by Paolo Braga
Paolo Braga
Words in Action
Forms and techniques of film dialogue
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Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library, Great Britain
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015936244
First published in Italian with the title Parole in azione. Forme e tecniche del dialogo cinematografico by FrancoAngeli, Milan: 2012.
The publication of this book has been made possible through funding by the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore assigned in 2015, based on the evaluation of research results expressed herein.
ISBN 978-3-0343-1662-0 pb. ISBN 978-3-0351-0829-3 eBook
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About the author
Paolo Braga is Assistant Professor in Semiotics at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, where he teaches Screenwriting. He has published extensively on the topics of the construction of empathy with character and of U.S. television series. The rhetorical dimension of storytelling is his general research area.
About the book
Words in Action dedicates to the subject of fi lm dialogue a comprehensive exploration. The book analyzes a wide series of examples, perfectly chosen in contemporary American mainstream cinema – from Gladiator to The Devil Wears Prada, from Schindler’s List to A Beautiful Mind, from Collateral to The Dark Knight – and, in some cases, also in prime time TV drama – ER, The West Wing, House M.D., John Adams.
In a screenplay, the secrets of well written dialogue are hidden in the construction of the scene, where every word should stem from the theme of the story. At the light of this basic assumption, the book explores how Hollywood screenwriters create verbal duels assigning characters different frames of values and making the hero win by “reframing” what is at stake in the scene. The author elaborates on how Oscar winner authors such as Paul Haggis, Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian create subtext. Finally, the book highlights the screenwriting techniques to cover exposition, an issue which gives the author also the opportunity to concentrate on the differences between dialogues in movies and in TV drama.
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← iv | v → Contents
Introduction: The perfect dialogue
The different role of dialogue in theatre and in cinema
Sight is fast and reliable
Stage-to-film adaptations prove the importance of terseness
Three functions of dialogue in film
The aim of this book
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: Dialogue and conflict
Dramatic dialogue and its features
Dialogue is action
Dialogue pushes the story forward
Dialogue is dynamic
Dialogue has deep implications
Dialogue has structure
Dialogue is succinct
Dialogue has a climax
Dialogue changes the fate of the character
Dialogue surprises
Dialogue tends to follow a set pattern
Three scenes
Munich. “Mazeltov”
Lethal Weapon. “You really like my wife’s cooking?”
The Best of Youth. “Then let’s get you signed out!”
Direct attack and sudden backlash
The counterattack
Dialogue, conflict and values
John Adams. “My sons…”
← v | vi → Chapter 2: Dialogue and subtext
Dramatic subtext
Why use subtext
Reason one: it reflects real life
Reason two: subtext creates tension
Reason three: subtext holds an audience’s interest
Reason four: subtext can be acted out
Two kinds of subtext
Deep subtext
The Next Three Days. “Goodbye”
Strategic subtext
The West Wing. “We’re gonna get the names of the damn commandments right.”
Non-shared subtext
Manipulation
The irony of fate
Crash. “Is there a problem, Cam?”
The Lives of Others. “I am your audience”
Chapter 3: Dialogue and exposition
The problem of exposition
The screenwriting techniques to solve the problem of exposition
Dramatization of exposition
Use of irony
Use of examples
The right moment for exposition
How to reveal themes in dialogue
Verbal setups and payoffs, taglines, key words and metaphorical texture
Batman Begins. “Justice is about harmony”
Theme in dialogue
Metaphorical texture
← vi | vii → Munich. “Break bread with me”
Theme through visual metaphors
Subtheme in dialogue
Subtheme through verbal metaphors
Metaphorical texture
Dialogue and revealing metaphors
Collateral. “Guy. Gets on a subway. Dies”
The revealing metaphor
The Dark Knight. “Because he can take it…”
The revealing metaphor
Filmography
References ← vii | viii →
← viii | 1 →
Introduction
The perfect dialogue
In the last scene of The Devil Wears Prada (USA 2006), the protagonist and antagonist of the film randomly catch sight of one another on the streets of Manhattan. By now some time has passed since the young assistant Andrea (Anne Hathaway) rebuffed her boss, Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), resisting the temptations of the diabolic director of Runway.
Now that all is said and done, destiny seems to have brought them together for one last time. They have not seen each other since their thorny adieu. Andrea, however, found out that Miranda showed confidence and grace to Andrea’s resignation by writing a letter of recommendation to an editorial office for her, so she could fulfill her dream of becoming a journalist. The opportunity to thank her ex-boss arrives unexpectedly, right now.
Andrea catches sight of Miranda and stops. The magazine director still hasn’t seen her. She walks in haste, searching for her car. She is on the phone complaining, in her usual cross manner, about the driver being late. Then, as the car pulls up to the curb for her to get in, Miranda spots Andrea. She freezes.
For a brief moment, the two women hold each other’s gaze from opposite sidewalks.
There are no words, but their looks make for intense dialogue.
ANDREA
The letter… Thanks.
Miranda, however, does not wave back.
← 1 | 2 → She is cold, impassible and stares at Andrea from head to toe. She quickly gets into the car. She remains silent, but it is as if Meryl Streep says:
MIRANDA
You still disappointed me. Goodbye.
Andrea just smiles and shakes her head before walking away. She also remains silent, but it is as if she says:
ANDREA
(to herself)
You’ll never change. The icy,
one and only… Miranda. I’ll
never forget you.
Miranda is now inside the car. She takes off her sunglasses ‒ the main accessory to complement her look in public. She sits in the back seat and sighs wearily.
Her gesture, the deep look in her eye that has become melancholic, is yet another unspoken line:
MIRANDA
(to herself)
Such solitude… I can’t take it
anymore.
Miranda then looks up and stares at Andrea, who is walking away. She briefly recalls everything that happened between them and makes peace with herself.
Then, as the screenplay reads, “And Miranda, alone, finally breaks into a real smile”, the audience picks up the last, unspoken line:
MIRANDA
(to herself)
Good choice, Andrea. As for me…
it’s not easy being the Devil,
but…
someone has to do it.
← 2 | 3 → Her brief inner crises is left behind and her normal personality returns to the fore. Miranda looks at the driver and very impatiently says, “Go!”. With this spoken line, the Devil puts her sunglasses back on and situates herself back into her public figure. She leaves the scene as the car disappears into traffic and the ending credits start to roll.
Another example of a film with a dialogue that has no words, or rather, a dialogue that can only be heard within the minds of the characters and the audience, is The Town.
After robbing a bank, Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck) and his gang have almost made their dangerous escape. Gotten the police off the track, the bandits pull over to switch cars. They spread strands of hair collected from barber shops all over the city in the first car to throw off forensics.
Then something unexpected happens.
The robbers stop in their tracks as they catch sight of a parked squad car on the other side of the street. It’s just a patrol car, parked there by chance. There is only one cop inside, whose blood runs from his face as he stares at them – five outlaws in latex masks holding machine guns.
No one else is in sight. There are no witnesses. As for the cop, it’s hard to say whether he is caught off-guard or terrified. The bandits, instead, feel the entire Boston Police Department breathing down their necks.
The criminals and the cop stare at one another. There is a moment of suspense. This dialogue needs no words. The situation says it all, with great accuracy:
BANDITS
(tense)
If you call in our location,
you’re dead.
COP
(scared)
But… if you shoot, they’ll
know where you are…
← 3 | 4 → BANDITS
True, dammit. So what do you want
to do? Become the hero?
COP
I don’t want to look like a coward!
BANDITS
Think hard. If you let us go, we’re
certainly not going to tell the department…
COP
(to himself)
And if they do get you one day,
You’ll be too worried about the
electric chair to remember me.
BANDITS
No one has seen us… Is it a deal?
COP
Deal.
The cop looks away so the bandits can continue their escape, undisturbed. No words were needed in this negotiation.
The dialogue between Andrea and Miranda crowns the work done on the antagonist by screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna and director David Frankel, whose character is based on the bestseller by Lauren Weisberger1. This scene, in fact, is not in the book, just like there is no letter of recommendation written by Miranda for Andrea. A viewer that read the original novel is well aware that the transformation of the antagonist from a neurotic and trite woman (Miranda in the novel) to a ruthless temptress who does have a heart (Miranda in the film) was fundamental for a successful adaptation. It is noteworthy that this adaptation ends with an unspoken dialogue.
← 4 | 5 → Not even the “telepathic” negotiation between the bandits and the cop in The Town was present in the original novel, which was entitled The Prince of Thieves (written by Chuck Hogan2 and adapted for the big screen in 2010 with screenplay by Ben Affleck, who not only starred in the film, but was also director and co-writer along with Peter Craig and Aaron Stockard).
While the screenplay was still being developed, anyone at Warner who got their hands on the script of this great detective story praised this scene and asked the writers where they got the idea3. The scene is very short, not even half a page and only 30 seconds long on film. It’s something extra. The getaway itself has already created quite a show and the audience would have been satisfied even without this last shot of an unexpected cop on the same street as the robbers. Yet the trained eyes of script analysis experts were enraptured by this scene4.
These two scenes, taken from films that have successfully gone down in the history of their film genres, are examples of a well-known assumption in the world of cinema – the perfect dialogue is a dialogue with no words.
This is the objective to lean towards when writing for the big screen. Even Hitchcock upheld this assumption in some of his famous quotes: “Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms”5. More recently, David Mamet, a great playwright and screenwriter with an unmistakable style for writing dialogue, states, ← 5 | 6 → “If you pretend the characters can’t speak, and write a silent movie, you will be writing great drama”6.
In the best screenwriting handbook in circulation today, Robert McKee stresses the same point even more, “The best advice for writing film dialogue is don’t”7.
In other words, let the scene communicate without relying on words. We can see clearly how this is true by comparing cinema to theater. Theater is the big brother that film has inherited8.
In theater, however, dialogue is of prime importance.
The different role of dialogue in theatre and in cinema
Theater lives within the confined space of the scene, within the space of the stage. As one would expect, given the short span of motion and close interaction between actors, the most immediate and natural action are words.
Moreover, the further one sits from the stage and the less in detail he can see the actors, the more listening becomes important. Thus performances are organized so that the audience must listen to what is said as much as they must watch what is going on.
These are the first two “structural” reasons for which dialogue is so important in theater.
← 6 | 7 → The third reason is associated to the essence of the theatrical experience – the physical presence of the actor on stage.
The physical presence of both characters and audience gives the sensation that something will happen now, that “real” emotions are present and mutually felt by the actors and the audience. Theater is the experience of a group of people built on perception. It is an event, a gathering where the audience lets themselves be guided by the actors in order to elaborate on a certain dimension of the human condition. For this reason, theater is also a “states-of-mind” analysis, a reflection on the different aspects of a situation. It is intimacy; th
e characters and audience become familiar with one another through the intimate experiences they share. It is everything that can be rightly delegated to words because the actors’ presence creates the condition required for listening. Hence, the monologue is a theatrical solution.
For these key reasons, theater is rich in dialogue. Dialogue can be elaborated on, refined, verbal or theoretical. Examples can be found in a series of quick-witted considerations, a series of critical distinctions, or in the careful description of feelings given vent to confidentially. In film, however, where the attention of the audience is directed on what is seen, these solutions are risky. Film is not confined to space. It can follow characters wherever it wants, inside or outside, capturing behaviors and consequential actions world-wide. What’s more, film editing brings the eye of the audience closer to the action, revealing key sequences. It is thus natural in film to show the development of human actions, highlighting the twists and turns and fine details, like a character’s arched eyebrow.
All of this implies, firstly, that there is a form of realism in film that influences dialogue, where spontaneity is favored over sophistication9.
Secondly, the importance of an action invites film to dose dialogue in order to respect the speed and primary importance of sight in comprehending behaviors and the intentions behind them.
← 7 | 8 →
Sight is fast and reliable
Velocity
Visual comprehension is immediate, concise. It has the potential to exhaust an image, grasping the sense in a fraction of a second. It pushes the film forward, always and readily awaiting the next phase of a situation. On the contrary, it takes much longer to listen to and understand words needed to express the same meaning. A gesture is understood in an instant, a sentence in a couple of seconds. If the scenes mentioned from The Devil Wears Prada and The Town were “spoken” and not “seen”, they would have been longer and much less intense. Consequently, dialogue is dangerous in a film. It’s like a brake that slows down the natural inclination of the eye to focus on what happens next. Contemporary cinema has been very supportive and sensitive to this inclination. Films and TV episodes produced twenty years ago now appear slow.