week I'm looking at some storytelling takeaways from the 2021 Oscar Nominees for Best Adapted Screenplay.  

 

Ramin Bahrani's THE WHITE TIGER, based on the novel by Aravind Adiga, starts with a horrifying moment--a young, rich, maybe drunk couple run down a little boy while they're fooling around. In the backseat our protagonist Balram watches, horrified. 

 

This is the key moment of the film. It will set Balram down his harrowing path, and it tells us exactly what we're in for. 

 

Except as we hear the car running over the body, the film freezes frame on Balram's shocked, somewhat silly-looking face. "Pardon me," he says in voiceover. "This is no way to start this movie. I am Indian, after all, and it is an instant and venerated custom of my people to start a story by praying to a higher power."

 

And just like that, the film seems to signal we're actually in the realm of Tarantino. The shocking sound of the car hitting the body plays into that; it's so awful to have heard that the idea the film might somehow be a comedy (as insane as that is from the outside; they killed a child) comes as a welcome relief. Maybe they didn't hurt that child after all. Or maybe somehow it won't matter.

 

The film moves on and we come to know Balram, first far in the future of the opening and then before it happened. In both cases, the story is constructed around absurdly funny kinds of ideas: in the future he's writing a letter to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, in fact his entire narration is a letter to woo Jiabao to meet Balram on his upcoming state visit to India. 

 

 

Meanwhile in the past he's this skinny, put-upon poor kid who has made it his quest to become the rich master's son's driver. And he chases that dream with an infectious over the top enthusiasm that once again signals comedy, not drama. 

There are beats along the way that are quite dark. He has the chance to go to school but is prevented by his controlling Grandmother. When he gets a job with the son he immediately sets to undermining the guy above him, and ends up using the man's religion to blackmail him into quitting. 

 

But still, Balram is so winning that these momentary alarm bells don’t make you realize just how fucking dark this movie is going to get.

And that's how it so happens that when we find our way back at the horrifying moment of the child being run down, and the movie becomes the story of Balram being betrayed by the people he's trusted, and how he responds, we're surprised. 

 

In an awful moment, if you give the audience a chance to look away or feel something else--if you give them an escape--they will take it. 

 

Knowing that gives you another way to surprise them.   

Takeaway Question: What's the story I'm telling? And what's the story I want the audience to think I'm telling? 

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY 2021: MINARI HOLDS ONTO ITS PLAN

This week I'm looking at storytelling takeaways from the 2021 Oscar Nominees for Best Original Screenplay.  

 

 

MINARI, written and directed by Lee Isaac Chung, represents a big step forward for Asian actors, creators and stories. It's thrilling to see a strong story that refuses the  standard representations of Asian or Asian-American cultures--or for that matter of rural white American--and to see it get recognized. 

One of the film's great strengths is the choices that Chung makes to keep expanding the humanity of his characters. Paul the Christian seems pretty kooky at times, but he's a truly nice man, who we come to discover has pretty much nothing of his own, and his faith becomes a great source of consolation for Monica after her mother falls ill. Jacob takes enormous risks but it turns out they're for the very best of motivations, so that his children won't see their father failing again. Monica can seem severe but she very much loves Jacob. Grandma Soonja is anything but your standard grandma. And at the same time she's not perfect either. 

The film also has some very satisfying section-work. When I'm watching a feature I often try to break down into discrete 10-15 minute sections of narrative, each of which has a specific problem or problems, the resolution of which becomes impetus or source of the next problem. And the opening of MINARI is a great example of this: We start with them arriving at their new home. Monica doesn't like it at all. And the the first fifteen minutes is them trying to figure out a way forward--which resolves with her agreeing to stay, as long as her mother can live with them. 

The first half of Act II, while long as units go, has a similar sense of being a unified whole, built around the relationship between David and his grandmother. He starts deeply uncomfortable with her, eventually becomes more openly hostile, but then after she cheers him on for outsmarting his father's punishment over the urine incident, there's a softening. 

The top of Act III has a similar sense of being a unit. We start with their problems: they are deeply strapped for cash with no clear prospects, and David's heart remains a question. In a wonderful twist, everything turns out far better than they could have dreamed--David's heart is getting better, and Jacob has finally found a buyer for his vegetables--and yet Monica's conclusion is actually a clearer sense that she and the children cannot live like this, that this is not going to end well. 

It's not at all how you might expect Act III to go, given what we've seen. And that's what makes it so satisfying (if sad). It's another great example of the power of a story in which a character is given what they want and it ends up being a bad thing. And yet there's no sense of punishment to it. Neither Jacob nor Monica is any kind of a villain. They're two people who love each other and yet don't quite fit together. There's something so very real in that sense of disconnection.

Then out of nowhere we get Grandma accidentally starting a fire which will burn down all of the produce Jacob has spent a year fighting for, and effectively destroy his future entirely. It's a terrible, terrible coincidence. 

And as such also a problem. Because it doesn't follow from anything that's come before. Yes, we've seen Monica and Anne burn trash. But we've never seen Grandma do anything like that, or clean up around the farm either. And while she's had a stroke, we've also seen nothing to suggest she's now mentally impaired. So the fact that she would suddenly do any of these things is hard to explain. It reads as an imperative of the writer rather than the characters.

And the final scenes, in which Monica and Jacob have now stayed together, do nothing to answer the question as to what has changed to make Monica change her view. If anything the fact that they're digging a new well signals they've gone even further into debt. 

There's that old adage that in planning your film you should start with the last scene. It tells you where you want to go. But our insistence on landing the plane in a certain field can also get in the way. Monica's decision to leave Jacob is painful for sure, but it also felt so right. Somehow the very surprise of it granted it a kind of confirmation. 

To ignore that and instead insert a whole other surprise twist is a challenge to accept.  

Takeaway Questions:  Can I break my script into discrete units, with clear beginnings, complications and resolutions? And is my ending where the characters want to go?

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY 2021: JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH STAY ON TARGET

This week I'm looking at storytelling takeaways from the 2021 Oscar Nominees for Best Original Screenplay.  

A good biopic is very much like an adaptation--your goal is to capture the essence of the person and their lives, rather than to hit every beat.

Most biopics struggle to do this well, I think because the creators come to so love the people and events they met in their research they're no longer capable of the objectivity needed to create a coherent and compelling story.

Every detail in a biopic has to stay true to the essence of the actual people and events being represented. And it also must answer the same question as one asks in any other story: Why is this here? How does it serve the narrative? 

And this is where JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH excels. Writers Will Berson, Shaka King, Keith Lucas and Kenneth Lucas are incredibly disciplined in the three stories that they set out to tell--William O'Neal's insertion as a plant and struggle to get free of the FBI while slowly being won over by Fred Hampton; Hampton's relationship with Darlene; and the FBI's relentless pursuit of his destruction and the destruction of the Black Panthers in light of his growing popularity. 

Look at the script and you won't find a single beat that doesn't hit one of those three stories. And all three arcs are also very tightly constructed. Each next scene moves the ball forward, step by step. We get no repeat beats and also none of the typical origin story flashbacks or Act Ones. Given how impressive a man Hampton was, there must have been many compelling stories from his youth. 

But the writers refuse to get drawn into any narrative cul-de-sacs. The film has not a single wrong turn or note. 

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Last week comic book artist Elsa Charretier did a video showing how she'd adapt a scene from RESERVOIR DOGS to a comic page. It absolutely nails the way a good adaption should be faithful to the source material. It's very worth watching for anyone interested in writing any kind of narrative translation, including a biopic. 

Takeaway Question: What are the main arcs of my biopic (or other story)? If I list them as a series of single sentences, are there any that don't seem to follow from the last or lead to the next?