Ever noticed how every Hollywood movie is essentially the same scraggy old lump of meat mouldering under a slightly different gravy? They consist of two plot lines: emotional need and material goal. The emotional need is often the rediscovery of a relationship (e.g. a long lost love, the pet dinosaur you thought had perished as an egg, or your old school mates aged 49). The material goal is a conscious action undertaken by the players (e.g. to rob a bank, to defend your planet against an evil genius, to climb Kilimanjaro aged 50)
Usually, the two plots are cleverly integrated, climaxing at the same moment (heaven help us).
Invariably Act One reveals two or three initiating events, to introduce characters and plot (the boys have a lunch, they decide to climb a mountain to mark their 50ths, A Charidee will benefit).
But Act One always closes with a complicating event.
“I can’t make the climb, but my partner and some of her friends are coming in my place” says JK a little awkwardly.
“That’s cool” says The Ageing Hipster, having missed the first bit.
“Child care issue” says Bobby Backspin
“The good news is there’s women there to keep Gooner D company” says JK
(Not sure if he's trying to sell it to us, or make himself feel better, but Gooner D’s not worried one way or the other).
“Did he really say he’s not coming to his own 50th birthday event, so that his partner and some of her mates can come?” I ask off camera.
“That’s about the long and short of it.” says Gooner D
Hang on a second! Family and friends coming with us is great. Family and friends coming instead of us is just a bit odd. Not even Hollywood’s lowest budgeted, "B"-est of "B" movies would have thought of that one. End of Act One!
Act Two sees the ensemble adjust to these new problems. The emotional need plot reaches its climax, altering the material goal plot (e.g. the little furry animals get lost in the woods as night starts to fall, a distant roll of thunder is heard and it starts to get all scary, they spend the night in a cave and discover a secret world of tiny people, where they are treated as deities. Or the supporting cast decide it won’t be the same without JK, and if he feels he can’t take the time away from the family, which is fair enough, we should find some other way of marking our half century).
By the end of Act Two, the Hollywood plot takes an unexpected twist in order for the material goal to be resolved. (e.g. Earth’s been destroyed by the Lizard Men, but it’s OK, we’ll find a new planet to colonise. Or, Jodie will be a cheerleader, despite having to live in an Oxygen bubble. We’ll just play the match in her hospital ward!).
And then there's the British version. (JK not being there fundamentally misses the point, but sod it, if he can't get this cleared by HQ, we'll just have to go without him! )
And then there's the British version. (JK not being there fundamentally misses the point, but sod it, if he can't get this cleared by HQ, we'll just have to go without him! )
It would be good to get Act Two resolved sooner rather than later, so we can get into Act Three (Will the crime get solved? Will the aliens take over? Will JG manage to sleep in a tent?) Hollywood dictates a secret will be revealed, or some other twist will complicate the material plot one last time. Personally I hope not. In porn parlance, I prefer money shots. I just want to get to the epilogue, that’s the bit where the characters ride off into the sunset, half way up a mountain in Africa.
No comments:
Post a Comment