Cool

I just have a question which I came across during the writing of my next project. Most, if not all, films usually have meaning or morals they want to show. They sometimes project different ways of society and the world. Like 'the truman show', showing the effects of reality tv or 'eleven monkeys' depicting madness and hallucination.

I just want to know, do you writers here believe, going into a big feature you should aim not only to produce an actioner, drama or adventure. But to include a deeper message or meaning. to infer something is wrong in society or what is right about society.

Like to know your thoughts.

What are you passionate about? What have you noticed that you're sure others are not fully aware of? That's what theme is all about. Your take on a subject matter.

Write what moves you.

I believe you're thinking of TWELVE MONKEYS, with Bruce Willis. Futuristic, been a long time since I've seen it, but don't remember it being a statement on society, but just how society is. I liked it.

THE TRUMAN SHOW is about the right or wrong in controlling someone. I liked it.

The actioner THE SEIGE is how we treat Arabs in the US when things go bad. I liked it.

THE INTERNATIONAL, about bad bankers. I didn't like it.

Most films have a character change during the film, from a flawed position, to a less flawed position. Something a broad audience will identify with. You have your flaws. You want to be better. You want to be a superhero and save the damsel in distress, oh and save the rest of the city along the way.

You're the guy who is a slut, but upon finding the right woman, you are willing to stop being a slut for her and live with her happily ever after.

You're a poor farm boy, nobody special, but by extraordinary circumstances, you are forced to dig deep and become a hero, and save everything you know from disaster, to the point of sacrificing your very life.

Your the consumate spy and know how to kill better than anyone else. But your home life is a wreck. Your wife, your daughter, hate you because you're never home. But events happen that make you realize that they are more important than your work. Even when your work puts them in jepoardy, and you have to save them to love them brand new, to start all over again. You dig deeper than you ever have before and meet the challenge.

You're fresh out of journalism school and are looking for a job. You find one within an idustry that challenges your moral foundation. You flirt with disaster, but in the end realized that your friends, your moral foundation, is worth more than money and importance.

What ever you write, someone will always disagree and cut your premise to shreads. Someone will always like it, side with you, and support you.

You don't always have to have a moral. You can just kill people off. Dismember them. Morals are not always present in a picture. Just the more successful ones.

I enjoy writing work that's frivolous fun as much as I do the heavier stuff. Generally, I try to avoid a straightforward message. I prefer just giving people enough to think about the themes in a new way so long as it's relevant to me in some sort of way. I started out pretty adament on not having any messages or heavy themes in my scripts whatsoever but now I figure nobody watches the same kinds of movies all the time. No reason that you can't write scripts differently from time to time.

I agree with most of the points, especially cloroxmartini. But I don't think giving people enough to think about the themes in a new way is enough, in features. When I go on wikipedia and research a film like 'the truman show', I learnt how the film had an effect on the mainstream audience. It actualy caused a condition which was sometimes known as truman syndrome where people thought their lives were a tv show.

Not all films have to be this deep or have that much of an effect but I feel for it to have a lasting effect on the audience, your film needs a message the audience will think about and not forget.

But I have to agree also that not all films have to have a moral, and some may make no sense whatsoever but the best films always want the audience to take a piece of it away.

I always tend to have a very deep or strong theme in my films )or at least attempt to). Like you say, a film that is simply frivolous entertainment is fine, but it doesn't live on in people's minds once the film is over.

Entertaining films tend to stimulate your senses, they are like a drug, you need more stimulation straight away. The best of films tend to satisfy your soul so you don't need to watch another one for a while and instead spend some time going over them in your mind.

There is already so much frivolous entertainment around, that it doesn't seem worth the effort to create more, but that's just my personal opinion.

Pretty much every film has a moral in one sense or another. A film that is deliberatley written without one will still be expressing a certain viewpoint.

If we take a film where people just die in terrible fashions and makes no authorial statement about it, it still makes a statement about the type of society that allows films to be made like this and about the audience that enjoys them, if you see what I mean. All art is political.

The good thing about writing to theme is that it makes your work more powerful, the downside is that it can make it quite predictable.

Once you've set the theme up, you can pretty much guess how the story is going to end.

One alternative is simply to invite the audience to ask questions. Present people with characters and strong issues but don't suggst a solution, just show it as it is or how you see it and let people make their own minds up. The disadvantage with that is it can seem as a cop out and audiences like to have the ends tied up nicely. It upsets the mainstream if they have to think.

It's also possible to tell stories where the central character doesn't change. Kiss me Deadly was a good example of this. The central character is right wing and nasty, he's still the same at the end of the film and we see that his character has resulted in certain problems.

What happens with that is that the audience view point will change. They'll see that his character is a problem and take away that you shouldn't live like that.

The more common "flawed" hero type story sees a change in the character, but it doesn't really affect the audience so much because by the end of the film it's usually all been resolved and they're not left unhinged or under the impression that society isn't working. It can still be very emotional, but it doesn't tend to have the same intellectual impact.

Plot+theme=movie

As a writer you should ALWAYS write with a theme somewhere in the background. Now the debate is over whether you should write with the theme already in mind or pull the theme out and discover it as you write. Either way, there should be a theme buried somewhere within a great script. Non-writers write without a theme in mind. If we aspire to be screenwriters I believe we should always write with this in mind. Now the real trick is to have the theme present without it being on the nose.

A movie without a theme is missing something important.

If you make a list of all of your favorite films, I guarantee they have a theme somewhere.

Quoted from James McClung I enjoy writing work that's frivolous fun as much as I do the heavier stuff. Generally, I try to avoid a straightforward message. I prefer just giving people enough to think about the themes in a new way so long as it's relevant to me in some sort of way. I started out pretty adament on not having any messages or heavy themes in my scripts whatsoever but now I figure nobody watches the same kinds of movies all the time. No reason that you can't write scripts differently from time to time.

You don't have to make a movie that has a theme and it will be ok. Just not GREAT. You may run the risk of calling your film soul-less(among other, very warranted, uncomplimentary adjectives) like this woman did to Tarantino http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L2ukSJFgCM

Quoted from JamminGirl You don't have to make a movie that has a theme and it will be ok. Just not GREAT. You may run the risk of calling your film soul-less(among other, very warranted, uncomplimentary adjectives) like this woman did to Tarantino http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L2ukSJFgCM

I would never call a Tarantino film soulless. That couldn't be further from the truth. They're all (perhaps with the exception of Jackie Brown) extremely passionate and heartfelt, in that Tarantino clearly has passion about what he writes and it shows.

I also think he's got some strong themes in a lot of his films. Unfortunately, I don't think he could ever write a script that examines themes in a serious way. I'd say his work is fresher and more original than most writers but just about everything he writes is derived from some other film, even if he completely changes it around. As a result, everything he produces feels "movie-ish," although I'm sure that's his intent and he doesn't care either way.

Good point, nevertheless.

Jackie Brown is probably the most passionate and hearfelt fim he ever made and IMO will ever make.

It's fantastic and is by far his most complete work. It's pretty much destroyed his career though. People were expecting more Pulp Fiction and instead they got a slow burning but mature masterpiece (watch it again without any expectation).

It's relative failure seems to have sent him backwards and he's trying to write in a way that he's grown out of. He's become something of a parody of himself.

A real shame in my opinion. He has such talent that his films are usually worth watching (with the exception of Kill Bill, although it has merit cinematically), but I think he was developing into a true great, but he's reverted to adolescent type stuff.

Anyway, that's another matter entirely.

Quoted from Scar Tissue Films Jackie Brown is probably the most passionate and hearfelt fim he ever made and IMO will ever make. It's fantastic and is by far his most complete work. It's pretty much destroyed his career though. People were expecting more Pulp Fiction and instead they got a slow burning but mature masterpiece (watch it again without any expectation). It's relative failure seems to have sent him backwards and he's trying to write in a way that he's grown out of. He's become something of a parody of himself. A real shame in my opinion. He has such talent that his films are usually worth watching (with the exception of Kill Bill, although it has merit cinematically), but I think he was developing into a true great, but he's reverted to adolescent type stuff. Anyway, that's another matter entirely.

Except he didn't write Jackie Brown. He adapted it. Maybe he made some decisions in regards to how it would transfer to the screen but it's not his story. He can hardly take credit for the juicier stuff.

That said, I have no issues with literary adaptations.