Life (and everything else) is a movie…

Photo by Samuel Regan-Asante

From my first book, The Eighth Day, to my current release, Forgive Us Our Trespasses, many readers emailed me or commented that “they could see it as a movie.” Or that “it should be a movie,” or “it would make a great movie.” My favorite is, “Why didn’t you make it as a movie?“

At some level, these well-intentioned comments bristle my literary soul. After all, a published book is the same achievement, relative to process, as a produced movie. They are both the end-product of creative inspiration. And each is the pinnacle of its art. (My card-playing Uncle Guido would say, “It’s da Pinochle a de art.” Uncle G always put his cards on the table.)

Last week I attended a very fancy dinner in a chic Manhattan restaurant. The check was more than my monthly rent when I was 35. Luckily, this time I was the guest. I’m no kid, but I was the youngest guy at the table. The purpose of the dinner meeting was to discuss a “big investment deal.” More money than the entire block I lived on back then costs. This was serious stuff. Four hours of exquisite apps, salmon, Delmonico steaks, wines, martinis, and “to the moon” desserts. All for three people!

But the amazing thing was we all had movie stories. It seems the movies were a common drug we were all addicted to. By mid-dinner, we were suddenly all teenagers, speaking of our hits and near misses in the movie biz, fueled by celluloid enthusiasm and cinematic verve, it was the most energetic part of the evening.

Orson Welles, in describing what it was like to be making his, (soon to be classic film), Citizen Kane, is quoted as saying, “It’s the biggest electric train set a boy ever had.” Well, the ‘little boys’ sitting around the table agreed.

The big, eight-figure deal may or may not happen, but that night, we all got to dabble in “the dream.”

P.S. Every time, and there are many, that some reader says my books should be a movie, I always ask, “You know anybody?“

Character Building ala Citizen Kane

In a previous blog post, I spoke of empathetic love connectors to the reader and used the classic film Citizen Kane as a reference. Well, here’s another little gem for authors coming from the genius writing duo of H.J Mankowitz and Orson Welles. I believe they are teaching all writers by channeling this lesson through the words of their character, Rawlston.

I like the simple thing notion. Because simple means common, and usually common is not complicated because it is innate to us, simple. So, when building a Character follow what Rawlston (Mankowitz and Welles) instructs us. After all, they made a movie that many call the greatest movie of all time, all around a simple thing. Rosebud!

Love is the essential empathetic connector…

It is good to remember that all Characters should possess some level of love. An easy way to identify this is to ask; who or what would they sacrifice it all for?  The landmark movie Citizen Kane had strong Character-love connections. I believe this empathetic connection to the audience is one of the reasons that keeps the film on most critics’ top ten list.  The love connection that impressed me most in the story, was an older man who recollects a girl he saw on the ferry once in his youth. He then admits there isn’t a month that goes by that he doesn’t think of her, he doesn’t even know her name,  but he has carried her with him through the years, every month!

Kane’s love, his clumsy attempts at buying love, forcing it to be a part of his life, are the tragic aspects of his love/empathy connection. These serve as setups to his ultimate love mystery, the last word he uttered on this mortal coil, “Rosebud.”

All these years later, since my first view of “Citizen Kane” on the Million Dollar Movie on Channel 9 in the ’60s, the scene in that movie that hardly a month goes by that I don’t think of is that old man, carrying that girl into old age. Here is that little sequence, brilliantly written by H.J. Mankowitz and Orson Welles: Bernstein is the seasoned citizen, Kane’s chairman of the board being interviewed by Thompson, the young reporter who is trying to unravel the Rosebud mystery.

I have been in the company of some of the most famous and Highest Net Worth Individuals on the planet. In unguarded moments of candor, they eventually get down to what they really want, (when they seem to have everything a human could ever want) namely, to be in love with someone. Sometimes it’s generic; just the need to feel that way about someone, sometimes it was specific, a person.

At moments like that, you just know that somewhere in the world, a million times over, some hard-working couple, struggling to make ends meet, facing the vicissitudes of life are holding hands and each other in their hearts. Each feeling like they are the lucky one in the relationship to have found the other. 

In my new book, I pay homage to this notion in a subplot where the sexiest actress in Hollywood, the one with the sex tape released on the internet, and two academy award nominations, tries but fails to seduce the husband of my pregnant protagonist. In that unusual, for her, outcome, (she always gets any man she chooses to act stupidly;) she has a life-changing event. One that she admits, “we only play at in movies” but she never believed actually existed; a love and commitment to one another which survives above all else.

That’s worth all the money in the world, and is invaluable when building your Character’s empathetic attraction. In my online novel writing course, From Writer to Author, I teach a lesson on building empathetic characters. I’m proud to announce that my course is now open for enrollment! Find out more at academyofcreativeskills.com or by clicking on the image below!

Editor’s Note: The actor Everett Stone, who played Bernstein, didn’t let the typo in the script pastrol stop him from saying, parasol. Proving that empathy is often more important than grammar. This is a good “first draft” lesson to would-be authors everywhere.