A case in point is Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tennenbaums (2001). Anderson’s film has such a complex and elaborate backstory, that voiceover narration is really the only way to deliver all the necessary information the audience needs to know about the characters within a reasonable period of time. The quick pacing, amusing short scenes, juxtaposition of dialogue with voice over, and inventive use of titles and props makes the voiceover portion of the 1st act as engaging and entertaining as any sequence of real scenes within the film. A particularly interesting device was to make many of the characters in the film authors of books. By showing a quick shot of the book a character wrote, the audience gets a very real sense of the character’s identity and personality, summarized neatly in a book title and dust jacket.
HIDDEN BACKSTORIES
Backstory imparts crucial aspects of the character’s identity and it also provides essential elements of conflict in the plot. How you choose to deliver the backstory within your film will, in many ways, determine the structure of the entire script. Whether you choose to deliver all of the backstory in the 1st act, or weave it throughout the course of the story, the relationship between a character’s backstory and identity development should always be closely linked. Often times, it is useful to hold back a crucial nugget of backstory, so that the unveiling of this juicy bit of information coincides with a development in the plot or a development within the character himself. In One Hour Photo (2002), we follow uneasily as Sy (Robin Williams) becomes more and more obsessed with the photographs of a family to whom he has become very inappropriately attached. We do not learn until the very end of the film that Sy himself was abused as a child, and that this abuse was linked with photography. The choice to keep this crucial bit of backstory hidden until the very end increases the general creepiness of Sy’s character. The audience is kept in the dark throughout the film about Sy’s motivation and the root of his depravity.
PERSONAL DISCLOSURE OF BACKSTORY
The revealing of backstory can be particularly effective on an emotional level when the character himself discloses the personal information. Though most of the backstory in The Royal Tennenhaums is delivered through voice over in the long, opening sequence, we do not learn about Royal’s (Gene Hackman) special relationship with his loyal sidekick (Kumar Pallana) until he tells the story of their meeting to his grandsons. The heart of the film revolves around Royal’s desire to win back his family, so when he shares a moment of intimacy and disclosure with his grandsons, we see Royal becoming a central figure in their young lives.
A quiet, sincere moment of disclosure and self-reflection can be extremely powerful. While the disclosing character creates intimacy with the person he is speaking to, he also creates an intimate emotional bond with the audience, as well. Just as an actor’s soliloquy in a Shakespearean play offers the audience direct insight into the thoughts and feelings of the character onstage, the film actor’s moment of disclosure allows the audience to enter the mind and motivations of the character on screen. The most memorable scene in Your Friends & Neighbors (1998) occurs when a mean-spirited, ultra-macho womanizer (Jason Patric) discloses to his two buddies that the best sex he ever had was when he and his high school buddies raped a male classmate. Suddenly, the audience gains insight to this character. Where as before the audience was appalled by his savage cruelty to women, the audience is now enthralled with the conflicted sexuality within this character’s behaviors and backstory.
IDENTITY DIFFUSION
Some films, especially biographic subjects, are all about backstory. Every single scene in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X (1992) deals directly with Malcolm’s (Denzel Washington) developing identity and its relation to his backstory. For these films, action truly is character, as every bit of plot and story is purposefully designed to add another dimension to the portrait of the character whose story the film is telling. But even non-biographic films can be character driven to the point where the plot is secondary to character development.
Though he had major parts in only three feature films, James Dean epitomized the adolescent character struggling through an identity crisis. Dean’s character in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) is a troubled teen whose main struggle is to somehow understand himself. The film is relatively “plot light,” focusing mainly on the characters and their sense of identity diffusion – the search for a personal and meaningful sense of self.
MORATORIUM AND FORECLOSURE
When structuring your character’s identity crisis, keep in mind the element of “moratorium” – the stage of active searching that precedes identity achievement. Malcolm X is the story of one man’s moratorium, a life-long search for a meaningful sense of personal identity, which, in turn, inspired a new sense of identity for an entire nation of African Americans. Another important element in Erikson’s model is “foreclosure” – the danger of ending the search too early, and settling on an identity supplied by others rather than a personally meaningful identity achieved through self-discovery.
At one point in Malcolm X, Malcolm submits himself completely to the Nation of Islam. Malcolm identifies himself to the core with the Nation’s leader, Elijah Muhammad. He aligns himself with the tenets of his leader and his religion, even when the tenets of these role models conflict directly with his own sense of morality. The conflict that ensues is another identity crisis, in which Malcolm must realize that the identity he adopted from Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam is a foreclosed identity – an identity originating from without rather than from within. In order to achieve a true sense of identity, Malcolm must dig within his own soul and find a religion and philosophy that is personally meaningful to him as an individual, rather than as a faceless follower of a false father figure. Malcolm’s search for a personal sense of identity is represented by his spiritual pilgrimage to Mecca.
REBELLION
The juvenile delinquents in Rebel Without a Cause and other films like it, such as The Wild One (1953) with Marlon Brando, are conspicuously devoid of any strong role models in their lives. Erikson believed that rebellion is common among teenagers because they have reached a stage of life in which they are ready to reject the role models they identified with as children. The parents and authority figures whom the individual looked up to as a child now seem rigid, hypocritical, old fashioned, restrictive, and hopelessly square in the hyper-critical eyes of the teenager. The intense conflict of identity diffusion arises from the fact that these teenagers have unilaterally rejected all of the adult role models in their lives, while not yet accepting new role models to fill that void. Hence, the troubled teen is lost. He has no true sense of identity, and no one to show him the way. This internal conflict, which Erikson believed is ubiquitous in teenagers, is typically displayed through external conflict between adolescents and adults in teen movies.
Even in teen movies that do not deal directly with identity issues, there are typically no competent adult figures to serve as role models for the confused teens. In teen movies such as Animal House (1978), American Pie, and Porky’s, all of the adults are either laughable, moronic characters, or blatantly anti-adolescent figures who are openly hostile to the teen heroes. The message in these movies is that adults are either hopelessly out of touch, or they are the mortal enemy of teens everywhere. In either case, adults cannot serve as proper role models. The teens themselves must somehow figure out how to solve their own problems – and in doing so – they resolve their own identity crises.
FINDING ONE’S SELF
The problem of identity is an inherently personal problem. Though your hero could, and often should, receive help and guidance from friends and mentors, the final resolution of the crisis must always be self-driven. The character must discover himself. His identity should not be handed to him on a plate by someone else. The first Star Wars trilogy presents a very complete example of identity development. At each stage of his journey, Luke Skywalker comes into contact with another element of his identity, as he learns more and more about his complica
ted backstory and the true identity of his father. Though he has two wise mentors (Obi Wan and Yoda), and several loyal allies (Han Solo, Princess Leia, etc.), Luke always tackles each milestone of his identity development on his own.
There is a striking scene in The Empire Strikes Back (1980) in which Luke enters a dark cave, encounters a vision of Darth Vader, and then beheads him, only to see his own face within Vader’s mask. The search for identity is a dark, confusing path that is often scary and disturbing. Though Yoda easily could have told Luke about his true identity, the wise Jedi master sent Luke alone into the dark cave of his own psyche – knowing that true self-knowledge must come from within. Like Yoda, you must also send your hero into the dark cave alone. Don’t be afraid to let your hero suffer the pain, anguish, and confusion of identity crisis. The harder your hero struggles, the more your viewers will identify with his conflict, and the more they will root for him to succeed in the end.
INTIMACY VERSUS ISOLATION
Erikson’s sixth stage of identity crisis deals specifically with the challenge of love. Romantic intimacy in life and on film exists on two levels. The physical level, sex, was traditionally only alluded to on screen. Now, the sex scene has become almost a mandatory fixture of any romantic film. Sex scenes are relatively easy to write. As a primal drive, sex requires little-to-no motivation. It is extremely visual and it easily captures and holds the attention of viewers, as it keys into the basic voyeuristic appeal of motion pictures. Emotional intimacy, on the other hand, is a bit harder to achieve on film. One thing to remember when trying to build emotional intimacy between characters is that the Latin root of the word intimacy in “intimare” – which means, “to let the innermost be known.” Personal disclosure is the key to creating intimacy between romantic characters.
TRUST AND INTIMACY
In many ways, the identity crisis of intimacy versus isolation recapitulates the primary identity crisis of trust versus mistrust. On a Freudian level, the feelings first experienced in the psychosexual relationship between baby and mother are later projected onto the psychosexual relationship between lovers. According to Freud, the feelings are essentially the same, only the object of love is changed. And, on an Eriksonian level, the basis of trust – the bedrock of the relationship between baby and mother – is similarly the bedrock of the relationship between adult lovers. A couple in a love relationship must trust each other before they are willing “to let the innermost be known.” Personal disclosure, revealing one’s deepest feelings and secrets, places a person in a situation of extreme emotional vulnerability, a situation that no one would willingly enter unless he or she had complete trust in the other person. Without trust, there can be no intimacy.
THE GAME OF LOVE
In romance movies, the two would-be lovers play the game of courtship in which they approach and disengage like birds during mating season. Each approach offers a bit of either physical or emotional intimacy. In It Happened One Night (1934), the blockbuster mega-hit which became the veritable blueprint for romantic comedies, each scene is another play in the game. Tiny little gestures: Peter (Clark Gable) picking a straw out of Ellie’s (Claudette Colbert) teeth, a discussion about donut dunking over breakfast, Ellie catching an eyeful of Peter with his shirt off, Peter catching an eyeful of Ellie’s leg as they hitchhike – all take on monumental significance as the audience observes the two stars patiently, waiting for the moment when they will both give into their mutual attraction and growing love. While other movies tend to have big scenes full of action or plot, romantic comedies are filled with small scenes, in which the couple spend most of their time exchanging gibes, flirting, and chatting. In essence, these characters are getting to know each other. They are building intimacy and establishing trust, so that when love finally does develop, it feels ripened and real.
MARS AND VENUS
Romantic comedies such as It Happened One Night often feature an antagonistic couple paired together by fate. Comedy, whether romantic or otherwise, arises from conflict. The “comic dyad” is a pairing of opposites that results in humorous conflict. Nature itself supplies the most basic comic dyad through the pairing of opposite sexes. Masculine and feminine, macho and sensitive, Mars and Venus… there are limitless ways in which basic conflicts between men and women can be scripted into comedic shtick that could fill most of the scenes of a 100-minute romantic comedy. But while the small scenes can and often do take up the majority of the film, you still need a basic plot structure with real conflict. So, while Peter and Ellie discuss the finer points of donut dunking, hitchhiking, and carrot eating, these scenes are intercut with segments that progress the main plot, (which centers around Ellie’s father’s quest to find Ellie, after she runs away from her gold-digging fiancé). If you are writing a romantic comedy, it is generally accepted that the story will be “plot light,” in order to allow for plenty of lighthearted scenes in which the principal characters engage in witty banter, flirting, and provocative teasing.
CRISIS OF INTIMACY IN THE 2ND ACT
As romantic couples becomes more and more intimate, they approach a moment of maximum intimacy – usually at the end of the 2nd act. Ideally, this moment should be emotional rather than just physical. In other words, the characters should pour their hearts out to each other, rather than just jumping into the sack. On the night before Ellie is to be returned to her father and fiancé, Peter tells Ellie about his secret dream – to run away to a tropical island. The scene stands out, because it is the first time in the film that Peter lets go of his tough-guy façade and talks sensitively about love, personal loss, and his sentimental dreams. Ellie responds in turn. She breaks down and tells Peter that she loves him and doesn’t want to live without him. After these truly intimate disclosures, it seems that the couple is finally going to get together. But – in typical 2nd act fashion – just at the moment when you think the heroes are going to succeed, everything suddenly falls apart, and all of a sudden they are farther away from each other than ever before.
COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN
Just as communication brings the two lovers together, it is a lack of communication that tears them apart. The prevailing device used to create the 2nd act crisis is a communication breakdown leading to a tragic misunderstanding. In It Happened One Night, Ellie’s declaration of love stymies Peter. He suggests that Ellie return to her bed. Heartbroken, Ellie returns to her side of the room. A moment later, Peter undergoes a sudden change of heart, but when he calls out to Ellie, she has inexplicably fallen asleep, though she was crying hysterically a second earlier. You’d think that Peter would tell Ellie the rather important news that he loves her and wants to marry her; but rather than waking her, he inexplicably sneaks out and drives to New York, so he could sell his story and have money in his pocket when he proposes to her.
Of course, when Ellie wakes to find Peter gone, she assumes he abandoned her, so she returns to her father’s house, resigned to the fate of marrying the man she doesn’t love. Upon driving back to Ellie, Peter sees her in her father’s car in the arms of another man. He, of course, assumes that she has changed her mind and wants nothing to do with him. So, directly after both characters reach their moment of maximum intimacy, their communication breaks down completely, leading to a tragic misunderstanding in which both characters feel abandoned, rejected, and betrayed.
THE COMPASSIONATE MEDIATOR
One final device is necessary for the plot to resolve in love and reconnection. A compassionate mediator realizes the confusion and reunites the two lovers, explaining the misunderstanding and bringing them back together. In dramatic terms, the compassionate mediator in romantic comedies represents a “deus ex machina” – a “god from the machine” that flies in when all seems lost and saves the day. (“Deus ex machina” is a stage term, referring to the fact that this supernatural character was typically introduced onto the stage with the use of a machine, such as a suspended wire, trap door, or elaborate special effect.) In It Happened One Night, Ellie’s fa
ther sees that both characters harbor false assumptions. He redirects his daughter back to the man she truly loves.
Though these devices (communication breakdown – tragic misunderstanding – compassionate mediator), are standard format in formulaic romantic comedies, there are some obvious problems in this structure. First of all, it rarely makes sense that at the moment of greatest intimacy and communication, there should be a complete communication breakdown. It does not make sense that at the moment in which both characters finally love and trust each other the most, that they should suddenly lose every bit of trust for each other, and believe that love between them no longer exists. But the biggest problem with the formula described above lies in the device of the compassionate mediator. The resolution of the intimacy crisis represents a resolution of a deeply personal identity crisis for both characters. This resolution is the completion of the heroes’ ultimate goal, and it should ideally be self-resolved. By suddenly handing over the reigns of the plot to a third party mediator, this formula takes power and action away from the heroes at the moment when they should be the most proactive. The heroes must rise to the occasion in the 3rd act. They must show their true mettle and prove that they are worthy of heroism by resolving the crisis by themselves.
SILLY LOVE FILMS
Despite these significant script problems, It Happened One Night is still considered a classic. Romantic comedies using the same basic formula are regularly successful. Because romantic comedies are expected to be “plot light,” audiences tend to be very forgiving about holes in the story line, continuity problems in character and story development, and uninspired crisis resolutions. For good or for ill, It Happened One Night established the fact that what makes a really good romantic comedy are two extremely attractive and charismatic principal characters. As long as there is witty banter, sexual tension, and lots of chemistry – plot and character development are relatively unimportant.
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