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
- 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.
- Complication (6-7 min.)
- One of her clients, a compulsive gambler, will kill himself unless
he can pay off a big gambling debt.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.).
- 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
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