by Robert McKee
TERMS OF ENDEARMENT tells of a very different obsession. Aurora (Shirley MacLaine) lives the Epicurean philosophy that happiness means never suffering, that the secret of life is to avoid all negative emotion. She refuses two renowned sources of misery, career and lovers. She’s so afraid of the pain of growing old, she dresses twenty years too young for herself. Her home has the unlived-in look of a doll’s house. The only life she leads is over the telephone vicariously through her daughter. But on her fifty-second birthday she begins to realize that the depth of joy you experience is in direct proportion to the pain you’re willing to bear. In the last act she throws away the emptiness of a pain-free life to embrace children, lover, age, and all the pleasure and woe they bring.
Second, the negative irony:
If you cling to your obsession, your ruthless pursuit will achieve your desire, then destroy you.
WALL STREET; CASINO; THE WAR OF THE ROSES; STAR ’80; NASHVILLE; NETWORK; THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY?—these films are the Punitive Plot counterpart to the Redemption Plots above. In them the “down-ending” Counter-Idea becomes the Controlling Idea as protagonists remain steadfastly driven by their need to achieve fame or success, and never think to abandon it. At Story Climax the protagonists achieve their desire (positive), only to be destroyed by it (negative). In NIXON the president’s (Anthony Hopkins) blind, corrupt trust in his political power destroys him and with him the nation’s faith in government. In THE ROSE Rose (Bette Midler) is destroyed by her passion for drugs, sex, and rock ‘n’ roll. In ALL THAT JAZZ Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) is brought down by his neurotic need for drugs, sex, and musical comedy.
On Irony
The effect of irony on an audience is that wonderful reaction, “Ah, life is just like that.” We recognize that idealism and pessimism are at the extremes of experience, that life is rarely all sunshine and strawberries, nor is it all doom and drek; it is both. From the worst of experiences something positive can be gained; for the richest of experiences a great price must be paid. No matter how we try to plot a straight passage through life, we sail on the tides of irony. Reality is relentlessly ironic, and this is why stories that end in irony tend to last the longest through time, travel the widest in the world, and draw the greatest love and respect from audiences.
This is also why, of the three possible emotional charges at climax, irony is by far the most difficult to write. It demands the deepest wisdom and the highest craft for three reasons.
First, it’s tough enough to come up with either a bright, idealistic ending or a sober, pessimistic climax that’s satisfying and convincing. But an ironic climax is a single action that makes both a positive and a negative statement. How to do two in one?
Second, how to say both clearly? Irony doesn’t mean ambiguity. Ambiguity is a blur; one thing cannot be distinguished from another. But there’s nothing ambiguous about irony; it’s a clear, double declaration of what’s gained and what’s lost, side by side. Nor does irony mean coincidence. A true irony is honestly motivated. Stories that end by random chance, doubly charged or not, are meaningless, not ironic.
Third, if at climax the life situation of the protagonist is both positive and negative, how to express it so that the two charges remain separated in the audience’s experience and don’t cancel each other out, and you end up saying nothing?
MEANING AND SOCIETY
Once you discover your Controlling Idea, respect it. Never allow yourself the luxury of thinking, “It’s just entertainment.” What, after all, is “entertainment”? Entertainment is the ritual of sitting in the dark, staring at a screen, investing tremendous concentration and energy into what one hopes will be a satisfying, meaningful emotional experience. Any film that hooks, holds, and pays off the story ritual is entertainment. Whether it be THE WIZARD OF OZ (USA/1939) or THE 400 BLOWS (France/1959), LA DOLCE VITA (Italy/1960) or SNOW WHITE AND THE THREE STOOGES (USA/1961), no story is innocent. All coherent tales express an idea veiled inside an emotional spell.
In 388 B.C. Plato urged the city fathers of Athens to exile all poets and storytellers. They are a threat to society, he argued. Writers deal with ideas, but not in the open, rational manner of philosophers. Instead, they conceal their ideas inside the seductive emotions of art. Yet felt ideas, as Plato pointed out, are ideas nonetheless. Every effective story sends a charged idea out to us, in effect compelling the idea into us, so that we must believe. In fact, the persuasive power of a story is so great that we may believe its meaning even if we find it morally repellent. Storytellers, Plato insisted, are dangerous people. He was right.
Consider DEATH WISH. Its Controlling Idea is “Justice triumphs when citizens take the law into their own hands and kill the people who need killing.” Of all the vile ideas in human history, this is the vilest. Armed with it, the Nazis devastated Europe. Hitler believed he would turn Europe into a paradise once he killed the people who needed killing… and he had his list.
When DEATH WISH opened, newspaper reviewers across the country were morally outraged at the sight of Charles Bronson stalking Manhattan, gunning down people if they happened to look like muggers: “Hollywood thinks this passes for justice?” they ranted. “Whatever became of due process of law?” But in nearly every review I read, at some point the critic noted: “… and yet the audience seemed to enjoy it.” A code for: “… and so did the critic.” Critics never cite the pleasure of the audience unless they share it. In spite of their scandalized sensibilities, the film got to them too.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to live in a country where DEATH WISH couldn’t be made. I oppose all censorship. In pursuit of truth, we must willingly suffer the ugliest of lies. We must, as Justice Holmes argued, trust the marketplace of ideas. If everyone is given a voice, even the irrationally radical or cruelly reactionary, humanity will sort through all possibilities and make the right choice. No civilization, including Plato’s, has ever been destroyed because its citizens learned too much truth.
Authoritative personalities, like Plato, fear the threat that comes not from idea, but from emotion. Those in power never want us to feel. Thought can be controlled and manipulated, but emotion is willful and unpredictable. Artists threaten authority by exposing lies and inspiring passion for change. This is why when tyrants seize power, their firing squads aim at the heart of the writer.
Lastly, given story’s power to influence, we need to look at the issue of an artist’s social responsibility. I believe we have no responsibility to cure social ills or renew faith in humanity, to uplift the spirits of society or even express our inner being. We have only one responsibility: to tell the truth. Therefore, study your Story Climax and extract from it your Controlling Idea. But before you take another step, ask yourself this question: Is this the truth? Do I believe in the meaning of my story? If the answer is no, toss it and start again. If yes, do everything possible to get your work into the world. For although an artist may, in his private life, lie to others, even to himself, when he creates he tells the truth; and in a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.
PART 3:
THE
PRINCIPLES
OF STORY
DESIGN
When forced to work within a strict framework the imagination is taxed to its utmost—and will produce its richest ideas. Given total freedom the work is likely to sprawl.
—T. S. ELIOT
7
THE SUBSTANCE OF STORY
From what material do we create the scenes that will one day walk and talk their way across the screen? What is the clay we twist and shape, keep or throw away? What is the “substance” of story?
In all other arts the answer is self-evident. The composer has his instrument and the notes it sounds. The dancer calls her body her instrument. Sculptors chisel stone. Painters stir paint. All artists can lay hands on the raw material of their art—except the writer. For at the nucleus of a story is a “substance,” like the energy swirl
ing in an atom, that’s never directly seen, heard, or touched, yet we know it and feel it. The stuff of story is alive but intangible.
“Intangible?” I hear you thinking. “But I have my words. Dialogue, description. I can put hands on my pages. The writer’s raw material is language.” In fact, it’s not, and the careers of many talented writers, especially those who come to screenwriting after a strong literary education, flounder because of the disastrous misunderstanding of this principle. For just as glass is a medium for light, air a medium for sound, language is only a medium, one of many, in fact, for storytelling. Something far more profound than mere words beats at the heart of a story.
And at the opposite end of story sits another equally profound phenomenon: the audience’s reaction to this substance. When you think about it, going to the movies is bizarre. Hundreds of strangers sit in a blackened room, elbow to elbow, for two or more hours. They don’t go to the toilet or get a smoke. Instead, they stare wide-eyed at a screen, investing more uninterrupted concentration than they give to work, paying money to suffer emotions they’d do anything to avoid in life. From this perspective, a second question arises: What is the source of story energy? How does it compel such intense mental and sentient attention from the audience? How do stories work?
The answers to these questions come when the artist explores the creative process subjectively. To understand the substance of story and how it performs, you need to view your work from the inside out, from the center of your character, looking out at the world through your character’s eyes, experiencing the story as if you were the living character yourself. To slip into this subjective and highly imaginative point of view, you need to look closely at this creature you intend to inhabit, a character. Or more specifically, a protagonist. For although the protagonist is a character like any other, as the central and essential role, he embodies all aspects of character in absolute terms.
THE PROTAGONIST
Generally, the protagonist is a single character. A story, however, could be driven by a duo, such as THELMA & LOUISE; a trio, THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK; more, THE SEVEN SAMURAI or THE DIRTY DOZEN. In THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN an entire class of people, the proletariat, create a massive Plural-Protagonist.
For two or more characters to form a Plural-Protagonist, two conditions must be met: First, all individuals in the group share the same desire. Second, in the struggle to achieve this desire, they mutually suffer and benefit. If one has a success, all benefit. If one has a setback, all suffer. Within a Plural-Protagonist, motivation, action, and consequence are communal.
A story may, on the other hand, be Multiprotagonist. Here, unlike the Plural-Protagonist, characters pursue separate and individual desires, suffering and benefiting independently: PULP FICTION, HANNAH AND HER SISTERS, PARENTHOOD, DINER, DO THE RIGHT THING, THE BREAKFAST CLUB, EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN, PELLE THE CONQUEROR, HOPE AND GLORY, HIGH HOPES. Robert Altman is the master of this design: A WEDDING, NASHVILLE, SHORT CUTS.
On screen the Multiprotagonist story is as old as GRAND HOTEL; in the novel older still, War and Peace; in the theatre older yet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Multiprotagonist stories become Multiplot stories. Rather than driving the telling through the focused desire of a protagonist, either single or plural, these works weave a number of smaller stories, each with its own protagonist, to create a dynamic portrait of a specific society.
The protagonist need not be human. It may be an animal, BABE, or a cartoon, BUGS BUNNY, or even an inanimate object, such as the hero of the children’s story The Little Engine That Could. Anything that can be given a free will and the capacity to desire, take action, and suffer the consequences can be a protagonist.
It’s even possible, in rare cases, to switch protagonists halfway through a story. PSYCHO does this, making the shower murder both an emotional and a formal jolt. With the protagonist dead, the audience is momentarily confused; whom is this movie about? The answer is a Plural-Protagonist as the victim’s sister, boyfriend, and a private detective take over the story. But no matter whether the story’s protagonist is single, multi or plural, no matter how he is characterized, all protagonists have certain hallmark qualities, and the first is willpower.
A PROTAGONIST is a willful character.
Other characters may be dogged, even inflexible, but the protagonist in particular is a willful being. The exact quantity of this willpower, however, may not be measurable. A fine story is not necessarily the struggle of a gigantic will versus absolute forces of inevitability. Quality of will is as important as quantity. A protagonist’s willpower may be less than that of the biblical Job, but powerful enough to sustain desire through conflict and ultimately take actions that create meaningful and irreversible change.
What’s more, the true strength of the protagonist’s will may hide behind a passive characterization. Consider Blanche DuBois, protagonist of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. At first glance she seems weak, drifting and will-less, only wanting, she says, to live in reality. Yet beneath her frail characterization, Blanche’s deep character owns a powerful will that drives her unconscious desire: What she really wants is to escape from reality. So Blanche does everything she can to buffer herself against the ugly world that engulfs her: She acts the grand dame, puts doilies on frayed furniture, lampshades on naked light bulbs, tries to make a Prince Charming out of a dullard. When none of this succeeds, she takes the final escape from reality—she goes insane.
On the other hand, while Blanche only seems passive, the truly passive protagonist is a regrettably common mistake. A story cannot be told about a protagonist who doesn’t want anything, who cannot make decisions, whose actions effect no change at any level.
The PROTAGONIST has a conscious desire.
Rather, the protagonist’s will impels a known desire. The protagonist has a need or goal, an object of desire, and knows it. If you could pull your protagonist aside, whisper in his ear, “What do you want?” he would have an answer: “I’d like X today, Y next week, but in the end I want Z.” The protagonist’s object of desire may be external: the destruction of the shark in JAWS, or internal: maturity in BIG. In either case, the protagonist knows what he wants, and for many characters a simple, clear, conscious desire is sufficient.
The PROTAGONIST may also have a self-contradictory unconscious desire.
However, the most memorable, fascinating characters tend to have not only a conscious but an unconscious desire. Although these complex protagonists are unaware of their subconscious need, the audience senses it, perceiving in them an inner contradiction. The conscious and unconscious desires of a multidimensional protagonist contradict each other. What he believes he wants is the antithesis of what he actually but unwittingly wants. This is self-evident. What would be the point of giving a character a subconscious desire if it happens to be the very thing he knowingly seeks?
The PROTAGONIST has the capacities to pursue the Object of Desire convincingly.
The protagonist’s characterization must be appropriate. He needs a believable combination of qualities in the right balance to pursue his desires. This doesn’t mean he’ll get what he wants. He may fail. But the character’s desires must be realistic enough in relationship to his will and capacities for the audience to believe that he could be doing what they see him doing and that he has a chance for fulfillment.
The PROTAGONIST must have at least a chance to attain his desire.
An audience has no patience for a protagonist who lacks all possibility of realizing his desire. The reason is simple: No one believes this of his own life. No one believes he doesn’t have even the smallest chance of fulfilling his wishes. But if we were to pull the camera back on life, the grand overview might lead us to conclude that, in the words of Henry David Thoreau, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” that most people waste their precious time and die with the feeling they’ve fallen short of their dreams. As honest as this painful insight may be, we cannot allow ourselves to believe it. Instead, we carry hop
e to the end.
Hope, after all, is not unreasonable. It’s simply hypothetical. “If this… if that… if I learn more… if I love more… if I discipline myself… if I win the lottery… if things change, then I’ll have a chance of getting from life what I want.” We all carry hope in our hearts, no matter the odds against us. A protagonist, therefore, who’s literally hopeless, who hasn’t even the minimal capacity to achieve his desire, cannot interest us.
The PROTAGONIST has the will and capacity to pursue the object of his conscious and/or unconscious desire to the end of the line, to the human limit established by setting and genre.
The art of story is not about the middle ground, but about the pendulum of existence swinging to the limits, about life lived in its most intense states. We explore the middle ranges of experience, but only as a path to the end of the line. The audience senses that limit and wants it reached. For no matter how intimate or epic the setting, instinctively the audience draws a circle around the characters and their world, a circumference of experience that’s defined by the nature of the fictional reality. This line may reach inward to the soul, outward into the universe, or in both directions at once. The audience, therefore, expects the storyteller to be an artist of vision who can take his story to those distant depths and ranges.
A STORY must build to a final action beyond which the audience cannot imagine another.