5 Screenwriting Takeaways: ‘The White Lotus’ is Mike White's musings on life at his best
August 2, 2021
The White Lotus is an uncomfortable watch. It feels like a much darker Wes Anderson meets the Safdie Brothers. Either way, it’s also distinctly Mike White. Much like Enlightened, which bore down on a mess of corporate whistleblowing in a pre #MeToo world, The White Lotus examines problematic people with an unflinching lens, asking difficult, and endlessly interesting questions of what it means to just try to exist in America today — often reminding the audience that money can help some problems, but often create many, many more.
Here are your five screenwriting takeaways from HBO's uncomfortable yet comedically invigorating summer limited series.
1. Suspense as story engine. In an opener reminiscent of both Big Little Lies and Knives Out, the show lets its audience know right at the top that someone on the isolated and lush White Lotus resort island will die over the course of the show. That builds-in suspects and suspicion right from the start of the story. And as the show evolves, there is both a whodunnit and a who might do this to themselves kind of feel as the audience gets to know the very personal issues each main character is dealing with.
3. The pleasures (and pains) of an ensemble cast. It’s rare to get a true ensemble, but White bounces back and forth between the various groups' stories and POVs effortlessly. It helps that he’s grouped people in families, and alone. Balancing an ensemble takes certain skills — screenwriters can get more Final Draft tips on crafting ensemble character arcs here — as each character requires very distinctive points of view, clear personal objectives, and a way to connect everyone even though they may at first seem totally disconnected. White masters them all as he so equally writes a bored teen as he does a man in a middle-aged crisis over his balls with eloquence, charm and ennui.
4. Vacation, all I ever wanted? There is a thematic statement here that Americans love a cure-all. An escape from what ails them; an easy fix. Vacation can be a metaphor for all of these things. Come back rested, tanned, better looking — “fixed.” Of course, like many things in America (and in live at large), this is an illusion. And White so wonderfully digs into this idea that there are no quick fixes. Your inner work (and ultimate happiness) can only come from truly doing it. Problems will follow you to the ends of the earth, particularly if you had a lot of them to begin with. It feels like an apt metaphor for where the world is now. Of course, we’d all like to escape the fears of everyday life that can now sometimes feel monumental as Covid ebbs and flows, but maybe, just maybe, all the crises will still force us to examine what really plagues us just a little bit harder.
5. The auteur of the uneasy. White has built a screenwriting career on the uneasy feeling of being alive. It started when he wrote himself as a misguided stalker in Chuck and Buck, and he clearly never looked back. Of course, it is a life of privilege to be engrossed in your own mini-drama, but that makes for a great foil when you juxtapose that with people whose drama is so literal they are giving birth in an office at a job they can’t quit (which feels like Parasite on an island paradise). What White’s greatest trick may be, is that he can paint anyone in a charming light. There are moments of sympathy even for polo shirt-wearing, abs-out and "Karen"-like Shane Patton (Lacey), which reminds us that everyone is dealing with something.
Final Takeaway: The White Lotus transports you somewhere that will cause you to question whether vacation is truly worth it, if it exposes all of your insecurities... Or perhaps that’s why we should all make time for vacation in the first place. When a soul finally gets to a place of quieting its thoughts, its dangerous tendencies are exposed and maybe better for those closest to know those dangers before repeating patterns, making mistakes, or just generally embarrassing oneself in paradise.
Written by: Lindsay Stidham
Lindsay holds an MFA in screenwriting from the American Film Institute. She has overseen two scripts from script to screen as a writer/ producer. SPOONER, starring Matthew Lillard (SLAMDANCE), and DOUCHEBAG (SUNDANCE) both released theatrically. Most recently Lindsay sold PLAY NICE starring Mary Lynn Rajskub. The series was distributed on Hulu. Recent directing endeavors include the Walla Walla premiering (and best screenplay nominated) TIL DEATH DO US PART, and the music video for Bible Belt’s Tomorrow All Today. Lindsay is currently working on an interactive romcom for the production company Effin' Funny, and a feature film script for Smarty Pants Pictures. Lindsay also currently works as an Adjunct Screenwriting Faculty member at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. You can follow her work here: https://lindsaystidham.onfabrik.com/- Topics:
- Screenwriting
- TV/Film
