The Death and Life of Drama : Reflections on Writing and Human Nature

By the ocean of Time ## Time T he title for this essay is taken from a chapter in Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain where he reflects on some of the paradoxes we encounter in our experience of time.1 Nothing is more commonplace or harder to understand or more likely to make us feel we are in Plato's cave watching shadows we confuse with reality. Often we feel a nagging sense, like Neo in The Matrix, that there is a truer reality above or below or beyond what we experience, and that if our immediate experience is an illusion so too is our perception of time, for that is inextricably bound up with our experience of reality. When time drags, experience drags. But it is not easy to say what makes time drag even in the case of dramatic action, which is just a special instance of our larger experience of time. Mann writes that if we fill time up with activity, as a drama is supposed to do with action, such that one day after another is full of our doings, cumulatively time seems to go very slowly, even though each day flies by. A week feels like it stretches out, in comparison to others with little activity, and feels full as opposed to empty. Something of our sense of childhood is built into this experience of time, those days of continual activity whether of school or with friends that seem eternal while we are in their midst. Yet if that activity accumulates over a long stretch of experience, suddenly we feel that time has abruptly fled: "Where has it all gone?" we wonder. What was it we were doing? Was it anything at all? What happened to childhood? Or youth? Or . . . ? The answer "We were living" immediately gives rise to the response "Was that all there was to life?" Paradoxically, the opposite experience of time brings us here too. Oblomov's days pass in almost dreamlike withdrawal and inactivity in Goncharov's novel Oblomov.2 Each day feels impossibly long and dull, yet the cumulative lapse of boredom is also one day felt as fast, as Oblomov feels Part I. Immediate Issues -- 1. By The Ocean Of Time -- Time -- The Argument We Are Caught In -- Time And Drama -- Slow Vs. Swift -- 2. The Heavy As Opposed To -- The Heavy Vs. The Exhilarating -- Freud, Civilization, And The Heavy -- The Descent Into The Heavy -- 3. Moral Substance And Ambiguity -- Morality And Screenplays? -- Typing And Volition In -- The Heavy And Moral -- But What Are We Morally Ambiguous About? -- 4. Complexity Vs. Fullness -- Belief Vs. Disbelief: Complexity -- Fullness -- Typing, Volition, And Fullness -- Endings -- Part Ii. The Cooked And The Raw --5. The Cooked And The Raw -- Cooked Emotion -- The Raw -- Blending The Cooked And The Raw -- Antecedents -- 6. The Smart And The Dumb -- Flat And Round -- Hamlet And The Dumb -- John Nash And The Smart -- Plot-handling Implications -- Part Iii. The Lost Poetics Of Comedy -- 7. The Lost Poetics Of Comedy -- The Comic Universe -- Winnicott And Play -- Some Diagrams -- The Two Roads -- The Bones Of The Comic Angle Of Vision -- The Cooked And Comedy -- The New Beginning In Comedy -- The Smart And Dumb In Comedy -- Part Iv. The Nature Of Dramatic Action -- 8. The Weight Of The Past -- What Is The Past? -- High Noon -- Lantana -- Wild Strawberries -- Lifting Weights -- 9. The Weight Of The Wrong Decision -- The Wrong Decision In The Past -- The Wrong Decision In The Present -- True Heroines And Heroes And False -- 10. The Nature Of The Hero's Journey -- Campbell's Hero -- The Dramatic Hero -- 1. Arresting Life --2. Complying With The False -- 3. Awakening -- 4. Confused Growth And The Pursuit Of Error -- 5. Failure Of The False Solution -- 6. The Discovery Of The True Solution -- 7. The Heroic Deed -- 8. Suffering -- 9. The New Life -- Part V. The Death And Life Of Drama -- 11. The Death And Life Of Drama -- Prometheus In Athens, Gladiator In Rome -- Shakespeare In Elizabeth's London -- The Argument We Are Having With Ourselves -- Appendix: A Case Study -- Ingmar Bergman's Fanny And Alexander. Lance Lee. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [243]-258). What makes a film "work," so that audiences come away from the viewing experience refreshed and even transformed in the way they understand themselves and the world around them? In The Death and Life of Drama , veteran screenwriter and screenwriting teacher Lance Lee tackles this question in a series of personal essays that thoroughly analyze drama's role in our society, as well as the elements that structure all drama, from the plays of ancient Athens to today's most popular movies. Using examples from well-known classical era and recent films, Lee investigates how writers handle dramatic elements such as time, emotion, morality, and character growth to demonstrate why some films work while others do not. He seeks to define precisely what "action" is and how the writer and the viewer understand dramatic reality. He looks at various kinds of time in drama, explores dramatic context from Athens to the present, and examines the concept of comedy. Lee also proposes a novel "five act" structure for drama that takes account of the characters' past and future outside the "beginning, middle, and end" of the story. Deftly balancing philosophical issues and practical concerns, The Death and Life of Drama offers a rich understanding of the principles of successful dramatic writing for screenwriters and indeed everyone who enjoys movies and wants to know why some films have such enduring appeal for so many people.