Screenwriting and Death

“I am not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
                                  Woody Allen 

“It ought to be the business of every day to prepare for our last day.”
                                  Matthew Henry

 

There have been many high profile celebrity deaths in the last two weeks. It’s been kind of hard to miss that fact. A lot of people have been asking, “What’s going on?”

While the concentration of celebrity deaths in a short time is unusually high I don’t think anything is going on beyond what occurs 5,500 times everyday in the United States. That’s the number of people according to the New England Journal of Medicine who die everyday in this country. It’s just not something we tend to dwell on everyday.

Celebrity deaths from Marilyn Monroe, to James Dean, to Elvis, to Princess Diana, to Michael Jackson seem to grab our attention and provide never-ending discussions.  Death scenes in movies also grab our attention. Some of the all-time most memorable scenes in movie history are centered around death. Here are a few examples:

The shower scene in Psycho, the opening scene in Jaws, the closing scene in Braveheart, the vast number of bodies spread out on the field of battle in Gone with the Wind, and William Holden floating in a pool in Sunset Boulevard. The list goes on and on. (Tim Dirks’ filmsite.org has a whole list called Greatest Movie Death Scenes.) 

Since a major part of movies center around conflict then it’s natural that death would be at the center of some of our most memorable movie experiences.  Here’s some solid advise on how to write a death scene:

“In The Godfather, Don Corleone falls and has a fatal heart attack while entertaining his grandson. The physical life of the scene is superb: Brando slices an orange and places the peel against his teeth, pretending to be a monster. It not only adds an interesting texture but also breaks the stasis of the scene when the child bursts into tears and forces Corleone to comfort him. The physical life created a flow and opened the door for a very specific and interesting character revel. It is a very original way to write a death scene by juxtaposing play with death.” 
                              James Ryan  
                              Screenwriting from the Heart
                              page 150 

 

Scott W. Smith

Read Full Post »

How to Win an Academy Award (tip # 19)

Maybe I should have said “How to increase your odds of winning an Academy Award.” But who wants to read an article on that? Regardless, I think I have the secret to winning an Academy Award. (Not that I would know first hand—though I did win an Addy Award last week for a commercial I shot and produced.) This is not even really a secret, it’s more basic number crunching.

Simply pick a best-selling book. Or perhaps just a book you like. In fact, of the 81 Oscars, Slumdog Millionaire became the 44th film based on a book to win best picture. That’s more than 50%. Interesting, huh?

According to Tim Dirks over at filmsite only one film based on a TV show (Marty)  and only one film based on an article (On the Waterfront) have ever won best picture. Original screenplays make up 22 of the Academy Award best pictures which, of course, is a 50% drop from those based on a book.

So how do you go about optioning a book? You get the rights to a book you like or you find one in the public domain. If you want to use a Charles Dickens book, knock yourself out—it’s free. If you want the rights to a John Grisham novel —stand in line. But in between those in public domain and best-selling authors there are an estimated 300,000+ books published every year worldwide.

Certainly, the majority of the millions of books published over the last few years have not been optioned for film. So there are opportunities out there if you’d like to pursue them. Talk to a lawyer or search the web for more information on how to draw up a bidding contract and then approach the author. All they can say is no, and they may be flattered enough that you believe enough in their book to invest time in a screenplay that you get the rights fairly cheap, with more coming if the screenplay is sold.

Stephen King used to have a $1 option deal that worked something like that. You’re creative, so be creative in finding a way to option a book you like. And persistence pays off in this regard as well. Follow the journey that Frank Darabont took to get the rights to The Shawshank Redemption which he first read in novella form in 1982 (That’s 22-years before the movie’s release).

First he started doing various jobs on low-budget films and in 1983 made a short film called The Women in the Room based on a Stephen King short story. Least you think he was rich at that time, Darabont has said that he made about $7,000 the year he made that short and he spent most of it on the film. The Woman in the Room made the short list for the semi-final nomination for Academy Award consideration in 1983. 

That opened other doors and eventually lead to him securing the rights to what would become The Shawshank Redemption. 

“So I got  the rights and didn’t do anything with them for five years, for a number of reasons…I think on a certain level I was waiting for my abilities as a writer to catch up with my ambitions for the script. I don’t think I could have written it nearly as well when I first optioned it. But the day came when I felt like I was ready to try it. So I sat down and wrote it in eight weeks, and two weeks later we had a deal with Castle Rock.”
                                                                Frank Darabont
                                                                Conversations with Screenwriters
                                                                by Susan Bullington Katz 

Granted Darabont didn’t win an Oscar for all his efforts but he did get an nomination (the film had a total of seven nominations) and the film is one of the best loved films in cinematic history.

Related post: Screenwriters Work Ethic (tip #3)

Scott W. Smith

 

 

Read Full Post »