The adventures of a professional screenwriter and frequent film festival jurist, slogging through the trenches of Hollywood, writing movies that you have never heard of, and getting no respect.
I've spoken at the Alameda Writers Group a couple of times, and they asked if I would help them get the word out about a FREE lecture by Emmy Award Winning screenwriter Erik Bork (BAND OF BROTHERS, FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON, etc). So here it is...
EMMY AND GOLDEN GLOBE WINNER ERIK BORK TO SPEAK FREE ALAMEDA WRITERS GROUP SATURDAY MAY 7 AT 10:00 AM GLENDALE PUBLIC LIBRARY AUDITORIUM 222 EAST HARVARD STREET, GLENDALE 91204
ERIK BORK is best known for his Emmy and Golden Globe-winning work as a writer-producer on the HBO miniseries BAND OF BROTHERS and FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON. He has also sold multiple pitches for original series – and written pilots – for NBC and Fox, worked as a writer-producer on staff of drama series for Warner Bros. TV and Twentieth TV, and written features on assignment for Playtone, Steven Spielberg, Universal Pictures, HBO and TNT. He’s represented by Creative Artists Agency.
Erik did classes last year at the Screenwriting Conference in Santa Fe - where I still have open seats in *my* class this year. Info on how to sign up for that...
Many pre-pro writers send out their scripts to agents or managers or producers and (usually as a result of hammering away for a response) get a nice rejection note saying that their masterpiece is “Well written, but not right for us”, or they “Loved it, but we have something similar in development”, or some other exciting and positive thing about how much they loved your screenplay. They celebrate how close they came to selling their script and brag to all of their friends that they are almost over that big wall that surrounds Hollywood. Everyone loved their script! They are great writers!
When I was living in my home town dreaming of Hollywood I had a chance to give a copy of one of my scripts to my idol at the time, Paul Schrader. He wrote TAXI DRIVER and OBSESSION and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS and THE YAKUZA and ROLLING THUNDER and OLD BOYFRIENDS and other films I loved... and he took a copy of my script and read it (or had someone read it) and sent me a great letter of encouragement. I sent the same script to my favorite director, Martin Scorsese, and he had someone read it, and they sent me this great letter of encouragement on Columbia Pictures stationery! My script was the greatest script on the world!
Of course, when I read that script today I cringe at how awful it is and am embarrassed that people I admired had to read it - or get their assistants to read it. That script just sucked.
Pauline Kael once said, “Hollywood’s the only town where you can die of encouragement.”
No one will ever tell you that your script sucks. The reason why is simple - they read your current script, which sucks, but what if you keep working hard at this screenwriting thing and improve and a few years later you write a great script. One of those scripts that everyone in Hollywood is fighting with each other over. There are bidding wars - and the winner not only gets to pay you a huge amount of money, they get that amazing script you have written. But if Joe’s Productions tells you that your earlier script sucks, they won’t be part of that bidding war. You will not take your script there. What Joe’s Productions wants is for you to be the *first* place you go with that great new script - so that they can maybe buy it before there is a bidding war... or at least be the friendly producer that you want to sell the script to. So, instead of saying “Your script sucks” they come up with a euphemism like “Loved it, but we have something similar in development.”
That really means your script sucks.
Here’s how to tell if they *really* loved it:
1) They buy it or option it (for real money). 2) They want to meet with you to discuss other projects. 3) They offer you a writing assignment. 4) They *request* your next script or ask to read other scripts you have written.
I have a script tip on this floating around on my website, but you should even beware of producers who want to option your script for $1 or no money. Basically, you get what they pay for. If they have a dollar invested, that is what your script is worth to them, and tells you how hard they will work to bring it to the screen. In that tip, I talk about a producer I know of who literally options every script he can get his hands on for $1 and never reads any of them. He is a “material pack rat” and his theory is that if he options 100 scripts for $1 (sight unseen) one of them has to either be good enough to set up somewhere or has some strange elements that some real producer may be looking for. This guy has you write down “keywords” about your script, then takes your script to a warehouse where it will be forgotten like the Lost Ark, and if any real producer is looking for a script with the keywords for your script - this guy tries to set up a deal. If you’ve read any of those strange script requirements in InkTip listings, you know how oddly specific some producer’s needs are. And this guy has a warehouse full of scripts he *owns*, and one may fit those strange needs. If not, he’s only out $1. The thing about options - if they pay you $1, that’s what they think your script is worth, and most likely it’s not a real option. Sure, sometimes there are underfunded legit producers looking to have control over a script when they take it into a studio... but usually the $1 option isn’t much different than no option at all. And how much can you celebrate when all you have is $1?
If they read your script and did have something just like it in development, but thought the writing was great, they will ask to read something else or want to meet with you. If they actively pursue you, you have something they want (writing). If they say nice things but don’t *do anything*, they don’t think the writing is strong enough to follow up on.
Just like in a screenplay, in real life - actions speak louder than words.
Producers will tell you all kinds of nice things, but what they *do* tells you want they really think. If they do nothing, well...
Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean your script *completely sucks*, but it’s just not there yet. Keep working at it, and eventually they *will* do something. They won’t just say, “We loved it but it’s not for us”, they will want to meet with you to discuss anything you may have that *may be* for them. Because producers need screenplays and they need screenwriters. Can’t make a movie without a script.
No matter how many great things they say about your script, look at what they *do* - that will tell you what they really think. And if they don’t do anything, all is not lost! You just need to keep writing until you get that script where they actually do something... not just tell you how much they loved it.
One of my favorite movies of all time - I watch it at least once a year on DVD, and have seen it several times on the big screen. You may not know this, but a handful of classic Hitchcock films from this time period, including REAR WINDOW and ROPE, had been pulled from release for decades due to some strange rights issue. For a while it was thought that these films might never be seen again. They did not show on TV or in revival cinemas and were not available on VHS. Then, a bunch of lawyers got into some sort of steel cage match or something, and the good guys won, and the movies were once again available... and they even seriously restored them (which requires they track down prints and negatives from all over the world and find the best versions and then take *those* and work on them until they are like new). One of the interesting things about film restoration is that the most popular films are usually in the worst shape. That’s because the studios used to dupe prints off the original negative, and the more prints they duped the more wear and tear on the negative. Because they wouldn’t have to keep striking prints for an unsuccessful film, the negative wouldn’t go through all of that wear and tear and be in great shape. But a hit like REAR WINDOW? They needed lots of prints for lots of theaters and the film was so popular they’d re-release it again and again... and the original negative would be a mess. They would literally glue the negative together and laquer it to squeeze more prints out of it... knowing that eventually the negative would be garbage and that would be the end of the film.
Forever.
So being able to see REAR WINDOW is a double miracle, and when the (I think) five “lost” Hitchcock films had been restored, they gave them a theatrical run before going to VHS. The first time I saw REAR WINDOW I was already a huge Hitchcock fan and had the poster (for a movie I had never seen) on my wall. The film was legendary...
And also kind of the “perfect storm” movie for Bill Martell. Because the short story the movie is based on was written by one of my favorite writers, Cornell Woolrich. Woolrich is credited as one of the three “founders” of noir fiction (along with Horace McCoy and James M. Cain - two of my other favorite writers). “Noir” comes from a series of novels Woolrich wrote with the word “Black” in the titles, BRIDE WORE BLACK, BLACK ALIBI, BACK PATH OF FEAR, etc. that had all of the hallmarks of what we now call Noir. Darkness, despair, and other words beginning with D... about normal people who wrestled with the darkness inside them as they crossed the line into criminal activities... on purpose... and stayed on the wrong side of that line.
In a typical thriller the protagonist might do something slightly wrong and spend the rest of the movie paying for it. In Noir fiction the protagonist did something illegal knowingly... and continued to do the wrong thing. The lead characters in stories by Woolrich and Cain (DOUBLE INDEMNITY) were the bad guys if the story were told from the authority’s POV. They were not gangsters or professional criminals, they were regular people who did the wrong thing. In DOUBLE INDEMNITY Walter Neff commits a perfect murder so that he can collect a man’s life insurance and collect his widow. In Woolrich’s BRIDE WORE BLACK Jill Killeen tracks down the people who were involved in the hit and run death of her husband and murders them one by one... until she realizes that the man who may be her only chance at a new relationship was one of them... will she kill him or kiss him? It’s Noir, so kill is the answer.
When Woolrich’s BLACK series were published in France, they became the Serie Noir (Black Series) and part of the general fiction classification of Roman Noir (black fiction - meaning dark fiction). When these Noir novels became films, those French dudes called them Film Noir, and it stuck. Roman Noir had a kind of resurgence in the 80s thanks to Black Lizard Press reissuing many of the novels from the 30s as well as the 50s roman noirs of Jim Thompson and Charles Willeford and others. These days, Hard Case Crime publishes some Hardboiled Detective fiction, some Crime Fiction, and some Roman Noir fiction. Eventually I will find a recording booth and put my Film Noir class on audio CD, and I’ll get into all of this stuff in more detail.
Hitchcock only made one film based on a Woolrich story, which is surprising, but directed several short stories for his TV show and one for a *rival* TV show (4 O’CLOCK - a real nail-biter of a story about a husband who plots his wife’s murder... then gets caught in his own trap and realizes *he* will die at 4 O’clock along with her!). Woolrich wrote all kinds of things for the pulp mags, from Noirs to Thrillers to Hardboiled to Crime Fiction to Police Procedurals to Supernatural stories to “Whiz Bangs” (sort of screwball crime fiction). REAR WINDOW, based on a story called IT HAD TO BE MURDER, was a straight thriller about a man confined to his apartment who thinks he may have seen a neighbor murder his wife. It’s a short story, and it’s all “did he or didn’t he?” Three characters - the protagonist, the killer, and the protag’s male servant. This was beautifully expanded by John Michael Hayes into a great nail biter of a suspense film which explores male and female relationships better than any rom-com or romantic drama you can name.
Nutshell: Magazine News Photographer L.B. Jeffries (Jimmy Stewart) is confined to his apartment with a broken leg, and spends his time watching his neighbors across the courtyard. He is engaged to a beautiful fashion model Lisa Freemont (Grace Kelly) whom he met on a shoot... but he is having all sorts of problems committing. He’s an adventurer who is used to living out of a backpack and sleeping on the ground when he’s on a story, she’s a fashion model who is used to a ton of luggage and first class hotels. In a way, this is the basic conflict in most male/female relationships, she wants nice things and he doesn’t care. Jeff has a nurse/physical therapist (the always great Thelma Ritter) and a cop best friend from back when he was covering the crime beat (Wendell Corey).
But it’s the people across the courtyard who are the focus of the film - as Jeff watches them, he learns all of the secrets of their lives... and one of those secrets may be murder. The traveling salesman Thorwald (Raymond Burr) may have murdered his nagging invalid wife. She seems to have vanished, and Thorwald is cleaning saws and big knives and has packed *something* in some cases that he sneaks out with in the middle of the night. Did he kill her and chop her up? Or is there some innocent explanation?
Hitch Appearance: Across the courtyard in the Composer’s apartment winding a clock.
The Experiment: I mentioned that Hitchcock usually does some interesting experiment in his films, from changing protagonists in PSYCHO to the continuous shot of ROPE (coming up) he doesn’t just make an emotionally involving thriller that is amazingly visual and uses the perfect combination of shots... he always seems to challenge himself by doing something that no one has ever done before on screen. You may never notice these experiments, because when they work they are completely invisible. In REAR WINDOW we get an interesting experiment in point of view - there isn’t a single shot where the camera is not in Jeff’s flat (until the very end). When we get a shot of some apartment across the courtyard, it is taken from inside Jeff’s flat. When we get a shot of inside Jeff’s flat, is taken from inside Jeff’s flat. When we get a shot of the street, it is taken from Jeff’s flat. Everything is seen through that rear window - everything. And, with the exception of one shot, we only see what Jeff sees. If he isn’t looking out the window, we don’t see it.
This puts us in Jeff’s shoes, and we see the story through his eyes. Not quite the total POV method of LADY IN THE LAKE (where we only see the protagonist when he looks in a mirror, and when he gets kissed or punched either the fist or the lips are coming right at us) or the opening of the noir flick DARK PASSAGE (based on a Goodis novel) where we escape from prison in pure POV shots. But - with the one exception - we see what he sees and nothing more... which makes it easy to identify with Jeff and easy to feel what he feels and suspect that Thorwald killed his wife.
In order to have the control over lighting and angle required to only show things through the rear window of Jeff’s apartment, they had to *build a city block of New York* in a studio at Paramount... including a street where real cars could drive back and forth. When you see the cars and the street and the buildings beyond - that’s a set built *indoors* on a sound stage!
One of the things I think is amusing - because we are always looking out Jeff’s apartment window, the facade of his building didn’t need to exist... except for a couple of shots at the end where he’s dangling out a window. So they had to build the exterior wall of Jeff’s apartment *just for those two or three shots*!
The idea of *only* seeing what Jeff can see creates identification with the character... and I can’t think of any movie made before or since that does this.
Kuleshov Experiment: The technical experiment Hitchcock did this time around was to replicate Lev Kuleshov’s experiment in the 1920s involving juxtaposition of images to create perceived emotions. The greatest acting in the world may just be editing. Kuleshov took Russia’s greatest stage actor, Ivan Mozzhukhin, and filmed him with a completely blank expression. Then he cut this shot with a shot of a bowl of soup... and Ivan looked hungry. Cut it with a shot of a woman in a coffin, and Ivan looked sad. Cut it with a shot of a puppy, and Ivan looked happy. This was shown to an audience and they all believed that Ivan’s facial expression had not only changed, but that he had reacted strongly to all of these things he was “looking at”. The audience was positive Ivan’s blank look was different in every shot. As an audience we connect the images in our minds and think we see Ivan crying or laughing - when he isn’t. We (the audience) “create” the acting in our minds.
So Hitchcock did the same thing with Jimmy Steward looking through his camera at the people across the courtyard. There is a sequence of shots that is Stewart with the exact same neutral expression, but when you cut in images of Miss Torso dancing topless, or sad Miss Lonelyhearts eating dinner alone, or the Composer struggling with his music; it *seems* as if Stewart is reacting to each - leering or looking sad or whatever. He’s not. When Hitchcock shot that footage of Stewart he had no idea what he’s be “looking at” - that happened in the cutting room. And you’d swear Stewart is smiling in some shots and looking concerned in others. In the original version of the Hitchcock/Truffaut book they had a page (or maybe two) that showed the “different” shots of Stewart alternating with the shots of the people he was “reacting” to - only it’s obvious that the different shots of Stewart are the same shot! In the reprint of the book, some idiot editor places the shot of Stewart on one side of the page - only one shot - and scatters the other photos on the page - not understanding that there was a reason *why* it was all the same shot of Stewart in the original version. That editor should throw themselves into an active volcano.
Great acting may just be a juxtaposition of images that makes you think the actor is changing expressions.
Great Scenes: In my Supporting Characters Blue Book I focus on how the characters across the courtyard are reflections of Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly’s characters - and how *every* character in this script illustrates a different aspect of the romantic problems that Stewart and Kelly’s characters are dealing with. The story outside is the story inside. That’s the great screenwriting lesson we can learn from REAR WINDOW - that your supporting characters represent different aspects of the protagonist’s emotional problem. So here we’re going to look at some of the great scenes in REAR WINDOW - and these scenes are even more amazing if you remember that we never leave that flat - everything is from single point of view.
Opening Shot: The film opens with the view out the window, from one building to the next, to L.B. Jeffries (Stewart) sleeping and sweating neat the window, to the thermometer heading towards 100', back out the window to each of our key characters across the courtyard, back to Jeff sleeping... in a wheelchair... to the cast on his leg, to smashed up professional camera on his table and to the photo of the race car wreck heading right at the camera framed on the wall, to a series of other photos on his wall - war, news, exotic locations - to a new camera, to the negative of a beautiful woman and to the cover of a fashion magazine with the shot of the beautiful woman (Grace Kelly). One shot that gives us all of this information. As writers we don’t get to chose whether it’s one shot or a dozen, but we *can* open a script with visual information like this.
The Kiss: Grace Kelly’s character Lisa is introduced in the flesh when Jeff wakes up and she kisses him. This is a great scene - faces close - that shows how comfortable they are together, how intimate their relationship is. She has brought him dinner, and they have an argument about their future - when you only have two characters in a room, the type of push-and-pull emotional relationship creates some great dramatic peaks and valleys. They are in love, but Jeff doesn’t think they can live together, let alone get married. By the end of this series of scenes, Lisa tells Jeff she’s in love with him... then they break up.
Have to mention the beautiful Robert Burks color cinematography with deep shadows and lighting that seems natural - pools of darkness where there are no lights.
Scream In The Night: Jeff is awakened by a woman’s scream, something crashing... then sees the traveling salesman Thorwald (Raymond Burr) across the courtyard leaving his apartment with his sample case... at 2:30 in the morning. He returns and leaves again - several times. Why?
One of the great things about this film is that we see what Jeff sees (except for one shot) and we must assemble the puzzle pieces just as he does. And that leaves room for doubt - we never see Thorwald kill his wife, so what if he didn’t do it? What if all of this is just Jeff’s (and our) over-active imagination?
While You Were Sleeping: While Jeff is sleeping we see a shot that he does not - Thorwald and a woman dressed in black leaving the Thorwald apartment. Mrs. Thorwald? The great thing about this shot is that it plants doubt in *our* minds. We worry that Jeff is completely wrong about what happened, which involves the audience in the story.
Coming Attractions: We get a series of scenes between Jeff and Lisa where they debate - did he or didn’t he kill his wife? And how terrible a job it would be to chop up a human body into pieces that would fit in the sample case... and the trunk he’s shipping.
There are a couple of great little suspense scenes in these scenes where Jeff is afraid Thorwald will see him watching. Because Jeff is in the wheelchair, it’s tough to back out of the line of sight quickly... did Thorwald see him?
Lisa decides to spend the night with Jeff (and sex is implied as a possibility, except for that cast) and she shows him her lingerie - a “preview of coming attractions”.
And that’s when Jeff’s cop friend Doyle (Wendel Corey) stops by and the three debate whether Thorwald is guilty and what each of the facts mean. Doyle has a logical explanation for everything - proves that there was no murder.
Not Much of a Snifter: Now here is where a prop guy can screw up a whole movie... Lisa serves brandy to everyone - but it’s Jeff’s apartment, not really set up for social functions. And Doyle says, “Not much of a snifter, is it?” - except it’s a friggin’ great looking brandy snifter that they probably paid a bunch of money for. The line was written for a jelly glass or a tumbler or something, and makes no sense when they have this great brandy snifter.
The Dog Who Knew Too Much: When the older couple’s dog begins digging around in Thorwald’s flower beds a couple of days later, Thorwald removes the dog... and later the dog is killed. Murdered. Everyone in the courtyard comes to their windows as the older couple deals with the dead dog... except one person. Thorwald.
Shrinking Violets: Why would Thorwald murder the dog? Here we get a great piece of visual story telling - Jeff has taken pictures of the flower beds, and when he compares the pictures of the flower beds to how the look now, the flowers have grown *shorter*. We see the slide of the flower beds and then the actual flower beds, so that *we* (the audience) can actually see the difference ourselves.
Breaking In: Lisa and Nurse Stella decide to go across the courtyard - into enemy territory - to dig up the flower bed and find whatever is buried there. Jeff calls Thorwald, pretends to be a blackmailer, and gets him out of the apartment for a while. Just that Thorwald leaves seems damning. When they find nothing in the flower bed, Lisa climbs the fire escape and breaks into Thorwald’s apartment - finding his wife’s wedding ring. Proof that the wife is dead. And that’s when Thorwald returns... and the suspense becomes unbearable. Because Jeff has to watch, helpless, as the woman he loves is hiding in the apartment when the killer comes back. It’s not *if* Thorwald will find her, it’s *when*... and this scene is a huge nail biter.
Watching helplessly as someone you love is in trouble is one of the iconic scenes in thriller films, and this scene milks every second of suspense. It’s not Jeff who is trapped, it’s the woman he loves.
Flash Bulbs As A Weapon: Lisa is Thorwald’s clue to Jeff... and the killer comes for a man trapped in a wheel chair, trapped in his flat... helpless.
And here’s what is great about this scene...
We hear Thorwald coming.
A window breaks. Then heavy footsteps up the stairs. Climbing closer and closer to the apartment where Jeff is trapped in his wheel chair. And the suspense builds. Jeff tries to find a weapon - but he’s a *photographer* not a cop or a spy or anyone who might have a gun. All he has are cameras and camera equipment. Hitchcock had this theory that I called Hitchcock’s Chocolates when I did an article about it for Script Magazine, that characters use the tools that characters are comfortable using. In RED EYE when Rachel McAdams is being chased by the killer - she grabs her field hockey stick to defend herself. It was established very early in the film that field hockey was her sport. So she grabbed the tool she was most comfortable with and used it as a weapon. In REAR WINDOW we have a photographer - what are the tools that he uses in his every day life and how can they be used as weapons?
Jeff turns off all of the light sin his apartment and when Thorwald breaks in, he sets off a flashbulb right in his face - blinding him! Every time Thorwald regains his vision and moves closer, Jeff sets off another flashbulb... buying time until Lt. Doyle arrives. But soon he runs oout of flashbulbs and Thorwald grabs him and they fight... a good sloppy rough looking fight.
Cast Party: Ending with Jeff going out his apartment window and landing in the courtyard... breaking his other leg a day before he would have gotten his cast off. Ironic! But also a fitting end. We need to have the *best* ending for the screenplay, and here we have a story that comes full circle - it begins with Jeff and a broken leg and ends with Jeff and a broken leg... just the *other* leg this time.
Head In A Hatbox And that’s what was buried in the flower bed.
Sound Track: One of the cool things about REAR WINDOW is that all of the music (except for the opening title music) comes from some source - a radio, the composer playing his piano, a record playing in an apartment across the courtyard. The opening title music and the song the composer is struggling with are written by Franz Waxman and have a jazzy sound to them. By the way, the composer is played by the guy who would later become “David Seville” from the Chipmunks cartoons (and novelty records). But the real sounds of the street, of people talking, of music on radios far away gives the film a feeling of overheard life that matches the voyeuristic plot. They actually measured off the distance between source of the sound and Jeff’s apartment and recorded the music from that distance so that it would sound right. And everything has that tinny real life sound. The sound design on this film is probably never discussed, but’s amazing.
REAR WINDOW is one of the best Hitchcock films - and holds up pretty well. I haven’t mentioned the dialogue, but everyone has great lines in this film. Instead of some bland answer to a question, characters rattle off great one-liners that fit their characters and are clever as can be. I wish I could write stuff this good. Watching it again to write this, I think it’s one of the best films ever made about the difficulties of modern romance and the problems involved with chopping up bodies *and* getting your apartment cleaning deposit back.
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: When Concepts Conflict! and a long forgotten Eddie Murphy movie. Yesterday’s Dinner: Salad - healthy! Bicycle: Rode into Toluca Lake to meet Jeremiah Daws. Pages: Well, this blog post... but still stuck on a scene on the spec.
I'll be teaching at the Screenwriting Conference in Santa Fe again this year, and becuase I've postponed my Los Angeles class - this may end up being the only class I teach this year. And it's only a month and a half away!
I'm sure I mentioned before that Santa Fe and the Raindance Film Festival are the reasons why I taught classes in the first place. Both called at about the same time a decade ago and asked if I wanted to teach a class for them, and I told both that I didn't teach classes, and both said: Come out out and try it, you'll like it! I've always been terrible at public speaking, so I thought it might be a good idea to deal with that - so I said yes to both.
Santa Fe was great, and that first year I basically just did a class based on my book Secrets Of Action Screenwriting. I've gone back several times over the years, and was there last year with Josh Olson - who will not read your fucking screenplay (except he read portions of his student's screenplays as part of his class). The great thing about Santa Fe is that Larry tries to keep it Working Professional Writers as teachers. So your teacher may be an Emmy Winner or and Oscar Nominee like Josh or some dude with a bunch of awful action films that play every week on the UK's version of Spike TV like me. But he tries to avoid that thing other conferences do where it's a bunch of Script Gurus with consulting services who have never sold a script telling you how to write... while plugging their own services. At Santa Fe, you learn from people who do it for a living.
And there's access. I mentioned in my blog entries last year that I went out to dinner with a group of students every night I was there - and so did almost everyone else. I was also in the hotel bar every night with some of teh other teachers and many students - and we talked screenwriting. I answered a bunch of questions from people who were not in my class - which is cool because you may get a different answer from me than from one of the other pros (we all have different experiences). Though I'm pretty easy to talk to at someplace like Expo, I've done events where we were kept separate from the students the whole time. Expo is kind of like that - one year at the "mixer" party that students paid money to attend, all of the teachers were in the "VIP room" upstairs. I felt guilty and went down to hang out with the students. Santa Fe - no walls, no separations. There's always a "mega panel" with all of the instructors answering student's questions, and students and teachers eat lunch in the hotel restaurant together - sit at my table if you want.
So this year I'm back in Santa Fe, and in addition to my 3 day class where I tear apart your first ten pages and go through all of the elements of writing (this year we're going to look at concepts, too) - I'm doing a short class based on the *revised* Secrets Of Action Screenwriting book. Kind of a flashback to that first class I did in Santa Fe a decade ago.
If you're interested in taking my class, there are still a couple of seats available, check it out!
Here is last year's blog entry on my adventures: Santa Fe 2010.
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Self Discipline - not as much fun as self bondage... Dinner: City Wok - Tomato Beef Pages: No sleep yesterday, so no pages written. Bicycle: Yes, short ride.
Screenplay by George Tabori and William Archibald based on the play by Paul Anthelme.
How is this for topical: A Catholic Priest has an affair with a married woman, which leads to a bit of trouble with the church and his parishioners? Okay, just to make it juicy, the woman is married to an elected government official. Sound like something you saw on 60 Minutes last week? Well, it’s all part of Hitchcock’s 38th movie, I CONFESS. A dark, brooding film about guilt that you may not have heard of... but is worth checking out.
Nutshell: In Quebec, poor church handyman Otto Keller (O.E. Hasse) decides to break into dirtbag lawyer Villette’s house and steal two thousand dollars, which will change his life completely. Villette has a lot of undeclared cash sitting around, due to his sideline as the local blackmailer. When Keller is caught in the act, he kills Villette and goes back to the church to hide... Where he runs into Father Logan (Montgomery Clift) and confesses what he has done. And how he managed to avoid suspicion walking on the streets late at night - by borrowing one of Logan’s priest’s cossacks. As Keller tells his wife later, “He can not tell them what he heard in confession”. But here’s the problem: Villette was blackmailing the wife of prominent politician Grandfort (Anne Baxter) because she once slept with Logan. The detective investigating the murder LaRue (Karl Malden) has eyewitnesses that place a priest at the scene of the murder, and the evidence begins to mount against Logan... but he can not break his vows and tell LaRue what Keller told him in confession. This gives us our falsely accused man, not on the run, and with a Catholic twist. Hitch, a life-long Catholic, gets to explore issues close to him in an exciting thriller format.
Experiment: As far as cinematic experiments are concerned, nothing major - the film has dark, brooding black & white cinematography, but that’s not an experiment, just great lighting.
As far as story is concerned, there are probably two things that are of interest, the way the story flows between characters (which we’ll look at in a moment) and the concept of transference of guilt between characters. Even though Keller is the killer, once he confesses to Logan it becomes Logan’s problem... and even though Logan is not guilty he must deal with the guilt. This was explored in Hitchcock’s previous film, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, which we will look at next week. There are echoes of I CONFESS in movies like THE SILENT PARTNER and BAD INFLUENCE - especially the idea of a psychopath and a fairly normal guy who made one little mistake becoming almost partners in the crime. They have a relationship built on some horrible thing, which one did and the other is blamed for. The moment Logan hears what Keller has done, it is as if Logan has done that thing... as if he killed Villette. He takes on Keller’s guilt and can’t shake it until the end of the story.
Probably the two greatest experiments for Hitchcock in the film was working with Method actors like Karl Malden and Montgomery Clift - he usually worked with big personality actors, and here he works with more internal actors. But it works in this story. Clift has that dark, brooding quality that perfectly fits the character, and Malden is a very external method actor who was best known for his stage roles at this time. The other experiment for Hitchcock was shooting on location - most movies were still shot on the back lot, and Hitchcock took the whole crew up to Quebec and shot most of the film on actual locations. You get a real feel for the city.
Hitch Appearance: A couple of minutes in, walking on a path above a stairway, almost a complete silhouette.
Great Scenes: One of the cool things about this film is that it is filled with confession scenes. It’s almost wall-to-wall Perry Mason Moments (those scenes on the TV show where Perry Mason starts with “Isn’t it true...” and ends up getting the person on the witness stand to admit to killing someone... and that kind of fits, because a section of this film *is* a murder trial with some moments like that). The script is filled with juicy reveal scenes. And, though I’d have to watch it a few more times, I suspect that the Keller character manages to break most of the Ten Commandments and most of the Seven Deadly Sins as well. He seems like a nice guy, but is filled with envy and lust and pride and covets just about everything he doesn’t get around to stealing. This is another Hitchcock film that I really appreciated after seeing it again. The writing is great, the characters are amazing... and just watching Keller crumble from a seemingly nice guy to a killer who can justify just about any heinous act to stay alive is amazing.
Opening Scene: How do you create an opening that pulls us into the story without dialogue? That has a thematic element, say, like a finger pointing in accusation? This story has Quebec standing in for... Quebec! And we begin with the city, where a traffic arrow points down a street. Another street, another traffic arrow. A smaller street, and another traffic arrow. We are going from an over view of the city to a specific place... with the arrows pointing the way. The final arrow points down a small street to a lighted window... where Villette lays dead on the floor of his office. We follow the killer, in a priest’s cossack, as he walks down the dark street, passing a pair of school girls in uniform... ending up at a beautiful ornate Catholic church.
Confession: Along the way the Priest takes off his cossack, so when he approaches Father Logan, we know that it is Keller. He tells Logan that he is thankful for all that he has done for himself and his wife, but has done a terrible thing, and needs to make a confession. In the confessional, Keller tells Logan that he didn’t mean to kill Villette, but he was frightened at being discovered, frightened by possibly having to go to jail... so he killed the man. He manages to justify his stealing by saying that Villette had so much money... it just seemed fair to take some.
Chess Match Dialogue: One of the things which not only creates suspense with dialogue, but is also realistic, are verbal chess matches. I CONFESS is filled with them, and has some of the most interesting dialogue jousts of any Hitchcock film. The morning after, Mrs. Keller (Dolly Haas) is serving all of the Priests breakfast... and she wants to know whether Father Logan has told the other Priests, will tell the other Priests, and will tell the police about the confession. But she can not overtly ask this question without giving it away to the others... so as she serves breakfast her focus is on Logan, and she mentions that her husband is at Villette’s. Wednesday is the day he tends to Villette’s garden... and she watches Logan’s reaction. What will he do? Now, a dopey story note might be that Mrs. Keller would never mention Villette, she would want no one to think of the murder victim. Why even bring him up? But for Mrs. Keller to learn anything, she must take that chance and mention the murder victim’s name... to gauge Logan and te other Priest’s reactions. She must make a move for the opponent to make a move. She must take a risk to be rewarded with information. It’s not stupid if it’s the only way to slyly get the information.
Character To Character Flow: One of the most important thing in a screenplay is *flow* - moving from scene to scene seamlessly. This is especially important when you are first introducing the characters, to show us the relationship between them. I call this the “string theory” - you want to have each character be linked as if they are knots on the same piece of string. One character leads us to the next. So far we have had the murderer, Keller, lead us from the victim Villette to Father Logan. Now Father Logan leads us back to the crime scene, where he meets Detective LaRue. Here we get some more chess match dialogue as Logan tries to find out how much LaRue knows... and discovers that Keller has pretended to discover the body, and is being the perfect cooperative citizen. Now that we have Detective LaRue introduced, we stick with him as Father Logan leaves the crime scene... and bumps into Mrs. Grandfort on the street. LaRue sees this through the window in a great shot where he is interviewing Keller and we can see the street through the window behind him. On that street, Logan tells Mrs. Grandfort that Villette has been murdered, and there’s this pause where she may be wondering if Logan killed him. You wonder what the relationship is between these two. It is *not* the standard Priest / Parishioner relationship. Now we follow Mrs. Grandfort as she goes to the Provence government building, where everybody seems to know her... and where she meets her big time politician husband and asks if he would like to go to lunch. He says she seems less troubled than she was earlier in the day... Now we are wondering why that is. Why would Villette’s murder make a politician’s wife less troubled? Maybe even happy? As one character meets the next, we not only learn their relationship to each other (or create some mystery about it) we also link each element of te story in a logical way that creates a flow to the story. Instead of a jagged, jumbled cut from one character to the next where we do not understand what the heck this person has to do with the story, each character and story element is connected. Easy for us to follow.
Girls? One of my favorite dialogue techniques is misunderstandings. In real life we have no idea what the person we are talking to is going to say, and once said, we don’t know exactly what they mean by it. So we run it through *our* filters and *our* mental filing cabinet and come up with what *we* think they meant, and respond to that. In a bad script, the characters respond as if they know exactly what the other person meant - which is impossible unless you are a mind reader. In a good script, no one understands what the other person means 100%, and these slight misunderstandings (or major ones) create realistic dialogue that doesn’t seem as if it is planned, but just kind of free-forms back and forth across the line where the scene is going. It doesn’t follow the line directly, so it seems as if the characters are making it up... when, in fact, the writer knows where the dialogue is going but has planned some unpredictability.
The Prosecutor (Brian Aherne) is introduced as a guy who takes nothing seriously - throughout the story he does all of these silly parlor tricks: balancing a glass of water on his forehead while doing the limbo, using the silverware on the table to create odd sculptures, etc. These things show us his character, and make him and interesting character. When LaRue says he has a couple of girls waiting outside the Prosecutors office, he gives a leer, “Girls?” Which turns what would have been just a scene introducing the two little school girls who say the priest that night into a gag *and* a fun little twist *and* a way to show the Prosecutors character... and LaRue’s character - because we get his no-nonsense reaction. This makes the scene seem real - the D.A, has no idea who is waiting outside the door, and he jumps to the wrong conclusion.
Priest Sandwich: Keller returns to the church and has a conversation in front of the other priests which is aimed directly at Logan. The police do not suspect Keller at all. Then a policeman comes for Logan... LaRue would like to ask him some questions at the police station. This creates some suspense - Keller doesn’t know if Logan will give him up. He can’t go along to the police station to find out what Logan will say.
Logan goes to the police station where he is questioned by LaRue... about Mrs. Grandfort. Logan is very evasive, which makes him look guilty. He refuses to explain what his relationship with Mrs. Grandfort is, or why both of them ended up at the crime scene the morning after the murder. LaRue tells Logan that there are witnesses who saw a Priest leave the crime scene. Then he asks where Logan was at the time of the murder... and Logan is again evasive!
What is great about this situation is that Logan is trapped between the real murderer, Keller, and Detective LaRue. Logan has great scenes with Keller and great scenes with Detective LaRue... and there is no way for him not to get crushed in between without breaking his vows. LaRue is logic and reason and the law. Logan is faith and the church. And Keller is a man who has gone astray. These elements battle it out throughout the story. At one point, Keller tells Logan, “You are so good. It is easy for you to be good.” He also asks at one point if Logan is human. We discover that Logan is only too human... but where Logan is what is good in man, Keller is what is bad in man. As I said, Keller’s fear of being caught makes him do more bad things. He begins as a normal man and becomes a psychopath by the end of the film. Keller decides to use the bloody cossack to pin the murder on Father Logan. He bears false witness.
We get a great link from characters to characters again to keep the story flowing smoothly. After Logan leaves LaRue’s office, LaRue calls the Prosecutor... who is at a party at the Grandfort’s house. They want to begin a case against Logan. When the Prosecutor leaves, we stick around with the Grandforts after all of their guests have left... and Mr. Grandfort gets his wife to confess... that she is in love with Father Logan and always has been! We wondered what the relationship was, and now it is revealed. After Grandfort leaves the room, Mrs. Grandford calls... Logan. And after this phone conversation, we are back with Logan in the church.
More Confessions: At the police station, Detective LaRue starts hardballing questions at Father Logan and Mrs. Grandfort... in front of the Prosecutor and Mr. Grandfort. Both are evasive - they have plenty to hide, but we are not sure of the details, yet. But the more LaRue hammers away, the more uncomfortable it becomes until Mrs. Grandford confesses... to almost everything. Starting with her affair with Logan. Which is shocking stuff.
We get this confession in a flashback. What makes the flashback interesting is it is Mrs. Grandfort’s memory of what happened... and not impartial or objective. In her memory, what happened was a story of star-crossed lovers, and the flashback is kind of the trashy romance version of what happened. Before Logan was a priest, he was a young man going off to war... and Mrs. Grandfort was his girlfriend. While he was away at war, she took a job as Grandfort’s secretary. When Logan stopped writing to her, she began dating Grandfort and married him. But when Logan returned from the war, an emotionally scarred man, she met with him... and slept with him... (and in an early draft of the script, had a child by him - but the censors made Hitchcock remove the child, since that would overtly prove infidelity instead of just ***strongly*** hint at it as the film does)... and they are discovered by Villette in each other’s arms. But Logan is so scarred by what he has seen in the war he joins the priesthood, and for several years has just been Mrs. Grandford’s found memory of a fling with Mr. Right... until Villette showed up and wanted to be paid for his silence.
In my thriller class on CD I talk about the small sin that leads to the large sin, and here it’s the returning soldier version of Logan sleeping with the woman he loves... not knowing that she has married while he was away. That’s what causes all of the problems which follow, because had there been no connection between Logan and Villette, there would be no police suspicion that Logan is the killer.
Mrs. Grandfort confesses that she was with Logan at the time of the murder. Discussing what to do about Villette. And Logan told her that he would take care of it.
Reversals: Now that this huge scandal has been revealed, and Logan has his alibi for the time of Villette’s murder, you might think that Detective LaRue would move on to other suspects and maybe even realize that Keller has access to a cossack and knew Villette.. But instead, the coroner comes back with a more precise time of death, and it is later than they first believed. Not only could Logan have killed Villette, but didn’t Mrs. Grandfort say that Logan would “take care” of Villette for her?
Logan Thinks: Without an alibi, Father Logan goes on the run... except this isn’t NORTH BY NORTHWEST and he’s a Priest, so he just takes a walk around the city to think of what he should do. How do you show what someone is thinking? Here we get a great example of visual storytelling, because everything that Father Logan passes on the street shows him a different possible outcome for his dilemma. A traffic cop seems to be pointing at him in accusation... but he’s just directing traffic. A movie poster shows a man in handcuffs being lead away by two policemen. A clothing store has a mannequin in a suit in the window... should he change out of his Priest’s cossack to blend with the rest of the city? He has sinned, should he quit the Priesthood? He passes a church with statues of Christ carrying his cross. His burden. The burden of knowing what Keller said in confession, yet being unable to tell the police and prove his innocence. He goes into the church... and prays... and makes his decision. He goes to the police station to turn himself in.
One Woman Jury: Point of view is one of the most important tools a screenwriter has... not using POV as a shot, but showing the action from a character’s perspective instead of being completely uninvolved in the story. We ave a Catholic Priest on trial for murder - that pretty much fills up a courtroom with press and spectators. But instead of giving us this scene from Father Logan’s point of view, or Keller’s point of view, or even the Prosecutor’s point of view; this scene is told from *Mrs. Keller’s* point of view as she watches in the gallery. She knows the truth. She watches as that silly Prosecutor turns into a clever, very competent Prosecutor who manages to get every single bit of evidence to point to Logan’s guilt. She watches her husband’s testimony, waiting for him to confess... but he does not. She watches Mrs. Grandfort’s testimony, which exposes all kinds of deep secrets to the public, with her husband sitting next to her... will he put a stop to this by confessing? He does not. She watches Father Logan on the stand, as he protects Mrs. Grandfort’s reputation the nest he can... then is questioned about the night of the murder. Will Logan break his vows now that his life is on the line? Will he tell what really happened? Logan does not break his vows... and when he gives a slightly different account of his meeting with Keller *before* the confession, it makes it look like Logan is lying. Mrs. Keller keeps waiting for the truth to come out - but it does not. She looks at her husband sitting beside her, waiting for him to tell the truth so tat this innocent priest does not go to prison for the rest of his life... but he says nothing. By writing this scene from Mrs. Keller’s seat it the gallery, we see the trial from the most interesting perspective, rather than just a flat telling of the scene.
The Verdict: What’s the worst that can happen? If they find Logan guilty, the conflict is over and Logan is carted off to prison... so that is *not* the worst thing that could happen. The jury comes back with a not guilty verdict, but the judge makes it clear that this does not mean Logan is innocent - the judge believes he is guilty, but there was not enough evidence to convict. Which means Logan has this cloud over him forever. When he leaves the courthouse, the crowd jeers him, “Take off that collar!” The crowd tries to tear him apart! It looks like he’s going to be lynched!
And that’s when Mrs. Keller breaks away from her husband at the courthouse steps and runs to Logan. She tells a police officer that Logan is innocent, and turns to point at her husband... who turns to point his gun at her! He shoots his own wife to shut her up, then goes on the run. Logan cradles her as she lays dying. LaRue wants to hear what she said - will she exonerate Logan with her dying words? No. Her dying words are, “Forgive me.” She dies without letting Logan off the hook for murder.
Final Confession: But Keller is now on the run for killing his wife. And LaRue wants him captured alive so that he get Keller to confess to Villette’s murder. But Keller has escaped into a huge hotel, and he is armed and dangerous, and it will not be easy for the police to take him alive. Problem is, if they kill Keller, the cloud will forever be over Logan’s head. So we get a really exciting chase through the hotel (maybe the first kitchen shoot out on film), ending with Keller trapped in the hotel’s theater. LaRue and Logan are now a team against Keller... and after LaRue tries to get Keller to confess to Villette’s murder without success, it’s up to Logan to walk in, unarmed, and get a confession. By this point, Keller is a paranoid maniac - he even blames Logan for the death of his wife! Logan “made him kill her”. Logan finally gets his confession, Keller is shot by the police... and begs Logan to help him, forgive him. Logan cradles him as he lays dying and gives him his last rights. The end.
Sound Track: Dimitri Tiomkin with a great score, it becomes especially important in the scenes without dialogue to give us the emotions below the surface. Tiomkin can go over the line into that “big score” thing, but here he uses his gift for strong rhythm to add weight to scenes and keep the suspense high.
I CONFESS is kind of a “lost” Hitchcock film. No one talks about it, it seldom shows in revival houses or on TV... yet it’s an interesting film with some great performances and some really great dramatic scenes.
Lancelot Link Thursday! For those of you who think they need to remake John Landis' movie SCHLOCK! with modern special effects, here are some articles about screenwriting and the biz plus some fun stuff that may be of interest to you. Brought to you by that suave and sophisticated secret agent...
Here are five cool links plus this week's car chase...
6) This week's car chase is from NO PROBLEM! a 1975 comedy that's kind of a riff on THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY...
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Revealing - which is not about turning an adult cow back into the baby cow. Dinner: Burger, onion rings & Barney's Beanery. Pages: Still trying to dive back into this script after working on 2 others for a week... and struggling. Bicycle: No - had a screening to go to.
This is probably because I’m officially an old man, but I wonder why kids don’t seem to care about anything but themselves anymore. And, I’m fairly sure I was one of these kids once - but also fairly sure I had slightly better manners.
It's been cool in Los Angeles lately - after a couple of days of 80', we've gone back to winter for some reason. I’m sitting in a Starbucks by the door and a whole flock of really loud kids enter - school just let out, I guess - and as soon as I think “indoor voices please” the kids manage to click the door to “stay open mode” and don’t close it, just stand in line with the door open and the overhead fly fan going crazy and cold air blowing in. After a few moments of the door open next to me, I get up and close it.
Cut to: same girls, same door... on their way out. Again, they click the door to “stay open mode” and again no one closes it. Now, this happens all of the time - and it’s not only kids - there are many adults who also leave the damned door open. But this time I decide to step outside before closing the door and ask the kids to please come back and close the door that they opened...
And they yelled at me. So I yelled back that they opened the door, they need to close it. And they yelled some more and called me names. Um, these are like 12 year old girls. They called me things I wouldn’t call my worst enemy.
Door: still open.
But here’s the question - what do you do now to get these people to close the door? I can continue to close doors for strangers for the rest of my life, but I didn’t open these doors, and it’s not my responsibility to close them. And If I don’t close them, it just trickles down to someone else like me who also did not open the door. If none of us closes the door, it gets cold inside Starbucks and we all suffer and eventually some employee who should be making your drink has to get out from behind the counter and close the door. Then, your drink is late - and maybe you are late for a meeting - and maybe because you are late you get fired or don’t get the job or some other terrible thing. Yes, I’m kind of making mountains out of molehills, but how many times in your life have things gone wrong because your timing was off by a minute? And, even though I’m specifically talking about closing doors, here, there are lots of other things that are just like this - where people just don’t care and cut across three lanes of freeway traffic to make their exit because they forgot to merge over... and cause a ten car pile up? These little things are really big things.
The person who opens the door should also shut it.
We are all human. We have all left some door open somewhere. I’m sure the reason why I stuck my head out the door and asked these kids to come back and close the door is because they did this *twice* in the space of 5 minutes... and didn’t notice and didn’t care. So, I’m imagining hundreds of doors all over Los Angeles left open by this group of 12 year old girls. And they have learned that this is okay, and will keep leaving doors open all of their lives - billions of open doors that others have to close!
Poliely asking did not work. Demanding did not work. What *does* work?
The door was sill open.
I closed it on my way back inside.
Sometimes, you just have to do it yourself... even if it's not your responsibility. You can complain about things that are wrong, or you can work to change them.
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Revealing - which is not about turning an adult cow back into the baby cow. Dinner: Burger, onion rings & Barney's Beanery. Pages: Still trying to dive back into this script after working on 2 others for a week... and struggling. Bicycle: No - had a screening to go to.
Over the weekend I went to Monsterpalooza 3, and every year it is *more crowded* than the last. This year, I looked outside at about 3pm and there was still a line *around the building*!
So, I was supposed to meet my friend Rod there, and looked all over for him... bumping in to other friends and talking with them along the way. As the day went on, I hadn't seen him, and decided to call. Should have done that earlier, but I figured we were in the same very crowded building and eventually would spot each other. Rod picks up - he's just left the venue. He was there - but it was so crowded we never even saw each other!
I went to a couple of panels - the guy who played Godzilla (in the suit) was speaking - a little old Japanese man who told amusing stories about being dressed in rubber and hanging from wires and sometimes being injured in a fight with some other stuntman in a rubber monster suit, but not telling anyone because it took so long to get the suit on and get hooked up to the wires that it was easier to work injured.
As a kid, GODZILLA movies were weekend afternoon TV movie staples. They were silly fun, and I've always been a fan of the big guy. Also Mothra. And Mothra's caterpillars. And those two little girls in the bird cage. I had a Godzilla plastic model and some Godzilla toys and a Godzilla movie poster. Mostly as a goof. Later I had a movie poster for Larry Cohen's IT'S ALIVE, a goofy movie that was actually about something...
The next panel was for THE HOWLING, which is one of my favorite movies. I fell in love with Belinda Balaski in PIRANHA and she and John Sayles and Joe Dante all went on to make HOWLING together. Also on the panel - Dee Wallace (who is in my INVISIBLE MOM movie) and Robert Picardo (this was his first film), and one of Rob Bottin's FX make up team. They had some good stories - one day Bottin took 13 hours putting the werewolf make up on Picardo... and by the time he was done they had run out of time to shoot! Other stories about the difficulties of acting opposite FX to be added later, and the stop motion scenes that were cut out of the film. Dante talked a lot about John Sayles contributions, and the decision to add humor - because audiences can find unintentional humor in an overly serious horror flick, so if you mix a little humor in they laugh at that instead and aren't trying to make fun of the real scares. The whole EST thing was Sayles' contribution, too. I know all of this stuff from reading every article on the film when it came out, but cool to see the real people talk about it. Belinda still looks great.
The next panel was American Grindhouse, and featured a bunch of great film makers - Joe Dante stuck around, but the highlights for me were the amazing Larry Cohen (IT'S ALIVE - and dozens of others, plus *hundreds* of screenplays from DADDY'S GONE A HUNTING (1969) to PHONE BOOTH and CELLULAR (a few years ago), plus Jack Harris (FOXY BROWN and THE BIG DOLL HOUSE) and Bill Lustig (MANIAC COP and RELENTLESS). All of that talent onstage, and the moderator (director of the doc AMERICAN GRINDHOUSE, which is great and a free view on Hulu if you are in the USA) screwed it up by not having any prepared questions and then asking a bunch of silly questions about experiences in 42 Street cinemas in the 70s. Huh? No real questions about making the films (though in the doc Larry Cohen tells some greats tories about shooting the end of BLACK CAESAR on the streets of New York with no permits and just people walking down the street as accidental extras. Fred Williamson (in my CROOKED movie) gets shot and staggers down the street bleeding and eventually falls over and dies - all with real New Yorkers as unknowing extras! I would have loved to have Lustig talk about making movies for grindhouses & drive ins... and then make similar movies for Cinetel like HIT LIST and RELENTLESS (great low budget flick) and then do direct to video stuff like UNCLE SAM. Nobody asked.
After that I did a final loop through the event and then went to the hotel bar and had me some beers on an empty stomach. Darin Scott and many from the Thursday Night Gang were there, plus Tyger Torres (was his birthday), and a bunch of others. I hung out, talked to Don about his DIY feature, and eventually realized I'd better get on the bike and pedal home while I could still balance. In previous blog entries I've talked about what the event is all about, so I'm linking those entries below:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Is Your Screenplay Ready? - a few ways to figure out. Dinner: McD's chicken club while in transit on the bike. Pages: No. Well, actually a page - but that wasn't enough. Trying to dive back into this script after working on 2 others for a week. Bicycle: Yes. I've been doing medium rides every day. I've also thrown the bike on the front of the Orange Line "bullet bus" to ride in far off lands west of here.
Movies: YOUR HIGHNESS - It was better than I was lead to expect from the reviews, and I liked it more than PINEAPPLE... but have no idea how this will ever show on network TV. It's seriously R rated. I laughed, and thought the elements of parody were fun (from the mechanical bird to the endless shots of them marching on mountain tops like in LOTR). I also thought the hand villain guy was a cool idea. Some of the gags didn't work, but it had a story that made sense. I think the problem with a film like PINEAPPLE is that you have this shaggy dog nonsense story, so when gags don't work - nothing works. At least here we had a story to fall back on when a gag fell flat with a splat. Not a great movie (may use one of the big flaws in a script tip - dude starts out as a whinny worthless slacker... and ends up as one, too... I could not understand why he's a hero at the end) but no reason for the critics to trash it to this extreme. I think all of the reviews I read hated it because it was raunchy... and that's what it was supposed to be - a raunchy comedy. Well, it's seriously raunchy, but that's kind of the point.
What's interesting to me about this film: it tested *really* well and everyone thought it was going to be a big hit... but it wasn't. Is that because McBride isn't a star? Because they didn't want to see a raunchy comedy this week? Because there's a difference between test screenings and when a film opens?
Seeing a (secret) movie Tuesday and may see HANNA on Wednesday.
I may have posted this before, it's from Improv Everywhere. They posted an April Fools clip where Jar Jar Binks gets the beat up on the subway a few days ago, which wasn't fun to watch. (As much as I dislike Jar Jar, I don't want to see him get beaten the crap out of.) This clip is fun...
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: When You Want To Hurt The World - and James Bond movies. Dinner: Hawaiian BBQ chicken. Pages: Saturday - not much sleep or writing, Sunday - not much sleep again, but I did some outline work. Bicycle: Good rides on both Sat & Sunday - though both days were overcast and I feared rain. Movies: SOURCE CODE and INSIDIOUS and SUPER... was going to see BATTLE: LA, too but was tired.
Like REAR WINDOW, this is another “Perfect Storm” movie for me: Patricia Highsmith is another one of my favorite writers and it’s a shame that Hitchcock only brought one of her novels to the screen because they seem like a perfect match. Highsmith played in the noir playground, often taking the villain’s side and showing how difficult it is to lead a life of crime. Her short stories are often brutal, and she has a way of getting under your skin so that you can’t stop thinking about some scene or nasty plot twist. When you read one of her books and someone does something very very wrong, you often think, “I could do that. I can imagine myself killing someone like that.” And you *shouldn’t* be able to imagine doing these things yourself. But her books take you so far into that world, you can imagine crossing whatever moral lines you might have.
These days, Highsmith is probably best known as the writer of THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY which was made in to a film with Matt Damon. That’s the first in a series about Tom Ripley, badguy, and by now most have been made into films. What’s ironic is that the best Ripley film is Wim Wenders’ excellent Hitchcock homage AMERICAN FRIEND... with probably the worst Ripley, Dennis Hopper. Just completely miscast. The best Ripley is John Malkovich - he was born to play the role - in the bland remake of FRIEND called RIPLEY’S GAME (title of the novel). I still haven’t seen Barry Pepper’s version in RIPLEY UNDER GROUND, the last of the original trilogy to be filmed.
STRANGERS was the first Highsmith novel to be filmed, and now they are talking about remaking it... a better idea would be to make THE BLUNDERER (filmed in France ages ago), a similar story about two men and two murders. But I don’t think anyone in Hollywood actually knows how to read, so we’ll just be getting remakes of the movies.
Oh, and add in that hardboiled novelist Raymond Chandler took first crack at the script, and the “perfect storm” is complete. Chandler and Hammett and Carroll John Daly were the founders of the Hardboiled genre, and when I was in high school I read everything of theirs I could get my hands on. Chandler wrote the novels THE BIG SLEEP and MURDER, MY SWEET are based on, and the books are sarcastic and brutal and show a corrupt Los Angeles where the people in the mansions are often more dangerous than the thugs on the streets. Though Chandler’s name is on a couple of great films, he wasn’t very successful as a screenwriter. He didn’t get along with anyone, and had a drinking problem. On STRANGERS he was replaced by Czenzi Ormonde, one of Ben Hecht’s assistants.
Nutshell: Tennis player Guy Haines (Farley Granger) meets spoiled heir Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker) on a train, where Bruno tells him his plan for a perfect murder - in order to have a perfect alibi and not leave behind any personal evidence, two people with someone to kill *swap murders* - they each do the other’s killing. Though Guy has a crazy estranged wife knocked up by some other guy (she’s not sure who) he would like removed from is life, he laughs it off as a joke. But after his estranged wife (Laura Elliot) is strangled to death, Bruno shows up at his doorstep and demands that Guy kill his stern millionaire father who wants Bruno to, you know, get a job. When Guy refuses, Bruno threatens to plant evidence at Guy’s wife’s murder scene that points directly to Guy. Will Guy kill Bruno’s father... or be arrested and probably convicted for murdering his slutty wife?
All of this is complicated because Guy is leaving tennis for... politics! He is working for Senator Morton (Leo G. Carroll) and dating the Senator’s hot daughter Ann (Ruth Roman) and adored by the Senator’s teenaged daughter Barbara (Patricia Hitchcock, director’s daughter). Guy thought his estranged wife was a problem while she was alive... wait until he’s accused of her murder!
Experiment This is one dark story, and the story experiment is the transference of guilt between Guy and Bruno (from the novel). The story frequently cross-cuts between both characters for suspense as well - and does it in interesting ways.
The film experiment is in sound design. There are several points in the film where a *sound* becomes the flashback. Instead of a visual flashback, we get the sound of a train or a calliope at the amusement park to remind us of a past event.
Also the use of visual symbols, from hands that are used to strangle to glasses that both Guy’s murdered wife and Guy’s girlfriend’s sister wears. If you just watch for the use of hands in the film, you’ll see they pop up again and again - aside from strangling, characters get manicures, they look at their hands, there are big close ups of *hands* doing things throughout the film. Things like this can be in a screenplay, but may be too subtle for most readers to notice. That’s no reason not to put them in, but don’t be surprised when 99% of the folks who read your script never notice.
Hitch Appearance: Carrying a massive string base trying to board a train.
Great Scenes: STRANGERS ON A TRAIN has a couple of iconic Hitchcock scenes that get swiped for other movies and homages. But even the lesser known scenes are packed with tension and suspense and just plain creepiness. This is a film that gets under your skin, because as Bruno says in a scene. Haven’t we all fantasized about killing someone? And haven’t you ever struck up a conversation with a stranger who becomes ever more stranger the more you talk to them?
The movie opens with two sets of train tracks joining into one... and two pair of legs (with very different taste in shoes that give us a clue to character) are on a similar collision course. One going right, one going left... both entering a train... then the shoes takes seats and bump into each other as both sets of legs cross at the same time. That’s the first time we tilt up to see Guy and Bruno’s faces... and Bruno insinuates himself into Guy’s train trip and his life... and comes up with his murder swap idea. Guy laughs it off and gets off the train, leaving his monogrammed cigarette lighter behind.
Listening Booth: Guy was taking the train to his home town to try and negociate a divorce with his estranged wife so that he can marry the Senator’s daughter. His slutty wife Miriam works in a music store with several glass-walled sound proof listening booths, and one of those booths is where they have their little conversation. It is a great location, because if we look at the booth from the outside we get picture without sound. That allows for some interesting choices for the way the scene is presented.
We begin inside the booth as Miriam refuses to grant Guy a divorce. He tries to hang on to his temper by asking her why she wants to remain married to him when she is carrying another man’s baby. Woah! This is a 1951 movie, can they talk about stuff like that? Even in a soundproof booth? What’s more, it’s later implied that she ha no idea who that other man is. She’s “playing the field” and dating a whole bunch of other men. We always think of movies from sixty years ago as being G rated, and some were... but not Hitchcock’s films. Sex was part of all of his films, and here we have a married man who is probably sleeping another woman while his wife is sleeping with just about everybody. And she thinks remaining married to Guy while his political star rises will put her in a much better position when she eventually does grant him a divorce. And what is he going to say? His wife got knocked up by some other guy? He *can’t* divorce her without looking like he’s running out on his pregnant wife.
When Guy loses his temper, we go outside the booth and see the scene from the music store manager’s point of view. Guy seems to suddenly explode with violence and attack his wife in a rage. The manager has to go pull him off of her. The great thing about this scene is that the manager has no idea what Miriam has said, no idea she’s blackmailing Guy and maybe even destroying his political career. He only sees Guy go crazy and attack his wife. If the audience is a little ahead of the curve and guesses that Bruno may act on his crazy scheme and murder Miriam, this scene ratchets up the tension. Now there are witnesses that have seen Guy attack his wife. All of these things will make Guy look guilty and probably get him arrested, tried, convicted and executed for murder.
Tunnel Of Love: The next time we see Miriam, Bruno is following her. She gets on a bus with not one, but two, hunky younger guys... and Bruno hops on the same bus. Miriam and the boy toys get off the bus at an amusement park... as does Bruno. When Miriam notices Bruno following her, he smiles...and so does she. What is clearly a killer stalking his victim becomes twice as creepy because she flirts with him. When they come to one of those carnival games where your strength is gauged by how hard you can pound a sledge hammer like mallet to ring a bell, the two boy toys just aren’t strong enough to ring the bell. Miriam looks around for the man following her... doesn’t see him, and is *disappointed*. Then spots Bruno grabbing the mallet. They smile at each other, then he easily rings the bell. She licks her lips. Most disturbing.
When Miriam and the boy toys get on a little boat that goes through the tunnel of love before berthing on an island in the middle of the amusement park, Bruno hops in the next boat. In the Tunnel Of Love - darkness and shadows. Echoes of laughter. Suspense builds. The killer and victim in the same dark place. Once the tension builds to the breaking point - what is happening in the darkness? - Miriam screams! We see the shadows of one figure grabbing another on the wall of the Tunnel Of Love - Bruno killing Miriam? No - one of her boy toys copping a feel.
The two boats are beached on the little island - filled with couples making out. Miriam runs through the moonlit trees, her boy toys chasing behind. She’s teasing them. She runs into someone in the darkness - Bruno. He flicks a cigarette lighter - Guy’s monogrammed lighter - to illuminate her face. When she sees it’s that older man who was following her through the amusement park, she smiles... and then Bruno strangles her. Miriam’s glasses fall to the ground - and in a great shot, we see the strangulation reflected in the lenses. She falls to the ground, dead. Bruno starts to leave, realizes he’s dropped Guy’s lighter, goes back for it. Picks up Miriam’s glasses while he’s at it. Then, we hear the boy toys scream when they find Miriam dead. More screams and panic as Bruno calmly pilots his little boat back to the amusement park. While everyone else at the amusement park is looking out at the island, Bruno is calmly walking in the opposite direction. The contrast is creepy.
Your Turn: When Guy returns home, Bruno is waiting in the shadows behind a wrought iron gate across the street, “I did it.” Guy joins him in the shadows, each on opposite sides of the gate - opposite sides of the bars. Bruno tells Guy that he killed Miriam, and now it’s Guy’s turn. Guy doesn’t believe him, so Bruno shows him the glasses. Guy thinks Bruno is crazy, threatens to call the police... But Bruno says he can’t go to the police. “Why would I kill your wife?”
And here we get the Transference of Guilt - Bruno’s guilt rubs off on Guy. Guy wished his wife were dead, and he gets his wish. Even though Bruno was the actual killer, that guilt is transferred to Guy. Not only will everyone else believe that Guy is somehow responsible for his wife’s murder, *Guy* will begin to believe he is responsible for his wife’s murder. And the more he tries to escape the guilt, the deeper he will sink. Evidence will begin to mount, and Guy will have to struggle to prove his innocence. Big problem - he *feels* guilty, and it’s much more difficult for an innocent man to prove what he *didn’t* do. Add to that - innocent men are often bad liars, and this is a situation where Guy *must* lie again and again to people who know him well enough that they can tell that he is lying.
While Guy is realizing that he can not go to te police without looking like an accomplice or worse, a police car pulls up in front of his apartment - police there to tell him that is wife is dead. Guy doesn’t want to be seen, and hides deeper in the shadows with Bruno, moving behind the wrought iron gate. Now both men are on the same side of the gate - the shadowed side. And the iron bars cast shadows over Guy’s face - like jail cell bars. This is a great bit, because the sides of the wrought iron gate give us a way to show the transference of guilt - a way to show that Guy is no longer in the light... and is now in the darkness. A cool device like the gate allows something internal to become external - we can see Guy’s guilt, and see the prison bars across his face.
When the police car leaves, Guy comes out from the darkness and tells Bruno he will *not* kill his father... and to leave him alone.
Bruno - Everywhere! Bruno does not leave him alone, the two are now connected by this murder. Everywhere Guy goes, Bruno is there - watching him.
Guy’s alibi for the time of his wife’s murder is a drunken Professor who was in the club car of the train with him. Note: trains again. The police find the Professor, who was on that train... but has no memory of Guy or anything else from that night. Not much of an alibi. And it would have been possible for Guy to murder his wife and then hop the train at a later station - still seeing the drunken Professor in the club car. The police label Guy as prime suspect and give him 24 hour police surveillance.
Guy befriends one of the detectives following him (they’re both going the same place, so why not split a cab?) but everywhere Guy goes... there is Bruno. Will the Detective notice Bruno and ask who that guy is? Since Bruno is the real killer, and killed Miriam *for* Guy, that last thing he wants is the police finding out about Bruno. The great thing about these scenes is that Bruno as been given a distinctive look, so we can have Guy and the Detective driving past the Lincoln Monument with Bruno standing at the top of the steps... and we *know* that’s Bruno’s silhouette. Paranoia builds... where will Bruno pop up next time? He seems to be everywhere!
Guy and Ann (the Senator’s hot daughter) are having a conversation in some public building when Bruno steps out of the shadows and beckons him over. Guy excuses himself and has a whispered conversation with Bruno about killing his father... not too loud - doesn’t want Ann to overhear. But Ann doesn’t need to hear the words - she can see the two men whispering together. I have no idea how popular Patricia Highsmith’s novels are in the Gay Community, but her stories often have a Gay undercurrent to them. Tom Ripley is obviously bisexual, and in STRANGERS we have two men who share a secret... and it’s almost a metaphor for a Gay affair that a straight man is trying to cover up. While Ann is watching them whisper to each other, you can’t help but feel you are watching a woman discovering that the man she loves... loves another man. After the whispered conversation, when Ann asks what that was all about, Guy lies that it was just a tennis fan... and she knows it’s a lie... and he worries that she knows it’s a lie.
A great example of contrast is a practice match Guy plays as a warm up to a big tennis tournament he’ll be playing in later in the film. This scene not only has Guy trying to act normal while Bruno puts the screws into him to kill his father and the Detective watching him is right over there... Bruno is in the stands! The stands are filled with people watching the match, all of them following the ball back and forth across te court. Except Bruno. As every head turns to follow the ball, Bruno remains focused on Guy. Bruno’s focus is so different than everyone else’s that you wonder if the Detective will notice.
He Was Strangling *Me* After the match, Bruno is chatting with Ann and some friends at the country club. Guy has no choice but to join the table... and be seen with the man he’s trying to avoid. Ann’s little sister, Barbara, asks Guy who the attractive man is... and he has to find some way to warn her away from Bruno without explaining how he knows about him. But when Bruno sees Barbara - and her glasses- the calliope music from the amusement park plays in his mind (and on the soundtrack), and he stares at her. Creepy.
Later, the Senator has a party... and there’s Bruno! Guy tries to avoid him... and Ann watches how both men behave when they are in the same room together. Bruno is the life of the party, chatting with a couple of society matrons about the perfect murder. They laugh at the conversation - he’s joking around. Who would they want to kill if they could? How would they do it and get away with it? The whole conversation is something we’ve probably joked about or thought about - which draws *us* into the guilt. And it’s the same thing as the film’s concept - isn’t there someone we wish were dead? Wouldn’t it be great if we could find some way to kill them and get away with it?
Bruno explains that the very best weapon is one that is easy to conceal and difficult to trace - your bare hands. He puts his hands on one of the matron’s necks to demonstrate... then sees Barbara watching him, and that calliope music plays in his mind again (and on the soundtrack so that we can hear it) and his hands tighten on the matron’s neck. Tighter. Tighter. Tighter! The other matron screams, and they pry Bruno off... and this is Guy’s worst nightmare. The man who murdered his wife, the man he wants to have nothing to do with, has just become the focus of attention. Guy has to find a way to get Bruno out of there before people start asking questions... and he knows that’s not going to happen. The can of worms has been opened. The big deep dark secret about his relationship with Bruno is about to be made public.
Afterwards, Barbara tells Guy that the entire time Bruno was strangling the matron, he was staring right at her. “His hands were on her neck, but he was strangling *me*!”
How Did You Get Him To Kill Her? The secret is out. Ann corners Guy and asks him, “How did you get him to kill her?” Guy can’t lie, can’t hide the truth... must confess everything to the woman he loves. What I think is interesting is that there is a similar scene in REAR WINDOW where Grace Kelly finally comes over to Jimmy Stewart’s side after spending much of the film disbelieving him. The male lead and female lead reach a point where they team up - and together they try to resolve the problem. Guy confesses everything, and even though Ann isn’t completely on his side, she’s getting there. Eventually she and Barbara will help him deal with Bruno.
Killing Bruno’s Father: But before things can get better they must become much much worse. Guy realizes there is no way out of this mess without dragging down the Senator and the woman he loves. Bruno has his lighter and Miriam’s glasses and will plant them as evidence that *Guy* killed her... unless Guy upholds his half of the deal and murders Bruno’s father. Bruno has given him a gun and a map of the house and a key to the front door. Guy makes the toughest decision anyone can make... and calls Bruno to tell him to make sure he has an alibi for tonight.
This scene combines dread and suspense... you don’t want Guy to do it. You also don’t want him to be caught doing it. There is no good way for this scene to end. Something should stop Guy from doing it... but that would mean Guy gets caught. It’s a great dilemma - and it draws the audience right into the scene. Guy crosses a huge lawn to get to the front door - will he be seen? Will he turn around and go back? By stretching it out, it becomes agony for the audience. We are on the scene-rack, and stretching the scene makes it more painful. Guy uses the key the door, and is now in Bruno’s house. At this point, he’s broken the law and is in big trouble no matter what happens. He has the gun in his pocket. He opens the map and finds the stairway leading up to Bruno’s father’s bedroom....
And on the steps is a guard dog.
Growling at him.
He must get past the dog.
Step by step as he climbs the stairs he gets closer to the growling dog.
When he reaches the dog, he holds his hand down for the dog to sniff... or maybe bite off. The dog sniffs him, licks his hand, allows him to continue up the stairs.
And this is more great dilemma stuff, because we *don’t want him* to continue up the stairs. If the dog had attacked him, he wouldn’t be able to kill Bruno’s father. But, now he can... and we don’t want that!
Guy follows the map to Bruno’s father’s room. Pulls the gun from his pocket. Approaches the bed where someone is sleeping. Suspense and tension and dread reaching a boiling point. You don’t want to see what’s going to happen next. And....
Guy whispers - more secrets - to Bruno’s father that Bruno has sent him up here to kill him, and Bruno is a very disturbed person, and needs to be locked away somewhere, and...
The light clicks on and the sleeping man swings out of bed - it’s Bruno. Nothing at all Gay about Bruno in bed having a whispered conversation with Guy at the foot of the bed. Bruno whispers that his father wasn’t home tonight - he tried to tell Guy this when he called. Bruno is not happy with the double cross - and not happy with Guy. He grabs the gun. Guy tries one last time to reason with Bruno, but that is impossible. Guy walks out of the room, down the hall, down the stairs... with Bruno aiming the gun at him the entire time. Will Bruno fire? The closer Guy gets to the front door, the more tension builds.. You *know* Bruno is going to fire. But that would wake mother...
Tennis Match/Lost Lighter: Now we have a great piece of cross-cutting suspense. Bruno is going to plant the monogrammed cigarette lighter at the murder scene the next night... and Guy needs to stop him. Only one problem: that’s the day of the big tennis tournament. So, if Guy can win his match early, he can hop a train and stop Bruno from planting the evidence. Ann and Barbara will help him evade the detectives watching him... which is good, because the police have decided to arrest him after the tennis match. Though all of their evidence is circumstantial, there are no other suspects, and Guy has been acting really guilty.
Guy playing the tennis match is cross-cut with Bruno going out to the amusement park to plant the lighter at the crime scene... But things go wrong on both ends. Guy plays like a lunatic, trying to win the game... but his opponent is much better than he thought and the match ends up tied and is not an easy win. Bruno accidentally drops the cigarette lighter down a drainage grate at the amusement park and has to retrieve it. We cross cut between both actions - will Guy win his match in time to stop Bruno? Will Bruno retrieve the lighter before Guy can win his match? Each action is drawn out to build suspense... and eventually Guy wins his match and Bruno recovers the lighter. Now, can Guy stop Bruno before he plants the lighter on the island?
Carousel Gone Wild: Guy gets to the amusement park *seconds* before Bruno gets on a boat to the island... but the police are in hot pursuit - following Guy. We get a chase and fight that ends up on that carrousel with the calliope music, which goes out of control when the police chasing guy accidentally shoot the operator - who falls onto the controls. As the carrousel starts moving at warp drive - throwing people off - it’s as if both Guy and Bruno are on the same bit of insanity. The carrousel becomes a metaphor for Bruno’s psychosis - and Guy is trapped in it. The two men battle it out on the carrousel as the police watch. The police have found the Tunnel Of Love boat rental dude - and eyewitness who has seen the killer - and ask him if the guy on the carrousel is the same guy. He says “yes”. Now the police are sure that *Guy* is the murderer. A fellow is dispatched to climb under the out-of-control carrousel and switch it off... so that they can capture Guy. Guy continues to battle Bruno... wooden horse hooves almost smashing Guy’s face at one point! The carrousel reaches the breaking point and “crashes” (pieces go flying) (closest thing to an explosion you can get with a carrousel). Bruno is crushed under the carrousel... dying. The police arrest Guy. Not the ending you expected, huh?
The Tunnel Of Love dude says, “No, that’s not him. The other fella.” Guy tells the police that Bruno killed his wife and came here to plant his lighter. They go up to the dying Bruno and try to get him to confess... but he pins it all on Guy! He says Guy asked him to go out to the island to retrieve Guy’s monogrammed lighter, that Guy left behind when he killed Miriam! Then, Bruno dies.
Did Bruno have time to plant the lighter on the island after-all? Is Guy going to be executed for *wishing* his slutty wife were dead?
Not the end you expected, huh?
Then, as Bruno dies, his hand opens... and there’s the lighter. The police let Guy go - he’s innocent. The end.
Sound Track: Another great Dimitri Tiomkin score. Dark, lush, and with that haunting Tiomkin rhythm. Though I prefer the Herrmann scores for Hitchcock, Tiomkin’s partnership with the director produced some great work... as did Rozsa’s (which we’ll come to in a couple of weeks).
STRANGERS ON A TRAIN is one of my favorite Hitchcock films, and it really holds up. The transference of guilt is great in this film, and while watching it *I* always feel guilty. If you have ever fantasized about killing someone, or wished your enemy was dead... this movie will probably haunt you long after you’ve seen it.
