I think having a strong theme is a quality (one of many, including character development, dynamic set pieces, powerful third act, dialog) that starts to separate "good" scripts from "great" scripts. The way I finally understood loglines, as part of this application process, is that a good hook for a story is one that, regardless of effective characters, specific stars, or witty dialog - is still an effective story concept. Interesting to people. But just because it's a good idea doesn't make it a good script. That's where that other stuff comes in. The execution is what, then, makes it actually sell-able or a strong movie.

I agree with Shawn, which echoes my post from yesterday and why I tend to work from the inside out. It also probably explains my emotionless (read: indifferent) reaction to most of the ones I see posted. I think an excellent logline does what Scott mentions, but also allows the reader to envision the possibilities of the emotional aspects - and if your hook is what sparks that, all the better.

This is just off the top of my head, but... I wonder if, while the logline is about the story, the theme is about the *treatment* of the story. You could write, say, "boy runs away away from home to search for absentee father" in dozens of different ways, and each would have a slightly different theme, but they would have similar if not identical loglines.

I agree with Shawn's observation and also agree with Scott's assessment. Loglines are really about plot with a dash of character. Hopefully they line up in a way that a hint of theme can be gleamed from it, but that's not always the case. I think why this seems so intrinsically flawed is because (I believe) writers are drawn to the writing process in the completely opposite manner--theme, character, and then plot. (which is probably why writing loglines is such a bitch!) It's also hard to write loglines based on theme because theme tends to be vague. Plot is specific. Love conquers all -- isn't really specific. But -- a man sells all his worldly possessions to chase a married woman he can never have -- at least presents a context. But here's the thing -- Loglines are just an appetizer. They aren't the end all be all. They just get your foot in the door. Most of the time, in discussion, in meetings, what I talk about is theme. How these parts of the plot relate to the underlying story. How they drive and motivate the characters. To fundamentally understand story, you need to understand both part. They say sell the sizzle. The logline is your sizzle. The screenplay is your meal, the meat. P.S. You'll also notice most producer assignments are often seemingly random plot elements thrown together. The craft of writing is piecing together coherent meaning from them.

I ask this because I'm having a hell of time thinking of a hook / logline without falling back on the ideas and themes I want to investigate as a starting place. I think Fight Club and American Beauty and A Clockwork Orange and On The Waterfront are films where the theme is just as important (maybe more) as the hook and clearly the writers (of the original source material) were aiming their stories about something. So in most high concept Hollywood films I think the emphasis is on the journey and playing out the "what if" ness of the concept. And the theme is tucked in there somewhere to give us the full experience, but it isn't at the forefront. And moviegoers rarely talk about the "about-ness" of what they just watched. It's just good times, which I totally understand. However, like TBBB, I find reading a log line -- even the ones that have been praised on this blog -- not as compelling as thinking about what I want to examine in the story. Egri talks of this when he mentions premise. For him it's not simply the "what if" but it's a more didactic kind of thing like "possessive love kills the object of one's desire" or something like that. Although, I don't really want to prove anything so textbook-ish, I do like thinking about stories as examinations of something culturally or philosophically relevant -- I mean doesn't the Flight trailer Scott posted today look interesting for this exact reason?

Two things. 1) Don't you think American Beauty, Fight Club, and The Matrix (all released roughly around the same time) are all dancing around a very similar theme? Loosely, they're all about male protagonists oppressed by the consumer driven society they live in and how that conflicts with the reality of their daily lives. Yet, they are very different films. And express these ideas VERY differently. 2)"I think Fight Club and American Beauty and A Clockwork Orange and On The Waterfront are films where the theme is just as important (maybe more) as the hook" Don't confuse "important" with function. A hook is just a hook. It's the thing that gets butts in seats. It's the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. It's absolutely necessary. As is theme. Which is more or less important is a rather arbitrary distinction. P.S. Egri's uses premise and theme interchangeably. For most of us, those words aren't. Premise and theme have potential to answer the same question: What is this story about? You could answer, "Love." Or "A man who murders another man." And they could be describing the exact same story. The difference is one is specific and the other is general. You can film a premise, you can't film a theme.

Great comments all around. Now if I can only figure out my hook...

Hooks generally rely on a twist of the initial set-up (grab). So... I'd say your set-up takes us in one direction, have the hook be something contradictory to that (the "but" vs. the initial "when", so to speak). Contradiction and Irony work very well in finding the hook.

With all due respect, if you think The Matrix has *anything* to do with consumerism or a consumerist then you've misunderstood it. FYI, you might want to look up Jean Baudrillard and Gnosticism or any of the Philosophy of The Matrix books.

Fair enough. But that really wasn't the point. The point was that similar themes can be expanded on in widely differing ways. When it comes to a logline, that can be far too vague to describe what is actually going to be shot / what the film may ultimately look like. My response was also posed as a rhetorical question to Shawn, the emailer from the OP. If one of the examples doesn't ring true for you, that's fine. There's others. You don't need to agree with the specific examples. It was posed as something to chew on and think about in a broader sense. And to get nitpicky-- To me, The Matrix is just a modern day retelling of Plato's Allegory of the Cave. To me, the matrix (the thing the people are sedated by, the thing they are trapped in, the only world they know) is this pre Y2K "broken" utopia. I find that to be a similar idea to how Lester Burnam is trapped in his own perfectly plastic life, or how the Narrator in Fight Club has to concoct a badass alter ego to escape his own Ikea-clad life. If you disagree that this is similar, that's fine by me. You don't have to make the same connections as I do to enjoy the film. We ain't the same people :).

[...] Myers notes, “In the process of crafting and writing a story, it’s critical to look for and manage the [...]

[…] Loglines and theme […]