Filmmaking – @habits

Edge of Tomorrow

I re-watched Edge of Tomorrow last night – probably my fourth or fifth viewing – and it’s just a great film. If you haven’t seen it, would highly recommend. Rotten and IMDB ratings seem to generally agree.

Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt deliver strong leading performances. Cruise is in his element – I’d argue that his tendency to overact (not necessarily a criticism) lends itself to sci-fi even more than “realistic” plots like Mission Impossible. Minority Report is another example. Heightened acting complementing heightened stakes.

Strong supporting performances from Brendan Gleeson and Bill Paxton. Bill’s iconic line “There is no courage without fear”

Standard Hollywood 3 act structure, executed very well. The Act 1 twist (Cruise acquires the power to restart the day), the midpoint low (Cruise’s despair at their inability to cross the battlefield), the Act 3 break (using the transmitter to find the Omega’s real location), the maxed out stakes of the desperate final attack

I need to read the Japanese manga from which the movie is adapted (All You Need Is Kill)

Similar to Inception’s use of “a dream within a dream”, Edge of Tomorrow layers repetitive patterns within the broader repetitive loop which Tom Cruise finds himself trapped in: He wakes up in a helicopter to begin and end the movie, and he wakes up repeatedly throughout to signify resetting the day; He falls in love with Emily’s character by watching her die countless times, just as Emily’s own character fell in love with a man named Hendricks in much the same way when she held the “reset” power

The sci-fi concept of repeating a day (/week/year/life) fascinates me. Groundhog Day was the first such film that I remember watching. There’s also 50 First Dates, Run Lola Run, Primer, among others. I always wonder what I would do with that extra time, and what changes I would make if I truly had a “reset” button.

Screenwriting insights from Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat

Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat [Amazon] has been one of Hollywood’s bestselling screenwriting books since its 2005 release. There’s good advice in this book for every kind of writer. And funny to boot.

Some Hollywood types complain that the book’s formulaic approach has hurt the screenwriting profession. More like: its revealed insider secrets, and most insiders don’t like that.

Here are some of my favorite highlights:

And yet, so the rules tell us and human nature dictates, we don’t want to see anyone, even the most underdog character, succeed for too long. And eventually, the hero must learn that magic isn’t everything, it’s better to be just like us — us members of the audience — because in the end we know this will never happen to us.

Look at Point Break starring Patrick Swayze, then look at Fast and Furious. Yes, it’s the same movie almost beat for beat. But one is about surfing, the other is about hot cars.

There’s the “good girl tempted” archetype – pure of heart, cute as a bug: Betty Grable, Doris Day, Meg Ryan (in her day), Reese Witherspoon. This is the female counterpart of the young man on the rise.

Tell me a story about a guy who…
> I can identify with.
> I can learn from.
> I have compelling reason to follow.
> I believe deserves to win and…
> Has stakes that are primal and ring true for me.

Not to get too self-protective, but a strong structure guarantees your writing credit. More than any other element, the bones of a screenplay, as constructed in the story beats of your script, will be proof to those who decide who gets credit at the Writers Guild of America (WGA) that the work is primarily yours.

The hero cannot be lured, tricked, or drift into Act Two. The hero must make the decision himself. That’s what makes him a hero anyway — being proactive.

a movie’s midpoint is either an “up” where the hero seemingly peaks (though it is a false peak) or a “down” when the world collapses all around the hero (though it is a false collapse), and it can only get better from here on out.

At the All Is Lost moment, stick in something, anything that involves a death. It works every time. Whether it’s integral to the story or just something symbolic, hint at something dead here. It could be anything. A flower in a flower pot. A goldfish. News that a beloved aunt has passed away.

You must take time to frame the hero’s situation in a way that makes us root for him, no matter who he is or what he does.

I propose to you that, for some reason, audiences will only accept one piece of magic per movie. It’s The Law. You cannot see aliens from outer space land in a UFO and then be bitten by a Vampire and now be both aliens and undead. That, my friends, is Double Mumbo Jumbo.

The Covenant of the Arc is the screenwriting law that says: Every single character in your movie must change in the course of your story. The only characters who don’t change are the bad guys. But the hero and his friends change a lot.

In many a well-told movie, the hero and the bad guy are very often two halves of the same person struggling for supremacy, and for that reason are almost equal in power and ability. How many movies can you name that have a hero and a bad guy who are two halves of the same persona? Think about Batman (Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson), Die Hard (Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman), and even Pretty Woman (Richard Gere and Jason Alexander).

Make sure every character has “A Limp and an Eyepatch.” Every character has to have a unique way of speaking, but also something memorable that will stick him in the reader’s mind.

Four Quadrant – Men Over 25, Men Under 25, Women Over 25, Women Under 25

4 great life lessons from the movie The Gladiator

The Gladiator is one of my all-time favorite movies. Yes it’s a very violent, bloody film, and yes the special fx can’t match up to today’s latest and greatest. But the grandeur of the story, the solid acting, the brilliant Hans Zimmer score, and what I appreciate more and more with each re-watch: that the movie fits in quite a few powerful lessons about leadership, values, and friendship.

So here are 4 of those lessons, with accompanying screenshots. There are some spoilers, but it’s been 2 decades since the movie was released. There should be a statute of spoiler limitations :)

1. To inspire great behavior, we can appeal to even greater forces

In the movie’s beginning fight scene, Maximus says the following to his cavalry before their critical charge:

If you find yourself alone, riding in green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled…for you are in Elysium, and you are already dead!

Later, he adds:

Brothers…What we do in life echoes in eternity

It reminds me of a quote from Eric Hoffer’s seminal book on how leaders create mass movements:

In their battle orders army leaders invariably remind their soldiers that the eyes of the world are on them, that their ancestors are watching them and that posterity shall hear of them. The great general knows how to conjure an audience out of the sands of the desert and the waves of the ocean. – Eric Hoffer, Mass Movements

2. At the top, it’s all about gestures and symbols

At the end of that beginning battle, two critical things happen: the Emperor Marcus Aurelius refuses his son Commodus’s hand, but then he allows Maximus to support him onto his horse. The Emperor then leans in and whispers, “So much for the glory of Rome.” He recognizes what a poor picture he paints to the assembled soldiers, as his frail dying body can barely mount the horse without the aide of a ladder and Maximus’s help.

Later in the film, after Aurelius dies, Commodus offers his hand to Maximus, demanding his loyalty. Which Maximus rejects to his peril.

3. A leader (and a civilization) should have clear values, and they should be shared and repeated

“Strength and honor” are the first values. In the movie, it’s a phrase repeated often among the Roman army as a sort of call-and-response. I was reminded of how militaries and organized religions share this in common: short, simple, powerful phrases, repeated often, and usually in the call-and-response format.

The second moment is when Commodus says the following before he “hugs” his father Marcus:

You wrote to me once, listing the 4 chief virtues. Wisdom, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance. As I read the list, I knew I had none of them. But I have other virtues, Father. Ambition. That can be a virtue which drives us to excel…

Hearing the word “ambition” used this way, I was immediately reminded of Silicon Valley, Wall Street, Ivy League schools, and the like. I do believe that for many people that run in those circles, ambition matters above all. Sure, lip service is given to other values like integrity and respect, but what seems to matter most is growth, or the size of your bonus, or the rank of your school.

Finally, Commodus, as the movie nears its end and the walls close in, comes to a painful realization when he discovers that Maximus is actually not dead, and his lieutenants had misled him:

If they lied to me, they don’t respect me. If they don’t respect me, how can they ever love me?

4. As the Garth Brooks song goes, “I’ve got friends in low places”

One of the film’s most consistently beautiful moments is the unexpectedly strong friendship between Maximus and Juba the Namibian. It is no accident that the movie’s final scene features Juba burying two small clay idols that represent Maximus’s wife and child.

Thanks for reading this rather long essay! I hope the pictures made it worthwhile :)

Ok, ok, just one last, relevant quote from the real, historical Marcus Aurelius:

The art of life is more like the wrestler’s art than the dancer’s, in respect of this, that it should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected

If you want to see more essays like this, email or tweet me and let me know! My time lately has been spent studying and writing about religion, but at a deeper level I’m interested in life wisdom in all its wonderful formats.