Listen if you want to know whether Blake Snyder, Michael Hauge and Christopher Vogler's structural theories actually apply to Academy Award-nominated screenplays

Three of the most widely read structure books in screenwriting — Snyder's Save the Cat, Vogler's The Writer's Journey, and Michael Hauge's Six Stages — all make essentially the same claim: this is how great films are built. In our debut episode, we run that claim against two Oscar-nominated films to see if it holds: PHILOMENA and DALLAS BUYERS CLUB.

We map both against Snyder, Hauge, and Vogler, looking for where the beats land, where they don't, and — more usefully — what those gaps reveal about how the films actually work. As Chas puts it: "the answer as to whether these structural theories apply is actually less important than what the act of testing them against great films teaches us

PHILOMENA turns out to be a dual-protagonist script that makes the frameworks interesting precisely because it doesn't fit cleanly.

DALLAS BUYERS CLUB seemingly has a cleaner structure — the A-plot is Ron Woodruff's drug-smuggling operation — but the more interesting structural question is the B-story: Stu identifies it as "the battle for Ron's soul," with Rayon and Eve staging Ron's transformation from a man "sick in both body and soul" into something else.

The structural question we keep returning to: if a great film breaks the rules, does that mean there are no rules, or that it found something better?

And we skim over a few other ideas: why we picked these films over other nominees, the problem with Page 12 catalysts, and whether "Save the Cat" moments are actually doing what Snyder says they are.

As always: SPOILERS ABOUND and all copyright material used under fair use for educational purposes.

LIKE THIS EPISODE?

Thanks to our Patrons, especially Khrob, Theis, Sandra, Jesse, Randy, Paulo, Thomas, Jennifer, Malay, Alexandre & Natalie and Lily.

→ Read the transcript for this episode.

———

"They aren't the Bible. They aren't the holy grail of screenwriting. You need to do more than read these books to become a screenwriter." — Chas Fisher @ 00:03:36

———

CHAPTERS

FILMS

SCRIPTS

LINKS

EPISODES IN THE SCREENPLAY GURUS SERIES

———

More Draft Zero is brought to you by our awesome Patreons.

If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, a rating on Spotify, or a review on Podchaser.

We are @stuwillis, @mehlsbells and @chasffisher on Twitter. You can find @draft_zero and @_shotzero on Instagram and Twitter.

Full show notes at: https://draft-zero.com/2014/dz-01/