[Julia Bucci]

Julia’s Seabiscuit Analysis

What I learned: SO many of the best profound moments are completely visual – no dialogue. It was especially illuminating to notice these moments in Seabiscuit, since this is a film that’s filled to the gills with lines of dialogue that are so profound that they even sometimes feel On the Nose.

Out of the many profound moments in Seabiscuit (there are so many!), here are a few of my favorites:

The depression camps. Seeing Red and his family there.

Red’s father saying goodbye to Red – gives him a bundle of books after we’ve seen how much the father/son have loved literature together. Visual of the books in a hobo sack – heartbreaking ironic contrast.

Red sleeping alone in the barn.

Seabiscuit making friends with the other horse that Tom Smith put in to calm him down (after kicking out the sheep).

Howard’s son taking the fishing pole – missing and trying to please his father.

Howard’s wife and their estrangement – very few words were exchanged, but we could feel the whole thing.

Almost every moment, gesture, action of trainer Tom Smith felt like a profound moment. How he worked with horses.

Red deciding he had to ride Biscuit in the race despite his injury – risking his leg (life?) for this.

Lines of dialogue:

You don’t throw a life away just because he’s banged up a little.

Sometimes all somebody needs is a second chance.

The other jockey at the end: I (we?) don’t stand a chance.

ASSIGNMENT 2

Julia Turns Insights into Action!

What I learned: Showing new ways/insights through actions rather than dialogue will make my script much better. While I don’t love the 5 I brainstormed, it’s a start and a reminder to keep brainstorming these kinds of actions that show insight.

List of 5 New Ways/Insights and the Action that will express them:

1. Maud’s car has been fixed and is waiting outside her cabin. She can slip away. Instead, she gets dolled up to see Ray in the mess hall.

2. When the class gets mad at Maud because they think she was trying to steal Ruth’s story, Maud calls the Brattleboro Book Festival and arranges for the group to give a reading.

3. Maud puts Ruth and Mike together to work on a project.

4. After rejecting Mike’s advances (old way), Ruth (new way) relents and starts another painting of Mike.

5. Maud attempts to get a mortgage to buy the camp, even though she’s completely broke.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by  Julia Bucci.

[Julia Bucci]

Julia’s Living Metaphors

What I learned: The “should work, but doesn’t” challenge is brilliant!

I found an Oppression — maybe on the way to a better Oppression.

Updated logline for LIFE WRITING: When a broke, desperate author’s parking-lot fight with an old lady goes viral, she is given court-ordered community service: teaching memoir writing to senior citizens at an off-season summer camp. (contained feature dramedy)

1. Go through your story outline or script and brainstorm the following:

– 5 Should Work, But Doesn’t challenges

Old Way: Maud pretends (to her daughter) that she has all the $ in the world to pay her tuition, even though she’s completely broke

Challenge: Maud maxes out credit cards and waits for inspiration that doesn’t come, deadlines pass

How it might play out: Maud tries to write at night at the camp, gets stuck

Old Way: Maud lies to publisher, promises a draft soon

Challenge: Maud’s got nothing

How it might play out: Maud, in desperation, writes out some of Ruth’s story, sends it to publisher. She later takes it back, but Ruth/others find out about her theft. Ruth says go ahead and use it!

Old Way: Maud tries to slip out after the first day

Challenge: Students block her path

How it might play out: Students just happen to show up at her cabin when she brings bag out to the car; she ends up saying she’s going to get supplies (?) for teaching, they come with her

Old Way: Ruth tries to leave when she and Maud fight

Challenge: Ruth is figuring out, during the fight, that Maud is her birth daughter

How it might play out: Ruth notices something very familiar during the fight about Maud. She backs down and apologizes, disarming Ruth

Old Way: Maud tries to get out of the community service by calling in a favor

Challenge: She’s out of favors

How it might play out: Maud leaves a lot of voice mail messages/texts – no one answers

– 5 Living Metaphor challenges

Old Way: Shopping cart as a weapon (Maud bangs it into Ruth’s car) – pain and revenge to shopping cart as a symbol of connection

Challenge: Maud learns the truth about why Ruth left her as a baby in a shopping cart

How it might play out: Ruth reads the whole story out loud at the Brattleboro Book Festival

Old Way: campfire as a place of exposing hard truths to camp fire as place of reconciliation, bonding

Challenge: truth gets to be too much for Maud, Ruth, Mike

How it might play out: old memories at the campfire for Ruth and Mike; Maud and Ruth have an unintelligible argument one night at the campfire; Mike and Ruth start getting close, so Ruth leaves

Old Way: the viral video of Maud banging her shopping cart into Ruth’s car

Challenge: Maud needs to repair her reputation

How it might play out: Maud’s publicist sends out photos of her teaching the class nicely– but only 20 people view it, while the other video has 3 million views

Old Way: painting young of Mike by Ruth

Challenge: it’s 50 years later

How it might play out: Ruth starts painting a new image of Mike

Old Way: Shakespeare sonnet that young Mike used to read to young Ruth

Challenge: Mike tries to read it to Ruth again – she rejects it/him

How it might play out; Mike reads a different Shakespeare sonnet out loud: “That Time of Year Thou Mayst in Me Behold” (metaphor of old age as autumn/love while you can

How it might play out: This is Mike’s expression of forgiveness and also proposal to Ruth

[Julia Bucci]

Julia’s Counterexamples

<b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>What I learned: Questions and counterexamples help us (and our characters) change our old ways. And these can be brainstormed for our characters — and also for us!

My protagonist and Oppression for LIFE WRITING are changing, and I’m struggling & feeling unsure about both, but I’m going ahead with this assignment anyway to keep moving forward. Asking myself questions and providing myself with counterexamples…

5 Question Challenges to an Old Way + Counterexamples

Old Way: (Maud) get community service hours done as quickly as possible

Question: “What’s so important/urgent to get back to?”

Counterexample: is startled/moved by the stories of her students

Old Way: (Maud) Most people’s stories aren’t worth telling because they don’t have the talent to tell them

Question: “What about old family stories?”

Counterexample: Mike reads a story that makes everyone cry, then says he wishes he had the “talent” to tell it

Old Way: (Maud) wants to track down birth mother (Ruth) to punish her

Question: “What would you have done in her place?”

Counterexample: Ruth “mothers” Maud by coming to the class and subtly helping her (other ways too?)

Old Way: (Maud) closed to love

Question: “Do you click with anybody?”

Counterexample: Ruth and Mike; Ray and Maud click!

Old Way: (Ruth) doesn’t communicate well, even with those closest to her (her kids don’t even know yet that she’s moved back to VT)

Question: “What are you trying to hide?”

Counterexample: Ruth starts writing her story/invites her kids to Brattleboro Book Festival to hear her read it

[Julia Bucci]

Julia’s Old Ways Challenge Chart

What I learned: 1) THE TERMINATOR built in old ways/challenges really well for Sarah Connor. 2) I need an Oppression!! Still looking for one as I brainstorm Old Ways/Challenges. I feel like it’s hovering on the horizon, but I don’t see it yet.

OW: (Maud) snob about writing/writers and older people

C: some of the seniors write better stories than her clients (or her??)

OW: (Maud) angry at birth mother

C: having to listen to birth mother’s story with neutral teacher empathy – having to deal with what is left when her anger starts to dissolve

OW: (Maud) pitch student’s story as her own (client’s own?) to help herself

C: remorse – to do the right thing now = undermining her own career

OW: (Maud) romantic relationships with men

C: new romantic feelings for Ray

OW: (Ruth) social distance – thinks she doesn’t deserve love

C: her old (old) boyfriend Mike wants to be together now

OW: (Ruth) turn her back on her past – giving birth to Maud, placing her for adoption

C: how to deal with Ruth — in her face, possibly knows who she is, is pulling story out of her in the class

[Julia Bucci]

Julia’s 12 Angry Men Analysis

What I learned doing this assignment: There are so many ways to show the old ways and to challenge them! I have a pretty long list here, but I’m sure it’s incomplete.

BTW, I love this play and movie, and I think it stands the test of time 100%. Great play, and such brilliant acting/directing in the film. I’ve read it/seen it before, and even taught it to students once, but I saw new things this time as I looked at it through the Old Ways/Challenge lens.

Old Ways (OW)/Challenge (C):

OW: boredom, assumption that the legal system is boring/simple ( “I almost fell asleep…open and shut case”)

Challenge: forced to listen more carefully and talk; consider that law is a breathing/complicated instrument, and the burden of proof is on the prosecution, not the defense

OW: let’s get this over with quickly

Challenge: having to stop and take time to listen to other points of view; “Who tells you have the right to sit there and play with a man’s life?”

OW: go with the crowd – if most people raise their hands, go ahead and raise your hands too (preliminary vote)

C: challenged to think for yourself by paper vote

OW: being decisive, seeing things in black and white

C: being willing to be uncertain; seeing not knowing something as a starting point – “You really think he’s innocent?” “I don’t know…we talk.” + GREAT Lee J Cobb transformational moment: “How can you be positive about anything?”

OW: unwilling to change one’s mind “You couldn’t change my mind if we talked for 100 years.”

C: forced to at least sit and talk for an hour

OW: no compassion for the kid – : a murder trial is a game (prosecutor did a great job, glad to be on a murder case rather than a robbery)

C: compassion – we should at least talk about the kid; he’s had it rough & his life is at stake

OW: stereotyping about ethnic groups (“I’d slap those tough kids down before they started trouble”)

Challenge: forced to consider this individual kid AND forced to confront their own prejudices (“How come you believe the woman? …she’s one of them, isn’t she?”); forced to confront prejudices about European immigrant juror

OW: making assumptions based on someone’s past/location (“look at his record”; “slums are breeding grounds for criminals”)

C: forced to question the assumption that past behavior predicts future guilt; confronted on narrowmindedness (“I grew up in a slum”)

OW: assuming the majority is right

C: challenged to think for themselves

OW: assuming the evidence is not questionable – that “facts” are facts and speak for themselves (Lee J Cobb: “I just want to talk about facts…you can’t refute facts”)

C: having to question facts (can you see through the windows of an el train at night?)

OW: assuming the defense attorney did his job

C: considering that lawyers can be incompetent/lazy

OW: assuming that witnesses are infallible

C: forced to consider that they are human/could be wrong (knife angle, witness wears glasses)

OW: having to be loyal to your first opinion

C: “I don’t believe I have to be loyal to one side or the other…just asking questions.”

OW: deal with problems through anger and violence (Lee J. Cobb) or dealing with all disagreements as a pissing contest

C: having to look at oneself (“You’re a sadist”) / “You’re trying to turn this into a contest”

OW: hostility to others (all the small tensions/arguments in the group)

C: working together (counting time it took for old man to get to the door; thinking about the glasses – “There are 12 people here, and 11 of us didn’t think of it”)

OW: blinded by personal wound (Lee J. Cobb’s relationship with his son; “What do you think, I’m an idiot?”)

C: forced to confront personal wound (son) and understand that the wound was getting in the way (“Not guilty.”)

[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.

[Julia Bucci]

Julia’s Connection with Audience

What I learned: “You want us to feel that these characters are us, but you don’t want to bore us. So the key is to give us something in common with the character in an interesting way.” I hadn’t thought about deliberately building in these common experiences AND doing it in an interesting way. Very illuminating!

What I have here is a start, but it’s just OK and not very entertaining. Doing this assignment shows me that I need to improve the “interesting way” that I form connections with the audience for all of these characters.

1. Tell us which characters you are going to INTENTIONALLY create a connection with the audience.

Mia

Ruth

Boomer

Mike

2. With each character, tell us how you’ll use each of the four ways of connecting with the audience in the first 30 minutes of the movie.

Mia (protag,TC)

A. Relatability – hot flash/loses her temper in a Target parking lot
B. Intrigue – why was she vacationing alone in this town? Why does she choose to stay and get the community service hours over now?
C. Empathy – stuck doing community service hours
D. Likability – unexpectedly entertaining as a teacher

Ruth (main character, TC AND Change Agent)

A. Relatability – loses temper (fights with Mia) in Target parking lot
B. Intrigue – then why does she sign up for Mia’s writing class?
C. Empathy – Mia fights with her at Target, then isn’t nice to her in class, even when she starts showing her vulnerability
D. Likability – Mike has a thing for Ruth, from way back when

Boomer (main character, TC AND Change Agent)

A. Relatability – outsider

B. Intrigue – ?
C. Empathy –scarred by small-town homophobia + starts having feelings for Mia
D. Likability – looks out for seniors as camp chaperone

Mike (supporting character, low key TC AND Change Agent)

A. Relatability – terrible student and writer, no attention span, just taking the class because Ruth’s in it
B. Intrigue – what happened with Mike and Ruth way back when?
C. Empathy – Ruth rebuffs him every time he tries to connect with her
D. Likability – going after Ruth, trying to save camp from developers

[Julia Bucci]

Julia’s Three Gradients

What I learned:

· There’s a different journey for forced or chosen change, with different emotional sequences

· Challenges bring out weaknesses – natural/obvious ones as well as weaknesses they (we) didn’t know about

· The bigger the challenge, the bigger the weakness it evokes

· Old Ways first half…New Ways second half

· To build in steps of the emotional gradient

This model is incredible!!

And I have a long way to go with my concept. These assignments are helping me to see some of the pieces.

1. What is the Emotional Gradient you’ll use? forced change

2. For each emotion of that gradient, tell us the following:
A. Emotion: denial
B. Action: Maddie calls in a favor to get community service hours reduced/deleted – fails
C. Challenge / Weakness:

C: Maddie has to stay back in town where she was vacationing & do service work – missing big event in NY

W: Doesn’t have the power she thought she had

A. Emotion: anger
B. Action: belittles the students, tries to slip out
C. Challenge / Weakness:

C: Students don’t let her leave – they keep watch/hold her hostage

W: Doesn’t have the control she thought she had

A. Emotion: bargaining
B. Action: make deals with students to help them finish unfinished business that came out in the writing; tries to get this business done too quickly through the wrong means; steals a student’s story; loses job when she tries to un-steal it
C. Challenge / Weakness:

C: How can she help others with unfinished business when she has so much of her own?

W: unwillingness to deal with unfinished business

A. Emotion: depression
B. Action: the group kicks her out & she tries to go back to old life

C. Challenge / Weakness: She is not wanted either place

C: the old life is undesirable

W: loneliness

A. Emotion: acceptance
B. Action: returns, makes amends, helps others with unfinished business
C. Challenge / Weakness:

C: She’s still out of a day job

W: She needs to learn to accept love (romantic and friendship)

[Julia Bucci]

Julia’s Transformational Structure (updated)

What I learned: Not to quit when it gets tough…just remember that this is rough draft mode. Both the Mini-Movie structure and the gradients helped to move this story forward.

LIFE WRITING
1. Transformational Logline. When a high-powered literary agent is court-ordered to teach memoir writing to senior citizens, she begins stealing their stories.

2. Tell us who the main character will be:

MAUDE MCGRATH (protag, Transformational Character) – 50, confident Boston literary agent whose life is falling apart

RUTH (Change Agent & transformational character too) – 70, enigmatic artist, just moved back to town

RAY (Change Agent & transformational character too) – 50, cranky cook/chaperone, love interest for Maud

MIKE (Change Agent for Ruth) – 70s, nice guy who loves Ruth

3. Mini-Movie structure:

MM #1 – Pages 1 – 15 – Our hero’s status quo, his ordinary world, ends with an inciting incident or “call to adventure,” introducing the story’s main tension.

While on vacation, Maud hears that her literary agency has been stolen out from under her. She gets into a stupid fight with an old lady, Ruth, in a Target parking lot and rams her shopping cart into her car repeatedly. Sentenced to community service hours – offered reduced hours if she teaches writing to senior citizens at a community camp starting tomorrow.

Turning Point: Call to Adventure.

Gradient: denial

Challenge: arrested – community service hours

Weakness: confused/out of comfort zone

MM #2 – Pages 15 – 30 – Our hero’s denial of the call, and his gradually being “locked into” the conflict brought on by this call.

Maud tries to call in favors to get out of the hours- unsuccessful. She shows up at the camp (off season, 1- week, town-sponsored senior citizen camp), teaches the class, which includes Ruth from the parking lot, is both likeable and patronizing to her students and especially hard on Ruth’s writing prompt. Mike jumps to Ruth’s defense – he has a thing for her. Tries to sneak out at the end of the day, but her newly enthusiastic students slyly thwart her attempts to sneak out. Gets off on the wrong foot with the attractive lesbian chef/chaperone, Ray.

Turning Point: Locked in.

Gradient: anger

Challenge: stuck in the camp

Weakness: vulnerable when trying new things (teaching)

MM #3 – Pages 30 – 45 – Our hero’s first attempts to solve his problem, the first things that anyone with this problem would try, appealing to outside authority to help him. Ends when all these avenues are shut to our hero.

Maud starts really teaching – students start writing amazing true stories.

It’s a bittersweet year for this off-season senior citizen camp, as it’s the last – the camp land has been sold to make way for bespoke condominiums.

Most of the class members worked as counselors at this camp back in the day – long history.

Maud sets class goal – reading at a local literary festival (Brattleboro)

Maud & Ray flirt.

Mike, the world’s worst student and writer, tells a great story from his youth out loud – a love story

Maud gets on the phone, pitches Mike’s story to publishers under previous client’s names in an attempt to win clients back.

Clients don’t go for it. Maud is half-relieved; she was starting to feel guilty.

Turning Point: Standard ways fail.

Gradient: bargaining

Challenge: to get back her business

Weakness: dishonest, then remorseful

MM #4 – Pages 45 — 60 – Our hero spawns a bigger plan. He prepares for it, gathers what materials and allies he may need, then puts the plan into action — only to have it go horribly wrong, usually due to certain vital information the hero lacked about the forces of antagonism allied against him.

Camp dance. Maud & Ray dance together, sparks fly.

Ray joins the class.

1 or 2 students have unfinished business in their stories (TBD) – class starts to help them resolve this business.

Mike’s story is about his past with Ruth. Ruth stops talking to Mike.

Students find out about Maud’s theft – confront her.

Ray pulls away.

Turning Point: Plan backfires.

Gradient: more bargaining

Challenge: Feelings for a woman + called out on attempted story theft

Weakness: emotional vulnerability + emotional shut down

MM #5 – Pages 60 — 75 – Having created his plan to solve his problem WITHOUT changing, our hero is confronted by his need to change, eyes now open to his own weaknesses, driven by the antagonist to change or die. He retreats to lick his wounds.

Maud retreats into her cabin, full of self-pity. Packs.

Students keep improving their stories, working together.

Mike and Ruth fight about their story.

Maud rallies and promises a spot at literary festival for the group. Also promises to help with unfinished business.

Ray agrees to drive the group in a bus (to festival, to unfinished business)

Turning Point: The decision to change.

Gradient: depression

Challenge: public humiliation, feelings for Ray

Weakness: self-pity, then humility

MM #6
– Pages 75 – 90 – Our hero spawns a new plan, but now he’s ready to change. He puts this plan into action…and is very nearly destroyed by it. And then…a revelation.

????

Field trip to help group member with unfinished business – backfires

Someone in the group get sick in hospital (TBD).

???

Turning Point: The ultimate failure.

Gradient: acceptance

Challenge:

Weakness:

MM #7 – Pages 90 – 105 – The revelation allows our hero to see victory, and he rejoins the battle with a new fervor, finally turning the tables on his antagonist and arriving at apparent victory. And then the tables turn one more time!

Group decides to collaborate/finish this story for the sick member.

Maud works with each student on their stories as if they are famous authors

They arrive at the Brattleboro Literary festival – but their appearance at the reading has been canceled.

Maud and Ruth fight.

Maud and Ray break up.

Turning Point: Apparent victory.

Gradient: more acceptance

Challenge: Forgiving/loving Ruth – accepting Ray’s love

Weakness: letting go of old identity

MM #8 – Pages 105 – 120 – The hero puts down the antagonist’s last attempt to defeat him, wraps up his story and any sub-plots, and moves into the new world he and his story have created.

Maud finds a way to get stage time for her group [TBD].

Ray shows up at the reading.

Ruth reads her story about her past, revealing that she is Maud’s birth mother and that she knows that Maud knows. Emotional moment of love between the two.

Mike reads his story, wins Ruth back.

Maud and Ray reconcile.

Back at the camp, the group says goodbye to the land.

Last scene: Maud, Ray, Ruth, and Mike together in the water (or some kind of good image of rebirth)

Turning Point: New status quo.

Gradient: even more acceptance

Challenge:

Weakness:

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by  Julia Bucci.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by  Julia Bucci.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by  Julia Bucci.

[Julia Bucci]

Julia’s Lead Characters

What I learned: I need a betraying character! And I need an Oppression! And a Change Agent…here’s what I came up with so far. Brainstorming continues.

1. Tell us your transformational journey logline.

A demanding Manhattan editor (Jackie Mack – this name is a placeholder) must teach memoir writing to a group of senior citizens (mandated community service hours for losing her temper in a parking lot & smashing her cart into someone’s car).

2. Tell us who you think might be your Change Agent and give a few sentences about how that character fits the role. Also, include:

– Their vision:

– Everyone in the group gets to tell their story to someone who needs to hear it (road trip? Reading? Publication/celebration?)

– Everyone’s story is equally important

– The life in front of us is beautiful

– Their past experience that fits that vision:

– Spent many years hiding relationship, pretending to live a straight life

– Now partner is dying (GLBT) and they finally want to have their wedding/tell their story to the world before it’s too late

– or spent years in “Indian” boarding school learning to hide/repress experiences

– or secretly Jackie’s birth mother

3. Tell us who you think might be your Transformable Character(s) and give a few sentences about how that character or characters fit the role.

Demanding Manhattan editor. Nothing’s good enough for her – compelled to “edit” everything around her. Used to working with A-list writers; will have a hard time appreciating/drawing out stories from these elderly students. She’s also having a hard time dealing with her life falling apart. That’s what got her into trouble/mandated community service in the first place.

4. Tell us who or what you think might be The Oppression and give a few sentences about how The Oppression works in your story.

I’m having trouble with this one!

Maybe:

– Jackie lose her job if she doesn’t sneak off soon

– they’re selling the camp to build bespoke condos (no more senior citizen camp) if they don’t raise $

– the students kidnap Jackie/make sure she stays at camp until she’s helped them get their stories out (or publish? Or …?(

5. Tell us who you think might be your Betraying Character and give a few sentences about how that character fits the role.

Nancy – one of the group members never felt she was good enough – encourages a “friend” to tell her story, then steals it.

[Julia Bucci]

Julia’s Transformational Journey

What I learned: To keep following the puzzle process! It’s helping me get from what I started with (title, vague idea) to concept. Also, I appreciate Hal’s reminders not to get too attached to any of the pieces. At this point, I’m attached only to my title (LIFE WRITING) and profound truth – but even those may change.

Logline: When a demanding Manhattan editor tries to sneak out of her mandated community service teaching memoir writing to senior citizens, the seniors hold her hostage (at an off-season summer camp) until she helps them with all of their stories.

Old Ways:

· Her main rule: Only excellence matters

· Arrogant, snobby, sense of superiority

· Self-centered

· Feels like a piece of crap about herself inside – fears her own lack of talent

New Ways:

· Compassionate, loving

· Appreciates all kinds of stories

· Starts writing her own story

· Open to love relationship

BTW, I love my classmates’ profound truths and concepts – it’s wonderful to see them unfold.

[Julia Bucci]

Julia’s First Three Decisions

What I learned doing this assignment is that I can build this story like a puzzle, starting with the profound truth, as long as I’m not too attached to the story/details I have in mind now. Also, I will probably discover a deeper profound truth underneath the one I have to guide/focus the story. I love how this assignment breaks this process down for us.

1. What is your profound truth?

Your real life is more beautiful than the life you imagined/planned/wanted.

2. What is the change your movie will cause with an audience?

Inspired to see beauty/meaning in the boring/disappointing parts of our own lives.

3. What is your Entertainment Vehicle that you will tell this story through?

Right now, I’m thinking “Pick a World” = senior citizen center or community center. I was excited about this until I saw the more-entertaining examples. Room for improvement here?

[Julia Bucci]

Julia’s analysis of GROUNDHOG DAY

What I learned: How it is possible to package an allegory about the human condition/Everyman’s journey into an entertaining, unpredictable, fun movie!

1. CHANGE/Transformational Journey of this movie: From feeling stuck in the same boring, self-centered, meaningless life to finding meaning and happiness in love and giving to others.

2. Lead characters:
– Change Agent

Rita Hanson. She’s the one Phil loves, and Phil needs to open up to love more than anything. Also, she embodies kindness, and that’s the trait that Phil needs to acquire: kindness to others and to himself.

– Transformable Character

Phil Connors. He’s the right character because he suffers from so many human problems/conditions that we can all relate to: he’s deeply self-centered; he has vulgar, violent impulses; he sees the people around him as objects; he’s bored by his job and thinks he’s too good it; he’s depressed to the point of being suicidal; he’s unwilling or unable to open up to love. I think what makes him likable, at least for me, is that he is aware of all this – but still too depressed and stuck to do anything about it.

– What is the Oppression?

Being forced to live the same day over and over. (It’s never specified what exactly causes this in the movie – I was hoping it would be Ned Ryerson having some magical fun with Phil – but it could be the blizzard or lack of love.)

3. How are we lured into the profound journey? What causes us to connect with this story?

I’m instantly lured in by the first scene, in which Phil gestures over the empty weatherboards, showing how bored he is with his work and how he’s done this a million times. I’m also hooked right after that, when announces that he’s up for another job. We (or most of us?) can connect with being bored with our jobs, feeling overqualified, and thinking that there are better opportunities out there for us just around the corner. We (most of us?) have felt at one time or the other Phil’s sense of meaninglessness, of feeling stuck in our lives.

4. Looking at the character(s) who are changed the most, what is the profound journey? From “old ways” to “new way of being.”

Identify their old way: Phil is profoundly self-centered

Identify their new way at the conclusion: Phil is open to love, kinder, more expressive (piano), and more altruistic

5. What is the gradient the change? What steps did the Transformational Character go through as they were changing?

1. Depressed/stuck/cynical, and aware of it/unhappy about it

2. Becomes literally stuck – denial phase (I think this can be mapped on 5 stages of grief) – sees doctors

3. Anger phase – acts out in car, with police, on people

4. Bargaining – tries to kill himself using multiple methods

5. Depression – can’t kill himself – gives in to despair

6. Acceptance – starts to use his knowledge to prevent accidents/mishaps for others, learn to play the piano, start wooing Rita in a less self-centered way

6. How is the “old way” challenged? What beliefs are challenged that cause a main character to shift their perspective…and make the change?

Phil’s old way is dealing with the situation (same day over and over) is characteristically immature and self-centered: he indulges his senses (violent car chase, random sex, drinking, smoking, eating desserts); expresses his mean/dark id (being mean to the homeless guy and guy in the hallway); exploits the situation to manipulate/seduce people (including Rita).

New way: he’s kinder to people and finds joy in helping them and open to love/commitment/marriage/kids/making snowmen with Rita.

7. What are the most profound moments of the movie?

– Phil giving the perfunctory weather report at the beginning

– Bowling alley conversation that shows how EVERYONE feels this way (at one time or another)

– Suicide attempts

– The poem Rita quotes in the diner – sums up not only Phil, but all self-centered people

– Trying to save the homeless man and seeing that some people just die if it’s their time

– Phil’s speech to the camera at the end

8. What are the most profound lines of the movie?

Phil: What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing you did mattered?

Guy he’s drinking with in bowling alley: That about sums it up for me.

Rita: Sometimes I wish I had a thousand lifetimes. I don’t know, Phil. Maybe it’s not a curse. Just depends on how you look at it.

Rita: “The wretch, concentered all in self,/Living, shall forfeit fair renown,/And, doubly dying, shall go down/To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,/Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.”

Phil: Can I be serious with you for a minute?

Rita: I don’t know. Can you?

Phil: It’s cold out there every day.

Phil: I’m going to give you a prediction about this winter: it’s going to be cold, it’s going to be dark, and it’s going to last you for the rest of your lives.

Phil: When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn’t imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter.

Phil: Whatever happens tomorrow, or for the rest of my life, I’m happy now…because I love you.

9. How does the ending payoff the setups of this movie?

Phil’s speech to the camera (about winter, the cycle of life, and being with the people of P.) pays off the setup of his perfunctory, repetitive comments to the camera earlier.

Phil suggests moving to Punxsutawney, after commenting on how he wouldn’t even stay an extra second in that town

Phil says about Rita, “She’s fun. But not my kind of fun.” Payoff: he asks her to stay in P. with him!

Phil is rude to Ned vs. Phil buys every kind of insurance from him

First glimpse of Phil: talking basically to a wall vs. last glimpse of Phil: going out (even through a gate) and into the world

10. What is the Profound Truth of this movie?

In the darkness/uncertainty/meanness/coldness/tedium that is our lives, we find meaning and joy in the present moment, through loving and giving to others.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by  Julia Bucci.

[Julia Bucci]

Julia Bucci

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[Julia Bucci]

Hi everyone,

So glad to be here with you all. I’m Julia Bucci in Boston. she/hers

I’ve written 4 screenplays + 2 TV pilots (one is out to a few producers).

Every ScreenwritingU class I’ve taken has been a transformational journey. I’ve been wanting to take this course for a long time – and now the time is finally right. I’d like to learn the Profound model and apply it to a concept I’ve been wanting to work on for a while now.

I created a class for senior citizens called Life Writing, and I loved teaching it. The project I’ll be working with in this course, LIFE WRITING, is inspired by this experience.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by  Julia Bucci.

[Julia Bucci]

What an incredible story, Christopher! I just googled Helen & Peter Fagan’s story and found out a bit more. I like your MMM outline so far. A story that needs to be told!