SURPRISE, SUSPENSE AND VIOLENCE
Last semester I
taught an undergrad screenwriting course at a college in Los Angeles with 13
students, nine of whom were girls and four were boys. The girls were interested
in character and story. All four boys were trying to be Quentin Tarantino. Poor
Quentin Tarantino. To think he’s going to have all that competition. On the
other hand, he needn’t worry because none of these four young hopefuls had a
clue what it means to be Quentin Tarantino. They all thought it meant to write
lots and lots of violence.
Actually, a
computer could do that quite easily. But it wouldn’t be a script, it wouldn’t
have a story or characters, and it wouldn’t capture what makes Quentin
Tarantino so special. His incredible talent is not writing violence, it’s
writing the longest, quietest, most compelling scenes and sequences of suspense
imaginable. It’s impending violence that puts us on the edge of our seat, not
the explosions and blood that might follow.
No one has written
a more nerve-racking, spine-tingling experience than the opening sequence of “Inglorious
Basterds.” In it the renowned “Jew-hunter” Nazi Colonel Landa (Christoph Waltz)
spends a long, long time chatting with French farmer LaPadite. Meanwhile we in
the theater can hardly breathe it is so suspenseful. Why? Because the camera
dollies down beneath the floorboards, and we see huddled there in the grimy
depths the Jewish Dreyfus family. If we didn’t know they were there there’d be
no suspense. But once we know, we dread what’s inevitably coming. We can’t wait
to get it over with while simultaneously praying it will never happen. It gets
more and more unbearable. And over time we relate and identify more and more with
the people under the floor. They are us and we are them, as Col. Landa slowly and
casually breaks down the farmer’s reserve, playing on his fear, making him
understand the Nazis can keep coming back to his house or never bother him
again.
Oh, my God! It’s
getting closer. No! No! With a look, the farmer gives away the location of the
family. Landa begins to leave. Maybe he didn’t notice. Maybe we’re free. The tension
is relieved. And then…in the best Hitchcockian tradition, just when the tension
has been relieved, the climax hits. Landa’s Nazi
soldiers pour in and fire hundreds of rounds through the floorboards.
They kill all the
Dreyfus family except for one young girl who escapes. And who takes us along with
her into the movie that follows. It was all a preamble to a whole different
story. But one we’ll never forget.
It took me a page
to describe the sequence in detail, but it must be at least 15 minutes, maybe
twice that in the movie. That is the genius of Quentin Tarantino. He holds us
in the palm of his hand for as just long just as he likes. He can have two
characters discuss what they call Big Macs in Paris and we lap it up because we
know, he’s made us know, something sinister lurks around the next bend in the
road.
In a much nicer,
more civilized kind of way, it’s just what Alfred Hitchcock did in over 50
films over some 50 years. He invented many of the techniques that have become
the norm in Hollywood films. The Jews under the floorboards come right out of
Hitchcock’s boy unwittingly carrying a bomb onto a crowded bus.
We, the audience,
need to know what the potential for violence is if we’re going to be affected
by it, that is, if we’re going to feel the suspense. Hitchcock said he didn’t
make mysteries. That isn’t true. He often did make mysteries. But he always
made moves rife with suspense.
Screenwriters have
choices to make time and again. Do you want to create surprise or suspense?
Both are good in movies. The best surprise is the one we almost saw coming but
not quite. It is inevitable while also completely unexpected. That’s how movie
climaxes should feel when they’re working at their best. But surprise has its
limitations. It only last a few seconds. We all gather in a room with Harry’s
wife, turn off the lights and wait. The door opens and Harry enters, and we
flip on the lights and all yell, “Surprise!” But then we see Harry has entered with
his arm around his girlfriend. We’re the ones surprised. Especially Harry’s wife,
who’s so mad she pulls out a gun and shoots him dead. Surprise! Wow – three surprises
in less than a minute. Pretty good writing there.
But the problem
with surprises is they only last a few seconds. It took three of them to fill
up less than a minute. Whereas suspense, as practiced so wonderfully by Quentin
Tarantino, can last a lifetime. Or at least many minutes until it’s paid off,
and we suffer through all those minutes. In a good way. And remember it for a lifetime. Since what we, an
audience, want to experience in a movie is everything we don’t want to
experience in our own lives. But that’s a topic for another blog post.
-
Bob Shayne
