i SWELL: A feature-length screenplay set in the world of Australian surfing, and an accompanying exegesis on three-act structure. By Gerard Lee B.A. (University of Queensland), Dip T. (North Brisbane College of Advanced Education), Writing Certificate (Australian Film and Television School). Submitted to Faculty of Creative Industries, Queensland University of Technology Presented for the Master of Arts Degree (by Research) 2003 ii Keywords: Screenplay, surfing, Australian cinema, international cinema, three-act structure in screenplay, one-act structure, post- modern cinema, Field, Aronson, McKee, Dancyger and Rush iii Abstract: Despite many arguments to the contrary, the three-act story structure, as propounded and refined by Hollywood continues to dominate the blockbuster and independent film markets. Recent successes in post- modern cinema could indicate new directions and opportunities for low-budget national cinemas. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Swell, a feature length screenplay…………… 1 Exegesis……………………………………… 118 Introduction………………………………….. 119 The National Cinema………………………… 122 Structure in the Screenplay…………………... 127 The Structure of Swell………………………... 133 Act I…………………………………………... 137 Act II………………………………………….. 140 Act III…………………………………………. 147 Coda…………………………………………... 149 List of Films Cited…………………………….. 155 List of Works Cited……………………………. 157 (The pages of the screenplay—page 1A to page 117—are exempted from inclusion in the Australian Digital Thesis collection for commercial-in-confidence reasons) v Authorship: The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted for a degree or diploma at any other institution. The thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made. Signed:……………….. Dated:……………….. 1 SWELL (The pages of the screenplay—page 1A to page 117— are exempted from inclusion in the Australian Digital Thesis collection for commercial-in-confidence reasons) Copyright: Gerard Lee. 2003. Queensland University of Technology, Gardens Point. Creative Industries. 118 Exegesis Swell: An account of the use of the three act structure within the low-budget Australian surfing film 119 Introduction In the early 1980s, a number of film-makers at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (including myself)—some of whom were to go on to become significant figures nationally and internationally: Jane Campion, Chris Noonan, P. J. Hogan, Alex Proyas, Rolfe de Heer, Marc Rosenberg, Jocelyn Moorhouse—would meet regularly to discuss our scripts and ideas for stories. At these meetings there was intense discussion around what kind of films we wanted to make. The debates were chaotic—more passionate than scholarly— but they were to inform the work of this emerging generation of practitioners and, to a degree, the direction of the national cinema. Debate centred around a series of trip-wire binaries: art versus commerce, national versus international cinema, low-budget versus big-budget, high art versus popular culture, feminist cyclical narrative versus male, patriarchal, linear, ‘military-industrial state’ narrative. For some of us, art movies were written from the heart, or the soul, from an original inspiration and designed to challenge the emotional and intellectual status quo while commercial movies were written from a formula, designed to make money. For me, the intervention that changed the terms of this debate was the publication in 1981 of Syd Field’s The Screenwriter’s Workbook. A script reader for the big Hollywood studios, Field introduced a structural approach to screenwriting. He explained some of the qualities I admired in popular American film: the satisfactions of story, the dynamics of character, and the 120 focus on theme. I became a rabid ‘structuralist’. My colleagues, at the time, resisted the implications of structuralism but over the subsequent decade all of them have embraced, to differing degrees, the structure-based approach. The objection many writers made to the early description of the three act structure was that it was formulaic. They were affronted that their own personal visions of character and ideology could be subjugated to a series of thirty pre-ordained steps. They resisted what they saw as Hollywood's coercion of their originality into a 'commercial' package. My view and practice was that the three act structure was not so much a prescription as a tool for putting forward personal vision. What it requires of the creative writer is to use it in a fresh way. This exegesis seeks to reframe structuralist thinking, not as a formula but as a series of opportunities. I will do this as I account for the accompanying screenplay, Swell, in relation to two factors. First, I want to historicise this screenplay within my other work and the national cinema: to place it, by exploring each phase of concept, realisation and execution, within national debates and the international pressures and opportunities. What I’ll argue is that contemporary Australian films can succeed here and in the international market if they display the structural discipline evident in successful American independent films. And that American independent film, particularly recent post-modernist productions which I'll discuss later, provides a potential template for low-budget film-making in Australia. Second, I want to examine the structure of Swell as it relates to the similar models outlined by Robert 121 McKee, Christopher Vogler, Linda Seger and Linda Aronson. I will comment on how successful this 'modelling' has been and then, using the work of Ken Dancyger and Jeff Rush as well as Robert Stam, indicate future directions for screenplay models, beyond the three acts. 122 The National Cinema In 1970s and 1980s Australian film makers were often torn by divergent cultural and financial imperatives. Australian cinema at the time was involved in a cultural project of national identity-making and a process of historical recovery and revision. As Dermody and Jacka state: The 'second world' we inhabit is bound to reproduce the first world (UK and the USA), but needs to assert a measure of independence, of product differentiation, to market or circulate our reproductions… Second world countries like Canada and Australia are riddled with post-colonial ambiguity and anxieties. […] For where do we end and 'the other' begin? Who is the other by which we define our difference, ensuring ‘us’? Britain? America? […] Our film industry proclaims its central role in revealing an identity we don't know we have until we recognise it. (1988a:20) One of my generation’s aims was to tell contemporary stories with political or social significance relating to our national identity. (This was reinforced by the policies of the AFC.) The national cinema has been defined in different ways, each of them shedding some light on an unstable and dynamic field. But all of them share the same concern. Where does our national cinema fit into the international scene? Tom O’Regan in Australian National Cinema argues: 123 national cinemas are simultaneously an aesthetic and production movement, a critical technology, a civic project of state, an industrial strategy and as international project formed in response to the dominant international cinemas. (45) His research teases out the complex nature of the economic and cultural relationships between the various kinds of national cinemas operating in a global marketplace. He cites the need for Australian films to both “imitate and oppose” Hollywood. He quotes Phillip Adams describing as “doomed” a cinema based on national identity (132). Dermody and Jacka lament the “drastically unequal” nature of our relationship to the other English-speaking cinemas and describe ways various film-makers have tried to deal with our difference without which we “shrivel in self-esteem” and “inhabit a place-less, story-less limbo” (1987b:11). There’s Ross Gibson’s “feral” vision in O’Regan (108)—introduced ideas and cultural artefacts going wild on our soil, and Bertrand and Routt’s “islander” view (4). Despite the orientation of the national cinema to the international market, only a proportion of films achieve an international release. The Adventures of Barry Mackenzie, Crocodile Dundee, Gallipoli, Breaker Morant, The Piano, Babe and They’re a Weird Mob are films which have proved their dual national and international appeal and have done so by employing a variety of strategies. O’Regan cites Mad Max, Crocodile Dundee and Careful He Might Hear You as films which imitate American form but substitute Australian content (49). 124 There are other ‘Australian’ films which are American in both form and content, infamously Richard Franklin’s Roadgames. During the 1970s Australian audiences were exposed to European cinema—Italian, French, Swedish, German and Spanish—to an unprecedented degree. O’Regan notes that between 1973 and 1978 only 41 per cent of films released in Australia were English language (78). While English language films dominated the box office, this exposure to non-English-language cinemas helped couple our emerging notion of a national independent cinema with the idea of the writer/director—the auteur. Paul Cox, Jane Campion, Jocelyn Moorhouse, P.J. Hogan and I modelled ourselves on this idea. The 1970s had seen a string of films exploring national identity through our past: Gallipoli, Breaker Morant, The Getting of Wisdom, Picnic at Hanging Rock were also predicated on notions of high art. The films were adapted from novels and exhibited the hallmarks of