WE BREAK DOWN THE NARRATIVE ARC OF THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS--AND DISCOVER IT HAS PERFECT MOVIE STRUCTURE.
SHOW NOTES:
- The best podcast for screenwriting ever made [episode links]
- How theories of human evolution use narrative with the first human as hero [PDF]
- Furiosa's cinematic and beautiful Dark Night of the Soul [video]
- Lincoln's Second Inaugural address [link]
- The text of the Gettysburg Address [link]
- Is the Trump presidency a farce or tragedy? [link]
- The Mr Smith Goes to Washington Filibuster [video]
- The "On Fire" comic of the dog on fire saying "this is fine" [comic]
THE NARRATIVE STRUCTURE OF THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS:
- SETUP
- Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
- INCITING INCIDENT
- Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
- EMBARK ON JOURNEY (BREAK INTO SECOND ACT)
- We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.
- MIDPOINT
- It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
- BAD GUYS CLOSE IN
- But in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.
- DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL
- The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here
- FINAL PUSH
- It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
- CLIMAX
- It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom --
- DENOUEMENT
- And that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
The Gettysburg Address is a movie called “America”, written and directed by Abraham Lincoln.
