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Dallas Buyers Club (2013)

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DZ-1: Do Screenplay Gurus win you Oscars?

Do Oscar-Nominated screenwriters follow the structural formulas prescribed by the 'gurus' and books?

AI✦Examines how Ron Woodroof’s character arc--from self-interested drug smuggler to advocate for others--structures the narrative independently of Save the Cat conventions, questioning whether the script’s plotting actually requires traditional three-act scaffolding.✦

⏱ 1h 40m

1 MAR 2014

Structure · Character · Genre

Listen if you want to know whether Blake Snyder, Michael Hauge and Christopher Vogler's structural theories actually apply to Academy Award-nominated screenplays

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Three of the most widely read structure books in screenwriting — Snyder’s Save the Cat, Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey, and Michael Hauge’s Six Stages — all make essentially the same claim: this is how great films are built. In our debut episode, we run that claim against two Oscar-nominated films to see if it holds: PHILOMENA and DALLAS BUYERS CLUB… →

Films: Philomena (2013) , Dallas Buyers Club (2013)

Structure: Plotting , Act Two , Escalation

Character: Character Arcs , Character Motivation

Genre: Genre Conventions

"His journey in the whole of the rest of the film is his journey from helping himself to helping other people. Because I think he’s completely self-interested in bringing these drugs in. He’s like, wow, this shit works."

— chas | DZ-1: Do Screenplay Gurus win you Oscars?