Screenwriting from Your Darker Side

 

I think that writing isn’t psychotherapy but there are elements of it in it. It’s not its purpose, but I do think we work things out in our stories. Ultimately I think that’s the whole point of stories, whether you’re the creator of them or the audience of them that’s why we want to see them. That’s why we want to hear them. They actually are about us and about the things we’re going through. At least acknowledging and dealing with characters that are a part of that darker side of ourselves is crucial. I don’t think anybody would be interested in seeing something that didn’t have that kind of conflict in it.”
Oscar-winning screenwriter Steve Zaillian (Schindler’s List)
The Art of Screenwriting/2002 seminar
(That talk/Q&A along with Scott Frank can be seen on Amazon Prime)

Below is a dark scene from the movie Schindler’s List (1993) from a script written by Zaillian. I don’t know if that scene is in the historical fiction book Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally for which the Spielberg directed movie was based, but it’s always stuck in my mind as one of the strongest visceral depictions of depravity—of the dark side of humanity. You don’t get the positive emotional payoff at the ending of this movie without these darker moments.

Scott W. Smith

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‘The Greatest How-To Book on Screenwriting Ever Written’—Scott Frank

“I think the best book about screenwriting that will help you in terms of prose is Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett. Read his prose in that book—he says a lot with a little. It’s so terse and wonderful. Just the way he describes things in that novel. The way the dialogue done, but more importantly the way he sets up a room or sets up what someone is thinking—it’s the greatest how-to book on screenwriting ever written.”
Screenwriter Scott Frank
The Art of Screenwriting/2002 seminar
(That talk/Q&A along with Steve Zaillian can be seen on Amazon Prime)

Here are a couple of examples I pulled from Red Harvest (a book originally published in 1929):

The city wasn’t pretty. Most of its builders had gone in for gaudiness. Maybe they had been successful at first. Since then the smelters whose brick stacks stuck up tall against a gloomy mountain to the south had yellow-smoked everything into uniform dinginess.
______

The first policeman I saw needed a shave. The second had a couple of buttons off his shabby uniform. The third stood in the center of the city’s main intersection—Broadway and Union Street—directing traffic, with a cigar in one corner of his mouth. After that I stopped checking them up.

_____
As an example of how that Hammett-like terseness translates to screenwriting here’s the introduction of the Tom Cruise character from Scott Frank’s script Minority Report:

INSIDE PRECRIME HEADQUARTERS – MAIN FLOOR

Slides open, revealing senior detective JOHN ANDERTON. Mid thirties, military haircut. He pushes through a second, pressurized door, leading us past a series of glassed-in offices and viewbicles.
______

Here’s what one of Frank’s scenes from his Minority Report script looks like on the page, followed by a clip of that scene.

INT. ANDERTON’S ROOM – NIGHT

As the Spyder flattens out and eases under the door.

INT. BATHROOM – NIGHT

As Anderton climbs into the ice cold tub, reaches over and
shuts the bathroom door as…

THE SPYDER

Turns toward the sound of the water shutting off. As it
moves towards the bathroom door, it begins to fold its legs
and flatten itself out.

INT. BATHROOM – HIGH ANGLE – NIGHT

Anderton lowers his head under the water, just as the spyder
comes under the door and into the bathroom.

Scott W. Smith

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Classic Screenwriting 101 (According to Scott Frank)

 

Your only touchstone as to what’s good is what you like and what makes you feel good as a writer— what inspires you. And then you hope that that will somehow connect with an audience. I think there are some stories that are less cinematic than others, and might not be engaging in terms of film. But David Lynch made a movie about a guy riding a lawnmower across the country [The Straight Story] and I loved it. The  Trip to Bountiful is about an old woman who wants to go back home and I didn’t blink for two hours in that movie. In fact, it’s classic screenwriting 101; What does your character want? Very simply you get the audience to want it with her.  And by the end you’re just ‘please get home.’ And it’s an unbelievable piece of writing by Horton Foote. All you have is what inspires you, period.”
Director/Screenwriter Scott Frank (Minority Report, The Wolverine, Godless)
The Art of Screenwriting/2002 seminar
(That talk/Q&A along with Steve Zaillian can be seen on Amazon Prime)

And to show that the concept of going home is universal, here’s the Lifetime Channel version of The Trip to Bountiful starring Cicely Tyson.

Related posts

Horton Foote (1916-2009)  “I picked a difficult subject, a little lost Texas town no one’s heard of or cares about … But I’m at the mercy of what I write. The subject matter has taken me over.”
Screenwriting Quote #56 (Horton Foote)
Postcard #6 (Waxahacie, TX)
David Lynch in Iowa (The Straight Story takes place mostly in Iowa)
DAVID MAMET BOLD MEMO (?)    “QUESTION:WHAT IS DRAMA? DRAMA, AGAIN, IS THE QUEST OF THE HERO TO OVERCOME THOSE THINGS WHICH PREVENT HIM FROM ACHIEVING A SPECIFIC, ACUTE GOAL.

Mamet also the first question to ask is “Who wants what?” In The Straight Story Richard Farnsworth wants to see his dying brother and if it takes a riding lawnmower from Iowa to Wisconsin, then he’ll do it. In The Trip To Bountiful Mrs Watts (Geraldine Page)  wants to see her childhood home before she dies.  Page won an Oscar for her performance and Foote received as Oscar nomination for his script. The Straight Story won the Best Foreign Independent Film from British Independent Film Award, and Farnsworth also received an Oscar-nomination for his performance as Alvin.

Scott W. Smith

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Scott Frank: ‘One of my favorite screenplays is…’

“One of my favorite screenplays is Melvin and Howard and it has a 25-minute opening scene—and it’s a great script. It’s very episodic and I don’t’ know what the act structure of that movie is. I think [screenwriting classes on structure] are great if they help you think about writing, and that they get you writing, and help you organize your thoughts. But I think that there really are no rules. It’s a gut feeling. Are you lost in the story? Are people to looking at what you want them to look at? Are they in the story the way you want them to be?”
Director/Screenwriter Scott Frank (Minority Report, The Wolverine, Godless)
The Art of Screenwriting/2002 seminar
(That talk/Q&A along with Steve Zaillian can be seen on Amazon Prime)

BTW—Bo Goldman won an Oscar for his Melvin and Howard script.

Scott W. Smith

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The Problem with Outlining and The Illusion of Structure According to Screenwriter Scott Frank

[Director] Sydney Pollack tells the story of these two actors who are improving once and they were talking about having a baby—they were making plans for their life. The female actress was pregnant [in the scene] and the acting teacher whispered into her ear without telling the male actor that she just had an abortion and the male actor doesn’t know. So they start playing out the scene and they’re acting away and the woman announces that she’s had an abortion and the male character faints. And she keeps on going—keeps on acting and talking like he hasn’t fainted, and the acting teachers asks why. And she says, well, we’re supposed to talk about the baby, and plans, and this and that. Ignoring the fact that the guy just fainted in front of her. And I think outlines for me can very much be the same thing. You want some level of spontaneity [in your writing] and you want to go with it. And I think that the illusions that movies present is that it’s all structure. If you can just have the right structure you can have a good story. I think they’re much more living and breathing than that.”
Director/Screenwriter Scott Frank (Minority Report, The Wolverine, Godless)
The Art of Screenwriting/2002 seminar
(That talk/Q&A along with Steve Zaillian can be seen on Amazon Prime)

Scott W. Smith

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Screenwriting is Not About Structure— Structure—Structure (According to One Oscar-winner)

Here’s a different view from all those that say screenplays are structure, structure, structure:

When I first started writing I don’t think I paid much attention to structure, I relied more on inspiration. I thought inspiration was all that mattered and that structure would work itself out. Looking back on things I’ve done, I noticed there is a structure that I wasn’t really aware of when I was doing it, which leads me to believe there’s kind of a natural structure to storytelling that’s inherent in almost all kinds of stories.  Traditional stories anyway. You can look at something that’s more impressionistic in art or writing that’s not going to follow that kind of structure. But I think if you’re telling a story in a script, or telling a story about something that happened to you during the day, if you’re telling a joke—A man walks into a bar…—or a play or anything else there is a definite structure. And it’s not very valuable to me be aware of this or follow it or to use it. But I have over the years come to the point of acknowledging it exists….I’ve never seen the point of those screenwriting courses that really lay it out—from what I understand reading the brochures—like you have to do this, and they bring in all these examples of good films that do that, and don’t bring in all the bad films that do exactly the same thing. It’s not about that. Those kinds of structure do exist and do cover a lot of different kinds of writing including screenplays, but it’s obviously what you bring to it and how you treat the story that’s going to make it good or not.”
Oscar-winning screenwriter Steve Zaillian (Schindler’s List)
The Art of Screenwriting/2002 seminar
(That talk/Q&A along with Scott Frank can be seen on Amazon Prime)

Scott W. Smith

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‘Screw Structure. Have fun.’—William Akers

Here’s a quote pulled from my 2010 post Your Screenplay Sucks! One of the ways that William Akers says that your screenplay sucks is,  “You worried about structure when you came up with your story.” Then he elaborates:

Screw Structure. Have fun.

Structure is for later. For now, just let your incredibly creative mind run free. Make notes about character and plot and story and funny moments and locations you’d like to visit. Tape record dialogue for your characters…Free associate…Make stuff up. Make more stuff up. Steal from real life and make it your own. Steal from other people’s lives….Make more notes. Enjoy this part of the process. It’s easier to think up cool material if you don’t have to worry if it fits…Creativity sells. Worrying about rules and page numbers will only cloud your mind.”
William M. Akers
Your Screenplay Sucks!
pages 43-44

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Fireworks, Sandlot Baseball, Ray Charles, and the 4th of July in America

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What is Drama?—According to Alfred Hitchcock

“To insist that a storyteller stick to the facts is just as ridiculous as to demand of a representative painter that he show objects accurately…We should have total freedom to do as we like, just so long as it’s not dull. A critic who talks to me about plausibility is a dull fellow…I don’t want to film a ‘slice of life’ because people can get that at home, in the street, or even in front of the movie theater. They don’t have to pay money to see a slice of life. And I avoid out-and-out fantasy because people should be able to identify with the characters. Making a film means, first of all, to tell a story. That story should never be banal. It must be dramatic and human. What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out.”
Director Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho, North by Northwest)
Hitchcock: The Definitive Study of Alfred Hitchcock by Truffaut

Here’s a classic Hitchcock scene where he cuts out the dull parts of a man in a cornfield.

P.S. This makes a nice bookend quote to ‘EVERY SCENE MUST BE DRAMATIC’—DAVID MAMET.

Scott W. Smith

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Rating Your Script: Poor, Fair, Good, Excellent

“Most coverage templates include, what I call, the idiot grid. It’s a grid of criteria on which the script is judged – categorized (usually) by POOR, FAIR, GOOD, EXCELLENT. It’s a quick way for someone to see the qualities of the script without even having to read the coverage (hence the term, ‘idiot grid’). I’ve included below several examples of idiot grid templates from management companies, talent agencies, studios, and production companies. This will give you a rough idea of how your script will be ‘graded.’ You’ll note that most of the companies are examining the same qualities.”
WME Story Editor Christopher Lockhart
The Inside Pitch Facebook group
(And below are script coverage examples from Lockhart and others in the group.)

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