"Notes to Screenwriters" in the News

Here's a new interview with Barbara and Vicki about our book and the current crisis in storytelling. Thanks to the Azusa Pacific University magazine for spreading the word!

Here's a snip...

What are the biggest challenges the movie industry faces in terms of storytelling?

Nicolosi: The system of movie creation is broken, which makes good storytelling difficult or impossible. Today, movies are not stories, but a product. So many people at the table try to change the story and these alterations have everything to do with selling it as a product—marketing the product, making the product more global – and nothing about whether it works as a story. Generally, we moderns lack detailed, focused, rigorous labor in all of the arts. Storytelling is suffering from this too. Our book says the way to move forward is to look backward. Look at what Aristotle said about story and what Aesop did and try to bring those principles into the modern era.

Interview: Peterson and Nicolosi on 'Movies Matter'

Why Pixar's 'Inside Out' Premise is Brilliant

Pixar released the extended trailer yesterday for its upcoming feature, Inside Out:

The premise is that characters who each represent an emotion live in the control center (get it?) of a human's brain and tries to "help". Of course, we can assume these emotions get in each others' way and muddle things up as much as possible.

The premise might at first seem like a risky move for Pixar. For one thing, it's unlike anything we've seen before. For risk-averse Hollywood, cranking out another Cars sequel might seem like a better financial move. Pixar, known and respected for creating delightfully original content, has been playing it safe lately, so this is a welcome and hopeful nod to their strong storytelling roots.

In spite of theoretical risk, Inside Out, from a story perspective, is a brilliant idea. Why? The premise taps into the very reason people go see movies: to feel something.

In our chapter on story in Notes to Screenwriters, we discuss why a story has to matter. A story is something to learn. The primary lesson that people want to learn in story has to do with a better way to live. A story is also something to dream. The societal point for story is for audience members to watch the trials and tribulations of a made up character and then import those lessons into their real lives. And finally, a story is something to feel.

"Stories are meant to provide a variety of human experience. Especially emotional experience. Our psyches are programmed for a wide spectrum of emotional sensations, ranging from sidesplitting laughter to gut-wrenching sobs, from the thrill of wonder to goose bumps and shrieks of terror. When we feel intense emotions, they can act as a cathartic release or purge."

Also in Notes to Screenwriters, we break down the various emotions and their corresponding genres. People go to dramas to experience pathos and sympathy. they go to comedies to experience surprise and the absurd. They see horror films to experience the limits of their own courage.

It's safe to assume that Inside Out will deliver all of these emotions and more. Perhaps this is the new meta-genre. Pixar is the best at establishing ultimate mass appeal, and this film suggests that whatever you want to feel at the movies, Inside Out will have it.

Of course, this premise is so "high concept" it could backfire by trying to accomplish too much and thereby please no one, but if anyone can pull something off like this, it's Pixar. We won't know for another three months if they deliver on the premise, but we hope they do! 

Complex Structure: A Storyteller's Enigma

There is a lot to like in one of this year's Best Picture nominees The Imitation Game.  As a beautifully recreated period piece with a quirky, brilliant protagonist and high stakes internal and extrernal stories, it's the kind of movie that will always do well with movie fans and critics alike.  So, why didn't it really catch fire? Why did it play, in the end, as basically enjoyable, but not something we would ever need to see again?  Possibly because of the risks the storytellers took in structure.  Risks that proved too much for the story. 

The structure in The Imitation Game was very problematic. Weaving in and out of three stories spread over forty years is always going to emotionally distance the audience from the characters. The story of Turing falling in love as a young boy offered the main pathos of the movie and was the filmmakers' attempt to make us forgive Turing for his ill-treatment of others as an adult.  But it didn't add much if anything to the main story of breaking Enigma, nor really even of explaining his social disorders. Just because somebody has their heart broken when they are twelve does't excuse that person treating all other people badly forever. What was gained from the boyhood story could have gotten done in one short scene, we didn't need to spend twenty minutes of the movie going back there. 

Flashing ahead to the investigation of Turing by the police also added little to the main story.  The whole episiode was contrived to get to the historical fact that Turing was prosecuted for indecency.  It would have had more power to the audience it if had been left as a title card at the very end.  What was lost in audience engagement by the periodic flashing forward to watch the police figure out something the audience already knew, ended up as an insurmountable obstacle to the storytelling.

Every time The Imitation Game jolted back into the distant past or ahead into the future the audience was lifted out of the movie and distanced from the illusion of the story as being their story.  Flashbacks and flash forwards are very, very tricky. They belong on the shelf of tools on the cinematic workshop which has the sign, "Just because we can doesn't mean we should."