Low Concept is a bit of a strange idea.
On the surface, it might be difficult to see how Low Concept films would sell at all, at least by the core concept behind them.
In fact, these films are only called “Low Concept” insofar as they are diametrically opposed to the “hook that sells the film” type of High Concept film. In one sense, Low Concept films are harder to sell because they are harder to pitch–unless you’re excellent at teasing out why a person would want to view the film.
While that may be true, the odd Low Concept film actually does spectacularly well. Often that’s because of critical acclaim or the fact that it has a famous director, etc.
I mean I seriously doubt Ordinary People would get a lot of viewership on the basis of its logline–A wealthy family falls apart after the accidental death of one of its two sons (yawn)–but the fact that Robert Redford directed it makes it a bit more worthwhile.
You’ll usually see a glut of Low Concept films around awards season because they’re released by studios as Oscar bait–there’s a good reason that this happens, which we will discuss in due time.
All the acclaim, of course, after Ordinary People won a shitload of awards, makes it more watchable. But we’re talking how to sell this film from the pitch alone, so bear with me.
Let’s start our examples of Low Concept by clearing up a perennial misconception.
Many folks out there love to classify Pulp Fiction as the prime example of a successful Low Concept film.
My guess is that the problem arises because the overarching logline reads:
(1994, Quentin Tarantino)
Three stories about underworld Los Angeles linked by their relationship to a crime kingpin.
At this point, you’re probably wondering how you can reduce such an interesting, impactful film to something so boring. Agreed.
Then again, with the logline as it reads, we have no idea what the stories are or how exciting they might be in isolation. After all, that’s the key to how the film works and how we are able to actually sit through 154 minutes of it.
Why would we not mention Jules and Vincent or Butch and Mia or the Wolf or Lance or Jimmy or Alexis Arquette trapped in the closet with the Hand Cannon.
It’s for this very reason: the logline itself is pretty unarguable, but for a good reason. Pulp Fiction is actually a series of three short films, each of the three linked by its relationship to Marsellus Wallace.
Ultimately, to call Pulp Fiction a Low Concept film, we fail to set the frame correctly.
The key to the movie is that the individual short films inside work like gangbusters. Unsurprisingly, we could write fantastic loglines for each of the short films:
A heroin-addicted hitman takes his violently jealous boss’ wife out on the town–at the boss’ request, only to let her accidentally overdose.
A boxer agrees to take a fall while secretly betting on himself to win, inviting the murderous wrath of the gangster who paid him off.
After miraculously surviving an ambush, two hitmen reckon with their faith, and one discovers that a potentially suicidal act of selflessness may be his only route to salvation.
These stories are so riveting that, were you to see it in the cinema, I bet you wouldn’t even check your notifications in the middle. If you do, please put this book down and stop reading. It will do you no good.
Now–the point here is that when all is said and done, Marsellus is the character who provides the throughline–the reason that we can put all of these pieces together. He’s actually the one guy who’s consistent through all of the movies, and he even finds his own sort of redemption when he lets Butch go.
For all the other characters, though they might pop in and out of other stories, these stories aren’t technically “theirs.”
Let’s look at another example:
(1999, David Lynch, w. Mary Sweeney)
An elderly man without a driver’s license rides his lawnmower three hundred miles to visit his ailing brother.
One might argue that this is a bit of a weird story and therefore High Concept. Still, I don’t know how many people would actually be interested in a film about some old dude who rides a lawnmower 300 miles.
Have you ever driven a riding lawnmower on a highway? I have (don’t ask). They go like eight miles an hour.
It really does seem a bit painful—the sort of thing that an 80-year-old in a bar in the Midwest might tell you that his neighbor once did—and mercifully he can tell the whole story in five minutes.
This film had better fucking have some sort of point.
In other words, how could riding a lawnmower 300 miles feasibly interest someone for 90 minutes? It sounds stultifyingly boring. Already.
The fact that this is one of the greatest films of the 1990s is immaterial, because it’s really, really, incredibly fucking difficult to sell the concept.
Excellent query.
Well… chances are the story was pitched as “David Lynch makes a Disney movie.” Yup—I mean pitched to the studios this way. Shit, who wouldn’t want to see that?
The bizarre irony that Disney (?!@£!@?) funded a David Lynch film is probably more what intrigued the higher-ups than the actual story within the film.
Yup—sometimes the irony is outside the film itself. Nevertheless, unless you have the clout that a David Lynch or a Disney has, my suggestion is to put it in the damn film.
All that said, The Straight Story is awesome. Go watch it.
(2018, Gaspar Noé)
A French dance troupe’s rehearsal afterparty gets spiked with LSD.
This isn’t a terrible idea, but it really ends up with a big “so what?” unless I have some idea of how this is going to play out. If I know that Gaspar Noé is behind it, however, I understand that it’s going to be intense, disturbing, and deeply fucked up.
Ticket purchased.
(1991, The Coen Brothers)
In 1941 Los Angeles, a screenwriter struggles to overcome his writer’s block.
Ugh… This concept actually sounds even more boring—let’s bring the lawnmower dude back.
There’s really no clear idea how this story would be told. Obviously there’s a lot more to the story—murder, surrealism, dream sequences, Chet!–but this is in fact the concept.
All the great stuff about the film is secondary to its main concept.
Imagine you’re trying to sell this to your boyfriend or girlfriend or imaginary friend. I just like the “Significant Other” because it sounds so painfully politically correct that I often wonder whether it actually refers to one of those creepy rubber shag-dolls like the one that Ryan Gosling used to date.
ANYWAY…
Let’s say your rubber shag-doll doesn’t know the film, and you want to watch something Friday night. You know Barton Fink is a great film and it’s very funny and you’re trying to tell him/her/it? what it’s about—and failing spectacularly.
As much as this person loves you, are they actually willing to drop twelve bucks on this film?
Especially when you struggle for elements of the film that don’t sound boring or simply insane: “Frasier’s dad plays a character based on William Faulkner! There are lots of shots of peeling wallpaper!”
More likely, you say, “It’s really good. It’s really funny. It’s a Coen Brothers film.”
OK, that does it. What sells people, in the end, is that it’s a Coen Brothers film. People know that the Coen Brothers make excellent, hilarious, deeply weird films.
Still, we’re not selling the story on the story’s own merits. After all, the story literally is about a screenwriter struggling to overcome his writer’s block.
Why are we lingering on a weird-ass 30-year-old film that really seems to have no easily definable concept?
Because the French can’t be wrong: Barton Fink won the Trifecta at Cannes: Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Film. In fact, specifically because of Barton Fink’s sweep of the three major categories, the Cannes Elders decided that no film afterward could ever win more than two of the three categories. Truth.
So that’s why we’re looking at Barton Fink. Very well received critically, excellent film, but definitely low concept.
This film actually somewhat strides the line between high concept and low concept. Just look at the logline:
(1999, Mike Judge)
An office drone goes to a hypnotist to relax, only to find that this now-permanent relaxation has a ripple effect through the rest of his life.
If you’re familiar with the movie, you’ll remember that the hypnotist dies after hypnotizing him. Now he’s unable to un-hypnotize himself. It’s a bit of a silly, awkward concept that stretches the limits of believability.
Arguably, that is a bit High Concept. Still, the main idea here is that our man needs to relax, and that’s about it.
Given that the hypnosis thing is over and done with in about five minutes—and really doesn’t have a lot to do with the film except sparking his relaxation—the High Concept part only exists to spur on the Low Concept part—everything after the first five minutes.
By the end, we’ve pretty much forgotten about the hypnosis, anyway.
(1999, Sam Mendes, w. Alan Ball)
A suburban man’s midlife crisis disrupts his family.
On this level, the story is so trite and obvious as not to matter. What does he do? Buy a Porsche? Shag the blonde in HR? Decide to get into S&M?
Realistically, there are any number of ways that a man’s midlife crisis can disrupt his family. American Beauty’s brilliance is that it takes quite a few of them and skewers them all to deliciously dark effect.
How many ways could a midlife crisis manifest?
Lester does all the things that you “shouldn’t do.” He does drugs, buys a new car, tries awkwardly to have an affair, all of the obvious stuff. It’s such a classical conceit that we kind of feel like we’ve seen every different possible iteration of it.
BUT… the point is that it’s obvious—he doesn’t just squash it down pretending the problem doesn’t exist until it leaks out one side, the way it happens IRL.
Nope. Motherfucker just does all the things, becoming a walking, talking id. Miraculously, he doesn’t read like a total bastard. File under: “roles only Kevin Spacey could play.”
American Beauty is a very knowing, very wise movie. It plays on our expectations of knowing that he’s doing all the obvious stuff.
However, if you simply read it on the level of “a suburban man’s midlife crisis,” it doesn’t sound very interesting.
(2013, Joe Swanberg)
A guy and girl who work in a brewery like each other but they already have partners.
It sounds like a boring romantic comedy. Maybe it is—I’ve heard that said before. Meh, I liked it. To each their own. It definitely has a boring concept.
Nevertheless, it’s actually a very entertaining film. What makes it interesting, however, is that the concept is dealt with in an interesting and very non-Hollywood way.
It enters the realm of microscopic frustrations that people experience when they’re not 100% sure of the relationships that they’re in—envying people nearby who apparently have excellent relationships, and how this discomfort ripples out to everyone in their friendship ecosystem.
Furthermore, it wisely shows that no one—even the “perfect relationship”—is actually 100%. Even so, that doesn’t mean that the relationship isn’t sustainable.
Drinking Buddies is what’s often referred to as a “mumblecore” film. This genre tends to dig into tiny details of relationships and focus on people’s subjective experiences (how they feel) rather than their objective experiences (what they do or is done to them). We’ll discuss this quite a bit more when we get to discussing Stakes and Irony.
Long story short: it doesn’t sound like a particularly interesting film.
Drinking Buddies is not something you’d see Kate Hudson or Shirtless Matthew McConaughey in. And as a side note, if you think mumblecore is difficult to deal with, try sitting through a fucking Eric Rohmer film.
Still, if the right person made it and hit the right notes, it might be worth watching! That’s the key to Low Concept, yet again: when you have some cachet to back it up, such as an excellent storytelling team, the film itself can be amazing.
Even something that doesn’t have what seems like a complete concept can get bumped over the edge if you have
Everything up to this point gives a compelling explanation as to how quality Low Concept films tend to be later films from respected filmmakers.
It’s hardly a surprise that many Oscar-winning films are pretty low-concept. That’s because that’s what happens as filmmakers become older and more respected: they’re dealing with more “adult issues,” which tend to be more about relationships than, say, gunplay. (Not that those things are mutually exclusive).
The Academy voters tend to be retired Hollywood people. On average, these people are Really Fucking Old. That’s not a knock against them—hi, Oscar voters!—that’s just the way things work.
These people appreciate films that deal with the same things they’re dealing with, like Michael Haneke’s Amour. Just kidding, Oscar voters!
More reverentially to our elders, these people are dealing with more “adult issues” than those dealt with in the giganto-bombastic “This Has Enough Explosions to Sell in China!” films.
Low Concept usually means something that wouldn’t pass muster as a concept unless we have another reason to be interested in the film. That is, a famous director, actor, or perhaps even a location or unique scenario.
The concept itself is not tight enough to give us a specific idea of how it would play out. However, we are sold on it based on this external reason.
So while you might have a great low concept idea if you could just get Margot Robbie in the lead role, my advice would be to shelve this until you have the clout to land (and the cash to pay her) and develop an idea that stands better on its own.
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