A Lesson For Screenwriters From Fireproof and Marley and Me (No, Seriously)

Honest Emotion

As screenwriters we are almost encouraged to be a little too cute. Complex intersecting storylines a la Crash are popular, as are twist endings, red herrings, and self-referential wit.

But what about real honest, unabashed emotion? Not subdued, not put in quietly, but loud and not embarassed about it?

The films from such material are easy to mock, but their results are hard to dispute.

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Fireproof

Consider the movie Fireproof. Yes, I know, it’s a Christian movie.

It’s also a movie produced on a budget of 500,o00 (figures according to BoxOfficeMojo.com) which grossed $33 million in the United States despite released at its widest to only 905 theatres. For purposes of comparison consider that your average wide release gets around 2,000-3,000 screens and is supported by a multimillion advertising campaign. Most likely Fireproof did not benefit from such a campaign.

The movie is poorly acted, the characterization relatively shallow, the story fairly pedestrian and typical.

That said, there are real honest emotions in the film. Watching it you get the sense of real passion behind the project, not surprising for something faith-based. My theory is that it’s not that Christian audiences are starved for entertainment, but that they responded to the heart. That firemen really makes a huge effort to win back his wife’s love, and there’s something honestly nice and moving about that.

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Marley and Me

Likewise, Marley and Me is a very simple story. It’s no grand feat of writing. And the ending, SPOILER, where the dog dies after being hugged by Owen Wilson, and then the adorable children have a funeral for the dog, is arguably manipulative to the extreme.

But I think it comes from an honest place. Love for a dog. We can all (or most of us can) relate to that. I don’t think too many members of the average theatergoing audience took those scenes as manipulative, rather as expressing a genuine emotional response to the death of a loved one.

That movie has already made $155 million worldwide.

-Dan Benamor

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28 responses to “A Lesson For Screenwriters From Fireproof and Marley and Me (No, Seriously)”

  20. In response to the popularity of this article I’ve written another one. It’s about Deconstructing Genre in Screenwrting and it’s on the front page of the site now.

    -Dan Benamor