How not to write a synopsis

As a guy who's done a lot of film writing in my day, I've also synopsized a lot of movies.

And by this I don't mean I've summarized the plot of a lot of movies -- that's not the point of a synopsis. If you want that -- and I sometimes do, if I've been falling to sleep during the second half of a movie -- wikipedia usually has excellently detailed outlines of movie plots from beginning to end (even if they are not always excellently written). The spoiler alert is assumed.

The synopsis is really to give readers a taste of what the movie is about -- to give them about what the trailer gives them, assuming it's a trailer with the standard level of exposition. Roughly approximated, it's about as much information as you would learn in the first ten or fifteen minutes of the movie -- who the characters are, and what their (overt) goals seem to be.

And so it's very important not to write a synopsis based on information you could have only gleaned by watching the whole movie. If you're going to synopsize a movie for public consumption after you've seen it, you have to be oh-so-careful to remember what information you learned, when.

This is why I'm pulling out an example from one of my own former colleagues for this post. It's not because he's a bad guy (in fact I don't know him personally), and I actually think he can be quite a strong writer. It's because he pretty much blew some of the key surprises about Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol by failing to adhere to this simple synopsizing protocol (if you will). (But because I don't want to throw him under the bus, I'm not going to name him or the site name in this post.)

And because this plot synopsis will constitute a spoiler for those of you who haven't seen the movie, I'm going to invite anyone in that category to stop reading right now.

Okay, we good?

Actually, there's really only one sentence in his synopsis that's relevant to today's discussion, so I'll include only that. (Which will also make it less likely that you'll track down who I'm talking about.) Here's what he wrote:

"As the movie opens, Ethan Hunt (played once again by Tom Cruise) is busted out of a Russian jail, where he was imprisoned for taking revenge for the apparent death of his wife (Michelle Monaghan)."

If you've seen the movie (and I'm assuming everyone who's still reading has, or doesn't care if they haven't), you know that there are actually three violations of synopsizing etiquette in this sentence. In possible order of their magnitude:

1) At the beginning of the movie, we know only that Hunt was in a Russian prison. We have no idea why he was there until much later, when it is part of a key reveal in the plot.

2) That key reveal is that his wife was killed, and he took revenge on those who killed her. However, this reveal probably does not come until an hour in, at which point, we are supposed to take it at face value. Plot synopses are all about the parts of the plot we are supposed to take at face value. So even if her death was revealed in the first 15 minutes, and therefore appropriate as part of a synopsis, you wouldn't want to call it an "apparent" death -- that only signals to the reader that things are not as they seem. (Imagine synopsizing The Sixth Sense and referring to Bruce Willis' character as "a psychiatrist who may or may not be alive.")

3) By giving Michelle Monaghan's name in parentheses, you are essentially telling the reader she appears in this movie -- something that doesn't occur until its final five minutes. Sure, you could just be reminding the reader of what he/she knows from Mission: Impossible III, but unless an actor or actress appears in the cast of the current movie, parenthetically mentioning them in connection with a character name is misleading at best. (Of course, she could have been killed in the opening of this movie, but once they start watching, viewers will quickly realize that's not the case -- and have the rest of the movie tarnished for them at that point.)

People who write about film for a public audience have such a sacred responsibility to respect the intentions of the filmmakers, not to mention create the best possible circumstances for a viewer to receive and benefit from those intentions, that I can't help but write about this. I know that my appreciation of this incredibly fun action movie would have been severely compromised if I'd read this synopsis before I saw the movie.

So I hate to single you out, So-and-So from Such-and-Such website. But my own intentions are only good ones. And if you do happen to read this, maybe it'll help make you a better synopsizer -- and help save some of your readers from having future movies casually spoiled through careless writing.

Drive out the old year, drive-in the new

Parents going out on New Year's Eve without needing a sitter?

Mission: Possible.

On Saturday night, we rang in the new year with Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol and The Sitter at the Mission Tiki Drive-in in Montclair -- the site of both successes and failures in our moviegoing past. And we got to be (semi)-responsible parents by having our son right there in the back seat with us. (Better than leaving him at home with Jonah Hill, right?)

It had been a rather late-developing plan. The initial idea was to do more or less what we did for his first New Year's, which was go out for an early dinner at somewhere that was fancy enough to serve us a celebratory cocktail, then return home for a movie (last year, it was the thematically appropriate countdown movie Run Lola Run).

But this past Wednesday Mission Tiki sent me its weekly email advertising its offerings for the upcoming weekend, and it was clear they would be open on New Year's Eve. In fact, we were being told to "ring in the New Year under the stars." Since we'd failed to decide on a movie (Roland Emmerich's 2012 had been batted around, but did we really plan to see this behemoth a second time?) or a place to eat, going to the drive-in would take care of both, as we'd buy sandwiches to picnic at the theater. In fact, the sandwiches and the $7 entry fee per head might make the whole evening about as expensive as just our two celebratory cocktails.

We'd learned our lesson about trying to switch screens between the first and second movie (see the "failures" hyperlink above), so we needed to be convinced that both the movies were ones we a) at least sort of wanted to see, and b) had not already seen. The only one of the four pairings that met our criteria was M:I - GP and The Sitter. (With The Adventures of Tintin and Hugo, we'd both seen Hugo; with Sherlock Holmes and The Darkest Hour, she'd seen Sherlock Holmes; and with Chipwrecked and We Bought a Zoo, I'd seen Zoo. And besides, not even at a drive-in would I see a chipmunks movie.) And since they repeat the first feature after the second one finishes, we could risk switching screens at that point and might even catch The Adventures of Tintin. (Though it would be weird watching the clock strike midnight in the middle of a movie.)

Ah, but there was one more criterion we haven't mentioned: They both needed to be movies we'd be willing to see in the compromised environment of the drive-in. Here was where I almost tripped us up.

See, everyone's been talking about how great Mission: Impossible is -- and specifically how great it is in IMAX. If there were ever a movie to see in IMAX, this was apparently it. I knew that most of the action set pieces had been shot with an IMAX camera, but I didn't know what most of those set pieces were, meaning I might be able to claim bliss by virtue of ignorance. However, the film's most famous set piece -- Tom Cruise climbing the outside of Dubai's Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building -- would always haunt me if I didn't see it in IMAX. This is what I wrestled with once my wife had decided she was on board for the drive-in, lured particularly by Mission: Impossible.

I wrestled for less than a day. Ultimately, I felt pretty fortunate in the first place that my wife wanted to wade back into the unknown dangers of going to the drive-in with a toddler, and if I got hung up on whiny technicalities ("But I wanna see Mission Impossible in IIIII-MAAAAX!"), I'd run the risk of throwing a wet blanket over the whole affair. You can't see every movie you want to see in the ideal setting to see it. Sacrifices must be made for the greater good.

So we got all our ducks in a row and left around 5:25 for a 7 o'clock show -- in other words, at least ten minutes later than we'd wanted to leave. It's funny, because after last time, we swore we'd never be running late to the drive-in again. Last time, we were fumbling with our walkmen (that's how you don't bother the sleeping baby with the sound) as the opening credits were rolling, desperately trying to find the correct FM station on cheap equipment we'd bought for $10. When we got a late start Saturday night for the hour-long drive, I felt the same nerve-jangling scenario arising again.

Never happened. In fact, we were parked and ready to go at about 6:40 -- early enough even for me to sneak off to the bathroom for, ahem, something more than a trip to the urinal. (Since I don't want that innuendo to be misunderstood, I'll remove its usefulness as an innuendo by explaining: I had to go #2, and was already worried that I wouldn't have the time for it, leaving me in a potentially desperate situation during the movie.)

The place was dead. We thought there was a decent chance parents would see this as a way to get out with their kids for New Year's Eve, especially with two family-friendly double features playing. But we were one of only about a half-dozen cars facing our screen when we got there, and that number only doubled by the time the show started.

It went mostly smoothly. Our son slept all the way through to the Burj Khalifa sequence. At this point, my wife got into the back seat and fed him the bottle we'd warmed up at home before we left -- and I started to panic. See, my wife had left her walkman in the front seat -- I think she didn't want to get tangled up in the headphone cable. I thought she'd planned to just hand him the bottle -- he can drink it without our assistance -- but she stayed back there until he was done, and even comforted him when he wouldn't return to sleep. So I was filled with that sinking certainty that she was missing ten minutes of the plot (the scene where they set up the fake exchange at the Burj Khalifa), and it started distracting me terribly. Eventually I went diving for her walkman on the passenger side floor, and handed it back to her. It was only later that I learned that she was hearing the scene fine, albeit at a quieter volume -- there was a car less than ten feet to our right, and they were playing it at full volume.

Whew. Had the chance to ruin the whole movie for her.

Our son was up for a good 90 minutes at this point, but surprisingly, it was not that much of a distraction. We each took turns rocking him in place in the carriage, and even though he didn't go back to sleep, he was pretty docile. And all you really have to be doing is facing the screen with your headphones in. Who cares if you're standing up or sitting in the car? Seeing the movie is the important part.

And so it was that we didn't care that we both watched the first half (the weaker half) of The Sitter outside the car, as a sign of solidarity to the other person who wasn't doing the rocking/pushing. He finally went back to sleep, and we both watched the more heartfelt second half of the movie back inside the car.

We had decided beforehand not to stay for The Adventures of Tintin when it played again at 11. We knew that things would time out perfectly for us to get home just before the ball dropped if we were lucky, and that was a goal worth striving for. Being on the roads before midnight, rather than after, would also cut down on the knucklehead factor in terms of other drivers. But the people at the Mission Tiki made it easy for us anyway, taking the microphone during the closing credits for The Sitter and thanking us for coming -- "We are now CLOSED." So much for ringing in the new year. My guess is that they looked at the paltry attendance and figured that they could at least salvage something from the evening by sending their staff to a local party in time for midnight.

Sure, it wasn't like the old days at the drive-in. We didn't get to eat as much of the wide variety of food we'd brought as we'd planned, because it's much harder to locate where you put things when you're trying not to rustle and crinkle too much around a sleeping baby. (And that was even with my wife taking precautions to organize everything better than last time.) We lost a small bit of each movie to baby logistics. And listening to the movies through our headphones rather than the car's radio was a definite step down in the auditory experience.

But hey, as a New Year's Eve activity with a 16-month-old? First rate.

And we did get home before the ball dropped. In fact, it was 11:49 when we pulled up outside our house, and though our son woke up and started wailing, I appeared to have him down by about 11:58.

As soon as I exited his room, he started wailing again. But by now, it was a mere 80 seconds to midnight. We decided he could endure 80 seconds of wailing and watched the ball drop in Times Square -- three-hour tape delay, of course -- then finished the countdown with the customary kiss at midnight. In that moment, we really didn't notice the screaming baby soundtrack.

Just two parents finding that compromise between the way things used to be, and the way we're so glad they are now.

Tom Cruise can run

You know what a lot of actors can't do very well?

Run.

Lately I've been noticing it a lot. Scenes in movies or TV shows that are supposed to be tense, that feature the main characters running. Except most of the time, they look like they're more worried about tripping on a loose object and stumbling face first -- the kind of fall that would risk scratching up their money-makers. I can't believe the number of directors who let actors get away with these slack-faced, controlled trots, which are all the more ridiculous because you can't look intense while running cautiously.

But not Tom Cruise.

Tom Cruise can run.

In fact, Tom Cruise running is one of the main reasons I look forward to a Tom Cruise movie. That guy runs like a bat out of hell. He runs like he's being chased by a pack of wolves that haven't eaten in two weeks. He runs like there's a finish line and he needs to blow past a hundred other runners before he can get there. He runs like he's running away from a bomb. (Which in movies, he usually is.)

If you don't believe me, just check it out. I'd hoped to find a single still that perfectly encapsulated the Tom Cruise Run. Fortunately, Youtube has got me covered. (Which also means that "Tom Cruise can run" is not a particularly original observation).

Here:



Even still this does not capture the quintessential Tom Cruise Run in my mind's eye.

Where other actors hesitate, Cruise commits. Where other actors demonstrate a me-first attitude, he puts the drama first. And you know it's not a double, because they usually shoot him head on. How else to capture that slightly crazed, slightly desperate, slightly shocked look in his eyes?

Anyway, it's one of the reasons I'm now looking forward to Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. (Damn, that's too much punctuation for one title). Which opens wide today after raking in the dough while opening on just a couple hundred screens last Friday.

I mean, I knew Cruise could run and I knew he would run in Ghost Protocol. The difference is that I have seen a lot of bad running recently in movies and TV, so it has whetted my appetite for an actor who can actually do it effectively.

I'm also looking forward to it because the critical raves are in. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly, one of the critics I read most, even put it in his top ten of the year. (At #10, but still.) And unlike such series as The Fast and the Furious, where Fast Five has gotten a lot of positive word of mouth, I'm actually caught up with the M:Is. So I can watch this one without wondering if I'm missing some of the story (he says while stifling a bit of laughter at his own ridiculous rules).

The problem is, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Adventures of Tintin also release today, and the list of movies I'd like to see before January 24th, when I close my 2011 list, is currently 40 titles long. (Exactly 40 -- I just checked on my blackberry.)

If I want to see all these movies, I'd better run.