Stu and Chas look at AMERICAN BULLSHIT (the 2010 Black List spec script by Eric Warren Singer) and the film it became… AMERICAN HUSTLE (co-written and directed by David O’Russell), which garnered 10 Oscar nominations in 2014.
Stu and Chas are joined by their first guest – illustrious script developer and producer Stephen Cleary – to explore how certain films can trigger an outpouring of emotion from the audience. Turns out that Aristotle may have figured it out a few thousand years ago and called it Catharsis.
To examine how Catharsis can be triggered by a sequence of fixed beats, Stu, Chas and Stephen zone in on the last few pages of FIELD OF DREAMS, TOY STORY 3 and SE7EN. And Stu brings up FROZEN. Again.