Script Tip: Second Chapter First
wcmartell
by William C. Martell
IRON MAN opens with Tony Stark (Robert Downey jr) listening to loud
rock music from a boombox while drinking a cocktail in a Humvee
somewhere in the desert - maybe Afghanistan. He's a civilian
surrounded by soldiers in uniform. What is he doing here? He jokes
with the soldiers, including the woman driver. One of the soldiers
asks if he can take a picture with him... Stark agrees - jokes that he
doesn't want to see it on the soldier's MySpace page. Just when they
get ready to snap the picture, the Humvee on the road in front of them
hits a mine and is blown to smithereens. They slam on the brakes...
and are blasted by gunfire. The soldier riding shotgun gets cut to
ribbons, the driver is killed. The soldier who was posing for a
picture only a moment ago tells Stark to stay where he is, then opens
the door and is riddled with gunfire. Everyone is dead except Stark.
He staggers out of the Humvee, into the war zone. Hides behind a
boulder. A bomb lands only a few feet away from him, and he dives for
cover as the bomb explodes. Wounded, bloody, he is captured by enemy
soldiers... a dozen terrorists aiming automatic weapons at him. From
cocktails to prisoner of war in a minute.
Then we get a title card... 36 Hours Earlier.
We're still catching our breath from the opening scene at an awards
ceremony in Las Vegas where we get a puff-piece bio movie of Tony
Stark along with some words of praise from his friend Colonel Rhodes
(Terrence Howard). Stark is getting some sort of Man Of The Year
award, very prestigious. But when it's time to hand over the award,
Tony is nowhere to be found. His business partner Obadiah Stane (Jeff
Bridges) has to accept it for him. You get the feeling Stane has done
this a dozen times before - he's the responsible one. We learn a bit
about their relationship when Stane gives his acceptance speech for
Tony.
Meanwhile, Tony is playing craps - two beautiful women on either side
of him, a cocktail in hand. Rhodes shows up, reminds him he's here to
get this Man Of The Year Award. Tony says, just a minute, I'm on a
streak. Completely blows the dice roll - maybe it was a losing streak?
And Rhodes hands him the award, just like that, at the craps table.
Later, Tony hands the award to some guy in the casino lobby. He
doesn't care.
As they are leaving, a hot female reporter (Leslie Bibb) asks him what
he thinks about his nick-name, "The DaVinci Of Death"? Stark quips
back - and we discover that he's the owner of Stark Industries - a
company that makes weapons. Stark and the reporter trade barbs... then
we cut to them in bed trading precious bodily fluids. When she wakes
up the next morning, no Tony. His computer "butler" Jarvis (voice of
Paul Bettany) and his personal assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth
Paltrow) help her find the door. Pepper goes down into Tony's workshop
to remind him that he's supposed to be on a plane 2 hours ago... But
Tony is busy tearing apart a car engine. It's his private jet, they'll
wait for him. And he continues working on the engine. Getting his
hands greasy.
This is a great two-way scene, one of a couple in the film. You think
the scene is there to show how Tony Stark thinks that he is more
important than anyone else in the world - he's keeping a plane full of
people waiting, not to mention a bunch of VIPs in Afghanistan who are
waiting for him to fly in for this demonstration. And he's playing
around with a car engine. Behind him in the work shop, we see all
kinds of custom sports cars - this is hobby. He'd rather fool around
with his hobby than be responsible. So, this is a character scene,
right? Well, actually it is setting up Tony's mechanical abilities -
which will come into play when he builds his Iron Man suit a couple of
scenes later. The scene secretly sets up Tony's ability to build the
Iron Man suit... but at the time, we think it's just showing how
selfish and irresponsible he is.
(Another great two-way scene deals with Pepper giving Tony a gift.)
When Tony is done playing around with his engine, he gets in an Audi
sports car and drives to the airport at warpdrive. Everyone on the
plane, including Colonel Rhodes, have been waiting for him for
*hours*. There are several more character building moments, on the
plane, and by the time we get to Afghanistan again, we know everything
there is to know about Tony Stark...
And we start with a bang (literally). We open with an exciting scene,
*then* go back to fill in the less exciting (but required for story)
character material. We front load some excitement so that we can take
our time introducing our lead character, the supporting characters
around him, and all of the emotional and character issues he will have
to deal with in the rest of the film.
CHAPTER TWO
Lawrence Block explains how to do this neat trick in his book "Writing
The Novel: From Plot To Print", calling it Second Chapter First.
Basically you take the first chapter that introduces the character and
put it AFTER the second chapter that usually introduces the conflict.
We can use this in our scripts, by starting with the story in progress
and finding ways to introduce our character on the run... then go back
and fill in the character information.
Alan Ball's AMERICAN BEAUTY opens with a grainy videotape with Thora
Birch talking her boyfriend into killing her dad (Kevin Spacey), "You
want me to kill him?" Then Spacey narrates, "This is my life. In less
than a year I'll be dead." That's all in the opening minute of the
film! We KNOW that this seemingly perfect upper middle class June &
Ward Cleaver family is headed to hell... and we get to watch. Knowing
that Spacey will be killed by the end of the film makes him
fascinating.
We will watch the most boring aspects of his life because the story
has already begun... we know where we're going. The greatest side
effect of Second Chapter First is that the audience will really pay
attention to the character information, because this isn't just any
guy... it's the guy who witnessed the murder, or discovered that his
wife is a spy, or found out that lotto ticket he gave to a homeless
guy is the big winner. Now the ordinary parts of his life are
interesting. We can spend some time building character because the
audience knows that this is a SPECIAL character.
THE FUGITIVE uses the second chapter first method with flashbacks. The
film opens with an ambulance joining a dozen police cars in front of
the Kimble house. We see Kimble's wife dead, and forty seconds into
the film Kimble is taken away by the police. Now a flashback
introduces Kimble, his wife, and his friend at a party. The film
alternates between flashbacks showing the events leading up to the
murder, and the police interrogation of Kimble. Each flashback is
designed not only to tell the backstory, but to expose character. We
learn about Kimble, about his wife and their relationship, we even get
information about his friend and a handful of clues that we'll need to
solve the crime later in the film. And by the ten minute mark Richard
Kimble has been found guilty of murdering his wife. Wham!
MICHAEL CLAYTON opens with George Clooney's lawyer pulling his car to
the side of the road, and running up a hill... behind him, he car
explodes! Someone is trying to kill him! Why? Then we flash back to
what brought him to this point. A film like MICHAEL CLAYTON is
basically a very slow paced character study - so we need some hook to
make the audience interested in this guy. In this case, it's Second To
Last Chapter First. We get the big explosion from the end, then zip
back to the beginning of the story. Now, we *know* people will
eventually be trying to kill this Michael Clayton guy, so we are
interested in him... even though his family drama and office politics.
NO FLASHBACKS REQUIRED
IRON MAN and these other films use flashbacks, but you can use the
Second Chapter First method and maintain chronology. You just
rearrange your story so that your conflict comes first... then you
fill in all of the character details and supporting characters and
subplot material.
Let's say your script is about a Businessman who witnesses a murder on
his lunch hour and gets a great look at the killer. He describes the
killer to a police sketch artist. The sketch looks similar to three
known criminals. They decide to have a Line Up. The three criminals
are brought in, and a pair of detectives that fit the same general
description are added to the line up just to fill in the spaces. This
is a fairly common practice. The witness looks at the five men in the
line up, and identifies the killer... it's one of the cops!
You could start your story with the witness waking up in the morning,
and we meet his wife and kids. His wife thinks he works too much, his
kid has problems at school and they need to go to a parent-teacher
conference... but our hero isn't sure he has time for that. Little
spat with the wife over whether he cares about his family or not. Then
he drives to the office, and we meet the people in his car pool - and
all of their issues with each other. He works half a day - and we see
all of the office politics he has to deal with. His boss is completely
incompetent, and the company is going to go bankrupt unless they can
land this one big account. Our hero is in charge of the account, but
his office rival is trying to sabotage him... and keeps creating
rumors and problems that our hero must quash. After all kinds of
office politics, our hero breaks for lunch... and witnesses the murder
at end act one.
But the story doesn't really start until he sees the murder - all of
the stuff before that may be setting up the lead character and even
some elements of the stiry, but it's boring. It's stuff that happens
BEFORE the story starts.
But what if our businessman witnesses the murder on page one? Then we
learn some things about his character as he deals with the police,
then he goes back to the office and tries to work - and has to deal
with his incompetent boss and scheming business rival and all of the
office politics. But now these things are bigger problems, because
he's a murder witness. He rides home in the carpool, and tries to live
his life at home with his wife and kid... and deal with the parent-
teacher conference and his family issues... but now he's a murder
witness.
The same character information, but instead of being a boring
businessman, our protagonist is a murder witness. Same exact
character, but now we know WHY we're supposed to be interested in him.
And when we drop in the "killers is a cop" plot twist on page 10,
you've hooked the Reader for the rest of the script.
You want to start as late as possible. If the story can't start until
the businessman witnesses the murder, that's not the end of act one,
that's the beginning of your script!
By following the lead of IRON MAN and many other scripts, and
*starting* with conflict and then setting up character and story, you
can grab the reader on page one and make your lead character more
interesting. Second Chapter First... try it!
- Bill
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copyright 2008 by William C. Martell