Almost Linear

By Jack Davis

To all my readers from last week, great to see you again. To all my new ones, where the heck have you been?

Last week, I introduced the first half of my blog series on meandering movies, talking about what makes a postmodern film, how that applies to thrillers, and one of my favorite films, Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye. Today I’ll continue that thread, wrapping up on Altman’s film, talking a bit about Inherent Vice, and going more into the characteristics of a postmodern mystery:

One thing these sort of “revisionist” noir / mystery films have that the classics don’t (even though today The Long Goodbye is old enough to be considered a classic) are subplots. Maybe that’s not giving the older movies enough credit, so I’ll amend that and say those films don’t have as many subplots. For example, a large chunk of the movie involves a woman, Eileen Wade, hiring Marlowe to find her missing husband, Roger, an alcoholic novelist. Even if Eileen may prove to be pivotal to the story by the end, from a traditional narrative standpoint that wouldn’t justify the time we spend with Marlowe freeing this writer from a mental asylum and hanging out with him at his house. That said, they’re some of the movie’s best scenes. It is absolutely a blast watching this Roger Wade character pontificate and grunt his way around; while Eileen ends up being a figure in the story, I can say that Roger wouldn’t be traditionally classified as such. I don’t believe that even the self-classified movie snobs (please stand up) would complain about these scenes being there.

Same with Inherent Vice. Joaquin Phoenix’s stoner-PI-who’s-actually-good-at-his-job (new archetype?) constantly has run ins with Josh Brolin’s Detective Bigfoot (who at one point eats all his pot), is looking for a missing real estate mogul who “is Jewish but wants to be a neo-Nazi,” and is also getting constantly hired for various gigs; like The Long Goodbye, some of the asides turn out to be relevant to the story – if you decide this movie has a plot – and some don’t. But what means something is a) you don’t know immediately whether certain scenes or characters pertain and you’re still along for the ride and b) the characters are so rich they make you not grip so tightly on / forget about the mystery, which c) leads to some wild but not out of nowhere surprises.

That was a lot, but it’s all a long way of saying that seeing these movies was very freeing for me as a writer. It made me not feel as bound to the traditional three-act structure while recognizing that even without it, certain beats and pivots in a script must occur. A movie where the absolute core of it is characters speaking and nothing more often (not always, but most of the time) can be uniformly and consistently tedious, but that doesn’t mean you can’t prioritize writing rich characters. There exist a lot of dialogue heavy movies, a lot of meandering movies, like the two above, that don’t necessarily follow your traditional structure. They do have a plot at their core, it’s just well hidden. And it’s not an easy thing to write, I believe there is probably a lot of forethought and outlining that has to go into a story like this beforehand, but it is possible. Hey, if you at least have rich characters, you’re beating a lot of the other movies out there.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my tangential free association (redundant?) on the love I have for meandering movies, as well as how it’s inspired and motivated me as a writer. I’d love to hear about any of your successes / struggles with the form, or experience as a writer in general.

Don’t be a stranger; I’d love for you to comment with any questions, concerns, or friendly disagreements. Also feel free to reach out to me through the “Contact Me” section of my page. Peace and love!