strange days Archives - Addicted to Writing

Spoiler Alert. The post contains spoilers about the following movies: (And there are aff. links in the post.)

Strange Days (1995)
The Broken Circke Breakdown (2012)
Braveheart (1995)
The Man without a Face (1992)
The Crow (1994)

Black Mirror is a great show, make no mistake. It’s engrossing; you can’t take your eyes from it. The quality of production is top-notch, and the stories show how technology often takes our flaws, obsessions or inhumane qualities one step further. So each episode tends to be extremely depressing. Ergo, it is not for me.

I need a bit of light in things that I watch. One of my favorite movies is Strange Days from 1995, which is not a happy movie in general. It takes place in a brutal 1999 where a technology allows people to get high on other people’s experiences. Since you feel everything yourself, it has turned into the most addictive drug. And it’s illegal. Disenchanted ex cop Lenny (Ralph Fiennes) makes a living selling these tapes, and people either go for the overly violent or sexual. He is obsessed with his ex girlfriend, hooker Faith (Juliette Lewis), and his only friend is Mace (Angela Bassett), who is a kickass limo driver that often has to save his sorry ass from trouble. With a Los Angeles that is out of control and a serial killer on the loose who is making his victims watch their own killing, it is a dark movie. But it is also a lot of fun, and there is love, action, hope and friendship. And friendship and love win. I can’t recommend the movie enough. I’ve seen it more times than I can count, and I’m looking forward to seeing it again.

The Broken Circle Breakdown. Image via youtube.

One of my least favorite movies is The Broken Circle Breakdown. A friend of mine fell in love with this movie, and even though I loved some parts of it, it depressed me so badly, I was swearing at the writers at some point. I’m not saying the movie isn’t good. It’s just so emotionally raw that you feel like you have a big hole in your soul, just like the characters do. And I don’t like to feel depressed. I suffered from depression, my dear readers, and I’m not good with characters who don’t try to deal with it. And by deal with it, I mean actual therapy! You can’t just fix yourself after losing your child! And these are freaking musicians from a well-developed country. I’m pretty sure they could have found the means from their government (Belgian!) OK, I’m calm, now. J

They destroy each other with their pain. They grow distant instead of supporting each other. Go ahead and watch the movie, and let me know if you left the movie with joy.

Surprise, surprise, I hate unhappy endings. Sure, you might say, your favorite movie Braveheart has the protagonist dying after being betrayed by his closest ally. Yeah, but he also impregnated a princess that seemed determined to take over the kingdom and that betraying ally decided to win the war in his honor. So sure, he died, but nothing he did was in vain. And while he was alive, what a life that was!

Mel Gibson in The Man without a Face. Not the movie poster, but you needed to see the face. Image via movie-rouletteç

The Man without a Face showed McCloud (Mel Gibson), whose face is so badly burned that he is referred as a freak, being excluded, judged and blamed, but he turned Norstadt (Nick Stahl) into an achiever. He gave him a father figure. He gave him an excellent mentor, teacher and best friend. And the end? The end is at the very least semi-happy.

Brandon Lee as Eric Draven, The Crow. Image via movieweb.

The Crow has Draven (Brandon Lee) take his revenge, make peace with Sarah, die happily to be with his dead love of his life forever. Happy! He was already dead when the movie began, so I wasn’t exactly sad when he went back to his grave.

My point? Don’t give me a love story where the couple loses a kid, and one of them dies. Thank you!

Maybe this is why I tend to write romantic comedies and dramas. This is why I rarely kill off a character. There have been no villains in my stories so far. Maybe jackasses and assholes, but that’s about it.

I’ve killed two characters in a total of five screenplays (three finished, two in the works): One was dead practically before the story began; his death was the catalyst for three characters’ actions, and the other was a supporting character whose death, while tragic, was necessary for one character’ growth. And while my characters go through a lot dealing with these deaths, it doesn’t define them. It doesn’t take my story into a direction so bleak that my viewer/reader will get depressed alongside them. Feel sad? Yes. Desolate? No.

It would probably come as no surprise to you that I love reading John Grisham and Lee Child. The main character almost always lives. They might not always get a happy ending, but the stories give me enough adrenaline and serotonin that I don’t mind (a lot).

I’m not saying I won’t ever kill off many characters. I’m not saying I won’t ever write a thriller or action movie. I’ve been dreaming of finding brilliant thriller premises ever since I was a kid. But I haven’t found the right idea. Yet.

Here’s the thing: Life is full of pain, death and destruction. It is also filled with love, happiness and hope. I don’t need to be reminded of the first that often. News, politics and our own lives provide enough of that. On the other hand, I don’t mind overdosing on the positive stuff.

How do you like your endings?

story structure to die for- pj reece — Image via pjreece.ca

There are many stories that I wish I had written- stories whose characters, structures and pretty much anything- I wish I would have come up with. I’m definitely in love/awe with those stories. Some of them are:

Pretty much any John Grisham legal thriller, but especially:

– The Runaway Jury- the book, not the movie

– The Brethren

– The Partner – remind me why The Partner and The Brethren haven’t been adapted to screen yet?

By Christopher Nolan (and Jonathan Nolan)

– Memento (nope, not The Prestige.)

– The Dark Knight Rises (not the first two)

By Kurt Wimmer:

– Equilibrium

– Law Abiding Citizen

By Randal Wallace

– Braveheart. (duh!)

By Nancy Meyers

– What Women Want

By James Cameron

– Strange Days

The list goes on. But the point is:

Those stories are perfect to me in their genres. Yes, the books mentioned are best-sellers, and the movies are either critical/cult hits or box office hits or both. They made me laugh, think, cry, get glued to the screen/book, hold my breath or made me do a various combinations of these.

So these movies make you want to wish you could sit down with those authors and pick their brains. Interviews don’t always help. For instance Joseoph Gordon-Levitt and Gary Oldman are marveling at what a great story-teller Nolan is. OK-I’m admiring too but how the hell does he and his brother (who created one of my favorite shows, Person of Interest, too by the way) write those things?

Of course some of these writers do also come up with stories that don’t impress (me) so I don’t die of jealousy. Apparently, Kurt Wimmer did Double Trouble (action comedy about muscular twins who….you don’t really care about.) And James Cameron did Titanic and Avatar. (who does that after Strange Days???You might enjoy those movies, but if you watch Strange Days, you might appreciate why a fan of that story might expect different things from Cameron.))

But back to the stories we love.

No matter how many times I dissect writing manuals and those movies, I still find a hard time delving into the secret ingredients-how the hell they managed to put one and done together. Sure, Randall Wallace had history to guide him- but with Braveheart, he outdid himself. If you have seen Pearl Harbor, you might wonder how the writer of Braveheart could write that (nope, I don’t like Pearl Harbor. Could’ve appreciated that one in 1930. Not in 2001. )So I’d definitely not die for the story structure of a love triangle between soldier presumed dead, his girlfriend and his best friend.

Was I ranting? Good. That was the point. A story (structure/idea) to die for is something most writers go after, and not many accomplish. So it was a relief to have run into PJ Reece’s Story Structure To Die For in which he rants, gives great examples of stories that worked, what didn’t work from his own stories and he does rant about what other how-to writers left out of the equation.

And you know you can relate to Reece when he dedicates her book to Jack Lemmon and Eva Marie Saint (it will make sense once you read it) and that he gives Moonstruck as an example for a great story structure. For one, even though I like the movie, even though it has an Oscar and all that, it is a guilty pleasure for me. Oh the stereotypes and the soap opera acting and the emotional outbursts of Nic Cage…But guilty pleasure or not, it WORKS and that’s what matters! (and it is nice of him to pick a movie we have mostly seen and remember- I probably would have had a heart attack and never gone back to the book, had he been giving examples from Lars Von Trier.) He has some other solid and useful (yet fun) examples as well.

There is also the way he structures this non-fiction- you automatically assess your characters and writing to see how you measure up to talking about-he needn’t give checklists and bullet points. You instinctively visualize, analyze and evaluate.

PJ Reece makes his points well. He also reminds you of the ultimate screenwriter fantasy- the Oscar. Whether we’ll ever get nominated and win is another issue. But he does help you see how to get unstuck from ruts, insufficient conflicts and unnecessary writer panic born from unsatisfactory story flow. He also makes you want to re-watch Rocky and Good Will Hunting- for educational purposes.

: )

Read the book. It’s also a fine example of how to write an engaging and fun e-book on non-fiction matters. You can download it from here. Looks like I have another writer blog to hang out at.

On Happy Endings and Why I Rarely Kill My Characters in my Stories (And Why Black Mirror Isn’t My Kind of Show)

PJ Reece’s Story Structure To Die For – An Awesome Free Resource on Writing Fiction