Podcast

Friday, January 28, 2011

The Meddler #4: …And My Fixes for The Ghost Writer


Okay, yesterday I laid out my problems with the recent thriller The Ghost Writer. Could I have done a last-minute polish (a polish for the Polish?) and fixed any of those problems? Here are my oh-so-presumptuous suggestions for changes to Act One:

  1. We begin with a much poorer McGregor waiting by the phone nervously with his lefty flatmates. They know that his agent is reading his heartfelt memoir of his 20-something years and he expects to hear back today... Finally he gets a text message from the agent: He loves the memoir, he’s showing it to certain people and they want to talk to him about a huge possibility with a half-million pound advance, so meet him for lunch tomorrow!
  2. The flatmates are ecstatic for McGregor. They throw him an impromptu party that night. He promises not to forget them when he’s hobknobbing with the literati. An even poorer friend asks if he can take over McGregor’s place in the flat and McGregor says why not?
  3. McGregor meets with his agent. The agent is super-excited: the head of a big publishing firm loved the tone of the memoir, and thinks McGregor would be the perfect person to take over the ghost-writing of Brosnan’s memoir! What? McGregor is aghast—what about publishing the memoir? Oh no, the agent waves that away, whiny white-boy 20-something memoirs are totally dead in the market—surely he knew that this was nothing but a writing sample, right? McGregor is heartbroken and refuses outright. He doesn’t want to tell some else’s story—he wants to tell his own! And certainly not Brosnan’s! He worked on Brosnan’s campaign, then watched him screw over the country! His flatmates would never forgive him if he participated in a whitewash of the guy. The agent is flabbergasted. Doesn’t McGregor need the money? The agency has never been happy with McGregor’s lack of earnings, they’d have to drop him if he refuses the only lucrative offer he’s ever likely to get…
  4. McGregor goes home and avoids his flatmates, locking himself in his room. Knocking on the door, they remind him that the other guy is coming to move in the next day… Is everything all right? McGregor buries his head in his hands. He realizes he’s trapped… He calls the agent and says he’ll take the meeting…
  5. At the meeting, he falsely claims to be apolitical, using the same clever logic he used in the actual movie. He gets the job.
  6. His flatmate drops him off at the airport, telling him that he still can’t believe he’s going to help that scumbag Brosnan. He implores McGregor to sabotage Brosnan, but McGregor says there’s no need. He may be a good writer, but he’s not good enough to make Brosnan look rosy again. Remember how infuriated we all were by war? This guy will never be able to explain all that away…
  7. But when McGregor meets Brosnan, he reverses McGregor’s expectation immediately. He’s funny and self-deprecating. He candidly admits mistakes and asks for McGregor’s help in setting the record straight. He is, in short, totally seductive. Soon he has McGregor admitting that he hates Brosnan’s guts, and came out there happy to help him hang himself. Brosnan asks if he can take McGregor into his confidence and looks deeply sincere… he talks candidly about what it’s like to be PM and the strains of office, all the forces pushing and pulling you…
  8. Before you know it, McGregor has totally drunken the Kool-Aid again. He even calls his flatmate and reports that they had this guy all wrong, repeating some of the charming stories he’s heard from Brosnan. The flatmate is horrified-- what happened to the guy who wouldn’t be happy until he could tell his own story? McGregor says that now he almost feels like Brosnan’s story is his story—it’s everybody’s story. The flatmate is disgusted and brusquely gets off the phone.
  9. The next night, McGregor gets a message from the flatmate saying that he checked up on that story, which sounded suspicious to him, and found that the dates didn’t line up. He begs McGregor to remain suspicious. McGregor is merely annoyed, but then he notices a notation from the former ghost-writer implying the same suspicion, and indicating the existence of a mysterious file... At this point, he goes through the old writer’s things and finds his file of inconsistencies. Has Brosnan seduced him all over again with more lies? Now he’s angry, and he starts his investigation, launching us into Act 2…

That’s it for my polish of Act 1. Now, if I were hired to do a more substantive re-write, I would also do some rewiring on Act 3: I think Brosnan should get assassinated because of McGregor's discoveries, after they mysteriously leak out prematurely, infuriating the public all over again. McGregor, wracked with guilt, tries to find out who leaked his info, giving him more motivation throughout Act 3. This leads him to the final reveal. He has the same final confrontation at the end, but the person he’s confronting admits that they leaked it themselves to get ahead of the story before McGregor found out everything. McGregor threatens to expose the rest but meets the same fate he met in the original.

Okee-dokee, that’s it for round two of the Meddler. Next time, I promise: it won’t be another thriller. I’m happy to meddle in all sorts of genres.

1 comment:

James Kennedy said...

This whole "Meddler" project is brilliant. Presumptuous, ballsy, and brilliant. When I need my story structure rethought and punched up, I'm coming to you.