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Let me ask you a question. Have you ever watched a movie or read a script and afterwards you thought… “That was decent. It was well done.” But it left you with absolutely no feelings whatsoever? It didn’t move you. It didn’t make you think. This is the majority of Hollywood movies out there, and it happens because Hollywood has created a middle-of-the-road formula that they’re afraid to deviate from. It leads us to one of the most primal truths about the business.
Hollywood knows how to make a movie that feels like a movie.
But they struggle to put together a movie that makes you feel.
And the reason that’s important is because you can’t make a great movie unless you make the audience feel something. So how do you make an audience feel? Probably the best way is to create strong relatable characters who go through a powerful transformation over the course of the story. Their transformation often feels like our transformation, which gives us that supercharged kick when leaving the theater – that lasting feeling that’s going to inspire us to tell our friends about the film.
Here’s the problem though. A lot of the transformations characters go through in movies are similar. You have the selfish hero who becomes selfless. You have the cowardly hero who becomes brave. So even when you do a good job with your characters, you still run the risk of your script feeling similar to all the other scripts out there.
And this is where today’s observation comes in. It actually occurred when I stumbled upon a cable-showing of “Castaway.” You know, the Tom Hanks movie where the guy is stuck on the island. In that movie, the second leading character…….. is a volleyball. Now I want you to think about that for a second. This is not an animated film. It’s not a comedy. This is a straightforward drama. And one of the characters is a volleyball.
How many ways could they have fucked this up? Talk about taking a risk. This choice could’ve fallen flat on its face. There’s actually a scene in the movie where Tom Hanks is CRYING because Wilson the Volleyball is floating away in the ocean and he can’t save him.
That got me thinking about other great screenplays/movies. And I began to notice a trend. They all TOOK BIG CHANCES. Because see, here’s the thing. I can teach you how to structure a story. I can teach you how to build a character with flaws. But unless you take chances in your story, your script will never truly catch anyone’s attention. You need to do something different, something that you’re not typically supposed to do. And the bigger the chance you take, the bigger the reward will be.
Want proof? What’s the biggest movie of all time? It’s probably Star Wars. That movie takes the biggest chance of any movie I’ve ever seen in my life. It creates a goofy religion where people can die, turn into ghosts, and guide others, inside a FANTASY SPACE EPIC, a genre that’s already got a million crazy things going on in it. And what happened? That religion, “The Force,” became a part of the lexicon. Every single person in the world knows what you’re talking about when you bring up “the force.”
Here’s the scary thing though. Taking chances means a much higher chance of failure. And the bigger the chance you take, the more embarrassing the failure can be. Our friend George Lucas has seen this play out on the opposite end of the spectrum. Jar-Jar Binks. I give it to Lucas for going balls out and taking a chance with this character. Chastise him all you want, but this was a HUGE roll of the dice. Why, then, didn’t it pay off like the Force? Why was it such a disaster?
The question becomes, can you quantify chance-taking? Is there a way to do it that allows you a better chance at success than failure? Or is it, by its very nature, a crapshoot? The whole idea behind taking a chance is that you have no idea what the outcome will be.
Well, when I started looking at the chances that have paid off in films, I did start to notice a trend. The chances that tend to pay off the biggest are the ones that anchor directly into your hero’s development. Let’s go right back to the Force, the biggest chance ever taken in a movie. Why did it work? Well, I’m not going to pretend that there was only one reason. But it’s not a coincidence that the bulk of the Force was tied directly to Luke Skywalker’s development. He needed to believe in himself, which was represented by him believing in the Force.
We can see this with The Matrix too. What’s one of the biggest chances The Matrix took? Its characters only fought with kung-fu. Now I want you to think about that for a second. Sentient agents in a machine decided to fight with humans via kung-fu. Why?? Who the fuck knows? It makes no sense. That’s why it was such a risk. BUT it totally worked. And a big reason for that was that kung-fu was tied directly into Neo’s development as a character. That early scene with Morpheus teaching him how to fight? It’s not really about kung-fu. It’s about Neo believing in himself.
One of my favorite movies, Field of Dreams, does the same thing. There are some weird freaking chances they take in that screenplay. Cornfields talk to characters. A guy builds a baseball field on his farm. We go back in time. There are baseball-playing ghosts that, for some reason, only half the people can see. But it works because it’s tied directly into Ray Kinsella’s development. We know that these crazy chances being taken are going to end up in Ray finally figuring out what’s missing in his life.
The second level of chance-taking can be boiled down to emotional rooting. If you’re going to take a chance, look for one that has an emotional connection to the story. And you may notice a pattern here. If we’re attached to and rooting for a character, then anything you tie to that character, no matter how absurd, we have a better chance of buying into. So in the case of Wilson the Volleyball, that was Tom Hanks’ only outlet to avoid loneliness – was creating this companion. Wilson became his best friend during a time when he desperately needed someone. So no shit we’re crying when he floats off in the ocean. We’re emotionally invested in the bond these two developed while he was on the island. If Tom Hanks decides to masturbate every morning on the top of a coconut tree, sure that’s taking a chance, but it’s not rooted in any emotion, so it feels random and “off.”
The third level of chances is where we start to get more superficial. I think these are the most dangerous chances to take because they’re based almost solely on feel. Look at Guardians of the Galaxy. In that movie, you have a wise-talking machine-gun-wielding raccoon as one of the main characters. Oh, and let’s not forget that another one of the characters is a tree. Those are really weird and out there chances. But I will say this about these types of chances – they work best if they stick with the tone of the movie. Guardians was a wild wacky funny ride, so we’re more likely to believe in a talking fox here than had you written an intense drama, or a supernatural flick.
The last level of chances comes down to structure – how you physically decide to tell your story. Are you going to tell it like Pulp Fiction? Where the story is told randomly out of a order? Are you going to tell it like Richard Linklater’s “Slacker,” where we move from one character to the next, never to see the previous characters again? These choices have some of the farthest-reaching implications since they affect the entire read (where as a character like Wilson is only involved in part of the story). But I will say that if you take a chance with your structure and COMMIT to it, people will usually go along with it. For example, Pulp Fiction wouldn’t have worked if the first half of the movie was a straight narrative and the second half an out-of-order one. That chance would’ve been too jumbled and inconsistent for people to buy into.
And still, even if you follow all these guidelines, there’s still no guarantee that your chance is going to pay off. That’s why it’s considered taking a chance. For example, I just reviewed Sorkin’s “Steve Jobs” biopic in my newsletter (Are you not on my newsletter? Why not??) and he establishes a very risky structure, just like Pulp Fiction or Slacker did, but it proved boring. It just didn’t keep the script moving fast enough. And that’s one of the tough things about taking chances. Is its not just taking the chance. It’s how that chance fits in with all the other variables of your screenplay. If the other variables aren’t good, then probably no chance you’re going to take will matter.
But I will say this. It seems to me like the chances that best pay off are the ones that are rooted in the emotion or the concept of the screenplay. As long as your chances are anchored in one of those two areas, you’re usually good. Look at “Her” for example. That’s a movie where one half of the featured romantic couple is never seen. In the entire movie! That’s a huge chance right there. But it made sense because that was the concept. A guy falls in love with his new operating system. It was pretty much the only way they could go.
I’m curious to hear what you guys have to say on this topic. What do you think constitutes a good risk or a good chance? Share your thoughts in the comments. I’ll start looking for the best comment to feature in the next newsletter!
