Journey, not the destination.

I’ve talked about the fallacy of resolution before, how the need for your movie to be wrapped up in a bright blue bow is preached by the endless parade of screenwriting books and 3-day writer’s conferences.

It’s not true, you know.

I could give you five great movies without resolutions from each of the collected works of Cassavetes, Altman, Fellini, Wells… but that would be too easy. Doesn’t take a brain surgeon to know that every movie doesn’t have to be Air Force One, yet you’d be amazed to hear the so-called experts harp upon the R Word. Kinda like Syd Field telling you you MUST outline your movie ahead of time. What was it the great William Goldman said? “There are no rules.”

Just to be clear: You do not need a resolution for your movie. But you do need a great story. You do need–almost always– character change. Or, without character change, the WORLD around that character change. Here are ten great movies that prove you don’t need classic resolution.

• 2001 A Space Odyssey

Mankind finds a mysterious, obviously artificial, artifact buried on the moon and, with the intelligent computer HAL, sets off on a quest.

I got that part. What I don’t get, never got, and would welcome opinions on, is the ending. Where exactly does our astronaut hero, Dave Bowman, go? Well, he goes into a VOID, and……what?

• Irreversible

Blew me away. Like no movie I’ve ever seen. Let me repeat that: Like. No. Other. Movie. Lasted in Chicago only a week. I sat down for the last show of its last night. As the lights went down there were 30 of us in the theater. When the lights came up, there were no more than 10 people left. I had to have the movie so I bought the DVD. It sits, still, in plastic wrapping, never opened. I can’t force myself to watch it again. Gaspar Noe destroys any conception of resolution (and in last year’s Enter The Void, too) The end of this movie is the beginning is the end. If you want to understand what that means, watch the movie. I dare you.

• American Psycho

Wall Street banker Patrick Bateman happens to be a serial killer. This adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel strikes a blackly comedic tone showing Bateman maim street people, kill dogs and women and banker rivals and… you get the picture. We see all of this mayhem. In most movies the killer must get his comeuppance at the end, but not here. In fact, there’s a conversation that leads us to believe none of it actually happened, except in Bateman’s mind. No clean, blue-ribbon ending here.

BATEMAN
Wait. Stop. You don't seem to understand. You're not really
comprehending any of this. I killed him. I did it, Carnes.
I'm Patrick Bateman. I chopped Owen's fucking head off.
I tortured dozens of girls. The whole message I left on your
machine was true.

Carnes stares at him in confusion and annoyance.

CARNES
But that's simply not possible. And I don't find
this funny anymore.

BATEMAN
Why isn't it possible?

CARNES
Because I had dinner with Paul Owen twice in
London...just ten days ago.

BATEMAN
No, you...didn't?

CARNES
Now, if you'll excuse me.

• Glengarry Glen Ross

Times are tough in a Chicago real-estate office; the salesmen (Shelley Levene, Ricky Roma, Dave Moss, and George Aaronow) are given a strong incentive by Blake to succeed in a sales contest. The prizes? First prize is a Cadillac El Dorado, second prize is a set of steak knives, third prize is the sack! There is no room for losers in this dramatically masculine world; only “closers” will get the good sales leads. There is a lot of pressure to succeed, so a robbery is committed which has unforeseen consequences for all the characters.

The neat, concise IMDB sum-up above doesn’t tell you much about the resolution because…there is none. We follow a half-dozen Chicago real-estate salesmen, the Glengarry leads come into the office, the office is robbed. Who did it? When we find out, the movie is over. But this isn’t a caper film, and it’s not a crime thriller. It’s straight up character-driven drama. The Jack Lemmon character will lose his gig, maybe even do some time in jail, but that’s it. For every other character, when all is said and done, it’s just a really bad day-at-the-office. When the smoke clears it’ll be the same old shit tomorrow. They hate the job but it’s all they know. Coffee is for closers…

• Mulholland Drive

I’d offer you 10 bucks to send me a chronological breakdown of the linear progression of this movie but I bet a hundred of you folks have already done so, so I’ll just ask the rest of you: Where does this movie begin and end, in real time? Resolution? We don’t need no stinkin’ resolution!

• PI

Max is a genius mathematician who’s built a supercomputer at home that provides something that can be understood as a key for understanding all existence. Representatives both from a Hasidic cabalistic sect and high-powered Wall Street firm hear of that secret and attempt to seduce him.

216. The narrative driver of the movie is a 216 character number that might unlock the mysteries of God’s design, or just fix the Stock Market for shady Wall Street types that put the Occupy Wall Steet villains to shame. Aronofsky’s first, it’s a $60,000 brain food thriller with zero plot resolution, but a flick that grows on me each time I see it.

• The Social Network

The 162 page Oscar-winning script rolls out at 120 minutes–so much for the page-a-minute rule. The Aaron Sorkin dialogue flies off the screen, but why? Think about this: The framing device is the courtroom battle between the Winklevoss twins vs. Zuckerberg. This leads us into linear flashbacks showing the founding of Facebook. The ending of the movie happens just before the Winklevoss hearing ends and a settlement is reached. Not exactly epic resolution for a movie that is all about journey, not the destination.

• Almost Famous

William Miller is a 15 year old kid, hired by Rolling Stone magazine to tour with, and write about Stillwater, an up and coming rock band. This wonderfully witty coming of age film follows William as he falls face first to confront life, love, and lingo.

Somebody’s gotta get the girl, right? Nope. Rock star god Russell Hammond doesn’t get her. Neither does up-and-coming protagonist kid reporter William. The super charismatic groupie Kate Hudson ends up solo in Morocco. William ends up back at mom’s, Russell back on the road after reconciling with William. It’s warm and fuzzy, but not exactly Terminator 3.

• No Country For Old Men

In rural Texas, welder and hunter Llewelyn Moss discovers the remains of several drug runners who have all killed each other in an exchange gone violently wrong. Rather than report the discovery to the police, Moss decides to simply take the two million dollars present for himself. This puts the psychopathic killer, Anton Chigurh, on his trail as he dispassionately murders nearly every rival, bystander and even employer in his pursuit of his quarry and the money. As Moss desperately attempts to keep one step ahead, the blood from this hunt begins to flow behind him with relentlessly growing intensity as Chigurh closes in. Meanwhile, the laconic Sherriff Ed Tom Bell blithely oversees the investigation even as he struggles to face the sheer enormity of the crimes he is attempting to thwart.

This one stuck in my craw, right between cheek and gum, like some saliva-brown Texas chaw tobacco. What the fuck kind of ending was that? Good guy killed (and we don’t even get to see it), bad guy limps away, Tommy Lee Jones quits and has bad dreams.

The lesson here is that a great movie needn’t have clear resoluti0n. Great art goes against. Its greatness is proven by its very rarity, fearless endings you just never see in most movies.

That said, I still wanted Anton Chigurh dead with that cattle prod up his….

I’m an awful person. I have a blog so every now and again I can confess to you, Good Reader. Blog as shrink. Not to tantalize you too much. I won’t be going DARK dark side today, but I will admit to my habit of movie marathoning.

You know what I’m talking about. Get to the theater at noon, pay for the half-price matinee, and stay all day. Three movies minimum, five max.

Oh c’mon, you’ve done it! Or are you the good citizen who actually pays for every movie he sees? In the era of Pirate Bay, what’s the percentage of people who actually pay for every movie they see? 50%? More? Less?

Yeah yeah, I know about Comcast On Demand and Hulu. I know you really don’t have to steal intellectual content and that, in a rather easy argument to make, you really shouldn’t. But that doesn’t,  and won’t, stop me. Am I a bad person? Nah, just pragmatic.

I bring a schedule of movies, maybe even a sandwich and drink. It’s going to be a long 10-hour day inside the multiplex, defeats the purpose to buy that six buck popcorn. I check the schedule and make a tentative game plan. For instance: A quick Google search today finds these movies playing at the downtown Chicago AMC 21:

Showtimes for AMC River East 21

322 East Illinois Street, Chicago, IL - (888) 262-4386 - Map

How many movies on this list appeal to you? How many would you pay the full $12 per to see? HUNGER GAMES, sure. CABIN IN THE WOODS, yep, liked Joss Whedon from Toy Story, even Titan AE and Serenity. BULLY, heard good things about it. THE THREE STOOGES, hell yeah, if only for a goof. So, I can pay $48 for these four, or $8 for the matinee of one of them, and see the rest in a marathon. Decisions, decisions! If Professor Pauly made six-figures—or anything even approaching it—he’d pay 100%. But he doesn’t, and I don’t.  Is it wrong to marathon? Theoretically, sure. Do I lose much sleep over it? Nah.

If you marathon you know that unless the schedule works out perfectly you’ll have to hang in the bathroom for a minute or two, or duck into a movie like THE LORAX or freakin’ 21 JUMP STREET. That’s cool because if the subject comes up at a party you can think back to the ten minutes of 21 JUMP STREET you saw and in good conscience tell your friends it blew.

In all the years of doing this I was only caught once. It was at the above-mentioned AMC 21 and I was with my marathoning buddy in the john, schedule out a bit too brashly, saying something to the effect of, “SWEENEY TODD at 5:30 or 127 HOURS at 5:40?” He pointed to a guy drying his hands who overheard us. He had a lanyard and AMC 21 badge around his neck. Oops! Playing it cool, we left and moved down the long hall toward 127 HOURS. Up from behind us he came. “You heard me, didn’t you?” He shook yes and out we went. He wished me well and I wished him well and out onto Illinois Street I went. No drama. He’s not paid enough to bust his ass prosecuting or calling cops, I don’t make enough to pay for every movie, but in an ideal world I would. We understood each other. This round to him, the next to me.

Movie marathoning = broke ass life in balance.

Yep, it’s that time of year again, the Nicholl deadline, and you’re going crrrrrazzzzzyyyyy! Pulling out all the stops, making yourself a complete nuisance to friends and family to read your freakin’ script.  Hitting the message boards at Trigger Street or Moviebytes…

It’s the annual screenwriter’s ritual, like salmon swimming upstream. The uptick in script evaluations here at Script Gods in the month of April is a direct result of contest season.

By now you know that May 1 is the Nicholl deadline this year. The cost for entry is $52. I suppose I could Google this, but…was it $52 last year? I seem to remember it being $35. And wasn’t the deadline May 15? Love the new clock that ticks down the deadline second by second, adding to the paranoia and frenzy to get that killer thriller or HANGOVER 3 wannabe in to the Nicholl Fellowship powers that be.

How many scripts came into Nicholl last year? 8,000? 10,000? Whatever the number, your odds are better than winning the lottery and for a mere 52 bucks, why not take the shot? Some folks take the same attitude with middling contests like Blue Cat or Final Draft or Slamdance or Page or….you get the picture. Multiply $50 by 10 or so contests, you have a definite investment in your career. And while submitting to all these contests is fine, they ain’t Nicholl. Not even the most money hungry contest runner would question who the Big Dog is here.

How do you know they’re the Big Dog?

#1: They don’t spam you. Aren’t you guys tired of getting spammed by these super-slick sites? I could name names but what’s the point? You get their email blasts too. Somehow you signed up for something and now, even hitting unsubscribe, you hear from them one, two or three times a week. From the smallest fish spamming me on LinkedIn, to the larger ones offering free advice on this or that but really baiting you in for online classes or screenwriting contests. Nicholl doesn’t need to spam you, and they don’t.

The middling contests? Never much bothered with them. That’s not to say folks like Slamdance or Final Draft or Page are scamsters, but what can they actually do for you?  Ever hear a SINGLE memorable movie coming from there? Their claims to hook you up with industry insiders and jump start your career is music to your ears. Common sense says if something sounds too good, it probably is.

Nicholl, the Big Dog, doesn’t make outrageous claims. They don’t need to. When I finished with just a semifinal finish a few years ago, overnight I had 25 or so emails from managers, agents and production companies seeking out my script. There were some big fish in that list, including Jerry Bruckheimer Productions and Benderspink. These folks cherry pick the Nicholl list, sending out an email blast to the Semi winners on up for their new blood. And you wonder why they didn’t answer your query letter.

Nicholl Fellowship is a decent shot in the dark, and at $52, for a writer without contacts, I say why the hell not.

Two days left before the deadline.

Breathe…breathe…relax.

Things will work out fine.

Win or lose, you’re a nice person, I’m sure.

Every scene exists for a reason. When you outline what you’re doing is writing out the scenes that are essential to telling your story. Presumably, when you finish your outline, every scene exists for a purpose.  You’re ready to write the movie.

Approach each new scene in this matter: What am I trying to do in the scene? Do it. What do I have to say? Say it. Get in late, get out early. Say what you have to in the scene, get done what has to get done, and move on. Fast, no fat, in and out of every scene.

Develop the cut instinct. Look to the dialogue you write in the first “discovery” draft. Look at it hard. What can go? Cut it. Does the scene still make sense? If the answer is yes, it stays cut. If you’ve left something out that has to go back in, then in it goes. That’s the true measure of what’s necessary: Does the scene makes sense without it.

10-5-2-0

Let’s try an experiment. I’ll give you a scene with 10 lines of dialogue, you cut it to five lines. Then we’ll take the five liner and cut it to two. Then we’ll take the scene with two lines of dialogue and see if we can do with zero lines. Ready?

Awful stuff. Exposition, backstory, needless repetition. Let’s cut it, hone the same scene in five lines of dialogue. Should NOT be hard.

Still awful, but tighter. You don’t miss the lines cut because the intention of the scene hasn’t changed: Jealous wife confronts late-arriving husband. Cut out the backstory, the repetition, we lose nothing so out it goes. Now do it in two dialogue lines.

The purpose of the scene remains intact: Pissed-off wife confronting drunk–possibly cheating–husband. It’s a quarter the size it once was, but still isn’t sharp enough, still not quite enough THREAT to it. Let’s work it once more, and try it with zero dialogue.

Ten lines gone, intention fully there, perhaps even clearer without the use of dialogue.

Always challenge your dialogue, every line of it.

Develop the cut instinct.

I don’t know why I’m writing about this.

The usual writer’s narcissism, of course.  The exhibitionism, too. Hanging dirty laundry, calling it a life lesson.

I try to fight the good fight, hoping something in these pages will help your own journeys, but as the great writer once said, we all make that sad trip alone. The machinations are as follows…

TITLE CARD- EIGHT MONTHS EARLIER

I signed up with Linked In. Friend of a friend friended me. Got 3 email accounts, 2 Facebooks. But no Twitter. Constant communication is no friend of mine. My friend chided me about me preaching networking 24/7, so what the fuck, I signed up. Didn’t see much purpose of Linked In other than folks pushing their own agendas. I navigated carefully but within a month had 200+ friends. Mostly screenwriting folks. One of them turned out to be JG.

She sent me a message telling me her story. She had been an agent’s assistant with ICM back in the day. More recently, an agent at a “boutique” agency. She had just gone out of her own, forming a Management company. She had a sharp sense of the business. I was impressed with her aggressiveness and sense of humor. Very Type A. She was looking for writers. Well well, thought I, Linked In is good for something after all!

I replied to her message, asked her if she liked drama and black comedy (my “genre bands”). She said those would be lovely. I sent her some stuff, and she liked them. The calls between us became more frequent. She wanted to rep me. I was without representation and didn’t see a downside. She wasn’t asking for exclusivity on my material and the contract she faxed was legit. I signed it. Within a matter of weeks I had myself a manager.

The phone calls were popping now. 2 or 3X a week. We focused on two scripts, Crossroaders, a casino caper drama, and Skin Deep, a black comedy about a geek-turned-hunk changing his life through plastic surgery. JG thought the scripts were tight and would be going out with them immediately. She was heading to Cannes and might even be able to slip them into the hands of Producer X, Y or Z. She’d keep me informed. Cool.

TITLE CARD– WEEKS LATER

JG phoned. Told me Cannes war stories. Everybody–and she meant everybody–was looking for self-contained thrillers or Hangover-style comedies. She had a comedy of mine, but it was black comedy, not broad comedy…big difference. Best definition of the difference I ever heard was that black comedy makes the audience think. Hangover 2 doesn’t need to make you think. When a monkey sitting on a dude’s lap jerks off a Coke bottle, like the character says, “funny in any language.”

I would do JG a disservice to say she didn’t understand the difference in terms of trying to sell me (black comedies being harder in this brutal spec script environment to sell). Still, she was optimistic. She believed in the scripts, especially Crossroaders. She’d be sending that out in a week.

TITLE CARD– TWO WEEKS LATER

Crossroaders came back. She had given it  to exactly two people…who had issues. One of the producers like it, with reservations. He wanted a rewrite up front. His option offer? Nothing, up front.

There’s nothing worse than seeing the person who reps you revealed as having no backbone. They walk into a meeting with X Y or Z with pure optimism for a script. Upon hearing reservations, they walk out with concerns.  Then comes the call to you looking for revisions. Free revisions. Then comes the choice you, the writer, has to make.

Doing revisions for free is a completely subjective, your-call choice. There is no right or wrong. Like the great William Goldman once so famously said, “There are no rules.” The material we were discussing, Crossroaders, had been vetted for years before JG picked up the material. It was very close to being green-lit through the production company that produced Emma and Dead Poets Society. It had made Semifinals at Nicholl Fellowship. It’s my strongest piece, and didn’t need tweaking.

Least not for dollar zero.

I’d be perfectly happy to listen to producer notes, and to act on those notes, but not for dollar zero. They weren’t impressive. I always remember my ex-agent at William Morris telling a low-balling prodco,  “it speaks to your level of commitment on the project.” Zero was offered, so draw your own conclusions on their commitment.

I was burned out too. It had been a long year at Columbia. I was looking forward to a five week break. I made a decision. I told JG I wouldn’t be doing any free rewrites, at least for that five week period. Afterwards I’d be recharged, maybe it could happen then.

JG was not happy.

At all.

What followed was a Type A phone call, and some Type A emails exchanged. And then…silence.

Strangely, I saw JG in New York a week or two after that. I was in New York and we had booked the meeting previously, so it happened. I walked into the meeting not knowing if I still had a Manager. I left the same way.

And I still don’t.

TITLE CARD- PRESENT DAY

Haven’t heard from JG in months though. The days of 2 and 3 phone calls a week are over.

I would feel worse if I hadn’t met her off freakin’ Linked In, or if she ever made me a penny. Like a few other reps I’ve had, it was sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I don’t know why I offered this up to you today. It’s just another wannabe life lesson from your Humble Narrator.

Shit happens. More often than not it’s not splashy or outrageous like on Entourage. Often it’s just silence, emails or texts no longer sent, phone calls stopped. You never know if the end is for the best…

Or if it’s the end at all.

We talked before the importance of character arcs. I’d like to illustrate a few more famous characters and their journeys. The hope is it helps you think about your own characters and their journeys. I mentioned in the last article that characters gotta change. Like every other screenwriting rule, this one can be broken. Let me be more specific:  I recommend to you that your characters change during the course of the movie. There are famous examples where this doesn’t happen though:

• Scarface

Tony Montana is an animal on page 1 of Scarface. Straight-up criminal off the boat from Cuba. He takes a job at a taco stand but he’s got his eye on more. Life as the pursuit of more. His journey commences through the drug trade, through murder and mayhem and mountain of cocaine. He becomes a boss, rich beyond belief. Ironically, it’s only when he won’t kill a target that his empire comes under fire and he is taken down. When Tony Montana is killed, yeah, he might have a regret about killing his best friend and getting his sister killed, but his nature is essentially unchanged. He’s an animal. “Say goodnight to the bad guy!”

• Citizen Kane

Maybe I’m wrong here but…does Kane really change? Here’s the quick synopsis from Wikipedia:

Flashbacks reveal that Kane’s childhood was spent in poverty in Colorado (his parents ran a boarding house), until the “world’s third largest gold mine” was discovered on the seemingly worthless property his mother had acquired. He is forced to leave his mother (Agnes Moorehead) when she sends him away to the East Coast of the U.S. to live with Thatcher, to be educated. After gaining full control over his possessions at the age of 25, Kane enters the newspaper business with sensationalized yellow journalism. He takes control of the newspaper, the New York Inquirer, and hires all the best journalists. His attempted rise to power is documented, including his manipulation of public opinion for the Spanish American War; his first marriage to Emily Monroe Norton (Ruth Warrick), a President’s niece; and his campaign for the office of governor of New York State, for which alternative newspaper headlines are created depending on the result.

Kane’s marriage disintegrates over the years, and he begins an affair with Susan Alexander. Both his wife and his opponent discover the affair, simultaneously ending his marriage and his political career. Kane marries his mistress, and forces her into an operatic career for which she has no talent or ambition. Kane finally allows her to abandon her singing career after she attempts suicide, but after a span of time spent in boredom and isolation in Xanadu, she ultimately leaves him.

Kane spends his last years building his vast estate and lives alone, interacting only with his staff. The butler recounts that Kane had said “Rosebud” after Susan left him, right after seeing a snow globe.

This film has been called the greatest American film of all time, perhaps the greatest film period. But I asked you: How does the man change? One could say he betrayed his roots of poverty. His last word, “Rosebud”, referring to the sled, to his happy childhood days despite the lack of money. His “idealistic early publishing days” are barely seen. The rest of it is Kane doing what his does best–accumulating power. No wonder this movie wasn’t sanctioned by William Randolph Heart.  Wells brilliantly and relentlessly shows what the spoils of power bring.

• Being There

A simple-minded gardener named Chance has spent all his life in the Washington D.C. house of an old man. When the man dies, Chance is put out on the street with no knowledge of the world except what he has learned from television. After a run in with a limousine, he ends up a guest of a woman (Eve) and her husband Ben, an influential but sickly businessman. Now called Chauncey Gardner, Chance becomes friend and confidante to Ben, and an unlikely political insider.

When they tell you characters have to change, ask them about this movie. The Peter Sellers character of Chauncey Gardener is one of his greatest roles for its restraint. Just as with Kane, same as with Tony Montana–The character doesn’t change, his circumstance does.

• The Fugitive

Same deal here. The doctor, played by Harrison Ford, loves his wife at the top of the movie. He loves her (in death) at the end. He’s essentially the same man. His journey, and the movie’s, is to prove his wife’s innocence. Sure, he makes discoveries about a former friend who betrayed him. He also puts his life on the line and jumps from Hoover Dam in his quest. Tommy Lee Jones, the FBI cop who stalks him, comes to realize this is an innocent man, but it’s not until 130 minutes of non-stop thriller action. The circumstances of plot change, not the doctor.

Last week we talked about beating down your protagonist–manipulation of audience emotion through them connecting to your characters. One sure way for them to connect is to have them identify with the character, and then

mercilessly,

relentlessly,

beat them down.

Many movies have done this in many ways. I showed some examples last week that might be instructive to show again:

1. Nature or natural forces (Titanic, 2012, Twister, The Poseidon Adventure )
2. An antagonist of far greater strength makes life miserable or causes death and destruction(The Devil Wears Prada, The Crow)
   
3. War-time abuse (Schindler’s List, The Deer Hunter, Saving Private Ryan)
4. Addiction (The Lost Weekend, Days Of Wine And Roses, Black Snake Moan)
5. Mental illness (The Miracle Worker, Sling Blade)
6. A crippling or death-dealing accident (Diving Bell and the Butterfly, 21 Grams)
7. Brainwashing (The Manchurian Candidate)
8. Loss of job or bad economic conditions (Falling Down, The Grapes Of Wrath)
9. Religious oppression (Ben Hur, The 10 Commandments, The Rapture)

This list is in no way complete, just a scratch of the surface. Slam the character throughout, grab us by the throat and never let go. Have us not just root for the characters, but live and breathwith them:

• Carrie

Tarantino has made a career on beating down characters in revenge fantasies. Horror movies punish the antagonist in backstory, molding them into that damn hockey mask, then have a bunch of characters that we maybe care about run around trying to survive. With Carrie, they all deserve to die, we’re rooting for it. That’s called 80 minutes of beat down before the final 15 minutes of blood lust revenge.

• 40 Year-Old Virgin

It’s not always drama where the beat down occurs. This poor guy gets it from every side, even himself, in his epic struggle with the opposite sex. Tragedy is my hangnail, comedy is you trying to get laid.

• The Elephant Man

Kills me. Absolutely cannot watch this movie with crying. It’s almost unwatchable, what John Hurt goes through in the title role, or how Anthony Hopkins tries to save him.

• Leaving Las Vegas

You’d think self-destruction wouldn’t get you sympathy. Wrong. This tale of death by booze is one of Nick Cage’s best. What the heck happened to Elizabeth Shue, anyhow? This one killed me too.

• Castaway

WILSON!!! You know you’ve put your protagonist through hell when the loss of a Wilson volleyball elicits tears. The greatest product placement movie in history, but also a great journey, Fed Ex systems engineer survives a plane crash, surviving on a desert island, building a raft and somehow making it back to civilization to discover his chick married to another guy. Dues!

The lead character must pay dues. Is that true?

Sympathy = Punishing Your Protagonist.

Wondering how true is the truism. It’s common for movies to beat down the protagonist. It’s not done randomly. The filmmakers want us, the audience, to react to the beat down. We’re being manipulated and the better the manipulation, the less you realize it’s happening.  How to do we, the audience, respond to the character being put through hell? It may depend on the circumstances…

Let’s say a character is an abusive relationship. We’re rooting for them to escape it, sure. But what if the character could just walk out and leave? Or get a divorce? Our reaction might go from “poor girl” to “what the *&^!, why doesn’t she just split?”  The sympathy factor will be less than if, say, she’s born and married to an abusive 16th Century King.  She has nowhere to turn, divorce not an option. Sympathy is earned through her struggle to survive the marriage forced upon her.

What about a daughter tending to a mother dying of cancer. The daughter wants to do the right thing but the mother dumps on her, relentlessly. Many in the audience might personally relate to the daughter, having to care for elderly parents of their own. The daughter is selfless, self-sacrificing…two big-time sympathy characteristics.

I had a running list of Sympathy and Non-Sympathy traits. A character who is soft spoken, who dies a noble death, who responds to life’s beat down not with anger or cynicism, but with an almost Jesus-like ability to sacrifice one’s self for the sins of others, will always have the audience by the throat.

When it comes time to sell your script, you can bet some producer somewhere will ask why people will pony up $10+ bucks to see your movie. Who are they wanting to take a ride on, who will they root for? Eliciting sympathy isn’t done with smoke and mirrors. It’s done with craft, with storytelling. And with recognizing that your characters have to take a full journey, meaning it’s likely they will have to be beaten down. How?

1. Nature or natural forces (Titanic, 2012, Twister, The Poseidon Adventure )
2. An antagonist of far greater strength makes life miserable or causes death and destruction(The Devil Wears Prada, The Crow)
   
3. War-time abuse (Schindler’s List, The Deer Hunter, Saving Private Ryan)
4. Addiction (The Lost Weekend, Days Of Wine And Roses, Black Snake Moan)
5. Mental or physical illness (The Miracle Worker, SlingBlade)
6. A crippling or death-dealing accident (Diving Bell and the Butterfly, 21 Grams)
7. Brainwashing (The Manchurian Candidate)
8. Loss of job or bad economic conditions (Falling Down, The Grapes Of Wrath)
9. Religious oppression (Ben Hur, The 10 Commandments, The Rapture)

Here are a few specific examples of character beat down from movies you might know:

• Breaking The Waves

I’m off Lars Van Trier. Not planning on seeing Melancholia, didn’t see AntiChrist…what’s the point? The Nazi comments at Cannes aside, this guy is all about shock and headline grabbing. Not saying he’s not talented. Breaking The Waves wrecked me. Stars Emily Watson as a simple-minded young Scottish woman who believes that God talks to her, and is instructed by her paralyzed husband (Stellan Skarsgard) to have degrading sex with oil tanker workers, until it kills her. I stumbled out of the theater after this one. If there were ever a doubt that punishing the protagonist works in drawing an audience closer, one need not go past this movie.

It was Dogville, the rape scene with Nicole Kidman, that put me off Van Trier. When my friend wanted to stay for the credit role, I stood up in the theater and screamed at him, for all to hear: “I just sat through 178 minutes of B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T, and you want to watch the &^%$! credits?!” I’m not the first one to notice the punishing of women in Van Trier movies. From the UK Telegraph:

“In von Trier’s controversial musical, Dancer in the Dark (2000), singer Björk largely escaped such physical privations. As Selma, a poverty-stricken Czech immigrant in America, she merely goes blind, murders a man using a safe deposit box and ends up being hanged.

Still, as Björk tells it, filming took a heavy emotional toll on her. She complained that von Trier was “sexist”, and declared she would never work with him again. She has been quoted as saying that he needs actresses to infuse his films with a soul – “and he envies them and hates them for it”.

Nicole Kidman was the next victim. In Dogville (2003), she played a gangster’s moll who arrives in a small, rural American town. She is perceived as an outsider, and the intolerant citizens insist she does demanding chores before submitting her to all kinds of degradation, finally forcing her to wear an iron collar with a bell and weight attached to prevent her escape. She becomes the helpless victim of the sexual whims of several men in the town.

“I don’t think I tortured Nicole on Dogville, but I know she said I was tough,” said von Trier. The two reportedly had tempestuous rows on set. And when I mentioned von Trier’s name to Kidman a year after Dogville’s release, she gave me what might be termed an old-fashioned look.”

Sure, we can scorn the director, but how do we feel about the characters? Do we pity them? Sympathize with them? If I want to elicit a response from a reader-audience member, I’d do well to study the reaction to characters in movies like this. Van Trier uses women badly in his flicks, but he wasn’t the first…

• The Birds

In fairness, the whole town gets abused by the crazy attacking birds. We focus on Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) and family, plus wealthy San Fransisco socialite Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren). Terrorized, the back end of the movie has them trapped and defending a house from the constant onslaught. Kinda a no-brainer here–of course we’re rooting for them. The movie has been studied down to the shot, as has Hitchcock’s obsession with Tippi Hedren, and his beat down of women in this and other movies.

• Gladiator

“Maximus is a powerful Roman general, loved by the people and the aging Emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Before his death, the Emperor chooses Maximus to be his heir over his own son, Commodus, and a power struggle leaves Maximus and his family condemned to death. The powerful general is unable to save his family, and his loss of will allows him to get captured and put into the Gladiator games until he dies. The only desire that fuels him now is the chance to rise to the top so that he will be able to look into the eyes of the man who will feel his revenge.”

Revenge, done well, works. Roman general Maximus (Russell Crowe) has his life ripped from him–friends, family, his Legion, even his rightful appointment as Emperor–by the crafty and ever-ambitous Commodus. We see it happen, every awful step of the way. Nothing he, or we, can do about it. Powerful guy, but it’s all taken from him.We sympathize and root for him to give Joaquin Phoenix, and that freaking annoying scar of his, what for.

Dorothy Parker founded the “hate writing, love having written” school. One of her beefs was rewriting.

As every one of us knows, you can stare at a problem scene for hours and just be stuck. You know the damn script better than anyone but it doesn’t help get you to any sort of solution. You can’t figure it out.

Then you get your hands on a friend’s script and can see, clear as day, not just every pimply zit in his script, but the obvious solution to all his life’s troubles.

Why is that?

The pressure is off. It’s always easier to see the errors in the other guy’s script. You have detachment, objectivity. You don’t have four months of writing invested. It’s no sweat to come in and be the hero with your ever-so-unique opinions.

I’d like to help with critical capacity, if such a thing is possible. In future posts we’ll look over some student-written scenes to break down. The thinking is: The sharper your critical eye for the other guy’s script, the sharper it will be when you train it on your own movie. It’s part of the sometimes mundane aspect of craft which you’ll have to work if you want a career in the biz. So, vamos. Identify where this scene can be improved.

There are some obvious things that could be cleaned up. Here are some I identified:

1. Characters with similar names. Avoid them. Do you really need three D names?
2. “Slightly emaciated”? I’m generally a hater of adverbs and adjectives. Doesn’t emaciated say it all? If not, pick another adjective that does the job. Slightly is a weak choice.
3. While telling me about his “dead end security job” and “two bedroom apartment” might shed light onto Darius, it certainly cannot be seen by the camera. In short, it’s unfilmable. We could have hours of debate on unfilmables, how the camera doesn’t always have to see what’s being described. While I might even agree with you under certain circumstances, this isn’t one of them. Start your action with who is in the shot and what’s happening now. You can’t go wrong with at least starting your action there. All the rest of what can’t be seen has to go.
4. “Begins to pace…” Cut every begins to, starts to, and continues to. Get to the verb. He paces the hospital lobby.
5. We’ve got Mom talking but he never introduced her in the action description.
6. “Waiting to get an update on his son’s condition“. Another unfilmable. Unless we saw the kid shot or brought in, I have no idea why he’s in that lobby. All the camera can see is that this man is pacing.
7. “Yeah, I remember. He was gunned down by the same type of men just because he didn’t want to join their gang. You know what, first thing I’m gonna do is buy myself a gun and then, I’m gonna find the men responsible for killing my son.” Exposition and backstory will absolutely kill your chances to get the script sold. Rewrite this scene with subtext. Say it without saying it. Leave some room for the action to use physicality, to fill in the gaps of emotion not with dialogue but with body language, with their eyes and movement.

Let’s try a few scene workshops for readers of SCRIPT GODS. If you have a scene of 3 pages or less you’d like me to look over, give some feedback on, and highlight on the blog, send it as a PDF or Final Draft doc. No guarantees all the entries will get broken down but I’ll be totally discreet and get to as many as possible. These scenes will be used as examples for the greater good.

Working together, maybe a few of us can Occupy Hollywood before we all croak.

Might be sacrilege for my 19 year-olds at Columbia College, but no, I don’t love all his movies.

Tarantino, for me, is the mad video clerk who has seen 10,362 movies. He has total recall, can sample, skim, or outright steal from the obscure Korean flick you never saw and do it so artfully, you’ll never know it was ever done. Picasso told us, “good artists borrow, great artists steal.” There’s much more to Tarantino than this aspect, though.

Make no mistake: Tarantino will be around hundreds of years from now. Inglorious Basterds, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill are for the ages. Are they on my Top 100 stuck-on-a-desert-island list? Hell no. All style, little substance, few female characters of any depth, violence reduced to cartoon level. Bloody body counts rise and I just kinda…shrug. It’s Roadrunner shit, death with no stakes or meaning.

But style…holy Christ, the style! When you get an esque after your name, the debate on whether it was deserved or not is pretty much academic.

Have you read the guy’s scripts? You should.

Just like with Shane Black, by some alchemy, reading a Tarantino script is a unique experience. Nobody writing for genre can write dialogue at his level. The action sequences are unparalleled. One pictures Tarantino at the computer having a grand old time and the reading experience is similar: It’s hellava lotta fun to read his stuff. Breaks tons of rules in the process but it’s utterly beside the point– He tells a story like few others.

How about if we start with his most recent, Inglorious Basterds. Apologies for running the dialogue long, but I want it to sink in: This isn’t even half the scene. We’re talking about one of the most remarkable set piece to open a movie. A 10+ minute dialogue scene OVER A TABLE, totally static except for the camera tilting down to show the Jewish family beneath them, their survival hanging on every word between the farmer and Nazi Hunter. It’s pure Hitchcock, the definition of suspense…but Hitchcock’s bomb under the table is the Jewish family. How many screenwriters have the chops to pull off ten solid minutes of interrogation to open a movie? Tarantino shatters the screenplay manuals that tell the new writer it’s the visual over verbal, show don’t tell.

 
 13.      The Jew Hunter, removes both a pipe and a bag of tobacco fixings.
          The pipe, strangely enough, is a Calabash, made from a "S" shaped goard
          kith a yellow skin, made famous by Sherlock Holmes.
          A the Nazi Colonel, busies himself with his smoking life, he
          ontinues to hold court at the Frenchmans table.

 COL LANDA           The other mistake the German soldier
          make is their severe handling of the
          citizens who give shelter and aid to
          the Jews. These citizens are not enemies
          of the state. They are simply confused
          people, trying to make some sense out of
          the madness war creates.
          These citizens do not need punishing.
          They simply need to be reminded of their
          duty in war time.
          Let's use you as a example Monsieur
          LaPadite. In this war, you have found
          yourself in the middle of a conflict
          that has nothing to do with yourself,
          your lovely ladies, or your cows - yet,
          here you are.
          So Monsieur LaPadite, let me purpose
          a question. In this time of war, what is
          your number one duty? Is it to fight the
          Germans in the name of France to your
          last breath? Or, is it to harass the
          occupying army to the best of your
          ability? Or, is it to protect the poor
          unfortunate victims of warfare who can
          not protect themselfs?
          Or, is your number one duty in this time
          of bloodshed, to protect those very
          beautiful women who constitute your
          family?
          The Colonel lets the last statement stand.

 COL LANDA           That was a question Monsieur LaPadite.
          In this time of war, What do you consider
          your number one duty?

 PERRIER           To protect my family.

 COL LANDA           Now, my job dictates, that I must have
          my men enter your home, and conduct a
          thorough search, before I can officially
          cross your families name off my list.

 COL LANDA 
 (CON'T)           And if there are any irregularities to be
          found, rest assured, they will be.
          That is unless, you have something to tell
          me that will make the conducting of a
          search unnecessary.

 (PAUSE)           I might add also, that any information
          that makes the preforming of My duty
          easier, will not be met with punishment.
          Actually quite the contrary, it will be
          met with reward.
          And that reward will be, your family
          will cease to be harassed in anyway,
          by the German military during the rest
          of our occupation of your country.
          The Farmer, pipe in mouth, stares across the table at his German
          opponent.

 COL LANDA           You are sheltering enemies of the state,
          are you not?

 PERRIER           Yes.

 COL LANDA           Your sheltering them underneath your
          floorboards aren't you?

 PERRIER           Yes.

 COL LANDA           Point out to me the area's where their
          hiding.
          The Farmer points out the area's on the floor with the Dreyfusis are
          underneath.

 COL LANDA           Since I haven't heard any disturbance,
          I assume that while their listening,
          they don't speak english?

 PERRIER           Yes .

 COL LANDA           I'm going to switch back to french now,
          and I want you to follow my masquerade
          - is that clear?

 PERRIER           Yes.
          Colonel Landa stands up from the table, and switching to FRENCH says

 SUBTITLED IN ENGLISH; 
 COL LANDA           Monsieur LaPadite, I thank you for milk,
          and your hospitably. I do believe our
          business here is done.
          The Nazi Officer opens the front door, and silently motions for his
          son to approach the house.

 COL LANDA           Mademoiselle LaPadite, I thank you for
          your time, we shant be bothering your
          family any longer.
          Yet the LaPadite women watch the Nazi soldiers, machine guns at ready,
          approach the house.
          The Soldiers enter the doorway, Col Landa, silently points out area of
          the floor the Jews are hiding under.

 COL LANDA           So, Monsieur and Madame LaPadite
          I bid you adieu.
          otions to the Soldiers with his index finger.
          wy TEAR UP the wood floor with MACHINE GUN FIRE.
          The little farm house is filled with SMOKE, DUST, SPLINTERS, SCREAMS,
          0ULLET CASINGS, and even alittle BLOOD.
          With a hand motion from the Colonel, the Soldiers cut off their
          gunfire. The Colonel keeps his finger in the air to indicate silence.

 UNDERNEATH THE FLOORBOARDS           The entire Dreyfus family lay dead. Except for sixteen year old
          $HOSANNA, who miraculously escaped being struck by the nazi's bullets.
          With her dead family surrounding her, the young girl goes for freedom
          (represented by wire mesh vent).

 L LANDA           ears movement underneath the floor, looks down and see's a SHAPE
          Wing forward between the planks in the floor.

 COL LANDA           It's the girl. Nobody moves

 I'. 
 T           KICKED open, the girl SPRINGS out.

 COL LANDA           ae he crosses the floor, he see's the young girl RUNNING towards the
          cover of the woods. He unlatches the window, and opens it. Shosanna
          to perfectly FRAMED in the window sill.

 1SANNA           RUNNING towards woods. Farm house and Col in the window in B.G.

 LTHY BAREFEET           LAPPING against wet grass.
          Qt! SHOSANNMA' S FACE
          same as a animal being chased by a predator FLIGHT - PANIC - FEAR

 SNOSANNA'S POV           the safety of tree's, getting closer.

 COL LANDA           Pramed by the window, takes his LUGAR, and straight arm aims at the
          fleeing Jew, cocking back the hammer with his thumb.

 CU COL LANDA           SLOW ZOOM into his eyes as he aims.

 PROFILE CU SHOSANNA           Sod dash for life.

 L LANDA           changes his mind. He yells to the rat fleeing the trap, heading for the
          safety of the wood pile, in FRENCH SUBTITLED IN ENGLISH;

 COL LANDA           Au revoir, Shosanna! Till we meet again!

 HOSANNA           Maces it to the woods, and is gone.
          T h e S.S. Colonel closes the window.

Few writers match Tarantino for action sequences. When a student writes: “The bullet pierces Jimbo’s chest, Jimbo falls hard, writhing on the ground before dying.” I might tell him the passage is functional, it tells what the camera sees, but it doesn’t go further. In other words, anyone could write it. That won’t get your script sold. If you want to write action sequences, do yourself a favor and read Tarantino, like here from Kill Bill:

EXT. RESIDENTIAL PASADENA STREET - DAY  The front door opens and an attractive black HOUSEWIFE the
same age as The Bride stands in the doorway.
The Housewife's face shows immediate recognition of the
blonde on her doorstep.

The BRIDE
on the porch; we do a quick Shaw-Brothers-style Zoom into her
eyes.

FLASHBACK - SPAGHETTI WESTERN STYLE (That means our Heroine is remembering something, and we see
it with an orange filter.) We're back inside the wedding
chapel. The Bride is taking the beating of her life by four
people in black suits. A black woman PUNCHES HER in the
face... WE see it's the black housewife, five years earlier.

The BRIDE ON THE PORCH
We Zoom quick out of her eyes to CU, a VENGEANCE THEME PLAYS
LOUD ON THE SOUNDTRACK. (Whenever we hear this theme
throughout the picture, we'll quickly learn what accompanies
it is The Bride goin Krakatoa all over whoever's ass happens
to be in front of her at that moment.) As the Vengeance Theme
plays, a Vein in The Bride's forehead begins to pulsate. When
the Vengeance Theme stops, The Bride ATTACKS The Housewife.

INT. HOUSEWIFE'S NICE HOME - DAY 
The white woman and the black woman FLY into the center of
the living room, CRASHING onto her coffe table in front of
the sofa.

These two wildcats go at each other savagely, TUMBLING OVER
the couch, clawing and scratching all the way, landing
together on the plush carpet.

The HOUSEWIFE
KICKS The Bride, sending her CRASHING backwards into the
small table where the phone, a note pad (for messages), and
the mail is kept.

The Housewife scrambles up on her feet, but is caught by a
FLYING TACKLE from behind by The Bride that sends them both
into........

An ornamental iron and tempered-glass bookcase that has
framed family photos, display toys, some African art, and a
collection of painted commemorative plates depicting the
negro experience in the American military. Starting with a
plate featuring Cripis Atkins in the revolutionary war, negro
troops in union blue during the civil war, Buffalo soldiers
fighting Indians, the Jim Crow troops of the first world war,
the colored troops of world war two, Korea, Vietnam, and
finally Colin Powell....The Bride and The Housewife CRASH
THROUGH all this reducing everything to rubble.

They land hard on the floor covered in broken glass, locked
in grapple, each trying to get the best of the other one,...
When The Housewife HEADBUTTS The Bride in the nose.
 The HOUSEWIFE
hops off The Bride, runs into the kitchen, opens a drawer and
comes out with a HUGE MOTHERFUCKIN BUTCHER KNIFE.

The BRIDE
rises from the floor, and WHIPS OUT a KNIFE in a sheath
hanging from her belt known as a SOG. (A SOG is a long,
double-edged knife that's as sharp as a razor, and is what
Navy Seals use to kill humans with.)

The Bride backs up into the mess of the now totally
demolished living room.

The two    woman stalk each other, each holding her blade, each
looking    like they know how to use it, each waiting for the
other to    make a mistake so they can plunge their blade deep
into the    other one.

Blood and sweat dript off of the faces of the two women
locked in life and death combat......

....When The back kitchen door opens, and a FOUR-YEAR-OLD
LITTLE GIRL, carrying a lunch box steps inside.

 FOUR-YEAR-OLD GIRL              Mommy, I'm home!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He's allowed to give camera angles in the screen direction, you're not. 
He's Tarantino, he's directing, he's got the $$$, 'nuff said? I shouldn't, 
but can't help myself, for a last example check out this sequence from Kill Bill. 
Dude breaks every rule in the book, utterly tearing up the Guru's Format Guide, but it's a great read:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BLACK FRAME TITLE CARD: 

                        Five years later.

INT. THE COMATOSE BRIDE'S HOSPITAL ROOM - NIGHT 
The CAMERA is in a corner of the ceiling, looking down on the
comatose Bride, who lies motionless in her bed.

WE HEAR the sound of a BUZZING MOSQUITO, doing loop de loops
and figure eights in the air, looking for some warm blood.

The BUZZING stops....
 MACRO CU of mosquito on The Bride's forearm, its stinger dug in her
flesh, visibly drawing blood from its host.

CU MOSQUITO'S FACE drinking her blood.

MACROSHOT OF MOSQUITO ON FOREARM drinking blood...when The Bride's hand comes into FRAME and
SQUASHES the bug flat. Her fingers FLICK the dead bug away.

CU The Bride
her wide-open eyes, that have stared in a constant gaze for
the last five years,
finally...slowly...softly...shut.
 
They SUDDENLY POP OPEN.

The BRIDE SITS BOLD UPRIGHT IN BED.
She has no idea where the fuck she is. WE DO A SHAW BROTHERS
STYLE QUICK ZOOM INTO A CU OF HER FACE. 
QUICK CUT TO A FLASHBACK SPAGHETTI-WESTERN STYLE back at the wedding chapel, gun pointed down at our face.

THE BARREL EXPLODES LEAT AT US - BANG! 
QUICK CUT BACK TO The BRIDE IN HER HOSPITAL BED,
BANK still echoing in her ears. She lets out a SCREAM OF PAIN
and her hand goes to the side of her head, as if she were
just shot.

Her hand feels the metal plate embedded in the side of her
skull where the hole was. She knocks against it with her
knuckle...it goes...TINK...TINK.

Suddenly she says out loud;

 THE BRIDE           My baby.

Her hand goes down to her belly, unly to find it not swollen
but flat. She doesn't understand, lifts up her hospital gown
and sees a JAGGED SCAR which runs down her abdomen. Her
fingertips trace it.

She quickly looks at the palm of her and and counts the
lines.

MACRO CU The LINES IN HER PALM look like a road map.

She stops counting, shocked;

 THE BRIDE                (to herself)
          Five years.

She counts again.

 THE BRIDE               (a statement)
          Five years.

The Bride's two eyes fill with tears as she realizes her baby
is long gone.

WHEN SUDDENLY... 
She hears the STEP...STEP...STEP...OF BILL'S BOOTS WALKING
 TOWARDS HER ROOM.... 
WE SEE THE CINEMATIC EQUIVALENT OF A COMIC BOOK THOUGHT BALLOON by her head. INSIDE OF IT WE SEE BILL'S BLACK BOOTS
walking across the wood floor of the wedding chapel.

INT. HOSPITAL CORRIDOR (THE BRIDE'S FLOOR) - NIGHT 
We see a HOSPITAL ORDERLY'S bright red and white Reeboks
softly slapping against the smooth surface of the
institution's floor. They make a sound nothing like Bill's
shoes.

 SCREEN GOES TO SPLIT SCREEN 
 LEFT SIDE RIGHT SIDE The BRIDE listening to them            Orderly's Reeboks walking
getting closer. WE HEAR the            down the hospital
STEP...STEP...STEP...in time           corridor.
with Orderly's sneakers.

 CAMERA MOVES UP TO                                        Orderly's face, leading
                                       two TRUCKDRIVERS.
The Bride HEARS BILL'S
VOICE SPEAK FOR THE ORDERLY; 

 BILL'S VOICE ORDERLY       (in time)                              (in time)
   She's right in here.                She's right in here.

 SPLIT SCREEN FINISHES                    STAY WITH The BRIDE'S SCREEN

The Bride decides the best course    of action,    till she gets
her bearings, is to play possum.    She throws    herself back down
on the bed, just as the three men    enter her    room.
They see just what they expected    to see, The    Bride lying in
her bed in her coma.
 She duplicates her comatose eyes-wide-open-fixed stare.
Except knowing she's awake, and sees everything in front of
her, creates a slightly different effect.

The Bride, however, while she sees the Two Truckdrivers for
what they are, when she sees The Orderly she sees Bill, when
The Orderly talks she hears Bill. WE HOWEVER WILL NEVER SEE
BILL'S FACE COMPLETELY. 
The Orderly takes her shee covering off, and hitches up her
hospital gown till her blonde pussy is exposed. He does kind
of a "TA-DA" presentation of her vagina.

 THE ORDERLY           Now is that the cutest little
          blonde pussy you ever saw, or is
          that the cutest little blonde
          pussy, YOU-EVEA-SAW?

Trucker #2 (Gerald) would tend to agree, Trucker #1 (Warren)
fronts.

 WARREN           I seen better.

CU The BRIDE
EYES WIDE OPEN PLAYING POSSUM. She can't believe she's being
exhibited in this manner. A look of chagrin crosses her
trying-to-be expressionless face, "I've seen a fuck load
better than you, fatass."

 THE ORDERLY           Yeah, in a movie - maybe. But I
          know damn well this is the best
          pussy you ever saw you had touchin
          rights to. The price is seventy
          five dollars a fuck gentlemen, you
          gittin your freak on or what?

The Truckers pay the bill of fare.

As The Orderly counts The Truckers' money, he lays out the
rules;

 THE ORDERLY           Here's the rules; Rule    number one;
          no punchin 'er.
          Nurse comes in tomorrow    an she got
          'er a shiner - or less    some teeth,
          jig's up. So no knuckle    sandwiches
          under no circumstances.    And by the
           way, this little cunt's a spitter -
          it's a motor reflex thing but spit
          or no, no punchin. Now are we
          absolutely positively clear about
          rule number one?

 TWO TRUCKERS           Yeah.

 THE ORDERLY           Rule number two;
          No monkey bites, no hickeys - in
          fact no leavin no marks of no kind.
          But after that, it's allll goooood.
          Her plummin down there don't work
          no more, so feel free to cum in 'er
          all ya wont. Keep the noise down -
          try not to make a mess, and I'll be
          back in twenty.

The Orderly turns to leave, then remembers something, and
turns back. He takes out the most disgusting jar of vaseline
in the history of cinema, and hands it to Warren.