John August

Search Results for: characters

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.

Shouldn’t I get credit for the outline?

Film Industry, Psych 101, QandA, Rights and Copyright

questionmarkI work for a small European film company. On one project-in-development (based on historical events and characters), my boss verbally outlined the story of the entire screenplay while I took notes. I then went away and wrote a 35 page detailed outline based on her verbal instructions and incorporating my own much more detailed descriptions, scene settings, character nuances and several ideas.

The treatment was written mostly out of office hours and on my own personal computer without overtime pay. My boss didn’t write a word. The treatment was always intended to be sent to a more experienced screenplay writer, and I was always happy with this. I never had a special contract for this project (nor do I have any contract with this company), doing the work in good faith and expecting at the very least my name would remain on the treatment.

However, the treatment is about to be sent to the screenplay writer and I’ve noticed today that my ‘treatment written by’ has been taken off the treatment and my boss has left her name only with ‘story by’. When I asked about this I was told that it was not my film. I spent a huge amount of time on this and am quite upset, mostly by the blatant disregard for my work.

In this situation do I have copyright in the project? Should I insist on having my name included on the treatment and should I get any credit on the eventual film?

— Marley
London, UK

Not only am I not a lawyer, I’m not a British lawyer specializing in copyright. So my advice here isn’t as counsel, and shouldn’t be considered as part of any legal claim whatsoever.

That said, don’t pursue it. As frustrating as this is right now, you have the opportunity to learn from it. And so do the people reading your question.

Let me break down your statement into smaller chunks:

1. You’re employed by a film company in some sort of production executive or assistant role.
2. Your company is developing a project based on historical (and presumably public domain) material.
3. Your boss instructed you to take notes as she pitched the entire plot of the movie based on that material.
4. You wrote up this pitch as an outline, embellished with your own details. (It’s unclear whether you were instructed to embellish, or if you did this on your own.)
5. The result, a 35-page document, was sent to a screenwriter.
6. As sent to the screenwriter, that document did not have your name on it.

Let’s start from the top. You’re employed by a film company. Depending on British laws, anything you write on behalf of the company may be their property, just as a spreadsheet an accountant creates for a paper company is owned by the company. Again, I don’t know the specifics of how it works in the U.K., but in the U.S., this would certainly be a factor in any copyright claim. Writing the outline after hours on your own computer is unlikely to matter, since you were writing it on behalf of the company.

Second, the property is based on public domain sources. If this were based on a novel the producer had optioned, I doubt you would be writing in with this question, because you would recognize that the story belongs to someone else. It’s partly because the source material is “out in the wild” that you feel ownership to your creation.

In this case, the story belongs to the producer. You say she verbally outlined the story of the entire screenplay. So I ask you: if she had tape-recorded her pitch and asked you to transcribe it verbatim, would you still feel the pangs of authorship? Probably not. You’d see yourself as a typist.

Which raises the question, At what point in the embellishment did the outline become “yours”?

That’s a tough question for you to answer, and even tougher for a judge or jury.

I have some sympathy for your boss upon being handed a 35-page outline. ((I’m using “outline” and “treatment” interchangeably. Treatments tend to be longer than outlines, but at this length, either term makes sense.)) Here is the movie she pitched you, but with changes she couldn’t have anticipated. It’s her story, but suddenly your name is on the cover, and it’s not at all clear whether the extra work is meant to impress her or grab credit from her.

To put it bluntly, are you a brown-noser or a back-stabber? An over-achiever or an underminer?

If I were in her place, I would sit you down and have an uncomfortable conversation about your job description and the difference between what you do and what a paid screenwriter does. Because imagine the scenario in which you suddenly came back with a 120-page screenplay. She would rightly be furious. You would have taken her story without permission.

Which leads us to the last point. The outline you wrote was sent to a screenwriter — for whom I also feel sympathy, because an outline at that level of detail feels like a straightjacket. But assuming the movie gets made (a big assumption), how would you hope to defend what pieces of the final product are “yours”? You wrote the outline following the instructions of your producer, so every element would come down to you-said, she-said.

Again, I’m only responding to the facts as you presented them. I understand why your feelings are hurt, but I think pursuing them further is a mistake legally and professionally. Writing up notes, outlines and beat sheets is part of a creative exec’s job description. And so is not getting credit when credit is due.

When I was in film school, the president of production for Warner Bros. came in to talk about his job. He said that his buddies back home would see his movies and always ask, “Why isn’t your name on it?”

“I’m the shield,” he would reply, referring to the Warner Bros. logo.

And that’s where you’re at, Marley. Your credit is the production company billing on the movie. If that’s not enough, take it as incentive to write or produce your own movies that will carry your name.

Aquaman is a Pescepublican

Dead Projects, Projects, Psych 101

Recent articles about the [political leanings](http://tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=578) of popular comic book characters got me thinking about the uncanny valley between fictional and real-world ideologies. We’re happy to have characters speak in broad terms — “With great power comes great responsibility” — but the minute they start referring to specific issues, we become very uncomfortable.

How does The Flash feel about immigration? Is Wolverine pro-choice? Does Black Canary support the First Amendment rights of hate groups? We don’t know, and really don’t want to know.

To be certain, comics sometimes do have their characters take specific, controversial political stands. Famously, Frank Miller’s Superman in The Dark Knight Returns is literally working for Reagan. But more often, we get placeholders and parallels to soften the blow.

Wonder Woman’s homeland of Themiscyra is isolationist, as the U.S has been at times. The Green Lanterns police the universe, like U.N. peacekeepers writ large. And X-Men are mutants who fight prejudice, discrimination and mutant-phobia.

Sometimes the analogies are transparent. Black Adam rules Kahndaq with an iron fist — he’s literally a weapon of mass destruction, and a danger to the free world. But the facile Iraq/Al-Qaeda parallels only go so far. Yes, he’s a tyrant, but there’s no religion or oil at stake, no greater cause beyond his own ego. If Black Adam were to get sucked into a magic scarab, or sent to the farthest reaches of the universe, there would be no more “Kahndaq crisis.” ((As recent history has shown, simply getting rid of the leader achieves less than you’d think in the real world.))

And this is probably a good thing. I’d argue that the thematic success of comic book characters, and comic book storylines, comes from how closely they can approach the line separating Real from Too Real, without crossing it.

For example, this summer’s The Dark Knight is set in the most realistic Gotham City yet, but its characters still speak in broad philosophical proclamations. Just listen to Batman:

> Sometimes, truth isn’t good enough. Sometimes people deserve more. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded.

Sometimes, dialogue should only be spoken while wearing a mask. His statement makes sense in abstract, but you wouldn’t want it applied to, say, the invasion of a sovereign nation based on false evidence. Even Commissioner Gordon seems to understand that Batman is better suited to villain-thumping than leadership. His improbable answer to his young son’s question about why Batman is running:

> Because he’s the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now…and so we’ll hunt him, because he can take it. Because he’s not a hero. He’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector…a dark knight.

(MUSIC RISES.)

Efforts to place TDK’s Batman on a real-world political spectrum are doomed. Sure, he’s tough on crime, but he’s also anti-gun. He holds himself outside the law, but destroys his own phone-tapping technology. Is he a [Conservative](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121694247343482821.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries)? A [Liberal](http://thatsrightnate.com/2008/07/20/dark-knight-liberal-propaganda-is-a-joke/)? ((Note: Dry humor at link. You have to read a few entries to get the gist of it.)) A [Libertarian](http://blog.mises.org/archives/008317.asp)?

Nope, he’s just Batman. And as a comic book character, he’s allowed to hold simultaneous incompatible philosophies.

I think fans are responding to this latest wave of superhero movies not because they’re more realistic, but because they safely insulate us from reality, letting us address epic themes without uncomfortable details. Law versus Chaos is entertaining in TDK, but messy when you look at Iraq. The military-industrial complex is, well, less complex when Tony Stark can simply stop making weapons. And become a weapon. Or something. (The important thing is, he beat up Jeff Bridges, who was visibly evil and bald.)

The episode of Heroes: Origins I was set to write and direct last year deliberately crossed that line between “somewhat believable” and “far too realistic.” It was structured as an installment of A&E’s great documentary series [Intervention](http://www.aetv.com/intervention/), and followed two addicts with superpowers. We never shot it — [the whole series got shelved](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/no-heroes) — but I’m not sure it would have worked. And the producers were certainly nervous. In Iron Man, Tony Stark’s alcoholism is fundamental but non-threatening; real addiction is too real, too uncomfortable.

On some level, we want to keep our heroes just pure enough to fight the bad guys without encumbrance.