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.
++
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?
