John August

Words on the page

One. Million. Dollars.

Words on the page

This fall’s ongoing financial indigestion is depressing, if not an actual capital-d Depression. The world’s smartest folks are busy asking difficult questions about the billions and trillions of dollars involved. I certainly don’t have the answers.

Instead, I’d like to attempt to answer a question that’s perplexed me for a while: What’s so special about one million dollars?

In movies, TV, and actual conversation it’s by far the most frequently quoted dollar figure to mean “rich,” despite inflation. The top-shelf reality competition shows (Survivor, The Amazing Race) use that as the prize figure. But it’s not just a lot of money. It’s been mythologized as the transformative tipping point between the life we have and some mythological Good Life in which profound satisfaction is possible.

Consider this discussion from Office Space:

PETER

Our high school guidance counselor used to ask us what you’d do if you had a million dollars and you didn’t have to work. And invariably what you’d say was supposed to be your career. So, if you wanted to fix old cars then you’re supposed to be an auto mechanic.

SAMIR

So what did you say?

PETER

I never had an answer. I guess that’s why I’m working at Initech.

MICHAEL

No, you’re working at Initech because that question is bullshit to begin with. If everyone listened to her, there’d be no janitors, because no one would clean shit up if they had a million dollars.

SAMIR

You know what I would do if I had a million dollars? I would invest half of it in low risk mutual funds and then take the other half over to my friend Asadulah who works in securities...

MICHAEL

Samir, you’re missing the point.

But he’s not. Samir has it right: the question of what you’d do if you had a million dollars is essentially the same as what you’d do with a million dollars. Sure, you could answer, “If I had a million dollars, I’d light myself on fire and jump out of a tree.” But the question strongly implies “What would you do that you couldn’t do right now if you had a million dollars.” And while rich people often do stupid things, stupidity itself is free.

And Michael is right, too. The question is sort of bullshit. I’d argue that the phrase “and you didn’t have to work” is easy to challenge. Could you really retire on a one-time windfall of a million dollars? Even before taxes and inflation, it’s [less than you think](http://www.usnews.com/articles/business/retirement/2008/06/03/is-1-million-enough-to-retire-on.html):

> If you drew down 4 percent of your $1 million nest egg every year, a share many financial advisers recommend as prudent, you would receive about $40,000 annually, before adjusting for inflation — a pretty comfortable salary outside major metropolitan areas, especially if your house is paid off. Of course, how far that $3,333 a month goes depends on your lifestyle, health, and inflation.

Forty thousand dollars is not what most Americans would consider rich. It’s not first-class to Paris.

Of course, this is logic talking. And our mythologizing of one million dollars is more emotional than rational. I have a few working hunches why a million dollars seems so special.

1. **We have no personal frame of reference for “million.”** Most Americans earn five figures ($10,000 to $99,999). If we buy a house, we’re likely dealing with six figures ($100,000 to $999,999). But few Americans will ever encounter seven figures in relation to their own finances. So it seems like a magical and unobtainable sum.

2. **All rich people are millionaires, so all millionaires must be rich.** This failure of the symmetric property has been pointed out in books like The Millionaire Next Door, which shows that cost-containment and steady investment is a more realistic lifestyle for the average millionaire. Along the same lines, having a million dollars isn’t the same as making a million dollars. It’s easy to confuse assets with income. When stocks and home prices were rising, an increasing number of Americans became millionaires on paper. ((“On paper” is really a terrible term, because I don’t know any millionaires who keep a million in gold laying around.)) But since that’s not spendable cash, it’s not what most people mean by millionaire.

3. **What matters is the million, not the actual value.** Americans would rather have the million dollars than 750,000 euros. And two million dollars doesn’t feel twice as good as one million.

When a million is meaningless
====

Despite these defenses, I think the million dollars’ cinematic days on top are numbered, and screenwriters would be wise to avoid the figure in scripts. It’s simply not enough money to have a clear meaning. Consider:

EVELYN

Have you met Tom, her fiancé? His apartment in New York cost almost a million dollars!

Is the proper response…

TAMI

I always knew she’d marry money.

or…

TAMI

What is that, a one-bedroom?

(In fact, a million could be as little as a loft.)

If you need to have characters talk about money, you’re much better off referring an object (or service) than its price.

EVELYN

Her ring cost more than my car.

TAMI

She gets her hair done by this woman who flies in from Paris. Can you imagine?

EVELYN

She ripped out the limestone in the bathroom because it wasn’t organic. Turns out they don’t make organic limestone. So she got this stone from Italy. Used to be a church.

Billion is the new million. Sort of.
====

For now, I think you can safely get away with calling a billionaire rich. ((I’m speaking of the U.S. definition of billion, which is a thousand million.)) Keep in mind, it’s a staggering amount of money, so any character thusly defined would have to have a plausible explanation. For example, rich as he is, Will Smith is likely not a billionaire. With rare exception, you become a billionaire though canny investments or lucky inheritance.

Do millionaires dream of being billionaires? I don’t golf, so I haven’t heard this topic come up in conversation. But my experience of earning money in Hollywood has been that one’s financial ambition caps out at a certain point. The dream of a million dollars is a life free from financial worry: paying for the mortgage, college, and retirement. Once those fears are addressed — at a figure likely significantly higher than one million dollars — there is less to reach for financially.

So while I don’t advocate using the million dollar figure in scripts, I think it still has some real-world years ahead of it as a psychological milestone. Wealth isn’t simply what you can buy; it’s how much protection you have from poverty. A million dollars may not be “rich,” but it’s a comforting distance from poor.

On creating emotion

Big Fish, Directors, Projects, QandA, Words on the page

questionmarkI am writing an extended essay in order to get my IB Diploma for school, and Mr. LaRue is my coordinator. My extended essay is about film, especially about emotions in film. I was wondering if you could help me out by answering a few questions.

What causes emotional catharsis in a movie?

What sort of components (lighting, sound, dialogue,…) have the most emotional effect on the viewers, and do you have any examples?

What techniques are used to produce emotions within the viewer of a movie?

What are some things that you have specifically done (relating to the screenplays that you have written) in order to produce emotions in a movie?

— Danielle
Fairview High School

Danielle is attending my former high school, so I feel some duty to steer her in the right direction, if not exactly answer her questions. But for readers who didn’t grow up in Boulder, Colorado, a little background is in order.

Boulder is a medium-sized (100,000) city tucked right into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. It has a much bigger national reputation than it should, largely because of its university (CU) and its reputation as a bastion for all things New Age-y. Mork and Mindy was set there, and quite believably; a man claiming to be an alien would not raise the slightest suspicion on its snowy streets.

There are two rival high schools in the city: Boulder High and Fairview. Except that Boulder High doesn’t really consider it a rivalry, because they’re too cool to give a shit. For example, [Josh Friedman](http://hucksblog.blogspot.com/) went to Boulder High, and would never need to answer a question from a student there, unless it was why his Terminator show glorifies violence at a time when G8 countries should be focusing on global debt relief.

It’s an accepted truth that schools are falling apart and today’s youth aren’t getting nearly the education older generations did, but by all accounts Fairview is actually a much more academically rigorous school now than when I attended. I took three AP classes, which would now be openly mocked by students like Danielle. I never wrote an extended essay about emotion in film. But if I did, I’d probably reach the following conclusions.

1. Emotional catharsis is a direct function of how much the audience identifies with the character(s). Catharsis is a journey through dark territory, and you don’t go on that trek unless you can put yourself in a given character’s place, and feel like you’re living that experience.

2. The triumvirate responsible for creating emotion are The Writer, who creates the character and lays out the obstacles; The Actor, who gives the character weight and breath; and The Director, who coordinates the technical elements (such as lighting, editing, and music) to achieve the emotional reaction desired.

3. An example from my own work: Will telling Edward the final story in Big Fish.

**GIANT SPOILER WARNING** if you haven’t seen the movie.

On a writing level, the moment wouldn’t work if we hadn’t invested time in seeing their dilemma from both sides: the frustrated son, the slippery father. The script sets up a lot of elements and characters for recalls: Karl the Giant, the shoes, the Girl in the River.

The performances are strong, with actors continuing threads established earlier. In particular, Billy Crudup tends to get overlooked here: because he’s so prickly earlier on, it’s particularly affecting to see him struggle to hold on.

Finally, Tim Burton directs the elements calmly. From visuals to music, he’s careful not to push too hard or too fast, letting the emotion kindle.

Good luck with the essay.

Keeping track of time

QandA, Words on the page

questionmarkI have recently finished writing a screenplay with a friend. It takes place in present day. Towards the end of the first act, we go to a flashback, 30 years earlier to 1978, when the main character was 8 years old. After the flashback, we come back to November of the next year.

So if the beginning of the film was in December 2008, we then cut to flashback in 1978, and come back to November of 2009. How would we label, or denote this? We were going to put TITLE OVER: November of the following year.

We felt that doing this might confuse people more, in thinking that it is just one year later than the flashback. We’re confused and want to make sure the reader isn’t confused.

It’s not clear from your example whether it’s important that the reader (and ultimately the viewer) know that it’s specifically 2008 — for instance, that it’s an election year. Most likely, it’s not important at all. The story is just set in “present day,” which happens to be 2008 or 2009. So I’d avoid any mention of the year except for the flashback, which is mostly to give a sense of relative ages and period setting.

Specifically, I’d recommend the following:

* Don’t say anything about the year until the flashback.
* Before that, if it’s important that it be December, give us a concrete visual (e.g. Christmas shopping) that lets us know the month, rather than a title over.
* For the flashback, don’t do a title over for the year. Just include [1978] in the sluglines.
* When you return to the present, mark [PRESENT DAY] in the first slugline. You don’t need to continue it after that.
* If you need to show that 11 months have passed, give us a clear story indicator. Something or someone has grown or changed in the interim. (If nothing has changed, why are you jumping forward anyway?)

A project I’m currently writing moves forward a lot in time, much in the way The Godfather or Goodfellas does. At first, my instinct was to carefully label all the time cuts, but it quickly became clear that what mattered wasn’t the months but the forward progress of the story. Readers can keep up with you if they’re engaged.

Time jumps and oil drilling

Dead Projects, Projects, QandA, Television, Words on the page, Writing Process

questionmarkI’m writing a movie that makes a time jump about 90 pages in, meaning at the beginning I’ve got a couple of 10-year olds who’ll be about 18 at the end. That’s not my problem though, since the jump is unavoidable and casting different actors actually makes sense in this case.

My question is: What’s the best way to label the new characters/actors? I checked your Big Fish shooting script in which you used terms like “YOUNG EDWARD” — but do I have to do this, if the older (or younger) characters never turn up again? Because “ADULT CHRIS” or “ADULT GINA” sounds a bit stupid in German. Could I just keep the original name after pointing out the leap in time or would that cause confusion?

Might sound like an insignificant detail to you, but it’s been bothering me for some time now.

— Fabian
Germany

Yes, you need to label them differently, because people will actually get confused. They might not when they’re reading through it from page one, but when they’re going back through the script looking for a specific scene, they will need to know immediately whether they’re looking at an 18-year old or a 10-year old. And if you do make it to the production stage, that chance of confusion increases exponentially, because scenes will be scheduled and shot out of order.

Given where your time jump occurs, I’d label the adult characters as such, or give them slightly altered names. (The young version of CHRIS becomes CHRISTOPHER as an adult, etc.)

. . .

questionmarkA two part question: I’m currently writing a spec script, a legal thriller set in Washington D.C. While I started it over a year ago — outlining, making notes, character sketches — I shelved it due to other work demands. Now I find that the subject matter (domestic oil drilling) is gaining topical currency in a way that I didn’t anticipate when I started out. Which is both good and bad.

A) Should I continue to write it, knowing that there is a strong possibility that it may be old hat by the time I finish (6 months to a year for a passable first draft. I have a day job!)? Or should I forge ahead in the hope that it may still hold some topical currency by the time I’m finished? And…

B) Since much of the story has to do with the law, and the subversion of a particular piece of legislation, how do I go about acquiring some fluency with legal protocol without enrolling in Law School? I’m a naturalized American citizen, so there is still lots I don’t know about the American justice system. If you were to approach material like this, where would you begin in order to make it at least plausible? Would you line up a couple of friendly D.C. lawyers and try to get some interviews? Try for an internship at the Dept of Justice? This material needs to be very well-executed for it not to be laughable (I’m after The Firm, not Pearl Harbor), and I’m anxious that the plot details at least make sound legal sense.

— Mark
New York

Yes, write it. No, don’t take an internship at the DoJ. But you’re going to need to hang out in D.C. to get the answers you want.

The kind of research you need to do will be an ongoing part of the process. You research; you find something that helps your story; you hit a roadblock; you do more research. You’re looking for believable dialogue, but more importantly, a believable approach to the situation you’re presenting in your story. That’s why you need to find someone (better yet, a couple of someones) who approximates the kind of characters you have in your story.

When I was writing the pilot for [D.C.](http://johnaugust.com/library), I wandered around Capitol Hill introducing myself to young staffers, and got them talking about their jobs. A few were interesting enough that I kept up with them via email, and could easily ask them a question about their lives on or off the clock. The show wasn’t staggeringly realistic — it had roughly as much verisimilitude as Felicity — but the characters were doing and saying the kinds of things they would in real life. (Just faster, and with better hair.)

From what you’re describing, it sounds like you need attorneys and staffers who handle energy legislation. You can find them. If you know anybody working in Washington, you’re probably two degrees of separation from someone in that job. And if you don’t know anyone there, hop on the train and head to the Hawk n’ Dove bar at happy hour. Two beers in, you’re likely to meet someone who knows someone.