Why Cinematic Success Often Relies On “Interiority & Information” (Patreon)

1. IN THE MOMENT

I was recently watching 1978’s The Fury and was struck with the realization that I had no idea what most of the characters on screen were thinking.

This was weird given that 1) I think Brian De Palma one of the best-and-yet-still-somehow- underrated filmmakers of the last century and 2) his films are normally excellent at putting you right in a character’s headspace. But I realize it’s easy for me to use that word “headspace,” but what does it mean, exactly? I know sometimes we often take this notion literally, as if it’s about going into a character’s literal Point Of View (POV) and using the camera to see what they see. But that’s not really the case. For a lot of filmmakers, it’s about getting in there with a really outstanding close-up that shows off the actor’s nuanced performance, which in turn allows you to emote right alongside them. But honestly these are just really important methods of capturing that moment - the truth is that showing one's headspace needs much more than good camera work…

It needs the job done beforehand within the writing itself.

What we’re really talking about is establishing the “interiority” of a character’s life. Often, these are not surface details. Meaning it’s not what they wear, what they do, or even what grade they’re in. It’s far more psychological. It’s about knowing what they want and seeing how they’ve behaved in previous scenes. And as an audience it then allows us to bring that knowledge into the present moment, which then allows you to implicitly understand how they’re feeling when certain things then happen to them. I know that may sound a bit abstract, so let’s use a really simple hypothetical example that highlights how this works:

You’re watching a generic high school movie and a jerk character just said a terrible thing to your main character. Let’s say that it was particularly cruel in that mean teenager-y way. Something like they’re outright making fun of our main character’s sick parent. Now, on the surface this is simple to understand the cruelty of his, no?  But let’s say you put this as the first scene in the movie. Say you did that and then suddenly you see the main character get upset and shout “actually, my dad died this morning!” And everyone suddenly feels bad, even the jerk who wanted to be mean, but not THAT mean. As an audience member, you’re like, “oh, I didn’t know that, that’s sad.” But that doesn’t really mean anything based on previous scenes, does it? Sure, we technically got all the important information, but emotions are not just about knowing information. Because here you’re only finding out about how the character is feeling in the moment itself (well, technically speaking, the very moment after it happens), which is not how we are most affected.

To wit, imagine if the ordering of that information went differently. Pretend we opened the movie with the sadness of that death itself. You show your main character saying goodbye to their parent the night before. You have the sadness of the actual passing. You feel all of what your main character is experiencing. Then the next morning they decide to go to school to “get their mind off things” and try to put one foot in front of the other, all to find some kind of distraction. But then right when they walk in? Suddenly the jerk says that horrible thing and oof… But notice there’s nothing she has to shout back at all. Right then you already understand everything. You know exactly what the main character just experienced. You know why that remark cuts so close. You know exactly what they MUST be thinking and feeling. And once you have that, you can then use all that great filmmaking technique stuff to come in for the emotional close-up and show their beautiful performance with every subtlety of the pain. You don’t have to say a word precisely because you established their interiority beforehand. Which is exactly what allows the story to move on from there without any kind of retroactive explanation.

Now, I wrote this hypothetical because it was clear and obvious, but you have no idea how many stories forget to do this in slightly less obvious cases. Note how many blockbusters are CONSTANTLY trying to explain things in the moment - and not just logical plot details, but by alluding to whatever characters were supposed to have been feeling beforehand, we just never dramatized it (Black Widow, a film I mostly liked, suffered from a great deal from this. Especially when it came to third act payoffs). Instead, you want that moment of reaction right there in the moment - as your already anticipating the character’s reaction because you understand where they are at - because this is the best way to empathize with them. If you do it the other way, then there’s no ability to emote along with someone’s interiority. You’ll just always be reacting to the dramatic moment and like, “ohhhhh, THAT’s why that bothered them. Ok.” And you don’t want to feel like you’re always on your heels.

But I can imagine you asking: you can’t explain EVERYTHING all of the time beforehand, right? Aren’t there good reasons to put their audience on their heels? Don’t you have to save some things for later? Isn’t there some information you want to hold back on for effect? Well, to answer all those questions: yes. But it brings us to the more complex notion of picking and choosing who we are aligned with on screen / why / and understanding what information comes out when it does… And I hate to break it to you folks, but that’s not some small subject… That’s literally the entire process of story construction. But hey, it’s impossible to write a column solely about interiority because it so directly intersects with this larger idea of the timing of information. But luckily for us…

There are some grounding thoughts on how to approach it all.

2. THE FINDING NEMO OPENING LAW

At this point I’ve brought up the subject ad nauseam, but that’s just because it keeps being so damn relevant. So I’m finally just going to call it a “The Finding Nemo Opening Law” and keep referencing it. And what it essentially means is this: 99% of the time you want to put your main character’s core motivation in or near the opening, do not save it for a later reveal.

This is due to the famous anecdote about how Finding Nemo was *almost* constructed. You’ll remember that in the finished result we all saw, there’s a heartbreaking opening scene where we see our exuberant, joyful main character Marlin suffers a barracuda attack where he loses his wife and all their eggs, save for one, his little Nemo. Flash-forward to the same character raising his little clown fish son and he’s totally an overprotective parent. But you at least fully understand and empathize with why he is, given that we previously established his interiority. But the whole thing is that director Andrew Stanton originally wanted to reveal the attack 2/3 of the way into the movie, specifically during an action scene. Why? Well, I always call this “The Magician Instinct” because it seems like the storyteller’s way of going “Ta-da! Don’t you feel bad now? There’s a very good reason he was being protective! I knew what I was doing with this story all along!” That’s perhaps a crass way of putting it, but it honestly does sum up the instinct.

But the big problem with this kind of reveal scene is not that it’s “bad” or un-effecting, it’s that you have to watch your main character seem like an overprotective jerk for two hours before getting to, “oh, i guess he a motivating reason to be this way.” And we actually need that empathy up front because it makes us infinitely more invested in our main character and their journey infinitely more compelling. But to prove exactly how much this is true, the problem is that Stanton stuck to his guns and tried to do the same exact reveal 2/3 of the way into John Carter and show us his dead family then (again, right in the middle of an action scene). But by then it was already too little too late (I sometimes think about how that movie has not one, not two, but three introduction scenes and none of them the right one). But don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of things in that movie I really like. The problem is how they’re all let down by the core problem of this construction. With those kinds of popular adventures, you always want to be right there with your main character’s interiority so you can go on your journey with them. Not following them on your heels.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there’s so much classic Pixar that is great at doing this. But understand it’s not just that they put the crucial information up front, it’s that they dramatize it in a way where it comes out through the story and conflict. In the opening of Ratatouille we see Remy literally sneaking into a house and risking his life for good food because it’s his deepest passion; something that feeds his budding cooking instincts, but also puts him in stark contrast with his family, which leaves him feeling alienated. But this set of conditions frames everything about his conflict and also establishes why he simply HAS to leave and chase his dream. By comparison the famous montage of Up may seem like a constant layering of information, but it’s actually dramatizing just the same. It seemingly goes through every therefore / but in the complete story of their lives, showing their wants, obstacles, and constant set-backs, but ultimately ends with them still content with their partnership through life… until that devastating moment of loss where his wife dies. Because you saw it all, you really feel the weight of all that. Having lost everything, you understand exactly what would make Carl finally lash out on his last begrudging adventure, while simultaneously resenting the idea of teaming up with a kid along the way. The montage doesn’t just give us the framing of the story, it gives the critical interiority that fuels the rest of the conflict.

But all this comes with the admission that Pixar is making four quadrant animated blockbusters and thus needs to be very direct in it’s characterization. And I understand that’s not someone’s style. Or that they’d at least like to be more subtle about it. But even while being more subtle, that doesn’t mean being any less laser targeted. A great example of this 1980’s Ordinary People. Note: I realize I probably want to apply a general spoiler warning for this essay because I kind of need to talk about the plots of a TON of older movies, so anytime I mention one please be warned that key plot details will follow. And with Ordinary People it’s funny to me, because when I was a kid this movie felt like the standard bearer of drama and would be so forever. But it seems to have dropped off the radar? Anyway, it really is a remarkable, devastating film. But doesn’t just hit you right out of the gate with its depiction of trauma, instead comes at its subject matter with more elegance. It starts with a shot of the water. Then a boy having trouble connecting to the world and his family. But we soon end up in his weekly therapy session (which is still about 17 minutes into the film, I think) and learn how much trauma is going on in this seemingly “ordinary” life.

Namely that his brother died in a sailing accident, that he blames himself for it, and that he attempted suicide over it (all details that give that opening image of the water some new implications). But with this framework and understanding of his haunting motivations, the story gives you all that you need to experience the rest of the narrative. We see his father tries to connect with him, but just doesn’t understand the unique language of his trauma. It’s as if the dad thinks the mere act of reaching out should be able to fix things instead of letting him experience the depths of his pain. Even more cutting is the fact that his mother is in denial and pretending to be fine, while holding all sorts of wicked blame and anger just under the surface, especially about her loving her other son more. Again, the story is playing with all sorts of subtleties in these scenes, but we have all the most important story information to understand the architecture of their conflict. And all the other information being withheld is not revelatory, nor game changing, just the kinds of sad, small details that come out and break down the additional barriers between them (ugh, the detail about the towels is GUTTING). In fact, it’s those small details that help bring the inner realities of the parental characters to the surface.

Please understand that this difference - between what we fully understand about our main characters vs. what we know about our side characters - is what actually brings us to a really important aspect of interiority. Namely that there are going to be different things that the audience knows about different people at different times - and why that difference is really important to conflict is expressed. Because really, so much about the timing of information is about whether or not you want the audience to be on the…

3. INSIDE OR OUTSIDE

Let’s go back to the hypothetical high school movie from the opening section. And let's say you’ve switched perspective in this story and now your main character isn’t the one who lost a parent... Now your main character is the jerk. Why tell a story about a jerk? Well, there’s lots of stories about jerks. It’s the whole “Road to Damascus” trope where you show the way to become a better person through the drama. Anyway, in this case, it’s actually important for the character (and the audience) not to know that the person’s sick parent just died. It doesn’t just put you in the main character’s shoes, it captures the feeling of when you unknowingly take something too far (even if making fun of a sick parent is something you would never, ever rightfully do… honestly I just went with that first example at the the time and at this point we gotta roll with it). But to that point, if you showed all that goodbye stuff first it might be TOO aggressive a move to pull with your audience, especially if you are trying to get them to stick with this person on their journey to the proverbial Damascus. They can be a jerk, but not TOO much of a jerk. And you want to show the ways they feel remorse early on.

But the real thing to understand about whether you’re on the inside or outside of information is that it is related to who the audience is experiencing the story through. To wit, there’s five main examples of variation for how to go about doing this. Starting with the fact that so much delayed information comes through…

I) The Other Character

Perhaps the most obvious example of “being on the outside” of certain information is when your main character is getting to know another person. And often they discover that this person is not who they thought they were. You can practically call it the “you think you know someone” genre with classic efforts like Rebecca, Jane Eyre, or the noir Laura (it is perhaps not an accident that these stories all have lady names). But if I’m going to spoil something for the essay I’m not going to pick a classic, I’m going to pick something more middling and that’s the 1996 Richard Gere thriller Primal Fear . Behold its peak 90’s trailer! But what’s funny about this movie is it actually punches above its weight and made a splash because it launched baby Edward Norton’s career. And that’s because he’s really quite good in it. Heck, he even got an Oscar nom for playing the oh-gee-oh-shucks altar boy who is accused of killing an archbishop. But he’s not our main character. No, that’s Richard Gere as our hotshot lawyer who comes in and wants to turn this case into a big media circus precisely because Norton’s so obviously innocent. Fittingly, it all comes from Gere’s perspective.

What’s funny is that unlike what the trailer suggests, this film is not really playing into “did he or didn’t he?” angle because it’s not trying to milk tension from being vague. Instead, the story cracks wide open pretty early on when Gere discovers Norton has dissociative identity disorder (or what we used to call “multiple personalities”). Namely Norton has a sociopathic personality named “Roy” who is one who really seemed to do it - and even admits it. Now, as pressure and evidence mounts, Gere realizes that he has to go with insanity defense, and climatically puts Norton on the stand and provokes him until “Roy” comes out. Boom, insanity plea achieved! (I hate how all these movies seem to think our country’s psychiatric wards are in any way more cushy than prison, if anything they’re often even more inhumane). Either way, the movie ends on this little slip from Norton which gives way to the big reveal that he faked the multiple personality disorder thing. There was no shy boy, only the sociopath who wanted to get off for his terrible crimes. Dun Dun Dunnnnnn movie over!!! Wasn’t that twist so cool!!?!?!!!!

Yeah, it’s cool, but it doesn’t lend much resonant final meanings to the main character. Like I said, it was a flash in the pan movie with a really good performance, but I went into detail about it because it’s one of those things where I want to ask you the same question of motivation, “should we have known this at the beginning of the movie?”

This time, the answer is no! Because this is a good example of a main character learning more and more about the devious nature of the “other” character. And as the story evolves, you get different forms of tension from that learning, whether it is Gere's overconfidence in the beginning, the complications of his client’s guilt and seeming disease, all before hitting the hammer of him being duped at the end. I mean if you put any of that devious information earlier there would be no real use for it when it comes to ratcheting up / changing the conflict. Basically, it would only be able to employ dramatic irony the whole movie and that only gives you a few scenes worth of conflict at best (which means the whole situation would quickly grow stale). So it naturally makes so much sense to tell this story from the main character’s perspective and have them learn about “the other” because it’s the way you get the most conflict. Like I said, the only thing that I would change is trying to figure out a way to get more meaning out of the ending beyond “gotcha!” and Gere’s basic feelings of disillusionment. Because “gotcha” endings show us the difference between mere momentary effect and actual catharsis.

For a great example of attaining catharsis with “the other,” look to none other than Plains, Trains, & Automobiles. A great 80’s comedy where Steve Martin is stuck on a trip with the great John Candy, who is playing a nice, well-meaning, but overbearing and talkative travel companion. Hijinks ensue, but the whole time Candy keeps mentioning his wife, how much he loves her, and how she’s the real core of his life. We think these are nice, innocuous details, but when their travel problems hit the true climactic fall, Martin finally loses it. He yells and makes Candy leave, but soon after doing so he realizes that Candy’s wife isn’t there to go home to… she has actually passed away. And that’s Candy’s always traveling because he’s effectively grieving and without a home. That sudden bit of empathy and understanding the motivation is what allows the final catharsis and real coming together between them. But that’s exactly why it has to be held back. He’s the end goal, but also the chief source of conflict. And not knowing this information is precisely how you get all the good comic tension beforehand.

But while I think holding back information with the other characters makes sense, let’s look at something far more complicated. Let’s look at what happens when you try to do it with…

II) The Main Character

As I alluded above with John Carter / Black Widow, this is one of the most difficult things you can try and attempt. Because you are just so readily denying crucial interiority with your character. And this is not just true of some big action movie with a clear rooting interest. One of the examples that I always point to is Mrs. Henderson Presents. Which is a lighthearted British period comedy where Judy Dench is on a mission to show of naked women on stage so that boys have a place to be horny (I am not kidding). You go the whole movie and it’s mostly a lark (even when the details of World War II get worse), but it all builds to this moment where Dench has to defend her work to the censors or what have you. She gets up and FINALLY tells this sad story about her core motivation: her son died in the first world war and when he did, they found a little postcard with a nudie girl and she thought it was so sad that he never saw a naked woman before he died. So she created this place for young boys before they go off to the war.

The problem with this is three fold. The ending expects this to be a late emotional punch with “ta da!” magician instincts, but it just sort of cements the exact thing we already understand so completely. Second, it misses a crucial grounding we could have had in getting this information during the beginning and going in with that genuine rooting interest. But third, and perhaps most importantly, it reveals how there was no real “what comes next” in the movie. There was no arc with her. No thing she learned. No extra cards to play. And all this is the mark of a movie with a flimsy premise. Unfortunately, this happens a lot with biographical movies. You get painted into the flimsy corner by reality itself and try your best. But like most flimsy stories, they just hid something important, cryptically teased it, and then just finally declared it as a core motivation and pretended that this was some sort of arc. It wasn’t. It was the mark of a story that only had an interesting premise (which is how most good movies start) and not figuring out what to do - so they made that premise the ending. And believe it or not, it’s not just empty Hollywood mystery boxers that have that trouble. Indie and arthouse movies love to hide their conceits the whole movie, too.

Honestly, I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of a movie that benefits from this kind of approach and genuinely having trouble (I hit up friends, too, so please bring up any in the comments). Again, Ordinary People only waits 17 minutes. Manchester by the Sea waits a bit longer, but still only 30. Really, the only time it ever seems to make sense is in those rare cases where the main character doesn’t really know themselves / what’s going on with them / and essentially investigating themselves. An obvious example is something like Shutter Island, a genuinely visceral film that still can’t help but play into broad Hitchcockian conspiracy and archaic notions of psychology. But to me, Sixth Sense is always the perfect standard bearer for the genre precisely because you don’t realize you’re in that kind of self-investigative story, even though that’s exactly what’s happening. You think it’s so much more about understanding the kid, but instead it builds to reflection. Really, it’s a story about self-acceptance and realizing one’s own trauma. But keep in mind it’s VERY easy for these kinds of self-investigation films to come off flimsy. For one, the audience does not like being fucked with. And having the movie itself (as opposed to other characters) being like “haha none of that was actually happening can really push them over the line. For every film that successfully plays with that kind of tension, there’s two dozen films like High Tension or The Number 23 which hold back information on the main characters to the point of audience-provoking dysfunction.

But isn’t that just the case with pulpy thriller stuff? What about the world of highbrow artistic filmmaking? The kind of places where audiences are patient and not expecting you to hit them over the head with stuff? And where you can find space within the narrative to explore? (If anything, I think there’s a subsection of these audiences that outright resent being manipulated). You’re right to ask those questions now, but it honestly takes a little more conversation to understand the different storytelling methods to employ in those artistic pursuits. To wit, a film like Kieslowski’s Blue is for sure about keeping you at a distance from their main character, but not in a way where you don’t understand their core struggles. Again, you get hit with the trauma of her losing her family immediately. But we come to understand her “freedom” is about her getting swallowed in grief, trying to push people away, be cut off from the world, and all the ways it slowly creeps back in. Yes, we keep learning new bits of information about her old life along the way, but they are all a clear part of the process of her opening back up and understanding herself. And to understand how surgically Kieslowski is being here, compare it to his other film in the same trilogy, Red, which puts you so much more traditionally in the main characters’ interiority and allows most of the conflict to come from the dramatic irony of seeing the missed connections between them.

The core question in these different approaches is simple: what do you want to achieve? If you want you to go on a difficult journey with these characters, then use anything that helps us empathize with them early. If you want to keep the audience at a distance, then ask yourself why? Is it because you secretly have a flimsy premise and no conflict from what comes next? Is it because you want to be a magician instead of a straightforward storyteller? Do you really understand that momentary splash could cost you the whole ballgame? It doesn’t mean there isn’t a way, however. Because if you go back and you look at the dynamic in the “other character” section, you realize that one character is essentially playing a game with another. So what happens if you have two characters playing a game with each other / the audience at large? Well then you have…

III) The Two-Hander Game

I use that word game specifically, because there are genuine games of motive to the two characters each hiding things, both to the audience, and each other. A perfect example of this is Gone Girl, which is really just a super trashy pulp thriller dressed up in Fincher’s finest (I say that lovingly). The first third is built so succinctly: Affleck’s wife has gone missing and they’re slowly building our understanding of his shitty-ness, even painting him as the likely murderer, all before playing the bait and switch. Amy’s still alive! Worse, she has all these intentions to screw him over. But as things keep going and our sympathies get bonked around time and time again, the new truths just keep feeling like these escalations of weapons for the characters to wield upon each other - and the audience. That’s the main reason it all works so well. They’re not magician reveals of “ta-da!” upon you. Everything is grounded in their dramatic effect upon the characters. Another great example of this approach can be found in Tony Gilroy’s super-underrated Duplicity, where the games pile up with ferocity, all constantly escalating the stakes.

But what these two examples make you realize is that they’re both essentially a part of the “con game” genre, where deception between characters (and the audience) is absolutely integral to the plot. Because the audience is literally there to be surprised. But even then, notice how important it is for those surprising things to not just come completely out of nowhere. They have to be planted. Take Oceans 11 (oh god even this remake is 20 years old and could be considered a classic now). The final turns have surprising elements, yes, but still callback key parts of set-up. Like the air freshener in the truck, which helps you connect to the fact that impersonating the SWAT team was always the intention. Same goes for Danny getting Tess back. He was initially hiding this intention from Rusty, but when confronted over it, he was asked whether it was going to be Tess or the money. But Danny plants this exact ending moment with his answer: “if everything goes to plan, I won’t have to make that choice.” In fact, Terry will. And it comes at the exact moment that connects with yet another set-up with the cameras because “someone’s always watching.”

When these big cathartic moments happen it’s not just because they come during big dramatic scenes where you think everything is about to go wrong. It’s because they deliver on those crucial set-ups. To wit, you don’t want the audience to go “what the fuck!?!?!?” You want them to go “Oh, of course!” But understand you have to be outright SURGICAL with these kinds of con games. Oceans 12 has so many fun things about it, but it’s playing one too many games and hiding one too many intentions. Essentially, there’s too much “what the fuck?” and all the retroactive explanations don’t feel like connected enough payoffs. The characters (and story) kept the audience too far away. Even at the end, you barely feel like you’re in on the last turns and even the last celebration closes the door from you! It can’t JUST be the magic trick and the surprise. It has to come with significant moments of catharsis to the plot, and better yet, the characters themselves. But nowhere is this more true than when dealing with…

IV) Full On Mysteries

For the bajillionth time, mysteries are not about being vague.

Just like the games in the section above, they are surgical presentations of evolving information. The difference is that you start with a driving question, as in “who did X?” But both the investigator and circumstances need to present clear, believable information that leads you to suspect one thing or another. In other words, interiority is your grounding force. And through investigation, the story will present new information that changes your perception. Yes, sometimes very surprising information, but it’s all en route to the deeper answer. But here’s the problem: if everything is vague, meaning if everything is “oooh is this guy telling the truth?” Then the problem is NOTHING is true enough that you can lean in and anticipate. You just end up being skeptical of everything. Which means you can’t have a real twist because you didn’t have the “oh i trusted that person!” that comes beforehand. Similarly, if you try to make everything a surprise, then you ruin your crucial moments where good surprises were possible (and distinct from other moments). The kind of moments where a well-timed “wait what the fuck?” are actually good at flipping the script and showing you where the real conflict lies. Remember: reveals push you forward, where twists tend to push backwards.

Again, interiority is so crucial in all the moments where the new information comes to light. You need your character processing and understanding, reflecting the audience's processing and understanding.  You have to be there alongside them, in their head, trying to figure out everything in turn. And when it all comes together, the catharsis of the story should double as some kind of catharsis with the character.

But I can imagine you asking, “wait, what about Sherlock? Isn’t he always one step ahead!?!” Ah yes, I’ve seen this thrown about as a criticism time and time again, but it’s just another garden variety case of taking one “rule” and trying to make it apply to everything. Moreover, it clearly misses the fact that Sherlock isn’t the main character of his stories. Watson is. He’s the one who brings us into the story as the audience surrogate and we see Holmes through his eyes. Notice that like Edward Norton and Richard Gere - we have one character who has more information and is essentially playing a game with the other - but the key difference is they are partners working toward the same goal. This turns it from an adversarial relationship into a fun game with Watson - and by extension, the reader. We get to feel like he does, coming up with our own takes, a little bit in on the fun, but still wowed by this brilliant person that we get to be partners with. This is not “bad” mystery storytelling. The popularity of Sherlock speaks to this fact alone. It’s even the same thing that propelled the success of House, M.D. for years, which needed that much more human team alongside him.

But please note that this kind of game is true for even something incredibly straightforward like Columbo; which is a show where you know who the killer is from the start and all the fun came in watching him politely hang about while The Killer politely squirms in turn. But it would still save these little ending moments where Colombo revealed the little detail where he suspected the person was guilty near the start. This was always part of the fun of it. Could you notice the same thing Columbo did? You surely caught on to the inconsistencies he noticed later, but did you see that first thing? What I love is how this speaks to the fact that the most compelling mysteries often revolve around these small details (which give way to much bigger reveals).

But nowadays I feel like we have so much of this backwards? Because we’ll get stories that try to front load these big crazy vague details with no reall idea what to do with them. People will be like “omg, why was there a polar bear on that tropical island!??!?!?!” But the eventual answer only comes with an off-hand mention in a video that’s basically like, “I dunno, there was some group doing experiments with them here or something,” all before passing the buck to a new crazy mystery that draws your attention. Basically, we have stories that try to operate like mysteries even though they aren’t mysteries at all. They are just trying to create questions where there really aren’t any. For instance, I wrote so much about Wandavision’s case of mystery-box-itis, where it kept trying to hold off on all these basic motivation details and treat them as reveals, even though it was constantly just confirming what it was already dramatizing. It never really knew how to be on the outside and inside of the information it was presenting, at times whiplashing between the two and expecting our simple affinity to do the heavy lifting work. But with the mention of both these serialized shows it’s worth nothing how this medium has slightly different needs than feature narratives. So let’s look at…

V) Television and The Low Sustainability of Longer Con Games

Sooooo you MAY have noticed that I’m often critical of JJ Abrams’s story approaches. But I genuinely like the energy of his direction! And he’s incredible at casting! But by comparison, my relationship with Lindelof’s early work is way more complicated, especially as he keeps making incredibly interesting things like Leftovers and Watchmen. But I want to be very clear when I talk about those relationships and all that is to follow. Because I really, really like most of LOST. Especially those first few seasons.

It wasn’t even about the draw of the “what the fuck?” moments. Because for all the obvious mystery box problems, they were just incredibly good at bringing you from the outside to the inside of the characters on screen. With the whole character-of-the-week approach you’d always end up having a much bigger understanding not just of their past, but who they really are, what they want, and what drives them forward. Those stories were done so damn well. Heck, “Walkabout” is still one of the best episodes of television I’ve ever seen. I mean, there’s a reason everyone went gaga for this show and tried to ape the formula in so many varying ways. They really felt like meaningful journeys inward every week.

But what I want to highlight about this formula is two-fold. The first is that, yes, they are absolutely doing the “magician” thing I talked about where they push off motivation and understanding for forty minutes, but then at the end of the episode have those hair-raising character moments where you understand so much more about them. But the reason this worked was because you’re nesting the tricks into a 20-ish minute sub story within a bigger story. One that even fed into the characters' interactions on the island. And what these big reveals hopefully did was allow you to understand the character as they went forth in the bigger narrative itself… So the question is whether you can take all those ta-da moments and actually build something more traditional within your bigger narrative. Or that is to say, build something more grounded in their interiority and clear conflicts that come with information being on the table...

But that’s where the rubber met the road for that particular show. Because you can’t just keep going inward forever, otherwise your show will implode under the weight of constant withholding (warning big show spoilers for the next two paragraphs). To their credit, I think the writer’s understood this. They often cited the episode about Jack’s tattoos as being the nadir of their constant character dives... but I dunno, it coulda been interesting if you found something compelling? It essentially brings us to the catch 22 of having EVERYTHING rotate around a “character secret” because it just constantly re-pushing away and making us try to peer in. By that point we could have just been with a story from the character’s past and rooting for something with full understanding of who they are. Having character secrets forgets that some things really work better when you’re on the inside. And what made things infinitely more difficult was that the island narrative became locked in a prolonged stasis where they believed they couldn’t give away the real endgame until the show ended, which meant either being constantly vague or participating in straight up denial of “you can’t know the answers!”

But again, to their credit, I think they implicitly understood this and tried their best to work around it. But there’s a reason they were always at their best when bringing in new characters (it allowed them to go back to their old tricks). But perhaps the biggest gamble in trying to appease that need for growth was the show’s sudden change of approach at the end of season 3 by launching it all into the future. The flash-forward structure was interesting because it suddenly turned the hopes and dreams of their escape into a weird thing that had already been answered - for us, it became a game of piecing together logic, rather than dramatic release (especially when it also got into time travel stuff). So by the time the show was finally circling the drain, dramatizing an escape we already knew the solution to - while basically doing a final season where they literally did the thing they were always doing a metaphor for - you felt the weight of not being able to sustain it. Even then, the real final draw for me with the ending was the blatant Christian-centric gnosticism, which will always be a hard pill for me to swallow.

But honestly, these problems just lie with the particulars of that show. The ultimate lesson of LOST is that there is feast and famine with this model when it comes to how an audience may become entranced by it. Mysteriousness is always alluring. The magic trick is always alluring to the creator, too. But their sustainability is incredibly limited. And to evolve them, you have to learn to lean into the more traditional resolutions that have more to do with interiority and working with what you’ve already established. You have to let us eventually work from the inside. And please know that the pursuit itself in all this is not without empathy.

Because I understand navigating the inside / outside of information is really, really difficult. I act like these ideas are simple to understand, but there is NOTHING simple about any of this. Especially when you’re in the middle of writing and you don’t have hindsight. Whether it’s the straightforwardness of Pixar, the deft touch of Ordinary People, or trying to navigate the crazy conceits of LOST, all these methods take extraordinary work and constant tinkering. But talking about their successes and failings only helps us ground in the difficulty of that process. And it also comes with an understanding that underneath all that important use of story architecture, every organic story has a kind of raggedy quality that makes them human and likable despite the so-called failings. And to me, nowhere is the push-pull of this more clear than with the…

4. THE ANIME CONTRADICTION

So I’ve been watching a lot of anime this year! It’s honestly been an utter joy. But that’s the fun of getting into something that is new to you: you get to run through all the stone cold classics. But as a genre (is it even right to call it a genre?), the thing that makes most anime so interesting to me is the way it radically splits everything I’m talking about in this essay into two distinct approaches.

Because on one hand, it is mostly INCREDIBLE at emotional interiority. It honestly seems like the only important thing it ever considers. Take The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, which brings you right into a young girl's feelings as she tries to navigate adolescence, while constantly trying to literally “head back” through time and preserve the glow of uncaring youth. Then where’s Summer Wars, which puts you right into the headspace of being a young boy who gets thrown in with a huge, overwhelming family of someone he has a crush on. It’s him trying to not just navigate the logistics of who is who, but the histories and relationships they’ve all long since established (with a little internet-centric mega warfare thrown in). And this interiority emphasis is  even true of the futuristic, otherworldly Neon Genesis Evangelion, which so placed us within Shinji’s existential terror, his depression, and his feelings of degradation. But while all three of these stories bring you into the headspace of their characters and their wants, you’ll also notice that all three also have a kind of wild, absurd plotting circumstances around their premise.

Which brings us to the other hand, because much anime I’ve seen is NOT INCREDIBLE at ordering information (AKA what we think of as plotting). But perhaps it just feels that way because western media places such emphasis on this need. I’m not just talking about logical explanations. I’m talking about important questions for dramatic tension like: what are the rules? How does that person actually know that other person? And even remarking just after watching FLCL, did that thing I just saw actually happen? These are make or break issues in western media (because our stories derive crucial tension from them), but with so much of what I’ve seen from anime… they just explain things later, or not at all. But that doesn’t mean they’re automatically using this habit to their detriment. Really, I’ve seen three core ways they deal with the lack of plot emphasis…

With something like Evangelion, they’re not explaining so much of what’s happening, but they’re using big broad symbolism to still convey coherent messages the way films like Mulholland Drive or Under The Skin do (yes, I think that show is HIGH ART *clinks champagne glasses*). Meanwhile, with something like Ghost In The Shell, the lack of timing with story information means it’s constantly trying to explain itself after the fact. Which honestly is a very left brain and not entirely helpful solution because it’s easy for our eyes to glaze over as it goes on and on with its dilithium crystal-esque nonsense. But I understand why a lot of left-brained folks gravitate toward that stuff. They like diving into the cold logic of it because to them, it’s its own kind of game (or perhaps, it feels safer than actually emoting). But with most of the anime I’ve seen there’s a kind of “functional chaos” thing going on. Like with Satoshi Kon’s work, he has this way of leaning into some parts with abject clarity and then keeping you off balanced with the surprises in the confusing stuff. You still care in that necessary way, but you just have to be more comfortable being confused a lot (at least on first watch). It’s trusting that it will go about business and leans into its deeper emotions by the story’s end.

None of this falls into “bad / good” designation. In fact, these stories are often so good at interiority they let the character’s feelings often guide you through the more confusing experiences. You just have to be willing to ride the interior feeling over the interior logic. But this difference of approach undoubtedly affects how the audience engages with the material. And I think it’s honestly a huge part of the way the west comes to regard anime in general. For some, it turns it into an impenetrable wall. For others it’s the raison d'etre, because the chaotic energy is the very thing they’re attracted to. And for many others still, those who grew up on it’s 90’s/2000s crossover juncture, that critical attention to the interiority of youth was the very thing that was most cherished. These are simplifications, I know. But to this very point, this fanning effect speaks to which artists breakthrough, how, and with which audience.

For instance, it’s the reason I believe Miyazaki is the most beloved crossover director and it’s precisely because he tends to be “better” (aka more western) at ordering story information than others. But make no mistake, he is no less abstract or weird. Whether it’s cat buses, personified soots, or cursed pig pilots, he guides you to these absurd places with a remarkably deft hand. And at its most balanced, it feels like these little bits of whimsy in the midst of powerful emotional journeys. But it’s no better or worse than the out and out insanity of something like Summer Wars. It’s about who translates to what and why. And even then, there’s a meaningful push / pull to all this. Whether western or eastern, it highlights one important thing...

How much of this is really about awareness.

5. ALL HAIL THE CAPO

So I’ve been rewatching The Sopranos for the Nth time and there’s so many reasons I feel like it’s the G.O.A.T. But please know that such rankings and superlatives are meaningless and easily interchangeable. It’s just a great show. One that is brazen, tremendously funny, and almost solely driven by theme (which matters more in a western media world that is often driven by plot). It cares nothing for being likable when it can be incisive. And offers an incredibly compelling look at society, sociopathic behavior, and most of all: our deeper psychologies. But it’s not just because they have a main character verbalizing things in a psychiatrist's office most weeks. It’s because most of what’s really going on with him are in the things he doesn’t bring up. And when he does bring them up, you see the defensive, controlling reasons he feels compelled to do so. In fact, when you look at the modus operandi of the show it reveals how much of it ties into every variation I’ve mentioned in this essay.

Because The Sopranos employs virtually every kind of storytelling throughout its run. From early motive declarations, to delays of info with the other character, to two hander games, to reality-breaking moments of plot withholding, and even to abstract dream logic. It’s constantly playing with all these methods, but often in far more sneaky ways than shows that have an “in your face” approach to their construction. At times, you’re right inside of Tony’s head. At other times, you’re on the outside. In one scene you might be empathizing and understanding his silence as a bunch of super-rich golf doofuses want to be regaled with mob stories and see him as trifling entertainment. But then you’ll be on the outside and see him snarl and hiss like a little frustrated boy, all while you’re aligned with Carm, who is watching him with a 1000 yard stare of boredom. But then a few moments later you’ll be with Carm’s friend - who has to deal with the terrible feeling of being beckoned over by Carm with a telling hand wave just like the rest of the help. It is so, so, SO radically good at shifting your understanding, empathy, and alliances to purposeful results. There are so many times you’ll be going along and have no idea what the episode is “about” before you realize you just watched a story about shifting blame, small and large forms of racism, or even small morality tales. There’s even so many episodes where we get introduced to little characters that become integral players, if only for a brief moment, a la Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. For they either find their role expanding or getting off’ed. But none of this works because the show is daringly playing with the form itself…

The reason it works because of the nuts and bolts writing of set-ups, specifically in how much awareness the audience’s current orientation. It’s because it understands everything I just talked about when it comes to being on the inside / outside of characters and how those understandings frame the conflict. I think the show actually makes for a fantastic object lesson, where you could watch The Sopranos and keep track of those simple questions: what am I supposed to understand from this information? Why did it come now? Look at how it establishes who is on the inside / outside of the conflict and how that switches. It honestly speaks to the thing I say again and again about how much the best writing is invisible. Because where the magician wants to “ta-da!” you with a simple and often purposefully withholding trick, there’s someone like David Chase doing high-dives and triple backflips in a way that you wouldn’t even notice. We just see the seamless result. Which feels apt to me for a writer who cut their teeth on invisibly sharp and charming shows like The Rockford Files.

But perhaps it’s not surprising that there’s so much about storytelling that we take for granted. And honestly, if it’s also much harder than it seems, then perhaps these two realities are the very reason to talk about this stuff, especially in the world of criticism. It’s certainly not a good reason to turn around or chastise artists for not “getting it.” No, the lessons of all of this stuff are meant to be grounding forces of help. To make the incredibly difficult process just a bit easier. And it’s not because I want every show to literally be The Sopranos, it’s that I want every show to be as good as The Sopranos. And they can be. Believe it or not, Spongebob Squarepants used similar tactics of empathy-shifting all the time. Same with the golden age of The Simpsons. It’s no accident that I’m referencing stone cold classics here, but sometimes it’s simpler alignment of goals. I want popcorn films a la classic Pixar that understand the value of putting key motivations up front. I want indie films to strive for the kinds of symbolic clarity that help float their more abstract approach to plot. And I want wild art that embraces the chaos of “devil may care” approaches to still ground me in the visceral emotion of their experiences. But most of all, I want budding artists and audience members to take all these understandings forward. Because the point of art is to be connected to one another. And there are few things better at that…

Than an interiority, shared.

<3HULK