Movies I Like: The Wizard of Oz (Doing what the story needs)

 “Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works." -- Steve Jobs

As a teacher and consultant, one of the things I see people struggle with the most is the concept that they should be the servant of their story rather than the master. That means that as a storyteller you make decisions based on the needs of the story rather than personal preferences.

Most storytellers have scenes, characters, settings, shots, or moods they want to put into their story. These are the things they like and so they figure that all of these things put together will make a good story. Most of the time, a good story is not the outcome of this process.

No method is foolproof, and any technique can yield a substandard product. I liken it to a recipe. Two people working from the exactly same recipe may have differing results. One dish may be delicious and the other less so. Some people can cook and some can’t. But surrendering to the dictates of one’s story is a recipe that works more often than not.

It may or may not still be true, but at one time The Wizard of Oz was the most seen film on earth. It is fair to say that by most standards this film has worked for the vast majority or audiences since its release in 1939 over seventy years ago. It is also an excellent example of the creators of this film giving over to its needs rather than imposing their will upon it.

The writing is impeccable. The credited screenwriters, Florence Ryerson, Edgar Allan Woolf, and Noel Langley, never lost sight of the film’s main point – that we may already have what we are looking for. You see this in Dorothy herself, who in the opening of the film dreams that there must be a better place, only to find that when she is away from home it had everything she was longing for. She wants nothing more than to get home.

The supporting characters of the Scarecrow, Lion, and Tin Man also find that they have all along had the very things they had been looking – a brain, courage, and a heart, respectively.

I talk more about this in my first book Invisible Ink, if you’d like to read more about the film’s story construction. But what makes the film such an achievement is that there were many more writers than credited and several directors, yet they all seemed to be servants of the story.

I’d like to talk about some of the other creators of this film and how they let the film itself dictate their creative decisions.

In the Frank L. Baum book The Wizard of Oz, he describes Dorothy’s world of Kansas as gray and drab. According to the book America’s Songs, by Phillip Furia and Michael Lasser, when E.Y “Yip” Harberg was trying to come up with the song for Dorothy to sing in the first act he thought of Baum’s description of the grayness of Kansas and decided that the only color she would see would be the rainbow – and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” was born.

Understand that Harberg did not start with the idea that he wanted a song about a rainbow. No, he looked at the story itself to find the song that the film needed rather than some song he wanted to write for some ego-based reason. He was the story’s servant rather than its master.

What’s even better is that the director was inspired by the song to shoot the Kansas scenes in black-and-white and the Oz scenes in color. Again he was only acting as a servant of the story. He did not say to himself, “I always wanted to shoot a part of a film in black-and-white and some in color.” No, he only tried his best to serve the needs of the piece.

These days when I read interviews with directors they talk a lot about what they wanted to see, or show, and very little about the dictates of the films themselves. They seldom surrender to the film or the story being told. They’d rather have unnecessary camera moves, or other effects, that they believe are eye-catching or cool.


Chaos Cinema Part 1 from Matthias Stork on Vimeo.

Then there was the matter of Dorothy’s hair. The film’s first director Richard Thorpe had made many missteps in making the film and was fired off the film and was replaced by George Cukor, who did not like what he saw of Thorpe’s footage. For one thing, Thorpe made actress Judy Garland look too sexy and old for the part. With inappropriate make-up and a curly blonde wig, she did not bring to mind an innocent farm girl from the early 1900s.

Cukor, being a servant of the story, took off half of Garland’s make-up and had her curly blonde wig removed in favor of dark hair and braids. He wanted to make sure she looked the part of a Kansas farm girl.

Cukor soon left the film to work on Gone with the Wind and was replaced by Victor Fleming. But did Fleming feel he had to change Garland’s look so that he could put his mark on the film? No, he left it because it worked. This was not about the egos or whims of Cukor or Fleming or the other creators on the team – it was about the story. They asked themselves, “What does the story need?” That was the recipe they followed to make a bona fide film classic.

Next time you are working on a story ask yourself what the story needs. Forget the cool scene you want to see. Forget the funny line you had in mind. Forget the quirky character your want to write. Check your ego at the door and ask yourself what the story needs you to do. Be the servant not the master. Surrender to the needs of your story, and in seventy years maybe someone may still be writing about your story. Better yet, maybe audiences will still be enjoying the story itself.

Tell 'em What You're Gonna Tell 'em

A few days ago I sent out a link to friends and students to a story about a studythat said readers found stories more enjoyable if they knew the ending first.  This seemed obvious to me, but I was informed by a few people that this finding was counter-intuitive.

For me this study was nothing master storytellers haven’t known for millennia.  The first rule of story construction is “Tell ‘em what you are going to tell ’em.”

To explain to my friends and students why this finding was no surprise to me I sent them the following response. They thought it would make a good post, and so here you are:

A friend once asked me to read a novel he was writing, and I tried, but could not get through it. I told him that it bored me and I couldn't finish because I didn't know why I was reading it—he needed to tell people why right away. 

He didn't know what I meant, so I asked him if I ever told him about the time I almost got shot. He said that I hadn't, and he leaned in to hear the story. Then I told him that it had never happened, but it was clear he wanted to hear that story.

Starting with the ending is often how stories are told in the natural world of conversation because it engages people—it hooks them.

“I was fired today.”

“My wife’s been cheating on me.”

“My house was robbed.”

Those are the endings of the stories. Then the teller goes back in the timeline to flesh out the details.

I remember bad reviews of TITANIC (a mediocre film in my opinion, but with some very strong story elements) where reviewers panned the film because they couldn’t understand why people would sit through a story where they know the ending—the ship is going to sink.

But that knowledge is the engine that drives the story. People sat through the film because they knew the boat was going to sink. And they knew not just because of the history, but because Cameron put that information right up front.

In SUNSET BOULEVARD Billy Wilder starts the story with the body of William Holden floating face down in a pool and the rest of the film is his voice-over telling the story of how he got there. But we know right off he ends up dead, so we watch to find out how.

Wilder did basically the same thing earlier in DOUBLE INDEMNITY where you see that the character Walter Neff is hurt—shot. And he then tells the story of how he came to get shot into a tape recorder because he wants to get the story out before he dies.

Old stories use this structure: This is the story of how the brave knight defeated the dragon.

Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories: How the Camel Got His Hump.

Sometimes the serial nature of story implies the ending. We know that Batman will defeat The Joker. And that Superman will win against Lex Luthor and that Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple will solve the mystery: Yet this does not stop us from enjoying the journey.

The classic long-running television detective show COLUMBO is often called a mystery show, but it was not a mystery at all. Each show started with the murderer committing the crime. The audience saw every aspect of how and why the crime was committed before the detective was ever introduced.

Of course the viewers knew that Lt. Colombo would solve the crime, but they did not know how. The fun was in seeing just how the detective solved the murder—or how he trapped the killer into admitting their crime. It was engaging and suspenseful. So much so that the show “ran,” in one form or another, from 1971—2003.

Hitchcock said that he never created suspense by keeping information from people, but by giving it to them.

Because, I believe, we are listening to stories for survival information we are want to know just how William Holden died so that we can avoid it. My friend with the novel wanted to know just how I got away without being shot.

Since human conversation is the parent form of all storytelling, it contains the seeds of drama and literature. If you listen to stories in “the wild” when people are talking and may be unaware that they are even telling stories, they will often start with the ending.

Imagine someone from a non-profit speaking to an audience of potential donors. She shows a slide of a distinguished businessman on a suit in a fancy office and says that this man was once homeless. People will listen.

But what if she started with a slide of the man while he was homeless? The lead-up to the ending it would be far less interesting. It may be a surprise ending, but it's a far less interesting story.

Knowing the ending does not answer all the questions—it poses more questions. Plus people understand why they are they are listening, or reading, or watching.

Embracing Cliché (by not being cliché)

"There is nothing new in art except talent." – Anton Chekhov


When teaching story structure, one of the biggest objections I have run into over the years is that “life’s not like that.” You can read my answer to that on my old Sherman Alexie post.

Another objection is that utilizing structure creates stilted work. Yes, it can, if one has only a superficial understanding of structure and has yet to master it. But that’s true of learning any new skill.

Still another objection is the beginner’s idea that the practice of story structure leads automatically to cliché. Legendary playwright Anton Chekhov said that a writer can’t introduce a gun in the first without using it by the third act. This is the most basic rule of story structure. Hollywood legend Billy Wilder said, “If there is a problem with your third act, it is really a problem with your first act.”

This is a variation of what Chekhov said. I am not smarter than Chekhov and Wilder, so I listen to them and do what they say and more times than not it works out.



But people who know this rule see a gun introduced early in a story and roll their eyes because they know it will be used later: “Of course the gun was used at the end. That’s so cliché, so predictable,” they say.

So these writers who want to avoid cliché often opt for randomness, because randomness is not predictable. But after teaching hundreds of students over the years I have noticed something about my students who desperately want to be different – they are all “different” in exactly the same way. They create, ironically, the same clichés. In their stories, the guy will not get the girl. In their stories, characters are quirky. In their stories, the main character dies at the end. Their stories are dark – no happy endings for them. Their stories present random scenes that go nowhere and are awkward because, “That’s the way life is.” These are the clichés of the avant-garde, the clichés of those who wish to be simply “different.”

These writers never seem to ask themselves why the more mainstream clichés exist – they chalk it all up to lazy writing or rose-colored glasses. Sometimes it is. They are not completely wrong about that. But it is no less lazy than a series of random events and dark, quirky characters that do not serve a story function. (Making the writer feel “original” is not a real story function.)

Hitchcock talks about want to avoid a cliché in his classic film North by Northwest. In the story, the main character, played by Cary Grant, is being pursued by the bad guys who are trying to kill him. In one scene, the bad guys try to kill Cary Grant in an open field using a crop-dusting airplane.

Peter Bogdanovich asked Hitchcock about this in a 1963 interview:

How did you get the idea for the plane sequence?

This comes under the heading of avoiding the clichés. The cliché of that kind of scene is in The Third Man. Under a street lamp, in a medieval setting, black cat slithers by, somebody opens a blind and looks out, eerie music. Now, what is the antithesis of this? Nothing! No music, bright sunshine, and nothing. Now put a man in a business suit in this setting.

What’s funny to me is that Hitchcock both used the cliché and avoided it. He knew he needed a scene where the character was isolated and alone, where the bad guys try to bump him off. He did not choose not to have the scene, but rather to avoid the cliché trappings of the scene. This is what made the scene an original and a classic.  


An old song lyric goes, “It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it.” Craft is about how well you execute a concept. 


If you want to avoid a cliché first ask honestly why the cliché exists – there may be a good story reason to have it. But then what you do is find a way to get away from the trappings of the cliché.

One way to do that is to choose opposites. This is an old acting trick. They say that when playing a miser stress his generosity. Good actors will often play opposites because it takes their performances away from the cliché. The actor might smile and speak sweetly when the character is seething with anger, for instance. Playing opposites gives characters depth and avoids the cliché. One can always play against a cliché while still understanding its usefulness in telling a particular story. This way one gets the best of both worlds. 


At the very end of his classic film The Apartment, Billy Wilder had guy get the girl and proclaim his love for her. This is a cliché if ever there was one. How did Wilder both use the cliché and avoid it, too?


In the scene the man and women are playing cards together when the man proclaims his love. Does the woman say that she loves him too, throw her arms around him, kiss him and say that she loves him too? No, she does not.


What she does is continue to play cards. The man bears his soul and says again how he feels. Still interested in her cards the woman smiles and says to the guy, “Shut up and deal.” And we know she has feelings for him, too.

Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine

in The Apartment.

This is a film classic by one of the best filmmakers in history. He did not run away from the cliché, but he knew just how to soften it, take the gloss of sentiment off it.


Another way to use the cliché while avoiding its trappings is to tell the truth. If the story demands that you have a type of scene you have seen a million times before then ask yourself what might really happen in that situation. Don’t copy what you have seen in the movies, but be as honest to real life as possible. How would a person really act if they were being shot at? How would someone behave if they were trapped somewhere with a bloodthirsty monster? 

Jodie Foster in the basement with the killer as he views her through  night-vision goggles in The Silence of the Lambs.

I remember reading an interview with Ted Tally, screenwriter of The Silence of the Lambs, where he talked about needing get the heroine in the basement with the killer. At first he wanted to avoid the cliché, but he realized that he could not escape the story’s demands. So his job was to find a convincing story reason that compelled the woman to go into the dark basement alone with the killer.

When you are constructing a story, and you introduce a gun in Act One that must be used by Act Three, your job is not to use the gun, but to surprise the audience by how the gun comes back. Maybe it is used by a character that we least suspect would use it. Or you could construct the story so well that the audience forgets all about the gun until it returns.


My point is you don’t avoid the clichés by not using them, but knowing why you might need them to help tell your story and how you might dress them up in new clothing.

My Book FREEMAN Is Out!

  Hey guys, my new book FREEMAN is actually out now.  We had a pre-release last month at TR!CSTER, but now it is available to anyone on Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com. 

FREEMAN, an original screenplay, is a western about Thomas Freeman a former slave, living out West with his wife and child, building a new life. Accused of stealing, he is forced to become a fugitive. To evade the posse on his trail, he finds himself using the same tricks he used as a runaway slave. Problem is, Freeman's also being hunted by an expert tracker by the name of Cage. Cage's former profession? Slave-catcher. And he knows all the tricks.          
 

The book also includes my notes on how the story was constructed.  As often as possible I like to show you all how the elements of story I write about can be put to practical use.

In my first book INVISIBLE INK I use the script for my short film WHITE FACE to show how the principles of Invisible Ink were applied. And on this blog I often use the work of others as examples. But with FREEMAN you can see how these principles can help in the construction of an entire feature film.

In this book I show how theme/armature can be applied to every aspect of one’s decision-making when writing a story – how one can use armature as a compass that points true north. I hope that I show how these ideas of structure can be used to create an interesting, exciting, emotional and meaningful story. That was the idea. So far people tell me that the book does just that.

Hope some of you find it helpful as well.

-- Brian  

Movies I Like (Redux): Planet of the Apes

"Overall theme leads to characters then on to plot"
-- Rod Serling


This post is a kind of “re-run” of a previous post, but I thought that with the new Planet of the Apes film about to open, it was worth posting again. The original post was about the erroneous, in my opinion, comparison of M. Night Shyamalan to Rod Serling, I have altered this version just a bit to speak only of the original Planet of the Apes.

It would take only a casual glance at my writings to deduce that I’m a huge Rod Serling fan. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if people are tired of reading about it.  


When I was a very young boy (this would have been 1969 or ‘70), I remember my father speaking with wonder and excitement about a film he’d seen called Planet of the Apes. He spoke with such joy it is possible that my love of film started at that moment.

My Dog Trixie and I in 1970

When I saw the film I was just as impressed as my father had been. It wasn’t until years later that I would know that the film was co-written by Rod Serling—or even who Rod Serling was.


Serling was the creator of an early television classic called The Twilight Zone, a show known for strange happenings and twist endings. But for me what shines through his work is his love of humanity coupled with his profound disappointment that we can be a cruel, self-destructive and greedy species. 

This can be seen even in his work which precedes The Twilight Zone, when he was writing for the live television dramas of the early 1950s. His work spills over with humanity. But for better or worse, because of The Twilight Zone, he has become known as the twist-ending guy.

People who are not practitioners of something are often impressed with the obvious. People who don’t act, for instance, think that crying on demand is good acting. Or that being able to do accents or memorize lines is good acting. Trained actors know different. A lot of work that people don’t notice as easily goes into great acting.

In writing, the twist ending is one of the obvious things that people are very impressed with. But what is often overlooked is that Serling’s endings were linked to the story’s theme—the reason to tell the story.

Serling winning Emmy number four.

Back to his screenplay for the original Planet of the Apes, which is very much like a feature-length Twilight Zone. (By the way, I used to tell people that Planet of the Apes was just a long Twilight Zone, that it had all the same structure, but people said that I was crazy. Then some guy cut a short version of the film and made it into a Twilight Zone and people were surprised how well it worked.)

http://theforbidden-zone.com/media/tzone.shtml

Okay, back to the monkey movie. Planet of the Apes was a film where the twist blew people away.

In the opening of the film an astronaut on a starship tapes a log. In it he talks about how long he’s been away from Earth and how even more time would have passed on Earth because he and his fellow astronaut have been traveling at light speed. Then he says:

“I wonder if Man, that marvel of the universe, that glorious paradox who has sent me to the unknown...still makes war against his brother, and lets his neighbor's children starve.”

This is the theme that the entire film explores—are human beings essentially war-like, self-destructive creatures? The story never loses track of this.

So, Taylor, the astronaut, and his fellow travelers crash land on an unknown planet. At one point, as they walk through a desert looking for food and such, they have this exchange:

LANDON (heatedly): You thought life on Earth was meaningless. You despised people. So what did you do? You ran away.

TAYLOR: No, not quite, Landon. I'm a bit of a seeker myself. But my dreams are a lot emptier than yours. (pause) I can't get rid of the idea that somewhere in the Universe there must be a creature superior to man.

There it is again. Human beings are not so great.

Later, intelligent apes with the power of speech capture Taylor. On this planet, human beings are primitive brutes that cannot speak (Taylor was injured during his capture and cannot talk). One of the apes, Dr. Zaius, talks to another in front of Taylor’s cage:

ZAIUS: Men are a nuisance. They outgrow their own food supply in the forest and migrate to our green belts and ravage our crops. The sooner they're exterminated, the better.

Here it is again. Humans are self-destructive. But this time out of the mouth of someone other than Taylor. Now Taylor finds himself trying to argue on the side of humanity.

This point of view is consistently stated throughout the film.

At the end of the film, Taylor escapes the apes and this strange planet only to discover the Statue of Liberty buried in the sand. He has been on Earth the entire time. Humans have destroyed the Earth. This “twist” is right in line with what the film has been saying the whole time. We brought about our own destruction by way of a nuclear war.




If the three acts can be defined as Proposal, Argument, and Conclusion, then we can look at the tape log at the beginning of the film as a proposal. And the second act as the argument when the opening statement or proposal debated. So the conclusion of the film is proof positive of what the film has been saying all along.

This is not just a trick—it is storycraft.


Serling’s stories are timeless and they matter. In the ‘60s, when he wrote the film, the cold war was raging and people felt like any minute the world might end by our own hand.

Today, although it is still a possibility, we are slightly less worried about the nuclear threat and more an environmental one. But it doesn’t matter what the method of possible destruction is, only that we may be the ones ultimately responsible.

 Great stories are never just timely, they are timeless.


Rod Serling was so much more than a writer of twist endings. He was an artist and a craftsman. His writing was so good that it still inspires filmmakers today. I wonder if this new film Rise of the Planet of the Apes will employ as much storycraft. Will there be a strong underlying theme that can be seen, and felt, throughout...or will it be an excuse to show cool-looking CGI apes?

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.