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.