As some of you know, I had to make an unanticipated trip to California a few weeks back. My mother-in-law Sally died suddenly. She was in hospice care, but declined quickly and unexpectedly. Fortunately my wife and her sister were able to be with Sally the last four days of her life.
As I was flying back home, I recalled that I had made the same pilgrimage twice before: After my father’s death in 2003 and my mother’s in 2007.
And that got me thinking about death.
Just as darkness helps to define light, death can be one of the ways we define and even choose to perceive life. Remember that saying: “Live each day as if it was your last.” What if we actually lived like that?
I think I know why scant few of us do – because to live each day as if it was your last one would be to live with a profound awareness of death all the time.
That’s a scary and burdensome thing to do.
Moreover we are trained from early on in our childhood to incorporate the idea of death into our consciousness, then essentially relativize it.
Per the training as a child, think about these:
* “Cross my hear and hope to die.”
* “Now I lay me down to sleep, pray the Lord my soul to keep; and if I die before I wake, pray the Lord my soul to take.”
* Playing games of the imagination — war games, cops and robbers, good guys and bad guys — where one moment, we ‘die,’ then we’re alive again and now it’s one of our friends turns to ‘die’
Psychologically it’s critical that a child learn how to incorporate the idea of death into their thinking. By the time they have the ability to grasp the concept of permanence – typically around 6 years old – they will have become familiar enough with the notion of death to make that transition from fantasy to reality.
But then the next part of our education begins: Now that we understand the concepts of death and permanence, somehow we have to learn how to live with the knowledge that (A) we are going to die and (B) we could die at any moment.
How do we manage to pull that off? I contend that much of what goes on in education and socialization essentially is geared toward neutering the impact of those realities. Part of that is, I think, a reflection of the fact that if we dwell too much on the possibility of death, we can become hamstrung, unable to be proactive in our lives. But part of it is tied to an innate human instinct to turn aside from painful or ugly realities. Indeed if you take a meta view of advertising, it seems like a big part of their message is about how we can live forever, be beautiful forever, be strong forever…
One time before I started writing a screenplay that involved a central character who was dying of cancer, I emailed poet and friend Kurt Brown, asking if he could send me a good poem about death. This was his reply:
“Scott, all poems are about death.”
What I’ve just written thus far in this post basically sums up what I was thinking on my flight home following Sally’s death.
Then I started to think about Kurt’s observation. If all poems are about death, what about stories? And if stories, what about movies?
Obviously death is used time and time again in movies in a symbolic way — the end of a relationship, the failure of a business, the last game of a season.
But what about actual death, characters who physically expire in movies?
So I went to IMDB and looked at the top 25 movies of all time as voted by IMDB users. They are:
| 1. | 9.1 | The Shawshank Redemption (1994) | 488,763 |
| 2. | 9.1 | The Godfather (1972) | 391,934 |
| 3. | 9.0 | The Godfather: Part II (1974) | 232,028 |
| 4. | 8.9 | Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo. (1966) | 148,854 |
| 5. | 8.9 | Pulp Fiction (1994) | 396,551 |
| 6. | 8.8 | Schindler’s List (1993) | 262,408 |
| 7. | 8.8 | 12 Angry Men (1957) | 109,761 |
| 8. | 8.8 | One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) | 202,555 |
| 9. | 8.8 | Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980) | 265,431 |
| 10. | 8.8 | The Dark Knight (2008) | 435,845 |
| 11. | 8.8 | The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) | 346,888 |
| 12. | 8.8 | Star Wars (1977) | 309,330 |
| 13. | 8.7 | Casablanca (1942) | 161,227 |
| 14. | 8.7 | Shichinin no samurai (1954) | 92,208 |
| 15. | 8.7 | Goodfellas (1990) | 217,669 |
| 16. | 8.7 | Fight Club (1999) | 361,592 |
| 17. | 8.7 | Cidade de Deus (2002) | 156,679 |
| 18. | 8.7 | The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) | 371,314 |
| 19. | 8.7 | Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) | 233,316 |
| 20. | 8.7 | Rear Window (1954) | 113,269 |
| 21. | 8.7 | The Usual Suspects (1995) | 255,486 |
| 22. | 8.7 | Psycho (1960) | 136,383 |
| 23. | 8.7 | C’era una volta il West (1968) | 69,556 |
| 24. | 8.6 | The Silence of the Lambs (1991) | 233,092 |
| 25. | 8.6 | The Matrix (1999) | 362,815 |
In every one of those movies, at least one character dies. Think about that. The 25 most popular movies on arguably the most popular movie site on the web, and every single one of them has at least one actual death as a narrative component.
What does this mean?
Presumably a lot. And I ask your opinion on the subject in comments.
The one thing I’d like to say is this: Movies provide an important psychological function, allowing viewers to ‘experience’ death in a safe way, not actual physical death, but – to the degree that we enter ‘into’ the lives of the movie’s characters – emotionally through what transpires on screen.
Why is death so prevalent in movies? Because we know. We know we are going to die. We know at any second, we could get hit by a meteorite. Or swallowed up by an earthquake. Or cut down by an aneurysm.
We’re not comfortable with those thoughts. They scare us. But we know – as we’ve known since our childhood – that this is the reality: life ends in death.
And so as afraid as we are to sit with the awareness of our mortality, we are drawn to poems, stories, and movies – those ‘safe’ places – to experience death, to feel those feelings of sadness and loss, terror and fear, and sometimes relief and even beauty.
What are your thoughts? About death? About the prevalence of death in movies? About the power of movies to tell stories involving death? What is that about? What is going on there? Have you ever written a script involving death as a significant narrative element? What was that experience like?
Finally as long as we’re here in this emotional ‘place,’ how about each of us take a moment, close our eyes, and remember those loved ones of ours who have passed away. Think about them. Their faces. Their lives. What they meant to you and to others. And give thanks for what we shared together with them.
I didn't realize that all films in the top 25 featured death.
I also didn't realize (although probably would have assumed) that none are comedies.
I think the death of someone or a group of people can be a great motivator for your protagonist (Gladiator comes to mind). Sometimes this will spawn revenge, sometimes guilt. This emotion will lead them through act 2 and at the end of act 2 they will die themselves, literally or figuratively, and emerge as someone new.
Everything I've written involves death… Never realized it. Maybe I'm not as happy/upbeat as I thought, or maybe I just always feel I can better portray the reverse in comparison with with the other.
Blake Snyder in Save the Cat always talked about the "whiff of death" where he felt that at your protagonist's lowest point it was important, no matter the genre to include some reference (even subtly) to death to raise the stakes.
His example was Elf, a light comedy, but there is a moment where Buddy stares over a bridge and briefly considers suicide.
Just a thought.
That may be one of the best random blog posts I've ever read. And I think it just really helped my screenplay. So thanks.
A friend told me that when a loved one dies my relationship with them doesn't end…it just alters. I hang on to that.
When the screen can deliver up the beauty in death, that's when I sob…eg,Wit, The Notebook. And in the sobbing, something shifts in the soul. I always feel grateful to the writer and the team who created that moment. Such generosity to remind us all that we're not alone.
Inspirational & thought-provoking post, Scott.
First off Scott, I'm sorry for your family's loss. Second that was a brilliant post and makes me realize why I hang around GITS.
My thoughts?
I think when I was in my mid-twenties I realized when you reach puberty and into your late twenties, you think you are invincible. Death has no concrete meaning. When you get into your thirties, it gradually comes to pass that you sense you might actually be mortal. When you are in your forties and later, Life pounds it into you- you will die.
That being said, when I was in my twenties I was in a war and saw people slaughtered. I almost died but I made it. After that I was and still am fascinated with the question, What is Death? It is truly absolutely something that no one on this planet or in this universe can truly know UNTIL IT HAPPENS, and the prime supreme irony is YOU CAN'T TELL ANYONE!
We have many religions which contain the poetry you allude to but ultimately they all require faith.
The one discipline, and not a religion, I've found which gave the best answer for me was Zen Buddhism. I'm not a Buddhist, but I love the perceptions of the writings I've read in books by Alan Watts and RH Blythe.They give me peace and serenity of mind.
Consider the Samurai of 16th Century Japan. Why would they be so quick to commit seppuku over a perceived insult? To their thinking, Life is merely the other side of Death and what lies beyond this world is not the conventional heaven-hell paradigm. The bodies we love so much decay and without them perhaps there is a far more interesting reality?
The films dealing with death are obviously astronomical because it is a human concern which crosses cultural boundaries and is inherently capable of creating drama, conflict, and emotion…all the things which make great films great.
I'll "whisper this down a dark well at noon": When I think about death, my own, my children,anyone I love, I think of this passage of a prayer or meditation- from the Clavell book "Shogun":
"Now sleep. Karma is Karma. Be thou of Zen.Remember, in tranquility, that the Absolute, the Tao, is within thee, that no priest or cult or dogma or book or saying or teaching or teacher stands between Thou and It. Know that Good and Evil are irrelevant, I and Thou irrelevant, Inside and Outside irrelevant as are Life and Death. Enter into the sphere where there is no fear of death nor hope of afterlife, where thou art free of the impediments of life or the needs of salvation. Thou art thyself the Tao. Be thou, now, a rock against which the waves of life rush in vain…"
In my current screenplay, I killed one of my main protaganists. I loved this character so much. So much that for a while considered making it alive. But I just thought that this ridiculous and unrealistic. For Death is the only sure destination that any human will reach. Only destination.
Great post Scott Thanks a lot.
THANK YOU!!!
Yesterday I read my last finished screenplay Kim.
The ending sucks. It is so cute it is dripping with syrup. Yesterday I still couldn't figure out a good ending.
I think you just helped me out there.
What are your thoughts? About death?
I'll give you my favorite quote of all time. It sums me up.
“In the last analysis, it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions that life puts to us.”
Dag Hammarskjöld, U.N. Secretary-General, 53-61
Have you ever written a script involving death as a significant narrative element?
Yes. My paranormal mystery thriller (now in its 4th draft) is precisely about a man's realization that death may not be the end.
I think "Fight Club" is a comedy, and "Pulp Fiction" and "Goodfellas," too.