“Next to me in the blackness lay my oiled blue steel beauty. The greatest Christmas gift I had ever received, or would ever receive. Gradually, I drifted off to sleep, pranging ducks on the wing and getting off spectacular hip shots.”
Screenplay by Jean Shepherd, Leigh Brown & Bob Clark
This has been going around in my circle the past couple of years, and I’ve been hearing it even more this year. There is a cantankerous debate going around about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie. On the surface it seems like a ridiculous debate to have, but it does stir up questions about what constitutes a Christmas movie and what doesn’t.
A friend of mine told me the other day that if it has a Christmas tree in it, then it’s a Christmas movie. That, to me is too broad of a statement to make. Another person I know told me that, in order for a movie to be a Christmas movie, then the plot needs to revolve around Christmas. Again, I think that might be too broad a statement, especially when you consider a film like It’s a Wonderful Life, which is widely considered to be one of the best Christmas movies ever, and it certainly is one of the most popular. It’s on TV every Christmas, and the scene where George Baily runs through Bedford Falls yelling “Merry Christmas!” to everyone and everything in town is one of the most iconic scenes in cinematic history. However, the Christmas motif doesn’t kick in until two thirds of the way through the film. In fact, the first two thirds of the film have little or nothing at all to do with Christmas. But you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t consider It’s a Wonderful Life to not only be a Christmas movie, but one of the great Christmas movies of all time.
Then there are the classic Christmas movies like White Christmas, A Christmas Story and Miracle on 34th Street and others that are completely about Christmas, and build up to a Christmas crescendo. No one would argue the Christmas merits of those films, especially when so many of them even have the word Christmas in their titles.
But lets go back to Die Hard. It’s one of the great action films of the 80’s and it holds up surprisingly well. It has all of the elements of a great action flick, and unlike so many of its contemporaries, Die Hard actually has a pretty good story. It’s about New York cop john McClane (Bruce Willis), who travels to Los Angeles to see his kids and his estranged wife at Christmas. He goes to her office at Nakatomi tower for the company Christmas party. While he’s getting ready, the party is taken over by terrorists, led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), but they really turn out to be thieves who are after the hundreds of millions of dollars in the company vault. From there it turns into an action thriller as McClane’s street smart savvy goes up against Rickman’s sophisticated, diabolical and meticulous planning. But as far as Christmas is concerned, it’s nothing more than a backdrop at that point. It’s the reason to get McClane to L.A., but it has little or nothing to do with the rest of the story. To me, Die Hard is an action movie that happens to take place around Christmas, but I would not call it a Christmas movie.
One other point of interest is that I’ve never heard this debate as it pertains to Lethal Weapon, which has the same issue. It’s an L.A.-centric action film that happens to take place around Christmas time. It seems to me that if you’re going to call Die Hard a Christmas movie, then you need to do the same with Lethal Weapon.
What are your thoughts? How wide is your umbrella for what you would consider a Christmas movie? Does Die Hard fall in that category for you?
I wish I was a woman of 36, dressed in black satin with a string of pearls!
Screenplay by Robert E. Sherwood & Joan Harrison
RIP Joan Fontaine (1916-2013)
“I wish I was a woman of 36, dressed in black satin with a string of pearls!”
Screenplay by Robert E. Sherwood & Joan Harrison
RIP Joan Fontaine (1916-2013)
Lawrence of Arabia is the obvious choice, but his acting in The Lion in Winter was superior. Plus, this is some beautiful writing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXlDmAzrPi8
Anyone who has followed this blog with any regularity knows that I am an advocate of 3-Act structure, especially for new writers trying to break into the business. The reason for that is because as a former studio reader I know that studio readers are first and foremost on the lookout for any reason to pass on a script. It’s always easier to explain why you passed on a good script than why you recommended a bad one. So the first thing a reader will look for is the strength of the structure. Does Act I end between pages 25 and 30? Act II between pages 85 and 90? If you’re an established writer or filmmaker, you can get away with playing with the structure. If not, and the structure is not up to standards, whether intentionally or not, the reader will presume that the writer is an amateur, doesn’t know what he or she is doing, and pass on the script.
But is it really the only way to write a script or tell a story? The simple answer is, “of course not.” The history of cinema is replete with successful and popular and great films that did not conform to standard 3-Act structure. Many novels have been adapted into terrific movies that did not conform to that structure. The case could be made that Gone With the Wind, one of the greatest films of all time, does not easily fit into 3 acts, and yet it is a riveting film that has sold more tickets at the box office than any other film in history.
So what is the secret? What is the trick to writing a screenplay that does not necessarily conform to structure? Do I have to be Stanley Kubrick who told Full Metal Jacket in 2 acts and A Clockwork Orange in four acts? Likewise, does it have to be Casablanca, which is also told in four acts? Furthermore, the case could be made with Casablanca that Act 2 and Act 1 have swapped places, followed by acts 3 and 4. I could make the case that Rick’s Ordinary World was being in Paris with Ilsa, and he Crossed the First Threshold into the Special World of Act 2 when Ilsa doesn’t meet him at the train station, and he’s forced to leave Paris without her.
Yep, that’s all there is to it. Just write one of the great stories of all time, and no one will care about the structure. (Do you smell the sarcasm?) All kidding aside, there is certainly room for films that don’t follow the standard structure. There are as many ways to tell stories as there are stories to be told. In western cultures, it’s important for stories to have a beginning, middle and end, which implies the 3-act structure, but it doesn’t require fanatical obedience to it. Now, if you’re a writer who is still trying to make a name for yourself, you need to show that you can follow the rules before you show that you can effectively break them. That’s why it’s most important as a writer to know 3-Act structure. It’s important to know the Hero’s Journey. It’s important to demonstrate in your early writing that you have a grasp of these concepts. And you know what? That will make you a better writer. Imagine that. Having an understanding of the fundamentals of a discipline will make you more competent at that discipline. It’s a radical concept, I know, but one worth considering. Like Brad Hamilton told Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, “Learn it, live it, love it.”
The trick again is not using 3-act structure as a crutch, but to tell an amazing story that people want to hear or see in a theater. Let the structure be your guide. It can help you get past mental blocks. It can help you develop a compelling plot. And then, once you’ve mastered the art and the technique of writing in 3-Act structure, you’ll have the ability to make the structure fit what you’re doing. You’ll be able to make the structure work for you. You may even be able to write a story that completely ignores it. Just make sure that the story is good enough, the characters are engaging enough, and the writing is solid enough that a studio reader or executive or producer won’t be able to ignore it.
In honor of Thanksgiving, since this is a movie about trying to get home for the holiday:
“Was that seat hot or what? I feel like a Whopper. Turn me over, I’m done on this side. I’m afraid to look at my ass. There’ll be griddle marks.”
Screenplay by John Hughes
I recently got to see a work-in-progress screening of a film that will be out some time in the future. It had it’s moments and I could see the potential for a great film in what I saw, but it will not be great until they fix one major component. The film was weak thematically, and that caused it to have no spine.
Now you might ask, “What do you mean it had no spine?”
The spine of a story is comprised of the thematic elements involved and it’s what the story is trying to say. It’s not necessarily what it’s about, but it has more to do with how the story makes you feel, and it can quite often be reduced to a sentence or two.
The spine has to do with the theme of your story. It isn’t necessarily the theme of your story because your story could have many thematic elements playing with and against each other. What the thematic elements need to do, however, is come together to make easily identifiable what you’re trying to say. Sometimes it’s the moral or lesson of the story, but it doesn’t have to be that. It’s basically what you’re telling the audience. It’s why you’re telling this story.
Now you might ask, “Why is that important?”
I can’t tell you the number of scripts I’ve read where the writer seems to care less about the audience than anything else. Yes, I know you’re writing your script as a means of self expression, but you’d better be engaging the audience if you want anyone to read it, and you certainly had better be engaging the audience if you ever want to see it get made.
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As I think back on watching all of the Eon produced James Bond films, I thought I’d express a few final thoughts, as well as a couple of rankings. Obviously, this is one of the most popular film series of all time. Only the Harry Potter films have grossed more at the box office, and the only reason for that is inflation. More tickets have been sold for James Bond films than any other series, and more films have been made than any other series.
Why such enduring success? I do not consider myself an expert on James Bond, or an aficionado. I’ve merely seen all of the films, and it seems to me that these films are all a reflection of the times they’re from, while also instilling enough elements of fantasy to make them emotionally engaging. James Bond is charismatic (for the most part), heroic (almost always) and flawed. Women love him, men admire him and the world needs him.
That’s the difference between Bond and say, Jason Bourne or Ethan Hunt. The Bourne films and the Mission: Impossible films are all cut from the same cloth as Bond, but they lack something that Bond has. Bond carries sophistication. It doesn’t matter which Bond we’re talking about, they all carried a level of sophistication that no other action character can come close to matching. That’s where the admiration comes from.
That character has been the key, because there have been some real dogs in this series. We all love to talk about our favorites and debate the merits of Casino Royale over Goldfinger or On Her Majesty’s Secret Service over From Russia With Love, but for every one of those, there’s a The Man With the Golden Gun or Licence To Kill. This hasn’t been a perfect series, and even the best films in the series have flaws. The bottom line, however, is that the films are entertaining. They transport the viewer to a world that is simultaneously familiar and fantastic. That’s why we keep coming back for more.
Now, if you’ll indulge me, I have some lists. As mentioned above, I do not consider myself a Bond expert. I’ve simply seen all of the films, and I have some opinions on the films. Feel free to comment with your own lists. As I mentioned to someone a few days ago, the beautiful thing about films is that two people can see the same film and come away with completely different opinions. So I welcome differing opinions and would be interested to hear which films, Bond girls and Bonds you like best.
1) Skyfall
2) Goldfinger
3) From Russia With Love
4) Casino Royale
5) Thunderball
6) The Living Daylights
7) The Spy Who Loved Me
8) For Your Eyes Only
9) On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
10) GoldenEye
11) Dr. No
12) You Only Live Twice
13) Quantum of Solace
14) The World Is Not Enough
15) Die Another Day
16) Octopussy
17) Tomorrow Never Dies
18) Licence To Kill
19) Live and Let Die
20) Diamonds Are Forever
21) The Man With the Golden Gun
22) Moonraker
23) A View to a Kill
Sean Connery (The original and still the Gold Standard. The Bond to which all others are currently measured.)
Daniel Craig (The most human of Bonds. If he makes 2 or 3 more films the quality of Skyfall and Casino Royale, he’ll vault ahead of Connery.)
Pierce Brosnan (Solid, but not remarkable. He performed the role well, but is dragged down because his films weren’t as good, which isn’t entirely his fault.)
Timothy Dalton (Could have been rated higher if he had been in more films. The Living Daylights was great. Licence To Kill not so much.)
Roger Moore (Out of 7 films, only 2 were great, 1 was mediocre and the others were just bad. He played the role with a forced lightheartedness that never fit the character.)
George Lazenby (Grades out as incomplete. His 1 Bond film rates in the top 10, but he doesn’t have a large enough body of work.)
Titiana Romanova (From Russia With Love)
Vesper Lynd (Casino Royale)
Honey Ryder (Dr. No)
Anya Amasova (The Spy Who Loved Me)
Teresa di Vicenzo (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service)
Melina Havelock (For Your Eyes Only)
Domino (Thunderball)
Wai Lin (Tomorrow Never Dies)
Pussy Galore (Goldfinger)
Jinx Johnson (Die Another Day)
Natalya Siminova (GoldenEye)
Octopussy (Octopussy)
Solitaire (Live and Let Die)
Camille Montes (Quantum of Solace)
Kara Milovy (The Living Daylights)
Tiffany Case (Diamonds Are Forever)
Pam Bouvier/Lupe Lamora (Licence To Kill)
Kissy (You Only Live Twice)
Dr. Christmas Jones (The World is not Enough)
Mary Goodnight (The Man With The Golden Gun)
Dr. Holly Goodhead (Moonraker)
Stacey Sutton (A View To A Kill)
Skyfall is the best Bond movie of all time. There, I said it. This film beats anything that Pierce Brosnan did, anything that Timothy Dalton did, certainly anything that Roger Moore did, and even anything that Sean Connery did. Be honest with yourself. If someone handed you a DVD or a blu ray of Goldfinger and another one of Skyfall, which would you rather watch? For me, 3 times out of 4, it would be Skyfall.
The reason for this can be summed up in one word: drama. This is the most dramatic film in the Bond pantheon. It has the best acting from character to character and it strikes the best balance between action and story. The thing about the Daniel Craig films is that they’re heavy on action. The same can be said about the Pierce Brosnan films, but Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace had better stories than any of the Pierce Brosnan films. GoldenEye could be ahead of Quantum in that regard, but that’s a debate for another day. The Craig films had good stories, but what carried them mostly were the action sequences, which were intense and memorable. In that regard they were much more like the modern Mission: Impossible films of the Jason Bourne films than the classic James Bond films.
Few of the action sequences in Skyfall measure up to the action sequences in the previous Craig films, but they’re more effective because there are fewer of them and they’re paced out better. It helps when you have Sam Mendes directing. Mendes won an Oscar for American Beauty, and had critical and box office success with other films like Road to Perdition and Revolutionary Road before helming Skyfall. None of those films are known for their action sequences, so Mendes was a little outside of his wheelhouse for this film, but he still shows his considerable skills as a director by giving us a Bond film to which we feel an emotional attachment.
The relationship between Bond and M is the driving force in this film, and it’s one of a petulant son protecting a disciplinarian mother. A rogue MI6 agent is bent on assassinating M for past transgressions, and taking down MI6 with her. The villain, Silva, is in a position of strength since he knows the secrets of MI6 and he knows what moves M and Bond will make before they make them. It’s basic storytelling in that the villain is put in a position of power, and the hero needs to take action which moves the story forward. Bond spends the first half of the film reacting to Silva, but changes to a more proactive stance at the midway point of the film. Mendes spends the first half of the film getting us engaged with the characters and their relationships, so that we as an audience care about them and what happens to them. Then the second half of the film is spent dealing with the consequences of the first half. It’s a well balanced, well constructed, well paced story that any aspiring writer or director could study when constructing their own stories.
Another aspect of this film that is great is that it pays homage to previous Bond films throughout, whether it’s the Aston Martin car that Bond and M make their escape in or the new Q telling Bond that he’s not getting an exploding pen. At once they’re deconstructing and paying homage to the Bond of the past while ushering in the Bond of the present and future.
One Bond motif that is noticeably absent in Skyfall is the Bond girl. The case could be made for either Eve or Severine to fill that role, but neither of them are in the film nearly enough to justify that distinction. In fact, if there’s a Bond girl at all in this film, it’s M. She spends the most time with Bond, the plot circles around her issues and she’s the one with whom Bond forms the strongest emotional attachment. Her final scene is one that is emotionally jarring and poignant as Bond seems to mature right before our eyes because of her tutelage and guidance. But it could be an interesting source of debate. Is there a Bond girl in Skyfall, and if so, who is she?
There is no mistaking who the villain is in Skyfall, however. Javier Bardem brought all of the sinister magic to Silva that made him such a terrifying villain in No Country For Old Men and he spiced it up with a natural flare for Skyfall. His performance is among the very best villain performances in the series, and even though he isn’t overtly threatening the whole world with annihilation like other villains in the series, his psychotic and unrelenting focus on killing M and dishonoring her while he does it make him a truly threatening villain that the audience can legitimately fear. But there is more to Silva than that. He has depth and nuance, and that is another of the strengths of this film. Whether you agree with his motives or not, he has clear motivation for wanting to bring harm to M and to MI6. In his mind he is justified. He’s the perfect villain who is the hero of his own story.
Is Skyfall a perfect film? Certainly not. Perhaps I missed it, but I would really like to know how Bond survived falling a couple of hundred feet off the train bridge with multiple gunshot wounds. I’d like to know how he avoided drowning or bleeding to death or dying from the fall, because it isn’t terribly clear in the film.
However, over all this is the best film in the series. I don’t blame anyone for preferring Goldfinger or From Russia With Love or even On Her Majesty’s Secret Service to Skyfall, but in my opinion this film is the most dramatic, best acted and most balanced of any of the Bond films. Here’s how I know that Skyfall is a great film and the best Bond film. I’ve spent the past two and a half months watching all 23 Bond films that Eon Productions made, and now I’m bummed that I have to wait until next year to see another one. Always leave them wanting more, they say. Skyfall certainly does that.