One of the things you try and learn while writing a screenplay is how people really talk in real life. People often don’t say exactly what they mean, instead, they use something called subtext which is defined as: the underlying or implicit meaning, as of a literary work. Very often a look, or the rolling of the eyes says everything in a scene and you should not try and make anything too obvious or it just gets too boring. The boring form of dialogue in movies is known in the industry as “On the nose dialogue”.
There is nothing boring in “Silver Linings Playbook” that came out in 2012. You know within the first few minutes that this was a special movie and that most if not all of the actors in it would be recognized for a great performance, especially Jennifer Lawrence who won the academy award for her part as the manic and disturbed girlfriend of the main character played by Bradly Cooper and also the wife of a man who was tragically killed. Robert Deniro plays Cooper’s father in this movie and the movie begins as Cooper’s character returns home after some months in a mental hospital for beating up the man who had an affair with his wife. This movie gives a rare insight into the subject of mental illness not only with Cooper and his new girlfriend but also with Cooper’s father who is an obsessive gambler and actually believes that certain repeated events must happen in order for him to win his sports team bets, mostly with the Philadelphia Eagles.
The screenplay for this film was written by David O. Russell, and it’s outstanding throughout. This film is one of the rare examples of a movie that has moments of extreme drama and comedy. You knew immediately when I saw the scene at the Diner with Lawrence and Cooper that Jennifer Lawrence would win the Academy Award because her performance in that one scene was so compelling. (see movie clip below). The scene towards the end of the movie with Lawrence “doing her homework” was also great. (last clip)
Silver Linings Playbook is a must-see movie, and it gets my highest recommendation.
Eddie Murphy has had probably one of the most successful and unusual show business careers of all time. He was as big as anyone ever has been in when he was only 18, having made the cast of Saturday Night Live in the early 80’s and arguably was the only reason why the show survived. Soon after this, he made big movie hits like “48 Hours”, “Trading Places” and his biggest hit, “Beverly Hills Cop” which came out in 1984. Then after 1984 he never reached the level of those movies again. Most of his following movies were either bad or at most average and the Beverly Hills Cop franchise was ruined by “Beverly Hills Cop 3”, which is considered by most a pretty bad movie. Beverly Hills Cop 2 looks like it was made entirely for the money and did not have the quality or great humor from the first film. In 2006 Murphy made “Dream Girls” and was nominated for an Academy Award for the best supporting actor, which I thought he should have won. The rumor was he was very angry that he didn’t win. Since then he has not made that many movies and the ones he did make were just small parts, perhaps because he was disgusted with the movie business or his attempt to be a serious actor met up with some very serious opposition in Hollywood. Perhaps because of the confusion of being a father to no less than 9 children with 5 different women.
The movie Mr. Church is the first 100% serious role Murphy has ever done in his entire career. It’s a very small film in limited release and I was impressed with the acting in this film given the subject matter which has a lot to do with cancer and dying. The story is highly unusual. Murphy is hired as a cook to work for a single mother and her 10-year-old daughter for 6 months and he is being paid by some benefactor who is never introduced in this film or fully explained. The mother is dying of breast cancer and due to some miracle is able to live longer than her original six-month diagnosis. Over the course of the film, we find out that Mr. Church has a very bad childhood involving a very abusive father, which causes him to be very secretive and an alcoholic. There are several scenes where Murphy comes home very drunk and reenacts arguments with this father which are very well acted. Church is also a chain smoker and one serious flaw in this movie was the constant scenes where Murphy is smoking. Once again, I had to wonder if cigarette companies were involved producing in this movie in some way and I thought it was very unnecessary to show this much smoking in scene after scene. Hopefully one day all smoking in movies will be banned, but we are a long way from that day. At least in this movie, the end result of smoking and health are at some point revealed.
The daughter in this film is played very well by Britt Robinson, who has been in several quality movies lately, including in 2015 “The Longest Ride”, which is also reviewed in this blog. Her mother is played by Natascha McElhone and her role is the most depressing part of the movie as she slowly dies over a period of 7 years of breast cancer. This is not a movie for anyone who recently lost someone to cancer or who has cancer themselves and the majority of this movie is depressing, but the acting and the story is good overall.
There are some rumors of Eddie Murphy being considered for an Academy Award for this movie and I am in agreement that he should at least receive a nomination. Murphy has finally proved that his career in movies should include more than just comedy roles and he should be considered for dramatic movies as well. I recommend this film, but be prepared for depressing moments.
The 4th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
When the Edward Snowden story came out in 2013, my first thought was, why is this such a big deal? Of course, the CIA and the NSA are spying on everyone in the entire world. We had a terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, and because of this, the world had changed. After September 2001 the world now included a group of people who want to do nothing more than murder all Americans and other free people around the world. They are willing to do this in any way possible, including blowing themselves up to kill themselves and many other innocent people. In fact, these terrorists not only do not fear death, they want to die because they believe that they will go to paradise if they kill people for their cause. Our only real defense against this level of evil is to prevent it from ever happening in the first place. The only way to prevent terrorism is to spend massive amounts of money on surveillance counterterrorism and spying. At the time all of this made sense to me, but what didn’t make sense was why was Edward Snowden was such a big story and now being called a traitor? To me, all Snowden did was point out what we already must have known was happening; that there were massive levels of spying and surveillance going on for all cell phones, emails social media and all other forms of communication between all people in the entire world. The reason for this was simple; we had to stop large numbers of people from being killed by terrorists. One line that really stood out for me in this movie is that with the connections of people around the world if you go three people deep into a series of links, that this can be a total number of people as high as 2.5 million.
What the new Oliver Stone movie “Snowden” points out is that this story is not simple at all and is fundamentally very complicated because when does massive spying to save lives go too far? Is it possible to save lives and at the same time not infringe on the basic constitutional rights of all Americans? Is it even feasible to regulate what the NSA and CIA are allowed to see, or hear and at the same time still be able to do their jobs of protecting American lives? If someone finds out that major Government Agencies are blatantly violating the 4th Amendment, is it a crime to report them as breaking the law? Clearly, the United States thought that what Snowden did was a crime, and because of this if he ever returns to this country he will be put in jail, possibly for life. To escape this, both he and his girlfriend will be living in Moscow for the rest of their lives and as Americans, this must be rather unbearable for them.
The story of Edward Snowden, played very well by Joseph Gorden Levitt is a highly unusual one. He was a poor young man, born in 1983 who had to drop out of high school to make money to help his parents who divorced and then found himself in Army Bootcamp and then managed to break both of this legs. Despite his lack of education, he was a self-taught genius of software development and because of his impressive skills he was recruited by the NSA and very soon was found to be a programming superstar. One wonders how many great and very gifted geniuses in this country are working for the NSA and CIA doing nothing more that creating complex software to spy on the entire world or building weapons.
During his early years in the NSA Snowden met two mentors played by Nicholas Cage and Rhys Ifans, both of whom guide this gifted employee towards the top of the NSA. It was unusual to see Nicholas Cage in a very small part in a major motion picture but I thought he did a very effective job in his role. Edward meets a woman played very well by Shailene Woodley who very quickly becomes his girlfriend. Over time, Snowden realizes that the NSA is not only spying on terrorists and other countries like Iran and Russia but pretty much everyone in the United States, including even his girlfriend. Once Snowden finds out how pervasive the spying in the NSA was, both his anger and conscience gets the better of him and eventually he seeks out members of the press, one of them played by Zachary Quinto. What is important at this point is that you realize that Snowden knew that going to the press would doom his life as a United States citizen for life and despite all of this, he did it anyway. Right after going to the press, Snowden’s life was never the same and he had to take asylum in Russia and was eventually joined by his girlfriend. At the end of the movie, Edward Snowden himself makes an appearance at the end of this movie and he makes no apologies for as he put it, “doing the right thing”, to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans. As far as the question as to whether Snowden is in fact, a criminal and a traitor to the Unites States, each person has to reach his own decision about this. For me, my honest answer is that I think he was wrong to actually steal data evidence from the NSA, but he was not wrong in reporting that our fourth Amendment rights were being violated. Perhaps the only solution was to not come forward himself, but instead, he should have sent the evidence to the press anonymously but not steal data from the NSA. In the end, Snowden could not resolve this conflict without resolving to spend the rest of his life in asylum.
It’s was unusual to see an Oliver Stone movie like this one, given that his last major release was as far back as the year 2010 with the release of the Wall Street sequel “Wall Street, Money Never Sleeps”, which probably proves how hard it is to get a movie produced in Hollywood, even for someone with the clout of Oliver Stone. I highly recommend this movie which does a great job documenting an important event in American history.
A Screenwriters Perspective: Current and Past Movies. 