Original subtitles

Use the force, Luke.

I stick my neck out for nobody.

Well, darling, look out, 'cause my hair is coming down.

Always do the right thing.

That’s it? That’s it.

I got it, I’m gone.

There are certain films

that people keep going back to over and over again...

I'm gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.

Films that were not only popular in their day,

but that continue to be popular.

You're talking to me?

And my question is, why?

It’s not about what I want.

It’s about what’s fair!

They call me Mister Tibbs.

I’m in love with you.

Snap out of it!

Rosebud.

I’m Howard Suber.

For over five decades,

I’ve taught thousands of aspiring directors,

producers, screenwriters, and scholars

the patterns and principles I’ve found

in America’s most memorable popular films.

Join me as we discover the power of film.

One of the great mysteries of human behavior,

of living in a society, is motivation.

A word that comes from the same root as "motor".

What drives people? What’s the source of power?

Think of when people started talking about your motivation.

This may be one of your earliest memories.

Somebody, often your father,

your mother or some pivotal figure

said, "Why did you do that?"

Or, "Why did you do that?" "Why did you do that?"

Kevin, get upstairs right now.

Why?

It can be inflected any way you want,

but you learned at a very young age

that a question about your motivation

is not a search for information.

It’s an accusation.

Why did you do that?!

Why did you do that?!

Why did you do this?

But you don’t have to ask about motivation

if you approve of what somebody is doing.

But we go through our lives,

we read about serial killers,

saying, "Why did that person do that?"

We don’t know why,

but motivation is at the center of power

when it comes to human being,

and yet who knows what motivates human beings?

All I want to do is go the distance.

Just once I want to do something right!

I want to live.

I wanted a mission,

and for my sins, they gave me one.

What do you want?

Motivation reveals something

that I think is really crucial

both to film and characterization,

but also to each of our lives as we live it.

The constant tension between fate and destiny.

If you look in a dictionary,

they will define fate and use the word "destiny".

And if you look under destiny,

you’ll find they define it as fate.

So it’s no help at all.

We have to look to how people actually live their lives

and how they use the language.

Fate is how tall you are,

the color of your eyes, the color of your skin,

the gender you identify with or are.

You may not even be aware of it, but you didn’t choose it.

In "No Country for Old Men,"

we see Javier Bardem’s character driving through a neighborhood

unaware of what will happen at the next intersection.

If he died...

we’d say he was in a fatal accident.

"Fatal."

Well, must be connected to fate.

In American history,

one of the ideological things

that caught hold of American politicians

and the American public

was something called "manifest destiny".

"Manifest" simply means "self-evident".

It isn’t "manifest fate". It’s "manifest destiny".

Destiny is a choice.

Destiny is a goal,

and you have to reach out and seize it.

First, you’ve got to get mad!

You’ve got to say, "I’m a human being, God damn it."

"My life has value."

What we want is demonstrated

by the scene in the middle of "Network."

I want you to get up now.

I want all of you to get up out of your chairs.

I want you to get up right now and go to the window,

open it and stick your head out and yell, "I’m as mad as hell,

"and I’m not going to take this anymore!"

That’s destiny.

That’s seizing control of your destiny.

That’s refusing to continue to be victimized.

Just get up from your chairs right now.

Where are you going? Go to the window.

I want to see if anybody’s yelling.

I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!

I’m mad as hell! I’m not gonna take it anymore!

I'm mad as hell, and I'm not...

Boy, does that resonate with all of us.

We’re mad as hell,

and we wished we could say,

"I’m not going to take it anymore."

But that’s the kind of thing we go to movies to see...

somebody reaching out

and changing the world they live in.

Where the hell have you been?

I’m talking about all of us

who face what fate has given us.

To the bathroom, sir.

The bathroom?

But who refused to passively accept their fate.

For 40 minutes a day?

What are you doing there?

Destiny is something that requires you to act...

There’s no bathroom for me here.

Often in ways that are unpleasant for other people.

What do you mean there's no bathroom for you here?

There is no bathroom.

There are no colored bathrooms in this building

or any building outside the west campus,

which is half a mile away.

Did you know that?

I have to walk to Timbuktu just to relieve myself.

Skirt below my knees, my heels, and a simple string of pearls.

Well, I don’t own pearls.

Lord knows you don’t pay coloreds enough

to afford pearls.

And I work like a dog day and night,

living off of coffee from a pot none of you want to touch!

I’m not suggesting

you can only be a hero if you change the world

in some way where an entire society changes.

When I talk about changing the world,

I really mean changing your relationship to the world.

There are films, what I call costume dramas

with comic book characters,

and they do change the world.

Hell, Superman can move planet Earth

to revolve in the other direction.

He’s really changing the world.

I’m not talking about that kind of character.

I’m talking about people who reach out

and change their relationship to the world.

I want to do something big and something important.

George Bailey in "It’s a Wonderful Life."

I don’t want one for one night.

I want something for 1,001 nights,

with plenty of room here for labels from Italy and Baghdad,

Samarkand...

It begins with George saying,

"I want to get out of this burg.

"I want to be somebody.

I want to be an architect or an engineer.

I want to build things, I want to fly,

et cetera, et cetera.

But he stays in this little burg that he wanted to get out of.

George! George!

And it ends with perhaps one of the most moving examples

of the power of community.

Here you are, George. Merry Christmas.

But it’s a small community,

and George has done small things.

He hasn’t saved the world,

but he has saved the poor people of his little town.

And it’s a major feat.

So the scale of the change is important to understand.

W-A-T-E-R, water.

It has a name.

W-A-T...

For example, Helen Keller in "The Miracle Worker"

is blind and deaf.

W-Wa...

The most powerful moment in the film

is when Anne Bancroft,

whose character is Anne Sullivan,

traces on her palm the word "water".

Yes.

That’s one of the biggest triumphs

that I remember from all the films I’ve seen.

It’s a little thing,

and it doesn’t go outside of Helen Keller

and her relationship to Anne Sullivan,

but it’s truly lasting and memorable.

"Lawrence of Arabia" is one of the few films

in which the tension between fate and destiny

is out there on the surface.

It’s referred to constantly throughout the film.

You are mad.

To come to Aqaba by land,

we should have to cross the Nefud Desert.

That’s right.

The Nefud cannot be crossed.

I’ll cross it if you will.

Lawrence is accused of blasphemy

because it is written no man can go across the Nefud.

The Nefud is the worst place God created.

I can’t answer for the place,

only for myself.

But he does it.

And on the way,

they notice that Gasim is missing.

We must go back.

What for? To die with Gasim?

And he’s told it was written

that Gasim would perish out there in the desert.

Gasim’s time has come, Lawrence.

It is written.

Nothing is written.

Go back, then!

What did you bring us here for,

with your blasphemous conceit?!

Hey, English blasphemer?

Again, he is accused of blasphemy because it’s clear

that the Arab culture being depicted in the film

is heavily on the side of fate.

But you will not be at Aqaba!

I shall be at Aqaba.

That is written...

in here.

Where is it written?

Somebody else in a memorable popular film

says that about an hour into "The Godfather,"

Michael Corleone is in a meeting with his brother Sonny.

Sonny, being the hothead, wants to go after the tribe,

and Michael makes a proposal.

You’re going to search me when I first meet them, right?

He...

Well, I can’t have a weapon on me, then.

Should kill Sollozzo

and McCluskey, the crooked cop.

But if Clemenza can figure a way

to have a weapon planted there for me...

then I'll kill 'em both.

And Sonny pinches his cheek and says, "College boy,

"you think you’re so big, a big shot.

"You cannot kill a cop."

And Michael’s sitting there and says...

Where does it say that you can’t kill a cop?

"where is it written?"

Come on, Mikey. Tom, wait a minute.

I’m talking about a cop that’s mixed up in drugs.

I’m talking about a... a dishonest cop,

a crooked cop who got mixed up in the rackets

and got what was coming to him.

That’s a terrific story.

The hero has certain requirements.

The first one, of course, is courage.

They might like a story like that.

They might, they just might.

Michael has exhibited the second requirement of the hero,

which is defiance.

Because anybody who says that is being defiant of the rules,

the laws, what people think people have to do,

and those people who challenge

what people tell them they have to do...

Have you left?

Are well on their way to becoming heroes.

No, um, I’m not going to make it.

We see this clearly when Daniel Craig’s character

at the end of the 25th James Bond film

"No Time to Die,"

tells Léa Seydoux's character, Madeleine,

who is the mother of his child,

that he will not leave the island

that is about to be bombed.

I’ve often wondered why, in real life,

people don’t imitate movie heroes more often than they do.

And I think it’s because the hero is a scapegoat.

The hero exists and becomes a hero on behalf of society.

But that’s generally paradoxical.

Think of the ending of "High Noon."

Gary Cooper, Will Kane, has tried to get the support

of a community that betrays him.

And so at exactly high noon,

he is forced to confront Frank Miller and his gang

all alone.

Couldn’t be a better example of individualism in American film.

This single individual against these four bad dudes.

But the conversation throughout the film is about community.

And what kind of community is this going to be?

And so Will Cain, our sheriff, saves the town

by plugging these four guys dead.

And then what does he do?

It’s one of the most famous endings in American film.

The townspeople, having been saved by Will Kane,

now come out from their hiding places...

because they were watching the gunfight,

they just weren’t participating...

and Will Kane takes his badge off his chest

and throws it in the dirt

and drives off with his Quaker wife.

"Apocalypse Now."

Willard, our main character, played by Martin Sheen,

fulfills his mission,

which is to terminate... with extreme prejudice...

to kill Marlon Brando’s character, Kurtz.

The horror.

The horror.

After Willard kills Kurtz,

he comes out of the compound in the jungle

with the native people gathered around,

and he’s got the machete he’s used to kill Kurtz

in his hand.

And it’s clear by the way the people bow down to him

that this is a familiar dramatic situation

that Shakespeare used

of "the king is dead, long live the king."

And it’s a wonderfully subtle gesture which some people miss.

Willard has that bloody machete in his hand,

and he drops it.

And then Willard goes through the crowd.

The crowd parts to show how powerful Willard is.

And then we hear the metallic clatter of the natives

dropping their weapons,

following his example.

He came in the name of war,

and now he has renounced the war.

And he gets back on his boat and he says...

They were going to make me a major for this,

and I wasn’t even in their fucking army anymore.

One more example... "Dirty Harry."

Harry Callahan is a cop in San Francisco

who insists on pursuing the Scorpio serial killer,

even though the mayor,

and therefore, the police chief have ordered him not to.

When are you people going to stop messing around

with this guy?

He’s got to be stopped now.

He’s got a busload of kids,

and I can’t take that chance.

I gave my word of honor on it, and he will not be molested.

And that’s a direct order, Callahan!

Well, you can just get yourself another delivery boy.

Once again, heroic behavior requires defiance.

He corners the killer...

kills him, of course...

and once again,

he takes his badge and throws it into the water.

And it’s the same ending as "High Noon."

When Harry Callahan, Captain Willard,

and Will Kane leave the community,

it’s because what happens is what usually happens

in heroic tales...

you get to be a hero by being a killer.

Once you have gotten rid of the person

the community wants you to get rid of,

maybe you’ll kill other people,

and therefore, the story ends with the exile of the hero.

It served society’s needs

to have you be the killer and the scapegoat.

But it also serves society’s needs that you leave.

So I asked the question,

what does the hero get for all this sacrifice

and suffering and angst and action?

We will remember him forever.

In "E.T.", a story about a boy and his pet alien,

it’s a love story...

Ouch.

Between this cute little alien and this cute little boy,

Elliot.

Ouch.

And so they’re coming to take him home.

And you have this scene with this alien

who’s learned to speak perfect English really fast.

It’s one of a million separation scenes

that marks memorable storytelling.

And E.T. extends his long finger

and says...

I'll be right here.

What’s here?

Memory.

To live in the memory of your community

is one of the greatest powers a human being can have.

And if the community within the film

is not likely to remember the central characters,

then the audience is not likely to remember the film.

The reason we don’t emulate heroes

is because they don’t get anything that we see.

Go...

You’re a hero if you don’t get something.

Take your friends and run.

You’re a hero if you sacrifice for other people.

Listen, you don’t have to fight anymore.

The word "sacrifice" comes from the same root as "sacred."

Sacrifice is often what causes people to remember you.

That is a destiny worthy of being remembered.

Who are you?!

"Who are you?" is what a lot of films are about.

"Who are you?" is based upon this tension

between fate and destiny.

In "Citizen Kane," you have that long newsreel sequence

that basically recapitulates the whole plot

we're about to see, and the editor says...

All we saw on that screen

was that Charles Foster Kane is dead.

Who is Charles Foster Kane? You got to find out who he is.

It isn’t enough to tell us what a man did.

You’ve got to tell us who he was.

Needs that angle.

Wait a minute... what were Kane’s last words?

Do you remember, boys?

Huh? Yes.

What were the last words he said on Earth?

Maybe he told us all about himself on his deathbed.

Yeah, and maybe he didn’t. Maybe it was...

All we saw on that screen was a big American.

One of the biggest.

But how is he any different from Ford,

or Hearst, for that matter, or John Doe?

Yeah, sure.

I tell you, Thompson, a man’s dying words...

But where is he? You don’t read the papers.

Charles Foster Kane died.

He said just one word... "rosebud."

The search for the meaning of "rosebud"

is an attempt to answer the question,

who is Charles Foster Kane?

Who is this character?

Charles Foster Kane inherited

one of the greatest fortunes of all.

That’s his fate.

But who was he?

What’s the relationship to their fate

and what they’ve made of their life?

Well, that’s what that film is about.

That’s what "Lawrence of Arabia" is about.

What’s up, man?

That’s what "Moonlight" is about.

You have one character who has three names.

Each name reflects a stage in his development,

so he begins as Little,

and then he becomes Chiron,

and then he ends up as Black.

Those changes in what he calls himself

are manifestations of the changes of his own power.

Chiron and Kevin have a sexual encounter on the beach,

but then Chiron is picked on by bullies,

and they force Kevin to beat Chiron up.

Yo, Kev.

Hit that nigga.

Hit that nigga, Kev.

Yeah, hit his faggot ass.

Fuck you waiting on?

- Do it. - Come on.

Let’s go.

Chiron is really in pain, not because of the beating,

but just because of the betrayal.

But the next day, he comes into school,

and there’s the bully.

And he’s arrested.

He had seized control of his situation.

He had not turned in his lover for beating him up,

but he had whacked the guy who put his lover up to it.

What it got him was his fate,

which was to be incarcerated

and to move into the third phase of his own evolution...

where he ends up being the character called Black.

And his faith is now set until it’s not.

Years later, he comes to revisit Kevin,

who’s a much older person, has gone on with his life,

but he’s never stopped loving Kevin.

The character who’s called Black has seized control

of a part of his own life...

the person he loves

and the kind of love that he chooses to express.

But it’s been a long, tortuous passage that he’s gone through.

Anyone caught between their fate and their potential destiny

is trapped.

We’re all trapped.

We’re trapped by bad jobs. We’re trapped in our schools.

We’re trapped, many of us, in bad relationships.

We’re trapped in our friendships,

which often are accidents of our lives,

and as they go on, we say,

"You know, I really can’t stand this person who’s my friend."

It’s not just the hero who’s trapped.

The villain is trapped.

The Joker in "The Dark Knight" is as trapped as Batman is.

Norman Bates in "Psycho" says...

You know what I think?

I think that...

we’re all in our private traps, clamped in them,

and none of us can ever get out.

"Trapped" could be the title of nearly all memorable films.

Hello, HAL, do you read me?

Since we all know the feeling of being trapped...

Hello, HAL, do you read me?

It resonates.

Affirmative, Dave. I read you.

It can be in a minor or a major scale,

but it’s not fun.

Open the pod bay doors, HAL.

I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.

What’s the problem?

That’s why, over and over and over again,

you could title the memorable popular films "Trapped".

But that’s not why people go.

They know how universal traps are in human existence.

What they want to know is, "how do I get out of it?"

If ever there was a character who clearly was trapped,

it’s Ripley in "Alien."

As we close in on the ending of the film,

it looks like Ripley has killed the monster.

And so she’s able to go into the pod,

leaving the mothership to be extinguished.

And surprise, surprise...

the monster reappears.

She gets into the spacesuit

and she takes a harpoon-like instrument.

What is she going to do with the harpoon?

So the monster gets closer and closer.

Boogie, boogie, boogie.

And she opens the pod bay door...

takes the harpoon and blasts it into the monster...

who gets sucked out of the ship.

Without her seizing the initiative,

she was just going to be yet another victim.

Her seizing control of her destiny

is coming up with a bright idea, literally standing on her feet,

reacting to the crisis of the moment.

"The Shawshank Redemption."

And again, we don’t come just to see somebody trapped.

We come to see somebody find a way out of their trap.

Whereas in real life, not a lot of people

manage to break out of prison.

But this is the film

that totally depends on our protagonist

after 20-some years getting freed.

Andy crawled to freedom through 500 yards

of shit-smelling foulness I can’t even imagine.

Or maybe I just don’t want to.

He crawls to the outside of the prison grounds...

500 yards.

And Andy gets out and it’s raining,

and he goes like this.

And takes in this fresh water

that’s going to clean all the filth out of his life.

He has seized control of his destiny.

Lots of human beings don’t have that luxury.

They can’t seize anything,

because they are trapped in their ethnicity,

their economic station, where they live.

They’re trapped by all kinds of things outside themselves,

but they can’t move beyond that.

They have no opportunity to seize control,

to even imagine a destiny,

and that’s always been true.

It’s... it’s true today for millions and millions of people

who live on our planet.

One of the reasons American movies appeal

to people around the world

is because we say over and over and over again,

"You can seize control of your destiny.

"You can fulfill your dreams.

"What you have to do is act."

Let’s go home.

Fate, I imagine as being a force

that pushes you from behind.

You can’t see it, but you sure can feel it.

And you can’t resist it because it’s in back of you.

Destiny is something that requires you to act.

The ending of the film tells us whether this has been a story

about the power of fate or the power of destiny.

Let’s take "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,"

one of the most popular teams in film history.

But how does it end?

Well, from early in the film,

after they commit a bank robbery,

they’re being chased by a posse.

We get to the end.

They’ve hightailed it out to Bolivia.

They think they’ve escaped.

When we get outside...

And then they’re caught inside this building,

surrounded by the Bolivian military,

with guns aimed in their direction.

So they come out with their guns blazing...

there’s a hail of gunfire,

and the film turns to sepia color to distance us,

to say, this is now a snapshot.

A moment in time.

A memory.

We all die.

We all know that.

Death in itself is a natural part of life.

We all know that, at least intellectually,

however much we may struggle to reconcile that.

But people can transcend death

if their death is, first of all, a choice.

And secondly if it is a choice

made on behalf of something higher.

I’m not going to hurt you, okay?

I just want to kiss you, all right?

No, no. Come on. Come on.

Throughout "Thelma & Louise,"

you have all these despicable males

who somehow Thelma and/or Louise manage to overpower.

God damn!

I don’t think he’s going to apologize.

Nah, I don’t think so.

These are strong women.

When it comes to the climactic scene,

and they’re surrounded by all these police cars,

and they all converge at the edge of the Grand Canyon.

So what do they do?

They grab each other’s hands

and they smile as they plunge off the cliff.

And you have this freeze frame...

locking the full realization

that, of course, they’re going to be squashed way down there.

Are they free?

Well, of course they’re free.

They chose their destiny.

It’s the only choice they have under the circumstances

because they don’t want to go to prison.

They don’t want to continue to be

under the thumb of these bastards.

And the only way to escape is to free yourself,

even if you happen to die.

You might call those endings bittersweet,

which is to say, they’re not tragic.

"Bittersweet" is a paradoxical word.

For the films that stick in your mind...

Hey!

Ask yourself...

is this a happy ending for the hero,

or is this a Pyrrhic victory?

Or is this actually a case of winning a battle

but losing a war?

As we will see as we go along,

one of the powers of so many memorable films

is their built-in paradox.

I think I have to talk to you.

Ah.

I saved my first drink to have with you.

We’re not able to resolve the paradoxes,

and therefore, the films just keep churning around

in our mind.

If it’s churning around in our mind,

we’re remembering the film.

I heard a story once.

As a matter of fact, I’ve heard a lot of stories in my time.

And so it’s not a coincidence

that the memorable films themselves invoke memories,

memories that are never quite clear.

Richard, Victor thinks I’m leaving with him.

Haven’t you told him? No, not yet.

But it’s all right, isn’t it?

You were able to arrange everything.

Everything is quite all right. We’ll tell him at the airport.

The less time to think, the easier for all of us.

Please trust me.

So you’re never quite sure...

Yes, I will.

Is the ending of "Casablanca" a happy ending?

It’s clear that the only thing in life

that Rick Blaine has ever loved is Ilsa Lund.

And this is a romantic triangle

in which Ilsa is married to Victor Laszlo,

but we know, and she knows, that she really loves Rick.

In the end, we think, and Ilsa thinks,

that Rick and Ilsa are going to get on that plane

bound for Lisbon and freedom.

But at the airport, Rick insists

that the letters of transit should be written out...

in the names of Mr. and Mrs. Victor Laszlo.

And she’s surprised as we are.

Inside of us, we both know you belong with Victor.

You’re part of his work, the thing that keeps him going.

If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him,

you’ll regret it.

Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon

and for the rest of your life.

But what about us?

We’ll always have Paris.

Rick sacrifices the thing he loves most in life,

and he sends her off with the other guy.

Here's looking at you, kid.

And we call that a great love story.

But if Rick and Ilsa go off together in the fog,

I don’t think it would be a memorable film.

The fact they don’t go off is a master stroke of screenwriting

because it’s not the way we thought it was going to end,

and yet it makes sense.

Let’s take another great love story, "The Graduate."

Again, it has a famous ending.

Benjamin Braddock, Dustin Hoffman,

races frantically to the church

to rescue Elaine, his great love.

Don’t ask me what Elaine sees in Benjamin,

but you take that as the premise of the love story.

Elaine!

Elaine!

Elaine!

Who is that guy? What is he doing?

Elaine!

He pounds on the window of the church

and repeats Elaine's name, I don’t know, 32 times.

They escape and they jump on a bus.

Oh, what a happy ending.

Two lovers have reunited and are going off into the brave future.

But after the excitement of rescuing Elaine

from a fate worse than death,

Benjamin and Elaine sit in the back of the bus

and they look at each other once and smile.

And then they look straight ahead.

And over the soundtrack, we hear Simon & Garfunkel

reprising a tune that we heard at the beginning of the movie.

If this is a great love story,

why are Simon & Garfunkel talking about darkness?

Mike Nichols was asked in an interview

shortly after the film came out,

what happens to Ben and Elaine?

He said, "They become like their parents."

One can look upon this

as that bus taking them to their destiny

or as a fulfillment of fate.

The choice is left to the audience.