The Voice of the Screenwriter (Voice 2007)
- originally published at thewritersbuilding.org, a low-cost online community for serious screenwriters.
There are three main categories of skill needed to write a
screenplay
-- Structure, Characters and Voice. Dialogue may win Oscars and
get many an established pro hired on assignment, but I believe it's a
distant fourth when it comes to a spec screenplay submitted by a NEW
writer.
You've probably heard about the dreaded studio Readers who read only
the dialogue in a script. Well, that can happen, so I'd contend
that it's your job to make the reader WANT TO READ your description by
seducing them with a compelling narrative voice that establishes TONE,
PACING and EMOTION right off the bat, rather than just listing flat
stage directions. You need to grab them, shake them, and hold
them.
This is not a license to pack each page with dense blocks of text and
riddle them with landmines o' wit in the form of sarcastic asides, but
rather a call to not waste a single word, while considering how your
Reader (your "audience of one," which is all you have and should be
concerned about at this point) should feel at this moment in
the movie.
It all comes down to...word choice. Which may seem obvious --
isn't that what writing is? Choosing the right words? But
too many of you have been told to view your screenplays as "blueprints"
for films, which just sounds like so bland a task, when I think you'd
be better off approaching it as the "emotional cinematic template" for
a film. It has to FEEL like a movie, it has to feel REAL and it
has to make the Reader feel EMOTION. The only way to do that is
to choose the perfect combination of words.
Too many of you look at the description/action as mere blocking
cues. It's true that the most important aspect of description is
to show us what we see and hear, and it must be CLEAR above all else,
but that doesn't mean you should employ the most flat, boring verbiage
you can find. I ask you to please abandon those awful forms of
"be:" is and his dreaded brother are.
There is, there are and we see are not going to
BLOW AWAY THE READER! The Reader does not want a shot list, they
want two hands to reach out of the manuscript, grab them by their
sallow cheeks and PULL THEM KICKING AND SCREAMING INTO THIS MOVIE.
In short, we're all writing spec screenplays for a professional Reader
who reads flat, uninspired prose all the time. They're waiting
for something fresh, something with LIFE. They're dying to read
work by a writer who can really write, not just string together
sequences. You need to establish right off the bat that you are
confidently taking them to a specific world which only you know in this
way, at this time, in this manner, with this FEELING. And the
best way to do that is with a unique voice on the page, in description and
dialogue, but we're going to focus on description because I think
there's a need for it and because dialogue should be the subject of its
own separate workshop.
THE BAD NEWS, THE GOOD NEWS AND THOSE PESKY INTERNETS
The bad news is that voice can't really be taught; you either know just
the right word to capture the moment or you don't. But the good
news is that there are plenty of examples online and in print that can
demonstrate for you what to do and what not to do.
I will always believe the best way to learn about screenwriting is to
read as many screenplays and books as possible, to see the good and the
bad. The more you read, the more you detect patterns in structure
and form and you build mental lists of what works and what doesn't.
But it's important to note that most produced screenplays to be found
online are production drafts, not spec submission drafts.
And many are the result of writing assignments which have come with
specifications from the producers and director and with the
understanding that they will be trimming the fat in
post-production. So these scripts tend to run much longer than
your average spec script (e.g., 120+ pages, rather than the ideal range
of 100-110 pages for a spec), can be littered with camera and shot
references and the style is often over-written as "actor-bait" to
attract talent. This is just one of the reasons why peer review
is such a crucial activity for the developing screenwriter.
[Note: I'm going to use examples from several produced screenplays in
this article, and in each case I've done my best to replicate exactly
the text of the script as printed. Most of my sample scripts were
referenced in bound form, but in the case of the downloaded
screenplays, I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the transcription and
layout.]
DON'T BE OLD SCHOOL 
Yes, everyone in Hollywood is looking for the next Shane Black and
William Goldman. But here's the deal: you are not Shane Black or
William Goldman. And their style is old.
So why are you trying to write like them?
You should be writing like YOU. And not forcing it. And not
commenting on it.
Black and Goldman's commentary style has been done, it's gone, it's old
school.
Maybe you can come up with a new style of commentary?
Perhaps. I'm sure you'd have Readers guffawing aloud with red
thighs from slapping themselves.
Or maybe not.
Maybe you can just forget about being a wise-acre and just stick to
telling a great story with precision and elegance?
Yeah, that sounds like the best route to me. And it's tough
enough to pull off without having to comment on said great story in a
pithy manner along the way.
Let me give you an example. Here's a line from page one of
William Goldman's screenplay Absolute Power...
We'll find out more about him as
time goes on, but this
is all you really have to know:
Luther Whitney is the
hero of this piece.
Did you hear my GROAN?
You see, his little "heads-up" to the reader is completely extraneous,
considering that the scene is a well-written opening that SHOWS us
Luther Whitney. Thus no need for Bill Goldman to TELL us he's the
hero. It's almost as if the writer isn't trusting his own
storytelling.
Plus, the Reader naturally assumes the first major character they meet
is the Protagonist; they're often proven wrong a page or two after, but
it's a natural assumption because when you read enough scripts and see
enough movies, the hero is usually the first bloke or dame you meet.
So please don't do the little "wink-wink" commentary thing. And
if you decide to ignore me, which if you're the
iconoclastic-self-described-rebel-Black and Goldman-worshipping type of
writer means you probably will, at least keep it short. For me.
So with that said, let's worship a little bit at the altar of Shane,
shall we?
CAPTURE THE
MOMENT 
Shane Black's Lethal Weapon screenplay had a huge impact on the
industry, and rightfully so. It's dripping with voice, has tons
of commentary and never lets up, for better and for worse. In the
"better" category, Black shows his penchant for nailing the TONE of a
room or a scene with some distinctive language on page 1...
Lethal Weapon, pg. 1...
PASTEL colors. Window walls. New
wave furniture tor-
tured into weird shapes. It looks
like robots live here.
I like the furniture being "tortured into weird shapes," but for me
that "robots" line hits the bulls eye. We immediately know this
is a chic, Hollywood condo owned by people with too much money and zero
compassion for their fellow human beings. That's not necessarily
commentary for me, that's just good description.
But a little bit later, he throws in a line that feels disassociated
from the introduction of the Martin Riggs character (Mel Gibson).
Riggs smiles at him innocently.
Strokes the collie's fur
with one hand.
With the other, he reaches into a
paper sack and produces,
a spanking new bottle of Jack
Daniels, possibly the finest
drink mankind has yet produced.
That Jack Daniels line feels like it's trying too hard. That may
have made me groan, as well. Well, maybe not if I knew I was
reading a Shane Black screenplay, since this is his calling card.
I'd throw him a little slack.
But not you. The unknown. The newbie. You get no
slack, scribe. Sorry, that's just the way it is. But you
can do something about it.
You can be elegant...
which by definition means gracefully concise and simple; admirably
succinct.
Concise, simple, and succinct. Damn, I love those words.
Why? Because they so rarely describe what I read. But I
always want them to.
So that's your task.
Use as few words as possible.
But make them the BEST words.
Which, I know, can be crippling to you playwrights, novelists and poets
who are used to waxing on like Mr. friggin' Miyagi with his backyard
deck over here. But welcome to screenwriting. It's a
totally different animal. And it thrives on simple, elegant
prose.
You MUST learn to capture an entire mood in a single word or short line
of dialogue. If you can't, then personally I don't think you have
any business writing screenplays.
Why?
Because of the Reader. Remember that lovely gatekeeper of a human
being?
They, like the average filmgoer or
channel-surfer... don't... have... time... to... waste. So keep
it
short. And sweet. And use --
white space. It's your friend.
And keep those description paragraphs to 2-4 lines thick. And by
great Odin's beard make sure it's CLEAR. Show us what we see
and what we hear in the most straightforward, clear way
possible...while still choosing the best word in the entire English
lexicon. No biggee, right?
Actually, it is. But to make you feel better, I've prepared some
handy lists, which are always fun and never dull and are most often
like having a cake and eating it too...
TO DO --
- Be clear
- Be specific
- Be elegant
- Be unique (without being too literary)
- Use strong, active verbs
- Capture tone
NOT TO DO --
- Don't explain
- Don't comment
- Don't use forms of "be" (is, are)
- Don't use generic descriptions (e.g. "He looks like the All-American captain of the football team.")
So those are the rules. And yes, they're broken all the
time, sometimes in brilliant ways, but mostly in ham-handed ways.
Here's an example of a nice break of the rules.
Mark Andrus and James L. Brooks "direct" the shot and comment all over
the place, but they manage to beautifully capture the first kiss
between MELVIN (Jack Nicholson) and CAROL (Helen Hunt) in As Good
as it Gets, approx. pg. 90...
Carol moves to the chair next to him... She sits very
close -- he tenses.
CAROL
Have you ever let a romantic
moment make you do something you
know is stupid?
MELVIN
Never.
CAROL
Here's the trouble with never.
TIGHT SHOT
for the kiss. Their faces are close -- she looks at
him... She closes her eyes -- her face moving toward him
-- he is wide-eyed and afraid...His face almost moves
-- in a shot this close it's almost flight... But
now his head moves back and he receives her kiss. It is
brief. Carol smiles encouragement to him and herself.
Melvin can't bear the pleasure.
MELVIN
You don't owe me that.
Nice, huh? If you lean back and look at that big paragraph as a
whole, it looks unwieldy with all the ellipses and dashes, but when you
read it...it works. And I can't say why, or how they did it.
That's for you to wonder. Have fun with that.
On the opposite end of the emotional and genre spectrum, here's a
brutal scene from the opening of an early draft of Robert Rodat's Saving
Private Ryan, found on the web...
THE LEAD LANDING CRAFT
The Motorman holds his course.
Shells EXPLODE around them. FLAMING OIL
BURNS on the water. CANNON FIRE
SMASHES into the bow.
THE MOTORMAN IS RIPPED TO BITS
BLOOD AND FLESH shower the men
behind him. The MATE takes the controls.
A YOUNG SOLDIER
His face covered with the remains
of the motorman. Starts to lose it.
Begins to shudder and weep. His
name is DELANCEY.
THE BOYS AROUND HIM
Do their best to stare straight
ahead. But the fear infects them. It
starts to spread.
A FIGURE
Pushes through the men. Puts
himself in front of DeLancey.
The figure is CAPTAIN JOHN MILLER.
Early thirties. By far the oldest man
on the craft. Relaxed,
battle-hardened, powerful, ignoring the hell
around them. He smiles, puts a
cigar in his mouth, strikes a match on the
front of DeLancey's helmet and
lights the cigar.
Rodat immediately brings us into this deadly world. He starts out with a very intense voice to reflect the battle, creating an immediate sense of dread and chaos with the shells EXPLODING, canon fire, burning oil, and the Motorman being "RIPPED TO BITS." He uses very specific word choice and grammar...
His face covered with the remains of the motorman. Starts to lose it.
Begins to shudder and weep. His name is DELANCEY.
Rodat avoids a conventional active sentence, such as "DeLancey, a 19 year old private, begins to shake and cry." That wouldn't be as interesting as the description "Starts to lose it. Begins to shudder and weep." which is shorter and thus reads more intense; and to save the introduction of the man's name for the end of the paragraph adds an edge as well. Then we meet the men...
Do their best to stare straight ahead. But the fear infects them. It
starts to spread.
Can "fear spreading" be shown or is this a breaking of the rules, a telling of something internal? It's a bit of both, but it works, in that we can picture the 'spreading' as these boys all adopt terrified looks on their faces. It's elegant and economical, so he doesn't need to show us 3-4 specific soldiers and what they're doing (e.g., crying, knuckles going white on rifles, praying, etc.). He lets us picture it in our head as we will, but he manages to capture the TONE -- fear and foreboding. WE know how to feel; we know how the film feels. We've been dropped with these men into a nightmare. And it's just beginning -- something's coming and it will no doubt be deadly.
On that note, let's talk about...
CHARACTER INTRODUCTIONS 
A FIGURE
Pushes through the men. Puts
himself in front of DeLancey.
In the above description, Rodat chooses to introduce Miller (Tom
Hanks)
first as A FIGURE. This makes us picture his back, assuming his face
can't be seen by the camera. And it gives a sense that he is a dark
character, to be feared; maybe he's in charge of this mess? Then when
he strikes his match on DeLancey's helmet and lights up a cigar in the
midst of this hellish scenario, we are shown his character through
action: he's a seasoned, tough-as-nails veteran of war who refuses to
succumb to fear.
Notice how he "Puts himself in front of DeLancey"; he doesn't
"stand" in front of him or "address" him. This is a man who will throw
his body in front of anything, and this shows even more in the
next scene as he enters the fray and fights with reckless abandon.
Here's Stuart Beattie's introduction of VINCENT (Tom Cruise) in his
screenplay Collateral, pg. 1...
FADE IN:
INT. BRADLEY TERMINAL - BLURS - DAY
slide past in a 400mm lens. Then, entering a plane of focus is
VINCENT. He walks towards us...an arriving passenger.
Suit. Shirt. Tie. Sunglasses and expensive briefcase say
"confident executive traveler." The suit's custom-made but
not domestic. His hair and shades are current, but it would be
difficult to describe his identifying specifics...grey
suit, white shirt, medium height. And that's the idea...
The little commentary blurb "And that's the idea..." clues us into
the
scenario, draws us into what seems to be a ruse, a disguise of some
sort. Some game is being played. We don't yet know if it's
a funny or deadly game, but we'll soon find out.
I especially like that the description and commentary are not
describing anything internal; it's all shown.
Unlike this example, which unfortunately comes from As Good as it
Gets and if it were in a spec from a newbie I'd file it under the
NOT TO DO column...
MELVIN UDALL
in the hallway... Well past 50...unliked, unloved,
unsettling. A huge pain in the ass to everyone he's ever
met. Right now all his considerable talent and strength
is totally focused on seducing a tiny dog into the
elevator door he holds open.
This description TELLS us about this guy, it EXPLAINS him to
us.
Which might be fine, if he weren't about to SHOW us his true character
by shoving his neighbor's dog down the trash
chute.
After sending Verdell the dog on a little trip, Melvin performs the
following actions, which I would file
under the TO DO column...
INT. MELVIN'S APARTMENT, BATHROOM - NIGHT
Melvin locks and unlocks and locks his door, counting to
five with each lock. He turns the lights quickly on and
off and on five times and makes a straight-line towards
his bathroom where he turns on the hot water and opens
the medicine chest.
INT. MEDICINE CHEST
Scores of neatly stacked Neutrogena soaps. He unwraps
one -- begins to wash -- discards it -- goes through the
process two more times.
It's always best to SHOW, not tell.
Here's the introduction of LT. DAN from Forrest Gump by Eric
Roth. Roth chooses to use very little description, letting the
dialogue and actions speak for him...
Lieutenant DAN TAYLOR steps out of a tent. Shirtless, he
holds a roll of toilet paper in his hand.
LT. DAN
You must be my F.N.G.'s.
BUBBA AND FORREST
Morning', sir!
LT. DAN
Ho! Get your hands down. Do not salute
me. There are goddamned snipers all
around this area who would love to
grease an officer. I'm Lieutenant
Dan Taylor. Welcome to Fourth Platoon.
Lt. Dan looks at Bubba.
LT. DAN
What's wrong with your lips?
BUBBA
I was born with big gums, sir.
LT. DAN
Yeah, well, you better tuck that in.
Gonna get that caught on a trip wire.
Where you boys from in the world?
BUBBA & FORREST
Alabama, sir!
LT. DAN
You twins?
Forrest and Bubba look at each other oddly, they don't
get the joke.
FORREST
No, we are not relations, sir.
Concise and funny, it works.
Here, the screenwriters of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The
Witch and the Wardrobe manage to achieve a nice sense of wonder...
The Centaur stares at him, unmoving.
PETER
We...have come to see...Aslan.
The centaur says nothing.
Suddenly behind them all of the creatures kneel, leaving the
three Pevensies standing alone.
Peter blinks. Suddenly, LUCY GASPS.
Just below the tent flap steps...an ENORMOUS PAW.
The flap parts, and there in the shining sunlight stands a
FEARSOME, BEAUTIFUL, GOLDEN...
LION. He gazes at them. His mane shimmers.
Lucy stares for a moment...then KNEELS. The Beavers drop to
all fours, bowing their heads.
Peter and Susan awkwardly go down on one knee.
Aslan addresses the CHILDREN in a BOOMING VOICE.
ASLAN
Welcome, Peter, Son of Adam.
Welcome, Susan and Lucy, Daughters
of Eve.
Another. Completely different feel. From American
History X, by David McKenna...
TIGHT ON DEREK VINYARD. The young man has a shaved head, a
trimmed goatee, and a SWASTIKA on his right tit -- the center
of the symbol crossed perfectly at the nipple.
McKenna calls a man's chest a “tit.” It gives an edge, an intensity, a street
feel to this young man. And you notice he puts swastika in CAPS,
because it's such a strong image and it immediately and dramatically
introduces the themes of white supremacism and hatred that will
permeate the story. This demonstrates the need for you to...
BE SPECIFIC
Sometimes it's just one distinctive word or phrase that brings the
zing.
Beattie calls Vincent's gun by its dealer name: PARA-ORDNANCE. An
unwieldy term to be sure, much more so than just "pistol" or ".45," but
distinctive and memorable and it makes the writer sound like he really
knows what he's talking about.
VINCENT APPEARS
around a corner, clearing space.
Fast. His Para-Ordnance up.
Max and Annie running, now...
Vincent sees vague shapes...
BOOM-BOOM! BOOM-BOOM! Gunshots
punch through the glass, inches
from Max and Annie, collapsing
walls revealing Vincent against
the LA-scape. Blossoms of white
flame: BOOM-BOOM...
William Monahan uses the adjective "flash" several times in his
Oscar-winning screenplay The Departed, to denote the contrast
between the rich upper-crust world that Colin (Matt Damon) aspires to
and the filthy underbelly that he must cater to, as here on pg. 20...
INT. APARTMENT ON BEACON HILL -
TWILIGHT
A REALTOR switches on
lights. An empty, flash apartment above
the Parisian rooftops of Beacon
Hill. A view of the Dome.
More than you'd think a cop could
afford.
On page 8, Monahan comes up with a clever linguistic take on a
generic
tension device as BILLY (Leonardo DiCaprio) takes the police exam...
A CLOCK TICKS, sweep hand coming
around.
BILLY'S EYES on it.
I love that "sweep hand" term! Never seen it. And I like
how he didn't bother with the CLOSE ON Billy's eyes, he just showed us
BILLY'S EYES, so naturally we view this shot in our minds eye in Close
Up. We don't need the "direction," which is a no-no in a spec
submission draft but a common occurrence in a production draft.
Here's a lusty moment from Casanova, pg. 4, production draft...
DIFFERENT WOMAN
My husband!
Casanova runs into a dark closet. The darkness becomes the
interior of a covered gondola. We pull away and see the boat
floating in a canal-- legs sticking out from all sides from
under the felze.
What the Caravaggio is "felze?" I have no idea, but it sounds
like something they'd have in Venice in 1797, so I'm on board with it.
DON'T EXPLAIN! 
Unfortunately, even the pros exhibit the bad habit of explaining too
much in their production drafts, but we'll let them slide because they
may be catering to the skimming habits of all of the execs, actors and
crew members who will be reading this draft. But YOU can't make
the same mistake.
Collateral, pg. 122, I've bolded the offending line for your
reading pleasure (or pain?)...
VINCENT + MAX
sit there, riding the train.
Softly:
MAX
We're almost at the next stop.
Vincent smiles faintly. He leans
his head toward Max as if
conferring a secret. In a
halting whisper:
VINCENT
Hey, Max... A guy gets on the MTA
here in LA and dies
(off Max's look)
Think anybody...will notice?
MAX
looks into Vincent's eyes. It
means "I'm that guy" and "will
anybody notice that
once...I was here?"
VINCENT
leans back, gazing straight ahead
now. Rocking gently with
the motion of the train. And then
Vincent's no longer
rocking. In fact, Vincent's no
longer doing anything. Ever.
We know what Vincent means, and we get the callback to the first
exchange between him and Max in the opening pages. No need to
point it out. It's especially offensive, considering this elegant
moment on the last page of the script, the last we'll ever see of
Vincent the assassin...
WE HOLD ON Vincent for awhile.
Riding the train by himself,
his head forward as if sleeping,
alone in the car.
Another dead guy on the
subway...riding somewhere.
Speaking of great moments in screenwriterly offensiveness, we have a
wildly successful novelist who perhaps should avoid screenplays --
here's Stephen King with his own adaptation of his novel Desperation,
Third Draft, 1998, pg. 117...
TAK is whamming ELLEN'S bloody
hands on the window while MARY
tries to start the car. IT
CRANKS BUT DOESN'T START. (Film
critic Roger Ebert calls this the
"kidding battery.")
That's fascinating, but what pray tell does Leonard Maltin call this
particular filmic device?! (Ed. note: Stephen King was
unavailable to answer this question as he had opened the window in his
office and he was busy placing piles of money on top of the five
manuscripts he'd written before breakfast that day so they wouldn't
blow away.)
Anyway, this MIGHT have been okay if I hadn't have been EXHAUSTED by
this point with King's penchant for huge, dense paragraphs like this,
on pg. 98...
A MINER falls, exhausted. A
WHITE FOREMAN kicks him to his
feet again. We PAN JERKILY
TO CH'AN and SHIH, loading an ore-
cart. Beyond them is the
shaft face. Six or seven miners are
working at this. RUBBLE FLIES. The
MINER PEERS into the
hole, getting the attention of his
fellow miners. The FOREMAN
walks down to see what they've
found. The MINERS widen the
hole to the size of a
dinner-plate. The FOREMAN shoves a
couple of MINERS aside and shoves
his face into the hole.
CH'AN and SHIH stand a little
apart from all this, looking.
You don't want to shove this much in one paragraph. Break it up
-- think of it in terms of shots, but without referring to them as
shots. Remember: no "directing."
I will concede that commentary often works for historical or culturally
complicated pieces, to provide facts to the historically-challenged
Reader.
For example, Stephen Gaghan's Syriana, pg. 54...
INT GROTTO - BEIRUT - DAY
An ancient grotto where the early
Christians used to
hide, be discovered, and executed.
A tourist attraction,
it's a cool, vast, dimly lit,
subterranean space.
I'll leave it up to you to decide if that little history of the grotto
aids the script or not. If one considers that the goal with
submission was to find a producer interested in the middle east, then
I'd warrant it was appreciated. But too many of these asides
would quickly make the script into a history lesson, an excuse for an
amateur writer to show off their research. And I've seen that too
many times, my friends, too many times. It breaks my heart every
time. Okay, no it doesn't.
Here's a couple more excerpts from The Departed, what I'd call
good and bad...
On page 4, Monahan toes the line of explanation and showing...
YOUNG COSTELLO
Church wants you in your place.
Do this don't do that, kneel, stand,
kneel, stand...I mean if you go for
that sort of thing...
YOUNG COLIN, the recent altar boy,
visibly doesn't go for
that sort of thing.
...and it works (although personally I don't care for italics in a
screenplay). But next, this parenthetical just smacks of a
carebear that needed to be smothered in its sleep...
COLIN
(not vainglorious, but
innocently stretching for
the idea)
You're in trouble if you're "only"
anything.
ACTION SEQUENCES 
There's different methods for capturing those moments when the pulse
must race. Here's an example of an action sequence from Tony
Kushner and Eric Roth's Munich, pg. 73. It's dynamic and
it flows well, but with no CAPPING, it certainly feels different than a
thriller like Collateral. Softer, perhaps? Was this
intentional, since Munich is a historical drama?
Avner moves closer to the balcony
railing where it abuts the
hotel wall. He hauls himself
up, then leans in. He hears al-
Chir moving about, singing softly
to himself. A tap running.
Peeing. A toilet
flush. Then the sound of a man lowering
himself into bed with a sigh.
Avner leans further in. He
can just see the foot of the bed,
and al-Chir's legs sliding under
the bedclothes. He lowers
himself back to his own balcony,
goes in his room, switches
off the light.
A beat, and then an enormous
explosion; the wall Avner's room
shares with al-Chir's is pushed in
and falls over, intact,
knocking Avner back onto his
bed. The fan in the ceiling
above is sheered off and falls,
nearly hitting Avner.
EXT. THE HOTEL OLYMPIC - NIGHT
Smoke and flames explode from
al-Chir's room across his
balcony.
EXT. THE STREET IN FRONT OF THE
HOTEL OLYMPIC - NIGHT
Glass and plaster and stone rain
down on the street, bouncing
off a car in which Steve and Carl
are sitting.
Robert and Hans are in the car
behind Steve and Carl's car,
Hans driving, Robert holding the
detonator. The car lurches
forward, preparing to drive off as
planned.
Seems a bit odd that they wouldn't cap an "enormous explosion," doesn't
it? Just for the sake of research, let's look at another Eric
Roth action scene, from Forrest Gump...
Forrest looks up as the sun suddenly appears. Forrest's
platoon is attacked. A bullet kills the soldier standing
next to Forrest. Bombs explode all around as the soldiers
scramble to the ground.
LT. DAN
Take cover!
Forrest crawls over a berm as bullets fly overhead and explode
all around him.
Yeah, I think it's safe to say this guy doesn't like CAPS...but I'm not
going to argue with the writer of Forrest Gump, The Insider, Ali and
The Postman (which was supposed to be a really great spec, by
the way).
Let's leap back to Shane Black's Lethal Weapon for a famous
action sequence and a definite breaking of the rules. It's
interesting how he describes the action in a more stylistic than
literal manner...
Rianne screams. Murtaugh
shouts. Strains. The chair
thumps up and down, creating an
insane, staccato rhythm.
The Gen eral laughs.
Rianne shrieks. Harrowing. Terri-
ble. A scene out of Hell. And
then the Devil comes in
and kicks the door off
its hinges. Okay. Okay. Let's
stop for a moment. First off,
to describe fully the
mayhem which Riggs now creates would
not do it justice.
Here, however, are a few pointers: He is
not flashy.
He is not Chuck Norris. Rather, he is
like a sledge-
hammer hitting an egg. He does
not knock people down.
He does not injure them.
He simply kills them.
The whole room. Everyone stand-
ing.
There's more to it than that, but just that beginning to the sequence
took some huge guts.
In 1987.
Which means...
You're not going to do that now, right?
Right?
Just making sure.
Wink.
-Daniel Calvisi
www.actfourscreenplays.com
copyright © Daniel Calvisi 2007
-See my current COACHING & CONSULTATION
SERVICES
-More TIPS & ESSAYS
References...
COLLATERAL by Stuart Beattie, 123
pages.
CASANOVA Screenplay by Jeffrey Hatcher and Kimberly Simi, Story by
Kimberly Simi and Michael Christopher, 129 pages.
but I prefer...
CASANOVA Written by Kimberly Simi (original spec draft), 128 pages.
THE DEPARTED by William Monahan, Based on Infernal Affairs, script as
shot compiled September 2006, 152 pages.
DESPERATION By Stephen King, 1998, Third Draft, 137 pages.
SYRIANA by Stephen Gaghan, 129 pages.
MUNICH Screenplay by Tony Kushner and Eric Roth, Based on the Book
“Vengeance” by George Jonas, 162 pages.
PARAVEL By Ann Peacock And Andrew Adamson And Christopher Markus &
Stephen McFeely, Based on the book by C.S. Lewis, 113 pages.
AS GOOD AS IT GETS by Mark Andrus and James L. Brooks, Story by Mark
Andrus, Internet draft, source: imsdb.com.
FORREST GUMP Screenplay by Eric Roth, Based on a novel by Winston
Groom, Internet draft, source: imsdb.com.
LETHAL WEAPON by Shane Black, Internet draft, source: imsdb.com.
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN by Robert Rodat, Internet draft, source: NOT
imsdb.com, that one’s awful!
ABSOLUTE POWER Written by William Goldman, Based on the book by David
Baldacci, May 1996 draft, Internet draft, source: imsdb.com.