Laura Novak
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True Confessions

10/23/2011

 
Not mine personally. I mean the movie whose screenplay I am studying.
I have so many favorite lines from this movie:  "Were you wearing this when you were banging Lois Fazenda?"  Most of them belong to Robert Duvall whose tight smile and twitching fingers says more about his character, Tom Spellacy, than all the dialogue in the world.

A few things jump out at me as never before from all the times I've watched True Confessions. The writers, Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, used very simple scenes to show the characters "back story wounds." The tension between the brothers is spelled out carefully (and literally) in the scene with their ill mother. ("May all your sons be Jesuits, sister", Duvall's character says to a nun as he brushes past her protests to visit his mother's bedside.) The murder victim's innocence is painted by a painstaking and awkward conversation with her parents about her dental retainer, no less.  Forget "she was a good girl."  The dialogue is so much richer with details about how and when she'd wear her orthodontia.

The fuel of fiction is complication and tension. It might have been simple enough to get closer to Jack Amsterdam's complicity in the dead girl's life and times in L.A.  But then the Father Spellacy would have been too good a man with only minor problems with his brother the cop. No, Des Spellacy had to have met, and picked up in his car, the murder victim. And the madame, dead in the morgue, had to have made a last attempt to reach the man her former lover is trying to nail for Lois' murder.

As I begin building my character bible of my next mystery, I have to remember that redemption (and a cemetery plot in the desert) is only good if it's a rough and rocky road getting there. And that complication piled up on complication is what makes for great fiction. Now, back to work.
phantomimic link
10/23/2011 10:25:06 am

Complications leading to redemption are fine, but the fiction I most like is that with a "twist". For me there is nothing like the unexpected jumping out from the page making you say, "Wow!" I remember those moments forever.

Sherryn
10/23/2011 03:01:10 pm

@phantomimic I agree with you on those "Wow" moments, when well written, they DO make the work more memorable. For me it's the lead up before the twist- if the comlexity and tension interplay isn't there, the "Wow" moment loses it's punch.

@Laura If writers ever wonder if their work has meaning or effects the lives of the reader in any way, I can assure you the answer is "yes". My mother (and myself to an extent) had a very hard time with unresolved grief after my Father passed on. Joan's book "The Year of Magical Thinking" was like a balm for our souls and a gift she gave we'll always treasure.

Ted Powell
10/24/2011 03:50:11 am

"Where you wearing this..."

"Where" as in "at what location"? Does it really say that in the screenplay? I don't think that's what Mr. Dunne wrote. (Even though I suppose that sash could be worn on different parts of the body.)

Laura Novak
10/24/2011 05:30:53 am

Ted, thank you! I changed that typo/homonym! Every writer needs an editor.

And no, that green sash definitely had to go across Durning's big, fat belly.

Thanks! The hand writes what the mind think it sees.

Barbara Alfaro link
10/24/2011 05:52:04 am

"True Confessions" is a great film -- with acting to match. I remember reading that Joan Didion named the elderly and good priest in the story in honor of the Irish poet Seamus Heaney. And as for the redemption theme, I can't think of any movie with a more moving ending than that of "The Color Purple" -- the reconciliation between the minister and his daughter.

Ottoline
10/24/2011 06:05:46 am

phantomimic -- I love the twists too. Like in "Rebecca," or "Witness for the Prosecution." Do you have any faves that come easily to mind? I'm ready for a new one, but I want a really delicious one.

Laura Novak
10/24/2011 06:14:43 am

Barbara, Seamus was a simple, but very painful character to watch. Not a whole lot of dialogue, but immense frustration conveyed there. Especially as he's snapping at those bushes while being told he's going out to pasture.

Sherryn, I have not yet read her book on Dunne's death, other than excerpts. But it's worthy to note that he and his brother apparently had a difficult relationship. It would be too easy to learn that two famous and successful writers got along really well.

And the biggest twist for me to this movie was Des' involvement. That he knew the murdered girl. Or at least had to be reminded that he'd picked her up in his car. I didn't see it coming; it had been so long since I'd seen the film.

I loved all these actors in this film. And another great line:
"I might have picked her up (in my car) but you fucked her." Well, that's not what you expect to hear from a priest now is it?

DebinOH
10/24/2011 08:45:54 am

Not sure how in the heck I missed this. It seems like I missed out on a lot of things raising my kids.

Thanks Laura now I just have one more thing to add to my list after reading your book and Ingrid's book, etc. etc. etc. :) I swear every weekend that I am going to read it and then something always happens.

Laura Novak link
10/24/2011 10:02:59 am

I just hope (and think) you will enjoy both books when you get to them. It should be enjoyable, but not a thing that you feel pressured to do.

If not True Confessions the book, then the movie is worth seeing.

And Ottoline, what about the Coen Bros. Do you like their movies? Talk about twists!!

Ottoline
10/24/2011 12:03:53 pm

Oh, yes: Coen Brothers. Fargo was just too wonderful! I started True Confessions -- or one of Dunne's books -- and it was so seamy and low-life that I stopped. Maybe it was L.A. Confidential. But now I will try TC again. I do love Joan Didion, have read everything of hers. I read Magical Thinking before I went through a really hard death of a loved one -- and I'm amazed what I didn't grasp the first time around. Odd that Dominick was so obsessed with the high life -- the 1% -- and his brother with such gritty realities. Although Dominick tells some good stories too, and the uber-wealth fluff was balanced by his understandable obsession with his daughter's death.

Laura Novak
10/25/2011 01:45:48 am

Yes, Ottoline, there again is interesting conflict. The two writer brothers. And without the tragedy of Dominick's daughter's death, I wonder if his pursuit of justice in ALL kinds of stories would have existed or been so prominent. I still remember the look on his face when the OJ verdict was read aloud. His marriage and separation from his ill wife also added layers of complexity to his life. So it was easier to not dismiss him as simply a society writer. And I loved his writing!

Ottoline
10/25/2011 06:53:38 am

And his going under, career and substance-abuse-wise, after that last film with Eliz Taylor (Ash Weds). To come back from that is a lesson for us all. I can still quote my fave lines from his work -- and from Didion's. They were both quite wonderful.


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    Laura Novak

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