Speaker 1: Film pundits claim that the least creative way for narrative exposition is through dialogues. But I am here to introduce an exception. One of its kind science fiction that unfolds almost entirely through dialogues. Welcome to the 10th episode of Film Students Diary. The episode category is old is called, but I am here to introduce you to a movie which released only 13 years ago. Why? Because it was first conceived by Jerome Bixby as a story back in early 1960s. He included almost the same concept when he wrote an episode named Requiem for Medusale for the NBC TV series of Star Trek which originally aired in 1969. But he was constantly working and reworking to evolve the same concept as a flawless feature screenplay which he completed on his deathbed in April 1998. Bixby dedicated the last of his screenplay to his son, screenwriter Emerson Bixby. Later, Richard Schenkman was interested to direct this screenplay with a shoestring budget under the title The Man from Earth. Why is this movie so much important? In Man from Earth, Professor John Oldman played by David Lee Smith quits his job and packs up everything to get relocated to somewhere far. He is a bit secretive about this but his colleagues pay a visit to bid him farewell. They sense there is something off about this sudden change of plans. They start talking and he finally claims he is a caveman who has been alive for over 14,000 years. His colleagues are not newbies. They are experts in their fields, namely Dan, an anthropologist, Harry, a biologist, Edith, an art teacher, Dr. Will Gruber, a psychologist, Art is an archaeologist, Linda is a student of art and Sandy is another historian. Sandy and John are actually mutually attracted. It grows like a roundtable conference and they debate to disprove his claims. The movie has got more cult following than any other movie which got released in this past couple of decades. So, it is not like a play that was shot with a camera. Then what exactly is the principle behind such successful sequences which rely mostly on dialogues? In his bestseller, The Anatomy of Story, John Truby wrote that, Great drama is the product of values and ideas of individuals going to battle. Conflict of values and moral argument are both forms of moral dialogue. Conflict of values involve a fight over what people believe in. Moral argument in dialogue involves a fight over right and wrong action. Most of the time, values come into conflict on the back of story dialogue because this keeps the conversation from being too obviously thematic. But if a story rises to the level of a contest between two ways of a life, a head-to-head battle of values in dialogue becomes necessary. In a head-to-head battle of values, the key is to ground the conflict on a particular course of action that the characters can fight about. But instead of focusing on the right or wrong of a particular action or a moral argument, the characters fight primarily about the larger issue of what is a good or valuable way to live. So, in the point of view of this particular principle, how good an example is the man from earth? Hidden exposition is the best exposition. You know that, right? But what if the information to be passed to the audience is so vast and cannot be hidden? The easiest way to exposit information is by having characters talk about it. So, when one character who knows something shares it with another, who totally has no clue about it, we the audience will learn things. We need to know to push the overall narrative one step further. But the dialogue has to be motivated by something. Otherwise, it may appear to be too boring. But what happens if the audience, most of the audience are not as ignorant as the character who is supposed to learn? So, if there is an ignorant character, makers will have to make all the audience on the same page with this ignorant character and make the information flow. I mean, that is the information that is about to be revealed to the ignorant character. So much intriguing. So, audience will learn organically without realizing the fact that makers are serving the information on a silver platter. In murder mysteries, the most cliched pattern is the investigator who follow odd ways of investigation, later explaining the clues to the ignorant sidekick who was so ignorant to link the clues. On the other hand, in Man from Earth, the information is so diverse and vast. So this method won't work organically. If the protagonist starts to explain things from various branches of science and history, then that would resemble a science or history TV channel documentary. So in this particular movie, each character is superior in his or her field of science or history. But at the same time, though they try to find loopholes in John's revelation, John easily dodges them with more skepticism. There is no flashback. Just his words against theirs. Some of those claims might sound outrageous too, but what he points are not answers to certain questions. Instead, he ignites better questions for everything we can find in research or reference books and keeps us engaged. The complication which usually arises is to make the information exchange so realistic, as organic as possible. Writers and directors have a tendency to make the characters too preachy or they might even end up making the characters too out of character, with too much dutism or lack of knowledge. But here, John's story is way ahead of these mistakes, because every point he rises evolves into debates which unroll into all directions, all of them incite emotional variations in others, ranging from curiosity, amusement, anger, distrust, and so on. John cannot make bogus claims out of thin air since his colleagues are experts in their own fields, but at the same time, they haven't left out those who defy science. Edith is a brilliant addition to represent such a category. She loves science, but ironically, she loves the religious beliefs way more. Now the conflict of values explained by John Truby in his book makes sense, right? The proper exposition of the movie is blessed with a subtle but effective performance of the entire cast, along with cinematography and cuts which don't draw much attention from the narrative. Also, you might know that the stimulations incited by the music can psychologically tend the brain to respond to the mood they're evoking. So it can elevate whatever that's being passed to us through visuals and other sounds. Man from Earth works better because of the score composed by Mark Hinton-Stewart and the proper placement of Pete Orwin's 7th symphony, 2nd movement. We badly want to believe John Oldman because he is the protagonist and the aura of determination in which he narrates everything. He is not simply uttering facts and figures, but at the same time, we can disprove them and side with someone like Edith or Art. Or maybe like Sandy, Linda, Harry, Dan or Will who wants to debate but at the same time, deep inside, they all tend to fall for the story, right? See this is how Bixby has hooked you. He never lets the viewer stop thinking. The questions keep flowing. This heightened sense of intellectual conflicts engages us till the end of the drama and then make us wonder about our own beliefs after finishing the movie. The way John delivers his story holds together because friends are there to regretfully bid farewell to one of their own. So the makers are literally making the audience to be there in that room and pretend like someone who has been with them for the past 10 years and acts surprised that John wants to leave all of a sudden. Then these characters, brilliant professors start planting big questions in our head. So we initially get involved in them as colleagues who are pouring in nostalgia or trading jokes. Once we are in this trap, the questions will close the lid and seal our fate. The best part is, we will feel some external connection and tend to stay inside this trap forever. I would like to quote John Truby once again to let you know what's good storytelling. Again from the same book which I mentioned before, The Anatomy of Story. Good storytelling doesn't tell audiences what happened in a life. It gives them the experience of that life. Good storytelling lets the audience relive events in the present so they can understand the forces, choices and emotions that led the character to do what she did. Stories are really giving the audience form of knowledge, emotional knowledge or what used to be known as wisdom but they do it in a playful, entertaining way. The storyteller is constructing a kind of puzzle about people and asking the listener to figure it out. The author creates this puzzle in two major ways. He tells the audience certain information about a made-up character and then he withholds certain information. Withholding or hiding information is crucial to the storyteller's make-believe. It forces the audience to figure out who the character is and what he is doing and so draws the audience into the story. Audiences love both the feeling part, reliving the life part and thinking part, the figuring out of puzzle part of a story. Every good story has both. So that's it for this episode. Hit the like button if you liked it and please do comment beneath to let me know your perspectives. Usually I write notes, shoot and edit all by myself but for this episode, one of the followers, Rajarshi Bhaumik from Kolkata, who befriended me after the last episode was trying to help me with the edit part but unfortunately, we both became busy and we couldn't make it practical. Maybe next time. That's the reason why it took some time. I believe you have already figured out that I reduce the frequency of episodes because I am a bit busy these days. I am working on a couple of screenplays. So looking forward to meeting you all in a couple of weeks or maybe a month. I hope you would understand. Take care, stay safe, peace.