Words in Action
Page 18
The young man says:
PETER
There is an epidemic failure within
the game to understand what is really
happening. And this leads people
who run Major League Baseball
teams to misjudge their players and
mismanage their teams.
(a beat)
I apologize.
BILLY
Go on.
PETER
Okay. People who run ball clubs,
they think in terms of buying
players. Your goal shouldn’t be to
buy players. Your goal should be
to buy wins. And in order to buy
wins, you need to buy runs. You’re
trying to replace Johnny Damon.
The Red Sox see Johnny Damon and
they see a star who’s worth seven
and a half million dollars a year.
When I see Johnny Damon, what I
see is… an imperfect understanding
of where runs come from. The guy’s
got a great glove. He’s a decent
← 173 | 174 → leadoff hitter. He can steal bases.
But is he worth the seven and a
half million dollars a year that
the Boston Red Sox are paying
him? No! No! Baseball thinking is
medieval. They are asking all the
wrong questions. And if I say it
to anybody, I’m ostracized. I’m a
leper.
Billy likes Peter’s reasoning. He wants to know more about Peter, who tells him he studied economics. This makes Billy like him even more (“Yale, Economics, baseball. You’re funny Pete!”).
TWO QUESTIONS:
1.How can an awkward “fresh-out-of-college” Economics major contribute to Billy’s unrefined cause?
2.If everyone is spending their money unwisely, how can it be spent wisely?
At this point, curiosity has reached its peak and the contours of the gap of knowledge that needs to be filled have been very well defined. Peter must now prove his talent by pulling the rabbit completely out of the hat… that is, if there is one.
SCENE 6. A dialogue filled with exposition.
Billy has hired Peter as his new assistant. At the Oakland Headquarters, the young man finally illustrates his key thoughts, which are inspired by the theories of Bill James, the father of sabermetrics.
The numbers have been written on a whiteboard. A computer monitor is filled with numbers and percentages.
While Billy begins with more theoretical considerations, the director turns the camera towards the monitor. A series of close-ups on the numbers. The images fill the entire screen. The close-ups zoom in so tightly on the numbers that the grains of pixels can be made out. The music that accompanies the images suggests that this moment is the mark of a new beginning:
← 174 | 175 → PETER
Using this equation in the upper
left, I’m projecting that we need
to win at least 99 games in order
to make it to the postseason. We
need to score at least 814 runs in
order to win those games and allow
no more than 645 runs.
BILLY
What’s this?
PETER
This is a code that I’ve written
for our year-to-year projections.
This is building in the intelligence
that we have to project
players.
BILLY
Okay.
PETER
It’s about getting things down to
one number. Using the stats the way
we read them, we’ll find value in
players that nobody else can see.
(a beat)
People are overlooked for a
variety of biased reasons and
perceived flaws. Age, appearance,
personality. Bill James and
mathematics cut straight through
that. Billy, of the twenty
thousand notable players for us to
consider, I believe that there is a
championship team of 25 people that
we can afford, because everyone
else in baseball undervalues them.
Like an island of misfit toys.
← 175 | 176 → On the screen, we see the gigantic and unfocused numbers that accompany Billy’s explanation. The numbers create the idea that there is an eye that brings the audience into profound mechanisms. The audience instinctively has the impression of being accompanied beyond what the eye can see and into a secret DNA. The hyperrealistic power of the image is so strong it transmits a sense of concreteness that embraces Billy’s initial reasoning, which is still complicated and abstract. On the other hand, his ideas gradually lose their sense of abstractness and become vivid conceptual frames. The first frame is talent that is unjustly discriminated against. The second is the needle in the hay stack (trying to find real talent within the multitudes). A final metaphor – “like an Island of misfit toys” – creates a mental-image that the audience can easily associate to these two frames, especially the one in which a player is penalized for his physical appearance.
At this point the dialogue enters into a new phase. Billy moves from theory to practice with a concrete example – the case of a player worth buying, and at a small price, since all the majors have rejected him because of his strange way of throwing a ball.
As Peter presents this player, images of the player throwing a ball are shown on the screen. Calling the player’s movements “strange” is an understatement. It doesn’t take an expert to see that the athlete’s shoulder and arm form an incredibly unnatural and annoying arch. It’s as if the player suffers an injury to his joints and moves strangely as consequence. The audience almost pities him.
PETER
Billy, this is Chad Bradford. He’s
a relief pitcher. He is one of the
most undervalued players in baseball.
His defect is that he throws
funny. Nobody in the big leagues
cares about him because he looks
funny. This guy could be not just
the best pitcher in our pen, but
one of the most effective relief
pitchers in all baseball.
(a short beat)
← 176 | 177 → This guy should cost three million
dollars a year. We can get him for
237,000.
End of scene.
The initial thirty minutes of the film were studied for this scene, for an explanation of sabermetrics that would be met with a desire-to-know that has been gradually built up.
The explanation has been completely simplified. The difficult term “sabermetrics”, for example, has been conveniently omitted. Overall, the difficult part of the speech is quickly brought to the apotheosis (first made verbal with “the Island of misfit toys”, then visible with the strange throwing movements of the player) of one of the main and most consolidated narrative archetypes – the underdog, the one condemned to lose reverses his own destiny.
Baseball, percentages and playing strategies are all placed in the background, where an element of a scientific nature makes the story realistic. The focus is on the implications the aspects have on humankind, and two numbers whose difference can be easily perceived ‒ 3,000,000 dollars and 237,000 dollars.
Thus, the magic of the numbers becomes comprehensible.
When information the audience is very curious about arrives suddenly, in a state of conflict that calls for a turning point, we call it totally efficient exposition. The screenwriter’s desire to give this information to the audience is completely invisible.
The film Saving Private Ryan (directed by Steven Spielberg, screenplay by Robert Rodat, USA 1998) presents one of the best examples of this technique.
It was important the audience have information regard
ing the protagonist’s (Captain Miller played by Tom Hanks) past to create empathy for the character. In this great film directed by Spielberg, a film that seeks to express the individuality of each of the many soldiers involved in the story, even if only for a few seconds, Miller’s point of view and past experiences were fundamental in making the tragedy of the events of those days humanly comprehensible and tolerable. Thus, his point of view had to be reliable, something that could easily be perceived by the ← 177 | 178 → audience and that reflected his repugnance for the manslaughters so realistically portrayed on screen. The screenwriters needed for Miller to be a man who acutely perceived the madness of war. Otherwise, later on in the story, the audience wouldn’t have been moved by the scene in which he comprehends the reasons the conflict and mission are worth carrying out.
For this reason, Miller is an English composition teacher with a completely different life from the life he ends up leading in the military. Yet the information about Miller’s life as a civilian is learned by the audience far into the plot, after the audience’s curiosity has been adequately fomented. Furthermore, the character himself reveals this information all at once to reverse a critical situation.
The solution to create expectation and surprise is for the soldiers to all place a bet. One of the ways Miller (who guides his company with a friendly, but firm hand) stresses the importance of hierarchical boundaries and safeguards the influence he has on his soldiers is by keeping his past a total secret. His reservation to talk about his past has inflamed the curiosity of his men, who have turned it into a game. Whoever guesses where the officer is from and what he did before the war will win a sum of money that continues to grow with time. Miller is amused by all this and goes along with the game.
Miller’s backstory remains a mystery until the middle of the film when his men (and the audience) learn of this past in the most unexpected way, which is precisely why it is so effective. Exposition arrives at the climax of the midpoint, or rather, of a crisis normally placed at this point in the plot to highlight the character’s difficulties and reveal in advance situations and themes that will be shown in the principal scene.
The crisis initiates when Miller orders the attack of a German outpost that the company could have easily bypassed without being discovered. Even though the outpost is dangerous for the future passing of the allied troops, it is not the officer’s duty to carry out such an attack. His mission is to find Ryan. For this reason, the company is in a bad mood and when the operation doesn’t go exactly as planned, things get worse. During the attack, they lose one of their men. What’s more, at the end of the attack, the Americans find themselves with a German prisoner they have taken and who becomes a problem, given that it is just not possible to bring him along on their mission.
← 178 | 179 → When Miller prohibits the company from killing him, their exertion and fears are unleashed through aggressiveness. The situation worsens. A fight breaks out between who is in favor of killing the German and who isn’t. Things get out of hand. One of the soldiers is enraged and points a gun at his comrade. He is about to pull the trigger.
Miller is confused, but clear-headed enough to know he needs to shock his men to bring them back to their senses:
MILLER
Mike, what’s the pool on me up to
right now? What… What’s it up to?
What is it, three hundred dollars?
Is that it, three hundred? I’m a
schoolteacher. I teach English
composition in this little town
called Addley, Pennsylvania. The
last eleven years, I’ve been at
Thomas Alva Edison High School. I
was the coach of the baseball team
in the springtime.
Everyone freezes. The soldier who was about to shoot can’t help but show his own amazement (“I’ll be doggone”). Miller continues:
MILLER
Back home, when I’d tell people
what I do for a living, they’d
think, “Well, that figures.” But over
here, it’s a… a big… a big
mystery.
The information on Miller’s backstory stopped a man from pulling a trigger. This is also what transforming information into ammunition means.
Using information to turn the progression of conflict upside down, transforming it into action and making it an important function of drama. To this we can add the enjoyment of curiosity that has been fueled over time and is finally satisfied in the scene that has just been analyzed.
← 179 | 180 → This is an excellent example of how the problem of exposition can be transformed into a spectacular opportunity.
How to reveal themes in dialogue
An essential piece of knowledge the audience needs to be introduced to is the theme of the film. The theme’s moral message touches the deepest cords of the audience.
The theme is what the plot means to the audience, a life truth the audience can infer from what is happening to the protagonist and apply it to its own life, a human question shared by both the audience and the main character. In other words, the theme is the heart of the story and deserves to be given importance in dialogue – just the right topic to end this book on.
This question can be dealt with by linking it to the question tackled thus far in this chapter. In a screenplay, the theme faces the problem of exposition. In fact, when someone’s words pass judgment, the film risks acquiring a “preachy” tone.
There are two solutions to prevent this from happening.
The first solution – repeated so many times in the previous pages that it may now seem obvious – is conflict. That is, when a character explains his reasons for making a certain moral decision, he should do so within a context of opposition.
The theme of a film does not necessarily have to be spelled out in words in order to be understood. The main way to communicate the theme is through the action of the characters and, by and large, this should be enough to transmit knowledge of the theme to the audience. In fact, there is a general rule that says the theme should remain within the subtext until the climax of the film. At the same time the protagonist makes one, last fundamental behavioral choice, the theme becomes clear. An example of this can be seen in the film The Devil Wears Prada (the theme of innocence emerges through the words of Miranda when she ultimately tries to tempt her) and in Schindler’s ← 180 | 181 → List (when the mentor Stern gives the protagonist the ring, reading the verse of the Talmud engraved inside: “Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire”. There are many exceptions to this rule, however. In many films, the theme is mentioned and discussed specifically through dialogue. This is possible, without appearing boring or rhetoric, if the characters have opposing opinions, specifically regarding the theme58, or rather, when openly referring to the theme gives rise to conflict between them.
The second solution is to insert thematic reflections into a system of metaphors that, in addition to making concepts more concrete, stimulates the audience to find meaning and enjoy the pleasure of discovery – the pleasure of linking such different elements together, of becoming aware of an order that was not obvious at first sight and of discovering a hidden meaning59; the pleasure of possessing greater knowledge about something abstract (for example, a group of values) thanks to the comparison created through a tangible element.
Naturally, the metaphorical texture of a film has an iconic nucleus. The fundamental meanings built up throughout the plot are usually indirectly expressed through visible symbols60. Dialogue, however, can take the same nucleus of meaning and develop its representation through words, or support it with verbal metaphors, creating a complementary, symbolic theme.
← 181 | 182 →
Verbal setups and payoffs, taglines, key words and metaphorical texture
A basic (not to mention the most synthetic and incisive) dialogue technique to metaphorically reiterate the theme of the story is to repeat a specific phrase during th
e film in order for it to become symbolic61. There are three approaches to this technique.
The first approach, the single-repetition approach, is for the sentence to be repeated only once, quite a while after it was first said and in totally different circumstances, so that the original meaning is greatly enhanced or the phrase takes on such a new and totally different meaning that it becomes emblematic. The sentence spoken at the beginning of the film returns at the end, where new circumstances give greater meaning and sudden and unexpected prominence. In certain cases – to the audience’s great surprise – the meaning of the original sentence is turned upside down. Thus, this first approach can be referred to in terms of simple verbal setups and payoffs.
One example (whose theme will be analyzed in the next few pages) is found in Batman Begins (directed by Christopher Nolan, who also wrote the screenplay with David S. Goyer, USA 2005). At the beginning of the film, when the protagonist Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is just a child, he falls into a well. His father gets him out and comforts him, saying “And why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up”. The sentence is spoken again in act three, when the protagonist faces his greatest moment of crisis. Bruce hides inside the Batcave with the butler Alfred (Michael Caine) while the family estate burns to the ground (handiwork of the antagonist). Bruce has lost all hope. “I failed”, he says. Alfred encourages him by using the same words his father once used many years ago. “And why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up”. Here the line becomes a word of caution – don’t give up. This line, as will be explained in this chapter, is also an invitation for ← 182 | 183 → Bruce to defend, with all his might, the ideal upheld by his father (faith that the corrupt city of Gotham can be saved and that despite its fall, it will rise again, just like the protagonist as a little boy).
In The Dark Knight, the sequel in the Batman saga – which will also be analyzed in more depth in the next few pages – there is another good example of verbal setups and payoffs. In the first half of the story, Bruce Wayne speaks to Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), the District Attorney, who confirms that Batman is tired. The super hero would like for someone to substitute him. According to Dent, Batman knows full well he can’t continue to unlawfully combat Gotham’s enemies exercising more and more power without ever having been elected. The District Attorney thinks Batman runs the risk of upsetting the people: “You either die a hero or you live, long enough to see yourself become the villain.”