D. Hart St. Martin

I make female heroes badass AND believable

Movies

Dancing with the Denouement

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(Originally published November 12, 2015)

This article is a favorite of mine, so I decided to repost it. I hope you enjoy it.

The best piece of writing I’ve ever experienced was not a book or a short story. It was a movie—The Terminator. I found myself thinking about this movie and its brilliant screenplay by James Cameron last night as I was considering how to approach an explanation to a writing friend of what I call the punch-line denouement. (According to Writers Digest, “the denouement is the final outcome of the story, generally occurring after the climax of the plot. Often it’s where all the secrets (if there are any) are revealed and loose ends are tied up.”)

For those who’ve never seen it, The Terminator tells the story of Sarah Connor, a 1980s college student working as a waitress. Sarah’s life is irreparably changed when two travelers arrive from the future. One—a cyborg—has come to kill her to keep her from conceiving the savior of humankind. The other—Kyle Reese—intends to stop the cyborg and keep Sarah alive.

Warning: There be spoilers ahead.

From a feminist standpoint, this movie is perhaps the first I ever saw with a female hero at the helm of an action film. Yes, Sarah is the hero. It is she who must change in order to make the future possible. She begins as a fun-loving young woman who by the end has gathered together all the strength she possesses in order to face that future straight on.

Back to my point. Storytelling. The amazing screenplay by James Cameron blows me away every time I watch the movie or even think about it. I recommend it to anyone who wants to taste the joy of how to tell a very complicated story in a couple of hours. Cameron hands us each piece of information required at the very moment we require it.

Two men are after Sarah. Who are they? Are they both bad guys? Or, if one of them is good, which one is it? Boom. It’s Kyle Reese, the young man who looks totally out-gunned by Arnold and who came back in time because he’d fallen in love with Sarah from a Polaroid picture. Why is Arnold after her? What does he intend to do with or to her? Boom. She’s the future mother of the man who sent Kyle back in time to save her. How can you tell these cyborgs from humans? Dogs can sniff them out. And it goes on.

If you haven’t seen The Terminator and you’re a writer of any kind of fiction, I highly recommend it as the next movie you stream. Don’t accept watching it on commercial television; they cut out the stupidest stuff, including any time a blow from Arnold connects, even when he punches through a windshield. Brilliantly concocted and shot on a budget that apparently precluded getting permits from the city of Los Angeles for all those street racing night scenes (they filmed them on the sly then slipped away into the night without getting caught), it is, in many ways, an indie film.

But, the most important aspect of this film is the way Cameron sets up his final scene. The movie reaches its climactic ending right after Sarah and Kyle have consummated their blooming love for one another. The terminator kills Kyle and then Sarah terminates the terminator. Glorious.

Cut to the final scene. Sarah in a Jeep driving through the desert, dictating into a tape recorder saying, “Do I tell you about your father?” Then, she rubs her very pregnant belly and continues on briefly about Kyle. A dog sits with her in the Jeep.

She pulls up to a little gas station out in the middle of nowhere. A boy runs up to the Jeep and exchanges a couple of lines with Sarah. He has a Spanish accent. He takes her picture with his Polaroid and then asks for payment which she gives him. It’s the picture Kyle had fallen in love with. The boy’s grandfather says something in Spanish, and Sarah asks the boy what he said. “A storm is coming.” Sarah looks off in the direction she’s headed and agrees when she sees the cloud. Then she drives off, and the credits begin with the Jeep heading away from the camera. Fade to black.

Now that all took far more time to describe than it takes on the screen. It’s a simple little scene, and every single aspect of it requires no explanation to the viewer because Cameron set it all up earlier in the movie. And that, my friends, is how to deliver the punch line to a story. Set-up is everything. You shouldn’t have to rely on explanations in the denouement. It should stand on its own.

MY TAKE ON STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI

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YONDER BE SPOILERS, TRED LIGHTLY

So, here’s what I thought of The Last Jedi. I didn’t love it. I haven’t quite figured out why because I think it will end up #2 on my Star Wars favorite list, but there you have it. I started crying when Luke kissed Leia on the forehead and didn’t stop until after I got in my car. It still makes me cry because my Star Wars is over. If Carrie Fisher hadn’t died, she would have been left for episode IX, but we know they’re going to have to off General Organa somehow. Sigh.

Kudos to Rian Johnson for finally getting the whole balance-in-the-Force thing right. The prophecy of “The Chosen One” always bugged the crap out of me. “The Chosen One will destroy the Sith and bring balance to the Force.” That’s like saying the Chosen One will kick the kid on the left side of the teeter-totter off and bring balance to the teeter-totter. Or let’s keep the sun shining 24 hours a day. We need the dark. We need to recognize the darkness deep within us if we are to remain whole. If the prophecy had said, “The Chosen One will destroy the Sith and save the universe,” I wouldn’t have an issue with it. But it says “balance,” and you can’t have balance on a scale when only one side carries any weight.

Adam Driver was brilliant. That first scene with Snoke (the scene without Rey) where Snoke smacks him around verbally and tells him he’s still a child and then the closeup on Driver’s face where he looks like a child with that pout—great. Daisy Ridley—doggedly carrying on the seeker’s role and doing it well. Carrie Fisher—I wish we’d had more. But Luke, beloved Luke, ripped apart and desiring nothing save dying on that island to put the Jedi to rest for good. I love the conflicted ones, and Mark Hamill played that conflict right up to its razor edge.

I want to see it again and again. There’s so much going on, I suspect it will take several viewings to catch it all.

Carrie on, Courageous Sister

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Two events stand out in my life from 1977—I read the third (and what I thought of as final) book in the Dune series, Children of Dune, and I saw Star Wars at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood on a Thursday afternoon with two friends. Both moments contributed to what eventually became my Lisen of Solsta series. The first because upon finishing it, I threw the book across the room and declared, “If Frank Herbert won’t write the book I want to read, then I will.” (Upon re-reading the book, I discovered it was actually pretty good when I didn’t make my personal expectations impediments to my enjoyment.)

As for Star Wars, what can I say? The ads and teasers left me thinking swashbuckler in space. Swords and young people swinging across chasms? I was on board before I ever saw it. Months later when I set out to write “my” story (you know, the one Frank Herbert didn’t write), I chose a female hero because I thought it was time for as many Princess Leias as there were Luke Skywalkers.

carrie-fisher

Carrie Fisher died today, and I’m one of thousands, if not millions, recording their feelings for posterity about this woman who stood proud and never attempted to hide her reality. And her reality was often brutal. Standing as an icon to geek-dom while still in her early twenties, struggling with addiction and then facing the diagnosis of bipolar disorder—she could have played her little violin, and all her fans would have fallen in line to pity her. But Carrie Fisher wasn’t a violinist, and she declined people’s pity. Instead she wrote. And what she wrote!

She wrote biographical novels about her relationship with her famous mother. She wrote memoirs about life in a brighter-than-light spotlight. She wrote one-woman plays detailing her battles with the iconic life of a princess, drugs and mental disease. Rather than run away from these things, she celebrated them with humor and fearless reflection.

I suffered a few losses of my own this year (previously documented), but when I learned of Carrie’s passing, although not unexpected, I cried and realized her loss leaves me as empty as those other losses do. May the Goddess bless her on this new leg of her journey, but damn it, I had so wished to read her take on flat-lining on a plane.

Dancing with the Denouement

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T2_sarah_polaroid

The best piece of writing I’ve ever experienced was not a book or a short story. It was a movie—The Terminator. I found myself thinking about this movie and its brilliant screenplay by James Cameron last night as I was considering how to approach an explanation to a writing friend of what I call the punch-line denouement[1].

For those who’ve never seen it, The Terminator tells the story of Sarah Connor, a 1980s college student working as a waitress. Sarah’s life is irreparably changed when two travelers arrive from the future. One—a cyborg—has come to kill her to keep her from conceiving the savior of humankind. The other—Kyle Reese—intends to stop the cyborg and keep Sarah alive.

From a feminist standpoint, this movie is perhaps the first I ever saw with a female hero at the helm of an action film. Yes, Sarah is the hero. It is she who must change in order to make the future possible.  She begins as a fun-loving young woman who by the end has gathered together all the strength she possesses in order to face that future straight on.

Back to my point. Storytelling. The amazing screenplay by James Cameron blows me away every time I watch the movie or even think about it. I recommend it to anyone who wants to taste the joy of how to tell a very complicated story in a couple of hours. Cameron hands us each piece of information required at the very moment we require it.

Two men are after Sarah. Who are they? Are they both bad guys? Or, if one of them is good, which one is it? Boom. It’s Kyle Reese, the young man who looks totally out-gunned by Arnold and who came back in time because he’d fallen in love with Sarah from a Polaroid picture. Why is Arnold after her? What does he intend to do with or to her? Boom. She’s the future mother of the man who sent Kyle back in time to save her. How can you tell these cyborgs from humans? Dogs can sniff them out. And it goes on.

If you haven’t seen The Terminator and you’re a writer of any kind of fiction, I highly recommend it as the next movie you stream. Don’t accept watching it on commercial television; they cut out the stupidest stuff, including any time a blow from Arnold connects, even when he punches through a windshield. Brilliantly concocted and shot on a budget that apparently precluded getting permits from the city of Los Angeles for all those street racing night scenes (they filmed them on the sly then slipped away into the night without getting caught), it is, in many ways, an indie film.

But, the most important aspect of this film is the way Cameron sets up his final scene. The movie reaches its climactic ending right after Sarah and Kyle have consummated their blooming love for one another. The terminator kills Kyle and then Sarah terminates the terminator. Glorious.

Cut to the final scene. Sarah in a Jeep driving through the desert, dictating into a tape recorder saying, “Do I tell you about your father?” Then, she rubs her very pregnant belly and continues on briefly about Kyle.  A dog sits with her in the Jeep.

terminator-1984-sarah-connor

She pulls up to a little gas station out in the middle of nowhere. A boy runs up to the Jeep and exchanges a couple of lines with Sarah. He has a Spanish accent. He takes her picture with his Polaroid and then asks for payment which she gives him. It’s the picture Kyle had fallen in love with. The boy’s grandfather says something in Spanish, and Sarah asks the boy what he said. “A storm is coming.” Sarah looks off in the direction she’s headed and agrees when she sees the cloud. Then she drives off, and the credits begin with the Jeep heading away from the camera. Fade to black.

Now that all took far more time to describe than it takes on the screen. It’s a simple little scene, and every single aspect of it requires no explanation to the viewer because Cameron set it all up earlier in the movie. And that, my friends, is how to deliver the punch line to a story. Set-up is everything. You shouldn’t have to rely on explanations in the denouement. It should stand on its own.

[1] The denouement is the final outcome of the story, generally occurring after the climax of the plot. Often it’s where all the secrets (if there are any) are revealed and loose ends are tied up. http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/what-is-a-denouement