Actually, GWH is a tough movie to talk about in terms of theme, simply because the themes are so well integrated into the characters. Some films state their theme so baldly that you can't miss it - and are often quite boring as a result - but in a way, the better the writing, the harder you have to work to define the theme. I suppose the theme is related to identity - who is Will? Who does he want to be? Who does he risk becoming if he doesn't take action to change his life? What are the options available to him - each embodied in a character who exerts some pull over his life...? In a broader context then, could the theme be: how should we live our lives? Head, or heart, or both?

I agree, head vs. heart is a key theme in GWH. One of my favorite speeches in the script is Sean's "All your knowledge is from books" wake-up call to Will, really effective, and provides a nice broader commentary on the setting -- brainy campuses like MIT and Harvard nestled among working class suburbs geared more around family life and sports. I lived in Boston for a couple years and love the way they used it so intrinsically to the story. This theme is also echoed nicely in Sean and Lambeau's dynamic, a kind of family or fame/ personal or public sphere/ happiness or success argument, as well as in Will's dynamic with Skyler -- several scenes where he gets her to put the books down so they can have fun together. Ultimately Will must reconcile the two, head and heart, rather than suffocate his intellect. The script shows us nicely that Will already knows this intuitively in the beginning, as Sean points out, he didn't have to work as a janitor at MIT, running around scribbling down math theorems anonymously. For me this makes his character transformation more realistic, Sean doesn't change him, but rather brings out what was already inside.

One theme, I would say is the one he wrestles with the entire movie, even more so than the "do something with your life", is the story line of letting his father issues go and allowing himself to realize he is somebody worth loving. That is the emotional core of the film. The one that, once resolved, will allow him to confidently be someone to himself and a lover and friend to others. I would say its a theme that people deal with a lot. We let our history and our perception of it control who we are, whether we like to or not. It can hinder us from becoming something great. Which is quite literally the case in GWH.

Debbie, GWH is a good script to consider in terms of themes, especially as a lesson for our own writing, because there are multiple themes, some bigger than others, some more important than others. As writers, when developing and writing our stories, one thing we benefit from doing is actively trying to surface themes. One way to do that is by digging into the Protagonist. In most cases, the nature of the P's metamorphosis -- starting out in this psyche state and ending up in that psyche state -- is narrative terrain where the central theme and perhaps lesser themes emerge. Clearly Will is in a state of Disunity. I will try my best to remember to go back to the Character thread and give a more complete take on this subject, but briefly: * He was an orphan (disconnect from parents). * He was shunted around to multiple foster homes (disconnect from normality). * He was physically abused by a foster father (disconnect from a Good Father figure). * He is a genius with a blue collar life experience. * He tries to fit in with his friends (Chuckie, et al), but his intellect sets him apart. * He works at MIT as a janitor while having the intellect to be a student there. * He is filled with rage over his past and filled with guilt. Clearly Will is a Protagonist who needs to change. And that's why this story happens when and how it does. Three things occur almost simultaneously: * Lambeau discovers that Will is the mystery person who answered the math questions. * Will beats up Billy, goes to court, and is only spared going to jail when he agrees to work with Lambeau and see a shrink [this leads him to Sean]. * Will meets Skylar. If you remember that amazing quote from Jung: "The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains divided and does not become conscious of his inner contradictions, the world must perforce act out the conflict." From a psyche standpoint [and conveniently from a writing perspective, too], these events happen when they do because they have to happen. They are the universe's way of forcing Will to "act out the conflict" of his Disunity self. So obviously some themes and almost certainly the story's Central Theme would naturally arise from Will's psychological journey. I have a specific take on that in a comment below.

Betsy, you have hit on a key to almost any character's metamorphosis: The change originates from within. The essence of who they are to become has long existed in their Inner World. There is almost always something standing in the way. And 99% of the time, the manifestation of what's standing in their way is fear. Robert Towne says if you really want to understand a character, you ask them this question: "What are you afraid of?" Although the revelation happens very late in the script [P. 105], Will finally confronts his troubled past, going past his rage to an even deeper source of pain: guilt. When confronted with two stark possibilities -- adults [who are supposed to trust and who are supposed to take care of us] are chaotic, unreliable, and dangerous [manifested by his foster father's physical abuse] versus "I did something to deserve the beatings," a child will often choose the latter. Why? Because guilt is something they can own, they can understand, they can see some cause and effect, there is a logic to it. An adult just wailing on a child for no apparent reason is too overwhelming for a child to comprehend. [BTW, we will see this same dynamic next week in The Silence of the Lambs]. So underneath everything that Will feels and all of who he is, there is this thing he fears the most: confronting his guilt. That he deserved those beatings and in some way has deserved his pointless [up until now] life. That's what that whole "It's not your fault" scene with Sean is all about. He keeps pressing and pressing and pressing that point. And Will tries to fight him off -- "Don't fuck with me" -- but Sean persists, getting closer and closer physically, mirroring how much closer and closer he is getting psychologically until there is that hug and Will's breakthrough confession: "I know... I know, I know." What is really scary is not confronting the guilt, it's the thought of losing that fundamental tenet Will has assumed his whole life: That guilt is how he made sense of the world. If the guilt is gone, there is no certainty. For the longest time, he would not go there because the fear of that unknown was worse than living with his guilt and rage. And all of that, as you point out, Betsy, is within Will. Sean may have facilitated the breakthrough, but it is Will who finally had the courage to break on through to the other side: "I know... I know, I know..."

question.authority, you hit the nail right on the head. And here is one way I would typify the Central Theme of GWH: The Beauty and the Beast. At one level, the Beauty is Skylar and the Beast is Will. Much like the original fable, Will was cursed from something that happened in the past. He has something special within (personified by his genius), but is unseen by others. In large part this is the case because - again like the fable - the Beast is filled with rage over what transpired in his past. And so the Beast needs to confront the cause of how he became a Beast in order to be with the Beauty. A wrinkle in GWH is that while the Beauty (Skylar) does function in the story to connect with Will's heart, it is another character entirely (Sean) who is most involved in the Beast (Will) going into his psyche tied to his troubled past. There is another level in which this metaphor works: The Beauty = Will's genius. Will is deeply ambivalent about his intellect. Why else "hide his lamp under a bushel" as he does by furtively answering the math problems at MIT? Why not step up and let the world know how smart he is? My guess is Will perceives his genius negatively for two reasons: (1) Like being a foster child, like being beaten by a foster father, both of which set him apart from 'normal' people, so, too, his genius. (2) He thinks his genius is part of his past curse. The Beast has not seen the Beauty of his gift. Lambeau tries to get him to see it. Sean tries to help him see it. Skylar attempts [albeit nominally] to get him to look at his genius in another light. There is a third way we can look at the Central Theme of GWH being the Beauty and the Beast: Beauty (Young Will) / Beast (Violent Foster Father). Part of the psychic energy of his breakthrough with Sean is to reclaim at least a tiny sense of that Young Will, a boy with enormous potential, a beautiful child. And so Will's decision to go to California in the end is a response to three aspects of Beauty and the Beast: Skylar (his Attractor), his Genius (which he is now finally able to look at from a more neutral stance), and moving past the Beast (Will as tormented Disunity self, Violent Foster Father) So I would say one way we can look at the Central Theme of GWH: The Beauty and the Beast.

Thanks Scott! Your analysis is really helpful to see how key the psychology is to the character, and hence plot and theme lines. I'm just wondering, in terms of your process, how much of the psychology do you feel is important to nail down before writing pages? All of it? Most of it? Kind of a similar question with themes, do you consciously shoot towards theme in the early stages, or let the themes emerge as the story unfolds organically? I know different writers have different approaches, just curious about yours. BTW thanks for the awesome site, it's a great educational (and free!) resource for poor struggling writers like myself!

Betsy, every writer is different and every story is different, so it's hard to quantify or concretize a specific approach that always works. Frankly that pertains to my own writing as well. But generally I follow what I lay out in the 6-week Prep: From Concept to Outline course (Screenwriting Master Class). Start with Protagonist and delve into the character. Brainstorm like crazy including other characters, possible plot elements. Spend a lot of time sitting with characters, talking with them, interviewing them -- and thinking about their respective narrative functions (this is where I usually find working with archetypes -- Protagonist, Nemesis, Attractor, Mentor, Trickster -- quite helpful. Four primary Plotline points: Best way I know of wrangling the basic structure of a story. Four Themeline movements: This gets into quite a bit of psychology as it drills down in the metamorphosis process for the Protagonist and any other character who goes through a significant change in the story, especially those tied to the Protagonist. Ten major Plotline points: Working through the rest of the big events in the story. Narrative Throughline: An outline which includes everything that happens scene by scene in the Plotline (External World) as well as the emotional plot of the Themeline (Internal World). Much of the psychological work emerges in Prep, but then I spend a lot of time in prep-writing because I think it's the best place to 'find' story and characters. But in page-writing, I can't help but discover new and deeper themes emerging. As I write, they come more and more to life, and with that, the inner psychological life of the story reveals itself. But here's the key: It's the characters who reveal all that stuff. It's all there, all that's required of me is to spend time with them, get curious about them, dig into them. It's not work so much as it is an ongoing dialogue with them, then time to reflect about them. That's just me. Actually you've inspired me to do a GITS post to ask folks how important the psychological aspects of a story are, how much time they spend delving into them, how they do that, when do they do that, etc. So thanks for sending me down this path, Betsy!

Will identifies with his friends and wants to make an honest living without feeling like he's causing harm to anyone. He doesn't want to become a cog in a large machine that feeds the military industrial complex. All the psychological turmoil that he's experienced has given him a perspective from outside of the main stream--he's not been swept along--and he needs to find an authentic way to live his life. He's been mistaking loyalty for authenticity and after his closest friend tells him how much he hopes that Will will move away--that every morning he hopes that he'll discover that Will is no longer tied to being a menial laborer, that Will is set free to pursue a different life. Will has discovered that true loyalty is deeper than he'd previously realized and that being his authentic self will help his friends in ways he'd not previously understood.

Here's a long list of all the thematic threads I noticed in this script of GWH: