I tend to believe everyone has a story to tell, every life is unique, and the quality of a biography's storytelling usually depends on how you look at the life.  In other words, with the right storytelling, any life can be dramatic.  Or undramatic.

Never has this been more true than in the case of The Express, screenwriter Charles Leavitt and director Gary Fleder’s new film based on the short life of Syracuse University football star Ernie Davis (played by Rob Brown).

Davis isn’t the world’s most famous football player… or the world’s most famous civil rights activist… but he certainly did some remarkable things worthy of a story.  The problem is:

Leavitt and Fleder do little to make the actions and events of Davis’s life SEEM remarkable; they instead tell an overly-familiar, paint-by-numbers story of a young black athlete trying to come of age and play football in the racist mid-twentieth century.

To be fair, the opening seconds of the film show promise… it begins with college football teams facing off on the line.  “Ready for this, spook?” one of the white players sneers at Davis. “I’m gonna kick your black ass back to Africa.”  The play snaps into action, and Davis is buried under a mound of white players… who proceed to punch the shit out of him.

This “mini-scene” only lasts a few seconds, but it’s an effective way to kick off the movie.  Unfortunately, it’s the last scene with any bite for a long time… and most of the movie that follows doesn’t live up to the in-your-face violence of these opening moments.  It's not a "bad" movie; it's just uninspired and tame.

The story begins with Davis as a young boy growing up in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, where he’s harassed by white children… who try to beat him up but are too slow to catch him.  It’s obvious Davis has incredible football skills, but he doesn’t consider putting them to use until he and his mom move to Elmira, New York, where he becomes a high school football stud.  He’s also a top-notch student, and he eventually receives over fifty scholarship offers from various universities.

Meanwhile, at Syracuse University, head football coach Ben Schwartzwalder (Dennis Quaid) has a problem: his superstar player, Jim Brown, is graduating, leaving an unwelcome hole on the football team.  Schwartzlander has scoured the country looking for a replacement, but he’s found no one… until he watches a film of lightning-fast Davis on the gridiron.  At first, Schwartzlander doesn’t want to pursue Davis because black athletes are “too much trouble,” but with the help of Brown himself, he convinces Davis to give Syracuse a shot.

Much of The Express’s second act focuses on the Davis-Schwartzwalder relationship.  Davis is a black athlete who won’t use his celebrity to ruffle feathers and speak out against racism.  Schwartzwalder cares about only one thing—winning—and he’s willing to condone players’ and opponents’ racism in order to keep people happy and not jeopardize victories.  Over the course of the film, both Schwartzwalder and Davis come to realize “winning” is about something more.  Davis—prodded by his activist cousin Will (Nelsan Ellis)—learns he has a larger responsibility than simply scoring, and he begins speaking out against racism.  Schwartzwalder also begins standing up to racism (although thinking back on it, he really only does this one significant time).

The movie’s biggest flaw is that none of the racism… or the moments when Davis or Schwartzwalder stand up to it… ever seems all that fresh, palpable, or powerful.  This isn’t to diminish the evil of racism, it’s just to say that we’ve seen a LOT of movies about racism, and the racism in The Express seems… well… like “racism lite.”  Not that the racism itself is “lite,” but Leavitt and Fleder give it almost no visceral impact.  Sure, there’s a healthy dose of the “n-word,” and we see rednecks booing black players, and African-American athletes are told they can’t use front doors or sleep in white hotel rooms, etc., etc., etc.  But we’ve seen all this before… and this time, none of it lands with any force.  We don’t FEEL the pain of the racism because it’s all depicted in stale clichés.

As a result, Davis and Schwartzwalder never feel that heroic when they DO finally stand up injustices around them.  Sure, it’s an important moment when Davis—who has always avoided talking publicly about race—grows some sack and tells a reporter that when he’s on the field he only thinks about football, but “that doesn’t mean he forgets the color of his own skin.”  But come on… at a time when Martin Luther King and Malcolm X are taking enormous actions to overthrow the status quo, a flippant comment to a reporter feels a bit soft.

Now, I know what you’re thinking…

This isn’t the story of Martin Luther King or Malcolm X.  This is a smaller story, the story of a “normal” guy who takes a smaller—but no less important—stand.  And historically, you’re absolutely right.  Except for one thing…

In a good STORY, actions must feel huge.  Enormous.  GIGANTIC.  This doesn’t mean there can’t be tiny actions—like pouring a glass of tea or glancing wistfully at a stranger—but actions in a story must FEEL huge.  They must have massive emotional weight and impact.  A storyteller’s job, after all, is to HEIGHTEN action, so the audience feels as if these characters and actions—as they’re playing out—are the most important in the entire world.  And this is where The Express falls short.

If it wants to be a “smaller” story, a character study of a potential football legend who made brave choices (and all of us, no matter how “small,” should be making those same brave choices), fine—but it needs to go deeper into the complexities of Davis and his relationships.  But it doesn’t do this… Davis never transcends being a righteous hero to become a full-bodied, three-dimensional character with loves, fears, hatreds, inconsistencies and hypocrisies.  Neither does Schwartzwalder.

Thus, the movie is stuck in a tepid no-man’s-land… it paints by its numbers well enough to have some effective moments, but it never tackles its material hard enough to be truly powerful or special.

So I guess TODAY’S TAKE-AWAY SCREENWRITING LESSON IS…

Write fearlessly.  And I don’t mean that in a cheesy, write-from-the-heart kind of way… I literally mean: if you’re going to write something, write it to extremes.  If you’re writing a character who is cruelly racist, make him the cruelest racist ever seen in literature.  If you’re writing an action-packed car chase, make it the most thrilling car chase ever witnessed.  If you’re writing an angelic virgin, make her the purest character ever met.  If you’re writing a grotesque torture scene, make it the most stomach-churning sequence to be put on screen.  Do not be afraid offending anyone… do not play it safe… do not be afraid of “going too far.”  The human heart, head, and stomach can handle much more than we usually give them credit for… and I think writers and artists often believe they’re pushing boundaries, when—in actuality—the boundary is barely being touched.  

So while The Express in no way wants to be an “edgy” movie, I DO think that great storytelling—even in a family-friendly football movie—lives in extremes… and, as The Express proves, stories that refuse to go to extremes wind up going almost nowhere.  Or at least nowhere very interesting.

Having said all that… there’s almost nothing better than the sound of crashing football pads… especially when that sound is cranked full-blast over an awesome movie theater sound system.  Which means if the sound is good enough, almost any football movie will kick a little bit of ass.


THE EXPRESS TRAILER

Hey, screenwriters—

Saw two movies this last week—Made of Honor and Baby Mama—that I thought made an interesting comparison of romantic comedies.  Neither is particularly brilliant, but I think Baby Mama succeeds more as a romantic comedy, or relationship comedy, and I wanted to look at why.

Although there are plenty of things to pick apart in each one, I want to focus on the primary difference—the one thing which makes Baby Mama succeed in a way that Made of Honor never does.  And that’s this…

Unlike in Baby Mama, we never fully believe that our main characters in Made of Honor truly, desperately need each other.

In other words, Made of Honor fails to illustrate how much Tom (Patrick Dempsey) and Hannah (Michelle Monaghan) need/love each other in the same way Baby Mama does with Kate (Tina Fey) and Angie (Amy Poehler).  Take a look…

At the beginning of Made of Honor, Tom and Hannah have supposedly been best friends for ten years.  Tom is a perpetual bachelor, bedding every woman he meets; Hannah is just another single woman pushing thirty.  But when Hannah’s job sends her to Europe for six weeks, Tom misses her in a way he’s never thought about… and suddenly realizes he’s in love with his best friend.  Hannah, of course, is busy meeting the dashing Kevin McKidd (Colin McMurray), and when she returns with a ring on her finger, Tom realizes he must win back his best friend.  But like I said, here’s the problem…

We never believe Tom really loves her... because the movie never shows us this.

Sure, we see Tom and Hannah spend time together, but we never see how much they NEED each other.  Tom brings her coffee in the morning, they browse antique shops, and they go to brunch every Sunday.  Yet while this is all sweet and good-natured, it doesn’t signify a super-strong BOND.  In fact, a weekly brunch hardly signifies a once-in-a-lifetime relationship.  I have friends I see or talk to once a week… but I also have friends I see or talk to EVERY DAY.

Not to mention: Tom’s willing to sleep his way around town until Hannah heads to Scotland… then he suddenly wakes up and he decides he loves her—which is kinda hard to swallow after the story has already established he's an impulsive playboy.  Especially when he announces to his buddies: “I don’t know… I think there might be more to my relationship with Hannah than just friends,” which is quite possibly history’s most UNCONVINCING declaration of love ever.

I wish the movie had shown us a scene of them relying on each other when the chips were down.  I.e., have Hannah call Tom just after her heart has been broken, and Tom races to her... maybe he even ditches a gorgeous date to go console her.  Have Tom’s career be on the line and he has 24 hours to put together a job-saving proposal or presentation… and Hannah cancels all her plans to help him.  Basically—show us these two characters need, want, and care for each other more than anything else on the planet.

Baby Mama does this simply and beautifully.  First of all, it sets up how badly and desperately Kate wants to have a child.  We see her pining after babies, trying to meet husbands, hoping to get pregnant.  Ultimately, of course, she learns she’s infertile and decides to hire a surrogate mother: Angie, the world’s most inappropriate mom.  But there’s one perfect little scene that sets up their entire relationship…

Kate and Angie are standing on Kate’s balcony, having just finished the interview where they’ll decide whether or not Angie is going to carry Kate’s baby.  And Kate says to her (I’m paraphrasing because I don’t really remember):  “I really want this.  And I think you’re great.  I hope you choose me, because I need you, and I think you’re wonderful, and I’ve never wanted anything so badly in my life.”  And Angie says: “I think you’re wonderful, too.  And I think I’d be really good at this, and doing this for you would make me feel important and valued, and that’s something I don’t have anywhere else in my life.”

So even though it’s simple, direct, and on-the-nose, Baby Mama does what Made of Honor doesn’t… it bonds those characters inextricably.  They NEED each other more than anything else on the planet.  Thus, we’re willing to buy all the hijinx and complications throughout the rest of the story because we’re so invested in Kate and Angie’s relationship.

So I guess the takeaway lesson is this: in a romantic comedy, the ROMANCE must come before the COMEDY.  If we don’t buy the romance—or the relationship between our leads—we’ll never care enough to laugh with the comedy.  And I think if you look back at some of the great romantic/relationship comedies—When Harry Met Sally, Annie Hall, you name it—the movies always put the spotlight on the relationship, and let the comedy bubble up behind or around it.

Before I begin this post, I need to warn you: spoiler alert!  If you haven’t seen Iron Man, and you want to, be warned: I am about to give away parts of the movie.  So proceed at your own risk…

Saw Iron Man last night.  And all in all, it’s a fun way to spend two hours.  Robert Downey Jr. is terrific—charming, funny, loveable—and there’s plenty of cool blowin’-stuff-up.

But it’s also a flawed movie, and while its flaws don’t necessarily detract from the overall experience, I think they illuminate some interesting thoughts about how comic book heroes are written… and screenplays in general.

To me, there are two main weaknesses to Iron Man:

WEAKNESS #1:  He's not an underdog.  For those of you who don’t know the story of Iron Man, here’s the Cliff Notes version:  Iron Man’s true identity is Tony Stark, a technology genius/fun-loving playboy who’s made his money as a multi-billion-dollar arms manufacturer.  (Imagine if Bill Gates ran Lockheed Martin… but was also a hard-partying ladies man.)  When Tony is captured and tortured by terrorists, he realizes the damage he has been inflicting and has a change of heart, deciding to stop making weapons and instead create machines of peace.  (How this plays out in the movie is a bit different than in the comics, but same idea.)  So he makes a giant suit—complete with guns, missiles, jets, you name it—to defeat evil and protect innocents around the world.

Sounds good, right?  Well, in real life, it would be.  In a comic: not so much.  (And by the way: as I say all this, know that I am NOT an avid comics reader.  I know Iron Man is beloved by fans everywhere.  I know the movie will make thousands of dollars and win the weekend.  I even think it deserves to.  I liked it.  A lot.  Still, I think there’s a major flaw in the concept of Iron Man, and here’s why…)

Iron Man is not an underdog.  He’s rich, good-looking, funny, charming, irresistible… and just decides to become a super-hero.  Because he’s a good guy.

But the best superheroes are those who are “forced” into it, or those for whom being super-powered is a burden, a curse that prevents them from being whom they truly want to be.  Batman is haunted by his past and his own psychosis… the bat suit is his only escape (or his cross to bear, depending on how you look at it).  Peter Parker is an anti-social geek who’s suddenly given powers… that no one can know about.  Even Superman must wear a disguise to fit in to normal society.

But Tony Stark becomes Iron Man because he wants to.  It’s just another of his outstanding attributes.  And while you could argue that becoming Iron Man is his redemption for being a war-monger in his “previous life,” we certainly never get the sense he’s tortured by his past.  Even if the story suggested this, he’s so damn loveable WE never feel he needs to be redeemed.

Having said this, we still—for the most part—root for Tony/Iron Man.  But Iron Man doesn’t hold the same sense of wonder and fascination and magic as Spiderman or Superman or the X-Men.  I always think one of the coolest things about those classic superhero stories is that they tap into how we all feel; they’re stories of people who don’t fit in, but the reason they don’t fit in is they each hold extraordinary gifts and abilities… and if other people could just see those special gifts, and realize how awesome they are, they’d be accepted.  (This never works out, of course—as soon as their gifts are revealed, they’re ostracized… which is why they must keep their true identity secret.  It’s a catch 22: the one thing that should be recognized and celebrated is the one thing they can never share.)  And the genius of these superhero stories is: we've all felt like this.  We all know the pain and frustration of feeling like we’re special, unique, valuable people… if only others could recognize this.

But Iron Man never lets us feel like this.  It’s the story of a rich, successful, handsome, dashing, powerful guy who becomes… well… better.

And nowhere is this more evident than in the fact that Iron Man lacks some of the key scenes/sequences/moments that make superhero movies so much fun: the moments where the superhero uses his powers in ordinary, everyday situations.  The moment where Peter Parker uses his spider skills to catch his falling lunch tray or humiliate a school bully.  Or when Wolverine kicks ass in a bar fight.  Or Clark Kent takes Lois or Lana on an extraordinary date.  The moments that make us go: “Yeah!  That’s exactly what I'd do if I had superpowers.”

But Iron Man never has these scenes.  We never see Tony use his abilities as a normal person.  Not only because his abilities are confined to a giant robotic suit, but also because—ultimately—he's not a normal person.  He’s not like any of us.  He’s a superhero even before he becomes a superhero.


WEAKNESS #2:  Iron Man isn't about relatioships.  (By the way, before you read further: I am about to give away the entire ending of the movie.)  Sure, there are “relationships” within in the movie, but in the final battle of the movie, it suddenly dawned on me: Iron Man, the movie, isn’t about anything except itself.  It’s about nothing more than a man who suddenly decides to become an anti-war superhero.  Here’s why…

The final battle is a massive fight between Tony Stark, in his Iron Man suit, and Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), an old friend of Tony’s late father, and Tony’s partner at Stark Enterprises.  Stane builds his own Iron Man suit (called Iron Monger), which is bigger and more powerful than Tony’s original suit, and these two duke it out in the movies final climax.  Here’s the problem…

Screenwriters Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby and Art Marcum & Matt Holloway never flesh out the Tony/Obadiah relationship… so the final battle means almost nothing to us.  Sure, we see Tony and Obadian together, and we know there’s a history there, but this relationship should be the heart of the entire movie… so by the time the two guys are punching it out in the end, we feel like this is a relationship being ripped apart at the seams.

Yet we’re never sure what these two men mean to each other: is there relationship father/son?  Two brothers?  Teacher/student?  Best friends?  We don’t know… so there’s almost nothing at stake when they finally come to blows.  (Sure, you could say Tony’s life is at stake… but since we know he’s not going to die, there needs to be more.)  This was the beauty of the Spiderman movies: when Spiderman fought Green Goblin, it wasn’t just Spidey fighting a villain—he was fighting a friend, someone he’d loved and trusted.  So the final fight was the culmination of all the bumps, betrayals, twists, and turns that comprised that relationship.

But Iron Man fails to give us this.  We never feel the love, friendship, trust, or adoration between Obadiah and Tony.  So we don’t feel the pain of either of them, especially our hero, in the movie’s climax.

This, together with the lack of Tony’s “underdog status,” combine to make a movie that’s a terrific and visually pleasing thrill ride… but has about as much heart as the metal used to make Iron Man’s suit.


Anyway, I “like” these two weaknesses because—for all Iron Man’s strengths—I think they illustrate the two elements most important to brilliant screenwriting and storytelling:

•  RELATABILITY – the ability to see reflections of our own lives in a story and its characters

•  RELATIONSHIPS – connections and relationships between characters that makes us care about, root, and hurt for them

Of course, Iron Man may also prove the most important rule of screenwriting: if you have an awesome star and plenty of explosions, none of the other stuff matters.


IRON MAN TRAILER

Hey, screenwriters—

I just want to say this up front: my wife made me go.

Okay, that's a lie.

She definitely wanted to go more than I did, but the truth is: I kinda wanted to see it.  At least, I had wanted to see it… before it got nothing but horrible reviews.  In fact, the best thing I heard about it was from a friend who saw it and said, “I dunno… there are probably worse ways to spend two hours.”

I’m talking about Vantage Point, the Pete Travis movie which came out a couple weeks ago and was universally panned.  And rightly so.  The movie’s pretty horrible, although to be fair, it’s an interesting premise that you really want to work.  Unfortunately, it just doesn’t.

Basically, Vantage Point is the story of an attempted presidential assassination-- and the investigation of who’s behind it-- as seen from multiple perspectives, a la Rashomon.  So it replays the same events multiple times, each from a different character’s point of view… illuminating a bit more of the story and a few more clues each time.

I won’t go into all things that are wrong with the movie because it’s a LOT… the least of which is Forest Whitaker’s ridiculous overacting.  The guy practically narrates everything he does on screen.  If his phone rings, he says to himself, “My phone’s ringing… need to see who it is…”  If he spots someone mysterious through his video camera, he says... “Hm… that’s weird… I wonder if he should be there…”

However... I did think Vantage Point was a perfect example of one of the biggest mistakes to avoid when writing a mystery movie, which—at its heart—this is.  Here’s the problem…

The posters, billboards, and marketing campaign for the movie were all based around the question/tagline: “Can you solve the puzzle?”  (Check out the trailer below.)  Which, sure, is simply a marketing tool.

Except that it’s not "simply a marketing tool"…

…because “can you solve the puzzle?” suggests that what makes this movie fun, like any mystery, is that YOU—the viewer or reader—are trying to solve the mystery along with the story’s heroes or detectives (in this case, Secret Service Agent Thomas Barnes).

And it’s right.  That’s exactly what should make this movie fun.

We love mysteries, whether it’s Sherlock Holmes or CSI, because we enjoy participating in the puzzle-solving.  Which means the storyteller has one very important job: to lay out clues that track logically from one to the next, so when everything adds up in the end, we—the audience—have that amazing “aha!” moment that all great mysteries have.  That “oh-my-God-I-should’ve-seen-that!” moment.  Or the “oh-of-course-it-all-makes-sense!” moment.

This doesn’t mean we should be able to solve the mystery before the hero.  It simply means that we need to be able to feel like we could, and that when the solution is finally unveiled, we can flip back through the clues in our head and see how it all fits together.

But Vantage Point never attempts to let you try and solve the mystery.  Why?  Because it purposely and shamelessly withholds clues.  For instance…

Characters continually see clues we’re not allowed to see.  I.e., at one point, Agent Barnes (Dennis Quaid) is watching a playback of the assassination on Howard Lewis's (Forest Whitaker) camcorder.  As he watches the screen, his eyes go wide, he says something ominous like, “Oh my God—that’s it!” and races off.  We don’t find out till much later, in a different person’s “story,” what he saw.  Which is not only frustrating as hell, it’s a cheap shot on the part of the storyteller.  We realize that the solution to the mystery is right in front of us, but we’re unable to solve it—or have the fun of trying to solve it—not because it’s a complex, intriguing puzzle, but because the storyteller is willfully withholding information… and sharing it with other characters right in front of us!

Also, each mini-story (each time we see the event from a new perspective) ends in a cliffhanger.  At one point, for example, one of the main characters steps out to confront someone and says, “Bet you didn’t expect to see me alive, did you?”… but before we see who he’s talking to, the mini-story ends and we move on to someone else’s perspective.  And while cliffhangers are supposed to be maddening and suspenseful, they should be maddening and suspenseful because we’re so emotionally invested in characters, relationships, and events that we’re dying to know what happens next… not because we’re angry at the filmmaker for not giving us information that's clearly right in front of our noses.

So while these moments are frustrating in and of themselves, the bigger problem is that we’re constantly aware that the filmmaker is not giving us the promised clues, so we’re never allowed to try and solve the puzzle… which is not only a complete betrayal of the marketing campaign’s promise, it’s a betrayal of the promise made by all mystery storytellers at the beginning of the mystery.  Which is: “I, the storyteller, am going to create a mystery so complex and intriguing you can’t solve it… but we promise to play fair along the way, giving you all the clues and tools you’ll need to solve it.”  In other words, "we'll do our best to outsmart you, but we'll at least play fair."

After all, you can’t have a great “oh-my-God-I-should’ve-seen-that-coming!” moment if there’s no way you could've seen anything coming.

It’s this flaw that makes Vantage Point such a dismal failure.  I think mystery audiences are willing to forgive a lot of things—bad acting, lame characters, etc.—if the mystery is compelling and they feel like they’re actually able to participate in the solving.

But by refusing to play fair, Vantage Point immediately sets its own course for self-destruction.

So, the lesson to take away from this: IF YOU’RE WRITING A  MYSTERY, YOU NEED TO PLANT CLUES FAIRLY AND HONESTLY ENOUGH THAT YOU AT LEAST GIVE THE “ILLUSION” THAT YOUR PUZZLE IS SOLVE-ABLE.


Coming soon… thoughts on Forgetting Sarah Marshall…


VANTAGE POINT TRAILER

Hey, screenwriters--

Today's post is brought to us by Martin Scorsese's new Rolling Stones IMAX movie, Shine A Light.  (Okay, not really, but it looks incredible, so do yourselves a favor and check it out.) 

And while I haven't seen it yet, I can only assume that it will rock hard... which will help to wash off the stink for those of you who go see director George Clooney's new movie, Leatherheads... which I just saw last night.  (So see Leatherheads first, then Shine A Light... so it's like you get dirty and then have a nice, warm, comforting shower...)

While I don't want this blog to turn into a movie review site, I do think it's helpful to look at movies and talk about their screenwriting qualities... and you often learn more by looking at bad movies than good ones, because you see all their mistakes. 

So, let's talk about Leatherheads (and I won't give away any actual plot details, just in case you decide to actually put yourself through it)...

Leatherheads is a 1920's love triangle set against the backdrop of the newborn professional football industry.  It follows three characters: Dodge Connelly (George Clooney), an aging pro football player for Minnesota's ailing pro football team, the Duluth Bulldogs; Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski), a college superstar-- and World War I hero-- who's drafted by Connelly to revive the dying Bulldogs; and Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger), a scrappy Chicago reporter determined to "cook Carter's goose" by proving he's not the war hero everyone thinks he is.

Of course, both Connelly and Rutherford fall head-over-heels for Littleton... forming a (supposedly) dramatic love triangle that's at the center of the film.  Here's the problem...

It doesn't work.

There are a myriad of reasons that keep the film from working: it's a pastiche of incongruent styles and tones (screwball comedy, dry social commentary, contemporary romantic comedy), it flits from theme to theme without ever being sure what it wants to say, etc.

But today I want to talk about one major script flaw that prevents Leatherheads from taking off...

It never takes the time to define its core relationships. 

The key to pulling off this kind of romantic comedy/love triangle is illustrating the love between all three people involved... and getting the audience to care for all of them.  We need to see the attraction between Littleton and Connelly... we need to see the attraction between Littleton and Rutherford... and, perhaps most importantly, we need to see the bond and friendship between the two men, Connelly and Rutherford.

In Leatherheads, the relationship between the two men is most important... but it's given the least amount of time.  The entire plot is driven by the partnership of Connelly and Rutherford... the fading veteran and the arrogant upstart.  Yet we know very little about the two men's relationship.  Are they father-son?  (Not literally, of course... but in the context of their relationship.)  Are they brothers who love and hate each other?  Best friends?  Business rivals?  Teacher-student?

Because we're never sure, we don't know what's at stake when the woman-- Littleton-- drives a wedge between them.  The destruction of two "brothers'" relationship is tragic and dramatic.  So is the break-up of two best friends.  But two guys who just like the same girl is just... well... two guys who like the same girl.  Thus, we're never really invested in caring about how these two men will solve their battle for the same woman, because it never feels like anything tremendous will be lost or gained.

Secondly, the script never fully articulates the Littleton-Connelly or Littleton-Rutherford relationships.  We know both men find Littleton attractive... but what does Littleton see in each of them?  Sure, she has some pseudo-witty repartee with Connelly... and she needs to cling to Rutherford to get her juicy newspaper story... but we're never sure what emotional need each of these men fills in Littleton.  How does each satisfy her, emotionally, in a different way?  And likewise, what emotional hole does she fill in each of them?

Because we never know, we have no idea what each man will lose if he loses this woman.  As a result, we have no idea why each even bothers to pursue or fight for her.  Does Littleton make Rutherford want to discover his wild, uninhibited side?  Does she make Connelly want to settle down and become a responsible family man?  We don't know... so we have no idea what each man stands to lose, personally, if he loses Littleton.

Likewise, we don't know what Littleton will lose if she loses one of these men.  Does Rutherford provide her with a sense of security and warmth?  Does Connelly give her excitement and adventure?  And by picking one over the other, what is Littleton gaining and what is she sacrificing?  We never know, so there are no stakes in her dating or giving up either.

So, Lesson #1:  If you're writing a romantic comedy, we need to know why your characters desperately need each other... and we need to know what they'll lose if they lose each other.

And Lesson #2:  If you're creating this kind of love triangle, we need to be invested in all the relationships... which means each relationship needs to be clearly enough defined that we understand why it's important to the characters... and what they'll lose if the relationship dissolves.

The best way to learn these lessons, of course, is to go see Leatherheads.  Unfortunately, it'll be a two-hour, ten-dollar lesson (and neither is refundable), but if you're writing a love-triangle/romantic comedy, it just may be worth it...

Chad


LEATHERHEADS