When Knowing Your Screenplay Inside-Out Can Be A Disadvantage

I recently listened to the director’s commentary on Duplicity, written and directed by Tony Gilroy. Because of his hyphenated position on this movie, he is in a unique position to provide some insight into various choices he made before and while directing his own script. One such choice relates to the opening sequence, which was only added at a very late stage, when it became clear that without it, audiences were confused.

The sequence, which isn’t included in the only pdf version of the screenplay I could locate online, is a piece of backstory featuring the two main characters, a pair of corporate spies played by Clive Owens and Julia Roberts.

Owens comes on to Roberts at a garden party in Dubai. He doesn’t know she’s a spy. She knows he is, but pretends not to know. From the garden we cut to Owens in a deep, drug-induced sleep in a hotel room, while Roberts goes through his personal items and removes a secret file.

From this brief sequence we learn that the world these characters populate is one of deception and double-crossing, in which any tactic is acceptable. We also learn that Julia Roberts is a sophisticated, ruthless operator, and that Clive Owens, although suave and full of self-confidence, is also vulnerable.

During the rest of the film Roberts and Owens, who have meanwhile become a couple, refer to “Dubai” a number of times. Owens refers to the incident with bitterness, while Roberts is annoyed that he won’t just let it go.

Now, the nature of the story is such that you never really know who’s deceiving whom. Plus the structure of the story is a chronological mix of the present and increasingly recent episodes from the past. It’s quite a puzzle, which is the perfect form for a story dealing with people constantly trying to second-guess all the other characters’ intentions.

However, test screenings of the film without the opening sequence showed that repeated references to an incident the audience hadn’t seen, was just too much mystery. So the opening sequence was added.

As Gilroy looked through the rest of the film to see if this addition necessitated any other edits, he realized that the backstory sequence added an entire new layer to the rest of the story. Simply showing up front what the characters refer back to during the rest of the film, adds humour, raises intriguing rather than confusing questions about what the characters really feel, and leaves the suspense intact.

Gilroy was surprised to see the effect of such a seemingly cosmetic change, and his anecdote clearly shows how challenging it is to know how much information and backstory to show and when. It’s crucial to spell enough out for the audience so they understand the story, and leave enough up to their imagination to keep them actively involved.

It’s easy to forget that what may seem obvious to you, because you’ve been living with the characters and the story forever, might be invisible to a completely fresh audience. In this case, I think Gilroy got the balance just right, but only after test audiences had shown him that they needed more information.

On The Evolution Of Reversals By Natural Selection

In a recent interview with The New Yorker, writer-director Tony Gilroy, of Michael Clayton fame, amongst other things, comments on the problem that audiences have become accustomed to “… an aesthetic of disorientation.”

Lots of mainstream movies now routinely play around with chronology and use sophisticated cutting in order to maintain suspense. Audiences catch on quickly though, forcing filmmakers to push the creative envelope again and again.

Take for example the wonderful tv drama Damages. I’m well hooked on the second series, although I have to admit, my attention is waning. And here’s why:

The series is all about deception, mistrust, and backstabbing, so it constantly has to reveal new, surprising information to remain suspenseful. Otherwise it would just be another trite (albeit stunningly acted) linear, legal drama. Although the series meets this challenge pretty impressively, I’m beginning to become immune to the following scene:

We see someone in a parked car, in profile, looking troubled. This is a character we’ve been following and have built up some sympathy for, as they’ve been portrayed as something of an underdog or a victim. Then we pull out and discover … shock-horror … one of the bad guys is sitting next to them in the car, and they’re in cahoots.

Sure, this increases our understanding of the character, perhaps we suddenly understand their moral dilemma, or their corruptness. The device certainly moves the story along, and it worked really well for me the first few times I saw it. However, now whenever I see anyone in a parked car looking troubled, I’m out of the narrative. I’m playing: “Guess the treachery” with myself, because the scene has been overplayed, it’s become predictable.

The essence of a good reversal, is its unpredictability. The more a reversal subverts the audience’s expectations (based on what’s preceded the reversal onscreen), the more effective it is. But surprise isn’t sufficient in itself. The surprise has to change the stakes in some way, in order to really hold the audience’s interest. Even better than merely changing the audience’s expectation of what is to come, is doing so while undermining their assumptions about what they’ve already seen.

One great way to achieve this, is what Tony Gilroy does a few times in the movie Michael Clayton. He deploys a ballsy combination of non-chronological editing and repetition. We see the same short scene twice at very different moments in the film. The first time might be a flash forward, or the second time a flashback. Either way, because of what we’ve witnessed in between, our interpretation of the film so far changes drastically when we see the scene for the second time.

It’s precisely this realization that we were fooled the first time we saw the scene, which is such a great “reversal” sensation. It’s strange that it’s so pleasurable to realize you’ve been hoodwinked, but that’s what it boils down to. The audience craves this sensation of been fooled.

Unfortunately, every time they are fooled they become a little harder to fool.

And so reversals evolve …

(Thanks to Andy Conway at Shooting People for pointing out the article!)