The Town: ticking bombs of suspense

I had planned on using a particular scene in The Town as the subject for today's post. Then I read Roger Ebert's review and found that he opened with a several paragraph discussion of that very scene. As there had been a suggestion that both Scott Myers and I would cover The Town in separate posts, I lamented in a discussion thread on Go Into The Story that I might have to go back to the drawing board.

Fortunately, Nate Winslow came to the rescue when he posted this:

"That bit about the tattoo-covering moment with Doug/Claire/Jem? That's a popular moment, apparently: I was planning on using that as an example for MY write-up on the movie haha. In my studying of the various versions of that script that I found, that bit wasn't in any of them. Neither is the moment of seeing Jem's tattoo during the robbery itself. So, whoever stuck that in there on a last minute revision is a genius."

Viola! I had my topic!

For those not in the know, here's the set-up: A gang of four guys in Charlestown have been pulling several robberies. On their latest bank hit, the hot-headed Jem (Jeremy Renner, who will always be Penn from Angel to me) takes along assistant manager Claire (Rebecca Hall) as a hostage before soon releasing her. Now he's worried that she can identify them once he finds out that she lives in their neigborhood. He's prepared to kill her as a preemptive measure.

The more level-headed Doug (Ben Affleck) offers to check up on her and make sure she isn't a risk. He ends up romancing her and soon Doug is trying to keep his partners from finding out about his new girlfriend even as he's keeping the truth from her. Claire talks to him about the robbery and mentions a detail she didn't tell the FBI - a distinctive tattoo on the back of one of the robber's necks. We - and Doug - know she's talking about Jem's tattoo, and if Doug was truly keeping his agreement with Jem, he'd kill her for that.

The scene that Roger, Nate and I are all over the moon about comes about midway through the script. Jem confronts Doug while he's out with Claire. Though Jem is outwardly polite to Claire, he sends some clear subtext to Doug along the lines of "Why are you dating the one girl who could nail us to the FBI? What else are you hiding?" Worse, Doug knows that the instant Claire sees that tattoo, the pieces are going to fall into place - and then things can only end badly from there.

The tension hits fever pitch and the directing does an excellent job of making us empathize with Doug's tight spot. It's a rare film that can make an audience hold their breath just with one scene of three people talking. This is the perfect example of the sort of suspense I talked about back here. There's a bomb in that scene and we don't know when it's going to go off.

The secret of the tattoo is so critical to the tension among all three characters that it's hard to believe what Nate says above, that it wasn't in an earlier draft. Here's just a quick look at what that tattoo means:

- Claire can identify at least one of the robbers.
- Thus, when Doug finds out what she knows he's actively defying Jem's orders to kill her if she's able to expose them.
- In turn, this means that Doug's ass is on the line and he has to keep Claire from finding out the truth because not only does that put her at risk, but it means she will find out who he is too.

Without that tattoo, there's not much to push it to the boiling point. Sure, Jem might eventually decide that Claire is too great a risk for them to chance, but if she can't identify him, then his motivations for killing her are inaccurate. It works so much better when she actually could figure out who he is. It opens the door to her figuring out Doug's true identity on her own, or perhaps identifying Jem herself and somehow escaping in time to notify the FBI.

Having that secret makes Claire a more active part of the story rather than just a love interest for Doug and a target for Jem. Her actions have a more direct chance to change the game rather than just being a plot device for conflict between the two robbers. It's one of my favorite things about this movie. And it took a rewrite to find that moment.

Let that be a lesson - you can always push an idea further. Find that twist that elevates a character from plot device to player, the moment that makes the stakes that much higher and multiples the ways things can go really wrong.

I have to say, I liked this movie a lot. That's an impressive feat when you consider that I read far too many scripts about Irish guys from "the neighborhood" who think of each other like brothers and fancy themselves master thieves. (The Boondock Saints has a helluva lot to answer for. Remind me to punch Troy Duffy in the face next time I see him.) Done wrong, this could have been like scripts I read several times a month. I'm sick of reading this genre, so if anyone was going to come into this film with their teeth sharpened, it's me.

So here's my plea to all of you: if you liked The Town, please emulate its storytelling rather than its subject. The world doesn't need another script about Irish hoods trying to make the big score unless it's a DAMN good one.

Subtle suspense

I've finally been about to get around to re-watching season 2 of Everwood, which as I've probably said before, is one of the greatest character-based series ever written. The series is the brain child of Greg Berlanti - who cut his teeth on Dawson's Creek, and has a new series called No Ordinary Family premiering this week on ABC. (He's also one of the writers of the forthcoming Green Lantern movie.)

The show is built around Andy Brown, a renowned brain surgeon who seems to be one of the most famous of his brethren. When his wife suddenly dies, Andy reevaluates his priorities and suddenly uproots his two children from their New York life and moves to a small town in Colorado called Everwood.

The folks in this sleepy hamlet are beside themselves with the arrival of this "celebrity" and the first episode uses their reactions to let us know just how big a deal Andy is. It's hard to imagine them more impressed if Stephen Hawking took up residence there. But none is more impressed than 15 year-old Amy Abbott. She's the most popular girl in her grade, and quickly latches on to Andy's son Ephram. Being a teenage boy, Ephram welcomes the attention - and then she reveals she's got an agenda.

See, Amy's boyfriend Colin was in an accident several months earlier. Now he's in a coma and Amy is convinced that "the great Andy Brown" is his last hope. Midway through the season, Andy is persuaded to try a risky operation in the hopes of saving Colin. In what seems to be a miracle, Colin wakes up. For a while he seems to be his old self, but soon mood swings and tremors reveal that there have indeed been complications. Andy is convinced to operate again, but it's clear that there is a very real chance that Colin won't survive this surgery. The final episode of the first season builds up to that surgery. We experience the agony of the wait of those in the waiting room, along with seeing Andy scrub in for surgery.

The final scene of the show features Andy emerging from surgery to face those in the waiting room. They give expectant looks, and Andy appears weary, exhausted. The season ends with Colin's fate ambiguous. Did he die? Did he survive with complications? Did he pull through?

The first scene of the next season opens at a pool luau and in a sneaky bit of suspense, each main character is reintroduced in the course of the scene. It's a great way to toy with the audience. We see everyone turn up, nothing is said of Colin's fate and we find ourselves waiting to see if Colin proves to be among the crowd. Then, one character bumps into someone from behind. They turn - and it's Colin.

So the audience likely exhales their tension, relieved that the story got a happy ending. Then the show kicks us in the gut again. He speaks to Amy, and then fades out. We find ourselves at his funeral. He didn't make it.

It's a nice series of mini-reveals. The first scene casually reintroduces the characters, knowing we'll be scrutinizing their arrivals and their behaviors for clues as to Colin's fate. I remember seeing another show where the opening scene featured the aftermath of a car crash and from the reactions of those on site, it's clear that one of the main characters was killed. Cut to a local hangout - one by one the leads of the show are featured. The audience realizes they're subconsciously taking a head-count, figuring out who's missing... until we realize who isn't there.

The Everwood example is even better because the scene avoids the trap of feeling like a dream scene. Most of the time when a show does a fake-out dream sequence, it tips its hand early on. It'll have characters clearly acting out of character, or something happen that is clearly impossible. Here, the moment is a mundane daydream - nothing truly calls attention to the scene as being out of place. Not only does it make Colin's appearance a relief, the truth becomes that much more of a gut-punch because we're truly taken off-guard.

It's moments like these that lead to the fans at Television Without Pity coining the phrase, "Damn you, Berlanti!"

Suspense

Last week I cautioned that it's not often a good idea to let the audience get too far ahead of the characters in the story. Many times, it can be frustrating for a viewer to have to wait for the characters to "catch up" to them, resulting in a less compelling viewing experience. However, I'd say there's at least one very good exception to that rule. I'll yield the floor to Alfred Hitchcock, master of suspense.

"There's no emotion in a who-dun-it because you withhold information from an audience. The element of suspense is giving them information.

"[Suppose] you and I are sitting here . . . . suddenly a bomb goes off and up we go, blown to smithereens. What have the audience had while watching this scene? Five or ten seconds of shock. Now we do the scene over again, it's a five minute scene. You and I are talking about football, something very innocuous, but the audience are informed by a method unknown to us that there's a bomb under the table and it's going to go off in five minutes.

"Now this innocuous conversation about football becomes very potent. 'Don't talk about football, there's a bomb under there,' that's what they want to tell us, as the bomb ticks away and we keep telling the audience there's a minute to go; half a minute and finally ten seconds. That is when it must not go off. If we let it go off, the audience will be as mad as hell with us, they'll be disgusted. They'll say, "Don't go and see that movie or that play".Your toe MUST touch the bomb at the last minute, you must look under the table, grab the bomb and throw it out of the window, then it can go off; but you and I must be saved. An audience needs that relief after you've put them through the ringer."

(Source: http://www.on-cue.org.uk/articles16.html, originally published in 'Heard in the Wings" edited by Roderick Bloomfield, 1971.)

The key thing to remember here is to take advantage of the suspense that is generated when the audience is ahead of the characters. One such example I remember well is the reaction the multiplex crowd had the first time I saw Air Force One. The premise is that terrorists have taken over the President's plane, and unbeknownst to anyone, one of the Secret Service agents is a turncoat who has aided the terrorists in taking over the plane. For much of the first half, this agent is with all the other hostages, as if he was one of them.

Then comes the moment when Harrison Ford, playing the President, gets to the hostages. Guess who he gives his extra weapon to? The Turncoat Agent. I don't think I've ever heard an audience react so aggressively as when Ford gives his enemy a weapon. It felt like the whole room was shouting "NO!" They knew that it wouldn't end well.

Basically, if your viewer is ahead of the audience, craft scenes that has characters making fatal mistakes that they wouldn't make if they knew what the audience did.