Save the Cat!

by Blake Snyder

  The point is that amping up a great logline with the hero who makes the idea work best is how the idea comes to life. And let's be clear, the trick is to create heroes who:

  > Offer the most conflict in that situation

  > Have the longest way to go emotionally and...

  > Are the most demographically pleasing!

  On this last point, I have particular experience now that I am over 40. Nowadays, I must always catch myself when thinking of my movie heroes. In my mind everyone is 40- And the heroes (in my mind), the ones that I am personally drawn to anyway, are now all "existential heroes" — a little world-weary and yet bravely wise. Yeah! Right! And the audience that's going to show up for that movie is... well, A.W.O.L. to be honest. (But, if it gets made, the French will hail me as a genius.)

  Whenever I find myself drifting into thinking about writing starring roles for Tim Allen, Steve Martin, or Chevy Chase, I catch myself and realize where I am: youth-obsessed Hollywood. Those guys are fine in ensemble, as part of a four-quadrant family pic, great, but as the lead? Never. Okay, rarely. My solution, once I do catch myself and give up on trying to change things, is to make that great character with the existential dilemma a teenager, and make that married couple who's having a crisis a twenty-something married couple. This is the crowd that shows up for movies. These are the heroes the audience likes to see onscreen at their local Cineplex.

  Why fight City Hall?

  The age of characters I think up is my particular blind spot; you have yours. But keep in mind what our job is here: mass market, high concept poster movies for everybody, all over the world. Do not think that just because you and all your friends prefer something, or are in on a certain trend or fad, or like a type of person, that everyone else will, too. I have actually been pitched a movie that the writer said was a great "Julio Iglesias vehicle" — I swear! — won't everybody show up for that premiere? (Mucho doubto.) This is why I stress getting out and pitching your movie ideas to real people in the real world to get their reaction.

  This discussion of blind spots reminds me of a favorite story my father used to tell. He worked in Advertising early on and one time was trying to sell a client on buying TV time on Sundays. The client, a wealthy man, balked at this idea and had a very studied reason: "No one stays home and watches TV on Sunday," he explained. "Everyone's out playing polo!"

  A lesson in perspective for us all.

  THE PRIMAL URGE

  As stressed throughout this book, let me just say again: Primal, primal, primal!

  Once you've got the hero, the motivation for the hero to succeed must be a basic one. What does X want? Well, if it's a promotion at work, it better damn well be related to winning the hand of X's beloved or saving up enough money to get X's daughter an operation. And if it's a match-up with an enemy, it better well lead to a life-or-death showdown, not just a friendly spitball fight.

  Why?

  It s because primal urges get our attention. Survival, hunger, sex, protection of loved ones, fear of death grab us.

  The best ideas and the best characters in the lead roles must have basic needs, wants, and desires. Basic, basic!

  Don't believe me?

  Then let's look at our three loglines and take out the primal-ness in each to see how our desire to see each wanes:

  What if in 4 Christmases, the lead couple isn't married? What if they're just friends who grew up together and share Christmas

  with each other's family every year? Same premise. But take out the sex and what have you got? No stakes. Nothing is on the line. It's still funny. It's still the same idea. But I have no primal rooting interest. Pass!

  In Ride Along, try taking out the sister/fiancee. What if the doofus teacher just signs up for a ride along with a cop — any cop. Well, in this gin-rummy hand of primal-ness I've still got: survival. This teacher still has to make it through the night and there will still be risks to his life. But having the cop's sister/teacher's fiancee as the goal makes the stakes resonate with primal-ness. Again, as in the examples in Chapter Two, it's almost a knight-errant tale, isn't it? But having the princess as the prize makes it work whether it's set in the modern day "hood or the Middle Ages.

  One more. Just to grind it in.

  The Retreat. Let's take out the danger. What if there aren't any murders? What if it's all pranks played on the newbie executive. Well, where are the stakes? To make this idea work you must have the threat of death; otherwise it's a corporate training film, or worse, an existential metaphor.

  And yes, this is all about your hero. Give him stakes. Real stakes. Primal stakes. Stakes that are basic, that we understand. Make the hero want something real and simple: survival, hunger, sex, protection of loved ones, fear of death.

  And when it comes to who to cast in your screenplay, we respond best to stories of husbands and wives, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, ex-boyfriends and girlfriends. Why? Because we all have these people in our lives! You say "father" and I see my father. You say "girlfriend" and I see my girlfriend. We all have em — and it gets our attention because of that. It's an immediate attention-getter because we have a primal reaction to those people, to those words even! So when in doubt, ground your characters in the most deep-seated imagery you can. Make it relevant to us. Make it something that every caveman (and his brother) will get.

  Make it, say it with me now... primal!

  CASTING FOR THE ROLE OF YOUR HERO

  One of the pitfalls of being a savvy movie writer is knowing who among the acting set is looking to do what part next. Adam wants to do a drama next — to get his Oscar nod. Ditto Jim. Ditto Steve. (After Lost in Translation, ditto everybody!) We have also seen everyone's most recent movie, may or may not know what's in production next, and think we know who'd be perfect for the movie we are writing.

  Let me state here and now: We do not know!

  This is all a long way of saying:

  > Don't cast the movie before you've sold the script!

  > Don't write parts for certain actors!

  > Don't get married to the idea of one particular actor doing the part — you'll always be disappointed.

  Rare is the occasion when dream script meets dream cast. And let me give you an example of learning the hard way:

  The amazing Sheldon Bull and I wrote a hilarious comedy in 2004. What if the President's helicopter goes down behind enemy lines? And what if he is forced to capture Osama bin Laden — all by himself? That was our premise. It's about a President who finds his "inner leader." It's "Galaxy Quest with George W. Bush." Great, huh? We even had a great title: Chickenhawk Down. And here's why we did not sell that script: Because there are about two

  people who can play the part of the President. It's the lead. And there really isn't anyone out there who can "open" that movie. Tim Allen was our first choice. And... who else ? What we had done was paint ourselves into a corner on casting. Yes, it's funny. Yes, it's a great story. Yes, someday it will get made (by God!) but right now it just sits there. Hear the crickets?

  We are professional screenwriters and we should have known better. But we got so caught up in our idea (see! ?) that we didn't think it all the way through. The point is to leave yourself plenty of room for casting. Your leads should be able to be played by many actors and actresses. And they should all be able to "open" the movie. This is yet another reason why young actors are in such demand: They're so damn many of them! And no, you do not know what parts actors are looking for. Even if you hear it from their manager. Even if the actor looks you in the eye and tells you that their next movie, the role he really wants, is a comedy where he plays a teacher. He is lying. He is an actor. Lovely, charming people to be sure, but skittish as thoroughbreds.

  They do not know what they want to do next.

  And neither do you.

  ACTOR ARCHETYPES

  That said, why is it that certain actors always play certain parts over and over again? As hinted at in Chapter Two, you find throughout cinema histo
ry that many of the big stars play one part really well. Think about Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Cary Grant. Now think about Jim Carrey, Russell Crowe, Julia Roberts, and Sandra Bullock. It's not because these are not good actors who can't do more than one type of role, only that what makes movies work to a large degree is our need to be shown certain archetypes onscreen.

  And the actors who play these archetypes now are just taking the place of the actors who played the same archetypes years ago.

  Isn't Russell Crowe Errol Flynn? (Even geographically?)

  Isn't Jim Carrey Jerry Lewis?

  Isn't Tom Hanks Jimmy Stewart?

  Isn't Sandra Bullock Rosalind Russell?

  The reason is that these archetypes exist to satisfy our inner need to see these shadow creations in our brains played out onscreen. It's the Jungian archetypes these actors represent that we're interested in seeing. And if you always remember to write for the archetype, and not the star, the casting will take care of itself. So while this may not be strictly Jungian (even though I got an "A" in Jung) let me instead give you some Snyderian archetypes for your perusal:

  > There's the "young man on the rise" archetype — a very American character that includes Harold Lloyd, Steve Martin (in his day), Adam Sandler, and the omni-versal Ashton Kutcher. Horatio Alger-esque, a little dumb, but plucky, this is the type we all want to see win.

  > There's the "good girl tempted" archetype — pure of heart, cute as a bug: Betty Grable, Doris Day, Meg Ryan (in her day), Reese Witherspoon. This is the female counterpart of the young man on the rise.

  > There's the "imp," the "clever and resourceful child" —Jackie Coogan, MacCauly Culkin, and even their evil opposite, the "Bad Seed," i.e., Patty McCormick.

  > There's the "sex goddess" archetype — Mae West to Marilyn Monroe to Bridget Bardot to Halle Berry.

  > And the male version, "the hunk" — From Rudolph Valentino to Clark Gable, from Robert Redford to Tom Cruise to Viggo Mortenson to Mr. and Mrs. Diesel's pride and joy, Vin.

  And the list goes on. There's the "wounded soldier going back for a last redemptive mission" archetype: Paul Newman, and now Glint Eastwood. There's the "troubled sexpot" archetype: Veronica Lake, Angelina Jolie. And the lovable fop: Cary Grant, Hugh Grant. There's the court jester: Danny Kaye, Woody Allen, Rob Schneider. There's the wise grandfather: Alec Guinness and now — same beard, same robe — Ian McKellen.

  There are magic dwarves and tricksters, sidekicks and talking animals, spinsters and wizards, Falstaffs and misers — and they keep on popping up. Over and over again. Same characters, same function for being in the story. Like knowing the history of certain story types, knowing the long line of ancestors your characters descend from is a must.

  You don't have to be Joseph Campbell to see that no matter who's hot in Casting Call, the archetypes never change. Each one of these archetypes has a story arc we want to see played out again and again. And it's all about matching what we carry in the back of our minds to what we see onscreen. Who deserves to win and why? Who deserves comeuppance and why? And despite the dictates of political correctness, fashion and fad, we still want to see justice meted out for characters we hate and victory granted to those we admire. The stories of these heroes and the mathematical equations that makes their stories work is already sewn into our DNA. Your job, your simple task, is to forget the stars, concentrate on the archetypes, and strive to make them new.

  SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES

  And now, for my bullheads in the audience, let's get to the exceptions. When it comes to creating the linear, straightforward movie hero, we pretty much understand. But what about the special circumstances? What about ensemble? What about biographical movies? What about animated movies where the characters come from non-relevant fairy tales??

  Okay.

  Yes, there are always special circumstances. But finding the hero in all of these examples is the same method used to find them in any original one-line or spec.

  Take biography. You've been handed someone's life story and now have to make a movie out of it. So what if the hero isn't necessarily very likeable? Or what if he or she did things that weren't all that admirable, what then? Let's take a look at Kinsey. Those of you who know the story about the famous sex study pioneer, Alfred Kinsey, know that the screenwriter (also the director, Bill Condon) faced a problem. Kinsey was odd. He conducted sex studies on friends and neighbors, spied on his wife, and dabbled with his subjects in ways many might think of as objectionable. Finding the hero in that story also means finding a "bad guy, " too. But if they can make a movie out of the life of porn-meister Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler Magazine, as they did in "The People vs. Larry Flynt, and make him out to be a hero, well, why not follow the same formula? And that's exactly what Condon did.

  The writers of A Beautiful Mind faced this same problem with mathematician John Nash and chose to simply fudge some of the facts of his life story to make him more palatable. They dropped certain un-heroic facets of his love life and merged two real wives into one for the sake of movie continuity. This kind of thing, with

  the guidance of a good errors and omissions attorney, is done a lot.

  I myself grappled with a similar dilemma when I was handed the biographical challenge of John DeLorean, the famous automaker and creator of the DeLorean sports car. Imagine my surprise when my research proved him not to be a "Tucker-esque" maverick brought down by the Big Three automakers for his radical ideas but, by some accounts, a con man. All well and good, but who's the hero in that story? My solution was to make the hero the author of one of the books I'd read, a guy who had been inside the DeLorean empire from the start and grew disillusioned by both the man and his "vision." By tracing the rise and fall of DeLorean from this insider's point of view, and showing how he could be fooled, it gave the audience the "way in" to that story. I even gave my script the ironic title, Dream Car. Your way in to a biography has to pay attention to the same rules of any story: It has to be, first and foremost, about a guy who... we can root for.

  Or at least understand.

  Ensemble pieces can offer the same dilemma for the screenwriter. And as the examples of John Travolta in Pulp Fiction and Woody Allen in Crimes and Misdemeanors prove, the hero doesn't always have to be the one with the most scenes. But ensemble does offer a unique challenge of finding your way in. Who is this about, you keep asking, this piece with 12 characters, all with equal screen time?

  One of the masters of the ensemble, director Robert Altman, specializes in this. Nashville, Welcome to L.A., and Shortcuts offer crisscrossing character sketches with no central lead. But Altman would argue differently. The city of Nashville became the "star" of Nashville, and Shortcuts and Welcome to L.A. "stars" the city of Los Angeles. Granted these are not classic hero's tales, but Altman found his way in and stuck to it. And by creating a new kind of hero to root for, he was true to the moral he wanted to tell.

  In ensemble, like any story, the "hero" is usually the one who carries the theme of the movie. When in doubt, ask yourself who serves this function in your movie — who comes up against the others the hardest, and who grows the most? And pretty soon you're asking the same questions you ask when finding the hero of any movie you're writing: Who offers the most conflict? Who comes the farthest emotionally and who is the most likeable, the one we want to root for and see win? That's the one you have to make it "about."

  Animated tales based on existing material are often difficult challenges, especially when translating across cultural differences and time. Later we will see how the hero of Disney's Aladdin went from being an unlikable street urchin in the original text (though one who was perfectly acceptable to the culture in which he was created) to an affable, modern Surfer dude. Likewise in Disney's Mulan, Pocahontas, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the writers were presented with similar challenges and met with mixed results based on changes to the hero — and how his or her story was told. But whether your cast of characters is a pack of prehistoric ice Age-ers
or a bunch of idiosyncratic insects (Antz, A Bug's Life), the process of giving us a winning logline, and the hero to star in it, is exactly the same.

  The rule of thumb in all these cases is to stick to the basics no matter what. Tell me a story about a guy who...

  > I can identify with.

  > I can learn from.

  > I have compelling reason to follow.

  > I believe deserves to win and...

  > Has stakes that are primal and ring true for me.

  Follow that simple prescription for finding the hero of your movie and you can't go wrong. No matter what assignment, material, or sweeping canvas has been handed to you, you find the hero by finding the heart of the story.

  SLAVE TO THE LOGLINE

  When you have found the perfect hero for your story and nailed down just what his primal goal is, it's time to go back to your log-line and add in what you've learned to make it perfect. And if it sounds like I am insisting that you become a "slave to the logline" — well, you're right.

  The logline is your story's code, its DNA, the one constant that has to be true. If it's good, if it has all the earmarks of a winning idea, then it should give you everything you need to guide you in writing the screenplay. It is, in short, the touchstone, both for you the writer and the audience you're selling your movie to. If you are true to your logline, you will deliver the best possible story. And if you find yourself straying from it in the middle of the writing process, you better have a good reason.