The original plan was to have something new for today's blog... well, so much for plans! So here's an article...
STORY LINK - How To Survive A Screenwriting Conference.
And here's some inspiration for those of you thinking about writing a SyFy Channel movie...
Gene Splicing Gone Wrong!
Oh, and I am teaching 2 classes at Expo this year:
Noir & Mysteries on Friday 10/8 @ 2pm, and
Generating High Concept Ideas on Friday 10/8 @ 4pm.
Screenwriting Expo 2010.
- Bill
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
Random Thoughts On Art
There’s this sculpture on the corner of Buena Vista and Victory in Burbank of an all American ten year old farm boy in over-alls dancing with joy hand outstretched to the sun. Kind of Norman Rockwell kitsch. Inoffensive, and 99% of the time I drive by it and don’t even notice it. The last time I went past I was on my bike and hit the stop light and had a minute to look at it and think about it. Someone had taped an American flag in the boy’s out-stretched hand. It looks like he’s celebrating America, wholesomeness, and that 1950s version of pure patriotism.
But when I thought about this Norman Rockwell piece of art I wondered if it even was art. Adding the American flag made it even more on-the-nose and obvious - even more bland and invisible. It’s expected - like a plastic pink flamingo on a suburban lawn. It doesn’t catch your eye. It’s not really interesting - you don’t really think about it. Something else you drive by at that intersection, like the sign for the Radio Shack in the strip mall or the marque for Ralph’s Groceries with this week’s deals... Actually, I often look at the Ralph’s marque, because it changes constantly. It’s *different* and often unpredictable - How can they sell ten ears of corn for 99 cents? That’s downright *provocative*! I might have to pull in and see that for myself! But the fake Normal Rockwell kid? Booooring! It’s *expected*. I don’t think art can be expected... so maybe it is not art, just decoration. Manufactured, like millions of identical Halloween skeleton decorations which are not a bit scary.
I wondered what kind of reaction this same decoration would get if someone had taped a Soviet flag in the dancing boy’s hand. Red. Hammer & Sickle.
Now, we have something interesting. Something that is probably art. It’s no longer bland. Because it forces you to think. It’s shocking. It may even offend some people. It’s different. Unexpected. No way we could drive past that without thinking about it, wondering what it means - is this a ten year old *Soviet* kid? Or some sort of innocent and idyllic traitor? I’ll bet there are hundreds of different ways this could be interpreted! Even if you are deeply offended by it, you would be *thinking* about it and *feeling something*. It would not be some passive experience - just a decoration. And I think that makes it art.
There is a conflict between our image of that dancing ten year old kid and the hammer & sickle flag. An incongruity. You can’t just absorb it - you need to process it first. To think about it. To figure out what it means, and what it means to you. We take art personally - we love it or hate it. It provokes us.
Now, my normal opinion is that what makes art is the test of time. If we still think the movie is great 50 years from now, it is art. There are many movies that people claim are art... that just vanish in a couple of years. Films that were called a work of genius, and a decade later we aren’t even thinking about. I think those films are often “surface art” - they seem provocative on the surface, but they don’t touch us deeply... and don’t stick with us. There are movies that I will never forget... and others that I see in the cinema and don’t remember seeing the next day! And many of those are artsie indie films where the film maker was trying to provoke me with things on the surface of the story, instead of digging deeper and *really* screwing with me. And there are mainstream studio films that seem inoffensive on the surface, but go straight for your heart and that unevolved insect part of your brain... and stick with you. One of the reason why I love those BOURNE movies is that they dig deep into the protagonist’s motivations and get into the icky things we don’t like to think of: am *I* the monster?
One of the things that makes horror films work is the connections to our subconscious. Great horror films are often completely politically/socially incorrect. They deal with the things we don’t ever want to think about - the things we fear are true, but have created this concept of society to contain and control those thoughts. I watched THE MIST on 9/11 - it seemed fitting. I think that film might have reached a much larger audience with a different ending... but would not have been nearly as powerful. The nightmares in that film aren’t what the monsters do to people, it is what people do to people. And how people think they are doing the right thing... and they are wrong, and must live with that for the rest of their lives. Good horror movies give characters impossible choices - things that haunt the characters for the rest of their lives, and haunt the audience as they leave the cinema. “What would I have done? Only 4 bullets...”
As a million people have said before me, a beloved Christmas film like IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE sticks with us because it’s a bleak, ugly, nightmare! It’s not some bland story about nice characters who never engage in conflict with each other - it shows us both the good side of humans and the bad side... and I think the bad side gets a lot more running time! It provokes us. It challenges us. That film even *scares us* more than many pre-fab horror movies that get turned out by Hollywood. IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE has passed that test of time - we are still watching it today.
I think there are two things required for a film to pass the test of time:
1) Enough people must have seen it so that it *can* be remembered decades later. Even though IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE was not a box office hit, it was a big wide release movie that many people saw, and later in its life became a staple on TV at holiday season for a couple of reasons... at least one of which was that it had fallen out of copyright for a while and any TV station could show it for pocket change. The other reason being that it had a big name star and a big name director and a story that - despite its darkness - was accessible. Many arty indie films often have stories that are *not* accessible to a wide audience, and those films may become nothing but memories when one black-beret wearing audience gives way to the next. They are *temporary art* instead of something that we will be watching and talking about for decades to come - over 70 years in the case of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. A movie must be seen by large numbers of people to be remembered.
2) The film must be memorable. No matter how many people see a film, if it is bland and doesn’t touch them; they will not remember it. I did not see PRINCE OF PERSIA or SORCERER’S APPRENTICE, but many people didn’t see them. The reason why *I* decided not to see either is that they seemed generic - nothing provocative or dangerous about either. Now, that may be because they failed to include those elements in the trailers, but I suspect traces of dangerous material would still show up in whatever scenes they picked for the trailer. Those things are in a story’s DNA (hey - read my article in this current issue of Script Magazine for more on this!). If cut a trailer to BOURNE IDENTITY you can’t help but put in something about how the lead is searching for his identity and is afraid he is a very bad person. You can’t cut a trailer to THE MIST without including the conflicts between the people trapped in the market - even if you were trying to make it look like a monster movie. I will eventually get around to finishing the Fridays With Hitchcock on REBECCA, and there is no way to make a trailer to that movie without Max deWinter having some dark secret... and maybe even giving away that he may have killed his first wife. These provocative elements are *part* of the story and can not be removed or hidden. The Micky Mouse cartoon of SORCERER’S APPRENTICE is more dangerous and provocative than any of the 3 minute trailers to the Nic Cage film. Cute little Micky does the forbidden - he uses magic, and it gets out of control. He’s like that Norman Rockwell 10 year old dancing with glee with a Soviet flag in his hand.
No one wants to ride a roller coaster where the tracks just end - and the cars shoot off into the amusement park to crash into the merry-go-round.... nor do they want to ride a roller coaster that is mostly straight-aways and gentle hills. We want the thrill of danger without the actual danger. That means a good movie is going to be a little dangerous - sure, we leave the cinema with all of the limbs we came with, but we may have a little scar tissue we didn’t have before. We don’t go to the cinema for a safe and bland experience - we want to *almost die*. We want to see a movie that leaves a mark. When the roller coaster ride is over, we want our hearts to still be racing in the memory of how close to death we came... and survived.
The problem with the business side of entertainment is that it's stupid. They are afraid of doing anything that might offend some segment of the audience - they are afraid of doing anything that is too different than the norm - they are afraid of doing anything that will anger advertisers. Now, as businesspeople they want to protect their investments, and that means they need to be cautious. They need to make sure they aren't going to produce some TV show or movie that people will not watch. That makes sense...
But at the same time, they need to be intelligent about their caution. They can't just say NO to everything that is different and always play it safe - because that leads to boredom. Part of entertainment is the novelty of the show or movie. That often leads to I SURVIVED A JAPANESE GAMESHOW and crap like that... but it doesn't have to. By the way, how many of you even remember HOW I SURVIVED A JAPANESE GAME SHOW? It was a TV series on summer of 2008 - only 2 years ago. Hey, it was strange, weird, wacky... and all surface. Nothing that left a scar. Novelty without art.
But novelty can also lead to interesting and innovative shows that stretch the medium - look at how 24's concept of one hour of TV = one real hour of the story was an interesting innovation or how LOST’s concept of starting in the middle of the story - the plane crashes on an island - then zipping back in time to tell us who these survivors really are and what their secrets are... as the continue forward and things just get stranger and stranger on the island. If we rewind time and look at what network execs were thinking before the first seasons of those shows aired, I'm sure they secretly thought they would be huge failures. And screw them up big time - because if it failed after 5 episodes, they would have this dangling unfinished story. This is a business run by fear - no one wants to greenlight the unusual TV show that could flop big time, or greenlight the movie that challenges the audience or makes them feel things that might be unpleasant.
But as those suits become more conservative - more interested in *not* taking a risk... they take a greater risk by giving us either crap or shows and movies that are so tame they are not novel. They are not original. They are not interesting. They offer us nothing we haven't experienced before... and that's when networks and studios make nothing but flops. They play it safe - not realizing that safety is really dangerous. No one wants to ride on a roller coaster with only moderate hills and no big scary turns. A safe roller coaster where you never worry that you might die.
To a certain extent TV and movies needs to "color within the lines" - TV has to make shows that run a half hour or an hour and follow the basic things we expect... stories that make sense and have some sort of conclusion at the end of the episode (though in the case of shows like 24, maybe not *the* conclusion). Movies need to be something that tells a coherent story about characters that we can understand and maybe identify with, and probably stay within the basics of drama those Greek dudes identified 2,400 years ago and hopefully run under 2 hours so that we can get a 7pm and 9pm showing on weekdays and 1pm, 3pm, 5pm. 7pm, and 9pm on weekends (or 12, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10).
But just because we have a certain framework doesn't mean we can only use 8 pack of Crayolas to color our pictures... in fact, because we have that framework, we need the full 120 pack of Crayolas... and we need to find ways to combine and shade and use those crayons in ways they have never been used before to color those pictures. The more we color within the lines, the more we need to be creative about colors and do wild bold things that no one has done with Crayolas before. We have to give the audience that near-death experience of the roller coaster... even though they know they will survive intact at the end. We can’t make our Crayola drawing bland and predictable - we need to make it exciting and inventive and maybe even frightening.
And here's where things go wrong - those Studio Execs and TV Execs think they need to play it safe in all ways, when they only need to play it safe in *some* ways - and be dangerous as hell in others. But knowing where to be cautious and where to be innovative takes intelligence - not computer print outs and business plans. I think that's the thing that may be missing in Hollywood these days - the old Moguls, for whatever reason, had that strange ability to know what elements required caution and what elements required anarchy. Or maybe they didn't - maybe they just knew what required caution and didn't care about the other elements at all - and the writers and directors were allowed to go wild (as long as they colored within the lines). Whatever the case - there was that blend of popular story and innovation. And I think Robert Evans at Paramount may have been the last of that line. GODFATHER PART 2 is one of my favorite films, and it is both art and potboiler. It's a gangster soap opera and an examination of morals and family. There was a time when - for whatever reason - we could have a TV show or a movie that was both innovative and interesting *and* popular. But that required the person in charge to know what elements needed to be treated with caution and what elements needed to be innovative.
I think the big problem with the suits in current Hollywood is that they are trying to make safe choices in all things - when a movie really needs to be dangerous and frightening like that roller coaster. A movie needs to be more than “decoration”, it needs to be provocative. It needs to scare us. Challenge us. Make us think. These people use intelligent caution but have no idea what intelligent innovation is. They want to bland down anything that might offend any audience member. Instead of making “sharp” movies, they want to make dull ones... and I think the reason why movies like PRINCE OF PERSIA fail is because they are dull or seem to be dull from the trailer.
Saw what you want about INCEPTION - you may hate it - but that end sure starts a conversation doesn’t it? And when it is revealed who killed his wife... not a safe bit of plot at all! Hey, that film sold some tickets!
And so did TOY STORY 3 - the darkest of the series. A movie that left a scar on me. The amazing thing about Pixar movies is that they aren’t afraid to make the roller coaster frightening, and at times really uncomfortable. They make films where the protagonist may be completely wrong, where the protagonist may have caused the problem, where the protagonist’s problems may self-inflicted. Pixar makes dangerous movies. Movies that stick with you. Movies that leave a mark. Hey, and what film sold the most tickets this year?
One of the things that pisses me off about writing scripts is that they always want me to sand down the rough edges. That's the first rewrite - the "caution" rewrite. Anything that might snag something needs to be removed. And that's where things go wrong - because if there is nothing rough to snag on the imagination, nothing to rip into the viewer, the story becomes "harmless" and smooth and boring. The roller coaster with gentle hills and no sharp turns. Boring. And they think this makes it better!
Think of the moments in films that you remember - the scenes that snagged you - and chances are, those are the scenes with the rough edges. Think of the films that left their mark on you - chances are those are films that may have looked like entertainment on the surface, but cut deep into you... causing you pain or discomfort at times. The films you remember are the ones that made you feel something you did not expect to feel. People love CASABLANCA because he *doesn’t* get the girl (sorry - spoiler). All of the test audiences and focus groups and marketing idiots who might look at that ending and think that the film might have been more successful if Bogart and Bergman ended up together at the end are just plain wrong. The audience might have “liked” the film more when they initially viewed it... but it would never have stuck with them and it would not have survived to become art had Bogart actually *not* been good at being noble.
For something to become art, it must stand the test of time. To stand the test of time, it must be seen by enough people to be remembered, and have enough rough edges to snag their memory. A movie has to be more than a decoration that we see and forget, it must be dangerous and provocative.
I think I’m going to buy a Halloween plastic severed head, and the next time I’m stopped at that intersection near that Norman Rockwell-like sculpture, tape it in the hand of that all American ten year old farm boy in over-alls dancing with joy.
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: What's Your Story? - too many story threads is confusing - you want a *focused* story.
Dinner: City Wok - sweet & sour chicken, brown rice, pot stickers.
Pages: Still trying to get back in the groove, and the groove eludes me.
Bicycle: Yes, rode west for a medium ride to NoHo, then down to CBS Radford.
Movies: WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS, and did I already mention CATFISH?
But when I thought about this Norman Rockwell piece of art I wondered if it even was art. Adding the American flag made it even more on-the-nose and obvious - even more bland and invisible. It’s expected - like a plastic pink flamingo on a suburban lawn. It doesn’t catch your eye. It’s not really interesting - you don’t really think about it. Something else you drive by at that intersection, like the sign for the Radio Shack in the strip mall or the marque for Ralph’s Groceries with this week’s deals... Actually, I often look at the Ralph’s marque, because it changes constantly. It’s *different* and often unpredictable - How can they sell ten ears of corn for 99 cents? That’s downright *provocative*! I might have to pull in and see that for myself! But the fake Normal Rockwell kid? Booooring! It’s *expected*. I don’t think art can be expected... so maybe it is not art, just decoration. Manufactured, like millions of identical Halloween skeleton decorations which are not a bit scary.
I wondered what kind of reaction this same decoration would get if someone had taped a Soviet flag in the dancing boy’s hand. Red. Hammer & Sickle.
Now, we have something interesting. Something that is probably art. It’s no longer bland. Because it forces you to think. It’s shocking. It may even offend some people. It’s different. Unexpected. No way we could drive past that without thinking about it, wondering what it means - is this a ten year old *Soviet* kid? Or some sort of innocent and idyllic traitor? I’ll bet there are hundreds of different ways this could be interpreted! Even if you are deeply offended by it, you would be *thinking* about it and *feeling something*. It would not be some passive experience - just a decoration. And I think that makes it art.
There is a conflict between our image of that dancing ten year old kid and the hammer & sickle flag. An incongruity. You can’t just absorb it - you need to process it first. To think about it. To figure out what it means, and what it means to you. We take art personally - we love it or hate it. It provokes us.
TIME WILL TELL
Now, my normal opinion is that what makes art is the test of time. If we still think the movie is great 50 years from now, it is art. There are many movies that people claim are art... that just vanish in a couple of years. Films that were called a work of genius, and a decade later we aren’t even thinking about. I think those films are often “surface art” - they seem provocative on the surface, but they don’t touch us deeply... and don’t stick with us. There are movies that I will never forget... and others that I see in the cinema and don’t remember seeing the next day! And many of those are artsie indie films where the film maker was trying to provoke me with things on the surface of the story, instead of digging deeper and *really* screwing with me. And there are mainstream studio films that seem inoffensive on the surface, but go straight for your heart and that unevolved insect part of your brain... and stick with you. One of the reason why I love those BOURNE movies is that they dig deep into the protagonist’s motivations and get into the icky things we don’t like to think of: am *I* the monster?
One of the things that makes horror films work is the connections to our subconscious. Great horror films are often completely politically/socially incorrect. They deal with the things we don’t ever want to think about - the things we fear are true, but have created this concept of society to contain and control those thoughts. I watched THE MIST on 9/11 - it seemed fitting. I think that film might have reached a much larger audience with a different ending... but would not have been nearly as powerful. The nightmares in that film aren’t what the monsters do to people, it is what people do to people. And how people think they are doing the right thing... and they are wrong, and must live with that for the rest of their lives. Good horror movies give characters impossible choices - things that haunt the characters for the rest of their lives, and haunt the audience as they leave the cinema. “What would I have done? Only 4 bullets...”
As a million people have said before me, a beloved Christmas film like IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE sticks with us because it’s a bleak, ugly, nightmare! It’s not some bland story about nice characters who never engage in conflict with each other - it shows us both the good side of humans and the bad side... and I think the bad side gets a lot more running time! It provokes us. It challenges us. That film even *scares us* more than many pre-fab horror movies that get turned out by Hollywood. IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE has passed that test of time - we are still watching it today.
I think there are two things required for a film to pass the test of time:
1) Enough people must have seen it so that it *can* be remembered decades later. Even though IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE was not a box office hit, it was a big wide release movie that many people saw, and later in its life became a staple on TV at holiday season for a couple of reasons... at least one of which was that it had fallen out of copyright for a while and any TV station could show it for pocket change. The other reason being that it had a big name star and a big name director and a story that - despite its darkness - was accessible. Many arty indie films often have stories that are *not* accessible to a wide audience, and those films may become nothing but memories when one black-beret wearing audience gives way to the next. They are *temporary art* instead of something that we will be watching and talking about for decades to come - over 70 years in the case of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. A movie must be seen by large numbers of people to be remembered.
2) The film must be memorable. No matter how many people see a film, if it is bland and doesn’t touch them; they will not remember it. I did not see PRINCE OF PERSIA or SORCERER’S APPRENTICE, but many people didn’t see them. The reason why *I* decided not to see either is that they seemed generic - nothing provocative or dangerous about either. Now, that may be because they failed to include those elements in the trailers, but I suspect traces of dangerous material would still show up in whatever scenes they picked for the trailer. Those things are in a story’s DNA (hey - read my article in this current issue of Script Magazine for more on this!). If cut a trailer to BOURNE IDENTITY you can’t help but put in something about how the lead is searching for his identity and is afraid he is a very bad person. You can’t cut a trailer to THE MIST without including the conflicts between the people trapped in the market - even if you were trying to make it look like a monster movie. I will eventually get around to finishing the Fridays With Hitchcock on REBECCA, and there is no way to make a trailer to that movie without Max deWinter having some dark secret... and maybe even giving away that he may have killed his first wife. These provocative elements are *part* of the story and can not be removed or hidden. The Micky Mouse cartoon of SORCERER’S APPRENTICE is more dangerous and provocative than any of the 3 minute trailers to the Nic Cage film. Cute little Micky does the forbidden - he uses magic, and it gets out of control. He’s like that Norman Rockwell 10 year old dancing with glee with a Soviet flag in his hand.
*INTELLIGENT* CAUTION
vs.
*INTELLIGENT* INNOVATION
No one wants to ride a roller coaster where the tracks just end - and the cars shoot off into the amusement park to crash into the merry-go-round.... nor do they want to ride a roller coaster that is mostly straight-aways and gentle hills. We want the thrill of danger without the actual danger. That means a good movie is going to be a little dangerous - sure, we leave the cinema with all of the limbs we came with, but we may have a little scar tissue we didn’t have before. We don’t go to the cinema for a safe and bland experience - we want to *almost die*. We want to see a movie that leaves a mark. When the roller coaster ride is over, we want our hearts to still be racing in the memory of how close to death we came... and survived.
The problem with the business side of entertainment is that it's stupid. They are afraid of doing anything that might offend some segment of the audience - they are afraid of doing anything that is too different than the norm - they are afraid of doing anything that will anger advertisers. Now, as businesspeople they want to protect their investments, and that means they need to be cautious. They need to make sure they aren't going to produce some TV show or movie that people will not watch. That makes sense...
But at the same time, they need to be intelligent about their caution. They can't just say NO to everything that is different and always play it safe - because that leads to boredom. Part of entertainment is the novelty of the show or movie. That often leads to I SURVIVED A JAPANESE GAMESHOW and crap like that... but it doesn't have to. By the way, how many of you even remember HOW I SURVIVED A JAPANESE GAME SHOW? It was a TV series on summer of 2008 - only 2 years ago. Hey, it was strange, weird, wacky... and all surface. Nothing that left a scar. Novelty without art.
But novelty can also lead to interesting and innovative shows that stretch the medium - look at how 24's concept of one hour of TV = one real hour of the story was an interesting innovation or how LOST’s concept of starting in the middle of the story - the plane crashes on an island - then zipping back in time to tell us who these survivors really are and what their secrets are... as the continue forward and things just get stranger and stranger on the island. If we rewind time and look at what network execs were thinking before the first seasons of those shows aired, I'm sure they secretly thought they would be huge failures. And screw them up big time - because if it failed after 5 episodes, they would have this dangling unfinished story. This is a business run by fear - no one wants to greenlight the unusual TV show that could flop big time, or greenlight the movie that challenges the audience or makes them feel things that might be unpleasant.
But as those suits become more conservative - more interested in *not* taking a risk... they take a greater risk by giving us either crap or shows and movies that are so tame they are not novel. They are not original. They are not interesting. They offer us nothing we haven't experienced before... and that's when networks and studios make nothing but flops. They play it safe - not realizing that safety is really dangerous. No one wants to ride on a roller coaster with only moderate hills and no big scary turns. A safe roller coaster where you never worry that you might die.
To a certain extent TV and movies needs to "color within the lines" - TV has to make shows that run a half hour or an hour and follow the basic things we expect... stories that make sense and have some sort of conclusion at the end of the episode (though in the case of shows like 24, maybe not *the* conclusion). Movies need to be something that tells a coherent story about characters that we can understand and maybe identify with, and probably stay within the basics of drama those Greek dudes identified 2,400 years ago and hopefully run under 2 hours so that we can get a 7pm and 9pm showing on weekdays and 1pm, 3pm, 5pm. 7pm, and 9pm on weekends (or 12, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10).
But just because we have a certain framework doesn't mean we can only use 8 pack of Crayolas to color our pictures... in fact, because we have that framework, we need the full 120 pack of Crayolas... and we need to find ways to combine and shade and use those crayons in ways they have never been used before to color those pictures. The more we color within the lines, the more we need to be creative about colors and do wild bold things that no one has done with Crayolas before. We have to give the audience that near-death experience of the roller coaster... even though they know they will survive intact at the end. We can’t make our Crayola drawing bland and predictable - we need to make it exciting and inventive and maybe even frightening.
And here's where things go wrong - those Studio Execs and TV Execs think they need to play it safe in all ways, when they only need to play it safe in *some* ways - and be dangerous as hell in others. But knowing where to be cautious and where to be innovative takes intelligence - not computer print outs and business plans. I think that's the thing that may be missing in Hollywood these days - the old Moguls, for whatever reason, had that strange ability to know what elements required caution and what elements required anarchy. Or maybe they didn't - maybe they just knew what required caution and didn't care about the other elements at all - and the writers and directors were allowed to go wild (as long as they colored within the lines). Whatever the case - there was that blend of popular story and innovation. And I think Robert Evans at Paramount may have been the last of that line. GODFATHER PART 2 is one of my favorite films, and it is both art and potboiler. It's a gangster soap opera and an examination of morals and family. There was a time when - for whatever reason - we could have a TV show or a movie that was both innovative and interesting *and* popular. But that required the person in charge to know what elements needed to be treated with caution and what elements needed to be innovative.
I think the big problem with the suits in current Hollywood is that they are trying to make safe choices in all things - when a movie really needs to be dangerous and frightening like that roller coaster. A movie needs to be more than “decoration”, it needs to be provocative. It needs to scare us. Challenge us. Make us think. These people use intelligent caution but have no idea what intelligent innovation is. They want to bland down anything that might offend any audience member. Instead of making “sharp” movies, they want to make dull ones... and I think the reason why movies like PRINCE OF PERSIA fail is because they are dull or seem to be dull from the trailer.
Saw what you want about INCEPTION - you may hate it - but that end sure starts a conversation doesn’t it? And when it is revealed who killed his wife... not a safe bit of plot at all! Hey, that film sold some tickets!
And so did TOY STORY 3 - the darkest of the series. A movie that left a scar on me. The amazing thing about Pixar movies is that they aren’t afraid to make the roller coaster frightening, and at times really uncomfortable. They make films where the protagonist may be completely wrong, where the protagonist may have caused the problem, where the protagonist’s problems may self-inflicted. Pixar makes dangerous movies. Movies that stick with you. Movies that leave a mark. Hey, and what film sold the most tickets this year?
One of the things that pisses me off about writing scripts is that they always want me to sand down the rough edges. That's the first rewrite - the "caution" rewrite. Anything that might snag something needs to be removed. And that's where things go wrong - because if there is nothing rough to snag on the imagination, nothing to rip into the viewer, the story becomes "harmless" and smooth and boring. The roller coaster with gentle hills and no sharp turns. Boring. And they think this makes it better!
Think of the moments in films that you remember - the scenes that snagged you - and chances are, those are the scenes with the rough edges. Think of the films that left their mark on you - chances are those are films that may have looked like entertainment on the surface, but cut deep into you... causing you pain or discomfort at times. The films you remember are the ones that made you feel something you did not expect to feel. People love CASABLANCA because he *doesn’t* get the girl (sorry - spoiler). All of the test audiences and focus groups and marketing idiots who might look at that ending and think that the film might have been more successful if Bogart and Bergman ended up together at the end are just plain wrong. The audience might have “liked” the film more when they initially viewed it... but it would never have stuck with them and it would not have survived to become art had Bogart actually *not* been good at being noble.
For something to become art, it must stand the test of time. To stand the test of time, it must be seen by enough people to be remembered, and have enough rough edges to snag their memory. A movie has to be more than a decoration that we see and forget, it must be dangerous and provocative.
I think I’m going to buy a Halloween plastic severed head, and the next time I’m stopped at that intersection near that Norman Rockwell-like sculpture, tape it in the hand of that all American ten year old farm boy in over-alls dancing with joy.
- Bill
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: What's Your Story? - too many story threads is confusing - you want a *focused* story.
Dinner: City Wok - sweet & sour chicken, brown rice, pot stickers.
Pages: Still trying to get back in the groove, and the groove eludes me.
Bicycle: Yes, rode west for a medium ride to NoHo, then down to CBS Radford.
Movies: WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS, and did I already mention CATFISH?
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Lancelot Link Thursday
Lancelot Link Thursday! For those of you who wonder if in the future, monkeys will be running all of the major studios... and doing a better job... here are some articles about screenwriting and the biz that may be of interest to you. Brought to you by that suave and sophisticated secret agent...
Here are four cool links plus this week's car chase...
1) Thursday is tweet "Harry Connolly GAME OF CAGES" day - if we all tweet it, maybe it will trend? That would be cool. It's an exciting book, let's see if *we* can add something to that twitter trending list!
"Harry Connolly GAME OF CAGES"
2) Your Spy Dictionary Has Arrived! - thanks to Jeff!
3) Offended By The Rank Objectification Of Writers - we are not sex objects! - um, you may not want to let any attractive members of the opposite sex read this.
4) Chuck Lorre Vanity Cards! - when you are creator/producer of a TV show, they give you a place at the end of the show for your company logo. Chuck Lorre (DHARMA & GREG, TWO AND A HALF MEN, BIG BANG THEORY) uses that space for rants... that you can not read because they're only up for a few seconds. But if you Tivo his shows, you can pause and read them... and they are funny! That link takes you to all of them, pre-paused for your reading pleasure!
5) And today's car chase...
Burt Reynolds in WHITE LIGHTNING! One of those moonshine movies... and Reynolds made 2 playing the same character (the other one, GATOR, features boat chases and ultra hot Lauren Hutton). Since most of the car chases have been urban, here's one in the country...
Corn fields and quarries and lots of dust.
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Thick, Juicy Scenes - and Jack Black.
Dinner: Tortas burrito.
Pages: Awful writing day.
Bicycle: Yes, rode west for a medium ride.
Here are four cool links plus this week's car chase...
1) Thursday is tweet "Harry Connolly GAME OF CAGES" day - if we all tweet it, maybe it will trend? That would be cool. It's an exciting book, let's see if *we* can add something to that twitter trending list!
"Harry Connolly GAME OF CAGES"
2) Your Spy Dictionary Has Arrived! - thanks to Jeff!
3) Offended By The Rank Objectification Of Writers - we are not sex objects! - um, you may not want to let any attractive members of the opposite sex read this.
4) Chuck Lorre Vanity Cards! - when you are creator/producer of a TV show, they give you a place at the end of the show for your company logo. Chuck Lorre (DHARMA & GREG, TWO AND A HALF MEN, BIG BANG THEORY) uses that space for rants... that you can not read because they're only up for a few seconds. But if you Tivo his shows, you can pause and read them... and they are funny! That link takes you to all of them, pre-paused for your reading pleasure!
5) And today's car chase...
Burt Reynolds in WHITE LIGHTNING! One of those moonshine movies... and Reynolds made 2 playing the same character (the other one, GATOR, features boat chases and ultra hot Lauren Hutton). Since most of the car chases have been urban, here's one in the country...
Corn fields and quarries and lots of dust.
- Bill
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Thick, Juicy Scenes - and Jack Black.
Dinner: Tortas burrito.
Pages: Awful writing day.
Bicycle: Yes, rode west for a medium ride.
Tweet It!
Thursday is tweet "Harry Connolly GAME OF CAGES" day - if we all tweet it, maybe it will trend? That would be cool. It's an exciting book, let's see if *we* can add something to that twitter trending list!
"Harry Connolly GAME OF CAGES"
- Bill
"Harry Connolly GAME OF CAGES"
- Bill
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Common Screenplay Cliches
So, what do *you* think are the most common cliches in the screenplays of new writers? Post them in the comments section!
(looking for script problems for a new article for Script Mag)
- Bill
(looking for script problems for a new article for Script Mag)
- Bill
We'll Always Have Paris
I was going to write a new blog entry for today, but was too broken up about Paris Hilton being banned from Japan.
So here's a clip from one of my favorite movies, Bertolucci's 1900...
These two boys grow up to be DeNiro and Depardieu. The film looks at their relationship from 1900 to 1976... with the history of Italy as the "background". Ends with two old men on those railroad tracks, waiting for the train.
The "frog hat" is one of those strong images that I think about sometimes - Bertolucci's work is filled with images like that. They haunt you long after you've seen the film.
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Visuals vs. Visually Told Story - and the genius that is Roland Emmerich (really!).
Dinner: Subway Black Forest Ham.
Pages: Not a good writing day, though began the rewrite.
Bicycle: Yes, places in NoHo more North than usual.
Movies: CATFISH - *this* should be the Facebook movie.
Without giving away anything - documentary about NYC photographer develops online friendship with 8 year old painter - who has done paintings based on his photos. Begins a FB friendship with the 8 year old's hot older sister (who is legal, so Chris Hanson does not make a cameo in the film), and texts her, phones her long distance, etc. Then things get strange. He has a relationship with a bunch of people he has never met - only know from FB and texting...
There's a moment in the film that is right out of BLAIR WITCH when they decide to poke around hot older sister's place in the middle of the night - very intense.
A great look at how we live our lives in the FB age - we text, we use YouTube, we use MapQuest, we use StreetView, we talk to people on the phone we have never met, etc - we no longer have relationships with real people. We "friend" people we have never met and never will meet. Can someone you only know online really be your friend? Can you fall in love with them and have a long distance phone relationship? What if that woman you love in another state and have never met has a big secret? What if she has a husband? What if she has...
You will get ahead of the story - and they seem to do this on purpose. There is a moment where they drop a big hint, and my friends and I looked at each other because we thought we had figured it out. But we only got it half right... and the other half was what made the movie.
Check it out.
- Bill
So here's a clip from one of my favorite movies, Bertolucci's 1900...
These two boys grow up to be DeNiro and Depardieu. The film looks at their relationship from 1900 to 1976... with the history of Italy as the "background". Ends with two old men on those railroad tracks, waiting for the train.
The "frog hat" is one of those strong images that I think about sometimes - Bertolucci's work is filled with images like that. They haunt you long after you've seen the film.
- Bill
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Visuals vs. Visually Told Story - and the genius that is Roland Emmerich (really!).
Dinner: Subway Black Forest Ham.
Pages: Not a good writing day, though began the rewrite.
Bicycle: Yes, places in NoHo more North than usual.
Movies: CATFISH - *this* should be the Facebook movie.
Without giving away anything - documentary about NYC photographer develops online friendship with 8 year old painter - who has done paintings based on his photos. Begins a FB friendship with the 8 year old's hot older sister (who is legal, so Chris Hanson does not make a cameo in the film), and texts her, phones her long distance, etc. Then things get strange. He has a relationship with a bunch of people he has never met - only know from FB and texting...
There's a moment in the film that is right out of BLAIR WITCH when they decide to poke around hot older sister's place in the middle of the night - very intense.
A great look at how we live our lives in the FB age - we text, we use YouTube, we use MapQuest, we use StreetView, we talk to people on the phone we have never met, etc - we no longer have relationships with real people. We "friend" people we have never met and never will meet. Can someone you only know online really be your friend? Can you fall in love with them and have a long distance phone relationship? What if that woman you love in another state and have never met has a big secret? What if she has a husband? What if she has...
You will get ahead of the story - and they seem to do this on purpose. There is a moment where they drop a big hint, and my friends and I looked at each other because we thought we had figured it out. But we only got it half right... and the other half was what made the movie.
Check it out.
- Bill
Monday, September 20, 2010
Friday, September 17, 2010
4 Minutes Of Video: 2 Min Hitchcock, 2 Min Me
Sound comes to film, and the first British sound film was directed by Hitchcock... he also produced a "variety film" ELSTREE CALLING that showcased sound - musical numbers, etc... and includes this Hitchcock directed short - under 2 minutes...
At Great American Pitchfest I got ambushed by cute Deb from Write On! who asked if she could interview me. On camera. I said "sure" and was one of several people she grabbed and interviewed - which is cool. She has all kinds of great things on her site. My interview was maybe 10 minutes, cut down to these 2 minutes...
Note that the cycling has resulted in my losing a little weight: picture that starts the interview was from about a year ago.
- Bill
At Great American Pitchfest I got ambushed by cute Deb from Write On! who asked if she could interview me. On camera. I said "sure" and was one of several people she grabbed and interviewed - which is cool. She has all kinds of great things on her site. My interview was maybe 10 minutes, cut down to these 2 minutes...
Note that the cycling has resulted in my losing a little weight: picture that starts the interview was from about a year ago.
- Bill
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Lancelot Link Thursday
Lancelot Link Thursday! For those of you who wonder if 100 monkeys with typewriters could write a better script than THE LAST AIRBENDER, here are some articles about screenwriting and the biz that may be of interest to you. Brought to you by that suave and sophisticated secret agent...
Here are four cool links plus this week's car chase...
1) Clint Eastwood is tired of people calling him great.
2) What kind of woman reads Playboy to blind men? (and she *does* describe the pictures.)
3) Harry Connolly's first book... Okay, I've finished reading GAME OF CAGES, and it rocks! My plan was to read a chapter or two every night before going to sleep... but Harry ends his chapters with insane cliff hangers, making the book impossible to put down. You think, "I'll just read the first part of this chapter, until Ray gets out of this insane problem", but by then, you are hooked on that next chapter and next thing you know, you're at the end of the chapter and there's another danged cliff hanger! I read the book in about 24 hours. Damn that Harry Connolly!
4) TV Tropes - which should really be called *Fiction* Tropes. Those things that happen again and again in stories... which may help prompt you if you've got writer's block.
5) This week's car chase was suggested by Matt Racicot...
SPEEDTRAP with Joe Don Baker. One of those forgetable drive in movies in the "car wreck" genre - like GONE IN 60 SECONDS.
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Changing Clothes - taking the core of another story and using it... by changing every single thing else.
Dinner: Baja Fresh - grilled fish tacos, black beans, rice.
Pages: An awful day - woke up feeling like someone had been beating on me in my sleep - back ached, etc. So, not much writing got done.
Bicycle: No... not quite up to a ride to Northridge, yet.
Movies: Well, from yesterday's Script Tip, you know I've seen EASY A... and tonight I'm seeing another movie (in Northridge), which I'll tell you about later.
Here are four cool links plus this week's car chase...
1) Clint Eastwood is tired of people calling him great.
2) What kind of woman reads Playboy to blind men? (and she *does* describe the pictures.)
3) Harry Connolly's first book... Okay, I've finished reading GAME OF CAGES, and it rocks! My plan was to read a chapter or two every night before going to sleep... but Harry ends his chapters with insane cliff hangers, making the book impossible to put down. You think, "I'll just read the first part of this chapter, until Ray gets out of this insane problem", but by then, you are hooked on that next chapter and next thing you know, you're at the end of the chapter and there's another danged cliff hanger! I read the book in about 24 hours. Damn that Harry Connolly!
4) TV Tropes - which should really be called *Fiction* Tropes. Those things that happen again and again in stories... which may help prompt you if you've got writer's block.
5) This week's car chase was suggested by Matt Racicot...
SPEEDTRAP with Joe Don Baker. One of those forgetable drive in movies in the "car wreck" genre - like GONE IN 60 SECONDS.
- Bill
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Changing Clothes - taking the core of another story and using it... by changing every single thing else.
Dinner: Baja Fresh - grilled fish tacos, black beans, rice.
Pages: An awful day - woke up feeling like someone had been beating on me in my sleep - back ached, etc. So, not much writing got done.
Bicycle: No... not quite up to a ride to Northridge, yet.
Movies: Well, from yesterday's Script Tip, you know I've seen EASY A... and tonight I'm seeing another movie (in Northridge), which I'll tell you about later.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Manchurian Candidate & Seconds
I posted this stuff a couple of weeks ago on FB - MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE is the ultimate mind trip thriller... and deals with planting ideas in people's minds, much like INCEPTION.
I love how everyone has the same dream, but all of the dreams are individualized and different. When they get to James Edwards (the Black guy)'s version of the dream - it's exactly the same, but every character's race is flipped. The old white ladies in the garden club become old Black ladies, and the Black servant becomes a white servant. It has a great sense of sly humor (probably due to the tone of the source novel written by the clever Richard Condon) and has great suspense. The remake got some basic stuff wrong... Um, the reason why it's a game of solitaire is because no one ever asks you if you want to play solitaire, so it is the perfect "trigger phrase". Here's the opening scene - the first dream - watch how the dream changes without a cut. It's the garden club... then it's Chinese brainwashing with the help of the Koreans. Hey, that's Reggie Nadler in the audience! Voice over is by the great Paul Frees, a radio actor who had a very distinctive voice.
The film was directed by John Frankenheimer, who also directed this great film...
SECONDS is a thriller about getting a second chance at life and realizing you take all of your emotional problems with you.
You see echoes of this film in ROBOCOP and other movies about people who realize they can not go back to their old lives ever aagin. Rock Hudson gives the preformance of a lifetime - he was a light comedy pretty boy actor before this film... and here he does dark, deep, drama. Based on a novel by David Ely (who wrote some great TWILIGHT ZONE type science fiction novels). Story hits the ground running with middle aged man John Randolph getting a phone call from his dead friend. WTF? This is a slow burn story, but like MANCHURIAN, deals with constant paranoia. It is *always* creepy. Where MANCHURIAN deals with the idea that you may not be in control of your own life (mind control), SECONDS deals with having to constantly pretend to be someone you are not... and the fear that people may discover who you really are.
- Bill
The Novels:
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: The One Page Synopsis - and how to master it.
Dinner: Togos again.
Pages: Some blog stuff you will see in the future.
Bicycle: Just around the corner - doesn't really count.
I love how everyone has the same dream, but all of the dreams are individualized and different. When they get to James Edwards (the Black guy)'s version of the dream - it's exactly the same, but every character's race is flipped. The old white ladies in the garden club become old Black ladies, and the Black servant becomes a white servant. It has a great sense of sly humor (probably due to the tone of the source novel written by the clever Richard Condon) and has great suspense. The remake got some basic stuff wrong... Um, the reason why it's a game of solitaire is because no one ever asks you if you want to play solitaire, so it is the perfect "trigger phrase". Here's the opening scene - the first dream - watch how the dream changes without a cut. It's the garden club... then it's Chinese brainwashing with the help of the Koreans. Hey, that's Reggie Nadler in the audience! Voice over is by the great Paul Frees, a radio actor who had a very distinctive voice.
The film was directed by John Frankenheimer, who also directed this great film...
SECONDS is a thriller about getting a second chance at life and realizing you take all of your emotional problems with you.
You see echoes of this film in ROBOCOP and other movies about people who realize they can not go back to their old lives ever aagin. Rock Hudson gives the preformance of a lifetime - he was a light comedy pretty boy actor before this film... and here he does dark, deep, drama. Based on a novel by David Ely (who wrote some great TWILIGHT ZONE type science fiction novels). Story hits the ground running with middle aged man John Randolph getting a phone call from his dead friend. WTF? This is a slow burn story, but like MANCHURIAN, deals with constant paranoia. It is *always* creepy. Where MANCHURIAN deals with the idea that you may not be in control of your own life (mind control), SECONDS deals with having to constantly pretend to be someone you are not... and the fear that people may discover who you really are.
- Bill
The Novels:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: The One Page Synopsis - and how to master it.
Dinner: Togos again.
Pages: Some blog stuff you will see in the future.
Bicycle: Just around the corner - doesn't really count.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Lucky Bastard!
A week ago a friend mentioned that one of the producers of the BOURNE movies has been reading his blog and said “We should find a project to work on together”. Just out of the blue like that! That lucky bastard!
There are hundreds of screenwriting books and dozens of screenwriting classes and seminars and a bunch of websites offering advice and I almost have 400 Script Tips on my site with information on screenwriting... and nothing on luck. Though most of the books and seminars focus on some sort of over-all formula for screenwriting success, there are discussions about characters and stories and concepts and dialogue and actions and all of that writing stuff... and less discussion about hard work and determination and knowledge and skill and perseverance.... and we always seem to avoid talking about talent (because that can get personal, as in “what your writing lacks is talent” and “the reason why you have yet to succeed is that you have no talent” which often leads to that big question I ask myself daily, “What if I don’t have any talent?”), but we **never** talk about luck. Never.
But luck is just as much a requirement for success in screenwriting as great characters and talent. Maybe even more important than either.
The problem is - luck is even more frightening than talent. Sure, it may be that you are either born with talent or born without talent... but we are in even less control when it comes to luck. You can be on top of the world and then have a change in luck. You can have a run of bad luck. Luck can change. You can lose your luck. Luck can just screw with you. In fact, one of the reasons we don’t talk about luck is because the moment we say we have good luck, our luck changes to bad.
We can have everything else going for us, and luck might pass us by...
Both Mark Twain and Douglas MacArthur said that luck favors the prepared man (or woman) (or typing chicken). In some Script Tip, or maybe here on the blog, I have probably mentioned the time I was walking down a hotel hallways during an event, recognized a producer, ran out to my car and grabbed a script from that box of scripts I keep in the trunk, and ran up... hoping that he was still somewhere in that hallway. He was, he ended up taking my script, it got good coverage and he ended up having a meeting with me that led to the sale of that script. How lucky can you get!
But you may have also been at that event and also passed that producer in the hotel hallway... yet I was the lucky one who sold him a script.
The luck part of that was that he and I were in the same hallway... yet even that is less than luck because it was an event we were both attending. The real luck in this case - when I ran back from my car, he was still in the hallway. He could easily have gone into some room or down the elevator or up the elevator in the time it took me to run to my car and back. In fact, it’s kind of a miracle that he was still there - and that’s the luck part. But if you or someone else in that hallway had run to your car, he would have been there for you, too. So it wasn’t just luck that looked favorably on me, it could have looked favorable on you or anyone else in that hallway as well. The reason why it was only me who got lucky that day? I was prepared. I knew what the producer looked like - everyone else was just walking past him, unaware that he was a producer. Maybe he was just there to teach classes or sell something? I knew what he looked like... which isn’t luck. I ran to my car and popped the trunk, where I keep a box of script copies. And that isn’t luck either. The reason why that box of script copies is in the trunk of my car? Well, the numerous times I didn’t have a script copy when something like this happened. It took me several times to learn that a box of scripts back there with the spare tire was a good idea. There is a *selection* of scripts in that box, and I took a precious second to pick the one I thought this producer might like. The hard part for me was actually talking to the producer - I am scared and shy by nature. But nobody else was bothering him, so just recognizing that he was a producer and saying hello was enough to get a conversation started. Then *he asked me* about the script in my hands! Hey, maybe that’s luck, too - but I don’t think so. After being rejected on a daily basis, it’s easy to forget that a producer’s job is to buy (or develop) screenplays from writers. I had in my hands the thing he needs. He asked if he could read it, I gave it to him. Then, it was up to the screenplay... again, not a luck element.
Now, you may think I’m lucky - and that this lucky streak is why I have a career. If you could only have had the lucky breaks that I have had! Okay, that’s a fair thing to think - I’m thinking my buddy with the new BOURNE connection got a lucky break, and in my evil jealous mind I probably think he doesn’t deserve that lucky break as much as I do... except that “lucky break” came from his hard work on his film biz related blog and his hard work in the film biz. The producer didn’t start reading his blog on a whim, he read the blog because it had substance. This lucky bastard friend of mine worked his butt off to advance his career... and even without this bit of luck, his career was moving right along. This bit of luck might help him move a little faster, now - but he wasn’t just standing there waiting for luck to find him - he was DOING SOMETHING.
I believe that I have more than my share of bad luck. Did I even tell you about TREACHEROUS? Okay, I write this script and after pounding on hundreds of doors get someone to read it, and then I have three people reading it, and one makes an offer. A low budget company. But here’s where things get lucky, kind of: the low budget company takes the script to Hemdale (PLATOON) who wants to make it... except my contract pays me the same whether it’s a theatrical or a direct to video movie. Mickey Rourke (when he was a star) signs to play the lead and I do a (free) rewrite to change the lead character to a boxer. Brian Dennehy is going to play the sidekick. Things are moving along, and even though I’m being paid crap - I have a theatrical film from an Oscar winning company. Then Hemdale goes bankrupt! One too many expensive art house films. And my script is dead - Rourke and Dennehy split. But the producer has some connection at Universal home video, and they read the script and like it and want to make it. A new cast is set up at Universal, Rutger Hauer in the lead. Then, the Universal executive dies in a plane crash. The project dies with him - his replacement doesn’t want to make any of the movies he was going to make. (I realize my project being shelved is nothing compared to the loss of his life, and the loss his family must have felt.) Once again the cast leaves and the producer has only the screenplay. He likes the script, and continues to try and get it set up somewhere... and gets it to ITC - a company that used to make TV shows, but now sells the rerun rights to those TV shows. They have been talking to both Cinemax and 20th Century Fox Home Video about projects, and think my script would be a good match for everyone... and set it up as a Cinemax Original Movie with Fox getting home video. And Adam Baldwin and Tia Carrere and C. Thomas Howell are cast... and the film actually gets made! But the director does a page one rewrite and it is nothing like my original screenplay. And it sucks. And the guy from ITC calls me (this is a miracle, by the way) and warns me about the film before the premiere. And the film completely sucks - and they mis-spell my name in the credits (probably a blessing) and that, folks, is my luck in a nut shell! Almost 2 years between initial sale and screening - and that money had been spent long ago by the time I saw the film.
Some of you may have seen a couple of films with my name on them, thought they sucked big time, and think I must be the luckiest guy on earth to still have a career. You and me both! But somewhere along the line I have realized that it is not all luck - and since there is a major string of bad luck for every little bit of good luck that comes my way, I figure there’s some of that perseverance and determination and hard work and maybe even a hint of talent involved in my 20 years making a living putting words in actor’s mouths. I have no agent, no manager, and no real connections. And 15 years ago when I had a couple of back-to-back lucky years where I had *three* scripts go to screen... they were all sold to different companies! So *different* producers all seemed to think those scripts were okay. Though there’s always some luck involved in every deal - the right script the right place the right time, or maybe my query letter arrived on the day they were looking for scripts - once that lucky break opens whatever door, the script still has to be something they want to spend the money to make.
I must be doing something right, it can’t all be lucky breaks.
Just as I believe my luck is mostly the bad kind - I don’t think I’ve ever had a script that was an easy delivery to the screen - I know a guy with amazing luck. He completely lucked into his first script job - he knew some people who needed a script and convinced them to pay him to write it (even though he had never written a script before). He wrote a script, it was not good, they brought in a guy to rewrite it, the rewrite guy did not get credit... and now this guy gets called in sometimes based on that script that he didn’t really write. He got an agent, and has been paid for a few assignments... but it always reaches the point where he delivers a draft, they read it... and think the writing sucks. He’s a friend of a friend, and at one point I suggested he secretly take some screenwriting classes and read a stack of basic screenwriting books and learn how to write a screenplay - but he told me that part didn’t matter as long as people were still hiring him to write scripts and do rewrites. Well, they aren’t anymore, and his agent dumped him, and I’m guessing that the word is out that he is not a good writer. He was depending on luck - depending that he would get hired based on the film and not his writing - and that luck has now dried up. He keeps making his rounds, trying to get hired, and nothing happens at all. He thought because he had a run of good luck that all he ever needed was luck - but the truth is you need to be that prepared man (or woman) (or typing chicken).
What I find interesting about this guy is that he is still not cracking a book or doing anything to improve his craft, nor is he writing spec scripts. Because luck is what got him in, he seems to be focusing on regaining his luck somehow. Though I don’t think you can run out of luck - if you had some lucky break and screwed it up (I’m the king of this) there will eventually be some other lucky break in your future. Just try not to screw that one up, too (I am the king of this). But even if this guy’s luck turns around, he is doing nothing to be prepared this time around. That door might open and he won’t have the script that will keep them from slamming the door on his leg. You can’t depend only on lucky breaks.
Another guy on a message board seemed to have a lucky break, and went from guy with an interesting background to a guy hired by a producer to write a screenplay about his interesting background. The problem is, once he has written that screenplay, what’s next? Right now he is getting a ton of meetings because his project is pretty high profile, but that will not last forever. Even though he is flavor of the month, the month will soon be over... and then where will he be? This is a type of luck - you get that break where suddenly everyone wants to meet with you, but if you are not prepared for that lucky break it will fizzle out. If all you have is one story, or even a couple of stories, those will soon be gone and you will have no stories. A guy who was involved in a big story in Iraq is someone everyone in town wants to meet with, but what happens after he’s had all of those meetings? What happens when he sets up his one or two stories... and what happens when Iraq is old news and no one wants to make any movies about it? The key is to be ready for your luck to change for the worst, and still have the hard work and determination and enough scripts about enough subjects to continue your career.
If you depend on luck, you are depending on something you do not control... and soon that luck will burn itself out and you’ll only have whatever *you* bring to the equation. You need hard work, you need determination, you need all of those other things in addition to luck. When luck leaves you, you need to still be able to pound out a great script that people will want to buy. If you end up writing a stack of scripts while waiting for your luck to change, you will be prepared when it does.
She will hate me for mentioning this, but Bamboo Killer Emily quipped on a message board that she makes her own luck. What balls she has! And... haven’t I heard that line in a movie before? But even though I don’t think you can actually make luck, I do believe if you hide from luck it will never find you... and Emily goes out looking for luck. She meets luck halfway. I knew Emily only as a name on some messageboard... until she e-mailed me and asked if I needed any help at Screenwriting Expo. She was volunteering to be my assistant for the Expo. And I needed an assistant and said yes. That is a great example of getting yourself out there where luck can find you (though, as she learned, I can do nothing for anyone’s career - so ask a *producer* if they need an assistant at Expo). Most writers want to hide out in their offices and just write, I know I do. But that is a sure fire way *not* to meet that producer in the event’s hotel hallway and be able to run to the car for a script copy. You have to meet luck halfway, and that is part of the prepared part. If there is someplace where people who can help your career are going to be, you need to be there, too. I’ve got a Script Tip and there’s more on the Guerrilla Marketing CD about things like going to local Film Festivals to meet producers and directors and even people in your hometown who make films - that’s part of finding luck. Getting yourself out there.
Another part of finding luck is that prepared part. Write scripts. Rewrite those scripts until they are great. Have a selection of scripts. Have scripts that are marketable (in that they are in a popular genre and interesting and the kind of movies producers seem to be making these days). Have scripts with great star roles that actors will want to play. Know who people are. Have a plan for your career - so that when someone asks you what you want or what’s next for you, there’s an answer (not just a glassy eyed dull stare). Always be prepared.
Most people who seem lucky are really just *ready* for when luck finds them. It’s not so much that the door of luck opens for them, it’s that they are ready to step through that door when it does open. We can’t depend on the luck part or create the luck part - we *can* meet it halfway and we *can* be ready for luck to find us. Hiding doesn't help, so get yourself out there in the world! And have a script or two in the trunk of your car! All of that brings us back to the hard work and determination and all of that other stuff that we can control. The stuff we usually talk about.
So, do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do you?
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Point Of View - are you telling your story from the right POV?
Dinner: Togos Hummus sandwich to make up for the steak and loaded baked potato the night before.
Pages: Nothing - last week was a pain in the butt. I did all kinds of errands and didn't seem to get much writing done.
Bicycle: Yes - doing some regular bike riding - just short jaunts to NoHo. I have to keep my legs from going too soft and my gut from growing.
There are hundreds of screenwriting books and dozens of screenwriting classes and seminars and a bunch of websites offering advice and I almost have 400 Script Tips on my site with information on screenwriting... and nothing on luck. Though most of the books and seminars focus on some sort of over-all formula for screenwriting success, there are discussions about characters and stories and concepts and dialogue and actions and all of that writing stuff... and less discussion about hard work and determination and knowledge and skill and perseverance.... and we always seem to avoid talking about talent (because that can get personal, as in “what your writing lacks is talent” and “the reason why you have yet to succeed is that you have no talent” which often leads to that big question I ask myself daily, “What if I don’t have any talent?”), but we **never** talk about luck. Never.
But luck is just as much a requirement for success in screenwriting as great characters and talent. Maybe even more important than either.
The problem is - luck is even more frightening than talent. Sure, it may be that you are either born with talent or born without talent... but we are in even less control when it comes to luck. You can be on top of the world and then have a change in luck. You can have a run of bad luck. Luck can change. You can lose your luck. Luck can just screw with you. In fact, one of the reasons we don’t talk about luck is because the moment we say we have good luck, our luck changes to bad.
We can have everything else going for us, and luck might pass us by...
Both Mark Twain and Douglas MacArthur said that luck favors the prepared man (or woman) (or typing chicken). In some Script Tip, or maybe here on the blog, I have probably mentioned the time I was walking down a hotel hallways during an event, recognized a producer, ran out to my car and grabbed a script from that box of scripts I keep in the trunk, and ran up... hoping that he was still somewhere in that hallway. He was, he ended up taking my script, it got good coverage and he ended up having a meeting with me that led to the sale of that script. How lucky can you get!
But you may have also been at that event and also passed that producer in the hotel hallway... yet I was the lucky one who sold him a script.
The luck part of that was that he and I were in the same hallway... yet even that is less than luck because it was an event we were both attending. The real luck in this case - when I ran back from my car, he was still in the hallway. He could easily have gone into some room or down the elevator or up the elevator in the time it took me to run to my car and back. In fact, it’s kind of a miracle that he was still there - and that’s the luck part. But if you or someone else in that hallway had run to your car, he would have been there for you, too. So it wasn’t just luck that looked favorably on me, it could have looked favorable on you or anyone else in that hallway as well. The reason why it was only me who got lucky that day? I was prepared. I knew what the producer looked like - everyone else was just walking past him, unaware that he was a producer. Maybe he was just there to teach classes or sell something? I knew what he looked like... which isn’t luck. I ran to my car and popped the trunk, where I keep a box of script copies. And that isn’t luck either. The reason why that box of script copies is in the trunk of my car? Well, the numerous times I didn’t have a script copy when something like this happened. It took me several times to learn that a box of scripts back there with the spare tire was a good idea. There is a *selection* of scripts in that box, and I took a precious second to pick the one I thought this producer might like. The hard part for me was actually talking to the producer - I am scared and shy by nature. But nobody else was bothering him, so just recognizing that he was a producer and saying hello was enough to get a conversation started. Then *he asked me* about the script in my hands! Hey, maybe that’s luck, too - but I don’t think so. After being rejected on a daily basis, it’s easy to forget that a producer’s job is to buy (or develop) screenplays from writers. I had in my hands the thing he needs. He asked if he could read it, I gave it to him. Then, it was up to the screenplay... again, not a luck element.
JUST MY LUCK!
Now, you may think I’m lucky - and that this lucky streak is why I have a career. If you could only have had the lucky breaks that I have had! Okay, that’s a fair thing to think - I’m thinking my buddy with the new BOURNE connection got a lucky break, and in my evil jealous mind I probably think he doesn’t deserve that lucky break as much as I do... except that “lucky break” came from his hard work on his film biz related blog and his hard work in the film biz. The producer didn’t start reading his blog on a whim, he read the blog because it had substance. This lucky bastard friend of mine worked his butt off to advance his career... and even without this bit of luck, his career was moving right along. This bit of luck might help him move a little faster, now - but he wasn’t just standing there waiting for luck to find him - he was DOING SOMETHING.
I believe that I have more than my share of bad luck. Did I even tell you about TREACHEROUS? Okay, I write this script and after pounding on hundreds of doors get someone to read it, and then I have three people reading it, and one makes an offer. A low budget company. But here’s where things get lucky, kind of: the low budget company takes the script to Hemdale (PLATOON) who wants to make it... except my contract pays me the same whether it’s a theatrical or a direct to video movie. Mickey Rourke (when he was a star) signs to play the lead and I do a (free) rewrite to change the lead character to a boxer. Brian Dennehy is going to play the sidekick. Things are moving along, and even though I’m being paid crap - I have a theatrical film from an Oscar winning company. Then Hemdale goes bankrupt! One too many expensive art house films. And my script is dead - Rourke and Dennehy split. But the producer has some connection at Universal home video, and they read the script and like it and want to make it. A new cast is set up at Universal, Rutger Hauer in the lead. Then, the Universal executive dies in a plane crash. The project dies with him - his replacement doesn’t want to make any of the movies he was going to make. (I realize my project being shelved is nothing compared to the loss of his life, and the loss his family must have felt.) Once again the cast leaves and the producer has only the screenplay. He likes the script, and continues to try and get it set up somewhere... and gets it to ITC - a company that used to make TV shows, but now sells the rerun rights to those TV shows. They have been talking to both Cinemax and 20th Century Fox Home Video about projects, and think my script would be a good match for everyone... and set it up as a Cinemax Original Movie with Fox getting home video. And Adam Baldwin and Tia Carrere and C. Thomas Howell are cast... and the film actually gets made! But the director does a page one rewrite and it is nothing like my original screenplay. And it sucks. And the guy from ITC calls me (this is a miracle, by the way) and warns me about the film before the premiere. And the film completely sucks - and they mis-spell my name in the credits (probably a blessing) and that, folks, is my luck in a nut shell! Almost 2 years between initial sale and screening - and that money had been spent long ago by the time I saw the film.
Some of you may have seen a couple of films with my name on them, thought they sucked big time, and think I must be the luckiest guy on earth to still have a career. You and me both! But somewhere along the line I have realized that it is not all luck - and since there is a major string of bad luck for every little bit of good luck that comes my way, I figure there’s some of that perseverance and determination and hard work and maybe even a hint of talent involved in my 20 years making a living putting words in actor’s mouths. I have no agent, no manager, and no real connections. And 15 years ago when I had a couple of back-to-back lucky years where I had *three* scripts go to screen... they were all sold to different companies! So *different* producers all seemed to think those scripts were okay. Though there’s always some luck involved in every deal - the right script the right place the right time, or maybe my query letter arrived on the day they were looking for scripts - once that lucky break opens whatever door, the script still has to be something they want to spend the money to make.
I must be doing something right, it can’t all be lucky breaks.
ALL GOOD LUCK
Just as I believe my luck is mostly the bad kind - I don’t think I’ve ever had a script that was an easy delivery to the screen - I know a guy with amazing luck. He completely lucked into his first script job - he knew some people who needed a script and convinced them to pay him to write it (even though he had never written a script before). He wrote a script, it was not good, they brought in a guy to rewrite it, the rewrite guy did not get credit... and now this guy gets called in sometimes based on that script that he didn’t really write. He got an agent, and has been paid for a few assignments... but it always reaches the point where he delivers a draft, they read it... and think the writing sucks. He’s a friend of a friend, and at one point I suggested he secretly take some screenwriting classes and read a stack of basic screenwriting books and learn how to write a screenplay - but he told me that part didn’t matter as long as people were still hiring him to write scripts and do rewrites. Well, they aren’t anymore, and his agent dumped him, and I’m guessing that the word is out that he is not a good writer. He was depending on luck - depending that he would get hired based on the film and not his writing - and that luck has now dried up. He keeps making his rounds, trying to get hired, and nothing happens at all. He thought because he had a run of good luck that all he ever needed was luck - but the truth is you need to be that prepared man (or woman) (or typing chicken).
What I find interesting about this guy is that he is still not cracking a book or doing anything to improve his craft, nor is he writing spec scripts. Because luck is what got him in, he seems to be focusing on regaining his luck somehow. Though I don’t think you can run out of luck - if you had some lucky break and screwed it up (I’m the king of this) there will eventually be some other lucky break in your future. Just try not to screw that one up, too (I am the king of this). But even if this guy’s luck turns around, he is doing nothing to be prepared this time around. That door might open and he won’t have the script that will keep them from slamming the door on his leg. You can’t depend only on lucky breaks.
Another guy on a message board seemed to have a lucky break, and went from guy with an interesting background to a guy hired by a producer to write a screenplay about his interesting background. The problem is, once he has written that screenplay, what’s next? Right now he is getting a ton of meetings because his project is pretty high profile, but that will not last forever. Even though he is flavor of the month, the month will soon be over... and then where will he be? This is a type of luck - you get that break where suddenly everyone wants to meet with you, but if you are not prepared for that lucky break it will fizzle out. If all you have is one story, or even a couple of stories, those will soon be gone and you will have no stories. A guy who was involved in a big story in Iraq is someone everyone in town wants to meet with, but what happens after he’s had all of those meetings? What happens when he sets up his one or two stories... and what happens when Iraq is old news and no one wants to make any movies about it? The key is to be ready for your luck to change for the worst, and still have the hard work and determination and enough scripts about enough subjects to continue your career.
If you depend on luck, you are depending on something you do not control... and soon that luck will burn itself out and you’ll only have whatever *you* bring to the equation. You need hard work, you need determination, you need all of those other things in addition to luck. When luck leaves you, you need to still be able to pound out a great script that people will want to buy. If you end up writing a stack of scripts while waiting for your luck to change, you will be prepared when it does.
HOW TO BE LUCKY!
She will hate me for mentioning this, but Bamboo Killer Emily quipped on a message board that she makes her own luck. What balls she has! And... haven’t I heard that line in a movie before? But even though I don’t think you can actually make luck, I do believe if you hide from luck it will never find you... and Emily goes out looking for luck. She meets luck halfway. I knew Emily only as a name on some messageboard... until she e-mailed me and asked if I needed any help at Screenwriting Expo. She was volunteering to be my assistant for the Expo. And I needed an assistant and said yes. That is a great example of getting yourself out there where luck can find you (though, as she learned, I can do nothing for anyone’s career - so ask a *producer* if they need an assistant at Expo). Most writers want to hide out in their offices and just write, I know I do. But that is a sure fire way *not* to meet that producer in the event’s hotel hallway and be able to run to the car for a script copy. You have to meet luck halfway, and that is part of the prepared part. If there is someplace where people who can help your career are going to be, you need to be there, too. I’ve got a Script Tip and there’s more on the Guerrilla Marketing CD about things like going to local Film Festivals to meet producers and directors and even people in your hometown who make films - that’s part of finding luck. Getting yourself out there.
Another part of finding luck is that prepared part. Write scripts. Rewrite those scripts until they are great. Have a selection of scripts. Have scripts that are marketable (in that they are in a popular genre and interesting and the kind of movies producers seem to be making these days). Have scripts with great star roles that actors will want to play. Know who people are. Have a plan for your career - so that when someone asks you what you want or what’s next for you, there’s an answer (not just a glassy eyed dull stare). Always be prepared.
Most people who seem lucky are really just *ready* for when luck finds them. It’s not so much that the door of luck opens for them, it’s that they are ready to step through that door when it does open. We can’t depend on the luck part or create the luck part - we *can* meet it halfway and we *can* be ready for luck to find us. Hiding doesn't help, so get yourself out there in the world! And have a script or two in the trunk of your car! All of that brings us back to the hard work and determination and all of that other stuff that we can control. The stuff we usually talk about.
So, do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do you?
- Bill
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Point Of View - are you telling your story from the right POV?
Dinner: Togos Hummus sandwich to make up for the steak and loaded baked potato the night before.
Pages: Nothing - last week was a pain in the butt. I did all kinds of errands and didn't seem to get much writing done.
Bicycle: Yes - doing some regular bike riding - just short jaunts to NoHo. I have to keep my legs from going too soft and my gut from growing.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Creating Suspense & Dread: The Leopard Man
When I first moved to Los Angeles, I had this ugly 2 bedroom apartment in Van Nuys that ended up being the crash pad for all of my Bay Area friends. The sofa bed in my office was mostly used by the DEAD BEAT gang - we made this behind the scenes of horror movie show on VHS and sold them at Fango conventions. So I was hanging out with horror movie people and going to horror conventions since coming to Los Angeles, and was making little horror movies along with those private eye movies and Hitchcockian thrillers and cop action flicks and parody films on super 8mm film Though it’s a parody of PSYCHO, my film PSICKO! was still designed to be a horror film about the incorrect use of electric carving knives. I’m a longtime horror fan, and even though I can appreciate some gorefest like MARTYRS, the films I really love are the spooky ones like the original THE HAUNTING and those great Val Lewton low budget horror flicks for RKO. The ones that used suspense and dread. The ones that were evocative and creepy and used the darkness within our imaginations to fill in the gore.
For a completely fictionalized version of the Val Lewton story, check out THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL where low budget film producer Kirk Douglas gets a job making a movie about cat-men for a studio... and realizes the best man in a cat suit still looks stupid, so he decides to use suspense and dread instead of dudes in costumes and ends up with a hit. Lewton had the same thing happen at RKO - he got a job making horror movies in the low budget division and ended up making a bunch of classic horror films like CAT PEOPLE and ISLE OF THE DEAD and LEOPARD MAN. These films played on Bob Wilkins Creature Features when I was a kid and on the Saturday afternoon movies sometimes, and they scared me. Scared me deeper than any of the other fright-fest movies. They played on my secrets fears, and touched me on some primitive level that caused them to live on in my childhood nightmares. As a jaded teenager when I watched these films, they still scared me. As an adult watching these films at the UC Theater in Berkeley, they still scared me. I bought the box set on DVD a couple of years ago, and they still scare me. Okay, I know that it’s a movie and I know that there’s no such thing as women who turn into panthers when they get horny and these movies are in black and white and shot on sound stages and are fake... but they still work just like that original version of THE HAUNTING works and the remake does not. Robert Wise directed THE HAUNTING... and was one of Val Lewton’s three “staff directors” in his horror division at RKO.
THE LEOPARD MAN is one of those trifecta movies for me like REAR WINDOW - produced by Val Lewton, directed by the great Jacques Tourneur (OUT OF THE PAST) and based on a novel by Cornel Woolrich (REAR WINDOW). A bunch of my favorite people working together! The Woolrich novel is one of his “Black” series, where noir gets its name, and is an intense page turner. The book and movie have different endings, take place in different cities, and have some other minor differences, but the film is pretty faithful to the book. The main way it is faithful is the use of suspense and dread, which are really why all of the Lewton movies work so well. They all have these great suspense sequences that build and build and build...
So let’s take a look at one of those great scenes from LEOPARD MAN, tear it apart and see how it ticks. This scene is almost word-for-word from the novel. Oh, I guess it needs some set up...
Kiki Walker (Jean Brooks) is a night club singer stuck in New Mexico with her promoter Jerry Manning (the great Dennis O’Keefe) where the big star is flamenco dancer Clo-Clo (exotic one-named actress Margo). In order to steal the show from Clo-Clo, Jerry comes up with this great stunt - a rented leopard on a leash that Kiki will walk in with during Clo-Clo’s performance... then Kiki will go on and become the big star. Only things don’t go exactly as planned and the leopard escapes into the night. Now, the leopard is on the loose in the New Mexico town... waiting to attack anyone who ventures out at night. Both the novel and film have an interesting structure, which has Jerry and Kiki as the leads - but often in the background of a sequence. This is the first leopard attack, and it goes from the panic after the leopard escapes to Clo-Clo walking home at night and townspeople saying hello to her along the way... one of whom is Teresa Delgado, who becomes the lead character in this sequence.
Now let’s take a look at how that sequence works...
1) SUSPENSE is the anticipation of a known action. It is *not* the action - and the longer the anticipation is stretched out, the greater the suspense. A *known* action means the audience knows what is (probably) going to happen and that creates the suspense. Hitchcock’s examples were the two men discussing baseball statistics while a bomb with a timer ticks away under the table - and he directed a TV episode based on a Woolrich short story called 4 O’CLOCK about a man who rigs a bomb to kill his cheating wife and her lover at 4pm... then his house gets robbed and the robbers tie him up in the basement across from that ticking bomb. As each minute passes, the suspense builds. We *know* what will happen at 4pm, and the anticipation of that explosion is what creates the suspense. Hitch’s other example was similar to a scene from REAR WINDOW, where someone is searching an apartment and does not know that the apartment resident is climbing the stairs and will soon discover the searcher. This version of suspense has two things we do not want to see in the same shot getting closer and closer - like two trains on the same tracks hurtling toward each other. Even though the searcher does not know about the resident getting closer, the *audience knows*, and that’s where the suspense comes from. It’s Dramatic Irony - the audience knows what the character does not. Suspense is created by the anticipation of the resident discovering the searcher in his apartment... what will Grace Kelly do?
2) DREAD is the anticipation of an *unknown* action. We know that something bad is going to happen, but are not sure exactly what is going to happen or where the threat is coming from. Dread is usually the version of suspense that we find in a horror movie, because a major element in horror is *fear of the unknown*. For dread to work, we need to create a situation where a bad action of some sort might happen...
3) Like an escaped leopard in the town. That is the HORROR SITUATION, the same way Jason wandering around Camp Crystal Lake with his machete is a horror situation. This is the first requirement for a scene of dread - what the heck are we dreading? It must be established in some early scene, and like Jason wandering around with his machete, the escaped leopard will create the horror situation for the entire movie.
4) The SEQUENCE SITUATION. Okay, we know the leopard is out there waiting to kill someone, now we have to get some tasty someone out there to be killed. This is where horror movies often stumble - the stupid teens go into the house where the crazy old lady with the knitting needles is supposed to be hiding, and the last people who went into that house had their eyes needled out and died... so let’s just go in and look around, okay? You need some *good reason* to go into that house... or out into the town after dark when there’s a hungry leopard roaming the streets. So we have Mrs. Delgado run out of cornmeal while making dinner, and sending Teresa out into the night to buy some. The further motivation is that this is *Mr. Delgado’s* dinner, and mom doesn’t want her hard working husband to come home and not have the dinner he deserves. So Teresa will have to go to the store - simple as that.
5) REMIND US WHY. That escaped leopard was, like, ten minutes ago. We need to remind the audience why Teresa doesn’t want to go to the store. This isn’t done because the audience is stupid or forgetful - the title has “Leopard” in it - but to “poke the tiger”. Let’s say we have that bomb under the table while the two guys discuss baseball statistics from the Hitchcock example - if we never show the ticking bomb, we have lost the suspense. Even though the audience knows the bomb is under the table, we need to keep showing it to keep that fear in the forefront of their minds... so that they don’t get interested in those baseball stats. Every time we show that bomb, we are poking the tiger - and poking the audience’s fear. So when Teresa’s little brother makes the hand-shadow on the wall of the tiger, it reminds us what is out there. It puts it back in the front of our minds. Yes, we knew it was there, but the reminder pokes us.
6) TWO-FERS! Why the hand-shadow thing is genius - the leopard will be hiding in the shadows! So turning the leopard into a shadow in this scene makes us fear the shadows. Any time you have several ways to do something, look for one that is a “two-fer” - that manages to do two or more things at the same time.
7) MAKE US SYMPATHIZE. Okay, we have a teenaged girl about to go outside where a vicious leopard may be waiting, you’d think that was enough to make us sympathize with her, right? Well, probably... but why not do a little more? Why not show her fear? The problem with those stupid teens that waltz into the crazy knitting needle house is that they don’t show the basic fear anyone with an IQ over 70 would have. So let’s make Teresa smart enough to know she might get killed by that leopard, and try everything to get back into the house. This shows us that she’s afraid, and also shows us that she isn’t stupid - and both things make us sympathize with her. Of course if she is allowed to stay in the house we lose all of the dread... so her mean mom sends her back outside to get the cornmeal and tells her not to come back without it... and then does something that seems like part of this scene, but is actually a set up for a later scene: she bolts the door closed so Teresa can not sneak back in. Now Teresa has NO CHOICE but to go out into the night and get that corn meal.
8) NO EASY OUTS. One of the great ways to ratchet up suspense and dread is to create an easy solution to the problem... then yank it away. This knocks the audience off balance, and also tells them that there will not be an easy solution here - things are going to get worse. Because dread is the anticipation of an unknown event, we need to find ways to make things worse without tipping our hand to what, exactly, is going to happen. By having Teresa go to the “Provisions” market close to home, and have them closed, and the owner unwilling to reopen just for her; we have just made things worse without actually doing anything. No leopard has attacked her, yet. She isn’t even far from home... but she has already hit a roadblock. There has already been a reversal of fortune that has popped Teresa deeper into trouble. If she had just gone straight across the arroyo to the other market without going to the “Provisions” market, she would not have seemed as if she were in as much danger. This set back makes the trip to the other market a larger problem. Oh, and I love the situational irony that if Teresa had not fought with her mother for so long about going out, she would probably have made it to the “Provisions” market before it closed.
9) SPOOKY SETTINGS. To get to the other market before it closes, Teresa takes a short cut through the arroyo and under the rail road trestle. This scene is wall-to-wall dread. The location is unpopulated - no one there to help her. She is *alone*, and that makes her vulnerable. It is dark and spooky and bathed in shadows - and we have already been tipped to the black leopard hiding in shadows by the brother’s shadow-puppet. Under the train trestle is all shadows. When you are creating dread, find the spooky location that’s frightening even before you tell us there may be a hungry leopard roaming around in there. In CAT PEOPLE there is a great dread scene in an indoor swimming pool at night - one of the characters is stealing a swim, so there are very few lights on. The combination of darkness and water and being indoors all makes that location somewhere you wouldn’t want to be... then add that cat woman with her claws and... The dark train trestle is a spooky location - and the scene where Teresa walks under it is stretched out for maximum dread. Oh, but there are two more things about Teresa and the Train Trestle...
10) SCHLOCK SHOCK. You know those damned cats that jump out of cupboards in horror movies? Those hands that suddenly grab the lead’s shoulder, and turn out to be their friend? That stuff is what I call schlock shock. Schlock is poorly made, shoddy, merchandise. So Schlock Shock is a cheap jump moment. But it serves a couple of purposes - it is usually a diversion followed by the *real* shock moment. The cat jumps out of the cupboard, the audience screams for a moment, then realizes it is just a cat... and let’s their guard down... and then the killer crashes through the window! Because the audience has let their guard down the killer crashing through the window is a bigger scare. The other purpose for schlock shock is to “poke the tiger” some more. To remind us that bad things could happen at any minute. After an excruciating walk through that darkness (where there is standing water) she comes out the other side without encountering any leopards. Then that tumble weed comes skittering out from the darkness under the train trestle, we jump out of our skin for a moment... then realize it’s just a tumbleweed... then realize there could easily be a leopard in that darkness, too. We are reminded of the reason for our terror... Now, that has been one great bit of dread... but it was *really* just the set up for the return trip!
11) BREAKING THE TENSION. A good screenplay is peaks and valleys. Too much action, too much suspense, too much tension... dissipates the effectiveness. So to keep that dread strong, we need to mix it up a little. After that schlock shock tumbleweed, we get to the bright, well lighted market with the kind old man behind the counter. Guess what? Teresa has made it to her goal! She has made it to the market to buy the cornmeal. We can breath a sigh of relief, right? All of the elements here tell us that she is safe, that the leopard is not going to get her, that she will get that cornmeal home to mom and dad will have that dinner he deserves after his long day at work. The store keeper is paternal and funny and jokes with Teresa. And they have a conversation about being afraid of the dark, which is a great two-fer because it makes us think this might all be about Teresa having this silly childhood fear which puts us at ease... but also poke that tiger a little because it is still dark outside and there is still a leopard out there. Hmmm, I wonder which it will be? All just her imagination? Or a serious threat of leopard attack? This two-fer manages to keep us in unknown territory! When Teresa says she’s not really afraid of the dark, what could happen to her? We think “Leopard attack!” She prompts our thoughts of the danger in this situation.
And when she says that she is not afraid of the dark, that is not the truth, it is what she wishes were true. The safety of the market has allowed her to push her fears back into her subconscious and pretend they do not exist. She *says* that she is not afraid, but moments later she wil be back in the darkness, surrounded by shadows, and we will see that her actions speak louder than her words.
12) Though this has nothing to do with dread or horror or suspense, I love this line from screenwriter Ardel Wray, “The poor don’t cheat one another, we’re all poor together.”
13) SECOND TIME TERROR. Okay, the last time Teresa was at this train trestle the only danger came from a tumble weed, so it’s safe, right? Here’s the great thing about going back to the train trestle - we already know it is spooky, and the audience secretly knows we wouldn’t be going back there unless something was going to happen this time. It can’t just be another tumble weed. If it was just the spooky location again and nothing happens it’s a waste of time... so our dread grows because this is a *known* location, and horror is fear of the *unknown*, so if nothing was going to happen she’d have to walk through some *unknown* spooky place. Our subconscious tells us that you don’t go back to a spooky location where nothing happens twice - so something is going to happen this time... but what? Unknown. Teresa creeps to the dark trestle, shadows, dripping water, darkness...
14) TRIPLE SHOCK. Remember how I said Schlock Shock was a great way to make the audience lower their guard so that you can get ‘em with real shock? LEOPARD MAN has a great twist on that method - and any time you can break the pattern in a way that works better than the pattern is great. Here, we have Teresa see what appear to be a pair of glowing eyes in the darkness under the trestle... the leopard? Then the eyes disappear - was it just her imagination? Teresa takes a few steps deeper into the darkness under the train trestle, and we *know* those were the eyes of a leopard and it is now about to pounce on her! Just when the audience thinks this is going to be a real leopard attack... a train ROARS over the trestle - schlock shock! We jump out of our skins, then relax when we realize it was just a train, then remember those eyes in the darkness - we should not have relaxed! When Teresa recovers from the train scare and makes it all of the way through the darkness under the train trestle - which is stretched out to our breaking point, she doesn’t make it through quickly because that would kill the building dread - she looks up and sees the leopard! Waiting for her. The killer she has spent the entire sequence trying to avoid is now RIGHT THERE. And she is in serious trouble. Instead of the schlock shock/relax/real shock rhythm we get a possible real/relax/schlock shock/relax/real shock rhythm that we don’t expect.
15) RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! The leopard pounces! Now that we have seen the leopard, we no longer have fear of the unknown and no longer have dread - so we switch to suspense and suspense techniques. A chase where the antagonist is getting closer and closer and closer is a basic way to create suspense - you’ve seen it in hundreds of movies, at least one with Cary Grant and a crop duster where there ain’t no crops. You have also seen it in a hundred horror movies, at least one with Michael Myers chasing Jamie Lee Curtis in Haddonfield on Halloween. And we get that chase here as well, including the typical heroine trip. What saves this trip from cliche country is that she spills the cornmeal all over the place - the very reason she was out in this dangerous situation in the first place! Ironic, isn’t it? Teresa trips, falls, spills the cornmeal, then scrambles to her feet and runs home with that hungry leopard in hot pursuit!
16) DRAMATIC IRONY = SUSPENSE. For reasons we will get to in our next section, instead of showing the end of this chase scene, we go back inside the Delgado house. This allows some more of that wonderful dramatic irony, plus some great suspense. You may have noticed that two are often connected - if the audience knows something that the characters do not, we want to yell at the screen that the characters are making a mistake. That’s what happens here - I don’t know if this scene was gut wrenching for you or not, but it was for me. We start out with mom drying dishes and the brother reading the comics when there is POUNDING on the front door and Teresa yells “Let me in, let me in! If you love me, let me in!” And mom turns to the brother and says something about Teresa dilly-dallying and spending half the night just to get cornmeal. Not taking the threat we know is real seriously. We know Teresa has just outrun a freakin’ leopard to get to the front door - which is bolted - and her mom thinks she is just being pushy like a typical teenager. And the more the mom says pointless and unnecessary things, the more the suspense grows - it’s like those guys discussing baseball statistics! The less mom seems to care about Teresa’s problems outside the door, the more WE care... and the more we want to scream at her to shut the eff up and get that door open before the leopard attacks! The more mom says things that are mundane or boring or do not matter, the greater the suspense - due to the dramatic irony of the situation. We know Teresa is going to be *killed* if mom doesn’t do something right now, but mom doesn’t know this.
17) EVEN MORE SUSPENSE. Mom figures out something might be wrong when Teresa SCREAMS, and now she runs to the door to open it. But remember when she bolted the door at the beginning of this sequence so that Teresa couldn’t sneak back in? I’ll bet your forgot up until now - there’s been so much dread and suspense and fear, how could you remember a locked door? Well, that bolt is *stuck* and no matter how hard mom tries to shoot it open, it just won’t budge. Which creates suspense - will she get the bolt open and the door open before the leopard rips her daughter to shreds? The brother runs to get a block of wood to use as a hammer to POUND that bolt open. Suspense isn’t just that main thing, it is all of the details and actions that are part of the main thing. Each one of those details, like running to get that block of wood, extends and strengthens the suspense - in a way, those are tiger pokes. Just trying to loosen the bolt isn’t enough action to keep the suspense going, we need plans and possibilities. We need things that do not work - which are similar to that “provisions” market in that the failure builds our dread, builds our fear, escalates the terror.
18) VIOLENT ACTION. Since dread is the anticipation of an *unknown* action, we eventually have to get to the action or it has all been a tease. The difference between these Val Lewton movies and today’s gorefests is how they show the action. Not whether there is action or not, not whether the action is bloody and gory or not - but what they decide to show and what they leave up to your imagination. So the decision is made *not* to show cute little Teresa being ripped to shreds, which is one of the reasons we go inside the Delgado house instead of stay outside that door with Teresa and the leopard. We get that nice suspense bonus from being inside the house, but I doubt the censors would have allowed them to show Teresa being killed back in 1943. But if you think by not showing it the action is not violent, you are dead wrong. This is a horror movie. The level of violence is horrific. We just don’t see it. Teresa screams, the leopard growls, there are the sounds of a vicious and violent attack... and then... that pool of blood practically pours from under the door! That pool of blood is visual proof of the carnage on the other side of that door - and we need that proof to fill in all of the ugly details with our imagination. That blood tells us Teresa is dead. Without that blood, she may still be okay, just in need of a doctor. But the blood is a coda to the scene. Gotta have it.
19) EMOTION PICTURES. Movies are about emotions. Creating the emotions in the viewer, like dread and fear and suspense... but also allowing the viewer to feel the emotions of characters. One of the greatest parts of this sequence is when Teresa’s mom realizes that her daughter is in real danger and she has not believed her. And that whatever happens to her daughter, she bares some of the responsibility... and will feel as if it is all her fault. This is a gut wrenching emotional scene - Teresa’s mom realizes that she has doubted her daughter, and that doubt has lead to her daughter’s death. It is only a line, a moment, in the scene - but that moment is powerful emotions that will haunt us. Look for moments of emotion in your scenes, and remember that the most powerful emotions are the ones that make us uncomfortable. A mother realizing she may have killed her own daughter is more powerful than all of those scream moments in the film. Those are the emotions of great tragedy... and that is why LEOPARD MAN is more than just a cheapo horror movie from the 1940s... it is a work of art, and one of Martin Scorsese’s favorite films.
20) You may have noticed that this sequence works in the basic three act structure: introduce the conflict, the conflict escalates, a midpoint (the market), the conflict escalates further, then the resolution of the conflict. Hard to avoid something so basic. This sequence seems like a stand-alone, but it is actually one of several sequences where the leopard attacks again and again, escalating the conflict for Jerry and Kiki who are responsible for the leopard’s escape. With every new victim, they get into more trouble with the town and the police and it becomes more apparent that Jerry will have to capture or kill the leopard himself. He is pulled deeper and deeper into the quicksand with every new victim, and must find a way out. Each sequence ends by tying Jerry and Kiki back into the story - with their problems worse than before.
Okay, that is one of a handful of sequences in LEOPARD MAN where people and leopards eventually meet without a pleasant outcome. It’s a good example of how to build dread and also how to create gory bloody violent deaths - that are not graphic. Just because the death is not shown doesn’t mean that it is pleasant and doesn’t mean that the audience doesn’t experience it. We want to make sure there is horror in the horror! If we can’t see it, you need to make sure we imagine it. This scene is a great example of how to make a scene scary and keep the fear and dread building until the violent pay off. Things to consider if you are writing a horror or suspense script.
Hey, what does that look like on that page? Do we just write “scary things happen” and the director makes up all of the details? Nope! Below is this sequence from the shooting script of LEOPARD MAN by Ardel Wray - and all of the thrills and chills are there on the page. Check it out!
INT. DELGADO HOUSE - NIGHT
The Delgado house is typical of the poorer Mexican homes in New Mexico. This main room, which is small, serves as living room, bedroom and kitchen. An Indian blanket covers the doorway into the only other room. The adobe walls are plastered with pictures of religious subjects.
The wooden floor is bare. There is a charcoal-burning brasero in one corner. Pots and pans on the hearth of the fireplace show that it is a supplementary stove, The rest of the furniture consists of an iron bedstead, a large and hideous oak table and an open-faced china cabinet which contains the Delgado treasures.
Pedro, Teresa's nine-year-old brother is seated at the oak table, eating from a bowl of frijoles. He is, and looks like, an imp. Teresa is backing away from her mother, who turns away from the window to face her angrily.
TERESA
(evidently resuming a discussion)
But, Mamacita -- why can't Pedro go this time? I'm so tired...
PEDRO
(complacently)
I'm too young.
SRA. DELGADO
If your father comes home and there are no tortillas, he will shout and tomorrow it will be all over town: the family of Juan Delgado is too poor to buy corn meal! Do you wish we should be so disgraced?
Teresa shakes her head, but makes no move to go. Exasperated, Sra. Delgado reaches for the nearest weapon -- the broom.
SRA. DELGADO
Then go!
Sra. Delgado brandishes the broom toward Teresa, who backs up again.
PEDRO
I know what she's afraid of...
Pedro lifts his hand. It casts a sharp shadow on the wall behind him. Watching the shadow, he manipulates his fingers so as to create the shadow of a leopard's head in miniature.
PEDRO (CONT'D)
This!
SRA. DELGADO
And what, por todos los santos, is "this"?
Teresa braves the threatening broom and moves a step toward her mother.
TERESA
(eager to be believed)
The leopard, Mamacita. They say a lady at the El Pueblo had it on a string and it ran away. It hasn't been found yet...
SRA. DELGADO
A leopard?
PEDRO
(gleefully)
They're big -- and they jump on you!
Pedro jumps the shadow on the wall, to simulate the leap of a leopard.
SRA. DELGADO
(furiously)
Did you ever meet one of those things yet when you went to the store for me?
Teresa swallows, shakes her head mutely.
SRA. DELGADO
(bellowing)
Then you won't meet one this time either! Now get out! Do as I told you!
Sra. Delgado gives the broom such a backward swing of final purpose that Teresa hurriedly opens the door behind her and slinks out backwards -- her big liquid dark eyes, still futilely pleading, the last to disappear. Sra. Delgado moves after her, pushing the door closed.
She puts the broom in the corner and goes to where Pedro is seated. Here she stands a moment, fondly watching him as he masticates his beans. Behind her the door stealthily opens.
Teresa tries to sneak back into the room. Mamacita sees the movement and makes a tempestuous rush toward her, but Teresa sidles out of the door before she can be caught. Mamacita, muttering, slams the door shut and with difficulty pushes the heavy, rust-covered iron bolt into place.
EXT. DOORWAY DELGADO HOUSE - NIGHT
Teresa stands outside the door. We hear the heavy bolt inside driven home forcibly.
SRA. DELGADO (V.O.)
Now you will not come in again, not until you bring the corn meal with you!
EXT. STREET OUTSIDE DELGADO HOUSE - NIGHT
Teresa steps down from the single doorstep outside her house.
She crosses her arms and pulls her shoulders together in a gesture of fear. She looks once, despairingly, at the closed door behind her and then reluctantly steps out into the dirt road and starts walking.
EXT. CALDERON GROCERY - NIGHT
Only a large corner window, with the word. "Provisiones" printed on it shows that this ordinary house is a grocery store. In the moonlight, one can see a few boxes of groceries stacked on shelves inside. Teresa comes up to the window and peers in. She knocks on the window.
TERESA
Senora Calderon It is Teresa, Senor. Teresa Delgado.
Over Teresa's shoulder, we see the interior of the little store light up dimly as a curtain is pulled at the back of the room.
Beyond the curtain is revealed another room, brightly lit by a bare electric globe hanging from the ceiling on a cord. Under the light, a man sits at a table, heartily eating from a plate heaped with food.
The curtain has been pulled back by Senora Calderon. We see her only in silhouette and the details of her face and figure are indistinguishable. We do see, however, that her long black hair is down her back and she is braiding it. She walks a little ways into the darkened store.
SRA. CALDERON
(speaking loudly to be heard through the window)
The store is closed.
TERESA
I just want a sack of corn meal for my father's supper!
SRA. CALDERON
Tomorrow.
TERESA
(imploringly)
It'll just take a second. ..Please or I must go clear across the
Arroyo to the big grocery --
Teresa taps against the window hopefully. But Sra. Calderon turns back toward the doorway into the inner room, where the solitary feaster hasn't even bothered to look up during this exchange.
SRA. CALDERON
(as she goes)
It means taking off the lock again, putting on the light, measuring the meal. It's too much trouble. Once I close, I close!
Sm. Calderon steps into the inner room and draws the curtain closed behind her, as she speaks the last words. Again the store is in darkness -- only a rim of light showing around the edges of the curtained doorway.
TERESA
(quietly, hopelessly)
Senora...
There is no reply. Teresa turns away.
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. EDGE OF ARROYO - NIGHT
The Arroyo is a deep narrow cut in the mesa, bone dry in this season. Its floor of bleached sand and weeds stretches desolately wider a vast moonlit sky. Here and there, children's feet have scuffed steep little trails down the banks.
Teresa appears at the top of one of these trails. She looks down into the Arroyo -- and then off to the right.
A distance down the Arroyo is a bridge which carries a train track across the dry river bed. To divert the rush of rain water in winter and spring, the bridge is underpropped by two slanting stone piers. They stand out like ribs against the blackness of the underpass, which they divide into three tunnels.
Teresa's face shows her dread of the Arroyo. She turns back the way she came, takes a step away, hesitates and then returns to the edge of the bank.
She starts down the little trail, her feet sliding in the loose sand and a shower of pebbles bouncing down ahead of her.
EXT. ARROYO FLOOR - NIGHT
Teresa stands at the bottom of the bank. She looks off to the bridge again. Then she starts walking forward slowly, a very little figure in the large loneliness of the night.
EXT. EAST SIDE OF BRIDGE - NIGHT
Teresa comes up to the face of the underpass with its three openings. She stares from one black tunnel mouth to another.
She glances behind her, then looks at the underpass again.
Teresa goes forward again, toward the middle tunnel.
EXT. EAST ENTRANCE OF MIDDLE TUNNEL - NIGHT
The roof of the underpass is only a little higher than Teresa's head and the passage is not more than ten feet wide.
The opening is dimly lit by the moonlight, but beyond it is dense blackness. Teresa enters slowly. She takes a few steps toward the blackness - and stops. She listens. Teresa moves forward again, walking as lightly as possible. The light dims rapidly, so that after Teresa has taken a half dozen steps, she is swallowed up in complete blackness.
The CAMERA HOLDS for a moment on the dark underpass before Teresa emerges from the blackness on the West side. A light scratching sound is heard. Teresa's eyes widen in panic as she hears it and she hurries out of the tunnel, watching fearfully ever her left shoulder. She must cut across in front of this other tunnel in order to get to the south bank.
She starts across, never taking her eyes off the black tunnel mouth. Suddenly she gives a convulsive start and a little cry escapes before she can control it. A shadowy shape, low to the ground, detaches itself from the dimness of the tunnel opening and moves toward her. Almost at once, we see that it is a large tumbleweed, blowing clown the Arroyo in the wind.
Teresa sighs soundlessly and goes on to the foot of the bank.
She starts scrambling up another steep little path.
DISSOLVE
INT. BIG GROCERY STORE - NIGHT
This is a fairly good sized room, lined with shelves and counters. A tall, Indian-type Mexican with iron-grey hair puts a paper sack of cornmeal on the counter in front of Teresa.
She starts toward the door, but noticing a bronze cage with two toy birds in it, a mechanical device which has stood there for years, she goes toward it, puts down her sack of corn meal and goes up close.
TERESA
Oh, the toy birds!
MANUEL
You've seen them before. I couldn't chase you away from the counter when you were a little girl.
She winds up the bird cage.
TERESA
I'd forgotten them.
MANUEL
(smiling, good humoredly, skeptical)
Every day you see them --and you have forgotten them? Oh, I remember my little Teresita -- I remember the little girl who was afraid of the dark. They shouldn't send you.
The birds have begun to sing, a highly mechanical rendering of a bird song.
TERESA
I'm not afraid. What could happen to me?
The birds sing and she pretends to listen. Manuel leans against the inner door of the grocery watching her, smiling and amused. Finally his smiling irks her into action. She picks up her sack of corn meal.
TERESA (CONT'D)
(as she starts off)
I'll pay you tomorrow.
MANUEL
Never fear - - next time you come.
The poor don't cheat one another.
We're all poor together.
In the bronze cage the two birds continue to sing their mechanical song. Their heads turn from side to side.
We hear the door close behind Teresa. The birds are still singing as we...
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. CORNER WEST SIDE OF BRIDGE - NIGHT
There is a sound of slow, measured dripping. It comes from water seeping out between two rocks and dropping onto another rock below. These rocks are piled up at the juncture of the bridge and the left bank and the water is evidently leaking from some water main or sews go pipe running under the highway overhead.
EXT. WEST SIDE OF BRIDGE - NIGHT
Teresa is approaching the entrance of the middle tunnel, She is evidently scared - her footsteps are lagging and she holds the sack of corn meal in both hands, as if feeling its weight. She looks fearfully at the black tunnel before her and comes to a standstill, trying to peer into the blackness.
In the silence, the dripping of the water can be heard.
Teresa looks up and to the left to locate the sound. She sees the shining dampness on the rocks.
She turns back to the middle tunnel before her -- and, drawing a deep breath of resolution, starts to enter it. But she hesitates and then, suddenly, veers over to the left. She peers into the opening of that tunnel.
INT. OPENING OF NORTH TUNNEL - NIGHT
The wall of the tunnel is also damp with the seepage from above. It reflects the outer moonlight in glistening streaks, so that the blackness here is not so complete as in the other tunnel..
EXT. WEST SIDE OF BRIDGE - NIGHT
Teresa gets a fresh grip on the bag of corn meal by shifting her hands under it -- and walks into the entrance of the north tunnel.
INT. NORTH TUNNEL - NIGHT
Again, the crunching sound of Teresa's footsteps are magnified in the enclosure of the tunnel walls. It is very dim, but the luminosity of the damp wall casts a faint light on Teresa, reflecting in her wide, frightened eyes.
She walks slowly and lightly, her eyes going from side to side in the darkness, her neck and head held rigidly. Suddenly she stops with a sharp intake of breath, Ahead of her and to her left are two tiny gleams of light. Teresa backs away from them. As she does so, they seem to fall and vanish.
Slowly Teresa moves forward again, staring at the place where the lights had been. As she moves parallel to the spot, they appear again. A half-cry dies away in her throat --she sees that the gleams are two drops of seepage, trickling down the side of the tunnel wall.
Teresa half closes her eyes and sways a little, faint with fear. Then she forces herself to move forward again. She takes one -- two fearful steps -- and then the underpass reverberates with a sudden tremendous shock of sound - more a giant vibration than actual noise.
It is a train passing overhead.
INT. NORTH TUNNEL - NIGHT
As Teresa stands transfixed, the terrific roar continues.
Second after second, flashes of light as brilliant as lightning illuminate the interior of the tunnel the reflections thrown into the Arroyo by the train windows.
And then, as abruptly as it began, the noise ceases. It is cavernously dark in the tunnel again. In this thick stillness, Teresa walks forward once more.
EXT. EAST SIDE OF BRIDGE - NIGHT
In the frame of the tunnel opening, Teresa stands for a moment. Behind her, there is a new sound -- a mere whisper of sound carried forward on the light wind. A little shower of rubble falls from the top of the concrete pier. Teresa turns to look behind her.
Crouched on one of the piers of the trestle - and seen only very dimly in the darkness -- is the leopard, looking down into the Arroyo.
An enormous big HEAD CLOSE UP of Teresa.
An enormous big HEAD CLOSE UP of the leopard, its clear golden eyes fixed and staring.
EXT. ARROYO FLOOR - NIGHT
Teresa's nails dig into the paper sack of corn meal and little trickles of the meal start spilling from the slits.
Her eyes widen and her face falls slack from the horrible shock of what she sees. She turns and runs.
EXT EDGE OF ARROYO - NIGHT
Teresa scrambles frantically up over the edge of the bank.
She stumbles and falls and the sack of corn meal drops from her hands and spills onto the ground. In a single move, Teresa is on her feet and running again. A shadow flashes over the spilled meal and we hear a heavy, ripping snarl.
INT. DELGADO HOUSE - NIGHT
It is quiet and peaceful in the Delgado home. Senora Delgado is puttering about the brasero. Pedro, on all fours, is reading a comic book, his rump high in the air, his chin two inches from the book. Suddenly, a wild rain of knocks on the door fill the little room. Sonora Delgado, at the brasero, drops a spoon with a clatter and Pedro springs up.
TERESA'S VOICE
(screaming)
Mamacita, let me in! Let me in, let me in!
SENORA DELGADO
Hah!
Sonora Delgado smirks knowingly and puts her hands on her hips.
TERESA'S VOICE
If you love me, let me in -- !
SENORA DELGADO
(mimicking Teresa)
Mamacita -- let me in. Let me in, now that I've spent half the night getting the corn meal!
TERESA'S VOICE
It's coming - it's coming closer.
I can see it...
PEDRO
She is afraid of the leopard.
SENORA DELGADO
Just what she needs -- something to
NIP AT HER HEELS AND HURRY HER UP -
She is interrupted by a scream so high, of such agonized finality, that it makes the others before it seem like nothing at all. Mingled with the scream and blurring the end of it comes an impact of such violence that the whole door structure shakes with it from top to bottom. A puff of dust wells up around the door from the impact of the blow.
REPRO
(his voice high with fear)
Madre do Dolores, she isn't fooling!
Pedro jumps to his feet. An instant change has come over the face of Senora Delgado. She hurls herself forward.
SENORA DELGADO
(beseechingly)
Wait, Teresa! I come! I will let you in...
Senora Delgado tugs at the rusty bolt.
SEN0RA DELGADO
Only a moment, querida, hija do mi
alma -- your mother is here --
As Senora Delgado tugs vainly at the bolt, Pedro darts over to the fireplace and grabs up a stone from the hearth.
SENORA DELGADO
Your mother will let you in - -
Pedro rushes to the door and pushes his mother's hands aside.
He hammers the unruly bar back with the stone.
Then, he draws back and looks down at his feet. Senora Delgado's horrified eyes follow his glance.
Under the crack of the door seeps a dark tongue of blood, widening and lengthening on the rough wooden floor.
And here is a link to the entire script:
LEOPARD MAN screenplay by Ardel Wray.
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Writing Over 40 - how to sell a script or land an assignment in age conscious Hollywood.
Dinner: Salad with some dead chickens in it.
Pages: Yikes! This article was the one I wrote *after* the one that I was going to run on the blog today. The other one got pushed back.
Bicycle: Yes - a NoHo ride on both Sat & Sun. I feel better, but there is still some pain in the wrist if I twist it in unusual ways, so I'm thinking about going to the doctor (which I fear, because I do not want a cast on my arm - I can take the brace off to type, but a cast?)
Movies: MACHETE and TAKERS...
Wait... There's more!
For a completely fictionalized version of the Val Lewton story, check out THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL where low budget film producer Kirk Douglas gets a job making a movie about cat-men for a studio... and realizes the best man in a cat suit still looks stupid, so he decides to use suspense and dread instead of dudes in costumes and ends up with a hit. Lewton had the same thing happen at RKO - he got a job making horror movies in the low budget division and ended up making a bunch of classic horror films like CAT PEOPLE and ISLE OF THE DEAD and LEOPARD MAN. These films played on Bob Wilkins Creature Features when I was a kid and on the Saturday afternoon movies sometimes, and they scared me. Scared me deeper than any of the other fright-fest movies. They played on my secrets fears, and touched me on some primitive level that caused them to live on in my childhood nightmares. As a jaded teenager when I watched these films, they still scared me. As an adult watching these films at the UC Theater in Berkeley, they still scared me. I bought the box set on DVD a couple of years ago, and they still scare me. Okay, I know that it’s a movie and I know that there’s no such thing as women who turn into panthers when they get horny and these movies are in black and white and shot on sound stages and are fake... but they still work just like that original version of THE HAUNTING works and the remake does not. Robert Wise directed THE HAUNTING... and was one of Val Lewton’s three “staff directors” in his horror division at RKO.
THE LEOPARD MAN is one of those trifecta movies for me like REAR WINDOW - produced by Val Lewton, directed by the great Jacques Tourneur (OUT OF THE PAST) and based on a novel by Cornel Woolrich (REAR WINDOW). A bunch of my favorite people working together! The Woolrich novel is one of his “Black” series, where noir gets its name, and is an intense page turner. The book and movie have different endings, take place in different cities, and have some other minor differences, but the film is pretty faithful to the book. The main way it is faithful is the use of suspense and dread, which are really why all of the Lewton movies work so well. They all have these great suspense sequences that build and build and build...
So let’s take a look at one of those great scenes from LEOPARD MAN, tear it apart and see how it ticks. This scene is almost word-for-word from the novel. Oh, I guess it needs some set up...
Kiki Walker (Jean Brooks) is a night club singer stuck in New Mexico with her promoter Jerry Manning (the great Dennis O’Keefe) where the big star is flamenco dancer Clo-Clo (exotic one-named actress Margo). In order to steal the show from Clo-Clo, Jerry comes up with this great stunt - a rented leopard on a leash that Kiki will walk in with during Clo-Clo’s performance... then Kiki will go on and become the big star. Only things don’t go exactly as planned and the leopard escapes into the night. Now, the leopard is on the loose in the New Mexico town... waiting to attack anyone who ventures out at night. Both the novel and film have an interesting structure, which has Jerry and Kiki as the leads - but often in the background of a sequence. This is the first leopard attack, and it goes from the panic after the leopard escapes to Clo-Clo walking home at night and townspeople saying hello to her along the way... one of whom is Teresa Delgado, who becomes the lead character in this sequence.
Now let’s take a look at how that sequence works...
1) SUSPENSE is the anticipation of a known action. It is *not* the action - and the longer the anticipation is stretched out, the greater the suspense. A *known* action means the audience knows what is (probably) going to happen and that creates the suspense. Hitchcock’s examples were the two men discussing baseball statistics while a bomb with a timer ticks away under the table - and he directed a TV episode based on a Woolrich short story called 4 O’CLOCK about a man who rigs a bomb to kill his cheating wife and her lover at 4pm... then his house gets robbed and the robbers tie him up in the basement across from that ticking bomb. As each minute passes, the suspense builds. We *know* what will happen at 4pm, and the anticipation of that explosion is what creates the suspense. Hitch’s other example was similar to a scene from REAR WINDOW, where someone is searching an apartment and does not know that the apartment resident is climbing the stairs and will soon discover the searcher. This version of suspense has two things we do not want to see in the same shot getting closer and closer - like two trains on the same tracks hurtling toward each other. Even though the searcher does not know about the resident getting closer, the *audience knows*, and that’s where the suspense comes from. It’s Dramatic Irony - the audience knows what the character does not. Suspense is created by the anticipation of the resident discovering the searcher in his apartment... what will Grace Kelly do?
2) DREAD is the anticipation of an *unknown* action. We know that something bad is going to happen, but are not sure exactly what is going to happen or where the threat is coming from. Dread is usually the version of suspense that we find in a horror movie, because a major element in horror is *fear of the unknown*. For dread to work, we need to create a situation where a bad action of some sort might happen...
3) Like an escaped leopard in the town. That is the HORROR SITUATION, the same way Jason wandering around Camp Crystal Lake with his machete is a horror situation. This is the first requirement for a scene of dread - what the heck are we dreading? It must be established in some early scene, and like Jason wandering around with his machete, the escaped leopard will create the horror situation for the entire movie.
4) The SEQUENCE SITUATION. Okay, we know the leopard is out there waiting to kill someone, now we have to get some tasty someone out there to be killed. This is where horror movies often stumble - the stupid teens go into the house where the crazy old lady with the knitting needles is supposed to be hiding, and the last people who went into that house had their eyes needled out and died... so let’s just go in and look around, okay? You need some *good reason* to go into that house... or out into the town after dark when there’s a hungry leopard roaming the streets. So we have Mrs. Delgado run out of cornmeal while making dinner, and sending Teresa out into the night to buy some. The further motivation is that this is *Mr. Delgado’s* dinner, and mom doesn’t want her hard working husband to come home and not have the dinner he deserves. So Teresa will have to go to the store - simple as that.
5) REMIND US WHY. That escaped leopard was, like, ten minutes ago. We need to remind the audience why Teresa doesn’t want to go to the store. This isn’t done because the audience is stupid or forgetful - the title has “Leopard” in it - but to “poke the tiger”. Let’s say we have that bomb under the table while the two guys discuss baseball statistics from the Hitchcock example - if we never show the ticking bomb, we have lost the suspense. Even though the audience knows the bomb is under the table, we need to keep showing it to keep that fear in the forefront of their minds... so that they don’t get interested in those baseball stats. Every time we show that bomb, we are poking the tiger - and poking the audience’s fear. So when Teresa’s little brother makes the hand-shadow on the wall of the tiger, it reminds us what is out there. It puts it back in the front of our minds. Yes, we knew it was there, but the reminder pokes us.
6) TWO-FERS! Why the hand-shadow thing is genius - the leopard will be hiding in the shadows! So turning the leopard into a shadow in this scene makes us fear the shadows. Any time you have several ways to do something, look for one that is a “two-fer” - that manages to do two or more things at the same time.
7) MAKE US SYMPATHIZE. Okay, we have a teenaged girl about to go outside where a vicious leopard may be waiting, you’d think that was enough to make us sympathize with her, right? Well, probably... but why not do a little more? Why not show her fear? The problem with those stupid teens that waltz into the crazy knitting needle house is that they don’t show the basic fear anyone with an IQ over 70 would have. So let’s make Teresa smart enough to know she might get killed by that leopard, and try everything to get back into the house. This shows us that she’s afraid, and also shows us that she isn’t stupid - and both things make us sympathize with her. Of course if she is allowed to stay in the house we lose all of the dread... so her mean mom sends her back outside to get the cornmeal and tells her not to come back without it... and then does something that seems like part of this scene, but is actually a set up for a later scene: she bolts the door closed so Teresa can not sneak back in. Now Teresa has NO CHOICE but to go out into the night and get that corn meal.
8) NO EASY OUTS. One of the great ways to ratchet up suspense and dread is to create an easy solution to the problem... then yank it away. This knocks the audience off balance, and also tells them that there will not be an easy solution here - things are going to get worse. Because dread is the anticipation of an unknown event, we need to find ways to make things worse without tipping our hand to what, exactly, is going to happen. By having Teresa go to the “Provisions” market close to home, and have them closed, and the owner unwilling to reopen just for her; we have just made things worse without actually doing anything. No leopard has attacked her, yet. She isn’t even far from home... but she has already hit a roadblock. There has already been a reversal of fortune that has popped Teresa deeper into trouble. If she had just gone straight across the arroyo to the other market without going to the “Provisions” market, she would not have seemed as if she were in as much danger. This set back makes the trip to the other market a larger problem. Oh, and I love the situational irony that if Teresa had not fought with her mother for so long about going out, she would probably have made it to the “Provisions” market before it closed.
9) SPOOKY SETTINGS. To get to the other market before it closes, Teresa takes a short cut through the arroyo and under the rail road trestle. This scene is wall-to-wall dread. The location is unpopulated - no one there to help her. She is *alone*, and that makes her vulnerable. It is dark and spooky and bathed in shadows - and we have already been tipped to the black leopard hiding in shadows by the brother’s shadow-puppet. Under the train trestle is all shadows. When you are creating dread, find the spooky location that’s frightening even before you tell us there may be a hungry leopard roaming around in there. In CAT PEOPLE there is a great dread scene in an indoor swimming pool at night - one of the characters is stealing a swim, so there are very few lights on. The combination of darkness and water and being indoors all makes that location somewhere you wouldn’t want to be... then add that cat woman with her claws and... The dark train trestle is a spooky location - and the scene where Teresa walks under it is stretched out for maximum dread. Oh, but there are two more things about Teresa and the Train Trestle...
10) SCHLOCK SHOCK. You know those damned cats that jump out of cupboards in horror movies? Those hands that suddenly grab the lead’s shoulder, and turn out to be their friend? That stuff is what I call schlock shock. Schlock is poorly made, shoddy, merchandise. So Schlock Shock is a cheap jump moment. But it serves a couple of purposes - it is usually a diversion followed by the *real* shock moment. The cat jumps out of the cupboard, the audience screams for a moment, then realizes it is just a cat... and let’s their guard down... and then the killer crashes through the window! Because the audience has let their guard down the killer crashing through the window is a bigger scare. The other purpose for schlock shock is to “poke the tiger” some more. To remind us that bad things could happen at any minute. After an excruciating walk through that darkness (where there is standing water) she comes out the other side without encountering any leopards. Then that tumble weed comes skittering out from the darkness under the train trestle, we jump out of our skin for a moment... then realize it’s just a tumbleweed... then realize there could easily be a leopard in that darkness, too. We are reminded of the reason for our terror... Now, that has been one great bit of dread... but it was *really* just the set up for the return trip!
11) BREAKING THE TENSION. A good screenplay is peaks and valleys. Too much action, too much suspense, too much tension... dissipates the effectiveness. So to keep that dread strong, we need to mix it up a little. After that schlock shock tumbleweed, we get to the bright, well lighted market with the kind old man behind the counter. Guess what? Teresa has made it to her goal! She has made it to the market to buy the cornmeal. We can breath a sigh of relief, right? All of the elements here tell us that she is safe, that the leopard is not going to get her, that she will get that cornmeal home to mom and dad will have that dinner he deserves after his long day at work. The store keeper is paternal and funny and jokes with Teresa. And they have a conversation about being afraid of the dark, which is a great two-fer because it makes us think this might all be about Teresa having this silly childhood fear which puts us at ease... but also poke that tiger a little because it is still dark outside and there is still a leopard out there. Hmmm, I wonder which it will be? All just her imagination? Or a serious threat of leopard attack? This two-fer manages to keep us in unknown territory! When Teresa says she’s not really afraid of the dark, what could happen to her? We think “Leopard attack!” She prompts our thoughts of the danger in this situation.
And when she says that she is not afraid of the dark, that is not the truth, it is what she wishes were true. The safety of the market has allowed her to push her fears back into her subconscious and pretend they do not exist. She *says* that she is not afraid, but moments later she wil be back in the darkness, surrounded by shadows, and we will see that her actions speak louder than her words.
12) Though this has nothing to do with dread or horror or suspense, I love this line from screenwriter Ardel Wray, “The poor don’t cheat one another, we’re all poor together.”
13) SECOND TIME TERROR. Okay, the last time Teresa was at this train trestle the only danger came from a tumble weed, so it’s safe, right? Here’s the great thing about going back to the train trestle - we already know it is spooky, and the audience secretly knows we wouldn’t be going back there unless something was going to happen this time. It can’t just be another tumble weed. If it was just the spooky location again and nothing happens it’s a waste of time... so our dread grows because this is a *known* location, and horror is fear of the *unknown*, so if nothing was going to happen she’d have to walk through some *unknown* spooky place. Our subconscious tells us that you don’t go back to a spooky location where nothing happens twice - so something is going to happen this time... but what? Unknown. Teresa creeps to the dark trestle, shadows, dripping water, darkness...
14) TRIPLE SHOCK. Remember how I said Schlock Shock was a great way to make the audience lower their guard so that you can get ‘em with real shock? LEOPARD MAN has a great twist on that method - and any time you can break the pattern in a way that works better than the pattern is great. Here, we have Teresa see what appear to be a pair of glowing eyes in the darkness under the trestle... the leopard? Then the eyes disappear - was it just her imagination? Teresa takes a few steps deeper into the darkness under the train trestle, and we *know* those were the eyes of a leopard and it is now about to pounce on her! Just when the audience thinks this is going to be a real leopard attack... a train ROARS over the trestle - schlock shock! We jump out of our skins, then relax when we realize it was just a train, then remember those eyes in the darkness - we should not have relaxed! When Teresa recovers from the train scare and makes it all of the way through the darkness under the train trestle - which is stretched out to our breaking point, she doesn’t make it through quickly because that would kill the building dread - she looks up and sees the leopard! Waiting for her. The killer she has spent the entire sequence trying to avoid is now RIGHT THERE. And she is in serious trouble. Instead of the schlock shock/relax/real shock rhythm we get a possible real/relax/schlock shock/relax/real shock rhythm that we don’t expect.
15) RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! The leopard pounces! Now that we have seen the leopard, we no longer have fear of the unknown and no longer have dread - so we switch to suspense and suspense techniques. A chase where the antagonist is getting closer and closer and closer is a basic way to create suspense - you’ve seen it in hundreds of movies, at least one with Cary Grant and a crop duster where there ain’t no crops. You have also seen it in a hundred horror movies, at least one with Michael Myers chasing Jamie Lee Curtis in Haddonfield on Halloween. And we get that chase here as well, including the typical heroine trip. What saves this trip from cliche country is that she spills the cornmeal all over the place - the very reason she was out in this dangerous situation in the first place! Ironic, isn’t it? Teresa trips, falls, spills the cornmeal, then scrambles to her feet and runs home with that hungry leopard in hot pursuit!
16) DRAMATIC IRONY = SUSPENSE. For reasons we will get to in our next section, instead of showing the end of this chase scene, we go back inside the Delgado house. This allows some more of that wonderful dramatic irony, plus some great suspense. You may have noticed that two are often connected - if the audience knows something that the characters do not, we want to yell at the screen that the characters are making a mistake. That’s what happens here - I don’t know if this scene was gut wrenching for you or not, but it was for me. We start out with mom drying dishes and the brother reading the comics when there is POUNDING on the front door and Teresa yells “Let me in, let me in! If you love me, let me in!” And mom turns to the brother and says something about Teresa dilly-dallying and spending half the night just to get cornmeal. Not taking the threat we know is real seriously. We know Teresa has just outrun a freakin’ leopard to get to the front door - which is bolted - and her mom thinks she is just being pushy like a typical teenager. And the more the mom says pointless and unnecessary things, the more the suspense grows - it’s like those guys discussing baseball statistics! The less mom seems to care about Teresa’s problems outside the door, the more WE care... and the more we want to scream at her to shut the eff up and get that door open before the leopard attacks! The more mom says things that are mundane or boring or do not matter, the greater the suspense - due to the dramatic irony of the situation. We know Teresa is going to be *killed* if mom doesn’t do something right now, but mom doesn’t know this.
17) EVEN MORE SUSPENSE. Mom figures out something might be wrong when Teresa SCREAMS, and now she runs to the door to open it. But remember when she bolted the door at the beginning of this sequence so that Teresa couldn’t sneak back in? I’ll bet your forgot up until now - there’s been so much dread and suspense and fear, how could you remember a locked door? Well, that bolt is *stuck* and no matter how hard mom tries to shoot it open, it just won’t budge. Which creates suspense - will she get the bolt open and the door open before the leopard rips her daughter to shreds? The brother runs to get a block of wood to use as a hammer to POUND that bolt open. Suspense isn’t just that main thing, it is all of the details and actions that are part of the main thing. Each one of those details, like running to get that block of wood, extends and strengthens the suspense - in a way, those are tiger pokes. Just trying to loosen the bolt isn’t enough action to keep the suspense going, we need plans and possibilities. We need things that do not work - which are similar to that “provisions” market in that the failure builds our dread, builds our fear, escalates the terror.
18) VIOLENT ACTION. Since dread is the anticipation of an *unknown* action, we eventually have to get to the action or it has all been a tease. The difference between these Val Lewton movies and today’s gorefests is how they show the action. Not whether there is action or not, not whether the action is bloody and gory or not - but what they decide to show and what they leave up to your imagination. So the decision is made *not* to show cute little Teresa being ripped to shreds, which is one of the reasons we go inside the Delgado house instead of stay outside that door with Teresa and the leopard. We get that nice suspense bonus from being inside the house, but I doubt the censors would have allowed them to show Teresa being killed back in 1943. But if you think by not showing it the action is not violent, you are dead wrong. This is a horror movie. The level of violence is horrific. We just don’t see it. Teresa screams, the leopard growls, there are the sounds of a vicious and violent attack... and then... that pool of blood practically pours from under the door! That pool of blood is visual proof of the carnage on the other side of that door - and we need that proof to fill in all of the ugly details with our imagination. That blood tells us Teresa is dead. Without that blood, she may still be okay, just in need of a doctor. But the blood is a coda to the scene. Gotta have it.
19) EMOTION PICTURES. Movies are about emotions. Creating the emotions in the viewer, like dread and fear and suspense... but also allowing the viewer to feel the emotions of characters. One of the greatest parts of this sequence is when Teresa’s mom realizes that her daughter is in real danger and she has not believed her. And that whatever happens to her daughter, she bares some of the responsibility... and will feel as if it is all her fault. This is a gut wrenching emotional scene - Teresa’s mom realizes that she has doubted her daughter, and that doubt has lead to her daughter’s death. It is only a line, a moment, in the scene - but that moment is powerful emotions that will haunt us. Look for moments of emotion in your scenes, and remember that the most powerful emotions are the ones that make us uncomfortable. A mother realizing she may have killed her own daughter is more powerful than all of those scream moments in the film. Those are the emotions of great tragedy... and that is why LEOPARD MAN is more than just a cheapo horror movie from the 1940s... it is a work of art, and one of Martin Scorsese’s favorite films.
20) You may have noticed that this sequence works in the basic three act structure: introduce the conflict, the conflict escalates, a midpoint (the market), the conflict escalates further, then the resolution of the conflict. Hard to avoid something so basic. This sequence seems like a stand-alone, but it is actually one of several sequences where the leopard attacks again and again, escalating the conflict for Jerry and Kiki who are responsible for the leopard’s escape. With every new victim, they get into more trouble with the town and the police and it becomes more apparent that Jerry will have to capture or kill the leopard himself. He is pulled deeper and deeper into the quicksand with every new victim, and must find a way out. Each sequence ends by tying Jerry and Kiki back into the story - with their problems worse than before.
Okay, that is one of a handful of sequences in LEOPARD MAN where people and leopards eventually meet without a pleasant outcome. It’s a good example of how to build dread and also how to create gory bloody violent deaths - that are not graphic. Just because the death is not shown doesn’t mean that it is pleasant and doesn’t mean that the audience doesn’t experience it. We want to make sure there is horror in the horror! If we can’t see it, you need to make sure we imagine it. This scene is a great example of how to make a scene scary and keep the fear and dread building until the violent pay off. Things to consider if you are writing a horror or suspense script.
Hey, what does that look like on that page? Do we just write “scary things happen” and the director makes up all of the details? Nope! Below is this sequence from the shooting script of LEOPARD MAN by Ardel Wray - and all of the thrills and chills are there on the page. Check it out!
INT. DELGADO HOUSE - NIGHT
The Delgado house is typical of the poorer Mexican homes in New Mexico. This main room, which is small, serves as living room, bedroom and kitchen. An Indian blanket covers the doorway into the only other room. The adobe walls are plastered with pictures of religious subjects.
The wooden floor is bare. There is a charcoal-burning brasero in one corner. Pots and pans on the hearth of the fireplace show that it is a supplementary stove, The rest of the furniture consists of an iron bedstead, a large and hideous oak table and an open-faced china cabinet which contains the Delgado treasures.
Pedro, Teresa's nine-year-old brother is seated at the oak table, eating from a bowl of frijoles. He is, and looks like, an imp. Teresa is backing away from her mother, who turns away from the window to face her angrily.
TERESA
(evidently resuming a discussion)
But, Mamacita -- why can't Pedro go this time? I'm so tired...
PEDRO
(complacently)
I'm too young.
SRA. DELGADO
If your father comes home and there are no tortillas, he will shout and tomorrow it will be all over town: the family of Juan Delgado is too poor to buy corn meal! Do you wish we should be so disgraced?
Teresa shakes her head, but makes no move to go. Exasperated, Sra. Delgado reaches for the nearest weapon -- the broom.
SRA. DELGADO
Then go!
Sra. Delgado brandishes the broom toward Teresa, who backs up again.
PEDRO
I know what she's afraid of...
Pedro lifts his hand. It casts a sharp shadow on the wall behind him. Watching the shadow, he manipulates his fingers so as to create the shadow of a leopard's head in miniature.
PEDRO (CONT'D)
This!
SRA. DELGADO
And what, por todos los santos, is "this"?
Teresa braves the threatening broom and moves a step toward her mother.
TERESA
(eager to be believed)
The leopard, Mamacita. They say a lady at the El Pueblo had it on a string and it ran away. It hasn't been found yet...
SRA. DELGADO
A leopard?
PEDRO
(gleefully)
They're big -- and they jump on you!
Pedro jumps the shadow on the wall, to simulate the leap of a leopard.
SRA. DELGADO
(furiously)
Did you ever meet one of those things yet when you went to the store for me?
Teresa swallows, shakes her head mutely.
SRA. DELGADO
(bellowing)
Then you won't meet one this time either! Now get out! Do as I told you!
Sra. Delgado gives the broom such a backward swing of final purpose that Teresa hurriedly opens the door behind her and slinks out backwards -- her big liquid dark eyes, still futilely pleading, the last to disappear. Sra. Delgado moves after her, pushing the door closed.
She puts the broom in the corner and goes to where Pedro is seated. Here she stands a moment, fondly watching him as he masticates his beans. Behind her the door stealthily opens.
Teresa tries to sneak back into the room. Mamacita sees the movement and makes a tempestuous rush toward her, but Teresa sidles out of the door before she can be caught. Mamacita, muttering, slams the door shut and with difficulty pushes the heavy, rust-covered iron bolt into place.
EXT. DOORWAY DELGADO HOUSE - NIGHT
Teresa stands outside the door. We hear the heavy bolt inside driven home forcibly.
SRA. DELGADO (V.O.)
Now you will not come in again, not until you bring the corn meal with you!
EXT. STREET OUTSIDE DELGADO HOUSE - NIGHT
Teresa steps down from the single doorstep outside her house.
She crosses her arms and pulls her shoulders together in a gesture of fear. She looks once, despairingly, at the closed door behind her and then reluctantly steps out into the dirt road and starts walking.
EXT. CALDERON GROCERY - NIGHT
Only a large corner window, with the word. "Provisiones" printed on it shows that this ordinary house is a grocery store. In the moonlight, one can see a few boxes of groceries stacked on shelves inside. Teresa comes up to the window and peers in. She knocks on the window.
TERESA
Senora Calderon It is Teresa, Senor. Teresa Delgado.
Over Teresa's shoulder, we see the interior of the little store light up dimly as a curtain is pulled at the back of the room.
Beyond the curtain is revealed another room, brightly lit by a bare electric globe hanging from the ceiling on a cord. Under the light, a man sits at a table, heartily eating from a plate heaped with food.
The curtain has been pulled back by Senora Calderon. We see her only in silhouette and the details of her face and figure are indistinguishable. We do see, however, that her long black hair is down her back and she is braiding it. She walks a little ways into the darkened store.
SRA. CALDERON
(speaking loudly to be heard through the window)
The store is closed.
TERESA
I just want a sack of corn meal for my father's supper!
SRA. CALDERON
Tomorrow.
TERESA
(imploringly)
It'll just take a second. ..Please or I must go clear across the
Arroyo to the big grocery --
Teresa taps against the window hopefully. But Sra. Calderon turns back toward the doorway into the inner room, where the solitary feaster hasn't even bothered to look up during this exchange.
SRA. CALDERON
(as she goes)
It means taking off the lock again, putting on the light, measuring the meal. It's too much trouble. Once I close, I close!
Sm. Calderon steps into the inner room and draws the curtain closed behind her, as she speaks the last words. Again the store is in darkness -- only a rim of light showing around the edges of the curtained doorway.
TERESA
(quietly, hopelessly)
Senora...
There is no reply. Teresa turns away.
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. EDGE OF ARROYO - NIGHT
The Arroyo is a deep narrow cut in the mesa, bone dry in this season. Its floor of bleached sand and weeds stretches desolately wider a vast moonlit sky. Here and there, children's feet have scuffed steep little trails down the banks.
Teresa appears at the top of one of these trails. She looks down into the Arroyo -- and then off to the right.
A distance down the Arroyo is a bridge which carries a train track across the dry river bed. To divert the rush of rain water in winter and spring, the bridge is underpropped by two slanting stone piers. They stand out like ribs against the blackness of the underpass, which they divide into three tunnels.
Teresa's face shows her dread of the Arroyo. She turns back the way she came, takes a step away, hesitates and then returns to the edge of the bank.
She starts down the little trail, her feet sliding in the loose sand and a shower of pebbles bouncing down ahead of her.
EXT. ARROYO FLOOR - NIGHT
Teresa stands at the bottom of the bank. She looks off to the bridge again. Then she starts walking forward slowly, a very little figure in the large loneliness of the night.
EXT. EAST SIDE OF BRIDGE - NIGHT
Teresa comes up to the face of the underpass with its three openings. She stares from one black tunnel mouth to another.
She glances behind her, then looks at the underpass again.
Teresa goes forward again, toward the middle tunnel.
EXT. EAST ENTRANCE OF MIDDLE TUNNEL - NIGHT
The roof of the underpass is only a little higher than Teresa's head and the passage is not more than ten feet wide.
The opening is dimly lit by the moonlight, but beyond it is dense blackness. Teresa enters slowly. She takes a few steps toward the blackness - and stops. She listens. Teresa moves forward again, walking as lightly as possible. The light dims rapidly, so that after Teresa has taken a half dozen steps, she is swallowed up in complete blackness.
The CAMERA HOLDS for a moment on the dark underpass before Teresa emerges from the blackness on the West side. A light scratching sound is heard. Teresa's eyes widen in panic as she hears it and she hurries out of the tunnel, watching fearfully ever her left shoulder. She must cut across in front of this other tunnel in order to get to the south bank.
She starts across, never taking her eyes off the black tunnel mouth. Suddenly she gives a convulsive start and a little cry escapes before she can control it. A shadowy shape, low to the ground, detaches itself from the dimness of the tunnel opening and moves toward her. Almost at once, we see that it is a large tumbleweed, blowing clown the Arroyo in the wind.
Teresa sighs soundlessly and goes on to the foot of the bank.
She starts scrambling up another steep little path.
DISSOLVE
INT. BIG GROCERY STORE - NIGHT
This is a fairly good sized room, lined with shelves and counters. A tall, Indian-type Mexican with iron-grey hair puts a paper sack of cornmeal on the counter in front of Teresa.
She starts toward the door, but noticing a bronze cage with two toy birds in it, a mechanical device which has stood there for years, she goes toward it, puts down her sack of corn meal and goes up close.
TERESA
Oh, the toy birds!
MANUEL
You've seen them before. I couldn't chase you away from the counter when you were a little girl.
She winds up the bird cage.
TERESA
I'd forgotten them.
MANUEL
(smiling, good humoredly, skeptical)
Every day you see them --and you have forgotten them? Oh, I remember my little Teresita -- I remember the little girl who was afraid of the dark. They shouldn't send you.
The birds have begun to sing, a highly mechanical rendering of a bird song.
TERESA
I'm not afraid. What could happen to me?
The birds sing and she pretends to listen. Manuel leans against the inner door of the grocery watching her, smiling and amused. Finally his smiling irks her into action. She picks up her sack of corn meal.
TERESA (CONT'D)
(as she starts off)
I'll pay you tomorrow.
MANUEL
Never fear - - next time you come.
The poor don't cheat one another.
We're all poor together.
In the bronze cage the two birds continue to sing their mechanical song. Their heads turn from side to side.
We hear the door close behind Teresa. The birds are still singing as we...
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. CORNER WEST SIDE OF BRIDGE - NIGHT
There is a sound of slow, measured dripping. It comes from water seeping out between two rocks and dropping onto another rock below. These rocks are piled up at the juncture of the bridge and the left bank and the water is evidently leaking from some water main or sews go pipe running under the highway overhead.
EXT. WEST SIDE OF BRIDGE - NIGHT
Teresa is approaching the entrance of the middle tunnel, She is evidently scared - her footsteps are lagging and she holds the sack of corn meal in both hands, as if feeling its weight. She looks fearfully at the black tunnel before her and comes to a standstill, trying to peer into the blackness.
In the silence, the dripping of the water can be heard.
Teresa looks up and to the left to locate the sound. She sees the shining dampness on the rocks.
She turns back to the middle tunnel before her -- and, drawing a deep breath of resolution, starts to enter it. But she hesitates and then, suddenly, veers over to the left. She peers into the opening of that tunnel.
INT. OPENING OF NORTH TUNNEL - NIGHT
The wall of the tunnel is also damp with the seepage from above. It reflects the outer moonlight in glistening streaks, so that the blackness here is not so complete as in the other tunnel..
EXT. WEST SIDE OF BRIDGE - NIGHT
Teresa gets a fresh grip on the bag of corn meal by shifting her hands under it -- and walks into the entrance of the north tunnel.
INT. NORTH TUNNEL - NIGHT
Again, the crunching sound of Teresa's footsteps are magnified in the enclosure of the tunnel walls. It is very dim, but the luminosity of the damp wall casts a faint light on Teresa, reflecting in her wide, frightened eyes.
She walks slowly and lightly, her eyes going from side to side in the darkness, her neck and head held rigidly. Suddenly she stops with a sharp intake of breath, Ahead of her and to her left are two tiny gleams of light. Teresa backs away from them. As she does so, they seem to fall and vanish.
Slowly Teresa moves forward again, staring at the place where the lights had been. As she moves parallel to the spot, they appear again. A half-cry dies away in her throat --she sees that the gleams are two drops of seepage, trickling down the side of the tunnel wall.
Teresa half closes her eyes and sways a little, faint with fear. Then she forces herself to move forward again. She takes one -- two fearful steps -- and then the underpass reverberates with a sudden tremendous shock of sound - more a giant vibration than actual noise.
It is a train passing overhead.
INT. NORTH TUNNEL - NIGHT
As Teresa stands transfixed, the terrific roar continues.
Second after second, flashes of light as brilliant as lightning illuminate the interior of the tunnel the reflections thrown into the Arroyo by the train windows.
And then, as abruptly as it began, the noise ceases. It is cavernously dark in the tunnel again. In this thick stillness, Teresa walks forward once more.
EXT. EAST SIDE OF BRIDGE - NIGHT
In the frame of the tunnel opening, Teresa stands for a moment. Behind her, there is a new sound -- a mere whisper of sound carried forward on the light wind. A little shower of rubble falls from the top of the concrete pier. Teresa turns to look behind her.
Crouched on one of the piers of the trestle - and seen only very dimly in the darkness -- is the leopard, looking down into the Arroyo.
An enormous big HEAD CLOSE UP of Teresa.
An enormous big HEAD CLOSE UP of the leopard, its clear golden eyes fixed and staring.
EXT. ARROYO FLOOR - NIGHT
Teresa's nails dig into the paper sack of corn meal and little trickles of the meal start spilling from the slits.
Her eyes widen and her face falls slack from the horrible shock of what she sees. She turns and runs.
EXT EDGE OF ARROYO - NIGHT
Teresa scrambles frantically up over the edge of the bank.
She stumbles and falls and the sack of corn meal drops from her hands and spills onto the ground. In a single move, Teresa is on her feet and running again. A shadow flashes over the spilled meal and we hear a heavy, ripping snarl.
INT. DELGADO HOUSE - NIGHT
It is quiet and peaceful in the Delgado home. Senora Delgado is puttering about the brasero. Pedro, on all fours, is reading a comic book, his rump high in the air, his chin two inches from the book. Suddenly, a wild rain of knocks on the door fill the little room. Sonora Delgado, at the brasero, drops a spoon with a clatter and Pedro springs up.
TERESA'S VOICE
(screaming)
Mamacita, let me in! Let me in, let me in!
SENORA DELGADO
Hah!
Sonora Delgado smirks knowingly and puts her hands on her hips.
TERESA'S VOICE
If you love me, let me in -- !
SENORA DELGADO
(mimicking Teresa)
Mamacita -- let me in. Let me in, now that I've spent half the night getting the corn meal!
TERESA'S VOICE
It's coming - it's coming closer.
I can see it...
PEDRO
She is afraid of the leopard.
SENORA DELGADO
Just what she needs -- something to
NIP AT HER HEELS AND HURRY HER UP -
She is interrupted by a scream so high, of such agonized finality, that it makes the others before it seem like nothing at all. Mingled with the scream and blurring the end of it comes an impact of such violence that the whole door structure shakes with it from top to bottom. A puff of dust wells up around the door from the impact of the blow.
REPRO
(his voice high with fear)
Madre do Dolores, she isn't fooling!
Pedro jumps to his feet. An instant change has come over the face of Senora Delgado. She hurls herself forward.
SENORA DELGADO
(beseechingly)
Wait, Teresa! I come! I will let you in...
Senora Delgado tugs at the rusty bolt.
SEN0RA DELGADO
Only a moment, querida, hija do mi
alma -- your mother is here --
As Senora Delgado tugs vainly at the bolt, Pedro darts over to the fireplace and grabs up a stone from the hearth.
SENORA DELGADO
Your mother will let you in - -
Pedro rushes to the door and pushes his mother's hands aside.
He hammers the unruly bar back with the stone.
Then, he draws back and looks down at his feet. Senora Delgado's horrified eyes follow his glance.
Under the crack of the door seeps a dark tongue of blood, widening and lengthening on the rough wooden floor.
And here is a link to the entire script:
LEOPARD MAN screenplay by Ardel Wray.
- Bill
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Writing Over 40 - how to sell a script or land an assignment in age conscious Hollywood.
Dinner: Salad with some dead chickens in it.
Pages: Yikes! This article was the one I wrote *after* the one that I was going to run on the blog today. The other one got pushed back.
Bicycle: Yes - a NoHo ride on both Sat & Sun. I feel better, but there is still some pain in the wrist if I twist it in unusual ways, so I'm thinking about going to the doctor (which I fear, because I do not want a cast on my arm - I can take the brace off to type, but a cast?)
Movies: MACHETE and TAKERS...
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