The 3-Act Paradigm at Work: Pollock

written by Barbara Turner and Susan Emshwiller


The tragic story of the famous and innovative, but also self-destructive, artist.

Structural Analysis

  1. Hook (0 min.)
    • Pollock autographs a story about him in Life magazine. He is famous but looks unhappy, brooding, alienated. Why?
  2. Complication (3 min.)
    • He's an unsuccessful artist and an unwelcome freeloading guest at the home of his brother and sister-in-law. She wants him out.
  3. Call to Action (7 min.)
    • He meets a woman artist, Lee, who invites him to visit her studio. Three weeks later he does, and they begin a long relationship.
  4. Act One Plot Point (21-2 min.)
    • His artist girlfriend criticizes a new painting for not following the "rules of cubism." "I'm just painting, Lee," Pollock explains. He is going to do it his way, painting to his own vision. He will break all the rules.
  5. Midpoint Plot Point (45 min.)
    • Pollock and Lee marry and move to the country to get out of NY and to get Pollock sober.
  6. Act Two Plot Point (96 min.)
    • After a period of sobriety and fame, Pollock's time has passed and younger artists get the favor of a critic who first championed him. Pollock is drinking heavily again.
  7. Climax and Resolution (111-4 min.)
    • With Lee in Europe without him, Pollock is despondent, even though he has a younger girlfriend. He drives her and her girlfriend drunk, even though they don't want to ride with him, and he dies in a crash.

Notes

Pollock, perhaps more than any other movie about art, communicates the brooding internal life of the artist in the process of creating the work. The movie does this with moody visual storytelling and brooding imagery. The weakness of the story is in its long third act, which lacks drive and tension. It plods on to its tragic, inevitable conclusion like a slow incoming storm.


MODULE 4: SCREENWRIGHT: the craft of screenwriting

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