Lost Love 101

“I wanted to bottle the pain of standing in a parking lot next to a Piggly Wiggly and having your heart broken.”
Writer director Jeff Nichols on his film Mud 

When a man loves a woman, he can’t keep his mind on nothing else
He’ll trade the world for the good thing he’s found
If she is bad, he can’t see it, she can do no wrong
When a Man Loves a Woman
Lyrics by Calvin Lewis and  Andrew Wright and recorded by Percy Sledge in Sheffield, Alabama

Over the weekend I saw in theaters the movies Mud and The Great Gatsby, and afterwards I realized they were connected. Though the timeframes are decades part, the settings totally different,  and the socio-economics worlds apart—the films are connected by this universal and timeless thing known as love. At the story core of Mud and The Great Gatsby is the desire for a man to re-connect with a woman he loves.

You could do a whole film class called “Lost Love 101.” I’m sure Casablanca wasn’t the first film to touch on lost love, but it’d be a good place to start.

“Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world…she walks into mine.”
Rick (Humphrey Bogart)
1943 Oscar-winning Best Picture Casablanca 

I don’t have any idea how many movies throughout film history revolve around lost love, but I do know last year that I walked away from seeing Django Unchained and Silver Linings Playbook realizing that the story spines were also about men trying to get back a lost love. One thing that shows you is that there is no end to the simple single concept of a man trying to find a lost love. There’s always room for different characters in different parts of the world taking a concept as old as love itself and giving audiences new experiences. (I think I’ll start a movie list about a men or a women trying to retrieve lost love. Place in comments or email me your favorites.)

In memory of the great country singer George Jones, I should mention no class on lost love would be complete without his song He Stopped Loving Her Today. The song, written by Bobby Braddock and Curly Putnam , is considered one of the greatest country songs ever. Alan Jackson sang it last week at the close of  George Jones’ funeral.

P.S. Some have said that George Jones was the model for the character Max Sledge in Tender Mercies written by Horton Foote. A role that brought Robert Duvall an Oscar. Tender Mercies is a film by the way that 35-year-old Jeff Nichols referenced in one of his interviews about Mud. Just one big connected world.

Related Posts:
The Django—Silver Linings Connection
4o Days of Emotions

Scott W. Smith

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Writing Quote #38 (Jorge Luis Borges)

“What I have read is far more important than what I have written. For one reads what one likes—yet one writes not one would like to write but what one is able to write.“
Jorge Luis Borges
This Craft of Verse
H/T What 50-Famous Authors Want Us to Know about the Writing Process

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Writing Quote #36 (George Orwell)

“All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.”
George Orwell
Why I Write

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Wes Anderson on Theme

Since I’ve written the last few posts (and many over the years) about screenwriters and filmmakers who either start with theme, or how theme plays an important part of the stories they tell, here’s a Wes Anderson quote showing how creative people often take a 180 degree approach to what other people are doing:

“If somebody asks me about the themes of something I’m working on, I never have any idea what the themes are…. Somebody tells me the themes later. I sort of try to avoid developing themes. I want to just keep it a little bit more abstract. But then, what ends up happening is, they say, ‘Well, I see a lot here that you did before, and it’s connected to this other movie you did,’ and…that almost seems like something I don’t quite choose. It chooses me.”
Writer/director Wes Anderson (Rushmore, Moonrise Kingdom)
Elvis Mitchell interview on KCRW’s The Treatment (H/T nofilmschool)

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Lawrence Konner on Theme

“The more you can find a theme that unites the plot and the character and think about that theme as you’re writing, the better off you’ll be determining the story’s structure.

Taxi Driver, is a brilliant example of this. A theme to that movie would be alienation leading to violence. You pick a character who you want to be alienated. Well, what better place to put somebody alienated than New York City? And then what better job to give them than taxi cab driver, sort of interacting with people all day and yet not?

There’s no rule as to whether a character comes before the theme, but they both have to be there. Setting should support the theme, character should support the theme, and the story should support the theme. And the theme should be an active one. Generally, you think of a story first, something that interests you. Then, you have to think about what theme you want to support because otherwise, I think you get lost.”
Screenwriter Lawrence Konner (Boardwalk Empire, Mona Lisa Smile, Planet of the Apes—2001)
On Screenwriting

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Theme = What Your Movie is Really About

“Theme is the most important element of a good screenplay. It’s the driving intention behind the film. It’s the message that the writer is trying to get across to the audience which, when effectively communicated, satisfies them, emotionally and analytically, and makes them feel they’ve just watched a good film. It is, in a single sentence, what the movie is really all about.”
Three-time Emmy award-winning writer/producer Jeffrey Scott
The Importance of Theme in Screenwriting

Related Post: Writing from Theme (Tip #20)

P.S. I never seem to get tired of finding these quotes about theme and emotions. If you have some favorite quotes on those subjects please send them my way.

Scott W. Smith

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Theme = Story’s Heart & Soul

“Theme is not only the spine and core of your movie but the Heart and Soul of your story. It’s the moral and lesson of your story that gives your screen or teleplay universal meaning. Ultimately, it’s what unifies your story and makes it emotionally significant. It’s your ‘voice’ – it’s what you want to say. Stories teach us how to be human through symbolic experiences…..I think the most important and effective way to illustrate theme is through your main character. Theme is expressed through your main character’s transformational arc during the journey. How do you show this transformation? To express transformation, the need for transformation has to be established – hence the Character FLAW. Remember this: Theme is the opposite of the character’s flaw. 
Tawnya Bhattacharya (writer on USA Network’s Fairly Legal and the blog Script Anatomy)
Script Shadow Interview

Related posts:

Writing from Theme (Tip #20)

More Thoughts on Theme

Michael Arndt on Theme

Character Flaw #101 (Tip #30)

Writing Quote #22 (Dara Marks)

Scott W. Smith

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Michael Arndt on Theme

“Winning takes care of everything.”
Tiger Woods quote and now controversial Nike ad

“It took me time to realize plot, characters and all that were important, but it really had to be about something.”
Carl Foreman

“I read a lot of comedy screenplays and the disappointing thing—the reason most of them don’t work is because they’re not about anything. If your story isn’t about anything—or your character just wants a pretty girl and a bag of money then it’s not going to add up to anything. It may be funny—but most comedies are funny in the first act, they’re funny in the second act, and then they either get sappy and sentimental in the third act or they just fall apart. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted Little Miss Sunshine to have a climax at the end. One of thing things that was an impetus to write the script is I remember reading this interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger where he was talking to a group of high school students—high school students—and he said, ‘If there’s one thing in this world that I hate it’s losers. I despise them.’ And I thought there is just something so wrong with that attitude. That there is something so demeaning and insulting about referring about anyone as a loser. I wanted to attack that idea that in life you’re either going up or you’re going down, you know, it’s all about status and impressing other people… It’s this winner take all society where one person is going to get the million dollars and everyone else is a loser, and I just despise that mentality. And so I wanted to just totally attack it….And to a degree a child’s beauty pageant is the epitome of the ultimate, meaningless competition that people put themselves through.”
Screenwriter Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine, Toy Story 3)
2007 talk at Cody’s Books 

Related posts:
Writing from Theme (Tip #20)
Sidney Lumet on Theme
Eric Roth on Theme and Loneliness
William Froug on Theme
Aaron Sorkin on Theme, Intention & Obstacles
Diane Frolov & The Theme Zone
Coppola Vs. Serling

Scott W. Smith

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“Film as Art”—Michael Arndt

“One of my favorite films is LATE SPRING by Yasujiro Ozu. To me, it represents film as art.”
Michael Arndt
Interview with Writer Michael Arndt (Toy Story 3)

Related post: Screenwriting from Japan

Scott W. Smith

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Hollywood=Factory Town

“In many ways, though, my life has remained much as it was in 2000. I still rent the same one-bedroom walk-up in Brooklyn, and I still spend my days sitting in a chair and staring at a computer (though the chair is more comfortable and the computer is nicer). The main difference is I don’t worry about having to get a day job. (Not yet, anyway).”
Screenwriter Michael Ardnt
(Writing in 2006 soon after the release of Little Miss Sunshine)

“I live in New York, I still rent an apartment in New York, and I taught myself to write living in New York. There is a tiny, tiny little industry there where I can be reading scripts there, but the idea of going to Los Angeles and being a struggling screenwriter in Los Angeles—I just couldn’t do it. It was just too much for me to take. And in a way, I don’t think I would have written Little Miss Sunshine if I’d been living in Los Angeles, just because it’s such a factory town, you know. I hesitated for a long time to write this movie just because I knew it’s such an odd and idiosyncratic movie—and so low budget, and so small scale—that it didn’t seem like anybody was going to be interested in making it. And I think you just internalize the values of that environment. I’m going to move back to New York after I finish with Pixar [writing Toy Story 3] and I hope I stay there. 
Oscar-winning screenwriter Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine)
2007 talk at Cody’s Books (Before he won his Oscar and before Toy Story 3 was released)

Related Post:

Hollywood Hacks & Shipwrecks
The Outsider Advantage
One Benefit of Being Outside of Hollywood
Why You Shouldn’t Move to L.A.
What’s it Like to Be a Struggling Writer in L.A.

Scott W. Smith

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