Well, Bob, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen Office Space, mostly because I’ve lost count. And another thing, Bob, I can’t recall a week since I bought the DVD where I didn’t watch it. It is to me as TPS reports were to Peter’s 8 bosses my only reason to live.
Not really, but I do really like the film. I like it because it’s simple and comforting, not necessarily because it’s outstanding. It’s mashed potatoes, it’s mac and cheese, it’s mind meatloaf. It’s plated up with a nice vegetable side. Everything works out for Peter as we hoped. He gets the girl, he gets a job where he’s finally happy, Lumbergh is presumably jobless and the evil Initech empire is reduced to so much a pile of soot. And Milton may not have received a piece of cake or been able to keep his stapler, but he had three hundred thousand of Initech’s dollars and a sunny Mexican beach on which to drink. It was a satisfactory resolution for all of those characters; a “happy ending.”
There are many choices when ending your script, and picking the right one is of paramount importance. In a comedy for example, you need to let the audience know that it’s all going to be okay for the main characters. At the end of a drama, the conflict has most likely been resolved, the emotions are still raw, and you want to capture that intense anguish without beating your audience over the head with a leg of lamb. You want just enough subtlety to tug at your heart, but enough nuance to remain sophisticated.
While, of course, some movies do still employ the classic happy ending, most films now go out of their way to choose simple, clean, quirky endings as a way to shine. It’s a writer’s last chance to send their audience out into the lobby, with a bigger and better smile on their face.
A happy ending, to me, is one in which the protagonist satisfactorily completes his journey and has demonstrated growth as a result. He participates in a conclusion that marks the character’s growth with a hint that his future is going to be okay; that we need not worry because this person whom we’ve become so invested in, will thrive in the next phase of his life.
Recently, I saw 500 Days of Summer. I generally hate romantic comedies. But in this case, I was charmed. I liked the notion of telling the story of “the girl before the girl.” Every man has had their heart broken and it is through that pain that they become the men we marry or couple with. I find the story of the woman that helped make my man the man he is, fascinating. To me, this was a wonderfully quirky ending. Tom moved on. He chose to live and thrive. And then, he meets the girl we’re lead to believe is “the girl.” Tom has a happy ending. A classically happy one? No. But a happy one nonetheless.
Before I saw Tootsie, I felt every movie should end with the hero and the heroine driving off together, into the sky, in a cherry red convertible like Grease.
Instead, the ending is this: Michael and Julie stand on a Manhattan sidewalk on a beautiful spring day. His female persona no longer. Julie asks to borrow Michael’s yellow Halston dress. Being cheeky, he refuses to lend it to her. And so he starts to walk down the street away from the camera and Julie follows protesting, and that’s it. They just keep on walking until they vanish into New York, the end credit music lulling us to the final fade out.
Oh what a revelation! You mean to tell me, endings didn’t have to be a magical, Disney-wedding, extravaganza, in 3-D, on ice in order to sell the simple idea of love? It seemed preposterous, yet also plausible. It doesn’t have to be wrapped up in a nice neat bow.