I was talking with a buddy the other day about how I balance my days. Now that I’m a father, I get up pretty early for baby time. Then, in the mornings, I try to do all my No Film School articles and shift to my own writing in the afternoons.
Somewhere in between all of that, I also watch a lot of movies, because that’s the business I’m in and my passion.
And one thing I’ve noticed as I watch some movies I’ve seen dozens of times is that I’m reacting to them very differently. And that’s because while they may be the same, a lot has changed about me since I’ve seen them.
Let’s dive in.
Time May Change Me
There is a brilliant, famous piece of writing by Roger Ebert about his evolving relationship with Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. I recently saw it making the rounds again over on Reddit, and it captures a profound truth about cinema that every writer and director needs to internalize:
“Movies do not change, but their viewers do. When I saw “La Dolce Vita” in 1960, I was an adolescent for whom “the sweet life” represented everything I dreamed of: sin, exotic European glamour, the weary romance of the cynical newspaperman. When I saw it again, around 1970, I was living in a version of Marcello’s world; Chicago’s North Avenue was not the Via Veneto, but at 3 a.m. the denizens were just as colorful, and I was about Marcello’s age.When I saw the movie around 1980, Marcello was the same age, but I was 10 years older, had stopped drinking, and saw him not as a role model but as a victim, condemned to an endless search for happiness that could never be found, not that way. By 1991, when I analyzed the film a frame at a time at the University of Colorado, Marcello seemed younger still, and while I had once admired and then criticized him, now I pitied and loved him. And when I saw the movie right after Mastroianni died, I thought that Fellini and Marcello had taken a moment of discovery and made it immortal. There may be no such thing as the sweet life. But it is necessary to find that out for yourself.”
Without waxing a ton beforehand, I just want to say Ebert nailed it. The DCP doesn’t shift. The celluloid doesn’t rewrite itself in the can. But we rewrite ourselves constantly. And we are constantly changing until the day we die.
Focusing the Lens of Life
Think about the movies you obsessed over in your early teens and twenties. You watched them through the lens of pure ambition, angst, and whatever romantic or career turmoil you were wrestling with at the time.
You may have watched them feel their first love or lose their virginity. They were movies made for the youth in your eyes, and as you get older, you may start identifying with Jim’s Dad in American Pie more than Jim!
For me, a prime example is Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond the Pines.
When I first saw it in theaters back in 2012, I was just a guy trying to carve out a career in screenwriting. It was a bold movie that broke the “rules”.
I looked at Ryan Gosling’s character, Luke Glanton, and saw this tragic, undeniably cool rebel. I was all in on his insanity. The motorcycle stunts, the bank robberies, the desperate romance all felt like a hyper-kinetic tragedy about a guy fighting the system.
Fast forward to today. I am a father now.
And I am all in on Mahershala Ali’s character. On that calming presence you could tell Gosling never had, but wanted to give over badly.
I rewatched The Place Beyond the Pines recently, and the “cool” factor completely evaporated for me. It was replaced by a visceral, suffocating anxiety.
Watching Luke frantically try to provide for his infant son, watching the generational trauma unfold, and seeing the terrifying weight of trying not to pass your own worst traits down to your kid.
The movie absolutely gutted me.
Now, I know that the movie didn’t change a single frame, but my entire emotional architecture had been renovated. It hit harder than it ever could have a decade ago.
And I look forward to seeing what it does to me even further down the line.
‘The Place Beyond the Pines’Credit: Focus Features
What This Means for Screenwriters and Filmmakers
As storytellers, we have to recognize this phenomenon. It’s actually our secret weapon.
When you are writing a script, especially if you’re playing in genres, you aren’t just writing for one demographic. You are writing for an audience that will project their own lived experiences onto your characters.
You’re also creating a time capsule for who you are in this one moment and what you believe.
Ebert saw Marcello as a role model, then a victim, then someone to pity, and finally someone to love.
That’s such a beautiful character arc.
If your protagonist is one-note, they won’t survive a rewatch ten years down the line. Give them flaws that look like rebellion to a teenager, but look like tragedy to an adult.
And also, leave yourself open to grow out of your own ideas.
The scripts I’m writing now are not the scripts I wrote in my twenties. And they shouldn’t be. You have to let your changing worldview bleed into your pages. If you’ve become a parent, experienced loss, or just gotten exhausted by the industry, put that shifting perspective into the mouths of your characters.
Summing It All Up
If you’re like me, you pour everything into your films and hope to capture lightning in a bottle. But the real magic happens years later, when a viewer sits down in the dark, presses play, and realizes the movie has been waiting for them to catch up.
Let me know what you all think in the comments.