Film Courage: Okay then I’ll give you my version of a marginalized voice in a story
versus a middle class one [first world problems].
A marginalized one is a little girl wants to go to a birthday party but the friends
in the neighborhood...the mothers know that her mom cleans people’s houses for a living.
The [pack] of moms respond with “Oh...honey...she’s nice but we don’t really know her.
I’m so sorry.”
The middle class voice is someone is applying for colleges but it turns out most of her
friends are getting accepted into college and she’s not sure if her GPA is good enough
to get into the school her friends will all attend.
And [the protagonist] is like “Oh my gosh, I’m going to lose all of my high school
friends.
What’s going to happen to my social standing in this group?”
Alan Watt, Author/Screenwriter and [Founder of L.A. Writers' Lab]: Okay so these are like
seeds of story right?
So tell me what is your question?
Film Courage: My question is are the stakes higher for the author of the marginalized
voice where that story implies non-inclusion into a group?
Whereas the middle class story has a protagonist more worried about losing social footing or
losing touch with friends?
Are the stakes higher for one versus the other?
Al: I don’t think of stakes...gosh?
I don’t know how to answer that question.
I don’t think the stakes are about the actual situation.
The stakes are really about the ability of the writer to convey a sense of urgency or
anxiety.
In other words...we’re not really talking about dilemma, we’re talking about stakes.
The stakes should always be life and death in every story.
They are always life and death.
If Jan Brady doesn’t get a date with Tad Hamilton she will absolutely die!
Stakes are always life and death.
If they are anything less than life and death, we don’t care at all.
We don’t care at all.
If you want to talk about dilemma, there are two ingredients to dilemma.
So dilemma is a problem that can’t be solved without creating another problem.
And when you connect to your dilemma you’re connecting to the aliveness in your story.
There are two ingredients to a dilemma: A powerful want, a powerful desire and a false
belief.
A misperception of myself or the world.
And so when Sally loves me, then I’ll be complete.
Now that’s the beginning of the story.
I’ve got to get Sally to love me in order to be complete.
Do you see a powerful desire...if Sally doesn’t love me my life will be unimaginable.
And the false belief is that Sally will complete me.
So we’ve got a powerful desire.
Remember that story structure is desire, surrender, transformation.
We’ve got to surrender, I mean I’m going to have to let go of the meaning I make out
of my goal as long as I believe that Sally’s love complete’s me, I will forever be in
bondage to Sally or my idea of Sally’s love because...and the audience or the reader is
going to be disappointed if all that happens at the end of the story is that Sally loves
me.
If Jimmy Stewart left Bedford Falls at the end of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE we would be
disappointed because that’s not what the story is about.
The plot is will Sally love me.
The them is about completeness.
What does it mean to be complete?
It doesn’t mean that completeness comes from outside of ourselves, it comes from within.
Okay so that’s a dilemma.
The dilemma is what is the theme?
It’s completeness.
If you’re doing a story about justice.
Let’s say I’m in prison...or freedom.
Let’s say this is a story about what does it mean to be free.
So if I’m in prison and I want to be free I might believe at the beginning of the story
that when I escape then I’ll be free.
That’s dilemma, that’s the dramatic question.
And then through the story I might actually succeed in escaping and discover that I’m
still not free.
That could be the dark night of the soul.
Let’s say I escape and I’m with a buddy and we’re shackled and we get away and the
he trips and twists his ankle and now I’ve got to decide do I really want to be free.
Now I’ve got to take a blunt instrument and hurt my buddy, you know what I mean.
And now am I free?
They are chasing after me.
So in my attempt to become free, in your protagonist attempt to get what he or she wants, the movie
increasingly away from their desire.
So my attempt to be free moves me further away from freedom leading to the end of Act
2 where I have to let go of the meaning I made out of my goal...i.e. when I escape prison,
then I’ll be free.
End of Act 2 I discover that true freedom comes from within and I might discover at
the end of the story that freedom might involve going back to prison.
Taking responsibility for my crime.
So that’s the shift in perception.
So desire (I want to be free), surrender (I have to let go of the meaning of my false
belief of what freedom means) and transformation (I have a new understanding of freedom).
Film Courage: I think you had used the movie THE SOCIAL NETWORK in another interview I
watched.
Can you use that analogy as well because I found it interesting.
Al: Oh...yes...that was a long time ago.
So the dilemma of THE SOCIAL NETWORK is the tension between integrity and ambition.
So if I’m really ambitious and I want to make a billion dollars...it’s the same kind
of thing.
I set out on this quest.
But did I steal this idea from these two gorgeous twins?
Film Courage: [Laughs] They were quite handsome.
Al: And so that’s what THE SOCIAL NETWORK explores.
Every single scene examines the dilemma of integrity versus ambition.
So he is driven by his ambition.
What do I want?
I want to succeed.
What do I need?
I need to do the right thing?
And I think it’s kind of an ambiguous ending but it leaves us with that question (does
the end satisfy the means)...or something like that?