How to Create a TV Show, Part 10: Identify the Hole in Their Schedule

For the most part, we’ve talked about writing spec pilots that will never be made, but today let’s actually try to get a show on the air.  In order to do so, you have to think the way that networks do, and the first thing you have to understand is that networks vastly overestimate the importance of their own house ads.

Networks love promos for their own shows so much that they’re now willing to float them on top of their shows, and sometimes leave them on the whole time!  I don’t know about you, but if I have to look at an ad for a full hour, I’d rather content myself with knowledge that the network got paid a boat-load of money to run it, instead of just handing it out free to another show at the network!

But house ads can’t do them any good if their shows aren’t in pairs: they have to have one show that can (or should) share the same audience as another show, so that the two shows can set up a feedback loop: promoting each other more and more.

The next thing you have to know is that reality shows are a good (and low-cost) short-term revenue stream, where as scripted (fictional) shows are a good (but high-cost) long-term revenue stream.

Despite predictions that reality would kill scripted TV, just the opposite has happened.  Every basic cable channel with its own hit reality show now wants a scripted show to pair it with.  That way they can channel the short-term value of the reality show into a more long-term pay-off: a scripted show that will go where the reality show can’t: syndication and DVDs.

Believe it or not, most shows currently on  the air owe their existence to this phenomenon:

• A blatant example: A&E had a hit show called “Intervention” so they started a scripted show called “The Cleaner” about an intervention-coordinator to pair it up with. 
• Big networks do it, too: NBC decided to pick up “Smash” once “The Voice” became a hit, knowing that they could pair the two together, just as Fox had done with “Glee” and “American Idol”.
• The CW has been desperate for years to get a hit show about modeling to pair with “America’s Next Top Model”.  They’ve all failed, but I suspect that if you pitch them another model show, they will jump on it.  

And it’s not just reality shows.  Anything that features ads can be paired up with a scripted show:

• AMC greenlit “Mad Men” because they were still showing classic movies at the time, so they felt they needed a show set in the same era. *
• Later, AMC greenlit “The Walking Dead” because they were getting their best rating from their October HorrorFest movie marathons, and it drove them crazy that they had no in house programming to run house ads for during those ad slots. (They also get good numbers with Westerns, which got us “Hell on Wheels”)

Once you start noticing this phenomenon, you will see it everywhere. This can pay off for you: If you’re pitching a network (or even writing a spec pilot that they might see), find out what their top-rated non-scripted programming is, then create the ideal companion.  The key to any sales meeting is this: don’t sell them what you came to sell, sell them what they came to buy.

I promise you that basic cable networks are looking for shows about ice road truckers, cake bakers, snipers, and wedding planners.  Even better, make a show about a bickering-but-loving family with one kid in each of those professions—You could sell it anywhere!

* And it works the other way, too : this season of “Mad Men” is paired with a new reality show called “The Pitch”

Storyteller's Rulebook #134: A Bad Movie is Actually Kind of a Big Deal

So recently I’ve been eating my spinach, which is to say that I’ve been catching up with the ScriptNotes podcast by John August and Craig Mazin.  I feel I must listen because this is an opportunity to hear two big-money screenwriters give inside tips about how to survive the business, and I do appreciate that they’re taking the time to do that, but I have to force myself to do it because I find them both to be pretty obnoxious.

I’m not going to fall into the trap of casting aspersions on their produced credits, because I certainly understand that a writer has very little control over which jobs they get (In fact, John and Craig did a pretty good episode about that here) but I don’t have to, since my problem is with each guy’s online persona…. 

Craig ran the ridiculously smug blog “The Artful Writer” for many years, and he’s rather infamous for his disastrous interference in the 2007 writer’s strike.  John’s eponymous blog is occasionally fun, but the good is mixed in with a lot of blasé cluelessness, such as his piece about how you shouldn’t write any screenplays about people trying to get a million dollars anymore, because a million dollars is just chump change these days (to guys like John).  

And it’s that last one that points to the most infuriating element of the podcast.  Almost every week, for one reason or another, they launch into an attack against people who get upset by low-quality movies.  “Who cares?”, they demand to know, “Bad movies aren’t hurting anybody!”  These giddy tirades inevitably end with a pumped-up Craig yelling “SHUT UP!  SHUT UP!” while giggling. 

Can you spot the connection?  A bad movie isn’t a big deal…if a million dollars is chump change.  But for most moviegoers, neither of these things is true.  After a long week’s work, if you go to a movie by yourself on a Friday night, you’re dropping $10-$17 for the ticket.  If you bring your family, it shoots up to $60 or more.  For many American families, that’s their entire entertainment budget for the week, and even if it wasn’t, that’s the only “night out on the town” that they can carve out from a 50-hour work week.  

I hate to shock John, but for the average joe, a million dollars is actually a lot farther away now than it was thirty years ago. Wages haven’t kept up with the rate of inflation (but costs such as movie tickets have exceeded it).

So yes, if you use up several hours’ wages and the only entertainment time your family has on a bad movie that none of the moviemakers really cared about, that is kind of a big deal.  John and Craig are allowed to goof off all they want going to free screenings, so they don’t realize what they’re asking of the people who have to pay to see their movies.  Which, come to think of it, explains a lot.    

How to Create a TV Show, Part 9: Establish a Unique Point of View

A casual observer might look at the endless spate of cop shows on TV and say “cop arrests crook, they’re all the same…”  But the best TV shows succeed because they have a unique point of view.  This p.o.v. is usually defined by the first scene in the teaser, which is literally our “way in” to the story.

• “Columbo” always began with the murderer, showing the whole crime.  Only then did Columbo himself arrive to start playing catch-up.  This established that this show was about the psychology of murder, with Columbo as unassuming shrink-with-a-badge.  Given this point of view, it wasn’t surprising that we never saw his home or wife.
• Likewise with  “Law and Order”, which always began with random passers-by discovering a body on the streets of New York.  Though we never saw these passers-by again, starting with them established that the show was about the cops and prosecutors in their role as public servants.  The focus was on how each crime affected the public’s sense of safety and morality, not on the lives of our heroes. 
• “CSI” begins long after the body has been discovered, with the first moment that the techs cross the yellow crime scene tape. We then zoom in on the pieces of evidence that will tell our story. The evidence is the hero, and the characters are merely its interpreter.

Many sitcoms also have specific points of view:

• Many sitcoms are now told from the perspective of documentary film crews, but “Arrested Development” was the only one to add an unreliable narrator.
• “How I Met Your Mother” is supposedly told to Ted’s kids (see above), despite the fact that it’s one of the raunchiest shows on TV!
• “Louie”, like the early seasons of “Seinfeld”, begins every episode with Louis’s stand-up routine, then jumps into his life to illustrate his points. 

Not all shows are as formulaic as those three but almost every show has certain tendencies:

• “Burn Notice” almost never begins with the injustice-of-the-week, preferring to start with a problem in the hero’s personal life.  This establishes that the action on this show is usually a metaphor for a personal problem, and not the other way around. 
• “Breaking Bad” usually begins with a hint of some danger to come… maybe some killers looking for Walt, or a hallucinatory flashforward to a future catastrophe, then cuts to some utterly mundane aspect of Walt’s day, emphasizing the irreconcilable contradictions of his life. 
• “30 Rock” frequently begins with Liz showing up at work, only to be instantly accosted with each of her co-workers’ crisis of the week.

Of course, there are also great shows like “Mad Men” and “The Simpsons” that have no fixed point-of-view at all, but these shows are about such unique worlds that they don’t feel as much need to distinguish themselves from other, similar shows.

One nice thing about establishing a unique point of view is that it allows you to re-tell classic stories in a fresh way.  “Columbo” and “Law and Order” may have already done “wife kills her husband’s mistress” stories, but “CSI” is going to tell it in a new way: from the point of view of the evidence.

The most important thing that studios and showrunners look for when they read a spec pilot is a new “voice”.  They want someone who can find a new angle from which to tell whatever story they’re assigned to write.  Writing a spec pilot with a never-before-seen point of view is a great way to prove that you’ve got what they’re looking for.

How to Create a TV Show, Part 8: Why TV Loves Cops, Doctors and Lawyers

Earlier, I recommended that a spec pilot can go a little crazy, and explore strange new professions, but there are good reason why TV shows love cops, doctors and (to a lesser extent) lawyers.  It’s good to know what those reasons are so that you can know what problems you might face if you try to do something more ambitious.  

Here are some of the benefits of all three professions:

• The stakes are high, because their decisions are matters of life and death.
• Trouble walks in the door every day.  They don’t have to generate any business, because the phone is constantly ringing with someone who desperately needs their help.
• They live in a world that brings rich and poor together.  Too much wealth and a show seems frivolous.  Too much poverty and it seems hopeless.
• They have decision-making power in the field.  They aren’t just following orders.  They have to improvise.  This is why there was always a mole inside CTU on “24”.   You have to get to a point where the hero can’t call for back-up and has to handle it personally.   
• Okay, but all of the above are also true for fire fighters, so how there aren’t more shows about them?  One big problem is that fire-fighting doesn’t really have any moral gray areas.  Fire is an obstacle, but it’s not a conflict.  Everyone agrees that the fire should be put out, so there’s nothing for your characters to debate. Cops, doctors and lawyers face much trickier decisions.

And here’s two more that are true for cops and doctors, but not so much for lawyers:

• They engage in both physical and cerebral activity.  It’s boring to watch somebody sit and think.  You want to get them up and moving.  There’s a reason why everybody walked-and-talked on “The West Wing”: to hide the fact that nobody was doing any hands-on work!
• This is huge and it might be hard to spot at first: they don’t make long–term commitments.  Danger comes in the door, they take care of it, and they send it right back out.  We get a new story every week.  One problem with a show like “The Philanthropist” is that real philanthropists can only help people by committing for the long term.  Watching a situation slowly improve over several years is booooooring.   

If you choose another profession without all these benefits, it might be an uphill battle.  A masterpiece like “Slings and Arrows” is all the more impressive when you realize that it had none of these advantages.  The worst that could happen was that a Shakespeare festival would fail!  Each play lasted a whole season, gradually coming together over time!  This is storytelling death... 

…And yet, we come to care deeply about these productions and their ups and downs, because the writing was just so damn good.  They made us care, even though we had no good reason to.  We forgot that the stakes were so low.  They made us share the characters’ long-term commitment to making these plays better, bit by bit. 

It’s always going to be a hell of a lot easier to get us to care about cops, doctors and lawyers, for all the reasons listed above, but a great writer can make us care about anything.  Are you sure you’re up to that challenge?

Storyteller's Rulebook #:133 Tough Decisions Must Have Tough Consequences

There are still lots of questions on the checklist with nothing to link to, so I’ll be periodically filling those in.

Is Lethal Weapon 2 the worst movie ever made?  Maybe, but I can say with certainty that it’s the most infuriating movie I’ve ever seen.

The villains are evil, snarling, Apartheid-loving South African drug dealers, but no matter how many people they kill, the police chief keeps snarling to Mel and Danny: “Forget it, guys, they have diplomatic immunity, there’s nothing we can do about it!  If you touch a hair on their head, I’ll have your badge!”

What a predicament!  How will our cops figure out a clever way around this conundrum?  Well, they don’t: they finally just get fed up and say “Screw it!”  They barge into the bad guys’ place and begin a raging gun battle.  Oh no, what will the consequences be for our heroes??  Answer: nothing.  They eventually call in back-up, the police arrive to help and then they all stand up and cheer together.

A similar recent example was Taken, in which Liam Neeson wants his daughter back so badly that he’s willing to do anything... He even shoots the Paris police chief’s wife and then refuses her treatment until the chief tells him the whereabouts of the bad guys!  Wow, he’s willing to throw his own freedom away in order to save his daughter! 

Except not.  Here’s how naïve I was: I genuinely expected the movie to end with Neeson in prison, getting a visit from his daughter, and assuring her that it’s all worth it if she’s okay.  Nope, it ends with Neeson happily flying home with his daughter without a care in the world.   Um… How does that work?

Now don’t get me wrong, I realize that a lot of people love these movies just as they are, and they wouldn’t be happy to see our heroes sitting in jail at the end, but nobody’s proud of themselves for loving these movies.  They get their adrenaline pumped, but when the credits roll, the taste of joy has already started to turn sour in their mouths.  They know it doesn’t really make any sense. 

As I mentioned here, two thrillers that have stood the test of time did a much better job with this: the economy gets wrecked in Jaws, and Lechter escapes in Silence of the Lambs.  Our heroes have made painful choices and must live with the grave consequences of the risks they took.   

One of the best movies of last year (which I totally forgot about by the time I did my “best of” list) was Win Win.  We’ve seen a million movies about lawyers who skirt ethical issues, then have to come clean, only to find some dubious cop-out at the end that allows them to keep their practice, so I was deeply gratified to see the final shot of this movie, which respected our intelligence and showed some real-world consequences.    

Big Update to the Ultimate Story Checklist

Well, folks, you may have noticed that I’ve been adding a lot of items to our various checklists recently (How to Generate a Story Idea, How to Create a Compelling Character, How to Build a Scene, etc…), and you might have guessed that this is what we’ve been building up to: a major update of The Ultimate Story Checklist.  

I’ve added several questions to lists, tweaked some of the older questions, changed some of the linking to point to more relevant posts, etc… (I’ve also taken this opportunity to go back and make the damn thing more grammatically correct—I got tired of reading phrases like “a hero who know what they want”)

At the bottom, I’ve also made it easier to download the checklist.  Go knock yourselves out!  

How to Build a Scene, Addendum: Know What the Audience is Rooting For

Most movies are about a hero trying to solve a personal problem.  The problem becomes acute in the first scene and it’s resolved (or peaceably accepted) in the final scene. 

Therefore, the way to get from scene to scene is not determined by “Where does my hero go next today?”, or even “What is the fallout of this scene?”  Instead, the next scene should be the next step in the escalation or solving of the problem, whether that happens immediately after the previous scene or two years later. 

Once you’ve established this rhythm, the audience will subconsciously realize that they are following the path of the hero’s problem, not the hero’s life.  And as the audience engages with the story, they will begin to attempt to guess: Will the hero’s problem get worse or better in this scene? 

If you’ve done your job and made them love your hero, then they will be rooting for the problem to get better.  But what does that mean?  It depends on the scene.  In most scenes, the audience will want the same thing the heroes do: the heroes pursue a goal and we root for them to achieve it. 

But in some scenes, the audience will be rooting for some heroes not to get what they want. For one reason or another, we know that they are pursuing a false goal and what they’re attempting to do will only make their problem worse.   In these scenes, we root for the hero to realize that what they want is not what they really need. 

Sometimes, we find ourselves rooting for both outcomes, causing a pleasant cognitive dissonance. I’ve written before about Psycho: we want Tony Perkins to get help, so we don’t really want him go get away with hiding Janet Leigh’s body, but when the car bobs back up out of the lake, we gasp for fear that he will be discovered.  Hitchcock is forcing us to root for what Perkins wants (to get away with it) and what he needs (to get professional help) at the same time, even though they conflict. 

Even when we’re straightforwardly rooting for a good-guy protagonist to succeed, that doesn’t mean we’re always rooting against the bad guys.

• In a movie like The Fugitive, we root for the both the protagonist and the antagonist in alternating scenes, even through they’re working at cross purposes.  Ultimately we’re rooting for them to realize that they share the same true goal (arresting the right man) before they kill each other. 
• In The Rock, we see that Ed Harris is basically an honorable guy so we root for him to achieve his ends (exposing government corruption), but not through these means (taking hostages). 
• Die Hard is an even more interesting case: we hate that Hans is threatening our hero and his wife, but we find ourselves oddly cheering for him to kill off the FBI, because they’re lunkheaded jerks (who have insulted our hero) whereas Hans is clever, witty and sophisticated. 

If you’re telling a straightforward story, then there’s nothing an audience hates more than to have no rooting interest in a scene.  “Why are they showing me this?  This isn’t moving the story forward.  I can’t even figure out what’s supposed to happen here, or how to feel about it…”  Instead, you must either trigger straightforward feelings in your audience (stand up and cheer!) or trigger ambiguous feelings (I want the hero to succeed and fail, and I can’t decide which I want to see more…).  

As soon as a scene begins, let your audience know that one of a few things might soon happen, then get them to root for one or the other, or maybe even, if you’re really good, for more than one irreconcilable option.  Once they’re rooting for a certain outcome, then how you end the scene will either make them feel good, make them feel bad, or make them feel something more complex… but you must make them feel something.

What Should've Won That Could've Won: 1933

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The Year: 1933

What the Nominees Were: 42^nd Street, A Farewell to Arms, Cavalcade, I am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang, Lady for a Day, Little Women, The Private Life of Henry VIII, She Done Him Wrong, Smiling Through, State Fair

Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: Queen Christina, Duck Soup,

Footlight Parade. King Kong

What Did Win: Cavalcade

How It’s Aged: It’s absolutely terrible.  Barely adapted from the stage, it portrays a wealthy British couple who lose one son in the Boer War and the other on the Titanic, but keep a stiff upper-lip the whole time.  Ugh.  It think it deserves serious consideration as one of the worst Best Pictures ever.  

What Should’ve Won: I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang

How Hard Was the Decision: Really tough.  Once again, I must be honest and confess that Queen Christina might have gotten the nod if I hadn’t already written it up, and Duck Soup is obviously everybody’s favorite movie from that year.  I actually rewatched Duck Soup last night in order to make the decision, and it’s a masterpiece, but despite the wartime setting, it’s simply too daffy and lightweight to ever earn any top prizes.    

Director: Mervyn LeRoy

Writers: Howard J. Green and Brown Holmes, based on the memoir “I Am a Fugitive From a Georgia Chain Gang” by Robert E. Burns

Stars: Paul Muni, Glenda Ferrell, Helen Vinson, Noel Francis, Edward Ellis

The Story: A decorated WWI vet decides to travel the country looking for engineering work and ends up in the south, where he gets forced at gunpoint to help out with a stick-up.  Sentenced to a vicious chain gang, he eventually escapes, heads north, and starts a successful career under a fake name, but soon enough, his past catches up with him, leading to one of the most heart-breaking endings (especially the final line) in film history. 

Any Nominations or Wins: Nominated for Picture, Sound, and Best Actor, but lost all three.

Why It Didn’t Win: Warner Brothers wallowed in the sort of squalid urban environments that most Hollywood moguls had run away from, literally and figuratively.  They would much rather sniff the rarified air of Cavalcade than wallow in the muck (and muck-raking) of movies like this.       

Why It Should Have Won:

1. In too many prison-injustice stories, from “Les Miserables” to The Hurricane, the creators take the narrative shortcut of personifying the injustice of the system in the form of one relentless antagonist. This movie takes on the more difficult and laudable task of condemning the whole system equally.  There are no bad apples here—the whole bunch is rotten. 
2. The result was the most devastating and effective social protest movie of all time—outrage at this movie contributed to the end of most of the chain gangs. (But if you note the difference between the title of the book and the movie, you’ll see that Warner Brothers did get scared in one way, afraid of retaliation from local theaters if they identified the state. That’s a shame, because prosecutors from my homestate haven’t changed even today, as seen here and here.)
3. But this is another movie which was greatly helped by being “pre-code”, leavening the movie’s earnest message by allowing Muni to be a less-than-angelic victim, blowing through a series of lovers, including an explicitly-presented prostitute...
4. Another thing that I kept wondering while watching The Hunger Games was “Whatever happened to the art of adaptation??”  That movie, like most these days, merely abridged the story but refused to adapt any story elements for the screen.  Though this movie drew its value from being a true story, they felt free to transform it for the screen, turning the hero from a magazine publisher to a bridge-builder, for instance, because that’s more visual. 
5. And this sets up a great moment near the end when Muni has to blow up a bridge to escape.  A weaker actor would have let the irony of that act play across his face, but Muni shows merely the sheer glee of a man escaping, trusting the audience to grasp the irony on our own.  Muni was the Meryl Street of his day, specializing in Oscar-chasing biopic roles which buried him under elaborate accents and costumes, but this raw, affectless performance is the proof of his true greatness.

How Available Is It?: It’s got a nice-looking DVD with an informative commentary track and something that must be seen to be believed… Last week I mentioned that the Grand Hotel DVD had a 20-minute parody shot on the same sets, and that makes sense—a big all-star movie is ripe for a send-up, right?  Well, insanely, this DVD also has a such a same-sets parody.  Comedian Jerry Bergen escapes from a cushy prison, marries a shrew, and then decides to break back in.  Tremendously offensive…but actually kinda funny.    

Ah, 1933: Smell Your Gelatin, If You Dare!

Rulebook Casefile: Deathwish Fulfillment in The Hunger Games

When I saw The Hunger Games in hipster-filled Brooklyn this weekend, there were several moments where the boisterous crowd giggled, but none moreso than the cave scene after Katniss comes back with the salve.  She rubs it on the Peeta’s leg, just off-screen, and he says that it feels good.  The crowd couldn’t help themselves and started tittering.   

This got me thinking… What if she had given him a handjob?  What if we just pulled back and boom, there it was: her hand on his (let’s say prosthetic) penis.  What would the reaction be?  The crowd would have revolted in disgust.  We would have said, “That’s horrible / That’s repugnant / That’s pornographic! / That’s just wrong!”    

But this is craaaaazy.  We have shot after shot in this movie of teens ruthlessly snapping each other’s necks.  Our heroine stings one teen to death with a swarm of poisonous insects, kills another with an arrow to the chest, and then feeds the last one to a pack of dogs (don’t worry, she gives him a mercy killing after the first few bites), all without a smidgin of reluctance or remorse. 

Why do we enjoy seeing all this killing?  Well, of course, we pretend that we don’t.  We pretend that we disapprove, and the more graphic the killings are, the more we congratulate the moviemakers for having the courage to show how horrific and wrong this situation is.  Hmm... Really?   

The Hunger Games is a combination thriller/horror/disaster movie and make no mistake, we watch all three of these genres for the same reason: because death and the death-urge turn us on. How so?  Let us count the ways:

• One reason we fear death is because we cannot imagine what it will be like.  Seeing it happen helps resolve that anxiety.
• Seeing others die makes us value our own life.
• We still feel a vestigal urge to kill our enemies, left over from our fading pre-civilization instincts, and we enjoy living vicariously through those onscreen who get to satisfy those urges.
• We are embarrassed by our undisciplined craving for life and the life-urge, aka sex, so we wish to punish and discipline ourselves by indulging in the opposite.  

Why would we be disgusted to watch one 17-year old give another 17-year old a handjob (something that happens harmlessly everyday, all over the world), but get off on watching a teen snap a pre-teen’s neck (something that would horrify the whole world if it ever actually happened)?  Because, for better or worse, the death-urge is just as much of a turn-on as its inverse.  And once we’re in topsy-turvy death-urge mode, then, perversely, something as happy and healthy as a handjob looks disgusting. 

Yesterday, my goal was to criticize The Hunger Games, but not today.  I myself, after all, have written plenty of thriller/horror/disaster stories, and I would love to write something as successful and resonant (at least for the moment) as this series.  

But I also know that I need to be clear-eyed about my motives for doing so, and why the audience would enjoy it.  As a writer, I have to admit to myself that I’m not being “courageous” by showing unapologetic brutality, just the opposite: I’m indulging my own death-urge, and I’m hoping to satiate the death-urge of my audience.  

Rulebook Casefile: Obstacle Vs. Conflict in The Hunger Games

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Once again, a hit children’s book gets a big-deal movie adaptation, and the critics love it: 90% on Rotten Tomatoes!  And once again, I say… eh.

Just as with Hugo, The Hunger Games is too much obstacle, not enough conflict.  At least in this one, we did have two occasions where the heroine faces a genuine conflict and meets the challenge:  At the very beginning, she offers to take her sister’s place in a gladiatorial contest (bold and heroic!).  Then, at the very end, she tricks the gamemasters into letting both her and her pseudo-love-interest live (bold, heroic and clever!)  But in between… ugh. 

The co-competitor from Katniss’s home district (Peeta) decides that they should act like they’re in love, and she passively goes along with it.  That’s a great story idea (borrowed from They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? but who’s counting?) but it doesn’t pay off.  It’s neither an obstacle nor a conflict, because it’s not hard to do…

• What if the fake romance had been her idea, and Peeta didn’t want to do it, so she had to talk him into it?  That’s a lot more active and difficult! 
• What if the gamemaster was offended at their manipulation and kept trying to prove they weren’t really in love, so they kept having to up the ante?   

…or hard to want to do:

• What if she was deeply in love with that hunky guy back home, and couldn’t stand to kiss someone else?  They vaguely imply this might be the case, but they never really go there, for some reason.
• What if she was in love with Peeta, despite the fact that he didn’t feel the same way, but he agreed to fake it for the cameras?  That would have been emotionally wrenching for her to kiss her unrequited crush knowing that he was faking it!
• In the book/movie, Peeta is really in love, and she’s not, but what if she had to hide it from him that she didn’t really mean it?  He might begin to suspect the truth as they went along, forcing her to up the ante.   

But the real problem is the combat itself, which is totally emotionally flat.  She sort of wants to win, so we sort of want her to win, but neither she nor we have any strong feelings either way.  There’s no emotional journey.  As I complained about the book a long time ago, killing her fellow teenagers causes no emotional response at all, which is utterly bizarre. 

And this brings us to the fatal flaw that kills the drama and exposes the theme as totally hypocritical… Where the hell is the Woody Strode scene??  Spartacus thinks he can survive in the ring by not getting to know anybody he’ll have to kill.  He only makes one friend, and ignores the rest.  Then, on his first day’s fighting, what happens?  He has to fight his one friend!

Katniss becomes the champion gladiator, but she never has to kill anybody she doesn’t like along the way!  Everybody she kills is a jerk!  This is totally morally and intellectually dishonest! 

Ultimately, Katniss is a flatline.  At the end, she hasn’t changed at all.  Going to the capital hasn’t changed her.  Killing all those kids hasn’t changed her.  Being separated from that guy back home hasn’t changed her.  Faking that romance with that other guy hasn’t changed her.  She’s numb in the beginning, numb in the middle, and numb in the end.  Apparently the critical faculties of the reviewers were equally numbed.  

But wait, what was I talking about?  Oh, right, urges.   Tomorrow: a humorous story about urge and lack of urge in The Hunger Games. 

The Big Idea, Addendum: What Urges Are You Satisfying?

Usually, when I get an idea, it gets me excited for a very short time, and then it falls apart: I realize that it doesn’t make sense, or it doesn’t mean anything, or the character arc and the plot have nothing to do with each other… Somehow the whole thing fails to coalesce. 

Then there are other times when everything magically clicks into place.  A compelling character believably finds himself plunged into an exciting plot that builds to a satisfying conclusion!  Even better, the whole things is a powerful metaphor for our modern condition! Victory!  But then… something happens: I pitch the idea to a friend, or maybe my management, and they hit me with a devastating response: “Well, okay, sure, but why would anybody want to see it?”  Often, I have no answer. 

Let’s say that your co-worker corners you at the water cooler on Monday morning to tell you about the great movie they just saw.  What are the odds that they’ll say…

• “It had a great structure!”
• “It really seemed true to life!”
• “It had a very satisfying theme!”
• “It was a devastating metaphor!”

Not very likely. You have to push people’s buttons.  You have to give them something they crave.  Here’s a list of things you co-worker is more likely to say:

• “It was so funny!”  aka LAUGHTER (comedies, dramadies)
• “It was hot!” aka LUST (sex comedies, some thrillers, some horror, some indie movies)
• “It rocked!” aka ADRENLINE RUSH (action movies, kids’ movies)
• “It was wild!” aka THE THRILL OF TRANSGRESSION (thrillers, some comedies)
• “It was gruesome!” aka DEATHWISH FULFILLMENT (horror, some thrillers, disaster movies)
• “It kicked ass!” aka POWER FANTASY (superheroes, spies, sports)
• “It was so sweet” and/or “It got me laid!” aka ROMANTIC FANTASY (romances, romantic comedies, coming of age)
• “It was devastating!” aka EMPATHY (melodramas, documentaries, indie movies)
• “It was gorgeous!” aka BEAUTY (spectacles, some documentaries, animated movies)
• “It blew my mind!” aka COGNITIVE DISSONANCE (art films, some high-concept blockbusters)

(Some of these are self-explanatory, but some of the others I’ll delve into in more detail over the next few days.)  Now, obviously, no movie is going to hit all these, but every movie should try to hit more than one.  If your movie is pulse-pounding, then it’s okay for it to be ugly (most recent action movies), but if it’s about ennui, then you probably want some beauty onscreen (every Catherine Deneuve movie from the 1960s).

What are they going to say about your movie at the water-cooler tomorrow morning?  It’s good to know.

Storyteller’s Rulebook #132: What We Talk About When We Don’t Talk About What We’re Really Talking About

You can write an entire screenplay without using any sub-text.  Trust me, I’ve done it.  Just have everybody honestly state their emotions and charge directly at each other full force.  But the more you write, the more you desire to imitate real life, and real people are rarely direct.  That’s why writers have to learn the art of subtext.

Sub-text is an odd thing: it’s both the most naturalistic way to write but also the most artificial, since the writer must put a lot of work into layering multiple levels of meaning within each scene, setting up and paying off complex x=y algorithms.  And yet the results, if done right, will seem totally organic.

Here are eleven types of subtext, and an example or two of each:

1. Talking about the present instead of the past: On “Modern Family”, the son frequently criticizes his father’s treatment of his new stepson, when he really wants to complain about his father’s treatment of him in the past. 
2. Talking about past instead of the present: Donna Reed keeps talking about her “Dance by the Light of the Moon” evening with Jimmy Stewart to try to let him know that she still likes him in It’s a Wonderful Life
3. Talking about or exchanging an object instead of an emotion: In The Apartment, keys represent souls: Baxter loans out his apartment key in order to get an executive washroom key, but when he finally gets it, he realizes what it’s cost him and hands it back.  
4. Complaining about something trivial instead of something major: Tony worries about the ducks flying away in the “Sopranos” pilot, rather than his guilt over his mother.  (Or for the opposite version of this, see the above skit)
5. Complaining about something you can’t do anything about to avoid complaining about something you can do something about: Andie MacDowell frets about a garbage barge instead of her marriage in Sex, Lies and Videotape, Woody Allen rants about the Warren Report instead of his marriage in Annie Hall
6. Talking about an obstacle instead of a conflict: Jason Robards always claims that he can’t look for a job until he completes various small tasks in A Thousand Clowns
7. Attributing one’s desires onto a third party: In Husbands and Wives, married Mia Farrow is attracted to Liam Neeson, but rather than admit it, she suggests her friend date him.
8. Criticizing a third party instead of the person you’re talking to: Dennis Christopher talks about how the Italians cheat as a way of indirectly confronting his father’s dishonesty in Breaking Away.
9. Talking about work dispute instead of home dispute / home dispute instead of work dispute: Sam and Diane initially broke up on “Cheers” because they kept arguing about whether or not to have a fortune-telling machine in the bar, rather than arguing about their future. 
10. Feigning an opposite emotion: feigning hate instead of lust in Gilda, annoyance instead of attraction in The Awful Truth, devotion instead of contempt in Match Point, aloofness instead of fascination in Pride and Prejudice.
11. This last example is sort of the reverse, so I suppose you could call this super-text…a character chooses to make huge life change rather than risk a relatively minor confrontation: The son becomes Italian rather than confront his father in Breaking Away, another son stops speaking rather than confront his father in Little Miss Sunshine, a third son changes his first name rather than confront his father in “Breaking Bad”

That’s my incomplete list.  Can you guys help me out with any others? 

What Should've Won That Could've Won: 1932

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The Year: 1932 

What the Nominees Were: (For the first but not the last time, the Academy decided to experiment with expanding the number of nominees) Arrowsmith, Bad Girl, The Champ, Five Star Final, Grand Hotel, One Hour With You, Shanghai Express, The Smiling Lieutenant

Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: Love Me Tonight, Red Dust, Trouble in Paradise, Scarface, Freaks

What Should’ve Won and Did Win: Grand Hotel

How Hard Was the Decision: Very tough, I explained before that Love Me Tonight is one of my favorite movies.  To be honest, it’s possible that I only chose this one because I’d already written up the other movie.  

Director: Edmund Goulding

Writers: William A. Drake and Vicki Baum, based on his American play, which was based on her German play

Stars: Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore, Jean Hersholt (He of the humanitarian award)

The Story: In the first ever “all-star” ensemble movie, we see how the lives of several people interact at a luxurious Berlin hotel, including a manic-depressive ballet star, a faded Baron turned jewel thief, a small town middle manager in town for a cure, an industrialist in crisis, and a stenographer on the verge of become that kind of steno…

Any Other Nominations or Wins: Fun fact—This is the only movie ever to win best picture despite getting no other nominations. 

How it Won: For once, the stars aligned: the grandest studio, the biggest stars and the best reviews all lined up for one picture, making the Academy’s choice easy. 

Why It’s Great:

1. To a certain extent, this was the “Nanny Diaries” of its day: Baum had been a chambermaid in two of Berlin’s finest hotels and this was her tell-all.  Nevertheless, as the depression raged, nothing could be easier than condemning those who frittered away their fortunes in opulent hotels, yet Baum and her collaborators choose instead to exercise a supreme act of empathy.  Each guest assumes that the others have it all, not knowing that everyone else is also on the verge of disaster.  Only we in the audience understand how cruelly misunderstood everyone is. 
2. Joan Crawford would go on to be one of the saddest stars in Hollywood, overacting more and more, refusing to age gracefully, and mistreating everybody, but it’s a revelation to see her here in her prime, almost stealing the movie from Garbo, giving a marvelously nuanced performance as the steno.  Her huge eyes tell the whole story, whether batting seductively, shooting daggers, or averting her gaze in shame…
3. This was John Barrymore’s first major film and he’s utterly heartbreaking as a penniless baron who has lost his morality but not his dignity. His downfall prefigures the death of the German soul: “When I was a little boy, I was taught to ride and be a gentleman.  And then at school, to pray and lie, and then in the war to kill and hide, that’s all.”
4. But Barrymore’s brother Lionel is equally wonderful.  Those of us used to his devilish roles in It’s a Wonderful Life and Duel in the Sun finally get a chance to see just how achingly sympathetic he can be (though it is ironic that in one of the last able-bodied performances he plays a dying man)

How Available Is It?: It’s got a nice DVD with a short documentary and various ephemera, such as an 18-minute musical parody from the time made on the same sets.

Ah, 1932: Hey Kids, Licorice!