Premise Nailed

By Mark David  

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Premise revisited

I have discussed premise before, without arriving at any consensus. These communities can be used for something really at the very core of writing really meaningful stories that move and enthral us. This is my motivating factor as a writer. 

I have previously stated: 

'Somewhere along the line, we have to say stop and figure out what it is we are doing. That is when we have to discover the premise, so we appreciate what the story is essentially about and how it can end (Enders-first not included).'

I have always had the feeling that premise lies at the very heart of creating a great work of fiction, whether it is a book or a film. The media are different, yet the device I feel is the same. I knew it had something to do with showing human quality. Defining just what that was is not easy.

To illustrate this, I have spent time looking for an example that encapsulates what it is I have been feeling I know is the key to great fiction writing - so I can learn from it and apply this recognition to turn my fiction into something it aspires to be. Great. Cutting Edge.

My mission in this post is to define PREMISE once and for all - by illustration

We can say that the 'core' of the meaningful story – contains the motivating force. The genetic material for the tree: The seed, from which a novel will grow with a trunk (storyline), branches (subplots), flowers (generate ideas) and bear fruit (prove its point).

This is exactly what the De Niro character does in the example I was looking for. It is a line from a film by a great instructor with the best actors and cinephotographers in the business.

'A guy told me one time. Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.' 

HEAT

This line is the best one I have found that illustrates what PREMISE is all about.

The premise is attached to the main character played by Robert De Niro. He, through the choices he is confronted with, fails to live up to his own mantra, sealing his fate. It is a tragic premise, preaching destruction. Mantra, because these words are a sacred utterance, a profound statement of being and a prediction of what will happen to those who do not listen to their inner voices and abide by it. It is a deep and fascinating premise. It was what HEAT is all about and why I think this one of the best crime-robbery movies ever made.

'If we want our stories to create resonance with the reader, we have to believe whole-heartedly in the premise. It doesn't have to be the only truth there is, but a possible — a likely truth that we can out out hearts into. That core of meaning  - this what a strong premise provides.' (from a post on G+)

The premise is based on character. De Niro is faced with the choice of starting a new life with the young woman he has come to love, or exact revenge on him who has been the cause of the events that has lead him to his current predicament. It is a battle between belief and circumstance not of his own choosing. 

When he comes face to face with his opposite, the counterpoint, the meeting is defined by the premise in the film.

The premise in HEAT is imbued with overtones of existence and fate and the choices we face when the going gets tough, placing us in situations we have no control over and have not chosen to be placed within. To rise above circumstance and walk the right path to a 'better destiny' than the one he is currently headed towards. It is universal and I'm sure rereading will show other examples from cultures all around the world.

The premise drives the entire movie and it can be defined as: 

Emotion is greater than reason (for the antagonist)

Even when the stakes are at their greatest. This is the story and character premise is in its purest form. It is embodied in the antagonist, the antithesis of the protagaonist (Al Pacino) who follows his motivation to hunt at the expense of his emotional life. The protagonist does not conform to premise and this is what sets him apart as being the antithesis of the crime running forwards in story.

The differences between them men and their motivation is brought to fruition in the climax of the film that follows the events, placing the Protagonist in a situation where his fate is decided: Life. Destruction. Order. Chaos. The premise drives the antagonist, and the entire story, though they could each have their own premise. 

As far as I am concerned, this understanding nails premise once and for all.

Fictionalising the Cold War: No James Bonds here

By Mark David  

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At the moment I've just seen the TV-series The Company. This wasn't ground breaking television, but it did a great job of visualising the cold war. The Company is a three part miniseries part being in East/West Berlin that was particularly atmospheric. Berlin in the fifties, East Berlin still a wreck from the war, it's all there. But before getting into a thread about The Company I want to backtrack a bit and explain the reason for my interest in this series.

I admit it, the Cold War fascincates me. Nowadays it seems any crime or mystery thriller revolves around the role of that little handheld computer we call the smartphone: GPS, tracking people, discovering messages revealing secrets. Television predominantly. The problem for fiction is, it often ties the story down to a series of often-seen incidents we have seen so often before. You know, where the protagonist gets that just-in-time sms or receives a tip off as he walks past the house where the bad guy lurks, or the police task group following someone to an area coordinating their position from the ubiquitous three sender-masts on the mobile grid, closing in for the kill. Yawn. It was interesting the first time around ...

Perhaps one of the main reasons I trashed the 21st century for the twentieth. It just seemed to make so much sense. No phones. Characters in extremis, cut-off from the outside world. I loved the idea of fictionalising the cold war because it's possible to go back to a time when agents and the victims of deception really were on their own. No online ... anything. No safety rope. No contact. Nada. Other than themselves and what an individual can pull from the mass of grey matter unencumbered by appointments, friend requests or surfing the net for the not-quite-essential info about the latest reality TV-show.

A Reference of Past

Perhaps another reason is I grew up under the cold war. It is a part of my psyche as much as JVC v. betamax, Video Killed The Radio Star and MTV. I was born of the radio age but grew up in the video age and have seen the entry and subsequent changes to society brought about by any small-packaged electronic device that ever came into existence. Except those used in the world of spies.

I decided to go with the flow on this one - use what you know, I told myself. And what is better than the knowledge of the way the world used to work, polished into understanding by the comfort of historical distance? I wanted something without mobile phones. I wanted isolation. And intrigue spiced with deception.

I'm currently developing the back plot of The Elements that involves experts in the shadows. Puppet masters who successfully nurture a psychology of fear and deception. I keep looking around for good fiction that has captured this in the way I want to but admit I have to look hard.

No James Bonds here

Who has ever heard of James Jesus Angleton? Otherwise known as 'Jim.' Well I had. Because of writing what I'm writing. This guy is total legend. The archetypal master of subterfuge, deception and counter deception. He was the one man who could navigate through the wilderness of mirrors. The man who collected and analysed thousands of small unrelated little pieces of information. He was the only one who knew the picture could only come into focus by relating these pieces to each other. 

It was about finding those relations. So the spy became the detective as well, except Angleton knew he was working against masterminds as chess masters - and the analogy is made in the last part of the 3-part series. The masters of the all-powerful KGB creating worlds within worlds for the CIA and MI6 to get lost in. 

One of the reasons - of many - for writing a cold-war based series was my interest in writing about the effect on the players of a hidden game of masters. The Company features real people, in particular Michael Keaton's portrayal of James Angleton was well conceived and executed. The gaol master too. Sleep deprivation. Perception of the game by just thinking it through. Year by painstaking year.

The Way It Was

Keaton comes real close to the kind of feel I've been looking for. If they could have gotten hold of Willem Dafoe - who really looks like Angleton himself - with the same depth Michael Keaton then the series could have been complete ... The thing is, The Company really brought the audience under the skin of ...  not knowing what the f*** was going on. Because that was the way it was. 

So much fiction these days dots the eyes and crosses the t's it seems like the creators regard their audience as children. I find very little that satisfies my ever-hungrey appetite for prime-quality fiction these days. The Company did that. Nothing is what it seems to be. Who can you trust? Who is the mole? We were kept guessing to the end. And even afterwards, provides a very good platform for reflection.

The point of this blog is to make a simple point that I think it's very okay to let the reader or watcher make up their own minds as they wander within the wilderness of mirrors. 

Element of Crime meets Blood Meridian

By Mark David  

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I have just finished reading Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. I had the thought when I finished it that this book is a book as a film is a film when made by Lars Von Trier. I was curious about the idea and expand on it in this blog, starting with that film of Trier's The Element of Crime (the Von bit was a pun made at his expense by his fellow students ....)

The Element of Crime is the first and in many ways the most difficult to place of all of Lars Von Trier's films. The only instructor I can compare the feeling this movie creates to is David Lynch. I am no expert, but Mulholland Drive springs to mind. Where the the two directors differ is in approach - Lynch makes extensive use of 'between realities' - the journey into and out of the inner world of the mind and the outside world beyond and vice versa. This can be the subject of a new blog so I'll stop here. Trier is very taken with atmosphere, technique while sharing the inner-world focus of Lynch (this is my own interpretation and entirely subjective). The bottom line is both directors reward viewing with experiences few others can match.

The Element of Crime was made in 1984. I won't go into the details of the film. You can either browse wikipedia of see an  in depth coverage of Element of Crime on Film Walrus reviews.

Blood Meridian The Evening Redness in the West was written in 1985 and is probably the most famous of the books by American author Cormac McCarthy, perhaps the greatest living author in the US. McCarthy can today be regarded as a living legend - to compare with all the greats of US fiction like Steinbeck or Hemmingway. He writes in his own ballsy style waving indifference in the face of convention.

Both use a descriptive language of places and scenes. Both render details vivid. Both are prose in motion. Both are a journey. Both enter places unhealthy for the body and soul and both embark on a journey in inhospitable terrain. Both when seen or read are journey's of the mind. Our minds.

This is an essay and an experiment

The aim of this blog is foremost though an experiment - to explore the boundaries between two mediums and two comparable projects - the book and film. The idea is to find common traits and artistic similarities. I do this to focus on what it is that makes great fiction - whatever the medium - in the hope of gaining a little insight. I want insight, but like anything else in life this has to be worked at. So lets cut to the chase:

In both and for the sake of argument there is neither storyline or recognisable plot, other than the blurred focus on a character -  Fisher in EofC and in BM the two diffuse characters of The Kid and Judge Horton. Both work on a cause-and-effect sequence of events.

As Film Walrus writes:

The Element of Crime is told in a cryptic style, full of symbols, allusions, ambiguities and contradictions. The lighting is done with high-pressure sodium bulbs [1] that lend the film an orange tone (quite a bit more intense than sepia) broken only occasionally by highlights of green or blue. The shooting was done exclusively at night, usually during the rain. The narration is in strict monotone that distances the audience from any emotional connection to the characters. The camerawork is highly experimental, with a preponderance of overhead shots. The mise-en-scene is dense and disturbing, full of abandoned buildings, pools of dripping water, dead and dying horses and, everywhere, the decrepit and broken artifacts of decaying post-war Europe. Almost every minor character is bald.

Allusions and Ambiguities

As in E of C the journey is the detective seeking to discover, entering a shadow - or literally - night world apocalyptic and full to the brim with methods to catch our own fantasy where one act leads to the next without a guidebook to show us the way. Death is all around us and made vivid in ways we have never seen before, a world populated by figures unlike any we have encountered. A world that is a hypnosis-induiced flashback, a journey of the mind, full of the mind's associative ability to couple together fragments from the most remote and obscure of libraries that reach deep down into the wells of the human psyche. Like a dream E of C is a visual journey we are a part of but also one we ourselves are the creators of - by making something that is not served on a plate and making it our own.

Similarly, BM is also a symbolic overdrive full of allusions and ambiguities. For example, in the obscure ending in Blood Meridian. McCarthy writes:

"In the dawn there is a man progressing over the plain by means of holes which he is making in the ground ... he sinks fire in the hole and drains out his steel. Then they move on again."

Wikipedia says of the ending:

"The images of the epilogue seem to serve as a harbinger of the more ordered and settled civilization which will soon replace the war-torn chaos of the West, with its own rituals and codes very unlike those portrayed in the novel's setting."

The above is very insightful and certainly resonates with meaning that renders words into something more - a comment on the essence of a time as chaotic and lawless as any other in the diverse histories of human affairs. I feel therefore a deep resonance between both works both my masters and seek to compare. 

A key

I prefer however for my own subjective reasons to think of the above epilogue in BM as a key - a key to unlocking the experience of reading the text. This for me is the journey - a figurative journey. The reading of the epilogue in BM is not the track of holes but the moment of making one and moving on to the next. This suggests the moment-by-moment state of existence that in the story - a gang of renegade scalp hunters paid by the authorities of the land to cut scalps from natives - each moment of violence degrading the group to a more primitive state.

I have read a handful of reviews on Blood Meridian and I am appreciative of it. I believe the book is like good music - the greater the submersion the greater the appreciation. But and this is a big but. This is not a book of entertainment. Not for me at least. All books are read subjectively so I'm not interested if someone disagrees with me on this one. 

Let's look at the book as a coin with an upside and a downside. Starting with the downside I see the reading of the book as a wander in the desert of existence as much as it is for the diffusely sketched characters. I find the running descriptions of setting page after page of verbal exploration tedious and long for something else - the zooming into an important macro detail foreshadowing a meaningful event for example. The book procrastinates to the extreme in the wandering descriptive. I do not therefore, elevate Blood Meridian to the gods but nevertheless curse the day when there are no more Cormac McCarthy's around to whom we can only aspire.

Many critics agree that there are Gnostic elements present in Blood Meridian, but they disagree on the precise meaning and implication of those elements. One of the most detailed of these arguments is made by Leo Daugherty in his 1992 article, "Blood Meridian as Gnostic Tragedy." Daugherty argues "gnostic thought is central to Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian" (Daugherty, 122); specifically, the Zoroastrian branch of Gnosticism. He describes the novel as a "rare coupling of Gnostic 'ideology' with the 'affect' of Hellenic tragedy by means of depicting how power works in the making and erasing of culture, and of what the human condition amounts to when a person opposes that power and thence gets introduced to fate.


The point of this blog

What would Blood Meridian be like if it was made into a film visualised by the likes of Trier? Let's face it, Von Trier's films do not grip. But they are at time subliminal. The world would be a boring place without the funding for people like Von Trier.

I would vouch that the enjoyment is not in the entertainment value but in the appreciation of the ascetic and aesthetic of the setting - the raw west with raw people sunken to a level of depravity that sinks below any contemplation concerning the meaning of life. This is man here and now at his most primeval, acting according to one the genetic encoded need to kill arisen from a need to survive. To exist at all. Like the holes in the epilogue, the random movement from event to event, place to place, act to act, follow a law devoid of laws other than the law that is all laws and that law is survival. And yes, I wish to establish a resonance akin to The Element of Crime ...

McCarthy and Von Trier are artists extraordinaire - each in their respective mediums. In an age when half of the stars are wearing stupid superhero costumes and losing a certain artistic credibility into the bargain (Gwinneth Paltrow in Iron Man for example. Skycaptain I can buy - but Iron Man ... christ money really shouts out loud in Hollywood for people who already have plenty of it. Now half the movies are the local cinema are for kids past the age of eighteen...) 

I fear if Von Trier took Blood Meridian he would take something and make it more extreme than it already is - away into his own inner worlds mortals like us probably don't really want to go and see. I would therefore voucher for Clint Eastwood or even Paul Greengrass (The Bourne trilogy). Greengrass could take something silent and breath life into it as Eastwood would lavish in the poetic setting of the West that vanished for ever with the making of those holes in the grounds for the poles of the border and segregation and the permanence of nations.

If Von Trier would for once cater for others than his self then perhaps he could create something sublime. Perhaps. He would need a bloody good cinemaphotographer as in Antichrist with a passion for detail and stop masturbating.