Christopher Riley, Screenwriter, Author, and Instructor: I had to be more than 50 years old
to experience that moment of healing.
This to me is the advantage that writers have with every passing year.
Film Courage: How does a writer find defining moments in their own life?
Christopher: Kathy and I have developed a list of characteristics that we think describe
defining moments and that they help us when we go looking for defining moments. That list
includes things like the moment a dream was born, it could be the moment a dream died.
Sometimes defining moments or moments of birth or death
and that can be a literal death or it could be a figurative death. The death of a business,
the death of a relationship or the birth of a relationship. We think about
moments of discovery, so for a child who's been adopted the moment they discover that they were
adopted might redefine their understanding of themselves. A special kind of discovery
is a lesson that's learned. Dorothy in Oz makes the discovery that there's no place like home
and that discovery becomes the mantra that allows her to travel back to Kansas.
It was the discovery that she needed when she set out from Kansas. She didn't think that the
people at home were special enough to cherish she thought that real life lay somewhere out there
and along the way she makes the discovery that there's no place like home and that redefines
who she is sometimes we're looking for a moment when a wound was suffered or a loss was incurred
other times we're looking for a moment of the birth of hope or a moment of healing a moment of
deep emotional or spiritual change and with that it's not a checklist but that those categories
we can look at our own lives and say well what was a moment of deep emotional change
that I've experienced if I'm a morose person was I always that way and if not when did that change
Kathy found a an old black and white picture of her dad when he was a young boy
and Kathy's dad as I knew him was a serious mechanical engineer
and not not playful that's the last word I would use for him and yet this picture
showed this impish kid with this like wicked smile on his face
and Kathy and her brother turned to each other when they found this picture and said
did you know that person and they both said no I never met that guy well what was the moment
when he went from the playful imp to the very serious very dour person that my wife grew up with
that at least turns our gaze in the right direction and we can start looking and see seeing
is there is there a moment like that now there are times I think that we can't find the moment
either because it happened when we were so young that we have no memory of it or
it may be so traumatic that we have not allowed ourselves to remember it
but we know we walk with the limp and I discovered in myself
a sort of evidence of a wound that I don't ever remember suffering but I remember as far back as
six years old having having the damage and so I don't know what that defining moment was I just
know that it exists and I know that I learned from that experience that I must not let people
know the real me or they would not want me I learned that men are dangerous and I had to
I have no memory that accounts for those things but I had to look at that history nonetheless
and recognize those lies as being so deep in my in my firmware that I couldn't remember a
time where they weren't there and then I had to learn the truth that would neutralize those lies
and I still feel like those lies are true but I now know they're not and I'm able to tell myself
here's the truth there are people who actually know you and they actually love you and so the
lie that if people know you they won't love you that's a lie no matter how how that feels and I've
learned I'm not a little little boy anymore and I don't have to be afraid of grown-ups it's not
actually dangerous to have human encounters even though it still feels dangerous to me
well so I've just described a moment of healing that's also a defining moment
I had to be more than 50 years old to experience that moment of healing this to me is the advantage
that writers have with every passing year we keep getting more and more life experience and so we
have more and more to draw on if you're 20 well you've been through middle school so you have
you know you've come through at least one war that's painful yes and so you know I always
think of the popular kids I'm not sure they exist I haven't met anyone as an adult who
says oh yeah I breezed through eighth grade it was awesome my favorite year it's just awful
but a 20 year old is going to have 20 years of life experience a 40 or a 50 or a 60 year old
writer is going to have more life experience and so while the industry may have a preference you
know for 22 year old writers because it's exciting like it's exciting to get a new sports car
mostly we give awards out to people with a little more mileage on them and it's because in part
of the greater life experience which gives you more access to these kinds of moments
you know you just jogged my memory because I knew someone who was considered very
popular and they worried their worry was they thought hey everyone thought they were stuck up
and b they were worried about their image and when they left the house how did they look to
everybody so to them that was a huge concern because they were afraid of breaking that image
and to me I saw the person as had it all together and they had all these people around them that
wanted to be around them but they were terribly concerned so I guess you're right that to them
it was still tragic I do think about people whose faces are on magazine covers and there is a burden
that goes with that now we might think oh you know boo hoo you're you're beautiful and famous but
there is a there's a burden that goes even with the popularity that that rises to the level of
celebrity of an acquaintance once said to one of my children you don't know how hard it is to be so
pretty and at the time I thought that's a line I need to put in a script but you know as you as you
talk I think no that actually for for this young lady she experienced that
as as pain and anxiety and all of all of that kind of human experience is interesting to me
both as a human but also as a storyteller that's an interesting character
it's not that wasn't my life experience but it's it's an experience that's interesting to me
is there a limit on how many defining moments someone can have in their life you know I've
been thinking a lot lately about defining moments and I keep discovering more of them for myself
I’m not sure that the half dozen is any sort of absolute limit at all I
you know I think that our lives don't continue in a straight line there are reversals
there are moments of transformation our lives seem to unfold kind of in chapters
we don't just do the same thing the same way forever well the whole world
with covid has experienced that that things actually change sometimes quite dramatically so
I could probably put my finger on a dozen moments that from my own life that are
pretty profound and create distinct moments of before and after so I don't know that
there's an absolute limit I just think that practically speaking when we come to characters
we probably want to work with a manageable number of them so that we don't dilute
their impact and their power
especially if we're thinking of a stand-alone feature film if we're talking about a television
series that goes for many many episodes then you probably could do justice to a dozen defining
moments over you know 100 episodes if anybody is doing 100 episodes anymore at some point it
you know Aristotle talked about how many acts there should be in
any any play and he said well it just depends how long the play is because an act
has to do with a reversal and there he says there should be a big reversal in each act
a life that is nothing but reversal starts to feel not like a real life it would be like a
football game where there was an interception or a fumble on every play it just becomes absurd but
he says you've got to have enough of them to keep it interesting so that's his formula he
doesn't tell us you know how many acts there should be in a one-hour television pilot
but the general principle is there should be enough to keep it interesting but not
so many that it becomes absurd and I suppose the same could be said of defining moments.