I would say “the long journey” or “the prize at the end,” but really, you could say that every great story is about a long journey in pursuit of some sort of prize. Isn’t a “Whydunit” a journey toward the “prize” of catching the killer? Or a “Buddy Love” about the “prize” of making a relationship work?
In a way, that’s true. So in movie ideas that don’t have that clear goal that fits another genre, but there is a goal, I turn to this genre to see if there’s a match. And the five very distinct subgenres Blake identified helps us to assess that:
1. Buddy Fleece
In some movies, there is a clear physical journey from one place to the next. The classic “road” movie. These are pretty clear-cut. From
Thelma and Louise to
Little Miss Sunshine to
National Lampoon’s Vacation, a group of people are headed from point A to point B, and meet a lot of obstacles, conflicts and complications along the way, to the point where it’s in doubt that they will ever get to where they’re going. (Whether that’s merely a physical place, or a life situation, or something less clearly defined, but still transformative.)
The key is that the audience, at the beginning, understands and relates to what this journey is for, and what the main character (and others on the journey) hope to get out of it. Sometimes just reaching the other end is the end of the story, especially when it’s about getting “home,” as in
Planes Trains and Automobiles. Or sometimes it’s what they hope to find at the end of the road, which may or may not solve their problems, but they won’t know until they get there. As in
Philomena.
In other movies, the “prize” isn’t the destination itself, but something else that they’re forced to travel around a lot, in order to eventually find. As in
The Hangover. Or
This is Spinal Tap.
2. Epic Fleece
In this second category, the stakes are substantially higher, as in “life and death.” Physical battles become the “problems along the way,” as in
Saving Private Ryan, Star Wars or
3:10 to Yuma. Again there is a lot of movement around from place to place, in pursuit of the eventual prize at the end.
3. Sports Fleece
Here there is little or no traveling from place to place at all, and the “road” is more figurative. An unlikely team (or sometimes an individual with others supporting) tries to pull off an underdog victory in a game that means everything — to their sense of themselves and place in the world. (The stakes of the game itself often isn’t as important as what it means to them personally.) We see this in
The Bad News Bears, Cool Runnings or
Rudy. I can also stretch this concept to encompass movies that are about competition, but not exactly on the playing field — such as
Jerry Maguire, Stand and Deliver and
School of Rock. This subgenre, like the next one, is more limited and specific.
4. Caper Fleece
These are essentially about a heist (or sometimes a breakout, or other “caper”). We root for those doing the heisting because, though they might be criminals, they’re not as bad as who they’re trying to “fleece,” who has it coming — such that it’s almost a victimless crime. As in
The Sting or
Oceans Eleven. I think
Pulp Fiction (Bruce Willis’s story) and
Reservoir Dogs also fit into this category, as do
Inception and
Argo.
5. Solo Fleece
In this final subgenre, there’s no team at all, but simply a single character on a long road, where there is one big unanswered question or challenge to their life, that we want to see resolved. Of all the fifty subgenres, this one is probably best for movies that try to chronicle the span of a whole lifetime, or a large chunk of it. The key is the nature of the problem we want to see resolved. It has to always be front and center.
12 Years a Slave is a great example, but also lower stakes movies like
Walk the Line, Ray and
Capote, as well as
The World According to Garp, The Shawshank Redemption and
The Pursuit of Happiness.
Keys to the Golden Fleece
I think the one thing that holds all these diverse movies together, across five subgenres, is the idea of a life-changing “prize” that we’re waiting to see reached. What they’re trying to get to has to have massive
stakes. It has to be an easy-to-identify-with
problem. We have to feel that if they reach it, all will be right with their world, and they will be healed and happy, at long last. And if they don’t, well, that’s unthinkable. All will seem truly lost.
That’s the biggest error I see in scripts that writers feel are “Fleeces”: there might be a journey, a road, a team, and some sense of a prize, but it’s hard to see how that prize is so important that one should base a whole movie on it. It’s not life-changing enough. It won’t transform everything. It may give the character a sense of pride and success, but if it’s not a big enough change to their (currently unacceptable) inner and outer circumstances, the audience might not care that much.
As Blake Snyder liked to say, movies are “Transformation Machines.” A character’s life and/or way of being must be really at stake, in a primal, fundamental way — where this journey is necessary, urgent, pressing, and, of course, extremely
difficult. They must really get beaten up along the way. But emerge, at the end, changed for the better.
This is the second in my series of articles on how to work with these ten genres. Use the search function to find the other posts!
Thanks so much. Would you say Midnight Run is a Buddy Fleece?
I think so – haven’t seen it in a while but that seems right to me!
Can the Golden Fleece result unsatisfactory for the characters? As in, once they reach it, they realize it was fruitless, or after internal change they come to the realization?
I’m sure there might be some example of that, but in my view, usually that approach works better with the Rite of Passage genre. See also https://www.flyingwrestler.com/2017/03/rite-of-passage/
What happens if the fleece itself “changes” or is revealed in a different light that makes the hero/s question its desirability?
The one that immediately comes to mind is Raiders when the Ark unveils its “true power.”
Or if the internal change that happens to the hero makes it so that though the hero has been pursuing one “fleece” up until the climax in the final moments he/she chooses to let it go?
Also I have noticed that in a lot of these Epics (Saving Private Ryan, Apocalypse Now), a main conflict for the protagonist is actually whether it is “worth it” to “capture the fleece”, though in both these films said fleece/mission is captured/completed. Could a movie therefore successfully fit the genre and go the other way?
IE: A hitman is on a mission to kill target but upon further inspection decides he is too good of a soul to deserve death. (I’m sure there are a million films like this but no specific examples come to mind right now.)
Isn’t one of the criteria for a “Rite of Passage” film that in a full lifetime one is expected to experience the event in question?
I am not trying to nitpick or poke holes; I am a young student who just discovered this seemingly genius way to classify story and am merely trying to reach a better understanding and help classify/change some of my concepts in progress. Thanks!
Great questions!
I think it’s possible to still be a Fleece where in the ending the main character lets it go or doesn’t get it. It’s about what’s been driving the story up until the climax, and if it’s got that ROAD/TEAM/PRIZE feel and the PRIZE seems really important and we root for it, that’s what I’d be looking for. If the goal changes midway through that’s something else but changing at the end I think is always an option for Fleece.
In Private Ryan Capt. Miller has to deal with others questioning the mission and perhaps he questions it internally himself and that is fine and good but doesn’t change the fact that the main story driver is still this mission to find this prize. There’s no getting out of it. It’s less about a desire than following orders, but still a Fleece.
Rite of Passage is a whole other genre where the audience knew the goal was kind of the “wrong way” all along, and yes, usually it connects to a life passage we all face at some point. Although some dodge addiction… 🙂
Thanks for the analysis. I especially liked your explanation of the “Solo Fleece.” It shows that there does not have to be a team in the genre, and it can be an individual.
Next, I would like you to go over “Institutionalized.” Then “Epic Love” under “Buddy Love.”
Thanks very much for this, Erik! We are wrestling (you fab flyingwrestler 😉 with Solo Fleece vs. Dude with a problem, so our vote is for you to choose Dude with a Problem next. The Rite of Passage article was terrific as well. You are so helpful!
I find value in all your writing-advice articles, but this one I found especially valuable. I’ve written a lot of stories, but the one I’m struggling with right now has gone through a lot of re-writes, more than any of the others. Through trial and error, whittling down, constant refocusing, eliminating B and C stories and tangential events, I’ve come to what you said in the Solo Fleece: “The key is the nature of the problem we want to see resolved. It has to always be front and center.” It has to be front and center. If it didn’t happen to my main character or effect the quest, it is irrelevant–those paragraphs and pages are hitting the cutting room floor. Thanks for defining it.
Incidentally, in the Golden Fleece myth as depicted by Euripides, Jason is an unsympathetic jerk, and loses his family and wealth as a result of his betrayal of Medea. Eventually, he’s killed when a timber from the Argo falls on his head.
There are some caper films in which the audience does not root for the protagonists to succeed, some in which the audience may be ambivalent, and even some in which the audience roots against the protagonists.
In “The Killing,” for example, the audience may empathize with the protagonists more than with the very impersonal robbery victims, but the failure of the heist isn’t disappointing.
“Flight” is a kind of heist story, and while the audience doesn’t want the trio to fail (which would mean jail for Denzel), the protagonist’s confession / renunciation at the end is satisfying. Other movies in which the audience may be ambivalent: “A Simple Plan,” “In the Bedroom.”
Finally, some heist protagonists are so unsavory that the audience roots against them (In the Company of Men, the various Dangerous Liaisons, The Ladykillers, even Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
I bring these exceptions up because I think heist films make a good test case for the likability principle. The one common denominator is that the audience wants to know how the heist turns out, but there is no guarantee that the audience wants it to succeed.