Contour At The Movies

I just read a fabulous article by author/filmmaker Peter Hanson.  It’s posted on The Writers Store website and it condenses down into five points some of the things he learned while interviewing screenwriters for the book he co-edited Tales from the Script: 50 Hollywood Screenwriters Share Their Stories.

I didn’t read one thing in the article that I disagree with (shocking, I know!) and I think this short article should become required reading for everyone pursuing a career as a screenwriter.   It puts the level of commitment, time, and effort required into very practical terms.  If this is any indication of the full scope of the book, then it’s a must have.  Well done, Mr. Hanson!

CLICK HERE to read the article.

–Jeffrey Alan Schechter

I haven’t see the movie yet, but I’m confident that it will win Best Picture.  Why?  Because the story of the making of SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE is the best story of all of nominated films.

The  filmmakers cast the film with no name actors literally plucked from the slums of Mumbai, they had to figure out how to shoot the movie in one of the worst places on earth, they fought to build an audience for the movie, and they have gotten the young actors into school and established funds for them out of their own pockets once the youths complete their studies.

It’s the four archetypes in classic sequence: Orphan.  Wanderer.  Warrior.  Martyr.

And the Academy knows a good story when it sees one.

Blog reader “Twilight” asked the following question:

“I must ask something here about who is the main character in Titanic. All the time I though it was Rose, because she is the character who drives the story, or?

I also think I have read from others like Michael Haug that Rose is the Main Character.

So please tell me how you think.”

This has been a topic of some discussion for me for several years. I used to believe that Jack was the main character based on certain principles, but I’ve heard people argue (effectively) that Rose is the main character. It’s fascinating to me that it’s even a question in my mind.  I’ll outline the principles I use to help determine main character  so you can see why this is the question for me that it is:

Principle #1 – The final battle of every good story is always “The Good Guy vs the Bad Guy over the Stakes.” In TITANIC it’s Jack and Cal over Rose, meaning Jack’s the main character. THE WINNER — JACK. 

Principle #2 – The main character is the one who changes the most from the start of the film to the end. Jack appears to change the most; he goes from a loveless drifter to committed boyfriend to dead, which is a pretty big change. However, Rose also changes from someone trapped in her life and stifled to liberated. THE WINNER — A TIE. 

Principle #3 – The main character is exactly like the main opponent, but with a moral center. The antagonist is who the protagonist IS IN DANGER OF BECOMING if he or she loses that moral center. And often, the antagonist is doing EXACTLY what the protagonist WISHES in their darkest of hearts he or she could do but doesn’t because of that moral center.  In DIE HARD, John Maclean’s dark wish would be to kill his wife’s boss, take her by force, and blow up her office building…which is exactly what Hans Gruber is doing.  In RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, Indiana Jones is so much  like the bad archeologist Belloq that even Belloq calls him on it.  Is Batman really THAT different than the Joker?  

In TITANIC, if Cal is our antagonist, who is like him but with a moral center?  Rose is like him in status, but Jack is like him in desire.  He wants Rose and is as committed to being with her as Cal is, however Jack is moral and Cal isn’t.  Could Jack ever become like Cal if he loses his moral center?  The scene where both he and Cal stand together after convincing Rose to get on the lifeboat sticks in my mind because Jack is just as guilty of being protective of her as Cal is, neither taking into account HER feelings.  Could Rose become like Cal if she loses her moral center?  No, because she’s ready to kill herself before that can happen.  THE WINNER — JACK.

Principle #4 – The main character drives the action.  Jack and Rose take turns driving the action.  It’s his decision to save her life when she’s ready to commit suicide.  It’s her decision to be sketched in the nude.   It’s her decision to get off TITANIC in New York with him.  It’s his decision to martyr himself.  Still, she makes some of the most major plot decisions.  THE WINNER — ROSE, BY A HAIR.

Principle #5 - The main character usually gets the biggest martyr moment at the end.  While Rose gives up a life of leisure, she doesn’t give up her life as Jack does.  THE WINNER — JACK.

So, who’s the main character?  To be honest, I’m still not sure that it’s clear in my mind. Empirically it seems that the evidence points to Jack more strongly than it does to Rose, yet…

Is it possible that Rose is the main character and Jack is the ‘traveling angel’ who changes her life?  Is it possible that Jack is the main character and Rose is the innocent who needs rescuing? Is it possible that they’re both the main character?  

Even with all I’ve written and all I know I’m not sure of the answer, and that intrigues me.  Some very smart people say that Rose is the main character.  They might be right.  My head says Jack, but my heart says Rose.

The real question is ‘what can we, as writers, learn from this?’

TITANIC was a cultural phenomenon.  It was the right movie, at the right time and was a stunning ode to the art of movie making.  What hardly anyone thinks is that it was a well-written script.  In fact, many of the reviews were scathing about the writing.   Of course, success is the best revenge so nobody should feel too badly for Mr. Cameron.   But is it also possible that the lack of clear focus on the main character is a failing and not a virtue?  Is it conceivable that the movie could have been even better with more clarity on the main character?

To me, the biggest takeaway from this question is that if we were writing TITANIC, we should clearly choose either Jack or Rose as the main character and run with that choice.  Not being clear is not an option when you’re trying to launch your career.  

As you can see from all I’ve written, I’m wide open to thinking and rethinking about this question, so…what do YOU think?

I debated a while before posting this, however I must warn people about a very dangerous screenwriting seminar.  This is no joke, and all figures I’m about to give you are real.

Out of all the graduates of the screenwriting seminar in question:

• 800 have died in auto accidents
• 90 have died of cancer
• 2 were murdered

For legal reasons I can’t tell you the name of this dangerous, deadly seminar.  But don’t be afraid, because there is a seminar out there whose graduates have won dozens of Oscars, Emmys, and other awards.  This one seems like a safer bet, doesn’t it?   There’s only one problem…

…it’s the same seminar.

The promoters of this seminar list how many attendees they’ve had over how many years and how successful they’ve been, however given enough years and enough attendees, one can generate all sorts of statistics.   Hence the ability to generate fatality rates for graduates as well as Oscar winners.  It’s called “data dredging.”  

So, which numbers should you pay closer attention to, the success rate or the mortality rate?   My suggestion?  Neither.  A seminar can no more take credit for the success of its attendees that be blamed for their untimely deaths.

Screenwriting seminars, books, software, and gurus often make all sorts of claims when trying to get you to take them seriously.   Write a movie in an hour and a half!  Sell your story without a script!  All you need to know about the movie and TV business!  Make money!  Sell your spec!  Learn the secret!  NO…learn MY secret!!

It’s not that you can’t learn something from these books and seminars,  but I want to encourage people to use their heads (and I’d like to encourage the authors and seminar givers to dial back the rhetoric.)  

Isn’t Contour just more of the same?  I hope not.   The closest I’ve gotten to hyping the software is “Get your story idea from brain to page in the shortest time possible” and “Minimum theory…maximum results.”  Both comments happen to be demonstrably true.  

At the recent LA Screenwriting Expo I did a presentation of Contour where the audience generated an idea for a movie and then after 30 minutes of explaining what Contour is and the underlying theory (“Minimum theory) we took the remaining 60 minutes and beat out the whole story.  And not 15 brief broadstrokes, but 44 specific plot points that someone could actually use to write the script from FADE IN to FADE OUT.   That’s not too shabby for an hour’s work. 

So, beware of wild claims of secrets and magic formulas for success.  During the gold rush, the only people who consistently made any money were the people selling the shovels.

As the old adage goes: if something sounds too good to be true, it is.

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

In order to have a basic understanding of how these reviews work, you need to understand two concepts: the four questions and the four archetypes.

The four questions are the questions that every movie must answer effectively:

1. Who’s your main character?
2. What’s your main character trying to accomplish?
3. Who’s trying to stop your main character?
4. What happens if your main character fails?

The answers must be:

1. A sympathetic character, who is…
2. …trying to accomplish a compelling goal while being opposed by…
3. … a powerful and committed opponent, over…
4. life and death stakes.

The four archetypes are the four classic archetypes that every main character moves through in every great movie:

1. ORPHAN in Act One
2. WANDERER in the first half of Act Two
3. WARRIOR in the second half of Act Two
4. MARTYR in Act Three.

Syd Field first described the three areas of conflict your main character is dealing with, and I’ve gone back to this concept over and over again, particularly in crafting a good CENTRAL QUESTION for my stories.  (The Central Question is the question that once it’s answered definitively “yes” or “no” the movie is over.)

These three areas of conflict are:

• PROFESSIONAL — That which is evident to everyone around your main character.
• PERSONAL — That which is evident to only those closest to your main character.
• PRIVATE — That which only your main character really knows.

So, in STAR WARS the Central Question is “Will Luke save the Princess, destroy the Deathstar, and become a Jedi like his father.”  Destroying the Deathstar is his professional goal.  Saving the Princess is his personal goal.  Becoming a Jedi like his father is his private goal.

A more recent example is QUANTUM OF SOLACE.  The Central Question is “Will Bond defeat the plans of the Dominic Greene (professional), keep Camille safe as she seeks revenge (personal), and avenge the death of his girlfriend Vesper Lynd (private).”

The closer you can resolve all three of these areas of conflict to each other, the tighter and more satisfying the conclusion of your stories will be.