Film Courage: What is a dangling cause?
Paul Joseph Gulino, Associate Professor at Chapman University Dodge College of Film and
Media Arts: A dangling cause is one of the tools that keeps the audience anticipating.
And it comes from I believe French formalism narratology (the narrative theory) and simply
stated we respond (we talk about this in the book) we respond to cause and effect.
We look for cause and effect.
We are geared toward understanding the world that way.
It’s easy for us to follow stories, narrative events when there’s a cause and effect that’s
evident.
Dangling cause is a cause that you don’t get the effect right away but you anticipate.
So boy likes girl, boy kisses girl.
Cause and effect.
Boy likes girl, boy says “I’m going to kiss her before the weekend is over.”
Dangling cause.
We’re going to pick up that effect later but it dangles over in the audience’s consciousness.
So it’s one of the tools in the screenwriting (the sequence approach) that we talk about
that helps keep the audience wondering what’s going to happen next?
I mentioned deadline that telegraphing sort of what is coming literally.
There’s an appointment at 5 o’clock today, we are going to meet at Jerry’s Juiceateria
tell the audience that when you cut there you don’t have to explain why we’re there,
you’ve been told.
The deadline like THE HURT LOCKER or AMERICAN BEAUTY we know that when he’s close to being
dead the movie is going to be over.
There is dramatic irony where we are engaged because where we are engaged because we’re
going to see what happens when the truth comes out and then there’s dramatic tension when
we’re wondering how would the person will get what they want or not and will they escape
what they want or not.
And I think if there’s anything in my approach what we are trying to do here that I emphasize
with the students is there’s always talk about rules.
Should I follow the rules?
Should I break the rules?
Should I do this or that and to me the problem with rules or understanding rules or even
if you want to call them guidelines is that if you follow the rules congratulations.
You’re one down, you’re following, you’re following!
You are not leading.
You’re following and having followed them the rules don’t applaud and they don’t
pay you anything.
A better question to ask is what’s the effect?
What’s the effect of my choice in the story on my audience?
Because now I’m one up, I’m in charge of what is happening.
I’m in charge of how I’m affecting my audience and the tools that are in these books
that’s the idea.
What are the choices that you didn’t know you had that you have that you can use to
affect the audience and audiences do applaud and they pay you.
So I like my students to be in the power position where they’re figuring out what they wants
to do rather than whether they can follow something.
Film Courage: So true or false if we focus on the audience everything will fall into
place with our screenplay?
Professor Gulino: If we focus on the audience everything will fall into place?
True or false, no nuance?
We focus on the audience we have a better shot of succeeding at connecting with an audience,
that’s the closest I can come.
Film Courage: So focusing on the audience keeping structure in mind, sequences, things
like that?
Professor Gulino: Yes and it gives you that freedom if you know what they’re anticipating
and you can play games.
How do you break a rule?
Well Alfred Hitchcock (I don’t want to give it away but) Alfred Hitchcock exploited the
fact that in a Hollywood movie there’s a main character and the main character is the
star and the star lives through the movie.
Maybe they die in the end but they live through the movie.
Knowing that’s what the audience is expecting what happens if you do them off 40 minutes
in?
Well that’s going to have a huge effect.
Well you can do other things to make up for the loss if you understand what the function
of a character is then you can do something else to compensate for that and keep the audience
interested even though the character is gone.
I’ll leave you with one joke and I know we’ve got to end but it’s like this if
you were to write a book on knock-knock jokes what would you do?
You would look at all the knock-knock jokes, you say it’s very simple, these are the
rules.
You say knock-knock.
The other person says “Who is there?”
You give a partial answer.
They say “Partial answer who?”
And then you give them the punchline okay?
That’s the rules.
That’s my book and that’s how if you want to be successful.
Okay knock-knock.
Film Courage: Who’s there?
Professor Gulino: Control freak…okay now here is how you say “Control freak who?”
See I just broke the rules but what I was doing was trying to elicit was a laugh.
The whole point was the effect not the rules.
It’s knowing what you think, exploiting the fact that you have a schema, an understanding
of what the knock-knock joke is I can play games.