Myth to Movie: REDEMPTION

First published in Produced By, the official magazine of the Producers Guild of America

Myth to Movie
By Ken Atchity

Redemption

The formula of the perennial family of stories inspired by the redemption myth:

Because of a previous failure, a hero has withdrawn from the world. Faced with the opportunity to test himself again in the same arena where’s he’s failed before, he refuses, having lost his confidence. But when the stakes are raised and allies and/or provocateurs force his hand, he’s inevitably drawn into the situation that forces him to reenact his trauma. This time, overcoming his own fears, he succeeds.

Films as distinct in flavor as Reign of Fire (2002) and Seabiscuit (2003) draw story pattern from the core myth of redemption.

Analyzed with reference to this “underlying mythic story structure,” two 1993 films, Cliffhanger (directed by Renny Harlin) and In the Line of Fire (Wolfgang Petersen), for example, are retelling the identical mythic pattern. Though one appeals to the popcorn crowd and the other to the smart set, they deliver identical satisfaction to the audience’s universal longing for self-redemption--for getting a second chance, and succeeding.

In the Sylvester Stallone thriller, Gabe Walker has retired from a mountain-climbing rescue team because he believes his recklessness, shown in the breathtaking and perfectly ambiguous opening scene, led to the death of his best friend’s girlfriend; the mythic protagonists we relate to the most seem always to be ones with the greatest hubris, taking the weight of the world on their shoulders. When a plane is downed in the inaccessible Rockies by a daring midair heist engineered by madman Eric Qualen (John Lithgow), even the pleas of Gabe’s former girlfriend Jessie (Janine Turner) fail at first to move him to action. Only Gabe’s knowledge that he alone can pull off this rescue finally triggers his decision to join the purported rescue team, face the antagonist and his own fears, complete the impossible task, and earn back his self-respect. Testimony to the power of a movie story well-shaped by its underlying myth was Roger Ebert’s comment, “True, there’s not a moment in the plot that I could believe. That didn’t bother me for an instant.”

Line of Fire’s Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan (Clint Eastwood) has been nursing his failure to protect President Kennedy with alcohol for nearly three decades when an antagonist straight out of his nightmares, John Malkovich’s Mitch Leary, draws him out of his loser-stupor by announcing that he’s going to kill the present President (played by Jim Curley)—and that Horrigan and Horrigan alone can stop him. Tightly wrapped agent Lilly Raines (Rene Russo) shames Mitch into action and, in a well-orchestrated final sequence, the failed hero relives his past but this time throws himself between the assassin and the President--and rises to a new life.

More recently, The Legend of Bagger Vance shows the redemption and rebirth of Rannulph Junuh (Matt Damon), an Old South protagonist whose previous failure came from being bested by the brutalities of war, a game with no gentlemanly rules about how it’s played. Despite his engagement to blue-blood Savannah belle Adele Invergordon (Charlize Theron), Rannulph can’t bring himself to face life and disappears into a self-imposed limbo of smoke-filled back rooms. But, like the plane crash in Cliffhanger and the assassin in Line of Fire, fate—this time in the person of Adele, who misses her handsome and absent beau—intervenes to give him a second chance: a golf tournament, a game that “you don’t win, you can only play.” Junnuh’s redemption is assisted not only by the charming connivance of Adele but also by unlikely allies in the person of Bagger Vance (Will Smith), a wise caddy who walks straight out of the mists of myth, and the young boy (J. Michael Moncrief), who believes in Junnuh almost as much as he believes in the game of golf.

Most recently, we see redemption reworked in two 2004 films Alexander Payne’s Sideways, and Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby. In the former, Miles Raymond (Paul Giamatti) is a failed San Diego writer biding his downward spiral as a disaffected English teacher. His pal Jack (Thomas Haden Church) is an almost-as-failed hero whose few moments of fame have allowed him a faux joie de vivre that leaves Miles in his pale. Their road trip to Santa Ynez explores not only wine country but their own discontent; their allies, Maya (Virginia Madsen) and Stephanie (Sandra Oh), lead them through oenophilia to sex to self-awareness, self-acceptance, and the hope of a new, more honest life.

In contrast to the rosé- and Pinot Noire-colored glasses of Payne’s film, Million Dollar Baby is equal parts noir and noir. The redemption of Frankie Dunn (Eastwood), drifting rudderless through a meaningless life, is accomplished through young Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank) and ally ex-boxer Eddie Dupris (Morgan Freeman). Maggie’s indomitable dream combines with the wisdom Eddie has distilled from forty years of rejection to reenlist Frankie’s motivation. Though the film ends with a tear-jerking trauma, Frankie emerges reborn with the courage to accept, if not embrace, life one day at a time.

We love redemption because it leads to rebirth, so redemption stories should be classified as a branch of the rebirth family tree. Other rebirth stories that aren’t motivated by redemption include Ron Howard’s Cocoon (1985), where the rebirth of old folks choosing a stellar journey has nothing to do with their merits; My Fair Lady, discussed in a previous column, where Henry Higgins’ rebirth comes from willfully taking on an impossible challenge; or even Rocky (1976), where Rocky Balboa is reborn as a winner through the strength of his inner vision backed by sheer determination.


Among Atchity’s other films in development, John Scott Shepherd’s Henry’s List of Wrongs (New Line Pictures), is based on the redemption myth.

Finding the Right Agent or Manager

Excerpt from my How to Publish Your Novel

Of course many of the major publishers require that you approach them only through a representative, which can be a literary agent, manager, or attorney. So how do you find the right agent or manager?

Writers’ representatives are as eager to find you as you are to find them because without writers they have no business. They make finding them relatively easy—it’s getting their attention that’s difficult. Here are the best ways to start your search.

Personal recommendations

Nothing takes the place of a personal recommendation from a writer, especially if he’s willing to make the contact for you. Don’t be bashful about approaching writers of your acquaintance, and asking them for their advice. I don’t recommend asking them to read your novel—that’s a different issue entirely, and usually produces a glazed look and awkward demur from the victim. Use professional editors for that purpose, but your writer friend simply for his advice. The word “advice” normally triggers a beneficent response, primarily, I think, because it doesn’t involve responsibility. It’s something the writer can give you effortlessly, and still feel good about it. There’s a difference between a “referral” and a “recommendation.” The latter implies that he’s read your work, and will recommend it. The former, only that “you can say I referred you.” Of course if the relationship is a close one, and/or you’ve prevailed on the writer to serve as your mentor, a recommendation to his favorite agent or manager is the best of all possible worlds. But a referral is a strong second best.

With that in hand, approach the representative with a cover letter that says,

Dear Mr. Adashek:

Vincent Dressman referred me to you, and I’m enclosing, as requested in your directory listing, the first fifty pages of my novel, Drive Down to Dixie, along with a five-page synopsis.
I appreciate your consideration.

If you’re fortunate enough to have your writer acquaintance recommend your work, normally you’d wait to submit it until he’s gotten back to you with the information that he’s made that introductory call, and the representative is expecting your submission. Then your cover letter would read something like this:

Dear Mr. Adashek:
Vincent Dressman told me he’s spoken with you about my novel, Drive Down to Dixie, which he was good enough to read and recommend. I’m enclosing, as requested in your directory listing, the first fifty pages, along with a five-page synopsis.
I appreciate your consideration.

It’s not necessary to say, “Let me know if you’d like to read the rest of the book.” If the representative is impressed by what he’s read, he won’t hesitate to let you know he wants to read the whole manuscript.

Directories

A number of directories are published in revised editions each year for no other reason than to make it easy for novelists to find representation.

They include:

The Internet

Of course the Internet, especially if you’re hooked up to cable, provides the fastest of all resources for finding the right representative.

Live encounters

In their ongoing effort to reach out for talented new novelists, authors’ representatives regularly attend writers’ conferences and give lectures and workshops at universities and continuing education programs. You can go and meet them in person, give them your card, and say, “I’ll be in touch.” They will appreciate the businesslike approach, but don’t be too shy either—if they weren’t open to listening to your story they wouldn’t be there in the first place. Many conferences offer attendees the opportunity for a one-on-one session with the visiting agents and managers. This is your chance to pitch your novel live, and there’s no better way to get someone’s attention, assuming you know how to pitch. Practice makes perfect!

Now that you’ve scoured the resources listed here, sit down with pad and pencil and begin a target list, drawing from all the resources listed above—and others you’ve devised on your own. Don’t forget that the representatives on your list may have their own websites, which makes approaching them relatively easy. And don’t forget that no one appreciates an approach that shows no knowledge of what that representative requires for submissions. When he has taken the trouble to make his information easily available, in directory listings and/or websites, a submission that breaks his rules from the get-go only indicates a novelist who isn’t interested enough in the marketplace to do his basic homework.

TEN RULES TO MAKE WORKING WITH AGENTS AND EDITORS A SUCCESS FOR YOU

Rule 1: Take the time to become familiar with the agents and editors that you want to represent or publish you.

Rule 2: Familiarize yourself with the submission policies of the agent or editor that you want to submit to and abide by these policies.

Rule 3: YOU are as important as the work that you are submitting. The quality of your work is not the only element evaluated by an agent or editor considering a business relationship with you – so, SELL YOURSELF as much as your work.

Rule 4: Carefully consider the appropriateness of a phone call before dialing your agent or editor.

Rule 5: Gimmicks don’t work.

Rule 6: Make your manuscript or screenplay easy-on-the-eyes.

Rule 7: Always make sure that the formatting for your manuscript or screenplay is correct.

Rule 8: Don’t overdo the packaging!

Rule 9: Don’t send queries or submissions via email or fax, unless specifically requested to do so.

Rule 10: It’s a good idea to thank your agent or editor in your acknowledgements of a book that they have worked on with you or sold for you.











Purchase Book

Prayer For Light

Let your light shine in dark places.



Let it illuminate the shadows



With truth and love,



That you may be a beacon



To those who crave for light.



Let the radiance of



The enlightened spirit



Dispel the creatures of the shadows



That all may shine, to bring about



A spiritual universe of light,



Where once there was darkness.



Make it so; make it so; make it so.



Thomas J Mitchell

Tips For Screenwriters

Screenplays are in the present tense, which makes the action immediate.

How To Publicize Your Book

Now that you have finished your book, and it is ready to be shopped around to publishers (or has already been bought by a publisher!) it’s time to think about what you can do to help promote your book.

1) A little promotion, focused on NY media, can help us bring your book to the attention of major publishers. Brainstorm with us about this!

2) All other PR should be saved for the month of your books’ launch and following.

3) That means you have to start six months before that date to make magazine and television deadlines!


4) Read the chapter on publicizing your book in KJA’s How to Publish Your Novel (Square One Books).

5) Read John Kremer’s 1001 Ways to Market Your Book.

Come up with a marketing Plan!

•Books don’t publicize themselves and, today, publishers rarely put maximum effort into a book’s release until the book starts selling. This Catch-22 means that YOU are your book’s best hope. The sooner you take that approach, the better your chances will be. Even well-known writers have found that putting little effort into marketing will produce virtually zero results—one or two thousand sold.

•Let us review it before you start implementing it and spending money.

•Start a website! Create a website solely dedicated to your book. AEI’s webmaster provides that service for our clients at rock-bottom prices. And get your link sponsored on other websites too!

•Write emails! Send an email to friends, family and co-workers about your book, and ask them to pass it along to everyone they know. You’ll be amazed how fast word of mouth spreads!

Endorsements

It’s invaluable to get endorsements for your book–authorities and/or well-known people who will say great things about your book to display on the jacket. There are numerous ways to request endorsements (aka “blurbs”):

•Ask your colleagues! If you are a professional in any given field, it’s always a good idea to ask your colleagues for their own endorsements, or to recommend you to well-known others, especially those who are writers too.

•Does your topic deal with a timely issue? Can you think of anyone in entertainment who may relate to your topic? Try and seek out celebrities (actors, best-selling authors, athletes) to endorse your book (it never hurts to have a famous name on the cover!)

•Brainstorm with your editor. Check out your publishers catalog, and suggest writers who might appreciate your book.

•One suggestion. Busy people have good hearts but not enough time. Write the endorsement yourself, focusing on what might sound in character for them; fax or mail it to them, along with sample chapters of your book, asking, “Would you mind endorsing my book along the lines suggested here?” You’ll be surprised that often they just say yes, and let you use what you wrote as their endorsement or change it slightly.

Click here to buy How to Publish Your Novel by Ken Atchity, Andrea McKeown, Julie Mooney, & Margaret O'Connor on Amazon

Overwriting!

Ben Freedman, a guru of mine now living in the North Bay, sent me this great story that all writers (including me) need to take to heart:

Suzuki describes an encounter between a Zen master and a Western philosopher. In response to a four word Zen proverb, the Westerner launched into an hour long conceptual analysis. The Zen master listened patiently and finally stretched out his hand, palm down. "What does that mean?" asked the philosopher. The master replied, "When the cup is full, stop pouring tea."

In other words, as Robert Frost said, “Less is more.”

Movie Myths THE MYTH OF BETRAYAL

First published in Produced By, the official magazine of the Producers Guild of America

Myth to Movie
By Ken Atchity

Whether it’s betrayal for ambition, power, love, sex, and money, or even envy, story patterns spun from this violent myth hover over the history of the cinema as they do over the history of humanity. Dancing among themes of trust and treachery, deception, desertion, and disloyalty, some of the most dramatic villains are its greatest betrayers—from Brutus and Iago, to Benedict Arnold and Aaron Burr.

In the betrayal story a close bond is established between the subject and the one who betrays him, the bond must be jostled by some irresistible motivating emotional force that becomes the betrayer’s obsession; the obsession leads to the betrayal, which threatens to destroy--and often does destroy--the subject. Finally the betrayer is either punished for his perfidy or not. The betrayal myth shapes such diverse films as:

• Samson and Delilah (1949): Personal strength is stolen by deceitful love, and a nation is jeopardized;
• Phaedra (1962), where misplaced lust, instilled by the gods, explodes a marriage and a family;
• Body Heat (1981), where weakness is the entry point for duplicity and betrayal;
• Betrayal (1983), where love and betrayal deconstructed, are revealed as inevitably interlocking reverberations;
• Fatal Attraction (1987), where a moment of weakness unravels a lifetime of happiness;
• Brave Heart (1995), where Robert the Bruce, motivated by political ambition, betrays Mel Gibson’s William Wallace twice;
• Othello (1995, 2001), where the force of Desdemona’s alleged betrayal is the mirror reflection of Iago’s betraying envy.
• The Ice Storm (1997), where betrayal springs like evil flowers from the soil of suburban ennui.
• The Passion of the Christ (2004), where the poster boy of betrayers wreaks vengeance on himself.

One hero’s passion is another’s betrayal. For bringing fire to mankind out of sympathy for our plight, Prometheus is chained to a rock for all eternity. Antigone must choose between betraying King Creon or betraying her dead hero brother. Betrayal stories focus on the thread that binds the individual and “the other,” generally illustrating the moral that unrestrained self-interest is always in danger of unraveling the social fiber. “Othello was not jealous,” Alexander Pushkin pointed out. “He was trustful.”

In one of my all-time favorite betrayal stories, All about Eve (1950), Bette Davis plays the actress that Anne Baxter’s Eve betrays by working her ambitious way into every corner of her life--until Margo realizes that Eve has set the stage for taking over her career. The comely ingénue is the pivotal character of the story--villain as protagonist. When Eve is called to task by Addison DeWitt (George Sanders), she’s devastated to realize that, unwittingly, she’s made a pact with a devil even more sinister than she is—because, unlike her, he has no ambition except to serve up gossip. The movie ends with a dramatic reminder that the cycle of “betrayal for ambition” is never-ending, and that people of power should never trust new friends. Eve’s Promethean rock is having to live not only with herself seen clearly in DeWitt’s journalistic lens but also with undergrad Phoebe, the “next Eve.”

The mythic theme “love betrayed by lust” traces back at least as far as Homer’s Iliad—in stark contrast with The Odyssey, where Penelope’s refusal to betray her absent husband leads to a violently happy ending. Adrian Lyne reprises his fascination with the repercussions of fatal attractions in Unfaithful (2002)--based on Claude Chabrol’s La Femme Infidele (1969). Here the betrayal is flipped to the distaff side. Happily married Susan (Diane Lane) is struck by Eros’ thunderbolt borne on the winds of chance. In a scene that sizzles almost as successfully as the seduction scenes, husband Richard Gere takes retribution on the irresistible Frenchman (Olivier Martinez). Drawn on the intimate canvas of domesticity, the film literally brings home the deadly consequences of betrayal.

One of myth’s characteristics is that it can move audiences just as powerfully when portrayed on the widest as well as on the smallest story screens. Whether contracting or expanding, the violent myth of betrayal can instill equal awe. But when working on the wider canvas, if the emotional catalyst that leads to the betrayal isn’t dramatized effectively the failure of the mythic retelling is all the more painfully obvious. Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy utterly falters in making us understand how the launch of a thousand ships could be caused by the insipid dalliance of Orlando Bloom’s Paris and Diane Kruger’s Helen. When you don’t bring to life the emotion at the core of a myth, all the visual magnificence and tiling in the world still leaves the audience feeling hollow.

A wide spectrum of 2004 films focused on betrayal story patterns. Mike Nichols’ Closer (from Patrick Marber’s play) is an interesting contrast with the 2005 Woody Allen Match Point’s coldly amusing cynicism. Where Allen’s film suggests that betrayers can get away with murder in our amoral times of relative values, Nichols’ victims and perpetrators sleepwalk their way through a muddle of despair and inevitable ennui. The moral of this disturbing tale seems to be that passion, even love, are best avoided altogether.

Much more joyful, though much more violent (oddly enough), are Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill 1 & 2--where +betrayal is yoked to the exhilarating high energies of rampant revenge--and Yimou Zhang’s House of the Flying Daggers, where the same symbiosis between love and violence and betrayal play across the big screen with infinitely greater complexity but much less emotional impact. Both films are choreographed admonitions of one thing we never cease learning about betrayal: It unleashes the all-consuming power of the heart.