I decided this week that we have not reached the third act of Donald Trump but, rather, America’s third act with or without…HIM. After all, it’s ultimately all of US who are the main character in this tawdry story and whose fates hang in the balance. We’ve got the most at stake and we’re the downtrodden potential hero any reasonable audience will be rooting for.
So….I decided to consult an expert.
Screen and television writer-producer Tony McNamara (Poor Things, The Great) recently wrote a piece for the L.A. Times where he likened the writer’s experience of writing a screenplay, especially its third act, to the three-act structure journey we usually send our main character (Note: They used to call them heroes in the old days, but Donald has forever ruined that) on in our movies.
And since McNamara used his experience writing the crazy, bold and currently Oscar-nominated adapted screenplay for Poor Things, a film that under most circumstances would never get made, much less released, by a major Hollywood studio (Note: Nor certainly in a country ruled by an aspiring dictator) as a metaphor, I figured what he had to say was noteworthy.
Here’s how he sees it:
The first act is the writers’ setup and then acceptance and commitment to take on the daunting task of telling – and actually agreeing to write – the story.
In McNamara’s case this was particularly daunting since Poor Things was based on a Scottish novel and he had never adapted a screenplay from a book, much less one set in Victorian London, that was both “a gothic comedy fantasy and a philosophical satire about shame” centered on a woman (Bella Baxter) who is “reanimated to life when her own baby’s brain is put into her head.”
Nevertheless, we screenwriters tend to be nothing else if not game, much in the way many of we Americans used to be in our not-so-distant pasts. (Note: See the 1960s and/or 1970s for examples).
The second act, according to McNamara, is the actual writing process – meaning facing all the obstacles, challenges and conflicts set up along the way for our characters during the process of writing them, and solving them cleverly, dramatically and even with some outrageous humor.
No need to go into details of what he had to do with his screenplay here, except to say that, like most history, Bella’s narrative in the novel was told, and thus controlled, by the men in her life. It was their version of her story with them, taking place in their world.
So the decision was made that the movie “story” would instead focus on Bella’s journey of growth and discovery, as well as the failure of traditional society (e.g. men) to control her. It took the whole project in a new and exciting direction, moving McNamara quickly through much of the scenes he had planned up to that familiar moment in almost every movie, and in many a writers’ nightmare, when a hero/heroine/society’s dream turns to crap and they, and their writer, are faced with –
The dreaded third act.
That point where the writer, and the movie, must pick up their main character (Note: Or even country, if it aspires to be heroic) out of the gutter, figure out a believable solution to the problem at hand, and then come up with a plan of action which will lead to a solution that will resolve the story in a true, believable and somewhat satisfying (though not necessarily happy for everyone) way worthy of said character, its people, and the audience (Note: Or citizenry) living and/or viewing it.
What this meant for the third act of Poor Things can be viewed onscreen (Note: No Spoilers here!) and through the accolades and mostly positive attention it has received from filmgoers and critics since its debut at the Venice Film Festival in the fall of 2023.
But know that it wasn’t easy getting there.
McNamara recalls that at that structural point in his and his film’s journey he was panicked, convinced everything he had planned would happen could now never work, and found himself unable to come up with any solutions.
At All.
Nothing. Nada.
Except sheer panic.
Eventually, and after much thought about, well, A LOT of things, this prompted him to send an email to the director with the words:
It’s too hard. We tried. Let’s never speak of this again.
And a promise to return all the money he was paid to face, what seemed at the time, an impossible task – yet one that with more time, thought and renewed focus would turn out to be anything but.
Most of the writers I know, myself included, have either lived or lives in fear of the moment McNamara experienced as his third act loomed. Of course, It doesn’t always happen in that spot.
For me it’s usually later on, midway through the second draft, where I suddenly begin to hyperventilate, what have I done?, out loud to myself as I slowly begin to realize the whole thing is falling apart.
For others it happens at the beginning, when they have to start, or have started, to their dissatisfaction. Still others have their moment near or at the conclusion, sure every bit of it will not work and that it will mark a real ending for them personally, one they had never anticipated and certainly never intended.
Often it takes the form of a voice that says:
There is NO recovery from this for me. The end is near and there is nothing to be done about it but pack it in, submit to the looming defeat that is about to come and hide in shame until it passes. Maybe you try to live on, but likely you won’t, certainly not in the way that you have been.
Well, I can’t help but feel that many voters in America are in a similar panic mode as they face the current end of act two low point of the Trump Era and contemplate his very well-publicized, gasping grab at a victorious third act…For Himself.
So we need to ask ourselves this:
Whose game are we playing? His? Or ours? Whose narrative is this? Who is the star of this movie – US, or Him? (Note: Ironically, when asked about films he likes he rejects anything contemporary and often cites Sunset Boulevard (A former star who lives in the past and is going stark raving mad) or Citizen Kane (A bitter mogul whose life ends with him moaning for a toy that gave him one single fleeting moment of childhood happiness he was doomed to never experience again in his adult life).
Hey, I like them too. But think about it.
Also, think about this.
There are many other tough, smart Black women willing to follow in NY Attorney General Letitia James’ and Atlanta DA Fani Willis’ footsteps into the white hot national spotlight of scrutiny in order to slay the MAGA dragon and save the country, and in turn, democracy.
But they can’t do it alone. Nor should they have to.
The least the rest of us can do is stop whining about Trump and wringing our hands over Joe Biden’s age and start publicly opposing the MAGA agenda at every single chance we get – verbally, financially and at the ballot box.
We need to write our own Third Act before the Orange Menace does it for us and determines our Final Solution.
notes from a chair 