I just watched a rerun of the brilliant BBC sitcom, COUPLING. In
this episode, called, Her
Best Friend’s Bottom (air date – 9/17/2001), Steve has just accidentally
seen Sally’s arse in his own bathroom (Sally is Susan’s best friend, Susan
is Steve’s girlfriend) and Jeff, the lovable dork (who works with Susan),
pleads with Steve never to tell Susan about the incident. Here is a transcription
of their conversation about CAPTAIN SUBTEXT.
INT. THE BAR – EVENING
Jeff, Steve and Patrick sit around their usual table.
JEFF
And what if Susan asks if you liked your best friend’s bottom?
STEVE
What if?
JEFF
Do you know what she’ll really be asking? Do you know what Captain Subtext
would say?"
*This is where I fell out of my couch, or however you say that.
STEVE
Captain Subtext?
JEFF
She’ll be saying "Do you fancy my best friend?"
STEVE
And who is…Captain…Subtext?
JEFF
So what will you tell her when she asks you that?
STEVE
The truth.
JEFF
But you do fancy her. Everybody fancies Sally.
STEVE
OK, I’ll tell her lies.
JEFF
She’ll know.
STEVE
Will Captain Subtext tell her?
JEFF
Captain Subtext isn’t a real person, Steve.
STEVE
Yes, I got that. So who will tell her?
JEFF
The prickles, the blurts, and the head laugh.
And are they real, or do they work with the Captain?
JEFF
Oh Steve, they’re real.
Now, you might be asking, what has that got to do with anything? Well, I’m
reading a small, but brilliant book by Charles Baxter called "The
Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot" which contains some astounding comments
about setting the stage to write subtextual dialogue. The first time I heard
about subtext was in Robert McKee’s "Story" Workshop.
The subtext (and this
is where the intrepid Captain comes in) is the unstated, unspoken, oblique
feelings the characters are having or implying. As
Baxter puts it, "It is not that actions speak louder than words; they
speak instead of words." He also says, "The story in
the foreground serves as what I call the "staging area," where we
witness the gradual uprising of what has gone unsaid. As a consequence, [Beaushean]
stories are almost ritually haunted by the inexpressible."I can’t wait
to get further in this book.
Basically, writing the subtext, or not writing it as it were, is the best
way to avoid on-the-nose (OTN) dialogue. In novice screenplays, we often
see characters thinking out loud to one another and inserting large bits of
backstory (exposition). The experts do a great job of expressing the unexpressed,
making their characters lie through their teeth while we know how they feel,
and learning about characters through their actions. Pretty cool.
