2020 will give odds to many films: in Hollywood suggested how this year will end

If 2020 was a TV show, what would it be? The premise is promising (as can happen when political dysfunction meets a deadly virus), but the execution needs work. Think about how messy it all is: competing storylines, twists and turns, villains, stories introduced and then quickly forgotten. The publication spoke in more detail about this idea The Washington Post.

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Whether we like it or not, this TV show is racing towards the finale and nobody knows what will happen in the final episode. Will there be a good ending? Or one of those disturbing and ambiguous ones that gnaws at you long after you've finished watching? And will this ending be the end?

Hollywood plot masters also thought about this.

“This year's script is very much like a joke we often play in the writers' room,” says Bruce Miller, showrunner of Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale. - And the joke is this: if all the crazy things happening in the world became a show, what would it be? Maybe a comedy? Or tragedy, dystopian thriller, political and legal drama, medical procedural, apocalyptic fiction, horror and satire? Or is it all rolled into one?

But mostly it's a completely insane plot. Remember everything that happened this year: coronavirus, quarantine, George Floyd, mass civil rights marches, Lafayette Square, Elmhurst Hospital, fires, destruction of the American economy, death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, impeachment of US President Donald Trump, president's illness, New York Times publishes presidential tax returns, brexit and megsit, killer hornets and much more.

The journalists asked the five writers to tell what they would have done with such a plot plan: how they would have turned it into something viewable and how they thought it should end (not necessarily how they would like it to end).

  Structure

Looking at the endless daily twists and turns and plots of the notorious 2020 scenario, experts expressed multiple opinions.

"I would tell that writer, 'Hey, slow down,'" says Eli Atty, a writer for NBC. “For example, show us who these people are, or highlight and extract some of these story events, and let one story be central.”

Miller says that when he writes, he is trying to "give people enough time to really think about something complex." In 2020, "we have so many complex things that are very difficult to handle, and they appear one after the other."

As an example, Miller cites recordings of the first lady, Melania Trump, which were released by her former adviser Stephanie Winston Wolkoff. "It's ignored in the next scene and we never hear about it again," Miller says. - This happened in the real world. But that doesn't work in fiction."

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Angela Kahn, showrunner for the Walking Dead project on AMC, made a similar observation: "A lot of things happen, and then everything seems to disappear and not end."

The parade of people and storylines that simply disappear is what makes 2020 different from a TV show. While there are plenty of jaw-dropping twists, "it doesn't feel like it has the kind of narrative structure that we expect from television," says Dan Schofield, writer and producer of NBC's The Good Place.

This is worse than bad, Schofield said.

“Even a lazy show tends to end,” he says.

Genre

“There are possibilities that it could be a dark comedy, a drama or a satire,” Schofield says, “but it depends on how you narrow your focus: COVID-19 or something else.”

Pandemics in real life are slow and painful, which is not very convincing. That's why pandemics in entertainment tend to be "the kind of contagion that makes people drop dead quickly," says Cheo Hodari Coker, Netflix's showrunner. He thinks 2020 could work as a 24-style action show, where the hero is tasked with saving the country - both from the virus and from an infected president who is "clearly out of his mind."

Or maybe this is a series about a zombie apocalypse. Kahn has a few ideas: The show will open with impeachment, with a few hints about “this weird flu that started in Asia,” she says. “Little by little people disappear, and you don’t know why.” And then, of course, over time you find out that it’s actually the dead who are marching through China.”

The zombie virus is spreading in the United States. The President becomes infected, and the previous scenario kicks in on its own.

“You have to go through a chain of different people who should take the post of president,” Kahn elaborates. “And one by one they become infected.” Then you have a scene in the halls of Congress where the senators are tearing each other apart, which is kind of a metaphor.”

Players

You might think that US President Donald Trump would be a good hero for the show. But the scripting experts disagree.

“He doesn't have that inner life, the emotional life, that a three-dimensional character does. I don't know how to make it interesting. There's no nuance to it. This is not a contradiction. He’s not at war with himself,” explains Atty.

Schofield puts it more bluntly: “He is almost like Jaws: a huge creature that causes destruction, but without anything that might sound like motivation or logic. So it's good for the show, but bad for the character. "

Perhaps the problem here is a lack of imagination. Kahn sees a little more room for nuance in Trump's character. “The villain is the hero of his own story,” she says. “If you want to write a story where the president is a sympathetic anti-hero, you can do that.”

However, the writer is probably better off focusing the plot on someone else.

“Often your protagonist is the audience,” says Atty. “It’s a vessel through which the audience can immerse themselves in the story and see what’s going on.”

He thinks a good target would be “a person who starts out as a Trump supporter, radicalizes and changes, and then realizes that he has to risk everything. Perhaps this is an administration official who was driven to mutiny. "

Miller said the story of 2020 is best told “through the eyes of someone who sees it as the end of one era and the beginning of another,” ideally someone who is not involved in politics.

“I would definitely use the point of view of a young, non-white woman,” he shares his take on plotting. “It seems to me that this man has the greatest and most interesting view of history.” Someone who is just trying to grow up in this world and start their life.”

Plot twists

“It was such a crazy year that when the government declassified the UFO footage, almost no one talked about it,” Coker says.

Then there were the killer hornets, also known as the Asian giant hornets, an invasive species that decapitates bees. Their presence as harbingers of the End Times is perhaps exaggerated. But if it was a series, it is likely.

“These are the kinds of things where you just mention it somewhere in the episode and then forget about it,” Kahn explains. “And then that information has to come back at the end of the season in some unexpected way.”

This year we saw stocks of toilet paper, Tom Hanks' coronavirus, and Kanye West's presidential campaign. Another moment created for television was Kimberly Guilfoyle's bizarre and harsh speech at the Republican National Convention. (Guilfoyle, the ex-wife of California Governor Gavin Newsom, is now meeting with Donald Trump Jr.)

"The fact that the girlfriend of the president's besotted son is also the ex-wife of the governor whose state is burning seems all too convenient," comments Schofield. “It’s like a fantasy when the show’s producers say, ‘Oh, we already have this actress that we like. Let’s just take her again.”

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And then there were the events of late September and early October, when Justice Ginsburg died, the contents of President Trump's tax returns were revealed, the disastrous first presidential debate occurred, and the president and many of his staff tested positive for the coronavirus. The revelation that Amy Coney Barrett, the conservative justice appointed to replace Ginsburg, once held the title of "Handmaid" in a Christian group was a particularly strange collision of reality and fiction for Miller, the author of "The Handmaid's Tale."

“You could really shoot a miniseries in those two weeks,” says Kahn.

But will the president get the coronavirus in the 2020 dramatic version?

"People will say it's too primitive," Coker said.

Atti disagrees.

“I think the most Shakespearean element of these two and a half weeks was Trump's diagnosis with the disease and his inability to change it,” he counters. “It’s a karmic irony.”

Ending

We're almost at the last episode. So the challenge for these writers and showrunners is: With everything that has happened, how can this end?

In the script, as in life, there is no simple answer.

“My first thought was: Is this a season finale or is this a series finale?” - admitted Schofield. He thinks it will be difficult to complete all the unfinished business this year in any meaningful or satisfactory way.

This forces him to think about the phrase “it was just a dream,” or the famous St Elswehr finale, which ended as follows: the camera lens went to the side to show that the hospital drama took place inside a snow globe and may have been a figment of the imagination. autistic child.

Or maybe the writers will have to rely on a deus ex machina - a surprise actor who changes everything at the last minute. “Murder hornets appear,” Schofield builds the storyline. — The aliens are approaching at the same time as the floods. Fires are coming from all sides. Humanity is disappearing. This seems to be the only possible way to tie up all the loose ends.”

“I think I would have looked for an absurd twist,” says Kahn, “not one that involves zombies.”

“Maybe Trump is leaving for California, and there are fires there,” she develops her thought. — The President goes to the set to take a photo and disappears. He is considered dead. But it turned out that he used it as an escape to go to Russia because he thought, “I’ll lose, and Russia will protect me, and I won’t have to pay taxes.”

“The happy ending is this: right on the verge of collapse, the president comes out of his steroid stupor and realizes that he has lost himself, lost his country and resigns,” Cocker shared his version of the ending.

“To be honest, I think the end may be in sight now,” he says. “Biden is leading in the polls, but it is unclear whether his lead will translate into victory.”

On the other hand, artful ambiguity is a risk. The audience demands satisfaction.

“You want to end with Trump leaving the White House, whenever that happens,” Miller says.

“I don’t know if this is a happy ending,” he continues. “I mean, this is the start of something complicated.” And this is not the end at all.”

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