Save the Cat! (10 page)

This is all a long way of saying:

> Don't
cast the movie before you've sold the script!

> Don't
write parts for certain actors!

> Don't
get married to the idea of one particular actor doing the part — you'll
always
be disappointed.

Rare is the occasion when dream script meets dream cast. And let me give you an example of learning the hard way:

The amazing Sheldon Bull and I wrote a hilarious comedy in 2004. What if the President's helicopter goes down behind enemy lines? And what if he is forced to capture Osama bin Laden — all by himself? That was our premise. It's about a President who finds his "inner leader." It's "
Galaxy Quest
with George W. Bush." Great, huh? We even had a great title:
Chickenhawk Down.
And here's why we did not sell that script: Because there are about two

people who can play the part of the President. It's the lead. And there really isn't anyone out there who can "open" that movie. Tim Allen was our first choice. And...
who else ?
What we had done was paint ourselves into a corner on casting. Yes, it's funny. Yes, it's a great story. Yes, someday it will get made (by God!) but right now it just sits there.
Hear the crickets?

We are professional screenwriters and we should have known better. But we got so caught up in our idea
(see! ?)
that we didn't think it all the way through. The point is to leave yourself plenty of room for casting. Your leads should be able to be played by many actors and actresses. And they should all be able to "open" the movie. This is yet another reason why young actors are in such demand: They're so damn many of them! And no, you do not know what parts actors are looking for. Even if you hear it from their manager. Even if the actor looks you in the eye and tells you that their next movie, the role he
really
wants, is a comedy where he plays a teacher. He is lying. He is an actor. Lovely, charming people to be sure, but skittish as thoroughbreds.

They do not know what they want to do next.

And neither do you.

ACTOR ARCHETYPES

That said, why is it that certain actors always play certain parts over and over again? As hinted at in Chapter Two, you find throughout cinema history that many of the big stars play one part really well. Think about Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Cary Grant. Now think about Jim Carrey, Russell Crowe, Julia Roberts, and Sandra Bullock. It's not because these are not good actors who can't do more than one type of role, only that what makes movies work to a large degree is our need to be shown certain archetypes onscreen.

And the actors who play these archetypes now are just taking the place of the actors who played the same archetypes years ago.

Isn't Russell Crowe Errol Flynn? (Even geographically?)

Isn't Jim Carrey Jerry Lewis?

Isn't Tom Hanks Jimmy Stewart?

Isn't Sandra Bullock Rosalind Russell?

The reason is that these archetypes exist to satisfy our inner need to see these shadow creations in our brains played out onscreen. It's the Jungian archetypes these actors represent that we're interested in seeing. And if you always remember to write for the archetype, and not the star, the casting will take care of itself. So while this may not be strictly Jungian (even though I got an "A" in Jung) let me instead give you some Snyderian archetypes for your perusal:

> There's the "young man on the rise" archetype — a very American character that includes Harold Lloyd, Steve Martin (in his day), Adam Sandler, and the omni-versal Ashton Kutcher. Horatio Alger-esque, a little dumb, but plucky, this is the type we all want to see win.

> There's the "good girl tempted" archetype — pure of heart, cute as a bug: Betty Grable, Doris Day, Meg Ryan (in her day), Reese Witherspoon. This is the female counterpart of the young man on the rise.

> There's the "imp," the "clever and resourceful child" —Jackie Coogan, MacCauly Culkin, and even their evil opposite, the "Bad Seed," i.e., Patty McCormick.

> There's the "sex goddess" archetype — Mae West to Marilyn Monroe to Bridget Bardot to Halle Berry.

> And the male version, "the hunk" — From Rudolph Valentino to Clark Gable, from Robert Redford to Tom Cruise to Viggo Mortenson to Mr. and Mrs. Diesel's pride and joy, Vin.

And the list goes on. There's the "wounded soldier going back for a last redemptive mission" archetype: Paul Newman, and now Glint Eastwood. There's the "troubled sexpot" archetype: Veronica Lake, Angelina Jolie. And the lovable fop: Cary Grant, Hugh Grant. There's the court jester: Danny Kaye, Woody Allen, Rob Schneider. There's the wise grandfather: Alec Guinness and now — same beard, same robe — Ian McKellen.

There are magic dwarves and tricksters, sidekicks and talking animals, spinsters and wizards, Falstaffs and misers — and they keep on popping up. Over and over again. Same characters, same function for being in the story. Like knowing the history of certain story types, knowing the long line of ancestors your characters descend from is a must.

You don't have to be Joseph Campbell to see that no matter who's hot in
Casting Call,
the archetypes never change. Each one of these archetypes has a story arc we want to see played out again and again. And it's all about matching what we carry in the back of our minds to what we see onscreen. Who deserves to win and why? Who deserves comeuppance and why? And despite the dictates of political correctness, fashion and fad, we still want to see justice meted out for characters we hate and victory granted to those we admire. The stories of these heroes and the mathematical equations that makes their stories work is already sewn into our DNA. Your job, your simple task, is to forget the stars, concentrate on the archetypes, and strive to make them new.

SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES

And now, for my bullheads in the audience, let's get to the exceptions. When it comes to creating the linear, straightforward movie hero, we pretty much understand. But what about the special circumstances? What about ensemble? What about biographical movies? What about animated movies where the characters come from non-relevant fairy tales??

Okay.

Yes, there are always special circumstances. But finding the hero in all of these examples is the same method used to find them in any original one-line or spec.

Take biography. You've been handed someone's life story and now have to make a movie out of it. So what if the hero isn't necessarily very likeable? Or what if he or she did things that weren't all that admirable, what then? Let's take a look at
Kinsey.
Those of you who know the story about the famous sex study pioneer, Alfred Kinsey, know that the screenwriter (also the director, Bill Condon) faced a problem. Kinsey was odd. He conducted sex studies on friends and neighbors, spied on his wife, and dabbled with his subjects in ways many might think of as objectionable. Finding the hero in that story also means finding a "bad guy, " too. But if they can make a movie out of the life of porn-meister Larry Flynt, the publisher of
Hustler
Magazine, as they did in
"The People vs. Larry Flynt,
and make him out to be a hero, well, why not follow the same formula? And that's exactly what Condon did.

The writers of
A Beautiful Mind
faced this same problem with mathematician John Nash and chose to simply fudge some of the facts of his life story to make him more palatable. They dropped certain un-heroic facets of his love life and merged two real wives into one for the sake of movie continuity. This kind of thing, with

the guidance of a good errors and omissions attorney, is done a lot.

I myself grappled with a similar dilemma when I was handed the biographical challenge of John DeLorean, the famous automaker and creator of the DeLorean sports car. Imagine my surprise when my research proved him not to be a "Tucker-esque" maverick brought down by the Big Three automakers for his radical ideas but, by some accounts, a con man. All well and good, but who's the hero in that story? My solution was to make the hero the author of one of the books I'd read, a guy who had been inside the DeLorean empire from the start and grew disillusioned by both the man and his "vision." By tracing the rise and fall of DeLorean from this insider's point of view, and showing how
he
could be fooled, it gave the audience the "way in" to that story. I even gave my script the ironic title,
Dream Car.
Your way in to a biography has to pay attention to the same rules of any story: It has to be, first and foremost, about a guy who... we can root for.

Or at least understand.

Ensemble pieces can offer the same dilemma for the screenwriter. And as the examples of John Travolta in
Pulp Fiction
and Woody Allen in
Crimes and Misdemeanors
prove, the hero doesn't always have to be the one with the most scenes. But ensemble does offer a unique challenge of finding your way in. Who is this about, you keep asking, this piece with 12 characters, all with equal screen time?

One of the masters of the ensemble, director Robert Altman, specializes in this.
Nashville, Welcome to L.A.
, and
Shortcuts
offer crisscrossing character sketches with no central lead. But Altman would argue differently. The city of Nashville became the "star" of
Nashville
, and
Shortcuts
and
Welcome to L.A.
"stars" the city of Los Angeles. Granted these are not classic hero's tales, but Altman found his way in and stuck to it. And by creating a new kind of hero to root for, he was true to the moral he wanted to tell.

In ensemble, like any story, the "hero" is usually the one who carries the theme of the movie. When in doubt, ask yourself who serves this function in your movie — who comes up against the others the hardest, and who grows the most? And pretty soon you're asking the same questions you ask when finding the hero of any movie you're writing: Who offers the most conflict? Who comes the farthest emotionally and who is the most likeable, the one we want to root for and see win? That's the one you have to make it "about."

Animated tales based on existing material are often difficult challenges, especially when translating across cultural differences and time. Later we will see how the hero of Disney's
Aladdin
went from being an unlikable street urchin in the original text (though one who was perfectly acceptable to the culture in which he was created) to an affable, modern Surfer dude. Likewise in Disney's
Mulan, Pocahontas,
and
The Hunchback of Notre Dame,
the writers were presented with similar challenges and met with mixed results based on changes to the hero — and how his or her story was told. But whether your cast of characters is a pack of prehistoric ice
Age-e
rs or a bunch of idiosyncratic insects (
Antz, A Bug's Life)
, the process of giving us a winning logline, and the hero to star in it, is exactly the same.

The rule of thumb in all these cases is to stick to the basics no matter what. Tell me a story about a guy who...

> I can
identify with.

> I can
learn from.

> I have
compelling
reason to follow.

> I believe
deserves to win
and...

> Has stakes that
are primal
and ring true for me.

Follow that simple prescription for finding the hero of your movie and you can't go wrong. No matter what assignment, material, or sweeping canvas has been handed to you, you find the hero by finding the heart of the story.

SLAVE TO THE LOGLINE

When you have found the perfect hero for your story and nailed down just what his primal goal is, it's time to go back to your log-line and add in what you've learned to make it perfect. And if it sounds like I am insisting that you become a "slave to the logline" — well, you're right.

The logline is your story's code, its DNA, the one constant that has to be true. If it's good, if it has all the earmarks of a winning idea, then it should give you everything you need to guide you in writing the screenplay. It is, in short, the touchstone, both for you the writer and the audience you're selling your movie to. If you are true to your logline, you will deliver the best possible story. And if you find yourself straying from it in the middle of the writing process, you better have a good reason.

And this is particularly true when it comes to your hero.

The logline tells the hero's story: Who he is, who he's up against, and what's at stake. The nice, neat form of a one- or two-sentence pitch tells you everything. Nailing it down and sticking to it is not only a good exercise, it will become vital to your story as you continue to "beat it out" and eventually write it. By examining who your hero is and what his primal goal is, as well as the bad guy who is trying to stop him from achieving that goal, you can better identify and expand on the needs of your story. The logline with the most conflict, the most sharply defined hero and bad guy, and the clearest, most primal goal is the winner. And once you identify
those characteristics and it works, stick to it. Use that logline to double-check your results as you begin to execute your screenplay. And if you find a better way in the writing, make sure you go back and re-enunciate it. But from beginning to end, making it "about a guy who..." keeps you on track. And the logline helps you continue to double-check your math from initial concept to