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
- Hook (0 min.)
- Pollock autographs a story about him in Life magazine. He is famous
but looks unhappy, brooding, alienated. Why?
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Midpoint Plot Point (45 min.)
- Pollock and Lee marry and move to the country to get out of NY and
to get Pollock sober.
- 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.
- 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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