Those occasional "forget the three-act structure" prescriptions drive me nuts. Because when writers do, you usually get movies like In American Splendor. Boyce declares that "You hope till it hurts that his relationship will work out." No frikken way; I was hoping it would end.

A film is a tightly controlled and guided experience that operates on a time limit. It has to tell the audience what they see/hear as well as invite continual audience participation (emotional investment).

Therefore narrative form in film is essential, unlike in a play where characters (literally) come to life and let the audience respond to and pick up on subtleties of performance.

Moreover, if you're trying to sell a screenplay w/out a clearly defined structure, forget it. Try reading some structureless, or poorly structured, screenplays to see what I mean.

There is not a single good story out there that does not use the three-act structure. Every good story has set-up, conflict, and resolution. Period.

I remember a 3 act story structure in Millions. Well sort of...

1. Boy talks to saints, comes into stolen money.
2. Everything goes out of control. Robbers want it back.
3. Can he make everything right in the end.

I definitely love this movie. I was trying to remember if there was any quotable Mother-Son dialogue at the end.

Not to take the limelight away from GITS, but Scriptshadow is having a "Amateurs Week" where he's taking one amateur script at random that was submitted to him over the past couple of weeks and reviewing like he would any other script. There's something to be said for reading great screenplays that do it all right, but I think reading the ones that don't get it right is just as useful.

So, if we're talking about the importance of structure...reading some of the scripts he's reviewed is a great case for the implementation of structure. The majority of the constructive criticisms those scripts are getting could be fixed if they had a 3 act structure (or any sort of structure, really) nailed down to give the story some sort of framework. Anyways. For anyone that's curious what the scripts look like:

http://scriptshadow.blogspot.com

Hi Scott

Interesting point about the collective consciousness, and one I agree with and touched upon here: http://bit.ly/9txPJi

Keep up the great work!

Tally ho.