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
Years ago when I was in London to teach my big 2 day class and attend the Raindance Film Festival, I did a million interviews in two days. I was on morning radio (breakfast chat) and afternoon radio. I did all kinds of radio in between. Every newspaper interviewed me. I did a couple of strange shows at the BBC where I was in a studio talking to someone who was on the other side of the country... and it was broadcast live. I did one great show - kind of a zany drive show, hosted by a couple of writers who wanted to know every story I would never tell in print... and I told a couple.
And BBC's Writer's Room wanted to interview me. After racing all over town in a million taxi cabs, they called and rescheduled... for the morning at some hotel. I don't do mornings. And I still had jet lag. I get to the hotel - barely awake, and they seat me on the lobby steps and begin asking questions... as hotel guests come down the stairs. Every minute we had to stop for guests! I finish this lengthy interview, and have no idea how it turned out. They run it, and post it on their website:
One of the focuses on this interview is Writing For Production - being aware of schedule and budget and all of the other elements that you will need to know if you also plan on making your own film. Or just selling it to a low budget production company.
Along with interviews from Paul Greengrass and David Benioff and many other folks you have heard of, and I kind of forget about it. Until a website regular discovered it, and e-mailed me a version and put a copy up on YouTube. I decided to add titles and put it up on My YouTube... and here it is.
As I said, I talk a lot about writing for a budget, which I don't think Greengrass or Benioff cover in their interviews. This is the kind of information that is important when you are breaking in, because you probably won't be writing a big blockbuster like THE DARK KNIGHT or IRON MAN... you may be writing a Made For TV movie or an Indie film or a low budget action or horror flick or even making your own movie, where budget matters.
Thanks to the Raindance Film Festival for setting all of these interviews up for me!
- Bill
Hey, this is topical...
NEW: WRITE IT: FILM IT!
Making Your Own Movie?
Writing An Indie Film?
Writing A Low Budget Genre Script To Sell?
Writing A Made For TV Holiday Movie?
You will be writing for BUDGET. On a standard spec screenplay, you don’t have to think about budget, but these types of screenplays writing with budget in mind is critical!
If you are making your own movie, budget, is even more important - and you need to think about budget *before* you write your screenplay... or you will end up with a script that you can’t afford to make (or is a struggle to make). Everyone is making their own films these days, and even if you have done it before there are lots of great techniques in this book to get more money on screen - for less money! You can make a film that looks like it cost millions for pocket change.
Yesterday’s Dinner: Fresh tomato beef at City Wok in Studio City.
Movies: MOVIES: CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR - So I drove down to Long Beach to hang out with my friends Melanie and Yamo and grabs some dinner and see a movie. As dinner winds down, Mel pulls out a list of all the movies playing at the 95-plex next to the restaurant, and I look over the list and have seen many of the films and Mel or Yamo have seen others... and we narrow it down to a handful, of which CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR is the best as far as time goes... so that’s what we see.
Okay, you have an all-star cast, and Mike Nichols directing, and Aaron Sorkin writing, so you can’t end up with a bad movie.
Tom Hanks plays this charmingly sleazy congressman, Charlie Wilson, who is sitting in a Vegas hot tub with a couple of strippers and a Playboy centerfold when he sees Dan Rather on TV wearing a turban. A turban! He wants to know what that’s all about. Discovers that the Russians have invaded Afghanistan, and the Afghans are fighting back... but they need weapons. And Charlie sees a way to make his mark.
He teams up with a grumbling CIA agent named Gust, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and a wealthy right wing Texan played by Julia Roberts. Since Roberts just popped twins and is getting older, her character *must* wear a bikini in one scene.
This movie is all over the place - and nowhere at the same time. Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts seem to be in some over the top farce, Hoffman manages to play his character with a foot in reality... yet still be at home in the farce scenes. But the danged thing just isn’t funny. You get all the funny lines in the trailer - both of them. It’s kind of breezy for the most part, and the people are fun to watch... but they left the jokes out. And the thing about this true story is that it’s wacky. It plays as farce better than it plays as reality. Oh, then they throw in a real horror of war scene with *children missing limbs* in an Afghan refugee camp. Nothing farcical about that! The TONE is all over the place, and the film never seems to decide if it’s a comedy or a drama or a farce or a... heck, it could be anything. But ends up kind of being nothing. Light but not funny.
And it’s hard to shake the real-life punchline: the Afghans we armed to fight the Russians became the Taliban. Those guys we were showing as heroes in RAMBO 3 and that James Bond movie became the guys who took down the Twin Towers. That’s not in the movie, but maybe it should have been. Maybe they should have left out the maimed kids and made the film into a laugh out loud comedy... with the shocker end. People would have loved it... then hated it. But they would have *felt something*. Instead we get an all star, beautifully made, kind of ho-hum film.
A couple of years ago they released THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE on BluRay, and it's one of those great 70s crime films, gritty and real and with one of Mitchum's best performances (in a career of great performances).
In RESERVOIR DOGS Mr. Blonde is a big fan of Robert Mitchum movies, and so am I. The great thing about Mitchum is that he worked right up until he died - and was still a leading man when most actors his age were playing grandfathers. He was a star in Westerns and War Films in the early 1940s, was *the* star of Film Noir in the late 40s to mid 50s, then starred in NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (one of the greatest films ever made) as the *villain*, and then spent the rest of the 1950s and some of the 1960s as a *romantic lead*, and did a bunch of revisionist westerns in the 1960s... and by the 1970s he was starring in action movies. You read that right - Old Robert Mitchum was the star of some great 70s action flicks, like THE YAKUZA (1974, co-written by Paul Schrader)...
This is one of those great action movies that seems to be forgotten. Mitchum played an ex-cop who goes to Japan to help a WW2 pal whose daughter has been kidnapped and gets involved with both current crime issues (those Yakuza dudes) and his WW2 past. He's not just the action guy kicking ass, he's the romantic lead, too! He's the one kissing hot Asian women!
He also *starred* in THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE (1973, screenplay by producer Paul Monash who was one of those big shot TV writers from the 50s who created a bunch of classic TV shows and also produced movies like CARRIE, BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID and BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA) another one of those great crime films that nobody has seen these days. The great thing about Old Mitchum in this film is that he's playing a tough old guy a few weeks from going to prison for a stretch who is trying to do some last minute crime deals to take care of his family... and things go wrong and some shooting has to happen. Mitchum is that guy who may be old, but you don't want to eff with him.
Then Old Mitchum played Philip Marlowe in FAREWELL, MY LOVELY (1975, written by David Zelag Goodman who wrote STRAW DOGS and LOGAN'S RUN) which was kind of riding the coat tails of CHINATOWN, but pretty damned good. When Mitchum was younger he'd starred in the best Film Noir movie ever made, OUT OF THE PAST, playing a disgraced private eye... and you wonder why they didn't cast him as Marlowe back then - he was perfect. But when they did get around to casting him, being the Old Mitchum worked in his favor. He played the role as if he'd seen all of this crap a million times before. This film has a great score... and some dude named Sylvester Stallone playing thug #2.
Old Mitchum also made an updated version of THE BIG SLEEP, which should be avoided, three years later.
He finished the 1970s *starring in action movies* as a tough old guy - and was supposed to star in 48 HOURS in the 80s... but he was probably too busy *starring* in TV miniseries like WINDS OF WAR, NORTH AND SOUTH, and WAR AND REMEMBRANCE. In the 90s, he *starred* in 3 TV series, was narrator for TOMBSTONE, and finished his career playing director George Stevens in the James Dean movie for TV the year he died.
Robert Mitchum's career lasted a hell of a long time... but those 70s action flicks he made as an old man contain some real classics.
"The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail," Robert Mitchum.
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Backstory - Creating the past for your characters. Dinner: Popeyes Chicken & biscuits. Pages: A bunch of catch up work on classes I'm teaching later in the year. Bicycle: Short hops to Starbucks and back and then to the subway to Hollywood for drinks with friends and back. Movies: Nada.
THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962)
Directed by: John Frankenheimer. Written by: George Axelrod based on the novel by Richard Condon.. Starring: Frank Sinatra, Janet Leigh, Laurence Harvey, Angela Lansbury. Produced by: George Axelrod, Frank Sinatra, Howard W. Koch. Music by: David Amram.
This is like the original paranoid political thriller... and it wasn't just an innovative screenplay and story, the direction is inventive and cool... and when you compare how the direction tells the story in this film as opposed to how some directors of current blockbusters seem to make choices which distract from the story, you wonder what the hell happened to film directors? So many amazing things in this film!
During the Korean War, Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) is a cold, unlovable, disciplinarian officer - hated by his men. Their Korean translator (Henry Silva) leads the platoon through the woods... where they are attacked by the enemy.
Later, Shaw gets a hero’s welcome home - he has won the Congressional Medal Of Honor for single-handedly overpowering their North Korean captors after three days and rescuing his platoon... only two men were lost in the escape. Shaw is met at the airport by his overbearing mother Eleanor Iselin (Angela Lansbury) and his hated step-father conservative Senator Iselin (James Gregory) - who try to use his heroism to help Iselin’s political career. Shaw tells them he won’t be part of their schemes, and is headed to New York to take a job as a journalist.
Meanwhile, Captain Ben Marco (Frank Sinatra) who was in Shaw’s platoon and recommended him for the Medal Of Honor, is suffering from a recurring nightmare... and discovers that he isn’t the only member of the platoon who has this same nightmare. Weird! In the nightmare, he’s at a women’s gardening club meeting... where Sgt Shaw strangles one member of the platoon to death and then shoots another in the head. And some members of the women’s gardening club turn into Chinese and Russian military men. Weird. And the two platoon members Shaw kills in the dream happen to be the two who were killed in their escape. What does this dream mean?
I love how everyone who was in the platoon has the same dream, but all of the dreams are individualized and different. When they get to James Edwards (the Black guy)'s version of the dream - it's exactly the same, but every character's race is flipped. The old white ladies in the garden club become old Black ladies, and the Black servant becomes a white servant. This film has a great sense of sly humor (probably due to the tone of the source novel written by the clever Richard Condon).
Captain Marco, who *hated* Shaw, when asked what he thinks of him is *compelled* to answer, “Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.”... as are all of the other men. They all use the exact same words! What? “It's not that Raymond Shaw is hard to like. He's IMPOSSIBLE to like!” Marco digs around, uncovers the truth - the entire platoon was brainwashed over the three days they were captured, and Shaw - the war hero - has been programmed to kill! Oh, and his step-father Iselin claims there are 207 communist spies in the Department Of Defense, and that managed to catapult him into the headlines... and since this is an election year, Iselin ends up in the Vice President position on the ticket. One sniper shot away from becoming President! And Marco thinks that Shaw might be that sniper. But how can you prove any of this? With the Republican Convention only a few days away, and Iselin the expected Vice Presidential candidate, Marco must figure out a way to convince his commanding officer that he’s *not* crazy or suffering from “shell shock” (PTSD), but that there is a real assassination in only a few days!
One of the great things about this film is how *everyone* is programmed in one way or another. Characters are programmed to *think* in certain ways which help the plan, young attractive people are programmed to fall in love with the one person their parents disapprove of, liberals are programmed to hate conservatives and vice versa, people are programmed to judge a book by it’s cover - whether that is an actual book (Marco has read hundreds of them since coming home) or a figurative book like their Korean translator who asks Raymond Shaw for a job and Shaw says he doesn’t need a translator in New York City - everyone speaks the same language. Senator Iselin is programmed to say or do anything that will get him elected - he doesn’t believe any of it, he’s a puppet with his wife pulling the strings... and China and Russia pulling *her* strings! Marco’s superior is programmed to think that men returning from war can be a little paranoid... and the unmarried business woman Marco meets on the train (Rose, played by Janet Leigh) is programmed to mother an emotionally wounded man. Oh, and the voting public is programmed to fear and distrust anyone who doesn’t fear and distrust. The film looks at all kinds of “programming” in addition to Raymond Shaw’s brainwashing. One of the great things from Condon’s novel - he was a satirist who wrote thrillers that commented on society - and in this case the whole Red Scare paranoia of the 1950s, with McCarthy and Nixon seeing a communist in every pumpkin patch.
The story is also a nice retelling of Oedipus Rex - Raymond Shaw has a full-on tongues-down-throats kissing scene with his mother at one point, and (spoiler) shoots his stepfather. The thing I find fun about this movie is that the role Janet Leigh played just before this was Marion Crane in PSYCHO - another film about a man with some mommy issues. Heck, after this she played Rosie in BYE BYE BIRDIE who has serious problems with her fiance’s overly protective mother played by Maureen Stapleton. It’s like she was typecast as “the other woman” that comes between a boy and his mother!
I know this wasn’t the first American movie with a big martial arts fight scene (those MR MOTO films), but it has an *epic* hand to hand fight scene between Marco and the Translator when they bump into each other in Shaw’s apartment. That’s another bit of “programming”, by the way - each man recognizes the other as an enemy, even though they served together in the war. This hand to hand fight scene *destroys* the apartment, the way that Postal Carrier destroys Kathy Hale’s (Faye Dunaway) apartment when he fights Turner hand to hand in THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR. This is a *savage* fight, and we get to see a table karate chopped in half!
While we’re on how influential this film is, the Political Convention scene with a sniper waiting to kill the candidate gets lifted for THE PARALLAX VIEW (which, like CONDOR, also features character actor Walter McGinn). So much of MANCHURIAN ends up “homaged” in other movies that it’s like patient zero for political thrillers.
Hey, since I brought up McGinn (sleazy Parallax recruiter and Sam, Condor’s most trusted friend), let’s look at some of the amazing supporting cast in this film, beginning with James Edwards. This film and Kubrick’s THE KILLING is where I first became aware of him, and he is in my favorite scene from THE KILLING (playing the lonely parking lot attendant who befriends the crippled ex-soldier played by the great Tim Carey - and after really connecting as human beings, casting aside all prejudice that society programs into us concerning race and injuries, when it comes time for Carey to pull out his sniper gun and kill the lead horse, he can’t get rid of Edwards. He tries everything, eventually using the N word and really emotionally damaging Edwards’ character. It’s a three tissue scene). Once I’d realized that the same actor played both roles, I began noticing him in other movies - in Sam Fuller’s THE STEEL HELMET (awesome movie!), in PATTON, in Don Siegel’s COOGAN’S BLUFF, in Phil Karlson’s PHENIX CITY STORY, in Robert Wise’s THE SET UP, and in his big break out role HOME OF THE BRAVE (1949) as the only Black soldier in a white platoon going on a dangerous mission behind enemy lines on a Japanese held island. Edwards was one of the first black actors to play serious roles in Hollywood. He paved the way for Poitier.
Henry Silva is one of the most recognizable villains in film - he has that skull-like face that meant he would never play a romantic lead but never be without work. Between CODE OF SILENCE (Chuck Norris) and ABOVE THE LAW (Steven Seagal) he’s kicked all kinds of martial arts hero ass, and he’s one of those guys who played the villain at least once on every 70s and 80s TV show. He was in the original OCEANS 11 with Sinatra and the remake with Clooney. Plus, a ton of B movies where he played the villain and gave way more than he was paid. Though he was always cast in ethnic roles, he was born in New York... and is still with us.
The other villain, Chinese brain wash expert Dr. Yen Lo is played by Khigh Dhiegh, an incredibly charismatic actor who would also appear in John Frankenheimer’s SECONDS, but you probably know him as the recurring mega-villain in the original HAWAII 5-0 show, Wo Fat. He was the Ernst Stravro Blofeld to Jack Lord’s Steve McGarrett for the run of that show.
Oh, and the Russian in the Korea flashback / Women’s Gardening Club scene is Reggie Nalder, who played the assassin in the Jimmy Stewart version of THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH - which we look at in the new HITCHCOCK: MASTERING SUSPENSE book.
Unlovable Raymond Shaw falls in love with a young woman from the other side of the political aisle - a real Romeo & Juliet romance - played by Leslie Parrish (who played cute young women for decades until she quit the business in the 70s), and her father - the extremely liberal Senator Thomas Jordan - was played by the great John McGiver. A pudgy character actor with a distinctive voice (always sounded as if he was out of breath) who is another one of those actors who has been in everything... including my favorite TV show as a kid, MR. TERRIFIC, as the head of the Government’s Bureau Of Special Projects, which turns a complete wimp into a superhero with a top secret power pill. You probably know him from MIDNIGHT COWBOY, where he plays the “pimp” who turns out to be ultra religious (and is what brings Joe and Ratso together). McGiver played judges and mayors and all sorts of politicians, and you always felt like he knew whatever power he had was fragile and eventually he’s be carted off. Of course, in MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE he gets shot dead....
So, unlovable Raymond Shaw may be brainwashed to kill, and kind of an uncaring jerk, but he’s a profoundly lonely man... and when he meets Jocelyn Jordan (Parrish), she is his salvation. She loves him, even though he’s a jerk mama’s boy. She can see the goodness underneath all of those layers of armor. Shaw kind of is like Norman Bates, and Jocelyn breaks through to him and makes him a better man. They get engaged. Shaw stops being such a jerk. He is on a path to a normal life...
And then the phone rings.
“Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?”
The trigger phrase that turns Shaw into a remote control assassin... and he is ordered to kill Senator Thomas Jordan.
The remake with Denzel Washington got some basic stuff wrong... Um, the reason why it's a game of solitaire is because no one ever asks you if you want to play solitaire - it’s a one person game! So it is the perfect "trigger phrase". The remake has Shaw’s *name* as the “trigger phrase” - which means a freakin’ telemarketer could accidentally turn him into an assassin! But who would call you up and ask you to play solitaire? Great “trigger phrase” because no one would ever say that...
But after the voice on the phone *does* say it, Shaw goes to Jordan’s house with a silenced pistol to kill him. Except Jordan isn’t alone - Jocelyn is there. So he doesn’t only kill his target, he kills the only woman who ever loved him. This is a huge, tragic, scene - where you actually feel sorry for this unlovable man. Like “Romeo & Juliet”, the star-crossed lovers don’t make it until the end credits. This scene, and the ones that follow, turn the film into an epic tragedy...
All of which leads to a great race against time ending where Marco discovers the plan - that Shaw is a remote control assassin for the Russians, and his mother and Senator Iselin may look like ultra-conservative communist haters... but they’re really Russian agents! And Shaw will assassinate the Presidential Candidate leaving Iselin as the Man Who Will Be President. A Russian spy in the White House! The Convention Scene is as tense and exciting as the Albert Hall scene in THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, with some shocking violence and a great twist ending.
I mentioned earlier that novelist Richard Condon writes witty, satirical thrillers, and one of the basic elements of thrillers is *humor* - and this is something that seems lost on development executives in Hollywood these days. The remake was dry and dead serious, and when we think of thrillers - from Hitchcock to Roman Polanski to Brian DePalma - they all contain some form of humor, often in the form of irony, or the absurd, or comic relief characters. The idea of a dead serious thriller is as problematic as the idea of a dead serious superhero movie... which is a current problem. People go to the cinema to be entertained, and if we go back to those great 70s thrillers like THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR or MARATHON MAN or PARALLAX VIEW, those are amusing and entertaining films with a touch of humor to balance the gritty suspense. One of the most common reactions to the threat of serious bodily harm is humor... and that may be in the form of nervous laughter or using humor as a defense mechanism or in an attempt to de-escalate the situation. The *absence of humor* is unrealistic in a thriller. One of my favorite scenes in MARATHON MAN is when Dustin Hoffman’s character needs to enlist the help of the juvenile delinquents that live across the street from him, ring their door buzzer, and when he says his name they have no idea who he is... and he’s forced to say, “It’s *creepy* from across the street” - because they call him “creepy”. Then they know him! Hey, it’s creepy! Come on up! And after he gets these guys to break into his apartment and steal some clothes for him (and take his television and anything else they want as payment) a pair of badguys watching Hoffman’s apartment interrupt them - asking them what they’re doing. One of the badguys pulls a gun... and then *all* of the juvenile delinquents pull guns. Must be a dozen guns aimed at these two badguys! That always gets a big laugh... and the punchline is the one juvenile delinquent who *struts* into the apartment as if he owns the place (and owns those two badguy’s asses). That’s a great thriller scene! Richard Condon’s novels are wicked and dark and funny in a sick and twisted way.
This film was directed by one of my favorites, John Frankenheimer, who made a series of great films in the 50s and 60s and then hit a slump in the mid 70s... only to resurrect himself in the 80s with an awesome film version of an Elmore Leonard novel... which lead to some hit or miss films including RONIN - which probably introduced him to a new generation who never saw BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ. You’ll be seeing some of his other films featured in future Trailer Tuesday entries!
Voice over is by the great Paul Frees, a radio actor who had a very distinctive voice. You’ve heard his voice in a million different things, from Disneyland theme park rides to commercials to Saturday morning cartoons! He lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, and passed away 30 years ago... but his voice is still part of the Haunted Mansion!
MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE is the prototype political thriller... and beautifully shot and acted. The film was co-produced by Frank Sinatra, who had it pulled from distribution when JFK was assassinated - so for many years it went unseen... along with SUDDENLY, another Presidential assassination movie co-produced and starring Sinatra where he played the assassin - a disgruntled ex-military sniper. I may do a Trailer Tuesday on that film sometime in the future. If you want to know the great thing about having Sinatra as co-producer, check out the Senator’s luxurious private plane... that’s Sinatra’s, loaned to the film for the scene! If you haven’t seen this one, check it out!
This week we’re going to look at Burt Lancaster’s career when other actors had long since retired. Robert Mitchum continued to play tough guys, Lancaster played *retired* tough guys the way Clint Eastwood plays roles like that today.
Lancaster was an interesting guy... A working class kid who was a high school athlete, landed a college sports scholarship but dropped out to become a *circus acrobat*. He also worked as a singing waiter before WW2, and when he returned from the war he auditioned for a play and landed on Broadway... where he was discovered by a talent agent (who would later become his producing partner). He was a handsome athletic guy who could sing and dance... and make women swoon. His first role was the *lead* in THE KILLERS with Ava Gardner directed by Robert Siodmak (who directed CRISS CROSS and some other great Lancaster films). Lancaster was kind of like the George Clooney of his day: he didn’t just want to play handsome men in typical Hollywood movies, he wanted to control his career... so he formed a production company and began making his own films. Like Clooney, these were often the kind of edgy and unusual films that the studios *wouldn’t* make... like SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS.
And Lancaster grabbed his circus pal Nick to do stunts and often co star in films. Lancaster was nominated for a pile of Oscars, won one for ELMER GANTRY, and continued to make interesting films throughout his career (a string of great films with John Frankenheimer, and the recently released to BluRay THE SWIMMER which is probably the weirdest movie ever made with a Hollywood star). But when he was getting up there in years... he seemed to be rediscovered.
Though the movie that really brought him back (he didn’t go anywhere) was ATLANTIC CITY in 1980, I’m going to start off with the only movie he directed, THE MIDNIGHT MAN (1974), the story of an old tough guy ex cop working as a security guard on a college campus who finds himself at the center of a murder investigation. It’s kind of a geriatric private eye movie that deals with aging and action at the same time, I think most people have forgotten it. Susan Clark and Harris Yulin from NIGHT MOVES pop up, and screenwriters Quinn Redeker (DEER HUNTER) and Bill Lancaster (THE THING) (Burt’s son) play roles. It wasn’t a hit, but I think it got some good reviews. I read the novel (“The Midnight Lady And The Mourning Man” by David Anthony) and probably saw the movie when it opened in my town. Haven’t seen it since, and I’m curious what it looks like now that *I’m* older.
1900 (NOVECENTO) (1976) is one of my favorite movies, but a completely acquired taste. Bernardo Bertolucci’s sprawling story of Italy from the year 1900 to 1976 stars Robert DeNiro and a young handsome Gerard Depardieu as childhood friends from different sides of the tracks who fall in love with the same woman (Dominique Sanda). DeNiro is the son of the wealthy estate owner, Burt Lancaster... and Depardieu is the dirt poor kid of the senior field worker, Sterling Hayden. This film is filled with beautiful images and an amazing performance by Donald Sutherland. Lancaster and Hayden, two old tough guys, are great in the early part of the film when the two lead characters are little boys. This was one of several films that Lancaster made in Italy as an older actor.
ATLANTIC CITY (1980) was the film where people noticed Lancaster all over again, playing a retired mobster living in Atlantic City and pretending to have once been more important than he really was. He hooks up with a young casino worker played by Susan Sarandon, who applies lemon juice to various places on her body... and wants to get enough money together to move to the south of France. She’s married to a bum who steals some drugs from the mob, and brings a whole world of hurt down on them... and Lancaster’s mostly tall tales of being a mobster turn to action reality. This is a kind of a film noir mixed with Italian neo realism... and shows an Atlantic City that no longer exists. The city before it was rebuilt with all of the new casinos.
LOCAL HERO (1983) is a great film. If you haven’t seen it, stop everything you are doing now (except breathing) and check it out! This is a gentle comedy by Bill Forsythe about an oil company flunky (Peter Riegert) sent into a small Scotland town to convince the residents that they should accept and love the new oil company refinery that is going where their town used to be... and move the heck out. This is one of those great movies that feels like a life changing experience, and is kind of the prototype for many UK comedies to come like WAKING NED DEVINE about unusual occupants of small towns. When Riegert runs into trouble getting some townspeople to sell the homes that have been in their families for generations for something as silly as *money*, the big boss (Lancaster) comes to town to convince them... and ends up recapturing the magic of small town life and decided that maybe this isn’t the right spot for a refinery.
Just for fun, I’m throwing in TOUGH GUYS (1986), a buddy comedy with very old buddies... Lancaster and Kirk Douglas are the old version of the kind of gangster roles they played, just released from prison and trying to figure out how the world works now. The film is uneven, but has some funny scenes that I can still remember... including one where Lancaster and Douglas end up in a gay bar without knowing it... and are asked to dance. These two guys realize they are never going to fit in with the world now... and decide to go back to their armed robbery past.
And though his career still had a few films to go, let’s wrap it up with FIELD OF DREAMS (1989), because I saw it on the big screen at the Egyptian Theater about a year ago and it was still an experience. Lancaster plays Moonlight Graham, who played only one game in the Major Leagues and then retired to become a country doctor. Lancaster plays the old version of Graham, again playing the old retired tough guy... this time a retired athlete. Lancaster began as a high school athlete and gets to play the old version of that in FIELD OF DREAMS.
Even at the end of his career, Lancaster was charming and charismatic and commanded the screen in every scene... and still virile as hell. One of those larger than life movie stars who had a great onscreen third act playing characters who were old but still cooler than I’ll ever be.
The amazing thing about JAWS is that it is so well made it stands up now... and is better than most current films. In fact, compare JAWS to JURASSIC PARK (same director) and JAWS still wins. Better characters and situations and more suspense. The novel JAWS is kind of a pulpy beach read - a big chunk of it focuses on the affair between Mrs. Brody and hunky young Matt Hooper. All of that was removed for the film, and some great scenes were added. In fact, what always impresses me about JAWS is how many great scenes and memorable scenes are in the film. Just for fun, why not write a list of the great or memorable scenes you can remember. Doesn’t matter how long it has been since you have seen the movie, in fact - the longer it has been the better! If you haven’t seen the film since 1975, those scenes you can remember now made an impression.
Got your list? Well, I know which two scenes are on the top, and we’ll be looking at one of those later in the series, but now let’s look at one that is probably further down your list... A memorable scenes.
This scene happens about 13 minutes into the film... you read that right! The movie begins with the teens on the beach, skinny dipping, shark attacking the girl. Great way to start a film! The audience knows there is a shark out there. Next we have a scene that introduces Martin Brody and his wife and kids - he’s new on the job. He was an NYPD cop, who came to Amity... and is not thrilled by the water. He’s also over protective of his kids - he warns them the swing set isn’t safe.
Next scene we have our missing girl, and the guy she was with is showing Brody where she disappeared... and then they find what is left of her. Shocking! The town’s medical examiner confirms it as “Shark Attack”. Brody asks where they keep the “Beach Closed” signs... and finds out they don’t have any.
So Brody heads down to the store to buy sign making supplies. Now, here’s the great thing - the bike shop guy wants Brody to deal with the kids at the Kung Fu class, because they keep kung fuing his fence and even his bikes. The small town problems he *thought* he was going to deal with! He gets to the store, and more small town problems are discussed as he buys the paint and brushes and signs. He tells his deputy to take the stuff back to the police station and have the *secretary* make the signs, she has better penmanship. This becomes an issue!
Then Brody gets cornered by the Mayor and City Council Members on a ferry - and is pressured to change the cause of death to “boating accident” and pressured to keep the beaches open. The Mayor gives that great little speech about how when someone yells “Barracuda!” no one cares, but when someone yells “Shark!” it creates a panic. Brody *knows* this was a shark attack, but bends under the pressure. It’s him on that ferry against a handful of others - his bosses - who press him to do what he knows is the wrong thing.
Which brings us to this scene, about 13 minutes into the film. See how fast paced this film is? But it doesn’t seem that way - we get a good introduction to Brody and his family, a feel for small town life, introduce Body’s deputy and secretary, a look at small town politics... all while dealing with the shark attack. These aren’t a bunch of quick-cut MTV scenes, these scenes are concise and do many things at once. Packed with information, and emotion...
And then we have our day at the beach...
This scene is all about Brody *knowing* that he was pressured to do the wrong thing. He’s on edge - watching the people in the water. We get to know some minor characters - the Kitner Boy and his Mom, the Boy and his Dog, the Woman on the raft... and Bad Hat Harry (Bryan Singer’s production company!). All of these people will be players in the scene.
This scene has two great Hitchcock techniques - the “Hitchcock Wipes” where a passing person bridges the cuts so that it all flows as if it is one piece of film. This technique was used in “Rope” and “Frenzy”. In JAWS each wipe takes us closer and closer to Brody - focusing on how intently he is watching the people in the water... worried about a shark attack. The other technique is the “Dolly/Zoom” from “Vertigo”, where the camera dollys at the exact same rate as the lens zooms to that we get an expansion or compression of the background.
One of my favorite bits is when the guy *blocks Brody’s line of sight to the water* in order to talk about red curbs or whatever mundane thing. This creates suspense and frustration for Brody’s character - and that perfectly transfers to the audience. Conflict is the key to everything, and here we have another person with a small problem getting in Brody’s way when there is a much bigger problem. The great payoff with this is the screaming girl and her boyfriend. This heightens the tension. Even though it’s a fake out, we *know* that something is going to happen for real.
Now we “make it personal” with his kids getting into the water. He’s concerned, but hold back - tries to act cool. His kids swim way out there... towards the Kitner Boy.
Now it’s Bad Hat Harry who blocks his line of sight. The conflict has *escalated* because Brody’s kids are out there... in potential danger.
Escalating the tension and building dread is the Boy unable to find his Dog. That stick he was throwing is floating in the water... but no Dog fetching it. Something is wrong.
Did you see that? One of the great things about the shark eating the Kitner Boy is that it happens *in the background* of the shot of Brody’s kids and their friends swimming. Instead of making it obvious, the shot puts it in the background so that we aren’t quite sure what we saw. That’s more ominous than if they made it obvious. The folks on the beach aren’t sure what they are seeing, as well. That’s when we get the great “Dolly/Zoom” and Brody - knowing this is all his fault for being spineless - runs to the edge of the water and yells for everyone to get out of the water.
Here’s where we get more wonderful conflict. The parents race *into the water* to grab their kids! Into danger! Now Brody is trying to get the parents back to the shore (unsuccessfully) as well as get the kids to swim to shore. Absolute panic! Once everyone is on shore and heading away from the water, one person is walking *toward* the water - Mrs. Kitner. The scene ends just over 18 minutes into the film... with the bloody raft brushing up against the shore.
That’s not even one of the top two scenes you wrote down, which were probably “We’re gonna need a bigger boat!” and Quint relating his experience on the USS Indianapolis during WW2.
What does that look like on the page?
EXT. AMITY BEACH - DAY
A plump jelly-bowl of a woman plunges into the ocean. There's
enough there to satisfy the most gluttonous shark. Buoyant,
joyful, she splashes away in abandon. From her, we pan off
to reveal other cheerful bathers enjoying that last
uncluttered weekend before the season starts in earnest.
ANGLE ON THE WATERLINE
A Man and his dog are romping at the water's edge. The Man
is throwing a stick out into the surf, the dog, a happy
retriever, is bounding into the waves after it.
TWO YOUNG PEOPLE ON THE BEACH
A Girl and her Boyfriend leave their blanket and run for the
water, playing tag, chasing each other, having a wonderful
time.
ANGLE ON BIRTHDAY PARTY ON THE SAND - MARTIN AND ELLEN BRODY
He is sitting stiffly in a beach chair, scanning the beach
with careful, cautious looks, eyeballing everything that's
going on.
Around their particular blanket and umbrella are a number of
adults and their kids, the youngsters gathered to celebrate
Michael's birthday. Ellen is dishing out ice cream and cake
from a cooler chest to the raucous 10-year-olds. Michael's
hand is still bandaged.
MAX TAFT
(an adult)
Looks like another big season. Gets
worse every year.
MRS. TAFT
And none of them from the Island.
Just a lot of bother.
Brody (and we) hear a shrill scream from the water. He
stretches to look past the group, to see what's happening
out there.
BRODY'S POINT OF VIEW - THE WATER
The young lady is disappearing under the water, pulled under
the waves by some force. She is shrieking. She pops right up
again riding the shoulders of her boyfriend, who pulled her
under. She's laughing hysterically. Brody is unamused.
THE ADULTS
BRODY
(to Taft)
What?
TAFT
Present company excepted, but off-
islanders are a pain in the butt.
Pardon my French.
Ellen captures Sean, and holds him playfully, an example.
ELLEN
What about this kid? What if he were
born here. That make him an islander?
TAFT
Just 'cause a cat has kittens in an
oven, it don't make them muffins.
SEAN
I'm not a muffin! I'm a boy!
Brody rumples his hair and sets him off to play.
ANGLE ON ANOTHER SMALL BOY, PLAYING ALONE
It's Alex Kintner, and his mother, nearby, reading a novel.
Alex is towing a funny rubber raft, and headed for the water.
MRS. KINTNER
Alex! Alex Kintner! Where do you
think you're going?
ALEX
Water. Just once more, please?
MRS. KINTNER
Let me see your fingers --
He holds out his hands.
MRS. KINTNER
They're beginning to prune. 10 minutes
more.
Alex starts for the ocean. Behind him, Michael and his gang
are also heading for the inviting waves. Brody is watching
them go, his spine rigid with tension.
MAN AND HIS DOG
As Alex and the boys hit the water, we see the man throwing
his stick into the waves, his dog swimming strongly after
it.
BRODY'S POINT OF VIEW
Out beyond the kids and the dog, the Fat Lady is bobbing
around, out way too far, isolated from the other swimmers.
UNDERWATER VIEW - EXT. - DAY
A fish's-eye view of the bathers: lots of little kicking
legs, rafts with tasty arms dangling in the blue, slowing
circling, favoring one raft (little Alex's). The Kintner
boy's legs and arms are kicking and paddling, producing
bizarre underwater vibrations of more than passing interest.
Dog goes by, dog-paddling along.
ON THE BEACH
Brody is half-rising, looking out over the water. The Fat
Lady is not where he remembered her. He scans the water
anxiously.
ELLEN
Do you want the boys to come in?
Honey, if you're worried...
A Black Object swims across the water. It's the dog, breasting
against the surf.
ANGLE ON THE WATER - BRODY'S POINT OF VIEW
It's the Fat Lady, floating, relaxing. A black object swims
up to her. It's not the dog. It rears up out of the water.
It's a man in a black bathing cap. They exchange distant
pleasantries, he strokes away.
ANOTHER ANGLE - WATER
Alex Kintner, paddling around, making boat sounds, tooting,
going "vroom, vroom."
ANGLE ON THE BOY AND GIRL
They kiss, embrace, kiss again. Strong stuff. They sink
beneath the waves, knotted in an embrace.
ANGLE ON MICHAEL BRODY AND HIS FRIENDS
He's trying to salvage a soggy piece of birthday cake, holding
it above the water, paddling with his other hand. The bandage
has come part way loose, and his cut is trailing in the water.
BRODY AND ELLEN ON THE BEACH
Ellen is rubbing suntan oil on his back, and he is allowing
himself to relax part way. His eyes still nervously scan the
beach in a constant surveillance. Mr. Keisel is coming out
of the water, toweling off vigorously, exclaiming to himself.
BRODY
(to Keisel)
How's the water?
KEISEL
Too cold. I'm going in again Labor
Day. Hope we get this weather next
weekend.
ELLEN
You're very tight, y'know?
(digs in)
Right there.
BRODY
Ow.
(he sees something)
He's gotta be more careful in the
water...
ANGLE ON THE GANG PLAYING IN THE WATER
Michael has just been drenched. He splashes back. A big
waterfight ensues, the boys splashing and chopping at the
water, shouting battle cries and karate whoops. Alex is
paddling around near them, but not involved with them.
ALONG THE WATERLINE ON THE BEACH
The Man with the Dog is whistling into the ocean, looking
for his dog.
DOG MAN
Buster! Hey, Buster! Here boy!
(whistles)
He continues to ad lib calling his
dog, but there's no answer, no dog
in the water.
THE WATERFRONT
A huge splash explodes in the water near the gang, an eruption
of foam and spray that stops everyone cold for a moment.
They stop to see who was responsible.
A KID (MATHEW)
Hey, no fair splashing in the eyes!
Before anyone can answer, another kid (P.J.) renews the
battle, whooping a karate cry, and slashing at the water
with his hand like a little kung-fu warrior, advancing through
the waves.
CLOSE ON MATHEW, SPLASHING BACK
He hits the water, which sprays up suspiciously pink. He
stares at it, surprised.
CLOSE ON P.J.
His hands are dripping deep pink, the red matting his hair,
running into his eyes. He looks down. The boys are surrounded
with a deep pink slick, their little bodies ringed by a
spreading stain of blood.
ANGLE ON SHORE, A TOURIST AND HIS WIFE
He's pointing frantically out to sea.
TOURIST
Something in the water. Right there!
Didn't anyone see it?
WOMAN
There's blood in the water.
ANGLE ON BRODY
He leaps to his feet, nearly knocking Ellen over, and starts
for the water.
ELLEN
What is it...?
Brody is pelting towards the water. He kicks sand over an
annoyed Mrs. Kintner, who looks up, just in time to hear
Brody's bellow.
BRODY
Michael! Sean! Out of the water.
Everybody out of the water! Michael!
Get out!
His urgency communicates itself to the others. Ellen snatches
Sean up from where he's been playing in the sand. Other
parents are calling their kids, hysteria mounting. People
rush into the water, dragging their children and families
bodily out of the ocean. The first kids coming out of the
surf are frantically trying to wash the sticky blood off
their bodies. The sight of the red sends the beach into a
full panic.
CLOSE ON BRODY
He rushes into the water, up to his ankles, and suddenly
stops, unable to move into deeper water. He is urging Michael
out, holding his hands out to his son, who is slogging through
the surf towards his dad. He stands there immobilized by the
water, nervously helping people out of it onto the beach.
ANGLE ON MICHAEL
As he emerges from the water, Alex Kintner's raft washes in
behind him, ripped in half, the water pink, the foam spreading
the stain onto the sand as the wave breaks.
ANGLE ON MRS. KINTNER
Her voice rising into panic and hysteria with each unanswered
cry.
MRS. KINTNER
Alex! Alex? Alex...!
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?
At the first Writer’s Guild “Words Into Pictures” Conference in 1997 I was one of the hundreds of people who watched Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau perform I.A.L. Diamond’s short play “Quizzically” about a pair of writers debating a “wrylie” - a parenthetical to tell an actor how to deliver the line. Due to chance and maybe the stars aligning correctly, I was in the front row, only a few feet away from these two great actors. It’s one of those things that I will remember forever... and Diamond’s short play is hysterical if you are a screenwriter. Diamond was a co-writer with Billy Wilder on SOME LIKE IT HOT and THE APARTMENT and many more films, and Matthau and Lemmon were the perfect team to bounce the clever lines off of each other. I haven’t read the play, but I will bet there were very few parentheticals in it, because those things are usually the sign of a problem in a screenplay... which is what we will be talking about today.
THE LIFE OF WRYLIES
New screenwriters often litter their screenplays with “wrylies” (parantheticals) for a couple of reasons which are both part of not trusting the actors to do their jobs. One of the things that is difficult for new writers to remember is that even though writing that spec script is an individual accomplishment and you *are* all of the other people involved in making the film at that point, it will eventually become a team effort and other very talented people will work to create the finished film. There’s a line that is often blurry between that individual accomplishment and team effort, and new writers tend to micro-manage their screenplays instead of creating what TAXI DRIVER screenwriter Paul Schrader calls the “Invitation to others to collaborate on a work of art”. Our job as screenwriters is to give hints to the other participants in making the film, rather than give orders. We want to nudge them in the right direction, because if we try to shove them they will do the exact opposite of what we want. When you push, people push back. I often say that part of our jobs as screenwriters is to make the director think that it was their idea. So we need to let the actors do the acting, the cinematographer do the lighting, the casting director figure out what the actors look like, the set designer figure out the specifics of what the locations look like, etc. We can hint, but we can’t demand. And if we are good at hinting in our screenplays - everyone will think that it was their idea. So let’s look at letting the actors act...
Though we are imagining the performance in our minds as we write, we still want to leave room for each of the other creative people involved to do their jobs - and they are the experts at those jobs. If we use a “wrylie” to tell the actor that the character is supposed to be angry when delivering the line, that often means that the line itself is not expressing anger - and that’s a flaw in *our work*. Often “wrylies” are used to prop up weak dialogue that isn’t doing it’s job to demonstrate that emotion. There are better word choices or a better order to the words that will make that line show the anger of the character. Often the problem is sentence length - angry people don’t have long winded sentences, they are quick and to the point, and adding a wrylie is not going to change the length of the sentence. The shorter the sentence, the more energy in that sentence. Longer sentences dissipate the energy. So, as the writer, our *writing* needs to demonstrate the emotions so that we do not need a wrylie. Telling an actor to deliver a line with anger doesn’t make the line sound angry - and the line is our job, performance is the actor’s. Let the actor choose the delivery of the lines.
Here’s why: The 1964 version of THE KILLERS has a scene where assassin Lee Marvin is threatening Claude Akins, who has information on where his target is hiding. Now Marvin is playing a violent and impatient man, whose catch phrase is “I don’t have the time”, so you might think that (angry) is the perfect “wrylie” for his threats to Akins. When you wrote the dialogue - these were angry lines, right? But if they are angry lines, you don’t need to identify them as such - the dialogue *demonstrates* the emotion in the way it is written....
Plus, the actor might make a brilliant choice, as Lee Marvin did in this scene - he delivered the lines quietly and calmly, which made the threats even more chilling. He removed the anger from his voice, so we got control - and that makes this scene stand out. This is a man who kills people for a living and has as much feeling about it as an assembly line worker feels about doing his job. Awesome choice by the actor, and you don’t want to limit those choices by micro-managing their performance. Just as we have our skills as writers, actors have their skills. They understand how to play the scene better than we do, they play scenes for a living.
Trust the actors to do the job that they are experts at!
Also trust the director and everyone else to do their jobs. Directors like to be in control, they like to be the person who came up with the genius idea... so if you write CLOSE UP: they will not want to shoot that in a close up, because it wasn't their idea. And if it needed to be a close up? You just screwed yourself by writing CLOSE UP instead of using language so that the director reads the scene and imgaines a close up. In the DESCRIPTION AND VOICE Blue Book there's a section on how to use language to create a specific picture in the reader's mind. No need to type CLOSE UP if all they can imagine is a close up. I once had a meeting with a director on one of my screenplays and he was excited by "his idea" of how to shoot an action scene. I told him that he was a genius to think about shooting it like that... but I purposely described it so that you would imagine those shots and angles. I created the images in the reader's mind from those angles. I hinted.
So let the people do their jobs... and secretly be the puppet master pulling theor strings.
SARCASTICALLY?
Make sure that your dialogue is doing its job, and doesn’t need to be propped up with a wrylie. The one place where a wrylie might be required is a sarcastic line of dialogue, but even then the delivery should be completely obvious by the situation and the character. The situation and character are also the writer’s jobs, so you still should not need a wrylie if you are doing your job. Sarcasm is a character trait - something that you can mention when introducing the character, and then their dialogue throughout the screenplay will reflect this. If a character who has never been sarcastic before suddenly becomes sarcastic, that’s a little odd - and maybe you should rethink that dialogue? Actors are going to question when a character does something out of character... and you should be questioning that before they ever get a chance to read it. So even with sarcasm, you don’t need wrylies. If the character is introduced as being sarcastic, and the dialogue in this situation can only be sarcastic? No need to micro-manage that. Trust the actor to figure it out. You do your job and allow them to do theirs.
ACTIONS NOT EXPRESSIONS
The other way that new writers often micro-manage a screenplay is by telling an actor what expression they should have on their faces. My personal rule is that I control the actor’s bodies and the actor gets to control their expressions. Let the actors act! One of the problems with either a wrylie that says (smiles) or a line of description that tells the actor to smile is that some actors aren’t the smiling types. When was the last time you say Clint Eastwood giving a big toothy grin in a movie? So if you are trying to get that emotion to the audience, it never gets there. It’s depending on the actor to do the writer’s job - either through the line of dialogue that demonstrates happiness or and action (using their bodies) that shows happiness. If the situation that the writer creates is all about joy and happiness, the actor doesn’t need to smile - the *audience* will be smiling... and that’s the key to emotions and emotional scenes.
Frank Capra said, "I thought drama was when actors cried. But drama is when the audience cries." Your job as a screenwriter is not to make the characters cry, it’s to create a situation where the audience cries. Or laughs. Or feels anger. Or feels joy. One of the things that I have noticed in some films is that when the character cries, the audience doesn’t have to... but if the character tries to remain in control in a scene where they would normally cry, the audience feels as if they need to do the crying for the character.
The same holds true with expressions - sometimes an actor knows that if they *don’t* show an expression when the situation calls for one, it will create stronger feelings in the audience. The actor understands what expression will be best for the scene, and sometimes they make an interesting choice that we, as writers, would never have thought of. I don’t know if Richard Widmark’s character laughed with joy when he pushed an old woman in a wheelchair down the stairs to her death in the screenplay for KISS OF DEATH or whether it was the actor’s choice (I suspect the latter) but that really odd choice given the situation is what made that scene famous. Actors can take our characters and find the behaviors that we never imagined - and that’s why we want to trust them to do their jobs.
There are times when a character nods or smiles as an important response - it's story related, so you will write that smile or nod or whatever. But try to find a better way to do that, if possible.
Um, I am guilty of this: I had a screenplay where the producer thought the protagonist was too dour, so I added a (smiles) wrylie a couple of times in the first ten pages, problem solved! Yes, I did everything that I just told you not to do. But only in self defense. I knew that whoever played the protagonist was going to be a charismatic movie star, and for some reason the producer was imagining some sad sack loser... I told the producer that I completely rewrote the character, but all I did is add a couple of (smiles) and it solved the problem. Tools not rules.
Some new writers think that the “description” part of a screenplay is just there to break up the dialogue, but that is not its purpose. The difference between Movies and TV when it comes to screenplays is that TV is a growth of radio - and tends to be more dialogue driven, and modern movies are a growth of silent films - and tend to be stories told visually. Through the actions of the characters. What their bodies do. So find the way to demonstrate the emotions with actions, rather than with expressions. Read through your screenplay - skipping the dialogue - and make sure that the story is told through the actions of the characters, the situations, the images. One of the things in my Action Screenwriting Book and I believe the Visual Storytelling Book are “twitches and touchstones” - creating a physical object with an emotion built into it, so that a character can create emotions in the audience just by touching that watch that their dead father gave them, and the audience knows that they are thinking of their father. Our job is telling stories visually through the actions of the characters - so we don’t need to tell them what expression is on their face... the actor can provide that.
NONE OF MY BUSINESS
Though we control the actor’s bodies, another place where writers often micro-manage is “business”. Business is what an actor does with their hands during a scene - that’s an oversimplification, but it’s any normal actions that aren’t changing the course of the story. “Kurt takes a sip of wine.” These are like “physical wrylies” - actions that really don’t have anything to do with telling the story, they are telling the actor what to do. “Sandra shakes her head” before the character saying “No” is redundant. When we are talking about the actions of the characters, we aren’t talking about little things that they do. One of my short films had a scene where a woman returns from the grocery store and is putting away groceries. Putting away the groceries was all of the action required for that scene, and the actress pulled out a bag of potato chips, opened it, and munched on a few as she put the groceries away. Brilliant! That was business. She did what someone normally does when putting away groceries - snack a little on something that she bought. I didn’t need to write that in the screenplay or tell her to do that - she is an actress and she did what the character would do in that scene. Eating a few potato chips didn’t impact the story in any way - so it wasn’t something that I would write in the script. Just as taking a sip of wine at dinner is just normal - unless the wine was poisoned or something, it doesn’t impact the story. A friend of mine worked on a film where the actor developed an amazing trick with a cigarette lighter for his character - not in the screenplay. But the actor thought that if his character had smoked their entire life, they would have developed fun ways to do it. Actors bring things like this to the characters. That lighter trick didn’t advance the story in any way - it was business.
You want to focus your action lines on physical actions that *do* impact the story, and let the actors do the natural stuff. If your screenplay is just a bunch of people standing around talking - that is a problem. Adding “Kurt takes a sip of wine” or “Sandra shakes her head” or even that cigarette lighter trick is not going to solve the problem of a static scene where nothing is physically happening or characters use words instead of actions. Often the story itself is the culprit, here - you have a non-visual story in a visual medium. A radio play that you are trying to pass off as a SCREENplay. Instead of adding business, go back and rethink that scene - how can you show the feelings and emotions? How can you demonstrate the story through actions instead of exclusively through dialogue?
Movies are words and pictures, and if you only have the words, a picture of “Kurt takes a sip of wine” tells us *nothing*. So let the actors do the acting - let them choose the delivery of the lines, chose what expression is on their face, choose what to do with their hands. And you as the writer create situations and physical actions that impact the story itself. Trusting the actors to do their jobs, trusting the cinematographer to do their job, trusting the costume department and set designers and everyone else to do their jobs.
Expanded version with more ways to create interesting protagonists! How to remove bad dialogue (and what *is* bad dialogue), First Hand Dialogue, Awful Exposition, Realism, 50 Professional Dialogue Techniques you can use *today*, Subtext, Subtitles, Humor, Sizzling Banter, *Anti-Dialogue*, Speeches, and more. Tools you can use to make your dialogue sizzle! Special sections that use dialogue examples from movies as diverse as "Bringing Up Baby", "Psycho", "Double Indemnity", "Notorious", the Oscar nominated "You Can Count On Me", "His Girl Friday", and many more! Over 160 pages!
From 2012... Now that everyone is saying that THE LONG WALK is a ripoff of HUNGER GAMES!
THE HUNGER GAMES (2012) is based on a novel from 4 years ago - and happened to be the #1 film of the weekend again.
So there’s a funny little picture being passed around on Facebook with a shot from PULP FICTION and the question - “Do you know what they call HUNGER GAMES in France? BATTLE ROYALE with cheese.” Amusing, but shouldn’t it be Japan?
The thing that I find most amusing about this are the people who think that HUNGER GAMES is just a rip-off of BATTLE ROYALE - as if the history of cinema began a dozen years ago. Hey, this story has been around almost as long as film! At least 80 years ago they made the same basic story!
"Do you like Gladiator Movies?"
So I thought ot would be fun to look at some of the films that came before HUNGER GAME and added to it’s story...
We’ll get to CONDEMNED (2007) when we look at the movies about prisoners who get chosen to play the game where they fight to the death, but first let’s take a look at innocent school children who are chosen in a lottery to fight to the death...
You are probably thinking about BATTLE ROYALE, and we’ll get to that, but about the same time as BATTLE ROYALE came out one of my favorite movies that no one has ever seen came out - SERIES 7. This indie flick is about a hit reality TV show where random people are chosen to fight each other to the death as SURVIVOR-like camera crews follow them. Instead of an island or an abandoned part of the city or a wooded area these contestants play in the city. They hunt and kill each other in the real world. The film follows a handful of contestants including the pregnant champion and a *cheerleader* who is driven to kills by her parents. I love this movie! It’s savage and funny and looks just like an episode of SURVIVOR.
SERIES 7 (2001)
Just before SERIES 7 we had the Japanese version of the story which seems most similar to HUNGER GAMES... except the tone is completely different and the characters and motivations and reasons for the game and even the details of the game are completely different. The parts that are the same? Kids as contestants. If you consider how many times this story has been made and how many other variables there are that are direct-connections to HUNGER GAMES... plus LORD OF THE FLIES which was remade the same year (2000) and was *originally* made in 1963 (Peter Brooks) and based on a novel that predates the BATTLE ROYALE novel by *decades*, why the heck is this the first film people think of when they are looking for a HUNGER GAMES source?
BATTLE ROYALE (2000)
By the way, BATTLE was directed by the same guy who gave us GREEN SLIME (not the pink stuff). The novel was written in 1996... which is long after Stephen King’s RUNNING MAN (published in 1982) which was made into a movie 3 years before BATTLE ROYALE. Hey! How come no one points to RUNNING MAN as the source for HUNGER GAMES? Probably more similarities between the two - the major difference being prisoners instead of just kids... but if you have read the book you know the prisoner thing was an invention of the screenwriters, in the book the protagonist was an out of work guy from a District called Co-Op City which is very much like the coal mining world of District 12, who volunteers for the game to save his daughter. A poverty stricken dystopian future, a game to the death, a family member playing for another family member. That's RUNNING MAN! The tone and feel of the book is similar to HUNGER GAMES - they almost share the same dystopian future. The HUNGER GAMES books are a complete ripoff of King's novel! So how come nobody ever brings that up? Are these folks illiterate? Probably. Though the novel is exactly like HUNGER, the movie?
RUNNING MAN (1987)
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Though there are plenty of battles to the death on an island (HELL IN THE PACIFIC, 1967) and people hunting each other flicks (RUN FOR THE SUN (1956), NAKED PREY (1966), and the cheese-fest DEATH CHASE from 1988), but if there was ever a source for HUNGER GAMES it’s a crazy Italian film from 1965 based on a novel by Robert Sheckley called THE TENTH VICTIM. The film is about a TV reality show where ten normal people are chosen at random and given guns in order to hunt each other through the city. There is an MC, there is a TV audience, there are bets made on the outcome, just about everything in HUNGER GAMES is in this film... including the “star crossed lovers” aspect! Because the strangest part about THE TENTH VICTIM is that it’s kind of a rom-com! Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress are contestants who fall in love along the way - even though they must kill each other in the end. Will they change the rules so that two can survive?
TENTH VICTIM (1965)
I love Ursula’s bra-gun! My James Bond parody film FOR SORE EYES ONLY featured a villainess named Greta Goodtits who had machineguns surgically implanted in her breasts - a pair of blazing 38s! The most amazing thing about this film is that it was made in 1965 and predicts reality TV shows... but the Sheckley story was published in 1953! How the heck could he have predicted reality TV shows in 1953?
I mentioned that RUNNING MAN changed the unemployed everyman who would have fit right in working in those District 12 coal mines with a prisoner played by Ah-nuld, but for the past 20 years or some we have had many versions of this story as junky action films about *prisoners* who get a chance at freedom if they kill each other on live TV. CONDEMNED was a recent version where prisoners fought to death on an island (like in BATTLE ROYALE), and the DEATH RACE remake they fought to the death in cars. There are a zillion steel cage match movies like THE OCTAGON which feature fights to the death, and lots of movies like HARD TARGET and SURVIVING THE GAME where the game isn’t televised - but still is played to the death,
I believe I am probably the only one who has seen this Prisoners Battle To The Death On A TV Game Show flick in a cinema - DEATHROW GAMESHOW directed by Northridge’s Mark Pirro... who makes films on Super 8mm, though this was shot on 16mm. I saw this flick at AFM one year...
DEATHROW GAMESHOW (1987) - caution: boobies!
But all of these films go back to that film shot at the same time and on the same sets as KING KONG, the amazing MOST DANGEROUS GAME (1932) based on a story by Richard Connell published in 1924. Here we have the island, the hunting of people, the star-crossed lovers... and the hounds! Those killer dogs in HUNGER GAMES? They are in this version of the story, too! Not the DNA mutants from HUNGER GAMES, but dogs specially breed to find humans. I was looking for a trailer or good clip of the film, but could only find the whole damned movie (it’s in public domain). So don’t click on the clip below unless you have over an hour to kill watching people hunting people on an island.
MOST DANGEROUS GAME (1932)
So there you go - 80 years ago the first film that could be called a source for HUNGER GAMES was made, and in every decade since there have been a handful of movies with the same basic plot. Like all basic stories, this one is as old as time. There were probably cave men telling the story of fighting each other to the death... Hey, wait a minute - how does 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY begin?
If you want the most similar story, that's obviously RUNNING MAN (the novel). If you aren't illiterate, you already knew that. If you didn't know that? Try reading a book now and then - it's not like Stephen King is an obscure writer.
But what's important about a movie or screenplay isn't the similarities, it's the differences. Every story is like a bunch of other stories, but what are the elements that make *this version* unique?
Why pay $510 for a used version of the 240 page 2000 version that used to retail for $21.95? (check it out!) when you can get the NEW EXPANDED VERSION - over 500 pages - for just $9.99? New chapters, New examples, New techniques!
"SECRETS OF ACTION SCREENWRITING is the best book on the practical nuts-and-bolts mechanics of writing a screenplay I've ever read." - Ted Elliott, co-writer of MASK OF ZORRO, SHREK, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN and the sequels (with Terry Rossio).(ie; 4 of the top 20 Box Office Hits Of ALL TIME.)
Starring: Vincent Price, Carol Ohmart, Richard Long, Elisha Cook jr, Carolyn Craig.
Written by: Robb White
Directed by: William Castle
Produced by: William Castle
William Castle was the king of gimmicks, and this film featured “Emergo” - which was nothing more than a plastic skeleton on a wire that shot out at the audience at a point in the film near the end...
The movie opens with screams over a black screen, and then Pritchard (Elisha Cook jr) says, “The ghosts are moving tonight, restless... hungry. May I introduce myself? I'm Watson Pritchard. In just a moment I'll show you the only really haunted house in the world. Since it was built a century ago, seven people, including my brother, have been murdered in it. Since then, I've owned the house. I only spent one night there and when they found me in the morning, I was almost dead.” Which sets the stage for the story without showing a single ghost or dead body. Haunted house movies often begin with the legend of the house, and both HELL HOUSE and THE HAUNTING have scenes where we hear about all of the terrible things that have happened in the house previously so that we fear for our new guests.
After Pritchard is finished, we get Frederick Loren (Vincent Price) introducing the situation in voice over as we see our guests approach, “I am Frederick Loren, and I have rented the house on Haunted Hill tonight so that my wife can give a party. She's so amusing. There'll be food and drink and ghosts, and perhaps even a few murders. You're all invited. If any of you will spend the next twelve hours in this house, I will give you each ten thousand dollars, or your next of kin in case you don't survive. Ah, but here come our other guests...” And we get an introduction and brief bio of each character. In a movie that isn’t even 75 minutes long, using voice over to introduce the characters and basic situation gets us right into the story without wasting valuable film stock on all of those introduction scenes.
This is an interesting haunted house, because despite Pritchard saying it’s 100 years old, it is ultra modern on the outside... a spooky cobwebbed set on the inside. The guests: brave test pilot Lance Schroeder (THE BIG VALLEY’s Richard Long), broke secretary Nora Manning (Carolyn Craig) who works for Loren’s company, gossip magazine columnist Ruth Bridges (Julie Mitchum), skeptical psychiatrist Dr. David Trent (Alan Marshal), and the house owner Pritchard... none have ever met each other or Loren, even though Nora works for his company. All are interested in getting paid $10k for 12 hours work... except Trent who is more interested in debunking the legend of the house.
Moments after they meet, a door slams shut (on its own) and the chandelier begins moving... then crashes down at Nora... but Lance saves her.
Upstairs the charming Loren is waiting for his fourth wife Annabelle (sexy Carol Ohmart) to get dressed for the party. He knows she’s cheating on him; but she counters by saying he can’t prove it, can he? Loren knows she’s a gold digger and suspects she is going to try to kill him and inherit. All of this in fairly witty dialogue between them, before Loren goes downstairs to meet his guests.
Pritchard pulls a giant knife from a secret compartment and shows it to the other guests, “This is what she used on my brother and her sister, hacked them to pieces. We found parts of their bodies all over the house, in places you wouldn't think. The funny thing is the heads have never been found, hands and feet and things like that, but no heads.” So there are two loose heads floating around somewhere in here?
Loren enters and mixes drinks for everyone - the caretakers will leave at midnight and the doors will be locked. No phones, bolted windows, no way out. Pritchard says that four men and three women have been murdered in this house, and Trent quips that there are four men and three women here now - that’s a ghost for each of them.
Pritchard leads them on a tour of the house - pointing out a huge blood stain on the ceiling, and when Ruth stands under it... fresh blood drips on her hand! “It’s too late - the house has marked you!” They go into the massive wine cellar, where a past resident filled a vat with acid and tossed his wife in. “There’s been a murder almost everyplace in this house.” When Nora almost falls into the vat, Lance saves her again. Pitchard tosses something into the vat to show that there is still acid in there.
When the tour moves on. Lance and Nora stay behind - our romance story (to counter the anti-romance of Loren and Annabelle). They poke around in the wine cellar until Lance finds a door that leads... somewhere. Once he gets through the door it slams shut and Nora can’t get it open! Then all of the lights go out and she sees the ghost of an Old Woman appear for a moment on the other side of the room, she races to get out of there! Nora gets help, says we’ll have to break down the door - it’s locked. Except it’s not locked... it’s open. Lance is on the other side, unconscious - hit in the head. Who could have done that? All of the others were together.
Lance and Nora go back to the wine cellar to search for secret passages and when Nora is alone, the Old Woman Ghost zooms past her - scare moment. She screams and Lance runs in... but there is no trace of the ghost.
When Nora races upstairs she bumps into Annabelle - who warns her not to go anywhere in the house alone... she is in danger. When Lance comes up stairs to look for Nora he bumps into Annabelle as well - and she makes the moves on him, and warns him that Loren is planning something... something sinister. The three wives before her died under mysterious circumstances.
About 33 minutes into the film, Loren knocks on all of the guest’s doors to announce that it is almost midnight - last chance to leave the house before the doors and windows are locked and bolted for 12 hours. Nora tells him that she will be staying, then goes back into her room and discovers one of those missing heads when she opens her suitcase. Nice shock moment. She runs out of the room, takes a wrong turn, ends up in a strange hallway... dark, spooky... she is lost in the strange house. Then a hand grabs her from the shadows! An Old Man says, “Come with us before he kills you!” She escapes from the Old Man and races downstairs to the living room... where everyone else is. Screaming that she doesn’t want to stay here.
A door blasts opens and the Old Woman Ghost and Old Man stand there!
Loren introduces them as the Caretaker and his Wife... who will be leaving at Midnight and locking the doors. Nora wants out - she doesn’t care about the $10k. Then a wind blows through the room, rattling everything. Weird! When they turn back to the Caretaker and his Wife - they are gone! They have left and locked the door behind them! Now Nora is trapped in the house for 12 more hours like everyone else.
At about 37:30 (the halfway point) they are locked in the house.
Loren provides them all with *guns* (in cute little coffin shaped boxes), and Pritchard exclaims: “These are no good against the dead... only the living.” Trent thinks the guns are a bad idea - fear is likely to have them shooting each other. Annabelle says she doesn’t need a gun, and it goes back in it’s box.
Nora drags them all upstairs to look at the severed head... but it is no longer there. Is she crazy?
Lance goes to Nora’s room to comfort her (if you know what I mean) and finds her door unlocked and Nora isn’t there... but the severed head is hanging in the closet! He grabs the head and races downstairs to the living room... where Pritchard tells him that it is too late - the house has her now. They will never see her again.
A scream from upstairs! Lance runs to the staircase where he sees... a woman dangling from a noose! Has Nora killed herself? Trent comes down the hallway, sees the hanging woman, and they take her down... and *without showing us her face* take the dead woman into a room and place her on the bed. Trent checks her pulse - pronounces her dead. Loren runs in, asks if Nora is alright, and Trent says, “She’s dead... your wife is dead” and we see the dead woman’s face for the first time: Annabelle!
Lance leaves the room, notices curtains blowing at the other end of the hallway... an open window? A secret passage? Just as he gets to the curtains Nora pops up behind him and pleads, “Hide me!” Lance takes her to his room, where Nora claims that Loren tried to strangle her and then left her for dead. It was dark, but she’s sure it was Loren. Lance tells her that Annabelle is dead - and he thinks someone killed her.
Pounding at the door. Lance opens it carefully - Trent on the other side of the threshold says he doesn’t believe Annabelle hung herself and he wants to meet with everyone (except Loren) downstairs.
Loren is looking down at his dead wife, not exactly mourning, when there’s a noise behind him - Pritchard. “Your wife isn't there anymore. She's already joined them!” Loren says he’s drunk and throws him out of the room.
In the living room (where most of this film takes place) Trent takes charge - and we are in AND THEN THERE WERE NONE territory as he explains that there are no ghosts, but one of them is a murderer. There was nothing Annabelle could have stood on before hanging herself. Loren says he believes she was murdered... by one of you. Lance chimes in that to want to murder someone, you must know them... but we were all strangers to Annabelle except Loren. He is the only logical suspect. The problem now is that one of them is a killer and now they are trapped with each other for 6 more hours. The plan: since all have guns, they will all stay in their rooms alone for the next 6 hours, and if anyone comes into their rooms - shoot them!
At 56 minutes they are all locked safely in their rooms...
Trent sees his doorknob moving, but when he opens the door - no one in the hallway.
Blood drips on Ruth’s hand - the blood pool has appeared on her bedroom ceiling.
Lance goes into Nora’s room (hormones) to make sure she’s safe... then goes exploring in that mystery hallway where the curtains were blowing before. Finds a secret passage in the wall and enters.
The lights go out due to the convenient storm, and Nora thinks she sees a rope crawling through her window like a snake and coil itself around her legs! Floating outside the window - Annabelle’s ghost! When Nora grabs the gun, Annabelle floats away taking the rope with her. Nora freaks out, runs down the hallway with the gun... right into Annabelle’s hanging body near the stairs! She backs against a door... and a dead hand reaches around the door to grab her! She runs downstairs... where a dusty old organ begins to play a funeral dirge by itself! She screams and runs away.
Upstairs - Trent knocks on Loren’s door and they aim their guns at each other. Trent heard a scream and running, thinks they should search the house: Loren downstairs and he will search upstairs. When Loren is gone, Trent goes into the room where Dead Annabelle lays on the bed, says to her corpse: “It’s almost over, darling. Every detail was perfect.” Then Annabelle’s eyes pop open, and she begins to rise! “Get me out of this hanging harness.” And at 65:20 minutes we get the scheme - Trent and Annabelle are driving Nora crazy, making her believe that Loren has murdered his wife and is now trying to kill her; and just waiting for Nora to find Loren and shoot him dead... so that Annabelle inherits everything and can run off with her lover Trent. “When you hear the shot, come down to the cellar”, Trent tells her before he goes.
In the cellar: Nora and her gun search the darkness... as Loren enters from the shadows behind her. She lifts her gun and shoots him!
Trent enters from a secret passage, opens up the vat of acid, drags Loren’s body to it as the lights flicker out again. In the darkness: A man’s death scream!
Annabelle goes into the cellar looking for Trent, can’t find him. But the doors slowly creak closed one by one trapping her in the cellar. Trapping her in the darkness! Shadows everywhere! She creeps up to the vat of acid... bubbling... and a skeleton emerges from the depths... and *keeps* emerging! It comes out of the vat, and starts moving across the room towards her! (Emergo - and zips at the audience!) “At last you have it all, everything I have. Even my life, But you’re not going to live to enjoy it. Come with me murderess, come with me!” says Loren’s voice from the skeleton! She tries to open the door - locked! The skeleton grabs her - freaking her out. Then the skeleton slowly walks towards her, backing her into... the vat of acid! She falls in... and her body is dissolved.
From the shadows Loren emerges - with a marionette rig - the skeleton was just a puppet. He tosses the rig and skeleton into the acid and all of the evidence is gone. When the others finally make it into the cellar, they find Loren standing over the bubbling acid. He tells them that Annabelle and Trent plotted to kill him - using Nora as an unknowing assassin - but he discovered their plan and filled her gun with blanks. When Trent tried to throw him into the acid, Loren struggled and Trent fell in. When Annabelle came down, she stumbled and fell into the acid. Loren is more than willing to turn himself over to the authorities and see that justice is done.
The doors pop open and everyone is free to go.
Pritchard looks at the bubbling acid - bones and skulls bobbing - and says, “Now there are nine. There’ll be more, many more. They’re coming for me, now... and then they’ll come for you!”
Tomorrow we'll look at one of the great Corman adaptations of Poe starring Vincent Price.
