Memo from the Story Department. Christopher Vogler
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about, be it Psycho, The Crying Game, Pulp Fiction, The Blair Witch Project, The Passion of the Christ or 300. To fulfill that clause of the contract, there'd better be something really strange, scary, shocking, thrilling or surprising inside that movie so that people can talk about it knowingly after they've seen it.
One of the most powerful ways to honor the terms of the entertainment contract is to fulfill a deep wish held by many members of the audience—to see the dinosaurs walk again in Jurassic Park, to fly and wield superpowers in Superman, to be seduced by sexy teen vampires in the Twilight series. Walt Disney realized that fairy tales were driven by wishes and built his brand identity around giving people the wholesome fantasy experiences they wanted, filled with wish-granting fairy godmothers, wizards and genies.
Up in the Air fulfilled the contract in several ways, with appealing, complex characters and good story, but really scored by catching something in the Zeitgeist. (I also have to love this movie for highlighting the futuristic design of the Lambert Field terminal building in St. Louis. My Dad helped build those concrete arches.)
Sometimes a movie fulfills the contract by simply capturing something in the Zeitgeist, the prevailing mood of the moment. Movies will sometimes accidentally line up with a current issue. Famously The China Syndrome, dealing with a fictional nuclear plant meltdown, was released within days of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident and became the movie everyone wanted to see. Up in the Air had good performances and story but it also happened to be released, after many years in preparation, just as many Americans found themselves thrown out of work and so its story of corporate gunslingers flying around to fire people struck a chord. Of course a movie can also be killed by current events. After the 9-II attacks on the U.S. a number of movies were shelved because they featured tall buildings being attacked and destroyed. That was not the way people wanted to have their contract fulfilled at that moment.
At first I resisted the idea that it's all wheeling and dealing—it can't just be about business, can it? But I came to see it is, in a way. From the Bible on down we have lived by our contracts, for the Bible is an account of the covenants or deals made between God and his creation. We all have an unwritten deal with the rest of society, called the social contract, to behave ourselves in return for our freedom and relative safety. The essential documents of our civilization are contracts, agreements made or statements declaring the terms of a new deal, from Hammurabi's Code and the marriage contract to the Bill of Rights. Just be sure when you tell your story that you've thought about “What's the deal going down here?” in every scene and “What's the big deal?” of the whole story. Think of the attention and time your clients, your audience, have put on the table, and try to fulfill your part of the bargain with something that at least entertains them, grants their wishes, perhaps stimulates and amuses them, and maybe even transforms them a little bit.
NOTE FROM McKENNA
Annette Insdorf is my boss at Columbia University. A few years ago, she asked me to create a 14-week course in Auteur Studies. I was stumped for a second about which auteur to choose until I realized that producer-director-composer-movie star-icon Clint Eastwood's astoundingly long career hadn't been discussed at Columbia. He became our topic.
The class was scheduled to begin in a few weeks when Annette bumped into Mr. Eastwood at an industry function. When she mentioned our plans, he responded with his trademark squint and sweetly growled, “Don't let him bore the kids.”
Now that's a contract with the audience (and very likely the key to Clint's status as a filmmaking legend).
CHAPTER FIVE
POLAR OPPOSITES
—— McKENNA ——
The other day, I had a student writer present the beginnings of an idea during a workshop session. She featured two sisters who are basically in tune with each other at the outset and who remained so throughout.
This was as far as she'd gotten, and she was frustrated that she couldn't find the story. So I asked her to consider the differences, rather than the similarities, between the characters.
I was asking her to use the storytelling tool of Polarities, of Polar Opposites.
Responding to “Polarity” questions, the writer decided that Sister A was older, more headstrong and inclined towards security. Sister B was younger, more heartfelt and had a taste for adventure. A good start, and from it we deduced that Sister A is the alpha female who (as the story begins) can always rely on her younger beta sister to be a trusted sidekick.
The Polarities tool was generating the basics of the conflict that would drive the story.
The writer had envisioned a romantic setting of upper-class wealth and privilege. Our storytelling tools helped us infer that such privilege would be rooted in long-time traditions and rules to maintain the luxurious status quo. This suggested that alpha Sister A could be a conservative figure, devoted to following and protecting those rules. Polarities could posit beta Sister B as a potential radical who might be tempted away.
What could tempt her? What might threaten the status quo and tear the girls apart? How about the arrival of a swarthy, handsome fellow from the lower classes? Sister A could see this fellow through the eyes of traditional values and immediately pigeonhole him in a subservient position. But Sister B might see instead the fellow's natural charm and the possibility of a romantic relationship. Eureka! We were finding a story!
AN ESSENTIAL TOOL
Polar Opposition is one of the tools that all good dramatic craftspeople value. On the most fundamental level, stories pit two opposing forces against each other and then stage scenes of physical, emotional and philosophical combat (i.e., Reciprocal Action) until the conflict is resolved. The conflict usually continues until one of the Polar Opposites prevails or until the two forge something new that wasn't present in the early going.
PULP FICTION: TWO CHARACTERS, TWO POLES
Think about the post-credit opening of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. We initially see Jules and Vincent as a matched pair of businessmen, colleagues who are carpooling to work. They are almost mundane as Vincent describes his recent vacation in Europe.
But Tarantino uses these two as Polarities to personify the opposing forces of his morality play. The separation begins when the two argue over whether giving a woman a foot massage is a sexual act. This lively debate creates conflict between the otherwise identical colleagues.
The Polar Opposition becomes clear during a key dramatic event. Jules and Vincent complete their mission by blowing away a roomful of bad boys. Out of nowhere, a previously unseen enemy barges into the room and opens fire with a hand cannon. Impossibly, all of the bullets miss Jules and Vincent.
In this all-important moment, Vincent claims that they were lucky. Jules rejects this, claiming that they've been saved by a miracle. The two characters are in thematic conflict, and the Polar Opposites argument focuses the script's actions. Pulp Fiction begs the question: Are we merely subject to random good and bad luck? Or is there a greater force at hand with which we can communicate?
Pulp Fiction implicitly debates this thematic question at all points. Is it luck or God that causes fugitive boxer Butch to encounter Marcellus on the street? Is he lucky or divinely inspired when he wins redemption by rescuing Marcellus from the evil gun shop owners? Is it fate that puts the watch from Butch's father at hazard?
Tarantino seems to have strong feelings about this question. Just look at where Vincent and Jules wind up. Placing his faith in luck, Vincent survives a near-fatal night out with Marcellus' wife. His luck runs out when gun-toting Butch catches him on the toilet. Denying God, Vincent dies as a secondary character in someone else's story.
Belief in God gives our Polar Opposite character superhuman powers. Faith allows unarmed Jules not only to talk mad killer Ringo and his wildly unstable girlfriend Honey Bunny out of hurting anyone in the diner, he also convinces the homicidal pair to return