A Magnificent Story of Change

While watching a movie like Garden State you easily notice that it holds a lot of elements that makes up a good screenplay. Garden State does, in fact, excellently use a lot of the great elements. Along side the basics like the inciting incident, plot points, and so on; the script is loaded with tons of subtle symbols, themes and motifs, and excellent foreshadowing.
Zach Braff writes, directs, and stars in this heart-warming and funny movie about a young man, Andrew Largeman, who returns home from a nine year absence for his mother’s funeral. His mother’s funeral is the inciting incident. It is the event that will once again bring him home and start his life over again. It will also give him a chance to reconnect with his father and their distant relationship. While he is home he meets a very peculiar and loveable girl named Sam.
Meeting her is the Plot Point near the end of Act one that takes us into the second act. Upon meeting her, we see an instant connection and know that the scenes to come will be them getting to know each other. He faces many obstacles in Act 2 that she helps him overcome (along with the help of his old friends). Andrew is a very emotionless character who has been living his life numbed on depression and an assortment of other medications. He stopped taking them and realized that he hasn’t needed them to get by in life.
His realization that he must face his mistakes in his past, a painful yet successful reconnection with his father, and the like for this new girl all work collectively to bring us into the third act of the screenplay. Here he will deconstruct his thoughts and start to see who he is and his purpose in life. At first, he thinks he must return to the life he has been living the past nine years and start from there. At the airport he says his final goodbyes to his Sam and they part ways. This is the climax of the screenplay. He rose above all his mental and emotional problems, and in entering the resolution went through a magnificent character change. But does he leave his hometown and Sam, or leave the life he thought he knew miles away and act on his change of heart, mind, and overall character?

Disturbia

This week I decided to analyze the script for the film Disturbia. A good movie indeed that bears a lot of the essentials needed to make a good script. The set-up does an impressive job in instantly creating a modern day, laid back, smart-ass kid named Kale. He is out on a fishing trip with his father, and we see how well he interacts with his fun Dad. After the fishing trip Kale and his dad get in a brutal car crash that kills Kale’s father. Since we know that Kale got along so well with his dad it is evident, before showing us, that Kale is crushed. After this incident he really doesn’t care what he does or what happens to him.

Shortly after the accident we see Kale sleeping during his Spanish final in school. This is when the inciting incident occurs. It is quite an epic and nicely written incident at that. The Spanish teacher wakes Kale up and tells him it’s his turn to go, but when Kale clearly does not know enough to pass the test he gets upset. He says that just because Kale lost his father doesn’t mean he should lie down and give up, or get special attention. Kale knocks the teacher’s lights out.

Kale gets through his trial with three months of house arrest over the entire summer. This is the result of the inciting incident, and because of it we know something will happen soon at the end of Act 1. We see a couple of times when Kale is watching TV that girls are randomly going missing. The news report details the suspect’s car as a Mustang with a dent on the front. So, when Kale, with nothing else to do but spy on his neighbors, sees a Mustang that fits that exact description pull up and into his neighbor’s garage, he gets a little freaked out. This puts us into Act 2. We now know that Kale thinks his neighbor is a serial killer and he will continue to scope out and get to the bottom of this. No one believes him but his one friend, so it’s going to be tough.

After spending a lot of time spying and finding more and more evidence to his neighbor’s guilt, Kale is sure his is a murderer. So the second Plot Point occurs when Kale’s friend investigates the neighbor’s house. He takes a video camera in and films everything he can. After a while they determine there is no evidence to be found and all hope of solving this case is gone. After one more look at the footage, Kale notices a shape in the distance stuck behind an air vent. A closer look reveals it is a dead body. This spins us into the third and final Act.

The neighbor, catching wind that someone is on to him, appears at Kale’s house and attacks him and his friend, and kidnaps his mom. This is the climax, and Kale is presented with the final opportunity to take down his nemesis and save his mom. If you haven’t seen it I won’t give away the ending.

Kale, during the resolution, shows more signs of character changes. He went from being a stuck-up kid who doesn’t want to deal with anything anymore to being a confident man who learns to stop dwelling in his past.

The Dude

I have always been a big fan of the Coen Brothers when it comes to movies. One of my favorite films they made is The Big Lebowski. The Big Lebowski is about a very interesting character, The Dude, who always gets himself in very bizarre and crazy situations. The set up of the film begins with a narration sequence setting up a little of the who, what, where, etc. while “The Dude” shops for milk at a supermarket. We instantly see that the Dude is a low income bum who really doesn’t care about anything. He dresses how he wants, does what he wants, and lives life one step at a time. In the next part of the set up we follow the Dude to his house where he is attacked by two thugs. The two thugs think he is a different Mr. Lebowski, a Lebowski that is rich and has lots of money.

When the thugs realize they have the wrong Lebowski they get upset, trash the house, and pee on the Dude’s rug. This is the event that gets the story going and gives the main character a motive. Since “the carpet really tied the room together, man”, the Dude decides to find the rich Lebowski and get paid back for his damaged rug. To the Dude’s dismay, Mr. Lebowski doesn’t want anything to do with the Dude or his problems. So the Dude takes it upon himself to just take one of Mr. Lebowski’s rugs and calls it even.

Just when the Dude thought his life was back to its peaceful state he gets a call from Mr. Lebowski, who needs his help. This is the first plot point at the end of Act 1. Mr. Lebowski needs a favor of the Dude. His wife has been kidnapped by the German thugs that tore up the Dude’s house. He wants the Dude to give them their demands and fix everything up. Cornered and unable to say no, the Dude finds himself in a very peculiar situation. Something he has no purpose dealing with.

The Dude’s friend Walter ruins the whole plan by trying to give the bad guys the fake briefcase of money. This causes more problems and the thugs continue to demand the money from the Dude. The second plot point comes when we find out that Mr. Lebowski’s wife was never kidnapped, she just ran away with a friend for a few days. The Dude has basically been running around getting mixed up with things and people that he thought were related when they weren’t.

The climax happens when the Dude and his friends Walter and Donnie have a showdown with the Germans because they are still asking for the money. The stupid Germans never quite grasped the concept that there never was any money. Walter beats up the Germans and Donnie has a heart attack in the middle of the fight. In the resolution the Dude and Walter sit at the bowling alley that they always go to and recollect on what happened. For all the times they were in the bowling alley during the movie, this is the first time we actually see them bowl.

Everybody Comes to Rick's

For this week’s entry I decided to do a very old, but good movie adapted from a play called Everybody Comes to Rick’s. The movie Casablanca is a great screenplay to analyze because it contains all the necessary elements that make up a great screenplay. The set-up of the screenplay quickly introduces what is going on in the movie and who our main character is, the two plot points keep the story nicely flowing, and the resolution effectively ties the movie together and shows the main character going through a very interesting and unexpected change.

Casablanca is set in an unoccupied Africa during the early stages of the Second World War. Europeans fleeing to America from the Germans set up refuge in a town called Casablanca where, from there, they must wait there for exit visas that are nearly impossible to get a hold of. The first few minutes of the screenplay sets up this story by showing the police looking for the culprit who killed two German couriers carrying two very valuable transit letters. These transit letters will shortly be entrusted to Rick Blaine, our main character. In the set-up we learn that this American, a former freedom fighter, owns the hottest nightspot in town that everyone goes to. Although very popular, Rick is a very cynical and isolated man. So when he gets hold of these two very valuable, unquestionable by law, transit letters he probably won’t give them up so easily. This presents itself as the inciting incident, and first plot point, because an acquaintance of Rick’s gave him the letters and is then killed by the police under charges of murdering the couriers. Rick’s friend had to be killed in order to start the plot of Rick having a lot of power with the control of these letters.

In Act two we learn of the European Resistance Leader, Victor Lazlo, who is coming to Casablanca in an attempt to get to America. A German named Major Strasser occupies Casablanca for a while to try and capture him with the help of French Chief of Police, Captain Renault. When Victor hears that Rick has unquestionable transit letters he knows that Rick is his only help to escape. This won’t be so easy for Victor when Rick sees him walk into his bar with the love of his life Isla. For unknown reasons Isla left Victor in Paris and was never heard from again until now. This causes Rick to be very hostile towards Victor and Isla, and he lets them know he has no intention of giving up the visas. The major obstacle that Rick faces in the second act is when he finds out Isla is married to Victor, and has been since before they met in Paris.

Rick and Isla begin to fall in love again and Rick starts thinking about what he will do with the visas. Does he keep them for himself to leave for America with Isla? Or does he send Isla and Victor to America so Victor can continue his freedom movement. We learn of a plan that Rick has to trick Victor into staying in Casablanca so he and Isla, who are in love again, can escape to America. This is the second plot point at the end of act two that carries us into the very exciting resolution.

The writers of this screenplay did a tremendous job in molding Rick’s character into someone who only looks after himself. He’s been through it all and he is sick of everything. He owns the hottest place in town, but yet he often sits in solitude. His character represents America’s political position at this time of the war. Rick, like the USA, at this time is a sleeping giant, and if anyone wakes him he has the power to control the outcome of some very important events. So when Rick goes through a major character change during the resolution, the audience becomes that much more attached to Rick. Knowing that what he and Isla had in Paris is only meant to remain as heavenly memories he decides to send Victor to America with her. Rick realized that she is the foundation of Victor’s powers in the movement against German’s and she must stay with Victor.

Rick continues this big change when he kills Major Strasser in an act of self-defense, and while guarding the escaping plan with Ilsa in it. This is what puts Rick back in the Resistance against the Germans. Especially with Captain Renault on his side, Rick will make a very good freedom fighter.

Screenplay by: Julius and Philip Epstein and Howard Koch