by Jim Mercurio
The boat on the shimmery lake.
FREDO
… Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us…
We hear a quiet, echoing GUNSHOT; and then silence.
One of the most beautiful and life-affirming moments in cinema comes at the end of Bicycle Thieves. The young boy Bruno witnesses his father trying to steal a bike and being caught by a hostile crowd. Sympathetic to the shamed father, the men who catch him let him go. Ricci is too ashamed to make eye contact with his son. As they disappear into the crowd, Bruno places his hand in his father’s.
At the end of Blade Runner, Batty (Rutger Hauer), the murderous replicant whom Deckard (Harrison Ford) is tasked to kill, suddenly and surprisingly decides not to kill Deckard. Deckard hangs on to a ledge for dear life:
(Deckard) looks up into the stern warrior face of Batty, the cold eyes!
Deckard stands (sic) there and for a moment he has to consider whether this is the continuation of a cruel game.
The Batty is hauling him up one-handed and with that scary strength he has.
After Deckard is safely on the roof:
Batty looks at the man gasping next to him with the cold eyes of a man looking at a fish. It is as though Deckard is some species far below Batty on the evolutionary scale.
Ironically, the supposedly inhumane, nonhuman killing machine learns to appreciate the value of life.
A stunning moment in Atlantic City combines action, image, and sound. Sally (Susan Sarandon) returns home from her job as oyster-bar waitress and takes off her top to reveal a skimpy tank top. At her kitchen sink, she plays her cassette tape of the classical aria “Casta Diva” (Chaste Goddess) from the opera Norma. She then cuts a lemon, squeezes its juice into her hands, and then wipes it on her arms. You can almost smell the lemon and feel her desire to cleanse herself of the oysters’ foul odor.
Across the way in an adjacent apartment, Lou (Burt Lancaster), a small-time numbers runner and wannabe gangster, notices and turns off his light and peers through the shades. Eventually, Sally lowers her T-shirt and washes her bare chest with the lemon juice. More time is spent on the shot of Lou’s mesmerization than the restrained and tasteful shot of the topless Sally. Instead of lecherous voyeurism, it evokes a sense of loneliness and longing.
Dialogue
In Apocalypse Now, Kilgore (Robert Duvall) sentimentally shares with Willard (Martin Sheen) a gruesome napalming of a hill. (“I love the smell of napalm in the morning… it smelled like victory.”) Kilgore’s final response is startling insight into his character.
(Kilgore) looks off nostalgically. A shell comes in and HITS in the background. Willard and the soldiers react; Kilgore ignores it.
KILGORE
Someday this war’s gonna end.
A tremendous sadness envelops him.
Channel your peculiar perspective through the characters. In the indie film Tallulah, written and directed by a woman named Sian Heder, Tallulah (Ellen Page), a free-spirited young woman who has been living out of her van for years, is taken in by Margo (Allison Janney). Margo chastises her by asking, “What are you doing? Were you raised by wolves?” Lu’s distinct perspective doesn’t even register the words as admonishment. Here is her wistful response:
LU
No, but that would be so cool.
Her reply gives insight into her take on the world, just as a response from Sal (John Cazale) does in Dog Day Afternoon. In the midst of the increasingly likely-to-be-doomed bank robbery, Sonny (Al Pacino) asks Sal what country he wants to escape to after the successful completion of their heist. He responds, “Wyoming.” Of course, it’s funny, but it also shows how “in over his head” he is, which foreshadows his tragic fate.
For our final example, it seems appropriate to reference what may be the finest film about the movie industry, one whose protagonist is a screenwriter. Ironically, the moment in question is a scene about a scene.
In Sunset Boulevard, Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) is a delusional silent-era actress who is unaware that the times have passed by her. She believes she is still a powerful movie star. She lures Joe Gillis (William Holden), a down-on-his-luck screenwriter, into her web of delusion and desperation.
JOE
You’re Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.
NORMA
I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.
She hires him to work on her script that she believes will be the basis for her big comeback. He is a “gun for hire” in more ways than one as he becomes her kept man.
Joe learns that her butler Max (Erich von Stroheim) used to be her director and husband. Max goes through great lengths to perpetuate her fantasy to protect her from painful reality. As Joe leaves to break free from her, he tells her that there will be no film. The painful truth, instead of being a healthy dose of reality, pushes her to a complete break from it. She shoots and kills him.
When the police arrive to take her into custody, she refuses to leave her bedroom. To get her to come out, Max instructs the reporters to set up their lights at the bottom of the stairs. He convinces Norma that they are about to film a scene of her as a princess in her big comeback.
As she gives her final performance, she reminds the world of what we do, why we do it, and for whom we do it:
NORMA
… I just want to tell you all how happy I am to be back in the studio making a picture again! You don’t know how much I’ve missed all of you. And I promise you, I’ll never desert you again because after Salome we’ll make another picture, and another picture! You see, this is my life. It always will be! There’s nothing else -- just us -- and the cameras -- and those wonderful people out there in the dark.
The final line of the film requires a healthy suspension of disbelief. However, at its core, it’s completely believable. It’s a magical amalgam. A love letter. A cautionary tale. Part fantasy, part unflinching reality. Unfulfilled dreams turn to sheer delusion:
NORMA
All right, Mr. De Mille, I’m ready for my close-up.
Your Expectations Will Surprise You
Using my own terminology, I stumbled upon a succinct triple entendre that summarizes the next stage of your screenwriting journey and growth.
Your expectations will surprise you.
This phrase summarizes the overriding principle of how you find and execute your surprises—both big and small. It’s how you twist and turn an act, a sequence, a scene, or even a line of dialogue. Allow your scenes to zig toward expectation and abruptly zag toward surprise (“I won’t (hit you). I won’t… The hell I won’t”). Craft your hints just right, and you can justify any imaginable surprise.
So craft those hints. Explore the craft topics in this book. Find and watch the scene examples that have resonated with you. Whenever you see a scene in a film that strikes you, mentally workshop it by relating it to the principles and perspectives you’ve learned here.
Managing expectations requires you to study or understand the worst possible notion of the cliched, antiquated, overly prescriptive “rule book” by learning what has come before. Pierre-August Renoir said, “First learn to be a craftsman; it won’t keep you from being a genius.” Nor will it stop you from being the screenwriter you are destined to be.
When you learn from other writers and filmmakers, you are standing on the shoulders of giants. Great storytellers have paved the way for you and your stories by showing you not only what to write but what not to. Sometimes, avoiding missteps is the closest thing to a shortcut to your personal voice.
Secondly, honor the “your” in “your expectations.”
You can use your personal voice to tackle serious subjects, social injustices, and complex themes. But don’t limit how you express yourself. There is no one right way. Your personal voice can and should surprise us. You’re even allowed to have some fun with it.
Consider this list of eclectic films that represent their own brand of authenticity:
• Magical
escape—Princess Bride, Raiders of the Lost Ark
• How we dream—Wild Strawberries, Fantasia, Spellbound
• How we nightmare—The Night of the Hunter, Rosemary’s Baby, Blue Velvet
• A magical sense of hope—Amelie, The Wizard of Oz, Singin’ in the Rain
• How we embrace our irrational sides—After Hours, Birdman, Edward Scissorhands, Pan’s Labyrinth
• How we unite the most disparate, contradictory, illogical, and subconscious ideas and feelings—Persona, Mulholland Drive, Adaptation, The Orphanage, The Arrival
In Mothlight, Stan Brakhage challenged the nature of the medium itself. The Italian neorealists eschewed the familiar artifice of cinema in favor of the rawness and real suffering that was right in front of them. Whether you are trying to change the world or merely a genre, strip away the clichés, assumptions, and conventions that oversimplify, misdirect from, or obfuscate you.
Writing in your personal voice isn’t egotistical or solipsistic. In fact, it’s perhaps the most selfless duty you can perform as an artist. The most personal story you tell will often be the most universal.
The final meaning of “your expectations” might be the most important.
What are your expectations and standards for the quality of your script and growth as a screenwriter?
I suggested that a bit of virulent madness in the form of passion will sustain you during the arduous pursuit of screenwriting success. It’s a thin line between an irrationally passionate, obsessive, and unconditional love for storytelling and the twisted dreams of Sunset Boulevard’s Norma Desmond.
Let Norma be a foil character for you. Don’t succumb to the frustrating obstacles and inevitable litany of rejections by losing yourself in delusion. Stay grounded in the reality of hard work, deliberate practice (watch movies, study scripts, read books, and discuss movies with other writers, filmmakers, or even just film lovers), and the sole action necessary to legitimately call yourself a writer: writing.
You don’t have to be perfect. Merely great.
In fact, perfection is the enemy of great. However, a more insidious enemy of great is “pretty good” or “good enough.”
Perfection isn’t a concrete destination but, rather, a trusty compass. To reiterate something I wrote in the introduction: aim for the script you aren’t quite ready to write. This will be somewhere between great and perfect. Force the process to push you to grow into the writer that you need to be to pull it off.
When your script meets or exceeds all of your expectations for your story, for your battles with the status quo, and for the evolution of your craft and career, you will have found your voice.
I want you to be great, but I have no stake in how you get there. Find your own way. Step by step. Beat by beat.
An old adage says screenplays are never finished but rather abandoned. Write with abandon. And don’t abandon your script until it’s great—in the neighborhood of perfection. I trust that you will know your way from there.
And…
… Scene!
APPENDIX: 14 STEPS TO A BETTER SCREENPLAY
Let’s turn talk into action.
These fourteen steps incorporate the major principles of this book into craft that you can implement immediately. They will improve your scenes on the spot.
Consider writing a scene solely for these exercises to which you have no sentimental attachment so you can begin to develop a healthy irreverence for what’s on the page. Learn how to let go of your preconceived ideas in order to fully mine your script and help it evolve into what it is trying to be.
As always, I encourage you to find your own way, but when you try these steps for the first time, consider doing them in order. You will find a method to my madness, I promise. The earlier steps are more “ripple-y”; they have more substantial impact on your scenes than the later ones do.
Go with the flow. If you get stuck, choose to be unstuck. Use these steps to reestablish momentum. If they sometimes feel mechanical, that’s good. Stop thinking, and let your subconscious take over. You never know what you might stumble upon.
14 STEPS TO A BETTER SCREENPLAY
1. Brainstorm a new concept.
2. Find the story of the scene.
3. Eliminate redundancy and ensure escalation.
4. Find and accentuate the climax.
5. Push character perspectives further.
6. Eliminate on-the-nose dialogue and create audacious subtext.
7. Be specific.
8. Visuals: use props, blocking, wardrobe, and location.
9. Eliminate exposition.
10. Find the opposite.
11. Finesse thematic touches.
12. Listen to your dialogue: stage a table read.
13. Think like an editor.
14. Embrace brevity.
1) Brainstorm a new concept.
This refers to “concept” in the broadest sense. Is there a completely new approach to the scene? Could you eliminate all of the dialogue and replace it with only visuals? This is not where you would look for clever ways to integrate the location as a minor obstacle but where you consider a change in location that would have an overwhelming impact on the entire scene.
We can also consider concept in the narrower sense, as we discussed in Chapter 7, “Exploiting Concept.” Is there a gimmick or a premise of the concept that can drive the entire scene? Could this be one of your showy set-piece scenes that reveals your voice and acts as director-bait? Think about set-pieces as the most audacious scene possible given the setup of your concept.
Create the concept logline, a list of the select major conceits or premises that together comprise a comprehensive description of your overall concept. This becomes the unified cauldron in which you brew your concoction. Use it as a checklist to determine if you are incorporating several of the premises at the scene level.
You won’t always come up with an overhaul, but this is your last chance to think about it.
2) Find the story of the scene.
A scene is a story. At its core is structure. Consider every other book on screenwriting and story structure, as well as all that you know about storytelling, as a resource here. Never be afraid to reoutline or restructure a scene. If the scene begins to go astray, write a paragraph—without any reference to dialogue—that summarizes the action and tells the scene’s story. Use this to get the scene back on track.
3) Eliminate redundancy and ensure escalation.
Make sure the story of the scene constantly moves forward toward a climax that’s a reversal. You can use a thought process that parallels the Clurman method outlined in Chapter 1, “The Story of a Scene.” Label the individual beats so you can get a big-picture perspective.
If the progression of beats becomes flat, push them further. Take beats such as asking and turn them into begging or, better yet, into selling your soul. You can also try to eliminate the soggier beats and see if what’s left flows more effectively.
If the scene is still uninspiring, dig deeper into the character’s dilemma and backstory to find deep-seated resonance. Determine the source of the surprise. Are you happy with the twist and its inspiration from characterization? Or, if you are trying to turn a big part of the story, like an act or an important character arc, do you need to call on deeper character?
If you can’t find the clear turn or change in the story and the character, consider cutting the scene. If you do eliminate an entire scene, ask yourself which, if any, small elements, beats, or context are absolutely needed for the story. Keep track of them and distribute them to other scenes where they can be equally or even more useful.
4) Find and accentuate the climax.
One of the most important lessons I hope you take from this book is the principle of a climax: how a story builds to a surprise and reversal and then moves on.
Once you identify your climax, make sure it is clearly the scene’s biggest twist. Move it as close to the end as possible. If a few actions or lines o
f dialogue follow it, consider transplanting them to an earlier moment in the scene.
Next, orchestrate every craft element to give the climax its maximum emotional impact.
Finalize the action description and other details in the early part of the scene that are necessary for the eventual reversal. Establish what should happen. Hint that the surprise could happen.
Then, focus on the zig before the final zag.
In the split second before the climax and reversal, push as far as possible in the other direction. Create a mad dash back toward expectation just before the twist to the frustration.
Use craft and contrast—the calm before the storm, i.e., some form of zig before zag—so that the audience feels the climax.
We’ve seen this applied to the overall story in the swing from boy loses girl to boy gets girl or rock bottom to character arc and in countless scenes, but it will also apply to the smallest elements. Often, in subtle ways.
In My Best Friend’s Wedding, after it’s been established that Kimmy is an awful singer and hates karaoke, she and her fiancé are in a karaoke bar, where it seems Michael is ready to playfully embarrass his fiancée, Kimmy, by handing her the microphone. Julianne swoops in and snatches it away, as if protecting Kimmy from embarrassment. After this causes Kimmy to relax and drop her guard, Julianne reverses course from what the audience expects by introducing Kimmy to the crowd and slapping the mic into her hand. Kimmy is godawful, which twists into another sudden reversal: she wins over the audience.
Protect your climax by removing any clutter that distracts from it and its revelation.
Plant and finesse setups so that the audience immediately understands the surprise.
5) Push character perspectives further.
In Chapter 8, “Theme,” we explored how character orchestration (an understanding of intellectual perspectives) contributes to theme. However, insight into your characters’ ideological stance contributes to the more visceral goal of unifying the conflict. Each character’s dilemma translates immediately and directly to conflict at the scene level.