I finished
reading the 31st screenplay Friday.
When I
first wrote about this, the parameters weren't clear:
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
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