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In the same way, everything is related in the screenplay, as it is in

life. You don't have to know the specific details of your ending when
you sit down to write your screenplay, but you have to know what
happens and how it affects the characters.
I use an example out of my own life to illustrate this.
There was a moment in my life when I didn't know what I
wanted to do or be. I had graduated from high school, my mother
had just died, as my father had some years before, and I didn't want
to get stuck in some job or go off to college. I didn't know what I
wanted to do with my life, so I decided to travel around the country
and see whether I could find a direction. My older brother was in
medical school in St. Louis at the time, and I knew I could stay with
him or visit friends in Colorado and New York. So, one morning, I
packed my bags, got into my car, and headed east on Highway 66.
I never knew where I was going till I got there. I preferred it that

path along which something lies.

ter live or die? Get married or divorced? Win the race or not? Return
safely to Cold Mountain or not? Destroy the ring in the fires of
Mount Doom or not? Get away with the robbery or not? Go back
home or not? Find the criminals and bring them to justice or not?
What is the resolution of your screenplay?
A lot of people don't believe that you need an ending before you
start writing. I hear argument after argument, discussion after dis
cussion, debate after debate. "My characters," people say, "will deter
mine the ending." Or, "My ending grows out of my story." Or, "I'll
know my ending when I get to it."
(^
Sorry, but it doesn't work that way. At least not in screenwriting.
You can do that maybe in a novel, or play, but not in a screenplay. Why? Because you have only about 110 pages or so to tell your
story. That's not a lot of pages to be able to tell your story the way
you want to tell it.
The ending is the first thing you must know before you begin
writing.
Why?
It's obvious, when you think about it. Your story always moves
forwardit follows a path, a direction, a line of progression from
beginning to end. Direction is defined as a line of development, the

ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS

SCREENPLAY

way. I had good times and bad times, and loved it; I was like a cloud
on the wind, drifting without aim or purpose.
I did that for almost two years.
Then, one day, driving through the Arizona desert, I realized I
had traveled that same road before. Everything was the same, but
different. It was the same mountain in the same barren desert, but it
was two years later. In reality, I saw I was going nowhere. I had spent
two years trying to get my head straight, and I still had no purpose,
no aim, no goal, no destination, no direction. I suddenly saw my
futureit was nowhere.
I became aware of time slipping away, almost like an acid trip,
and I knew I had to do something. So I stopped wandering and
went back to school. At least I'd have a degree after four years, whatever that meant! Of course, it didn't work out the way I expected
it never does. But it was there, at Berkeley, that I met and worked
with the man who would change my life forever: my mentor, Jean
Renoir. "The future," he told me, "is film."
When you go on a trip, you are going someplace; you have a destination. If I'm going to San Francisco, that's my destination. How I
get there is a matter of choice. I can fly, drive, take a bus or train,
ride a motorcycle or bike, jog, hitchhike, or walk.
I can choose how to get there. And life is choicepersonal
choices, creative choicesand learning how to take responsibility
for them.
Understanding the basic dynamics of a story's resolution is essential. By itself, resolution means "a solution or explanation." And
that process begins at the onset, at the very beginning of the screenwriting process. When you are laying out your story line, building
it, putting it together, scene by scene, act by act, you must first determine the resolution. What is the solution of your story? At the moment of the initial conception of your screenplay, when you were
still working out the idea and shaping it into a dramatic story line,
you made a creative choice, a decision, and determined what the
resolution was going to be.
Good films are always resolvedone way or another. Think
about it.

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