In the
recent Steven Spielberg film Bridge of
Spies there’s an early scene in which Tom Hanks talks about insurance. He’s
having a civil debate over drinks with another attorney about whether an
accident that kills several people should be counted as several occurrences,
with the insurance company liable for each one, or as one occurrence, with the
insurance for the accident covering the maximum amount per occurrence,
regardless of the number of deaths and injuries.
I’m
assuming the scene was put in to show — prior to Hanks defending a Soviet spy
and later negotiating the release of an American spy pilot — that the character
had a keen legal mind, which would come into play as the drama progressed.
But even
so: Talking about insurance law? That’s a pretty gutsy thing to do in a
big-budget movie aimed at a wide popular audience. After all, what if the
insurance debate put people to sleep?
He Believed in Himself
Now I’m
guessing again, but I suspect Spielberg had enough faith in himself, Hanks, and
the Coen brothers (who wrote the dialogue) to feel that he could put that scene
in the movie and not lose his audience. In fact, by developing the character,
he might have pulled at least some viewers deeper into the film. It certainly
made a positive impression on me.
Spielberg
is a master story teller, and job one for a story teller is to make it
interesting. An awful lot of terrific story ideas have never become good books
or movies because the artists couldn’t get the details of story telling right.
It has a lot to do with pacing, weaving together the threads of the story, and
imparting information at the right time in an effective way. Not many people
can do it.
Adding
detailed information that doesn’t immediately move the story forward is even
harder. It can be worth doing because character development and creating a
sense of mood or place can make a story richer and more memorable. Think, for
example, of Dickens taking two pages to describe the howling storm that rages
on the night Magwitch returns to London to see Pip again in Great Expectations.
I’ll Take the Details
It’s hard
to say how typical I am, but I’m one of the readers who wants a bit of detail.
If a murder takes place during a bird-watching expedition, I want the author to
tell me something about bird watching and why it exerts a spell on its
followers. If characters are regularly meeting in their favorite bar, I want
the author to tell me a bit about the bar, because in doing so, the author is
telling me more about the characters.
These days
I read a lot of books where detail of that sort is missing. And at one level I
can understand the reasons. An author or filmmaker understandably wants to keep
the story going and the pace as fast as possible, and, let’s face it, a lot of
times the extra details are laid out in a way that doesn’t work. So why pause
to admire the scenery when it’s so easy to have more action?
A good
story teller, and one with a sense of depth and breadth, is more likely,
however, to say something along these lines: I find it interesting, and if it’s
interesting to me, I think I can make it interesting for everybody else. And then does just that. Is it a skill that
can be taught? I rather doubt it.
