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.

Conflict Resolution

Most writing teachers will tell you that stories and their scenes need to contain conflict. Most people have heard that an understand it. The problem is how they understand it. To most novice writers it means an argument. So I read scripts all the time with people fighting, but with no underlying conflict.

Conflict comes in a few forms. There is a kind of “super-conflict” which is related to the super objective—to borrow from Constantin Stanislavski.

Super objective, meaning that the story’s protagonist has a goal or objective that she wants and is after the entire time. This is what moves the story forward. The “super-conflict” is the big obstacle that keeps her from that goal. So this is one kind of conflict.

But as the story progresses, related objectives arise, as do their obstacles. For instance, the super objective may be to steal a billion dollars and run off to Acapulco. But along the way, the protagonist may need to get the combination to a vault or acquire a key from a guard. Or find a way into the bank after closing. These obstacles are conflicts, but they do not necessarily require that two or more characters have a screaming match.

In fact, our protagonist may smile and flirt with the bank guard to gain his trust and get close to the key she needs. There would be conflict in such a scene because there is a goal and obstacle.

There is internal conflict that can work very well. This kind of scene requires very little of a writer.

In the movie Fatal Attraction, Michael Douglas plays a man who has had an adulterous affair, but begins to regret the consequences. So the storytellers put Michael’s character in happy family scenes. While he is out for a night of bowling with his family, they are having fun and he is lost in thought and regret, but tries to put on a happy face. The conflict is internal. You can get a lot of mileage out of this kind of conflict.

Internal conflict is the most powerful form. Hamlet’s To-be-or-not-to-be soliloquy is testament to the power of a character in conflict with himself.

If you have a character who is a recovering alcoholic and has decided not to drink, find a reason to get her in a bar with people laughing, drinking and having a good time. Boom. Conflict. Internal conflict. After that you can write a pretty straightforward scene.

There is a great scene in Disney’s The Jungle Book where Baloo has to break it to the boy Mowgli that he needs to go back to the “Man-Village” to be safe from the bloodthirsty tiger Shere Khan.

This is a great scene because there is Baloo’s internal conflict, but the two characters also have different objectives. In the scene, the boy wants to play and Baloo has something serious to say. These are characters at cross-purposes and that is a perfect ingredient for dramatic or comedic conflict.

This is conflict, but not arguing. You could, for instance, have one character embarrassed by the behavior of a friend. But no one needs to argue. Not necessarily.

Another reason to use internal conflict is that a character may be uncomfortable in his or her skin—they could embarrass themselves. You could have a flabby guy at his first day at the gym surrounded by muscular men with perfect physiques and—to top it off—fill the place with beautiful women.

Or you could go the other way and put an overweight woman in a room full of wafer-thin super models and handsome eligible men.

Same thing. Put a poor person in a swanky country club. You get the idea.

There is also practical conflict, by which I mean physical barriers that must be overcome. The hero must defuse a bomb is a practical conflict. But if you throw in that this is his first day on the job and he’s nervous, you now have internal conflict, too. 

Sometimes conflict is in the form of an argument, but often it can take other more interesting and nuanced forms. If you apply these forms your stories will take on added dimension.

It’s true—don’t argue with me.

Getting past our issues to get to the craft

Dooley Wilson and Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. 

Sometimes I will tell a student that they should watch a particular film to help them understand a particular concept better or just to see a concept executed perfectly. I was once, but am no longer, surprised at the response that often comes back at me: “No, I won’t see that film because I don’t like fill-in the-blank-actor.” Or they will say have a particular political philosophy that stops them from seeing the film. I have a conservative friend who would not see the animated film The Iron Giant because he had heard from his family that it was “anti-gun.”

I once had a student who refused to get the point of why I was showing her a clip from the film Kramer vs. Kramer because she thought the film was sexist.

I’m not saying that you should not be offended at the things you feel are wrong, just that these personal things often get in the way of people being able to see craft clearly.

Casablanca is, in my opinion, one of the best films ever made. It is amazingly well constructed, acted, photographed and directed. I have seen it more times than I can count and still think it is a brilliant piece of cinema. It also has clear evidence of racism.

I understand that this is a sensitive subject for some and any charge of racism is a reason for them to turn off and stop listening, but please stick with me here. There are many who will see this post as “preachy.” I have found that for some even the acknowledgment of the history of racism in America is offensive.

My purpose here is neither to provoke nor to preach. It is just that for reasons of this post I have to talk about a subject that evokes strong emotions in me. Thanks in advance for understanding this.

When my mother was a little girl in St. Joseph, Missouri, she was once in a restaurant with her father where they ordered food, but were not allowed to sit. They had to take the food out to eat. My mother tells me that she kept asking her father why they couldn’t sit down. He was silent, and did not answer her question. Rather, he could not answer.

I have often wondered what that felt like for my grandfather. How do you explain to your child that the world does not treat you with dignity—does not treat you as a man.

In the world of my grandfather, and for most of American history, it was common to treat grown black men as children. Not just children, but dimwitted children at that. “Boy” was the word used to refer to my grandfather; no matter how old he got, he would be called “boy,” and treated as such.

Why bring this up?  Because in the film Casablanca, when Ilsa Lund, played by Ingrid Bergman, sees Sam the black pianist played by Dooley Wilson, she recognizes him and inquires about the boy playing the piano. The “boy.” Dooley Wilson was in his mid-fifties at the time but she tosses this term off casually. Boy. It was normal. A word people used in polite conversation. A word my grandfather heard many days of his life, which was meant to emasculate him and remind him that he had no power in this world.

In the film Sam also sings a song called “Shine.” “Shine” was what was called a “coon song.” “Coon songs” were a popular form of music in the America until the 1920s. These songs relied heavily on black racial stereotypes, and in fact “Shine” was a derogatory term for black people.

Here are the lyrics to “Shine”:

Well, just because my hair is curly
 And just because my teeth are pearly
Just because I always wear a smile
 Likes to dress up in the latest style 
Just because I'm glad I'm livin’
Takes trouble smilin’, never whine 
Just because my color’s shady
 Slightly different maybe
 That’s why they call me shine.

I bring this up because although the presence of these things in the film Casablanca are offensive to me I can still acknowledge the flawless craftsmanship of the filmmaking and story-craft.

Unlike Birth of a Nation, D.W Griffith’s 1915 film, which is blatant piece of racist propaganda that turns the Ku Klux Klan into heroes, I don’t feel that the makers of Casablanca went out of their way to be racist. They were simply products of their time.

Birth of a Nation makes use of gross stereotypes of brutish black men that were so frightening to some that that some white audiences at the time fired their pistols at the screen. Reports say that many African Americans openly wept at how they saw themselves portrayed.

In fact, Birth of a Nation has been said to have been a factor in the huge resurgence of Klan membership in the 1920s.

I have even watched this film because it is credited with defining much of the film language that we still use today and take for granted—like the close-up, for instance.  But I have only watched it once—I am only human after all and the film is reprehensible. Still, I made a point to learn from the film how best to tell the stories I’d like to tell about the things that are important to me.

As for Casablanca, I consider this film a masterpiece of storytelling as well as an example of American racism at that time. Yes, it can be at once brilliant and racist. I do not let one thing affect my view of the other.

If I had not gotten past my personal issues while watching Casablanca, there are some great craft lessons that I would not have learned. Stuff that I use in my own work. Things I have written about in my books and on this blog. 

The reason I bring all of this up in a blog about story-craft is because I wanted to illustrate that if I am able to look past my personal concerns to see what is good about the film, you can do the same.

I promise the next post will be less touchy and personal. Thanks for sticking with me.

The Advanced Class – Back to Basics

“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” – Bruce Lee

Many times after one of my six-week classes is completed, a student, excited by what he or she has just learned, has said to me, “You should teach an advanced class!”

I am always flattered, but always a little surprised. Advanced? I know for a fact that they have not mastered the most basic principles, and yet they feel that they are ready to move on to the next level. Being introduced concepts is nothing like truly understanding them.

I never cease being bowled over when someone blows off a concept as basic—some people are always looking for “something new.” But storytelling is as old as humanity and there is nothing new to it. Someone may have a new way to say an old thing, and that might help the concept be more clear to some, but if it is real knowledge, it will be an old concept.

Stories and storytelling are rooted in human emotions, motivations and psychology, and these have not changed. Until they do, no one will have anything truly new to say on the subject.  Anyone who says differently is trying to sell you something. (My apologies to William Goldman)

One can change the form that stories take—for instance, from stage to film. Film was new and techniques of using that medium to best tell stories had to be developed, but stories and storytelling are still rooted in common human experience. This will never change. This is why Aristotle’s Poetics is still read and studied today, because despite all of the changes and advancements made in this world nothing of consequence has changed about the fundamentals of storytelling.

The best way to discover “new things” is to contemplate the old ones. Contemplation is not something Westerners put much stock in—and we Americans are particularly bad at it. We need to know it all—right now! But contemplation—deep contemplation over months, years or decades—is the only way to fully understand anything worth learning.

Someone recently requested that I post pictures of my bookshelves on my blog. I’m guessing she thought it might give some insight to how I have learned what I know. I don’t want to be presumptuous here, there are plenty of people out there don’t think I know much at all. But if you think I have anything worthwhile to say, this is how I learned it.

When I was very young I used watch television shows and movies. I took them apart the way other boys took apart their toys to see how they worked. In the ’70s, before the days of videotape, I used to audiotape television shows and study their construction. I knew about act structure before I ever read one book about it or even knew it was something other people studied.

We were poor. I remember days without food. I remember going to school with an empty belly. I wanted more than anything to have a movie camera, but there was no money for such a thing. One day Mister Rogers showed how to make flip books on his show and I became obsessed with making them. I have no idea how many I made, but I made at least one a day for years. People who were adults at the time still remember me making these flip books. I learned things then that I still use today.

In 1975, I met a kid with a movie camera and we made a Super 8mm film, an animated film using plastic army men called The War. My strongest memory from that time, my strongest feeling, was: Finally. Finally I’m getting to make a film. I was 10 years old.

The first movie camera I owned was this exact model.  It was not even super 8mm – it was 8mm.  It was a very old camera even when I was using it.

A few years later I called all of the people who had anything to do with film in my town and asked if I could come see what they did. A few said yes. And one guy, who had a small animation company, offered me an afterschool job. This was about 1979 or ’80. This is also around the time I wrote my first screenplay.

Film, filmmaking and storytelling were my life. I read about it all the time. I read every interview with every director, screenwriter, animator and special effects guy I could find. And then I would watch films and television trying to spot the theories and principles talked about in these interviews, to see if these things were really there and if they worked the way they were supposed to.

When anyone would say that they had recently seem a film they liked or didn’t like, I would grill them about what they liked and what they didn’t. I would sit in movie theaters and watch one screening after another of a film, studying them. I noted where people reacted from one screening to the next. Some screenings I would watch the audience more than the film.

I didn’t know it, but I was lucky in some ways: I didn’t do well in school and was never told that I was smart. I had dyslexia, but no one bothered to diagnose it. I thought that I was stupid, thought that I never understood anything, so I worked extra hard to understand the things I was interested in. I thought about concepts for years. (The only adult outside my family who ever told me I was smart was my mentor, Bruce Walters.)

I won’t recount my entire life here, but suffice to say that I have spent my life contemplating the very first things I ever learned. By the time I teach them, argue about them in a coffee shop, write about them in a book, or lecture on them, I have literally spent years in deep contemplation on the subject.

Once you think you understand something, you will stop learning about it and your knowledge may stagnate and even atrophy.

I have become confident that I understand the things I have studied, but I know that there is still much to uncover on these subjects. Because all of these hours over the last 35 years (more really), have taught me one thing above all others: There is no such thing as “advanced.” All there is is a deeper understanding of the basics.


P.S.  Here are some famous people who also have dyslexia

The Strength of the Reluctant Hero

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.  ~ Ambrose Redmoon

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.  ~ Mark Twain

How many of you reading this are fearless? I mean, you are afraid of nothing, from heights to public speaking to snakes to death. Nothing.

My guess is that we all have something would rather not do or face. And there are some things that we don’t even allow ourselves to entertain. For the construction of drama, these fears are fertile ground.

Too often, I see films where the hero is gung-ho for any situation. He is ready with a clever quip, a wink and a smile with lines like: “It’s go-time,” or “Let’s do this thing,” or “Let’s rock and roll.”  Nothing scares this person.

Sure, sometimes these lines can make an audience cheer with a Pavlovian response, but it is a cheap way to get that cheer. And a fearless hero is less of a hero than someone who overcomes fear. It is the facing of these fears that makes one heroic, not the actual deed performed.

The so-called reluctant hero is a hero; the fearless hero is a cartoon. Ironically, a character who has fear but confronts it will feel more real to an audience—even if that character is actually a cartoon. 

Look at Finding Nemo. The father, Marlin, is deathly afraid of the ocean and its dangers, but when his son, Nemo, is lost Marlin faces his fear and conquers it.

In Aliens Ripley is afraid of facing the aliens. She knows how dangerous they are. All of her shipmates were killed—and that was only one alien. I’d be afraid, too. Wouldn’t you?

Many of you who have read the work of Joseph Campbell or Chris Vogler know of the idea of the “Refusal of the Call.” This is the part of the “Hero’s Journey” that follows the hero’s “Call to Adventure.”

Lots of people learn these steps and follow them when they create their own stories, but they seldom ask why these steps are there. I believe it’s because they do mirror life. How many times have you been asked to do something or given an opportunity, and have been paralyzed with fear at the prospect?  It is always much easier to stay in the world and circumstances you know. It’s dangerous out there.

I am reminded of my father wanting to take the training wheels off my bike. I protested and was so frightened that I cried. But my dad knew I could ride without the training wheels and took them off. He steadied me on my bike and held me up so that the bike would not fall. Then I went to look up at him and he was gone! He was far behind me. I was riding by myself. My father smiled broadly—proud of me. And I was proud of myself. I had been reluctant, faced my fear and conquered it.

 

I’m not saying that I was heroic learning to ride a bike, but the steps and feelings do mirror the mythic steps of the Hero’s Journey. I am sure that without too much struggle you can pull up a similar experience from your own life.

You may have been afraid of a new job or a promotion at your current job. Maybe it was a fear of parenthood. Or a maybe it was a new relationship. Or maybe it was leaving a relationship. Maybe you are reluctant to start that novel or screenplay. You get the idea.

The reluctant hero is true to life. It is true to how we experience life—we are often reluctant to leave the world we know for the dangerous and unknown.

Creating a reluctant hero makes him or her someone the audience can empathize with. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not find myself in a nest of murderous aliens. What makes a Ripley heroic is her fear. The fear is what makes the story worth telling. We learn from the story that we might conquer our fears if we confront them.

In Jaws, the sheriff, Chief Brody, is afraid of the water but must overcome his fear to kill the shark terrorizing his town. His last line in the film is, “You know I used to hate the water.” Just like me on my bike, he faced his fear and defeated it.

Over the weekend I saw the film The King’s Speech—a movie about a man with a debilitating stammer who faces and conquers his fear of public speaking. In this story it makes him an admirable and heroic figure. People clapped at the screening I saw. Like my dad watching me on my bike, the audience was proud of this character’s bravery. They rooted for him throughout the film. They empathized.

Don’t ever forget the power of a reluctant hero; it is a way to draw people into your story. This reluctance makes heroic acts even more heroic and makes heroes more human—and makes your story universal.

Movies I Like: Tootsie

 

Anyone who has read my first book, Invisible Ink, knows how highly I think of Tootsie. It was one of the many standout films—along with E.T., The Verdict, and Gandhi—that were released in 1982.

I am going to talk here, as I have with other films I like, about how impressed I am with the laser focus of this film. It is a story that aims directly at its thematic target and hits a bulls-eye.

I won’t take up time here breaking down the entire film, but the first act in so well constructed that there is much to learn from it.

The film was co-written by Larry Gelbart, who in his early career was one of the legendary writers of the Sid Caesar shows Caesar’s Hour and Your Show of Shows in the 1950s. Sid Caesar’s writing team included Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and Neil Simon. Heavyweights. Gelbart later went onto create the classic M*A*S*H television show in the 1970s.

Comedy writers for Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows:" (from left, front row) Gary Belkin, Sheldon Keller, Michael Stewart and Mel Brooks; (from left, back) Neil Simon , Mel Tolkin, and Larry Gelbart. (pbs/file 1956)

Sidney Pollack, who was a brilliant director and actor, directed the film.



If you don’t know the film Tootsie, it stars Dustin Hoffman out an out-of-work actor and acting teacher who—desperate to get a part on a soap opera—pretends to be a woman.

Sidney Pollack did not want to direct the film until he figured out the film’s armature (theme): Wearing a dress could make Dustin’s character a better man.

I know that Pollack always worked hard to find an opening image that had thematic meaning in his films. The very first shot in Tootsie is a long pan-shot of a make-up table. We see fake teeth, wigs, and powders; we end on an actor applying make-up. We don’t know it yet, but this is Dustin’s character, Michael Dorsey.

We see him apply a false mustache. He smiles, proud of his work. The glue unsticks and the mustache lifts off his face. This is not a small thing. For plot reasons we want to know he has some knowledge of stage make-up because later he must become another person.

There is also a thematic component here—the mask will come off.

Nothing is random in this act. The next thing you see is Michael Dorsey teaching students. We start to get the idea that he is an actor who knows what he’s doing. This becomes very important.

Then we see Michael in an audition. In the audition, he reads lines with a male gum-chewing stage manager. As a response to Michael’s line that someone is coming and to put some clothes on, the stage manager reads his line flatly: “I’m a woman. Not Felecia’s mother and not Kevin’s wife.”

Right away we have a man pretending to be a woman. This is solid construction. It may look simple, but it is hard to do well. And you might think an audience would see something so obvious, but they don’t. But they do get a sense that the story has a direction and is not random lines and scenes.

Dorsey is told that he’s not right for the part—they need someone older, they say.

Next we see Dorsey in another audition playing the part of a young boy. He is now told that they are looking for someone younger.

In the next audition he is told that he’s too tall. He says that he can be shorter. He pleads with them telling them he can be whatever size they need. They then say that they are looking for somebody different. And he answers that he can be different.

In frustration they tell him that they are looking for somebody else. He has no answer.

What’s great about this series of auditions is that we get both thematic and plot information. Plot-wise, we know that it is hard for Dorsey to get work. Theme-wise, we see that he would be willing to change anything about himself to get a part. And in fact, he does become “somebody different” to land a part.

We now see him teaching again where he tells his students that they have to be truthful in the parts they play. I’m paraphrasing, but this is essentially what he says.

He then reads from cards as he performs lines from a play for yet another audition. The play seems to be about how you shouldn’t do some things for money. This is thematic because when Michael gets the part on the soap opera he ends up hurting people he doesn’t mean to. All because he wanted money.

Next he is teaching again. In this scene he tells his students that they should not play a part that isn’t in them—they must become the characters they play.



This is also thematic. When Dorsey pretends to be a woman he must be true to that experience. He begins to see life through the eyes of a woman. This is how “wearing a dress makes him a better man.”

Later Michael is rehearsing for a play and in the scene he is dying. He is asked by the director to stand up and move center stage as he dies. This doesn’t ring true to Dorsey and he refuses. This is also thematically relevant—because this is all about Michael being true to the part. If it isn’t truthful, he won’t do it.

This makes it hard for Michael to find work, because he is seen as difficult to work with.

Again, for the sake of space, I will not break down every scene here. But some of the plot things we are told in this act is that Michael’s roommate, played by Bill Murray, is a playwright and they need money to put on this play. We also see, at his birthday party, that Michael is a bit of a womanizer. He lies to women.

So it is established that Michael Dorsey tells the truth when he’s acting, but in life can be a little dishonest.

There is a classic scene, also in the first act, where Michael Dorsey agues with his agent, played by the director of Tootsie, Sydney Pollack, about not getting him work. In the scene we hear Michael argue that he must always be truthful to the character he is playing—even if that character is a tomato.



I will let you find some of the rest of the thematic Easter eggs in the first act of this film. But I will say that this is a thing made with fine precision. This kind of craftsmanship is rare as the dodo in films made today.

By the end of this beautifully conceived and executed first act we find out that our character is a skilled actor who believes strongly that he must tell the truth while acting. We also find that he is not so honest in his life—particularly in regards to women. And we know that Michael Dorsey needs money. He needs a job.



The stage is set. When Michael Dorsey puts on the dress and make-up, and becomes his alter ego Dorothy Michaels we believe it. We know he has the acting and make-up skills.

We also know that he has a lesson to learn—he must become a better man,

And we know that when he becomes Dorothy, he has no choice but to see the world through the eyes of a woman because he has to become the character. He has to be true to the character. He cannot lie when he’s acting. This commitment to character is what forces Michael to change.

If you want to see storytellers working at the top of their craft watch Tootsie; take the time to really study the film, and it will make you a better writer.

Isolation of Interest: More thoughts on Learning

 If you ever want to get better at learning, become a teacher—you will see all of the things people do that stop themselves from learning. One thing we do that blocks us from learning is that we listen/read with an agenda. In magic this is called isolation of interest.

Here is a story I have told before, but to make a different point, about a magician who was teaching a class on magic in Las Vegas. While at a craps table, he told the students that he would roll a seven. He passed the dice around to be examined to make sure they were normal dice. They passed inspection.

Then, as he said, the magician rolled a seven—to much amazement and applause. But he topped that by pointing out that the dice he passed around were red and that the dice on the table were green.

By telling the spectators that he was going to roll a seven, he isolated their interest and they never noticed him switch the dice. This kind of mono-focus makes us blind and deaf to all other things. Magicians know this very well.  In cognitive science it is known as selective attention.
If you listen to a teacher with an agenda, you will only listen for things relevant to that agenda and miss, or dismiss, everything else.

I once taught a person who had studied geology. She told me that her professor once gave a test where he laid several rocks in a row on the table and the students had to correctly identify them. No one noticed, but all of the rocks were of the same type.

When the professor revealed this fact he told them, “The eye seldom sees what the mind does not anticipate.”

The students had blinded themselves by looking only for what was different about the rocks; they could not see what was similar about them.

People can be so good at isolation of interest that I guarantee that there is someone who is reading this blog post right now and asking themselves what geology has to do with storytelling. They will fail to see any reason for me telling this story.

Another way people stop themselves from learning is to assume that they understand an idea at first blush. In the West, and in American in particular, we like to get things quickly. We think it makes us smart. This is reinforced by the educational systems. Malcolm Gladwell talks about this in his book Outliers.

I think this rush to understand things forces us to grasp ideas and concepts at only their most basic levels. We understand things on the surface, but are unaware that there are layers and layers beneath that can takes years to uncover. In Zen practice, they understand the value of deep contemplation—there is no rush to “get it.” 

I have noticed that the people who actually don’t “get it” are often the people who think they get it quickly. Those are the people who never look any deeper. But that is like looking at the surface of the ocean and believing that that’s all there is to it. There’s a whole world underneath that you’ll never see if you don’t take the time to look.

I spoke with a woman not too long ago who was stuck on the ending for a short story she was working on. We talked for a while, and then I asked her to define what a story was.  Or at least, what her definition of a story was. She stammered and could not answer the question.

I gave her my definition, which is very close to what the dictionary will tell you: A story is the telling of a series of events leading to a conclusion.

With that she scoffed, as if to say, Of course. In fact, she said, “Sure, that’s basic.” Sure. It was so basic that when I asked her what a story was she had no answer.

But if she had this definition in her head, she would not have been stuck for an ending because that would have been where she was headed the entire time.

The reason she scoffed is why many people scoff at that kind of information—we have been taught that simple explanations must be flawed because they are not nuanced. But the student is supposed to take this simple explanation and think about it. Make their own discoveries. I have learned that if you want to discover the profound you should contemplate the mundane.

Take light, for instance. Light is all around us and few of us think much about it, but great artists and thinkers have made profound discoveries from the study of light. This includes painters like Vermeer and Rembrandt and scientists like Newton and Einstein. 

Look, you don’t have to agree with my definition of what a story is, but if you are a storyteller you should start to consider how you might define it in the simplest terms for yourself. Don’t be afraid to ask yourself the most basic of questions.

And as you study, try to be open to learning anything that comes. Don’t limit yourself by isolating your interest.

Movies I Like: Sunset Boulevard

“Grab ‘em by the throat and never let ‘em go.”—Billy Wilder, talking about the audience.

The Major and the Minor, Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, Sunset Boulevard, Ace in the Hole, Stalag 17, Sabrina, The Seven Year Itch, Witness for the Prosecution, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, and The Fortune Cookie are just some of the classic films co-written and directed by the great Billy Wilder.

This list does not even include the classics he wrote as a screenwriter before he became a director. You could do worse than studying the work of Wilder and I could talk about many of his films, but one of his best is Sunset Boulevard.

What’s so great about it? What isn’t?

The film is about a young and struggling Hollywood screenwriter in the 1950s who is in debt and desperately needs a job. Through happenstance he ends up the kept man of a movie star whose best days, during the silent era, are behind her.

The film starts with the young screenwriter, Joe Gillis (played by William Holden), floating dead in a swimming pool as his voice-over narrates the scene. He explains how he always wanted a pool, but that the price proved to be too high. Then he says he will tell us the story of what really happened here and the story flashes back to the true beginning of the story.

Here’s what’s great about this opening. It starts with a great “outer boundary” as I call it. That is right away the story lets you know what can happen, and will happen, in this story’s world. It lets us know the most extreme thing that can happen in this reality.

The classic It’s a Wonderful Life begins with angels, depicted as pulsating stars in the sky, talking to one another. It is a long time before anything else supernatural happens in the film. But when it does happen the audience has been primed for it and has no problem believing the fantastic.

This is the same trick used in the opening of the film Raiders of the Lost Ark. We see that character is fantastic situations and so we believe it later. We have been primed.

The other thing these scenes do is whet our appetites for what is to come. We want to know how this fantastic thing links up with the rest of the story.

In the case of Sunset Boulevard, we want to know how Joe Gillis ended up dead in a pool. This is a very smart way to open a film. It grabs the audience.



In Act One we see Joe Gillis being hounded by repo men for his car. He spends the first act looking for money and/or a job so that he can pay to keep his car. While trying to outrun the repo men in a car chase, he ducks into the garage of an old dilapidated mansion. He thinks it is abandoned. It is not.

This is what I call the Land of the Dead. All stories have a point where characters enter the Land of the Dead. These are places where things are in disrepair. Things may be rotting or in decay. Sometimes there is death or the very real possibility of death in these places. Or people may hurting physically or emotionally or spiritually. There is often isolation or loneliness. One or all of these things may be present in the Land of the Dead.

Wilder makes sure that this house is a dead place. It feels like a mausoleum. There is death here, as you will see when you watch the film.

It is here that Joe Gillis meets Norma Desmond, the old silent movie star played by the real-life silent movie star Gloria Swanson. This is a woman who will not let go of the past. She lives in the Land of the Dead.



In stories, the Land of the Dead is no place to live. One may visit to learn the story’s lesson, but in order to be healthy the hero must leave this place.

Because Joe Gillis needs money he ends up the kept man of this woman. He is her pet. She has money and he has none, and so Joe feels trapped in this dead place. At one point the house butler, Max, tells Joe that Norma Desmond is suicidal and in order to protect her from herself there are no locks on any of the doors.

This may seem like a detail that doesn’t matter, but think about it. Joe feels trapped here and is expressly told that there are no locks here. Thematically it means he can leave whenever he wants.

There is a great scene where, on New Year’s Eve, Norma throws a party, but Joe is surprised that by design he is to be the only guest. This is a dead place without life. No guests at a party. Frustrated, Joe leaves the mansion to find a party with life in it, but as he tries to leave his clothes get caught on the door handle. This is a perfect thing for the story thematically, for a man who feels trapped.

This is the story of a man who learns to that living as a poor man is better than being wealthy in the Land of the Dead.

There are about a million good things to say about this film, but the main thing is that every element in this film is there to help tell the story. The mansion is not creepy for the sake of being creepy. It has to be a mausoleum. There are no guests at the party not to have an odd scene, but to drive home that this is a place without life. What could say that better than a party without guests?

Everything in Wilder’s films in there for a reason. No fat.

If you have seen this film watch it again and see what you notice that you didn’t before. If you have never seen it, you are in for a treat.

Mountain Music -- The Movie

Last year I was asked to direct a three-minute documentary for MTV. This was for their show $5 Cover and the short films were companion pieces called B-sides. Several filmmakers made shorts for the show and as far as I know MTV has never done anything with them.

They wanted us to do something about the Seattle music scene, but not a typical Seattle music story. So my producing partner and I settled on a band called The Tallboys that plays old time mountain music. Two of the band members, Charmaine Li-Lei Slaven and Charlie Beck, have another band called Squirrel Butter with just the two of them.

Since I always look for the emotion in any story and focus on that it became clear that the story was really about Charmaine, the female member of the band. She had the most compelling story and we had to focus on just one person. We only had three minutes.

She was a great subject and there was a bunch of cool stuff that we just couldn’t put in the film.

Anyway, I just wanted to share this with you guys because I don’t want to be one of those people who writes about filmmaking and never does anything himself.

Hope you enjoy the film.


Squirrel Butter and the Tall Boys Old Time music from Marcus Donner on Vimeo.

Movies I Like: Shadow of a Doubt

Alfred Hitchcock’s directing career spanned form 1922 to 1976: 54 years. He started with silent film and saw the advancements of sound (he made the first British talkie), color and even 3-D within his lifetime. And he was a master of filmmaking almost from the beginning.



Some of his classic films include Blackmail, The Lodger, Rope, Strangers on a Train, Lifeboat, Dial M for Murder, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, North by Northwest, The Birds, Rear Window, and Psycho.

My personal favorite, followed closely by Rear Window, is Shadow of a Doubt, released in 1943. Not only did Hitchcock direct, but the great Thornton Wilder (author of the classic Pulitzer Prize-winning play Our Town) wrote the screenplay. This was Hitchcock’s personal favorite, and it is also David Mamet’s favorite of Hitchcock’s films.

If you have read any of my previous posts then you’ll know that I believe that a great story has a focus – a direction. It knows what it’s about – what’s it’s trying to say.

In the first act we are introduced to a young woman named Charlie who is tired of her boring town and her boring family. Nothing exciting ever happens. She lives a Norman Rockwell existence.

She wants to break up this monotony and goes to the telegraph office to invite her favorite uncle, also named Charlie, to come visit. But when she gets there, she finds that there is already a telegram there for her from her uncle saying he’s on his way. The two Charlies have a special connection.

What the girl Charlie eventually discovers is that her uncle is a notorious murderer on the run. Uncle Charlie is not the kindly affable man he pretends to the world. Now that she knows the truth about her uncle, all Charlie wants is her old boring life back.

This is a Thornton Wilder theme – that life, even a simple, uneventful life, is a wonderful thing that we do not take the time to appreciate. You can see this theme in Our Town after one of the characters dies and is able to go back and see/relive moments in her past. She chooses an ordinary day, nothing special. And she is surprised to realize that people don’t find each moment of their life precious.

This is the very same theme in Shadow of a Doubt – young Charlie had a good life and now she wants it back. But it is too late: She knows what she knows and can’t return to that life.

This is a deep theme dressed as a common thriller – it is so much more. As a thriller it is Hitchcock at his best. And as a piece of art, it is Wilder doing what he did best.

I have to admit that there is a tacked-on love story that I believe the studio wanted – another writer handled that (some things never change). This is not on par with the rest on the film, but the film is too good to be ruined by this. Hitchcock himself was never happy with the love story.

When I say they don’t make movies like they used to this is what I mean. If I see a thriller now and say it was empty and meaningless people say to me, “What do you want? It’s just a thriller!”

You know what I want? Shadow of a Doubt.