Conversation Series – Screenplay cheating or great cinematic ambitions?
Dazed & Confused ———-
Action and Dialogue. That’s what a screenplay should contain. You don’t have the luxury to write what you want, only what the audience can see or hear. That makes a screenplay less readable than your average novel. But to do otherwise, would be cheating or a great challenge cinematically.
See below, an extract from ‘Inglorious Bastards’. Is Tarantino cheating or can he actually execute the words onto the screen?
———–
He looks at her in the face, and filled with tremendous guilt, because if he’s succesful tonight, he’s going to blow this cute French girl to smithereens, he says:HIRSCHEBERG
GrazieThe cute French girl looks back at the goofy looking Italian boy wih slicked black hair, that makes him look kind of Jewish, with tremendous guilt, knowing if she’s succesful tonight, she’s going to burn him alive,and says;
SHOSANNA
Prego.
————–So is he cheating, or not? If you were directing, how would convey the words on paper to screen?
Grazie.
dabba ———-
everyone cheats. The question is why do you cheat? On film, there are several advantages of recognition, star value, etc., that will add tremendous depth to what’s on page cos we invest our actors/stars with all the baggage of what they’ve done before. If you cheat to really drive home an emotion THAT YOU HAVE CREATED through the scene, do so sparingly, after you are confident that u have created the emotion. Don’t cheat to sub for creating the drama/emotion.
In the scene above, we know both these characters are going to blow the place up. we know both have come a long way to make this happen, and this is the purpose of their existence. They are also both aware that although their targets are nazis, there may be innocents that will die, btu they are Nazi collaborators so are they really innocent. And just before this exchange, they have a cute flirtatious moment when they meet for the first time.
After doing all the above work, when QT throws in what the character is thinking, you feel ‘em. It will be communicated on film, as just a wistful look, or one of regret, and it is better to communicate on paper what the look is supposed to be, again AFTER you have created or earned it.
i am very wary of telling novice screenwriters to use asides to the reader to communicate emotion, or a wisecrack/joke to entertain the reader whcih will never make it to the screen cos they always use it as a substitute for drama.
shane black (lethal weapon, kiss kiss bang bang) took it to the extreme and wrote his scripts as narrations to the reader, where he would say things like -
EXT. MANSION – DAY
A marble white mansion bigger than what my agent will buy when this spec sells.shit like that, and because his movies were making money, everything he shat on was treated as golddust that ppl snorted.
All scenes are not the same. A scene where ppl are going to blow shit up has a different level of resonance/danger than a scene where 2 ppl are meeting for ice cream.
So, to reiterate, everyone cheats. But be mindful of what a Tarantino or other established writers do.
A. He is Tarantino.
B. Their scripts are already sold before they even write it.
C. He is Tarantino, and a damn good writer.
D. The scene you are talking about comes in the climax of the film. It’s maybe the last 25 pages somewhere. If your reader has made it this far, you can smear feces on the rest of the pages. (Not really)
D. Check out the first 30 odd pages of Basterds. Does he do that? I don’t think so.Lesson – Cheat, and use asides to the reader AFTER you have earned his/her trust.
This means you need the following -
A. a kickass story that develops and grips. If you are writing in a genre where you can deliver the goods immediately like comedy (funny set piece, super funny dialogue in the first few pages), horror or thriller (suspense, scares), action-adventure (action set piece), the job will be easier.
B. If you’re writing a non-crime drama, you’re screwed.
B. the reader must want to find out more.
C. Act cute in your first 10 pages at your own peril
D. never forget you are a nobody, and live with utmost fear.
ShriPriya ———-
Do we, the audience, already know they are going to try to kill each other? If yes, he is not cheating.
What do you think ? amigos?
Tags: Inglorious Bastards, Screenplay, tarrantino
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Haven’t read IB but saw Death Proof yesterday after long. Was mulling over the lines as usual. There is a fine and quite a tasteful mistake we make while celebrating any master, Tarantino included, and that is undermining the consistency they (might)put in. I saw DP and was like oh wow another trippy QT flick, and bought posters and shut it. It was only yesterday that I noticed the finer lines, the delivery and the placing of the lines that underlines the humor. I have been looking for the script but didn’t find. One particular scene was the typical QT ouvre ‘I ACTUALLY have a book’. But the way he executes it is classified stuff. And then I am not sure if any screenwriting acumen could explain the cooler QT stuff like intermixing lines(for e.g. the lap dance bit, how the fuck did this guy hear it, he was never in focus! types), or ‘is this a or is this this is a (tasty beverage), then the fake brands(Big Kahuna, Red Apples), or the fake sense of exposition that mocks yet gives you your payoffs and ohh-aahs.
I am not sure what is QT frankly upto. Will he ever make a straight faced film(like The Coens), or will he play the con game forever, don’t know. But I do know that he does have ways to pull us in the con and then watch it straight-faced.
I have read that when M.Karunanidhi wrote screenplay for ‘Mandhirikumari’(1946? – Thamizh movie that had MGR as the hero and MN.Nambiyaar as the conniving rajguru) he wrote with enough details regarding costumes, body language etc. etc,. that Ellis Duncan simply shot what was written – all the cues were in the screenplay and actors too simply followed it and it helped the process greatly because Ellis Duncan was an american and most of the actors knew precious little english to understand and jam with Ellis Duncan. Super star Rajinikanth mentioned about this in Shivaji silver jubilee function.
He is not cheating, he is trying to setup an emotional atmosphere for the dialog..he cannot do much more than a murky smile, or intent eyes for expressing the emotions written…but if it is in the mind of the actors who perform, then the performance will be pschycologically supported by better understanding of the situation
I’ve found that this sort of ‘cheating’ is often more noticeable in the scripts of writer/directors as compared to those of writers.
Someone who is either planning to direct the script or is accustomed to directing their own writing can end up adding in the additional detailing, essentially as miniature ‘director’s notes’. This would cover some of the blocking, actor directions, emotional instruction, art direction etc
Someone who is writing the script to sell it should know that such additional detailing might be deleted/ignored anyway and would keep the writing a bit tighter.