I saw the movie Big Fish yesterday with the family. Three out of four Plante's liked the movie (only my 13-year old daughter was somewhat bored), so I can recommend it to you.

The end of the movie made use of a technique (twice, actually) that has attracted my attention as a writer several times before. I am not a student of film or screenwriting, so pardon me if there's a technical term for this technique, but I have come to think of it as the "curtain call" scene. In a movie or book with many characters, this is a scene that takes place after the major action has finished, to bring all the characters back together in a final scene and let them nod one more time to the camera.

A good movie example of the curtain call scene is at the end of Frank Capra's It's A Wonderful Life, where all the characters in Bedford Falls gather to help George Baily out of his fiscal jam, and sing Auld Lang Syne around the Christmas tree. It's schmaltzy, but it works for me. Another effective curtain call is at the end of James Cameron's Titanic, where the characters are all resurrected on the ghost-Titanic when Rose dies. Lord Of The Rings had a couple of curtain calls (coronations and weddings) and Star Wars episode IV had one, too. Lots of good movies have curtain calls, so it seems to be one of the screenwriter's standard tricks.

Perhaps the curtain call is less prevalent in the written word, but I remember a good one at the end of Lonesome Dove, where all the characters we met along the way were dredged back into the spotlight briefly as the book ends.

At this point in my life, I have only worked in short fiction. Obviously, the curtain call is best suited to longer works with many characters, so the opportunity to write such a scene hasn't really presented itself. Maybe one day I will start working on a novel (I say this all the time, by the way) and if I do, the curtain call is one of those bits of knowledge I've tucked away in my brain (and my little notepad), perhaps to make an appearance if it seems right for the story at hand.

The point is, I'm still learning the writing game. There's quite a lot to learn, actually.