The Central Dramatic Question

  1. published in Script magazine, November 2002

A wonderful Saturday Night Live sketch begins with the very last scene of It’s a Wonderful Life, as George Bailey and friends have their Christmas toast. But the sketch doesn’t end with the bell ringing and Clarence getting his wings — instead, a member of the crowd shouts “Let’s go kick Mr. Potter’s ass!” and the revelers charge off to find the despotic Potter. Cut to Potter’s office, and the angry mob throws him from his wheelchair and proceeds to beat the unholy crap out of the old cripple. The violence reaches an absurd level as it becomes obvious they’re beating a stuffed dummy. The dummy bit is actually unnecessary, because it’s quite a funny premise to begin with. Twisted, but very funny.

Why does this sketch work? Because anyone who’s seen It’s a Wonderful Life a time or two can attest to the presence of a nagging little question. You know the one: “What about Potter?” He was the villain of the story, a true “scurvy spider” of an Antagonist, but the climax does not find him getting his due — our Protagonist does not triumph over the Antagonist. Potter just disappears. Huh?

But yet the movie works. In fact, it sports one of the great film endings: “A toast to my big brother George. The richest man in town. ” Brings a tear to my eye, every time. Last Christmas season, I caught it twice on cable and it brought two more tears. So why does it work?

Because it answered the Central Dramatic Question of the story:

Will restless dreamer George Bailey escape from boring Bedford Falls to a life of adventure and wealth — or will he find satisfaction in his hometown?

This question keeps popping up, as George is forced to take over the Savings & Loan, as George gets married and has children, as George gets the glamorous job offer from Potter. What about George’s dream, we continue to ask? The ending gives us the answer. He doesn’t need that dream, because a man is wealthy who has friends. End of story. Alas, Potter does not need to have his ass kicked all over town. As gratifying as that may have been. Let’s look at some other strong uses of the Central Dramatic Question...

RAINMAN
(screenwriters Barry Morrow and Ronald Bass)

Perhaps like the dangling question of the fate of Mr. Potter, Rainman starts by asking “Will Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) come to terms with his father?” Considering that his father has just died (the inciting incident), Charlie has some extreme conflict to face in pursuit of reconciliation. The story continues and this issue is never directly shown to be resolved, but with no negative story repercussions because Charlie’s main question, the Central Dramatic Question of the story, later becomes “Will he bond with his brother Raymond?” Charlie Babbitt’s character arc is so strong that by the end we know he’s changed to the point that he’s overcome his father complex. The resolution to the original question is assumed.

CITIZEN KANE
(Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles)

The most famous Central Dramatic Question in film history is probably “Who/what is Rosebud?” from Citizen Kane. This question is raised in the very first scene of the film, and not answered until the final scene. A beautiful, perfect use of this structural device.

Both Rainman and Kane as examples might lead one to think that the Central Question is best used in films that focus on a complex portrait of one central character. Perhaps. But they can also apply to straightforward comedies and thrillers.

A good general rule is that the Central Question should be introduced as early as possible, best when in the opening and at the latest the end of Act One (page 28-32 in the screenplay). A more complex film may contain two Central Questions, the second one to be introduced at the Midpoint, but it is always best to keep the first one in play to maintain driving momentum until the climax. A classic example of this would be The Wizard of Oz — we always wonder “Will Dorothy get home to Kansas?” even when at the Midpoint the Great Oz tells her she must bring back the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the East. From that point, we also want to know “How will she defeat the witch and get the broomstick?” but it’s all leading to the climax of her coming home. Thus, the true climax is really her leaving on the balloon and waking up from her dream, not the melting of the Wicked Witch — because it answers the first Central Question.

CITY SLICKERS
(written by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel)

We ask “Will Mitch (Billy Crystal) find his smile?” which is another way of asking if he will get over his midlife crisis and find his path in life. The path he chooses to take at the end of Act One is that of an Old West-style cattle run — we wonder how he’ll survive this adventure. The climax has him risking his life in a rainstorm, roping Norman the calf like John Wayne and saving the animal from a rushing river. The very last scene definitively answers the Central Question when he points to his own grin and tells his wife “Look what I found.”

But we have to be careful the question gets answered. Let’s move on to some more recent examples, complete with huge plot spoilers so feel free to skip over those films you haven’t seen...

CAST AWAY
(written by William Broyles, Jr., director Robert Zemeckis)

Perhaps the issue of the Central Question is why I found the ending of Cast Away a bit unsatisfying. Because for me, the question was “Will Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) survive this ordeal?”, or perhaps if you’re judging by the opening scene which shows him lecturing about time, “Will Chuck Noland win his battle with time?” But although his love interest was an issue on my mind, I did not feel it was the driving question of the entire story; his search for love was a parallel line of action, not the main throughline. Thus when in the climax Chuck finally meets the mysterious woman behind the “wings” package and there is a definite romantic spark, this seemed to answer the question “Will Chuck Noland find his one true love?” I felt a bit cheated, as the whole time thing was seemingly dropped. Or maybe this scene was more an epilogue and the climax was the scene in the rain with his former girlfriend Kelly (Helen Hunt)? But that scene also exists on the love interest line of the story, not the main throughline of Chuck’s battle with time. So maybe the true climax of the story occurs when Chuck is rescued at sea? But that’s the end of Act Two! Or maybe they intended for him returning the “wings” package to be the climax — but that was such an inevitable, ultimately predictable moment that it lacked dramatic power for me. Perhaps a stronger final climax would have been Chuck’s choice of a new occupation, one that shows his triumph over his obsession with time? Retirement home activities coordinator? We can only muse.

I enjoyed the film, regardless of my hanging questions. It’s just that I still have an unsettled feeling about that ending. I’d like to take another look at the film, but it seems to me that the focus of the film was a survival story, not a love story. And if his main dramatic conflict involved loneliness, then why not SHOW Helen Hunt’s new family actively instead of just in photos? Why not give her three kids, two twin girls and a boy, maybe, to amplify the conflict for Tom Hanks? And didn’t this conflict need to build to a truly extreme breaking point, like Tom and Helen being found in a loving embrace by her husband?!

Perhaps we need a twisted comedy sketch to resolve these questions? Somebody get me the writer’s room at Saturday Night Live on line two! Or Dreamworks, either one will do. So, ahem, while that’s dialing, let’s move on...

UNBREAKABLE (written by M. Night Shyamalan)

In my opinion, one of the worst failures in this department in recent years is M. Knight Shyamalan’s Unbreakable. If you’ve seen the film, you know about the “surprise ending” in which Elijah reveals he is in fact a supervillain of sorts because he intentionally caused at least three deadly disasters, one of which was Dunn’s train crash. This scene does indeed take us by surprise, and seems to answer any number of questions, examples being:

  1. “What is Elijah’s function in David Dunn’s life?”
  2. “What is Elijah’s true goal?”
  3. “Is there a supervillain to Dunn’s superhero?”
  4. “Were these three accidents we heard about actually caused by a lone terrorist?”

The revelation certainly answers these questions, but the big problem remains: WE WERE NEVER ASKING THESE QUESTIONS. Questions 1 and 2 never occur to us because Elijah is not the Protagonist, and we already have a convincing goal for him, in that he is a comic book fanatic and he has combed the Earth’s media looking for any sign of a superhero. Interesting enough for me, I didn’t need more.

Question 3 would have been better answered with action — SHOW us an active conflict with Dunn’s arch-villain rather than restrict it to dialogue. (I personally found Dunn’s actions at the family house versus the psycho to be totally unsatisfying; too dark in tone and ultimately ambiguous) And Question 4 never occurs to us because Dunn’s accident and the two others are merely spoken about, not shown, and they don’t continue to place conflict on Dunn in the main story engine. The train wreck is essentially dropped as a story device after it functions as an inciting incident.

If you were like me, you were probably asking questions like this:

We get no concrete answers to these questions. In my humble opinion, I think it was a critical misfire that Shyamalan made a comic book movie that features only one scene of action, which is dark and ambiguous at best. But hey, that’s just me — apparently a lot of people really enjoyed the film and the risks it took. I applaud M. Knight for taking those risks, but I think he was ultimately unsuccessful due to basic story problems and an adherence to concepts that just could not work on film. In fact, my most prevalent question while watching the film was “Why doesn’t Bruce Willis just hit himself with a hammer and see if it hurts?” Then there’d be no reason to drag it out for two hours. But hey, it’s a movie — whattayagonnado?

Speaking of Mr. Shyamalan, let's move on to his strongest work — a quick thought on the very effective...

THE SIXTH SENSE
(written by M. Knight Shyamalan)

Now, maybe you’re saying “But hey, when I watched The Sixth Sense I wasn’t asking if Bruce Willis was a ghost!” Maybe not, but weren’t you wondering “How will Malcolm come to terms with his wife?” The revelation that he is dead shows us that he can now let go of that turmoil — it is truly time for him to go, his work is done (especially because the previous scene has shown us the answer to the parallel dramatic question “Will Cole finally talk to his mother?”). Goal achieved, questions answered, fade out.

The answer to the Central Dramatic Question should be surprising. If it’s predictable, it might not work. Even if the answer is simple, the how it’s shown should be unpredictable.

LEAVING LAS VEGAS
(screenplay Mike Figgis)

Here we ask “Will Ben drink himself to death?” In the end — yep, he dies. But the surprise is that he dies while making love for the first and last time to his love Sera. We didn’t quite see that one coming. Or maybe for those of us expecting him to be saved a la Hollywood convention, it is truly a surprise when he dies. (Alternative theory: maybe the surprise is that she is actually the protagonist?)

MAGNOLIA
(written by Paul Thomas Anderson)

How are all these people linked? The answer is the climax: “a rain of frogs” (duh, how else would they be linked?!). In addition to the impossibility of predicting said rain of frogs, P.T. Anderson fakes us out in that he leads us to believe they are all linked through the TV game show, especially when we find out late in the film that Earl Partridge (Jason Robards) was the original producer of the show. At least that’s how I saw it, but I really enjoyed the film while I’ve met many others who felt it was tedious (feel free to insert your own heated opinion of Magnolia, the film that loves to divide the human race).

FIGHT CLUB
(screenplay Jim Uhls)

The opening of Fight Club shows us Edward Norton’s Narrator being held at gunpoint by the devilish Tyler Durden. We ask “How will Ed Norton beat Tyler Durden and survive this situation?” By the end of Act One, we’re also wondering “Will Ed Norton learn to ‘let go’ like Tyler is trying to teach him?” The climax is the answer to both of these questions — in shooting himself with the pistol Ed Norton gives us the ultimate act of letting go AND simultaneously destroys Tyler Durden (his alter-ego).

The Central Dramatic Question can be directly related to the protagonist’s external (plot) goal, but it doesn’t have to be. George Bailey does not escape Bedford Falls in the climax, but rather he comes to terms with his own place in the town. So his goal of “getting out of town” is not achieved, but we’re still satisfied because the question of “How will he solve his internal dilemma?” has been answered.

So maybe then, the Central Dramatic Question is related more to the internal goal of the protagonist rather than the external goal? Perhaps, but if the internal only comes about at the midpoint, then what’s driving the action prior to that and holding our interest?

An interesting question.


-Daniel Calvisi
www.actfourscreenplays.com
copyright © Daniel Calvisi 2005-2006

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