PA RT I I I GENRES: FORMING THE STORY The term genre often conjures up images of gangsters, Western heroes, or monsters. In fact, the term is applicable to all stories. Genre is nothing more than the form, the envelope that encloses the characters and structure of the story. Of course, gangster films, Westerns, and horror films are particular genres. But so are war films, biographical films, science fiction films, and a wide variety of comedies. In this section of the book, we are going to look at four meta-genres, those that transcend the more specific genres and yet include them. For example, every sports film, every gangster film, every screwball comedy has in it a layer of melodrama. Although we will be using long films to contextualize the different genres, we will look only at meta-genres that are suitable to the short film. These meta-genres embrace the particularities of the short film— its relation to the short story and to the photograph—as well as the link of the short film to nonnarrative forms such as poetry and abstract art. Now we will turn to those meta-genres and show how they will be useful to your writing a short film. Ch13.qxd 9/27/04 6:10 PM Page 151 Ch13.qxd 9/27/04 6:10 PM Page 152 13 THE MELODRAMA Perhaps it’s best to start this chapter with a bit of fact and fiction about melo- drama. First the fiction. Over the years, the term melodrama has increasingly taken on a negative implication. It is associated with soap opera, exclusively with romantic women’s stories, and with a dramatic device best characterized as exaggera- tion (as opposed to realism, or a story that is simply more believable). Although all of the above has a hint of truth, each is too narrow an approach to melodrama and keeps us away from the usefulness of melodrama as a form. Turning to the “truth” about melodrama, what then do we mean by the term? A good starting point is to suggest that melodrama at its most basic concerns itself with stories that are essentially realistic. Within that general description, melodrama can be a story about ordinary people in ordinary sit- uations as well as a domestic story about a king (Lear) or a prince (Hamlet). Melodrama can be a relationship story of the privileged (James Cameron’s Titanic) or of the famous (Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen). Melodramas can be presented in the form of a novel (Judith Guest’s Ordinary People), a play (Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge), or as a film (Joseph Mankiewicz’s All About Eve). It can be a long film or a short one. Graham Justice’s A Children’s Story and Elke Rosthal’s My Name Is Rabbit are both short films that are melodramas. Both will be discussed later in this chapter. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MELODRAMA Realistic People in Realistic Situations Melodramas, unlike fables, are stories that may have happened, or that at least in the mind of the audience, could have happened. That means that the super- natural and the fabulous are the subjects, or surroundings, of other genres. In 153 Ch13.qxd 9/27/04 6:10 PM Page 153 the melodrama, the story is about you or me, or our grandparents, or about someone we believe exists or did exist. This recognizability affects every ele- ment of the melodrama—its characters, its shape, its tone. Although not all forms of drama are accurate renderings of reality (rather, they are exagger- ated forms of reality), melodrama is essentially constrained by this notion of recognizability and consequently believability. To get more concrete, melodramas on television such as ER and Chicago Hope focus on the lives of doctors and patients. Hospital bureaucracy, socie- tal problems, love affairs, and the struggle for life are the story elements of these successful series. The characters are well defined, differentiated, and above all, very human. Hope, fear, passion, commitment, power, and pow- erlessness define the characters and their goals. But key to our involvement is that we in the audience know these people; they are you and me. This quality of the melodrama is recognizable in the most highly acclaimed films—Titanic, Shine, The English Patient. The subject matter of these recent successes echoes the famous melodramas from the past. Ambition is at the heart of All About Eve. Family violence is the core issue of Lee Tamahori’s Once Were Warriors. The consequences of divorce are the sub- ject of Robert Benton’s Kramer vs. Kramer. Racism is the core of Robert Mulligan’s To Kill a Mockingbird, as it is of Euzhan Palcy’s A Dry White Season. The key elements all these films share are that they treat the core issue realistically, and the characters who inhabit the story are realistic. The Dominance of Relationships as a Story Element There are genres that are dominated by plot—the action-adventure film, the Western, the war film. Other genres, such as melodramas, are dominated by character. What this means is that melodramas key in on relationships on a level that is both understandable and appealing to us. In George Stevens’s A Place in the Sun (1952), the main character deeply explores two love relationships, one with a working-class coworker, the other with a privileged debutante. These relationships dominate the story. In Peter Yates’s Breaking Away (1979), the main character explores his relation- ships with his peers (a group of working-class mates who do not go to col- lege) and a relationship with a privileged college student. In order to pursue this latter relationship, he pretends to be a college student as well. To hide more deeply his true identity from her, he also pretends to be Italian. In Anthony Minghella’s Truly, Madly, Deeply, the main character struggles between loyalty to a dead lover and the life-affirming urge to form a rela- tionship with a man who is alive and capable of a future. Her struggle is very much between remaining rooted in a tragic past and risking a viable future. The character in Graham Justice’s A Children’s Story is a 10-year-old from a 154 Writing the Short Film Ch13.qxd 9/27/04 6:10 PM Page 154 broken family. Her mother doesn’t have time for her, and the bus driver who does have time for her is accused of sexually abusing her. The Nature of the Main Character’s Struggle Melodramas are marked by a very particular struggle for the main character. Essentially it can be characterized as the struggle of a powerless main charac- ter against the power structure. I should add that the definition of powerless- ness has to be viewed in a very liberal way. For example, a king may be on the surface very powerful, indeed all-powerful, but if he is as old as King Lear, he will be faced with antagonists who are young, vibrant, and confident that they are “the power structure.” In this sense, an aged King Lear is powerless. A clearer example is the young child in a family drama. Relative to his adult parents, the child is powerless. So too is a woman in a culture where male dominance prevails. Thus, a story like Mike Nichols’s Working Girl is one of a bright woman trying to make her way in a workplace that is a male power structure. To complicate this story, Nichols places a high-status woman at the head of the company. The main character’s working-class roots make class the overlay to the female/male power grid. Consequently the female, working-class main character has two layers of the power struc- ture to contend with. Whether the main character is dealing with gender, class, race, or age, the key element to the melodrama is that the main character’s struggle is always against the power structure. In genres such as the action-adventure and the situation comedy, the plot enables the main character to achieve his or her goal. In the melodrama, the plot is set against the main character and his or her goal. In Breaking Away, the bicycle race that concludes the film offers the main character a chance to win the race, but in doing so he loses the college girl with whom he was infatuated. To win he has to drop his pretense. No longer a foreign student, no longer a college student, he acknowledges his working- class self. He wins the race (plot) but loses the girl (goal). The Adaptability of Melodrama Although melodrama tends to be a character-driven proceeding, whether without plot (Truly, Madly, Deeply) or with plot (A Place in the Sun), it is not rigidly so. The form can be adapted if the story benefits. Specific examples will illustrate. George Miller’s Lorenzo’s Oil is a melodrama in which the mother and to an extent, the father, initially believe they are powerless when their son is The Melodrama 155 Ch13.qxd 9/27/04 6:10 PM Page 155 afflicted with a fatal illness. Rather than accept his fate, they fight the med- ical establishment (power structure), which views their son as raw material for scientific experiments—experiments that will enhance the doctors’ repu- tations but not save the son. The parents decide to explore science for solu- tions to halt the disease, and in the end they are successful. Lorenzo’s Oil uses plot in the way the thriller does—to victimize. By eluding the victimization of the plot (the disease), mother and father are victorious, and they save their son (their goal). In Lorenzo’s Oil, the adaptation of the structure of the thriller makes this melodrama unusual and powerful. The same adaptation of plot from the thriller form makes Christopher Morahan’s Paper Mask an unusual melodrama. The main character’s goal is to pretend that he is a doctor. The threat this poses to his patients, his friends, and to himself creates the tension that relentlessly moves us through this story. Melodrama Explores Issues That Are More Psychologically Complex Than Other Genres Because the melodrama is essentially character-driven, and because all sto- ries require us to form a relationship with the main character, it is critical that we understand and identify with the issues that character faces. This means that the issue must be primal, not peripheral. Consequently, it has to be an issue that touches us quickly and deeply, one that is close to each of us. Family relations are complex, and they are the key to many of the critical issues in melodrama. Acceptance and rejection within the family, particu- larly between parent and child, is at the heart of many of the great melodra- mas—Elia Kazan’s East of Eden, Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata. The problems of commitment and autonomy are at the core of melodramas like these, which focus on problematic marriages: Irvin Kershner’s Loving, Paul Mazursky’s Enemies: A Love Story. An identity crisis is at the heart of Yates’s Breaking Away and of Steve Kloves’s The Fabulous Baker Boys. Conformity vs. individuality is the central issue in Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Tony Richardson’s The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Issues of loss, gender, sexuality, ambition, jealousy, envy, all are prime subject matter for the melodrama. What is important here is that these issues not be treated casually. The more deeply they lie in the heart of the story, the more likely we are to deeply engage with that story. Melodrama Is Adaptable to the Issues of the Day One of the most notable qualities about melodrama is how the form can be used to embrace the key social, economic, and political issues of the day. 156 Writing the Short Film Ch13.qxd 9/27/04 6:10 PM Page 156 When the downturn of coal mining was a central concern of British society, films such as John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley and Carol Reed’s The Stars Look Down were produced. Today, sexual abuse and incest, particularly concerning children, is a powerful issue. Films like John Smith’s The Boys of St. Vincent, Angelica Huston’s Bastard Out of Carolina, Tod Solondz’s Happiness, all attest to the power of this issue in the public consciousness. Women’s issues, children’s issues, education, religion, morality, amorality, immorality, the lives of politicians, priests, pundits—if they are issues of the day, they quickly become the material of melodrama. This impulse is most pronounced in television—both series television and TV movies. One of the reasons melodrama is so gripping for audiences is this very malleability. Melodrama Is the Fundamental Layer of Many Genres A biography of T. E. Lawrence or Jake La Motta, or an epic screen treatment of the religious/secular struggle of Thomas More or of the political/personal struggle of Yuri Zhivago—each of these stories has a layer of melodrama. In fact, it is the layer of melodrama that humanizes and dramatizes the story. To be more specific, the plot of David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia is the story of the Arab revolt against its Turkish rulers. Lawrence led the revolt, essentially a sideshow in the larger world war of 1914–18. The progress of that revolt and its outcome is the plot of Lawrence of Arabia. The melodrama layer is the story of T. E. Lawrence, bastard of a British nobleman, a man who sees himself as an outsider in British society. This outsider affiliates himself with a group of other outsiders, Bedouin tribesmen. He unites them and is united with them, one out- sider leading other outsiders against the power structure (the Ottoman Turks and the British, two distinct empires). Of course, he wins the battle but loses the war: the Arabs merely change masters, from the Turks to the British, and Lawrence has been their instrument. In a sense the melodrama is the story of Lawrence’s search for a new identity. He finds a new identity, but sadly it lasts only for a short while. Once the revolt is over, there is no place for Lawrence. He must return to his own again, to be an outsider (and soon die). This same pattern shapes David Lean’s Dr. Zhivago. The plot is the Russian Revolution of 1917 and how its success was the ruination of the individual and of the family unit. The melodramatic layer of the film cen- ters around Yuri Zhivago’s relationships; the Revolution always under- mines the only thing he truly values, love—embodied in an intimate relationship first with his wife, then with Lara. In the end the personal losses and sacrifices are so great that Yuri is literally heartsick. Does he die of a heart attack or of a broken heart? Choose whichever interpretation you wish. The key issue here is that melodrama is the fundamental layer in biographical, sports, war, gangster, and epic films. The Melodrama 157 Ch13.qxd 9/27/04 6:10 PM Page 157 . long films to contextualize the different genres, we will look only at meta-genres that are suitable to the short film. These meta-genres embrace the particularities. embrace the particularities of the short film its relation to the short story and to the photograph—as well as the link of the short film to nonnarrative forms