Why does this come up when I image search "Rewrite"? I have no idea, but that's what I'm doing this week! (Not anime; rewriting.)
Holidays are a great time to let your mind breathe. Don't hesitate to give yourself that space if you need it.
But it can also be a good time to Get Stuff Done!
Whatever you choose, I hope you enjoy it.
Coming next week: New movies that just don't work! Others that shouldn't but do!
Happy New Year's! Whee!
"DIE HARD is the all time best Christmas movie" is one of those things relatives like to quip at Christmas dinner to seem a little smarter than the rest of us softies. I'm not fooled by your Old Man Angels and Santa Clauses, they imply. I see beyond that. To which I respond:
But it is a great, great movie. If you haven't seen it lately, take the time to check it out. It does so many things right that other action movies of its time do not even conceive of. For instance, where the standard action movie takes the time to give interesting details or motivation to the bad guy and his main henchperson, DIE HARD very quickly lays out a bunch of different characters, some in terms of role, like the hacker who doesn't care about their human casualties, some in terms of dress. There's a moment where a truck rolls up and a ton of baddies get out. It should be the definition of "faceless mob," but instead their varied costumes both tell us they're each individuals and make us curious to get to know them all. That choice alone is genius. It's so simple and yet has such impact in terms of how we relate to these characters, how much room we're willing to give them in our imaginations.
The part that struck me the most, though, is the way in which DIE HARD sets up so many pieces at the very beginning, before we really even know what the story is, and then is so patient in playing them. We've got John and Holly's relationship, of course. But also Holly's boss, and her pregnant assistant, and the cocaine guy, each of whom will eventually prove really important in moving the story forward, but at different points.
We've got John's driver, who will get forgotten for long periods of time, but will end up stopping the getaway in the end (and is kept in the loop enough along the way so that that doesn't seem like a cheat).
Likewise, we've got the fact that John has no shoes on--which is actually set up in the opening scene on the plane, and doesn't end up playing an important role until close to the film's low point, when Hans sees it for himself.
In retrospect, it really is like a magic trick. Writers Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza start the film by literally showing us all the cards they're going to play, literally daring us to understand what they mean. And of course we don't, such that when they're actually used it not only works in story, because they've set it all up, it's a source of great delight, specifically because it was right there in front of us and we didn't see it coming.
Truly, there are lots of lessons to be learned from DIE HARD. Maybe because it's two days before Christmas, the one that grabs the most today is the power of place setting. If you set things up well, showing enough to justify later moves without giving it all away, when you make those moves your audience will love you forever (so much so they'll show up at Christmas year after year insisting you're the best Christmas movie of all).
I also have to say, George's journey reminds me in some problematic ways of Dorothy's in the WIZARD OF OZ. Dorothy has this fantastic life in Oz, but all she wants is to go back to grey old Kansas. George actually has big dreams, and his conflict is that life keeps asking him to forgo those dreams to help others, and he keeps saying yes. (It's a really interesting problem to have; it sounds very passive, yet in fact each new yes is by its nature an active step.) But then in the end the thing he has to learn is that he was always meant to stay home, that it helped so many people. And no one asks, how many lives might he have affected if he'd pursued the life he wanted? Because like OZ, this is a movie that wants to celebrate and raise up the status quo, really. And yet again, it really really works.
There's lots of script-y stuff to talk about in LIFE, but the thing that really stood out to me watching it was the degree to which the story makes us privy to George's inner life in a way no one else is. We are often the only ones who fully appreciate the sacrifice he's making; others may have pieces of that same knowledge, but only we see it all. In fact there are moments, as when he stares into the camera after he's told he has to run the savings and loan, where quite literally we're the only ones allowed to see his reaction, the way his face falls.
It's an important tool for late in the story. By the time George goes off on everyone and decides to commit suicide, the audience really needs to be totally united with him.
But it's also a way of creating and keeping conflict alive in the story. George has a lot of happy things happen to him along the way, including moments that he himself values deeply. But because the writing and direction has given us this privy look into his dreams from the start, those good things always feel uncomfortable for us. Every good thing in fact is another thing keeping him from the journey we've been taught to want for him. It's a genius screenwriting move, that, and one I often need to remember. I think the success of the script is all about me, the writer (and of course the acting and production team as well).
But there's another group involved, and that's the audience. And it turns out, if you get the audience to identify with your protagonist's desire early on, they will fight to keep that desire alive all on their own.
Or put another way, in the case of LIFE, If you poison the well early, the audience is going to keep freaking out even if the characters themselves don't seem to be getting sick. It's just what we do.
An exercise you might try: Write a scene where you establish the character's desire and need strongly right away, and then don't talk about it for as long as you can in the scene, and see what you discover. What are the beats you need in that beginning to really cement the desire in the audience's mind? How late can you go back to it before the end without it losing its power? Is there any way in which not going back to it actually increases its strength in our minds?
I've written about THE HAPPIEST SEASON before. I think it's a script with a lot of potential, but it struggles with some choices made early that end up becoming more and more problematic. (There's that principle again--when you're wondering why in the third act you are so desperate for the lead to break up with her girlfriend (while the writing thinks otherwise), consider the fact that you began the movie by having the girlfriend kind of gaslight her.
But there is this one thing about HAPPIEST SEASON that works really well, and that is Aubrey Plaza's character. In a nutshell: our lead Abby (Kristin Stewart) gets invited home for the holidays by her girlfriend Harper (Mackenzie Davis), who then immediately says no, you don't have to come, I didn't really mean it, and oh by the way no one in my family knows I'm queer so you have to hide it, too. (Ugh.)
But then, while dealing with that nonsense, Abby meets Harper's high school ex Riley (Plaza). And as soon as she does the movie just completely unclenches. Riley is this wonderfully Zen-like being who knows Harper's drama intimately and has learned from it and moved on. She's meant to offer a little bit of exposition and a lot of friendship/wisdom/for Abby.
But she's such a great character (and Harper is just such a mess of one), once we meet Riley we just want more. The energy of the film absolutely shifts to she and Abby. You can see how the writers Clea DuVall and Mary Holland might say, Yeah, we get that, but that's not the story we wanted to tell.
I want to suggest, while that makes sense, as writers we have to pay attention to what's actually happening on the page. If you're writing a script and a character you didn't anticipate having a big role is just coming to life, either you need to consider what is missing in your other characters that is creating this kind of need in the story, OR, you need to consider allowing the story to go in a different direction.
One of the things I most love about writing is discovering the treasure I left for myself without knowing it. You're writing that first draft or early episodes and you're inevitably including some moments that are sort of background, or just for that instant. Then you get to that point later in the script or the season where you're thinking wow, I really need something here, I'm not sure where this goes. And you look back on what you have and realize, oh shit, I set up a great payoff way back in that other scene that I didn't even think about. The unconscious...it's crazy.
So here's the note, as I see it--and because I love her let's call this an Aubrey: When you see some treasure partially buried along the side of the road, don't drive on by. Pull over! Dig that shit out! There's something there you need, whether you planned for it or not.
I watched MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET for the first time last year -- I know! -- and I was shocked at just how compelling a guy who believes he is Santa Claus could be. That character is crafted and performed in such an interesting way. There's not an ounce of winking at the camera going on; Kris works in fact precisely because he is 100% straightforward. He is Kris Kringle, whether people believe it or not.
And most of the film just follows the ripples caused by his presence. His unambiguous goodness draws out the best in others, including rival businesses. But the film also gives him a struggle of his own, and a quest which comes from that. He's here to see if the world has gotten as dark and empty as he fears. It's a nice layer; it gives his story an unexpected poignancy. In a sense his plight is the same as children who begin to doubt whether Santa exists; he's desperate to find some reason to continue to hope.
But then two-thirds of the way through the film, suddenly the film completely shifts to a courtroom drama in which the focus is now on Judge Harper, a character we have no real connection to, and the political damage that institutionalizing Kris could bring him, which we don't care about.
On one level the writers might argue this is the key beat in Kris' journey, the moment the people will reveal once and for all whether the world is worthy of his continued hope. I think what's more likely is that they thought the film needed more drama, and who doesn't like a courtroom for that? And in shifting the focus they more or less cut Kris out of the action. He simply sits there watching the proceedings. The camera barely cuts to him; he's now that marginal.
The set up of a film, the Act One, is more than the thing that gets you into the action. It's the contract between us the filmmakers and the audience. This is who you'll be riding along with, and this is the kind of adventure you can expect.
By cutting Kris out of most of the last third of the film (and really Doris, the woman who has been helping him, too), the creators breaks that contract. And they didn't need to. If there's going to be a hearing, you want Kris to be the one who talks last, and you want his words to be loving and wise and have the impact we've seen them have in the past--or, at the least, for him to clearly surrender to their judgment and see that humility impact the court.
For me that's the key takeaway--that a good set up/contract will create a way forward in the end. It might not be obvious at first. But don't lose your nerve. If you built it right--and writers Valentine Davies and George Seaton really did--there will be a path.
SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE is a Christmas classic. Tom Hanks, Ross Malinger and Meg Ryan each deliver pitch perfect performances as the widow, his son and the woman who hears him on the radio talking about his dead wife.
It's not a complicated script. There's no big twists or mystery to be solved. It's really just the simple story of two characters, Annie and Jonah, who go on quests to get what they want. Jonah wants his dad to be happy; Annie wants to find Sam.
I think Annie's story in particular is worth thinking about. In a nutshell, she keeps trying to get to Sam and keeps failing. She writes Sam a letter, then decides not to send it. The letter gets to him anyway, but then instead of reading it he goes on a date with someone--which Jonah then broadcasts on the radio show, as Annie listens. She goes to Seattle to meet him, but then at first is shy about it and just watches. And when she finally gets up the courage, she sees Sam hugging a woman and gives up. She goes back to her fiancé.
Jonah decides to meet her and sends her a letter to meet him at the Empire State Building. She doesn't go until it's too late and misses them. But (finally) the fact she went at all is enough--she turns to leave to find Sam and Jonah there.
Again, super simple as storylines go. But it demonstrates the power of a really basic principle well-executed: you want your protagonist to make choices, and you want those choices not to succeed but rather to complicate things further for the protagonist. So she goes to Seattle but then that means that she sees Sam with his sister and assumes the worst. Or she returns to Walter and as a result misses Sam and Jonah at the Empire State Building.
Note that even in her final choice, to go to the Empire State Building, complicates her life with another failure. When she gets there, they're not there. I love that the film does that, because it's true to her character. Annie acts but always with a little hesitation and as a result she fails.
And yet her meeting Sam and Jonah doesn't feel like a cheat, because Jonah has been a consistent arc of his own. Jonah is the one who gets his dad on the radio. He's the one who reads Annie's letter and tries to get his dad to read it. He's the one who goes back on the radio saying the woman his dad is dating is not right for him, which gets Annie on the plane to Seattle. He's the one who decides to fly to New York and tells Annie to meet him, which gets Sam on a plane to chase him and leads to Annie and Sam finally meeting.
There's probably lots of lessons to draw from SLEEPLESS. But the one I want to suggest is this: Keep it Simple and Keep it Consistent. You don't have to have a thousand bells and whistles or a mind-bending plot to succeed. You need one clear, clean story, and an arc that somehow involves the character doing the same thing over and over, and yet ends in a surprising way. That's the real sleight of hand.
I'm planning to focus on different Christmas movies each day these next two weeks. But as I was writing up LOVE ACTUALLY yesterday I kept coming back to a second technique that film uses that really works for me. It's a really minor element, and one that won't directly apply to a lot of stories. But I do think it's part of why the film continues to be a favorite.
It's the interconnections. Even though LOVE ACTUALLY is the story of a bunch of different London people struggling to overcome their fears and take the risk of loving, those stories themselves are also interconnected. Natalie is in love with David, who is the brother of Karen, who is married to Harry, who is kind of having a thing with Mia, who was hit on by Colin and friends with Mark, who is in love with Juliet, who is married to his best friend Peter, who is somehow friends with Jamie, who is in love with Aurelia.
Some of the characters are more loosely connected: the porn stand-ins John and Judy are mostly a story of their own, except their assistant director is Colin's best friend Tony; but they also run into Tony at the airport at the end, when Colin shows up with a new girlfriend for Tony, and David and Natalie and Harry and Karen and Sam and Joanna also reunite nearby. Likewise, Sarah's story is mostly with Harry, Karl and her brother Michael; but she's also friends with either Peter and Juliet (and perhaps Jamie) as she's at their wedding, and she has a conversation with Mark there that is actually pretty important in his story. And Colin is working at that wedding. Billy Mack interacts directly with no one except Joe; and yet almost every character ends up watching him on television or listening to him on the radio at one point or another.
Once you've seen the film a couple times, the very fact that you're going to see different characters interact for a moment here or there becomes a new part of the fun of it all, something you look forward to. And writer Richard Curtis also makes some of the connections harder to figure out, which means there's still fun work to be done in later viewings. Like, What is the deal with Jamie? Who from the wedding is he friends with? Also, is Karen just a friend of Daniel's, or is she some kind of blood relation? And how is Daniel or his wife related to Natalie's parents, because I'm pretty sure they are present at the funeral?
The movie never answers some of these questions. That might drive some people nuts, but it also invites us to be creative, to take things further ourselves.
This technique, which I call Minding (or Mining) the Gap, is something I've written about here before. When you build a gap into a story, you create the possibility of engaging the audience further, giving them a different kind of ownership of what they're watching.
But I think the thing worth noting here is not that technique per se, but Curtis' broader decision to add another layer to the story, one that in some sense is unnecessary and kind of decorative. It may have been the first thing he thought of, the hook that got him excited, I don't know. But to me it's just a reminder that even when you think your script is done, it's worth going back one more time and asking yourself, Is there some further layer or touch that I can add to the whole? Something that isn't just an affectation, but speaks to the themes of the piece in a different way?
There's a lot of good movies, a lot of good TV shows. But to my mind the truly great ones are often the ones that go this extra mile, that find one more visual or narrative layer. It's really the definition of craft.
We start today with modern classic LOVE ACTUALLY, Richard Curtis' 2003 film about a bunch of interrelated love stories happening the month before Christmas in the United Kingdom.
Some people love this film. Some people do not. Personally I am mostly in the "love this film" side, although I will say in thinking about it one major flaw I find with the film is that almost all of its stories are either told almost exclusively from the point of view of the men in them or have the male characters in them driving the story.
Also, with the maybe exception of Billy Mack and his manager Joe, this is a film about love stories that has no queer people in it. In fact the film has the audacity to offer a seemingly queer character in Andrew Lincoln's Mark only to then add the "twist" that actually he's straight too.
Personally I do tend to see Billy and Joe as a queer story, but even if that was the author's intention--which it seems pretty clear it wasn't--in a story with a dozen different love stories, you should be able to do better than one iffy queer story.
But the film's failure also points to its strength, which is its willingness to brainstorm interesting possibilities off of a premise. I've talked about just how much you can get from the simple act of brainstorming before.
So here let me highlight the key to the success of the brainstorming here: A clear and specific premise.
This is not just a set of fun/complicated love stories; it's a set of stories that all have as their premise Love is forced to overcome fear. At the one extreme is Sam, who is going to do whatever it takes to share his love for Joanna, including learning how to play the drum set in three days and chasing her through airport security and getting arrested; and also Colin Frissell, who just KNOWS that if he goes to Milwaukee, Wisconsin he is going to find love.
At the other extreme is Mark, who is a real creeper when it comes to Keira Knightley's Juliet, absolutely incapable of either overcoming his fear or dealing with it until he gets caught--at which point he finally says what he's wanted to say all along and is free of it; Alan Rickman's Harry, who doesn't seem afraid on the surface but clearly is, of continuing to live just an ordinary life (and how dare he, Emma Thompson is everything); and Laura Linney's Sarah, who simply cannot get past her own defense mechanisms even when Karl is right there in bed with her.
Sarah's story is the one that seemed to me like it fit the least the first couple times I watched LOVE, but now it's really the story that unlocks everything. Even as she has this other thing that really gets in the way, her brother, it's made so clear that he represents a defense mechanism, something that is not a life-giving choice for her, but rather that she uses to protect herself.
A screenwriting piece of advice that has always haunted me: If your third act doesn't work, it's because you fucked up something in act one. When you're doing the kind of brainstorming LOVE ACTUALLY does, I think there's a similar rule. If you keep the subject of a brainstorm too general, the pieces are likely to fit together only in a general way. To get the best result you need to polish away at that idea until you know exactly what you're asking for.
Really brainstorming is like requesting a wish from a genie: Be specific or be damned.
An Exercise to Try: Think of something you might need to brainstorm about for a story you're working on. But instead of actually doing the brainstorm, try to hone the actual subject down. See just how specific you can get.