Fridays With Hitchcock: Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941)

Screenplay by Norman Krasna.

There are no cross-dressing killers, no stolen microfilm, no man wrongly accused of a crime in this Hitchcock film - it’s a standard rom-com. Weird, huh? I have seen all of the Hitchcock films on the big screen including this one - a non-thriller - but I have to admit I saw MR. & MRS. SMITH decades ago on a Hitchcock triple bill and it was the last film playing and, well, I may have fallen asleep. I have not see it since, and never owned it on VHS and did not own it on DVD... and worried that it might suck. Did I really want to buy the DVD? I mean, spending $15 for THE PARADINE CASE was a waste of money, but I could chalk it off to being a completist, right? I mean, it may be lame, but it is still kind of a thriller. MR & MRS SMITH is a rom-com, a chick flick...

So I grabbed my Hitchcock/Truffaut to see what Hitch said about it... and he says nada! When Truffaut brings up the film, Hitch tells an amusing anecdote about Carole Lombard and then changes the subject. The only thing he really says about the film was that it was a favor to Lombard and he just followed the script. Did I really want to buy this on DVD?



Worse - the film was part of a $99 box set and I owned all of the other movies but one. Sure, I could get it at Amazon for $70... but I didn’t want to spend anything near that much for a rom-com that probably put me to sleep the last time I saw it. Damn this blog!

Then I discovered that there were 3rd party vendors who had probably bought the set, broken it up and sold all of the popular films (STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, NORTH BY NORTHWEST) and were now stuck with MR. & MRS. SMITH... and were selling it for $4. Deal.

Here’s the thing - this is a typical 1940s rom-com, funny, charming, and good. I think if Hitchcock had *not* directed it, people would love it and put it up there with THE AWFUL TRUTH and HIS GIRL FRIDAY. But the Hitchcock audience isn’t really the rom-com audience and vice-versa... so people haven’t given it a chance. I thought it was fun.




Nutshell: David (Robert Montgomery) and Ann Smith (the beautiful Carole Lombard) are a passionately married Manhattan couple... and have rules that will keep them married. That passion thing is great when things are going well in the relationship, but when things go wrong they are just as passionate and throw things at each other. So they have the rules - one of which is that no one can leave the bedroom after a fight until they have made up. Problem is, this cuts into David’s work week sometimes (he’s a lawyer). They can stay angry at each other for a loooong time!

Another rule is that after they’ve made up, each gets to ask the other a question... and they must answer honestly. Note to men in a relationship: this is a trap. No woman ever wants you to answer honestly (“Yes, those jeans make your ass look *massive*!”) they want to hear the lie that makes them feel good. So David makes a huge mistake by answering that he misses being single and probably wouldn’t marry Ann if he had to do it all over again. He loves her, he can’t live without her, but probably wouldn’t marry her again. She doesn’t like this answer, but they’re married, so the point is moot, right?




When a clerk (Charles Halton) from the town they were married in tells David that one of those only-in-the-movies clerical errors has nullified their marriage, he thinks for a moment that this may be his chance for freedom. The clerk was a childhood friend of Ann’s, stops by their apartment to visit and lets slip that she isn’t really married to David. Ann expects him to re-propose that very night and whisk her away to a Justice Of The Peace to go through the vows again. Her mother forbids her from sleeping with David until they are once again married. That night, David takes her to the cozy little restaurant where he first proposed... which is now a dump... and Ann thinks he’s going to pop the question. But he doesn’t. When they get home he chills some champagne. Um, now he can pop the question - but how will they get to a Justice of the Peace? When David gets into his silk Pjs, Ann blows her top. He expects her to sleep together even though they are not married? She throws him out.




David is sure that Ann will come crawling back to him... but that does not happen. Instead she finds a job and begins dating again.

Then Ann hooks up with David’s partner Jefferson (Gene Raymond) - a deep fried Southern Gentleman, and it looks like they’re getting engaged to be married! When David objects, Ann notes that she is not his wife, and legally has never been his wife - he has no claim on her.

David realizes he may fantasize about being single again, but the reality sucks! He *must* break up Jefferson’s relationship with Ann and win her back!

Experiment: Well, it is a rom-com. By this time Hitchcock was firmly established as the Master Of Suspense - he’d become famous in England for his thrillers like THE 39 STEPS and THE LADY VANISHES... and that’s why he was brought to America. But Carole Lombard was a friend, was a huge movie star, and wanted to do a film with Hitchcock... so he made a rom-com. The anecdote he told Truffaut was about his first day on the set - when he arrived there were three little cattle pens with a calf in each - wearing a name tag on its collar with the names of the stars. Lombard’s joke (she and her husband Clark Gable were notorious practical jokers - and the most tragic tale in CITY OF NETS is about the joke that preceded Lombard’s death in a plane crash, which devastated Gable). So - it’s a rom-com.

Hitch Appearance: When David and Jefferson come out of Ann's building together, then go in opposite directions, Hitchcock walks in front of the building.

Great Scenes: Let’s look at some rom-com things and other lessons that we can apply to any screenplay, starting with...

Story Point Of View: A common complaint about recent rom-coms is that they seem to be about the guy - KNOCKED UP seems to focus on Seth Rogen’s point of view instead of split equally between the couple. Well, it seems like that’s nothing new, as the lead character in MR. & MRS. SMITH is not Carole Lombard, or even Lombard & Montgomery... it’s Robert Montgomery. The film opens with Lombard in bed pretending to be asleep after a spat, and Montgomery tries to slyly get her attention with funny faces and hijinks (which come off charming rather than lame). This scene is not only told from his POV, some of the shots are his POV... and this continues throughout the film. Though I think you *can* have a rom-com where each member of the couple trades off as protagonist; it seems that in the end, one or the other is dominant (the “main protagonist”). That’s what happens here...




But whether one character is the protagonist or two, each scene takes a side and shows it from that character’s point of view. When Ann is waiting for David to pop the question at dinner... and then later at home... those scenes all take her side. We are not neutral in those scenes, we are given the information to understand her character and we see the scene from her side of the dispute... but not his. We know her plan is to accept when he re-proposes... but we have no idea what David’s plan is. Did he plan on proposing at the little restaurant? What’s his plan when he slips into his Pjs? We do not know - but we do know that her plan is *not* to sleep with him until they are married again. We have taken her side in this sequence. And there is a great reason for this - it creates drama and suspense. If we know everything, it’s dull - like knowing how a movie ends. We want to *use* POV to create intrigue. Since knowing David’s intentions remove the suspense from the scene, we take Ann’s side and keep David’s intentions secret. After she kicks David out, we take his side for most of the rest of the movie.

Do you know who is the “lead character” in each of your scenes... and why?




Visual Symbols: A picture is worth a thousand words. After that opening scene spat has been resolved, there is a scene where Ann shaves David with a straight razor. You may wonder what the heck that is all about, but the answer is - it *shows* the trust between them with an intimate act. We can’t exactly show them hitting the sheets in 1941 (and that may even be tonally wrong for 2010) but we can show them doing something together that is personal... and that also shows trust and seems domestic - you wouldn’t let your best friend do this, but you might let your wife. Again, there are a million things that might show two people comfortable with each other in an intimate situation - but what can we show in 1941?

The great thing about the shaving scene is that it not only shows trust and intimacy and comfort with each other now, it is actually a set up for a later payoff near the end that shows Ann recovering her trust and comfort with David. When we see her shave his unconscious body (okay - weird), we realize that they are going to get back together. And David, who is not really unconscious, trusts her not to use the razor on him.





A visual symbol that is designed for a laugh: After being kicked out, David goes to his club which has hotel style rooms available for men who have been kicked out of the house (and maybe bachelors between apartments). There is a board with room keys on it, several empty hooks *with name cards over them* because some poor slob got into a fight with the wife and is now living there. David has to ask the clerk if there is a room available, and the clerk makes a big deal about saying that David has never asked for one of the room keys in the entire time he has been a club member. Then makes a big deal about grabbing the key and giving it to David - this is a *moment*. David and Ann never leave the apartment until they have made up... and now David has been kicked out. The key is symbolic of this being a major problem in the relationship, not just a little bump.




But the great thing is that the key becomes a running gag that gets a laugh (well, from me) every time they show it. David spends the whole day trying to win Ann back, and just when you think she may forgive him... he’s back at the club getting that room key. - Eventually the board of keys has his name on a card over one key.

There are many other little visual symbols in the film - like Ann replacing the name plaque on the apartment door with a card with her maiden name - David keeps tearing it down every time he goes to the apartment and there is always a new one when he comes back. And, um, there’s a pair of skis at the end that, um, seem kind of symbolic of a successful re-honeymoon.




Symbolic Supporting Characters: The other symbolic thing are some of the supporting characters. When David checks into the room in the club, he is now one of the guys who got kicked out of the house by their wives for a variety of reasons. The character he hangs out with is Big Chuck (Jack Carson) who is constantly being kicked out by the wife, and offers David some advice on what to do to get her back if it was a minor infraction... and how to have a good time as a temporary bachelor if you end up with an extended stay at the club. In a way, Big Chuck is a married guy’s fantasy of bachelorhood - he drinks and smokes and whores around and doesn’t care what the wife says. He’s on a “marriage vacation”... and that is kind of David’s fantasy, isn’t it?

Big Chuck *symbolizes* David’s fantasy of being a single guy again, but still with the safety net of being married. He is an externalization of what David is thinking. You want to find the external and concrete visual way to show what’s going on in a character’s heart or mind - and Big Chuck is the kind of guy David wishes he was. That way, we can have David interact with his wish (instead of just having him think - which we can not see) and a great deal of comedy comes from the fantasy version being different than the reality version.




Something else that David and every other married man fantasizes about? Those hot single women out there! Big Chuck sets up a double date - setting up David with a hot single woman who will “show him a good time” (we all know what that means). But the fantasy is not the same as the reality - and David’s date is a loud uneducated bottle blonde who gulps champagne as if were water and smokes like a factory. You fantasize about slutty women and that’s what you get. What makes this scene great is that they are in a fancy restaurant (in contrast to the women) and guess who are a few tables over? Ann and Jefferson. So we get a direct comparison between David’s wife and the single woman David hopes to score with. Um, the sure thing never looked so bad!

This is also a good example of escalation of conflict within a scene. You think once David meets his date that things can't get worse. Then the date starts ordering half the menu. Then she's so loud and obnoxious that everyone in the restaurant is starring at them. Then Ann and Jefferson spot them. And it *keeps* getting worse!




There’s a great gag in this scene where David realizes that Ann is looking in his direction and moves his chair so that he seems to be sitting with the elegant woman at the next table... which works until her husband comes back. David ends up with a broken nose - which should be a good way to get the hell out of the restaurant... except his date used to date a boxer and knows all of the tricks for stopping a nose bleed. Right in the middle of the elegant restaurant. This is the date from hell! Instead of just being the bad situation, things keep happening that makes it worse and worse and worse - it's like Indiana Jones in the treasure cave in RAIDERS as a date! Just when you think it could never get any worse...

Does the conflict continue to escalate in your scenes. Once you have the bad situation, what are all of the things that make it worse?

Bellamys: One of the standard characters in a romantic comedy is the “Bellamy”, named after Ralph Bellamy from HIS GIRL FRIDAY. This is also a symbolic character - in a rom-com the couple splits up or maybe even has never been together in the first place... so how do you *show* that the love interest is *rejecting* the protagonist? At the end, how do you *show* that the love interest is *choosing* the protagonist? What you need is a romantic rival - someone who symbolizes a life for the love interest without the protagonist. Enter The Bellamy (which sounds like a really weird Kung Fu film). This is the guy or gal the love interest is either already engaged to or begins dating after the break up. A physical thing that gets in the protag’s way of winning the love interest back. The strangest Bellamy ever is Otto the blow up pilot in AIRPLANE! Usually it is someone who is the opposite of the protagonist in some way.




Where David in MR. & MRS. SMITH is impulsive and passionate and his life is kind of a mess, Jefferson is conservative and well mannered and steady as a rock. Jefferson will put Ann on a pedestal and treat her like a lady - always polite and quiet and calm. He symbolizes a relationship for Ann that is quiet and safe and predictable. The opposite of David. This takes a decision that is in Ann’s head: wild passion or safe predictability, and puts it on screen where we can see it. Without the Jefferson character, we could not see what she was thinking. There is actually an early scene with Ann sitting in the center of the sofa with a man at either end verbally fighting for her.




The great thing about a Bellamy character is that it not only shows us the choices the love interest makes, it also brings out the character of the protagonist (and the Bellamy). It is easier to see how wild David is when we have Jefferson to compare him with. Jefferson is the perfect Southern gentleman, always opening doors, always polite, always quiet... and that helps to highlight David’s unpredictable behavior. There’s an early scene at the law office where David has neglected his work and Jefferson has been covering for him. Without Jefferson, we wouldn’t see how David was *supposed to be* at work. All of the wild passionate things that David does would just seem romantic without Jefferson to show us a different sort of romance that seems much more practical.

And that is the big choice Ann has to make: security or passion?

If You Know What I Mean Subtext: David doesn’t make that decision easy. He doesn’t understand how he became suddenly single. Sure, he admitted to Ann that he secretly wished he were single again, but now that he’s single the only thing he wants is to be married to Ann again... and she’s off with some other guy... and not just any other guy, his *business partner*! So he begins a series of schemes to get her back again.

One of the more amusing schemes is some “obvious subtext” - when David discovers that Jefferson plans on *marrying* Ann, and is going to introduce her to his very conservative Southern parents, David crashes the meeting. Jefferson’s parents do not know that Ann is David’s ex-wife (well, they were never actually married), and think this is just some woman their son is dating. So when David butts into the meeting, Jefferson’s parents introduce him to Ann... and he says they have already met...




Then begins a series of clever bits of dialogue that are designed to be misunderstood by Jefferson’s parents. David says he’s seen a great deal of Ann - implying that he’s seen her naked, yet never actually saying that. David talks about how Ann is great at serving breakfast in bed. Line after line! Everything seems innocent, but these lines are designed to lead the other person to jump to that guilty conclusion. It’s a strange sort of subtext, because we are meant to understand the hidden meaning, as are the other characters in the scene... yet nothing is said directly. Jefferson’s parents eventually grab their son and take him into the next room - the bathroom, for humor - and ask what sort of woman this Ann is... and what is her relationship to his business partner?




Jefferson manages to put out that fire... which leads to a vacation with Jefferson, his parents, and Ann in a ski lodge. And David follows them, and starts more schemes, eventually placing Ann in the position where she must make a choice between these two types of men, and these two specific men... and then David does something that causes Ann to raise her legs up and cross her skis.

Sound Track: Excellent! A great whimsical score by Edward Ward performed by human lips - whistling. The music adds to the film and never gets in the way of the film.

Though MR. & MRS. SMITH is not a typical Hitchcock film, it is a pretty good romantic comedy from that period and both Lombard and Montgomery are charming and fun. I thought this entry was going to be more painful to write than it was - I really enjoyed the movie. If you are a fan of old rom-coms, check it out.

- Bill

BUY THE DVD AT AMAZON:










More Fridays With Hitchcock!

Lancelot Link Thursday: Lancelot Takes Manhattan!

Lancelot Link Thursday! Now that they've made BATTLESHIP: THE MOVIE, are you waiting for BARREL OF MONKEYS: THE MOTION PICTURE? If so, 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 four cool links plus this week's car chase...

1) Pick Movies Based On The Writer - amazing idea!

2) 25 Ways To Become A Better Writer

3) The Overlook Hotel from THE SHINING is a house of cards... a tour. (Thanks to Brad!)

4) A Nice Little Article About Alien

5) Batman Villains - did poor potty training turn them into monsters?

6) And I am still worried about people bathing their taints in the Los Angeles water supply. That's why tap water tastes like...




And this week's car chase... is more of a foot chase...



DISTRICT B13 - one of those arty French films.

- Bill

Now on Nook!

Your Idea Machine (Blue Book #1) - for Nook! That was fast - I posted it to the site yesterday, the note said it would take 48 hours or more... but it's up today.

Your Idea Machine for Nook.

Same deal as Kindle - 160 pages (if it were a paper book) for $2.99.

And Kindle got my cover up. It was #3 on the sales list for Kindle Screenwriting books for a while today. Just think, if I had written a book about identifying ants by sex, it might *always* be #1 in its category!

Okay, you guys are tired of all of this crap, I'm going back to work on the screenplay - almost done!

- Bill

Shady Producers

So, today's Script Tip is on your first script sale with all kinds of warnings about producers who may seem a little shady. Like this guy...

Unlucky Producer? Or Fraud?

- Bill

Blue Book update

Okay, Nook ended up being easier than I thought it would be except for one minor cosmetic issue (it "page ends" after every sub-chapter - no big deal). It hasn't popped on B&N yet, but when it does I'll link it.

Due to some weird timing issue, I am locked out of uploading the cover to Kindle until tomorrow. I will fix a couple of cosmetis issues when I dfo that (two lines break in the middle of a sentence due to a stray bit of code, a couple of paragraphs didn't break - you probably wouldn't ever notice it.)

Though I'm finishing up a script right now, and next up is the Secrets Of Action Screenwriting, I may find a minute or two to get some other Blue Books up.

TUESDAY UPDATE: Nook version still in the grinder, will come out soon.

- Bill

The Blue Book Project

I hate my Blue Books. If you don’t know what they are - they’re these booklets I sell from the website, each on a specific subject of screenwriting and each 48 pages (including covers). There are supposed to be 20 of them, but I still have 3 that are in some form of “not finished” - in one case, the material is there but I just haven’t put it in booklet form.

The reason why the Blue Books exist is my friend Jim... When I was sending out preview copies of the Action Book to pro-screenwriters for cover blurbs, he asked me what I was going to sell in the book. I said, I don’t understand that question. He explained that my book would be in bookstores all over the place, and when people bought the book and took it home... what other products would I have listed in the book so that people who liked my book could buy something else like it? Okay, now I was understanding the question, but my answer was: Nothing. I didn’t have anything else to sell, and I only had the Action Book by accident: I had these xeroxed pointers on how to write an action script that I gave to my friends, which had turned into a 100 page booklet with a red cover, that turned into a 200 page book with a glossy blue cover, which turned into the 240 page version that I sold about 13,000 copies of and is now for sale on e-bay for hundreds of dollars because it has been out of print for so long. But every step along the way on the Action Book was just a reaction to whatever happened with the last version. The 240 page version was that original xerox thing with some additional articles added. I was never really trying to write a book... and I had no idea what I could use that book to sell.

So Jim said I should think about some other stuff, and I thought it would be cool to have a book where you picked the chapters yourself - if you wanted to know more about characters and visual storytelling and great endings, you could just buy those “chapters” and make your own book. I jotted down 20 “chapter” ideas - and put a page in the back of the book announcing them. Except, the problem was, people *did* like the Action Book and *did* want to but the danged booklets! So that meant I had to write them. And they kind of came in batches - a bunch came out in 2000, and then in 2002, and then in 2004... and then a couple have come out since then and the last three...

But just writing them was only one of the problems. I had to manufacture them myself. At first, this was fairly easy - the place that copied my scripts gave me a great deal if I ordered about a zillion Blue Books - they would not only knock the price down, if they had nothing better to do they would fold and staple them for free. If you have ever priced folding and stapling (called “saddle stitching” for some reason) at Kinkos, you know this was the deal of the century. Kinkos charges folds by the page - and a 48 page booklet would cost a pile of money in addition to the copy costs. Then, my script copy place went out of business - and to this day that has caused all kinds of issues with the Blue Books, main one being the fold and staple thing.

The other wonderful issue with the Blue Books is that people order weird things. For instance, I suddenly got a bunch or orders for #12 and #4 - and ran out of those two booklets. The new place that prints them has a “bulk discount”, but when I only need some odds and ends, the price goes up and sometimes I basically break even. I might run 20 sets of 17 booklets and get a price break, then get 30 orders for #12 for some weird reason and it screws up everything. If next batch I get extra #12s, there will be a run on #6. You just can’t predict this.

But the biggest problem? Postage. If I mail a complete set of Blue Books to Australia, it costs more that half the cost of the Blue Books themselves - and people often complain. And they are right to complain - if you pay more than half for shipping, something is wrong. The books are heavy - they cost a lot to ship. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve tried to switch over to classes on audio CD - they cost much less to ship. Even with the $1.50 padded envelope, I can get more info sent to someone on a CD that weighs less than that same amount of info on *paper*. But I’ve had a couple of CD classes waiting for me to go into a booth and record.

So I have a possible solution... what do you think?

I’m reading more books on my Kindle than on paper... and someone gave me a link to an article that said 75% (or some large number) of Kindle books sold are technical and educational books with a niche audience. So maybe that’s the answer for the Blue Books? No expensive postage - you just pay for the book. And I knock some money off because there’s no paper involved. (There will still be the paper versions if people want them.) At first I thought I’d do a page one rewrite on every book - a lot of them were written *11 years ago* and could use some work (many have film examples that no one remembers anymore... or examples from films that stink). But a full rewrite would take a long time... that’s 816 pages! And you know, by the time I finished it would be at least 2,000 pages because I’d want to add more. The danged Script Tips from the year 2000 started off as 2 paragraphs and once I get done rewriting them they usually end up 8-10 pages!

I talked this over with some friends, who all said: If you sell them on paper as they are now, why would you need to rewrite them for Kindle/Nook/e-book? Just put out exactly what you have! Good question. But changing formats means I’ll be touching the words again, not just the paper the words are printed on... and I feel kind of compelled to rewrite them while I’m at it.

So look for the new Blue Books in about 20 years...

Or, dang it! What if I did a touch up on each Blue Book for now, and add 4-5 Script Tips on the same subject? The Script Tips pop up every year and a half on the website for free, and eventually it will be every 2 years... but they would be a “bonus” in the e-Blue Books, so I wouldn’t be charging for something you get for free. Does that make sense? And the older Blue Books will probably get a lot more touching up than the more recent ones - since they need it.

Eventually all of the Blue Books will get a more thorough rewrite, but this will work for now... and hopefully I'll get those last three finished and up as well. I will also code them for Nook and other platforms.

I am also *considering* setting up the paper versions on Amazon as a print on demand. When I looked into it, the main problem is that to print a 48 page booklet costs the same as printing a 100 page booklet. And if I charge less than $6.99 it would literally cost me money. So if I do that, I would make the paper Blue Books 100 pages and charge about $7.99 – which is $3 more than now, but for twice the material. I may play around and see if $7.49 for twice the material works. This would solve all of my printing problems – but kind of by passing on a price increase to you. I hate doing that, but sometimes I have too many things going on and this would take one thing off my To Do List.

What do you think?


PS: First one is done and up on Kindle right now - the Your Idea Machine Blue Book. I added about 10,000 words in the rewrite (new techniques to come up with story ideas), not counting the Script Tips. Total words = 40,052, which is about 160 pages. Paper price was $4.99 plus postage for 48 pages, Kindle price is $2.99 and no postage costs at all. Hey, there's even Kindle for your computer if you don't have the device... free. Nook version is on the way, and other platforms, too. This is the first, most of the rest should come out in September if all goes as planned.

Of course, it never does.

- Bill

PS: Due to a screw up the cover isn't up, yet.

Fridays With Hitchcock: Torn Curtain (1966)

TORN CURTAIN (1966)
Screenplay by Brian Moore

Hitchcock's *other* Cold War movie (I'm not counting NORTH BY NORTHWEST - which uses the Cold War as a backdrop but isn't really about the Cold war) is much better than TOPAZ, but still a lesser Hitchcock film. As I've probably said before, despite the insistence of critic Robin Wood that the 60s films were Hitchcock's best, mostly they are disappointments with a good scene or two - Hitchcock was believing his press and coasting. Though Hitchcock hated having the studio stick him with big movie stars like Paul Newman and Julie Andrews, they are part of what makes this film a hundred times better than TOPAZ. The film has a few cool shots, one great scene, and some other scenes that are okay. It's a watchable film, Hitchcock’s 50th film.

Nutshell: In Hitchcock/Truffaut, Hitch talks about this interesting idea he had for a movie - a professional spy, man of action type, is going to parachute behind enemy lines. Onboard the plane is a little guy - not a man of action - who gives him his final briefing. But the plane shifts when the spy jumps out, and the little guy falls out, too. Now both professional spy (who speaks the local language) and the little bureaucrat who gave him his final briefing are stuck together behind enemy lines - and every time some enemy soldier asks the bureaucrat a question - he doesn't understand the language and the spy has to help him. And every time there’s an action scene, the spy has to save and protect the bureaucrat. The spy can’t just dump the guy, because the bureaucrat technically outranks him. The bureaucrat becomes a big problem for the spy on his mission. Okay, what the heck does this have to do with TORN CURTAIN?



TORN CURTAIN is about a top nuclear scientist, played by Paul Newman, who attends a conference in Denmark with his fiance, Julie Andrews. She thinks he may be up to something strange - perhaps having an affair - and she starts to follow him. When Newman defects to Communist East Germany, Andrews follows... and now Newman is stuck behind the iron curtain with her... protecting her and trying to keep her from discovering exactly what he is up to. Is he cheating on her with the enemy? Nope - he’s actually faked his defection in order to befriend *their* top nuclear scientist, pump him for information, steal all of their secrets, then return. So he ends up kind of like that spy stuck with the bureaucrat from Hitch’s pitch - except she’s his fiance as well. Newman must fulfill his mission *and* make sure the woman he loves doesn’t get killed in the process. Screenplay was by Brian Moore - novelist who wrote BLACK ROBE among others.

Experiment: No big story experiment in this film.

Hitch Appearance: In a hotel lobby with a baby on his lap.... Here it is on YouTube:



Score: This film is probably most famous for being the movie that resulted in divorce between the long-term team of Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann. Hitch rejected his score, and hired John Addison.

Great Scenes: One of the greatest Hitchcock scenes is in this not-great movie - the murder of Gromek. Hitchcock thought movies make murder too easy - casual almost. When someone was killed on screen back then, they’d get shot, clutch their chest, and fall over dead. Since it was the 1960s, there was some blood... but not much. But even if you think about films today, the hero sprays a bunch of bad guys with machine gun fire, there’s a blood squib, then they all fall over dead. It’s over in a second or two. That makes it look easy, and Hitchcock wanted to show how difficult it is to kill a man. This scene is intense, scary, messy, and makes the typical movie scene where the good guy kills the bad guy into a long and frightening experience.

Paul Newman’s scientist is followed to his contact in the underground’s farm by East German Agent Gromek, and must prevent him from calling the police and having them all arrested. With a taxi driver waiting just outside the farmhouse, this must be a silent fight - they can’t use a gun and they can’t let Gromek use his gun. Newman knocks the gun from Gromek’s hand, the farmer’s wife grabs it, realizes it will make noise... and grabs a huge knife instead. But when she stabs Gromek, the blade breaks off inside him, and he’s *still* grappling wit Newman. She hits him repeatedly with a shovel, and eventually he goes down... but he’s still very much alive. As Newman catches his breath, Gromek moves to his feet, opens the window to call for the Taxi Driver. Newman and the farmer’s wife, pull him away from the window and slam it closed... and Gromek proceeds to strangle Newman! This guy just won’t die! Eventually the farmer’s wife turns on the gas oven without lighting it, and they drag the fighting Gromek to the open oven door, stick his head inside... then have to hold him seemingly forever until he finally succumbs.



There is also an overlong sequence on a bus trying to escape from East Germany that has a few tense moments. The bus is a fake, identical to the real bus, and filled with fake passengers, running 10 minutes ahead of the real bus. The problem is, the police are all over the place looking for Newman and Andrews by this time, and they are stopped and searched. Tension builds as the police check everyone’s papers, and we know Newman’s and Andrew’s papers are forged. But they manage to get through. After that bandits rob the bus... and the police decide to give the bus an escort! Now the police are *with them* the whole time, and the *real* bus is catching up to them! Some tension here... but the scene goes on four times longer than it should.

Other scenes - an escape from a facility surrounded by police, an escape from the ballet - surrounded by police, an escape from a boat - surrounded by police... and for those of you who are fans of TOP SECRET, the bookstore scene! It’s always fun to see the exact scene parodied in a ZAZ film, and TORN CURTAIN has that scene.

TORN CURTAIN is too long, not enough real suspense, and seems to have the scenes in the wrong acts - it doesn’t build to and ending as much as peter out to an end. Both Paul Newman and Julie Andrews seem way too low-key to make this work. Newman was a Method actor, and gives a quiet and realistic performance without any trace of personality... and Hitchcock relied on the personality of the actors to carry the characters. Working in the old studio system, where they cultivated exciting larger than life stars like Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart, he seemed to struggle in the new gritty version of Hollywood. This film was made a couple of years after Cary Grant starred in the best of the Hitchcock imitations, CHARADE directed by Stanley Donen, and the same year Donen directed another Hitchcock homage ARABESQUE starring Gregory Peck in a story very similar to TORN CURTAIN. Though this is not Hitchcock’s best film by a long shot, it does have an interesting idea and is much better than TOPAZ.

- Bill

Fridays With Hitchcock: Family Plot

I was going to do a complete rewrite on this one - the first of the Firdays With Hitchcock - but I'm saving the new version for the first of the three Hitchcock books which will be coming soon (EXPERIMENTS IN TERROR). So here's how it first ran in 2008...

The Master of Suspense made 53 films and I have managed to see all of the existing films projected on the big screen at least once in my life. I love suspense films and thrillers and have had a handful actually produced, so it’s no surprise that I’ve always been a big fan of Hitchcock’s film. Difficult to work in the thriller genre without being influenced by Hitch - he was the trail blazer for just about every film maker we have today. Hey, the first British sound movie was a Hitchcock film! He’s probably the most recognized film director in the world - due to hosting duties on his TV show. And you can watch any Spielberg film and see some trace of Hitchcock, from the dolly-zoom in JAWS to that scene they never shot in NORTH BY NORTHWEST at the auto assembly-line that shows up in MINORITY REPORT. Hey, and 53 films means I can do a blog entry every week for a year!

Hitchcock truly understood the language of cinema. He knew that every angle, every camera movement, every composition of the frame, and every juxtaposition of shots and images created an *emotional response* in the audience. No director since has understood the language of film like Hitchcock, and I fear we may be losing this language as more and more directors would rather use a “cool shoot” than the shot that makes the audience feel something. Hitchcock told films visually - there are often long sequences in his films without dialogue which manage to give us deep information about characters and story...

Hitchcock began as a writer in silent movies - he was the one who wrote the title cards and illustrated them. He became an art director and assistant director... and eventually they let him call the shots. He married an film editor and screenwriter, Alma Reville, who probably advised him on story throughout his career. He also worked with the best screenwriters in the business throughout his career, and treated them very much as he treated his actors. No, not like cattle. Hitch would allow his actors to do whatever they wanted creatively as long as they hit their marks. Ernest Lehman said in an interview that after he discussed the story with Hitchcock, he was sent away to write it while Hitchcock worked on another project. There was no micro-managing, no excessive development, not much rewriting. Hitchcock hired the best writers and allowed them to do their best without looking over their shoulders. This sort of creative freedom is unusual, and also means these great films can be traced back to some great screenwriters. Film may be a director’s medium, but as the famous story goes about auteur Ernst Lubitsch, a director can’t put his mark on 120 blank pages of paper.

So we will be looking at a different Hitchcock film every week from a screenwriter’s point of view. Beginning with his last film and moving backwards into the silents where he began. One of the interesting things about Hitchcock is that he was always experimenting with both cinematic storytelling and storytelling itself. Even the worst Hitchcock film (and there are some stinkers) contain some interesting story experiment and some interesting scenes. What can we learn as writers from these films?



FAMILY PLOT (1976)
Screenplay by Ernest Lehman based on the novel “Rainbird Pattern” by Victor Canning.

Hitchcock's final film. I have a soft spot for this film - it was the only Hitchcock movie I saw in a cinema during it's initial release. I was too young to see the others when they came out. Though FAMILY PLOT isn't Hitchcock at his best, it's a fun film... written by the multi-Oscared Ernest Lehman who also wrote NORTH BY NORTHWEST. Though not a chase film, both films share the same sense of humor.

One of the great things about FAMILY PLOT is the strange cast - it *stars* Bruce Dern. Dern played psycho Viet Nam Vets and twitchy villains and is probably most famous for being the only actor to ever *kill* John Wayne on screen. Not a leading man... but has a great sarcastic delivery like his pal Jack Nicholson. Playing his girlfriend, was the always cute Barbara Harris, who played the mom in the original FREAKY FRIDAY... and John Cusack's mom in GROSSE POINT BLANK. On the villain side we have Karen Black (who was probably the biggest star in the cast when this was made) and the always suave William Devane who replaced Roy Thinnes halfway through shooting - you can still see Thinnes in long shots. Devane had played JFK on TV, and was considered a leading man... not a villain. One of the great things he brings to the film is his charisma - early in the film you are rooting for him and Black to get away with their crimes - they are so clever and elegant and cool. Hey, and the great Ed Lauter plays a childhood friend of Devane's who will kill anyone for a buck fifty.

Nutshell: Fake psychic Harris learns that a wealthy client’s sister gave up a kid born out of wedlock when she was a teen, and now wants to find the kid and put him in her will. If Harris and Dern find him, the wealthy client will pay them a huge chunk of money. Only one problem - that bastard child is now a notorious jewel thief known as “The Trader” who is the top story on every TV news program. How do you find a man who is doing everything in his power not to be found?

Dern is a failed actor who drives a cab, and throughout the film gets to use his acting abilities to play everything from a private detective to a sympathetic friend in oprder to get information.

Meanwhile, suave criminal Devane and his accomplice Black have a novel way of getting rich - they steal wealthy *people* and ask for famous jewels as ransom. Hey, aren’t you supposed to steal jewels from wealthy people? By twisting that around, it makes Devane’s “Trader” an unusual jewel thief.

The Experiment: Intersecting stories. The story cross cuts between these two pairs until it becomes apparent that the lost heir that Dern and Harris are searching for is the suave criminal Devane and his accomplice Black. Novels often have two different stories that eventually become one by the end, but movies tend to be focused on only one story and one protagonist. Hen we change protagonists or stories we tend to lose the audience completely. In FAMILY PLOT we actually have two sets of protagonists, and as the two stories come together each pair becomes the other pair’s *antagonist*. Devane and Black don’t want anyone finding them (because they are wanted by the FBI and criminals by trade), and Dern and Harris are searching for them! So Devane sends killer Ed Lauter after them... turning them into the antagonists in the Dern and Harris story.

This is accomplished with a great deal of skill by Lehman. Instead of just jumbling two stories together, he finds ways to connect the stories - bring the two pairs closer and closer together as the story progresses. We begin with Harris learning about the bastard heir, and she and Dern drive back from the wealthy woman’s house they almost hit a woman in a crosswalk - Black. Instead of continuing with Dern and Harris, we follow Black as she goes to pick up the ransom for a Greek shipping tycoon. After picking up this massive diamond, Black is picked up by Devane... and we learn about their scheme. The story continues moving logically between the two pairs of protagonists, helped along by every clue Dern and Harris discover leads to someone who knows or knew Devane when he was a child. The connections between story threads make sense and one character can enter a location just as another leaves it.

After that first connection, the audience will probably figure out the 40 year old heir Dern and Harris are looking for is probably the 40 year old criminal played by Devane, though it isn’t until close to the end that the characters figure it out. What the audience may lose in the surprise of that reveal is more than made up for with the suspense of knowing that the man they are searching for would rather kill them than be discovered. The closer they get to finding Devane and Black, the more danger they are in.

Hitch Appearance: Silhouetted in a window at city hall's bureau of
records.

Great Scenes: The great set pieces in the film are a car chase on a winding country road... after Dern and Harris have been drinking pitchers of beer and shoveling down burgers - they get car sick in the car chase. This is funny and really suspenseful. I don’t believe I have seen another car chase where vomiting was a serious threat. Always look for the way to make each scene different than any similar scene.

Another great scene has Dern and Harris going to interview the Priest who baptized the bastard heir as a baby, but the Priest is kidnaped in the middle of a church service by Devane and Black! A great suspense scene that ties the two stories together.

Plus there's a puzzle-like scene at a graveyard where Dern tries to corner Lauter's wife - and the byzantine pathways keep pushing them closer to each other then pulling them apart. This scene is almost like an art piece - I have never seen anything like it in a film before.

And a harrowing scene where Harris is captured and the minutes to her murder tick away as Dern tries to re-trace her steps and find her. The method of murder is a great example of what works in a thriller script - a garden hose. You always want to turn the mundane into the threatening in a thriller, and when Devane grabs the garden hose off the garage wall, you wonder how it will kill someone... then he proceeds to show us!

Score: Great music from the great John Williams!

FAMILY PLOT is a fun little crime movie with some great dialogue and a couple of great scenes and some nice performances by actors who usually play different roles. And, you have to love Hitchcock's loyalty - one of Dern's very first roles was as a psycho dad in Hitchcock's MARNIE.... which we'll look at in a few weeks.

- Bill


BUY IT AT AMAZON (click on DVD box):

Lancelot Link Thursday: Lancelot Goes To Hell!

Lancelot Link Thursday! For those of you who want can't wait to see that documentary about the family who raised a chimp as their child (mom actually breast fed it!)... 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 four cool links plus this week's car chase...

1) The Brit List.

2) The DARK KNIGHT RISES poster.

3) Terrible Movie Taglines

4) Production Budget = $0, Income so far = $20k.

And this week's car chase...



The remake of OUT OF THE PAST.

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Tom Cruise Takes You For A Ride - Where?
Dinner: Panda - that garlic chicken.
Pages: Still screwed up - I'm way behind.
Movies: THE TRIP... weird combo of improv and fiction.

Book Reports #2

Okay, I actually read this book a while back, and a friend of mine wrote it... but he has a new wrinkle and I thought I'd mention it. If you've ever clicked on But The Third One Was Great! blog over there --> you've read some of Joshua Grover-David Patterson's work. His blog looks at the never-ending sequels to horror movies and has a good time making fun of the bad ones. He's an award winning film maker and has written for film related magazines like FILM THREAT and others.




Well, he wrote a novel called MERCY - a Kindle & Nook original - that is kind of LOST meets DAWN OF THE DEAD. A plane from Ethiopia crashes on a remote island and the survivors thought just finding food and shelter (and rescue) was going to be the worst of their problems... until the zombies began attacking. The zombie plague has broken out - and those passengers who went down with the plane, seat belted in? Once the seat belts rot their bloated corpses rise to the surface and come looking for flesh to eat!

Now, here's the interesting thing about MERCY - it's really a story about a mother (named Georgina Fulci - this book is fun) who will do anything to be reunited with her young adopted daughter (Mercy) and husband (Rob). The plane crash and zombies are the obstacles. So it's a story with lots of heart. Though there are plenty of zombie attacks, Josh doesn't go overboard on the gore - and that may be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what you like. I think by not overdoing the gross out stuff he makes the novel more human... and focuses on what makes us human. Those dead people attacking look like humans, but they aren't anymore, why?

The great thing about this book is that it never loses sight of the human side - Georgina's reason to live is to return home to her husband and daughter. Each of the characters is a real person with real problems, and the conflicts between the survivors form the real meat of the story. This, and specifically the character of Marshall (big guy, doesn't talk, deeply religious - reminded me of Tom Cullen) are the things that echoes Stephen King's THE STAND for me. On the island they must form a society and decide what's right and wrong and who lives and who dies - and some of the deaths are shocking.

One of the elements of the book is that Georgina becomes the surrogate mother for a child survivor, in a way adopting the kid the way she and her husband adopted their daughter. Motherhood, and that strength and power that comes from being a mother, are major elements in the story. That makes it more than just a zombie story - though it's a zombie story, too. A handful of people trapped on an island surrounded by zombies.

But one of the interesting factors of this story is that Josh and his wife have an adopted daughter from Ethiopia in real life... so this is kind of "write what youy know" (except for the whole plane crash and zombie attack part). The early chapter of the book in Ethiopia has that authenic feel because Josh has been there... that's where his daughter comes from. In an online conversation with a bunch of friends, he told a fascinating story about a man from Ethiopia who went to college in the United States (San Francisco I believe) and returned to Ethiopia to get kids interested in reading. In Ethiopia there are no libraries where a kid can get a book... and really no books for children. This guy has changed that - travelling from village to village on a *donkey* loaded with books! His version of a mobile library. He has since built some actual libraries, and now has several donkey mobile libraries making the rounds. That's an amazing story!

Well, Josh's new wrinkle is that he's going to donate 10% of all of his book sales to this guy with his donkey-libraries in his daughter's home country. He has a blog entry about it here. And if you just want to donate without buying his zombie book, there's a link on his blog.

But the zombie book is a lot of fun... and only $2.99. And lots of great reviews on Amazon that *aren't* from me.

- Bill

Script Magazine - July issue is out!

On newstands, in book stores (if any still exist) and in your mailbox or in box!




Captain America: The First Avenger
By Aaron Ginsburg

When screenwriting duo Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely heard that Marvel Studios was rebooting America’s most iconic superhero, they chased the job … and got it. But re–imagining Captain America proved a daunting task, with over 70 years of material on the Man Behind the Shield. Markus and McFeely recount their journey from research to set rewrites on Captain America: The First Avenger.

Cowboys & Aliens: A Genre Mash–up With Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby
By Tom Benedek

With Cowboys & Aliens, the graphic novel had no famous characters, no famous situations. Scribes Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby were thrilled with the idea and the chance to do a genre mash–up like no other. Here they explain how John Ford’s films and Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind helped inspire this summer’s highly anticipated sci–fi Western adaptation.

From Script to Screen: A Better Life
by David S. Cohen

Through 22 years of development, two screenwriters, a title change, and a page–one rewrite, Summit Entertainment’s A Better Life still remained remarkably true to its original concept. Roger L. Simon (story) and Eric Eason (screenplay) share their experiences scripting the East Los Angeles drama.

Dread Ringer: Summoning Up The Devil’s Double
by Bob Verini

Latif Yahia was given an offer he couldn’t refuse: Become the body double for Saddam Hussein’s vicious elder son Uday, or let his family suffer the consequences. Scribe Michael Thomas couldn’t pass up the chance to delve into the terrifying world of the Black Prince of Iraq and the man forced to do his bidding in the upcoming drama The Devil’s Double.

Taming the Script: Stranger Comics’ Sebastian A. Jones
by Joshua Stecker

Sebastian A. Jones, comic book writer and founder of Stranger Comics, talks about the challenges and advantages he faces when translating his tales of modern fantasy from the script to the screen.

Writers on Writing: Road to Nowhere
by Steven Gaydos

Writer Steven Gaydos recounts his experience scripting Road to Nowhere, a meta–noir crime tale about a filmmaker determined to make a great movie from a crime story written by his screenwriting pal. The story echoes the longtime working relationship and friendship between Gaydos and director Monte Hellman, who realized Gaydos’ vision for the dark and complex film.

Chemical Dependency: Breaking Bad
by David Radcliff

Script rounds up Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan and stars Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, and Dean Norris to discuss the mad science behind their award–winning AMC series.

How to Sell Out!
by Thomas Lennon & Robert Ben Garant

Everyone has an idea for a script, but most aren’t able to cash in on it. Comedy hyphenates Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant (Reno 911!, Night at the Museum) provide 10 easy tips for writers on the “art” of selling out to the Hollywood studio machine and scripting movies for profit.

Script Secrets: No Dramatic Stone Unturned
by William C. Martell

Film is a dramatic medium, so as writers we should always be looking to mine those tense moments in our scripts. Columnist William Martell encourages scribes—in any genre—to show their stories’ drama, not try to avoid it, and he uses the comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall as a great example of dramatic gold.

Script Magazine homepage.

- Bill

Fridays With Hitchcock: Notorious (1946)

Screenplay by Ben Hecht.

This is my favorite Hitchcock movie. The one that gets me every time I see it. Hey, REAR WINDOW is great and NORTH BY NORTHWEST is fun... but this is the one that hurts me to watch - because it makes me feel painful things. Here’s the thing about Hitchcock - he was a master of cinematic language. But just like a novelist who is a master of language, you still need to use that language in the service of a story. I believe that even the worst of Hitchcock’s movies (and we are passed most of those) contain some great scenes and interesting visual or narrative experiments. They movies may not work, but *parts* of them are amazing. And that’s the problem with all movies - a film is a combination of dozens of different arts (or 7 if you’re a fan of old Warner Bros releases) and getting all of those aspects to work at the same time, and then work together, requires a miracle. Usually some things work and some things don’t work. For me, NOTORIOUS is the Hitchcock movie that gets almost everything right at the same time, and all of that begins with the screenplay by Ben Hecht.

A film has all of those arts (or 7) that must come together, and a screenplay also has many different elements that must each work, and then work together. Your characters, your dialogue, your actions, your pacing... there are maybe a hundred different elements, and the odds of them all working on the same scripts are millions to one - which is why there are very few movies that you wouldn’t want to change a word. As screenwriters, we try to get as many elements right as we can.



Hecht was a legendary screenwriter - he wrote *fast* and also wrote great stuff. He worked on other Hitchcock screenplays, but this is the one where everything fell together perfectly... and then Hitchcock’s master of cinematic language brought that screenplay alive. Every time I watch this film (and I know the dialogue by heart) it almost brings me to tears. I get swept up in the story and forget that these are actors speaking lines - they are real people to me with some very real and messy emotional problems. All of Hitchcock’s techniques make this film *more* emotional and *more* personal. Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman - movie stars - manage to play roles that make you forget they are movie stars. Both are so tragic, so sad, so unglamorous...

Nutshell: During World War 2, unemotional CIA Agent Devlin (Cary Grant) drafts party girl Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) to go to Rio De Janerio where Nazis are up to something. Alicia is the daughter of a traitor, and a childhood friend, Alex Sebastian (Claude Raines), is one of the Nazis in Brazil. Devlin and Alicia are two people with permanent broken hearts... but while waiting for their mission in Rio they fall in love. The mission? Alicia is supposed to screw Sebastian and find out what the Nazis are up to. So Devlin has to order the woman he loves to screw some other man! And then stick around - practically watching them screw - to get information from Alicia. Folks, this film was made in the 1940s and is shocking even today. What amazes me is how they got this thing past the censors, because the plot is: she screws a Nazi. She’s a whore for Uncle Sam. Sure, they use some euphemisms, but they make it clear that she is screwing the guy. And she discovers that they are working on an atomic bomb (which had not been invented when this film was made - which got Hitchcock in some trouble) and that’s when things go really really wrong. (Grant is actually an OSS Agent - the predecessor of the CIA - but I’m de-complicating it for this blog entry... which is not a history of USA espionage agencies.)

Experiment: Not much in the way of *story* experiments in this film, though Hitchcock did some ground-breaking shots - an amazing shot from high overhead a crowded party slowly cranes down to a close up of a key in Ingrid Bergman’s hand. All in focus, by the way. I don’t know how many recent films I’ve seen where the camera moves just a little and is out of focus. Here we get a complicated moving crane shot and it’s perfect. This shot, by the way, is a great illustration of Hitchcock’s Biggest To Smallest Theory - which we will talk about when we get to YOUNG AND INNOCENT. The film is filled with beautiful moving camera shots on difficult terrain like stairways (it was a crane shot mimicking a dolly) and none of it is showy - all of the camera movement is used to enhance the emotional experience of the story.



There's also a great subjective shot from Ingrid Bergman's character, who is in bed with a hangover, as Cary Grant enters the room and stands over her... ending up upside down from her point of view. It's a great shot because it's boozy like Bergman's character and is *exactly* what you would see if you were her.


Hitch Appearance: A guest at the big party at Sebastian’s house, gulping champagne.

Great Scenes: This is another one of those films that is all great scenes, so we are going to look at some of the elements that makes those scenes great.

Opening Scenes: NOTORIOUS opens with a title card with date and time, setting this story is reality. Inside a criminal court building, reporters wait outside and one opens the doors to the courtroom so that we can evesdrop on the end of the trial... Just in time for the defendant, Huberman, to rant about how the worst is yet to come... and then be found guilty for *treason* as an agent of the Nazis. Like in REAR WINDOW, the audience becomes voyeurs. Seeing this through a cracked open courtroom door makes it seem more real. Then Alicia Huberman exits the courtroom, running the gauntlet between reporters, and we get some of the smoothest exposition I’ve ever seen on film. Conflict is the key, here - as the reporters hammer her with questions, we get information about who she is. Alicia gives no information.



Next scene is Alicia at home having a party, drunk off her ass. Everyone is drinking and dancing except one man, back to us, who sits quietly on a chair watching. Alicia tries flirting with him, gets nowhere... but that only makes her want him more. She kicks out everyone but the stranger, and it’s only after they are alone together do we get to see his face - Devlin (Cary Grant). This back-towards-us introduction was also used in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK with Indiana Jones. It’s a great way to introduce a character using mystery - hey, who is that guy who is at the party and just sitting there? Why aren’t they showing us his face?

Then Alicia wants to go on a picnic (in the middle of the night) and insists on driving (hammered to the point where she can barely walk) and Devlin goes with her. Sitting in the passenger seat, hand ready to grab the wheel, he watches as she swerves all over the road. Hitchcock uses the same POV concept he’ll use in NORTH BY NORTHWEST, putting the audience behind the wheel. It’s a great, tense, scene - because Devlin needs to allow her to drive like a maniac in order to win her trust. Hey, he might die in the process! His love for his continued existence vs. his duty to the CIA to win her trust.



Scene DNA: Back in the March 2000 issue of Script Magazine I had an article called Making A Scene that contained this theory of mine about your screenplay’s DNA. Every scene in your screenplay should also be a microcosm of the story and should contain the DNA necessary to clone the script. You should be able to read any scene from your script and have some idea of what the whole script is about. This usually comes down to your script’s central conflict and theme - those two elements should be present in every single scene of your screenplay. The Central Conflict is where your *emotional conflict* and your *physical conflict* (the plot) intersect. You can usually find the theme through the central conflict, or find the central conflict through the theme. In NOTORIOUS the central conflict is Love vs. Duty - and that can be found in almost every scene in the film. This is part of what I call Organic Screenwriting - Each scene has to be integral to the story not just filler material. Each scene should expose character, move the story forward, and deal with the central conflict and theme of the screenplay... the script's DNA.

Our very first scene has Alicia at her father’s treason trial - she loves her father but did not testify on his behalf. This is a question from one of the reporters - and is not answered for over 15 minutes, in a scene where Devlin plays a recording of Alicia arguing with her father about being a Nazi spy. Every scene in between has been about Alicia and her father - her love for him vs. her duty as a patriotic American to be against the Nazis. How can you hate the enemy when your father is one of them? After hearing the recording she tells Devlin that she did not turn him in, and he says that they did not expect her to - she’s his daughter. A line of dialogue full of that Love vs. Duty central conflict! If you only had that one line of dialogue, you could “clone” the movie.



Most of the characters in NOTORIOUS end up in pairs, with the Love vs. Duty conflict between them. There’s Alicia and her father. Alicia and Devlin. Alicia and Sebastian. Sebastian and his mother. Each pair (and several others in the film) deal with the Love vs. Duty central conflict in scene after scene. The *plot scenes* are all about this central conflict - and we will look at some examples in a moment.

The *emotional scenes* are all about the Love vs. Duty question *within* every character. These are characters at war with themselves - they have an internal Love vs. Duty dilemma which is externalized through the situations in the story. In NOTORIOUS all of the characters are at war with themselves over "love" and "duty". Devlin is a man who says he is afraid of women - a lonely man who is all about his job (CIA Agent - actually OSS, but this isn't an espionage history lesson). When we meet him, he is defined by his loneliness - he is alone at a party, interacting with no one. For a while, the focus is on creating situations that point out that he is lonely - and one interesting way to do that is to put him in a bunch of scenes with Alicia who is a hot, seductive woman... and he is constantly pushing her away. She throws herself at him, he rejects her. Though at this point you may not think that is Love vs. Duty - it actually is the *fear of love* vs. duty - the scenes are all about potential romance that Devlin is rejecting because he needs to focus on his work... only we see Devlin looking at her. He desires this woman. The situation in the story puts them *together*, and we know when the leading man and leading woman are together in scene after scene, romance is somewhere on the horizon. Devlin *wants her* but pushes her away.



In order to show him *rejecting* his love for her, we must find a way to show the love exists. Show that Devlin desires her. There’s a great bit on the plane to Rio De Janeiro where they look out the plane window on Alicia’s side at Rio, then Alicia bends over Devlin to look out the window on the other side of the plane - and her face and lips are maybe an inch from his. It’s a “kiss moment” but he does not kiss her. But the *situation* shows us that he wants to kiss her... but is afraid. This is supposed to be a professional relationship, not a personal one. Duty, not love.

There is absolutely no backstory that says Devlin has had his heart seriously broken - but his actions show this, so we understand it. It's all about what characters do, not what they say... and we’ll talk about the subtext in NOTORIOUS in a minute. We also learn about Alicia through her actions - just as Devlin pushes love away, Alicia is jumping into the arms of anyone who will give her love. She's a slut (tramp is the word they use in the film). Now, what does this tell us about Alicia? Hey - we have two people who *need* love, and each is going about it in the wrong way. So, let's create a situation by putting them together! A situation where they are supposed to be working together, *not* falling in love. That situation brings the whole love vs. duty central conflict to the surface.

About 5:45 minutes into the movie, Alicia says there’s nothing like a love song to give you a good laugh.

About 20:00 minutes into the movie, Devlin says he’s always been afraid of women.

Once they get to romantic Rio, their actions at odds with each other - Alicia throwing herself at Devlin and Devlin deflecting her. But here's the depth part - not deflecting her because he isn't interested, deflecting her because he *is* interested. He is at war with himself. We have established that he is lonely, we have established that he is afraid of love - those two things would remain internal if not for Alicia. The key to screenwriting is to take what is internal and make it external - which is how it is completely different than novels. We have only two senses in screenplays - sight and sound. We have to find ways to show Devlin’s emotional conflict through *situations* and *actions*... and sometimes the absence of expected actions. We also have the location working for us - this is romantic Rio, the perfect place to fall in love, and they are together almost 24/7. So Alicia is everything he wants *and* everything he fears. The situations - the scenes - are designed to force Devlin to deal with this again and again. His *duty* is to be with her in Rio while they wait for their assignment, but that means he must be constantly fighting his love for her.

But he loses that fight. In a scene similar to the plane “non-kiss”, Devlin and Alicia are sight seeing while waiting for their assignment, and she looks at the view - placing her face an inch from his. This time, he kisses her... and she kisses him back... and they become a couple. The most dysfunctional romantic pair ever put on film.

Devlin and Alicia are two wounded people who fall in love. Devlin lets down his armor and falls in love with her. That means our story must do something to poke a stick at the fear inside him... the fear that she will break his heart. So we get a great dilemma - Love vs. Duty, our central conflict - the CIA tells Devlin what Alicia's job will be... she has to sleep with a Nazi (Alex Sebastian) and find out what he is up to. Now we get two scenes back-to-back: Devlin tells the CIA guys she won't do it, she's not that kind of woman, she's reformed. They laugh this off - she's a slut. Next scene - Devlin has to tell Alicia what the mission is. And, because he's afraid that she doesn't really love him (heartbreak fear) he sets it up to be *her* decision. That way, in that game playing method of rocky relationships, by refusing the job she will be professing her love for him. But it takes two to play games, and she decides to say "yes" and see if he tells her she shouldn't do it. Guess what? This screws up everything, and each thinks the other doesn't truly love them, and now she's gonna go screw some Nazi and report back to Devlin about it. Can you imagine a worse situation for either of them? A more painful situation for Devlin? And the big problem is - his job, his *duty*, is to have the woman he loves screw some other guy. That's the concept of the film - the basic situation of the story. It's the logline. And that love vs. duty aspect is in almost every scene of the film. Since the *story* is about a man who must order the woman he loves to sleep with some other guy, that central conflict is part of all of the plot scenes *and* part of all of the emotional scenes. The big emotional conflict is having characters do the thing they would never do... the thing that hurts them most.

For Devlin to be a good CIA Agent, he must make sure Alicia screws that Nazi like crazy! But, for Devlin to be a happy person, she can not screw the Nazi. He is at war with himself - love vs duty. Every scene becomes *emotional* and every scene has his character in conflict with himself.

And, because this is a movie - about things that happen rather than about thoughts and feelings - Alicia SCREWS THE NAZI. AND KEEPS SCREWING HIM! AND TO NOT BE SUSPICIOUS, MUST PRACTICALLY SCREW HIM IN FRONT OF DEVLIN. Scene after scene, situation after situation, she must seem to select Alex Sebastian over Devlin - and Devlin must WATCH this and even participate in it. These situations are created so that Devlin, who loves Alicia, must practically push her into another man's arms (and bed) because it is his *duty*.



There is a great scene where Alicia *reports* to Devlin that she has added Sebastian to her list of “playmates”. That’s one of those scenes where you wonder how the censors let that slip past. You don’t need a decoder ring to figure out what she means - she screwed him. They aren’t married, there is no talk of marriage at this point... but she screwed him. And Devlin, trying to act businesslike, tells her “good job”. But you know that isn’t what he’s thinking... or feeling.

Later, after Alicia and Sebastian have been screwing for a while, she goes to see the CIA boss and Devlin for advice - Sebastian has asked to marry her. Hey, one thing to push the woman you love into the bed of another man... a bigger thing to says she should *marry* him. That takes her off the market. That’s permanent. But that’s what the situation forces Devlin to do. It’s a great scene, because Devlin ends up trying to find some *business* (duty) reasons why they should not get married... but ends up finding the solution to every objection he comes up with. He’s the one who realizes their marriage may be bad for his heart, but it’s good for the mission.



Because the marriage creates an excuse to throw a big party... where Devlin and Alicia can search the wine cellar and find out what the Nazis are up to. At that big party there are numerous scenes and bits where Devlin and Alicia desperately want to be together... but he must hand her over to Sebastian. There are 3 or 4 scenes in that sequence where this happens - the big one where Alicia and Devlin have gone to the wine cellar together, discovered that the Nazis are working with uranium, and are almost discovered spying (duty) by Sebastian, but they pretend to be kissing (love) so that he wioll not suspect. Only problem - they both really want to kiss each other and do not want to stop.

And every time Devlin must push her into the arms of Sebastian, we feel awful for him. How can a man do that? How can he live with that? How can he stand there and watch the woman he loves with someone else? How can he be the one who forced her to be with that other person - and in scene after scene keep forcing her to be with him. But that is his *job*, his *duty*. Scene after scene deals with this central conflict - you could pick any random scene and find that central conflict and use it to clone the rest of the script. Once you have that central conflict, that war within the character that is also the plot, you have to create scenes that externalize it into a series of battles.

BIGGEST TO SMALLEST - ALL ONE SHOT:


And all of the other characters are different aspects of that Love vs. Duty conflict *illustrated*. We’ve looked at Devlin and Alicia's *love vs. duty* aspects, let's look at the other characters: The Nazi, Alex Sebastian (Claude Raines), is a great character - a sad little man in love with a hottie. To give us the love vs. duty thing - he discovers that Alicia (woman he loves) is really a CIA agent - what does he do? He goes to his smothering mother (Madame Konstantin) for advice, “Mother, I have married an America agent” - love and duty in the same sentence *again*! When Sebastian tells her that Alicia is a spy, she has to pit her love for her son (which is kinda creepy) against her duty as an evil Nazi - if she exposes Alicia as a spy to the other Nazis, she may get rid of the woman who is coming between her and her son... but also putting her son in danger - the other Nazis will probably kill him.

So they decide to slowly poison her, and tell the other Nazis that she is ill. And that’s as far as I’m going to go with the plot, in case you haven’t seen the movie. I don’t want to spoil all of it. But when you watch the film, look at scenes like the one with Poor Emil, who freaks out in front of Alicia when he thinks the wine they are serving with dinner might be Uranium. All of the Nazis love Emil, he’s a very sweet guy, but they decide he’s let his emotions get in the way of business by freaking out like that, and the only way to resolve it is to kill him. This is a great scene because it does so many different things at once - it is “love and duty” and shows just how evil the Nazis are (they are killing their friend) and telling us the wine bottle is the MacGuffin and - what we don’t know at the time - completely setting up the end of the movie!

You can take any scene in NOTORIOUS and find a Love vs. Duty decision in the center of it - the DNA of the story - and use that DNA to clone the rest of the story. Each scene, each line, each character is a *part* of the whole. Nothing tacked on from the outside. Nothing that does not belong.

Subtext: The great thing about these Love vs. Duty situations is that they are overflowing with subtext. NOTORIOUS is one of those films where every line of dialogue has multiple meanings - usually the “duty” line that has a “love” second meaning. This allows the dialogue to be subtle - the situations are so emotionally charged there’s no need for big dramatic dialogue.



One of the scenes I use whenever I teach my 2 day class is the one where they finally take a chance on love, and Alicia plans on cooking him dinner (even though in a previous scene she said she hates to cook - so this is a big thing for her) and she talks about marriage... hinting that she would not be opposed to a long term relationship with Devlin (again, this is a party girl who is used to one night stands and no permanent romantic attachments)... except the conversation is all about preparing chicken. When she talks about the domestic act of making dinner, she’s really talking about *their* domestic future. Oh, and I guess I should mention that this conversation takes place during what was the record for the longest kiss in screen history! Couldn’t be a single sustained kiss, the censors would not allow that, so it is a liplock and a line of dialogue and a liplock and a line of dialogue with the two of them tangled in each other’s arms the whole time. Sexy as hell!



Focus Objects: I have a Script Tip on suspense “focus objects” that uses NOTORIOUS as an example. A “focus object” is an item that creates suspense - like the unraveling rope bridge support in adventure films. The wine bottles are great focus objects in the film, first in the scene where Emil freaks at the bottle being served with dinner - you wonder what’s in it? When they pour it and it is only wine, the question becomes - the why did Emil freak? When Devlin and Alicia search the wine cellar - they are looking for a similar bottle... and find a bunch of them. Devlin accidentally breaks one, exposing Uranium ore. Now he must clean it up against the clock - with Sebastian climbing down the stairs! They find a similar bottle, empty the wine and fill it with the ore, and replace it on the shelf. When Sebastian searches the wine cellar later, looking for something out of place, he looks from vintage year label to vintage year label on the shelf of “uranium bottles” - and one year is not like the others... the one Devlin replaced. The bottle out of place is what creates the suspense in the scene.



And the wine cellar key is the focus of the big party scene and the scenes before and after. Alicia, as Mrs. Sebastian, has access to the keys to every room... except the wine cellar. Since Emil freaked at a wine bottle, Devlin is sure that is the key to whatever those pesky Nazis are up to... and orders Alicia to steal the key. There is a great scene where she steals the key from Sebastian’s key ring while he is dressing for the party only a few feet away. She gets the key - it is in her hand - when Sebastian approaches her, grabs both of her hands! He tells her how much he loves her (as she is stealing the key as part of her spy duties) and lifts one of her hands, opens it... (the empty one, close call) and kisses her palm. Then goes to kiss the other hand... but Alicia pulls him into her arms so that he’ll forget about the hand with the key in it. Distracts him with some lovin’ so he won’t find the stolen key. That’s *before* the party, where the key is the focus as Alicia palms it off to Devlin and eventually Sebastian realizes the key is missing from his ring when he and the butler go down to get some more champagne. That key is the center of about 15 minutes of the film!



There’s also a great “twitch” in the story - an object that has a symbolic and emotional meaning. When Alicia wants to go on that midnight picnic at the beginning of the film she is wearing and outfit with a bear midriff, and Devlin jokes that she might catch cold and ties his handkerchief around her waist. That handkerchief becomes a symbol of their relationship, and there’s a heart breaking scene where she returns it to him... because she’s now screwing that Nazi morning, noon and night. Whenever you can take an object and give it an additional meaning, you can tell your story without words.



Ticking Clock Also whenever I do the two day class I sometimes use the champagne at the party as an example of unusual ticking clocks. Those big red LEDs on the sides of bombs are a complete cliche, and not every film is about a bomb. But there are a million other things that can be used as a “ticking clock” to create suspense. In NOTORIOUS at that big party there is a huge ice bucket full of champagne bottles - and everyone at the party is drinking champagne. Devlin and Alicia will be breaking into the wine cellar, where the rest of the champagne is, to search for the freakout wine. If the champagne in the bucket runs low, Sebastian will need to go down to the wine cellar to get more... except he can’t because Alicia has stolen his key. So, every time they pull another bottle of champagne from that bucket, it’s like minutes ticking away on the clock. This is a great device - and when Alicia or Devlin is offered a glass of champagne and they turn it down, it’s strange and suspect. Hey, it’s a party!



Sound Track: Big, lush, romantic music from Roy Webb, who scored CAT PEOPLE and LEOPARD MAN and MURDER MY SWEET and many other noir films. If the NOTORIOUS score sounds familiar to you, it’s because it gets nicked all the time for parody films with big soapy romantic scenes.

NOTORIOUS is one of those films that doesn’t seem to age - sure it’s in black and white (cinematography by the great Ted Tetzlaff) and is about Nazis and World War 2, but the raw emotions that run through every scene and the sophisticated story about a woman who screws for her country (still amazing that they let them make the film!) seem more modern than half of the films made today. Romance, suspense, drama... all in one great film!

NEXT FRIDAY: THE PARADINE CASE... the movie Hitchcock quit!

- Bill

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