Tamsen Webster explains how to find your core theme by listening for a movie's red thread, usually revealed early in the screenplay. She uses Forrest Gump's sponge metaphor as an example of how a favorite film can reveal ideas that match your own values and the problems you want to solve.
Trying to figure out what your red thread is, or even just a piece of it? Here's a hint: what's your favorite movie? Hiding in many screenplays on page 5, which is about 5 minutes into the script, is a secret that can help you figure out what your red thread, or at least a piece of it, might be. What is that? Well, this is something I first found out about from Steven Pressfield, who is an author and a blogger— amazing blog, by the way— but he mentioned that many screenplays, not all, follow a template of sorts where somewhere around page 5 the author of the screenplay writes in the theme of the movie. In other words, the red thread. In a seemingly meaningless piece of dialogue back and forth between characters or some other way, they will reveal what the whole movie is really about. The reason why I say if you're trying to figure out your red thread, go watch your favorite movie, is that if you listen for that and if that movie follows that template, you might be able to discover one of those pieces that really resonates for you. In other words, some idea that whatever the movie's about is something that you too believe. So take Forrest Gump, for example. On page 5 of that script is a conversation between Forrest and his mother, and it's not about life being like a box of chocolates. It's about the fact that each of us has different size sponges that we're given when we're born. And that, as Forrest's mother says to him, it's not about the size of the sponge, it's what you squeeze out of it. It's what you use it for. Now, for anyone for whom Forrest Gump is one of your favorite movies or it resonates with you, it might just be because you believe very strongly in that idea as well. So the next time you're trying to figure out what's my red thread or what's the problem that I'm drawn to solve or what are the solutions that I, I like to bring to bear? What is it that I really care about? What are my ideas? Go watch your favorite movie and see if there's a clue there.
