Chapter 31

Multi-Tasking

Screenwriters understand that it’s always better to have a scene accomplish more than one thing. It’s far better to have one scene in which three storylines move forward or one story moves forward three times, than to have three separate scenes with only one thing accomplished in each.

So for example, if you’re writing a contemporary high school version of Cinderella, you could have one scene that shows Courtney (nobody is actually named Cinderella any more) working at a fast-food franchise, treated badly, looking a mess, making minimum wage, and everything is going wrong. Poor girl.

And another scene where her stepsisters are mean to her.

And a third scene where she has a cute meet with Preston. (The “Prince.”)

You could write those three scenes. But wouldn’t it be better to have one scene where Courtney is working at Franks’n’Fries and her sisters come in and are mean to her and she is so flustered she spills a chocolate shake all over a customer who happens to be Preston? See that? The scene is more fun and costs one-third the budget of the other three. The movie seems to be whizzing right along. One of the effects we are going for.

So when writing a screenplay that includes a love story, and needs to accomplish four main tasks (The Meet, The Crack, The Obstacle, and Why You?), sometimes, it’s just good story telling to multitask and cover a few of these all at once.

Let’s take a look at some examples.

Moonstruck

Written by John Patrick Shanley, 1987, this is a good example of the combo one-two punch approach I’m recommending. When Loretta meets Ronny Cammareri, Shanley covers all four items on our list in one great scene.

The Meet: Loretta (Cher) seeks out Ronny (Nicolas Cage) where he works, in the basement kitchen of an Italian bakery in New York City, to tell him that—

The Obstacle: Loretta has just become engaged to Ronny’s older brother, Johnny.

The Crack: Ronny has a gaping emotional and physical wound. He is angry and bitter and hates his brother. He has lost a hand in a bread slicing accident he blames on Johnny. After it happened, his fiancée left him for another man. He feels like he is in hell, surrounded by fires. The fires are real, as he bakes bread in open-fire ovens for a living. Loretta falls right into his open wound of pain. A huge crack. Watch closely. At the end of the scene, when Ronny walks away, Loretta follows him as if an invisible cord has tied them together.

Why You?: Loretta is the Sleepwalker. She is still grieving for her first husband who died, leaving her a widow far too young. She wears black clothes, a premature granny bun hairdo, and even has gray in her hair. She has settled for an engagement to a man who is completely wrong for her. Johnny Cammareri is a weakling and a mama’s boy. When his mother in the old country found out he was engaged, she immediately feigned a heart attack, pulling Johnny back into her grasp, emotionally blackmailing him, and ultimately preventing him from marrying. (See Chapter 36, The Alternative is Impossible.) Loretta thinks her life is over, so a marriage to Johnny is better than growing old alone.

Surprisingly, Ronny, with his wooden hand and surrounded by his own personal fires of hell, is a Life Force character. He has passion (even if it’s misguided) and rage and he is a fully human man, shirtless, sweating, hairy, almost an animal, like the wolf who chewed off his paw to escape a trap. He is sexy. He personifies animal sexuality. He is feral. When Loretta suggests that his cutting his hand off wasn’t Johnny’s fault, Ronny slams a flour can across the room, shouting, “I don’t care! I ain’t no freaking monument to justice!” And the effect on Loretta is like a bucket of cold water in the face. He wakes her up.

Symbols: Ronny asks, “What is life? They say bread is life, and I bake bread.” He shoves the dough into the open hearths, fire burning. So bread symbolizes life. And the Italian loaves he bakes are phallic in shape. So sexuality. And creating life. And fire is heat and movement and light. Fire is itself a sustainer of life. And it also, as I mentioned, symbolizes hell for Ronny. Oh and as a result, he’s hot.

You see how much you can accomplish in a single scene if you put your mind to it?

Shall we do another one?

The American President

1995. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin combines all four elements into one fun Cute Meet scene. Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas) is President of the United States. Sydney Ellen Wade (Annette Bening) is a lobbyist working to try to limit fuel emissions to slow Global Warming. She feels strongly about this issue and is also paid to feel that way.

The Cute Meet

They meet in the White House where Sydney is at a meeting with the President’s Chief of Staff, played by Martin Sheen. Sydney blows up and launches into a full-scale rant that goes something like this:

And at this moment Sydney realizes that the President has entered the room behind her. Well, she actually notices this because he says, “Let’s take him out back and beat the shit out of him.”

The Crack

She is humiliated at being caught being disrespectful, insulting the President on her first day on the job, in the White House, a hundred feet from the Oval Office. And he is pretty delighted to see her vulnerable, back-pedaling, apologizing, and miserable.

Why You?

They are pretty undeniably the two smartest people in the room. Twins. Of an age. Successful. Idealistic. Attractive. Powerful. He’s President. She makes a lot more money than he does as a hired gun political analyst. A perfect match.

The Obstacle

He’s the President. Of the United States of America. Sydney has a political agenda that may not click with that. Plus as soon as they are dating and she stays over at the White House, the Press Corps are camped out and the story is front page. And his ratings drop from 65 percent approval to 45 percent. A huge ding. No sitting president has been single and fallen in love in office since Woodrow Wilson married Edith Bolling Galt in 1915. And since President Shepard has a 13-year-old daughter, the Republicans (led by a Cheney-esque Richard Dreyfuss) are all over it, playing the Family Values Card for every drop they can squeeze out of it. So this romantic relationship is not the easiest thing to keep alive and well.

As you work through your screenplay, try to accomplish several of your goals in a single scene. See if it doesn’t make your scenes more lively, more complex, and more fun.