by Paolo Braga
LEWIS
How many fingers?
PATIENT
Three.
LEWIS
What’s your name?
PATIENT
Jeff Barr.
LEWIS
Where are you?
PATIENT
Cook County General.
LEWIS
What’s today?
PATIENT
St. Patrick’s Day.
← 151 | 152 → LEWIS
You’re fine.
(to assistant)
Get a set of facial bones.
(to patient)
You’re gonna be just fine, Mr. Barr.
PATIENT
You’re beautiful, doc.
LEWIS
Thank you.
PATIENT
You married?
LEWIS
No, I’m a doctor.
PATIENT
Then, listen…
LEWIS
Take it easy, Mr. Barr. You don’t
want to fall on your face twice in
one day…
In addition to the information given on the character’s personality (she is a woman with determination who does not let herself be intimidated and has a good sense of humor), the audience has also learned what hospital they are in (a university hospital; an essential piece of news given the importance the interns will have later on in the series), that this doctor is considered “the most beautiful” of all the protagonists and that she is single because she is a doctor, which is pretty much normal, at least in this series.
Not bad for a few seconds of dialogue. While the audience is caught up in an amusing element of conflict (a patient that flirts with a doctor in the emergency room), it absorbs this information.
← 152 | 153 →
Use of irony
When there is a significant amount of information to deal with, irony can aid conflict in concealing exposition. This is because when information triggers biting remarks that make people smile, it is gladly received. Kaffee’s lines in the scenes considered above from A Few Good Men, provide a good example of this technique.
Furthermore, irony is useful to exposition because it is an approach with little to moderate conflict used by people who know one another, to jokingly provoke one another on matters that are known to them both. Irony, in fact, is useful in keeping a relationship alive, recalling to mind old habits that create a condition of sympathy and understanding. When irony is used to emphasize a relationship or habits among people who know one another, the allusion made about this known fact to a character by a family member, colleague or friend appears more credible.
Finally, irony is a form of indirect communication based on the capability of finding the hidden meaning in subtext, which is a rewarding intellectual exercise.
It is obvious that irony works when brilliantly construed when it is unexpected and in character.
This is the case in the dialogue that introduces Dr. House, the brilliant, uncompromising Sherlock Holmes of medicine in the pilot episode of the series House M.D. (USA 2004-2012). There is a mix of conflict and sarcasm. The dialogue takes place just a few minutes into the episode, after the teaser that has presented the case of the episode (filmed from the teacher’s point of view, a teacher has a terrible seizure in front of her students).
The audience meets House (Hugh Laurie) in a corridor of the clinic he works in. The much-loved character created by David Shore has a cane and walks with a limp. He is with Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard), his colleague and friend, who would like for House to accept the teacher’s case. This is a classic TV “walk and talk” scene. A camera follows the characters from behind as they walk in order to make the dialogue, which would not have been otherwise, visually dynamic.
With regards to relaying information, the screenwriter has two objectives – to give the audience as much information as possible about ← 153 | 154 → House and Wilson, since they are completely unknown to the audience, and provide medical information about the teacher, developing the mystery that the episode has left to the expertise of the protagonist to resolve.
There is a lot of information to be given, some of it even overlapping, and yet this information must flow without boring the audience:
WILSON
Twenty-nine-year old female. First
seizure one month ago. Lost the
ability to speak. Babbled like a
baby. Progressive deterioration of
mental status.
This information about the case created a bridge with the teaser seen just seconds before. The information in itself is dramatic. The topic alone captures the attention of the audience as the dialogue begins.
HOUSE
You see that? They all assume I’m a
patient because of this cane.
WILSON
So put on a white coat like the
rest of us.
HOUSE
I don’t want them to think I’m a
doctor.
WILSON
You see where the administration
might have a problem with that
attitude?
Information about the protagonist is facilitated by his cane. It emphasizes his limp ‒ an initial insinuation that this trait has a lot to do with the character’s personality. He says he is a doctor, but he’s different from others. And he doesn’t like working. This information is ← 154 | 155 → introduced, in an arrogant tone of voice, through a complete and abrupt change of subject (House shows complete indifference to the women’s illness and places attention on himself) that makes the audience curious about his character – who is this man and why doesn’t he want to help someone who is so seriously ill?
HOUSE
People don’t want a sick doctor.
WILSON
That’s fair enough. I don’t like
healthy patients…
An ironic variation. A witty exchange that provides brilliant comic relief. House’s remark, evidently only an excuse, portrays a subtle bit of truth. In response, Wilson inverts this subtle truth in order to produce another, which connects perfectly with House’s line.
Thus, they get back to the case:
WILSON
The twenty nine-year old female…
HOUSE
The one who can’t talk? I like that
part.
WILSON
She’s my cousin.
HOUSE
And your cousin doesn’t like the
diagnosis. I wouldn’t either: brain
tumor. She’s going to die. Boring.
New information on the patient. The audience’s attention is re-captured by two unexpected revelations (the patient is Wilson’s cousin and she has a brain tumor) that the protagonist responds to with two sarcastic comments.
← 155 | 156 → While all this is being said, visual information is being given as well. House takes out a bottle of pills and swallows a few. Thus, it is deduced that House is being treated for some ailment.
WILSON
No wonder you’re such a renowned
diagnostician: you don’t need to
actually know anything to figure out
what’s wrong.
HOUSE
You’re the oncologist. I’m just a
lowly infectious disease guy.
Wilson uses irony to move the audience’s attention back on the protagonist and reveal new information about him (he is renowned). House responds with irony as well (feigning modesty) and adds two bits of information about himself and his colleague (their specializations). Once again, they get back to the case.
WILSON
Yes. Just a simple country doctor…
Brain tumors at her age are highly
unlikely.
HOUSE
She’s twenty nine. Whatever she’s
got is highly unlikely.
WILSON
The protein markers for the three
most prevalent brain cance
rs came
up negative.
HOUSE
That’s an H.M.O. lab. Might as well
have sent it to a high school kid
with a chemistry set.
← 156 | 157 → WILSON
No family history.
HOUSE
I thought your uncle died of
cancer.
WILSON
Other side. No environmental
factors.
HOUSE
That you know of.
WILSON
And she’s not responding to radiation
treatment.
HOUSE
None of which is even close to
dispositive. All it does is raise
one question: your cousin goes to
an H.M.O.?
Medical information about the case that excludes the likelihood of cancer and more information about Wilson (this information is important because, later on in the episode, we find out that he lied about them being related). Once again, House laces his remarks with sarcasm. First he philosophizes to enhance the exchange (his funeral-like observation of her young age), then he creates conflict (he belittles the lab the tests were done at and invites Wilson to have them repeated somewhere else to confirm the existence of cancer, reaffirming that he does not want to be involved).
WILSON
Come on! Why leave all the fun for
the coroner? What’s the point of
putting together a team if you’re
← 157 | 158 → not gonna use them? You’ve got
three overqualified doctors working
for you, getting bored.
This is where the scene ends, on the look in House’s eyes as, for the first time, he seems to have taken the problem Wilson has presented him to heart.
This is Wilson’s last attempt to convince House to accept the case. Wilson’s plea, directed to the only person capable of saving the patient, gives the audience two more pieces of information (House has a staff and House does not use his staff). This new information, introduced with more irony (leaving all the fun to the coroner), stimulates the curiosity of the audience even more. Why does a rule-breaking top-notch doctor keep a team of highly-efficient doctors inoperative? This information paves the way for more, which arrives in the next scene.
This dialogue keeps knowledge flowing. There is no conflict created because the information itself is, and fuels, conflict (one character wants a sickness to be cured, the other character does not). Each piece of information serves in pushing the audience’s attention forward, towards the reaction triggered inside the speaker. Throughout this conversation, even before the audience has time to entirely digest the information, it is already intrigued by the effect this information will have on the relationship between the two characters. The answer is immediately at hand, accompanied by extra information that might not have been specifically asked for, but which provokes a reaction, and so forth. Meanwhile, the irony strewn throughout the dialogue makes the passage entertaining.
In order to make exposition pleasant and imperceptible, irony can be just as decisive as conflict. This happens, for example, when characterization does not allow a character to deal with grave aspects from his past in a serious way.
One example is the way in which the screenwriter of The Devil Wears Prada reveals the backstory of Nigel (Stanley Tucci), the gay art director who becomes the protagonist’s (Andy) mentor.
At the end of the first act, after Andy has just been torn to shreds by Miranda for not having integrated into this high-fashion environment, Andy goes to Nigel for some consolation. Her complaints, however, do ← 158 | 159 → not move Nigel to pity. Rather, he quite openly reprimands her. She is not making the effort she should be given that the position she currently holds is very sought after and she only wound up there out of, almost, pure chance (“Don’t you know that you are working at the place that published some of the greatest artists of the century? Halston, Lagerfeld, de la Renta. And what they did, what they created was greater than art because you live your life in it”). Nigel’s short tribute to great stylists, his ranting and comical tone of voice, set-up the ironic deviation with which Nigel, hiding behind a hypothetical case, uses Runaway to talk about himself:
NIGEL
You think this is just a magazine,
hmm? This is not just a magazine!
This is a shining beacon of hope
for… Oh, I don’t know… Let’s
say a young boy growing up in
Rhode Island with six brothers,
pretending to go to soccer practice
when he was really going to sewing
class and reading Runway under the
covers at night with a flashlight.
These heart-felt autobiographical words give Nigel the psychological depth necessary to become a mentor. Furthermore, they prepare the way for an important surprise at the end of the film, when Miranda unexpectedly gives the promotion he had anticipated for himself to a candidate that is “of greater use” to her at the moment. The audience’s knowledge of all the sacrifices Nigel has made, since he was a young boy, to enter into the world of fashion is what makes this passage so powerful. This knowledge also makes the audience well-aware of just how bitterly disappointed Nigel is and, at the same time, just how evil Miranda the “devil” is. Revealing this information about Nigel’s backstory in advance was thus crucial for this point of the film.
The screenwriter deserves credit for making sure that none of this information, however, weighed down his character or altered the kind and sprightly image of him before arriving at this point. Giving ← 159 | 160 → information that brings on a smile was the only possible way to do this. This information was memorized, its dramatic value was planted into the minds of the audience and ready to be activated in the most opportune scene.
Use of examples
Exposition becomes more challenging when it regards a more articulate topic that tends to be abstract and is made up of specialized and technical elements. In this case, conflict and irony join forces with frames. As already seen in chapter one, a cognitive scheme is the mental disposition that unites different experiences into a form that is more immediately recognized and memorized.
If the topic alone, due to its scope and nature, does not produce an instantly recognizable frame, it is the screenwriter’s job to do so. The screenwriter must, thus, create an explanatory and unifying metaphor to illustrate what must be conveyed. In simple terms, he must create an example. The screenwriter can create a situation that directs the dialogue within a vivid mental frame, a situation that anchors an idea to the image and relates it to the audience’s experiences through association.
The following are two examples. The first example, from A Beautiful Mind, has made the writing ability of screenwriter, Akiva Goldsman, a case study due to the film’s difficult subject matter.
The story of John Nash could never be told without giving the audience a tangible glimpse of his genius. The audience needed to be aware of the scientist’s research, of the ambitious, theoretical objective he wanted to achieve at all costs, even at the risk of compromising his own weak psychological balance.
Goldsman found himself in front of a remarkable impediment. Nash is a mathematician and not only is math abstract, it is a subject that most people, on average, find remote and complicated.
To be more specific, Goldsman had to make Nash’s own intuition on the subject of game theory both accessible and enjoyable. The protagonist, in fact, is searching for mathematical models aimed at explaining the actions of rational agents involved in competitive situations ← 160 | 161 → ‒ models based on the calculation of the possible optimal outcomes of each action combined with the action eventually carried out by the adversary. To be even more specific, the discovery Goldman had to write about ‒ the Nash equilibrium – consists in the idea that the combination of strategies that creates a situation in which no player has any interest or gain in changing
their own strategy can be calculated.
Goldman was very effective and successful in anchoring this explanation to an image on the screen, or rather, illustrating it through a frame (situational schemes) that the audience was both familiar with and found simple. All of this was done through two scenes in the first act, one to prepare the audience and the other to conclude.
The first dialogue takes place in the university library. Nash (Russell Crowe) has reached a standstill in life. The young man is in the library consumed by his search for an idea that will make him stand out above his colleagues. He sits by a window, barefoot, under the algorithmic formulas he has written on the window. His roommate Charles (Paul Bettany) – a hallucination produced by Nash’s mental pathology – finds him completely immersed in his problem and eggs him on:
CHARLES
You’ve been in here for two days…
NASH
You know Hansen’s just published
another paper? I can’t even find a
topic for my doctorate.
Charles indicates the formulas written on the windows.
CHARLES
Well, on the bright side, you’ve
invented window art.
NASH
(referring to the algorithms)
This is a group playing touch
← 161 | 162 → football. This is a cluster of pigeons
fighting over bread crumbs.
And this here is a woman who is
chasing a man who stole her purse.
CHARLES
John, you watched a mugging. That’s
weird…
NASH
In competitive behavior someone always
loses.
CHARLES
Well, my niece knows that, John,
and she’s about this high.
NASH
See, if I could derive an
equilibrium where prevalence is
a non-singular event, where
nobody loses, can you imagine the
effect that would have on conflict
scenarios, and arms negotiations…
CHARLES