The elevator stops.
A pretty young woman gets in.
The man takes off his hat.
Do you understand that? You must understand why that is great. With that shot, you know everything. You know it's a crappy marriage, you know he wants better, you know there is sexual energy in that rising room now.
And you can do that in what, ten seconds?
That scene could be entered a minute before, with the married couple in the lobby, either bickering or staring daggers at each other.
Or a day or a month later.
Don't need it. Let Chandler show you the way.
Enuf, for the nonce, on this. (See "viz.")
You know all the nutty stuff people find on the Net? Here are two that were sent to me yesterday, one related to what we're doing, one not, but I love the "not" so much I have to tell you. Also, I'm getting carried away on this point, never the best thing to do.
Okay. This is from a supposed U.S. Government Peace Corps manual. It is given to volunteers who work in the Amazon jungle. It tells what to do if an anaconda attacks you. In case you don't know much about them, maybe this will help: they are the largest snakes in the world, they can grow to thirty-five feet, can weigh four hundred pounds.
This is what the manual said:
1. If you are attacked by an anaconda, do not run. The snake is faster than you are.
2. Lie flat on the ground. Put your arms tight against your sides, your legs tight against one another.
3. Tuck your chin in.
4. The snake will come and begin to nudge and climb over your body.
5. Do not panic.
6. After the snake has examined you, it will begin to swallow you from the feet. Permit the snake to swallow your feet and ankles. Do not panic!
7. The snake will now begin to suck your legs into its body. You must lie perfectly still. This will take a long time.
8. When the snake has reached your knees, slowly and with as little movement as possible, reach down, take your knife and very gently slide it into the snake's mouth between the edge of its mouth and your leg. Then suddenly rip upwards, severing the snake's head.
9. Be sure you have your knife.
10. Be sure your knife is sharp.
I guess I could relate this to screenwriting. My question would be this: How do you do that and not make it a comedy scene? I mean, do you have the volunteers reading it aloud? How, without laughing?
When you've got the answer, I'd sure like to know about it.
The next e-mail is just for us. Pay close attention.
Ten Things We'd Never Know Without the Movies
1. It is always possible to park opposite the building you are visiting.
2. When paying for a taxi, don't look at your wallet as you take out a bill--just grab one at random and hand it over, it will always be the exact fare.
3. Television news bulletins usually contain a story that affects you personally at the precise moment that it's aired.
4. It is not necessary to say hello or goodbye when beginning or ending a telephone conversation.
5. Any lock can be picked by a credit card or a paperclip in seconds--unless it's the door to a burning building with a child inside.
6. The ventilating system of any building is the perfect hiding place no one will ever think of finding you in and you can travel to any other part of the building undetected.
7. All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red readouts so you know exactly when they are going to go off.
8. Should you want to pass yourself off as a German officer, it will not be necessary to speak the language--a German accent will do.
9. Once applied, lipstick will never rub off--even while scuba diving.
And my favorite
10. You can always find a chainsaw when you need one.
Pretty neat, I thought, And there is one crucial point about all ten, and while you are pondering just what it might be, a story. Concerning number 3, about TV news always affecting you personally.
That actually happened once. To someone I know. Here it is:
Almost thirty years ago now, two young actors were in their twenties. Their names were Penny Marshall and Rob Reiner and they were both on TV shows. Huge hit TV shows. (Think Seinfeld and Friends today.) Rob was Meathead on All in the Family, she Laverne in Laverne and Shirley.
They met. And the Gods smiled down. They fell in love. And got married. And were just so happy. But the home they were living in was not to their liking, nothing ever got finished, the place was a mess.
They went to New York to star in a TV movie Rob wrote, More Than Friends. They would be gone little more than a week.
And in that week, the decorator promised, everything would be made right. Their home would be exactly as they wanted it to be.
Back they come after the shoot. Together, suitcases in hand, they go to their Dream House. They unlock the front door and, very nervous now, enter. They peek into their living room.
As in their dreams.
The dining room.
Yes again.
The kitchen.
Ideal.
Now slowly, up the stairs they go to their bedroom. They put their suitcases down in silence. It's beyond belief perfect.
Like schoolchildren they sit on the end of their bed, turn on the TV and the instant they do, what they see is Jean Dixon saying these words: "Jeane Dixon predicts: Penny and Rob will split."
See, life can imitate art. (The marriage did not last.)
Enough. Did you think about the ten things? Fine. Then tell me the one crucial thing about them all--
--I'm waiting.--
--Want a hint?--
--Forget hints, here's the answer:
They're all the same.
They're all about what the camera does.
They're all about speed.
To show you what I mean, I'll talk about the first couple. Here's numero uno--
1. It is always possible to park opposite the building you are visiting.
Well, we've all sure seen that baby. (Or its corollary: the star raises his hand in New York and a cab stops instantly.) Here's how you might write it:
FADE IN ON
Wall Street. High noon. MEL GIBSON tools along in his Ferrari, spots a parking place across from City Hall, and as he heads toward it--
CUT TO
MEL, hurrying up the steps of that ornate building.
Maybe the entire enterprise takes, what, twenty seconds at the outside? Fine. Now let's try it another way. Same set-up.
CUT TO
Wall Street. High noon. MEL GIBSON tools along in his Ferrari, looking for a place to park.
CUT TO
THE STREET. Jammed. Cars wedged in right beside one another.
CUT TO
MEL. Hmm. He glances at his watch, bites his fingernail for a moment--then, as his face lights up--
CUT TO
An empty spot--just up ahead around the corner and
CUT TO
MEL, doing his best to maneuver in heavy traffic that seems to thicken and--
MEL
Son of a bitch!
CUT TO
A CLUNKER driven by a heavyset woman with a mustache has snared the empty spot, starts to park.
CUT TO
MEL, glancing at his watch again as he turns the corner--up ahead now is the woman, trying to maneuver her car into the spot. Clearly she'll never be able to make it fit. MEL pulls up, stops, waits.
CUT TO
THE WOMAN WITH THE MUSTACHE, trying like hell to make her clunker fit the small spot. No way.
CUT TO
MEL, biting his fingernail again, watching, waiting.
CUT TO
THE WOMAN WITH THE MUSTACHE. She is now backing her clunker into the car behind her, trying to make space. The brakes are on in the rear car, and she has no success. Now she stops, sits there frustrated, her car half-in half-out of the space.
MEL
/> (calling out to her)
Doesn't look like it's going to fit.
WOMAN WITH THE MUSTACHE
Thanks for sharing, you Australian asshole--
-- and as she gets out of the car, leaving it just as it is, gives him a final finger--
CUT TO
A SIGN WITH AN ARROW INDICATING A GARAGE.
CUT TO
MEL, a little rattled now, seeing the sign, driving up to it--
CUT TO
A GARAGE ATTENDANT shaking his head sharply.
PULL BACK TO REVEAL
MEL in his Ferrari, trying to drive into the garage. THE ATTENDANT points to a sign: No Space.
CUT TO
MEL, driving ever more slowly around the block--it's clear now--he will never find a parking space.
2. When paying for a taxi, don't look at your wallet as you take out a bill--just grab one at random and hand it over, it will always be the exact fare.
FADE IN ON
Wall Street. High noon. MEL GIBSON sits in a taxi as it pulls up in front of City Hall. He pulls out a bill, hands it over, and as he starts to get out--
CUT TO
MEL, hurrying up the steps to that ornate building.
That takes even less time than finding a parking space did. Terrific. Mel is on his way inside to where the real scene is about to begin. In other words, just as the earlier sequence was more than likely not a movie about Mel Gibson finding a parking space, this one is not about Mel Gibson getting out of a cab. But let's try it again.
FADE IN ON
Wall Street. High noon. MEL GIBSON sits in a taxi as it pulls up in front of City Hall. He pulls out a bill, hands it over to the CAB DRIVER, and as he starts to get out--
CAB DRIVER
This is a single.
MEL
What?
CAB DRIVER
You gave me a single--I brought you in from JFK, it's thirty-two bucks, plus tolls.
MEL
Sorry.
(He doesn't look at his wallet this time either, just hands over another bill.)
CAB DRIVER
This is another single. That's two.
MEL
Must be jet lag.
(Hands over another bill, still without looking at his wallet)
CAB DRIVER
Three singles don't cut it, Mister.
(beat)
Why don't you ever look at your wallet?
MEL
Look, I'm in a hurry--
CAB DRIVER
--does this scam work where you come from, you Australian asshole?--
(calling out)
Officer?
CUT TO
ONE OF NEW YORK'S FINEST, moving to the DRIVER.
POLICEMAN
Problem?
CAB DRIVER
This guy owes me from JFK and all he does is hand over three singles--
(big)
--and he never looks at his wallet.
POLICEMAN
Don't get you.
CAB DRIVER
Watch.
(to MEL in the back)
I'd like my money, mister.
MEL
Here, take it.
(he hands over another bill without looking at his wallet)
POLICEMAN
Damndest thing I ever saw. What'd he give you?
CAB DRIVER
Progress--a five.
POLICEMAN
(to MEL)
Mister? You owe the man. Now, why don't you just look in your wallet, take out the money, and hand it over.
CUT TO
MEL sitting there, the wallet in his hands. He tries to raise it up to eye level so he can see it. His arms won't move. He tries to drop his head to chin level so he can see it down there. His head won't move.
MEL
(soft)
I don't ... seem to be ... able to do ... that.
POLICEMAN
This is not funny--you don't pay the man, you go to jail. You want to go to jail?
Let's leave Mel pondering that question. And pardon my riff about Mel's not being able to look at his wallet--I was in a Last Action Hero mode, and this scene would have worked there. Because that movie was about an action hero in a movie who didn't know he was in a movie, he thought he existed in our world.
All the ten cliches in the list are about trying to save time. Because the alternatives are too gruesome for the moviegoer: sitting there with nothing happening that relates to the story.
Get on with it--that is what the camera demands, and when we write movies, we have no choice but to obey.
Here's a shot that's a favorite of mine--it's when I can tell a movie is in trouble. When a car drives up to a house and you see the whole long drive, you just know the movie is going to suck. Because there is only one reason to show the drive.
There better be a monster in the house ...
* * *
Chinatown
by Robert Towne and
Fargo
by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
* * *
I'm not sure, really, why I linked these two great Oscar-winning screenplays. I could fake you out with a lot of reasons. They both form the basis for among the best detective movies ever made, both are funny and savage and filled with shocks and surprises, both are literate and surprisingly witty.
Both have wondrous detectives at their core. Gittes (Jack Nicholson), armed with his juvenile cynicism, thinks he know everything but is totally unprepared when he meets a man (Noah Cross, played by John Huston) who is really willing to do anything.
Marge (Frances McDormand), the pregnant police chief, is a lot smarter than Gittes but amazingly unprepared for the strange and terrible things people do to one another.
Both movies are dazzlingly complicated until you know their truths, and then they are clear and inevitable, as all wonderful storytelling must eventually be.
I think what links them in my mind is the placement of their two great scenes. The Fargo detecting scene starts half an hour in, the Chinatown confrontation begins twenty-five minutes before the end. (I have gone to Bergman for an example of a beginning, and, modestly, said he, I am going to use Butch Cassidy as an example of an ending.)
These two scenes both have the same effect on their respective movies. When you read them you know this: the work is done. A magician's phrase for that part of a trick--it can come close to the start or near to the end--when the magician's crucial work is finished. All that remains is the unfolding of the inevitable.
In both movies, after these two scenes, the remainder, for me, is inevitable. The writers have us in their power, at their mercy; they can do with us what they will.
The Coens drive me nuts a lot of the time.
Example: I cannot explain too often how crucial it is for you to know your story before you start. For me, if I don't know how a story is going to end, I don't know how to enter each individual scene preceding. I am not saying you must know each cut, obviously, but it is essential that you know the story you are trying to tell. I asked them how they know they are ready to start a screenplay.
JOEL
To start it? Well, since we started writing we don't do an exhaustive outline--
ETHAN
--or any outline. The rule is, we type scene A without knowing what scene B is going to be-- or for that matter, we type scene R without knowing what scene S is going to be.
JOEL
What happens with us is mostly that we tend to write fast at the beginning, then get very slow, then speed up once we really have to confront the structure.
ETHAN
And also, because we're doing our own thing, we can get stuck and literally grind to a halt and put it aside for a year even.
In other words, everything I feel you must do, they don't. Obviously, there is no correct way to work. I think the one thing writers are all interested in is how others do it. (Maybe looking for, at last, the right way--who knows?)
I have a theory as to why
it works for the Coens. Peter and Bobby Farrelly have equally bizarre ways of getting things done. Listen to this madness:
PETER
Bill, you said once you were in a spot where you didn't know what was going to happen next.
BOBBY
Well, that's what we do. We write ourselves into a corner purposely--
PETER
Because we think if we can go into a corner where there's no way out, and then we take a week or a few days or a month even, and find a reasonable way out without making it absurd, then nobody in the audience is going to sit there and get it within a minute and get ahead of us.
And what do they do in that "week or a few days or a month even"?
PETER
We just drive. You know, it frees everything up. We just get in the car and drive. I drove across country fifteen times but together we've only done it five times.
Okay, my theory as to why it works for them is simplicity itself: numbers. Not because they are brother writing teams, although that doesn't hurt. They certainly know each other so well, and can deal with each other's idiosyncracies. But it's because there are two of them. I can't do it that way--if I get into a dark place, I can't say to my writing partner, "Here, fix the fucker." There's only me, trapped helpless in my pit, no way out.
Another example of why the Coens drive me nuts: The Big Lebowski. This nutball melange of a flick takes place a lot of the time in a bowling alley, where John Goodman, who is nuts, is taunted by another bowler named Jesus (John Turturro). A tournament is mentioned several times.
Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade Page 20
