Save the Cat! Goes to the Indies Read online

  Published by Save the Cat!® Press

  Cover Design: Barry Grimes Design

  Layout: Gina Mansfield Design

  Editors: Cory Milles, Naomi Beaty and Brett Jay Markel

  Printed by McNaughton & Gunn, Inc., Saline, Michigan

  Printed on Recycled Stock

  © Estate of Blake Snyder 2017

  ISBN 10: 0-9841576-9-7

  ISBN 13: 978-0-9841576-9-3

  TABLE

  OF

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  FOREWORD

  INTRODUCTION

  CHAPTER ONE: MONSTER IN THE HOUSE

  One of the most productive genres in independent film history: 28 Days Later, The Lives of Others, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Blair Witch Project, Funny Games

  CHAPTER TWO: GOLDEN FLEECE

  Put your characters on the road: The Full Monty; Little Miss Sunshine; O Brother, Where Art Thou?; Reservoir Dogs; The Straight Story

  CHAPTER THREE: OUT OF THE BOTTLE

  Be careful what you wish for: Being John Malkovich, Amélie, Her, Fight Club, Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

  CHAPTER FOUR: DUDE WITH A PROBLEM

  Welcome to an unexpected battle between life and death: T he Ghost Writer, Drive, A History of Violence, The Impossible, Dallas Buyers Club

  CHAPTER FIVE: RITES OF PASSAGE

  What we can learn from a struggle that’s primal: Lost in Translation, Blue Valentine, Three Colors: Blue, Trainspotting, The 400 Blows

  CHAPTER SIX: BUDDY LOVE

  There are many kinds of love with a special connection: Kes, A Dangerous Method, Before Sunrise, The Reader, Blue Is the Warmest Color

  CHAPTER SEVEN: WHYDUNIT

  The detective discovers a dark reflection of ourselves: Michael Clayton, Pi, The French Connection, Get Carter, The Big Lebowski

  CHAPTER EIGHT: FOOL TRIUMPHANT

  Innocence somehow results in success: The King’s Speech, Life Is Beautiful, Match Point, The Artist, Boogie Nights

  CHAPTER NINE: INSTITUTIONALIZED

  Deciding to belong when the consequences could be dire: Paths of Glory, Dogville, Glengarry Glen Ross, Cinema Paradiso, Pulp Fiction

  CHAPTER TEN: SUPERHERO

  The mysterious stranger, so different from us: Erin Brockovich, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Brazil, The Elephant Man, The Crow

  GLOSSARY

  Terms used throughout the book, from All Stories Are About Transformation to Whiff of Death

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Let me start by thanking the many friends, family, collaborators, clients and all the loyal, close people who have given me their support, faith and encouragement while I was writing this book — thankfully, you are too many to note, and as the saying goes, you know well who you are... as I tell you all the time!

  Also, this book wouldn’t exist without the careful, patient, meticulous, painstaking editing work by Cory Milles and Naomi Beaty! And it looks and reads great because of Gina Mansfield’s talents and skills doing the layout.

  There are three people whose help and encouragement made this book possible:

  First of all, let me thank my friend Miguel Angel Macarrón, AKA Maca, AKA Mr. Mck for his help finding and discussing the films that would be analyzed in the book. Ex-projectionist, fellow film analyst for many years and current teacher, his encyclopedic, firsthand knowledge of the European and American indie scenes was pivotal for me. They say a friend is someone that you call just about any time, so thanks for those many conversations in the middle of the night!

  Second, I want to give a loud, “Thanks for trusting me!” to Brett Jay Markel, primary editor of this book. You believed in my ability to accomplish this task, and I am even more thankful knowing that you are letting me keep Blake Snyder’s heritage alive and, hopefully, his ability to inspire people, to help them be creative and to empower them with storytelling. Thanks for your advice, editing and for giving me this chance!

  Lastly, and in a special place of honor, thanks to Blake, wherever you are. I feel blessed for having met you — you changed my life in so many ways! Your generosity teaching the craft, your ability to make everything seem so easy and your endless “focus, discipline and positive energy” inspired me to follow your path and become a professional writer. I am so glad and honored to carry on the Cat! flag and keep your legacy alive.

  Thank you all!

  FOREWORD

  I first worked with Blake Snyder in 1986 and continued to work with him — on and off — until that fateful day in 2004 when publisher Michael Wiese asked me to edit a new screenwriting book. It was called “Save the Cat.” Blake had written the first draft and Michael had already come up with the cover that would soon become iconic.

  At the time, Blake was busy selling scripts but wanted to “codify” what he’d first recognized when listening to films while commuting from his home in Santa Barbara to Los Angeles — story categories, and beats he began to identify within the stories. And so his 10 genres, 15 beats and now-popular phrases like “save the cat,” “pope in the pool” and “double mumbo jumbo” were born.

  As the book came closer to its publication date, Michael sagely suggested we keep our goals modest, as the screenwriting book market was oversaturated (and still is 13 years later and counting!). The thing is… none of us had a clue what was about to happen.

  The book was published in May 2005, and the rest is history. As I write this Foreword to the fourth entry in the series, Save the Cat® has been embraced by the professional screenwriting community across the globe.

  The question is… why?

  I think the biggest clue is how the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet fits so many movies produced before Blake even dreamed of writing his book. You see, he didn’t really invent anything — he simply made it easy to break down movies so that today’s writers could learn from those scribes who preceded them.

  For all those critics who bristle at “formula,” Blake was trying to do no more than provide a common language to analyze and create films. That was the primary purpose of his second book, Save the Cat!® Goes to the Movies, which presented Beat Sheets for 50 mostly studio-produced films (5 for each of Blake’s 10 genres).

  And now one of his mentees, Spain’s brilliant and talented screenwriter and novelist Salva Rubio, takes an exciting step, applying Blake’s language to 50 independent, European and cult films in this book, Save the Cat® Goes to the Indies (again 5 Beat Sheets for each of Blake’s 10 genres).

  Discover here how Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others, The Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Big Lebowski, Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (co-written with Calder Willingham and Jim Thompson) and Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation — along with 43 other “indie” classics — “hit the beats.”

  Blake would be so proud of Salva — and would also take great joy in the fact that the language he created is still being used to help writers do what they do best: write.

  Brett Jay Markel

  April, 2017

  INTRODUCTION

  Well, for me, it was pretty normal. Another day at the office! Literally. But then I realized that for others... it was something rather odd. And it came as a surprise to them. But how could they not see it? I thought. It worked so well!

  Wait! What I am talking about? You mean that... Blake Snyder’s Beat Sheet and his genres, something seemingly designed for Hollywood blockbusters, could be used for indie and auteur films? What? Well, let me tell you a story…

  When I started my film analyst, script doctor and screenwriting career, I used to work for one of Europe’s most important indepen
dent distribution, exhibition and production companies. Lots of independent and auteur scripts arrived at the office, seeking distribution, co-production, international sales and financing — in many cases before the movie was shot.

  Thus, I was fortunate enough to read scripts by the Coen Brothers, Eric Rohmer, Gus Van Sant, Walter Salles, Jane Campion, Christopher Hampton (whom I even met!), Amos Gitai, Marjane Satrapi, John Turturro, Larry Clark and David Cronenberg, among many other talented writers. Of course, I also read the usual less-than-good amateur proposals and literally a thousand just plain bad ones.

  It was then that I realized that the best scripts — no matter how cutting-edge the director’s later approach or the resulting film — were written with a classic narrative format in mind, and of course, all of them fit the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet. And I also recognized that, once these films premiered, the most successful, most awarded and most viewed also were in harmony with the Beat Sheet!

  So before we go on, let me re-emphasize this point: no matter how much the resulting film was auteur-ish, indie-like, or (insert-your- Cahiers-du-Cinema critique here), the original script of each of these successful yet cutting-edge films was perfectly classic in its narrative approach. And thus, Blake’s techniques and genres worked beautifully to create stories that resonated.

  Many of these films went on to win awards at Sundance, Berlinale, Cannes and even some from the Academy. And despite their indie status, some of them were pretty big hits at the box office. I learned that sometimes, the visual narrative, montage or art direction of the resulting film doesn’t let us see the script behind it... but if the film has been a success, you can bet there’s a Blake Snyder Beat Sheet lurking inside.

  I realized that what was so obvious for me wasn’t necessarily that apparent for many others, so as a test I wrote a Beat Sheet for Michael Haneke’s Academy Award ®-winning drama Amour for the Save the Cat!® blog. The feedback I got was great, and I thought that I could show my fellow European, indie and worldwide auteur screenwriters that Blake’s principles would be useful for them, too.

  And thus, this book was born!

  BUT IT’S ME VS. HOLLYWOOD... RIGHT?

  Of course, you may be scratching your head under your beanie hat or pushing your horn-rimmed glasses up your nose, or even touching your well-groomed beard in disbelief: can a bestselling method, apparently devised for writing blockbusters, help you with your $ 12,000 self-made independent film about your grandpa’s return to rural Wisconsin from ‘Nam? Isn’t Hollywood the enemy? Can this get me onto the Black List? Will Sean Penn want to star in it?

  I think the Save the Cat!® principles are for writing good stories, period.

  And I can attest to that, since as a professional screenwriter, novelist, essayist and graphic-novel writer, I have used it in many genres and formats, from artsy European comic books to commercial animation series and features.

  Indeed, it was the visual style, the outer finish, that gave those works the indie/auteur-ish look — the inner story was as classic as you can get.

  That is why for this book we have selected a wide array of films that belong to many categories, countries, schools and styles, but practically none of them — or so we think — have been backed by what you could call the all-mighty-dollar Hollywood industry.

  We have low-budget films that became international sensations like The Blair Witch Project, promising debuts like Pi by Darren Aronofsky, small films that acquired cult status like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Euro-blockbusters like The Full Monty, indie gems like Before Sunrise, textbook classics such as The 400 Blows... all of which seem to defy categorization! There are, of course, other higher-budget films in our book, but they still financially fit the “independent” label, like The Impossible, but we promise that we have kept away from big-budget, studio-driven, blockbuster-oriented, tent-pole summer bets, super-hero franchises and the like.

  But is that all there is? Are scripts for the two kinds of films — auteur and commercial — really the same? As you will see, the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet and Blake’s 10 genres work perfectly in the indie world, but there are some differences with mainstream examples.

  OUR THEME STATED: FLEXIBILITY

  We offer three guarantees. In all of our chosen films:

  1) All the beats are there.

  2) All of them are in the proper order.

  3) All of the films feature the 5 -Point Finale.

  Besides these, the key word for using the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet in your indie/auteur film is simply flexibility — especially in certain aspects of writing regarding timing.

  This much is clear: most Hollywood films have a fixed duration, with scripts following a certain set of rules pertaining to beats and act-break timing. They are usually 90-110 pages long. Some beats usually fall on page 12 (Catalyst), while others are usually around pages 45-50 (Midpoint). They are three-hole-punched and held with 2 brass brads (seriously, do they still do this?). Woe to you if your script doesn’t respect these rules in the blockbuster world! The dreaded agent or studio analyst might throw it, curve-ball style, to the nearest recycling bin, and there goes a great film.

  Luckily for us, in this book, the beats don’t have a fixed page number, but an approximate proportion in regards to the rest of the film. Thus in the indie or auteur film realm, script or beat length is not a set rule, and we can have really long films, such as Dogville (178 mins), Brazil (142 mins), Boogie Nights (155) or even the aforementioned Amour, whose script is about 67 pages long yet the resulting film lasts 127 minutes... and went on to win an Academy Award ®! I know many executives whose heads would explode by this fact alone.

  There are other ways to play around with time, like giving extra time to certain beats and scenes — they could be only 3 pages long, but the director might want to experiment with scene duration or the direction of the actors. This happens, for example, in Haneke’s Funny Games where the Dark Night of the Soul beat takes about 10 minutes. And in Blue Is the Warmest Color (Life of Adèle), the Break into Three beat is just one scene that lasts 15 minutes. Isn’t it awesome that some Finales can last for almost one hour, like in the Director’s Cut of Cinema Paradiso?

  Another way I discovered that indie writers play with beats is seen in Blake’s 5-Point Finale, the best way to nail an ending. Every one of the supposedly anti-classic films we feature follow it. And it’s also a nice tool to try interesting techniques structure-wise. Did you know that The Lives of Others has two consecutive 5 -Point Finales, one for each main character? And that in Being John Malkovich those beats are doubled and simultaneous, just like in Blue Valentine?

  There are other ways of experimenting with beats, like using multiple Beat Sheets. The master of this technique is, no doubt, Quentin Tarantino — Reservoir Dogs breaks into two Beat Sheets (albeit cleverly hiding some beats from sight) and Pulp Fiction breaks into three interlaced Beat Sheets (one for each major character’s story). It take sheer talent to pull something like this off, but he did it... so you can too.

  Of course, there are more ways of having fun (and games) with the Beat Sheet, as we will see with each analysis. Will you be the one to find out even more? Well, tell us, of course! Honoring Blake’s own tradition in his books, here is my personal email. Seriously, write us: [email protected]

  TO FIT OR NOT TO FIT... THAT ISN’T THE QUESTION!

  As for assigning each film to a genre, the key word is, again, flexibility. Blake made it very clear in Save the Cat!® Goes to the Movies that your goal in writing (and in life) shouldn’t be to try and find films that do not fit in any categories, if only to prove us wrong. There are better ways to waste your time!

  In the indie realm, the borders among films are not only fuzzy, but many times they openly overlap — and that’s a good thing, because you could even think of mixing genres or using complementary storylines to enrich your script and your themes. This is not new. In countless films, there is a Buddy Love take to its B Story regardless of its genre. So, alt
hough doubts may arise when trying to fit an indie film into a given category, use this genre flexibility to your advantage!

  After all, this also happens in mainstream films. Doesn’t Big have elements of Out of the Bottle and Fool Triumphant? And Blake himself talked about Ghost as an example of a genre mix, so expect it to happen much more in our rebellious independent realm. Is Pan’s Labyrinth more of a Golden Fleece or a Superhero? And does Cinema Paradiso fit better in Buddy Love (because of Totó’s relationship with the projectionist) or Institutionalized (regarding the themes of his belonging to his birth town)?

  Is the Ghost Writer more of a DWAP or a Whydunit? And O Brother, Where Art Thou? — doesn’t it have elements of both a Buddy Fleece and an Epic Fleece? What about sex, lies, and videotape? Yes, it could belong to the Sex Fool subgenre but a closer look shows that it may fit better with Issue Institution. Even Boogie Nights could be an Institutionalized, but it fits Sex Fool, too. And The Elephant Man could be a Fool Triumphant, but we placed it in People’s Superhero, which fits as well or better. A dual-cop classic like The French Connection could seem to be a Professional Love story to some, but instead, our take is that it’s a Cop Whydunit. Even Lost in Translation could easily seem a Buddy Love too, but we decided to go for the Mid Life Passage themes. Keep in mind that all this flexibility only enriches your themes!

  So here’s our advice: there is no point in trying to set in stone which film belongs in which genre. Simply use this tool to your advantage by “breaking a story” and don’t get too worked up trying to determine what fits and what doesn’t. As Blake wrote, “In cases where we are not sure what type of movie it is, the bottom line is we now have a language to talk about it [...] if you are trying to ‘stump the author’ by thinking up movies that don’t fit the paradigm... Stop. Won’t help you.”

  (IF) YOU’RE NOT GETTING IT (YET)

  Another reason why I wrote this book is because sometimes the Save the Cat!® principles are criticized by people who deem them as “formulaic,” “too Hollywood-minded” and so on.