Last night, I broke away from the Dramatica analyses to watch a movie with my film club – The Virgin Suicides. Guess what? I’m near certain that it’s another Conceptualizing story; and far from the ‘developing a plan’ mantle.
I’ll try to avoid spoilers, but the framing device is of four boys attempting to figure out how the Lisbon girls’ environment led to their suicides (which I think is also an issue of Situation! – just like American Beauty/What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?); the mother is envisioning a ‘pure’ existence for her daughters without rock music or boys; the girls are trying to figure out who they are in the world/how to live under the repressive regime of their mother; the outside world is trying to imagine what’s going on within the home, etc. There’s a lot of Conceptualizing going on, basically. But very few plans are being made.
I can safely say that I wouldn’t have noticed or understood any of this had I not watched Baby Jane and American Beauty days before. So to conceptualize Conceptualizing, you should basically just watch the movies and break it down.