Is this tacky?

Sounds to me like a fresh spin on a tired and cliche'd scene. The hard part is going to be keeping the audience interested in what is basically going to be a near feature-length second act. If you believe in it, write it. Don't worry about if it's timely or not, because by the time it ever got optioned, produced and released we're likely to be involved in a different war by then anyway. You don't see Toby Keith too worried about his pro-war songs being too overly dramatic. He's just looking to make a buck. And he's not having any trouble paying the rent, last I heard.

Each to their own

It's a heartstring plucker, all right. Alas, in the real world what your script details is happening on a regular basis. So timing couldn't be worse, IMHO.

On a related note, just before the invasion began I was tinkering with a comedy set in Iraq. Readers said it was funny. I haven't touched it in over two years. Don't know if I ever will. It's not so funny any more.

Let your conscience guide you.

-Derek
Derek's Web Page - stories, screenplays, novels, insanity.

I think you should write it. If done well, it sounds much more of a personal story than an op/ed type piece disparing the trials of war. It doesn't sound tacky to me.

What would be tacky and immoral is to not portray the killed Marine in an honorable light. After that, I think your sister's wrong. I think if people were to see this, it'd be very cathartic for those who lost loved ones. Think of it as public service. But for Pete's sake, make it good. It sounds like your heart's really into this story and I think you feel compassion, not greed, while you write. What's tacky about that? Maybe you're driven by the great drama of the story rather than giving soldiers' families something to relate to, but you've gotta support yourself somehow. But I would say continue writing without caring whether you get paid for the script or not. If you've got a good idea, all the money in the world couldn't pay you like the payment you get for just getting the idea down on paper and off your chest.

I like it. It sounds like something which could move a lot of people, if done right. My only other comment: the multi-act structure seems as though it may work better as a play rather than a screenplay. Just an avenue you might want to explore. Regardless of what format you write it in, though, I'd be very interested in reading this.

<--- combat vet.

Jer -

You have described a framing device for a story - not a story. It's not tacky, but it runs the risk of being shmaltzy or worse depending upon the execution and the story you are telling within that framework. Stories require some sort of conflict so if the film is solely a series of flashbacks of "good, poignant memories" without conflict and the only tension coming from the audience knowledge that the character is dead - then I don't see much of a story there.

For an audience to know from the very beginning that the character is dead - is totally different emotional viewing experience than when an audience doesn't know the character is dead until the end. It can prevent an audience from getting emotionally involved with the character. So you need to work extra hard to pull an audience in.

Jer -

You're describing some emotional scenes - but I am still not seeing where your story is - your arc, your growth, your conflict. Danny's goal, his obstacle, etc.

Every death in Iraq is a tragedy. Every soldier has a personal story of how he got there. But a personal story is not the same thing as a story in the dramatic defintion of the word - and most human stories - no matter how dramatic - do not make good drama on the screen or on the page.

I'm not saying you don't have a dramatic story there - but you have not communicated what your story is.

hey

dpaterso said:

It's a heartstring plucker, all right. Alas, in the real world what your script details is happening on a regular basis. So timing couldn't be worse, IMHO.

On a related note, just before the invasion began I was tinkering with a comedy set in Iraq. Readers said it was funny. I haven't touched it in over two years. Don't know if I ever will. It's not so funny any more.

Let your conscience guide you.

-Derek
Derek's Web Page - stories, screenplays, novels, insanity.

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Hey Derek - I have to disagree, this seems like the best time to do this type of drama if done tastefully. I like the idea. I kind of thought about the evil powers of Desperate Housewives used for good. A dead central character with the people that he loves revolving around him in a cleverly knit together story. I think it could really shead some light on some basic human emotions popular with military families across the US. Think of all the post-war blockbusters after Vietnam. Platoon, Full Medal Jacket, M*A*S*H. I like the idea and I think the timing is perfect. Now... I could be wrong. If so in the words of Donnie Brasco "Forget about it"


PS - Ladder 49 comes to mind as a good example of how this was done.

I'd have to quote one John Rambo and say, "Nothing is over!" The movie he was in was made 7 years after Nam. So...Iraq's still going to be fresh by the time this could get made. Another thing he could do is tell the story of the contact team coming to the house as a flashback for most of the movie, then at the end, reveal the results of that.

Well, I think your sister has trouble dealing with highly emotional stuff, that's all. I mean why is it immoral? I don't understand.

There's always a war going on somewhere. I mean, when are you going to be able to write about death of a soldier? Wait for world peace? Good luck.

They're even going to make movies about 9/11. Talk about heartstring-tugging.

Now, whether you can pull this off without being manipulative and "heartstring -tugging" -- which a lot of people "resent" -- is another matter. For example, Cinderella Man is very manipulative and heartstring-tugging, but it's VERY well done...

Iwrite is right...you have to have conflict and growth of the characters. With what you've eluded to here, there isn't any conflict. Also, your dead soldier sounds way too perfect to be human. What are his flaws and how are you going to play them out?

All the emotional stuff is great and it's good to make people cry but even movies like The Notebook (similar in that it is also an emotional story told through memories) have conflict and a story that builds and moves forward.

Don't hold back on a story because it may be an inappropriate time - if you are passionate about writing the story, write it now. That's the only part of the process that is under your control anyway.

I wanted to comment on some of your story ideas. Here's what I think is a little odd:

1. Guy dates girl who's tougher and stronger than he is. Which is fine however, then you have him join the military. I think in most peoples' minds; people that join the military can already pretty much hold their own.

2. I would kinda stay away from the whole anti-war thing with "No WMDs" because this isn't Vietnam, there are a heck of a lot of people that support the war.

3. If you're sister cried that should be even more motivation for you to write this. You were able to bring out a very fierce emotion through words, there's nothing more powerful than that. You can't abandon it. Do you think Spielberg said "I can't make Schindler's List because it's too sad"?

The idea isn't tacky. The execution has yet to been seen though.

There is more to movie making

then just tugging at the heart strings as Iwrite is trying to point out to you.


All I think are in agreement that many of your thoughts are emotionally charged and at many points in your movie there is likely not to be a dry eye in the place.


It is an interesting concept, to take that 30 second time frame, slow it down and zero in on it.
However, movies have a very specific formula to them that makes them watchable, makes them work ON SCREEN.

The backbone of that formula is characters locked in conflict between something.
That antagonistic force may be a personal flaw, (greed, honesty, jealousy, laziness, anger, etc) or it may be a person, animal or thing (terrorist, boss, wife, storm, animal, alien).


The audience needs to know by the end of the film that SOMETHING has changed. Something has been accomplished. We go to the movies as a psychological way to deal with things we may not otherwise be able to deal with. We enjoy Spiderman because deep inside we all want to be a hero.
We watch Lord of the Rings because we all feel little and small and we want to see good win over evil. We watch romances because we need our hope restored in true love. We watch thrillers and horrors so we can be thankful that our problems aren't that bad. We see comdies so we can laugh at others making silly mistakes and learn to forgive our own.
(And yeah, you get out of the house; there is the spectacle, the effects, the eye candy.)

We don't want to leave the theater going "What was all that about? Gee, could have stayed home, watched CNN and still feel just as bummed out."


How will your film help us escape or deal with our humanity?
By the end of your story what will you have accomplished?
The soldier will still be dead.
Do you want the world to understand that death is sad?
That people will miss a loved one?
That War is hell?


Well, we all ready know that.
What we want is some way to DEAL with it.


In your story what will be different from when the car stopped at the curb and when the officers knock on the door?

If little Danny is your protag (it kind of sounds like he is) what growth does he go through? Does he fight a war inside himself? Does he discover a way to be comforted?

Maybe he starts out being angry but as he observes and goes through all the memories of his Dad and sees his family's reactions he comes to some kind of new understanding and by the time he reaches the door he is somehow ready to be what his Daddy wanted him to be.

The film would be about his CHANGE.
His STRUGGLE to cope with this loss and the grief around him.

Maybe his conflict is his love for his Dad and his anger at the choices that removed him from Danny's life.


OR you could take a slightly different bent on it and contrast the life of the little boy the solider comforted with Danny's experience. Danny will then have to deal with perhaps some hatred toward this other innocent child.


OR you can focus on how this family is divided by the pre Danny situation and the war, and how their grief unifies them in some way.


The point is that in order to fully involve the audience you MUST have a cohesive plot and viable conflict.

Some articles that may present these ideas in a more understandable manner then I perhaps did.

http://www.scriptsecrets.net/tips/tip288.htm
http://www.scriptsecrets.net/tips/tip30.htm
http://www.scriptsecrets.net/tips/tip11.htm
http://www.scriptsecrets.net/tips/tip12.htm
http://www.scriptsecrets.net/articles/decision.htm




Now, to the tacky question.
This is a win/lose story.
Some will agree with your take on things, and others won't, depending on their political views. You can't satisfy them all. As Depaterso said, you just gotta do what you believe is right and let the chips fall where they may.

I DO think you would need to approach the subject matter delicately and with skill. There is nothing worse then a serious subject handled poorly.

JERETHAL said:

The "story" is "How the death of Danny affects the family- especially his family.

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Actually the screenplay you outlined does not tell this story at all. We have no idea how their lives will be changed or effected by Danny's death as the film ends when they find out the news. All we have are their reflections on what life was like with him and how they react to the news of his death.

I am going to revise my initial statement and say that yes it is tacky to create a screenplay that is devised to manipulate an emotional response in an audience merely by the subject matter (dead soldier with heart of gold) as opposed to generate true emotion from plot, conflict and multi-dimensional characters.

First, Id care what no one else says. Write it out. It wounds good. Theres always gunna be a market for this type of story. Myabe not big screen, maybe cable, maybe network TV. It sounds like a good concept, so put it into screenplay format.
About your sister, you cant make everyone happy, youre a grown up, and if writing this story brings you some kidn of pleasure, do it!
Do it!

Someone can always come in and clean it up for you.
Otherwise youre always going to be torturing yourself, should I have written it.

Here's my shot at an ending.
Have the actual marine that was killed, and another soldier from same block, neighborhood, (basically make it a mixup in names like they did in Saving Private Ryan)
After all that, spice the ending up so that he comes through the door, Alive and Well.
that should bring some tears to the eyes.

well...

this kind of stuff always reminds me off The Best Years of Our Lives which was a personal/ensemble story about various soldiers afflicted by WWII. it was so fresh that one of the soldiers who lost both hands actually played himself....and he wasn't an actor. it won the Oscar for best picture that year. check it out!!!

NikeeGoddess said:

this kind of stuff always reminds me off The Best Years of Our Lives which was a personal/ensemble story about various soldiers afflicted by WWII. it was so fresh that one of the soldiers who lost both hands actually played himself....and he wasn't an actor. it won the Oscar for best picture that year. check it out!!!

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Nike - that's a good example - but Best Years was filled with conflict as all the characters must come to terms with how things have changed. It's the personal challenges and conflicts that made that script brilliant. It's the darkness, not the light that led it to win the awards and become a classic.

What Jer has described has no apparent conflict or drama other than the death itself.

The Notebook's poignancy comes from the true identity of the alzheimer's victim - but the drama, and emotion comes from the struggle that the character's had to be together. Without that struggle, without that conflict - the audience would not connect in the same way to the older characters.

Drama is conflict. Character's need to grow and change which means they need a mix of good and bad, dark and light.

Jer,

Your story definitely has a lot of emotion, but Iwrite is right, without conflict that emotion takes you nowhere. Scripter1 had some good suggestions.


Maybe he starts out being angry but as he observes and goes through all the memories of his Dad and sees his family's reactions he comes to some kind of new understanding and by the time he reaches the door he is somehow ready to be what his Daddy wanted him to be.

I thinks this would hit it right on the nose.

I think you could possibly hit it harder if each of his relatives were angry about something that occurred before Danny left, something they weren't able to find closure to. Even heroes have flaws.

Maybe he was tempted to cheat on his wife and she never forgave him.

Maybe when they were children, Danny and the Uncle quarreled over something major, which was the uncle's fault. The uncle never got to say he was sorry.

Maybe one of his relatives have kept a deep dark secret about something and planned to tell him, but no longer have the chance.

Little Danny is upset because his father promised he'd return.

These kind of things make conflict. Without conflict you have no story.

Play with it a little. See if you can come up with your own conflicts.

Steph

You have a good story here, but I'm afraid you're not getting what we're trying to say.

A soldier getting killed for approaching a little boy covered in blood is not conflict. Conflict is something to be overcome. If the man is dead, how will he overcome his own death?

Conflict is something that interferes with your character. It is what causes your characters to act. Without conflict you have no action. No action, no story.

Your story has a good concept, but no one is going to go to the theatre and watch a two hour movie based on emotions alone. In the end, the man is still going to be dead.

Suggestion-if you haven't already, watch "LADDER 49" or read the script. The man character is trapped in a fire during the whole movie, but we get flashbacks of his life. There is a lot of emotion, but there is also conflict. One of the main conflicts is that his wife is worried he might be killed, he's got two children, they fight and argue, at one point he seriously considers quitting his job as a fire fighter. In the end the man gives up and dies in the fire. It's very sad and a little disappointing, but during the movie we had something to hang on to. We wanted to know if the main character was going to survive or wether or not his wife had good reason to worry. You got to find that something that is going to keep us hanging on.


Steph

I've read over your entire posting and am going to address a few of your comments here. It is often better and easier to address these things while you are still developing the story rather than once it's complete. I am approaching this as I would approach any story that was pitched to me that sounded weak. To be honest if you had pitched me this story I simply would have put the query in the rejection pile - because to me there is neither a story or true conflict present and your explantaions in this post do nothing to alleviate those concerns.

First of all what you are describing here is not a linear story - it is more of a collage or scenes that in their totality will create a moving, clear, and compelling portrait of a person.

There are very few writers who can pull this off without the benefit of a linear storyline and make it dramatic and compelling. I strongly suggest therefore that whatever flashbacks you do have weave together into one linear storyline that traces Danny's life, growth and decision to enlist - rather than an isolated memory of how he met his wife here and another of him as a 4 year old playing Tarzan.

JERETHAL said:

Well, I'm writing the thing with the goal in mind of "trying to present on film what we all would feel when that car pulls up in front of the house." All of us would experience the same thing. We would flashback memories of our loved one.

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I'm not sure I buy this - I mean we are all different and react differently to such tragedies - but I think if most people saw the military car pull up to their homes - they would not experience fully fleshed out flashback memories at that moment - they'd have panic, fear, dread, denial, numbness coarsing through their veins. The most likely image to pop into your head is an image of how they died - not a memory of how they lived.

Later, once the shock and pain have subsided somewhat, the memories would filter in. I know that's been my experience every time I've found out about a tragic and unexpected death. At the moment you find out such a thing, you are numb, angry and shocked.

JERETHAL said:

It's almost like i can feel what it would really be like to experience that.

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Feeling it yourself and getting your audience to feel it are two different things entirely. I am not sure that the way you are structuring this is the best way to accomplish the mission of getting the audience to feel it.

The best way to do that is through a comeplling STORY. With a character the audience can relate to because he overcomes the obstacles both inside and outside himself to achieve his goal. This is what allows an audience to connect and empathize with a character. Showing a series of mushy - or "awwww, how sweet" enducing moments without a strong spine of a story and a character that grows does not create empathy

JERETHAL said:

They're just having a family get together playing cards on a nice summer day when WHAM! , life deals them a blow to the gut.

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I'm not buying this either. When your loved one is in at war - you are always slightly on edge - you never fully relax - it's never completely unexpected. Everytime a car pulls up in front of your house some part of you tenses anticipating that it's the military officials.

I think the big problem with these assumptions that you are making to frame your story - is that it is necessary for you to have an audience that will make those same assumptions if your story is to play out emotionally the way you want it to.

Those who like think that fear, panic and numbness are the most likely reactions to seeing the car rolling up - may find it eye-rolling that you used this set-up to lead to flashbacks.

JERETHAL said:

The conflict will occur over the posthumus letter to Danny jr. Butch intercepts it and changes it with Moms approval.

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Your main conflict MUST involve and impact your main character. It appears that Danny is your main character - since the man is dead by the time his sone receives the posthumus letter - he will obviously not be effected by the conflict.

The conflict needs to be about some sort of struggle for your main character. Internal and external. As I said up top - a pitch with no conflict is a pitch with no shot. I am not saying that you cannot tell a story using flashbacks. I am not saying you cannot tell a story about the issues you want to explore.

What I am saying is that you still have not been able to communicate exactly what your story is and you have not put your main character in any type of conflict (the scenario you described about Danny is a momentary conflict - not an ongoing one that defines and changes who he is). In order for your script to work then everything that comes before it for Danny would need to lead to that moment. Danny's decision to drop the gun and comfort the boy needs to come out his growth cycle and the resolution of his internal conflict. I'm not seeing that in your explanation.

JERETHAL said:

But when it all boils down to it, i have a problem with the story. Real people will be deeply affected by this. How can someone go to see this movie and then come home and have it become reality? Things like that will happen.

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Yes you do have a problem with the story and that problem is you don't appear to have one. You seem to be confusing - a tear jerking moment here and there - with a movie that packs an emotional wallop. Go back and look at any movie that has ever brought you to tears. You will see it is the story itself, the drama and the conflicts that have built up to that moment of loss. We feel the loss because we empathize. We empathize because we've taken the journey with the character. You do not sound like you are creating a journey.

JERETHAL said:

I'm leaning toward finishing it but putting it in a drawer and never looking at it again when I'm done.

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The difference between an aspiring writer and a professional one - is that an aspiring writer either will never finish it or will put it in a drawer when it's done - and a professional writer will keep revising and honing until it shines - and then will get it out into the world.

JERETHAL said:

I can say that I haven't had to think about anything in this story. It just oozes out of me.

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This is a big part of the problem. Ideas flowing out of you can feel great especially in a first draft. But structure, beat progression character development, require a certain amount of thought and strategizing.

You need to take a long hard look at your intention vs. your ooze. Because often what oozes out of us does not actually serve our intentions. For example it sounds like you want to pack an emotional wallop. That's all well and good - but what you have described is not going to do that.

I don't know what your background is Jer - but I suggest you pick up a good book on drama. One of the best is "The Art of Dramatic Writing" by Lajos Egri. It was originally written for playwrights - but his analysis applies to any sort of dramatic writing. It's among the most complete and the best books on the subject. I am sensing from your posts that you are missing the mark on what drama actually is because you are focusing on the concept of creating a visceral, emotional reaction - but you appear to be unaware that those reactions are in fact a pay-off to the dramatic elements set in place well prior to the scene that made you cry.

I hope you will take this in the spirit in which it was written - which was to give you food for thought. You do have the seed for something that could be quite interesting and dramatic - but you have not even begun to sow that seed.