Reader Question: What’s the best way to write cross-genre movies?

Question from Annika W:

Everything I’ve been reading about what buyers want now says multi-genre has an edge over single genre, as audiences have become tired of genre formulas and now find them predictable. I agree. However, I watched a movie last night (Extreme Measures, written by Tony Gilroy) that drifted from one genre into the next, as if it didn’t know whether it wanted to be a thriller, a medical mystery, a drama, or even a melodrama. What are some tips for keeping a genre mash-up (like Zombieland) different from a script that just doesn’t know which genre it wants to be?

That’s a really interesting question. In my own writing, when working with other writers, or teaching students, it’s one of the first questions that comes up in the story-crafting process: What genre is it? There are certain expectations that come along with the choice of genre related to characterizations, tone, pace, style, narrative voice, and so on. But when you write a cross-genre movie, how do you determine what the approach to the story should be and stay true to that throughout in your writing?

And by the way, it’s not only a crucial question for how you write the script, but also how the movie gets cast, how it’s shot, how it’s edited, and how it’s marketed.

Here’s my quick answer: Drill down into your story and determine which of the genres most reflects the essential story you want to tell. Pick one as your primary genre. If you’re writing an action-comedy, decide: Is it an action movie with comedy, or a comedy movie with action? If you’re writing a science fiction-thriller, decide: Is it a science fiction movie with thrills, or a thriller with science fiction elements?

Let’s look at a hugely successful cross-genre movie from 2010 Inception. IMDB lists it as: Action, Crime, Mystery. For clarity’s sake, let’s substitute the word Caper for crime because everything I’ve read about the movie is that Nolan’s original instinct about the story was always to make a caper film. And frankly, I’d swap out Science Fiction for Mystery because the idea of ‘inception’ and the way it plays out in the movie strikes me much more as sci-fi and much less a mystery.

So Inception: Action, Caper, Science Fiction. If you had to choose, which of those three would you say is the best description of the essential story in the movie? I’d say Caper. The whole premise of the movie is a caper. The team of lead characters are involved in capers as their profession. It was, as noted, Nolan’s original instinct about the movie — to do a caper film.

Therefore I’d say Inception is a Caper movie with Action and Science Fiction elements. And the fact Nolan stayed squarely on target with that vision gave the film a cohesive feel throughout.

Now consider Black Swan. IMDB lists these two genres for the movie: Drama, Thriller. Which of those two would you say best describes the essential story of the movie?

But wait… shouldn’t we include Horror in there, too? As these reviews suggest.

To be honest, I don’t know how to answer the question re Black Swan. Look at the various subplots:

NOTE: SPOILER ALERT!!!

* Nina — Erica (Mother): That is played out pretty much as a drama (domineering mother who lives out her fantasies through her daughter).

* Nina — Lily (Understudy): Conversely this has the tone of a thriller (twisted relationship where the understudy may be messing with the Protagonist’s mind).

* Nina — Thomas (Artistic Director): This feels more like a drama (driven visionary who manipulates artist to get her best performance).

* Nina — Beth (Faded Star): Here again this comes off as more of a thriller (violent and suicidal impulses of retired artist threatens the sanity and life of the Protagonist).

* Nina — Black Swan (Nina’s Shadow Self): And this, which I would argue is the story’s Plotline, feels to me like it is at least attempting to be a horror story (Protagonist loses her grip on reality and her life by immersing herself in her Dark Side).

I know a lot of people like Black Swan. It didn’t work for me in part precisely because it didn’t feel cohesive, switching tones each time it cut from one storyline to the next. Yes, brilliant visually. Yes, Portman’s performance is incredible. But as a story? In trying to be a Drama, Thriller, and Horror movie — without picking one as the essential story — it lacks focus and ultimately, for me at least, a sense of narrative unity.

Feel free to disagree, as I’m sure many of you will.

Circling back to your question, Annika, my advice is simple: In a cross-genre story, pick the one genre that best describes the essential story you are telling, then stick to that choice, recognizing that the other genre elements are there to support the primary genre.

GITS readers, please provide your thoughts as this is an important issue each of us is or will deal with and presumably more than once.

UPDATE: In comments, Chucklz mentioned an interview Aronfosky and actress Mila Kunis did with Movemaker. Here are some key excerpts:

Joe Leydon (MM): It’s difficult to ask very specific questions about Black Swan without giving too much away. So at the risk of sounding too vague: Was it difficult to portray a character who might not always be real, who might — or might not — sometimes appear on-screen as a manifestation of someone else’s fears or desires?

Mila Kunis (MK): I think the difficult part of that was for Darren. It wasn’t so difficult for me, because I never had to think about whether the character was really there. I just went through the scenes, doing whatever he told me to do.

MM: But did he tell you to play certain scenes with a different intensity?

MK: I think in every scene we played her every which way possible. You could never really predict what we’d be doing the next day in regard to playing the character. What we might focus on originally during rehearsal might be one thing, but once we started shooting it, Darren was incredibly creative.

Darren Aronofsky (DA): Mila could always be counted on to bring whatever she was doing to a level where it seemed very real. She was always very truthful and honest and present. It was my strategy to always try all the different ways that it could be played. We wanted to play it with sweetness, we wanted to play it with some conniving, we wanted to play it more ephemeral — we tried it all those different ways so we’d have all those options in the editing room.

MM: Were there some days you were less worried about realism than others?

DA: Every day, we tried to get as much as we could. Sure, there are certain scenes that are less real… But in general, we just tried to create as much a range of options as possible, so that we could play around in the editing room after we figured out exactly what was going on. The goal was to get the actor to give you each direction clearly and truthfully. That was never a problem with Mila.

Interesting. Compare to this quote from Francis Ford Coppola:

When you make a movie, always try to discover what the theme of the movie is in one or two words. Every time I made a film, I always knew what I thought the theme was, the core, in one word. In “The Godfather,” it was succession. In “The Conversation,” it was privacy. In “Apocalypse,” it was morality.

The reason it’s important to have this is because most of the time what a director really does is make decisions. All day long: Do you want it to be long hair or short hair? Do you want a dress or pants? Do you want a beard or no beard? There are many times when you don’t know the answer. Knowing what the theme is always helps you.

I remember in “The Conversation,” they brought all these coats to me, and they said: Do you want him to look like a detective, Humphrey Bogart? Do you want him to look like a blah blah blah. I didn’t know, and said the theme is ‘privacy’ and chose the plastic coat you could see through. So knowing the theme helps you make a decision when you’re not sure which way to go.

One approach offers maximum flexibility. The other is a preference for the narrowness of focus.

UPDATE: In comments, Annika W makes a good point:

One other thing that comes to mind when setting up cross-genre stories is to establish all of the genres you’ll be playing with early on, then use them consistently. It’s a problem when, say, a melodramatic scene pops up at the beginning of a third act of a thriller. I loved Zombieland and Shawn of the Dead, but you knew those were horror-comedies right out the gate. What you are really guarding against is tone shifts.

This falls under what Tom Benedek calls a writer’s “pact with the reader,” how in a script’s set-up, you convey to the reader key elements of the narrative, including what genre it is, what its tone is, then deliver on that pact.

Annika mentioned Zombieland, how “you knew those were horror-comedies right out the gate.” I made exactly that point in this post:

One of the most important things a writer wants to do when they begin a script is establish the story’s tone — and this is nowhere more important than with a cross-genre movie. A great example is Zombieland (2009). Written by screenwriters Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick, the movie crosses two genres: horror and comedy. And Reese & Wernick let the reader know straightaway their screenplay has heaping gobs of both.

Hit the link to see that script’s opening couple of pages.

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