Film Courage: Hollywood films are built on three components?
Character, desire and conflict?
Michael Hauge: Yes, they are!
Film Courage: Okay, so Hollywood films [are built on this].
Any other types of films?
[How about] Art house films…we talked about briefly off camera?
Do the same rules apply, but maybe it’s just different?
Michael Hauge: Well in that case there is nothing different at all and we’re not just
talking about movies.
That’s the foundation of story.
Any story.
You can talk about an epic poem?
You can talk about a fairy tale or children’s book.
It’s all built on character desire and conflict.
Every story that I can think of, if it’s a narrative story, that has a beginning, middle
and an end, is going to be about a character who desperately wants something and something
stands in their way.
Film Courage: And you say the desire moves the story along but what we actually resonate
with is conflict?
Michael Hauge: I’m saying the conflict is more responsible for the emotion that is illicit
because…well let me put it this way and give an example of a movie.
Well let’s say I said to you let’s go to a movie this weekend.
And you say “Well what are we going to see?”
I heard about this movie and it’s about a guy who want to make a speech.
Well chances are (even though I know you’re into art house movies), you are probably going
to say “Yeah, but what else is playing?
Watching a guy give a speech, you can do that on TV and be bored to tears anytime.”
It’s a story about a guy who wants to give a speech and he happens to be a prince in
Great Britain who has a horrid speech impediment, who was abused as a child, and has no desire
for the throne but then has to become King when his brother abdicates and the speech
he wants to give is going to be the speech that leads his country into World War II.
Now it’s not only sounding intriguing, it’s sounding like it could be an Oscar-winner
because all of those things I just said were all of the conflict he faces in trying to
give a speech.
It’s not giving that speech that makes the story exciting, emotional, appealing or commercial.
It’s the obstacles he has to overcome to do that.
Film Courage: Let’s take desire, so in something like FATAL ATTRACTION, which I know is an
extreme version of desire.
The desire is not really what is moving the story along?
It’s conflict in terms of…Michael Hauge: No…no…desire is moving it forward but
you have to pinpoint what is…first of all, who is the hero in the movie?
The hero is the Michael Douglas character, okay?
And at the set-up he’s restless and not a very moral character and then as the opportunity
he meets Glen Close (I don’t remember the character’s name) and he has an affair with
her and starts doing that.
So somewhere around the one quarter mark I think he’s already gone to bed with her,
but then we see that she might be a little more possessive than he was anticipating.
And gradually the more her craziness and possessiveness and psychosis starts coming to the fore, the
more he wants to get away from her and finally stop her from terrorizing him and his family.
So actually his outer motivation is to stop the crazy woman he slept with from terrorizing
or destroying his family.
And if you realize that the goal is to stop her, then his desire to do that pushes that
story forward.
Now admittedly it’s her actions that he must react to or are moving things forward
just as much.
So he’s reactive more than proactive in a way but what we’re rooting for is for
him to get away from this crazy woman before everything goes KABOOM.
Even though we know he made a big mistake we still are rooting for him.
Question for the Viewers: What’s the best movie you’ve seen this year?