1. In the Bourne Identity, Matt Damon plays a man found floating in the ocean with no memory of who he is. As he searches through Europe for clues to his identity, he becomes the target for assassins. Who is he and why does everyone want to kill him?
Thrillers offer excitement based on emotions and character, rather then elaborate stunts sequences and pyrotechnic effects.
The first British sound film was a thriller called BLACKMAIL – about a woman, who accidentally kills a man, then falls in love with the detective investigating the crime. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
There are different kinds of thrillers.
The mystery thriller – The Lady Vanishes in 1938
The chase thriller - North by Northwest made in 1959
The vanishing spouse thriller - Breakdown made in 1997
And the political thriller - Three Days of the Condor made in 1975.
We will also add two recent suspense thrillers – Minority Report and The Bourne Identity… and The Game.
What is a thriller?
In a thriller, the protagonist runs away or hides from the conflict. In an action movie, the protagonist confronts the conflict.
In an action movie, when someone shoots at the protagonist, they take out their gun and shoot back.
In a thriller when someone shoots at the protagonist, they run.
In an action movie, when somebody punches the protagonist – they punch back.
In a thriller when somebody punches the protagonist, they try to get the heck out of there. Though the thriller protagonist will eventually be cornered and forced into a confrontation at the end of the film, they don’t start out that way.
In Die Hard, John McClain confronts the terrorists. Picking them off one by one. He lures them into his territory and kills them. He confronts the conflict. That’s an action movie.
In the Bourne Identity, Matt Damon keeps running from the assassins, and only resorts to fighting them when they find him. Bourne doesn’t confront the conflict until Act Three. Up until then, he’s either running or hiding. He may fight an assassin, but it’s only in self-defense. He isn’t throwing the first punch and he isn’t stalking the Treadstone Organization. They’re stalking him. He’s a defensive player rather than an offensive player. Even when John McClain is lying in that bathroom, feet cut with broken glass, worried that he’s going to die, he’s still trying to figure out how to kill the terrorists and rescue his wife. He’s still an offensive player. He’s just called a time-out to regroup.
What about Silence of the Lambs? Clarease is an FBI agent stalking a serial killer, searching for the antagonist. How can that be a thriller scenario? Even though Clarease is searching for Buffalo Bill, she’s not in control of the story. She’s overmatched, in trouble and when she finally enters Buffalo Bill’s lair, the hunter becomes the hunted.
In a detective thriller, the detective is always overmatched. They may be seeking the antagonist, but the story’s about the search rather then the moment when the protagonist finds the antagonist. Even when the protagonist is a professional in a thriller, they are so overmatched; they might as well be an amateur. Clarease could easily be Buffalo Bill’s next victim. In an action movie the protagonist willingly engages in conflict, he punches people, he shoots guns. In a thriller, the protagonist tries to avoid the conflict. They run away or they hide.
SUSPENSE ORIENTED
Because thriller films are about running away and hiding, instead of confrontation, they’re often less about the action scenes and more about the suspense scenes. The thrills come from the protagonist avoiding the confrontation, through running = chase scenes, or hiding = suspense scenes. The juice in the story comes from the fear of discovery or the fear that the protagonist will be caught, rather then the excitement of the physical action.Alfred Hitchcock explained the difference between surprise and suspense with a bomb under the table. If two people are having a conversation and suddenly a bomb under the table explodes, we’re surprised. If we show the bomb under the table and show the same two people having a conversation, we’re building suspense. We want to warn them that there’s a bomb under the table. That’s also the difference between the scene you’d find in a action movie, and the type of scene you’d find in a thriller. An action movie is all about the action - the explosion, the shoot out, the physical action. A thriller is all about the events that lead up to the action. Though you probably have suspense in any action film, and action in any thriller, the focus of each genre is different. When I’m outlining an action film, I’ll brain storm a bunch of fight scenes and shoots outs, actions scenes. When I’m outlining a thriller- I’ll start with a bunch of suspense scenes, scenes where the thrill comes from the anticipation of the action, rather then the thrills from the action itself.
2. NOW LET’S TALK ABOUT IDEAS.
Thrillers are often based on the primal fear or a secret desire in the audience. Wait until dark deals with our fear of the dark, and the unseen. Emotional fears are always better then physical fears. Starting with a common fear or desire is a great way to come up with a thriller idea.
Primal fears. Let’s start with a fear that we all understand. A common fear for parents is that they’re kids will wander away in a store or some other public place and get lost. As kids we had the flip side of that fear. We worried we might lose sight of our parents and get lost. What if we never saw them again? Some place right now there’s a kid crying in a store because he’s lost sight of his mommy. And the mother is scared to death that she won’t be able to find her kid. That is a basic fear that we’ve all experienced. We can all understand. What if someone we loved was suddenly lost? What if they just vanished? Now let’s take that fear and grow a thriller script from it.
BREAKDOWN - A husband and wife are on a cross-country road trip when the car breaks down. The husband stays by the car, the wife accepts a ride into the next town to phone for a two truck. But she just vanishes. Breakdown takes the common fear of losing a loved one, and turns it into a heart-pounding thriller. Anyone who ever wandered away from their parents when they were a kid, knows the feeling of terror and helplessness that Kurt Russell experiences as he searches frantically for his wife. The fear of being separated from those we love is built into us on a genetic level. Though most of us have never had a spouse just vanish, it happens frequently in movies.
Before Breakdown there was The Vanishing with Keiffer Sutherland losing his wife at a roadside convenience store, and that movie was a remake of a Dutch film. There’s a made for TV movie starring Chloris Leachman, where it’s the husband who disappears from a roadside diner, and the wife who spends the rest of the film searching for him. Plus we have Frantic with Harrison Ford, his wife just disappears while they’re on vacation in France, so not only does he have the missing wife to deal with, he has the language and cultural barriers. He’s a stranger in a strange land and his wife just vanishes.
There’s also a movie made in the 60’s called So Long at the Fair about a family at the world’s fair in Paris who has a family member who just vanishes. And there’s the animated film – The Triplet’s of Bellevue about a bicycle racer in the Tour d’France who just vanishes and his mother spends the rest of the film searching for him. France and roadside diners are like the Bermuda triangles of thriller films. Stay away.
The reason why there are so many thrillers that use the Vanishing Spouse plot is because it works. We all know what it feels like to be separated from someone we love. Sometimes the story’s just about a kid who just vanishes, like Ransom. The scene where the kid vanishes in the park is creepy and frightening. It hits us at the primal level. We can’t help but gasp.
MAGNIFICATION – You take something that everyone can relate to, and you magnify the conflict and the stakes, and the emotions. You blow it up way out of proportion until you end up with a story big enough to fill the screen. The fear that your kid will wander away in a grocery store turns into a movie like Ransom or Breakdown. Take a fear that touches you on an emotional level and build a story on it. An emotional fear is much better then a physical fear. You made be afraid of spiders, but it’s hard to magnify that fear into a big Hollywood film, unless you make the spiders really big. We’ve had too many big spiders already, so it’s time to come up with a different idea.
Let’s look at some common fears. I’m afraid that the person I love isn’t being completely honest with me, that they’re hiding part of their life from me. That’s something we can all relate to. Even if you’ve been married for twenty years, there are probably still some things you don’t know about your spouse. Probably not sinister things, but that’s because your life isn’t a Hollywood movie. But if what if I find out my wife is a foreign spy who only married me because I’m a scientist with a top-secret clearance working on a big government job? - - my whole marriage is a sham. We’ve taken that fear and magnified it until it’s become a big Hollywood movie. There’s a suspense film called White of the Eye, about a woman who begins to suspect that her husband, who’s an air conditioning repairman, is the serial killer who’s killed dozens of people throughout the southwest.
Here’s another fear. People at work really hate me. What if people at work were plotting to kill you? There’s an amnesia movie from the 60’s called Mirage, where Gregory Peck can’t remember what happened at work last week, but today, everyone is trying to kill him and his office has completely disappeared from the building. The door has vanished.
How about this one? I don’t really know my parents. What if someone accused your father of being an evil Nazi concentration camp officer who killed hundreds of Jews during World War II? You’d defend your father. How could he be evil? He’s your dad. But the more you dig into his past, the more you find out that the accusations may be true. Now you’ve uncovered all your father’s secrets and you realize you never really knew who he was. You only know who he pretended to be. That’s a story from the Oscar nominated movie starring Jessica Lange called The Music Box, by Joe Esterhaus.
What are some of your emotional fears? I’m not smart enough. People don’t really like me? I can’t control my anger? I’ve raised my children all wrong? Make a list of things you fear and magnify them into thriller ideas.
Another place to get thriller ideas is to look at our secret desires. We all have things that we wish, but we don’t always want them to come true.
Double Jeopardy takes the common desire that many women have to get back at the man that done them wrong, and magnifies it into an edge of your seat thriller of vengeance. Stories like Strangers on a train also deals with our secret desire to get rid of people who may have made life difficult for us.
Be careful what you wish for. A secret desire doesn’t have to be something that goes wrong, it might be something that goes right. That’s how Double Jeopardy works. Her husband fakes his own death and frames her for murder. She goes to prison for a murder she didn’t commit. And when she gets out she discovers that her husband is still alive and because of double jeopardy, she can shoot him down in Time’s Square in broad daylight and can’t be arrested for it.
Usually a thriller will be about a secret desire that backfires. Matt Damon in The Talented Mr. Ripley is a poor kid who is more cultured, more intelligent then all the rich kids he goes to school with. He may be the first person they go to when they need help on a test, or need someone to play a piano concerto, but they look down on him, he’s not an equal. Tom Ripley wishes he could live like Dickey Greenleaf. Wishes he could have Dickey Greenleaf's life. Never have to work or scrounge for money. Always get the girl. That’s his secret desire. He gets his wish when he kills Dickey and assumes his identity, but that dream becomes a nightmare. He has to pretend to be Dickey. And whenever he meets someone who knows Dickey, he’s in big trouble. He either has to come up with some sort of weird explanation, for why he’s pretending to be Dickey, or he has to kill them. It’s kind of a Cinderella story with a kick.
There’s a great thriller film from the 60’s called Seconds, about a middle-aged man who wishes he could be young again. He’s approached by a secret company who offers a second chance at life. They will perform complete plastic surgery to make you look young and handsome, give you a new identity, and a new life. That’s a desire we can all relate too. The chance to get a fresh start. To live the life we’ve always dreamed of. But here’s the problem. Now you’re whole life is a lie and you must keep that lie from being discovered. You may meet the woman of your dreams because of your new handsome self, but you can never be honest with her. You must always be guarded. What if you mention some rock concert you went to that took place before your new identity was even born? You can never be yourself, because that self doesn’t exist anymore. The Seconds Company has faked your death so you can have this wonderful new life, and now you’re stuck with it. You may come to miss that frumpy old wife of yours, realize that the love and companionship that you had with her is better than all the hot chicks you can get now. But you can never go home again, because she thinks you’re dead. There’s no way to convince her otherwise even if you try. You’re stuck living this life that isn’t yours. Your secret desire has backfired. But the real terror doesn’t begin until you discover where they get the bodies they use to fake the customer’s deaths. That’s pretty scary stuff.
So what are some of your secret desires? Make a list and develop some thriller ideas from them.
You can also develop a thriller idea from a moral question. You can take a moral question and magnify it into a big thriller. There’s a great film from the 60’s called Daddy’s Gone A Hunting. A big political moral issue at the time was abortion. This film turns that issue into a heart-pounding thriller. Free love 60’s and our leading lady finds herself pregnant. Her boyfriend is kind of a screw up - no one she wants to get married to, and no one she really wants to have a kid with, so she has an abortion. A year later she’s found Mr. Right and settled down. Her hippy days are long behind her. She gets pregnant but this time it’s with a guy she wants to spend the rest of her life with. They decorate a room for the nursery; she has the baby and comes home to the perfect suburban life. But her ex boyfriend shows up and steals her baby because “you owe me a child.” Now the psycho is running around with her baby and threatening to kill it. She killed his baby right? So why is killing this baby any different? We’re exploring an issue, but the audience is sitting on the edge of their seats cringing in fear. There’s still a scene that terrifies me. The mother gets a phone call from her psycho ex boyfriend. He’ll give her, her baby back if she just meets with him and talks with him. “Right now.” She hangs up the phone, races out to her car, backs out of the driveway and CLUNK CLUNK backs over something. Oh no. She gets out of the car, goes to the back tires and there’s something wrapped in a blanket under the tires. Something with a little pink hand. She completely freaks and pulls the blanket and baby out from under her car, fear building. She unwraps the blanket and inside is a plastic doll, all smashed up. And he still has her kid! The reason why issues are a good place to find thriller ideas is because they are frequently both primal fears and a secret desires.
If you think Daddy’s Gone A Hunting sounds a little like Rumple Stillskin and Psycho a little like Little Red Riding Hood, you’re on to something. Fairy tales are morality stories designed to teach kids a lesson. What are some moral questions that might make good thrillers? Think about it.
3. Concept
Concept is everything. In Blood Work – Clint Eastwood plays an ex-FBI profiler who retires for health reasons. He has recently undergone a heart transplant. Against doctor’s order he finds himself drawn into a murder investigation - the victim the donor of the heart that beats within his chest. In Minority Report, Tom Cruise plays a detective in the pre-crime’s division where psychic beings help them arrest criminal before they commit their crimes. You have a protagonist, a really great character that you’ve created and you just can’t wait to get them involved in a thriller story. Can you just come up with some random event that kicks things off? All you need is something that gets your protagonist in trouble, right? Something that creates a conflict so you can use all those really cool scenes you’ve come up with. Can you just flip through a newspaper and find a really exciting inciting incident? Nope. That’s the scene that sparks your whole story. The entire rest of the script will be about that scene. If you look at thrillers like Minority Report and Bourne Identity, those scenes that trigger the chase end up being what the story is really all about. They’re thematic. Those movies are not about the chase scenes, but they’re about destiny and identity. The elements created by the inciting incident. That event is the spark of life for your screenplay. And that spark determines everything else that happens in your script.
In Minority Report, what gets the hero on the run is the system that sees crimes in advance and is never wrong – and it sees that the hero will kill a man. That not only sets our hero on the run – it’s also what creates the theme and every single scene that follows. It’s not just an excuse to get the story started – it’s the scene that creates the rest of the story. The reason why they’re after the protagonist, the goal for the protagonist, the way he will prove that he’s innocent – that’s all in that scene. The theme, the emotional conflict for the protagonist. It’s the whole dang story in that one scene. You have to come up with the inciting incident that uses the themes that you want to explore. That way you’re telling your story and not just some random story that has nothing to do with your protagonist and your scenes. The cause of the conflict is the cause of the story. You can’t just pick something random out of a newspaper. You have to carefully select the incident that will spark the story you want to tell.
In the bourne identity. Jason Bourne is found floating in the ocean with no memory of who he is. The central conflict or question for Bourne is “who am I?” that’s the question that propels the entire story. It’s not a question with a simple answer. You can break it up into a series of questions. Each a step on the way to the answer and each providing further questions. Part of “who am I” is his name. When Bourne goes to the bank and opens a safety deposit box, he finds a passport in the name of Jason Bourne. Now he knows what his name is, but the passport includes a new question. His address. “what kind of place do I live in?” And the safety deposit box contains a couple of other great questions. A gun, money, and other passports. These serve to ask the question – “What kind of person am I? The film is filled with questions. What kind of person has a bank account implanted in their hip? “How come I know the best place to find a gun is in the cab of the truck out there?” The more Bourne learns about himself, the more dangerous he becomes to Treadstone. The people that know who Bourne is, are the same people that are trying to kill him. Every clue he finds to his own identity, takes him to another step deeper into trouble. He cannot find out who he is without putting himself in danger.
The inciting incident in the Fugitive sets up the entire rest of the movie. Everything comes from the scene where his wife is murdered and the way his wife is murdered. Number 1. A one-armed man is sent to kill Dr. Kimble. But he’s not home. So the one-armed man kills his wife. Number 2. Kimble comes home, fights the one-armed man, who escapes. Number 3. Kimble’s wife dies and all the evidence points to Kimble as the killer. He’s the only one who saw the one armed man. Number 4. The rest of the film is Kimble searching for the one-armed man who killed his wife. He is the only one who believes his one-armed man exists. Number 5. No one will believe Kimble about the one-armed man - and there in lies the theme. Lieutenant Gerard doesn’t believe Kimble, but grows to believe him as the story goes on. Number 6. when he finally discovers the one-armed man, he also discovers that he, Kimble, was the intended victim. Because he discovered the false data in the drug research. The murder of his wife and the method by which she was killed, is what creates the entire rest of the story in the fugitive. The thing that sets the story in motion is too important to leave it to some random event. You really need to give it a great deal of thought, because it is the thing that creates the rest of the story, contains the theme the whole script will be exploring. Take the time to come up with the best concept for your thriller, a concept that explores the theme that you’re interested in.
4. Let’s Get to the Villain’s Plan.
You may have noticed that thrillers are similar to action films. The story’s kicked off by the antagonist, not the protagonist. In The Fugitive it’s the falsified drug research that kicks off the story. It creates the situation that Kimble must take care of. In Minority Report, it’s that odd murder that puts Tom Cruise in the cross hairs.
In North by Northwest, it’s the villain, the spy Van Dam, who kicks the story in motion by setting a trap for CIA agent George Kaplan that Cary Grant accidentally stumbles into. Now they all believe that he’s CIA George Kaplan, and he’s not. The antagonists plan, is more important than the protagonist’s goal. What is Cary Grant’s goal? To have a three martini lunch every day? Cop stories don’t begin with a detective deciding to go out and find a crime to solve. They begin with the antagonist committing a crime. The antagonist gets the ball rolling and the protagonist reacts.
Lies – about an actress who auditions for a role as a wealthy heiress, who’s confined to a mental hospital, only to discover that the antagonist has accidentally killed a real heiress, and need a woman who looks like her in order to claim the inheritance. The good news is the actress gets the roll, the bad news is she has to live the rest of her life in a mental institution. When she tries to tell the psychiatrist that she’s really an actress, hired to play the actress by scheming villains, they look at her like she’s crazy. It’s the roll of a lifetime. And it all began with the antagonist placing a casting call. The antagonist’s plan created the story. If you’re wondering why so many thriller films deal with serial killers. The answer is simple. Not only do you end up with a bigger movie, you end up with an antagonist with an active plan, instead of a passive plan. If the killer writes “stop me before I kill again on the mirror with red lipstick, the protagonist has to do something to stop him. A single murder launches the story, but then the villain is passive for the rest of the story. They have no plan. Plus there’s no real threat to the protagonist. They can’t be the next victim. You want you protagonist to be in danger, right? That’s what a thriller all about. So make a list of your favorite thrillers. What sparks the story? Who is the antagonist and what do they want? How does the protagonist get in the way of the antagonist’s plan?
5. Now let’s talk about ISOLATION.
On a basic level, thrillers are all about isolation and paranoia. It’s not by mistake that Insomnia takes place miles from civilization. Detective Al Pacino has to endure a long flight in a small plane in order to get to a snowbound town where local cop Hilary Swank may be the next victim of a serial killer who slowly kills his victims. Even if a thriller has an urban setting, like Rear Window, the story isolates the protagonist from society. When the story starts the protagonist is usually already partially isolated from society. Breakdown opens with the Taylor’s, Kurt Russell and Kathleen Quinlen on an endless stretch of highway, surrounded by miles and miles of nothing. They’re moving to a new city to start their lives all over again. But they leave behind all of their friends, all of their relatives. They leave behind their past. They don’t know anybody in their new home. They only have each other. In North by Northwest, Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is a glib liar with too many girlfriends and too many multi-martini lunches. He has no real friends except for his mother.
In The Lady Vanishes, Iris Henderson has left her college friends to hop a train through rural Europe so that she can marry a man she doesn’t love, and her friends really don’t like. In Three Days of the Condor, Turner (Robert Redford) is a bookworm - a guy who sits in a little room and reads for a living. How much more isolated from society can you get?
Isolation and character arc. The very thing that isolates your protagonist from society in the beginning of the story will come into play in the protagonist’s character arc. So be careful. In Three Days of the Condor, Turner ends up having to live the kind of spy adventure life that he reads about. In Breakdown, Taylor will be forced out of his middle class lifestyle and must adapt to the badlands in order to survive. In The Lady Vanishes, Iris is a spoiled rich girl who always gets her way, who can’t get a single person on the train to help her find the missing Miss Froid. In North by Northwest, Cary Grant is a liar by trade, who ends up being the boy who cried wolf. No one believes that he’s not CIA agent George Kaplan. Good stories begin with character and explore character. So the reason why your character has one foot outside of society when the story begins, is an aspect of character the rest of your story will be exploring.
In the Bourne Identity, the more Bourne finds out about himself, the less he likes himself - and the deeper into trouble he becomes. He starts off thinking that he’s a nice guy, but every new clue about his identity, makes him look more and more like a political assassin. He begins to fear himself, fear the kind of person that he really is. This gives Bourne an emotional core. It makes the story a struggle between his violent nature and his new self-image.
Physical Disabilities. There’s an entire sub-genre of thrillers about people who are isolated from society by a physical or emotional handicap. Jimmy Stewart is stuck in his wheel chair in Rear Window, unable to leave his second story apartment. In Wait Until Dark, Audrey Hepburn is blind. In the Spiral Staircase, Dorothy Maguire is a mute maid who can’t communicate with anyone – isolation - even where there are people around. There are dozens of films like Hear no Evil and See no Evil where the protagonist is deaf or blind or agoraphobic or maybe has crippling migraines. What isolates your protagonist from society before the plot kicks in? What aspect of your character will you have to deal with in the story? Remember...what isolates your protagonist form society? What aspects of his character will he have to deal in the story? These are the questions you need to know about.
6. Small sins.
Often a small sin leads the protagonist into trouble. In Breakdown Kurt Russell takes his eye off the road for a second to grab his thermos from the back seat and almost plows his car into the side of a pickup truck driven by the evil Earl. In Rear Window, Jimmy Stewart is watching people from across the courtyard through binoculars and witnesses what might be a murder. In Original Sin – Antonio Banderes lies about himself to his mail order fiancé. In Momentum, an out of workman takes twenty bucks from the pocket of a prosperous businessman who has fallen asleep in a movie theater. But the businessman isn’t asleep, he’s dead and in no time the pickpocket is wanted for murder. In Rear Window the audience knows that watching the neighbors across the courtyard is wrong. But basically, harmless. Watching Miss Torso do her exercises or the artist work on her sculpture is something we might do. Taking our eyes off the road for a second is something we might do. Once we take the audience that baby step over the line, it’s easy to yank them all the way when the threat escalates. Once you’ve seen what’s in the Thornwalls apartment through high-powered binoculars, sending the woman you love over to search for clues, doesn’t seem that far over the line. Before you know it, that small sin has lured you into big trouble.
7. Paranoia.
The other basic element in thriller is Paranoia. It’s not enough that you’re an outcast from society, it seems that people are really out to get you. In the beginning of most thrillers the audience isn’t sure whether the people really are out to get the protagonist, or if he’s just imagining it. Because a good thriller puts us in the protagonist’s shoes, we begin to wonder if the threat is real, or is it imagined. After almost hitting the pickup truck in Breakdown, Taylor pulls into a gas station and the pickup pulls in behind him. The dentally challenged Earl, threatens him. And when the Taylor’s drive off, the pickup truck follows. Is Earl out to get them? Or is he just going in the same direction? Suspense builds with every mile they travel.
In Three Days of the Condor, Turner goes out for lunch and is spared when killers massacre everyone in his office. When he uses a payphone to call CIA headquarters, everyone on the street seems to be watching him. Is that woman with the baby carriage a killer? In The Lady Vanishes, a potted plant falls from the windowsill and hits Iris in the head. Was that an accident?
In The Game, every single person on the street seems to be part of the game. Are they all in on it? Are they all part of it? Or is it just paranoia. Society turns against them. Everyone turns against the hero making him a lone man or woman, against the world. In Breakdown, Taylor’s wife has disappeared and everyone in the local diner gives him a hard time. Two guys at the counter tell him that his wife may be in the ladies room. When Taylor looks inside, he finds a drunk woman vomiting all over the place. “Be with you in a minute.” She says. The guys at the counter begin laughing. They knew what Taylor would find in the bathroom. The rest of the diner patrons begin making fun of his clothes. He’s a suburban man in cowboy country.
In North by Northwest, Thornhill tries to buy a train ticket at Grand Central station and the ticket agent keeps pestering him with questions about his dark glasses. Finally the ticket agent goes to get him a ticket, except really what he does is go to call the police. In the Lady Vanishes, no one will even admit to even seeing the vanished Miss Froid. The strange Italian family who sat next to her on the train car say they’ve never seen her before. The two traveling salesmen who passed miss Froid, the “sugar” in the dining car, claims that Iris was sitting alone. The Adulterous couple they had a conversation with in the hallway...they tell Iris to go away and slam their compartment door. No one will help the protagonist – even people who aren’t involved in the conspiracy will shun them.
There’s a logical reason for this. The Adulterous couple doesn’t want to call attention to themselves. The Italian family sitting next to Miss Froid are worried about their visas and the traveling salesmen don’t want to get involved in anything that might delay their business trip. From the point of view – not becoming involved makes sense. But from the protagonist’s point of view, it seems like the entire world is out to get them.
8. Insanity.
One reason why total strangers turn against the protagonist in a thriller –The protagonist is obviously crazy. In their desperation to survive they often say or do crazy things. To make matters worse, they always act crazy in front the police or authorities. Because we understand what their up against, these things make complete sense to us. But to an outsider, it appears as if the hero has lost their mind. In Breakdown, Taylor spots the trucker who kidnapped his wife, Red, played by the late J.T. Walsh. He flags down a highway patrol. Red says he never gave Taylor’s wife a ride in fact, he’s never seen Taylor before in his life. The patrolman searches the truck looking for some sign of Taylor’s wife and finds absolutely nothing. Taylor pushes the patrolman aside and searches the truck himself. Acting completely crazy, he’s tearing it apart. The patrolman actually has to pull him out of the truck and threatens to arrest him. In The Lady Vanishes, Iris threatens to stop the entire train unless the conductor helps her search for the missing Miss Freud. Not only has no one on the train seen Miss Freud, there isn’t a single trace of her on the train. Not a trace. Her luggage and her handbag are gone. The doctor on the train says it’s common for people to be delusional after receiving a blow to the head. Miss Freud is obviously a figment of her imagination, right? She’s crazy.
In Three Days of the Condor, Turner can’t get anyone at the CIA to believe he’s an agent. And he can’t get anyone outside of the CIA to believe he’s an agent. He’s a crazy man. A killer on the run who claims to work for a top-secret branch of the CIA where they read books all day. Yeah, right. In North by Northwest, Thornhill claims a group of total strangers tried to murder him with a bottle of bourbon and a sports car. The police escort him back to the scene of the crime, but the cabinet Thornhill says was filled with booze, is actually filled with books. And a sofa cushion, supposedly stained with spilled bourbon, is completely clean. Even his mother thinks the murder attempt is some sort of drunken delusion. “Pay the two dollars Roger.”
Removing authorities. In all four films there’s a scene where the authorities search for proof that the protagonist’s story is true and turn up nothing. In North by Northwest, Condor and Breakdown, that scene occurs 20-25 minutes into the film. In Lady Vanishes, which has a lengthy set up sequence in a hotel before the characters board the train, the scene where they discover Miss Freud never existed takes place about 20 minutes after boarding the train. Why do all four films have a similar scene at a similar point in the story? Is it some sort of thriller formula? Are they all copying off each other’s papers? Actually, it’s just effective storytelling. We need to find a way to remove the authorities from the equation, for the entire rest of the story.
If the protagonist can go to the police for help, the movie’s over. Or a policeman becomes the protagonist. The two most common ways to make sure the protagonist can’t go to the authorities, are to make them look crazy, or make them look guilty of murder. Or both. If the protagonist can get someone to help them, he can escape the conflict. And we can’t start act two until the protagonist is locked into the conflict with absolutely no escape. That’s why these scenes happen at the end of act one. The police and other authorities are symbols of society and order. And thrillers need to thrust the protagonist into chaos, in order to be affective. Insanity is the ultimate state of chaos, and an intersection between isolation and paranoia. The authorities believe the protagonist is insane and the protagonist believes the world around him has gone insane. The normal ways to resolve to problem will not work and the protagonist’s life continues spiraling completely out of control. The only escape is death.
9. Outcasts.
Like the boy who cried wolf, no one in a thriller believes the protagonist. In North by Northwest, even Roger Thornhill’s own mother doesn’t believe him. Roger Thornhill goes from being a popular advertising executive with too many girlfriends and plenty of drinking buddies to a complete pariah. No one wants to talk to him, no one want to be seen with him, he’s an outcast.
In Roman Polanski’s wicked thriller The Tenant, every resident of a high-rise apartment building in Paris signs a petition against one tenant. Our protagonist refuses to sign the petition because this tenant’s never done anything wrong to him. This immediately pits our protagonist against every other person in the apartment complex. From that point on, he’s the odd man out. And they make him feel like the odd man. And when they succeed in kicking out the other tenant, she shows up on the protagonist’s doorstep late at night to thank him. And to tell him she’s just spared him the punishment she’s just inflicted on every other person in the apartment complex. What punishment? She tells him that she “did it” in front of everyone’s door but his. Did what? He looks down the hallway and sees a pile of human waste in front of everybody’s door but his. No, no, no – they’ll think that he did it. When she leaves, he scoops up a little bit of crap and puts it in front of his own door, hoping this will help him fit in with the other people in the apartment complex. Of course it fails. They escalate the war against him. They break into his apartment – they dress him in drag while he’s sleeping – they taunt him – they turn his life into living hell.
With both society and the authorities against our protagonist, he has nowhere to turn for help and must resolve the conflict himself. This is difficult because the protagonist’s in thrillers aren’t very heroic. They’re not take charge guys. In Breakdown – when the dentally challenged Earl confronts Taylor at the gas station, and begins hurling taunts and insults, Taylor backs down from the argument and runs away. In Lady Vanishes she’s a spoiled rich girl used to buying off problems. She has the folk music expert evicted from her hotel room because he makes too much noise, but she can’t buy her way out of this problem. In three days of the condor, the only spine that Turner has is holding together the covers of his books. He has to run at the first sign of trouble. In Minority Report, Tom Cruise may be the head of his department, but he lets Colin Ferril’s character push him around. The hero in an action movie turns and fights. The hero in a thriller movie turns and runs. Before they can resolve their problem, they have to lose absolutely everything, including their lives.
10. Stripped and Reborn
You know what the first step is in being reborn? You gotta die. The protagonist in a thriller will lose all of the things that make up their life. They will be stripped of their worldly possessions. The things that identify them. In Breakdown, Taylor’s cell phone doesn’t work. He loses, his wife, loses his car – his car crashes into a river and floats away along with all of his luggage. Everything that makes him a middle class suburban American male is taken from him, leaving only the torn clothes on his back. In Three days of the Condor, Turner can’t go back to his apartment and his book collection. It’s being watched. He loses his bicycle, he loses his friends, he loses his colleges, and he ends up on the run, with only the clothes on his back. In Lady Vanishes, Iris loses her purse, she loses her luggage, she loses her seat on the train, she loses her place in society’s higher achy and her only friend on the train vanishes.
In North by Northwest – Thornhill is also on the run with only the clothes on his back. He’s even forced to use Eva Marie Saint’s little razor to shave with. In fact all the things that form Thornhill’s identity end up being used against him. Those three martini lunches? Thornhill is held down and forced to drink a bottle of liquor then tossed behind the wheel of a speeding car. Those anonymous business hotels? The entire hotel staff believes he is George Kaplan. Even his job description is a profession liar who no one will believe. Everything that creates the protagonist’s character is taken from him and then used against him. In the Game, Michael Douglas’s character is a powerful businessman until he begins playing the game. All of his power, and all of his money is taken away from him. His identity is gone. Bank accounts cleaned out, credit cards cut in half. His car, his house, his life, all corrupted by the game. He wakes up in Mexico with nothing but the shirt on his back. And he has to figure out how to get back into the United States without money or passport. A wealthy man who’s stripped of everything.
In both Minority Report and Bourne Identity, the protagonist’s are being hunted by the organizations that they are a part of. Using the resources that they’ve helped develop. The precog’s who helped Cruise find criminals, are now helping Colin Ferril find him. All of their tools are used against them. Up is down and down is up. Protagonists in thrillers lose everything that identifies them, and reach a point where they aren’t even sure who they are. In North by Northwest, Roger Thornhill feels compelled to identify himself to his own mother, as “Your son Roger Thornhill” as if she might not know who he is. Roger’s middle initial is zero. In Hitchcock’s Rebecca, the protagonist actually has no name. She’s only identified as the new Mrs. DeWinter. In Bourne identity, Matt Damon is found floating in the ocean by a fishing crew. He has no memory of who he is, nothing but the wetsuit on his back. A capsule surgically implanted in his hip contains a laser pointer with a Swiss bank account number. A safety deposit box at the Swiss bank contains a passport with the name Jason Bourne. Wait, who is Jason Bourne? A second compartment in the safety deposit box contains bundles of money from a variety of countries, plus a bunch of different passports. Each has a different name and a different nationality. And all have Matt Damon’s picture. Okay, now who is he? Bourne? Or one of these other names? He has lost his identity, and the more he searches, the more illusive his identity seems to be. It’s as if he were starting his life all over again. Reborn.
11. Doppelgangers and mistaken identities
Once your protagonist has shed their old identity, the embryo protagonist in a thriller is often forced to assume a new identity. Often a mistaken identity. In North by Northwest, everyone believes that ad executive Roger Thornhill is CIA agent George Kaplan. Even though Kaplan is much shorter and has dandruff. If that weren’t bad enough, he must pretend to be Kaplan for much of the story in order to keep the woman he loves alive. In Breakdown, Taylor is forced to pretend to be the wealthy donut king in order to get his wife back. The kidnapers would kill her if they found out he was just a typical suburbanite. In Three Days of the Condor, bookworm Turner is forced to become a CIA agent known as the Condor, in order to survive. That’s his code name, but he’s never really thought of himself as a spy before. Once Matt Damon accepts his identity as Jason Bourne, he’s forced to use another passport and another name to retrace his steps to the days before he was shot and dumped in the ocean. In Minority Report, Tom Cruises eyes are his identity. No matter where he goes, they can find him with a retinal scan. So he much change his identity, by changing his eyes. Yuck.
In Talented Mr. Ripley, Matt Damon’s Tom Ripley assumes the identity of Dickey Greenleaf in order to cover up a murder. In the second novel Ripley Under Water, he’s forced to assume the identity of artist Dewalt, in order to cover a forgery scheme. In the 3rd novel Ripley’s game, now a movie with John Malcovich as Ripley, the game, is to force a mild-mannered picture framer into becoming an assassin.
In Vertigo, Jimmy Stewart tries to dress up a working class shop girl to look like his dead love. A sophisticated society woman. He makes her dye her hair, dress like the dead girl, walk like the dead girl – Kim Novak has to become someone else. Someone who is dead. Dreams become nightmares. The protagonist must shed their identity as part of a trial by fire to purify them, so they can become reborn as someone else. They often become trapped in an alter ego. Forced to live a life that they’ve only dreamed of, but soon becomes a nightmare. In Antonio meets the Passenger, Jack Nicholson finds a way to escape all of his troubles when the man in the next hotel room next door to him dies. Nicholson swaps identities with him. He thinks he’s got a chance to start his life all over again. But instead, he’s just inherited a stranger’s problems, which are much, much worse then his own. In the 80s thriller Gotcha, young Anthony Edwards is a nerdy college student who wishes he was James Bond. While on vacation with his best friend in Europe, he meets a beautiful woman played by Linda Fiorentino, who’s a currier of information in and out of East Germany. Edwards gets to travel behind the iron curtain with her, and pretend to be a spy, but that backfires when she is captured and he is left with a top secret microfilm an a Russian assassin chasing him across Europe. What’s your protagonist’s new identity? How does the identity start out sounding kind of good “millionaire donut king” and end up being hell on earth?
12. Transfer of Guilt.
There’s often transference of guilt in a thriller film. The protagonist takes on the guilt of another character. In Strangers on a train, Guy wishes his wife were dead and gets his wish when the psychotic Bruno murders her. Bruno’s guilt is transferred to Guy. In Rear Window, Jimmy Stewart can’t tell anyone he’s seen a murder across the courtyard without admitting he’s a peeping Tom. The guilt of the killer reflects on Stewart. In David Koep’s Bad Influence, wimp James Spader wishes he were more like his aggressive pal Rob Lowe. His dreams turn to a nightmare when he’s accused of a murder Lowe committed. Now he must prove himself innocent, even though he’s done nothing wrong himself. In a thriller, you have to be careful what you wish for.
13. Don’t help me.
In order to show that there’s no one that the protagonist can trust, the helpful friend usually lures them into a deadly situation. In THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR, Turner’s best friend Wicks says he’ll meet him in an alley to bring him in to safety. But in reality it’s a set up, they’re going to kill him. In Breakdown, the mentally challenged Billy tells Taylor that he’s seen his wife. “They took her down by the river” When Taylor drives down to the river, he discovers it’s a trap designed to kidnap him and Billy isn’t quite as mentally challenged as he pretends to be. In North by Northwest, Eve tells Roger that Kaplan wants to meet him at the Prairie stop. When he gets there, he doesn’t find Kaplan, but he does find a crop duster flying where they’re ain’t no crops.
In Lady Vanishes, the doctor who offers to help Iris is really the mastermind behind the crime. These double crosses take place about 30-35 minutes into the story in both Condor and Breakdown. From that point on, we know that no one can be trusted. If you can’t trust your friends, the woman you love or a doctor, you can’t trust anybody. Anyone who does offer to help the protagonist is usually killed before they can do anything. In Breakdown, the policeman finally comes to believe that Taylor’s wife has been kidnapped by the trucker Red, and he’s immediately killed. In North by Northwest, Thornhill finds the one person who can prove that he was kidnapped and assaulted by villains with bourbon and in a sports car. Bassler Townshead. Proof that he’s innocent! But before they can get to the police, Townshead is killed by a knife thrower, and it looks like Thornhill’s the killer. Like the betrayal by a friend in Breakdown or Condor, this scene happens about 30-35 minutes into the story for the same reason. You have to remove any source of support for the protagonist, so he literally has no place to turn and he’s forced to deal with the problem himself.
In North by Northwest, even Cary Grant’s mother thinks that he’s just had too much to drink and imagined everything. “Just pay the two dollars Roger.” Anyone who offers to help the protagonist ends up either double-crossing them, or dying right before their eyes. Make a list of everyone your protagonist can go to for help. Then figure out how to illuminate them. You want your protagonist to be alone against the entire world.
Romantic traps. Love is a dangerous thing.
14. Deadly Paperclips. Just as friends can’t be trusted in a thriller, neither can every day objects you find around the house. I mentioned how in North by Northwest the very things that Thornhill uses in his day-to-day life become weapons against him - assault with bourbon and a sports car. The ordinary becomes deadly in a thriller. It is another aspect of society turning against the protagonist. In Condor, a mild-mannered mailman is really a deadly assassin. This is before that might have been considered normal. : ) This shows how much times have changed by the way. In the mid seventies, the least likely person to brandish an automatic weapon was a postal employee. Now it might the most likely. In Breakdown, the most common thing on the highway – big-rig trucks – they’re deadly. A quiet country barn is filled with the loot from dozens of carjack and murders. An old freezer in the basement? That’s what they put his wife in. In Family Plot, a garden hose becomes a deadly weapon when it’s attached to the tailpipe of a car and snaked through a window. In William Goldman’s Marathon Man, a baby carriage hides a bomb. Who would suspect a mother and child as assassin and weapon? In Bourne Identity, a savage fight between Bourne and an assassin uses items found on his office desk as weapons. At one point an ink pen is thrust deep into the assassins hand. Ouch. The pen may be mightier then the sword. The knife use to cut the daily bread is used for murder in Sabotage. And the knife used to cut a birthday cake is the murder weapon used in Brian DePalma’s Sister – gets shoved right down the leads throat. In Suspicion, a wholesome glass of milk contains slow acting poison. In Sabotage, a package carried by a ten-year-old boy, contains a bomb. In Notorious, wine bottles contain the uranium required to make an atomic bomb. You don’t know want to know what’s in the hatbox in Rear Window. Thought Swimming with Sharks is a thriller played for laughs, the executive’s assistant, used items found in the office, to torture his boss. Piercing him with paper clips, cutting him with paper – Ewww, the paper cut on the cut thing…ouch. In an action movie, the weapon used will most likely be a gun, in a thriller it might be as mundane as a hairdryer thrown into the bathtub, or a grocery bag pulled over somebody’s head. Paper or plastic. Come up with some everyday objects that can be used as deadly weapons.
Concealed by the Mundane. Things that seem innocent really have a sinister and often deadly purpose in a thriller. In Three Days of the Condor, the secret code is hidden in a paperback adventure novel. In North by Northwest, an art auction covers the delivery of top-secret microfilm. In the Lady Vanishes, the tune Miss XXX hums is really a musical code. In The 39 Steps, the sideshow memory expert has memorized top-secret airplane plans. In The Game, the typical office building contains an organization that can turn your life into living hell. In Bourne Identity, a music teacher is an assassin, and everything can be turned into a weapon. You not only can’t trust your friends in a thriller, you can’t trust your toaster. Things found in normal every day life are deadly, which means nothing can be trusted. You want the audience to worry about things they’ve taken for granted up until now. You want them to think about everything in life having a weird sinister purpose.
15. Cornered in act two. Eventually the protagonist will run out of places to run and hide. The antagonist will corner them and they must turn and fight in order to survive – this is the end of act two. The protagonist completely trapped without any hope for escape. Just as the authorities will be taken out of the equation to kick off act two of your thriller – the protagonist will be cornered and have no choice but to fight at the end of act two. When the protagonist assumes a new identity often happens at different points in different films. The other elements often happen at different points in act two – but these two were the constants. When I watched my stack of thriller films – the protagonist was severed from society at the beginning of act 2 and is forced to take charge at the end of act 2.
16. I Spy. Thrillers usually feature protagonists on the run evading danger – until they are finally corned and must turn and fight in order to survive. In Act 3 – They turn the tables on the villains and fight back. This usually begins with the scene where the protagonist spies on the villains, and discovers their real plan. In Breadown – about 20-25 minutes from the end – Taylor climbs into Red’s barn and spies on the villains. This is where he discovers they have been carjacking and killing travelers and plan to kill his wife Amy. In North by Northwest, 20-25 minutes from the end – Roger climbs the pillars of Van Dam’s house, spies on him and learns of their plan to throw Eve out of the airplane over the Atlantic Ocean. In Three Days of the Condor – 20-25 minutes from the end – Turner traces a phone call, listens in – and learns about Atwood – the shadow organization and it’s plan to corner the world’s oil market. In Lady Vanishes – Iris and Gilbert sneak into Dr. Hart’s sleeping car and unravel the bandages from the patients face. It’s the missing Miss Freud.
17. Reborn Protagonists. Now the protagonist puts his reborn stronger self to use stopping a villain’s plan - - usually in a series of big action set pieces – There’s a train chase and shoot out in The Lady Vanishes, that epic Mount Rushmore action sequence in North by Northwest – the car and truck chase and bridge crash in Breakdown…And Turner kidnaps the villain Higgins in Three Days of the Condor – and threatens him with exposure in the New York Times. In The Game – Michael Douglas grabs a gun and breaks into the game companies office where he discovers a mundane cafeteria filled with all the characters he met so far in the game. They’re all actors. The guy he killed? Alive, an actor. The salesman who signed him up? An actor, who alerts security that Douglas is here and that leads to a shootout with security officers in the cafeteria that turns into a roof top shoot out, which ends with Douglas accidentally shooting his own brother played by Sean Penn, then jumping off the roof to kill himself. The end? Not quite- it’s all a game.
18. Outsmarting the villain. One of the differences between an action film and a thriller is the way the protagonist deals with the antagonist. In an action movie – the hero vanquishes the villain with action - frequently violent action. In my book secrets of action screenwriting- I mention the exploding villain in action films. The hero often finds a way to blow up the villain into a million pieces. In a thriller, the hero often doesn’t vanquish the villain through violent action – but by outsmarting them. In Wait Until Dark, Audrey Hepburn realizes that her blindness is a disadvantage in the light – the villain can see her - but an advantage in the dark. So she shuts off the lights. In thrillers heroes often get the villains to admit to their crimes on tape or with the police nearby- or they turn the tables on the villains, and use their own evil plans against them. Thriller heroes tend to keep their hands clean, while their action hero counterparts get their hands dirty. Part of this is because thriller heroes are usually non-action characters – innocent folks who aren’t accustomed to violence. They’re more likely to solve a problem by being clever and outsmarting the villain. Brains instead of Braun. In Minority Report – Tom Cruise out smarts the villain, getting him to admit his crimes in public. The police may be there to arrest the hero, but he carefully turns the tables so they arrest the villains instead. The same thing happens in The Fugitive. Villains ought to take off their wireless microphones before they start admitting evil deeds. Thrillers often end with villains arrested by the police when the hero sets a trap for them. Or the villains own scheme backfiring on them. In Breakdown, evil trucker Red tries to kill the hero with a truck, that truck and the hero’s wife, crashes through the guardrail on a bridge and dangles hundreds of feet over rocky gorge. After the hero rescues his wife, the villain tries to throw him off the truck into the gorge, but that backfires and Red falls hundreds of feet to the rocks below. Splat. Then the truck falls down on top of him. Double splat. Red’s crime method becomes the very thing that kills him. In Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy – the police discover the wrongly accused hero in a room with the latest victim of the necktie killer. His best friend tells the police that he saw the hero kill the woman, but the hero points out that his best friend isn’t wearing a necktie. The friend may be pointing the finger at the hero, but four fingers point back at himself. Once the protagonist has vanquished the villain, they usually do not go back to their old life. They’ve survived the trial by fire and been reborn as a stronger more confident person. They find a new life, a better life. The transformation is complete and we fade out.
No comments:
Post a Comment