Mother!: Intellect vs. Intution as Screenwriting Tools
By Jacob Krueger
Before we get started with this week’s podcast, I want to take a moment to remind you that you still have a few days left to register for our Annual TV Writing Retreat, October 11-15 in Manchester Vermont. This is our biggest event of the year. We bring our entire faculty-- including Jerry Perzigian, former showrunner of Married With Children, The Golden Girls and The Jeffersons, our Pulitzer prize nominated TV Drama teacher Steve Molton, me, and of course the rest of our award-winning teachers--and we all head up to ITVfest, the second largest TV festival in the world. You get world-class TV writing workshops all morning, a VIP Content Creator pass that gets you into all the screenings, parties and events in the afternoon and evening, and a special one-on-one pitch consultation with one of our incredible teachers, so you can develop your show, get out there and pitch your heart out to everyone you meet. Plus, we team with the festival to get you hours of exclusive access to the producers, managers, and agents in attendance at our exclusive Secret Producer Pitch Party! It’s the best event of the year for TV writers, so I hope you can join us. You can find out more at our website: writeyourscreenplay.com/vermont. Hope to see you there!
This week we are going to be talking about Darren Aronofsky’s new film, mother!
mother! is probably one of the most frustrating movies of the year.
It is frustrating because of its ambition. It is a movie that shoots so big, and attempts to do so much-- filmically, thematically, visually, structurally, societally, politically, psychologically-- that you desperately want to love it.
It’s a movie with a first half that’s nearly perfect (at least for those of us open to magical realism in films)-- an ending that should move you to tears…
But it suffers from a sequence about ⅔ of the way through that makes you want to scream. And not for the right reasons.
It’s a movie that, despite its profound message, is having a hard time connecting with the emotions of its audience-- that often elicits unwanted groans and laughs at what should be it’s most haunting and disturbing moments-- rather than the emotional and political response it’s shooting for.
I would like to suggest that what’s brilliant and what’s problematic in mother! both come from the same source, and can actually be boiled down to three really simple concepts.
So, I would like to walk you through mother! today.
I would like to walk you through what is brilliant about the film, and I would like to walk you through where the film stumbles.
That way, if you are ever working on a screenplay whether it is an experimental movie that is breaking the mold like mother! or something much more traditional-- if these really common problems were to happen to you, then you can anticipate them and be aware of them and address them in an early draft, rather than try to explain them in interviews after the film is out.
Now, I want to say that none of the issues I am going to raise with mother! have anything to do with the surrealism of the film. There are a lot of people who don’t like mother! because of what it is trying to do; there are a lot of people who don’t like mother! because it isn't living in the world of naturalism. They don’t like mother! because it isn't telling a traditional story.
And if that is you, then it is important to understand that this is a taste issue, rather than an execution issue. And pretty much any film that gets made--if your film is good enough to deserve to get made--the truth is you are going to piss some people off. There are going to be some people who hate your film.
And there are some people who hate mother! And then there are some people who love mother! despite its pretty obvious flaws.
So what I want to do first is to separate the taste issue out. Separate the genre issue out.
And I am going to encourage you to do that with your own scripts as well.
When you get feedback that is about taste, that is about genre-- when you get feedback that isn't in keeping with the intention of your script-- you have to recognize that that feedback isn't really for you-- that isn't your audience that you are speaking to.
mother! is a $30 million dollar movie with huge star power in it, so this isn't a $200 million dollar epic that has to appeal to everybody.
Rather, mother! is a movie that has to deliver for its very specific audience-- the people who connect to the world in the way that Darren Aronofsky sees it.
In some ways, it succeeds in that tremendously. And in other ways it falls short. And the same is true with your writing.
In order to find that producer, that director, that executive-- in order to get a star like Jennifer Lawrence (at first, Aronofsky actually thought was a mistake to even go down and meet with her because he thought there was no way she was going to get attached to this tiny little movie)-- in order to attract those kinds of stars, you have to write the movie that only you could write.
And sometimes that means that you are going to alienate some people.
In order to write the movie that is going to get somebody passionate about your work, get a producer passionate enough to back a new writer, get your dentist friend passionate enough to write a check to you for ten grand for your independent film, you are going to have to write a movie that pisses some people off.
And the fact that it pisses some people off means that there is enough to it that the person who is moved by it is going to be deeply moved, passionately moved.
They aren't going to say, “Oh this is a perfectly decent, good movie,” they are going to say, “Yes, this is a movie that I need to see on the screen.”
At the same time, you’ve got to make it work. And the truth is Darren Aronofsky comes very close to making it work in mother! But he doesn’t totally make it work.
And he doesn’t totally make it work for reasons that were actually very avoidable.
So, first I want to walk you through the concept of what Aronofsky is trying to build. And then I want to talk you through my experience of what he’s actually built.
If you haven't seen the film yet I am going to warn you that there is no way to do this for real-- there is no way to do this in a helpful way-- without spoilers. So, if you haven't seen the movie and you don’t want anything spoiled for you, you may want to watch the movie and then come back to this podcast.
Here’s what mother! is really about.
Darren Aronofsky is a huge environmentalist. That is a really big deal for him. And he feels a lot of rage about Climate Change; he feels a lot of rage about the way that people don’t care for the earth.
He feels a lot of rage that we are basically destroying our own planet through our narcissism and our self-involvement.
And he is very aware of the myriad causes and hypocrisies that make this possible-- the bizarre scenario by which deeply spiritual and religious people whose beliefs are based in the idea of caring for the earth and for one another, have somehow become allied with a political party of climate change deniers that seem bent on their own destruction.
The rare confluence of our media and our art and our religion-- our desires and our egos-- separating us from our home, and destroying the very home and the very peace that we want to live in.
And that is a really emotional place to start a film.
So this is a lesson you can start with for yourself, even if you aren't doing experimental films-- start your movie with something that matters to you.
If you start your movie with something that matters to you, you are going to end up writing something that also matters to your audience.
So, here is the conception of the film according to Darren Aronofsky.
Darren Aronofsky gets pissed off about Climate Change, so he decides to write a movie about it.
He comes up with this idea that the Jennifer Lawrence character is going to be Gaia. She is going to be Mother Earth. And the Javier Bardem character is going to be God.
And he’s going to do a relationship piece about God and Mother Earth trying to live with each other.
All Mother Earth wants to do is rebuild and renew God’s broken home, and help him to be the creator he was meant to be.
Except that God’s got this really self destructive streak in him.
He’s a blocked artist. And when he finally does create, instead of building a beautiful life with Mother Earth, he keeps on populating the earth with assholes, inviting them into the beautiful home Mother Earth has worked so hard to build and rebuild, because of his desperate need to be worshipped and adored.
So this is an intellectual conception, but you can see that already it is growing out of something that is real for Aronofsky, his rage about the earth.
And the central question that Aronofsky is asking is this: What does it feel like to be Mother Nature?
What does it feel like to be powerless? To defend yourself against human greed and narcissism and self-involvement and violence against you? To give and give and give to people (and to a God) who only seem to take.
He was inspired by the mythology of Gaia, he was inspired by the Bible, he was also inspired by a book called The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, which was about a tree that gives and gives and gives and gives and gives to a little boy. And if you’ve seen the film you can see how Jennifer Lawrence is The Giving Tree.
So that’s the conception. Mother Earth and God are living together in this beautiful octagonal house.
He became obsessed with the octagonal house not only because it looks really beautiful when you shoot it, but also because the number eight is a number that in the Bible is associated with resurrection.
So, here is Mother Earth, the symbol of life and renewal,