Sex and the City

Spoiler Alert: this breakdown divulges information about the end of the film.

Sex and the City was a revolutionary TV show. Not because it showed women having lots of sex. That part was always unbelievable. Even young hip New York women don’t have that much sex with that many different partners or they’d be dead. No, Sex and the City was a big deal because it showed women as main characters in the story of their lives, not as the supporting girlfriend to the male hero. It showed women in the day-to-day business of work and love – the very fabric of human life – and it didn’t apologize for the fact that women craft their lives differently than men. If you don’t think that’s a big deal, try traveling the world as I did during the run of the show and hearing women from every conceivable nationality rave about this show.

Over the years the show went from Sex in the City to Relationships in the City, which was more believable but less fun. Especially when two of the women got themselves into relationships that were just plain dumb. Smart lawyer Miranda with Steve the bartender was painful to watch, and hear, since Steve’s how-dumb-can-I-talk voice was like nails on a chalkboard. And Charlotte’s marriage to the impotent mama’s boy was a clear case of theme driving plot into never-never land.

Now comes the movie and it is surprisingly effective. I say surprisingly because turning a TV show into a good movie is extremely difficult, with a very low success rate. There are a number of reasons for the success of Sex (and no, the sex is not one of them). But let me focus on two. The first is the character web on which the book and the show were originally built. Character web is a crucial structural element for any work of fiction, in whatever medium, but it’s especially important in TV. In the TV Drama Class I point out that mainstream Hollywood film emphasizes a single main character going after a single goal with a one-time plot that is usually highly intricate. TV, on the other hand, emphasizes a community of characters the audience wants to visit once a week, with plot being secondary and often predictable. Plot has grown more important on TV for “24” and “Lost”, but they are still the exception.

With character community being primary, how you set up the character oppositions for the leads of the show is crucial. The four women on Sex represent four unique approaches to how modern single women craft their work-love lives. There’s the driven professional woman, the narcissistic sexaholic, and the Princess who expects life to be a fairy tale. At the center of this mix is Carrie, a combination of all three who is the only truly well-rounded character of the four.

This highly-differentiated character web sets up a second major reason for the success of the Sex movie, the story weave. In the Advanced Screenwriting Class I talk about an advanced storytelling strategy called the branching structure. In multiple character stories, each character represents a branch. The trick is how you combine these branches without destroying all narrative drive. If you crosscut equally between many characters, the story has to track too many simultaneous actions and narrative drive disappears.

But because Carrie is the first among equals in the character web, the branching story weave here is more like a single trunk with three other branches extending off. Carrie’s story provides the strong spine that a mainstream Hollywood movie requires while the stories of the other women provide sub-plots, with each being a variation on the main line. Luckily Carrie has that one big event that can provide the spine of the movie, her pending wedding to Big. This event also focuses the theme of the film so that each of the four women can present a different approach to the question: how do women deal with the deeply-ingrained fairy tale image of being married to a man?

Unfortunately this event left me quite ambivalent. I too wanted the fairy tale ending; boys watch Disney movies too. But emotionally it wasn’t right. It wasn’t earned. Here is a guy who has “jilted” Carrie for the entire TV show, then does it again at the altar, and she takes him back one more time. The writer justifies it through the Miranda subplot with Steve (also fake), with the statement that “You’ve got to forgive.” Well, no, you don’t. If the guy keeps blowing you off and humiliating you time and again in the process, at some point it’s the mark of a mature person to say, “Get the hell out of my life.”

Of course, Carrie’s marriage to Big does set up the inevitable sequel to this blockbuster film. Anyone want to place bets on Big being faithful?

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

“What a drag it is getting old.” Yes, Mick, it is. Cultural icons are supposed to be immune from old age. But actors, even action heroes like Harrison Ford, are not. And that has a ripple effect through this entire movie.

Try as he might, Ford can’t convincingly do the moves of Indy in his prime. And no amount of editing or movie slight of hand can hide it. So the story mechanics, and this genre has a lot of them, show through in glaring detail.

Perhaps as a compensation, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has gone slapstick. A lot of the action scenes look like the Keystone Cops. As a comic book action serial, the Indiana Jones movies have always walked the fine line between serious action – where death is believable – and comic action – where the audience can come along on the joyride. But when you go too far into the comical, and particularly slapstick, you run into the problem of the later Matrix films. The first Matrix was man-on-man conflict where the fights seemed real and there was some suspense about whether the hero would win. The later Matrix films were one against a hundred, so the punches looked like cartoons and there was never any doubt of victory.

Screenwriter David Koepp, a seasoned pro, tries to “take the stink off” the problem by admitting Indy’s age up front. He also tries to make the story personal, similar to the successful strategy used in the Batman series (Batman Begins) and the James Bond series (Casino Royale). Koepp brings back Marian and introduces a young sidekick whose Brando motorcycle uniform is suddenly hip again compared to 40s Indy. But it doesn’t work. Indy is the classic rogue action hero, and trying to turn him into a family man just made me cringe.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull also suffers from a major structural flaw in the script, a weak opponent. The action-fantasy form has a clear divide between those films with a comical opponent – which are usually failures – and those that have a believably deadly opponent – which are usually a success. Here we have a Soviet death mistress, played by Cate Blanchett, who looks like she’s straight out of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. Blanchett’s voice and hair make her such a dead ringer for Natasha, I was waiting for Boris to show up and at least make the movie funny. But alas he never came.

Finally Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull dies from no plot. In the Action Class, I explain why this is always a big problem in the action form. Most screenwriters don’t know that action is not the same as plot, and that if not handled properly, action will kill your plot. This is especially true in James Bond-like action stories in which an unbeatable hero is challenged in a series of all-out attacks. The story becomes a series of stunts, of action set pieces, each the same beat with a different skin. In short, no plot.

Not that any of this has hurt the box office. But you only have to look at the second Pirates of the Caribbean to know that the script is not the only source of a film’s success, or even the major one. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull shows us once again George Lucas’s ability to create a cultural icon that can grab the imagination of the world.

John Truby

Iron Man review

It’s an easy bet to say that Iron Man will be the best action picture of the ’08 summer. Some of the credit has to go to the casting and performances of Robert Downey and Gwyneth Paltrow. They’re so good it makes us realize these two actors should be in a lot more movies than they are. But most of the credit has to go to the script.

There’s a natural tendency to think of the action genre as the most director-dependent of all the forms, what with all their spectacle, staging, and special effects. But this is just another example of where conventional wisdom is wrong. Invariably when an action film goes wrong, it’s because of the script. And when it stands above the crowd, it’s definitely the script.

Comic book action films like Iron Man look deceptively easy to write. Just a fun, heroic character flying around and fighting evil villains. It’s actually a tricky form, because you are combining three genres: action, fantasy and comedy. In this script, writers Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby, and Art Marcum & Matt Holloway avoided every pitfall of the form and made all the right structural choices.

One choice was already made for them. As the film that introduces the character to the audience, Iron Man is an origin story, and that is always the best story in a series. Think of Batman Begins vs. all the others, even the Nicholson one.

But the key choice the writers made that set this action film apart had to do with the characters. In the Action Class, I talk a lot about how to create characters that have the capability to change, a structural element that becomes even more important when you combine action with fantasy. Here in Iron Man, instead of a superhero who is super heroic, main character Tony Stark has a number of weaknesses and is in many ways an unlikable person. Instead of being a one-note fighter for good, he is a real man with a deep need that is both believable and relevant in today’s world.

The writers take this same approach to the opposition. Instead of battling a silly, over-the-top villain, Stark must go up against a deadly Afghan warlord and a corporate boss who will let nothing get in the way of profit. These opponents are not detailed or deep in any way. We’ve certainly seen them many times before. But they are believable and relevant to the audience in the real world, and that gives the contest power beyond the boundaries of the comic book world.

This grounded and real character work makes it even more surprising that this is also the funniest script of the season. The action-comedy combination has been popular for a long time (it’s one of the seven comedy sub-forms I detail in the Comedy Class). In the past this has been used most often in action-crime films, like Beverly Hills Cop, as a way to show that the action hero is so good he can make jokes in the face of death. But here the comedy is used to undercut the natural pretentiousness of the superhero character. The writers extend this technique by having the main character make fun of the comic superhero form itself. This again makes him seem more real as he performs his heroic deeds, because the comic book heroes are all those other guys.

The combination of action and fantasy is now virtually the sole genre of summer blockbuster films. It’s obviously one of the main products that Hollywood wants to buy in their never-ending quest for worldwide popularity. If you want to write an action fantasy, do not underestimate it. Going back to the deep structure techniques necessary for any great story is your only guarantee of success.

Son of Rambow

When you're making an indie film, you're always looking for ways to save money. And if you're smart the first and foremost place to do that is in the script.

One great strategy is to make a virtue of having no money - the old turn-lemons-into-lemonade trick. You know you can't compete with the big budget pictures on production values. So you come up with a story that relies on amateur video. This was the main technique used by sex, lies and videotape, generally considered the beginning of the modern indie film movement in the US. And it was used in The Blair Witch Project, one of the highest grossing indie films of all time. It's also used to great effect in Son of Rambow.

Of course, this strategy won't mean a thing if your story is not well structured. Ironically, script is even more important in indie filmmaking than in big budget movies, because the script is usually all you have going for you. And it doesn't cost any more to write a good one. Son of Rambow is a love story between two young friends, and writer Garth Jennings came up with a structure that not only carries a lot of comedy, it packs a surprising amount of emotional impact.

Like most good love stories, Son of Rambow is based on the fundamental opposition of the odd couple. Here a delinquent schemer and religious straight arrow team up to make a First Blood sequel where the son of Rambo tries to save his father. Matching the concept to the personal weakness and need of the leads, both boys are missing a father at home. The odd couple sets up the main opposition, but the similar need sets up the emotional payoff at the end.

But the key structural decision the writer made in this film has to do with the desire line. The normal desire in a love story is for the characters to want each other. But using the normal structure for these characters would have meant no plot and a sticky sentimental mess. Instead, these boys want to make a movie that will win a short film contest. Notice that this external goal allows the writer to sneak up on the audience, to tell a love story where the payoff is a complete surprise.

One of the big problems a lot of love stories have is lack of plot. That's also the case here. The desire, though effective at setting up the final punch, does flag a bit since it is essentially a stall. To increase the plot in the slow middle of the story, the writer adds outside opponents from each boy's family, along with the older kids at school. This character web is not altogether successful, especially the cool French boy that all the English kids worship. But it does complicate the making of the video enough to justify waiting so long to find out who wins the award.

In the Love Story Class, I talk a lot about how to transcend the form, by twisting the beats so the story pays its dues but also gives the audience something new. Writer Garth Jennings has come up with a unique love story structure through which to express the joys of friendship and the power of the imagination.

Smart People

Smart People uses one of the fundamental strategies of indie filmmaking, the witty, dialogue-driven comedy. These scripts are cheap to make and "writerly." Ironically the film is anything but well-written. It supports what is perhaps the greatest of all myths about the writer, as the person who provides the dialogue. Real writers know that the game is won or lost in the structure, which is the development of the character through the plot.

Make no mistake. There is some witty dialogue in this film. But because the script lacks character and plot, the dialogue comes across as written lines performed by actors. Let's consider the characters first. The film crosscuts among four important characters. That's already a risky strategy for a short feature like this one, because you simply don't have time for much character definition when you divide 90 minutes by 4. But the problems here go much deeper.

Smart People is first of all a love story between Dennis Quaid's Lawrence and Sarah Jessica Parker's Janet. If Lawrence were essentially a good guy with a few flaws, you wouldn't have to go too deeply into why smart doctor Janet would want to go out with him. But given that Lawrence is a pompous, self-absorbed jerk, you had better get into why in great detail. Not here. Janet is completely opaque, and her only explanation for wanting to be with this guy is that she had a crush on him when she was his student. But he was a jerk then as well.

Ellen Page plays the same overly intellectual, enunciate-every-word-slowly girl she played in Juno. But this time she is also essentially married to her dad, and has a crush on her disgusting, much older uncle even though, as a young Republican, she should know better. Fourth in this pantheon of supposedly smart people is Chuck, played by Thomas Haden Church, whose zen-like, witty one-liners indicate he is the smartest one of all, but inexplicably is no more than a homeless man at the age of 50.

You can't fall back on the notion that smart people screw up relationships just as much as anyone else. You have to provide motive. Because fiction is all about making the characters clear to the audience, even though they are not clear about themselves. Characters don't have to be likeable in a story, but they must at least be understandable. Otherwise they don't seem like real people and the audience doesn't care what happens to them.

Without a strong character foundation, the film's plot has nowhere to go. The writer tries the old indie trick of having lots of really short scenes, so it looks like real life, only wittier. But instead the plot comes across as episodic and contrived, with the mechanics of the writer's struggle becoming increasingly obvious. Somehow everyone ends up where they should be, but I have no idea how.

In the Comedy Class I talk about how important it is to start with the comic structure, not the one-liners. There are eight major sub-structures of comedy, and each plays out a very different set of story beats. If you start with the comic structure that is right for your story, you can twist the beats to make them original and hang the one-liners on a structure that make them even funnier.

If, on the other hand, you start with the one-liners, you end up with a structural mess and get a film that stops being funny after the first ten minutes. It's your choice.

Definitely, Maybe

I often find that the easiest films from which to learn professional storytelling techniques are the mediocre ones, where both strengths and weaknesses are clear. Certainly that’s the case with Definitely, Maybe, a romantic comedy that offers us all kinds of lessons. This is the story of a man who tells his young daughter about the three most important women in his love life, and she in turn must guess which one is her mother.

The storyteller device is one of the most misused techniques in screenwriting. I talk extensively about proper use of the storyteller in the Advanced Screenwriting Class and in my book, The Anatomy of Story. For a couple of reasons, the storyteller device in Definitely, Maybe is often painful to watch. First, the daughter is 10 going on 30, and few things are more grating than watching phony mature dialogue coming out of the mouth of a child. Second, it is inconceivable that this girl knows nothing about the identity of her mother.

So the love story/mystery frame almost kills the film before it starts. Why then does writer Adam Brooks use it? Because the love story/mystery structure it sets up has so many benefits. The most important has to do with transcending the standard love story. In all my genre classes, I talk about how crucial it is that you not only hit the basic story beats of your form but also twist them in an original way so your script stands above the crowd.

The average Hollywood love story is structured as an action story. There is a single courtship line in which the man chases the woman and eventually wins her through sheer relentless pressure. Besides the fact that this structure is anything but romantic, it has no basis in reality, so the standard love story comes across as a contrived, phony mess.

By combining the love story with the detective form, Brooks can show the audience three women the hero has loved in his life, each in different ways and for different reasons. Instead of tracking a short courtship line, Brooks can expose the ups and downs of a person’s love life over a 10-15 year period.

The main reason most writers stick with the single courtship line is that it’s easy to create a unified story. One lover + short time period = tight script. A story with three lovers over a 15-year period could easily become hopelessly episodic. Which brings us back to the love story/mystery structure and the storyteller frame. Instead of an episodic sequence where one woman follows another, the frame allows Brooks to weave the three lines and bring each woman back over the entire story. And the precocious daughter, who almost kills the film up front, gives the ending an extra emotional payoff when the hero discovers his one best love.

Romantic comedy may be the most difficult of all genres to write well. Which makes it even more imperative that you come up with an original take and invent a unique story structure that will make your romantic comedy one of a kind.

Enchanted

It's easy to underestimate the fantasy form, especially when it's a Disney family picture like Enchanted. But writer Bill Kelly knows his genre and its potential, especially when it's mixed with other forms.

Enchanted is really a combination of fantasy, fairy tale, romantic comedy, musical and the traveling angel story. That's a lot of forms, which is why this film is more complicated than it appears. Most writers trying to mix all those genres end up with a structural mess. Too many heroes, too many desire lines, too many story beats and so on. But Kelly makes it work.

One reason for the film's success is that Kelly has combined genres that work well together. Fantasy and musical have very similar thematic underpinnings. Both are about learning how to live well, which they define as forming a community. Love stories are about creating a community of two. The traveling angel story concerns a (usually) perfect person who enters a community in trouble and sets it right.

Now all of this thematic unity doesn't change the fact that mixing so many forms is tricky. Kelly starts by establishing the foundation of the story, which is the fantasy and fairy tale opening world. Though an apparent utopia, the world has a big flaw, which is the jealous queen. And the princess, though apparently perfect and about to be married, has a flaw as well. She has no emotional depth and therefore is about to marry the wrong person. One of the nice touches here is that the audience is no more aware of this at the beginning than is the princess. The viewer, having seen decades of Disney films, is as caught up in the promise of fairy tale life as the princess is. But this weakness is crucial because it creates the need in one of the lovers that is essential for a good love story.

With the foundation set, the heroine travels to the second, fantastical world. Ironically this film flips the beat and makes the second world all too real, modern day New York. But for the Princess it is a nightmare, a dystopia, and, true to the fantasy form, it is where the heroine will learn her great life lesson. It is also where the traveling angel plot kicks in. Using music and her own boundless, fairy tale optimism, she begins to help the characters who are in trouble and turns the cold New Yorkers in Central Park into a utopian community.

This is also where the love story line resumes. The man who helps her out has his own weakness and need. He's a single dad who doesn't believe in love. He needs to feel love again, for himself and his daughter. From this point on the film plays out the key beats of the fantasy, love story and traveling angel story. One of the fun aspects of modern fairy tales is seeing how the writer comes up with modern equivalents of fairly tale elements, like transformations, spells and kingdoms. For example, when the Princess finds herself in need of a fairy godmother, the daughter pulls out the greatest wish fulfiller of all time, dad's credit card.

Hollywood blockbuster films are all about mixing genres. Even pleasant little children's stories are more difficult than they appear, because they usually require a lot of forms. If you are interested in modernizing a fairy tale - which is a very successful story strategy - check out the Great Screenwriting Class. For fantasy, of course, go to the Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction Class or the Fantasy Software. You can learn Romantic Comedy in the Love Story Class or Software, or in the Comedy Class or Software. I explain the ever-popular Traveling Angel story in the Comedy Class and Software.

Above all, try to combine forms that work well together. In Enchanted, writer Bill Kelly shows the tremendous advantage that comes from knowing your craft.