Michael Clayton

With Michael Clayton, writer Tony Gilroy proves once again that he is a master of the thriller form. As the author of the Bourne films, Gilroy took the action thriller to a new level, a feat made even more impressive by the fact that he was writing a trilogy. Now he has seamlessly connected the thriller genre to the social drama, and that may be an even greater accomplishment.

Stories about corporate malfeasance are quite common, and when they are done as straight social drama they are usually dull. Writers typically try to up the excitement by turning the story into a courtroom battle. While this approach gives the story suspense near the end, it does nothing to relieve the plodding steps leading up to the battle.

That's where the thriller comes in. This form makes the entire story a crisis, with the hero in great danger throughout. Sounds like a good idea. But combining thriller with social drama is not easy. These forms are about as far from each other as two forms can be. Thriller is rushed. Drama is deliberate. Thriller keeps everything obscure until the big reveal. Drama lays out all sides of the issue in discussion.

Gilroy uses all kinds of techniques in this script that show he is a master storyteller. Let's look at two that are especially important if you want to write a good thriller. The first has to do with the need of the hero. A good thriller establishes the weakness-need of the main character (the first major story structure step) and then connects it with the crime or case the hero must solve. When writing your thriller, always begin by making a one-to-one connection between the lead character and the crime. This allows you to give the audience a double success: the hero solves his personal problem and accomplishes the action line at the same time. It also allows you to play out the larger theme of the story through the personal struggle of the main character.

Through quick but precise brush strokes, Gilroy establishes that Michael is a purposeless man. He has a gambling problem, he is $85,000 in debt (from trusting his brother), and he's a "janitor" lawyer. He does fix-it jobs for his firm, cleaning up the mess when someone screws up. He is assigned a case in which one of the firm's lawyers has a crisis of conscience involving a client company whose use of pesticides may have killed a number of people. As the case plays out, it becomes clear that all the characters have some flaw at work that is crippling their lives. The lead attorney for the company, Karen, is obsessed with success. Michael's boss, Marty, has always known the case was dirty, and is desperate to make a merger go through before any dirt comes to light. Everyone's life is way out of balance. But the mantra they all repeat to themselves is "I'm just doing my job."

Notice that the main plot line having to do with a company in which everyone was just doing their job is expressed in the psychological flaw of not only the hero but all the minor characters as well. Even more important, each character is a variation on the central moral problem of the hero and the company. This is one of the marks of an advanced thriller.

A second technique that Gilroy handles beautifully has to do with plot. Most writers have great difficulty constructing a good thriller plot. That's because the thriller hero is always under intense assault. The opponent tends to be all-powerful, knocking the hero back on the defensive. Result: a passive hero and a weak plot.

For a good thriller plot, you have to balance an active hero investigating the case with an aggressive opposition that puts the hero in constant danger. This is a very tricky balance to maintain. A hero who is too forceful going after the desire line doesn't make the audience fear for his or her safety. An opposition that is too aggressive paralyzes the hero and stops the plot.

In Michael Clayton, Gilroy knows just how to strike the right balance. He uses a flashback structure, rare in thrillers, so that he can jumpstart the story with a car bomb. This tells the audience that Michael is in grave danger and will be for the entire film. The writer can then go on with a quieter part of the story in which Michael is actively seeking his desire line and driving the plot.

Gilroy also breaks from the usual thriller technique of staying within the hero's point of view, which makes it unclear if the apparent opponent is really guilty. By occasionally cutting to the opposition, he shows that the opponent is indeed extremely deadly and that Michael is blithely walking into a trap. As a result, Michael continues to drive the plot while generating even more fear in the audience who sees just how much danger he's in.

If you're interested in writing the thriller form, study Michael Clayton to see how a top screenwriter accomplishes the rare feat of effectively weaving social drama with thriller.

The Bourne Ultimatum

The Bourne Ultimatum is the best action film of the year and is a textbook case for how to write in this very popular form. Let's look at just a few of the techniques writers Tony Gilroy, Scott Burns, and George Nolfi use.

The first element that stands out in The Bourne Ultimatum is the hero's strong need. Need is the one of the seven major structure steps in any good story, and yet it is missing from most action films, where the hero is a paragon of virtue or a superhero. Thatâs a huge mistake, because need is what makes the story matter. Itâs personal, to the hero and to the audience. Need is what unifies a story under the surface, so the action film becomes more than just a series of stunts.

In The Bourne Ultimatum, the hero, Jason Bourne, has both a psychological and a moral need. Psychologically, he must figure out who he is. Morally, he feels deep guilt about all the people he has killed and must try to make amends. The psychological need has been present from the first Bourne film (and novel), and is indeed central to the high concept premise of the series. The moral need is unique to this film and makes the hero seem like a real person, in spite of his almost super-human fighting abilities.

A second major structural technique the writers use in this film is a double desire line laid over a single track. Normally you want to avoid two desire lines, because then you have two spines and the story falls apart. But here, the writers give Bourne two contradictory desires, to seek and avoid. He wants to find out who at the CIA has done this to him and he must avoid those same people because they are trying to kill him. This is a classic predicament: going after A makes it much more difficult to accomplish B; going after B makes it much more difficult to accomplish A. (Ironically this is the same technique used in creating the sitcom desire line).

Notice, instead of creating two separate desire lines, this technique creates a push-pull effect along a single track and places the hero under extreme pressure. It also gives the story a very strong spine on which to hang a number of big action set pieces without losing plot and momentum.

This brings up the biggest mistake most action writers make: they donât know how to create action without killing the plot. There are a lot of reasons for this. One has to do with how you set up the opposition. Most action opponents are all-powerful and evil. That makes them dull. But more importantly, everything about them is right on the surface. Result: no surprise and no plot.

In the Bourne films, the opposition is very powerful. But most of it is hidden under the surface. There are layers upon layers that Bourne must uncover. In Ultimatum, he continues to dig into the corrupt CIA that made him the killing machine that he is. And he has both ongoing opponents, like the David Strathairn character, as well as a succession of new assassins trying to kill him. All of this contributes to a plot that is much better than we get in most action films.

Action stories are among the most underestimated of all genres, because they seem to charge full speed down a single straight line. Thatâs why so many bad ones are written. A good action film, like The Bourne Ultimatum, is like an athlete who is so talented you donât see the myriad of techniques he has hidden under the surface. If this is your form, take a look at the Action Story Class, and study films like this one for the techniques that make this tough form look easy.