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This week's answer:
Rules
of Disengagement
Rules were meant to be broken,
Adelaide. That's why they call them
"rules." Or why we want to break
them. Or something along those lines. Now, if
you're talking about breaking ALL the rules, including the
rule that says you can't break all the rules, then you
might be getting yourself in quite a kettle of fish.
Or a kettle of rules. Or lobsters if you're in Maine
-- which you're probably not since, according to your
signature, you seem to be from England (unless you're
really from Maine and you wrote "England" to
break the rules).
The best time to break screenwriting
rules if you know what they are and are breaking them for
a specific purpose. For instance, starting your
screenplay with "FADE
OUT" or "The
End" would most certainly be breaking the
rules and you should probably have a pretty good idea why
you're doing that. Ending your screenplay as it
begins, that is. Not to say that it couldn't be
done. I'm no stickler for the rules. But that
would be quite a short film, and movie theatre owners
(such as Peter Pacific Theatres and George General
Cinemas) don't want riots on their hands when moviegoers
rebel after taking their seats with their jumbo popcorns
and jumbo candy boxes and jumbo soft drinks, only to find
that the movie is only ten seconds long (or thirty if
there is a long fade out). So you probably don't
want to break that rule. There are other general
rules you want to most likely stay with. You
probably don't want to kill your hero off too early or at
all. Audiences like to root for the good guy.
Or good gal. Or good girl. Or good lady.
The heroine. You know what I mean. And if the
villain doesn't get his just desert (why should a villain
get to have desert when we have to sit in the dark theatre
with cheap candy stuck to our back teeth? What about
OUR desert?), that can bother an audience to the point
that its members start throwing cheap candy at the screen,
along with jumbo popcorn, candy boxes, and soft
drinks.
Memento and Run Lola, Run
broke the rules, and more and more films are breaking the
"screenwriter barrier." Breaking rules
that were once thought in screenwriting circles as being
sacrosanct. What was once taboo is now
commonplace. So break the rules, by all means.
Just watch out for the flying
popcorn.
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