The 3-Act Paradigm at Work: Citizen Ruth

written by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor


Now and again a movie appears that makes me think, Damn, I wish I had written that! Citizen Ruth is such a film. The movie manages to turn the life-and-death intensity of the abortion issue in our culture into comedy, sometimes dark, sometimes political satire. It's a gutsy accomplishment.

Structural Analysis

  1. Hook (0-4 min.)
    • After having sex in order to have a place to stay, drug-addicted and homeless Ruth Stoops is kicked out by a guy and turned away by her ex-husband, who won't let her see the children of whom she's lost custody.
  2. Complication (8-11 min.)
    • High and passed out in an alley, Ruth is arrested, a regular affair. But this time she learns she is pregnant. The judge offers to reduce her unusual sentence if she gets an abortion. He is charging her with the criminal endangerment of a fetus.
  3. Call to Action (13-5 min.)
    • In her cell, Ruth prays to God for help. No sooner does she pray than she gets cell mates willing to help her - members of the anti-abortion group, Baby Savers. She moves in with a couple in the movement to get her act together.
  4. Act One Plot Point (33-6 min.)
    • When the Baby Savers take Ruth to a doctor (31 min.), she demands to have an abortion - until she is shown gruesome movies about the procedure. Her case makes the papers (33 min.), she learns that there are "crazy people" who want her to have the abortion, and she is faced with options and uncertainty.
  5. Midpoint Plot Point (55 min.)
    • Kicked out by her host family for getting high, Ruth moves in with another woman - a "spy" from the pro-choice movement who has infiltrated the Baby Savers (47 min.). Ruth blows her cover on the phone, causing a confrontation when the Baby Savers come to take her back. The police intervene and ask Ruth what she wants to do. She announces she'll have an abortion. Later she is told "this is not just about you any more" (63 min.) as her case becomes a national issue.
  6. Act Two Plot Point (88 min.)
    • The Baby Savers offer Ruth $15,000 if she'll have the baby (68 min.). The Pro-choicers match it, then the Savers raise it to $27,000 (84 min.). But before Ruth can offer to take it, she has a miscarriage. Now all seems lost.
  7. Climax and Resolution (95-111 min.)
    • Arriving at the clinic to have the abortion that is no longer needed, Ruth gets the satchel of money and escapes out the bathroom window. Chaos reigns outside, with both sides yelling at one another, as Ruth escapes with $15,000.

    Notes

    When I read the script of Citizen Ruth in Scenario, I immediately loved it. I was first in line when the movie hit town.

    The movie was terrific - until the end. Then the film cut the last scene in the script. In the screenplay, Ruth quickly buys more paint to sniff (her drug of choice) and we leave her in the same alley where we've seen her before, getting high. She stares at the camera and says, "What are you looking at?"

    I love this ending and its confrontation of the easy judgment we can make on this unlikely protagonist. Why was it cut? In an exchange of emails, writer and director Alexander Payne assured me that the decision to cut this scene was his alone. He wanted a more open-ended conclusion, a suggestion that Ruth might make it. I still don't like this ending, which seems too much like a compromise in an otherwise gutsy and tough-minded story.

    Ending aside, this movie/script has excellent scene design and is a model of efficient film storytelling. As you watch it, pay particular attention to scene transitions and their efficiency. Two examples:

    When the Baby Savers end up in the same cell with Ruth, a beginning writer doubtless would write a long scene of their meeting. Here the transition is from a Baby Saver seeing Ruth in agony on the cell floor -- "Honey, are you all right?" -- to money being counted out as she is bailed out. No dialogue of meeting at all!

    In the second example, when the daughter wakes up Ruth on her way out of the house late at night, the transition is from Ruth saying "Party?" to her already getting high in the back of the car, partying with the teenagers. A beginner would have followed them out of the house, meeting the others, beginning to party, etc.

    What is left out is as important as what you write in the script. Beginning writers put much too much in, not realizing how efficient the narrative form of screenwriting actually is.


    MODULE 4: SCREENWRIGHT: the craft of screenwriting

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