A month of reading screenplays

I finished reading the 31st screenplay Friday.

When I first wrote about this, the parameters weren't clear:

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2015/04/next-phase-of-screenwriting.html

It soon became obvious that trying to read multiple screenplays in a day would be impossible. There are ways in which it would seem like ready screenplay pages would go faster than book pages, but they don't go fast. (And one felt like it was taking way longer than it should have.)

I basically kept up the pace of one a day, except for the 29th of April, when I had to finish a library book before it was due. I need to sleep sometimes.

I mainly went back and forth between two sites: http://www.simplyscripts.com/movie.html and http://www.dailyscript.com/. I liked that the Daily Script site would highlight a different script each day, and I would often let that guide my reading choice. When that didn't work, navigation the Simply Scripts site was easier.

I started getting pickier toward the end, because I decided I wanted to read at least two from each decade. Even for the 1920s, which I was worried about, there were a few options.

There were interesting moments. One night I was looking for something shorter, and I found City Lights, with 30 pages. I was worried that was cheating, but the movie itself runs for 87 minutes, which is feature length. Generally you expect one script page to equal one minute of screen time. That made me curious about silent movies, so I read the screenplay for The Artist the next day. That was only 43 pages for 100 minutes.

That was a good lesson. The rule usually works for action scenes too, but perhaps when you have almost nothing but action you take less pains to describe it. Also, there was a scene it helped clarify.

In one of the films within the film, Tears of Love, as George is sinking into the quicksand he calls out "Norma, I never loved you." It seemed cruel, though perhaps reflective of where the artist's life was heading. The script noted that he was obviously saying this to make letting go easier for her. That also fits with different things in the wider plot, but it was not obvious. We didn't get that at all.

The other thing about that scene was that the script also said that death was clearly imminent for Norma, as natives were watching George sink, and likely to attack. That was changed. I suspect having the natives there took too much focus off George, and the way the natives were depicted, while in keeping with what a movie of that time would have showed was not great. Also, if she is about to die, she doesn't so much need help in letting you go as encouragement in surviving the next few minutes. Regardless, that leads to the next point: movies change.

I have not seen the majority of these films, but even with some that I hadn't seen I knew they had changed things. Famous scenes, that you saw in clips and trailers, read differently. The scene in Goodfellas where Joe Pesci asks if he's a clown - well, I think the scene was in the script, but that wording wasn't. That's because it came from a real-life experience of Pesci, but it wasn't put in the script because Scorsese wanted the others to be surprised.

In Empire of the Sun a scene that involved both Basie and Doctor Rawlins with Jim did not have Basie in the clip I saw. Based on everything else, that made more sense. You edit and re-write scripts, but sometimes you don't know until you are shooting, or even until you are editing later, what really works best.

It was a good learning experience overall. I will write more about some of them, but first, a list of what I read, in order. The year is sometimes the year for that draft of the script, but sometimes the year the movie came out.

Dear White People, by Justin Simien, 2014

Interstellar, by Johnathan Nolan, 2014

The Muppets, by Jason Segal and Nicholas Stoller, 2011 (seen it)

High Noon, by Carl Foreman, 1952

Airplane!, by Jim Abrahmas, Jerry Zucker, and David Zucker, 1980 (seen it)

A Christmas Story, by Jean Shepher, Bob Clar, and Leigh Brown, 1983

City Lights, by Charlie Chaplin, 1931

The Artist, by Michael Hazanavicius, 2011 (seen it)

Office Space, by Mike Judge, 1999 (seen it)

Breakfast at Tiffany's, by George Axelrod, 1961

The Year of Living Dangerously, by David Williamson, 1982

Mystery Men, by Neil Cuthbert, 1999 (seen it)

Antz, by Todd Alcott, Chris Weitz, and Paul Weitz, 1998

The Big Lebowski, by Ethan & Joel Coen, 1998

Goodfellas, by Nicholas Pileggi and Martin Scorsese, 1990

Logan's Run, by Devid Zelag Goodman, 1976

Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, by Sidney Buchman, 1939

Moonstruck, by John Patrick Shanley, 1987 (seen it)

The 40-Year Old Virgin, by Judd Apatow & Steve Carrell, 2005

10000 BC, by Roland Emmerich, Harold Kloser, Matthew Sand, John Orloff, and Robert Rodat, 2008

Empire of the Sun, by Tom Stoppard, 1987

The Maltese Falcon, by John Huston*, 1941

The Jazz Singer, by Alfred A Cohn, 1927

Call Northside 777, by Jay Dratler, 1948

Big Trouble In Little China II, by Charles Proser, 1995

Ordinary People, by Alvin Sargent, 1980

The Lion In Winter, by James Goldman, 1968

Singin' In The Rain, by Adolph Green and Betty Comden, 1952 (seen it)

London After Midnight, by Todd Browning, 1927

All The President's Men, by William Goldman, 1975

Eight Legged Freaks, by Jesse Alexander & Ellory Elkaye, 2000