{"id":1441,"date":"2013-10-11T00:55:12","date_gmt":"2013-10-11T04:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/?p=1441"},"modified":"2013-10-11T00:55:12","modified_gmt":"2013-10-11T04:55:12","slug":"lets-steal-from-this-the-movie-gravity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/lets-steal-from-this-the-movie-gravity\/","title":{"rendered":"LET&#8217;S STEAL FROM THIS! The Movie &#8220;Gravity&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"tweetbutton1441\" class=\"tw_button\" style=\"\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattdebenham.com%2Fblog%2Flets-steal-from-this-the-movie-gravity%2F&amp;text=LET%26%238217%3BS%20STEAL%20FROM%20THIS%21%20The%20Movie%20%26%238220%3BGravity%26%238221%3B&amp;related=&amp;lang=en&amp;count=horizontal&amp;counturl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattdebenham.com%2Fblog%2Flets-steal-from-this-the-movie-gravity%2F\" class=\"twitter-share-button\"  style=\"width:55px;height:22px;background:transparent url('https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-tweet-button\/tweetn.png') no-repeat  0 0;text-align:left;text-indent:-9999px;display:block;\">Tweet<\/a><\/div><div id=\"fb_share_1\" style=\"float: right; margin-left: 10px;\"><a name=\"fb_share\" type=\"box_count\" share_url=\"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/lets-steal-from-this-the-movie-gravity\/\" href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php\">Share<\/a><\/div><div><script src=\"http:\/\/static.ak.fbcdn.net\/connect.php\/js\/FB.Share\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/div><p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>LET&#8217;S STEAL FROM THIS! looks at popular culture for lessons we can drag back to our cold, damp cave of fiction-writing. This time: the new movie <em>Gravity<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>I saw <em>Gravity<\/em> last weekend, and I&#8217;m so, so glad I did. It&#8217;s the best action movie I&#8217;ve seen in years, and also the best thriller, and it has no more than two characters. (I&#8217;m being careful not to spoil things for those who haven&#8217;t seen it.)<\/p>\n<p><em>Gravity<\/em> also came up during workshop today, when I suddenly realized something about a student&#8217;s novel-in-progress: in telling the story of a father and son on a group fishing trip in an exotic location, she may not need all the run-up to the trip, which had occupied a good many chapters; all she may need is the trip. This is something that&#8217;ll be sorted out once she finishes the first draft, of course, and god knows there&#8217;s more than one way to tell a story. But I did point to <em>Gravity<\/em>, a movie whose magic comes almost entirely from the fact that you are stuck in space with the main character(s) for the whole 91-minute running time.<\/p>\n<p>In the case of my student&#8217;s novel, there&#8217;s a lot of backstory for her main character. But this trip itself is where all the present-day action happens. I can&#8217;t imagine it not being a better story for playing off the compression of being IN that trip from start to finish.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not saying every story should take place in a single location. But Gravity does remind me of both the delights of story compression and the perils of starting your story too early.<\/p>\n<p>Gravity&#8217;s director, Alfonso Cuaron, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/2013\/oct\/09\/gravity-alfonso-cuaron-studio-pressure?CMP=twt_fd&amp;CMP=SOCxx2I2\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">gave an interview yesterday<\/span> <\/a>where he revealed all the studio meddling he&#8217;d had to fight off to make Gravity his way. Je-sus Christ.<\/p>\n<h5>Cuar\u00f3n highlights a demand for constant cutting to Mission Control in Houston, a la Apollo 13: &#8220;You need to cut to Houston, and see how the rescue mission goes. And there is a ticking clock with the rescue mission.&#8221;<\/h5>\n<p>Not to get dramatic, but cutting to Houston would have killed the movie. Instantly. Besides, you know what provides a real &#8220;ticking clock&#8221;? Being trapped in space with a limited oxygen supply and your ride home smashed to bits. Here&#8217;s another gem:<\/p>\n<h5>Another request was for the script to include flashbacks: &#8220;You have to do flashbacks with the backstory.&#8221; Then there was the suggestion that Bullock has &#8220;a romantic relationship with the Mission Control commander, who is in love with her.&#8221;<\/h5>\n<p>Again: flashbacks would take you <em>out<\/em> of space, which would remove that &#8220;ticking clock&#8221; you&#8217;re so fond of yet not somehow seeing right in front of you. I&#8217;m not going to talk about the romantic relationship with the Mission Control commander who is in love with Sandra Bullock.<\/p>\n<p>These suggestions, by the way, read like made-up dialogue from a movie about the frustrations of filmmaking. There&#8217;s nothing in <em>The Player<\/em> that&#8217;s any dumber or more outlandish than the things these executives said to Alfonso Cuaron. And this is why our movies are mostly terrible.<\/p>\n<p>But those suggestions are hugely instructive, if only to remind us what <em>not<\/em> to do. What&#8217;s unnecessary. I remember being in graduate school and reading an interview with Ben Marcus where he said he refused to give backstory to his characters. I thought that was fantastic. I also thought it was, for me, maybe a little unrealistic: most of the stories I was writing at the time were dealing with the push-pull between where people were going in their lives and where they&#8217;d been. But it did make me very aware of not giving <em>too<\/em> much &#8212; I&#8217;d long had a habit of just piling on the backstory and the flashback and all the reasons why why why.<\/p>\n<p>I ended up making a rule for myself, thanks to Ben Marcus: I could use backstory to echo or provide counterpoint to things in the current storyline, but I couldn&#8217;t use it to &#8220;make a case&#8221; for why a character was the way she was. I still think that&#8217;s a good rule of thumb, though rules (like thumbs) were made to be broken.<\/p>\n<p>I also remember an interview with a novelist &#8212; I can&#8217;t remember if it was Louise Erdich or Alice McDermott &#8212; who said this about the <em>scope<\/em> of her books (and I am paraphrasing): &#8220;I write it, starting it where I think it should start. Then I give it to my friend, who reads it, and she tells me where it <em>really<\/em> starts. And it&#8217;s always, inevitably, about a third of the way further in than I&#8217;d thought.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This was another thing that came up in today&#8217;s workshop, for another novel, and it&#8217;s something else illustrated beautifully by <em>Gravity<\/em>: try starting only as far back as you need to in order to get the story moving.\u00a0So many other writers\/filmmakers would&#8217;ve started <em>Gravity<\/em> earlier. I guarantee you someone would&#8217;ve had Sandra Bullock&#8217;s alarm clock going off, and her hand flopping over the shut it off. Then she shuffles through her morning at home and then she gets in her car &#8212; we still think she&#8217;s just going to some boring job &#8212; and CUT TO she&#8217;s at the launch pad, because holy cow, she&#8217;s going to space! And here George Clooney attempts to banter with her, but she&#8217;s not having any of that because she&#8217;s sad and CUT TO flashback of what happened to make Sandra Bullock sad.<\/p>\n<p>Guess what? You didn&#8217;t need any of that. There&#8217;s a smidge of backstory given in dialogue at the beginning, as they&#8217;re fixing the Hubble telescope, but even so much of that is kind of unnecessary. Know why? Because really only a certain kind of person would go work in <em>space<\/em>. Because it&#8217;s <em>space<\/em>. The situation, like any deeply specific situation, helps define the character; her dialogue and her actions and inactions fill in the rest.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s what really carries us along with Sandra Bullock as she goes from one &#8220;OH GOD, NO!&#8221; moment to another. She&#8217;s in space because of one aspect of her personality, but she&#8217;s also not made of the same stuff as Clooney, and so we want her to get back home. We&#8217;re as desperate for it as she is.<\/p>\n<p>(Without spoiling anything, I will say that I also like the ending of <em>Gravity<\/em>. It might end earlier than some people would wish, but for me it ends exactly where the <em>story<\/em> of the movie ends. Meaning: oftentimes we wish for wrap-ups or and-thens, but these things don&#8217;t always honor the stories that preceded.)<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s good, basic character work, which means it&#8217;s good writing. But <em>Gravity<\/em> is a terrific reminder that good writing isn&#8217;t just a bunch of effective words on a page, and it&#8217;s not just the A-to-B-to-C progression of plot. It&#8217;s also the <em>choices<\/em> you make &#8212; where to start, where to end, what to show, what to leave out. It&#8217;s about knowing the exact dimensions of that metaphorical iceberg Hemingway so famously discussed. And it&#8217;s about ignoring the urge to show <em>everything<\/em>. A movie executive in 2013 would demand not only to show the entire iceberg, but also to have a flashback scene where we see the moment from that iceberg&#8217;s childhood that explains <em>everything<\/em> about the character of the iceberg.<\/p>\n<p>Go see <em>Gravity<\/em>. Have a good time. Ask yourself: do I really need all the backstory and flashback and external elements in my story? Then ask yourself: Why aren&#8217;t more movies like this being made, movies that take narrative risks and attempt to do more with less? But I fully expect we&#8217;ll hear about a bunch of scripts being bought where people are trapped in space, or trapped in something (water? Sand? Methane clouds?), and that&#8217;ll show us that the exact wrong lesson was learned, yet again.<\/p>\n<p>The lesson isn&#8217;t to copy all the surface elements of a thing that worked. The lesson is that a one-person action movie &#8212; WITH A LADY &#8212; just came along and ate everyone&#8217;s lunch and it did so because it ignored all the things that are supposed to make for a blockbuster while <em>not<\/em> ignoring all the things that make for a good story. Even if movie executives take away the wrong lessons and keep making crappy movies, let&#8217;s steal from <em>Gravity<\/em> everything we can with regard to our own work. Including ignoring the executives in our heads!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div id=\"tweetbutton1441\" class=\"tw_button\" style=\"\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattdebenham.com%2Fblog%2Flets-steal-from-this-the-movie-gravity%2F&amp;text=LET%26%238217%3BS%20STEAL%20FROM%20THIS%21%20The%20Movie%20%26%238220%3BGravity%26%238221%3B&amp;related=&amp;lang=en&amp;count=horizontal&amp;counturl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattdebenham.com%2Fblog%2Flets-steal-from-this-the-movie-gravity%2F\" class=\"twitter-share-button\"  style=\"width:55px;height:22px;background:transparent url('https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-tweet-button\/tweetn.png') no-repeat  0 0;text-align:left;text-indent:-9999px;display:block;\">Tweet<\/a><\/div><p>LET&#8217;S STEAL FROM THIS looks at popular culture for lessons we can drag back to our cold, damp cave of fiction-writing. This time: the movie Gravity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lets-steal-from-this"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1441"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1444,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441\/revisions\/1444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}