The 3-Act Paradigm at Work: House of Games

written by David Mamet


House of Games is a suspenseful tale of a famous psychiatrist who discovers, and becomes addicted to, her own dark side.

Structural Analysis

  1. Hook (3-4 min.)
    • Character hook: we meet a famous, workaholic psychiatrist, just out with a new book called Driven, whose mentor urges her to slow down and have fun.
  2. Complication (6-7 min.)
    • One of her clients, a compulsive gambler, will kill himself unless he can pay off a big gambling debt.
  3. Call to Action (9 min.)
    • The psychiatrist goes to the House of Games to try and relieve her client's gambling debt - and is talked into taking part in a poker scam.
  4. Act One Plot Point (24-8 min.)
    • The poker scam is supposed to use her as the victim but at the last moment she discovers that a squirt gun is being used - and catches on. But she is intrigued by this world of scam and deception.
  5. Midpoint Plot Point (47 min.)
    • She returns to the House of Games and the man who tried to use her. She admits she wants to try "a new thing," and they steal a hotel room in which to make love.
  6. Act Two Plot Point (75 min.)
    • She feels great guilt, thinking she has been involved in the killing of a policeman, a scam gone wrong. But then she discovers this "accident" itself was a scam to trick her again and everyone, including her patient, has been in on it (83 min.).
  7. Climax and Resolution (86-97 min.)
    • She gets her revenge, confronting the man from the House of Games, but when he will not beg for his life, she kills him. Meeting her mentor after a trip, during which she was able to "forgive herself," she steals a lighter from the purse of a woman at the next table. She lives a life of danger, uncaught, loving it.

Notes

Like The Spanish Prisoner, House of Games twists and turns with a plot full of surprises and reversals. Here the protagonist discovers and embraces her dark side, in an ending unusual for Hollywood.


MODULE 4: SCREENWRIGHT: the craft of screenwriting

[BACK TO TEXT]
6/99