My guess is it could make for a pretty decent flick. Different enough, a neat kicker for an ending. Star part, all that.
You know why I don’t want to write it? Because I don’t love it enough to do the legwork required, to find a town, go there, find some lawmen, talk them into letting me tag along, so I could learn what their life is really like.
That reality would be something I would have to have confidence enough to write, because it would add a crucial authenticity to a story that tends on occasion toward the operatic.
Maybe when I was younger, but not now.
If you have young legs, if you think you can make it wonderful, all yours …
* * *
Two Kinds of Stories
In every movie, there are two stories: the story of the movie itself and the story of each of the individual scenes that make up the movie. And what you must realize is that if the individual scene does not logically advance and thicken the overall story, either rewrite it until it does or get rid of it. Hopefully Misery will show you what I mean.
Scene one: typing.
The movie opens with Paul Sheldon (Jimmy Caan) in a hotel suite somewhere out west in the mountains and there is the sound of heavy wind. A storm might be coming. He pays no attention, concentrates only on what he is doing: sitting at a table, writing something. A neat pile of manuscript pages is visible on the table. A final typing flurry, he pulls out the last page, and we see these words:
THE END.
Then he takes the manuscript, holds it close, is momentarily moved.
In other words, it’s a little scene, we see a guy finishing something, we’re out west, it’s windy.
Half a page, a little more.
Scene two: leaving.
Paul’s packing, goes outside to his car, makes a snowball, rockets it at a tree, dead solid perfect.
Another half page.
Scene three: driving.
Paul’s driving along in the mountains, a storm hits. (We had set it up, remember, in the typing scene where we heard the wind increasing.)
Another half page to here.
Scene four: the storm.
Paul is doing his best to stay on the road, a page and a half.
Scene five: the crash.
Half a page as Paul loses control, the car leaves the road, roars out of control, settles in the wilderness, upside down.
Scene six: the struggle.
Final half page as Paul tries to get out, can’t, we leave him dying.
Okay, the first scene says somewhere there is this writer, not starving in a garret but in a lovely hotel suite in the mountains—and he has written something he is proud of. That pride is crucial to what follows.
Leaving scene. Two things aside from the necessary info that he is taking off. One, he is not the most mature guy around—I would not expect Bill Gates to heave a snowball after leaving a Microsoft meeting. Plus this: he is a jock. You can tell that from the power and the accuracy of the throw. (Needed to help set up some of the stuff he has to do when trapped in the wheelchair.)
That’s enough, and I am not saying this is glorious screenwriting, but it is proper. It helps set up the big story we come into later, of Paul at the mercy of the only woman Hannibal Lecter should have married, Annie Wilkes.
This is not how King started the novel. He starts with Paul already in agony at Annie’s mercy, and he already hates her. He was correct for his story, I think we did fine with ours. There is no right or wrong way to tell this tale. Both worked, I think well, for their particular forms.
Here’s another scene—and I don’t want you throwing the book across the room but, yes, it’s from Butch Cassidy, and it’s smack in the middle of the Superposse chase. Middle of the night. Butch and Sundance have gotten rid of one horse in an attempt to split up whoever is following them, and fight whichever half comes in their direction. The Superposse comes to the spot where Sundance jumped from his horse to Butch’s, sent it off in another direction. The Superposse starts to split, which pleases the two guys. Then the posse comes back together again, all of them back together and dead on Butch and Sundance’s trail. Tension is, as they say, mounting. Butch and Sundance are running out of places to run.
This is what they try next.
CUT TO
SHERIFF RAY BLEDSOE asleep in his bed.
He is in a small room connected to a small jail. One window looks out on rocky terrain. Ray Bledsoe is an aging hulk of a man, close to sixty.
CUT TO
BUTCH AND SUNDANCE, entering. Bledsoe stirs, glances up, then suddenly erupts from his bed clearly horrified at what he sees.
RAY BLEDSOE
What are you doing here?
BUTCH
Easy, Ray--
RAY BLEDSOE
(riding roughshod through anything BUTCH starts to say to him)
--hell, easy--just because we been friends doesn’t give you the right--what do you think would happen to me if we was seen together?--I’m too old to hunt up another job.
(glaring at them)
At least have the decency to draw your guns.
(As Butch and Sundance draw, Bledsoe grabs a rope, sits in a chair and tosses the rope to Sundance, who hesitates a moment)
Come on, come on--take it and start with my feet. Just don’t make it so tight I can’t wiggle loose when you’re gone.
Through the remainder of the scene, Sundance binds and gags Bledsoe while Butch paces the room, keeping close track of the view out of the window, always aware of whatever it is that is following, somewhere behind them.
RAY BLEDSOE (CONT’D)
You promised you’d never come into my territory--
BUTCH
-- and we kept our word, didn’t we, Ray?
SUNDANCE
--we never pulled off anything near you--
BUTCH
--everyone in the business we told, “Leave old Ray Bledsoe alone.”
SUNDANCE
--we been good to you, Ray--
BUTCH
--now you be good to us--help us enlist in the Army and fight the Spanish.
RAY BLEDSOE
You are known outlaws.
BUTCH
We’d quit.
RAY BLEDSOE
(exploding)
You woke me up to tell me you reformed?
SUNDANCE
It’s the truth, Ray, I swear.
BUTCH
No, let’s not lie to Ray. We haven’t come close to reforming. We never will.
(He is desperately honest now)
It’s just--my country’s at war and I’m not getting any younger, and I’m sick of my life, Ray.
RAY BLEDSOE
(There is a pause. Then--)
Bull!!
BUTCH
All right. There’s a certain situation that’s come up and--it could work, Ray--a lot of guys like us have enlisted; we could too, if you’d help us--either fake us through or tell the government how we changed--they got to believe you; hell, you never done a dishonest thing yet and what are you, sixty?
RAY BLEDSOE
You’ve done too much for amnesty and you’re too well known to disguise; you should have got yourselves killed a long time ago when you had the chance.
BUTCH
We’re asking for your help, Ray!
RAY BLEDSOE
Something’s got you panicked, and it’s too late. You may be the biggest thing ever to hit this area, but in the long run, you’re just two-bit outlaws. I never met a soul more affable than you, Butch, or faster than the Kid, but you’re still nothing but a couple of two-bit outlaws on the dodge.
BUTCH
Don’t you get it, Ray?--something’s out there. We can maybe outrun ’em awhile longer, but then if you could--
RAY BLEDSOE
--you just want to hide out till it’s old times again, but it’s over. It’s over, don’t you get that? It’s over and you’re both gonna die bloody, and all you can do is choose where.
&n
bsp; (softer now)
I’m sorry, I’m getting mean in my old age. Shut me up, Sundance.
CUT TO
SUNDANCE, the gag in his hands.
CUT TO
THE GLOW OF THE SUPERPOSSE, seen in the distance now.
CUT TO
BUTCH, reaching the rear door, opening it, going out. A moment later, SUNDANCE follows him.
CUT TO
BLEDSOE, gagged, staring after them. He is terribly moved. Camera holds on the old man a second. Then--
CUT TO
THE SUN AND IT IS BLINDING.
A lot of helpful stuff here. When Bledsoe says, “You’re both gonna die bloody, and all you can do is choose where,” I put that in to foreshadow Bolivia. Going into the Army to fight the Spanish had been mentioned before and scorned by Sundance before, so the fact that they are both pitching the old man to let them enlist indicated how desperate they have become. I always thought that was good material—outlaws hiding out in the Army; better because it was real.
And it’s helpful for us to know they have a friend like Bledsoe who has yet to do a dishonest thing. And really helpful that Bledsoe likes them. And it doesn’t hurt our cause to find they never did rob in his area, their word meant something. And it’s got a neat reversal—the sheriff insisting the outlaws draw their guns and tie him up—in order to give a standard talk scene some movement.
If you think I am pretty smart to have come up with this dazzler, here’s a moment of truth. Do you know why that scene is there? Because I felt I needed someone, someone who we could believe, to tell us just how remarkable the heroes were, never a soul more affable than the one, more dangerous than the other. I felt I needed the audience to realize they were special.
Then.
Because zero people on the planet had ever heard of my two guys. If I were writing the movie today? Never would have written that scene. People know who they are today. Today it’s just a stage wait.
The truth: I probably didn’t need it then. Three minutes of chitchat in the middle of a chase to the death? If you had written the script and come to me for my opinion, I would have been laudatory, sure.
But I also would have said: lose that stupid Bledsoe scene.
Different Drafts
I wrote in Adventures in the Screen Trade that there were two different versions of the screenplay, the selling version and the shooting version.
That’s still true and I’ll get back to it, but those are versions. We are talking here of drafts.
When I finally suck it up and write the first draft, well, almost nobody sees it. I call this the “For Our Eyes Only” draft.
And it only goes to my readers.
I have a couple of people whom I give it to. That’s all. Someone once said that a friend was someone you could say “Go to hell” to and it would be okay. Well, a reader is someone who can criticize your work. And it’s okay.
I cannot overemphasize the importance of a critical reader. If you don’t have one, it will damage you terribly in the long run. If you do have one or two, treat them with great kindness. They will save your ass as the years go by.
It is very hard to be a reader. Obviously, they are people you know and know well, and being critical of work at any point can be a problem; at the start, it more than likely will be.
I have been given, I guess, over the decades, thousands of scripts to read. And I always ask at the start, this:
Do you want the truth?
or
Do you want me to tell you how wonderful you are?
One hundred and five percent of them come back thusly:
The truth.
And then I say: A lot of people say that but not a lot of people mean it; their reply is always this:
I mean it.
So what happens is I read their script and I always find a sequence to start with that I can argue needs help. Say, it’s the sequence where the dog dies.
I will carefully say something like this: “I have a question about when the dog dies.” And more than you can imagine, this is what they say:
Oh, I love that sequence, that’s, like, my favorite sequence in the whole movie, I only wrote the movie so I could write that sequence.
Here is what I give them then: praise. Praise unending. How moved I was by their work and what wonderful writers they are.
And I do them no good whatsoever.
Which is fine. The world will etch away on them soon enough.
Let’s do a list of drafts now.
1. The For Our Eyes Only Draft. Which I will rewrite until I’m happy with it. Or as happy as I can be. Or just run out of steam and ideas and can’t go any further on my own.
2. The First Draft. This is the one I give to the producer. This is probably the one specified by your contract that you have to get in by such and such a date. Here is what happens when they read it: they do not ever get back to you as quickly as you hope. And you go nuts. Either you are fired, which has happened to us all, or the asshole will eventually call and you will meet. And trust me—they will want changes. Not only that, they will want them for free. Which is more than likely against your contract. But which you will more than likely do anyway.
3. The First Draft (with Producer’s Notes). Hopefully, this is the draft that will get submitted to the studio.
The above are what I call the “selling versions.”
All future drafts are what I call “shooting versions.”
Now, all this is true only if God has smiled on you. Usually He won’t do that. Usually you’ll have one more selling version to do, because the studio will want a draft with their notes included before they decide to try for what they call an element. Which means a director or a star.
4. The Studio Draft. You still keep it as readable as you can because now you’re selling to an element.
Now, if you are amazingly lucky, they will decide that, yes, they want to try and make the movie. And you may be pissed at their slowness but they have a point. Please tattoo this behind your eyeballs:
You only have one shot at a star.
They get so inundated, so many people are trying to fuck them, to cater to them, to make them even richer and more spoiled that they simply will not bother to read a script a second time. Here is what they will say:
Isn’t that the one where the dog dies?
(Final dismissal)
I read that.
I believe more screenwriters screw up the Studio Draft than they do anything else. Don’t get scripts to people just because you can; get them seen when they are done. It’s hard, I know, but please remember this:
When you go out there, BE AT YOUR BEST.
5. (And forever after) The Shooting Drafts.
These are all the drafts that come after a director is onboard, or if the producer is powerful enough to get a green light on his own.
There are an infinite number of these drafts. You think you’ll go mad.
Then it gets harder—the star has arrived.
This is the most painful time in one respect, because the star is usually only interested in his or her part. The producer and the director might want the picture to have quality. The star is not against quality. Just so it doesn’t interfere with his having the winning role.
But if it is the most painful, tough about that. You have a picture gearing up. You will have a credit. You will have had this start to a career.
Or, as a producer said to me after Paul Newman said he would do Harper, “You don’t know what just happened, do you? This is what happened—you jumped past all the shit!”
May you all turn out to be glorious leapers.
* * *
Story Three: The Mastermind
* * *
As I said, ideas come from everywhere. This one comes not from the blue or a headline but rather, a book. I read it over a decade ago and thought immediately that not only could it be a movie, it could be just about the best caper film ever, alongside David Ward’s Oscar winner, The Sting.
/> I wrote a caper film early on, The Hot Rock, based on the first of Donald Westlake’s Dortmunder series. They tend to follow a pattern: the hero wants something valuable, can’t get it legally, usually forms a gang to accomplish his end.
This story follows dead on that classic pattern.
Before specifics, I have to ask you this question: What, in your opinion, is the most valuable portable object in the world? The reason I throw in the word “portable” is because something gigantic tends to lose all connection to human scale. So I don’t want any of the smart-asses among you answering thus: The Pyramids.
I am talking something you can hoist. Diamonds, furs, paintings, that kind of thing. The stuff caper films are made of. Just taking the above three, I am sure some fur somewhere that could be traced back to someone historically important or famous could be worth several million. And the Kohinoor diamond? A guess, but maybe tens of millions.
Chicken feed.
Some Asian billionaire bought a van Gogh, didn’t he, for close to a hundred biggies?
Closing in.
You’ll notice I haven’t yet disclosed what the valued object is—because I’m trying to raise your interest, and also because at this moment I am not sure how deep into the picture I go before revealing it. But here’s a scene that might come early on. The Mastermind of the title is a man of forty, from a family of great wealth and power, but because he is not the oldest son, he is penniless, and reduced to living by his wits, as they say. The most stylish charming guy you ever met. Read Sean Connery at the peak of his Bond phase for the Mastermind.
And who is he talking to? Why, only the Bill Gates of his day (I’m setting this in 1911): Mr. J. P. Morgan.
We are in the library of Morgan’s New York City mansion, which is the size of most houses.
The year is 1911.
Morgan and Connery sit drinking brandy, smoking cigars. Both are elegantly dressed, and throughout, their tone is civilized. We are looking at two men at the very top of their respective games.
All around them on the walls--the most famous art works from across the centuries.
J. P. MORGAN
Which Lie Did I Tell? Page 29