Save the Cat! (5 page)

A screenwriter's daily conundrum is how to avoid cliche.

You can be near the cliche, you can dance around it, you can run right up to it and
almost
embrace it.

But at the last second you must turn away.

You must give it a twist.

And insisting on those twists, defying that inner voice that says "Oh, well, no one will notice," is a universal struggle that good storytellers have been fighting forever.

To quote the studio executive who first blurted out this rule to me, Sam Goldwyn-like, during a development meeting: "Give me the same thing... only different!"

Bless his pointy little head.

In every aspect of creation — from the idea, to the way characters speak, to the scenes themselves — putting a fresh spin on it (whatever "it" is) is what we do every day. But to know how to avoid the cliche, to know what tradition you are pushing forward, begins with knowing what that tradition

is. A full-fledged knowledge of hundreds of movies, and especially those which your movie is like, is required.

Yet surprising as it seems for people who are interested in pursuing a career in movies, I am shocked —
shocked!
— to find how many up-and-comers can not even quote from movies in their own genre, much less movies generally.

Trust me, all the big guys can.

Listen to Spielberg or Scorsese talk about movies. They know and can quote from hundreds. And I don't mean quote as in "recite lines from," I mean quote as in "explain how each movie works." Movies are intricately made emotion machines. They are Swiss watches of precise gears and spinning wheels that make them tick. You have to be able to take them apart and put them back together again. In the dark. In your sleep. And your knowledge of a few movies you like is not enough. It is also not enough to know all the movies of the past five years. You have to go back, see the lineage of many types of movies, know what movie begat what in the line of succession, and how the art was advanced by each.

Which leads me to the subject of genre.

You are about to embark on the next step of writing a successful screenplay and that is the categorizing of your movie idea.
But no!

you think.
My movie is new! It's like nothing ever seen before! I will not be put into a category!

Sorry. Too late.

You can't tell me any idea that isn't like one, or dozens, found in the movie canon. Trust me, your movie falls into a category. And that category has rules that you need to know. Because to explode

the cliches, to give us the same thing... only different, you have to know what genre your movie is part of, and how to invent the twists that avoid pat elements. If you can do that, you have a better chance to sell. And, by the way, everyone, and I mean
everyone
in Hollywood, already does this. So why not know what they know?

WHAT IS IT... MOST LIKE?

So now you've got your logline.

You've followed my advice, you've gone out and test pitched your dozen or so "victims," you've got their responses and adjusted accordingly, and now your one-liner is just shining there so brightly! You know you've got yourself a winner.

You're ready to type FADE IN: — right?

Wrong.

I'm holding you back because before you start writing I want you to think a little bit about the question after "What is it?" — and that's "What is it...
most like?"

I return again to the example of you and your friends on Saturday night. You've pitched them their movie choices, and they've picked a couple. And now they want to know more about what they can expect to see when they plunk down their $10. Okay, so it's a comedy. But what kind?

This situation is why you hear so many bad movie pitches in Hollywood. They're the ones, I admit, that I've used as shorthand, but which I really hate and don't advise you to use. These are the types of pitches people make fun of— and rightly so. "It's
X-Men
meets
Cannonball Run!"
the nervous pitcher will say. Or
"It's Die Hard

in a bowling alley! " The ones that combine two or more movies are especially irksome. You sit there, trying to imagine how "It's
Heathers
meets
M*A*S*H"
really works. What is that? Spoiled teenage girls join the Army? A medical team is airlifted to a high school to save kids who are shooting each other? What? And odds are all the pitcher is doing is grabbing two hit movies and hoping there's some element in there that someone will like.

(PLEASE NOTE: You never use bombs to describe these mad doctor experiments; it's never
"Ishtar
meets
Howard the Duck"
— an example which tells you exactly how bad a technique this is.)

And yet... I admit I do it.

The reason categorizing your movie is a good idea is that it's important for you, the screenwriter, to know what type of movie you're writing. Of the many ways to get lost while in the middle of writing a screenplay, this is the most common. When I am writing a movie, when
Steven Spielberg
is writing a movie, referencing other movies, looking for clues of plotting and character within the genre, is commonplace. And thus, when you are stuck in your story or when you're preparing to write, you will "screen" a dozen movies that are like the one you're working on to get clues about why certain plot elements are important, why they work or don't, and where you can change the cliche into something fresh.

There are
10
movie genres that have proven to be good places to start this process. That's all they are, a place to start — we'll get into how to move past them next.

As I search for matches in this game of genre gin rummy — do I look for runs or pairs? — I'm interested in creating categories of movies that I can add more movies to every year. And I think within these 10 story types, you can stick just about every motion picture ever

made. You can make up your own categories, you can add others to this list, but I hope you won't need to. You will also note that nowhere in this list do I have standard genre types, such as Romantic Comedy, Epic, or Biography — because those names don't really tell me anything about what the story is. And that's what I need to know.

The 10 types of movies I have categorized here are:

Monster in. the House
— Of which
Jaws, Tremors, Alien, The Exorcist, Fatal Attraction,
and
Panic Room
are examples.

Golden Fleece
— This is the category of movie best exemplified by
Star Wars; The Wizard of Oz; Planes, Trains and Automobiles; Back To The Future
; and most "heist movies."

Out of the Bottle
— This incorporates films like
Liar, Liar; Bruce Almighty; Love Potion ; Freak
y
Friday; Flubber;
and even my own little kid hit from Disney,
Blank Check.

Dude with a Problem
— This is a genre that ranges in style, tone, and emotional substance from
Breakdown
and
Die Hard
to
Titanic
and
Schindler's List.

Rites Of Passage
— Every change-of-life story from
IO to
Ordinary People
to
Days of Wine and Roses
makes this category.

Buddy Love
— This genre is about more than the buddy movie dynamic as seen in cop buddy pictures,
Dumb & Dumber,
and
Rain Man
— but also every love story ever made!

Whydunit
— Who cares
who,
it's
why
that counts. Includes
Chinatown, China Syndrome, JFK,
and
The Insider.

The Fool Triumphant
— One of the oldest story types, this category includes
Being There, Forrest Gump, Dave, The Jerk, Amadeus,
and the work of silent clowns like Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd.

Institutionalized.
—Just like it sounds, this is about groups:
Animal House, M*A*S*H, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,
and "family" sagas such as
American Beauty
and
The Godfather.

Superhero
— This isn't just about the obvious tales you'd think of, like
Superman
and
Batman,
but also includes
Dracula, Frankenstein,
even
Gladiator
and A
Beautiful Mind.

Are you thoroughly confused? Do you doubt my sanity when I tell you that
Schindler's List
and
Die Hard
are in the same category? Are you looking at me kinda funny when I tell you that buddy movies are just love stories in disguise? Good! Then let's dig further into the wonderful world of genre.

MONSTER IN THE HOUSE

What do
Jaws, The Exorcist,
and
Alien
have in common? They're examples of the genre I call "Monster in the House." This genre has a long track record and was probably the first tale Man ever told. It has two working parts: A monster. A house. And when you add people into that house, desperate to kill the monster, you've got a movie type so primal that it translates to everyone, everywhere. It's the type of movie that I like to say, "You can pitch to a caveman." It's not about being dumb, it's about being
primal.
And
everyone
understands the simple, primal commandment: Don't... Get... Eaten!

That's why this genre is responsible for so many worldwide hits and franchises. You can probably run most of these films without the soundtrack and still "get it
."Jurassic Park
; the
Nightmare On Elm

Street, Friday the 13th,
and
Scream
series;
Tremors
and its sequels; and every haunted house and ghost story ever told are all examples of this genre. Even films without supernatural elements, like
Fatal Attraction
(starring Glenn Close as the "Monster"), fall into this category. And it's clear from such movies as
Arachnophobia, Lake Placid,
and
Deep Blue Sea,
if you don't know the rules of Monster in the House — you fail.

The rules, to me, are simple. The "house" must be a confined space: a beach town, a spaceship, a futuristic Disneyland with dinosaurs, a family unit. There must be sin committed — usually greed (monetary or carnal) — prompting the creation of a supernatural monster that comes like an avenging angel to kill those who have committed that sin and spare those who realize what that sin is. The rest is "run and hide." And putting a new twist on both the monster, the monster's powers, and the way we say "Boo!" is the job of the screenwriter who wants to add to the illustrious limb of this family tree of movies.

We can see a bad example of this category in
Arachnophobia,
the film starring Jeff Daniels and John Goodman. Bad monster: a little spider. Not much supernatural there. Not all that scary either — you step on it and it dies. Also: No house! At any given moment, the residents of
Arachnophobia
can say "Check please" and be on the next Greyhound out of town.