Even Heartbreak Feels Good in a Script Like This
What makes Nicole Kidman’s AMC advertisement so easy to love?
It’s 2021. The Pfizer vaccine was just approved, COVID-19 restrictions have begun to lift, and for the first time in weeks, you’re feeling hopeful about leaving the house for longer than three hours at a time. It’s about time, too. You’re a bit lonely, and you just watched Squid Game on your iPhone.
But suddenly — a disembodied voice rings through your bedroom.
“We come to this place… for magic.”
You think, “Wait, was that Nicole Kidman?” And indeed, it is. From the mobile device that’s become your closest — and perhaps only — friend, you find her cherished AMC Theatres commercial.
The one minute video of Kidman monologuing from an empty theater is September 2021 in a nutshell. Kidman arrives at the theater mysteriously cloaked, walks around familiar velvet seats with contrived wonder, and dramatically praises moviegoing, a pastime that peaked in popularity in the 1930s.
The commercial is aggressively topical. Over-eager. It tries so hard to be cool, it’s automatically disqualified from the distinction. And four years later, so many of our questions have still been left unanswered. Why was there a budget of $25 million? Did AMC find Hillary Clinton in a diamond mine, or is there a better reason Kidman is wearing a rhinestone pantsuit?
But most notably, what makes this AMC advertisement so easy to love?
The answer: sheer writing talent. The commercial, for all its campy quirks, is written well, deftly tugging the strings of space, tension, and nostalgia. We adore this video for the same reason we laud our favorite pieces of literature, and why wouldn’t we? Even the most mundane assignments deserve the full range of skills today’s writers have to offer.
Yes, AMC’s 2021 advertisement is one of the greatest pieces of 21st Century American writing. But to unpack this revelation, let’s turn our gaze to the visionary who began this saga: AMC CEO Adam Aron.
In 2021, Aron needed fresh creative juice. Box office revenue across the U.S. and Canada was catastrophically low, streaming services had officially enraptured Americans, and to no one’s sympathy, Aron’s pay had fallen almost 10% to a meager $18.9 million. But amidst his despair, an epiphany dawned: Aron needed a star of the silver screen to rescue him and his business. He needed an Orpheus for casual moviegoers to follow back to the world of the living.
He needed Nicole Kidman.
Luckily for Aron, Nicole Kidman didn’t just agree to the project — she brought a friend with her. Tapping in Oscar-nominated screenwriter Billy Ray, the actress set out to make a cinematic commercial for going to the cinema.
Even with global tragedies blanketing news headlines in 2021, Ray managed to write us a morsel of campy, unadulterated goodness that cut through the fog. The commercial accrued millions of views on YouTube, amassed a cult following of dedicated fans, and earned Nicole Kidman a much deserved moniker as the “patron saint” of movie theaters.
And it’s clear why. The drama is evident from the first scene, which features a four-inch stiletto puncturing the AMC logo’s reflection in a puddle, and builds in the second scene, where Kidman removes an oversized hood from her face to gaze longingly at the theater marquee.
“We’ve come to this place… for magic,” says Kidman in her opening line. “We come to AMC theaters to laugh, to cry, to care.” It’s a vapid tricolon for an audience that spent more than a year laughing, crying, and caring from their bedrooms as the world stood still, but Kidman delivers it with such earnestness, that for a moment, you can’t help but believe her.
From there, Kidman beckons the viewer forward, foregoing the typical cinema lure of a crisp Coke and artificial butter for a promise she cannot possibly guarantee (but does all the same): magic. “We go somewhere we’ve never been before,” chants Kidman. “Not just entertained, but somehow reborn. Together.” So much of the post-pandemic rhetoric emphasized what we lost, but here, Kidman promised paradise regained. Paradise now. Paradise at AMC Theatres.
Everything about Kidman’s script is quirky, compelling, and enchanting. And that’s by screenwriter Billy Ray’s design. Ray is perhaps best known for writing the script to the first Hunger Games movie, and though you never get the sense that Kidman will be rushed into battle, there’s a similar sense of collective urgency. Ray’s frequent use of “we come to” and “we need that” imbues the text with action. In the midst of a plague of loneliness brought about by COVID-19, here was a communal entreaty: let’s go to the movies.
As writers, we recognize these as advanced rhetorical techniques. Surely Billy Ray must have spent at least a month on this. Right? Wrong. Billy Ray had just one paltry hour to work on his masterpiece. Despite temporal restrictions, he delivered beautiful work — his best, some might even say.
According to the decorated screenwriter, “Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place like this?” is “the best line [he] ever wrote.”
Billy Ray proves the beauty of writing doesn’t rest in its vessel; any piece of writing can earn literary merit with the right amount of eagerness. Anything can be a great script when you give yourself the courage to pull it off. We don’t have to wait for the next Hunger Games reboot to showcase our writing chops because for all we try, we can’t pick and choose the pieces that will carry on our legacy.
So, to every writer reading this, holding out for their next prestige project, I offer you this: stop waiting. Instead, write everything you have time for — no matter how minute it may seem. Write website copy. Write thank you cards. Write your phone number on napkins, even.
Pursue whimsy.
Be trivial.
Because we come to this blank page for magic. Go out there and make it.
– Ananya Udaygiri (WWW intern)
In “Orations Worth Ovations,” professional speechwriters analyze great speeches (real or fictional, historic or personal) and explain what makes them so good.
Follow West Wing Writers on LinkedIn.
