Why LITTLE BOY Was a Bomb

LITTLE BOY (2015) PG-13

DIRECTOR: Alejandro Gómex Monteverde
PRODUCER: Leo Severino (Metanoia Films)
EX PRODUCER: Eduardo Verastegui, Sean Wolfington, Mark Burnett, Roma Downey

STARRING
Tom Wilkinson (Fr. Oliver)
Cary-Hioyuki Tagawa (Hashimoto)
Emily Watson (Emma Busbee)
David Henrie (London Busbee)
Kevin James (Dr. Fox)
Jakob Salvati (Pepper Busbee / Little Boy)

(SPOILERS AHEAD)

I am asked now and then to talk more about movies that fail because of a false or misguided moral premise.

So, a couple years back, I girded up my loins and analyzed and blogged about some big MOVIES THAT FAILED. It was hard work, looking at all that money and talent being wasted. Terrible storytelling. Clear, obvious, universal, common sense story rules were just thrown out the window by filmmakers and studios alike... because, it seems, they come up with an ironic hook. But irony has to support the story, not just be ironic for entertainment's sake. Ionic stories (with good hooks) yet without the proper story foundation will always fail.

Tonight, in order to test out a new hearing aid...I've lost a lot of my high frequencies...I turned on our Apple TV, Netflix, and New Releases (for Netflix, not in the theaters). The first movie on the list was Metanoia Films' LITTLE BOY. Metanoia is run by some talented devout, Catholic filmmakers that I've had the opportunity to meet and talk to a few times.  But I had not seen LITTLE BOY, so, Pam and I settled down to watch and listen (as long my new hearing aid worked...and it did.)

As a period piece, the production values on LITTLE BOY are fantastic. The art direction, prop department and carpenters all deserve some sort of award. The photography and editing are eye-popping good.  The supporting actors are wonderful, and the overall direction is tight and purposeful, and who can deny that watching Tom Wilkinson, Emily Watson, David Henrie, and Kevin James is anything but a joy. And Jakob Salvati, as Pepper, the  Little Boy, held his own as the protagonist.
There are scenes that will make you cry...my wife was taken numerous times with heavy tears. The movie is just plain captivating.

But at the end, I was left with this awful empty, contradictory feeling. Why, I wondered? I couldn't put my finger on it for a while. I ran to the computer and checked what I had remembered about the box office being mediocre. BAM!!!  Yes, something was seriously wrong.

With an estimated budget of $20M-$30M (in Mexico no less where things are a lot cheaper to shoot), the U.S. Domestic Box office was a trifle $6.5M (rounding it up) with apparently no International distribution.

Folks, this is horrible. For a movie that has so much going for it in terms of production value, and scene value—there are wonderful sequences with deft parallel editing, scene-after-scene are just fabulously made—why would this film not connect?  First weekend it opened in 1,000 plus theaters and does a modest $3.3M. Not great, but if the movie was really as good as it looks, it would have dropped only 30% by the next week. But it dropped 62.3%. Fatal. Word of mouth was tepid at best. In later weeks it dropped three successive weeks by 50% and in 8-weeks it was history.

ANALYSIS

The reason this movie about Christian faith did not connect, even with it's Christian/Catholic target audience, has everything to do with the Moral Premise and common sense storytelling's black and white rules.

THE STORY, on the surface is about a little boy who is learning about how faith as small as a mustard seed, can movie mountains. In the movie, he tries and sort of succeeds to move a mountain. It's also about the hateful prejudice some Americans showed American Japanese during WWII. The little boy's father is called off to war and Pepper, with the astute help of Fr. Oliver (Wilkinson), passionately and actively pursues an increase in his faith (through good works) so that his father will return from the war safe and sound. THAT IS, THE PHYSICAL GOAL OF THE PROTAGONIST (Pepper / Little Boy)....is TO GET DADDY HOME ALIVE. Making that goal tangible and visible is well executed in the film. Pepper's family lives in a town on the West Coast of California and there are scenes where Pepper holds up his arms toward the setting sun over Japan (which at that moment may be the Rising Sun of Japan), grunting and shaking in a Star Wars'esque effort to morph "Christian faith" into "The Force." The atheistic Mr. Hashimoto challenges Fr. Oliver to stop the charade and protect the boy psychologically. But Fr. Oliver...is having his own crisis of faith, and doesn't know what to tell the kid...because to Fr. Oliver it seems like the kid does have faith (alas, the kid is demonstrating faith in his own selfishness not in God's power to save...so what we have here is really poor understanding of fundamental theology.) Admittedly, the movie makes no attempt to suggest that what Pepper is doing is Christian faith. But neither does the movie define Christian faith, otherwise. So the audience is left to believe what is shown. And what is shown is logically invalid and subliminally the audience figures that out. (BTW: The Coen Brother's HAIL, CAESAR! does a better job of presenting the Gospel.)

Thus, when the first atomic bomb lands on Japan (shortly after one of Pepper's arm shaking episodes aimed at Japan) the town wildly celebrates because they believe that is was Pepper who was responsible. Why? Because his nick name around town is "Little Boy" and the nickname of the atom bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima was "Little Boy."  Immediately thereafter and for solid minute there is great rejoicing. The film suddenly shifts to the somber destruction and the celebration stops. To make things worse, the family hears that Dad is taken as a POW, and then that he is killed. But through mistaken identity, the soldier that is killed is not Dad. And Dad returns home at war's end shell shocked but reunited with family.

IT'S A HORRIBLE MISTAKE for a movie that tries to battle prejudice to turn to celebration the killing of hundreds of thousands of Japanese in the shadow of what the little, smiling and celebrating Pepper believe is "Christian Faith." Even when, moments later, the movie puts on the appropriate somber moral mood for the bomb, a bitter taste is left in the mouth. A scene like that in any film, least of all a purported Christian film, is like a moral sin. It's nearly unforgivable. It's abhorrent. As one commenter on IMBD wrote "Christian Faith Nukes Hiroshima"  Of course the filmmakers don't say that...but (Damn It!) they SHOW it.

As bad as that scene was conceived, it is not what kills the movie...although the movie deserves to die because of it.

What kills the movie is something more subtle and at once obvious. To explain that I have to take a stab at the moral premise....that sentence that should be controlling everything about the story and it's presence on screen.

[NOTE TO FILMMAKERS OF ALL STRIPES: If you understand an apply the moral premise, your films won't go bust, assuming everything else is well done But when you screw this up, money will never save your investment.]

MORAL PREMISES

There are two possible moral premise statements for LITTLE BOY based on the explicit issues portrayed:

Moral Premise A

Racial hatred and lack of faith leads to hatred, separation and death; but

Brotherly love and faith leads to friendship, family and life.

Moral Premise B

Racial hatred and lack of faith leads to Daddy not coming home; but

Brotherly love and faith leads to Daddy coming home.

Moral Premise A would be a good statement if the movie had a protagonist with some goal that related to life and friendship within the community and physical efforts were put to that end.

But LITTLE BOY is about a little boy who wants his father to come back from war. The kid is not motivated to make the town better. 

Having made that clear (I hope)...

All successful stories MUST follow a few simple rules. Let me mention one of the most important:

1. The inner transformation of values that the protagonist experiences, logically motivates the action that causes the physical transformation.  Psychological Motivation ALWAYS leads Physical Action...and the connection better be logical. 
2. The protagonist's physical action toward the goal, logically causes the goal to be achieved. The goal cannot be achieved by any other action than that of the protagonist. 

If you need to understand this, take my Storycraft Training Online. There's not the room here.

A story cannot succeed if at the end of the plot, the protagonist steps aside and someone else saves the day. The protagonist must do the hand-to-hand combat, not another less important character. Thus LITTLE BOY fails due to three violations of these Natural Laws of Story Structure.

1. THERE IS NO LOGICAL PHYSICAL CONNECTION BETWEEN PEPPER'S ACTIONS AND GETTING HIS DAD HOME.

There is no direct acton that Pepper takes that remotely effects the return of his dad.  It's as if all though the movie Pepper pursues his goal with various actions, but at the end, a superhero swoops in and rescues Dad. The superhero being the guys on the Manhattan Project...some would say, far from innocent lads. Audiences subliminal are left dissatisfied. The catharsis is cut short and quick, if there's any at all. (Bad word of mouth #1.) - This is similar to the story error Hollywood calls DEUS EX MACHINA — an unexpected power or event saving a seemingly hopeless situation, especially as a contrived plot device in a play or novel. Wikipedia explains Deus Ex Machina well.

2. PEPPER'S LEARNED VIRTUE IS ACTUALLY A VICE

There is a hidden theme in the story that "innocence trumps reality." In other words, as the audience, we want the kid's wishes to come true BECAUSE and only because he's an innocent kid. If an adult acted like Pepper we'd call the character selfish, narcissistic and self-absorbed. Pepper's not wanting his Dad to come home for a selfless noble purpose. This is not A WONDERFUL LIFE where George Bailey's presence in the community benefits the good of all. Yes, we can see that Mom (Emily Watson) is sad and that she's being stalked by the friendly doctor in town (Kevin James). And we recognize that Pepper's older brother is getting in trouble because Dad is gone. BUT NONE OF THOSE have anything to do with Pepper's motivation for wanting his Dad back. That is, Pepper doesn't want Dad back because the Savings and Loan has to be saved for the sake of the town's livelihood. He wants Dad back for himself, alone. And we buy it because the kid is young, and sweet and innocent. But the kid's motivations are not pure, they are filled with vice.  Subliminally, audiences see that. (Bad word of mouth #2.) 

3. THERE'S NO LOGICAL CONNECTION BETWEEN PEPPER'S INNER TRANSFORMATION AND THE OUTER PROGRESS OF RETURNING DAD.

The moral premise also demands that it's the vice or weakness in the protagonist that creates the bad consequences, and that a transformation of that inner value to a virtue or strength will bring about the good consequence. But what does this movie do? Pepper achieves his goal, and we're led to believe in some way that it was his Christian faith that brought his Daddy home. But that's not true and Christians and non-Christians subconsciously know such an idea is fable and heresy. (Bad word of mouth #3.)

And ironically, I'll bet almost no one leaving the theater could explain any of this. It's a feeling, a sense, that something isn't quite right, and quite right they are.

Consequently, Little Boy was a Bomb.

Come on guys and gals out there making movies. READ MY BOOK at least, and try to understand this stuff. I'm not making money off these books, but you could. 

Life as it is... vs... as it ought to be.

REALITY VS. OUGHT TO BE

A great quote from a blog by Daniel McInerny (Graham Greene on the Art of Storytelling) who quotes Graham Greene (talking about cinema) quoting Chekhov (talking about novels).  Thus, I quote McInerny so like a good chain letter you can pass it on and we'll all be remembered. Uh-huh.

Here it is (my emphasis):

‘The best of them (novels/movies) are realistic and paint life as it is, but because every line is permeated, as with a juice, by awareness of a purpose, you feel, besides life as it is, also life as it ought to be, and this captivates you.’ This description of an artist’s theme [continues Greene] has never, I think, been bettered…

Had I come across Chekhov's quote when I was writing The Moral Premise I would have included the quote at the beginning of a chapter. 

When Chekhov says "this captures you" he's referring to audience identification in the moral sense. That is, you are aware that the immoral actions, motivations, and words enacted by a character do not reveal the best of humankind, or even what the character is capable of. That sense of rightness and wrongness comes through in the context of the writing, whether it be a screenplay or novel. That sense of "life as it ought to be" is the moral conscience of the writer communicated to the audience, who knows in their heart (if not in their actions) the difference between moral virtue and vice. Such conflict is absolutely necessary to engage the reader or spectator. And notice Greene's use of the term "theme" which is the root from which a moral premise is derived.

We watched Gavin O'Connor's PRIDE AND GLORY (Hard-R) the other night on our Apple Box, which deals with a multi-generational family of New York's "Finest" who struggle with where the line is between right and wrong. They joined the police force for the pride and the glory. O'Conner's story, which he co-wrote and directed, reveals that when even a taint of corruption enters in a cop's life, the pride and the glory evaporate as fast as a bullet can leave a gun's muzzle. It's the writer's honest revelation of reality in the context of hope and goodness, that allows the audience to know what "ought to be." 

What Chekhov quote begins with these words "realistic and paint life as it is". There's a term for that, which O'Connor uses to describe his work: Verisimilitude (or truthlikeness)—the quality of realism in something (such as film, literature, the arts, etc). 

THE PROBLEM OF BELLA

Verisimilitude's virtue reminds me also of a lesson that I saw in the making a few years back. This lesson reminded me that if you want mainstream audiences to see your movie (and hear your message) then you have to meet them where they are and reflect reality to them as they understand it.  If you don't, then they can't follow your story, let along understand the moral message in it -- if that's important to you -- and should be if you want your movie to be entertaining. (Yes, there's a direct connection between a film's moral message and entertainment. They are two sides of the same coin. See FIRST ENTERTAIN.)   

The lesson involved the movie BELLA which was suppose to be an anti-abortion film... which in my thinking probably involves some sexual content. (I don't need to spell that out for you,  do I?)  Because BELLA was a hit at the Toronto Film Festival with audiences, many people thought it was going to clean up at the box office. I didn't see the screening in Toronto, but some suggested that the producers (as offen happens at festivals), stacked the theater with supporters. 

Regardless, after an early promotional screening (between Toronto and the film's theatrical release) I met one of the producers and chatted. I was concerned because he had just apologized to the very conservative Catholic audience about something that evidently had been pointed out to them as "offensive" and they promised to remove it before the film was released to theaters. What was the "offensive" element? The sound of the protagonist urinating on a pregnancy test strip. There was ONLY the sound. No picture. And the fact that she was to discover she was pregnant was critical to the story's plot. It was a major turning point in the story. You have to SHOW such things. But the producer's didn't show it, they let you hear it. And then they were going to remove the "hearing" of it.  To me this attitude was the death knell of the movie; which explained why I thought the movie was modestly boring to begin with. This harkens back to Chekhov's observation.

BELLA's producers, in their desire to not offend anyone in the audience with visuals or dialogue (and also get grassroots support for the film when it hit theaters), screened the movie dozens of times with conservative Christian audiences. And they made changes based on the feedback from those audiences. They wanted to produce a "pro-life" "anti-abortion" film that didn't offend their conservative supporters. They cleaned and cleaned the edit -- until it was antiseptic of reality's edge. In their striving for truth, the missed verisimilitude or truthlikeness. The result? A box office bomb.

Here's some more evidence about that conclusion.

That same year there were two other "pro-life" "anti-abortion" films that came out. The films were KNOCKED UP and JUNO. These two films found the right balance. They realistically painted life as it is, but permeated the scenes with the juice of what it ought to be. Great balance, and great entertainment. Check out the worldwide box office scores, divide by $5 and you'll know about how many people saw each film:

BELLA (PG-13) -          $12,083,296  (02 M tickets)

KNOCKED UP (R) -   $219,076,518  (44 M tickets)

JUNO (PG-13)  -        $231,411,584  (46 M tickets)

Two of these films went mainstream, the other one was only seen by a very small niche, that had probably already seen the film during the screening tour.  You have to ask yourself the proverbial question:  "If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it fall, did it make any noise?" 

One final note I found particular ironic. Notice that BELLA garnered a PG-13 rating. That baffled me. I would have guessed PG at most. Here's what the film rating board said:

BELLA - "PG-13 for thematic elements and brief disturbing images."

Now here's the ratings why for the other two films:

KNOCKED UP - "R for sexual content, drug use, and language."

JUNO - "PG-13 for mature thematic material, sexual content and language."

Do you notice how one of these is not the same as the others? (I learned this watching Sesame Street with my kids. Okay, I was watching after my kids graduated from college.)

BELLA was suppose to be about sex. But sex, which the reality of American culture "worships", was evidently absent from the film -- at least to the point that the ratings board didn't think the film had any sexual content. So much for reality. 

To close, one more reminder of what Chekhov wrote:

‘The best of them (novels/movies) are realistic and paint life as it is, but because every line is permeated, as with a juice, by awareness of a purpose, you feel, besides life as it is, also life as it ought to be, and this captivates you.’

In other words...when you do this, there's chance that people will see your movie.