Film Courage: Now that you’ve explained the 6-stages and we’ve already talked about
Stage 1 (the set-up) can you also talk about what happens in Stage 2 (we’re still in
Act 1).
Michael Hauge: Yes.
So I said at the 10 percent point of the story something that has never happened to the hero
before is going to happen and that is the Opportunity.
It can be something good, meeting the person of their dreams if it’s a romantic comedy,
let’s say.
It can be something terrible, like the first body of the horror movie is discovered or
the spaceship that the aliens are landing on earth in shows up.
Whether it’s good or bad, it’s going to be something that forces the hero into Stage
2 into a new situation.
And in this stage the primary goal of the character is to figure out what’s going
on (I’ve entered this new world).
Sometimes in movies it’s even a change in geography.
To go back to quite an old movie now, THELMA AND LOUISE, it’s when they leave town and
go out to spend the weekend at some guy’s cabin or something like that.
In THE FIRM, when he takes the job with Bendini, Lambert & Locke and he and his wife head to
Memphis.
It could be a geographical change, it might not be.
But they are in a new situation and they have to figure out “What am I doing here?
What are the rules of this world I have entered.
What is expected of me or how do I deal with the news of the discovery of that body?
Or what am I going to do with this person I just met?”
A movie that I really enjoyed a lot this year is EYE IN THE SKY.
And we meet our hero Helen Mirren waking up and we see her living her every day life and
we see that she is in the military and so on and when she gets a call and when she gets
to the base or wherever it is, she discovers that they have found or they have confirmed
that a group of bad guys, particularly these two Americans have shown up and she’s been
doggin’ after them.
So she’s got to figure out how are we going to be following them or capturing them once
they are all together.
She’s trying to figure out “What do I do?”
On the inner journey level in Stage 1 we see the character living fully in his identity.
Okay, like I mentioned Will Hunting in GOOD WILL HUNTING.
Or if you take a character like Hitch (HITCH Movie) who has also had his heart broken,
so he is shut down.
He will help other people find love but he doesn’t believe in love for himself.
He’s stuck.
Stage 2, the character is still in his identity.
Still fully protected but the character will get a glimpse of what living fully, what living
in his essence might be like.
So that is in HITCH when he first meets Albert Brenneman, the Kevin James character, for
all of his schlubby personality is way more courageous and way more understanding of the
value of falling in love than Hitch is.
So he gets just a look at what that might be like.
He doesn’t really register but we recognize “Okay, this is what this person needs to
learn.”
We recognize early on in this story this is the journey this character needs to go on
inside.
And then at the end of Stage 2 comes what I call the Change of Plans, another key turning
point.
Another thing happens that has never happened before and that is going to move the character
from figuring out what is going on to formulating the goal, the visible goal and taking the
first steps to achieve it.
So, when that happens, let’s go back to EYE IN THE SKY.
What happens there is they discover that these bad guys have moved to a different location.
The location they can’t go in to capture the bad guys because it will create chaos
outside.
The only way they can stop them is to use a drone, send something at them, and take
them out.
Obliterate them, just send them into oblivion.
So now the outer motivation for Helen Mirren becomes she wants to use a dart or a drone
to take out the bad guys in this building.
And the rest of the movie will be her pursuit of the goal and all the obstacles she will
encounter in trying to get there, all of the conflict.
And I didn’t mention it but I should have mentioned this earlier in the interview, but
I’ll say it now…I began this by saying the primary goal of any storyteller is to
illicit emotion.
One thing that is critical to understand is emotion comes out of conflict, not desire.
So the more you can build up the obstacles your characters have to face, the more emotionally
involved the story will be.