6 0 April 2017
'The Night Of' complicates conventional scriptwriting
formulas. The lawyer saves the cat, but the cat saves
him. When Naz gets his saviour back all characters
are freed to empathise, and survive.
by Cormac Deane
Movie-scriptwriting
manual ‘Save
the Cat’ advises
to insert a scene
early in your script
where the hero
does something –
like saving a cat –
that makes us like
him
Saving
the Cat
I
N THE first episode of HBO’s recent TV murder series,
‘The Night Of’, a wealthy young New Yorker is
stabbed to death in her bed after a night of drink and
drugs with the driver of a cab that she happens to
get into. He’s a New Yorker too, but he’s from a Paki-
stani background and he has none of her privilege or
wealth. We know from the outset that he, Naz, is not the
killer, and we have little expectation at any point that the
real killer will be exposed.
For a murder series, then, it gives us little in the way
of whodunnit resolution. The real story here, in fact, is
the dysfunction of a legal system that is dedicated to
procedure and protocol, and fully uninterested in truth
or justice. The only thing that Naz has going for him is
that he didn’t do it, and it is quickly made clear to him
that this is irrelevant. Above all, his lawyer cynically and
truthfully tells him, Naz has to learn to keep his mouth
shut. Anything he says is evidence, the lawyer warns,
and it will be taken down and used against him.
It fits that it’s the lawyer, John Stone, who is at the
centre of this world of ‘whatever you say, say nothing’.
Played with aplomb by John Turturro, he is a shambolic
bottom-feeder of the criminal justice system, an expert
in advising clients who are on minor charges to plea bar
-
gain, and an expert in avoiding going to trial. His cheesy
advertisements in the subway promise “No fee until
you’re free” and he hands out his glossy calling card at
every opportunity. He’s the wrong lawyer for Naz, who
knows no better, but he’s the right man.
He’s the right man because he knows what it is to
suffer. This is literally, prominently, the case. John
Stone suffers from debilitating eczema, particularly on
his feet, causing him to wear sandals wherever he goes,
a fact which nobody seems to be able to ignore. His
search for a treatment for his suffering comprises a sig-
nificant subplot throughout the series, and practically
MEDIA
April 2017 6 1
all of its comic moments.
Midway through this story, the eczema suddenly dis
-
appears and he exultantly puts on lawyer’s shoes for the
first day of the trial. He attributes the improvement to a
Chinese herbal remedy that he’s been taking, though it
doesn’t rescue him permanently and the eczema sud-
denly returns later on. The respite is brief and anomalous
unless you note, as my more observant viewing partner
did, that it coincides with his caring for a cat.
The cat’s owner is the murder victim, and it poses a
problem for John Stone. Visiting the scene of the crime
as part of his evidence-gathering, he finds the cat hungry
and needy. He cannot take it in, as he suffers from aller-
gies, as we have already seen in some detail. So he takes
it to the shelter, a prison-house of unseen howling
canines, and reluctantly leaves it there.
But, just as he cannot ignore the plight of Naz, whom
he first walks past at the police station on ‘the night of’,
he cannot forget about the cat either. So sure enough,
he takes it in, housing it in a segregated room in his
apartment. The work of caring for the cat (food, litter,
toys, protective masks, gloves, vacuum cleaners) fully
unmasks him as a decent human being, unconsciously
searching for an outlet for his love and a way of tackling
his fear of contamination. Now there is a creature in the
house to whom he can holler ‘I’m going out!’ when he’s
going out.
However, back in the real world of courts, legal fees,
cops, prison, racism and sensationalist media, John
Stone finds himself sidelined by a far more qualified and
classy lawyer. Naz fires his saviour reluctantly when it is
pointed out to him how thoroughly unqualified John
Stone is to do the job. What does John Stone do? He reap-
pears at the awful pound, a clear allegory for Naz’s
prison, the cat in a cardboard box for a household
bleach, fittingly. Once rid of the cat, he is struck down
by his eczema and all of the Weltschmerz that goes with
it. He cannot see the link, as it makes no sense. He’s
allergic to cats, or he thinks he is, so how could he?
It’s a tragic string of developments. The cat is back on
death row, our lawyer protagonist is alone and suffering,
and Naz is being represented by a lawyer who has only
her own interests at heart. She tells him to plea bargain,
but he wants to insist he didn’t do it. She’s not interested
in his innocence. While at the dark heart of it all, nobody
is thinking of the cat’s owner and nobody looks like find-
ing out who killed her.
If I may insert a spoiler alert here: things end well. It’s
a little surprising, as the realism of so many American
TV series nowadays ('The Wire', 'Breaking Bad', 'True
Detective', 'House of Cards', 'Homeland', 'Westworld')
specialises in hopelessness and the impossibility of
redemption. ‘The Night Of' sets us up to expect more of
the same. Most characters are more bound by their
mutual dislike than by anything else. Cops show no sym-
pathy for each other, lawyers are the assholes you’d
expect them to be, expert witnesses are mendacious and
pliable, prisoners are murderous, judges are smugly
tyrannical, and nobody grieves the victim. But in many
ways, things come right, even to the point that we could
call Episode 8 a happy ending.
Maybe the most successful movie-scriptwriting book
of the last decade or so is called, coincidentally enough,
'Save the Cat'. Blake Snyder’s short book is a lively col
-
lection of witty and sane advice about how to mimic the
patterns of narrative that underpin the biggest box-
office hits. Its formulaic approach and unavowed
commercial instincts mean that it is perhaps more
despised (at least in public) than admired, but it is a fair
guess that this ‘last book on screenwriting you’ll ever
need’ has been an influential little volume.
Snyder’s advice is to insert a scene relatively early in
your script “where we meet the hero and the hero does
something – like saving a cat – that defines who he is
and makes us, the audience, like him”. The writers of
'The Night Of' are about as well regarded as they come
in the industry – Steven Zaillian wrote ‘Schindler’s List’,
‘Awakenings’, and ‘Gangs of New York’, and Richard Price
wrote ‘The Color of Money’ and parts of ‘The Wire’,
among other things. And then there’s John Turturro
bringing all of the kudos and wit of all of the films by the
Coen Brothers and Spike Lee that he has appeared in
down the years. It gets better: an honorary credit as
executive producer is given to the late James Gandolfini,
the venerated star of the venerated 'Sopranos', who was
initially slated to star in this. Does it seem likely that
these are readers (users) of Snyder’s book and its untrou-
bled cheerleading for simple narratives and happy
endings?
Snyder’s point in recommending that the hero saves
the cat is this: “A screenwriter must be mindful of getting
the audience ‘in sync' with the plight of the hero from the
very start”. It’s not an exotic piece of advice, nor is it
dumb, but it is definitely obvious. 'The Night Of' compli-
cates the device a little. The lawyer saves the cat, but the
cat saves him. When he loses his saviour (as happens to
Naz), we want him to get him back. And when he does,
the moral core of the whole narrative softens and the
path is cleared for all characters to conduct their capac-
ity for empathy and, simply, to survive.
Cormac Deane lectures in film, television and media at
the Institute of Art, Design and Technology
'The Night Of' complicates the
device a little. The lawyer saves
the cat, but the cat saves him.

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