Save the Cat! (6 page)

Where is the tension there?

Because the filmmakers behind
Arachnophobia
violated the rules of Monster in the House, they wound up with a mishmash. Is it a comedy or a drama? Are we really supposed to be scared-scared? I could write a whole book on the rules of Monster in the House, but you don't need me to have a MITH film festival in your own home and discover these nuances for yourself. And if you're writing a screenplay that falls into this genre, I suggest you do just that.

I want to make clear that, as with all the genres to be discussed here, this is a category that has not, repeat
not,
been exhausted. There is always a way to do a new one. But you must give it a fresh twist to be successful. You must break from cliche. You must "Give us the same thing... only different." Anyone who thinks there isn't new territory to mine in the Monster in the House genre, should think of the myth of the Minotaur. Great Monster: a half-man/half-bull. Great house: a maze where the condemned are sent to die. But the ancient Greek hack who eyed this successful story and said: "It's over. Genre's dead. I can't top that!" never envisioned Glenn Close with a bad perm and a boiled rabbit.

THE GOLDEN FLEECE

The quest myth has been one of the more winning tales told around the campfire since, well, forever. And if your screenplay can in any way be categorized as a "Road Movie," then you must know the rules of a genre I call "The Golden Fleece." The name comes from the myth of Jason and the Argonauts and yet it's always about the same thing: A hero goes "on the road" in search of one thing and winds up discovering something else — himself. Thus
Wizard Of Oz; Planes, Train and Automobiles; Star Wars; Road Trip;
and
Back to the Future
are all basically the same movie.

Scary, huh?

Like the twists of any story, the milestones of The Golden Fleece are the people and incidents that our hero or heroes encounter along the way. Because it's episodic it seems to not be connected, but it must be. The theme of every Golden Fleece movie is internal growth; how the incidents affect the hero is, in fact, the plot. It is the way we know that we are truly making forward progress — it's not the mileage we're racking up that makes a good Golden Fleece, it's the way the hero changes as he goes. And forcing those milestones to mean something to the hero is your job.

As it turns out, I have been working on a Golden Fleece with my current writing partner, the amazingly successful and talented Sheldon Bull. And we have been discussing Golden Fleece movies a lot — naturally. Since our film is a comedy, we've looked at
Planes, Trains and Automobiles,
and discussed the character dynamics of
Rain Man, Road Trip,
and even
Animal House,
believe it or not, in an effort to get a handle on what is basically the story of a kid who heads home after being unjustly kicked out of military school and discovers...
that his parents have moved without telling him!
It's basically
"Home Alone
on the road." (Sorry! It's a bad habit). The adjustments we are making aren't about the adventure — which I find hilarious — but about what each incident means to our kid hero. In many ways what these adventures are is irrelevant. Whatever fun
set pieces
our hero encounters must be shaded to deliver milestones of growth for our kid lead. We always come back to that Golden Fleece truism that can be found in
The Odyssey, Gulliver's Travels,
and any number of successful road stories through the ages: It's not the incidents, it's what the hero learns about himself from those incidents that makes the story work.

This genre is also where all heist movies are found. Any quest, mission, or "treasure locked in a castle" that is to be approached by an individual or a group falls into the Golden Fleece category and has the same rules. Very often the mission becomes secondary to other, more personal, discoveries; the twists and turns of the plot are suddenly less important than the meaning derived from the heist, as
Ocean's Eleven, The Dirt
y
Dozen,
and
The Magnificent Seven
prove.

OUT
OF
THE BOTTLE

"I wish I had my own money!" This is what our character Preston Waters states in the movie Colby Carr and I wrote and sold to Disney that became a kid's mini-hit called
Blank Check.
And

Preston will, in fact, soon get his own money — a million dollars to be exact — with which he will happily run amok. This type of wish-fulfillment is so common because it's a big part of the human psyche. "I wish I had a_" is probably the single most frequently spoken prayer since Adam. And stories that tell a good "what if' tale that exploits these wish fulfillment fantasies are good, primal, easy-for-a-caveman-to-understand stories — which is why they're so many of them. And why they're so successful.

The comedy hit
Bruce Almighty
is an example of this genre. In fact, the flexible Jim Carrey has also been the star of another "Out of the Bottle" classic,
The Mask.
It doesn't have to be God who bestows the magic. It can be a thing — like
The Mask
or a magic VW named "Herbie" in Disney's
The Love Bug,
or a formula that you invent to make the opposite sex fall in love with you as in
Love Potion
starring Sandra Bullock, or magic silly-putty that can save your teaching career as in
Flubber
starring Robin Williams.

The name Out of the Bottle should evoke the image of a genie who is summoned out of the bottle to grant his master's wish, but it doesn't have to be magic to be part of this wish-fulfillment genre. In
Blank Check,
there is no magic that gets Preston his million bucks — sure it's a long shot, and Colby and I went out of our way to make it seem reality-based. But it doesn't matter. Whether it's by divine intervention or luck or a magic being who enters the scene, it's the same device. For some reason or other, usually because we like the guy or gal and think they deserve it, their wish is granted and their lives begin to change.

On the flip side of Out of the Bottle, but very much the same category, is the curse aspect of wishing. These are comeuppance tales. Another Jim Carrey movie,
Liar, Liar,
is a good example (hmmm, are we seeing a pattern here about what stars consistently fit best into what Jungian archetypes?). Same set-up, same device a kid wishes his lying lawyer father would start telling nothing

but the truth — and lo! It happens. Suddenly Jim Carrey can't tell a lie — on the day of a big case in which lying is, and has been, his best weapon. Jim's going to have to change his ways and grow if he is to survive, and by doing so, he gets what he really wants in the first place: the respect of his wife and son. Another comeuppance tale is
Freak
y
Friday,
both the Jodie Foster version and the updated Lindsay Lohan take. But there are many of these, such as
All Of Me
with Steve Martin and
Groundhog Da
y starring another famous wise guy, Bill Murray.

The rules of Out of the Bottle then are this: If it's a wish-fulfillment tale, the hero must be a put-upon Cinderella who is so under the thumb of those around him that we are really rooting for anyone, or anything, to get him a little happiness. And yet, so the rules tell us and human nature dictates, we don't want to see anyone, even the most underdog character, succeed for too long. And eventually, the hero must learn that magic isn't everything, it's better to be just like us — us members of the audience — because in the end we know this will never happen to us. Thus a lesson must be in the offing; a good moral must be included at the end.

If it's a comeuppance tale version of Out of the Bottle, then the opposite set-up is applied. Here's a guy or gal who needs a swift kick in the behind. And yet, there must be something redeemable about them. This is a little trickier to pull off and must include a Save the Cat scene at the outset, one where we know that even though this guy or gal is a jerk, there is something in them that's worth saving. So in the course of the tale, they get the benefit of the magic (even though it's a curse); and in the end, they triumph.

DUDE WITH A PROBLEM

This genre is defined by the phrase: "An ordinary guy finds himself in extraordinary circumstances." And when you think about it,
it's another of the most popular, most primal situations we can imagine for ourselves. All of us consider ourselves to be an ordinary guy or gal, and thus we are drawn into sympathetic alignment with the hero of this type of tale from the get-go. Into this "just an ordinary day" beginning comes something extraordinary — my wife's building is taken over by terrorists with ponytails (
Die Hard);
Nazis start hauling away my Jewish friends (
Schindler's List);
a robot from the future (with an accent!) comes and tells me he is here to kill me and my unborn child (
The Terminator);
the ship in which we are traveling hits an iceberg and begins to sink without enough lifeboats for everyone on board
(Titanic).

These, my friends, are problems. Big,
primal
problems.

So how are you, the ordinary guy, going to handle them?

Like Monster in the House, this genre also has two very simple working parts: a dude, meaning an average guy or gal just like ourselves. And a problem: something that this average guy must dig deep inside himself to conquer. From these simple components, an infinite number of mix-and-match situations can bloom and grow. The more average the guy, the bigger the challenge, as movies like
Breakdown
with Kurt Russell demonstrate.

In Breakdown,
Kurt has no superpowers or skills, no police training. Nada. But he shares with
Die Hard's
Bruce Willis the same domestic agenda all average guys understand: Save the wife that he loves! Whether our hero is skilled or not, it's the relative size of the challenge that makes these stories work. And one rule of thumb is: The badder the bad guy, the greater the heroics. So make the bad guy as bad as
possible
— always! —
for
the bigger the problem, the greater the odds for our dude to overcome. And no matter
who
the bad guy is, the dude triumphs from his willingness to use hiss individuality to outsmart the far more powerful forces aligned against him.

RITES OF PASSAGE

Remember the time you were awkwardly going through puberty and that cute girl you had a crush on didn't know you were alive? Remember that birthday party when you turned 40 and your husband came to you and asked for a divorce? These painful examples of life transition resonate with us because we have all, to a greater or lesser degree, gone through them. And growing-pain stories register because they are the most sensitive times in our lives. It's what makes us human, and what makes for excellent, poignant, and even hilarious storytelling. (Isn't Dudley Moore in
10
the funniest mid-life crisis put on film?) But whether it's drama or comedy, "Rites of Passage" tales are of a type. And all have the same rules.

All movies are about change, so to say that Rites of Passage stories document a change is missing the point. These are tales of pain and torment, but usually from an outside force: Life. Sure it's about the choices we've made, but the "monster" attacking us is often unseen, vague, or one which we can't get a handle on simply because we can't name it.
Lost Weekend, Days of Wine and Roses, 28 Da
y
s
starring Sandra Bullock, and
When A Man Loves A Woman
starring Meg Ryan all tell stories about
coming to
grips with drugs and alcohol. Likewise, puberty, mid-life crisis, old age, romantic break-up, and "grieving" stories, like those about getting over the death of a loved one, such as
Ordinar
y
People,
also have the same thing in common: In a good Rites of Passage tale, everybody's in on "the joke" except the person who's going through it — the story's hero. And only the experience can offer a solution.

In essence, whether the take is comedic or dramatic, the monster sneaks up on the beleaguered hero and the story is that hero's slow realization of who and what that monster is. In the end, these tales are about surrendering, the victory won by giving up to forces stronger than ourselves. The end point is acceptance of our

humanity and the moral of the story is always the same:
That's Life!
(another Blake Edwards movie! Hmmm, between that,
10,
and
Days of Wine and Roses,
Blake Edwards appears to like and do well in this genre.)