Save the Cat Goes to the Movies (3 page)

   
Dark Night of the Soul
—
Why hast thou forsaken me, Lord?
That part of the script where the hero has lost all hope …

   
Break into Three
…but not for long! Thanks to a fresh idea, new inspiration, or last-minute action or advice from the love interest in the B story, the hero chooses to fight.

   
Finale
— The “Synthesis” of two worlds: From what was, and that which has been learned, the hero forges a third way.

   
Final Image
— The opposite of the Opening Image, proving a change has occurred. And since we know
All Stories Are About Transformation
, that change had better be dramatic!

   These two sets of organizing principles — “genre” and “structure” — give us everything we need to write our movie and make the idea we’re working on more likely to succeed.

I’ll say it again.

If you want to sell your script and create a story that pleases most audiences most of the time, the odds increase if you reference these two checklists to write it.

Genre and structure are what buyers
and
moviegoers want.

This is because one of the other things I discovered in selling many scripts to Hollywood — a couple in the million-dollar range — is that executives know this, too. The savvy ones follow the same rules writers do. They want to know the type of story they signed on for, and whether it’s structured in a way that satisfies everyone. It’s what they’re looking for.

Why not give it to them?

And while many of you rebel from “structure” or referencing other films for clues as to how to create and write your story, it has been my experience that mastering these templates is the only way to know if what you have is actually new — or if you are inventing a wheel that has already rolled out of the factory and down the road without you.

What I’ve done is fully expand on genre by showing the range and breadth of each. And since we learn from all movies, this isn’t about the 50 “best,” but the ones we can gain the most insight from. Along the way, I’ll also point out some of the tricks the directors and writers used. And for those of you who haven’t seen these films yet … WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

In this book you will also see terms and phrases you might not be familiar with. If you haven’t read the first
Save the Cat!
there is no need for you to feel left out:

   
Save the Cat!
— Not only the title of this series, but a great principle of storytelling. When we meet the hero, he must do something that makes us like him. Save a cat and we will!

   
Stasis = Death
— We know what Death means. Stasis = Things Staying the Same. It is the moment before the journey begins where we know the hero will “die” if his life doesn’t change.

   
Stakes are Raised
— Also known as the “midpoint bump.” Those events found at the middle of a movie that supply sudden pressure, new problems, or “bad news” for the hero(es).

   
The Pope in the Pool
— A distracting way to bury exposition, so called for a scene in a script I know where the pope swims in the Vatican pool while boring plot details are told to us.

   
Booster Rocket
— A character that appears for the first time toward the end of a movie and lifts it to its final push, e.g., John Candy in
Home Alone
or Will Ferrell in
Wedding Crashers.

   
A Limp and an Eyepatch
— When characters lack character, that thing which gives them a unique identifying quirk or habit.

   
Primal
— My favorite word and a guiding force in good stories. To test if your story is so, ask: Would a caveman understand?

   These terms and others will be used throughout our discussion. As in the first book, if there’s anything that you want to comment on, or need clarification for, email me. My direct email address is the same as it was in the first book:
[email protected].
You can also check my website at
www.blakesnyder.com
, and contact me at
blake@ blakesnyder.com.

Please do. I really like to hear from you!

So if you’re ready, let’s imagine a movie theater. In my mind, whenever I think of the perfect place to see a film, I picture the Arlington on State Street in Santa Barbara, California, where I grew up. With a Spanish motif, like the rest of the town, the interior of that great old movie palace copies that of a classic hacienda: chalky adobe walls with purple shadows painted on them, topped by a rim of red-tile roofing as though you were in the middle of an open-air plaza. Overhead, the cavernous ceiling of the theater is covered by hundreds of pinlights that mimic stars. And like you and everyone who loves the adventure of storytelling, as the stars dim and the plush velvet curtains part, I scrunch down in my seat, and think:

This is gonna be good
…

   
In space no one can hear you meow! Sigourney Weaver “saves the cat” in the “Monster in the House” classic
, Alien.

Welcome to the wonderful world of genre! What is genre? It’s a grouping of stories that share similar patterns and characters. And “Monster in the House” is one of the oldest … and most primal.

It is also the first story type I ever discovered — or at least had pointed out to me. Like many of the insights in this book, the term came from a fellow scribe, in this case my friend and writing partner, Jim Haggin.

We were working on a script and taking a break, standing around the parking lot outside my Dad’s office in Santa Barbara when Jim, smoking a Lucky Strike, idly said: “Did you know that
Alien
and
Jaws
are the same movie?”

This was amazing news. And like so much of what Jim knew about film, this little nugget made me stop and think.
Jaws
is the story of a killer shark,
Alien
is set on a starship somewhere in space. I didn’t see the connection.

The illustrious Mr. Haggin went on. He said that both movies have a powerful creature intent on eating the cast, an enclosed community into which the beast is let loose to ply his trade, and a third element: sin. It is the sin of greed that lets the shark roam the shores of Amity, greed too that is at the bottom of why
The Nostromo
picks up its titular hitchhiker. In fact, Jim said, sin is what really makes all true “monster” movies work. It’s one thing to get eaten, but to be lunch because of something
we
did adds guilt to horror — and the guilt makes it much more juicy.

Wow
.

My adventure into finding story patterns had begun.

What I discovered with this genre, one Jim and I started calling “Monster in the House,” was that filmmakers weren’t just ripping off
Jaws
, but in fact had been stealing from a story type that went all the way back to the Minotaur and the maze, and the dragonslayer myths of the Middle Ages! We’ve been letting the monster in the house, or going to where the monster lives and invading his abode for centuries.

And yet there is always a way to tell a new version.

So how does this help
you
? You’ve got a great “monster” movie idea. Or maybe you’ve got a serial killer whose power comes from insanity, or an evil spirit haunting some kind of dwelling.

Are these Monster-in-the-House tales?

That’s why we’re here: to fit your ideas into established story forms and, by doing so, better see just what they are. To discover if yours is a true MITH, we should begin with the basics. As hinted at above, movies in the MITH genre have three main components: (1) a “monster,” (2) a “house,” and (3) a “sin.”

Let’s dig deeper into these.

When it comes to the “monster” found in every MITH tale, the common denominator is: supernatural power. Whether a “Pure Monster” like the supercharged beasts in
Jaws
and
Jurassic Park
, a “Domestic Monster” like the human kind found in
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
and
Pacific Heights
, or a “Serial Monster” such as the knife-wielding baddies of many a “slasher” flick, supernatural power is a monster must-have. Look at
Jaws.
That shark isn’t just a shark; it’s a super-shark with an agenda beyond feeding. It’s come for the one person, Chief Brody (Roy Scheider), who is afraid not only of sharks but of water. Thus, the Great White also represents what all good monsters must be … “evil.”

There is a sense in many a MITH that what’s at stake is not one’s life but one’s soul. This is why
The Exorcist
and films it begat, such as
Poltergeist
and
The Ring
, are so deeply frightening. At the heart of what I call “Supra-Natural Monster” movies — those starring a monster that represents forces beyond our three dimensions — is the sense that something more than daylight will be lost if we don’t
survive. This is also why lesser monsters, like the tiny spiders in
Arachnophobia
, or the ones that can be dispatched with a baseball bat in
Signs
or die of the sniffles in
War of the Worlds
, are so unsatisfying.

Lesser Monsters = Lesser Movies.

So what about the “house” we find these monsters in — why is that so important? Well, think about the myth of the Minotaur for a moment and realize that while facing a half-man/half-bull is frightening, more frightening is being trapped with one inside a dark maze. And whether it’s an actual house, like the creepy hotel in
The Shining
, a deep-sea diving bell in
The Abyss
, or the basement prison Cary Elwes wakes up in
Saw
, the more cramped the space — the more isolated our heroes — the better.

In
Fatal Attraction
, the family unit is the “house” within which Michael Douglas is trapped. And considering the “monster” he created by his actions, this will be the perfect place to confront it. In films like
Scream
, where a serial monster stalks a whole town, it is the city limits that enclose the horror, and the community that locks its doors at night and becomes the “house” through which the monster roams. Still, isolated enclosures like the spaceship in
Alien
remind us that if there’s a choice, lock ’em in. It’s scarier knowing you’re trapped and have nowhere to go!

As far as the “sin” is concerned, think about all those teen slasher movies in which “Michael Myers” and “Jason” run riot. “Have sex and die,” says Jamie Kennedy, who lays out the rules in
Scream
, and speaks to why guilt about sin is important. Sex works in teen-targeted movies because it’s new for them — and scary. For adults, “sins” like putting career over family, as Ellen Burstyn does in
The Exorcist
and Naomi Watts does in
The Ring
, or greed over ethics like in
Jaws
, when the town fathers of Amity keep the beaches open to protect their “summer dollars,” or even in a dark comedy like
The Cable Guy
when Matthew Broderick tries to get free cable! — these hit a universal guilt button.