Scene Inspiration: Making a Plea
If you’re writing a fic that requires raw emotion, and/or any sort of desperate plea to help a loved one, I highly recommend watching this scene from the movie “Men Don’t Leave” with Jessica Lange for inspiration. You won’t be spoiling anything if you watch this before the whole movie.
Background: Beth (Jessica Lange’s character) falls into a deep depression following the sudden death of her husband, a move to a new city, the loss of her job, and the growing distance between her and her firstborn, Chris. She’s been sleeping for days on end and her children are scared.
Chris has been pretty ugly to his mother’s new love interest, Charles (Arliss Howard), the man he’s appealing to in this scene. Charles has stopped coming around after some awkwardness with Beth that has absolutely nothing to do with Chris. Still, he blames himself.
I don’t know if the actor, Chris O’Donnell, was completely on script or not, but he plays this scene with such purity you can feel his character’s heart breaking and his tough facade crumbling. It’s not just the dialogue; pay attention to his body language. He displays all his frustration, anger, sadness, fear and love in less than 2 minutes.
I just wanted to share this in case any of you want to capture in your writing the basics of what’s going on here.
More scene inspiration: Kisses