Colossal: Externalizing the Internal

[spb_column width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]   By, Jacob Krueger [/spb_text_block] [/spb_column] [divider type="standard" text="Go to top" full_width="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [fullwidth_text alt_background="none" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] Colossal: Externalizing the Internal Podcast Transcript: If you haven’t seen Colossal yet, this is definitely a movie that you need to check out. Because whether you love genre-bending monster movies or not, Colossal is a film that shows you just how much you can get away with if you are willing to trust yourself.   This is an example of a movie that simply should not work, so let me give you the premise really quickly. And for those of you who haven’t seen it yet, it’s important to understand that this is not some experimental art film. This is a mostly naturalistic character-driven drama about alcoholism.   Except instead of exploring alcoholism in a traditional dramatic format, it explores it by mashing up B-Movie, sci-fi elements, with a mostly naturalistic script that seems like it’s going in a romantic-comedy-with-some-dramatic-elements, direction.   In the simplest terms. it’s the story of Gloria, who is a raging alcoholic, total mess of a character, who seems to have some strange connection to a Godzilla monster that keeps on attacking Seoul, Korea every time she gets drunk.   As if that weren’t hard enough, this movie seems to break pretty much every other rule as well.   For example, the common wisdom is that you’re supposed to have a likeable main character in your movie, but this main character is far from likeable. Her alcoholism is so out of control that we find ourselves actually sympathizing with her nasty ex-boyfriend.   This is a character who uses people, who is irresponsible, who is out of control. At the beginning of the movie, gets kicked out of her boyfriend’s apartment and is forced to return home to the abandoned house of her parents.   Arriving there, she meets Oscar, played by Jason Sudeikis, a guy who has always been in love with her since they grew up as kids, who keeps showering her with gifts, who gives her a job at his bar, who tries to do anything he can to be nice to her… (Even if there is something that feels just a little bit stalkery about him, just maybe a little bit too nice, maybe just a little bit controlling).   We feel like we’re going in a Romantic Comedy direction-- like the film is making a promise to us. And again, the common wisdom is that once you start to to set the rules of a Romantic Comedy genre, that’s what where we’re supposed to go! We’re supposed to watch the story of two troubled souls coming together. We’re supposed to watch this story of the guy who always loved the girl, finally finding a way to connect. Of two broken souls healing each other. We’re supposed to have a happy ending, right?   Mild spoilers ahead...   Instead Gloria responds mostly by playing mind games with Oscar. By taking advantage of what at least at the time seems like is generosity.   She does this by attempting to seduce his best friend Joel, even knowing how Oscar feels about her. And she does it again much later in the film when she shows up at his bar with her ex-boyfriend, Tim, even knowing what that’s likely to mean for Oscar.   But of course, Oscar’s not really such a nice guy either. He’s not gonna play the likeable, romantic, comedy role that we expect him to play. Instead, he turns out to be the real villain of the piece. Whereas Gloria turns out to be the real hero.   And though we start off on a Romantic Comedy trajectory, we soon find ourselves going in a much darker direction.   On the playground of their childhoods a battle is playing out, a battle not for love, but for control-- a battle between sobriety and alcoholism, a battle between two children and two adults, a battle between a giant robot controlled by Oscar, and a giant monster controlled by Gloria, a battle between past present, between childhood and adulthood, between the psychological programs and patterns that were built in the past, and the people that these main characters want to become.   So I think it’s safe to say that all these things are about as far as you can go from a traditional Romantic Comedy structure.   In fact, this might be just about as weird a premise that you could come up with for a movie. Which is why it is so beautiful to see how well it actually works.   So often, as screenwriters, we think our idea isn’t good enough, or commercial enough, or no one will understand it. We think that no one will find the real story that we want to tell. We think that the crazy flights of our imagination will not make it on the screen.   And I’m not saying that everybody has to be Charlie Kaufman or Nacho Vigilando, but learning that you can push on any premise and make it work is one of the most valuable lessons you can have as a screenwriter. Learning that your own instincts, even when they take you to totally crazy places, are actually the only thing you can depend on as a writer is one of the most valuable lessons you can learn in screenwriting.   Now, does this mean that all of a sudden every crazy idea you’ve ever had should make it into your movie? Absolutely not. If you’re writing a traditional Romantic Comedy and a monster shows up, you have to ask yourself: is this really the film, or is this the metaphor?   But in this case, Colossal is actually a movie about monsters.   It’s a movie about the monsters that live inside of us. It’s a movie about the monsters that we can become. It’s a movie about the monsters who appear like monsters, and the monsters that appear like friends. It’s a movie about the monsters from our childhood that we internalize. It’s a movie about the monster of addiction. And it’s a movie about the monster that is rampaging in Gloria’s soul. And wreaking havoc on every life that she touches.   Our job as screenwriters is actually very simple. Our job as screenwriters are to look inside of ourselves and find the emotions, the characters, the questions that live there. To look inside of ourselves, find the things that are true.   In other words, our job is to externalize the internal. To take the things that live under the surface for us, and put them up on the screen where everyone can see them.   Sometimes that means our job is to look at our own monsters. And sometimes that means our job is to claw past the monsters that we believe ourselves to be to find the beauty that lives under the surface. Sometimes our job is to dramatize the parts of ourselves that we are ashamed of. And sometimes our job is to dramatize the parts of ourselves that we find most beautiful.   In a similar way, our job as screenwriters is to dive into the psyches of our characters. To dive into the characters that exist within them.   The reason that Colossal works despite its crazy premise is not because it’s a perfect movie -- it isn’t, and there are certain moments, especially, towards the beginning and towards the end where you can feel a certain bumpiness, where the writer still is trying to figure out what the structure means to the real world.   The reason that Colossal works-- the reason that all these disparate elements that feel like they shouldn't go together still do-- the reason that this film works is because of the way that all of these characters grow from inside of Gloria.   Carl Jung wrote about the idea of the Collective Unconscious.  When Jung’s spoke about the collective unconscious, he was not speaking as a screenwriter; he was one of the fathers of modern psychology. When he talked about the collective unconscious, what he talked about was the idea that there is a fabric that weaves us all together-- A fabric that he believed that we could tap into in our dreams.   And when we tapped into the Collective Unconscious, that fabric that unites all of us, we could tap into the metaphors that meant the same thing to every person, the metaphors that we all shared.   So if you imagine the world-- if you imagine every character in the world, and every situation in the world, and every metaphor, and every emotion, as a giant, giant, giant circle, you could imagine that your known world, the little bit of you that you know, is like the tiniest little dot in that circle. It’s tinier than a pin.   And the process of writing is about looking inside to find the parts of ourselves that we don’t actually know.   Looking inside to expand the amount of the Collective Unconscious that we can tap into as screenwriters. In other words, looking inside to find the outside.   Similarly, when they begin their journeys, our characters are like a little dot in a giant circle of the universe -- a little tiny dot that’s only aware of a tiny piece of who they can actually be.   And our job as screenwriters is to take the journey with them.   That journey isn’t always a logical journey. Sometimes it’s a metaphorical journey or an emotional journey. But to take a journey with them, looking inside of them in order to look inside of ourselves. Tapping into the Collective Unconscious in them to unmask and reveal the pieces of them that they’re not even aware of.   When we begin Colossal, there’s a part of Gloria that thinks she is the monster. Just like there is the part of every alcoholic that thinks of themselves as the monster.   And, similarly, there’s a part of Gloria that thinks of others as the monster. Who thinks of alcohol as the monster. Who thinks of her boyfriend Tim as the monster. A part of her that feels victimized and a part of her that truly hates herself.   And,