The Screenwriters Taxonomy: A Roadmap to Collaborative Storytelling [1 ed.] 9781138090392

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The Screenwriters Taxonomy

In The Screenwriters Taxonomy, award-winning screenwriter and educator Eric R. Williams offers a new collaborative approach for creative storytellers to recognize, discuss and reinvent storytelling paradigms. Williams presents seven different aspects of storytelling that can be applied to any fictional narrative film—from supergenre, macrogenre and microgenre to voice and point of view—allowing writers to analyze existing films and innovate on these structures in their own stories. Moving beyond film theory, Williams describes how this roadmap for creative decision making can relate to classics like Sunset Boulevard, The Wizard of Oz and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as well as such diverse modern favorites like 12 Years a Slave, Anomalisa and Shrek. Eric R. Williams has written professionally for American Movie Classics, Universal Studios, Grateful Films and Fox Interactive. His screenplays have been workshopped at the Film Independent Producers Lab in Los Angeles, and have won three prestigious awards: Best New Work from the Writers Guild of America, Award for Individual Excellence in Screenwriting from the Ohio Arts Council and an Emmy Award for Interactive Media. Eric is also an award-winning educator and the inaugural director of the MFA in Communication Media Arts program at Ohio University, where he teaches screenwriting and virtual-reality production. Eric earned his undergraduate degree from Northwestern University in Chicago and his MFA at Columbia University in New York City. He is also the author of another book by Routledge, Screen Adaptation: Beyond the Basics (2017). You can learn more by visiting his website: www.WilliamsOnStory.com.

Author Eric Williams, honored finalist of the Ohio University Presidential Teacher Award in 2014

Routledge Studies in Media Theory & Practice

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Semiotics and Title Sequences Text-Image Composites in Motion Graphics Michael Betancourt

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Synchronization and Title Sequences Audio-Visual Semiosis in Motion Graphics Michael Betancourt

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The Screenwriters Taxonomy A Roadmap to Collaborative Storytelling Eric R. Williams

The Screenwriters Taxonomy A Roadmap to Collaborative Storytelling

Eric R. Williams

First published 2018 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Eric R. Williams The right of Eric R. Williams to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-09039-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-10864-3 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Petra, you are the love of my life. Thank you for listening to all of my crazy ideas throughout the years, and for sharing your own. Funny how so many of them come true.

Contents

List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgments Preface

x xi xiv xv

Introduction

1

1

3

The Need for a Road Map

PART I

Defining the Film

13

2

Movie Types and Supergenres

15

3

Macrogenres and Microgenres

47

4

Genre Case Studies

88

PART II

Refining the Film

99

5

Voice

101

6

Pathway

126

7

Point of View

143

8

Case Studies

158

Index

167

Figures

1.1 The Screenwriters Taxonomy 1.2 Taxonomy of All Living Things

6 7

Tables

Chapter 2 10 Brands of Drama 12 Brands of Comedy Screenwriters Taxonomy: Supergenres Action Supergenre Examples Action Supergenre Specifics Crime Supergenre Examples Crime Supergenre Specifics Fantasy Supergenre Examples Fantasy Supergenre Specifics Horror Supergenre Examples Horror Supergenre Specifics Life Supergenre Examples Life Supergenre Specifics Romance Supergenre Examples Romance Supergenre Specifics Science Fiction Supergenre Examples Science Fiction Supergenre Specifics Sports Supergenre Examples Sports Supergenre Specifics Thriller Supergenre Examples Thriller Supergenre Specifics War Supergenre Examples War Supergenre Specifics Western Supergenre Examples Western Supergenre Specifics

15 17 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 33 34 35 36 38 39 40 41 42 43 45 46

xii

Tables

Chapter 3 Time Travel Macro Paired with Supergenres Mystery Macro Paired with Supergenres Fifty Macrogenres Crime Supergenre Pairings A Crime Supergenre Pairings B Crime Supergenre Pairings With Two Macros Classic Genre Combinations for the Action Supergenre Classic Genre Combinations for the Crime Supergenre Classic Genre Combinations for the Fantasy Supergenre Classic Genre Combinations for the Horror Supergenre Classic Genre Combinations for the Life Supergenre Classic Genre Combinations for the Romance Supergenre Classic Genre Combinations for the Science Fiction Supergenre Classic Genre Combinations for the Sports Supergenre Classic Genre Combinations for the Thriller Supergenre Classic Genre Combinations for the War Supergenre Classic Genre Combinations for the Western Supergenre Supergenre as Macrogenre Example Addiction Microgenre Story Examples Addiction Micro Example A Addiction Micro Example B Addiction Micro Example C Addiction Macro With New Supergenre Owning Mahowny Drugstore Cowboy Permanent Midnight The Fifty Macrogenres and Their 200+ Microgenres (A) The Fifty Macrogenres and Their 200+ Microgenres (B) The Fifty Macrogenres and Their 200+ Microgenres (D) The Fifty Macrogenres and Their 200+ Microgenres (E) The Fifty Macrogenres and Their 200+ Microgenres (F) The Fifty Macrogenres and Their 200+ Microgenres (G) The Fifty Macrogenres and Their 200+ Microgenres (H) The Fifty Macrogenres and Their 200+ Microgenres (I) The Fifty Macrogenres and Their 200+ Microgenres (K) The Fifty Macrogenres and Their 200+ Microgenres (L) The Fifty Macrogenres and Their 200+ Microgenres (M) The Fifty Macrogenres and Their 200+ Microgenres (P) The Fifty Macrogenres and Their 200+ Microgenres (R) The Fifty Macrogenres and Their 200+ Microgenres (S) The Fifty Macrogenres and Their 200+ Microgenres (T) The Fifty Macrogenres and Their 200+ Microgenres (W)

48 48 49 50 50 51 51 52 52 53 54 55 55 56 57 58 58 59 60 60 61 61 61 62 62 62 63 64 65 67 68 68 70 71 72 72 74 78 80 81 86 87

Tables

xiii

Chapter 4 Genre Breakdown of The Shawshank Redemption Genre Breakdown of Twelve Monkeys Genre Breakdown of 12 Years a Slave

88 90 94

Chapter 5 Films That Use Nonlinear Voices Films That Mix Black and White with Color Footage Films That Subvert Conventions in Editing and Sound Design Voice Content Continuum Different Audience Voices Applied to Similar Subject Matter Voice for Nonlive Action, Nonhuman Characters Films with Little or No Dialogue Films with Extensive Internal Monologues Films That Break the Fourth Wall Mockumentary Voice Used for Different Platforms

103 106 107 108 110 114 117 119 120 124

Chapter 6 20 Pathways Supergenre—Pathway Combinations Pathway #1: The Defeated Underdogs Pathway #2: Defeated Underdog + Subverted Journeys Pathway #3: Subverted Journeys Pathway #4: Multiple Protagonists Pathway #5: Multiple Protagonists + Unknowing Audience Pathway #6: All-Knowing Audience Pathway #7: Noncharacter Antagonists

127 128 129 131 132 133 136 138 140

Chapter 8 Comparison of 12 Years a Slave and Argo Comparison of Shrek and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Comparison of The Imitation Game and Casablanca Comparison of The Godfather and The Godfather II Taxonomy for Stabbed in the Heart Taxonomy for RoBot SiX + Joules-01 Taxonomy for Blood Trail

159 160 161 162 163 164 165

Acknowledgments

If you are lucky, then you will find at least one special teacher in your life. Thank you, Paul Hammock. You have shown me how to hang doors while others are busy building walls.

Preface

Bob Mondello and Salvador Dali saved me from drowning one day in the high desert of Arizona. On days that I write, without fail, at three o’clock in the afternoon, my dog, Kit, takes me out for a walk. Whether I need it or not. It helps me clear my head and iron out my thoughts. Last November was no different. I’d been thinking about this idea of a screenwriters taxonomy for more than twenty years and seriously tinkering with it for almost ten. It’s a tug of war for me. As a screenwriter, my creative impulses have been shaped by conversations with producers, directors and other screenwriters. In any given meeting when I received notes on a project, it would not be unusual for me to be told to make it “funnier,” “more serious,” “less of a thriller,” “more action oriented,” “for kids” and “what if we started the movie with the final scene?” These conversations happen all of the time, with half a dozen people throwing out suggestions and leaving it to The Writer to make sense of it all. Which is why I need to clear my head each day at three p.m. This is also why, years ago, the Screenwriters Taxonomy was birthed: as a way for me to sort through the chaos and find order—a way to mold these different voices into a cohesive whole (aka: a good script). Like a man overboard in a sea of opinionated creative types, if I see a rope—I grab it. In my thirties, I began to teach. That’s where I found the other end of the rope, and the tug-of-war began. As a professor, I found myself telling students to make it “funnier,” “more serious,” “less of a thriller,” “more action oriented” and “for kids” and asking, “What if you started the movie with the final scene?” And I began to see the looks of confusion on the students’ faces. That same look that my creative counterparts must have seen on my face when I was the writer. But there was a difference. As an educator, I was forced to explain where these questions come from and why. I was forced to justify and legitimize these seemingly off-kilter and often contradictory suggestions.

xvi

Preface

Of course, for years, I was just treading water in the sea. Holding onto two ends of the same useless rope. I didn’t really know what I was talking about. I mean, yes, these ideas fit together in some chaotic way inside my own head. But not in a way that I could legitimately describe to others. It’s more like the logic that exists in a dream in which the sandwich you are eating becomes Salvador Dali’s foot, your tongue is a scorpion and it tickles his toes like spicy mustard. You ask, legitimately: why isn’t Salvador wearing any socks and is that elephant really on stilts? Then, suddenly, it was three o’clock in the afternoon on November 18, 2016. I had been seriously working on this book for about a year—much different than thinking about or tinkering with it. Now I had deadlines. People— myself included—were expecting me to make sense of it all. So I tied one end of the rope around my waist, looped the rope over a passing elephant and grabbed the other end tightly with both hands. Then I pulled. And pulled. And pulled. And slowly, this strange tug-of-war managed to raise me to higher, drier ground. Unfortunately, I found myself on a very lonely island. Deserted. The elephant disappearing off into Dalian dreams. And I began to wonder if maybe I weren’t spending all of this time and thought explaining something that wasn’t really necessary at all. And I thought maybe I should just cut the rope, jump back into the sea and be done with it all. Nobody else is having these problems. Drink hemlock or go into exile, I thought. That is, until Bob Mondello came by in a boat. I was hiking in the high desert of Arizona with Kit, listening to All Things Considered on National Public Radio. And at three o’clock in the afternoon on November 18, 2016, Bob Mondello gave his critique of the film Red Turtle: Red Turtle blends elements of several styles of animation—charcoaldrawn backgrounds, digitally animated action—to make a tale of trauma and transformation as flat-out gorgeous as it is wordless. Deliberate and painterly, it’s unlikely to hold the interest of children, but it will qualify as a Zen-like treat for us older folks. A survival story that centers on family, with tsunamis and sunsets, glorious blues, greens and grays and that remarkable red turtle, a fantastic beast if ever there was one. My god, I thought! Bob understands that a movie isn’t just an animated movie or a silent movie. It’s not just a survival story or a tale of trauma and transformation or even just a movie for the older folks. It’s all of these

Preface xvii things, intricately woven together and enjoyed like a multicourse meal fed to a man alone on an island. And in that single minute, Bob Mondello taught me that we all have these struggles of identifying and talking about the creative process of filmmaking. I realized that I was developing a creative handbook for the filmmaking community. A handbook that we could use to get on the same creative page. The writing got much easier after that. Perhaps now, thanks to Bob Mondello, Kit and Dali, we can all come together to have a more meaningful discussion on the creative process of filmmaking. Pass the mustard, Salvador! Eric R. Williams Screenwriter and Professor Summer, 2017

Introduction

1

The Need for a Road Map

Imagine: Your agent calls to tell you that a producer recently purchased the rights to a book. She’s taking pitches from screenwriters looking to adapt the material. The basic premise is this: A man, falsely imprisoned, falls victim to the very worst in human behavior before finding his way to freedom and putting his life back together. Your agent asks, “Is this a genre that interests you?” Of course, you say, “Yes.” You want the work. But think about the question: “Is this a genre that interests you?” If you get the job, you’ll be spending a year on this story. It will consume you. So consider the question carefully. You think about it, then you call your agent: WRITER:

Book the meeting. I love the genre.

AGENT:

Really? I didn’t know comedy was your thing.

WRITER:

What? Who said this was a comedy?

AGENT:

Uhm .  .  . Most rom-coms are comedies.

WRITER:

This is a romantic comedy?

AGENT:

Uhm .  .  . what genre did you think it was?

WRITER:

Prison break.

AGENT:

It is. It’s kind of a swashbuckling prison break rom-com that takes place on the high seas .  .  .

WRITER:

You mean it’s a pirate movie?

AGENT:

And the prison’s an island inhabited by singing cannibals.

WRITER:

Great. (sigh) Book the meeting. I love that genre.

4

Introduction

This sort of disconnect happens all the time. You thought you were writing an escape movie. Your agent thinks it’s a comedy. The producer wants pirates. So, what happened? I’ll tell you in one word: genre. This word causes more problems for screenwriters than it should. If you asked any random person to list ten movie genres off the top of their head, you’d get something like this: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Action Adventure Comedy Drama Kids’ Movie Musical Road Movie Romantic Comedy Sci-Fi Western Zombie

This is how the general public defines genre: with a list. If you go to IMDB or Netflix, you’ll find these categories there too because, if you are searching for something, these categories can help. If you want a movie for kids, then search for a “kids’” movie; if you want to find movies to make you laugh, then search in “comedy.” These are great categories for finding something. But these categories are not very helpful for writing something—or discussing that thing that you’re writing. It’s like going to the car dealership and telling the salesperson you want something that’s “red” and “fast.” You don’t know if you’re going to get a Ferrari or a fire truck. But what if we developed a more “scientific” approach? If we, as creative storytellers, could establish a way to identify key audience expectations for specific kinds of stories, then we would have some sort of creative roadmap from which to discuss, shape and write our screenplays. If you go to the car lot and ask to see 2017 off-road 4 × 4 Jeep Wranglers, you’ll find what you are looking for. Then you can search for the fast red one on your own. Biologists have used this approach for centuries, creating a layered classification system—a taxonomy—that describes all living things by categorizing their commonalities (Dunn, 2010). On the most basic level, their taxonomy classifies all living things into two kingdoms: 1. Animal 2. Plant

The Need for a Road Map

5

Within each kingdom, there is a category called a phylum, based on body and appendage shape. Some examples in the animal kingdom: • • • •

Chordata: Arthropod: Cnidarian: Mollusk:

Animals with a backbone Animals with an exoskeleton and jointed legs Jelly-like animals with tentacles Soft-bodied animals with a “foot”

Within the chordata phylum, there are subphylum categories that further delineate animals into invertebrates and vertebrates. Vertebrate animals have backbones made of cartilage or bone, and they have a brain that is encased in a protective skull. Beneath the subphylum vertebrata, we find different “classes.” This is where fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals are further sorted out. For instance, a turtle is: • • • • • • •

An animal (kingdom) With a backbone (phylum) And a tale that extends below its anus (phylum) The backbone is made from bone or cartilage (subphylum) It also has a skull (subphylum) And is cold blooded (class) With scales instead of hair or feathers (class).

See how these descriptions helps biologists more accurately communicate? When analyzing this animal, you have a clear roadmap of what it is you are talking about. Compare this system to our current state of movie genres: “We want you to write a comedy. Go!” That’s kind of like saying, “We’d like you to draw an animal. Go.” Vague, to say the least. Now, instead, think back to Bob Mondello’s description of The Red Turtle from the preface. He describes the film as: • • • • • • •

A tale of trauma A tale of transformation A survival story Animation Wordless For older folks One that centers on family.

Now we’re getting somewhere. These aren’t genres. These are descriptors. Mondello is breaking the movie down into comprehendible units that work

6

Introduction

together. Now I can see the skull, the backbone and the scales. I can see The Red Turtle more clearly through this sort of lens. Screenwriters need this sort of precision to discuss and consider the stories we are trying to tell. It would help to communicate to producers. It would help to collaborate with other writers. And it would help when trying to describe and analyze the story to a general audience and to ourselves. The Screenwriters Taxonomy encourages writers to think creatively, yet communicate professionally. My approach is not a scholarly approach. It’s a creative approach. Rest assured, there are well known scholars who will define these content areas differently than I do (especially “genre”). That’s okay. I’m not saying that they are wrong. What I’m saying is that this approach is a more specific way of thinking about storytelling—a way that can help us all communicate better.

Figure 1.1 The Screenwriters Taxonomy Illustration by Tyler Ayres

The Need for a Road Map

7

Figure 1.2 Taxonomy of All Living Things Illustration by Tyler Ayres

The Screenwriters Taxonomy Versus the Roadmap Metaphor At first blush, a taxonomy might feel too scientific to a screenwriter. Too prescriptive. Paint by numbers. Yet in practice, it’s anything but. Think of the seemingly infinite living things on this planet, both present and past. The Taxonomy of All Living Things doesn’t limit Mother Nature’s imagination any more than the Screenwriters Taxonomy should limit yours. Further, I’m not suggesting that you have to follow the expectations outlined in the taxonomy, simply that we should be able to identify and discuss them. These ideas define the audience’s expectation, not ours. Yet it’s only through understanding and discussing the audience’s expectations that we can subvert, enhance, reinvent or redirect them to craft our own unique stories. Still, some people shy away from a descriptive approach. I understand your reluctance. But let me try to explain the approach in a different way. Let me explain the process through the metaphor of a road trip. This road trip is

8

Introduction

your script—your story idea—and each layer of the taxonomy is a decision that you will make along that trip. No preconceived ideas, just possible options to consider. You are completely in charge.

Movie Type and Supergenre Broadly put, all films are either some form of drama or comedy. This is similar to all living things being either a plant or an animal. Instead of kingdom (which differentiates animal from plant), I label the distinction between Comedy and Drama the film’s Type. Instead of phylum, I believe we can categorize all films into eleven supergenres. Supergenres broadly define the audience expectations for Character, Story and Atmosphere. For example, “Crime” is one of these supergenres. Going to see a crime movie, audiences already know that: • There will be criminals going up against The Law. • The story will end with the criminal being convicted or escaping conviction. • We’ll visit the scene of the crime, the criminal’s lair and legal inner workings. These are some of the broad strokes of the crime supergenre. Returning to the road trip as metaphor: let’s imagine that your road trip starts in Columbia, Missouri—a city roughly in the middle of the United States. Now imagine a road trip from Columbia Missouri to any other city in the Americas. Each road trip will represent a specific movie script that you have in mind. Columbia to Toronto, Canada = Script A. Columbia to Guadalajara, Mexico = Script B; Columbia to Denver, Colorado = Script C. And so on. There are hundreds of thousands of cities you could travel to (and scripts that you can write) and very few limiting factors on how your trip will go. Yet there are decisions that you have to make. The first choice on any given road trip is which direction to drive. I’ll give you two choices: east or west. I know, the contrarian in you points out that you could drive due north or due south. But eventually you will be driving either easterly or westerly. And besides, it’s a metaphor. Go with it. East versus West is analogous to the movie type. Either you’re going to start by driving east or you are going to start by driving west. You are going to decide to write either a comedy or a drama. Now, since you are driving, you’ll eventually have to drive through Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, Oklahoma, or Tennessee on your trip. No way around it. You can’t leave Missouri by car without traveling through one of these eight states. Imagine those states as

The Need for a Road Map

9

your supergenres. You’re going to have to drive through one of them to tell your story. Right? But no one’s trying to tell you how to drive, what kind of car (or truck or motorcycle or lawnmower) you should use or whether to take the highway, byway or dirt roads. It also doesn’t matter which direction you travel in to reach your destination. If you want to drive to Canada by driving southwest out of Missouri into Oklahoma—that’s great. Be original.

Macrogenres and Microgenres Macro- and microgenres provide the details that some of you were so desperately looking for earlier. For instance, within the crime supergenre, you can choose macrogenres like: • • • • • •

Gangster Mystery/detective Superhero Criminal biography Political crime Crimes of addiction

These are similar to the cities that you can visit in each state that you drive through. If you’re driving through Oklahoma, where are you going to stop for lunch? • • • • •

Oklahoma City? Tulsa? Lawton? Ardmore? Enid?

The choice is up to you. There’s plenty to choose from. For instance, there are at least fifty different macrogenres that can be paired with any supergenre. Further, each macrogenre has its own microgenres. For example, the superhero macro has at least three micros, including: • Superhero’s Origin Story • Superhero fighting Personal Battles • Superhero Saving the World. Microgenres are like restaurants, peppering the towns inside the states that you are driving through. You don’t have to stop for lunch if you don’t want to, but if you do . . . you have options.

10

Introduction

Voice The Voice you create is analogous to the car you drive on your journey. You may be traveling from Columbia, Missouri, to Atlanta, Georgia, by way of Indianapolis, Indiana, and Nashville, Tennessee, but are you driving a pick-up truck, a convertible or a motorcycle? The traditional mode of travel might be a two-door sedan with a sunroof, bucket seats, cruise control and a nice stereo system that takes unleaded gasoline. But those are not your only choices. Similarly, to establish a Voice, screenwriters should ask themselves: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Will the story be told linearly? Am I writing this for kids? Adults? Animated, live action, puppets or other? Is it a musical? Silent?

The answers to these questions and others define your storytelling vehicle. You choose the color, make and model of your “car.” On top of which, who even says it needs to be a car?

Pathway If voice is your vehicle, then the pathway is your road choice. Your pathway is how you choose to lead your audience through the story. Regardless of genre, each story sends its protagonist(s) along a specific trajectory (or pathway). This pathway becomes a subconscious roadmap for the audience—a tool to guide them through the story. Again, more questions and decisions: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Do you plan to have a single protagonist? Will your story follow the Hero’s Journey? Will the audience and protagonist travel together? Is the antagonist another human being? In the end, is your hero victorious?

Most Hollywood films choose the highway. This is how people expect you to travel. But consider taking the back roads, side streets and blue highways. Take the scenic route in your jeep, or drive on the berm in a lawnmower for all I care!

Point of View The screenplay’s Point of View (POV) is a critical decision point. Personally, I like to think about POV as a decision tree with three central questions.

The Need for a Road Map

11

• Limited or omniscient? • Primary or secondary? • Objective or subjective? Metaphorically speaking, it’s really a question of who’s driving the car. Is it on autopilot, are you driving or did you pick up some crazy hitchhiker and let them drive for awhile? This is the final and perhaps the most important layer of the taxonomy.

Infinite Choices To demonstrate how this collaborative tool might work for creating new screenplays, let’s use the taxonomy to expand and define an ambiguous idea. Just as an exercise, imagine that you are fascinated by the story of Romeo and Juliet. Since it is in the public domain, you decide that you might want to adapt it. Imagine that you are working with your producer and a cowriter. How would you proceed? Using the Screenwriters Taxonomy, a creative conversation might follow this sort of logic: Your producer wants a modern version of the Bard’s classic. She proposes a contemporary whodunit. You and your writing partner suggest starting the screenplay with the discovery of three dead teenagers, Romeo, Juliet and Paris, in an urban cemetery. With these first ideas, the three of you have already decided upon the movie type (Drama) and the supergenre (Crime). By making it a whodunit, you’ve narrowed in on one macrogenre (Mystery) and a microgenre (Whodunit). These decisions tell us a lot and suggest even more. If the audience knows from the beginning that Romeo and Juliet will die by the end, then the story’s central theme will be less about love itself and more about the tragic decisions made in the name of love. And rather than telling this story from a teenager’s point of view (since your central characters are dead), the story will most likely be told from an adult POV—perhaps a modern rendition of Friar Lawrence (now a “detective”)? It also means that the story will have some sort of nonlinear aspect to it, since you are starting your screenplay at the end of the original story. One way to unravel the mystery of these deaths in a modern-day whodunit might be to place some of the story inside of a courtroom, allowing detective (or lawyer) Lawrence a chance to explain the events of the crime to the jury (and the audience). This not only begins to focus the story on the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, but it also starts to put Detective Lawrence more on center stage. What is his character like? Perhaps this tragic tale has broken him, or perhaps he has been broken already, and this case pulls him deeper into despair. Sounds like a neo-noir story to me—one in which the detective reflects back on events through voice-over, told from a primary omniscient point of view.

12

Introduction

Now you have a fairly well defined roadmap, at least enough to get you started: • • • • • • • • •

Type: Supergenre: Macrogenre 1: Microgenre 1: Macrogenre 2: Microgenre 2: Voice: Pathway POV

Drama (tragedy) Crime Mystery Whodunit Legal Courtroom Nonlinear, live action, breaking the fourth wall Noir Primary omniscient

Consider how much information this simple process gives you and your partners to work with. You have a construct for your story. You know its general shape. You know, from the point of view, what sort of scenes you’ll need and which can be discarded. You have a theme and a general tone for the story, and you now know how this version will differ from Shakespeare’s. You also have a pretty good idea of where central secondary characters will come into play (as cops, witnesses, defense attorneys, suspicious family members and the like). Seven different layers each thought through and connected by the story, provide you with a creative roadmap to let your imagination start working on dialogue and scenes, characters and action. I can tell you from experience, this approach saves a tremendous amount of time by clearly defining expectations and creative ideas between team members. The producer knows what she’s getting, and the writers can collaborate much more effectively because the roadmap defines the trip. We’ll revisit this idea of adapting Romeo and Juliet in the final chapter. But between now and then, I hope that you can start to conceptualize how the Screenwriters Taxonomy can be used to collaborate on original screenplay ideas. With all the different options to choose from, there are more than 200 million unique combinations, providing you with some specific questions to ask the next time your agent or producer calls and asks: “Is this a genre that interests you?”

References Dunn, Rob. Every Living Thing: Man’s Obsessive Quest to Catalog Life, from Nanobacteria to New Monkeys. London: Harper Perennial, 2010. Mondello, Bob. “‘Fantastic Beasts’ and ‘The Red Turtle’ Bring Magic to the Screen.” National Public Radio, November 18, 2016. www.npr.org/2016/11/18/502616387/ fantastic-beasts-and-the-red-turtle-bring-magic-to-the-screen

Part I

Defining the Film

2

Movie Types and Supergenres

Movie Types The most general category in the Taxonomy of All Living Things is “kingdom,” which bifurcates all living things into plant or animal—that’s it—one simple distinction. The Screenwriters Taxonomy has a similar delineation with films: Comedy or Drama. The fundamental distinction within all narrative films is whether they are going to be funny or serious. That’s it. These are the two “Types” of movies. Of course, there are nuances. There are more than a dozen different brands of comedy, and at least ten brands of drama—including the ever-popular “dramedy.”

10 Brands of Drama Brand

Description

Examples

Dark Drama

Dramas dealing with intensely serious issues.

Oldboy Requiem for a Dream The Reader

Docudrama

Black Mass Dramatized adaptation of real-life events. While Into the Wild not always completely Zodiac accurate, the general facts are more or less true.

Docufiction

Interior. Leather Bar Different from docudramas, docufictional Strangers in Good films combine Company documentary and Your Name Here fiction, where actual footage or real events are intermingled with recreated scenes.

Dramedy

A serious story that contains some characters or scenes inherently humorous to the audience.

Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Everything Must Go Silver Linings Playbook

Hyperdrama

Coined by film professor Ken Dancyger, these stories exaggerate characters and situations to the point of becoming fable, legend or fairy tale.

Alice in Wonderland Fantastic Mr. Fox Maleficent

Light Drama

Lighthearted stories that are, nevertheless, serious in nature.

The Help Mary Poppins The Terminal

Satire Also see: Comedy of Ideas (in Comedy)

Satire can involve humor, but the end result is typically sharp social commentary that is anything but funny. Satire often uses irony or exaggeration to expose faults in society or individuals that influence social ideology.

Birdman Dr. Strangelove Fight Club Idiocracy Thank You for Smoking

Straight Drama

The 39 Steps This broad category applies to those that do Ghost World not attempt a specific Wuthering Heights approach to drama but, rather, consider drama as a lack of comedic techniques.

Tragedy

Stories that explore human suffering and end in devastation.

Manchester by the Sea Million Dollar Baby Fruitvale Station

Tragicomedy

A story that explores human suffering, but with an uplifting ending and/or with enough comedic elements to keep the audience laughing throughout the tragic story.

50/50 Bronson Man on the Moon Moonrise Kingdom

12 Brands of Comedy Brand

Description

Examples

Bathroom Comedy

Animal House Indecent comedy, often about sex and bodily Dumb and Dumber functions, containing a Wetlands healthy dose of profanity.

Comedy of Ideas Also see: Satire (in Drama)

Comedy used to explore serious ideas such as religion, sex or politics. Often characters represent divergent worldviews and are forced to interact for comedic social commentary.

Adventures of Baron Munchausen Bob Roberts MASH The Player

Comedy of Manners

Emphasizes verbal gymnastics above all else, utilizing clever insults and witticisms to entertain.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s The Graduate Under the Tuscan Sun

Dark or Black Comedy

Humor that makes light American Psycho of subject matter typically Deadpool considered taboo. Killer Joe

Farce

Exaggerating situations beyond the realm of possibility, thereby making them entertaining.

In the Loop The Producers Some Like It Hot

Observational Humor

Finding humor in the common practices of everyday life.

Carnage Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood Fast Food Nation

Parody (or Spoof)

Humor based on imitation. All parodies are based on a preexisting work that is widely recognized. The work is summarily exaggerated to the point of mockery and trivialization.

Airplane! Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me Hot Fuzz Young Frankenstein

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Defining the Film

Sex Comedy

Humor that is primarily derived from sexual situations and desire.

Choke Don Jon Knocked Up

Galaxy Quest Situational Comedy Humor derived from knowing a stock group of The Princess Bride characters and exposing Tyler Perry’s them to different Madea’s Big situations to create Happy Family humorous and ironic juxtaposition. Straight Comedy

Films that do not attempt Clueless a specific approach to Mrs. Doubtfire comedy but, rather, use The Peanuts Movie comedy for comedic sake.

Slapstick Comedy

Humor that uses tripping, Mr. Bean falling and cartoon-like The General violence as the core The Three Stooges element.

Surreal Comedy

Storytelling that includes behavior and storytelling techniques that are illogical, including bizarre juxtapositions, absurd situations and unpredictable reactions to normal situations.

After Hours Monty Python and the Holy Grail Swiss Army Man

It is important to note that some categories that use the word “comedy” or “drama” in their description are not listed. Just as a koala bear is not a bear and a starfish is not a fish, these “comedies” and “dramas” fit elsewhere in the Screenwriters Taxonomy. For instance, “Melodrama” and “Screwball Comedy” are pathways (Chapter 6), while “Romantic Comedy” and “Family Drama” are macrogenres (Chapter 3).

The Basics of Genre There’s no official governing board of genre. Genres have been created using a crowdsourced approach. They are built upon specific audience expectations that have evolved over the decades. For instance, if I say, “Let’s go see a western,” then I recognize that you already have specific expectations for the characters you’re going to see in the film, the basic kinds of stories that might unfold and the atmosphere within which those stories will be told. Atmosphere, Character and Story—these are the fundamentals of Genre.

Movie Types and Supergenres 19 Atmosphere A film’s atmosphere is affected by: • Location • Costumes and props • Visceral expectations of the audience. For instance, a film in the western genre often takes place in the American Southwest, with a large number of scenes filmed as exteriors so we can soak in nature’s beauty. We also expect to see saloons, a sheriff’s office, a brothel and maybe a hideout in the cliffs. The costumes and props focus on the people who live in these locations (cowboys and Native Americans). Naturally there will be guns, horses, headdresses and cowboy hats. We can also expect to see a sheriff’s star, cattle, rope, card games and whiskey and maybe a spittoon and a stagecoach. The visceral expectations of a film are the elements that will excite the audience and get their hearts pumping or their minds racing. Each genre creates different visceral expectations. In a western, the visceral expectations are created with fistfights, shootouts and exciting chases on horseback. There will also be spectacular images of the rugged countryside—a feast for the eyes. Together, these elements (location, costumes/props and visceral expectations) define the atmosphere of the western genre. If you went to see a western and you didn’t see those things, you would think you went into the wrong theater by mistake. Character A genre’s character also has three defining elements: 1. Character types 2. Character goals ( for each character type) 3. Stock characters. Horror movies are typically stories about an innocent victim being confronted by some sort of overpowering, evil entity whose sole intention is to kill and destroy. This scenario provides two central character types: the Victim and the Killer, each with their own character goals: to survive or to kill. The stock characters in a horror film are the other victims who are going to die off, one by one. Also, there is usually an ineffective Authority Figure, there to demonstrate that “even the police can’t stop this monster,” and an Expert who knows the killer’s history and can explain why the murders are happening.

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Defining the Film

Story The third requisite of all genres is Story, which includes: • Theme • Tentpole scenes • Story rhythm. The theme is the central recurring idea underlining the entire story. While each film may have its own specific story and theme, genres as a whole typically have broad themes that are explored. For instance, science fiction films typically critique modern societal problems, masking their critique in metaphor. An early example would be Invasion of the Body Snatchers, depicting a story about “pod people” taking over the minds and bodies of earthlings to comment on the Red Scare in the United States. Tentpole scenes are the big scenes that hold up the film—just like a circus uses large tentpoles to hold up the tent. In a sports movie, we expect to have the Training Montage, the Motivational Speech and the Big Game. Each genre has its own set of expected tentpole scenes, without which the audience will feel as if something is missing. Story Shape illustrates the general pattern a story follows. For instance, the story shape for a romance film typically crafts a scene with the girl . . . then the boy . . . then the girl . . . then the boy until they meet and start dating. Inevitably, they break up . . . and get back together until . . . in the end, they reunite and live “happily ever after.” This approach creates an editing rhythm. Each genre has its own general story rhythm. Atmosphere, Character and Story are the building blocks of genre, allowing screenwriters to understand the basic expectations of their audience. The writer needs to recognize that these expectations exist—not only within the audience but within the minds of cowriters, producers and ourselves. Once recognized, the screenwriter can choose to work with (or against) these expectations to craft a unique script. Keeping this definition of genre in mind, let’s revisit our list of “genres” from the introduction: • • • • • • • •

Action Adventure Comedy Drama Kids’ Movie Musical Road Movie Romantic Comedy Sci-Fi

Movie Types and Supergenres 21 • Western • Zombie. If you say that a film is a Comedy, Drama, Musical or Kids’ Movie, you aren’t defining the Atmosphere, Character or Story. If you say a film is a Comedy, the audience doesn’t have any idea about the location or costumes or props—they just expect it to be funny. If you say it’s a Musical, the audience doesn’t have any expectation for characters—they just know that people are going to sing. And if you say the film is a Kids’ Movie, that doesn’t give the audience any expectations about story—they just know that there won’t be any swearing or nudity. This is not to say that descriptors like comedy, musical or kids’ movie aren’t helpful in the writing process. They are very helpful. They are just not “genres.”

Supergenres When strictly considering Story, Character and Atmosphere as criteria, the choice of genres whittles down to about sixty. But in the spirit of creating a more specific vocabulary, I find that those sixty genres can stand beneath eleven genre umbrellas. I call these “supergenres” because they actually define the Story, Character and Atmosphere that all other genres subsequently use. Screenwriters Taxonomy: Supergenres Action Crime Fantasy Horror Life Romance

Science Fiction Sports Thriller War Western

To fully understand the nature of the supergenres, let’s examine them one at a time.

The Eleven Supergenres 1. Action Films Action films are visceral, not intellectual. These films have great fight scenes and/or extended chase scenes, enhanced with heart-racing stunts and vivid special effects. This genre empowers the audience by placing them in the hero’s position. The hero is nearly always a resourceful hero; sharp witted, quick on their feet and able to improvise both mentally and physically.

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Defining the Film

Despite these strengths, the hero typically begins the film with an internal problem, quickly followed by an external problem (marital issues and hostage issues in Die Hard, e.g.). By story’s end, our hero will resolve both by verbally explaining the internal problem while physically dealing with the external problem. These twin story threads create the rhythm of an action film. When one issue seems to be settled, the other issue falls apart.

Action Supergenre Examples Drama 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

1. Bourne Identity 2. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 3. Die Hard 4. Fast and the Furious The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo 5. 6. Inception 7. John Wick 8. Kingsman: The Secret Service 9. Mad Max: Fury Road 10. Mission Impossible

Comedy The A-Team Airplane! The Blues Brothers Central Intelligence Charlie’s Angels Deadpool Hot Fuzz Kick Ass Pineapple Express Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

You should also notice that the action film villain is usually single-minded with grand, two-dimensional plans like “taking over the world.” They are portrayed as highly intelligent with extreme character flaws, subsequently behaving in exceptionally nasty ways. This battle between the resourceful hero and the psychotic villain creates one of the broad themes in action films: the battle between Good and Evil. While we have every confidence in our hero, an important secondary character is typically put into harm’s way in an action film—often a damsel (or dude) in distress that the hero must protect, rescue or defend. Therefore, the climactic scenes at the end of the film are not only for the survival of the hero but for the survival of others. Additional stock characters in an action film include the villain’s henchmen, a mentor who provides the hero with technological or logistical information and unsuspecting individuals (such as politicians, children or civil servants) representing the society that the villain is trying to destroy. Often, the locations in an action film create a clash between the mundane and the exotic. Because the hero stands in for the “everyman” in the mind of the audience, the hero is often seen doing mundane things in typical locales. But then the hero is launched into some exotic location or some exotic element within a mundane setting (even if the story takes place in a typical city, the hero will find himself on the roof of the highest skyscraper, in the tomblike tunnels beneath the city or chased through the most regal museum). Therefore, ability to blend into a variety of locations is important for the hero. Costumes are designed to make the hero seem both strong and suave, allowing

Movie Types and Supergenres 23 him to wear an outfit to a dinner reception but then also fight off various henchmen while wearing the same clothes. The hero’s clothes must do double or triple duty. Similarly, props must be multifaceted. Anything that the hero touches or sees can be used as a weapon or as an object that can help them get out of a bind.

Action Supergenre Specifics Story Themes

Good over evil Logic over action Individual in a single-minded world

Expected Scenes

Assignment of the mission Confronting personal issues Picks up a companion/duty that must be upheld Big chase/battle Victorious ending

Story Rhythm

Internal vs. external problems • Hero’s personal problem in the first act • Hero vs. Villain in the second act • Hero solving both problems in the third act

Character Character Types

Character Goals

A. Resourceful Hero B. Smart but Nasty Villain C. Dame/Dude in Distress

A. Struggles against all odds to survive B. Single-minded evil objective C. To be rescued

Stock Characters

Sidekicks Henchmen The amazed locals Hero’s advisor

Atmosphere Location

Exotic and/or intense locations Clash between mundane and exotic locales

Costumes & Props

Costumes that make the hero seem strong and will allow him/her to blend in in a variety of locales They don’t change clothes much Props that allow our hero to be resourceful

Visceral Expectations

Fight scenes Chase scenes Stunts and special effects

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Defining the Film

2. Crime Films Crime films explore themes of truth, justice and freedom and contain the fundamental dichotomy of Criminal versus Lawman. This relationship can be explored in a variety of multilayered and complex stories. For instance, crime films often employ the idea of an “antihero” where the audience roots for a criminal. They can embrace the emotions behind a crime or the results of a poorly handled investigation or conviction. Traditionally, crime films have us rooting for the lawmen to win. We might follow the story of a lawyer, members of the jury, a valiant police officer or victims of a crime. It is important for writers to understand too that crime films make the audience jump through a series of mental “hoops.” The audience is often trying to solve the crime along with the detective, figure out how the elaborate heist is going to work, how the convict is going to escape or how the lawyer is going to corner the criminal at trial. Because the audience is already thinking on all cylinders, it is not uncommon for the crime film to use verbal gymnastics to keep the audience—and the protagonist—on their toes. The general rhythm of a crime story is Us versus Them. The story typically jumps back and forth between the “Good” and the “Bad”—and part of the fun for the audience is to decide who is on which side. Crime stories are full of trickster and shapeshifter archetypes, forever challenging the protagonist to trust the right person. Inevitably, characters in a crime story will be double-crossed. In the end of a crime story, justice is served one way or another, and the initial crime is laid to rest.

Crime Supergenre Examples Drama 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Argo The Big Short The Departed End of Watch The Fantastic Mr. Fox The Godfather Sicario Traffic Training Day The Usual Suspects

Comedy 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Bad Santa Fargo Get Shorty The Grand Budapest Hotel O Brother Where Art Thou? The Player Seven Psychopaths The Sting Take the Money and Run Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Crime stories take place in a wide variety of locations—but one constant element is that the location allows characters to hide or blend into their surroundings. Crime stories can also use costumes to hide people inside their uniform (in prison, the military, schools or a corporate setting). Costumes in this genre are also used to deceive the audience. Not everyone is who they

Movie Types and Supergenres 25 appear to be. In addition, the audience for crime films will find excitement in the criminal acts and in the violence that surrounds them. Typically, stories in the crime genre involve the protagonist assessing the crime and then trying to mete out the appropriate justice. The lawman must find clues, assess weaponry and gather information in order to assess how the criminal will be punished. Characters serve as judge, jury, victims, witnesses, organizational bosses and henchmen. Props in the genre tend to be items that can be used as weapons, clues and tools to either perpetrate or solve a crime.

Crime Supergenre Specifics Story Themes

Exploration of truth, justice and/or freedom

Expected Scenes

The criminal act (or its immediate aftermath) Clues and witnesses Red herring/double-cross/mistaken identity Final justice and/or “solving” the crime

Story Rhythm

Us vs. Them (in a way similar to the Sports genre)

Character Character Types

Character Goals

A. Criminal B. Lawman/Detective

A. To stand up against a system/person/ situation that they feel is unfair B. To uphold the law and/or the status quo

Stock Characters

Victim Witnesses Henchmen Boss Judge/Jury

Atmosphere Location

Someplace where a person can easily hide such as: • A big city • The wide-open rural landscape • Repetitive camouflage of the suburbs.

Costumes & Props

Costumes in which people can change “identities” and through which clothes seem to represent a person Weapons and things that can be used as weapons Clues Tools to analyze clues

Visceral Expectations

Mental and verbal gymnastics Violence from a character who is cornered Unusual or unexpected crime

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Defining the Film

3. Fantasy Films The hallmark of fantasy films is a sense of wonderment, typically played out in a visually intense world inhabited by mythic creatures, magic and/or superhuman characters. Props and costumes within these films often belie a sense of mythology and folklore—whether ancient, futuristic or otherworldly. The costumes, as well as the exotic world, reflect the personal, inner struggles that the hero faces in the story.

Fantasy Supergenre Examples Drama 1. Being John Malkovich 2. The Chronicles of Narnia 3. Dr. Strange 4. The Jungle Book 5. Life of Pi 6. The Lord of the Rings 7. Midnight in Paris 8. Pan’s Labyrinth 9. Where the Wild Things Are 10. Willow

Comedy 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

17 Again Alice in Wonderland Big Big Fish How to Train Your Dragon Mary Poppins Shrek Splash Swiss Army Man Time Bandits

Fantasy films create fantastical representations of humans’ subconscious fears and desires. These metaphoric tales are enjoyable for the audience, providing a sense of wish fulfillment. While a typical fantasy film follows the struggle of a single heroic protagonist, the hero is unknowingly standing in for “the many.” The rhythm of a fantasy film usually follows the Hero’s Journey, wherein the hero begins the journey in a familiar world, then leaves for an unknown world, only to return to the familiar world with new knowledge. Along the way, the hero typically gathers a band of misfit companions who will discover the unknown world together, becoming entangled in an epic battle as part of the final confrontation with an Evil Force. The mentor plays a key role in fantasy films, as do the hero’s allies. The mentor delivers wisdom from the past or from another world, allowing our hero to better understand the newly discovered, unusual creatures. These different life forms metaphorically represent different decisions that the audience members may have to make in their own lives, often providing insight to the hero (and audience) as she observes life in new, fantastical ways. Fantasy films encourage the audience to get lost in a new world and to make new discoveries about the majesty of life, just as the hero does.

Fantasy Supergenre Specifics Story Themes

Fantasies often play on the idea of wish fulfillment, playing into fantastical representations of our most basic human fears and desires Fantasy typically explores personal—rather than societal—issues

Expected Scenes

Epic battle/chase Mentor revealing “the true stakes” to the hero Gathering of the band of brothers/sisters Sacrifice of one for the many Hero’s moment of personal growth

Story Rhythm

Gathering the band, and then . . . An epic voyage, chase or discovery of a new world . . . Leading to a final, epic confrontation

Character Character Types

Character Goals

A. Hero that does not know s/he is standing up for the many B. Mentor C. Evil Force

A. To be true to what is right B. To pass on messages from the past to those in the present and future C. To destroy

Stock Characters

The band of brothers/sisters Unusual creatures or life forms that represent various decisions for the protagonist The masses portrayed by specific characters

Atmosphere Location

Intensely visual (and often exotic) environment that reflects the inner turmoil of the characters and of the world in which the characters live

Costumes & Props

Costumes that belie a sense of magic and/or superhuman powers. Props that allude to mythology and folklore (both ancient and futuristic)

Visceral Expectations

Mythic creatures Epic battles/decisions/journeys Intensely visual worlds full of wonderment Magic/superhuman feats

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Defining the Film

4. Horror Films Structurally and rhythmically, horror films are similar to war films. The story typically starts with an ensemble group of characters who die, one by one, at the hand of “the enemy” until the lone survivor must confront a stronger enemy in order to survive. Most horror films take place during modern day, in some remote location where a group of people can be isolated from the rest of society. The characters are often teenagers or people in their early twenties (the genre’s central audience). Characters wear typical, modern clothes—except for the killer, who often wears a strange costume and/or mask and utilizes a variety of props/weapons to kill the victims. Thematically, horror films often serve as morality tales, with the killer serving up violent penance for the victims’ past sins. Metaphorically, these become battles of Good versus Evil or Purity versus Sin. Characters who drink alcohol, take drugs, and have premarital sex tend to die, while the pure character tends to live.

Horror Supergenre Examples Drama 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

The Babadook The Conjuring Insidious Jaws Let the Right One In Psycho The Ring Rosemary’s Baby The Shining Sinister

Comedy 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

American Psycho An American Werewolf in London Beetlejuice The Cabin in the Woods Scary Movie Scooby-Doo Shaun of the Dead The Stepford Wives What We Do in the Shadows Young Frankenstein

The killer in horror films frequently has some sort of superhuman ability, whether it is telekinetic powers, extreme strength, near invulnerability, stealth or an above-average intellect. However, the killer does not always have to be human. It could be the devil or some sort of possessed human or even some sort of haunted location trying to kill the inhabitants. The visceral expectations in this genre come from the antagonist’s unique ability to kill, inevitably revealed as violent deaths of the ensemble characters, various “startle moments” as we wait to see who the killer will strike next and the final confrontation when the weakened protagonist must battle the powerful killer to survive.

Movie Types and Supergenres 29

Horror Supergenre Specifics Story Themes

Good vs. Evil Sin vs. Purity Penance for past sins

Expected Scenes

Arrival to isolation Various deaths Discovering the killer Killer vs. Survivor final battle

Story Rhythm

Typically a group whittled away by an unseen aggressor

Character Character Types A. The pure B. The nonpure C. Evil killer Stock Characters

Character Goals A. To survive B. To live their life as they see fit C. To kill

Ineffective authority figure Characters very similar to the hero (who die) Knowledgeable expert on Evil

Atmosphere Location

Someplace isolated, to which most characters are new and unfamiliar

Costumes & Props

Typical modern-day clothes and household items

Visceral Expectations

Bloody killings Startle moments Final confrontation with the killer

5. Life Films: Day-in-the-Life (or) Slice-of-Life Films Day-in-the-Life and Slice-of-Life films are subtly different from one another but share enough similarities that they can be lumped together into one supergenre. Life films take place in locations that are mundane to the protagonist(s). Costumes and props are comprised of modern-day clothes and items of daily life (again, to the protagonist, not necessarily for the audience; for instance, in Captain Fantastic, the family lives a survivalist existence in the woods of the American Northwest. What seems exotic to the audience is mundane to these characters). And while all of this may seem boring, the audience finds

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visceral pleasure from rooting for/against the day-to-day decisions that the main characters make. There is rarely an extreme antagonist in these films, other than devastating events like death or disease. Rather, the human antagonists are just as mundane as the protagonist. Nevertheless, they are adversaries that our protagonist must face to accomplish a series of personal goals. The other characters in this genre are family and friends, colleagues from work or school and the people who populate the world in which the protagonist lives (shop owners, neighbors, police, etc.). Common themes in this genre revolve around the idea that we all go through the same inherent struggles in our lives; the difference comes in the individual choices that we make. Typically, the audience can expect to see a variety of opinions on a single topic, forcing us to consider which choice will be “right” for the protagonist. Scenes that can be expected in life films are different characters contemplating the same topic, someone sitting down and having “the big talk” with the protagonist about what is “right,” and the Big Realization—either by the protagonist, changing their ways and making the “right” choice, or by the audience realizing that the protagonist made the “wrong” choice. There are two general rhythms of a Life film. The film either focuses exclusively on the protagonist, only cutting away to other characters as they relate to the protagonist’s problems, or the film will be designed as an ensemble piece, in which multiple stories are told in parallel.

Life Supergenre Examples Drama 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

12 Years a Slave Boyhood Dallas Buyers Club Fences The Help Million Dollar Baby Manchester by the Sea Moonlight Steve Jobs The Wrestler

Comedy 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

American Splendor The Descendants Captain Fantastic Good Morning, Vietnam Groundhog Day The Pursuit of Happyness The Terminal Sunshine Cleaning Up in the Air Waitress

Day-in-the-Life Most genres tell stories that involve the protagonist affecting the lives of other people. Whether it’s saving the planet, inventing something earth

Movie Types and Supergenres 31 shattering, robbing banks, killing the dragon, stopping a monster, ending the war or winning the big game, the ramifications of the protagonist’s decisions affect people. However, the exploits of the protagonist in a life film will have little or no affect on a larger population, and their actions have few ramifications on anyone else. Rather, the day-in-the-life film takes small events in a person’s life and raises their level of importance. The “small things in life” feel as important to the protagonist (and the audience) as the climactic battle in an action film or the final shootout in a western. In day-in-the-life films, you often see protagonists struggle with their art or with addiction; they deal with conflicts in their marriage, with illness, family issues, societal detachment and insanity, just to name a few. Often, the protagonists deal with multiple, overlapping issues in the course of the film—just as we do in life. One of the main enjoyments of a day-in-the-life film is for the audience to see how other people deal with the same sorts of problems that they are going through. This is not to say that protagonists in other genres do not also deal with these issues. They do, but protagonists in other genres deal with these problems while they are taking corporations to trial (The Verdict/crime genre), discovering the theory of relativity (Theory of Everything/romance genre), winning the championship (Hoosiers/sports genre) and fighting the Japanese (Bridge on the River Kwai/war genre). In a day-in-the-life film, life’s struggles are the central conflict in the story. Slice-of-Life Similarly, Slice-of-Life films use the same “small-ball approach” to explore the stories of a community. They are often ensemble stories—each character having their own story and the collective stories adding up to represent a particular cross-section of society. If the story is not an ensemble, then the main character’s story tends to broadly reflect the lives of a particular community. One of the main “enjoyments” of a slice-of-life film is to spend time in a specific location observing how that community copes with everyday issues.

Life Supergenre Specifics Story Themes

We, as human beings, all have the same struggles Life can be wonderful even if it seems mundane or oppressive at times

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Expected Scenes

The Big Talk The Big Realization Many differing opinions about life from many different points of view

Story Rhythm

Following the protagonist with limited cutaways to others in their life, but only as it relates to the protagonist or: An ensemble point of view in which the group stands in for a single protagonist and the film jumps among characters equally

Character Character Types

Character Goals

A. Protagonist who is a “typical person” B. The protagonist’s small group of friends C. The protagonist’s long list of adversaries

A. A series of small goals to succeed in life or the particular matter at hand B. Help the protagonist understand the world C. Obstruct and challenge the protagonist’s sense of wellbeing in the world

Stock Characters

Family Work colleagues People in this world (shop owners, civil servants, people around town)

Location

Locations that seem mundane to (or outside of the control of) the protagonist

Costumes & Props

Typical clothes and household items appropriate to the characters’ time period

Visceral Expectations

A series of key events or decisions that will change the character’s life

Atmosphere

6. Romance Films Similar in many ways to Life films, Romance films tend to take place in typical settings for the main characters: home, work and the places in between. However, there are also “special places”—locations that represent love. When connected to these locations, the characters dress differently and express a feeling of enchantment. These special places stand in stark contrast to the mundane world in which the characters find themselves for the majority of the film, reflecting an inner sense of happiness.

Movie Types and Supergenres 33 The visceral expectations in a romance are emotional. The audience expects to see a First Kiss at the very least and perhaps even a few hot and steamy sex scenes. However, these expectations are not always shown on screen and, especially in films from the 1940s and 1950s, the romantic interludes were often demonstrated through double entendres and visual metaphors. Audiences also expect to see the “downside” of love and are emotionally prepared for heartbreak and loneliness as part of the story.

Romance Supergenre Examples Drama 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Annie Hall Brokeback Mountain Carol Casablanca Her How Stella Got Her Groove Back 7. La La Land 8. The Notebook 9. Southside with You 10. The Theory of Everything

Comedy 1. 50 First Dates 2. Beauty and the Beast 3. Bringing Up Baby 4. Forgetting Sarah Marshall 5. How to Be Single 6. Knocked Up 7. The Lobster 8. Silver Linings Playbook 9. Sixteen Candles 10. There’s Something about Mary

The traditional characters (and story rhythm) in a romance center around the “Boy” and the “Girl.” The old axiom to describe romance stories is: Boy meets Girl, Boy loses Girl, Boy gets Girl back. This is the general rhythm, with the scenes split evenly between the Boy and the Girl—each wanting to “fall in love.” Of course, we will also see characters such as the Best Friend who gives the lovers guidance, and the Other (often an ex-lover, but also a job opportunity, illness or family obligation) that stands in the way of love. We will watch how each side relates to falling into and out of love. It should be noted that the lovers are not always boy and girl. Brokeback Mountain is a romance between two men. The idea of love does not always fit within our social norms either; Lolita is a romance between a pedophile and his teenage bride. In fact, it doesn’t even have to be a romance between two living things. For instance: Her. Nevertheless, romance films can usually be identified by themes that reinforce our beliefs about love: Love at First Sight, Love Conquers All and There Is Someone Out there for Everyone, just to name a few. The tentpole scenes in a romance are the lovers meeting for the first time, their first date, their first “kiss,” the breakup, advice from their friends and a final reuniting of the couple—which may end poorly or happily ever after. These scenes almost always include the two protagonists, who are surrounded with stock characters to populate their mundane world: service providers, friends, family, ex-lovers and characters who represent other

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interests that take time away from the relationship, such as work, hobbies, habits, addictions and travel opportunities.

Romance Supergenre Specifics Story Themes

A variety of themes that typically follow a single, well-worn saying that everyone already knows, such as: • Love at first sight • There is someone out there for everyone • Love conquers all • Everyone is beautiful, it just takes the right person to see it.

Expected Scenes

First meeting Love scene and/or first kiss Advice and/or sabotage from others Breakup(s) Final reuniting of the couple Death or happily ever after

Story Rhythm

Boy vs. Girl And then, within that structure: Pro–Con–Pro– Con of the relationship

Character Character Types A. B. C. D.

The Girl The Boy The Other The best friend(s)

Stock Characters

Character Goals A. B. C. D.

To fall in love To fall in love To stand in the way of love To give guidance

Service providers (waiters, store clerks) Examples of good and bad relationships Family/friends Characters that represent alternatives to love: work, travel, hobbies

Atmosphere Location

The Normal Worlds of both main characters— typically home and work And a “special place” that represents “romance”

Costumes & Props

Clothes and daily items that reflect the inner happiness (or sadness) of each character Objects that portray the typical daily life

Visceral Expectations Love scenes—emotional and physical

Movie Types and Supergenres 35 7. Science Fiction The science fiction film is often the story of the protagonist (and her allies) facing something that is “unknown” or “incomprehensible” with the potential to change the future of the human race. The Unknown may be represented by a villain with incomprehensible powers, a creature we don’t understand or a scientific scenario that threatens to change the world. Regardless of who or what antagonizes the hero, we expect tentpole scenes in which our protagonist faces the unknown head-on and learns an important truth about humanity before the final confrontation in which she will risk “everything.” And, of course, there will be a scene where the “incomprehensible unknown” is explained by a scientist or a more intelligent being—allowing the storytellers to explore philosophical and moral issues about society. Science fiction films frequently force the audience to consider the nature of human beings, the confines of time or space and the concepts of human existence in general. The anagnorisis of these stories often forces the audience to reflect on thematic questions such as: Is there a right or wrong? Are we in control of our own destiny? Like the fantasy genre, science fiction often takes the audience into an intensely visual world. The visceral expectations of this genre naturally tend to lean toward fantastic locations and special effects, battles with epic stakes and fun and unusual characters. However, if the story (or budget) doesn’t allow for these visceral expectations, then audiences are equally intrigued by mind-bending concepts and strong social commentary.

Science Fiction Supergenre Examples Drama 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

The 5th Wave Arrival Blade Runner Children of Men A Clockwork Orange District 9 Ex Machina Morgan Planet of the Apes Ready Player One

Comedy 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

The Adjustment Bureau Guardians of the Galaxy Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Hot Tub Time Machine Idiocracy Men in Black Pixels Repo Man Sleeper Wall-E

Looking at the list of science fiction film examples, it may seem difficult to establish specific locations, costumes and props. The key is not to concentrate on the specifics but rather on the idea of a clash between the “alien” and the “familiar.” To accomplish this, the writer can employ a few techniques: • Making “the alien” seem familiar (e.g., put a saloon on another planet) • Making “the familiar” seem alien (e.g., show Manhattan completely abandoned)

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Defining the Film

Perhaps because the worlds and the concepts in science fiction films are so fantastical, the characters are often more simple (although usually a lot of fun). The hero usually has a group of Friends, and together they battle the villain (or complex scenario). The hero and allies are simply focused on fixing the problem, or stopping the villain, and navigating the new world(s) in which they find themselves. They do not have complex personal issues to worry about. Background characters include the scientists/experts, the alien or unusual beings and the unsuspecting masses that are at risk of being destroyed. The science fiction film acts like a chameleon when it comes to story rhythm—frequently mimicking the macrogenre with which it is paired (see next chapter).

Science Fiction Supergenre Specifics Story Themes

Philosophical exploration of political and social issues through metaphor Exploration of the human condition and our place in the universe, on the planet or in society The hero often fights unknown forces that the rest of the population is oblivious to

Expected Scenes

Our hero facing the unknown Coming face to face with some universal truth Explanation of the science of this world A final confrontation, risking everything

Story Rhythm

Wide range of structural options—typically relies on other subgenre for its story rhythm

Character Character Types A. Hero B. Villain or scenario C. Hero’s support team

Character Goals A. To navigate the science-fiction world to achieve the goal B. Uses science or technology to achieve their evil goal or to stop the hero C. To understand, utilize, fix and operate science to help the hero

Movie Types and Supergenres 37 Stock Characters

Scientists Alien, foreign or futuristic beings The unsuspecting masses

Atmosphere Location

Juxtaposition between alien and familiar images Set some time in the near or distant future

Costumes & Props

Costumes specific to the film’s futuristic setting but also grounding the audience with hints of modern or historic objects Combine the familiar and the alien

Visceral Expectations

Grand special effects Epic stakes Mind-bending concepts and phenomena that are not fully accepted by mainstream science Fun and unusual characters and/or settings that combine the familiar and the alien

8. Sports Of course, we know that in a sports movie, people will be playing sports, and it will basically be the story of “Our Team” versus “Their Team.” Their team will always try to win, and our team will show the world that they deserve recognition or redemption. The story could also be an individual athlete, or the story could also focus on an individual playing on a team. Our tentpole scenes are going to be the Big Game, the Big Talk or Motivational Speech, the Training Sessions (often à la montage) and the Loss of an Important Character along the way. These scenes all play into one or more of the following themes: • Hard work and dedication pay off • There is no “I” in “Team” • Sacrifices need to be made in order to win. These themes (and others like them) are vital in an underdog story—which nearly every sports movie follows. We hardly ever root for the champion, although it is not impossible. In order to set up an underdog story, it is important to create a sense that the other team/athlete is “the best.” Therefore, as

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Defining the Film

a storyteller, you need to compare and contrast Our Team to Their Team. This creates the story rhythm of cutting back and forth between these two entities for a majority of the film until the two finally meet for the Big Game.

Sports Supergenre Examples Drama 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

8 Mile Bend It Like Beckham Hoosiers The Hunger Games The Hustler Moneyball The Natural Remember the Titans Rounders Spare Parts

Comedy 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

The Bad News Bears Blades of Glory Caddyshack Cool Runnings Kingpin Semi-Tough Talladega Nights Tin Cup Undrafted Whip It

Locations primarily consist of the playing field, the practice field and the personal homes of the lead characters. Costumes and props center around uniforms and sports equipment—with personal (nonathletic) items representing the personality of each athlete. These characters are often stock characters. For instance, in addition to coaches, refs and star players, we often see a character who: • • • • •

believes that the underdog team can win believes that the champion can never lose holds secret knowledge about the game is physically weak but morally or mentally strong sacrifices him-/herself for the team.

These characters bond during the course of the film, allowing the underdog to win the final game—which is where the audience finds the greatest visceral expectation. Other visceral moments come from watching the extraordinary athletic ability on both teams. It is important to note, however, that sports films are often misclassified. Just because a film uses athletics and sports as part of the story, it does not necessarily mean that it fits in the sports genre. For instance, the film Bull Durham is a Romance story about a love triangle within the minor-league baseball community. There are baseball games and baseball players, but it falls in the romance genre because of the atmosphere, character and story elements. On the flip side, not all movies in the sports genre have to do with sports. I know that this sounds odd, but consider the movie 8 Mile—which

Movie Types and Supergenres 39 has all of the trappings of a sports movie but whose characters compete in rap battles instead of football. Or Spare Parts, which follows a high school robotics team.

Sports Supergenre Specifics Story Themes

Underdog story Hard work pays off Sacrifices need to be made in order to succeed in the world of sports

Expected Scenes

The Big Talk/Motivational Speech Playoffs leading to the Big Game Loss of an important character The Big Game

Story Rhythm

Underdog vs. Top Dog

Character Character Types A. Our “Team” B. Their “Team” C. The “Coach” Stock Characters

Character Goals A. To show people that they deserve recognition (to redeem themselves) B. To win C. To provide the Hero with a key insight Coaches Refs Crowd/family The believer(s) and the nonbeliever(s) The one with skills who, for some reason, never made it to the top

Atmosphere Location

Playing field Practice field Personal homes (or lives) of the lead characters

Costumes & Props

Athletic uniforms and equipment Personal clothes and items that represent the different personality types of the teams and coaches

Visceral Expectations

Preparation for the game Extraordinary athletic ability (mental and physical) The Big Game

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Defining the Film

9. Thriller While an action film typically takes place in an exotic location and/or contrasts a mundane location with the exotic, the thriller genre takes a typical location and elevates it to the extreme. For instance, James Bond action films take place all over the world, but Fletch—a comedy thriller—simply takes place on the beaches and streets of Los Angeles. Nevertheless, these films are filled with suspense, cliffhangers and extreme stunts pulled off by a seemingly normal hero. The tension in a thriller is almost always based on the disproportional strength between the hero and the villain. In this genre, the protagonist is typically an unwitting hero who is reluctantly drawn into the story and must do battle with an epic villain to save the lives of innocent victims. Our hero inevitably finds himself deeply involved in a situation that involves insane criminals with a very dark past—who will threaten, double-cross and kill anyone who stands in their way. Even the typical good guys in other genres (the police, detectives and guards) can’t be trusted in a thriller. Granted, there are “good guys” in a thriller, but the audience and hero never really know who they are until the end. Thrillers explore the ideas of hope and fear, constantly tearing the hero (and, more importantly, the audience) between these two extremes. It is not uncommon to have the audience hope that the hero will defeat the villain yet fear that they will not. Often, there is a central mystery that the protagonist must solve, one that is obfuscated from the audience and the hero, so that it is difficult to know what is needed to successfully unravel the impending sense of doom that hangs over the hero.

Thriller Supergenre Examples Drama 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Black Swan Bridge of Spies The Girl on the Train Memento Psycho Se7en Shutter Island The Silence of the Lambs The Martian Zodiac

Comedy 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

The Cable Guy The Family Fletch Get Shorty Inside Out Kingsman: The Secret Service Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Midnight Run The Nice Guys War Dogs

The costumes in a thriller tend to mask the intentions of the characters, while the props tend to reveal these intentions: weapons, secret devices, hidden messages and the like. We may understand what a character is trying to accomplish, but we don’t know why or what kind of person they truly are. This dynamic of uncertainty plays into the story rhythm. In a thriller, the audience almost

Movie Types and Supergenres 41 always follows the protagonist into this dark world by accident; once inside the dark world, we are as lost as the hero and must struggle to find the answers to a mystery. We struggle to find out the truth—just as the hero does—until the end, when a central piece of information is revealed and we can finally make sense of the world and figure out how to escape victoriously (or die trying). The story rhythm of a thriller naturally leads to some expected tentpole scenes: • • • • •

Hero gets into trouble Big twist or double-cross Big reveal (where we learn the bigger story behind it all) Big fight or chase Justice is finally delivered, but at the price of the hero’s life or innocence.

Thriller Supergenre Specifics Story Themes

A mystery must be solved beneath a sense of impending doom. The audience is constantly torn between hope and fear—hope that things will turn out all right for the protagonist (and the person being rescued) and fear that they may not succeed.

Expected Scenes

Slow reveal that a “bigger story” is at play Justice is finally delivered at the end—but often at the expense of the hero’s life or innocence Chase/fight scenes (either physical or mental) Revealing past, twisted relationships

Story Rhythm

The protagonist typically has a central problem caused by an incredibly strong antagonist The protagonist is trying to stop the antagonist from achieving a goal The audience struggles to keep up or find out what is happening, until a central piece of information is revealed

Character Character Types

Character Goals

A. Epic villain B. An unwitting hero C. Innocent victims

A. Destroy the protagonist B. Duty-bound to save others (despite typically being unwittingly forced to solve a crime or stop a plot) C. Caught between the villain and the hero, they simply need to survive

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Defining the Film

Stock Characters

Wide variety of criminal elements Menaced women and children Characters with a dark and sordid past Cops, agents and/or private eyes

Location

Typical settings taken to the extremes

Costumes & Props

Costumes that mask the true intentions of the characters Props that betray the true intentions of the characters when they are revealed: weapons, secret items, hidden messages, etc.

Visceral Expectations

Suspense Cliffhangers Extreme reversals

Atmosphere

10. War The War genre has a lot in common with both the horror and sports genres. Similar to horror, the war film typically tells the story of a small group of isolated individuals who—one by one—get killed by an outside force until there is one character (or a small group) left to confront the enemy in a fight to the death. The idea of facing death and a final battle between deathly forces are the lead visceral expectations in a war film. However, one key difference between horror and war is that in a war film, we tend to believe that the protagonists have a greater ability to strategize. Even though the enemy may outnumber or outpower the hero, we assume that the enemy can be defeated if only the hero can figure out how.

War Supergenre Examples Drama 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

300 Apocalypse Now Braveheart The Deer Hunter Hacksaw Ridge Hotel Rwanda The Hurt Locker Life Is Beautiful Saving Private Ryan The Thin Red Line

Comedy 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

1941 Catch-22 Dr. Strangelove Inglourious Basterds MASH Men Who Stare at Goats Operation Dumbo Drop Stalag 17 Stripes Tropic Thunder

Movie Types and Supergenres 43 Highlighting strategic interplay between two sides is what makes the war film similar to the sports film. The characters have different names, but they run parallel in their storytelling function: • The soldier (athlete) wants to win the battle (the game) • The commander (coach) wants to lead his troop (team) to victory • The companions (teammates) unite and sacrifice for the troop (team) to win • The enemy (other team) wants to kill (beat) the hero at all costs. Instead of sports uniforms, the characters wear military uniforms. Their sporting equipment is the paraphernalia of war (weapons, camouflage, maps, radios and war machines). Instead of an athletic field, war stories have a battlefield and training grounds. Because this genre usually deals with many characters simultaneously, each character ends up being a little more two-dimensional than in other genres. We don’t see all of these characters in every film, but we see them frequently enough that they are staples: • • • • • •

The girl back home The traitor/deserter The soldier who is brave to a fault The soldier who is emotionally terrified but morally or mentally strong The soldier who sacrifices him-/herself for the troop The soldier who is more comfortable at war than at home.

Unlike a sports movie, the war story rarely bounces back and forth between the hero and the enemy. Instead, the antagonist in a war film remains unseen (or rarely seen), and it is this uncertainty of death that haunts our heroes. Anybody can die at any time in a war. The narrative construct of an unseen enemy underlies the central themes in a war movie: the inhumanity of war (and the humanity that can surface because of it), the will to survive, the honor and trust among soldiers and/or the sacrifice that a society makes when sending citizens into battle.

War Supergenre Specifics Story Themes

The will to survive The meaning of sacrifice Inhumanity of war and/or effects of war on society Patriotism and/or honor among soldiers Ideas of us vs. other

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Defining the Film

Expected Scenes

One by one, soldiers die Training (mental or physical) Final battle

Story Rhythm

Typically a group whittled away by unseen aggressor in a way similar to the Horror genre Another approach is Us vs. Them similar to the sports or crime genres

Character Character Types

Character Goals

A. B. C. D.

A. B. C. D.

Soldier Commander Companion(s) Enemy

Survive/win Lead others to victory Band together to do their best Kill

Stock Characters

Girl back home Soldiers representing emotions (fear, bravery, stupidity, honesty, naiveté, love, etc.) Civilians Traitor or deserter Mindless leadership of the war machine

Location

Foreign land vs. back home Training ground or preparation Battleground (bunker, tank, town, etc.)

Costumes & Props

Uniforms and camouflage (literal or metaphoric) Weapons and war machines Symbols of peace and/or a time before the war

Visceral Expectations

Battle scenes Hardship, personal struggle and death Extreme sacrifice

Atmosphere

11. Western Films in the Western genre often take place in the American Southwest or in Mexico, with a large number of scenes occurring outside so we can soak in nature’s rugged beauty. But we also expect to see saloons and corrals and sheriff’s offices, as well as a brothel or a hideout in the cliffs. The costumes and props tend to focus on the people who live in these locations (cowboys and American Indians), so there will be guns and horses and cowboy hats—black hats if you’re “bad,” white hats if you’re “good.” We’ll also see sheriff stars, cattle, card games and whiskey and maybe a spittoon and a stagecoach.

Movie Types and Supergenres 45 The visceral expectations found in a western are created during the expected fistfights, gunplay and exciting chase/battle scenes. There will also be spectacular panoramic images of the countryside including sunsets, wide-open landscape and endless deserts and sky.

Western Supergenre Examples Drama 1. 3:10 to Yuma 2. Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford 3. Django Unchained 4. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly 5. Hell or High Water 6. Mad Max 7. No Country for Old Men 8. Tombstone 9. True Grit 10. Unforgiven

Comedy 1. 2.

Back to the Future III A Big Hand for the Little Lady 3. City Slickers 4. Little Big Man 5. Lone Ranger 6. Maverick 7. A Million Ways to Die in the West 8. Rango 9. Three Amigos 10. Wild Wild West

In a Western, you almost always have a sheriff—or someone who is acting like a sheriff—who wants to uphold “American law and order” in the town. But they can’t because there are outlaws and gunfighters (or Indians or Mexicans) who are set on subverting the law. Caught in between the lawman and the outlaw are all of the characters who are just trying to get by in a harsh frontier world—townspeople and families, ranchers and shop owners, bartenders and musicians, gamblers and whores. Thematically, most Westerns are fundamentally stories that explore the idea of order versus chaos; sometimes order comes in the form of revenge over evil forces, other times it comes in the form of a professional duty to society or in our inherent need to progress as a country. To underscore that broad theme, the audience can certainly expect to see a final standoff between the lawman and the outlaw. They also expect to see scenes in which the outlaw creates chaos, scenes in which the lawman rallies the troops and scenes with the outlaws in their hideout, and we’ll see someone tell the hero that he can’t possibly win. You can also recognize the theme in the story rhythm of the western. Most westerns start with a protagonist who is part of “a society” (a family, a town, a wagon train, etc.) and creates a sense of order. However, the protagonist is soon peeled away from their societal bond by some sort of chaotic entity. The rest of the story is then spent preparing for and standing up against the

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Defining the Film

lawless, chaotic force that destroyed the protagonist’s sense of order. Many but not all westerns are set in the past; No Country for Old Men is modern, while Mad Max takes place in the future. Nor do they even have to take place on earth (e.g. Serenity).

Western Supergenre Specifics Story Themes

Law vs. chaos Codes of honor and/or personal justice Taming the wild/savage (i.e., conquest of nature)

Expected Scenes

Showdown/duel One against many Traveling from the wilderness into town Man alone trying to survive

Story Rhythm Typically follows the protagonist, cross-cutting between one thematic element and the other to demonstrate the internal conflict of the protagonist (law vs. chaos or savage vs. civil, etc.)

Character Character Types

Character Goals

A. B. C. D.

A. B. C. D.

Single-minded individual Sheriff/deputy/bounty hunter Outlaw/gunfighter Damsel/townspeople in distress

Stock Characters

Live and prosper in a harsh land Uphold the law Subvert the law Get by/get along

Townspeople: bartender, merchant, musician, banker, deputy, hooker, barber, hotel owner Out-of-townspeople: cattle hands, posses, native people, prospectors, travelers, stagecoach drivers

Atmosphere Location

A frontier full of expansive landscape, harsh wilderness and/or desolate locations In town: saloons, jails, hotels, merchants Out of town: ranches, hideouts, homesteads

Costumes & Props

Bland, tough clothing peppered with cowboy hats, boots and rawhide Utilitarian items such as guns, trucks, horses, cattle, rope, satchels, etc.

Visceral Expectations

Shootouts, chases, robberies Revenge Gambling and/or drinking to excess

3

Macrogenres and Microgenres

People are so used to using the word “genre” that I don’t want to stray too far from it. Instead, let’s try to refine its use by recognizing that there are three layers of genre. There are eleven supergenres: Action, Crime, Fantasy, Horror, Life, Romance, Science Fiction, Sports, Thriller, War and Western. As explained in the previous chapter, supergenres define story, character and atmosphere in a broad sense. The other two layers of genre (macro and micro) provide specificity to each supergenre and help the screenwriter to better define the audience’s expectations.

Macrogenres On the surface, “macrogenres” may appear to be similar to supergenres. Consider: “Time Travel” or “Mystery.” They seem like they could be supergenres. However, upon closer consideration, you’ll notice that these “genres” don’t necessarily create any concrete expectations for story, character and atmosphere. All we really know about a Time Travel film is that it will involve . . . uhm . . . time travel. All we know about a Mystery is that it will involve some sort of . . . uhm . . . mystery that needs to be solved. Therefore, these categories don’t fit our definition of supergenre. Instead, consider them macrogenres, containing interchangeable elements that pair with supergenres to create a more detailed story. If you pair a macrogenre (such as Time Travel) with any of the eleven supergenres, more specific expectations emerge. For instance, the criminal in a Crime movie can use time travel as a secret weapon. In a Romance, time travel can stand in the way of love. In a Slice-of-Life movie, the idea of time travel can be used metaphorically. And so on. The time travel element becomes interchangeable within each supergenre and molds itself to the story, character and atmosphere that has already been defined.

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Defining the Film Here are eleven examples of how time travel pairs with supergenres:

Time Travel Macro Paired with Supergenres Supergenre Action

Macrogenre Time Travel

Example Looper

Crime

Time Travel

Time Crimes

Fantasy

Time Travel

Time Bandits

Horror

Time Travel

Triangle

Life

Time Travel

A Christmas Carol

Romance

Time Travel

The Time Traveler’s Wife

Science Fiction

Time Travel

The Terminator

Sports

Time Travel

Touchback

Thriller

Time Travel

Déjà Vu

War

Time Travel

Edge of Tomorrow

Western

Time Travel

Back to the Future III

Similarly, the “Mystery” macrogenre transmogrifies depending on the supergenre with which it is paired. It does not stand alone, as a supergenre might. In a horror movie, the mystery is what might propel our “detectives” off into an isolated environment. In a sports movie, the mystery may drive the story of competition. In a western, it may drive each character toward the final shootout.

Mystery Macro Paired with Supergenres Supergenre

Macrogenre

Example

Action

Mystery

Reservoir Dogs

Crime

Mystery

The Usual Suspects

Fantasy

Mystery

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Horror

Mystery

The Blair Witch Project

Life

Mystery

The Hangover

Romance

Mystery

Vertigo

Science Fiction

Mystery

Minority Report

Macrogenres and Microgenres Sports

Mystery

8 Men Out

Thriller

Mystery

The Silence of the Lambs

War

Mystery

Atonement

Western

Mystery

The Hateful Eight

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The Fifty Macrogenres Macrogenres stand under the umbrella of supergenres not because they define the stories but because they refine the stories. I propose that there are at least fifty macros—but this is not an exhaustive list by any means:

Fifty Macrogenres 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

Addiction Adventure Alien Invasion Apocalyptic Artificial Intelligence Biography Bro-/Womance Demonic Disaster Disease/Disability Epic/Saga Erotica Escape Family Gangs/Punk/Brothers in Arms Gangster Ghost/Spirits/Angels Heist/Caper Historical Holiday Identity Killing Law Enforcement Legal Love

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

Magical Martial Arts Medical Military Mission Monster Mystery/Detective Political Procedural Protection Psychological Religious Revenge/Justice Romantic Comedy Science Fantasy School Films Showbiz/Artistry Slasher Spy/Espionage Superhero Superpowers Survival Terror Time Travel Workplace

As you read this list, stop for a minute and ask yourself if you need an explanation. My guess is that you don’t. You have seen enough of these kinds of movies that you know what a Holiday movie is, or a Workplace

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Defining the Film

picture or a Martial Arts film. Needless to say, the expectation of most of these macros should be clear because “genres” are based upon inherent audience expectations. To demonstrate how macros open up your creative options, imagine that you have been hired to write a crime film (your supergenre). You might consider matching this assignment with any of these macros:

Crime Supergenre Pairings A Supergenre

Macrogenre

Crime

Biography

Crime

Gangster

Crime

Mystery/Detective

Crime

Political

Crime

Superhero

Notice how you immediately have a more specific set of expectations about the crime story you are writing. Remember, macros intensify and/or alter the supergenre’s atmosphere, character and/or story to create a more unique piece. A gangster crime movie (Black Mass) will be much different than a political crime movie (All the President’s Men) or a superhero crime movie (Watchmen). Of course, you could just as easily combine crime with another set of macro options:

Crime Supergenre Pairings B Supergenre

Macrogenre

Crime

Addiction

Crime

Historical

Crime

Mission

Crime

Romantic Comedy

Crime

Time Travel

Drugstore Cowboy and Ocean’s 11 are both crime movies, but one is focused on criminals who steal because of their drug addiction—the addiction macro—while the other gang of criminals steals because they are on a personal mission—the mission macro. It is also possible (and often likely) to utilize more than one macro.

Macrogenres and Microgenres

51

Crime Supergenre Pairings with Two Macros Super

Macro A

Macro B

Example

Crime

Addiction

Gangster

Scarface

Crime

Historical

Biography

Catch Me If You Can

Crime

Mission

Mystery/ Detective

The Usual Suspects

Crime

Romantic Comedy

Political

Meet John Doe

Crime

Time Travel

Superhero

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Imagine how confident you would feel about the direction of your script if someone hired you to write a modern-day romantic comedy set against the backdrop of a political crime, rather than if someone asked you to write “a comedy.” Who do you think gets writer’s block more often: the person writing a superhero crime movie about time travel or that same person working on their “drama”?

Supergenre/Macrogenre Combinations With eleven supergenres and fifty macrogenres, there are 550 combinations that can help screenwriters mold their stories. Here are some of the most widespread (and a few of the most unusual) combinations. It should be noted that supergenres can also be paired together, with one serving as the macro to shape the other.

Supergenre: Action Classic Combinations Macrogenre

Example

Disaster

Deep Impact

Gangster

Public Enemies

Military

Black Hawk Down

Monster

King Kong

Law Enforcement

Training Day

Romantic Comedy

Killers

Science Fantasy

Mad Max: Fury Road

Superhero

Captain America: Civil War

Unusual Unions Biography

Free State of Jones

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Defining the Film

Action and thriller supers pair well with many macros because they act as an adjective—making the macro story more action packed or thrilling. Notice how the classic combinations for action macros all have to do with guns, explosions or life-threatening battles, a natural complement to action stories. Action movies are more difficult to pair with the more “realistic” macros such as biography because the gun-toting, explosive expectations are seen less often in real life. Nevertheless, they can be found—most likely with people whose life has overlapped significantly with war.

Supergenre: Crime Classic Combinations Macrogenre

Example

Escape

The Shawshank Redemption

Family

Godfather

Heist/Caper

Hell or High Water

Killing

The Silence of the Lambs

Martial Arts

Romeo Must Die

Mystery/Detective

Inherent Vice

Religious

Dead Man Walking

Workplace

Glengarry Glen Ross

Unusual Unions Apocalyptic

Children of Men

Crime pairs well with macros across the board. Criminal acts proliferate stories of all kinds. Where the crime super runs into trouble is when the visceral elements of the macro overshadow the excitement of the criminal act. For instance, an apocalyptic event within a story will make a prison break seem boring by comparison. However, by weaving the criminal act into a postapocalyptic world, the film Children of Men matched these genres’ layers nicely.

Supergenre: Fantasy Classic Combinations Macrogenre

Example

Adventure

Stardust

Epic

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Macrogenres and Microgenres Ghost/Spirits/Angels

Spirited Away

Love

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Mission

The Wizard of Oz

Superpower

The Green Mile

Time Travel

Groundhog Day

Workplace

Being John Malkovich

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Unusual Unions Gangster

Marvel’s Luke Cage [TV series]

The fantasy super meshes well with macros that employ fantastic characters or can be transported easily to another location. The more “realistic” the expectations are for a macro, the more difficult the pairing. For instance, it is difficult to find gangster films that are also fantasy because, in many ways, the gangster macro has roots in American crime lore, and movies centering on gangsters are often period pieces. It is difficult to populate 1930s Chicago with mythic creatures. However, the Netflix TV series Marvel’s Luke Cage created a gangster fantasy by inserting a superhuman character (bulletproof, überstrong) into a realistic gangster setting, thereby creating a folklore hero that belies a sense of wonderment, even in the “drab” setting of modern-day Harlem.

Supergenre: Horror Classic Combinations Macrogenre

Example

Apocalyptic

28 Weeks Later

Demonic

Sinister

Identity

Psycho

Monster

The Thing

Protection

The Babadook

Slasher

Leatherface

Survival

Backcountry

Terror

The Shining

Unusual Unions Military

Outpost

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Defining the Film

Horror, sports and western are three supergenres that, in my opinion, are the most difficult to pair. Horror has such specific story and character expectations that they often overshadow or negate the elements in the other genre. Rae Brunton was able to combine horror with the military genre in Outpost, but this seems to be a rare occurrence in which a macro is able to keep its identity while paired with horror. The most successful super–super pairings I have seen with horror have been crime and science fiction—two genres in which themes of guilt and retribution can serve as overlapping components. Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room is an excellent example of a (1) horror super, (2) crime macro + (3) gang/punk/brother in arms macro combination.

Supergenre: Life (Day-in-the or Slice-of) Classic Combinations Macrogenre

Example

Addiction

Barfly

Bromance

50/50

Erotica

9 1/2 Weeks

Gangs/Punks/Brothers

Boyz n the Hood

Holiday

A Christmas Story

Medical

Patch Adams

Psychological

Running with Scissors

School Films

Dazed and Confused

Unusual Unions Killing

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

Life supergenres have a difficult time pairing with viscerally engaging macros. Violence, explosions, time travel, monsters and life-threatening decisions just don’t happen in most people’s day-to-day existence. These supers typically work better with macros that emphasize individual decision making and interpersonal conflict. Sometimes, however, a story can do both. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer concentrates its story not on the violence (although there is that) as much as it does on the disturbing reaction that Henry has to his violent tendencies.

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Supergenre: Romance Classic Combinations Macrogenre

Example

Ghost/Spirits/Angels

Over Her Dead Body

Holiday

The Garry Marshall trilogy: New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day

Identity

Carol

Legal

Laws of Attraction

Magical

Ella Enchanted

Mystery/Detective

Vertigo

Science Fantasy

Blade Runner

Superpowers

The Age of Adaline

Unusual Unions Slasher

The Loved Ones

Romance films match well with most macros (and all other supers). Romantic stories can be told in the past, the present and the future, on Earth, in outer space or lost in a ghostly world. They can be slow paced or high octane. When considering the Romance genre, one of the most important considerations is whether the romance element is going to be the dominant story component or whether the macro is going to lead the story. One area in which romance has a hard time blending is when the macro emphasizes blatant violence as the core story element. Slasher films, for instance, don’t work well with romance—but it’s not impossible. Australian filmmaker Sean Byrne wrote and directed The Loved Ones, managing to blend the slasher macro with a teen romance super (although violence was certainly the focus of the film).

Supergenre: Science Fiction Classic Combinations Macrogenre

Example

Alien Invasion

Edge of Tomorrow

Artificial Intelligence

A.I.

Disaster

The Day After Tomorrow

Disease/Disability

Outbreak

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Gangs/Punks/Brothers

A Clockwork Orange

Love

Somewhere in Time

Medical

Cloud Atlas

Political

V for Vendetta

Unusual Unions Procedural

The Andromeda Strain

Since many science fiction stories are metaphorical social critique, they tend to pair well with a wide variety of macros. They can match on the surface level with movies about punks, superheroes or an alien invasion. But they can just as easily play off of political commentary, public safety issues or topics of war and civil unrest.

Supergenre: Sports Classic Combinations Macrogenre

Example

Addiction

The Fighter

Biography

The Hurricane

Magical

Angels in the Outfield

Procedural

Spare Parts

Revenge/Justice

Rocky IV

Romantic Comedy

Fever Pitch

School Film

Friday Night Lights

Showbiz

Moneyball

Unusual Unions Superhero

Batman v Superman

Sports movies pair best with stories about individual struggles concerning issues that most people can relate to. This super doesn’t transition well into space or into magical lands. That is not to say that there can’t be interesting sports-related scenes in movies of any genre (Quidditch, anyone?). However, supporting an entire film with a fantasy sport story is a more difficult task—primarily because the audience generally needs to relate to the game itself to understand the characters. If the game and the team dynamics are

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not understood, then it is difficult for the audience to empathize with the protagonist’s literal or metaphorical struggles. Another interesting aspects of the sports super is its ability to use the story rhythm to hybridize macros. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and G.I. Jane are not movies about sports per se. But the screenwriters’ story rhythm makes Batman v Superman play out like Rocky, and G.I. Jane feels like a military rendition of Any Given Sunday.

Supergenre: Thriller Classic Combinations Macrogenre

Example

Artificial Intelligence

Ghost in the Shell

Demonic

Angel Heart

Disease/Disability

Rear Window

Erotica

Stranger by the Lake

Legal

The Lincoln Lawyer

Martial Arts

Ninja Assassin

Psychological

Shutter Island

Spy/Espionage

The Manchurian Candidate

Unusual Unions Show Business/Artistic

The Player

Thriller pairs well with many macros because it tends to make the macro story more thrilling. Whether the antagonists are demonic or political, screenwriters can build up tension in the audience. However, thrillers are more difficult to connect with macros that hold our interest on a broader, more sociological level—such as show business movies or movies about addiction, in which the visceral elements are inherently different than that of a thriller. In the show business or addiction macros, we want to learn more about the characters, but in thrillers, the screenwriter is trying to hide information. Michael Tolkin did a nice job writing the screenplay for The Player, making a show business story about a murder in Hollywood. To do this, Tolkin told a murder story in which the protagonist had to hide in plain sight in order to not raise suspicion. This created scenarios in which the audience could learn about the entertainment industry, yet it is reasonable for characters to be hiding information from each other.

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Supergenre: War Classic Combinations Macrogenre

Example

Alien Invasion

Edge of Tomorrow

Epic

Lawrence of Arabia

Escape

The Great Escape

Historical

Troy

Mission

Hacksaw Ridge

Religious

Kingdom of Heaven

Survival

Lone Survivor

Terror

The Objective

Unusual Unions Sports

We Were Soldiers

Within the specificity of the war genre, plenty of combinations can be created because of the scope and complexity of a war environment. Soldiers are sent on missions, they fall in love, they escape; there are political, moral and emotional issues to confront. And, unlike the western, the boundaries of war can be local, regional, international or even intergalactic. The screenwriter simply needs to define what the “war” is and where its boundaries lie.

Supergenre: Western Classic Combinations Macrogenre

Example

Adventure

Dances with Wolves

Bromance Womance

Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid Thelma and Louise

Family

An American Tail: Fievel Goes West

Heist/Caper

Hell or High Water

Historical

Tombstone

Law Enforcement

High Noon

Protection

Pale Rider

Revenge/Justice

The Revenant

Unusual Unions Time Travel

Back to the Future III

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Westerns pair nicely with stories that emphasize personal tales of rugged independence and/or screenplays highlighting camaraderie in the face of oppression. They fare less well with stories that emphasize science, technology or imaginary characters. Because Westerns utilize such specific locations and characters, it is often difficult to combine them with other supergenres. Certainly, crime and thriller can be easily matched with western—and war too, if carefully considered. But a western-sports or a day-in-the-life western or a western fantasy are more difficult to imagine. Nevertheless, Back to the Future III managed to combine time travel and science fiction with the western genre, so anything is possible.

Macrogenre Rules of Thumb In summary, there are three rules of thumb to keep in mind when working with macros: 1. Any macrogenre, in theory, can be paired with any supergenre, although some pairings work better than others. 2. You can pair more than one macrogenre with a supergenre. 3. Supergenres can be paired with each other—one serving as the supergenre and the other serving as the macro—as noted in this chart highlighting ten examples:

Supergenre as Macrogenre Example Supergenre

Super as Macro

Example

Romance

Action

This Means War

Romance

Crime

Loving

Romance

Day-in-the-Life

Carol

Romance

Fantasy

Cinderella

Romance

Horror

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Science Fiction Romance

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Sports

Romance

Tin Cup

Thriller

Romance

Eyes Wide Shut

War

Romance

Casablanca

Western

Romance

Brokeback Mountain

Understanding Microgenres Microgenres work differently than macros. Each micro is particular to a given macro. They cannot be paired at random with any given macro. As

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an example, the addiction macro has at least four micros: Alcohol, Drugs, Gambling and addictive Actions such as hoarding, eating disorders, selfinflicted harm, kleptomania or sexual promiscuity.

Addiction Microgenre Story Examples Macro Addiction

Micro

Story Examples

Actions

Hoarding, eating disorders, self-inflicted harm, kleptomania, sexual promiscuity . . .

Alcohol

Binge drinking, alcohol abuse, alcoholism . . .

Drugs

Heroin, cocaine, crystal meth, pills . . .

Gambling

Horses, cards, dice, sports betting . . .

Notice that each micro creates more nuanced expectations for the macro. They do not change the macrogenre expectations. Instead, they provide even more specificity to the macro. Each macrogenre has its own set of micros. There are more than 200 microgenres. But before we get to the list, let’s explore how super-, macro- and microgenres might work together to create uniquely different films even though they stand—for instance—under the umbrella of the crime supergenre. Earlier in this chapter, I mentioned how addiction (as a macro) could be paired with crime. Drugstore Cowboy and Scarface were both used as examples—but we could have just as easily chosen Basketball Diaries, Flight, The Gambler, Kleptomania, Owning Mahowny, Rush or Shame. From these films alone (and there are many others), we know that crime and addiction pair well as supergenre and macrogenre. But we can use our microgenres to tease these films apart even more. In the case of the addiction macro, the specific microgenres add an explanation to the criminal’s actions.

Addiction Micro Example A Supergenre Crime

Macro Addiction

Micro Gambling

Examples Owning Mahowny The Gambler

If the micro is “Gambling,” then the addiction story will revolve more tightly around the economic damage caused by the addiction. These financial consequences are often detrimental to an unknowing family member, while the gambler is typically threatened with violence if their debt is not paid. Owning Mahowny serves as an example, with Dan Mahowny embezzling millions and wiping out his family’s bank account to feed his addiction.

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The same themes (and locations) emerge in The Gambler. Not only does the micro put a finer point on the story, but it also tends to focus the atmosphere as well. In both of these films, a majority of the film is spent in gambling halls, alone in hotel rooms and revisiting the family home that is being destroyed.

Addiction Micro Example B Supergenre Crime

Macro Addiction

Micro

Examples

Drugs

Drugstore Cowboy Basketball Diaries Rush

However, if the micro is “Drugs,” then the story becomes more about personal abuse of the protagonist’s mind and body—even though there may be financial and interpersonal elements to the addiction. Drugstore Cowboy tells the story of Bob and his crew as they try to stay high. Bob’s addiction forces him to make interpersonal choices that put himself and his closest companions at risk. Similar themes and decisions play out in Basketball Diaries and Rush.

Addiction Micro Example C Supergenre Crime

Macro Addiction

Micro Actions (kleptomania) (pornography)

Examples Kleptomania Shame

Addiction movies that focus on lesser known or discussed addictions— such as kleptomania or pornography—often focus more on the personal obsession of the character who is addicted. The films spend more time explaining where the addiction comes from and/or personifying the urges the character is fighting. Again, these stories tend to take place in common locations, reminding the audience that they too (or their friends and relatives) can fall victim to such addiction.

Addiction Macro with New Supergenre Supergenre Day-in-the-Life

Macro Addiction

Micro Drugs

Examples Permanent Midnight

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Other creative options can be explored by keeping a macro and micro pairing intact but then changing the supergenre. Consider how a supergenre change from crime to day-in-the-life affects a macro–micro combination dramatically. A drug addiction crime story focuses on criminal acts and their repercussions. In a day-in-the-life drug addiction story, the emphasis is placed on the daily actions of the protagonist and the personal (rather than legal) ramifications of his/her addiction. Permanent Midnight is the story of a TV writer addicted to heroin and the tragedy that befalls him. The story, per se, has nothing to do with crime (except that heroin is illegal). It is also worth noting that every film can (and probably should?) have secondary macros and micros that add even more specificity to the story. Remember, each macro will have a micro attached, but there is no limit to the number of macrogenres that can be attached to a supergenre. Three examples from some of the previously described films follow.

Owning Mahowny Supergenre Crime

Macro

Micro

Addiction

Drugs

Biography

Newsworthy

Family

Rift

Drugstore Cowboy Supergenre Crime

Macro

Micro

Addiction

Drugs

Caper

Tale

Workplace

What It’s Like

Permanent Midnight Supergenre Day-in-the-Life

Macros

Micros

Addiction

Drugs

Biography

Everyman

Show Business

Culture

Microgenre Rules of Thumb As with the macros, there are three rules of thumb to keep in mind when working with microgenres: 1. Microgenres are specific to the macrogenre. There is some overlap between some descriptors, but they should be considered unique to their macrogenre.

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2. You can pair more than one microgenre with a macrogenre. 3. There should always be at least one microgenre for every macrogenre. That said, the microgenres are less well known than the macrogenres. Over the next several pages, I lay out my general observations of the fifty macros and their related micros. As before, this is not an exhaustive list. My hope is that this is the start of a more collaborative discussion (and evolution) of these definitions.

The Fifty Macrogenres and Their 200+ Microgenres A Macros

Micros

Addiction

Actions, Alcohol, Drugs, Gambling

Adventure

Battle, Exploration, Piracy, Quest, Rebellion, Space

Alien Invasion

Earth-Centric, First Contact, Space-Centric

Apocalyptic

Actively Within, Postapocalyptic, Preapocalyptic

Artificial Intelligence

Androids, Cyborgs, Robots

Macrogenre: ADDICTION Microgenres: Actions, Alcohol, Drugs, Gambling Common addictions seen in films are alcohol, drugs and gambling, but characters can also have addictive behaviors and actions such as hoarding, eating disorders, self-inflicted harm, kleptomania, sexual promiscuity and so on. In the Addiction genre, the protagonist struggles to overcome an addiction or interacts with someone who is overcoming an addiction. These addictions cause a change in the protagonist—either as a metaphor (the eating disorder in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape) or as a specific obstacle they must overcome in order to succeed (alcoholism in The Verdict). Macrogenre: ADVENTURE Microgenres: Battle, Exploration, Piracy, Quest, Rebellion, Space Adventure films focus on the exotic locations and unusual characters that the protagonist encounters. The adventure macro can be seen in the heat of Battle (Lawrence of Arabia), during a Quest (Treasure of the Sierra Madre) or while characters are engaged in Exploration (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea). Pirate stories and Space Exploration are more specific versions of these tales. Rebellion stories are also ripe for adventure, as in Into the Wild, in which college student Chris McCandless leaves his middle-class life and travels around the country.

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Macrogenre: ALIEN INVASION Microgenres: Earth-Centric, First Contact, Space-Centric Alien Invasion stories center around an Us-versus-Them dichotomy, but the invasion does not always have to be violent or militaristic in form. A First Contact story could simply highlight the awe of realizing that humans are not the only living creatures in the universe (Contact). Within the militaristic realm, screenwriters should be aware that Earth-centric stories tend to elicit a strong sense of patriotism from the audience. The heroes are trying to save planet earth, the United States or their local communities—and audiences respond to this on a personal level (War of the Worlds). Space-centric stories, on the other hand, tend to be more about the adventure of battle elsewhere. The characters themselves may be patriotic, but the audience is more interested in the conflict and a spectacle in space than any sort of personal stake in the battle (Enemy Mine). Macrogenre: APOCALYPTIC Microgenres: Actively Within, Postapocalyptic, Preapocalyptic Screenwriters writing an apocalyptic tale must first decide where, in proximity to the apocalypse, the story is taking place. Films like Dr. Strangelove are Preapocalyptic in nature, foretelling the end of the world, while characters in The Road are experiencing the apocalypse. Postapocalyptic tales typically focus on humanity trying to reinvent itself in a new world (Oblivion). Macrogenre: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (A.I.) Microgenres: Androids, Cyborgs, Robots Human trust in machines is the common theme in the A.I. genre, often asking the question “What makes us human?” To get to that question, the A.I. micros tend to differentiate their A.I. characters by the amount of machinery they display and/or contain. For instance, a Robot is 100% mechanical (as seen in I, Robot), but a Cyborg is both mechanical and organic (as seen in RoboCop). An Android is a robot that appears to be human (as seen in Blade Runner). By differentiating the “mechanical-ness” of the A.I. character, the themes within the story change. B Macros

Micros

Biography

Entertainment, Everyman, Group/Organization, Newsworthy, Political, Rich and Famous, Rags-to-Riches, Temporal

Bro- or Womance

Stronger Bond, Traditional, Tragedy,

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Macrogenre: BIOGRAPHY Microgenres: Entertainment, Everyman, Group/Organization, Newsworthy, Political, Rich and Famous, Rags-to-Riches, Temporal Biography is a broad genre, one that can be easily parsed into micros. An Everyman biography highlights an individual’s personal strength while confronting monumental challenges (Hidden Figures), while Rags-toRiches explains how now-famous people came to prominence (The Social Network). Entertainment biographies show the lives of entertainers while they are famous. Each Biography must also be considered temporally within the context of modern day, historical or a period piece. Consider Political Biographies: Lincoln is historical, Milk is a period piece set in the 1970s, and W. follows the life of George W. Bush up to modern day (at the time the film was made). Similarly, Biographies about the Rich (The King’s Speech), the Famous (Malcolm X) and those who are Newsworthy (Snowden) should aim to provide the audience with personal insights about people we only know from a distance. Additionally, some biographies are about an organization as much as they are about an individual (Moneyball). Macrogenre: BRO- OR WOMANCE Microgenres: Stronger Bond, Traditional, Tragedy A bromance or a womance tells the story of a strong platonic relationship between two people of the same sex. During the story, we see a bond build much like a romance, but without the physical implications. Traditionally, the characters are polar opposites who gradually learn to like and then deeply care for each other (The Odd Couple). However, these characters can also start off as friends (Star Trek), and/or the story can end in tragedy rather than “womantically” (Heavenly Creatures). When considering writing in this genre, screenwriters should think about designing scenes that have all the trappings of a romance (first meeting, dinners together, breakups, etc.) and then figure out how to work them into the story in ways that don’t draw attention. D Macros

Micros

Demonic

Devil/Occult, Possession, Witchcraft

Disaster

Global, Local, Personal

Disease/Disability

Personal, Societal

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Macrogenre: DEMONIC Microgenres: Devil/Occult, Possession, Witchcraft As with the artificial intelligence macro, the demonic story has a strong thematic overlay. The concept of Good vs. Evil is no longer philosophical. Evil has been personified, and the protagonist is able to physically do battle with it. The micros simply set the rules by which this battle will take place. In films like Angel Heart, the protagonist battles the Devil or the Occult. In The Exorcist, the demonic influence is made physical through Possession of a human, and in The Witches, evil attacks in the form of wart-nosed crones casting spells. Macrogenre: DISASTER Microgenres: Global, Local, Personal We are all familiar with the Global disaster films in which a meteor or a flood or an earthquake is going to kill millions if not billions of people. Thematically, these films tend to address “the good of the many versus the good of the few” by focusing on personal concerns in the midst of a global or national crisis. The audience (as with alien invasion films) feels a sense of patriotism, as if their family/country/world is at risk right alongside the protagonists’. A more localized approach, such as the film The Impossible, removes the patriotic element of the story. Instead, it engages the audience on a more personal level, often forcing them to ask, “How would I react in a similar situation?” Regardless of scope, all disaster stories involve the protagonists’ realization that—without action—their world is going to end. The disaster story’s focus should be on the choices the protagonists make and whether those choices are effective. These stories typically involve multiple secondary characters, some of whom choose wisely and others who do not. Macrogenre: DISEASE/DISABILITY Microgenres: Personal, Societal Similar to a disaster movie, a disease/disability story involves the protagonists’ realization that life, as they know it, has ended (or is about to end). The central plot points of the story then revolve around the characters’ reaction to that realization. These stories can be told on a Societal level (local, national or global) as in Outbreak, with world health threatened by a pandemic, or on a much more Personal level as in a family’s struggle against Alzheimer’s disease (Still Alice) or a man struggling to live with cerebral palsy (My Left Foot).

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E Macros

Micros

Epic/Saga

Discovery/Exploration, Event-Specific, Historical, Person-Specific

Erotica

Fetish, Mainstream

Escape

Impossible, Nonprison, Tale, Traditional

Macrogenre: EPIC/SAGA Microgenres: Discovery/Exploration, Event-Specific, Historical, Person-Specific Epics, by their very nature, are long, detailed stories of heroic adventures. Many are Historic in nature. Some sagas detail the adventures of a Specific Person—such as The Motorcycle Diaries detailing Che Guevara’s prerevolutionary exploits. Other sagas detail specific events. The Way Back tells the story of seven prisoners’ escape during World War II. Epics often highlight Discovery (2001: A Space Odyssey) and Exploration (Aguirre: the Wrath of God). Macrogenre: EROTICA Microgenres: Fetish, Mainstream Erotic films use sexual encounters as a central storytelling construct. Sex becomes a driving force for the main characters, and the story changes based upon the reactions to the various sexual encounters. Mainstream examples include Fifty Shades of Grey. Some erotic films explore people’s sexual Fetishes. In Crash, characters derive sexual pleasure from car accidents, and the story revolves around the pursuit of these desires. Macrogenre: ESCAPE Microgenres: Impossible, Nonprison, Tale, Traditional When people think about the traditional escape movie, they naturally think about prison escape, where the common tropes of this macro are most easily recognized. The protagonist must be trapped in a place that is well guarded and fortified. The audience and protagonist are informed of the challenges early on, and the story is dedicated to our hero systematically solving each problem until the escape is complete. Of course, there are Nonprison escape films such as Alive, in which the characters try to escape from a plane wreck high in the Andean Mountains, or Running with Scissors about a man trying to escape his abusive family. As with heist films, sometimes the central

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conceit is based on the Impossible nature of the situation (Escape from Alcatraz), while others are more interested in telling the Tale of the escapee rather than highlighting the fortress (Papillon). F Macros Family

Micros Family Bond, Family Feud, Family Loss, Family Rift

Macrogenre: FAMILY Microgenres: Family Bond, Family Feud, Family Loss, Family Rift A family film is one in which the characters are related—not film written for a “family audience.” The family film generally revolves around how the family, as a whole, reacts to specific events. We are all familiar with the Family Feud approach: a holiday or event film in which disparate family members are brought together during Thanksgiving or a wedding, who argue and eventually resolve their differences. Other micros focus on how a Family Bonds during difficult emotional times (Father of the Bride). Family Loss films comment upon how a family deals with tragedy, usually ending with the family finding a way to heal (Big Fish). Ordinary People seemingly begins as a Family Loss film, then turns into a different micro: the Family Rift. Family Rift stories explore the dynamics of a family when an irreconcilable difference (the rift) occurs and the family is unable to resolve the problem. G Macros

Micros

Gangs/Punks/ Brothers in Arms

Ideology-Specific (punk rock, politics), InterestSpecific (biker, surfer), Location-Specific (neighborhood, school)

Gangster

Antihero POV, Authority POV

Ghost/Spirits/ Hauntings/Angels

Across the Divide, Emotional, Mystic, Reincarnation

Macrogenre: GANGS/PUNKS/BROTHERS IN ARMS Microgenres: Ideology-Specific, Interest-Specific, Location-Specific Similar to a family film, films that highlight gangs, punks and/or brothersin-arms focus on the group dynamic over the story of an individual. Each particular social group is “forced” to be together for one of three reasons:

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Interest-Specific stories create conflict both inside and outside the group. Characters who are part of the motorbike culture or the surfing culture do not necessarily have a common ideology. They are in the gang because they like motorcycles or surfing. Therefore, tensions between the bikers and the public will exist, and there will also be conflict within their own ranks. The Wild One is a classic example about motorcycle culture. With Ideology-Specific stories, the characters are more in sync internally. They still fight, but the main conflict occurs between the ideologically aligned group and their detractors. Hunger focuses on Irish Republic Army prisoners and their hunger strike in opposition to their political status being revoked by the British government. Location-Specific films also have a lot of internal conflict because the characters did not have a complete choice in the matter of joining this social group. More often than not, members were born or were placed into these social organizations. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Outsiders, South Central, Animal Factory, Gangs of New York and City of God are all examples of the location-specific micro. Macrogenre: GANGSTER Microgenres: Antihero POV, Authority POV Gangster movies are similar to gang/punk/brothers-in-arms films in that they tend to explore characters within a specific social construct—the construct of organized crime. Three items differentiate this micro from gang/punk/brothers-in-arms. First, this genre almost always has an illegal, money-making angle to the story. Second, there is an understanding that these organizations have a strict hierarchy, that their members have been carefully recruited, and that everyone is honor bound in their commitment to their organization’s illicit enterprises. Finally, the punishment for doing something wrong in this genre is almost always death or imprisonment. The big question when writing for this macro is whether the story will be told from the Antihero’s POV (The Godfather) or from the Authorities’ POV (The Untouchables). Macrogenre: GHOST/SPIRITS/ANGELS Microgenres: Across the Divide, Emotional, Mystic, Reincarnation If characters are visited by ghosts, we traditionally expect a horror film. In such cases, the ghost is simply a monster, created through death. There is not necessarily any secondary meaning to the ghostliness. However, enough screenwriters have chosen to use ghosts in a more metaphoric way that a separate macrogenre should be considered.

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Ghost stories don’t have to be horrifying. In Spirited Away, characters become spirits/angels in order to engage the audience in more mystic thoughts. Similarly, What Dreams May Come uses the spirit world to explore the emotions of losing a loved one. In The Shining, the idea of child abuse and alcoholism is metaphorically reincarnated through Jack’s ghost. A question a screenwriter should ask when contemplating ghosts, spirits or angels in the story is, “What does a spectral character add that a physical character does not?” H Macros

Micros

Heist/Caper

Impossible, Procedural, Tale

Historical

Alternate, Modern, Period

Holiday

Event, Family, Origin

Macrogenre: HEIST/CAPER Microgenres: Impossible, Procedural, Tale In a heist or caper movie, the audience is informed of the protagonist’s challenges early on, and the story is dedicated to a band of “heroes” systematically solving each problem until the robbery is attempted. Heists are rarely accomplished alone, so these films tend to rely on “the group” as a character. Often, there is infighting within the group, as each person has usually been chosen to join the caper because of their unique specialty (safecracker, con man, etc.) rather than their ability to work well in small teams. Most heist movies are based on the idea of an Impossible target—with only one team crazy enough to attempt the mission. But sometimes the mission isn’t impossible, and a personal Tale takes center stage (The Getaway). Another approach is to engage the audience as if they are members of the team, explaining the specifics to such a degree that the film becomes a Procedural. Stanley Kubrick tried this approach in his first feature film, The Killing, detailing the heist of a horse track. Macrogenre: HISTORICAL Microgenres: Alternate, Modern, Period When screenwriters talk about writing an historical film, the fact that the story takes place in the past is not what is important. The important aspect is that the audience is given new insight into their own understanding of history. Therefore, the movie Razor’s Edge is not an historical film even though it takes place in the 1910s and 1920s because the historical context does not bring new insight about our history to the viewer—it is simply part of the setting. However, a movie like Schindler’s List is historical because

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the historical context plays a part in the way in which an audience will reconsider the events of World War II. Even a film such as Black Hawk Down is historical because it provides perspective on the military raid in Mogadishu and, in turn, affects our understanding of modern history. Even films based on fictional characters can be considered historical. For instance, Troy—based in part on The Iliad—depicts the Trojan War in ways that provide historical insights. It is also possible to encourage historical reflection by engaging with the audience in a completely fictionalized world. The HBO film Fatherland sets its story in a world in which the United States withdrew from the European theater after a D-Day defeat (this never happened). The film then follows the subsequent actions of Germany invading England, while the United States continues fighting in the Pacific against Japan. By paralleling fictional elements with historically accurate events, this alternate history film acts as an historical film. A film like Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, however, would not fit into this micro. The alternate history aspect of World War II simply serves the story as narrative technique to heighten intrigue; it does not bring historical insight to the audience. Macrogenre: Holiday Microgenres: Event, Family, Origin A holiday film is meant to reinforce the theme of a specific holiday. They are typically feel-good movies for a wide audience, ones that rehash age-old stories and themes to be enjoyed year after year. Classic holiday stories such as A Christmas Story capture the theme of the holiday from a child’s perspective— making the audience feel good about the season. Origin stories remind us of age-old tales about the holiday itself—like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer reminding us of the story of Santa Claus and his team. Family stories typically involve family conflicts in the second act, which are then resolved by the end so that everyone feels good about the holiday. For instance, Home for the Holidays takes this approach for Thanksgiving, while National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation uses a different holiday. And finally, some holiday stories embody holiday themes and settings purely for entertainment value, such as the classic Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

I Macros Identity

Micros Gender/Sexuality, Humanity, Loss of . . ., Racial, Religious

Macrogenre: IDENTITY Microgenres: Gender/Sexuality, Humanity, Loss of . . ., Racial, Religious

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Identity stories are highly personalized tales about someone (or a group of people) who struggles to find out “who they are” and/or how they fit into a larger social network. In The Razor’s Edge, the main character struggles with his religious identity. In Wild, the main character considers the role of humanity while living outside of human constructs. Others find themselves trapped within society. The Color Purple illustrates identity issues faced by African-American women in the first half of the twentieth century, while I Am Michael depicts a man’s struggle with sexual identity. Screenwriters tackling this macro need to balance the external demands of the plot with the internal struggles of the person searching for their identity. K Macros Killing

Micros Reflection, Serial, Slasher, Stalker, Unintended

Macrogenre: KILLING Microgenres: Reflection, Serial, Slasher, Stalker, Unintended Many movies contain scenes that involve death, but in the killing macro, death is the central issue in the story: someone either has been killed or is going to be killed. All major events will stem from the idea of this killing, minimizing all other character concerns. Every decision is one of life or death. In a Slasher movie, a group of people is systematically slashed to death by some sort of deranged killer (Friday the 13th). A Serial Killer film is more specific and focuses not on the victims but on the killer (Snowtown). Some films focus the story on the events leading up to a killing and the killer Stalking his victim—Cape Fear has only a few killings in the story itself, but Max Cady’s act of stalking Sam Bowden and his family overshadows every scene with the threat of death. The flip side is the story of those who have already killed, and every moment of the film Reflects on their decision. Dead Man Walking is the story of a man on death row reflecting on murders that he committed six years prior. Although the deaths happened before the film begins, their influence on his behavior is central. L Macros

Micros

Law Enforcement

Community, Personal Crime, Process and Life of . . ., Rescue, True Crime, Undercover/Vice

Legal

Courtroom, Investigation, Tales of the System, Underdog/Whistleblower

Love

In Disguise, Nonconventional, Obsession, Traditional, Unrequited

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Macrogenre: LAW ENFORCEMENT Microgenres: Community, Personal Crime, Process and Life of . . ., Rescue, True Crime, Undercover/Vice Law enforcement films focus on protecting the greater good—as opposed to focusing on a detective solving a mystery. This does not mean that crime solving won’t play a part, it just doesn’t play the central part. Zodiac is the story of saving a community from the Zodiac Killer. The law enforcement team is certainly trying to find out who the killer is, but the story focuses on the dynamics of the team and whether they can stop future murders. Some stories focus on the characters’ lives. Traffic and In the Heat of the Night focus their attention not on outcome but on the personal steps taken within the profession. The characters are focused on catching the criminals, but the screenwriter is focused on the characters’ interpersonal relationships and home lives. Personal Crime movies combine the two, asking: How can a law enforcement agent separate their personal life from the objective role they are supposed to play in society? In this micro, characters are put into a position in which they cannot keep the two worlds apart, and the screenwriter explores the moral gray area—as in Inherent Vice. Still other micros deal with specific types of law enforcement. Rescue films test the protagonist’s resolve to save the lives of others (Die Hard). Undercover/Vice stories also highlight professionals risking their lives in the line of duty (Donnie Brasco), but these stories traditionally focus on a race against time—whether the criminals are going to be arrested before the undercover agent is detected. True Crime stories illustrate the characters’ resolve, reminding the audience that law enforcement officials are real people catching real criminals (Catch Me If You Can). Macrogenre: LEGAL Microgenres: Courtroom, Investigation, Tales of the System, Underdog/Whistleblower The legal macro focuses on the legal battle at hand. Courtroom stories play out like sports movies, with each legal team vying to win. In the Wrongly Accused micro, the audience usually knows that the main character is innocent, and the story revolves around whether the legal system will act justly (Hurricane). Underdog/Whistleblower films are David-and-Goliath stories of people trying to stand up against powerful companies, individuals or institutions (The Insider and Erin Brockovich). Tales of the System focus more on how the legal process works than on the crime itself (12 Angry Men). The story is more about the decision-making process, than those accused.

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The investigation micro is the complete opposite. These stories hardly ever enter a courtroom. Instead, they encourage the audience to decide the characters’ guilt or innocence. Since the audience has scrutinized the case alongside the detective, the story typically ends with the culprits being arrested or leaping ahead to the outcome of the trial (Mississippi Burning, Concussion). It is important for screenwriters to realize that not all legal stories need to take place within the criminal justice system. Concussion takes place in the court of public opinion, as Dr. Bennet Omalu tries to prove that head injuries in NFL players are caused by a series of concussions. Macrogenre: LOVE Microgenres: In Disguise, Nonconventional, Obsession, Traditional, Unrequited While all romance stories are about love, not all love stories are romances. Stories in the love macrogenre revolve around characters making every major decision based upon love. Traditional love stories are between two people who feel the same way about each other (Out of Africa). Stories of Unrequited Love, however, occur when the intensity of one character’s love is not reciprocated by the other (Carol ). Nonconventional love stories involve participants who are not human. These stories question (or mock) the meaning of love. In Howard the Duck, a woman falls in love with a duck; in Blade Runner, a man falls in love with an android. Love In Disguise films have the appearance of one type of relationship on the surface but reflect a different form of love. In Some Like It Hot, the two men disguise themselves as women to avoid being killed by the mob. What appears to be friendship with a female colleague is actually love in disguise. Obsession stories imply an unhealthy relationship in which one person is preoccupied by the other (Star 80). For a more lighthearted look at love stories, writers might want to consider the Romantic Comedy macrogenre. M Macros

Micros

Magical

Locational, Vocational, Wonderment

Martial Arts

Form (karate, kung fu, mixed), Philosophy (ninja, samurai)

Medical

Biography, Nonhospital, Seemingly Impossible, Tale

Military

Biographical, Historical, Mission, Tale

Macrogenres and Microgenres Mission

Impossible, Tale

Monster

Alien, Creature, Mutant, Mythic (mummy, vampire, werewolf, zombie, etc.), Scientific, Swarms

Mystery/ Detective

Crime-Specific (murder, theft, kidnapping, etc.), HardBoiled, Pulp, Whodunit

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Macrogenre: MAGICAL Microgenres: Locational, Vocational, Wonderment In magical films, mysterious forces play a central role in either the plot, the outcome or in the enjoyment of the film—often all three. Some films, like The Prestige, focus our attention on magic because the characters are magicians and magic is their vocation. Some stories are location-specific, such as The Wizard of Oz, in which the main character is transported to a magical land, and in which the story resolves through magic. In other films, such as the Harry Potter series, the story takes place entirely in a magical world, and the various acts of magic serve as a form of wonderment for the audience. Macrogenre: MARTIAL ARTS Microgenres: Form, Philosophy Many storytellers delineate marital arts movies by the form of martial art being practiced. Films may highlight a specific martial art such as judo, karate, kung fu, tae kwon do or tai chi. For instance, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a kung fu movie. While Tekken highlights mixed martial arts. Another way to parse the Martial Arts macrogenre is by the philosophical approach to martial arts. Samurai films typically highlight the strict rules of honor and combat to which a samurai warrior is bound. The story revolves around the samurai’s duty to uphold this honor. On the other hand, a ninja wages irregular warfare and trains in the more covert uses of combat techniques. Ninja movies like Batman Begins highlight this more subversive martial arts philosophy. Macrogenre: MEDICAL Microgenres: Biography, Nonhospital, Seemingly Impossible, Tale Medical films highlight the lives and acts of medical professionals. Traditional medical tales dramatize these decisions in a realistic manner (Patch Adams), in a satiric manner (Critical Care) or in a horrific manner (Coma). These films exaggerate the daily decisions to a point of heroic (or villainous) import.

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Not all medical films need to take place inside a hospital (The Sessions or Sybil ). Instead of highlighting daily decisions, the Seemingly Impossible micro highlights insurmountable tasks facing the medical profession and the patients. Films such as Awakenings and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly highlight the characters’ ingenuity and perseverance. Other films highlight medical work done by a group (MASH and So Proudly We Hail!). Medical Biographies tell stories about lifetime struggles of individuals who played critical roles in events that changed medical practice in some unique way (Miss Evers’ Boys and Concussion). Macrogenre: MILITARY Microgenres: Biographical, Historical, Mission, Tale Just because a character is in the military or a war is going on during the story does not make the movie a miltary or war film. Similar to medical films, films in the military macro highlight the life and acts of military professionals. American Sniper and Patton are Military Biographies, highlighting extended periods of a military figure’s life, while films like Bat 21, Black Hawk Down and Lone Survivor—although biographical—only highlight a specific Mission in the protagonists; lives. Historical films (Tora! Tora! Tora!) dramatize events across a large scale of national significance. They also tend to utilize a broad tapestry of characters, highlighting the extensive social ramifications of military events. Macrogenre: MISSION Microgenres: Impossible, Tale When writing a script about a difficult mission, most screenwriters take a similar approach: (1) gather up the people for the mission, (2) describe and plan the mission in detail so the audience understands what to expect and (3) enact the mission. The purpose for explaining the mission’s details to the audience is because, inevitably, something will go wrong and the characters will have to improvise. By knowing the plan in advance, the audience gets to enjoy the improvisation. If they hadn’t known the details, they wouldn’t necessarily know that the plan had gone awry. Mission films tend to tell the tale of a risky yet logistically possible operation (Apollo 13, Argo, Captain Phillips). In these cases—all based on real missions—an educated audience might know that these missions succeeded. The enjoyment, therefore, is in watching the ingenuity of the characters. On the other hand, Impossible Mission movies (The Dirty Dozen or The Martian) are predicated on the assumption that the mission will probably fail, and it is the fearlessness that intrigues us in the characters.

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Macrogenre: MONSTER Microgenres: Alien, Creature, Mutant, Mythic (Vampire, Werewolf, Zombie, etc.), Scientific, Swarms Monsters represent our inner fears—both consciously and subconsciously. The monster micros break down our fears into different psychological groups. We are naturally afraid of Creatures that exist in the world and that are trying to kill us (Jaws). Alien monster films are similar, but the monster is not an animalistic brute. Instead, it is an insidious being with some sort of alien-minded plan such as in The Thing or Under the Skin. Other monsters bring out different fears. Swarms make us fear things that seem harmless on the surface, but when they work collectively, they can be deadly (The Birds). These stories examine the fear of the hive mind—something that can be killed in pieces but never as a whole. Similarly, Scientific monsters like The Fly take something harmless yet, through the misuse of science, create something deadly. Mythic monsters rely on the thematic fears highlighted in literature for centuries. Mummy movies exploit the fears of ancient knowledge; Vampire movies explore ideas of lust and sexuality; Werewolf movies tend to explore the dichotomies found within human nature; and Zombie movies play upon our fears of mindless masses taking over society. Ghost movies haunt us with thoughts of bad decisions from the past (see the Ghost macro for additional approaches). Macrogenre: MYSTERY/DETECTIVE Microgenres: Crime-Specific, Hard-Boiled, Pulp, Whodunit The mystery or detective macros explore the clues and motives that reveal a crime (the mystery) and/or the person uncovering the clues (the detective). In this micro, these story points are more important than the social or legal ramifications of bringing the criminal to justice. A Whodunit (Rear Window) typically introduces a unsolved crime and its suspects early. The audience then watches the detective try to figure out who committed the crime and why. Crime-Specific films typically assume the point of view of the detective rather than the criminal, dramatizing the emotional toll that the case takes on that character. The crime is important, but the story explores the internal struggles within the protagonist (Catch Me If You Can and The Black Dahlia). The terms Hard-Boiled and Pulp Fiction are often used interchangeably, but distinctions can be made. Personally, I approach Hard-Boiled as an exploration of a cynical, emotionless character inhabiting both criminal and innocent settings. It is the character who is boiled hard. In the more criminal settings, his brashness fits in. In polite society, it becomes apparent that the protagonist is a bit rough around the edges. These contrasts help

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screenwriters make social and interpersonal commentary if they so choose. Devil in a Blue Dress is a good example of a hard-boiled detective, just as Nightcrawler also assumes the hard-boiled form even though the protagonist is a news reporter. Pulp Fiction is more about a hard-boiled world than a hard-boiled person. In Pulp Fiction, everyone is cynical and relatively emotionless. The cynical, emotionless character fits in no matter where he goes—because everyone in a pulp fiction story is hard boiled (Blood Ties or Killer Inside Me). P Macros

Micros

Political

Contemporary, Historical, International, Local, National

Procedural

Artistic, Investigative, Legal, Medical, Political, Scientific

Protection

Babysitter, Bodyguard, Family/Loved Ones, Legal

Psychological

Conspiracy, Evil, Mistaken Identity, What If? Worst Case

Macrogenre: POLITICAL Microgenres: Contemporary, Historical, International, Local, National The political macrogenre addresses the inner workings of governmental decision making and/or the governmental process. When the film is Historical (Lincoln), the screenwriter has the advantage of hindsight and must keep in mind the audience’s general knowledge of the subject matter. When writing a Contemporary political story (The Ides of March), the screenwriter will do best to consider the audience’s presumptions and specifically consider how they may change between writing the screenplay and having the film produced. A hot political idea today may seem like old news in five years. Most political stories play out on a National stage (Primary Colors), although Local stories can still make metaphorical national commentary (Election). An International political film may have different meanings for different people. The German film The Wave will seem “international” to an American audience, but the intention of the film was for a German audience. The filmmakers did not intend for the film to have an international element to the storytelling—just as Primary Colors is not written as an international film for a German audience. That said, a screenplay can be written to make a statement to a domestic audience based on comparison and contrast to political systems and practices of other countries (Our Brand Is Crisis).

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Macrogenre: PROCEDURAL Microgenres: Artistic, Investigative, Legal, Medical, Political, Scientific In procedural films, the screenwriter highlights a specific process, minimizing the interpersonal behavior of the characters. The concept comes from television writing, specifically “police procedurals” like the show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Sherlock Holmes is an Investigative procedural about the sleuthing work of a detective, while Apollo 13 walks the audience through NASA’s scientific process of rescuing the Apollo team. Procedurals can run the gamut of any professional process, the most popular being Artistic (Pollock), Legal (12 Angry Men), Medical (The Andromeda Strain) and Political (In the Loop). Macrogenre: PROTECTION Microgenres: Babysitter, Bodyguard, Family/Loved Ones, Legal This macrogenre overlaps with a others such as family, legal and law enforcement, but what sets the protection macro apart from the others is that these stories focus as much on the story of the people being protected as they do on the person protecting them. As an example, Die Hard fits into the law enforcement macro instead of the protection macro because—although John McClane is certainly protecting his wife and her colleagues in the story— the script focuses more on the heist and McClane. Compare this approach to a film like Winter’s Bone, a Family Protection film, in which we really understand the plight that Ree Dolly’s family is going through, aligning Dolly much more closely with her loved ones’ needs than with her own. Family Protection stories are common, but other sorts of characters can play pivotal roles as protector. Mary Poppins tells the story of a Babysitter in the role or protector, while Man on Fire employs the Bodyguard micro. Protection stories can also occur within the Legal system (The Client). In these stories, there is usually a finite time limit for protection (until the trial begins, until they testify, etc.). Macrogenre: PSYCHOLOGICAL Microgenres: Conspiracy, Evil, Mistaken Identity, What If ? Worst Case The mental and emotional degradation of the protagonist is the central focus of the psychological film. Physical threats may also come into play, but only as a result of the psychological battle being waged between the protagonist and the much more powerful antagonist (with much more sinister intentions than the protagonist realizes). The starting point for the screenwriter is to determine who (or what) is threatening the protagonist, because the source of psychological torment has story and thematic implications. For instance,

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in Angel Heart, Harry Angel battles evil incarnate, and the story becomes allegorical. Conspiracy films (The Manchurian Candidate) place the protagonist in the center of a very large plot, which he and the audience may never fully understand. In this micro, the audience is typically kept in the dark at first, only slowly understanding the larger implications of the psychological abuse as the story goes on. A micro that uses the opposite approach is the case of Mistaken Identity (Three Days of the Condor). In these stories, the audience typically knows that there is a larger story in play (even if they don’t understand it). The What If ? micro allows characters to play out their wildest psychological fantasies with no remorse, as the screenwriter typically ends these tales with a reveal that the danger was all constructed and/or imaginary (The Game). The nightmare version comes in the Worst Case scenario (Fatal Attraction), in which a common transgression results in extreme psychological anguish for the protagonist—far outweighing his transgression. These stories tend to be written as cautionary tales. R Macros

Micros

Religious

Biographical, Religious Text, Spirituality

Revenge/Justice

Legal, Psychological, Settle a Score, Vigilante

Romantic Comedy

Adult, Child, Nonconventional, Remarriage, Teen

Macrogenre: RELIGIOUS Microgenres: Biographical, Religious Text, Spirituality Religious stories explore the spiritual awakening of a character, of a person from history or within the audience members themselves. On a fundamental level, Spirituality stories dramatize the moment of spiritual awareness of their protagonists. These stories can be purely fictional (The Last Sin Eater) or based in reality (Chariots of Fire). Biographical religious films (The Message, The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, The Buddha) also dramatize the spirituality of the protagonist but typically in the context of their life as a whole rather than focusing the entire film on a singular spiritual event. The stories of some religious films come directly from Religious Texts; examples include Noah, The Kingdom of Solomon and Battlefield Earth. Macrogenre: REVENGE/JUSTICE Microgenres: Legal, Psychological, Settle a Score, Vigilante The revenge or justice film seemingly overlaps with other genres such as legal, protection or family, the difference being that revenge/justice

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stories specifically focus on the obsession of one character with exacting retribution. In the end, the audience is not being asked whether the proper legal actions have been taken. They are being asked to judge whether the scales of personal justice have been balanced. The protagonist can exact their revenge in a Legal arena (A Time to Kill ) or through Psychological warfare (Oldboy). In each case, the screenwriter must determine the tools that the characters will have at their disposal. Similarly, the screenwriter should consider the mental state of the person seeking justice. Vigilantes believe that they are on the side of law—taking it into their own hands (True Grit). Those Settling a Score, however, do not consider the ramifications of the law, and the screenwriter shouldn’t either (Sleepers). Macrogenre: ROMANTIC COMEDY Microgenres: Adult, Child, Nonconventional, Remarriage, Teen While the Love macro takes a more serious look at relationships of the heart, a romantic comedy takes things a little less seriously. Granted, “rom-coms” can still be tear-jerkers and/or highlight important issues, but they do so with a light and humorous touch. One of the central attributes to this macro is that the audience quickly recognizes that the two characters are perfect for each other, even though the characters themselves may not. Most romantic comedies have adult characters in their twenties and thirties, but romantic comedies can also be written with children as the central characters (Flipped), with the screenwriter tempering the “rom” in the romcom. Similarly, romantic comedies written for a children’s audience may take a nonconventional approach, swapping animal characters for humans, à la Lady and the Tramp. Romantic comedies can also address relationships later in life. The Remarriage micro works with characters that have already fallen in love once (Under the Tuscan Sun and Silver Linings Playbook). These characters are more experienced than traditional rom-com characters, who have often never fallen in love before.

S Macros

Micros

School Films

College, Elementary, High School, Specific School (law, culinary, medical, etc.)

Science Fantasy

Discovery, Dying Earth, ET Relations, Mad Scientist, Space Opera, Sword & Planet

Showbiz/Artistry Biography, Creative Process, Culture Slasher

Splatter, Survival, Teen

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Spy/Espionage

Corporate, Military, Political, Secrets (sports, school, etc.)

Superhero

Origin Story, Personal Battles, Save the World

Superpowers

Intelligence, Life Extension, Mental, Physical

Survival

Captivity, Experiences (abuse, training, disaster, etc.), Nature/Outdoor, Rescue

Macrogenre: SCHOOL FILMS Microgenres: College, Elementary, High School, Specific School In this macro, school life becomes its own universe in which sharp dichotomies are created: student/teacher, jocks/nerds, boys/girls, lowerclassmen/ upperclassmen and so forth. Everyone seems to know where they stand in a school film, and the stakes are just as clear: grades, social status, a date for the dance or suspension. Each punishment or reward is clearly defined, and the audience can directly relate. Of primary interest, screenwriters need to consider the school in which the story takes place. If Elementary School is the location (Akeelah and the Bee), the story tends to involve a sense of wonderment and innocence. The characters are experiencing things for the first time, but the audience is not. Most audience members will enjoy the film from a position of nostalgia. In High School films, the presence of adults (except for teachers) is minimal. In College films (Animal House or Wonder Boys), there is more overlap with the adult world—but not much. The adult world is magnified, however, in Specific School films (e.g., law school, culinary school, medical school). The students in these schools tend to be adults who are choosing to go back to school to make a change in their lives. Screenwriters, therefore, tend to dramatize the differences between the two lives and step outside the school setting more often (Legally Blonde). Macrogenre: SCIENCE FANTASY Microgenres: Discovery, Dying Earth, ET Relations, Mad Scientist, Space Opera, Sword & Planet Science fiction prides itself of using science to realistically explain the events within the story. Science fiction writers would say that their stories are scientifically possible—they just haven’t happened yet. Science fantasy, on the other hand, revels in creating stories that are scientifically impossible. The stories seem real only because the characters do not doubt the worlds in which they live, even though the event could never scientifically occur. Sword & Planet is a popular science fantasy micro in which characters gallivant from planet to planet fighting their enemies with little or no attention

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paid to oxygen, gravity or the distance between missions. Flash Gordon is a classic example. Dune and Space Battleship Yamato, on the other hand, are Space Operas emphasizing melodramatic storylines amid a backdrop of intergalactic war. The Star Trek film franchise adheres to the Discovery micro, with the Enterprise traveling through space for more peaceful reasons. Science fantasy films can also take place on earth. Dying Earth films like Oblivion thematically concentrate on human decisions that could lead to global destruction and/or the question “What makes us human?” ET Relations films focus on stories of aliens and humans coexisting, commenting on how we view “the other” in our current society (Men in Black and Arrival). The Mad Scientist micro challenges the audience to consider the ethical boundaries of scientific experimentation (The Island of Dr. Moreau). Macrogenre: SHOWBIZ AND ARTISTRY Microgenres: Biography, Creative Process, Culture In stories about Hollywood or artistic Culture, the writer must pay attention to the details of the world the characters inhabit. In fact, the stories themselves are often thinner (not necessarily in a bad way) in order to linger more on the characters’ societal practices. In both The Player and Boogie Woogie, the writers introduce dozens of characters, each vying for precious screen time, while exploring Hollywood’s filmmaking culture and the contemporary art scene in London, respectively. Biographical films such as Ed Wood or Pollock still contain elements of culture but instead the stories turn inward—exploring both internal and external struggles over the course of the protagonist’s life. Creative Process films (Adaptation or Girl with a Pearl Earring) may also illuminate the private life of a virtuoso but typically do so through exploring a single artistic creation or a specific period in the artist’s life. Macrogenre: SLASHER Microgenres: Splatter, Survival, Teen A slasher film highlights violence with sharp objects—in which skin is “slashed”—as opposed to violence by firearm or blunt instrument. Slasher micros are delineated by what else the story brings to the table. A Splatter film (Wolf Creek) is a more violent form of slasher, deliberately focusing on graphic details of the violence. In Teen slasher movies, screenwriters should play up the teenage relationships between characters. As mentioned earlier, high school films tend to focus on the high school setting. In a teen slasher (I Know What You Did Last Summer), the same high school archetypes would be present. Survival slasher movies spend more story time

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dramatizing the process that the lone survivor goes through to escape the would-be killer (Texas Chainsaw Massacre). Macrogenre: SPY/ESPIONAGE Microgenres: Corporate, Military, Political, Secrets (Sports, School, etc.) Espionage uses covert means to obtain secret information for combative purposes, and spies are the people who pull it off. Screenwriters simply use the micros to tell these tales in different environments. Most audiences are accustomed to the Military (Hunt for Red October) or Political (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) forms of espionage played out between two countries. Each side is driven by political ideologies prescribed by “higher-ups,” with the story operating at the level of the foot soldiers who are left with the responsibility of interpreting those orders through their own personal moral code. However, similar scenarios can play out in the Corporate world (Paycheck). In these stories, the corporations are often viewed as “evil empires,” with the protagonist seen as David against the corporate Goliath. Spy films can be reimagined by focusing more on the Secrets than on locations or ideological conflict. Harriet the Spy tells the story of a middle school student who uses covert means to obtain her secret information about friends, relatives and teachers, while Bring It On tells a spy story set in the competitive world of cheerleading. Macrogenre: SUPERHERO Microgenres: Origin Story, Personal Battles, Save the World While you could divvy up the Superhero genre by superpower, by audience or even by publisher, when considering the differences as they apply to genre elements, there are three simple micros. The first is the Origin Story, which explains how a superhero obtained and first started to use their superpowers. Beyond the Origin Story, the screenwriter’s main decision should be whether the superhero engaged in a Personal Battle (in which the villain’s criminal acts affect those the superhero most cares about and/or himself directly) or in a Global Battle (in which the superhero is trying to save the world). A global battle, however, does not always have to be about saving Earth. It could play out on a smaller scale such as saving the country or a city—as long as the superhero is making decisions to save “humanity” rather than himself and the specific people he loves. This is the difference between Iron Man and The Avengers. Macrogenre: SUPERPOWERS Microgenres: Intelligence, Life Extension, Mental, Physical Not to be confused with superhero films, superpower films explore the lives of ordinary people with extraordinary abilities. Whether the powers

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are granted for life or are only temporary, these stories often serve as dream fulfillment (or nightmare) stories for the audience. People often dream about what it would be like to be more Intelligent (Limitless) or to have their Life Extended (Tuck Everlasting). Stories such as these typically start off well, with the hero getting what s/he hoped for. However, the story would be quite boring if it was about someone who got everything they wanted and could handle it all perfectly. So naturally, these stories tend to get out of hand once the power overwhelms the hero—leaving her to decide whether to abandon the new power or to use it more responsibly. On the other hand, some films explore the darker side of wish fulfillment. Stephen King often tells stories of disgruntled, abused or downtrodden humans obtaining Mental superpowers: Carrie, The Dead Zone and Firestarter tell the stories of humans with telekinetic, psychic and pyrokinetic powers, respectively. In each, the superpower serves as a metaphoric externalization of the characters’ internal struggles. Screenwriters should consider such metaphors when writing superpower stories. Similarly, Physical powers such as those developed by scientific catastrophe (The Fly) or by magical happenstance (Mary Poppins) can also be read as allegorical. Macrogenre: SURVIVAL Microgenres: Captivity, Experiences, Nature/Outdoor, Rescue The central focus of a survival film is the question of whether the protagonist will live until the end of the story—and if so, how? Rescue survival films revolve around the idea that the character can only survive with the immediate help from others. These stories, like Black Hawk Down, are typically told from the rescuers’ point of view. Outdoor/Nature stories may have a rescue element in them, but the story usually focuses on the protagonist’s personal efforts to stay alive. External rescue efforts—if any—play a secondary role (The Martian and 127 Hours). Captivity films are more about surviving by adapting to the environment. Escape is not an element of the story (although it may happen). To survive, the protagonist must learn how to embrace the environment and outthink the elements that threaten his life. 12 Years a Slave certainly takes this approach, dramatizing Solomon Northup’s life as a slave, while Animal Factory dramatizes Ron Decker’s fight for survival in San Quentin prison. Humans can also survive life-threatening Experiences within society. They do not have to be isolated, imprisoned or lost in the wilderness. For instance, protagonists can be struggling to survive abuse (Running with Scissors), the apocalypse (The Road) or a natural disaster (The Impossible).

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Micros

Terror

AI/ET Encounter, Man-Made, Natural, Paranormal, Stalker, Survival

Time Travel

Discovered, Exists, Secret Invention

Macrogenre: TERROR Microgenres: AI/ET Encounter, Man-Made, Natural, Paranormal, Stalker, Survival Horror movies revel in violence and gore. Terror is different. Terror films revel in the psychological buildup to an impending horrific incident. The horror need not even occur, as it is the anticipation that drives the story’s rise in tension. Horrific incidents take different forms. In most cases, the impending savagery is based on violence, and the terror comes from being Stalked (Jaws). In these stories, the screenwriter often demonstrates a violent example early in the film and then continually reminds the audience what might happen. This is a very effective technique. Movies about terrorism play out in a similar fashion. A Man-Made terror film like Day Night Day Night meticulously details the hour-by-hour preparation of a suicide bomber, terrorizing the audience to imagine what will happen if/when the woman is successful. When this is applied to an Artificial Intelligence or an Extraterrestrial Encounter, the screenwriter has the added element of surprise because the audience does not fully comprehend the insidious possibilities of these beings (2001: A Space Odyssey). Two of the most terrifying films I have ever seen involve Natural and Paranormal events played out in a realistic manner. By providing small hints on the surface of a much larger problem beneath the protagonist’s psyche, the screenwriters are able to create severe unrest in the audience as they watch the characters slowly become untethered (Don’t Look Now and Rosemary’s Baby). Macrogenre: Time Travel Microgenres: Discovered, Exists, Secret Invention Time Travel movies routinely create plots that dramatize two central time machine paradoxes: the predestination paradox (if you have the blueprints for a time machine, can you go back in time to give those blueprints to someone so they can then build the first time machine?) and the grandfather paradox (if you go back in time and kill your maternal grandfather when he is a boy, will you simultaneously cease to exist because your mother would

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never have been born?). These ideas specifically come into play when the story’s time machine is a Secret Invention and very few people understand the ramifications of the machine (Time After Time and Predestination). In films in which time travel exists as common knowledge, characters may encounter such paradoxes, but the focus on the story is elsewhere. In films such as Twelve Monkeys and Planet of the Apes, the characters are freely able to travel through time and rarely question its implications. Time travel is an expected part of their mission. In this micro, time travel paradoxes are much more likely to play a role in the third act as a central part of the climax rather than a continuing issue for the characters to worry about. In stories in which time travel is Discovered by the characters (e.g., Edge of Tomorrow and The Time Traveler’s Wife), the phenomenon is almost seen as a superpower (or a curse) by the characters. Yes, there may be paradoxical ramifications, but these become secondary to the protagonists’ other concerns in the story. W Macros Workplace

Micros Boss’s Story, What It’s Like, Worker’s Story

Macrogenre: Workplace Microgenres: Boss’s Story, What It’s Like, Worker’s Story Workplace movies view their characters in a two-dimensional way because the stories do not delve into the characters’ personal lives. The audience (and the characters) only see the other characters at work. Rarely does the screenwriter reveal character behavior at home or in social situations outside the workplace. When writing such a script, consider the level of trust the audience (and the other characters) have for each character in the story. Central considerations for this genre include whether the story is told from the Boss’s point of view (à la The Social Network) or from the Worker’s point of view (à la The Help and Office Space). A third way to approach the Workplace story is to simply explain What It’s Like to work in a particular job—movies such as Up in the Air and Glengarry Glen Ross serve as examples of exploring the worlds of corporate downsizing experts and bottom-feeding real estate salesmen, respectively.

4

Genre Case Studies

With what we know of the Screenwriters Taxonomy so far, let’s revisit the call from your agent in Chapter 1. A producer is taking pitches from screenwriters looking to adapt material with a basic premise of: A man, falsely imprisoned, falls victim to the very worst in human behavior before finding his way to freedom and putting his life back together. Using the defining characteristics of super-, macro- and microgenres, let’s examine how this one descriptive sentence can be parsed into three very different films using the first three layers of the Screenwriters Taxonomy. I would argue that The Shawshank Redemption, Twelve Monkeys and 12 Years a Slave each tell the same general story: • • • •

A man, falsely imprisoned, falls victim to the very worst in human behavior before finding his way to freedom, and putting his life back together.

By examining these well-known films, let’s study how super-, macro- and microgenres delineate one central idea into three very different stories.

The Shawshank Redemption

Genre Breakdown of The Shawshank Redemption Supergenre Crime

Macros

Micros

Bromance

Traditional

Survival

Captivity

Escape

Tale

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In the classic film The Shawshank Redemption, the major focus of the story is on the first two parts of the log line: “a man, falsely imprisoned, falling victim to the very worst in human behavior.” This is a crime movie, pure and simple, illustrating the fundamental dichotomy of Criminal versus Lawman. The screenplay starts with a mystery: Did Dufresne kill his wife, or is he an innocent man? For at least half the movie, we do not know the answer because the story isn’t told through Dufresne’s point of view. It is told from the point of view of another inmate: Red. Red is the “detective” in this film, trying to decipher the mystery that is Andy Dufresne. However, instead of the typical detective/criminal relationship, screenwriter Frank Darabont told the story as a traditional bromance. Red and Andy form a friendship, and as Red becomes closer to Andy, he (and we) learn that Dufresne’s claim of innocence is true. Our “detective” (Red) is also able to describe for the audience the mental game of chess played between inmate Dufresne and prison warden Norton. Darabont does a nice job in the first act, making us suspect that Dufresne is a miscreant and Norton his spiritual leader. Then, in the second act, our detective discovers that Dufresne is innocent and that Norton runs a criminal enterprise. This places us emotionally in the second macrogenre (survival) because we are now curious to find out how Dufresne is going to make it out of this perilous relationship alive. Through Red, we learn that Dufresne is beaten, raped and doublecrossed by the warden (who discovers Dufresne’s innocence but keeps him imprisoned for personal exploitation). And through it all, Red explains how Dufresne keeps his sanity—how he survives. This macro/micro combo accomplishes two important goals. First, it demonstrates that the protagonist in our crime movie stands up against a corrupt system. No matter what is thrown at him, Dufresne faces the challenge and survives. He’s a fighter. Second, and more importantly, Darabont uses the survival macro to disguise his third macro: Escape. It took Darabont nearly one hundred pages to illustrate “a man, falsely imprisoned, falling victim to the very worst in human behavior,” and honestly, the last half of that log line could have been: “learns that friendship can be found even in the toughest of environments and can make life worth living,” and it would have been a good movie—a great tale of bromance survival. But Darabont had something else in mind, just as Andy Dufresne did. In the last twenty pages of the script, Darabont shows us how Dufresne “finds his way to freedom and begins putting his life back together.” Darabont utilizes the third act of his story as many other crime movies do: he ends with a double-cross. By the end of this crime story, justice is served to those who hid their criminal behavior behind the mask of authority, and Darabont is able to

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synthesize all of his genre components and pack them into a powerful realization for the audience: • We realize how Dufresne survived: he planned his escape for nearly twenty years. • We realize that Red’s entire story was simply a two-hour tale of escape, with a reveal right at the end. • We learn that Dufresne and Red would be together once Red is paroled—the bromance brought to a close as both men “begin putting their lives back together.”

Twelve Monkeys

Genre Breakdown of Twelve Monkeys Supergenre Science Fiction

Macros

Micros

Apocalyptic

Preapocalypse

Time Travel

Exists

Identity

Humanity

David and Janet Peoples drew inspiration from the French short film La Jetée when they wrote the screenplay Twelve Monkeys. The Peoples quickly illustrate “A man, falsely imprisoned, falling victim to the very worst in human behavior”: INT. PRISON DORMITORY/FUTURE - ETERNAL NIGHT PRISON P.A. SYSTEM: --number 5429, Garcia--number 87645, Cole. . . COLE, late thirties, dark hair, comes awake in a bunk cage, one of many stacked four high along both sides of a long dim corridor. He blinks in the near dark, shaken, disoriented. Then, as he ”recovers” from his very vivid dream, WE GET OUR FIRST LOOK AT HIS ENVIRONMENT .  .  . A WINDOWLESS UNDERGROUND WORLD OF ETERNAL NIGHT SOMETIME IN THE FUTURE .  .  . AN ALMOST COLORLESS ”REALITY” OF BLURRED EDGES AND ECHOEY SOUNDS, MUCH MORE ”DREAMLIKE” THAN HIS DREAM.

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Flashlights glare. In the half-light, COLE sees spooky figures, GUARDS, moving among the locked bunk/ cages. COLE turns and whispers to the occupant of the next cage, JOSE .  .  . COLE:

Ssssst! Jose, what’s going on?

JOSE’s face is almost lost in shadow. What there is of it is youthful. He’s just a scared Puerto Rican kid! JOSE:

”Volunteers” again.

JOSE immediately rolls over and feigns sleep as SCARFACE, a menacing guard with a jagged scar running down his cheek, looms close to COLE’s cage and unlocks it. SCARFACE:

”Volunteer duty.”

The PRISONERS in the other cages watch silently with narrowed eyes. COLE:

I didn’t volunteer.

SCARFACE:

You causing trouble again?

COLE:

(controls his temper) No trouble.

INT. EQUIPMENT ROOM - ETERNAL NIGHT COLE’s alone, struggling to get into what looks like a space suit in a room where suits hang like ghosts with blank eyes. TITLES BEGIN SUPERED OVER THE SCENE COLE has the torso of the suit on now and is trying to close it. VOICE:

(o.s.) All openings must be closed.

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COLE looks for the source of the voice, a tiny grate in the wall. VOICE:

(o.s.) If the integrity of the suit is compromised in any way, if the fabric is torn or a zipper not closed, readmittance will be denied.

INT. SEALED CHAMBER - MINUTES LATER (ETERNAL NIGHT) COLE, wearing the ”space suit” and a helmet with a plastic visor, steps into a tiny chamber, a kind of air lock. The heavy door clangs shut behind him. He’s alone. COLE’S breath comes quicker now as he sucks oxygen from the air tanks on his back. On the opposite wall is another door with a huge wheel lock. COLE turns the heavy wheel, opens the door, steps through it. INT. ELEVATOR - SECONDS LATER (ETERNAL NIGHT) COLE’S in an ascending elevator that groans and creaks. He looks down at a crudely drawn map he holds in his gloved hand. The map shows a series of tunnels and ladders. INT. SEWER PIPE - MINUTES LATER (NIGHT) COLE pans a flashlight, probing the filthy sewer he’s wading through. RATS flee the blade of light, scurry across islands of rusting junk. The flashlight beam settles on a ladder mounted in the wall. Reaching the rusted ladder, COLE starts to climb awkwardly. EXT. CITY STREET/FUTURE - MOMENTS LATER (NIGHT) A SCRAPING NOISE as a heavy man-hole cover is pushed up and moved aside. COLE’S helmeted head emerges from below.

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COLE’S POV THROUGH HIS PLASTIC-VISORED HELMET: a city in moonlight! A surreal image of abandoned buildings. No people anywhere. The only sounds are the WIND and COLE’S BREATHING.

By page three, we know that we are in a science fiction film. Juxtaposing alien and familiar images, the Peoples place our protagonist (Cole) up against unknown forces who send him on some sort of scientific mission. As the story plays out ( jumping rhythmically back and forth between the future and the past), we learn that Cole has been released from his hellish imprisonment to help stop the destruction of mankind via biological warfare. This brings two macrogenres into focus—time travel and apocalypse—while setting the stage for a third: Cole’s search for “Identity.” These three macros work well together. In this film, time travel already exists (the micro). Characters are freely able to travel through time and rarely question its implications. However, Cole will inexplicably run into the grandfather paradox as he tries to save the world. Even though the film starts “After the Apocalypse” (the reason for Cole’s hellish captivity), a majority of the film takes place “Preapocalypse” (another micro). These two fit together nicely. Cole is sent to the past to uncover important information about who released the chemical agent that destroyed humanity. This information could save the future of the human race if he can return it to the scientific team—who also happen to be his futuristic captors. In keeping with sci-fi expectations, this scenario encourages the audience to contemplate our role in society and the well-being of future generations. For instance, one of Cole’s “mentors” asks, “”Wouldn’t it be great if there was a germ or a virus that could wipe out mankind and leave the plants and animals just as they are?” This also becomes Cole’s driving question, personally. Having lived most of his postapocalyptic life in a cage, and victim to the very worst in human behavior, Cole must decide what his role is in society. Freed into the past, Cole has a chance to make a run for it and abandon his mission. But part of him feels obligated to at least try to save humanity from its apocalyptic fate. As is done in all good scripts, the screenwriters are able to marry the expectations of all three macrogenres into one unified ending. Cole, while using time travel to prevent the apocalypse, runs into the grandfather paradox as he tries to flee. This forces Cole (and the audience) to realize that Cole (as a child) has seen all of this before. In a mind-bending realization, this science fiction film ends with our hero saving humanity but sacrificing himself. Nevertheless, Cole (a man, falsely imprisoned who fell victim to the very worst in human behavior) found his way to freedom and made something of his life by discovering his own humanity (the third micro) and sacrificing it for the good of the human race.

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12 Years a Slave

Genre breakdown of 12 Years a Slave Supergenre Slice-of-Life

Macros

Micros

Biographical

Temporal

Survival

Captivity

Psychological

Worst Case

From the very first page of Solomon Northup’s personal memoir, we know the story: Having been born a freeman, and for more than thirty years enjoy the blessings of liberty in a free State—and having at the end of that time been kidnapped and sold into Slavery, where I remained, until happily rescued in the month of January, 1853, after a bondage of twelve years—it has been suggested that an account of my life and fortunes would not be uninteresting to the public. Yes, this is definitely the story of a man, falsely imprisoned, who falls victim to the very worst in human behavior before finding his way to freedom and putting his life back together. Imagine being screenwriter John Ridley, in 2008, trying to figure out how to adapt Northup’s book. He had choices as to how to tell this story. He could have told it as an adventure story or as a crime story. Even as a romance. But Ridley chose a different, less traditional, route. In a 2014 interview for the Script to Screen Series, Ridley explained the universal idea that drew him to the story: Think of how many times you walk out the door and you’re dismissive to someone who’s important to you. You don’t think about never seeing them again. [ . . . ] The thing that was really powerful to me was: this person, who had an education, who had a life, had stature, had circumstances . . . could not see how precious they were, and could not understand how easily those things can slip away from all of us. And I don’t even mean in the bigger picture of our freedom and our liberty, but the small things that people hold precious. That’s what was powerful to me when I first read the story. [ . . . ] For a film to be relevant, it’s got to be informative. And I don’t think anyone in this room needs to be informed about the decency of human nature. Instead, Ridley continues, “this film informs the audience about the preciousness of life—a preciousness that Solomon discovered during his twelve

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years of slavery.” Knowing that the preciousness of life is one of the driving ideals of the narrative, it is easy to understand how Ridley embraced the slice-of-life genre over any other. Ridley wanted to tell a universal story. In 2008, when Ridley first decided to write a script on spec, he read Solomon’s memoir with an eye toward adaptation. Ridley admits that, as a black man, when he reread parts of the story where Northrup is repeatedly denigrated, he thought, “Well . . . ‘Hell no. That’s not going to happen. Solomon is going to kick his ass!” Ridley explains that he realized his first instinct was to make it an action movie or an escape thriller. He struggled with these impulses. But, in the end, he went back to the fundamentals of the memoir and stayed true to Solomon Northup’s story of survival in captivity (macro and micro). As a writer, Ridley concludes, “However much regard I might have for myself as a writer, you start to realize ‘I don’t have anything other/better/greater to say about the circumstance than what was said [by Solomon].’” Examining Solomon Northup’s text, it is clear that he was telling a sliceof-life story. He says as much in the first few paragraphs: I can speak of Slavery only so far as it came under my own observation— only so far as I have known and experienced it in my own person. My object is, to give a candid and truthful statement of facts: to repeat the story of my life, without exaggeration, leaving it for others to determine, whether even the pages of fiction present a picture of more cruel wrong or a severer bondage. Ridley agrees that slavery is a fruitful topic for comment and discussion, but he didn’t want to simply discuss it as a historical event. He chose to write this story as a modern point of discussion. He wanted the audience to understand the significance of what it is like—as a people—to be enslaved. Not just as a black slave but a slave of any race. He explains this passionately, I think one of the dangers of this film is that you come out of it and go, “Well thank god we’re not those folks anymore. Thank god that that was 160 years ago and were not like that.” [But] there is more slavery going on in the world, per capita right now, than any other time in our history. And I put myself at the top of the list [of] those that benefit from the system. Sometimes it’s extreme and we have nothing to do with it, like human trafficking. Other times, it’s forced labor. I’m not here to preach. I’m not here to indict. Again, I put myself the top of that list. What we saw [in 12 Years a Slave] was not just 160 years ago. What we saw is not in the past. And as much as I want people to come out of this movie feeling good about ourselves and our country, and how we’ve progressed, what we have to remember is that there are people in that

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Defining the Film circumstance right now. And they are not all in foreign countries. They are not all removed. Some of them are right here, okay?

By allowing the audience to spend time in this specific community and to see how enslaved people coped with everyday issues and relationships over an extended period of time (twelve years), Ridley was able to expand the personal story to a global level and to maintain an emotional honesty to his (and Northup’s) story. Ridley utilized the fact that this is an historical biography (the second macro/micro) and—by accentuating the psychological effects of this worst-case scenario (the third macro/micro)—created a cautionary tale for a modern audience. To do this, Ridley had to ensure that his script did not fall into the trappings of other, more Hollywood-centric supergenres. A slice-of-life film needs to be realistic and to feel like an honest portrayal of events. We, as screenwriters, inherently want to raise the stakes and bring the audience to its feet, cheering—especially at the climax of the film. For example, there is a moment at the end of 12 Years a Slave when Solomon is finally rescued. However, his physically—and emotionally—beaten friend, Patsy, is left behind at the plantation. Ridley fought the urge to shift genre expectations: “Emotionally you want that moment where he reaches back and says ‘She’s coming with me and there’s nothing you can do about it!’ But that’s not the reality.” Ridley elaborates: There is a reason why you want [that kind of Hollywood ending] and there is a reason why you hope for it. That’s the great moment in those kinds of films, where [the hero says:] “I’m not leaving unless I can take everybody” you know? That has become a staple of theater because that’s what we emotionally want. [But] that wasn’t Solomon’s circumstance. And it was not for me to create that circumstance. [ . . . ] And I think [the scene that I wrote] is powerful because it reminds folks of a certain reality, and that we’re dealing with reality. [ . . . ] It may not be the most satisfying ending, but it is the most honest. And in slice-of-life movies, honesty is what we are looking for as an audience. In biographies, too, we want honesty. Ridley’s choice to tell this psychological survival story through a lens of honesty created an Academy Award–winning screenplay.

Summary An idea does not dictate super-, macro- or microgenre. To the contrary: these genres help you give your own idea its form, shape and substance. A

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simple through-line such as “A man, falsely imprisoned, falls victim to the very worst in human behavior before finding his way to freedom and putting his life back together” can become a crime movie, a science fiction film, or a slice-of-life story with any number of macro and micro combinations. The choice is up to you. With twenty-five film types, eleven supergenres and fifty macrogenres (each with an average of four microgenres), you now have 55,000 options to choose from.

References 12 Years a Slave. Directed by Steve McQueen. Written by John Ridley. United Kingdom and United States: Fox Searchlight Pictures and Lionsgate, 2013. Darabont, Frank. “Rita Hayworth & Shawshank Redemption.” Film script. Third draft, February 22, 1993. Peoples, David and Janet Peoples. “Twelve Monkeys.” Film script. Production draft, June 27, 1994. Ridley, John. “12 Years a Slave.” Film script. Shooting script, January 24, 2013. University of California Television (UCTV). “12 Years a Slave—Script to Screen.” Shot: April 2014. YouTube video, Duration: 58:52. Posted: April 25, 2014. www. youtube.com/watch?v=xp5fv5-6as0

Part II

Refining the Film

5

Voice

Once a storyteller has moved past the idea of genre, they have most likely defined the film as far as story, setting, theme and general characterization goes. What’s left then is the refinement of those elements and the refinement of the screenplay itself. Specifically, how is the story going to be told? In their fantastic book Alternative Screenwriting, Ken Dancyger and Jeff Rush discuss their collective approach to genre. In one section, they describe satire, docudramas and experimental films as being part of the same genre. They call these the Genre of Voice. I have the utmost respect for Dancyger and Rush. However, their use of the word “genre” in this instance seems a bit off the mark. Satire doesn’t define a set of stories—any set. Satire is more of a critical opinion. You can satirize any genre. Similarly, any story can be nonlinear, just as any true story dramatized is a docudrama. Like “comedy” or “drama,” these descriptors give us a clearer sense of the movie, but they are not genres in the sense defined by our taxonomy. Instead, they describe how the screenwriter is choosing to tell the story—a very important element in storytelling. As a nod to Dancyger and Rush, I call the fourth layer of the taxonomy the storyteller’s “Voice.” Voice changes the way an audience will experience the film. For instance, you might have a great idea for a crime movie; maybe it’s a gangster flick. If you tell the story classically, you could end up with Black Mass. If you tell the story as a kids’ movie, it becomes Bugsy Malone. Make it a parody, then you get Mafia! Or a musical: Guys and Dolls. Or animated: Gangs of LA 1991. Voice defines how the story will be told, but it does not affect the genre. I believe that, subconsciously, most of us are familiar with the traditional voice in narrative North American cinema.

Traditional Voice A traditional screenplay is told as a linear narrative made using modern filmmaking techniques and written for a broad audience with live-action,

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human characters that speak their dialogue as oblivious participants in the screenwriter’s story. Within this definition, six questions influence the screenwriter’s voice. 1. Will the story be told linearly? 2. Should the filmmaker expect to use modern filmmaking techniques? 3. Is the story being written for a broad audience? 4. Will the story be presented with live-action, human actors? 5. Will the characters speak their dialogue? 6. Are the fictional characters oblivious that a film is being made? Let’s break these concepts down one by one. Each element is another opportunity for the screenwriter, director or producer to creatively influence the story.

Linear Narrative For some inexplicable reason, screenwriting professors tend to tell their students that flashbacks should be avoided, but personally I believe that a linear voice is not always best for every story. In many cases, yes, a linear story—in which each scene progresses forward in time—works well. Audiences can easily understand these stories. Yet there are at least half a dozen nonlinear approaches to also consider. • Flashbacks. The audience is suddenly taken back in time for a flash of something that happened previously. The flashback may be from years ago, the day before or only a few moments prior. This is a common nonlinear device and often does not feel like a nonlinear story. Casablanca is a linear film, with the exception of Rick and Ilsa’s relationship in Paris, which is told entirely in flashback. • Two time periods, intercut. In The Godfather Part II, two stories are told simultaneously, each taking about half of the screen time. Michael Corleone’s story takes place in the 1950s and 1960s. His father’s story starts fifty years prior. The film cuts frequently between the two stories, encouraging the audience to actively make thematic connections between the two. • Parallel realities. This voice also cuts between two time periods, but only one of the stories is “real.” For instance, in The French Lieutenant’s Woman, two parallel stories are told: a love affair between a modern-day actor and actress and a second love story between a couple living in Victorian England. In this film, the Victorian-era story appears to be real but is, in fact, only the

Voice

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movie-story in which the modern-day actors are starring. However, the characters in the Victorian-era story don’t know that they aren’t real. The Victorian couple doesn’t realize that they are scripted characters being played by actors. Their story progresses as if they really exist—the audience is emotionally attached to both sets of lovers. With both couples played by Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons, the story magically flits freely between two worlds. • Repetition. Screenwriters can alter the linear progression of a story through repetition of time. In the film Run Lola Run, the film repeats the same set of events three different times. Each time, the protagonist, Lola, makes different choices to try and save her boyfriend’s life. Each sequence is linear on its own, but once the sequence ends, the audience and Lola are returned to the beginning of the process—a sort of linear loop progression similar to the comedy Groundhog Day. • Time Travel. While a Time Travel movie is usually told linearly from the protagonist’s perspective, the scenes can be set in a nonlinear order. This voice has many different options for manipulating time and scene order to confuse and entertain the audience. Examples include Time After Time, Midnight in Paris, Looper and Primer. • Reverse Chronology. Memento is perhaps the best-known example of a story told with scenes that run backward through time, meaning that Scene #1 happened after Scene #2, which happened after Scene #3. As the viewer watches the film, the story unwinds in reverse. Other films that use this technique (at least in parts) include The Sweet Hereafter, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the French film Irréversible.

Films That Use Nonlinear Voices Flashbacks

Casablanca Slumdog Millionaire

Parallel realities

Atonement The French Lieutenant’s Woman

Repetition of events

Groundhog Day Run Lola Run

Reverse chronology

Memento The Sweet Hereafter

Time travel

Twelve Monkeys Back to the Future

Various time periods

The Godfather Part II The Hours

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Modern Filmmaking Style While this list is not complete by any means, I think it is safe to say that modern filmmakers and audiences expect films to utilize the following: • Color 35mm film or top-of-the-line digital camera, using prime lenses and riding on dollies, cranes, car mounts and using fluid-head tripods. • If effects are needed, they will be created with high-quality computer graphic imagery CGI and/or 3-D computer animation. • Complex sound design with multiple tracks able to highlight any important sound or piece of dialogue. • Dynamic editing patterns that utilize a variety of shots within a scene (wide shot, medium shot, close-up, e.g.) allowing the editor to cut every 5 to 30 seconds, with most scenes averaging about 2 to 4 minutes. This is, by no means, the only way to make a film. It is probably not even the best way to make a film. But it is the common way we make films in the United States in the early part of the twenty-first century. But consider “modern” back in 1939. It was not unusual for films to be shot in black and white. Which is why, in the first act of The Wizard of Oz, audiences thought nothing of Kansas being shot entirely in drab gray. Then, what an impact the change to color must have had when Dorothy stepped out into the Technicolor land of Oz! Screenwriters need to understand the medium that will give birth to their story. Not everything that a screenwriter writes will be put into practice, but the work should be creatively written on the assumption that their vision will hold up through production. We all know that creative choices in film are financially influenced. Spike Lee wrote and shot his feature debut She’s Gotta Have It on a shoestring budget for approximately $175,000. If you have never read his book Spike Lee’s Gotta Have It: Inside Guerilla Filmmaking, you should. The book documents the creative decisions that Lee made as he conceptualized, wrote, shot and cut the film. In it, Lee describes nearly all of his creative choices, including the thought process he used to craft the voice of using black-andwhite film in combination with color film to enhance the story. The film’s story revolves around a woman, Nola Darling, as she tries to choose between three men that she is dating: Jamie, Greer and Mars. In the middle of the film, Jamie takes Nola on a special date for her birthday. The entire film is shot in black and white, except for this scene—which is shot in color. By reading his journal entries, we are able to examine how Lee’s creative process worked over time:

Voice November 24, 1984

December 2, 1984

December 9, 1984

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What if it’s Nola’s birthday and Jamie has a special surprise for her? He went out and got a dance troupe or a duo to perform for her in her loft. Now that’s a special birthday present. Dancing integrated right into the film. IDEA: For the birthday scene where Jamie tells Nola to click her heels together and we cut to her ruby red slippers Wizard of Oz style. I’m gonna go to a special effects house to make those shoes sparkle. Ernest called me last night and suggested that we shoot this film in black and white. He had been watching Raging Bull on tape. Originally, he wanted to do the love scenes in black and white. He has rekindled my interest in that Wizard of Oz joke—maybe we could still make her shoes ruby red and sparkle just the same as it was done in Rumble Fish. I do need to find out how you do art direction for a black-and-white film. By the time Ernest comes back from Curaçao I should have a script for him. Once he has read the script we can sit down and further decide if we shoot black-and-white.

Cinematographer Ernest Dickerson read Lee’s latest draft while Lee borrowed Dickerson’s videotape copy of Raging Bull. By December 22, they decide to shoot the film “in beautiful black-and-white.” January 25, 1985

Yesterday Ernest suggested shooting the entire dance sequence in color. It’s a thought. I will give it serious thought. It would, however, diminish my homage to the Wizard of Oz, because if we were to do the whole dance sequence in color it would have to start where she opens her eyes in the park. But then Wizard of Oz was black-and-white in the Kansas scenes.

Notice how Lee’s creative process—his production voice—was inspired by other filmmakers. Of course, there is the homage to The Wizard of Oz. But Lee is also influenced by Scorsese’s Raging Bull and Coppola’s Rumble Fish—which both use color within their black-and-white films.

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Films That Mix Black and White with Color Footage Films

Technique

The Wizard of Oz The Unbearable Lightness of Being Darkness in Tallinn Oz: The Great and Powerful

The film shifts between black and white and color depending upon the physical and emotional changes the characters go through.

The Picture of Dorian Gray The Tingler Rumble Fish Schindler’s List

The film presents in black and white, except for specific characters or objects that appear, metaphorically, in color.

A Matter of Life and Death Wings of Desire

Life on Earth is represented in color, while Heaven is shown monochromatically.

Singin’ in the Rain Raging Bull

The story primarily exists in one style, but when the characters are shown in home movies or films they starred in, the style flips.

Shock Corridor

The film is in black and white except for the characters’ colorful dreams/hallucinations.

The Purple Rose of Cairo Pleasantville

A meta-representation of characters that exist both inside and outside some form of media. Life within the media world is black and white, while life in the “real world” is shown in color.

She’s Gotta Have It

Shot entirely in black and white, except for one scene shot in color to represent the singularity of that moment for the protagonist.

Dead Again American History X

Present-day scenes are in color, while the scenes set in the past are in black and white.

JFK Thirteen Days

Some scenes begin in black and white to create the feeling that historical footage is being used, and then the scene segues into color as the fictional story is introduced.

Memento

Black and white scenes move forward chronologically, while color scenes move backward chronologically.

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Similar production considerations should be made as screenwriters imagine other creative aspects of their stories. Jim Jarmusch’s earliest films Stranger Than Paradise and Down by Law used long takes for each scene, requiring minimal editing. Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped focused on the plight of a prisoner of war through minimalist audio—portraying the entire film only through the sounds that the prisoner himself could hear. Sometimes these decisions were made for financial reasons, but not always. Terrence Mallick’s The New World eschewed dolly and crane shots, as well as CGI, despite a $50 million budget.

Films That Subvert Conventions in Editing and Sound Design Minimalist Sound

2001: A Space Odyssey The Blair Witch Project Elephant A Man Escaped

Creative Use of Silence

Gravity Jaws M Raging Bull

No Musical Score

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days Cast Away Dog Day Afternoon No Country for Old Men

Longer Takes and Slower Editing Rhythm

Before Sunrise Down by Law Gerry The Straight Story

Few Mechanical Camera Movements

Clerks The New World Songs from the Second Floor Stranger Than Paradise

Written for a Broad Audience When considering an audience-appropriate voice, a screenwriter should consider five content-specific areas: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Language Violence Humor Sexuality Gore.

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Each of these areas has its own continuum upon which a screenwriter should consider placing their content. So ask yourself: “Dang” or “Damn”? Bullets or bananas? Bleeding out or cutting away? Jokes or jeers? Kissing or coitus? Looney Tunes cartoons provide an excellent example of one side of the equation. Yosemite Sam frequently “swears”; Elmer Fudd has shot Daffy Duck in the face with a gun more times that I can remember; Pepé Le Pew is forever on the make; and Bugs Bunny is often seen chasing—but never killing—people with an axe. And these are children’s programs! How do they get away with such things? Easy: they use a different voice. In the 1954 cartoon Captain Hareblower, Yosemite Sam screams “Ya doggone idjit galoot! You’ll blow the ship to smithereenies!” compared to Jules Feiffer’s script for Carnal Knowledge, in which Jonathan screams: “Answer me, you ball-busting, castrating, son of a cunt bitch!” Both voices express anger, but for vastly different movie going audiences. By adjusting your voice to temper language, violence, humor, sexuality and gore, a Crime story about gangsters during Prohibition can turn from the violent Untouchables into the kid-friendly Bugsy Malone, while a Day-in-the-Life rivalry set on a college campus can become the debauched Animal House or the feel-good Monsters University.

Voice Content Continuum Continuum:

Clean |–—————LANGUAGE——–———| Dirty

Examples:

Looney Tunes Back in Action

Full Metal Jacket

Additional Factors: Foul language is not always associated with swear words. Racial slurs, sexual degradation or spiteful religious innuendoes can also be perceived as caustic, even if no one is swearing.

Continuum:

Fanciful |–————VIOLENCE–————| Excessive

Examples:

The Three Stooges

Straw Dogs

Additional Factors: Violence does not always have to be physical engagement between two people. Violence can be inflicted upon oneself (The Perks of Being a Wallflower), or it can be psychological violence via mental or emotional abuses (Ordinary People or Cinderella).

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Continuum:

Playful |—–————HUMOR—————–| Caustic

Examples:

The Peanuts Movie

Freddy Got Fingered

Additional Factors: Humor is a very broad subject. See Chapter 2 for an explanation of various types of humor.

Continuum:

Prim |–—————SEXUALITY—————–| Explicit

Examples:

My Girl

Nymphomaniac

Additional Factors: Physical contact is not the only consideration for sexuality. Also consider the people involved in the relationship. Stories involving minors and adults (Lolita) or portraying incest (Fighting Fish) are incendiary by nature. And, while this is certainly changing in society today, LGBTQ stories play differently across various audiences.

Continuum:

Implied |–—————GORE—————–| Detailed

Examples:

The Birds

The Green Inferno

Additional Factors: Gore is not only found in horror films. Gore can appear in a medical context (Coma), personal injury (127 Hours), sci-fi body mutilation (Videodrome) or in war (We Were Soldiers).

This does not mean that screenwriters need to avoid adult themes if they are writing for the children’s or young-adult market. In fact, these are often the best places to infuse adult themes—just make sure to adjust your voice accordingly. Stories such as The Lorax center around environmental responsibility, while Watership Down introduces children to the ideas of death and supreme loss—both in G-rated, animated films. By applying a different audience voice to your subject matter, you can end up with very different screenplays.

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Different Audience Voices Applied to Similar Subject Matter Subject Matter

Adult Audience

Children’s Audience

Day-in-the-life rivalry on a college campus

Animal House

Monsters University

Science fiction battle between the U.S. military and outer space aliens.

The Day the Earth Stood Still

Iron Giant

Crime story about gangsters The Untouchables set during Prohibition

Bugsy Malone

Western about a stranger trying to protect the town

Rango

Pale Rider

Horror film highlighting the Night of the Living ParaNorman reanimation of the dead Dead

Vulgarity, sex and violence aside, there are also societal considerations when conceptualizing your audience. Whether we want to admit it or not, a “general audience” in the United States once meant (and perhaps still means to many corporate ad execs) white, middle-class Christian Americans between the ages of 10 and 60 with at least a fifth-grade education who expect to see male heterosexual heroes on the screen. Luckily, this idea has started to change. Filmmakers like Spike Lee (Do the Right Thing), Gus Van Sant (My Own Private Idaho) and Jane Campion (The Piano) started to break down these barriers in the 1980s and 1990s, while Alfredo DeVilla (Nothing Like the Holidays), Lisa Cheledenko (The Kids Are All Right), Annette Apitz (Fighting Fish), Tanya Hamilton (Night Catches Us), K. Lorell Manning (Happy New Year), Bertha Bay-Sa Pan (Almost Perfect) and Mike Paulucci (short films: Pronouns and Black & White)—among many others—continue to broaden the voices heard in American films today. Specific Versus General Audiences And while we all want our stories to be enjoyed by the widest audience possible, sometimes screenwriters choose to “speak” to a more specific crowd. The four-hour miniseries Killing Jesus targets a specific religious audience. The film Frost/Nixon expects its audience to understand the political landscape of the 1970s. And David Cronenberg’s film Cosmopolis takes aim at an adult audience already familiar with the financial inequities prevalent in

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America today. When writing for a specific audience, you have the luxury of digging deeper into the culture, nuance and specific knowledge because you can build upon an expected base of knowledge within your intended audience. At the same time, however, you need to have a firm understanding of the details you are exploring. Otherwise, the audience may recognize your shortcomings and discredit the story altogether. Similarly, a script written for the general population also has pitfalls. If you “dumb down” your script too much, you may lose a portion of your audience. But if you are writing for a general audience and the material becomes too complex, too scientific or too cerebral, then a portion of the audience may drift away. Therefore, the screenwriter needs to figure out ways to “help the audience along” if the material becomes difficult. One great example is the adaptation of the book Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 into the feature film Apollo 13. In it, screenwriters William Broyles Jr. and Al Reinert must explain in just a few minutes what author Jim Lovell explained in detail over many pages in his book. INT. ROOM 210 – BLACKBOARD DRAWING Kranz adds to his drawing of earth, moon, Apollo and trajectory lines, writing the numbers in, x’ing the point on the drawingKRANZ:

So you’re telling me you can only bring our people this far? Gentlemen, that is not acceptable.

There is a CACOPHONY of opinion and debate then, all speaking at once, till a persistent VOICE shouts them downARTHUR:

Power is everything!

Heads turn and John Arthur steps forward. He’s only in his mid-20s but supremely confidentARTHUR:

(more softly) Power- is everything. Without it they don’t talk to us, they don’t correct their trajectory, they don’t turn the heat shield around. We have to turn everything off now or they won’t even make it to reentry.

KRANZ:

What do you mean ‘everything’?

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ARTHUR:

With everything on, the LEM draws amps, at which rate the batteries dead in 16 hours, not 55. And so our people. We’ve got to get them to 12 amps.

60 are are down

A CHORUS OF PROTEST greets thisCONTROLLERS:

No way! Twelve! That’s crazy! You can’t run a vacuum cleaner on twelve amps!

Notice that we—the general movie-going audience—may not know what an LEM is or how to calculate trajectory or even what an amp measures. But we now know that “power is everything” and that these scientists are going to have to keep the astronauts alive using less energy than a vacuum cleaner uses. Most importantly, we know that this is a serious problem. Broyles and Reinert provide enough dialogue that the scene sounds like a bunch of scientists arguing. The writers are intelligent enough to write convincing scientific dialogue, while at the same time they are also smart enough to simplify the scene in a way that everyone can understand and enjoy the dramatic beats.

Live Action, Animation, Puppets and Human Beings Live-action films with human actors are common these days, if you ignore the CGI superhero movies. But there are many creative reasons to choose nonhuman actors, as the various Wizard of Oz films demonstrate. The classic 1939 version casts human actors in the roles of Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion. This fantasy film tells the story of a young girl leaving home and confronting her fears—as described in the very first act. Early in the (shooting) script, three farmhands—Hunk, Hickory and Zeke—each speak to Dorothy separately. On page 4: HUNK:

Now lookit, Dorothy, you ain’t using your head about Miss Gulch. Think you didn’t have any brains at all.

Later on page 4: HICKORY:

Oh! Oh, it feels like my joints are rusted. Listen, Dorothy, don’t let Hunk

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kid you about Miss Gulch. She’s just a poor sour-faced old maid that -- she ain’t got no heart left. You know, you should have a little more heart yourself, and have pity on her.

On page 5: ZEKE:

Listen, kid, are you going to let that old Gulch heifer try and buffalo you? She ain’t nothing to be afraid of. Have a little courage, that’s all.

Later, once Dorothy lands in Oz, she meets three fantastical characters: the Scarecrow (representing Brains), the Tin Man (representing Heart) and the Cowardly Lion (representing Courage). In this live-action film, the same human actors play characters in both worlds: • Ray Bolger plays the roles of Scarecrow and Hunk • Jack Haley plays the roles of Tin Man and Hickory • Bert Lahr plays the roles of Cowardly Lion and Zeke This creative choice encourages the audience to make the connection that Dorothy’s fantasy adventure is directly related to her life back in Kansas. And this is more than a directorial decision. It is written into the final scene of the script. In case the audience was unsure that the face of the Cowardly Lion was that of Bert Lahr, Dorothy points it out in dialogue. AUNT EM:

There, there, lie quiet now. You just had a bad dream.

DOROTHY:

No --

HUNK:

Sure -- remember me -- your old pal, Hunk?

HICKORY:

And me -- Hickory?

ZEKE:

You couldn’t forget my face, could you?

DOROTHY:

No. But it wasn’t a dream -- it was a place. And you -- and you – and you -and you were there.

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Screenwriters Langley, Ryerson and Woolf had to be aware during the scriptwriting process that their live-action farmhands would also be visually recognizable in the fantasy scenes, even though they would be disguised as anthropomorphic creatures. In this case, their choice to use live-action, human actors was a specific one. Disney had released Snow White and the Seven Dwarves two years earlier, so animation was certainly an option. But knowing that the film would be shot using live action helped the screenwriters enhance the story thematically. To further illustrate the point, in a Japanese anime version, The Wizard of Oz 1982, the visual similarities between characters in each world were lost, and the entire parallel story line was thrown out. In a 2016 interview with blogger Jacob Hall, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman discussed his animated puppet film Anomalisa, explaining how animation should be recognized as an artistic form. [Animation] is just another way to make a movie. You can do anything with animation. It’s got its own set of characteristics that are apparent, especially stop-motion since it’s got a handmade quality, if you don’t erase that from the process. We [ . . . ] are trying to push the idea of animation as a form—not a genre—forward. Because it is. There should be a diversity of animated films out there and there isn’t. According to Kaufman, animation should be used as a voice for the storyteller, not as a genre that pigeonholes an animated story as “a family movie.” There is plenty of room for both. Whether stop-motion, puppets or animation, these nonhuman voices can encompass both family and mature topics—and everything in between.

Voice for Nonlive Action, Nonhuman Characters Stop-Motion Animation Family Audience The Boxtrolls The Fantastic Mr. Fox Nightmare Before Christmas

Mature Audience Anomalisa Book of the Dead Live Freaky! Die Freaky!

Live-Action Puppets Family Audience The Muppet Christmas Carol Muppet Treasure Island

Mature Audience Dante’s Inferno Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story

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2-D or 3-D Animation Family Audience 101 Dalmatians Big Hero 6 Shrek Tangled Winnie the Pooh

Mature Audience Akira From Up on Poppy Hill The Secret World of Arrietty When Marnie Was There The Wind Rises

The Japanese film The Wind Rises is an animated historical biography, the science fiction epic Akira illustrates a dystopian future that grows out of control and the R-rated magazine Heavy Metal has been adapted into the fantastically vivid animated film Heavy Metal. Additionally, the stop-motion film Live Freaky! Die Freaky! dramatized the Charles Manson murders from 1968, while filmmaker Todd Haynes used Barbie dolls for puppets in the biopic Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story about the singer’s struggle with anorexia.

Spoken Dialogue Screenwriters are forever trying to figure out the best way to explain what is going on inside the characters’ minds. In a novel, the author writes this information into the narrative. But a screenwriter doesn’t have this luxury. Of course, you can have your characters explain their feelings to each other in dialogue. But there are other ways to accomplish this as a screenwriter. Musicals When Dorothy sings “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” we understand that she is revealing her dreams of running away. This is not something that Dorothy is actually saying to anyone. Musicals allow the audience to suspend their disbelief that humans would just naturally go through life singing about their feelings. It is a fun stylistic approach that allows us to enter a character’s heart and mind through music. To demonstrate two different voices, consider two adaptations of the same source. The 2016 film Pete’s Dragon was a remake of the 1977 musical of the same name. The musical version was able to infuse the idea of child abuse and child slavery into the script quite easily in a toe-tapping Disney song early in the film when Pete’s “family”—the Gogans—tries to retrieve him from his savior, Nora:

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Merle:

We got a bill of sale in hand.

Lena:

And lady, if you don’t budge

Grover:

We’ll pick ya up right where you stand and bring ya before the judge.

Nora:

No sir!

All Gogans:

That boy is our property. Same as the family cow. ’Cause we got a bill of sale right here. And we’re gonna take him now.

Nora (Gogans): You can’t have him (Petey’s gotta do his chores). You don’t love him (Paint the doors and wash the floors). All you’ve done (Shine shoes) up to now (Turn screws) is break his heart (Fix the broken fuse). You’ll abuse him (He’s so good at feedin’ hogs). And just use him (Pitchin’ hay and choppin’ logs). Look out, or I’ll take you apart (We’d like to see you try it). All Gogans:

We got a bill of sale right here. He’s ours until he dies.

Nora:

Stay where you are - just one more move and you’ll get it between the eyes! You won’t make a slave of him. Even if you connive!

All Gogans:

Yes we will, ’cause we got a bill of sale right here. We got a bill of sale right here. We got a bill of sale right here, right here!

Based on Seton Miller’s unpublished short story, Pete’s Dragon is about a dragon that may or may not be a part of Pete’s imagination. Purportedly, the short story has dark undertones, and the reader is left uncertain whether Pete is imagining this creature as a coping strategy for something in his past. Malcolm Marmorstein cleverly used a musical voice to bring some of these dark ideas into the Disney film in 1977. However, the 2016 version chose

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to remove the musical element from the story, thereby making allusions to child abuse and slavery nearly impossible in a film for kids. Instead, screenwriters Lowery and Halbrooks created sympathy and despair by having Pete’s parents die in a car crash at the start of the film. Silence Musicals rely heavily upon a didactic transfer of knowledge, with characters verbally explaining their innermost thoughts through musical numbers. But what if a screenwriter took the opposite approach—removing all verbal interaction between audience and character? Before the 1920s, all films were silent (as far as dialogue goes). Silent films had to rely on physical cues from the actors, visual metaphors and subtextual editing techniques to provide important aspects of the story to the audience. It has become a lost art . . . almost. There are still a few modern filmmakers who use this nonverbal voice.

Films with Little or No Dialogue After the Apocalypse The Artist Brand Upon the Brain! Dr. Plonk Hukkle Juha Metropolis Return to Babylon Sidewalk Stories Snow White [Blancenieves]

Spanish filmmaker Pablo Berger wrote Snow White [Blancenieves] as a truly silent film. Other modern films may use sound within the film, but their characters do not speak. For example, After the Apocalypse is a survival story that has no dialogue because the character’s voices were destroyed by poisonous gas. Silent and sans-dialogue films force the screenwriter to rely much more on visuals and editing techniques to tell the internal elements of their story. Internal Monologues Similar to musicals, an internal monologue allows the audience to hear what the characters are thinking—just without all the music and dancing.

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Written as Voice-Over (VO) in the script, this flag informs the reader that only the audience can hear what is being said. Charlie Kaufman, in the selfreferential adaptation Adaptation, introduces the character Charlie Kaufman to the audience with this voice: INT. LARGE EMPTY LIVING ROOM - MORNING 2 Beamed ceiling, ostentatious fireplace. A few birthday cards on the mantel, two of them identical: ”To Our Dear Son on His Fortieth Birthday.” Charlie Kaufman, a fat, balding man in a purple sweater with tags still attached, paces. His incantational voiceover carpets this and every scene he’s in. It is at times barely audible, but always present. KAUFMAN:

(VO) I’m old. I’m fat. I’m bald. My toenails have turned strange. I am old. I am -- I have nothing. She’ll think I’m an idiot. Why couldn’t I stay on that diet? She’ll pretend not to be disappointed, but I’ll see that look, that look-- God, I’m repulsive. But as repulsive as I think? My Body Dysmorphic Disorder confuses everything. I mean, I know people call me Fatty behind my back. Or Fatso. Or, facetiously, Slim. But I also realize this is my own perverted form of selfaggrandizement, that no one talks about me at all. What possible interest is an old, bald, fat man to anyone?

Then, a few scenes later, the Kaufman character meets the woman that he was worrying about—Valery. They meet in a restaurant to discuss an upcoming writing project: an adaptation of the book The Orchid Thief. INT. L.A. BUSINESS LUNCH RESTAURANT - MIDDAY 9 Kaufman, wearing his purple sweater sans tags, sits with Valerie, an attractive woman in wire-rim glasses. They pick at salads. Kaufman steals glances at her lips, her hair, her breasts. She looks up at him. He blanches, looks down. KAUFMAN:

(VO) She looked at my hairline. She thinks I’m old. She thinks I’m fat. She --

Voice VALERIE:

We think you’re great.

KAUFMAN:

Oh, thanks, wow. That’s nice to hear.

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A rivulet of sweat slides down his forehead. Valerie watches it. Kaufman sees her watching it. She sees him seeing her watching it. She looks at her salad. He quickly swabs. VALERIE:

We all just loved the Malkovich script.

KAUFMAN:

Thank you. That’s .  .  . I appreciate that.

VALERIE:

(still looking at her salad) Such a unique voice. Boy, I’d love to find a portal into your brain.

KAUFMAN:

(laughing) Trust me, it’s no fun.

Because of the internal monologue from the earlier scene, we know that Kaufman is insecure, despite the producer’s accolades and the successful film she refers to (the actual film Being John Malkovich written by the real Charlie Kaufman). In fact, the consistent use of Kaufman’s internal monologue does provide a sort of portal into his brain. Screenwriting instructors often tell students that using VO is a weak choice and that we would be better served to “show” and not “tell.” This may, in many cases, be true. However, it is worth noting that famed filmmakers throughout the decades have used this technique, including Mary Harron (American Psycho), Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho), Peter Jackson (Heavenly Creatures and The Lord of the Rings), Stanley Kubrick (A Clockwork Orange and Lolita), Spike Lee (Malcolm X), Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line and Badlands), Gus Van Sant (My Own Private Idaho) and Martin Scorsese (The Wolf of Wall Street and Goodfellas).

Films with Extensive Internal Monologues About Schmidt Adaptation American Psycho Badlands A Clockwork Orange Fight Club Goodfellas Heavenly Creatures

Lolita The Lord of the Rings Malcolm X My Own Private Idaho Psycho Secret Window The Thin Red Line The Wolf of Wall Street

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Characters as Oblivious Participants Most films show us the story of fictional characters that are unaware of the presence of the audience. It is as if we are watching them through an invisible fourth wall. When fictional characters address the camera directly, they have “broken” that metaphorical fourth wall. Breaking the fourth wall is startling to the audience.

Films That Break the Fourth Wall American Psycho The Big Short Crank Deadpool Fight Club George of the Jungle Goodfellas Kiss Kiss Bang Bang The Rocky Horror Picture Show Sunset Boulevard The Wolf of Wall Street

In the dark comedy American Psycho, Mary Harron and Guinevere Turner begin their screenplay by breaking the fourth wall to great effect: INT. PASTELS RESTAURANT- NIGHT An insanely expensive restaurant on the Upper East Side. The decor is a mixture of chi-chi and rustic, with swagged silk curtains handwritten menus and pale pink tablecloths decorated with arrangements of moss, twigs and hideous exotic flowers. The clientele is young, wealthy and confident, dressed in the height of late-eighties style: poufy Lacroix dresses, slinky Alaïa, Armani power suits. CLOSE-UP on a WAITER reading out the specials. WAITER:

With goat cheese profiteroles and I also have an arugula Caesar salad. For entrées tonight I have a swordfish meatloaf with onion marmalade, a rare-roasted partridge breast in raspberry coulis with a sorrel timbale .  .  .

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Huge white porcelain plates descend on very pale pink linen table cloths. Each of the entrees is a rectangle about four inches square and look exactly alike. CLOSE-UP on various diners as we hear fragments of conversation. ”Is that Charlie Sheen over there?” ”Excuse me? I ordered cactus pear sorbet.” WAITER:

And grilled free-range rabbit with herbed French fries. Our pasta tonight is a squid ravioli in a lemon grass broth .  .  .

CLOSE-UP on porcelain plates containing elaborate perpendicular desserts descending on another table. PATRICK BATEMAN, TIMOTHY PRICE, CRAIG MCDERMOTT and DAVID VAN PATTEN are at a table set for four. They are all wearing expensively cut suits and suspenders and have slicked-back hair. Van Patten wears hornrimmed glasses. The camera moves in on Bateman as his narration begins: BATEMAN:

(V.O.) We’re sitting in Pastels, this nouvelle Northern California place on the Upper East Side.

The Waiter sets down plates containing tiny, elaborately decorated starters. As he does so we hear Bateman’s description of each of the men at the table. BATEMAN:

(V.O.) You’ll notice that my friends and I all look and behave in a remarkably similar fashion, but there are subtle differences between us. McDermott is the biggest asshole. Van Patten is the yes man. Price is the most wired. I’m the best looking. We all have light tans. Right now I’m in a bad mood because this is not a good table, and Van Patten keeps asking dumb, obvious questions about how to dress.

VAN PATTEN:

What are the rules for a sweater vest?

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Notice how this differs from the VO in Adaptation, with Kaufman’s voice as an internal monologue instead of an attempt to communicate with the audience. By starting the film with an introduction to the lavish setting, the screenwriters establish a certain air to the characters. Had the Bateman character not broken the fourth wall, we would have taken all of their subsequent dialogue as a genuine reflection of their personalities. However, since Bateman has winked through the lens and let us into his point of view, we now see the haughty dialogue from a more humorous perspective: his. Harron and Turner also use Bateman’s voice for another, more sinister reason that is only revealed later in the story. By inviting us into Bateman’s perspective, we begin to relate with him. We begin to like him. We begin to understand why he dislikes this world and all the people in it. And by then it is too late. We find out that we have become sympathetic to a serial killer. The biographical, day-in-the-life film American Splendor also breaks the fourth wall. In the midst of a story about a writer named Harvey Pekar (played by actor Paul Giamatti), the Real Harvey Pekar appears and talks directly to the camera, commenting on both the story and the actors. The voice, however, is different from the American Psycho approach because the story is biographical. Pekar is a real person, not a fictional character. By using this approach, the filmmakers actually infuse a documentary technique into a fictional film for both thematic and comedic effect. Other filmmakers reverse this approach by taking fictional characters and infusing them into what appears to be real documentary—but which is not. This is known as a mockumentary, where the filmmaker is mocking the documentary style, subverting it for storytelling purposes.

Mockumentaries One way to consistently break the fourth wall is by placing the story within a fake documentary, wherein the characters themselves are fully aware of the filmmaking process. In recent years, this filmmaking voice has become increasingly popular—to the point that at least five platforms have developed upon which a mockumentary can be built: • • • • •

Low-Budget platform Sham-Reality platform Known-Actor platform Satiric-Media platform Uchronia platform

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Low Budget Early adopters of this cinematic voice used it to save money, realizing that their low budgets could be covered up if the story that they were telling involved characters who were supposedly making a low-budget documentary film. By adopting this voice, the audience tends to excuse poor lighting, fluctuating sound quality, shaky cameras and even stilted characters. This approach overlaps with the modern filmmaking technique aspect of voice. Sham Reality Casey Affleck and Joaquin Phoenix made what appeared to be a real documentary when, in fact, it was all scripted. The mockumentary I’m Still Here supposedly documented Phoenix’s retirement from acting to pursue a career in rap music. Affleck (the film’s director) and Phoenix both acted as if this were a true story even when being interviewed on television by David Letterman and in other public appearances. The story was eventually debunked, but not before garnering national attention for the fictional film. Known Actor Other mockumentaries are clearly fictional but use known actors as the platform to hook people into the film. Bob Roberts is a political satire starring Tim Robbins. Clearly, the public new that Tim Robbins was not a rightwing politician running for Senate. But the mockumentary voice allowed Robbins—who also wrote and produced the film—to examine politics from a behind-the-scenes perspective that gave his social commentary more of an authentic and humorous feel. Satiric Media Other films use a documentary approach to satirize the media itself. For instance, the film Series 7: The Contenders satirized the modern state of reality television and used a reality television format to do so. The audience for satire is more specific than the general public, in that the audience must be aware of the object of the parody. The rap-documentary parody CB4 relies on the audience’s familiarity with the rap group Niggaz Wit Attitudes (NWA). Without this background knowledge, audiences may still find humor in the movie, but the parody itself will not be as sharply understood.

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Uchronia Some mockumentaries blur the line between fantasy and reality by “documenting” actions that occur in a universe that runs parallel to our own—sort of a “what if” approach to history—called uchronia. An example would be the 1971 political thriller Punishment Park that takes place inside a hypothetical internment camp that a “parallel President Nixon” created to quell social protests about a “parallel Vietnam War.” Often, these sorts of films can be made on a tight budget through the use of real-world props and locations while still delivering strong social commentary.

Mockumentary Voice Used for Different Platforms Sham-Reality platform

The Blair Witch Project Confessions of a Porn Addict I’m Still Here

Satiric-Media platform

Borat Finishing the Game Series 7: The Contenders

Known-Actor platform

Bob Roberts Drop Dead Gorgeous Sweet and Lowdown

Low-Budget platform

Chalk FUBAR Man Bites Dog

Uchronistic platform

Confederate States of America First on the Moon Interview with the Assassin

References Broyles, William Jr. and Jeffrey Kluger. “Apollo 13.” Film script. Fourth revised draft, August 6, 1994. Dancyger, Ken and Jeff Rush. Alternative Scriptwriting: Writing Beyond the Rules. Waltham, MA: Focal Press, 2001. Harron, Mary and Guinevere Turner. “American Psycho.” Film script. Fourth draft, November, 1998. “‘It Could Only be Charlie’: A Conversation with ‘Anomalisa’ Directors Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson.” Film Blogging the Reel World. Posted: Thursday, January 14, 2016. www.slashfilm.com/anomalisa-interview-charlie-kaufmanduke-johnson/

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Kaufman, Charlie and Donald Kaufman. “Adaptation.” Film script. Second draft, September 24, 1999. Langley, Noel, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allen Woolf. “The Wizard of Oz.” Film script. Shooting script, 1939. Lee, Spike. “She’s Gotta Have It.” Film script. Book insert, October 15, 1987. Lee, Spike. Spike Lee’s Gotta Have It: Inside Guerrilla Filmmaking. New York: Fireside Books (Simon & Schuster), 1987. Lovell, Jim. Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1994.

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Pathway

The screenwriter’s voice suggests how the story could be told, but the pathway describes the trajectory of how the audience will move through the story. Regardless of genre, each story takes their protagonist(s) along a specific pathway. This pathway becomes a subconscious atlas for the audience—a tool to guide them through the story. A traditional pathway has five elements. Most Hollywood movies follow this pathway: 1. One central protagonist goes through a change (except in a romance, where there are two equally weighted protagonists). 2. The audience and protagonist generally learn information at the same time. 3. The protagonist follows the Hero’s Journey (leaving home, having an adventure, learning something, then returning home). 4. The central payoff for the audience is the protagonist battling the antagonist. 5. In the end, our hero is victorious and is rewarded (even in death). These five elements take an audience through a film in a familiar way. For instance, in the 1991 Academy Award–winning film The Silence of the Lambs, we join Clarice Starling on her metamorphosis from fledgling to experienced FBI agent. We go through the story with her. What she learns, we learn. She starts in the world of law enforcement, makes her way into the world of the criminally insane, and eventually returns, victorious, to her home at the FBI. The visceral payoff for the audience comes from her mental battles with Dr. Lecter and Buffalo Bill. In the end, agent Starling is rewarded for the battle that she waged.

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If the old adage is true and you have to learn the rules in order to break them . . . then these five traditional elements provide the screenwriter with a variety of departure points from which to tell new and creative stories. In addition to the traditional pathway, there are at least nineteen other ways to break these five rules.

20 Pathways 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

TRADITIONAL Buddy Movie Chase/Hunt Coming of Age Fish Out of Water Gang Falls Apart Lost Innocence Human vs. Nature Human vs. Self Human vs. Society

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

Human vs. Technology Melodrama Noir (Neo-noir) Rags to Riches to Rags Reunion Reunite the Gang Road Movie Screwball Comedy Tale of Madness Unlikely Ensemble

You may have noticed that some of these pathways have been used historically as “genres” because they are easy classification categories. But ask yourself: Do these pathways help specify character, story or atmosphere? Consider, for example, five specific pathways: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Buddy Movie Coming of Age Fish Out of Water Road Movie Noir.

These pathways do not define audience expectations except to say that the story will: A. Follow a twin set of protagonists B. Take place at a critical point in a young protagonist’s life C. Focus on an outsider D. Occur in transit E. Result in the destruction of the protagonist. Other than that, the pathway does not adjust the supergenre much at all.

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Supergenre

Pathways

Example

Action Crime Fantasy

Buddy Movie Buddy Movie Buddy Movie

Cop Out 21 Jump Street Shrek

Horror Life Romance

Coming of Age Coming of Age Coming of Age

Carrie A Bronx Tale The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Science Fiction Sports Thriller

Fish Out of Water Idiocracy Fish Out of Water The Blind Side Fish Out of Water Witness

War Western Action

Road Movie Road Movie Road Movie

Apocalypse Now No Country for Old Men Mad Max

Crime Fantasy Horror

Noir Noir Noir

Drive The Dark Knight Se7en

It may be controversial to film theorists, but within the Screenwriters Taxonomy, even film noir is not a genre (super, macro or micro). I do not say this to minimize what film noir means to people but rather to specify what today’s film noir has become in our storytelling culture. It is no longer a genre; it is a style of filmmaking with specific implications beyond character, location and story. It has become . . . a pathway.

The Evolution of Noir Film experts such as Foster Hirsch and Sheri Chinen Biesen identify film noir as a genre. And, indeed, it once was. Historically, noir film captured the inflated sense of urban fatalism and moral desolation that the single male ego felt after World War II. The noir atmosphere was defined by stylized visuals of a city in shadow, the stories involved themes of modernism in a postwar setting, and characters included the femme fatale, the idealistic love interest and, of course, the down-on-his-luck protagonist who would be beaten down further by society and powers beyond his control. This was a genre in the 1940s and 1950s. However, over the last half century, this film genre has evolved, as all film forms are apt to do. People talk now of neo-noir, nuevo-noir and retro-noir. They speak of noir as a visual style separate from its psychological elements, or they speak of the psychological elements in a different sort of physical/ visual context (the desert-noir, for instance). As Richard Brody, film critic for The New Yorker, said in his 2014 article “Film Noir: The Elusive Genre,” That’s why it’s strange to think of film noir as a genre—at least, as an open-ended one. A Western is a Western is a Western, whether it’s

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filmed by Thomas H. Ince in 1916, by John Ford in 1939, or by Clint Eastwood in 1992. The same is true of war films, comedies, and, yes, crime movies. But the film noir is historically determined by particular circumstances; that’s why latter-day attempts at film noir, or so-called neo-noirs, almost all feel like exercises in nostalgia. The film noir, outside of its post–World War II context, loses its historically defined characteristics. This is not a bad thing. It is an evolution. It is an evolution that helps to illustrate the definition of the screenwriters’ pathways.

Defining the Pathways Each pathway alters at least one of the five traditional pathway options. If we group them into seven categories, it is easier to recognize their similarities and differences.

Pathway #1: The Defeated Underdogs Pathways

Noir Tale of Madness Rags to Riches to Rags

Divergent Points

The protagonist may battle an antagonist, but the more important struggle is against some larger force. Our visceral engagement comes from watching this force destroy the protagonist. The protagonist is typically destroyed. Or, if he survives, survival itself is the victory. Rarely does the protagonist “come out on top.”

Noir Pathway Whether you call it noir or neo-noir, this pathway intentionally subverts the Hollywood expectation of a heroic protagonist. In noir, the protagonist is rarely successful during the course of the film. Instead, he spends most of the story in a perpetual state of distrust, despair and/or hopelessness. Regardless of who or what the antagonist is, the noir protagonist will never win (even if he defeats the antagonist). This is because the noir protagonist is really up against the bigger forces of society (greed, corruption, graft or some sort of power system that he is unable to fully comprehend). Subsequently, this is also how the audience is meant to feel. This is the point of noir. Even at the end, the audience is meant to feel trapped, isolated or squashed beneath the same weight that squashed the hero. Examples include Blade Runner, Casablanca, The Dark Knight, Drive, Gone Baby Gone, In Cold Blood, L.A. Confidential, Million Dollar Baby, Minority Report, No Country for Old Men and Se7en.

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When approaching a story through the noir pathway, the screenwriter must figure out how to create and sustain a sense of deepening distrust, despair and hopelessness without relying too much on the antagonist, because sometimes the protagonist will win but still be destroyed by the bigger powers at work. For instance, in Casablanca, Rick is successful in misleading the Nazis, but his heart is crushed again. Often, this sense of despair is maintained through a foreboding location (the overcrowded streets in Blade Runner), by the situations that continue to build upon the protagonist (the convoluted intricacies of the criminal system in L.A. Confidential) or from the character’s increasingly isolated point of view (as Sheriff Ed Bell continues to hunt but never catches Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men).

Tale of Madness In tales of madness, the hero battles two antagonists: his nemesis and his own insanity. When writing this pathway, the screenwriter must make three central decisions: 1. Is the “mad” person the narrator, and, if so, are they a reliable or an unreliable narrator? 2. When and how will the audience learn about the protagonist’s madness? 3. Once the audience learns this, how will it affect what they have already seen and what they are about to see in the film? The answer to each question leads the story in different directions. In the Academy Award–winning film A Beautiful Mind, screenwriter Akiva Goldsman at first leads us to believe that John Nash is part of an international wartime conspiracy. However, after Nash has been “captured” by what we believe is a Soviet agent masquerading as a psychiatrist, the truth is revealed: Nash has schizophrenia— and everything from the start of the film needs to be reconsidered. In other films, like the Charlie Kaufman biopic Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, the audience is left to wonder whether Chuck Barris was delusional or whether he was, in fact, a CIA assassin, as he claims in his autobiography. Other examples of how and when madness is revealed during a story can be seen in three very different films from 1999: Fight Club (a romantic comedy action film), The Minus Man (a psychological horror film) and Girl Interrupted (a day-in-the-life escape movie).

Rags to Riches to Rags In Hollywood films, the rags-to-riches story is familiar: an underdog works hard and succeeds against the odds. The success may be financial or illustrated

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in terms of fame, love, honor, freedom and so forth. In traditional stories, we expect the hero to win, as she routinely does. But rags-to-riches-to-rags stories subvert this expectation by pulling the rug out from under the protagonist (and the audience) in the final act—leaving our hero just as poor (or anonymous or lonely or weak or deplorable) as she was at the start of the film. This approach is different from a “tragedy,” in which the hero may die but is ultimately successful (wealthy, loved, revered, famous, free, etc.) in the eyes of others. In a rags-to-riches-to-rags film, the hero is successful at one point in the story but loses it all by the end. Instead of the uplifting feeling from watching the hero succeed, it is the recognition of what caused their “fall from glory” that provides the audience with a sense of satisfaction at the film’s conclusion. In Raging Bull, we realize that it is Jake LaMotta’s hubris and inability to love that doom him to a life off excess and unhappiness. In another Scorsese film—Goodfellas—we are reminded that “crime doesn’t pay” when, by the end, nearly all of the gangsters are either dead or in prison. And in the Academy Award–winning film The Imitation Game, we learn that the man who helped to defeat the Nazis in World War II was ultimately persecuted for his homosexuality and driven to despair. In many ways, the rags-to-riches-to-rags pathway is a ruse. The screenwriter often makes the audience feel as if the story is going to have a classical, “up,” ending—only to pull the rug out from under them in the last act. Of course, other approaches work just as well. Scorsese tends to bookend his rags-to-riches-to-rags stories, foreshadowing the demise of the protagonist from the start. With this structure, Scorsese doesn’t trick us into believing that the protagonist is going to win. Rather, the entire film becomes a cathartic experience for the audience, because we know that somehow our “hero” is going to lose everything. We watch each decision anticipating where the protagonist goes wrong.

Pathway #2: Defeated Underdog + Subverted Journeys Pathways

Melodrama

Divergent Points

The protagonist may confront an antagonist, but the central focus is watching the protagonist endure an extreme personal tragedy. The protagonist is often destroyed emotionally and rarely “comes out on top.” The protagonist rarely changes in a melodrama. She may begin on what appears to be a Hero’s Journey, but the structure changes once the tragedy begins.

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Melodrama You may have heard the retort, “Don’t be so melodramatic.” It means that you shouldn’t overexaggerate your emotions. Melodramas capitalize on creating heightened emotions—typically sadness—within the audience. Instead of the focus of the story being on the protagonist going through change and making important decisions while battling the antagonist, this pathway focuses our attention on how the main character endures a tragic hardship that besets a loved one. The main intention of a melodrama is to bring the audience to tears, and therefore, the central cathartic moment of a melodrama occurs within the audience, not within the main character. We, the audience, change. The main character typically does not. Films like Forrest Gump (an epic coming-of-age movie), Patch Adams (a biographical slice-of-life film) and The Notebook (a historical romance), bring us to the edge of our seats emotionally. This is not because we expect the main character to “win” but because we know in our heart of hearts, that they will not. When crafting a melodrama, screenwriters may consider starting with traditional storytelling devices such as the Hero’s Journey and broad supergenre expectations. These techniques, at the beginning of the film, will interest the audience in the protagonist. However, once the audience is “hooked,” the screenwriter can veer sharply away from those expectations and delve deeply into the protagonist’s emotional upheaval. Paul Haggis, when writing the sports melodrama Million Dollar Baby, used the first ninety pages to tell the story of a young fighter—a “female Rocky Balboa,” named Maggie—making her way up from the streets with an old, scrappy trainer named Frankie at her side. But after ninety pages, Haggis uses the melodrama pathway to lead the audience in a new direction. During a championship fight, Maggie breaks her neck. The last act of the film is anything but a heartwarming rise to glory for Maggie and Frankie. Instead, it is tear-soaked melodrama as we watch Frankie help Maggie live (and die) as a quadriplegic. Other excellent melodramas include Brokeback Mountain, Dead Poets Society, The Fault in Our Stars, Moulin Rouge, Sophie’s Choice, Steel Magnolias and Terms of Endearment.

Pathway #3: Subverted Journeys Pathways

Chase/Hunt Road Movie

Divergent Points

The protagonist rarely returns home— literally or metaphorically.

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Chase/Hunt Rather than embarking on a journey—in which the protagonist has some sense of control over where and when they will travel—the protagonist in a chase/hunt film is always at the mercy of the antagonist. They are being hunted, and they act like prey—forever trying to escape. Therefore, our hero rarely chooses where to go and is forced to constantly react to new scenarios, new people and new threats. This becomes one of the main points of enjoyment for the audience: seeing how the hero reacts to the new challenges that get thrown his way. The chase/hunt pathway is a natural choice for the crime and thriller supergenres, as seen in The Bourne Identity, Catch Me if You Can, The Fugitive, The Getaway and the classic chase thriller Three Days of the Condor. While the protagonist is constantly surprised, the screenwriter should not be. Rather, the screenwriter has to constantly build the intensity of each new setting and each new circumstance. It is important to map out the sequence of a chase film so that tension rises from one location and/or one set of characters to the next.

Road Movie Similar to the chase/hunt pathway, the protagonist does not return to their normal world in a road movie. If they do, then it is not a road movie—it is simply a Hero’s Journey that takes place on the road. For instance, much of Dorothy’s adventure in The Wizard of Oz takes place on the Yellow Brick Road, but it is not a road movie; it follows the classic formula of the Hero’s Journey. Apocalypse Now is a road movie. Captain Willard is given a mission, he snakes down the Nung River in search of Colonel Kurtz, and the story ends with Willard still deep in the Cambodian jungle. Other road movies include Bonnie and Clyde (crime, romance), Drugstore Cowboy (crime, addiction), Kingpin (sports, revenge), Nebraska (slice-of-life, family), Thelma and Louise (western, crime) and the often-overlooked gem Gerry (day-in-the-life, survival).

Pathway #4: Multiple Protagonists Pathways

Buddy Movie Screwball Comedy Reuniting the Gang Unlikely Ensemble

Divergent Points These pathways do not use a single protagonist to carry the story. Instead, they split the story equally

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Refining the Film across multiple protagonists—whose stories are shorter because each character has a full story with its own beginning, middle and end. Protagonists may or may not confront an antagonist. If they do, the antagonist is typically a broad, two-dimensional character. The audience is more engaged in the emotional relationship between the various protagonists than they are in external conflicts. Note: Romance films typically have two characters, but they are generally the yin and yang of one another—fitting together as a cohesive unit. Characters in these four pathways do not function as one unit. They are, most likely, at odds with one another.

Buddy Movie A buddy movie involves twin protagonists. They function with different driving forces, but together they share the same general goals. In The Odd Couple, the two main characters are friends and also the other’s antagonist. A similar approach was used in the Academy Award–winning script for Sideways. Screenwriters Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor often placed the twin protagonists together in the same scene to highlight both camaraderie and conflict. Of course the fun and the challenge for screenwriters who choose this pathway is that they must divide the central actions, moments of change and the story’s final denouement between two main characters rather than just focusing on one.

Screwball Comedy The screwball comedy is similar in many ways to film noir. It too was once a thriving genre back in the 1930s and 1940s. Many film scholars describe it as the flip side of the coin from noir, a comedic representation of the angst from that era. Yet while noir has grown in popularity, influencing a variety of film forms over the years, the screwball comedy has nearly fallen into disrepair—except for the Coen brothers, who breathed new life into the form with Raising Arizona and The Hudsucker Proxy. For those interested in revitalizing this pathway, it tends to be a lot of fun. The screwball comedy, at first, appears to focus on a central male character. However, this protagonist is soon joined by a female character who elbows her way into sharing center stage. From this point on, the man’s story

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becomes secondary to a new issue that grows in significance: his masculinity being challenged by this sharp-witted love interest. Traditionally, the story in a screwball comedy becomes so unbelievable by the end that it can only be seen as one humorous send-up of sex, love and marriage. In the screwball comedy All of Me, Roger Cobb is dating his boss’s daughter until his mind is accidentally transposed into another woman’s body—forcing him (and the audience) to reexamine the relationship from another vantage point. In the ensemble screwball comedy She’s Funny That Way, all six main characters seem to be in love with—and/or sleeping with—each other behind the backs of everyone else. Relationships between characters dominate the audience’s attention by the second half of this pathway and, even though the characters still have an external goal (to return the baby, to invent the new hula hoop, etc.), the audience is much more interested in how the romantic elements will play out. Thus, the initial plot is usually given short shrift by the end of the film.

Reunite the Gang Reuniting the gang typically begins with a single protagonist who is facing a problem so large that she cannot do it alone. Luckily, she knows people from her past who can help. One by one, this crack team of “experts” is rounded up, and together they try to accomplish the goal. At first, the film appears to be traditional. Then it becomes a buddy film, then a trio and eventually an ensemble story (Ocean’s Twelve) or a story in which the group acts as one multifaceted entity (The Blues Brothers). Recognizing that the protagonist’s initial story will be sidetracked until the gang is reunited, the screenwriter should consider how many pages the reuniting process will take. For instance, John Landis and Dan Aykroyd used half of The Blues Brothers script to get the gang together, while David S. Ward takes care of the process in a one-page montage in The Sting. Or, as Deric Washburn did in The Deer Hunter, the act of reuniting old friends becomes the entire story. More recent examples include Anchorman 2 and the French film The Concert.

Unlikely Ensemble The unlikely ensemble pathway also tells the story of a group rather than an individual protagonist. But, unlike the reuniting-the-gang pathway, these characters are brought together by outside forces, not by friendship. The bonding factor may be a part of the fictional story, or it might be the filmmaker who brings the characters together by anthologizing their stories. For instance, films like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Short Cuts

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and Cloud Atlas are ensemble films, but the central characters never (or only tangentially) interact with each other. The filmmakers simply juxtaposes the characters against one other to make a thematic point. Other films unite characters through some specific task. In 12 Angry Men, the characters are jurors bound to reach a decision; in The Great Escape, they are prisoners in a German POW camp; in Cocoon, characters are stuck together in a retirement home; and in The Avengers, they are superheroes, duty bound to save the world. It should be noted that unlikely ensemble films are often longer than other pathways because when you have four to six different characters (or twelve jurors) whose stories you are trying to tell, pages accumulate quickly. The ending is often the trickiest part of the screenplay. If each character has their own story, do they also have their own ending (à la The Great Escape— where as many as ten different escape attempts are played through to completion—run time: 172 minutes)? Or do you try to weave them together thematically, allowing the audience to find one grand thematic ending (as in Cocoon—run time: 117 minutes).

Pathway #5: Multiple Protagonists + Unknowing Audience Pathways

Reunion Films Gang Falls Apart

Divergent Points

These pathways do not use a single protagonist to carry the story. Instead, they split the story equally across multiple protagonists. Protagonists may or may not confront a specific antagonist. Often the story revolves around an event that the group must endure or a mission that the group must accomplish. Each character serves as the antagonist in their colleagues’ story. What sets this pathway apart from the “multiprotagonist” pathway is how backstory is provided to the audience. In this pathway, the audience is perpetually playing “catch up.” The protagonists know each other and have known each other for some time. However, the audience joins the characters’ story already in progress. Therefore, part of the enjoyment of watching the film is unwinding the backstories to understand the characters’ interrelationships.

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Reunion Reunion films typically involve a group of characters rekindling relationships after being separated for a number of years. The story rarely has a central conflict, per se. Rather, the film revolves around a variety of small conflicts, each involving different character pairs or triplets. It is not uncommon for one character to play a different archetype in multiple story lines (e.g., hero to one character, mentor to another and antagonist to a third). By jumping from story to story, the audience ends up learning about each character through interrelated relationships while they also learn about the group as a whole. When writing reunion films, the screenwriter must recognize that the characters have a deeper knowledge of each other than the audience does, and therefore specific attention needs to be paid to how to reveal backstory. Since characters know one another, there are fewer natural opportunities for them to discuss basic surface information that might come more naturally in a story in which people are meeting for the first time (e.g., name, occupation, family history). Also, as in an ensemble film, the screenwriter must divide the pages among multiple characters and stories—providing a smaller window for each. A prime use of this pathway is when writing a sequel—for instance: Cocoon: The Return. The film Cocoon, an unlikely ensemble pathway, provided backstory to the audience in a traditional manner. Cocoon: The Return (a reunion film pathway) had less need for backstory, assuming correctly that most of their audience would be familiar with the characters and their relationships. This allowed screenwriter Stephen McPherson to spend optimum time on the collective stories. The classic reunion film is The Big Chill, reuniting a group of old friends for a funeral. More recent examples include That Championship Season, A Mighty Wind, The World’s End and 10 Years. A case of mistaken identity might be Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion. While the story takes place during the twin protagonists’ high school reunion, the story is not an ensemble. Instead, this is a buddy movie in which two women face their fears together in a setting that just so happens to involve a reunion.

Gang Falls Apart Rather than telling the story of a reunion, this pathway begins with a unified group of compatriots. During the story, however, they disappear one by one, until there is only one or two left by the end. This pathway is used frequently

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in war and horror films. When conceptualizing a gang-falls-apart story, it is helpful for the screenwriter to know in advance which of the characters will survive and in which order. I suggest mapping the timeline of each character’s demise. This process ensures that each character’s story is able to develop before their storyline ends. Subsequently, as each person in the gang exits the story, the eventual lone survivor must shoulder the thematic thread of the film. Often, the gang will fall apart because of a single antagonist (typical in the horror genre). Examples include Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Alien and The Usual Suspects. However, the gang might also battle something more general, such as “the enemy.” Examples include Saving Private Ryan, Full Metal Jacket and The Dirty Dozen. Disease, disaster or an unstoppable force may also be responsible for the deaths of the gang members. Regardless, the outcome is still the same. The Stand, Interstellar, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Reservoir Dogs, Shaun of the Dead and Snowpiercer all serve as examples.

Pathway #6: All-Knowing Audience Pathways

Coming of Age Lost Innocence

Divergent Points

In these pathways, the audience knows more than the protagonist. The audience doesn’t learn information as much as they remember information. Enjoyment comes from reminiscence, and the central payoff comes from watching the protagonist go through an awakening, not from battling a powerful antagonist.

Coming of Age In a coming-of-age film, the audience is familiar with the lesson that the protagonist is going to learn. Usually, these lessons revolve around the protagonist going through something for the first time—something that the audience has already gone through—like a first love, the death of a loved one or the first realization that the world is not fair. Instead of the audience learning a story alongside the protagonist, the audience is always one step ahead. They relive the emotions and thoughts of the characters with a sense of “I remember what that was like!” Examples

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include Blue is the Warmest Color, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, The Spectacular Now and Stand By Me. The issues in a coming-of-age film are incredibly important to the protagonist but much less so, in retrospect, to the audience. Therefore, the screenwriter needs to be aware of what the audience knows in relationship to what the character knows. A careful balance must be struck, informing the audience of information without providing that same information to the protagonist. It is not uncommon for a coming-of-age story to be told in retrospect, often by a narrator who can guide the audience via a self-reflective process.

Lost Innocence Loss-of-innocence films are similar to coming-of-age films in that they begin with a naïve and innocent protagonist. But they are different in that the protagonist typically goes through something more extreme than what most people have experienced. For instance, in Stand by Me, the young characters experience death for the first time—but the event is simply seeing the dead body of a boy their own age. Certainly, this is life changing for the characters. It is something that many people can relate to (their first encounter with death). This demonstrates the boys’ coming of age, but they have not “lost their innocence.” On the other hand, Life of Pi is a loss-of-innocence story. The protagonist—Pi—also experiences death for the first time but in a much more intense way. His parents drown while he is with them, traveling across the ocean by boat, and Pi must fight for survival for many weeks on a life raft. What Pi goes through, no person should have to endure—let alone a child. In this film, the child does not “come of age”; he loses his innocence. Because loss-of-innocence stories are so emotionally intense, the tales often utilize metaphor and symbolism as a central part of the story. The emotions that are being felt by the protagonist need to be familiar to the audience, yet the intensity of the turmoil typically is not. A connection, therefore, must be created between the story world and the real world. Metaphor can be used quite successfully in this way. Other examples of films that use a lossof-innocence pathway include The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Blue Velvet, A Monster Calls, Platoon, Schindler’s List, Stockholm Pennsylvania and The Truman Show.

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Pathway #7: Noncharacter Antagonists Pathways

Fish Out of Water Human vs. Nature Human vs. Self Human vs. Society Human vs. Technology

Divergent Points

In most stories, the protagonist battles another flesh-and-blood sentient being. These pathways diverge from this expectation by telling stories of a protagonist’s battle against something nonsentient. These are stories of circumstance in which the “antagonist” does not set out to willfully engage the protagonist. Yet the protagonist’s life or livelihood is in danger nonetheless.

Fish Out of Water In this pathway, the antagonist isn’t the protagonist’s biggest problem—their new environment is the problem. True, the protagonist may be engaged with a specific antagonist or problem—as in Men in Black—but the audience is primarily interested in watching how a fish makes his way in this new land. Perhaps the story is about a prison warden locked in prison (Brubaker) or an abused girl trying to fit into a new group home (Precious) or two men trying to masquerade as women (Some Like It Hot). The protagonist is usually very good at “what they do” and demonstrates this expertise in the first act. However, the second act takes them to a new environment in which their original strengths are now seen as handicaps, and the protagonist must reassess how they are going to survive and thrive in this new environment. Since a traditional antagonist is absent (or diminished) in this pathway, the screenwriter must pay specific attention to how the environment (including new characters) will affect the protagonist in a meaningful and tensionbuilding way. Examples of films using the fish out of water pathway include Being There, Blind Side, Enchanted, Goats, Legally Blonde, The Little Mermaid, Queen of Katwe and Sky High.

Human Versus Nature The protagonist in this pathway is simply trying to survive. Natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods or tornadoes can all serve as the antagonist. Hitchcock utilized swarms of animals in The Birds, while movies like Gerry,

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Alive and 127 Hours tell tales of humans trying to survive deadly conditions in the wild. When writing these stories, the physical challenges for the protagonist do not always have to physically escalate as they would in a traditional story. Instead, it is the protagonist’s circumstance that deteriorates. For instance, the protagonist may encounter the same mountain ridge in Act I and in Act III, but if the character has not eaten in four days, the ridge may create much more of a challenge.

Human Versus Self Human-versus-self stories will often employ an antagonist, but the real battle that the audience is watching is the battle within the protagonist. In The Verdict, the lawyer may be involved in a court case, but the real story is about his battle with alcoholism. A Clockwork Orange is more about Alex’s rehabilitation than it is about his battle with a specific person. In these films, the central reason for the protagonist’s failure to succeed is not the shadow archetype—it is her-/himself. Therefore, the screenwriter must know from the outset what the protagonist’s internal issue is and when this issue will become known to the audience.

Human Versus Society The human versus society pathway focuses on an individual’s struggle against community expectations and norms. Often, the protagonist in these stories must first battle against him-/herself because initially they believe they are personally responsible for the conflict with society. For instance, in Malcolm X, Malcolm Little first battles drug addiction, self-loathing and a criminal mindset before realizing that a racist social system is the real enemy. Conversely, the script for The Elephant Man clearly identifies John Merrick as a man constricted by society’s judgment, telling the story of his battle against prejudice from the very beginning. Other examples include American History X, The Help, 1984 and V for Vendetta.

Human Versus Technology Human versus technology feels most similar to a traditional hero-versusvillain scenario, except that in this case the protagonist is battling against a machine (and/or the technological ripples created by the machines). The difference lies in that machines are not performing their actions for “evil purposes.” In films like Blade Runner, I Robot, The Iron Giant and RoboCop, the machines are humanoid and therefore take on the manifestations of a more traditional antagonist. In other films, such as The Fly, 2001: A Space

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Odyssey, Christine, Decoder, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Primer and Transcendence, the technology itself delivers unwanted and often tragic change to the protagonist—but the technology is not intentionally engaging the protagonist for personal reasons (except for HAL, I suppose).

Reference Brody, Richard. “‘Film Noir’: The Elusive Genre.” The New Yorker, July 23, 2014.

7

Point of View

If pathway is the atlas for our road trip, then POV is the driver of the vehicle. Consider: Is one person driving the vehicle the entire time, or will there be multiple drivers? Is the driver impaired? Has s/he driven this route before? Or is there a backseat driver really in charge of the decision making? These are very important questions to ask when considering a road trip . . . er, writing a screenplay. From the outset of any story, a screenwriter must decide how much information the audience will have. Will the audience be privy to everyone’s observations or limited to the one person’s perceptions? Will the audience be able to jump around from location to location freely or be attached parasitically to the protagonist? It is not uncommon for a first-time screenwriter to place the hero in the center of every scene, never once leaving them for one second of one scene. But is this the best option? Our literary heritage teaches us that an author has many choices when telling a story. Screenwriters should take a page from the novelists’ playbook. I guide my students to editor Ellen Brock’s webpage (www.EllenBrock Editing.com). Adapting Brock’s wisdom to screenwriting purposes, I encourage you to think about POV as a decision tree with three central questions for the screenwriter: 1. Will I limit what the audience can see, or will I allow them to be omniscient? 2. Should the story be told from a primary or secondary character’s perspective? 3. Is this story being told objectively, or is there a subjective element to events? By finding answers that best help tell their story, screenwriters determine a POV for their screenplay. The sooner, the better. I personally try to answer these questions at the brainstorming stage. Adjusting a screenplay’s POV

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is a major undertaking. In some cases, a POV adjustment can amount to a “page-one rewrite.”

Question 1: Limited or Omniscient? A limited POV is just what it sounds like: you are limiting the information available to your audience. Specifically, you are limiting the knowledge to what a single character knows. For instance, in limited POV, you might only follow your protagonist. If your protagonist is talking to Character A, and then Character A walks into the other room . . . the scene would stay with the protagonist and not cut to Character A in the hallway. If the protagonist doesn’t see what happens, then the audience doesn’t get to see it either. The film 127 Hours is told in a limited POV. We only experience what canyoneer Aron Ralston experiences, imagines or remembers. If the pathway for the story was a Buddy movie—or a Romance—then the POV would be limited to the perspectives of two characters. But still, the story would be limited to their observations. The audience would only experience the story from the twin protagonists’ POV. The omniscient POV, however, is not limited. The storyteller can strategically reveal the actions of any character at any time. Using the previous example, with an omniscient POV, the audience might be privy to the protagonist in one room and the actions of Character A in the hallway—perhaps cross-cutting between the two to build tension. Many films employ the omniscient POV, including The Bourne Identity, in which the audience is privy to more information than what protagonist Jason Bourne knows.

Question 2: Primary or Secondary? In any story, the protagonist’s POV is the primary point of view. Telling the story as any other character would be from a secondary POV. The primary POV tends to place the audience in the middle of the action. In Escape from Alcatraz, the audience experiences the breakout from the primary POV of Frank Morris. Even though it is a four-man team attempting to escape, screenwriter Richard Tuggle keeps the scenes specific to Morris. Yes, we may see the other team members gathering supplies, exploring the escape route or dealing with their own personal problems—but each scene ties back directly to what Morris knows (or would know) through conversations with these men. There is no information provided to the audience that Frank Morris himself would not know. A secondary POV takes a step back from the protagonist, observing him from a distance. In another escape movie, The Shawshank Redemption, the story is told from another inmate’s POV—not the protagonist’s. This

Point of View 145 approach allows the screenwriter to withhold and reveal information without slowing down the story with logistical machinations. Specifically, this is the story of a man who has been planning his escape for twenty years—told only as a big reveal in Act III. Had the story been told in primary POV, the reveal would not have been possible, because the audience would know that Dufresne had been trying to escape since the day he entered prison. Additionally, since our secondary character—Red—is a life-long inmate in this prison, he is able to quickly and efficiently provide backstory that the protagonist would never know. Red can easily tell the audience about a prison guard’s temperament, and we believe it. But if the story was told from Dufresne’s POV, then screenwriter Darabont would have had to craft additional scenes for Dufresne to suss out how and why the guards would react to a given situation. Such scenes can become extraneous to the plot, and therefore a secondary POV—properly crafted—can streamline a screenplay.

Question 3: Objective or Subjective? An objective POV presumes that a universal truth exists and that the story at hand is told from within that truth. This means, for all intents and purposes, that what the storyteller tells the audience is “true” (as far as the fictional story goes). A subjective POV would leave more room for interpretation of the storyteller’s sense of “truth.” In Apollo 13, the facts of the story are never in question. The audience may not know what will happen next, but they are certain that the event is happening, that the characters are true to their word and that the filmmaker is not manipulating the reality of the situation. Apollo 13 is told from an objective POV. Subjective POV brings the reality of the story into question. In The Matrix, when Morpheus explains the nature of the matrix to Neo, this is from a subjective POV, since we, the audience, have no reason to know whether Morpheus’s truth is accurate. In Memento, Christopher Nolan intentionally mixes objective and subjective POVs to comment on the subjectivity of our own memories. Similarly, in stories with unreliable narrators, what appears to be objective is not—although we may not know it at the time. Subjective points of view can be skewed, changing, prejudiced, propagandized, misinformed or just outright lies—leaving the audience to decide where truth lies. Examples include Atonement, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Gone Girl and Shutter Island, among others.

POV Combinations Once answered, these three questions allow the screenwriter to connect and craft a variety of storytelling formulas. Ideally, the POV chosen by the

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screenwriter will accentuate the theme, the characters’ motivations and the pathway of each individual story. Filmmaker Omniscient A widely used POV is that of the omniscient filmmaker. The characters are unaware that a film is being made and so have no narrative voice. Instead, the filmmaker crafts a story by taking us on an omniscient tour of characters and events, designed to intrigue and entertain the audience by showing the perfect piece of the story at the most impactful time. This type of filmmaking is almost always objective, since the very nature of watching a movie is predicated on the filmmaking being truthful. Examine this early scene from the 1980 Academy Award–winning comedy Airplane! The scene takes an omniscient perspective of an airport as our protagonist (Striker) arrives. INT. TERMINAL BUILDING - NIGHT The Krishnas are approached by the Religious Zealot. ZEALOT #2: Hello, we’d like you to have this flower from the Church of Consciousness. Would you like to make a donation? KRISHNA:

(shakes his head) No, we gave at the office.

INT. TERMINAL BUILDING - NIGHT A voluptuous BLONDE saunters through the airport, clears her throat loudly, and spits on the wall. She walks past an ELDERLY WOMAN standing outside a men’s room door. She turns and sticks her head in the door. ELDERLY WOMAN:

Go, O.J., go!!

INT. SECURITY CHECK AREA - NIGHT SECURITY CHECK LADY is watching X-ray scanner. First picture is typically filled suitcase, then another, then a chest X-ray. A man passes through metal detector archway and it BEEPS.

Point of View 147 SECURITY LADY: Please put your metal objects on this tray. He puts his watch, keys on the tray. Then removes his metal arm and metal leg. EXT. TERMINAL BUILDING - PASSENGER LOADING AREA  - NIGHT MR. and MRS. HAMMEN and their eight year old son, JOEY, arrive in a station wagon. They unload luggage. P.A. SYSTEM: (male v.o.) The red zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in the white zone. P.A. SYSTEM: (female v.o. weeping.) P.A. SYSTEM: (male v.o.) The red zone is for .  .  . Betty, put down that gun! SHOTS and GROAN. P.A. SYSTEM: (female v.o.) The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in the red zone. The Hammens walk toward terminal past a BUSINESSMAN. BUSINESSMAN: Taxi! A taxi cab skids to a stop in front of him. The Businessman gets in as the driver, TED STRIKER, drops the flag and rushes out. STRIKER:

Back in a minute.

INT. TERMINAL BUILDING - BAGGAGE PICKUP AREA - NIGHT Striker enters, looking around as if searching for someone. People are rolling down the conveyor belt of a baggage carousel, banging into each other like

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luggage. The luggage is standing around the conveyor belt, waiting for the people to come off.

Screenwriters Abrahams, Zucker and Zucker clearly tell this story in an objective, omniscient way, taking the audience to various locations to provide a holistic and hilarious interpretation of an airport in full swing. Sometimes, however, a subjective POV can make its way into an omniscient filmmaker’s story. In Akiva Goldsman’s script A Beautiful Mind, the character Charles Herman is introduced as if he is “a real person.” Only much later do we learn that the filmmaker dramatized Nash’s mental disorder as Nash himself experienced it—as objective truth. Nash is not telling this story, but Goldman wrote the script as if the film itself were suffering from Nash’s schizophrenia. As learned later in the story, the Charles character only exists in Nash’s mind. But you would never know it from this introductory scene. INT. - FRESHMAN DORM ROOM - SUNSET Nash ENTERS. Small but well furnished. His clothes are still packed in trunks. Nash pulls off his tie, goes to the window. Couples and LAUGHING groups move across the sundrenched field. Nash rests his forehead against the glass. Alone. The door swings open behind him. Unruly hair and a tuxedo that looks slept in whirl into the room. Meet CHARLES HERMAN. CHARLES:

The prodigal roommate arrives.

Charles begins stripping as he speaks. Nash stares in wonder as off comes his jacket and bowtie. NASH:

Roommate?

CHARLES:

Did you know that a hangover is not having enough water in your body to run your krebs cycle?

Charles pulls off his pants, and hopping, both shoes. CHARLES:

Which is exactly what happens when you die of thirst.

Point of View 149 Now finally his shirt, which he throws on the couch. CHARLES:

So dying of thirst would feel like the hangover that finally kills you.

He grabs a towel and heads for the door. CHARLES:

Nash, right? Happy to meet you.

NASH-CLOSE. Speechless.

Primary Omniscient Another common POV is primary omniscient, in which the story is viewed through the main character’s personal lens. The story is often biased and the actions told in retrospect—in order to tell the “bigger story” in which the primary character has been caught. Alan Ball used this technique in his final draft of American Beauty. From page one, we know who is telling this story and that Lester has the ability to take the audience anywhere; an ability that he is not afraid to use: FADE IN: EXT. ROBIN HOOD TRAIL - EARLY MORNING We’re FLYING above suburban America, DESCENDING SLOWLY toward a treelined street. LESTER:

(V.O.) My name is Lester Burnham. This is my neighborhood. This is my street. This .  .  . is my life. I’m forty-two years old. In less than a year, I’ll be dead.

INT. BURNHAM HOUSE - MASTER BEDROOM - CONTINUOUS We’re looking down at a king-sized BED from OVERHEAD: LESTER BURNHAM lies sleeping amidst expensive bed linens, face down, wearing PAJAMAS. An irritating ALARM CLOCK RINGS. Lester gropes blindly to shut it off. LESTER:

(V.O.) Of course, I don’t know that yet.

He rolls over, looks up at us and sighs. He doesn’t seem too thrilled at the prospect of a new day.

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LESTER:

(V.O.) And in a way, I’m dead already.

He sits up and puts on his slippers. INT. BURNHAM HOUSE - MASTER BATH - MOMENTS LATER Lester thrusts his face directly into a steaming hot shower. ANGLE from outside the shower: Lester’s naked body is silhouetted through the fogged-up glass door. It becomes apparent he is masturbating. LESTER:

(V.O.) (amused) Look at me, jerking off in the shower. (then) This will be the high point of my day. It’s all downhill from here.

Stanley Kubrick used the same POV in A Clockwork Orange, but we tend to trust the narrator less—rightfully so—because we learn early on that he is a conniving thug. He may be able to take us to various places to tell the story, but it is difficult to know if his story is being told objectively. Primary Limited A much greater sense of objectivity is created when the protagonist’s POV is limited. Oddly, although the story is told from a single person’s subjective interpretation of events, somehow this POV seems more authentic and objective—at least in certain situations. A prime example is this early scene from Ronald Harwood’s script for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Jean-Dominique’s memoir of battling locked-in syndrome after surviving a stroke. The filmmaker puts you directly into Jean-Dominique’s POV from the very start of the film (translated from French): INT. JEAN-DO’S ROOM, NAVAL HOSPITAL - DAY Blackness. Silence. The blackness slowly, very slowly, begins to lighten. As if at a distance THE SOUND OF TWO VOICES, a man’s and a woman’s chatting, little more than intermittent murmurs. Then, suddenly close:

Point of View 151 FEMALE VOICE: (urgent) Look! He’s waking MALE VOICE:

Page Dr. Cocheton. Quickly.

Almost immediately: FEMALE VOICE: Dr. Cocheton, come to room 119 please, Dr. Cocheton to room 119, please A SUDDEN FLASH: the faces of TWO NURSES, one male, the other female. Then, just as suddenly, blackness again. MALE VOICE:

No, no, Jean-Dominique, open your eyes -

Like a flickering eyelid a picture begins to take shape: a small, bare hospital room, the faces of the NURSES either side of a bed, both looking down expectantly, directly into CAMERA THE CAMERA IS JEAN-DOMINIQUE BAUBY, KNOWN AS JEAN-DO. As his eyes open he sees first the foot of his bed, then curled, paralyzed hands on the yellow sheets, the IV pole hanging over him, and THE TWO NURSES, smiling, leaning towards him. THE FEMALE NURSE pats his cheek. FEMALE NURSE: (gentle) Jean-Dominique? (a flicker) No, no, keep your eyes open, you’ve been asleep for a long time, you’re waking up now. Can you hear me?

Secondary Limited Secondary limited is unusual but not out of the question. In fact, some of the most famous stories of all time—the tales of Sherlock Holmes—are told from a secondary, limited perspective. Of course, the story is about the primary character (Sherlock Holmes), but it is told from the perspective of a secondary character (John Watson). Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as the author, reveals only what Watson would logically know or be able to infer about how Sherlock Holmes solved the crime. The recent Sherlock Holmes films both attempt to stay true to this POV.

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EXT. THAMES EMBANKMENT - NIGHT Almost tipping over, the carriage turns onto the Thames Embankment, hurtles through the writhing fog along the icy river. We catch a GLIMPSE OF A FACE scanning the embankment from under the canvas roof of the carriage, and then the carriage locks its brakes and fishtails to a hard stop. The steaming horses -- one black, one bay -- whinny and buck. DR. JOHN WATSON leaps out, runs back through the snow along the embankment. Late 20’s, early 30’s, he is a wiry, sun-battered veteran of the Afghanistan campaigns, with eyes that have seen plenty. CUT TO: DOWN RIVER, two ponderous POLICE CARRIAGES make the turn onto the embankment, following Watson. CUT TO: Watson stops when he reaches a SINGLE SET OF FOOTPRINTS in the snow, vanishing over the edge of the Embankment, with no trace on the frozen snowcovered river ten feet below. Watson’s footprints partner the first set as he follows them to the edge. CUT TO: ANGLE FROM THE RIVER: Watson stands over a GAPING SEWER ENTRANCE in the Embankment wall. INT. SEWER TUNNEL - NIGHT Almost invisible in the gloom of the sewer we see the whip-like silhouette of SHERLOCK HOLMES. Holmes raises his hand until his pistol is pointing straight up and fires a single shot; the instant he

Point of View 153 does, he drops to the ground and rolls sideways. He is very quick.

As previously mentioned, the well-loved film The Shawshank Redemption is another example of this perspective put to excellent use. At first, it may seem as if the narrator—the character Red—is omniscient, but this is only because Red is such an all-knowing person. (Having Morgan Freeman’s voice as the narrator doesn’t hurt either.) However, when the script is examined, it becomes apparent that the story is simply told from the point of view of the main character’s seemingly all-knowing (but not omniscient) best friend. Secondary Omniscient Secondary omniscient is even more unusual and typically occurs when the character is reflecting on her life or has some sort of special power that causes omniscience. The Coen brothers use this POV in at least two of their films. In No Country for Old Men, sheriff Bell reflects on his life and a particular case. In The Hudsucker Proxy, the Coens make the audience think that the story is told from an omniscient filmmaker’s POV from the opening page: CITY SKYLINE - NIGHT (CIRCA 1958) Lights twinkle. Snow falls. The WIND MOANS. After a beat, the voice of an elderly black man: NARRATOR:

(V.O.) The’s right .  .  . New York.

We are TRACKING HIGH THROUGH the night sky. From the streets far below we hear the sounds of TRAFFIC muffled by the falling snow, and the DISTANT sound of many VOICES SINGING. We are DRIFTING AMONG the buildings; the tops of skyscrapers slip by left and right. NARRATOR:

(V.O.) It’s 1958 -- anyway, for a few mo’ minutes it is. Come midnight it’s gonna be 1959. A whole ’nother feelin’. The New Year. The future .  .  .

The SINGING, a little MORE AUDIBLE, but still not close, is ”Auld Lang Syne.”

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NARRATOR:

(V.O.) .  .  . Yeah ole daddy Earth fixin’ to start one mo’ trip ’round the sun, an’ evvybody hopin’ this ride ’round be  a little mo’ giddy, a little mo’ gay  .  .  .

We are MOVING IN TOWARDS a particular skyscraper. At its top is a large illuminated clock. NARRATOR:

(V.O.) Yep .  .  .

We hear a SERIES OF POPPING sounds. NARRATOR:

(V.O.) .  .  . All over town champagne corks is a-poppin’.

A big band WALTZ MIXES UP on the track. NARRATOR:

(V.O.) .  .  . Over in the Waldorf the big shots is dancin’ to the strains of Guy Lombardo .  .  . Down in Times Square the little folks is a-watchin’ and a-waitin’ fo’ that big ball to drop .  .  .

The LOMBARDO MUSIC gives way to the CHANTING of a distant CROWD: ”Sixty! Fifty-nine! Fifty-eight!” NARRATOR:

(V.O.) .  .  . They all tryin’ to catch holt a one moment of time .  .  .

The CHANTING has MIXED back DOWN AGAIN TO leave only the WIND. Still TRACKING IN TOWARD the top of the skyscraper, we begin to hear the TICK of its enormous CLOCK. The clock reads a minute to twelve. Above it, in neon, a company’s name: ”HUDSUCKER INDUSTRIES.” Below it, in neon, the company’s motto: ”THE FUTURE IS NOW.” NARRATOR:

(V.O.) .  .  . to be able to say -- ’Right now! This is it! I got it!’ ’Course by then it’ll be past. (more cheerfully) But they all happy, evvybody havin’ a good time.

We are MOVING IN ON a darkened penthouse window next to the clock. The window starts to open.

Point of View 155 NARRATOR:

(V.O.) .  .  . Well, almost evvybody. They’s a few lost souls floatin’ ’round out there .  .  .

A young man is crawling out of the window onto the ledge. With the opening of the window, ”AULD LANG SYNE” filters out with greater volume. NARRATOR:

(V.O.) .  .  . This one’s Norville Barnes.

The man gingerly straightens up on the ledge. He is perhaps in his late twenties. He wears a leather apron. Printed on the apron: ”HUDSUCKER MAIL ROOM/The Future is Now.” He looks with nervous determination into the void. NARRATOR:

(V.O.) .  .  . Let’s move in for a closer look.

The CAMERA obliges.

After that, for more than an hour, we never hear the narrator again. It seems as if the omniscient filmmaker has set up the story and perhaps might bookend it with this voice of God (which it does). Unexpectedly though, on page 72, we meet this secondary character. Amy Archer, the female love interest in this screwball comedy, has crept into the inner workings of the Hudsucker skyscraper to spy on the boss (Mr. Mussburger). She is surprised by a voice: VOICE:

(O.S.) Watchoo doin’ down they, Miss Archuh?

AMY:

Huh?!

She straightens and turns. Facing her is a very old BLACK MAN in a janitor’s jumpsuit with HUDSUCKER INDUSTRIES/The Future Is Now emblazoned across it. We might recognize his voice as that of the narrator who opened the movie. AMY:

Who are you? How did you know who I am?

MOSES:

(BLACK MAN) Ah guess ole Moses knows jes about ever’thing, leastways if it concerns Hudsuckuh.

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AMY:

But -- who are you -- what d’you do here?

MOSES:

Ah keeps the ol’ circle turning -- this ol’ clock needs plenty o’ care. Time is money, Miss Archuh, and money – it drives that ol’ global economy and keeps big Daddy Earth aspinnin’ on ’roun’. Ya see, without that capital fo’mation --

AMY:

Yeah, yeah. Say, you won’t tell anyone about me, will you?

MOSES:

I don’t tell no one nothin’ lessen they ask. Thatches ain’t ole Moses’ way.

AMY:

So if you know everything about Hudsucker, tell me why the Board decided to make Norville Barnes president.

MOSES:

Well, that even surprised ole Moses at fust. I didn’t think the Board was that smart.

AMY:

That smart?!

MOSES:

But then I figured it out: they did it ’cause they figured young Norville for an imbecile. Like some othuh people ah know.

The audience now realizes that the omniscient narrator was not the filmmaker but is, in fact, a secondary character in the story—Moses, the keeper of the clocks. This gives the story a more magical and allegorical feeling and sets the stage for a miraculous sort of ending similar in tone to that of It’s a Wonderful Life. Interestingly enough, It’s a Wonderful Life also tells an omniscient story through a secondary character’s POV—one who also happens to be a clockmaker.

References Abrahams, Jim, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker. “Airplane!” Film script. Shooting script, June 15, 1979. Ball, Alan. “American Beauty.” Film script. Final Draft, Undated. Brock, Ellen. “‘The Difference Between Omniscient POV and Headhopping.” Ellen Brock Editing, December 1, 2016. https://ellenbrockediting.com/tag/point-of-view/ Broyles, William Jr. and Jeffrey Kluger. “Apollo 13.” Film script. Fourth revised draft, August 6, 1994. Coen, Joel and Ethan Coen. “No Country for Old Men.” Film script. Final draft, Undated.

Point of View 157 Coen, Joel, Ethan Coen and Sam Raimi. “The Hudsucker Proxy.” Film script. Draft, September, 1992. Darabont, Frank. “Rita Hayworth & Shawshank Redemption.” Film script. First draft, Undated. Darabont, Frank. “Rita Hayworth & Shawshank Redemption.” Film script. Third draft, February 22, 1993. Goldsman, Akiva. “A Beautiful Mind.” Film script. Revised draft, August 11, 2000. Harwood, Ronald. “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.” Film script. Draft, Undated. Johnson, Mike and Anthony Peckham. “Sherlock Holmes.” Film script. First draft revisions by Anthony Peckham, March 14, 2008. Kubrick, Stanley. “A Clockwork Orange.” Film script. Shooting script, September, 1970. Nolan, Christopher. “Memento.” Film script. Shooting script, green revisions, October 4, 1999. Tuggle, Richard. “Escape from Alcatraz.” Film script. Draft, 1978.

8

Case Studies

Now that we have examined each layer of the Screenwriters Taxonomy, let’s look at all six layers together to see how they can be used as a collaborative approach to screenwriting. First look at how we might use this creative roadmap to discuss eight different award-winning screenplays. Using the taxonomy, it is easy to distinguish similarities and differences among these famous stories and thereby draw decision points for our own creative decision making. Secondly, let’s revisit our earlier attempt to modernize Romeo and Juliet, exploring how a creative conversation might develop by using the taxonomy.

Comparison A: Two Historical Docudramas Argo won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2012. The next year, 12 Years a Slave won the same award. Both are historical docudramas written in a traditional voice. Yet because of the nature of the stories themselves (as well as the themes those stories contain), the screenwriters used very different creative approaches. While both films are thrilling to watch, only one of them is a thriller. Argo is the story of a CIA agent sent into Iran to rescue six Americans from being captured during the Iranian Hostage Crisis during the 1970s. It seems obvious that the story may lend itself to the thriller supergenre: • Our hero is duty bound to save others and stop a larger plot. • The audience is constantly torn between hope and fear—hope that things will work out and the fear that they might not. • After revealing the protagonist’s past relationships, justice prevails. As discussed in Chapter 4, John Ridley could have chosen a similar route when adapting 12 Years a Slave. However, he chose a different approach. He chose to tell the story using a Day-in-the-Life supergenre: • Following the protagonist through a series of key events and decisions that change his life

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• Set in a location that is outside of the protagonist’s control • Limited cutaways to other characters • Demonstrating that life can be wonderful even if it is oppressive. 12 Years a Slave

Argo

Type

Drama Docudrama

Drama Docudrama

Supergenre

Day-in-the-Life

Thriller

Macrogenre Microgenre

Biography—Historical Survival—Captivity

Historical—Modern Mission—Tale

Voice

Traditional voice except written for an adult audience

Traditional voice except written for an adult audience

Pathway

Fish Out of Water

Unlikely Ensemble

POV

Primary Limited

Filmmaker Omniscient

Ridley’s supergenre choice subsequently affected the point of view of the story, making it primary limited, instead of the omniscient POV often utilized in a thriller. To build universal empathy for the protagonist (Solomon Northup), Ridley combined this POV with a fish out of water tale as Solomon tries to survive twelve years of brutal captivity. We are transfixed by the biographical story, told through the lens of history—not because it is “thrilling” but because it is real. When writing Argo, Chris Terrio also told an historical tale. But his was one of a mission, one that is intended to make us wonder how the protagonist will succeed. The story is told from an omniscient POV, and we are captivated by the protagonist (Tony Mendez) just as we are with the various team players that Mendez collects in an effort to succeed. This unlikely ensemble of characters makes the thriller more thrilling, and the modern historical context gives the older audience a chance to reflect on their own lives at that time.

Comparison B: Two Buddy Movies On the surface, the 2001 animated family comedy Shrek doesn’t seem to have much in common with the 1969 classic live-action drama Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. One is a satirical fantasy film, while the other is an epic western. Yet there are a few binding agents that hold both stories together. Both movies use the buddy movie pathway to connect with the audience, and both utilize an omniscient filmmaker POV to help the audience empathize with the somewhat unlikeable characters (an ogre and donkey in Shrek and a pair of bank robbers in Butch and Sundance). By using this POV, the

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screenwriters provide brief glimpses into what the antagonists are up to. In both films, the audience learns that the deck is stacked against our “heroes,” and we begin to care more about them as characters. Not only are both stories buddy movies—in which the characters function as twin protagonists—but they are also bromance movies. In Shrek, the ogre and donkey follow the traditional bromance expectation: they start as enemies and end as friends. Butch and Sundance begin as close friends, have a falling out, and end as kindred spirits bound together as inseparably in the pages of history. Shrek

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Type

Comedy Satire

Drama Light drama

Supergenre

Fantasy

Western + Crime

Macrogenre Adventure—Quest Microgenre Bromance—Traditional Love—Nontraditional

Historical—Period Bromance—Stronger Bond Epic—Events

Voice

An animated film filled Traditional voice that with modern pop music occasionally uses sepia that helps guide the story tones, title cards and photographs to remind us of its historic nature

Pathway

Buddy Movie

Buddy Movie Chase/Hunt

POV

Filmmaker Omniscient

Filmmaker Omniscient

Comparison C: Two Nonlinear Films Set During World War II Both Casablanca and The Imitation Game take place during World War II. Yet neither screenplay fits the classical definition of the war supergenre. Although both protagonists fight against the Nazis, the films take on the story, structure, atmosphere and characters of other genres. The Imitation Game is a story riddled with mental and verbal gymnastics, exploring themes of truth and freedom, through double-crosses and mistaken identity. This is a crime story through and through (a double-decker one, at that)—especially when you consider that central characters are either the lawman upholding the status quo or a “criminal” standing up against a system with an ending that reveals an unexpected crime that was smartly (and surreptitiously) bookended at the start of the film. Casablanca, on the other hand, is more of an action film than a war movie. Again, the protagonist matches wits with the Nazis, but the story is

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not one of combat soldiers. Instead, it is the story of a resourceful hero in an exotic location—one that juggles both internal and external problems, solving them both in the third act. His theme is not one of Life versus Death but instead that of Good versus Evil. The Imitation Game

Casablanca

Type

Drama Docudrama

Drama Hyperdrama

Supergenre

Crime

Action

Macrogenre Microgenre

Biography—Historical Love—Traditional Workplace—Worker story Workplace—Company Story Military—Historical Identity—Loss of . . .

Voice

Nonlinear narrative

Nonlinear narrative

Pathway

Unlikely Ensemble Lost Innocence Man vs. Society Man vs. Technology

Noir Reunion Film Man vs. Self

POV

Faux Primary Omniscient Filmmaker Omniscient

Filmmaker Omniscient

Both films use a nonlinear voice, allowing the audience to contemplate key decisions in hindsight. It also allows the storytellers to omnipotently withhold/reveal crucial information in order to build tension. But here the similarities stop. Casablanca is a love story in which we observe our protagonist in his place of work, as a bar owner. As the story plays out, Rick slowly sheds his tough-guy veneer and loses his identity in memory of the love he once had. The Imitation Game is a love story too, but not the one we expect. We never really see Alan falling in love, although we think that we do. This is actually part of “the crime.” Alan’s engagement (as well as his opening “voice-over monologue”) are actually red herrings designed to mislead the audience. Of course, The Imitation Game plays up the military history angle a bit more, as it is a biographical piece depicting the workplace of a team of code breakers. Yet the trappings of a classic war film are blatantly missing, and anyone expecting to see battle will be sorely disappointed.

Comparison D: Two Godfather Adaptations It is not often that critics are able to analyze a writing team’s work adapting one source into two films. But such is the case with Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo’s adaptation of Puzo’s novel The Godfather. This duo adapted one novel into two of the most famous films of all time: The Godfather and

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The Godfather II. On the surface, the two films seem very similar. However, upon closer inspection, one will notice how the screenwriters changed the microgenres, voice and pathways to create two very different films. Broadly speaking, both films are crime dramas. Even more specifically, they are both period pieces: historical gangster films in which we follow a charismatic antihero named Michael Corleone. These similarities provide cohesion between the two stories and are obvious choices that one would make when reading the source material. However, it is the more nuanced decisions that set these films apart and make each a classic in its own right. The first film is told more traditionally, with a traditional voice. To steal a phrase from superhero movies: The Godfather is Michael’s origin story. It is a story of a family in crisis and how this family bonds together. From this experience, a new mafia godfather is born through a loss of innocence. It is a classic antihero story. We watch (and root for) an innocent war hero as he turns into a murderous kingpin—all in the name of family. But you can’t tell an origin story twice. So Puzo and Coppola change tacks. In The Godfather, Michael was born through his loss of innocence. In Godfather II, he comes of age. He comes of age through a gut-clenching realization that everything he believed in is now coming undone. The family bond now becomes a family rift. The screenwriters also make a wonderful choice by changing the voice. By telling the story nonlinearly (one half of the story takes place in the past, the other plays out in “the present”—both moving forward). This voice serves double duty: reminding the audience of the first film by dramatizing how the family was built (in the past) while simultaneously dramatizing the destruction of the family (in the present). The Godfather

The Godfather II

Type

Drama Dark Drama

Drama Tragedy

Supergenre

Crime

Crime

Macrogenre Microgenre

Historical—Period Gangster—Antihero Family—Family Bond

Historical—Period Gangster—Antihero Family—Rift

Voice

Traditional voice except A nonlinear narrative that it is written for an written for an adult adult audience audience

Pathway

Lost Innocence

Coming of Age

POV

Filmmaker Omniscient

Filmmaker Omniscient

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Infinite Choices When considering the creative decisions that these screenwriters made, the choices often seem obvious. But they are not. This isn’t paint by numbers. This is a creative endeavor with infinite (or near-infinite) choices. All told, the Screenwriters Taxonomy provides more than 200 million different configurations storytellers can use. To demonstrate how this might work for creating new screenplays—rather than using the taxonomy to analyze films that already exist—let’s revisit the Romeo and Juliet project from Chapter 1. During your meeting with the producer, you developed a roadmap from which you could easily make a project pitch and get hired for the job. It might look something like this: Stabbed in the Heart A nonlinear crime movie that starts with the discovery of three dead teenagers in an urban graveyard. The noir detective breaks the fourth wall to comment on the depravity of teenagers in love as he tries to put the pieces together, eventually taking various family members to trial to prove that they were responsible for their children’s deaths. The story is told from the detective’s point of view during the investigation—one that ends in tragedy as we realize that two of the teenagers are lovers who killed themselves out of despair.

Taxonomy for Stabbed in the Heart Type | Supergenre Drama Crime

Voice Nonlinear; protagonist breaks the fourth wall

Macros

Micros

Mystery

Whodunit

Legal

Courtroom

Pathway Noir

POV Primary Omniscient

Not bad for a spitball session with your producer and your writing partner. Now that you better understand the Screenwriters Taxonomy, you can recognize the additional depth that these decisions bring to the table. But now imagine that the producer rejects this idea. “Too serious” or “Not what I’m looking for.” So, back to the drawing board. What do you and your partner do? Reconceptualize it, of course. The story is the same—which is why I chose an adaptation as an example. But think about your own original

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ideas. Don’t think about them as genres. Think about them as stories—just as you would think about Romeo and Juliet as a story, one that can be adapted into any number of forms. Your ideas are the same. They are stories. You can adapt them into any configuration. Sure, they may come out of your head as a tragic romance, or a crime story . . . but that doesn’t mean that you can’t turn them into a comedic road movie in outer space if you wanted to. For instance, consider these two other ways to use the Screenwriters Taxonomy to reimagine Romeo and Juliet: RoBot SiX + Joules-01 This version is an animated musical for children about two robots who get their parts switched on the assembly line. This sci-fi buddy comedy removes death and romance from the story, instead making it about two robots forced to work together to find what’s missing in their lives. At the end, both are tragically disassembled, but with the help of a child named Paris—who also feels incomplete—the robots are reassembled correctly and become best friends.

Taxonomy for RoBot SiX + Joules-01 Type | Supergenre Comedy Science Fiction

Voice Animated, musical for kids with robot characters and only one human

Macros

Micros

Artificial Intelligence

Robots

Womance

Enemy to Friend

Pathway Human vs. Technology

POV Filmmaker Omniscient

Blood Trail Set during the Apache Wars in the 1800s, this epic western tells the tragic tale of a young Apache boy who falls in love with a white girl. Knowing the violence that awaits them, the young man tries to protect the girl as her family’s covered wagon caravans across New Mexico. Despite the fact that the young lovers cannot speak each other’s language, the girl sacrifices her own life to save the Apache boy when he is captured by American soldiers.

Case Studies

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Taxonomy for Blood Trail Type | Supergenre Tragedy Western

Voice Traditional, except main characters don’t speak the same language and never talk to each other

Macros

Micros

Survival

Experience

Protection

Loved Ones

Pathway Chase/Hunt

POV Filmmaker Omniscient

Notice how, in each example, the general ideas about character and plot remain the same. However, by shifting the various elements of the taxonomy, a creative team could envision entirely different (and unique) films. Personally, this is how I use the taxonomy. It is helpful as an analytic tool, but it is more useful as a creative instrument. Regardless of how you choose to use it, I hope that you do. And I hope that we all keep adding ideas and insights to the Screenwriters Taxonomy so we can communally build an instrument for creative collaboration. Eric R.Williams Screenwriter/Professor Ohio University www.WilliamsOnStory.com August 1, 2017

Index

Page numbers in bold indicate a figure. 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days 107 5th Wave, The 35 8 Men Out 49 8 Mile 38 9 1/2 Weeks 54 10 Years 137 12 Angry Men 73, 79, 136 12 Years a Slave 30, 85, 88, 94–6, 158, 159 17 Again 26 21 Jump Street 107 28 Weeks Later 53 39 Steps, The 16 50 First Dates 33 50/50 16, 54 101 Dalmatians 115 127 Hours 85, 109, 141, 144 300 42 3:10 to Yuma 45 1941 42 1984 141 2001: A Space Odyssey 67, 86, 107 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea 63 About Schmidt 119 Abrahams, Jim 148 Action supergenre 21–4, 21, 31; and 12 Years a Slave 95; and Casablanca 160, 161; and macrogenres 47; super-macro combinations 51, 52; and thrillers 40 Adaptation 83, 118, 119, 122 Addiction macrogenre 49–51, 49, 54, 56–7, 60–2 Adjustment Bureau, The 35 Adventure macrogenre 49, 63

Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The 17, 139 Affleck, Casey 123 After Hours 18 After the Apocalypse 117 Age of Adaline, The 55 Aguirand the Wrath of God 67 A.I. 55 Airplane! 17, 22, 156 Akeelah and the Bee 82 Akira 115 Alice in Wonderland 16, 26 Alien 75, 138 Alien Invasion macrogenre 49, 55–6, 58, 63–4 Alive 67, 141 All of Me 135 All the President’s Men 50 Almost Perfect 110 American Beauty 149–50 American History X 106, 141 American Psycho 17, 28, 119, 120–2 American Sniper 76 American Splendor 30, 122 An American Tail: Fievel Goes West 58 American Werewolf in London 28 Anchorman 2 135 Andromeda Strain, The 56, 79 Angel Heart 57, 66, 80 Angels in the Outfield 56 Animal Factory 69, 85 Animal House 17, 82, 108, 110 animation 104, 112–15 Annie Hall 33

168

Index

Anomalisa 114 Any Given Sunday 57 Apitz, Annette 110 Apocalypse Now 42, 128, 133 Apocalyptic macrogenre 49, 52, 63, 64 Apollo 13 76, 79, 111–12 Argo 24, 76, 158–9 Arrival 35, 83 Artificial Intelligence macrogenre 49, 55, 57, 63–4, 66, 86 Artist, The 117 Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford 45 A-Team, The 22 atmosphere: as a basis of supergenre 8, 18–21; and macrogenres 47, 50, 61; and pathways 127–8 Atonement 49, 103, 145 Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me 17 Avengers, The 84, 136 Babadook, The 28, 53 Backcountry 53 Back to the Future 103 Back to the Future III 45, 48, 58, 59 Badlands 119 Bad News Bears 38 Bad Santa 24 Ball, Alan 149 Barfly 54 Bat 21 76 Bathroom Comedy 17 Batman Begins 75 Batman v Superman 56, 57 Battlefield Earth 80 Beautiful Mind, A 130, 148 Beauty and the Beast 33 Beetlejuice 28 Before Sunrise 107 Being John Malkovich 26, 53, 119 Being There 140 Bend it Like Beckham 38 Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 16 Biesen, Sheri Chinen 128 Big 26 Big Chill, The 137 Big Fish 26, 68 Big Hand for the Little Lady, A 45 Big Hero 6 115 Big Short, The 24, 120

Biography macrogenre 49–50, 64, 65 Birdman 16 Birds, The 77, 109, 140 Black Comedy 117 Black Dahlia, The 77 Black Hawk Down 51, 71, 76, 85 Black Mass 15, 50, 101 Black Swan 40 Black & White 110 Blade Runner 35, 55, 64, 74, 129–30, 141 Blades of Glory 38 Blair Witch Project, The 48, 107, 124 Blind Side, The 128, 140 Blood Ties 78 Blue is the Warmest Color 139 Blues Brothers, The 22, 135 Blue Velvet 139 Bob Roberts 17, 123, 124 Bonnie and Clyde 133 Boogie Woogie 83 Book of the Dead 114 Borat 124 Bourne Identity, The 22, 133, 144 Boxtrolls, The 114 Boyhood 30 Boyz n the Hood 54 Brand Upon the Brain! 117 Braveheart 42 Breakfast at Tiffany’s 117 breaking the fourth wall 120–2 Bresson, Robert 107 Bridge of Spies 40 Bringing up Baby 33 Bring It On 84 Brock, Ellen 143 Brody, Richard 128–9 Brokeback Mountain 33, 59, 132 Bronson 16 Bronx Tale, A 128 Bro-/Womance macrogenre 49, 64, 65 Broyles, William, Jr. 111–12 Brubaker 140 Buddha, The 80 Buddy movie pathway 127, 133, 134 Bugsy Malone 101, 108, 110 Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid 58 Cabin in the Woods 28 Caddyshack 38 Campion, Jane 110 Cape Fear 72

Index Captain America: Civil War 51 Captain Fantastic 29, 30 Captain Hareblower 108 Captain Phillips 76 Carnage 17 Carnal Knowledge 108 Carol 33, 48, 55, 74 Carrie 85, 128 Casablanca 33, 59, 102–3, 129–30, 160–1 Cast Away 107 Catch 22 42 Catch Me if You Can 51, 73, 77, 133 CB4 123 Central Intelligence 22 Chalk 124 character: as a basis of supergenre 8, 18–19, 21; and macrogenres 47–50, 59, 61; and pathways 128, 130, 132, 134–41 Chariots of Fire 80 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 138 Charlie’s Angels 22 Chase/hunt pathway 127, 132, 133 Cheledenko, Lisa 110 Children of Men 35, 52 Choke 18 Christine 142 Christmas Carol 48 Christmas Story, A 54, 71 Chronicles of Narnia 26 Cinderella 49, 108 City of God 69 City Slickers 45 Clerks 107 Client, The 79 Clockwork Orange, A 35, 56, 119, 141, 150 Cloud Atlas 56, 136 Clueless 18 Cocoon 136–7 Cocoon: The Return 137 Coen Brothers 134, 153 Color Purple, The 72 Coma 75, 109 comedy 8, 15, 17–18 Comedy of Ideas 17 Comedy of Manners 17 Coming of Age pathway 127–8, 138–9, 162 Concert, The 135 Concussion 74, 76 Confederate States of America 124

169

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind 130, 145 Confessions of a Porn Addict 124 Conjuring, The 128 Contact 64 Cool Runnings 38 Cop Out 127 Coppola, Francis Ford 105, 161–2 Cosmopolis 110 Crank 120 Crash 67 crime supergenre 8–9, 21, 24–5; and addiction stories 60–2; and Godfather I & II 162; and The Imitation Game 160–1; and macrogenres 47–8, 50–4; and noir 128–9; and pathways 133; and Romeo and Juliet 11–12; and Shawshank Redemption 88–9; and voice 101, 108, 110 Critical Care 75 Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon 22, 75 Curious Case of Benjamin Button 53 Dallas Buyers Club 30 Dances with Wolves 58 Dancyger, Ken 16, 101 Dante’s Inferno 114 Darabont, Frank 89, 145 Dark Comedy 17 Dark Drama 15 Dark Knight, The 128–9 Darkness in Tallinn 106 Day After Tomorrow, The 55 Day Night Day Night 86 Day the Earth Stood Still 110 Dazed and Confused 110 Dead Again 106 Dead Man Walking 52, 72 Dead Poets Society 132 Deadpool 17, 22, 120 Dead Zone, The 85 Decoder 142 Deep Impact 51 Deer Hunter, The 42, 135 Déjà vu 48 Demonic macrogenre 49, 53, 57, 65, 66 Departed, The 24 Descendants, The 30 Devil in a Blue Dress 78 DeVilla, Alfredo 110 Die Hard 22, 73, 79

170

Index

Dirty Dozen, The 76, 138 Disaster macrogenre 9, 51, 55, 65, 66 Disease/Disability macrogenre 49, 55, 57, 65, 66 District 9 35 Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood 17 Diving Bell and the Butterfly 76, 150 Django Unchained 45 docudrama 15, 101, 158–9 Docufiction 15 Dog Day Afternoon 107 Don Jon 18 Donnie Brasco 73 Don’t Look Now 86 Do the Right Thing 110 Down By Law 107 drama 8, 15, 16, 18 dramedy 15, 16 Drive 128, 129 Drop Dead Gorgeous 124 Dr. Plonk 117 Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas 71 Dr. Strange 26 Dr. Strangelove 16, 42, 64 Drugstore Cowboy 50, 60–1, 62, 133 Dumb and Dumber 17 Dune 83 Edge of Tomorrow 48, 55, 58, 87 editing 20, 104, 107, 117 Ed Wood 83 Election 78 Elephant 107 Elephant Man, The 141 Ella Enchanted 55 Enchanted 140 End of Watch 24 Enemy Mine 64 Epic/Saga macrogenre 49, 67 Erin Brockovich 73 Erotica macrogenre 49, 54, 57, 67 Escape from Alcatraz 68, 144 Escape macrogenre 49, 52, 58, 67 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 59, 103 Everything Must Go 16 Ex Machina 35 Exorcist, The 66 Eyes Wide Shut 59

Family, The 40 Family macrogenre 49, 52, 58 Fantastic Mr. Fox 16, 24, 114 Fantasy supergenre 21, 26, 27, 47–8, 52, 53 Farce 17 Fargo 24 Fast and the Furious 22 Fast Food Nation 17 Fast Times at Ridgemont High 135, 139 Fatal Attraction 80 Fatherland 71 Father of the Bride 68 Fault in Our Stars, The 132 Feiffer, Jules 108 Fences 30 Fever Pitch 56 Fifty Shades of Grey 67 Fight Club 16, 119–20, 130 Fighter, The 56 Fighting Fish 109, 110 Filmmaker omniscient POV 146, 159–62, 164–5 Finishing the Game 124 Firestarter 85 First on the Moon 124 Fish out of water pathway 127–8, 140, 159 flashbacks 102, 103 Flash Gordon 83 Fletch 40 Flipped 81 Fly, The 77, 85, 141 Forgetting Sarah Marshall 33 Forrest Gump 132 Freddy Got Fingered 109 Free State of Jones 51 French Lieutenant’s Woman, The 102, 103 Friday Night Lights 56 Friday the 13th I72, 138 From Up On Poppy Hill 115 Frost/Nixon 110 Fruitvale Station 16 FUBAR 124 Fugitive, The 133 Full Metal Jacket 108, 138 Galaxy Quest 18 Game, The 80 Gang falls apart pathway 127, 136, 137–8 Gangs of LA 1991 101

Index Gangs of New York 69 Gangs/punk/brothers in arms macrogenre 49, 54, 68–9 Gangster macrogenre 9, 49–51, 53, 68, 69; and Godfather I & II 162; and voice 101, 110 General, The 18 General Audiences 110–12 George of the Jungle 120 Gerry 107, 133, 140 Getaway, The 70, 133 Get Shorty 24, 40 Ghost in the Shell 57 Ghost/spirits/angels macrogenre 49, 53, 55, 69–70 Ghost World 16 Girl Interrupted 130 Girl on the Train, The 40 Girl with a Pearl Earring 83 Girl With the Dragon Tattoo 22 Glengarry Glen Ross 52, 87 Goats 170 Godfather, The 24, 52, 69, 161–2 Godfather Part II, The 102, 103, 161–2 Goldsman, Akiva 130, 148 Gone Baby Gone 129 Gone Girl 145 Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The 45 Goodfellas 119, 120, 131 Good Morning Vietnam 30 Graduate, The 17 Grand Budapest Hotel 24 Gravity 107 Great Escape, The 58, 136 Green Inferno, The 109 Green Mile, The 53 Groundhog Day 30, 53, 103 Guardians of the Galaxy 35 Guys and Dolls 101 Hacksaw Ridge 42, 58 Haggis, Paul 132 Halbrooks, Toby 117 Hall, Jacob 114 Hamilton, Tanya 110 Hangover, The 48 Happy New Year 110 Harriet the Spy 84 Harron, Mary 119–20, 122, 124 Harry Potter 75

171

Harwood, Ronald 150, 157 Hateful Eight, The 49 Heavenly Creatures 65, 119 Heavy Metal 115 Heist/caper macrogenre 49, 52, 58, 70 Hell or High Water 45, 52, 58 Help, The 16, 30, 87, 141 Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer 54 Her 33 Hero’s Journey 10, 26, 126, 131, 132–3 Hidden Figures 65 High Noon 58 Hirsch, Foster 128 Historical macrogenre 49–51, 58, 70–1 Hitchcock, Alfred 119, 140 Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 35 Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug, The 52 Holiday macrogenre 49, 54–5, 70, 71 Home for the Holidays 71 Hoosiers 31, 38 Horror Supergenre 19, 21, 28, 29; and ghost/spirit/angels macrogenre 69; and macrogenres 47–8; and pathways 138; super-macro combinations 53, 54; and terror macrogenre 86; and voice 109–10; and war movies 42, 44 Hotel Rwanda 42 Hot Fuzz 17, 22 Hot Tub Time Machine 35 Hours, The 103 Howard the Duck 74 How Stella Got Her Groove Back 33 How to Be Single 33 How to Train Your Dragon 26 Hudsucker Proxy, The 134, 153, 156 Hukkle 117 Human vs. nature pathway 127, 140, 141 Human vs. self pathway 127, 140, 141 Human vs. society pathway 127, 140, 141 Human vs. technology pathway 127, 140, 141–2 Hunger Games 38 Hunt for Red October 84 Hurricane, The 56 Hurt Locker, The 42 Hustle, The 38 Hyperdrama 16 I Am Michael 72 Identity macrogenre 49, 53, 55, 71, 72

172

Index

Ides of March, The 78 Idiocracy 16, 35, 128 I Know What You Did Last Summer 83 Imitation Game, The 131, 160–1 Impossible, The 66, 85 I’m Still Here 123, 124 Inception 22 In Cold Blood 129 Inglourious Basterds 42, 71 Inherent Vice 52, 73 Inside Out 40 Insider, The 73 Insidious 28 Interior. Leather Bar 15 Internal Monologues 117–19 Interstellar 138 Interview with the Assassin 124 In the Heat of the Night 73 In the Loop 17, 79 Into the Wild 15, 63 I Robot 64, 141 Iron Giant, The 110, 141 Iron Man 84 Irréversible 103 Island of Dr. Moreau, The 83 It’s a Wonderful Life 156 Jackson, Peter 119 Jarmusch, Jim 107 Jaws 28, 77, 86, 107 JFK 106 John Wick 22 Juha 117 Jungle Book, The 26 Kaufman, Charlie 114, 118–19, 122, 124–5, 130 Kick Ass 22 Kids are All Right, The 110 Killer Joe 17 Killers 51 Killing, The 70 Killing Jesus 110 Killing macrogenre 49, 52, 54, 72 King, Stephen 85 Kingdom of Heaven 58 Kingdom of Solomon, The 80 King Kong 51 Kingpin 38, 133 Kingsman: The Secret Service 22, 40

King’s Speech, The 65 Kiss Kiss Bang Bang 40, 120 Knocked Up 18, 33 known actor platform 122, 124 Kubrick, Stanley 70, 119, 150, 157 L.A. Confidential 129–30 Lady and the Tramp 81 La La Land 33 Landis, John 135 Langley, Noel 114, 125 Last Sin Eater, The 80 Law enforcement macrogenre 49, 51, 58, 72, 73, 79, 126 Lawrence of Arabia 58, 63 Laws of Attraction 55 Leatherface 53 Lee, Spike 104, 110, 119, 125 Legally Blonde 82, 140 Legal macrogenre 49, 55, 57, 72–4 Let the Right One In 28 Life is Beautiful 42 Life of Pi 26, 139 Life supergenre 21, 29–30, 31–2; and 12 Years a Slave 158, 159; day-in-the-life 30–1, 59, 61, 62, 108, 110, 122; slice of life 31, 47, 94, 95–7 Light Drama 16, 160 Limitless 85 Lincoln 65, 78 Lincoln Lawyer, The 57 linear narrative 101–2, 161–2 Little Big Man 45 Little Mermaid, The 140 Live Freaky Die Freaky! 114, 115 Lobster, The 33 Lolita 33, 109, 119 Lone Ranger 45 Lone Survivor 58, 76 Looney Tunes Back in Action 108 Looper 48, 103 Lorax, The 109 Lord of the Rings 26, 119 Lost innocence pathway 127, 138, 139, 161–2 Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 111, 125 Loved Ones, The 55 Lovell, Jim 111, 125

Index Love macrogenre 49, 53, 56, 72, 74; and romantic comedy 81; and Shrek 160, 161 Loving 59 Low budget platform 122, 124 Lowery, David 117 Mad Max 45, 46, 128 Mad Max: Fury Road 22, 51 Mafia! 101 Magical macrogenre 49, 54–5, 74, 75 Malcolm X 65, 119, 141 Maleficent 16 Mallick, Terrence 107 Man Bites Dog 124 Manchester by the Sea 16, 30 Manchurian Candidate, The 57, 80 Man Escaped, A 107 Manning, K. Lorell 110 Man on Fire 79 Man on the Moon 16 Marmorstein, Malcom 116 Martial arts macrogenre 49, 50, 52, 57, 74, 75 Martian, The 40, 76, 85 Marvel’s Luke Cage 53 Mary Poppins 16, 26, 79, 85 Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein 142 MASH 17, 42, 76 Matrix, The 145 Matter of Life and Death, A 106 Maverick 46 McPherson, Stephen 137 Me and Earl and the Dying Girl 139 Medical macrogenre 49, 54, 56, 74, 76 Meet John Doe 51 Melodrama pathway 18, 127, 131, 132 Memento 40, 103, 106, 145, 157 Men in Black 35, 83, 140 Men Who Stare at Goats 42 Message, The 80 Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, The 80 Metropolis 117 Midnight in Paris 26, 103 Midnight Run 40 Mighty Wind, A 137 Military macrogenre 49, 51, 53, 54, 74, 76 Milk 65

173

Million Dollar Baby 16, 30, 129, 132 Million Ways to Die in the West, A 45 Minority Report 48, 129 Minus Man, The 130 Miss Evers’ Boys 76 Mission Impossible 22 Mission macrogenre 49–53, 58, 75, 76 Mississippi Burning 74 mockumentaries 122–4 Moneyball 38, 56, 65 Monster Calls, A 139 Monster macrogenre 49, 51, 53, 75, 77 Monsters University 108, 110 Monty Python and the Holy Grail 18 Moonlight 30 Moonrise Kingdom 16 Morgan 35 Mother’s Day 55 Motorcycle Diaries, The 67 Moulin Rouge 132 Mr. Bean 18 Mrs. Doubtfire 18 Muppet Christmas Carol 114 Muppet Treasure Island 114 musicals 115–17 My Girl 109 My Left Foot 66 My Own Private Idaho 110, 119 Mystery/detective macrogenre 9, 49–52, 55, 75, 77–8 National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation 71 Natural, The 38 Nebraska 133 New World, The 107 New Year’s Eve 55 Nice Guys, The 40 Night Catches Us 110 Nightcrawler 78 Nightmare Before Christmas 114 Nightmare on Elm Street 138 Night of the Living Dead 110 Ninja Assassin 57 Noah 80 No Country for Old Men 45, 46, 107, 128, 129–30, 153, 156 noir pathway 127–30, 134, 161, 163 nonlinear voice 102, 103 Notebook, The 33, 132

174

Index

Nothing Like the Holidays 110 Nymphomaniac 109 Objective, The 58 objective POV 145 Oblivion 64, 83 O Brother Where Art Thou?24 Observational humor 17 Ocean’s 11 50 Ocean’s Twelve 135 Odd Couple, The 65, 134 Office Space 87 Oldboy 15, 81 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 69 Operation Dumbo Drop 42 Ordinary People 68, 108 Our Brand Is Crisis 78 Outbreak 55, 66 Out of Africa 74 Outpost 53, 54 Outsiders, The 69 Over Her Dead Body 55 Owning Mahowny 60, 62 Oz: The Great and Powerful 106

Precious 140 Predestination 87 Pride and Prejudice and Zombies 59 Primary Colors 78 Primary limited POV 150, 159 Primary omniscient POV 11, 149 Primary POV 144–5 Primer 103, 142 Princess Bride, The 18 Procedural macrogenre 49, 56, 78, 79 Producers, The 17 Pronouns 110 Protection macrogenre 49, 53, 58, 78, 79–80 Psycho 28, 40, 53, 119 Psychological macrogenre 49, 54, 57, 78, 79–80, 94 Public Enemies 51 Punishment Park 124 Puppets 112, 114 Purple Rose of Cairo 106 Pursuit of Happyness, The 30 Puzo, Mario 161–2 Queen of Katwe 140

Pale Rider 58, 110 Pan, Bertha Bay-Sa 110 Pan’s Labyrinth 26 Papillon 68 parallel realities 102–3 ParaNorman 110 parody 17, 101, 123 Patch Adams 54, 75, 132 Patton 76 Paulucci, Mike 110 Paycheck 84 Peanuts Movie, The 18, 109 Peoples, David and Janet 90, 93, 97 Perks of Being a Wallflower 108, 128 Pete’s Dragon 115–16 Phoenix, Joaquin 123 Piano, The 110 Picture of Dorian Gray, The 106 Pineapple Express 22 Pixels 35 Planet of the Apes 35, 87 Platoon 139 Player, The 17, 24, 57, 83 Pleasantville 106 Political macrogenre 49, 50–1, 56, 78 Pollock 79, 83

Raging Bull 105, 106–7, 131 Rags to riches to rags pathway 127, 129, 130–1 Raising Arizona 134 Rango 45, 110 Razor’s Edge, The 72 Reader, The 15 Ready Player One 35 Rear Window 57, 77 Reinert, Al 111–12 Religious macrogenre 49, 52, 58, 80 Remember the Titans 38 repetition 103 Repo Man 35 Requiem for a Dream 15 Reservoir Dogs 48, 138 Return to Babylon 117 Reunion films pathway 136, 137 Reunite the gang pathway 127, 135 Revenant, The 58 Revenge/justice macrogenre 49, 56, 58, 80–1 Reverse chronology 103 Ridley, John 94–7, 158–9 Ring, The 28

Index Road, The 64, 85 Road movie pathway 127, 128, 132, 133 Robbins, Tim 123 RoboCop 64, 141 Rocky 57 Rocky IV 56 Rocky Horror Picture Show 120 Romance supergenre 20, 21, 32, 33–4; and love macrogenre 74; and macrogenres 47, 48; and paired with other supergenres 59; and pathways 126; and sports movies 38; super-macro combinations 55 Romantic comedy macrogenre 18, 49, 51, 74, 80, 81 Romeo and Juliet 11–12, 158, 163–4 Romeo Must Die 52 Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion 137 Rosemary’s Baby 28, 86 Rounders 38 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer 71 Rumble Fish 105, 106 Run Lola Run 103 Running with Scissors 54, 67, 85 Rush 60–1 Rush, Jeff 101, 124 Ryerson, Florence 114, 125 Satire 16, 101 Satiric Media Platform 122–3, 124 Saulnier, Jeremy 54 Saving Private Ryan 42, 138 Scarface 51, 60 Scary Movie 28 Schindler’s List 70, 106, 139 School films macrogenre 49, 54, 81, 82–3 Science Fantasy macrogenre 49, 51, 55, 81, 82–3 Science Fiction supergenre 20, 21, 35–6; and macrogenres 47–8; and Romeo and Juliet 164; and science fantasy 82; super-macro combinations 54–6; and Twelve Monkeys 90–3, 97; and voice 110, 115 Scooby Doo 28 Scorsese, Martin 105, 119, 131 Scott Pilgrim vs. the World 22, 139 Screwball comedy pathway 18, 127, 133, 134–5, 155 Se7en 40, 128, 129

175

Secondary Limited POV 151–3 Secondary omniscient POV 153 Secondary POV 144–5 Secret Window 119 Secret World of Arrietty, The 115 Semi-Tough 38 Series 7: The Contenders 123, 124 Sessions, The 76 Seven Psychopaths 24 Sex Comedy 18 Shame 60, 61 Sham Reality Platform 122–3, 124 Shaun of the Dead 28, 138 Shawshank Redemption, The 52, 88–90, 97, 144, 153, 157 Sherlock Holmes 79, 151–3, 157 She’s Funny That Way 135 She’s Gotta Have It 104, 106, 125 Shining, The 28, 53, 70 Shock Corridor 106 Short Cuts 135 Showbiz/artistry macrogenre 49, 56, 81, 83 Shrek 26, 115, 127, 159–60, 160 Shutter Island 40, 57, 145 Sicario 24 Sidewalk Stories 117 Sideways 134 Silence 107, 117 Silence of the Lambs, The 40, 49, 52, 126 Silver Linings Playbook 16, 33, 81 Sinister 28, 53 Situational Comedy 18 Sixteen Candles 33 Sky High 140 Slapstick Comedy 18 Slasher macrogenre 49, 53, 55, 81, 83–4 Sleeper 35 Sleepers 81 Slumdog Millionaire 103 Snowden 65 Snowpiercer 138 Snowtown 72 Snow White [Blancenieves] 117 Snow White and the Seven Dwarves 114 Social Network, The 65, 87 Some Like It Hot 17, 74, 140 Somewhere in Time 56 Songs from the Second Floor 107 Sophie’s Choice 132 So Proudly We Hail! 76 Sound Design 107

176

Index

South Central 69 Southside with You 33 Space Battleship Yamato 83 Spare Parts 38, 39, 56 Spectacular Now, The 139 Spike Lee’s Gotta Have It 104, 125 Spirited Away 53, 70 Splash 26 Spoken Dialogue 115 Spoof 17 Sports supergenre 21, 25, 31, 37–42, 43–4; and horror films 54; and legal macrogenre 73; and macrogenres 47–9; super-macro combinations 56–9 Spy/Espionage macrogenre 49, 57, 82, 84 Stalag 17 42 Stand, The 138 Stand by Me 139 Star 80 74 Stardust 52 Star Trek 65, 83 Steel Magnolias 132 Stepford Wives, The 28 Steve Jobs 30 Still Alice 66 Sting, The 24, 135 Stockholm Pennsylvania 139 story: and all knowing audience pathways 138; as a basis of supergenre 8, 18, 20–1; and defeated underdog pathways 129–32; and macrogenres 47–8, 50, 52, 54–7, 61–2; and multiple protagonists pathways 134–8; and noncharacter antagonist pathways 140–1; and pathways in general 126–8; and subverted journeys pathways 133 Straight Comedy 18 Straight Drama 16 Straight Story, The 107 Stranger by the Lake 57 Strangers in Good Company 15 Stranger than Paradise 107 Straw Dogs 108 Stripes 42 Subjective POV 145, 148 Sunset Boulevard 120 Sunshine Cleaning 30 Superhero macrogenre 9, 49, 50–1, 56, 82, 84 Superpowers macrogenre 49, 51, 82, 84–5

Superstar: Karen Carpenter Story 114, 115 Surreal Comedy 18 Survival macrogenre 49, 53, 58, 82, 85 Sweet and Lowdown 124 Sweet Hereafter, The 103, 103 Swiss Army Man 18, 26 Sybil 76 Take the Money and Run 24 Tale of madness pathway 127, 129, 130 Talladega Nights 38 Tangled 115 Taxonomy of All Living Things 7, 15 Tekken 75 Terminal, The 16, 30 Terminator, The 48 Terms of Endearment 132 Terror macrogenre 49, 53, 58, 86 Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The 84 Thank You for Smoking 16 That Championship Season 137 Thelma and Louise 58, 133 Theory of Everything 31, 33 There’s Something about Mary 33 Thing, The 53, 77 Thin Red Line, The 42, 119, 119 Thirteen Days 106 This Means War 59 Three Amigos 45 Three Days of the Condor 80, 133 Three Stooges, The 18, 108 Thriller supergenre 21, 40–1, 42; and Argo 158–9; and macrogenres 47–8, 49, 52; and pathways 133; supergenre as macrogenre 59; supermacro combinations 57 Time After Time 87, 103 Time Bandits 26, 48 Time Crimes 48 Time to Kill, A 81 Time Traveler’s Wife, The 48, 87 Time Travel macrogenre 47–8, 49, 50–1, 53, 86–7, 90–3 Tin Cup 38, 59 Tingler, The 106 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 84 Tolkin, Michael 57 Tombstone 45, 58 Tora! Tora! Tora! 76 Touchback 48

Index traditional voice 101–2, 158, 159, 162 Traffic 24, 73 Tragedy (as a form of drama) 16 Tragicomedy 16 Training Day 24, 51 Transcendence 142 Treasure of the Sierra Madre 63 Triangle 48 Tropic Thunder 42 Troy 58, 71 True Grit 45, 81 Truman Show, The 139 Tuck Everlasting 85 Tuggle, Richard 144, 157 Turner, Guinevere 120, 122, 124 Twelve Monkeys 87–8, 90, 90–3, 97, 103 Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family 18 Uchronia Platform 122, 124 Unbearable Lightness of Being 106 Under the Skin 77 Under the Tuscan Sun 17, 81 Undrafted 38 Unforgiven 45 Unlikely ensemble pathway 127, 133, 135–8, 159, 161 Untouchables, The 69, 108, 110 Up in the Air 30, 87 Usual Suspects, The 24, 48, 51, 138 Valentine’s Day 55 Van Sant, Gus 110, 119 Verdict, The 31, 63, 141 Vertigo 48, 56 V for Vendetta 56, 141 Voice Content Continuum 108–9 W. 65 Waitress 30 Wall-e 35 Ward, David S. 135 War Dogs 40 War of the Worlds 64 War supergenre 21, 42–3, 44; and Casablanca and The Imitation Game 160–1; and macrogenres 47–9; super-macro combinations 58–9 Washburn, Deric 135 Watchmen 50

177

Watership Down 109 Wave, The 78 Way Back, The 67 Western supergenre 21, 44–6; and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 160; and macrogenres 47–8, 49, 54; and pathways 128; and Romeo and Juliet 165; super-macro combinations 58–9; and voice 110 Wetlands 70 We Were Soldiers 58, 109 What Dreams May Come 70 What’s Eating Gilbert Grape 63 What We Do in the Shadows 28 When Marnie Was There 115 Where the Wild Things Are 26 Whip It 38 Who Framed Roger Rabbit 24, 48 Wild 72 Wild One, The 69 Wild Wild West 45 Willow 26 Wind Rises, The 115, 115 Wings of Desire 106 Winnie the Pooh 115 Winter’s Bone 79 Witches, The 66 Witness 128 Wizard of Oz, The 53, 75, 104–5, 106, 112, 125, 133 Wizard of Oz 1982, The 114 Wolf Creek 83 Wolf of Wall Street, The 119, 120 Womance 49, 58, 64, 65, 164 Wonder Boys 82 Woolf, Edgar Allen 114, 125 Workplace macrogenre 49, 52–3, 62, 87, 161 World’s End, The 137 Wrestler, The 30 Wuthering Heights 16 X-Men: Days of Future Past 51 Young Frankenstein 17, 28 Your Name Here 15 Zodiac 15, 40, 73 Zucker, David 148, 172 Zucker, Jerry 148, 172