American Experience

David Grubin
on Choosing the Emblematic Material

RealAudio

The key in making a film biography, which is going to be four hours of television, is to choose the essential material, the emblematic material. Film is not very good on giving lots and lots of facts, lots and lots of information, but it can be very good at giving emblematic information. For instance, we want to give a portrait, we want to communicate the idea that TR learned the lessons from his father of noblesse oblige, that he ought to be responsible for those in need. How do you do that? How do you find that image that tells that, that gives you a portrait of that in, that's so strong it only takes two or three minutes for you to get it? The way we did that was to construct the dinner table scene in which TR's father is entertaining his very wealthy guests and brings them in to the dining room and in the dining room are people who are crippled and poor and TR's father turns to his friends and says you have to give money to help them. That scene for us was an emblem of the idea of noblesse oblige. The key in making any film narrative is to find these emblematic moments, these moments in the narrative that will speak to the essential idea that you're trying to communicate.