John August

Search Results for: protagonist

If we played by the rules right now we’d be in gym

QandA, Story and Plot

questionmarkI have read countless things about what makes a screenplay sell, however, when I look at a film like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off I can’t help but wonder how a screenplay like this sold.

All I’ve heard from the experts is that you need character arcs and all that jazz but I just don’t see that in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. He wakes up and gets back in bed the same person, right?

Obviously it’s a great film, an instant classic but it just seems to defy everything a “great screenplay” should have by today’s standards. Any thoughts?

— Nick
Rhode Island

answer iconYou could spend a semester studying what makes Ferris Bueller such a classic, but the character arc thing is easily answered:

Ferris doesn’t change. Cameron does. Cameron is the reluctant protagonist, literally dragged along by Ferris. By the end of the story, Cameron has changed a little, with plans to stand up to his father. Arcs don’t have to be epic.

As I’ve [said before](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2005/whats-the-difference-between-hero-main-character-and-protagonist), the main character doesn’t have to protagonate. Yes, in most movies, your hero is the protagonist and it’s all cut and dried. But it’s not the only way a story can work.

If you’re ever confused, refer to Michael Goldenberg’s advice: The protagonist is the character that suffers the most.

In this case, that’s Cameron.

Watching OTMM

Follow Up, Indie

One Too Many Mornings, the Sundance movie I [wrote about last week](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2010/one-too-many-mornings), just debuted at Park City and online. I watched it — the $9.99 HD download — and would recommend it to many readers of this blog. It’s lo-fi funny, a mumblecore Swingers, with a refreshingly clear sense of what it is.

The movie’s achievably ambitious. The team figured out exactly what assets they had, and how to maximize those strengths. More crucially, they sliced away a lot of the cruft that usually comes along with shaggy indie films. There are no guns, no teary poems, no bad fathers. Its protagonists are a wuss and an asshole, but the script lets them be more than that.

And it looks great, largely thanks to its black and white photography.

Could anyone pick up a camera and make a movie like this? No. There’s talent required. But the film is great example of how little actual money you need to make an honest-to-God movie.

The film’s distribution strategy — allowing viewers to [buy it online](http://www.onetoomanymornings.com/), or [rent it on YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK91Gsx1ePE) — makes it simple for aspiring filmmakers to check it out.

Please take your finger out of your ear

Rant, Television

Along the lines of my gripes with cinematic [cell phone troubles](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2009/no-signal) and [air ducts](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2006/air-vents-are-for-air), Lou Lesko takes issue with another movie cliché:

> The high technology wireless radio devices that are concealed in the ear canals of the good guys for surreptitious communication work just fine without sticking your finger in your ear. And yet on NCIS Los Angeles last week –- in a pivotal scene where a guy is being shadowed -– there were all the protagonists, obvious as could be, looking like they forgot to take a Q-Tip to their ears for the last month.

For once, writers are off the hook. Nowhere in the scene description do we tell actors to poke their fingers in their ear canals.

Rather, it’s directors who are likely propping up this cliché, worried that the audience — particularly a CBS audience — won’t understand why characters are talking to invisible people.

Setting is not story

Film Industry, Genres, Pitches

[This article](http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-paradise-prison26-2009jul26,0,3103335,full.story) from Sunday’s LA Times makes a great case study in the difference between an interesting setting and an actual movie idea:

> Pagasa may be a 75-acre speck of sand and rock, but that hasn’t stopped a swarm of countries from battling over the hundreds of specks of sand and rock that make up the Spratlys, which may be the most disputed island chain on Earth.

> So, in 2002, the Philippines decided to establish a small colony of hardy civilian settlers on the island, augmenting the two dozen military workers who earn special “loneliness pay” to live on the far-off spot — and bolstering its claim that possession is nine-tenths of the law.

> The result is sort of “Cast Away” meets Plymouth Rock.

It’s worth reading John Glionna’s entire article, because it’s quickly clear that Cast Away is only one of many different kinds of movies you could set on the island.

Here are some elements I found compelling:

* **Isolated, together.** The “volunteers” are far from home, but never alone. In fact, the island is so tiny you can’t get away from someone.

* **Primitive and modern.** Despite the airstrip, most of their food comes from fishing. A bad typhoon can destroy them. Yet they keep blogs.

* **An international dispute over an unimportant piece of dirt.** Is it really the airstrip the Philippines wants to protect, or its ego?

What is a Pagasa movie?

Is it a thriller? Most thrillers rely on something to isolate the protagonist, either literally (Panic Room) or figuratively (The Bourne Identity). Islands work well for this. In 2002, I pitched a version of Alien v. Predator set on an island in Maine during a massive storm; Pagasa could work similarly.

Is it a comedy? Pagasa is a military installation, so it’s not hard to envision a version of Stripes, cast with a bunch of funny younger actors.

Is it a romantic comedy? Given its isolation and lop-sided male-female ratio, it’s a natural and cinematic setting.

My point is that there’s a big difference between the world of a movie (the setting, the rules, the background color) and the movie itself. And that bridging that gap is what screenwriters do.

When you’re a newish-but-working writer in Hollywood, you get sent articles like this all the time. The producer or creative exec will say, “We think there’s a movie here. Come in and pitch your take.” Generally, they’ll give you some kind of direction, like, “We see it as The Piano, but, you know, funnier.”

As the screenwriter, your job is to come up with the characters, conflicts, goals, themes, reversals and set pieces that make the story worthwhile. (In TV, you call this breaking a story.) You’re not getting paid for this, even though it may take a week of your time. Rather, you’re auditioning for a job. You want them to hire you to write it.

Most of the time, you won’t get the job. But breaking story after story is amazing practice, and each pitch helps you figure out not only how plot works, but how the movie industry works.