SeanPaulMurphyVille: Writer Tip #33: Conflict Overload

Thursday, January 27, 2022

Writer Tip #33: Conflict Overload

I believe in conflict.

I believe conflict is essential. When I taught screenwriting, I hammered home to my students the need for conflict in every scene. I would have never thought it was possible for me to complain that there was too much conflict in a film until I saw the film Being The Ricardos, which was written and directed by Academy-Award winner Aaron Sorkin.

Am I, the screenwriter of a bunch of B movies and an instructor at a regional university, daring to criticize the great Aaron Sorkin? You bet your ass I am.

Like many people, I grew up on I Love Lucy reruns. It is an amazing show that established the template for the three-camera television situation comedy. With strong performances, great writing and solid direction, the show remains remarkably timeless. Yes, I came to love Lucy, and I have read what I could about the show and principals over the years.

When I heard Sorkin was going to do a biopic about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, I was very excited. I am not a Sorkin hater. He's certainly a strong writer, but I feel he sometimes tends to play with the facts to suit his viewpoints. I felt some dread when I heard this film was going to concentrate on one week during the production of I Love Lucy. I knew it had to be the week when Lucy was forced to deal with the accusations of being a communist. That worried me. I was afraid Sorkin was going to use that incident as opportunity to get up on his soapbox and pontificate. Fortunately, I was wrong. Unfortunately, that would have been the least of my problems with the picture.

I was correct about the week. The film revolves around the week when Lucy and Desi, by then the most popular stars on television, must deal with the accusations that she was a communist. If Sorkin left it at that, and played it straight, Being The Ricardos, might have been a fine film. Unfortunately, those career ending stakes weren't high enough. Instead, irregardless of the timing of the actual events or their chronological order, Sorkin decided to shoehorn every conflict Lucy and Desi ever experienced into that single week.

So, aside from some flashbacks showing how Lucy and Desi met, we have the couple fighting the communism charge; the couple announcing Lucy's pregnancy; the couple fighting the network, their sponsor, and their own creative team about whether Lucy can be seen pregnant on television; and, finally, Desi being exposed as a serial philanderer in a gossip magazine. That's all true, but it didn't all happen that fateful week. He's just piling on.

That normally would be enough conflict for three movies, but Sorkin doesn't stop there. Everyone else in the movie is at each other's throats too. Vivian Vance and William Frawley have a caustic relationship. (True!) Vivian resents Lucy's attempts to fatten her up and keep her frumpy. (True!) Writers Bob Carrol, Jr., and Madelyn Davis are overly competitive and backstabbing. (Probably untrue since they worked as a team for over thirty years.) Lucy is rude and condescending to the director. (Possible but Desi, with his better people skills, generally handled the directors and writers at this period leaving Lucy free to concentrate on her performance. Lucy didn't get her reputation for being dictatorial and difficult until much later.) Lucy tries to muscle Jess Oppenheimer to share his producer credit with Desi to soothe his poor self-esteem. (I doubt Desi ever suffered a lack of self-esteem and by this time he was already respected as one of the most successful and innovative producers on television.) There's more, but why go on? You get the picture.

I'm sure if I went through the script scene-by-scene with my students, I would have applauded each one as a masterful example of screenwriting. However, cumulatively, all of this conflict proved disastrous to the overall film. In the end, the set of I Love Lucy seemed like a living hell and I didn't like any of the people, especially Lucy and Desi.

Sorkin added so much conflict that he gave the narrative little time to breathe. He didn't give us time to observe and understand the characters outside of the harsh light of conflict. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were married for over twenty years. Their respective faults were known to each other from the beginning, yet they choose to stay together for decades. They didn't stay together simply because they had a hit television show. They had an abiding love and respect that survived beyond their marriage. I didn't really get a taste of that in this film.

Depicting the external conflicts Lucy and Desi faced in this film was child's play compared to getting to the bottom of the true emotional complexity of their relationship. I wish Sorkin would have skipped some of the overwrought and superficial conflicts between the supporting characters and dug a little deeper into the central relationship. That would have been a task worthy of a great writer.

I don't mean to be overly critical of Sorkin. I am guilty of the same sin. I had converted my novel Chapel Street into a feature script. I thought it was a great script. I worked hard on it and managed to convey all of the action, i,e, conflict. Recently, however, a producer told me that the project would be more attractive as a streaming series so I wrote up the pilot. Only as I wrote the pilot did I become aware of how much of the heart I had cut out of the story to fit in all of the conflict. Now I am going through the feature script again....

So remember: Conflict is a good thing. Except when it isn't.

I hope that's helpful.

Here's the trailer for film: