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SWELL:

A feature-length screenplay set in the world of Australian surfing, and an accompanying exegesis on three-act structure.

By Gerard Lee B.A. (University of Queensland), Dip T. (North Brisbane College of Advanced Education), Writing Certificate

(Australian Film and Television School).

Submitted to Faculty of Creative Industries, Queensland University of Technology

Presented for the Master of Arts Degree (by Research)

2003

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Keywords: Screenplay, surfing, Australian cinema, international cinema, three-act structure in screenplay, one-act structure, post-

modern cinema, Field, Aronson, McKee, Dancyger and Rush

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Abstract: Despite many arguments to the contrary, the three-act story structure, as propounded and refined by Hollywood continues to dominate the blockbuster and independent film markets. Recent successes in post-modern cinema could indicate new directions and opportunities for low-budget national cinemas.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Swell, a feature length screenplay…………… 1 Exegesis……………………………………… 118 Introduction………………………………….. 119 The National Cinema………………………… 122 Structure in the Screenplay…………………... 127 The Structure of Swell………………………... 133 Act I…………………………………………... 137 Act II………………………………………….. 140 Act III…………………………………………. 147 Coda…………………………………………... 149 List of Films Cited…………………………….. 155 List of Works Cited……………………………. 157 (The pages of the screenplay—page 1A to page 117—are exempted from inclusion in the Australian Digital Thesis collection for commercial-in-confidence reasons)

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Authorship: The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted for a degree or diploma at any other institution. The thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made.

Signed:………………..

Dated:………………..

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SWELL

(The pages of the screenplay—page 1A to page 117— are exempted from inclusion in the Australian Digital Thesis collection for

commercial-in-confidence reasons)

Copyright: Gerard Lee. 2003. Queensland University of Technology, Gardens Point. Creative Industries.

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Exegesis

Swell: An account of the use of the three act structure within

the low-budget Australian surfing film

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Introduction

In the early 1980s, a number of film-makers at the Australian Film Television

and Radio School (including myself)—some of whom were to go on to

become significant figures nationally and internationally: Jane Campion, Chris

Noonan, P. J. Hogan, Alex Proyas, Rolfe de Heer, Marc Rosenberg, Jocelyn

Moorhouse—would meet regularly to discuss our scripts and ideas for stories.

At these meetings there was intense discussion around what kind of films we

wanted to make. The debates were chaotic—more passionate than scholarly—

but they were to inform the work of this emerging generation of practitioners

and, to a degree, the direction of the national cinema.

Debate centred around a series of trip-wire binaries: art versus commerce,

national versus international cinema, low-budget versus big-budget, high art

versus popular culture, feminist cyclical narrative versus male, patriarchal,

linear, ‘military-industrial state’ narrative. For some of us, art movies were

written from the heart, or the soul, from an original inspiration and designed to

challenge the emotional and intellectual status quo while commercial movies

were written from a formula, designed to make money.

For me, the intervention that changed the terms of this debate was the

publication in 1981 of Syd Field’s The Screenwriter’s Workbook. A script

reader for the big Hollywood studios, Field introduced a structural approach to

screenwriting. He explained some of the qualities I admired in popular

American film: the satisfactions of story, the dynamics of character, and the

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focus on theme. I became a rabid ‘structuralist’. My colleagues, at the time,

resisted the implications of structuralism but over the subsequent decade all of

them have embraced, to differing degrees, the structure-based approach.

The objection many writers made to the early description of the three act

structure was that it was formulaic. They were affronted that their own

personal visions of character and ideology could be subjugated to a series of

thirty pre-ordained steps. They resisted what they saw as Hollywood's

coercion of their originality into a 'commercial' package. My view and practice

was that the three act structure was not so much a prescription as a tool for

putting forward personal vision. What it requires of the creative writer is to

use it in a fresh way.

This exegesis seeks to reframe structuralist thinking, not as a formula but as a

series of opportunities. I will do this as I account for the accompanying

screenplay, Swell, in relation to two factors. First, I want to historicise this

screenplay within my other work and the national cinema: to place it, by

exploring each phase of concept, realisation and execution, within national

debates and the international pressures and opportunities. What I’ll argue is

that contemporary Australian films can succeed here and in the international

market if they display the structural discipline evident in successful American

independent films. And that American independent film, particularly recent

post-modernist productions which I'll discuss later, provides a potential

template for low-budget film-making in Australia. Second, I want to examine

the structure of Swell as it relates to the similar models outlined by Robert

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McKee, Christopher Vogler, Linda Seger and Linda Aronson. I will comment

on how successful this 'modelling' has been and then, using the work of Ken

Dancyger and Jeff Rush as well as Robert Stam, indicate future directions for

screenplay models, beyond the three acts.

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The National Cinema

In 1970s and 1980s Australian film makers were often torn by divergent

cultural and financial imperatives. Australian cinema at the time was involved

in a cultural project of national identity-making and a process of historical

recovery and revision. As Dermody and Jacka state:

The 'second world' we inhabit is bound to reproduce the first world

(UK and the USA), but needs to assert a measure of independence, of

product differentiation, to market or circulate our reproductions…

Second world countries like Canada and Australia are riddled with

post-colonial ambiguity and anxieties. […] For where do we end and

'the other' begin? Who is the other by which we define our difference,

ensuring ‘us’? Britain? America? […] Our film industry proclaims its

central role in revealing an identity we don't know we have until we

recognise it. (1988a:20)

One of my generation’s aims was to tell contemporary stories with political or

social significance relating to our national identity. (This was reinforced by the

policies of the AFC.)

The national cinema has been defined in different ways, each of them

shedding some light on an unstable and dynamic field. But all of them share

the same concern. Where does our national cinema fit into the international

scene? Tom O’Regan in Australian National Cinema argues:

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national cinemas are simultaneously an aesthetic and production

movement, a critical technology, a civic project of state, an industrial

strategy and as international project formed in response to the

dominant international cinemas. (45)

His research teases out the complex nature of the economic and cultural

relationships between the various kinds of national cinemas operating in a

global marketplace. He cites the need for Australian films to both “imitate and

oppose” Hollywood. He quotes Phillip Adams describing as “doomed” a

cinema based on national identity (132). Dermody and Jacka lament the

“drastically unequal” nature of our relationship to the other English-speaking

cinemas and describe ways various film-makers have tried to deal with our

difference without which we “shrivel in self-esteem” and “inhabit a place-less,

story-less limbo” (1987b:11). There’s Ross Gibson’s “feral” vision in

O’Regan (108)—introduced ideas and cultural artefacts going wild on our soil,

and Bertrand and Routt’s “islander” view (4).

Despite the orientation of the national cinema to the international market, only

a proportion of films achieve an international release. The Adventures of Barry

Mackenzie, Crocodile Dundee, Gallipoli, Breaker Morant, The Piano, Babe

and They’re a Weird Mob are films which have proved their dual national and

international appeal and have done so by employing a variety of strategies.

O’Regan cites Mad Max, Crocodile Dundee and Careful He Might Hear You

as films which imitate American form but substitute Australian content (49).

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There are other ‘Australian’ films which are American in both form and

content, infamously Richard Franklin’s Roadgames. During the 1970s

Australian audiences were exposed to European cinema—Italian, French,

Swedish, German and Spanish—to an unprecedented degree. O’Regan notes

that between 1973 and 1978 only 41 per cent of films released in Australia

were English language (78). While English language films dominated the box

office, this exposure to non-English-language cinemas helped couple our

emerging notion of a national independent cinema with the idea of the

writer/director—the auteur. Paul Cox, Jane Campion, Jocelyn Moorhouse, P.J.

Hogan and I modelled ourselves on this idea.

The 1970s had seen a string of films exploring national identity through our

past: Gallipoli, Breaker Morant, The Getting of Wisdom, Picnic at Hanging

Rock were also predicated on notions of high art. The films were adapted from

novels and exhibited the hallmarks of European art movies. But they were also

part of an overt nation-making project that did not translate to the international

box office.

My generation’s emergence from this background in European art cinema

continued a bias against mainstream American features and commercial

cinema in general. Unlike the generation of film-makers before us, we wanted

to find our own voice but through contemporary dramas. This led to an

intractable problem: how to make Australian cultural property attractive to at

least part of the American market without surrendering our cultural integrity.

O’Regan encapsulates the conflicting elements prevalent at the time:

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By definition a minority product, national cinemas emerge from

cultural policy needing at some level to enact a high/low culture divide

while, at the same time, registering the contingency of what is art and

what is not. (132).

Partly, the international potential of Australian films was imperilled by

primitive film-making. Many art films of the 1970s failed to live up to the

highest artistic standards set by such successes as Antonioni’s Blowup (1969),

Fellini’s oeuvre and the American examples: Five Easy Pieces and Easy

Rider. Many were boring and pretentious: Last Year at Marienbad (1961),

Celine and Julie Go Boating, the legendary nine-hour Jaguar and the

interminable Andy Warhol pieces. They lacked discipline and audience

awareness. Accompanying these films was a whole raft of non-narrative

experimental cinema; plot and character were totally disposed of. These films,

as one patron at the Melbourne Film-makers’ Co-operative, one weekend in

1973, stated: “work best when you’re stoned off your face”. This wasn’t the

kind of cinema that would cement our place on the world stage.

As film-makers, we faced myriad problems: how to make contemporary

Australian reality entertaining; how to convince the Australian Film

Commission (AFC) our ideas were worthy of government/taxpayer funding

(as opposed to someone else’s ideas); and, most importantly, how to bring art

movie techniques into contemporary stories.

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Structure in the Screenplay

And then, along came Syd Field, unconcerned with national identity or

history. For him, there was only structure:

Structure is the most important element in a screenplay. It is the force

that holds everything together; it is the skeleton, the spine, the

foundation. Without structure, you have no story; without story you

have no screenplay. (17).

Unlike Christopher Vogler, Field’s basic structural analysis was innocent of

the parallel discourse instigated by Vladimir Propp and Levi-Strauss inside the

academy. Evacuated of its surface political concerns, Field saw structural

analysis as a tool of the content creator (writer/producer), not as a tool of

anthropology or cultural studies. Field’s goal was to describe the structure of a

successful film as confirmed by its box-office takings.

With one idea, he deftly side-stepped all the issues of art and commerce. He

wasn’t there to tell you ‘what to write’—that was up to your own political,

social and emotional choices—but he could tell you ‘how to write it’. In a

somewhat unclear phraseology, Field—who read most of his scripts in the

spa—forsook ideological questions (including his own) and drove straight in

to the heart of story. He clumsily outlined what made a story commercially

successful and his examples proved the case. If Syd Field had not come on the

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scene, someone else would have had to appear, to reign in the free-wheeling

stories of the 1960s.

For Australian screenwriters struggling to produce commercially-viable art-

house cinema, his insights were more than useful. Most of his observations on

structure could be applied to successful European art movies: Diva, La Dolce

Vita, and Un Coeur en Hiver among others. This promised an applicability to

the paradigm of low-budget Australian film-making.

Since Field, the bookshops have bristled with volumes of 'how-to' books, some

better than others. Promotion, perhaps, hit rock bottom with the optimistically-

titled How to Write a Movie in 21 Days: the Inner Movie Method and 500

Ways to Beat the Hollywood Scriptreader.

Even so, the more developed theories are useful models for film analysis and

development. Here I will make reference to: Story by Robert McKee; How to

Make a Good Script Great and Creating Unforgettable Characters by Linda

Seger; Alternative Scriptwriting by Dancyger and Rush; Scriptwriting

Updated by Linda Aronson and an unpublished manuscript The Second Act

Story, by Lynda Heys. These texts make strong arguments for their structural

analysis, backing it up with many examples. They also tend to take a more

broad-minded approach to the writing process, being less prescriptive than

some of the more commercially-oriented analysts.

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As these books reflect, the three-act structure is the predominant story form for

national and international cinema. Its simple presentation of an argument—

thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis—make it an integral part of almost every

sophisticated story form. In ensemble pieces, or multi-plot narratives, three-act

structure, at the very least, informs the progress of the story and character. At

the same time new and emerging forms make for an exciting time, particularly

for non-mainstream writers.

In the forty years from the 1920s to the 1960s, the studio system in Hollywood

turned story into a product and, like any factory, sought to hone down its raw

material and forge it into an efficient economic unit (Bordwell, Staiger and

Thompson 320-327). As Robert McKee argues in his lectures, there was no

need for how-to books; the knowledge was passed down from one generation

of writers to the next in the writing rooms on the studio lots. This process

broke down in the 1960s as technological advances (in camera and sound

equipment) and ideological change, meant the studios lost some of their

control.

It is important to realise here that three-act structure is not an American

invention. Stories with beginnings, middles and ends are ancient forms.

Aristotle's Poetics for instance, outlines the structure, but as Hollywood

commodified storytelling, 'beginning, middle and end' has become

synonymous with capitalism and exploitation. As Routt observes:

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In the writing on film which has gone on since May 1968 there has

been a great deal of anti-American sentiment masquerading as

reasoned politics. […] The ideas that ‘classic narrative’ is somehow

linked in some fundamental fashion to Hollywood and thus to

capitalism (and that the bourgeois art cinema of Europe and Japan

offers a politically palatable alternative) seem specious on the face of

it, but they are what everyone knows these days. (218).

This is aptly put. The hot-house of Hollywood has refined and experimented

with classic narrative. While for millennia stage dramas have been built

around structural assumptions and conventions, the screen industry places

story structure at the centre of the writing process and constructs 'story' not as

personal or national expression but as product. Screenplays are routinely

referred to as 'properties'; writers are 'owned'; ideas are 'developed through

investment' not through an urgent inner need to create, play and express.

Critics of Hollywood, however, have a point. If the 'three-act structure' or

‘classic narrative’ is interpreted as a ‘hero’s journey’, it can easily be freighted

with many of the ‘despised’ values of America: capitalism, commerce,

individualism, greed, revenge, romantic love. Dancyger and Rush in their

introduction to Alternative Scriptwriting think so:

The premise of most restorative three-act stories is that crime doesn’t

pay, that good will triumph over evil, and that there is no confusion

over which is which. But suppose this simple morality is foreign to us?

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Suppose the world we know is more likely to be marked by small

missteps, unexpected tenderness, and, most of all, a lack of overriding

predetermined purpose or clarity? […] Suppose we find ourselves

asking questions like - Why do our lives seem to slip by in a succession

of little details that appear so unimportant? (27)

Their critique questions the value of the hero’s journey, placing

representations of moral complexity and oppositional politics at the centre of

the writers’ task. This can introduce us into a more complex world such as in

Magnolia and Angela’s Ashes—both of which are, arguably, one-act dramas.

But Dancyger and Rush’s critique can be questioned for two reasons. First,

they seem to deny the potential of the three-act story to dramatise a morally

complex world, or to contest mainstream American politics. Films such as

The Ice Storm, Six Degrees of Separation and Drugstore Cowboy—indeed

many independent American films—show it is possible to dramatize a morally

complex world peopled with anti-heroes, within the three-act structure. Ice

Storm is the story of dysfunctional families during the time of a dysfunctional

president. The 'hero' of Drugstore Cowboy is the leader of a gang of drug

addicts. Six Degrees of Separation again, explores a dysfunctional

relationship, focuses on the divide between the haves and the have-nots and

questions the myth of rages to riches in American society—all of them, neatly-

defined three-act dramas. Second, moral complexity does not always follow

from breaking with traditional form. Go, Pulp Fiction, Run, Lola, Run, Snatch,

and Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels—arguably all one act dramas—

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create worlds of minimal moral complexity (at times, amoral domains), where

characters are driven by primitive rather than heroic instincts. The characters

face challenges but the dramas do not focus on the moral conflicts.

Structurally, their storyline follows the most basic form: set-up, confrontation,

climax.

My own film All Men Are Liars based on the romantic comedy genre (Some

Like It Hot and Tootsie) is firmly planted in the Hollywood tradition but its

content is almost completely Australian except for the satirical use of the Elvis

impersonator. With Swell I wanted to follow the same pattern. I was confident

that local content of a hard-edge Australian surfing world would create

national and international appeal.

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The Structure of Swell

Surfing and film-making in Australia have had a long intertwined but low-

profile history. Surfing documentaries and surf-related feature titles occupy

three pages of index in Albie Thoms’ book surfmovies Although some of the

feature films have had success—Puberty Blues, The Coolangatta Gold,

Summer City and The Empty Beach, they fail to register as part of the national

cinema. Susan Dermody and Elizabeth Jacka mention only the interesting

experimental Palm Beach in their overview, The Screening of Australia. The

marriage of Australian surfing and film-making is yet to produce a golden

child.

Surfing is one of Australia's international icons. The country is well-

represented year after year in the Top 44 (the international surfing circuit) and

has had four world champions since the competition began—one of them

Mark Richards, holding the title four years running. Four Australian surf-wear

companies are represented in the top five surf-wear companies, globally. The

sport encompasses not only vivid, likeable personalities such as Tom Carroll

and Mark Occilupo, it occurs in some of our best locations. Surf magazines

and videos are a local industry. There are seven million surfers worldwide and

Australia is a regular destination. A well-crafted Australian surf movie, if one

could ever be made, is a sitting duck to gain national and international sales.

A regular criticism has been that writers have failed to come up with a

storyline which knits surfing into character: the hero’s journey. This was the

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brief I set for myself in the conception of Swell. With market and genre

considerations in mind, I chose to construct my screenplay as a traditional

linear narrative. Linear narrative, regarded as a masculine form, linked to

heterosexist romance, ideologies of nationhood and socioeconomic privilege

(Bordwell and Thompson 82) suited my mostly male audience (probably 13 to

22 year-old boys), but the flavour of epic journey (surfing safari) also

suggested a linear treatment. Other aspects of the story, transcendental

themes—synchronicity, the unconscious and death—which could suggest

flashbacks and flash forwards are subjugated within the framework of a

traditional form. These themes operate as an undercurrent to the urgent

'present': the earthy, apparently mundane situations the boys find themselves

in. I felt this was a suitable and effective treatment for these themes. Bringing

them to the fore—as happens in the horror genre or science fiction—would

have meant a closer examination, necessitating a logical progression, thereby

robbing them of their mystery and power.

In writing the script, I followed Linda Aronson’s format for act one. She

provides a more detailed breakdown than Syd Field or Robert McKee. Her

stages are: normality, disturbance, protagonist, plan, surprise, obstacle.

Aronson suggests writing a story sentence as a way of maintaining focus

during writing. My story sentence is:

Two very different brothers find common ground and reconnect

following a vision of a perfect wave.

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Before coming to the above story line, I gathered the elements from disparate

sources. Aronson describes the process under the heading, Assembling the

Fragments:

stories present in fragments – a character, a scene, a climax - and the

writer’s job is to find, or impose some kind of order on them without

pre-empting the creative process. (43)

An early idea was to do a story about twins partly inspired by articles I read in

the newspaper in the late 1990s. They threw new light on human behaviour

based on the study of twins reared separately. I was fascinated by the story of

twin brothers separated at birth who upon meeting at the age of twenty-five,

bought the same gift for each other, a matching shirt and tie set, from the same

shop. They had each chosen the same career and dated similar girlfriends. This

and other evidence indicated a stronger genetic influence on behaviour than

had previously been believed. I found it mystical and inspiring that such things

can be coded into the body.

A related idea was a comedy version of the phenomenon of twins. Mark

Twain had written a dark but hilarious story Those Extraordinary Twins about

two Italian Siamese twins who are heralded into a small American riverside

village. One is noble and sober, the other raucous and base. The townsfolk

divide, the brothers cannot. An update of this story, I felt, could generate

interesting insights into identity and interior conflict. One brother’s outrageous

behaviour has a bodily hold over the other, in this case literally. At that time, a

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similar script was circulating through the LA studios with Vincent Ward (Map

of the Human Heart, What Dreams May Come) attached as director. It was

deemed to be too confronting.

Next, the world of surfing had been of interest to me since I was a young man,

particularly the mystical/anarchic/romantic figure of the lone surfer—man and

sea. Judith Wright had written an inspiring poem, The Surfer. The problem

was there is only one dramatic question inherent in surfing: if I catch this wave

will I be able to ride it, or will it kill me? This is related to the idea of death, a

young man's idea of death as the ultimate authority, or limit. Or is it? Is there

life beyond death? Is it possible to cross over and come back? This concept of

death and separation tied in to the idea of the twins. Where are the boundaries

between people?

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Act One

Aronson recommends making a structure chart. I made a number of these for

Swell before settling on one for the first draft. Then I wrote a brief outline.

Following is the outline for Act I:

Twenty-one year-old Tom is helping out at his dad’s landscaping

business one last long weekend before he begins his new job at a law

firm. The pair have battled through thick and thin after Lorraine

(Mick’s wife) died, nineteen months earlier, and wayward son Rory

(aged 23) took off, apparently to surf.

Rory, in fact, surfed for a while but was apprehended by police trying to steal

a grower’s marijuana crop. He’s spent six months in jail, but now, as our film

begins, has organised weekend leave with his mate Harvey—during which

they are required to report to a police station every evening at 6pm until their

return. Rory and Harvey have no intention of keeping those appointments.

Following an intense recurring dream of Rory’s, they are heading for a secret

surf break off the coast where they know (from the dream) a perfect set of

waves is due to appear. There are ominous signs that these waves could be

killers—but without the strong prospect of his own death, Rory wouldn’t be

interested anyway. Tom has had the same dream but not being such a keen

surfer and more interested in safety and duty, he stays home to help dad. Then,

there’s a call on his mobile. Pete, a Christian surfer and friend of both the

brothers, rings to say he’s seen Rory and warns that he’s on some kind of hare-

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brained mission. Tom, against his father’s wishes, downs tools and heads off

in search of his wayward brother.

On reaching the surf camp at the back of the beach, Tom discovers Rory trying

to steal a car. Reluctantly but in an effort to hold on, Tom joins him and begins

a journey of emotional and physical mayhem that tests him to the limit. (End

of Act I)

Interestingly, Ms Aronson does not mention synopsis, a step in the process

recommended by almost every other screenwriting workbook. She outlines a

nine-step three-act structure. Six of these are in Act I. Her steps are similar to

Christopher Vogler’s twelve step structure (The Writer’s Journey) six of

which also are in Act I. Act I is important in setting up the characters, the

premise and the world of the film. To take her first six steps:

1. Normality. McKee and Vogler refer to this stage as the Ordinary

World. In the case of Swell, this is Tom’s home world: life with his

father, the house they live in, the awkward nature of the meals they

share, the work, the loss of the mother and brother (loss of family) and

his goal to be a lawyer.

2. Disturbance: The initial disturbance is Tom’s dream of big surf in

which he recognises his brother. This is reiterated later in the morning

when Pete, the Christian, rings to tell him of Rory’s whereabouts.

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3. Protagonist: Tom, the younger brother is the protagonist. We

favour his movement through the story. He is the one who is going to

be tested most sorely, the one required to change the most.

4. Plan: Tom’s plan is to find Rory and bring him back home. He

wants to re-create the safety of the family circle.

5. Surprise: Tom is surprised on meeting his brother. There’s an

attitude in his behaviour he can’t understand. He’s bamboozled by

Rory’s cool response on seeing him again.

6. Obstacle: Tom realises Rory will not return home with him. He’s

lucky to get even a civil welcome.

Aronson seems to place less importance than many other analysts on the main

character’s decision at the end of Act I. Many others, including Field, McKee

and Vogler, put great emphasis on the character's turning point at the end of

Act I. The character is faced with a block (obstacle) to achieving their solution

(plan) to the problem (disturbance) they’ve been faced with. They then make a

decision to try a solution which has already been presented. Usually, this is a

choice that will jeopardise them. It is in making this decision that an ordinary

human character (we’ve spent twenty-five minutes of screen time establishing

how ordinary they are) begins a hero’s journey: that complex process through

the trials of Act II.

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Act II

Act II, particularly the second half of Act II, has been described as ‘the belly

of the screenplay’. Many screenplays lose suspense at this point. Attacking the

problem of Act II in the mid-1990s while at the American Film Institute and

while working as a reader for Paramount, Australian writer/director Lynda

Heys (Kick) developed what was to become a highly-respected model for the

second act. Heys put forward the notion that successful second acts actually

contain a hidden three-act structure. Heys studied more than twenty films and

explicated a disturbance, a plan, a surprise, an obstacle, two turning points (at

the end of the first and second acts) and a ‘character climax’ within Act II.

These steps furthered the main character’s pursuit of their external goal but

this was less important than their character journey: a building up of strength

or an un-shielding of self, leading to the character climax which forges the

hero, in readiness for the final external climactic confrontation in Act III. So,

Act II is the playing out of a dual system: a three-act structure with every step

reflecting simultaneously an internal and external aspect of the protagonist.

When this is done well, Act II runs with a double meaning, a tension which

gives the drama irony, comedy, suspense and mystery. The crucial factor is a

sleight of hand in which the main character sub-consciously creates an

external goal in an effort to avoid facing or overcoming their inner need.

Tootsie is a good example of this. Michael (Dustin Hoffman) decides to

succeed he must become a woman rather than facing his character flaw that he

is an unco-operative control freak. His decision is doomed and we are aware

of this from the moment we see him walking down the street, tripping on his

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high heels. His decision adds a layer of irony to every scene in Act II. We

know he is going to fail. For the writer, a clear understanding of the

character’s inner need and character flaw is essential to fully exploit the

dramatic potential of their story.

In my experience, Heys is the only structural analyst who points this out

clearly. I used her model for Tom, my character in Swell. Tom's inner need is

to recreate the safety of the family he once knew. To do that, he's prepared to

risk his legal career and make the doomed choice to go with his brother. Heys

shows that once the protagonist moves into the second act, there is a new

period of orientation in which the new world is set up. This corresponds to

Aronson’s normality. In Swell this is the beginning of the road trip. Tom’s first

few minutes in the car set the scene. The driving will be dangerous: he’ll be in

the hands of his lunatic brother, crushed up against an uncomfortably desirable

young woman, with a drug taker in the backseat—all of them, except him,

looking for the elusive perfect wave. Once Tom decides to get into that car he

has moved into Heys’ Extraordinary World, or according to Vogler, Crossed

the First Threshold.

Heys’ next step is a test of the hero’s inner flaw, or using Aronson, a

disturbance. For Tom, whose flaw is fear, the discovery that the car is stolen,

threatens his external goal—to get Rory safely home—and his inner self: his

fear of going beyond the bounds of convention.

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Aronson’s third step, establishing a protagonist, is fulfilled. Even though we,

through Tom, have encountered the strong, charismatic figure of Rory the

focus of the story must remain with the main character. Rory’s stealing of the

car is not a dramatic moment for him: he’s done it before; his pulse doesn’t

even increase a beat. But for Tom, this is a lifting of the stakes and our focus

tends toward him as the character with the most emotional energy, the one in

the most jeopardy.

The plan has already been established in Act I. Here, Tom is brought up to

speed. They’re on their way to catch some waves Rory has seen in a dream.

Again, this reflects on Tom’s inner life. He hears enough detail to know he’s

had the same dream—a threatening situation because it ties him in psychically

with his crazy brother.

The visit to The Ego is a step Aronson does not seem to recognise while

McKee, Heys and Vogler mention mentors and gatekeepers. These characters

add drama and information. They may represent Aronson’s obstacle or

surprise but in this case The Ego is used to reiterate the idea of death, to warn.

The next step of the story is what Heys calls the climax of failing. By the time

the car pulls into the service station, Tom has almost had enough: Harvey is

trying to sell drugs to a dread-locked guy in a Kombi; Rory has told Tom he

must pay for petrol and food, and Kate has teased him once too often. This is

the final straw, or the obstacle. Tom grabs his stuff, walks across the highway

and begins to hitch-hike home. Heys describes this period of the screenplay

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(first half of Act II) as failing tests. This does not mean Tom hasn’t passed

some tests, but that he failing more often than he is succeeding.

A romance sub-plot runs in parallel to the main plot throughout Act II. This is

a love-triangle, partly set-up in Act I with meaningful eye contact between

Rory and Kate from the moment they meet. This establishes normality. Rory

likes Kate; Kate likes Rory. But once Tom comes on the scene, Kate also

seems to pay attention to him—we have disturbance. We can’t tell which one

of them she likes the most and nor can the boys. Perhaps she can’t either. This

affects Tom (protagonist) more than the others. He’s obviously an innocent in

this world. Rory has the plan. He wants Tom to do something about Kate. He

doesn’t want to see her ‘go to waste’. He tries to goad Tom into action—a

reflection of what he’ll do later in the surf.

To return to the main plot: the combination of action line and inner journey.

We are at the structuralist’s mid-point. This is a feature pointed out by Heys,

McKee and Field but not Aronson or Seger. Vogler’s eighth step, the supreme

ordeal is the action movie’s equivalent. I’m convinced it is a crucial moment

in a successful story structure. It is particularly effective in Hamlet and

Macbeth, in stories with a high level of action, in detective stories and in

romantic comedies. It has even more significance in two-act structures such as

Sean Penn’s She’s So Lovely and Alan Cumming and Jennifer Jason Leigh's

Anniversary Party.

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In a typical mid-point, the hunted hero turns and begins to hunt the villain;

there's a power shift. In Swell, Tom is standing on the side of the highway

trying to hitch a lift back home. Rory approaches. They fight and Rory gives

in, or appears to give in. He tells Tom he wants him to come along, to share

the world of surfing. He apologises for his behaviour and eventually wins Tom

over by agreeing to return with him—but only once they’ve found the break

and surfed it. Tom takes control. He throws the marijuana in the bin. He

drives. He starts to pass some tests (Heys, Aronson, McKee). On the action

level he appears to be doing well, but this section of the screenplay, between

the mid-point and the end of Act II, is a period in which the inner journey

takes even more precedence over the external goal. It is a dive into the psyche

of the character. We tend to see them alone and inactive, at crucial moments.

Heys denotes two key scenes: a moment in which the hero’s real fear is

exposed and a later moment in which the hero realises what his life will be like

without overcoming that fear. Tom twice exposes his fears to Rory: on the

waves and in the pub. Rory attacks him both times and sarcastically shows a

blatant disregard for any caution. But Tom is rising in power. He’s starting to

shed his shield—through catching waves and his developing relationship with

Kate. In this he is aided by her surfing lessons and later when he inadvertently

eats magic mushrooms.

This burgeoning risk-taking continues at a dance at the pub and later during a

midnight swim; he and Rory reach a zenith of closeness. Heys describes this

moment as the first inkling the hero has of his own possibilities. But there’s a

crash (Heys). The period of awareness is interrupted by outside events. Tom’s

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finding out that Rory has escaped from jail and has jeopardised his whole legal

career, is this point in Swell. This is actually the end of the second act within

the inner journey or the character story.

As with the conclusion of any second act, it presents as closure. But we have a

third act within the character story. With Rory’s help and encouragement, Tom

rallies. He goes one step further, crosses another boundary by deciding to

accompany everyone else in the dinghy out to the break. This represents act

three of the inner journey. The time on the boat with his brother presents as a

short period of togetherness, on an adventure. But, the external plot takes over.

The surf is not right, it doesn't live up to the dream and furthermore, the

brothers' relationship breaks down completely. Here on the beach, Tom and

Rory have what Heys calls the character climax. There's a showdown. Rory

has to admit his deception and his obsession. He breaks the deal they made at

the mid-point and Tom’s goal, to bring him home, is destroyed. He calls the

police on his own brother (end of Act II).

Again, this presents as a possible closure. To summarise, they go to the

headland; the surf is bad; Rory breaks his promise; Tom calls the police. The

main character does not achieve his goal. The brothers again go their separate

ways. This is tragic closure.

The typical Hollywood ‘happy-ending’ embodies a tragedy at the end of Act

II. This is reversed by John Ridley in U-turn, in which the end of Act II is

positive. Sean Penn, the main character, has passed through his tests and

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ordeals, he’s redeemed the car, he’s grabbed the money, and he’s escaped with

the girl, only to have everything tragically taken away in Act III.

With Swell, I opted for the traditional structure. During the ‘crash’ at the end

of Act II, the three sub-plots of the film also go through the same paradigm.

Mick (the father) has caught up with his boys but he and Rory refuse to speak.

Tom and Kate are no longer close and Doggy’s crew have unwillingly helped

bring Rory down. The stories move into a low-point, slowly evolving into Act

III.

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Act III

Act III contains all the elements of every other act: a set-up, disturbance,

problem, warnings, surprise and finally, a reluctant decision to once again go

beyond the normal boundaries to confront the antagonistic force at the climax.

These steps in Act III typically occur at great speed, each one bringing with it

all the relevant information and emotional messages built up in the two earlier

acts. With some qualifications, Act III is a re-enactment in short powerful

steps of the same central question which has occupied us from Act I. Many

screenplays end Act II with the frustration of the main character’s external

goal. For example, he doesn’t get the money; she doesn’t get the man. Act III

then sets up a new external goal.

In the case of Swell the same external goal is maintained. What has changed,

through the intercession of Kate, is that Tom now understands the idea of

letting go. It’s the solution to the problem Rory presents and also the problem

of riding the approaching wave. By setting Rory free, Tom not only

jeopardises his own career, he knows he’ll probably never recreate the safe

family he had. He knows his brother will be in jail or a fugitive. But, Tom

goes beyond his boundaries one more time and enters the world of the third act

which meshes the normal and the extraordinary worlds. The climax of the film

comes with the appearance of the dream wave. This is the nemesis and

redemption Tom has feared since before our story began. At their best, the

climax embodies a twist. My twist is to have Tom ride the wave instead of his

brother and then for Rory to disappear when we believe he’ll give himself up.

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The epilogue is Rory and Kate’s escape into the wide blue yonder with Rory’s

partial, bittersweet reconciliation with his father.

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Coda

I chose to execute Swell in a traditional format (classical Hollywood structure

with Australian characters) because I believed at the time, it best suited the

market. Upon reflection, at the end of the process, this may not be the case.

The success of a number of structurally innovative new films, including Lock,

Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Sliding Doors, Pulp Fiction, Memento, Being

John Malkovitch, and Run Lola Run suggest that moving beyond the three act

structure (rather than conforming to it) might be a more fruitful direction for

Australian writers. Given the size of our budgets, the availability of actors and

the limitations of location, the screenplay is one area we can, through

innovation and experiment, maximise our chances of commercial success.

The level of observance or avoidance of three act structure by Australian film

makers is unclear. Obviously a number of Australian films, including films

from the 1970s revival, have experimented with non-three act forms. Picnic at

Hanging Rock offered audiences a new and mysterious experience. It has a

unique structural framework, an ensemble piece with little character

development, no climax or resolution. At the end, the mystery is still 'hanging'.

Breaker Morant and Shine, both from South Australia, also display

noteworthy structure, in their, not ground-breaking, but unusually

sophisticated use of flashback. My guess is that this propelled their acceptance

in the world marketplace. Lastly, My Brilliant Career, again, not a vastly

innovative story structurally, risks an ending in which the woman does not get

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her man, or more exactly, she doesn’t even want her man. This was the film

many viewers seemed to be waiting for; the risk paid off.

Whether these films were structurally innovative or structurally naïve is

unclear. But it is interesting to compare their success with the market failure

of Strange Plane: a Melbourne production with plenty of charm and plotting

clever enough to raise a wry smile. In each case it may be that structural

questions and features were not paramount in the audience experience of the

film. Jane Campion, with whom I collaborated on Sweetie, was insistent on

this point. We found our greatest point of differences in my fascination and

respect for the Hollywood story form and her disdain for it. She did concede to

allowing the Syd Field-like first turning point (when Kay and Louis discover

Sweetie has broken into the house). The second turning point, when Sweetie

falls out of the tree house was reached without any disagreement, but the

climax, in my view, is weakened by a failure to clearly solve the lovers’ initial

disturbance: what happened to the passion?

This lack of structural clarity has been read by some as ‘artistic subtlety’ as it

shies away from a full-frontal happy Hollywood ending. A more conclusive

ending, in which the two lovers meet, face to face, tease out their final

differences, embrace and make love, may on the face of it sound corny and

obvious but it would have provided a warmth and close-ness, qualities sadly

missing from this example of ‘alienated’ cinema.

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Despite these mixed signals, there are, however, a number of observable

trends in international screen writing that seem pertinent. The wholesale take-

up of structure-based approaches to screenwriting within Western cinema over

the past twenty years, and its close analysis by fugues such as Field, Aronson,

and McKee, has allowed a deeper understanding of the building blocks of

story.

This has led to a seemingly unending diversity in three act variations, often

with subtle interplays of structure and content. For example, the ironic attitude

to structure exemplified by the work of Mike Meyers (Wayne’s World,

Goldmember) and outlined in Alternative Scriptwriting (Dancyger and Rush,

1991) must and does, affect content. Meyers seeks to send up the false

passion, the artificially created turning point, the convenient reversal and the

happy ending. Doctor Evil’s plotline in Goldmember is a good example. The

relationship movements between the three generations of the Dr Evil clan are

so thoroughly over-acted and clichéd structurally, they draw our attention to

cynical production decisions in the American blockbuster, thereby

undermining the pre-dominant form.

Unlike Campion’s films, produced out of a self-claimed structural naivety,

other writers are actively moving beyond the three act structure by self-

consciously toying with it. As in Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation, writers, in a

post-structuralist turn, have been freed up to make bold moves in story design.

Magnolia, Go, Run Lola Run, Memento, Sliding Doors, and Adaptation as

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well as Mike Meyers' films, can be read as reactions to the imposed authority

of the traditional form.

Often the interplay of form and content is clear. In Scriptwriting Updated,

Linda Aronson says good writing is a marriage of two kinds of thinking. She

quotes Edward de Bono’s lateral and vertical thinking models and suggests a

gripping story requires a balance of these two:

Good writing happens when craft (provided by vertical thinking) and

the writer’s unique view of the world (provided by lateral thinking) are

inextricably mixed to produce a work of striking originality. (2)

And just as lateral and vertical thinking struggle against each other, so do form

and content. In Memento, the backward/forward movement of the story is

intimately connected to the character’s faulty memory. It would be interesting

to ask Christopher and Jonathan Nolan, the writers, which came first, character

or form. (Sliding Doors makes less effective use of character and structure, as

the two are not as interdependent.) Here it is the interplay of form and

content, which gives each story its flavour and finds its best result when the

struggle between these two ultimately irresolvable domains has been pursued

as far as possible.

In a contraindication to this complexity, it could be argued that, in other films

story structure has been reduced to its simplest form. Snatch and Lock, Stock

and Two Smoking Barrels, as well as Tarantino’s oeuvre, are cases in point.

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They exhibit a strong sense of economy, and have the feel of free-form,

transcending the traditional structures. There’s a sense of speed, confusion and

suspense, maintained through the use of the simplest story form—a one-act

story—set-up, confrontation, climax. Characters do not develop but rather

'reveal' more about themselves as they progress toward a violent climax. There

are no moments of quiet introspection. As Robert Stam states in Film Theory:

In a certain sense recent developments in commercial film relativize

both cognitive and classical semiotic approaches, revealing them as

relevant only to classical forms of cinema. Lately, we find a slackening

of narrative time, a kind of post-modern picaresque stringing of

narrative non-events. Here, a critique of linear narrative, exploitative

spectacle, and the dominating gaze becomes irrelevant. […] In the

post-modern cinema of Tarantino, causality and motivation are

trivialized […] characters kill not out of any ‘project’ but rather

through accident (Pulp Fiction) or due to a fleeting impulse or

momentary irritation (Jackie Brown). (318)

This reduction of complexity in character and theme is reflected in the

blockbuster productions, the recent Spiderman being a case in point:

A new blockbuster cinema, made possible by huge budgets, sound

innovations, and digital technologies, favour(s) a sound and light show

cinema of sensation [...] (and) fosters a fluid , euphoric montage of

images and sounds reminiscent less of classical Hollywood than of

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video games, music video, and amusement park rides […] sensation

predominates over narrative, sound over image […] verisimilitude is

no longer a goal; rather, it is the technology dependent production of

vertiginous, prosthetic delirium. (Stam 317)

In re-considering Swell a central question will be whether it is too

conventional for this liminal moment in film structure and for the youthful

surfing fraternity. Perhaps the new breed of cinemate surfie is ready for the

Tarantino treatment of the waves. By this I mean, less character development,

more violence and confrontation and an amoral universe. Unfortunately this

was not the kind of film I set out to write.

These new directions in screen structures do not necessarily spell the death of

the traditional three-act structure. The screenplay of Swell has been optioned

by a Melbourne production company, Faraway Films. The company’s

principals see the script as fulfilling all the dramatic requirements of the three-

act structure. They aim to interest American studios to invest in the

production. The swirling meteor of story will eventually curl back on itself,

pick up something old and something new and re-do it with all the verve and

panache we've come to expect from the wonderful world of film.

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List of Films Cited

The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (Bruce Beresford, 1972)

All Men are Liars (Gerard Lee, 1995)

Angela’s Ashes (Alan Parker, 1999)

Anne dernière à Marienbad, L' (Alain Resnais, 1961)

Babe (Chris Noonan, 1995)

Blowup (Michaelangelo Antoniono, 1966)

Breaker Morant (Bruce Beresford, 1980)

Careful He Might Hear You (Carl Shultz, 1983)

Céline et Julie vont en bateau (Jacques Rivette, 1974)

Coolangatta Gold (Igor Auzins, 1984)

Crocodile Dundee (Peter Faiman, 1986)

Drugstore Cowboy (Gus Van Sant, 1989)

Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969)

Empty Beach (Chris Thomson, 1985)

Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson, 1970)

Gallipoli (Peter Weir, 1981)

The Getting of Wisdom (Bruce Beresford, 1977)

Go (Doug Liman, 1999)

Ice Storm (Ang Lee, 1997)

In God’s Hands (Zalman King, 1998)

Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino, 1997)

Jaguar (Jean Rouch, 1967)

Kick (Linda Heys, 2000)

La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini, 1960)

Lock, Stock and two Smoking Barrels (Guy Ritchie, 1998)

Mad Max (George Miller, 1979)

Magnolia (PT Anderson, 1999)

Map of the Human Heart (Vincent Ward, 1992)

Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000)

Palm Beach (Albie Thoms, 1979)

The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993)

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Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 1975)

Puberty Blues (Bruce Beresford, 1981)

Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)

Roadgames (Richard Franklin, 1981)

Run Lola Run (Tom Twyker, 1998)

She’s So Lovely (Nick Cassavetes, 1997)

Six Degrees of Separation (Fred Schepisi, 1993)

Sliding Doors (Peter Howitt, 1998)

Snatch (Guy Ritchie, 2000)

Some Like it Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959)

Spider-man (Sam Raimi, 2002)

Summer City (Christopher Fraser, 1977)

Sweetie (Jane Campion, 1989)

They’re a Weird Mob (Michael Powell, 1966)

Tootsie (Sydney Pollack, 1982)

U-Turn (Oliver Stone, 1997)

Un Coeur en Hiver (Claude Sautet, 1992)

What Dreams May Come (Vincent Ward, 1998)

157

List of Works Cited

Aronson, Linda. Scriptwriting Updated: New and Conventional Ways of

Writing for the Screen. Sydney: AFTRS, 2000.

David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson. The classical

Hollywood cinema: film style & mode of production to 1960.

London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985.

David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: an introduction. 4th ed.

New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993.

Australian Film Commission. Get the Picture. Sydney: AFTRS, 4th edition,

1996.

Australian Film Commission. Get the Picture. Sydney: AFTRS, 6th edition,

2000.

Bertrand, Ina and William Routt. “The Big Bad Combine: Some Aspects of

National Aspirations and International Constraints in the National

Cinema, 1896-1929.” The Australia Screen. Eds. A. Moran and

T.O’Regan, Ringwood; Penguin, 1989, 23-27.

Dalton, Kim. Development Practice in the Australian Film Industry. Proc.

National Screenwriters’ Conference. 2000.

Dancyger, Ken and Jeff Rush. Alternative Scriptwriting. Boston: Focal

Press, 1995.

Dermody, Susan and Elizabeth Jacka. The Screening of Australia. 2 Vol,

Sydney: Currency Press, 1987-1988.

Field, Syd. The Screenwriter’s Workbook. New York: Dell, 1984.

Field, Syd. Screenplay: the foundations of Screenwriting. New York: Dell,

1994.

Heys, Lynda. The Second Act Story. (Unpublished Manuscript)

King, Viki. How to Write a Movie in 21 Days: The Inner Movie Method.

New York: Harper Collins, 1988.How to Write

Lerch, Jennifer. 500 Ways to Beat the Hollywood Script Reader: Writing

the Screenplay the Reader Will Recommend New York: Simon &

Schuster 1999.

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McKee, Robert. Story: substance, structure, style and the principles of

screenwriting London: Methuen, 1998.

O’Regan, Tom. Australian National Cinema. London: Routledge, 1996.

Routt, William. “Are you a Fish? Are you a Snake?: An obvious lecture and

some notes on The Last Wave” Continuum 8 (1994): 215-231.

Seger, Linda. Making a Good Script Great. New York: Samuel

French,1994.

Seger, Linda. Creating Unforgettable Characters. New York: Henry Holt,

1990.

Stam, Robert. Film Theory: An Introduction. Mass: Blackwell, 2000.

Thoms, Albi. Surfmovies: the history of the surf film in Australia. Noosa

Heads: Shore Thing, 2000.

Twain, Mark. “The Comedy of Those Extraordinary Twins”: The Tragedy of

Pudd’nhead Wilson and The Comedy of Those Extraordinary

Twins. Hartford: Amer. Pub Co., 1900.

Vogler, Christopher. The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structures for

Storytellers and Screenwriters London: Pan, 1998.