DZ-110: Voiceover — Transcript

I think we've completely swapped jobs, Chas. I'm now the one that watches everything in advance and you're like, oh, I watched it this afternoon just before the very last possible moment. It's like- A 1.2.

Speed.

Very bizarre universe.

Hi, I'm Mel Killingsworth.

And I'm Chas Fisher.

And I'm Stu Willis.

And welcome to DraftZero, a podcast where today three filmmakers try to work out what makes great screenplays work.

And in this episode, we are continuing our little mini saga on talking directly to the audience. Our previous episode was kind of an introduction, laid the frameworks, possible ways of thinking about how characters talk directly to the audience, whether it's in terms of the voiceover, pieces to camera, advertising, title cards. We kind of went through all that stuff. And this particular episode is going to be looking at voiceover. And we're going to be looking at the pilot episode of Veronica Mars, the feature animation, The Emperor's New Groove, and the Michael Bay classic for the second time on this podcast, Pain and Gain. In fact, I like it because the reason that Mel even got to know us was because of our episode on Michael Bay with Better Squit Reader. Isn't that how you discovered us, Mel?

It's true. True. So yes, we have broadly Michael Bay to thank for this whole thing.

Thank you, Michael. I'm sure this is actually your greatest piece of work, not pain and gain. So just as always, Draft Zero is brought to you by our amazing patrons who bring you more Draft Zero more often. And in particular, Abigail Kingswood today wrote in a question about, in relation to this topic, I'm currently writing a screenplay where the twist relies on the audience believing the narrator is a different character until act three. Thus have been thinking a lot about casting and audience voice recognition. Would be interested in hearing thoughts on this. And our intention is to record a separate back matter episode answering that question that will be posted for free on our Patreon page. To get stuck into those three films, Veronica Mars, Emperor's New Groove, and Pain and Gain, we're only looking at voiceover. So we will mention in passing how I think all three of these films subtly do other things than voiceover, but we were really trying to look at voiceover and we're really trying to apply the tools or levers that we identified in the previous episode, which were diegetic to non-diegetic, i.e. In story world to not in story world. then who is talking from a omniscient storyteller down to a character whom are they talking to you know ranging from are they talking to themselves another character or directly to us as the audience and we've got some different examples of those in that we're doing today and from when in time is the communication coming and that question is actually i think for me one of the biggest reveals about what when voiceover is doing different things in looking at this homework i.

Mean i think that question around from when in time is the communication coming impacts on narrative point of view perhaps obviously but what is interesting is we're talking about reliability we're talking about how much knowledge are we thinking this character has and i think that's what's so cool about that as a tool is it kind of inadvertently connects to that idea. Is this character completely omniscient or are they whatever the opposite of omniscient is? Uni-isn't? Myopic?

Oblivious? Yeah. All right. Well, that's actually unusually for us about all the preamble we need before we can get into our first example.

I'm never getting married. I mean, what's the point? Sooner or later, the people you love let you down. And here's where it ends up. Sleazy men, cocktail waitresses, cheap motels on the wrong side of town that's where i come in you're veronica mars right sometimes you're good enough to hear your leg of chili or something or something veronica mars her dad's a private detective i heard this was kind of like your office i hear you can find stuff i need your help i don't care what they say about you veronica mars you rock yes i do i also take cash random locker searches i know when they're gonna happen before vice principal clemens does, veronica will you please open your locker And he had some songs to play, This is a little embarrassing.

So this first example, the Veronica Mars pilot, not the movie, sorry, Julio. Sanity prevailed in terms of us doing the pilot and not the movie, according to Mel.

You can fight me about this later.

We know that you're an avid film noir consumer and writer. Why in particular did you choose Veronica Mars, given basically voiceover is almost a staple or trope of that subgenre?

Well, yeah, I mean, it's very, it's quintessential of the genre. And one of the interesting things about the pilot is either way you watch it opens with a voiceover. But the way that Rob Thomas wanted to start it, the way that it originally started, which you can find still on the DVDs or online, is it starts with a bitter, jaded sort of like, you know, Veronica Mars, no love, no marriage, if you want to guarantee that's it. So it's very, very noir.

Are i'm never getting married you want an absolute well there it is veronica mars spinster i mean what's the point sure there's the initial primal drive ride it out better yet ignore it sooner or later the people you love let you down and here's where it ends up sleazy men cocktail waitresses cheap motels on the wrong side of town, and a soon-to-be ex-spouse wanting a bigger piece of the settlement pie. That's where I come in. $40 an hour is cheap compared to the long-term financial security sorted photography can secure for you. Your offspring. Your next lover. But do us a favor if it's you in there. dispense with the cuddling this motel tryst it is what it is make it quick person sitting in the car across the street might have a calculus exam in five, four hours and she can't leave until she gets the money shot if.

You watch what the network originally aired it's basically like i'm veronica this is neptune high school here's this click here's that click here's how the politics of the place work.

This is my school if you go here your parents are either millionaires or your parents work for millionaires neptune california a town without a middle class if you're in the second group you get a job fast food movie theaters mini-marts. Or you could be me. My after-school job means tailing philandering spouses or investigating false injury claims.

It's a lot more functional, but it uses the voiceover in a couple of different ways. However, unlike the other two examples we're going to look at, it uses it completely consistently. It's only ever Veronica that we hear talking in the voiceover.

Not true.

Oh, okay.

Let's put a pin. Let's put a pin.

This is my first time watching Veronica Mars, And we actually are now hooked, right? I mean, partly it's just because it's like, we're both watching there going, yeah, I'd wear that. Ooh.

Jacket porn.

Yeah.

The jackets are great. The jumpers are great. Still not sure about the camo mini skirt.

Or the puka shell necklace.

Yeah. So, you know, this is kind of leaning really into my early 2000s aesthetic. So I want you to summarize the episode, Mel.

So the episode essentially has like three main tracks or stories. Race your a plot your b plot and your c plot if you will so you get the introduction to the world which is the broader thing and veronica starts outside the camelot hotel spying on someone you don't know why she's there the next morning she goes to school and she cuts this kid down who's been taped to the flagpole his name's wallace that's sort of going to be our essentially our c plot where wallace has been taped to the flagpole by a gang because he saw them stealing something thing and now the sheriff is trying to pin the gang for it. Then you've got the plot that will essentially carry through the entire season, which is Veronica trying to solve her friend Lily Kane's murder. And this is introduced in pieces throughout. A lot of it's in flashback. Veronica will start telling you something about the school, like, oh, I used to be a member of the cool kids before. And then it'll flash back to like her being best friends, her dating the hot young thing. And you find out through all these flashbacks, oh, her dad used to be the sheriff and then he was disgraced. After this murder so you find a lot of this stuff out in flashbacks and then sort of the second track is tied quite closely into the rest of it is veronica's mother disappeared and and just sort of like up and abandoned her when veronica's dad keith who was the sheriff lost his job a lot of stuff happened at once mom's run away and veronica sort of accidentally stumbles over some things all while you're meeting cliff you know this other pi you're meeting celeste kane who's like hiring keith to go and investigating uh keith is going to to catch a bail jumper you find out that's how they normally do work but veronica it sounds like a lot when i'm saying it and is a lot for a pilot but because of the voiceover yeah.

It's a pretty amazing pilot.

It's an incredible example of a pilot and i think at some point especially again after re-watching it yet again kind of like with alias which did cheat because it was essentially a pilot and a half or like stump town or things like that where if you just go through and break down all the beats and find out how it sets things up it introduces your characters it sets the world it sets the tone it solves its own mini mystery which veronica sort of uh sets up a sting operation that involves swapping out security tapes in the sheriff's office for these other things and getting wallace off the hook and And getting Wallace off the hook means that the PCHers are on her side. And then because the PCHers are on her side, they want to beat up Logan because Logan's coming after her because she got him in trouble. Like, it all ties together. But it does it so well. And most of the world building and specifically most of the tone come from the voiceover. The tone is huge in a noir show in particular. This is like a noir show set in high school. And the voiceover kicks that off and keeps it consistent all the way throughout.

Okay. So here's my question that obviously covers a lot. And it feels like part of what the narrative, the purpose of the voiceover is, is to help us make the connections. It's compression, right? Like it allows for narrative compression. I realize this, therefore I did this. And then in voiceover, it means you can actually skip some of the shoe leather, right?

While Corny did his thing, I downloaded the pictures from the Camelot. Every girl's got to have a hobby. Photography's mine.

Yes, but it's also key what she doesn't tell us in voiceover. For example, that sea plot with Wallace, we don't quite understand what they're doing when they're going to see the guy who makes the bong, when they go to sneak outside and he's like, oh, I'm too nervous to do this. And she's like, it's fine. There's parts where we go, oh, voiceover could tell us why they're doing this, but instead it's more interesting to let it play out.

Yeah. So it's toying with narrative point of view. It's really orienting the audience. Like we spoke spoke in the last episode, I feel like, yes, one of the key aspects of this voiceover is to give tone and flavor to it. It's to also give, like you pointed out, character motivation. Why is Veronica doing A, B, or C? And the third thing is definitely audience efficiency. Like, let's catch the audience up with the minimum amount of knowledge they need to know to get through this as quickly as possible.

Sure she's a bitch but can you blame her after all dad did try to send her husband to jail for life.

Yeah so i think we should analyze this in the context of the four question you've got but my question because i came back to like what does the character want out of the audience yeah right like why are they talking to whoever they're talking to so who is veronica talking to in the voiceover.

So a lot of her voiceover is her internal monologue. I think she's talking to the audience, but I think there's other, especially as you watch throughout the series, it's a really interesting split where she's definitely talking to the audience quite a bit. She's guiding the audience, but there are certain things that are just about her emotional state or they're just about, in particular, the writers use it to get in those really clever noir turns of phrase.

I'm saying, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause you're turning it away from my question, which is, is who is she talking to? Internal monologue. Okay, so she's talking to herself.

Herself or the audience.

Can I distinguish here? Because I think she's only ever talking to the audience.

In the pilot. Remember, we're talking about the pilot.

And the reason that makes me say this is there was one moment in the middle of the pilot episode where it's the actual moment that in the extended intro is the opening of the episode. She's at the Camelot. It's one in the morning. She's taking photos. Photos and there's been her voiceover as to how she feels about you want.

To guarantee veronica mars will never be in love yeah.

So that's happening and then she sees the bikers coming and she says out loud to herself alone in the car well this can't be good and that is self-talk and it really stood out to me because i'm like why didn't they just do that in voiceover and then And she's definitely got lines in there, like when she introduces the fact that her sexual assault.

Quite a reputation I've got, huh? You want to know how I lost my virginity? So do I.

She's not saying that to herself. She's talking to us. And there are definitely moments where the writers are using that established communication between Veronica and us as the audience to allow us tighter emotional insight into what Veronica is feeling at a point in time. But for the most part, I would say it's almost entirely a dialogue with the audience.

I mean, it's probably as unsurprising to you, Lun, Chas, that this was originally planned to be a young adult novel, right? Because the voiceover feels like the novel's probably written in first person. Person so coming from because i i think that's a great analysis particularly that moment when she says you know i'd like to know too is that she is aware it's the audience but not like not so mad it's not deadpool where it knows that it's talking to an audience of a movie she's just talking to the person that's listening in and maybe you know god or or like you know the flying spaghetti monster so what do you think is um obviously this varies from scene to scene but But broadly, what would you say is the dramatic purpose of her talking? What does she want from the audience? Does she want anything?

I think the pilot especially is she is very interested in how she is viewed and seen, right? Like she wants to be viewed as a tough guy. The reason, like Wallace is the one who calls her a marshmallow, which later she very grudgingly acquiesces to. But she wants to be seen as the tough guy is the wrong party is the smart one is the one who's like you know fighting the man if you will and.

In fact isn't it pretty much the button in her voiceover is the marshmallow line.

You know what they say yeah she she acquiesces but it's somewhat grudging okay you know which is which is a fun contrast to the opener right in the opener she wants to to be seen as the jaded cynical hardened bitter detective but she's not there yet yeah.

And in fact the way it's shot is and we're talking about the alternate opening here is it's a big reveal that she's so young right.

That she has a calculus test in the morning is the button on that it's like the end of that scene and you don't it drifts down from the camera and you don't see that it's like this young 17 year old speaking till the end and.

Then you know kristin is in her early 20s at that point. But the calculus thing really sells this on the bonnet. So I think that analysis is really good. And maybe the reason I prefer the alternate opening, right? I understand why they went for the other one, but I think the alternate opening kind of connects more thematically to what they're kind of playing with. Both the themes of her wanting to present older than she is, right, is definitely part of her character. But also the fun tropeyness of the setup. up. Whereas the pilot that aired feels a little bit more like it's leaning into the Mean Girls kind of.

Yeah. I mean, maybe the voiceover is exactly the same in the extended edition because I just watched the added intro. So, I didn't see whether the intro changed that the following scene that is the opening scene that broadcast, which is the introduction to the cliques and the high school and the relationships. But the voiceover had to do a lot more heavy lifting in the broadcast cast version to sell this idea of teen detective tough person because of the way it was shot it didn't feel like all the cliques were visually distinct it didn't feel super stylized having.

Read the original pilot well read it as in flick through it the first.

Five.

Five-ish pages there was no voiceover they're like in the school quad right so i think your observation is correct it's almost like they went, oh shit, we're gonna cut the opening. We now need to add voiceover. And they haven't planned it in the same way that that great mini sequence on Mean Girls, which could have been another good film for this episode, kind of has, and maybe we'll do a Shot Zero on it. So you should go to shot-zero.com and follow Shot Zero so we can call out just that little scene from Mean Girls because it's great. Or we should do it in talking to audience. Like spontaneous there's just random characters and mean girls that talk to the audience that eyeball the camera and say shit in mean girls it's so good anyway uh.

So can i just make one more observation so sue you asked what does veronica want from us as the audience when she's talking to us and i fully agree with what you've said mel but i want to make two observations which one is she is way more vulnerable with us as the audience than she presents to other people Right. She does not share what's happened to her mom, to any other character. She does not share with her dad what she is going through. She does not share her sexual assault with her father or any other character other than the sheriff. And she shares it with us as the audience.

And that was in flashback. So that's distinguished as a time when she was, when she was different than who she is now talking to us. Yeah.

She presents herself as tough, both to us as the audience and to the other characters. But I think what she wants from us as the audience is for us to be on her side, empathy, understanding.

And here's an interesting thing. It only just occurred to me that it's actually one of the most powerful tools of voiceover, and it kind of comes back to this idea of sympathy or empathy, which is that actually voiceover allows a character to speak directly about their motivation. Yeah. Or what they believe their character motivation is. So, all the stuff around her mum, it's her going, this is why I can't let go what happened with my mum. That is actually one of the reasons to do it in voiceover. Yeah. I'm thinking about it now, like pain and gain. Yeah.

Absolutely.

100% of pain and gain would not work without voiceover.

Although they're lying to themselves.

Yeah, yeah.

They're lying to themselves more than Veronica. Absolutely. Veronica is very clear, but they both generate empathy from the audience.

What a character believes motivates them and what actually motivates them is different.

Absolutely.

I have my own issues with the book, but it is actually a really useful tool. The lie the character believes the lie the character tells themselves is actually a really great kind of motivational like it's a great tool for screenwriters if you haven't used it before it's like what lie does this character believe that kind of gets them to do things and it's a great tool because it's actually is about motivation right you know thor is a great example all i need to i'm actually blanking now on the point.

That he believes he's worthy of Mjolnir.

And he takes action in a particular way based on that lie. So I think characters lying in voiceover to explain motivation, like in the end, if you're thinking about a character using voiceover, it's because the character needs you to understand their motivation is actually a pretty good rule of thumb beyond any of the other complications. It's like, I want you to understand why I did these things.

But, and you're right, but I think the line, like when the character lies to the audience, A, it needs to be about motivation and emotions and not fact, right? Because if Veronica's telling us lies about Lily Kane's murder, that throws the whole thing off. But also you do need to be careful about that because if the character tells us too much that doesn't jive with them, right? Then they become unreliable and then we start doubting everything else. So it is a little bit of a balancing act to say where the character is lying to themselves and where they're true. And a lot of times that comes from what they are saying laid on top of what they're doing because they're not necessarily related. Sometimes they are, sometimes they're not.

It's interesting because when I watched this, I was like, oh, this feels like it's a pretty bog standard voiceover, right? What's my honest reaction? And there's one particular line in the episode where there's a bit of a flashback, which I do want to talk about. Flashback to her father discovering the body of Lily Kane, her best friend. And so her father coming in and she's like, and this bumbling detective was my dad. And it's like, yeah, I can fucking see it's your dad. And I made a joke in our Twitter. I was like, the voiceover in this feels like it was made for second screens before there were second screens. Right? Right. But I say, but because there's actually is a lot more going on. I think there is possibly a little bit of that. It's 2000s era. There is something, you know, there used to be this perception of television being a radio play with pictures that you kind of have to communicate a lot through dialogue because you don't know if your audience is watching, which is all stuff that's kind of coming back. It's like, guys, we just had a golden couple of decades around television. Now we're coming back to what it used to be, which is you'd put it on where you're vacuuming. Right. But now I'm like, yeah, there's a lot more going on because it is about how she perceives herself. And that's why it works in the show. And it is building the mystery.

Even that line, bumbling detective, where she's bitterly parroting what the townsfolk are saying. But I think it's clear that she doesn't believe it, right? Like they called him bumbling, which is about his handling of this case, which is what got him fired. But the more you watch, the more you realize that she doesn't think that. And so there's this dramatic irony. I think voiceover is great for dramatic irony.

Oh, yeah. And you pointed out earlier, Mel, I think Veronica's voiceover is very reliable and that she doesn't lie to us. That we're aware of in the pilot. Nothing that she says is revealed to be a lie. But her reliability limit is she only tells us stuff when she feels like it as the storyteller for dramatic purposes. You know, if she wants the audience to be behind what she's up to, she lets us be behind. If she wants us to catch up to her, she gives us a flashback. And if she wants us, I mean, at no point, I think from memory, I mean, I only watched it earlier this afternoon, but at no point does she put the audience ahead of her, which is different to the other examples that we're looking at.

No, she doesn't. And I think that comes in part and parcel with the genre, I think.

I think we've completely swapped jobs, Chas. I'm now the one that watches everything in advance and you're like, oh, I watched it this afternoon just before the very last possible moment.

A 1.2 speed.

Very bizarro universe. I quickly want to run through those questions that we had at the beginning as at all. And I think we should do that for the other two films, either at the beginning or at the end. Go through those questions because they're useful and will prompt other discussions.

All right. Before we do those questions, can I just observe that Wallace does have a voiceover and he has a flashback. But the key difference here is that Wallace's voiceover is him talking to Veronica in relaying what had happened. and then we just go back and get it visualized and dramatized so that we can see it while he's talking.

Right. It starts while they're eating lunch at the table and he starts talking and then it becomes a voiceover because we're actually seeing it. So we know that that is how it went down. And every once in a while, the show will do that, but no other character becomes the narrator of the show.

Yeah, no other character talks to the audience.

Right, they're talking to another character. Yep, yep, you're correct. It becomes a voiceover as opposed to starting as one. No, you're right. You're absolutely right.

But I just made the point because for any listener, identifying whom the voiceover is directed at, whether it's to another character or to the audience, makes a huge difference. That makes Wallace's voiceover diegetic, but the majority of her voiceover- The majority.

Is absolutely non-diegetic.

And so using the remainder of the questions, who is Veronica talking to?

The audience and sometimes yourself and sometimes other people, mostly the audience.

Who is talking? It's always Veronica.

Yeah. I mean, we kind of talked about like, is it a character or is it a storyteller? And we actually had a line of dialogue in a script that we locked today where we're like, yeah, this doesn't quite feel like the character, but it's making a strong thematic point that we want to make as writers. So let's leave it in. And if anyone goes, well, that doesn't really seem true to the left-wing movement in indigenous Peru, which is specifically was the conversation around it. It's like, that's so niche. Let's kind of put our words in the character's mouth. But I think at this stage, definitely in the pilot, it feels like it's the character talking. And even when she's telling us what I would call Mickey mousing, which is a term to do with like music scores, this will connect us to Emperor's New Groove. It's basically where the music basically is the folly, right, is called Mickey Mousing. And then people use that to refer to the fact that anything that just completely is a literal recreation of what you're seeing on screen.

And then from when in time is the voice overcoming?

I think it's present, right?

It's always present.

Really? I always thought it's always from the future. Oh, there's a lot of it. No, you're right. You guys are right.

Well, I think you're saying that because part of like when the Camelot, it does then flash back to 24 hours later, et cetera, et cetera.

And a lot of her voiceovers are about flashbacks, but she's talking from the narrative present of the, she's not talking from at the end of the case.

Right. Cause she doesn't know. Yeah. She doesn't know what's happened. She's saying, I'm trying to figure this out. Not like, oh, I figured it out. Let's figure out, like, let's retrace my steps. But yeah, the flashbacks are still coming from, quote unquote, her present, thus our present.

Yeah.

So what do we think is the cumulative effect of these decisions in terms of the emotional experience of the audience and why the voiceover works in this? Obviously, it works partly because it's the trope. But I think the combination of, for me, I'm going to answer that, but it's interesting to jump to you, is the fact that it's the character, not the storyteller, right? And that her purposes around motivation and that she's reliable, but she could be wrong, works because she's from the present, right? She may not be aware of all the facts. So if she doesn't know something, she can't tell us. But she wants us to understand the motivation. She's still storytelling a bit. So, her decisions of when to talk and not to talk are about the audience's experience of this case, right? But it is kind of her real-time narrating her experience. And I do think the flashbacks are kind of interesting. Flashbacks, to me, are a form of talking to the audience, right?

Well, definitely.

Because if it was just a real-time present story, you wouldn't go into Wallace's head and see what he is talking about. out so it kind of raises some interesting things i.

And and you're right i think it does that as well because we've just met him and she's just met him and because the whole point of that story hinges on who's telling the truth is he telling the truth is he being intimidated out of telling the truth or who's lying because you essentially have three different parties the sheriff wallace and the pch was all trying to push their own narrative we need to know the same ways veronica needs to know that it's a fact. So when we hear his voiceover, the fact that we see it is not just the audience is being told this, but Veronica believes this.

Yeah, nice observation. So is there anything more or different you want to take about the cumulative effect of those choices around voiceover?

No, I think for me, really a lot of it just boils down to tone. It is very much a narrative tool of this is the most efficient way to do it, but you're doing noir and to sell that, They sell it really hard with the way that the voiceover works.

At the risk of sidetracking us, what do you think of the effect of that tone is? We've talked about this, I'm pretty sure, on our Watchmen mega podcast, and we talked a lot about how tone is like a lens that refracts the events of the story for theme. What do you think is the, because he's saying, oh, it's for tone, but what do you think the tone using voiceover to create this tone does?

I think a lot of it is we're a we're empathizing with her for better or worse. Right. Because she's she's certainly not a, you know, pure as the driven snow protagonist. But the the tone is very much it's it's jaded and it's personally broken. But it's also very mistrusting of everything. So she mistrusts everyone around her. She's telling us about that. She's telling us how corrupt everything is, which is very much a noir thing. And so we empathize with her and trust her, but pretty much nobody else. And we also get that specific insight, like what Chaz was saying, into how broken she is, which is very much a noir thing, where she has had these things happen to her and doesn't feel like she can tell certain people or she has reacted this way against someone who used to be her friend or her boyfriend for this reason. And so not only is she jaded and cynical, but we can see she's also somewhat emotionally slunted, which every good noir detective is.

I mean, I would just say that what the tone, what the voiceover really does, there's probably, the nighttime shots also do this, but so much of this pilot happens during the day is it makes it grimy because otherwise this does have a kind of Mean Girls bop and pep to it, right? It's a California noir, like there's beach and there's surf and there's big blue skies and it's high school set.

And really orange optical filters, like, Devont kind of style, like, I'm waiting for those fucking Sunset Grads. Full Tony Scott.

And also, this was network broadcast in the US. So there's very limited sex, very limited swearing, very limited blood. And so I think the voiceover gives it the grimy edge that it wants while being a show that could be PG rated, I presume.

Well, I think I like the four questions. We've completely lost the smoothness like butter of our segue, but Emperor's New Groove.

Long ago, in a faraway land, there was a prosperous kingdom ruled by a young emperor. Ha! Boom, baby! He had a serious attitude. You threw off my groove! I'm sorry, but you've thrown off the emperor's groove. Sorry! An evil advisor. By the way, you're fired. I'll take over and rule the empire. And one major problem. I'll just poison him with this! Hey, Kronk, can you top me off, pal? Be a friend? A llama? He's supposed to be dead! Yeah, weird. Take him out of town and finish the job. Now, his only hope is a humble peasant. Demon llama! Demon llama? Where? You kidnapped me! Why would I kidnap a llama? You're the criminal mastermind, not me. What? Tell him Mecusco's dead. Ow! Well, he's not as dead as we would have hoped.

Well, just to repeat the segue, because to me, it's going to be important how the film concludes, is that it does use a theme song for the filmmakers to talk directly to the audience.

Yes. Yep.

It's not voiceover, but it is direct communication to the audience. There is no mistake why the opening theme song is his perfect world begins and ends with me. And at the end, his perfect world begins and ends with us. And to whoever that letterbox reviewer was that said that there was no journey in this movie. Go fuck yourself. So, Emperor's New Groove is a early 2000s Disney animated studio. It was part of that run of films where Disney animation studios, like, had those massive hits and then came crashing back to earth. But it's a hidden gem of a movie. And it is about a Incan emperor, completely self-absorbed, and gets cursed by his, like, grand vizier royal advisor character Yzma and instead of poisoning Cusco Yzma and her henchman slash lover Kronk accidentally turned him into a llama Kronk has a crisis of conscience and cannot kill Emperor Cusco and it then becomes a story of Emperor Cusco and Pacha the village leader slash I don't know is he described as a peasant?

Yes many many many times Okay.

Whom learned before Cusco was cursed that Cusco was going to raise his entire village and put his palace where his generational home has been. And it's about them getting back to turn Cusco back into the emperor on the promise that Cusco will not put his pool where Patcher's home is. All right. The frame tale that is not a frame tale, the film opens at the lowest point, which is Emperor Cusco is a llama. He's by himself in the jungle, in the wet, and he has given up on returning to his human form. He's given up on being an emperor. And it's his absolute low point. And there is a voiceover over the emperor that's coming from him. In fact, it says.

Well, you'll never believe this, but that llama you're looking at was once Once a human being, and not just any human being, that guy was an emperor. A rich, powerful ball of charisma. Oh yeah! This is his story. Well, actually my story. That's right, I'm that llama. The name is Kuzco. Emperor Kuzco. I was the world's nicest guy and they ruined my life for no reason. Oh, is that hard to believe? Look, I tell you what, you go back a ways, you know, before I was a llama and this will all make sense.

And the reason why I say it's not a frame tale is because that is the low point, it's the turn into the third act. And after that point in the film, when we'd circle back around, we come back to the low point, there is no more voiceover after that point. It is not a concluding end. To me, importantly, because that's the low point and because Cusco changes at that point, the voiceover stops. And what I would love to do is there's so much voiceover between that, the opening and that low point, and we can talk about all the different instances, but I would really love to initially apply those four questions that we have and compare those two points, because I think the voiceover does two very different things in those points, and it kind of does very similar things everywhere else in the middle.

Yes.

I think you're right. A, it starts one way with voiceover. Ends essentially without it and then has like that little button or that that fifth act that is back with the voiceover but it shifts in and out of kusco's point of view using the voiceover to transition in between those shifts which is really fascinating and that all sort of happens in that that middle space but you're right that it's not specifically a frame tale because we do kind of catch up to him and then we're as in the dark as he is as how the thing's going to end and how it's going to happen. It's not like Sunset Boulevard, right, where you start and we're in the future and then we just only catch up to the beginning. We go far past that.

Yeah, yeah. But to your point, the voiceover at the beginning comes from that point in the story that we end up in at the turn into the final act, the turn into the climax. So, I made the observation in the previous episode that what I loved is the character on screen, the Kuzco on Initially, the voiceover is non-diegetic. There's a llama there and there's a voiceover that is talking to us as the audience. He introduces himself. He says, that llama is Cusco, I am Cusco. So, he's very clear who he's talking about. And then he says, they ruined my life. So, the they ruined my life is in past tense. He's talking about what has led up to that point, right? And then we get through the whole story. And what fascinates me about the use of voiceover in this movie is at that point where we get back to that point in the story after everything has happened, and it's really clear that Kuzco has kind of deserved this, that he is the architect of his own situation here. When Kuzco talks back to his own voiceover, he says, who are you kidding?

So, this is where you came in. See, just like I said, I'm the victim here. I didn't do anything and they ruined my life and took everything I had. Hey, give it a rest up there, will you? What? I'm just telling them what happened. Who are you kidding, pal? They saw the whole thing. They know what happened. Well, yeah, but... Just leave me alone.

The voiceover, and this is to your point, Stu, that overarching question, what does the person communicating to the audience want? So, the voiceover Cusco wants us to believe that Cusco is a victim of circumstance, that we should feel sorry for Cusco. And the actual Cusco on screen, who's talking to his own fucking voiceover, is much more self-aware, has kind of much more the character that we've seen lived through that. By him saying, who are you kidding? They've seen all of it. He doesn't say like expressly disagree with his own voiceover, but that pushback that who are you kidding? He's beginning to recognize that he's responsible for his own situation.

What it's actually doing, because the other question is who are they talking to, you know, themselves or directly to the audience? I think what's actually really interesting about this is it sounds like he's talking directly to the audience, but really he's talking to himself, right? Voice over Kuzco is trying to talk to- In the story world, Cusco, right? And that affects what he's saying. And then it's like, the last question is from when in the time is the communication coming? What I think is really, really good about this and that we can take as a learning lesson is the writers have chosen an incredibly specific point of time in the story says the voiceover is flowing from this. They have chosen the low point, right? In Spontaneous, which we've brought up a few times, but we're not doing as an example, but the voiceover is actually from like the last scene. Okay. Which is similar to Fight Club, but all of that is a specific choice, right? Whereas the choice of from where in time is the voiceover coming in Veronica Mars is in this scene, right? If it's a flashback, it's like, it's not in this scene, but we understand that it's like probably her at her dad's offices or whatever, but it's a specific point in time. And I think this is a really good example of the power of that choice, because that colors everything, that voiceover Cusco. And I love that you separate them as characters, because I think that is actually another tool that you can think about. But even if you get rid of Cusco and just make it Cusco VO, if in your draft, you write voiceover Cusco, right? Like it's a separate character because it's a different character that's got different understandings of the events and therefore is making different choices. Voices that's going to change their voiceover i think that could be a way to do it like future kusko you know low point kusko and.

What you said about veronica mars stew like it's so obvious that it's a great way of externalizing the internal but what we've got here is a voiceover and the on-screen character talking to each other and disagreeing or having conflict with each other And is there a better way? And even better, like he is talking to himself. And this film does that for another character without voiceover. We have Kronk with his angel and his demon where they get to externalize the internal arguments with three versions of Kronk without having to use voiceover, which we can't talk about in this episode because it's not voiceover, but I just want to identify that it's there and it's gold.

You're not just going to let him die like that, are you? My shoulder, Angel. Don't listen to that guy. He's trying to lead you down the path of righteousness. I'm going to lead you down the path that rocks. I'll come off it. He'll come off it. Yeah. You infinity. Ah.

I realized, so I probably haven't watched this in a few years, and I watched it a couple days ago as homework for this podcast, and I can still basically quote this film top to bottom. It's impeccable. I can put the flea in the box. I can do the lever. I think this might be one of my most quoted films. It's just.

Yes.

Those were my main observations. And, Stu, thank you for picking up on the point in time. I think being the strongest lever that that's pulling in terms of the quote-unquote frame tale element of it. But then the story does use Vio, even though it's always Cusco's Vio, it's never another character. There are moments throughout where Cusco's Vio is, I feel, coming from a different point in time. It's arguable or debatable. In particular, the thing that jumped out at me is the audience's introduction to Yzma, where Kuzco stops listening to what Yzma is saying to him and focuses on like her wrinkles and what's stuck in her teeth. And he's looking at those things and he's speaking very present tense. The animation is of him being like disgusted and-

He is speaking then, it's like his voiceover is speaking his internal monologue from that point in time.

Exactly. And you could argue the voiceover Kuzco from the future would be saying exactly the same thing. So it's not like it's breaking or using necessarily a different tool, but it is very present tense. It's very in his experience.

Well, right. I'd have to check, but the tense matters, right? The tense isn't, oh, it was disgusting. That is disgusting. You know, how long has that been there? That tense is unclear, but the rest of it is present tense.

And they even use Cusco's VO for a very separate purpose. And I'm actually going to pose this as a question to you guys, because I don't quite understand. It's hilarious. So maybe that's the only reason why they did it. But they've got Cusco providing voiceover for the scenes where he is not.

Conscious yes i was going to bring out that when he's turned into a llama he's knocked out and he's narrating about all the stuff that happened and as it turns out he was unconscious for all of it and he makes a joke about that right guess.

Where i am right now uh-huh in the bag still think i'm not the victim here watch it gets better oh he's doing his own theme music big dumb and tone deaf i am so glad i was unconscious for all of this i am.

So glad i was unconscious for all this.

Yeah i well because we have we have one other omniscient narrator in the story essentially which is you pointed out the theme song the theme song guy theme song guy is tom.

Jones no it's sting sting wrote the songs they're sung by fucking tom jones man.

That's not sing's voice um but the the theme song narrator is this omniscient person who comes in and gives us the backstory and tells us about the emperor and his kingdom etc so it is an interesting choice i think they did do it just for the comedy right because they could have chosen to lampshade it again. They could have chosen to bring in another song. They could have chosen to suddenly switch and have Yzma narrate it.

Or Kronk.

Or Kronk or somebody. But I think for two reasons. One, it's funny. B, it is about empathy, right? He's a horrible person who does change at the end. At some point, especially the point in the story we're about to get to, if we don't have empathy for him, And we're just with Patrick, we're like, fucking leave this guy. Like, dump him down the ravine. Let the bats... Invade his body and carry him away you know whatever all these terrible things that happen like literally being tarred and feathered with with honey and and a pillowcase like but at some point you do kind of you need to be able to root for pacha to be like all right there's something here i'll take you back not just because pacha is a good person but because we think there's something something either redeemable or just man he's just been dumped on by the universe so much so hard maybe if someone's just nice to him and so i think keeping the voice over there in his in kusko's point of view does help can maintain our empathy until he can get to a point where he actually deserves it.

Sure i'm not sure that him doing the voiceover while he was unconscious for all this and like just paying out crunk like shitting on crunk uh.

Does create empathy yeah okay like like putting us in his shoes and we might think that also crocs you know a big lump of of man meat you know um but yeah so not necessarily sympathy but empathizing with him so that we want him to succeed and we don't think he's a you know great guy now.

In the last episode i pointed out a midpoint between the the two voiceover points where kusco stops frame He's still unconscious and he appears, I guess, voiceover Cusco appears on screen and draws on the frame, you know, to say, reminder everyone, this story is about me, not him. And runs away. But what I'd never noticed before in looking at it through this particular lens, that it is not Cusco human. It is Cusco llama who interrupts us. So, even though it's not voiceover, it's breaking the fourth wall. It's using a different way to talk to the audience. It's in fact a different character. It's voiceover Cusco, but he's still a fucking llama. That's how clever and consistent these tools are being applied.

It's like, if you're going to have a similar moment in your story where a future version of the character is doing the voiceover, if you have a moment where they stop the frame and then walk on in like shitty blue screen and like talk to the audience, it should be the future version of that character. It seems obvious to say, right? Because the times you remember this is they execute it well, but people could fuck this up.

Right?

And go, because at the moment it's like, this is me we're talking about and it's him as a llama, right?

And it's something you should distinguish in the screenplay and not just assume that whoever ends up directing or producing your piece is going to see that. You distinguish it in the screenplay.

Yes, I think this is something we will talk about in that back matter thing that we're going to record still and stick on our Patreon for free. But you still need to go to the website because we want you to check out the Patreon. I think it depends what you want the effect on the audience to be. And I think if you want the audience to go, this is the future version of this character. You should call them future Cusco. If you want them to think it's present Cusco, you should just call them Cusco. Clearly, it's not that it's an intellectual distinction. It's a field distinction, but it's a field distinction constructed through English's particular ability, over-fracturedness around tenses, but it's able to construct the idea that this is a character that's telling us it for the future.

Well, let's talk about that. So, if the feeling of choosing it to be llama Cusco, not human Cusco, makes it possibly feel like that's Cusco at that point in time, like the very same point in time. Hey, guys, just stepping in here to remind you that this story is about me. It feels very consistent that it's still the Cusco from the future, from the low point, who's coming back to narrate it. But it could be either. What else has that done? done, if it was human Cusco, it would in some ways spoil the film. We would make us go, he is likely to return to human in the future, even if that's subconscious. Right. So, it's still left. The ending of the film open but what that limiting is is that it is actually from within this time span that he is a llama that that character who stops the film comes in and starts drawing over it with a with a texter or a sharpie is from within a specified time where kusco is a llama yeah.

I wish like and in the end we're talking about both veronica mars and this and i magic pain and gain is we're talking about the films holistically and their use of voiceover holistically rather than breaking down specific scenes. I mean, obviously we have highlighted some specific scenes, but I think that the power of both Veronica Mars and Empress New Groove, and we'll see, I think, with Pain and Gain, is the strategy of the storytellers, or more particularly the writers, is being very consistent. Maybe they flip and change just the way it weaves in and out of the scenes, or exactly, you know, with that moment when Veronica Mars, when she says the line aloud, they're making those choices, but largely the strategy that they've got is consistent. So if you're doing voiceover, it's like, what is the purpose that I am doing this for? Which is separate from like, what purpose does I as the screenwriter want? Which is separate from why is this character, what does this character want at this point in time? Like they could have chosen him when he was much happier, but I think like it absolutely infects his thing and that's different from veronica mars and i think it is different from i think what's really fascinating about pain and gain is the points in time that the characters are speaking are different as.

Is when they speak i'm really fascinated as to when we get each of the characters first voiceovers because i think it matters both in terms of character and in terms of the film structure establishing its rules yeah.

All right well i I was going to squash that segue, but it's too good a segue. So let's carry on.

Did you have anything else on Embrace New Groove?

Oh, fuck. Well done. I did it. I just, I wanted to end on the fact that the voiceover stops at that low point. There's no voiceover past that low point into the end of the film. But in the mild defense of my shitting on that Letterboxd review is that the theme song does it for us. And I think if they didn't have the theme song, there would be voiceover. So, the filmmakers have chosen a different tool to talk directly to us.

And it is interesting, we have not done a musical.

I think it would be a nice excuse for Stu, you and I, to learn some new storytelling tools from musicals. Because neither of us are very musical literate. Alright. Apologies for all the segue squashing. But to go back to Stu's excellent earlier observation and Mel, you know, backing it up 100% is the when in time the voiceover is coming from appears to be really crucial. And that does have, I think, a huge impact in pain and gain.

Don't worry. That's what we specialize in here. Penis magic. I'm a self-made man. I made a lot of money. Maybe yourself ought to spend some of it on a salad. You know who invented salad? Poor people. What's going on, DL? You ever just get tired of being where you are, Adrian? No. I kind of like it here. I mean, the weights are new to me. I mean, in life, man. When's the last time you paid your rent when it was due? I got a plan to change that.

So, Stu, given that Mel and I have both summarised the film already, how about you summarise Pain and Gain for us?

So, Pain and Gain is a true story, a fact which the film reminds of. It's not just at the beginning, but a very brilliant point later on, when you're like, this is just getting bullshit. And it's like, no, in fact, this is a true story. It is, in fact, a true story about two ex-cons basically team up together and kidnap, torture, and then extort a businessman in Miami, and then they kind of basically get hungry again and do it for a second time, which is ultimately their undoing. To use the current Australian turn of the phrase, they went back for their hat. So, to break that further, the central character that we follow for most of it is played by Mark Wahlberg. It's Daniel Lugo. go and we learn through a flashback that he is actually kind of a bit of a con man and he starts working at this place called the sun gym and he makes a friend there adrian dauble who's basically become impotent from steroids which is a thing i wouldn't know about that because i don't take steroids nor am i impotent um he basically kind of gets envious of a character called victor kershaw show, which is one of the people he's training and he is inspired by a motivational speaker. To become a doer and extort Kershaw for his assets. So he recruits Dorble and basically convinces another ex-con and born-again Christian who's played by The Rock. So you've got Anthony Mackie as Dorble, Dwayne Johnson as Doyle, and Mark Worgberg playing Daniel. And they team up and kidnap Victor Kershaw. And it's got that classic kind of black comedy. They're criminals who don't know what they're doing, and it just goes from bad. to worse.

But are very, very, very confident that they do know what they're doing.

Yeah. And that's part of it, right? Is their confidence. And we have access to voiceover from all those three characters, but we're also introduced through voiceover very early to a character played by Ed Harris, who we don't really meet until, I was going to say, it's not even the midpoint. It's almost like the low point.

Since you've just gone there, I do want to say one of the most interesting things to me is how this film let's set aside the ed harris thing for a moment because i think that that snippet is actually which comes yeah like 45 seconds in and then we don't see him for much later that is doing something slightly different to me which is something that we discussed um for something like you know haunting a blind manor right where you've got this narrator that you don't know is the narrator or like um big lebowski and then you never hear or see from him again for ages but what the film does other than that which i think is just michael bay being michael bay and breaking all the rules and doing stuff, is the first time you meet Lugo, you get his voiceover.

My name is Daniel Lugo, and I believe in fitness.

The first time you meet Paul, introduce Paul, immediately get his voiceover, talking about his backstory.

Know why habit rhymes with rabbit? Because your whole life disappears down a bunny hole. While you grow long, sensitive ears, The.

First time you meet Serena, you sort of immediately get her in voiceover.

Who's Serena?

The dancer.

The dancer who believes that these guys are CIA agents. And when we say dancer, we mean...

Stripper.

Stripper. Absolutely.

Right. right.

It all started in Transylvania. I was Miss Bucharest. Ludmila Dragoneski is a whore. She showed her vagina to, I knew the only place a woman like me could be appreciated was in United States. After all, it was the land of opportunity. I saw a pretty woman. All Julia Roberts had to do was show Richard Gere her pizda and she got a shopping trip to Beverly Hills. My pizda was so much nicer than hers. Then I met Daniel. He had that can-do spirit. My American dream was finally coming true.

But those are the first three people that we get voiceovers from.

Oh, really?

Other than Ed Harris. And Ed Harris, I'm putting in a side basket to talk about in a minute. Once you sort of have established, oh, we're going to get everyone giving us their own story, then the other characters voiceovers because the next two we get are noel who's anthony mackie.

I'd do anything for danny lugo he was my boy as good to me as anyone ever was he was a big hearted motherfucker who i knew only had my best in mind but the shit he was popping this daffy plot he had percolating i'd never been a crime ain't never had a reason to be my shit stopped Stop working. And all of a sudden, I had a reason.

And then Victor, who's Tony Shalhoub, is, once it establishes, oh, here's these different voices, here's how this is going to work, then it can just throw to any character at any time it wants, which is a lot of fun. But it kind of establishes things. And then, of course, you've got the Ed Harris basket. And then when he comes back around, that works partly because of casting, right? Because his voice is so distinct. At first, you're just like, oh, we're just going to have a narrator who sort of fills in the blanks or maybe auto-corrects characters. And then when he comes back, you're like, oh no, that's actually a character as well. But it kind of establishes a pattern. And then once it establishes a pattern, it's like, yeah, fuck it. We can break it whenever we want.

So if that convoluted intro to Pain and Gain has not made it clear, what really sets Pain and Gain apart from the previous two examples, is I've never seen a movie where so many characters have voiceover. From my memory of it, I thought it was the main three bodybuilders, but no, it's the stripper, it's the detective, it's the victim, like almost everyone. Stu, you were raising your hand.

The other film we're going to do when we chose this instead was The Thin Red Line, which has got at least three characters give voiceover in it. Have you seen The Thin Red Line?

But this is like almost every character. In fact, I was surprised, I ended up on this rewatch, watching it through this lens, I was surprised that the gym manager, who was the notary public who ends up facilitating the bodybuilder's actual theft and is part, at the end, it gets revealed that he goes to jail as well. He's the only character of any substance in the film that doesn't get voiceover.

Which is, as you say, interesting because this leads to my question, which is from when in time is the communication coming? I think there is a bit of a frame tale in this that's loosely, you know, to use a phrase I quite like, strong opinions loosely held. I think they've got a strong opinion that's loosely held, which is that the voiceovers, at least for the main three, are actually to do with when they're in court, right? Roughly after they've been convicted of these crimes, these characters are justifying why these things happened and why they're not really guilty of murder. I'm not saying that this is exactly, it's not as clear a specific point of time as in Emperor's New Groove, but it It feels like it's roughly at that point. They're trying to convince you they didn't commit crimes. And so it is interesting then because she's the girlfriend, the stripper, is brought up as someone on the witness stand. I don't think she's one of those people that are arrested, but it feels like she's probably explaining how she got involved in these people and how they convinced her that, one, they were music video directors, and two, they're actually working with the CIA. So it is interesting that they have chosen not to highlight his voiceover, whereas the other clear victim, Victor Kershaw, he's explaining about how he withstood so much torture, right? Because he actually wants you to understand, because this comes back to character motivation, is this man is absolutely fucking beaten. He is abused, right? And he says in his voiceover, I'm not going to get broken. And he does get broken, but he doesn't get killed, which is kind of the midpoint of the film, is they try to kill him and they're such fuck-ups, they fuck up killing him. And they don't actually check that he's dead. They didn't follow the rules from Zombieland. They didn't double tap.

If anyone wants convincing to watch a Michael Bay movie, and if anyone needs to know, answer the question, is Michael Bay aware that his style is being satirized, like he's satirizing himself here, is in the shot when the three bodybuilders are walking away from the explosion in which they believe they've just killed Victor Kershaw. Victor Kershaw's body in slow motion, like he climbs out of the car while still on fire, putting himself out, stumbling around in the background while they're slow motion strutting towards the camera. This film is entirely aware of what it's doing.

I mean, mum, I don't think you should probably watch this, but I think dad would enjoy it. It is so over the top.

All right. Let me steer us back a bit because I think, Mel, you've made an important observation that ties back to our previous observations from the other examples, which is there is actually a really firm pattern and set of rules to the voiceover that is established that this film adheres to very rigidly, possibly the Ed Harris character being the one exception.

They do something different with him. him but again when you establish your rules you can kind of fuck around with them a bit.

As i said i think the rule is this is all court case stuff yeah.

I mean applying the questions it's all diegetic at no point are the characters aware like it's all outside of story well as much as you're saying it's from the point in time of the court case to which i agree with you we never see, a transition like in veronica mars where they're talking on the stand and it goes into voiceover overall flashback we're never.

No non-diegetic yeah yeah it's entirely non-diegetic and i'm kind of saying it feels like it's from that because it helps me make sense of why and the tense.

In which they're speaking and all that.

Yeah it's.

Absolutely true that's a great point.

And the fact is it was based on a magazine article right a series of articles and it's very possible those articles were verbatim from the transcripts like i actually went through a phase of going to a lot of verbatim theater. For those who don't know, it's a cool theater style where they literally do stuff based on like court transcripts or interviews or whatever. And it feels like it's connected to that as a style.

And so we are always, other than the Ed Harris character, he is the only character who has voiceover before we see visually the person on screen. Everyone else, we see them on screen before we hear their voiceover and they're introduced to us. So we're always, other than the Ed Harris character, the audience is always aware of who is talking. So, I'm running through the questions here, basically. Whom are they talking to? I think this is actually a good tie back to your courtroom observation because it does feel that they're not necessarily talking to us as the audience, but they are justifying their- What does the communication want? What does the voiceover want. It wants us to understand why they're doing what they're doing. And I think that is why you're getting the feeling that it's a courtroom or post courtroom.

Or pre-court room. It could be in the interview process.

But post being caught, importantly. And that goes back to being the point in time. None of this feels like it is the voiceover from that moment that we're watching.

Caught as in C-A-U-G-H-T, not C-O-U-R-T, just to be clear.

Bloody Australians.

Court and caught. Court. What the screenwriters have chosen is to not be super clear on whom they are talking to or from what point in time they're talking to, but it feels consistent. It feels consistent that they, because of what the voiceover wants from whomever it's directed to is for whoever's listening to understand why they're doing what they're doing. I mean the film does end with a voiceover and it ends with Daniel Lugo in at jail he's on death row like he's waiting to be executed he's been given the death sentence and he says I and it's like I believe in fitness I believe in second chances so that to me is actually my vibe of when the voiceover was coming from but.

I think what's interesting is that in terms of consistency The writer could have simply said, like to Sue's point, look, I'm not going to establish who they're talking to, but I'm going to write all of them as though they're on a witness stand and as though they're trying to explain this in a court case. And that will help guide the consistency where the audience will feel that consistency. But I don't actually need to directly establish that and be so literal about it.

I agree. You are correct for agreeing with me.

How generous of you.

But to go back to your point of view, Mel, they actually have a very firm structure. As much as it feels almost borderline absurd that we get voiceover from this many characters, and some of them very minor characters. I think the stripper is probably the most minor character who gets a voiceover in terms of both her role in the plot and also just her time on screen. But to your point, Mel, the first bit of voiceover from the majority of characters, except from the Ed Harris character, is always, we've just met them, and they tend to give us a bit of backstory. So, they're often accompanied with flashbacks, and it's still, to me, the overriding factor in this is it's nearly always to give us an understanding as to why the characters are about to do the ostensibly crazy thing that they're about to do, because this film would not work without the voiceovers. You would not believe for a second what any of the characters do without the voiceovers. And yet, because of the voiceovers, you are in it the entire time. I was never thrown out or disbelieving of it. So, there's that, and it keeps to that structure right the way throughout. Like, when Ed Harris appears well past the midpoint, it goes into his flashback. It keeps to that structure.

Being a cop for so long, I've learned that people's lives are usually linear until they're not. Comes a day for just about everyone when A suddenly skips B and careens to polka dot weird W. The best move I ever made was marrying Sissy. Sweetie Pie, are you deaf? The phone has rung like 19 times. Sorry, babe, I didn't hear it. After I retired, I reopened the detective agency my old man used to own. But after a few years, Sissy begged me to retire from that too. She said I'd earned my relaxation years with long, lazy days full of golf and fishing. Except the only thing I hate more than golf is fishing.

Right, it tells us who he is, how many generations of detectives he's come from, why he's retired, how he doesn't like fishing or golf, and that's all his life is. And is telling us all that so that it answers his motivation as to why he puts up with Victor Kershaw and takes that case.

I think that is a lot of why it works is that the harsh juxtaposition between what we're seeing and what we're hearing, we would not keep watching. You're right, not only would we check out, but what possible rationale could that person have for doing something that stupid? Oh, okay. I mean, does it make sense? No, but I wouldn't have gotten there myself if I did not have the voiceover to explain their internal workings.

I mean, we're speculating here, but probably part of the draw for the story in the original article and then the screenwriters was, how can people be that dumb? Right? And then suddenly it's like you hear the words from their mouths and you're like, yes.

That's how.

And that's how wonderful their organization of the voiceover is because Ed Harris's voiceover near the end of the film describes them as really, really dumb. And prior to that, we are only hearing their delusions of grandeur about themselves. The first time we're seeing how dumb they are and we're seeing the consequences of their stupidity, but no character refers to themselves as dumb until that voiceover near the very end of the film. But I'd like to make a second observation is as much as they're rigidly adhering to that structure of introduce a character, then give them some voiceover to give us their backstory. And then for the majority of it, it is to, I think, explain motivation. In particular, Dorbal's first voiceover, I think, was particularly important is he says, I was never a crimer, but suddenly I had a reason. That voiceover is only to go for why is this guy joining in? But as soon as they've established that pattern and they adhere to it, the voiceover, to my mind, and this comes back to when in time is the voiceover coming from, but it's nearly all about dramatic point of view. It's nearly always about actually putting the audience slightly ahead of the characters because the voiceover characters are coming from the future. They often give voiceover to make us tense about what is just about to happen. Like, Stu, you pointed out the Victor Kershaw intro, right? We've met Victor various times at the the script before he's kidnapped. He's suddenly kidnapped. He's tied to a chair. And then we get his backstory, which is in keeping with the structure established by the film. But it says, I can put up with an incredible amount of pain.

My grandfather fled Germany in 1943. I was born in Bogota, grew up in New York City, put myself through college, working six nights a week at Pizza Hut, busted my ass, but ended up control of a billion dollar a pipeline in the rectum of the third world. I put up with shit they don't have names for in civilization. Funny, I left South America because there was too much kidnapping. That's what you call irony. But if they think a little slapping around is going to break me, they don't know Victor Pepe Kershaw.

And what does that tell us? That these idiots are about to try and torture this guy out of his fortune, and they're suddenly about to find it way harder than they expect. And the voiceover is telling us as the audience that that is what's about to happen before the three bodybuilders, before the three leads get there.

And I actually do think this works with his character because Victor is very concerned about being seen as his victim. And the irony of his character is he's a fucking asshole. He is, as Ed Harris' character says, as Detective Ed says, he's a very hard man to like. So not only is this character, unfortunately, hit with racial prejudice he compounds it by being a dickhead.

And i think that it's important that he's one of the characters who we don't get his voice over until after we've seen several scenes of him because it really establishes exactly how much and the type of asshole he is before he gets a chance to try to speak directly to us and sort of sway us as oh i'm not the victim i am this and And it's like, no, we've been, we've seen what you've been for like the last half an hour, bro. Yeah. You know.

And like, as soon as it kind of gets past that almost first third of the movie, they still, when they're introducing new voiceovers, they stick to the structure. But I was just finding every time they came to the voiceover from characters who'd already introduced themselves, it was almost always to actually put the audience slightly ahead narratively than the point of view characters. So, yeah. They said, we have unfinished business. So, suddenly they're going back into the hospital to try and kill Victor because they've just learned that he's lived, that he survived their idiotic attempts to kill him. We suddenly know, before Victor does, that the bodybuilders are coming to get him. And they say that in voiceover before they show it to us. And then you've got that delightful moment in the hospital. Ed, the detective, is on the phone to Victor saying, if I were you, I would get out of the hospital because they'll be coming back to kill you. And at the same time in voiceover, you've got Daniel Lugo, the Mark Wahlberg character talking about how stupid the line system is in the hospital and how they can't find- how to find Victor Kershaw in the hospital. So, it's putting us as the audience ahead of the bodybuilders, ahead of Victor. This is the one example where the voiceover is actually changing narrative point of view to put us ahead of the characters rather than level with or behind the characters. And they do that because it reinforces that these guys are dumb.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's great. I hadn't bumped on that, but as you're speaking through it, I'm like, yep, absolutely.

As we've talked about before, a good way to make your characters seem smart is for us to be behind them. They work things out before we do, right? So the opposite is true, and in this case it serves the purpose. If you want your characters to be dumb, you have the audience and know what's happening before they do.

Whereas Veronica Marge does a lot of that in later episodes where we're slightly behind and she's explaining us and it seems, oh, that's very smart. Or even when they choose not to use voiceover, like in the case of the bong setup, she's obviously ahead of us.

There is another person talking direct to audience in Painting the Game, which I think, oh, I mean, maybe you've come to this conclusion. I don't know if you have, which is slightly different from Disney Groove and Veronica Mars, which is in pain and gain, I can feel the hand of the storyteller. Right. It's clearly someone is assembling this stuff and telling me like, it's basically like how fucking bonkers is this. Right. And it's not someone who's the characters. It is kind of a very clear authorial voice. It's almost like this film takes a lot of inspiration from Guy Ritchie and Scorsese, but it's actually even more overt that Michael Bay, there is a storyteller telling us a story. And the film is somewhat aware of that at the end, And the end credits basically go into the real people, right? And there is this, like we've talked about a little bit, kind of a little bit about taking inspiration from true crime and documentaries and stuff that's a little bit more flexible with how it presents information. And this film does feel like it's playing around with that. I don't know. It's hard to put a finger on it because it's voice.

Oh, I can put a finger on it because you're absolutely right. There is the filmmakers as another character that's talking directly to the audience and and they do it three times, and they do it in title cards.

Oh, yeah. Coming back to my this is still a true story moment.

Yes. And the title card actually comes, if I'm not wrong, with like the Ed Harris the first time as well, like the literal title card of the movie.

Anyway, Chaz is about to be incorrect by agreeing with me.

So there's three times that I remember in this most recent watch that a title card appears, and one is it says, The weak link, which is when Victor is befriending Doyle, the Dwayne Johnson character. And again, it's putting us ahead of the audience. It's saying that it's the filmmakers talking directly to the audience, pointing out what we are seeing, that Victor is befriending Doyle and Doyle is crumbling and Doyle's will is weak here and that he's the weak link in this chain of three idiots. And it's just the filmmakers feel the need to tell us. The other one is slightly interesting. There's a moment in the hospital, Victor escapes the hospital. The three bodybuilders are there. Mark Wahlberg is pretending to be a surgeon in a hospital that apparently doesn't have operating theatres because the doctor asked why are you dressed as a surgeon? And in that moment, Mark Wahlberg's character, Daniel Lugo, learns that. But has already talked to the police and no one believes him. And so, he suddenly feels we've done it, we've got away with it. And a title card appears saying perfect execution. Now, that is arguably from Daniel Lugo's point of view, but he's voiceovering to us at the same time as the filmmakers and title cards are saying the same thing. And then you've got your moment, Stu, where again, the Doyle character, Dwayne Johnson, and is barbecuing hands outside in the middle of a street, waving to neighbours. And as he's barbecuing these hands to try and remove the fingerprints, a title card appears, this is still a true story.

And it's a great moment because you're just like, this is just getting way too ridiculous, right? And it's like, yep.

Correct.

I mean, this is why it feels like it's after they've been caught, whether it's before they're convicted, whether they're on the stand, it is after all this shit has happened. I mean, the point of view is probably informed by the fact that it was an article written about the insanity of this, but it's from that point of view of like, are you still with me? Because this shit is whack, is kind of the vibe. And I think that's what works about it, that Michael Bay's kind of Tony Scott-inspired chaos cinema, which is about there's so much surface, right? Like, you know, Michael Bay's stuff doesn't try to hide the fact that you're watching a film, right? His style is so overt and in your face. He doesn't want you to disappear in the film. He wants you to be like, fuck, that shot is cool, is part of his style, right? And I think it works for this because the consciousness, you being self-aware, the aesthetic distance it is creating is allowing you to have a thematic engagement of the text. Right.

Well, his superficiality reflects their superficial understanding of what the American dream is.

And hence, blows it up to a thousand and projects it in shiny neon.

What's the truly deep understanding of the American dream, Jazz?

I am not qualified to comment on that. But I just want to, on that point, there is one character beat in this whole film, which I did not, on this particular rewatch, where I'm like, I'm not sure I buy this. And they used the voiceover to get me across it, which is just after grilling the hands, the Doyle character, the Dwayne Johnson character freaks out and abandons the team. Like he has just been grilling hands and waving at neighbors. And then he freaks out and runs away from the whole thing. But in the voiceover, it says, I've been here before and I'm not proud of it. And I say, my note says all to put the audience ahead and justify the dumb decisions that the characters make. And it is possible that he's on a cocaine come down and that he's gone from being, I'm okay with grilling hands to I'm not okay with any of this.

Actually, there's another moment. You're talking about these moments where the filmmakers are talking to the audience. There's another moment where it lists all the side effects of cocaine, anxiety and delusions because he's having these kind of dream sequence.

Does it do that for the steroids as well or just the cocaine?

Oh, I can't remember.

I can't remember either, but I feel like, yeah, anyway. Yep.

Oh, the other character, the other notable character who doesn't get a voiceover, does Rebel Wilson's nurse character, does she get a voiceover?

I feel like she does, but it could just be that we do see her on the stand. And so she gets an opportunity to talk about her shitty ex.

We definitely don't when we get introduced to her. I agree with Stu. I was like, oh, I feel like we do later, but maybe we don't. Maybe it's just actually seeing her participating after the fact.

But I have a question for you guys. We've talked about how spectacular the voiceover functions on a micro level, in a moment by moment level in this film. What do you think is the cumulative effect, to use Stu's earlier term, of having so many characters provide voiceover?

They all enable each other, right? And I actually, whether or not Michael Bay thinks this, it's kind of interesting commentary on kind of the rugged individualism of America, because in this, it's they're pursuing this kind of rugged individualism, but they're all depending on each other. And they're enabling each other and pursuing these very selfish decisions. And not that we've done the thin red line or tree of life, but the way Malik uses collective voiceover to make us feel like stuff is being bigger than in any individual. I think that's kind of the cumulative effect. On this right the people are kind of we like enabling and why people can be deceived i think makes it easier how does this happen it's a whole bunch of people.

So just to put it quick in context of the other two films like narratively when we get for example veronica mars she's the protagonist she's the main point of view character she's sort of the linchpin and here it's all spread out throughout because yeah loosely daniel is but mostly they're they're all kind of you know, bumbling around in this big thing but emotionally when we were talking about with emperor's new groove why they chose to have kusco narrating it's because they wanted to keep us empathizing if not sympathizing with him and i think in this film it's kind of like none of these characters are someone that you want to spend a lot of time empathizing or sympathizing with so when we get bits and pieces of all of them we can understand where they were going but we're not having to emotionally relate deeply to their like deep stupid selfish destructive absolutely batshit crazy mentality we're just getting bits of all of them and.

And that's where i kind of agree with both of you where yes it's doing the same thing from all the different characters it's it's getting us across their motivation, but their motivation all ties back to a single kind of unifying theme about like, to your point that you got this vibe that they're all enablers. And to me, they're all like justifying their decisions based on, you know, there are some lines about making America a better place, being a doer not a donor, like the rugged individualism, like there's all this thematic stuff that hearing each of their different versions versions of that, actually, even though this was so focused on character and so focused on the internal of individual characters, by spreading it across so many characters, to me, it really brought out the theme of the movie. That, again, not only if- I'm trying to imagine this film without the voiceover, and not only would it be a mess where I wouldn't believe what any character was doing from moment to moment, it also wouldn't have that unifying theme. Around at all.

I mean, you even have Detective Ed saying that what these characters did is un-American and you have them and you have Mark Wahlberg, Daniel constantly talking about how he's doing the American thing, right? So, all of it is kind of coming back to them justifying their kind of narcissism through this lens of like patriotism or like bettering oneself. I mean, that's why you even have a character.

I believe in fitness.

I believe in fitness or John Woo stuff, right? And they even have a moment where he's talking about, I've got these nine honeys. And a moment later, you have him going, get the bitches into the boat, right? Like it's the, what people tell the world, the master they present in the world about how well they're doing and actually how awful they are as human beings and how it's not quite what their dream. Yeah.

I mean, to me, the criticism, whether this is fair or not, and whether this is of the American dream. But to me, this was a criticism of individualism because everything that they were doing was if it's for the betterment of me as an individual, then it must be good. And it takes that to such an extreme.

In the end, they still don't succeed individually. Not only is it toxic and not only is it destructive, but it is completely self-defeating.

But none of them see it as individualism.

No.

They all see it as part of America. At the midpoint of the film, I can't remember which character says this. I've got it quoted. I presume it's Daniel, but he says, someone in voiceover says, make America a better place.

Yeah, that's what he's planning on doing with all the money. Daniel Lugo's like, I'm going to take all the money and I'm going to do X and I'm going to buy this and I'm going to make America better. And it's like, of course you're not.

But his delusion is that rugged individualism and being a doer not a donor and taking everything that you want is what america is about it.

Is what it says it's about isn't it, before this ends on too depressing of a note.

I mean, it is a delightful, hilarious film where arguably the forces of institutionalism and collectivism win.

I mean, this film is nasty and it's me and I don't think any character is particularly redeemable by the end. Even Ed Harris at the end, you know, you're getting this sense that he's meant to be retired but he loves catching bad guys. That's his juice, right? Right.

One last job.

One last job. And the thing is, what I like about this film is it's not presented as some noble thing that he's doing. It's just that he can't stop it. He's addicted to the rush of tracking down like-

As much as he's smarter than everyone else, he is in it for himself. He is doing it for himself. He doesn't need to do it. His wife doesn't want to do it. It's not good for him or his wife or his collective. You know, he doesn't really give a shit about victor kershaw i mean i guess he does there's that nice scene with the bread roll where they're making tony shalhoub like mush's face up against the glass this.

Is where if we did do veronica marsh the movie i would have tied it back in for julio about how it's all about being addicted to the game.

I just did yeah i mean there was a bit of a michael man kind of like you know the action is the juice to quite hate um but like yeah he's not as you say he's not actually especially in it for kershaw he doesn't really like this person he kind of seems to get off on the fact that he goes to the police commissioner he's able to be like you got it wrong right like there's a sense of like arrogance in it and i think that's kind of what makes it work is just how like it's misanthropic it's it's actually of the three films the most misanthropic of all of them.

Despite being ostensibly you know it has that florida sheen about it they're all bodybuilders they're all image obsessed you have a director whose style is very image oriented like.

He's possibly got the best guns and guns of any director in hollywood so.

Mel what have you learned from doing re-watching the veronica mars pilot emperor's new groove and pain and gain.

I really like the note where we talked about even if you don't, even if it's not super clear to the audience necessarily without retrospect what the rules of the writer are, like we were talking about keeping it consistent. I think as a writer, having an okay, the voiceover will do X or will do it in this way or will always come from this point of view will really help make things clear going in. So in terms from a writing standpoint, I thought that was really great. I really enjoy voiceover as tone. I also think a lot of people think all voiceover is just a really cheap way of doing things, but everything's been done before. Why are you doing it? Does it fit your genre? Are there ways to play with it and have fun with it, like with Ebber's new groove? Are there ways to establish your rules and then sort of immediately fuck with them like pain and gain? Is there a way that you are creating understanding of your character's emotional state in a way that you couldn't through strictly acting the way that we were talking about with Veronica Mars and what we know versus what she's not confiding to others? So I think all of those things, and particularly, I think, looking at all these movies and the way they move the four levers as a framework has been really helpful.

I would say the most important decision, this is what I've learned from this episode, but it's like, it's the last question on our list, but it's actually, I think it's the first question you almost need to answer as an audience is from where in time is this communication coming?

Fuck you, Stu, for stealing my key observation. Carry on.

Right because everything kind of is connected to that from what point in your story which is another way of thinking is this communication coming because that imply that that will help you answer whether this is diegetic or non-diegetic will help you answer whether it's a storyteller or character because it being out of time it's not actually in the place of the story is a completely valid answer it means that it's not longer present tense and then that will then also inform like Like, that will be connected to whom they're talking, right, and what they want out of it is going to be reflected on from what point in their story they're talking. And I think that if you're going to do voiceover, thinking about that will connect it. And we haven't had any discussion about unreliable narrators, but I think unreliable narrators are ultimately connected to the fact that the character wants something from the audience, right? And so the unreliability comes from both a combination of what this character knows, but also what they want you to know.

Well, I think we have, while we've not tackled it directly, and we had other examples that we were thinking about doing for this episode that would tackle it more directly. But Pain and Gain, where there is such a discrepancy between what the character voiceover is saying and what we're seeing, that made the voiceover unreliable. No one is listening to that voiceover in Pain and Gain going, this is truth.

Right. But then that relates to The Lever as as well because you have unreliable when someone's trying to convince someone else unreliable when they're trying to convince each other because like if you watch something like the unusual suspects, he's trying to convince someone else and then that lever moves in different ways whether they know they're talking to an audience or not etc which is where i think the intersection of you're right the levers versus what type of narrator and diegetic non-diegetic etc make it so fascinating.

So, yes, Sue, I did not think that when in time is the communication coming was going to be as important as it turned out to be in all three of these examples. And I think it's such a key decision to think about because it, like both of you said, it influences the other- the answers to the other questions. Even if it's the Big Lebowski, right? Like, when we meet Sam Elliott in the Big Lebowski, I still feel his voiceover is coming from a different point in time than when we meet the character. I agree. So that's, I agree with you that that's the most important lever. I just want to make a really dumb and obvious observation that we've talked about how. Voiceover is such a great tool for efficiently providing backstory, efficiently dramatizing the internal, efficiently providing character motivation. It's such a great thing, but don't go in a script going, oh, I'm suddenly coming up with these problems where people are not buying why a character is doing something and then go, I know voiceover in that moment, we'll fix it. All of these three examples that we've picked because they were excellent examples of voiceover, us and our patrons have picked, you know, they're excellent examples of voiceover and they all do voiceover or some form of communication directly to the audience from beginning to end. And they've all got, to your point, Mel, really clearly defined rules as to how and when they're going to do that and how and when they're going to break those rules. So, it's really obvious, but I just wouldn't throw voiceover into paper over something. If you're going to use it, have a really clearly defined set of parameters as to what it's intended to do.

All of these films, the voiceover serves a thematic purpose, and it's not necessarily theme in the sense of this is the message of the film, and we are going to be learning lessons about these things, right? But it is thematic in terms of what the film is largely about, right? And what is a driving or organizational principle, you know? Veronica Mars, it's not just what it is, but she is a kid that's being thrusted in an adult world. And it's her believing that she is more adult or emotionally mature than she is and that's part of what her voiceover drives the use of the voiceover right it's obviously a genre constraint in emperor's new groove it's a character at his low point it's him trying to convince himself that he he's the victim of circumstance and and really it's not his fault and he's trying to convince himself because he knows it's a lie pain and gain the thematic purpose is actually more omniscient which is why I think we get a sense of the storyteller in there, which is that the voiceover is we've kind of largely talked about, and you can articulate it in many different ways, but it is largely about how these people's selfish needs, their narcissism leads them to being awful human beings, right? And it leaves no one unscathed in that. That film is absolutely the lie the character believes. Every voiceover is the lie the character believes. I left, you know, Eastern Europe to become a movie star in Hollywood. would.

She's been suckered into the American dream and individualism and the belief that if you're a doer, not a donor, you will succeed as much as any of the other characters, including Ed Dubois.

So the interesting transition for me is I think breaking the fourth wall is going to really challenge our ideas around at what point in time this voiceover comes from, because there There probably are some examples, but my gut instinct, without us having to decide what those examples are, is that voiceover is going to be more... Innately tied to the present but we're hopefully whether it's through a musical or whatever going to be finding some of the examples are different and we have not done a film where the voiceover or more broadly speaking the talking to the audience is coming from the past which can happen but it's fairly rare right that you've got the mechanism of the tapes as you talked about with you know bones and all or the letters in sans soleil which are definitely more art house and maybe that That part of the outhouse-iness comes from the fact that that choice creates a more unusual emotional contract with the audience.

Well done, Sue. Nice wrap up.

Segues into the next episode even.

Yeah. Amazing. Thanks as always to our amazing Patreons who bring you more Draft Zero more often. Hopefully we'll be more sober for the next episode. But in particular, special thanks to our amazingest Patreons, Alexandra, Jen, Jesse, Crob, Lily, Millay, Randy, Sandra, Thees, and Thomas. And thanks also to Abigail for throwing a question in that is very relevant to tonight's recording.

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