The adventures of a professional screenwriter and sometimes film festival jurist, slogging through the trenches of Hollywood, writing movies that you have never heard of, and getting no respect. Voted #10 - Best Blogs For Screenwriters - Bachelor's Degree
There's a great new documentary video series focusing on the 20 TV episodes that Hitchcock directed called HITCH 20. This episode is BACK FOR CHRISTMAS which stars Hitchcock regular John Williams (TO CATCH A THIEF) as a henpecked husband who finds a permanent solution to his marital problems. In my Thriller class, I talk about the importance of comedy in a thriller to balance the story and make the thrills even more thrilling (peaks and valleys), and this episode has a great light comedy tone which heightens the suspense. Hitch called PSYCHO a comedy... and this episode is as funny as a steel pipe to the side of the head!
There is one more episode of HITCH 20 in this season, which I'll post next Friday.
Of course, I have my own books focusing on Hitchcock...
Bill
- Bill
HITCHCOCK: MASTERING SUSPENSE
LEARN SUSPENSE FROM THE MASTER!
Alfred Hitchcock, who directed 52 movies, was known as the “Master Of Suspense”; but what exactly is suspense and how can *we* master it? How does suspense work? How can *we* create “Hitchcockian” suspense scenes in our screenplays, novels, stories and films?
This book uses seventeen of Hitchcock’s films to show the difference between suspense and surprise, how to use “focus objects” to create suspense, the 20 iconic suspense scenes and situations, how plot twists work, using secrets for suspense, how to use Dread (the cousin of suspense) in horror stories, and dozens of other amazing storytelling lessons. From classics like “Strangers On A Train” and “The Birds” and “Vertigo” and “To Catch A Thief” to older films from the British period like “The 39 Steps” and “The Man Who Knew Too Much” to his hits from the silent era like “The Lodger” (about Jack The Ripper), we’ll look at all of the techniques to create suspense!
Films Included: NOTORIOUS, SABOTAGE, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, THE 39 STEPS, REBECCA, TO CATCH A THIEF, FRENZY, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, THE LODGER, THE BIRDS, TORN CURTAIN, SABOTEUR, VERTIGO, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934), THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1955), SUSPICION, and NUMBER SEVENTEEN. 17 Great Films!
We all know that Alfred Hitchcock was the Master Of Suspense, but did you know he was the most *experimental* filmmaker in history?
Contained Thrillers like “Buried”? Serial Protagonists like “Place Beyond The Pines”? Multiple Connecting Stories like “Pulp Fiction”? Same Story Multiple Times like “Run, Lola, Run”? This book focuses on 18 of Hitchcock’s 53 films with wild cinema and story experiments which paved the way for modern films. Almost one hundred different experiments that you may think are recent cinema or story inventions... but some date back to Hitchcock’s *silent* films! We’ll examine these experiments and how they work. Great for film makers, screenwriters, film fans, producers and directors.
Films Examined: “Rear Window”, “Psycho”, “Family Plot”, “Topaz”, “Rope”, “The Wrong Man”, “Easy Virtue”, “Lifeboat”, “Bon Voyage”, “Aventure Malgache”, “Elstree Calling”, “Dial M for Murder”, “Stage Fright”, “Champagne”, “Spellbound”, “I Confess”, and “The Trouble with Harry”, with glances at “Vertigo” and several others.
Professional screenwriter William C. Martell takes you into the world of The Master Of Suspense and shows you the daring experiments that changed cinema. Over 77,000 words.
The spider web fills the screen, it's Boris Karloff's THRILLER!
Season: 1, Episode: 34. Airdate: May 23, 1961
Director: Herschel Daugherty Writer: Robert Arthur Cast: Henry Daniell, Lloyd “It’s a cookbook” Bochner, Marion Ross. Music: Morton Stevens Cinematography: Benjamin Kline Producer: William Frye.
Boris Karloff’s Introduction: “The hand of death strikes suddenly, and without regard for the plain, the beautiful, the bad or the good. For when the hand of death is controlled by a force of evil the consequences can defy belief. Our story tonight concerns just such a force and it features a most unusual star: This mirror. In it you will see our players caught in a strange reflection. Mr. Lloyd Bochner, Miss Marion Ross, Mr. Jack Mullaney, Miss Pat Michon, and Mr. Henry Daniell. So be prepared to gaze through a glass darkly. But don’t! Please don’t stand too close! I should hate to see this happen to any of you.”
(Break to continue the prologue story in 1910)
“Young Robert was no murderer, nor was he mad as he may have seemed. He was a victim of one of the most diabolical practitioners of black magic ever known, Count Alessandro Cagliostro. Only a legend you say? Well, perhaps, but that’s for you to decide. Now we resume our tale, more than half a century later.”
(Now to present day)
Synopsis:Paris, 1910: The elegant Robert de Chantenay (David Frankham) and woman Marie Blanchard (Erika Peters) sip champagne in a restaurant. Robert does some amazing slight of hand magic producing a bouquet of roses, a bird, a diamond necklace! She is amazed and amused and wants more. He uses the diamond necklace to hypnotize her... but the end of his hypnosis is a frightening: “Life transformed into death.” He suddenly turns into a skeleton, and puts the necklace around her neck with a boney hand! Who is Robert de Chantenay? A sorcerer? A demon?
Later, Robert paints the mirror in his room black... when there is a knock at the door. It is his Mother (Frieda Inescort), who says there are men downstairs who want to speak to him... *police*men! They have a warrant for his arrest for the murder of Marie! Robert tells his Mother that he is innocent, but could never prove it... so he jumps out a window to his death! Splat! On the cobblestones below.
Back to Karloff for the second half of his introduction, then...
Paris, Today: In the Societe Curiosites Historiques, Professor Harry Langham (Lloyd Bochner) is investigating the historical figure known as Count Alesssandro Cagliostro but is warned not to by Professor Thibault (Peter Brocco) because Cagliostro was pure evil... undying evil. They are interrupted by Harry’s research assistant Fred Forrest (Jack Mullaney) who reminds Harry of an appointment. Harry tells Thibault that his research has lead him to look for a large mirror owned by Cagliostro that was acquired by Robert de Chantenay and sold soon after his suicide in 1910. Thibault suggests he look through the records at Armand’s, where every valuable antique bought or sold or stolen in Paris has been catalogued. Professor Thibault still wants Harry to abandon his quest for information about Cagliostro and offers to take him to the tomb of Yvette Dulaine, a favorite at the court of Louis The Sixteenth who fell under the spell of Cagliostro which lead to a strange and terrible fate. A dark tomb of a beautiful woman who suffered a terrible fate? Who could say no to that?
The Tomb: downstairs, gated and padlocked. Dark and creepy. Harry asks, “How did she die?” Thibault answers, “Did she die at all?” He opens the coffin and... Yvette (Patricia Michon) looks exactly the same as when she died in 1780. Is she dead or under a spell? Harry looks at her, she’s young and attractive... forever. Also probably dead. Is he falling in love with a dead woman? How could she remain so well preserved?
Harry talks to Mssr. Armand (Louis Mercier), who has a huge collection of antique mirrors... including one covered with black paint which was once owned by Robert de Chantenay. When Armand steps away to speak with someone else, Harry begins to remove the paint seeing the reflection of himself... and Yvette standing behind him!
Boston, Today: Professor Harry’s house, Fred and his sister Kay (Marion Ross looking nothing like Richie’s mom on HAPPY DAYS) are unpacking the mirror that Harry paid a fortune for in Paris. Cagliostro’s mirror? Fred wants Kay to hurry up and marry Harry so that he’ll settle down and stop these obsessive searches for weird historical artifacts. That’s when Harry comes home, kisses Kay, and asks Fred to help him carry the mirror upstairs. They place the mirror in the bedroom, and as soon as Fred and Kay are gone, Harry looks into the mirror for Yvette. He scrapes off the rest of the paint, until it’s a normal mirror again. No reflections but his own. Harry pulls up a chair to watch the mirror... and as darkness falls outside, he goes downstairs to dinner.
Professor Fred has dinner with his fiance Kay, who asks why he’s so distant. He tells her the story of Yvette... forever young and dead in that crypt. Kay wonders if he’s fallen in love with... a corpse. How can she compete with that? After dinner Harry goes up to his room and look at the mirror again. He is *obsessed* with Dead Yvette! Kay’s fears are not unfounded.
In the middle of the night, a weird reflection in the mirror: a flame? Yes! It’s Yvette lighting candles on “her side” of the mirror. Her side of the mirror is another room in another time, and Harry is not reflected there. It’s as if the mirror is a portal into another world. Harry talks to the mirror, on “her side” Yvette shakes her head when asked if she can speak... he wants to help her. Maybe he wants to kiss her, too, but Kay knocks on the door. She was worried about him. He was acting strangely at dinner, and then raced upstairs afterwards. Is he okay? Harry opens the door, but wants to keep her away from the mirror (and Yvette, the other woman in his life)... Then asks her to look in the mirror and tell him what she sees. Kay moves to the mirror, looks straight into the glass... but only sees her own reflection. The world on the other side of the mirror has vanished! “She’s gone! You scared her away!” He yells at Kay to get out of the room. She thinks he may have gone a little crazy and splits. He *has* gone a little crazy...
When Harry goes back to the mirror, instead of Yvette’s reflection in that other world he sees “another victim of Count Alexander Cagliosto” (the awesome Henry Daniel) who claims Cagliostro’s evil spell has made him and Yvette prisoners in this mirror... and Harry can help them escape. Harry looks at the beautiful Yvette, he can help her escape? All he has to do is repeat aloud one of Cagliostro’s spells... and then the Man hypnotizes Harry. Hey, that’s not a victim of Cagliostro, that’s the evil man himself! As Harry speaks back the spell, Cagliostro orders his soul to join them in the mirror... and Harry’s soul gets up from the chair (his body left behind) and walks *into the mirror*! Joining them on the other side! This is done in one shot, by the way: which is totally cool. A “how did they do that?” moment.
Harry wakes up in the mirror world...
Where Cagliostro tells him that he has left his body unoccupied by a soul, which will allow Cagliostro to occupy it! Harry watches as Cagliostro exist the mirror and enters Harry’s sleeping body on the other side... and then his body awakens! Harry has allowed the evil of Cagliostro to be release once more upon the world! He is trapped in the mirror with Yvette while his body goes on an evil rampage!
The body of Harry picks up some hot babe named Laura (Pamela Curran) in a sleazy waterfront bar, does some slight of hand magic to make flowers appear and gives them to her. He takes her for a walk in the moonlight...
Wakes up the next morning and has a conversation with Harry’s soul, trapped in the mirror. A knock on the bedroom door... and Kay says there’s a man downstairs to see you... a Policeman (echo from the opening scene!). Harry/Cagliostro tells Key he’ll talk to the Policeman in private, and then apologizes to her for acting strange these past few days. When Kay leaves, Harry/Cagliostro goes to the mirror and tells Harry that he plans on nailing her later. Why wait until after the marriage for the honeymoon? How can Harry get out of the mirror world and stop him?
Harry/Cagliostro goes downstairs and talks to Sgt. Burke from Homicide (Walter Reed) who wants to know where he was at 3AM this morning. Harry says he was here, working. Burke says that a cop on the beat saw him enter the house at 4:15 AM. Harry explains that he took a walk at 4AM. Well, Sgt Burke say it seems that one of his students saw him leave the bar with Laura... who was later found murdered. Harry/Cagliostro says he isn’t exactly the type to hang out in bars like that, and his students shouldn’t be, either. I mean, he’s a college professor! What would he be doing in such a place? Obviously a case of mistaken identity. Sgt. Burke leaves, agreeing that it’s most likely a case of mistaken identity.
Then Harry/Cagliostro lays a massive kiss on Kay. Rotor rooter tongue action!
That night Harry/Cagliostro and Kay leave for a night on the town, passing Fred... who has a copy of the paper with the murder headline in his hands.
In the mirror world, Harry is trapped... worried about Kay.
Fred goes up to Harry’s room to look for clues to Harry’s recent strange actions (is he the killer of that woman?), but as much as Harry yells from inside the mirror, Fred can not hear him. Fred eventually falls asleep in the chair facing the mirror...
Harry/Cagliostro and Kay come back from their night out and Kay wants a cigarette, looks in Harry’s coat pocket and finds some women’s ear rings... which match the ear rings in the newspaper photo of the murdered girl that Fred left on the table. Suspense: is her fiancé a killer? What should she do? Run? Wimpy women run, Kay confronts Harry/Cagliostro... who takes the ear ring out of her hands and uses it to hypnotize her!
Fred hears a noise and goes downstairs, finding Kay... murdered! Fred chases Harry/Cagliostro upstairs into the bedroom. They have a big fight, and *the mirror breaks*! Harry/Cagliostro dies... and Harry’s soul is trapped with Yvette in the mirror world forever!
Review: That might be a happy ending, since he gets the girl, or a frightening ending because he should have been more careful what he wished for!
On a message board we’re talking about how amazingly high concept TWILIGHT ZONES were, considering they were made on sixties TV show budgets. This is another example of what you can do on a very limited budget. We not only have the idea of the mirror world, we have *body swapping* years before FREAKY FRIDAY! The great thing about body swapping is that it’s just two actors acting like each other. What does that cost? Here it’s particularly sinister because we have an evil man taking joy rides in other people’s bodies and leaving the body owner to clean up the mess (or commit suicide because there is no way to clean it up). It’s a frightening idea, and it’s dirt cheap to film.
The Mirror World is another great idea that costs nothing (but talent) to film. The “sells it shot” where Harry’s soul detaches from his body and walks into the mirror is done with two simple shots. One is a double exposure with the camera locked down and Harry sitting in the chair, then a shot of harry getting up and walking away from the chair. Marry them and you have one Harry sitting as a translucent Harry gets up and walks away from his sitting self. The other shot is a little more complicated, but still not a budget buster. We see Harry *walk into the mirror* and disappear from this side as he exists only in the other side! All one shot. Of course, this is a $1.98 special effect where the mirror is just a frame with the “mirror world” on the other side. Harry just walks up to the frame, steps over it, and continues walking on the other side where Yvette is. Then he turns and looks out at a shot of his body in that chair. The Marx Brothers did a more complicated version of this in DUCK SOUP for laughs. When the mirror world disappeared, they just put a mirror in that frame! Though they didn’t do this for the episode, if you wanted to do this now I’d get a semi silvered mirror (two way mirror) and you could make a real reflection fade out into the mirror world without any cuts at all. (It looks like they might have done this in the episode, but the fade is too quick.) If you are doing a low budget movie you have to use much more imagination... that’s what you have instead of money. Same was true in television when this episode was made.
The echo scene of the police coming to talk to Robert in 1910 Paris and later Harry in present day America is great because we know the outcome of the Robert scene and fear that this will be the outcome for Harry as well. Things like this work in any genre and create suspense and dread... at no cost.
Henry Daniell was in five episode of THRILLER and is one of those great hambone British actors who just stole every second he was on screen. No one could be as deliciously evil as Daniell. He was an excellent Professor Moriarty in the Universal Sherlock Holmes movies and costarred with Karloff in THE BODY SNATCHER in 1945.
Marion Ross, Mrs. Cunningham from HAPPY DAYS, is a that young wholesome woman you’d take home to the parents and marry. She’s young and attractive, but not in an overt sexual way. This totally works for the story, because it’s one thing for Cagliostro to rape and murder some slutty bar girl, but much more shocking if it’s the super nice virgin. I realize that’s just plain wrong to say: it’s awful either way. But the in visual shorthand it’s one thing to kill a growling pittbull and another to kill a cute puppy. Yeah, both are dead dogs, but audience’s make value judgements and sometimes we use those value judgements for dramatic purposes.
Lloyd Bochner is one of those actors who are *everywhere*. The year after this he would be on TWILIGHT ZONE in Richard Matheson’s TO SERVE MAN, and he’s *everywhere*. He’s in my favorite film POINT BLANK, he’s a villain on THE WILD WILD WEST, he’s on both THE MAN and THE GIRL FROM UNCLE, he’s on HOAGN’S HEROES and IT TAKES A THIEF, he’s on MISSION IMPOSSIBLE and COLUMBO. He has 202 show credits on IMDB and some of those are TV shows where he was a recurring character, so it’s *hundreds* of total credits! This is a guy who could play heroes and villains and everything in between. This is his only THRILLER episode, and TO SERVE MAN was his only TWILIGHT ZONE episode, but he is memorable in both.
Though this episode isn’t as scary as some of the other horror eps, it has a creepy idea that sticks with you. What if someone could take your body for a joyride?
This new Film Courage segment (okay, 2015) is in response to a question about the fastest I have ever written a screenplay, and I decided to take it in a different direction and talk about *how* to write fast - because how you are going to make some insane deadline when it pops up might be worrying you a little. So let’s get to the clip...
I have written screenplays faster than 2 weeks, but who the hell cares? I know a couple of writers who did a FADE IN to FADE OUT race - all nighters. Hey, that's cool. Not sure when writing a screenplay in a weekend is ever really going to come up (might be good practice for TV, though). But congratulations if you managed to do that and end up with a great script - some people can. But *speed* and *accuracy* are two things professional writers need when crazy deadlines pop up... and they will. Nobody cares if you wrote a screenplay in a weekend if it stinks... and nobody cares if you spent 2 years writing your masterpiece and it was due 23 months ago. Both are problems. You need to be able to deliver quality work on a deadline, and sometimes an insane deadline. I know that I have mentioned before having to rewrite most of Act Three of an HBO World Premiere script *overnight* when we lost a location, because we were filming it the next morning... and because scenes are shot out of order, I needed *all* of Act Three rewritten by the morning call time.
In the interview I talk about a few times where I’ve had only 2 weeks to write a script (or less), that’s not how it normally works. Depending on the project, you are usually given a month to 12 weeks - sometimes more, in your contract. But just because they give you several months in your contract doesn’t mean they want you to wait until the last minute to turn in the script. I know a pair of writers who turn in their scripts at the very last minute... and I think their careers have suffered because of it. Just like anything else - you don’t want to wait until the last minute to do the work. Usually what will happen is the producer will call for a progress report, and though they sound happy and cheerful, what they really mean is “Where the hell is my script, slacker?” So even when you have a reasonable amount of time to write a screenplay, you don’t want to wait until the last minute...
And there may be times when you have an Unreasonable amount of time to write a screenplay, and it still has to be amazing. Because many of my assignments were for Made For TV or Made For Cable networks, we had an airdate *before* I started writing the screenplay. If that seems crazy to you - when are the next Marvel movies coming out? In this business they usually know when a film is coming out long before they have begun shooting it! A few of my projects were to fill a “hole” when another film dropped out at the last minute - and I had two weeks to write the script that went out to talent (who we were trying to get cheap - so the script needed to wow them). How do you do that? How do you write *good* and *fast*?
HAVE A PLAN
Prep time is your superpower - use it wisely!
I solve all of the basic story problems in the outline stage, including things like character purpose. Supporting Characters always serve the story. In the outline stage I make sure that the story is the very best that it can be - so I *work* my outline. It’s not just a jotted down list of things that happen, I go over and over it and make sure that everything happens in the best order. I want to find any story problems at this stage. Some of you don’t work from an outline because you think that it stifles creativity - but nothing is further from the truth. The outline is a *creative step*. For me the fun is writing for reader reaction within a scene. To lead the reader to believe A when B is true. Create emotions and twists and turns *within the scene* - so the outline is one creative step and the writing itself becomes another creative step. I focus on the story itself in the outline stage, and I focus on *telling the story* in the writing stage. That way I can perfect the way the story works, and I don’t have to worry about that aspect while writing it. If I have the story the best it can be in Treatment, I can focus on HOW I tell it within scene while writing. How to create impact, emotions. How to deepen character moments. I have more time for those things in in 2 weeks of writing because I have already figured out the very best way that the story can work in the outline stage, which is required for me to turn in a Treatment.
Treatment?
When you are working on an assignment, usually it works in steps... and that means you won’t have to do everything at once. The first step is a treatment, and on a normal project you may have a full month to write the treatment... on many of the crazy projects I’ve done, I’ve had a week or less to turn in a treatment. A couple were 3 days. That’s not much time to get the story aspect as close to perfect as possible, but there’s a loophole in “Reading Periods” which we will look at a bit later.
Much of your prep work will take place in that week (or 3 days). If you can figure out the basic story and characters and then do a beat sheet that you can turn into a treatment in a week, you’ll be okay. Most of the time they wanted about a 15 page treatment, and I could write that in a day from a beat sheet, so even if I only had 3 days, that was two days of “breaking the story” and figuring out the characters. Yeah, sometimes very long days, I can sleep later! Though you may need to compress some of your prep work to get that treatment done if you only have 3 days, and you may end up skipping some steps that you would normally do, and putting in some long hours. I think one of the things that helps me is having a working method to “break” the story, that I call the Thematic Method, and is in the Outline Blue Book.
After they read the treatment they’ll send you off to write the screenplay. Your contract will have a writing period for the first draft and a reading period for them to read it... or read the coverage... or have their assistant give them a 2 minute briefing on the way to the meeting. On a normal production there’s plenty of time... But my 2 week situations have all been about meeting an airdate or production start date or a window for a star or a funding source - and they need the script ASAP, so you need to get the rear in gear and write it. If there isn’t a hard deadline, and you’re just going by your contract - the producer will want it sooner rather than later - even though they may sit on it without reading it for weeks. Once they’ve commissioned the script, they want to see it as soon as possible. That doesn’t mean do a half assed job writing it - turning in crap on time is still turning in crap - but it does mean getting the work done as soon as possible.
So you have 2 weeks to write a feature length screenplay that is going out to stars... so it has to be great. How do you do that?
FOLDERS OF CHEATS
In addition to getting the outline the very best that it can be, I also work on characters in this week or two days or whatever. Again, the Thematic Method is a big help - I don’t write character bios as much as know the secrets and fears and goals and needs of my characters, plus have “dialogue patterns” - I make sure that every character has a different way of saying yes and no, hello and goodbye, I come up with their pet words and phrases and speech patterns and any mannerisms or physical actions that will help define them. One page per character. It’s easier to just write this stuff down, than to keep flipping back through the pages to find the last time the character said “Hello” and make sure that it’s consistent. All of these elements are *character related* - and are ways of showing the characters. I posted some lines of dialogue from PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN on FaceBook a few days ago, and all of Jack Sparrow’s dialogue is filled with sentences with lots of commas where he changes course in the middle of a sentence as he’s trying to figure out the best lie... or avoid actually saying anything. He’s a great bullshitter - and his *speech patterns* are a part of that. So finding the way that a character speaks that *shows* the character is a great way to write that character quickly.
The other way is having Folders Full Of Cheats.
Prep time is your superpower... Whenever I come up with a great line of dialogue or dialogue exchange, I have a folder on my laptop to put it in. It used to be a big spiral notebook that was divided up into sections for dialogue, actions, character moments, interesting scene ideas, plot twists, suspense scenes, car chases, shoot outs, fight scenes, and a generic section. I also jot down ideas on note cards and have a card file just filled with unorganized cards with ideas on them... which we will talk about in a moment. But the files on my laptop and the old spiral notebook are my Folders Full Of Cheats.
When I am on deadline, those files are gold. On DROID GUNNER (9 day deadline), I
robbed the dialogue file constantly. Almost every funny exchange was from the folder, something that I had thought of years ago and written down. We all have those ideas - we come up with some funny line at work or in the shower, and if you don’t write it down... you may forget it. If you have written it down and are writing against the clock and look through the folder before you write the scene - there it is! That amazing line that you came up with 7 years ago! Or you need a plot twist while outlining the script, that cool twist that you came up with 2 years ago! You always want these things to fit the story you are writing, but if you have enough of them, something in there will either work or spark a line that does work. I saw DROID GUNNER at a screening with an audience, and lots of lines got laughs - some people told the director afterwards that they thought it was his best film. One of the lines that got a good laugh was one that I had come up with almost a decade earlier while watching ALIENS and Lt. Gorman modifies the number of combat drops he’s done with the word “Simulations”. I came up with a variation, where a character says they’ve had over 200 hours of martial arts training... on the simulator. Response: Fine, if we run into any simulated killers, you can fight them. I took that raw line from the file and put it in the character’s voices and... it gets a laugh! When you only have 9 days to write a screenplay, all of the work in those files was a life saver! There were a bunch of one liners and asides and funny dialogue exchanges... and one of the things that I had on my character sheets is one of the characters just wants to get paid... but something always gets in the way. That became a running gag in the story - the big chase scene at the end had him constantly running past a sign pointing out where the payroll office was. That scene was cut, but it was a great read even if the audience didn’t get to see it.
So you can be prepared just by writing stuff down over the years. Even if you don't use it in this screenplay against the clock, it’s a great safety net... and gives you some confidence when you have an insane deadline. If you are stuck, you have that treasure trove of stuff to rob from - all of those folders of cheats!
Another thing I’ve learned about writing scripts on a deadline - you find some specific skill you have that is “coasting” - something that you are really good at, and make sure the script uses that skill. Oddly, I learned from NINJA BUSTERS and DROID GUNNER that I am pretty good at buddy banter off the top of my head - so if I have to write a script fast, I want it to be a buddy action script so that I can use that odd skill to turn out some pages that everybody likes quickly. Not everything has to come from the Folders Of Cheats!
I’ve also learned that my subconscious comes up with some great things when I don’t have time to think - and I’m sure yours will, too. And you will also discover that you will be able to come up with some great ideas on the fly - I never thought I could come up with anything off the top of my head (except hair pulled from the approaching deadline) but I come up with some amazing things when I’m in the middle of a scene - one trick of mine is to come up with *details* that may later pay off (“soft plants”), and if they don’t - they are still good details. One of the great things about writing fast is that you have to remove all of the filters and often get more honest writing. You don’t have time for the bullshit that comes from thinking about it - there isn’t time to think!
DO THE MATH
Once you get the deadline, be it three weeks or two weeks or 9 days, it’s all about the math. If you have 9 days to write a 90 page screenplay, that’s ten pages a day. Simple! Okay, not simple to write 10 pages a day, but simple to figure out how many pages you need to write every day. I have a bunch of friends who keep saying that I write fast, but really I write consistently. Slow and steady wins the race. Though 10 pages a day may not sound like slow to you (and it’s not), the *steady* part is what’s important. If you are wildly erratic and write 20 pages one day and then 2 pages for each of the next two days, you will never be able to make your deadlines. I know writers who write a bunch of pages and then burn out and struggle for the next few days - and that’s the Hare who loses the race, not the Tortoise who wins it. You are better off writing a reasonable number of pages every single day.
So once you have your deadline, just do the math. A feature script in 3 weeks is 5 a day for 6 days. Gets you to 90. I usually end up with 100+ pages due to good days. On a 2 week schedule, I do 7.5-8 pages a day to get between 90-100 finished pages after 12 days of writing. If possible, I try to save a couple of days at the end of the schedule for emergencies - and we’ll talk about that in a moment. But figure out how many pages you need to write every day to make your deadline... then write them!
This is another benefit of working with an outline - you know exactly what tomorrow’s scenes are going to be, and think about them a little at the end of the day. Let your subconscious do a little work while you are sleeping. If you know what the next day’s scenes are, you can prepare yourself to write them. BLIND TRUST was a thriller for USA Network that I had to write in 2 weeks, and all of the research came from books on my shelves already - but the night before writing tomorrow’s scenes, I would read the section of the specific type of poison that my character needed to know about, or whatever - and be prepared when I woke up the next morning. Knowing what you need to write tomorrow at the end of the day helps you make the crazy deadlines.
GOTTA KNOW YOUR LIMITATIONS
An important part of being able to make a deadline is that consistent writing. Writing against a deadline is like running a race. If you wake up one morning and think it would be fun to run a marathon, you probably aren’t going to even get close to finishing. You need to *train* for the marathon. So I “train” for those insane deadlines by using self imposed deadlines on spec screenplays. I have a daily page quota that I write every day. My page quota is 5 pages a day. If I can write 5 pages a day for 6 days in a row without completely screwing up, and I am *used to that*, I can run a little faster to make my two week deadline. I know that I can do that. It’s just 2-3 more pages a day. I don’t expect that to be easy, but I know that it is *possible*. I know what I am capable of...
And I also know my limitations. If I were struggling to write 2 pages a day, I probably couldn’t write a screenplay in 3 weeks - I wouldn’t be in shape to run that fast. It might be possible, but I would always be afraid of screwing up, and those thoughts might cripple my writing. You don’t want to be the person who gets winded walking down the block who signs up for a marathon race. Hey, miracles can happen... but you don’t want to bet your career on them. So work to build up your daily page count - it’s about consistency. You can predict whether you can do something based on consistency, not based on that one time, in band camp... Writing every day turns it into a habit. If you can do 5 pages a day, you can do 7.5 pages a day. Of course, we all have bad days...
I’M STUCK!
The worst part of writing on a deadline is when you get stuck. No matter how well you have outlined your story, how well you know your characters, how well prepared you are to go from 0 to 60 on a screenplay and have the thing done on time and amazing by the deadline, you are going to have one of those days... or maybe two. It’s normal. None of us wants it to be normal, but it’s going to happen. What do you do?
Keep moving forward. Writing on a deadline is like a shark - you don’t want to stop and get hung up on a problem. If I get stuck on a scene, I make a list of everything that the scene needs to do to move the story forward: the things that need to happen, the emotions that I want the audience to feel, the things that the characters need to feel, the big decision in the scene that changes the direction of the story, and everything else that needs to be in this scene in order to get us to the next scene and to the end of the screenplay. Most of the time, while making this list, I figure out how to write the scene and write it. Sometimes I just type up the list where the scene is supposed to go, so that I know what I need to do when I come back to it later... and go on to the next scene.
I mentioned the card files of random ideas that I have, and this is another resource for when I get stuck. These ideas are completely unsorted - there may be title ideas and dialogue ideas and car chase ideas and ideas on how to find a manager. Random ideas. I read through a bunch of cards. Hey, there may be something on a card that sparks an idea for the scene? Or it may just completely take my mind off the scene so that my subconscious can do some work behind the scenes and figure out the scene. But I find that random ideas can help me when I’m stuck.
Obviously I look at the Folders Of Cheats, too.
But if none of this works, I need to just leave that list of things that the scene needs to do and move on to the next. I don’t want to be stuck for days trying to write a scene when there are other scenes that I could be writing.
My first drafts have “Insert Funny Line XX” sprinkled throughout. I know that I need a funny line there, but at the time I was writing that scene had no idea what the line might be. Later I will think of it, search for “XX” and insert the line. But I want to move forward! My subconscious will be working on the “Funny Line” or “Clever Comeback” or whatever while I am moving forward on the story.
There are times when I put in a temporary line with an XX behind it so that I can find it later... and sometimes the deadline is coming and I haven’t thought of anything better, and the temporary line is what gets into that first draft. I try to come up with the replacement during the reading period...
READING PERIODS
Once you turn in your first draft or your treatment, there is a “reading period” - usually a week, or sometimes as long as the time you were allotted to write the treatment. That’s right - it takes them as long to read it as it took you to write it. Some of them probably move their lips while reading and have to look up “hard words” in the dictionary. But what this means to you - you have another week of prep for the script, or another week or more to get a head start on the second draft, if there’s time for that. While they are reading, you aren’t working on your tan in Mazatlan, you are doing all of the prep work that you couldn’t accomplish in that one week or less when you had to write the treatment. So you may turn in your treatment with a limited understanding of your characters and work that out while they are reading, or that place in the story you couldn’t quite figure out - so you faked your way through it in the treatment, you now have a week to figure out how to make it work.
None of this is leisurely. Whatever writer said that their spouse didn’t understand that when they were looking out the window for an entire afternoon - they *were* working... well, that writer isn’t going to be spending as much time looking out the window if they have to turn in a script in two weeks. You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to inspire yourself. You have to work your butt off. The good thing about writing on a tight deadline - even though you may be pulling a lot of all-nighters and might become a stranger to friends and family, it’ll be over before you know it!
One of the issues you will run into when using the “reading period” to work on your screenplay prep or coming up with all of those great lines of dialogue to replace the temporary lines in the first draft, is that it might be rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Though the WGA MBA says that a producer can’t reject a treatment, nothing says that the can’t give you notes that end up changing everything about the story at the end of that reading period, right before you go to script. There *will* be notes on the treatment, that’s the purpose for the reading period, but usually the notes will be changes that are easy to incorporate into whatever you are figuring out during the reading period. But sometimes they have some crazy note that changes everything... and it’s scary if there’s a deadline. But I have found it’s better to be prepared - if you have an outline that you can change, you are ahead of the writer who has to rethink everything in their head... and accidentally forgets the changes for a big chunk of the screenplay. When something like this happens on a tight deadline, I take a day of my writing schedule to figure it out and rewrite the outline and treatment.
By the way, that treatment can be imported into your screenwriting program, (if it isn’t already a part of it) and insert the sluglines and you have a scene by scene outline that can be expanded. I have snippets of dialogue in my treatments that end up being the temporary dialogue... unless they are great lines. This will help you get the screenplay done on those 2 week deadlines. You may have to redo the math to figure out how many pages you have to write per day, now - 5 pages might be 6 pages, 7.5 pages may be 8 pages, but it’s not going to be a crazy increase in pages per day that you need to write. As I mentioned earlier, while I’m doing the math I always like to leave a couple of days at the end of the schedule, just in case....
TWO EXTRA DAYS
It’s always good to know that you have a day or two extra on the schedule, just in case something goes wrong... because it will. There’s a temptation to look at 2 weeks and schedule your writing so that you finish at midnight before you have to turn the script in... but that’s a great way to screw up. On a 2 week writing schedule, I write 6 days, take a day off, then write 6 days... with one day left before I need to turn in the screenplay. On 3 weeks I give myself 2 extra days. The extra days can help if I end up behind, but I still try not to get behind. I try to make up for a bad day on the next day - and usually I can. I want to end the first week on a 2 week schedule with the screenplay half finished (or more), and take a day off and relax. This works better for me than writing straight through. I need the “pit stop” in the middle of the race to recharge my batteries. And I might need that day off at the end of the schedule to either finish the screenplay or to do a quick rewrite.
The "two extra days for rewrites" thing is one of my tips in the SELLING: BREAKING IN Blue Book, because the last thing you want is a really rough first draft leaking, or even being delivered to your producer. I *have* delivered rough first drafts before, and regretted it. You want them to think you are a creative genius, not someone who writes the same level of first drafts as everyone else. On a 2 week screenplay, that extra day at the end of the schedule is required - because some of the writing might be a little rough, and having one (maybe really long) day to go over the screenplay before you turn it in can smooth over the rough spots and add ideas that you have come up with along the way.
On BLIND TRUST once I finished, I realized that I needed a lullaby that a man would remember his mother singing to him as a child, and a handful of other details that would really make the screenplay great. So that final day I came up with a creepy lullaby and several other details and really worked on replacing every “temporary line” with the very best line possible - and turned in a first draft after 2 weeks that impressed everyone. Which is why that film never got made. They thought they had a chance to sign an Oscar nominated actress to their Made For TV movie based on the screenplay (certainly not the money) and they did! And then they thought they could skip the whole TV movie thing and make it a theatrical or sell it to HBO, and they began looking for a male lead of equal stature as the Oscar nominated female lead... and the project eventually fell apart. Screenplays aren’t the only things that are like sharks and need to keep moving forward!
The main thing to do is not worry. Okay, worry a little. The first time you have to make some tight deadline, you may think it’s impossible - and you may go crazy getting the work done and panic every other day... but once you’ve handed in the draft on time, you realize you *can* do it. It’s like sky diving or bunjee jumping - the first time you are sure you will die. Once you survive, you have the confidence to do it again. You figure out how to adapt to whatever the situation is.
Most of the time you will be given a reasonable amount of time to write your first draft. The producer does want the script as soon as possible, but they also want a good script. This *is* a business. There are deadlines. You need to be able to write on a schedule and get work done on time. You’ll get the hang of it.
Even if you don’t have a deadline to write a screenplay now, it’s a good idea to train yourself to write consistently, so that you know your limitations... and what you are capable of doing. Though most contracts are going to give you 12 weeks or even 6 to 8 months to write a screenplay, in the low budget and cable world where it’s more like television than big studio features you will have to write on a deadline that is often 3 weeks for the first draft... and on some occasions only 2 weeks, and once for me was 9 days! I had 2 weeks to write the treatment *and* the screenplay that was filmed! And I did it. And it’s now playing on TubiTV, embarrassing me.
You can write fast. You just have to be prepared, and have a consistent page count.
Director: Daryl Duke
Writers: Curtis Hanson (L.A. CONFIDENTIAL)
Starring: Elliott Gould, Christopher Plummer, Susannah York, John Candy.
It’s no secret that thrillers are my favorite genre, and I saw this Canadian gem when it was first released back in 1978. I have no idea if some critic called it Hitchcockian or not, but it has that STRANGERS ON A TRAIN vibe where two strangers become connected by crime. It also takes place during the Holiday Season with a background of Mall Santas and Holiday Parties and the Christmas Rush at stores... and a Santa with a gun.
Shy, chess playing Miles (Elliott Gould) is the head bank teller at a mall branch. He is approaching middle age, and this is the best it is ever going to get for him. He has a crush on the woman who is in charge of safety deposit boxes, Julie (Susannah York), but she’s having an affair with the married bank manager. He has a dead end life, and part of that is not being very assertive.
During the busy Christmas season, Miles is in charge of all of the Merchant deposits from the mall... all of the money people spend on gifts and clothes and meals comes to *his* window. Tens of thousands of dollars in *cash* every day. The bank manager trusts him with the money, but won’t recommend him for a promotion.
Miles discovers a deposit slip with a hold up note written on it in block letters... but with a distinctive “G”. Someone was planning on robbing the bank, then decided not to. Later he notices that one of the Mall Santas has a sign asking for donations to the poor... hand lettered with the same distinctive “G”. That is the robber! The next day, Miles puts all of the big cash deposits in his lunch box instead of the cash drawer... and when that Mall Santa comes in and hands him the stick up note, Miles gives him all of the money in the drawer, then triggers the alarm... and puts his lunch box full of cash in his briefcase. The old Security Guard gets into a shoot out with the Mall Santa, but he gets away....
Everybody run! Santa's gotta gun!
Miles is interviewed on TV, they say his name... and also the amount stolen (which is much much more than the Mall Santa ended up with). So the Mall Santa calls Miles, tells them that they are *partners* in this robbery, and if he knows what is good for him he will share the money. This begins a great cat and mouse game between Miles and the vicious bank robber (Christopher Plummer) where each tries to outsmart the other without being caught by the police. The background is the holidays, and Miles ends up taking Julie to the Bank Manager’s Christmas Party so that the Bank Manager’s wife won’t figure out he’s cheating. This leads to Julie confiding that she is facing the same dead end as Miles... and they two hook up. While the Bank Robber makes Miles’ life hell in the background. Miles has to figure out some way to outsmart the Robber, without screwing up his new relationship with Julie. And it’s much more complicated than that! (a character gets their head cut off, Miles loses the money, all sorts of fun things happen!)
John Candy plays another teller who hooks up with the hottest woman in the film (the new teller hired as Christmas Help). This is a great thriller, edge of your seat suspense, and does an amazing job of quietly setting up later complications (the new bank’s vault will be surrounded by a massive underground wall of cement is mentioned in passing, and pays off much later!). A great little movie, and written by some guy named Curtis Hanson (who would later win an Oscar for L.A. CONFIDENTIAL). I love this movie so much that I tracked down the Danish novel it’s based on (“Think Of A Number”, found it in a mystery book store in London) and read it. The book ends differently (in the film Miles and Julia talk about running away from the city to some tropical paradise and starting over again... and that’s what happens in the book and that is where the Bank Robber finds them), but the story is basically the same and the book also takes place at Christmas Time.
There's a great new documentary video series focusing on the 20 TV episodes that Hitchcock directed called HITCH 20. This episode of the show is a great HITCHCOCK PRESENTS episode called BREAKDOWN with Joseph Cotten as a ruthless businessman who downsizes a loyal long time employee... and then ridicules him for breaking down and crying. It's really a lot of fun, so take a look:
Of course, I have my own books focusing on Hitchcock...
Bill
HITCHCOCK: MASTERING SUSPENSE
LEARN SUSPENSE FROM THE MASTER!
Alfred Hitchcock, who directed 52 movies, was known as the “Master Of Suspense”; but what exactly is suspense and how can *we* master it? How does suspense work? How can *we* create “Hitchcockian” suspense scenes in our screenplays, novels, stories and films?
This book uses seventeen of Hitchcock’s films to show the difference between suspense and surprise, how to use “focus objects” to create suspense, the 20 iconic suspense scenes and situations, how plot twists work, using secrets for suspense, how to use Dread (the cousin of suspense) in horror stories, and dozens of other amazing storytelling lessons. From classics like “Strangers On A Train” and “The Birds” and “Vertigo” and “To Catch A Thief” to older films from the British period like “The 39 Steps” and “The Man Who Knew Too Much” to his hits from the silent era like “The Lodger” (about Jack The Ripper), we’ll look at all of the techniques to create suspense!
Films Included: NOTORIOUS, SABOTAGE, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, THE 39 STEPS, REBECCA, TO CATCH A THIEF, FRENZY, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, THE LODGER, THE BIRDS, TORN CURTAIN, SABOTEUR, VERTIGO, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934), THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1955), SUSPICION, and NUMBER SEVENTEEN. 17 Great Films!
We all know that Alfred Hitchcock was the Master Of Suspense, but did you know he was the most *experimental* filmmaker in history?
Contained Thrillers like “Buried”? Serial Protagonists like “Place Beyond The Pines”? Multiple Connecting Stories like “Pulp Fiction”? Same Story Multiple Times like “Run, Lola, Run”? This book focuses on 18 of Hitchcock’s 53 films with wild cinema and story experiments which paved the way for modern films. Almost one hundred different experiments that you may think are recent cinema or story inventions... but some date back to Hitchcock’s *silent* films! We’ll examine these experiments and how they work. Great for film makers, screenwriters, film fans, producers and directors.
Films Examined: “Rear Window”, “Psycho”, “Family Plot”, “Topaz”, “Rope”, “The Wrong Man”, “Easy Virtue”, “Lifeboat”, “Bon Voyage”, “Aventure Malgache”, “Elstree Calling”, “Dial M for Murder”, “Stage Fright”, “Champagne”, “Spellbound”, “I Confess”, and “The Trouble with Harry”, with glances at “Vertigo” and several others.
Professional screenwriter William C. Martell takes you into the world of The Master Of Suspense and shows you the daring experiments that changed cinema. Over 77,000 words.
The spider web fills the screen, it's Boris Karloff's THRILLER!
Season: 1, Episode: 25.
Airdate: March 14, 1961
Director: Ida Lupino
Writer: Barré Lyndon (?) based on stories by August Derleth (Extra Passenger), Wilkie Collins (Strange Bed) and Nelson Bond (Medusa).
Cast: Reginald Owens, Robin Hughes, John Abbott, Michael Pate, Richard Lupino.
Music: Morton Stevens.
Cinematography: Lionel Lindon
Producer: William Frye
Boris Karloff’s Introduction: “This is an English pub. Just the place for a little something to warm the cockles of your heart... while I chill your blood. They give you a mulled claret here, guarenteed to fortify you against, well, against anything. If the people’s clothes seem strange, well it’s because we’re back in 1905. When a dollar was still a dollar and the British pound was a beautiful gold coin. We are going to see three forces of evil. Three stories, each a masterpiece of strangeness and terror.”
(First Story)
“In this room is a young man who is on his way to commit murder. She wants money, he wants her. Well, to satisfy both of these desirous young people someone will have to die. Drink your claret, you’re going to need it. You are about to meet the extra passenger in one of the eeriest tales ever told.”
(Second Story)
“You’ll take another glass of this claret, of course. It will brace you for a different force of evil. All of the night birds show up in a pub like this sooner or later. Musicians between shows, detectives looking for someone, peers of the realm, reporters, actors, men about town, floatsom of a great city. People in trouble, or looking for trouble.”
(Third Story)
“I sometimes think, perhaps you do too, how outrageous it would have seemed to anyone a hundred years ago if they had been told that someday men would be doing exactly what you’re doing now. Listening to a voice, watching a picture plucked as it were out of the air. We’ve learned a lot in the last 100 years. But how much do you suppose had been forgotten in the last five thousand? You know how scientists scoff at folklore and ancient beliefs? But every now and then they amaze themselves with a discovery that our remote ancestors were right afterall. Our third take of terror contains the echo of an ancient fable which may not be a fable at all. It begins with a manhunt, a search for a murderer, a strangler if you will.”
Synopsis: A turn of the century PULP FICTION episode, with a pub as the hub instead of that bar where Butch and Vincent Vega hang out.
THE EXTRA PASSENGER
Our first story begins in our turn of the century British pub where Simon (Richard Lupino) and Katie (Iris Bristol) plot murder. Simon’s crazy rich uncle spends all of his time studying the occult. When he dies, Simon becomes very wealthy... but Katie suggests that the old guy might need a little prodding into the grave and Simon has a perfect plan. An alibi that the police could never break. He buys out a private compartment on a train, the Conductor punches his ticket. When the train comes to the stop near his uncle’s house he sneaks off the train, races to his Uncle’s house. His Uncle (Terence de Marney) has a rooster chained to a Ouiji Board kinda thing, and is so focused on his experiment to bring a flower back to life temporarily that he doesn’t hear Simon sneak in... until it’s too late. Simon beats his Uncle to death with a pestle, wipes the blood from his hands, and leaves the house.
Outside he has a car stashed. He gets in the car and speeds to the next train station. According to his time tables, he can just make the train because the road takes a more direct route than the train. He parks the car, has to run to make the train, sneaks back into his compartment *seconds* before the Conductor checks into the compartment. Simon pretends he had dozed off, now he has the perfect alibi. He never left the train. He has gotten away with murder!
But when the Conductor leaves he notices he’s not alone in the car... there is a strange man in black sitting quietly in the corner. Simon tells him this is a private compartment, the Man In Black says his Uncle was a warlock and had the ability to send a *walking corpse* to do his bidding. When the Man In Black looks up... it’s Simon’s Dead Uncle! He attacks Simon...
The Detective examines Simon’s dead body on the train and says he was killed by a rooster’s talons.
A TERRIBLY STRANGE BED
Our second story begins at the bar of that pub, where Collins (Robin Hughes) and Ashton (Francis Bethencourt) are discussing how terribly bored they are. They’ve seen all of the plays on the West End, what is left for entertainment? An older woman (Jacqueline Squire) sitting alone at a table pipes up and suggests they go to Hussar House, which has gambling in the back room. The two men mention the establishment’s reputation: in the past dead bodies have been found in the vicinity with rumors that they were gamblers robbed of their winnings. The old woman says those are just rumors. Though Ashton pleads exhaustion, Collins decides to try his luck.
The back room at Hussar House is filled with gamblers, and Collins finds himself winning most of their money over the course of the night. He has a massive stack of chips! The Hussar himself (Reginald Owen), a war hero in full uniform, takes Collins under his wing and makes sure he is treated well. His drinks are on the house, and the Husser makes sure Collins’ glass is always full. Collins feels so lucky, he decides to bet everything on one spin of the roulette wheel... and wins! The Husser shows him how to wrap his money in an old cloth so that he won’t be robbed on the street... the cloth weighs as much as a cannon ball! But Collins has had so much to drink he’s wobbly. The Hussar comps him into a room for the night: the turn of the century version of a VIP room complete with a huge canopied bed. Collins puts his winnings under his pillow and goes to sleep.
In the middle of the night, Collins hears a noise and awakens... the canopy is lowering, about to crush him! He rolls out of the bed at the last moment and the canopy crushes the pillows... which would have been his head!
After he catches his breath, the canopy begins to rise again... and a secret door begins to open in the wall! Collins grabs his winnings and pops out the window onto the ledge, hiding. He grabs a drain pipe and starts to climb down... but the pipe breaks and he almost falls! It was never meant to hold a man. Lots of suspense generated. He finally gets to the alley, races away with his winnings wrapped in the old bit of cloth.
He gets to Ashton’s flat, tells his friend about winning all of the money and almost being killed. Then opens the old cloth to expose... one of the cannon balls that had decorated the military themed casino. And his winnings?
A yacht with the Hussar and the Old Woman from the pub sails for tropical climes.
THE MASK OF MEDUSA
A scream in the night! The Leighton Stranger has struck again! Another woman killed! But this time, the police have a clue: the killer left behind a black leather glove. The police have quadroned off the section of London where the woman was killed and are doing a house to house search for a man wearing only one glove (Michael Jackson?).
Hiding in an alley, Shanner (Michael Pate) runs his glove along the wall... the other hand is bare. As the police search, he tries to find somewhere to hide... an unlocked door. But this is the middle of the night, every door is locked... except this one! A strange shop with a sign announcing that it features statues of 12 Famous Killers. Shanner takes off his single glove and puts it in his pocket, then sneaks into the dark shop...
A group of people are *starring at him* in the darkness! Shanner freaks out! Then he realizes these are the statues. He puts his hands around the neck of a female statue... and someone *touches him* in the darkness.
The shop owner Mr. Milo (John Abbott) turns on the light and asks if Shanner would like Milo to give him a tour. Shanner acts like a customer, and Milo goes from statue to statue telling the history of this killer, his methods, his victims, and other interesting information. It’s creepy. The statues are very detailed, very lifelike... but made of stone. Milo finally comes to the notorious killer Dr. Hartwell, and Shanner is confused: how could Milo have made a statue of the man, there were no known photographs of him and his victims couldn’t very well describe him. Plus, he was never captured! In fact, the police have never captured any of these killers on display! Shanner is suspicious and asks how he came to sculpt such lifelike figures. Milo says he has methods of his own. Shanner asks if this is a model of Dr. Hartwell... or the doctor himself? “Yes. That was Dr. Hartwell.” Shanner is shocked: “You killed them and petrified them! You’re a worse murderer than any of them!” Mr. Milo says he did not kill them. It was the Gorgon’s head. He is from Greece, and was digging around and found the head of Medusa carefully kept in a case...
Shanner wants to call him crazy... but there is a knock at the door. The Police doing their house to house search! Milo opens the door... and there are now 13 statues in the collection. Shanner stands very still as a pair of detectives (Richard Peel and Noel Drayton) enter the shop. There’s some great suspense as the two detectives poke around in the shop as they tell Mr. Milo they are chasing Leighton Strangler, and for the first time they have a real clue: the black glove. One of the detectives looks at the statues, examining them closely, commenting on how detailed they are but also mentioning that if they were statues of convicted and executed killers Milo might have a bigger crowd. One of the detective comes right up to Shanner, but moments before he discovers that Shanner is *not* a statue, the other detective says they need to be getting on to find the strangler.
Once they are gone, Shanner suggests that Milo help him sneak past the police. He says he’s had some problems with the police in the past, and if Milo could put him in a crate and then hire a wagon to take him past the police, he would gladly pay. When Shanner reaches into his pocket top pull out some money, he also pulls out the single black leather glove... and it drops on the floor between the two men. Milo looks at the glove and states that Shanner is the Strangler, the killer the police are searching for!
Shanner says that Milo is by far worse, having killed all of these other killers. Milo says they were turned to stone by the Medusa, and Shanner doesn’t believe him. Milo opens an ornate case, standing behind it, and exposes the head of Medusa... and Shanner turns to stone!
The last shot has Milo changing the sign on the door from 12 statues to 13.
Review: When I think of the THRILLER TV show, I think of Ida Lupino. When I watched these as a kid when they were rerun on some non network channel, my favorite episodes were GUILLOTINE and LATE DATE (coming up) and both were based on short stories by Cornell Woolrich, one of the three fathers of Noir fiction (oddly, there are no mothers). Sometime later I tracked down Woolrich’s novels and short stories (which had just been republished) and read them all. One of my first trips to Los Angeles included a trip to the UCLA Special Collections Library which housed a bunch of ancient pulp magazines, and I spent a few days reading stories in Dime Detective and others by Woolrich and Norbert Davis and many others. But also in those closing credits of GUILLOTINE was the name of the director, Ida Lupino. Wait, that’s can’t be the actress from that Bogart film HIGH SIERRA and that awesome Noir flick ON DANGEROUS GROUND, can it? Turns out it was. Turns out Lupino reached a point in her movie star career where she realized she would someday be too old to star and decided to start working on the other side of the camera. She wrote and directed all kinds of crime films from thrillers to noir to just plain old action. And she was *great*! Probably one of the main reasons why she caught my attention was that her career intersected with that on Don Siegel, who is one of my favorite directors. He directed a little film called DIRTY HARRY you may have heard of. Lupino cowrote PRIVATE HELL 36 which Siegel directed. Lupino cowrote that film with one husband () and costarred in it with another husband (Howard Duff), probably making for a tense set. But she went from actress to screenwriter to director, and was excellent at all of them. On Trailer Tuesday a while back I featured her film THE HITCHHIKER, which is edge of the seat suspense.
Lupino treats this episode like a movie, using camera angles and movement to build suspense and create visual reveals and reversals. I mentioned that last week’s episode had a pedestrian sequence of a character climbing a spiral staircase to their possible doom, but in this episode Lupino makes scenes like climbing down the drainpipe outside of the Hussar House incredibly suspenseful. But the most amazing bit of direction in the episode is an amazing single shot in MEDUSA where we go from Shanner looking at the Medusa head and pan and dolly to the Medusa head with Milo behind it, and then after Milo closes the case we follow him back to Shanner... who is now a statue. All in one shot. No cuts. I call these “sells it shots” because without a cut Shanner the human has becomes the statue of Shanner, and that sells that it really happened and isn’t some movie trick. That guy really turned to stone! Of course, behind the scenes there was probably a great deal of careful and quiet moving of the actor off his mark and the statue onto the mark. But tricky and inventive shots like this are something unexpected on a TV show’s tight shooting schedule... and this particular episode has *three* stories with *three* different casts, which would have been difficult for anyone to pull off. But all three segments use a level of visual storytelling that most of the previous episodes never got close to.
Next up is an episode based on a Woolrich story followed by *another* episode based on a Woolrich story followed by an episode based on Robert Bloch’s second most famous piece of writing.
FILM COURAGE did a series of interviews with me, around 36 (or more) segments total. That's almost a year's worth of material! So why not add a new craft article and make it a weekly blog entry? All I have to do is write that new article, right?
Creating suspense on screen:
Keeping the audience on the edge of their seat is the function of SUSPENSE. Suspense is not the same as action, nor is it the same as surprise, nor is it the same as mystery. Suspense is the *anticipation* of an action. The longer you draw out the anticipation, the greater the suspense. Hitchcock explained; "Two men are having an innocent little chat. Let us suppose that there is a bomb underneath the table between them. Nothing happens, then all of the sudden, BOOM! There is an explosion. The audience is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has been an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now let us take a SUSPENSE situation. The bomb is underneath the table, but the audience knows it... Probably because they have seen the villain place it there. The audience is aware that the bomb is going to explode at one O'clock, and there is a clock in the decor. It is a quarter to one. In this situation, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating, because the audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: 'There's a bomb beneath you, and it's about to explode!' In the first case, we have given the audience fifteen seconds of SURPRISE at the moment of the explosion. In the second case, we have provided them with fifteen MINUTES of SUSPENSE."
It’s no secret that I love thriller films and Hitchcock movies - my upcoming book is HITCHCOCK: MASTERING SUSPENSE which uses seventeen of Hitchcock’s films to illustrate different principles of suspense. But suspense isn’t confined to the thriller genre, it’s used in *every* genre to create tension. That romantic comedy where we know that one of the pair has that secret that will ruin the budding relationship if discovered... suspense is built around the anticipation of that discovery. In a movie of survival, be it THE MARTIAN or THE REVENANT suspense is built around situations where we anticipate the worst possible thing happening... and then the scene builds around that anticipation until it is resolved by the action. In REVENANT we know that bigoted fur trapper Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) plans on harming Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio)’s son - and that scene builds tension until we get the action. Instead of the action being over in a flash, the audience has been given the information that it will happen and that makes us squirm in our seats as we see Fitzgerald’s plan unfolding. Instead of a couple of seconds of surprise we have a whole scene of tension and suspense. In dramas we often have suspense built around a secret that our protagonist doesn’t want discovered. Every genre uses suspense to build emotions before the action.
There are Four basic kinds of suspense: the "ticking clock" (or time lock) and "cross cutting" and “secrets” and “focus objects”. The Hitchcock example above is a ticking clock. We are given an event which will occur at a certain time, and our suspense builds as we get closer and closer to the time of the event. Cross Cutting takes two things we don’t want to see in the same place and gets them progressively closer to each other - like two trains hurtling towards each other on the same track. The closer they get to each other, the more suspense. A good example of this method is in Hitchcock’s REAR WINDOW where our protagonist Jeffries sends his fiancé Lisa to search the apartment of suspected murdered Lars Thorwald. Jeffries has gotten Thorwald out of the apartment on the pretext of meeting him at a restaurant down the street, but when he doesn’t show Thorwald becomes impatient and returns home. Jeffries watches through the rear window of his apartment as Lisa searches the apartment as Thorwald returns - entering the building, climbing the stairs, walking down the hallway to his front door, unlocking the door, and...
Secrets are another form of suspense which is often used in dramas and comedies and romances. A character has a secret which they do not want to have discovered, and another character gets closer and closer to discovering it. In YOU’VE GOT MAIL we know the secret of Tom Hanks’ character - he’s the big corporate bookstore owner who is putting the small independent bookstore owned by Meg Ryan out of business... but the two meet and fall in love, and now he must keep that true identity secret from her because it will kill the relationship. The audience knows that secret exists, so we are in suspense that it will be discovered. Another type of secret suspense can be found in Hitchcock’s ROPE (an experimental film which we look at in my HITCHCOCK: EXPERIMENTS IN TERROR book) - two men have murdered a friend and placed his body in a giant trunk in their livingroom... moments before having a party in that same livingroom in honor of the now dead friend. Everyone wonders where David is... but we know that he’s inside the trunk they are serving a buffet dinner from. Suspense builds as things happen which get some of the party guests looking closer at the trunk than the killers would like. Will their secret be discovered or will they get away with murder?
FOCUS OBJECTS
That trunk is what I call a “focus object”, and in the Film Courage clip I mention the middle ages sword and sex flick FLESH + BLOOD, where Princess Jennifer Jason Leigh has been kidnaped by Mercenary Rurger Hauer, and eventually becomes his mistress. Hauer is leader of a band of Mercenary soldiers - knights in rusted armor - who are raping and pillaging their way across Europe. They were double crossed by the evil Prince who Jennifer was engaged to, and now they are doing everything possible to make that Prince's life hell on earth. Eventually they capture the Prince, and chain him up near a well. Princess Jennifer, Hauer's mistress and the Prince's finace, is about to have a meal with all of the other mercenaries celebrating the capture of the Prince.
Before the other mercenaries reach the table, the Prince grabs a piece of plague infested meat from the trash and drops it in the well, poisoning the drinking water.
Jennifer sees this, and the question is - will she tell anyone? As the water is brought from the well to the table, tension builds. The water in the jug becomes the "focus object". Water is poured into glasses of several mercenaries who were not kind to her when she was kidnaped. She wants revenge against them, so she says nothing.
The Prince watches her, waiting for her to tell them that the water is poisoned. She sees the shackled Prince watching her, and she watches the mean mercenaries drink the poisoned water one-by-one.
That jug of poisoned water goes from mean mercenaries... to women and children. The poisoned water is poured into their glasses and they start to drink it... will Jennifer tell them it is poisoned? Suspense builds.
The Prince watches her, waiting for her to stop them from drinking. But both of them watch as the women and children drink the poisoned water.
Then the jug of poisoned water is passed to Rutger Hauer, her lover. He pours a glass of water. Will she let him drink it? She is torn between the man she was engaged to and the man she sleeps with every night. What will she do? Hauer is having a conversation with some of the others, and every time he grabs the glass to drink, someone says something and he responds instead of drinks. Suspense builds.
The Prince, shackled by the well smiles at her. What will she do?
As Hauer lifts the glass to his lips, she...
See how focus objects work? They create suspense by giving the protagonist and the audience the same secret information that is tied to an object... and then places that object where the secret can be discovered by characters who can not know that secret.
All of these techniques rely on *dramatic irony* - giving information to the audience that one or more characters do not have. The key is letting the audience know that the water is poisoned or that the body is in the trunk or that Tom Hanks is also that bastard with the big chain bookstore that is putting Meg Ryan out of business. If the audience is not given this information, there can be no suspense or tension... and the story is flat and dull. Our job as writers is to *lead the audience* - to use information to control what they think and feel. Hitchcock called it playing the audience like an instrument. By giving them specific story information at the perfect time we bring them inside the story - they know the secret that some other character does not and now they have a stake in the story. The audience wants that secret to remain a secret. The audience wants to warn the characters that there is a bomb under the table. The audience participates in the story and feels what the characters feel. Our job as writers is not just to tell the story, but to use techniques like suspense in order to tell that story well. To involve the reader and viewer so that it becomes their story as well.
Always be leading the audience. Always be in control of your story and when the information is given to the audience. What do you want them to know and when do you want them to know it? And *why* do you want them to know this information at this specific time in your tale?
We all know that Alfred Hitchcock was the Master Of Suspense, but did you know he was the most *experimental* filmmaker in history?
Contained Thrillers like “Buried”? Serial Protagonists like “Place Beyond The Pines”? Multiple Connecting Stories like “Pulp Fiction”? Same Story Multiple Times like “Run, Lola, Run”? This book focuses on 18 of Hitchcock’s 53 films with wild cinema and story experiments which paved the way for modern films. Almost one hundred different experiments that you may think are recent cinema or story inventions... but some date back to Hitchcock’s *silent* films! We’ll examine these experiments and how they work. Great for film makers, screenwriters, film fans, producers and directors.
Films Examined: “Rear Window”, “Psycho”, “Family Plot”, “Topaz”, “Rope”, “The Wrong Man”, “Easy Virtue”, “Lifeboat”, “Bon Voyage”, “Aventure Malgache”, “Elstree Calling”, “Dial M for Murder”, “Stage Fright”, “Champagne”, “Spellbound”, “I Confess”, and “The Trouble with Harry”, with glances at “Vertigo” and several others.
Professional screenwriter William C. Martell takes you into the world of The Master Of Suspense and shows you the daring experiments that changed cinema. Over 77,000 words.
