Thank you, Tr!ckster!

This is unusual post for me because for the most part things I write here are directly related to the craft of storytelling, but I want to thank the people at Tr!ckster publicly.

This past weekend I was lucky enough to be one of the speakers/presenters at Tr!ckster in San Diego. It was the first year for this event, which ended up being the place to be. Tr!ckster is a response to what the Comic-Con has become—in many ways, it’s just a big commercial for whatever blockbuster the entertainment industry wants to sell that year.

This is me giving my storytelling talk at Tr!ckster. I guess that I sometimes strike a Shatner pose when I speak.

photo by Julia Lundman (using my phone)

Tr!ckster is more down-to-earth with a focus on creators and, more importantly, aspiring creators. There were symposiums on the craft of creation, and I gave a talk on storytelling and story construction. It was a short talk for me, but people did seem to like and learn from it.

Please forgive me for getting excited, but this is the very first time I have seen my three books on sale together.

It was also a chance for me to meet some of you. I met some fans of the blog and my books for the first time in real life. They were all cool people. Frequent commenter Jett and I got into a very serious but all-in-good-fun debate. I also met an early supporter of the blog, Emma Coats. That was nice, and she was as cool as thought she would be.

Good guy and Animator Everett Downing.  It was nice to see him.

Me with the very friendly and talented artist Jeff Pidgeon (photo by Joon Kim)

 Some of my favorite past students showed up to hear me say things that they have heard me say a million times. Thanks for coming, guys. (Artist Ronnie del Carman was also nice enough to come hear me speak on things he’s heard me say before. A good guy, that guy.)

Separated at birth -- me and Ronnie Del Carman.

It was also a chance to meet up and toss a few drinks back with some of the dudes I know from Pixar: Ted Mathot and Scott Morse, who co-created Trickster, were gracious hosts, on top of being two of the nicest guys you’d ever want to meet.

Ted Mathot and me after a few drinks.

I know I am forgetting some of the cool people I met and talked to, but there were many. My point is I had a great time and I think most everyone else did, too. If you did not make it this year, next year try to get yourself to Tr!ckster.

By the way, for those who don’t yet know my website is now up:

http://thinkinvisibleink.com/

Again with the simplicity

-->

 

--> "Simple is good." – Jim Henson

Many years ago a buddy of mine worked in a comic book shop. One day a bunch of teenagers who were very excited about the work of a particular artist came in. They were hyped to see that his new book was out, very impressed with all of the detail in his work. Conversely, they made fun of another artist, calling his work “lame” because he did not use enough lines in his work.

The artist that they liked was a young man named Rob Liefield. The artist they hated was named Mike Mignola.

Today, Mignola, known for his spare style, is recognized as one of the top artists in the field, and as the creator of the popular Hellboy character. Liefield, whose style was kinetic and busy, is barely remembered at all.

 

-->Rob Liefield's Youngblood
 

Mike Mignola Hellboy Book Cover

But there was a time when you could not get bigger than Liefeld. He starred in a Levi’s commercial directed by Spike Lee.

The youthful and the inexperienced tend to be more impressed with work that is visible. The flashier something is, the better they think it is. They cannot conceive of another way of viewing things.

When I was a teenager, working for my mentor Bruce Walters doing motion graphics, he said something to me that put me on the path of seeing the beauty in simplicity.

Bruce was a very smart guy and I paid close attention to the things he said to me all those years ago; I still use what he taught me.

We did a lot of animated graphics for local television spots, so we dealt with a lot of logos. One day as we were shooting some animation, he said to me, You know who makes a ton of money? The guys who design those international signs that tell people—without necessarily using words—things like “slippery when wet” or “this way to the hospital” or whatever. You know the signs.

I was surprised. He said it was because it was hard to design something that was so easily understood by so many different kinds of people.

 From that moment on I started to see the beauty in simplicity. I began to notice how effective simplicity was in all kinds of design and composition. I saw how simplicity communicated ideas so clearly. Simplicity can be hard to execute—it is marksmanship. It is about hitting the target. In design, it is about eliminating everything that is not necessary. Novices always want to add and seasoned designers want to take away.

From an essay on writing by Robert Louis Stevenson

When John Williams played his simple JAWS theme for a young Steven Spielberg, the director laughed because it was so simple. He thought Williams was joking. This is now so iconic that the simple notes are synonymous with sharks. Just as Williams’ simple Raiders of the Lost Ark march is synonymous with adventure. Williams is a master of these “sound logos”—simple ideas that communicate mood so perfectly that decades later they can easily be recalled and applied properly.

One of the most difficult things that I teach is the appreciation of simplicity. It may be better to think of it as precision. Legendary illustrator Alex Toth said (and I’m paraphrasing here) to figure out what you need to draw. Draw that and only that. And draw the hell out of it. Precision.

Drawing by Alex Toth

Mignola comic book art

Just as with these other crafts, storytelling can communicate much more clearly when there is no fat on it—nothing extra. Figure out what you need to write, write that and only that. And write the hell out of it.

“It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.” -- Bruce Lee

 

 

I'm On The Air!

Hey guys, I’ve been busy working on a book so it has been a while since I’ve posted. I promise that I will post something new soon. In the meantime you can listen to an interview I recently did for a radio show.

The Karl Show Starring Jason:


http://www.karlshowstarringjason.com/2011/07/episode-5-brian-mcdonald/-mcdonald/

Hope you dig it.

The High Bar - An Interview with Me

The High Bar w/ Warren Etheredge & Brian McDonald from The High Bar on Vimeo.

Meanwhile, Back at The Ranch…

“It was so quiet in Hollywood you could hear a name drop”  -- Hitchcock quote. Paraphrase

Paul Feig, being the nice guy that he is, holds up my book The Golden Theme.

 Once, after mentioning a famous friend while telling a movie business story, I was asked by a young student how I knew so many cool people. I told her that they were just the guys I started out with and that soon enough her friends would become big-time movie business folks.

This is turning out to be true. She does hang with a talented, hardworking, and smart group and they are starting to come into their own.

You will often hear people say about success that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Well, it’s both. But when people think of the “whos” to know they think of people who have already made it and how they might get to know them. That’s not the way it usually goes down. The people you come up with, those are the “whos” you know.

Over the years, I have seen truth in the saying that water seeks its own level. I have noticed that people of comparable talent and capabilities tend to find each other. The better you strive to be at what you do, the better you will be at attracting people reaching for that same level of excellence. And you will all get better by being in such close proximity–iron sharpens iron.

This has been true in the long history of art. Artists hang out, do nothing together, and, somehow, make art.

Back in 1986 I packed up my car and moved to Los Angeles. Hollywood was waiting for my arrival–or so I imagined. My joke at the time was that I was going to get to know Spielberg so well that when asked about him I would say, “That guy gets on my nerves sometimes.” I have yet to meet the man.

When I got to Los Angeles I was lucky enough to stay with a hometown friend by the name of Todd Masters. At the time he was starting his career and was working on make-up effects for an Arnold Schwarzenegger film called Hunter–later called Predator.

Skipping some of the boring details, within a few months I was writing jokes for a professional comic friend. He was a high school friend also from my hometown. It wasn’t long before I was trying stand-up myself. One of the places I worked started learning that craft was in downtown Los Angles downstairs at a place called the Variety Arts Center in a room called the Ed Wynn Comedy Lounge.

The Ed Wynn was a showcase club, where something like 15 comics would each do a very short set. It was there that I met some really cool dudes. They invited me to “The Ranch” as it was called. The Ranch (sometimes called “The Saticoy Ranch” after the street it was on) was a smoke-filled ranch-style house in North Hollywood where a few of these comics lived. There I would meet so many of those “cool people” I am now asked about. We were all just young dudes starting out. I think I was one of the youngest. Well, there was one kid who was younger.

The Ranch was a place where dudes, mostly dudes, would hang out and make each other laugh till all hours of the night while drinking gallons of coffee. After a few years, guys started making it. Some of us were working a little bit in the biz, but mostly we were doing our stand-up (I mostly worked in a lot of creature shops back then).

The first guy in our group to cross over to the big time was a screenwriter I spent a lot of time with talking craft. His name is Jim Uhls. He sold a screenplay called Dead Reckoning that has yet to be made. He went on to write the screenplay for Fight Club.

I won’t get into the details of how everything started to happen; I will just list some of the “Rancheros” (as we were called) that you may know:

Steve Higgins is now the producer of Saturday Night Live as well as the sidekick on the Jimmy Fallon Show. His brother Dave Higgins played “the fat guy” on the show Malcolm in the Middle and was a regular on the show Ellen. Their younger brother Al Higgins became a writer on the show News Radio and a producer on Malcolm in the Middle.

Joel Madison became a writer on Roseanne, the head writer of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and creator of Malcolm and Eddie.

Pat Hazell wrote on the first season of a show called Seinfeld, along with another Ranch guy Matt Goldman.

Comedian Andy Kindler, who you may know from his David Letterman appearances or from Everybody Loves Raymond as one of Ray Ramano’s buddies, was a frequent Ranch vistor.

An actor/writer who was my manager for a while when I was a stand-up, Steve Bannos, became the math teacher Frank Kowchevski on Freaks and Geeks. Another Ranchero named David (Gruber) Allen played the hippie counselor Mr. Rosso on Freaks and Geeks, too.

The youngest and most famous of the Rancheros was Judd Apatow. Judd didn’t spend as much time at The Ranch as most of us–he was funny, but very serious about his career. I wish I had paid more attention to what he was doing, and how he was thinking. I could have learned even more than I did.

Another great Ranch guy was Paul Feig. He is one of the warmest human beings I have met. He was the one guy who everyone knew was going places. When I was learning stand-up I would watch him in awe. He was, and is, a really talented guy. He is the guy who created Freaks and Geeks and took it to Judd, who worked on it with him. Paul directs a lot of TV now: Mad Men, 30 Rock, Arrested Development, The Office and the new movie Bridesmaids.

There are people I am leaving out, but you get it–a lot of cool people sat around at The Ranch.

I spent this time dropping names to show you how all of these guys were in the same social circle. Back then, I never would have believed that most of these guys would become what they have become–but they did. Now I don’t think this is in the least unusual.

The friends you create with when you are making comic books, or short films, or writing screenplays—these are the “whos” that you know. Keep doing what you’re doing with the people you are doing it with and eventually some younger person will ask you, “How do you know so many cool people?”

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.