Spanglish

James Brooks' Spanglish is a classic case of a film with some great lines and moments wasted by weak character and structure.

The film starts with a storyteller, Cristina, recounting the path that led her, a poor Mexican girl, to apply to an elite American college. Structurally, then, she is the main character and the story line is how her mother, Flor, changed her life.

But this places certain requirements on the character. She must have unique weaknesses and a Need that, through struggle, will lead her to a self-revelation at the end of the story. And since her mother is the main agent for that change, the mother should have weaknesses and a need, otherwise the story is nothing more than hero worship.

But this girl is barely drawn. Yes, she learns the value of keeping her unique Mexican traditions while succeeding in an American world. But there is really no weakness or need defined for this child at the beginning. And mother Flor is such a mature, advanced and beautiful human being from the start that all one should logically do is stare at this woman in awe.

The structure is further confused by the fact that this is a Hollywood mainstream movie. Which means that a little Mexican girl is not going to drive this story. The story will be driven by American movie star Adam Sandler and his movie wife, played by Tea Leoni.

But they haven't been set up structurally to drive the movie. Sandler's character, John, is even more perfect than Flor. His only flaw is being foolish enough to have married Leoni's nutcase character, Deborah, in the first place. Deborah has plenty of weaknesses and needs. But not the kind that show character complexity. Her weaknesses and needs are so extreme she is a caricature. She is the comic version of the mother in Ordinary People, a woman of such towering insensitivity and neuroses that no one could stand to be with her for longer than ten minutes.

Brooks tries to tack on some kind of self-revelation and moral decision when John and Flor admit their love for each other but won't go off together because of what it would do to their kids. But this doesn't work for all kinds of reasons. First, neither one is the structural main character. Second, this is two perfectly righteous characters acting righteously. And three, they are actually making the wrong decision; the best thing that could happen to their kids is to get them as far away from Deborah as possible.

There are some great lines in this movie. But these aren't real people. And that means the mechanics of the storytelling is always right on the surface.

Alfie

The big lesson of Alfie is the difference of episodic and organic story. An episodic story is one in which the individual event or scene stands alone. An organic story is one in which all the events and scenes are connected under the surface and build to a surprising but also logically necessary ending.

This film is extremely episodic. Alfie loves a number of women who are only mildly different. So each segment seems like the same beat, hit again and again.

Couple this with a simplistic moral decline on the part of the hero and you have a predictable story that devolves. This is the kiss of death.

All good fiction has a strong moral element, but a moral tale is too heavy-handed. The original Alfie was also episodic. But it had the great advantage of a hero whose hedonistic, amoral lifestyle was in shocking contrast to the prevailing morality and movie history at the time.

Forty years later, showing a playboy who learns that easy sex is hollow is so common, obvious and p.c. that the point is made by the second scene of the film. Everything after that is a test of endurance.

Big Fish

The teller of tall tales takes on a tough task (besides risking too much alliteration). The tales have to be exceptionally creative, because they are supposed to surprise and delight. But their fabulist nature also makes it more difficult to affect the audience emotionally. The audience knows the stories are fake and thus have no anchor in real human need and motivation.

Tall tales also tend to become highly episodic. Made up of bizarre and outlandish events, they highlight a moment or a single image instead of a steadily building web of cause-and-effect.

Big Fish doesn't know how to solve the unique problems of the tall tale. It's a patchwork script, and its attempts at solutions just make the problems worse.

The writer tries to affect the audience emotionally by framing the fantasy story with a son's attempt to get close to his storytelling father. This line is psychologically real but boring in its execution. It also feels like much ado about nothing. So what if dad likes to make up stories and repeat them a few too many times.

What's worse, this technique of a second, realistic story line backfires. Instead of anchoring the tall tales in some recognizable human emotion, the realistic line cross cut with the fantastical line seems like two different movies stuck together, and neither is done well.

An even more serious flaw with this script is that the tall tales aren't that delightful. This is where the fantasy game is won or lost. In Big Fish we have a giant who doesn't do much, a big fish, and a parachute drop behind enemy lines where the hero encounters a woman with two heads.

There is a Utopian town, which is quite common in fantasy and can be very powerful. But this town is never explained or given any larger symbolic meaning.

The first lesson here is simple. If you are going to do tall tales, do them all the way. You're in the fantasy genre, and once you get the audience in its own fantastical world, you have to keep them there.

In the Fantasy Class, I talk about the fact that fantasy is more dependent on the premise set up than any other form. If you don't get in and out of the fantasy properly, you can't build the fantasy and you can't make the necessary emotional connection between the fantasy events and the characters' psychology in the real world.

The second lesson is: once your audience is in the fantasy world, you better tell the most imaginative tall tales anyone has ever seen. Great fantasy is about showing people possibilities they never even dreamed of. That's a high standard, but in this form it's the only one that really matters.

Cold Mountain

Spoiler Alert: This breakdown contains information about the ending of the film.

The myth-drama is one of the most powerful story combinations that we have. Myth gives us the hero's journey and the epic scope. Drama gives us the family and the deep, complex issue. When the love story is added, we have the potential for a real knockout.

Unfortunately, the original writer of Cold Mountain structured his story in such a way as to remove much of the power of the myth-drama. By doing a straight cross-cut between the two leads for most of the story, the hero's journey does not build and the family cannot explore a central issue through conflict.

Cold Mountain is obviously The Odyssey set during the Civil War. In The Odyssey, Homer also cuts between the traveling Ulysses and the faithful Penelope back home. But notice the key difference in structure. Homer doesn't do an equal crosscut. He heavily weights the story in favor of the traveling hero. This gives the story a building line and a powerful spine on which to hang all the symbolic elements that come with the myth form (for more on this see the Myth Class).

The biggest drawback to doing a crosscut throughout most of Cold Mountain is that it kills the love story. The lovers barely have time to meet and have a quick kiss before they are separated. Yet we are supposed to believe they will both fight through three years of silence and the worst assaults of war to get back together.

Of course the thematic point of the crosscut is that the juxtaposition of the two story lines creates a larger point through comparison. But here that comparison remains on the broadest level, showing that the two leads are equal in the obstacles they must overcome for their love. But the specific scenes where the crosscuts occur are largely wasted.

This film almost overcomes its foundation structural weakness through a number of excellent scenes. But then it commits one of the great sins of storytelling, the false ending. When an audience invests two and a half hours of their time watching two people struggle through hell to be together, you better have a profound reason to kill one of them at the end.

In Cold Mountain, we're not even close to profound. Yes, in war, especially civil war, a lot of people die. But by that logic, you could kill off everyone in this story. But killing off one of the lovers after all that effort serves no thematic point, and gives no new story value.

It is fake tragedy, what I call "death ex machina." It doesn't make your movie better. It just pisses people off.

Something's Gotta Give

Something's Gotta Give comes off as an argument in praise of older women, which is exactly what one of the characters preaches at the dinner table near the beginning of the film.

If you're writing a script where you are literally trying to prove a premise, you have to hide and sugarcoat it. For example, the writers of Tootsie want to show that men are chauvinists with women, and they do so with a guy forced to dress up as a woman and a swirl of characters creating an intricate plot weave.

When your premise is out in the open like this one is, you cause yourself all kinds of problems. First, your dialogue is stilted. Second, you make the actors look like they are acting whenever they try to say the lines. Third, you kill the plot. If we are waiting for both characters to play out their side of the premise and they do, just as we thought, we have no surprise and no payoff.

Sure enough, tough but brilliant Erica learns to live a little. Harry learns to fall for a woman's "deeper" qualities and decides to spend the rest of his life with a great older woman.

But the writer (and director) gives Erica too little time to fall, based on too little from Harry. It's not as unbelievable as Helen Hunt falling for Nicholson in As Good As It Gets, but it's close.

All love stories are contrived. The trick is to hide the contrivance, give characters some real reasons to fall for each other, and give them enough screen time to do it. Don't underestimate this form. Love is among the most highly choreographed of all genres, and when it's connected with comedy it's even tougher. (See either the Comedy Class or the Love Story Class). But when it is done with a high level of craft, it is always popular.

In America

In America shows how powerful a small family drama can be when it is written and acted with a high level of craft. It's a film where you remember the moments. But those moments are memorable because the writers wove them into an overall structure that builds to a surprising emotional climax.

The story begins with an Irish family pretending to cross from Canada to the US for a vacation. The scene is both scary and funny, and it gives us shorthand character descriptions of each family member, especially the youngest girl, Ariel, whose personality is so cheerful and outgoing it almost gets the family into trouble.

The opening also introduces a voice-over by the oldest daughter, Christie, who is eleven. In it she refers to three wishes her deceased little brother, Frankie, gave her, one of which she must use to get the family over the border. This technique tells the audience this film will be a memory, which makes it feel more personal. The voice-over also gives the story a spine that will help tie the various moments together, and that is especially important when you don't have a strong desire line.

The storyteller technique also introduces the ghost of the story, Frankie's death, which will be the biggest and most ongoing opponent for this family that is starting over in America.

The ghost, as alums of the Great Screenwriting/Story Structure Class know, is the event from the past still haunting the hero in the present. It is one of the most important story beats in a good script. But often a strong ghost in a film is a big problem, because it literally pulls the story backward and drives the conflict too much into the mind of the hero. But the writers here avoid that mistake by keeping the ghost in the background of a number of difficulties this family faces in the present as they try to rebuild their crippled lives.

The other key to this script is the "yelling man" who lives downstairs from the family. By creating an outside character who is facing his own death, the writers give the family and the audience a character in the present who can personify what dying really means.

When the writers connect the death of this character with the loss of Frankie, the punch at the end is remarkable. Only drama, written with solid story structure, has that kind of emotional power for an audience.

Runaway Jury

John Grisham is a master of plot, specializing in the courtroom thriller. And in this complicated and underestimated writing skill, he has a lot to teach us.

Runaway Jury sets up as a battle royal between Dustin Hoffman's Wendall Rohr and Gene Hackman's Rankin Fitch, with Fitch the powerful opponent. Most writers would work their plot from there, using the hidden powers of the main opponent to provide most of the surprise upon which plot is based.

But Grisham adds another element that magnifies his plot tremendously. John Cusack's Nick Easter seems to be the innocent little guy who will, in classic thriller form, come under intense attack from the powerful opponent. But instead of using the reactive victim, Grisham gives Easter his own desire line, his own hidden agenda. The result: three sources of action and massive plot (see the Great Screenwriting Class for details on plotting, opposition, surprise, the reveals sequence and plot weave).