Allowing Your Lead To Lead

            Allow Your Lead to Lead

    I had the opportunity this week to see The Birds on a big screen in a full theater. Because I have seen this movie so often I decided to do two things, to study the film and to study the audience. Hitchcock always talked about what he was trying to do to the audience with his films. I never understood this until now.

    Average movie audience these days talk and chatter and check their phones. In other words they are rude. They believe they are at home. For the first thirty minutes of this movie that is how this audience was and then the ride began to grind into motion. That roller coaster Hitchcock would talk about started up.  The next hour and twenty minutes was dead silence except when Hitchcock wanted his audience to react.

    Hitchcock along with his screenwriter Evan Hunter achieved this in many ways. The way that I want to look at today is through the lead character of the screenplay.

    Melanie Daniels, played by Tippi Hedren, is the first character that we meet. We learn about her through her actions and by the reputation that she had built up over time in the tabloids. She is on  the screen for over 90 percent of the time. She becomes our gateway into this world that is being revealed. She becomes our gateway into the lives that she comes in contact with. Let’s face it they call this character the lead because that is what he or she does. They lead us through the story. What they fear we grow to fear. Who they love we grow to love. If you got a good one then they will make your story so much easier to tell.

    If you have a poor lead or worst you do not know who the lead is then you are probably having a problem with your script. They take you places that you do not wish to go or they talk too much or worst they have nothing to say.

    How do we solve this problem?

    Start over?

    Switch leads?

    Do a rewrite?

    Many of us have done all the above. The advice that you are going to get from me is sit down with your lead character and ask him or her what is it that they want. What is it that they need?  Keep asking questions until you run out of them and if at that time you are still interested in them then and only then should you continue with them as the lead of your story.

    “What if their answers are simple?”

    That would be great. What do you want? To stop these shark attacks, the sheriff in Jaws. What do you want? To get my daughter back, the father in Taken. What do you want? To survive these Bird attacks, Melanie in the Birds.
 

    What do most characters want? In one way or another it comes down to getting back to normal. The abnormal or strange has changed their world and they want to go back to the world that they knew.

    Allow your lead character to lead you to where they want to go. Part of the problem that many of us have with our scripts is that we try to lead rather than allowing our characters to lead. We have a plot and we must follow that plot even if our lead is not a willing traveler.

    I will end by putting it in sports terms. You have a superstar on your team. In who’s hands do you want the ball? Do you want to give the ball to the kicker? Why would you? His job is to give it back to the other team. Your lead is your point guard. Your lead is your quarterback. Your lead is your Ace pitcher. You are the coach, but they are the ones who execute  the game plan. Allow them to do it. Encourage them to do it.

    In the Birds Hitchcock keeps the character of Melanie Daniels on the field into she has to be carried off. Battered, beaten up and pecked half to death she did her job. She got the ball across the goal line again and again until the it reached historic levels. Watch the end scenes of the Birds. She left it all on the field. There is nothing more that this character can do and better still nothing left that she has to do.



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More About Dialogue

                More On Dialogue

    I am returning to dialogue for this reason. It sort of sounded earlier
that I was anti dialogue. I am not. I am against the over use and dependence upon dialogue to progress the script. Dialogue pages fly by, while action and description takes longer to write.
    Secondly my problem with dialogue is that people are just not as good at it as they use to be.
    Hold it.
    Wait a second.
    Drop that protest sign.
    I want you to go and look up what are considered the top fifty or so films of all time. Do the same for television. Do the same for songs. After you have done this review go back and look at the years these films, tv shows and songs were written. They will have something in common. Most if not all were written before the internet age, before the way we communicated changed. Instant messaging, texting, twitter has changed the way we talk to each other. Sentences do not always have begin middles and ends anymore. And of the modern day classics how many of them were written by older writers. People who started in the 80s or 90s?  How many? Just about all of them?
    You have two golden ages in filmmaking and screenwriting. The 1930's and the 1970's. The music was mostly bad, but the films were amazing.
    Examples from the 1930's, The Thin Man, Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Destry Rides Again, Stage Coach, Public Enemy, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Dracula, The Lady Vanishes, Murder, The Bride of Frankenstein, Duck Soup, Grand Hotel and I could list a hundred more films. Can you list 10 films from the last 5 years.

The scene is from the 1931 movie Public Enemy. the perfect mix of dialogue and action to tell you everything that you need to know about these two characters and their relationship.

    Let’s jump to the 1970's. The Godfather and its Sequel. The French Connection, The Exorcist, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Shining, Vanishing Point, Halloween, Rocky, Scarface, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Superman the Motion Picture, Jaws, Star Wars, Patton, Taxi Driver, Frenzy, Straw Dogs American Graffiti, Alien and half a dozen Woody Allen movies. I am leaving out tons of international films, Grindhouse movies, and the golden age of Italian horror films.

    Watch movies from both decades and read scripts from both. You will see that in the 1930's they had to hint and suggest what was really meant at times while in the 1970's they were allowed to hit you with a sledge hammer. The 1930's were about writing with a quill pen and the 1970's were about writing with a hammer and chisel. And the cool thing is that both ways were equally as effective.
    Recognize this and understand that you can do it both ways depending upon the story.
    Really? I don’t believe that. No one can tells stories using both styles.
    You are almost right. Most of us will find our niche and stick to it, but I would like to say that Hitchcock managed to do it. As a matter of fact he managed to produce classic films in both of the decades listed. I am not saying be Hitchcock. That is like saying go hit home runs like Babe Ruth. What I am saying is that Dialogue is a tool. Learn to use it and if you have to visit past experts that is okay.

One great scene from the Godfather. Basic one on one dialogue at its finest. The actors and writer made this look too easy.