the rules

You’ve probably come across a variety of blogs, books, and gurus who insist there are “rules” for writing a screenplay. (Maybe you’ve even read something to that effect on this very blog.) But are there really? Is there a secret formula for success? Well, yes… and no. Depends on who you ask. But maybe this is a better way to explain it.

An Analogy

Here’s one way to look at it. Screenwriting is like building a house. There are some generally agreed upon “rules” for houses: protection from the elements is a must. Generally a door to keep you and your stuff safe. Probably indoor plumbing and electricity. Bathroom and kitchen to make this a full service abode. Hopefully a window or two but otherwise…

The thing is, doors, electricity, and plumbing have rules. Doors need to be appropriately framed with headers. There are physical limitations to what you can do with electricity as well as safety precautions. Water flows downhill. If you want your sinks to drain and your toilet to flush, you’re going to have to install your plumbing correctly.

None of this has any bearing on the number or size of the bathrooms. None of it affects the shape of the house or the material you use. But there are definitely trends because some things are more effective or more efficient than others.

You have cheap houses for the masses.

Levittown-2

(Image via: http://longisland.mamasnetwork.com/2012/04/levittown-history/)

You have artistic houses for creative folks.

wing house

(Image via: https://davidhertzfaia.com/747-wing-house/)

You have rustic retreats.

cabin

(Image via: https://www.vrbo.com/335812)

And ostentatious abodes.

mansion

(Image via: http://www.mainlinetoday.com/Main-Line-Today/April-2015/The-Main-Lines-30-Most-Expensive-Homes/)

Point is: they’re all houses. They all meet the same basic requirements while expressing the art and lifestyle of the builder and the inhabitants.

Screenplays are similar, and many screenwriters will describe themselves more as craftsmen than artists. Yes, you need a creative mind, but you also need to know when to use a hammer and when to use a saw. Similarly, screenwriters need to be adept at understanding “the immutable laws of screenplay physics” as Blake Snyder calls them. Is your comic relief effective or overpowering? Does the story drag because the protagonist’s obstacles are episodic rather than escalating? Does the dialogue feel wooden because there is no subtext? Or maybe there’s no sense of urgency because your script violates the unity of time.

Or maybe your script feels cliched and predictable because it follows the rules a bit too closely. (This would be the home building equivalent of a stamped out, mass production condo.)

condos

(Image via: https://njcooperator.com/article/uniformity-in-condo-design/full)

And this is the final important thing to remember about the rules. Rules are meant to be broken.

Below are 2 examples of VERY successful movies that very clearly break screenwriting “rules.” I don’t care how much you want to bend the rules or try to contort things so they fit into some mold in a bizarro world. These are generally bad screenwriting choices, and yet, nobody cares.

Your Protagonist is not active enough.

Your protagonist should drive the story. Their decisions and actions push the movie forward. That’s why they’re the protagonist. Blake Snyder calls this “The Hero Leads.” And if your hero is just some schmuck who gets dragged from place to place like a cosmic lump on a log, Snyder calls him “Johnny Entropy.” But I have another name: Ebenezer Scrooge. Scrooge has probably gotten the most mileage out of doing the least work of any protagonist ever. Wikipedia lists 20 film adaptations of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and more than two dozen TV adaptations or episodes. But what does Scrooge actually do with all this screen time? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

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(I guess that’s why he’s in his pajamas for the whole thing. Image via: https://www.falter.at/the-vienna-review/2007/savoring-scrooge)

Marley, not Scrooge initiates the Christmas hijinx. Then the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future drag Scrooge on a time bending whirlwind. But apart from some tepid protests, Scrooge just goes along for the ride. Yes, at the end, Scrooge makes one massive 180 degree turn and starts giving his money away. But for the other 80 minutes of screen time, he’s as passive as Mr. Entropy himself.

The thing is, nobody cares. Since his creation 175 years ago, the audience has loved Scrooge’s largely unearned transformation from miser into philanthropist. And every ten years or so, a new production company capitalizes on Scrooge’s ability to do nothing and make cash. Do you always need an active protagonist? Well…

scrooge 2

(Image via: https://www.disneyclips.com/imagesnewb/ducktales.html)

Hook ‘em in the first 15 pages

It’s important to hook your audience in the beginning of your script. Fifteen to twenty pages/minutes is a good rule of thumb. It gives you some time to establish your “world” before you hit your characters with the inciting incident. And when you analyze a story, most professionals look at scripts from the perspective of the protagonist’s conscious goal.

In Jurassic Park, a beloved, award winning, visually stunning, and financially successful film, you could make an argument for any number of main characters, but I think many people would agree that Alan Grant (Sam Neill) is the protagonist. What’s his goal? To make it out of Jurassic Park alive. Well that can only be his goal if the dinosaurs have already escaped their pens, which means the power going out is the inciting incident, which means, the inciting incident doesn’t actually happen until almost an hour into the movie!

Hammond watch

(We don’t have eons here, Mr. Hammond. Image via: http://watchesinmovies.info/movies/jurassic-park-1993-2/)

Does that mean the power going out is the midpoint? Or should Spielberg have cut the first twenty minutes and had more screen time of Grant trying to save children from velociraptors. Or maybe you don’t always need your inciting incident in the first twenty pages.

You could make an argument for any of those things. But the bigger point is that Jurassic Park is a great movie and that the rules are not so hard and fast as they might appear.

As a filmmaker, it’s important to know the rules. Like a builder, you are part artist and part craftsman. The “rules” are more of a user manual than a blueprint. They’ll help you understand how a screenplay works without really telling you how to make one. So don’t cling to the rules like a Dickensian judge. Successful movies, like life, find a way.

judge 2

(Image via: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1167541/European-courts-powerful-says-British-judge.html)

Don’t Cross the Line!

Believe it or not, filmmaking comes with a lot of rules. And while artists may scoff at some seemingly arbitrary conventions, it’s important to know why they exist and how they can affect your audience and artistic vision. Today’s topic for discussion is the 180 degree rule.

Don’t cross the line!

The 180 degree line is an imaginary line that follows the action of a scene. (If you’ve never heard of it, it will make more sense as we go along.) For those of playing at home, you may recognize that 180 degrees is half of a circle. The rule dictates that your camera will always be on the same side of that line.

Who the F#€& came up with that?

Part of this is just physics. If you’re watching something (a sporting event, a street fight, paint drying) you tend to watch it all from the same place. If you want to change your perspective, you can walk to the other side of the stadium, but it’s going to take you a few minutes.

The ancient Greeks, who basically invented western civilization (and also theater) and are frequent this blog’s whipping boy, decided to set things in stone. Literally. They started building all of these amphitheaters.

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(Image via: https://www.athenswalkingtours.gr/blog/index.php/2011/11/04/the-great-theatre-of-epidaurus/)

You’ll notice that all of the seats are on one side. (It’s almost like half of a circle?!) The front of the stage makes a straight line, which taken as a whole, is called the proscenium. It is betwixt this line the actors and audience shall not cross.

Here’s another ancient theater with a much fancier proscenium.

Le_Théâtre_Antique_d'Orange,_2007

(Image via: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Theatre_of_Orange)

And here’s a view of a modern theater proscenium.

proscenium theater

(Image via: https://www.tes.com/lessons/H18uvEDH3eMUDA/copy-of-copy-of-types-of-stage-in-performance)

In all of these cases, you can only watch the action from one side of the stage. As a spectator, whether you’re in seat B6 or FF139, you’re always watching on the same side of the line.

Now if we build a set on the stage, there would only be three walls. Much like this living room set from Malevolence: Bereavement.

MALEVOLENCE FIELD

When you build three walls of a set, the “fourth wall” is the proscenium. The audience must pretend that there’s a fourth wall. And that’s why an actor speaking directly to the audience (or looking straight into the camera) is “breaking the fourth wall.”

house of cards fourth wall

(Image via: http://www.businessinsider.com/house-of-cards-times-kevin-spacey-talks-to-audience-2015-2)

Millennia later, film followed suit, generally filming all of the action from one side of the line. In addition to following an established dramatic convention, it also makes it easier to film. The lights, camera, dolly track, sound mixer, additional second second assistant director and therapy dog all have a place to hang out without mucking up the set.

(Image via: http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=216)

What does it all mean?!

Moving from a wide shot to close ups, filmmakers need to make sure they stay on the correct side of the line. Consider two people sitting at a table, talking.

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Sally, on the left, is looking towards the right frame of the camera. When you move in, she STILL needs to be looking to camera right.

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Even in a closeup without Harry in the shot, she’s still looking to the right.

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Similarly, Harry should always be looking to his left.

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(Screen shots from When Harry Met Sally’s infamous restaurant scene.)

A simple situation like this is pretty easy and straightforward, but it would also make for a boring cinematic universe. The good news is, actors can move. And every time the actor or camera moves, so does the line. In fact that 180 degree line is more appropriately called the “action line.” And when things are moving, that line can go all over the place.

Long Steadicam or handheld shots like this work because the audience can follow the action in real time. It’s when you cut to a new camera angle that things can get confusing.

For example, if someone exits frame to the right, which direction should they enter the frame from in the next shot? If there are six characters standing in a circle, what is the direction of the action? If a character hands a prop to another character whose back is turned, should he be reaching camera left or camera right?

Fortunately, the script supervisor and director of photography should be keeping track of all of this. If you’re an aspiring DP or scripty, well, you’ve got some research to do. (I would recommend Joseph V. Mascelli’s The Five C’s of Cinematography to start.) But the intricacies of continuity and action lines aren’t the real reason I wanted to write about this.

Who cares?

Although this won’t really affect the writer, the 180 degree rule has some interesting psychological effects that influence storytelling. For example, if two people… or Matchbox Cars are chasing each other, they need to be traveling in the same direction.

If we turn one of the cars around, they may be headed for a collision.

Version 2

Similarly, if your character drives from left to right on his commute into work, he should drive from right to left on his way home. Odds are, no one will ever notice whether or not you do this, but it’s one of those subconscious things that can disorient an audience if done incorrectly.

Mascelli goes so far as to argue that vehicles traveling west to east like an airplane flying from New York to London should move left to right on screen. I guess that wouldn’t apply to Australian filmmakers…

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(Image via: https://www.mapworld.com.au/products/australia-upside-down-world-map-in-envelope)

Once upon a time things that traveled from left to right were considered to be progressing while things that traveled right to left were regressing or retreating. (Presumably because most western languages are read left to right.) Curiously, that doesn’t seem to hold as much weight as it used to. The Eagles, the only team in the NFL whose logo faces the left finally won a Super Bowl.

NFL logos

(Look at those contrarians in the last column!)

And a not too distant political campaign with a right-pointing arrow didn’t end up working out so well.

The line can also effect how you feel about a character. The furthest you can get from the 180 degree line is 90 degrees. This is the most objective or voyeuristic point of view. You’re not part of the action, you are an outside observer.

Pink_Floyd_-_WYWH

(Not sure what’s happening on the cover of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, and I’m pretty happy at this distance.)

As you get closer to the line, you become more subjective to the point where characters are speaking directly to you (breaking the fourth wall), and you feel like you’re part of the story.

That’s a hefty workload for one little line.

When can you break the rule?

When ever you want! The thing to remember is that audiences have become accustomed to these conventions. Breaking the rule will lead to confusion and disorientation. If that’s the feel you’re going for, do it! Just make sure the audience can still follow the story. (Remember that post about empathy? You want to be sure you’re showing your character’s confusion, not just confusing the audience.)

But for 99% of what you shoot, the 180 degree line is going to serve as a tool, not an artistic choice. To get to the heart of your story as effectively as possible, make sure your audience is focused on the right thing, and don’t cross the line!

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(Screenshot from The Big Lebowski via makeameme.org )

The Tragedy of Tragedy Girls

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(image via: http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/264412/tragedy-girls-starring-alexandra-shipp-brianna-hildebrand-hits-blu-ray-february/)

With the Oscars this week, you’re probably scrambling to watch all of the films you’ve head about but haven’t seen. One little nugget that flew under the radar last year was Tragedy Girls. I only learned about it through the Queens of Crime podcast. (Highly recommended if you like true crime stories.) I enjoyed it for all of the reasons I thought I would: a ridiculous premise (high schoolers become murderers to publicize their blog), campy humor, ridiculous gore, and surprisingly high production value. The acting was spot on and the cinematography was creative and effective.

All that being said, there’s a reason this film flew under the radar, and it can be a lesson for the aspiring filmmaker. Tragedy Girls disregards many of the “rules” of screenwriting, and it shows. It wasn’t bad enough to be a B movie, but it wasn’t likable enough to be mainstream. The biggest thing I felt while watching it was discomfort. And here’s why.

Does your protagonist need to be likable?

No. But they do need to be relatable. The main characters, Sadie and McKayla, are snotty, narcissistic teens who are obsessed with social media. And while they can be funny, they aren’t likable. Nobody is rooting for them to succeed. The film never builds a bridge between these antiheroes and the audience. There is no “save the cat” moment or humanization of these sociopathic killers.

The film could have humanized them in a variety of ways. It could have better explained why they were killers (bullying? revenge?), given them their comeuppance in the end, or given them an opportunity to make amends for what they did. It also could have made their victims more despicable, turning Sadie and McKayla into the lesser of several evils (think of Dexter). But for some reason, everyone else in Tragedy Girls, is strangely guiltless and generally likable.

The Three Act Structure

Tragedy Girls disregards the three act structure, starting with Sadie and McKayla committing their first murder and capturing (and torturing) a serial killer. While it does get things moving quickly, it raises more questions than it answers. Who are these girls? What is their ordinary world? Why do they believe they are morally justified in killing people? Why is social media so important to them? Why do they want to be notorious killers? Answering even one of these questions would help endear them to the audience which is, after all, the primary function of the first act.

From there, the girls spiral into their killing spree–a kind of Mean Girls but with murder. And while it does have its comedic moments, that’s sort of it for the rest of the film. If you don’t find that entertaining, the film has lost you twenty minutes in.

The final act offers no real resolution or change. Sadie and McKayla are essentially the same on minute 1 and minute 91, giving the impression of a drawn out SNL sketch rather than a feature film.

Too Close to Home

When you strip away the jokes, you end up with a movie about two teens who kill their classmates and get away with it. The film offers no real alternative to the outcome, and it isn’t really a cautionary tale. If, for some perverse reason, you end up rooting for Sadie and McKayla, you end up rooting for high school murderers.

That really brings me full circle to discomfort. At every point in the movie, you’re not 100% sure if you should be laughing, cheering, or vomiting in disgust. I do have to tip my hat to the filmmakers because, production-wise, it’s very well put together. They also stick to their guns. They made a movie about unabashed serial killers who get away with their crimes. They bucked convention. As to whether or not it worked, you’ll have to judge for yourself. But as you build our own stories and craft your own characters, it’s important to keep in mind how some of these “rules” operate in screenplays and the reaction an audience can have if you disregard them.

Getting People to Like You(r Characters)

We’ve all been there: trying to impress your love interest, trying to convince your parents your tuition money hasn’t been wasted, or even just trying not to be picked last in dodge ball. It’s hard to get people to like you. So how can you convince them to root for your main character, especially if they’re an anti-hero or, well, frankly kind of a jerk? This won’t necessarily solve your problems, but here are a few tips.

Save the Cat

Save the Cat Cropped

This first one comes straight from Blake Snyder’s highly recommended Save the Cat. Simply put, have your protagonist save a cat or do some other altruistic thing to endear them to your audience. You could have them literally save a cat like Ripley in Alien, give bread to starving children like Aladdin in Aladdin, or take on charity cases like Lucy Kelson in Two Weeks Notice. In cases like Aladdin where you protagonist is a thief, your “save the cat” moment might be more necessary. But no matter what, people will find it easier to root for your characters if they actually seem like decent people.

Flaws

Even though we need to like them, your protagonist can’t be perfect. Generally, your protagonist’s going to have some major flaw. That’s the source of their “unconscious goal.” The thing that they need to fix that they don’t know they need to fix. Lightning McQueen must overcome his ego (Cars), Dianna must overcome her naiveté (Wonder Woman), and Alan Grant must overcome his fear of children (Jurassic Park).

But your characters also need smaller quirks whose primary function is to make them more human. In Save the Cat, Blake Snyder calls this the “six things that need fixing.” In Kramer Vs. Kramer, Ted Kramer needs to learn to be a good father, but he also needs to learn how to cook and struggles to find a new job. He goes through the same kind of shit we do. Indiana Jones may be the coolest professor ever, but he’s terrified of snakes. These character flaws don’t always affect the plot, but they do make your characters more endearing.

Primal Struggles

This is another Save the Cat tip. Snyder uses it in reference to the premise, but a relatable premise creates relatable characters. As Snyder explains it, your premise should be easy enough to explain to a caveman. It’s primal: revenge, trying to impress a love interest, trying to escape a monster. These are things we can all relate to. Maybe you’ve never had to run from a T. rex, but you may have had to run from Rex. It was terrifying, and you can relate.

Ever been a renown neurosurgeon by day who transitions into a destructive narcissist at exactly 8:25 every night? Me neither. I’m not saying it’s the only reason Do No Harm had the lowest ratings for a primetime drama premier ever, but it certainly didn’t help. It’s hard to relate to a character that’s so specific and so bizarre.

Familiar in Fantasy

But that doesn’t mean that you can’t do fantasy. Far from it. Fantasy and science fiction give writers immense creative freedom to explore new worlds and examine what it means to be human in unique contexts. Otherworldly characters do risk alienating the audience. I mean, who knows what it’s like to be a vampire or a hobbit? But there are still ways we can relate to these characters.

The key is to focus on the similarities between your audience and your subject matter. I don’t know anything about the blood feud between vampires and werewolves, but I can relate to forbidden love. I’ve never had to throw a ring of power into Mount Doom, but I’ve had to face difficult situations that even my closest fur-footed friends could not help me with.

A few months ago, Merriam-Webster posted this fantastic article looking at the different artistic approaches between Star Trek and Star Wars. Trust me, I know a lot of trekkies, but Star Trek doesn’t have quite the same mass following as the Force. The article’s definitely worth a look (and it really emphasizes the importance of diction, which I discuss here).

Empathy

All of these tricks have one goal: building empathy between your characters and your audience. You want your audience to go on an emotional journey with your characters. That’s empathy. And it’s different than sympathy.

If you hear about a successful lawyer who was diagnosed with AIDS, outed for being gay, and then fired for being outed, you might feel bad for him. That’s sympathy. But you don’t know what it’s like to be him. In 2017, AIDS isn’t as scary as it used to be and most people really don’t care if you’re gay. But when you watch Philadelphia, you go on a journey with Andrew Beckett. You learn what it was like to get AIDS in the early 90s. You experience the fear and the stigmatism. That’s empathy.

To illustrate the point further, consider two of M. Night Shyamalan’s films. In The Sixth Sense, we feel empathy for Dr. Malcolm Crowe. We go on a journey with him. We, the audience, learn that Dr. Crowe is (spoiler alert) dead at the same time he does. It’s just as shocking to him as it is to us. That’s why it works.

In The Village, however, something felt distinctly off. There was just something about The Village that didn’t add up. Most of the characters knew that the village and the monsters were a trick. You know who didn’t know? The audience. It was a gimmick.

Audiences felt taken advantage of and they didn’t like it. Ivy Walker, the blind main character, never learned the truth. It’s hard to go on a journey with someone who doesn’t go on a journey. Sure, you might feel bad for her. You may have sympathy for her. She does live with a bunch of delusional, conniving sociopaths, after all. But it’s difficult to experience empathy with her because you’re going on completely different journeys.

“But wait!” some of you are saying. “Isn’t that just dramatic irony? You know where the audience knows something that the main character doesn’t?” Why yes. Yes it is. In this clip from Harold Lloyd’s 1930 film Feet First, you can see dramatic irony in action. While he’s stuck in the sack, he doesn’t know that he’s being hoisted up on scaffolding. The same is true about the cigar that is thrown out a window and later dropped in the man’s hat and the bucket of paint that is knocked off of the scaffolding.

But you only get an effective emotional payout—you only get empathy—when Lloyd and the other characters come to the same realization as you.

Othello is one massive play of dramatic irony. We all know Iago is trying to ruin Othello’s life. Othello has no idea. When he finds out, his life is destroyed and Iago gets his comeuppance. If Othello was just about someone’s life turning to shit, it wouldn’t be a very good play. It’s the emotional journey and Othello’s realization that he’s been duped that make Othello a great tragedy.

If Ivy Walker learned the truth about her asshole parents, flipped them the bird, and wandered out of the village into the real world like Truman Burbank at the end of The Truman Show, it might of worked. Probably not, but it would have been better.

When you get right down to it, it’s hard to get people to like you, especially with all of your flaws, if you’ve only got ninety minutes to do it, and you’re not even a real person. But these tips will point you in the right direction.

Unity of Time (or why biopics have good acting, but are really boring)

A few years ago, a biopic about Magaret Thatcher came out. Merryl Streep did a fantastic job in the titular role of The Iron Lady. She won several awards including the Oscar for Best Actress. But as a whole, the movie was virtually unwatchable. Halfway through, I started folding laundry, and by the end, I was scrolling through Twitter. The reason is that The Iron Lady violated an ancient, very clearly spelled out screenwriting rule: the Unity of Time.

Remember, drama isn’t real life. Your real life is probably pretty boring. You wake up. You commute. You suffer through work. You commute home. You play with your kids, watch TV, go to bed, and do it all over again. Not that gripping. When something out-of-the-ordinary happens (your daughter is abducted, you see dead people, an alien lands in your back yard) we have a story. Or at least the beginning of one. But in order to keep that drama, we also need a sense of urgency.

Imminent, terminal cancer like we saw in Breaking Bad (even if it’s mostly manifested as a cough) launched one of the best television shows ever made. An increased risk of Alzheimer’s at some vague future point probably won’t. Film happens now! That’s why it’s written in the present tense. And if nothing’s happening, your audience will tune out. The audience’s ordinary lives (i.e. Twitter) have just become more interesting than your movie.

This isn’t a new idea. Aristotle pointed it out over two thousand years ago. (I did say ancient.) For those of who you like classical learning, check out Aristotle’s Poetics. And if ancient Greek is a bit much for you, Michael Tierno did an excellent job updating it in Aristotle’s Poetics for the Screenwriter.

The key thing for this article is Aristotle’s Unity of Time. To sum it up, the action of the drama (screenplay), should take place in as little time as possible. I think it was Robert McKee who said that a script should be as long as it needs to be, then it should end. Fox’s 24 with Kiefer Sutherland took this to the extreme when each episode happened in real time. One season of twenty-four episodes covered a single day.

That’s a little over the top and the premise wore thin as the seasons went on. But you’ll notice many of your favorite thrillers take place over the course of a few hours or days. If your daughter’s been abducted and we see the seasons changing, it’s hard to hold suspense throughout the script. If the bad guys haven’t done her in over the past few months, she’ll probably be okay for another fifteen minutes. Sounds like a good time to check Twitter.

This is also the reason montages are generally weak storytelling. The “learning to play baseball,” “series of quirky dates,” “watching your business grow” montages get the point across, but aren’t good drama. Are you telling me that your emotionally immature love interests who fought like cats and dogs for the first twenty pages suddenly went on a series of fun, carefree dates to a musical montage and nothing interesting happened? That’s kind of whacky. I thought they were more interesting than that. And yes, you will see these kinds of montages all the time. That doesn’t mean you should do them. You’re better than that.

And of course, this is why biopics tend to be kind of boring. It’s hard to condense someone’s entire life (Whitey Bulger in Black Mass, Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, J. Edgar Hoover in J. Edgar) into a compelling story arc. (The first half of Life of Pi literally made me want to throw a TV. In another post, I may tell you how that movie could have been immeasurably better.) At the same time, these movies often have fantastic performances. Now you know why those two things aren’t necessarily related.

Just this Thursday, I heard NPR’s Eric Deggans review the amazing true story of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. In it he praises Oprah Winfrey’s performance as “one of her best roles yet,” but criticizes the film for being “uneven” with “deeply affecting moments” that “don’t quite knit together into a consistently powerful film.” Does not surprise me in the least.

If you’re writing a script, and it’s not keeping readers on the edge of their seats, Unity of Time may be your problem. Add a concrete deadline. “Get that report on my desk by tomorrow morning.” “You have until midnight to deliver the money.” “Death Star approaching. Estimated time to firing range: fifteen minutes.” The added pressure tests your characters’ mettle and focuses your story. No time to stop and smell the roses with a Death Star on the horizon.

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Aristotle also advocated for unity of space and action, theories I may discuss in another post. But right now I think I’m going to advocate unity of blog subjects and see you in the next post.

A Roundabout Review of “Medici: Masters of Florence”

New screenwriters will often ask if they have to follow “the rules.” The short answer is, “Yes.” Why? Keep reading.

There are some great scripts that break “the rules.” But there are many, many, many terrible scripts that break “the rules,” and it’s easier to understand why the rules exist by watching some of these terrible movies (and TV shows). Medici: Masters of Florence, currently available on Netflix, is one of them. Here are some of my thoughts organized with the same headings used for industry standard coverage.

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STRUCTURE

You’ve probably heard of the three-act structure. I alluded to it in my previous post about Extraordinary Worlds. The purpose of the first act (AKA “The Beginning”) is to establish the characters and their needs. It builds empathy between the characters and the audience and gives the audience an idea of where this script is headed.

Medici starts by killing off Dustin Hoffman. We don’t know who he is. We don’t know why we should like him. Maybe it’s a good thing he’s being killed off. We immediately jump to Richard Madden (apparently Hoffman’s son) who is trying to decide how to respond to his political rivals. Again, it’s a little unclear who Madden is or why we should like him.

Hoffman’s death is cut together with scenes of Hoffman’s own funeral making the opening sequence even more confusing. Once we establish that A) Hoffman was the Medici patriarch, B) he is dead, C) Madden is his son, and D) Madden must now fill his ample shoes, Medici immediately jumps to a flashback.

In general, flashbacks are poor storytelling. Scripts are written in present tense because they happen now, and now is important. Flashbacks tell the audience that whatever happened then is more important than what is happening now. Well if then is more important than now, why not have your script take place then?

Although Madden’s hair is different and Hoffman is inexplicably alive, there’s no real way to distinguish now from then, continuing Medici’s theme of baffling confusion. This confusion is the bigger sin than merely using a flashback. The flashback not only fails to contribute to Madden’s contemporary story (his appointment to the signoria), but makes the show difficult to follow. And just when you thought the show was about to buckle down and do some proper storytelling, it dives into a montage.

Montages, like flashbacks, are generally poor storytelling. They can be used for a variety of reasons, but are most frequently used to compress time. In sports movies, you can’t show your heroes playing all 162 regular season games, but you can show a montage. When your warrior is training for the final battle, you don’t bore your audience with thirty minutes of calisthenics and meditation, you use a montage. In the pilot episode of Medici when Madden falls hopelessly in love with a laundress and drives a rift between him and his father, you should probably play that out for a few episodes. Well, they used a montage, and it was laughable. How can we possibly care about the love of his life when she’s only on screen for three minutes?!

Similarly (back to now), a surgeon who performed an illegal autopsy on Hoffman blackmails Madden. Madden informs his consigliere to pay the surgeon 100 Florins. When the consigliere pays the money, the surgeon demands 1000 Florins. Seems like a pretty important scene, right? We never get to see it! Madden’s consigliere just tells him about it in painful exposition a few scenes later. Why wouldn’t you use that scene?!

To sum up structure, there’s no real first act, the story is difficult to follow, the pacing is wildly off, and important scenes are not included in the script. Moving on…

CHARACTER

Hoffman and Madden may develop into interesting, likeable characters, but they certainly don’t start out that way. Madden is dour and brooding. Hoffman is, well, dead. In the flashback he kind of seems like a jerk. Maybe they’ll redeem themselves, but I’m not sure if I’ll watch long enough to see that. (Not all protagonists need to be likable, but they do need a redeeming quality. This is where Blake Snyder got the name for his fantastic screenwriting book Save the Cat.)

Madden’s lover (and most of the tertiary characters) are paper-thin. She’s posing for a group of artists only partially clothed. Despite all of the other eligible young men in the room, she and Madden are instantly smitten with each other. This leads to the aforementioned three-minute sex montage. (Now that I think about it, maybe it was just three minutes of sex. Again, the story was hard to follow.) In any case, it’s not the kind of deep reflection on the human condition that leads to memorable characters. Oh, by the way, she’s scared out of Madden’s life a few minutes later by his dad’s henchmen. (Another scene that is only talked about, not shown.)

There’s a brother, a not particularly intimidating antagonist, the consigliere, a cameo by the artist Donatello, and a handful of other forgettable characters who take themselves too seriously. The only entertaining person is Steven Waddington who plays a cheeky cardinal who bribes his way to the papacy.

DIALOGUE

But wait, it gets worse! If you’ve ever studied Uta Hagen (It’s bonus credit, but I do recommend reading Respect for Acting), you know that actors need motivation. When they lack motivation, your scene runs a very high risk of exposition. After all, if your characters have no motivation, they have nothing to do, and will just end up talking.

In Medici, there’s the awful scene where Hoffman’s rival sort of threatens Madden, but mostly explains that the signoria is rigged. Then there’s the scene where Madden’s wife explains that she’s been a loyal wife who wants to be part of his business decisions. But the one that really takes the cake is the scene between Hoffman and Madden about Hoffman’s legacy.

In it, Hoffman waxes philosophic about his legacy, complains about Madden’s desire to be an artist (another terrible example where “showing” would have been more powerful than “telling”), and explains his scheme for gaining power. Why have this elaborate, dull conversation full of exposition? Because it’s the middle ages and they have nothing better to do when travelling from place to place?

Now they could have been trying to convince someone to join their cause. Hoffman could have been scolding his son wasting resources on art. Or they could have been doing something visually interesting while having a boring conversation (another great tip from Blake Snyder that he calls “Pope in the pool”). Instead, it’s five mind-numbing minutes of exposition. C’mon, people.

The other thing that really kills the scene (while this isn’t in the writer’s purview), is Hoffman’s accent. Everyone else in the series sounds like they’re doing Shakespeare. Hoffman sounds like they pulled him out of a dock in the Bronx. The tough guy persona could work well, but the juxtaposition is distracting.

UGH…

On top of all of this, there was a painful and distracting soundtrack. It was almost as though they realized the show was horrible and were trying to draw your attention away from it.

With the difficultly of following the story, lack of empathy for the characters, and laughable dialogue, it was really hard to care. I ended up reading about the Medici on Wikipedia—which I found much more interesting—and frankly don’t know how the episode ended. More importantly, I don’t care.

This may not be a glowing review, but I do recommend you watch the pilot episode of Medici: Masters of Florence. It’s much easier to understand “the rules” when you see what happens if you break them.