Coming of Age Films—Big

When we think about coming of age films, is there a bigger one than Big [1988] by Gary Ross and Anne Spielberg? It was universally loved.

The premise was simple—12-year-old Josh laments being so short that he can’t even get on the roller coaster at the amusement park. And in his angst, he goes to a fortune telling machine and asks for what he wants—“I want to be big” he says. The machine spits out a card that says “Your wish is granted.”

The next morning he wakes up and, lo and behold, he’s got the body of a 25-year-old. He’s actually big.

He tries to tell his mom of his dilemma, but she thinks he’s someone who’s kidnapped her son! So he’s on the run with nowhere to go. He consults his best friend Billy who takes him into New York City where he stays in a rundown hotel. He’s alone and scared. He may be 25 on the outside, but inside he’s 12.

Take a look at the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGDTNhHYJ94

That premise is all you need to write the film. The choices the writers made were great, but you could have altered those choices and probably still have done pretty well with the film.

A great premise.

How do you come up with that elusive almost script-proof premise?

I think it’s about tapping into something universal. Everyone, when growing up, wants to be older. You wish you could make your OWN decisions and not always have to do what your parents want you to do. You wish you could eat what you want instead of having to eat broccoli and cauliflower and other stuff you hate. You wish you could play when you wanted to play instead of having to take out the garbage. You wish you could live on your own with no annoying parents to keep telling you what to do.

And once you ARE big—once you’re a grown up—you wish you could be a child again. You long for the carefree moments of your youth when you had zero responsibilities beyond taking out the garbage.

This is one of those films that works for both children and adults—children get to live the fantasy of being older and adults get to reminisce about the untroubled times of childhood when they didn’t have a mortgage to pay and a boss to please.

Universal themes. If you want to tell a story that resonates with people of different ages, you need that premise that’s so poignant that everyone will relate to it.

Brainstorm. Give yourself the task of, say, in 20 minutes, coming up with 10 premises that attempt to do just that. Who knows, maybe one of them will be bigger than you think.

Copyright © Diane Lake

08Aug21

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