Film Courage: If we took a not so great or a mediocre bland screenplay and we put it
on the same table and disassembled it we would see not enough conflict and then we would
see and then we would see…well this is sort of a bad term but emotional manipulation within
the story because you are saying that the audience (these readers) they want these clues.
They don’t want to be given the information
Paul Joseph Gulino, Associate Professor at Chapman University Dodge College of Film and
Media Arts: Right.
Well as they say there are many more ways of being sick than there are healthy.
Film Courage: That’s true.
Paul: So if we read a script that doesn’t quite work for us then obviously the issues
are manifold.
What kind of mistakes we make like with my students…my students are brilliant and they
hardly ever make mistakes but let’s just say there is that outlier once in a while.
There’s a tendency (in no particular order) and I see it in feature films.
There tends to be a misunderstanding in the scheme that I’m talking about what does
it mean to have the end of the second act.
It’s drummed into a lot of them that this is the low point, the kind of all is lost
moment or everything is hopeless and everything has to get really, really bad and it’s not
necessarily so.
It depends on what your story actually is.
The end of the second act is where the question is answered but the third is it’s resolved
but preferably in a way that turns the story into something deeper.
Milos Foreman (when I studied with Milos Foreman in the Columbia days) said that in a standard
classic feature with drama the audience usually has two possibilities, the person gets it
or they don’t.
So let’s say it’s hypothesis A or hypothesis B.
We hope for hypothesis A, we are afraid it’s going to be hypothesis B. But the audience
isn’t satisfied if the third act is either A or B. It’s got to be C. It’s got to
be something that transforms the way in which we are aware of, a deeper meaning of the story.
And that’s really what the function of the third act is.
We often feel like in the classic formulation that I think most people go by when they are
trying to write a script, the character wants…I don’t have anything bad on my mind…but
let’s just say he wants the girl (it’s easy).
Let’s just say a bank and they want to make money, they want to get their money back from
someone who stole it.
Let’s say that’s it.
They go through all of that, once they know that they take these various actions to try
to get that objective.
Then it would be at the end of the second act it doesn’t look like they will ever
going to get it.
Okay.
Oh it’s impossible.
That’s a classical formulation.
But there are other ways of seeing it that can be very powerful and I try to encourage
my students to examine those when they are looking at a story, when they are coming up
with it.
What happens if they get it at the end of the second act and it wasn’t what they thought
it was?
Or they paid a price to get it?
Or they paid a price on it?
Or the price was too big?
Or they did it but in the process damaged someone so deeply that now they have to deal
with the consequences of what they did?
Those are ways of really turning a story and examining the theme and making it powerful.
Like examples from the book and the analysis that I do, in TOY STORY it’s about this
guy who wants to maintain his position at the top, that’s what it’s about.
And the question is A) He maintains it or gets it back or B)
He never gets it back.
That’s how it’s presented but at the end of the second act what happens?
Well it isn’t a question of that anymore.
He gives up and he becomes selfless and then the two team up.
The question isn’t A or B, it becomes C.
We are going to accept whatever the outcome is but we are going to help each other.
So you end up with this really uplifting ending and you also (when you do this) when you open
yourself up to that possibility, you can also reverse the tension in that way.
The typical feeling is I love this character (let’s look at the tennis court), I love
that character, they are in deep trouble and I want them to win.
But there are times when the character wants something and you don’t want them to get
and that tension is perfectly valid.
And we see it in the classic like THE APARTMENT where the main character wants to climb his
way to the top.
But that’s not what we ultimately want for him.
What we want is for him to be a true human being who is not degrading himself constantly
to get to the top.
We want him to be a full human being who gets true love.
That’s what we want.
That’s not what he wants.
That’s not what he is pursuing.
So at the end of the second act, he gets everything he could possible want and he doesn’t like
it.
And now we explore the movie from a different point of view.
You take the premise and you flip it.
And that’s something where I have to work with my students because there is an automatic
tendency to go with A or B.
An example of a movie that I feel could have used a rethinking of it was (I’m probably
going to forget the name of it)…THE REVENANT that came out a few years ago.
At the root of it, it’s a very simple revenge story.
This guy…left me to perish and lied about it and I’m going to just get that guy.
So what is the tension?
He’s either going to get him or he isn’t.
And along the way we have these sub-scenes and they are not all against that guy.
None of them are.
They are all about overcoming the elements and being helped by somebody and the winter
weather and the river that would have hurt him in 30 seconds but this is Hollywood so
it all worked out okay.
So it gets all the way to the end
Now you are in a position (the filmmakers managed to put themselves in a position) that
it was going to be predictable.
The final fight is either they are going to get the guy or he isn’t going to get the
guy.
And he’s probably going to get the guy.
So inevitably in this kind of movie where they have limited options as storytellers
it’s going to come down to come down to a fight.
And the fight is going to have a moment where the bad guy almost gets him!
Maybe there’s a sharp object and “Aahhhhh!!!!”
But somehow the good guy finds just enough reserve of energy, where it comes from I don’t
know.
But somehow throw him off and get the upper hand.
And they perish horribly.
In this case he doesn’t get him, but he does pretty much the same thing to him that
was done to him.
But look at that story I mean what are the other options if that story comes to me and
I’m looking at it.
Well the main character is a guy who wants revenge.
Is that even the most interesting character?
This is what I would do, turn this around.
What are the other characters here?
Well there’s the “bad guy.”
You can always…the bad guys don’t think they’re bad guys.
They think they are doing it right.
They are just living with the times and going with the flow.
So this guy leaves him to perish.
Why does he leave him?
Well he thinks he’s going to be a drag on the group but they’re all going to perish.
That’s not a bad thing, that’s a difficult question.
Now the have painted this character as an evil guy but there’s another character there,
an army officer that are leading them.
What if the men are his responsibility and he knows for certain that if we keep this
guy, my men could perish.
Now that’s an interesting problem.
So he does something questionable, he leaves him to perish (or he thinks he’s hurt).
And then he finds out that the guy is alive and that to me is more interesting dilemma
and the third act could be the confrontation between them or it could be something more
interesting.
It’s not just going to be A or B. It’s going to be how do I redeem myself?
How do I get this person to understand I didn’t do it?
What are the issues?
It becomes a lot richer of a story.
He could probably still get a go in the river (the frozen river) and you could probably
still have that stuff.
But you are not locked into something that is just A or B.
So that’s what I see when you are talking about a script that doesn’t quite work.
A lot of good things in it but you are kind of left with…uh…okay…let’s go home.
It doesn’t lead me away.
The thing in terms of story development when I work with students there is this old Zen
saying, so if we can be a little Zen here for a short bit of time but there is a saying
to a beginning student that the rivers are rivers and the mountains are mountains.
But to an intermediate student the rivers are no longer rivers and the mountains are
no longer mountains.
To an advanced student though…guess what?
The rivers are rivers again and the mountains are mountains.
You can probably Google that and I’m sure you will find it under Zen sayings about mountains.
But to a beginning screenwriting student, you want to write a script?
Just start writing a script?
Write the scenes.
Okay I’ve got this…okay I’m going to start writing.
And if you put a bunch of scenes together, you will have a script, you will have a story.
An intermediate student learns no, no, no.
You have to plan the story first.
You’ve got to know what is the story.
How do you know what scenes you are going to have unless you have the story and it tells
you and I’ve run into this.
When I read an unsolicited script very often I start with a lot of notes which are pertaining
to the moments (the scenes).
Then I realize a few pages in wait a minute?
I don’t even know if the story needs those scenes?
I’ve got to figure out what the story is because the story needs those scenes.
I’ve got to figure out what the story is because then I’m wasting my time writing
detailed notes on scenes that should be thrown out because you don’t need them or they
are not optimal for the story.
So that’s the intermediate students.
But when you get to the advance level you realize (going back to constructivist psychology)
audiences don’t actually see stories at all.
They don’t.
What do they see?
They see scenes?
They see scenes and in the process of watching the scenes they construct a story in their
minds, they put the scenes together and they understand that there is a story.
But the story is not materially present ever.
It’s always just constructed in our heads.
And therefore because all you see in our scenes, when you have a premise the way you want to
develop it is the amount of really cool scenes in it.
I’ll sometimes see students where here’s a story and I have to stick with it.
But the way you’ve developed the story, you’re not allowing for any really interesting
scenes.
I’ve seen those scenes, the ones in THE REVENANT.
I’ve seen it in variations.
And I’ve seen that fight before.
But maybe you could turn the story in a way that “Yes, that’s going to be a really
cool scene.
And what about that one?”
Don’t you realize that if you withhold the information from the character now you have
a scene that has a double meaning to it.
There is a scene in a script that I consulted on and did a rewrite on where the father finds
the daughter with a lover she shouldn’t be with and it was like “YOU!
HOW COULD YOU DO THAT!”
And it was like “No father…I hate you.”
And it was exactly the kind of scene you’d see anytime, anywhere.
But the way I re-did it was the lovers are together and they see the father coming and
the daughter hides and the father sees the guy and he’s really in a tough mood, he’s
struggling with his career and he sits down with the guy (with the daughter right there)
and he’s talking about his relationship with his daughter and how he doesn’t understand
her and how he really wants…everything is really rich now!
Because we know that the daughter is hiding there and that’s the really cool scene,
let’s do that.
Let’s put that scene there rather than one we’ve seen a million times and it can all
come down to how you choose to develop it.
So scripts that don’t quite work I’ve seen that pattern with the third act.
I’ve seen choices made in terms of developing that don’t maximize the possibilities that
are present there.
There is the question of (which we have not talked about) the dialogue.
Of what dialogue is…(to be continued).