Absolutely, For Sure

It's been months since I saw Definitely, Maybe. I knew I'd blog about it eventually, but it's taken me all this time to really articulate why I think it's a strong, fresh romantic comedy.

I thought -- is it because I like all 4 of the leads? Ryan Reynolds has grown on me a lot, but the real gems of the film are the women: Elizabeth Banks, Rachel Weisz, and Isla Fisher? Great choices.

Then I thought, hmm, maybe it's all the wonderful grounding details in the story. Example: we spend part of the time in the '90s, while Ryan works on Clinton's presidential campaign. Hadn't seen that before, and yet it felt like a character detail rather than a hey-we're-travelling-in-time gimmick.

But no. I've realized what it is.

This is a romantic comedy structured around a mystery.

The premise: A single dad tells his young daughter about the 3 great loves of his life, and lets his daughter guess which one turned out to be her mother.

While I'm following these love stories -- all with their own nuances and complications -- I'm also, like the daughter, trying to put together the pieces of this puzzle. And I confess, I wasn't totally sure right up until the big reveal.

And the story doesn't even end with that reveal... that'd be too easy.

The fact is, this is where most romantic comedies fail. When non-rom-com-lovers refer to the genre, it's as "formulaic" and "predictable". This is because the central plot question is so often "Will this couple get/stay together?". It's almost always a gimme... of course they will!

Definitely, Maybe opts instead for a central question with real suspense. Which woman is mom?

How can any of us go back to the conventional faux-structure, now that we've seen this?

The Drama Before the Drama

Rewatching Cloverfield, I was struck again by how tight a movie it really is. Come on, people... if you don't think this movie works on a monster/disaster level, I don't know what.

But here's a simple lesson that's a great reminder for our own work: before the "problem of the movie" kicks in, the characters already have problems! In Cloverfield, our gang of partiers is celebrating Rob's big promotion... while Rob is pining for Beth, the girl who's about to be the "one who got away". For the first twenty minutes of the movie, that's what Rob cares about -- Beth is seeing someone else, because he never called her after their perfect day together. It's also what pretty much everyone else at the party is interested in too. 'Cause you know what? Who's-sleeping-with-whom is what life's all about.

Characters are supposed to be people. People always have drama in their lives. The things they care about may seem small when a giant monster attacks New York City... but until then, life isn't just jello shots and singalongs. Minor dramatic conflict goes a long way in helping establish the characters and what drives them, while keeping the tension up until the real stuff gets going. Even Luke Skywalker whined about wanting to go get power converters, if only his aunt and uncle weren't such sticks-in-the-mud.

Of course, in Cloverfield's case, the minor (romantic) drama is pretty much the major throughline of the film. The central question of the story is less "Will they survive?" and more "Will Rob get to Beth in time to tell her how he feels?"

So there it is. Have your characters sweat the small stuff until the big stuff comes along. You can't go wrong.

Problems: Part of the Solution

Rewatching Serenity the other night, I was struck by how many things I could blog about. The opening covers so much backstory, yet moves fast and is fun to watch. Our first moments with Serenity's crew (for those who were tragically unfamiliar with Firefly) offer mini-conflicts, getting exposition out without it feeling ham-handed. And there's wonderful moments of subtext in the movie. After the climax, Captain Mal asks Zoe, his right-hand woman who saw her husband die, about the damage to the ship. Her words: "She's torn up plenty, but she'll fly true." Yow.

There was one aspect of the story, though, that I really took note of this time, and that felt like something I've never written about. Which is the idea that everything -- problems as well as their solutions in the story -- is organic and connected. Two examples:

The Solution is Also the Problem

Mal and the Serenity crew have discovered a tragic conspiracy that effectively amounts to genocide on at least one "outer rim" planet. The only way they can get the word out is through Mr. Universe -- the hacker of all hackers, who can show the incriminating video footage on millions of screens across the 'verse simultaneously. When Mal finally gets to Mr. Universe, he's been preemptively killed by the Alliance, and his massive computer network destroyed. In his dying moments, though, Mr. Universe programmed his wife-bot with a message for Mal: instructions to the hidden backup system. This is excellent news -- Mal may still be able to get evidence of the conspiracy out there...

...but unfortunately, the wife-bot was programmed to begin relaying her message when someone walks into the room... not just Mal. Shortly after Mal has heard this crucial bit of information, the villain hot on his tail walks into the same room. And hears the same message.

The solution for Mal also created a problem for him. And thank God, because without this problem, there wouldn't have been much of a climax for the movie.

The Problem is Also the Solution

In this world, the most feared creatures of all are Reavers: humans who have mutated into chaos and madness -- raping, killing, and cannibalizing anyone in their path (and, to paraphrase a famous line from the series, hopefully in that order). When they're on their way to Mr. Universe to make the conspiracy public, Mal and his crew know dozens of Alliance ships are standing guard, waiting to blow them away. They're ridiculously outnumbered. So, moving through Reaver territory, they attack a Reaver ship and draw the attention of dozens if not hundreds of Reaver vessels... and proceed to speed toward the awaiting Alliance ships. The ensuing battle allows Serenity to make it to their destination. (The battle is extra-sweet symbolically, considering we've just learned that the Alliance conspiracy is directly responsible for the manifestation of Reavers to begin with.)

Mal basically took one problem (Reavers) and threw it in the face of another (the Alliance).

I'm thinking, when we're looking for a solution to a problem in our script, our first stop should be to look at what's already there.

The Burden of Context

Watching Charlie Wilson's War was an odd experience. It had that "ragtag team coming together to accomplish something huge" feeling, as a tiny group of unlikely allies work together to covertly help Afghanistan defeat the Goliath-like Soviets, thereby ending the Cold War. You want to really root for these guys (the U.S. backers, as well as the underdog rural Afghanis) and when they're successful, you really, really want to celebrate with them.

The problem of course, is that while you're watching these events unfold, you can't help but think about everything that's still to come. The Taliban, 9/11, horrific ethnic conflict in former Soviet states, etc... in short, not less war, but more.

I don't think this burden of hindsight is a problem -- I think it's a fantastic element that's used all the time, to great effect. It's what makes a movie like Schindler's List powerful... we know now the full extent of WWII's horrors, which makes even small acts of heroism during the holocaust all the more meaningful.

The lesson? You can have your cake and eat it too: Charlie Wilson's War played the characters' actions as cause for celebration, knowing we as an audience are going to be conflicted about it the entire time -- and acknowledging that in its final scenes and title card.

The cake is rich and delicious!

How to Be True

I thoroughly enjoyed re-watching True Romance last night; it remains a sentimental favourite. Now, I'm not so much about Elvis in the bathroom, or the Sicily history lesson, or the kung fu. Most of that stuff typed by anybody but Tarantino just sounds like it's trying too hard.

No, I'm more about plain old storytelling. Here are some True Romance lessons that endure:

1. The characters have colour. I'm not just talking about Clarence and Alabama. I'm talking about guys like Floyd (the stoner played by Brad Pitt). This is a character who has nothing to do except inadvertently lead the bad guys -- twice -- to the good guys. Why does he do it? Because he's so far out of his head that he just wants to be nice and show how helpful he can be. Anybody want a hit from his honey-bottle bong?

2. Speaking of leading the bad guys to the good guys... the structure of this story is predicated on a big coincidence in the inciting incident: Clarence leaves his driver's license in Drexl's (the dead pimp's) hand. Without this "oops", there is no way the gangsters would've figured out who stole the coke, and where he might be. But you know, you buy it... Clarence just shot up the place and killed some dudes and he's just a guy who works at a comic book shop, and he's a bit... stressed, the moment he's actually running out of the place. A good reminder of how you can still make a must-have plot point credible.

3. There's a ton of characters. But we don't meet anybody until we need to. Thank God we don't spend an hour checking in on cops Chris Penn and Tom Sizemore before they come into play, eh?

4. The scene where the gangster (James Gandolfini, who has not been at all typecast in his career) beats the crap out of our heroine Alabama. This scene is so brutal it's hard to watch, but I have to give the filmmakers credit: this scene, unlike how it might be played in another movie, never turns sexual. There's no threat of rape. How refreshing! And why does this beating never go there? I'd guess it's because the gangster is a professional. He's here to do a job. Not all gangsters are psychos, and not all scenes of violence against women must be sexual violence. (Yeah, I said it, Andrea Dworkin! Eat it!)

5. And then, of course, there's the romance: "Baby... you have blood in your eye." Awww.

And those are some of the reasons I still love True Romance. Feel free to share yours.

A Few Good Deaths

*There's a spoiler warning on this site already, but please, please don't read this if you haven't yet seen Children of Men.

Rewatching Children of Men on DVD, I realized one of the most powerful aspects of the story: its deaths.

Lots of movies have characters who sacrifice themselves--sometimes even the protagonist does so--or are collateral damage in the battle that is the story. But when I finally saw this movie a second time, I really saw it for the simple, elegant story it is: there's something worth protecting, there's a journey to safety, and there's the many people along the journey who throw themselves (literally and figuratively) in front of the precious cargo to protect it, in the hope that something good will come of it someday. Sound familiar?

There is such a thing as a good death; that's clear from many movies. But I'm hard-pressed to think of another contemporary film structured around the relentless execution of characters we care about, and that doesn't feel remotely exploitative. It works here because the stakes are so damn high, the price for "success" must be absolutely brutal. For me, the lesson is: we don't have to protect our characters. For them, as for many people, a death in service of a cause is preferable to a wasted life.

Biopic of the Litter

-Or-

And On the Seventh Day, God Rolled Credits

Finally saw The Queen the other day. I'm sorry I put it off. Of all the Best Picture nominees this year, it's the one that really moves.

The conventional biopic seems to me to be built on multiple episodes leading up to the hero's breaking point, followed by their ultimate redemption. See The Aviator, or Ray. The problem with that structure? First of all, it makes the films feel interminably slow. We simply aren't being guided toward an answer to a bigger question. The question is often just "Where will this end?" (or in my case, "Is this ever going to end?").

The Queen is so simple. It pits Elizabeth II against the newly-elected Tony Blair in the days following Princess Di's death. The big question being, will Elizabeth cave to the pressure to show public grief for this massively popular woman who was no longer part of the family?

The dramatic question being so simple creates two immediate benefits: first, this question has a limited shelf life. The movie takes place over six days. We know our answer can only be so far down the road. We know we're not, for instance, going to have to watch Elizabeth react to her mum's death, or Charles's engagement to Camilla, or Harry stupidly wearing that Nazi costume to a Halloween party. Instead, the movie propels itself toward its ending (the "answer") like a guided missile.

The second benefit? By having a very simple plot structure, there's lots of room for character. The movie tells the story of a woman through the story of this particular dilemma.

Why the hell is this such a rare choice for a biopic?