In the past, workers with average skills, doing an average job, could earn an average lifestyle. But, today, average is officially over. Being average just won’t earn you what it used to. It can’t when so many more employers have so much more access to so much more above average cheap foreign labor, cheap robotics, cheap software, cheap automation and cheap genius. Therefore, everyone needs to find their extra — their unique value contribution that makes them stand out in whatever is their field of employment. Average is over.

Okay– so why are there so many average or sub-par movies around?  Because those all come attached with Big Names.  If you are trying to get noticed today you either need Big Name attachments or an outstanding script.  A good script won’t make it any more.  A great script probably won’t either.  You need an outstanding script.  You need to be, in sports terms, a number one draft pick.

It’s more important than ever to hone your craft.  Be meticulous in your presentation. Be fresh. Be original. And don’t fall into common kinds of errors that derail your story enough to make it a “pass” rather than a “highly recommend.”

I’ve distilled everything I know about story analysis into a short eBook.  It will be my first Kindle, Amazon, iBooks, Sony Reader, Nook publication.  It’s priced at $4.99 for an introductory time.  Let me know if you’d like to be on the pre-order list. You can contact me through the site or leave a comment– I can get your email address on the back end.  It’s not published in the comment.

You are about write a story. How shall it begin? Perhaps there is a single conflict that needs to be resolved. Will my story have a happy ending or a sad ending? Perhaps the conflict has one of several distinct oppositions: man vs nature, man vs. technology, man vs. god or man vs. self.

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In 1894, French critic Georges Polti recognized thirty-six possible plots, which included conflicts such as Supplication, Pursuit, Self-sacrifice, Adultery, Revolt, the Enigma, Abduction, and Disaster. In 1928, dime novelist William Wallace Cook, author of Plotto: The Master Book of All Plots, did him one better, cataloging every narrative he could think of through a method that bordered on madness. His final plot count? 1,462.

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While still a young director in England, Alfred Hitchcock requested the book from America, and the creator of the courtroom drama Perry Mason claimed he had learned a great deal from it. In 1931, screenwriter Wycliffe Hill declared that he had invented a “Plot Robot,” which turned out to be nothing more than cardboard wheel of options that would help you choose a plot in the same way you might choose a color for your living room.

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Plotto was far more complex, and despite its careful categorization, still exceedingly hard to understand. It’s a narrative Dewey Decimal System of sorts, where each character-type is given a letter: the man is A, the woman is B, their relatives, such as a father or mother, would be F-A or M-B, and anything mysterious, be it a stranger or a strange object, is given the designation X, that ultimate letter of mystery. Conflicts have their own groupings, such as Love and Courtship, Married Life, Mystery, Misfortune, Idealism, Personal Limitations, Revelation, Helpfulness, Craftiness Stimulation, Mistaken Judgement, and Deliverance.

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Each narrative in Plotto begins with “Masterplots” which are made up of several beginning, middle, and end clauses (e.g. “A person in love > Falling in love when certain obligations forbid love > Pays a grim penalty in an unfortunate undertaking.”) These permutations, which can number in the hundreds, are subdivided once again according to character and conflict into specific situations, the more than 1,462 individual plots that make up the bulk of Plotto.

Let’s look at the simple issue of who is the protagonist in Tintin. The protagonist in a story is the central character whose actions set off the chain of events that pushes the story forward. So far so good.  Tintin buys a model ship that holds a long-hidden clue and sets off a chase for treasure. The protagonist must have a physical goal in the story that he or she actively pursues.  The goal for young Tintin is clear enough, solve the mystery and find the treasure. This is what TinTin wants.

What the character needs is an inner ache or yearning that the character is unaware of, denies, suppresses or ignores. It is a deeper, more abstract or intangible human longing. It is not physical or concrete. It is an emotional or spiritual urge or inner call to live up to one’s higher nature. For example: to stand up for one’s beliefs, to become a better parent, to forgive another, to act with integrity, to find one’s faith, to become more altruistic, to be a better friend, to face the truth, to love unselfishly, etc.

To embrace the need, the character must abandon the specific goal (or object of desire) and address more fundamental and far-reaching human concern. One of the most common problems with scripts that don’t work is the lack of a clear and specific want vs. a deep and powerful inner longing.

This is the case in Tintin.  There is plenty of external conflict in the chase. There is a good amount of relationship conflict in the centuries old feud between the Haddocks and Rackhams.  But there is no inner conflict for Tintin. There is nothing the boy needs to over come in himself in order to succeed.  He falters for a very brief moment late in the film but is immediately cheered up and on his way without missing a beat.

Captain Haddock goes from being an irresponsible drunk with low self esteem to someone who sobers up and rediscovers his own self-worth.  He is no longer intimidated by his illustrious ancestor and realizes he has courage too.  Tintin, like the young  protagonist in War Horse, is as plucky, courageous, determined and resourceful in the beginning of the film as he is at the end of the film.

At the climax of a film the question is, who makes the biggest sacrifice? Who pays the biggest price? Who undergoes the most powerful personal transformation. That person is the protagonist. It doesn’t matter how big a star or how well known a figure is “supposed” to be the protagonist.  It doesn’t matter how much screen time the “supposed” protagonist has.  If some other character makes a bigger personal sacrifice, is more powerfully transformed or pays a bigger emotional price, he or she is the protagonist.  If a secondary character plays this role the film will disconnect emotionally. That is the case with Tintin.

Perhaps the character worked better in a comic strip where Tintin acts more as a narrator/journalist telling someone else’s story.  But this is a movie and the requirements are different.  Mistaking which character is the protagonist is one of the most common reasons why a film doesn’t work emotionally for the audience. Spielberg should know better.

The film is beautifully shot but is low on emotional impact and, strangely, low on sacrifice.  Both the boy and the horse survive by a serious of amazing and miraculous coincidences.  A mediocre script in even the hand of  a master director pumped up by an overly emotional score still makes a mediocre movie.

How did War Horse go so wrong?

What the main character in a movie wants is a clear and simple goal.  It is something that directly benefits the protagonist that he or she can physically have or obtain. It is concrete. It is specific. It is the finite object of the character’s personal desire. In War Horse the boy’s want or goal is to find the horse and bring him home. To obtain the want, however, the character must abandon the need.  That personal conflict is the essence of good drama.

What the character needs is an inner ache or yearning that the character is unaware of, denies, suppresses or ignores. It is a deeper, more abstract or intangible human longing. It is not physical or concrete. It is an emotional or spiritual urge or inner call to live up to one’s higher nature. For example: to stand up for one’s beliefs, to become a better parent, to forgive another, to act with integrity, to find one’s faith, to become more altruistic, to be a better friend, to face the truth, to love unselfishly, etc.

To embrace the need, the character must abandon the specific goal (or object of desire) and address more fundamental and far-reaching human concern. One of the most common problems with scripts that don’t work is the lack of a clear and specific want vs. a deep and powerful inner longing.

That is the case in War Horse.  There is plenty of external conflict in the family’s poverty and the horrors of war.  There is a good amount of relationship conflict– different people in the story clash about all sorts of things. But there is no inner conflict. There is nothing the boy needs to over come in himself in order to succeed.  He is as plucky, courageous, determined and resourceful in the beginning of the film as he is at the end of the film.

It’s astonishing that in a film about war there is very little sacrifice for the good of others.  The boy is not changed by his experiences and no one else is much changed either.  The relentlessly upbeat ending is ridiculous in the face of the devastation of “The Great War” which so profoundly changed everyone and everything in Europe.

What the main character wants pulls us through the story. The need draws us deeper into or inside the character. If this bedrock conflict isn’t clear the script won’t add up to very much. Unfortunately, this is the case in War Horse.

A.O. Scott writes in The New York Times:

The definitive poem in English on the subject of cultural nostalgia may be a short verse by Robert Browning called “Memorabilia.” It begins with a gasp of astonishment — “Ah, did you once see Shelley plain?” — and ends with a shrug: “Well I forget the rest.” Isn’t that always how it goes? The past seems so much more vivid, more substantial, than the present, and then it evaporates with the cold touch of reality. The good old days are so alluring because we were not around, however much we wish we were.

Midnight in Paris is a rare foray in the Power of Idealism territory for a Woody Allen film.  It’s a meditation on the power of the past, finding the extraordinary in the ordinary and longing vs contentment.

Gil (Owen Wilson) is a very successful Hollywood screenwriter who considers himself a hack.  His fiancee, Inez (Rachel McAdams), likes the Malibu lifestyle that Gil’s prodigious income affords.  The engaged couple is tagging along on her parent’s business trip for a pre-wedding Paris shopping excursion.

Gil longs for more meaningful artistic achievement.  He wants to write a serious novel about a man who owns a memorabilia shop.  His biggest regret in life is moving to Hollywood when he had the opportunity to live in Paris and become a “real” writer.  His fiance thinks he’s crazy.

The worst thing that could happen to a Power of Idealism character is to be or become unexceptional, mediocre or completely ordinary.  A “Hollywood hack” fits this nightmare definition for Gil.

Power of Idealism characters are frequently consumed by what they cannot have or a sense that something important is absent or lost in their lives.  This missing something or someone can be the emotionally or physically unavailable love interest, an impossibly high standard of aesthetic or personal excellence or some other perfect, missing something.  For Gil, it’s the romance and inspiration of Paris in the 1920’s. If only he could have lived then– everything would have been perfect.

Gil has a magical chance to visit the era he longs for via a 1920’s Peugeot that stops for him as he drunkenly lounges on a stone stairway in a forgotten alleyway.  He is whisked off to a party where he meets Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Cole Porter and Ernest Hemingway.  Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Salvador Dali and Gertrude Stein also welcome him, as an aspiring novelist, into their circle.

In his wide-eyed wanderings, Gil meets and falls for the remarkable muse Adriana (Marion Cotillard), who inspired a whole catalogue of famous artists of the time.  Gil is shocked to discover the Adriana has absolutely no appreciation of the “golden age” in which she lives and in which she plays such a vital part.  Instead, she longs for the wonderful “Belle Epoque” which she sees as so much more glamorous, romantic and inspiring than her own era.

Power of Idealism characters must learn to find the magic and passion in the small details of their present day life with family and friends and discover transcendence in the mundane moments of living and loving in the here and now.   They must find the extraordinary in the ordinary.  They must learn to appreciate what they do have instead of longing for what they can never possess.

A.O. Scott puts it another way in discussing Gil meeting “Tom,” the poet who turns out to be TS Elliot:

Unless I’m mistaken, (the poem) “Prufrock” is a statement of the very ennui — the perception of a diminished world unable to satisfy a hungering sensibility — that afflicts Gil. Mr. Allen’s treatment of this condition is gentle and wry. He can hardly be unaware that he himself is, for much of his audience, an object of nostalgic affection, much the way Cole Porter, among others, is for Gil, his alter ego. That a shared love of Porter’s music allows Gil to forge a connection in the present (and conceivably the future) with a young Parisian woman (Léa Seydoux) is a sign that his fetishizing of bygone days has been based on a mistake. Paris is perpetually alive, not because it houses the ghosts of the famous dead but because it is the repository and setting of so much of their work. And the purpose of all that old stuff is not to carry us into the past but rather to animate and enliven the present.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/risky-business/watch-thr-s-full-summer-181150

Rififi

According to Wikipedia “The film was banned in some countries due to its lengthy heist scene, referred to by a Los Angeles Times reviewer as a “master class in breaking and entering as well as filmmaking”.  The Mexican interior ministry banned the film because of a series of burglaries mimicking the robbery protrayed. Rififi was also banned in Finland. In answer to critics who saw the film as an educational process that taught people how to commit burglary, the director, Jules Dassin claimed the film showed how difficult it was to actually carry out a crime (and get away with it).”

After he was blacklisted from Hollywood, Dassin, found work in France. He shot Rififi on a low budget and without a star cast.  Although like Fellini, Dassin has a keen eye for wonderful faces.  Authenticity is better than star power any day, in my book.

The film was offered distribution in the United States on the condition that Dassin renounce his past, declaring that he was duped into subversive associations. Otherwise, his name would be removed from the film as the writer and director. Dassin refused and the film was released by United Artists who set up a dummy corporation as the distributing company. The film was distributed successfully in America with Dassin listed in the credits; making him the first director to break the Hollywood blacklist.

What impressed me the most was a 30 minute segment almost completely without dialogue during the tension-filled jewel heist.  It’s choreographed to keep you riveted in suspense.  Sexual jealousy, friendship and betrayal make make this a must see Power of Truth classic.

Yet again a film looks at how we are haunted by our past.  Without examining the past and transcending it we are doomed to repeat whatever it was that got us into trouble in the first place.