Hunger Games: Catching Fire: Spectacle vs. Story

Yep, we watched it. And it was a lot of fun.

I would like to point out that this is a movie starring a woman, that grossed $424 million domestic and $864 million worldwide. So, given the right vehicle and the right franchise, women can be action stars. They make a different kind of action star, but that's my second post.

This post has to do with story vs. spectacle. So that means it has a SPOILER, k?

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The Latin phrase deus ex machina means "god from the machine." In many ancient Greek plays, it seems, various complications would ensue and ensue, until in the end it looked like nothing was going to get resolved. Then a god would descend from Mount Olympos and put everything in its place. The "machine" was a contraption that allowed an actor to be flown out over the stage using a crane.

Hence, ἀπὸ μηχανῆς θεός, which translates to "deus ex machina."

In HUNGER GAMES, CATCHING FIRE, our heroine, Katniss Everdeen, is unwillingly dragged back into the Hunger Games. Philip Seymour Hoffman, playing the world's worst public relations man, has convinced the evil President that they can destroy her as a symbol of revolution if they can first get her to kill all her buddies.

Naturally she spends a great deal of time being upset about this, and then spends a good deal of time in the games trying her best not to kill anyone. And then she suddenly figures out how to blow up the fancy high-tech arena in which the Games take place, something on which she has spent absolutely no apparent thought until the last reel of the film.

Just as the roof is caving in, you might be thinking, well, how is she going to get out of this? But no worries! Because it turns out that Philip Seymour Hoffman is part of the revolution! And he is descending out of the sky in a rocketship to rescue Katniss! Yay!

Philip Seymour Hoffman ex machina.

I bring this up not to complain that HG: CF is a bad movie, or even a bad story. Structurally, it does have a big problem. The heroine doesn't seem to have a positive goal or a plan throughout the movie, just a point of view ("this sucks!"). And she does not motivate the ending.

But the kids seem to like it, to the tune of $865,000,000. (It made another million while you were reading this post.)

What does the movie have? Well, it has a character we really like, with a serious problem. It has a hate-able villain. It's got a romantic triangle. It creates a world that is recognizable as a dark reflection of our own. There are horribly rich rich people, terribly poor poor people, and bread and circuses. (As the Romans said, panem et circenses; why do you think it's called "Panem"?)

It has spectacle.

Movies are spectacles at least as much as they are stories. A movie can survive on spectacle alone. See the TRANSFORMERS franchise, and the STAR WARS prequels, both of which had far, far worse stories than HG: CF.

What I'm suggesting here is really that we, as writers, need to be a bit humble about story. I personally care a great deal about story. I even think that human beings are genetically hardwired to interpret the world in terms of story. But story is not only what happens. It is also who it happens to and where it happens. And if you have enough scrumptiousness in where it happens and who it happens to, you can sometimes get away with serious flaws in what happens.

After all, if you give us the building blocks of story -- the characters and the world and the predicament -- we can make up our own stories. We imagine ourself in the world, not mimicking the heroine's moves, but performing our own. What would we do if we were Katniss? Etc.

I'm told that part of the attraction for women watching SEX AND THE CITY was imagining oneself in Carrie's shoes but not screwing up relationships with perfectly adorable guys like Aidan.

Hence fan fiction.

That's also why I agree with Richard Rouse III and Jill Murray that story in games does not have to be a linear story. It can be presenting the player with a rich world and rich characters and a predicament, and letting him or her tell his own story through gameplay. (But that is also another post.)

"Because it's Cool."

Jim Henshaw over at The Legion of Decency has a wise post about "The Scene You Don't Write," referring to a particularly shocking scene in the last Game of Thrones but one, involving what went down in a tomb. Also, there was a similar scene he was asked to write years ago, which he refused to write, because it would have destroyed the hero as a character.

(There are not, technically, spoilers in what follow, but clever readers will probably figure stuff out, so if are you are behind in your GoT watching and zealously avoiding social media, read not on.)

I've noticed that certain directors and certain network execs have a very different point of view than I do about what we're putting on screen. I'm all about the story and the characters. I want to tell a story that moves the audience. I've noticed that many directors want most of all to thrill the audience. They want wow factor. They want spectacle. They pay lip service to story and character, but what they really want is cool moments, especially if they can put those cool moments on their reel. How those moments figure into the story is sometimes secondary.

"Why? Because it's cool, that's why."

I'd like to say that these directors' movies don't turn out well, but it's not true, depending on your definition of "turning out." Just about everyone I know thought the STAR WARS prequels were embarrassing, but they made Panamax-sized boatloads of money.

What happens between Cersei and her loving brother is not in the novel. So one wonders what was going through the writers' heads as they wrote the scene. Was it a dictum from HBO? Their mandate is basically, "stuff you can't put on TV":



Well, you certainly can't put the Cersei/Jaimi scene on broadcast TV, now can you. So that is all win. Right?

Of course, it does make Jaimi despicable, which the writers address by having the characters never, ever bring up what happened ever again, sort of like the Supreme Court and Bush v. Gore. That's what makes me suspect that the scene didn't come out of the writing room, but was a network dictum. If the writers had come up with it, they'd have run with it.

Oh, and Jaimi is superdecent to someone in the next episode, maybe by way of apology?

So what do you do when a director or a network wants to have a character do something that is horribly out of character, and will damage the story edifice you have carefully constructed?

This is a problem that every pro writer deals with constantly; because, unless you're writing a spec, you are responsible to whomever hired you. But you are also responsible to the story; and if your credits are a bunch of crap movies, it's unhealthy for your career (though it is healthier than no credits). It is hard being a good servant to two masters. You can attempt to explain why it's a horrible idea. You can threaten to quit (not recommended). You can actually quit (definitely not recommended).

Or you can try to modulate the bad idea in some way, and twist it so that it's not a bad idea.

The two best things you can do are (a) find the good version of their bad idea, so that you are indeed giving them the scene they want, but in a context where it is not a bad idea; or (b) offer them something equally or more spectacular that obviously will not work with the bad idea, so they have to choose one or the other.

If you can do either of these, people will love to work with you, and you won't feel like a hack or a whore.

I generally find that there is a good version of most "bad" ideas. Figuring it out starts with really isolating ad crystallizing what exactly it is that the client wants. They usually want to fix something they perceive as broken. Try to find out what's behind the bad idea, even if it's lonely-puppy syndrome. ("You haven't given me enough toys to play with, so I'm going to chew on the couch.")

If you have to write the bad scene, then write it so that it can be taken out of the script without damaging anything. I.e. don't put any important exposition or plot development in it. Maybe, with luck, it will get taken out in post when your exec or director realizes what he or she has done.

Always, always respond to a bad note on a different day than you get it. In the morning, it may not be such a bad note. That's why the phrase "I'll have a look at that" is your friend.

Of course, there are some situations, like Jim H's, above, where you really have to choose between a rock and a hard place. That's where you get to decide whether you want to be a righteous, proud writer, or a rich one. Up to you. "Pride, plus a sack, is worth a sack," as the Ferengi say. But, as we say in New York, if you can't live with yourself, it's going to be hard to find an apartment.

UPDATE:

If you want to see how the series lines up with the books, here's a handy article and chart. 

Final Draft 9 Activation Issues

The people at Final Draft were kind enough to send me a review copy of Final Draft 9, their snappy new edition of the software.

I've been using it on my current show; I'm not a big fan of Screenwriter's not-very-intuitive interface. I haven't run across any really dandy new features, except that Script Notes are now organized. I'm sure there must be other features; I was going to look them up next week.

However, now I've got a more basic problem. After, originally, activating the software with no problem, FD9 has now decided to deactivate itself. No problem, I put my customer number back in.

Nope, this time, it won't activate. I get a buggy error message:


No problem. I call up the activation hotline. I get a message saying FD9 can only be activated online. And here's where it gets serious:

The activation people only work Monday-Friday, during Pacific Coast work hours.

Uh, what?

Y'all do know that screenwriters work on weekends? And nights?

Are you effing kidding me?

In this era of 24-7 Bangalore help centers, it is really inexcusable to have a help desk that only works 40 hours a week, Pacific Standard Time.

They really, really need to fix this.

Oh, well. Back to FD8.

(Yeah, yeah, DMc. I know.)

UPDATE:  Final Draft 9 will also not update itself unless it thinks it's been activated. That's just dumb. Doesn't matter though; even if I update from outside the program, it still won't activate.

UPDATE #2:  Called the Activation Hotline. Something's wrong with that. It's the usual "press one for Final Draft 6 through 8..." except it doesn't wait for you to press a button before telling you "I didn't get that" repeatedly.

UPDATE #3:  This post solves the activation problem.

Feminist ROI

According to FiveThirtyEight, the domestic Return on Investment of movies that pass the Bechdel Test is $1.37; for movies in which the women never get to talk to each other it's $1.22; movies that don't even have two named women, it's $1.00.

Since Hollywood believes that international markets don’t want to see women in film, we also broke down the median return on investment for films based on domestic (U.S. and Canada) and international box office numbers. We found that Bechdel-passing films still have comparable returns on investment when the movies “travel."

In other words, treating women characters as if they were human beings makes you money.

Worth Promoting

I thought this tweet was worth promoting:

1. Have five trusted friends read your script and ask them to write a logline for it. Compare them, notice what they responded to/ignored.
— Eric Heisserer (@HIGHzurrer) March 29, 2014

Also, decide if their loglines would make a better script than yours, and rewrite your script to match.

Here's a Nickel for your Idea, Now Eff Off

Just got off the phone with a writer friend who's been offered a lousy deal for his pitch for a TV series. The deal boils down to some money if the show goes, but no "created by" credit and no guarantee of being in the writing room. If the production company actually shot a whole first season of the show, he calculated, he'd get a maximum of under $20K, and a very, very vague non-writing credit.

The production company, of course, wants to keep their options open. They figure they'll bring on a big-deal showrunner who will rewrite the idea and want a created by credit. He may not want to involve my friend in development. He may or may not want my friend involved in the writing room. There may not even be a writing room. So the production company says they can't give my friend a credit or promise to involve him in development.

By "can't," of course, they mean, "don't want to." Of course they can. They can give my friend a (shared) created by credit. They can guarantee him involvement in the development. He's not asking for control of the show. He's asking to be part of the process on a show that he originated.

This is why writers need agents. Not just agents, but agents who are willing to stick up for them. And are willing to walk away from a deal if it's a lousy one.

The fact is, most shows don't go. If writers had to live on working on their own shows in production, all but maybe two dozen of us would starve. Writers mostly live on (a) working on other people's shows and (b) developing their own shows. The key word here is development. Lots of scripts get developed. Very few pilots get shot. Fewer pilots get picked up. Almost no shows survive their first season.

So when you make a deal for your pitch, you need to get paid every step of the way. Obviously you get paid less for a pitch document than a pilot script. Obviously you get paid less, per hour, for a pilot script (which will have to be rewritten 99 times before it's a go) than for later scripts. But you need to get paid something at each step.

And you need to be creatively involved. If you're not a showrunner yet, you want second chair. If you don't qualify for second chair, you want to be on staff. If they can't put you on staff--

--they can put you on staff. They just don't want to. They can, if necessary, pay you to write 1 1/2 development scripts and then throw those scripts out if they hate them. It's just a cost of doing business.

They can give you a created by credit. After all, it's your idea. And any decent showrunner who comes on later will just have to understand that.

If I were taking over someone else's show, I don't think it would be a dealbreaker for me that they share a created by credit. After all, they created the show. Sure, I would rewriting lots of stuff. But I'm rewriting from what they brought. Someone who tries to erase their name is a bit of a jerk.

I once optioned a script from an amateur writer. I rewrote everything. New plot. New characters. Basically, I kept his title, because it was a great title that suggested a better script than he had written.

I could have just written my own script. But that would have been stealing.

("Good Army compass. How if I take it?" asks Sherif Ali. "Then you would be a thief," says Lawrence, understanding perfectly that Sherif Ali would not at all mind considering himself a murderer, but could not tolerate being thought of as a thief, even by a dead man.)

A good showrunner does not need to steal your credit. He's the bloody showrunner. It's going to be his show to play with anyway.

Here's where your power comes in. You do not have to sell anything. They can't make your series without your agreement. You can't ask for unreasonable things -- to be a showrunner if you don't have the experience, to get paid huge money up front -- but you can insist on reasonable things. And it is reasonable to expect that if someone makes a series out of your pitch, you get some credit and money for it. That's what writers invent series for.

You will lose a few deals by insisting, in the long run, yes. But in the long run, the deals you improve will more than pay for the ones you lose. And companies that are really serious about making your pitch will ultimately consider your demands just the price of doing business. The ones that can't stomach giving you anything, I tend to think, are not the ones who will get your series made at all, ever.

Sign in Blue Ink

Q. If a person sent you an NDA [Non-Disclosure Agreement], in the body of an email, and you were asked to email back "I agree" as the sign that you read and understood the particulars.... what do you think of the validity of that exchange?

Legally, I believe, even an oral agreement is binding. An email agreement is an agreement. 

However, an email is just a text file. Any text file can be edited in a text editor. What happens if one of you alters your copy of the agreement? Then it's "he said, she said."

 That's why Adobe PDF software enables cryptographic signatures on documents. An encrypted "signature" at least prevents tampering with the document.

In real life, people rarely forge documents. On the other hand, you keep reading about people who do. I'd stick with actual signatures.

(I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.)

Making it look natural is hard work

I listened to Neil De Grassi Tyson's podcast on NPR. He describes the work he did before going on Jon Stewart. He analyzed how long Stewart lets a guest talk before he busts out of a joke. Then Tyson practiced talking in a rhythm that would get out a complete thought in less time than that, so that he would always have made a complete point before Stewart came in with the joke. He goes on to talk about how people compared Larry Bird as a "student of basketball" to Michael Jordan, who's a "gifted athlete." Of course Michael Jordan works really hard, and smart. No one who comes across as gifted does so without also working hard at it. "A line will take us hours, maybe but if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstitching is as nought."