John August

Big Fish

Rethinking motivation

Big Fish, Charlie, Projects, So-Called Experts, Words on the page, Writing Process

I’m in the planning stages of my next project, which is honestly my favorite part of the writing process. There’s no emotional cost to killing unwritten scenes, no niggling logic flaws, no exhaustion at page 72.

Plotting a movie is mostly figuring out who the characters are, and what obstacles they’ll face. In film school, we were taught to look at character motivation as the combination of two questions: ((My recollection is that these ideas are featured in Syd Field, but I’m not inclined to look it up, for fear of sparking of an enraged tangent about how damaging I think most screenwriting books are.))

1. What does the character *want?*
2. What does the character *need?*

The implication is that your characters should be able to articulate what they want (true love, the championship, revenge) at or near the start of the movie, but remain clueless to what they truly need (self-respect, forgiveness, literacy) until quite late in the story.

The screenwriter-creator leaves explicit prayers unanswered, but performs subtle psychological revelation so that the characters exit profoundly changed.

Like most screenwriting hackery, this want-vs-need concept works just often enough to seem useful. You can trot out the familiar examples. Every character in The Wizard of Oz can be addressed this way (the Scarecrow wants a brain, but needs to realize just how smart he is). Ditto for The Sound of Music, though it gets a bit vague amid the younger Von Trapps.

Of my films, Big Fish and Charlie and Chocolate Factory come closest to fitting this template, though it requires a bit of hammering to get there. In Big Fish, Will Bloom begins the movie *wanting* to find the truth in his father’s tales, but he ultimately *needs* to accept that his father is contained within these tales. In Charlie, Willy Wonka *wants* an heir, but *needs* a family. ((Charlie Bucket *wants* a Golden Ticket, but *needs*…well, Charlie doesn’t really need anything, which is another argument for why Wonka is the protagonist, and Charlie the antagonist.))

Bolstered by these two examples, I spent a few hours this week looking at the characters in my project through the want-vs-need lens, before finally concluding it is complete and utter bullshit. Trying to distinguish between characters’ wants and needs is generally frustrating and almost universally pointless. The fact that I can answer the question for Big Fish and Charlie after the fact doesn’t make it a meaningful planning tool.

I’ve written about character motivation a [few](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/write-scene) [times](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/clarification-on-point-one), but hadn’t thought it necessary to define my objectives. But I think it can be simplified down to a single question:

**Why is the character doing what he’s doing?**

Here’s what I like about this definition:

* **It scales well.** You can ask this question about a character in a specific scene (“Why is he trying to get in the bank vault?”) or the entire movie (“Why is he racing in the Iditarod?”)

* **It implies visible action.** Characters in movies need to do something. That sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how many scripts slather motivation on like spackle to fill the holes. ( “He has OCD because his father abandoned him.” Umm, okay, so why is he robbing a bank?)

* **It can be both concrete and psychological.** In Go, why is Ronna trying to make the drug deal with Todd Gaines? (A) Because she’s about to be evicted. (B) To prove to her friends (and herself) that she can. Both are true.

When I started asking this question, many of my concerns with the project I’m writing slipped away. The problem wasn’t character motivation, but how I was looking for it.

That said, you need to be careful not to stop at the first easy answer: *Why is he racing in the Iditarod?* “To win the prize money.” The better answer will likely lead to a better story. *Why is he racing in the Iditarod?* “To beat his ex-wife, the five-time champion.” “To catch the man who killed his brother.” “Because the ghost of his childhood dog is haunting him.”

For the record, I’m not writing Snow Dogs 4.

And I barely know who she is now

Awards, Big Fish, Projects

At the Grammy Awards last night, my friend Jen pointed to presenter [Miley Ray Cyrus](http://imdb.com/name/nm1415323/) and said, “You know she was in Big Fish, right?”

I insisted that was impossible, and immediately tried to pull up IMDb on my iPhone in order to prove her wrong. But the network inside Staples Center was massively overwhelmed, likely with other iPhone users trying to distract themselves from Aretha Franklin’s dress. Well, not so much her dress as her shoulders, which weren’t adequately contained within said dress. The fact that the two acts I was most eager to see — Foo Fighters and Amy Winehouse — were performing from other locations added an extra level of frustration. I got to see Amy Winehouse! On a TV! With a few thousand other folks! I would have live-blogged it, except there was no connection.

Checking later, it turns out my friend was absolutely right: Miley played Ruthie in Big Fish, one of the kids who spies on the witch. Only her credited name was Destiny, which seems an appropriate beginning to her later career as Hannah Montana, #1 movie star in America.

You know who else made her American debut in Big Fish? Marion Cotillard, who’s nominated for an Oscar this year for Ma La Vie En Rose.

So, my advice to a young actress? Be in Big Fish.

Blu-ray on a cold day

Big Fish, Strike

With Warners picking Blu-ray, and Paramount [rumored](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dc409afa-bd75-11dc-b7e6-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1) to have an escape clause letting it follow right behind, I finally bought my first Blu-ray disc: Big Fish. And a PS3 to play it on. ((Yes, I could have gotten something other than a PS3. But it was a very handy excuse for buying one. You know, for research.))

Movies I’ve written are available on both formats, so I didn’t really care who won in the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray battle. I just didn’t want to get stuck with the loser. ((Of course, isn’t really “over.” Even if all the studios sign on to Blu-ray, there may be alternative producers (porn, for example) who find a good reason why the other format is better, such as more flexible licensing terms. So here’s hoping that “universal” players are forthcoming, eliminating the confusion much the way the CD-RW+/- has largely gone away.)) Or, better put, I wanted to pick the format that would lose last. Any disc-based format is ultimately going to fall as internet distribution increases. That’s the future. (And a primary issue in the WGA strike.)

Because you’ll ask: [The Nines](http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FNines-Ryan-Reynolds%2Fdp%2FB000YW8RN6%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Ddvd%26qid%3D1198301424%26sr%3D8-1&tag=johnaugustcom-20) is a standard DVD. While it’s possible that there would be Blu-ray version at some point, it’s not on any calendar.

When I was working with [Blue Collar](http://bluecollarproductions.com/), the folks who developed the menus and special features for The Nines, they were salivating over the sophisticated features you can build into Blu-ray discs, such interactive, animated guides with transparency. Without knowing the real technology behind it, it seems to move beyond the “decision-tree-with-loops” setup of current DVDs and closer to the realm of real programming.

Most of all, Blu-ray discs are big. My dream — which I pitched at last year’s Sundance Film Festival — is to use the extra capacity to include compressed clips of all the original source material, so ambitious viewers could recut the movie on their own systems. That’s a big thing to ask for Sony to support, so reasonable success with this month’s DVD release will be a major factor.