Day 8 Assignments

[Julia Bucci]

Julia’s Profound Ending

What I learned: 1. Working backward, starting with the Profound Truth, is a great way to brainstorm endings. This process is definitely helping keep me away from writing a loose collection of scenes with a random ending that makes sense only to me.

2. What I think my Profound Truth is may not be my actual Profound Truth. I’m thinking about this one.

3. Designing it to see an inevitable ending, and then making that ending a surprise is not easy. But worth working on!

1. What is your Profound Truth and how will it be delivered powerfully in your ending?

Your real life is more beautiful/meaningful than the one you’ve imagined/planned wanted. [Question: is there something underneath this?]

2. How do your lead characters (Change Agent and Transformable Characters) come to an end in a way that represents the completed change?

Maud risks public humiliation/exposure and also sacrifices the chance to get a client back/resurrect her old career to get her group up in front of a large audience at the festival to read their stories.

Ruth reads her story about her decision to relinquish Maud for adoption, creating a connection between them for the future.

Mike convinces Ruth to open up to his love and marry him. WEDDING for last scene?

Mike realizes that he’s had ADD all these years & that’s why he hated school –

Maud asks Ray to give her another chance (in some romantic dramatic way).

Ray ??

3. What are the setup/payoffs that complete in the end of this movie, giving it deep meaning?

– Maud smashes her shopping cart into Ruth’s car – and at the reading, we find out in Ruth’s story that Ruth left Maud in a shopping cart in a store (TurnStyle)

– Maud had an urn with her (mother’s ashes) during the fight? In her luggage? We see the urn but don’t know where it will go? At the end, she lets mother’s ashes go in the lake? (Don’t know if I should include this at all – -too much loss?)

– Ray sells her share in a booming restaurant (we didn’t know the extent of how successful it is) to buy the camp land (too corny?)

– Ruth & Mike were going to get married – before Ruth (pregnant with another man’s baby/brief lapse in judgment that she was ashamed of) ran off forever? Planned to get married at the camp – now they can, but only if they do it now!

– The group says goodbye to the land at the end of the wedding; decides to have a monthly writing group at Maud’s (when she buys one of the bespoke condominiums?). And maybe Maud made a bid on the land with every cent she has but was outbid by a mystery buyer – Ray

– OR Maud & Ray can buy the land but only if they buy it together

– OR Ray now owns the land, will open a restaurant on some of the land, and the camp will continue.

4. How are you designing it to have us see an inevitable ending and then making it surprising when it happens?

– Maud has the chance to get her old job back (in some form)? Then throws it away to get her students on stage at Brattleboro Book Festival

– Ruth tells Mike a definite no. Then changes her mind after she opens up about everything and she and Maud have a reunion.

5. What is the Parting Image/Line that leaves us with the Profound Truth in our minds?
-Wedding toast: Ruth & Mike, with Maud & Ray reconciled

-Maud runs into the lake – Ray, Ruth, Mike follow

– But because my Profound Truth is about how your real life is better than the one you’d imagined, maybe the ending should be the stories read at the Brattleboro Festival. I don’t know. I still like getting them all back to the camp.

[Christopher Carlson]

Christopher Carlson’s Profound Ending

What I learned doing this assignment is remembering that each and every scene in MMM’s 1-7 represents a potential opportunity to set-up my Profound Ending.

Design your ending to have a profound impact.

1. What is your Profound Truth and how will it be delivered powerfully in your ending?

Profound Truth: When true love beckons, do not fear it – embrace it.

Ironically, my profound ending will resonate because Peter – my Change Agent and my Betraying Character — doesn’t have the courage to embrace true love when it beckons. In the end, he acts with fear, and the audience will sense how much Peter will lose in his life by not embracing Helen’s love when it beckons him. In the opposite manner, I think the audience will applaud Helen for her courage and grace in the wake of Peter’s failure – her commitment to their love to the very end, and her refusal to let what he did harm what she does going forward.

2. How do your lead characters (Change Agent and Transformable Characters) come to an end in a way that represents the completed change?

Helen – my Transformable Character – will embrace the New Ways, affirming her right to express her love and sexuality despite the prohibitions of the era, the Old Ways. Peter, the Change Agent, will falter and fail when confronted by his fears.

3. What are the setup/payoffs that complete in the end of this movie, giving it deep meaning?

For Helen, the setups are: in Act 1, being humiliated in Hollywood because she hasn’t had ‘romance or adventure’ in her life; in Acts 1 & 2, the women closest to her – mother Kate and Teacher – continually disparage Peter’s character, which is their way of stopping Helen from pursuing romance; in latter part of Act 2, Kate does everything in her power to prevent Helen from connecting with Peter, first ordering him to leave the house and not return, then removing Helen to the deep south so that the lovers won’t be able to see each other; in Act 3, the family preventing the elopement, ordering Peter to leave the house at the barrel of a shotgun.

In all this, Helen shows great courage and ultimate triumph by doing everything in her power to fulfill her love for Peter.

4. How are you designing it to have us see an inevitable ending and then making it surprising when it happens?

I think that the audience will believe that Helen and Peter will triumph together because of their profound love for each other. The surprising ending will be Peter displaying his fear and cowardice at the very last moment. The question will be: what impact will Peter’s decision have on Helen?

5. What is the Parting Image/Line that leaves us with the Profound Truth in our minds?

I think the Parting Image/Line that will leave the audience with the Profound Truth is Helen and Teacher standing side-by-side on the Vaudeville stage, an example of true love at its best – not physical intimacy, but a soul coupling — and Helen’s words: “We live by each other and for each other. Alone we can do so little. Together we can break down the walls that stand between us and our happiness.”

[Heather Hood]

question “What I learned doing this assignment is…?”

Endings are a lot harder than you think. Sometimes it’s easier to start there and work backwards.

Design your ending to have a profound impact.

1. What is your Profound Truth and how will it be delivered powerfully in your ending?

I am not sure if my profound truth is Family is made up of the people around you or If everything is taken from you, all you have left is integrity. I am leaning toward the later. It is stated twice in the movie: once by Jian Min and once by Jenny. I think because, what I’m really trying to say in this movie is…. Integrity is not a racist concept. It’s a human concept. This was the point of the inclusivity of the movie.

2. How do your lead characters (Change Agent and Transformable Characters) come to an end in a way that represents the completed change?

Jian Min dies by his life principles, showing Andrew how to live with honor. This profoundly affects Andrew, making him change to be more like Jian Min and cast aside his old ways

3. What are the setup/payoffs that complete in the end of this movie, giving it deep meaning?

Andrew spends the whole movie trying to find a way to bring his daughter to Canada. We find out at the end of Act 3, she’s not even his daughter: she’s the antagonists’ daughter, it’s why he never killed him when he had the chance. He didn’t want her to hate him.

He hates slavery, having spent time as a boy being an Ottoman slave, and yet he allows himself to be taken as a Tsimshian slave to free the Jesuit priests.

He finally learns to control his temper, just when he really needs it the most.

4. How are you designing it to have us see an inevitable ending and then making it surprising when it happens?

This is really hard. I’ve written 5 different endings so far. In this one, it looks like Andrew’s getting everything he’s ever wanted; respect, someone who cares about him, a family of his own and then….. he dies. Yup. His friends come to rescue him, the children run screaming onto the river ice which cracks and dumps them into the current. He goes to rescue them. He dies.

5. What is the Parting Image/Line that leaves us with the Profound Truth in our minds?

Please excuse the awful formatting. Final Draft doesn’t copy and hold its formatting.

EXT. MONTREAL WHARF – DAY

Jenny, her daughters and Michael look lost amongst a thinning crowd of passengers.

JENNY V/O

When my father was a boy he was captured by pirates and sold to the Ottomans. His Captain told him:

ANDREW AND JENNY V/O

“When everything else is gone, all we have left is integrity. It has no race, no skin color, no sex. It doesn’t give a damn if you’ve got one leg or none.

Jordan and Xhuuya, dressed to the nines, along with Father Tosi approach them. Father Tosi tells them Andrew has died.

ANDREW AND JENNY V/O

“It comes from the fires within, the flame God gave us when we drew our first breath.”

Michael, tears away and runs sobbing…

EXT. STREET BY THE WHARF – CONTINUOUS

…into Elisa leading her toddler on a walk past the merchant booths. She catches Michael and comforts him, then leads him back to Jenny.

ANDREW AND JENNY V/O

We never know the impact our lives have on those we meet. Integrity must go before us like a beacon, to light the dark ways for others.

JENNY V/O

All I have left of my father are the words in his letters. I know how he struggled to be a good man. Others tell stories of his last days, of his bravery and his honor.

INT. LONGHOUSE/SKAGWAY – NIGHT

The Haida dance the story of Andrew’s life around the fire.

JENNY V/O

The wilderness presses upon us without mercy. It overwhelms, but I look at Meilin and I see her courage. My father was an adventurer. Even if we did not share blood, I am still his daughter. His last act was to bring me to a place where I can follow my dreams. For this I thank him with every beat of my heart.

Kow-Kayth and Meilin sit beside Jenny with her daughters. The Haida tell her stories while Michael plays with Tah-Tiks and other boys in the shadows.

Jordan learns plant lore from the Shaman. The Chief looks around, nodding happily.

EXT. THE HARBOUR/SKAGWAY- NIGHT

Wind mourns through the buildings, scattering debris.

Moonlight silvers totem poles and longhouses, gilding wet surfaces so they shine like metal.

Mist drifts in from the ocean to twine between the branches of gigantic trees and slips between the claws of an enormous raven silhouetted against the moon. It calls three times, and glides into the mist…

And this is ending number five. We follow the raven that plagued Andrew throughout the movie. Ravens in West Coast culture symbolize change. So I think it’s a fitting image to close with. Andrew learned “sometimes you don’t win the fight any way you can”. Sometimes you let the fight go, if the cause is worthy. Saving the children was worthy. he died a hero. Now he lives forever in the stories of the Haida.

[Julia Keefer]

What I learned from this assignment is to take an aerial view so I can work backwards and eventually restructure my first novel as well as the third one I am working on.

Forum 8: 1. What is your Profound Truth and how will it be delivered powerfully in your ending? Despite technological advances, life extension, and climate catastrophes, humans are mortal and there comes a time when they must be absorbed by the earth, creating a legacy for those left behind. Jake’s profound truth was to morph from self-serving to truly helping people but that must tie into the high concept.

2. How do your lead characters (Change Agent and Transformable Characters) come to an end in a way that represents the completed change? Litonya and Jake die together as an earthquake rattles their grips in a relatively simple, safe hike in the Palisades. The Palisades or MM rolls into the river as it rises. Jake could throw BB overboard but what is the secret of Ib’s longevity? That prompts the final confrontation between the two.

3. What are the setup/payoffs that complete in the end of this movie, giving it deep meaning?

The question of who the serial killer/rapist is is finally confirmed with BB’s confession Or Jake’s discovery before Jake throws him overboard. Jake, Ibrahim, and Litonya have an honest discussion about the high concept plot with the kids Aanadi, Kisele, and Jesse who did research on degenerative diseases. There is now a vaccine to ward off Alzheimer’s and PD. Too late for Joan but the kids can take it so they don’t succumb. But why would Ibrahim and BB keep the vaccine from Jake? Is this part of a plot to kill old people? When and where do Ib and Jake have this conversation? Ib would be crazy old 90 so what is keeping him alive? These vaccines. BB would be 100 so this won’t work. He must be finished off earlier. He is not tied into the structure. How do MM feel about Ib and BB? After I answer these questions I must still embed them in scenes so the audience asks them to create intrigue.

4. How are you designing it to have us see an inevitable ending and then making it surprising when it happens?

I will do the ten exercises to make sure the audience thinks something else might happen to keep them engaged and create surprises. Could Ibrahim keep the vaccines a secret to Jake? They must have them before Joan dies in 2040. It looks like Jean will have to die at 2030 if he gets his diagnosis right after COVID although technology could keep him going longer. The beginning chapters are problematic now if his PD is partly caused by his getting COVID. I will have to give him COVID from Joan. BB is aging. He can’t be younger than 1955 or can he? Maybe 1960 like Chris. What dirty work does he do for Ibrahim? I have more than one CDQ throughout the trilogy but I must write them all down. I need better deaths or diseases for Ibrahim and BB. I had incidental, naturalistic deaths that will destroy my focus. The audience knows Jake is struggling with PD heading towards a wheelchair but fighting all the way and Litonya has cancer cells brewing in her spine from exposure to fracking chemicals–but no, she wouldn’t be near benzene unless she had to investigate the damage in those areas. But why would she sacrifice herself when she hates people?

5. What is the Parting Image/Line that leaves us with the Profound Truth in our minds?

After their parents die together hiking during an earthquake, their kids and some of the characters are still alive, safe, successful, and happy on the eco boats. Parts of Huguenot Street and central Manhattan around Central Park are okay although the coastline has changed because those buildings couldn’t survive and had to be replaced with oyster beds, salt marshes, berms, etc.

As igneous becomes sedimentary, the rocks are grateful for their recycling because they never die. The image is that life continues- individuals may die but life is immortal on the earth. Then when the earth is eaten up by the sun or hit by an asteroid or destroyed by human stupidity, its materials are released into the universe. There is also an interior world of particle physics and other dimensions that humans cannot see but is there to keep things recycling. Life is a circle not a cliff that you are pushed off even though it seems like that. Maybe looks are deceptive, something sexy Jake learnt as he succumbed to PD.