A Hollywood Story – 4

Have you been thinking about the kind of Hollywood film you’d like to write? Are you nudged in the direction of drama or comedy or something else?

Last week we talked about Singin’ in the Rain, the iconic movie musical that’s also really funny and has a romance angle as well. Let’s continue our review of films that tell a bit of a lighter Hollywood story with a look at an improbably named Hollywood film… because it’s not set in Hollywood.

State and Main [2000], by David Mamet, tells the story of what happens to a small town when Hollywood descends upon it to use it as the background for their movie shoot. In addition to some of the townspeople, the most sympathetic of the descending Hollywood crowd is the screenwriter, Joe. Otherwise, the Hollywood characters are not portrayed as people you’d want to spend a lot of time with, nor would you want them as your boss.

The film crew descends on this Vermont town after being kicked out of the New Hampshire town that had initially agreed to allow them to film their movie. And lots of adjustments need to be made. The irony is that, by the end, the behavior of the townspeople isn’t all that different from the behavior of the movie crowd. There’s something about worshipping stars that seems to make the worshippers pompous themselves. It’s an interesting dynamic.

One of the best things about State and Main is that the characters aren’t each just… one thing. You know what I mean? No one is “the good guy” no one is the stereotypical “long suffering wife”… no one is any stock character. While Mamet is definitely cynical about Hollywood and Hollywood types, the cynicism isn’t mean-spirited. It’s satire, sure, but even though we might not think too highly of some of these characters, they also have something sort of likeable, or redeeming, about them.

Take the director, Walt Price—sure, he’s a send-up of some stereotypes when it comes to directors, and the two stars of the film within a film are stereotypes of full-of-themselves actors, but they’re all, somehow, interesting and, if not likeable, at least funny in a way that doesn’t make us despise them but a way that makes us smile at them and their foolishness as the story progresses.

It’s a fine line, being able to write unlikeable characters BUT give them something that redeems them a bit. It’s so easy to write a stereotypical bad guy… it takes a lot more ability to write that bad guy with a bit of nuance, to make him more understandable, more real. It’s way more fun when even the villains have moments of likeability.

And that’s the main thing I’d encourage you to take from State and Main—the idea that good characters can be bad and bad characters can be good. It makes for a better story and it’s more like real life.

Copyright © Diane Lake

31Mar19

Email Diane a question to Diane@DianeLake.com