The 3-Act Paradigm at Work: Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle

written by Alan Rudolph and Randy Sue Coburn


Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle is a dramatic biography of the writer Dorothy Parker and her circle of New York friends. Perhaps no treatment of an artist pulls less punches in its realistic portrayal of alcoholism and the unflattering foibles of lives usually forgiven, if not romanticized, in the name of making great literature.

Structural Analysis

  1. Hook (0 min.)
    • A stinging short poem by Dorothy Parker, its cruel subject love, lets us know that we are in unusual territory.
  2. Complication (9 min.)
    • Parker's husband Eddie returns from the war, complicating the carefree life she leads with her artist friends.
  3. Call to Action (20 min.)
    • Fired at Vanity Fair, Parker decides to share an office with soulmate Robert Benchley and to write more seriously.
  4. Act One Plot Point (32-3 min.)
    • Eddie lashes out against Parker's "phony" friends and hits her. Their marriage clearly is doomed.
  5. Midpoint Plot Point (55-64 min.)
    • Despite the cynical attitude toward love in her work, Parker falls for Charley, wearing her "heart on my sleeve like a wet, red stain." Although both are still married to others, they announce their "engagement" to writer friends. But Parker discovers she's pregnant (59 min.), catches Charley in bed with an actress (62 min.), breaks up with him and has an abortion (64 min.).
  6. Act Two Plot Point (93-4 min., 100 min.)
    • Broke, alone, Parker runs into ex-hubby Eddie on the street, who is doing well. She realizes how far she has fallen since the early days of bliss in her first marriage. Later (as a screenwriter in Hollywood) she learns that Benchley has died (100 min.) and goes to pieces.
  7. Climax and Resolution (114-9 min.)
    • Her worst fears are realized: in Hollywood, she becomes a lonely, drunken, bitter old woman. Winning a literary prize, she staggers to the stage only to say, "I never thought I'd make it."

    Notes

    The romanticism often used when looking at writers in the 1920s here is knocked on its butt. The drinking bouts of Parker and her friends are a vicious circle indeed. This story, which moves between New York in the twenties and Hollywood in the fifties, is tragic and moving in its unrelenting portrait of a woman who regretted learning how to take her clothes off -- and who never could consummate a relationship with soulmate Benchley.


    MODULE 4: SCREENWRIGHT: the craft of screenwriting

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