Good Scripts, Bad Scripts Learning the Craft of Screenwriting Through 25 of the Best and Worst Films in Hi story

FALLING IN LOVE FRANK What? MOLLY What did you do? FRANK I didn't do anything. MOLLY You're lying. FRANK I didn't. MOLLY Come on. FRANK I didn't. . . . They talk like this through the whole script. The rhythms are interesting, the inarticulateness almost refreshing after watching so many other movies where people speak in perfectly crafted phrases. But even though there are people for whom this sort of dither passes for conversation, the only justification for having to sit through it is if there's some deeper profundity, some unexpressed resonance to keep us hanging around. The equally inarticulate musings in Tender Mercies reveal deeply sensitive and feeling char- acters. The banalities of Fargo perfectly capture people whose long- ings run ocean-deep. The characters in 2001: A Space Odyssey, mouthing their commonplace utterances, are Stanley Kubrick's vehicles for describing a civilization in desperate need of an extraterrestrial injection of soul. But this scene is all text without subtext, surface without depth, affect without meaning. What you see is what you get. Nor is this shallow dialogue specific only to Frank and Molly's interaction. Here's a glimpse of Molly at dinner with her doctor husband, Brian, just a few scenes later: 2.27

Good Scripts. Bad Scripts BRIAN The Shaffer woman died today. MOLLY Oh, no. BRIAN Yes. MOLLY Was it bad? (pause) BRIAN The husband was there. I made my little speech. He kept looking at me. They always look at you, like you should have something more to say. Do you want to go to a movie? MOLLY No. BRIAN Are you going into town tomorrow? Again, the rhythms are interesting, and the dialogue feels very \"real.\" And it's not as if people don't relate to each other like this; they do. A doctor, distraught and a little drunk, starts to reveal to his wife his anguish at telling a husband that his wife has died. It happens all the time. And so are there wives like Molly, who have no words of consolation, no sympathy or compassion. And it wouldn't be so bad except, first of all, we're supposed to care for Molly, who comes off as the unsympathetic bitch of the world, and second because just a few scenes earlier we've seen her mumbling similar inanities to her beloved Frank, whom she doesn't even rec- ognize is wearing a tie for the first time. It is for people like these that mercy killings were invented. But we're not supposed to put 228

FALLING IN LOVE her out of her misery, we're supposed to root for her, cheering that in Frank she's at last found a kindred spirit, light-years in sensitiv- ity above her oh-so-very-boring husband. Only it isn't the men in her life who are Molly's problem, it's Molly herself, brooding in her self-absorption, unable to feel or care for others. Our heroine, the egomaniacal moron. But Molly isn't the only one who should be placed on the euthanasia list. Here's Frank telling Ann, his wife, who already sus- pects he is having an affair, that he is in love with Molly: FRANK I met a woman on the train. I . . . uh . . . I don't know. Nothing happened. I mean, we didn't . . . we never . . . well. It's over now. Nothing happened. I'm not seeing her. I'm not having an affair. It's nothing like that. ANN No. It's worse. Isn't it? Another pause. Then Ann hits Frank in the face. Then she leaves the room. Once again, the emotional antagonist is rejected by the unemo- tional protagonist, only this time it took us a lot longer to get there. It's not that this scene, of which this is only an excerpt, is poorly written—it has a rising line of tension, an interesting emotional reveal when Frank admits he's in love with Molly, and the final beats where Ann reacts to this bombshell are sharply drawn. Nor is the problem that scenes like this don't happen in real life. Of course there are people who are afraid and hesitant to reveal embarrassing or hurtful truths. But Frank and Molly are just not the people with whom we want to live for two hours in a dark theater. No audience will hope they'll live happily ever after, continuing to hide their deeper feel- ings and shrug off relationships. Rather, the audience is conflicted whether to root for them or throw tomatoes at them. These char- acters are a vast miscalculation, who can only alienate an audience 229

jaad Scripts. Bad Scripts and lose box office. The paint-by-the-numbers calculations in so many other movies that too often make for predictably likable characters at least can be justified by the bottom line. The choice to create characters like those in Falling in Love was a choice to make the movie about the wrong people: Frank and Molly should be the antagonists, while Ann and Brian, with their deeper emo- tions, willingness to risk, and greater compassion, should be the protagonists. Mel Brooks, in his brilliant The Producers, made a Broadway musical whose hero is Adolf Hitler—only that was made for laughs. Falling in Love is deadly serious, and that's one of the reasons it died. Not only that, but in all of these scenes there are no specifics of character that make Frank and Molly different from a million other people in these circumstances. Their words and their silences never reveal a reaction that they and only they would make. Their individuality is never revealed through these scenes—they are merely generic fill-in-the-blanks, subtext personified, people with- out affect, without personality, characters as interchangeable as identical grains of sand. In case you're curious, Frank does leave his wife, and Molly does leave her husband, and they do come together at the end, to live happily ever after. The two happiest nonentities in the history of drama. 230

Resources Finding Scripts Many screenplays are published and can be obtained through any bookstore. The following outfits sell reprints of actual scripts: Script City 8033 Sunset Boulevard Box 1500 Los Angeles, California 90046 213-871-0707 Hollywood Book and Poster 6562 Hollywood Boulevard Hollywood, California 90028 213-465-8764 Information on the History of the Films in This Book Information on the making of some of the more recent films in this book was obtained through interviews with people involved in their production; I will honor their wish to remain anonymous. However, 231

RESOURCES the following books can be consulted for further information on the making of some of the films in this book: Singin' in the Rain. Lorrimer Publishing, 1986. Pulp Fiction. Miramax Books, 1994. Round Up the Usual Suspects—The Making of Casablanca, by Aljean Harmetz. Hyperion Books, 1992. America's Favorite Movies: Behind the Scenes, by Rudy Behlmer. Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1982. Contains information on High Noon and Singin' in the Rain. Three Screenplays, by Horton Foote. Grove Press, 1989. Adventures in the Screen Trade, by William Goldman. Warner Books, 1983. The Citizen Kane Book—Raising Kane, by Pauline Kael. Lime- light Editions, 1984. Television Plays, by Paddy Chayefsky. Simon & Schuster, 1955. Hit & Run—How Jon Peters and Peter Guber Took Sony for a Ride in Hollywood, by Nancy Griffin and Kim Masters. Simon & Schuster, 1996. The Devil's Candy—The Bonfire of the Vanities Goes to Holly- wood, by Julie Salamon. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1991. Scenario magazine, vol. 1, no. 3—script of The Usual Suspects, with an interview with Christopher McQuarrie. Scenario magazine, spring 1995—an early script of Groundhog Day with an interview with Danny Rubin. 232

About the Author SBBSSfeWTOJBg Wma8m&&&5 fM&MM&m W$&W$%8m& THOMAS POPE has worked as a professional screenwriter for twenty-five years. He did his undergraduate and graduate work in cinema with an emphasis in screenwriting at the Uni- versity of Southern California. His credits include Fraternity Row, A Great Ride, The Manitou, Hammett, The Lords of Discipline, and Cold Dog Soup. He also worked on F/X, Someone to Watch over Me, and Bad Boys. He has sold or optioned scripts to Columbia, Disney, and Miramax. He has worked for Penny Marshall, Frank Oz, Francis Coppola, Barry Levinson, and many others. He is married to the poet and novelist Freya Manfred; they live with their twin sons in Shorewood, Minnesota.