by Lucy V Hay
ii. The party dress. The party dress performs an important plot function in that it creates a link between Nolan’s hallucination in the ‘present’ and the flashback to the baby’s conception in the ‘past’. There’s a very notable difference between the screenplay and the produced movie: in the script Abigail Snr’s party dress is black, but in the produced movie it is red. Eric tells me that Wardrobe brought out several dresses for the actress playing Abigail, Genesis Rodriguez (Man on a Ledge [2012], TV’s Entourage); Heisserer felt red was more ‘alive and loving’, especially as, during pre-production, he came up with the concept of making every article or prop that signifies hope in the movie (the Coke cans, flares and emergency bags and so on) red. This notion of red being the ‘sign of Nolan’s hope’ is not present on the page; it is a pure production decision – something screenwriters commonly underestimate. Very often, spec screenwriters think everything they’re seeing on screen was on the page, meaning they’re not valuing the collaborative element of filmmaking. Yet Eric was the writer as well as the filmmaker of Hours – and he did not think of the red motif until pre-production. Fact is, our material may lead a filmmaker to make various creative decisions further down the line, even if that filmmaker is US!
iii. The baby’s conception. A sex scene is alluded to in Hours and could easily have ended up slightly creepy or weird, as Nolan talks to the end result of that lovemaking – baby Abigail herself. But it’s sweet and real, with Nolan having to wait for Abigail Snr as she puts ‘that’ dress on. Unable to contain himself at the sight of her when she finally reveals her outfit – and she really is gorgeous – they miss their dinner reservations and end up in bed together instead. But rather than being steamy and in danger of becoming cringe-making, Eric’s humorous dialogue is in evidence again with Abigail joking, ‘That was not like married sex AT ALL,’ to which Nolan replies, with a big belly laugh, ‘We’d better get dressed before my wife gets back!’ Neither of these lines was in the screenplay, as Eric Heisserer explains: ‘The post-sex scene was shot on day one of filming and I knew they would be a little awkward together – actors tend to be like that on the first day. They said the lines as written, but it wasn’t sounding spontaneous. So I grabbed some 3 x 5 cards and wrote three sets of jokes on them, then gave each of them their lines, without them knowing what their partner’s lines were. That way they could be surprised by the joke. When Paul says the line “We’d better get dressed before my wife gets back” and laughs, it’s a genuine laugh of him getting the joke.’ Sometimes the most authentic, memorable lines are those created on the fly; again, something spec screenwriters underestimate hugely as they obsess over their dialogue on the page.
iv. The looters’ bodies. In the screenplay, after ambushing and killing Jase and Lobo before they can create an issue for him and baby Abigail, Nolan strings up the bodies on the hospital roof to deter others. Apparently, Heisserer and the team shot this scene and even had it in the edit for a long time, but ultimately felt it raised too many questions, especially considering part of the story’s conceit was that Nolan only had between three and four minutes before he needed to hand-crank the generator again: when would he have had time to hang the bodies up? So they scrapped it.
Hours proves a well-written drama screenplay and the subsequent produced movie is about emotional authenticity, strong characterisation and the importance of being open to development ideas and collaboration, not just in getting the words on the page, but the images in the can. Eric Heisserer was able to attract A-list talent to this project that was considerably different from his previous output because of great writing, and because of his commitment to making Hours the best it could possibly be, which he recognises was not 100 per cent down to him (as it’s not for any filmmaker). As Eric says: ‘I’ve been the first to declare what a great influence Paul was, how his performance elevated the material and made it something more, something better and real… I think it would be rather disappointing if the best version of a movie was its script.’
What We Can Learn from Hours
Write Tips:
• Remember Eric’s concept of ‘mitosis screenwriting’ and Gail’s notion of two ideas ‘smashing together’ in her head? Don’t mine for ideas for your drama screenplay from just one source; combine pieces of lots of different ones to be in with your best shot of creating a new story that has the most meaning, for the most amount of people.
• Remember the difference between drama and other genres, especially thriller. Dramas are personal struggles, exploring the minutiae of life, such as the male psyche and fatherhood, as in Hours. Thrillers have conventions that are quite different.
• Beginning with a flashback invariably does not work; even if it works on the page, it may not work in the edit.
• Remember you can make use of ‘textbook’ screenwriting techniques like Eric does (such as ‘rejecting the call’ or a changing from one viewpoint to another in the course of the narrative) without using predictable plotting or characterisation. Never go for what the audience expects, but equally do not bring events or characters completely out of left field, either; fine tune and balance them accordingly.
• Again, moments of warmth and/or humour are absolutely essential if you don’t want your drama to be a complete downer. I know I’ve gone on A LOT about this in the course of this book, but that’s because the majority of spec drama screenplays I’ve seen in the past ten years or so simply don’t do this… yet the evidence is right there in front of us: produced drama content NEEDS light and shade!
Selling Points:
• A-list actors often want roles quite different from ones they’ve played before; so do your research and see if there are any genre stars like Paul Walker who want a change of direction.
• Don’t be precious about dialogue. Actors have to say your lines. Sometimes those lines won’t seem spontaneous or real because of when they’re shot in the schedule, or the actor is having a bad day. So be prepared to come up with solutions, like Eric’s jokes on the index cards.
• Be open to the development process and the concept of collaboration, both in pre-production and beyond (if you recall, Gail also makes reference to this in the Cancer Hair case study, saying the story continued to evolve in the edit suite). Don’t underestimate this process: it can ‘elevate the material’, as Eric suggests… just remember what YOUR vision is. Don’t let too many cooks spoil the broth!
• Distributors may sell your drama feature as something it’s not, particularly as a thriller. You most likely won’t have any say in this, so roll with any punches you might get from critics about it; it’s not worth getting upset over. What’s more, it may bring people to your story who enjoy it, but would not have watched it otherwise.
• Difficult shoots often create new opportunities for the story or at least increase camaraderie in the crew, so don’t despair if the production of your drama screenplay goes awry. It’s all material!
WHATEVER IT TAKES
‘BUT IT’S A TALKY FILM’
Most script readers, producers and agents will agree the average spec screenplay has too much dialogue in it. Yet the average spec screenwriter takes very little notice of this proclamation, believing their craft or their individual screenplay to be the exception to the rule! It’s not difficult to see the thought process behind this: after all, they work hard on differentiating their characters’ voices and on writing great lines actors would LOVE to say aloud, so they’re home free, right? Again: a million times, NO. Your screenplay is NOT the exception to any supposed ‘rules’, especially if it is a drama screenplay! In the case of genre screenplays like horror, thriller, or even comedy, many scribes accept that characters must ‘earn the right to speak’ and often try to relate dialogue to both character motivation and plot. This frequently goes out of the window, however, when the same writers attempt to write drama, the most oft-cited reason being, ‘But it’s a talky film!’
Again, it’s not difficult to see why spec drama writers
feel this way. It’s definitely true that dialogue plays a (slightly) larger part in drama screenplays than genre. What’s more, it can even be a selling point ‘off the page’, especially when it comes to the likes of acclaimed drama writers such as Aaron Sorkin. If we consider a produced drama like The Social Network (2010), the story of social media phenomenon Facebook, it is clear that witty dialogue is a ‘high point’ of the movie. Being a relatively recent true story that has been widely reported, we think we ‘know’ how it will work out for all the characters involved (Zuckerberg squeezes his co-founder Eduardo Saverin out and Facebook takes over the world), just like we think we ‘know’ how it will work out in Saving Mr Banks. In addition, Zuckerberg (and indeed most of the characters) are hard to relate to, being so privileged and, ultimately, dislikeable. It’s perhaps part of the human condition to admire those who can do what we cannot; but, equally, many of us also want to crush others like bugs if they’re ‘too clever’ and/or have superiority complexes… Mark Z and friends have such superiority complexes in abundance, which is probably the principal reason nerds are so reviled (rightly or wrongly) in high school and the world at large. So, we can see Sorkin’s dilemma: how can he make his audience LIKE such ultimately dislikeable people? The answer is simple: make them funny! Generally in life, IF you’re funny – and a male, preferably white – you get a free pass to be as obnoxious as you like. Sorkin does this with aplomb in The Social Network, getting the audience on board regardless of what the characters actually do! This combination of funny dialogue and despicable actions means the audience ends up in a curious place, hating AND admiring the characters at the same time. No mean feat.
But there’s an obvious mega-difference between a Sorkin screenplay and the average drama screenplay dialogue. The latter’s is just NOT GOOD, regardless of how hard a writer has worked to differentiate characters’ voices, or write the so-called ‘great lines’. The main issue is down to the fact writers appear to think spec drama screenplays are ultimately theatrical in nature; they end up writing what I call ‘screenPLAYS’. In other words, writers think drama screenplays equal people standing or sitting around, simply talking. As a result, screenplays will become long chains of exchanges, going on for pages and pages, occasionally broken up by a line or two of scene description to promote the idea of ‘movement’ in the scene. But it is a lie: there is no real movement in the scene. Often that scene description is just ‘filler’: staring out a window; a raised eyebrow; a shake of the head. Readers won’t fall for it and neither should writers. Screenwriting is a visual medium; we all know this. Yet many spec screenplays contain very few visuals at all, with drama screenplays being the biggest culprit in this respect. But how do writers tackle this and turn their drama screenPLAY around?
REMEMBER, SCREENPLAY
Sometimes, an obvious problem like your drama screenplay being ‘too theatrical’ thanks to its having ‘too much dialogue’ requires an obvious solution: writers need to think SCREENplay, not screenPLAY. But what does this entail? How about this, for starters:
• Cut, cut, cut. Very often, spec drama screenplay characters will make long ‘speeches’ every single time they speak: typically four or five lines, or even more. Writers make this mistake because they realise correctly that drama is about eliciting an emotional response… but instead of trying to elicit emotion from their target audience, they attempt to do this with their characters instead! As a result, their drama screenplay becomes very melodramatic, with characters naming their pain and splurging their FEELINGS OF WOE all over the place. UGH! Get rid. Same goes for other extremes of emotion, especially anger, but also other stuff like romance. Think about the people in your life: do they say exactly what they mean all the time? Of course not. Loads of things get in the way of ‘true’ honesty. During our ENTIRE LIVES, we can probably count the number of times anyone is truly honest with us on one hand, yet here is a screenplay full of this stuff? Readers can’t believe in the story or your characters as a result.
TIPS: So, if you want us to believe, make it DIFFICULT for your characters to say what they truly mean. Do it any way you want. But do it.
• It’s about character behaviour, NOT talking. An old screenwriting adage is ‘characters are not what they SAY, but what they DO.’ Many Bang2writers over the years have confessed they’re ‘not really sure’ what this means, usually because they feel that if they can’t have their characters saying what they need or want, their motivation is ‘unclear’. The key word, however, is ‘do’, as in ‘behaviour’. We know people want various things from us in ‘real life’ by the behaviour they exhibit, even if they don’t actually speak it aloud. The most obvious example would be romantic relationships. If you’re British like me, you’ll know dating can be a minefield because very few of us will come right out and say we want to go out with someone! Yet most of us pair up at least a few times in our lives and this is because we decode what that other person DOES. Sometimes it’s obvious (i.e. s/he sends us a signed Valentine’s card, or takes the opportunity to plant a snog on us under the mistletoe at the office Christmas party)… sometimes it’s NOT so obvious (i.e. s/he hangs out at the photocopier in the hope of talking, making you think, ‘Hmmm, does s/he do that to avoid working, or to talk to me??’). Misunderstandings, threats and opportunities will abound in our real, lived experiences of romance and its pitfalls, so these lived experiences must help ‘inform’ our characters’ actions in our drama screenplays, for them to be authentic.
TIPS: Think about your characters’ motivations or goals in your drama screenplay. Do you have any direct experience of the same? Great! Make a list of the events that happened, the people involved and what they did, both for you and/or against you, plus your own response. Now try and imagine WHY they might have taken the course of action they did and HOW you could have reacted instead? Try putting yourself in their shoes, even if it pisses you off (arguably, it’s good if it does, you might learn something extra!). But if you don’t have any direct experience, that’s okay: find people who have real experiences of what you want to write about. You can do this in ‘real life’ or you can read interviews with people, but DON’T rely on just one account; remember Eric and Gail’s ‘mitosis screenwriting’. Again, make lists of what people DO and why you think they followed that path. That’s what ‘write what you know’ ultimately means; it doesn’t mean you have to have lived it personally – just do your research!
• Substitute visuals for dialogue. Remember: most scenes in drama screenplays are STATIC, with characters talking about ‘whatever’, with the screenwriter sneaking in the odd line of description here or there to describe someone doing something PHYSICAL, e.g. crying, putting a hand on someone’s shoulder, hugging them, etc. YAWN. You need to know how to make scenes VISUAL. Watching a play, we will sit in the audience and stare at the characters moving around on stage; that’s it. Movies are different: the various camera shots and transitions (wide shot, close-up, POV, dissolve, match cut, etc.) can make the audience feel they are ‘right there’ with the characters, sometimes even looking directly through THEIR EYES. Never lose sight of the fact that you should be using visuals WHEREVER POSSIBLE, because ‘scene description is scene action,’ as Script Secrets’ Bill Martell says in his fantastic ‘16 Steps to Better Scene Description’, which is probably the ‘how to’ article I’ve recommended most to Bang2writers in the last ten years or so.
TIPS: The purpose of drawing your attention back to the mechanics of filmmaking is NOT to say you should include camera shots and transitions in your spec drama screenplay (generally speaking, you should NOT). Instead, think of how the finished film will look, then render that as ‘image’ (aka scene description) on the page in such a way that we can appreciate the world view and internal conflict of the characters. Again, there are no ‘rules’ on how to do this, but if you find yourself stuck, watch those produced dramas you feel have done it well (and read their screenplays!) and take a note of HOW they did it. At first, you may find your
self copying, but keep going! As ‘rendering as image’ via scene description ‘clicks’ in your head, you will develop your own style.
• Man the perimeters! Most spec drama writers do not give themselves an effective ‘perimeter’ for scenes, preferring instead for the scene to go on for as long as it ‘feels right’. As a result, too many scenes end up way too long, often because they end up feeling ‘bloated’ with dialogue (or, up until three or four years ago, because those scenes were ‘bloated’ with scene description! Always interesting to see how writing habits and mistakes change, en masse, in the spec pile). Writers need to challenge themselves to ensure each individual scene is as dramatic as it can be; or, as another old screenwriting adage goes, they need to ‘enter late and leave early’.
TIPS: I frequently suggest spec writers have ‘up to a page’ for ‘ordinary’ scenes and ‘up to three pages’ for ‘extraordinary’ scenes in genre screenplays. Obviously that’s not set in stone and, in the case of drama screenplays, there’s perhaps a little more leeway for ‘extra’ dialogue, though those dreaded chains of exchanges must never take priority over a drama script’s visual potential. Think very carefully about scene length and its impact on your story and the characters; never just leave it to chance.
• Dialogue is an ILLUSION. Very often spec drama writers will look at produced writers ‘known’ for their dialogue, like the aforementioned Sorkin, and believe the success of the work is down to that great dialogue alone. But it’s important to remember not only that the produced writer may have more ‘leeway’ than a spec writer, but that Sorkin doesn’t just write ‘good dialogue’; he is the WHOLE PACKAGE. In a world in which there are more spec screenplays than anyone could ever want, the reason Sorkin has a career and Joe X doesn’t is because Sorkin can do ALL OF IT: story, character, dialogue, visuals, THE WORKS.