Contour At The Movies

Overall Impression – I don’t care what anyone thinks… I enjoyed it! Solid Spielbergian fun. ‘Nuff said.

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Who’s your main character? Jerry Shaw

What’s he trying to accomplish? Professional: Stop ARIA, the AI defense mainframe. Personal: win over Rachel. Private: Find out why his twin brother was killed and prove to himself that he isn’t useless.

Who’s trying to stop him? ARIA, Special Agent Thomas Morgan, and many, many other people along the way.

What happens if he fails? The leadership of the American government is killed, the country falls into disarray, ARIA stays active… Oh yeah, Jerry, Rachel and her son will die.

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES

Orphan – Jerry has cut himself off from his parents, stopped speaking to his twin brother, and lives alone. But when he’s labeled a terrorist after finding nearly a million dollars in the bank, he can’t turn to anybody! In other words: uber-orphan.

Wanderer – Not only does Jerry have no idea what’s going on, but all the main characters have questions. Special Agent Thomas Morgan is trying to figure out what Jerry’s up to, while Jerry and fellow fugitive Rachel find their lives controlled by a mysterious caller with god-like control over all things electrical. In following the caller’s orders, they learn about each other, discover that they aren’t the only pawns in this game, and wonder ‘why them?’

Warrior – When Jerry and Rachel discover that the mysterious caller is ARIA – a super computer whose apparent goal is to help the American people, Jerry and Rachel more actively fight to follow its goals. They have to elude agent Morgan, battle their way into the Pentagon, and eventually fight ARIA itself once they discover its terrible endgame.

Martyr – Jerry is captured, but Agent Morgan believes his story and sacrifices himself so that Jerry can stop ARIA. In another martyr beat, Jerry fires a weapon inside the White House to stop ARIA’s attack coming to fruition, saving everybody, but getting himself shot in the process.

AND, IN THE END…

A few people I invited to see this movie didn’t want to, claiming that it was all one big cliché that they’d seen before. Having seen the movie, I don’t totally agree with that, but it’s not an unfair view to take. What this does is highlight the importance of paying attention to clichés when making movies.

The term ‘cliché’ is one that carries a certain amount of subjectivity, but it has also become somewhat muddy over time. Clichés can be seen as conventions that were once fresh and innovative, but which have since come to be tired and overused. That said, what might be one person’s cliché could, for another person, be a necessary component to place a movie within a specific genre. Another idea to consider is that clichés become clichés because they work.

In my mind, clichés become most useful when they’re associated with audience expectation. Really cynical audience member: “What’s the point in paying money to see a movie if you know what’s going to happen, since it’s bound to be like all the others that came before it?”

Movies have been around for a while now, and surprising an audience is becoming less about creating new ideas and more about finding new takes on old ones. With this in mind, clichés can be used as a means of subverting audience expectation, and making movies fresh again. DIE HARD is a great example of this. Traditional action heroes never got hurt, their hair was always perfect, and killing people was about as difficult as eating breakfast. Enter John McClain. He hates that he has to save Nakatomi Plaza, gets glass in his feet, and is probably more beat up than any of the thugs.

Then again, some clichés never get tired, and even the tired ones have their reasons for being used. They’re just good.

Yes, EAGLE EYE’s logic is stretched to the limits of believability (and then some). Yes, the President’s in trouble again and only somebody not in law enforcement can save him.  And yes, that somebody is a nobody.

So what? I’m a nobody and I’ll never get tired of the idea that someone like me can save the world.

-– Dan Pilditch

Overall Impression – An impressive film, can’t get enough of it. One of the best movies of the famous composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, ever made… in my opinion.

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Who’s your main character? — Salieri

What’s he trying to accomplish? – Professional: Prove that he’s a superior musician to Mozart.  Personal: Destroy Mozart’s and prevent him from getting a job at the court. Private: Punish God by destroying His creation, Mozart.

Who’s trying to stop him? – God (according to Salieri)

What happens if he fails? — Salieri will be a frustrated composer who will always feel that he’s a mediocre failure.

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES

Orphan — Salieri is an unhappy child. He wants to be a great composer. His father, however, doesn’t allow him to study music and so, Salieri prays to God to make him a great composer.

Wanderer — Salieri’s wish is granted, according to himself. His father dies and Salieri travels to Vienna to study music. Some years later, he becomes the court composer of Emperor Joseph of Austria. Salieri is happy being a famous composer, until he meets Mozart.  He recognizes in Mozart real genius, and tries to figure out how channel and control Mozart without letting on to the rest of the court that Mozart’s music is superior to his own. 

 Warrior – Salieri is angry at God because He gave not him, but “a monkey”, the bigger musical gift.  It is as if God is laughing at him!  From now on, he and God are enemies. He decides to destroy God’s creation by first ordering a beautiful requiem from Mozart and then kill him. During Mozart’s funeral he then will perform this requiem under his own name so the whole world will know that he, Salieri, is the greatest composer that ever lived!

Martyr — As Mozart lies dying, Salieri helps him work on his Requiem, seemingly softening on and almost willing to give up his vengeance (the martyr moment), showing a real tenderness and appreciation to the man and his talent that he’s destroying.  Still, it’s not enough and Mozart dies.  Many years later, now an old man, Salieri tries to kill himself, asking Mozart for forgiveness. He adored Mozart, it was God he hated!

AND, IN THE END…

I have seen this movie so many times since it came out many years ago and never realized that it is in fact about Salieri and his struggle with God. It’s however great to see how Mozart does his tricks, like hearing a musical piece only once and then performing it even better than Salieri wrote it in the first place! And what about the scene in which he improvises on a given melody in the style of other composers; beautiful!

– André van Haren

“PLEASE DON’T PAY PEOPLE TO READ YOUR WORK.”This was the subject line of a thread on a popular screenwriting message board. The writer was a frequent contributor to the message board with very strong opinions on a variety of subjects.

The author of the message went on to say that he had never paid to have his material read and critiqued, none of the professional writers the author of this thread knew had ever paid to get their work read, and neither should anyone else. The author ended with a bit of cheerleader pie-in-the-sky along the lines that if someone is persistent and has a good script, they will make it to the top.

The responses to his post were almost unanimous in their assumption that nobody can learn anything useful from anyone when it comes to writing, all quality writing comes from within, we should all just write whatever feels good to us and not worry about the commercial aspects of the business, we should each discover our own way to the craft and not rely on someone else to point us in any direction, and all script consultants are just failed writers.

I debated for a couple of days before deciding to respond to this thread. There was so much wrong with the underlying logic, so much misinformation, and frankly, so little understanding about the business of writing that I didn’t know where to begin.

It seemed to me that what had not been appreciated in this thread was the incredibly small window of opportunity a spec screenplay has to impress a studio, agent or producer. The expression “you only get one chance to make a good first impression” has never been more true than when it’s applied to trying to sell a script.

If you go out to the town with a script and it doesn’t sell, you can’t gather together your notes (if you even get any), rewrite the script, and then go out with it again to the same producers. Most of them will not spend the time to re-read a script they’ve already passed on unless there is some compelling reason to do so (an actor or director attached that means something…some financing that is legitimately in place if it’s an independent movie). A rewrite of the script does not qualify as a compelling reason.

“You only get one chance to make a good first impression.” So what do you do? You get some feedback first, and THEN go out with the script. Now the question is, to whom do you go for this feedback?

You probably know by now that you are the worst person to evaluate your script because you are either too green or too close to the material or both. If you are like most aspiring writers, you give it to some trusted friends to read.

What are their credentials? If they are just as green and unproven as you, their only benefit is distance from the material and that’s not enough to be helpful. How much do they really know about screenwriting? How many scripts have they read? Just because they also write screenplays doesn’t mean that they know what they’re doing. Worse, it doesn’t mean that they know what you’re doing. My eight year old makes interesting abstract pictures. I wouldn’t go to her for an explanation of Picasso’s “blue period.”Just because everyone’s writing doesn’t mean that everyone knows how to write.

I get infuriated by the hypocrisy some writers (aspiring and professional) allow themselves to unknowingly help promulgate. As writers we can’t both complain that not enough people value our contributions to movies while also believing that there is no method to the profession outside of what we can discover on our own. We can’t complain that our currency is devalued while we also believe that everyone can mint equal coins in their basement.

Writing is an art and a craft and, yes, a business. It is a profession for some, a hobby and hoped-for career for others. Some aspects of it are gifted to us. Some can be learned and acquired.

You have to ask yourself where you are in that continuum between “aspiring” and “working?” If you’re not far enough along for your liking, how do you get to where you want to be?

Firstly, you write. And after you write, you make certain that what you’ve written is representative of the scripts found on that area on the continuum you wish to populate. You do that by finding people who know what those scripts look like, both artistically and commercially. These people may or may not be the ones you have easy access to. That’s why many writers hire qualified, experienced script readers instead of friends.

Can your friends advise you about similar films in development? Can your friends advise you about trends in the marketplace? Can they tell you which producers are looking for your kind of material and which have sworn that they’ll never again make another western/horror/musical? Can they tell you how your script compares to others like it? Do they know why the others like it worked and can they identify those elements in yours?

Can they tell you what they liked about your script? Oh…they didn’t like your script? That’s even better. Can they tell you exactly what they didn’t like and why? Best of all, can they tell you how to fix the problems based not on their opinion (your opinion is just as valid as theirs) but on an empirical knowledge about screenwriting? This is what a skilled reader brings to your project.

The people who have said that professionals don’t pay to have their scripts read are wrong. I personally pay at least 15% of everything I earn to have my material read before I go out with it; I have two agents, one in Canada and one in Los Angeles and they split 15%. Part of their job is to read my material and make sure that it’s as good as it can be before we shop it to producers.

Why should I seek out their opinions? I’m a WGA, Emmy, WGC, and BAFTA nominated writer, producer, and director. I’ve been in the WGA for 20 years. I’ve earned my living exclusively as a screenwriter for two decades. Don’t I know how to write by now? The bottom line is that even my scripts only get one chance per producer to make a good impression. And what would I do if I didn’t have agents whose opinions, taste and business acumen I trusted? I’d hire the best script reader I could find and afford to make sure that I didn’t blow that one chance my script has of making a good first impression.

Yes, there are some readers out there whose only qualifications are “failed writer.” Yes, there are some readers out there who are only marginally more qualified than you to critique your script. There are also some very sharp people who can help you. Search for them the way you would search for the best medical specialist to cure a sick child. As with anything in life, you must make your own calculation between value and price.

“Please don’t pay people to read your work.” This is a blanket statement.As with all blanket statements there are times when it is absolutely right. There are also times when following it will guarantee that you labor in obscurity yet longer.

– Jeffrey Alan Schechter

I’ve been having an interesting tête-à-tête over at the Mariner Software Contour forum with a member from England.  He asks the question “Is this (Contour) too restrictive?”  

C’mon…you know you’ve been thinking the same thing. CLICK HERE to read the questions and replies.

Overall Impression – My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a great romantic comedy which I’ve enjoyed many times and still like to watch.  At the same time, I always get the feeling that something is missing.

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Who’s your main character? – Toula.

What’s she trying to accomplish? – Professional: Get married.  Personal: Get her family, particularly her father, to accept Ian, a non-Greek, into the family.  Private: Get away from the restaurant and have a fulfilling life.

Who’s trying to stop her? – Gus, her father.

What happens if she fails? — Toula will be unhappy. Not living with the man she loves and being stuck in the restaurant will make her life empty, without any meaning. In other words…figuratively DEAD!

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES

Orphan — Toula is a single 30-year-old woman, working in her family’s restaurant, the “Dancing Zorba’s”. She feels that she is missing out on life and is afraid that this might be it. Toula would like to study at the City College so she could get away from the restaurant, but dares only to secretly dream about this.

Wanderer — Meeting a high-school teacher, Ian Miller, makes her wish to study even stronger.  With her mother’s help they convince her father that taking computer classes would improve the restaurant business. Starting this course, she changes her appearance totally: contact lenses instead of glasses; wearing make-up and nice clothes. She takes a class in computers and tourism. Knowing that her aunt has a travel agency, she decides to take this class, hoping she can work there, this way escaping the restaurant. Together with her aunt and her mother, they manipulate the situation letting her father think that it was his brilliant idea of sending Toula to work at the aunt’s travel agency.

Warrior — At her new job, she meets Ian Miller again. They start a relationship in secret, behind her family’s back, because they would never approve her dating a non-Greek. However, her cousin Nikki tells her that the family knows: a neighbor saw them together. Ian asks Toula’s father permission to date her, but he refuses. They however stay together, become more intimate as time goes on. Ian proposes, and the father accepts their coming marriage, although not without complaint. To make it easier for the family, Ian (who is not religious anyway) converts to the Greek orthodox faith.

 Martyr — Trying to please the family, Ian converts to Greek orthodox. For his part, Gus gives in and accepts Ian.  It doesn’t appear that Toula sacrifices much, if anything.

 AND, IN THE END…

Is Toula giving up something in the end? Or is it Ian who asks the father if it’s OK to date her (taking her fight), converts to the Greek orthodox faith to please the father (changing his religion)? Ian even tries to learn their language. It seems to me that during the warrior part, it’s Iam who is the hero and not Toula. During the wedding, it’s the Millers who adapt themselves and start to enjoy the Greek partying lifestyle, and it is Gus who accepts the differences between the families by saying that even while we are different fruits (apple and orange), we are all still fruit.  Maybe this is why I feel something’s missing: Toula isn’t actively driving several of the key moments.

– André van Haren

Overall Impression –  A perfect example of how adhering to structure doesn’t hinder a story, but strengthens it.  

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Who’s your main character? — Jamal

What’s he trying to accomplish? – Professional: convince the authorities that he didn’t cheat on WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE, and get back on the show.  Personal: live happily ever after with his love, Latika.  Private: prove to himself that even a slumdog can achieve his wildest dreams.

Who’s trying to stop him? – Nearly everybody, throughout his entire life!  The gangster and the game show host are significant obstacles, but the real antagonist is Jamal’s brother Salim, who comes between him and Latika from beginning to end.

What happens if he fails? – Death threatens everybody Jamal knows, in one form or another.  Not only will he be imprisoned and likely killed, but any chance of a relationship with Latika will die, and she’ll fall into a world of prostitution and gangsters.

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES

Orphan – As a child, Jamal becomes a true orphan when his mother is murdered.

Wanderer — As they struggle to survive the slums, Jamal and Salim negotiate trust, friendship and love when they meet Latika.  A gangster called Maman takes them in under false pretenses, and while Jamal and Salim escape, they lose Latika.  For the next few years, the brothers travel India, scamming and stealing for survival.

Warrior – Eventually, Jamal insists that they find Latika.  When they discover that Maman has raised her as a prostitute, they rescue her, but Salim kills Maman in the process.  He begins work for a rival gangster and takes Latika for himself, telling Jamal to leave, or he’ll kill him.  Jamal tracks them down years later, only to discover that Latika lives with Salim’s boss.  Jamal loses contact with her again, so he enters WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE, knowing that Latika will see him on television.  However, he’s arrested on suspicion of cheating and has to convince his interrogators that his incredible life provided him with the answers.  If he doesn’t get back on that show, he will never find Latika.

Martyr – Salim is a true martyr here, and a strong one at that.  Moved by his brother’s success on the show, he atones for his mistakes by dying so that Latika can escape Salim’s boss and be with Jamal.

AND, IN THE END…

This movie succeeded on a number of levels: a riveting and unpredictable story, great characters, many hilarious and touching moments… the list goes on.

Not only is the structure clean, but the FOUR QUESTIONS and FOUR ACHETYPES are clearly and effectively answered.  What this illustrates is that sticking to structure and answering the necessary stages above IN NO WAY hinders creativity, imagination and the telling of an incredible story.  

If anything, it illustrates how it can make it stronger.  For example, Jamal’s personal desire and his main antagonist (Salim) remain the same from childhood to adulthood.  He’s wanted to be with Latika his entire life, been fighting for it his entire life, and Salim’s been pulling her out of his reach HIS ENTIRE LIFE!   If that doesn’t make you want him to succeed, I dunno what would.

As a side note, the visuals alone are worth seeing the movie for, and the cast dance at the end rocks.

– Dan Pilditch

Imagine listening to two pieces of music, both very similar but with one major difference. The first piece is the glorious final movement from Beethoven’s 9thSymphony. The second, a random re-ordering of all the same notes, played by all the same musicians, on all of the same instruments, and with each note lasting exactly as long as it did in the non-random version of the 9th. It’s obvious that while the random version of Beethoven’s 9thmight offer occasional moments of musical interest, as a whole it would be an unsatisfying experience.

The question we must ask is why should your brain prefer one version over the other? This isn’t a glib question. If two musical works are composed of the same notes and durations but in two different orderings, why does the brain hear one as “music” and the other as “noise?”

The answer is structure. Your brain hears the notes of the 9th Symphony as arranged by Beethoven, and because it has a structure that the brain’s “wiring” is genetically able to decode, the brain responds to and accepts what it just heard as the satisfying experience known as hearing music. Even someone who doesn’t like classical music (or hip-hop or new age or disco) would rather listen to a type of music they don’t have an affinity for than listen to a discordant, structure-less collection of notes.

Okay, maybe not disco.

Another way of saying this is that the brain is “hard-wired” to recognize and respond favorably to musical structure. It comes as part of the package deal we call “being human.” Now, if we can accept this idea — that the brain is hard-wired to detect and respond to musical structure — is it possible that the brain is also hard-wired to recognize story structure?

I posed this question to Dr. Barry Bank. Dr. Bank is one of them big-brain types. A former honcho at the National Institutes of Health in Washington, Dr. Bank is currently working on an early diagnostic tool to detect Alzheimer’s Disease. The wiring of the brain is his area of expertise, and the short version of his answer to my question — is the brain hard-wired to recognize good story structure? — is an unqualified “yes.” The brain is on a never-ending mission to take the data that comes its way through sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch and assemble that data into understandable experiences. When it does it with sounds at different frequencies it’s called “music.” When it does it with plot points and dramatic beats, it’s called “story.”

Joseph Campbell, in his defining work THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES, noticed that people from different cultures spanning the earth, cultures that had no contact with each other, told very similar stories in very similar ways. Campbell made popular the theory that there is something in the human condition that creates similar stories independent of culture or conditioning. Science has now stepped in to help clarify Joseph Campbell’s observation. The human brain looks for and responds to a similar meaningful story structure because that’s what it was born to do.

Armed with this information you can now see the power of developing a definable, repeatable system for breaking down movies. What if you were to take the top films of all time (”top” being defined as those films whose stories found the widest possible audience), distill those films down to their common shared elements and codify it all into a system? You’d have a pretty solid jumping off point for telling your stories. And don’t worry that your scripts are going to come out feeling formulaic. What makes AMERICAN BEAUTY, STAR WARS, THE SIXTH SENSE, and LIAR LIAR different from each other is not that their structures are different (which they aren’t) but how creative each writer was within the same structure.

It will be your creativity that will make your characters leap off the page. Your creativity will make your settings unique and your dialog soar. Apply it to the nuts and bolts of structure, however, and your creativity might just kill your script in the cradle by rendering the structure unrecognizable to the human brain.

There is plenty of room for creativity when writing. Just don’t monkey around with structure. Structure is mechanical. A tool. It is a waste of your time and energy to re-invent structure every time you sit down to write. And as the great William Goldman says in his classic book ADVENTURES IN THE SCREEN TRADE, “Screenplays are structure.”

–Jeffrey Alan Schechter

Overall Impression – A man who doesn’t believe in ghosts is trapped in a room haunted by them and cannot escape no matter what he does.  Great!

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Who’s your main character? — Mike Enslin

What’s he trying to accomplish? – Professional: Trying to escape room 1408. Personal: Healing the relationship with his ex-wife (I think).  Private: Trying to accept his daughter’s dead.

Who’s trying to stop him? — Room 1408 or is it the manager Gerald Olin? He however doesn’t play a role during the struggling part, so I go for the room.

What happens if he fails? — If Mike cannot escape from room 1408, he will die and in the end, his ex-wife with him.

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES

Orphan — Mike Enslin is divorced, his daughter died some time ago and he travels around the country alone to debunk paranormal occurrences.

Wanderer — Inside room 1408, Mike examines the room, and experiences unexplainable things: the radio starts to play music by itself. After ripping the clock’s electrical cord from the wall, the display changes into “60:00″ and starts counting down from 60 minutes; When Mike is unable to hear anything, he opens the window to check his hearing; the window slams down, wounding his hand; Mikes wants to leave the room to go to a hospital; however his key breaks off; Mike has visions of his daughter in the hospital before her death; Mike sees his own father in a hospital or institution of some kind.

Warrior — Mike tries to get out of room 1408:  He crawls through the air vents, where he meets a strange monster; he climbs out the window to enter another room, however suddenly all the other rooms on his floor are gone; he talks with his ex-wife via video-chat on his laptop, till the sprinkler system shorts out his laptop.  Later his laptop works again and a person looking like him tells Lili to join him in the room (which would lead to her death.)  The room fills with water; Mike is getting sucked under water and wakes up in a hospital. Free!  No… Suddenly everything around him breaks down and he’s back in the room, the nightmare continues. The clock resets itself to 60 minutes and counts down, starting the hour of hell from the beginning. Mike gets a phone call, asking him if he wants to take the expressway out; hanging himself. Mike says no. The caller tells him that his wife is on her way to join him.

Martyr — Mike doesn’t want his ex-wife to get into the same problems as he has and decides to end this now. He sets the room on fire with a Molotov cocktail, sacrificing himself. (So, in fact, the hotel manager gave him the tool to end everything!) There are two versions of this ending: In the theatrical release, Mike Enslin is rescued, in the director’s cut, he dies. Still, dying or surviving, he made the sacrifice by wanting to die so his ex-wife would be saved.

AND, IN THE END…

I love this movie! I believe it’s well done, although the scene with the monster in the ceiling was, I believe, out of place. It belongs more in a zombie kind of movie than here. Why not just let every exit leading him back in his own room instead of being chased by a monster? And I wonder who sent him that anonymous postcard, but maybe I missed that.

–  André van Haren

In the spirit of sharing the wealth (all right…sharing the work) I’m welcoming two new reviewers to this blog: Dan Pilditch and André van Haren.

Dan is my protege, sometimes writing partner, and all around good guy.  He’s also a working writer and a Contour-head…having been around since the TotallyWrite days.  Be forewarned, Dan’s from England so everything he says IMMEDIATELY sounds very legitimate.   Still, don’t be afraid to give him a hard time if you disagree with his analysis of any film.

André is from the Nederlands and he’s not only a talented writer but one of the most amazing classical composers you’ve never heard of.  Seriously.  Check out his music on his website.  I’m partial to his Piano Sonata No. 1.

Please note that the views expressed by an independent reviewer are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of management.   Unless you agree with the independent reviewer.  Then I told him to say it.