I wrote a piece on here a while back that insisted you were better off writing a happy ending. For some reason that rankled with a LOT of readers. I got – still get – SO many emails accusing me of being soft, of selling out, of suckering people into writing Hollywood schmaltz instead of being true artists, over and over, on and on.
(As if Art can only be Art if it has a miserable ending.)
I gave up arguing after a time. Some people who wrote to me seemed so entrenched, so angry, about what I had said that, to be honest, I couldn’t be bothered. But the other day I re-read something that made me think I need to revisit that one.
Look. One thing IS true. I WAS selling out around the time I wrote that piece – but not in the most obvious way. When I tried to appeal to people’s pragmatism, by saying that you usually get bigger word of mouth with a happy ending, which translates to more money, which translates to many producers staying shy of scripts that have an unhappy ending – THAT was me selling out.
All that is true, but it’s not the whole story. I was trying to smuggle some very deep held beliefs of mine past you by appealing to pragmatic instincts.
I apologise. That was cheap.
But the question remains: stories with a Up ending do tend to get better word of mouth. It’s a genuine phenomenon. Why?
Well, I genuinely believe it’s because a tragic ending is an secondary form of the art, and people respond to that. Yes, I have read Macbeth, and King Lear, many times each actually, and yes, they are truly great works. But I believe that a great work that ends with a wedding is greater than a great work that ends with a funeral.
It’s to do with something far, far deeper than earning a buck, or getting the next job. It’s to do with why we are here on earth.
The something I was re-reading the other day was “The Hero With 1,000 Faces”. It’s the most substantial book on story telling I’ve ever read.
Published in 1949, it distills decades of work by the brilliant Joseph Campbell, in which he carried out a cross analysis and summation of thousands of human stories, the most enduring stories from all corners of the world and human civilisation.
It goes way beyond an account of which beat goes where. It provides a description of how the best Story mirrors back to us the journey we all take between birth and death.
Campbell’s point is that people need Story because Story tells them how to live. And people look to writers of Story to tell them how to negotiate their existence. And that therefore writers have a duty to choose the stories they tell very carefully.
I believe this whole heartedly.
When you write a story, whether you like it or not, you are part of this. No matter how deep and dark your story goes, I believe it’s your job to find some joy in it somewhere.
Do you really want your message to be that the world is cruel, and dark, and people are damned? Is that what you want to be remembered for?
I believe a good, well earned, sound, and deep happy ending is much harder to pull off than a tragic ending.
After all, it’s easy to break things apart into fragments. It’s easy to point your finger, and say ‘isn’t the world shit?!’. It’s hard (very, very hard) to make things that last, and endure, and give genuine joy.
Here’s Joseph:
The happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation; for the world as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending: death, disintegration, dismemberment and the crucifixion of our heart with the passing of the forms that we have loved…
Modern literature is devoted, in great measure, to a courageous, open-eyed observation of the sickeningly broken figurations that abound before us, around us, and within…
Too well we know what bitterness of failure, loss, disillusionment and ironic unfulfillment galls the blood of even the envied of the world! Hence we are not disposed to assign to comedy the high rank of tragedy. Comedy as satire is acceptable, as fun as it is a pleasant haven of escape, but the fairy tale of happiness ever after cannot be taken seriously; it belongs to the never-never land of childhood, which is protected from the realities which will become terribly known soon enough; just as the myth of heaven ever after is for the old, whose lives are behind them and whose hearts have to be readied for the last transit of the portal into night – which sober judgement is founded on a total misunderstanding of the realities depicted in the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedies of redemption. These, in the ancient world, were regarded as of a higher rank than tragedy, of a deeper truth, of a more difficult realisation, of a sounder structure, and of a revelation more complete…
The happy ending.. is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as transcendence of the universal tragedy of man… [in a happy ending] enduring being is made manifest, as indifferent to the accidents of time as water boiling in a pot is to the destiny of a bubble, or as the cosmos to the appearance and disappearance of a galaxy of stars. Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachment to the forms; comedy, the wild and careless, inexhaustible joy of life invincible….
…the effect of the successful adventure of the hero is the unlocking and release again of the flow of life into the body of the world.
(Joseph Campell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, 1949)
Yeah, well I know where I stand on that.
Don’t leave us in the dark. Bring us back to the light. It’s inhumane not to.
How To Write A Screenplay
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Good to see you are still with us Phil. Anyway, to the point…Initially, I was going to say: ‘There are no rules – why can’t we have unhappy endings?’ Then, I tried to remember things I’d seen with tragic endings. I racked my brain, but I couldn’t recall any. I KNOW I’ve seen them, so why have I forgotten them? Then, I thought about some of my favourite films – It’s A Wonderful Life, A Matter Of Life And Death and Dumbo. They all have happy endings. I guess that while my head says ‘Anything goes’, my heart always leads me back to the light. And long may it continue…
I’ve read Joseph Campbell as well. Of course, I do believe that MACBETH has a happy ending because the bad king dies and we are left with hope for a better future. Just because it’s labelled “tragedy”, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a happy ending.
Every writer will face that supposed “sell-out” moment. I created a wonderfully strong, witty female character once for a comic. The artist drew her as a compact frame, small breasted woman with no hair. Our editor said, “I can’t sell this!”
At the time, comic books were still geared towards 12 – 14 year old boys. I doubt Wonder Woman would even exist today if she wasn’t all curves and rope. So, we had a choice to make: we could either shop our comic around to see if anyone else would take a chance on a couple of unknowns, or change how the character looked. We didn’t change how funny and strong she was, she simply grew curves and hair.
Did we sell out? I thought of it more as a way to introduce 12 – 14 year old boys to a funny, strong-willed woman that they might not normally see in comics.
When working in a group art, there is always compromise.
People who believe strongly enough that there’s no joy to be had, no release from their pain and stresses, usually kill (or excessively medicate) themselves – not very good for audience numbers; in turn, not too good for those who are brave enough to risk their hard earned sheckles producing the work.
Also, there’s a subtle irony inherent in a happy ending, isn’t there? A tacit agreement, a pact, between writer and viewer, a theatrical conceit, because we all know what the ending really is, don’t we?
We know that when the high-wire walker momentarily loses his balance, yet regains it in the nick of time, that he hasn’t really cheated the reaper, merely deferred his enjoyment a tad. And, in the wire walker’s deferment, his slipping of the chill, boney clutches of the reaper, there’s a glimmer of hope, hope for us all that we too may put off the inevitable, just a bit, and isn’t that why we applaud them? Bring on the happy ending, I say. Let it be a holiday in the sun, a reprieve from the grim reality, a breather from the rat race, because, when word gets round that there’s a breather to be had, the bums will be on seats in their thousands.
Now, talking of grim reality, I’ve got to get to work and it’s freezing outside. Oh, I’m H.A.P.P.Y, I’m H.A.P.P.Y. I know I am, I’m sure I am. I’m H.A.P.P.Y
In the realms of screenwriting advice, this article was one of most refreshing and heartwarming things I’ve ever read.
When I was younger I believed in feeling and taking on the pain of the world. I watched so many tragic movies and read so many deep and tragic books it probably helped damage the health of my brain.
Unbeknownst to me, I’d been suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for several decades . . . and this morbid practice certainly did not help.
Once I discovered my diagnosis, I set out to heal my brain. One thing I did was stop digesting so much dark material. I turned to comedies, adventures and romances—and chose my dramas carefully—and this became part of my healing.
I feel as though I’ve rediscovered the joy of movies. It doesn’t mean everything I watch has to be happy-happy; but I’ve rediscovered my passionate connection with feelings such as inspiration, upliftment and the capacity to be touched (rather than torn asunder).
Personally, I’m done with being torn asunder! I want to be happy. And I want to see happy endings taking place around me.
I became a grandmother last June and this has re-taught me the secret to life. When I see my grandson so alive and curious—and so happy because he knows his mom and dad love him—it reminds me that, as adults, sometimes we’re a little too sophisticated for our own good.
The purpose for life is to give and receive love. Happy endings further this purpose; tragic endings usually don’t.
There are definitely tragic stories that need telling (in the hope the human race will learn from its mistakes and become more compassionate, less power-hungry) but that doesn’t mean there’s no place for joy or hope in that story process.
This reminds me of a quote I saw from Sting. He and his band were scheduled to play a special concert on the evening of 9/11/01. When the horrific news came in from New York, Sting had to decide whether to cancel the show. He decided to go ahead with it. He said:
“You know, we were all put on this earth to be happy. We all deserve to be happy. They can’t kill our joy. We can’t let them do that.”
P.S. After years of reading (and writing some) book reviews over at Amazon.com, there’s a phenomenon I’ve noticed that helps prove Phil’s argument. Over 75% of the time, readers will vote *against* a negative review—even if the book richly deserves it. This is because people want to hear good things; not only about themselves, but about the world at large.
What about the ambiguous ending?
Philosophy this ain’t. have you covered all the categories ? as Sandyer points out , happy and sad are the twin drooling idiots . Whether audiences need this to buy your story is another question. The story, as you point out is the thing : the ripping yarn. It’s good to see that writers for Coronation street went on to Life on Mars.
Sure you can have an unequivocally sad ending if you want. Not because there are “no rules”, but because everybody’s free to make their own mistakes.
A sad ending is a mistake simply because it will only appeal to a very narrow range of people, but a writer wants his story to be heard by as many people as possible.
We have to never forget that audiences are very savvy. They know that what they’re watching is “made up”. Made up and acted and presented to them at a price to entertain them.
A movie with a sad ending says right out loud that its writer isn’t as concerned about entertaining them as he is about saddening them. Every audience knows that subconsciously.
And, hey, who likes or admires or respects a person who wants to sadden people? Nobody.