Film Courage: How does The Hero's Journey apply to storytelling?
Christopher Vogler, Hollywood development executive, screenwriter, author and educator: The
Hero's Journey applies to storytelling because it is storytelling it's it's the way that we
have been programmed I would say to understand what a story is and this is a difficult question
to say is this something that we have learned socially because we've seen so many stories
that we have formed an idea that every story more or less follows this journey pattern or
is it something that is deeper than that that's hardwired into the human nervous system and that's
kind of where I go it certainly reinforced by seeing thousands of examples but I think
that we would recognize The Hero's Journey and respond to it in the organs of our bodies even if
we weren't acculturated to it even if we didn't have the many examples we would recognize it and
respond to it and and this again goes back to the stick figure idea if you just draw stick figures
if they have any kind of desire or wish whether it's I've got a knife and I'm going to stab this
guy or I want to give some of my food to a starving bird we get on board and we want
what they want or we're watchful will they do this terrible thing or will they do this good thing and
we just can't help but be involved so that tells me I think that that the The Hero's Journey is
sort of the internal wiring diagram we have about stories and that it's something very very deep
is The Hero's Journey of formulaic blueprint for writing a screenplay well the question comes up
what do you call this thing The Hero's Journey is it a formula is it a pattern is it a mode
is it a paradigm I mean there are many words that have been applied to it I think the word
that's being used a lot these days to describe other things as algorithm and I think that's one
good way to look at it that an algorithm is a sort of a numerical way of analyzing things and
planning how things will progress in a system but I think The Hero's Journey is is something
like that I don't think formula is a good name for it because that implies that it's like a cookbook
recipe and that anybody who puts it up there is saying well you have to do this and you have to do
that in this sequence and this then this can only be the next thing and this can only be the thing
after that and I very strongly discourage that my point of view I guess has come around to the idea
that you must know this form and it is a form that exists and people know it and they recognize it
but you are obligated as an artist to break that form every single time you set out every time you
write a song or make a dance or create a story it's part of your obligation as an artist to defy
my expectations and surprise me with something a combination or leaving an element out that I've
never seen before I'm thinking about the mentors that I mentioned before and a kind of shocking
thing to me was a movie called Amour like the French word for love by a director Michael Haneke
and this won an Academy Award for best foreign film some years ago and it's a story about an
older couple who are sort of part of the music intelligentsia in France and the wife is declining
with some form of dementia Alzheimer's and the husband is dealing with it and he keeps turning
to what would be in a normal story a mentor he goes to the doctor he goes to his daughter he
goes to various nurses and people who are there to help take care and none of them has a clue what
he should do he doesn't have a mentor so that peace that's normally assumed to be present in
any design story design is just lifted out and it leaves a gap in there that's absolutely horrifying
it's it's a horrible thing to realize you're on your own man there's nobody who can advise
you how to deal with this situation or if they're hollow they're useless they don't really serve so
it's up to you and that's quite quite chilling and horrifying they found a wonderful beautiful way to
do it but it was a kind of psychological horror story so and that's refreshing
because it makes you look at the whole design in a different way like I've assumed there must be this
and this and this what if this and this are not there is that still a story might be and it might
be a very interesting story that that is missing some pieces or pieces are repeated sometimes that
the economical mind of a Hollywood producer would say why do we have two of those but the
poetic mind says well because it's nice to get reflections and to see two different characters
having the same problem and dealing with it in slightly different ways that that's an
interesting pattern that sort of breaks the formula but does it in an interesting way
so it sounds like there were 11 then stages but the mentor stage was taken out of that movie and
it still worked yeah the the movie the the movie I was referring to more still worked very well
and I think one interpretation of it is that the man looked outwardly for mentors which is where
you would normally look but in fact realized the only mentor is on board right here I'm it and so
I'm going to have to do something about this situation and he does something rather drastic
and very dramatic and kind of scary but in his universe that was the right thing to do so yeah
I I think that's a way of getting off of this idea of things being a formula I I think if you set out
to take the 12 stages as I've described them and create a story that hit every one of those beats
you would actually end up with a kind of a boring trite story where people would know what was
coming because we have seen so many examples and what we're really watching for when we
enjoy a movie is the places where they broke the pattern where it was it went off and where
I don't know what's happening that I don't know why it's happening I don't know who that
is I don't know what archetype that character represents then I'm thrilled and I'm a child
again I go back to that childlike state of mind of wonder like what is that just like when I was
originally read the fairy tales by my mother and grandmother and they'd throw something in
like a giant or a fairy Godmother I'd go what is that because I'd never encountered it before so
sometimes these interruptions of the pattern are the things that make it really beautiful
but that being said if someone does want to try something different it may be a glaring
hole you may be like well there's number three and number eight missing and that's why it's
not working so it's kind of there's a pros and cons there's maybe two formulaic or stuff is not
there's holes there's gaps well there's this idea that that a story sometimes have holes
in them that you can drive a truck through we like to say that when we're criticizing stories
but that's not always a bad thing sometimes it's an accident of editing that we didn't
we've shot that scene that explained that but we had to cut it out for time or or some other
the the it rained that day and we couldn't use the footage or something didn't match
but that can create again this very interesting tension in the design and uh
can bring that sense of wonder back to it I have one example that I like to point out is
I like Hitchcock because he's playing in this very playful way of mastery with all these things with
fairy tale spooky things scary things shadows and light but he will often deliberately leave a gap
in his explanation of things like in one of his movies notorious Cary Grant is a spymaster who's
trying to get Ingrid Bergman to help him to seduce some Nazi spies and get their secrets and there's
something weird about Cary Grant in the way that he deals with women and the wonderful love that
she's offering to him she was pleading with him please forget about the spy stuff let's run away
and we're obviously meant for each other so why don't we just skip all this dangerous spy stuff
and he sticks to his duty but he's unusually weird about romantic things about kissing and all all
the stuff that you would think would be automatic for Cary Grant and Hitchcock just refuses to tell
you why that is so it invites me as an audience member to fill in that blank and the missing piece
that I've filled in is that Cary Grant was a spy during World War II and he had a lover who was
also a spy and she betrayed him and he had to kill her and that's not in the script but it's very
attractive solution for me for this mystery that Hitchcock allows to just dangle there he doesn't
draw attention to it nor does he spend any time explaining it but it it added to my delight and my
pleasure in the film now that film is mine because I wrote part of it and I think the audience enjoys
sometimes when there is a disjuncture in the story or there's a missing piece they get a big
kick out of filling it in and imagining that for themselves this is the whole world of fan fiction
which is a wonderful development that people love the story so much that they'll write in
these kind of explanations and backstories that the original creators didn't provide.