This Is the (Place Where We Discuss) End(ings), My Friend

Ha! Lame and labored Doors reference: nailed it!

Let’s talk about the endings of two great movies: THE LOBSTER and PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET. Or, rather, I’ll type and you read.

Both are excellent films, made over 60 years apart. Both feature writer/directors with a strong personal vision and style (Yorgos Lanthimos and Sam Fuller). Both dip and swerve around their respective genre constraints.

Fuller’s PICKUP is a ’50s crime film wrapped in Cold War paranoia in which no one is all good or all bad or all smart or all dumb. Everyone has an angle; no one is a hero. And the only thing that marks you as “good” is your own moral code. The characters and their dialogue is symphonic: a multitude of instruments, movements, key changes, tempo changes. Crackerjack words, but grounded in human-seeming emotion. (I mean, the characters and dialogue are still a bit over-the-top.)

Our petty criminal pickpocket protagonist Skip, played by Richard Widmark (an all-time great, and under-rated, actor) has unknowingly stolen a strip of MacGuffin-esque microfilm from a girl on the subway. This is The Girl in the story because these stories always have The Girl. She’s played by Jean Peters.

Anyway, the Girl has been an unwitting courier for some Communist agents by transporting state secrets to some shadowy contacts. This is revealed to her when it’s demanded that she track down and retrieve the microfilm from Skip by any means necessary. She finds him, but he’s since he’s ascertained the value of the microfilm, he won’t give it up to anyway–not her, not the NYPD, not the FBI–unless he gets paid a huge score. Complications ensue.

The whole thing zips along until an ambiguous and not-too-great ending.

In the penultimate scene Widmark/Skip, has beaten, literally, the antagonist and recovered the strip stolen microfilm. Has he kept it to sell to the Russians to make his last big score or has he returned it to the US G-men?

We don’t know.

But he’s gotten the girl. The love story is the most predictable and least convincing  piece of the film. It’s forgivable though, except that it muddies the ending. We knew all along Widmark was gonna get the girl–what happened to the damn microfilm!

Perhaps, though, because Skip/Widmark’s moral code is strictly on the person-to-person level and not the person-to-country level, the fate of the microfilm doesn’t matter. This is a character who inadvertently filched the microfilm in the opening scene and then, when an FBI agent tries to convince him to return it for the good of America, says defiantly, “Are you waving the flag at me?”

Whereas you or I or any other typical American would’ve (probably) given the stuff up to the government, Skip/Widmark, as a three-time convict and victim of police harassment, isn’t beholden to any institution other than himself.

The ending of the film goes like this: Skip/Widmark tracks down the Communist agent who’s stolen back the microfilm (and roughed up/shot (!) the girl) and kicks the living shit out of him in a subway station. There’s the slight suggestion that he’s going to throw the Communist agent in front of an oncoming subway train, but instead knocks him out. Cut to the Skip/Widmark reuniting with the girl at the police station where she makes a comment about making sure he stays out of crime and they leave.

End of film. No mention of the microfilm. No mention of breaking up the Communist plot. No mention of patriotism or pats on the back or anything. It’s really a MacGuffin–the tiny engine that unspools the plot. The true climax is Skip/Widmark restoring his own dirty corner of the world to his moral code. His people got hurt, so he hurt the culprit back.

So why is this ending less than satisfying?

It’s probably the abruptness of it. The fight scene ends without any seconds spared for tension relief. It just ends, and we open the next scene in the police station with some more quick-witted, jargon-studded dialogue and he gets the girl and they leave.

Bing, bang, boom.
Fight, girl, fin.

It’s a rare film that could’ve benefitted from at least one minute of added footage. At least a few extra breaths to work the audience through a denouement or reflect on the previous 80+ minutes. Instead it feels like missed the last step going down a staircase. You don’t fall over, but you’re jolted. Maybe that’s alright.

I suppose, though, since the ending suggests that Skip/Widmark is opening up and connecting to another person instead of going it alone in this cold, dark world, then maybe  this is the “proper” conclusion to the story. It just needs a little bridge from the final punch to the final scene. A ruminatory moment that helps the ending coalesce in your brain sometime before the middle of writing a lengthy blog piece 3 days later…

On the other hand, flash forward 62 years to 2015’s THE LOBSTER, a film with a stunning, definitely not crowd pleasing, ending. Does our protagonist, David (Colin Farrell), get the girl? Does he fall into the structures of polite society? Does he rebel once more? Is he gutless, is he brave, is there any way to determine which is which? Uh… Well, the filmmaker gives you an almost uncomfortably long time to ruminate on the ambiguity.

THE LOBSTER is vivid, yet not nearly as economical as PICKUP. Lanthimos has things on his mind, ideas and concerns about modern relationships and society, and he wants you to ponder them with him. It’s a movie to contemplate. Fuller wants to pin you down to your seat from the opening scene and then eject your ass when it’s over. Contemplation is secondary and optional.

But it’s not the mere presence of ambiguity in THE LOBSTER’s ending that makes it work. It’s not a difficult thing to not give your audience the answers at the end. Not writing a definitive end to a story is dully simple. The difficult thing is to not make an ambiguous ending into an annoying-as-hell ending.

THE LOBSTER pulls this off with a virtuoso final shot.

To bring you up to speed, dear reader, and to totally spoil the movie for you, here’s a thumbnail plot:

David, our hero, lives in a society in The City where single people are given 45 days to find an acceptable mate or else they’re turned into an animal of their choice. Society dictates that you choose a mate based on a shared traits–usually a physical defect. Limpers go with limpers, lispers go with lispers, and the bloody-nosed shall live together in perfect bliss.

David tries to follow these rules by faking a romance with a woman whose defining trait a cold and ruthless and dangerous lack of empathy. David emulates this trait with tragic consequences. So he runs away and hides in the woods with other “loners”–a group that has their own rigid and stultifying societal structure. He falls in love, for real, with a woman played by Rachel Weisz. She’s given the evocative name of Short-Sighted Woman. They plan to escape together.

But love is verboten in the loner society, so the leader of this group has Rachel Wesiz blinded (!) as a punishment. David and Rachel Weisz escape this group as well, and take a pitstop at a diner on the edge of The City. Here, David must decide whether he’s going to blind himself so he can make it official by sharing a trait with Rachel Weisz. He goes to the bathroom to stab his eyes out and is deciding what to do when we–

CUT TO RACHEL WEISZ! for the final shot of the film.

She’s alone in the diner booth, waiting for David to come back from the bathroom. The question is obvious–will he blind himself or not?

Now, just that question, on it’s own, is annoyingly ambiguous. But it’s the construction of this final shot that makes it work, that makes you think, that gives you time and just enough direction to ponder the possibilities in a satisfying way.

It’s a fairly wide shot of Rachel Weisz in the booth. I don’t know how long it goes on for–30 seconds? 90 seconds? She faces the left side of the screen, toward the bathroom, blindly of course, while we get the view out of the huge diner windows behind her.

While she sits quietly, waiting, you notice there’s a lot of traffic outside those diner windows. Construction equipment, cars–a lot of things happening. But you don’t hear much. Excellent soundproofing perhaps. At some point, while watching all this commotion, you realize that she can’t. Her character is blind. You start to get an inkling of what she misses, what David will miss if he’s blind. Not a spectacular sunset, not a great work of art, but the view of traffic outside a diner. Every day entertaining crap.

A pause.

Then we hear someone moving toward the table–is it David? Has he blinded himself and is stumbling back? Has he not blinded himself and is skulking back, guilty? What would he say in either case?!

But no. It’s just the waitress who comes to fill up her water.

Another pause.

Then, outside the window, we catch a glimpse of someone walking into the left side of the screen–is it David? For split second you wonder, is he escaping? Is he leaving her? What would happen to her if he left her, what would happen to his psyche? What wou–

Oh, it’s just a random couple walking past.

Then another pause as Rachel Weisz breathlessly waits.

Then it’s over.
Cue credits.

None of your questions are answered. But the power of the final shot is that it gives you space and motivation to wonder about those questions–to ask them in the first place and ponder what the different answers would mean. If David blinds himself is he conforming to the society he tried to escape? If he doesn’t, is he somehow betraying Rachel Weisz? Does she want him to blind himself? How in the hell would they make it into the City without either of their sight?

By holding that one final master shot for so long, and putting those little suggestive tweaks in there, Lanthimos takes you to places where an explicit answer would not. The ending doesn’t rule out any possibilities but, rather, it allows them to develop.

Whereas Fuller’s ending on PICKUP just sort of dumps you off on the curb and says, “Dust yourself off, kid, and get outtta here,” the ending to THE LOBSTER reinforces the themes of the film. It’s gutsy and lifts the rest of the film.

So there. This is the ending to this article.

 

Lessons Learned: HIGH MAINTENANCE (“Olivia”)

Instead of a straight review, this series of posts looks at what can be learned from watching with a critical, writing-focused perspective. First up, the fantastic web series, HIGH MAINTENANCE, created by Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld. In my estimation, this is the best web series being produced right now. And you should probably watch the episode below. It’s free! And, ya know, that’ll make the rest of this more coherent.

The episode with the Assholes. And they are assholes. Insufferable, asshole-y boors. That’s established repeatedly and humorously before and beyond the title. Variations on a theme. A dozen ways of painting the same still-life. It’s entertaining, but I want to take a closer looks at the cut that comes at 1:41 in the episode. The juxtaposing cut. The Assholes are doing asshole things and then, boom, we cut to The Guy playing with a giggling toddler.

There’s a loose bridge between the shots with the Male Asshole saying, “Just use your face to cover my face,” and The Guy pushing on the toddler’s face which makes the kid laugh (almost everything’s novel when you’re 2.5 years old). “Face” to face. Is it a stretch to apply a little Eisenstein-sauce and say that the idea that these juxtaposing shots elicits is that the Assholes are really children? Nah. I like it. The idea stays.

The juxtaposition also creates a contrast that cleanly divides the Assholes into the bad-guy camp and The Guy into the good-guy camp. The casual pettiness and ill-will of the Assholes is doubled when it collides with the euphoric laughter of a toddler. We also know immediately who the “Assholes” that pop up on The Guy’s cell phone caller ID are.

The use of the toddler to contrast with the Assholes and set The Guy up as a white hat would feel a bit cheap if The Guy didn’t then admit that he was upset about the kid screwing up his income stream because, ya know, he can’t sell pot to the parents anymore. With that, we’re off into another slice-of-life HIGH MAINTENANCE dialogue exchange.

Which brings us to the third thing this cut does: keeping a speedy pace. One of the things this series does best is keep up a heady pace. It covers a lot of character-building ground quickly and pretty much blazes through the slight plots. I could talk about in media res and how HIGH MAINTENANCE illuminates this concept like a goddamn lighthouse every episode. With this cut, we’re jumping into the middle of conversation in a new location with new characters. Bang.

For those keeping score, that’s 1) equating the Assholes to children; 2) using contrast to express the gulf between the “good” guys and the “bad” guys; and 3) pushing the pace by dropping us in media res into a new scene. That’s a lot of work for a single edit. That edit gets a gold star. Stuff like that is why the series is so good.

Other eps, other reviews:
“Stevie”
“Heidi”
“Jamie”
“Trixie”

Lessons Learned: HIGH MAINTENANCE (“Trixie”)

Instead of a straight review, this series of posts looks at what can be learned from watching with a critical, writing-focused perspective. First up, the fantastic web series, HIGH MAINTENANCE, created by Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld. It also happens to be one of the Top Five Things I Watched in 2013.

A fairly lightweight episode, “Trixie” deals with NYers dealing with their Air BnB customers and their (weed) dealer. The Guy has little impact on the plot — mostly he gives our female protag (Candace Thompson) an opportunity to tell a flavorful little tale about waitressing and Appalachian white trash. But it’s tasty morsels like this that are the most striking things about this episode. Specificity like the details in this story carries us through the episode. They pave over the plot gaps, making the episode less of a story and more of a brief burst of character study.

There is a sparse constellation of plot points: couple opens apartment up to AirBnBers, female protag implores male protag to crack down on increasingly rude/bizarre AirBnBer behavior, stress-relief pot smoking, male protag finally tells loud AirBnBers to shut the fuck up. But it’s really the tiny specific off-hand details in the dialogue that kept my interest.

Things like the male protag’s nickname being “Papi”, the couple calling sex “teety”, the female protag claiming she’ll have to live in a trailer next to her grandma in West Virginia unless they get a grip on this AirBnB thing. We’re dropped into the middle of a relationship with in-jokes, histories, and lingering conflicts. It’s a good relationship to watch. These minute specific details are delivered off-handedly and accumulate quickly, animating the relationship into a living breathing thing.

And, of course, the episode is funny. The duck-duck-goose* structured joke with the weird Q-tip guy is a good bit, and the insensitive marriage therapist The Guy visits is a funny plot diversion. But the protagonists’ relationship, as it’s built by those specific details, is the engine that drives the episode. They have clear goals they’re reaching for (make rent, handle renters) but the episode isn’t about overcoming these obstacles. It’s a rich snapshot. Considering that the episode is almost 7 minutes, which is already on the long side of the webisode spectrum, it’s a neat feat.

Other eps:
“Stevie”
“Heidi”
“Jamie”

* I’m using duck-duck-goose here in reference to the “rule of three” but where the last thing is kind of a curveball. The Q-tip guy example: (duck) he surprises one protagonist by standing behind them awkwardly swabbing his earhole while watching them, (duck) he surprises the other buy doing the same thing, then (goose) they find two disturbingly waxy Q-tips left in mug.

Lessons Learned: HIGH MAINTENANCE (“Jamie”)

Instead of a straight review, this series of posts looks at what can be learned from watching with a critical, writing-focused perspective. First up, the fantastic web series, HIGH MAINTENANCE, created by Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld. It also happens to be one of the Top Five Things I Watched in 2013.

Using objects for character development:

For the last episode, I focused on brief shots in the opening montage and how they built character development. We had that lovely stack of books. We had some retro SLR cameras. This episode takes the idea of using objects to build character and pushes it further by implementing those objects into the action. Rather than quick static shots.

This episode still uses this technique by flashing to a framed Occupy Wall street handbill, but it folds the rest of objects into the storytelling in a more organic way.

“Jamie” is located in the kitchen of a couple–two spare-time gourmets who complain about the price of kombucha, then defend its “alkalizing” powers, then complain about hating themselves for spending so much on it, then plan to make it themselves like “bootleggers”–all in almost the same breath. There is probably some kimchi fermenting in their refrigerator next to a stack of tofus in varying levels of firmness.

What I love about this episode is that it briefly reaches a moment of madcap farce when the women are trying to figure out how to dispatch or free or inadvertently torture the eponymous mouse. They read about freeing the mouse from the glue trap using vegetable oil and Molly reaches for a bottle of oil…

“No no no no no! Sarah Greenfield brought that back from the vineyard in South Africa! You are not using that.”

Then she reaches for a different bottle of oil…

“NO! It’s chili-infused! It’ll hurt Jamie!”

Then she finds a can of Pam…

“What?! Why do we even have Pam?”

Then, when Our Dealer FINALLY kills the mouse with a cast iron skillet, their only response is…

“I just seasoned that pan.”

Not only is the frantic search for an appropriate lubricant to free the mouse funny, it also highlights a kinda complex attribute of these characters. They don’t view objects practically, with an eye toward utility, they see them as either representing a sentimental or ideological viewpoint. We see what the objects MEAN to them, why they’re important, and that develops their character in kinda subtle ways.

And their hypocrisy is awesome. Brenna claims that their apartment is “a place where things live … we do not torture and we do not kill.” Yet they laid down a glue trap. And freeing the mouse isn’t worth using a tablespoon of the special South African oil. All life is precious! Just not as precious as this cooking oil…

Then they agree that the mouse should die but instead of just doing it themselves, they ask Our Dealer to do it. Then they critique his methods.

It’s funny and it’s clever and it’s these tangible objects the characters handle that launch these little character developments.

So that’s something to remember for future writing. Not just having very specific objects in a script, but also spending time noting both what those objects mean to the character AND how they use them.

Bonus objects that are not commented on in the episode but are either telling or intriguing:

1) This is the first time I noticed Our Dealer’s wedding band. It has nothing to do with the episode (or any other episode that I’ve seen) but it intrigues me.

2) The tote bag they hotbox Jamie in is for New York Public Radio. They donated to an NPR fundraising campaign!

Catch up with Lessons Learned reviews of the first two episodes, “Stevie” and “Heidi”.

Lessons Learned: HIGH MAINTENANCE (“Heidi”)

Instead of a straight review, this series of posts looks at what can be learned from watching with a critical, writing-focused perspective. First up, the fantastic web series, HIGH MAINTENANCE, created by Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld. It also happens to be one of the Top Five Things I Watched in 2013.

Two things that stand out in “Heidi” are montage and brief detail shots:

Montage: In this, the second episode of Cycle One, the filmmakers are already creeping toward a more ambitious execution. Whereas the first episode mostly just aimed the camera at the characters talking, this second episode experiments with overlapping dialogue and a panning dollying tracking camera.

It’s smart. And efficient.

The first two minutes of the episode are a montage that establishes a budding hipster romance. Is using the long-maligned montage a necessary evil to bring the viewer up to speed in a 7-minute episode? I dunno. But it works here BECAUSE of the restlessness of the camera and overlapping dialogue. The filmmakers are just as itchy to get into the story as we (the laptop/smartphone gazers) are. So they make that montage active and packed with character-building minutiae. My favorite of which is…

Brief Detail Shot: …a brief shot of a stack of hipster/college books. They are:

The Omnivore’s Dilemma
Fight Club
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs
The Art of War
The Complete Home Bartender’s Guide
The Complete Manual of Woodworking

Wanna try to be a worldly-ish 20 year-old? Throw these titles on your bookshelf. These are your cultural touchstones.

I LOVE this detail, these artfully stacked books. Because in a single shot, it pegs who this guy is. And he is the upper-middle class white kid with a bachelor’s degree from a private liberal arts school. Probably in English or History. Basically everyone I went to college with. I remember those years, living with those kids, BEING one of them. Reading those books and thinking, “HEY! I know how shit works now!” But really just staying pretty much as naive and dumb as before.

(Because wisdom comes from experience, right, not reading pop-lit and pop-psych best-sellers in your dorm room? That just gives you a veneer of wisdom, a faint scent of knockoff wisdom perfume. And more painfully “enlightened” drunk/stoned conversations. Those were the worst.)

I probably would’ve been duped by a cute, high-fashion homeless girl too. That’s why HIGH MAINTENANCE resonates with me. Because I’m the ideal audience, probably. It’s about me. Or enough facets of “me” that I connect with it. That specificity is amazing. Because while network or cable shows kinda have to aim for a large swath or the population and often hit no one, a web series can aim for a smaller specific audience. And nail it.

If you missed the review of episode one (“Stevie”), catch up here.

Lessons Learned: HIGH MAINTENANCE (“Stevie”)

Instead of a straight review, this series of posts looks at what can be learned from watching with a critical, writing-focused* perspective. First up, the fantastic web series, HIGH MAINTENANCE, created by Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld. It also happens to be one of the Top Five Things I Watched in 2013.

You probably should watch it before reading on. Or else, you know, it won’t really make sense.

I love the roughness of this first episode. Some out-of-focus shots, an unnecessary title sequence, the shots making it feeling a bit confined. It’s got that low-budget, two people talking in a room, not-great lighting webseries feel. But you can already see how nicely constructed the episodes are, especially through three things that are almost hallmarks of the series: set-up and payoff, character reversals, and a tight ending.

In this initial episode, all three are tied together. The plot, as it is, has a Frantic Personal Assistant trying to buy pot for her demanding “bitch” of a boss.

If I was going to describe this web series in TV terms, it has a cold open. In it, an off-putting guy watches porn while Our Dealer deals. The guy notices that they both have the same shoes–those Vibram Five Finger toe shoes. Or, as some of my former students termed them, “gorilla ninja” shoes. (Yes, I wore them to teach one day.) ((Yes, they are super hideous. But comfortable.))

The customer is kinda a gross guy. I mean, he’s blasting porn on a big screen when people are around. The only other significant detail in the scene is that he notices they have the same shoes. So it kinda infects the shoes with grossness. This is the set-up. It happens so quickly that you pretty much forget it as soon as you move into the next scene.

The payoff is the last line, when the Frantic Personal Assistant, notices Our Dealer’s toe shoes and says, “Those shoes are disgusting.” It’s a simple bridge between scenes, but it’s effective. And not only is it the pay-off, it also creates the tight ending.

The reason why this ending stands out is that it immediately follows a beat where the Frantic Personal Assistant accidentally chucks her phone into the toilet–then gets a high five from Our Dealer for escaping her boss. It’s a nice moment, but “those shoes are disgusting” tempers it and feels like a better ending. Because it gives us that satisfying mini-payoff. It’s also more reflective of the series than a simple triumph.

It’s also a small character reversal. My** first initial impression of the Frantic Personal Assistant is not a good one. Especially when she says, “I’m a little uncomfortable because this is my first time doing this and I expected a more professional experience…” But instead of letting the Frantic Personal Assistant stay as a frantic personal assistant for the entire episode, the next scene has her accepting Our Dealer’s offer of pot and shooting the shit with him. Telling him real personal things. So she’s kinda cool. Then she shits on his shoes. And we’re out. Bang.

The only real constant in the series is Our Dealer and his even-keeled, expressive-eyed, wild-bearded ways. The series loves to set up expectations for a character and then reverse them. Or tweak them. Or destroy them. It’s great character work in small doses.

* I’m using “writing” kinda loosely here. Since I don’t know how much is scripted or ad-libbed or whatever.
** Initially I had “our” instead of “my” but then I realized that’s assuming too much. Maybe you love frantic personal assistants and really relate to them and their neuroses and semi-rude ways.

Scene Analysis and World-Building

Michael Soileau, a former student, writes in with a question and a relevant scene that he’s written:

I’m looking to introduce a new World, the rules of the World, and a main character.  The setting is urban fantasy with film noir elements.  The most common method in fantasy is to use the “dumb kid who needs splaining” method.  This is where the main character is not from the same Universe where everything is happening, (think Frodo in “Lord of the Rings”, Luke Skywalker in “Star Wars”, etc.).  The other method is the “Watson” method, where a great mastermind has to explain to his/her sidekick why he/she is doing things in the storyline.

In my story, I opt for the approach of just having the main character narrate what is going on in the story.  See what you think of this as a character introduction and an introduction to the settings of this particular World and environment.  So here’s the intro to the World and the main character, see if it makes you want to keep reading or if you think there’s a better way to introduce all these elements.

(Note: I haven’t yet sorted out how to cleanly express script format in WordPress yet, so for this scene, the action blocks will be bolded, the dialogue will not.)

————————————————————————————————

(START OF ACT #1)

INT. RICK’S MANSION

A mansion is shown with beautiful masonry, decorated tables with gold-leaf trimmings, statues and art decorating wall. Further in, the scene becomes disheveled with BROKEN TABLES, SMASHED VASES, and GLASS littering the floor with BLOOD TRAIL marks.

                         RICK (V.O.)
Hello, I’m Rick.  World’s greatest detective.

A thick crunching sound is made and a BORIS is kicking a man while he is down.  BORIS is Russian, 300 lbs., with a buttoned-down shirt that’s been rolled up and a tie around his neck.

                         RICK (V.O.)
That is a big motherfucker.  And no, that’s not me.

Boris pulls up RICK and headbutts him in the nose, smashing it.  Rick is in his late 20s, not muscular but fit, and  sporting a nice suit.  His wavy hair is smeared with blood and he looks at Boris with a set of grey, glowing eyes.

                         RICK (V.O.)
If you can’t guess it, I’m the guy getting his ass
kicked right now.

Boris slams Rick into his expensive desk and punches him.                         

                        RICK (V.O.)
But look closer, there’s more going on here.

Rick’s nose is already HEALING the blood and tissue reconnecting and clotting up.

                        BORIS
Where is she?  The boss knows you can
find anyone.  We paid you, you found her,
you tell us.

He picks up Rick and throws him against a wall.

                        RICK (V.O.)
I’m what they call a “heavy Aug”. It means a
someone whose body doesn’t reject augmentation
and who can use magic.  A “heavy” is a serious
magic user, less than one in a half million are considered
“heavies”.  I’m the only heavy Aug known.  Which is why
this is insulting.

Boris stalks over to the wall.  Rick is listening intently to the FOOTSTEPS, which echo out.  He is hearing an echo of the entire mansion, which shows TWO GUARDS waiting by a limousine for Boris.  Rick looks up at Boris from the ground.  Boris picks him up and rears back for another punch, but Rick rams his hand through Boris’s chest and starts electrocuting him by turning his body into a gigantic electric arc.

He runs towards the a window and crosses through it, standing next to the two men he overheard earlier.  They are startled at first, but then pull out their handguns and try to fire at Rick.  He shakes his head and opens up his fist, which pours out bullets.  He holds two of the bullets inbetween his fingers and fake fires it into the first guard.  A flash goes off between his fingers and the bullet explodes into the first guard, killing him.  He quickly turns around and pulls off the same trick on the second guard, killing him.

Rick stands surveying the scene for a second, and then flops face first onto the ground.

                         RICK (V.O.)
Something I should mention here. Using heavy
magic is taxing.  Think of running a marathon in
the space of two minutes and you’ll get the idea.
These down times are when I wait for the
augmented side of me to take over while my
normal body takes a breather and…

He hears a clicking noise.  A scan of one on of the downed guards shows his heart has a device on it.

                         RICK (V.O.)
The problem with Augs is that you can’t look
at a person and tell if they are one.  Some are
big deals, full muscular skeleton reworks, healing
and poison filters, etc. Some are small.  Like a dead
man’s switch that calls out if a mark  manages to kill
the hitters you sent to his house.

Rick hears vehicles a ways out speeding towards his mansion. He attempts to crawl in sputtered efforts towards his fence. The cars pull into the driveway.  Rick stands up and teleports through the fence.  His foot gets a branch shoved through it when he teleports and he limps off from the house.

                         RICK (V.O.)
Of the very few people born “heavies”, even fewer live
to adulthood.  Not being able to control your powers,
like attempting to teleport when you can barely walk,
means the results can be very, very bad.

Rick snaps the branch off on his foot and keeps walking.

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First up, big ups to Michael for being gutsy enough to want his scene posted online, with feedback. He’s constantly working on new projects and isn’t afraid of putting his work out there, which is great.

Now, before we get into the specifics, a formatting concern. Make sure that you’re using scene headers to separate locales/time. We start out in the mansion, then when the fight is over, we have a single action block that starts with Rick hearing cars, then jumps to Rick moving toward his fence, then goes back to the cars in the driveway, then back to the fence, then a close-up on Rick’s foot.

As written: “Rick hears vehicles a ways out speeding towards his mansion. He attempts to crawl in sputtered efforts towards his fence. The cars pull into the driveway.  Rick stands up and teleports through the fence.  His foot gets a branch shoved through it when he teleports and he limps off from the house.”

You need, at least, an EXT. MANSION GROUNDS – NIGHT when the scene moves outside. You can further split that into EXT. MANSION YARD and EXT. DRIVEWAY or you can use internal slug lines like:

EXT. MANSION GROUNDS – NIGHT

ACROSS THE SIDE YARD, Rick limps toward the fence separating him from freedom.

AT THE FRONT OF THE HOUSE, cars roar into the driveway, spraying gravel.

AT THE FENCE, etc. etc…

But you have to solve that geography situation, otherwise your settings are too fluid. And it’s not correct format.

As for your ultimate question, “does this scene make me want to keep reading,” the short answer is… not yet. Not as written. I think you’re trying to make the scene do too much.

Right now, you’ve got an opening scene with some familiar elements: a kinda stereotypical movie thug interrogating someone with his fists. The reversal is that the guy copping the beating is actually superhuman and when he’s tired of fooling around, he takes all the baddies in short order.

Opening with our hero getting the shit kicked of him has potential, as does the sudden reversal. Where the scene is falling flat (besides the formatting) is in the 1) details, 2) shape within the scene and 3) the voice-over.

1) Nothing is popping out either description or action details yet here. The house is vaguely opulent; the baddie is vaguely intimidating and vaguely references a botched assignment. Vaguely. There isn’t much spark here. It feels too rote, too first draft-y, as if you haven’t fully envisioned all the details yet. So they’re not showing up in the writing.

Who is Boris? What does he want? Clearly some information. But he’s so boring. Basically just a pair of fists smacking someone around.

If you want Boris to veer more to the rote side, you gotta pump up the action and description more. Maybe incorporate the setting. In my mind’s eye, I don’t see the mansion yet.

One of the most catchy visual moments in DJANGO UNCHAINED (one that appears in most of the previews) is the brief moment when blood sprays on cotton plants. And it’s written in the script just as it appear on-screen. It’s a brilliant little moment because it’s visually striking. It’s cinematic. Perhaps metaphorical. And it incorporates the setting into the action. Tarantino doesn’t go on and on describing the cotton field, but in that moment, you are totally aware of the setting. So it sticks.

(Also take a look at the LETHAL WEAPON script. Shane Black does a great job putting you in the scenes.)

The action, as written here, is also pretty straightforward. A punch here, a headbutt there. So it’s not jumping out too much either yet.

2) As for the shape of the scene, there isn’t much flow yet. Every action, regardless or significance, gets pretty much the same level of emphasis. You’re not building to big moments yet. Rick hearing a clicking sound and Rick ramming his hand into Boris’s chest get about the same amount of emphasis. But they really shouldn’t.

Rick changing from helpless punching bag to electricity-wielding superhuman should be an epic moment. But as you’ve written it, it’s just the next step in getting closer to the end of the scene. When all the actions have the same “weight” then nothing stands out. The scene is shapeless. This is another thing that Shane Black is really sharp on in LETHAL WEAPON. In fight scenes, he emphasizes important actions and lets less important ones slip by quickly.

So build to and expand big moments. Shape the scene instead of giving a point-by-point list of things that happen.

Also, in a similar vein, moments in the script aren’t really connection to each other in an organic, flow-y way. For instance, the audience sees Rick’s nose heal itself (a big moment…) but Boris seems to not notice it. Or he ignores it. Or he doesn’t care. Or it makes him angrier. Or scared…?

We actually don’t know Boris’s reaction to Rick’s face-healing because there is no mention of it in the scene. Boris slams Rick into a desk, Rick’s face heals, Boris yells at Rick for a while, then throws him into a wall… But does he not see Rick’s face healing? Is he so worked up that he doesn’t notice it? Does Rick turn his face away so Boris can’t see it? Does he proudly thrust his chin out to ensure Boris sees it? Does Boris know Rick is superhuman and doesn’t even care? This is a moment that would help the reader get a foothold in the scene and a glimpse into the characters.

There’s more to think about here, in terms of shaping the scene, but I’m going to move on to…

3) The Voice-Over. One benefit to putting the action blocks in bold means that the dialogue kinda recedes into the page more. Which means it has to work harder to stand out. And, in general, V.O. dialogue needs to work REAL hard to justify its worth. Does it here?

I don’t think it does yet.

As a reader, what would you rather experience? Simply watching that reversal when Rick unexpectedly turns superhuman or having Rick tell you to pay attention while he explains statistics and typologies?

For me, it’s definitely the former.

One handy way to keep your reader interested is to give them little mysteries to puzzle, to keep them turning the pages. Ask a question, then when you answer it, ask another one. If you cut out all the V.O. and simply let the scene unfold visually, I’d want to know who this Rick guy is, how he shoots lightning, and why Boris was kicking the shit out of him.

Instead, I’m loaded down with “1 in every 500,000 people are heavy” and “augs” and “world’s best detective” and “dead man’s switch” and the logistics of teleporting. Instead of wondering who the hell this lightning-shooting dude is, I’m trying to work out the math re: augs and heavies. So there are only 500,000 augs if he’s the only heavy aug and heavy augs exists 1 out of 500,000 people, right? BRAIN EXPLOSION. MATH. WHY.

At some point, you’ll want the audience to know about augs and heavies and their various capabilities, but maybe not the very first scene. If you want to use V.O. to establish Rick’s disdainful tone or to juice up the scene, it might work. But to relay semi-tedious information in the middle of an action scene… I’m using my veto power.

Voice-over isn’t a sin. SUNSET BLVD made good use of it (framing device, perspective, and tone) and V.O. made LOOPER’s whiz-bang first act even whizbang-ier. But it gums up the works in this scene.

And so, in the end, this scene feels very much like the first draft of the first scene. Like you’re trying to cram the world into a single scene because there isn’t anywhere else to put it. Yet. For a relatively simple scene (beatee turns tables on beater) there isn’t much space to info-dump.

You mentioned STAR WARS at the beginning. But the first scene of that movie isn’t Obi Wan explaining the Jedi ways to Luke. You don’t need to establish all the rules of the world at the beginning. Sometimes a little mystery is better for keeping the reader reading.

Cabin in the Woods: Earn dem Plot Twists

This weekend, I drove from Baton Rouge to Holland, Michigan with a 36-hour stop in the outskirts of St. Louis. It’s an easy drive—once you hit I-55, you just keep the car pointed north. For 15 hours. Lotta time to contemplate the wonders of the universe. Or Cabin in the Woods.

I contemplated Cabin in the Woods.

During my St. Louis pit-stop, I saw my buddy’s nine month-old daughter nicknamed Cannonball, went trap shooting, experienced the magic of Ted Drewes frozen custard, and watched Cabin in the Woods.  And most of season 4 of Archer. And part of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

You have to have something on in the background while you keep the baby from making poor life choices like gnawing on the bottom of your flipflops. Or gnawing on power cords.

Now I liked Cabin in the Woods a lot.  Intriguing concept. It was a fun. It moved fast. It had some cleverly-constructed funny bits (the Mer-Man’s revenge, for instance). It featured fellow Illinois Wesleyan University alum Richard Jenkins as one of the fusty bureaucrats tasked with–

STOP READING NOW IF YOU DON’T APPRECIATE SPOILERS

–guiding young people to their grisly deaths in order to prevent elder gods from escaping their titan’s prison and destroying humanity. So there is a lot to like. The script is relatively well-built despite all the moving parts.

But there was one scene that stuck out a bit as something that could use a quick fix: when the Golden Boy Jock triumphantly and heroically attempts to jump his dirt bike to freedom! But slams into an invisible forcefield. And dies. Spectacularly.

If you need a memory jolt (or don’t care about spoilers), here’s the scene set-up. Our five young protags are in the titular cabin and quickly unleash a family of lunatic-fringe zombies who start hackin’ and stabbin’ away. Two of the heroes are dispatched and the other three make a break for it in their RV. Just as they’re about to get their sweet sweet freedom, their escape plan is foiled when IWU alum Richard Jenkins manages to cause a cave-in that blocks the ONLY WAY OUT (by jiggling some wires). But wait! Golden Boy Jock just happens to have his dirt bike strapped to the back of the RV. And he thinks he can jump across a bottomless canyon and GO GET HELP.

It’s a risky move, but he’ll do anything to save his friends! The music swells. He revs his engine. He delivers an emotional speech promising to come back “with cops, and choppers, and large fucking guns, and those things are going to pay.” We’re ready for Golden Boy Jock to SAVE THE DAY and so it’s a huge shock when he splatters against the force field keeping them in the cabin-y area. And dies. Spectacularly. Right?

Wrong. As soon as he pulled the dirt bike off the RV, I turned to my buddy and made the universal “dirt bike slamming into forcefield” gesture. (You know that one, right?)

The point is that the filmmakers telegraphed this story move so obviously that it didn’t work as a twist. Or a shock. At least for me.

Here’s why it was so easy to foresee it.

Because they’re dealing with a fairly unique concept, the filmmakers had to set up the rules of the world quickly and cleanly. Which they did a decent job of. And they opted to set-up the rule that the cabin-y area is surrounded by a forcefield, so when Golden Boy Jock smashes into it and careens down into an endless chasm, it didn’t feel like a total cheat. They set it up when our doomed Scooby gang drives through the entrance/exit tunnel in the first act and the camera follows the RV and then a hawk that SCREECHES and abruptly smashes into the force field. So we know 1) there is a forcefield and 2) that it roughly surrounds the area. Particularly in the chasm-y parts.

Fast forward to Golden Boy Jock planning to jump the chasm and bring the cavalry. At this point, if you weren’t stumbling to the refrigerator to get another Tin Roof Blonde Ale that brought with you from Baton Rouge when the hawk screeched into the forcefield initially, you know that there are two possible outcomes to this scenario: 1) Golden Boy Jock makes it to freedom like he says or 2) he smashes into a forcefield. And dies. Spectacularly.

Uh. Clearly it’s gonna be number 2.*

The reason why we know it’s number 2 is that they filmmakers have done a good job setting up that as a possibility, but they haven’t done anything to set up number 1 as a real possibility in the movie.

In the first act, our protags have only interacted with themselves and the creepy gas station attendant. (And he’s definitely not gonna help them out.) But if they’d been pulled over by a cop or something during their drive, at least this would’ve introduced the notion that there IS help somewhere, if only Golden Boy Jock can make the jump. But we don’t even see other students at their college, let alone anything that suggests the helicopters and big guns that Golden Boy Jock promises to retrieve (maybe they drive past an Army base?)—so when GBJ revs his engine and the orchestra picks up and he starts speechifying, your film-brain is telling you that the only real option is that he smashes into a forcefield. And dies. Spectacularly.

The takeaway here: if you plant that Chekhovian gun in the first act, it’s gotta go off. If you have a shock or twist that relies on the audience forgetting about that gun, you gotta give them a reason to forget it. Bait and switch. Smoke and mirrors. A plausible non-gun scenario that at least puts that kernel of doubt in their mind. Otherwise you’re telegraphing your moves.

*insert pre-pubescent poop humor here.

The Origins and Format of Modern Screenplays

Occasionally a bit basic, but shows the progression to our current “literary” screenplay style. Pretty cool and well put together.

From FilmmakerIQ.com

Learn From This Script: Breaking Bad pilot

EXT. COW PASTURE – DAY

Deep blue sky overhead. Fat, scuddy clouds. Below them, black and white cows graze the rolling hills. This could be one of those California “It’s The Cheese” commercials.

Except those commercials don’t normally focus on cow shit. We do. TILT DOWN to a fat, round PATTY drying olive drab in the sun. Flies buzz. Peaceful and quiet. Until…

… ZOOOM! WHEELS plow right through the shit with a SPLAT.

NEW ANGLE – AN RV

Is speeding smack-dab through the pasture, no road in sight. A bit out of place, to say the least. It’s an old 70’s era Winnebago with chalky white paint and Bondo spots. A bumper sticker for the Good Sam Club is stuck to the back.

The Winnebago galumphs across the landscape, scattering cows. It catches a wheel and sprays a rooster tail of red dirt. 

Thus begins the pilot script for AMC’s prestige drama Breaking Bad.

Written by Vince Gilligan, and as illustrated by these two brief scenes, the script has an incredible vividness and readability in the scene description and actions–something that really slams home the possibilities for capturing visuals without being tedious or list-y.

Check out both the details Gilligan uses (“fat, round patty drying olive drab in the sun”) and the verbs (“galumphs”).

And notice how his shot paragraphs blend into each other both visually AND as they’re written:

…the rolling hills. This could be one of those California “It’s The Cheese” commercials.

Except those commercials don’t normally focus on cow shit. We do. TILT DOWN…

Not only can you easily visualize the details, but they linger in your mind as you move from image to image, creating the fast-moving sequence as you go. These connections keep the scene playing in your mind–it makes for great reading.

Things to focus on while reading this pilot and these scenes: narrative voice, vivid details, ka-pow verb, and an awareness of the connective tissue that links shots, scenes, and sequences.

Here’s a link to the script on the supremely useful TV WRITING site.