The Anatomy of Story (66 page)

With this contrast, a final audience revelation hits home: even supermen must die. And isn't it painful when they do?

Once again, the last line is the key line of the scene and the story. When Butch asks Sundance if he saw their nemesis Lafors out there and Sundance says no, Butch replies, "Good. For a minute I thought we were in trouble."

MASTERPIECES OF SCENE CONSTRUCTION

I'd like to take one last look at the techniques of scene construction and dialogue by studying two great films,
Casablanca
and
The Godfather.
These films are masterpieces in the art of storytelling, and their scene construction and dialogue are brilliant. Because so much of your success in scene writing depends on your ability to place a scene on the arc of your hero's development, I want to explore scenes that come from the beginning and the end of these two films. To fully appreciate the excellence of scene construction and dialogue, give yourself the pleasure of seeing these films again.

C
asablanca

(play
Everybody Comes to Rick's
by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison,

screenplay by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch, 1942)

First Scene Between Rick and Louis

In this scene, still fairly early in the story, Rick and Police Captain Louis

Renault have a pleasant chat before Major Strasser arrives and Ugarte is

captured.

■ Position on the Character Arc
This is the first moment in the development of the relationship between Rick and Louis that will end in their mutual redemption and "marriage" in the final scene of the story.

This scene is a perfect example of why you should always start constructing a scene by determining its place on the overall character arc. This is not the first scene in the movie and so it appears to be just another step in the flow of the story. Only by starting with the endpoint of Rick's arc-—becoming a freedom fighter and entering a "marriage" of friendship with Louis—do you see that this is the crucial opening step in that arc.

■ Problems

1. Show the audience that Louis is as witty as Rick and that he is the appropriate buddy for Rick to end up with.

2. Show that Louis has just as much moral need as Rick.

3. Bring in more information about Rick's ghost, particularly information that shows that this cynical, hard man was once not only good but also heroic.

■ Strategy

1. Have Louis question Rick and introduce information about his past under the guise that it is all part of Louis's job of stopping Laszlo. This is an excellent way of introducing exposition about the main character without being dull or heavy-handed. At the same time, Rick's insistence that he was well paid for his work keeps him from seeming too sentimental and idealistic.

2. Have Rick and Louis bet on whether Laszlo will escape. This gives the two men a desire line just between them and shows their mutual cynicism and selfishness; both will turn a freedom fighter's quest to defeat the Nazis into a contest for money.

3. Introduce information about Laszlo and Ilsa so that both arrive on the scene already having great reputations.

4. Provide more explanations between the complex and confusing power relationships between Louis, the French police captain, and the Nazi, Major Strasser.

■ Desire
Louis wants to learn more about Rick's past. Then he wants to warn Rick not to help Laszlo escape.

■ Endpoint
Rick won't tell him anything and claims he doesn't care whether Laszlo escapes, except as a sporting proposition.

■ Opponent
Rick is Louis's opponent.

■ Plan
Louis asks Rick directly about his past and warns him in no uncertain terms to leave Laszlo alone.

■ Conflict
Rick and Louis disagree over whether Laszlo will escape, but Rick defuses any real conflict by turning their disagreement into abet.

■ Twist or Reveal
The great freedom fighter Laszlo, whom we haven't met, is traveling with a remarkable woman, and hard-boiled, cynical Rick was a freedom fighter himself some years before.

■ Moral Argument and Values
This exchange is about acting morally. The two men bet on whether Laszlo will escape, not on whether he should. Indeed, Rick insists he will not help Laszlo and wasn't acting for moral reasons when he fought for the "right" side in Ethiopia and Spain. Rick also says Laszlo will take one exit visa and leave his companion in Casablanca.

The clear value opposition in the scene is money and self-interest versus romance and selfless fighting for right.

■ Key Words
Romantic, sentimentalist.

The dialogue of both characters in this scene is very stylized and witty. Louis doesn't just ask Rick about the ghost of his past. He asks, "Did you abscond with the church funds? Did you run off with the Senator's wife? I'd like to think you killed a man. It's the romantic in me." Rick doesn't just tell him to mind his own business. He says he "came to Casablanca for the waters." When Louis reminds him Casablanca is in the desert, Rick responds, "I was misinformed."

Closing Scene Between Rick and Louis

The final scene in
Casablanca
is one of the most famous in movie history. Rick has sacrificed his love for Ilsa and sent her off to help her husband, Victor Laszlo. Now he faces his former opponent but stylistic equal,

Louis.

■ Position on the Character Arc

1. This is the endpoint of Rick's becoming a committed freedom fighter and patriot.

2. Structurally, the scene has a double reversal, a change of two characters, Louis as well as Rick.

3. This is the endpoint of Rick's relationship with Louis in which the two enter into a buddy "marriage."

■ Problems

1. How do you give the final scene the most dramatic impact possible?

2. How do you show big changes, in
two
characters, in a believable but not boring way?

■ Strategy

1. Hold off the reveal of Louis's change and the creation of a new buddy team until the very end.

2. Use a double reversal so that Rick and his equal both see the light
but maintain their hard-nosed opportunism.
What makes the scene is the return to the bet. This allows both men to make huge moral flips but still preserve their tough-guy quality and so avoid over-the-top sentimentality.

■ Desire
Louis wants to join Rick in the fight and begin what looks

like a great friendship.

■ Endpoint
Rick welcomes him on the journey.

■ Opponent
It appears that Rick and Louis might still be opponents

over Rick's escape and the bet. But Louis finesses that.

■ Plan
Louis hides his real intention, making it look like he could

still give Rick trouble over the exit visa or the bet.

■ 
Conflict
The two men negotiate over Rick's escape and the money Louis owes Rick. But Louis comes up with a stylish resolution that ends in friendship.

■ Twist or Reveal
Louis isn't going to nail Rick; he's going to join him. But it will cost Rick the 10,000 francs he won.

■ Moral Argument and Values
Both men accept the idea that it is time to become a patriot. But they don't entirely forget about money, either.

■ Key Words
Patriot, friendship.

The last scene funnels down to a single point of the scene and the story: friendship. Rick may miss out on true love, but he ends up with a great and equal friend. The scene is constructed to lead to the big reveal, Louis's stylish way of joining Rick in his new moral action. The dialogue between the two men is just as snappy and sophisticated as ever. What makes it even better is that they're not even trying.

There's one last thing to notice about the dialogue. Though extremely witty, it is quite dense. The writers pack huge story flips into a few short lines, and this has tremendous impact on the audience. Rick does his noble deed. There's a line of dialogue from each, and Louis does his noble deed, dumping the Vichy water. Louis proposes the deal concerning Rick's escape. Three short lines. Rick flips it back to the bet. Three short lines. Louis combines the escape with the bet. One line. Rick realizes what's happened. And the last line is eternal friendship. That series of combinations produces a big knockout at the very end of the final scene of the film. Clearly, these writers understood how to execute Chekhov's rule about the last ninety seconds of their story.

The Godfather

(novel by Mario Puzo, 1969; screenplay by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
To see how the writers
of The Godfather
might have constructed the scenes and written the dialogue of this great film, we have to start with the big picture, the overall story. These are some of the ways we could describe the story strategy or process they want to play out over the course of the film:

1. The passing of power from one king to the next

2. Three sons, each with different attributes, trying to be king

3. A family under attack fighting back to survive and win

Now let's look at some of the big thematic patterns the writers want to track over the course of the story. First are the patterns of identity. These are story elements we normally think of as different but that these writers want to show, on a deeper level, are the same. The three most important are these:

■ Mafia family as business

■ Mafia family as military

■ Profane as sacred and sacred as profane: "god" as the devil

Next, we need to focus on the patterns of opposition, the key elements that the writers will contrast and place in conflict. These are the main patterns of opposition:

■ Family versus the law

■ Family and personal justice versus American legal justice

■ Immigrant America versus mainstream and elite America

■ Men versus women

Working through the scene-writing process, the
last
step we would need to take if we were writing these scenes is to clarify the values and symbols, or key words, that will come into conflict throughout the story. Only by looking at the full story can we see which objects or images are central and organic to it. Then we can tease them out and highlight them through repetition (Track 3 dialogue). In
The Godfather,
these values and symbols fall into two major clusters: honor, family, business, appearance, and crime versus freedom, country, and moral and legal action.

Opening Scene

The average writer would start
The Godfather
with a plot scene to give this big, violent story a running start. He would write the scene strictly with

story dialogue (Track 1) to help kick off the plot. But writers Mario Puzo and Francis Coppola are not average writers. Guided by the principle of the inverted triangle for both story and scene, they created a prototypical experience for the opening that frames the entire story and focuses down to a single point at the end of the scene:

■ Position on the Character Arc
Since this story tracks the end of one king and the rise of the next, the opening scene doesn't mark the beginning point of the new king (Michael). It starts with the current king (Don Corleone) and shows what he and his successor actually do.

■ Problems
In a story about a "king" in a democracy, much needs to be accomplished in the opening scene: