sex, lies, and blog

By Mckee's standards, John would be driving the scene. Basically he is an instigator, deliberately bringing up painful memories for Graham and knowingly hurting him. Much of the scene consists of John demonstrating his power: his power over Ann, his power over Graham years later, and even his power to get people where he wants them so that he can manipulate them and lie. The opening value is observably positive, yet at further glance it seems almost condescending. John “lightens” the mood by bringing up Graham’s past, which is an extremely volatile subject in its own right. The scene can be broken down a number of ways. I found that fourteen beats were effective in demonstrating the pendulum of sentiments that get tossed around about the scene. There is John manipulating, Ann ignoring, Graham prying, John allowing, John demeaning, Graham backing down and so on. The closing value of the scene is negative, rounding out a specific arc of value changes. It ends with John using his power to get them to leave so that he can use the apartment to have sex with Ann’s sister. Meanwhile, he already has demoralized Graham considerably without Ann knowing anything. Weston’s analysis is much more complex in terms of deducing motivations and general character psyches. Where Weston spends time elaborating on why someone might do something, Mckee makes point to break things down to simple, workable concepts.


Discussion Questons:

1. Do you consider beats an effective way of getting to the source of what the character is going through in a scene, what works and doesn't?

2. John is generally unlikeable, however, if you have never read the screenplay or seen the film, this may not be so evident. What can you ultimately conclude about John in this particular scene in and of itself, what does it say about how the film is written as a whole?