Duplicity--Powered By The Ever-Demanding Beast Called "Surprise"

Okay, bear with me on this one.  It's a long read, but well worth it.

The film "Duplicity" opened over the weekend, and the reviews have been relatively positive, but the REAL story here at Surprise Central is one that appeared in the most recent issue of The New Yorker, where writer D.T. Max interviews the film's writer and director Tony Gilroy.  In the piece, Gilroy--a well-respected veteran writer of film thrillers--explains not just the necessity of Surprise in film, but the challenge to maintain a flow of NEW Surprise to an increasingly educated and demanding audience.  Here are a few excerpts from Max's piece: 

"The core of 'Duplicity' is the screenwriting trope known as the reversal. Gilroy told me, “A reversal is just anything that’s a surprise. It’s a way of keeping the audience interested.”  In 'Good Will Hunting,' when Matt Damon, mopping the floor at a university, comes upon a complicated math problem on a blackboard and solves it, the audience suddenly realizes that he is not an ordinary janitor—that’s a reversal.

"Gilroy believes that the writer and the moviegoing public are engaged in a cognitive arms race. As the audience grows savvier, the screenwriter has to invent new reversals—madder music and stronger wine. 

Don't ya just love that? "A cognitive arms race."  How poetic!  Max and Gilroy go on to further explain the challenge, and the perils in not meeting it.

"Perhaps the most famous reversal in film was written by William Goldman, originally in his 1974 novel 'Marathon Man,' then honed for the movie version. Laurence Olivier, a sadistic Nazi dentist, is drilling into Dustin Hoffman’s mouth, trying to force him to disclose the location of a stash of diamonds. 'Is it safe?' he keeps asking. Suddenly, William Devane sweeps in to rescue him and spirits Hoffman away.

"In the subsequent car ride, Devane starts asking questions; he wants to know where the diamonds are. After a few minutes, Hoffman’s eyes grow wide: Devane and Olivier are in league! 'Thirty years ago, when Bill Goldman wrote it, the reversal in ‘Marathon Man’ was fresh,' Gilroy says.  "But it must have been used now four thousand times.'

"This is the problem that new movies must solve.  As Gilroy says, 'How do you write a reversal that uses the audience’s expectations in a new way? You have to write to their accumulated knowledge.'"

Generating Surprise--it ain't easy.  It's an ongoing beast that demands increasing amounts of nourishment.  But if the alternative is regurgitating the same ol' same old, well... THERE IS NO alternative.