Get to “I Love You” – Part 3
It doesn’t have to be romantic lovers to make this storytelling principle work. It can be friends. It can be enemies.
After the final bloodbath sequence in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, Deke Thornton (played by Robert Ryan), who had been pursuing the outlaw band throughout the movie, comes upon the shot-to-hell corpse of the Bunch’s leader, Pike (played by William Holden.) Pike, though dead, clings to the trigger mechanism of the .50-caliber machine gun he’d been firing in the preceding blood-and-guts scene.
Deke had once been a friend of Pike’s and still respects and admires him, even though he’s been chasing him, trying to kill him, throughout the whole picture.
Deke spots Pike’s six-shooter, still in its holster on Pike’s hip. He reaches and takes it.
In other words, “I love you.”
Another great moment between non-lovers is the finish of the movie version of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
This is the scene where Randle McMurphy (played by Jack Nicholson) has been returned to the psychiatric ward, having been lobotomized. His friend, Chief Bromden, played by Will Sampson, stands over the bed, heartbroken at what the hospital powers have done to the man who always believed in him and told him he should be free.
Chief places a pillow over McMurphy’s face and releases him from his shattered life, then uses the physical strength he had possessed all along but had never had the courage to put into play—and breaks through the hospital wall and escapes.
“I love you” doesn’t have to be said in words, and it doesn’t have to be between lovers.
DO THE WORK
Steve shows you the predictable Resistance points that every writer hits in a work-in-progress and then shows you how to deal with each one of these sticking points. This book shows you how to keep going with your work.
THE AUTHENTIC SWING
A short book about the writing of a first novel: for Steve, The Legend of Bagger Vance. Having failed with three earlier attempts at novels, here's how Steve finally succeeded.
NOBODY WANTS TO READ YOUR SH*T
Steve shares his "lessons learned" from the trenches of the five different writing careers—advertising, screenwriting, fiction, nonfiction, and self-help. This is tradecraft. An MFA in Writing in 197 pages.
TURNING PRO
Amateurs have amateur habits. Pros have pro habits. When we turn pro, we give up the comfortable life but we find our power. Steve answers the question, "How do we overcome Resistance?"
Brilliant
I don’t watch movies and don’t know a darn thing about them. But I rabidly read The War of Art and Turning Pro. I take my sage lessons from them. One of the principle lessons I learned was to fall in love with the required work it takes to accomplish your goals!
So true, Goethe said it as well… “It is not doing the thing we love to do, but loving the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed”. 🫠
wow, what a movie clip – speechless – too early in the day for crying – it’s morning here in Ireland – but almost did! great share Steve, thanks!
Dear Steven,
long live the art of screen writing. By the Cuckoos’s Nest is undeniably a master piece. Bless you Milos!
Thank you very much dear Steve. So it is the shining (or darkening) of love, not the specific relation, that is the core.
In the cases of hostility, the love one wants to give another is through changing or eliminating them, so the obstacles of their love are destroyed and… their love shines bright. That is a strange love, a dark love. Hate can be the other side of the coin of love, love by itself, for it is a calling to find through it that strange fulfillment.
Even when we act in automation, it is love: our autonomous-acting system trying to bring love forth, although it’s usually not so effective, because of the natural downwards pulls of life. We are not ideal existences, we are the descenants of life in all its awe, and life was hard as hell for a billion years, and we do not come from a master race that was always and immensely happy. Love in its light-sided shape is a priviledge, not a given. So love then was dark, but still love.
Love can be every act with purpose towards someone or something then. It was always in the air.
Even between animals. I love you, I eat you with love.
Which brings the question, what is love.
Thank you also very much for the book you talked about on IG, “Writing the Block Buster Novel” by Zuckerman. I just ordered it to see another aspect, another side of the multi-sided coin of creating this kind of art.
It takes years to get the power of the writer, it takes damn years. Self, knowledge and experience of the whole life. I want it all to be done in one day. But I can’t.
Thanks Steve,for shining the light on the most powerful force in the world. It can conquer anything even resistance. Loving the creative life helps me see each piece of writing and art to The End and the signature at the bottom of a canvas.
Love makes a story worthy of our time.
Behaviour is the most powerful expression of emotion and these you have shared are indeed among the greatest on screen moments thank you 🙏
Thank you Steve. Excellent column.
This is a bad morning for me. My first emails entailed a message that the print magazine I had looked forward to subscribing to, was finally able to, now is shutting down. Option, to shift over to their last print magazine, which incorporates some of the usefulness of Guitar Techniques and Bass Player Mags, which are now out of print. As a songwriter finally having gotten access to a monthly “Love note” communication, these were my lifeline to upping my writing skills in my writing field. Je suis Desolee, as the French put it, or my best translation in this instance, is like Chief putting the pillow over McMurphy’s face. I feel very alone in my chosen world. One more of the lights has winked out. I’m not expecting anyone here to resonate with this rant but my tears are very close.
I am sorry for everything bad that happened, and I am confident enough to bet that e.g. 1 year from now you will have arrived at very good ends too, along with the bads. Good luck.
Ohhh Muriel, I’m so very sorry. Realize that we, as a body, not be of the same genre, feel you. Hopefully new avenues will arise. That happens, ya know? Sometimes from where we least expect it. 🍃🌸🍃
Gads! Typos. Please excuse!
Another example I’m sure we all know well, is the resolution of True Grit, when Mattie, now a grown woman, has Rooster’s body transferred to her family’s plot. Years have elapsed since the tumultuous events of the story, and only now does she look for him and discovers that he has recently passed away. What a universal experience that is? To realise all too late that you have long taken for granted that a person would always be there, but now you have forever lost the opportunity to say important things that were left unsaid. I’ve experienced this a few times myself during 2024.
I’m not sure Mattie ever thanked Rooster for saving her life (in his unique, insane, and utterly committed manner) but this – having him reburied as if he were family – is how she can finally thank him.
How beautiful and moving. It’s the “I love you” moment.
Este exercício está me fazendo lembrar de várias cenas, também da literatura teatral, do ‘eu te amo’. Muito bom!👏
Kesey understood
As long as we are sharing
Gary Snyder still does..somewhere up that mountain
Weren’t we lucky to have been exposed to those authors?
Subtext. I suck at it. This is the perfect example. Thank you.
Today’s theme is overwhelming. The examples of these not-necessarily-romantic “I love you” episodes are done without spoken dialogue, which makes them all the more powerful. The reader/viewer knows at some level exactly what is on the protagonist’s mind without the author having to spell it out. I am so grateful for these weekly insights, thank you, Steven.
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“Exploring emotions and storytelling in ‘Writing Wednesdays: Get to “I Love You”‘ is truly inspiring! A journey of love and words worth experiencing. Speaking of journeys, level up yours with the iconic Ethan Hunt Jacket from black leather jackets!”