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Film Noir and the Production Code: An Unlikely Alliance

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For more than four decades the Production Code, otherwise known as the Hays code, controlled the content of American films. It was established in 1930 by William Hays with the blessing of the major studios, as well as conservative religious groups, and was initially released as A Code to Govern the Making of Motion and Talking Pictures and it was essentially a self-censorship document that would prevent film from becoming indecent or immoral in order to protect the American public from potentially indecent and immoral influences. In order to get distribution and to prevent the film makers from being fined, a film had to conform to the production code. In general terms there were many reasons the studios agreed to adopt the Production Code, but the main reason was certainly financial. When organized religious groups began complaining that films were becoming indecent, the studios initially ignored those complaints. That was until those groups created the Legion of Decency and organized boycotts of the cinema, resulting in a 12% loss at the box office over just a 3-month period. Realizing that they couldn’t sustain that kind of loss, the studios agreed to follow the directions of the Production Code, really just so they could stay in business.

Some of the highlights (low-lights?) of the Production Code were the famous “Don’ts and Be Carefuls”, can be found here.

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They’re pretty expansive lists, and wading too deeply into any of those waters could get the filmmakers in trouble, and could lead to a negative impact at the box office. In the late 50’s and early 60’s some films started pushing the boundaries of the Code. That, along with the dissolution of the studio system made way for the Production Code to be replaced by the aged-based rating system that is still in use today.

So what does all of this have to do with Film noir?

I’m glad you asked.

When we talk about Film noir, we’re actually talking less about a genre and more about a style of film making. In just the same way that you wouldn’t refer to animation as a genre, there are too many different kinds of stories within Film noir to box it in to a single genre. In terms of animation, if Despicable Me and Frozen were each live-action films, would you put them in the same genre? Of course not. If you didn’t have the single box called Film noir, you wouldn’t put Sunset Boulevard and The Maltese Falcon in the same genre. Or Mildred Pierce and The Sweet Smell of Success. Or even The Asphalt Jungle or Out of the Past. The list goes on and on of films that under normal circumstances would have no connection to each other besides this label of Film noir.

However one thing that a lot of Film noir does have in common is devious people doing devious things. As a part of the “Be Carefuls” portion of the Code, criminals always had to receive their comeuppance, and characters could not get away with murder. Plus, as a part of the Don’ts, any depictions or portrayals of sex were strictly off limits. Filmmakers couldn’t even show kissing that got too passionate. Since Film noir dealt with these issues as primary catalysts in the plot and thematic elements of the stories, they had to be dealt with in creative ways.

One of the most famous scenes in Double Indemnity occurs between Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), the doomed insurance salesman and the femme fatale Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) when the pair first meet each other in her home. She’s married, and in fact her husband is a customer of Walter’s, but the sexual tension between them is palpable as Neff puts the moves in Mrs. Dietrichson. “There’s a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff,” she says. ‘Forty-five miles an hour.” He replies, “How fast was I going, Office?” She answers, “I’d say around 90.” The conversation goes on for a few more lines after that and it drips with subtext. Everyone knows what they’re talking about, but they can’t really come out and say it. Had the Production Code not been in force at that time, or had this film been made any time within the past 20-30 years, the characters likely would have had a much more banal conversation about how he wants to sleep with her, but she isn’t ready to… yet. Instead we’re given rich dialogue that’s filled with passion and symbolism that ironically probably never would have been there if the filmmakers had been given the freedom to write the scene in the way that they probably would have wanted.

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Staying with Double Indemnity, there’s another great example of what you could and could not show. One of the Be Carefuls regarded brutality and graphic violence. The primary motive for Walter and Phyllis is to kill Phyllis’s husband and claim the insurance money. Walter concocts an elaborate, but doable plan to kill him which includes him hiding in the back seat of the Dietrichson’s car. Phillis is supposed to be taking her husband to the train station, but instead she pulls off onto a side road. The camera never leaves her face as we hear her husband complain that she made a wrong turn. Suddenly we hear him struggle as though he’s being choked. The music crescendos as we stay on Phyllis’s face staring straight ahead, and she has an expression of deep satisfaction, almost as though she’s getting turned on by what’s happening.

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Contrast that to another great film that would come out nearly 30 years later. There is a very famous scene in The Godfather where Michael Corleone has his brother-in-law Carlo killed for helping in the murder of Michael’s brother Sonny. Carlo, thinking that he’s being taken to the airport, gets in the front seat of the car where Michael’s henchman Clemenza sits in the back. Clemenza greets Carlo before quickly putting a string around his neck and strangling him. We see Carlo fall back over the seat and his foot kicks through the windshield as he unsuccessfully struggles to stay alive. His lifeless foot finally comes to rest outside the window as the car drives away.

Both of these scenes are powerful visually, but I would argue that the scene from Double Indemnity is more visually interesting for the reason that we’re left to our imagination to fill in the blanks. We’ve been introduced to Walter Neff, and he hardly seems the murdering type, and yet we hear him killing Mr. Dietrichson rather than seeing it. This is great because Director Billy Wilder remembered that sound is half of the film, and the sound cue tells us everything that we need to know. Then there is the expression on Phillis’s face. The deep satisfaction. The apparent sexual arousal. The unbridled look of evil intent. All of that is encapsulated in the brilliant performance that Barbara Stanwyck gave in the entire film, but in this scene in particular. We are made privy to her most intimate thoughts and feelings and if we’re paying attention we come to realize that we’re visiting a very dark place. What’s more is that even though Walter is doing the killing, even he doesn’t know just how dark the hole is that he’s falling down. Even if we’re only feeling this on a subconscious level, it’s still there and it sets up the second half of the film. The fact that Wilder couldn’t show the graphic nature of Mr. Dietrichson’s murder freed him up to show something even more important, something that we need to know in the story moving forward, and that something was the darkness inside of Phyllis.

Looking at the scene where Carlo is murdered in The Godfather, we’re exposed to something completely different. At this point, the Production Code had been gone for only less than 5 years and filmmakers were still experimenting with what they could and couldn’t do on screen. The Godfather was a film that took the graphic nature of violence to a new level, whether it was the bloody horse head in Jack Woltz’s bed, or Sonny getting massacred by multiple machine guns at the toll booth, or Luca Brasi getting the knife through his hand as he’s strangled from behind, audiences that saw The Godfather in the theater were exposed to a new type of violence that hadn’t been seen in the cinema before. There’s not blood in the scene in which Carlo is killed, but it’s just as graphic and disturbing as those other scenes because we see the fatal pain that is being inflicted on the characters. We watch as he unsuccessfully struggles to hold on to his life, and we’re almost relieved when it’s over. And yet, even though there is a lot more action in this scene, it still isn’t as visually interesting as the scene from Double Indemnity precisely because we’re being shown everything. Carlo dies in the scene. That’s what we see. We already know that Michael has turned ruthless and will kill anyone for any reason. We might find it satisfying because of what happened earlier to Sonny, there is absolutely nothing going on under the surface in this scene. We’re being shown a brutal murder because the Director Francis Ford Coppola had the freedom to do so. But other than the murder, nothing else is happening in that scene.

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It’s not only the violence of the films, but the sexual content as well, that forced the filmmakers of the 40’s and 50’s to approach what they were doing in more interesting ways. Look at a film like Body Heat, which is essentially the same story as Double Indemnity, albeit with some significant tweaks. William Hurt plays a small town lawyer, and Kathleen Turner is this film’s femme fatale. Very little is left to the imagination, as we see their steamy love affair unfold in front of us with reckless abandon. Although there are some restrictions to what Director Lawrence Kasdan could show in order to keep an R-rating, he went right up to that line and created scenes that Billy Wilder could only have dreamed of. But I think back to a scene in Double Indemnity where we dissolve from Walter and Phyllis kissing to them sitting on the couch. Walter is smoking a cigarette and Phyllis is reapplying her lipstick. The clear inference is that they’ve had sex. But now, Walter is lying in shadow and Phyllis is sitting in the light, where as previously they both had been equally lit. Walter then tells Phyllis that he has a plan to kill her husband. He has moved into a shadowy place, and having sex with her has pushed him there.

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Because these films had tragic heroes and the Code mandated that wrongdoers had to get their comeuppance, many of these films had tragic and deep endings. My favorite example is from Out of the Past starring Robert Mitchum as Jeff, a man who’s trying to escape his past, but ends up entangled in it yet again. He’s a former private eye who was supposed to find and bring back Kathie (Jane Greer), the girlfriend of his gambler client, Whit (Kirk Douglas), but instead ends up hooking up with her and then killing his former partner after Whit sends him looking for them. Trying to leave all of that behind, Jeff has opened a gas station in a small town and has a deaf kid working for him. He’s fallen in love with a local girl named Ann (Virginia Huston) , who’s also the object of affection of a local cop named Jim. Late in the film, as Jeff’s world is unraveling, Jim confronts him and tells him that Ann deserves a better life than the one that Jeff can provide. Maybe she’ll never love Jim as much, but he can give her the kind of peace and stability that she deserves and that Jeff can never give her. The film ends not only with Jeff sacrificing himself, but he tells the kid to lie to Ann in order to make her believer that Jeff was planning on leaving with Kathie so that Ann will be able to emotionally let go of Jeff.

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Because Jeff had killed his partner, and the Code demanded that he receive justice, there was no way for Jeff to live happily ever after with Ann. However he gets redemption both in the external sacrifice that he makes as well as the internal sacrifice of making sure that she doesn’t miss him the way she normally would. Plus, if Out of the Past came out today, the filmmakers would at least have the option of having Jeff get away with his crime, and they might succumb to that temptation, which would produce a flatter and ultimately weaker film.

Now then, please do not get me wrong. I am not advocating for censorship. I don’t believe in restrictions of any kind on artistic expression. However, Orson Wells once said that an unlimited budget and unlimited time are the enemies of creativity. In much the same way, the ability to express yourself in an unlimited fashion can stifle creativity as well. When I look at a movie like Sausage Party, to use an extreme example, I see filmmakers without boundaries. Without boundaries, you don’t have to think, you can just do, and that really creates a boring film. There’s a reason the 40’s and 50’s are looked upon as the Golden Age of film making. The filmmakers of that era had to be thoughtful and creative about the material they put in their films, especially if being open about that material would prevent their films from reaching an audience.

The filmmakers who created the best Film noir were the best at this practice. In order for them to get this material in to their films, they had to push the limits of their talent and creativity, and that’s what made these films so compelling and so memorable. If it wasn’t for the Production Code, I seriously doubt we’d look at Film noir so fondly today.

BSsentials – The Iron Giant

TheIronGiantPosterI am an animation guy. My career has been spent working for animation studios, I have a Masters Degree in animation from the University of Southern California, and I’ve always believed that animation is the purist form of film making. That said, I haven’t blogged a ton on this site about animation or animated films. There’s no particular reason for that, other than maybe since I spend my days working in animation, I view this blog as a refreshing change from that. That changes today, as I write about a film that is not only one of my favorite animated movies, but is one of my top-10 favorite films of all time. After successful stints on The Simpsons, Family Dog and King of the Hill, and before he became well-known to the mainstream with The Incredibles, Ratatouille and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Brad Bird made his feature film directorial debut with The Iron Giant in 1999. The film was actually a box office failure, but the blame for that falls 100% on Warner Brothers for not marketing the film properly. I can only surmise that they had no idea what they had in this film, and they gave it an August release date with very little publicity. In the years since, it has found a dedicated audience of cinema-philes as well as animation geeks who swear by the film’s deep story, important thematic elements, and beautiful animation and art direction. This is actually a film that has strong cross-over appeal, and has found fans who aren’t necessarily fans of animation.

Why it’s essential

There are three main components to this film that make it so special, and all of them are related to the script penned by Tim MacCanlies with an assist from Bird, and adapted from the novel by Ted Hughes. First of all, the story is beautifully structured, and we have rising tension until we reach the final crescendo at the end. That leads into the second great component of the script that is the multiple strong thematic elements that are expertly woven together so that we really care about the characters and the story. Speaking of the characters, they are wonderfully developed and have great depth with realistic back stories. Even though they’re hand-drawn animated characters, they feel like real people. All of these components are combined to create a film that elicits extreme emotional responses from the audience, and shows us what real humanity looks like. This is very much a “boy and his dog” story, and like many great films with that theme, the boy and the Giant both learn from each other.

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The hero of The Iron Giant is a young boy named Hogarth Hughes. His Ordinary World shows him as the child of a single mother named Annie (Jennifer Aniston), who struggles to make ends meat as a waitress at a diner in the small town in Maine in which they live. The film takes place in the 1957 right after the Soviets launched Sputnik, and paranoia of the Red Menace, as well as Nuclear Holocaust, were first and foremost in the minds of everyone. Hogarth’s Call to Adventure occurs after rumors of something crashing off shore begin to spread. When the power goes out, Hogarth goes into the woods to investigate and eventually comes across a 70-foot tall metal man. He Refuses the Call by running away, but turns off the power grid as the Giant falls onto an electrical plant, setting off an electrical reaction. He Crosses the First Threshold when he goes back into the woods and befriends the Giant, even as he continues to refuse the call by trying to keep it from following him home. “You stay,” he says. “I go. No following.” Eventually he brings it home and hides it in the barn. Hogarth brings the Giant comic books to look at, and after initially being interested in a villainous robot character that looks like the Giant, Hogarth shows the Giant a Superman comic and tells him that Superman is the real hero.

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The second act begins with the Tests, Allies and Enemies section and all three components are well-represented in this film. Hogarth is presented with the main test of keeping the Giant a secret, even after it’s struck by a train and is broken into a bunch of pieces. It ends up not being a problem as the pieces emit radio signals and the Giant is able to put himself back together. Hogarth gets to know a local beatnik artist named Dean (Harry Connick, Jr.), who turns into his main ally. And the enemy is a government agent named Kent Mansley (Christopher MacDonald), who figures the Giant to be a Soviet weapon, and is bent on destroying it. Throughout the first half of the second act Hogarth teaches the Giant about many things we take for granted. One of the most touching moments in the film is when they come across two hunters who have just killed a deer, and Hogarth has to explain death to the Giant. He tells him that it’s bad to kill, but it’s not bad to die, because we all have souls and souls don’t die. The Approach happens when Hogarth discovers that he can keep the Giant at Dean’s scrap metal shop, and the Ordeal is when Mansley discovers where they are and calls in the army, led by General Rogard (John Mahoney). Dean mocks up the Giant so that it looks like one of his metal sculptures, fooling the general and making Mansley look like an idiot. That leads to the Reward with Hogarth and the Giant playing Superman in the junkyard. But Hogarth uses a toy ray gun to pretend to shoot the Giant, which activates a defense mechanism within the Giant and he fires a laser out of his eyes and nearly incinerating Hogarth. Shouting at the Giant and calling him nothing more than a big gun, Dean sends the Giant away. The Giant wanders into town where it rescues two boys who were falling off of a tower. He looks at Hogarth, who has caught up with him and tells him that he is not a gun.

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The Road Back happens when Mansley sees the Giant in the town. Telling the general that the Giant is attacking, Mansley gets General Rogard to attack the Giant, who grabs Hogarth and runs away. During the pursuit the Giant discovers that he can fly and consciously prevents himself from firing back at the fighter jets and tanks that are firing on him. That us, until he’s hit so hard by a missile that he crashes. He sees Hogarth lying unconscious on the ground. Thinking Hogarth is dead, the Giant goes into full battle mode and nearly destroys the entire military force to the point where Mansley convinces General Rogard to lead the Giant away from the town so that it can be destroyed by a nuclear weapon. The Resurrection is a literal one, as Hogarth, who was not dead, stands in front of the Giant and tells him that he can be whatever he wants to be and that he doesn’t have to be a gun. The Giant finally recognizes Hogarth, and goes back to normal. Meanwhile Dean convinces the General that the Giant is friendly, but they have to stop firing on it. Unfortunately Mansley gets his hands on the walkie talkie and shouts for the missile to be fired. They all watch as certain death approaches, and Hogarth tells the Giant that when the missile comes down everyone will die. Knowing what he has to do, the Giant kneels down to Hogarth. In one of the most touching and heartbreaking moments in the history of animation, the Giant tells Hogarth, “I go. You stay. No following.” Then he takes off towards the missile. As he approaches it, he remembers Hogarth telling him that he can be whatever he wants to be. “Superman,” he says as he closes his eyes and smashes the missile, destroying it and himself. The Return With the Elixir happens when we see Hogarth is now well liked by the other kids and school and Dean and Annie have gotten together. Dean gives Hogarth a screw that the General had said was the only piece of the Giant that was recovered. That night while in bed, Hogarth sees that the screw is beeping and trying to get out. He smiles and says, “See ya later,” as he opens the window and the screw rolls away. We see the pieces of the Giant congregating in Iceland, reassembling.

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Clearly The Iron Giant has a strong story that is well-structured. However, the best crafted story isn’t going to resonate without characters with whom the audience can relate and root for. Brad Bird and his team did an exceptional job of creating characters that were deep, believable and sympathetic. Even Kent Mansley isn’t a character completely without sympathy. Yes, when we first meet him he’s a snarky asshole, but his motivation is national security. The best villains are the ones who believe themselves to be the heroes of their own stories, and Mansley clearly believes that he’s the one who’s acting heroic here. He doesn’t see himself as the bad guy at all. His problem is that he’s bought into the paranoia of the age, and he believes in shooting first and asking questions later.

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Look at the character of the Giant, voiced by Vin Diesel. Even though this character doesn’t have a lot of dialogue or varying facial expressions, the animators at Warner Brothers did an amazing job of giving him heart. The Giant serves as the proverbial fish out of water, and has to discover his own humanity. As the story progresses and the Giant does discover it, we sympathize with him. We’re concerned when he loses it. Then at the end, when the Giant performs the ultimate act of humanity in sacrificing himself so that others may live, the film makers created what may be the single most emotionally powerful moment in the history animation. I understand that that’s a bold statement that some my see as hyperbolic. Yes, I’ve seen Bambi. Yes, I’ve seen Dumbo. Yes, I’ve seen Up. The Giant’s sacrifice in The Iron Giant is more emotionally powerful than the most gut wrenching moments in all of those films.

Hogarth, the hero of the film, is terrific character. He’s a young boy who isn’t a brat, and I look at Hogarth as being right up there with Elliott from E.T. He’s a precocious boy with an adventurous spirit and a kind heart. He’s mischievous, but in a playful way. He’s the kind of kid that adults won’t get annoyed with watching. His flaw is that he’s awkward and can’t make friends, so in befriending the Giant he learns enough about himself sot that at the end of the story his character arc is completed by him now being a kid with a lot of friends.

All of the characters in The Iron Giant in one way or another are likable in some way. If you’re an aspiring screenwriter and you’re trying to develop likable characters with depth and pathos, this is a film and a script that you should study.

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This is a story that is not only well-structured with great characters, but is also funny, charming and highly entertaining. Bird and his crew added depth to the story by making it very deep thematically. There are a lot of thematic elements working together and complimenting each other in The Iron Giant. It’s very much an anti-gun and anti-violence movie. It’s a film about friendship and loyalty. It’s a film about staying true to what you believe and choosing your own path when the masses might be trying to push you in another direction. The Iron Giant is one of those films that affects you in a meaningful way. Ultimately this is a film about humanity, and what it means to be a human being. When the film is over, you feel like you’ve been through something. In fact, this is one of those rare films that allows you to feel almost every emotion that’s possible to feel, and it does all of this in a brisk 90 minutes. It’s exhausting, but highly satisfying.

The Iron Giant is a sophisticated film. Don’t let the fact that it’s animated fool you. Yes, it has a lot of gags, and there are moments in it that clearly play to the family audience. But this is a smart and emotional film that was carefully crafted by people who knew what they were doing. If you haven’t seen The Iron Giant, put it on your list. It is truly essential.

 

The 100 Greatest Movie Threats of All Time

For me, there is a big one that they’re missing. It’s the scene in Red River where John Wayne tells Montgomery Clift to always look behind him, “Because one time I’ll be there, and I’ll kill you, Matt.”

Otherwise, enjoy this highly entertaining montage, and I’d love to hear what others have to say about it.

Thanks to Harry Hanrahan and hh1edits for putting it together.

3-Act Structure in a Sequence – Jaws

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A few weeks ago, I blogged about a scene from Children of Men in which the scene was structured in 3 perfect acts. Certainly finding or creating a 3-Act structure within a 4-minute scene, while not necessarily easy, is often necessary and is usually clear to discern. But what about an entire sequence of scenes? Can you take a ten minute sequence of events and craft a 3-act structure around that? Well, I’m glad you asked, because there is such an example in Steven Spielberg’s classic Jaws.

All by itself this particular sequence tells a complete, nearly self-contained story. We’ve been given a good set up through the first half of the film, and in Hero’s Journey terms, this scene serves as the story’s Supreme Ordeal, or that moment in the middle of Act II where the stakes are raised and the hero must face more difficult challenges to get what he wants. In this case, Police Chief Martin Brody must overcome his fear of the ocean and get in a boat to hunt and kill the shark that is terrorizing his community. This is the sequence that makes that confrontation unavoidable.

Act 1 of the sequence

It starts on a closeup of a Killer Shark video game, and then the Ordinary World of the scene opens with Chief Brody (Roy Scheider), in his uniform, walking on to the beach, which is packed with people since it’s the Fourth of July, but no one is in the water. An aid tells Brody that some TV people are here, and he he tells him that he’ll get to them later. As Brody patrols the beach, he communicates through walkie-talkies with his team on the beach and in boats, including Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), who’s in one of the boats and tells him they haven’t seen anything yet. We then cut to a News Reporter (Peter Benchley, the author of the novel and the film’s screenwriter) on the beach, who speaks into the camera about how this peaceful beach town is under a cloud in the form of a killer shark. A helicopter flies over head and we cut to Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton), looking concerned as no one is going in the water, and he’s afraid that his town’s summer and reputation are being destroyed. He provides the archetypal Call to Adventure when he approaches his friend who is sitting on the beach and asks him to get into the water. The friend initially Refuses the Call by trying to tell Vaughn that he just put suntan lotion on, but Vaughn persists and he reluctantly agrees.

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Act 2 of the sequence

The friend and his wife timidly take the hands of their grandchildren and enter the Special World of the water. Then, like a chain reaction, others follow their lead and soon the ocean is filled with bathers as Mayor Vaughn looks on smiling. Brody’s son Michael and a group of friends are carrying a small sailboat into the water and Brody asks Michael to take it into the pond. Michael complains that the pond is for old ladies, and Brody says he knows and asks him to do it for the Old Man. Reluctantly Michael agrees, and Chief Brody waves to his wife Ellen (Lorraine Gary), who smiles at him approvingly and mouths to him that she has their other son, John. More and more people enter the water and splash around, and we get a lot of underwater shots, as though from the POV of the shark. As the shark spotters in the boats and helicopters scan the area, a fin can barely be seen in the background. Meanwhile, Mayor Vaughn is being interviewed by the newsman and tells him that a large predator that supposedly injured some bathers has been captured and killed, and it’s a beautiful day and the beaches are open and Amity means friendship.

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The Supreme Ordeal happens right at the half-way point of the sequence when a woman first thinks she sees the shark. Then a man sees it and a total panic ensues as everyone rushes and tramples over each other to get out of the water. The shark spotters finally spot it, and the lifeguard blows his whistle while panic stricken people run for their lives from the water, all while Mayor Vaughn looks on despondently. The Reward of this Hero’s Journey turns up when the shark turns out to be nothing more than a couple of kids with a cardboard fin, who pulled possibly the worst prank ever with the younger one pointing to his older brother and telling the armed shark spotters that he made him do it. Hooper communicates to Brody that it’s just a hoax, and all seems to be normal. Until…

Act 3 of the sequence

At roughly three quarters of the way through the sequence, at the 6-minute, 35-second mark, a young woman sees the real shark swimming into the pond and starts yelling for help. Brody seems skeptical at first until Ellen reminds him that Michael is in the pond. Brody starts running to the pond as the young woman continues to yell about the shark, which we watch swim into the pond and then see as the dorsal fin disappears under the surface of the water. Michael and his friends are struggling to tie knots aboard their sailboat, and a man passes by in a rowboat and offers assistance. We see the fin come up behind him and his boat is knocked over, as is the sailboat and everyone tumbles into the water. Frightened, the man tries to climb back onto his boat, but is pulled under and he screams as he’s devoured by the shark. We see his severed leg slowly sink to the bottom of the pond, and Michael treads water stunned, as the shark swims right by him and out of the pond as the stunned population of Amity looks on, unable to do anything.  Michael’s friends help drag him to shore, and Brody wraps him in a blanket as he lies there in shock. Brody then looks out to the wide open sea, knowing that his adversary is out there somewhere.

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The whole sequence is 9 minutes 15 seconds and it is told in three acts. In relation to the rest of the sequence, Act 1 is actually very short at 1:46 for a sequence that is over 9 minutes long, but it works in this case because the Ordinary World had been clearly established and we already know the stakes, and the tension of the sequence won’t really start until people start getting into the water. But there is a clear Act 1 where we are introduced to what’s happening in the scene. There is a clear point where the adventure of the sequence begins with people starting to enter the water. The story changes direction with the stakes being raised exactly halfway through the sequence with the hoax shark attack, and then the third act of the sequence, which starts roughly three quarters of the way through the sequence, is the real shark attack and ends with a new call to adventure for Chief Brody.

This is the type of story telling you should be striving for as a screenwriter. Not only should your movie have a clear beginning middle and end, but each scene and/or sequence should as well. Why is the scene important to the story? Answer that in the first act of the sequence. What is the purpose of the scene? That is the action that unfolds in the second act. How will it affect the rest of the story moving forward? That is the question that is answered in the third act of the scene. It’s also important because, like a shark, if a movie isn’t moving forward it dies. The same could be said about any scene. A scene is not merely a dialogue exchange or an action sequence. It is a segment of the story that picks up from the previous segment and feeds into the next segment. Like water flowing through a river, the story should flow through your scenes.

At Monument Script Services, we’re experts at breaking down screenplays and analyzing the structure of the overall story and the scenes as well. If you need someone to provide his type of analysis to your own script, click here for details on how we can help.

BSsentials: Back to the Future

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Back to the Future really is an exceptional film. Perhaps it doesn’t have the gravitas or social commentary that other films have, but it is an exceptionally crafted film with a brilliantly developed story and characters who are likable and easy to engage with and root for. I’ve heard several screenwriters interviewed where they claim that the screenplay for Back to the Future is either their favorite screenplay or at least in their top five. Indeed, it was nominated for Best Screenplay of 1985 (losing to Witness, which will be a BSsential on a later date), and as I’ll explain as we move along, this script uses several motifs and techniques that make it a textbook example of what to do right when you write a screenplay. This post will be written assuming that you’ve seen the film. If you haven’t, you should see it anyway, but please try and make sure you’ve seen it before reading further.

Why it’s essential

The sheer entertainment value of this film ought to be enough to get just about anyone, even the most curmudgeonly of movie snobs, to enjoy this film.  This is a film that has almost everything you need for high entertainment value. It’s funny and dramatic. It has heart. It has great characters that have become iconic over the past three decades since the film’s release. And all of that starts with its amazing screenplay.

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I think what’s so great about the script is that there are no wasted words. There are no wasted scenes. There isn’t anything that happens in this script that doesn’t either effect something else in the script or is effected by something else, or at least gets a laugh and/or builds tension or character within the story. Think about even the simple things. The first time we see the main character, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) he’s carrying his skateboard with him. After he enters the scene he plugs a guitar into an over sized amplifier and nearly blows himself through the room. Then when he finds out he’s late for school, he hustles on his skateboard and skates to school, sometimes catching a ride by holding on to the back of a car. We will also see him play his guitar again later in the first act. Marty will need both of those skills later in the movie at crucial moments so it’s important that we learn as far ahead of time as possible that he has them. He uses a makeshift skateboard to get away from Biff and his henchmen in the middle of Act 2, and then he has to play guitar at the school dance where his parents kiss for the first time. We also learn early on how important it is for Marty to get the chance to play in front of people, and in that scene he gets perhaps the most important audience he could ever get.

BackToTheFutureSkateboarding

Things that seem like throw aways  turn out to be crucial story devices. When Marty and his girlfriend Jennifer are about to kiss, they’re interrupted by a woman shoving a flier in their face to save the clock tower. That’s not only where we find out why the clock doesn’t work, but the only reason Marty holds on to what otherwise would be a worthless piece of paper is because Jennifer writes down the phone number to where she’ll be. Then, obviously the time that the lightning hits the clock tower is crucial because, as Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) says, the only way to generate the 1.21 gigawatts they need is with a bolt of lighting. The list of examples goes on and on.

This script also has a well-constructed Hero’s Journey with a very well-defined Ordinary World, a clear Crossing of the First Threshold into a very clear Special World, and then a clear Road Back and Return with the Elixir. The reason that the Hero’s Journey works so well in this script is because screenwriters Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale crafted the main character in Marty McFly as someone with clear inner needs and outer wants. However with that said, it isn’t really the Hero’s Journey in the classic sense. For example, the Ordinary World is obvious. Marty’s Ordinary World is the town of Hill Valley in 1985. He has a weak, nerdy father who has let the same guy bully him for 30 years and an alcoholic disconnected mother with puritan values that she’s trying to force on her kids. Marty has run afoul of the school’s principal, but he sees bigger things for himself than others seem to, and his best friend is a middle-aged professor that everyone in town thinks is a crack pot. The Hero’s Journey in Back to the Future diverges from the classic model with the Call to Adventure and the Refusal of the Call. Marty’s Call to Adventure actually happens when he Crosses the First Threshold. Unlike other heroes, Marty doesn’t spend the first act either looking for or trying to avoid an adventure. He’s just living his life until the adventure is thrust upon him when he dives into the DeLorean/Time Machine to try and escape the Libyan terrorists from whom Doc Brown has stolen the plutonium that he needs to power the Time Machine. Hitting 88 miles per hour, Marty is sent back in time and is called to adventure as the adventure begins. With that being the case, there is no classic Refusal of the Call, unless you consider his refusal of his mother’s advances throughout the story.

BackToTheFutureDoc

Also, while the structure of the story is perfect, it doesn’t fit the classic parameters. For example most second acts end with the hero losing everything. It doesn’t always happen, but I’d guess that it does probably 90% of the time. Back to the Future is one of the exceptions. However, there is a clear change in the direction of the story, which is always the true indicator of the changing of an act. The first act of Back to the Future is nothing more than Marty living in his Ordinary World, although we’re being given a ton of exposition and we don’t even realize it. The second act is all about Marty trying to get his parents to kiss at the Under the Sea Dance so that he and his siblings are not wiped from existence. The third act is about Marty getting back to the future in time to save Doc Brown. In fact, not only does Marty not lose everything at the end of Act 2, he’s completely successful. There is no real low point for him. He’s completed that phase of his overall goal, and now he’s moving on to the next one.

BackToTheFutureParentsSaved

Another thing that just occurred to me as well, is that there’s a great bit of planting and payoff at the beginning and end of Act 3 where Doc gives Marty (and us) a subtle warning that things will be different for Marty when he gets back. Marty tells Doc that his dad was great and that he punched Biff out and that he’s never done that in his life. Doc, examining the photo of Marty and his siblings and seeing that they’re all there, responds with a peculiar look on his face and ask, “Never?” Marty asks him why, and he tells him not to worry about it. Then when Marty does get back, and his family has transformed from a pathetic group of losers to a well-put together successful family unit, the plant is paid off.

Another thing that’s amazing about this story is how difficult the writers made it on the characters. Every challenge that Marty overcomes is replaced by one that it more difficult, and Marty (or Doc) has to come up with new (end entertaining) ways to overcome them. The shining example is the climax of the film. It’s one obstacle after another. Every time you think they’re in the clear, some other obstacle falls in their way. Zemeckis and Gale really lived by the mantra that audiences will not accept coincidences that help the hero, but will always accept coincidences that hurt him. Here’s the series of events that close out the climax. Marty has written a letter to Doc Brown warning him that he’ll be shot by terrorists on the night that Marty goes back in time, and he slips it in to Doc Brown’s coat pocket. Doc Brown discovers it as Marty is about to get into the car and he tears it up before he can read it, not wanting to know about future events. As Marty tries to tell him, a tree branch is knocked down by the storm and unplugs the cable that will carry the electrical current of the lighting to the car. Doc Brown has to climb all the way up the stairs to the top of the tower and throw a rope down to Marty so that he can tie the end of the cord to it and Doc Brown pulls it up. Marty tries to yell his warning to Doc Brown, but the clock bell chimes, signalling that Marty only has 4 more minutes and Doc tells him to go. Doc then tries to plug the cord in, but it’s hung up on the branch down below. He finally forces the plug in, but it comes unplugged down at the street, and Marty, who had to struggle to restart the car, is now barreling down the street. Doc uses a wire to slide down to the ground and gets the plug reconnected just in time. All of these obstacles hit at once under the threat of a ticking clock, and they all combine to create a highly tense and dramatic sequence.

Speaking of the ticking clock, the concept of time is a motif throughout. Obviously, since this is a movie about time travel, but time plays a critical role in the plot because Marty has multiple ticking clocks that he has to beat. He has to get his parents to kiss and fall in love by the Under the Sea Dance because we’ve been told in the first act that that was where they had their first kiss and that was when Marty’s mother knew that she would marry his father. Without that kiss, Marty is wiped from existence (high stakes). The other ticking clock is 10:04 pm on Saturday night. We know that that’s when lightning will strike the clock tower and unless Marty is in exactly the right place at that time, he’ll never get home and will be stuck in 1955 (more high stakes).

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Overall, Back to the Future is the complete package. It’s a highly entertaining film with a masterfully crafted story. I think crafted is the right word for the screenplay and the overall film. There are no accidents in this film. They crafted it in a meticulous and artistic way that has allowed it to become one of those cultural phenomenons that has also become a part of the popular vernacular. It has become ingrained in our popular culture and is certainly a film that anyone could enjoy, but is essential viewing for film buffs.