The Moral Premise Blog

MARTY. Please Come Talk To Us

2012-02-07T00:55:00.000-05:00

So, we're trying to get Martin Scorsese's attention. We've sent several invitations to him at his NY office, to his publicist, his business partner, we've sent flowers to the publicist's assistant. No response. So, this is our latest effort. Rent Bus-sides and parade them up and down 5th Ave. What'd think? If you're in Manhattan, have you seen these yet. They're pretty cool. Someone thought Donald Trump paid for them. If you know Marty, let him we're trying our best... well, I mean we haven't hired stalkers -- yet.

The 11 Story Imperatives & Log Line Mugs

2012-01-27T22:57:00.007-05:00

Trying to be of help, here. Imagine, as you're writing, and every time you grab for your drink you're reminded of the 11 Story Imperatives or the Log Line elements that every story needs to succeed. I've culled these from my experience consulting on screenplays in Hollywood, my own writing, and research form successful and not so successful motion pictures.

They are available at The Moral Premise Story Shop at Cafe Press. Only modestly marked up.
http://www.cafepress.com/moralpremisestoryshop

Readable graphics of what's on the mugs, tumblers, glasses, etc are available at the Moral Premise Writing Aids web page. http://www.moralpremise.com/storyaids.php

An written explanation of the Log Line mug and its graphic is HERE:

An written explanation of the Story Mug Shot mug a its graphic is HERE:

Let me know if these help. The more you grab for that mug, the more you'll learn.

Stan's Comming Appearances

2012-01-17T21:40:00.001-05:00

I have several gigs approaching that I'm excited to be a part.

Sunday Afternoon, February 12, 2012

I'll be participating (by Skype) in a presentation on the fundamentals of screenwriting, story structure, and pitching hosted by the Toronto Screenwriting Meetup Group, and the Vancouver Screenwriting Meetup Group . The moderator will be in Toronto (Windsor, Ontario's own Wayne McLean) and I'll be in Michigan, and who knows how many will be in the two Canadian cities. In you're near either city it might be worth your time to check out the links above and attend.

All Day Saturday, Saturday, May 5, 2012

is the date for the 2012 Biola Media Conference at the CBS Studio Center Lot in Studio City, CA. Keynote speakers will be Simon Swart, EVP of Fox Home Entertainment, Gavin O'Connor, director of the 2011 indie film, Warrior, and Devon Franklin, VP of Production at Columbia/Sony, and author of the wonderful book, "Produced By Faith." All will speak to us about our creative journey of developing a story that connects with a worldwide audience. Workshop speakers from Disney, Pixar, Industrial Light & Magic, and other world famous imagination factories will help us think through the creative barriers that keep us from fulfilling our dreams.

Oh, yeah, and there's me, Stan Williams. I'll be interviewing Gavin O'Connor on stage as part of The Great Conversation in Cinema, and hopefully two other notable directors.... when they confirm. I'll also be presenting one or two one-hour workshops on The Moral Premise. I mentioned in a post earlier, that DeVon mentions "The Moral Premise" in his book "Produced By Faith," so it will be good to meet him in person. DeVon was the EVP from Columbia on the shoot in China with Will Smith and company for Karate Kid that I worked on.

Evening, Sunday May 6, 2012

Stan will be the guest at the regular Greenhouse event. Check their website for time and location.

All Day Saturday, May 12, 2012

The Greenhouse in L.A. is sponsoring an day long Moral Premise Workshop on the campus of the Hollywood Presbyterian Church. Check out their website for more information.

Creating Emote Pacing Charts of a Story

2012-01-05T01:18:00.004-05:00

Alex Melii asked how the emote charts were created in an earlier post on Rollercoaster Story Pacing Charts.

I recently another chart, for a different version of the same screenplay mentioned in the above post. It's now titled PARABELLUM. It's an teen-wartime-actionier story. In 1943, near Berlin, a rebellious 14-year old German girl dares to battle her mother's fiancé, a blood-thirsty S.S. Colonel, to rescue her Jewish friends from the ghetto before they’re liquidated. If you wish for peace, PARABELLUM. That genre and log line will explain the severe up and down slopes of the chart below, and the sustained high emotion of the final scenes.

First, here's the chart.

As I explained in the earlier post about charts, the first time we created this chart for the script, there was this long slow (no action) part in the middle that obviously was out of place in a wartime-actionier script. So, those scenes were brushed, which also helped to shorten the story and get it below the 120 page limit, and closer to the 110 ideal.

Second, here is how I did it:

These instructions are for a Mac using Final Draft with M.S. Excel. If something doesn't make sense, write and ask about it. (I can not apologize for the anal or verbose approach to this. I spend almost four years writing crew flight procedures for NASA's Skylab and training astronauts how to use them. Yes, that's what the first "A" in NASA stands for... and there's good reason.)

The assumption in these instructions is that you'd like to have the Dialogue Info data (provided by the Scene Report) in your Excel data to help jog your memory at some time in the future when looking at the Excel spreadsheet. If this is not true the instructions below can be simplified, as hopefully will become obvious once you've done the process once or twice.

In Final Draft, ensure that the Scene Headings are as you want them (properly formatted as Scene Headings) and that you've added scene numbers.
From Final Draft create a Scene Report in "scene order" WITH scene numbers.
Select and copy the pertinent scenes (drag-select) in the Scene Report.
Open Excel and format ALL the cells in the worksheet as TEXT.
In Excel, paste into the text formatted worksheet the Scene Report data. Don't paste this data into the top row. Leave yourself a blank row above the paste. After the paste, do not try to get rid of extra blank rows or Dialogue Info rows of data -- that happens below. (Notice there are 4 columns of data, and the Dialogue Info data appears one line below the row with scene number, location, and scene length data. So, there is actually 5 "fields" of data, but not in the same row like Excel likes things. We're going to fix that below.)
Paste AGAIN the same Scene Report data, into the same Excel worksheet to the right of the previous paste, but ONE ROW HIGHER. (You might put at least one column margin between the two pastes so you can see the different pastes easily.)
DELETE from the second paste, the right-most three columns that contain page number, location and scene duration data. (This leaves the one column with Scene Numbers and Dialogue Spec data. Notice that the Dialogue Info from the second paste is now on the same row as its correct Scene Number form the first paste operation.)
Sort the worksheet on the Scene Number column (from the first paste at far left). Excel may ask you if you want to "sort anything that looks like a number as a number, even though the cells are formatted as text." Answer YES, to this. You DO WANT to sort by numbers the text formatted cells. [This will put the Dialogue Info from the second paste, and the extra Scene Numbers (from the second paste) in one area all together.]
Select the area of the chart with this extra Dialogue Info and extra Scene Numbers (that were sorted in the above step) and CLEAR it from the chart. (This leaves you with a clean list, one line for each Scene #, Location, Page length, and Dialogue Info.) You may have an extra column separating the second paste Dialogue Info from the other four columns. Delete it if you want.
Now would be a good time to label the top of each column. From left to right they should be: Scene #, Location, Page #, Scene Length, and Dialogue Info.
Converting the fractions of a page to a decimal format is a bit of a manual challenge. So use Excel's Search and Replace function on each of the seven possible fractions changing 1/8 to 0.125, and 2/8 to 0.250; 3/8 to 0.375 and so on. This will leave you with decimals, but with a space between the decimal and it's integer, if the scene was longer than 7/8 page.
To close the gap between the integers and the decimals, Search and Replace (in the one column only) a SPACE with NOTHING to replace it. You now have a column of numbers depicting the decimal length of each scene.
Change the format of the Scene Length column (which you just changed) NUMBERS with three decimal places to the right.
Insert a new column to the right of the Scene Length column, and label it "Script Length."
In the new column insert a formula that adds the cell above with the duration cell to the left. Then fill down this formula. Call this column "Script Length." The final page length will be longer than your script length due to the inaccuracies of the 1/8 fractions that Final Draft calculates for scene lengths. This is okay for judging the emotional roller coast of the story, although it will be a bit longer and not perfectly accurate. [To be very accurate you'd have to count every line of the page and substitute the number of lines in a scene for the 1/8 denomination that Final Draft (and the industry) use, for calculating scene length.]
Create a blank column to the right of the Script Length column and label it "E-Mote Value". And in this new column manually enter an integer (along a limited scale, of say -10 to +10, or 0 to 10)for your judgment of the content of each scene. For a Moral Premise evaluation, the number should evaluate how well the protagonist advances toward their goal. If the protag makes progress toward the goal, enter a positive number (1 to 10). If the antagonist makes progress at stopping the protag, insert a negative number (-1 to -10). Or, you can enter a number that evaluates the emotional excitement, the action (vs. talk), or a suspense factor. Use any scale you want to measure anything you want. The numbers you enter are not entirely arbitrary, but they ARE your personal qualitative evaluation of the scene.
When all the cells are filled in select only the Script Length and the E-Mote Value column data (they should be adjacent to each other, with the Script Length col on the left.
Insert a scatter line chart, and you'll see your emotional graph.
Study your chart and subsequently adjust the content and location of scenes so there is a constant up and down emotion to your movie.

The Writer's 12 Step Program

2012-01-02T22:43:00.001-05:00

I "teach" a Story Symposium once a month for 3 hours on a Saturday afternoon. As is typical of these "teaching" experiences, the first 1/2 of the class (first semester, first year) goes swimmingly, and everyone does their homework, and comes prepared. (Well, mostly.)

Then comes the transition (after the theory) to actually write their own stuff and prove their substance -- or to justify their reason for occupying space and depleting the Earth's resources (like food and oxygen). It happens every time to me -- students fall-off like flies deprived of sugar. We need a transformation, but it only happens if the student writer has a passion for what they're writing or their career. Like I say about a good story. You need a passionate writer and a passionate protagonist. Without both you have nothing.

So, my Story Symposium Class is struggling with this stage. We're meeting this Saturday for our first W.A. Meeting. That's "Writers Anonymous" ... as in the 12 Steps. And here they are:

The Writer’s 12 Steps to Getting It Done

I admit that I am powerless to write like I should—that my creative life has become desolate and unmanageable through disuse.
I believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity, and get my quota of words written each and every day.
I have decided to turn my will and my life over to the care of God, as I understand Him.
I daily search my life and make a fearless moral inventory of my motivations and whatever else has prevented me from applying my butt to a chair and my fingers to the keyboard.
I admit to God, and to another human being the exact nature of my wrongs from the previous step.
I am entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character so that I will complete the story that God has set before me.
I humbly ask God to remove my shortcomings and expect a completed work in the not too distant future.
I have made a list of all persons we I have harmed by not living up to and disciplining my creative potential, and I am willing to make amends to them all.
I have made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
I continue to take personal inventory and when I am wrong I promptly admit it.
Through prayer and meditation (or medication, depends on how bad off you are) I seek to improve my conscious contact with God praying only for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out in my creative life of writing.
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, I will carry this message to other writers, and to practice these principles in all my affairs.

VIRTUES OF HORROR

2011-12-29T09:37:00.003-05:00

At the onset, come clarifications:

(a) I have not studied horror as some have. There are some books (which I have not read) but which look valuable, and there are excellent articles on this topic that I have read, carefully, and recommend.

(b) My taste for horror is limited to those stories where the meaning is rich and thick, and the effects minimal.

(c) Most horror gratuity (explicit effects) is moral excess that can serve to dull and numb the conscience.

(d) I think well-crafted horror services a valuable purpose and I recommend such films, e.g. ALIEN, I AM LEGEND, THE DESCENT, (and the like) and THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST (yep, that's horror).

The best article I’ve seen is Brian Godawa’s AN APOLOGETIC OF HORROR that examines the horror genre in light of Christian theology and what is found in the Bible, both Old and New Testaments. I highly recommend it, and will again. I won't attempt to summarize Brian's work, because it is efficient and exhaustive, and doesn't need my spin. It stands alone.

In my consulting and teaching a question keeps popping up, and so I need to answer it briefly, and let other experts expound and correct me, like Brian. The question is this:

"If the popularity of a movie is proportional of the truth communicated by that movie, how do horror movies (which are very popular) teach truth?" In other words, “Why are horror movies so dang popular?”

I think there are a host of reasons. Here is a brief list, which assumes that the movie in question connects with audiences on a large scale. All of these reasons relate to “the moral premise” -- characters make moral choices that have physical consequences that correlate with natural law. In no particular order, and with considerable overlap which I am too per-occupied otherwise to correct at this time:

Horror movies emotionally involve the audience and remind them that their soul is in danger of damnation. Pay attention ye mortals.
Horror movies cause us to identify with the protagonist. We fear for him or her, we yell out to watch out. In short, we practice compassion...a virtue... and, thus we are taught to warn our friends of evil lurking in dark places.
Horror movies reveal the consequences of characters who are sinful or foolish or weak. Such stories remind us “DON’T DO IT”. They “scare the hell out of us.” (And that’s a good thing.)
Horror movies, as in all well-crafted movies, prove that SIMULATION is safer than ACTUAL EXPERIENCES. See what happens to others, but don’t go near it yourself. Learn from experiences or learn from simulation. I’ll take the simulation.
Horror movies boosts our self-confidence by reminding us (hopefully) that we will not be as stupid as the girl who just got killed.
Horror gives those in the audience who have experienced abuse, a way to get control of their emotions by CHOOSING to walk out of the theater, even at the end, and know that my life isn’t as bad as what was portrayed in the movie... or if it was that bad, to walk away from it.
Horror in many (if not most) circumstances is social commentary. Zombies might refer to mall rats or greedy predators. Vampires remind us of the monsters that tyrannical dictators lord over their populaces, controlling them with evil seductions. Monsters (on skyscrapers or in caves) metaphor social powers, physical abusers, or unconfessed sin dodging us as guilt.
Horror can remind us that suffering can be good, when the common or greater good is served.
Horror reminds us that no one is entirely innocent.
Horror presents commentary about the consequences of sin to a society that that has avoided softer words of warning. It instills a holy fear of sin, as well as a fear of foolishness and stupidity.

I discuss some of these points in my two posts on CLOVERFIELD and THE DESCENT.

And again, I recommend you study Brian’s excellent article referenced above.

HORROR RANKING

It also seems that there is a ranking of horror sub-genres from realism to fantasy. By no means exhaustive, here is a short list that might be useful when comparing and contrasting stories for critique or for consideration by an author.

1.    Stark Realism (PRECIOUS, SCHINDLER’S LIST)
2.    Psychological Horror (BLAIR WITCH, THE VILLAGE)
3.    Spiritual Realism (THE EXORIST, THE RITE)
4.    Magical Realism (THE GREEN MILE)
5.    Gothic Horror (BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA)
6.    Monster Horror (CLOVERFIELD, KING KONG)
7.    Sacramental Horror (all Vampire and Zombie stories)
8.    Slasher Horror (gratuitous exploitation of all the above)

HANCOCK

2011-12-09T14:26:00.005-05:00

HANCOCK Structural Analysis based on The Moral Premise

Director: Peter Berg
Writers: Vincent Ngo, Vince Gilligan

John Hancock – WILL SMITH
Mary – CHARLIZE THERON
Ray – JASON BATEMAN
Aaron – JAE HEAD
Red – EDDIE MARSAN

Released: July 2, 2008
Budget: $150MM
Domestic: $228MM
World Wide: $624MM

THIS ANALYSIS CONTAINS A MAJOR SPOILER. If you have not watched HANCOCK yet, please stop reading and go watch it first. It’s worth the effort. For me this film contains the most surprising audience sting in the history of cinema. So wonderful is it, that I didn’t tell my wife for 3 years until I finally got her to watch it the other night on BlueRay. At 54 minutes I was glued, not on the screen, but to Pam’s face. Her reaction was priceless. She about fell off the coach. END OF WARNING.

HANCOCK is the story of an immortal “superhero” who has lost his identity to alcohol, his memory to amnesia, and the respect of the public who don’t hesitate to call him an “a--hole.” And although his deeds bring criminals to justice, they’re also a huge financial burden the city of Los Angeles inasmuch as his crime fighting has resulted in over 600 warrants for felony destruction of property. When Hancock rescues well-meaning trapped-in-his car-Ray from being killed by a train, Ray asks Hancock to “drop” him at home where he invites the “super” for dinner. It’s then that Hancock meets Ray’s wife, Mary, and son, Aaron.

Suffice it to say, Hancock redeems himself with Ray’s help. Ray is perhaps the biggest heart in Public Relations, and demonstrates an altruistic effort to change the world, with Hancock as Ray’s latest project. We should all have managers like Ray. As Mary, his wife says to Ray: “You see good in everybody, Ray -- even when the good is not there.”

PHYSICAL GOALS
Here briefly are the physical goals for the main characters:

Hancock: To physically find himself and his true identity, and to act on his physical purpose in life. This sounds ambiguous but the portrayal makes it visceral. This is also well-crafted insofar as his physical want is clearly the consequence of neglecting his psychological need—to pursue with dignity his in-born identity. It is clear that the reason he lost his physical knowledge and ability to fully act on his identity (when he was mugged in Miami) because he purposely ignored his identity as a super and tried to live a normal life with Mary.

Hancock has subplot goals as well, as do the other characters:
a) Public: To be respected again. (Redeem his character.)
b) Personal: To get out of prison.
c) Professional: To stop crime and save lives.
d) Family: To have a woman in his life.

Mary: To get Hancock out of her familiy's life, so she can life a normal life as Ray's wife and mother to Aaron.

Ray: To help the world be a better place by getting corporations to embrace his charitable "All Heart" logo and terms. And related to that, use Hancock to prove his philosophy to the world, that the world can indeed be a better place with love and respect.

Red: To kill Hancock out of revenge for taking his power away, (and his hand).

These physical goals are important because they become metaphors in each character's life for what the movie is really about — the moral premise. To the extent that each character psychologically embraces the vitreous or vice side of the moral premise we will see the metaphor lived out on the physical side of their life.

MORAL PREMISE

HANCOCK is an action movie involving mythic gods a.k.a. superheroes. The movie references Greek mythology as its antecedent. In Greek myths the heavenly action is motivated by the moral choices and soap opera behavior of the characters. Likewise, the action in HANCOCK, while eye-candy to be sure, is entirely motivated by the moral choices of Hancock and his co-protagonists and belligerents, to accept or reject who they are called to be. If they accept their in-born identity with grace and dignity they are successful, if they reject who they are by a faux self-rationalization or through self-loathing, they fail, or come to a diseased demise.

Thus, Moral-Physical Premise Statements that apply to HANCOCK are:

Ignoring our in-born identity through excuse or self-loathing
leads to
an unhealthy and aimless life;
but
Pursuing our in-born identity with dignity and perseverance
leads to
a healthy and purposeful life.

Short-handing that a bit:

Rejecting our God-given identity
leads to an aimless life;
but
Embracing our God-given identity
leads to a purposeful life.

Or, in the vernacular of the movie:

Choosing to avoid what we were created to be
leads to being an a--hole;
but
Choosing to pursue our calling
leads to being a “super” hero.

Looks look briefly how this effects the arcs of our three main characters:

Ray accepts his calling perfectly. He’s the perfect public relations manager, who sees the good in everyone even if there’s no good to be seen. He is faithful, loving, and kind. He demonstrates mastery of this virtue with fat-cat executives who arrogantly are unwilling to give away 1% of their wealth in order to help change the world. And he demonstrates the embrace of his calling with belligerent, superhero, self-loathing drunks -- that would be Hancock.

Hancock is the opposite. He does not know who he is (something brought on by an attempted mugging 80 years ago). But even before the mugging Hancock had rejected his calling. He was created to save the world, and gave it up to live a “normal life" and in the process screws up his life. I can’t help but contrast Hancock’s backstory beats of his rejection to embrace his superhero status, with the climactic beats of Scorsese’ THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST. In that movie, Christ is tempted to come down off the cross, live a normal life by getting married and have kids — e.g. not die on the cross for humanity. But Christ refuses the temptation to be normal and chooses to embrace what he was on earth to do — die on the cross. Christ’s calling was to choose to be a superhero and save the world. He did. And in that way Scoresese is faithful to the Biblical portrayle of Christ.

On the other hand... the mythic Hancock is also sent to earth to protect it. Ray says, “You have a calling, you’re a hero...” Hancock can choose to be who he was created to be. But, 80 years ago, in the backstory, Hancock rejects that calling, gives into the temptation to be “normal,” opens himself up to the susceptibility of mortality, and while walking home from the theater (Boris Karloff’s FRANKENSTEIN) with Mary (his superhero "wife") he’s mugged, forgets who he is, and seems destined to live the rest of his life in a drunken stupor. Thus, in the backstory, by rejecting the truth of the moral premise, Hancock chooses to lead his life down a deeper, tragic path, further rejecting his natural gifts as the world’s crime stopper.

Now, this arc is also true of Mary, in a mythic, historical sense Hancock’s goddess wife. Sometime before the backstory they chose to dismiss their calling as mythic gods or angels to protect humankind and pair-up to live normal lives. As the diegesis rules go, when the “pair” are physically close they become morals and lose their super strength, but also end up being able to love and die. In living so, 80 years ago, they’re mugged and Hancock is seriously injured. He suffers amnesia and can’t remember who he is.

Mary, in a moral dilemma over her calling (and his), leaves him. Her intentions are partly noble. She hopes Hancock will regain his strength (with her away from him). There’s a suggestion that she also wants to assuage her guilt at turning away from their created calling. When Hancock tells this story to Ray and Mary at dinner, watch the multiple takes of Mary and her eyes; at this time Hancock does not remember who Mary is and she's not willing to tell him. Hancock laments that nobody claimed him at the hospital after the mugging, and since then he has had no clue about his past. Mary's guilt is palatable. But there is something special about Hancock; she says to him late in the movie:

MARY
You’re built to save people, more than the rest of us. That’s who you are. You’re a hero. The insurance policy of the gods. Keep one alive. You. To protect this world.

She further explains that “they” (implying their super enemies) always try to destroy Hancock by coming through her. Thus, to keep Hancock alive, Mary has tried to say away and keep them apart. But Hancock always seems to “find” her, as if by fate, although she’s quick to point out that fate doesn’t control all our lives, sometimes we can choose.

[A LITTLE CATHOLIC SIDEBAR. Probably unintended by the filmmakers, but if you have some Catholic sensibility you'll notice that this piece of story exposition parallels the Catholic teaching that that you can't come to Christ without coming to him through his mother, Mary. It was her choice (not fate) to obey her created calling to be his mother that allowed Christ to come into the world as its savior. Thus, you'll often hear in Catholic circles that we come to Christ through Mary, or we come to the Church through Mary. This was why, at the Council of Ephesus in 431 in order to protect Christ's identity as God incarnate, the Church proclaimed Mary "the Mother of God." The enemies of Christ were attacking Mary to get at Christ. The proclamation by the Council of Ephesus wasn't to elevate Mary, but was designed to protect Christ's identity. Thus in HANCOCK we see Mary trying to protect Hancock's identity as the mythic savior, and the bad guys using Mary to get at Hancock. On second thought, the parallels are pretty strong... wonder if they were intended allegorically???]

TURNING POINTS

Movie Story Length: 84 min

Inciting Incident (Ideal: 12:5% or 10.5 minutes. Actual: Begins at 10.5 minutes.)

The inciting incident is that moment or scene where the protagonist is reminded that his life is not perfect, and yet it could be, if he would just go on a journey of redemption.

In HANCOCK, our protagonist rescues Ray from a train. When Hancock first taps on Ray’s hood to announce his arrival, we’re about 10:15 into the movie. Hancock lifts the car off the tracks at 10:30. But the rescue doesn’t sit well with the many people watching. Hancock has destroyed a few automobiles, a locomotive, and derailed a long train. As the people remind him, he could have chosen to do the rescue differently and not destroyed any property. They all call him to change, to go on a journey. But he calls them all idiots.

Ray then steps to Hancock's defense: “I’m alive. I get to go home and see my family.” The scene ends with Ray asking Hancock if he’s flying by the valley and could he (Hancock) “drop” him (Ray) off. Indeed, Hancock “drops” Ray and his car at his house. Ray invites Hancock to dinner, where he meets Mary and Aaron. After dinner, as Hancock leaves the house, Ray INVITES Hancock to go on a journey of change and redemption. Ray becomes Hancock’s mentor. These beats are perfect in terms of story structure. And as all protagonists should do, Hancock rejects the journey -- at first – only to return to go on the journey.

Notice that just after the train rescue, Hancock is also encouraged to go on a journey of change by the public who demand that he should have rescued Ray differently. But Hancock just ridicules them and rejects their invitation.

Crossing the Journey’s Threshold or End of Act 1 Climax (Ideal 25% or 21 minutes. Actual: 21 minutes.)

It’s Hancock's return to Ray’s house (around 21:00) that signals Hancock’s wiliness to be guided on the journey, but he has reservations, and doesn’t really cross a physical threshold until he agrees to go to prison for the past warrants for felony destruction of property (at 26:58). Thus, we see two thresholds crossed. First is Ray's doorstep and willingness to talk about what he has to change, but the second is the admission of his faults at a press conference and then entering prison.

While the threshold can be thought of as either or both of those two moments, I prefer to think of it as the first because: (a) he makes a conscious effort to consider the explicit offer, and (b) it fits with an audience’s need for a bump or beat to see the story advance. Indeed, at 20 minutes, just before Hancock greets Ray outside the house, there is a foreshadowing of Hancock’s arc when Hancock meets Michel, the neighborhood French bully of Aaron. When Michel calls Hancock an a--hole for the third time, Hancock throws Michel skyward and is caught moments later. Michel has traveled one of the faster arcs in cinema, literally, and emotionally. He leaves the street (aiming for the stars) as an arrogant bully, and returns to Earth a humble crybaby. The arc is similar to what we’ll see Hancock travel, from arrogant, dismissive, destructive “god” to humble, accountable, and constructive superhero.

Thus, the first half of Act 2 is in two sequences. The first sequence is at Ray’s house where Ray tries to convince Hancock that he can change and he needs to change, and that in changing, Hancock will better know who he is and (re)discover his purpose in life. The second sequence is Hancock in prison, where he comes to accept his need to do public penance and deal with his anger issues. Indeed, it works. After only a few weeks of an 8-year sentence, with crime on the rise in the city, Hancock is called out of prison by the Chief of Police. And we have a MOG.

Moment of Grace (MOG). (Ideal 50% or 42 minutes. Actual 40 minutes, with Hancock actually showing up at the bank robbery scene at 41 minutes.).

I’ve written somewhere before that MOG’s are essentially the time when a character figuratively looks in a mirror and sees a different person. Filmmakers sometimes, at the MOG, have the character literally look into a mirror. HANCOCK offers us a perfect example. At 40 minutes into the film, shortly after Hancock gets a call from the Chief of Police, there are several shots of Hancock looking into his prison cell’s tin mirror and then saving off his scruffy beard (with his fingers). Thus, every shot of Hancock before the MOG he wears a scruffy beard and a belligerent expression. Afterward the MOG he’s clean-shaven and accommodating.

Hancock shows up at the robbery scene at 41 minutes. For the first time he walks among the police and with a clean-shaven demeanor says to the cops in a staid silly way, “Good job.”(the actor playing the cop, by the way, is Will Smith's personal trainer.) It’s a line that Ray rehearsed with Hancock during their PR training sessions in the prison visiting room. Needless to say, Hancock gets the job done in super heroic style and is rewarded with grand applause from the by-standers and the reinstatement of his popular hero status.

Near Death/Act 2 Climax: (Ideal: 75% or 63 minutes.) Actual: 63 minutes.

If mythic gods are going to fight in the heavenlies, then movie “gods” must do battle on the streets of Los Angeles (makes sense -- I guess.) The battle here is between Hancock and Mary, who is determined to keep Hancock from ruining her happy life as a mother and wife, and is likewise determined that he live his life apart from her so he can continue to be a superhero. After a bit of exposition at Hancock’s hilltop “trailer complex” she tells him they were (before) "brother and sister," But, he knows better and calls her a liar and flies off to tell Ray. Afraid that Hancock will ruin her marriage, she’s determined to stop him.

After an aerial chase that ricochets off a few hills they do battle on a street in downtown L.A. -- as Ray watches from a presentation boardroom in an office building, of which Mary and Hancock have stripped of its windows in a super sideswipe. The whole battle is the climax of Act 2 where Hancock battles Mary to discover who he really is, his goal. Her goal is to keep her "normal" life intact. She holds a secret and in an effort to reject HER created purpose and live a normal life, she wants to keep Hancock’s relationship with her and his past a secret as well. But Hancock is determined to not let that happen. It’s at 62:50 that Hancock calls her “crazy” to which Mary responds, “Call me crazy – one more time.” He says: “Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” And at precisely 63 minutes she picks up a truck and slams him into the pavement. It's near death for most of us, and super eye candy for the rest.

Following the street battle, Hancock and Mary fly back to her home, just after Ray shows up. And the “Dark Night of the Soul” scenes commence with all three of them none too happy about the revelations and their tangled relationships.

Final Incident (Ideal: 87.5% or 73.5 minutes.) Actual: 75.5 minutes.
(followed by hand-to-hand combat to the death)

Red and his escaped cons attack Mary and then Hancock in hospital and would kill them both if it wasn’t for Ray who comes to Hancock’s rescue. Hancock is vulnerable becasue of his close proximity to Mary, who lies in a hosptial bed from a gunshot wound... something she sustained because she was so close to Hancock.

Final Climax/Act 3 (Ideal: 95-98%/ 80 min-82 minutes.) Actual: 81 minutes.
Hancock struggles to get away from the hospital so that Mary and he will both live -- and so he can live to fight crime another day, e.g. live to be who he was created to be.

The Dénouement finds Ray and Mary at a county fair as he drills her about the men in her life and what they were like. He:" Attila the Hun?" She: "Cross-eyed." etc. Meanwhile, Hancock has relocated to the peak of the Empire State Building in Manhattan, where he stands guard with an Eagle at his side.

What’s next?

Rumor has it that HANCOCK 2 is in development.

Character Management

2011-12-02T18:55:00.000-05:00

I came across an old overhead projector cell (remember those?) from a workshop I gave to corporate managers on management styles. I was about to toss it, when I realized that these ten Management Styles could easily define Character Styles, or how a character interacts with the rest of the world. This could be useful for envisioning what a character is like and how to write him or her:

Management by Control (MBC, aka Theory X)

Autocratic, demanding, threatening. Or manipulative, detailed, or use of sanctions.

Management by Walking Around (MBWA)

Letting people see you watching them. Being curious about what they're doing and asking questions that helps them think about the consequences of their actions.

Management by Objective (MBO, aka Theory Y)

Getting others to accept mutually agreeable goals and deadlines.

Management by Listening (MBL)

Getting others to talk to you about their problems and talk them out. Usually the person, if they're interested, will solve their own problems, by you just listening.

Management by Motivation (MBM, aka Carrot Theory)

If you have something others want, barter. Could be for a benevolent or sinister end.

Management by Encouragement (MBE)

Cheerleader for your goals, or so other will like and follow you.

Management by Exception (MBX)

Ignore anything unless it is really irritating, then use another management style to fix it.

Management by Hearsay (MBH)

Do your research by asking for the opinion of prejudice individuals around you.

Management by Assumption (MBA)

Don't ask. Don't research. Just jump to the conclusions. It's faster.

Management by Theatrics (MBT)

Jump up and down and yell all the time. The sky is falling.

EXERCISE

Take a current script or story project and assign one of the Management Styles to each of your main characters. Are there going to be sparks, or is it a slumber party?

FREE E-BOOK: Top 10 Reasons Why It's a Great Time to be a Filmmaker Vol 1

2011-11-22T23:11:00.003-05:00

My publisher for The Moral Premise, Michael Wiese, came up with a promotion idea for a free e-book. It came out today: Top 10 Reasons Why It's a Great Time to be a Filmmaker Vol 1.

Sure, it's a great promotion for his filmmaking books, but it's more than that. A lot more. Fifty of his authors, including myself, responded. We wrote fifty short chapters that promise to inspired storytellers and filmmakers for years to come.

You can get it for FREE by going to Michael Wiese Productions .com. On the front page you'll see the promotion. All you have to do is give them your email address or confirm it, or buy a product from their website, and you'll get an email to download the e-pub free of charge.

My contribution, THE INSPIRING PROVIDENCE OF FILMMAKING, you'll find near the front on page 11.

The Kite Runner and VALUES TABLES

2011-10-31T22:17:00.005-05:00

Dir: MARC FORSTER
Writers: DAVID BENIOFF (SP), and
Khaled Hosseini (N)

AMIR: Khalid Abdalla (adult), Zekeria Ebrahimi (young)
HASSAN: Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada
BABA: Homayoun Ershadi
SORAYA: Atossa Leoni
RAHIM KHAN: Shaun Toub
ASSEF: Abdul Salam Yusoufzai (adult), Elham Ehsas (young)
GENERAL TAHERI: Abdul Qadir Farookh
SOHRAB: Ali Danish Bakhtyari (Hassan's son)
ZAMAN: Mohamad Amin Rahimi (Orphanage Director)

IMBD's KITE RUNNER

(It was late when I posted this, so please advise of typos.)

Synopsis

Amir, Baba and winning kite.

It's 1978 in Kabul, Afghanistan. A crazy place with humans trying to find dignity in the midst of hell. A puppet Communist government thinks it's in power. But the Islamic Mullah's really control the the people through intimidation. At the same time the Afghan guerrilla Mujahideen movement is born. The Russians invade the next year. When the Afghans defeat Russia in 1989 killing 40,000-50,000 Soviets, with help from U.S. shoulder fired rockets, there is more fighting.

In 1992 there are elections under a tenuous run Mujahideen Islamic State. More fighting. In 1994 the Taliban with their version of extreme Islamic fundamentalism (believe or die, or die because we don't like you -- tyranny) they make rubble out of Kabul. There is Pakistani and Iranian interference. More fighting. Mass killings by the Taliban, and the Hazaras sect is massacred.

God tries to slow the Taliban down by bringing Earthquakes to the country that kill tens of thousands. But the Taliban tries to out-do God. Osama bin Laden makes plans from within Afghanistan, attacks the U.S. (NY and Washington), setting up the U.S. attack in 2001. This is a very crazy place, and the reason many didn't want the U.S. to get involved, even to stop the Taliban --who seem to have been infected with the same demons that possessed the Nazis.

With that as a backdrop, KITE RUNNER is the story centers around two boys from different classes. Neither has a mother, both dead. The rich Amir is from the preferred or ethically superior race of the Pashtuns. Amir's father is Baba, a rich conflicted merchant who does well to teach Amir virtue. But the one virtue Amir doesn't learn is courage to stand for what is right. Amir is a coward. Baba's loyal business secretary, Rahim Khan, is like a father to Amir and tires to encourage him.

The servant to Baba is Ali, and Ali's son, Hassan, is sort of a servant and friend to Amir. Ali and his son are Hazaras. But Baba treats both boys as his son, although he seems to favor Hassan because, Amir thinks, Hassan stands up for himself and is not a coward. Amir can read and tries to write stories. Hassan likes to listen to Amir's stories. Together they fly kites above Kabul and join in kite fighting competitions. They win a city wide contest, which helps to create envy among some bullies, who are really young Talian. The bullies are led by Assef. Amir's cowardice is exposed when Assef corners Hassan and sodomizes him. Amir sees this but does not help his servant and friend. There is shame all around, and Amir plants his watch (movie), money (book) in Hassan's living quarters and then accuses Hassan of stealing, forcing Ali to leave Baba's long employ with his son, against Baba's desire and forgiveness to stay. The guilt of this injustice eats at Amir and sticks with him all his days -- even after he and Baba escape the Taliban, immigrate to America, where Amir manages to graduate from college, get married, and publish a book.

It's then, in 2000, after Baba has passed away, that Amir receives a telephone call from Rahim Khan asking him to return to Afghanistan for a special mission concerning Hassan's orphaned son, Hassan and his wife having been murdered by the Taliban. When Amir learns of his own family's history in the story, Amir does what he can to honor the memory of his old friend Hassan. He not only has avoid the Taliban, but an old nemesis in particular who has only gotten more sadistic with age.

In the end, Amir learns courage, and how to stand up for what is right.

Moral Premise

Marc Forster works with the Aamad (L) and Zekeria (R)

This story is complex in terms of its moral premise structure. The Nicomachean Ethics continuum consists of PARANOIA (Absence of Virtue) vs. COURAGE (Pure Virtue) vs. ARROGANCE (Excess of Virtue). (See diagram below).

Under "courage" there are two sub-values that the story considers: FORGIVENESS and JUSTICE.

Breaking down FORGIVENESS (as the pure virtue) you have BITTERNESS (absence of virtue), and TOLERANCE OF EVIL (excess of virtue).

And Breaking down JUSTICE (as the pure virtue) you have CHAOS (absence of virtue) and REPRESSION (excess of virtue).

Simply put this leaves the moral premise statement something like this:

Paranoia and Arrogance lead to chaos and repression; but

Courage, Forgiveness and Justice lead to order and freedom.

Character Arcs (Inner Journeys)

The following chart, is hopefully self-explanatory -- at least I don't plan on explaining it, much. But below are some things it reveals:

Some characters don't change, especially the most pure virtuous Hassan, and the ever evil Taliban.
The Nicomachean scale of values (absence of a virtue -- a pure virtue -- an excess of virtue) makes a wonderful conflict of values chart, around which to construct a story. Or perhaps you land there accidentally. It doesn't, but that you get there in the end is important for successful story construction.
A successful movie will layer character motivations so that they're related. Notice that Paranoia, Courage and Arrogance are on the top Nicomachean scale, but that COURAGE can be defined as (a) the "Courage to Forgive," and (b) "Courage to pursue Justice." That allows you to break down Forgiveness and Justice for additional value layers. It's important that you can relate all these values in some way, so the story organically seems "right." Notice how I have Rahim moving from half-way between Forgiveness and Tolerance of Evil TOWARD Justice. I suspect there are more of those "diagonal relationships" but this is the only one I saw tonight.
A successful movie, as THE KITE RUNNER is in every respect, provides for a group of characters that move in different directions and to different degrees along their inner arcs. What I suggest in the chart above is my estimate. Your chart of the same journeys may be different. That's okay. As long as there's a variety in the examination of the same values from various perspectives, both good, evil, and ambivalence.

Another Example (Inner Journeys)

Here are the values for a story I'm working on with a client. I'm not revealing anything confidential because these values (sans characters) probably apply to dozens of stories and movies. My client's assignment is to populate the chart with his characters and give them arcs. (See the instructions.)

And now, let's take this one step further. Below is a chart you can print out and fill in with your own value tri-poles and characters. Double clicking on the chart below should give you a BIG one to printout.

Click to download larger image for printing out.

Let me know how you do? Comments?

Not Without My Daughter

2011-10-16T11:31:00.003-05:00

Director: Brian Gilbert
Writers: Betty Mahmoody (book), William Hoffer (book), David W. Rintels

Sally Field as Betty Mahmoody
Alfred Molina as Moody
Sheila Rosenthal as Mahtob

STORY SUMMARY
(This summary includes political observations mostly from the book. The movie leaves out many dramatic beats that help to understand the story's meaning and moral premise.)

NOT WITHOUT MY DAUGHTER is the true story of Betty, an the American-Christian wife of the Americanized and trained Iranian doctor, Sayyed Bozorg Mahmoody, D.O. (Moody), who was born-in-and raised in a strict Islamic family in Iran. Betty and Moody lived in Corpus Christi, TX and later Alpena, MI, where Moody was an anesthesiologist. They met when he treated her for back pain. When the American backed Shah of Iran (the last of 2,500 years of Persian monarchs) was deposed, allowing the Iranian Revolution on 11 February 1979 (and the rise of the Islamic Republic of Iran), many Iranians longed to go back to Iran. The idea of a strict Islamic state (where men ruled with impunity -- a family level terrorism) is very attractive, in a demonic way, to the male ego. Moody was one of them, and in the process of re-embracing his Islamic heritage, also embraced the Islamic revolution's anti-American ideology.

Virgins waiting in paradise for Islamic fundamentalist men.

[There is a fundamental anti-conscience aspect to radical Islam where rote ideology supports a culture where suppression of another person's conscience (the inner sense of what is right or wrong) is allowed and encouraged. This is done in order to bring about the outward observance of Islam, if not by free-will, by fear and oppression. It is a culture where the disposition of the heart is meaningless, i.e. the individual's right to determine moral right and wrong is suppressed. It is a form of tyranny where a few control the lives of many through fear. In Nazi Germany the central figure was a man backed by a political machine. In radical Islam the central figure is a perversion of God's character and a religious machine. Islam's version of paradise (for a man) promises the attention of virgins when he gets to heaven. This is hilariously parodied in the picture above.]

MOODY by Alfred Molina

Thus, Moody manipulates Betty to take their daughter back for a 2-week visit to Iran to visit his family, but secretly he has no intention of leaving, or letting them leave the deeply misogynistic culture. Betty realizes this, in part, because of Moody's involvement in pro-Iranian/anti-American student activism here in the U.S.. She knows Iran is not a pleasant place, especially if you are American and female. But she loves her husband and wants to please him. Upon arrival in Iran, it appears that her worst fears are realized: Moody declares that they will be living there from now on.

Why would Moody (an American trained doctor) stay in a culture that seems to have jumped backwards 1,000 years in terms of hygiene, medicine, science, human rights, freedoms, and basic knowledge about the human condition? Several reasons. (1) It's revealed that his political activities in the U.S. have resulted in his termination from two jobs, in two states, and two different hospital systems -- further resulting in the loss of his Green Card.

[Some may see this as racism here in the U.S. or cultural prejudice. But prejudice is an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand without knowledge, thought, or reason. And there is reason to not trust an overtly active, anti-American doctor, treating American patients, in the American Hospital system, like Moody.]

BETTY by Sally Fields

(2) The second reason Moody relapses to his upbringing is that (as Betty surmises in the book) there is an basic inability of the Islamic culture to think independently -- a trait ingrained by the educational system upon her daughter, where all learning is by rote repetition. There is no opportunity in the system for reasoning or independent thinking, or creativity. In other words the conscience is improperly formed. You are taught only to say and think what is spoon fed to you. This becomes evident in Moody's refusal to do anything his ego does not want him to do, and Moody's cousin who, when in America, refuses to take a entry level position in a bank as a teller. The only job the cousin is willing to consider is an offer to be president of a company. Being the CEO sounds like a creative, take-initiative position, until you realized that the cousin's demand is the product of a rote ideology ingrained culturally into the male ego. The culture, thus, only survives through severe autocracy of various kinds and at various levels.

Betty conscience tells her to return to America. When he finally allows her return he refuses to led their daughter, Mahtob, go back with Betty, insisting that Betty (under the pretense of attending her Father's funeral), sell their extended American assets (homes and checking accounts) and send the money to Moody in Iran. Moody is desperate for money because his license to practice medicine in Iran has not been approved due to his American training. Nothing from America has any value to the government. And so, with some-half-efforts on the part of her female Iranian friends (who love intrigue, which is brought on by their suppression), Betty is determined to escape from Iran. But the obstacles to taking her daughter with her seem insurmountable.

BOOK vs MOVIE

MAHTOB by Sheila Rosenthal

I often think the book and movie are both good, although movie versions always show less. But in this case, the movie is sub-standard in terms of story telling and production value. Some of it is the director's decision (or budget requirement) to minimize the visuals-on-screen because the Iranian culture is visually minimal. (Shot in Israel.) Everything is stark, gray, black, and sensual. In the book, even the food is bland and apparently unappetizing. But the camera angles chosen, framing, lighting, and the "god-awful" music (more German classical than anything Persian or Iranian) was distracting and seemed like a cheap library afterthought. Indeed, some of the scenes could have used music but were barren. "Barren" does depict the production values. But the acting was very good, especially little Rosenthal as Mahtob. How little kids get their timing and emotional arcs amazes me. Good direction, helps. The screenplays choiceof scenes seemed right, but left out major plot points that would have confused me had I not read the book. Being from Michigan, I was disappointing that Atlanta stood in for it.

THE MORAL PREMISE
Throughout the book, Betty reiterates that her father brought her up to believe: Where there's a will, there's a way. This engenders in Betty, a perseverance in the midst of persecution, that allows her achievement of the goal -- getting out of Iran with her daughter. And the odds and obstacles for the unlikely, common hero are immense -- natural structure for a successful movie.

Now, consider "Where there's a will, there's a way" in light of the cultural artifacts that I've discussed above, namely the autocratic Islamic culture of rote learning and behavior, -- or the training that dislodges a properly formed conscience from what it means to be fully human. In this story, Betty retains or embodies the practice of listening to her (properly formed) conscience (or will) while her antagonists (the autocratic Islamic culture, represented by Moody) embody a rote-mentality (or suppression of the will) and a willingness to live under tyranny.

Thus, this becomes the story's moral-physical premise statement (where "conscience" is understood as the natural, organic, true-to-natural law sense of right and wrong):

Suppression of the conscience leads to tyranny; but

Preservation of the conscience leads to freedom.

or stated with words from Betty's father:

Suppression of an individuals will leads to tyranny; but

Preservation of an individual's will leads to freedom.

The paradox of all this occurs when one individual's will has the goal of suppressing another person's individual will.

Book Jacket: Mahtob and Betty

Reading the book (and watching the movie) was at the same time a fearful and hopeful experience, that reminded me of my own failings as a man, and the promise of being fully human. It was revealing, satisfying, and even a sacred time of reflection on our world and much redemption is needed.

It reinforces what I write at the end of The Moral Premise:

Vanquish Fear, Bestow Hope

The Pillars of the Earth

2011-10-07T13:57:00.003-05:00

The Pillars of the Earth is a emotional book-movie combination of Metaphors and Premises. It is one of those rare marriages of novel and motion picture (i.e. TV mini series with big budgets) that define the concept of epic literature and the motion picture arts. I would classify this with the Lord of the Rings, but without the fantasy. While some historians of 12th Century Western Europe would no doubt whine about it's accuracy, my joy is seeing a story told well, in both mediums. It also reinforces my observation that the best stories are not short, nor limited to 120-page screenplays, or is it 90-110 pages, now?

The MOTION PICTURE (IMBD link)

Eight, 60-min episodes on STARZ or DVD

High production value, fabulous casting, directing and acting and seamless special effects.

Accuracy: Fictional based on real events, but structured for story with a true moral premise.

Directed by: Sergio Mimica-Gezzan

Written by: Ken Follett and John Pielmeier

Starring (L-R, above)

Ian McShane - Bishop Waleran

Rufus Swell – Tom Builder

Matthew Macfadyen – Monk Fr. Philip

Eddie Redmayne – Jack Jackson

Hayley Atwell – Aliena

Donald Sutherland - Bartholomew

It was a year or so ago Pam and I watched the Episodes 1-8 on our Apple Box and big screen display with our nearly voice-of-the-theater speakers. What a great experience. We tried to spread it out over 8 nights, but the production was so well done in every respect, we watched 2 or 3 episodes a night... and then were disappointed when it was over.

Episode Titles:

1. Anarchy

2. Master Builder

3. Redemption

4. Battlefield

5. Legacy

6. Witchcraft

7. New Beginnings

8. The Work of Angels

The NOVEL (Amazon link)

I'm reading the novel now. I bought a used Library binding, Morrow edition. (I still like paper books, that I can mark up and hold in my hand without running on reserve power half way through a transcontinental flight and then using even more energy off the power grid. Yes, I'm into killing trees...they're a renewable resource and have proven to benefit humankind over the millennium.) Nice smooth, off-white paper, clear serifed font. I've estimated the word count, for what some say is Follett's most popular novel, at 405,000 words. Bring it on. I love epic stuff that takes a long time to read. Problem is I read before bed, in a nice leather chair in our bedroom. I keeps me up. But, Pam is always asleep across the room when I do this under LED glasses or a focused reading light. In spite of the drama in what I'm reading (last month is was the Padre Pio and Vatican corruption, now it's Medieval rivalries and hypocrisy) , my wife sleeps soundly, safety within eye-sight. I enjoy those times immensely. Deep joy.

The MORAL PREMISE

But it wasn't until this morning during prayers that I came across (by "accident") what I'm sure was the moral premise or thematic basis for the story. For the first time I happened to read the Canticle of Anna (1 Sam 2:1-10). There, toward the end are these words written thousands of years ago:

The pillars of the earth belong to the Lord; on them he has set the world. He guards the feet of his holy ones, but the wicked perish in the darkness; he grants the wish of him who asks and blesses the years of the just. For it is not by force that a man prevails: the Lord it is who shatters his enemies.

Reading that on my iPhone's iBreviary sent chills up my spine. I played back (in my head) the entire series, and re-read the first sentence of the novel:

The small boys came early to the hanging.

Classic first sentences, like the first image of a movie, can show us a lot.

Here's stab at the moral premise statement for the story

Wickedness leads to years of darkness; but

Holiness leads to years of blessing

(after generations of hardship and testing, I might add)

The moral-physical premise statement of course, is embedded organically into the 1 Samuel 2 passage, and properly imbued into every one of many chapters of the book, and 8 television movie episodes. When done right, you can read the statement, and connect it to all the events and actions, heroes and villains, settings, and (especially) motivations. Exciting, focusing stuff about what the story is REALLY about.

The METAPHORS (SHOWING not TELLING)

In all story telling metaphors (showing) always work better than didactic (plain telling). and when you do both, organically, all the better. Follett's first sentence "The small boys came early to the hanging" paints a picture of evil in high places and its consequence. At first it seems that the evil is whatever the man being hung had done. But it doesn't take long to come to the telling moment in that Prologue -- and how the curse will be passed down to successive generations through the values of the "fathers." Follett doesn't use that word "fathers" but the implication and layered meaning of the term is there. Here's the passage, faithful reproduced in the movie version. This happens at the base of the gallows as the man is being executed.

    There was a scream, and everyone looked at the girl...
    The girl turned her hypnotic golden eyes on the three strangers, the knight, the monk and the priest, and then she pronounced her curse, calling out the terrible words in ringing tones: "I curse you with sickness and sorry, with hunger and pain; your house shall be consumed by fire, and your children shall die on the gallows; your enemies shall prosper, and you shall grow old in sadness and regret, and die in foulness and agony. . . ." As she spoke the last words the girl reached into a sack on the ground beside her and pulled out alive cockerel. a knife appeared in her hand from nowhere, and with one slice she cut off the head of the cock.
    While the blood was still spurting form the severed neck she threw the beheaded cock at the priest with the black hair. It fell short, but the blood sprayed over him, and over the monk and the knight on either side of him. The three men twisted away in loathing, but blood landed on each of them, spattering their faces and staining their garments.

Enough said. Do you see the showing, both in her telling curse, and the metaphor of her actions. She is not telling us her "feelings" but is painting a visual picture of them.

AND THE PILLARS? The title says a lot. Mankind (especially the male variety) think of themselves as the pillars upon which everything, of any "good," gets done. I know the feeling. I'm a man recovering from rotor cuff surgery in my right shoulder, and something similar but less sever to my right knee. Both sailing injuries. I want and think I should and can do it all. It's humbling when your wife has to dress you. Hopefully, I'll heal... physically, but in the meantime healing of the spiritual kind is working on me -- the consequence of suffering. And that is what The Pillars of the Earth is significantly about -- male, patriarchal egos. The image at the top of this blog (from STARZ TV) is constructed like six vertical pillars (these are the characters about which the story is about). Then there are the pillars of the cathedrals that Tom and others are building... not all successfully (when not properly designed, resulting in death). And then there are the Angels that build the Church. And to make sure you really, really get the connection between the moral decisions, the natural physical consequences of attention to natural law, and the story's metaphors, the final scene (in the movie at least) SHOWS us the corrupt, egomaniac bishop as he takes a suicidal plunge from the properly designed and built pillars of the cathedral.

The pillars of the earth belong to the Lord; on them he has set the world. He guards the feet of his holy ones, but the wicked perish in the darkness; he grants the wish of him who asks and blesses the years of the just. For it is not by force that a man prevails: the Lord it is who shatters his enemies.

ACFW Workshop Slides and Q&A (9-22-11)

2011-09-18T11:07:00.010-05:00

I presented a five-hour version of The Moral Premise workshop at the American Christian Fiction Writer's Conference Sept 22, 2011 from 8 AM to 1 PM. In the days following I met with a number of authors and hope-to-be authors helping them beat out their stories.

I was also privileged to sit in on several other workshops, have dinner with super-agent Natasha Kern, and talk with numerous multi-published authors, with 20, 30, and even 50 books to their credit. It was a great few days in St. Louis. Between the questions and answers below I'll post some pictures taken during the trip.

Looking East from our conference meeting rooms.

The workshop slides can be found at two links in two modes:
1. To see in your web browser (PC use Firefox, Mac use Firefox or Safari)
USE THIS LINK.
2. To download as a 55 MB PDF to your computer,
USE THIS LINK.
I'm not sure how long I will leave the slides up, as storage space on my websites is limited and after a while I take things down.

All of the photos in this blog were taken with my iPhone. the conference was held at the Hyatt Regency at the Arch. Thus the pictures of the full arch (like the one at the right) are actually taken through windows in the hallway next to the meeting rooms.

Here are the questions I was handed, some of which I answered in the session, and my answers.

1. On the Emotion Plotting Slide, how do you decide numeric values on each action line, that are used for the graph. (Judy Christie)

Judy, the numbers assigned are subjective and objectively determined. Subjectively, they are based on my sense of how emotionally UP or DOWN the scene will come across to the reader/audience when I'm done editing it. In some scenes/lines the number is my INTENT. In others, it's what it is already. For instance when my protag's husband dies, it's a major DOWNER, when she is able to board the ship safely with her girls to go home, its a minor UPPER. Objectively, the "emotion" I hope my audience will feel is the degree to which they perceive my protag making progress toward the physical goal (positive numbers), or being set up from achieving the goal (negative numbers). I assign a number from -10 to +10 to each scene, and then accumulate a balance, like a checking account balance. It's the balance that is plotted, not the individual scene values.

2. As a preacher, the moral premise has been the centerpiece of all my writings and novels. “Entertainment is a trick to educate and persuade.” However, subtlety is frequently sacrificed in my storylines. How do I introduce subtlety without feeling like I have compromised my mission? (Patrick Johnston)

Patrick, I apologize if, during the session, I misinterpreted your question. In the session I responded that “entertainment” is a necessary component of all persuasive communication, and I referenced my blog post FIRST ENTERTAIN http://moralpremise.blogspot.com/2010/06/first-entertain.html. where I describe the necessity of activating and emotional response in order to train. Stories, by virtue of their God-like ability to be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent (http://moralpremise.blogspot.com/2009/02/motion-pictures-window-to-our-divine.html) provide entertainment value that allows us to remember truths.


L-R: Natasha Kern (agent), SW, Myra Johnson (author)*

But now, I see you were also asking about how to become less didactic and more engaging. I think that is what you mean when you say you want to be subtle. As a preacher you are probably called vocationally to be a bit didactic, if not a whole lot. But in story telling the way you get around didactic, and thus involve your reader/audience, is through the use of metaphor. In my presentation I described how Billie Letts used various metaphors in her novel Where the Heart Is to communicate truth. Remember how she uses the metaphor of the cameras and the darkroom to tell us that Novalee was learning to embrace self-determination vs. determinism? That technique resonates with readers on a deeper level because the reader has to work to figure out the meaning, and when they “get it” there’s a moment of catharsis that drives that truth deep. Now, adapting a truth for one’s life does not mean that person can explain it. To live an authentic life does not require that we’re able to describe what it is, or what we do to attain it. The behavior is what the person needs.

I think of story telling as that process by which, through the simulation of experience we are able to pass on values subliminally. I think of preaching as that process by which, through explanation, we are able to understand what the values are and why they’re important on a cognitive level.

3. Have you heard of the technique in screenwriting where there is a hint of the protag’s inner journey at around the 17 minute mark of the movie? Is this used in every movie? Does it translate to pg 17 in a book? (Kathy Kovach)

View from our room on the 9th floor overlooking 4th Street

You are probably thinking of the “Inciting Incident,” which is a beat in all successful films (and it should be in books, too) where the protag is first called to a journey. The call is both outward and inward. For to arrive at the outward goal of the journey the protag will need to solve some inward problems. Those inward problems are always hinted at, or evident to the astute observer, in the very first scenes involving the protag. when I say evident, I don’t mean necessarily explicitly explained. Again, I refer you back to the metaphors in Billie Lett’s Where the Heart Is.

Now, as to the 17 minute/page mark. That would relate to a movie that is 136 minutes in length. The number you might want to remember is 12.5%. I did not make a big deal about the percentages into a story where turning points occur, but you can read about them in my book and in various posts on my website. Look under the topic “structure” of which Story Structure Basics is the main article http://moralpremise.blogspot.com/2010/06/story-structure-basics.html#more

4. What are some mistakes that can hinder the successful implementation of the moral premise? (Dave Slade)

Good question, Dave. Here are the most common mistakes. A. The moral premise statement is not universally true. It pushes an ideological or value agenda that is not imbedded naturally into the hearts of men and women. Do not confuse, however, a story’s imbued values by looking at the external story. The moral premise is always stated in terms of universal, not particular truths. Thus, at the moral premise level Harry Potter is not about wizards and magic, but about sacrificing one’s self for his friends.

B. The moral premise is not consistently applied to all the characters and scenes in the story. Successful stories are about one primary moral value, which must be consistently challenged, tested, and argued in every scene and in every character’s arc, and in every setting description and props (the latter being metaphors of the values). When the story tries to give multiple thematic elements equal weight, the story’s focus and purpose gets confused, and the reader doesn’t know what metaphor goes with what purpose.

C. The moral premise is communicated in an overt didactic fashion. Stories work because they force readers and viewers to work and thus psychologically internalize the values that motivate action and understand the physical consequences. When we tell people, rather than show them, this “work” is neglected and learning and connection with the story and characters is diluted. Show, Don’t tell. Again, see what Billie Lets does with the metaphors of the cameras and darkroom, and finding meaning in the shadows.

5. Any specific tips for making the physical story a metaphor for the moral story? (Voni Harris)


Theoretical physicist and author Randy Ingermanson*

Good question, Voni. I remember you asked one other question I was unable to answer. This one is sort of like that. I don’t have any formula for figuring out what metaphor would be good for the moral story. And indeed, it is often best to start with an intriguing physical hook (the outer journey) before trying to figure out what moral values are involved. Perhaps practice in looking for metaphors in everyday life would be good.

In trying to come up with an answer I think back to Where the Heart Is and the camera metaphor – no control (Polaroid) to control (Rollie and darkroom). I’m not sure how Billie Letts came up with this one, but it seems she may have started with the purpose of telling a story where bad things happen, but through perseverance the protag is able to access the good that comes out of it. This is the Biblical adage that grace is always stronger than tragedy. With that in mind, Ms. Letts needed to scour the everyday countryside of disciplines and practices until she found out that the black in B&W photo prints can be lightened with potassium ferrocyanide. Out of that I’m pretty confident that Willy Jack’s name got changed to Billy Shadow.

Pam on our way to dinner with ACFW Board

The process can work either direction: (a) moral value to physical metaphor; or (b) physical activity to moral value. Look for generic similarities. For instance if the value arc of a character is from slothful to hard work, then what physical events have more positive results when pursued with hard work vs. those that are pursued slothfully? Make a list of things that achieve through effort, and the risks of not putting forth effort— e.g. a hot engine room will accomplish more than an engine at rest. Or, moving the other way, how is a character’s weakness of being late for work all the time v. getting to work early, represented in terms of moral values— e.g. slothfulness v. responsibility.

6. What is “final incident” vs. “climax”? (Voni Harris)

This is explained in this article: Story Structure Basics (http://moralpremise.blogspot.com/2010/06/story-structure-basics.html#more)

7. In your slide #22 (Core Values) you list a number of virtues and their opposite vices. Do they need to be paired always this way? Could brotherly love be paired with selfishness, or fear? (Kate Hinke)

Pam devours Tracie Peterson's "House of Secrets" on way home.

At its central core a story must be about naturally opposite values, like selfishness v selflessness; or courage vs. fear; or brotherly love vs. prejudicial hatred. The actual words uses are not as important, as their natural opposition. Why? Because characters must change from something to its opposite. If they don’t change to the opposite value, then they leave the old value still in place. Now, you might be able to explain how brotherly love is paired with selfishness, but that pairing is not as generic as what I paired above. the more universal your pairings, the more easily a variety of characters can be attached to the values as you explain the physical consequences of their motivations. Arrogance cannot be easily paired with tolerance, unless you also tie in humility and intolerance. Thus intolerant arrogance can be paired with tolerant humility.

8. Are you going to be in the Los Angeles area? (Margaret Brownley)

I am several times a year, but not always do I know it in advance. I am scheduled to be presenting a short version of this workshop at the Biola Media Conference at the Sony Lot May 5, 2012.

9. What computer program do you use for plotting your cards?(Vickie M.)

My H.S. English teacher Annette Schroeder*

I use KEYNOTE which is part of Apple’s iWork package. I work on a Mac, but iWork is available for the PC. I’m not sure how well it works on a PC, however. Because the Mac’s architecture is designed to work in a graphic environment, all graphic programs tend to work a bit more difficultly on a PC. That’s why I’m on a Mac. KEYNOTE by the way is Apple’s answer to Power Point.

10. Do you consult or coach on story development for a fee? (Kellie Gilbert, Rosemarie Karlebach)

Yes, all the time. Making it affordable for a writer who doesn’t have a studio budget can make it difficult. I’ve taken a crack at some fees for ACFW-like writers. You might want to check out http://moralpremise.com/ScriptConsulting.php and give me some feedback.

11. Where is the “evaluation sheet” that the slide package refers to? (Joy Avery Melville)

Ah, yes, the workshop evaluation sheet. There’s a picture in your slide packet, but not in my slide show. What’s up with that? After I submitted the slide package for duplication the ACFW Conference managers told me that they had their own evaluation sheet. So, I didn’t hand out one of my own. But here’s a link to mine, if you want to fill it out, or use it for your own purposes. http://www.moralpremise.com/MoralPremiseEvaluationForm.pdf

12. What are examples of Moments of Grace that are not spoken? Are spoken moments of grace more powerful? (Tricia Goyer)

St. Louis Cathedral. We got to Sat. AM Mass

The one moment of grace we saw during the workshop that was wordless was from Ratatouille when Collette’s motorcycle stops at the stoplight, she sees Gustav’s book in the bookstore “Anyone Can Cook”, the light turns green, and she returns to Linguini and the kitchen. Also, we pointed out the Moment of Grace in Where the Heart Is (the book) when Novalee sits up in bed and “begins to understand.”

I do not think words make the Moment of Grace powerful or less so. They can make it clear about what’s going on. But I prefer that the reader or audience work and invest some understanding in the meaning of the story. The bottom line is use whatever technique whatever the story demands to get the deepest emotional response and connection to the story.

Thanks Anne Baxter for seeing the typo in slide 121. “Socked” is now “Stocked”

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* Some notes on the pictures:

About a year ago, author Myra Johnson, of the Seekerville Blog, ask me to be a guest blogger. She said that her agent, Nastasha Kern, demanded Myra read The Moral Premise. While blogging comments for Seekerville, I was asked to speak at ACFW. As it turns out Nastasha is somewhat of a superagent for novelists, having sold over 1000 books in the last 20 years. Authors love her because she gets involved somewhat as an editor. I love her too, because she asks all her authors to read my book.

Illinois soy bean field sunset along I-57.

Randy Ingermanson and I hit it off. We both have degrees in Physics, although I was lucky to graduate with my Bachelors. Randy has a Ph.D. in the theoretical type from USC Berkley. In addition to being an author of a number of science fiction novels, Randy is also known worldwide as the purveyor of AdvancedFictionWriting.com

Annette Schroeder, my high school English teacher, lives in St. Louis. She never thought I'd amount to anything as a writer. At the time I couldn't put together a paragraph. So, I thought it was ironic that she should come hear me lecture to a bunch of authors on how to write a story. She loved it. I was glad she could come. She was also some of my first inspiration about movies. She is friends with Hollywood script writer D.C. Fontana, and her brother Donald is a well-known PBS documentary producer/director also living in L.A.

Inside the Mind of a Hollywood Director: Bitterness, Love, Verisimilitude

2011-09-12T16:28:00.005-05:00

An interview with Gavin O’Connor director of WARRIOR

Gavin O'Connor

WARRIOR is a motion picture story about two bitterly estranged brothers who end up fighting in a cage for the mixed martial arts world championship. It is also about their relationship with their father, whom neither can forgive. The violence we see in the cage is visceral. Brothers fight. But more impactful in this story is the spiritual warfare that pits the brothers and their father in a three-way psychological cage. All three are warriors. Yet the movie dares to be about how each of us is called to fight the good fight and be a warrior for love.

Why do Hollywood directors make movies that contain intense violence, offensive language and questionable thematic material, which are the elements that earned WARRIOR its PG-13 rating from the MPAA? Some will object to the film’s realism, calling it gratuitous. But O’Conner would disagree. Why? Because he’s intent on telling the truth about the spiritual warfare that exists in every man. And that includes you.

So, offered below is a different kind of interview with a top Hollywood director. It offers a spiritual and psychological glimpse into a director’s motivation for the kind of tough but true films that someday be may be dubbed the “Gavin O’Connor genre.”

While I have edited out the spoilers from the interview, it will nonetheless make more sense if you’ve first seen the film, or have read a thorough review or synopsis of the story. You can do so HERE.

Gavin O’Connor is truly one of the best director’s in Hollywood, although his filmography is not that long. He’s known for three major films: MIRACLE (2004, starring Kurt Russell) about the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team’s victory over the seemingly invincible Russian squad; PRIDE AND GLORY (2008, starring Collin Farrell, Edward Norton, and Jon Voight) the saga of a multi-generational family of New York cops and moral corruption; and now WARRIOR (2011, starring Joel Edgerton, Tom Hardy, and Nick Nolte).

Stan Williams: We hear about actors asking a director: “What’s my motivation?” Let me turn the tables. What motivated you to make WARRIOR?

Gavin O’Connor: That’s a very difficult question to answer. There were things going on in my life that I knew I wanted to deal with or gain some type of insight or understanding of them. I was really struggling with forgiveness. There were also things that happened in my childhood that I think I was trying to explore through my art. I also have a love of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), and I had never seen it dynamic portrayed in cinema before. So, I thought that was an interesting kind of possibility. Then it started to culminate with this idea, which I called “intervention in cage.”

Stan Williams: Which is a metaphor for what the film is really about…

Gavin O’Connor: Yes. What started to emerge, as I was thinking about the characters, was the idea of one man living in his higher self and someone living in his lower self and a third someone living in his spirituality. Then there is the idea of spiritual warfare. All these things were matriculating in a weird way, and they all started to come out.

Stan Williams: WARRIOR successfully engages audiences with several impossibilities: (a) it’s about two underdog brothers, who have been estranged for years, and (b) and yet they end up fighting each other in the final match for the mixed martial arts world championship. Ironically, it’s (c) their estrangement out of the cage that entangles and embraces them in the cage. While that’s intriguing, what do you do as a writer and director to help the audience embrace such improbabilities and make it seem so real? (1)

Gavin O’Connor: When I walked my co-writer, Anthony Tambakis, through the idea for the movie, he said, “You can’t have these two guys fight each other in the end. How are you going to pull that off?” Well, the way we approached all of this is to only tell the truth. We don’t write it and then shoot what we wrote. What we write becomes the blueprint for months of work-shopping the film with the actors.

Stan Williams: What do you do when you workshop a movie?

Gavin O’Connor: You meet extensively with the actors and you start connecting emotional lines. You start going so deep and dissecting the verisimilitude [the quality of realism in a work of art (3)] of every scene, that if anything seems false you address it. Like, how do we capture the essence of a marriage? How do we do that in the most truthful way? We always try to put everything under a microscope. We call it “non-acting.” For me, the word “acting” has a certain falseness to it. When I hear the word “acting” I always go for “non-acting.” We’re always trying to get to the truth of the scene. If we can keep doing that systematically and consistently throughout the whole film, hopefully, by the time we get to the impossibility [of the story’s plot] we’re so immersed in the emotionality of the piece and the characters, that the audience will want it, desire it, and be convinced of its reality.

Stan Williams: It seems that what you’re talking about is the psychological or moral motivation of the characters — because if you don’t tell the truth about their psychological motivations with respect to natural law, then the audience is going to pick up on that, and they’re not going to identify with the characters.

Gavin O’Connor: Absolutely. That’s exactly it. The characters must be rooted in their true psychological motivations. We’re always putting the microscope on the “want.” What do you want in this scene? And how are you going to get it?

Stan Williams: The Physical Wants and the Psychological Needs.

Gavin O’Connor: Yes. And they have to come from a truthful place. You really have to challenge it and poke it and prod it, because if it’s flimsy at all, it’ll fall like a house of cards.

Stan Williams: I’ll tell you, what you did in both PRIDE AND GLORY and WARRIOR translates incredibly to the screen. How long did you workshop?

Gavin O’Connor: I call it making the movie before you make the movie. With Nick Nolte [Paddy], the dad, we spent months together working on the character. Everyone has to do a biography on their own character. I give them a questionnaire with 100 questions to answer. And I want detailed answers. Because that’s what will inform everything, such as the emotional story lines. Then we start doing backstories on the [characters’] histories because since we’re making a movie about a family, there are things that everyone [among the actors and characters] has their own perspective on about what is true. We spent months doing it.

Stan Williams: What inner values are motivating Tommy to fight? Is he really trying to make things right with the Marines? Or is there a deeper motivation? Is he looking for an excuse to find forgiveness with his father?

Gavin O’Connor: The intention is that Tommy’s making a statement against God. He’s rejecting everything good. He’s rejecting love. He’s rejecting beauty. He’s rejecting all that is good in his life. There’s an expression, “Hurt people hurt people.” He’s a man who’s living in a lot of pain. And when you live in pain, it’s easy to inflict pain on others because that’s what you’re feeling yourself. I used to say to Tommy [the actor was Tom Hardy], think about Tommy as a guy who’s hitting a crack pipe.

Stan Williams: What’s that like?

Gavin O’Connor: It’s one of the most godless acts you can do. People who smoke crack experience an immediate high. But it’s a false high that goes away very quickly. It happens very quickly and then it goes away quickly. You’re always chasing it; and it’s so destructive. So, I’d say to Tommy, “When you get into the cage, you need to get high. You need to hit the crack pipe so you can actually experience this godless act that makes you feel good in the moment.” But once it’s over Tommy has to deal with himself again and ask himself, “Who is this guy who’s living in all this pain?” That’s what I was going for with Tommy.

Stan Williams: By the end of the movie Tommy changes, in a surprising way. I promise not to give away the ending. But where does Tommy begin to change? Where does he start to turn and start to embrace the good like he uncharacteristically embraces his father?

Gavin O’Connor: That’s very perceptive. That’s exactly what’s going on. At the top of the movie Tommy’s waiting on the doorstep and he offers his father a bottle of the brand that his father used to love. His father says, “No, thank you.” And we come to learn that Paddy is a thousand days sober. Tommy in essence is becoming his father. And he’s come home to get drunk with him.

Stan Williams: Ah!

Gavin O’Connor: Tommy’s expecting the man he knew as a boy growing up [drunk and abusive]. But it all gets turned upside down. Now his father’s not the man he knew at all. He’s an entirely different human being. And Tommy’s becoming like his father was. So, when Tommy finally gets his father [Paddy] to take a drink and become drunk once again, even while Paddy is listening to Moby Dick on tape as he does throughout whole movie, Paddy [the white whale] gets in Ahab’s face [Tommy] and yells: “Ahab! You godless son-of-a-bitch.” At that point, Tommy sees himself reflected back in his father’s face. It’s an Jungian archetype thing. And that’s the beginning of the surrender. It’s the first time you see Tommy become compassionate toward his father. To be healed, Tommy has to die to self. (2)

Stan Williams: We’re rooting for Brendon, Tommy, and their father, throughout the film. But it’s like Brendon and his Dad are both trying to pull Tommy along.

Gavin O’Connor: Tommy is on this godless path, this warpath of personal destruction of anything in his way — but his father and his brother force him to change.

Stan Williams: In PRIDE AND GLORY there are crucifixes on the wall in everyone’s house, even the bad guy’s. But you don’t bring the spirituality forward as you do at the beginning of WARRIOR. In Tommy’s absence, Paddy has dramatically returned to his Catholic faith and Tommy tears him to shreds over it, as if what Paddy is doing is hypocritical. Why is that? Why the shift from one film to the other? Why did you bring the spirituality forward in WARRIOR?

Gavin O’Connor: I think it was something that was a little more prevalent in my life, and also more prevalent in the characters’ lives. In short, the story demanded it. And I always intended the title, WARRIOR, to be about spiritual warfare, and warrior lives outside of the cage. The intention of the title was never about guys fighting inside [the cage].

Stan Williams: A strong metaphor to be sure. I see that the movie is really about love, but there’s a lot of bitterness, hatred, and violent fighting in the cage. Isn’t love about being kind and gentle?

Gavin O’Connor: If you want to dramatize love you need to see the flip side of it. I think visualizing love is a hard thing to do without seeing the opposite because you want something organic to emerge from it. (4) Then, there’s the balancing act as a filmmaker trying to capture the verisimilitude of this sport, which is violent. But what I was going for, and maybe it doesn’t come through, is to at least root the violence in the characters and never make it gratuitous. It is also mixed martial arts and I also have to shoot the sport in the truthfulness of its intensity, although I tempered it a bit. Once again, that all served the intent of the movie because I was driving toward [the metaphor of a spiritual] intervention in a cage. So, the spirituality in the film and the love in the film and the message of the film were all driving toward those five rounds [at the end] in that cage with the two brothers.

Stan Williams: What I think makes the film unique is that neither are fighting for selfish reasons, not pride, not ego, not to be rich, but for other things. They are both sacrificing themselves, in the cage, for something greater than themselves.

Gavin O’Connor: I think there’s nobility to both of their causes and quests. There’s something beautiful within Tommy’s pain — his loyalty towards what he calls his [Marine] brother, whom he calls Manny, whom he lost. There’s a nobility to what he’s doing – to try to save somebody else. He can’t save himself, but he can honor a promise and save Manny’s wife and children, and give them a life — that sacrifice is really important to him.

Stan Williams: What about Brendon?

Gavin O’Connor: In regard to Brendon, there’s the nobility of fighting for your home, to save your family. But I didn’t just capture it in the movie. As a nation were in the midst of the housing crisis [when we shot the film] and it hasn’t changed three years later [now, during its release]. You have this man being in debt, and because of his mixed martial arts background he literally is able to fight his way out of debt. I thought that was, in a way, wish fulfillment. There are so many men in this country that are on the doorstep of losing their homes and have wives and children and are trying to put food on the table – they’re working several jobs. They’re just trying to keep a roof over their head. So, they’re [figuratively] fighting their way out of debt. But Brendon literally fights his way out of debt. I just thought it was a perfect metaphor to explore.

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Footnotes

1 When O’Connor and Tambakis were writing WARRIOR, on their door they placed an Aristotle quote: “A convincing impossibility is better than an unconvincing possibility.” That’s good advice for all storytellers.

2 For my Moral Premise readers, this is Tommy’s Moment of Grace. While it does seem that both Brendon and Tommy are co-protagonists, and that is Gavin’s intent, Brendon changes little, and Paddy changes not a bit, although for one scene he slips off the wagon. But Tommy changes a lot. It is Tommy’s arc, not Brendon’s or Paddy’s, that creates the catharsis for the audience at film’s end. For that reason Tommy is the real protagonist, with Brendon and Paddy as the co-protagonists. The antagonist in this film is the bitterness, hatred, and inability to forgive, which is so prevalent in our culture. All of that is metaphorically represented by the hatred we see in the MMA cage and the tournament’s opportunistic promoters. Another way to analyze the characters is that this is a buddy road trip film, with three buddies. Each is the antagonist to the others who are their own protagonists. Remember, antagonists exist to change protagonists. But, however you analyze the film, O’Connor has created a masterful work drawing us in and helping us understanding a bit more about what sacrificial love is all about.

3. For more on the importance of verisimilitude (the quality of realism in film), and how it’s absence can kill the most nobly intended of film projects, see Life As It Is vs. How It Ought To Be.)

4. This is an important point that needs some explanation. When O’Connor says you want something “organic to emerge” from the juxtaposition of hatred and love, he means this: Just saying it, or TELLING it (as in a didactic sermon, homily or teaching) will not connect emotionally or memorably with the audience. Audiences learn through experience (or simulation of the experience which a well produced movie is). It’s the adrenalin rush that creates memories. So, you have to SHOW something with such verisimilitude that it’s ingrained in the audience’s mind, and not just a passing intellectual thought. This explains the power of stories, and why the Bible is 75% narrative.

The Importance of Screenplay Formats

2011-09-07T17:49:00.000-05:00

When I posted Judging Script Contests - New Criteria (a.k.a. Laughing Nun with a Ruler) I realized I was stepping on some sacred ground without taking off my shoes. The catalyst was some well-meaning criticism over a script draft I had submitted to a contest. (Something I rarely do.) What were my violations: (a) I used the word "we" in dialogue, and (b) later a few lines, where a character is yelling, were capitalized. The script was also criticized (c) because the opening dialogue didn't give any clear indication of the relationship between characters. [Duh! It was VO of the co-protagonist, from the end of the movie -- foreshadowing the end.]

The emphasis of the previous post was a call-out for contests to do what many studio and agency heads do... they don't ask to see the script first, but rather ask for hooks, log lines, and a one page snyopsis. THEN, if the STORY has some merit at that level, they'll take a look at the script. In addition to those two or three standard items I suggest that those "reading" or looking for stories, add two other very short items to their submission request list: a Conflict of Values and/or the Moral Premise Statement. In other words: what the movie is REALLY about. The log line and often the synopsis will only tell you what's going on physically or visibly. But what REALLY connects with audiences are the character's value motivations that drive the action. (Do I need to say it again, read The Moral Premise.) THEN, if all that seems like there's potential to the story, ASK FOR THE SCRIPT.

FORMAT RULES AND TOOLS

And when the script arrives in a reader's hands, standard formatting rules are really, very important. As a writer (and reader) I need them desperately. Over the deacades the standards have developed to the point where anyone with some experience can understand a great deal about a script at a glance, or a scan. And when reading, the various margins, capitalization, and white space, helps us "see" the story, at least in terms of pacing, length, and budget. There's more below from two of my friends.

What tools do I use? In order of importance they are:

1. FINAL DRAFT software (I'm on a Mac). While you can change the format and use different templates for the type of media you're writing (or for whom), the program does come pretty well set up and ready to go. I think I've made only slight adjustments.

2. THE HOLLYWOOD STANDARD (book by Christopher Riley, Michael Wise Books). Chris's book is sandwiched between my Random House dictionary and well-worn Rodale Synonym Finder, just above my computer. I have the pages edge indexed with ink tabs, and I refer to it often. I still find things I want to do that Chris doesn't discuss, so that's when I go to No. 3.

3. Screenplay and script drafts from studio projects I've working on.

There are half-a-dozen other format reference guides on my shelves, but I essentially ignore them.

Now, for some choice quotes from two friends who wanted to make sure I wrote THIS blog; Douglas Lloyd Mcintosh, and Barbara Nicolosi (both credited WGA writers).

From Doug:

Purchase and use Final Draft, the least expensive and most intuitive screenwriting program available. Simply by using the default settings the writer can create a professionally formatted script that will be acceptable almost anywhere. Another thing I like about Final Draft is that it includes a PDF creator so you can turn your formatted script into a file that anyone can read or print out.

As someone who has read literally hundreds of scripts, I can feel a little more sympathy toward judges, readers or producers who don't want to struggle through a script in a format not considered professional by current standards.

I can also sympathize with Mickey Rooney, who has probably read far, far more scripts than you and I put together over his busy professional lifetime. You're absolutely right that three pages is not enough to reach any meaningful story point, but I tell you, on a certain level I have to agree with him. I want a story that grabs you right from the first moment. If a screenwriter has any skill, professionalism, talent and/or the absolutely crucial ability to get you interested in a story and concerned about the fate of the characters, you probably are going to be able to see it within three pages. My experience is that if I'm bored on the first three pages the rest of the script is almost certainly going to be drudgery to read as well. If a reader wants to keep reading after the first three pages, chances are the audience will want to keep watching the film or TV show.

Story structure is extremely important as you well know, but the first test of any film is whether the reader or later the audience wants to find out what's going to happen next. And they should want to find out what's going to happen next every step of the way. It's vital to tell the story in such a way as to keep people turning those pages.

From Barbara:

I wanted to express a brief defense on behalf of those of us who are sticklers about screenwriting grammar, aka formatting. Considered under a professional lens, formatting is not irrelevant. In the vast majority of projects, a correctly formatted page equals one minute of time on the screen. The margins for dialogue are shorter and allow for the actors to add expression. The longer margins allow the audience to get a good enough look at whatever is being described. Beyond timing, capitalizations are signposts to casting agents, line producers, directors and DP's for all their respective tasks.

The best way to consider a screenplay is like unto an architectural drawing. People outside the profession do not appreciate all the industry standard norms for drawing, and would probably dismiss them. But they have their uses. Essential uses from a professional standpoint.

People who haven't learned the industry standard for formatting are better off writing their story in a straight narrative fashion, as in a treatment. There are some expectations for a treatment, but few people in the business will quibble over them.

Thank you both.

I hope this post makes my suggestion in the previous post more clear. I agree with everything you've said. Great feedback.

Judging Script Contests - New Criteria

2011-09-05T09:10:00.004-05:00

If you won't believe me in this matter, read Christopher Lockhart's post Screenwriting Contests.

NUN WITH A RULER

I rarely submit to script contests or (minor) film festivals because I think the contest and festival sub-industry needs a new set of rules.

Too often the evaluation criteria focuses on visual format and appearance and not on what's important to the audience—story structure.

The obsession with format and appearance rules (margins, fonts, capitalization, etc -- things which the audience never sees or hears), reminds me of nun running around with a ruler pretending that skirt lengths are an objective measure of spiritual integrity. Then there's the lady in the graduate office with her ruler measuring margins on thesis and dissertation submissions, as if correct margins were a measure of critical thinking. While there COULD be a correlation, there is a better way to evaluate the guts of a good story. And I intend to share that with you below.

I will admit that submitting a script with gross format violations does show a level of disrespect for the industry. But too often it appears that contests are being run by nuns with rulers rather than by judges who understand the rules of story structure. Let's start with the end in mind: the audience. It's easy to hire a script doctor to correct format issues. It's much more difficult to find a good story.

Recently one of our rare submissions was rejected for the oddest reasons. The rejection rationale, claimed that our script had signs of ameraturism, and a few specifics were mentioned. (We work hard to follow formatting bibles, e.g. Riley's The Hollywood Standard.) But the accusation prompted me to go further and open up a number of scripts I have been sent by A-listers in L.A. for review. I get paid now and then to do such things. Every one of the claimed "amateurisms" in our submitted script could be found in the the scripts of produced films or films in development from major studios on my shelf. Hmmm?

Recently one of my produced writer-director clients in L.A. has been trying to please the head producer of another firm with a story and script to the producer's liking. It seems the producer, like some contest judges, are enamored with a set of easy to understand "rules" or "adages" that (if you put equivocation aside) are clear signs of a good or bad script. It can be frustrating for the writer to convince some folks that what they're asking for are distractions and not essentials. Although this is a subjective industry perhaps there's a way to make it a tad more objective and constructive.

THE COMMAS AND SHIT

Issac Asimov, it is said about his early days as an author, was an illiterate grammarian, and his editors labored over his work to make them publishable. Why? Because they were great stories. Had his work been judged under the auspices that grammar and comma placement were sure signs of a good story, the world would have missed the most prolific author the 20th century.

Another case in point is Elmore "Dutch" Leonard. Although I've never read any of his raw manuscripts, this line from GET SHORTY is attributed to his attitude:

You have an idea, you write down what you wanna say. Then you get somebody to add in the commas and shit where they belong...I've seen scripts where I know words weren't spelled right and there was hardly any commas in it at all. So I don't think it's too important.

And it's not unimportant to point out that many of Asimov's and Leonard's stories were successfully made into movies. The question becomes, were their stories accepted because the margins and the commas were in the right place? Obviously not, because Asimov never was a screenwriter and of Leonard's 31 films based on his stories, he is credited with screenwriting only nine. So, obviously, a good story for making into a movie is based on something other than the format, grammar, and comma placement.

ME AND MICKEY ROONEY

Why then all the rules about judging screenplays based on format, and easy visual cues? Because it's easy. There are too many crappy stories out there, in the form of screenplays, and so readers take the easy way out.

But even taking a little longer and reading the first ten pages can not tell you if there's a good story present or not. Ten pages does not even get to the first turning point of a classic beat sheet, which for a 110-140 page script would be between page 13-18.

I once cornered Mickey Rooney in a Canadian Golf Course's Pro Shop. Really. I handed him a script...saying there was a part in it for him. He took it and said, "Okay, I'll give you three pages. That's all I'll need." How could he possibly do that? Of course he couldn't.

So, here are the rules that I wish such festivals and contests of scripts, (and stars et al) would follow. They make more sense than looking at commas, margins and capitalization. Using these rules might just result in some better stories coming out of Hollywood that would better connect with audiences. The industry needs it.

THE CRITERIA - SCRIPTS OF VALUE

Let's strive for stories (and scripts) of value, not success. In that spirit I offer the contribution below.

All script submissions should include:

A. Title (plus, if based on another IP who owns it)
B. Genre and estimated MPAA rating
C. Target Audience (demo or psycho-graphics)
D. Estimated budget
E. Hook
F. Log Line
G. Inner (psychological) Conflict of Values
H. Moral Premise Statement
I. One page synopsis (450 words) or Beat Sheet Outline
J. Script/Screenplay

Note: Items A through D cannot be judged, but do help evaluate later criteria. The evaluation begins with E through J, and the generic question for each is, "Is it good? "

That is, am I intrigued by:
E. The hook?
F. The log line?
G. The values in conflict? (the core conflict)
H. The Moral Premise? (what the movie is really about)
I. The One Page Synopsis or beat outline?

Notice, we haven't cracked the script yet.

If the answer to any two of those questions (of items E-I) is a firm "no," then judges should reject the submission for the reasons noted. If they get all "yeses" for E through I and get to J, then they might want to crack the script.

Opinion and taste are always present, and a judge should readily admit it. But to confuse "opinion" with "amateur" is disingenuous. I have a shelf full of scripts that have been produced by A-listers that contain so called "amateurisms".

Here's my evaluation recommendations:

Item E: HOOK
Question: Does the hook suggest an impossibility or improbability that is viscerally engaging?
Answer: Yes - Maybe - No.
Rejection Reason: Hook is not viscerally engaging to reader. "A convincing impossibility is better than a unconvincing possibility." (Aristotle)

Item F: LOG LINE
Question: Does the log line describe or imply the following elements:

F1: The protagonist
F2: The type of "struggle"
F3: The antagonist
F4: The protagonist's physical goal
F5: The stakes of the goal is not reached?
F6: (optional) Is it visceral?
Not Evaluated: Cleverness of words.

Answer: Yes - May - No.
Rejection Reason: The log line is missing an element. The story's essence requires clear physical conflict and goals.

Item G: INNER CONFLICT OF VALUE
[This item may only be clear to those who have read my book, The Moral Premise. The Conflict of Values is something that is at the motivational core of every successful story, whether or not a writer understands it or can articulate it. If the protagonist's and the antagonist's motivational values are not naturally opposing, there is not going to be a cogent story. But a story may be cogent and reflect organic conflict even if the writer is clueless about the conflict of values. ]

Question: Are the stated conflict of values natural opposite and generally accepted as universal values by the target audience?
Answer: Yes - Maybe - No.
Rejection Reason: The conflict of values are not naturally opposing and would not organically cause a conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist elements.
(or) The values in conflict are not universally (or subliminally) understood or held to by the target audience.

Item H: THE MORAL PREMISE STATEMENT (MPS)
[I have also referred to this (perhaps more accurately) as the Moral-Physical Premise Statement (MPPS). Again, without reading The Moral Premise or having knowledge about this through another source such as my blog or essays, this may need some explaining that I will not do here. I will, however, explain this much: The MPPS ties together the moral motivation of both sides of the story's characters and their resulting physical consequences in a way that is understood by the audience to be natural, organic, and universally true.]
Question: Will the moral premise statement SUBLIMINALLY be understood by the target audience to be natural, organic, and universally true?
Answer: Yes - Maybe - No
Rejection Reason: The MPPS will not be subliminally understood by the target audience to be naturally, organic and universally true.

Item I: SYNOPSIS (OR BEAT SHEET OUTLINE)
Question: Does the synopsis (or beat sheet outline) clearly describe the main turning points of a story in the chosen genre? For instance: Does the protagonist have a clear psychological need and a physical goal that at first are rejected? Is there an inciting incident? Is there a mid-point (a Moment of Grace) where the protagonist either rejects or accepts the underlying psychological truth about which the movie is really about? Is there a near death (or faux ending) as a result of the protagonist's efforts to achieve his or her goal? Is there a final incident where the antagonist attacks, threatens the stakes and ends the movie early? And is there a resolved ending, redemptive or tragic? (Yes, a European movie would have a different structure?)
Answer: Yes - Some - No
Rejection Reason: There is no cogent structure that the reader can understand. (or) One or more critical story structural elements are missing.

Item J: THE SCRIPT/SCREENPLAY
[My bias here is that successful stories are not dependent on strict rules of format, but on the structural elements above. So, while the following are important, a script doctor can fix most of them if the story is otherwise sound.]
Question: To what degree are the following elements engaging, understood, and easily read:
a. Action descriptions
b. Interior motivations
b. Dialogue
c. Characterization
d. Scene structure (timing, beginning, middle, end, conflict)
e. Page format (is it close? does it cheat and lie about the film's length)
f. Page count (80-140). I have received scripts that were over 300 pages in length. I did not read them.
g. Spelling and Typos. (Allow 1 per page but don't count them if you can understand easily what's being said.)
i. Dramatic execution of the turning points.
j. Other....
Answers: For each: Yes - Maybe - No.
Rejection Reason: List and comment.

A Convincing Impossibility Make the Best Stories

2011-09-03T11:46:00.001-05:00

Here's a short post that could have appeared in my review of WARRIOR, but the point deserves it's own.

I encourage my students to start developing their stories with a nearly impossible physical hook, and then as the story takes shape to stick close to the psychological truth of natural law. Taking a line from comedy development, a good story will "tell a lie that tells the truth". The LIE is the physical hook (it's an impossibility). But the TRUTH is the moral motivation that drives the action. The two together ensure you will engage your audience.

Storytellers are typically allowed only one hook per story. Everything else must be true in a physical sense. But EVERYTHING in the psychological world must be true. No moral hook is allowed.

So, with that here's a quote from the production notes of WARRIOR written by the director Gavin O'Conner and Anthonly Tambakis. Emphasis mine.

O'Connor's original, enduring story idea was one about two brothers who haven't seen each other in fourteen years and end up fighting for the world championship, both coming up as extreme underdogs. Although on paper the story might sound farfetched, the door to the room where Anthony Tambakis and Gavin wrote bore a sing with the Aristotle quote: "A convincing impossibility is better than an unconvincing possibility". To them, this mean that in the world of fiction, anything is possible if it's told truthfully.

The impossibility is the physical hook, and to that O'Connor and Tambakis emphases the importance of telling the story truthfully. So, if I can channel Aristotle and O'Conner here's what I'll put outside my door the next time I wrote a story:

A convincing impossibility told truthfully

is better than an unconvincing possibility told falsely.

In other words, a possible story that ignores the natural laws of morality is no match for an impossibility story told with moral integrity.

And now a word from a pretty good story writer:

Life as it is... vs... as it ought to be.

2011-08-31T22:13:00.001-05:00

REALITY VS. OUGHT TO BE

A great quote from a blog by Daniel McInerny (Graham Greene on the Art of Storytelling) who quotes Graham Greene (talking about cinema) quoting Chekhov (talking about novels). Thus, I quote McInerny so like a good chain letter you can pass it on and we'll all be remembered. Uh-huh.

Here it is (my emphasis):

‘The best of them (novels/movies) are realistic and paint life as it is, but because every line is permeated, as with a juice, by awareness of a purpose, you feel, besides life as it is, also life as it ought to be, and this captivates you.’ This description of an artist’s theme [continues Greene] has never, I think, been bettered…

Had I come across Chekhov's quote when I was writing The Moral Premise I would have included the quote at the beginning of a chapter.

When Chekhov says "this captures you" he's referring to audience identification in the moral sense. That is, you are aware that the immoral actions, motivations, and words enacted by a character do not reveal the best of humankind, or even what the character is capable of. That sense of rightness and wrongness comes through in the context of the writing, whether it be a screenplay or novel. That sense of "life as it ought to be" is the moral conscience of the writer communicated to the audience, who knows in their heart (if not in their actions) the difference between moral virtue and vice. Such conflict is absolutely necessary to engage the reader or spectator. And notice Greene's use of the term "theme" which is the root from which a moral premise is derived.

We watched Gavin O'Connor's PRIDE AND GLORY (Hard-R) the other night on our Apple Box, which deals with a multi-generational family of New York's "Finest" who struggle with where the line is between right and wrong. They joined the police force for the pride and the glory. O'Conner's story, which he co-wrote and directed, reveals that when even a taint of corruption enters in a cop's life, the pride and the glory evaporate as fast as a bullet can leave a gun's muzzle. It's the writer's honest revelation of reality in the context of hope and goodness, that allows the audience to know what "ought to be."

What Chekhov quote begins with these words "realistic and paint life as it is". There's a term for that, which O'Connor uses to describe his work: Verisimilitude (or truthlikeness)—the quality of realism in something (such as film, literature, the arts, etc).

THE PROBLEM OF BELLA

Verisimilitude's virtue reminds me also of a lesson that I saw in the making a few years back. This lesson reminded me that if you want mainstream audiences to see your movie (and hear your message) then you have to meet them where they are and reflect reality to them as they understand it. If you don't, then they can't follow your story, let along understand the moral message in it -- if that's important to you -- and should be if you want your movie to be entertaining. (Yes, there's a direct connection between a film's moral message and entertainment. They are two sides of the same coin. See FIRST ENTERTAIN.)

The lesson involved the movie BELLA which was suppose to be an anti-abortion film... which in my thinking probably involves some sexual content. (I don't need to spell that out for you, do I?) Because BELLA was a hit at the Toronto Film Festival with audiences, many people thought it was going to clean up at the box office. I didn't see the screening in Toronto, but some suggested that the producers (as offen happens at festivals), stacked the theater with supporters.

Regardless, after an early promotional screening (between Toronto and the film's theatrical release) I met one of the producers and chatted. I was concerned because he had just apologized to the very conservative Catholic audience about something that evidently had been pointed out to them as "offensive" and they promised to remove it before the film was released to theaters. What was the "offensive" element? The sound of the protagonist urinating on a pregnancy test strip. There was ONLY the sound. No picture. And the fact that she was to discover she was pregnant was critical to the story's plot. It was a major turning point in the story. You have to SHOW such things. But the producer's didn't show it, they let you hear it. And then they were going to remove the "hearing" of it. To me this attitude was the death knell of the movie; which explained why I thought the movie was modestly boring to begin with. This harkens back to Chekhov's observation.

BELLA's producers, in their desire to not offend anyone in the audience with visuals or dialogue (and also get grassroots support for the film when it hit theaters), screened the movie dozens of times with conservative Christian audiences. And they made changes based on the feedback from those audiences. They wanted to produce a "pro-life" "anti-abortion" film that didn't offend their conservative supporters. They cleaned and cleaned the edit -- until it was antiseptic of reality's edge. In their striving for truth, the missed verisimilitude or truthlikeness. The result? A box office bomb.

Here's some more evidence about that conclusion.

That same year there were two other "pro-life" "anti-abortion" films that came out. The films were KNOCKED UP and JUNO. These two films found the right balance. They realistically painted life as it is, but permeated the scenes with the juice of what it ought to be. Great balance, and great entertainment. Check out the worldwide box office scores, divide by $5 and you'll know about how many people saw each film:

BELLA (PG-13) - $12,083,296 (02 M tickets)

KNOCKED UP (R) - $219,076,518 (44 M tickets)

JUNO (PG-13) - $231,411,584 (46 M tickets)

Two of these films went mainstream, the other one was only seen by a very small niche, that had probably already seen the film during the screening tour. You have to ask yourself the proverbial question: "If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it fall, did it make any noise?"

One final note I found particular ironic. Notice that BELLA garnered a PG-13 rating. That baffled me. I would have guessed PG at most. Here's what the film rating board said:

BELLA - "PG-13 for thematic elements and brief disturbing images."

Now here's the ratings why for the other two films:

KNOCKED UP - "R for sexual content, drug use, and language."

JUNO - "PG-13 for mature thematic material, sexual content and language."

Do you notice how one of these is not the same as the others? (I learned this watching Sesame Street with my kids. Okay, I was watching after my kids graduated from college.)

BELLA was suppose to be about sex. But sex, which the reality of American culture "worships", was evidently absent from the film -- at least to the point that the ratings board didn't think the film had any sexual content. So much for reality.

To close, one more reminder of what Chekhov wrote:

‘The best of them (novels/movies) are realistic and paint life as it is, but because every line is permeated, as with a juice, by awareness of a purpose, you feel, besides life as it is, also life as it ought to be, and this captivates you.’

In other words...when you do this, there's chance that people will see your movie.

WARRIOR (2011) - A FIGHT FILM LIKE NO OTHER

2011-08-19T12:41:00.005-05:00

My thanks to Mary Kochan of CatholicLane for her editorial assistance. Catholic Lane published this review on August 24, 2011.

Director: GAVIN O'CONNOR

Writers: GAVIN O'CONNOR (screenplay), Cliff Dorfman (screenplay, story)

Starring

Tom Conlon - TOM HARDY

Brendan Conlon - JOEL EDGERTON

Paddy Conlon - NICK NOLTE

Tess Conlon - JENIFOR MORRISON

Frank Campana - FRANK GRILLO

Release Date: September 9, 2011

LIONSGATE

RATING: PG-13 for fight sequences and language.

[This is mostly a review of the film. I'll do a little moral premise analysis at the end.]

Synopsis
Tommy Colon and Brendan Conlon are estranged brothers who end up fighting each other inside a cage for the Mixed Martial Arts championship popular with ex-marines. At first punch and bruise (and there are a lot of them in this movie) it appears to be just another pugilistic movie filled with gratuitous violence designed to entertain the battered minds of a bitter disenfranchised generation. And it may be all that — but only in part. For this story is a gripping, won’t-let-you-go study of what it means to fight for noble causes, what it means to love, forgive, and find redemption.

Haunted by a tragic past, Marine Tommy Conlon (Hardy) returns home for the first time in fourteen years to enlist the help of Paddy, his father (Nick Nolte). Tommy wants Paddy, a recovering alcoholic who’s returned to his Catholic faith, to help him train for Sparta, the biggest winner-takes-all event in mixed martial arts (MMA) history – with a $5 million purse. A former wrestling prodigy, Tommy blazes a path toward the championship with quick, frightening knockouts. Meanwhile, his brother, Brendan (Edgerton), an ex-MMA fighter-turned high school physics teacher, returns to the ring in a desperate bid to save his family from financial ruin (the bank is ready to foreclose on their house). To the ringside crowd and the sports commentators (played by themselves), Tommy is a mystery fighter that came out of nowhere while Brendan is an over-the-hill fighter who is expected to be dispatched in the first round.

But what the experts don’t know is what’s driving the two men. Neither are fighting for glory, money, or egos — but something much more important — the redemption of their lives, which is complicated by a father they both despise for abusing their mother so badly that she ran for her life from him years earlier. “Pop” has now been sober for 1,000 days, has returned in a meaningful way to his Christian faith, and agrees to coach the deeply bitter Tommy even though ringside Paddy roots for Brendan. In the end, the two brothers must confront each other and the forces that originally pulled them apart in the MMA finals. The climax is perhaps one of the most unforgettable in the history of cinema.

The uniqueness of the story is that neither Tommy nor Brendan are fighting for personal glory. Tommy is an AWOL marine from Iraq. Why he’s AWOL harkens back to the story of Ishmael and Moby Dick and the biblical story of Job. Throughout the movie, Paddy (Pop) listens to Moby Dick on tape, and in a climax of his own, Paddy confronts the forces of nature that he (like Ahab) has brought upon his crew/family. Tommy is fighting for the families of the marines that were lost on the tragic day in Iraq that sent him running. He feels guilty that he alone survived and winning the $5 million dollar purse, which he intends to give to the families of his deceased warrior friends, will go a long way to erase his guilt for not dying with his comrades in arms.

Meanwhile, Brendan, who long ago gave up a successful career as a MMA fighter to become a humble but popular high-school physics teacher, gets upside down on his mortgage, and a hawk-like loan officer isn’t going to lose any sleep about foreclosing on Brendan, his wife and kids. But then, when Brendan begins to moonlight as a MMA fighter again, and wins a fight in the parking lot outside a local strip club bringing home the $500 purse to pay on the mortgage, the school board suspends him from his job without pay. Fighting outside strip clubs isn’t exactly the role model the school expects of its teachers. In this there is humor when his school principal ends up cheering him on with every ounce of his being. Also coming to his support is his wife, Tess who initially tells him: “I will not watch you fight” — but nonetheless puts her heart in the ring with him. As the audience, we cheer Brendan on as well, because, as his trainer tells him when he’s about to lose the second round championship fight, “Why are we here? If you don’t knock him out you don’t have a home.”

Dual Protagonists?
I want to say that the movie has two (dual) protagonists, Tommy and Brendan. But that isn’t really true. Brendan is the protagonist, and Tommy is the antagonist. Each has a tangible, physical goal, yet each is prevented from reaching that goal until they confront the psychological vice that blocks their progress — each must confront the truth that the movie is about (see “The Moral Premise” below). One of the endearing qualities of the picture is that the audience wants both Tommy and Brendan to win for different noble reasons. Consequently, the irony behind their estrangement makes the final two rounds of the final fight a love affair, in a very real way. I won’t reveal the ending here; it must be experienced. But I am looking forward to watching the movie again when it’s released to theaters and I can vote with my wallet.

Metaphor and Redemption
WARRIOR is like DIE HARD in the metaphor department , and both movies use the same theme music “Ode to Joy” that you may know as ” Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee.” Few women or mothers may understand what I write next, unless they are responsible for earning the family income and paying the bills. I suspect that most responsible men (and I consider myself one of them) have battled month after month, most of their lives, trying to pay bills and keep the family’s financial head above water. It is a constant battle in our consumer, materialistic society, where even as Christians we’re even harangued into giving every last dollar to the thousands of worthy causes that make us feel guilty if we don’t give way beyond our means. In DIE HARD, John McClain battles a tower filled with terrorists, who end up humbling John’s arrogance so John is ready to be a loving, caring and serving husband once again. The bloody fight with Hans Gruber and company is a metaphor for what John’s going through psychologically to get his wife back.

In WARRIOR the physical fighting is a metaphor for the psychological battle Brendan and Tommy (and Paddy/Pop) go through to find psychological redemption, and financial security as well. The fighting seems over the top and gratuitous until the last moments of the film, and then the metaphor and the brutality make sense. Watch and listen carefully to the last moments of the final fight. Sit on the edge of your seat and don’t miss it. What happens… what both men do… is nearly impossible for any other man to do in most casual situations, let along a championship MMA fight in front of millions on live TV.

Thus, the story beat that will grab you is how the brothers reconcile with each other and their father. It doesn’t seem possible, but then miracles do happen.

Moral Premise
If you’ve read my book, The Moral Premise, then you know that all successful movies (indeed, all successful stories in any medium) are about a conflict of values that prevent all of the main characters from achieving their physical, or outward, goals, until they confront the psychological blockage in their system of moral values. In WARRIOR the conflict of values is about bitterness vs. forgiveness. And until forgiveness takes place, no one is going to win any fight. Here’s WARRIOR’s moral premise statement:

Bitterness leads to hatred and separation; but 
Forgiveness leads to love and relationship.

In Conclusion
WARRIOR is an exciting and engaging human drama film, with award winning acting, direction, sound, editing, and a genre setting benchmark ending. It’s an Oscar contender and worthy film for adults and mature teens that explores the values in the human condition that are worth fighting for.

American Christian Fiction Writers Conference - Early Bird Workshop

2011-08-17T15:02:00.001-05:00

On September 22, 2011, in St. Louis, I'm presenting the five-hour long Early Bird Workshop for the annual American Christian Fiction Writer's Conference. Individuals who are registered for the workshop should be getting an email notice of what I'm posting below so they can come prepared by pre-reading and viewing the works I'll be referencing.

I'm posting it here for convenience, since the ACFW Conference cannot post it on their website. In case you're wondering if you want to attend (my workshop) the following provides the antecedents of my examples. If you want to know "generally" the outline of my workshop you can read about that HERE. Although what I do in St. Louis will be significantly abbreviated due to time and revised to include some novels in the mix.

I've also decided to spend more time than I have in the past on examples and clips, since SHOWING is far better than TELLING. (As a writer, have you heard someone tell you that before?) I love sharing this stuff and revealing the secrets of what makes great stories and movies. The title of my talk will be The Top 20 Secrets to Successful Storytelling (in Movies and Print).

========

Early Bird Workshop Reading/Viewing List

ACFW Conference September 22, 2011

Dear Early Bird Attendees:

In the course of the few hours we will spend together exploring the world of story structure, and the magic of moral and physical premises, I will reference a number of motion pictures and novels. You will get more out of the workshop if you are familiar with the following works. I am listing them in two categories:

I will spend the most time on these works:

“Where the Heart Is” (novel by Billie Letts)

and the following movies

DIE HARD (Bruce Willis)
KARATE KID 2010 (Jaden Smith, Jackie Chan)
RATATOUILLE (Pixar)
WHERE THE HEART IS (Natalie Portman)

I will mention these works but not spend as much time on them:

“The Mark of the Lion” novel series by Francine Rivers

and the following movies:

A BEAUTIFUL MIND (Russell Crowe, Ed Harris)
BRUCE ALMIGHTY (Jim Carrey)
CITY SLICKERS (Billy Crystal)
CITY SLICKERS II (Billy Crystal)
CRAZY HEART (Jeff Bridges)
DATE NIGHT (Steve Carell, Tina Fey)
GRAN TORINO (Clint Eastwood)
IN THE BEDROOM (Tom Wilkinson, Sissy Spacek)
LIAR! LIAR! (Jim Carrey)
MY NAME IS EARL (TV) (Jason Lee)
PRECIOUS (Gabourey Sidibe, Mo’Nique, Mariah Carey)
THE BLIND SIDE (Sandra Bullock, Quinton Araron)
THE INCREDIBLES (Pixar)
WHAT WOMEN WANT (Mel Gibson, Helen Hunt)

I’m looking forward to meeting you and sharing with you the excitement and focus that this workshop will give your story writing.

Please share this with your other writing friends and associates.

Stan

"WHAT DO I WANT?"

2011-08-12T12:08:00.001-05:00

I'm working on an analysis of Billie Letts' book WHERE THE HEART IS for my Early Bird Workshop at the annual American Christian Fiction Writers Conference September 22 in St. Louis. Because I use movie clips in my presentations, I will illustrate my comments analysis of Letts' book with clips from Matt Williams' movie, the screenplay of which was written by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandell. Ganz and Mandell are two of the most sought after writers in Hollywood, with a long list of credits and awards to their names.

In an Ari Esiner article about a conference interview with the writing duo:

Ganz says his earliest writing lesson came from actor Jack Klugman on The Odd Couple TV show. When presented with Ganz's script, Klugman walked up to the writer and promptly shouted in his face, "What do I want?" And there endeth the lesson on the foremost rule of writing for the young television scribe: always have your characters want something.

In the last month I've reviewed the work of numerous writers (both professional, and students) and this Ganz observation must be one of the most often violated principles of story writing. Characters always need an outward motivation, a physical goal — they must always want something. They don't necessarily NEED what they want, and what they want might be impossible to achieve because of an inner flaw (a psychological vice).... but they must want it.

AND, the audience or reader must know they want it.

While screening KNIGHT AND DAY, starring Tom Cruise (Roy Miller) and Cameron Diaz (June Havens), I was astonished at how quickly writer Patrick O'Neill and director James Mangold tell the audience what the main characters want... on a number of levels. The movie is one long chase scene, so to keep the plot and the chase interesting, giving depth to the characters, both Roy and June have multiple goals related to different aspects of their lives.

Roy's professional goal is to keep the Zephyr battery and its eccentric inventory away from the bad guys.
Roy's personal goal is to take a vacation by driving to Cape Horn.
Roy's romantic goal is to keep June from harm.
Roy's family goal is to be reunited with his parents who think he is dead.
June's professional goal is to restore her dad's GTO (she owns a garage back in Boston).
June's personal goal is to give the GTO to her sister to keep it in the family.
June's romantic goal is to land Roy.
June's family goal is to get to her sister's wedding.

Thus, depending on the scene, the audience always has several things to root for.

THE REASON WE ROOT FOR CHARACTERS

Now, why do we root for characters? Why do we want them to get what they want?

Because we like them.

In narrative theoretical terms, we identify with them. Michael Hauge says there are five ways you, as the writer, can foster likeability in a character:

Make the character sympathetic, the victim of undeserved misfortune.
Put the character in jeopardy. We ID with people we worry about. Many stories start with an orphan.
Make character likable, kind, goodhearted. They need to be relatable, not likable.
Make characters funny. We like to be with people who make us feel good about ourselves or have the courage to say things we don't.
Make characters powerful, or very good at what they do.

So, do we like Roy Miller and June Havens? Sure. June is undeserved in her misfortune of being tangled up with Roy, and is therefore in great and repeated jeopardy. She's also an orphaned traveler being kicked off her flight. She is goodhearted and kind. She's funny and encouraging. And she's very good at what she does, which we discover as she explains to the TSA agent the tailpipes and carburator in her carry on baggage. It also doesn't hurt that June comes packaged in Cameron Diaz's body, quirky smile, and damsel in distress persona.

Likewise, Roy seems to have been thrown undeserved misfortune when he is overpowered by both the Federal government and the bad guy cartel. We worry about him, because he's a spy without backup, and later a boy without his mom and dad -- a orphan. He's goodhearted in that he repeatedly protects, selflessly hapless June. His nonchalant way of dispatching bad guys is sarcastic and funny. And he's very good at what he does. Oh, yes, he has a million dollar smile and he's a hunk with sex appeal.

All together these are personas we'd like to hang around with. We wish we had them for friends. So, we root for them and hope they get everything they want. And by the end of the movie it seems they do. Cape Horn sequel anyone? Mom and dad and flying down.

Stories and Premises in Medieval Art

2011-08-06T22:59:00.001-05:00

On August 20 the small class of classically trained teens that I teach screenwriting to, will accompany me to the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) for a lesson in visual story telling by the masters -- centuries before photography and cinema. But the stories, along with their physical and moral premises, are nonetheless poignant and relative even for today. (all photos via my iPhone, today)

For those of you outside of Detroit, the DIA is perhaps best known for Rivera's Court, where Diego Rivera's renoun frescoes tell the unblemished story of the industrial revolution, and the moral struggle involved in balancing the values of labor, capital, product, and economy. The Rivera Court is particularly attractive because of the bold, bright skylight that illuminates the work of the controversial Mexican artist.

But on the day we visit we'll not spend but a few minutes in Rivera's Court. Instead, we'll head for the galleries either side of it. To the Southwest are the European: Medieval and Renaissance galleries, and to the Northwest is one particular room in the American collection.

The roots of Western Civilization (e.g. American civilization) came from Medieval Europe, that culturally was dominated by Roman Catholicism. It was the Catholic institution that saved literature, fostered agriculture, established education, embraced parts of the Renaissance that didn't threaten it's teachings, encouraged scientific discovery(*), and promoted the arts. This was during a time when the populace could not read, and if they could there were no books. It was through the visual arts (as movies principally are) that the Church and its constituents communicated stories. Among the hundreds of artifacts on display at the DIA, we'll see how visual story telling hasn't really changed that much in hundreds of years.

TWO CLASS ASSIGNMENTS are below -- my students should keep reading.

FROM A PLACARD IN THE GALLERY:

"In much of the 15th-century Europe, saints were an integral part of everyday life. People imitated them, honored them, and called upon them in times of need. Churches, guilds, cities, and nations all had patron saints.

"At the time, believers often felt unworthy to appeal to God directly and prayed to saints to intercede with God for them.

"The Catholic church recognizes as saints virtuous people to whom miracles are attributed.

"The mother of Jesus has a special role. Many Christians hold Mary in special regard, above even the saints. Believers consider her, as the mother of Jesus, the closest to God and the most important assistance in communicating their prayers." (to Jesus and God.)

"This room is filled with sculpted and painted images of saints and Mary that helped 15th-century Christians in prayer. A believer might have lit a candle or laid flowers in front of an image in respect and honor."

FROM ANOTHER PLACARD IN ANOTHER GALLERY:

"In this gallery you will find works of art created in Western Europe during the latter Middle Ages. You will see some of the materials and artistic techniques prized during the period: ivory carving, enameled metalwork, tempera painting, and stained glass." (At right: Diptych with Scenes of the Lives of Christ and the Virgin, about 1320. Carved from Ivory by an unknown Parisian artist.)

"Most of these objects have religious themes, reflecting the importance of prayer and devotion in the daily life of a medieval Christian. Many objects performed a particular function, whether it was a chalice to hold during during Mass or a sculpture of a revered religious figure to adorn a church altar.

"The medieval collection of the DIA is one of the most important of the country, notable for the excellent quality of the objects."

THE FIRST ASSIGNMENT for my class during our visit.

Take an hour to wander through the 10 galleries of the Medieval and Renaissance collection. Note that EACH work of art features the elements of drama that we've been studying present in motion pictures, yet at at no time are words used. (The best cinema still uses very little dialogue. SHOW don't TELL is the rule, even in contemporary novels.) Considering principally the elements of a log line (i.e. a protagonist, a verb, an antagonist, a goal, and stakes) select TWO works of art and for each list the following:

A. Name of the work.
B. Artist's name.
C. Type of media.
D. Year of it's creation.
E. The protagonist.
F. The battling verb.
G. The antagonist.
H. The protagonist's goal.
I. The stakes.
J. The virtue at work in the story.
K. The vice at work in the story.
L. The moral premise of the work.
M. The most striking emotional element of the work. (That is, what tugs at your heart and pulls you into the work emotionally?)

You'll obviously have to use your knowledge about some stories apart from the exhibit, just as the Christians of the period listened to sermons and teachings that explained what the works were about.

Try not to select the same work that others select. Let's get a good variety. After we're done we will let each of you take us to one of the works you selected and describe your observations to us as a class. (typically the DIA is not busy on Saturday so we don't be disturbing anyone.)

THE SECOND ASSIGNMENT is this:

As a group we will take our stools (provided by the DIA) and enter one of the American collection galleries, and sit before American Rembrandt Peale's 12-ft by 24-ft oil-on canvas painting "The Court of Death," which he completed in 1820.

It's the big screen of the 19th century, and like movies today it carries a powerful moral premise about virtue and vice and their physical consequences as one approaches death.

The painting depicts eight principal characters and a number of minor characters, not including Death who sits on a central throne...holding court. (There's a webpage dedicated to this painting. HERE.)

When my class arrives in this gallery we will cast lots and match up each of the students with one of the principal characters in the painting. Then we will sit on our stools before the painting and write a short and dramatic life story of the character we've been assigned. The ending of our story will place them in Peale's painting. Taken altogether we will have a powerful piece of explicit story telling that the painter intended for us to imagine.

Needless to say, bring a good pad of paper (your journal will do if you have pages left) and some good writing instruments.

I will post links here to the results, after they are edited. (Thanks WB for the suggestion.)

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(*) Story telling is much like scientific discovery in one respect. They are both based on the assumption that there is a natural law of rationally ordered cause and effect. In scientific discovery the cause and effect are both physical. In storytelling, while there is the same physical cause and effect relationship as in science, there is also, and more importantly, a cause and effect between the psychological (cause) and the physical (effect, or consequence) as described in my book, The Moral Premise.

The success of story telling is much the result of most religions' assumption (and science's fundamental assumption) that the universe is ordered and not random

Thus, the Church was principally (although indirectly) responsible for the scientific discoveries of the Renaissance. Catholic teaching assumes that the natural laws of the universe are ordered, structured predictable through rational investigation. The scientific method (1. observation 2. hypothesis. 3. Test. 4. Law) is dependent upon a observation that can predict cause and effect based on order that is a benefit to man's existence. If physical phenomenon were based on random events, or some set of laws that did not have mankind's survival as it's primary purpose, the scientific method would be useless -- and a box of dice might be as good as anything. Thus, it was, that many of the great discoveries in science were made by devout Catholic men...including Galileo. And thus, it was, that almost all of the great artists of the time, who could have been movie directors if alive today, were devout Catholics as well. And, you'll discover, that not a few of Hollywood's best directors have Catholic backgrounds and understanding.

Good Stories Require Aggression

2011-07-10T22:30:00.001-05:00

I've been doing a little sailing with the family, trying to get away from the computer, etc. But stories are always close at hand. In our pursuit of "sailing" from Detroit, MI to Lexington, MI we encountered a number of nemeses: sweltering hot weather (>100), big freighters that take up the channel, a midnight encounter with a foreign freighter on the St. Clair River that sent out a rouge wake that put my wife in the hospital for a few hours (they kept asking her: "Madam, are you in a safe environment?"), a late night dock security guard on a Segway, and "no wind"... a terrible thing for a "sail" boat. But we (the protagonists) were aggressive and overcame the obstacles, and achieved our goal: a quiet anchorage in Lexington, MI.

Stories require aggressive, resourceful heroes. No movie goer is interested in a hero who is only passively interested in the goal, or an antagonist who simply behaves contrary. Both characters need to pursue their goal with passion, diligence, and aggression. My workshop now begins with a slide saying you need two key ingredients for a successful story: The WRITER'S PASSION and the PROTAGONIST'S PASSION — both for achieving their goals. The actual slide form the workshop says it this way:

1. A good story originates from a writer's inexplicable INSPIRATION. Nothing can replace it.

2. A good story is about an imperfect hero's unrelenting DESIRE for achieving a goal against insurmountable odds. Nothing can supplant that.

3. For a good story to be well told the writer's INSPIRATION, and the hero's DESIRE must have one thing in common — STRUCTURE. Everything needs it.

Oh, yeah, here's a picture of an obstacle, and the boat getting to the goal:

Getting Focus Group Feedback

2011-06-14T19:09:00.001-05:00

Like a lot of you, I continue working on a number of story projects. One current project is NAUGHTY LITTLE NAZIS (D.K.N.), originally written by Nikita Mungarwadi when she was 13. At the time Niki went to the middle school where my wife, Pam, teaches. One day Pam came home and said that one of the students at school (but not one of hers) had read my book, The Moral Premise. That got my attention. It wasn't exactly written for early teen consumption.

The second sentence out of Pam's mouth was that the girl had written a screenplay and wondered if I'd read it for her. If the sentences had been reveresed I would have said "No, thank you." But how could I refuse to at least flip through the first few pages of the screenplay a teen had written after reading my book? It seemed "sacriledge" to say no.

Nikita Mungarwadi

So, a few days later a screenplay came home with Pam titled NAUGHTY LITTLE NAZIS. To say the least, it rocked my socks. I could hardly put it down. It needed some work to be sure, but the third thing that caught my eye was the author's name, "Nikita Mungarwadi." I have some connections to India, and as I found out Niki was an American off spring of Indian immigrants. Her Dad is the director of water distribution for S.E. Michigan for the City of Detroit.

I had to meet her. To make a long story short, I volunteered my time to work with Niki at their kitchen table with her dad helping us with Internet research about Germany during WWII. We worked off and on for six months, and then I bought an option on the project to develop it further.

Here's the log line for the war-time action story: A rebellious 14-year old German girl battles the Nazis to free her Jewish friends from the Ghetto before it's liquidated. (The story is loosely based on a compaction of the teenage resistance groups active in Berlin during the war, which required considerable research on Nikia's part.)


Sanjeev (dad) and Nikita Mungarwadi, Stan Williams, Alex Krüger, Pam Williams.

One of the problems with stories that are outside your experience is how to get a reading form someone that might know more than you do about it. The story had to read well to a German teenager, preferable form Berlin, I figured. Where was I going to find one of those, I thought. I'm in Michigan, and it's been decades since I was in Germany.

Niki and Alex. Alex returns to Berlin this week.

As it happened (for the convenience of this story) my son's family, who lives nearby, were hosting a 17-year German boy from Berlin as a foreign exchange student. The boy's uncle was in the Hitler Youth Corp. Such luck. Alex agreed to read the recent draft, and after Niki read it, and Pam, we all met for dinner at a local Indian restaurant.

Alex had a lot of great ideas for the character names to make them more traditional and German. With Nikita and Alex we refined a few scenes that they thought needed more danger and excitement. It's been fun working on a script written by a teenage an American-Indian girl, with a teenage young man from German (who's nearly forgotten how to speak in German after being the U.S. for a year), while sitting in an Indian restaurant in Michigan. Great Feedback. Now it's on to the next draft.

The Good of Conflict and Immorality in Movies

2011-06-11T08:23:00.006-05:00

What follows is an article I wrote for a Catholic website in 2003, while I was writing the first draft to The Moral Premise. I'm resurrecting it here for the record and to facilitate some discussions with some I consult with about the nature of the motion picture industry.

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THE GOOD OF CONFLICT
AND IMMORALITY IN MOVIES

Often I hear Christians complain about the protagonist in a movie because he or she made one or more immoral decisions, and is therefore a poor role model. Another oft heard criticism is that movies are filled with too much on-screen conflict or violence, thus giving audiences the wrong idea about how to resolve problems.

These are definitely valid concerns to the extent that the on-screen portrayal of conflict and immorality is gratuitous. But for most popular films there are some very good and moral reasons why movies must be about imperfect, immoral human beings, and why the conflict and suffering must be made visible.

The word "must" in that last sentence is pretty strong, so let me explain. In the history of civilization, stories have played a very important role in forming our culture by passing on history, defining cultural norms, teaching us how to deal with problems, and answering burning questions like, "Why is there suffering?"

Educational gurus might divide the world of learning into three kinds of instruction: (1) experience, (2) observation, and (3) lecture. Experience is the best teacher. Lecture is the worst. The reasons for that have a great deal to do with the number of senses, and consequently the degree of emotional involvement of the learner. The greater number of senses involved, the greater the emotional tension, and thus the deeper the learning.
Whereas lecturing involves only one sense—hearing, experience demands the active participation of all six senses [Footnote 1].

Experience also involves physical and emotional risk. Risk situations cause the release of adrenalin into our brain etching deeper memories about the experience and its lessons.

Somewhere between experience and lecture is observation, and the modern "movie experience" which is closer to SIMULATION.

Why Simulation? The darkened theater is replaced by extreme realism, and audience members are transported into the on-screen character's world. To a great extent, movies become so real for audiences that they are almost as good a teacher as experience itself...including the sense of personal risk.

But, do we want movies to teach us things? After all, the people making movies, so conservative Christian sentiment goes, are immoral pagans who ridicule God, don't go to church, and well, do everything in their life wrong. On some level, with some filmmakers, that can be true. Yet, when it comes to moral lessons that agree with Judeo-Christian values, there is an astonishing phenomenon.

As it turns out, when a movie conveys moral truth it "sits right" with audiences, and word of mouth increases the film's popularity, tremendously. Conversely, when a movie is morally deceitful, people avoid it. Over the years, filmmakers have recognized this. (Actually, in POETICS, Aristotle was the first to write about the correlation between the truth of a play's moral message and its popularity.) As a result, today, it is a safe bet that a box office success is also a movie that conveys a true moral message [Footnote 2]

All of that brings me back to the criticism about immoral characters and on-screen conflict. Without these elements movies would be incapable of presenting positive moral messages, infusing us with hope, or suggesting answers to why we suffer. If we remove the immorality and conflict we are left with no drama, no story to tell, and no lesson to learn. Showing the problem allows us to learn how the protagonist overcame it, or the consequences if he doesn't.

Here then are seven reasons why the appropriate, and not gratuitous, portrayal of conflict and immorality are necessary, not just in motion pictures, but in all stories, if those stories are to effectively teach us moral lessons.

1. Identity. Conflict and immorality are revealed in the life of a protagonist who is like us. This allows us to identify with the protagonist, and see that his problems are, or could be, ours.

2. Meaning. How the protagonist resolves the conflict and immorality reveals the meaning of the associated suffering. We translate that meaning to the suffering in our lives.

3. Consequences. The protagonist's decisions regarding the conflict and immorality result in consequences. We learn that similar decisions in our lives could result in similar consequences.

4. Hope. The protagonist's hope and perseverance in dealing with the conflict and immorality allows success. We are thus encouraged to hope and persevere, and likewise overcome our problems.

5. Risk. The on-screen protagonist must count the cost and take risks in opposing the conflict and immorality. This reminds us that our noble intents are worthless unless we honestly count the cost and are also willing to take risks to defeat sin and evil.

6. Sacrifice. On screen heroes often suffer and sacrifice emotional and physical loss in their effort to love and save others from harm. Those are examples to us, of how we are asked to love our neighbor and families, and resist sin, even shedding our own blood in the process. [Footnote 3]

7. Visible. Movies are really about spiritual and emotional conversion. But since we can not see such journeys, filmmakers make the reality of that most important journey visible in the physical realm, as a metaphor. While we may think our spiritual journey is only spiritual or mental, the proof is in our behavior, in our actions and works. What we do in the physical realm, represents exactly what is going on inside.

So, the next time you go to a popular movie, recognize what it is you're watching. Look for and analyze the moral messages, and recognize that without the appropriate portrayal of conflict and immorality, there would be little to be learned about how to live in our conflicted and spiritually dangerous world.

[1] There are six, not five senses. Most forgotten is the sense of balance, which is necessary for physically activity, including sitting in a chair during a scary movie.

[2] Whether a movie conveys a morally true message has nothing to do with its ratings or appropriateness for children. See MEANINGLESS RATINGS.

[3] "In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood." Hebrews 12:4

Meaningless Ratings (2002)

2011-06-11T08:00:00.000-05:00

What follows is an article I wrote for a Catholic website in 2002. The article reveals some of the motivation behind the research that resulted in The Moral Premise, which was begun the next year. I'm resurrecting it here for the record and to facilitate some discussions with some I consult with about the nature of the motion picture industry. It is dated, so I've done a little editing and added a few comments [in brackets].

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MEANINGLESS RATINGS

"I'd rather write an R-rated film that told the truth than a G-rated film that lied." That's what respected Christian producer and screenwriter, Brian Bird, said to me over lunch recently in Hollywood. He was tired of taking his children to see G-rated Disney fare that presented a worldview that was distinctly non-Christian — e.g. elevating faith in magic and fairies over faith in God and the angelic hosts.

For Christians, the Motion Picture Association of American (MPAA) film ratings, and the recent TV-ratings, do not tell whether or not a film is acceptable — to children or adults. But as a rough gauge of acceptability, they have provided some help. Or so I thought until recently.

When we first started our motion picture development company we made a decision to focus our efforts on writing only G, PG, and PG-13 rated films. No "R-ratings" we said — unless we felt particular inspired to do something as poignant as Schindler's List and we avoided gratuitous elements. But in recent months, some of the PG-13 films that have hit the theaters have caused us to rethink that rule. [And in 2004 there was THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST with a strong "R".] Increasingly, films that used to be rated R now appear to be rated PG-13. So recently we made the decision that our efforts would instead focus only on G and PG ratings, with PG-13 as the rarely allowed exception. [This makes business sense as well. The fewer admittance restrictions to a film, the higher potential box office.]

What is going on inside the MPAA rating board wasn't announced but it is being noticed. Peter Bart, VP and Editor-in-Chief of Hollywood's most respect trade publication, Daily Variety, wrote in his August 5, 2002 editorial “PG-13 Pictures Rate an 'R' for Raunchy” (p. 19):

More and more films like Austin Powers in Goldmember — movies steeped in toilet jokes and sexual innuendo — are earning PG-13 ratings rather than the more restrictive ratings they might have received a few years ago.

Is it pure coincidence that ratings mavens have seemingly become more liberal at a time when the major distributors are more conservative? When I asked one studio chief last week, he sat back and grinned: "Puzzling, isn't it?"

But parents may not be puzzled about whether they'd like their 13-year-olds to become aficionados of Austin Powers. Sure, no nasty penises or vaginas are on display (just some interesting facsimiles), and no one commits sexual intercourse, but the overall level of humor makes American Pie (which got an R) seem like a course at the Harvard Divinity School. When Dr. Evil refers to his lair, a submarine, as "long, hard and full of seamen," he is actually lifting the level of dialogue.

To set the record straight there are a number of motion pictures with PG-13 and even R ratings that, although they are not suitable for children, tell morally valid, redemptive stories with strong Judeo-Christian themes and values. Among such recent PG-13 films are: PAY IT FORWARD, THE APOSTLE, and WHERE THE HEART IS. Worthy R rated fare include WE WERE SOLDIERS, AMISTAD, THE GREEN MILE, AND BLACK HAWK DOWN, [and in 2004, THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST].

On the otherhand, there are also movies that deserve their restrictive R rating for no reason other than the filmmaker, in possession of a truly redemptive Judeo-Christian story, made stupid decisions regarding language and sexuality. One such movie is MAGNOLIA — a film that I would highly recommend if it wasn't for the zillion or so [unnecessary] expletives.

What Peter Bart suggests is that the MPAA ratings board has caved into the desires of filmmakers and the studios to produce raunchy, vile movies yet not necessarily jeopardize their $50 million marketing budgets. Instead of an R rating they get the more marketable PG-13. Why is the R rating now a problem when five years ago it wasn't? Because, not only are parents keeping a closer eye on what their kids are seeing, but theaters are doing a much better job of keeping kids out of R movies.

Additionally, TV shows with kid audiences are likewise turning away advertisements for films with R ratings. All of that hurts attendance. And while that's good for parents, it's bad for filmmakers of such fare. So, to help the studios and distributors appear to have a cleaner image, MPAA has embraced what might be called “ratings equivocation”. What used to be R can now be classified as PG-13. The result? Less conflict with critics, and more tickets sold ... to kids.

Parents beware. Don't read too much into a rating. Instead, get the scoop on the story and read what good Christian reviewers are saying about the picture, [although I still cringe at how some Christian reviewers count sweat words, and the number of times little Billy gets slugged in the stomach by big Bully. See my other post on "The Good of Conflict and Immorality in Movies.] Better still, go ahead of time or along with your child or teen, and don't be embarrassed to walk out.

I love the movies. I produce them. But in regard to my children and grandchildren, I have little patience for irresponsible filmmaking.

Villains "Noble" Intent

2011-06-03T12:29:00.000-05:00

In story development we often speak of heroes as having a weakness or imperfection. It is what allows audiences to identify with the protagonist and morally be sutured into his or her life. We also speak of villains has having an understanding (within themselves) that what they are doing is just, good, and right. No one else may believe it, but the villain, in his or her twisted logic, believes it.

This "light" of righteousness, as dark as it may be, also allows the audience to identify with the villain. Why? Because subconsciously, we, the audience, know that our best intentions often miss the mark. What we think is right, is often wrong. Maybe not to the extent that we'd be thought of as a villain, but it does put us in that arena.

What is right and wrong lies on a continuum. See this POST.

Today I was struck by three headlines where the three villains written about all have noble intent behind their actions. AP reports both:

From the AP & Fox News: Dr. Jack Kervorkian, the Michigan pathologist who championed physician-assisted suicides, died early Friday after being hospitalized with kidney problems and pneumonia. The 83-year-old Kevorkian, who said he helped some 130 people end their lives from 1990 to 1999, died about 2:30 a.m. at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan."

Notice the "noble" smile on Jack's face as he prepares again to help kill someone. Have you seen this man's "art." Google it. It's what an art director would create for a villains lair.

And then there's Ratko Mladic claim:

From the AP and Fox News: "Ratko Mladic defiantly refused on Friday to enter pleas to what he called "obnoxious" allegations that as the Serb military chief during the Bosnian war he orchestrated the worst atrocities of a conflict that claimed 100,000 lives. He claimed he was defending "my people and my country."

Notice the ironic patriotic salute.

Well, we don't want to be like these guys, but they're great "role models" for our story's villains.

And just a reminder... the villain can be the protagonist.

Big Yacht Repower - Post Production

2011-05-28T06:02:00.003-05:00

This is about a documentary I produced, shot, and edited. The shoot began November 2009, ending in July 2010. It was aired on Detroit Public Television in 2011. The On-Line version LINK is HERE at YouTube. The video is embeded below.

Disclaimer

I put this in my moral premise blog because I don't have a production blog. It's out of the ordinary post for the others found on this blog because it does not deal with a mainstream feature film. However, Big Yacht Repower does have an imperfect protagonist: An Old 53-foot Hatteras that leaked oil and went slow. The moral premise could be stated like this:

Old, leaky diesels lead to slow passages and low fuel economy. New, high-tech diesels lead to fast passages and high fuel economy.

Production notes and jacket copy below.

If the video doesn't play here easily, click on the YouTube icon to watch on my channel at YouTube.

Retrospect

Producing this took me back to my days of directing technical training video discs for Ford Motor Company. But back then I had great budgets with decent size crews, Ford's engineering departments to prep props and set pieces, a huge studio just 50' feet down the hall from my cubicle, and often a travel budget. Big Yacht Repower was just the opposite in about every way, with one exception. Back then we were editing on 2-inch wide Quad tape and the best editing equipment available in the world. Each hour of tape in it's aluminum 15-inch diameter reels weighed 20 pounds. Big Yacht Repower was shot on a nearly obsolete SD, tape based camcorder. Each hour of 1/4-inch wide tape was in a tiny plastic case that weighed a few ounces. In the Quad-tape days I needed a study hand-cart, a van, and a strong back to tape tapes to an edit facility. With BYR I could stick everything in my pocket, and edited on my laptop with sophistication I couldn't dream of back then. Thanks to Apple's Final Cut Studio suit of applications.

Jacket Copy
BIG YACHT RE-POWER is the gritty inspirational documentary about the repowering of a classic Hatteras 53-foot motor yacht with two massive new diesel engines. It's a fast-paced forty-minutes featuring a handful of savvy marine technicians at the Gregory Boat Basin, a 100-year old Detroit marina, who upgrade the engines and technology on the old but beautiful boat, turning it into the faster boat of its kind on the water.

The doc was shot during the winter of 2009-2010 at the Gregory Boat Basin in Detroit. The boat is "Signature One" owned by Scott Gregory. That spring and summer we edited the project. We did it as a marketing piece for the Gregory Service and Restoration Departments. The whole story is told with visuals, music, and superimposed type. Pure visual storytelling.

Production Notes

I shot it on a Panasonic DVX-100A at 24P 16:9 with the help of a wide angle anamorphic lens adapter. (Standard Definition). I shot everything at 24P; but should have shot it at 24PA. The 24P mistake required I remove all the 2:3 pull down elements via Final Cut, and then adjust all the special effect time maps (time lapse) elements. But in the end I had a true 24 fps timeline. (Note to Stan: Shoot 24PA from now on.) The combination of the small size camera, the low light sensitivity, and the extra wide angle adapter allowed us to get in spots that even with the Panasonic 200 DVX HD would have been impossible. Lots of fun, a truck load of work, but very satisfying.

After months of editing I showed it to WTVS (Detroit Public TV) thinking it might make a good midnight 40-minute filler. They enjoyed it so much that they offered to use it as prime-time pledge break if we could find a matching sponsor. There were enough companies involved in the project, but no one could afford the matching pledge liability (they must have thought a lot of people would be watching) -- Duh! So the premiere airing got bumped to March 19, 2011 (a Saturday) at noon and very few watched.

But before airing, I spent weeks color correcting the project (actually more black and peak level adjustments with some additional tweaks at the gamma) and preparing the elements for up-resing from standard definition to HD. With the competent advice of editor Don Thompson at WTVS I upgraded my Final Cut version, and then recreated all the superimposed type and chapter headings in HD. The SD was up-resed to HD (1080x1240) and imported into a Final Cut HD timeline, into which all the HD type and Photoshop elements were added. That timeline was then rendered to produce the HD end product.

Seeing this on PBS in HD, and being a guest on the pledge-break that aired it, was a rewarding experience.

My thanks to Scott Gregory who bartered years of slip and storage fees for our 41-ft ketch, FAMILY TIES, and support of Dan Miller and his crew who did the expert work and didn't complain when I was in the way or asked them "Can you do that again?" and Scott Gregory, Jr. for piloting the camera boat for the final on-the-water at sunrise shots that cap off the project.

The completed project with a couple of bonus tracks can be ordered on SD DVD HERE.

Rollercoaster Charts

2011-05-25T13:49:00.004-05:00

Just finished a couple of revision passes on D.K.N. (Naughty Little Nazis) a screenplay by Nikita Mungarwadi that we're developing.

Log Line: A 14-year old German girl battles an Nazi S.S. officer and his platoon to rescue her Jewish friends from the ghetto before they are liquidated.

The most recent revisions dealt with pacing. Since this is a war-time action picture, we had to make sure there were no long slow spots. In fact, while producing this graph we eliminated six pages that slowed the story down. The numbers on the bottom indicate "calculated" pages based on Final Draft's 1/8 page as the smallest scene length... the actual script is shorter than the chart indicates.

Click to Enlarge

The top chart (Progress vs. Regression toward Goal) measures the scene's portrayal of the protagonist's progress or lack of it toward her goal. The Moment of Grace is near the center of the chart at the GREEN ARROW. Until that scene the protagonist's efforts are up and down, without any great progress. But after the protagonist learns some tough lessons that takes her to apparent defeat (end of Act 2) -- she rises to apply the moral premise and finally make serious progress toward her goal. Yet, there are repeated set-backs of ever escalating danger all along the way.

The bottom chart shows how much reflection vs. action exists and where. As we should hope, as the story progresses the action becomes more intense, with the clear majority of the story above the line, well into the action arena.

The RED arrow is the Inciting Incident. BLUE the beginning of Act 2. GREEN the Moment of Grace. PURPLE the Climax to Act 2. YELLOW the beginning of the Final Conflict, with the Act 3 Climax occuring there the action and the coaster action gets the most fierce. These turning points are not positioned perfectly, but they respect the dynamics of the story. As we move forward we may find the need to adjust them.

If you want to know how these charts were created, HERE ARE THE INSTRUCTIONS. I began with Final Draft's Scene Report and used Excel 2011 chart generator.

Indexed Values

2011-05-20T13:35:00.002-05:00

Recently I subscribed to a blog post called INDEXED. Occasionally the creator, Jessica (whom I suppose a wannabe atheist (*) based on some of her posts), produces a Venn diagram or graph that touches eloquently on the conflict of values that we use in creating stories. While some will claim that her interpretations of things are not universal, I think they do, for the most part, connect generally with the human condition.

I also like them because they are mostly visual, which is what movies are all about -- show, don't tell. Pictures are worth thousands of words and her little index cards are great examples of this truth. I hope you can see protagonists and characters carrying around these cards (figuratively) in their pocket, and at a particular turning point in their story, they take the cards out and study them.

The challenge, perhaps to my students, fans, and clients is this: Take your story and create a graph or Venn diagram for the Conflict of Values your protagonist faces. Put that card in YOUR pocket, and when you're waiting in line, or stuck in traffic take the card out and imagine that your character is in your situation at that moment, sitting next to you. How would they see your current predicament in terms of the conflict of values that is illustrated on the card?

(*) I call all atheists "wannabes" because logically they have no rational basis for declaring there is no God. To do so, they would have to be omniscient... an attribute assigned to the essence that knows all things perfectly without error or contradiction. You can't claim something does not exist when your knowledge of the universe and reality is microscopically small. I'll accept agnostic, but not declarations. Every human discipline offers only a spec of knowledge of what is potentially possible. Science and theology are no exceptions to this. Some of what was known as universal truth by science 100 years ago, today is bunk... and the thousands of Protestant Christian faiths that all disagree with each other suggests a similar uneasiness. I'm Catholic for a host of reasons, not the least of which the Church does not claim to have all the answers. It has always embraced mystery as a tenet. That there is mystery in the universe/reality, is what makes stories, in part, work. We are bounded by time and space. Stories working through our imagination allows us to see reality from a perspective that transcends space and time.

====

I wrote the above on May 20. On May 25 Ms. Hagy posted this index card:

The Moral Premise is Now Likable on FACEBOOK

2011-05-19T14:52:00.000-05:00

I've desired to carry on discussions with my many readers, and answer their questions form time-to-time. Nearly 100 people visit the Moral Premise blog each day. So, we have finally created a PAGE on FACEBOOK for The Moral Premise. Please "LIKE" us and join in the discussion about popular story structure, motion pictures, novels and comics. I'll do my best to keep up. LIKING us will also allow me an easier way to communicate to you about new features, workshops, and story ideas. Here is the link:

ww.facebook.com/pages/The-Moral-Premise/163132023749323?sk=wall

Produced by Faith

2011-05-18T09:03:00.001-05:00

I just finished reading Produced by Faith: Enjoy Real Success Without Losing Your True Self, by DeVon Franklin, VP Production at Sony Entertainment. I picked up the book because DeVon was the studio executive from Sony/Columbia on Will and Jadden Smith's KARATE KID (2010). DeVon also worked with Will Smith as an intern some years back during his USC days.

If you're a regular reader of this blog you know that I'm a fan of metaphors, and all successful movies use them. Produced by Faith uses the creation of a successful movie as a metaphor for creating a successful life. DeVon also recounts some of his experiences during his rise to VP Exec. at Sony Entertainment.

But the reason I'm blogging about it here is because he spends a whole page (70) talking about The Moral Premise. In part he writes:

FINALLY, AS YOU'RE WORKING on your script, you must know your moral premise and live by it. In his book The Moral Premise: Harnessing Virtue & Vice for Box Office Success, Stanley D. Williams, Ph.D., says that a popular movie always contains a moral premise that we all hold to be true. In The Karate Kid, it might be "Live in fear and you will die, but face your fear and you will triumph."

Most good movie scripts feature a powerful, universal moral premise that audience members can identify with. Your story must be built on a similar bedrock. What virtue do you extol in your work and what vice do you condemn? What do you stand for and what do you stand against? The moral premise of your faith should be the arbiter of how you act in business.

I'd like to point out that the Karate Kid (2010) MPPS statement he articulates works for the movie quite well, although it's not one of the several possible that I mentioned in my other post on the movie, nor is it one that came up during the multiple times I interfaced with Will and his team about the movie. DeVon's insight in what the movie is about adds an understanding that successful movies are true on various levels allowing them to connect with multiple sensitivities of broad audiences.

I highly recommend this book.... and not because it mentions TMP... although that always helps.

Michigan Film Incentives - Entrepreneurial Motherload

2011-05-15T09:54:00.001-05:00

Below is testimony given by Detroit 187 (Now Cancelled, thanks to Gov. Rick Snyder) actress Erin Cummings before the Michigan State Senate Economic Development Committee 5-13-11 at the new Raleigh Studios in Pontiac, MI. The subject is whether or not to continue the State Incentives for the Film Industry. She says briefly what we've all been saying for years. When you bring smart, entrepreneurial people to an area, their presence is felt in a multitude of ways.

MOVIES ATTRACT SMART ENTREPRENEURS
I voted Republican, and for Gov. Snyder for a host of reasons, most of them economic. But Snyder's arrogance on the Film Incentive issue, and his stupidity about what attracts people to a state for business puts him on my recall list. His former company, Gateway, is now just 40 miles from Hollywood. They're there, I conclude, because of the intelligence of the work force, which in part is in the Los Angeles area because of the immense intellectual requirement that motion picture development, production and distribution requires. L.A. attracts many of the smartest people in the world due to the movie industry. But not all of them end up making movies, nor do their off-spring -- which are born with the entrepreneurial smarts in their DNA. The result is a host of other industries and businesses that foster products and employment. It's not just the weather. And it's definitely not all about lowering business taxes... which the incentives do.

Unlike any other industry, the motion picture industry requires workers from every imaginable discipline on the face of the planet. There is not an industry that it does not touch. Name a job title, and you can find someone doing that to help make a movie. There is no other industry like it in the world. And while many motion pictures lose money (some would say most do), the financial upside is so great that it produces billions of dollars in total revenue each year, around the world -- to say nothing of the entrepreneurial charity work that Erin mentions.

For a Full Size PDF of the Job Creation Turbine Click Here

WRITING GOOD LOG LINES

2011-05-04T17:08:00.012-05:00

Another explanation of this graphic and the log line is found HERE.

This is the last article you’ll ever need to read on log lines. Our goal: a strong, pithy pitch for a movie that will keep you focused as a writer and get your audience into the theater.

Because I teach, consult, write, and direct, I am always in desperate need of a good log line. If not for the story I’m currently working on, then to explain to my wife what I did all day long at home while she was off earning money to pay for our groceries. I’m always having to come up with them, or help others figure them out – the log lines, not the groceries. So, I needed an easy to remember formula that worked. But first, I needed a motivation. Don’t we all?

WHY LOG LINES?

Originally, log lines were long thin ropes on a spool with knots tied in them that mariners unreeled behind their ships to measure their speed – in KNOTS. They counted how many evenly spaced knots passed through their hand as the sand in the hour-glass drained from the top to the bottom. The marina’s log line was a necessity in helping them navigate their journey and not get lost. It told them how far they had gone in a certain direction and when to turn the boat to find their destination.

[The other advantage of the marina’s log line was that if the boat got lost, the sailors simply had to follow the log line back to port. As time went on, and captains become more adventurous sailing to distant lands, the log lines got pretty big. But, after a few ships sank from the enormous weight of the reels, ships never got lost again. Why? They learned their lesson and never ventured far from port.]

Now, if that last part in brackets sounds like a joke, it wasn’t intended as such for the writers reading this. It’s the lie that tells the truth -- about the importance of log lines. Log lines help us navigate our writing. They also help to steer funding and attachments to our projects. And they direct audiences to theaters. Log lines are a necessary tool that keeps us focused in writing our story, and helps convince “names” to spend their time and money to get our story made and distributed. A good log line tells us how far we need to go before we arrive at a turning point in the plot. And, if we get lost, a good log line will lead us back to the beginning where we can start again.

ELEMENTS

Fundamentally, a good log line will be a single sentence that will includes five elements.

The subject of the sentence will describe (1) an imperfect but passionate and active PROTAGONIST. The verb will depict (2) the BATTLE. And the direct object will describe (3) an insurmountable ANTAGONIST who tries to stop the protagonist from reaching (4) a physical GOAL on account of (5) the STAKES, if the goal is not reached.

The formula graphic at the right show you one possible way of organizing the log lone sentence. Notice that the terms (i.e. placeholders) I've chosen for the formula should be replaced or implied with specific nouns and visceral terms that fit your story. You don't have to be explicit, but you do need to communicate the moral and emotional tone that causes your protagonist to leap off the page with passion. That is, the log line is better if the words chosen enhance the story's marketability by suggesting the movie’s:

Values
Genre
Setting
Visual
Ironic hook
Relationships in the balance
Emotional context, and
Visceral action.

VERB

The verb you choose to depict the struggle must be visual and active. After all this is a movie, not a play or a novel. Thus, the log line verb should be one of the following, or one like them that best suits the genre:

struggle, battle, contends, wrestles, grapples, scuffles, fights, wages war, jousts, duels, spars, scraps, opposes, takes on, clashes, quarrels, feuds, or crusades.

STRUCTURE

Now, take all those elements and put them into a compelling sentence in this order:

[protagonist]…[verb]…[antagonist]…[goal]…[stakes].

What it doesn’t sound right? Then, rewrite it. You do know what a rewrite is, don’t you? As formulistic as all this sounds, expect to rewrite your log line many, many times --- not necessarily at first, but over the time that you develop your story and script.

MORAL PREMISE

Having written the book The Moral Premise, it’s only fitting that I reference it here. While the log line describes the PHYSICAL essence of the story, the moral premise statement describes the inner working, or the PSYCHOLOGICAL essence of the story. If you’re not familiar with the moral premise statement construction, here’s an example. Its purpose is to articulate the arc of the story from psychological value to physical consequence. For instance:

Fear leads to paralysis; but

Courage leads to action.

The log line only hints at the context of the moral premise statement. Both are necessary to write a strong story that touches both physical and psychological beats.

Again, it’s worth repeating, log lines tell us what the movie is about PHYSICALLY; it is why people go to a particular movie. And the moral premise statement (or moral premise line) tells us what the movie is about PSYCHOLOGICALLY; it explains the motivations of the characters the PHYSICAL action they take.

Audiences leave the theater thinking well or ill of a movie based on their subconscious awareness of the moral premise’s truth and consistency. Start with a good log line. Then, establish a true and consistent moral premise statement. With those two tools in hand you’ll be well on your way.

4 QUESTIONS AND 4 ANSWERS

My friend Jeffrey Alan Schechter makes the justifiable claim that a good log line should clearly and unambiguously answer these FOUR QUESTIONS:

Who is your main character?
What is he or she trying to accomplish?
Who is trying to stop him or her?
What happens if he or she fails?

The answers to those questions, which MUST BE embodied in the log line, are:

A sympathetic character, who is
trying to accomplish a compelling goal while being opposed by...
a powerful and committed opponent, over
life and death stakes.

Log lines, as I said above, are the place that writers start. Log lines help to focus the filmmaking team as they moves through the process of writing, development, attachment, production, and then marketing. But the best log lines are usually written AFTER the movie is finished. Why? Because movies are made three times: in the writing, in the shooting, and in the finishing. And it's not until it's all over that we really know what the film is about, and what the characters are REALLY about. At any rate, log lines are critical to understanding what makes a good story.

EXAMPLES

Here are a few good log line examples.

• A naïve young man battles heartless authorities to protect the life of his girlfriend when it’s revealed that she’s not human— she’s a mermaid.

• A police chief, with a phobia for open water, battles a gigantic shark with an appetite for swimmers and boat captains, in spite of a greedy town council who demands that the beach stay open.

• A Parisian rat teams up with a man with no talent to battle convention and the critics that anyone can cook and open their own restaurant.

• A lawyer who loses his ability to lie for 24-hours, clashes with his ex-wife for the affection of their son and the healing of their family.

• A young farmer from a distant planet joins the rebellion to save his home planet from the evil empire when he discovers he is a warrior with legendary psychokinesis powers.

GIVE IT TIME – BUT DON’T STOP

Nothing good comes easily. That adage begins and ends with log lines. Their importance in the movie industry cannot be understated. The human mind requires a respite from time-to-time to reach its full potential. Within your mind is the capacity to not only write a good log line, but construct the good story that goes with it. Write hard each day. But then relax and do something that involves physical activity aside from sitting in a chair and bending over a computer. Writing is hard work -- but you need exercise, too. I spend the mornings writing. In the afternoon I chop logs, garden, sail and chase my wife around town. You’ll be surprised how your mind assimilates and solves problems when you’re not trying to force it. As your project develops never stop coming back to your log line and see if you can make it that strong, pithy pitch that will sell your story.

Dr. Stan Williams, author of The Moral Premise: Harnessing Virtue and Vice for Box Office Success, consults on story structure, screenplays and the film industry from his home in Michigan and from the road in Los Angeles. You can reach him through his website at http://www.moralpremise.com.

Sell the Story

2011-04-28T09:00:00.001-05:00

This article which I picked up from DIY Musician, written by Scott James, originally appeared on Echoes.

In 2009, Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn tried out a little experiment. They spent $128.74 on a bunch of yard sale junk and hired professional writers to draw up interesting stories about each item. Then they put everything up on eBay with the stories that they created to see what happened.

They spent $128.74 on junk and turned that into…$3,612.51!

How does that work?

Sounds like a good question that’s worth exploring, doesn’t it? You might find some insight from the story of a flannel ball that they sold. A pretty worthless object, right? Not much practical value there. Accordingly, they originally paid $1.50 for it. You might be surprised to know that they ended up selling the ball of flannel for $51!

How? Well it all started by imagining it as something with a story. Something beyond just the utility value. Check out the first paragraph of the story that was written for it by Luc Sante:

After my friend Claude had his accident I went to visit him in the hospital. When I saw him I had to cough to divert a laugh. He looked like a guy in a cartoon, his entire body wrapped in bandages. He had broken everything that could be broken, from his skull to his toes. Somehow he was conscious and could speak, although to hear him I had to put my ear right up to his mouth-hole. I thought he said “door,” so I shut it, but he was still agitated. Eventually I got it: “drawer.” The one in his bedside stand contained a single object, a ball of wrapped flannel that looked like his head, only more colorful. I went to pick it up with my fingertips, but then had to readjust. Astonishingly, the thing weighed at least five pounds. I gaped at it, but Claude was making noises. I finally understood: “Don’t unwrap it.”

Suddenly we’re not thinking about the intrinsic value of a ball of flannel, but instead we’re drawn into a story… and ultimately projecting the intrigue and emotions of the story onto the object. What we have to realize is that people aren’t paying for objects, they’re paying for the meaning that they assign to the objects.

So when you’re pitching your CD, are you communicating that you’re just selling your CD or are you communicating the story of the blood, sweat, tears, fun, hope, dreams, inspiration, excitement, talent, heartache, challenge, and triumph that went into it? What are you saying about it on stage? What are you writing about it to your mailing list? How are you presenting it on your website? Are you telling a story or just selling an object?

Men in Black 1 & 2: Knowing and Pretending

2011-04-24T12:01:00.005-05:00

This post contains comments from both MIB (1997) and MIB II (2002). After MIB III comes out, I'll add to the post again.

MEN IN BLACK (1997) 98min PG-13
Budget $90M Est
Domestic BO: $250M
Worldwide: $326M

Director: BARRY SONNENFELD
Writers: ED SOLOMON, based on a LOWELL CUNNINGHAM comic.

TOMMY LEE JONES: Agent Kay
WILL SMITH: Agent Jay (James Edwards)
RIP TORN: Chief Agent Zed
LINDA FIORENTINO: Dr. Laurel Weaver
VINCENT D'ONOFRIO: Edgar
TONY SHALHOUB: Jack Jeebs
SIOBHAN FALLON: Beatrice

IMDB LINK

Men in Black's antecedent is a 1990 comic. (The Men In Black at Wikipedia.) Not as deep or celebrated as other well-known superheros (Superman, 1939). In many classic super hero comics, the "super" refers generally to the good guys who
save us from the scum of the Earth. It's a take-off on Christian tradition of a superman coming to Earth to save mankind.

In MIB, however, the "super" refers to some serious bad dudes from alien worlds that are are trying to do us harm...or, at least, as depicted in the comics the villains were aliens, demons, and mutants. The tag line for the movie is: "Protecting the Earth From The Scum of the Universe."

While the villains and the supers may have exchanged roles, the villains in both type of stories still stand-in as metaphors for the various evils or vices that plagues mankind — that is the psychological and moral vice that has personified into a physical presence so a story can be told on the screen where visuals are the director's primary tool.

The psychological underpinning (or moral premise) for MIB (1997) as to do with the vice and virtue of KNOWING. As you'll read below, MIB II (2002) has a lot to do with PRETENDING; and MIB III (2012) as a lot to do with ---- well, that's to be seen.

As evidence of the issues about KNOWING that MIB (1997) raises, consider:

A. In the opening sequence Agent K and and older agent have some nasty business with an alien named Mikey in the desert. It's nastier than it needed to be (evidently) because the older agent could not get out his alien-stun gun working, and Agent K is forced to liquefy the beast. When it's all over the two sit down and commiserate. The older agent wishes for his own life back when he could look at the stars and think how beautiful they are. Whether by plan or by his error, it's time for the older agent to have his memory neutralized with a neuralyzer, back to a time before his involvement with the alien police force. He says, "I'm going to miss the chase." To which Agent K says, as he dons his Ray-Bans and sets the neuralyzer, "No, you won't." The connotation is that to NOT KNOW about the MIB and the ALIENS is a good thing.

B. Joining up with the MIB has its disadvantages. Your identity is erased. You become anonymous. Because you know so much, your loose your ability to exercise your human rights freely. It reminds me of the scene in BRUCE ALMIGHTY when Bruce complains to God about having to answer all the prayers that find his way into his brain and his email. God's answer is that with great power comes great responsibility. The Men in Black have such great responsibility that they give up who they are for the benefit of mankind.

C. That such knowledge is a humble and scary thing, is reinforced by this dialogue during James Edwards' recruitment.

Edwards: Why the big secret? People are smart. They can handle it.
Kay: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.
Edwards: What's the catch?
Kay: The catch? The catch is you will sever every human contact. Nobody will ever know you exist anywhere. Ever. I'll give you to sunrise to think it over.
Edwards: Hey! Is it worth it?
Kay: Oh yeah, it's worth it. If you're strong enough!

I often have thought of this conundrum while listening to the political pundits who seem to be omniscient. I know that in 100 years our descendants will look back and and laugh at the general stupidity of our time. I am always somewhat scared of "what don't we know?"

D. The idea conveyed in the movie is that such "omniscient" knowledge (or at least knowledge that extends way beyond what a normal human being is expected to be responsible for) is a grave, solemn, and perhaps sacred gift that carries a great and selfless responsibility. Before Agent J accepts the journey of becoming a MIB agent, he thinks about it over night, as he watches the sunrise over Manhattan.

E. Here's a line that draws us closer to the moral premise of this movie. The line implies that too much knowledge leads to fear. While just enough knowledge allows happiness.

Kay: There's always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they DO NOT KNOW ABOUT IT!

F. At the end of the movie we discover that J has not been recruited to be K's partner, but to replace K. K longs for the life outside of MIB when he can rekindle his marriage of 35 years ago. K longs to look at the stars and not fear what they hold, but hold the one he loves and gaze romantically at the stars. It's the fitting bookend to the older agent in the desert at the movies beginning.

G. After Agent K retrieves his gun from the gigantic bug, by taunting the bug to swallow him whole, and find his gun in the bugs stomach, and then blasting the bug from the inside out, he commiserates from Agent J and asks J to neuralize his brain back some 35 years. Part of his argument to do that is this line:

I just went down the gullet of a mega-stellar cockroach. That's one of a hundred memories I don't want.

This leads to the Moral-Physical Premise Statement (MPPS) for Men In Black that can be articulated like this:

Too much knowledge leads to fear and unbearable responsibilities; but
Not knowing everything there is to know leads to the chance of a happy life and bearable responsibilities.

Now, at this point I have a problem reconciling this with the change in Agent J's moral arc. Normally I've believed that the vice (desire for increased knowledge) is demonstrated to the extreme in the antagonist's character... and perhaps that's true because the bug (Edgar) does have that knowledge lust as he seeks to obtain the "galaxy"... the McGuffin, which we might assumes will give him ultimate knowledge and power.

If we consider J and K co-protagonists then we can imagine K arc'ing from acceptance of the secret MIB life with it's burdensome knowledge of the universe, and his desire to move away from it. Meanwhile J moves in the opposite direction. J's Moment of Grace, by the way, occurs when he gives birth to the squid. He begins to seriously embrace the responsibility of protecting life through "alien" birth... and thus gives, metaphorically birth to his acceptance of aliens. That moment is in the middle of the film.

Agent K's Moment of Grace may be when he searching for his long lost love on the computer and considers how nice it would be to look up at the stars and smile... as she does in that scene when he seeks her out with the satellite cameras.

So, applying the MPPS statement to J, he moves from Not Knowing to Knowing, and from a relatively happy life (that we don't really see) to one of unbearable responsibilities, and K moves from a relatively unbearable responsibilities to one of a happy life with his long lost love.

MEN IN BLACK II (2002) 88min PG-13
Budget $140M Est
Domestic BO: $190M
Worldwide: $235M

Director: BARRY SONNENFELD
Writers: ROBERT GORDON AND BARRY FANARO, based on a LOWELL CUNNINGHAM comic.

TOMMY LEE JONES: Agent Kay
WILL SMITH: Agent Jay
RIP TORN: Zed
LARA FLYNN BOYLE: Serleena
ROSARIO DAWSON: Laura Vasquez

IMDB LINK

As MEN IN BLACK 3 gets under production next month in New York, it's about time I take a look at the last episode.

SPOILER ALERT

The big idea behind MIB 2 is about being who you were meant to be and not someone else. Apart from that big idea, everything else is up for laughs by playing it straight. [Not to get away from the "lie that tells the truth—that aliens from outer space are everywhere disguised as everything; and their presence tells the truth about ourselves.] The ironic humor stems from the aliens' efforts to fit in with the normal human population, when it's too hard for humans to define, let alone act, normal. It's the super secret, highly funded, Men in Black government agency's job to keep a lid on all things alien—and protect earth from the scum of the universe.

As crazy and fun as MIB 2 is, "underneath" the story line is a true and consistently applied moral premise. Let me get it out of the way so I can explain how the various characters portray it.

Pursuing who you aren't or doing what you shouldn't
leads to danger for yourself and all of earth; but
Pursuing who are meant to be or doing what you should (by the book)
leads to safety for yourself and all of earth.

In a shorter form, perhaps:

Pretending who you are not, leads to danger; but
Being who truly are leads to safety.

Let's see how each character in MIB 2 exemplifies this truth.

MIB DIEGESIS

The fictional world that MIB creates, of course, is about disguising or hiding the ugliness of who aliens really are. They live on Earth incognito, which always creates problems for "normal" earthlings and the MIB enforcement teams.

MIB AGENCY
Because the MIB are also in the deception business, they have their share of problems: corralling aliens, investigating them, prosecuting them, and neuralize the population.

[Sidebar: FAIR PLAY: The Moral Dilemmas of Spying by James Olson, Former Chief of CIA Counterintelligence, is a worthwhile book on the subject of deception and when or not it is morally justified. But Olson's book is not as funny as MIB 2.]

SERLEENA
In this MIB story, Agent Jay discovers that Serleena, an intergalactic alien menace that invades space and people as a fast growing sewer root, has returned to Earth disguised as a glamorous underwear model. "She" is looking for the "Light of Zartha" (the McGuffin) which she supposes is an artifact that when in her possession will establish her as the Queen of the Universe. Her outward "disguise" as a Victoria Secrets model instantly gets her in trouble when she's attacked by a Central Park mugger. Except, in this case, the mugger is taken behind a bush by Serleena and swallowed whole. Muggers are pretending to be something they aren't—infallible and all powerful purveyors. Wearing such a mask (literally) will always get you in eventual trouble.

But Serleena's inner disguise is that she thinks she should be the queen of the universe. Such arrogance (excessive self-deception) will always lead to danger. It's an arrogance that is styled explicitly after the Biblical Satan. When J and K return to MIB headquarters which has been locked down because of Serleena's invasion of it, the "security" guard is reading a tabloid with headlines that proclaims "SATAN ESCAPES FROM HELL" and the guard says to J and K, "That lady in there is causing all kinds of hell." (More on Serleena's Biblical antecedents below.)

But she's not rightfully the queen. It's not who she really is. And as vicious, cunning, and villainous as she is, as long as she tries to be someone she's not, she's doomed.

LAURA
The previous Queen (the good one, we suppose) was killed by Serleena 25 years earlier in an attempt to find the Light of Zartha, but unless Serleena can obtain the artifact, she will be stuck to the "underworld." (roots in undergarments, no doubt). But the Light of Zartha is also in disguise; it's not an artifact, such as the bracelet that Laura wears and begins glowing for some reason we're not told. The Light of Zartha is, infact, Laura herself, and even she doesn't know her heritage or future. She is the off-spring of the Queen of Zartha and Agent K, it seems. She is a princess. And her presence on earth endangers earth until she returns to Zartha as queen. She's the result of a an alien mating with a human. (Another Biblical antecedent.)

AGENT J.
The first half of the movie, up until the Moment of Grace (MOG), Jay is acting like he is MIB's best agent. He's cocky, but he's also making mistakes. This "mask" or "pretense" gets him in trouble. He doesn't follow the book on several occasions. At the MOG when Agent Kay fully regains his memory, Jay is humbled on several occasions and becomes the inferior to Agent Kay, MIB's best ever agent. Thus, Jay assumes his true identity and things work out for him.

MOG NOTE

Neither J nor K make progress toward their goal of stopping Serleena and getting to the Light of Zartha first, until the moment of grace for J and K.

AGENT K.
At the beginning of the movie Kay has been neuralized and has forgotten his true identity. And until Kay gets his memory back, some of which we discover was his own select neuralyzing -- earth, MIB, and Jay and Kay are in trouble. So, being who we are meant to be, and not pretending to be someone else, leads to safety.

BIBLICAL ANTECEDENTS

We found it remarkable that Serleena's character has several strong antecedents to story elements about Satan found in the Biblical books of Isaiah and Revelation. We suspect that this was not consciously planned by the writers but simply an example of how no story is really, truly original. Polti suggests there are really on 36 plot variations in all storydom.

But in MIB 2 there are some very explicit references that we found interesting:

2 Corinthians 11:14, NAB:

Satan masquerades as an angel of light.

Serleena masquerading as a Victoria Secrets lingerie model is wholly appropriate for what's going on here. To many she will appear as an "angel" of sorts, attractive and vulnerable. Indeed, a while back, Victoria Secrets did an "angel" campaign. But Serleena is a sinister villain, as Satan is.

Isaiah 14:12-15 (KJV)

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.

As mentioned earlier through the security guard's paper and his dialogue, Serlenna is connected to Satan who has escaped from hell.

She is modeled after "the false Light"— " Lucifer" (aka Satan) means "angel of light". In Isaiah the words are "son of the morning" or "star of heaven."

Like Lucifer, Serlenna, wants to rule the world, even if it is not her place to do so.

Revelation 12 (the whole chapter)

I'll summarize some of this passage then quote a few verses, then point to the plot points in the story that are similar.

In Revelations 12 we have a queenly woman, clothed in light (the sun) who is pregnant. The baby is born and then a red dragon (the Devil or Satan), having multiple heads and a tail, goes after the child to destroy it, because the child will prevent the dragon from ruling the world. But the child is eventually caught up to the heavens, and the dragon cursed to hell, is "cast upon the earth." Satan is also referred to here as a serpent. In Catholicism this passage is interpreted as Satan attacking Mary (the mother of Jesus) and the spiritual children of Mary's son, Jesus, the true light of the world.

The allegorical elements in MIB2 are Serleena searching out the "light" which is the off-spring of the queen mother (Lauranna). Notice that Laura's mother is LaurANNA" St. Mary's mother was Anne. Mary's son, Jesus, is the "light of the world."

And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time. And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child. And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent. (Rev. 112:9, 12-16, KJV)

In MIB 2:

Serleena's natural state is that of a fast growing, infectious, menacing, irritating root. But her tentacles are also similar those of a mythical dragon's tail, and serpent.
Serleena is out to deceive whomever she can about her identify and purpose.
The inhabitants of Earth should be warned because Serleena is among the population.
Serleena persecutes those that are connected with the queen and the Light of Zartha.
Laura is given wings to fly into the wilderness of space, to take her place on the throne of Zartha, or heaven.

Entertain, Educate, Elevate - Mel Gibson

2011-04-21T23:41:00.000-05:00

If an actor is any good, they are vulnerable, on stage and off. Transparency is necessary. Friends who have been with Mel in meetings say he's always anxious, and rarely looks you in the eye. That comes off on-screen, and because of it we are able to see inside the character... and man. It helps us identify with the story, because we all feel that anxious and unsure from time to time. It allows us to see humanity for what it really is—unsure, but trying hard to be better.

I just read a great interview with Mel conducted by DEADLINE’S ALLISON HOPE WEINER. The interview is mostly about Mel's personal life, which only concerns me as it affects his craft... the writing, directing and acting. You will note that the best artists in any discipline have raw edges. It's what allows them to get in touch with their inner being and do art. It allows us to see honestly real humanity, exposed and struggling with mortality.

Here's something Mel said in the interview that applies to this blog and the art of crafting motion picture stories. What we do is not not just about entertainment, although that is where you need to start.

"And the end of the day, it’s what did they think of that? Did they get something from it? Were they entertained? Were they educated? Were they elevated? Were they all three? You know, which is really good? Entertain, educate, elevate. I think that’s what Jodie did [in The Beaver]. If you can get all three of those, you’ve got the Trifecta going." (Mel Gibson)

Questions Answered about RomComs

2011-04-09T11:57:00.001-05:00

Janet asked some questions in the previous post's com box. I'll answer them here.

Janet Asks: Do all the other main characters struggle with the same MP, but in regard to their own issues?

Answer: Yes. that is how the movie can have multiple story lines but still be about one thing. the principles are the same for a novel or a screenplay.

Janet Asks: I've just bought and read The Moral Premise and learned a huge amount from it. But I'm writing a short romance novel rather than a screenplay...The type of romance novel I'm writing needs two main characters (hero and heroine) but there's no room for an additional significant secondary characters or antagonist. (Each acts as the others' antagonist along with the characters' psychological flaws.) Both hero and heroine have different lessons to learn, so I'm struggling to form the vice and virtue sides of the moral premise.

Answer: Good romantic comedies have two protagonists, the man and woman, who are the antagonists for the other. But there are other characters. Each will have a "reflection" character, and each with have a "nemesis" character. These are like the good and bad angels on their shoulders creating scenes that push the characters one way or the other. Each of these minor characters will have arcs that deal with the same moral premise as the main characters do, but obviously just not in as much depth.

When you say the hero and heroine have different lessons to learn, if those lessons are different sets of virtue and vices, then you have two different stories. Your story will connect better with audiences if the virtue and vice set are along the same continuum for both. See the posts on this blog under the topic of "values" (below and to the right under the Movies & Topics list.)

It is not always possible to squeeze a moral premise into an existing story that violates some of the natural laws of storytelling. I frequently guide students to change their story so it's about one thing, and not dilute the core psychological and moral principle which the story is REALLY about.

Janet Asks: Both characters' lives are out of balance. The heroine focuses on work and has no social life, whereas the hero has made play his priority and isn't into serous relationships. (He's successful in his work so has no lesson to learn about needing to work harder.) She needs to learn how to have fun while he needs to learn that fun flings won't make him happy. If the story was just the heroine's, then the moral premise would be easier eg 'A life totally focused on work brings yearning and and sadness but balancing work with fun brings fulfillment and happiness.' But this doesn't include the hero's issues.

Answer: For this to work, you need to change elements of your story. See the posts on Nicomachean Ethics — "Mean Virtue. If your heroine is into work and not play, then the hero would be into play and not work. Don't make them too extreme in those areas, but the bias has thrown their lives (with everything in their lives) out of balance. The purpose of the antagonist in a story is to change the protagonist by obstructing the protagonist's goal. Thus your characters are like iron-sharping-iron.

Janet Asks: Does the the moral premise in story with two main characters (who are both heading towards a happy ending) need to incorporate both arcs?--something along the lines of: 'Both an excessively serious approach to life and an excessively playful attitude lead to unhappiness, but a healthy balance between the two leads to fulfillment and happiness.' Often in romance novels the hero and heroine have similarly opposite flaws as the ones above such as Risk/caution/ or using others/helping others, so I'd love to be able to get the moral premise right for 2 protagonists dealing with opposite issues.

Answer: Yes, you got it. This is the Nicomachean Ethic post, precisely.

The Moral Premise Book Mark & Check List

2011-04-08T16:35:00.000-05:00

The new, 14-pt. coated Moral Premise Bookmark with rounded corners and improved check list is now available. The bookmark will help you write stories and screenplays better.

If you'd like a "physical" Moral Premise Book Mark Check List (2.75" x 8.50", with 14pt UV coating on both sides), send me a No. 10 SASE to Moral Premise Book Mark, P.O. Box 29, Novi, MI 48376, and I'll send one to you, FREE.

When I travel to Hollywood to work on a film as a story consultant I don't always take as proactive an approach as I think would be welcome. Part of my holding back is the natural intimidation I experienced because: (a) I am not as familiar with the story as the producer and writers are, who have been discussing the project for months before I arrive. And (b) I'm just a bit star struck being in the same room with people I've only read about in the trades.

Yet, when I analyze a successful film I'm amazed at the depth to which so much about the film consistently applies a true moral premise. For example, in THE BLIND SIDE each of the main characters (Michael, Leigh Anne, Michael's teachers, and Alton the drug boss) are involved in a multilayer retelling of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE. Each of the movie's characters test the moral premise, which is about courage and honor. That premise is made fairly explicit in the poem and in Michael's essay about the poem featured at the film's end. Such "discoveries" remind me that I need to be more proactive and bring more to the table, so that future films have the potential to entertain and enlighten audiences... and help producer's succeed at the box office... like THE BLIND SIDE has.

The book mark will thus help them and me do a better job at telling stories. Here's the check list on the back, revised April 5, 2011.

The Moral Premise Story Check List

What is the conflict of values around which everything in your story revolves?
What is the Protag’s main physical goal?
What are the P’s secondary physical goals (e.g. personal, professional, family, and career)?
How is your P morally imperfect related to each of those goals?
What is P’s psychological problem (vice) that obstructs the physical goals?
Toward what greater virtue or vice does the P progress?
How does P show desire to change?
What physical obstacles, metaphored by the psychological problem, do the characters encounter, especially the P?
What story altering moral decisions does the P make at the story’s key turning points? (see other side)
Do the characters’ major decisions come from the psychological motivations generated by the story’s virtue and vice?
What is your story’s SINGLE Moral-Physical Premise Statement (MPPS)? Will a general audience think it’s true?
Does the P’s psychological and physical arc follow the MPPS in every scene?
Do all the other main characters struggle with the same MP, but in regard to their own issues?
Is there a Moment of Grace (MOG) for each of the main characters?
Does the P’s motivation, either side of the MOG, parallel the the MPPS’s vice-virtue structure?
How is the MP consistently applied to all other aspects of the story & movie-craft: e.g. art direction, music, songs, lens selection and position, lighting, wardrobe, blocking, marketing?
Is the MP creatively but clearly stated somewhere in dialogue? Need it be?
Is the truth of the MPPS tested by the characters through the story like an emotional roller coaster scene-to-scene-to-scene from beginning to end?

Drama vs. Real Life

2011-04-03T08:25:00.000-05:00

Insight to why stories are popular; from a famous entrepreneur listening to a famous novelist.

Dereck Sivers (founder of CD Baby) relfects on a workshop with novelist Kurt Vonnegut.

http://sivers.org/drama

Moral Premise Screenplay Workshop

2011-03-22T11:12:00.000-05:00

Top 20 Secrets of Successful Movies and Stories

MADONNA UNIVERSITY (Livonia/Detroit, MI)

Saturday, April 2, 2011 - 9 AM to 5 PM

presented by

Stanley D. Williams, Ph.D.

William Goodman was wrong: Somebody Knows Something. Come learn what every successful filmmaker knows and yet why the movies of some of the best players in Hollywood bomb. The secrets have nothing to do with star power or money. In fact, anyone can do this. But you must first know how. This workshop will SHOW you. Read what others have said. 

For detailed workshop information and registration
 Click Here

What You Will Learn
At the heart of all successful stories is a True Moral Premise. That sounds soft and abstract. But we will make it clear and practical to you. Thus, in this workshop you will learn:
    1.    The 3 story elements needed in every successful hook
   2.   The 4 requirements of a high-concept log line
   3.   The 1 conflict your story can't do without
   4.   The 2 inter-dependent essences that all stories require
   5.   The 1 keystone upon which all stories are based
   6.    Why the hero must be imperfect
   7.   What the hero must always be doing
   8.   What the audience must always see
   9.   What the protagonist must realize before the goal is reached
   10.   Why the biggest obstacle for the hero is not physical
   11.   The 1 moment for each character that changes their world
   12.   The 1 four-part rule that must consistently be applied
   13.   Why speeches are sometimes necessary
   14.   The 2 choices the antagonist must make
   15.   The 4 choices the protagonist must make
   16.   How to design a scene-to-scene emotional roller coaster
   17. The 3 major and 14 minor ways audiences identify with your characters.
   18.   How chase scenes can mean something
   19.   The 6 most popular ways to structure a story
   20.   The A-lister's Story Diamond tool for plotting
   21.   Why some A-lister movies fail
   22.   Why some Academy Best Pictures fail
   23.   Why structure never fails
   24.   Why stories need to fit structure and not the other way around.

For a full description, outline, and sample slides of the workshop

CLICK HERE

A new window will open.

Please return to this window to register.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

Narrative writers, producers, and directors of all story genres and media will find this session beneficial, if not foundational. Fans of motion pictures may also want to attend. If you're a writer this session will give you a practical understanding of the moral premise that will speed along and improve the quality of your story's structure. In many ways the moral premise is a powerful muse; when used correctly it will inspire and focus your efforts, and powerfully connect you with your audience. Say "Good-bye" to writer's block. As a fan you'll have a greater appreciation of movies, plays, and novels when you understand and see how writers and directors use the moral premise as the center and motive force of their tales.

WHAT TO EXPECT?
The seminar lectures will be illustrated by both computer graphics and motion clips from popular films. Dr. Williams will, for the most part, follow the structure of the book. The presentation is continually being updated with new insights thanks to the generous contribution of past session participants, bloggers, story consulting sessions, and, of course, new films. The outline on the DETAIL page, therefore, may be slightly different from one presentation to the next.

GADZOOKS HOOK WRITING CONTEST

2011-03-11T22:08:00.000-05:00

WINNER GETS 1-HR OF FREE STORY CONSULTING

DEADLINE, Midnight, March 31, 2011.

(BTW: WORKSHOP, APRIL 2)

No one has said it too me directly, but I know one of the big weaknesses of The Moral Premise. It's that writers sometimes concentrate too much on the moral meaning of a story and not the story that gets people into the theater... the physical story... the story that begins with the (physical) hook.

What's a hook? It's the physical idea that makes a story engaging, and hooks both the writer and the audience to want to know what the story is about. A hook is NOT a log line. Here are notes from my writing class, actually the first step of my 8-Step Iterative Writing Process.

1. A Physical Premise (the Hook) is:

· Otherworldly

· Out of the ordinary

· Intriguing

· What if?

· Only one hook per story all else in the story must be normal for the setting.

Examples

· A young man falls in love with a real mermaid.

· A monster shark attacks a town.

· A rat can cook better than a man.

· A lawyer loses his ability to lie for 24-hours.

· A special type of warrior uses psychokinesis in battle

· A teenager takes on the Nazis

The Contest Assignment.

Write a good hook, based on the etymology of the term "GADZOOKS". My students are no eligible. My past and present customers are.

The winner, which I will pick, gets an hour of free story consulting.

You must post the answer in the com box of this post, and post your real name with the hook. Off line send me your email address. Stan AT moralpremise DOT com

Retired Mac Laptops vs Windows 7

2011-03-11T20:33:00.001-05:00

Do you think this will work?

The two Mac laptops are old and retired. But I think Windows 7 might still learn a few things. I have Macs everywhere in the house, and one PC running Windows 7 for my QuickBooks accounting system. Imagine how much better QB would run on a Mac, if Intuit would hire Mac programmers. I'm still amazed at the klutzy work-arounds and inability of QB to do simple things.

Writing Lessons

2011-03-01T12:06:00.000-05:00

Once a month for three hours in my living room, I tutor seven motivated Catholic home school teens on screenplay story structure. The group is part of the St. Augustine Home School Enrichment experience run by Dr. Henry Russell out of Ann Arbor. The image at right is of them taking a essay exam (hey, their writers) over our first eight sessions. Ms. J.S., their sponsor and test checker, sits at the end of the table on the right.

I really enjoy teaching them. During the week we exchange emails as they send in their iterative structural beat sheets. We're moving into the synopsis and treatment stages on some great stories.

Later that session I asked them for a list of writing rules that would reflect what they had learned. Here's what they said:

1. The hook and log line must reflect the core physical conflict and imply the underlying values.

2. There must be irony in the premise.

3. The story must have market appeal.

4. Audiences must identify with the protagonist's imperfect but talented characteristics.

5. Good characterization must be exaggerated; or a character must have an exaggerated life.

6. A writer must be organized and find the right structure for a story.

7. The story must be about something physically and morally important to a universal audience.

8.The physical spine should be a metaphor for the moral (or psychological spine)

9. Write everyday.

Reel Wisdom

2011-03-01T08:13:00.001-05:00

I have written that movies only connect with audiences when they impart learning about how to live life better. Audiences do not consciously walk out of theaters thinking, "Great I know how to live my life better" -- but they do like a film or not based on their subconscious recognition of life lessons portrayed in the film.

Here is a YouTube montage of clips that point out a few of the common life-lessons, or messages, that films communicate. It's called REEL WISDOM.

Michigan Film Incentives - Tangibles and InTangibles

2011-02-28T09:35:00.001-05:00

The debate over the continuation or cancellation of the Michigan Film Incentives (that allows producers to apply for a 40-42% tax rebate on the dollars they spend in Michigan on a film) has heated up since the former president of Gateway Computer (Rick Snyder) was elected governor. In an attempt to lure business to Michigan the gov thinks it is wise to kill the incentive program in favor of a lower corporate tax rate. That Gateway Computers moved from South Dakota (with a low corporate tax rate) to Irvine California (one of the highest and just 46 miles from Hollywood) provides an interesting and ironic interpretation. More on that at the end of this post.

What got me into writing this morning was, however, the leading question: "Why not give a 42% incentive for all businesses?" The answer for me is very simple, and it leads to the Gateway moving to Hollywood conclusion. Here we go.

Why not a 42% tax incentive to all businesses? Well, there are (at least) three (3) tangible characteristics, and two (2) powerful intangible characteristics to the MI Film Incentives that most other businesses don't have. If they do have these characteristics then perhaps they should get a similar incentive.

TANGIBLE FILM INCENTIVE CHARACTERISTICS

(1) Film Incentives attract cash that was previously OUTSIDE the local economy.

(2) The cash is spent QUICKLY.

(3) THE CASH is spent DIVERSELY (both geographically and in different industries or disciplines).

Those three tangible characteristics immediately begin to generate tax revenue through the dozens of tax channels the state has on the books (see turbine.pdf diagram). The more NEW cash in the engine, the more NEW taxes are generated as the money is spent over-and-over.

The tax turbine diagram is here: http://www.stanwilliams.com/turbine.pdf.

With 18 months, BEFORE the state writes the incentive check, the money likely changes hands a dozen times. And each time it changes hands it's taxed in one way or another. That the state gets back every dime in some form of tax revenue, from the dozens of taxes on the books, cannot be proven. But the Ernst and Young report points to the eventuality, even if it takes another 18 months.

The model is that the money is generally NEW cash that was not in the MI spend cycle BEFORE producers brought it in from investors. This even works if the investor is from MI, because money spent on movies is NOT being actively cycled or taxed until the hundreds of people in the first and second spend-tier start spending it.

The POWERFUL INTANGIBLE FILM INCENTIVE CHARACTERISTICS

(4) The END PRODUCT. Narrative motion pictures are the most powerful public relations device know in the history of mankind. A film Made in Michigan promotes MI through it's images and sounds on screen seen around the world for decades afterward. Made in Michigan movies (by their very presence in culture) promote not just tourism but also promote residency and business relocations. Any business or organization (when it has the money) will turn to motion pictures to promote its ideas or products. The reason film is so powerful has a great deal to do with the characteristics of story and how ONLY STORIES are effective in passing down values from one generation to the next. As evidence of that see the three essays beginning here: http://moralpremise.blogspot.com/2008/09/why-are-stories-necessary.html

(5) The ON-GOING PROCESS. Imbued in the storytelling is the collaboration of every discipline known to man. Motion picture development, production and distribution requires a friendly, encouraging business climate. It demands hour-by-hour innovation, through work-diversity, teamwork, art, music and a thousand other disciplines. Movie production pulls together EVERY aspect of human endeavor like no other industry in the history of mankind. Money cannot buy the positive, life-fulfilling, motivation that the process of creating a motion picture generates.

The creative, intelligence, and innovative leadership that made California (with all it's at-times weirdness) the cultural leader of the country, and why Silicon Valley is in CA, along with Facebook, and GATEWAY COMPUTERS (Hint! Hint! Wink! Wink!), is the result of the synergy created by the confluence of energized entrepreneurial mind-sets that are fostered through the motion picture industry. Like no other industry the film business pulls together EVERY conceivable discipline known to man and gets those diverse people to work together toward a common good, and in a quick manner. One of Tom Peter's rules for a successful business is to PROTOTYPE QUICKLY. That is exactly what the movie business does. Every movie is a prototype.

Nearly everyone involved in the production is an independent entrepreneur, working toward a common, innovative (never-been-done-before) goal. That brain power and initiative required for motion picture production carries over into every aspect of life outside the movie set, studio, or edit salon. And it raises-up the cultural and social fabric of EVERYTHING else in the community. Money can't buy that. But it comes naturally wherever movies are made. And that's why GATEWAY moved form South Dakota to Irvine, CA. It wasn't low taxes.

Question for Nancy Cassis and the small minds (at the Mackinaw Center) that want to count "employees" as opposed to "independent entrepreneurs": Which would you rather have as the basis for your economy: a bunch of employees that work 9-5 for someone else? Or A bunch of independent contractors that work 6 AM to 10 PM for themselves and with others toward an innovative and inspiring outcome? One mind set creates a labor intensive, assembly-line mentality. The other creates unstoppable innovation, new jobs, and unparalleled prosperity.

Just remember, Gateway moved to California, just 46 miles from Hollywood.

Stan Williams
Michigan Producer

The Kickback of Grace: The Coen Brothers' TRUE GRIT

2011-02-14T11:49:00.001-05:00

Daniel McInerny has written a great description of the moral concepts in the Coen Brothers' TRUE GRIT, paralleling it to Catholic author Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find."

He quotes something from O'Connor that I had forgotten. It's perhaps the best reason for violence in movies... assuming that the movie is about a true moral premise and not a false one. O'Conner's comment is her explanation for the violence in "A Good Man..." where The Misfit murders a whole family of Christians. O'Conner writes:

I suppose the reasons for the use of so much violence in modern fiction will differ with each writer who uses it, but in my own stories I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace. Their heads are so hard that almost nothing else will do the work. This idea, that reality is something to which we must be returned at considerable cost, is one which is seldom understood by the casual reader, but it is one which is implicit in the Christian view of the world.

VIOLENCE and SEX are two topics that continue to come up as prohibitions among Christians. But it would seem that in light of O'Conner's comment, there might be a similarity. Certainly the wrongful use of either has consequences.

Read Dan's post HERE.

Ralph McInerny and the Wisdom of Fiction

2011-01-29T11:04:00.001-05:00

From Daniel McInerny at his blog HIGH CONCEPTS a eulogy of this prolific father, Ralph McInerny, perhaps the most prolific Catholic author of fiction, non-fiction, and philosophy of the last few hundred years. Click HERE for the entire post at Daniel's blog.

=======

In Dante and the Blessed Virgin my father articulates a truth that served as one of the most formative principles of his life as both philosopher and writer of fiction. That truth concerns what he follows Aristotle in calling “poetry,” Aristotle’s name for the genus of storytelling, of fiction. About storytelling, my father says this in Dante and the Blessed Virgin:

We become involved in stories because their characters are in some way ourselves. They are our better or worse selves, but not too much the one way or the other. We follow an imagined version of the choices that make up any human life, choices that matter. We are what we do, and characters in a story reveal who they are by their actions and choices. In real life, bounders succeed and the innocent suffer; they do in fiction, too, but the story makes sense of that in a way real life never does. Any story worth reading again will tell us something about the human condition we recognize as true” (21).

Read entire post.