by Robert McKee
So, what are Charlotte’s reactions, choices, and tactics as she enters this all-but-deserted bar and sees a world-famous movie star sitting on a stool alone? She could be intimidated and leave, she could give him his privacy and take a table, or she could sit within talking distance.
As the Barman offers her a stool, she makes the boldest choice of the three and joins Bob. Her choice to sit, at the risk of embarrassment, expresses poise.
BEAT 3
BARMAN
What can I get you?
CHARLOTTE
Hmmm… I’m not sure… hmmm.
ACTION: The Barman attending to her.
REACTION: Charlotte testing her welcome.
Intimacy/Isolation (-)
Again, choices: Charlotte could have ordered her favorite drink immediately. But tensed by the risk she’s taking, she hesitates and gives Bob a chance to react. What he does now tells her whether or not she’s actually welcome.
BEAT 4
BOB
(quoting his commercial)
For relaxing times, make it—
BOB & BARMAN
(in unison)
“Suntory time!”
CHARLOTTE
I’ll have a vodka tonic.
Bob glances at her, impressed.
ACTION: Bob making her feel at home.
REACTION: Charlotte joining in.
REACTION: Bob endorsing her choice.
Intimacy/Isolation (+)
Bob’s choice of self-ridicule makes her feel welcome. As she orders a serious drink, he nods in approval, and their sense of intimacy versus isolation moves toward the positive. Two strangers settle in to talk.
Bob’s self-ridicule announces a character dimension: Actors take their work, even in commercials, seriously, but he chooses to mock himself. This choice of action reveals an inner contradiction between his artist’s pride and self-disdain.
BEAT 5
CHARLOTTE
(to Bob as the Barman leaves for her drink)
So what are you doing here?
BOB
Couple of things… Taking a break from my wife, forgetting my son’s birthday, and, ah, getting paid two million dollars to endorse a whiskey when I could be doing a play somewhere.
CHARLOTTE
(staring in disbelief)
Oh.
ACTION: Charlotte inviting a conversation.
REACTION: Bob confessing to his three chief failures in life.
REACTION: Charlotte concealing her shock.
Lost/Found (--)
Charlotte opens a door to the unexpected. If you were her, imagine your reaction as you sit next to a world-famous movie star whom you think leads an enviable lifestyle, ask him how he’s doing, and, offhandedly, he tells you that his life is misery. The phrase “taking a break” doesn’t tell Charlotte whether Bob blames himself, his wife, or both for his marital problems, but he clearly damns himself for forgetting his son’s birthday and, most of all, for corrupting his creative life by choosing money over art.
Bob’s declaration of failure not only surprises Charlotte, but it crosses a red line—that formal distance we traditionally keep between strangers and ourselves. His trespass puts Charlotte under a bit of pressure. Now that the personal value of lost/found has entered the conversation, she wonders if she should take a giant step toward intimacy and add her confession to his. She does. Bob’s revelation wrenches their chat into cycles of confession.
BEAT 6
BOB
But the good news is the whiskey works.
She laughs.
ACTION: Bob soothing her feelings.
REACTION: Charlotte sympathizing.
Intimacy/Isolation (+)
This beat of mutual empathy takes them a smidge closer to intimacy. Bob’s confession in Beat 5 upset her, but he’s sensitive enough to see what he has done and regret it. He quickly softens the moment with a joke. She, in return, sees that he’s embarrassed, so she laughs in sympathy to ease his chagrin.
BEAT 7
BOB
What are you doing?
CHARLOTTE
Hmmm, ah, my husband’s a photographer, so he’s working, and, hmmm, I wasn’t doing anything, so I came along. And we have some friends who live here.
ACTION: Bob inviting her confession.
REACTION: Charlotte confessing to an empty, perhaps troubled personal life.
Lost/Found (--)
From the moment their eyes met in Beat 4, they communicate openly and honestly. Cocktail chat becomes in vino veritas. In Beat 5 Bob dared an intimate confession, and now he tempts her to join him. Once again choices: She could have replied, “Oh, I’m having a wonderful time. My husband’s on a photo shoot and I’m enjoying some old friends.” Instead, her passive, tepid phrases imply the unflattering truth of her married life. Bob reads her troubled subtext.
BEAT 8
Bob lights her cigarette.
BOB
How long have you been married?
CHARLOTTE
Oh, thank you.
(pause)
Two years.
BOB
Twenty-five long ones.
ACTION: Bob readying his pass.
REACTION: Charlotte preparing to take it.
REACTION: Bob making his pass.
Intimacy/Isolation (--)
Charlotte has just confessed that her married life is unfulfilling, so Bob cannot resist making a pass at this beautiful young woman by complaining about his unfulfilled married life.
Note how Coppola has the older man make his move: He reacts to his own action. He asks Charlotte how long she’s been married, knowing that whatever number she might name, he can top it with a quarter century of dissatisfaction.
Note also Charlotte’s choice. As he lights her cigarette, she sees the pass coming and could have deflected it by answering, “Two wonderful years,” or more aggressively, with a question of her own, “Why do you ask?” Instead, she lets it skate.
But make no mistake. This is a sexual proposition. How serious is hard to say. Bob could be doing it out of masculine ritual, but when a middle-aged guy laments his lengthy, less-than-happy marriage to a young woman at a bar, he’s hoping for more than sympathy.
Bob’s pass could push Charlotte away, but instead, she moves closer:
BEAT 9
CHARLOTTE
You’re probably having a midlife crisis.
(pause)
Did you buy a Porsche yet?
BOB
(amused)
You know, I was thinking about buying a Porsche.
ACTION: Charlotte foiling his pass.
REACTION: Bob complimenting her wit.
Intimacy/Isolation (+)
Charlotte knows his pass is halfhearted at best, and so she teases him about his age in order to say “No” with a touch of kindness. He graciously acknowledges her wit.
BEAT 10
CHARLOTTE
Twenty-five years… that’s, ah… well, it’s impressive.
BOB
Well, you figure, you sleep one-third of your life. That knocks off eight years of marriage right there. So you’re, you know, you’re down to sixteen and change, and, you know, you’re just a teenager… like marriage… you can drive it, but you can… there’s still the occasional accident.
CHARLOTTE
(laughing)
Yeah…
ACTION: Charlotte offering a silver lining.
REACTION: Bob confessing his rocky marriage.
REACTION: Charlotte complimenting his wit.
Lost/Found (--)
From previous scenes, we know Charlotte has doubts about her husband and her future. When she tries to compliment Bob’s marriage, he reminds her of a reality she knows from her own life: Relationships rarely live up to our dreams. Bob softens that harsh truth with a deft comparison of marriage to teen driving, but his cynical answer offers no hope. Nonetheless, Charlotte laughs to compliment his insight.
Note that Beats 4, 5,
8, and 10 play in three steps, rather than the conventional two. Normally, a new action immediately follows an action/reaction. Instead, these beats run action/reaction/reaction. When a reaction triggers yet another reaction, it often signals a deeper connection between the characters, a greater sense of intimacy.
As Oscar-winning screenwriter Philip Yordan put it: “Do not drown your script with endless dialogue and long speeches. Every question does not call for a response. Whenever you can express an emotion with a silent gesture, do so. Once you pose the question, permit it to linger before you get a reply. Or better yet, perhaps the character cannot reply; he or she has no answer. This permits the unspoken response to hang in midair.”
BEAT 11
BOB
What do you do?
CHARLOTTE
Hmmm, I’m not sure yet actually. I just graduated last spring.
BOB
And what did you study?
CHARLOTTE
Philosophy.
BOB
Well, there’s a good buck in that racket.
CHARLOTTE
(embarrassed laugh)
Yes… well, hmmm, so far it’s pro bono.
ACTION: Bob inviting her personal story.
REACTION: Charlotte confessing to an unpromising future.
Lost/Found (--)
Having made his second confession in Beat 10, Bob draws Charlotte out again, and she confesses that, like her personal life, her professional life is adrift.
BEAT 12
BOB
(laughs)
Well, I’m sure you’ll figure out the angles.
CHARLOTTE
(laughs)
Yeah…
ACTION: Bob offering false hope.
REACTION: Charlotte laughing it off.
Intimacy/Isolation (+)
Lost/Found (-)
The world-weary Bob offers hope encrusted with irony. Charlotte’s laugh lets him know she gets it, and then she needles him with:
BEAT 13
CHARLOTTE
I hope your Porsche works out.
Bob nods.
ACTION: Charlotte also offering bogus hope.
REACTION: Bob signaling that he too gets it.
Intimacy/Isolation (++)
Lost/Found (--)
They both get it: Unhappy as they are, they won’t lie to themselves. Sharing this tough truth draws them closer yet.
BEAT 14
CHARLOTTE
(toasting)
Cheers to that.
BOB
Cheers to that. Kam pai.
ACTION: Charlotte celebrating their victory over self-deception.
REACTION: Bob joining her celebration.
Intimacy/Isolation (+++)
This upbeat gesture prepares for the downbeat turning point that caps the scene.
BEAT 15
A long pause.
CHARLOTTE
I wish I could sleep.
BOB
Me, too.
Another long pause.
ACTION: Charlotte confessing she feels lost within herself.
REACTION: Bob confessing that he, too, feels lost.
Lost/Found (---)
Intimacy/Isolation (++++)
The lines “I wish I could sleep” and “Me, too” intimate a subtext of suffering as moving as any I can remember.
Sleep restores sanity. Without it, existence becomes a mad, ticking clock. When you toss and turn, unstoppable racing thoughts send worries and fears swirling and churning through the mind. Charlotte and Bob cannot sleep. Why not? Jet lag? Racing thoughts?
In my reading of the subtext, their sleeplessness has a deeper cause. As their confessions reveal, they feel cast off from their marriages, adrift in their working lives, and at sea within themselves. A hollow place has opened up inside both that neither family nor work can fill. Charlotte and Bob have lost their purpose in life.
Character and Dialogue
As the film’s title suggests, the co-protagonists cannot translate their emptiness into fullness; they cannot imagine their future; they cannot interpret life’s absurdity into meaning. In more romantic times, Charlotte and Bob would have been known as “lost souls.”
Notice how Coppola’s aesthetic avoids verbal combat and uses casual, offhanded behavior to imply private battles waged behind a smile. She then squeezes vast content into the fewest, simplest monosyllables: “Well, I’m sure you’ll figure out the angles,” and “Yeah, I hope your Porsche works out.” How does she do it?
First, backstory. Like the scene from The Museum of Innocence, Coppola could have her characters narrate past conflicts vividly and explicitly. Instead, she keeps the dramas offscreen and implicit. Bob and Charlotte narrate three stories apiece—marriage, career, and private self. They end each storyline in a loss and do it with superb economy of language. Bob: “taking a break from my wife/endorsing a whiskey when I could be doing a play.” Charlotte: “he’s working and I wasn’t doing anything.” They tell each unhappy tale with a charm, wit, and self-mockery that guides us around their world-weary facades to their ongoing inner conflicts.
Second, the pause for subtext. Notice how Bob and Charlotte enter sentences on glides such as “Well…,” “Yeah…,” and “Yes…,” putting a thought-filled mini-pause before most everything they say. The actors also space their words with vocalized moments of reflection such as “Oh…,” “Ah…,” and “Hmmm…,” plus non-vocalized reactions of laughter, nods, glances, pauses with eye contact, and pauses staring into space. These hesitations, short and long, halt the words coming out of the character and invite the audience inside. A mini-pause opens space for thought.
Third, naturalistic characterizations. In many of his lines, Bob Harris, a world-famous action actor, sounds in-character. Phrases such as “I never gave a damn whether he was straight or not,” “figure the angles,” “a good buck in that racket,” and “the whiskey works” could have been said by any of the tough-guy characters he plays. Now they infuse his personality.
Charlotte’s vocabulary, in sharp contrast to Bob’s, consists of passive verbs and generalized nouns, absent a single adjective, adverb, or superlative that might add color: “I hope,” “I wish I could,” and “I’m not sure” said twice. Her tone is pleasant but her vocabulary reflects her achromatic, motionless life.
Value Progression and Dialogue
Once we separate the activity of talk from the actions the characters take, the shape of the scene shines through, as escalating value charges progress the dialogue from the first beat to the last.
Coppola designed her scene as a downward spiral that builds its negative power three times over. She progresses it through a series of tumbling confessions that take loss from bad to worse to worst.
First, Bob confesses that as a husband and a father, he’s a fraud, faking his way through his personal life (bad). Charlotte confesses that she’s just tagging along after a husband who loves his work more than her (bad). Bob confesses that he’s a sellout. He should be working as a serious actor; instead, he’s pushing booze (worse). Charlotte admits that she has no career or even the plans for one, and so her life outside of marriage has no direction and no purpose (worse). Then the last beat takes them to the basement. They each confess that they cannot sleep (the worst).
By building the scene around confessions, Coppola peels away the characters’ personae, so they can see each other for who they are. These lost souls confess to expose themselves. To be seen.
Why do these confessions feel progressive and not random? To begin with, Bob and Charlotte live parallel lives: Both have failed in all of life’s arenas. Coppola then composes their confessions so that they alternate in descending order. Which is worse? A personal loss in your private relationships or a professional loss in your working life?
Professional failure. Why? Because failed relationships are a mutual loss. Neither person is entirely blameless, nor entirely at fault. When a relationship fails, you can lighten your load
of guilt by heaping it on your partner.
When you lose in your chosen career, however, you know the fault is yours alone. We may make excuses and blame “the system” or bad luck, but in our heart of hearts we know that if we lose in our calling, it will be due to our lack of discipline, talent, knowledge, judgment, or hard work… the usual gaps that spell professional disaster.
But still, is professional failure always worse than relationship failure? Does losing a job mean more than breaking up a marriage? The key to the bar scene is a build toward a loss of identity. So the question is not one of getting or losing a job; it’s one of gaining or losing your identity.
If, for example, a woman were married and had a job clerking at Walmart, then a loss of relationship may prove worse than being fired, because the woman’s likely source of identity comes more from marriage than a job.
But neither of this film’s characters identifies with a marital relationship. Bob and Charlotte find their identities in themselves as artists. Therefore, for Bob and Charlotte, professional failure is far worse than relationship failure. Charlotte has made no effort to even name her ambition, let alone build a career. Later in the film, she hints at wanting to be a writer, but to date, she hasn’t written anything. Who but Charlotte is to blame for that? Bob is rich, famous, and in demand, but he chooses to waste his time and talent mugging for a liquor spot. Again, who but Bob is to blame for that?