by Ben Brady
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HAGEN (CONT’D)
down a New York Police Captain. Never. It would be disastrous. All the five families would come after you Sonny; the Corleone family would be outcasts; even the old man’s political protection would run for cover. So just . . . take that into consideration.
SONNY
(still fuming)
McCluskey can’t stay with the Turk forever. We’ll wait.
MICHAEL
We can’t wait. No matter what Sollozzo says about a deal, he’s figuring out how to kill Pop. You have to get Sollozzo now.
SONNY
The kid’s right.
HAGEN
What about McCluskey?
MICHAEL
Let’s say now that we have to kill Mc-Cluskey. We’ll clear that up through our newspaper contacts later.
SONNY
Go on Mike.
MICHAEL
They want me to go to the conference with Sollozzo. Set up the meeting for two days from now. Sonny, get our informers to find out where the meeting will be held. Insist that it has to be a public place: a bar or a restaurant at the height of the dinner hour. So I’ll feel safe. They’ll check me when I
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MICHAEL (CONT’D)
meet them so I won’t be able to carry a weapon; but Clemenza, figure out a way to have one planted there for me.
(Pause)
Then I’ll kill them both.
Everyone in the room is astonished; they all look at Michael. Silence. Sonny suddenly breaks out in laughter. He points a finger at Michael, trying to speak.
SONNY
You? You, the high-class college kid. You never wanted to get mixed up in the family business. Now you wanta gun down a police Captain and the Turk just because you got slapped in the face. You’re taking it personal, it’s just business and he’s taking it personal.
Now Clemenza and Tessio are also smiling; only Hagen keeps his face serious.
MICHAEL
(angrily, but cold)
Sonny, it’s all personal, and I learned it from him, the old man, the Godfather. He took my joining the Marines personal. I take Sollozzo trying to kill my father personal, and you know I’ll kill them, Sonny.
Michael radiates danger. Sonny stops laughing.
FADE OUT1
The Corleones’s situation is made clear immediately as Sonny relates the number of “button men” on the street and then finds himself in conflict with Hagen over how to get the Turk. Michael does not need to say anything because his desire for revenge is theirs, too; nor do they see any reason to ask anything of him. They know that Michael has just saved his father at the hospital, but not that he told his father, “I’m with you now.” Your protagonist must have an immediate need to act in order to begin the process of revealing and developing his motivation. Hagen provides Michael with that need by wearing down Sonny’s ardor and resolution.
Michael’s intervention is at once smart and brutally direct. He doesn’t directly challenge Hagen’s statement that everything is business: he simply makes it clear that they must act because Sollozzo is still trying to kill their father. Then, without directly challenging Sonny’s capacity, Michael offers a cogent plan to do what hasn’t been done (kill the police captain) in one artfully planned meeting—alone.
Sonny’s laughing rejoinder asserts (a) that Michael’s motivation is trivial and (b) that Michael’s motivation is purely current. The crisis has appeared: Michael’s effort to intervene is almost laughed away largely because of the view the others hold of his past. He is the brother who stood aside. What can he know or do?
His climactic response underscores the weight of his reversal of their position by putting himself in a more direct line than themselves with the Godfather: “It’s all personal, and I learned it from him, the old man.” Michael knows the lessons of the past better than they do, and they are different from what his brothers thought they were. His motivation to act now is linked to the past resoundingly. Simultaneously he reminds them he was a Marine. They know he was decorated for bravery. He can do what he says. He is a dangerous man. The revelation of this new Michael silences them.
The elements associated with crisis and climax operate succinctly.
CRISIS. Michael is nearly laughed away: failure seems imminent. Because of that imminent failure, a new and definitive effort must be made to succeed.
CLIMAX. Michael makes a new effort. He reveals he has a better handle on the past and so a better understanding of the present, and he also demonstrates greater immediate capacity than they do.
Note that in part the conflict over the past centers as much around what it means, as well as what it is. Moreover, the truth and meaning of the past that are raised in a scene are never Truth or Meaning but some particular truth and some particular meaning for those characters directly involved.
We emphasized earlier the importance of change in good writing. Michael’s role in the family and how we view him are transformed by this scene. He puts himself at the center of the family. So strong are his grief and anger as motivating forces that he abandons his past goals. Motivation leads to action: action leads to change. Drama makes both of these overt, and brings them into sharp focus through crisis and climax.
Not every response to a crisis succeeds, however. Earlier we saw how artfully Ben in The Graduate is made by Mrs. Robinson to want his failure. Ted does not succeed in holding onto Joanna in Kramer vs. Kramer. Alexander cannot successfully resist Bishop Vergérus in Fanny and Alexander. Let’s look at another scene from Kramer vs. Kramer in which Ted, unlike Michael Corleone, deliberately chooses failure.
A Choice of Failure in Kramer vs. Kramer
Earlier we looked at the scene in which Joanna returns and demands to have Billy back. Ted refuses her, and, as we saw, storms out of the restaurant. A bruising courtroom struggle ensues for custody of Billy in which both Ted and Joanna are mercilessly cross-examined. Billy is not asked to testify, however, and so is spared that experience. As we pick up the action, the courtroom confrontation has just ended. Ted has been waiting to hear what the decision of the judge is. He goes to meet his lawyer Shaunessy in a fashionable bar and there is told the judge’s decision.
FADE IN:
INT. MEN’S BAR, MIDTOWN (EST) DAY
A crowded, rather posh watering spot. Shaunessy sits alone at a table for two, a drink in front of him.
REVERSE ON THE DOOR
as Ted enters, spots Shaunessy and starts in his direction.
CLOSER ON SHAUNESSY’S TABLE
as Ted sits down.
TED
Well?
ON SHAUNESSY
as he looks up at Ted, says nothing.
ON TED
He realizes that they have lost.
TED
Oh, Christ!
CROSSCUT BETWEEN THEM
SHAUNESSY
That judge went for motherhood straight down the line.
TED
I lost him? I lost him?
SHAUNESSY
I can’t tell you how sorry I am.
TED
Oh, no . . .
SHAUNESSY
(reading from a piece of paper)
Ordered, adjudged and decreed that the petitioner be awarded custody of the minor child, effective Monday the 23rd. of January. That the respondent pay for the maintenance and support of said child four hundred dollars each month. That the father shall have the rights of visitation: every other weekend, one night each week to be mutually agreed upon and one half of the child’s vacation period.
(looks up at Ted)
That’s it.
TED
(grim)
What if I fight it?
SHAUNESSY
(matter of factly)
We can appeal, but I can’t guarantee anything.
TED
(determined)
I’ll take my chances.
SHAUNESSY
It’s going to cost.
; TED
(his mind is made up)
Don’t worry. I’ll get the money.
There is a beat of silence, then:
SHAUNESSY
I’ve got to tell you something, Ted. This time it’ll be Billy that pays. This time I’ll have to put him on the stand.
CLOSE ON TED
as his last hope goes crashing to the ground.
TED
Oh, Christ no . . . I can’t do that.
I just . . . can’t . . .
(he looks up at the lawyer in despair)
Excuse me . . . I’m sorry . . . I just . . .
That is all Ted can manage to say. He gets to his feet and rushes for the door.
FADE OUT2
Ted is placed in an archetypal situation as old as the biblical confrontation of the contending mothers before Solomon, where love is proved by the woman who lets the child go rather than sacrifice him in a tug of war with the other. This is Ted’s terrible choice: to hurt Billy in order to try and keep him or live with the judgment. His grief and anger are instantly apparent and provide ample motivation for him to pursue the case, but he chooses not to when he realizes the cost to Billy.
What we want to stress here is the clarity that the crisis and climax bring to a character and story. Ted’s choice makes it clear that he has indeed been transformed after Joanna’s departure into so loving and devoted a father that he is prepared to let his son go rather than keep him if that means hurting him. It is a rare moment and a noble choice. Simultaneously the nature of Ted’s struggle to keep Billy becomes clear; namely, he fought because of love, not as a way to take vengeance and inflict hurt on Joanna. Last, his objective in the story takes its final shape: not to hurt the child he truly loves.
These are crucial facets of crisis and climax. It is already apparent from the scene with Michael (above) that the protagonist is revealed in his true colors through the crisis and climax. But in addition to the way a character’s nature and the past become clear, the final objective of a character, as character and conflict have evolved, is shown to have undergone an evolution to which the crisis and climax give a final clarification.
We’ll bring our discussion to a head by looking at two substantial scenes from On the Waterfront and the successful stage-cinema-television drama A Streetcar Named Desire.
The Climax from On the Waterfront
In the last chapter we read the scene from Schulberg’s On the Waterfront in which Terry wins his release from Charley through his passionate outburst at how Charley, even more than Johnny Friendly, had betrayed him in the past. Guilt-stricken, Charley let Terry go.
Johnny Friendly then has Charley killed. Terry, beside himself with grief and fury, goes to the bar where Johnny Friendly and his confederates do business. He has a gun, and he intends to kill. Father Barry arrives and dissuades Terry from violence. There’s something better, more decisive, he tells Terry: go testify against Johnny Friendly. That is the very action Johnny had sent Charley to stop Terry from taking; that is the action around which the struggle for Terry’s conscience has become centered; that is the action that represents Terry’s rediscovery of his right to act as a free moral agent, something he had surrendered as a bum.
Terry testifies with great impact, but the hearings and trials have a long way to go before they will reach a definite end. Johnny Friendly remains in power on the dock. He threatens Terry’s life. Terry discovers that what he has done isn’t enough yet to avert the failure of his efforts, the crisis that arrived with Charley’s murder. He has to do more.
But Terry is baffled. At home he finds all the pet pigeons he had tended on the roof have been killed by a boy who until then had looked up to him. The consequence of being the “canary,” the man who has “ratted,” grows on him. His girlfriend Edie finds him on the roof. She’s moved by the slaughter of the pigeons, frustrated, afraid Terry will be another pigeon who will be killed. She begs Terry to leave the docks for good, to move somewhere else, and perhaps become a farmer. We pick up the action as Edie follows Terry into his room, demanding that he do what she says.
FADE IN
INT. TERRY’S ROOM (EST) [DAY]
as Terry enters. Edie’s voice follows him in as she trails behind him. He sits on the bed and looks at the cargo hook hung on a peg on the wall.
EDIE
Doesn’t that make sense!
[Note: She means leaving the docks and starting anew, maybe starting a farm.] Terry doesn’t answer her. He takes the cargo hook from the wall and jabs it viciously into the floor.
EDIE
I don’t think you’re even listening to me!
He pulls the cargo hook out and jabs it into the floor again.
EDIE
. . . are you?
He looks up at her, frowns and then studies the cargo hook, tapping it into his hand with pent-up feeling. The feeling is a strong and infectious one. Edie senses it and accuses him—
EDIE
You’re going down there!
He looks at her again for a moment and then works his hand over the handle of the hook.
EDIE
(her voice rising)
Just because Johnny warned you not to, you’re going down there, aren’t you?
He doesn’t say anything but the determination in him seems to be steadily mounting.
EDIE
You think you’ve got to prove something to them, don’t you? That you are not afraid of them and—you won’t be
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EDIE (CONT’D)
satisfied until you walk right into their trap, will you?
His silence maddens her. She seems on the verge of striking him out of frustration and impotent rage. Her voice is hysterical.
EDIE (CONT’D)
Then go ahead—go ahead! Go down to the shape-up and get yourself killed, you stupid, pigheaded, son of a—
(struggling to control herself)
What are you trying to prove?
With a decisive gesture Terry takes the hook and sticks it through his belt. Then he goes to the wall and lifts Joey’s windbreaker from the nail on which it has been hanging. He puts the windbreaker on in a deliberate way, and grins at her as he does so; then walks to the door with a sense of dignity he has never had before.
TERRY
(quietly)
You always said I was a bum. Well—
(points to himself)
not anymore. I’m going down to the dock. Don’t worry, I’m not going to shoot anybody. I’m just going to get my rights.
(rubs sleeve of the jacket)
Joey’s jacket. It’s time I started wearing it.
He goes.
QUICK DISSOLVE
EXT. PIER—SHAPE-UP [DAY]
Big Mac facing the semicircle of several hundred men. Into this circle walks Terry. Other longshoremen instinctively move away from him as he approaches.
CLOSE: BIG MAC
BIG MAC
I need fifteen gangs today. Everybody works!
He picks men out very quickly and they move forward from the mass.
MEDIUM CLOSE: TERRY PIER DAY
He has taken his stand defiantly, with his hands in his pockets, looking Big Mac in the eye. Big Mac picks men all around Terry. He makes it obvious by reaching over Terry’s shoulder to pick men behind him. Finally there are only a handful left around Terry, and then they are chosen. Terry is left standing there alone.
TERRY
(brazenly)
You’re still a man short for that last hatch gang, Mac.
BIG MAC
(without looking at Terry, calls to Sonny)
Hey, Sonny, go across to the bar and pick up the first man that you see.
Now Big Mac looks at Terry for the first time.
BIG MAC
Where are them cops of yours, stoolie? You’re gonna need ’em.
He turns away. Terry stands there seething. He looks around at Pop, and the others ready to enter the pier. They look away, still fearful of Big M
ac and the power of the mob, and feeling guilty for their passivity.
INT. JOHNNY FRIENDLY’S OFFICE ON WHARF DAY
Johnny looks across at the isolated figure of Terry. Sonny, Truck, and Specs are with Johnny. On the desk are tabloids with the headlines reading NAME JOHNNY FRIENDLY AS WATERFRONT MURDER BOSS. Under the bannerhead is a large picture of Johnny.
TRUCK
That ain’t a bad picture of you, boss.
Johnny glares at him and pushes the paper aside angrily.
SONNY
I wish you’d let us go to work on that cheese-eater.
JOHNNY
(with both hands working)
After we get off the front page. Then he’s mine. I want him.
EXT. CLOSE: PIER ENTRANCE ON TERRY & BIG MAC DAY
As the other Sonny returns with “the first man he saw”—MUTT MURPHY. Mutt and Terry glance at each other.
SONNY
Here’s your man, Mac.
BIG MAC
Okay.
Mac nods Mutt onto the pier, the one-armed derelict turning back with an apologetic gesture. Terry’s fury grows. Mac growls at him—
[BIG MAC]
You want more of the same? Come back tomorrow.
Terry looks at him, and then across at Johnny’s office on the wharf. His hands begin to tremble.
He turns and starts walking slowly; resolutely, down the gangplank leading to Johnny’s headquarters.
INT. JOHNNY FRIENDLY’S OFFICE DAY
SONNY
(seeing Terry through the window)
He’s comin’ down!
JOHNNY
He’s gotta be crazy!
TRUCK
(glancing out, growls)
Yeah, here comes the bum now. I’ll top ‘im off, lovely.
Behind Johnny’s back the click of a revolver safety latch is heard. Johnny whirls on him quickly.
JOHNNY
Gimme that.
TRUCK
(offended)
How are we gonna protect ourselves?
JOHNNY
Ever hear of the Sullivan Law? Carrying a gun without a permit? They’ll be on us for anything, now. The slightest infraction. Give.
(turns to the other goons)
All of you? Give—give—give—
Sonny, Truck and the others reluctantly give up their guns. Johnny turns to the safe and begins to open it.