I recommend "Walker Payne" as a good example of how story design can go wrong. This movie has a lot going for it: it has a better-than-average cast, with Jason Patric as the title character and the scene-stealing Sam Shepard as a slick grifter; it has high production values that create the late-1950s setting; and it has a compelling plot about a father trying to get his daughters away from his ex-wife amid the seamy world of dog-fighting. But the lesson -- an expensive one for the investors and producers here -- is that if you think your script might be in trouble, why not spend a little more for a script doctor? For one thing, there is a major problem with the motivations of one of the key characters and Walker's love interest, Audrey. Audrey at first makes such a convincingly prissy bank clerk that her transformation into a bar-hopping hussy is baffling. As the old saying goes, a person's IQ goes up 25 points when he walks into a movie theater and most viewers won't buy Audrey as a plausible character. Another old rule of thumb is that a movie that ends well will satisfy audiences even if the rest of it is a mess. This rule is demonstrated in Act Three. The major plot turn is when the chief antagonist, Walker's ex-wife, makes the big decision to leave their two young daughters behind, get on a bus and go off to nursing school. The big secret was that she was in cahoots with the Grifter to push Walker into entering his beloved canine, Brute, into one more big championship dog match -- a plot point that makes her character a co-protagonist as well as the chief antagonist. Walker's last Big Decision was at the start of the Act Three when he decided to enter that big match. Of course, that assumes that you will suspend your disbelief at the notion of a dog-fighting championship belt -- er, collar. At any rate, after Walkers' decision on that, things mostly happen to him. Indeed, he makes only two small decisions in Act Three: first, to drive his seriously injured dog home. But that fails when the dog dies and Walker, a parolee, is caught by the police and thrown in jail for a potentially long sentence. And then in jail, his young daughters come to visit him and he tells them he has given up their Great Dream to move to a house with a swimming pool and a swing set. The final action shot shows Audrey walking out of the jail hand-in-hand with Walker's daughters and his father figure (Bruce Dern). Together they face the future. But then there are shots of an old mine that had eventually been transformed by Mother Nature into a beautiful lakeside park where Walker and Audrey had enjoyed a romantic interlude back in Act Two. Then the credits role. And that leaves you asking what was the theme of this movie? Every writer and filmmaker knows that the theme must be shown on screen. A movie that leaves its audience scratching its head about the theme has committed the eighth deadly sin. Here, the protagonist has just suffered three huge downers: dead dog, jail time, and telling his kids he's a loser. Remember: a character suffering a series of devastating setbacks is a common comedy device. Here, when Audrey, Dern's character and the kids walk outside to face the future, we can only assume that Walker is back in his cell, hanging himself. In any event, this suggests the theme: "Don't be cruel to your dog because you will lose everything you hold dear." But the additional shot of the old mine that became a beautiful park suggests the theme "Time heals all wounds." A script doctor might have suggested, for instance, that the dog could die and Walker escape the police. Then he recovers his children when the ex-wife leaves town. Or the dog survives and he gets arrested, and the girls nurse the dog back to health while Walker does his time and Audrey takes them in. Either way, Walker gets his kids and learns his lesson not to be cruel to his dog. But time heals all wounds? That theme could only work if there were a framing device of one of the daughters narrating the opening and closing by looking back at the events as an adult. I think that's why the resolution of "Walker Payne" doesn't work -- and why viewers have given it such a low rating. Still and all, it's an excellent cautionary lesson in film-making: a potentially good idea went to photography with a strong cast and a good production-design budget, but sank because of a lack of hard work and imagination that should have gone into the story design. Amazing how many producers and directors make this same mistake over and over.
Review of Walker Payne
