Movie Lessons: A History of Violence

In A History of Violence, small-town perfect father Tom Stall gets accosted by gangsters who think he's the gangster Joey Cusack. Is he? Of course he is!

Maybe, in a Hitchcock film, the protagonist might have a chance to be the wrong man; but in just about any other film, we kind of know that Tom Stall really used to be Joey Cusack. So there's not a lot of mystery about his identity: he used to be a killer and a gangster. So how does the film keep our attention with this big mystery more-or-less taken off the table?

Primarily, there's the suspense and the menace of the situation. We know he's the killer Joey Cusack--so now we nervously wait for the situation to shake out, for it to ripple through his perfect life. Which is why we spend so long seeing the world as it is before the trouble starts, sometimes in an almost over-egged way.

For instance, when little girl Stall has a nightmare, dad comes in to comfort her. Aw, perfect dad! Then brother Jack comes in to comfort her. Aw, perfect siblings! Then mom comes in--and everything is perfect. The son's biggest problem seems to be playing baseball in gym class, about which dad gives him some advice, which turns out to be useful when Jack catches the ball and wins the game. Sure, that gets him into trouble with the school bully--but Jack defuses that situation also. Dad faces the problem of litter outside his diner; inside his diner, his cook and his customers all get along. There aren't many problems in the Stall world and every problem is manageable.

Also, there's the scene where Tom Stall and his wife have sex with her wearing her teenage cheerleader outfit, since "they never got to be teenagers together."

All this "perfect Stall-world" would almost be boring if the movie didn't start by introducing us to two wandering killers. Again, this scene is structured around suspense and delay: just as we saw the angry bully approach Jack, so here we hear one say that he "had a little trouble with the maid"--and it's only a little later that we see what this means.

So when these guys show up in Stall-world, we know how much the Stalls have to lose--and we have to wait to see how it's going to blow-up when they arrive in town after being gone for so long. (Bonus: they are driving in a different car, a nod to how they've stolen and killed their way across the state, I think.)

One of my favorite little sequences similarly uses suspense and delay--playing with what we can see and can't: when Tom worries that some gangsters are going to his house, he runs--limping--towards his house (delay #1). He calls his wife, who doesn't pick-up at first (delay #2). She eventually picks up and gets the shotgun ready, just in time for her to point the gun at Tom when he runs in. Only then do we see that Jack Stall is sitting at the kitchen table eating cereal and watching all this, which is an intense moment for him--and for us since we see that he had no idea what's going on. Then while mom goes to take care of daughter, Tom puts the shotgun down on a table--and the camera lingers for a moment before panning off of it, just to remind us that there is a loaded shotgun in the room--and that we can't see it when we turn away. I remember sitting in the movie theater, trying to move the film camera with my mind to show me the shotgun.

Now, A History of Violence uses delay and suspense a lot, but it also doesn't mind skipping some transitional moments. For instance, Tom Stall gets wounded twice in the movie and in the next scene, he's at the hospital confronting the emotional/character fall-out of the issue. We never waste time seeing anyone call the ambulance or see Tom get doctored. It would be a big waste to see that: we don't care about Tom's relationship with his doctor, only his relationship to his wife and kids.

Similarly, most of the violence here happens quickly and messily, since the violence is only interesting insofar as it affects Tom's relationships.

Movie Lessons: Argo

Summary: A CIA exfiltration agent hatches a plot to sneak six Americans out of Iran: pretend they're Canadians making a film. 

Argo is a historical movie, which means that Ben Affleck has only so much wiggle room to play with: to give the idea that the six Americans have nowhere to turn to, he can have a character say that the British and New Zealanders turned the six away (which, since the Kiwis and Brits really did help, earned Affleck a censure from the New Zealand government!); but he can't make it two Americans instead of six or end with them being captured instead of escaping. So, unfortunately, we know how it will turn out, which drains some of the suspense; but then, we know how Romeo and Juliet is gonna turn out, too, and that doesn't spoil it for us.

But because there are so many characters here, so many moving parts, Affleck can't really spend too much time with any of them. There's the Americans hiding out, the Canadians doing the hiding, the Iranian maid who knows the secret; there's the State Department and the White House staff and the CIA; there's the Iranian police and the cultural bureau and the Iranians in the street; there's the Hollywood makers and the Hollywood press. So how does Affleck solve this issue and give us fully-rounded human beings?

Well, he doesn't. "Character" is done quickly and broadly: the producer is an irascible old man, with one-two lines about how he's a shitty dad and kids need mothers; the Iranian in charge of hunting down the Americans has no particular traits; even Mendez himself--the exfiltration agent and guy we spend most time watching--is pretty thin as "the agent who isn't afraid to say no to the bureaucracy," which is a fun character type--but not a fully rounded human being.

Now, Affleck (and the screenwriter, Chris Terrio) pull some good tricks to give us some glimpse of these people. For instance, in Mendez's briefing, the CIA gives us a quick run-down of the six, complete with some home movies; so we are told bluntly who is the social climber, who are the newlyweds, etc.

Then there are all the historical touches which give the film some verisimilitude: there are so many chunky glasses and mustaches that it's hard not to see these characters as characters--the man who chose that soup-strainer must've had a reason and a backstory.

But more than that, Argo gets away with having pretty thin characters because of the propulsive and multi-POVed plot--even though the plot is pretty linear. So: 

1. Iranian revolution captures Americans, but six escape. 
2. How will they get out? Mendez offers the movie option. 
3. He goes to Hollywood to set it up. 
4. He goes to Iran. 
5. He faces some pushback from the six. 
6. He faces pushback from the US government. 
7. The Iranians nearly catch the, but they escape. 
8. He reconciles with his wife.

Sure, it's linear and pretty simple, but the script keeps up the tension by jumping between different POVs, including the antagonists'; and by setting up the stakes and the urgency. So we know the embassy files were shredded, but we see kids in a sweatshop putting the shreds back together, including photos of the people who worked there. Can Mendez get the six out before the kids put together their pictures? Or will they end up like the dead bodies we see hanging from construction cranes? Can the six learn their covers? Will the reluctant one be convinced to go along with this plan? And so on. There's even a "will the producer in Hollywood get to the phone on time to answer the call from Iran?" Hokey, sure, but it works to keep attention and tension.

The only real misstep, I think, was in that we spent too much time with Mendez and learned too much about him. Sure, he gets the crazy movie idea from the movie he watches with his son over the phone, but his whole storyline doesn't really add much. Are we supposed to believe that, after reuniting these six with their families, Mendez had a revelation that family was important and that he should be with his own? Frankly, I think it would've worked better with a Continental Op-type agent, a guy who was pretty mysterious. As it is, it seems pretty pro forma for him to have a happy, family-oriented ending.

Casino Royale, a Structural Review (or review of structure)

I've been rewatching Casino Royale at the gym; and while it's a little long, I think it does some very interesting things structurally to keep the reader's attention and forward the reader's understanding. And I think attention and understanding are very closely aligned, even when the reader/viewer may not be conscious of what that understanding is.

1. For instance, the movie opens with James Bond earning his 007 status by killing two people: one an Englishman who works for the government--and is betraying that government; and the other a long-haired assistant. Why does this matter?
• First, it matters because the opening tells us that we're watching an origin story: Casino Royale is the story of how James Bond becomes James Bond. So we open with him earning his 007 status; and we see him bumble his way through a few of the tropes--for instance, saying he doesn't care whether his martini is shaken or stirred; and we finally see him at the end introducing himself with that formula we all know: "I'm Bond--James Bond." So that's a nice parallel between the beginning and end.
• Second, Bond earns his name by discovering/killing a British traitor and a long-haired associate. So who does Bond take care of during this movie? Vesper Lynd plays a government agent and traitor; and Matthis plays another traitor, this one with the same long hair. That's not a connection the movie stresses; but by playing out a miniature version of the movie in the beginning, the viewer already has a template for what will happen.
2. The plot is human-level, as Todd Alcott points out, having to do with stock market manipulation and a poker game rather than destroying the world or anything. However, it is still a complicated plot, which is why the film provides many assistants and associates to verbalize certain issues--sometimes in drips of info across the whole movie.
• Le Chiffre's stockbroker notes that he's betting against the market in shorting the airline stocks; M will later explain to Bond what all that means.
• For the poker scenes, there is always someone to explain things: the banker Mendel, the dealer, Matthis, Felix Leiter.
• Note: There are certain issues--like Bond finding M's apartment or hacking into the system with M's password--where there are no answers, which is highlighted by the fact that people wonder about this. M asks at least once "How does he know these things?" This is a great example of "lampshading": by pointing out something that sort of doesn't make sense, the film is preventing us from balking by not believing. 
• The answer to how James Bond does what he does is always: He's James Bond.
• Or when Bond searches for information in the MI6 database, M's help often helps us by narrating his search, while M helps by reacting to the information. This isn't just an info-dump, as sometimes this information goes both ways, as when the MI6 organization helps Bond ID the bomb target at the airport or diagnose what he's been poisoned with.
3. Scenes without action are enlivened by dialogue between characters at odds.
• Bond and M spar over the dead bomb-maker, M lays out the business--including the exposition that they were looking for more powerful people.
• Vesper and Bond spar--which also gives them a chance to introduce their characters disguised as a verbal fight.
• Solange (Dimitrios's wife) pinpoints Bond's character during her seduction: he likes married women because he doesn't want to get attached.
4. Scenes hook into each other, with almost every scene connected with a "because."
• For instance, we meet up with Bond while he surveils a bomb-maker. (Again, there's no other explanation for this other than MI6 is surveilling this guy.) He chases the bomb-maker and kills him in an embassy, which makes the front page of newspapers. Because of that...
• Bond gets the bomber's phone, which will give him a location to search next;
• Le Chiffre learns the news, realizes he needs a new bomber;
• and M is very angry because she's just been grilled by the government. (Note: we don't see that government scene because it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that M is angry.)
• Even in little ways, one scene may explain the next. When Le Chiffre's stock option fails, he notes quietly "Someone talked"--and the next scene begins with Solange dead and tortured. (Which also tells us something about Le Chiffre: he tortures people. That will come up later.)
5. One thing about this screenplay is that it seems to package large sections together. So, for instance, we have a long non-action sequence of how Bond learns about the bombing--then we have the action sequence about that. Then, after that, we have about four scenes of verbal sparring between Bond and M (in the Bahamas); and Bond and Vesper (on the train, in the car to the hotel, at the hotel).
• This sameness/similarity might be problematic; but each scene of sparring gives us something different. For instance, the train scene shows us these two testing each other; in the car, there's more of a jokey tone between them; but when Bond makes a jerky move at the hotel (abandoning the cover), Vesper is angry. So we get a rollercoaster of their relationship instead of a change in the action.
6. By contrast, the poker game is kept interesting by making the stakes clear (terrorism) and by intercutting between it and between some other action: the warlord attacks, Vesper is shocked in the shower, bodies are discovered in a car trunk, Bond loses his cool, Bond is poisoned, etc.
7. Some people might feel that the multiple-endings of the movie is a flaw: first Bond beats Le Chiffre at poker; then Le Chiffre dies at White's hand; then Vesper's betrayal is discovered; then Bond shoots Mr. White. However, we should note that the first villain we actually see is Mr. White; and he shows up again at the end walking away with the money while Bond mourns Vesper. So there is something kind of repetitive about this ending, but again, the opening has helped set up some of it.

Multiple Protagonists in L.A. Confidential

Yeah, that's not a very exciting title, but I recently rewatched L.A. Confidential and it struck me as being a very smart and well-done screenplay which nicely surmounts the difficulties of multi-protagonist movies. Here's how:

1) The period voice-over --> character switcheroo: the movie tells us all we need to know about the set-up through a voice-over over period media. We get glamour and crime photos and movies, intermixed with some regular film detailing the fall of L.A.'s crime kingpin and the vacuum that's created. But even better, rather than just serve as background, we learn that this voice-over is from Danny Devito's sleazy tabloid journalist who will feature later in the story. That's our first character introduction and also our setting introduction--two for the price of one.

2) Short, pointed introductions to the multiple characters:

Bud White (Russell Crowe) hates wife-beaters, will tell us why in very simple terms later: our intro to Bud is a close-up of his impassive face as he listens to a domestic dispute, which leads, of course, to his calm demeanor as he beats up the wife-beater. Extra points for having him lift up a wire so the wife can go under it and respond unironically, "Merry Christmas, ma'am." That's all we need to know about him: he's a simple guy who wants to protect women. (Later, he will retell his Freudian childhood of watching his dad beat up his mom. The dad gets away, which will come up later.)

Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) is a sleazy Hollywood cop: Jack V. is a technical advisor for the show Badge of Honor and an associate of Danny Devito's sleazy tabloid journalist. Like Bud White, Jack only cares about results, though his results are all self-glorifying.

Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) is a goody-two-shoes with a heart of brass: All the other cops are getting drunk but Ed is on duty. He's also introduced in a close-up of worried/impassive face, but this time he's watching the cops get drunk. We also hear here that he's trying to live up to his dad, so we've got that motivation. But pretty soon, after all the cops go to attack some cop-beaters, Ed turns against the force in order to rise within it--because he's all about moving up in the world, even though he won't play the games the other cops play. (Later we'll learn that Ed's dad died and the cops never avenged him. So both Bud and Ed are on the same quest: vengeance in the name of Dad. And as we'll see, James Cromwell's Dudley Smith is pretty dad-like.)

In all of these case, the characters may grow or become more complex, but the introductions are quick and to the point.

3) Not just plot relation, but thematic relation: there's all the dad stuff lurking below the surface of this movie for the two main characters, Ed and Bud, who both got into this job because of dad. Jack V. is less clear as a character, though that itself is played for meaning: after Bud and Ed describe their reasons, Jack confesses that he no longer knows why he became a cop. If the others are son in search of a dad, Jack is a boozy dad who feels like he's betrayed his son.

Super Short Review: Mission Impossible (4): Ghost Protocol

I understand the urge not to number your sequels, which might make your product look derivative or cynical; but it's also just helpful to your customers to keep things straight. (This is especially true with Apple iPads: trying to buy things for your first-gen iPad can be a pain since the third-gen is also just known as "iPad"--there's far too much small-print reading involved.)

One nice thing about sequels is that you generally know what you're going to get, up to a point. Case in point, the Mission: Impossible franchise: do you like big action sequences tied together with exposition sequences? Then you might like this film.

When I saw this in the theater, I loved the action sequences, which had a cartoonish kineticism and disregard for the characters' health. On the small screen--especially at the gym--I still love the the action sequences, though the exposition sequences seem slightly worse and any pretense of an emotion other than excitement seems more awkward.

The action sequences seem especially well done because of the way they keep piling problems on our protagonists and play with certain expectations. For instance, when Ethan Hunt has climbed up the world's tallest tower, he sees a sand storm, but that's not the problem--the problem is that one of his gloves malfunction and his glass cutter malfunctions and there's no way to get him back unless he jumps out one window and towards another. And what's great about that jump is that, rather than barely make the distance and end up grasping on with only his arms, he overshoots the jump and ends up bashing his face into the top of the window and not holding on with anything.

No one goes to an M:I film expecting great exposition, because they're essentially heist films with multiple heists (or tricks). In a heist film, the purpose of the exposition is purely to exposit for the heist--not to express/build character and rarely to build conflict or heighten tension. So here, there're a few nods towards making exposition interesting: when the Secretary is telling Ethan what he has to do, his analyst is clearly uncomfortable with that. But most often these nods are pro forma or worse; for instance, heading to the Burj Khalifa setpiece, the characters are in a car and have to swerve suddenly to miss camels. Why the sudden swerve? Could the driver not look ahead on that perfectly clear day and straight stretch of road and not see the camels? That moment seems like a poor way to create "drama."

My own private Indiana Jones 4, part 4: act breaks

Once we've got something of a throughline (even a very rough one), we can move on to the rough idea of Acts. Now, different writing handbooks may define acts differently, but I like the idea that an act break occurs when an irreversible change occurs. So, if Indy goes from Nepal to Cairo, that itself is not an irreversible change--he could always go back to Nepal. But when Indy picks up again with his old flame as a partner, that's a serious change.

So, let's look at Raiders for some act breaks, using some formulaic sentences like "Indy wants":

Act I: Indiana wants to find Abner--but instead discovers that Marion Ravenwood has the Staff of Ra headpiece AND a chip on her shoulder. Irreversible change: he's got a partner now.

Act II: Indy wants to find the Ark--and this desire is to strong that he continues with his quest even after (a) he thinks Marion has died and (b) he discovers she didn't die but doesn't rescue her. Irreversible change: he knows where the Ark is and he picks it over Marion. (Note: Only half of that is irreversible.)

Act III: Having found the Ark, Indy wants it. Here's where Indy digs up the Ark (success) and then gets buried in the Ark room with Marion and lots of snakes (failure). We then get a whole series of success-failures as Indy tries to retake the Ark. Is it on a plane? Or a truck? Finally, Belloq succeeds in getting both the Ark and Marion. Irreversible change: Indy is left totally free and totally alone.

Act IV: Indy wants to rescue Marion--but he can't bring himself to destroy the Ark to do so. Here's a strange thing about this screenplay: in any other Hollywood movie, the hero would choose the girl / to be a good guy, but here, Indy seems to give in to his most Belloq-like nature. Luckily, there's the power of god around to smite the Nazis when Indy fails. But there is still an important change here: instead of approaching the Ark only as a historical artifact, Indy seems to accept its supernatural woohoo. Which is why the final scene is Indy arguing with the government about their treatment of religious objects.

So, using the same formulaic sentences (because formula helps when breaking structure, even if you wouldn't want to start every sentence in a short story with "Main character wants") and plugging in some place-holder names (which I've stolen and repurposed from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), let's break out some acts here.

Act I: Indiana Jones wants to be relevant and exciting when all the world seems to be telling him to hang up his hat and go home. Not just because he's old, but because he's burned as many bridges as he's built. So when Iris Spalko comes to ask for his experience in dealing with Oxley, he jumps at the chance. But what concrete object does Indy want? He wants to find Oxley's secret dig--the one that drove him mad (not that Indy believes that).

Act II: Indy wants the skull that he thinks is an Oxley fake to prove that this whole alien thing is fantasy. After investigating Oxley's booby-trapped house in Mexico, Indy figures out that Spalko is actually a Russian agent, with her own organization muscle behind her, whereas he's just a single guy. What's worse, Indy's old protege shows up leading a rival expedition that turns out to be a complementary one--another Russian group, both as co-worker and rival to Iris's group. (The protege was lured into it by promise of his old mentor being in trouble.) Indy at first thinks that Oxley wants the crazy tech to prove his theories correct. And in the bowels of some department store (whee! department store fight!), Indy finds some evidence left over that Oxley failed to get, evidence which points towards South America.

Act III: If the first act was "Indy wants in," Act III is "Indy wants out." Oxley hasn't gone to South America to find aliens, and when Indy and estranged protege head in that direction, they're kidnapped by Oxley's agents who take them to L.A. (So instead of the red line of global travel transitioning between scenes, part of this scene takes place during that travel.) (And the "clue" that's supposed to lead them to the next place is actually the key to the tech. I see a false reveal here, where Indy gets uncrated at what looks like some South American jungle, but turns out to be an LA garden or film set.) Having accidentally delivered one last part to the Oxley cult (with Jack Parson at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory?), Indy begins to realize the enormity of this power: Oxley won't use aliens to get himself back into the academic game, but to become superhuman. (Like the old Woody Allen joke: I don't want to achieve immortality through my works, I want to achieve it through not dying.) Indy wants to keep Oxley from putting together his alien artifact. Does that mean teaming up with the Russian when they show up? Unfortunately, Iris Spalko is part of Oxley's cult for her own gain, so Indy will have to rely on the person he least wants to rely on--his hotshot, hotheaded protege.

Act IV: Perhaps this act takes place either in the desert, with all the stories of tricksters and UFOs, or in the South Pacific, with its cargo cults and atomic testing grounds. Either way, Indy and protege race against Spalko and Oxley, to try to stop them from tuning the radio to the gods/aliens. Finally believing the truth of this and seeing the potential for World War III, Indy and the protege try to sabotage the item/ritual, which at least allows the item to connect to and reject the cult. Indy wants to live again, but also to see his protege go on after him.

My own private Indiana Jones 4, part 3: the basic story

After brainstorming, I came up with some questions and issues that have their hooks in me; now that I have some ideas that interest me, I'll try to write out the major plotline in synopsis form. For comparison, the Raiders of the Lost Ark synopsis would go something like this, in its roughest, shortest form:

The Nazis want to get the Ark of the Covenant, and are being helped by unscrupulous archaeologist Belloq, who may not be as good as Indy, but sure is unscrupulous. Indiana Jones actually fails to stop the Nazis, who are stopped by magical powers from God. Oh, and there's a woman involved.

That doesn't sound like too much fun, but it helps to emphasize the action of the story, which is actually instigated by the Nazis. Similarly, while the movie looks simple, there's some interesting twists here; for instance, we probably want to say that the Nazis are the antagonist, but then, what of Belloq? In some ways, he's more the dynamic relationship character: The Nazis want the Ark for its power, Indy wants to keep the Nazis away from the Ark, and Belloq wants the Ark for... Well, it's unclear: sometimes he sounds like he wants the historical Ark, sometimes he sounds like he wants the mythological Ark. But this is precisely the journey that Indy has to make, from historical to mythological interest.

So in that form, we can see what the protagonist and antagonist are fighting over, and where the dynamic relation character fits. The short, rough story of my version of Indy 4 is

Soviet agents use Indy in search for alien technology in America, in race against cuckoo archaeologist/researcher and protege he no longer believes in. Indiana has to recognize his passing and the potential skills of protege in order to stop dangerous organizations from taking control of power beyond their understanding.

Or something like that--there sure do seem to be a lot of antagonist figures here, potentially. One danger of brainstorming like I did yesterday is that I end up with lots of ideas that seem cool; as Tina Fey notes in Bossypants, one of the biggest tasks of the creative person is to prune back that creativity.

My own private Indiana Jones 4, part 2: brainstorming plot

Just brainstorming ideas:

Indiana Jones is older now. He's out of step with the 1950s, the era of big organizations--the man in the gray flannel suit, agency panic, the rise of L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology, post-war boom, and trauma. Indy isn't interested in keeping up with the Joneses or in going to get psychoanalyzed.

And what does Indiana Jones want? Jones doesn't usually want to be part of the adventure, he's either recruited by the government, falls into another adventure, or has to go rescuing his dad. For all his derring-do, Jones is a classic refusenik, as if all he wants in the world is to quietly collect a few artifacts and go on teaching, though he's a little old for the first and I don't see a lot of people painting their eyelids with "I Love You" anymore.

Well, what if we reversed that--what if Indy, afraid of being put out to pasture, was actively trying to get into the game? What if his safety net--Marcus Brody, the college, his dad--were all gone? Could he jaunt off and put himself in danger on purpose? Could he have a secret death wish--better to burn out than fade away? Might he already be dying of something or other? Cancer, heart problems? (After all, his mom died, probably of cancer. Note: Just did some research and she either died of scarlet fever or flu, so nix that.)

What would Russians do with some ancient alien artifact? Or is perhaps the artifact the guide to some secret cache of technology? Or perhaps the Russians searching for the artifact aren't loyal Soviets? The maverick Irina might be in it for herself, she might have some family legacy of state purges that she wants to get away from. Perhaps the maverick Indiana might find a partner in the maverick Irina, only part of his journey will be towards some form of community, while her interest in independence is unbending.

Theme: community and/vs. the individual? Indiana Jones, bereft of his community, has to rediscover the connectedness of people. Maybe the prologue should feature some failure--he fails to get the diamond, fails to save the cross from the rich speculator. Or does he succeed, but his associate lays down the "this is the last time, Indy" line. Indy may be experienced, but he's also kind of a jerk. With all the people who would put up with his issues gone/dead, Indy needs to figure out how to appreciate people.

People or just a few persons? A romantic angle? It makes sense for them to bring back Karen Allen, as the idea of senior citizen Indy picking up someone completely new might seem a little odd. But who says we really need a romantic angle: there was Karen Allen in the first, but his deepest relationship in the second is with Short Round, and in the third, it's his father.

A fight in a department store--there's a dig going on. A booby-trapped house: an Oxley-like ex-professor, exposed to the paranormal, started a cult, became too extreme. Wernher von Braun--"I was just trying to kill you a few years ago, now we're working together." Jet Propulsion Laboratories and the esoteric interests of Jack Parsons. Atomics. Space race. Lost Atlantis--aliens have been here before.

Mirrors of Indy: the Russian maverick who is more ruthless than Indy about preserving her independence; the superannuated crazy professor whose isolation has driven him to extremes (and vice versa); the hotshot expert kid who is too hotheaded to listen to others.

Problem: although Temple of Doom isn't as jet-setting as 1 and 3, there's some sense of jet-setting, and right now, most of my ideas revolve around America. (After all, most UFO sightings tend to be in America, a country sort of haunted by the idea of immigration and the future.) But if I want a more global setting, what? Easter Island? Nazca lines? Bermuda triangle? Tunguska?

My own private Indiana Jones 4, part 1: Past greatness and present themes

After listening to an excellent podcast analysis of Raiders of the Lost Ark by John August and Craig Mazin on Scriptnotes, I was reminded again of how disappointed I was by Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In fact, I was so disappointed when I first saw it that I started sketching out a bit of fan-fiction, something I've never done before.

This wasn't some completely original adventure, insofar as I wanted to take some of the same themes and issues of Indy 4 and make it into a better film; much as if I were hired (ha!) to fix the script before it went to production. And now that I'm thinking about it, I think I just have to go ahead and write it down in outline form.

But first, a quick reminder of the tone, themes, and formula of the first three Indiana Jones films, in list form (my favorite form of all):

1. Formula: All three movies mimic serial adventures by starting out with the end of some crazy adventure, which might connect to the current adventure by: 1) introducing a major antagonist (rival archaeologist Belloq), 2) leading directly to the current adventure (getting into a plane owned by gangster Lao), or 3) showing Indiana's childhood. (That last one isn't really connected to the new adventure except for the introduction of his dad.)
1. Lesson: start with some unrelated adventure.
2. There's crazy paranormal stuff in this world, but it's often considered crazy and paranormal. When American agents come to Jones to ask about the Ark, he kind of shrugs, as if to say, "That's the power of god or whatever."
1. Lesson: Indy can never take the paranormal for granted
3. In fact, Indy 1, 2, and 3 all chart something of the same character arc: Indy starts out as an unbeliever and becomes a believer. He starts out interested in the artifact (Ark, Grail) or in plain injustice (the exploitation of the village); but he's not interested in what the artifact says about the world (God exists, Shiva is awesome, Jesus is awesome). Only through the action of the film is he able to pay reverence to the artifact--and let the physical object go / return it to its rightful place.
1. Lesson: Indy's arc tends towards wonder and belief
4. While each film charts Indy's growth as a believer, they also focus on some other, related theme: in 1, it's about his relation to the Ark and his relation to Marion--he never treated either good enough; in 2, it's about his relation to his quasi-son, Short Round, a stand-in for the exploited kids of India; in 3, it's about his relation to his dad.
1. Lesson: Indy's arc is also towards relationships
5. Indiana Jones is in over his head, but still pretty awesome and action-oriented. For instance, take the idol-stealing scene from the first movie, where we see him replace the idol with a bag of sand very carefully, which looks awesome--but is also not entirely correct. But then, when the temple traps start to go off, he doesn't stand around looking worried; he runs away and does so in a way that looks flustered and great at the same time.
1. Lesson: Indy is smart, athletic, resourceful--and fallible as any human.
6. Indy may be over his head, but he's the one who figures things out: in Raiders, he finds the Ark; in Temple, he frees the kids and kills the cult leader; in Crusade, he figures out how to get through the traps to the Grail.
1. Lesson: Indy is active, never just an observer.

Now that's all the past greatness from the first three movies. Instead of going through Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and noting where they failed, let's just look at what they tried to do and what I can copy. Again, lists are great.

1. Primary Enemy: the Soviet collective (Irina Spalko, psychic agent; Dovchenko, the bruiser)
2. Artifact: The crystal skull of Ancient Alien visitors
3. Relationship: Son, Marion (again) 
4. Theme: Experience vs. knowledge (according to Todd Alcott's analysis)
5. Set-pieces: Red ants, attacked by natives, quicksand, vine-swinging, three waterfalls, etc.

So, no promises that I'll keep all--or any--of that, but what would I rather watch?

Sneakers, part 14: Lessons

Lessons from Sneakers

(a) The protagonist here is often not the agent of the action--he’s often saved or helped by his teammates, without any particular difficulty on his part. Or growth: he begins the movie by running away from a friend after pulling a prank; and he ends the movie after running away from the same friend in order to go pull more pranks. There’s a certain childishness to him that’s charming because, hey, Robert Redford is Robert Redford, even if he’s carrying a backpack. Still, for a fun movie that has resonant themes of information control, no one is going back to this movie because they’re interested in the character.

(b) Personality counts here, especially in the team scenes. When Mother and Crease are observing the heist, it could be a boring set-up shot just to show us where they are; but we’re more amused by the scene by the added bickering between them. (“Cattle mutilations are up.” “Don’t even start.”) Even in big team scenes where people don’t always have something important to do, the screenplay makes a point of including them: so Whistler is reading the code off the black box at the party, Mother is doing the hardware work, and Carl has his black book of impenetrable places (which probably includes a big section on women). Doesn’t Whistler have a black book of his own? No, because then what would Carl be doing?

(c) Every scene moves in some direction: caper films excel at parcelling out progress since the big heist often consists of several mini-quests. Sneakers does this as well with information, parcelling out enough to keep us going, making the audience feel as if its getting somewhere. (This also helps to reinforce important plot setup, as, for instance, when we need to understand what it is Marty’s team does. So we see them at work, the secretary explains it, and then the NSA agents question it.) This is especially true with the big issue of Cosmo: Scene 1) What happened to Cosmo? Scene 4) You don’t want to end up like Cosmo; Scene 11) Cosmo died in prison; Scene 14) Cosmo’s alive!

In a mystery/caper film, besides parcelling out the progress in every scene, the movie can also move forward with various obstacles, twists, and revelations.

But movement forward can also be movement down, towards some low moment. So, for instance, the party scene starts off with happy dancing (everyone dances, especially Liz!) and ends with the suspicious lockdown (everyone is a suspect, especially Liz!).

Sneakers, part 13: Cosmo

The villain plot: What does Cosmo want?
Here’s a fun thing to do on a rainy day: take a film you like, try to plot out the structure from the anatagonist’s POV, and watch it fall apart.

For instance, here’s Cosmo’s plot:

(1) Pull pranks, go to jail, hook up with Mafia, “die”
(2) Start second life as computer support for Mafia, recruit bad NSA agents
(3) Decide to use Marty to get Janek’s box (perhaps because he wants to screw with Marty, because, hello, Cosmo has a big organization that could probably pull this job off)
(4) Kill Janek, get box from Marty, and pay him back--whatever that means (seriously, when Buddy Wallace reaches into his briefcase for Marty’s payment, is he going for a gun or for a check? Does Cosmo want Marty killed at this stage?)
(5) Prevent Marty from talking to the Russians to prevent them from talking to the FBI... and then put Marty’s name into the system so the authorities will pick him up (because Marty won’t tell them all about Cosmo at this point if he’s caught? Sure, they might not believe him, but what if they do? Why would Cosmo take this chance?)
(6) Get the powerful black box and wait around for a while without using it
(7) Go to his office building but don’t go into his office for a whole day
(8) Discover the theft, promise to let Marty go, go back on his promise and tell the goons to kill Marty
(9) Track Marty down himself and beg Marty to stay and be friends again

So there’s a lot there that doesn’t make sense from a rational actor POV--but once we remember that Cosmo is a trickster and a game player, some of his actions do make more sense:

(3) Why involve Marty when he could just use his own goons to get Janek’s box? Because he likes manipulating and tricking Marty specifically.
(5) Why run the risk of Marty being picked up by the authorities and pointing to Cosmo? Because Cosmo knows that Marty’s worst fear is the system.

The only part that still gives me trouble is Cosmo’s on-again-off-again relationship with the idea of killing Marty. We can explain this away by saying that Cosmo himself is conflicted; and since we get this story from Marty, we don’t get to see Cosmo’s conflict up close. But still, there are ways to get this across, and “I can’t kill my friend. Kill my friend” doesn’t quite get at the nuance of this emotion.

So what is motivating Cosmo? Once you break down his plot like this, it seems like revenge is the top motivation for him, revenge and besting Marty. (Which also explains why he reveals himself to Marty: he wants Marty to know that he beat him.) Because otherwise, the whole “having the box and not using it AND not putting it away in your hidden safe” part starts to bug me. Which puts Cosmo in a long line of people who say they have grand plans to destroy the system, but really are just motivated by silly personal issues.

(Which, come to think of it, is entirely the motivation of Janus/006 in GoldenEye: he has a plan to destroy financial records to create some awesome dark age, but really, it’s just money and revenge he wants. Welcome to the end of the Cold War folks, where no one is motivated by any ideology other than capitalism and competition.)

Sneakers, part 12

Scene 19: Darth NSA
A successful heist should be followed by a party, but the NSA decides to crash Marty’s team’s HQ. (Reversal #1 for this scene: success turned into arrest.) You might ask yourself how they found Marty’s HQ or why Marty, after deciding that the HQ was no longer safe in scene 12, decided to go back. I mean, you’ve just fooled a Mafia IT specialist who knows where your HQ is--maybe you should think twice about going back there.

But no, Marty goes back and walks right into James Earl Jones’s arms. Consider this revenge, a long time coming, for that joke Cosmo made in the prologue about getting his pizza shaken, not stirred; it’s as if the NSA said, “You think you can crash our party? We’ll crash yours.”

Abbott (Jones) wants the box, even though (a) the box would only be good to spy on Americans and the other agencies, since the other countries’ codes are all too different (as Gregor noted) and (b) Marty tells him the box doesn’t work.

Instead of just taking the box and killing or arresting all of Marty’s team for their illegal activity, Abbott gets suckered into negotiating with them, since the NSA doesn’t want anyone to know they have a non-working box that would help them spy on Americans. (Reversal #2 for this scene: arrest turned into negotiation.)

Yeah, that doesn’t entirely make sense, and yes, the US government gets accused of a lot of things--it’s not like Marty’s team would have evidence to back up their claim, so it’s hard to see how Newsweek would be interested in that story. But a lot of this is fridge logic, the kind of thing that bothers you after the movie is over. In the scene, all we know is that Marty and Abbott are rapidly changing position as the powerful one in the scene.

As with the party scene, which this scene echoes, everyone again reiterates what they want: Crease gets his vacation with his wife; Mother gets his Winnebago; Marty gets his record cleaned; Whistler gets to express his wish for peace on Earth (Abbott: “We are the United States Government. We don't do that sort of thing.”); and Carl gets the phone number of the young lady with the Uzi (oh, River). Liz says she doesn’t need anything, which is simple code for “Robert Redford and I are going to go have sex.”

The NSA leaves with the box that supposedly doesn’t work, and now we see why it won’t work. Marty pulled the same sort of trick on the NSA that he pulled on Cosmo--he kept the code-breaker chip for himself and gave them an empty shell. (Reversal #3!)

Which explains the final news report that tells us that the GOP is broke, but Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and the United Negro College Fund are all recipients of large, anonymous donations. So, sure, maybe Marty and Cosmo were just pulling pranks, but pranks are fun, even for an adult male who (we presume) is also having sex on the side. In his little way, Marty still doesn't fully belong to the system.

Which is a happy ending all around: They all got what they wanted; they foiled both the bad bad guys (Cosmo) and the bad good guys (the NSA); no one suspects that they’ve got a code-breaker chip that others would kill for; and Marty fights on in little ways for a better, GOP-free future.

So what do we learn about scene construction and script structure from Sneakers?

Sneakers, part 11

Scene 18: The imperfect heist, part 2--getting out with the girl
Well, of course, when Cosmo takes Liz hostage, Marty is going to do the gentlemanly thing and try to save the girl. (Though let’s zoom out: say Marty saves Liz and Cosmo uses the black box to destroy the world’s financial and other systems--how safe would Liz be then?)

But that low point is why I break this heist up into two scenes. In its own way, this (long) third act can be broken down into its own three act structure.

Using David Mamet’s form, we could get something like this: “Once upon a time (Act 1), there was a hopeless Marty. Then one day (Act II), his team rallied around him and helped him plan a heist, which went off perfectly, until Cosmo captured Marty’s girl and then Marty.”

Rather than a single bad moment, the low point of this heist is a rolling series of disasters: the plans Carl got from city hall on PlayTronics aren’t entirely accurate so Mother and Crease argue; a guard finds the surveillance tap Mother and Crease were using to spy on the building; Mother and Crease get detained by two security guards, one of whom calls Crease “Midnight,” which elicits another excellent look from Sidney Poitier, the kind of look that says, “I did not get invited here for dinner for this”; Buddy Wallace starts shooting at the ceiling where Marty is hiding, given away by the anomalously loud talking of his earpiece (which didn’t seem to bother Elena when Marty was using it in Janek’s office, but, you know, technology); and finally, Cosmo blackmails Marty into giving himself up because Liz is a hostage.

Oh, and that whole “I’ll let you go free” offer of Cosmo’s was b.s., leading to one of the best lines of the film: Cosmo: “I cannot kill my friend. [To Eddie Jones and Timothy Busfield] Kill my friend.” Then, in classic mastermind fashion, Cosmo leaves the room before his enemies are killed. (No computer nerd today would be so genre-unsavvy, but the 90s were a different time.)

Now that’s a low point. Not only are Marty and Liz held at gunpoint, with death looming, but the rest of the team is likewise incapacitated, right?

Well, no: Carl, in the ceiling of Cosmo’s office, jumps down on a goon, allowing Marty and Liz to overpower them, and giving Marty the chance to get back at Buddy. And Whistler, in the back of the van, gets instructed by Marty (now on the roof of the PlayTronics building) to drive to come rescue them, which startles the guards holding Mother and Crease at gunpoint, giving these two the chance to overpower those guards, especially the guy who called Crease “Midnight.” (Yay, righteous revenge for everyone. And though I’m being a little jokey here, I also mean it--we as an audience love to see a little comeuppance. Especially after all the little disasters that have befallen the team.)

Before Marty can get away, Cosmo confronts him on the roof and gets the black box back at gunpoint. Cosmo’s demeanor here is a little confusing: after all the times he tried to kill or ruin Marty, now he pleads with him to stay. And he makes some good, prescient points here, about how the world is run by data and how the data controllers have all the power. All Cosmo wants to do is have his friend with him as they destroy civilization. After all, they started this journey together.

But Marty’s all grown up now and he tells Cosmo that they were just pulling pranks, not really saving the world. The subtheme here is that Cosmo needs to accept responsibility for their actions, which is directly expressed in Marty’s comment that Cosmo will need to pull the trigger himself if he wants to stop Marty from leaving. And let me tell you, it’s hard to take a lecture on responsibility from Marty, especially with that backpack he’s been carrying. (When they stole from Janek, he had a briefcase, but for confronting his childhood friend, Marty uses a backpack.)

Of course, Cosmo doesn’t shoot and Marty escapes; and, double of course, the box that Marty gave Cosmo is just the empty shell, not the code-breaker. So, once again, as in the first scene, Marty runs off into the night (his VW bus replaced by his business’s van), leaving Cosmo all alone, with nothing but his weird accent.

And if you’re asking yourself, “Wait, there were lots of security guards in this building before, where are they all know?,” then the soundtrack is here to tell you that you’re missing the point of this wistful scene about a guy being left alone.

Sneakers, part 10

Scene 17: The (im)perfect heist, part 1--getting in for the box
The heist starts off going fine, with tiny notes of worry to keep the audience engaged. But note that the script doesn’t burn us out with extended “oh no” moments.

For instance, disguised as a gardener, Carl slips into an air vent from a bathroom. One of the front lobby security guys gets a little suspicious at how long the gardener is in the bathroom, which automatically makes him seem more professional than the young guy at the bank in scene 2 and the harried guy at Coolidge in scene 10. But before he can report the strangeness, he sees the gardener outside again, so lets it go. (All while we see that this gardener is really Mother, but their outfits make them look the same.)

From inside the air vents, Carl slowly raises the temp in Cosmo’s office (and good thing Cosmo never goes to his office the whole day despite having this awesome new black box toy), but the rest of the heist takes place at night. Liz is on another fake date with Werner in order to steal his ID card, which goes smoothly until Cosmo’s robot dog accidentally spills Liz’s purse, and he learns that she’s not who she says she is.

There’s a lot of cutting here, between Liz on her downwardly spiralling date, Marty breaking in with Werner’s ID and voice-print, and the surveillance team of Don and Mother (almost getting into an argument about cattle mutilations). (Whistler is there too, but the movie doesn’t make a huge point of this, which helps us to forget him, which makes his appearance in scene 18 more surprising and satisfying.)

So everything goes smoothly, with Marty breaking into Cosmo’s office and moving very slowly. But then Werner shows up, dragging Liz in, claiming that she’s trying to steal from his office. Now we have another ticking clock scenario, with the bad guys coming to check Werner’s office while Marty is stealing from Cosmo. Very. Slowly. And here’s a ticking clock where we know the consequences will be dire.

But Marty gets safely into an air vent and Cosmo is just about to turn Liz free... until she says that this will be the last time she goes on a computer date. Cosmo knows what that means. (Does he get nervous any time computers are mentioned?)

So that’s quite a nice little rollercoaster ride, with some “oh no” moments (emphasized by the music)--the guard’s suspicion of Carl, the dog exposing Liz, Werner getting Cosmo’s attention, and Liz saying the wrong thing to Cosmo--and some relaxation of those moments--the guard stops being suspicious, Cosmo stops being suspicious.

But we end on a low note, with Cosmo recognizing that Marty stole the box--but he has Marty’s girl. (And as we know from the party scene, Marty may like hacking, but he loves women.) So what’s he going to do?

Sneakers, part 9

Scene 16: Planning the heist
The classic heist structure includes two things: the planning and the heist itself. Now, we’ve seen two previous heists (or as this team calls them, “sneaks”), but they’ve always been abbreviated: the bank heist was all heist, no planning; the Janek heist involved some surveillance, but we skipped almost all the planning to get right to the (thin) action.

This Act 3 heist is the first time we get the classic “plan-rob” form. I would argue that the planning section of heists are almost always positive for the protagonist. Yes, there are obstacles to the successful heist, but the team always has some plan to get around those obstacles. So this is a nice way to get the protagonist on an upswing after the low point of Act 2.

So they need an identity card and a voice print saying a very peculiar phrase. Bingo: let’s get Werner Brandes (Stephen Tobolowsky), a lonely guy with the office right next to Cosmo’s, who is on the cutting edge of computer dating.

(This leads to another one of those group reaction shots: after they go through his garbage, Liz notes that Werner wants someone refined and cultured, not like any of the women they would normally use for this sort of job--and they all look at her.)

So Liz goes off on a terrible date with Werner (without making us suffer through a computer hacking scene because we already know this group has the skills to do that). It’s a fun scene, with Liz trying to maneuver Werner into saying words like “passport” and “verify.”

And while she’s doing that, Mother and Crease explain the second obstacle, which is that Cosmo’s office has sensors that detect heat difference and motion. But they have a solution to that too, which is to raise the temperature of the office to body temperature and instruct Martin to move really slowly. (Why send Martin, one of the oldest members of the team, to do the physical work? Personally, I’d hire a Chinese acrobat for that work, a la Danny Ocean.)

So Act 3 starts with lots of good news for Martin: they’ve found Cosmo at PlayTronics and they’ve got a plan. A plan which will no doubt get screwed up in some way (as is traditional with heists).

Sneakers, part 8

Act 3: From low point to conclusion
For David Mamet, the acts can be broken down into (1) “Once upon a time,” (2) “Then one day,” and (3) “But there was one thing they all forgot.”

So in Sneakers, we could sum up the acts thus:

(1) Once upon a time, there was a hacker/heist (or, yech, “tiger”) team led by a rogue with a secret;
(2) Then one day, his secret caught up to him and he heisted a code-breaker box--but it was all a trick set up by the enemy that used to be his friend;
(3) But there was one thing they all forgot, which is that... Well, how does Marty get up from rock bottom?

Scene 15: With a little help from his friends
Marty wanders the city streets alone for all of one shot before he knocks on Liz’s door. Instead of slamming the door on the ex-boyfriend who (a) used her pointlessly (did she really need to go to the Janek lecture?), (b) ignored her (letting her take a cab home alone so he could go surveil Janek), and then (c) expressed distrust (not letting her leave after the party), Liz opens her door to Marty and starts cleaning his wounds.

Like in Indecent Proposal, the casting of Robert Redford seems to make this go a little too smoothly. Who needs a million dollars to sleep with Robert Redford? Who wouldn’t open their door to Robert Redford in need?

Liz does more than just open her door to Marty. When Marty says “I can’t do this alone,” he doesn’t sweep Liz into her arms--he calls his boys’ club, who all come over to make Liz’s home into their new HQ.

So when Marty needs to make a call to the NSA to confess what he knows, Whistler bounces the signal around to make it harder to trace and Mother creates a “voice-stress analyzer” to tell if the NSA agent is lying. Here we get our first, honest-to-god, ticking clock scenario, as Marty tries to get answers from the NSA before they can trace the call. It’s a pretty thrilling scene, even if the stakes aren’t really clear. That is, if Marty gets taken in by the NSA and cooperates to take down Cosmo, what’s the worst that could happen to him? Well, for Marty, the worst is that he would be even more firmly in the system.

Since the NSA can’t help them, Marty will have to do this by himself. And when I say “by himself,” I mean surrounded by his intelligent and skillful friends. So how do they find Cosmo? Using Whistler’s excellent sound system, they reconstruct the path that Martin took while being in the trunk of the car. (No real worries about how long he was unconscious. I think if you made this film today, you’d just put a black hood on him. Ah, the changing fashions of kidnapping.)

There’s another “aha” moment here, those little moments that help to propel the film by giving the character’s small tasks to complete, often with some fun leap of logic. Here, Martin claims to have heard a cocktail party, which turns out to have been the ducks/geese at the reservoir.

Having tracked down Cosmo to an electronic toy company called PlayTronics, now the real heist begins. And we can also finish our Mamet breakdown of the acts: Act 3 is “But there was one thing they forgot, which is that Marty had a skilled heist team to help him recover the box and get him out of the system.”

Sneakers, part 7

Scene 13: The return of Gregor
Last scene ended with Marty’s gun, this scene opens with it, as Marty pulls Gregor away from the concert at gunpoint and brings him down to the poolroom of the Russian consulate. (Because every Russian consulate in the 90s had a poolroom with a nice bit of fog on the water. Then again, this is San Francisco, and the foggy harbor of noir is too hard to pass up.)

Gregor offers to help Marty find the box--since the American codes are totally different than the Russian codes, the Russians would love to have that box. Curiously, Martin decides to trust him after that open expression of how much he’d like to get that box. As we saw from the first scene with Gregor, he comes off trustworthy by acknowledging his ulterior motives. See: he’s not a wolf in sheep’s clothing, he’s just a wolf.

So Gregor takes Marty on a ride, looking through a binder of photographs of various agents. Now, when other people take Marty for a ride, they do so in the idiomatic sense: they manipulate him, but when Gregor does it, there’s no idiom, they’re literally in his car. Marty recognizes Eddie Jones’s character, an NSA agent named Buddy Wallace who left the agency four years ago. Gregor advises Marty to run away since this Wallace works for bad people--who? We never learn from Gregor, which seems unaccountably reticent for the guy who just opened his country’s secret files.

Instead, Marty and Gregor (and his driver) get pulled over by FBI agents. Although Gregor offers Martin amnesty if he stays in the car, Marty gets out and the FBI agents shoot Gregor and the driver with Marty’s own gun, using that other American idiom of “take a ride”--the Mafia meaning, where you take someone for a ride to kill them. So, yeah, I’m not sure that amnesty thing would’ve worked out so well, but clearly getting out of the car didn’t work so great either. Before Eddie Jones bludgeons Marty to unconsciousness, the other fake agent says “Too many secrets.” Were they spying on Martin’s Scrabble game before?

Scene 14: Cosmo
Marty is locked in a car trunk, which really gets pounded into our head since we see both him inside the truck and an external shot of the car trunk as they’re driving. There’s one great mini-scene here where the trunk opens. We might expect that we’re here at the destination, but no, Eddie Jones just knocks him in the head again. What can I say, I’m a sucker for tiny subversions of my expectations.

Speaking of subversions of expectations, check out this crazy office that Marty wakes up in: there’s some small sharks in a tank, repeated man-shaped art on the walls, these weird metal chairs that seem to be hollow, deep blue lighting, a glass room with some big mainframe and benches. (I do my best thinking while sitting in a glass room with a mainframe.) And, weirdest of all, there’s Cosmo, still playing sleight-of-hand tricks on Marty and finally played by Ben Kingsley.

So I guess there’s no reason for Martin to feel guilty about the whole “getting his friend arrested and then abandoning him” thing, since he seems to have come out okay. He didn’t die in prison, but rather found a vocation: IT specialist to the mob. Which is, in a sense, just another organization, like the NSA or the FBI.

So Cosmo explains why he needs the black box: to protect the Mafia’s information, which is encrypted but online. Yeah, that makes no sense, and Marty doesn’t buy it, so Cosmo goes for his second reason: he’ll use the black box to take down the entire capitalist system, wiping out all the financial records and recreating the world as Utopian commune. Marty points out that this is crazy, but maybe only because he’s part of the system now, man. So Cosmo unveils his last reason for wanting the black box: he’ll put Marty’s name into the system so he’ll go to jail. This time, Cosmo will get away scot free.

In a way, this three-part answer is a great echo of the party scene where Marty gave his own three-part answer for why Cosmo and he pulled their financial pranks: we were young, there was a war, there were girls. So there’s one selfish reason (girls/revenge) mixed in with an ideal (against the war/capitalist system) and a position vis-a-vis the system (young/work for the mob).

And yet, here’s where I think Sneakers falls down, in the motivation of its antagonist. We’ll get back to this later, in a summation post on Cosmo’s plot, but let’s just note one thing: Cosmo doesn’t need the black box to send an anonymous tip to the FBI about Martin’s alias. He could’ve done that at any time to make Martin’s life difficult.

Despite that weirdness, this scene fits into the classic “friends growing apart” scenario. It starts with an emphasis on the past relationship by echoing the prologue in a few ways, with Cosmo’s sleight-of-hand and the same “posit-consequence-result-conclusion” game they played in the prologue.

But Marty and Cosmo aren’t the same kids now that they were then. Martin is all grown up, by which we mean that he’s reconciled himself to the system; while Cosmo has only changed in a few ways. For one, his long hair in the opening is now in a pony-tail. The fact that Cosmo works for the mob (a pretty adult career choice) is undercut by a certain adolescent vibe--what teenage boy wouldn’t love to have a shark tank in his office? And that’s not even getting into Cosmo’s cosmic vision of money, where he realizes it’s all, like, about perception, dude. What’s more adolescent than realizing that everything out there is just bullshit and you’re the only one who can see the truth?

So what should be a positive change (my friend is still alive!) becomes a classic rejection scene where the protagonist realizes the danger of one possible character arc for himself. (We all think of ourselves in terms of character arcs, right?) Transpose Cosmo to Vader and Marty to Luke and you get close to the dynamics of this scene: Yay, my friend/dad is alive; boo, my friend/dad is the villain; double-boo, how easy would it be for me to become the villain?

In some guides to structure, Act 1 ends when the character accepts the call to adventure; Act 2 ends when the protagonist is furthest away from the adventure’s goals (which might have switched). So when does Marty hit rock bottom? I argue that it’s here: he’s lost the black box, he’s being framed for murder, his past has come back to haunt him in the person of Cosmo, he’s been tossed out onto the street by Cosmo’s goons to wander the city alone, and, worst of all, he’s back in the system.

Sneakers, part 6

Scene 11: Partay
Part of the joy of Sneakers is that actors seem like they’re having a good time, and this is super-clear in the party scene that follows the successful heist. But even though the party is all about good times--which we see clearly in the montage where everyone gets a chance to dance with Liz--we get some heavy info in this scene.

For instance: what happened to Cosmo? Even though Martin Bishop (nee Brice) has already confessed to abandoning his friend to the Feds, he only tells us the rest of the story now, which is that Cosmo died in prison.

For another instance, we get the oh-so-cliched “what are you going to do after...” round robin discussion, which we know best from war films (“What are you going to do after the war, Marty?” “I’m going to make love to my wife.” *bang* “They shot Marty!”), but which also pops up in cop films (“...after you retire, Marty?” “Sail around the world.” *bang* “Salazar killed Marty!”) and robber films (“...after the big score, Marty?” “Sail around the world and make love to my wife.” *bang* “I shot Marty, because I’m in love with his boat.”)

But the real heaviness of this scene is when Marty and Whistler, working apart, come to the same realization: this box that’s supposed to be able to break codes--it can really break codes! This probably shouldn’t be such a revelation, but the dynamic way it’s done really helps to emphasize the importance: while Marty rearranged Scrabble tiles for the black box project’s name, “SETEC Astronomy” (“cootys rat semen”), Whistler reads the hard-wired code of the black box’s microchip. The microchip is more important than the Scrabble tiles, but Scrabble tiles are more fun to watch, especially when they come back with the anagram, “Too many secrets,” which seems like it must mean something. So by running them in parallel, the movie makes us forget how boring it would be to watch a blind guy read code.

(What do you want to bet that there’s an earlier version of the script where “Too many secrets” was a fun phrase passed around by Marty and Cosmo? But they had to take it out to avoid revealing too early that the real nemesis here is Cosmo.)

Once they discover the power of the box, Don Crease understands that any government in the world would kill for this box and everyone needs to stay right here. (Except for his family, whom he sends home; since he knows he’s not the protagonist, he rightly assumes that they’re not going to become hostages.)

So a scene that begins with everyone dancing together, ends with everyone uncomfortably sleeping in the same office because they can’t trust anyone. Another quick reversal.

Scene 12: The handoff
The next scene is when Marty and Crease go to give the black box to the NSA agents. Here’s another reversal: they can’t wait to get rid of the black box that they worked hard to get. Weirdly, the handoff takes place at an open-air cafe rather than the NSA office.

And Marty is about to get paid when Crease--hanging around by the car for some reason--notices the news that Janek was killed. Here’s a nice little bit of Notorious, where Crease has to get Marty away from the NSA agents without alerting the agents that something is up. (Why Crease is worried about these guys rather than the Russians might seem weird, if Eddie Jones wasn’t reaching into his briefcase in a really suspicious manner.)

So Marty and Crease leave the box, but escape with their lives, and go check on the NSA building, which is gone. Just to rub salt in Marty’s injury, the homeless beggar comes by again to complain that the government took his home, which suddenly has new meaning in this new context. If only Martin listened to him before!

In fact, there’s a lot of things that Martin should’ve done before, like check out the information on Janek and the NSA: his grant money wasn’t Russian, it was NSA; and the NSA office in California is in Los Angeles, not San Francisco. Post-Google, this would be unacceptable writing, but pre-Google, you can kind of get away with it.

So by the end of this twist, Marty suspects the Russians are behind the manipulation of his team and the murder of Janek, so he’ll go see Gregor. The zinger of this scene is that Marty prepares his gun before saying that he’s going to a concert. It’s an attention-getting line, a way to ratchet up the stress.

Because, sure, Marty got played here, but is there any reason he has to remain involved in this case? He’s not suspected of any crimes, he’s not threatened by anyone, he’s only lost a little time and money in pursuing this case. And really, for all my commentary on how he’s not making a killing in this line of work, he doesn’t have any subplot about why he needs a lot of money very soon. There’s no ticking clock here to make us anxious. But there is the mystery of who played Marty and the danger of that gun to rivet our attention.

Sneakers, part 5

Scene 10: Breaking in
If you’re reading this, thinking “where’s the heist I was promised?,” I want to point out that we’re only 30 minutes in to a two hour movie. All those times I said that the scenes were short and kept moving quickly, I meant that. (The later scenes are much longer. Once they do all this set-up, they can let the rising action and climax stretch out.)

And if you’re really impatient for it, here’s your heist. (Or the second of three heists: bank, black box, mysterious third heist that I’ll get to.)

Janek works at the Coolidge Institute, which might be take-off of the conservative, California-based think tank, the Hoover Institution. I have no idea what they do at this institute, but whatever it is, their security isn’t so great. After hooking up a microphone and practicing to pick a lock, Marty bullshits an overworked lobby receptionist into buzzing him up.

Once he’s up on Janek’s floor, Marty discovers the lockpicking practice won’t help, since Janek has an electronic keypad lock. Mother and Crease consult with Marty, and it sure sounds complicated--Marty says “yeah” and “okay” more than half-a-dozen times. But it turns out the way to bypass this type of door is just to kick it down. (Sad trombone. Except the sad trombone isn’t played by the person who you think would play it, and is instead played by a talented little Asian girl. Double-switch!)

So we’ve had two obstacles overcome, which means it’s time for a third. If you charted the first two obstacles against how expected they are, you’d find 1) getting past the front desk--totally expected, totally planned for (no consultation necessary, just bullshitting); 2) getting past the office door--expected but different, calls for new skill (brute strength rather than finesse, and some consultation required). So to complete the pattern, obstacle number three should be totally unexpected, involve a radical switch of skill-sets, and call for a lot of consultation.

And since Sneakers is a film that rewards pattern recognition, that’s totally what it is. After Marty grabs the decoy answering machine, Elena walks in. He grabs her (brute strength solution), and, with a running consultation with the boys, then bullshits her about affairs of the human heart (an issue on which he can fake expertise). He claims that he’s a PI working for a shadowy Mrs. Janek who wants Janek’s secrets. Which isn’t total b.s., if you replace “Mrs. Janek” with “NSA agents.”

For an added bonus, Marty adds that Elena and he are just pawns. It’s always fun when you can have a character tell the truth but not have them recognize it as the truth.