Storytelling: A Dying Art? Talking With Screenwriter Barbara Nicolosi

"Like" the Patheos Catholic Page on Facebook to receive today's best commentary on Catholic issues. As a Hollywood screenwriter, script consultant and cinema professor, you're surrounded with stories and how they impact people on a regular basis. Why are stories so important? Aristotle writes in his Poetics that stories are important because they serve two primal instincts in us, namely, the instinct for imitation and the instinct for harmony. We learn by imitation, and in stories, we have the opportunity to learn many more vital lessons than our own life experience could teach us. In stories, we learn vicariously through beloved characters, which means with a lot more enjoyment than the school of hard knocks of our own lives. The instinct for harmony drives us to seek in stories all of the things that real life can't give us—excellence of craft and high stakes, intimate access to the lives of others, intelligibility of their choices and motives, unity of plot such that all the boring or irrelevant parts are edited out, and satisfying resolution. In a very real sense, we need stories to teach us how to live. We enjoy the lessons because stories delight us with their artistry. Secondly, Aristotle says that a society needs stories that lead its people to cathartic experiences of compassion and fear of evil. We should stumble out of dramatic plays and movies asking, "How could this thing have happened? What was the source of all this trouble?" while all the while feeling, "There but for the grace of God go I." If I didn't have Aristotle's brilliance to lean on, I'd probably say it simpler as stories matter because they give us poles of heroism and nobility. In taking us on exhilarating adventures, they dare us to move past the banality and complacency of our everyday lives, and prepare us for the way of suffering that is eventually every human story. What are the elements of a good story? There are many ways to answer this question. We could say with the ancient Greeks that a good story has something for the mind (logos), something for the heart (pathos) and something for the imagination (ethos). We could speak of a story in a moral sense as something that communicates a worthy truth in a way that elicits compunction. Or we could speak of it using the work of the original populist storyteller, Aesop, as a meter. His stories have lasted thousands of years because they are very economical in terms of language and events, are completely unified by necessity, have high stakes, ironic consequences and are sprinkled with creativity and humor. How about in Aristotle's view? A good dramatic story first and foremost needs a working plot.That means it has a beginning that is intriguing and complete, a middle that complicates all the conflicts of the beginning, and an ending that ties up all the conflicts and feels like a whole new beginning. The plot should be a sequence of irrevocable choices—what Aristotle calls "men in action." Next, a good story needs to have lots of reversals and should end with a surprise. After plot, the next most important thing is a basically moral and accessible main character who undergoes a dual interior and external journey. He or she moves from good to bad fortune, mainly through weakness or folly, and then comes out, like Ulysses, better for having undergone all the suffering. The next most important part of a story is theme—that is, the answer to the question, "What is this story really about? What is the universal truth that underpins this tale that will on some level be the story of people of every time and place?" Next, Aristotle wants good dialogue that is replete with literary style and subtext. Finally, a good story has some kind of spectacle. Spectacle is the fun factor for the audience. Sadly, too many Hollywood movies get this order upside down. Where would you say our culture stands regarding good storytellers and stories? In his wonderful book, Story , which is pretty much the industry standard text on the subject, Robert McKee says that our society has just about lost the ability to tell a good story. McKee attributes this to the academy basically abandoning classical storytelling principles in favor of more culturally-based records of experiences. He also notes that moral relativism in the overall society makes it very hard to tell stories. It's a problem for the storyteller if the audience can't agree which values are worth living and dying for. Most romantic comedies today don't know what they really want for the characters. Marriage? Family? The white picket fence, really? Imagine if John Wayne's rousing words to his fellow Green Berets ended up devolving into an existential crisis speech about the ethical problems posed by unabashed patriotism in support of ultimately corrupt human governments. But it isn't just the storytelling art form that is in crisis. We are an age of non-exceptionalism in all the arts, which has something to do with the loss of rigor and discipline that is the doorway to the beautiful. Maybe a lot of the angst-driven artistic "need to connect" impulse in our time have been drowned in Ritalin and Prozac. Finally, I think the urge to make something beautiful comes from a sense of gratitude and immortality. In our culture, both those values are ever more quaint. In Hollywood, storytelling since Jaws has suffered mainly due to the fact that movies are seen first as commercial products and second as whole, harmonious and radiant stories. There is no change to any part of a story that today's studio wont make to please an egomaniacal actor or director. There is no part of a movie too sacred not to be cheapened by product placement. There is no overarching theme that can survive the endless tinkering of producers trying desperately to bring the project in on time and under budget. The pursuit of the mass-appeal blockbuster has made lovely, quirky human stories a very tough sell in Hollywood. The only real future for good movie stories seems to be outside the studio system. It's sad, but I think Hollywood's days of having access to the imagination of the world are gone. You have an interesting take on modern day Christian movies and the stories they relay that may come as a surprise to some. Could you share? I hate to even make the concession it requires to refer to some movies and stories as "Christian." Practically speaking, I'm not sure what it means to be a Christian story. I know what it is to be a beautiful movie, and this has everything to do with excellence of craft and integrity of theme and story. It makes sense to me that anything that is a beautiful movie should also be esteemed by Christians. I do make the distinction that some stories are sacred in that they are relating Biblical or explicitly religious images and history. Using this language, we could say that there have been sacred stories that are unchristian, like The Last Temptation of Christ and Kingdom of Heaven. There is a reactionary momentum right now among some Biblically-based folks both Catholic and Protestant to make movies that are affirming and soothing for our own sub-culture. Aristotle says that there are two ways that dramatic stories get wrecked. One is in making changes to pander to the players. The other is in making changes to pander to the audience. Most of the projects that are called "Christian" movies suffer from the latter ailment. When we start out shooting for non-offensiveness, we generally end up producing sentimentality—what the great storyteller Flannery O'Connor called "an over-emphasis on innocence." She noted that because we "know what is in the hearts of men" the overemphasis on innocence is particularly inexcusable for Christians. There is a prophetic voice in the arts that we stifle whenever we make creative judgments out of fear. Needless to say, nothing beautiful can come out of the desire to "show Hollywood" either. Finally, nothing beautiful is going to come out of cheap, quickie efforts that are born without any real respect for God-given talent, and the limits and possibilities of the screen art form itself. Christians who want to be part of this art form need to adopt as a creed that a movie is excruciatingly hard to produce or it isn't worth doing. I want to throw up every time a Christian tells me that they never watch movies, and then that they have written one. The greatest "epiphanies of beauty" (JPII, Letter to Artists ) in storytelling today are coming from artists who are outside of any real attachment to a faith community. Movies like the 2006 Best Foreign Oscar film, The Lives of Others. Or Jason Reitman's wonderfully and unintentionally pro-life film, Juno. I have never experienced in any Christian film what Aristotle referred to as "tragic wonder," but I have felt it in Precious , and The Hurt Locker and Sophie Scholl and In the Bedroom and Requiem for a Dream. None of those films were made by Christians, but they are much, much more beautiful and consequently Christian than the banal and badly crafted Christian sub-culture products like Facing the Giants , Bella , Therese , and Fireproof. In short, if we serve the beautiful and honor the story we have the chance of finding both. If we set out, instead to foment a spirit of triumphalism in the Church, then story and beauty will evade us; and also any really lasting good. Do you think today's Christian writers are timid in their approach to real life and real struggle? I don't know if it is timidity or laziness but the effect is the same. We remain standing on the sidelines begging for consideration from hardworking pagans who don't get us. We have to earn the right to place our values in front of the culture. Our work has to be so good that we can't be ignored. My sense is Christians avoid the mainstream culture out of the ironically contradictory feelings of superiority and fear. We are afraid to lose our veneer of purity by mixing it up in the unevangelized world. Neither reflect mature faith or pastoral love. Pope John Paul the Second once said that the Church of this day and age will have to atone for its failure to use the media to spread the Gospel. On a psychological level, Christians today have a hard time depicting human sin in drama because we don't want to make the world look too dark. As if showing sin in the world makes God look like He's not really on the job, so to speak. This is absurd. Again, Flannery O'Connor said the Resurrection is rendered void unless there is a real need for it in the world in which we live. We have to learn how to show sin without it being an occasion of sin. It takes some creativity, but it's eminently possible. I answer this question constantly from Christians, which is a huge sign of the problems in Church preaching and catechesis today. I just can't see Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and Dante getting caught up in this concern. But, of course, they were immensely talented and hardworking artists who were more concerned with saving their art then saving the world. It seems to me there's so much hubris regarding how much today's Christians worry about saving the world through art. I wish many more of us would brood about how to write a lovely paragraph now and then. You've said over and over again that it's critical for movies to combine truth with a mastery of the craft. Could you elaborate? A good movie is sacramental, a unity of matter and form. You have to have both. The matter here is the stuff of the story, the actors' performances, the directorial vision, production design, etc. The form is the meaning that radiates out of the project, its subtext. Christian producers tend to make the mistake of thinking that it's all in the form as in the message of the piece. Secular filmmakers tend to put all the emphasis on the matter. Emily Dickinson said, "Nature is a haunted house. Art is a house that seeks to be haunted." Getting a work of art to be haunted is damn hard. Creating something beautiful is a mysterious and humbling process in which, as the poet Yeats said, on some day after you have practiced and practiced and practiced your art from, your subconscious takes over the direction of your mind and movements, and then beauty makes an appearance. I rarely meet producers who are willing to invest all the time and patience that a truly beautiful film would require. I never meet Christian producers who will. That's because in their hearts, Christians think that the real power is in the articulation of a bunch of words. They want to get to those words as fast and as overtly as they can. They don't have the faith or patience for imagery and subtext. So, their movies are doomed to be banal. Can you share with us a favorite quote of yours, regarding writing and/or stories? I love Flannery O'Connor's refusal to accept that a story could be reduced to a line or two of message. She understood that a great story is a journey for the reader. She said, "If I could say it in a sentence, I wouldn't have written the story." I also love Benjamin Disraeli's line to the effect that, "We need stories of incredible heroism so that we can be kind to the annoying next door neighbor." I love Tolkien saying that modern men live in a prison and that stories can help them escape. The escape here is the only legitimate escape. That is, stories help people escape into the full experience of their human nature. I suppose I wouldn't mind if they put on my tombstone my favorite line to my students, "If it doesn't work as entertainment, it isn't going to get a chance to work as anything else." Act One, which you founded in 1999, has been a huge success. Could you tell us a bit about that organization and its vision? Act One is an organic ministry that has been all about correcting some of the dearths that we Hollywood Christians saw in ourselves fifteen years ago. I say it is organic because our faculty and mentors, our staff and most of our funders have come from within Hollywood. Not that we wouldn't welcome more funding support from the saints outside! Please see www.actoneprogram.com if you are inspired to help. The mission of Act One is to create a Christ-centered community of apostles in the mainstream media and entertainment lump. Our hope is that together we can leaven this lump and the world beyond by our lives, prayer and projects. Our keynotes are artistry, professionalism, meaning and spirituality, and pretty much every class and program that we offer touches on all four of those. We started out in 1999 training writers. We created additional tracks specifically to hone the skills of television writers. About five years ago, we created a new branch of Act One to train producers and executives. Eventually, if we can ever raise the funds, we'd like to train actors and directors. There is so much more I could say about Act One and why it has worked but probably if people are interested they should peruse the web site. We are always looking for talented writers and professionals to train for our business. We will give them mentors, a network and a great start in a very demanding business. It's an amazing program and I am very proud to have played a part in getting it started. What advice can you give Christian writers? First of all, I think the whole label "Christian writer" is a problem. It is fine to write to the cenacle of other Christians every now and then, but don't consent to be ghettoized by the secular world. Every baptized member of the Church has something crucial to say to the world outside our church doors. Be an apostle to the 21 st Century and start by thinking of yourself as a writer who is a Christian. Secondly, find out what your talents are and then develop them to the maximum of your capabilities. Don't look for an easy life, but set your face in the wind and commit yourself to being what you have said you are, a writer. Stand on the shoulders of the great writers who have come before you and be teachable. Know that, commerciality for you as a writer will be in the cross-section of the passion of your heart with one of the agonized "Whys?" of the people of your time. Everything else you write is preparation or therapy.

Storytelling: a Dying Art? Talking with Screenwriter Barbara Nicolosi