Lecture 12:
Poetry of the Screenwriter
Chinatown (1974)
Written by Robert Towne
Professor Daniel Cutrara
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Previous Lesson
•
Point of View
•
Adaptation
•
Assignments
This Lesson
•
Poetry of the
Screenwriter
•
External and Internal
Imagery
•
Chinatown
•
Assignments
Poetry of the Screenwriter
Chinatown (1974)
Written by Robert Towne
Lesson 12: Part I
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Poetry
• According to McKee, poetry means an
enhanced expressivity. Whether a story’s
content is beautiful or grotesque, spiritual
or profane, quietistic or violent, pastoral or
urban, ethnic or intimate, it wants full
expression.
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Enhanced Expression
• Enhanced expression is created through
image systems.
• An image system is a strategy of motifs.
• These motifs are a category of images
embedded in the film.
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Image Systems
• According to McKee, these motifs repeat in
sight and sound from beginning to end with
persistence and great variation, but with
equally great subtlety, as a subliminal
communication to increase the depth and
complexity of aesthetic emotion.
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Audience Reception
• Audiences react to visual or auditory cues
as part of a symbolic system.
• We sense that each object has been
selected to mean more than itself so we
have a connotation to every denotation.
• Examples:
– When we see Mercedes, we think rich.
– Harley-Davidson, dangerous.
– Red Trans Am, problems with sexual identity.
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Image Systems in Context
• Like all works of
art, a film is a
unity in which
every object
relates to every
other image or
object.
Chinatown (1974)
Written by Robert Towne
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Categories
• Category means a subject drawn from the
physical world that's broad enough to
contain sufficient variety.
• For example:
– A dimension of nature-- animals
– The seasons-- light and dark
– A dimension of human culture-- buildings,
machines
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Categories - 2
• According to McKee: This category must
repeat because one or two isolated
symbols have little affect.
• Variety and repetition drive the image
system.
• Most important, a film's poetics must be
handled with virtual invisibility and go
consciously unrecognized by the audience.
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Two Types of Image Systems
• External Imagery
• Internal Imagery
Rocky IV (1985)
Written by Sylvester Stallone
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External and Internal Imagery
Lesson 12: Part II
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External
• According to McKee, External Imagery
already has symbolic meaning outside the
film. This meaning is brought inside the
film.
– Crucifix, religious meaning
– Spiderweb, entanglement
– American flag, patriotism
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External - 2
• Rocky IV, Rocky
wraps himself in
an enormous
American flag
after defeating
the Russian
opponent.
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Internal Imagery
• According to McKee, Internal Imagery takes
a category that may or may not have
symbolic meaning and brings it into the film
to give it an entirely new meaning
appropriate to the particular film in that
particular film alone.
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Chinatown
Chinatown (1974)
Written by Robert Towne
Lesson 12: Part III
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Chinatown - The Story
• In Chinatown, Jack Nicholson plays Jake
Gittes, a private detective. He is hired to
spy on what appears to be an adulterous
husband. It turns out that he’s been used.
Stakes are raised when the husband is
found dead. Jake’s investigation uncovers
corrupt business dealings, and an
incestuous father.
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Four Image Systems
• According to McKee, Chinatown has four
image systems:
• Two external
• Two internal
Chinatown (1974)
Written by Robert Towne
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Internal Systems
• Primary internalized system: Motifs of blind
seeing
– Windows, rearview mirrors, eyeglasses,
particularly-broken spectacle, cameras,
binoculars, eyes
– If we're looking for evil out in the world we’re
looking in the wrong direction. It is in here, in
us.
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Motif Examples
• Pause the lecture
and watch the clips
from Chinatown.
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Motif Examples - 2
• The first clip- seeing and binoculars
• The second clip- windshield and rear-view
mirror
• The third clip- photography, the lens
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Secondary Internalized System
• Political corruption becomes social cement
– False contracts, subverted laws, acts of
corruption
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External Systems
• First externalized system--water versus
drought
• Second externalized system--sexual cruelty
versus sexual love
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Subliminal
• An image system must be subliminal.
• Symbols touch us and move us as long as
we don't recognize them as symbolic.
• Awareness of a symbol turns it into a
neutral, intellectual curiosity; powerless and
virtually meaningless.
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Screenwriter as Poet
• The screenwriter should begin the film's
image system and the director and
designers finish it.
• The writer first envisions the ground of all
imagery- the story’s physical and social
world.
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Assignments
Chinatown (1974)
Written by Robert Towne
Lesson 12: Part IV
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E-Board Post #1
• Describe the image systems you have
put in place or would like to put in place
in your script.
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E-Board Post #2
• Choose at least one of your peers to offer
suggestions or ways to create their image
system.
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End of Lecture 12
Juno (2007)
Written by Diablo Cody
(Frame from a deleted scene)
Next Lecture:
Sacrifice, Nothing is Wasted