8.
Your Hero's Showdown
Writing Act Three
"Endings, frankly, are a bitch."
--William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade
"Writers," notes Richard Walter, "need to resist
the urge to hurry as the conclusion of the script approaches" [REF].
"The conclusion is the easiest act to dissect," writes Lew Hunter, "as Acts
One and Two exist only to set up Act Three. Act Three exists solely
for itself. And once again we deal in increments of three. As there
is a beginning, middle, and end to existence, screenplays, and lovemaking,
so there is a beginning, middle, and end to your third act"
[REF].
And Michael Druxman writes that "a good ending will tie up all loose story
points and leave a final message or feeling about your material that will
remain with the reader or viewing audience" [REF].
Druxman also warns against "dishonest endings": "Authors employ dishonest
endings after they've written themselves 'into a corner,' and can't figure
out a way to resolve their situation."
Although you managed to get through Act Two, which is the longest and many
think the most difficult part of the screenplay to write, clearly the task
isn't over. It's not as if it's downhill from here. We still have a lot
of work to do.
Looking at Act Three
Again, it is helpful to dissect the third act and think of it in terms of its
parts - the beginning, middle and end of this section of the screenplay (to
use Hunter's terminology above). Something happened at the end of Act
Two that leads the hero to a decision to act, which in turn spins into
the final confrontation. Hunter thinks of this movement as preparation
to act, the action itself, and the consequences (ending).
I am a bit more colorful in my description of the three parts of the final
act but first let me remind you that all four parts of the three-act
screenplay can be dissected into beginnings, middles and ends - and, in fact,
should be in order to keep them on track.
- Act One:
- Beginning: hook, complication;
- Middle: hero's call to action;
- End: plot point.
- Act Two, Part One:
- Hero's reaction to plot point;
- Antagonist moves forward, hero's initial victory; subplot(s);
- Plot point, hero's insight, possible new goal.
- Act Two, Part Two:
- Hero's reaction to plot point;
- New obstacles to goal; subplot(s);
- Hero's low point, possible defeat;
- Act Three:
- Preparing for one last confrontation - the ticking clock;
- Hero-antagonist showdown - gunfight at the O.K. Corral;
- Resolution - the hero's growth.
Let's look at each of the parts of the final act in closer detail.
The Ticking Clock
Some stories lend themselves to "a ticking clock" more than others.
- In The Graduate, the sense is strong: Benjamin is racing against time
to get to Elaine before she marries. He is too late - but wins her anyway.
- But in Jurassic Park, we have yet another in a series of threats by
the prehistoric predators. There is really no more sense of a ticking clock
here than in earlier attacks, nor is the hero directly involved in saving
the situation, which Jarvis considers a structural weakness - and I agree with
him.
- In Fargo, the anti-hero has bolted the interview with the hero, so
there is a sense of the chase.
- In Chinatown, the ticking clock is strong, regarding whether Mrs. Mulray
can escape in time, with Jake trying to divert the police and help her.
- In Nixon, the President is trapped and squirming.
- In Rebecca, the new inquest seems headed to trap the hero's husband
- a mild ticking clock.
- In North by Northwest, Thornhill tries to rescue
Eve before she flies off to her death - a strong ticking clock indeed.
- In Atlantic City, Lou and Sally are
trying to escape but since the police don't know Lou is the killer, the
clock is mild.
- In E.T., we have another very strong ticking
clock as the boys try to get E.T. to the landing site in time while being
chased by the authorities.
- Moonstruck is not driven so much by a ticking
clock as by anticipation of the showdown when the two brothers and Loretta
end up in the same room.
- In True Lies, a series of one action sequence
after another keeps the plot in very high gear but the impeding doom of
a ticking clock is absent.
- A mild ticking clock informs The Birdcage
as the gays tries to sneak out the senator and his wife before the reporters
discover them.
Where the ticking clock is strongest - in The Graduate and Chinatown,
North by Northwest and E.T. -
we are more on the edge of our seats, waiting to see what will happen next.
I urge you to add this powerful element if at all possible.
How does one add the sense of a ticking clock? By putting a time frame
around something that we don't want to happen because it hurts the hero in
some way. The antagonist is on track and ready to win - unless the hero stops
the action in time.
Thus Benjamin hurries to stop the wedding and Jake hurries
to divert the police so Mrs. Mulray can get away. In both instances, the
hero fails! - but in The Graduate, Elaine goes to Benjamin even though
she has just been married, and we get the happy ending.
In Chinatown,
however, Mrs. Mulray is killed and the antagonist, her father, gets to run
off into the sunset with his granddaughter, a bleak and dark ending. Film
noir is perhaps the one popular genre in which unhappy endings are readily
accepted by the audience (in Body Heat, the "villain" also wins).
The ticking clock involves a race against time. If your story lends itself
to this kind of high suspense at the end, by all means use it.
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
And then there is the showdown, the moment we've all been waiting for. Again,
this can be presented in a variety of setups and contexts.
- In The Graduate, the reversal from apparent defeat - the "I do's"
are exchanged just before Benjamin arrives - to victory is wonderful. Benjamin
pounds on the church window, yelling "Elaine!" and finally Elaine responds,
"Benjamin!" A brief scuffle, and they are out of there. The ticking clock
much more than the gunfight carries the ending.
- In Jurassic Park, the situation is the opposite - all gunfight and
little ticking clock, little sense of urgency that this confrontation is
any different from earlier ones, although the beasts are more formidable.
The challenge in action movies, in fact, is to avoid this very dilemma - that
the series of actions gets repetitious.
- In Fargo, the hero's confrontation with the remaining murderer
is the gunfight and arresting the anti-hero in the motel is dramatically
anti-climactic, more a tying of strings at the end than anything else.
- In Chinatown, the "gunfight" kills Mrs. Mulray,
the very "like Chinatown" ending that Jake wanted to avoid at all costs.
Once again, his attempt to help someone got her killed.
- In Nixon, the gunfight is more psychological, Nixon trapped and
alone, facing his own demons, an ending quite appropriate to this "classic tragedy."
- In Rebecca, the gunfight is judicial and suspenseful - will
the truth be learned or not? The surprise twist, that Rebecca had cancer,
lets the hero and her husband move on - but not without first witnessing
the burning of Mandelay, another vivid "gunfight" as the antagonist goes
down with the mansion.
If the ticking clock is an optional element in your screenplay, the gunfight is
obligatory. There must be a gunfight, a climax, of some sort. That's the
whole point of the movie. This is the moment everything has been building
toward.
Tree people will know what this moment is before they start writing - or
at least be close. Forest people probably will not, trusting the "true
ending," the "best gunfight," to reveal itself to them in the process of
writing.
At any rate, don't be afraid to go for broke here and make the most dramatic
and "big" confrontation your story permits. It's what the audience paid
their money to see.
The Hero's Growth
The best stories have a point. The hero learns something and comes out
of his/her experience better than s/he went into it. The hero grows in some
way.
- In Jurassic Park, the hero learns a professional and a personal
lesson: that scientific research has its dangerous side and that he likes
children more than he thought he did. Children are probably in his future
with his girlfriend.
- In The Graduate, as Benjamin and Elaine bus into the sunset,
Benjamin learns that he can find happiness out of the middle-class conformity
in which he was raised. Or can he? With everyone on the bus staring at the
couple, the ending may be double-edged, the comedy blacker than we realize
at first.
- In Fargo, the hero and her husband learn how valuable the ordinary
moments of life can be (in contrast to the horror just experienced).
- In Chinatown, the lesson is bleak: Jake repeated his past Chinatown
experience. Perhaps he should stop trying to save people.
- In Nixon, there is no lesson: in this tragedy, Nixon learns nothing.
His tragic flaw, his own paranoia, leads to his downfall, which seems as
fated as the fall of Oedipus.
- In Rebecca, the hero grows into independence, finally able to
build a life with her husband out of the shadow of Rebecca.
Again, some of these moments of growth are more obvious and important than
others. Always remember that the paradigm is a menu of guidelines, not a
formula. How much your hero learns and how this is presented (and indeed,
if s/he learns anything at all!) depend on the demands of your story.
Must You Have a Happy Ending?
Hollywood is married to the happy ending. This is a fact of life. If you
have a story without a happy ending - and Chinatown and Nixon
do not have happy endings! - you have a harder sale ahead of you.
Be aware of it.
It's not difficult to figure out why Hollywood is married to happy endings.
Because we are. Because most of us would rather go to the movies to be
entertained and uplifted, rather than to be slapped in the face with depressing
stories about pain and loss, no matter how true they are.
But happy endings work best, I think, when they are earned. And they
are earned in the third act, when the hero faces considerable odds and still
manages to reach his/her goal. The ticking clock is a wonderful device
for driving the story toward the final confrontation, as we've seen in
The Graduate and Chinatown. And it's even more wonderful when
the hero wins, as Benjamin does in The Graduate.
Yet some stories would become artificial with a happy ending. This is why
your movie's concept is so important because it is
here, this early in the process, that you make decisions that will influence
the ending of your story. And the fact is that in the Hollywood marketplace,
the happy ending rules.
Bliss Is Typing FADE OUT
Let me write some scenes from Act Three of our continuing sample screenplay.
Writing Act Three.
Finishing Your Script
As you prepare to write your own Act Three, first see if you can create the
sense of a ticking clock. If you can, this will greatly help the line of
suspense as your hero moves into confrontation with the antagonist.
Next make sure that you don't fall into the disappointing trap of Jurassic
Park, where "confrontation" is too much like what went before it. You
have better models to follow, where there is indeed a sense of new and
extraordinary action being introduced in the story's closing sweep.
Finally, ask yourself what your hero learns from all this - and show this
to us rather than preach it.
- This moment in The Graduate is without
dialogue, the couple taking the bus into the sunset. Everyone in the bus
stares at them, and their "individuality" here reinforces their dropping
out of the comfortable middle-class conformity in which they were raised
to follow their own way, even defining it as they go (a forest person
ending!).
- In Fargo, the
hero and her husband have a quiet reflective moment in bed. "We're doing
pretty good," she says.
- In Rebecca, the growth is communicated
with the hero's narrative voice as we watch the mansion, so much associated
with Rebecca, burn to the ground. The antagonist housekeeper believes she
is ruining the happiness of the hero - but in fact she is liberating her
from Rebecca, removing the last thread of connection to the past. The
ending is nicely ironic.
- In Jurassic Park, the children are in the
hero's lap, safe and comfortable - in the lap of a man who thought he hated
children. A knowing look is exchanged between him and his girlfriend.
These are the elements to put into your final act. Now it's your turn - and time to
get writing.
An Act Three Checklist
When you have a draft of the final act, ask yourself:
- Does the hero enter the final act, after the second act plot point,
realizing that a final confrontation is forthcoming?
- Is the villain/antagonist looking more formidable than ever?
- Are subplots coming together to increase the tension in the main plot?
- Is there a sense of a ticking clock?
- Does the pacing now have an urgency to it?
- Do scenes move quickly toward the showdown?
- Is the showdown worth waiting for? Are there a lot of visual "big
sequences" in the showdown?
- Is the antagonist worthy of the hero? Is the hero worthy of the antagonist?
- Does the hero win?
- Does s/he learn anything from the movie's journey?
- Are all subplots wrapped up?
- Does the audience feel something at the end - is there an emotional
ending?
- Does the story add up to something beyond itself - is there a theme in
the story?
- Is this a story you yourself would pay to see on the screen?
From FADE OUT to FADE IN: Preparing to Rewrite
You've done it!
Listen, this is no small accomplishment - you wrote the first draft of a
screenplay!
Now your work can really begin. Before it does, however, reward
yourself.
And take some time off. Give yourself at least a few days, and if
possible a week, before you return to your script. You want to try and get
some distance from it before you begin what I consider to be the most
important part of the writing process, which is rewriting.
When you come back to your script, ready to rewrite, do one more thing
before you begin: read the script.
Try to read it "as a stranger." Read it quickly, from beginning to end in
one sitting, and don't take any notes. Just read it.
Just read it.
Now you're ready to start rewriting.
(Cyber Film School column, The Challenge of Act Three.)
[NEXT]
MODULE 8:
SCREENWRIGHT: the craft of screenwriting
10/98