Jul
9
Arcs and Endings (3)
Filed Under Free Content | Leave a Comment
In a Q&A for Creative Screenwriting Magazine, Michael Arndt made the point that “happy endings are really underrated”. It got me thinking.
What’s wrong with a Hollywood ending?
If you have a truly well-written story, why would a happy ending diminish its value? Why is it that writers believe happy endings are a cheap Hollywood device? The majority of cinema goers prefer a happy ending. Why don’t we want to give it to them?
It may have to do with the confusion between our taste and our trade.
Film professionals tend to see more movies than the average punter. Because of our inherent interest in the how to of film, on occasion we will be focusing on other aspects than the story and we are enthralled by the cinematography, sound design, music, philosophical statement of etc.
Because we see so many movies, we like diversity in the offering. We want to be challenged. We are expecting the happy ending, but instead prefer to be surprised.
This, however, doesn’t apply for those who only see one or two movies a year; those we are actually making these movies for. Hence the difference in taste between many filmmakers and the majority of filmgoers.
There may be an other powerful force at play. Peer pressure.
Educated cinema goers like to be intellectually challenged. Perhaps some filmmakers don’t want to appear uneducated. Perhaps they don’t want to lower themselves (in their own perception and that of their peers) by making movies for the masses.
When your taste monopolises your trade, you are gambling your career.
Chris Morrissey brings Aristotle into exactly the same discussion when he says:
“The problem still remains why Aristotle in Poetics 14 would rank later, allegedly formulaic developments in plot composition higher than the earlier, high culture “unhappy ending” type of tragedy. Surely an appeal to chance or formula would define not the superiority, but rather the inferiority, of “happy ending” tragedies, just as people imply today when they sneer at the haphazard and formulaic composition of Hollywood endings.”
Can you see how the author is perverting his own logic by allowing for his taste to interfere? He goes by the assumption that formula is de facto inferior.
This is exactly where in my view filmmakers stray. We are losing the context of the audience for which the art is created in the first place.
If the author had asked WHY happy endings are being ranked more highly, the answer would have been right there, with the audience.
Speaking of audience’s responses, a recent survey commissioned by the Australian Federal Government concluded:
1. Moviegoers do not lump all Australian movies into one genre
2. Australian films do not suffer from a handicap
3. Broader Australian population prefer mainstream Australian movies to art house
4. There is a clear positioning opportunity for Australian movies
I have an inkling that you won’t go too far wrong by replacing the word ‘Australian’ with any other nationality.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Jun
27
Arcs and Endings (2)
Filed Under Free Content | Leave a Comment
Should you write a happy ending?
Commercial common sense will tell you: yes, you should.
Robert McKee says: “Tell the truth.” (see the previous post)
McKee means: your story needs to reflect your worldview. If you contradict whatever you believe in for the sake of commerce, you will fail. During his Arthouse seminar, he gives the example of Bergman’s THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY, where Bergman forced an ending upon the story in which he didn’t really believe. The story didn’t work, McKee says. Even the great Bergman couldn’t go against his instinct.
The discussion about happy endings is not exactly the same as the discussion about arcs. Protagonists without arcs have starred in films with tremendous success (see the reference to Mystery Man on Film in the previous post).
Although writers with a positive world may have more success in connecting with a large audience, I believe that talented and skilled screenwriters can create stories that work, irrespective of their worldview.
First-timers will have a harder time.
Here is the dilemma: to break in, you need to write something the market wants to see. Yet you’ll have a better chance if this first spec screenplay is written from the heart. You need to tell the truth.
My advice to beginning screenwriters: see how different genres allow to make different statements about the human condition without compromising the chances of success. Horror, crime and satire are darker genres than romance, adventure or kids movies.
Finally, to illustrate McKee’s point, below is a transcript of his introduction to THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY for British television.
______________________________________
Robert McKee: I saw my first Bergman film in Detroit, Michigan when I was 15. It was The Virgin Spring, a tale of revenge for rape and murder. Next came a comedy, Smiles of a Summer Night. After that Brink of Life, a social drama set in a maternity ward, Monika: A Teenage Love Story, Hour of the Wolf, a psycho-horror film. Bergman was like a one-man film studio bringing a fresh eye to many genres and by word of mouth filling cinemas everywhere. But then in the sixties he became a creature of the critics. They treated his films as intellectual crossword puzzles and drove the audience back behind a barricade of critic-speak � symbology, metaphysics, alienation � until it was impossible to watch a Bergman film without the feeling that you were taking an exam. And that�s where he stands today, on a pedestal, intimidating, distant, watched only by a tiny circle of cineastes. I think that over the years we forgot what the early audiences instinctively knew � above all else, Ingmar Bergman was a master storyteller.
Bergman�s difficult. Not to understand, but emotionally tough. He shines light into the darkest corners of life. He asks us to empathise with complex characters who, although very human, are not particularly loveable. Then he spins his stories over an emotional rollercoaster, taking us on a quest for the truth, truth that explodes the little lies that make life comfortable. To watch a Bergman film you have to be willing to invest all your humanity, to open yourself up, to care about life so much you want to know the truth though heaven may fall. It is not intellect Bergman demands so much as courage.
Bergman�s also difficult because he explains nothing. He doesn�t force his ideas into the mouths of his characters. Like Hollywood he tells stories visually, writes naturalistic dialogue and layers his meaning in the subtext. Unlike Hollywood his films are not tales of wish fulfilment, telling seductive lies about how everything works out for the best.
1a: The Film
�for now we see through a glass, darkly:
but then face to face; now I know in part;
but then I shall know even as also I am known
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Jun
5
Arcs and Endings (1)
Filed Under Free Content | Leave a Comment
The finest writing not only reveals true character,
but arcs or changes to that inner nature, for better or worse.
In 1998 McKee signed my first edition hardback of STORY. He wrote:
“To Karel: Tell the TRUTH!”
Ironically with the quote at the top of this article, McKee is not telling his own truth.(*)
He contradicts something he teaches in his art film seminar. On Ingmar Bergman’s THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY(**), McKee makes the point that Bergman
“set out to prove what he desperately wanted to believe and carefully designed this film as a rhetorical argument in dramatic form to make his point. But then his instincts, his integrity, his sense of truth overwhelmed his intellectual ambitions and somehow all the scenes that say the opposite of what he believed overwhelmed the other and as a result the film says that rather than love showing the way to happiness, the more likely fate is that you will end up alone, desperate, blinded with self deception.”
In other words:
If you don’t believe the happy ending, don’t write it.
If you don’t believe characters change in the real world, don’t make them in your screenplays. Tell the Truth.
You don’t have the option to choose between a-protag-with or a-protag-without arc. You must write what you believe in.
Bergman, one of the great storytellers of all time, tried to end THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY on an uplifting note.
He didn’t believe it. It didn’t work.
(*) Earlier this year, Mystery Man refered to the same quote before building his brilliant Case AGAINST Character Arcs. MM substantiates his point with numerous classic films.
(**) Full transcript of McKee’s television introduction to that movie in my next post.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
