MALE SPEAKER: OK, then.
Now we today have the
honor or welcoming
a man who knows more
about stories than anyone
else I can think of and
who recently also chose
to share his knowledge
in this book.
So it's a great opportunity.
John Yorke is the
managing director
of Company Pictures, the
UK drama independent,
producing "Skins,"
"Shameless," "The White Queen,"
and "Wolf Hall."
For many years, he's been
responsible for a vast array
of British drama, as both
head of Channel 4 drama
and controller of
BBC drama production.
In 2005, he created the
BBC Writers Academy,
a year-long in depth
training scheme which
has produced a generation of
successful television writers.
He's also worked as
editor of "The Archers."
He is currently a visiting
professor of English language
and literature at the University
of New Castle upon Tyne.
So I would like for us all
to give a round of applause
as a welcome to John Yorke.
[APPLAUSE]
JOHN YORKE: Thank you so much
for those generous words.
I shall begin with a
thank you and apology.
Firstly a thank you.
I'm hugely flattered to be asked
to come and talk here today.
It means something
very much to me.
And second an
apology, because what
I'm going to try and
do in the next 35,
40 minutes is tell the
whole history and mechanics
of how all
storytelling has worked
since the beginning of time.
So if I rush through that
slightly, please forgive me.
I'm going to take
loads of shortcuts,
make loads of absurd
generalizations, loads
of things where you may go, ahh.
But if you feel like
going ahh, then please do.
Please do stop me
and ask questions.
It's absolutely fine.
I'll try and leave
some time at the end.
But in the interest of
brevity and moving on,
what I'm going to
talk about today
is what I'm going to
call story physics.
I'm going to talk about
how the narrative works
and explore the similarities
between narrative
in film and television,
but also hopefully touch
on theater, novel, and
narrative in life, about how
we tell stories about
the institutions
we work in, about our history,
and how perhaps, arguably, they
all work in exactly
the same way.
And perhaps that has something
to do with the laws of physics.
OK, so that's really what
I want to do in a nutshell.
So I want to begin with a
quote from Andrew Stanton who
worked for Pixar, and
some of maybe will know,
directed the film,
"Finding Nemo."
And I came across this
quote some years ago.
He said, "You often
hear the term,
'You should have something
to say in a story,' but that
doesn't always mean a message.
It means truth, some
value that you yourself
as a storyteller
believe in and then
through the course
of the story be
able to do the
debate that truth.
Try to prove it wrong.
Test it to its limits.
This is the stuff I
really geek out on.
I call this 'Story Physics."
And story physics,
that whole subject
of something confronted
by its opposite,
is really the heart
of what I want
to talk about this afternoon.
Now I want to begin
with a clip, if I may.
The first clip, it's from
"EastEnders," which some of you
may be familiar with, from about
20 years ago, which ages me.
Because I was the script
editor on this very clip.
I suspect half of you probably
weren't even born or not
allowed by your
parents to watch it.
But shall we have a quick look.
It's about two minutes long.
Hopefully it's self-explanatory.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-Talk to me.
-I've got enough problems
without that, Bianca.
Oh come on.
Don't look at me like that.
-I just keep making such a
stupid fool out of myself.
-No you don't.
It's all right.
I understand.
Don't worry.
-I'm embarrassed now.
-Don't-- don't cry.
It's nothing to
be embarrassed of.
It's only me.
I'm not going to say anything.
-I feel really stupid.
-Oh, come here.
Oh, you're a silly
thing, aren't you?
Hey.
I'll sing you a lullaby.
Hmm?
-No.
Kiss me.
-There.
That do?
Feel better?
-Now kiss me properly.
-No.
I don't think that's-- I don't
think that's such a good idea,
Bianca.
-Why not?
-Look, Bianca, you're drunk.
You don't know
what you're doing.
-Why don't you like me?
-Yes.
Yes, I do.
I like you a lot.
Don't do that.
Hey.
Don't do that.
Bianca, stop it.
Look--
-I like you too.
-Stop it.
This is something
you will regret.
Now just stop it.
-No, I won't.
-Bianco, cut it out, will you?
Just cut it out.
I'm sorry, but this ain't on.
Do you know what I mean?
-No, I don't as it goes.
-It's nothing personal.
-That's the stupidest thing
I've ever heard you say.
-Yeah, yeah, you're right.
It is.
-But then why not?
I mean, what's wrong with me?
Why's no one like me?
-I do like you.
I do.
I like you very much.
-Well then why--
-We just can't.
OK?
We can't.
-But I want you, David.
-No, you don't, Bianca.
Look, really, you don't.
Believe me.
You've been drinking, darling.
You don't know what
you're-- what you're doing,
alone what you want.
-I do.
I want you.
You want me as well, don't you?
-Bianca, please
don't do this to me.
Bianca, stop it!
Stop it!
For crying out loud, are you
trying to drive me insane?
Bianca, you can only
push a bloke so far.
Do you know what I mean?
-Well, why?
What have I done?
-You know what you did.
-Well, damn, why not?
I mean, what's your problem?
-I'm your father, all right?
-No, you ain't.
You can't be.
-I can be.
And I am.
I'm sorry.
I'm-- I'm really, really sorry.
You shouldn't have
found out like this.
Yeah.
I'm-- Come on.
-Don't.
Don't touch me.
Just leave me alone.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[APPLAUSE]
JOHN YORKE: I'm not
sure you're supposed
to laugh quite that much.
It's fine.
It's rather dated.
And it is what it is.
But what I want to use it
to, say, illustrate hopefully
a deeper point.
For years, I set up the
BBC Writer's Academy.
And my job has been to
teach people storytelling.
And I developed this
ridiculously shorthand,
ridiculously simplistic
way of trying
to analyze how a story
works if you get stuck.
And I came up with a system,
which if you ask 10 questions
and you could answer them all,
probably that will give you
a story shape.
And as those 10 were
questions, very quickly,
whose story is it?
What's the flaw in
their character?
What's the inciting incident?
What do they want?
What obstacles are in their way?
What's at stake?
Why should we care?
What do they learn?
How and why do they change?
And how does it end?
OK, so very simple,
again, simplistic
for obvious reasons-- brevity.
But you take those 10 questions.
Let's have a look at that
scene we've just seen.
Because it applies
to whole stories.
it applies to
episodes of stories.
But it also applies
to scenes themselves,
because dramatic
structure is fractal.
So it's the same units
enlarged time and time again.
So if we take David's story,
and again simplistic answers,
who's story is it?
Well, it's David's, obviously.
What's his flaw?
Well, he has a knowledge
the he hasn't imparted,
which is I'm your
father, obviously.
This was before "Star Wars," I'd
like to make this quite clear.
What's the inciting incident?
What's the event that sparks
off the problem, the catalyst?
Bianca tries to kiss him.
What does he want?
Well, he wants to
stop her kissing him.
Sort of.
What obstacles are in his way?
Well, obviously, Bianca.
It's very simple.
And then we move
on, what's at stake?
Well, his mental state,
I think we can probably
say, a few laws perhaps as well.
Why should we care?
Well, hopefully we like
the character-- not like,
but there's something about
him that we care about.
He's vulnerable.
We empathize with him.
What does he learn?
He learns to tell the truth.
How and why?
Bianca pushes him to
the point of no return,
sexual arousal, et cetera.
Because at some
level, clearly there's
something going on that he's
very uncomfortable with.
How does it end?
The knowledge is imparted.
OK, so very
simplistic, but it will
do as a kind of rule of thumb.
Let's have a look at Bianca
and what Bianca does.
Because what if
it's Bianca's story?
And what do you get?
Whose story is it?
Well, obviously, it's Bianca's.
What's her flaw?
Well, it's a lack of
knowledge of the situation.
It's her innocence.
What's the inciting incident?
He rejects her.
She wants to sleep with him.
What obstacles are in their way?
Well, David and
David's behavior.
What's at stake?
Her mental state.
Why should we care?
Arguably, she's vulnerable.
Two, what does she learn?
She's going to learn
to deny the truth.
How and why?
David pushes her to
the point of no return.
How does it end?
Truth rejected-- "No you ain't.
Get away from me."
OK, so again, very
simple, I've brought it
right down to absolute basics.
But clearly, there's
a pattern going on.
And what this pattern,
I think, introduces to,
which is really the heart of
the physics and the physics
that underpin story
I want to talk today,
is about this, this
extraordinary universe
of opposites.
So here's the pitch document
for "The Wire," which
David Simon wrote
and sent to HBO.
And in the pitch
document, he says,
"Suddenly the police bureaucracy
is amoral, dysfunctional,
and criminality in the
form of the drug culture
is just as suddenly
a bureaucracy."
All of "The Wire," all of
five series of "The Wire,"
are built on exactly
the same engine.
It's two sides slowly changing
places over five seasons.
What I'm going to answer--
hopefully by the end of this
I'll come some way
to convincing you
that opposites are the
root of everything.
And you can see this,
I think, quite clearly
by just looking of any drama
you've seen in the last week,
the last month, any book you've
read, any image you find,
opposites.
Opposites again.
I'm sorry, that's a
very bad quality images.
That is a shark.
And apparently I once looked
a bit like him as well.
Anyway, so there you go.
So opposites again,
complete opposites.
So on a story level-- I
just plucked these at random
this morning-- every character
is thrown into a world which
is absolutely
opposite of the world
they start in-- not
just vaguely opposite,
but absolutely opposite.
So Avatar are
captured by natives.
James Bond, Goldfinger,
classic opposites.
The Queen has no empathy.
Diana dies.
She's thrown into a world
where she has to feel.
"The King's Speech,"
classic opposite.
Mad Australian, in his
view, I should add.
"120 Hours," a man who
believes in absolutely freedom,
running through the
wilderness, trapped.
"The Social Network,"
Jewish insecure
geek thrown into big WASP world
of unimaginable privilege.
"12 Years a Slave," of
course, is absolutely
built on the dialectic
of freedom and slavery.
"Rush," Nikki Hunt and
Lauda, obviously opposites.
"Gravity,"
companionship, solitude.
OK, they all very clearly
embrace these two states
and are about the transition
from one state into another.
On a scene level,
for those of you
old enough, on "EastEnders,"
probably the biggest
moments in "EastEnder's"
history, or one of them,
"You can't tell me what to do.
You ain't my mother."
Kat, "Yes, I am."
OK, it's very simple.
They're absolutely opposite
in every conceivable way.
And then if you go to
British television,
if you go back in the history,
that's about 30 years old now,
"Edge of Darkness," Bob Peck.
His daughter's been murdered.
He goes and looks
in her bedroom,
because he can't
understand what's happened.
And he finds a teddy bear.
And he finds a gun.
And the whole of the series is
about how does that make sense.
In the end, he finds
out why and how.
"Line of Duty"-- apologies
for the image-- but again,
very clear opposites in
those two characters.
That's series one
of "Line of Duty."
Forgive, these are largely
BBC and British examples.
So forgive me.
"Line of Duty," series
two, those two, very clear
emotionally opposites.
And if you go back again
to one of the great shows
of British television, a
man with terrible psoriasis
lying in a hospital
bed, fantasizing
of being the coolest
detective this side
of Humphrey Bogart in the 1930s.
He fantasizes the opposite
state for himself.
And then we get to sidekicks.
I mean, this could go
on for a long time.
But clearly they're built
on something more than just,
oh, well that's interesting,
says the writer.
I'll do that.
And they always, if you go back
as far as [INAUDIBLE], which
is 1973, I believe--
I can go back
as far as I could in
television terms--
what you start to
realize is story physics,
this whole thing of
opposites, is everywhere.
So why?
What is going on?
It doesn't make sense.
So any of you who've studied
screenwriting at all,
or have a vague or parting
interest in screenwriting,
may have heard of this guy,
Syd Field who in the 1970s
wrote this book.
And Syd Field was
the first person
to try and articulate
how storytelling
worked in Hollywood.
And he basically came up with
an archetype, a paradigm,
with three acts.
He certainly wasn't the
first person to notice it.
But he was the first person to
write it down, articulate it,
and use it as a
teaching tool, which
allows him to create an
industry, which has grown
insanely to the level of today,
where screenwriting teaching is
one of the biggest industries
outside of cinema making
itself.
So he created a simple paradigm.
There's a three-act structure--
setup, confrontation,
and revolution.
Revolution?
Resolution.
That would be interesting.
OK, and between each
stage, a turning
point at the end of each act.
So act one, set up;
act two, confrontation;
act three, resolution.
Now, this carried
on for 20 years,
and there were
thousands more books,
notably by people like
Christopher Vogler and Robert
McKee, in 2000.
And they largely
stick to the adherence
to the three-act form.
But what's interesting about
all these books is none of them
say why.
There is no articulation of why.
They say, you must have an
inciting incident on page 12,
but they don't tell you what
font size you're writing in.
So it can't make any sense.
It doesn't have any
intellectual rigor.
And it seems to me that the most
important thing about studying
narrative is if you say these
things, you have to prove them.
It's basic science.
You have to approach
it like science.
But one of two people
did make a breakthrough.
There's a man called [INAUDIBLE]
he was a Hungarian theater
critic in the 1960s, and then
later the American playwright
David Mamet started to realize
that there was a pattern.
And it was a pattern
that is effectively
based on the act of perception.
So how do we perceive the world?
There's a babe-- forgive
the graphics-- snatched.
Slightly random.
There's a baby.
And there's a match.
If the baby touches
the match, the baby
learns not to touch
the match again.
Isn't it?
It's very simple.
It's I exist.
I perceive the world.
I change.
You come to this talk today.
You listen to me.
And you decide what you
think of me, what I'm saying.
You may think I talk rubbish.
I may think I don't.
That's absolutely fine.
But the process will happen
whether you like it or not.
You can't help but
come to some conclusion
about what you perceive.
I'm sure you do
this-- well, of course
you do this in your
jobs every day.
OK, so fundamentally,
what we're saying
is we think dialectically--
thesis, antithesis,
and synthesis.
So it's all built around
Hegel's theory of dialectics.
Though it goes back
much further than that.
So the fundamental process
by which humans assimilate
knowledge-- we exist, we find
something new, we explore it,
we assimilate it, and we change.
And of course, what we're
doing because of that is
we're ordering the world.
We're turning the
world into narrative.
Because the world without order
is overwhelming, and scary,
and unimaginable, and
terrifying, and makes no sense.
So we tell ourselves
stories to make it safe.
And there is no better example
of the company we sit in today,
in ordering, sifting,
making sense of the world
in an extraordinary way.
So every act of
perception, therefore,
is an attempt to impose order.
So every time we come across
alien phenomena, we explore it.
We find its essential truth.
And then we assimilate it.
So we test it, hopefully
scientifically,
but often with the prejudices
we've already learned.
We just bring those to
bear and change again.
And that's how that
process changes us.
So fundamentally,
storytelling therefore
is a manifestation
of this process.
This is three acts.
It doesn't have
to be three acts.
And I'll come back
to that later.
But fundamentally,
each stage is an act.
Something confronted
by its opposite
learns, and assimilates,
and changes.
So typically in
Hollywood, what you see
is a character with a flaw.
And in the second
act, you confront them
with their absolute opposite,
so King George VI, Lionel Logue,
learns not to stutter.
It sounds simplistic,
doesn't it?
But fundamentally, that's
sort of how structure works.
So you take any Pixar film.
I picked three at random.
Obviously you have Woody in the
first "Toy Story," benevolent
dictator, controlling,
thrown out of the window
into a world he
can't control, has
to make friends and ask
other people their opinion,
gets back home.
"Finding Nemo," again, Tom
Hanks controlling father,
child disappears,
thrown into chaos,
learns to allow
the child to play.
"Cars," Lightning McQueen,
arrogant, brattish sports
car, lost in the middle
of a small American town,
learns the values
of friendship, love,
and you don't have to
drive very fast everywhere.
It's very simplistic,
but when it's done well,
it's very effecting as well.
So I picked those at
random, because they're
very good examples of good
commercial properties.
But you will find this
in art house movies
absolutely as well.
But fundamentally,
what we're saying is
the Hollywood
archetype is dialectics
in its most simplified form.
So act one, you
establish a character.
Act two, you confront
it with their opposite.
And act three, you synthesize
the two to achieve balance.
And yet again, if you want to
talk about art house books,
you take something like
the film David Hare
adapted of the Schlink
book "The Reader."
And you have a young
boy who falls in love
with a woman who's
older than him.
She suddenly disappears.
Years later she
discovers she's been
arrested for being
a Nazi camp guard.
And in the third act,
he condemns her utterly.
And in the third act when
he starts to understand why
and what happened to her,
he starts to forgive her.
So the same shape resolves
itself again and again.
It's not just in Pixar films.
And so something that was
going on long before someone
came along and
codified it has been
going on since the
beginning of time.
Because of course you
see the very same pattern
in "Antigone."
It's Antigone and Creon.
They're opposites, aren't they?
You see it in Socratic dialogue.
It's all built on
opposites, like I'm sure
an awful lot of what you do
build on opposites as well.
So it forms the basic
structural model, not just of
every feature film,
but what I would argue
is all narrative as well.
So storytelling
becomes a codification
of the essential method
by which we learn,
expressed in a three
act dramatic shape.
OK.
So if you're drawing
the Hollywood paradigm,
that's what it looks
like, fundamentally.
What you also notice is
the symmetry in this.
And you find this in [INAUDIBLE]
perfectly structured films.
Act two, handedly divided
straight down the middle there.
It's double the length of
the first and last act.
There's something about
human beings' attraction
to symmetry when
they create narrative
that becomes very attractive.
But also if you're doing
difficult narrative,
you can bust that symmetry up.
And you create dissonance, which
has its own effects as well.
So the closer you look,
the more these rules apply.
But there's one
area in particular
that I wanted to dwell on
to show how deep this goes.
Because I think it's probably
the most unseen area of all,
and that is the area of
character and characterization.
So there we go.
Some of you may
recognize this chap.
He was head of [INAUDIBLE].
Paul Flowers.
He was a Methodist
minister, highly respected
member of the establishment.
And then "The Daily Mail,"
with typical "Mail" gusto,
exposed him as a man hiring
rent boys and buying crack
with them, and hence collapse
of career, shame, et cetera, et
cetera.
Same person, obviously.
It's a common trope.
So really what I want to
talk about before I come back
to narrative is a bit
about us as people
and how we work as people.
So there's a
contradiction, isn't there,
in the heart of our being.
You'll see this in the
search engines you use,
which reveal sides about
people that they would never
admit to publicly.
That's fundamentally
the contradiction.
We are all animals,
yet unlike animals, we
are all capable of rationality.
So we all have our
own survival at heart,
yet we have to live
in a society where
we have to repress some
of our survival instincts
to survive and live
with other people.
So we all have a fundamental
biological urge to replicate
our genetic material, yet we
cannot always express that,
because the worst case scenario
is you end up in court.
You have to control your
urges to live in society.
And most people manage
that very successfully.
But some may go online instead
and express them that way.
So you look at the behavior
on internet forums,
and I probably
have "The Guardian"
more in mind than
anyone else here.
But when societal
restrictions are removed,
the absence of identity allows
the inner animal off the leash.
So there is nothing more
enlightening, I think,
than the forums of
a liberal newspaper.
Because the comments underneath
are largely grotesque,
and offensive, and deeply
just horrible, basically.
They're probably the
same on every newspaper.
But there's something
that speaks more
about that kind of newspaper,
which I read myself.
But I think it's no accident
that these websites are
the homes of offensive material.
Because when you strip
away the need for exterior,
when you strip away the need
for identity-- and of course
you do this all the
time in what you do.
You let loose the true feelings
of impotence, and anger,
and rage that can lurk
underneath a caring exterior.
So publicly, again,
familiar I'm sure,
we tend to present ourselves
as models of civic virtue.
So in France, after
the war, it was
almost impossible
to find anyone who
said they supported
the Vichy regime.
And after Mandela was freed
from jail in South Africa,
no one ever voted nationalist.
Understandably, because if
you admitted to those things,
you'd be in trouble.
And it would be uncomfortable.
So you'd have to perversely be
brave to admit to those things.
And it's hard.
So the darker feelings,
the rage or shame
that fills those websites and
our innermost thoughts when
we're rejected,
when we're angry,
when we're not given the job
we want, when we're humiliated,
are hard to show publicly.
Which is why at
this most extreme,
you end up with gun
rage in America.
So this conflict between
what we really think
and how we want to
be perceived fuels
every second of
our waking lives.
If you think of the first time
you meet your group of people
you work with, you
think about what
you're going to
wear that morning.
You think about
what you're going
to talk about that will make you
feel them like you, hopefully,
or not like you, if
not liking's your goal.
But fundamentally,
you're creating
an image about yourself that you
want to be perceived publicly.
And obviously,
that's the wellspring
of the whole guilty pleasures
phenomena, when you actually
gleefully let that whole
thing go and realize
it's OK to make a tit of
yourself occasionally.
So what is Facebook
but an advert
for how we'd like to be seen?
OK, I'm sure this
will be familiar.
Or as my friend said, "What
are the unwatched programmes
on your Sky+ but taunting
reminders of who we might
really like to be?"
You tend, by default, to watch
the ones that are the easiest
ones to watch, unless yo you're
a particular kind of person.
So detour back to where I was.
How does this inform
characterization?
And how does this
form narrative?
And how does this
inform opposites?
Well, an interesting
thing about storytelling,
going back to its
very beginning,
is just the prevalence of
paradoxical characters, many
in history and in literature,
forgive me, many of whom
sought fame or glory to
still the conflict within.
So from real life, I just
chose a number of options
in real life.
So here we are.
We have an insightful
liberal, champion
of the underdog,
author of "Huckleberry
Finn" and "A Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthur's Court,"
one of the most enlightened
men of American letters,
but also champion of
free market capitalism,
avert racist, and
declared Philistine.
Of course it's Mark Twain.
It was Mark Twain
and Samuel Clemens.
And that's always a telltale
sign, when they have two names.
But you know, extraordinary
character, wonderful writer,
complicated.
Let's take another
one-- socialist,
religious, campaigned for rights
of the individual, championed
free market economic
policy, invaded
Iraq, removed countless
democratic freedoms.
Where am I going with that?
There's endless, endless
fascinating paradoxes
in that character.
Appearance-- champion of the
underdog, perfect marriage,
athletic alpha male.
Reality-- scion of privilege,
serial philanderer,
crippled with Addison's
disease-- Kennedy, obviously,
isn't it?
An extraordinary
character as well--
the richness of these characters
is always incredibly striking.
But what's
interesting is the war
that's going on between their
public and private selves
continually.
But what's
interesting too is how
this applies to
fictional characters.
You see this with
big, dramatic tropes.
If you make soap opera
for any length of time,
you see these things are again--
the trope of the vicar revealed
as the child abuser,
the preacher who's
the love rat, the union
leader who's the demagogue.
They come across
my desk about once
a month in stories
pitched to me.
And you see it all
the time if you
look at the great characters
of fiction on television.
So a man of substance,
well-versed in the finer things
of life, a man
who prides himself
in his aptitude for
service, a man who
hates the working class--
he's a hen-pecked husband
running a cheap B&B in Torquay.
Isn't he?
It's very simple, isn't it?
But that's where the
drama comes from.
That's where the
story comes from.
A soldier, successful
public figure,
model of respectability, in
reality, a figure of fun,
a Provincial bank manager,
hopeless marriage.
It's Captain [INAUDIBLE].
Again, and his absolute opposite
is, of course, Sergeant Wilson.
Appearance-- [? the ?]
rich, sophisticated
playboy in charge
of everything he
surveys, a man who
has everything.
Dirt poor, white
trash, a lost soul,
a man who has nothing,
not even his name.
Because he's not even
Don Draper, at all.
And you could do the
same with Tony Soprano.
You can do it the same
with most characters.
So in real life and in
fiction, and, of course,
us too, if we're
honest, conflict
is at the heart
of our character.
And it's the conflict between
the facade a character chooses
to project and their deeper
internal vulnerabilities
between the mask they adopted to
be a socially acceptable member
of society and the inner
feelings of vulnerability
that lie underneath.
But what's
interesting about this
is how it resolves itself
in dramatic structure
and narrative structure and
how narrative structure works.
Because there's a pattern.
So here's a story.
There's a story arc.
So from beginning to end,
there's our narrative.
A character starts off as
Don Draper or Tony Soprano.
And he goes on a journey.
His facade over time slips away
to reveal the hidden person
underneath.
And the inner person
hidden away at the start
obviously rises to the fore.
And something very
interesting happens
in exactly the
middle of the story.
King Lear would be
a very good example.
Starts as king, exactly
halfway through, naked
in a hovel in the
store on the heath.
I shall come back to that.
So we call that the midpoint
of any story, so hence the
look that most characters have
in a quintessential dilemma
in the middle of any narrative.
Let's have a look,
a clip, of how
that works in probably one
of the most famous examples
of all.
Can we have "The
"Godfather" clip?
This is exactly halfway through
the first "Godfather" movie.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[SPEAKING ITALIAN]
[GUNSHOTS]
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
JOHN YORKE: OK.
So it is what it is.
Exactly halfway through
the story, the old self
and the new self meet,
battle, and change sides.
So if the law abiding
soldier learns his father
has been shot.
If you break "The
Godfather" into five acts,
saves his father
in hospital, learns
he's not scared of
working in that world,
kills Soliozo and
McCluskey-- we've
just seen-- sacks Tom
Hagen, makes his father
his consigliore, kills everyone.
It's really simple--
it's a bit simplistic,
but fundamentally, bang in the
middle, war hero, you know.
It's a good thing.
But what's even more
bizarre, if you're
as sad as I am and you sit
there with a stopwatch,
and you work these
things out, what
you get in regular 20 minute
intervals, excuse the slightly
jumpy graphics, is you get that.
If you break it into
Shakespearean five act
structure, you get a very,
very clear physical pattern
of how it work.
And I don't believe
for a Francis Ford
Coppola thought about that.
He just did it.
Because exactly the
same pattern exists
in "MacBeth," which to
all intents and purposes,
is the same story.
The modest soldier hears
the witch's prophecy.
Angst ridden and pushed by
Lady MacBeth, he kills Duncan.
he murders Banquo.
Fleance escapes.
Macduff defects.
Murders Lady Macduff
and her children.
He's abandoned by all.
Lady Macbeth goes
mad around there.
Believes himself invincible--
"I cannot be killed."
It's a tragedy, so he's killed.
So he goes from modesty--
he's talked about
as being modest at first-- to
absolute arrogance at the end.
So from war hero into monster.
And very clearly each
Shakespearean act,
at that point, you see
that physical change.
So sorry, that was a bit
of a quick-- there we go.
So from there to there, just
the parallels are endless.
Again, I secretly love
"Legally "Blonde."
I think it's rather marvelous.
As it starts, Elle, or
Reese Witherspoon character,
is all pink with a loud hairdo.
so that's how she starts.
Let's have a look at her again.
96 minutes later, her
hair is immaculate,
and there's a small splash
of pink on her collar.
And exactly halfway
through, she gains entry
into the law firm,
exactly halfway through.
I don't think they
planned that either.
But what you're seeing is
this extraordinary thing
about character design,
about how two opposites meet
and undergo a reaction dictated,
we think, by the artistic muse,
but actually by the
laws of physics,
and then digested through
the laws of biology.
So if it's a book, we
can read it over time.
In cinema, it'll be
an hour and a half.
In theater, there'll
act breaks which
allow us to go to the toilets,
and in previous times,
to allow for daylight
and standing, et cetera.
So Andrew Stanton, who we
started with in the beginning,
in the same letter he was
talking about there, he said,
"Good storytelling
never gives you four.
It gives you two plus two.
If you construct
your story correctly,
it compels the audience to
conclude the answer is four.
This works with every
aspect of filmmaking,
down to a molecular level--
editing, plot lines,
relationships."
And I think it's true of
every kind of narrative,
and certainly of PR, is if you
tell someone what to think,
they won't think it.
But if you allow
them to work it out,
obviously, they'll
do it themselves.
And if you tell a story, in
which that message is embodied,
obviously that will have
extraordinary power.
But at every level, down
to a molecular level,
you see this universal
theory of two plus two.
So it's David and
Bianca once again.
And if you look at that
David and Bianca scene,
you'll see that pattern,
as Bianca learns the truth,
follows exactly the
same plan again.
It's a law of physics.
So all character, all
structure, all drama
is built on the war
between opposites.
And again, how long have we got?
I could just-- every Shakespeare
play is absolutely archetypal.
Think of what you
watched last week.
You'll find exactly
the same pattern.
Going on, there's
some more Shakespeare,
back to "EastEnders," forgive
me, Tony Soprano, Jennifer
Murphy, "NYPD Blue,"
Steptoe and Son.
Obviously sitcoms are a
classic, very clear example.
Hancock and Sid James.
Go back to [INAUDIBLE].
Again Pixar, "Homeland,"
"Starsky and Hutch,"
"Criminal Justie," "Appropriate
Adult," "Downton Abbey,"
"The Line of Duty," or "The
Village," on BBC One recently.
So you say, yeah, well, why?
And the answer is probably
really simple and staring us
in the face.
It's that, isn't it?
It's Newton's
Third Law, which is
when one body exerts
force on a second body.
The second point
simultaneously exerts a force
equal in magnitude and opposite
in direction of the first body.
And so if you're
starting at one place,
and you know you've got
to end at home again,
it will tend to
follow that pattern.
Now obviously there
are exceptions,
because great filmmakers, just
like great jazz musicians,
will come and smash that up.
But when they smash it up,
they create a dissonance
that you only know as dissonance
because of its relevance
to the shape itself.
So that shape, that
desure for symmetry,
seems to have an
extraordinary pull on us.
Seven years ago when I
started writing this book,
I came across this quote
from Hilary Mantel, who
I'm sure you know,
who wrote "Wolf Hall."
She was writing a book about
the introduction of fairy tales.
And just to wrap
up, she said this.
She said, "The journey
into the wood"--
she noticed that this story
exerted itself and recurred
again and again.
"The journey into
the world is part
of the journey of
the psyche from birth
through death to rebirth.
Hansel and Gretel, the
woodcutter's children,
are familiar with the wood's
verges but not its heart.
Snow White is abandoned
in the forest.
What happens to us in
the depths of the world?
Civilization and its
discontents give way
to the irrational and half-seen.
Back in the village with
our soured relationships,
we are neurotic.
But the wood releases
our full-blown madness.
Birds and animals talk to us.
Departed souls speak.
The tiny rush-light
of the cottages
is only a fading memory.
Lost in the
extinguishing darkness,
we cannot see our
hands before our face.
We lose all sense of
our body's boundaries.
We melt into the trees,
into the bark and the sap.
And from this green blood, we
draw new life and are healed."
That's Hilary Mantel
on fairy tales.
But what she's
describing, of course,
is that, the classic opposite.
You start at home.
You go on a journey
into the heart
of the woods where
you find the opposite.
It's exactly what
Al Pacino does,
exactly what "King Lear" does,
exactly what "Macbeth" does.
And then you bring it
home, and you've changed.
It's thesis, antithesis,
synthesis again.
OK, that's the book, by the way.
But I think before I
do that, let me just
go back to that a second.
It's worth saying,
obviously I've
talked about
narrative a lot today.
But I think what's
also fascinating
and probably a session
for another time
is how this applies politically.
Obviously all governments are
interested in establishing
narrative.
All political
parties in opposition
are interested in establishing
a counter narrative.
It's all about this
is the narrative.
I write the story.
I'm the winning side.
What's fascinating
is how in life
from the Israel-Palestinian
conflict,
to North and South
Korea, to Sunni and Shia
that we see today, what we do
is we create those opposites
again.
And if you look at how
those various sects divide
themselves, you see the
same pattern emerging.
So we process real life for
better largely through fiction,
but also with caution at
the same time as well.
Which I think brings me
exactly to 3 o'clock.
So I should stop there.
But thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
MALE SPEAKER: Well, thank
you very much for that.
It was fascinating.
We don't have time for
Q&A now, because we
have another thing
we have to do.
But I'm going to send
a question that you
can answer if you want
to via email later.
And that is, what
Shakespearean drama do
you think Google is in?
I would like to know that.
And I hope it's a good one.
So with that said, thank you
for a fascinating lecture.
And thanks for coming out to us.
JOHN YORKE: Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
