

Kernels to Storytelling Mastery

How watching movies

and munching popcorn

can lead to masterful storytelling

by Bill Johnson

Published by Blue Haven Publishing at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 Bill Johnson

Kernels to Storytelling Mastery

Copyright © 2013 by Bill Johnson. All rights reserved.

Published by

Blue Haven Publishing

Willamette Writers C.S. Whitcomb House

2108 Buck St

West Linn, OR 97068

Book Design: Bill Johnson

Cover: Nancy Hill

ISBN: 978-0-9673932-6-1

### Dedication

This book is dedicated to Nancy Hill, who has provided me many wonderful, beautiful book covers.

How watching movies and munching popcorn can lead to

## Introduction

I wrote many of these essays while teaching screenwriting and breaking down films in class as a teaching tool. I quickly discovered that many of my students had no idea of the dramatic point of a scene, that underlying message that said this is a story about X; the main character is seeking Y; the point of this scene is Z.

Because they lacked that understanding, the scripts they wrote were invariably about what was happening, but never about why, or why anyone should care.

I called these students blind imitators. They thought they were doing what successful screenwriters were doing, but they were not.

The goal of these essays was to help perceptive students gain a deeper understanding of storytelling. This is not an easy path, for it requires understanding of why one thing works and adds something to a scene, while something else is just a meaningless background detail.

In my experience, most people prefer the magic beans that would transform their ideas into scripts they could sale into the difficult path to understanding of storytelling.

So, be warned, no magic beans here; and understanding the mechanics of storytelling AND being able to apply it to one's own writing is a process, sometimes a long one. One I'm still learning.

And, this process might not be for you. You might be an intuitive writer. I'm an intuitive for ideas, but the craft of writing, I didn't have a clue.

For yourself, to use these essays, you might read an essay and watch a movie, or some variation on that.

If you are an entirely intuitive writer, and successful, you should not read further, and I envy you. You've probably already internalized what I teach, and learning to be consciously aware of the mechanics of storytelling could interfere with your process, so go away as fast as you can.

For everyone else who hasn't internalized an understanding of storytelling, you should keep reading.

Or, if you want to try a different process, consider Chris Vogler's _The Hero's Journey_ or _Save the Cat_. The point is, find something that works for you and stick with it.

Good luck, and perhaps we'll meet on this journey of understanding.

Table of Contents

### The Shawshank Redemption

### Chinatown

### Anatomy of An Action Adventure Movie, Notes on Die Hard

### Ideas and Stories -- A Review of Toto le Hero

### Why Police Stories? Notes on Lethal Weapon

### Moving Audiences to Think About What Moves Them, A Review of Seven

### Creating Story Movement by Traveling in Circles: A Review of Groundhog Day

### The Art of the Romantic Comedy

### Book of Revelations, A Review of Run Lola Run

### A Room With A View, Creating Drama by Writing to the Point

**T** he Shawshank Redemption, Writing to a Dramatic Purpose

_Shawshank Redemption_ is a film that points out once again a fundamental truth of storytelling. That by clearly setting out and writing a story around a dramatic issue like redemption, the storyteller sets in motion both a plot -- what the main character must do to gain redemption -- and a deeper story issue – whether adversity can lead to redemption.

By potently and vividly resolving and fulfilling its promise, the story offers a vivid story journey around the transforming power of adversity.

The story begins with its title, which suggests the story's promise. The title, then, is written around setting out the point of the story, not hiding it. By quickly setting out the story's promise, the storyteller can begin developing drama over the story's outcome. Will the main character here gain redemption? To delay the presentation of this issue risks weakening the story to create a distant plot revelation.

Music lyrics, 'If I didn't care... would I feel this way. If this isn't love, then why do I thrill."

This song is a set up for an introduction to the main character, Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), and his inner feelings. The lyrics are ironic when we discover his inability to express his feelings, and the repercussions of that failure. Knowing the situation the main character confronts as the story opens, the storyteller choose a song that makes a pointed reference about him. The song and its lyrics are an integral part of the story, just as every element of a well-told story has a discernible purpose. Writers weaken a story when they try and construct it from details that only have a vague association with the dramatic context of the story.

Next we come up on street lights; a quiet night. Another contrast to what will soon be happening.

We move into car, a man listening to the same song that opens the story. Who is he? Andy. What's he doing? The questions arise naturally.

He puts something in his lap. A gun. He loads bullets into it, drinks. He needs courage. Question, courage to do what? The questions here multiply. The song, coupled with the gun and drinking, suggests Andy is tormented by his feelings and is readying himself to do something about them. As a character, he is dramatically ripe. Ready to act as the story opens, not just thinking about taking action. If he were still thinking about acting, he would be a static character no matter how dramatic the situation around him.

Cut to Andy being asked a question at a trial about his conversation with his wife; that his wife asked for a divorce. He was very distraught at the time, but as he testifies, he appears calm, cool.

His wife, it comes out, was having an affair with golf pro. Cut between Andy in car and the trial, where he appears cool, unfeeling.

Andy calmly insists he didn't kill wife and her golf-pro lover, but the DA insists he was on the scene, had a gun. That the gun he insists he threw in the river was never found.

Is he innocent?

We see Andy get out of car with gun. Walk toward house.

DA talks about people being shot eight times. So gun had to be reloaded. A crime of passion.

We see Andy's wife and golf pro making passionate love.

Judge sentences Andy to life in prison, consecutive terms.

Cut to bars sliding open, a man entering a room. Andy? No, it's Red (Morgan Freeman) in for parole hearing. He's asked if he's rehabilitated. He's very agreeable, says that he's "a changed man. No longer a danger to society."

Cut to: 'Rejected' being stamped on his parole form. The scene gets right to the point. No one buys that Red is rehabilitated.

He returns to the prison yard at Shawshank prison. This naturally frames a question, will Red ever change? Ever be ready for parole?

Red walks up to see view in yard.

Through a voiceover, Red explains he is a con who can get anything for anybody. "A regular Sears and Roebuck."

We hear siren, see prison van approach. Question, who's in the van? By withholding that information, simply showing the approach of the van and the fuss about its arrival, a small revelation is set up about who's in the van.

We come up over roof to 'see' prison. This visual image is suggestive that we're going to be allowed a full view of this world. Even the camera work here, then, speaks to a dramatic purpose in the story, becomes another element in how the story is presented.

Men in the prison yard move with purpose toward the van and the arrival of new prisoners. Why are the men excited? The audience is set up to anticipate something.

Guards and cons alike await new prisoners, lining up to see them.

Door to van opens; guard comes out, then others. Finally, Andy comes out.

It quickly comes out that the cons like to torment the new arrivals.

Andy is shy, wears a suit. He's really out of place in this new, harsh world. By showing how out of place he is, a question is naturally generated: can he survive here? What will happen to him in the coming days? Minutes?

Red takes bets on which new man will get beat up first, will be broken.

Red, "I didn't think much of Andy... my first impression of the man."

The story will change the impression of Andy for Red and the audience. Red is set up here as our guide in this story, a guide to the world within the walls of Shawshank.

Andy looks up at the formidable walls as he enters prison. This is to let the audience more fully experience this moment. It also becomes a sly commentary on the inner fortress walls Andy must surmount.

We meet Captain of guards and the Warden. Rules are spelled out for the new prisoners.

Rule # 1. No blasphemy.

One guy wants to know when they'll eat. Captain cusses him out and hits him while Warden looks on. The audience is being shown that Andy has entered the abyss.

Naked men are hosed, deloused.

Men are taken into prison naked and put into cells. It's meant to degrade, and the moments are set up for the audience to experience, to feel the degradation of these men.

Red narrates what it all means, how many men break down and cry their first night. The question, "Who's it going to be?" Who's going to cry first? That's what the betting in the yard was about. Red has bet that Andy will break first.

Red narrates, remembering his first night in prison. Red, the "boys always go fishing with" new men. The cons bait the new men.

Fat man, a new prisoner, cries out plaintively, "I don't belong here."

Cons jeer him.

Fat Man, "I want my mother." Con, "I had your mother; she wasn't that great."

The fat man can't stop pleading that he shouldn't be there. A con in a cell quietly pleads with the fat man to shut up. The Captain brings the fat man out and beats him senseless with a club.

We're shown the brutal immorality here. That the real evil is with those running the prison.

Red narrates that he lost cigarettes because Andy didn't break that night, that he never made a sound. This is another step in our journey to take in the full measure of Andy as a man.

Morning, men walk along cell block and into mess hall.

Where will Andy sit? What will others do? He sits by himself. Picks maggot out of his food. An old man asks for the maggot. Andy gives it to him. Will the old man eat it? It turns out the old man has a baby bird in his coat.

The bird becomes a continuing character in the story, not just a momentary effect in this one scene. Great stories layer their effects, build on them, develop them, deepen their impact, in small moments and large.

A happy con comes in; he's won cigarettes from the bet about who would break first.

Andy listens to conversation, that fat men received no medical treatment. Andy asks his name.

Con, "What the fuck do you care? Doesn't matter what his name was, he's dead."

Andy is listless in shower. Another man asks, "Anybody get to you yet?" He's offering protection for sex. Question, how will this turn out?

Red narrates that it took Andy a month to speak to someone... and that someone turns out to be Red.

Andy still maintains his innocence.

Red, "Rumor has it you're a cold fish... think your shit smells sweeter than most."

Andy asks Red to get him a rock hammer.

Red thinks he might want it for a weapon. Boggs (the prisoner who spoke to Andy in the shower), wants Andy for sex, according to Red. Red tells Andy to grow eyes in the back of his head. Andy says he won't use the rock hammer as a weapon.

Will Red get it for him? They agree on ten dollars as the price.

Set up of question, pay off. One way to draw an audience through a story is to raise a small question at the beginning of the scene and resolve it by the end of the scene. Questions can also be set up to play across scenes, or through the body of the story, its plot, character goals.

Red tells Andy the rules. If he's caught with the rock hammer and mentions Red, he'll never get him another thing... gum, anything.

Red, "He strolled... like he had on an invisible coat that shielded him." Question, will he be able to keep that shield?

Cut to laundry room. Black man sticks something in shirt. It gets to Red. He gets rock hammer and realizes it can't be used to escape or as a weapon. Or so it appears.

Old man who fed maggot to baby bird delivers book with hammer to Andy.

Andy sent to basement area. Other men surround him. He's beaten by three men, including Boggs, and, we assume, raped. We have an answer to that question of what would happen to Andy.

Red, "Prison is no fairy tale world."

Red talks about Andy showing up with fresh bruises. That sometimes he fought them off. Red continues that this went on for two years, that it might have eventually broke Andy, but something happened.

Question, what?

Cut to Warden talking about new license plate factory needing volunteers. Andy and others volunteer.

Red smiles that he's called because of bribe. Andy is on detail as well.

While cons works, Captain talks about how a brother died with money and he's only getting $35,000, and the government will take most of that in taxes.

Andy looks off at something. What?

Andy walks toward the Captain. This sets off a reaction by guards. Will Andy be killed. What's he doing? He tells Captain he can keep money if he trusts his wife enough to give her the money. The Captain is outraged. Will Captain kill him? Andy, an ex-banker, explains that he can set it up so the Captain gets to keep most of the money if he puts it in his wife's name, and he wants three beers each for the work crew for the advice.

Captain goes along.

Cons get to drink ice cold beers.

Red, "We felt like free men."

The audience gets to experience this great victory with the men.

Andy has a strange smile. Big question, what's he smiling about? He refuses beer. Red believes Andy did that to feel 'normal' again.

Andy plays chess; Red hates the game. This comments on how Andy will eventually get out of prison, one move at a time, in a game that takes 20 years to play.

Andy needs rocks to carve chessmen.

Red comments that they are becoming 'friends.' Andy wants to know why he's there. Red's in for murder, the 'only guilty man in Shawshank.' Red knows who he is. Question, who is Andy?

Andy gets up. He carves something into wall with rock hammer. Question, what?

Cons watch movie.

Andy asks Red to get him Rita Hayworth. A poster? What?

Andy leaves. He's attacked again in the movie projection room.

Man takes out knife. He threatens Andy for oral sex. Andy refuses and is beaten senseless.

But now the Captain has something invested in protecting Andy. Boggs, the con who's been raping Andy, spends a month in solitary for the latest attack on Andy. When he returns to his cell, the Captain waits for him. He beats him into a wheelchair as a broken cripple. The Captain is sending a message that Andy works for him now, and he won't tolerate him being abused.

Cons decide Andy is someone to respect. They go out to get him rocks for chessmen.

Man finds a rock, but not right one. It's petrified horse shit.

Red gets in a shipment. It includes a poster of Rita Hayworth.

We now see walls of Andy's cell. It's covered with pictures.

Con mops. Guards come along for sweep of cells.

Captain, to Andy, on your feet. They trash his room, possessions.

Warden comes in. He's pleased that Andy reads Bible. Andy's favorite passage about being ready for Master's appearance.

Captain finds chessmen.

Warden disapproves of Rita poster, but he allows it.

Warden, "Salvation lies within." True words. It lies within Andy.

Andy then is taken to see Warden. Warden asks him if he wants to work in Laundry.

Andy is reassigned to Library. We see raven who was baby bird when first met, with Brooks, the old man in the prison.

Brooks doesn't know why Andy has been assigned to be his assistant.

Captain brings in guard who needs help with Trust. Andy, here, is not a con; he's a man. He sits across from guard as his advisor.

Brooks relates in mess hall how guard shook Andy's hand. Andy wants to get new books. Can he get funds? Another question that will play out across several scenes.

Andy asks Warden for funds. Warden says he'll mail letters. Will he? What will the letters accomplish?

Andy continues doing financial services. Does tax returns...first year, half the guards, then everyone, then guards from other prisons.

Red narrates Andy needed staff... which turns out to be Red.

Red, "And still, he kept sending those letters."

One day Brooks the old man goes crazy, pulls a knife. Andy tries to talk him out of killing Heywood.

Then it comes out that Brooks must kill someone or be released.

Red tells the others why Brooks wants to stay in prison, that it's the only life he knows. Some cons don't believe it.

"These walls are funny. First you hate them. Then you get used to them. Enough time passes, you depend on them."

"They sent you here for life... that's the part they take."

Will this happen to Andy?

Brooks tells 'Jake' the raven he's free.

Brooks leaves prison. He doesn't know what to do.

Brooks on bus, on city street. Sad music plays.

Brooks, narration, "I can't believe how fast things move on the outside." Cars are everywhere; everyone hurries.

He gets room in a half way house and job as bag boy. He worries about Jake. He thinks about robbing store, but feels he's too old. He's afraid all the time. He decides to leave. But where will he go? What will he do? He does something with knife in ceiling of his room. Question, what? Brooks then hangs himself.

We pick up his thoughts via his last letter being read by Andy.

Andy finally gets books. They are addressed to him.

He also gets a check for $200 to buy more books. His letters have brought in a donation. A guard smiles in spite of himself. Guard, "Good for you, Andy."

Andy, "It only took six years."

Andy has a moment of joy. The man who didn't appear to feel is learning to openly feel. It's a significant advance for the story. The moment is presented in a way the audience can fully experience it with Andy. He has taken another, inner step toward redemption.

Andy finds record, opera. He plays it.

He picks up key. Locks himself in room.

He plays opera music so everyone in prison can hear it.

Moment becomes transcendent as prisoners listen to music.

Everyone is shocked, everyone.

Everyone stops what they are doing.

Red narrates joy of moment, even though no one understood opera music. "Every last man at Shawshank felt free."

Andy is sharing his new feeling of freedom, sharing it with the other cons and the story's audience.

Warden demands Andy open door, demands Andy turn off music. Andy turns it up.

Captain breaks in after telling Andy, "You're mine, now."

Andy gets two weeks in solitary, in 'the hole.'

Andy tells others he took music with him in his head into the hole. He's teaching the others to transcend, sharing the experience with the audience by talking about it.

Andy, "That there are places... they can't touch."

Red, "Hope... is a dangerous thing... can drive a man insane."

The story is now on a new track.

Doors open into parole hearing. For who? Red again.

Red runs through his same routine of being changed. He's more thoughtful about it now. He's been in prison for 30 years, Andy ten. Question, will Red be paroled?

No.

Andy gives Red present. Harmonica.

Men are lined up outside cells for searches. Red sends Andy a new poster. Of who? Marilyn Monroe over the grate, her dress billowing up. The poster helps the audience track the passage of time.

Red looks at harmonica. What will he do? He plays it.

Andy writes two letters a week for new books. Finally, he gets $500 for new books.

A wall comes down, a metaphor for what's happening as Andy needs more room for books, as Andy expands his inner sense of freedom.

Men label books. Dumas is Dumb-ass.

By Kennedy's assassination, library has Hank Williams records and is best prison library in country. Andy is changing what exists within the high, thick walls of the prison.

Warden proclaims rehabilitation outside prison walls; that prisoners will work outside of prison. Warden is now older. That also let's the audience naturally track time passage. The new system is meant to save money, but it allows warden/guards to skim money from different projects. Warden/guards, then, are showing themselves as the real criminals.

Warden accepts bribe to not let prisoners build highway, and Andy keeps books for Warden.

Warden has wall safe behind religious message. It's where books are kept. Andy is getting a few gray hairs now.

Andy tells Red there's a river of dirty money running through prison. Red is concerned that it will lead FBI to Andy. Question, what will come out of this? Andy explains he has created a phantom person on paper with birth certificate, driver's license, etc. to collect money. Andy, "I was an honest person. I had to come to prison to become a crook."

Andy sees that what he's doing also got library, helped prisoners get high school diplomas. He's learning all is not black or white; that to be wise is to discern the real nature of what is good and evil.

Sirens sound. We have a new kind of cons coming into the prison, young punks. Prisoners from a new generation. One is Tommy Williams. It's 1965. He gets in with Red's group. He's in for two years.

Andy suggests he should learn a new profession, based on his convictions. Andy's now an old con. And tells Tommy everyone in Shawshank is innocent. Tommy has wife and baby on outside. He asks Andy for help, but Andy calls him a loser.

Andy teaches Tommy his ABC's, teaching him to read.

Red narrates that Andy helps Tommy in part to pass time now that he's built a library.

We see chess set, a few pieces short of being complete.

Andy gets a Raquel Welch poster. We're watching time pass through posters.

Andy times Tommy taking a test. Tommy flips out because he knows he failed test.

Red tells Tommy that Andy is proud of him. Red tells Tommy Andy is in for murder. Tommy's face turns somber. What?

Tommy tells about a cell mate in a different prison, Elmo Blatch. Twitchy, strung out guy who talked all the time. He told Tommy about working at a country club. It turns out Elmo did the murders of Andy's wife and her lover. The golf pro woke up and gave Elmo a hard time, so he killed both of them.

Now we have an answer to a question that began the story, did Andy kill his wife and her lover? But now we have a deeper, more pressing question. What will come out of this?

Warden then tells Andy new con was making up the story. Will the Warden help Andy considering how much he needs Andy around?

Andy calls Warden obtuse, which upsets Warden.

Andy says if he gets out he'll never mention Warden, which sets off Warden, who puts Andy in hole for a month.

Prisoners now know Andy is innocent. He's been in prison 19 years.

Tommy gets his degree. Moment is drawn out. Red, looking at it, "Well, shit." Then guard opens hole. He tells Andy, "The kid passed. C+ average."

Andy smiles. Even in the hole, he's a free man.

Captain pulls Tommy off mopping detail to talk to Warden. But it happens in a dark cage. What will happen? What does he want from Tommy? He offers him a cigarette. "We have a situation here." (A line from Cool Hand Luke). Warden wonders what is the right thing to do. Is he being serious? Will Tommy swear before a judge and jury? Tommy says yes.

Warden looks up toward someone behind Tommy. Who? Shots ring out. Tommy is shot dead.

Door to hole opens. Warden tells Andy Tommy is dead.

Andy tells Warden to run his own scams. Warden threatens Andy will do the hardest time there is. Warden, "You'll think you've been fucked by a train."

We are seeing the face of evil. Just when it seemed Andy might gain his freedom, he's thrown deeper into the abyss. Again the progression here is natural, unforced, but what led to this moment was constructed from the beginning of the story.

Warden adds another month to Andy's time in hole because of his insolence.

Lights go out, just as they go out for Andy in this dark night of his soul. Question, will the lights ever come on for him again? For anyone in this situation?

Cut to Andy alone in yard. Is he broken? Red sits beside him.

Andy, "My wife used to say I'm a hard to know... I loved her. I just didn't know how to show it is all. I killed her, Red... I drove her away. She died because of me... the way I am."

This is a potent, deeply felt revelation.

Red, "That don't make you a murderer. Bad husband, maybe."

Andy talks about being in path of tornado. "I just didn't expect the storm would last as long as it has." He asks Red if he thinks he'll ever get out. Red assumes it will only be when he's old and crazy. Andy says that if he gets out, he'll go to Mexico, that, according to the Mexicans, the Pacific Ocean has no memory. He'll open a hotel on the beach. Story question, will he get this? We now want Andy to have his dreams. He says he could use Red's help if he gets such a place. Red doesn't think he could make it on the outside. That he's an institutional man.

Red tells him to let go of his pipe dreams.

Andy asks a favor if Red gets out. That he go to a hay field and an oak tree where he asked his wife to marry him. "Promise me, Red, if you ever get out, find a rock ... there's something buried under it." Andy won't say what.

We now have a new plot element to track the advance of the story.

The other cons are worried about Andy. He asked someone for six feet of rope. Is he going to hang himself like Brooks?

Cut to Andy working on Warden's books.

Warden has him doing his laundry, shining his shoes. Then Warden tells Andy it's good having him back.

Is Andy broken? He takes out shoes and shines them. The shoes are a significant part of the story's plot now, but that's not apparent at the moment. Every moment of this story plays across different levels, has different meanings according to different contexts.

Andy walks along cell block. Red watches him. He sits alone in his cell.

Red, "I've had some long nights in the stir." He's worried about Andy, that wondering if Andy would kill himself was the longest night of his life.

Will Andy come out of his cell?

No. Is he dead? Guard looks in cell. "Oh, my Holy God." What does he see? We don't know. We here sirens. Andy probably took Warden's shoes.

Guards look at a checklist. He was checked in at lights out. Warden is livid. He brings in Red. He wants to know what Andy told Red.

Warden taunts Welch poster. Warden throws chess piece that goes through poster. But it's supposed to be a solid wall. He rips it down. Andy has escaped through hole in wall hidden by poster.

Cop cars go down road.

Red, "In 1966 Andy Defrense escaped Shawshank Prison." He'd worn down his rock hammer in twenty years of use.

Flashback to Andy first realizing he could get through wall.

Red, "All it takes is pressure and time."

Shot of Andy dropping rocks in prison yard.

Back to last night with Warden. Andy sets out a duplicate set of books and takes real books with him. We see him buffing shoes, looking at Warden's suits. Nobody noticed Andy wearing Warden's shoes as he walked to cell block.

Andy looks at Raquel. He takes off prison clothes. He's wearing Warden's clothes. He takes his chess pieces and crawls through tunnel.

He exits into crawl space and climbs down with package hanging from his feet via rope. Andy waits for lightning, and uses thunder to cover sound of him breaking into sewer pipe. He goes through sewer pipe, crawling through raw sewage, 500 yards. Half a mile.

He runs up creek, takes off shirt and laughs in rain and raises his arms to the sky.

Cut to Warden finding hole. Andy, wearing Warden's shoes, shows up at bank and withdraws money via the phantom 'man' he created. He'll be living abroad, he tells bank official. He asks they deliver package.

What's in it?

It comes out Andy went to 12 banks and withdrew 370,000 dollars.

Then a local paper gets call.

Warden reads headlines. Hears siren, looks at wall hanging about "Judgment coming and that right soon."

He finds a bible with a note from Andy, "You were right. Salvation lay within."

He then sees hole in bible where Andy originally got rock hammer. It now looks like Warden helped Andy.

Captain is served by arrest warrant. Red, "He sobbed like a little girl when they took him away." Warden loads gun. Points it at door (will he shoot at cops), then blows off the top of head.

Red gets postcard, blank, from Mexico. He knows Andy has made it to freedom.

Red, "Andy Dufresne, who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean."

Other cons talk about Andy and laugh.

He's proved that redemption can be won in the most hellish time and place.

Red misses Andy. "Some birds just aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are too bright." But the place is drab with Andy gone. Red, "I guess I just miss my friend."

Doors open. Red goes into parole hearing. Man at table, "Please sit down." Has Red been rehabilitated. He answers honestly this time. Red, "What do you really want to know? Am I sorry for what I did?" Red talks about his honest regret. "I look back on the way I was then. A young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him... Tell him the way things are, but I can't. That kid's long gone. This old man is all that's left. I gotta live with that. Rehabilitate is just a bullshit word... So stop wasting my time... I don't give a shit." He gets up.

They stamp form. Parole 'approved.'

Transcendent moment. A moment earned through a careful, thoughtful construction of the story's elements.

Red leaves prison, a free man because of what he's learned from Andy.

Red on bus.

Red in cheap hotel room that Brooks once stayed in. He sees words near ceiling, "Brooks was here." He gets job as bag boy at same grocery.

He asks Boss for break. Boss tells him he doesn't need to ask every time.

Red, "Forty years I've been asking for permission to piss... No way I'm gonna make it on the outside." He looks through window at guns. He wants to break parole.

"Terrible thing to live in fear... All I want is to be back where things make sense... where I won't have to afraid all the time." All that stops him is his promise to Andy.

Cut to Red in old field. He walks down field toward oak tree, taking off coat. What will he find at the end of this road? What will we find?

He finds tree in field, then rock wall. Then rock that is out of place. Behind it he finds box. Titanic lunch box. He opens it. Finds plastic sack. Within plastic sack is money and letter from Andy to Red, that Andy wants him to come to Mexico.

Andy, in letter, "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things... I'll be hoping this letter finds you, and finds you well. Andy."

Red leaves field. He is free now.

Red, "Get busy living, or get busy dying. For the second time in my life I'm guilty of committing a crime. Parole violation. "He's excited, the excitement of a 'free man." The audience shares his excitement.

Red, "I hope the Pacific is as blue as in my dreams... I hope."

Cut to Andy working on boat on water. He sees Red come up beach.

Pull back to allow men privacy of greeting.

Music swells.

End of one story, beginning of another.

The _Shawshank Redemption_ is a story carefully constructed around its dramatic purpose. The full effect of this is demonstrated by the fact that nothing can be removed from this story without changing it in some way. In loosely, badly written or constructed stories, one can make wholesale changes in everything and not really affect the outcome of the story and the destination of its plot. Here, everything is finely detailed around its purpose, everything works to achieve an effect, to deepen the impact of the story.

This is also a story that earns its impact, that doesn't cheapen itself by offering an easy, feel-good path to redemption. Here, redemption is carved out of the stone walls of the prison, just as in life people must struggle to find and give meaning to their lives. Through internalizing the journey promised by this story, its viewers can experience that even the darkest abyss can be survived. That sometimes it's through surviving the abyss that we grow and discover who we really are.

###  Chinatown, The Craft of Creating a Vivid, Compelling Mystery

_Chinatown_ has a deserved reputation as a great film. Part of what makes it a great story is the overall structuring of the story and the way each of its moments are vividly presented. Each moment operates to draw the viewer deeper into the story while advancing the story smoothly and with great, subtle precision. It is this underlying effect of movement, of the audience being drawn into the story and moved -- moment by moment \-- forward via clearly presented story ideas, plot questions and character issues that makes the telling of this story so vivid. How the story moves toward the resolution of the story's plot -- the murder of Mulwray and the water issue -- and the fulfillment of its deeper story about morality in a corrupt world -- demonstrates how a story's movement along different levels can be designed to be vivid, compelling and dramatic. By making each moment of a story vivid and dramatic, the storyteller creates a compelling, dynamic, satisfying story journey.

The film opens with credits and melancholy, mournful music. The style of music cues us to a time for the story, the 1940's, and also cues us to the terrain the story will cover. Every element of a great film communicates a sense of purpose.

The story opens with the sound of a man groaning while he looks at some photos of a man and woman having clumsy sex in the woods. This immediately pulls us into the question, who is the man? Why is he looking at these pictures? This is a subtle point, but every element of this movie is carefully crafted. To put something into a story that communicates no sense of purpose (even if that purpose is only revealed later) is to stall a story's movement.

We pull back from the photos to see Jake (Jack Nicholson) in the background. This cues us that he's an important character in the story, that we see him before we see the man looking at the photos. It's also a set up to draw us into the question, who is Jake?

We are then offered a close up of Curly. This gives the audience a sense of who he is, and, from his reaction to the photos, who he is in relationship to the woman in the photos. At this point, then, we have an answer to the first question of the story; the audience in a subtle way has been moved to discover this answer. This process of raising questions and offering answers can be recognized within scenes, across scenes, around the introduction of character issues and their resolutions, around questions that are only answered later in the story.

Curly, overcome by feeling, throws the pictures into the air and grabs the venetian blinds. Jake commiserates with him with cool detachment.

All right Curly, enough's enough. You can't eat the  
venetian blinds. I just had 'em installed on Wednesday.

This dialogue gives us a sense of what kind of man Jake is. Because he's wearing a cream-colored suit, the scene also suggests Jake likes to project a 'clean' appearance. It also suggests in a sly way that Jake's getting through life now unmarked by the 'mud' he handles. That speaks directly to the promise of the story.

Curly moans that his wife is no good. Now we know for sure what we were looking at in the photos. It's another small point, but audiences like to have a sense of what they are looking at, even if it later turns out to be something else, or have a different purpose than they suspected.

Jake offers Curly a stiff drink and supports Curly's belief that his wife is no good.

What can I tell you, kid? You're right. When  
you're right, you're right, and you're right.

This is clever dialogue, and in a subtle way it echoes through the story, when Jake finds himself in a situation where he struggles to discover what is right. He also will come to discover that someone else has looked at him with the same cool detachment he had for Curly. So the dialogue here has a purpose in this scene and a larger purpose in the story.

Curly talks about killing his wife and his idea of the unwritten law that he wouldn't be prosecuted. Jake responds,

I'll tell you the unwritten law, you dumb son of a bitch. You  
gotta be rich to kill somebody, anybody and get away with it.  
You think you got that kind of dough? You think you got that  
kind of class?

This exchange foreshadows the story's coming events.

Curly is ushered into the outer room, mumbling about begging off paying the fees until after his next fishing boat haul to catch albacore tuna. Jake's door is labeled "J. J. Gittes & Associates, Discreet Investigations." This accomplishes three things. It tells us 'where' we are in a quiet, unforced way. Note first the story is set into motion, then the detail about the place of the scene and who Jake is. This dialogue also, in an unforced way, sets up something that will be used later for the plot that revolves around Curly. When Jake tells Curly he can pay when he has the money, it also tells us something about Jake.

I don't want your last dime. What kind of  
guy do you think I am?

He also tells Curly to call him Jake, not Mr. Gittes. It's another small touch that tells the audience something about Jake within the flow of the story.

This opening scene both introduces the story through the dialogue and action -- about morality in a corrupt world and how Jake deals with it -- and has also begun to advance us along the story's plot line, that Jake is a detective for hire.

In another room are Walsh and Duffy, Jake's associates. They introduce Jake to his next client, Mrs. Mulwray.

She prefers to speak to Jake alone, which gives him a reason to introduce his associates and explain why they must stay. It also echoes with the theme in the story of trying to hide the truth while on the surface offering it. Another point, it tells us Jake is a successful private investigator, that he can afford to hire assistants.

Mrs. Mulwray asks Jake to investigate her husband's alleged affair with another woman.

Note that Mrs. Mulwray has a problem that she wants resolved. On the surface, her request is clear and direct. Jake attempts to dissuade the lady-like (another irony) Mrs. Mulwray from pursuing the case.

Let sleeping dogs lie. You're, you're  
better off not knowing.

This dialogue again speaks to a deeper issue in the story. The question here deepens to become, would Jake have been better off not knowing what he eventually learns? And through Jake the question reaches out into the audience. As Jake is our guide in this story, the audience is drawn in to wrestle with the same question, would all of us be better off not knowing what this story will reveal? Are we better off not knowing the details about some of the events that shape our lives, and therefore free to not have to make decisions about what we know?

On the surface Jake's dialogue also suggests again that Jake is a moral man. It's an example of how a storyteller 'names' what their story is about while they set their plot into motion.

Mrs. Mulwray insists Jake help her.

I have to know!

This tells us something about Mrs. Mulwray, but it's another line of dialogue that reaches out into the audience. This desire to 'know' leads to many discoveries of both wanted and unwanted information.

Mrs. Mulwray identifies her husband as Hollis Mulwray, the well-known chief engineer of the city's "Water and Power" Company. In an unforced way, this introduces another significant character in the story, and also sets up the audience to anticipate the introduction of that character.

Jake suggests the investigation might be more expensive than it's worth. Mrs. Mulwray insists that expense is no problem.

Money doesn't matter to me, Mr. Gittes.

This tells us something about her, something that also echoes later in the story. Again, the dialogue has a point in the scene and a purpose in the deeper story.

Jake begins his investigation by listening to public hearings discussing a project - a proposed Alto Vallejo Dam and Reservoir. Proponents and opponents of the dam present their cases at the city council meeting.

This information sets up a significant feature of the plot, although it appears to be merely a background detail. The storyteller, however, would know the importance of this information and how presenting it in an offhand way doesn't draw unnecessary attention to it. It also suggests that full force of the dilemma over the water issue in L.A. This aspect of the story, then, projects a clear sense of something being at stake over the story's outcome even if the water issue and what people are willing to do to secure water seems mere background.

Bored listening to a speech about how "Los Angeles is a desert community" needing irrigation projects, Jake reads the Racing Record.

When Mulwray is called to speak, he speaks against the project because of a past dam disaster.

Well, it won't hold. I won't build it, it's that  
simple. I'm not going to make the same mistake twice.

Mulwray's opinion is greeted with boos and protests. This scene tells us that Mulwray is a moral man, willing to stand up for what he believes is right. The dialogue also echoes with the sentiment about 'not making the same mistake twice,' an issue the story develops and plays out.

A farmer from the dry valley herds his sheep down the aisle of the public hearing, demanding to know why Mulwray is denying water to his livestock and crops.

You steal water from the valley. Ruin their grazing.  
Starve the livestock. Who's paying you to do that, Mr.  
Mulwray? That's what I want to know.

Mulwray looks down and doesn't answer. If he answered the question, he would foreclose an avenue of the plot. By not answering, the audience is drawn in to want to know the answer to the question.

This material here is presented as a background detail, but it's actually a central question in the story's plot. By introducing the question around a visually interesting situation \-- the farmer interrupting the meeting with the sheep - - the meeting is made visually interesting. It is also the nature of a plot that it operates around generating questions that engage the attention of an audience. Desiring answers, the audience is drawn deeper into the story.

Once this scene has introduced the information necessary to the story and plot -- the city needs water, but Mulwray will only meet that need in moral ways -- the scene is over. It's advanced the story along both its story and plot lines and generated new questions.

Jake trails Hollis, who walks in a dry riverbed and speaks to a Mexican boy on horseback.

This sets up the question, what is he talking to the boy about? What's he doing?

In passing, note the sound of the fly buzzing around Jake. This small detail operates to make the scene more vivid. By creating a story world with a vivid sense of purpose AND detail, a story's audience is drawn more deeply into that world. It appears more 'perfect' than life. Details alone, however, do not communicate a sense of dramatic purpose. The fly is a very minor detail in the sweep of the story, but it adds another small note to the story.

Next, Mulwray gazes all night long at the ocean from a coastal beach, where water mysteriously runs out of a run-off channel.

Again it sets up the question, what's going on here? Another question, will Mulwray spot Jake? That small moment of drama when Mulwray turns and almost sees Jake helps keep up the dramatic tension in the scene. A scene with a quality of dramatic tension operates to engage the attention of its audience. Scene that lack dramatic tension on some level are an invitation to the story's audience to tune out. More often than not when an audience tunes out of a film, part of them never returns.

Note the speed and clarity of these scenes. They communicate no unnecessary information. They have a purpose, they fulfill it, the scenes are over.

Jake returns to his car and finds a notice from the Citizens' Committee to Save Los Angeles on his car's windshield about the drought-stricken city's water supply. This reinforces one point about what's at stake in the story's plot, although that isn't fully clear to the audience yet. Jake crumples up the flyer and throws it away. Again, the purpose of the flyer was clear to the storyteller, and what purpose has been served by introducing that information. The storyteller wants the audience to not lose track of the water issue.

Jake takes a watch from his car and sets the time. This sets up the question, what's the purpose of the watch? Again the audience is being drawn forward. Shown something, then given the answer in the next scene. Struggling storytellers explain things in a way that undercuts this process of introducing a story's elements in a way designed to draw the audience deeper into the story's world. They make statements about things. This undercuts a story's movement because when one is through with a statement, one has no reason to keep going.

Jake sets the watch under the wheel of Mulwray's car.

If the storyteller were to find some way to explain why Jake was putting the watch under the tire, the story would lose that one small beat of a revelation. This story never misses a beat at creating this flow of revelations. It's part of what makes the film so pleasurable.

Next scene, we cut to the broken watch next to an unbroken one and Jake's comment.

Jeeze, he was there all night.

That suggests the water ran all night.

A voice speaks off screen.

I had to go back three times to pick up  
the watch.

Another small moment, but note how it's designed to pull us into wanting to know who the speaker is.

The speaker talks about where Mulwray went that day, to three reservoirs.

Jake reads the paper, unconcerned, while this information is imparted. He doesn't understand yet what he's hearing.

Jake's assistant Walsh thinks Mulwray is obsessed with water.

The guy's got water on the brain.

Walsh shows other investigative evidence to Jake - candid photographs of Mulwray in a heated argument with another man [Noah Cross], hearing only the mention of the words "apple core". And Duffy has located Mulwray with a young woman in a rowboat in Echo Park.

Jake repeats the phrase 'apple core.' This seems unforced, but it also is a cue that the information is important and needs to be heard by the audience.

The audience is also set up to wonder, who's the man in the photo Mulwray is arguing with? It's again this natural process of foreshadowing the full entrance of a main character.

Jake is unhappy about the pictures Walsh has taken. He explains that this business requires 'finesse.' This will echo again when Jake finds out who is being finessed here. Jake also sounds out of sorts. He then gets a call about "they're being in a rowboat in a park. Again, we're being drawn forward to want more information. We're given enough information to cue us to what's happening and orient us, but not enough to stop the forward momentum of the story. Within the context of the initial question \-- is Mulwray having an affair -- Jake now seems ready to make progress.

By advancing the story toward a seeming answer to a simple question, is Mulwray having an affair or not -- the storyteller offers the story's audience a sense of being able to track the meaning of a story's events. Struggling storytellers often create revelations by withholding information from the audience. It creates boredom. Offering too much information, on the other hand, stalls the story's audience from being drawn through the story. Each mistake undermines creating a quality of movement in a story.

Jake takes clandestine photos of Mulwray hugging and kissing the unknown blonde girl in the El Macondo Apartment's patio. Note the girl speaks in a foreign language, which raises both a question about who she is, but also where she's from.

During the scene, Jake dislodges a tile that makes a noise, drawing Mulwray's attention to Jake's position. Again Mulwray almost sees Jake. This small moment operates to keep dramatic tension in the moment.

We now seem to have an answer to the question, was Mulwray having an affair? This is important again because it allows the audience to track where they are in the story. Audiences don't like being confused. Surprised, amazed, yes.

In the next scene, Jake's photo of the couple appears on the front page of a newspaper; a scandal has engulfed Mulwray.

How this happens -- how the photographs went from Jake to Mrs. Mulwray to the newspapers -- is not within the dramatic purpose of the story; so those scenes do not appear. They would only delay the advance of the story.

A barber tells Jake that he's "practically a movie star" with all the publicity he generates. This dialogue speaks to different levels. While Jake appears to be sitting pretty, he is also, unknown to him, an actor in someone else's drama. An unwitting one. In a subtle way it also suggests that Jake might be overreaching himself, setting himself up for a fall. On another level, Jake has reached these heights (in the story) through being a dynamic character. It's hard to create a story around characters who aren't active (in movement) in some way. If they aren't in movement, it's hard to create drama around an anticipation of an outcome to their actions, feelings or thoughts.

A mortgage broker gets on Jake's case about what he does for a living. So as soon as we have this build up for Jake, it's attacked, undermined.

Jake reacts with anger. This suggests that he cares about who he is and what people think about him. Jake,

I help people out. I don't kick them  
out of their homes when they're in  
a desperate situation.

This dialogue echoes later in the story when Jake discovers that what he's doing is helping to evict people from their homes. Jake,

I make an honest living, understand?

Jake also doesn't understand how the pictures got into the papers so quickly. This is another small mystery the story will resolve. Again it's presented as a background detail.

Jake's commitment to the truth will be tested in the story, and also his moral sense when he finds out to what ends he's been used. This scene suggests that Jake will react to that information with passion and vigor. Stories need to be populated by characters who both react to events and seek to shape a story's course and outcome. Otherwise, passive characters communicate to the story's audience that the story only moves because the storyteller makes it happen.

Note also how again this scene suggests Jake is a moral character. A story about morality needs characters who react to this issue. In weakly written scripts, one is presented with a succession of characters who neither communicate a clear sense of dramatic purpose nor a sense of why the storyteller choose them to populate their world. A story about morality could, of course, have a significant character indifferent to that issue if that somehow impacted the story. But characters who create no deeper impression that being hired hands created to move a storyteller's plot around often fail to suggest that they are in movement, in movement because issues important to them are being challenged, because how they feel about a story's issues compels them to react to a story's events. Because issues they have feelings about are under attack.

The scene ends with the barber saying something about the Chinese and sex, a humorous story. But we don't hear the story, which pulls us into the next scene while also foreshadowing another aspect of the story.

We cut to Jake entering his office anxious to tell the same joke to his associates. He asks the secretary to leave because he won't tell the joke in front of her. Again, in his world, Jake acts to a moral code.

As he builds to the long, drawn-out punch line, Jake doesn't realize that he has another female client behind him listening to the entire joke.

So there's this guy, Walsh, do you understand? He's  
tired of screwin' his wife...

Walsh,

But Jake.

He's trying to tell Jake that someone is in the office, but Jake won't listen. Jake says,

You're always in such a hurry.

This is a quick set up for the punch line when Jake finds out the woman is in the office. Jake is a dynamic character who can rush headlong in life when he's feeling passionate.

Jake turns and meets the client - who is not amused by his joke.

Jake is clearly upset with himself because he's violated a rule from his moral code. He's also embarrassed because the woman in his office is a stunning beauty. She asks,

Do you know me?

This pulls both Jake and the audience in to want to know the answer. One would achieve a different effect by having her announce right out who she is. She continues,

Have we ever met?

Note how this draws out the dramatic tension of the moment. It is the job of the storyteller to build the tension in moments, to allow the drama of each moment to play out and escalate. This makes the moments in stories pleasurable for a story's audience. Jake,

Never.

Woman,

You see, I'm Mrs. Evelyn Mulwray.

This is a sudden punch to both Jake and the audience. This might be referred to as plot point one, a point of no return for the story. But on a deeper level of meaning, it twists apart everything Jake and the audience think they 'know.' This kind of twist can be very, very pleasurable when well done. It's well done here. It works because everything that has come before this moment was done in a vivid, clear way that seemed direct and to the point. Just like Jake, we accepted the earlier Mrs. Mulwray was who she said she was. Her character rang 'true' because every other element of the story is designed to ring 'true.'

She continues,

I see you like publicity, Mr. Gittes. Well,  
you're going to get it.

We now have a twist and pay off for the set up in the previous scene about Jake being a publicity hound. By raising the issue in the previous scene and then paying off on it here, the pay off has a greater impact. These kind of set ups and pay offs can be placed throughout a story. They heighten the impact of a story's advance.

She turns to leave, which raises the question, what's she going to do? Note also the pay off here around Jake being presented as a moral man. On one hand, the audience has been set up to feel he's undeserving of this fate. On the other hand, he has shown himself to be a bit full of himself.

Lastly, and most important, we know Jake will react to what's happening here.

Jake pleads his innocence, that she shouldn't get tough with him. She,

I don't get tough with anyone.  
(beat)  
My lawyer does.

Wonderful dialogue.

This twist in the story means both Jake and the audience now desire to know more, i.e., the audiences desires to be moved to discover what's going on here. The storytellers here (this story starts with a great script, but every aspect of the film is well-done) have set up a story with a plot that draws in the audience to want to know more, to NEED to know more. Any time the storyteller can set up such a need in the audience, they have set up a key design element of creating dynamic, engaging stories.

Befuddled, Jake goes to visit Mr. Mulwray in his office, but Mulwray is not in. Pretending he has an appointment, Jake snoops around the office and opens up Mulwray's desk drawer, finding nothing of interest - bank checks, neatly organized records, and a leather case. Jake opens up a large ledger book, reading a scrawled, enigmatic note,

Tues. night - Oak Pass Res. 7 channels used.

This sets up the audience to want to know more about what this means. Again, we learn things as Jake learns them. The audience is allowed to be a participant in the story. It's another element that makes a story enjoyable for an audience.

Hollis' chief deputy, Russ Yelburton enters. Yelburton ushers Jake out of Mulwray's office.

This sets up the question, what's going to happen next?

Russ,

I wonder if you'd care to wait in my office?

Jake goes with him.

In his own office with walls adorned by large game fish, photographs, and a painted symbol of a fish [the flag of the Albacore Club], Yelburton is convinced that the scandalous stories about Mulwray are groundless.

Jake excuses himself, but on the way out he takes a supply of cards from Russ's desk. This sets up another question, what's he going to do with them?

In the hallway by the elevator, Jake runs into Claude Mulvihill, the city's sheriff, whose own personal water supply has been shut off.

How'd you find out about it? You don't drink it. You  
don't take a bath in it. They wrote you a letter. But  
then you'd have to be able to read.

Wonderful dialogue.

Mulvihill approaches Jake, but Jake manages to defuse the situation. It then comes out Mulvihill is employed by the Water and Power Company to protect against numerous threats to blow up the city reservoirs. Yelburton explains why there is protest.

Well, it's this darn drought. We've had to ration water  
in the valley and the farmers are desperate. Well, what  
can we do? The rest of the city needs drinking water.

Jake exits with a comment about Mulvihill as a rumrunner never losing a drop, so he should be able to help the city. This simple comment operates on different levels. It suggests where Mulvihill is in terms of morality. He's corrupt but in a moral way. It also sets him up as a character who will later interact with Jake again.

Jake drives to the Mulwray mansion, tended by at least four servants, a chauffeur, a butler, a housemaid, and a gardener. In the rear of the estate is a fish pond and fountain. The Asian gardener mumbles: "Bad for the glass," but it sounds like he's saying it's bad for the grass. Something shiny in the bottom of the pool attracts Jake's eye, but he is not able to fish out the object before Mrs. Mulwray approaches.

Although what this means isn't revealed, because of the careful construction of the story in every detail, the audience is cued to the importance of the glass by the nature of their discovery. The audience, like Jake, is again being set up with a need to gain understanding.

While sitting down to tea, Jake confronts Mrs. Mulwray, determined to convince her that he had nothing to do with the publication of the incriminating photos or stories. She appears dangerous and threatening to him - but almost instantly and to his astonishment, she offers to drop the lawsuit. Jake isn't about to be put off.

Jake,

I'm not in business to be loved, but I am in  
business. And believe me, Mrs. Mulwray, whoever set  
your husband up set me up. LA's a small town, people  
talk. I'm just trying to make a living. I don't want to  
become a local joke.

One point of this dialogue is to communicate a deeper sense of who Jake is. The events of the story, then, have been designed to evoke this type of dialogue. By evoking this type of dialogue, the deeper issues of the story are voiced in a way the audience can assign meaning to the story's events. What's happened here has wounded Jake's sense of who he is. He must react.

Mrs. Mulwray offers to drop the lawsuit, but this is suspicious to Jake. And being suspicious to Jake, the audience is being drawn in again with him. Jake,

I don't want to drop it. I'd better talk to  
your husband about this.

Mrs. Mulwray,

Why?...Hollis seems to think you're an  
innocent man.

This speaks to the issue of what kind of man Jake is, but also to his desire to project a certain kind of persona. It speaks to another issue. If Hollis thinks Jake is innocent, who does he think is guilty? Jake,

Well, I've been accused of a lot of things  
before, Mrs. Mulwray, but never that. Look. Somebody's  
gone to a lot of trouble here and lawsuit or no  
lawsuit, I intend to find out. I'm not supposed to be  
the one who's caught with his pants down. So unless  
it's a problem, I'd like to talk to your husband.

Mrs. Mulwray,

Why should it be a problem?

Jake,

May I speak frankly, Mrs. Mulwray?

Mrs. Mulwray,

Only if you can, Mr. Gittes.

One purpose in this story for Mrs. Mulwray is to jab forcefully at Jake's sense of who she is. This kind of dialogue by its nature is pointed and barbed and a joy to hear when well done. Knowing that Jake's image is important to him, the storyteller brings in a character to attack his image.

Jake,

Well, that little girlfriend. She was pretty in  
a cheap sort of a way of course. She's disappeared.  
Maybe they disappeared together.

Jake's assessment of the girl will echo in a profound way later in the story. So the storyteller is setting up the audience here as well as Jake.

Mrs. Mulwray,

Suppose they did. How does that affect  
you?

Jake,

It's nothing personal, Mrs. Mulwray.

The audience knows this isn't true. It's very personal for Jake. Audiences like to be 'in the know' in this kind of moment. It's part of the pleasure of a story.

Again, if Jake weren't obsessed, he wouldn't be such a dynamic character. If he appeared to be the kind of man willing just to forget the whole thing, the story would collapse. That's the danger of trying to tell a story with passive characters. It's something that generally only the most skilled of storytellers can accomplish, while the stories of struggling storytellers are often full to the brim with passive characters sluggishly reacting to events.

Mrs. Mulwray,

It's very personal. It couldn't be more  
personal. Is this a business or an obsession with you?

This raises the question for the audience as well. It asks, why is Jake obsessed with this?

Mrs. Mulwray suggests that Jake look for Hollis at Oak Pass or Stone Canyon Reservoirs, where he frequently wanders during his lunch times.

This is the longest continuous scene to this point in the story. Its length is sustained by the dramatic tension of the dialogue; the dramatic voltage that passes between these two characters. Long scenes composed of dialogue with weak, dramatically unfocused exchanges tend to collapse into unpassable goo. Every exchange of dialogue in this scene is taut with tension and speaks always to a deeper purpose in the story. Great writing, acting, direction, lighting, editing, etc.

Using one of the business cards he lifted from Yelburton's office, Jake is allowed admission by police guards into the Oak Pass Reservoir. There, he meets former partner detective Lieutenant Lou Escobar, who used to work with Jake in Chinatown. Loach is Escobar's assistant.

When Jake wants to light a cigarette, he's told he can't. Escobar,

I'll see that he doesn't burn himself.

This plays on different levels. Has Escobar helped Jake not get 'burned' before?

The set up of the scene, however, pulls us into the question, how do these men know each other? Then it provides the answer.

Compared to the others, Jake now wears his flashy, expensive suits and his gold cigarette case, as Escobar notices. Escobar,

Well, sometimes it takes a while for a man to  
find himself. Maybe you have.

This raises the question, what happened that Jake needed to find himself? Note also that Escobar frames it as an open question. It's still an open question, then, whether Jake has really found himself.

Loach,

Going through other people's dirty linen.

Jake,

Tell me. You still puttin' Chinamen in jail for  
spittin' in the laundry?

Loach,

You're a little behind the times, Jake.

Escobar,

They use steam irons now. And I'm out of  
Chinatown.

Jake,

Since when?

Escobar,

Since I made Lieutenant.

Jake,

Congratulations.

This again naturally inserts the idea of Chinatown back into the story. We moved a step closer to understanding the 'why' of the title. The real revelation is still unseen in the distance, but this small step communicates that that revelation will come.

It also suggests that Escobar found a way to go along in Chinatown, while something in Jake's moral code wouldn't allow him to follow the same path.

Jake says that he's looking for Hollis Mulwray, that he'd like to talk to him.

Escobar,

You're welcome to try.

Here again we have a line of dialogue that draws us forward, that sets us up for a small payoff, that, in a way, is unexpected. Escobar continues,

There he is.

At that moment, Hollis's body is pulled dead from a fresh water reservoir.

Note here the timing. We see the body just as Jake and Escobar see it. It's not simply on the shore of the reservoir. In this small detail -- as in every other detail in this story -- the moment is designed to be more dramatic.

We also transition here into the deeper story. Who killed Mulwray? Why did they involve Jake? Because these questions are clearly presented, the story's audience is oriented to the direction of the story. Because Mulwray was the water commissioner, some of mundane information presented now takes on added dramatic weight.

This is another turning point for the story. The first was the appearance of the real Mrs. Mulwray. Now we have the dead Hollis. What seemed simple to both the audience and Jake grows in complexity. But we start from that seemingly simple, opening movement of the story around finding out whether Hollis, the water commissioner, is having an affair.

We then cut to the coroner and Mrs. Mulwray. Escobar suggests the possibility that Mr. Mulwray might have taken his own life.

After identifying her husband's body, Mrs. Mulwray is elusive, troubled, and frightened during questioning by Escobar about her husband's alleged affair with the young girl that was reported in the newspaper. She pretends that she had indeed hired a detective, and Jake backs her answer.

Note the timing of Jake's entrance here. Escobar is pressing Mrs. Mulwray for the details of when and how she hired Jake, and Jake steps into the frame to answer the question. Beautiful timing. Even written on the page, this would come off as great timing.

Note also how Mrs. Mulwray who a few scenes ago was dismissive of Jake now needs his help. This was part of the design of the story. It adds a quality of movement to the relationship between Mrs. Mulwray and Jake. They start out at odds, now are forced together, at least for this moment.

The audience is also drawn deeper into the question, who is the young girl?

Escobar wants the name of the girl seen with Mr. Mulwray. Jake doesn't know it.

At her car when leaving, Mrs. Mulwray thanks Jake and promises to pay him.

I just didn't want to explain anything.  
I send you a check?

Jake,

A check?

This goes back to the opening scene with Curly. Jake's morality means he won't just accept money from Mrs. Mulwray and go away.

Mrs. Mulwray,

...To make it official that I've hired you.

She drives away before Jake can answer. It's clear, however, that Jake is not going to back away from his investigation. Everything we know about Jake tells us that. But what's he going to do to move forward? The audience now must pay attention, must keep their senses focused on the screen.

During his lunch hour, Jake visits the mortician, who jokes about Mulwray's death.

In the middle of a drought and the  
water commissioner drowns! Only in LA.

A second drowning, that of a drunk living in one of the downtown storm drains, is more interesting to Jake. Jake doesn't understand how a man could drown in a dry riverbed. Jake knows the riverbed was dry because of following Hollis. So what seemed to be simply a backdrop to the story comes back around to play an important role.

By raising a question around this drowning, both Jake and the audience are pulled forward. In that way, the audience is sharing the journey of discover both through Jake and with Jake. It's an element that makes mysteries pleasurable for an audience. That sense of participation.

Jake's investigation of this new mystery also gives his actions a clear sense of purpose.

At the Hollenbeck Bridge, Jake prowls around for a closer look, noticing a trickle of water in the bottom of the "damp riverbed."

This raises the question, where did the water come from? Now what had seemed background details about Hollis Mulwray and his activities comes closer to center stage. The ominous music is also a cue that this death in a 'dry' riverbed is not what it seems.

In the background, we see the dresser of the drowning victim is elevated several feet from the river bed. That suggests a great deal of water must have come down the river to drown the man.

The Mexican boy on horseback appears and tells Jake that he would regularly report to the man with glasses (Mulwray) about the water.

It goes in different parts of the river.  
Every night a different part.

Jake has found another clue similar to the one Hollis Mulwray was in the process of learning just before his death. Portions of the city's water supply are being dumped or diverted secretly.

That night, Jake drives to the reservoir where Mulwray's corpse was found. We don't have intervening scenes because they would not serve a purpose in the story.

Jake finds a locked fence at the reservoir. Jake is a man of action. He goes over the fence and calmly resumes walking forward.

Jake hears gunfire. Believing he is a target, he jumps into a run-off channel for cover. The storm drain immediately fills with rushing water, almost claiming him.

This is a highly visual, dramatic scene. Jake jumps from a dangerous moment (the sound of shots) to an even more dangerous moment.

Now he must climb back over the fence in soggy clothes. Note also the symbolism of the events of the story starting to degloss Jake.

Jake is threatened for trespassing by Claude Mulvihill. Jake flippantly asks Claude,

Where'd you get the midget?

referring to another hired thug with Claude. This communicates that Jake is a tough guy.

A knife-wielding creep [Director Roman Polanski] warns Jake to stop snooping around.

You're a very nosy fellow, kitty-cat, huh? You know  
what happens to nosy fellows? Huh, no? Want to guess?  
Huh, no? OK. They lose their noses. Next time you lose  
the whole thing. Cut if off and feed it to my goldfish.  
Understand?

Jake's nose gushes blood after a sharp flick of the knife.

This scene escalates the drama over what's at stake in this story. If Jake goes forward, he is clearly risking his life. It is because he is willing to risk his life to find the truth that makes Jake a dynamic character.

He sports a bloody-bandaged and stitched nose in the next scene and an unraveling bandage. It visually tells us that Jake is willing to risk his persona to get at the truth. It also undercuts the stereotype about the hard bitten private investigator who travels through a story unscathed. In that way, this film again suggests it is going for a deeper sense of 'truth.' It's not going to play the normal conventions. This signals to the audience they can have no easy expectations about how this story will turn out or where it will go.

Jake's associates tell him he really doesn't have anything on Mulvihill, but Jake responds,

I want the big boys.

This cues the audience to what Jake wants in the story. So while the mystery at the heart of the story is still unrevealed, we're again oriented to a dramatic purpose for the moment and for Jake that is clear and direct.

A woman named Miss Ida Sessions telephones. She insists Jake knows her. This moment is designed to draw us deeper into the story.

Well, I'm a working girl. I didn't come in to see you  
on my own...

We still don't know what she's talking about. So both the audience and Jake now want the answer to this question. Jake,

When did you come in?

Ida,

I was the one who pretended to be Mrs.  
Mulwray.

Although she won't divulge her address or who hired her to be an impostor, she suggests that Jake look at the day's obituary column in the Los Angeles Post-Record - there he can find "one of those people."

This again pulls both Jake and the audience forward.

Once this information has been communicated, the scene is over. We move forward to a cocktail lounge, where Jake tears out the obituary column. It's not clear that he's found the information he's looking for. So what might have been a clear lead opens out into a deeper question.

Jake glances at the headlines of the paper: "WATER BOND ISSUE PASSES COUNCIL." Both Jake and the audience would now know this has some significance to the story, but what?

Mrs. Mulwray joins him and is startled to see his bandaged nose, staring at it, but not asking about it. Although Jake has been generously paid, still wants the truth. Jake,

Something else besides the death of your  
husband was bothering you. You were upset, but  
not that upset.

Mrs. Mulwray,

Mr. Gittes. Don't tell me how I feel.

Jake,

Sorry. Look. You sue me. Your husband dies. You  
drop the lawsuit like a hot potato all of it quicker  
than the wind from a duck's ass. Excuse me, uh. Then  
you ask me to lie to the police.

Mrs. Mulwray,

It wasn't much of a lie.

Jake,

If your husband was killed, it was. This could  
look like you paid me off to withhold evidence.

This adds a new wrinkle to the story. Mrs. Mulwray,

But he wasn't killed.

Jake,

Mrs. Mulwray. I think you're hiding something.

Mrs. Mulwray,

Well, I suppose I am. Actually, I knew  
about the affair.

Jake,

How did you find out?

Mrs. Mulwray,

My husband.

Jake,

He told you? (She nods yes.) And you weren't  
the least bit upset?

Mrs. Mulwray,

I was grateful.

Jake,

Mrs. Mulwray, you'll have to explain that.

Mrs. Mulwray,

Why?

Jake,

Look. I do matrimonial work. It's my métier [he  
pronounces it "meeteeyay"]. When a wife tells me that  
she's happy that her husband is cheating on her, it  
runs contrary to my experience.

Mrs. Mulwray,

Unless what?

Jake,

She was cheating on him. Were you?

We're getting at different 'truths' in this scene.

Mrs. Mulwray,

I dislike the word cheat.

Beautiful, elusive dialogue. She offers nothing freely.

Jake,

Did you have affairs?

More probing by Jake,

Where were you when your husband died?

Mrs. Mulwray,

I can't tell you.

Jake,

You mean you don't know where you were?

Mrs. Mulwray,

I mean I can't tell you.

Jake,

You were seeing someone too. For very long?

This is a loaded question that echoes deeply in the story. One of the many things about this great film is that repeated viewings offer new insights into the subtext of the dialogue.

Like their earlier extended scene, the dialogue here is witted, barbed, pointed.

Mrs. Mulwray,

I don't see anyone for very long, Mr.  
Gittes. It's difficult for me. Now, I think you know  
all you need know about me. I didn't want publicity. I  
didn't want to go into any of this then or now. Is that  
all?

She's offered Jake, and the audience, all the truth she's going to volunteer.

Jake,

Oh, by the way, uh, what does this C stand for?

Mrs. Mulwray,

Cr...Cross.

This innocent-seeming detail speaks to what has been mostly unseen in this story. Both Jake and the audience are cued that something else is happening here by Mrs. Mulwray's reaction.

Before he roars away in his car, Jake tells her his conclusions about her husband's death.

OK, go home, but in case you're interested, your  
husband was murdered. Somebody's been dumping thousands  
of tons of water from the city's reservoirs and we're  
supposed to be in the middle of a drought. He found out  
about it and he was killed. There's a waterlogged drunk  
in the morgue, involuntary manslaughter if anybody  
wants to take the trouble - which they don't. It seems  
like half the city is trying to cover it all up, which  
is fine by me. But Mrs. Mulwray, I goddamned near lost  
my nose. And I like it. I like breathing through it.  
And I still think that you're hiding something.

This puts an exclamation point on the question, what is she still hiding? Again the purpose of such a question is to orient the audience to the direction of the story.

Jake's spiel here also orients the audience to one dimension of the story, that there is a cover-up over Hollis Mulwray's death. That aspect of the story stands in full relief. But the more Jake discovers, the less he seems to really know. What he's discovered also makes him a kind of partner with Mrs. Mulwray as we see them face to face. It visually suggests the looming intimacy of these two.

Jake revisits the office of Hollis Mulwray - now being taken over by Yelburton. While waiting in the outer room, he notices that the walls are covered with photographs, one of which is captioned "Noah Cross, 1929," and others dated in the 1920s picturing Hollis Mulwray and Noah Cross. Jake has had this opportunity because Yelburton initially refuses to come out and see him. So this moment is put to dramatic use.

Note the sequence in this story. We have the early photo of Cross where he's unidentified; just a man arguing with Hollis. Then we hear his name from Mrs. Mulwray. Now Jake comes across his name and who he is. There's a clear progression for the presentation of information; the audience is being cued that Cross is a significant character.

Jake casually asks the secretary,

Noah Cross worked for the water department.

Secretary,

Yes. No.

Jake,

Well, did he or didn't he?

Secretary,

He owned it.

Jake is astonished that Cross "owned the entire water supply for the city." Mr. Mulwray, a co-owner/partner "felt the public should own the water" and persuaded Cross to turn it over to the public.

Now we have a reason for Mulwray's death. With Jake, we share this discovery. But this is just another piece of the puzzle. It sets up the larger question, was Noah Cross involved in the death?

Once it becomes clear Jake won't leave until he sees Yelburton, he's allowed into his office. They spar, until Jake says,

Jake,

Well, let's look at it this way. Mulwray didn't  
want to build a dam. Had a reputation that was hard to  
get around. You decided to ruin it. Then he found out  
you were dumping water at night. Then he was, uh,  
drowned.

Yelburton,

Mr. Gittes, that's an outrageous accusation.  
I don't know what you're talking about.

Jake offers to take the story to the papers. This forces Yelburton to admit that some secret diversions of irrigation water are indeed being made.

We're not anxious for this to get around. We have been  
diverting a little water to irrigate orange groves in  
the Northwest Valley. As you know, the farmers out  
there have no legal right to our water. We've been  
trying to help some of them out. Keep them from going  
under. Naturally when you divert water, there's a  
little run-off.

Jake's challenging dialogue forces out revelations that advance the story.

Jake wants to know exactly where those grooves are. Yelburton stalls. Jake tells him,

I don't want to nail you. I want  
to find out who put you up to it.

Jake is again operating from his personal moral code here. He suggests that if Yelburton cooperates, Jake can pin the murder on higher-ups and Yelburton can remain department chair for 20 years. This suggests that what Jake wants here is the truth, that he's aware the truth can't uproot all the corruption he comes across.

When Jake returns to his office, his secretary signals silently that someone is waiting for him. This gives dramatic shape to another small moment in the film. Now we as well as Jake anticipate discovering who's in his office.

Jake opens the door and sees a woman standing by the window with her back to him and us. Note how the drama of the moment is extended. She turns. It's Mrs. Mulwray.

He offers her a drink. She asks about his salary. This allows Jake to offer a few concrete details about his business. This is also a pleasurable moment because it plays against other detective scenes where we find out how much the detective charges. So the scene plays against a context of other movies and stories.

She asks,

Whoever's behind my husband's death - why have  
they gone to all this trouble?

Jake,

Money. How they plan to make it out of  
emptying reservoirs, that I don't know.

This is movement for the story, from their last scene when Jake presented the idea that her husband was murdered, to her acceptance of that idea here. It's still not the real truth of the situation, but it shows her acceptance of Jake.

She offers him his regular salary plus $5,000 to,

Find out what happened to Hollis and who was involved.

This orients the audience to Jake's purpose.

Jake reveals he knows that her father is Noah Cross, causing her to nervously light two cigarettes. Note how closely the camera focuses on Mrs. Mulwray as she lights the second cigarette. This sets up the payoff when Jake mentions she already has a lit cigarette. Jake,

Tell me something uh. Did you get married before or  
after Mulwray and your father sold the water  
department? Noah Cross is your father, isn't he?...Then  
you married your father's business partner...Does, uh  
my talking about your father upset you?

Mrs. Mulwray,

Why yes. No. A little.

Neither Jake nor the audience can fully understand why Mrs. Mulwray is so nervous here, but both Jake and the audience know this is a significant moment.

According to Mrs. Mulwray, Hollis and Cross had a "falling out" over the ownership of the water, never speaking again. Jake,

Over you? Or over the water department?

This question clearly startles Mrs. Mulwray.

Over me? Why should it be over me?

Jake (and the audience) is standing next to the truth, but it is not recognized.

Hollis had opposed the construction of an earlier dam, but was forced into building it by Cross. The dam collapsed, and she says they never spoke from that time on. Jake, remembering the recent photographs shown to him by his operatives of the two men fighting, asks if she is sure of her recollection as she signs the newly-drawn contract.

This is a pleasurable moment for the audience because they've been set up to know something that Mrs. Mulwray doesn't. This kind of set up, where the audience knows something a character doesn't, is part of how a story communicates that it is more 'true' than life, where most people feel in the dark about events.

The scene ends with Mrs. Mulwray signing the contract. The scene is over because it's fulfilled its dramatic purpose. We're a step closer to the truth about who killed Hollister Mulwray and the moral truth about why it happened.

Jake goes to the Albacore Club (flying the fish symbol). Note how the presentation of the scene draws us forward to want to know who he's meeting there (although we suspect who that is). Jake meets Mulwray's former partner, a sinister, jovial tycoon named Noah Cross (John Huston).

Cross misnames Jake, a subtle put down. Cross,

Mr. Gits.

Jake,

Gittes.

Cross,

Oh. How do you do? You've got a nasty  
reputation, Mr. Gits. I like that...If you were a bank  
president, that would be one thing. But in your  
business it's admirable and its good  
advertising...It's, um, why you attracted a client like  
my daughter...But I'm surprised you're still working  
for her unless she's suddenly come up with another  
husband.

Jake,

No. She happens to think the last one was  
murdered.

Cross,

Umm, how did she get that idea?

Jake,

I think I gave it to her.

Like the extended scenes with Jake and Mrs. Mulwray, the dialogue here is sharp, barbed, laced with undercurrents. It clearly comes out just how ruthless Noah is.

Cross,

Are you, uh, sleeping with her? (No answer from  
Jake) Come, come, Mr. Gits. You don't have to think  
about that to remember, do ya?

The real reason why he's asking that comes out later.

Jake,

If you want an answer to that question, Mr.  
Cross, I'll put one of my men on the job. Good  
afternoon.

Jake is too tough to be toyed with. But he's also in the dark, and unaware of it.

Cross,

Gittes. You're dealing with a disturbed woman  
who's just lost her husband. I don't want her taken  
advantage of. Sit down.

This echoes with the real 'truth' of the story.

Jake,

What for?

Cross,

You may think you know what you're dealing with,  
but believe me, you don't. Why is that funny?

This speaks to the story being, on one level, about a search for the truth.

Jake,

That's what the district attorney used to tell  
me in Chinatown.

Cross,

And was he right? Exactly what do you know about  
me? Sit down.

This is another step into the 'why' of the title. It's that subtle quality of movement that this story expressed in every scene, in every nuanced line of dialogue.

Jake,

Mainly that you're rich, and too respectable to  
want your name in the newspapers.

Cross,

Course I'm respectable. I'm old. Politicians,  
ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they  
last long enough. I'll double whatever your fee is and  
pay ya $10,000 if you find Hollis' girlfriend.

Jake,

Girlfriend?

Finding the girl opens up another purpose for Jake. His looking for the girl also orients the audience to a clear sense of purpose for Jake. Noah wanting the girl found seems natural, innocent. Both Jake and the audience are being pulled in here. Like the fake Mrs. Mulwray, Noah is presented in such a vibrant, natural way, what he really is does not openly register.

Jake,

When was the last time you saw Mulwray?...Do  
you remember the last time you saw Mulwray?

This is a loaded question. Cross tries to evade it.

Jake,

It was five days ago outside the Pig 'n'  
Whistle and you had one hell of an argument. I got the  
pictures in my office if that'll help you remember.  
What was the argument about?

Cross,

My daughter.

This is another bombshell that isn't what it appears to be. It appears to offer the 'truth,' but only another slice of it. Great dialogue.

They continue probing each other for information, some advantage.

Jake,

I'll look into it as soon as I've checked out  
some orange groves.

Cross,

Orange groves?

The dialogue in this scene operates across different levels of truth. Note that at the end of the scene Jake offers some information about his plans. It orients the audience to where Jake is going.

At the Hall of Records, Jake asks to see the plat books for the Northwest Valley. Numerous land sales are in escrow with new owners buying up the land, shown with their names pasted in the plat books. Most of the valley has been sold in the last few months.

This suggests something is happening, but what? Again, an answer leads to a deeper question.

A trip to the valley confirms the plat book records - farm land is rapidly being sold.

On one level, we're discovering why Hollis Mulwray was murdered, but not the deeper truth that murder conceals.

Men on horseback fire on Jake's car in the middle of one orange grove, pursuing him through the narrow rows of trees. He is dragged from his crashed automobile, beaten , and his pockets are emptied.

The audience is set up to expect that things are very grim for Jake. The dramatic tension of the story escalates. Will searching for the truth cost Jake his life?

The leader of the farmers wonders which of two hated groups Jake represents, misdirecting his anger at him.

Who are you with? The water department or the real  
estate office?

Jake identifies himself as a private investigator, hired by a client,

To see if the water department was irrigatin'  
your land.

The shotgun-armed farmer is flabbergasted - the exact reverse is happening.

Irrigatin' my land? The water department's been sending  
you people out here to blow up water tanks. They put  
poison down three of my wells. I call that a funny way  
to irrigate. Who'd hire you for a thing like that?

This is a revelation for both Jake and the audience.

Jake now understands why the farmers are defending themselves - water officials have diverted irrigation water to cause a drought in some parts of the valley to force farmers out of the dry areas, buying up their parched land at cut- rate prices. When he hands over Mrs. Mulwray's contract, one of the farmers is angry.

Mulwray! That's the son-of-a-bitch who's done it  
to us.

Jake is knocked out cold when he calls the man a "dumb Okie."

Just when Jake seems safe, things go awry again.

Jake regains consciousness with Mrs. Mulwray staring down at him, surrounded by the farmers on a Northwest Valley porch. This is another twist on our expectation of who Jake would see when he comes to.

As he drives back to town with Mrs. Mulwray, Jake describes the scandal to her, explaining how valley acreage is being purchased cheaply for speculation pending the reservoir's construction. Hollis was killed because he opposed the reservoir.

Something clicks in Jake's' memory about Jasper Lamar Crabb. His name is mentioned in the newspaper obituary column in his pocket. A memorial service was recently held at the Mar Vista Inn for Crabb who died two weeks earlier. Dummy investors are the new owners who are buying up the valley land. Jake,

He passed away two weeks ago, and one week ago, he  
bought the land.

They drive into the Mar Vista Rest Home and enter pretending to be a rich couple who need to find a convalescent home for Jake's dad. The home director, Mr. Palmer assures them that Jews are excluded and that strict privacy is maintained for all residents. This is another kind of immorality.

On an activities board for the home, Jake finds familiar names for the land sales. Some of the elderly residents are sewing a flag with the fish symbol of the Albacore Club, since Mar Vista is an "unofficial charity of theirs."

Palmer requests that they follow him out, and Mulvihill greets them in the lobby. After first urging Mrs. Mulwray to her car, Jake beats up Mulvihill. As he leaves, he is rescued just in time from the nose-cutting thug when Mrs. Mulwray wheels into the driveway with the car. In a quick getaway, Jake leaps onto the car.

First Jake is threatened, now Mrs. Mulwray. The pace of the story continues to escalate.

At the Mulwray mansion, all the servants have purposely been given "the night off" by Mrs. Mulwray. Thinking that he has asked "an innocent question" about how deserted the place is, she observes that his questions are never to be taken at face value.

Mrs. Mulwray,

No question from you is innocent, Mr. Gittes.

She mentions that his afternoon and evening have been fraught with danger, and wonders if this is typical of his whole life,

If this is how you go about your work, I'd say you'd be lucky  
to, uh, get through a whole day.

Jake mentions his past police work in the alien, mysterious world of Chinatown for the district attorney. This exchange speaks to how Jake has tried to find his way in an immoral world. He tries to live up to his own moral code, particularly after what happened to him in Chinatown. So we're getting a stronger sense here of Jake's world and what shaped it.

Jake changes the subject, asking for some peroxide for his bruised nose. He removes his bandage in the bathroom, causing Mrs. Mulwray to exclaim,

God! It's a nasty cut. I had no idea.

While she dabs it with peroxide, he notices that she has a black speck in the green part of her eye. She confesses,

It's a, it's a fl-flaw in the iris...it's a sort of birthmark.

Their faces are so intimately close to each other that they kiss.

Their relationship has advanced from their initial conflict to this moment.

The next scene shows them naked in bed after making love, leisurely smoking cigarettes. Wanting to know more about his past, Mrs. Mulwray finds that he is reluctant to speak about his past in Chinatown - where "you can't always tell what's goin' on." But he reveals to her that he had tried to prevent something terrible from happening there to a woman he cared for, only to hasten the tragedy. This caused him to quit the police force.

Jake,

I was trying to keep someone from being hurt. I  
ended up making sure that she was hurt.

Mrs. Mulwray,

Cherchez la femme? Was there a woman  
involved?

Jake,

Of course.

Mrs. Mulwray,

Dead?

We're getting closer to the 'truth' about Jake's life and what drives him.

Before Jake can respond, the phone rings, and she answers it with worry and concern in her voice after being told something troubling. Anguished, she replies cryptically,

Look, don't do anything. Don't do anything till I get there.

After hanging up the phone, she insists on leaving immediately, withholding her destination and her reasons. This story is never static. It is always advancing, moving, offering new revelations, new questions. Again both Jake and the audience are left in the dark about the purpose of the phone call.

Mrs. Mulwray,

Just that I have to...It has nothing to do with you or with  
any or all of this...Please, trust me this much! I'll be back.  
(She kisses him.) There is, uh, there is something that I  
should tell you about. The uh, the fishing club that old lady  
mentioned, um. The pieces of the flag...

Jake mentions Noah Cross. Mrs. Mulwray (kneeling by his side),

I want you to listen to me. Now, my father  
is a very dangerous man. You don't know how  
dangerous. You don't know how crazy.

Jake,

Are you trying to tell me that he might be behind  
all this?

Mrs. Mulwray,

It's possible.

She showers and then leaves. Although strictly told not to follow her, Jake disobeys her and trails after her. While hiding outdoors of the house she enters, he watches through a side window with a half-drawn curtain as she first talks to her Chinese butler. In another room he spies her late husband's visibly upset young blonde mistress lying down. Mrs. Mulwray administers drugs (sedatives, narcotics?) after they talk.

This answers one question, where is the girl? But it raises another, deeper question. How long has she been at this house? Why is Mrs. Mulwray hiding her? Again we have the process of an answer to a question setting up a deeper question that continues to draw the audience through the story.

Jake sits in Mrs. Mulwray's front car seat when she returns to the car. He assumes that the girl in the house is the missing girlfriend. Jake demands the truth.

Mrs. Mulwray,

Sh-she's my sister.

Jake,

Take it easy. So she's your sister - she's your  
sister. But why all the secrecy?

Mrs. Mulwray,

I can't...(anguished)

Later, Jake leaves the car and she asks,

Aren't you going - coming back with me?

Jake assures her,

Don't worry. I'm not going to tell anybody about this.

She has again been misinterpreted,

That's not what I meant.

He bids her goodnight,

Yeah. Well, uh, I'm tired Mrs. Mulwray. Good night.

Jake is making an effort here to stay detached. That by staying detached he won't feel responsible for what's happening in her life. His decision will cost him dearly.

That night, Jake lies awake on his bed. He's clearly swept up in what is happening. He picks up the ringing phone. An anonymous caller summon him to Ida Sessions' house. Jake refuses to be pulled to leave his bed. At first he seems disinterested in the caller, which forces them to call back. This plays against the expectation that Jake would want information.

The next morning, Jake drives to the location and finds broken glass in the front door window. Inside, Ida's dead body is sprawled amidst spilled groceries. We now have another question, who killed her? And the deeper question, why did they want Jake on the scene earlier?

Ex-colleagues Escobar and Loach confront Jake with a flashlight beam from inside a darkened bathroom.

Find anything interesting, Gittes? What are you  
doin' around here?

They suspect that Jake knows her or had something to do with her murder, because his phone number is written on her kitchen wall next to the phone. That suggests someone is trying to set up Jake, but who?

Jake is accused by Escobar of having worked for Ida Sessions. Jake defends Evelyn Mulwray's innocence after telling Escobar that he is "dumber" than he thinks. He explains how Hollis' body was deliberately moved to the reservoir to divert attention from the ocean.

What do you think? Evelyn Mulwray knocked off her  
husband in the ocean, then dragged him up to a  
reservoir 'cause she thought it would look more like an  
accident. Mulwray was murdered and moved because  
somebody didn't want his body found in the ocean...He  
found out they were dumping water there. That's what  
they were trying to cover up.

When Jake can't prove his point, he is given two hours to present himself and Mrs. Mulwray at Escobar's office.

Jake enters the Mulwray mansion, finding the maid covering furniture. In the garden patio area, the gardener repeats his frustration: "Salt water - very bad for glass." Jake suddenly realizes the water in the fishpond is salt water.

He asks the gardener to fish out the sparkling object he had seen earlier. The object is a pair of spectacles, possibly Hollis' glasses. Jake now realizes where Hollis was killed, not in the ocean.

Racing to the house where the young girl is hidden, Jake finds Evelyn rushing to pack in order to catch a 5:30 p.m. train. Without explaining why, Jake phones and summons Escobar to their location, and then asks Evelyn,

You know any good criminal lawyers?

He is determined to force information from her about everything he believes she has been concealing. This acts out Jake's determination to discover the truth.

Jake spills out a murder theory: the glasses in the pond belonged to Evelyn's husband and the pond was where he was drowned.

I want to know how it happened, and I want to know why,  
and I want to know before Escobar gets here because I  
don't want to lose my license...I want to make it easy for  
ya. You were jealous. You had a fight. He fell. He hit  
his head. It was an accident but his girl was a witness.  
So you had to shut her up. You don't have the  
guts to harm her, but you got the money to keep her  
mouth shut.

She finally tells the truth - the girl, Katherine, is the product of a union between her and her father. To discover this shameful fact, Jake has to slap her again and again - until he realizes that she isn't making a fool out of him.

Jake,

Who is she? And don't give me that crap about your sister, because you don't have a sister.

Mrs. Mulwray,

I'll tell you, I'll tell you the truth.

Jake,

Good. What's her name?

Mrs. Mulwray,

Katherine.

Jake,

Katherine who?

Mrs. Mulwray,

She's my daughter.

Jake (slapping her),

I said I want the truth.

Mrs. Mulwray,

She's my sister. (Slap again.) She's my  
daughter. (Slap.) My sister, my daughter.

Jake,

I said I want the truth.

Mrs. Mulwray,

...she's my sister and my daughter!...My  
father and I, understand? Or is it too tough for you?

Her revelation has nothing to do with the water department, the land swindle, the building of the new reservoir, corrupt money, or Jake being setup. Mrs. Mulwray had incestuous relations with her father, Noah Cross. Hollis Mulwray's "mistress" is the offspring of their liaison. The struggle over the girl has led Cross to murder Hollis Mulwray. He and Evelyn were trying to protect the girl from her incestuous father.

With Jake, we now have the core 'truth' of this story. But it sets up the immediate question, will Jake be able to help them escape? Can he not help them?

Jake decides to help Evelyn and her daughter avoid Escobar's men, suggesting that she avoid both the railway station and the airport. This speaks to the sense of morality that drives Jake. Unlike the night before, he's committed now.

He sends Mrs. Mulwray off to her Chinese butler's home in Chinatown. And as a footnote to everything, Evelyn casually observes that the spectacles aren't Hollis'.

These didn't belong to Hollis. He didn't wear bifocals.

Which raises the question, who did they belong to?

Katherine is brought down the stairs to meet Jake. Jake tells Mrs. Mulwray that he knows where they are going in Chinatown. He then calls colleagues Duffy and Walsh to meet him at the Chinatown address in two hours if they haven't heard from him.

The story is now going to the destination foreshadowed by its title. But now the word Chinatown has taken on a specific meaning to this story and its dramatic issues of morality.

After Escobar arrives, Jake is able to elude him and his men by leading them to Curly's home and then driving away with Curly in his truck. In exchange for his previous services, he wants Curly to provide safe passage that night for Evelyn and Katherine by smuggling them from Los Angeles to Ensenada. Curly wonders whether this is the right thing to do. This is an important exchange. Because the issue at the heart of this story is morality in a corrupt world, Curly is not just a plot device. His dialogue places him in the context of the world of the story.

Jake calls Cross and arranges a meeting at the Mulwray mansion - the scene of the crime - baiting him.

Have you got your checkbook handy, Mr. Cross?  
I've got the girl.

In their showdown, Cross is eager to get his hands on the girl. Jake first wants to pursue his questioning about the phony valley land investors by showing him his evidence - the obituary column. Jake also shows the spectacles as evidence of Cross' murder of Mulwray. Cross, however, explains how the new dam will be constructed to irrigate land in the valley, causing LA to become one vast metropolitan area, benefiting those who own land in the valley.

Jake asks,

Why are you doing it? How much better can you  
eat? What can you buy that you can't already afford?

Jake is struggling to understand Cross' moral code.

Cross,

The future, Mr. Gits - the future! Now where's  
the girl. I want the only daughter I've got left. As  
you found out, Evelyn was lost to me a long time ago.

Jake,

Who do you blame for that? Her?

Cross,

I don't blame myself. You see, Mr. Gits. Most  
people never have to face the fact that at the right  
time, the right place, they're capable of anything.

This speaks to the story's deeper issue of how we chose to live to a moral code. Noah Cross lives to one that justifies his actions, including raping his daughter and wanting to abuse her/his daughter.

At the urging of Cross to take them to the girl - with Mulvihill's gun pointed at his head - Jake reluctantly leads them to Chinatown.

In the startling and despairing ending scene, all the characters converge, including the unsuspecting police. Escobar's partner Loach immediately handcuffs Jake. At first relieved to be arrested, he then protests that Cross, Evelyn's incestuous father, is,

...the bird you're after...He's crazy, Lou. He killed  
Mulwray because of the water thing...Lou, you don't  
know what's going on here, I'm tellin' ya."

Escobar, though, has gotten to his position in life by doing what is wanted, not always what is right. He is a contrast to Jake. It's clearer now how Escobar survived in Chinatown.

Cross, who has finally caught up with his two daughters, identifies himself to the girl as her grandfather. Evelyn pushes him and attempts to get him away from the girl. He pleads with her to have the young girl.

Cross,

Evelyn, pleeease pleeease be reasonable...How  
many years have I got? She's mine too?

Mrs. Mulwray,

She's never going to know that.

With that, Mrs. Mulwray pulls out a small pistol. Cross tries to reason with her and accuses her of being neurotic,

Evelyn, you're a disturbed woman, you  
cannot hope to provide... You'll have to kill me first.

She shoots, and wounds her father in the arm, and then attempts to escape by car with Katherine.

Escobar fires his pistol into the air as a warning, and then both he and Loach take four shots at the escaping car. Suddenly the car slows to a stop, horn blaring.

Katherine screams as the awful, horrible scene is revealed. Slumped over the wheel of her car is Mrs. Mulwray, shot through the head from behind. Her face is horribly blown apart. Cross, lamenting "Lord, Oh Lord," shields and cover the eyes of an hysterical Katherine and takes her away. Escobar has the cuffs removed from Jake.

Jake is stunned and numb but mumbles what he told Mrs. Mulwray he used to do in Chinatown and has again succeeded in doing: "as little as possible." The devastated Jake is ordered by Escobar to get the hell out of there.

What's that? What's that? You want to do your partner a  
big favor, you take him home. Take him home! Just get  
him the hell out of here. Go home, Jake. (Whispering)  
I'm doing you a favor.

Walsh also tells him to lay the inexplicable blame on the foreign area, in a haunting closing line.

Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown!

Sirens sound and Escobar clears spectators gathering on the street.

Alright. Come on, clear the area. On the sidewalk. On  
the sidewalk, get off the street.

Jake walks away.

Chinatown is a great film that should be viewed twice just to begin to comprehend its careful, precise, full-bodied construction. Because every detail operates around moving the story toward the resolution of its plot -- the murder of Hollis -- and the fulfillment of its story -- the issue of living to a moral code \-- the story creates a vivid, complex world. That every detail of the film serves a dramatic purpose speaks to how a story can be constructed to be more 'true' than life.

A story built around details that communicate no clear sense of purpose struggles to fully engage the attention of its audience. This isn't to suggest that every film be an art-house film. In its way, a Jackie Chan film communicates a sense of being true to its purpose and fulfilling that purpose in an enjoyable way. But what becomes clear when viewing and reviewing a film like Chinatown is the great care that went into its construction; that every detail have a clearly defined, detailed purpose. That the storytellers here understood where they were going and the effects they wanted to create in each moment of the film combined with an understanding of the different levels across which the story was advancing, both the seen and unseen. And how those different elements intermeshed as they advanced. While appearing effortless in its smooth, precise movement, a deeper look at the film begins to reveal its many levels.

One level of Chinatown is created around its vivid and complex characters. There is an underlying storytelling process that can be perceived in their dramatic design. For example, to understand that one wants to create a mystery around an issue like morality suggests a need for a character like Jake who will pursue the truth because of his moral code. In such a story one potentially needs characters who are amoral but might appear moral (Noah Cross). Or a character like Mrs. Mulwray who appears tough and amoral but in reality is fragile and struggling to find a sense of morality in a life shattered by an amoral character. Or a character like Escobar, who unlike Jake didn't find his moral code offended by what he needed to do in Chinatown. Or even a minor character like Curly who appears to find it moral to beat up his wife but wonders whether he should help Jake get Mrs. Mulwray and her daughter to safety.

These characters are designed and set loose in a world that forces them to react and act, and by their actions to reveal the kind of people they are while their actions advance the story. The events of the story are designed specifically to compel them to react to issues of morality. This is not to suggest there is a simple formula for creating dynamic characters, just that there is an understandable logic at work in their creation.

Another aspect to this film's effect is that the audience is always offered a sense of where they are in relationship to the story/plot question at hand. For example, where they are in relationship to Jake finding out whether Hollis is having an affair. Finding out what appears to be the reason for his murder (the water scandal). Finding out the real reason for his murder. Being caught up in the drama of whether Jake can save Mrs. Mulwray and her daughter. The audience is drawn in to understand and track each stage of this story.

At each stage of this story, the audience is also offered fresh revelations and new information. Because this story never offers the same information, it claims the attention of its audience. In a weakly written story, a young boy could be turned into an old woman into a middle-aged man into a ghost into a dragon into a flying pig without changing the course or outcome of the story. Here, everything has a purpose, creates an effect, offers something new to the audience. No two moments are alike. No moment can be deleted without in some way altering, changing the overall effect of the story.

This isn't to suggest that a storyteller begins a story like Chinatown knowing every detail of its construction. But understanding the process of how a story like Chinatown is constructed can help free the imagination of a writer to write that which is complex and interesting, and not that which merely functions to let a story's plot avoid internal collapse from inertia or bad design. The writer with no understanding of the craft that underlies the creation of a story like Chinatown -- whether intuitive, learned, unconscious, or imitative -- more likely would struggle to assemble the details that collectively tell their story with passion and precision. To the degree the details of their story don't ring 'true' by speaking in some way to the story's dramatic purpose, they do not create the fundamental effect of a story, moving an audience around some issue/dramatic design moving to the audience.

A story that generates a clear sense of dramatic purpose and an anticipation of an outcome can survive some details that are merely descriptive, as long as they don't stall the advance of the story. Chinatown is a great example of what can be achieved when every stroke of a story operates to create and set out a vivid, dynamic purpose, and then to masterfully fulfill that purpose.

A great film. A joy to watch.

###  Anatomy of An Action Adventure Movie -- Notes on Die Hard

Action adventure movies have long been a staple for movie-goers. They meet a need for thrills. They often stage a dramatic, clear-cut duel between good and evil, with characters audiences are led to identify with. Their action and special effects are often breath-takingly staged. Throw in sub-plots that revolve around adventure, romance, and courage in the face of overwhelming odds, and it's easy to understand why such movies attract audiences.

What follows will be a scene by scene breakdown of the movie _Die Hard_. The review is intended to help reveal the process by which this particular story was assembled. The underlying principles of storytelling and story movement revealed can be applied to any story, from romantic comedy, children's story to art house film. Every well-told story arises from a foundation of the same story principles: premise, movement, fulfillment, plot, character. By understanding these principles, writers will be better able to write their own well-told stories.

_Die Hard_ opens with a shot of a plane coming in for landing.

This suggests a character on the move. It's a conventional opening used in many stories, but it works because it quickly establishes a sense of movement, physical in this case.

Next we meet John McClane on the plane. By how he grips the seat of the plane as it comes in for a landing, it's clear he's afraid of flying.

The point of this is that we're being told that the purpose of this trip has enough **consequence** that he would go up in a plane, in spite of his fear.

It's a point made quickly and economically, through an action shown visually. The writer didn't set up a way to somehow tell us the importance of this flight for John McClane, he found a way to SHOW us. Many lines of dialogue, character direction and description can be deleted when a writer learns to trust what can be shown in a scene rather than told or explained.

The passenger next to John tells him he can overcome his fear of flying by walking barefoot on a carpet while clenching his feet.

Much later in the story, John will walk barefoot on carpet strewn with glass and cut his feet. He does this for the same reason that he flies on a plane in spite of his fear of flying. It's what he must do to fulfill something important to him. So even what appears to be an innocent remark echoes in the story.

When John McClane talks to the other passenger, we SEE he's wearing a gun, so it comes out John's a cop.

Again, a visual image creates a movement of character, and of story. We now have a clearer sense of the direction of the story, because of its title, and because John is a cop.

We then see John in the airport, holding a large stuffed bear.

We're being told he's a fish out of water. No dialogue, just an image. But it further develops his character and this fish-out-of-water theme will be a motif that echoes through the entire story.

Next we meet the Japanese president of a large, Japanese-owned corporation; Holly, John's wife; and Ellis who works with Holly and, during their introduction, is making a pass at her.

These scenes are natural and unforced, but they set up Ellis as a brash character who will later come to a bad end because of his arrogance. So the movement of his character is established with just a few lines of dialogue.

In Holly's office, we see the picture of the family and John. Now we know the issue of consequence that John would risk flying, and later walk on broken glass: to reunite with Holly and his family.

Holly makes a phone call and talks to a maid. "Has John called home?"

No, he hasn't.

This echoes through the story. It's not just a random event. Because Holly doesn't know John's coming, neither do her office companions, so neither do the terrorists when they arrive.

Holly, turning the family photo with John in it face down, which acts out that she has mixed feelings about John.

The photo being turned down is also significant because it means that later in the story Holly can pass herself off as unmarried to Hans, the head terrorist.

Again, every action in the story has a purpose, not just for the moment it happens, but later in the story.

In the limo bringing John to Holly, Argyle the driver questions John. This, like the plane landing to open the story, is a standard device. Arygle's purpose in the scene is to get John to reveal information. But it's well done, and brief. Note that as John and Argyle talk, they are in physical motion to a destination, the Nakatomi building. So their physical movement has purpose, bringing John and Holly closer together for what we've been led to feel will be a reunion with a great deal at stake.

When John and Argyle arrive at the Nakatomi building, Argyle offers to wait for John, to see if he'll need a ride to a hotel if things don't work out with Holly.

Point to note: Argyle has now become invested in the outcome of the story, and has a reason to stick around. This means that Argyle is not just a device used by the writer to bring out information and then discarded.

John, entering the building, discovers on a directory that Holly uses her maiden name. It's a revelation to him, but it also figures in the story later, that there's no connection to Holly when John's name comes out.

Note, again, that the writer of the script has found a visual way for John to get this information, and his reaction is visual as well as vocal.

Every element that's been brought out has established both a point in a scene, and a purpose for the story as a whole.

John and Holly meet, and it's clear they still have feelings for each other...but whether they will reconcile is unclear.

Brief cut to truck with terrorists, but no development of them or their purpose.

Holly invites John to stay at the house, but John is angry over her using her maiden name, so the old wounds re-erupt.

That's why he had to see her maiden name.

At this point a story question has been clearly raised. Will John and Holly get back together? What might aid, or impede, this reunion?

Next scene, on cue, the terrorists. They will be both the prime obstacles to the reunion, but also the instigators of the reunion coming about.

The story's premise, although it would be too early to identify it yet:

"Courage in the face of adversity leads to growth."

In this case, John will move the story toward its fulfillment by doing what has to be done to save Holly from the terrorists and reunite with her. The opening of this story thus establishes what the story's at stake in this story, whether John and Holly can be reunited, and what must happen to bring that about. That's why it doesn't establish the terrorists until later. They are the obstacles to the story's movement. By having the courage to overcome them, John McClane makes the story's movement visible and concrete.

But it's not just John's courage the story is about, but Holly's as well, and Al the LA cop, who must overcome his own fear in the story's climax. So the story's premise must set out the boundaries for the world of the story and all the characters within that world.

Note, my original premise used the idea of love in the premise. At its heart, in many respects, _Die Hard_ is a love story about the obstacles that John must overcome to reunite with Holly. But a story's premise must provide a foundation for all the story's elements, and a premise about love doesn't quite stretch to include Al, who's an important character in the story.

Other points: The opening scenes of a story are generally where what a story is about is established, especially an action/adventure film. So to understand a story's premise, pay attention to a story's opening scenes, and to the introduction of characters. What they say and what comes out of a scene as their goals. This is where a story's premise first takes shape. Keep in mind, also, that for the reader to desire to internalize a story's movement, a reader/viewer must have a sense that something of consequence is at stake in the story. In _Die Hard_ , the issue of consequence is whether John and Holly will have the courage and strength to be able to overcome what keeps them apart and renew their love. It's an issue of consequence for a viewer, as well, because it's something viewers desire to experience in a fulfilling way, that love can find a way to overcome any and all obstacles in its path.

Once it's clear to a viewer what's at stake in a story, and it's been presented in the form of a question, the viewer can then assign meaning to character actions. This takes character X closer to their goals, this event escalates the drama over the outcome of their goals.

That's why a story's premise must have an issue of consequence at its heart, so a reader desires to internalize the story's movement. Second, it's why every element of the story must be tied into the story's premise, so it creates that purposeful, dramatic movement of the story toward an outcome a reader desires to internalize. The viewer is able to internalize the movement of a movie like _Die Hard_ because in its every action, its characters are true to the story's movement, and move it toward its fulfillment. Just as important, the story fulfills its movement in a way that the story's viewers can experience potent feelings of courage, faith and love, with some well-designed spectacle thrown into the mix for some well-time doses of adrenaline. This makes the action and events and characters of _Die Hard_ story-like, i.e., with purpose, meaning and fulfillment.

In a more subtle story, characters would not necessary boldly proclaim who they are, and their purpose. But their actions, even if subtle and evocative, must still be true to the story's premise and what it presents to be of consequence in the story; and their actions must still have a purpose and meaning a reader/viewer can assign meaning to, and thus be able to internalize the story's journey toward its fulfillment.

Returning to _Die Hard_ , the terrorists invade the building and take hostages.

John, unnoticed, escapes and triggers a fire alarm, which alerts the terrorists that he's in building. They call off the fire department, and send a terrorist to find and kill John.

John gets the drop on the terrorist, who tells John:

"There are rules for policeman."

Story problem for terrorist: John McClane is a rule breaker. He doesn't follow the rules.

John kills the terrorist, and sends his body back to Hans, who has just assured everyone:

"We're in charge."

Story answer: Not when John McClane's in the building.

See how the audience is set up to experience, and appreciate, those particular lines? It's an example of how dialogue has a specific purpose and meaning that ties it into the story's premise and movement.

Because the storyteller knows the direction of the story, they perceive how to set up such lines. So the audience gets to share that insight, and to anticipate what John must do to foil the terrorists. Even to live. Because he must live if he is to reunite with Holly, and prove the story's premise.

The dead terrorist has a brother, Karl, who now has a personal feud with John. So now a sub plot, a back story, has been created. This terrorist will stop at nothing to kill John. But his action also makes him another obstacle to be overcome if John is to reunite with Holly, so his actions also tie into the story's premise.

Using the dead terrorist's radio, John tries to contact the LAPD. They ignore him.

It sets up another sub plot. Even the LAPD are obstacles that John must overcome to save Holly.

Plot issue: note how everything John does to make the situation better actually makes his situation worse.

2nd plot issue, John doesn't know until much later in the story that Holly will die unless he acts. Therefore, early in his confrontation with the terrorists, he's acting more from an internal sense of anger about the situation then concern for Holly. So it's important for the story that John's been presented as the kind of man who would react as he has to the acts of the terrorists.

We're then introduced to a LAPD sergeant, Al. Notice the care given to draw us into his character. Like Argyle, he's not going to be a device used and discarded. He's created so his movement of character will tie directly into the action of the story, and its premise.

With the addition of these two back stories, Al the beat patrolman and his problems, and the brother of the dead terrorist committed to John's death, the drama over the outcome of the main story has escalated. But the back stories serve their purpose of making the story's movement more concrete and visible; by giving the story depth; and by creating characters who comment on the action and ask questions, thus making the story and its movement clear and concrete to the viewers.

Al comes to building, and all hell breaks lose. LAPD finally arrive at the scene. Still, they view John as a useless bystander.

A television reporter heads to the scene to further his career. Note his determination. Characters in a story must act with force and determination if they are to engage our attention.

John talks to Hans on the radio, and a personal animosity is established, which sets up another sub-plot to the story. We're being set up to experience the showdown between John and Hans. We can feel that current in the air of this movie, enjoy and anticipate its arrival.

Holly meets with Hans, the head terrorist. The photo of John is face down on her desk, so she calls herself "Ms. Gennero," her maiden name. This raises a story question: If, or how long, will it be before the terrorists find out that John is Holly's wife?

This again serves to escalate the drama over the story's potential outcome, of how and whether John and Holly will reunite. It's another obstacle.

John comes into possession of some detonators the terrorists must have. They now have a compelling reason to come after him, and not just seal him off in part of the building.

As the story continues, Al talks to John on the radio. This becomes a way for John to offer personal information without it seeming forced.

The news photographer shows up on the scene. He's there to advance his career, but his story purpose is to escalate the tension over the terrorists potentially finding out Holly's ties to John. So even while this man has his own personal motive for wanting to do this "story," his actions are tied into the story's premise and affect the story's movement.

We next see the television man on "TV" at the scene, which Hans has access to. Again, it escalates the drama over this question, when will Hans find out the connection between John and Holly?

Argyle, in the parking garage, also sees on the TV what is happening, and only then realizes he's trapped in the garage and there's no escape.

Police try and force their way into the building, at great loss of life, which would have been worse except for John, who stops the attack.

Ellis now tries to stage manage the crisis, and ends up dead...a situation set up in his opening scene when he comes on to Holly.

John and Al talk about their family life. Again, it shows the consequence of the story, what John is trying to accomplish by reuniting with Holly and his family.

Hans finds out that John is a New York cop, but not his connection to Holly. But it is another escalation of the drama over whether, and when, he'll make that connection, and what will happen to Holly when he does.

The LAPD commander on the scene blames John for the loss of life, even though John argued that no raid be made on the building.

Hans contacts the police and sets up a deadline of two hours for helicopters to be on the roof.

Note, this gives the story time pressure.

Hans to Karl: We must have the detonators.

The FBI, very arrogant, then show up on the scene.

Meanwhile, John surprises Hans on the upper floors of the building. Hans passes himself off as another escapee of the terrorists long enough to be rescued by Karl. When John flees, Hans and Karl shoot out the glass around him...so John's feet are cut. A scene foreshadowed in the opening scene of the movie when the passenger in the plane talked to John about walking barefoot on the carpet.

Hans now has his detonators, but Karl doesn't have what he wants: John dead.

Back on the radio, John asks Al why he's a desk sergeant. Al tells John he killed a 13 year old with a toy gun, and since then, he hasn't been unable to draw his gun.

Feds, meanwhile, cut power to the building...which disables a time lock, and allows Hans into a safe with 640 million dollars in bonds.

It also comes out that FBI plans an armed raid with helicopters...while Hans plans to kill the assembled hostages on the roof and escape in the chaos.

John, on the radio to Al, asks him to tell Holly that "he's sorry" for how he's treated her.

That's been the purpose of his trip. To reunite with Holly. So if this is the only way he can accomplish what he's set out to do, this is what he'll do.

John then wonders, what was Hans doing on the upper floors of the building? He goes upstairs on his bloody, cut feet and finds the roof is wired to blow up just as...

TV man finds out that John is Holly's husband as...

Karl finds John. They get into a wild brawl.

TV man announces on TV who John is, so Hans takes Holly in tow.

Again, it escalates the drama over whether John will survive being beaten by Karl, Holly survive being Hans' hostage. Plot point two. Point where everything seems lost.

Hostages, but not Holly, are sent to roof while FBI nears scene in helicopters.

John seemingly kills Karl, and goes to roof to get Holly and hostages off roof. Holly's not there, but John, knowing the roof is set up for an explosion, forces the hostages off the roof. FBI, thinking John a terrorist, try and kill John, forcing him to jump off roof to save himself.

See what this man who doesn't like heights, as set out in the opening scene of the movie, must do to save himself?

No action in this movie happens without purpose.

Explosion on roof kills FBI men as John, sailing off roof tied to a fire hose, shatters window and gets into building. Then FBI helicopter blows up, almost killing John again.

Note that whatever John does, more trauma and danger overcome him. The action is now at a non-stop pace.

Argyle, in parking garage, sees terrorist who disabled safe.

John, trying to find Holly, only has two bullets for a pistol, and an unloaded shotgun.

Argyle nails terrorist with limo.

John now realizes that this is a robbery...not a terrorist act.

John confronts Hans and another terrorist...and Hans, threatening Holly with a gun, tells John to put down his unloaded shotgun. John complies...while the pistol with two bullets is taped to his back.

Hans raises his gun from Holly's head to shoot John...and is shot and wounded by John, the other terrorist killed.

Hans grabs Holly as he falls out a window. He seems about to take her with him.

Note that even at this point, the drama over whether John will be able to save Holly.

John grabs Holly, and loosens Hans' grip on her.

Hans makes one last attempt to shoot John, then falls to his death.

John and Holly reunite, then leave the building and meet Al. It's a very emotional moment for John and Al. John introduces Holly as "Holly Gennero." Holly: "I'm Holly McClane."

They're reunited.

Suddenly, Karl the terrorist, left hanging and seemingly dead, reappears. He's about to shoot John, when Al shoots Karl. Al thus acts out the fulfillment of his character's movement: that through the action of the story, he can now do his job.

His action also guarantees that John and Holly survive, so his action ties into the story's premise.

Through an act of courage, the last obstacle has been overcome.

Holly decks the TV reporter, and Argyle reappears. John and Holly, in love and reunited, leave with Argyle in the limo.

The premise of the story, that _courage in the face of adversity leads to growth_ , has been proven.

Some notes about story and premise:

In a typical action film, characters can come fairly close to actually stating the story's premise. This is to make the story, its movement and potential fulfillment, clear and easy to follow. It also allows viewers to internalize the story's purpose and movement without too much effort, and enjoy its spectacle. The opening scene of a movie or book is generally where one will be given definite information about the story's purpose and premise. The introduction of characters is also a prime time to perceive a character's premise, and how it ties into the story.

Also, pay attention when another character is introduced in some fashion to ask questions of a primary character. The purpose is almost always to get out story information to the audience.

There's a certain latitude to do this, if it's not intrusive or too obvious.

Note how physical movement is used to give _Die Hard_ a sense of purpose. Characters are always in action, pursuing some goal.

The emotional movement of characters in _Die Hard_ is also laid out clearly and openly. Again, this is so the viewers can easily internalize this story about courage leading to growth being proven by the actions of the story's characters.

Because _Die Hard_ is a story about courage that leads to a rebirth of love, it is something of consequence a viewer desires to internalize. Because the story is true to its movement, a viewer is easily able to stay focused and enjoy the story's spectacle and the drama over its outcome.

While on the surface an action-adventure film might appear to be ONLY about its spectacle and action, it must have that underlying story issue that assigns meaning to character actions and the spectacle, or both will eventually produce boredom.

Senseless, purposeless activity is not the answer. Presenting it at a faster pace doesn't make it more engaging. Actually, it makes it more wearing and boring. This is what happened to _Die Hard 3_. No particular story was developed, so there was no way to assign meaning to individual character actions. The fact that in _Die Hard 3_ the robbers/terrorists were after 13 billion dollars, not 640 million, is irrelevant if there's not story to give that number meaning to a viewer.

In an action adventure story, the story itself might be a thread, or, in the case of _Die Hard_ , a steel wire taut through every scene. But this story-like arranging of elements to create drama over the story's outcome must be present to some degree in any story, this sense of something of consequence being resolved by the story's telling, for a viewer to desire to internalize the story and its movement.

To understand the story structure of a movie like _Die Hard_ can be a great aid to helping writers create their own well-told action adventure movies.

###  Ideas and Stories -- A Review of Toto le Hero

The following is an abbreviated version of my review of the film Toto le hero. The full review is available in my workbook, A Story is a Promise, available for $18.95. This workbook guides writers to an new understanding of the craft of writing dramatic stories.

Just like a series of events can be arranged to have a particular resolution, a story can create the effect of dramatic movement through its presentation of ideas. This essay explores that process through a review of the film _Toto le Hero_. This thoughtful story creates a deeply felt experience of fulfillment through its presentation of characters and ideas.

Briefly, _Toto le Hero_ is the story of Thomas. As a young boy, Thomas comes to believe he was switched at birth with the boy next door, the well-off Alfred. Thomas's life becomes a dual experience of the "reality" of Thomas's life versus the "reality" of Thomas's fantasies based on what might have been if he'd been raised as Alfred.

I would say the premise for this heartfelt, beautifully told story is:

Only through a direct experience of life can we fulfill our dreams.

It is around this premise that the dramatic action of the story revolves. To act out this premise, the story constantly intercuts from different stages of Thomas's life that offer commentary about his present circumstances and actions.

A story can be presented in this way because no story is ever literal -- or linear -- in a life-like way. A story is the assembling of descriptions of events, dialogue, character actions, thoughts and feelings, environments, ideas, all arranged to create a particular dramatic effect. The fact that the story of _Toto le hero_ does not happen in a chronological order does not detract from the fact that the events of the story move it very clearly **forward** along a dramatic path toward the resolution and fulfillment of its premise. The dramatic path this story sets out to explore is rich with ideas that makes this film an example of how ideas can be used in the service telling a story.

Thomas, through his memories and dreams, recreates his experiences to generate the fulfillment he has not found in life. In this story, however, the question arises: can Thomas move from experiencing life **only** through dreams and memories to finally **gaining** what he desires by **taking action** in the real world?

Therefore, no matter where we are in relationship to Thomas's age, the story is always moving dramatically **forward** toward the resolution of its narrative question. Will Thomas be able to act, or will he remain enmeshed in his fantasies? The story answers the narrative question it has set up in a dramatic, fulfilling way.

To set up this question, we are shown scenes of the elderly Thomas interspersing his fantasies onto reality. When a nurse offers him a pill, what we see is an enraged Thomas forcing the pills down **her** throat. Then we're offered the reality of the situation: the meek Thomas obediently downing the pill. This exchange moves the story forward because it shows the depth to which Thomas lives through his fantasies. The deeper issue the story explores through this exchange is the idea of a life as it is felt **emotionally** versus the actual **experience**.

It is not the issue in this story, or any other, that we have a straight forward telling of Thomas's life from his birth through to his death, but that through how this story arranges its elements through cross-cutting we come to a much richer feeling for Thomas's life. Through the story's cross-cutting, the story's audience is led to experience in a direct, potent way the dramatic "truth" about Thomas's life, that he has lived much of his life via his fantasies and memories. Further, through being shown the many painful episodes of Thomas's life, we're led to understand **why** Thomas felt that a life of fantasies was more desirable than experiencing life directly.

To create an effect of movement around its ideas, the creator of _Toto le Hero_ had a clear perception of how every scene in the story moved the story itself **forward** toward its resolution and fulfillment. Every scene in this story generates states of emotions around actions while tying them to the ideas the story explores. Thomas, for example, is shown living in his fantasies. He laughs out loud when they especially please him. He goes from his fantasies to his memories and back. Through his alter-ego, Toto le hero, a secret agent, Thomas rescues his father and shoots the man, Alfred, who has twice taken the love of his life: Alice his sister, and Evelyne, who appears to be an older version of Alice. But when Thomas was offered a real relationship with Evelyne, a seeming replica of Alice, Thomas has not the strength of will to pursue the relationship. In one of the films many dramatic, heartfelt moments, we find that Thomas allowed Evelyne to slip out of his life. Thomas, he of the vivid fantasies and memories, could not grasp what life offered to him. The comforting fantasies held too deep a pull.

The essay concludes...

The storyteller of _Toto le hero_ wanted us to be both entertained by the action and outcome of the story as well as prodded by its presentation of ideas to think about our own lives, our own fantasies. In contrast, a simple story could offer a story that offers a fulfilling experience of love. An artist, however, offers not only the experience of love, but probes and explores the thoughts and feelings and needs we experience when we think of the idea of love.

Because of the depth of its examination of life and the ideas it explores, _Toto le Hero_ is both a story and a work of art. It sets out not just to entertain, but to illuminate a particular facet of life. Every element of the movie is carefully designed and arranged to create the story's quality of illumination.

Ideas -- like feelings, events, issues, dialogue -- must be at the service of making the story dramatic and story-like. Both the storyteller and the artist who wish to examine the deeper issues of life must be able to perceive what ideas advance their stories toward a concrete and visible fulfillment.

For the storyteller who wishes to be an artist, or even for the storyteller who desires to tell a simple story, the relationship of a story's ideas to the story must be perceived. That is a fundamental aspect of the art of storytelling.

###  Why Police Stories? Notes on Lethal Weapon

Why so many police movies? Television shows? Books?

To understand the answer is to understand not just the "how" of telling a story, but the "why."

Briefly, a story is a world created by a storyteller where every action has meaning and purpose. The purpose of the story revolves around some issue at stake in the world of the story being resolved. A story unfolds and moves with purpose toward the fulfillment of what's at stake in the story through the actions of its characters, who act to shape the outcome of the story. A story's viewers internalize this story movement when they desire to experience the outcome of scenes and character goals, and the story's fulfillment.

By its very nature, the police story lends itself to being story-like.

1) It offers a sense of resolution.

A crime occurs and is resolved by the actions of the story's characters. Those who have been a victim of crime, or fear crime, through a story about crime where justice prevails, can have an experience of "justice" prevailing, and perpetrators being punished.

2) It is emotionally engaging.

The audience of a police story can engage emotionally in the story through a variety of characters and issues.

Characters: the police, the criminals, the victim(s), the onlookers (the audience), etc.

A well told police story is often set up to specifically invite this identification with specific characters. Through them, the reader/viewer is led to internalize and experience the movement of the story.

Issues: Feeling that justice will prevail. Or, conversely, that crime pays. That victims will be avenged. That wrongs will be made right. That there is order and purpose in the world (as made manifest by the action of the story). That others who have our best interests at heart watch over us. That the mystery of evil can be penetrated and defeated, etc.

Because viewers and readers often have a need to experience these issues in a state of resolution, a well told story offers them that experience in a dramatic, fulfilling way.

3) It can offer a satisfying intellectual experience.

Mysteries can allow readers to enter the story's world and both feel and participate in this sense of being a part of a mystery being solved. Unlike the world and it's unresolved mysteries and events, stories, in the main, offer answers and resolution.

4) The very form that a police story takes, that something will be made clear and resolved, gives it a story-like quality. In this genre, inexperienced writers can work with a story form that gives structure to their writing.

To understand, **why police stories** , a writer needs to see that they are successful because they engage an audience via stories that engage emotionally and intellectually. That "feel" true to the audience's senses and ideas and emotional needs of not what life is so much, as what they would like life to be. Because they can be written within a formula and structure that lends itself to drama, they attract both audiences and writers. Writers who are, in many senses, an audience to their own stories.

To set out the principles of writing a well-made police story, what follows is a review of **Lethal Weapon**.

**Lethal Weapon** opens with a humorous Christmas song playing over aerial shots of neighborhoods in Los Angeles. It moves into an apartment building apartment where a beautiful young blonde lays bare breasted. She smiles as the music switches to an ominous tone. Rising, she goes to a glass table where some Christmas lights are reflected...and drugs comes into focus on the table. She does some drugs, goes out the window onto a rail...pauses...then we see her jump, follow her, floating peacefully down...until she slams violently into a car.

This is the story's hook. Who is this woman? Why did she jump? Was there someone with her?

In the following scenes, we meet Roger Murtaugh , a middle-aged, black police detective. He has a happy, loving homelife; his main concern, that the gray is starting to show. He's getting old, just turned 50, and his family lets him know. In terms of story structure, this starts one of the story's back story, Murtaugh thinking about his age.

Next series of scenes open on a barren landscape with a dog running to a forlorn trailer. Inside the trailer, Martin Riggs smokes in bed, gets up to drink a beer for breakfast. He's unkempt, naked, and obviously disturbed.

Third series of scenes, back to Murtaugh , who's casually told by his wife that a Mike Hunsaker has called. Old friend he served with in Viet Nam. We also see Roger wears a gun, so we know now he's a cop.

Story elements--characters and plot--are introduced casually, as scenes progress. Scenes are brief, to the point, then over.

Next scenes, Roger at scene of suicide. He discovers to his horror that suicide is Amanda Hunsaker , daughter of old friend Mike Hunsaker .

In terms of structure, one question is answered, who is the woman that killed herself. Others are now raised. Early in the story, questions are raised that suggest where the story itself is going, but also within scenes questions are raised and then answered a few scenes later. The structure isn't to build to just one big revelation, but to create an on-going series of revelations that escalate the action of the story.

A prostitute named Dixie who witnessed Amanda jumping from her apartment is casually questioned and sent on her way.

Soon after, Murtaugh looks at photo of himself and Mike Hunsaker in Viet Nam, then calls Michael Hunsaker .

Next series of scenes, Riggs humorously tries to set up a drug buy, then pulls his badge and gun. In the ensuing shoot out, he's taken hostage. He dares --commands -- his hostage taker to shoot him. Question raised, is Riggs crazy? Brave? Psycho? When the man refuses to kill him, Riggs disarms him.

It's a question now, is Riggs suicidal? His character has moved from appearing distraught to suicidal.

Next series of scenes, Riggs drinks at home. As a Christmas cartoon plays in the background, he looks at a photo of his absent wife. He then takes out a dum dum bullet, loads it in a gun, puts the gun to his head...but can't pull the trigger. He cries, looks at his wife's picture and says, "I miss you." Then, "See you later."

Revelation, Riggs' wife is dead and he wants to join her.

The premise of this story, which will play out through all its action and effects:

Love can heal the deepest pain.

Riggs' personal premise:

Love can bring a dead man back to life.

Truly, in this story, Riggs feels dead inside...a man looking for a way out.

Murtaugh 's personal premise:

Feeling engaged in life can lead to feeling young again.

Even though this is a action/adventure story, at its heart, it's a story about love. It's what gives those watching the story an emotional entry point, a reason to care about all those action scenes and violence. What's at stake in this story is, can love heal Riggs? Bring him back to life? Will the action of the story help Murtaugh feel young again?

We're approximately seven sets of scenes (locations) into the movie. What's at stake has been set out for the story and it's main characters. And we have a mystery to resolve, the why of Amanda Hunsaker killing herself. The nagging question, why did Mike Hunsaker call Roger Murtaugh BEFORE he knew his daughter had killed herself. And will Riggs find a way to get himself killed?

Even though we're still not clear on the story's mysteries, note the care that's been taken to orient us to both the story itself, and an immediate, opening scene mystery to pull us deeper into the outer story.

At the police station, Murtaugh is told he's getting a new partner...and that Amanda Hunsaker was not just a suicide. She'd been given doctored drugs that would have killed her if she hadn't jumped out the window. The opening mystery becomes even more mysterious.

In the background, Murtaugh sees the unkempt Riggs loitering by a desk. When Murtaugh sees Riggs pull a gun, he charges him. Riggs tosses Murtaugh to the ground.

The two men are then introduced as new partners.

Off the bat, the two characters are in conflict that is made visible by action, not words.

Murtaugh 's refrain, repeated throughout the movie, "I'm too old for this shit."

Murtaugh and Riggs talk, that Riggs was in VN, in the Phoenix project as a sharpshooter. Now the question Murtaugh raises is, is Riggs psycho or a phony looking for a pension? And will his seeming death wish take Murtaugh with him?

Next series of scenes, General McAllister and his aide, Mr. Joshua, set up a drug deal.

Again VN is an issue raised in one scene, built on in the next. It's coming into focus as where the outer story will be going. Christmas motifs, which are about birth, continue in the background.

Murtaugh talks to Mike Hunsaker , who tells him he wanted his help to get his daughter off the streets. Murtaugh can relate. He has a young, coming of age daughter.

Mike reminds Murtaugh that he owes him his life, and he wants Roger to find those responsible for his daughter's death and kill them.

Next series of scenes, Murtaugh and Riggs go to scene of man threatening to kill himself by jumping off a roof. Riggs goes onto ledge with man. Riggs tells man he deeply understands his pain. After a brief conversation, he handcuffs himself to man...and pulls him off the ledge...onto a fire department cushion.

The distraught man now begs to be un-handcuffed from crazy-man Riggs. Murtaugh takes Riggs aside and demands an answer: are you crazy? Or not? He hands Riggs his gun. Riggs puts the gun into his mouth and is going to pull the trigger when Murtaugh rips away the gun.

Revelation for Murtaugh : Riggs is suicidal in a big, big way.

This is a very intense scene that very clearly spells out Riggs' emotional state. It's character movement, for both Riggs and Murtaugh .

Next series of scenes, Riggs and Murtaugh go to the house of Amanda Hunsaker 's sugar daddy. In a shoot-out, Murtaugh wounds the man...but doesn't check him further. Riggs saves Murtaugh 's life when the man brings up a concealed gun. The suspect is killed. Riggs and Murtaugh bond over his saving Murtaugh 's life. Character movement.

Murtaugh takes Riggs to his home. His young daughter is obviously enamored of Riggs, which is developed through the story. This scene moves forward this process, which is the main thrust of the story, of Riggs being brought back to life.

With the dead suspect, the murder of Amanda Hunsaker should be concluded...but Riggs won't accept it. Too neat. Close of scene: Riggs, "You don't trust me?" Murtaugh 's answer: "No."

Story question: Will Murtaugh learn to trust Riggs?

It comes out that Riggs once killed a man during the war, shooting him from a 1,000 yards. The Lethal Weapon of the title refers both to Riggs' talents as a killing machine...but also to the fact that as a man who feels dead inside, who would welcome death, he is fearless...and thus, more lethal.

This is plot point one for this story. Where story moves into deeper waters, characters engage on a deeper level in the action of the story.

Next scene, Riggs wakes up Murtaugh in his bed. Riggs and Murtaugh talk about his suspicions. Was Dixie, introduced in passing at beginning of story, witness or simply passerby?

Riggs demonstrates his crack shooting. Jokes continue about the cooking of Murtaugh 's wife...another refrain through the movie.

Riggs and Murtaugh go to Dixie's house, which blows up in their faces. The upshot, they learn that special forces people trained in VN killed Dixie. At this point, we now see more clearly the connection with the General.

At the point where the initial story mystery has seemingly been answered, another, more important story, overshadows it. The first mystery had its place to engage our attention, and, in itself, was not false. It was simply a small piece of a larger puzzle. Now we're beginning to see the larger puzzle. The casual references to VN now come into focus.

Riggs and Murdock now go to see Mike Hunsaker . They find out that ex-General McAllister and others are bringing in heroin via contacts they made in the war. They use Mike's bank as a front. He's been afraid to come forward, because his other daughter has been threatened. Before he can say more, he's killed by Mr. Joshua, shooting from a helicopter. Now the bad guys know that Riggs and Murtaugh know something, but not what.

Next series of scenes, Rigg is downed by a shotgun blast...but he's wearing a bulletproof vest so he survives. But the story is put out that he's dead. Next, Murtaugh 's pretty young daughter is kidnapped, and Murtaugh is ordered to come to the desert if she would be set free in exchange for him.

Riggs, "You know they're going to kill her."

Murtaugh , "Yes."

Riggs has his own "crazed" plan to get her back. Murtaugh accepts Riggs' offer to help get his daughter back.

Next series of scenes. The meeting and potential exchange is to happen at a lake bed. Murtaugh meets the bad guys. At a certain point, he sets off a smoke grenade, and sharpshooter Riggs starts killing bad guys...but not enough. He and Murtaugh are captured, the daughter taken back.

Riggs is tortured to make him reveal what he knows about the General and his plans to bring in heroin. Roger is beaten. Then his daughter is brought forward. She will be violated in front of him if Murtaugh doesn't talk. Riggs is to be killed.

The action of the story has escalated to a higher level. Extreme states of feeling. This is plot point two. Riggs has appeared to be shot dead, Murtaugh 's daughter has been taken...all seems lost.

Riggs kills his torturer, then breaks in on those holding Murtaugh . He rescues Murtaugh and his daughter. The gun fight continues out into a nightclub and into the streets of L.A. Murtaugh kills General McAllister in a confrontation, making good on his vow to kill the General for harming his daughter.

Riggs can't quite shoot and kill Mr. Joshua, chasing him on foot around L.A. A play on the more typical car chase.

Riggs and Murtaugh realize that Mr. Joshua will go to Murtaugh 's house. They call for backup to protect the house and go there.

Mr. Joshua arrives and shoots two patrolmen sitting outside the house. He then shots his way into house...and finds a television playing the movie "A Christmas Carol."

Mr. Joshua's answer: "Damm Christmas."

The bad guys even hate one of our major holidays. Truly evil.

The movie playing on television is also important, because it again speaks to that issue of Riggs coming back to life, just as "A Christmas Carol" told a story about Scrooge coming back to life. Even background details serve to tell the story.

Riggs captures Mr. Joshua...then Riggs asks Mr. Joshua if he'd like a chance at the title, i.e., to take on Riggs. Riggs and Mr. Joshua fight as more and more police arrive on scene. Riggs now fights to save his life...but he decides not to kill Mr. Joshua when he overcomes him. Only bad guy he hasn't killed. It's character movement.

Mr. Joshua gets his hand on a gun...and, over the shoulder, both Riggs and Murtaugh send him out of this life.

Arm in arm, "I got you."

"I got you, partner."

Next scene, Riggs in the rain lays flowers on his wife's grave. Sun comes out.

Riggs, "Merry Christmas, Victoria Lynn Riggs."

This is the first mention of her name, so it's a revelation. It also signifies that Riggs has returned to life, and thus fulfilled the premise of the story.

The premise:

Love can heal the deepest pain.

Riggs' premise:

Love can bring a dead man back to life.

Murtaugh 's premise:

Feeling engaged in life can lead an older man to feel young again.

Final scenes of the story are Riggs having Christmas dinner with Murtaugh and his family. These are the final scenes because they are the fulfillment of the story's premise. The climax of the story, associated with the actions of its plot, were Murtaugh killing General McAllister, Riggs overcoming Mr. Joshua, and Riggs and Murtaugh killing Mr. Joshua as partners.

A story's fulfillment and its climax are two separate issues. The story's final scene, then, is Riggs joining the Murtaugh family for Christmas dinner.

Story ends with house in bedlam...Riggs' dog fighting with Murtaugh 's cat. Murtaugh 's voice over, "I'm too old for this shit."

Answer, via his premise and the action of the story: No, he's not.

Credits roll over silly Christmas song sung by Elvis.

**Lethal Weapon** is a well-told story. It introduces what's at stake in its story early and clearly.

Scenes are brief and to the point. The story's revelations happen as the characters learn more about the nature of what they're dealing with. Not just about the General and his heroin scheme, but about the depth of Riggs' pain.

The action of the story escalates the feeling states of its main characters, Riggs and Murtaugh .

Both men have been changed by the action of the story. Riggs going from suicidal to wanting to live.

Murtaugh from feeling old and winding down, to young and cocky again.

Both of these character issues are introduced in these characters opening scenes. Both are dealt with -- show movement -- through the course of the movie. The story's movement, action, plot, revelations, back ground details and character development all work together to tell the story and make it fresh and both emotionally engaging and exciting.

In this story, not only does good overcome evil as personified by Mr. "Damm Christmas" Joshua, but we are allowed to experience through Riggs the emotional release that the deepest pain can be healed by love. Through Murtaugh , we are led to experience the feeling that even as we age, we can feel young again. What the movie story asks us to feel is developed clearly and consistently.

Again, this is a well done, well told, well acted movie. It may be only, as some have said, a typical action adventure movie, but it's faithful to its story in its telling and its details. It's also a good example of the formula of police stories, and why and how such stories connect with audiences.

If you would write an action film like _Lethal Weapon_ , study films in the genre. Note how many exchanges of dialogue are in a typical scene. How characters are introduced. How back stories that amplify the main story are introduced. How set piece action scenes are staged to be creative and different from other action film.

The police story is a staple of films and novels. To write a great story in this genre, study it to understand how and why it connects with audiences.

###  Moving Audiences to Think About What Moves Them -- A Review of Seven

Most commercial films are designed to offer a roller coaster ride that primarily appeals to the senses. As an audience is led through escalating conflict and plot twists with appealing, attractive characters, the audience is offered thrill after thrill. Feeling after feeling, emotional after emotion. Most films are designed to move people to experience pleasurable states of feeling. **Seven** is a different kind of film. It offers its thrills in a way that its audience is forced to think about why it's enjoying what it's watching. The story is designed to make the audience pay a price for enjoying the voyeuristic thrills offered by the storyteller.

How this story is constructed to offer its particular, thoughtful fulfillment is the purpose of this review.

A review of this story and its structure starts with its title. The number Seven both gives the audience a sense of orientation and a sense of anticipation. What does it refer to? In a subtle way the audience is already being drawn into the world of this story.

The movie opens with quick, flashing images. A man cutting off his fingertips. Someone reading a book. Someone blacking out passages. All of these suggestive images will be revealed for what they are in this story. The questions about these images will be answered.

The opening scene shows us a man at home with his back to us, Morgan Freeman, walking away from a chess board. This suggests he's an intellectual, a man who thinks about how one move affects another. By starting this moment with Freeman's back to the camera, the audience is drawn in a beat to want to know who he is., what he looks like. This process of always finding a way to draw the audience deeper into a scene, deeper into a story, is repeated in many films.

Next we see him putting on his tie. A small touch, but he's knotting the tie. He's not in a hurry. This moment of his knotting his tie later serves a purpose in the story's plot. Note also that it's only when the point is clearly expressed about the tie, does the camera tilt up to reveal his face. It's another aspect to how our physically 'seeing' him is made dramatic, while the details we are shown give us a sense of this man that is important to the telling of this story.

He's shown carefully arranging his pen, knife, badge (which quietly reveals he's a detective) neatly lined up on his dresser. He picks a piece of lint off his jacket before putting it on.

He creates a neat, orderly world. The unspoken story question that arises from this scene, will he be able to maintain that order and dignity in this story? How will it be challenged? That it will be challenged is the reason for it's being presented here so carefully. This makes this character 'ripe' as the story opens, and the plot of the story will attack his values. Details that didn't speak to an underlying purpose in the story would not be appropriate here; they would disorient the audience in a subtle way.

The scene cut to a dead man on the floor in a pool of blood. This is the opposite of what we've just seen. It's passionate violence. A voice-over describes what the neighbors heard, "two hours of screaming, then the gun went off, both barrels."

Showing this neat, meticulous man in this world we know now is so alien to his inner life naturally raises a question, what's he doing in this other world? What's he trying to accomplish?

We see him - Sommerset - looking at some drawings on the wall of the murder scene. He comments, "Just look at all that passion on the wall."

Bored cop, "Yeah, but it's a done deal; just the paperwork."

Sommerset notices a child's drawing on the refrigerator and asks if the child saw anything: he's observant of details, peripheral details that may be related. The other cop, obviously unaware there was child, is upset by the question. He goes into a tirade about Sommerset and his questions that ends with his comment that he'll be glad to get rid of Sommerset. This sets up the questions, where and when is he going? Will the story have an impact on his leaving? Questions are being raised that the story will answer.

The drama of this exchange is heightened by the cop openly attacking Sommerset. A story-teller can often heighten the dramatic effect of a story by letting characters loose to verbally spar.

The cop's last comment, "He's dead. The wife killed him. Anything else has nothing to do with us."

This story, however, is designed to show us what these events do have to do with US. By have a character say this, the storyteller suggests the purpose of this story. Understanding what their story is about, the storyteller understood how to introduce their story.

Detective Mills (Brat Pitt) arrives, hurrying up some stairs. He offers his name, then the scene cuts away. By just showing us this much of him, we're drawn in to want to know more about him.

Mills, "I just got in town twenty minutes ago; they got me here."

Which raises the question, why's he here? Where did he come from? It's quick, focused on work on the part of the storyteller.

The scene cuts to outside the building. Sommerset suggests they find a bar to talk, but Mills wants to go directly to the precinct.

Mills, "Not much time for this transition, you know."

We now know Sommerset is leaving soon, and that Mills is an impatient, somewhat pushy guy. When Sommerset asks why Mills wanted to be transferred here, Mills doesn't get the question. This points out that he's not thoughtful like Sommerset. Immediately, these two men are presented as distinct characters, and distinct in a way that they are naturally in conflict. The storyteller designs characters in ways that compel them to react to each other.

Mills, "I guess the same reasons you had, at least before you decided to quit. Yeah?"

Sommerset, stopping, "You just met me." He wants to know how Mills came to this conclusion.

Mills, "I thought I could do some good." It's naming Mills' purpose here.

Mills interprets Sommerset's questions as a challenge and reacts pugnaciously, saying, "It would be great for me if we didn't start out by kicking each other in the balls." Which is what he is doing, but not Sommerset. Then he backs down, saying "But you're calling the shots, Lieutenant."

We're being told he's impatient, not stupid.

When Sommerset tells him to watch and listen, Mills again takes it as an insult, referring to his five years experience in homicide.

"But not here," Sommerset responds. This suggests that Mills is entering into a new, different, more violent world than the one he came from. Then Sommerset tells him to remember during the next seven days he's to observe and learn.

This suggests Sommerset, based on this conversation, doesn't plan to teach Mills; he's already writing him off. It's movement for the story and the two characters based on this exchange.

We cut to Sommerset at home in bed. He turns on a metronome by his bed: he's man who has trouble sleeping, turning his mind off. He needs to hypnotize himself to sleep. He needs order in his world to be at peace, but something intrudes. He hears voices in his head; sounds. He's remembering the unsolved cases, the solved cases that still made no sense. His job intrudes into his private life. We have a sense now of why he wants to stop being a detective. It's taken over his life.

Sound of thunder.

Cut to strange images with jarring music : razor blades cutting off fingerprints, journals, threading a needle, cutting words (God)- etc. The credits run over the images.

We're being drawn into, shown this world, by these suggestions. Shown the world of the man who will be unseen for most of the story. But what we are shown of his world begins the process of drawing us in to want to know more. Although it isn't fully apparent at this stage, the characters of Sommerset, Mills and the unseen killer suggest the context for this story. The full meaning of that context is revealed as the story progresses.

Cut to: Monday. City. Mills waking in bed with his wife Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow). He looks at his watch. We're drawn in to the question of who she is by how she's introduced.

He puts on a pre-tied tie; this is a guy living life in a hurry. He brushes at his hair briefly. He looks out the window. He's ready to go. Now.

He's the opposite of Sommerset.

As he sits on the bed beside his wife, he gets a call. He snatches at the phone, but it still wakes her.

She brushes the sleep from his eye and refers to him as Serpico, which gives us a sense of how he wants to be perceived. By how they interact, we feel they're in a loving relationship. This is vital to this story that we feel/experience this point. This scene is long enough for us to fully take in this point, to **observe** it, to internalize it. There is another subtle point here, that the audience are here as observers.

Scene cuts to Mills standing in the pouring rain holding two cups of coffee. It's clear he's outside a crime scene. It's also clear he's trying to make up for what happened the previous day with Sommerset. It gives a sense that at heart he's a nice guy. It's movement, then, from how he acted the previous day. Characters need to change, react to a story's events in a way that is visible to a story's audience. Characters who hit the same character 'note' in scene after scene demonstrate the action of the story is having no effect on them. If it's not affecting them, why should it affect the story's audience?

Sommerset gets flashlights and gloves from a car trunk, then refuses the coffee, which Mills sets down on the sidewalk.

Mills, "Nothing's been touched; everything's like I found it." He's trying to do what Sommerset asked, but he's still doing it in his impatient way. He's consistent in his nature.

Sommerset, "What time was death established."

Mills, "Like I said, I didn't touch anything."

He's not answering directly; he's trying to answer the question he thinks Sommerset is asking.

They head in to a crime scene. Mills kibitzes with the policeman who fills them in on the scene. Mills tries to show he's on top of things but comes off awkward, asking how they know the dead man is dead when no one has checked the dead man for vital signs.

"So that's the way it's done around here..."

When they enter the dark house, Sommerset questions Mills point in picking an argument with the policeman. Mills responds, "Don't know. How many times has Barney Fife found dead bodies who aren't really dead?" His actions/questions aren't directed, purposeful- just combative.

"Drop it," Sommerset directs him.

The set up with the dark house is that it keeps us focused on what is important, the two characters, and also makes the environment creepy, suggestive. It also suggests the two men are literally 'in the dark.'

We see the dead man at first from the back. This pulls us in to want to know more, to see more. It's that subtle process of the story, making its audience aware that they want to view the grisly scenes.

After finding the grotesquely obese body, Mills makes snide comments like "Better Homes and Gardens," while Sommerset notices the cabinet full of spaghetti sauce. Mills asks who said it was a murder, and jumps to conclusions about it being a coronary: "This guy's heart must be the size of canned ham. If this isn't a coronary, well...I don't know."

Then..."Whoops!" when Sommerset shows him the bound feet. This excites Mills. He starts talking about another case- irrelevant, except that he talks about a man who stabbed himself in the back, which Mills metaphorically will do at the end. Sommerset asks him to be quiet.

Mills finds some vomit under the table, but doesn't notice if there's blood in it. Again he jumps to the wrong conclusion.

The doctor comes in and comments on the moody lighting.

Mills, "You think it's poison?"

Sommerset sends him out to help the beat cops question the neighbors. Mills hesitates. This is a dramatic moment. He knows he's being dismissed here. For him, this is the ultimate insult.

The doctor holds up the dead man's face- macabre! "He's dead!" "Thank you, Doctor."

Cut to car in rain.

Mills, "You've seen my files, right? You've seen the things I've done."

Sommerset, "Nope."

Mills complains about being sent out, that he's a detective. Sommerset defends his decision, refers to the integrity of the crime scene. Mills again misinterprets Sommerset, saying "Just don't jerk me off."

Sommerset doesn't respond. This draws us in to want to know the outcome of this conflict.

Cut to coroner's lab. The dead body sewn up after autopsy. Still very grotesque. Mills displays lack of compassion. "How did the fat fuck get out his door?"

"Please, it's obvious he was a shut-in." Mills is impatient during the coroner's explanation about the stomach and how it's been stretched until his stomach burst.

Sommerset, "This man ate until he burst?"

Mills is dissatisfied with his ambiguous conclusion.

Sommerset asked about the bruises on the head; they are suggestive of a gun being pressed to his head. Mills declares with satisfaction: "Ladies and gentlemen, we have ourselves a homicide."

Cut to outside police station. In a voice over, Sommerset summarizes the murder for his boss, that it happened over a period of twelve hours. The audience's need to feel 'in the know' is being satisfied here. This also clarifies and summarizes the murder for us - a particularly heinous murder in our (thus far limited) experience.

In the office, we see Sommerset, Mills and their boss. Sommerset concludes the act itself must have had some meaning; that it wasn't a crime of passion. And it's just the beginning.

Captain, "Somebody had a problem with the fat boy and decided to torture him."

Sommerset disagrees. The killer had to make a second trip to the store for more food.

Then Sommerset announces that he'd like to be reassigned. "This can't be my last duty. It's just going to go on and on."

Captain, "It won't be the first time you've left unfinished cases."

This clearly upsets Sommerset. He responds that he worked the cases as far as they could be resolved with the information he had. We know have a fuller answer to what was keeping him up the first night we met him.

Sommerset continues that it should not be Mill's first case, which pisses Mills off. Their conflict continues to heat up.

Mills demands Somerset say to his face that he's not ready, so Sommerset responds that 'it's too soon' for him to have this kind of case. Mills goes on as if Sommerset hadn't spoken.

Mills asks for the case, but the Captain tells him to 'shut up' and says he's putting him on something else, and Sommerset has to stay on this case.

From what we know about Mills, this must clearly hurt him. This story has been designed to bring about the collision of these characters.

Cut to Tuesday. Newspaper headline says "Murder has a new uptown address."

Mills arrives to investigate amidst a press conference by District Attorney Martin Talbot. Someone important was killed. As Mills walks through the impromptu, he overhears snide remarks: "Who's the kid" kind of thing. He enters the crime scene. He asks if they have anything yet, then send the investigators out for coffee. He immediately violates the integrity of the crime scene by sitting at the desk and swiveling in the chair as opposed to Sommerset's cautious, 'don't touch anything' approach.

He hears the news breaking on the TV. We learn Defense Attorney Eli Gould was the victim-murdered in his office. Mills hears the DA say the law enforcement officials have their very best men on this case and it will be the definition of swift justice. It's an important case. This swells Mills' ego and also puts the pressure on him to do well.

The irony here is that it is the killer in control of this case, not the impatient Mills.

Only then does Mills sees the word GREED written on the rug in blood. He was so caught up in himself he didn't see the obvious right in front of him. Then he sees a picture of Gould's wife with blood smeared around her eyes like spectacles.

We now have two more questions. Why was Greed written on the floor? Why the blood used to create spectacles? The audience is being set up to track the story's plot.

Cut to Sommerset's office. A workman is scraping his name off the glass.

The Captain comes in and tells Sommerset about Gould and the word GREED; that he was bled to death.

"Greed," Sommerset repeats. "Yeah, in blood," the Captain says, adding, "Mills is heading up the investigation."

The Captain asks Somerset what he's going to do when he retires. He talks about puttering about.

Captain, "Don't you feel that feeling? You're not going to be a cop anymore."

Somerset, "That's the whole idea." He wants to tune out those sounds/images that keep him awake.

He tells a story about a man attacked and stabbed in both eyes. Somerset, "I don't understand this place anymore."

He's the voice of reason sitting in for the rest of us.

Captain, "You were made for this work and I don't think you can deny that."

This exchange continues to cue us in to the dramatic purpose of the story and the characters within the story.

On his way out, the Captain drops off a jar of plastic pieces found in the obese man's stomach. "They were fed to him."

Somerset looks at them. Both Somerset and the audience are being pulled deeper into the question of the obese man's death and what these pieces of plastic might suggest. It's a features of thrillers that the audience is allowed to learn information alongside a main character. It's an element that makes a story pleasurable for its audience. They're allowed to consider relevant clues, to feel a part of figuring out what's happening.

Cut to the obese man's house. Sommerset cuts through the sealed off police investigation paper.

He looks in the fridge. Nothing. But as he's closing the door he notices scraping off the vinyl floor. The pieces fit to those he was given. He realizes the refrigerator has been moved.

Pulling it back he sees the word GLUTTONY written in grease on the wall. And a note. He pulls it off.

We're given an answer to the meaning of the plastic pieces, but it sets up two more questions: what's written in the note? And what's the connection between the two cases? Cut to Police station. Sommerset is telling Captain and Mills about the note. It reads: "Long is the way and hard that out of hell leads up to light." Sommerset identifies it as a quotation from Milton -- Paradise Lost.

"Alright, I'm confused." says the Captain.

Sommerset says it means it IS just beginning. "There are seven deadly sins, Captain. GLUTTONY, GREED, SLOTH, WRATH, PRIDE, LUST and ENVY."

He hands the photos to Mills.

Sommerset leaves, saying, "You can expect 5 more of these." When the Captain says, "Wait a minute," Sommerset replies "I can't get involved in these. He wanted it," pointing to Mills, who agrees, "I'm all over it."

Cut to a knife hitting a target. Sommerset's home. He's thinking.

Cut to outside. Night. Sommerset catches a cab in the rain. "Where're you headed?" the cabby asks. Sommerset stares out the window at a drug OD on the sidewalk: "Far away from here."

Cut to building. A guard lets him in.

We're being drawn in to the question, where are we? Moments here are always given a dramatic shape.

We then realize we're in a library. Sommerset teases the guards about playing poker when there are all these books. "A world of knowledge at your fingertips...and what do you do? You play poker all night."

Guard, "We got culture...coming out our ass."

One guard puts on some classical music. He selects Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

Intercut with Mills studying photos of the obese man. He can think about things.

The lyrical music continues throughout, forming an irony with Mills' pursuit of clues in the physical, the mundane; and Sommerset's pursuit of the classical, mythical clues to the murders. A study of the human condition. Somerset looks for the truth within the larger truth.

Sommerset find's Dante's Divine Comedy. He reads.

Mills studies the obese man's feet.

Sommerset reads in the library.

Mills studies photo of Gould, and reports that "victim was forced to mutilate himself." (This is new information for us.)

Sommerset looks at classical illustrations of Dante's Hell; all grotesque but in a more literary fashion. There are several decapitated figures. He makes a list of references for Mills.

Shot of Mills from above rolling his head.

Sommerset continues to read, words like "mutilated, torn windpipe (refers back to obese man's swollen esophagus), blood, slain etc. coming into focus. These seem direct references to the murders- inspiration at least for the murderer.

Mills watches a game on TV.

His wife looks at him from another room.

One guard suggests Sommerset will miss them, and he allows as how he just might. He Xeroxes diagrams of Dante's hell and the seven deadly sins. He folds the copies up.

Sommerset drops a envelope off on Mill's desk.

Cut to Wednesday. Mills runs through the rain to his car. He reads Dante but doesn't understand it. He gets really pissed off- he's frustrated over this case and what he doesn't understand. A cop knocks on the window. He rolls down the window and the cop hands him a package. He rips it open to reveal Cliff's Notes of Dante, Chaucer etc. from Sommerset. Even this act of kindness frustrates Mills; it reminds him of what he doesn't know.

Cut to office door with Detective Mills written on it. Mills enters with a box of stuff. Sommerset is sitting at the front desk; he moves to a side desk to give Mills the front desk. We're shown the graciousness of Sommerset.

Again, the distinction between the two men is always sharp and delineated.

Mills unpacks, stuffing the cliff notes surreptitiously into a drawer. The phone rings but Sommerset tells Mills it comes as a package deal; he's to answer the phone. It's Mills' wife. We hear him asking, "Why?" It pulls us into, why what?

He begins, however, by saying, "I appreciate the offer, but..." Then she says something that leads him to agree to come. Question, what did she say?

He hands Mills the phone...but the line is dead. Mills wants to know what she wanted. He tells Mills he's been invited to supper.

Mills is surprised.

So, I'm sure, is the audience. Nicely shaped scene. Even the seemingly mundane here is offered in a fresh way.

Cut to Tracy opening the apartment door for the men. She says she's heard a lot about Sommerset, except his first name, which we discover is William. She introduces him to David (Mills).

Tracy, "Good name, William."

Mills goes off to see the "kids" (dogs). This shows us another side to Mills. Again we're put in the position of observing him in another room.

The three chat and it comes out Tracy and David were high school sweethearts; she relates she married him because he was "the funniest person she ever met."

Sommerset is surprised. The audience would be as well. Again, another small moment shaped to its full potential.

Sommerset, "It's unusual, that level of commitment."

When he starts to take his coat off Tracy stares at his gun with concern and confesses no matter how often she sees them she can never get used to guns.

"Same here," Sommerset agrees.

Cut to after dinner. Tracy asks Sommerset if he's ever been married.

Mills objects to the personal nature of the question. Sommerset answers he was close once, but it didn't happen. Sommerset answers that "anyone who spends a significant amount of time with me finds me disagreeable."

Tracy, "How long have you lived here?"

Sommerset, "Too long."

It becomes clear Tracy is not adjusted to the city yet; she is unhappy. Then the subway shakes the house. Mills explains how they were "sold" on the apartment without being told how close it was to the train.

Sommerset and Tracy laugh.

This unforced, naturalistic moment actually speaks deeply to what's being set up in this story. We're being drawn in to care about these characters, because to care about them will compel the audience to confront the issues raised by the story. It's why, again, _Seven_ is different than most thrillers. The point here isn't just to get us to feel something about these characters; it's to get us to feel something in preparation to asking us to think about them, their situation in their story world, and our situation in relationship to them, and our relationship to our world and what this story says about our world. These kind of touches don't just 'happen' in a story. They can be constructed and designed by the storyteller who understands the craft of storytelling.

Cut to Mills and Sommerset discussing the Gould case. We learn Gould was forced to cut a pound of his own flesh off - a Merchant of Venice reference. Mills has found this reference. Being around Sommerset is influencing him.

"His task done, he would go free."

Sommerset, "Which part of your body is expendable?"

This is the choice the killer forced the victim to make. But note the design of the story also allows the audience to ask themselves the same question. Again, we're being drawn into and through this world. We're asked to be participants.

Sommerset is intrigued, hooked. He wants to know more.

Sommerset, "He's preaching." The killer is using the murders as a tool to teach.

The two start working together for the first time. Sommerset realizes the killer is on some perverted moral crusade - the murders are a form of "forced attrition."

Sommerset, "When you regret your sins but not because you love God."

We also learn there are never any fingerprints. Mills remembers the photo of Gould's wife, with the blood around her eyes. Sommerset conjectures there's something she should be able to see.

Sommerset talks about how people now are trained to mind their own business. Sommerset, "They teach women to not cry for help when being raped, but to cry 'fire.' People will come running."

Mills talks about the bloody spectacles.

Sommerset, "What if it isn't something she has seen, but something she's supposed to see but hasn't been given the chance?"

We're being drawn into this question.

Sommerset doesn't know the answer, but we can tell now he wants to know the answer.

Cut to Tracy, who discovers the men gone. We make this discovery with her. Knowing what she feels about the city, we have a sense that this would be upsetting to her.

Cut to Sommerset and Mills out at night, arriving at the safe house to talk with Mrs. Gould. Mills shows her pictures with her husband's body covered up.

Mrs. Gould, "I don't understand."

She insists she "doesn't see anything."

Mills wants to end the interview, but Sommerset quietly suggests it continues.

She does notice an abstract painting is upside down.

Cut to Gould's office. They examine the painting. Nothing.

Nothing is given to Mills and Sommerset. They must search for meaning.

Mills, "He's fucking with us."

He's speaking a deeper truth here than he realizes. The storyteller can write this kind of dialogue that echoes with later elements of the story from a knowledge of where the story is going.

Sommerset brushes dust on the wall and discovers finger prints. "Call the print lab."

Cut to a print technician works on the wall. He mumbles, "Oh man."

Mills, to Sommerset, "Have you every seen anything like this?"

This pulls us in to what to know what he sees. Even Mills has to turn away. At last we see "HELP ME" written on the wall in finger prints. The technician declares they are not the victim's prints.

Cut to a computer running matches for print ID. The Tech tells Sommerset and Mills it could take up to three days to get a match and would they cross their fingers somewhere else?

Cut to Sommerset and Mills lounging on a couch in the hall. Sommerset refers to Mills' assurance to Mrs. Gould that they will catch this guy and comments he wishes he still thought the way Mills does.

This is a quiet, intimate moment. We're shown these two men drawing closer together. It's movement.

Mills says, "Why don't you tell me what the hell it is you think we're doing here?"

Sommerset, "Picking up the pieces. We're collecting all the evidence, taking all the pictures and samples. Writing everything down. Noting the time things happen."

Mills, "That's all?"

"That's all. Putting everything in a neat little pile and filing it away, on the off chance it will ever be needed in the courtroom. Picking up diamonds on a deserted island. Saving them, in case we get rescued."

Mills, "Bullshit."

Sommerset, "Even the most promising clues usually only lead to others. So many corpses roll away unrevenged."

Sommerset is speaking here to what weighs on him. He has not been able to avenge the evil he sees; merely collect details about it.

Mills, "Don't try and tell me you didn't get that rush tonight. I saw ya. We're getting somewhere." Mills lies down to sleep.

This dialogue points out the deep divide still between the two men. Sommerset knows where he is; Mills doesn't. And neither knows where this story will ultimately take them.

Cut to Thursday. Sommerset and Mills asleep on the couch, with Mill's head on Sommerset's shoulder. The Captain wakes them with the news, "We've got a winner."

Cut to Captain briefing a large group about the murderer as revealed by the fingerprint ID. "Theodore Allen, a.k.a. Victor. Long history of mental illness. Strict Southern Baptist upbringing but... Drugs, robbery, jail time for attempted rape etc. His lawyer got him out; his lawyer was Eli Gould. We're gonna wrap this up today, ladies and germs. Victor's been out of circulation for a while but there's still a residence in his name."

The troops file out. Mills says to Sommerset, "You're not buying this, are you?"

Sommerset, "Doesn't seem like our guy, does it?"

Mills: "You tell me."

Sommerset, "Our killer seems to have more purpose."

Mills is getting more in tune here. More movement. He's reflecting on what he hears.

Cut to Swat team departing. Half the department's involved. This is exciting physical movement.

Cut to Mills and Sommerset in a squad car. Mills asks Sommerset if he ever took a bullet. "Never in my 34 years, knock wood. I've only taken my gun out three times with the intention of using it. Never pulled the trigger. You?"

Mills shot his gun once. Mills, "I was a rookie, then."

He still is.

A cop died. Mills can't remember his name and it bugs him.

The backdrop of moving to capture the suspect gives this conversation a more dramatic backdrop.

>Cut to Swat team arriving outside an apartment building. They swarm, enter building., break in apartment, it's incredibly seedy and dark. They bring in more people, it's just more people in the dark. Exciting stuff. Very visual and gripping. The audience is drawn in here to feel the action, the adrenaline.

The Swat people come to a room hung with air fresheners, then point their guns into another room.

"Good morning sweetheart. Get up now, mother fucker, NOW!"

We're being drawn forward, wondering who's in the room.

There's a bed, a body in it covered by a sheet. The sheet is pulled back- it's a scabby, emaciated corpse. Sommerset calls for an ambulance. A hearse is more like it. One hand is cut off. Mills tells everyone to leave, not to touch anything. He's learned.

Sommerset sees SLOTH written on the wall. They find pictures of Victor - the corpse in the bed -- taken each month starting one year ago today, along with body and tissue samples.

A cop leans over Victor and mumbles, "You got what you deserved." The corpse moves and coughs; Victor's alive!

This is brilliant and scary. The storyteller masterfully staged this moment. It's one of the most frightening moments I've ever experienced in a film. Note how deeply we're drawn in to fully believe this is a corpse, a dead man, before the shocking revelation.

Cut to ambulance arriving outside.

Cut to Sommerset and Mills in the hall.

Sommerset, "He's playing games."

Mills, "No shit."

They are moving back to being adversarial.

Sommerset, "But we have to divorce ourselves from our emotions, no matter how hard it is, we have to stay focused on the details."

Mills is angry, pacing, nearly out of control. "Hey man, I feed off my emotions, how's that?"

Again, he's a contrast to Sommerset. We're not told they are a contrast. We're shown this. Everything about the two men is a contrast.

A light bulb flashes. It's a reporter. Mills jumps all over the guy, cursing him out and telling him "to get the fuck out of here, it's a crime scene.'

"I've got your picture" the reporter yells. Mills even spells his name for the guy as he departs down some stairs.. Sommerset watches in dismay.

Mills, "How do they get here so fucking quick."

Sommerset, "They pay police for the information. And they pay well."

Mills apologizes, they just piss him off.

Sommerset, "It's OK. It's impressive...to see a guy feeding off his emotions."

This scene is so quick and naturalistic, it doesn't register at all what just happened here. The photographer was the killer getting pictures of Mills. When this is realized later, it will again show the depth of planning of the killer and the storyteller.

Note also the comment about 'feeding off his emotions." The audience is feeding off the emotions generated by this story. But is this a good or a bad thing, considering the nature of this story? This film, via its climax, forces the viewer to ask that question.

Cut to Hospital and cloaked bed. Doctor tells Sommerset and Mills Victor's brain is mush and "he chewed off his own tongue long ago."

Sommerset, "There's no chance of his surviving?"

Doctor, "Detective, if you were to shine a light in his eyes right now he'd die of shock."

The doctor talks about how he's been through more pain than anyone he's ever encountered and "he still has hell to look forward to."

Cut to Sommerset at home. He gets a call from Tracy asking him to meet her tomorrow. The question is, why?

She tells him she needs someone to talk to, and he's the only one she knows.

He doesn't understand. A man who understands so much, and this leaves him clueless.

She finally convinces him to meet her.

Note again how this scene is played out to draw us closer to Tracy and her issues; to lead us to have feelings about her; to let us feel that we know her, that we have a place in her life. When a storyteller can draw in their audience to care about their characters and their issues, that audience will go to great lengths to see how a story is resolved and fulfilled.

Cut to Friday at a grill. Sommerset and Tracy talking. She's so unhappy in the city, but doesn't want to burden David. She'll get used to it. "But the conditions here are...horrible."

Sommerset, "Why don't you tell me what's really bothering you, Tracy?"

She's pregnant.

This sets up one of the more brutal plot events of the story. It seems like background information here, another opportunity for Sommerset to talk about life. But we're being drawn in to have feelings about him as a human being.

He still isn't sure why she's talking to him.

Sommerset relates his past, about his own aborted child, a decision he still feels was right but not a day goes by he doesn't regret it. He didn't want to bring a child into our world, that he told his lover he didn't want a child, that he 'wore her down.'

He tells her not to tell David if she chooses not to keep it. But if she does choose to have the baby, spoil it every chance you get.

She cries.

Sommerset, "That's about all the advice I can give you, Tracy."

His beeper goes off. The camera holds on her while she cries. We're being allowed to feel this moment with her.

Tracy, "Thank you."

We're allowed to hold on his face while he looks at her.

Cut to chalk board with Seven sins listed, the first three crossed out.

Sommerset talks about how a landlord found Victor to be his "best tenant" because the killer always paid his rent on time.

Mills, "Why are we sitting here, rotting, waiting for the lunatic to do something."

Mills is impatient. Sommerset warns him not to make the mistake of dismissing the murderer as a lunatic. Sommerset reiterates how controlled, intentional, methodical the murderer is.

Mills will pay for his impatience, his lack of understanding.

"We walked into that apartment exactly one year after he tied Victor to the bed. One year to the day. He wanted us to." Sommerset refers back to the first note "Long is the way and hard that out of hell leads to the light."

He ponders the will of such a man, to keep a man bound for a year, to sever his hand to use it to plant finger prints, to insert tubes into his genitals. Mills insists the killer is a nut bag.

"Just because some nut's got a library card doesn't mean he's Yoda." This gives Sommerset an idea.

"How much money you got?"

He hurries out.

They have to make a list - any book the murderer might study.

Sommerset, "What would he study?"

Cut to library. Sommerset does a lit search, copies the list. Mills eats potato chips. He's reverting back to his old style.

Cut to Cafe. Sommerset and Mills are at a booth. Mills holds up a soggy piece of pizza and Sommerset refers to the 50 health violation this place has had. Mills is impatient, worries people will think they're "dating."

A seedy guy arrives, sits across from them, refers to a "menage a trois", takes Mills' money from Sommerset, and the pizza, and leaves.

We're pulled in here to want to know the purpose of the exchange.

Cut to Mills stewing. Sommerset offers to tell him what's going on.

Sommerset, "I'm trusting you more than I trust most people."

Mills, "Good, because I'm about to punch you."

Again, we're shown the two men drawing closer even as they spar.

The pizza guy is a friend from the library. They monitor reading habits. He'll give them names of people who've signed out Seven deadly sin-type books from the library. It's illegal, so they can't use the info directly.

"If you want to know who is reading Purgatory, Helter Skelter and Paradise Lost...the FBI can help."

The pizza guy comes in and hands off an envelope.

> Cut to car.

Mills, "Of Human Bondage. Bondage?"

Sommerset, "It's not what you think.

Mills brutally mispronounces the name of the Marquis de Sade. Corrected, he says, "Whatever."

They get a name: Jonathan Doe, a.k.a. John Doe.

They, and the audience, are being played with.

>Cut to stairs. They knock on a door. No answer. A guy comes around the corner down the hall. Shoots at them.

This is dramatic and unexpected. The pace of the story just leapt to a higher level.

It's also a payoff to the earlier scene about guns.

Mills first concern is that Sommerset is okay.

Long chase scene. Every time someone turns a corner, we don't know if there will be more gunshots. And there are enough gunshots to keep Mills and us revved up.

Mills is relentless in his chase. He physically risks himself to catch this man who keeps just ahead of him.

Mills, to someone who opens a door, "Get out of the fucking hall, please."

We almost see the man on the fire escape.

The killer runs across a busy street and is knocked down. All is chaos. Mills runs over the tops of cars.

Mills runs into an alley and sees someone run behind a truck.

He cautiously goes around the truck, then is knocked down from above and loses his gun.

What will happen now?

The shadowy figure of the man approaches. He puts his gun to Mills' head. The moment is fully extended to let us feel every beat of the drama.

The scene ends with the guy disappearing.

Sommerset catches up. He's truly concerned about Mills. It's another advance in their relationship.

Cut to the apartment door. Mills wants to break in. Sommerset warns they can't go in, their lead is off the record, they can't prosecute and the guy will walk if they break in.

The two characters are back in open conflict.

"We need a reason to knock on this door. Think about it."

Because the used the library system, they can't acknowledge legally what brought them to this apartment.

Mills, "You're right, I'm all fucked up."

He kicks in the door.

Sommerset is angry, calls him stupid and walks away.

Mills thinks, then calls out, "How much money do we have left?"

Cut to alley. A woman is telling a cop a clearly bogus story, blatantly coached by Mills, about how she suspected John Doe of the murders and called Sommerset. Mills rushes her away from the cop and Sommerset, pays her off and tells her to eat something.

Cut to John Doe's apartment. Dark and weird. Neon cross over bed. Multiple locks on door. A cupboard of spaghetti sauce.

Again they are in the dark, searching for clues. The audience searches with them.

Sommerset finds Victor's hand in a jar. A receipt for Wild Bill's Leather Shop is taped over a faded picture of a blonde. Who is she? We'll find out later.

Mills enters a dark room.

Sommerset enters a study/library-type room.

Mills sees pictures of the murder victims.

Sommerset finds journals which have odd markings, which sets up the question, why the markings?

Mills sees something, screams for Sommerset. Sommerset rushes in. Mills says they had him.

Set up, what does he mean?

It was the photographer on the stairs. There are pictures of an angry Mills developing in a bath tub.

Mills, "We had him and we let him go."

Cut to aerial view of police cars with lights flashing outside apartment building.

A policewoman flashes a drawing in front of Mills, who agrees it looks like the murderer. Another woman shows Mills a shoebox full of money, and tells him they haven't found a single finger print.

We now know why we saw the man cutting off his fingertips as the movie opens.

He tells them to look harder. Sommerset's reading the voluminous journals. No dates, no order. "Just his mind poured out on paper."

The man talks about throwing up on a stranger and laughing.

Mills, "His life's work."

A phone rings. It's the killer. He just wanted to tell them he's impressed.

We now hear his voice for the first time in the film.

"I respect you law enforcement agents more every day."

He talks about needing to redo his schedule for the murders.

And, "I would say more but I don't want to spoil the surprise."

Again, the storyteller is allowing the audience to track the story and the question, what surprise?

Sommerset, "He's preaching to us. The murders are a sermon to us."

Cut to Mills and Sommerset examining the photographs. Mill's points to the ones they know. "Who's the blonde?"

Sommerset, "She looks like a pro."

Mills, "A prostitute that caught John Doe's eye."

Cut to Saturday. Wild Bill's Leather Shop. Wild Bill remembers John Doe. Shows them a picture of a leather device he made for the killer. Mills passes it to Sommerset, who says, disbelieving, "You made this for him? We don't see it. Sommerset gets a call. They found the blonde in the photo. Mills and Sommerset leave with the picture.

The set up, what did Wild Bill make for the killer?

Cut to Mills and Sommerset outside, in the rain, going down some stairs.

The go past a guy in a ticket booth yelling at a cop. Down into the bowels of a hellish place. A cop stops them at a door, then lets them in. They see LUST on the door.

A dead woman is on the bed. Two cops are with a man in a chair screaming to "get this off of him."

We don't see what is on him.

Cut to Police station interrogation rooms. Intercut Mills questioning the guy who rented the room; Sommerset is questioning the hysterical man from the room.

The Booth guy saw nothing strange.

The 'trick' talks about a man with a gun. Sommerset throws down Wild Bill's picture and we see the contraption for the first time. It is a kind of strap with a hook coming out of it. A brutal way to kill a woman while having sex with her. A brutal way to die.

The Booth guy says he doesn't like what he does, what he sees. "But that's life, ain't it?"

Mills here is being philosophical. More movement for his character.

The Trick says the man forced him to have sex with the woman wearing the device. He put the thing on him and put his gun in his mouth and made him do it.

Later, Mills and Sommerset are alone.

Sommerset, "You know this isn't going to have a happy ending."

"Hey, man, we catch him, I'll be happy enough."

This is another line of dialogue that explodes at the end of the film.

Sommerset, 'If he turns out to be... Satan himself that might live up to our expectations... but he's just a man."

Mills, "You tell me these things... you think you're preparing me for hard times."

Sommerset, "You want to be a champion, but... people don't want that. They want to eat cheeseburgers."

Mills, "How did you get like this?"

Sommerset, "It wasn't one thing... I just don't think I can live in a place that embraces and nurtures apathy as if it was a virtue."

Mills, "You know... better."

They are 'naming' the story here, not just for the characters but the audience.

Sommerset, "Apathy is a solution... love costs. It takes effort and work."

Mills, "We are talking about people who are crazy."

Sommerset, "No. We are talking about everyday life here... you can't afford to be this naive."

Mills thinks he'll make a difference. He doesn't believe Sommerset. He won't agree with him.

Mills, "I don't agree with you."

These characters are again shown to be in conflict around who they are. Each has a different view of life rooted in who they are, arising from who they are.

Mills leaves.

He's at home. He snuggles up to his sleeping wife. It is a tender moment. He tells her, "I love you... so much."

Tracy, who we thought asleep, "I know."

Again we're drawn in here to feel something, to feel enmeshed in the world of this story. We're also drawn in to feel we're watching something; we're drawn in to be aware that we're viewing something.

Then we see Sommerset trying to sleep by listening to the metronome. He finally throws it down and breaks it. He's being eaten up inside by this case.

Next we see him throwing a switchblade at a dart board on a wall. He's thinking.

We cut to our mystery man calling 911 and saying, "I've gone and done it again."

Now we see Mills over a dead body; Sommerset comes in.

There's a dead woman on a bed slashed up and bandaged. Sommerset reads a note, "Call for help and you'll live, but you'll be disfigured. Or you can put yourself out of your own misery."

It turns out he cut off the woman's nose to "spite her face" as Sommerset adds. Her sin was Pride.

As they leave the building, Sommerset tells Mills he's decided to stay on the case. Otherwise, there will be seven killings.

Sommerset is being affected by the events of the story. A story struggles to ring true when its events seem to have no impact on its characters. When they aren't changed in some way by what's happening in the story.

Sommerset asks Mills to keep him on as his partner, that "you'd be doing me a favor." This is a concrete manifestation of his change.

As they walk into the precinct, another man gets out of a car. We see him from behind. The set up, who is he?

We then see them walking through the precinct. A man shouts, "Detective." They pause on a stairwell. Then, "DETECTIVE."

They turn. It's John Doe, wearing a bloody shirt. He holds out his hands and announces, "You're looking for me."

Mills pulls his gun and orders the man with crude language to get face down.

John Doe, "I know you."

Mills, "What is this?"

John Doe, "I'd like to speak to my lawyer, please."

We end the scene looking at Sommerset, who appears to realize something. Why is John Doe here if he hasn't reached seven? Who's dead out there?

Next scene opens with John Doe calmly making tea while in the background the police try to track down his background. All they know is that he's well educated and wealthy.

Mills, "His actions don't make sense."

Captain, "They aren't supposed to."

Sommerset, "He's not finished."

Mills thinks he's simply trying to make the police look like idiots, which Sommerset agrees with.

We then cut to Doe's attorney saying they will find the other two bodies at six o'clock, but the bodies will only be revealed to Mills and Sommerset.

Sommerset, "It's part of the game."

Mills complains that John Doe will go to prison and be taken care of while his wife "doesn't have cable t.v." Again, a line of dialogue that has a deeper purpose.

Mills, "Something stinks."

He verbally goes after Doe's attorney, who suggests that Doe will go for an insanity defense... unless Mills and Sommerset do what he wants. If he does, the killer will offer a full confession.

Sommerset questions the deal. He's still thoughtful.

The attorney suggests the press would have a field day if they don't find the two missing people. It also comes out that Doe had the blood of one of the victims on his clothes.

Mills, "Let's finish it."

Sommerset and Mills prepare for this journey in a bathroom.

Sommerset, "If John Doe's head comes open and a UFO flies out, I want you to have expected it."

The truth will be even stranger and more brutal.

Mills, "If I shave off a nipple, will it be covered by workman's comp?"

They laugh.

Mills, "If I keep coming home late, my wife's going to think something's up."

Another brutal line of dialogue, but it also ties back into Tracy's suggestion that Mills has a sense of humor.

Mills, "You know."

Sommerset, "What?"

Mills doesn't answer. It makes the moment more dramatic.

We have many close ups of the tense men preparing for this mission.

We see Mills 'tie' a tie, not use a fake one. It shows us his movement as a character, makes it concrete.

We see Sommerset check his gun.

They put on bullet proof vests.

A helicopter on the roof prepares to take flight.

They get into a car with John Doe and drive out onto a street.

The helicopter follows.

Sommerset, "Who are you, John? Who are you, really?"

He wants to know the 'truth.' He'll be getting to a deeper truth.

John, "Who I am means absolutely nothing."

Mills, "Where we heading."

John, "You'll see."

We'll see along with Mills and Sommerset.

Mills, "We're not just going to pick up two bodies. That wouldn't be shocking enough."

John, "Wanting people to listen, you can't just tap them on the shoulder any more. You have to hit them with a sledge hammer."

John feels that what he's doing is special, that it's his work.

Mills tells John that nothing about this is special. Mills taunts him that people won't remember what's happened.

John, "People will barely be able to comprehend it, but they won't be able to deny it."

Mills, "You be sure and let me know...because I don't want to miss it."

John, "Don't worry, you won't miss a thing."

More brutally 'true' dialogue.

They drive through an arid, barren area.

Mills, "When a person is insane... do you know that you're insane?"

John, "It's not something I would expect you to accept... but I did not chose, I was chosen."

Sommerset, "You're overlooking a glaring contradiction."

John, "What?"

Sommerset, "You enjoy torturing those people. Doesn't seem in keeping with martyrdom."

John counters with the idea that he's no worse than Mills, who would hurt him given the opportunity. Mills denies this.

Again, we have another powerful, brutal set up here.

Mills, "I thought all you were doing was killing innocent people?"

John, "Is that supposed to be funny?" He runs down the list of sinners and their sins and why they deserved to be tortured and killed.

"Only in a world this shitty could you even try and say these were innocent people and keep a straight face... We see a deadly sin on every street corner... We tolerate evil morning, noon, and night. Well, not anymore. I'm setting the example. What I've done will be puzzled over, studied, and followed... forever."

Mills, "Delusions of grandeur."

John, "You should be thanking me. You'll be remembered after this."

This sets us up to want to know what John is talking about?

John and Mills get into an escalating verbal conflict until John says, "I spared you... for the rest of what life I've allowed you to have."

He's gotten to Mills.

Mills, "You're a fucking t-shirt... at best."

John sees himself as an agent of God.

The helicopter trailing the car has to rise higher to get away from some electrical pylons.

They see a trailer in the distance and park nearby.

It looks abandoned.

Mills brings John out of the car. We "see" the scene from the helicopter, then back to the ground.

This makes the point again about our being observers.

John, "What time is it?"

John leads them across a field. The question, where are they going? What will they find? The moment is shaped for drama.

Sommerset sees a vehicle approaching. Sommerset returns to the car to intercept the approaching van. He forces it to a stop and tells Mills, "Wait for my signal."

He orders the guy out of the van.

We see the scene from the helicopter.

Guy, "I have a package for a guy... David Mills."

Sommerset gets the package.

We see the box from the helicopter. They think it's a bomb.

In a way, that's the truth.

Sommerset tells the guy to leave on foot.

He looks at the box.

Cut to John looking at Mills.

Sommerset, "I'm going to open it."

John, to Mills, "When I said I admired you, I meant what I said."

Sommerset uses his knife to open the box. When he opens it, he gasps.

Then we view the scene from the helicopter.

Then at Sommerset looking over at Mills holding the gun on John Doe.

He backs away, saying, "John Doe has the upper hand."

Brilliant writing. How can it be true?

He begins shouting at Mills to drop his gun, which confuses Mills.

John Doe, "I'm trying to tell you how much I admire you and your pretty wife."

Mills, "What you'd say?"

It comes out that John violated Tracy and took a souvenir, "Her pretty head."

It's Tracy's head in the box.

Sommerset comes up and demands the gun.

Mills, "What's in the box."

John, "Envy is my sin."

Sommerset, "He wants you to shoot him."

Mills, "Tell me she's all right."

Mills screams in agony.

John, "She begged for her life and for the life of the baby inside of her."

This is a revelation for Mills. He looks down at John with his gun.

John, "He didn't know."

Mills cries silently in anguish and keeps his gun pointed at John.

Sommerset, "If you kill him, he will win."

What will Mills do? In this moment, we're being asked what we would do in his situation.

The moment is drawn out.

Then, Mills shoots John Doe. A plume of blood flies out from his body.

We see the scene from the helicopter.

Then, the POV from John's body as Mills stands over him and shoots him repeatedly. Sommerset cannot look at him.

Sommerset walks away, seen from the helicopter.

Man in helicopter, "Somebody call somebody."

There is no one to call. It's a profound statement about the underlying context of this story. By accepting this kind of action story, by letting ourselves into this kind of violent world, we now have a storyteller who forces us to confront our values about what we find entertaining. That's why at this moment, there's no one to call here.

Next scene, Mills, in shock, in the back seat of a police car.

Captain, "Well take care of it."

Mills is driven away. He is clearly out of his mind, in a profound state of shock.

Sommerset, "Whatever he needs."

Captain, "Where you gonna be?"

Sommerset, "Around. I'll be around."

As Sommerset and the Captain walk away, we have Sommerset's voice over.

"Hemmingway once wrote, 'The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.' (beat) I agree with the second part."

Sommerset has been moved to have some of the feelings of Mills. This thoughtful man has been transformed by the action of the story.

Again, _Seven_ is a rare thriller that pushes its audience into a place where they think about the action of the story. Whether this story was written through a process of intuition or a deep understanding of the craft of storytelling, it is a masterful piece of work.

Every time I've spoken with others who've seen this film, a debate arises over the ending, whether Mills should have shot John Doe. Whether, even, Sommerset should have shot him instead. Or no one shot John Doe. It's part of the beauty of the film that it compels this debate. What would you do in this situation? The film makes you ask this question. It also asks you to think about the dark things that happen in our world and your personal response to them.

Powerful, powerful work.

A masterful example of the craft of storytelling, of an action film designed to not only move it audience to feel, but to think as well.

###  Creating Story Movement by Traveling in Circles: A Review of Groundhog Day

It is a principle of a well-told story that as a story unfolds, every event and character action should advance the story along its story line and plot line. A failure to introduce a story and advance it dramatically along its story line and plot line is a root cause of why so many struggling writers fail. Their stories fail to create a quality of dramatic advance that creates a "moving" experience for their audience.

The film Groundhog Day offers a great example of how a story can advance along its story line even when its plot is, on the surface, a replay of the same events. By pointing out how this story moves forward while seeming to be going in circles, this underlying process of creating dramatic movement can be explored.

The Review

Groundhog Day opens with its credits appearing over a sky with moving clouds, signaling a passage of time. It quickly cuts to Phil, played by Bill Murray, a weatherman speaking to a blank blue wall while on a television, he appears to be looking at a weathermap. It comes out in this scene that Murray is an egocentric sort who will be spending the day in Punxsutawney, a town where Groundhog Day has been turned into a tradition and media event. The producer for this field shoot will be Rita (Andie McDowell), who is young and fresh compared to Murray's jaded persona. The dramatic purpose of this scene is to introduce Phil as a particular kind of obnoxious character who will be spending some time with the innocent, fresh Rita. The story question this introduction sets up is, can Phil and Rita get together? Obvious answer, no. But since this is a romantic comedy that intends to show how that answer can be turned to "yes," these two characters are introduced to be naturally antagonistic...and spending the next few days together.

The next series of scenes has Phil, Larry his shooter, and Rita in a van driving to Punxsutawney. By placing Rita and Phil in the van together, it becomes just how clear they are OPPOSITES with a mutual dislike. Rita is more than happy to stay at a cheap hotel as long as it means spending less time in the vicinity of Phil.

To this point, the story has introduced Murray and his brand of humor contrasted with Rita's innocence, but it has also introduced these characters in a way that a core element of the story has come into view: if Phil and Rita are destined together, what must happen to bring this about?

How do we (the audience) know they're destined to be together? By the way they were introduced.

Phil comes awake on Groundhog day when an alarm clock flips over to 6 a.m. and the strains of "I Got You, Babe" by Sonny and Cher wake him. The song is followed by some local newscasters and their predictions about the weather. Phil walks to the park for his news report, meeting a variety of people. All seems typical. After giving his taped report of the events in the park, which predict six more weeks of winter, Phil, Rita and Larry head out of town. But the blizzard Phil predicted would not hit the area (on the opening newscast) sends them back to Punxsutawney.

Phil stays in the same bed and breakfast, and again wakes to Sonny and Cher singing "I Got You, Babe," and what sounds like a taped replay of the weather report from the day before. But as Phil begins his day, he realizes he's somehow repeating the day before, event by event. Phil is disturbed, but also cautious about appearing too alarmed because, while he's aware he's replaying the same day, others are not. Now, when Phil meets others, he reacts to them with the knowledge he's gained from living the same day the day before.

This is how the story advances even while it's playing out the same day in Phil's life, because by showing his reaction -- comic and funny -- to this turn of events, the story advances. Phil even asks Rita to slap him to bring him out of this seeming intense dream. Rita is happy to oblige. Phil tries to tell her that something is seriously strange happening in her life, but Rita simply thinks Phil has found a new way to be abrasive.

Phil goes to sleep that night bewildered and unsure about what to expect when he wakes. As an experiment, he breaks a pencil just before he goes to sleep.

Phil wakes at 6 a.m....into the same day, the broken pencil now unbroken. Now he reacts to the people he sees with a quality of panic. His reactions set up the question, what will Phil do about this strange happening? Is he trapped? Can he get untrapped? In terms of its structure, the story has advanced to a point of no return for Phil. He simply has to find a way to come to grips with what's happened. He literally has no choice but to resolve what's happened. The audience, to the degree they've been drawn in by Murray/Phil's persona and the story issue of his potential relationship with Rita, now has a curve in the equation about the question of whether the abrasive Phil will get together with Rita.

This is similar to Die Hard, which was a love story about a couple reconciling but blocked by terrorists, who, in a way, both block and bring the couple back together. In Groundhog Day, the very thing that blocks Phil -- the day repeating -- will later offer an opportunity for him to actually move ahead in life. While this story's plot is about this day that keeps repeating for Phil, its story exists on this deeper level of what it means to be stuck in life, in this case acted out by a very concretely "stuck in time" character.

Phil confides his dilemma to Rita. She advises him to get help. Phil later ends up at a bowling alley, rhetorically asking, "Why couldn't he get stuck in a beautiful day?"

He then asks a man he's getting drunk with, "What would you do if you were stuck in one day and nothing you did mattered?"

Man, "That about sums it up (my life) for me."

It's a funny, observant line. Like the humor in most well-done comedies, it's very true and accurate about how many people might feel about their lives at least some of the time.

Phil decides to drive his drunk friends home, when the question arises, "What if there was no tomorrow?"

The answer, then Phil could do anything he wanted.

So he does. He runs over a mailbox, plays chicken with a train, goes to jail...and wakes up at 6:00 a.m. back in his bed to start the same day over again. Now, Phil plays his predicament like a jolly good time, kissing an older woman, punching a high school chum who wants to sell him some insurance, avoiding stepping into a mud puddle, eating a HUGE lunch. He's got no worries, but Rita, observing his behavior, is horrified by it.

Phil, leaving Rita, meets a pretty woman. He talks to her long enough to get some background information about her, then...we cut to the next day/same day. This time, when Phil meets her, he uses what he knows about her to seduce her.

The story has advanced again. We're seeing the same day, but Phil's reaction to it is new and funny. When he seduces the woman, he accidentally calls her "Rita." She's upset, until he asks her to marry him...knowing tomorrow will be the same day and his actions won't have consequences. This is the obnoxious Phil in full play, but it also cues us to the fact that he does have feelings for Rita, an important issue for the story.

Several more "days" pass, and Phil, getting a little bored, asks Rita, "What do you want out of life?" Who would be her perfect guy? Phil has decided to begin courting Rita. But this story development was actually begun in the opening scenes of the story via the way Phil and Rita were introduced. Many writers struggle with the openings of their stories because instead of introducing characters in a way that suggests their dramatic purpose, they use the openings of their stories to systematically introduce their characters. The problem with this kind of introduction is it generally robs each introduction of any kind of suggestion about the dramatic purpose of the character in the story itself. Such a story can't "begin" until all those introductions are completed.

Returning to the story, Phil now begins to slow process of finding out information about Rita. In terms of the story's structure, a scene progresses until Phil makes a "mistake" in his approach to Rita, then the scene cuts away to the beginning of the previous scene. It replays showing Phil correcting his mistake of the "day" before. As part of his wooing Rita, Phil learns French and studies poetry.

He finally knows enough about Rita to create a perfect "day" for her. He invites her to his room and she reluctantly comes up. Finally, they kiss, but she has misgivings, and he blurts out, "I love you." At that point, the spell is broken. She feels he's playing her and lying just to seduce her. Unfortunately for Phil, he's spent so much time with her, he really HAS fallen in love with her, but she has no recollection of the many, many "days" they've spent together.

Rita, "I could never love someone like you."

Note the dramatic purpose of this line. It shows just how much effort Phil will have to make to change Rita's feelings about him. It's a line that sets up the drama of the situation to be acted out.

Phil keeps trying, the scene repeating over and over to this moment in his room, where Rita SLAP SLAP SLAPS his face. The repetition is both funny while showing Phil's determination to make love with a woman he finally really loves.

Phil, now tired and grouchy, gives up. He blows off his performance in the park, sits in pajamas giving all the answers ahead of contestants on Jeopardy to the amazement of on-lookers. During one of his newscasts, Phil talks about the winter being, "...cold, grey, last you the rest of your life."

Now when the clock wakes him, he smashes it.

Phil, seeking a way out, kidnaps Punxsutawney Phil, the Groundhog, and dies in a flaming crash. Only to wake up the next morning. For Phil as a character, this is yet another transformation into another character type. He started out the story brash and confidence, and now he's suicidal. In many of the scripts I read, characters are introduced as a particular type, and while they may play that type angry, etc., their personality never changes. In this story, Phil's character transforms as he reacts to what's happening to him. His transformations are subtle, comic, over-the-top and easy to track. Someone who hates Bill Murray would come up with a different list of adjectives to describe his performance, of course, but they should be able to concede the movement for this character, that Phil has gone through a series of distinct transformations as he's reacted to the story's events. Such transformations should occur in every story, unless the writer is specially making the point that they've created a character who doesn't change how they react to events no matter what happens to them.

Continuing with the story, Phil goes through killing himself in a variety of ways during the coming "days." The story shifts tone here, its seriousness and mournful quality breaking through to the surface, but no matter what he does, he can't keep himself from repeating this endless "day." As the story advances into new territory, Phil's physical reactions to his predicament and his emotional reactions to it change, and the audience as well is set up to be drawn in to experience this shift. Many "comedies" are, at heart, quite serious about their stories.

Phil now tells Rita, "I'm a god," because he can't die. He convinces her that he's experienced the same day over and over again. This builds to where Phil tells Rita he's in love with her, and she believes him. This scene continues the story advancing into new emotional territory for Phil.

Rita asks, "What's the worst part?" of the experience? Phil, "You'll have forgotten me." Or, to put it another way, Rita will just know the "Phil" he was before this day began, an egocentric jerk.

The movement of this story has forced Phil to recognize himself for what he is.

The story has advanced from Phil being an egocentric jerk to finally, truly understanding what that means.

Rita, "Maybe it's not a curse," i.e., at least Phil now has this realization of what kind of life he's lived up to this point. As "proof" of this new Phil and his attraction, Rita is now willing to stay with the night with him. As Phil falls asleep, he says to her, "The first time I saw you, something happened to me...I knew I wanted to hold you as hard as I could...I don't deserve someone like you, but if I ever could, I swear I would love you for the rest of my life."

Phil's character has made a concrete, visible transformation. Still, Phil wakes up alone. For Rita, those special moments of the day before have never happened. But Phil learned something from that day. He now goes about making it his business to ensure that everyone in Punxsutawney have a perfect day, where no bad thing is allowed to happen. The once-egocentric Phil even uses mouth to mouth resuscitation to try and keep from dying a vagrant living on the street. He learns to play the piano beautifully. He gives a man asking for spare change money, a salesman all the sales he can handle.

This is another way the story advances along its story line in a concrete, visible way.

At a post Groundhog Day party, everyone Phil's helped that day comes up to offer their thanks for his efforts to make their lives better. When Phil is offered up "for sale" as part of an auction, Rita makes the highest bid to "buy" the night with Phil, an action on her part that would have been absurd at the beginning of the story and the beginning of this "day."

Phil makes an ice sculpture of Rita's face...and she wants to know how he could have made such a beautiful likeness of her face having known her such a short time. He tells her of his deep, passionate love for her and how it arose. Phil, "No matter what happens, tomorrow or for the rest of my life, I'm happy now because I love you."

Rita, "I think I'm happy, too."

They kiss, and spend the night together.

The next day, the same song by Sonny and Cher plays...but it's a joke by the dee jays. It is a new day. Phil is wonderfully happy, for probably the first time in his life.

He and Rita go out to celebrate the new day.

End of story and answer to dramatic story question, can Phil transform himself in a way that he and Rita can get together.

Dramatic answer: yes.

The premise of this story: **"Being forced to confront and overcome our faults can lead to real happiness."**

If this story were to be diagrammed, it could be shown how each event of the story dramatically advances the story along both its story line and plot line in a pleasing and ultimately fulfilling way.

A few story structure notes...the story is designed so that Phil cannot escape repeating the same day over and over again, which leads him to fall in love with Rita. Some writers struggle because they offer their audience no compelling reason for why their dissimilar characters would choose to be together. If this story were set up in a way that Rita could somehow go on, leave the day behind, the story would lose its dramatic power. If Rita were created to be another obnoxious character, the story might risk not giving its audience any reason to care about whether either Phil or Rita made it free of the day repeating itself.

One of the things that is most instructive about this story is how Phil's character and his reactions to events change with each enactment of the same "day." In a weak script, major characters can go from one end of the story to the other without showing much change in how they're reacting to the story's events. As those events escalate the pressure and obstacles that act on a story's characters, those character's actions should show a discernible, concrete evolution that is tied to the story's underlying dramatic purpose and outcome. If a story's characters appear to be indifferent or impervious to a story's events, why should a story's audience feel affected by the story's course and outcome?

This is not to say that every story should have a series of Phil/Bill Murray type characters mugging at the camera, but that the storyteller perceive that the environment and plot of their story is designed to elicit from their characters emotional reactions that allow an entry point for an audience into a story. Without those entry points, a story risks remaining distant and unmoving to its audience.

This is a well-done, enjoyable story. As a footnote, the original creator of the script was not happy with the way his more philosophical story was changed into a more broadly comic story.

A second footnote, and a personal observation, Bill Murray and other stars are generally as good as the story they appear in. Bill Murray in a weak story isn't that funny.

###  The Art of the Romantic Comedy

The romantic comedy has long been a staple of American films. _It Happened One Night, She Done Him Wrong, The Thin Man, Adam's Rib, Annie Hall, Tootsie._ Every year, every generation, a particular film in this genre stands out and speaks to audiences in an engaging, satisfying way. While every film of this type has on the surface as many similarities as differences, there is an underlying dramatic purpose that weaves through these stories.

What is a Romantic Comedy?

A romantic comedy is a dramatic story about romance told with a light, humorous touch. As any writer knows, that simple statement is easy to make, hard to accomplish. An easier place to begin is with the question, why do romantic comedies engage the interest of an audience?

They do this by setting up dramatic issues that revolve around romance. Thus, they can act out that:

  * true love does exist

  * there's someone out there just for us, and if we could only find them, we would experience true love

  * romance can overcome all obstacles

Further, the romantic comedy often offers an experience of shared intimacy to couples -- married, dating, old, young, life-hardened -- that is fulfilling and pleasurable, and difficult to initiate or sustain for some people.

Well told romantic comedies are also, in the main, very observant about the humor and mores of their time. For example, changes in the role of women and men and how they approach each other romantically can be perceived in the popular romantic comedies of each generation. The cross-dressing in _Tootsie_ , for example, is played for an entirely different dramatic effect than the cross-dressing in _Some Like It Hot_. The humor of _Tootsie_ develops over a man coming to terms with what it is to be a woman. _Some Like It Hot_ finds its humor in manly men trying to pass themselves off as women. In that sense the romantic comedy serves as both a herald of change and a subtle instigator of change.

In that vein, the romantic comedy often offers a sense of what is sophisticated and current about romance. _It Happened One Night_ , for example, defined for many in its audience what was sophisticated. Audiences, then, can learn about romance from viewing stories about it.

Romantic comedies also offer a view of how people relate to each other in a particular generation. The interplay among the adults and children in _Sleepless in Seattle_ , with children presented more like miniature adults, might seem incomprehensible to a parent in the thirties, forties, or fifties.

The writer of the romantic comedy, then, would be served by understanding not just stories popular in the past, but understanding what makes their material fresh and new.

The "How" of the Romantic Comedy

How does one set out to write this magical beast, the romantic comedy? First, by understanding that like any well-told story, the romantic comedy should have a solid story foundation. This is expressed in a story's premise, which lays out its core dramatic issue, movement and fulfillment.

To explore the underlying principles of the romantic comedy, what follows is a breakdown of the structure of _Sleepless in Seattle_. This premise of this story:

True soul mates can find each other in spite of any obstacles to their being together.

Note how this premise applies not just to specific characters, but to an idea about romance that the story **acts out** dramatically.

**Sleepless** opens with Tom Hanks at the funeral for his wife. Immediately, a story question is raised.

Can Hanks recover from the loss of his beloved wife?

That's the dramatic purpose of this first scene, to set up that story question. One scene, a story question taking shape.

The opening shot of this scene focuses solely on Hanks and his son. That engages the audience in the story through the characters of Hanks and his son. Only then does the camera pull back to reveal that this is not just a day when Hanks has taken his son to his mother's grave, it is the day of his wife's funeral. The actual service is in progress. That revelation adds to the dramatic impact of the scene.

If the writer had started by describing the funeral, the purpose of the scene -- setting up its story question that arises from the story's premise to be acted out by Hanks -- would not have been as clear. This scene is deliberately designed to guide the audience to focus on what's dramatically important.

Note also that while the scene at the funeral sets the story into motion, the story is not about the **death** of Hank's wife, but about whether Hank's character can **recover** from his grief over her death. Therefore, a death-bed scene would not serve the dramatic purpose of this story. Communicating that Hanks is grieving over the loss of his wife is not the same as setting up the question, can Hanks recover from his grief over his wife's death? The first is a statement, the second a dramatic question.

In the following scene, friends of Hanks ask him if he understands how to make orange juice. Note how the story moves from the question, can Hanks recover, to, can he not just recover and regain a sense of life, but can this heartbroken man even recover enough to figure out how to make orange juice? It's a brief scene that quickly makes its dramatic point. The scene also introduces Hank's friends without explaining who they are. That they're close friends of Hanks is established because they are there with him at this moment.

By limiting the number of characters on the screen, the audience is guided to focus on what the author is setting up as dramatically at stake.

Third scene, a man at Hanks' office approaches and offers a card about his therapist. Hanks pulls out a handful of cards about various recovery groups.

Dramatic purpose: We're not shown Hanks going to these groups, we're shown the aftermath. That's the dramatic purpose of the scene: to show that Hanks can't recover.

The scene also gives us background information about Hanks.

Outcome of scene: Hanks decides that he can only recover if he moves to a different city where he is not reminded of his wife's presence.

Dramatic question raised by first and second scenes: Is there anything that Hanks can do to recover from his grief? Answer, quit his job and move to another city. Next scene, Hanks and his son are at the airport, leaving.

Again note the dramatic focus of the story. It's not about whether it's right or wrong that Hanks move or not, so there are no scenes where Hanks talks about his decision. As in all well-told stories, characters reveal who they are as they react to dramatic situations. Therefore, in this story, we aren't offered scenes to explain why characters are acting. That's made very clear by how the scenes act out a visible dramatic purpose. Writers struggle with they create scenes merely to introduce characters or to set up situations, but the scenes themselves have no dramatic purpose.

Continuing, Hanks walks on the airport concourse with his friends. They counsel him that at some point, he will start dating again. Hanks' response, he'll never again find the kind of love he found with his wife.

It's a brief, focused exchange that happens while characters are physically on the move, not contemplating moving. This exchange gets to the story question that is at the heart of the story, can Hanks recover from his grief and find another soul mate?

The first scene asked a question that arises from this story's premise. In this fourth scene, the story's premise comes fully into view. Four quick, dramatically focused scenes with a minimum of dialogue, and this story has set up a story question that arises from its premise.

Now the movie cuts to its credits, a song about love, and a map of the USA.

Point: once a story is in motion, its music and background credits can be used to add something to the dramatic effect of the story. But you have to set your story into some type of dramatic motion for these kind of effects to advance the story. Returning to _Sleepless_ , the question has been raised, can Hanks find true love again?

Next scene, Ann, played by Meg Ryan, is introduced with Bill Pullman, her boyfriend. The audience is being cued that Ryan is the one Hanks **will** find true love with.

The scene is designed to introduce what kind of relationship Ryan and Pullman have: workable, nothing special, no pizzazz. The audience is also being primed in a subtle way to want Ryan to get together with Hanks. This idea of true love being special, magical, is introduced as an issue in this scene by emphasizing that Ryan's relationship with Pullman has **no** magic; it's just two busy, on-the-go people agreeing to a joint schedule that will constitute their married life.

Now that the audience has been cued that Ryan is the woman Hanks will eventually meet, how can that event be made more dramatic? In the next series of scenes, Ryan announces her engagement to Pullman.

By blocking the potential movement of Hanks and Ryan toward each other, the story's plot heightens the dramatic tension around the story's outcome. If Hanks and Ryan are soul mates unknown to each other, living several thousand miles apart, how can they be brought together and fall in love? To get the answer to this question, the audience has to view the entire movie, in the same sense that a reader has to read to an end of a novel to get to the resolution of its central story question and the dramatic issues that arise from it.

After Ryan announces her engagement to Walter (Bill Pullman), Ryan's mother asks her if she has a satisfying sex life with him. It's the story playing out an unusual issue to a main stream audience, a mother asking her daughter about having sex with her fiancee. It's a way to make the story seem fresh and current.

Ryan tries on her wedding dress and it rips, a sign, her mother warns, that Ryan doesn't believe in her love for Pullman. It's a way of suggesting there is a true love out there Ryan is unconsciously calling to, to forestall her marriage to Pullman. How are Ryan and Hanks to be brought together?

First, the inexperienced writer should understand that the writer of _Sleepless_ probably started out with an idea about true love and soul mates. Putting a great distance between them is one way to make more dramatic their finding each other. A storyteller is always on the look-out for ways to introduce the elements of their story in a dramatic way.

In this story, to begin this process of bringing together Hanks and Ryan, Hanks' son calls a live radio show and speaks to the show's host. He talks about his father's grief and loneliness, his need for a new wife. The host then asks that Hanks be put on the line. Hanks tells her that he will NEVER be able to find again the love he experienced with his wife. Note how the audience is primed to anticipate/desire that Hanks CAN find such a new love, with Ryan.

Ryan, listening to the radio show, at first thinks Hanks' son calling the show is phony. This creates a sense of drama within the scene over its outcome. Scenes, just like stories or character issues, can be set up to have a dramatic purpose and a question over their outcome. The outcome of Ryan listening to Hanks talk about his grief is that Ryan -- and millions of other women listeners -- want to meet and comfort Hanks. Hanks and his son inadvertently create a media frenzy.

Note in the interchanges between Hanks and his son following the call how his son is more like a companion of Hanks. This mirrors the changing relationships between parents and children in our society.

Ryan now has become emotionally enmeshed with Hanks' character, even though they've never met. Note also that this scene comments on something new in the lives of many people, making emotional connections with people they never meet through a medium like radio call in programs.

Now the question becomes, Ryan now knows about Hanks, but how will they meet? Ryan, a journalist, begins inventing reasons for why she should meet and interview Hanks. The storyteller gives Ryan a reason to think about Hanks.

Ryan talks with her colleagues about Hanks and the reactions other women have had to hearing his story. Her male co-workers raise the issue that it's more likely for a woman over 40 to be killed by terrorists then to find and marry a man. This pronouncement sets off Ryan and her woman friend. Even when Ryan and her friend attack the idea, they agree that it **feels** true.

To start her campaign of meeting Hanks, Ryan writes him a letter. Hanks' son reads Ryan's letter and decides that he wants her to meet his father. The story then cuts back and forth from Ryan on a New Year's Eve date with Pullman, in which he proposes that they go to New York. Again, what would make Ryan meeting Hanks less likely, and therefore more dramatic? Pullman showing that he's a closet romantic. That's the dramatic purpose of the scene. On a level of timing and getting characters where they need to be to act dramatically, this date in New York also puts Ryan in a necessary position to act later in the story. The location of this date serves a dramatic purpose on different levels. It speaks to the issue of every element in a story, even its environment, having a dramatic purpose.

For his part, on New Year's Eve Hanks has a fantasy and, seeing his wife, he tells her, "I miss you so much it hurts."

Again, what makes it less likely, and therefore eventually more dramatic, that Hanks would meet and connect with Ryan? That he's still deeply enmeshed in grief and loneliness over his wife's death. But receiving letters from women does get Hanks to think about dating. Hanks doesn't want to become involved with women he doesn't know, so he asks a friend's advice about dating. The friend gives him an update on it. The scene is played for humor, but it also underscores the current realities of dating in the 90's. It offers a fresh insight on the dating scene, in the same vein that _Tootsie_ had several humorous scenes about dating in the mid-eighties.

Armed with a new understanding of dating, Hanks asks out a woman the audience is primed NOT to like. She laughs too loud. His son doesn't like her.

Ryan, rehearing Hanks on the radio, begins to wonder about her feelings for Pullman. The audience is primed for this by showing how BORING Pullman would be as Ryan's mate, that it would be a marriage without pizzazz or excitement.

Ryan flies to Seattle unannounced to meet Hanks...and sees him hugging a woman friend, the friend introduced in scene two. She interprets that to mean he's in a romantic relationship. Note how this friendship was not introduced just to set up a particular scene's dramatic purpose. This woman's character only a small part of the film, but her role has a dramatic purpose that affects its course and outcome. Characters whose actions have no effect on the course of a story are dramatically inert.

At the last moment, Hanks sees Ryan watching him...and in their gaze, something special happens. But then Ryan is gone.

The audience has been primed to want to know what would happen when Ryan and Hanks meet. They meet, and the magic is there, but then the scene's over. The meeting answers one dramatic question, will Ryan and Hanks meet? It sets up another, more urgent dramatic question. What will happen when they **really** meet? Will they meet after Ryan assumes that Hanks is in a relationship? And the twist, he is in a relationship, it's just not with the woman Ryan thinks he is.

Hanks' son, afraid he's drifting more deeply into a relationship with this other woman, contacts Ryan about meeting his father in New York atop the Empire State Building. He then flies alone to New York. When Hanks' discovers his son is missing, he's frantic. His loss would be devastating, coming so soon after the death of his wife. One purpose of this scene is to allow the audience to experience Hanks panic over his son being missing.

Hanks flies to New York.

Ryan goes to dinner with Pullman. She accepts that hers will be a life of mundane reality. This particular date happens in a restaurant with a view of the Empire State Building in the background. What comes out is that Pullman does not want to marry Ryan if she doesn't love him in that special way she seems to feel for Hanks. There's a reversal of the scene based on Pullman's reaction to events, not Ryan's. In a story where Pullman's character has been set up to be considered a bore, this scene works dramatically because it allows Pullman's character a sense of dignity.

Ryan, who was told she would meet Hanks on top of the Empire State Building at midnight, now rushes to make that meeting. Hanks' son is already at the top of the Empire State Building...alone. Hanks arrives and finds his son. They are reunited...but there's no Ryan in evidence. Hanks and his son leave.

Ryan gets special permission to go to the top of the Empire State Building, even though it has just closed. Note the detail of how the scene raises a dramatic question: will Ryan be allowed to go to the top of the Empire State Building even though the observation area is now closed. Again, the scene is set up to have a dramatic question and outcome. The answer, yes. But when she gets there, Hanks and his son are gone.

But, Hanks son has left his teddy bear behind. When Ryan turns to go...Hanks returns to get the bear, and the two soul mates meet.

The main story question has been dramatically answered: can Hanks find true love after the death of his wife?

Yes.

Can soul mates find each other in spite of any obstacles?

Yes.

Through answering these questions in a method deliberately designed to be dramatic, this story engaged and satisfied its audience.

To write a romantic comedy like Sleepless in Seattle, understand your characters and how to set your story into dramatic motion. Then, resolve the romantic issues of your story in a way that offers a fulfilling experience of romance with a light touch.

That is the art of writing the romantic comedy.

###  Book of Revelations, A Review of Run Lola Run

_Run Lola Run_ , a German film written and directed by Tom Tykwer, demonstrates how an on-going series of revelations about a story's characters can power the advance of a dramatic story. The film begins with a framework that suggests time is a beast that swallows us all. We're then shown a milling crowd that eventually forms the film title, Run Lola Run. This use of the crowd is a revelation that affirms this story is a game created by the storyteller.

As the story continues, we then drop down from the sky, into an apartment, and toward a ringing, red phone. Manni, boyfriend of Lola, is calling to tell her he's 'done for.' Because Lola didn't meet him, he lost some money and will be killed unless Lola can get 100,000 marks in 20 minutes.

How Manni ended up in this situation is offered as a series of quickly paced revelations.

Manni reminds Lola that she once told him, "Love can do everything."

Can Lola's love save Manni?

This story begins with techniques - animation, characters speaking to the camera - that remind us that this story is a construct of the storyteller. Yet, because of the emotional intensity of the revelations about Manni's situation and how he blames Lola for his situation, the effect is to catch up the emotions of the audience. It's the magic all well-told stories create, quickly drawing us into a new world and engaging us to feel emotionally or thoughtfully invested in a story's characters. Once that storytelling magic happens, the audience wants to experience a story's on-going revelations about its characters.

Continuing, on a television a row of dominoes collapse in a pattern, reaffirming the point that everything Lola must do to save Manni must happen with the right timing.

As the camera circles Lola, we see a series of faces, revealing who she's thinking about. We hear her thoughts settle on the word, "Papa," and the images freeze on the face of her father.

Lola now sets off with a twenty-minute deadline to get 100,000 marks.

As she turns to go, the man looking into the camera turns in the direction she's running and shakes his head 'no.'

This makes Lola's situation more desperate. It also reveals to the audience something Lola doesn't know. Such revelations help an audience feel more invested in a story. As Lola runs through the house, she passes by her mother on the phone. In the background on a television, we see Lola as an animated figure running down some curving stairs.

Lola comes out of an apartment building and runs past a woman pushing a baby carriage. We then see a quick series of shots that act out how this woman came to have the baby.

Tykwer clearly understands that audiences can take in information quickly if they have a frame of reference. Here, every revelation is woven into the fabric of the story's world. Each revelation offers the audience new, fresh insights into the possibilities of this world.

Returning to the film, a woman speaks emotionally about her affair with Lola's father, who listens impassively.

On the street, Lola passes a young man on a bike who offers to sell it to her. When she refuses, we see quick shots of his being beaten on the street, his wounds being treated by a nurse who takes care of him, then his marrying the nurse.

Lola runs by a driveway, distracting a driver, who has an accident with a car carrying three menacing young men.

Lola runs by the bum with the money without recognition.

Papa's lover presses him for a commitment. The reason, a revelation that's she pregnant.

Lola then runs into a bank. That answers the question of why she's come here. The bank guard speaks to her. We're being introduced to all the characters we met in the crowd scene at the beginning of the story, those seemingly chance encounters are revealed to have a dramatic purpose.

Lola runs past a woman in the hall. Images of the woman's life end with a car accident, then a grave stone. We see the significant events of each character as Lola passes them.

Lola bursts in on her father just as he commits to being the father of his lover's expected child.

Lola begs for money to save Manni, her boyfriend of a year. Her father doesn't know who Manni is. This quick revelation sums up Lola's relationship with her father.

The father offers to help, a surprise. But, as he walks Lola down the hall, he explains the nature of his help, that he's leaving Lola's mother - and Lola - for a new life. He ends by telling her he's not really her father, and asks the guard to throw Lola out.

Stunned by these revelations, Lola has to deal with the fact that she has only minutes left to meet Manni.

As Lola again runs along the street, an ambulance driver, distracted by her, almost runs into a pane of glass carried by some workman.

Manni stands outside a store he intends to rob. With a split screen, we hear Lola pleading that he wait for her.

He turns to go into the store, gun drawn, just as Lola, in the background, arrives to stop him. Instead of stopping Manni, Lola then becomes an accomplice to the robbery.

They run from the store, but are cornered by the police, and Lola is shot in the heart. This is a wrenching revelation.

As Lola lays dying, we go into her eyes and through them to her memory of an intimate scene with Manni. Lola presses the obtuse Manni to express his real feelings for her.

The scene ends with Lola saying, "I have a decision to make."

We return to her, dying on the street. "I don't want to leave." As she speaks the words, a bag Manni threw in the air is intercut with the red phone in the air, and finally Lola says, "Stop."

We then return to the beginning of Lola's journey to try and save Manni. The same 20 minutes.

A subtle point, it is Lola who decides the story needs a different outcome. As a character she has come fully to life and demands to shape her own story destiny. The storyteller, Tywyer, slips further from view.

This time, as Lola races to save Manni, events have a different outcome. A bully trips Lola. Will this change the outcome of what happens? Yes. When Lola runs by the lady on the street, the woman now has a different life. She wins the lotto. The boy on the bike dies as a junkie.

This time, because Lola has been slightly delayed, Papa gets the news that his lover is pregnant, but he might not be the father. This additional revelation puts Papa in an entirely different mood when he sees Lola. But, his mood turns to anger when Lola tells his lover where to get off, and Papa hits Lola.

She leaves, crying, but this time, Lola steals the guard's gun. Lola robs the bank. Just before she leaves the bank, she drops the gun. Outside, a wall of heavily armed cops are waiting. Lola's face registers her shock. As she expects to be captured, the cops wave her away from the door. They're waiting for a 'real' bank robber to exit, not a young girl with red hair.

A very funny revelation.

Resuming her race to save Manni, Lola asks the ambulance driver for a ride. He refuses. Distracted, he runs through the glass pane.

This time she arrives in time to stop Manni from robbing the store, but as he walks toward her, he's run over by the ambulance driven by the still-flustered ambulance driver.

Once again Lola's love for Manni has failed to save him.

This time we return through Manni eyes to their intimate night. Manni wants to know what Lola would do if he died, and she responds lightly. Same evening, same characters, entirely different emotional context. Now, Manni accuses Lola of being quite able to move on in life if he died.

The scene ends with Lola saying, "You haven't died yet." Then we return to the dying Manni on the street, who says, "No." Again the 20 minutes restart.

Again, as Lola passes people on the street, quick snapshots show their lives going along another track. This time, the bicycle thief, deflected by Lola, comes across the bum and offers to sell him the bike. Lola, deflected, now lands on the car that would have had the accident, preventing the accident. And the driver recognizes Lola, a new revelation.

This time, it is the man in the car who interrupts Papa's exchange with his lover. He drives off with the father as Lola comes around the corner.

This time, Manni sees the bum with his money. He gives chase, but can't catch the man. The chase, however, leads to Lola's father and his associate having an accident with the same white car with three toughs. Lola's father is seriously hurt.

This time as she runs, Lola asks the universe for helps. When she's almost run down by a truck, she looks up and sees a sign for a Casino. Going inside, she can only afford one gambling chip through the generosity of a cashier. She places a bet on the roulette wheel. She wins. Places the same bet. Someone wants to remove her for not being properly dressed, but she asks for - and is granted - one more game. As the ball rolls, Lola lets out a shattering scream that breaks glasses. She is demanding the universe help her.

She wins.

She has the 100,000 marks.

And two minutes to reach Manni.

Is this plausible in reality? No, but this is a story. Stories are about being true to what they promise an audience, that magical story journey. And the revelations of this story create that journey.

On the street, Manni uses his gun to stop the bum and get his money back.

The audience now knows something Lola doesn't, that Manni has the money.

On the street with the ambulance, Lola gets into the back of the ambulance when it stops to avoid the pane of glass. Inside the ambulance is Lola's dying father. He reaches out his hand to her. She takes his hand and comforts her father. Instead of dying, he comes back to life.

Is this plausible in reality? Again, no. But does it add another layer of depth and humanity to this story? Does it offer a heart-felt revelation about these characters that is satisfying? Yes.

The time is noon. The 20 minutes are up. Lola exits the ambulance. Looks each direction for Manni. Calls his name. No answer.

Then Manni gets out of a car down the street and joins Lola.

He asks, "Did you run here?"

How little he knows. The audience shares this moment with Lola.

Manni asks, "What's in the bag." Lola only smiles.

Fade to black.

This movie is a great example of how revelations about characters can both drive a story forward and how subtle changes in events characters act out can change the fabric of a story. In a weakly told story, a character could change from an old man to a little girl to a soldier, and not much would change. Here, everything changes. The world of _Run Lola Run_ is alive to the creative spirit of its characters. It's a wonderful example of the power of revelations to reveal the potent inner worlds of a story's characters.

Tykwer is also the writer and director of _Winter Keeping_ , a potent, quiet story that also deals with issues of how chance events affect relationships among diverse characters.

###  A Room With A View, Creating Drama by Writing to the Point

_A Room with a View_ is a delightful film that speaks to a central issue of creating drama in a story. This story speaks clearly and to the point about who its characters are and what they want, and what they think they want. And by speaking so clearly and to the point about its characters, the story's characters are naturally put into conflict when who they are cannot stand in the face of the story's plot or the desires of other characters. This quickly and forcefully raises that most compelling question of storytelling, how are the issues these characters bring to this story going to turn out?

This issue of writing to the point is a subtle one, but it goes into the heart of why some writers are able to create vivid stories while others struggle. Because struggling writers often write away from making a clear point about who their characters are - what they want, and what is driving them - their writing becomes a collection of passive details. What characters look like. What the environment of the story looks like. Details about what's happening. Because such scenes are composed of details that fail to suggest how they impact a story's characters and plot events, collectively they fail to create the dramatic impact of a full-bodied story told in a vivid, direct way.

To know what it means to express a dramatic point through a character or event, and to express that point in a vivid, potent way that draws an audience deeper into a story's world, goes to the heart of the art of storytelling. Someone who can't write a vivid, potent scene that forcefully expresses a dramatic purpose, won't be able to turn around and write a novel, play or screenplay that accomplishes that effect through an assemblage of scenes that lack dramatic vigor.

Someone who can't write a potent, vivid scene will struggle to write sentences that are active, well-constructed, and engaging.

It's part of the enjoyment of a story and film like _A Room with a View_ that it is so vividly and potently written to its point about the nature of repression, expression and love. It sets its stage around these issues quickly and cleanly.

This is not a suggestion that writers cast themselves head-long into an essayist-type of writing meant to explain their stories to audiences. It's meant to suggest that one doesn't convince an audience that a character is angry by writing something like "John looked angry." One suggests anger because characters clearly want something, are willing to act to gain what is desired, and the storyteller or other characters block them from getting what they desire. Anger is the natural outcome of such a situation. But setting characters in motion in a way that generates an expression of anger requires either an intuitive or conscious understanding of the craft of storytelling.

The subtle issue here is that when characters are in motion around fulfilling goals or desires, the actions of such characters can also name what a story is about, as _A Room With a View_ demonstrates.

As with many well-told stories, _A Room with a View_ opens with suggestive music. We're then introduced to each character with several suggestive graphic images. Again, the story gets right to the point. Here are the story's characters. Note how the graphic adds interest to the presentation of names.

We then see a sign on door, Pensione Bertolini. What's behind the door?

Answer, window lattes open revealing a nondescript street view. A woman in a hat looks down on three people walking away. This is a quick set up. Who is she? Is this the view mentioned in the title? Another woman appears behind her. Who is she? They appear upset, repressed. This speaks to the purpose of the story.

Dialogue: "This is not at all what we were led to expect." Quick set up, what were they led to expect? Lucy (Helena Bonham Carter), "I thought we were going to see the Arno." The first line of dialogue speaks to the story title. They have been given a room with no view. What will become of this? In a subtle way that only becomes clear later, it comes out how limited is the view of these characters. The very title of the story 'names' an important issue for its characters. The title gets right to the point. The opening image amplifies, sets out the dramatic point of the story.

Lucy and Charlotte talk about how a senora promised different rooms with a view. So the story opens with a sense of looming conflict. Charlotte, "She had no business to do it; no business at all."

These characters are introduced in a state of wanting something done about their lack of a view. Characters in stories are more vivid when they appear to an audience to have a purpose. It's hard to convince an audience that characters who are dramatically inert -- who appear to want nothing, are driven by nothing -- are 'alive' in a story.

Lucy and Charlotte enter a formal dining area. Old women look at the young Lucy. Lucy notices a young man at the table. He has food gathered on his plate in an odd shape. He turns the plate until Lucy - and the audience -- can see the shape forms a question mark.

This raises a question. What will come out of this meeting between the young man and Lucy? We're already being drawn forward to want to know. And, who is this young man? Because this story explores romance between a repressed young woman and an expressive young man, it quickly brings its main characters - Lucy and this young man - together in a suggestive way. And by having Lucy and the young man the only young people at the table, it's clear the storyteller is setting up an expectation in the audience that something will come out of their meeting. A point has been made. Having several young people in this particular dining room would have risked masking the point of this meeting, setting up an expectation that George and Lucy will come together somehow.

An older man - very expressive -- tells a woman not to drink lemonade. This is Mr. Emerson, a man who always speaks his mind in any situation. Charlotte fusses about her room, about the food. The audience is cued that this is a colony of English tourists in Italy.

Lucy, "We have no view."

Mr. Emerson introduces George, his son, the young man with the question mark on his plate. It turns out they have a view of the Arno from their rooms.

Mr. Emerson, "Women like looking at a view; men don't. It's ridiculous these niceties; they go against common sense.... My vision is within, here is where the bird sings." This dialogue is oddly ironic, because Mr. Emerson is so bullish. He tells George to "Go after them" to get Lucy and Charlotte to accept George's room.

Charlotte, chaperone for cousin Lucy, fusses with Lucy, that they should leave the pensione rather than become enmeshed somehow with George and his father. Then Lucy and Charlotte run into another border, a vicar, who turns out to be the new vicar of the church Lucy attends back home. When others mention the issue of the room, Mr. Beebe, the vicar, offers to make the arrangement. Charlotte fears there will be some expectation raised through an exchange of rooms. She fusses that Lucy wants her to turn these men out of these rooms. She's a fuss budget. She fusses a great deal in the movie, and everyone around her comments about it. It makes her character clear and vivid.

Charlotte manages the exchange of rooms with the help of Mr. Beebe. She offers to thank George's father in person, but George lets her know he's in the bath. This puts a funny little twist on the exchange, that George is so open about what his father is doing. This issue of bathing also plays out in other ways in the story. What appears to be a background detail takes on a stronger purpose in the story. But part of developing that stronger purpose is to make a point in passing about bathing here.

Cut to moving into the room. Charlotte, "In my small way I'm a woman of the world..." Yes, in a very, very small way, the audience is set up to think. This is an example of the audience having an understanding about something different than a character. It's part of what makes a story pleasurable for an audience, this sense of having a strong point of view about the action and characters of a story.

Charlotte, continuing,"...and I know where things can lead to." She's emphasizing the set up here for the audience about George and Lucy. By having Charlotte fuss about it, the point is reinforced for the audience.

In the room being vacated by George, there's another large question mark left on the back of a framed portrait. Again the concrete suggestion of a question here to be answered. Very, very to the point. In every moment in this film the storytellers are writing to the point they want to make, not away from it; raising questions, providing answers, answers that raise new questions that also arise from situations that speak to the conflict between repression and expression.

George wordlessly comes through and turns around the frame so we now see the portrait, not the question mark. Great work.

Lucy smiles. This moves Charlotte to a heightened state of fussiness. She - and the audience - see the sense of something developing between Lucy and George. It's a subtle process, but it's clearly been set into motion. The storytellers write to make that point.

Cut to Lucy in a bed with a shaft of sunlight playing across her body. She opens her window to bells ringing. With Lucy we see her new view courtesy of George and his father. This foreshadows events in the story. It's the first, subtle step in Lucy's eventual transformation.

Charlotte enters and tells Lucy to dress or "the better part of the day will be gone." Irony here, because Lucy was experiencing a wonderful moment in her day all without Charlotte. The point is quickly, neatly made. The audience is being led here to want Lucy to be with George and away from Charlotte.

Cut to Lucy practicing on the piano. She plays somber, passionate music.

Two old ladies enter the building and climb a staircase and listen to the music.

George and his father put flowers in the old lady's rooms - fulfilling something suggested by Mr. Emerson at the earlier dinner about the older women wearing flowers in their hair. The old women are both delighted and flustered at this attention.

Back to Lucy playing passionate music. Question, is she as passionate as the music she plays? Even this detail speaks to the point of the story, suggests something about Lucy's character. It's in the story because it speaks to a point.

Mr. Beebe claps. He's alone with Lucy, although that wasn't clear as Lucy played. It gives the scene a dramatic shape, a small revelation.

Mr. Beebe, "May I say something daring?" This suggests he would like to be closer to Lucy.

Lucy Honeychurch - even her names suggests what kind of person she is -- parries his thrust, that was he writing a novel as well? (One of the English women at the pensione is an author.) He counters that if he were, Lucy would be his heroine. This raises a question: what will come out of this interest of Mr. Beebe in Lucy? It's a small issue, but every scene in this story plays out across the different levels of the needs in play for each character. If a character has no need in a scene, no purpose, it confuses the audience to be told about them. They only clutter the scene, mute its real sense of purpose.

Lucy says she's going out, but not far when Mr. Beebe protests. Lucy cannot escape people who want to restrain her choices.

Lucy exits and an elderly lady comes on the scene with flowers in her hair. Mr. Beebe comments on the flowers in her hair in a tone that suggests mild rebuke. The audience is being shown here the deep contrast between George, Lucy, George's father, Charlotte, and Mr. Beebe. It's quick, neat work in the context of a story idea, will Lucy be able to create her own room with a view, within herself, with George?

A title card comes up to tell us where Lucy is sightseeing. She is the innocent abroad.

Lucy visits a monument to Dante. A man approaches speaking Italian. He is clearly a tourist guide who wants her to join a group, but she finds him unsettling.

George's father comes onto the scene and speaks in his usual blustery, gruff manner.

An English priest who caters to English tourists comments on how the church at San Croce was built by 'faith.' George's father comments that that translates into the workers not being paid. The priest rushes up to Mr. Emerson and tells him the church is too small for two parties, and he departs with his charges.

Mr. Emerson speaks to Lucy. "My poor boy has brains, but he's very muddled." He continues, "I don't require you to fall in love with my boy... but please help stop him from brooding."

He's speaking quite directly to what the audience already suspects is up. An example again of building up the drama of a story by speaking directly about the issues in play, not away from them. Lucy is taken back by Mr. Emerson's directness.

Mr. Emerson, "Then make my son realize that at the side of the everlasting Why, there's a yes, and a Yes, and a YES."

Lucy, "Does your son have a particular hobby?" She's still trapped in convention, which sets up the question, will she be able to break out of it? She clearly can't even comprehend what Mr. Emerson is talking about.

Lucy talks about her hobbies, as if that's the point of the conversation.

Mr. Emerson, "Poor girl." He's speaking to the point that Lucy doesn't even understand what he's talking about. This spells out for the audience the length of any journey for her to become conscious of her life.

Dialogue in a well-told story serves to set out the point of the story in a way that shows where characters are in terms of acting out the story. This helps the audience to track how far the story has advanced. Dialogue not written to some purpose, however elusive, can leave an audience feeling adrift, wondering about the purpose of scenes.

Another English lady, the novelist, tells Charlotte that she and Lucy are on an adventure. She warns Charlotte that Lucy is attracted to sensation, to be on guard.

Again, the spelling out of the issue. Knowing this, Charlotte looms as a stronger force to potentially block Lucy's transformation.

As Lucy walks across a square, cut to images of passionate statues, two men walking along with their arms around each other, a sudden, violent fight. Lucy is being subjected here to violent emotions. The question, how will she react?

A bloodied man falls at Lucy's feet, dies. Lucy swoons... just in time for George to catch her.

That's the main point of this scene, to bring Lucy and George together, and to bring this about by exposing Lucy to intense feelings. If this violent scene hadn't taken place, there wouldn't have been the thrust that ends with Lucy in George's arms. The scene both exposes Lucy to violent emotions while the outcome of her reaction furthers both the story and its plot.

The bloodied man is taken to a fountain by a crowd. Close by, George sits with Lucy.

"How are you now?" he asks. She nods silently, then says, "Absolutely well." She speaks like an automaton. She's clearly repressing her feelings, the point of this exchange of dialogue, so it isn't hidden.

George says, "Let's go home." Lucy asks him to find her dropped photos. When he goes to look for them, she tries to sneak off, but she goes down a dead-end street. This is a sly commentary about Lucy's life heading toward a dead end. George catches her. This need for George to confront her makes this moment more intense, dramatic. She's clearly trying to get away from George and these violent emotions.

The man at the fountain is carried off. George looks on. People wearing hoods lead a funeral procession.

The Italians clearly feel everything moment to moment, expressively, deeply.

Lucy asks George to not mention what's happened to anyone. Lucy wants to repress the truth.

George suddenly throws away her photographs. Why? He tells her they were covered with blood, and he didn't want to tell her.

George, "Something tremendous has happened." It's clear he's falling in love, but Lucy wants to return to her old life.

We see the photos going from calm water to rushing water, suggestive of the rushing emotions here of the characters, both George and Lucy.

Cut to the group of English tourists in carriages driving out to see a 'view' in the countryside, arranged for their benefit.

The English priest asks Lucy her purpose in traveling. While the priest points out views, the driver behind the priest kisses his girlfriend. The priest finally sees what is going on and excitedly forbids it and orders the girl off the carriage.

No passion allowed here.

Cut to group moving up a stony path. George waits for Lucy. She walks past him. She's clearly determined to not let George know she's thinking about him.

Cut to George climbing a small tree, which is a comical sight, and calling for Beauty. His father and two others comment casually in the foreground. It adds to the humorous effect of the scene. Then George falls out the tree while his father comments, "He's calling on the eternal Yes." Very funny. Note how it contrasts with the previous, more violent scene. The audience here is not rushed pell-mell from one highly-charged scene to another. They are allowed by the varied pace of the story to relax, to take things in, to ponder, to feel, to reflect. This helps keep the audience fully engaged in the world of the story.

This scene also acts just how expressive George is. Unlike his father, George reveals himself in stages. This makes his character interesting, scene by scene, as events reveal new facets of George's character.

Now cut to the women - Lucy, Charlotte, and the lady novelist - not reacting to George. The novelist offers them a comfortable seat on the ground, but she only has two ground covers. Charlotte says she doesn't need one, but in a way that shows her manipulating the situation to get one. Charlotte acts out a kind of repression that does not say what it wants, but still gets the point across.

Lucy decides to go off and find Mr. Beebe. Charlotte questions the lady novelist about another woman who married an Italian man ten years her junior. Excitement clearly sounds in Charlotte's voice.

Looking for Mr. Beebe, Lucy speaks to the handsome carriage driver. He leads her away to find Mr. Beebe. The guide clearly admires Lucy's sweet form in her white, pure dress. She struggles to walk down through a field of high grass toward what... It's George, not Mr. Beebe. George sees her and goes to her. He immediately kisses her. Lucy doesn't respond, then starts to respond, but suddenly Charlotte calls, "Lucy," and Lucy pulls away with a dazed look on her face.

This story is always advancing, scene by scene. We're shown George is attracted to Lucy, then he acts on his feelings. He doesn't stay at just being attracted to her. By acting on his feelings, the story advances into uncharted terrain. What will Lucy do? What will Charlotte do? The audience is being drawn forward to want answers to these questions.

Cut to a view of the city from a distance.

Lucy is taken away in a carriage while George looks on. George elects to run/walk back to the city. He offers his father his hat, which his father thinks is his own, and tries to put on over his own hat in a comic moment.

As thunder rumbles, George runs down a hill, leaping over stone walls. The thunder increases. A heavy rain falls. The others are sheltered while George runs in the rain. He's living this moment fully. George is swept up in the storm of his emotions. The question, is Lucy? What will she do when they meet again?

Cut to Charlotte combing out Lucy's wet hair. She wants to know how Lucy will deal with George. Charlotte expects George to brag about kissing Lucy, that the situation must be handled. Charlotte, "What would have happened if I had not appeared?"

She voicing a question the audience would ask as well.

Charlotte talks of taking the morning train, of having failed in her duty to Lucy's mother to protect Lucy.

Lucy, "Why need mother hear of it?"

This suggests that Lucy is waking up. That she realizes she doesn't have to tell her mother everything, that she can have her own life.

Lucy reassures Charlotte that she will never speak of what happened to anyone. Charlotte also agrees to be silent about the kiss.

This exchange about secrecy plays out in the story in an odd, pleasurable twist.

Charlotte informs the woman of the hotel that they are leaving.

The important point here is that the events of the story are impacting its characters. George kisses Lucy, a clear advance on their relationship. But it raises a new question. What now? And what will happen? When a story's events fail to impact its characters, the audience is left to feel uninvolved. If a story's events don't impact its characters, why should they impact its audience?

Cut to George ringing the bell at the door of the pensione. He's still clearly feeling alive, not moody as he appeared when first introduced. He wants to see Lucy, but Charlotte intercepts him. She tells him she would speak to him in the drawing room.

We then cut immediately to a title card that says, "Home."

This card tells us the upshot of the conversation with George, so that conversation is not acted out. To act it out at this point would be to delay the advance of the story. This story moves forward with sure confidence.

We cut to a bucolic country home.

A young man and girl talk on the lawn. It is Lucy. The utterly serious young man takes her hand.

A woman watches from a window, and talks about her expectation of this young man asking for Lucy's hand. A young man in the house comments the young man on the lawn asked him his permission to marry Lucy, and he turned him down. It's clear this is Lucy's brother, the older woman her mother.

Question, what's going to happen? Will Lucy turn him down? By staging the scene this way, the audience is set up to feel drama over the answer to the question, while Lucy's family is introduced during this moment of dramatic tension.

Note that Lucy's brother has a head of hair that sticks out wildly. This makes a visual point about his character. He's expressive. Like every other character in the story, his characters arises from the deeper issue examined in the story, expression versus repression. This is what helps creates the sense of these characters ringing 'true' in this story.

The young man enters and speaks in Italian. He is prudish, prim and full of himself. This naturally raises a question, can anything deflate this pompous ass?

Mr. Cecil Vyes says that Lucy has accepted him. This seems odd and incongruous. What will become of George? Lucy's feelings? Did that have an impact on her decision to accept this young man?

Cecil as a character is a full contrast to George. It's part of the design of the story that each character is so clearly defined, and by how they are defined, they stand in contrast to each other, and are naturally in conflict with each other.

Cecil tells Mr. Beebe he and Lucy are to marry, which surprises Mr. Beebe, who has just mentioned Lucy's potential for life. It's clear he has his own feelings for Lucy.

We now have a card, Officially Engaged. Again, the story advances quickly. It doesn't bog down in details, how people react to the news of the engagement, etc.

A group of older people and Lucy speak. A character even more pompous and useless than Cecil makes several witty, droll remarks. He clearly outshines Cecil in this department, which clearly upsets Cecil.

Lucy is clearly uncomfortable and asks her mother to go for a walk.

Lucy and future husband go for a walk. They come across Mr. Beebe. With every utterance, Cecil proves himself an ass. Even Lucy comments.

Lucy and Cecil pass a Villa for lease. The audience is being set up to anticipate George to be in residence soon.

Lucy and Cecil sit by a pond where Lucy once bathed until she was found out. This suggests that when younger, Lucy was more expressive.

Cecil, "I want to ask you something I have never asked before." Question gives dramatic shape to this moment. He asks for a kiss.

Lucy, "I can't run at you, you know."

They kiss, awkwardly, comically. It's a commentary on her kiss with George, and also on the life she would have with Cecil. The awkwardness of the kiss, then, is aimed directly at the audience.

Lucy now has a flashback to George and their kiss in the field. The audience is being shown whose kissed had the largest impact on Lucy.

Lucy sends out a letter about the Villa for rent to the two elderly women she met in Italy.

Cut to Lucy playing passionate music on the piano Others now listen. Cecil smiles as if proud of his possession. This creates an odd contrast for the audience, because how could the passionate Lucy be with such a passionless man as Cecil? So even a detail like the music Lucy plays has significance in this story. All well-told stories use their details in the service of each story.

Lucy's playing impresses Cecil's mother. He talks about raising their children like Lucy, sending them to Italy to learn subtlety. This scene again suggests to the audience the great depth of Cecil's banality. It's the point of the scene, that the audience is set up to have a laugh at his expense, to share in the moment of having a sense of who Cecil is that is radically different than his own self-assessment.

Cut to Lucy and Cecil together. This time she takes off his glasses so they can actually kiss without drama or comedy.

Lucy, Mr. Beebe's niece and Lucy's brother play with glee on the lawn. It turns out the two elderly lady are being replaced as tenets in the villa by the Emersons, who met Cecil in London.

Lucy leaves in a huff.

She asks Cecil about bringing in the Emersons. It turns out Cecil also met them and told them about the cottage to get back at the other country gentleman who outdid Cecil at the engagement party. This adds another level to this plot twist, that Cecil brings in the Emersons.

Cut to the meeting of Cecil and George and his father in London. This is clearly a coincidence, but because the underlying dynamics of the story have set the story into motion and sustain that motion, the audience is inclined to accept this improbable event. Since the event brings about a desirable situation - George drawing nearer to Lucy - the audience is inclined to go along with the contrivance. Writers struggle when they offer their audience no compelling reason to accept plot events as a natural unfolding of the story. In weak stories, even the most probable plot events can generate nit-picking, because they don't ring 'true' to the audience.

Cut to Cecil lecturing Lucy about democracy. She has an outburst about his being disloyal in his actions in bringing in the Emersons to rent the villa, when Lucy wanted it offered to the two elderly ladies. Cecil is clearly unsure how to respond.

This outburst by Lucy suggests the passions building up in her. The impact of George being near shows in her actions.

Mr. Beebe and Fred, Lucy's brother, go to pay the Emersons a visit. Mr. Beebe comments on Emerson's, which include The Way of All Flesh, a book about a vicar. Mr. Beebe has never heard of it, a small joke for those familiar with the novel.

George goes off with Mr. Beebe and Fred. George talks about his finding this villa near Lucy to be fate. Mr. Beebe explains that it's all a series of coincidences starting with the meeting of the principles in Italy. George responds that Mr. Beebe can name what's happening 'Italy,' but George prefers to call it 'fate.' This speaks to this issue of the story, about the question of soul mates - George and Lucy - finding each other in spite of any obstacles. By having characters speak about these issues in a natural, unforced way, the audience hears the dramatic purpose of the story. Some writers expend so much energy to never have characters refer to the dramatic issues of a story, the audience can be left adrift. This isn't a call for being obvious, just that either extreme can lead to weak writing, particularly when a writer has no sense of what constitutes either extreme.

Note how Cecil naturally serves as an obstacle to George and Lucy being together, and how his proposal of marriage \- and its acceptance - heightens the dramatic impact of the story's plot. With George on the scene, the action of the story becomes more intense.

Fred asks George and Mr. Beebe if they'd like to share a bathe. George agrees. The men travel to the pond. George dives naked into the pond, and Fred invites Mr. Beebe in. He strips and joins the young men. The three men play. It is a passionate, feeling time for the three men. They are open about who they are, what they are. All is feeling and expression, without repression.

George playfully chases Fred. All three men play and chase each other.

They are living this moment fully. Through them, the audience also lives this moment fully.

Lucy, her mother, and Cecil come along. This sets up a delicious expectation of what will happen when their paths cross for the audience.

Fred and George, naked, appear on the path shared by the others.

Fred covers himself, but George shouts and jumps up and down. He will not repress himself for these others.

Lucy and her mother then come across Fred again. Fred is irrepressible here, although, unlike George, he uses a branch for modesty.

Lucy and her mother laugh. Cecil is clearly discomfited. This scene of open sensuality and nudity plays strongly against the reserved, well-covered, prudish characters of other scenes.

Cut to a scene where marriage plans are made. Lucy asks that Charlotte not be invited. Cecil chimes in. It's clear he doesn't like Charlotte. This is subtle, but the relationships of these characters shift and change as the story advances. By making visible and concrete the changes in relationships here, the story's audience is able to track the advance of the story.

Fred plays the piano, a comic song. His hair is wild. His music drives out Cecil. Cecil clearly cannot abide this display of a lack of culture. Lucy goes to him.

Lucy's mother and Fred see Lucy talking to Cecil outside. Set up, what are they talking about?

Cut to Lucy explaining to her mother that Cecil wasn't being uncivil when he sneered about Freddy's music. The pressure builds on Lucy as it becomes clearer that Cecil disdains her mother and brother. Then Freddy talks about inviting George in for tennis. If Cecil's being a twit, he'll bring around George. Action/reaction. Thrust/counter- thrust. The audience is set up here to want George to make an appearance based on how Cecil has responded to Lucy's family.

Freddy tries to energetically dance with Lucy, until their mother takes Lucy away.

Lucy talks to her mother, pouting, that everything seems to be going oddly. Lucy's mother gets a commitment from Lucy that Charlotte will be invited to the wedding. Lucy is clearly in a state of flux.

Charlotte arrives and she bumps into George at the train station. She is clearly taken back, not expecting to see George.

Cut to Charlotte on the back of a carriage. George rides his bike in funny patterns behind the carriage. George simply won't be conventional in any way.

Cut to Charlotte breathlessly telling Lucy about George. Even Charlotte is coming to life here, her feelings coming out.

Cut to the family watching Charlotte trying to get change to pay the driver who brought her to the house. In the end, Cecil takes some of the money, which suggests he might be a poor prig, that he's not what he's trying to appear to be.

Lucy finally gets the necessary change for Charlotte, who, as soon as they are alone, asks if anyone knows about George and the kiss. Lucy says that George doesn't seem to really care for her. This suggests Lucy is thinking about George.

Cut to Lucy outside her house. A book is on the ground. Lucy's mother asks her to pick it up. Question, what book is this?

Lucy goes off with her mother and Charlotte in a carriage. Cecil comes out to say good-bye, and Lucy glares at him. It increases the drama around the question, what was in this book?

We then hear Cecil reading from a book of poems while Freddy and George play tennis.

Cecil, George and Lucy sit together on the lawn. It turns out that Cecil is reading a novel written by the women novelist Lucy met on the trip to Italy. Cecil speaks about an absurd view in the book. Lucy asks George what he thinks of their view? He counters that one only has a view of the sky over one's head.

Lucy and George spar.

Cecil reads a passionate passage about two young lovers kissing in a field in Italy, while Lucy and George look at each other with longing. Hearing about the kiss in the book, Lucy breaks it off and suggests they go in for tea. She hurries off, with George right behind her. As soon as they are out of sight, George kisses her. Again she starts to respond, then breaks off before Cecil can see them.

Lucy corners Charlotte about the book Cecil was reading. Lucy insists that the scene Cecil read was based on George kissing Lucy in Italy. It means that Charlotte told the book's author about what happened in spite of her swearing to tell no one the story.

This is a great plot twist that could not have been foreseen, but it works with great power. Lucy promised not to speak about the kiss, but she did not expect to need to ask Charlotte not to speak about it. Lucy is getting lessons in life here.

The story is building to a climax.

Lucy asks Charlotte to 'go and call him.' Cecil? No, George.

Lucy steels herself. George enters. She tells him to leave and never come back.

George speaks passionately. "I would have held back if your Cecil was a different kind of man." He's upset that Cecil doesn't want Lucy to be real, in the way that he loves Lucy.

Outside, Cecil behaves stupidly, emphasizing George's point for both Lucy and the audience.

George, "Nothing must hinder us ever again."

He speaks of true love here.

Lucy is still not conscious. She still wants George to leave. Now it's Charlotte who doesn't want George to leave, but he does. Charlotte, "I shall never forgive myself." Lucy, "You always say that, Charlotte, but you always do forgive yourself."

Wonderful dialogue.

We're seeing here that Charlotte isn't quite what she has presented herself to be. This gives her character another level.

Lucy tells Freddy that George has left. Freddy asks Cecil to play tennis, but he passes on the request in his usual, priggish way.

Cut to graphic, "Lying to Cecil."

This gets us right to the point again. This story is a demonstration of writing to the point of a scene, not away from it. Putting characters into conflict, not away from it.

Cecil, "Because I wouldn't play tennis with Freddy?" It's clear that Lucy is breaking something off. Lucy, "We're too different." They weren't as the story began, however.

Cecil, "But I love you. And I did think you loved me."

Lucy tries to explain her feelings, using George's language. She walks away. Cecil follows her. What will he do or say? He asks her reasons for not marrying him? "You wrap yourself up in art, and books and music and you want to wrap me up. That's why I want to break off my engagement."

This is a wonderful moment, with Lucy using the reasons George gave her to explain to Cecil why she can't marry him. The audience has been set up to fully enjoy this moment.

Lucy keeps insisting that she isn't interested in someone else, even though Cecil never suggests that.

It's clever, engaging dialogue.

Cecil, "I must actually thank you for what you've done... for showing me what I really am. I admire your courage. Will you shake hands?"

This is an interesting transformation. In most stories, a character like Cecil hits one note only. Here, he's allowed to become something else, to react to what is happening in a new way. It adds another level to the story, to any story when the events of the story clearly have some transforming impact on its characters.

Cecil sits on the stairs and puts on his shoes. All his foppish mannerisms are gone.

One of the elderly ladies writes about going to a warmer climate again. This contrasts to the way this story has been heating up the local cold climes.

Mr. Beebe comes across Freddy and Cecil. He has a letter from the elderly ladies about a plan to travel to Greece.

Mr. Beebe borrows some matches. Fred runs after him to get them back, and tells him about Lucy breaking off the engagement with Cecil. This clearly excites Mr. Beebe.

We get another title card about Lucy telling more lies.

Mr. Beebe speaks to Lucy. He tells her she's doing the right thing.

Lucy suggests she would like to go to Athens with the two elderly ladies. She asks Charlotte's help to get away.

Lucy doesn't want George to get any ideas if she stays with him around.

This heightens the drama around the question, will she and George get together?

Lucy plays a song at the piano, but doesn't put much feeling in the words.

Charlotte goes out into a blustery wind which is akin to the emotions of the characters. She lets Lucy's mother know about Lucy's travel plans. We don't get an outcome, just that the mother is surprised.

Cut to George and his father, apparently getting ready to leave the villa. George's father is disconsolate.

George goes off in the rain on his bike.

Lucy and her mother meet with the two elderly ladies planning the trip.

Lucy's mother clearly ends the meeting early.

The two old ladies talk about Lucy after she's left, that she didn't look like a bride to be. It's both comic and observant. One lady finally decides Lucy lacked radiance. Like Cecil's transformation, allowing these two ladies to be 'real' in their observations adds depth to the story.

Charlotte stops by the villa and asks to wait there. She finds out from Mr. Emerson that he never knew what happened in Italy. That George was the only one involved with the kiss to not tell others. She finds out that George does love Lucy. Charlotte tries to excuse herself, but Mr. Emerson asks her to stay. She reveals that Lucy has broken off her marriage plans.

Mr. Emerson becomes quite animated and happy at this news.

Cut to Lucy and her mother. Lucy reveals she'll be coming into some money in a year. Her mother accuses Lucy of being like Charlotte, which upsets Lucy, but it also tracks that she is changing.

Lucy asks for the top of the carriage to be let down. It affords a view of the villa being vacated, which is news to Lucy.

Lucy becomes lost in thought.

Cut to Lucy appearing at the Emerson's. George's father says "it's all his fault," because he told George to love openly.

Charlotte leaves the villa for the carriage, but now Lucy isn't with her.

Lucy tries to convince Mr. Emerson not to leave, that she is leaving. He talks about how much George loves her. He tells her that she thinks she's going to Greece because she loves George.

Lucy breaks down crying.

She feels it's impossible to not go on the trip.

Mr. Emerson, "The only thing impossible is to love and part."

Mr. Emerson is an interesting character, because at this point in the script he pulls back from seeming merely eccentric, just as Cecil has grown.

Lucy feels she has to go because the others have 'trusted' her.

Mr. Emerson, "Why should they? When you deceived everyone, including yourself."

Lucy is not used to this kind of truth. The audience has been prepared from the first meeting with Mr. Emerson that he would speak the truth. It's natural here, as well as forceful.

She runs out of the villa and tries to catch up to the departing carriage and her mother and Charlotte.

They see Lucy. She smiles now.

Great set up. What will happen?

We cut to Charlotte in bed reading a letter. The voice over is Lucy, talking about traveling to Florence and staying in the same pensione that opens the story, where Lucy sees a mother and young girl like herself, upset that they doesn't have a room with a view. George responds, "We have a view." He smiles and takes the hand of the smiling Lucy.

Cut to George and Lucy kissing while a view out the window goes unviewed. Her hair is down. She finally responds to his kisses with open passion as bells ring.

Lucy now has both a room with a view and a life that has been opened up to a new vista she was unaware of when the story opened. Again, in every way and every scene, this story speaks directly to its dramatic purpose. Can Lucy's life be opened up? Can she experience real passion? The story takes its audience on a dramatic journey to the answer to those questions.

This story creates drama by setting into motion clearly defined characters, defined in ways that puts them into conflict, that impact other characters. As characters collide, they reveal who they are in a way that advances, propels the story.

The storytellers also begin this story in a direct, clear way. It opens with Charlotte and Lucy in a room with no view, but in a way that suggests their view of life is repressed. By beginning with a question, will they get a room with a view?, the story begins in an active voice. The story, about repression and expression in conflict, is in view in this scene in a subtle, playful way. The plot, about how and whether Lucy will, first, get a room with a view, then a deeper, inner view of life, goes into motion in this scene as well.

A joyful, intelligent story to view.

# Conclusion

There is no one way, right way, only way to learn screenwriting or the art and craft of storytelling. I've known successful screenwriters who watched 2-3 movies a day until they assimilated an understanding of how to tell a story as a movie.

Others would benefit from a more conscious approach, but either way, the goal is the same, to write a good script. And that can be most difficult to do.

For more current movie reviews, visit my website at A Story is a Promise, http://www.storyispromise.com

I am the author of A Story is a Promise & The Spirit of Storytelling, a writing workbook available on Smashwords.
