Enneagram and Encaustic – Screenwriting, Lyrics, Art, and Investigation

Leap Year (2010)

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Amy Adams’ Leap Year is a romcom recommendation that surfaces on streaming at this time every year. When I first watched it a decade ago, I was not impressed. However, I recently gave it another try and found it interesting because it lines up with some of my recent thoughts about storytelling. I’ll show you what I mean.

ONE

While the credits roll, establish Anna as a professional stager (for real estate sales) who has applied with her cardiologist boyfriend, Jeremy, for an exclusive apartment. Tease a “special dinner” later between them, including the possibility of a marriage proposal.

TWO

Throughout, we see that Anna likes to be in control and doesn’t like chaos. She meets her alcoholic father, who’s late, in a bar, and we understand why she wants an ordered and planned life. When Dad learns that Jeremy is on his way to Dublin for a convention, he mentions the Irish leap year tradition: the women propose marriage to the men.

Fallout Season Two: Story Enneagram Breakdown

(Episode One: The Innovator)

ONE

Robert House tries out his mind control device on some thugs (although it explodes the man’s head).

Lucy snipes Coop’s noose rope, saving him from a gang, then they’re headed to Vegas.

TWO

Cooper, after hearing what Barb said about dropping the bombs, takes Janey for Bakersfield. A neighborhood alert blocks their way.

Vault life: Reg starts his club, Davey gets lost, and no one knows what happened to Norm.

Moldaver wants Cooper to kill House on the Vegas trip.

Norm unfreezes Bud’s Buds.

Lucy and Coop, following Hank, find the vault where he’s installed a mind control device in the food truck’s son. Another brain explodes.

THREE

Hank happily reaches Vault-Tec’s bunker. He cleans himself up and broadcasts his message: he’s continuing their work from before the war. He discovers the miniaturized devices.

Fallout’s finale: The Strip

ONE

Battle between the two factions of the Legion. Amidst the smoke and turmoil, Macaulay Culkin’s Legate drags the skeleton of the former Caesar to his tent. He reads the mysterious note the Caesar wrote before his death, naming his heir. This is what the two factions have been fighting over, each refusing the other the chance to read. It says: It ends with me. (No heir is designated.) Legate eats the paper before anyone else can see. He takes the laurel crown from the skull and wears it himself. The soldiers cheer and hail him. His victory speech: We’ll conquer Vegas!

And then Culkin says, We’ll build a palace. Caesar’s Palace. (Groan. Honestly?)

Roll title card.

Fallout: The Handoff (the penultimate episode)

ONE

Two women running, chased through a snowy pine forest. One of them is Steph, the other her mother. A marine in power armor stops them. A bomb goes off.

Cut to Overseer Steph, either waking from a dream or remembering. She turns toward the camera, showing her ruined eye socket. When she rises, we see Chet asleep in bed beside her.

As Steph brushes her teeth, she remembers the moment when the explosion injured her mother. Dying, the mother sends Steph south, over the border.

Crosscut Overseer Steph vigorously brushing her teeth with younger Steph slicing a man’s throat so she can have his can of beans. From Canada, Steph is stopped at the American border by a guard. She kills him and walks through.

Roll title credits.

(I wasn’t aware of the Canada lore in Fallout prior to this episode. The quick summary: America took over their country and the Canadians hate the U.S. for colonizing them.)

Fallout: The Other Player

ONE

Pre-apocalypse. Barb sits through different Vault-Tec presentations, each more ridiculous. She looks like she’s about to lose her mind.

Title card: Barb

Young Hank enters the meeting between Barb and Fake Robert House to take notes. Opening a briefcase, House shows the remote mind-control device. “The automated man”, he calls it. Hank leans in for a better look. Barb tells House he has a number of vaults for his experiments, but House responds that Vault-Tec is trading him cold fusion for this.

When the meetings are over and Barb is alone, she closes the blinds so she can have a nervous breakdown. She looks at a photo of her family and weeps.

Roll title card.

The new film version of Wuthering Heights . . .

. . . is set to release for Valentine’s Day weekend. Production stills of the shoot have set the purist-minded internet (including me, lol) on edge. The costumes aren’t historically accurate, the casting for the dark-skinned Heathcliff (in a diversity-conscious Hollywood) is baffling, and the portrayal of teenager Cathy by an almost middle-aged actress, regardless of her fame and talent, upends much of the story’s intention.

If you’d like to buff up on the brutal (literally) truth about Emily Bronte’s novel, here’s a plot summary I wrote last year. Spoiler: Heathcliff and Cathy aren’t actually that romantic.

And if you’d prefer to watch a different trope-subverting (and very funny) movie for the holiday, I recommend 1997’s Addicted to Love.

Fallout: The Wrangler

ONE

Lucy and Ghoul Coop stare at the deathclaw emerging from the Gomorrah casino. Two more deathclaws approach from opposite ends of the street. Lucy and Coop dodge behind a car. Looking like Jurassic Park’s T-Rex, the deathclaw sniffs for them as it climbs on the roof.

Dogmeat runs away; Coop and Lucy follow, sliding under the security gate just out of reach of the (slowly) chasing deathclaw.

Roll title card.

TWO

Lucy and Ghoul Coop stand in Freeside looking at the boarded up section of Vegas. She wonders why her dad would go in there. Coop explains that a special vault, one for management is in there. His wife and daughter are in that vault. Of the handful of management vaults spread around the Wasteland, Coop has found them all and each one was empty.

Fallout: The Demon in the Snow

ONE

Gunfire, snow, and vertibirds.

Title card: The Alaskan Front

It’s the pre-apocalypse Battle of Anchorage. The Marines wear the janky T-45 power armor. Charlie’s left arm starts sparking and malfunctioning. Cooper orders him to return to base. Instead of following him, though, Coop continues his search for the missing unit. Falling snow and burning equipment in the dark make it hard to see.

TWO

Gunfire and approaching troops. Cooper tries to return fire, but his left leg armor sparks and locks up. He falls over like a tree. The Chinese soldiers approach and mock him as he lies helpless. Behind them, through the flames and snow, Cooper sees a beast approaching. We know what it is, although Coop doesn’t. He tries to signal with his eyes as the deathclaw comes up and eviscerates the troops. He’s terrified as the deathclaw breathes on his face. It leaves without touching him, though, and word comes over the radio that the battle is won. Cooper tries to say that it wasn’t the soldiers that routed the Chinese, but no one is listening.

Title card: Fallout

An overhead shot of Cooper lying on his side, helpless in the snow, is mirrored here as Max looks down at Xander’s dead body. It’s the moment immediately after Max drove the super sledge into Xander’s head at the end of the last episode.

Fallout: The Profligate

ONE

Thaddeus’ ghoulification has progressed. (He was briefly Max’s Squire, remember.)

TWO

He oversees children, some ghouled, whose job seems to be to drink Sunset Sarsparilla. The bottlecaps, Wasteland currency, are collected after the bottle is opened. He’s sympathetic and kind as he cracks the whip.

Title card: Fallout.

Lucy is a captive of the Legion. Slaves are tortured. Tunic Lady, who “lost her Legionary”, has her throat violently slit. Lucy reacts in shock.

Title card: The Legion.

THREE

She’s brought before Caesar. The Legate who cut Tunic Lady’s throat takes off his helmet in a prolonged reveal. It’s Macaulay Culkin. He refers to Lucy as “Profligate”.

Fallout: The Golden Rule

In Season One we learn that Shady Sands, a post-apocalypse, thriving community, is nuked by Hank. He wants only his controlled vaults, 31-33, to lead the world. Anyone not beholding to middle management should be stopped.

ONE

Episode Two of Season Two opens with the healthy Shady Sands. Boy Max lives here. His father invents a water purifier. The radiated water everyone’s been forced to accommodate is clean. Hope pervades the settlement.

A caravan man and his cart enter town. He robotically repeats the same phrase. Blood coming from his eyes, the man collapses in the center of town. People surround him, trying to help. When he curls over, the mind control device implanted at the base of his neck becomes visible. Max’s father quickly removes the tarp on the caravan cart. Underneath is a bomb.

(It’s an enlarged mini nuke design from the games with a Pip Boy interface. YAY!)

Joseph sends Max running for home and tries to dismantle the bomb’s timer. Closeup of the smiling Vault Boy as the Pip Boy screen informs him that by stopping the countdown Joseph has activated the fail safe. He runs.