The 3-Act Paradigm at Work: Music Box

written by Joe Eszterhas

Music Box is a gripping courtroom drama about a lawyer who defends her Hungarian father against war crimes -- only to learn that he is guilty.

Structural Analysis

  1. Hook (4 min.)
    • The father is charged with war crimes. The lawyer-daughter is sure it's a case of mistaken identity.
  2. Complication (6 min.)
    • But the U.S. attorney is quite serious about the charges. The father is considered a beast. The government wants to revoke his citizenship so he can be extradicted to Hungary to stand trial.
  3. Call to Action (14 min.)
    • The daughter decides to represent her father herself.
  4. Act One Plot Point (25-8 min.)
    • Evidence mounts to make the daughter question whether her father is guilty or not. This isn't going to be a piece of cake.
  5. Midpint Plot Point (50, 63, 72, 77, 79 min.)
    • A sequence of twists and turns in the trial, culminating in the father's collapse under the stress: first, the daughter learns that one of her son's grandfathers told him the holocaust never existed (50 min.). At trial, horror stories bring the daughter to tears (63 min.). She manages to cross-examine one witness into an admission of lying (72 min.). But another witness's story is so horrific she cannot even cross-examine (78 min.). Under the stress, the father collapses and is hospitalized (79 min.).
  6. Act Two Plot Point (106-9 min.)
    • Visiting Budapest to cross-examine an ill witness, the daughter finds phtographs that lead her to believe her father may be guilty. This feeling is solidified when she retrieves a pawned music box back in the U.S. and finds more photos concealed in it. Her father is guilty.
  7. Climax and Resolution (114-120 min.)
    • She confronts her father, who continues to deny guilt. But she sends the new photographic evidence to the prosecutors, and the movie ends with headlines of his re-arrest.

Notes

Music Box is masterful in the pacing of its information, letting the audience see evidence along with the daughter-lawyer, reaching its conclusion slowly. No flashbacks are used in this movie, a temptation most beginning writers would embrace -- but there simply is no need for them, the photographs themselves standing as ample and powerful evidence and visual representation of the past.

At the end, when the daughter must tell her own son about his grandfather's guilt after all, the entire scene is done visually -- not one word of dialogue, another temptation a beginner would not avoid. We know it's going to be a difficult explanation and we don't have to hear it literally, just seeing the woman take her son out onto the deck for a private moment is powerful and sufficient. This is a tight, economic script to study for pacing.

MODULE 4: SCREENWRIGHT: the craft of screenwriting

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