I've started reading a book on plot development in anticipation of re-igniting my lifelong attempt at a screenplay. I've never had an interest in the great American novel, mostly because no one seems to agree what that looks like, and conversely it seems, at least to me, that most people can agree on what makes a great screenplay.
The process of starting a screenplay has always been quite easy for me. The process of finishing one, on the other hand, has never been accomplished. I've always destroyed the draft in frustration. For years I've believed that my biggest obstacle has been getting my character out of the proverbial conflict tree. Getting them up the tree? Easy. Getting them back down again? Seemingly impossible.
I think I've realized why it is so difficult for me and why so few people have written truly great screenplays - it's because you have to be willing to use some sort of artifice to get your characters out of that tree, and I quite frankly don't want, or rather just can't, do that. I leave my characters stuck up there forever, because I don't want them to come down. Who are they to get that benefit? Why should they get to come down while the rest of us are stuck up there? It has just always seemed patently unfair to me that EVERY character (I'm generalizing) gets the satisfaction of closure, when no one ever gets that in life.
For years I was obsessed with the Princess Bride, and its comical but sincere depiction of true love. I read an interview with Robin Wright a few months ago where she described (quite painfully) her divorce, and the difficulty she's always had with relationships. Why does Buttercup get closure, but Robin Wright can't?
At first glance, Casablanca seems beautiful for its sadness and its depiction of love lost, but if I had written the same screenplay, Ingrid Bergman would have taken a job as a waitress, and they would have awkwardly maneuvered through each other's lives, arguing behind the dumpster on smoke breaks, constantly getting back together, breaking up, getting back together...
Please don't take this note as some naive statement that life isn't like the movies, and people don't ever get to have what they want. It would be folly for me to take that position, as I know a number of people who regularly get what they want out of life. What I'm arguing is that regardless of whether life gives you lemons and you choose to make lemonade, or if you're one of those people who found wealth and love and the perfect dog, you're still stuck up in the tree with the rest of us, many holding the shitty end of that flowery branch.
In the end, no one gets to leave the tree.
I strongly considered not putting this in the blog, because I thought people might be turned off by the fact that it wasn't about autism. But please let me assure you, for me, it is exactly about autism.
Since my son's diagnosis I've desperately wanted to develop, and adhere to, a standard schedule of character development. Autistic kid goes up the tree, faces conflict, overcomes conflict, climbs down and saunters off into the sunset. I'm realizing, only now, that it won't work that way. Autism is for life, and he'll be up in that particular tree forever. Things will certainly change, as evidenced by a mother with an autistic teen that we met a few days ago that insists that Mowgli is just like her son was at that age (her son, though admittedly having a good day, seemed more than happy with his life - and quite functional). Despite such reassurances though, which are nice, the plot doesn't resolve itself. There's no exhale, no time for reflection on what is the great conflict of our lives. Just glimpses of what type of conflict the future might hold and a chance to guess at how we might handle it when it comes.
I think the hardest part of my screenplay writing process (if there even is one) is how to make all of the conflict trees work together. Why isn't love like the Princess Bride or The Notebook? Because the characters in The Notebook only have to deal with the issues associated with one conflict tree - the tree of love. In real life, love exists in the spaces between the many branches of many different, converging conflicts (I'm punishing this metaphor, no?). Special needs child, career, neurotypical child, finances, extended family, mental health, exercise, down time. Somewhere in between those branches is love - dispersed like a vapor. Collecting up that vapor and making something of it, while dealing with all that other conflict, usually creates a bearable, functioning love. Not even Ryan Gosling, with all his unabashed dreaminess, could sell you that bag of goods - "darling, I don't want anything else, I just want thirty years of bearable love - a love that can only function amid endless conflict."
Do you see my problem here? I'd write a screenplay where Ryan Gosling has a special needs child and then takes out his frustration with that fact on Rachel McAdams, who slowly develops a nagging resentment for him amid an overwhelming mom-guilt that can't be repressed. The movie never ends as they struggle to find themselves and squeeze a nap in every once in awhile. They love each other in a bearable way, buy each other their favorite candy bar on a whim for instance, or share a laugh over a TV show. Given zero conflict, and all the time and resources in the world - they'd be kissing passionately in a never ending rainstorm of love. End scene. Instead, they just try and grab up enough vapor not to lose one another, because they're no less passionately in love, it's merely a question of plot development.
Having children creates its own set of branches to maneuver around. Having a child with autism creates additional branches on top of those - thick, snagged branches that leave very little room to move. But no matter how tangled they get, there's always spaces in between for love to exist, and there's always ways to collect that vapor and to try your best at making something from so little that life sometimes affords you. That's the ending to my movie that no one goes to see or never even gets made. The characters just do their best to live within those spaces and all those moments - happy, sad, or otherwise, never end - they live on forever as part of the framework. The screen never goes black, because after that passionate kiss in the rainstorm, someone's still got to change that shitty diaper.
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