Believe it or not, I had never seen CABARET until the other night.
I know, take away my card and pray that Judy curse me with a lack of pitch forever. It's a great score and a very, very good film. CABARET won 8 Oscars in 1973, including director Bob Fosse beating out Francis Ford Coppola for the goddamn GODFATHER.
And the thing is, it's a pretty simple story. The backdrop is the Nazis starting to come into power in Germany, but the focus is entirely on the love story between the American cabaret performer who wants to see her name up in lights Sally Bowles (Liza Minelli) and British grad student Brian Roberts (Michael York).
In part, that's the greatest writing lesson CABARET has to teach: Keep it simple. Complex is rarely the same as profound.
But the thing that I keep coming back to is the ending of the film, which I will now spoil, so if you haven't seen it and don't want it ruined, mayhaps turn your head.
Sally, who has gotten pregnant and accepted Brian's proposal of marriage, decides instead to terminate the pregnancy. She knew, had they had that baby and gotten married, neither one of them would be happy. So she gives him the freedom to move on and herself as well.
Somewhere in my screenwriting education a teacher told us there are four basic endings to a film:
- The character gets what they want and it's the best, huzzah!
- The character gets what they want and it turns out to be not what they need at all, wah wah.
- The character doesn't get what they want and it's too bad. Sad!
- Or the character doesn't get what they want and it turns out to be for the best. Hurray!
In CABARET, we get two different endings at the same time: Brian doesn't get what he wants, wah wah. And Sally does, but also wah wah because she loves Brian and her choice leaves her stuck at the cabaret.
So, tragedy all around, right?
Maybe, if the film had ended there. But instead we go back to the Kit Kat Club where Sally works, and she gets to do one more number, the title track. It's an upbeat number about getting out of the house and going to the cabaret, which given what she's just given up feels like it could be ironic and bittersweet.
But instead the performance seems to help her discover again who she is and what she wants. The longer she goes, the more alive she becomes.
So in a sense the film gives her three of the four possible endings--she gets what she wants and what she has to sacrifice is sad; but then also in the very end she's happy with that; and yet it's not what she wanted really, not the big career in a massive theater but a room full of drunks at a cabaret, and yet she's realized she's still great with that.
For me the writing note is this: Give yourself permission to explore the space around your ending a little before you call it said and done. Or to put another way that probably many writing teachers will shriek at, Don't end the story when you think it's over. End it after you think it is.
Give your character a chance to live out the resolution of their story. Let's see them in their new "state", having won or lost and happy or sad about it. Maybe it's material that in the end you will decide isn't really necessary. But you never know: maybe there's one more turn still waiting to be had in that final scene for them and for us.
