Screenplay writing advice 105: Saving The Cat

Hey all! Welcome to more Screenplay Writing Advice! This time our topic is "Saving the Cat."

"Saving the Cat" doesn't mean the character actually saves a cat (although that always works). Rather, it's a small action the main character takes that shows that he (or she!!!) is a good person the audience can sympathize with.

Once you know about Saving the Cat, you'll start seeing it in every movie you watch. For example:

• In Polanski's Chinatown, Jack Nicholson as Jake Gittes "saves the cat" when he politely tells Diane Ladd that she should "definitely lose a great deal of weight for aesthetic and health reasons."  
• In Spielberg's Jaws, Roy Scheider as Chief Brody saves the cat when he suggests that everyone should cut Jaws a break.
• In Jones' "Leprechaun," Warwick Davis as Loopy The Leprechaun saves the cat when he offers to let Tory Redding (played by a young Jennifer Coolidge!) use his condo in San Diego free of charge for two weekends in a row. 

Above: a promotional still from my as-yet unproduced screenplay "Transformers 2"

And in every Harry Potter movie, Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter saves the cat by being friends with a zero like Ron.

So here's the thing-- now that everyone's saving the cat in every screenplay they write, audiences aren't even noticing! A protagonist doing something nice is so normal it doesn't register and so the protagonist remains unlikable. That's a recipe for disaster.

Luckily, there are several workarounds to this problem.

1. Don't Save a Cat, Save an Endangered Lion.   A lot of the great screenplays you come across (in the post Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit era) have a protagonist going above and beyond a small gesture. GO BIG! Instead of giving a homeless man a breakfast sandwich as she leaves for work, have your protagonist give the homeless man a diamond necklace from Tiffany's.   Instead of having your protagonist say hello to a lonely old lady as he walks down the street, have him prevent that old lady from getting attacked by the wolfman.

2. Keep on Saving That Cat!  Instead of having your hero save a cat once, have her save the cat again and again. Eventually the likability gets through to your audience-- in my sci-fi biopic "Fantastic V'Ger: The Coolio Story," Coolio Jr. is hassled for money by a sickly orphan once a page for all 250 pages of the script. And in each case he simply reaches into his wallet and hands the orphan a ten dollar bill, then goes back to saving the galaxy.  It's incredibly enjoyable, but more important: it's likeable.

Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman in The New Yorker 

3. Make Everyone Else Kill the Cat:  If every other character is extraordinarily unlikeable your protagonist will become likable in comparison.  For example, you could have a secondary character idly tear a ferret in half and kick it down the stairs, or be played by actor Greg Kinnear.

Remember folks: don't give up, keep writing, and maybe the dream of Hollywood will one day be yours!

Famous Screenplay Goofs: It didn't take long for smart audiences to realize this silent "lamb" was really a dog supplied to the production by a incompetent animal handler.