Save the Cat! (7 page)

If your movie idea can in any way be considered a Rites of Passage tale, then these films are fair game for screening. Like the steps of acceptance outlined in Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's
On Death and Dying,
the structure of this story type is charted in the hero's grudging acceptance of the forces of nature that he cannot control or comprehend, and the victory comes with the hero's ability to ultimately smile.

BUDDY LOVE

The classic "buddy story" is a type that I think of as a creation of the Movie Age. Though there were a few great buddy tales
(Don Quixote,
for example), this category really didn't take off as a story form until the dawn of cinema. My theory is that the buddy movie was invented by a screenwriter who realized that his hero had no one to react
to.
There was just this big, empty space where interior monologue and description is found in fiction. And the screenwriter suddenly thought "what if" his hero had someone to debate important story issues
with?
Thus the classic "buddy movie" was born, and from Laurel and Hardy to Bob Hope and Bing Crosby to
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
to the antics of
Wayne's World
(both 1 & 2), it has become a movie staple. Two guys talking to each other like 48
Hours
; two girls talking to each other like
Thelma & Louise;
two fish talking to each other like
Finding Nemo
— they all work because stories of "me and my best friend" will always resonate. Again, they're very human and based on universal circumstances. These are stories you can pitch to a caveman and both he (
and
his buddy!) will get it.

The secret of a good buddy movie is that it is actually a love story in disguise. And, likewise, all love stories are just buddy movies with the potential for sex.
Bringing Up Bab
y
, Pat and Mike, Woman of the Year, Two Weeks Notice, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
are — genre-wise —just sophisticated
Laurel and Hard
y movies where one of the buddies is wearing a skirt. And yet the rules for these, drama or comedy, sex or no sex, are the same. At first the "buddies" hate each other. (Where would they have to go if they didn't?) But their adventure together brings out the fact that they need each other; they are, in essence, incomplete halves of a whole. And realizing this leads to even more conflict. Who can tolerate
needing
anybody?

Penultimately, the All Is Lost moment (more on this in Chapter Four) which occurs toward the end of each of these stories is: separation, a fight, a goodbye-and-good-riddance! that is, in reality, none of these. It's just two people who can't stand the fact that they don't live as well without each other, who will have to surrender their egos to win. And when the final curtain comes down, they have done just that.

Often, as in
Rain Man,
one of the buddies is the story's hero and will do all or most of the changing (i.e., Tom Cruise) while the other buddy acts as a catalyst of that change and will do slight or no changing (i.e., Dustin Hoffman). I have been in many story discussions about this dynamic.
Whose stor
y
is it??
is what it very often boils down to.
Lethal Weapon
is like that to an extent. It's Danny Glover's story. Mel Gibson is the agent of change. And though Mel will not be suicidal by the story's end, it's Danny Glover whose transformation we care most about. These "catalyst" Buddy Love tales, in which a "being" comes into one's life, affects it, and leaves, is a subset of the Buddy Love dynamic and an important one to keep in mind. Many "boy and his dog" tales are like this, including
E. T.

If you're writing a buddy movie or love story, either drama or comedy, the dynamics of the Buddy Love structure are a must to know. Sit down with a dozen of these, pop em into your DVD player, and get ready to be amazed by how similar they all are. Is this stealing? Is Sandra Bullock ripping off Katherine Hepburn? Should Cary Grant's estate sue Hugh Grant for copyright infringement? Of course not. It's just good storytelling. And the beats are the same for a reason.

Because they always work.

WHYDUNIT

We all know that evil lurks in the hearts of men. Greed happens. Murder happens. And unseen evildoers are responsible for it all. But the "who" is never as interesting as the "why." Unlike the Golden Fleece, a good Whydunit isn't about the hero changing, it's about the audience discovering something about human nature they did not think was possible before the "crime" was committed and the "case" began. Like
Citizen Kane,
a classic Whydunit, the story is about seeking the innermost chamber of the human heart and discovering something unexpected, something dark and often unattractive, and the answer to the question: Why?

Chinatown
is perhaps the best Whydunit ever made, and a textbook example of great screenwriting. It's one of those movies that you can see a thousand times and drive deeper into smaller and smaller rooms of the Nautilus shell with each viewing. What makes it a great Whydunit is what makes all classic Whydunits work. From
China Syndrome
to
All the President's Men
to
JFK
to
Mystic River,
every detective story or social drama, these stories walk on the dark side. They take us to the shadowy part of the street. And the rules are simple. We in the audience are the detectives, ultimately. While we have a surrogate or surrogates onscreen doing the work for us, it's

we who must ultimately sift through the information, and we who must be shocked by what we find.

If your movie is about this type of discovery, take a look at the great Whydunits. Note how a surrogate onscreen represents us. And see why the investigation into the dark side of humanity is often an investigation into ourselves in an M.C. Escher-kaleidoscopic-reptile-eating-its-own-tail kinda way. That's what a good Whydunit does — it turns the x-ray machine back on ourselves and asks: "Are
we
this evil?"

THE FOOL TRIUMPHANT

The "Fool" is an important character in myth and legend and has been forever. On the outside, he's just the Village Idiot, but further examination reveals him to be the wisest among us. Being such an underdog gives the Fool the advantage of anonymity, and also makes everyone underestimate his ability, allowing him or her the chance to ultimately shine.

The Fool in the movies goes back to Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd. Little men, silly men, overlooked men, who triumph by luck and pluck and the specialness that comes from not giving up despite the odds. In modern movies,
Dave, Being There, Amadeus, Forrest Gump,
and many of the movies of Steve Martin, Bill Murray, and Ben Stiller come to mind as examples of how this tradition has evolved and why it will always have a place.

The operating principal of "The Fool Triumphant" is to set the underdog Fool against a bigger, more powerful, and often "establishment" bad guy. Watching a so-called "idiot" get the goat of those society deems to be the winners in life gives us all hope, and pokes fun at the structures we take so seriously in our day-to-day lives. Thus, no establishment is too sacred to be skewered, from the White House
(Dave)
to success in the business world
(The Jerk)
to the overblown reverence for the importance of our culture
(Forrest Gump).

The working parts of a Fool Triumphant movie are simple: an underdog — who is seemingly so inept and so unequipped for life that everyone around him discounts his odds for success (and does so repeatedly in the set-up) — and an institution for that underdog to attack. Often, the Fool has an accomplice, an "insider" who is in on the joke and can't believe the Fool is getting away with his "ruse": Salieri in
Amadeus,
the Doctor in
Being There,
Lieutenant Dan in
Forrest Gump.
These characters often get the brunt of the slapstick, the guy at the end of the Rube Goldberg chain of events the Fool sets into motion, who ultimately gets the pie in the face, like Herbert Lom in
The Pink Panther.
Their crime is being close to the idiot, seeing him for what he really is, and being stupid enough to try to interfere.

Special Fools, whether they're in comedies or dramas like
Charly
and
Awakenings,
offer us a glimpse of the life of the outsider. We all feel like that at times, and tales of the Fool Triumphant give us the vicarious thrill of victory.

INSTITUTIONALIZED

Where would we be without each other? And when we band together as a group with a common cause, we reveal the ups and downs of sacrificing the goals of the few for those of the many. Thus, the genre I call "Institutionalized" tells stories about groups, institutions, and "families." These stories are special because they both honor the institution and expose the problems of losing one's identity to it.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
is about a group of mental patients.
American Beauty
is about a group of modern suburbanites.

M*A*S*H
is about the American military.
The Godfather
is about a Mafia family. Each has a breakout character whose role is to expose the group goal as a fraud. Jack Nicholson, Kevin Spacey, Donald Sutherland, and Al Pacino, respectively, carry this role in these films.

The reason I've dubbed these stories Institutionalized is that the group dynamic these tales tell is often crazy and even self-destructive. "Suicide Is Painless, " the theme song of
M*A*S*H,
isn't so much about the insanity of war as the insanity of the herd mentality. When we put on a uniform, be it the uniform of the Army or a comfortable cotton shirt with a little polo player over the pocket, we give up who we are to a certain extent. And these movies are all about the pros and cons of putting the group ahead of ourselves. Again, this is a very "caveman" kind of story. Loyalty to the group sometimes flies in the face of common sense, even survival, but we do it. And we have done it forever. To watch others fight that battle, just like we do every day, is why this genre is so popular... and so
primal.

Often movies of the Institutionalized category will be told from the point of view of a newcomer. He is us — a virgin who is new to this group and who is being brought into it by someone who is more experienced. Jane Fonda in
9 to
5 and Tom Hulce in
Animal House
are examples. For any world in which the technology, lingo, or rules are not familiar to the average viewer, these characters can be invaluable relayers of exposition. They can literally ask "How does that work? " and allow you to explain the importance to everybody. It's away to show what is often a "crazy" world to us civilians.

Ultimately, all the stories in this category come down to a question: Who's crazier, me or them? All one need do to understand how sacrificing oneself for the group can be an insane proposition is to check out Al Pacino's face at the end of
Godfather
2. Here is a
guy who has committed suicide for the good of the family and "tradition." And look where it got him. It is just as shocking as Kevin Spacey's last-minute discovery in
American Beauty
and mirrors, almost exactly, Jack Nicholson's blank post-operative expression in
Cuckoo's Nest.
Why? Because it's the same movie, with the same message, told in extremely different and moving ways.

But they all work for a reason.

Because each movie followed the rules.

And they gave us the same thing... only different.

SUPERHERO

The "Superhero" genre is the exact opposite of Dude with a Problem and can best be defined by its opposite definition: An extraordinary person finds himself in an ordinary world. Like Gulliver tied to the beach by the Lilliputians, a Superhero tale asks us to lend human qualities, and our sympathy, to a super being, and identify with what it must be like to have to deal with the likes of us little people. No wonder so many brainy geeks and teens read comic books! They don't have far to go to get in sync and identify with what it's like to be so misunderstood.

This genre goes beyond stories about guys in capes and tights, however. It is more than the Marvel universe or the DC Comics characters.
Gladiator
and
A Beautiful Mind
(both Russell Crowe vehicles — another
hmmm, interesting
) are good examples of human superheroes that are challenged by the mediocre world around them. In both those films, it is the tiny minds that surround the hero that are the real problem. Don't they get it? Well, no they don't. That's why being "special" is so difficult.
Frankenstein, Dracula,
and
X-Men
are the same in this regard. Ultimately, all superhero tales are about being "different," a feeling with which