“Perfectly Happy, Even Without Happy Endings”

Several people sent me a link to this NYT article and for good reason: It has some ideas screenwriters should definitely contemplate becoming part of their creative process. Excerpt:

Ms. Doran is in the movie business, and her résumé runs from production executive on “This Is Spinal Tap” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” to producer of “The Firm,” “Sense and Sensibility” and “Stranger Than Fiction,” to president of United Artists Pictures, and now an independent producer.

What’s not on her résumé is just as intriguing: script doctor, for one, and anti-smoking advocate who helped lead the effort to eliminate on-screen puffing. But the biggest position missing from the official CV is her role as a missionary for mood-elevating films. Terry Rossio, a writer whose credits include “Shrek” and the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, playfully describes her as a “Pied Piper, leading all those ratty, bleak and violent screenplays in town over a cliff.”

Ms. Doran is an omnivore who likes movies light, dark and in between. But when she attended the Austin Film Festival last year, “something I found both terribly sad and terribly sympathetic,” she recently recalled, “is that aspiring screenwriters ask again and again, ‘What can I write that a financier wants to make?’ Not, ‘What can I write that fills me with joy?’ ”

After reading the book “Flourish,” by Martin E. P. Seligman, a catalyst of the positive-psychology movement, she began rewatching films through the lens of what Dr. Seligman identifies as the five essential elements of well-being: positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment. (He refers to these elements collectively as perma.)

The results surprised her. And they inspired a stealth campaign to reverse the Hollywood superstitions that a “movie is only art if it ends badly, and that you’ll only win an Academy Award if you write or direct a movie about misery or play someone miserable,” as she put it. During the past six months, at a symposium and in a series of presentations to filmmakers, she has strongly advocated the concept of cinematic Zoloft.

The business about “mood-elevating films” interests me the least because as long as I’ve been working in the business, I’ve always assumed that in terms of comedy or family drama, the areas in which I’ve written the most, the studios always want a happy ending. There’s an old Hollywood adage about movie endings: “Give the audience what they expect… then give them what they want.” It’s okay to bring the audience down with a false expectation, but then give them a happy ending. The Disney movie Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey is a perfect example of this expect-want dynamic:

That moment where after Chance and Sassy have returned home, Peter waits for his dog Shadow. When the dog doesn’t show up, a dejected Peter says, “He was old. It was too far. He was just too old.” He turns away. Then who limps into view but Shadow.

Peter: Shadow!

Shadow: Oh, Peter, I worried about you so.

Expect: The old dog Shadow didn’t make it.

Want: Against all odds, Shadow gets back home.

Sure, indie dramas and even some mainstream movies have more nuanced, even downer endings, but I think it’s safe to say that major studios are predisposed toward upbeat endings because they equate that with a positive viewing experience which translates into strong BWOM [By Word Of Mouth].

What’s most intriguing to me in the article are these five “essential elements of well-being”:

P(ositive) emotion

E(ngagement)

R(elationships)

M(eaning)

A(chievement)

This strikes me as a helpful lens through which to look at our stories and the reason I say that is this: Each of these individually and all of them collectively fall into the domain of characters. And it’s characters who have the power to create a powerful connection with a script reader and moviegoer.

Could these five elements provide a valuable way for us to develop our characters?

Could they help us to see plot in a different light, one that drives home the importance of our characters’ connections to the events that transpire in the narrative?

Are these helpful in assessing story concepts so that we can zero in on the ones most likely to engender a connection between a script reader and the script’s characters?

I encourage you to read the rest of the article here as there is a lot more grist for the mill in it. I plan to come back to this article at least once and probably a few times this week as I unpack my thoughts.

In the meantime, has anybody out there read “Flourish” by Martin E. P. Seligman? If so, could you elaborate on his ideas re PERMA [secifically] and “positive psychology” [generally]?

Martin Seligman Wikipedia page

Authentic Happiness, Seligman’s home page at the University of Pennsylvania

Here is Seligman in a TED talk about the value of positive psychology:

What are your initial thoughts on this subject?

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