Joseph Grammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "lessons"
3x3: The Old Inter-Roman Boy
Over Christmas I watched Oldboy, The Interview, and Roman Holiday -- three very different movies that all helped me analyze some ideas about writing.
1. In Oldboy, a Korean drunkard is kidnapped and imprisoned in a hotel room for 15 years, for no apparent reason. When one day he is inexplicably released, he embarks on a strange and violent journey to discover why he was abducted.
2. The Interview concerns a douchy entertainment host named Skylark who lands an audience with Kim Jong Un, dictator of North Korea. When the CIA discovers the interview, they intercept Skylark and convince him to poison the world leader. Upon meeting the man, however, Skylark decides he is cool as shit, and has second thoughts about assassination.
3. In Roman Holiday, Princess Ann (of an unnamed country) tires of her over-scheduled life, and absconds from her family and servants while on a public relations tour in Rome. In the streets she meets a stranger named Joe, a news reporter who conceals this fact when he figures out he's encountered royalty. Joe attempts to secretly interview the princess without letting on that he knows who she is, which gets them into various slapstick antics while the princess "lets loose" on her first day in obscure, civilian life.
Summaries achieved! Now what do these three films have in common?
1. Two of them deal directly with hard-to-get interviews. I could bend the rules and say Oldboy is about a hard-to-get interview as well, since Oh Dae-Su, the protagonist, is hunting down a mysterious man who knows the reason for his abduction.
2. What's more, **SORT OF SPOILER** the movies all end on a weirdly upbeat note. Even Oldboy, which is a pretty dark movie. **END OF SORT OF SPOILER**
3. All the main characters learn something meaningful about themselves (like any good main character, I suppose). Even in a bro-comedy like The Interview, Skylark "discovers" the horrors of North Korea and chooses to do something noble for the first time in his life. Princess Ann and Joe learn about their own values, and a bit about the lives of the common man and royalty, respectively, which helps them come away with a better and less cynical worldview. Oh Dae-Su learns some pretty heavy stuff about himself and completely changes from the careless drunkard of the film's beginning.
What can these three films teach about telling stories?
1. Oldboy taught me about twists. Surprise, tension: all that stuff. The plot uses an element found in the first Sherlock Holmes story, so it is not a straight-up mystery because there's no way you can predict the ending based on the information you were given at the beginning. However, I didn't care about that; it was just a cool, unexpected movie. I learned that you don't have to follow all the rules of logic from this film, especially when you can squeeze as much shock and emotion out of the denouement as Oldboy did. Watch it at 4am and tell me what you think.
2. The Interview taught me that good comedy (which The Interview only has some of) comes less from over-the-top raunchiness and more from lovable characters being adorable. Kim Jong Un, when we first meet him, is a silly, awkward, closet-lover of Katy Perry. Since I expected him to be visibly insane, or at least a hardass, it was funny to me when he is introduced as a goofball. That goes a lot farther, amusement-wise, than a series of fart jokes or meaningless swearing, all of which were unfunny to watch in the film. However, there is a finger-biting scene that is hilarious in its unexpected extremeness (especially because extreme violence is used only sparingly, i.e. at the end).
3. Roman Holiday taught me an old lesson, which is to mix seemingly opposite characters together and watch them realize how similar they really are. At first glance, you have the rich princess and poor reporter. They seem unalike; but when they meet, they have a good time together, and eventually develop feelings for one another. The script didn't go heavy on sentimentality, which worked in the film's favor -- and this is useful to remember, too.
Have you seen any of these three movies? Have you learned any lessons, writing or otherwise, from them? Hit me up.
Peace and love.
1. In Oldboy, a Korean drunkard is kidnapped and imprisoned in a hotel room for 15 years, for no apparent reason. When one day he is inexplicably released, he embarks on a strange and violent journey to discover why he was abducted.
2. The Interview concerns a douchy entertainment host named Skylark who lands an audience with Kim Jong Un, dictator of North Korea. When the CIA discovers the interview, they intercept Skylark and convince him to poison the world leader. Upon meeting the man, however, Skylark decides he is cool as shit, and has second thoughts about assassination.
3. In Roman Holiday, Princess Ann (of an unnamed country) tires of her over-scheduled life, and absconds from her family and servants while on a public relations tour in Rome. In the streets she meets a stranger named Joe, a news reporter who conceals this fact when he figures out he's encountered royalty. Joe attempts to secretly interview the princess without letting on that he knows who she is, which gets them into various slapstick antics while the princess "lets loose" on her first day in obscure, civilian life.
Summaries achieved! Now what do these three films have in common?
1. Two of them deal directly with hard-to-get interviews. I could bend the rules and say Oldboy is about a hard-to-get interview as well, since Oh Dae-Su, the protagonist, is hunting down a mysterious man who knows the reason for his abduction.
2. What's more, **SORT OF SPOILER** the movies all end on a weirdly upbeat note. Even Oldboy, which is a pretty dark movie. **END OF SORT OF SPOILER**
3. All the main characters learn something meaningful about themselves (like any good main character, I suppose). Even in a bro-comedy like The Interview, Skylark "discovers" the horrors of North Korea and chooses to do something noble for the first time in his life. Princess Ann and Joe learn about their own values, and a bit about the lives of the common man and royalty, respectively, which helps them come away with a better and less cynical worldview. Oh Dae-Su learns some pretty heavy stuff about himself and completely changes from the careless drunkard of the film's beginning.
What can these three films teach about telling stories?
1. Oldboy taught me about twists. Surprise, tension: all that stuff. The plot uses an element found in the first Sherlock Holmes story, so it is not a straight-up mystery because there's no way you can predict the ending based on the information you were given at the beginning. However, I didn't care about that; it was just a cool, unexpected movie. I learned that you don't have to follow all the rules of logic from this film, especially when you can squeeze as much shock and emotion out of the denouement as Oldboy did. Watch it at 4am and tell me what you think.
2. The Interview taught me that good comedy (which The Interview only has some of) comes less from over-the-top raunchiness and more from lovable characters being adorable. Kim Jong Un, when we first meet him, is a silly, awkward, closet-lover of Katy Perry. Since I expected him to be visibly insane, or at least a hardass, it was funny to me when he is introduced as a goofball. That goes a lot farther, amusement-wise, than a series of fart jokes or meaningless swearing, all of which were unfunny to watch in the film. However, there is a finger-biting scene that is hilarious in its unexpected extremeness (especially because extreme violence is used only sparingly, i.e. at the end).
3. Roman Holiday taught me an old lesson, which is to mix seemingly opposite characters together and watch them realize how similar they really are. At first glance, you have the rich princess and poor reporter. They seem unalike; but when they meet, they have a good time together, and eventually develop feelings for one another. The script didn't go heavy on sentimentality, which worked in the film's favor -- and this is useful to remember, too.
Have you seen any of these three movies? Have you learned any lessons, writing or otherwise, from them? Hit me up.
Peace and love.
