Cast Away: Act One Breakdown

I was once watching a film where one cop betrays another—this is the event that spurs the story into action. Afterwards we find out that these cops were best friends. I don’t recall one scene of them together before this big scene. In fact, the betrayed cop had to say out loud, “But we’re best friends.” That is very sloppy construction. The moment had no emotional impact at all.

What was missing was a first act. Act One has many functions, not the least of which is providing context that will later elicit an emotional response from the audience. 

Remember in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones looks into a pit of snakes, and how the audience responded? I saw the film when it came out and there was an audible “Uh-oh” in the theater when Indy saw those snakes. Why? Because we found out in Act One that he hates snakes. So later when the snakes showed up, the crowd had an emotional response.

Aspiring screenwriters have learned, since the release of Syd Field’s book Screenplay in 1979, that the first 25 to 30 pages comprise the first act. Knowing this has had the effect of training writers to do little more than kill time until the big event happens that gets the movie going. Or they will skip that “filler” at the beginning and cut to the chase with an action sequence.

I was even told once by a former agent not to write first acts—that they were a waste of time. But here’s the deal: writing a story that has no first act is like building a house without a foundation—it will fall apart no matter how well the rest of the house is built.

Everyone understands the importance of a first act when they are telling a joke, get to the middle, and realize that the punch line will not work because they have forgotten to give the listener vital information: “Oh, wait, I forgot to mention that the sheep is wearing a party hat!”

Although this is a clumsy way to tell a joke, you might still get a laugh if the listener has all of the information before the punch line has been reached. The joke would never work if the joke-teller got to the end, and after the unfunny punch line then explained about the missing information.

But, as I mentioned in my opening paragraph, this is another thing that I see often—information given after the point when it can’t have any emotional impact.

In the old days they really understood first acts. When I say “the old days,” I mean until the mid ’80s or so. There are really great examples in classic cinema. I’m talking about films by Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Capra, etc. Casablanca has a great first act. Recently, I blogged about the film Tootsie and its flawless first act.

Today, the first act is almost extinct, but it does show up from time to time in films made after the early ’80s. One example is the film Cast Away. I know that there are people out there who might not have responded to the film, but I am asking you to look past that to see my bigger point.

One person I know personally who did not like the film is my uncle, Dwayne. I remember the film came up because he had caught it one night on cable a few nights before and he wouldn’t stop talking about how bad it was, and how it was only about Tom Hanks stuck on an island for two hours. But how could a film about a guy stuck on an island have impacted so many other people?

So, I asked him if he had seen it from the beginning. His answer did not surprise me—he said that he’d missed the beginning. He had missed the first act.

First, the film has a great thematic opening image. Many films start with a generic image, but Cast Away starts right away with an image that matters to the story. Trust me, when people see a film or read a screenplay that knows what it is about from the very beginning, they know that they are in the hands of a pro.

The image is a vast open space. Isolation. This is a desolate landscape. This is what the film will deal with—isolation. Loneliness. Nothingness.

This same shot follows a lone FedEx truck, small in the frame, as it comes to an intersection—a crossroads. This matters. At the end of this story, Tom Hanks is at a crossroad in his life and must chose the correct path. In fact, he ends up on this very road to nail the point home.

This kind of on-the-nose precision is something amateurs run from. They would rather be clever rather than clear. Not pros—professional storytellers rejoice when they find a clear way to communicate with an audience.

When the film came out, people complained that it was a long ad for FedEx because Tom Hanks’ character works for the overnight courier service. But why did he work for an overnight courier service? Because it was very important. 

When we meet Tom Hanks’ character, Chuck, he is giving a speech about time:

“Time rules over us without mercy—not caring if we are healthy or ill, hungry or drunk, Russian, American or beings from Mars.  Time is like a fire—it can either destroy us or keep us warm. That’s why every FedEx office has a clock. Because we live or we die by the clock—we never turn our back on it. And we never ever allow ourselves the sin of losing track of time.”

Right away the film states what it is about. Chuck is a man ruled by time, but what the first act shows us is that he doesn’t make time for his life. He is always rushing. He doesn’t take the time to get the number of a doctor to help a friend’s wife with her cancer. Not because he’s a mean guy, but because he thinks he has all the time in the world.

Chuck barely has time for his long-time girlfriend, Kelly. And when he does have time with her, he is so tired from working that he falls asleep. Here he is committing the sin of “losing time.”

 At a family dinner with his girlfriend’s family we find that it is an ongoing joke that Chuck has taken his sweet time proposing to Kelly. He is losing track of time the closer he watches it. In fact, Chuck has even timed how long it took for the family to bring up the subject of marriage—14 minutes, by his watch.

Chuck is teased for wearing a pager all the time, always on call, but he also has a bad tooth he should have looked at—and never seems to get to.

This is followed very quickly with Chuck being called away from Christmas dinner to go to work. It is clear that Kelly is unhappy with this.

When Kelly drops Chuck off at the airport, because he must fly away for his job, Chuck gives Kelly a small box for Christmas—presumably an engagement ring. But Chuck stops short of proposing and tells Kelly to wait, that she can open it on New Year’s Eve. With that Chuck kisses Kelly, boards his plane, and turns his back on time.

It should be noted here that in some amazing precision of storycraft Kelly's gift to Chuck is a pocket watch.  Not just that, but on the inside of the watch is a picture of Kelly.  So Time and Kelly are linked together in a single image.

While in flight the plane hits a violent storm and crashes in the ocean. Chuck, the only survivor, finds himself alone on an island. One of the first things he does is pull out his pager. It is waterlogged and obviously broken. Now Chuck, who did not have enough time, has nothing but time. End Act One.

In the second act we see that what keeps Chuck alive is his love for Kelly—his desire to get back to her. It has become clear to Chuck how he should have spent the time he had.

The first act of Cast Away makes everything that follows matter. It creates emotion in the audience. I believe my uncle could not connect with the character of Chuck because he did not have a context to understand what he was seeing. All he could see was a man alone on an island, not someone learning a lesson.

But for most people who saw the film it did work. The film was a huge hit.

 The screenwriter, William Broyles, Jr., knew what he was writing about. He was saying that time is precious and fleeting and that we should spend it wisely. The story was telling us that we must never turn our backs on time. That we must never commit the sin of losing time.

Cast Away has a brilliant first act and studying its construction further would be time well spent. Get to it! Time’s wasting.

Movies I Like: Marty

Why haven’t I written this post before I have no idea. I have talked all around Marty without writing directly about it. Just an oversight, I guess. Sorry.

I’m not sure how many times I have mentioned the great Paddy Chayefsky in these posts, but I’m sure it’s plenty. Whatever the number it isn’t big enough. The man was The Man. He was the dramatists’ dramatist. He was the best of the best.

Paddy was one of the cluster of great writers who wrote for early television in 1950s. There were shows called Playhouse 90, The Philco Television Playhouse, and Kraft Television Theatre. These all featured plays written for television. The writers of these plays are some of my writing heroes: Rod Serling and Reginald Rose at the top of the list, along with Chayefsky, because their work was so profoundly humanistic. 

Marty was one of these television plays, but was popular enough to made into a film.

Marty is about a single man living in New York City, in a traditional Italian-American neighborhood, with his mother. Marty is told that he should be ashamed of himself for not being married. He’d like to get married, but can’t connect with women. Marty is about a man that finds out that he has worth. He’s not a handsome guy, but he is a compassionate one, and in the end that is what connects him with a woman.

It sounds so simple – even trite – but it is a masterpiece.

Chayefsky believed that television was such an intimate medium that small drama played best on it. Marty is a small drama about real people with real concerns. Marty is a person the audience can connect with and this small drama is big enough for the big screen. We are moved by the honestly of the writing. It is sometimes so painfully honest that we cringe with empathy. Our hearts go out to Marty.

There is a “rule” that screenwriters should not write scenes where people talk on the phone. I understand why the rule exists – these scenes can be boring and static. They can be a cheap way to get out expository information. But if you want to see a scene that takes all the validity out of that “rule,” watch the scene in Marty asks a woman out over the phone. It is masterful.

I directed that scene once and it was the simplest thing I ever directed – it was all on the page. All the actor had to do was read it.

Marty was cited at the time for its naturalistic sounding dialogue, but that is a relatively easy thing to master. What’s hard is getting to the emotional truth below the lines, and of course, few people understood how to structure scenes and stories as well as Chayefsky.

If you want to know more about how, and why, Paddy Chayefsky constructed stories the way he did, I will remind you, for the very last time I promise, to read his book Television Plays.  I cannot stress enough just what a valuable resource it is. Few people are as articulate about how they do what they do.

Anyway, treat yourself – see Marty.  If you are not moved, you may want to remove that chunk of coal where your heart used to be.

Movies I Like: The Shawshank Redemption

It’s a little strange to write about this film because just about everyone already knows and loves it. I guess I hope to point out some of the craftsmanship that makes it so effective.

The film was adapted for the screen and directed by Frank Darabont, and is based on the novella by Stephen King, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.

First let me say first that I have been a Frank Darabont fan for many years. I mean back before most people even knew his name. In fact, I didn’t even know his name.

Back in the ’80s my roommate was make-up artist Todd Masters and he was working on a show called Tales from the Crypt. (Side note:  I worked for Todd and my job was putting stalactites on the Crypt-keeper’s ceiling.)

Anyway, Todd would bring home the scripts for all of the shows and, wanting to be a writer and hoping to write for the show, I would read every script. Most of the time I rolled my eyes and thought, I could write this. But one day I read a script that was supposed to be for a new show called Two-Fisted Tales (it later did become an episode of Tales from the Crypt) to be made by the same producers. I was blown away. This writer was good. He was really good. I held on to that script and still have it to this day. 

A few years later I watched the Young Indiana Jones show on television every week and was mostly disappointed. But there was one writer whose shows I always liked. They didn’t feel like the other episodes.

I had forgotten this guy’s name, but was so blown away when I saw The Shawshank Redemption that I would read anything I could get my hands on about the filmmaker. It was then I realized that I had liked Darabont’s work for years.

Why do I mention this?  Because this is a writer who understands craft, and it was as clear in his early work as it is later.

So let’s look at Shawshank. The story follows a banker, Andy Dufresne, as he endures several years in prison for the murder of his wife and her lover of which he claims to be innocent. While serving his time, he befriends with an inmate by the name of Red.

One of the things that Darabont does well is balance the feminine and masculine elements of his stories. Readers of my book Invisible Ink will know that I define masculine elements as the physical things that happen in a story. Things like plot, action, violence and the other things we associate with “guy movies.” Things blowing up. Think of your typical run-of-the-mill action film.

What I call feminine elements are the elements dealing with the internal world – the emotional world. Now we are talking about things like mood or the emotional life of characters. Think of what is commonly referred to as “chick flicks.”

Most writers are good at one, either the feminine or masculine element, but neglect the other. But when these elements are unbalanced the stories can become cartoonish and feel unreal.

Jaws, for example, is about a man-eating shark terrorizing a town and the sheriff who must stop it. Nothing special really – just a monster movie.

But add in the fact that the sheriff is scared half to death to be on the water, that this is his great fear, and now you have a strong feminine element and the entire thing has weight. Now it’s not just a hit, but also a classic.

Darabont knows how to balance these elements so that a harsh prison film becomes a tender story of friendship.

I had a student who could not for the life of him tell me the armature (theme) of Shawshank. He could not see it.  My guess is that most of you could identify the theme without too much trouble, but let's look at the film's clues.

How about the film’s use of clone characters. Again, I do go more into this in my book, but the short definition is that clones are secondary characters who give the audience a yardstick by which to measure a major character.

The most famous clones in storydom are the the Three Little Pigs. We measure the success of the last pig, who built his house of bricks, against the first two pigs, who were unsuccessful with their houses of straw and sticks, respectively.

There is an old man at the prison by the name of Brooks who has spent most of his life in prison. He is what Red, another long-time inmate, refers to as “institutionalized.”

As Red says it: “These prison walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, gets so you depend on them. That's institutionalized. They send you here for life, that's exactly what they take. The part that counts anyways.”

When Brooks gets out of prison the world is too much for him; he cannot to adjust to life on the outside. The old man carves the words “Brooks was here” into the wall of his cheap hotel and he hangs himself.

Later Red gets out of prison, gets the same job that Brooks had and is in the very same cheap hotel, in the very same room. Red also has a hard time on the outside.

But what does Red do? He carves into the very same wall, right next to Brooks’ words, the words “So was Red.” And with that he leaves this room to get on with his life.

We know that Red has succeeded because, just like with the Three Little Pigs, we have poor Brooks’ failure to measure him against.

So what is the film’s armature? Well, the main character of the piece, Andy Dufresne, is able to keep his spirits up through his years of prison and he brings hope and joy to a place with little of either. He teaches the inmates to live.

At one point in the film Andy tells Red that things come down to two choices: “Either get busy living or get busy dying.”

There it is. The theme. The whole movie tells us this. Every frame. And we see that Red has learned the lesson well when he walks out of that cheap hotel. Brooks got busy dying and Red got busy living.

Wow. Such beautiful work. Such command of craft.

I think this film is one of the best films anyone has ever made. Period.


P.S.  Here's some stuff about The Golden Theme:
http://www.melindamckee.com/2011/03/build-your-entire-story-experience-around-the-golden-theme/
http://lynnwoolf.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/were-not-just-farmers-were-people-who-eat/

Things Best Left Unsaid -- Writing Subtext

I’ve been thinking about this post for a while now, because one of the most difficult things to write about is subtext. One reason for this is that there are various meanings for the term. Some people say subtext to mean the overall theme of a story. This is not what I mean.

I am talking about all the things within a scene that are not being said between characters, but are really what the scene is about. Subtext can be very powerful emotionally and will engage your audience—and it is something that is pretty much always missing from the work of beginning writers. In amateurish works, characters always say just what they mean and mostly the scenes lie flat.

Why does subtext work? Because it gives the reader/viewer something to do. They are actively putting pieces together and seeing underneath appearances. When subtext is well constructed, it doesn’t look like writing at all.

But how do you write subtext? How do you write the unspoken? There is no right answer for this, but there are a few tricks.

The most familiar form of subtext is sarcasm—people saying one thing while meaning to communicate the opposite meaning: “Nice tie.” This is probably the most basic form, and not very sophisticated, but there are others.

There is a film called Tales of Manhattan where we follow a topcoat from one owner to the next, telling a story for each owner. It is really a series of shorts, and some segments are better than others. In one of the segments, a man who is an avid hunter takes a dashing young man into his trophy room to show off his prized hunting gun.

He shows the gun and they talk about it. The hunter talks about what a good, accurate gun it is and all of the great hunting he’s done with it. The scene could be mundane and boring, but it isn’t. It’s tense. When I show this clip in my classes the room is quiet and all eyes are riveted. The scene is all subtext.

This scene works because of the set-up. It has been established earlier that the hunter’s wife is having an affair with the young man. The woman also warns the young man that her husband has been drinking, and that he’s a little crazy when he drinks.

It is after this set-up that the drunken hunter takes the young man into his trophy room of mounted animal heads and shows off his gun, talks about its accuracy and how he likes to hunt. The whole scene is a threat.

Now, I have a writer friend who says this is not subtext because since one character has a gun, the scene could only be about one guy talking about killing the other. But you could take the same dialogue and make it an unwanted sexual advance, for instance.

I use this scene in classes because it is easily understood and can make it so that people learn to recognize what subtext looks and feels like.

There is another type of subtext that is harder to spot. Writer and director Robert Benton is a master of subtext. The things he doesn’t write are beautiful. He knows what not to say better than almost anyone.

In his film Places in the Heart a woman’s husband has been shot dead. She and her sister prepare the body for the funeral. The body is spread out on the very table where the family was earlier having dinner together.

As the woman and her sister prepare the body in silence, the woman begins to talk about all her life with her husband and ends with talking about a scar on his body that she had never seen before. She says she never knew about that scar.

The subtext is that they still had more living to do. That there were still things to learn about each other. It is beautifully simple and powerful. And it is subtext.

Another kind of subtext is to have characters talk about the opposite of what is going on in the scene. It has been pointed out by others that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, two characters who are obviously about to die, spend their time talking about the future.

In Of Mice and Men, one character has a speech he repeats about what he would do if he didn’t have to take care of the other one. It’s clear from his actions that he loves his friend, but that fact that he says the opposite makes the speech sweet without become saccharine. 

There is still another kind of subtext that is just the unexpressed emotion of a scene. I was once trying to explain to a playwright that the order of scene could make all of the difference. I said you could write a scene where a man is the life of a party. He smiles and jokes with everyone and he drinks to drunkenness. The more he drinks the funnier and friendlier he gets.

In the next scene he gets a letter telling him that his beloved son has died in the war.

In this order the first scene could get boring over time because really nothing is happening. It is a static scene and would get old quickly.

The scene where he gets the letter might have emotion because there is such a shift in tone from happiness to sadness. This is the order most writers would construct. But imagine the reverse: A man gets a letter that he beloved son has died. In the next scene he gets drunk and laughs and jokes. And drinks some more.

Now the audience feels the pain he is not expressing. They know he is drinking and joking because he is sad. Now the scene can last a while because it is layered. It could be agonizing to watch and at the same time riveting. The party scene has more depth, but only the order of scenes has changed. The writing itself is the same as before.

It can be hard mastering the constructing of subtext, but if one learns how to use it you can add a depth to your stories and scenes that will give them a professional sheen.

Browsing my Bookshelves

When I was a little kid I started reading about film, filmmakers, filmmaking. The first book I remember getting from the library was a book on Walt Disney—not the company, the man. After that I mostly read film books and magazines. I still apply many of the lessons I learned in those books I read so early on, and I add to this vast book collection all the time.

A little while ago someone requested that I take a picture of my bookshelf and post it on the blog. To be honest, I’m not sure what would be gleaned from this, but I’ll give it a shot.

One thing you are sure to learn is that I have a crappy camera on my phone.

You will notice, in the picture above, one of my favorite books on the craft: Television Plays by Paddy Chayfesky. I seem to mention it every other posting. In fact, I will buy copies if I see them at bookstores and give them to friends. Right now, I think I own three copies.

You should know that many of the great television writers from the 1950s wrote books like Chayefsky’s where they printed their plays and wrote essays about the profession.

You should also read Rod Serling’s Patterns: Four Television Plays.

You will also notice books on the subject of magic. I am a mediocre magician, but I don’t study magic to be a magician, but to be a better storyteller. A magic trick has the very same structure as a good story, and so to know magic is to understand how to communicate. 

Orson Wells knew magic, and it helped him on Citizen Kane when his budget was cut and he no longer had the money to build the elaborate sets he’d envisioned. He often built partial sets that receded into shadow. He knew just how much information to give an audience so that they would imagine the rest.

The other great thing about studying magic is that the best tricks, the ones that blow people’s minds, are the simplest ones. Learning magic can reinforce the power of simplicity.

I also like to read old interviews with the old masters of film. They were really, really smart. If you read what they say and follow their advice you will see your work improve.  You’ll be amazed. The stuff I know I learned from them.

Chuck Jones is one of my all-time favorite filmmakers. Period. I have learned as much from him as any live-action director. He admits that he stole liberally from Charlie Chaplin, and so I began to study Chaplin. Trust me, if you can learn to see the sheer genius of Chaplin, it is like the clouds parting and sunbeams shining through to the sound of Gregorian chants. Chuck Jones ripped him off shamelessly.

You can read some insightful Chaplin essays the back of a book called Discoveries: Charlie Chaplin by David Robinson.

Chaplin is so smart that he has an essay in this book about how “talkies” won’t last that even in hindsight seems to makes sense. At any rate, it does talk about the strength of visual storytelling.

Also for great lessons on visual storytelling read David Mamet’s On Directing Film.

For visual storytelling I like studying great illustrators and Norman Rockwell is one of the best artists to study for storytelling. Some people object to his subject matter and so dismiss his work—big ol’ fat mistake. Few people understand how to communicate so precisely. He knew just what to include in a picture to get an idea across. Why not learn from him? Me? I’m not smart enough not to learn from the best.

I have, in my time, read a ton of books on story-craft and have learned a lot from the construction of jokes that transfers directly to building stories.

Well, those are the highlights on my bookshelf. There were some things missing, but you get the basic idea of what’s there. Not sure if it was any help to anyone, but it was easy to write. And there isn’t much I can say that about.

Movies I Like: One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

Sometimes I feel very lucky to have grown up in the ’70s wanting to be a filmmaker. It was an amazing time in film. It also set me up for quite a fall because they just don’t make as many good films as they once did. There were so many classics made then that it was normal to see not just good films, but exceptional films. One of those films was One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, released in 1975.

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is a film about a prisoner, Randle Patrick McMurphy, played by Jack Nicholson, who has been transferred to a mental hospital to be evaluated for mental illness. While there he meets his nemesis, a strict nurse named Mildred Ratched, played by Louise Fletcher, who makes his life very complicated.

Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is what I call an Angel From The Sky story.

First, let me tell you, I’m not big on the idea of genre. The way genres have been defined seems to be mostly about costumes and time periods rather than anything of substance.

A Western could be a love story, or a buddy story, or a heist story, or a father and son story; it could be a drama or a comedy, an action story or a coming of age story.  It could be anything. So how does one define a Western other than the clothes people wear?

I think this is true of all genres—they can be any kind of story.

But it can help us to organize when we put things into some kind of category. I like to find categories that help me navigate the construction of a story rather than tell me what they look like. So, here are genres that work for me. Maybe they can help some of you. Angel from the Sky is how I categorize One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.

Angel from the Sky stories take place in places of despair. They are sad places often without hope. It is into this world that the “Angel” enters. With him/her they bring hope, joy and often love. They often give people another state of mind—a new way to look at the world. When this is done, and the lesson is learned, the “Angel” goes away again. Sometimes that may even mean that they die.

These stories often have a magical or spiritual quality, and the stories have a special place in our hearts. Sometimes the characters may even be endowed with healing powers and other magical traits. Or they may have an almost supernatural ability to see hope where others see only pain.

E.T. is an angel from the sky. Elliot is missing his father and there is some sadness in his house. Elliot is also a child who does not know how to empathize with others. E.T. comes in, brings joy and love, and teaches Elliot to feel for others. When the lesson is learned, he leaves. E.T. heals Elliot’s cut finger, has the ability to fly and levitate objects, and has a magical link with Eliot that is so strong that when E.T. gets drunk so does Elliot. It is through of this connection that E.T. is able infect Elliot with empathy.

In the Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne comes in to a prison—a place without joy, beauty, or hope—and teaches others to find these things. Andy does things like play opera over the prison loudspeakers and brings beauty to a place with little of it. 

And he does something to allow him to give get a couple of beers for his fellow inmates so that for, if only for a few minutes, they feel free. He gives hope to the hopeless and then he leaves. But the people left behind are changed.

The classic Cool Hand Luke is a story that also takes place in a prison setting—but more of a prison camp. Luke is a character who will not let himself be broken by the harsh treatment of the prison overseer and guards. Luke keeps running away. He is captured and punished harshly each time, but he refuses to be broken and becomes a hero to the other inmates. These “angels” are often not treated well by the power structure or by the society at large.

The Green Mile is another story with a character who brings love to a prison’s death row—a place of ultimate despair.

These kinds of stories, when told well, have enormous power. They can move people deeply.

And I mean no disrespect when I say this, but the story of Jesus is probably the most famous of these types of stories. Whatever you personally believe, you cannot deny that the story has moved many people deeply. I do not mean to say that Cuckoo’s Nest’s McMurphy is a Jesus figure, only that the story pattern is the same.

McMurphy enters the world of the mental hospital—a place without joy—and brings joy and teaches others to find it. He frees them from their mental prisons. He teaches them how to live.

The film is moving, hopeful and full of love all without being overly sentimental or sappy. Sit down and watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It’s so good it’s crazy.

Movies I Like: The Odd Couple

“Don't be too clever for an audience. Make it obvious. Make the subtleties obvious also.”—Billy Wilder
 

The Odd Couple is a testament to the power of simplicity. It was written by one of my writing heroes, Neil Simon. He wrote the screenplay based on his hit play. The Odd Couple was so popular that it was turned into two television shows and a Saturday morning cartoon. I’m sure I’m leaving other adaptations out.

I was once talking to a playwright who informed me that, in the world of theater, Mr. Simon is not respected. I was shocked, but I should not have been surprised because he had committed two of the cardinal sins of art—he communicates clearly and is extremely popular. And when I say popular I mean to say that he is the most successful playwright in the history of Broadway.

I have never understood the concept that popularity makes one a hack while obscurity is proof of one’s genius. But I admit I am a dinosaur who admires those communicate clearly and can engage an audience.

Neil Simon’s real mistake is that he makes what he does look easy. It ain’t easy. In my opinion, the man is a craftsman and a genius. 

The Odd Couple takes two characters who are opposites and throws them together in comedic conflict. One character, Oscar Madison, played perfectly by Walter Mathau, is messy, while his roommate Felix Unger, played brilliantly by Jack Lemmon, is fastidious. So basic a concept that it seems as if it must have been penned by the ancient Roman playwright Plautus. But it wasn’t—it was Neil Simon.  In your face, Plautus!

This very basic concept yields great things.

Often I see a more recent comedy and shrug. People will say to me, “Didn’t you think it was funny?” Sometimes these things are funny, but they have nothing else—funny is all that they are. The Odd Couple has a story and characters who change.

And not the tacked-on character change that I see so often nowadays, where in the last five minutes of the film, they decide the hero better learn a lesson. Suddenly the film comes to a conclusion that the story has not been about the entire time. Not The Odd Couple; it knows what it is about throughout the whole story. It’s an old-fashioned technique called understanding your craft.

In the story both characters are divorced—or close to it. Oscar is divorced and Felix has been kicked out of his house because his wife wants a divorce, so Oscar lets his buddy move in with him.

Sidebar: Simon does something very smart here. How do you get two people who are so different from one another to live together, even when there is a lot of conflict between them? The way Neil Simon solves this problem is to make Felix so upset about his separation from his wife that he is suicidal. So now no matter how bad things get between them, Oscar cares enough about his friend to let him stay. Very smart—and the kind of care I seldom see anymore.

Here is the genius of The Odd Couple. Most people describe the two characters as one being messy and the other being clean, but that isn’t exactly right. This relationship is a replay of their marriages and how they fell apart—one of these characters is a husband and the other is a wife. What I mean is that they fill those traditional roles, so most of their arguments are typical, if not stereotypical, man vs. woman arguments. And it is through this replay of their failed marriages that each character learns to change and grow.

There are many ways in which the film demonstrates that this relationship is a marriage, but the most obvious is that when Oscar invites Felix to stay with him and they are standing outside of Oscar’s apartment door. Felix is worried that he will be too much trouble and to convince him that it’s no trouble Oscar says, “I’m proposing—what do you want a ring?”

It’s right there, out in the open for everyone to see, and yet few people do. They still think of the characters as the “messy one” and the “clean one.” The hardest thing for me to convince students of is this: that being obvious works. If you are telling your story well and people care about the characters, they will never see the tricks you are using to pull them in. They will simply be pulled in.

Younger readers may have issues with the older photographic and acting styles, but if you can get past those things you will learn lessons about storytelling that are timeless.

Yes, the movie is based on a play, and sometimes has the feeling of a play put on film, but this too can be overlooked because this is the work of amazing storytellers Jack Lemmon, Walter Mathau, director Gene Saks, and the great Neil Simon being funny and telling a worthwhile story at the same time. This is a rare thing in modern comedies. So rare that many people don’t even believe it can be done. Well, it can be done and it looks easy, but don’t be fooled—you are seeing the work of a master.

In fact, why are you still reading this—why aren’t you watching The Odd Couple?

Uh…Did I mention that this was hard?

"A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than other people."
— Thomas Mann

Here’s how an old cathode-ray tube television works: The TV picks up both the audio and video signals separately and sends each to their respective circuits. Electrons are fired in a beam down the cathode-ray tube in a side-to-side motion and creates a television image one line at a time like an electronic paintbrush.

Now that you know how a television works go out and build one. How hard can it be—I just told you how it works.

 

This sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Why? Because all you really got from the above description is an explanation of how a television works, but not how to build one. To build one you would have to know a lot more than most of us knows about science and electronics. It takes years of study to acquire that kind of knowledge.

I bring this up because screenwriting and filmmaking is something that people believe they understand after reading a book or two, just because they have been introduced to a few concepts. But there is always so much they don’t know.

I was reading an old interview with Larry Gelbart and he was talking about “story gurus” and how now that we have so many story gurus we have more terrible stories. He wondered why this was.

After more than a decade of teaching I think I may have an answer to this question. Before there were so many books on screenwriting one had to study films and storytelling. People had to find all of the “rules” for themselves. There was no one to tell them if they were right or wrong. They only had themselves. This made people work harder to understand the concepts.

I realize now when I (and others) take things it has taken a lifetime to learn and distill them into easily understood language it makes these things sound easy to do. They aren’t. This is hard, hard work. And all I, or any teacher, can do is point people in the right direction.

I used to think that I was failing because it wasn’t getting any easier for me to write screenplays. I see this with students now. They struggle and think that they shouldn’t be. Wrong. If you are struggling that means you are trying to get it right. Writing comes very easily to people who are bad at it.

But I see my students desperately seeking the one thing that makes this entire process easy—the magic bullet or the holy grail. Or, even worse, thinking that they have already found the thing that makes the process easy.

Years ago I read an interview with Paddy Chayfefsky where he was saying that the construction of drama was always hard for him. This was music to my ears. If writing was hard for him, and he was at the top of the field ,who was I to think it should be easy?

So what the story gurus (and whatever it is I am) are trying to do is take something that is very difficult and make the concept easy to grasp, but not to do.

I once heard a physicist talk about the beauty of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity: E=MC².  What he was impressed with was that is was simple equation that described so much. This is what I, and others, are trying to do when we simplify and idea. We are not saying that the concept is not complex; we are just trying to provide an simple way to think of a complex idea. Don’t confuse simple with simplistic. It is a common amateur mistake.

Put simply—writing is hard work no matter how easy I, or anyone else, makes it sound.

Observing Drama in its Natural Habitat -- A Raccoon Adventure

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions. --Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci was 500 years ahead of his time. Think about that for a second. Five hundred years. He invented the diving suit, the armored tank, the helicopter, the parachute, the hang glider and even scissors, to name just a few accomplishments.

I once watched a documentary about Leonardo that quoted him as saying that all of his ideas came from nature, which reminded me that Aristotle famously said that drama was an imitation of life.

These two titans of thought are worth listening to--we need to be looking at nature because nature has all of the secrets.

Everything one wants to learn about telling stories can be observed by studying them in nature. I call this observing stories in their natural habitat. Life is the natural habitat of stories. We forget this all the time. We are surrounded by stories, and the elements that make them up, daily. All of the principles and rules are there to be seen by anyone willing to look.

The master of suspense in film, Alfred Hitchcock, said that he learned about suspense when he was a boy in school in England. At his school, when you got in trouble you would have to go see the headmaster of the school--who had a paddle for such occasions. At that meeting, the severity of the crime was discussed and it was determined just how many swats were to be given as punishment. But they were not given to the child at that time. No. The number was written in a book next to the child’s name. The child would then have to return at the end of the day for his punishment.

Hitchcock said that all one could think about for the rest of the day was those oncoming swats. He said that’s where he learned about suspense.

He always said that one doesn’t create suspense by keeping information from an audience, but by giving them information.

This wasn’t something he learned in a book. He observed it in nature. In life. And he used that lesson to build a long career of turning out film classics.

The basic elements one needs to create compelling dramatic (or comedic) conflict are these: Someone wants something desperately and there is an obstacle to that goal.  

This is not a rule made up by someone--this is what is compelling to us in life. It is life at its most basic. Life is a series of obstacles that we must overcome in order to survive.

For example, last summer my girlfriend and I went to the zoo. While there we found ourselves at the bald eagle enclosure. It was outside, very high, with a net overhead and all around to keep the birds in.

There is something compelling about seeing a bald eagle in real life--they are near-mythic creatures. They had everyone’s attention as they sat high overhead on top of a pole, looking powerful and majestic. 



That is, until we all noticed that a wild raccoon had pried an opening at the bottom of the fence and made his way into the enclosure. There was a small babbling stream running through the eagle habitat and, on the ground, suspended over this stream was a log. Underneath this log were suspended several fish. They had been hung there by the keepers for the eagle’s supper. But the raccoon had other plans. Here right in front of us was an unfolding drama. Drama in its natural habitat. The crowd was mesmerized. All eyes were riveted.

The raccoon made his way to the log. It was clear he wanted the fish. The first element of dramatic conflict: Someone wants something desperately.

It was also clear that this raccoon didn’t want to get wet. So he would reach for the fish, almost fall into the stream, catch himself, rethink his strategy and try another angle. With each slip the crowd laughed and gasped. The second element of drama--not wanting to get wet--was the obstacle to the goal of getting food.

And another obstacle was also present: eagles overheard. Would they swoop down to protect their food?

This was bona fide dramatic conflict and the crowd knew it. People held their collective breath as this drama unfolded. Will this raccoon succeed in getting his meal, we wondered. We were on pins and needles each time the raccoon reached for his prize. He would stretch out his little hand and arm as far as he could, almost touch the fish and slip. Each time almost falling into the stream. We gasped each time. Then all eyes would move to the eagles to see what they were going to do. They remained still. They hadn’t noticed the little thief.

And true to the “rules” of drama the raccoon had become the main character--the protagonist--while the eagles had become the antagonists. Why? Because we all identified with the “person” with the strong goal. We all wanted to know if he would succeed.

Eventually the raccoon found an angle on the problem that allowed him to succeed. He grabbed a fish, but not without almost falling into the water, and sneaked back under the fence with his well-deserved meal without being detected by the eagles.

Everyone, kids and adults alike, cheered at his victory like he was Luke Skywalker blowing up the Deathstar. This was a drama as old as life itself and still it entertained. It was, in fact, riveting. Not one person turned away from this scene. No one cared that this was an old story--maybe the oldest. In fact, its strength came from being so primal--the struggles to get food, the struggle to live another day. This is at the core of drama, at its nucleus.





I have often been accused of being too rigid with my “rules” for drama. But they aren’t my rules; they’re nature’s. It is when we start to separate these rules from the way life actually works that we run into trouble. It is when we break these rules that we risk losing our audience.

I’m guessing that few the people at the zoo that day were students of drama, but they all knew it when they saw it. Ironically, this was not a natural habitat for the animals, but it was for drama.

For those of us who create stories, these lessons are all around us. We are in school 24 hours a day. At least we can be if, like Da Vinci, we pay attention.