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Subtext, Action, and Character
The presentation of subtext, often associated with the interior dilemma of the character, is more often associated with theater than with film. However, subtext is an important dimension of good screen stories. Subtext always relates to character. In order to present a model of screenplay subtext, it is necessary to look at the structure of the screen story.
The structured screen story presents characters at a particular point in their lives, facing a particular problem. This problem is given dimension by the secondary characters, who articulate two options for the main character. The dilemma and character are supported by a story line that provides the opportunity for the main character not only to interact with the secondary characters but also to be confronted by events during the course of the action line that will help her to make a choice. If the story is properly structured, not only will there be a mounting sense of urgency about making that choice, but there will be major plot points that chart the way for the central character. So far, the story appears to be all action line. Where does the subtext develop, and does it interact with the action line?
Foreground and Background
To explain the subtext–action–character relationship, it is better to revert to other terminology. We will call the action line the foreground story. The foreground story is the plot that embraces people and action outside the character. The background story, which yields the subtext, relates to the main character’s interior problem or issue. The central character works out this interior issue through her relationships with the secondary characters. A specific example of this foreground–background relationship is found in Jack Soward’s Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan.
The foreground story is the struggle between Khan and Kirk. Khan, an aberrant genius long exiled to a desolate planet, is accidentally discovered by the starship Reliant. The Reliant has been on a scouting mission for the Genesis Project Scientific Station. Khan is only interested in getting revenge on his nemesis, Kirk. Khan takes over the Reliant and orders Carol Marcus, chief scientist of the Genesis Project, to hand over all scientific data. This is a highly irregular procedure, so Carol sends a distress signal to Admiral Kirk. Kirk, on a training mission with Captain Spock of the Enterprise, responds, and he and his inexperienced crew take off to the Genesis Station.
A struggle for control of the Genesis Project as well as a space duel between Kirk and Khan follow. To complicate matters, Kirk and Carol were lovers, and their child, David, now a grown man, works with his mother. David is not fond of Kirk, the father he never knew. Spock, however, is totally devoted to Kirk and to the fate of the Reliant. He sacrifices his life in order to save the crew members aboard the Enterprise. Spock’s crypt is sent to the planet, created by the Genesis Effect, as his final resting place. This action line is the foreground story.
The background story is the interior issue of Admiral Kirk’s aging. He no longer has a command, he has an administrative position, he needs glasses, and he seems to have a fondness for antiques—books by Dickens and Shakespeare. During the course of the story, Kirk echoes that he feels old. Taking command of the Enterprise, opposing an old adversary (Khan), and reconciling with his family are all challenges he must confront. At the end of the film, after the memorial ceremony honoring Spock, Carol asks him how he feels and Kirk answers, “Young. I feel young.”
Clearly, the events in the action line can help or subvert this interior issue. In Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, with so many young people playing important roles and with the Genesis Project providing the opportunity for the birth of a planet, the young–old dilemma is given dimension.
If we look at the balance of foreground and background, it is usually as follows: in Act I, both foreground and background stories are introduced; in Act II, the background story is fleshed out; in Act III, the foreground story is prominent, and the background story is resolved. The foreground story is action oriented. The background story, on the contrary, is emotion oriented; it is what the main character feels most deeply about.
In order to highlight the subtext, or background, story’s relationship to character, it is useful to examine, in detail, Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond’s The Apartment. The foreground story is a tale of corporate advancement in a New York insurance company. C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is a low-level clerk. He is ambitious, and his colleagues give him the means for advancement. Baxter allows first one person, later four people, to use his apartment for trysts. Each promises recommendation to the head of personnel, J.J. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray). When Sheldrake wants to use Baxter’s apartment, Baxter’s future is secured. At the beginning of Act II, Baxter is promoted. How far he advances in the company is now totally dependent on Sheldrake.
When Baxter takes care of a problem for Sheldrake (Sheldrake’s girlfriend attempts suicide in Baxter’s apartment), the reward is further advancement. When a former girlfriend tells all to Sheldrake’s wife, his feigned divorce becomes real, and he asks Baxter for his apartment. But Baxter refuses, because by now, he, too, is involved with Sheldrake’s girlfriend. Baxter loses his job, and his advancement within the company is over.
The background story follows Baxter’s interior dilemma—he wants a personal life, but his personal life is always negated by his will to advance. The focus for this personal dilemma is Fran (Shirley MacLaine), an elevator operator whom Baxter likes. When Baxter gets his first promotion, he asks her out. She agrees, telling him she has to see another man to say goodbye and will then join him in front of the theater. Fran never makes it to the theater. She gives into the charms of J.J. Sheldrake and goes with him to Baxter’s apartment, leaving Baxter in front of the theater. She has stood him up and he’s hurt but not discouraged. The opening of Act II follows Baxter’s interest in Fran as well as Fran’s relationship with Sheldrake.
In the first half of Act II, Fran and Sheldrake have a relationship, and Baxter is on the outside. Only during his second attempt to woo Fran (at the Christmas party) does Baxter realize she is Sheldrake’s girlfriend. She uses a cracked makeup case he had returned to Sheldrake earlier in the story. Shel-drake jokes that women take these flings so seriously. Baxter, realizing the truth about Fran, leaves and gets drunk on Christmas Eve. Meanwhile, Shel-drake and Fran are arguing in Baxter’s apartment. She presents him with a Christmas gift; he didn’t remember to buy one for her; hence, he offers her a hundred dollars to buy herself a gift. Sheldrake then dashes off for an evening with the family, and Fran attempts suicide by taking Baxter’s sleeping pills. When Baxter returns, a lovely woman on his arm, he finds Fran. With the help of the doctor next door, he revives her. The suicide attempt is the midpoint of Act II. The balance of the act focuses on Fran’s recovery in Baxter’s apartment and their developing relationship. Fran is not yet aware of the depth of their relationship, but Baxter is. He knows he wants a deeper connection with her, but his happiness is brief.
In Act III, Baxter rehearses his speech for Sheldrake. Because he loves her, Baxter will take Fran off Sheldrake’s hands. However, when he sees Sheldrake, Sheldrake makes the speech. He tells Baxter that his wife threw him out and he’s planning on getting a divorce and taking up more legitimately with Fran. It is at this point that Baxter faces his moment of truth. He chooses to give up his advancement and walks out on Sheldrake. He’ll not be an accomplice to Sheldrake’s plan, especially because he loves Fran. He is no longer willing to sacrifice his personal life for advancement.
Critical to the successful interplay of foreground and background is the nature of Baxter’s character. We have to believe that he can be both an opportunist and a sensitive idealist. The story has to be structured in such a way as to provide scope for both sides of his character. Next, the quality of the secondary characters must allow for the two options—opportunist and idealist—to resonate. Sheldrake and the other insurance company executives are singularly opportunistic. Both Fran and Baxter’s doctor neighbor, however, are idealistic; they are friendly and straightforward. They never manipulate, nor are they cruel. These two characters analyze the world: Fran categorizes people as “takers and those who get took,” and the doctor sees those who are “mensch” (good human beings) and those who are not.
The subtext arises out of the interplay of the emotion-laden background story with the action-laden foreground story. The result is layered. How far is Baxter willing to go to succeed? Besides defining that limit, the subtext also suggests the degree of dehumanization the individual is willing to tolerate to improve his material well-being. But is it worth his spiritual well-being? In the end, Baxter opts to be a human being, and Fran decides to join him. They question their material well-being at this moment (“I don’t have a job. I don’t know where we’ll go”), but the issue of spiritual sovereignty is, for these two characters, indisputable. They are whole, and they are happy; this is the implication of the background story and the source of satisfaction for the viewer.
In a sense, the deeper satisfaction for the viewer devolves from the sub-text of the story rather than from the resolution of the plot. The subtext issue is the interior issue and is, therefore, more deeply associated with the main character. The plot, on the contrary, presents a line of action that is the surface of the story. The foreground story may be quite distant from the interior life of the main character. There are intersecting points of background and foreground, but the foreground story doesn’t necessarily offer the viewer the level of involvement that is available from the subtext.
It is, however, not enough to believe that the character can go in one direction or the other. For subtext to be deeply meaningful, it must be interwoven with the character’s foreground plight. An example will illustrate how this relationship between character and subtext works.
John Fusco’s Thunderheart is the story of an FBI murder investigation on an Indian reservation in the Badlands of South Dakota. Roy Levoi (Val Kilmer) is the main character, an FBI agent assigned to look into the struggle between radical and conservative factions on the reservation, a struggle that has led to murder. The foreground story in Thunderheart is the investigation and solution of the murder. The background story is the struggle between primitive Indian values and commercial white values on the reservation. Fusco fuses the main character to this background story by making him half white, half Indian.
Those characters who relate to the white values in the story—the older FBI agent (Sam Shepard), who becomes the antagonist, and the conservative Indian faction he works with—definitely appeal to the side of Levoi that wants to be accepted as a white man. The other group of secondary characters, the Indian side, includes an Indian sheriff, a female Indian teacher, and the Indians’ religious leader, all representing older values involved with magic, nature, and history. They represent the past for Levoi, and each in turn prods him to admit to his Indianness.
When the crime is solved and Levoi learns that his FBI partner is an accomplice to the murder, he is outraged. When the Indian teacher is killed, there is no turning back. He will go against his white partner, risk his life, and demand justice. By the end of the story, Levoi has accepted his Indian side and has implicitly devalued his white half. The subtext, or background, story to accept Indian values or white values, with their implications for the future, the environment, and the community, is at the center of Thunderheart. And because Roy Levoi is half white, half Indian, that struggle is all the more personal and meaningful. Thus, screen stories work best when subtext and character fuse as strongly as is the case in Thunderheart.
The Balance between Foreground and Background
There are screen stories that are all foreground. These stories are plot intensive. In these stories, the character facilitates the plot, and her inner life isn’t alluded to. Ruthless People and Fatal Attraction are two examples of films with a strong foreground script. In Ruthless People, the premise that money can’t buy love attaches most easily to the wife (Bette Midler), but she experiences no deeper inner conflict, nor does the husband (Danny DeVito), who instigates the idea of murdering his wife for her money. What is interesting about Ruthless People is the difficulty in determining the identity of the main character, and, once that determination is made, how little the main character matters. Contrary to classic screen narrative, the main character’s role in Ruthless People is incidental.
In Fatal Attraction, the premise that one-night stands can be fatal falls best on the shoulders of the husband (Michael Douglas). But again, there is no interior conflict. Both mistress (Glenn Close) and wife (Anne Archer) are important to the plot but are less critical to the interior life of the husband’s character. His conflict is totally externalized. Noteworthy is the success of both Ruthless People and Fatal Attraction; both are well structured, compelling screenplays, but they do not have that additional layer, the background story, that involves the audience in a complex relationship with the main character. Other examples of screen stories that are all foreground include Blind Date, Risky Business, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Back to the Future.
Screen stories that allude to the main character’s interior life, but for all intents and purposes are foreground treatments, include Black Rain, The Accused, Presumed Innocent, Some Kind of Wonderful, Valmont, and Ghost. In these screen stories, the effort at creating an interior conflict for the main character can confuse the viewer. In the cases of Black Rain, Presumed Innocent, and Valmont, the unfulfilled promise of greater complexity from the character eventually undermines the effectiveness of the foreground story. In The Accused, Some Kind of Wonderful, and Ghost, the main characters aren’t complex; they are young innocents. The audience doesn’t expect complex inner lives; consequently, these characterizations don’t undermine the foreground stories.
A number of films do, however, try to introduce a modest background story that adds a layer to the story but does not derail the foreground story. These stories are primarily genre stories that are heavily plot dependent; thus, the effort put toward background story is surprising, yet in each case, the script is strengthened by the effort.
John Bishop’s The Package is the story of a U.S.–Soviet military plot to assassinate Gorbachev and/or the U.S. president to promote a continuation of the Cold War. The cold warriors hire an assassin, a former covert military man (Tommy Lee Jones). The subversive plot, headed by an army colonel (John Heard), is organized with the help of top military officials on both sides. An army sergeant, Gallagher (Gene Hackman), is used as a dupe for the plot. But he doesn’t want to be the victim of a traitorous plot, and he doesn’t want to endanger all those close to him. In the end, he thwarts the assassination attempt and saves the day.
The Package has an elaborate, intelligent plot, but it is the background story that strengthens the film. Quietly, the sergeant’s story is about the old-fashioned virtues of military life—the camaraderie, the loyalty, and the effectiveness. These virtues are undermined by the colonel’s subversive political agenda. The sergeant doesn’t want to get enmeshed in political scheming, he simply wants to be a good soldier, and, in the end, he is. But it requires disobedience and unlawful behavior and individual initiative—the very opposite of the values the military instilled in him. The background story follows his struggle with these contradictions.
The Package is a thriller, whereas Striking Distance is a police story. In the police story, there is a crime, and the plot chronicles the ensuing investigation until the crime is resolved and the criminal is apprehended. The background story in Striking Distance is about family values. Rowdy Hernington and Martin Kaplan have written a story about a Pittsburgh detective, Thomas Hardy (Bruce Willis), whose testimony indicts his partner and cousin for brutality. The result is that Hardy’s colleagues on the police force shun him. The subsequent suicide of his partner and death of his father (also a policeman) in a high-speed chase, with Hardy at the wheel, lead Hardy to leave the force for the River Police, a demotion.
The foreground story concerns the hunt for a sadistic killer of women, all of whom were associated with Hardy. Through both phases of his career, in homicide and in the River Police, Hardy contends that the killer is a former policeman. The interesting background story about duty and family is played out effectively, because one of the accused is Hardy’s cousin. His father and his uncle are career police officers, and, clearly, Hardy hopes to be a career police officer as well. The problem that divides the family and provides the background story is the role of his partner and cousin, Joey. Will Joey’s father cover up the fact that his son is a criminal? And how should Hardy respond to the criminality of his partner and cousin? The choice between duty and family becomes the subtext and the background story.
Finally, we turn to a situation comedy, a genre that is also plot driven. Gary Ross’s Dave is the story of Dave (Kevin Kline), a man who looks identical to the president of the United States. When the president, a self-serving political ne’er-do-well, has a stroke, Dave is recruited to act as his stand-in. Dave is decent and generous; even the president’s wife notices how different the “president” has become. What will the fate of the nation be at the hands of Dave? Clearly, it’s going to be better. But can Dave get away with this deception? This is the plot of the film.
The background story of Dave relates to the values the president should stand for. Should they be the idealistic, positive, Capra-esque values, or should they be modern, cynical, and self-serving? The background story provides a layer to the mistaken-identity plot of Dave and makes it far more meaningful to the audience. This is precisely the benefit in adding a background story. The Package, Striking Distance, and Dave are foreground-intensive stories, which are strengthened by the modest addition of an effective background story.
A Case Study of the Primacy of the Foreground Story: Music Box
Joe Eszterhas’s Music Box is the story of a Hungarian-American accused of war crimes during World War II. If convicted, he will be stripped of his American citizenship. The majority of the story takes place in Chicago and pivots around the hearing during which Michael Lazlo (Armin Mueller-Stahl) is accused of lying on his American immigration application. He is specifically accused of being a Hungarian policeman who cruelly aided and abetted the deportations of Jews from Budapest in 1944. To the end of the film, he denies his complicity.
We enter the story through the eyes of his daughter, Ann Talbot, an attorney played by Jessica Lange. Lazlo asks her to defend him in the hearing. Reluctantly, Ann complies and, in her efforts to defend her father, learns more than she ever wanted to know. Whether she is prepared to deal with his past is her personal dilemma (the background story).
The presentation of the story is very straightforward. In the foreground, the father and daughter are introduced. We see that Ann Talbot is a successful, aggressive lawyer and a good daughter. Then her father is accused of war crimes. He invites his daughter to join him when he goes to see the immigration people. She agrees, already defensive about her father (the background story is introduced), and he asks her to defend him. Other characters are introduced—Ann’s son, her ex-husband, her ex-father-in-law, the prosecuting lawyer, and her female assistant. The investigation begins, followed by the hearing, which includes a number of witnesses, survivors of the Holocaust, principally women. The hearing concludes in Budapest.
Throughout the story, Ann learns more facts that challenge her view of her father (the background story). Ann continues to function as a good lawyer, despite the credibility of the eyewitnesses. However, when her assistant turns up information about her father’s finances, she begins to learn about his past associates. Finally, she pieces together the truth. Having gotten her father acquitted (the resolution of the foreground story), she is faced with a personal dilemma—to allow the acquittal to stand or to reveal what she has learned about her father. This is the moment of truth and the moment of resolution of the background story. Family solidarity or moral justice, which should she choose? As his daughter, her choice is that much more difficult to make, but in the end she turns against her father.
The foreground story in Music Box is elaborate and well plotted. The impact of the foreground story resolution is strengthened by the background story. The daughter’s inner life—her view of herself as a daughter, and the solidarity and strength that comes from being a member of this immigrant family—is challenged by the choice she has to make. In Music Box, the foreground story is dominant, but the existence of the background story strengthens the screen story and results in a greater emotional resonance for both foreground and background.
A Case Study of Subversion of the Foreground Story: Homicide
Homicide, written by David Mamet, is on one level a classic police story. Police stories tend to be plot intensive—crime, investigation, and apprehension. The story ends when the police officer or detective finds, takes into custody, or kills the bank robber or serial killer who has been the center of the investigation.
David Mamet is very taken up with the confused identity of his main character. Can one be both a police officer and a Jew? This is at the heart of the background story. Mamet builds up the background story as if it is another plot—the murder of an elderly Jewish storekeeper and the subsequent investigation. Nevertheless, its resolution is not at all clear in the way the foreground story is resolved. Indeed, the background story, with its overlay of Jewish terrorists, a neo-Nazi organization, and the effort to get Detective Gold (Joe Montegna), all but makes us forget about the foreground story. Gold suffers losses—his partner, his own well being—in expediting the foreground plot, which follows a murder investigation. Nevertheless, his confusion about his own Jewishness seems to supersede all other elements of the story. At the end, Gold is lost because he doesn’t know who he is. The background story has posed a problem for him, and his failure to find an answer subverts resolution of the background story and makes us all but dismiss the plot, its resolution, and its importance in the narrative.
A Case Study of Moving Toward a Greater Background Story: Q & A
There are particular genres where the plot is more critical than is the character layer or background story. The audience expects war, science fiction, and horror films to be plot driven. This is particularly true in gangster films; Scarface is a good example, whereas The Godfather is exceptional in its attempt to balance the foreground (plot) and background (character layer) stories. However, Q & A, written by Sidney Lumet, turns our expectations of the genre upside down. In Q & A, the background story (character layer) is more prominent and important than is the foreground story (plot).
The foreground story of Q & A is the investigation, by the district attorney’s office, of a killing. A policeman, Mike Brennan (Nick Nolte), has shot and killed a Puerto Rican drug dealer in what he claims is self-defense. The investigation is commissioned by Quinn (Patrick O’Neal), the head of the department. Quinn assigns O’Reilly (Timothy Hutton), a recent law school graduate, to the case. O’Reilly, who has just joined the office, was a policeman and is the son of a policeman. This will be his first case.
The foreground story follows O’Reilly’s investigation. He is assigned two police detectives to assist in what appears to be a straightforward investigation. But the investigation doesn’t prove to be so straightforward. The dead man’s boss, Bobby (Armand Assante), suggests that Brennan killed not in self-defense but in cold blood.
The story is further complicated by the fact that Bobby’s wife is a woman that O’Reilly used to live with and who suddenly left him. Other complications are the loyalties that develop along lines of race, color, and culture. The case becomes even more complicated when the Mafia becomes involved. Finally, Brennan starts killing witnesses, and the plot—the killings and their investigation—accelerates. Can anyone stop this rogue cop? And will O’Reilly, the main character, come to appreciate the motive, which is racial hatred, rather than the pursuit of justice? In the end, Brennan and Quinn are implicated in the killings. The simple case of defensible homicide has become more complex; indeed, the extent of the killing defies rational explanation.
This foreground story provides the action line for a story that is more interior than it first appears. The background story that gradually unfolds is a story of prejudice and the hatred born of that prejudice. Q & A is populated by five ethnic groups—Puerto Ricans, Irish, blacks, Jews, and Italians. Each group is very loyal to its own members. Therefore, positioning O’Reilly, the main character, against Brennan, one of his own, immediately forces the main character to make a choice—be true to his own at all costs or go against his own. This is how Brennan and Quinn put his options to him. However, this particular conflict isn’t as strong as that behind the reason O’Reilly’s wife, Nancy, left him the night she first introduced him to her father. She had never told him, nor could he have guessed from her appearance, that her father was black. She saw his prejudice at that moment, and she left him. Seeing her again, O’Reilly is faced with his own prejudice.
The central conflict for O’Reilly is whether he can look beyond race and color to the person and situation, or whether he will remain prejudiced. The background story is rife with prejudice. Every group expresses hatred toward the other four groups, and their hatred is evidenced in language and in action. Simultaneously, the pressure within each group is to support the other members of the group, even if one member of that group is a criminal and another is a cop. Other cultures are present as well—the police culture, the criminal culture, and the transsexual culture. In each case, group solidarity and opposition to other groups are not just registered, they are demanded by members of the group.
Because of the dilemma faced by the main character, the story becomes not so much the story of a criminal investigation (foreground) as it is a study of a system choking on prejudice and hate (background). Can the individual maintain his nationality, humanity, and morality in such a system? There are no easy answers, and, as a result, the screen story ends posing more questions than it answers. But it does stir many emotions, principally because the background story is so powerful. In contrast, the outcome of the foreground story, the death of Brennan, is neither satisfying nor cathartic. The background story has displaced the foreground story in relative importance.
Case Studies of the Writer Elevating the Background Story: The Fabulous Baker Boys and Flesh and Bone
Steve Kloves has written two films, The Fabulous Baker Boys and Flesh and Bone, in which the interior life of the main character dominates the narrative. In the first film, a musician (Jeff Bridges) is passive relative to his business-minded brother and partner (Beau Bridges). Their music career is flagging, but when the business-minded brother decides to hire a female singer, their career improves. Two problems arise: as the passive brother is an inveterate womanizer, he falls for the woman (Michelle Pfeiffer); meanwhile, his career is a creative dead end. He does not have the self-confidence to pursue the jazz career he desires. When the story ends, he has broken off with his brother, the singer leaves him, and he may or may not pursue jazz.
In Flesh and Bone, a son (Arlis, Dennis Quaid) has a murky past. As a boy, the son helped his father, Roy (James Caan), burglarize farms in Texas. The story opens with a burglary gone wrong. The result is the killing of three of the farm occupants; only a baby girl lives. Twenty years later, the boy, now a man, is a small businessman in Texas. He keeps to himself. A woman enters his life (Meg Ryan), and later we discover she is the young baby who survived the killing. Arlis’s father comes back, too, and on finding out about the girl’s past, Roy wants to kill her. Despite his love for the girl, Arlis struggles with what he should do. In the end, he rescues her and kills his father. Whether he will take up with her and be happy is left unsaid.
Steve Kloves has chosen two main characters who are extremely interior and has placed them in stories with very little narrative. The background stories each have to do with individual vs. family obligation. How much should the individual give up on behalf of family? Should they give up creative aspiration, ethical consideration, and happiness? It’s as if neither main character can be truly happy, and the background stories in each film provide one last chance at happiness. The attitude of these films is that of film noir, but the form is melodramatic with the parent/brother standing in as the power and the son/brother standing in as the transgressor.
In both The Fabulous Baker Boys and Flesh and Bone, Steve Kloves elevates the background story over the importance of foreground, and the result is a unique choice for character over plot at a time when plot over character dominates commercial screenwriting.
A Case Study of the Background Story: Moonstruck
John Patrick Shanley’s Moonstruck is a good example of a background screen story. In the foreground, Loretta (Cher) is a mid-30s Italian-American who is about to marry for the second time. She agrees to marriage despite her lack of passion for her husband-to-be. Her husband-to-be (Danny Aiello) asks her to invite his estranged brother (Nicolas Cage) to the wedding, as he is flying to Sicily to tend to his dying mother. Loretta falls in love with the brother, and her passion is revived. Although everyone around her is looking for passion, Loretta finds it and keeps it.
The background story focuses on Loretta’s pivotal search for passion. Her father, mother, aunt, and uncle, even an unknown NYU professor, all seek the same state—to be moonstruck. Loretta achieves this state by moving from a passionless relationship with one brother (Aiello) to a totally passionate relationship with the other (Cage). It is Cage, with his focus on opera (intense passion) and extreme emotions (love for Loretta and hate for his brother), who is the primary catalyst for Loretta.
Shanley is much more interested in exploring the state of being moonstruck (the background story) than he is in weaving an elaborate plot. Consequently, we have a very simple foreground story and a consistent meditation among each of the characters on the issue of the background story (being moonstruck). What is surprising about the story is the amount of feeling it generates, which is due to the appeal of the background story. It is very much like a fairy tale. Shanley wishes everyone could experience being moonstruck. It is interesting that director Norman Jewison has chosen “That’s Amore,” performed by Dean Martin, as the theme song. Could he be more direct about the background story?
Like Moonstruck, Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love and David Mamet’s Things Change also have dominant background stories, favoring the characters’ interior lives over their actions. Noteworthy is the fact that all three films are written by playwrights. Indeed, Shanley, Shepard, and Mamet were probably three of the most interesting writers for both stage and film during the 1980s. We can look at the screen work of other playwrights—Paddy Chayefsky ( The Hospital, Network ), Peter Shaffer ( Amadeus ), and Herb Gardner ( A Thousand Clowns )—and note that, in all cases, the background story is of great importance in their respective works.
“The Moment” and Subtext
As might be expected, stories with little foreground are accused of having no action, whereas stories that are all foreground are accused of having no character. The type of story that balances foreground and background offers the opportunity for both action and character. Harnessing the interplay of action and character, however, poses a very particular problem for the writer. To set up action and character, particularly characters with an interior dilemma, requires a strategy that we call “the moment.” The moment is the point at which we join the screen story. Needless to say, there are thousands of points at which we can join a story or enter a character’s life. The moment we refer to, however, is the point that launches us into the story in a gripping fashion.
For example, we join The Apartment at the moment when C.C. Baxter has so overcommitted his apartment that he is crowded out and has to sleep on a park bench instead of his bed. Clearly, the use of the apartment by corporate executives is out of hand. Does he want a personal life or not? In Moonstruck, we join the story at the point when Loretta receives a marriage proposal. The engagement sets into motion the events that follow and illustrates the lovelessness in Loretta’s life, despite her being engaged. The moment in Something Wild is the point when Charles meets Lulu. She has accused him of stealing, and he is already on the defensive. The moment in Mystic Pizza is Jo’s wedding. She faints, and the wedding is called off. The rest of the story has to do with three young women and their quest for either marriage or independence. The moment, then, can be called the critical moment, for in each case mentioned, the moment presents the character in a crisis. It highlights the nature of her dilemma and places the viewer right in the middle of the main character’s quandary.
Important to note is that no background or insight into the main character is necessary to interpret the problem. We may not fully understand yet why the main character behaves as she does, but we soon will. The problem has been put forth, and we are curious as to how it will be resolved. Will Baxter opt for a personal life? Will Loretta be happy when she marries Jerry? Will Jo ever marry? In each case, the answer is yes or no. When the question posed during “the moment” is answered, the screen story is over. The moment, then, is critical in that it positions a main character in an untenable situation, given her interior life. The character’s preferences become clear as the story unfolds, but the moment is used to intensify the character’s tension and quickly involve us in the screen story.
A Case Study of “The Moment”: My Beautiful Laundrette
My Beautiful Laundrette is about Omar (Roshan Seth), who thinks of himself as a Briton, but the British think of him as a Pakistani. He is both and neither. The story begins—and this is the moment—when Omar tells his father he is dropping out of school and going to work for his father’s brother, Nasser, whom his father thinks is a barbarian. Nasser puts Omar to work in a car wash, but Omar has other plans; he wants to be a businessman on his own. He talks Nasser into allowing him to take over one of his laundrettes. Located in a poor British neighborhood, this laundrette is destined for failure. But Omar has a strategy. He brings on a local boy named Johnny, a former classmate and lover, to help.
Johnny’s fellow thugs feel that one of their own has betrayed them and gone over to the enemy. It is only a matter of time until the laundrette is subverted by the new colonialism—the Pakistanis as imperialists and the Brits as the new natives. Who is the colonized and who is the colonizer is very much at the heart of Hanif Kureishi’s screen story.
The plot line, a young man’s embrace of capitalism and its swift kick back, isn’t very revealing or gripping, but the background story, Pakistani or Briton, is a critical internal issue, not only for Omar, but for all the other characters as well. All characters, including Nasser and Johnny, contemplate their identity. Nasser challenges his marriage by keeping a British mistress; Johnny challenges his friends by taking a Pakistani employer and lover. All three characters— Omar, Nasser, and Johnny—challenge the status quo and suffer for it in varying degrees. Nasser loses his mistress, Johnny loses his friends, and Omar loses his laundrette. However, in the end, Omar and Johnny are two outsiders taking solace in each other.
The moment unfolds two options—Omar will either succeed or fail. When one outcome occurs, the screen story is over. Although the screen story becomes somewhat more layered, the story ends with Omar’s failure as a Brit. However, his British identity is replaced by another identity—his homosexuality—thereby leaving Omar as Pakistani but capable of a loving relationship with a Brit. The resolution is not a failure for the main character; rather, it is a success, as he has found a new, different, and more complex identity. The outcome was considerably more positive than was anticipated. The vitality of My Beautiful Laundrette derives from the inner lives of these characters (the background story). The use of the moment helps to involve us at a critical point, particularly in the life of Omar. The result is a screen story with considerable subtext.
The purpose served by the moment is to propel the story toward conflict and dramatic action. The character pits himself against prevailing expectations, thus situating himself in both the foreground and the background stories. The objective is to begin the character-intensive story in a compelling manner. Characters, as they are introduced, present the issue in a surprising fashion. The result is that the background story is fleshed out fully, whereas the foreground story is no more than a continuing device.
A Case Study of Subtext: “Lust Caution”
For James Schamus one of the writers of Ang Lee’s “Lust Caution” (2007), the film was their second co-venture into Chinese language filmmaking, the first being “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”. Both films have a vigorous plot that is used to mask a subtext particularly focused on the actions of their female main characters.
In “Lust, Caution”, the main character is Wong Chai Chi. She is a freshman at Lingman University in 1938 when invited to join a patriotic drama club. In this second year of the Sino-Japanese war, there is clear pressure in the society, to choose sides. A Chinese Collaborationist government working for the Japanese already exists.
For Wong whose father and brother have left for England, the drama club offers companionship and a chance to be close to Kuang, its charismatic leader. Putting on plays is not enough. He suggests they would make a greater patriotic statement if they assassinated Mr. Yee, an official of the collaborationist government. He enlists Wong to be the bait. To assure Wong is the married woman she pretends to be Kuang enlists their only sexually experienced member to initiate the virginal Wong. He himself remains chaste as does their mutual interest in one another.
The attempt fails in Hong Kong. Kuang revives the plan in 1942 Shanghai this time with professional supervision from the Resistance. Wong’s relationship with Mr. Yee progresses and a plan is developed to kill Mr. Yee at a jeweler’s shop where he has had a ring created for Wong.
Wong cannot go through with the assassination. In the shop she urges Mr. Yee to “go now”. He does. The would-be assassins including Wong are arrested and executed.
To this point the story has been about a young woman wishing to join in political action. Whether she does so to be close to Kuang, is implied rather than enacted. And it is clear, at least in the Hong Kong phase of the deception that Wong fully intends to see the plot through to a successful conclusion. In Shanghai however, to prove herself trustworthy to the rightly cautious Mr. Yee, she allows herself to get lost in the sexual relationship with him. And in getting lost, a feeling she fully confesses to her superiors, she wins Mr. Yee over. He is as lost as she is in the relationship.
In saving Mr. Yee, the subtext of the story becomes manifest, lust and sexual desire trumps all things rational—commitment to politics, to her drama club colleagues, to Kuang. She knows this means her own death and the death of her colleagues. Schamus and Lee add a codicil so as not to hang this outcome on women alone. As the narrative ends we see Mr. Yee also will pay a price for getting lost in a relationship. His deputy tells him he wavered in his commitment to his collaborationist cause. He will not be trusted in the future.
Conclusion
Screen stories can exist without subtext, but if the scriptwriter wants to tell a story that involves the inner life of the main character, the story must have subtext. To illuminate the subtext, the foreground story (the action line) must interweave with a background story. The degree of subtext is influenced by genre and by the writer’s disposition toward action or character. It should be clear to the scriptwriter that subtext evolves in tandem with character. The writer should look for events that define character. If external events involve relationships, a subtext beyond plot is an option for the writer. The result can be a more emotionally satisfying experience for the viewer.