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I've studied the popular teachings about structuring a screenplay, but I'm looking for something more (either that or I'm asking a questino that can't be answered, one each writer must make for himself).  I've struggled with a script for over a year now looking for the "key" that unlocks the structure for this story -- the right way to tell it.  Once I find that, it will give me space to include all the elements I want, the elements that need to be told -- it will allow this story to "work."  I've been writing (in other forms) professionally since 1979.  I know the main structures for newspaper articles, magazine articles and books.  I've learned to enjoy the process of discovering it for these forms.  But I haven't found any way that will unlock the structure for telling stories in screenplay form.  Any ideas, helps, hints, clues?

I think that Lecter has to be one of the greatest villains of all time simply because I always found myself rooting for him. I think that one of the reasons that people empathize with Lecter is his disdain for the rude and arrogant, yet incompetent, among us...the "free range rude" amongst society. Pretty much everyone he killed was an asshole. I have definitely had days in which I have encountered people and thought, or even said, "Hannibal Lecter would feed that person to someone".

I could sense the humanity of Luke Skywalker in the very first frame in which he appeared in Star Wars and so my empathy naturally gravitated to him. by contrast, the makers of Gladiator spent half the film trying to create empathy for Maximus but to me he was just a stuffed tunic. so by default my interest gravitated to Commodus who though sick and twisted was at least recognizable as a human being. likewise, the writer of Silence Of The Lambs spent a lot of time trying to create empathy for Starling but I just felt she was the kind of person who would throw her best friend under a bus if she thought it would help her career. Starling’s boss was a non-person and so by default my interest gravitated to Lecter who though a cannibal was at least a cannibal you could trust…a cannibal with integrity.

Hahah! I'm glad someone said something about saving the cat.