The second in my series on Todd Field's breakthrough screenplay TAR, a masterpiece that deploys Hemingway's "Theory of Omission" to compel multiple viewings. hashtag#screenwriting 040725
Screenwriting : What Is the Iceberg Theory Cinematic Aesthetic? by Yusuf Toropov
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Toward an Iceberg Theory Cinematic Aesthetic
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Hi, Yusuf Toropov. Great topic. I don’t like spoon-feeding in my scripts or movies/shows I watch. Sometimes I’ll spoon-feed in my scripts at first to get my ideas and things about the characters and the story onto the page, but I’ll go back and get rid of the spoon-feeding, at least most of it.
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This is super interesting to me, and you broke Hemingway's idea down nicely. :) I tried to teach "Big Two-Hearted River" to my college students several years ago, and they didn't really want to get it. (Those who did probably have SparkNotes to thank.) They just didn't want to think about anything on a deeper level. I feel like there's room for both iceberg and spoon-fed in cinema, but that it's important for the screenwriter to know going in which of these audiences they're trying to appeal to, because they're not typically the same person, and it will require two completely different approaches to storytelling.
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Erin --"Big Two-Hearted River" is my go-to example in literary fiction for Iceberg Theory. If I ever meet Todd, I want to ask him point-blank whether he's read it :-)
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Maurice Vaughan -- yes, exactly. It's not a matter of never adding the spoon-feeding in, but of getting enough distance and enough maturity and enough perspective to know when to reach for the scalpel.