by Robert McKee
As Gittes:
“An opening. Get her now. Make her confess.”
GITTES
(jumping up)
Yes, positively. That’s where
he was drowned.
As Evelyn:
Stunned. “At home?!”
EVELYN
What?!
As Gittes:
Fury. “Make her talk. Now!”
GITTES
There’s no time to be shocked
by the truth. The coroner’s
report proves that he had salt
water in his lungs when he
was killed. Just take my word
for it, all right? Now I want to
know how it happened, and I
want to know why, and I
want to know before Escobar
gets here because I don’t
want to lose my license.
As Evelyn:
His sneering, livid face pushes into yours. Chaos, paralyzing fear, grasping for control.
EVELYN
I don’t know what you are
talking about. This is the
craziest, the most insane
thing…
GITTES
Stop it!
As Gittes:
Losing control, hands shoot out, grasp her, fingers digging in, making her wince. But then the look of shock and pain in her eyes brings a stab of compassion. A gap opens. Feelings for her struggle against the rage. Hands drop. “She’s hurting. Come on, man, she didn’t do it in cold blood, could happen to anybody. Give her a chance. Lay it out, point by point, but get the truth out of her!”
GITTES
I’m gonna make it easy for
you. You were jealous, you
had a fight, he fell, hit his
head… it was an accident
… but his girl’s a witness. So
you had to shut her up. You
don’t have the guts to harm
her, but you’ve got the money
to shut her mouth. Yes or no?
As Evelyn:
The gap crashes shut with a horrible meaning: “My God, he thinks I did it!”
EVELYN
No!
As Gittes, hearing her emphatic answer:
“Good. Finally sounds like the truth.” Cooling off. “But what the hell’s going on?”
GITTES
Who is she? And don’t give
me that crap about a sister
because you don’t have a
sister.
As Evelyn:
The greatest shock of all splits you in two: “He wants to know who she is… God help me.” Weak with years of carrying the secret. Back to wall. “If I don’t tell him, he’ll call the police, but if I do…” No place to turn… except to Gittes.
EVELYN
I’ll tell you… I’ll tell you the
truth.
As Gittes:
Confident. Focused. “At last.”
GITTES
Good. What’s her name?
As Evelyn:
“Her name…. Dear God, her name…”
EVELYN
… Katherine.
GITTES
Katherine who?
As Evelyn:
Bracing for the worst. “Tell it all. See if he can take it… if I can take it…”
EVELYN
She’s my daughter.
Back in Gittes pov as the expectation of finally prying loose her confession explodes:
“Another goddamned lie!”
Gittes lashes out and slaps her flush across the face.
As Evelyn:
Searing pain. Numbness. The paralysis that comes from a life time of guilt.
GITTES
I said the truth.
She stands passively, offering herself to be hit again.
EVELYN
She’s my sister—
As Gittes:
slapping her again…
EVELYN
—she’s my daughter—
As Evelyn:
Feeling nothing but a letting go.
As Gittes:
… hitting her yet again, seeing her tears…
EVELYN
—my sister—
… slapping her even harder…
EVELYN
—my daughter, my sister—
… backhand, open fist, grasp her, hurl her into a sofa.
GITTES
I said I want the truth.
As Evelyn:
At first his assault seems miles away, but slamming against the sofa jolts you back to the now, and you scream out words you’ve never said to anyone:
EVELYN
She’s my sister and my daughter.
As Gittes:
A blinding gap! Dumbfounded. Fury ebbs away as the gap slowly closes and you absorb the terrible implications behind her words.
Suddenly, Khan POUNDS down the stairs.
As Khan:
Ready to fight to protect her.
As Evelyn, suddenly remembering:
“Katherine! Sweet Jesus, did she hear me?”
EVELYN
(quickly to Kahn)
Khan, please, go back.
For God’s sake, keep her
upstairs. Go back.
Khan gives Gittes a hard look, then retreats upstairs.
As Evelyn, turning to see the frozen expression on Gittes’ face:
An odd sense of pity for him. “Poor man… still doesn’t get it.”
EVELYN
… my father and I…
understand? Or is it too tough
for you?
Evelyn drops her head to her knees and sobs.
As Gittes:
A wave of compassion. “Cross… that sick bastard…”
GITTES
(quietly)
He raped you?
As Evelyn:
Images of you and your father, so many years ago. Crushing guilt. But no more lies:
Evelyn shakes her head “no.”
This is the location of a critical rewrite. In the third draft Evelyn explains at great length that her mother died when she was fifteen and her father’s grief was such that he had a “breakdown” and became “a little boy,” unable to feed or dress himself. This led to incest between them. Unable to face what he had done, her father then turned his back on her. This exposition not only slowed the pace of the scene, but more importantly, it seriously weakened the power of the antagonist, giving him a sympathetic vulnerability. It was cut and replaced by Gittes’ “He raped you?” and Evelyn’s denial—a brilliant stroke that maintains Cross’s cruel core, and severely tests Gittes’ love for Evelyn.
This opens at least two possible explanations for why Evelyn denies she was raped: Children often have a self-destructive need to protect their parents. It could well have been rape, but even now she cannot bring herself to accuse her father. Or was she complicit. Her mother was dead, making her the “woman of the house.” In those circumstances, incest between father and daughter is not unknown. That, however, doesn’t excuse Cross. The responsibility is his in either case, but Evelyn has punished herself with guilt. Her denial forces Gittes to face character defining choices: whether or not to continue loving this woman, whether or not to turn her over to the police for murder. Her denial contradicts his expectation and a void opens:
As Gittes:
“If she wasn’t raped… ?” Confusion. “There must be more.”
GITTES
Then what happened?
As Evelyn:
Flashing memories of the shock of being pregnant, your father’s sneering face, fleeing to Mexico, the agony of giving birth, a foreign clinic, loneliness…
EVELYN
I ran away…
GITTES
… to Mexico.
As Evelyn:
Remembering when Hollis found you in Mexico, proudly showing him Katherine, grief as your child is taken from you, the faces of the nuns, the sound of K
atherine crying…
EVELYN
(nodding “yes”)
Hollis came and took care of
me. I couldn’t see her… I
was fifteen. I wanted to but I
couldn’t. Then…
Images of your joy at getting Katherine to Los Angeles to be with you, of keeping her safe from your father, but then sudden fear: “He must never find her. He’s mad. I know what he wants. If he gets his hands on my child, he’s going to do it again.”
EVELYN
(a pleading look to
Gittes)
Now I want to be with her.
I want to take care of her.
As Gittes:
“I’ve finally got the truth.” Feeling the gap close, and with it, a growing love for her. Pity for all she’s suffered, respect for her courage and devotion to the child. “Let her go. No, better yet, get her out of town yourself. She’ll never make it on her own. And, man, you owe it to her.”
GITTES
Where are you gonna take
her now?
As Evelyn:
Rush of hope. “What does he mean? Will he help?”
EVELYN
Back to Mexico.
As Gittes:
Wheels turning. “How to get her past Escobar?”
GITTES
Well, you can’t take the train.
Escobar’ll be looking for you
everywhere.
As Evelyn:
Disbelief. Elation. “He is going to help me!”
EVELYN
How… how about a plane?
GITTES
No, that’s worse. You better
just get out of here, leave all
this stuff here.
(beat)
Where does Kahn live? Get
the exact address.
EVELYN
All right…
Light glints off the glasses on the table, catching Evelyn’s eye.
As Evelyn:
“Those glasses…” An image of Hollis reading… without glasses.
EVELYN
Those didn’t belong to Hollis.
GITTES
How do you know?
EVELYN
He didn’t wear bifocals.
She goes upstairs as Gittes stares down at the glasses.
As Gittes:
“If not Mulwray’s glasses… ? A gap breaks open. One last piece of truth yet to find. Memory rewinds and flashes back to… lunch with Noah Cross, and him peering over bifocals, eyeing the head of a broiled fish. The gap snaps shut. “Cross killed Mulwray because his son-in-law wouldn’t tell him where his daughter by his daughter was hiding. Cross wants the kid. But he won’t get her because I’ve got the evidence to nail him… in my pocket.”
Gittes carefully tucks the bifocals into his vest, then looks up to see Evelyn on the stairs with her arm around a shy teenager.
“Lovely. Like her mother. A little scared. Must have heard us.”
EVELYN
Katherine, say hello to Mister
Gittes.
You move into Katherine’s pov:
If I were Katherine in this moment, what would I feel?
As Katherine:
Anxious. Flustered. “Mother’s been crying. Did this man hurt her? She’s smiling at him. I guess it’s okay.”
KATHERINE
Hello.
GITTES
Hello.
Evelyn gives her daughter a reassuring look and sends her back upstairs.
EVELYN
(to Gittes)
He lives at 1712 Alameda. Do
you know where that is?
GITTES
Sure…
As Gittes:
A last gap opens, flooded with images of a woman you once loved and her violent death on Alameda in Chinatown. Feelings of dread, of life coming full circle. The gap slowly closes with the thought, “This time I’ll do it right.”
CREATING WITHIN THE GAP
In writing out what actors call “inner monologues” I’ve put this well-paced scene into ultra-slow motion, and given words to what would be flights of feeling or flashes of insight. Nonetheless, that’s how it is at the desk. It may take days, even weeks, to write what will be minutes, perhaps seconds, on screen. We put each and every moment under a microscope of thinking, rethinking, creating, recreating as we weave through our characters’ moments, a maze of unspoken thoughts, images, sensations, and emotions.
Writing from the inside out, however, does not mean that we imagine a scene from one end to the other locked in a single character’s point of view. Rather, as in the exercise above, the writer shifts points of view. He settles into the conscious center of a character and asks the question: “If I were this character in these circumstances, what would I do?” He feels within his own emotions a specific human reaction and imagines the character’s next action.
Now the writer’s problem is this: how to progress the scene? To build a next beat, the writer must move out of the character’s subjective point of view and take an objective look at the action he just created. This action anticipates a certain reaction from the character’s world. But that must not occur. Instead, the writer must pry open the gap. To do so, he asks the question writers have been asking themselves since time began: “What is the opposite of that?”
Writers are by instinct dialectical thinkers. As Jean Cocteau said, “The spirit of creation is the spirit of contradiction—the breakthrough of appearances toward an unknown reality.” You must doubt appearances and seek the opposite of the obvious. Don’t skim the surface, taking things at face value. Rather, peel back the skin of life to find the hidden, the unexpected, the seemingly inappropriate—in other words, the truth. And you will find your truth in the gap.
Remember, you are the God of your universe. You know your characters, their minds, bodies, emotions, relationships, world. Once you’ve created an honest moment from one point of view, you move around your universe, even into the inanimate, looking for another point of view so you can invade that, create an unexpected reaction, and splinter open the cleft between expectation and result.
Having done this, you then go back into the mind of the first character, and find your way to a new emotional truth by asking again: “If I were this character under these new circumstances, what would I do?” Finding your way to that reaction and action, you then step right out again, asking: “And what is the opposite of that?”
Fine writing emphasizes REACTIONS.
Many of the actions in any story are more or less expected. By genre convention, the lovers in a Love Story will meet, the detective in a Thriller will discover a crime, the protagonist’s life in an Education Plot will bottom out. These and other such commonplace actions are universally known and anticipated by the audience. Consequently, fine writing puts less stress on what happens than on to whom it happens and why and how it happens. Indeed, the richest and most satisfying pleasures of all are found in stories that focus on the reactions that events cause and the insight gained.
Looking back at the CHINATOWN scene: Gittes knocks on the door expecting to be let in. What’s the reaction he gets? Khan blocks his way, expecting Gittes to wait. Gittes’s reaction? He shocks Khan by insulting him in Cantonese and barging in. Evelyn comes downstairs expecting Gittes’s help. The reaction to that? Gittes calls the police, expecting to force her to confess the murder and tell the truth about the “other woman.” Reaction? She reveals that the other woman is her daughter by incest, indicting her lunatic father for the murder. Beat after beat, even in the quietest, most internalized of scenes, a dynamic series of action/reaction/gap, renewed action/surprising reaction/gap builds the scene to and around its Turning Point as reactions amaze and fascinate.
If you write a beat in which a character steps up to a door, knocks, and waits, and in reaction the door is politely opened to invite him in, and the director is foolish enough to shoot this, in all probability it will never see the light of the screen.
Any editor worthy of the title would instantly scrap it, explaining to the director: “Jack, these are eight dead seconds. He knocks on the door and it’s actually opened for him? No, we’ll cut to the sofa. That’s the first real beat. Sorry you squandered fifty thousand dollars walking your star through a door, but it’s a pace killer and pointless.” A “pointless pace killer” is any scene in which reactions lack insight and imagination, forcing expectation to equal result.
Once you’ve imagined the scene, beat by beat, gap by gap, you write. What you write is a vivid description of what happens and the reactions it gets, what is seen, said, and done. You write so that when someone else reads your pages he will, beat by beat, gap by gap, live through the roller coaster of life that you lived through at your desk. The words on the page allow the reader to plunge into each gap, seeing what you dreamed, feeling what you felt, learning what you understood until, like you, the reader’s pulse pounds, emotions flow, and meaning is made.
THE SUBSTANCE AND ENERGY OF STORY
The answers to the questions that began this chapter should now be clear. The stuff of a story is not its words. Your text must be lucid to express the desk-bound life of your imagination and feelings. But words are not an end, they are a means, a medium. The substance of story is the gap that splits open between what a human being expects to happen when he takes an action and what really does happen; the rift between expectation and result, probability and necessity. To build a scene, we constantly break open these breaches in reality.
As to the source of energy in story, the answer is the same: the gap. The audience empathizes with the character, vicariously seeking his desire. It more or less expects the world to react the way the character expects. When the gap opens up for character, it opens up for audience. This is the “Oh, my God!” moment, the “Oh, no!” or “Oh, yes!” you’ve experienced again and again in well-crafted stories.