Chapter 40

Endings

Whether your lovers end up happily ever after or torn apart is entirely up to you. At the end of this book I have included a list of my own favorite 100 love story films, and in about 40 percent of them, the lovers are parted by various things. Casablanca has Rick sacrificing his own love for the greater good, as he puts Ilsa on that plane. Gone With the Wind has Rhett Butler walking away with the famous, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

The meaning of the story, the point of it, is the writer’s domain. And the last word comes at the end. It is important that you recognize the significance of this few hundred words and make them count.

Would Gone With the Wind have been as good a movie and as huge a hit, if Rhett at the last minute had thrown down his coat and thrown down Scarlett? Probably. The important thing in this case is that the protagonist, Scarlett O’Hara, learned what love was. Grew. Changed. Figured out what it meant to love another human being, not for her own selfish, foolish ego but for himself. To love him more than herself. And she did that. She made the leap from Level One to Level Two in character evolution. Whether she gets her man or loses him or gets him back tomorrow, because tomorrow is another day, is not the point. The point is that now she is a person who is capable of loving. She loves. Job done.

If Rick had thrown down Ilsa at the end of Casablanca and run off with her, you never would have heard of this movie. Because the protagonist’s (Rick’s) character growth was to be able to love and to choose a higher calling. He moves up to Level Four, Community. And to fall back to Level Two, Bonding, at the end would have been selfish and sad and a failure of the heart.

In other words, the important thing is the love and a character’s growth in terms of love. What we are after here is big emotion. Whether your audience sheds a tear of joy or tears of heartbreak or laughs with delight, they need to feel it here and it’s your job to create that emotional response.

One of the tricks that screenwriters know is that there is a rule of physics in which the number of words spoken counterbalances the level of emotion elicited in a scene. The more words said, the less emotion felt. The fewer the words, the more the emotion. If someone is completely overwhelmed by emotion, he/she can’t speak at all. If she is chattering away, she’s not feeling much. You can raise the level of the emotions simply by cutting down the words.

I wrote a play a few years ago with Marc Acito called Holidazed in which a soccer mom of three brings a homeless street teen home for the holidays, throwing her family into chaos. At the end of Act One her husband is furious and asks her why she did it. In the first draft this is her response: “She was cold and hungry and pregnant, I thought. She needed a mother and guess what. I am a mother. Maybe not the best mother but not the worst either. This I know how to do.”

In the final produced version of the scene she says less. “She was cold and hungry and she needed a mother and guess what. I am a mother. This I know how to do.”

Do you feel how the emotion is higher here with no new words added? The actress would tear up every night on “This I know how to do.” Fewer words. More emotion. Try this on your own drafts.

I actually learned this rule by watching it smashed to bits by the remake of Sabrina (1995) with Harrison Ford and Julia Ormond. At the end Sabrina goes off to Paris. Linus follows her there and they have a reunion scene on the street at night. And before they kiss, 190 words are spoken. Seriously. They say things like, “How did you know where to find me?” and, “How can I trust you?” And things like, “I thought it was all a lie.” And, “I don’t know how to believe you.” And “Because you know me better than anyone else. I think you know I love you.” And then her voice-over in the middle of the scene starts telling a fairy tale beginning with “Once upon a time.” Yikes! “Life was pleasant there and very, very simple.” You can almost take a little nap before the kiss finally happens. If she had looked up and seen him and they’d walked into each other’s arms without a single word, this would have been a better movie.

Sometimes we can have our cake and eat it too. At the end of Titanic, after we have cried because Jack died and Rose blew the whistle and lived, the 102-year-old Rose falls asleep and becomes young Rose again on the most beautiful ship ever built, climbing the grand staircase into Jack’s arms.

This is a bit of a nod to The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, as she dies at the end and is finally united with her captain and they walk into the light to live happily forever and ever after.

The best scene in The Bridges of Madison County (1995, Richard LaGravanese adapting Robert James Waller’s novel) is near the end when Francesca (Meryl Streep) is in the pickup truck with her husband and she sees her love Robert Kincaid (Clint Eastwood) driving away in his truck and he wants her to run away with him and she wants to so badly. As their truck stops behind his at a red light, her hand grips the truck door handle and she almost makes it, but can’t do it. Heartbreaking. No words necessary.

If you work with all four elements of great love stories, it will be clear to you how yours should end. If the buildup is right, the Throwdown is inevitable. Or the heartbreak.

Think about what you want to say to the world about love. Then say it here.

FADE OUT.