Heroic Hollywood: Charlie, the Kid and the Cop -- Best Lesson Ever in Hollywood Screenwriting

This faded lobby card from Charles Chaplin’s The Kid is the best lesson you’ll ever have in how to write for the movies. Despite its age, it illustrates many of the essential elements you’ll need to keep in mind today as your write your Hollywood screenplay. It’s a visual reminder of the kind of movie that producers, studios and – most importantly – audiences are looking for.

The best movies are inspiring in both meanings of the word. They not only provoke a strong emotional reaction in us, but this emotion makes us want to do something and believe that we can do it.

If the main character is courageous and determined, then we walk out of the theater feeling courageous and determined, too. If the main character finds love, we believe that we can find love, as well. If struggle and sacrifice achieve a happy ending, then we resolve to struggle and sacrifice to achieve our own happy endings.

In this sense, movies that inspire us make us want to emulate the main character of the story, that is, to strive to equal or match what the character accomplishes.

But more than that, there is an underlying moral theme to most Hollywood movies that accounts for their ability to inspire and emotionally connect with audiences world-wide.

When it comes to the question What should I do?, Hollywood says there are a thousand-and-one ways to answer that question. But, no matter what…

Doing the right thing is worth the struggle.

Life is a struggle. Acting morally can often make the struggle harder for you. But in the end, if you want the good to prevail and receive its blessings for yourself, your family and your nation, you have to do the right thing.

The struggles of life can be discouraging. Art is an antidote to discouragement. People need the encouragement that art offers, in particular, the encouragement that drama offers. We need to know that our choices have meaning, that our choices can make a difference in our lives. We need to know that acting morally is worth the struggle. And that’s what Hollywood movies do. That is the inspiration they give to the audience.

Nowhere are these ideas better expressed than in an amazingly audacious yet moving scene in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

It’s the scene near the end of the movie where, at the ruins of Osgiliath, Faramir and the Hobbits escape from the clutches of a Ringwraith and his fell beast. Under the spell of the Ring, Frodo attacks Sam, nearly plunging his sword into Sam’s neck before coming to his senses. Totally dispirited, Frodo’s resolve weakens. (In the following, I speak of Tolkien as the author, but the filmmakers altered the material and context.)

FRODO: (slowly and with despair) I can’t do this, Sam.

SAM: (getting up slowly) I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are.

Here, I think Tolkien, through Sam, is summing up the basic problem of human existence: none of us asked to be born into this world, and yet here we are. For good or bad, fair or not, all of us must confront this basic fact of reality…we’re here in this world, and only for the time we are given. And as Gandalf says, while we are here we must decide what to do. There is no escaping our need to make choices.

We can choose to do what we know is wrong, or we can choose to do what we know is right. And our decision to do the right thing can demand a great struggle that may lead us to lose heart and give up the fight to do the right thing. In this scene, Frodo is at the point of giving up…his decision to do the right thing by casting the Ring back into the fire has caused him great hardship and he is losing heart. He wants to stop struggling.

What is Sam’s response to Frodo’s loss of spirit? Sam could answer Frodo is any number of ways, but look at how Tolkien chooses to have Sam reply:

Sam stands and leans against a wall, looking out into the distance.

SAM: It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?

Out of all the possible things Sam could say at this moment in the story, Tolkien has him speak about…stories.

That Tolkien chooses this moment in the story to speak about…well, stories themselves…indicates the importance he places on the subject at this critical point of the plot, where Frodo says he can’t go on. This is something Tolkien wants us to pay attention to. Stories have something to do with Frodo and his struggle.

Tolkien has Sam look out into the distance as he speaks…not at Frodo. That’s because Sam is not thinking about the present moment. He’s thinking about the past. His own past. He’s remembering the stories he heard in his youth. The “great” stories…”the ones that really mattered.”

The stories that mattered were about darkness and danger. The great stories were about struggles so intense – against forces so strong – that it seemed impossible that the hero would win. How is it possible for the good to win when evil seems so powerful? And even if victory is achieved, was it really worth all the suffering? When listening to the story, the outcome is in doubt…and a happy, Hollywood ending seems impossible. This is what Frodo is thinking now. And those are the stories that Sam is remembering now. He continues:

SAM: But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why.

Tolkien is making several points here. First, that Sam has learned from the stories that the darkness can be overcome, no matter how bleak it looks. There can be a happy, Hollywood ending. In Sam’s childhood stories, the heroes won, and the darkness passed. And when the light returned, it illuminated life making it dearer. The stories where the hero prevailed – where light overcame the darkness – are the ones that mattered to Sam. They “meant something.” These are the stories that he remembers now in a time of crisis, not stories where men failed and heroic struggle was useless against the darkness .

Second, even as a young boy, when Sam really didn’t understand intellectually the full meaning of the stories, there was something in them that touched his spirit. This may be Tolkien’s way of expressing the idea that sometimes we understand things emotionally before we understand them intellectually. Dramatic stories can teach us their lessons by our emotional reaction to them. Even at an early age, human beings can understand the necessity for light to overcome the dark, even if they are not intellectually capable of explaining why. That’s why it’s important for the young to be exposed to heroic stories, even though they may not have a clear idea of why it is necessary to struggle against the darkness. They will feel it in their spirit all the same, as Sam did. Now, as an adult who has experienced light and darkness first hand, Sam at last understands the importance of the stories of his youth.

SAM: But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. They kept going because they were holding on to something.

These stories of Sam’s youth were all about one thing: what should I do? And the answer was: struggle to do the right thing. Struggle forward, even when it is tempting to turn back, as Frodo is tempted now. Struggle forward, because there is something you hold on to that that makes it worth the struggle.

FRODO: What are we holding on to, Sam?

SAM: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.

Or as another not-so-famous writer once said: doing the right thing is worth the struggle, because it will restore the good.

The purpose of those stories from Sam’s past are for just this moment – when Frodo and Sam are tempted to turn back, they find the strength to continue because of what the stories promise. These stories provide the inspiration necessary to continue. It is an inspiration carried not only in their minds, but in their hearts. Tolkien was confident enough to be able to say to his readers, “Just as it was critical for Sam and Frodo to be inspired by stories, it is critical that you find inspiration in theirs.”

Tolkien knew that men need inspiration. We need to know – in our hearts and minds – that, no matter what the difficulty we face, doing the right thing is worth the struggle.

Great link - wish I could write.

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