by Jim Mercurio
INT. NEWSVAN - CONTINUOUS
…
ON THE MONITOR is Randy, still on the couch, engrossed in the movie. Directly behind him… the GHOST. Kenny does a double-take. … He watches as the GHOST stands still, unmoving, knife raised.
(A humorous riff on the self-reflexivity motif in the film. We are now watching a horror film where a character watches another character who is also watching a horror film.)
…
The Ghost takes a silent step forward.
KENNY
(screaming at the monitor)
BEHIND YOU! LOOK BEHIND YOU!
Later in the film, the surprise to the surprise is that it’s not Randy who is killed, but Kenny. In many cases, Scream follows through with an extra twist, just for good measure, that hyperextends the audience’s pleasure at being in on the joke, and still manages to surprise.
Scream is specific and clear with its setup. It presents the conventions that it will spoof and controls how they are used. When you use a familiar tool or convention or setup, one of the ones that everyone else has at their disposal, your job is to use it in a surprising way.
Scream does this with the biggest and broadest conventions of the horror genre, but this tactic can also be used with the smallest convention. For example, both The Wrestler and Creed reference the same visual cliché seen in so many fight movies in which the camera follows the fighter from behind as he emerges from the solitude of the locker room, through tunnels, out into the glare of lights and the roar of the crowd. In a scene from each movie, the filmmakers begin similarly. In The Wrestler, Randy wears a hairnet and in Creed, Creed (Michael B. Jordan) wears a hoodie, both of which are reminiscent of the hood on a fighter’s robe.
In The Wrestler, Randy is forced to take a job in a deli, which he finds embarrassing. In the film, he leaves the bathroom and the camera follows him from behind as he walks through close to a hundred yards of backroom hallways and work spaces. When he nears his destination, the subjective sound of a crowd begins to rise. Although the long walk wasn’t in the script, the screenwriter planted the idea:
He heads toward a RUBBER-STRIP CURTAIN leading to the deli counter. Standing before the curtain, he pauses a moment, gathering himself like before a wrestling match.
Appropriately, the director took the idea and ran with it. In fact, the film contains dozens of other instances of following Randy from behind, often when he is wearing a hoodie. For him, his everyday life is a constant fight.
In Creed, Creed walks into a nightclub where his girlfriend is set to perform. The camera follows from behind. His hoodie and stride make the image strikingly evocative of the “long walk into the arena” motif. Eventually, Creed gets in a fight with the other performers.
Although each of these scenes begins with “rhyming” images of a familiar motif, the filmmakers’ intentions diverged. In The Wrestler, the image is an ironic, exciting buildup that contrasts with the mundane, banal payoff that when Randy bursts through the curtains, he is merely a deli employee. In Creed, the shot becomes foreshadowing. He’s going into a club to see his girlfriend, so we shouldn’t expect a fight. However, the convention plants that seed in the audience’s mind that a fight is plausible. It may create subtle tension, but it definitely ensures that the ensuing fight doesn’t come out of the blue.
A personal spin on a well-worn trope can elevate a scene and allows you to put a small imprint on your screenplay. Not everything can be groundbreakingly original. Often Hollywood seeks something that is uniquely familiar. Put a fresh spin on a recognizable idea by employing disciplined creativity, and you can find a craft-oriented path to idiosyncratic expression that can come only from your script.
The fundamental elements you must control are concept, character, theme, and consistently, at the scene level, location. Fail to track any of these across the entire script, and the voice of your script can falter and become lost. We have seen several times throughout the book how manipulating even one of these may create absolute uniqueness:
• Concept—This incorporates genre and storyline, but it also reminds us to exploit the clever resources in our compact setup and to avoid non sequiturs. We saw how the addition of the word “darling” in Freaky Friday interplayed with the concept and turned a rudimentary beat of dismissal into sarcastic flirtation. When the teenage daughter’s psyche in her mother’s body says the line to the mother’s fiancé, she gets the last thing in the world she wants: a romantic gesture from him.
• Character—Both on-the-surface characterization and deep-rooted character, as we have seen repeatedly, are the source of the most clever and profound surprises. In My Best Friend’s Wedding, careful phrasing by Julianne of why she must break up Michael’s wedding cues us into the underlying motivation for going after him: “I can’t lose him.” To win is her real intention.
• Theme—Your theme is expressed through variations in the characters’ values that align or contrast with the values “on the mind” of the movie. Make sure your movie’s mind doesn’t wander. In Gattaca, Vincent and Irene (Uma Thurman) go on a date to a recital by a concert pianist with six fingers on each hand whose music is playable only with twelve fingers. Irene catches the artist’s glove, and it inspires their discussion about how a genetic flaw inspires unique creativity.
• Location—A location in one scene will not make or break your entire script, but think about the impact of your setting. Except for close-ups of your actors, a restaurant location has more prominence visually than your characters, even if they are played by Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. In Duplicity, the best expression of Garsik’s character springs right from the bowling alley setting: “Any sport puts a limit on your score… a complete waste of time.”
You can practically guarantee idiosyncrasy, something that can come only from your script by simply weaving your scene through your theme, concept, character, and location. Ensure that all of the surprises spring forth from these to create your script’s voice.
Let’s see this in action.
Fredo: The Penguin
Consider this logline and key conceits of a fictional screenplay:
In this slapstick comedy, an inconsiderate, selfish chef Fredo cheats an old, mystical fisherman out of his catch, so the fisherman puts a curse on the chef that slowly transforms him into a penguin.
Key Limitations/Conceits:
Physical
• His flippers are clumsy and shorter than arms.
• He needs to be really cold.
• He has trouble moving in his increasingly oblong and uncoordinated body.
Psychological
• His flaw is that he is inconsiderate and selfish.
• We are slightly past the middle in tracking his character arc. He is becoming increasingly sympathetic as he begins to see the world through the eyes of a penguin.
Setting
• Kitchen
Theme
• Let’s see what theme emerges as the scene comes together.
Let’s dive in to a scene with Fredo at work as a chef, struggling to do his daily tasks because of his almost-complete transformation into a penguin.
INT. KITCHEN - DAY
WHIRR, WHIRR, WHIRR… a fan oscillates, high up on a shelf, wedged between two giant bags of flour. It stirs up the cold mist streaming out of a wide-open walk-in freezer.
A knife THUDS down on a chopping block and falls out of the clumsy grip of a flipper leaving a small carrot intact.
FREDO
Holy mother freakin’ mackerel.
Fredo, who is almost completely a penguin, leans forward so his flipper just barely reaches his brow to wipe sweat from it, and then bends over, teeters, and nearly falls before he picks up the knife.
FREDO
(to the carrot)
Don’t think I’m letting you off the hook.
Our description of the scene does double duty or even triple duty to set up the physical space and some of the rules in this fantasy world. The cold
mist creates visual interest and emphasizes his physical discomfort and need for cold temperatures, which incorporates and reminds us of his ongoing biological transformation. We also establish his awkwardness in the body and the lack of coordination and length in his flippers. We might even have unknowingly planted a setup that will get us out of a jam later in the scene.
Let’s say his boss comes in and is angry to find the freezer door left open. Fredo explains that he is overheated, but the boss decides to close it anyway. Here is a chance for some unique blocking.
Boss shuffles to get around Fredo and easily pushes his stubby flippers out of the way. Fredo waddles to block his path to no avail. Boss slams the vault-like door shut.
The boss lectures him on being inefficient and reminds him of all of the frozen fish remaining that he must “slice and dice.” Fredo refuses to fillet the fish, and his reasoning comes from the budding character arc, his growing empathy. He takes a stand, but it’s filtered through the concept:
FREDO
It’s hard to slice and dice one of your own.
BOSS
You’re not even a fish. You’re a bird.
Not only is using the taxonomy metaphor a fun groove, but it also imbues the moment with surprising importance by using the conceit of his ongoing biological transformation. The change to his body is affecting his perspective and outlook, which is why the boss’s disrespectful attitude gets under his skin or, rather, feathers:
FREDO
This bird knows what it’s like to be a fish.
In a silly, broad comedy, I am not going to obsess over kingdom, family, genus, or species, but sometimes “shining a light” on a possible logical loophole—a technique called “hanging a lantern”—helps to sell it to the audience. If there is any confusion, the boss’s reaction highlights the absurdity and gives the viewer a moment to process our sleight-of-hand: that a penguin is actually a bird.
BOSS
(double take)
What does that even mean?
I have a verbal punch line in mind as a response, but I want us to get into the habit of thinking in terms of images. Let’s see if we can find a visual complication that also incorporates the space.
Give Fredo a short rant full of wild gesticulations. He gets so worked up that he doesn’t even realize that Boss is fixated on his precarious grip on the knife, but we notice, and the tension grows with Boss’s expectation. Eventually, yes, the knife goes flying and pierces the bag of flour, causing it to explode…
Well, that’s what I wanted it to do, but how does a knife cause a bag of flour to explode? If we are going to create a surprise, let’s start with the opposite.
The knife pierces a bag of flour, which stops it in its tracks.
Our setup of the fan earlier creates an opportunity:
Until…
WHIRR… the fan oscillates and nudges the knife, which slowly rips the bag wide open. The fan blows the flour and spews an explosive cloud of white.
Boss’s flour-covered hands move away to reveal a clear hand-shaped flourless patch around his eyes that are now glaring at…
Fredo, covered in flour. Moves his flippers to reveal a clear flipper-shaped flourless patch that reaches… only to the middle of his chest.
Fredo then opens his eyes -- brown beads in a sea of white -- and blinks, causing a small flurry of flour to cascade from his orange eyelashes.
We show the boss removing his hands to establish the expectation of “covering eyes to protect from the flour.” It’s a visual counterpoint that sets up the payoff: Fredo tried to do the same thing and failed.
In Chapter 7, “Exploiting Concept,” I warned against adding a single conceit to the concept merely to solve a single story problem. Is this what I am doing here at the scene level? Is the fan an overly forced and contrived way to justify the flour explosion? I don’t think so. It’s at least somewhat integrated. It’s a manifestation of Fredo’s need to be cold, which derives from the comical burgeoning physical transformation, which contributes to his psychological growth. If you can find a more effective and organic way to justify the flour explosion, go for it.
This is a first draft, and we were able to incorporate action description of the scene’s beginning that emphasized the lack of dexterity and short length of his flippers. If we cut this visual gag with the flour, we would return to the opening and establish the scene with a different set of details that were more integral to the scene’s eventual surprises. For instance, we could keep the fan but would probably cut its oscillation and the presence of the bags of flour.
With a momentary aside like this, we probably need a recapitulation of some sort to reorient the audience to the topic of their discussion: Fredo expressing his newfound empathy for fish to his skeptical boss. Let’s make it clear that Fredo’s next line will be a rebuttal to the Boss’s original question about his biological classification. Let’s use purposeful repetition to reorient the audience:
FREDO
You don’t know what it’s like to be a bird that looks like a fish until…
Finally, for our punch line, let’s draw from the prevalent body-switching movie theme, that a person gains sympathy for the person or, in this case, an animal, he inhabits. The classic theme line from To Kill a Mockingbird, “You never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them,” is a bit too serious. Let’s steal it but tweak the tone by threading it through our concept:
FREDO
… you never really know a bird until you’ve swum around in his…
(looks down)
… flippers.
And then to show you how effortlessly we can continue to make this unique, let’s consider some characterization and voice of the character. Let’s make Fredo a New Englander:
FREDO
You don’t know how wicked hahd it is for a bird until you’ve swum around in his…
(looks down)
… flippahs.
Surprise! We have come up with something unique that no one else ever has, nor probably ever should.
If we need a bigger change in the scene, we can stick with the concept and kill two birds, so to speak, with one stone. We can make sure that the audience knows we were in control of the bird-fish dichotomy as well as create a more drastic reversal.
Fredo waddles off.
FREDO
I quit.
BOSS
Well, there’s plenty more fish in the sea.
FREDO
I’m a bird!
We achieved idiosyncrasy merely by sticking with the specific and essential choices: concept, theme, character, and location. Your story achieves its voice—something completely unique that could come only from your script—by mining its own setups and creating a self-contained world.
That, right there, is the mainstay of the voice of the script.
This is not the romantic notion of mythical and magical sense of unbridled voice that captures the essence of your untamed, creative soul. This is the more sober and disciplined manifestation of your script’s unity of concept, character, theme, tone, and style.
When you are starting out as a writer or still developing your personal voice, you will probably find it easier to inject your script with sporadic iterations of your personality, quirkiness, or deep-seated passions than to write a straightforward, well-executed genre film with its own consistent, if not wheel-reinventing, voice.
But inconsistent and scattered glimpses into your quirkiness, thematic obsessions, and peculiar worldview by themselves cannot sustain a career, possibly not even a script. Sometimes writers muscle their way through a first script with some idiosyncrasies and intuition. If a personal script like this actually makes it to the screen, even if it’s successful, the writer might not be able to repeat. Often these writers become one-hit wonders who are unable to re-create the magic.
To succeed as a screenwriter, you must learn the language of storytelling and be able to “take” and implement notes. You must prove
you can move the story around to satisfy producers, managers, directors, and maybe even talent. This craft allows you to write a classically told conventional script within a genre and within the classic Hollywood narrative paradigm. If you can do this well and with a healthy dose of originality, freshness, and innovation, you will most likely have a career as a storyteller or screenwriter.
Genre and Beyond
The Fredo the Penguin example cleverly riffs on genre and its conventions, which is the least amount of innovation with which you should approach a script. Although a light reworking of genre expectations will not lead you to the full extent of your personal voice, I began with genre because we and the audience intuitively understand the rules and conventions. In fact, we have played an essential role in defining them.
Genre expectations have been an implicit and ongoing negotiation between audience and filmmakers since the inception of narrative cinema. When you are trying to innovate within a genre, the base rules and assumptions, i.e., the expectations that you must manage, are clear. And, ultimately, good storytelling boils down to managing expectations.
In fact, genre films are a great place to begin injecting the personal and romantic sense of voice. With genre, the voice of the script and your personal voice fall somewhere between innovation and transcendence.
If you want to transcend the preset boundaries of a genre and start from scratch with your own set of intriguing new challenges, your deftness at managing expectations will be the skill that can take you from the voice of the script to your personal voice.
Sometimes a single and simple disruption to an otherwise conventional or conventionally told story can have a powerful effect on your script and elevate it within its genre. The Silence of the Lambs and Alien are prototypical films in their respective genres, but their similar surprising choice to make the protagonist female had an overwhelming sway on the film.
If you were writing an action movie or thriller and did a “search and replace” in your script and replaced a male protagonist’s name with a female name, that alone would create a startling effect. Of course, I would encourage you to follow the ripple effect, or in the case of Alien, the Ripley effect, and use that setup to inspire changes throughout the script.