Hello, from Michel Gondry.

An illustration by Michel Gondry of Michel Gondry saying hello to me.

What if Wes Anderson directed everything?

What if Wes Anderson directed "Spider Man?"  Jason Schwartzman as Peter Parker makes a lot of sense.  And the actor who plays Owen Wilson playing Harry Osborn is better than Owen Wilson himself (and I'd like to challenge him to take on Luke and his pathetic, false AT&T commercials.)

What if Wes Anderson directed other movies that lack a soul?  And by soul, I mean tone and style and focus on character within their world and within the explicit conflict. Spider Man is the perfect example of a movie which lacks these elements.


Last week, amid the rumors that Anderson might actually do the next Spidey filck, my husband, a comic book aficionado, and I were talking about the short comings of Raimi's Spider Man.  This is what we do.  Also, my husband is credited with imparting this and all comic book knowledge upon me, knowledge I've learned over the eleven years we've known each other.  (Last year, I went to Comic Con New York, and liked it.)


Anyway, with Spider Man, you have a character not unlike Rushmore's Max Fischer, a character I find to be complex and endearing, who struggles, makes bad choices, suffers, and changes.  Max is a writer, a smart, prep-school loner.  Peter Parker is a photographer, also a smart loner.  Parker's an orphan.  Max's mom died.  Both are constantly bullied, Peter by Flash Thompson, Max by Magnus.  Max is an overall awkward teen who falls in love with a teacher at his school and befriends the father of two of his classmates. Peter is an overall awkward teenager who one day, gets bit by a radioactive spider at a nerdy science demonstation.   But the Spider Man movie forgets all of this.  

  

Flash Thompson and Magnus Buchan. Bullies.

Spider Man is the story of the average, nerdy, teen boy bestowed with super abilities he didn't ask for. But the movie drops these interesting aspects of Peter's character and focuses just on the surface conflict, the action for action's sake: the Green Goblin, Mary Jane in peril, the Roosevelt Island Tramcar full of kids.  All super-exciting, right?  Did you ever once think he wasn't going to succeed?  No, you didn't.  


And maybe it's because Peter has no character after the first half of the first act.  It's not until the very end: the whole with great power, comes great responsibility-voice-over from dead uncle-  walking away- last shot are we reminded of Peter, the boy who didn't ask for this power, the boy who lost his parents and his uncle, the nerdy boy who got bit by a freakin' radioactive spooked spider, a very symbol of geekdom.  He's not a super hero.  He's a nerd, a sweet, endearing and complex character.

  
Yes, he saved the day, and there was tragedy, people died, friends were lost, but we've forgotten who this kid is and/or was.  All of the complexities introduced in the first act is not pulled through to the end.  (Subsequently, this film breaks a rule of storytelling that I'm a big fan of: the gun on the table, or the rifle on the stage.)  

"One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it."

- Anton Chekhov

Parker's hang-ups, baggage, years of bullying can't just disappear. His awkwardness needs to be present throughout, changing gradually, so by the time we see the hardened guy he becomes at the end, we buy it and it's even more effective.  Think about Max Fischer, how he changed, and how his personality and baggage were present throughout making the last shot of that film so much more.  

"I don't give a shit about the barracudas.  Fuck it! I'm building it anyway."

It's a scenario that is perfect for the Anderson (Jonze or Gondry for that matter) touch.   Did you think Max might not get that aquarium built?  Did you think he would ever speak to the teacher again?  SPeak to Herman, or Dirk?  You may say a comic book/action movie is not a Wes Anderson movie however, Michel Gondry, (someone I consider similar in sentimentally as Anderson), is bringing us The Green Hornet. 

So, what movies would benefit from an Anderson makeover and work as a Wes Anderson film??

Structure is your friend.

It is there to help you tell your story in the best way possible. Simply, structure is choosing what the audience knows and when they know it in order to maximize dramatic effect.  The question you need to always be asking is, “Does it work for my story?”

You can’t talk about structure without talking about plot.  Plot is the most important feature of story.  Something needs to happen.  Two friends sitting at a bar talking is boring, (and if I wanted to watch that, I’d go to the bar.)  These two friends can start out talking at the bar, but then what?  All stories must have a beginning, middle, and an end.  (Aristotle said that.)  All good stories have a conflict and a resolution, because audiences want something to happen and they want whatever happened to affect a change. 

Most screenplays are organized into a three-act structure.  It’s a tradition of storytelling that comes from theatre and is easily identifiable (and expected) by audiences. Audiences like to feel safe.  Structure is safety.  You want your story to be full of compelling surprises.  You want to make your audience think and figure things out.  They should not be confused by the way in which you present to story to them.  

You may be thinking, "To hell with convention.  I'm going to do things how I want to do them.  I'm original!"  Great, yes.  But be original with your story, characters, complexities of the character, not the frame you choose to tell it in.  It's like the frame of a house.  You should not build it with honey and sponges, it won't be sound.  Build a solid frame and then, add your honey and sponges, create your bizarre reality around this backbone that you can trust to stand up on its own. 

If the dependable structure is there supporting even the most complex, unreal plot, your audience will have a better chance to not only follow along, but to believe your story because they trust the way it's being presented. Even a films like Memento, and The Science of Sleep follows the structure.  Lost, with all it's subplots, flashbacks, physics, and time-traveling follows a structure in each episode and in the series as a whole.