MONDAY'S SCRIPT TIP:
FLASHBACKS!
The problem is, a screenplay is like a shark - it has to be moving forward or it dies.
When you think about flashbacks in movies, what they do is move the story
forward... not fill in a bit of the past. The flashback in RESERVOIR DOGS is a
good example - Mr. Orange lies bleeding on the floor after the robbery goes
south... all around him the other robbers are pointing guns at each other and
accusing each other of informing the police - how did the police get there so
fast? Now we get Mr. Orange's flashback... he's an undercover cop. Now, we
may be going back in time, but Mr. Orange being an undercover cop
ESCALATES THE CONFLICT - they will kill him if they find out! He can't run,
he's been gutshot. So each bit of that flashback moves the story forward - we
are discovering more and more information that makes the present situation much worse. The
flashback moves the story forward - it isn't filling in a plot hole.
THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE is a textbook example of how NOT to use flashbacks.
An ambitious young reporter (Kate Winslet) is granted an interview with David
Gale (Kevin Spacey) a college professor and anti-death penalty activist who will
be executed at the end of the week. She will be given an interview on each of the
three last days of his life. Winslet and the interviews become excuses for flashbacks
of the events leading up to Gale's conviction. The first two flashbacks concern Gale's
life as a college professor... how he had an affair with a student that cost him his
job and his marriage. How he descended into alcoholism. How he couldn't keep even the
simplest of jobs. How he lost almost all of his friends and ended up a homeless drunk.
Okay - some of you may be wondering what this has to do with being on death row.
And that's a good question. The first problem is that these two flashbacks have nothing
to do with the story of a man on death row. Though these events provided an excuse for
why a jury might convict an intelligent, articulate man of murder when there is almost
no evidence - the flashbacks are boring and don't change the CURRENT story at all. At
the end of each flashback Gale is still on death row and we haven't learned anything
that will help his case. You'd think a guy with only three days to live would cut to
the chase! Because the flashbacks have no impact at all on present events, they are
pointless. They do not move the story forward, they just waste our time. We get to
know who David Gale is... but it's the life story of a college professor who screws
up his life. Not the most exciting story in the world. The first two thirds are like
sitting next to someone on a long airplane flight who insists on telling you about
their life in Topeka. Who cares?
The third flashback is the one with all of the story material. It's here where we
finally get to the murder and murder conviction. But even though Winslet gets to search
a house and find a video tape and race across town to try and stay the execution because
of the new evidence... the course of the story doesn't really change. The situation at
the end of the third flashback is EXACTLY THE SAME as the situation at the beginning of
the movie... making all of the flashbacks (and the movie itself) pointless. The flashbacks
don't change the story in any way - they don't give us any information that we couldn't
have guessed from the premise itself (many people have), and two of the flashbacks are just
time killers. A flashback needs to MOVE THE STORY FORWARD. A flashback needs to CHANGE the
present situation. These flashbacks just wasted our time.
Where you place your backstory will depend on where it moves the story
forward - that may mean it's the opening scene! Or it may escalate the conflict
if you save that information and reveal it later.
If you have 7 different backstories that are really background material and
therefor need to be established before the story starts... you're in trouble. Let's
say your story is about 7 people who got screwed over by George Lucas as
he climbed his way to the top who decide to band together and kill him at the
premiere of the animated CLONE WARS movie. The problem is you need to
establish their motivations before the story starts, because the revelation that
Character #3 was the editor who said "R-2, D-2 would be a great name for a
robot!" doesn't escalate the conflict at all. So you have to start with these 7
stories... and each one will have to establish the relationship between the
character and Lucas so that the back-stabbing-on-the-way-to-the-top is a real
betrayal. That's not like the snippets we get in SORCERER that only need to
show us why these guys are broke in South America... each of these Lucas
things is it's own story. So the beginning of your script is going to be 7 stories
that need to be told before you can get on to the REAL story - killing George
Lucas. If each of this stories are cut down to 12 minutes - and that will be hard
to establish the bond of friendship and how it is betrayed in so little time - you
have 84 minutes before you can even get to the real story! If you're a frigging
genius and manage to get that story of friendship and betrayal down to 5
minutes each, you're still at 35 minutes of background material before the
story even starts! So a story like this is better suited to a form where you can
spend more time on the backstory - like a novel.
FLASHBACKS MOVE THE STORY FORWARD - THEY DON'T GO BACK &
PLUG PLOT HOLES.
What is the impact of your flashback on the present time story? Does the flashback escalate the conflict, or just give information?
A script is like a shark - the story must always be moving forward... even when it's a flashback.
MY BLOG!
SCRIPT SECRETS STORE - time to monkey around!
Was THE PROPOSAL almsot as good as FIRE IN THE AMAZON when it comes to Sandy Bullock nudity?
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