“The book says that we may be through with the past, but the past may not be through with us.”

—PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON
Magnolia

Not too long ago, I was invited to an evening at the Writers Guild of America to attend a program with a renowned Academy Award-winning screenwriter-director. A number of writers, directors, producers and guests had also been invited, as well as several film students. The evening began with a screening of the writer-director’s latest film, followed by a question-and-answer session. The writer spoke about the genesis of the film and some of the problems he had while writing the screenplay.

Toward the end of the evening, one of the students stood up and asked the filmmaker whether he thought the traditional three-act structure was still relevant. The filmmaker thought for a moment, then replied, “You’ve got to get beyond all that; you’ve got to find new ways of telling your story.”

I found his remark interesting, because this particular filmmaker, noted for both his writing and directorial talents, has always worked within the framework of a “traditional” three-act structure. As a director, he’s known for his straightforward narrative films. While he uses many different filmmaking techniques—like voice-over narration, flashbacks and crosscutting—to tell his stories, his films have always been well structured.

As I was driving home that night I thought a lot about the filmmaker’s comment. Many filmmakers today insist the narrative story line is passé, out of date, not “part of the scene” anymore. They loudly proclaim that the three-act structure is dead and no longer pertinent to the modern movie. One filmmaker even went on record to state, “The Hollywood narrative film is in its death throes right now and people are looking for something else. The whole school of Act I/Act II/Act III is destructive to a thriving, growing cinema.”

Since Pulp Fiction there have been many films that illustrate this approach in fracturing the form, though more for shock value, I think, than for anything else; Fight Club, Body Shots, Go and Best Laid Plans are just a few examples. These films don’t necessarily illustrate a particular intellectual idea, like Alain Resnais did in Last Year at Marienbad; they simply seem obligated to break the form for what they term “artistic reasons.”

It seems pretty clear that the social and cultural forces working on the “Gen X” and “PlayStation Generation” are actually changing the way we see things. Run Lola Run reflects this really well. The movie unfolds like a video game. Every time Lola fails to get the $100,000 to save her boyfriend, guess what? The game’s over. She goes back to the beginning and plays another game until she wins.

It’s also true that filmmakers are indeed searching for new ways of telling their stories: Being John Malkovich, The Matrix (Andy and Larry Wachowski), Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson), The Sixth Sense (M. Night Shyamalan), Wonder Boys (Steve Kloves), American Beauty (Alan Ball), Traffic (Stephen Gaghan) and Gladiator (David Franzoni) push the form both in style and content. At first glance these films may seem to be in rebellion against the narrative film, but the truth is they’re as traditional as their predecessors.

I agree it’s time to push the form. The traditional way of “seeing things” has changed, and we need to be open to the sights and sounds of new voices and new visions. Because of the advance of film technology, many of our movies look great, slick as waxed apples in the supermarket, but they’re geared more for the disposable market than anything else. Just look at Mission Impossible: 2 and The Perfect Storm. Both, in cinematic terms, are dazzling, but they’re like cotton candy, nothing more than sugar and water. There’s no content. As Gertrude Stein once remarked about Oakland, “There ain’t no there when you get there.”

Movies are a source of both entertainment and enlightenment. So, when I read some of the comments of these filmmakers about pushing the form to another level, I’m a little confused. I love their passion, love their take on things, but when I see what they declare to be their “forward-looking” films, it seems obvious they don’t understand the distinction between form and formula.

To me, film is a language that speaks directly to the heart. When I see a movie I like, I can talk endlessly about the visual brilliance of the director, the great acting of the actors, the broad sweep of the photography, the poetry of the editing or the ingeniousness of the special effects. But when I get right down to it, there’s only one thing that holds the whole thing together.

And that’s the story.

Ideas, concepts, jargon, analytical comments, don’t really mean a thing. Whether the movie proceeds in a straight line or a circle, or is fractured and splintered into little pieces, doesn’t make a bit of difference. Movies are all about story. No matter who we are, or where we live, or what generation we may belong to, the singular aspects of storytelling remain the same. It’s been that way since Plato created stories out of shadows on the wall. The art of telling a story with pictures exists beyond time, culture and language. Walk into the Elmira caves in Spain and look at the rock paintings, or into the Accademia Museum in Venice, and gaze upon those magnificent panels depicting the twelve stations of the cross, and you enter the grand view of visual storytelling.

When I walk into a darkened movie theater and wait for the lights to dim and watch those flickering images of the title sequence unfold, it is a moment of magic. And it’s no different now than it was for Shakespeare in sixteenth-century Elizabethan England. Shakespeare knew there were two ways to grab the attention of the audience. The groundlings, as they (the common man) were known, watched the performance standing in the pit, the large open area directly in front of the stage. The majority of the audience were heavy drinkers, and it’s well documented that they were not afraid to vocalize their likes and dislikes by throwing rotten eggs or tomatoes at the players if they didn’t like what they were seeing. Shakespeare had to grab their attention immediately.

One of the ways he grabbed the audience’s attention was by beginning the play with a dynamic action sequence, like the ghost walking the parapet in Hamlet or the three witches huddling over the cauldron prophesying the future of Macbeth. The second way was opening with a character scene; in Romeo and Juliet, for example, the chorus comes onstage and declares this to be a story about two “star-crossed lovers.” We do this in our films today, but instead of the chorus we use a voice-over narrator and he or she tells us what we need to know. Lester, the Kevin Spacey character in American Beauty, does this; the movie opens with him telling us, “My name is Lester Burnham. I’m forty-two years old. In less than a year, I’ll be dead…. In a way, I’m dead already.”

The Green Mile (Frank Darabont) uses the “bookend” approach; the opening has the Tom Hanks character, now an old man, reflecting on an incident he experienced while working as a prison guard many years before. The film concludes with him as an old man who has shared his experience with us. Spielberg also does this in Saving Private Ryan, when the Matt Damon character revisits the cemetery at the Normandy beachhead and then we flash back into the story. When the story has been told, it ends back at the beginning again, in present time, with the Matt Damon character asking his wife and children if his life has been worth the lives that were lost saving him. It’s a strong, character-driven opening.

An action film grabs the attention of the audience immediately. When I first saw The Matrix, I had the same feeling I had when I saw Terminator 2: Judgment Day. I walked out of the theater knowing “this is the future.” The Matrix is an incredible blend of mind-grabbing content and dynamic visual execution. The seeds of its origins may be the comic books, but it still incorporates mythological figures who are larger than life. So to say this is a “traditional” or “conventional” film may seem bizarre, but it happens to be true.

The opening scene is no ordinary action sequence of flying fists, fired shots and a few explosions. This is a totally unique ass-grabbing sequence; it pits Trinity (Carrie-Ann Moss), a lone woman, against several armed policemen, all wearing bullet-proof vests. Right before our eyes, in the most amazing physical feats, whether suspended in midair or walking on walls and ceilings, Trinity escapes. We see her leaping from rooftop to rooftop, building to building, totally disregarding gravity as she flies through the air to reach the other side. From there, it’s a race against the huge garbage truck to reach the ringing telephone. She makes it in the nick of time and answers the phone just as the truck slams into the telephone booth.

Whoa … If that’s not a grabber, I don’t know what is. In terms of information, we don’t know who Trinity is, whether she’s a “good guy” or a “bad guy,” nor do we know what the story’s about, or how she managed to escape the way she did. But it’s an opening that certainly grabs our attention.

At this point, I want to know what the story is about, and who it’s about. In dramatic terms, exposition is defined as the necessary information needed to move the story forward, and that’s exactly what we get next. Neo, the main character (Keanu Reeves), asks Trinity about the Matrix. But she doesn’t explain anything; she only warns him that he’s in danger because “they’re watching you.” And, she stresses, “The truth is out there, Neo, and it’s looking for you and will find you, if you want it to.” Then she’s gone.

What is the Matrix? Morpheus explains later that we’re inhabiting a parallel universe and that the Matrix is a state of virtual reality, an illusion, maya, and we’ve all been programmed to accept it as real The truth, the “real” world, has been destroyed and re-created by a race of machines, artificial intelligence and the computers into a form of virtual reality.

So begins the hero’s journey. Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), the rebel leader, is dedicated to waging war against the Matrix to reveal “the truth,” thus liberating humanity from the bondage of the machines. Morpheus believes in the prophecy that the rebels’ only hope of winning is by finding “the One,” a human being endowed with godlike powers who will lead them in their war of liberation. And he believes Neo is “the One.” As Morpheus tells Neo, the mind and body are entwined with each other even though they are separate entities; therefore, Morpheus says, if you can control your mind, you can control reality, and thus your destiny.

I love that. An ancient teaching brought into a contemporary situation, futuristic in thought and execution. Neo, like Hamlet, or the warrior Arjuna in the classic Indian tale the Bhagavad Gita, must choose his own destiny. I found this theme of choice to be a recurring motif throughout the film. This is illustrated when Neo receives a package and a cell phone pops out, ringing. Morpheus is on the line. He tells Neo, “They’re after you. There are only two ways for you to leave the building; either you choose to leave by the scaffolding hanging outside the window, or you choose to leave as a prisoner.” Like Hamlet and Arjuna, Neo embodies the stance of the reluctant hero, and before he can rise to another, higher level of consciousness, he must accept himself and his own destiny.

This fusion of the ancient and futuristic is embodied in the various names used in The Matrix. I confess I didn’t know what most of the names meant, so I explored their origins. I found the names to be derived from ancient history and mythology. The rebel ship, the Nebuchadnezzar, is named after the famed fifth-century-B.c. Babylonian king who’s credited with tearing down and rebuilding the ancient temples, so he’s both a destroyer and a builder. The name fits the ship’s destiny, for it houses the small rebel band determined to destroy and rebuild the Matrix. In Greek mythology Morpheus is the god of sleep, responsible for building and weaving the fabric of our dreams in the deep-sleep state. Neo, of course, means “new,” and Trinity has several religious implications. These mythological echoes are simply a way of adding more insight and dimension to the story line.

At this point, the story progresses by action and explanation. Only when Neo can accept being “the One” can he really be “the One.” In other words, what we believe to be true is true. At Plot Point I, during the meeting with Morpheus, Neo is offered a choice: take the blue pill and get ordinary reality, or take the red pill and get the truth. Neo doesn’t hesitate—he takes the red one. Reality distorts as he falls between the corridors of virtual reality and the netherworld. In a sequence as bizarre and evocative as a Geiger painting, Neo is reborn as a man freed from the restraints of his limited mind. As the embryo of himself Neo must retrain both his body and his mind until he is capable of exploring the untapped resources of his unlimited self as seen in martial arts contests with Morpheus.

Neo’s encounter with the Oracle is the Mid-Point of the story. She’s a great character. I expected an old, old man, extremely wise, with white hair and possibly a long straggly beard. Instead, I was delightfully surprised to discover a middle-aged woman baking cookies. When she casually asks if he believes he’s “the One,” Neo shakes his head and says, “I’m just an ordinary guy.” Once again, his belief systems, the limitations of his own mind, imprison him. Too bad, she says. Why? he asks. “Because Morpheus believes in you, Neo, and no one, not even you or me, can convince him otherwise,” she says. “He believes it so blindly that he’s going to sacrifice his life for you. You’re going to have to make a choice. On one hand, you’ll have Morpheus’s life … and on the other hand, you’ll have your own…. One of you is going to die…. Which one will be up to you.”

She is his “mirror,” reflecting what he believes, telling him what she sees within him. His struggle guides him to the understanding that he can wear the mantle of “the One” only if he chooses to. Only when we can give up the concepts of our limited self can we attain enlightenment and liberation. The reluctant hero must accept the challenge of being who he or she really is, in much the same way that Hamlet and Arjuna must choose to accept their own destiny. Whether he likes it or not, Neo is “the One” who has been chosen to “set the times right.”

At Plot Point II, Neo makes his decision to rescue Morpheus. “The Oracle told me this would happen,” Neo says. “She told me I would have to make a choice….” He pauses, and in one of the earlier drafts of the script says, “I may not be what Morpheus thinks I am, but if I don’t try to help him, then I’m not even what I think I am … I’m going in after him.” When he declares himself in this fashion, it is the first step in accepting himself as “the One.” At this juncture, I remembered that moment at Plot Point I when Morpheus asks Neo if he believes in fate. No, Neo replies, “because I don’t like the idea that I’m not in control of my life.” Whether he believes it or not, whether he knows it or not, he’s now in the hands of his fate, his destiny.

After rescuing Morpheus, Neo doesn’t make it out of the Matrix in time, and in a tremendous fight scene dies at the hands of Agent Smith. As Trinity stands over Neo’s inert body, she shares what the Oracle has told her—that she would fall in love with the man who was “the One.” Even though Neo’s dead, she believes with all her heart that love is stronger than the physical body. She kisses him, then demands that he “get up.” Neo’s eyes flip open, and he’s resurrected. A miracle? Of course. Once again, he has died so he can be reborn. How? It doesn’t matter. Either we believe it or we don’t; the willing suspension of disbelief is required. He has overcome the limitations of his own mind; he has chosen to wear the mantle of “the One.”

I think The Matrix is one of those films that embodies a future direction in movies: technology integrated into a classical, mythical story line that becomes larger than life. Does it follow the “traditional form” of beginning, middle, end; Act I, Act II, Act III? Absolutely. But that’s not what makes it work so well; it’s the filmmaker’s vision, the ideas behind the film that are integrated into the story and which heighten the filmic reality.

I don’t arbitrarily set down any “rules” when I go to the movies. There’s only one “rule” I follow: if it works, it works, and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a “conventional” film or an “unconventional” film. I’m exhilarated when I see a film like Mike Figgis’s Time Code, Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich, Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wang Hui Ling, Tsai Kyo Jung, and James Schamus) or Christopher Nolan’s exceptional Memento, because they push the form in new directions. It doesn’t matter if certain parts of the films don’t work. If I’m emotionally taken by the vision of the filmmaker, I’ll go out of my way to support it. It could be a movie like Steven Soderbergh’s Erin Brockovich (Susannah Grant), or his slightly off-kilter and wonderful Out of Sight (Scott Frank), or his dynamic Traffic (Stephen Gaghan); in each case, Soderbergh pushes the form of the story in new ways. If a movie works, it works, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a nonlinear or a multilayered story line. If what I see on the screen moves or touches me, I want to take it apart and see how and why it works.

Which is what happened when I first saw Magnolia. I didn’t have the opportunity of seeing it when it was first released, and I hadn’t seen Boogie Nights either, or Hard Eight, so I literally knew nothing about the work of Paul Thomas Anderson other than what I had heard or read about him. Though there had been a lot of talk and press about Magnolias being nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Screenplay, I had heard from friends that it was overlong, melodramatic and “unrealistic;” several people whose opinion I respected told me they didn’t like it, and a few even walked out, taking issue with the frogs falling from heaven.

When I finally got a chance to see it, it was late in the afternoon and a light drizzle was falling. I had just finished a very tough chapter in this book, and I was drained and did not feel like continuing to work. When I saw that Magnolia was playing nearby, I jumped into my car, drove to the theater, paid my $8 and walked inside. I got my popcorn, found a seat and waited for the film to begin, all the while thinking of what I wanted to cover in the next chapter of my book. The previews came and went and the movie began.

I was totally unprepared for what I saw on the screen. I had had no preconceptions about Magnolia, so when I saw the newsreel-type shots of the hanging of three men—Green, Berry and Hill— in the prologue, I wondered what was going on. Then, hearing the voice-over narrator explain how a scuba diver wound up in the top branches of a tree struck me as so ludicrous, so strange, I started to get interested. The final part of this little introductory three-part prologue, where the boy Sydney gets killed attempting suicide, was so odd, so bizarre, so riveting, I was hooked. And when the narrator says, “This was not just a matter of chance,” I still didn’t know what was going on—nor did I care, because the filmmaker had me; I was ready to go anywhere Paul Thomas Anderson wanted to take me.

As the movie progressed I saw there were ideas here—ideas of death, of reconciliation and forgiveness, of chance, destiny and fate and the interconnectedness of all things—as well as serious issues—the relationships between fathers and sons, and fathers and daughters. I was totally engrossed by the superb acting as well as by Anderson’s filmmaking prowess. As I sat in the dark it seemed to me that Anderson’s style of filmmaking was more poetry than a series of staged dramatic actions. If there’s any one word that describes Magnolia for me, it’s “fluid.” The movie flows from one sequence to another, one story to another. The camera itself is a fluid force, a bird in flight, not drawing attention to itself, but integrated as an essential part of the story. When young Stanley (Jeremy Blackman) and his father arrive for the taping of What Do Kids Know, the camera follows them inside. We wait while they talk to a production assistant, then the camera leaves Stanley and follows the assistant, who takes us to the next character, who leads us to Jimmy Gator (Philip Baker Hall) preparing for the quiz show. Powerful and inventive, it was reminiscent of the masterful opening sequence Orson Welles created for Touch of Evil

After the prologue, each character is set up and the images flow from one into another. There are two different emotional levels working here, both dealing with the relationship between sex and love. First, we first see Frank T. J. Mackey (Tom Cruise) pitching his “Seduce and Destroy” infomercial on television. Over this, we hear Aimee Mann’s rendition of Harry Nilsson’s “One,” setting up the theme about the quest for love. Frank maintains that sex is a way to destroy the opposite sex, yet the song says we all seek love. These themes are illustrated in the next scene, when we see Claudia (Melora Walters) being “hit on” in a bar; in the first scene, the middle-aged stranger says “Hi,” then we cut to them walking into her apartment, see them do a few lines of coke, then he says “So?” and we cut to them having sex. So simple that we in the audience have to fill in all the unspoken and unseen actions. Great screen-writing.

From there, we go to Jimmy Gator, Claudia’s father, being told by a doctor that he does not have long to live; then we meet young Stanley as he gets ready for school; then we cut to the former Quiz Kid, Donnie Smith (William H. Macy), at the dentist being measured for braces; then to Phil (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the hospice caretaker, arriving to care for the dying Earl Partridge (Jason Robards); leading to Linda (Julianne Moore), Earl’s wife, leaving the house; and then to Officer Jim Kurring (John C. Reilly) as he prepares for his day. We listen to his voice-over recording on the answering machine telling us who he is, what he’s looking for in a relationship and what he wants out of life.

The characters are all introduced and set up visually, and we’re with them as they prepare for the day ahead so the real story can begin. Then we see an insert of the weather forecast: “82% chance of rain.”

At this point, I still didn’t know what the relationships were between the characters, or what part they played in the story, but I knew Paul Anderson did, so I willingly surrendered and let the story unfold. For me, that joy of discovery is what going to the movies is all about.

When I talk about Magnolia in my seminars and workshops, some people object and tell me it’s too long. I agree. But so what? They say it’s too melodramatic. I agree. But so what? They tell me it pushes the boundaries of reality. Yes, thank God. For me, it’s the brilliance of Anderson’s vision, the intelligence of the emotional tapestry he weaves into his fluid style of filmmaking, which makes the film such an overridingly powerful experience.

Many people insist that Magnolia is an excellent example of an “unconventional” film because it doesn’t follow the “conventional” guidelines of the narrative film. When people insist on telling me how unconventional it is, and ask if I think it follows a “traditional” structure, I reply “Definitely,” pointing out that “form always follows structure;” structure is only the start point, not the end point.

It may seem that Magnolia is a disjointed, nonlinear story experience, but that’s not the case at all. The nine stories told in Magnolia are all connected and related to each other. The actions of each character are superimposed, one upon the other, and the film’s structure begins at the beginning of the day and ends with Earl’s death, at the end of the day.

As I studied the film, I saw that the film really revolves around the death of Earl Partridge. On this, the very last day of his life, Earl wants Phil, his nurse, to find his son, Frank T. J. Mackey. Earl, as seen on the background credits on the always-playing TV, is the owner-producer of the What Do Kids Know TV show, where Stanley is a key contestant. Linda is Earl’s wife. Jimmy Gator works for Earl, and, as we’ll learn later, Jimmy molested his daughter, Claudia.

As I began to see the connections of the individual stories, I had the image of an old wagon wheel, where the hub at the center connects all nine spokes to the outer rim. That image stayed with me as I analyzed the film; Earl is the hub of the story and his past actions are the glue that holds the story together in terms of the present. Earl’s guilt over leaving his wife so many years before, and letting his fourteen-year-old son Frank take care of his dying mother, has taken a heavy toll on Earl’s conscience. The dying man has hidden that fact, and only now, as the cancer eats away at him and he is riddled with pain and memory, does he seek forgiveness.

Magnolia deals with the themes of reconciliation and forgiveness, revealing what the parents’ past actions have wrought upon their children. Ibsen’s great play Ghosts deals with the same theme of the sins of the father passing on to the son. Certainly, this is the subject of Earl’s incredible deathbed monologue as he confesses his “sins” to Phil, telling him he walked out on his wife and son, leaving Frank to tend to his dying mother. “It’s the biggest regret of my life,” he says. “I let my love go.”

When Phil drops the liquid morphine into his mouth, it’s the end, but as it turns out, Earl’s death is really a new beginning, the catalyst that brings everyone together. As the rain thunders down we see the nine characters singing about their pain and guilt and lack of self-worth, knowing it’s just not going to stop “till you wise up.” Claudia asks Jim Kurring, “Now that you’ve met me, would you object to never seeing me again?” Until they can accept themselves for who they are, until they can forgive themselves and accept their sense of self-worth, until they can let somebody love them for who they are and let the past go, it’s not going to stop. They have to “wise up” first.

When I first saw this scene, I was taken aback. All the characters in this emotionally charged movie were singing about the truth of their lives. I guess that’s why some people refer to Magnolia as being “operatic.” To have the characters break into song, expressing their pain and discomfort in a musical lyric, is an extraordinary accomplishment. James Brooks tried to do this in his 1994 film I’ll Do Anything, and it didn’t work. After cutting the movie with several different approaches, Brooks finally had to drop the songs and tried to structure the film in a different way. But it never really worked. Paul Anderson makes it work in a masterly fashion.

Then there are the frogs. I didn’t quite know what to make of this when I first saw it. But personally, I love this collision of reality and unreality. I learned this while working with one of my students, the brilliant Mexican screenwriter Laura Esquivel; Laura taught me about the heritage of the Mexican literary tradition referred to as “magic realism.” Working with her on the screenplay of Like Water for Chocolate, I was introduced to this concept of “exaggerated reality,” where the clash of reality and unreality blends into the framework of the story line. Intrigued, I began researching it, and discovered that the falling of the frogs is taken from the Bible—Exodus, Book 8, where a plague of frogs descending from the sky is the Pharaoh’s punishment for betraying Moses and the Hebrews in the land of Egypt. As I began exploring the backgrounds of the scenes in the film, I kept seeing references to “8:2,” in the audience at the TV show or on an outdoor sign on Magnolia Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley.

In the end, as Jim Kurring tells us in his voice-over narration, “Sometimes people need a little help. Sometimes people need to be forgiven….” In the very last scene, this narration takes us to Claudia, who stares vacantly into the camera. Then she smiles. So simple, so bright, so elegant; I had not seen her smile once during the entire film. I was so moved to see that smile after all the pain she’s lived in and been through, it brought tears to my eyes.

The voice-over narrator sums it all up: “There are stories of coincidence and chance and intersections and strange things told and which is which who only knows … and we generally say, ‘Well, if that was in a movie I wouldn’t believe it.’ And it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that these strange things happen all the time … and so it goes and so it goes and the book says, ‘We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us.’“

And so it goes and so it goes.

I think Magnolia and The Matrix, or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, are examples of films that are guiding us into the new millennium. From what I’m seeing on movie screens around the world, we’re perched on the edge of a revolution in storytelling; we have new tools, a new technology and a plethora of new filmmaking techniques. Even now, as I sit writing this, there is a film by Irish screenwriter Roddy Doyle, When Brendan Met Trudy, which has the main character’s movie fantasies merging with reality. Scenes from Godard’s Breathless, John Ford’s The Searchers and other great films are incorporated into the emotional reality of the characters and express what the characters are saying and feeling. It seems we’re standing on the threshold of a new frontier in the movies, and there are no rules as to what we can or cannot do. The question Jean Renoir posed so many years before, “Qu’est-ce que c’est le Cinema?” is as relevant today as it was when I first heard it.

When I first began my career as a writer and teacher, I asked myself what I would like to accomplish in my teachings and books, and the answer that came up was this: I wanted filmmakers to make great movies that would inspire audiences to find their common humanity. I knew that future technologies would emerge and there would be new, more advanced ways of telling stories with pictures. I felt that if people understood what makes good movies, what makes a good story, it would be of value to filmmakers and audience alike. When I uncovered the Paradigm, I didn’t really discover anything new; this concept of storytelling has been around since Aristotle’s time. I simply uncovered what was already there, gave it a name and illustrated how it worked in contemporary movies.

What’s happened over the years is that the understanding of dramatic structure in the movies has become the focus of debate. The discussion rages over the differences between conventional and unconventional methods of storytelling. I find that good, because it may lead to conversations of discovery, new points of departure in film. Structure will not change, only the form, the way the story is put together, will. And if that leads to new ways of telling stories with pictures, then I’ve accomplished what I set out to do. So while “we may be through with the past, the past is not through with us.”

As I sit in a darkened theater I’m sustained by an unbridled hope and optimism. I don’t know whether I’m looking for answers to my own questions about life, or whether I’m sitting in the dark silently giving thanks that I’m not somehow up there on that monster screen actually confronting the struggles and challenges I’m seeing. Yet I know that in those reflected images I may glean an insight, or awareness, that may embrace the personal meaning of my life.

I think about this as I look back upon the footprints of my life. I see where I began my journey, gaze over the ground I’ve covered, the trails I’ve traversed, and understand that it’s not the destination that is so important; it is the journey itself that is both the goal and the purpose.

Like the Oracle in The Matrix, I believe that the silver screen is a mirror, reflecting our thoughts, our hopes, our dreams, our successes, our failures. Going to the movies is an ongoing journey, for those dancing shadows of light are simply a reflection of our lives, where the end might be the beginning, and the beginning the end.

Just like in the movies.