Jump_Cut:
On Screenwriting

Editor's Note: Authorlink welcomes Los Angeles screenwriter and teacher Neil Flowers and his new monthly column on the subject of writing for film and television. Neil's columns appears on the first of every month.

- Sam Fuller to his wife, Mildred, after Kane leaves and Fuller comes out of hiding.

Last month, in a discussion of High Noon, we spoke about the basic structure of act II—aka the conflicts and complications. We saw how High Noon's protagonist, Will Kane, goes through a series of one-on-one conflicts with various people in Hadleyville whom he expects will stand by him in the looming fight with Miller and his gang.

"These desertions constitute act II. The heart and soul of the story lies here. "
—Flowers

One by one, people disappear. Amy, Mettrick, Harv Pell, Helen, some of the boys in the bar who had once worked for Kane, Sam Fuller and his wife Mildred, Dr. Mahin, Joe Henderson, the congregation, Martin Howe, Herb Baker. In short, the entire town. A town that five years prior to the action of the film Kane saved from the scourge of Miller.

His friends all have their reasons for not showing up when Miller steps off the train. Joe, bartender of the Ramirez Saloon, actually rallies his patrons against Will. Some people, such as the hotel clerk, are nostalgic for Miller's return. To rub salt, the two women in his life, Helen, his ex-lover, and Amy, his new wife, depart town together.

These desertions constitute act II. The heart and soul of the story lies here. Miller and his gang are perfunctory in terms of character. They are all homicidal sociopaths. They exist dramatically to put the pressure from the outside on the townspeople, to force them to show the their true colors. And, of course, to provide a showdown.

Now hold up, you may be thinking. The saloon and church scenes aren't one-on-one. On a Sunday morning at 11:30, the saloon is full of loungers leaning on the bar, feet propped on the rail, hands wrapped around alcohol. The trim, white church is packed with pious men, women, and kids. About a dozen adults—including Ezra and Trumbull—speak out either for or against Kane when the pastor, Dr. Mahin, throws open his church to his parishioners for discussion of the Kane-Miller conflict. So how can these two scenes be examples of one-on-one conflict?

Of course these scenes literally contain more than one antagonist who faces Kane. But before we move on to the second act of Collateral, let's look at these unique and remarkably similar scenes and see how they work and the purpose they serve. They will also tell us something about act 2 of Collateral.

Both scenes are large crowd scenes. Each crowd is composed of a different class of Hadleyvillites.

It's easy to see that the barflys and the churchgoers represent a worker-boss class division. These classes are generally in conflict due to different investments and interests in the economic structure.

Now in the first columns of "Jump_Cut," we spoke about the origins of Western drama in ancient Greek plays, and how the role of the Chorus and Chorus Leader developed in Athens through the fifth century in the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripedes.

There is irony here that in Hadleyville the two classes—pious parishioner and beery saddle tramp—agree about Kane. Two aspects of their common ground lie in economics and in fear. The result is that the working class and the haute bourgeois unite to abandon their Marshal in his time of extreme duress. Hadleyville, we discover, is composed almost entirely of cowardly ingrates, those who think of their wallet first, and even those who sympathize with homicidal maniacs.

Collateral, in contrast to High Noon, has no real chorus, although it has a spectacular crowd scene. This terrific thriller shows us a second act that is composed mostly of one-on-one conflict that leads to major complications for Max, the reluctant hero. We'll return to Collateral next month.

Suggested viewing for next month: Collateral, Apocalypto, Notes on a Scandal.