First it was Paul Muni, then it was Al Pacino, and now...
EMBED-Scarface School Play - Watch more free videos
Gives a whole new meaning to Childrens Theater.
- Bill
Your warning:
Movies 4 Men Channel: 10/2 - 11:00 - Crash Dive - The crew of a nuclear submarine rescue supposed victims of a boat disaster, but the victims turn out to be terrorists intent on capturing nuclear weapons aboard the sub. (1997)
Friday, September 30, 2011
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Lancelot Link: The Next Day
Lancelot Link Thursday! 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 six cool links plus this week's car chase...
1) Superheroes In Their Off Moments.
2) Duct Tape Tron.
3) John Landis On Movie Monsters.
4) Want To Read All Of The Christopher Nolan Screenplays?
5) Hollywood Without DVDs.
6) Linda Obst on BRIDESMAIDS and women on screen.
What happens when your search terms are "Movie Car Chase Norway"?
- Bill
Here are six cool links plus this week's car chase...
1) Superheroes In Their Off Moments.
2) Duct Tape Tron.
3) John Landis On Movie Monsters.
4) Want To Read All Of The Christopher Nolan Screenplays?
5) Hollywood Without DVDs.
6) Linda Obst on BRIDESMAIDS and women on screen.
What happens when your search terms are "Movie Car Chase Norway"?
- Bill
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Angelina Jolie Eats Live Human Babies!
You know how movie stars keep looking young even when they get old? They eat live human babies. Tom Cruise is 50 years old and still looks like a teenager – how does he do that? He eats live human babies. Madonna is 50 but doesn't look anything like it – she eats live human babies. She even adopts them from different countries, maybe some kind of a balanced died thing. Angelina Jolie is approaching 40 but looks like she's in her 20s – she also eats live human babies, and also adopts them from different countries. Bridget Bardot was eating live human babies every single day, then she stopped – and look at her now! She just got ancient and ugly fast! See – it works! It's gotta be true that they eat live human babies because they look so young. What else could it be? Plus, I read this on a website that was all about Hollywood, so I know it's true. Movie stars all eat live human babies! Why would the website lie about something like that?
It was on the internet, so it has to be true, right?
BRIDGET BARDOT - BEFORE AND AFTER:
(She should never have stopped eating the babies!)
Back when I was a kid I had a paper route, and delivered the “Green Sheet” - the Contra Costa Times. It was printed on green paper. Every morning I would get up, ride my bike to the newspaper shack, pick up my papers, take them home to roll them and band them, then deliver them before school. Once a month I would go door-to-door to collect. Ah, the joys of childhood! Back then major cities usually had two competing newspapers – one that backed the Democratic Candidates and one that backed the Republican Candidates – independents were out of luck. Newspapers had big staffs and editors and fact checkers and reporters out in the field and in other countries. They reported the facts, and had opinions on the editorial pages, Sure, they may have been a slight spin – if there was a fire the Republican paper would report how much money was lost in structure damage and the Democrat paper would report how many people were left homeless – but 99% of the story was exactly the same. Facts came first, opinion came last. What was important was the fire.
Then cable hit, and all of those news shows, and talk radio, and opinion shows, and two things happened to newspapers: Due to the competition, fewer people read the papers so they had to cut staffs down to the bare bones – fact checkers and editors and field reporters and everyone else was “let go” and they began using “pool reporters” and wire services... and to compete with the crazy TV shows the papers became more like tabloids – filled with gossip and rumor and unsubstantiated facts and opinion. So now the % of facts vs. opinion has changed big time – but newspapers still print retractions when they get something wrong and make an attempt to report the news.
Of course, now everybody gets their news online and the print journalism business is in the crapper. But even online there are legitimate news sources and... the other places: bloggers, 98% opinion news sites, and the rest. Places that are more rumor than fact, where Angelina Jolie eats live babies to keep that hot bod.
She is hot, right? So that proves it!
Recently there was a wonderful article about the Truth Behind Hollywood that was filled with all kinds of crazy things – some relating to screenwriters. This was not an article in The Hollywood Reporter or Variety or any legit news source – it was some website that generated excitement through incitement. One of those places that is full of scandal and finger pointing and end of the world scenarios – and this was the *Hollywood* end of entertainment scenario. Just reading the article, you could see that it was light on facts and full of opinion. Yet, like wildfire, that article was linked on Twitter and Facebook and messageboards and every place that screenwriters might congregate. And everyone believed it! Well, everyone who didn't know better. But what surprised me was how many people that was. The people who work in the business knew that it was mostly fabricated crap, but many writers who haven't broken in yet believed it without checking out the facts – even though it was not from a source known for facts. They *wanted* to believe it. The didn't want to check the facts – that would take time away from posting on those various messageboards how awful this all way and how Hollywood has actually gone to Hell in a handcart. Why do we want to believe the worst? Why do we believe stuff from suspicious sources?
I can not understand *wanting* to believe that Angelina Jolie eats live babies.
This stuff happens at least once a week – and sometimes it's *amazing* how the same bad info keeps getting passed around. You know that woman who claims that THE MATRIX and every other movie ever made ripped off her idea? You know that story that she took Warner Bros to court and won millions? And, of course, all of that is completely false – her case was thrown out of court for lack of basic evidence. And there are plenty of actual newspaper stories that reported the actual outcome, and if you go to Snopes.com it is listed as complete BS – the woman was interviewed in a *college newspaper* and said she won the case, and then worked her butt off to get that college newspaper story linked all over the place so that it seemed like a fact. But one minute on Google and you can easily find a bunch of legit news sources that dispute her story and have the facts that she lost. It's not hard to find the truth about that one...
Yet, sometime this month someone will post that story on a screenwriting messageboard as proof that Hollywood rips off writers. See, she won in court against Warner Bros. This weird screenwriting blog from someone in Peru proves it!
(Nothing against screenwriters in Peru – just using that as an extreme outside the Hollywood loop example.)
A while back on one of the messageboards I frequent someone asked a very good question: why would people believe some new writer who has no idea what they are talking about and can't even support their argument with a couple of facts over a working pro (not me, by the way)? And people were arguing *against* the working pro – and arguing *against* his experience! Huh? Though everyone has different experiences (ask a panel of pro writers how they broke in and you will get as many different ways as there are people on the panel), the experience of someone who does this for a living trumps the opinion of someone who does not. Hey, facts may still come into play here and show that the *average* experience is different than that guy who does it for a living... and that's cool. But those are facts from some reliable source, not some rumor mill website. The stuff on the rumor mill website? Not facts. Not a good source for information. Instead of reading stuff there, why not go to Variety or Hollywood Reporter or some other legit source?
Is it because the scandal element is what is exciting? The negative aspects of the “news” are more attractive than the truth? What amazes me are those people on messageboards who will *fight* against the truth. Who will argue against the real facts. Who will argue against someone with experience and do everything they can to tear them down rather than just listen and consider what they say. And, like I said, if you can find the facts that dispute what I say – I want to hear them! My experience may be a fluke! (Though, I take the time to Google stuff so that I don't make a complete ass of myself in print... though sometimes I still screw up. Sorry.)
If someone gives me real information that conflicts with my experience, I'm going to use that real info. Things like that give me a larger picture and help *me*. You know, I'm trying to sell scripts just like everyone else. If I'm doing something stupid, I want to know. I'm not going to *fight* facts – that seems stupid.
But still some people seem to prefer the rumors to the facts and seek them out... when they could just as easily find the facts (and check to see if those rumors are true or not). Why do they *want* to believe that Angelina Jolie eats live babies? Why do they want to spread the rumor that she eats live babies? Why, when faced with the facts, would they fight those facts in order to continue to believe obvious lies? What's up with that?
Here's the thing – the internet is filled with crap. Messageboards are filled with crap. The whole danged world is filled with crap. Instead of just blindly believing something, do a minute of research before you spread that nonsense. Hey, you may learn things!
There are no producer's “staff writers” who script all of those ideas that producers steal from new writers. The WGA is not some evil cabal designed to keep out new writers so that their members can make more money (actually, the WGA makes a pile on initiation fees from new members – and that means they *want* new writers to get work). There are no secret handshakes or odd conspiracies – Hollywood mostly just wants to make money. They want to buy one script instead of another because they believe one will make more money than the other. They hire one writer to do an assignment over another writer because they believe that writer is a better writer (and/or has a better work ethic). Maybe the problem with the truth is that it's mostly pretty boring, but rumors are usually weird and amazing?
But, what else explains why Angelina Jolie is still so hot after all of these years?
- Bill
It was on the internet, so it has to be true, right?
BRIDGET BARDOT - BEFORE AND AFTER:
(She should never have stopped eating the babies!)
Back when I was a kid I had a paper route, and delivered the “Green Sheet” - the Contra Costa Times. It was printed on green paper. Every morning I would get up, ride my bike to the newspaper shack, pick up my papers, take them home to roll them and band them, then deliver them before school. Once a month I would go door-to-door to collect. Ah, the joys of childhood! Back then major cities usually had two competing newspapers – one that backed the Democratic Candidates and one that backed the Republican Candidates – independents were out of luck. Newspapers had big staffs and editors and fact checkers and reporters out in the field and in other countries. They reported the facts, and had opinions on the editorial pages, Sure, they may have been a slight spin – if there was a fire the Republican paper would report how much money was lost in structure damage and the Democrat paper would report how many people were left homeless – but 99% of the story was exactly the same. Facts came first, opinion came last. What was important was the fire.
Then cable hit, and all of those news shows, and talk radio, and opinion shows, and two things happened to newspapers: Due to the competition, fewer people read the papers so they had to cut staffs down to the bare bones – fact checkers and editors and field reporters and everyone else was “let go” and they began using “pool reporters” and wire services... and to compete with the crazy TV shows the papers became more like tabloids – filled with gossip and rumor and unsubstantiated facts and opinion. So now the % of facts vs. opinion has changed big time – but newspapers still print retractions when they get something wrong and make an attempt to report the news.
Of course, now everybody gets their news online and the print journalism business is in the crapper. But even online there are legitimate news sources and... the other places: bloggers, 98% opinion news sites, and the rest. Places that are more rumor than fact, where Angelina Jolie eats live babies to keep that hot bod.
She is hot, right? So that proves it!
WANTING TO BELIEVE
Recently there was a wonderful article about the Truth Behind Hollywood that was filled with all kinds of crazy things – some relating to screenwriters. This was not an article in The Hollywood Reporter or Variety or any legit news source – it was some website that generated excitement through incitement. One of those places that is full of scandal and finger pointing and end of the world scenarios – and this was the *Hollywood* end of entertainment scenario. Just reading the article, you could see that it was light on facts and full of opinion. Yet, like wildfire, that article was linked on Twitter and Facebook and messageboards and every place that screenwriters might congregate. And everyone believed it! Well, everyone who didn't know better. But what surprised me was how many people that was. The people who work in the business knew that it was mostly fabricated crap, but many writers who haven't broken in yet believed it without checking out the facts – even though it was not from a source known for facts. They *wanted* to believe it. The didn't want to check the facts – that would take time away from posting on those various messageboards how awful this all way and how Hollywood has actually gone to Hell in a handcart. Why do we want to believe the worst? Why do we believe stuff from suspicious sources?
I can not understand *wanting* to believe that Angelina Jolie eats live babies.
This stuff happens at least once a week – and sometimes it's *amazing* how the same bad info keeps getting passed around. You know that woman who claims that THE MATRIX and every other movie ever made ripped off her idea? You know that story that she took Warner Bros to court and won millions? And, of course, all of that is completely false – her case was thrown out of court for lack of basic evidence. And there are plenty of actual newspaper stories that reported the actual outcome, and if you go to Snopes.com it is listed as complete BS – the woman was interviewed in a *college newspaper* and said she won the case, and then worked her butt off to get that college newspaper story linked all over the place so that it seemed like a fact. But one minute on Google and you can easily find a bunch of legit news sources that dispute her story and have the facts that she lost. It's not hard to find the truth about that one...
Yet, sometime this month someone will post that story on a screenwriting messageboard as proof that Hollywood rips off writers. See, she won in court against Warner Bros. This weird screenwriting blog from someone in Peru proves it!
(Nothing against screenwriters in Peru – just using that as an extreme outside the Hollywood loop example.)
EXPERTS VS. DRIPS UNDER PRESSURE
A while back on one of the messageboards I frequent someone asked a very good question: why would people believe some new writer who has no idea what they are talking about and can't even support their argument with a couple of facts over a working pro (not me, by the way)? And people were arguing *against* the working pro – and arguing *against* his experience! Huh? Though everyone has different experiences (ask a panel of pro writers how they broke in and you will get as many different ways as there are people on the panel), the experience of someone who does this for a living trumps the opinion of someone who does not. Hey, facts may still come into play here and show that the *average* experience is different than that guy who does it for a living... and that's cool. But those are facts from some reliable source, not some rumor mill website. The stuff on the rumor mill website? Not facts. Not a good source for information. Instead of reading stuff there, why not go to Variety or Hollywood Reporter or some other legit source?
Is it because the scandal element is what is exciting? The negative aspects of the “news” are more attractive than the truth? What amazes me are those people on messageboards who will *fight* against the truth. Who will argue against the real facts. Who will argue against someone with experience and do everything they can to tear them down rather than just listen and consider what they say. And, like I said, if you can find the facts that dispute what I say – I want to hear them! My experience may be a fluke! (Though, I take the time to Google stuff so that I don't make a complete ass of myself in print... though sometimes I still screw up. Sorry.)
If someone gives me real information that conflicts with my experience, I'm going to use that real info. Things like that give me a larger picture and help *me*. You know, I'm trying to sell scripts just like everyone else. If I'm doing something stupid, I want to know. I'm not going to *fight* facts – that seems stupid.
But still some people seem to prefer the rumors to the facts and seek them out... when they could just as easily find the facts (and check to see if those rumors are true or not). Why do they *want* to believe that Angelina Jolie eats live babies? Why do they want to spread the rumor that she eats live babies? Why, when faced with the facts, would they fight those facts in order to continue to believe obvious lies? What's up with that?
Here's the thing – the internet is filled with crap. Messageboards are filled with crap. The whole danged world is filled with crap. Instead of just blindly believing something, do a minute of research before you spread that nonsense. Hey, you may learn things!
There are no producer's “staff writers” who script all of those ideas that producers steal from new writers. The WGA is not some evil cabal designed to keep out new writers so that their members can make more money (actually, the WGA makes a pile on initiation fees from new members – and that means they *want* new writers to get work). There are no secret handshakes or odd conspiracies – Hollywood mostly just wants to make money. They want to buy one script instead of another because they believe one will make more money than the other. They hire one writer to do an assignment over another writer because they believe that writer is a better writer (and/or has a better work ethic). Maybe the problem with the truth is that it's mostly pretty boring, but rumors are usually weird and amazing?
But, what else explains why Angelina Jolie is still so hot after all of these years?
- Bill
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
More People Dying!
RIP: David Zelag Goodman - screenwriter of STRAW DOGS and the Mitchum FAIRWELL MY LOVELY.
RIP: Uan Rasey - trumpet player on the CHINATOWN soundtrack. Thanks to my brother Dave (pro musician) for the heads up on this. Jerry Goldsmith's CHINATOWN score is amazing, and Rasey's trumpet solo work carries the score.
Both will be missed.
- Bill
RIP: Uan Rasey - trumpet player on the CHINATOWN soundtrack. Thanks to my brother Dave (pro musician) for the heads up on this. Jerry Goldsmith's CHINATOWN score is amazing, and Rasey's trumpet solo work carries the score.
Both will be missed.
- Bill
Monday, September 26, 2011
Low Budget Losers
From the vault...
For some reason, I know a bunch of stuntmen and special effects guys. My friend Rick’s friend Chuck rolled down the stairs at the end of THE EXORCIST and then, the next day, fell off the top of the Space Needle in PARALLAX VIEW. He’s an interesting guy - he’s worked on almost every Clint Eastwood movie and is still working now... even though he is no longer a young man. I’ll bet I know at least one stuntman on every U.S. movie that hits the big screen... and DVD. For this little story. I’m going to either change the names or leave them out... since these stuntmen want to keep working.
There is this low budget company that began by making low-end direct to video horror films. The company began as a distributor - and that’s really what studios like Paramount and Warner Brothers and Universal are - they distribute films. This company is way way way down the list from those studios. They “buy” a completed low budget film from an indie filmmaker (usually horror), then take it to American Film Market and sell foreign territories for as much as they can get... then release the film on DVD in the USA. They probably began with a boiler room, with out of work actors on the phone selling the movies to mom & pop video stores. Doing a hard sell, because these films have no stars in the cast, and probably no one who can even act in the cast. Plus, they were made on a shoe string and probably look like crap.
The problem these companies have is that they are dependant on the indie producers to make a film they can sell. As you know from my Trilogy Of Terror blog entries, most indie producers don’t have a clue... and end up making horror movies without any horror. I have no idea why they do this. But these really low end distribs have to wade through all of those movies, trying to find a horror film with some horror in it... at least enough to cut together a trailer. Eventually they find some indie filmmakers that have a clue, and they work with those guys - often telling them what sort of horror movie they would buy, so that the indie filmmaker can make that film. But people who have a clue tend to move on to bigger and better distribs... so eventually these low end companies decide it would be much easier to just make the films themselves.
And they start doing “in house” - making their own films.
Now, the creative force behind these films... are salesmen. The guys who sell the films at AFM or have graduated from the boiler room to VP Sales. They are not writers. They are not directors. They are not even producers. They are SALESMEN. They know what sells (boobs, blood) but know absolutely nothing about story or making movies.
They do know that if they are going to make a lot of money on these films, they have to be made for pocket change. So this company makes movies for $100k maximum and pays $1k for the screenplay. They started out paying $2k, but discovered the writer who would take $2k would take $1k. So why not pay the writer less and pocket the difference?
Now, here’s where it gets really good. At the company in this story, after they pay the writer $1k for the script, one of the salesmen does a rewrite. They don’t hire a writer to do the rewrite, because writers don’t know *what sells* the way a salesman does. This company makes over a dozen films a year - and has a deal with Blockbuster video. I have no idea how much Blockbuster pays them per film, but they make them for $100k. SAG signatory (extreme low budget deal) so they can get some names in the cast.
YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR
So one of my stunman friends gets hired to work on a film from this company. The company has decided horror movies are oversaturated, so they’ve decided to make an action flick. Hey, and they are going to spend a little more (because they have to). My friend is a stuntman who wants to become a stunt coordinator (a step up) and they hire him in that position. He reads the script, and it’s not great, but it’s okay.
He goes to the first production meeting and discovers there is very little money in the stunt budget, but a whole lotta action in the script. My friend doesn’t want to be stunt coordinator on a film with very few stunts, how would that look on his resume? He wants to get a bunch of great clips for his reel out of this film, so that he never has to work for a company this low on the totem pole ever again. That means he’s going to have to pull favors.
He realizes the best way to get good clips on *his* reel is to find other stuntmen friends who want good clips on their reels. So he asks all of his buddies what stunts they have always wanted to do... stunts they would do just to have them on their reel (so that other companies will hire them at top dollar to do the same stunts in much better films). My friend goes back to the “producers” with a list of “stunts at cost” and they work them into the script. This is easier than you might think, since action films tend to have the same basic stunts. There are car chases and a high fall and fist fights and things like that.
Now, at this budget, the most impressive “stunt at cost” he can get is a car doing a multiple roll and exploding. My friend knows a stuntman who has always wanted a big car roll on his reel. If you’ve seen THE KINGDOM, you know that a good car roll can be really impressive. The SUV chase and explosion in that film is just amazing. There’s a behind the scenes on HBO that shows how they did it - and *that* is amazing. Back in the 70s when John Wayne was losing popularity, he made a film called McQ where he played a Dirty Harry type cop - and to sell the film, they did a record breaking car roll. The only reason why I own that film on DVD - the car roll.
Now, the car roll stuntman has never done one of these before, so he pulls all of *his* favors - and gets five top stunt guys in Hollywood to help him with his first car roll (and be there to watch... so they might hire him or recommend him later). They buy a car, build a roll cage, do all of the prep stuff. These expenses come out of pocket, now - the stuntguy will be paid for after the stunt. The stunyguy gets a pyrotech friend of his to explode a second car for cost. They will need an ambulance and a water truck on set for this... but the “producers” argue that they can do without both. The producers are thinking they can save money... and pocket it. What’s more, the ambulance and water truck and Fire Marshal don’t show up on film, so why pay for them? If it’s not on screen, it’s not important.
Well, the law says differently, so the producers are forced to comply. The producers will take care of the water truck and ambulance and Fire Marshal... because they are afraid if my friend the stunt coordinator does it, he won’t get the best price.
A week before the film goes into production, one of the two salesmen who own the company does his script rewrite... and now the script is much much worse than when my friend signed on. Now it’s crap. But the two salesmen turned “producers” who own the company think it’s brilliant. They think they know what they are doing, and what is good... and they are wrong.
But my friend thinks that maybe all of the cool stunts will make up for the (now) really bad screenplay....
THE CAR ROLL AND EXPLOSION
The call time is 9am. The stunt guys show up at 9am with the vehicles.... and no one else is there.
No one.
They wait around, and people start trickling in.
The pyro guy wants to run a test - explode the second car with a quarter of the pyro stuff... but there is no fire marshal on set. He asks when the fire marshal is supposed to show, and the Assistant Director says call time was 9am (even though he didn't show until after 10am himself). But he assured the pyro guy that there was a permit to explode stuff.
Well, the pyro guy *knows* the fire marshal who would be assigned to this film, and calls him. Guess what? There was never a permit. No one ever applied for a permit. This makes the pyro guy angry, but he’s already out here and set up... so he talks to the fire marshal. Smooths things over. Finds a way to make it work. The fire marshal will come out on set and they can fill out the paperwork and get a permit when he arrives. He will allow them to do the explosions (if they have a water truck on site) as soon as he arrives. By the way - this is a huge favor the pyro guy is pulling - he's getting a fire marshal to show up and do a permit on site... and it was the guy's day off.
The fire marshal gives them even a bigger break - he allows the pyro guy to do a test before he arrives.
My friend the stunt coordinator realizes that the test may provide an additional angle of the explosion (this is a low budget film - they have *one* camera to film the explosion) and tells the camera crew he needs a camera set up in 30 minutes. The camera crew seems to be working at their own pace, but assures him that the camera will be ready in half an hour.
Fifteen minutes later, my friend checks in with the camera crew, and they don’t seem to be working very fast. Part of this may be that my friend is the stunt coordinator, not the director... but it’s not like the camera crew is doing anything else. Today is a stunt day - it’s all about the stunt. The director, who is somewhere at the location on his cell phone talking to someone about something that has nothing to do with the movie. Seems not to care. I have no idea what they pay the directors on these films, but if the writer’s fee is any indicator, the director is probably making minimum wage. Now. I have this belief that what you are getting paid should have nothing to do with the amount of energy and enthusiasm you give a project. If you decide to do a crappy job because you are being paid crap... you won’t ever be offered a better job. Anyway, neither the director nor the camera guys seemed to give a damn.
This stunt man is going to risk his life by the end of the day, doing a dangerous car roll for peanuts, and the camera guys and director don’t care.
Half an hour later, the car is ready to explode... the camera is not ready to shoot. Now, my friend thinks the test explosion is pretty important on a low budget film... so he begs the pryo guy to give them another half hour to get the camera set up. Then he tells the camera crew that they have a half hour to get the camera set up and pointed at the car that is going to explode. If they aren’t ready in half an hour, they can will explode anyway.
A half hour later, the camera is still not ready, and the pyro guy says he's going to do his test. The test is cool... and not on film.
When the camera finally is ready, the stunt guy gets ready to do his car roll. All of his buddies - big time stunt guys - are there to see the big event... and maybe pull him from the wreckage if things go wrong. They give him last minute advice on how to do the car roll, things to watch out for, things to remember... Then they all shake his hand. He’s about to do something very dangerous... roll a car over several times *on purpose*. Stuntmen are crazy.
The stuntguy asks when the ambulance is going to show, the Assistant Director says, “I don't know, but we're behind time, so just do it.”
The stuntguy thinks that is a very bad idea - they are *miles* from the nearest town out in the middle of nowhere. He asks how far the nearest hospital is - and the AD doesn't know. Folks, in case you don't know - the rules say they need to know where the nearest hospital is, and have directions on how to get there, even if all they are shooting is a *dialogue scene*. Usually the map to the hospital, along with all of the emergency numbers, is on the back of the call sheet. If a film is shooting a dialogue scene and someone gets hurt, has a heart attack, whatever, they need to know where the nearest hospital is.
This is a day where they are doing dangerous stunts *and* explosions and the Assistant Director has no idea where the nearest hospital is... not even the phone number!
Well, the stuntguy blows his top. The AD gets on the phone to one of the two salesmen turned film producers who run this company and explains that the stuntguy refuses to do the stunt unless they have an ambulance. The “producer” asks if an ambulance is really required? Maybe he can talk the stuntguy into doing the car roll without it, put him on the phone.
The stuntguy controls his temper as he explains how dangerous this stunt is. They have the car with the roll-cage, they have all of the safety equipment, they have a stunt team... it would be a shame to lose the stunt because they don’t have an ambulance. The “producer” tells the AD it's up to him to get an ambulance out there - free or dirt cheap.
Well, while the AD is calling ambulance companies, the fire marshal shows up - so they can blow up the second car. The fire marshal sees the water truck, and, for some reason, decides to tap the tank with his knuckles... it's empty. See, filling it with water would cost extra - somewhere between $20 and $50 - so they didn't do that. Well, the fire marshal blows up - what kind of morons are these guys? He's not going to let them do *anything* - even bullet hits - unless they get the water truck filled with water. The first AD calls HQ again, and the “producer” decides it's too much trouble to send a PA to fill the water truck, plus pay for an ambulance, etc.
So, they change the scene. They just want the car to drive up and down the dirt road, and they'll do everything else in post. They’ll superimpose some fake looking fireball on the car, and instead of the car roll, well... it just comes to a stop.
The stunt guys are all pissed off. The pyro guy is pissed off. The fire marshal is threatening an investigation.
Everyone has wasted their time, wasted their efforts, wasted their credibility... they’ve pulled all kinds of favors... for nothing. For want of a single horse a mighty empire fell... All of the cool stunts they would have had in their low budget movie for *free*? Not there.
This is why so many low budget film makers remain low budget film makers. They think it’s more important to save $20 than to make a better film. Who the hell would even *rent* a water truck and then not put water in it? These guys are low budget losers... the kind of people you never want to work for. They don't care, and they don't want to improve their work. The most important thing - the basic requirement - you have to care. You have to love what you do. You need to constantly be trying to do something better - to improve yourself and your work. Even if you are making a low budget horror flick, you need to try to make the *best* low budget horror film possible. If you don't have the money, use your imagination.
My friend and all of his stuntmen friends are never going to work for these low budget loser again, and have spread the word. No one will ever do them a favor again... no more free stunts, they'll have to pay full price. But the crappy film without stunts? On the shelves at Blockbuster.
Only in Hollywood, baby!
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: That scene in FARGO where Marge meets that guy she went to high school with for drinks.
Yesterday’s Dinner: Fish Tacos at Islands in Burbank.
MOVIES: MICHAEL CLAYTON - I posted somewhere that I hated that title, it was boring... but after seeing the film, it's *fitting*. The movie is not the thriller advertized, it's a character study. It's all about Michael Clayton. It's as much about his family problems (his two brothers, his son, etc) as it's about his work (fixer for a law firm in charge of dealing with a lawyer who has gone crazy - and now wants to switch sides). The trailer makes it look like it's all about the job, and a thriller. Well, it has some paranoia - but nothing compared to PARALLAX VIEW - a film that is filled with suspense set pieces... and still gives us a great character (and character scenes) and makes a political/social point. The acting is great, Clooney manages to be charming on the outside and sad on the inside at the same time. And everyone else is great... but the story itself is light - more of a framework for the character study than anything else.
MOVIES: A week ago I saw the final director's cut of BLADE RUNNER with a bunch of my FX friends. When I first saw the film, whenever it was released, I thought it had too much production design... and I still feel the same way. Hard to get past the hairdoos.
DVDS: Watched BLOOD SIMPLE again last night - one of my favorite movies... but I *hate* the director's cut on DVD. They actually cut stuff out! They cut out a set up for an eventual punchline (that doesn't work). And cut lines here and there - and, because I freakin' know the film by heart, I miss all of those lines! Still an amazing flick... but I want the non-George Lucas version on DVD.
Pages: Preparing for my Expo Classes... so I'm procrastinating by writing a page or two on SLEEPER... now I'm only 10 pages from the end! I want to just finish the sucker... but I need to work on the classes.
For some reason, I know a bunch of stuntmen and special effects guys. My friend Rick’s friend Chuck rolled down the stairs at the end of THE EXORCIST and then, the next day, fell off the top of the Space Needle in PARALLAX VIEW. He’s an interesting guy - he’s worked on almost every Clint Eastwood movie and is still working now... even though he is no longer a young man. I’ll bet I know at least one stuntman on every U.S. movie that hits the big screen... and DVD. For this little story. I’m going to either change the names or leave them out... since these stuntmen want to keep working.
There is this low budget company that began by making low-end direct to video horror films. The company began as a distributor - and that’s really what studios like Paramount and Warner Brothers and Universal are - they distribute films. This company is way way way down the list from those studios. They “buy” a completed low budget film from an indie filmmaker (usually horror), then take it to American Film Market and sell foreign territories for as much as they can get... then release the film on DVD in the USA. They probably began with a boiler room, with out of work actors on the phone selling the movies to mom & pop video stores. Doing a hard sell, because these films have no stars in the cast, and probably no one who can even act in the cast. Plus, they were made on a shoe string and probably look like crap.
The problem these companies have is that they are dependant on the indie producers to make a film they can sell. As you know from my Trilogy Of Terror blog entries, most indie producers don’t have a clue... and end up making horror movies without any horror. I have no idea why they do this. But these really low end distribs have to wade through all of those movies, trying to find a horror film with some horror in it... at least enough to cut together a trailer. Eventually they find some indie filmmakers that have a clue, and they work with those guys - often telling them what sort of horror movie they would buy, so that the indie filmmaker can make that film. But people who have a clue tend to move on to bigger and better distribs... so eventually these low end companies decide it would be much easier to just make the films themselves.
And they start doing “in house” - making their own films.
Now, the creative force behind these films... are salesmen. The guys who sell the films at AFM or have graduated from the boiler room to VP Sales. They are not writers. They are not directors. They are not even producers. They are SALESMEN. They know what sells (boobs, blood) but know absolutely nothing about story or making movies.
They do know that if they are going to make a lot of money on these films, they have to be made for pocket change. So this company makes movies for $100k maximum and pays $1k for the screenplay. They started out paying $2k, but discovered the writer who would take $2k would take $1k. So why not pay the writer less and pocket the difference?
Now, here’s where it gets really good. At the company in this story, after they pay the writer $1k for the script, one of the salesmen does a rewrite. They don’t hire a writer to do the rewrite, because writers don’t know *what sells* the way a salesman does. This company makes over a dozen films a year - and has a deal with Blockbuster video. I have no idea how much Blockbuster pays them per film, but they make them for $100k. SAG signatory (extreme low budget deal) so they can get some names in the cast.
YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR
So one of my stunman friends gets hired to work on a film from this company. The company has decided horror movies are oversaturated, so they’ve decided to make an action flick. Hey, and they are going to spend a little more (because they have to). My friend is a stuntman who wants to become a stunt coordinator (a step up) and they hire him in that position. He reads the script, and it’s not great, but it’s okay.
He goes to the first production meeting and discovers there is very little money in the stunt budget, but a whole lotta action in the script. My friend doesn’t want to be stunt coordinator on a film with very few stunts, how would that look on his resume? He wants to get a bunch of great clips for his reel out of this film, so that he never has to work for a company this low on the totem pole ever again. That means he’s going to have to pull favors.
He realizes the best way to get good clips on *his* reel is to find other stuntmen friends who want good clips on their reels. So he asks all of his buddies what stunts they have always wanted to do... stunts they would do just to have them on their reel (so that other companies will hire them at top dollar to do the same stunts in much better films). My friend goes back to the “producers” with a list of “stunts at cost” and they work them into the script. This is easier than you might think, since action films tend to have the same basic stunts. There are car chases and a high fall and fist fights and things like that.
Now, at this budget, the most impressive “stunt at cost” he can get is a car doing a multiple roll and exploding. My friend knows a stuntman who has always wanted a big car roll on his reel. If you’ve seen THE KINGDOM, you know that a good car roll can be really impressive. The SUV chase and explosion in that film is just amazing. There’s a behind the scenes on HBO that shows how they did it - and *that* is amazing. Back in the 70s when John Wayne was losing popularity, he made a film called McQ where he played a Dirty Harry type cop - and to sell the film, they did a record breaking car roll. The only reason why I own that film on DVD - the car roll.
Now, the car roll stuntman has never done one of these before, so he pulls all of *his* favors - and gets five top stunt guys in Hollywood to help him with his first car roll (and be there to watch... so they might hire him or recommend him later). They buy a car, build a roll cage, do all of the prep stuff. These expenses come out of pocket, now - the stuntguy will be paid for after the stunt. The stunyguy gets a pyrotech friend of his to explode a second car for cost. They will need an ambulance and a water truck on set for this... but the “producers” argue that they can do without both. The producers are thinking they can save money... and pocket it. What’s more, the ambulance and water truck and Fire Marshal don’t show up on film, so why pay for them? If it’s not on screen, it’s not important.
Well, the law says differently, so the producers are forced to comply. The producers will take care of the water truck and ambulance and Fire Marshal... because they are afraid if my friend the stunt coordinator does it, he won’t get the best price.
A week before the film goes into production, one of the two salesmen who own the company does his script rewrite... and now the script is much much worse than when my friend signed on. Now it’s crap. But the two salesmen turned “producers” who own the company think it’s brilliant. They think they know what they are doing, and what is good... and they are wrong.
But my friend thinks that maybe all of the cool stunts will make up for the (now) really bad screenplay....
THE CAR ROLL AND EXPLOSION
The call time is 9am. The stunt guys show up at 9am with the vehicles.... and no one else is there.
No one.
They wait around, and people start trickling in.
The pyro guy wants to run a test - explode the second car with a quarter of the pyro stuff... but there is no fire marshal on set. He asks when the fire marshal is supposed to show, and the Assistant Director says call time was 9am (even though he didn't show until after 10am himself). But he assured the pyro guy that there was a permit to explode stuff.
Well, the pyro guy *knows* the fire marshal who would be assigned to this film, and calls him. Guess what? There was never a permit. No one ever applied for a permit. This makes the pyro guy angry, but he’s already out here and set up... so he talks to the fire marshal. Smooths things over. Finds a way to make it work. The fire marshal will come out on set and they can fill out the paperwork and get a permit when he arrives. He will allow them to do the explosions (if they have a water truck on site) as soon as he arrives. By the way - this is a huge favor the pyro guy is pulling - he's getting a fire marshal to show up and do a permit on site... and it was the guy's day off.
The fire marshal gives them even a bigger break - he allows the pyro guy to do a test before he arrives.
My friend the stunt coordinator realizes that the test may provide an additional angle of the explosion (this is a low budget film - they have *one* camera to film the explosion) and tells the camera crew he needs a camera set up in 30 minutes. The camera crew seems to be working at their own pace, but assures him that the camera will be ready in half an hour.
Fifteen minutes later, my friend checks in with the camera crew, and they don’t seem to be working very fast. Part of this may be that my friend is the stunt coordinator, not the director... but it’s not like the camera crew is doing anything else. Today is a stunt day - it’s all about the stunt. The director, who is somewhere at the location on his cell phone talking to someone about something that has nothing to do with the movie. Seems not to care. I have no idea what they pay the directors on these films, but if the writer’s fee is any indicator, the director is probably making minimum wage. Now. I have this belief that what you are getting paid should have nothing to do with the amount of energy and enthusiasm you give a project. If you decide to do a crappy job because you are being paid crap... you won’t ever be offered a better job. Anyway, neither the director nor the camera guys seemed to give a damn.
This stunt man is going to risk his life by the end of the day, doing a dangerous car roll for peanuts, and the camera guys and director don’t care.
Half an hour later, the car is ready to explode... the camera is not ready to shoot. Now, my friend thinks the test explosion is pretty important on a low budget film... so he begs the pryo guy to give them another half hour to get the camera set up. Then he tells the camera crew that they have a half hour to get the camera set up and pointed at the car that is going to explode. If they aren’t ready in half an hour, they can will explode anyway.
A half hour later, the camera is still not ready, and the pyro guy says he's going to do his test. The test is cool... and not on film.
When the camera finally is ready, the stunt guy gets ready to do his car roll. All of his buddies - big time stunt guys - are there to see the big event... and maybe pull him from the wreckage if things go wrong. They give him last minute advice on how to do the car roll, things to watch out for, things to remember... Then they all shake his hand. He’s about to do something very dangerous... roll a car over several times *on purpose*. Stuntmen are crazy.
The stuntguy asks when the ambulance is going to show, the Assistant Director says, “I don't know, but we're behind time, so just do it.”
The stuntguy thinks that is a very bad idea - they are *miles* from the nearest town out in the middle of nowhere. He asks how far the nearest hospital is - and the AD doesn't know. Folks, in case you don't know - the rules say they need to know where the nearest hospital is, and have directions on how to get there, even if all they are shooting is a *dialogue scene*. Usually the map to the hospital, along with all of the emergency numbers, is on the back of the call sheet. If a film is shooting a dialogue scene and someone gets hurt, has a heart attack, whatever, they need to know where the nearest hospital is.
This is a day where they are doing dangerous stunts *and* explosions and the Assistant Director has no idea where the nearest hospital is... not even the phone number!
Well, the stuntguy blows his top. The AD gets on the phone to one of the two salesmen turned film producers who run this company and explains that the stuntguy refuses to do the stunt unless they have an ambulance. The “producer” asks if an ambulance is really required? Maybe he can talk the stuntguy into doing the car roll without it, put him on the phone.
The stuntguy controls his temper as he explains how dangerous this stunt is. They have the car with the roll-cage, they have all of the safety equipment, they have a stunt team... it would be a shame to lose the stunt because they don’t have an ambulance. The “producer” tells the AD it's up to him to get an ambulance out there - free or dirt cheap.
Well, while the AD is calling ambulance companies, the fire marshal shows up - so they can blow up the second car. The fire marshal sees the water truck, and, for some reason, decides to tap the tank with his knuckles... it's empty. See, filling it with water would cost extra - somewhere between $20 and $50 - so they didn't do that. Well, the fire marshal blows up - what kind of morons are these guys? He's not going to let them do *anything* - even bullet hits - unless they get the water truck filled with water. The first AD calls HQ again, and the “producer” decides it's too much trouble to send a PA to fill the water truck, plus pay for an ambulance, etc.
So, they change the scene. They just want the car to drive up and down the dirt road, and they'll do everything else in post. They’ll superimpose some fake looking fireball on the car, and instead of the car roll, well... it just comes to a stop.
The stunt guys are all pissed off. The pyro guy is pissed off. The fire marshal is threatening an investigation.
Everyone has wasted their time, wasted their efforts, wasted their credibility... they’ve pulled all kinds of favors... for nothing. For want of a single horse a mighty empire fell... All of the cool stunts they would have had in their low budget movie for *free*? Not there.
This is why so many low budget film makers remain low budget film makers. They think it’s more important to save $20 than to make a better film. Who the hell would even *rent* a water truck and then not put water in it? These guys are low budget losers... the kind of people you never want to work for. They don't care, and they don't want to improve their work. The most important thing - the basic requirement - you have to care. You have to love what you do. You need to constantly be trying to do something better - to improve yourself and your work. Even if you are making a low budget horror flick, you need to try to make the *best* low budget horror film possible. If you don't have the money, use your imagination.
My friend and all of his stuntmen friends are never going to work for these low budget loser again, and have spread the word. No one will ever do them a favor again... no more free stunts, they'll have to pay full price. But the crappy film without stunts? On the shelves at Blockbuster.
Only in Hollywood, baby!
- Bill
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: That scene in FARGO where Marge meets that guy she went to high school with for drinks.
Yesterday’s Dinner: Fish Tacos at Islands in Burbank.
MOVIES: MICHAEL CLAYTON - I posted somewhere that I hated that title, it was boring... but after seeing the film, it's *fitting*. The movie is not the thriller advertized, it's a character study. It's all about Michael Clayton. It's as much about his family problems (his two brothers, his son, etc) as it's about his work (fixer for a law firm in charge of dealing with a lawyer who has gone crazy - and now wants to switch sides). The trailer makes it look like it's all about the job, and a thriller. Well, it has some paranoia - but nothing compared to PARALLAX VIEW - a film that is filled with suspense set pieces... and still gives us a great character (and character scenes) and makes a political/social point. The acting is great, Clooney manages to be charming on the outside and sad on the inside at the same time. And everyone else is great... but the story itself is light - more of a framework for the character study than anything else.
MOVIES: A week ago I saw the final director's cut of BLADE RUNNER with a bunch of my FX friends. When I first saw the film, whenever it was released, I thought it had too much production design... and I still feel the same way. Hard to get past the hairdoos.
DVDS: Watched BLOOD SIMPLE again last night - one of my favorite movies... but I *hate* the director's cut on DVD. They actually cut stuff out! They cut out a set up for an eventual punchline (that doesn't work). And cut lines here and there - and, because I freakin' know the film by heart, I miss all of those lines! Still an amazing flick... but I want the non-George Lucas version on DVD.
Pages: Preparing for my Expo Classes... so I'm procrastinating by writing a page or two on SLEEPER... now I'm only 10 pages from the end! I want to just finish the sucker... but I need to work on the classes.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Fridays With Hitchcock: Psycho (1960)
Screenplay by Joseph Stefano based on a novel by Robert Bloch.
For most of my life, my telephone was listed under the name Norman Bates. It stared as a joke on PacBell... When I first moved out of my parents house at 18, I had a roommate - a guy I worked with at the movie theater. The apartment building was a converted motel on the very edge of Walnut Creek, CA - and looked a little like the Bates Motel. A year later when I moved into my own place in Concord, I got my own phone - and thought I try to pull one over on PacBell by claiming my name was Norman Bates and that I was in college studying Hotel & Motel Management. I figured they’d reject it - but they did *zero* credit checks back then. They were the only game in town, so if you didn’t pay your phone bill... well, you didn’t have a phone. There were no other phone companies to go to, no cellular, nothing. So when the new phone book came out, I was like Navin Johnson flipping through to see if my name was listed... well, Norman’s was! Every time I moved, I expected PacBell to figure it out and yank my phone. They never did. When I moved to Los Angeles, I was sure the game was over... but they asked me if I had graduated college and asked if I was working in the Hotel & Motel industry. I said “Yes” and kept Norman Bates as my phone listing... Until a couple of years ago when I moved a couple of blocks down the street into a building that was wired by Sprint - and *they* caught me. So, if you forget my number, you can’t just ask information for Norman Bates anymore.
Most people identify Hitchcock with PSYCHO - even though it is nothing like any of his other films. I think it’s probably the combination of Hitchcock becoming very famous from his popular TV show... and PSYCHO being his biggest hit ever (which really says something - his first US film, REBECCA, won Best Picture Oscar back in 1940). At the time, low budget horror films made by people like William Castle were popular, and Hitchcock thought it would be fun to make one. The plan was to make it cheap, using the crew from his TV show between seasons and the backlot at Universal. I believe he also used his own money - and kept the budget under $1 million. The film was based on a best seller by Robert Bloch (who, along with Richard Matheson, is one of the great horror novelists) and I believe they spent $100k for the rights (10% of the budget!). Screenplay by Joseph Stefano, who created THE OUTER LIMITS TV show.
Hitchcock loved to experiment in movies. He understood the medium like nobody before or after him, but wasn’t satisfied to just make a movie using that knowledge... instead, he was always pushing. Finding new ways to do things. Attempting things that had never been done before (wait until we get to ROPE). Though TOPAZ is a failed experiment, the idea of telling 4 short stories with some of the same characters which add up to a larger story is something that would be later used in PULP FICTION. The novel PSYCHO does some things that work fine in a novel, don’t work at all in a movie. The solution to the main problem may have been solved by Hitchcock or Stefano or both working together - but it’s a very successful experiment in strange storytelling.
PSYCHO switches protagonists a couple of times. That’s easy to do in a novel, but in a movie the audience *becomes* the protagonist for 2 hours, so swapping characters usually just loses audience identification completely. Hollywood is littered with movies that tried this and failed, and landfills are filled with screenplays that tried it and failed. So lets take a look at how they cracked it in PSYCHO....
Nutshell: PSYCHO opens with location and date and time - almost documentary style. The film is shot in black and white in a time when most films were shot in color. The B&W was an artistic choice - to make it look more “real”. Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) and Sam Loomis (John Gavin) are in a cheap hotel, post sex. She’s in white bra and white slip. They are not married - but sleeping together. This was 1960 - when you couldn’t do things like that on film. Sam is divorced and broke - living in the back room of his dead father’s hardware store... can’t afford to get married. Marion is too old to still be single. They need to find some money so they can live happily ever after, but this is the real world.
One of the things I love about old movies is that they often had to find ways to talk about sex, without alarming the censors. This lead to clever dialogue. Here we get Marion talking about licking Sam’s stamps... and can’t help but think about other things. It’s like a discussion of oral sex!
After the “nooner”, Marion returns to the Real Estate office where she works. A wealthy old client completely hits on her - nothing subtle about it - while brandishing a few bundles of hundreds he’s using to buy a house for his 19 year-old daughter. She’s getting married, his wedding gift is a house, he’s paying *cash*. Marion’s boss tells her to take the money to the bank right away - he doesn’t want that kind of money in the office safe. Marion takes the money... home with her.
Marion, black bra and black slip (bad girl) packs suitcases at her apartment... finally packing the big bundles of money in her purse. She gets in her car and drives to Sam’s place... but gets tired and stops at the Bates Motel for the night. With this much money, she can pay off Sam’s debts and they can live happily ever after. Though she’s stealing, we completely understand it, and the horn-dog rich guy kinda deserves to get ripped off. Why should his spoiled 19 year-old daughter get a free house, when Marion and Sam are working hard just to live on the edge of poverty?
At the Bates Motel Hitchcock and Stefano find the key to the protagonist switch experiment. In the novel, Norman is a fat, nasty, hick. In the film, Norman (Tony Perkins) is a fragile young man with too many responsibilities, trapped in a life he doesn’t deserve. We feel sorry for Norman. After Marion checks in, Norman invites her to dinner up at the house... but Marion overhears Norman’s mother yelling at him - verbally abusing him - belittling him - for inviting a strange woman to the house. Marion is eves-dropping, and knows she shouldn’t be listening to a private conversation... but does anyway.
Later, Norman brings sandwiches and milk down from the house, and has dinner with Marion in his parlor behind the office. Here is where the baton is passed from one protagonist to the next, and it’s a brilliant scene. Norman and Marion talk about being trapped in their lives - and we find out that poor Norman has been stuck in this motel his entire life - taking care of his mother. He has no life outside the motel. His mother is demanding and abusive... and a little crazy, but he can’t just abandon her. He can’t afford to send her to a private sanitarium, and the State run facilities are, well, looney bins - he can’t send his mother to someplace like that. Norman is trapped in his life... and we feel sorry for him. We wish he could find some way out of this trap.
At the end of this scene, we don’t leave with Marion... we leave with *Norman*. Norman has become our new protagonist. Before she leaves, Marion hints that she’s going to drive back home and return the money - probably resolving *her* plot problem. But Norman still has a problem - his abusive mother - and we’re gonna stick around and see how he escapes *his* trap.
Just as Marion eves-dropped on Norman, Norman pulls back a painting, uncovering a peephole in the wall, and spies on Marion as she undresses for a shower. But just as she gets down to bra and slip, Norman turns away. Covers the peephole with the painting. There’s something almost innocent about this - he’s a lonely, virgin man... he will spy on a girl in her bra, but seeing her naked is taking it too far. Strange as this seems, when he turns away and replaces the painting, we kind of admire his restraint. And we couldn’t have that admiration unless he was peeping in the first place. It’s like Marion wanting to return he stolen money.
And everything would be happily ever after except for Norman’s mom....
Because she’s afraid that a woman like Marion might lure her son away... and then she’d have no one to take care of her (and no one to verbally abuse). So, she does what any mother in the same position would do... she brutally kills Marion. Now, poor Norman must clean up the mess - blood all over room #1s bathroom, a dead naked woman, her car, her belongings. Norman must get rid of all of it before anyone discovers what his mother has done and puts her in the looney bin.
Title sequence by the great Saul Bass:
Great Scenes: No shortage of great scenes in PSYCHO - this is the movie that made people afraid to shower alone. But before we get to the shower scene, there are a couple of other scenes that deserve mentioning...
Driving Out Of Town: As Marion is driving out of town with a purse full of stolen money, she stops at a light, and crossing the street.... her boss! She’s supposed to be at the bank! He sees her - they lock eyes - then he finishes crossing, the light changes, and she tears out of there. This scene would be repeated in PULP FICTION, the Bruce Willis story, with Ving Rhames crossing the street.
As Marion drives, we get an interesting variation on Voice Over Narration. Instead of Marion *telling us* what she thinks and fears with narration, we get *dramatic* VO of what Marion imagines other characters will say when they discover she’s stolen the money. What will Sam say? What will her boss say... and do? What about the wealthy old guy she stole from? As these voices rattle around inside her head, we get *drama* instead of an exposition dump.
Marion is exhausted, pulls to the side of the road for a nap... and wakes up with a Highway Patrolman pounding on her window.... and the money in her purse. He wants to see her license (also in her purse - under all of the bundles of money) and she just wants to get the hell out of there. This is a great suspense scene built around the bundles of money in her purse - she can’t let him see them! After he lets her go, he follows her...
High Pressure Car Sales: I have this thing I call The Rule Of The Logical Opposite - the idea is to do the exact opposite of what the audience expects in a scene, but make sure it’s still 100% logical. Marion is afraid the Highway Patrolman will remember her car, so she decides to go to a used car lot and trade it. We are used to seeing a used car salesman high pressure a potential customer, trying to close a deal. That is what the audience expects in a scene like this.... but we get the opposite. Marion high pressures the car salesman trying to quickly close the deal... and this makes the scene different and interesting. It also makes the car salesman suspicious. Add to that - when Marion isn’t looking, the Highway Patrolman spots her, pulls across the street from the car lot, and watches the entire transaction take place. She doesn’t know he’s there - we do. That’s called “audience superiority” and it’s a great way to build suspense. You just want to yell at the screen, “The cop is right across the street! Get out of there!” but she can’t hear you.
Shower Scene: Once Marion steps into the shower - where she is naked and vulnerable - Norman’s mother attacks her with a very sharp knife. Slashing her. Killing her. And here’s where Hitchcock’s amazing control over angle and composition and everything else comes into play. There are 70 shots in the shower scene... and the censors were sure that they had seen Janet Leigh naked (both breasts) and that they had seen the knife actually penetrate the body. In fact, when you see this scene, you will think you see those things, too. Especially the knife entering the flesh - everybody sees that. It’s right there, on the screen. I saw PSYCHO on the big screen a couple of years ago - some anniversary - and that knife cuts through skin. Except, it doesn’t. There are no breasts shown, and the knife *never even touches* the skin. Everything you *think* you see is created by selecting specific angles, movements, framing, juxtaposition of images. It’s the Kuleshov Experiment all over again (more on that when we get to REAR WINDOW) - by juxtaposing specific images, you can make the audience see things that are not there. Here, we think we’ve seen a brutal murder - but the knife never touches the body.
The Clean Up: After Norman’s mother kills Marion, Norman is stuck cleaning up the mess. And that’s just not fair. She’s abusive, she’s ruined his life, and now she’s killed Marion and left Norman to do the clean up. We get a great, messy, clean up scene - that will later be plucked by the Coen Brothers for BLOOD SIMPLE (another character stuck cleaning up the mess after someone he loves commits murder). By the way, PSYCHO is the first Hollywood movie to show a *toilet* in the bathroom. Before this film, every single bathroom in the movies had no toilet! This clean up sequence ends with a great bit - sinking Marion’s car (with her corpse and belongings - including the money - inside). At this point we care about Norman, and don’t want him to have to pay the price for this murder his mother has done. So when the car *stops* sinking in the swamp, we gasp - what if it doesn’t sink? What if it’s just stuck in the swamp like that, where everyone can see it? Because, at this point, we care about Norman and don’t want to see him get in trouble for something his crazy jealous mother did, we want that car to sink! And eventually it does - after drawing out the tension to the breaking point.
Arbogast’s Death: Sam and Marion’s sister Lila (Vera Miles) hire private eye Arbogast (Martin Balsam) to find Marion... which means he’s poking around the Bates Motel. The great thing here is that Norman is our protagonist, so we worry that Arbogast will uncover some clue to Marion’s murder and this will ruin Norman’s life. The entire time Arbogast is interrogating Norman, we are hoping he finds nothing... but Norman keeps slipping and Arbogast keeps hounding and soon we fear that Arbogast suspects something happened to Marion at the motel. There’s a great bit with the motel register - evidence that Marion was there - which Norman wants to hide and Arbogast wants to look at. Creating suspense. It’s strange, because we are not on the “cop’s side” we are on the “criminal’s side” in this scene. We really don’t want poor Norman to get into any more trouble - his life is already hell.
Arbogast breaks into the Bates house to question Norman’s mother... and this creates a great conflict in the audience. Because we don’t want any more trouble for poor Norman, but we also worry about what mother might do if Arbogast finds her. So we are afraid for Norman *and* afraid for Arbogast.
We get a great suspense stair climb as he searches for Mrs. Bates, ending with a high overhead that makes us feel like Arbogast is a victim even before mom rushes out of her bedroom with a knife and slashes ay his face and body a dozen times. Arbogast then falls down stairs - but doesn’t tumble. It’s a great shot where he just falls backwards until he reaches the floor... then Norman’s mother stabs him again and again... leaving Norman another mess to clean up.
Lila Meets Norman’s Mother: You know, there are only so many murders you can cover up for your mom before you begin to lose sympathy with the audience. After Arbogast’s murder we begin to think Norman would be better off if his mom *was* in the state run looney bin. Yes, it’s his mother - and none of us want bad things to happen to our mothers... but she’s freakin’ crazy! Norman would be better off with her in the looney bin. This covering up thing has got to stop!
Which is why this is the perfect place to pass the protagonist baton once again. We already know Sam Loomis, we know he’s trapped living in that little room behind his father’s hardware store, trying to pay off his father’s debts. So he becomes our new protagonist. By the way, think about Norman and his mother, Sam and his father, the wealthy old guy and his daughter, Marion and her dead mother’s picture (talked about in the opening scene), the other girl at the Real Estate office and her nosey mother, and all of the other parents & children paired up in this film.
So Sam and Lila (Marion’s sister) set out for the Bates Motel to find out what happened to Marion and Arbogast. They check into a room together as a couple (did Sam nail both sisters?) and while Sam keeps Norman busy, Lila breaks into the Bates house to talk to Mrs. Bates.
Now, by this time we’ve had a great reveal *plus* a great bit of misdirection. Sam and Lila have gone to the local Sheriff (John McIntire) and told him everything... and he reveals that Mrs. Bates died ten years ago. Wait! If she’s dead, who killed Marion and Arbogast? When Sam *insists* that Arbogast has seem Mrs. Bates (and sam has, too), the Sheriff says, “If the woman in the window is Mrs. Bates, whose body is buried in Greenlawn cemetery?” Did crazy Mrs. Bates find some way to fake her own death? Is there another murder victim besides Marion and Arbogast? How long has this been going on? The great thing about the Sheriff’s dialogue is that he tells us Norman’s mother is dead, then gives us an alternative possibility to keep us from figuring out the truth.
So when Lila climbs those stairs, just as Arbogast did, we wonder what she’ll find - and who. She enters Mrs. Bates bedroom - and someone is living there. The closet is filled with clothes, make up is set out on the vanity... and there’s an indentation in the bed. A *deep* indentation. But no mother. Norman’s bedroom is a child’s room - complete with stuffed animals and a kid’s bed. It’s like he’s living as a child. But no sign of mother - we keep waiting for her to burst out of a closet and attack... but it doesn’t happen. When Lila tries to leave, Norman enters the house! Lila hides under the stairs as Norman goes upstairs... and that’s when she notices the fruit cellar door, and descends... and meets Norman’s mother in the big shock scene... a mummy! You know, in the scene between Norman and Marion at the beginning of the movie Norman says his hobby is taxidermy - completely setting this up! Then Lila meets Norman’s mother *again* - this time with a knife, and we find out that Norman *is* his mother. Sam grabs Norman/Mother before he can kill Lila... and then we get that hellishly long scene with Simon Oakland as the shrink explaining why Norman was dressed in his mother’s clothes.
Don’t miss two things at the end: Ted Knight (CADDYSHACK) as the cop guarding Norman’s cell, and the subliminal skull superimposed over Norman’s face.
Hitch Appearance: Outside the Real Estate Office - you can see him through the window.
Sound Track: Great Bernard Herrmann score! Not only is the music in time to the windshield wipers of Marion Crane’s car, the “stings” in the shower scene are probably the first time anything like that was done. Now we *expect* stings in a horror film, but no one had done that in a movie before. By the way, the Herrmann score is 100% strings - also kind of weird.
Hitchcock on cutting the PSYCHO shower scene:
PSYCHO was a ground breaking horror movie, and Norman Bates is the Hamlet of the horror genre - a young man we feel sorry for... even after the final twist is revealed. But the film is also a great experiment in serial protagonists and how to pass the baton from one character to the next without losing audience identification.
MORE ON PSYCHO!
** BONUS: My Review
** BONUS: Dialogue That Isn't.
** BONUS: PSYCHO script PDF
** More Fridays With Hitchcock!
- Bill
BUY THE DVD AT AMAZON:
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Action and Character and STAR TREK: NEMESIS
Yesterday’s Dinner: Boston Market chicken in Toluca Lake.
Pages: 5 script pages again.
Bicycle: Thursday bike ride - nothing epic, but enjoyable.
For most of my life, my telephone was listed under the name Norman Bates. It stared as a joke on PacBell... When I first moved out of my parents house at 18, I had a roommate - a guy I worked with at the movie theater. The apartment building was a converted motel on the very edge of Walnut Creek, CA - and looked a little like the Bates Motel. A year later when I moved into my own place in Concord, I got my own phone - and thought I try to pull one over on PacBell by claiming my name was Norman Bates and that I was in college studying Hotel & Motel Management. I figured they’d reject it - but they did *zero* credit checks back then. They were the only game in town, so if you didn’t pay your phone bill... well, you didn’t have a phone. There were no other phone companies to go to, no cellular, nothing. So when the new phone book came out, I was like Navin Johnson flipping through to see if my name was listed... well, Norman’s was! Every time I moved, I expected PacBell to figure it out and yank my phone. They never did. When I moved to Los Angeles, I was sure the game was over... but they asked me if I had graduated college and asked if I was working in the Hotel & Motel industry. I said “Yes” and kept Norman Bates as my phone listing... Until a couple of years ago when I moved a couple of blocks down the street into a building that was wired by Sprint - and *they* caught me. So, if you forget my number, you can’t just ask information for Norman Bates anymore.
Most people identify Hitchcock with PSYCHO - even though it is nothing like any of his other films. I think it’s probably the combination of Hitchcock becoming very famous from his popular TV show... and PSYCHO being his biggest hit ever (which really says something - his first US film, REBECCA, won Best Picture Oscar back in 1940). At the time, low budget horror films made by people like William Castle were popular, and Hitchcock thought it would be fun to make one. The plan was to make it cheap, using the crew from his TV show between seasons and the backlot at Universal. I believe he also used his own money - and kept the budget under $1 million. The film was based on a best seller by Robert Bloch (who, along with Richard Matheson, is one of the great horror novelists) and I believe they spent $100k for the rights (10% of the budget!). Screenplay by Joseph Stefano, who created THE OUTER LIMITS TV show.
Hitchcock loved to experiment in movies. He understood the medium like nobody before or after him, but wasn’t satisfied to just make a movie using that knowledge... instead, he was always pushing. Finding new ways to do things. Attempting things that had never been done before (wait until we get to ROPE). Though TOPAZ is a failed experiment, the idea of telling 4 short stories with some of the same characters which add up to a larger story is something that would be later used in PULP FICTION. The novel PSYCHO does some things that work fine in a novel, don’t work at all in a movie. The solution to the main problem may have been solved by Hitchcock or Stefano or both working together - but it’s a very successful experiment in strange storytelling.
** SPOILERS **
PSYCHO switches protagonists a couple of times. That’s easy to do in a novel, but in a movie the audience *becomes* the protagonist for 2 hours, so swapping characters usually just loses audience identification completely. Hollywood is littered with movies that tried this and failed, and landfills are filled with screenplays that tried it and failed. So lets take a look at how they cracked it in PSYCHO....
Nutshell: PSYCHO opens with location and date and time - almost documentary style. The film is shot in black and white in a time when most films were shot in color. The B&W was an artistic choice - to make it look more “real”. Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) and Sam Loomis (John Gavin) are in a cheap hotel, post sex. She’s in white bra and white slip. They are not married - but sleeping together. This was 1960 - when you couldn’t do things like that on film. Sam is divorced and broke - living in the back room of his dead father’s hardware store... can’t afford to get married. Marion is too old to still be single. They need to find some money so they can live happily ever after, but this is the real world.
One of the things I love about old movies is that they often had to find ways to talk about sex, without alarming the censors. This lead to clever dialogue. Here we get Marion talking about licking Sam’s stamps... and can’t help but think about other things. It’s like a discussion of oral sex!
After the “nooner”, Marion returns to the Real Estate office where she works. A wealthy old client completely hits on her - nothing subtle about it - while brandishing a few bundles of hundreds he’s using to buy a house for his 19 year-old daughter. She’s getting married, his wedding gift is a house, he’s paying *cash*. Marion’s boss tells her to take the money to the bank right away - he doesn’t want that kind of money in the office safe. Marion takes the money... home with her.
Marion, black bra and black slip (bad girl) packs suitcases at her apartment... finally packing the big bundles of money in her purse. She gets in her car and drives to Sam’s place... but gets tired and stops at the Bates Motel for the night. With this much money, she can pay off Sam’s debts and they can live happily ever after. Though she’s stealing, we completely understand it, and the horn-dog rich guy kinda deserves to get ripped off. Why should his spoiled 19 year-old daughter get a free house, when Marion and Sam are working hard just to live on the edge of poverty?
At the Bates Motel Hitchcock and Stefano find the key to the protagonist switch experiment. In the novel, Norman is a fat, nasty, hick. In the film, Norman (Tony Perkins) is a fragile young man with too many responsibilities, trapped in a life he doesn’t deserve. We feel sorry for Norman. After Marion checks in, Norman invites her to dinner up at the house... but Marion overhears Norman’s mother yelling at him - verbally abusing him - belittling him - for inviting a strange woman to the house. Marion is eves-dropping, and knows she shouldn’t be listening to a private conversation... but does anyway.
Later, Norman brings sandwiches and milk down from the house, and has dinner with Marion in his parlor behind the office. Here is where the baton is passed from one protagonist to the next, and it’s a brilliant scene. Norman and Marion talk about being trapped in their lives - and we find out that poor Norman has been stuck in this motel his entire life - taking care of his mother. He has no life outside the motel. His mother is demanding and abusive... and a little crazy, but he can’t just abandon her. He can’t afford to send her to a private sanitarium, and the State run facilities are, well, looney bins - he can’t send his mother to someplace like that. Norman is trapped in his life... and we feel sorry for him. We wish he could find some way out of this trap.
At the end of this scene, we don’t leave with Marion... we leave with *Norman*. Norman has become our new protagonist. Before she leaves, Marion hints that she’s going to drive back home and return the money - probably resolving *her* plot problem. But Norman still has a problem - his abusive mother - and we’re gonna stick around and see how he escapes *his* trap.
Just as Marion eves-dropped on Norman, Norman pulls back a painting, uncovering a peephole in the wall, and spies on Marion as she undresses for a shower. But just as she gets down to bra and slip, Norman turns away. Covers the peephole with the painting. There’s something almost innocent about this - he’s a lonely, virgin man... he will spy on a girl in her bra, but seeing her naked is taking it too far. Strange as this seems, when he turns away and replaces the painting, we kind of admire his restraint. And we couldn’t have that admiration unless he was peeping in the first place. It’s like Marion wanting to return he stolen money.
And everything would be happily ever after except for Norman’s mom....
Because she’s afraid that a woman like Marion might lure her son away... and then she’d have no one to take care of her (and no one to verbally abuse). So, she does what any mother in the same position would do... she brutally kills Marion. Now, poor Norman must clean up the mess - blood all over room #1s bathroom, a dead naked woman, her car, her belongings. Norman must get rid of all of it before anyone discovers what his mother has done and puts her in the looney bin.
Title sequence by the great Saul Bass:
Great Scenes: No shortage of great scenes in PSYCHO - this is the movie that made people afraid to shower alone. But before we get to the shower scene, there are a couple of other scenes that deserve mentioning...
Driving Out Of Town: As Marion is driving out of town with a purse full of stolen money, she stops at a light, and crossing the street.... her boss! She’s supposed to be at the bank! He sees her - they lock eyes - then he finishes crossing, the light changes, and she tears out of there. This scene would be repeated in PULP FICTION, the Bruce Willis story, with Ving Rhames crossing the street.
As Marion drives, we get an interesting variation on Voice Over Narration. Instead of Marion *telling us* what she thinks and fears with narration, we get *dramatic* VO of what Marion imagines other characters will say when they discover she’s stolen the money. What will Sam say? What will her boss say... and do? What about the wealthy old guy she stole from? As these voices rattle around inside her head, we get *drama* instead of an exposition dump.
Marion is exhausted, pulls to the side of the road for a nap... and wakes up with a Highway Patrolman pounding on her window.... and the money in her purse. He wants to see her license (also in her purse - under all of the bundles of money) and she just wants to get the hell out of there. This is a great suspense scene built around the bundles of money in her purse - she can’t let him see them! After he lets her go, he follows her...
High Pressure Car Sales: I have this thing I call The Rule Of The Logical Opposite - the idea is to do the exact opposite of what the audience expects in a scene, but make sure it’s still 100% logical. Marion is afraid the Highway Patrolman will remember her car, so she decides to go to a used car lot and trade it. We are used to seeing a used car salesman high pressure a potential customer, trying to close a deal. That is what the audience expects in a scene like this.... but we get the opposite. Marion high pressures the car salesman trying to quickly close the deal... and this makes the scene different and interesting. It also makes the car salesman suspicious. Add to that - when Marion isn’t looking, the Highway Patrolman spots her, pulls across the street from the car lot, and watches the entire transaction take place. She doesn’t know he’s there - we do. That’s called “audience superiority” and it’s a great way to build suspense. You just want to yell at the screen, “The cop is right across the street! Get out of there!” but she can’t hear you.
Shower Scene: Once Marion steps into the shower - where she is naked and vulnerable - Norman’s mother attacks her with a very sharp knife. Slashing her. Killing her. And here’s where Hitchcock’s amazing control over angle and composition and everything else comes into play. There are 70 shots in the shower scene... and the censors were sure that they had seen Janet Leigh naked (both breasts) and that they had seen the knife actually penetrate the body. In fact, when you see this scene, you will think you see those things, too. Especially the knife entering the flesh - everybody sees that. It’s right there, on the screen. I saw PSYCHO on the big screen a couple of years ago - some anniversary - and that knife cuts through skin. Except, it doesn’t. There are no breasts shown, and the knife *never even touches* the skin. Everything you *think* you see is created by selecting specific angles, movements, framing, juxtaposition of images. It’s the Kuleshov Experiment all over again (more on that when we get to REAR WINDOW) - by juxtaposing specific images, you can make the audience see things that are not there. Here, we think we’ve seen a brutal murder - but the knife never touches the body.
The Clean Up: After Norman’s mother kills Marion, Norman is stuck cleaning up the mess. And that’s just not fair. She’s abusive, she’s ruined his life, and now she’s killed Marion and left Norman to do the clean up. We get a great, messy, clean up scene - that will later be plucked by the Coen Brothers for BLOOD SIMPLE (another character stuck cleaning up the mess after someone he loves commits murder). By the way, PSYCHO is the first Hollywood movie to show a *toilet* in the bathroom. Before this film, every single bathroom in the movies had no toilet! This clean up sequence ends with a great bit - sinking Marion’s car (with her corpse and belongings - including the money - inside). At this point we care about Norman, and don’t want him to have to pay the price for this murder his mother has done. So when the car *stops* sinking in the swamp, we gasp - what if it doesn’t sink? What if it’s just stuck in the swamp like that, where everyone can see it? Because, at this point, we care about Norman and don’t want to see him get in trouble for something his crazy jealous mother did, we want that car to sink! And eventually it does - after drawing out the tension to the breaking point.
Arbogast’s Death: Sam and Marion’s sister Lila (Vera Miles) hire private eye Arbogast (Martin Balsam) to find Marion... which means he’s poking around the Bates Motel. The great thing here is that Norman is our protagonist, so we worry that Arbogast will uncover some clue to Marion’s murder and this will ruin Norman’s life. The entire time Arbogast is interrogating Norman, we are hoping he finds nothing... but Norman keeps slipping and Arbogast keeps hounding and soon we fear that Arbogast suspects something happened to Marion at the motel. There’s a great bit with the motel register - evidence that Marion was there - which Norman wants to hide and Arbogast wants to look at. Creating suspense. It’s strange, because we are not on the “cop’s side” we are on the “criminal’s side” in this scene. We really don’t want poor Norman to get into any more trouble - his life is already hell.
Arbogast breaks into the Bates house to question Norman’s mother... and this creates a great conflict in the audience. Because we don’t want any more trouble for poor Norman, but we also worry about what mother might do if Arbogast finds her. So we are afraid for Norman *and* afraid for Arbogast.
We get a great suspense stair climb as he searches for Mrs. Bates, ending with a high overhead that makes us feel like Arbogast is a victim even before mom rushes out of her bedroom with a knife and slashes ay his face and body a dozen times. Arbogast then falls down stairs - but doesn’t tumble. It’s a great shot where he just falls backwards until he reaches the floor... then Norman’s mother stabs him again and again... leaving Norman another mess to clean up.
Lila Meets Norman’s Mother: You know, there are only so many murders you can cover up for your mom before you begin to lose sympathy with the audience. After Arbogast’s murder we begin to think Norman would be better off if his mom *was* in the state run looney bin. Yes, it’s his mother - and none of us want bad things to happen to our mothers... but she’s freakin’ crazy! Norman would be better off with her in the looney bin. This covering up thing has got to stop!
Which is why this is the perfect place to pass the protagonist baton once again. We already know Sam Loomis, we know he’s trapped living in that little room behind his father’s hardware store, trying to pay off his father’s debts. So he becomes our new protagonist. By the way, think about Norman and his mother, Sam and his father, the wealthy old guy and his daughter, Marion and her dead mother’s picture (talked about in the opening scene), the other girl at the Real Estate office and her nosey mother, and all of the other parents & children paired up in this film.
So Sam and Lila (Marion’s sister) set out for the Bates Motel to find out what happened to Marion and Arbogast. They check into a room together as a couple (did Sam nail both sisters?) and while Sam keeps Norman busy, Lila breaks into the Bates house to talk to Mrs. Bates.
Now, by this time we’ve had a great reveal *plus* a great bit of misdirection. Sam and Lila have gone to the local Sheriff (John McIntire) and told him everything... and he reveals that Mrs. Bates died ten years ago. Wait! If she’s dead, who killed Marion and Arbogast? When Sam *insists* that Arbogast has seem Mrs. Bates (and sam has, too), the Sheriff says, “If the woman in the window is Mrs. Bates, whose body is buried in Greenlawn cemetery?” Did crazy Mrs. Bates find some way to fake her own death? Is there another murder victim besides Marion and Arbogast? How long has this been going on? The great thing about the Sheriff’s dialogue is that he tells us Norman’s mother is dead, then gives us an alternative possibility to keep us from figuring out the truth.
So when Lila climbs those stairs, just as Arbogast did, we wonder what she’ll find - and who. She enters Mrs. Bates bedroom - and someone is living there. The closet is filled with clothes, make up is set out on the vanity... and there’s an indentation in the bed. A *deep* indentation. But no mother. Norman’s bedroom is a child’s room - complete with stuffed animals and a kid’s bed. It’s like he’s living as a child. But no sign of mother - we keep waiting for her to burst out of a closet and attack... but it doesn’t happen. When Lila tries to leave, Norman enters the house! Lila hides under the stairs as Norman goes upstairs... and that’s when she notices the fruit cellar door, and descends... and meets Norman’s mother in the big shock scene... a mummy! You know, in the scene between Norman and Marion at the beginning of the movie Norman says his hobby is taxidermy - completely setting this up! Then Lila meets Norman’s mother *again* - this time with a knife, and we find out that Norman *is* his mother. Sam grabs Norman/Mother before he can kill Lila... and then we get that hellishly long scene with Simon Oakland as the shrink explaining why Norman was dressed in his mother’s clothes.
Don’t miss two things at the end: Ted Knight (CADDYSHACK) as the cop guarding Norman’s cell, and the subliminal skull superimposed over Norman’s face.
Hitch Appearance: Outside the Real Estate Office - you can see him through the window.
Sound Track: Great Bernard Herrmann score! Not only is the music in time to the windshield wipers of Marion Crane’s car, the “stings” in the shower scene are probably the first time anything like that was done. Now we *expect* stings in a horror film, but no one had done that in a movie before. By the way, the Herrmann score is 100% strings - also kind of weird.
Hitchcock on cutting the PSYCHO shower scene:
PSYCHO was a ground breaking horror movie, and Norman Bates is the Hamlet of the horror genre - a young man we feel sorry for... even after the final twist is revealed. But the film is also a great experiment in serial protagonists and how to pass the baton from one character to the next without losing audience identification.
MORE ON PSYCHO!
** BONUS: My Review
** BONUS: Dialogue That Isn't.
** BONUS: PSYCHO script PDF
** More Fridays With Hitchcock!
- Bill
BUY THE DVD AT AMAZON:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Action and Character and STAR TREK: NEMESIS
Yesterday’s Dinner: Boston Market chicken in Toluca Lake.
Pages: 5 script pages again.
Bicycle: Thursday bike ride - nothing epic, but enjoyable.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Lancelot Link: The Legend Of Curly's Gold
Lancelot Link Thursday! 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 eight cool links plus this week's car chase...
1) Indie Producer Who Will Not Be At AFM This Year.
2) Screenwriter Breaks His Nose Without Fighting Uwe Boll.
3) Indiana Jones 30 Years Later.
4) Universal Remakes Classic 1932 Gangster Film!
5) The Locations For DRIVE (2011)
6) How does Jason Statham make so many films in a year?
7) Prop House That Dripped Blood!
8) GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO remake full trailer.
Car Chase Of The Week: Something romantic from The Marseille Contract (1974):
- Bill
Here are eight cool links plus this week's car chase...
1) Indie Producer Who Will Not Be At AFM This Year.
2) Screenwriter Breaks His Nose Without Fighting Uwe Boll.
3) Indiana Jones 30 Years Later.
4) Universal Remakes Classic 1932 Gangster Film!
5) The Locations For DRIVE (2011)
6) How does Jason Statham make so many films in a year?
7) Prop House That Dripped Blood!
8) GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO remake full trailer.
Car Chase Of The Week: Something romantic from The Marseille Contract (1974):
- Bill
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
September 20...
TUESDAY:
Okay - at 4pm today: IDEA MACHINE was #1 and PROTAGONISTS was #3...
WEDNESDAY:
Neither has ever been #1 before!
Idea Machine has been out since JULY and has stayed right around #3 the whole time. Protagonists was bounced all over the place.
- Bill
Okay - at 4pm today: IDEA MACHINE was #1 and PROTAGONISTS was #3...
WEDNESDAY:
Neither has ever been #1 before!
NEW!
*** YOUR IDEA MACHINE *** - For Kindle!
*** YOUR IDEA MACHINE *** - For Nook!
Expanded version with more ways to find great ideas! Print version is 48 pages, Kindle version is around 155 pages!
Only $2.99 - and no postage!
NEW!
*** CREATING STRONG PROTAGONISTS *** - For Kindle!
*** CREATING STRONG PROTAGONISTS *** - For Nook! (coming soon)
Expanded version with more ways to create interesting protagonists! Print version is 48 pages, Kindle version is once again around 155 pages!
Only $2.99 - and no postage!
Idea Machine has been out since JULY and has stayed right around #3 the whole time. Protagonists was bounced all over the place.
- Bill
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Fridays With Hitchcock: Suspicion (1941)
Screenplay by Joan Harrison, Alma Reville, and Samson Raphaelson based on the novel “Before The Fact” by Frances Iles.
This is another one of those movies that I know all of the dialogue to (“A passionate hairdresser!”) and could do a one man show, if suddenly required to save mankind from some horrible fate. I don’t really know why I have seen this film so many times, but I suspect it was one of those films from my childhood that was *always* on TV, and also the kind of movie I love... so if my choice was between SUSPICION on one channel and some other movie that always played on TV on another channel, I’d watch SUSPICION again. I identified with the female lead - not because I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body or because Cary Grant is my “Mango” - but because the first time we see her she is reading a book, and books are her life. That was me as a kid. In fact, this was one of many films that had me riding my bike to the library to check out the novel it was based on. As a shy, bookish, boy, I understood what it meant to secretly love someone way out of your league (Debbie Morrow in grade school)... and know that your heart will be broken again and again because they are just out of your league.
Nutshell: Shy, bookish Lina (Joan Fontaine) comes from a wealthy family - her mother and father (Dame May Whitty and Sir Cedric Hardwicke) expect her to die an unwed virgin, she’s approaching thirty and never even been kissed! On a train she meets handsome, charming, lady’s man Johnnie Aysgarth (Cary Grant) who hides from the conductor in her first class compartment... and when caught, asks her if she will pay for the balance of his ticket. Their paths cross a couple more times, with Johnnie always asking her for something... and they begin dating. He sweeps her off her feet - one of the most eligible men in all of England, and he picks *her*! It’s like Cinderella... and although Johnnie is charming, is he a prince? More the male version of a gold digger. Her parents (and just about everyone else) don’t approve of Johnnie, so they elope - getting married at a Justice Of The Peace and honeymooning in Europe. But, did Johnnie only marry her for her money? Though he lives like a millionaire, he has no money of his own - just his good looks. He has spent his life living off wealthy women. He seems to always have some get rich quick scheme that never works... and *he* never works - he is a born freeloader. He bets on horses, embezzles money from relatives who offer him jobs, sells Lina’s family heirlooms, and does all kinds of awful things - but is always funny and charming and the perfect husband.
When Johnnie enters into a scheme with his wealthy college pal Beaky (Nigel Bruce), Lina begins to suspect that Johnnie may be planning to murder his pal for the money... and when Lina’s father dies and she is in line to inherit, she begins to suspect that Johnnie plans to kill *her* for the money. Johnnie befriends a local mystery writer to find untraceable poisons... and Lina *has* been feeling a little strange lately. Has he been giving her a slow-acting poison? Will she call the police and report the man she loves to the police... or die a happily married woman?
Experiment: Though there is that great shot of Cary Grant climbing the staircase with a *glowing* glass of milk (Hitchcock put a light *inside* the glass to call attention to it) and several other cool shots, the film doesn’t have any obvious ground breaking experiments except the “did he or didn’t he” plot which seems rather daring for a movie starring Cary Grant... and the unfilmed ending. I’m going to save the ending discussion for the end of this blog entry - with SPOILER notices all over the place first.
Hitch Appearance: Dropping a letter in the mailbox... which is part of the film’s leitmotif, which we will discuss in a minute.
Great Scenes: The two great screenwriting lessons we can find in SUSPICION are the “did he or didn’t he” scenes of suspicion, and the use of mailing letters as a leitmotif throughout the film.
Unreliable Character:
One of the keys to creating suspicion about a character is to make sure they are unreliable - that we have room to doubt them. Cary Grant is a romantic lead - who would ever believe he *might* be a bad guy? So the story contains scenes that throw his character into question again and again. These are like the Suspicion Scenes we will discuss in a moment, but are more about establishing the untrustworthy character.
The meet-cute has Johnnie hiding from the conductor in her first class car, and when he’s discovered, he asks her for money to pay for the ticket. Not your most dependable person... yet right after he pays off the conductor, she sees his photo in a society magazine. He tracks her down, showing up at her parent’s house on Sunday morning and asking if she will go to church with him. Except he doesn’t take her to church - she takes her on a walk in the country and tries to kiss her. Later, he says he’ll pick her up at 3pm to go out... then calls to cancel. A week goes by and she doesn’t hear from him - on the day of a big party, she gets a telegram saying he will see her at the party. She dresses up - looks hot - and goes to the party... and he’s a no-show. When he finally does show up at the party, he has no invitation and tells the doorman that he’s Lina’s father’s guest. Lina’s father is not happy about this. After one dance, Johnnie “borrows” Lina’s father’s car and takes her on a drive - kissing her in the car. After the make out session, he asks if she will marry him - um, kind of sudden! By having him break rules, be unpredictable and undependable, yet still be suave, charming Cary Grant; we don’t know what to expect from him throughout the movie. He becomes attractive *and* dangerous. The *character* of Johnnie is suspicious!
Suspicion Is Tearing Us Apart:
As promised in the SHADOW OF A DOUBT chapter, this film is a great example of how to maintain suspicion without ever telling us if he did it or not. As I said in that entry, at the heart of every screenplay is the central question. It's what propels the story forward and keeps the audience involved. In a romantic comedy, the central question might be: Will they hook up or not? In a disaster movie it might be: Will they survive, and *who* will survive? The story begins with the introduction of the central question and then keeps us wondering how it will be resolved for the next 100 pages. This question is what keeps the story going - and will not be answered until the end of the movie. It is the fuel that propels the story, and the moment the question is answered, there is no more fuel for the story.
To keep the question “alive” and keep the suspense growing, we need to keep that question in the foreground - and not let the audience forget it. I call this “poking the tiger” - we will forget that a tiger is dangerous if we allow it to fall asleep and the audience to forget it. So we need to keep poking it throughout the story. Which is where suspicion comes in - we need to suspect that Cary Grant is guilty... yet when Lina gets ready to confront him, have a logical explanation for every bit of suspicion she has. But *keep* the suspicions mounting so that we don’t forget what that central question is and *always* wonder if he is guilty of something. Unlike in SHADOW OF A DOUBT, we never know whether Cary Grant’s Johnnie is guilty or innocent until the very end - so we never know whether Lina is in real danger or just has an over-active imagination until the very end. This keeps the suspense simmering throughout the film.
Creating and maintaining suspicion is an important tool in screenwriting, no matter what genre you are working in. Obviously it’s part of many thrillers and mysteries, but it can be used in comedies and romances and dramatic films. Does the guy love the gal in the rom-com or not? Was our hero betrayed by his best friend or not? Is she married or not? Is the protagonist about to lose their job or not? Suspicion is a great tool that we can use in every genre.
Guilty: When they return from their No-Expenses-Spared honeymoon in Europe, Johnnie gets a letter from a friend asking for money... The money he borrowed to finance the honeymoon.
Guilty: When they arrive at their new house, the decorator has the bill in hand and wants to be paid. Johnnie tells him to put it on that nice little table near the door and leave.
Guilty: When Lina asks how Johnnie intends to pay for all of this, he has no answer - he has never had a job in his life, and has no skills. Lina tells him her parents are *not* going to support them... and that’s when her father calls.
Guilty: Johnnie tells her father that he has been offered a job by his cousin Captain Melbeck that will pay the bills.
Innocent: After hanging up, Lina gets angry with Johnnie for lying to her father about the job offer from Captain Melbeck... but Johnnie pulls an envelope from his coat pocket with a letter from Melback (Leo G. Carroll) offering him a job. He was hoping not to have to work for a living, but if he must...
Guilty: Lina’s father is giving them a special wedding gift... Johnnie is hoping for bags of money, but it ends up being a pair of antique chairs. When Lina comes home the next day, the two chairs are missing. Johnnie’s friend Beaky says the odds are 20 to 1 that Johnnie sold them and went to the race track. When she asks, Johnnie hems and haws and then says he sold them to an American for $200. The next day, Lina sees them in a pawn shop window while walking with local mystery writer Isobel Sedbusk (Auriol Lee) - who says she has seen Johnnie at the race track when he was supposed to be at work. Johnnie comes home with gifts for everyone - he’s won $2,000 at the race track on a bet of $200. Lina asks where he got the $200, and forces him to admit he pawned the chairs...
Innocent: But then he produces the receipt for the chairs - he’s bought them back with his winnings. Not exactly innocent, but he’s done the right thing, right?
Guilty: Lina goes to Captain Melbeck to find out how Johnnie can be at the track when he’s supposed to be working, and discovers that Johnnie was fired... because he embezzled $2,000! The exact amount he supposedly won at the race track. Did he really win the money? Melbeck doesn’t want to go to the police, and has given Johnnie a few months to find the money to reap him.
Innocent: When Lina goes to confront him, he breaks the news that her father has died, and comforts her like the perfect husband.
Guilty: Early in the film, Johnnie tells Lina, “A girl like you is going to come into lots of money eventually.” So when Johnnie and Lina go to the reading of the will, Johnnie is sure that Lina will inherit the half of the old man’s money that doesn’t go to his widow. But they end up inheriting the painting of the old man in full military uniform... and Lina will continue to receive her allowance. Johnnie says he doesn’t know what he would do if Lina were to die first... is he plotting to kill her?
Innocent: The great thing about “not knowing what he would do if she died first” is that it’s ominous... but also romantic. You can take it either way.
Guilty: Once again, Lina asks Johnnie why Melbeck fired him... and he answers “We just didn’t get along.”
Innocent: This continues to build throughout the story - getting worse.
Guilty: Johnnie forms a partnership with Beaky to buy some property on a cliff overlooking the ocean and develop it. Johnnie’s plan, Beaky’s $30,000 - after Beaky agrees, he calls Melbeck to say he’ll soon be able to repay that $2,000 he stole. While Johnnie is making that call in the next room, Lina tries to warn Beaky that this may not be a good investment, maybe he shouldn’t trust Johnnie so much... and Johnnie enters and overhears this. He threatens Lina, tells her not to meddle in his business. It’s *obvious* he plans on ripping off Beaky.
Innocent: The next day he apologizes to Lina for losing his temper, and has decided not to go through with the deal.
Guilty: Instead of just calling off the deal, Johnnie insists on taking Beaky out to the cliff-side property the next morning to show him the reason why he no longer wants to do the deal. Beaky says he doesn’t need to see the reason, he trusts Johnnie. This conversation takes place while the three are playing Scrabble, and Lina arranges her letters to form a word - “Murder” - and a couple more letters make it “Murderer”. She has a flash of Johnnie pushing Beaky off the cliff into the sea far, far below.
Guilty: When she wakes up the next morning, Johnnie and Beaky have already left to look at the cliff-side property. She gets in her car and speeds out to stop the murder. But when she gets there, it is too late. No one is there... just tire tracks leading *over* the edge of the cliff! And Johnnie’s footprints. She looks over the cliff, can see no sign of the car. The sea has already washed away the evidence. She races home to confront Johnnie... and finds him *alone* in the living room. No sign of Beaky. He really did kill his friend for $30,000!
Innocent: Until Beaky pops his head up. Alive! He says he *almost* died, when he put the car into reverse and almost drove over the cliff, but Johnnie jumped in and saved his life.. almost killing himself in the process.
Guilty: Johnnie begins reading books by local mystery writer Isobel Sedbusk... why the sudden interest in reading about murder? He was never one to read before...
Guilty: Johnnie wants to go to a dinner party at Isobel’s house because her brother - the London medical examiner - will be present. Huh? Johnnie asks the brother about untraceable poisons... discovers there is one. Cleverly questions him until he finds out more about the poison Is Johnnie planning on poisoning her?
Innocent: Isobel tells Lina that Johnnie has been asking her many questions about crime because he plans on writing a mystery novel. Is this how Johnnie plans to earn a living?
Guilty: Earlier in the film, Beaky quaffs a snifter of brandy and has a seizure. Johnnie does nothing - just stands there watching his friend suffer. He says Beaky knows he shouldn’t drink brandy, has had this reaction before, and he will either live or die - not much they can do to help.
Guilty: Beaky has to go to Paris to return the $30,000, and Johnnie wants to go with him. Beaky says that’s not necessary... so Johnnie insists on going with him to London, then sticking around London to look for a job.
A couple of days later, a pair of Homicide Detectives ring the bell and want to talk to Johnnie. Lina says he’s away, asks what it’s about... Beaky has died in Paris from drinking a snifter of brandy. He was with another Englishman who dared him to drink a full snifter quickly. The Paris police found papers in Beaky’s pocket about the partnership with Johnnie. When will Johnnie return so the police can question him? Lina says he’s in London looking for a job...
Guilty: When the two Detectives leave, she phones Johnnie’s club in London to talk to him... but he checked out the same day as Beaky left for Paris.
Guilty: Lina asks Isobel about the brandy seizure thing, and Isobel says people have used it to murder in the past, in fact, there’s a book about it on her research shelf... but when Isobel looks for it, it isn’t there... then she remembers: She loaned it to Johnnie a few weeks ago.
Innocent: Johnnie comes home, heart-broken over Beaky’s death. He warned him that drinking brandy might kill him. He did not go with Beaky to Paris, instead looked for a job in London... and checked out of his expensive club to stay in a cheaper hotel... he has a reason for everything that makes him look guilty.
Guilty: Hey, but what about that untraceable poison? Johnnie gets a letter from an insurance company... that he hides from Lina. She sneaks over, pulls it out of his coat pocket while he is in the shower, reads it. (Great suspense scene.) It’s about borrowing on *her* life insurance. Says the only way he can get any money from the policy is in the event of her death.
Guilty: That night he brings her the glowing glass of milk...
Innocent: Though I’ve pretty much spoiled the whole movie, I’ll spoil the end in the section called “Unfilmed Ending”...
By having a reason or explanation or excuse for everything that makes Johnnie look guilty, Johnnie is never proven guilty... just stays under that cloud of suspicion. If there was no explanation for any of these things, we would *know* he was guilty and wonder why the heck she didn’t get out of the house NOW! But this way we wonder, as Lina does, if all of this is in her mind. Does she have an over-active imagination? Is this her insecurity at being a homely woman married to a handsome man making her jump to conclusions? Because there is a potentially innocent reason for everything he has done, she sticks with him... and we don’t think she’s stupid for doing that... and the story can continue to ratchet up the tension without reaching a conclusion as to whether he is guilty or not. Johnnie is certainly not innocent of everything - he *is* an embezzler and ex-womanizer and lazy bum pretty-boy... but whether he’s a killer or not, and whether he plans to murder Lina, are unanswered questions that remain unanswered until the end of the film. That “guilty or innocent” question is what drives the story, so we don’t want it to be answered until the very end.
Leitmotif: A "leitmotif" is a recurring theme, phrase or image associated with a person, situation, or idea. Robert McKee calls them "image systems", but they aren’t always images. Whatever term you use, it's an additional thread connecting pieces of the story, and often a way to explore theme through recurring images. Instead of arbitrarily forcing a leitmotif on your script, you should grow one naturally from the plot and characters. In SUSPICION the leitmotif is letters... not the kind Vanna White turns on Wheel Of Fortune, but those things people wrote on paper before the invention of e-mail.
The way to spot a leitmotif is to look for story elements that connect to each other that are their due to a choice or decision on the part of the writer. So when Lina is digging in her purse to find some money to pay the train conductor for Johnnie’s ticket, she pulls out a postage stamp... and Johnnie says that will do - it’s as good as money - then tells the conductor to use the stamp to write to his mother. He *could* have just used the coins she pulled out, but the writer made a decision to use a postage stamp... because it has to do with letters (and maybe another reason we will look at in a moment).
After Johnnie cancels their first date... then seems to disappear... Lina goes to the post office and asks if there are any letters for her that may have been misplaced.
When Lina decides to elope with Johnnie, she tells her mother and father that she is going to the post office in town... she could have said she was going to the store, but letters and the mail are the leitmotif.
Johnnie has that letter from Captain Melbeck offering him a job in his pocket.
The letter from the insurance company that Lina sneaks a peak at.
And at least a half dozen more instances. Throughout the film, letters and the post office are an additional thread connecting parts of the story. You might even add in those Scrabble letters - they could have been playing any game. These are conscious choices on the part of the writer - just as the use of *water* is the leitmotif in CHINATOWN and sharks are the leitmotif in LADY FROM SHANGHAI and mirror reflections are the leitmotif in PSYCHO. The leitmotif isn’t something required to tell the story, they are and additional element. All of these letters and stamps and post office visits seem to be leading to something... the ending that Hitchcock claims he wanted to use, but the studio wouldn’t let him.
Unfilmed Ending:
SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!
Hey, now that I’ve spoiled all of the suspense in the film, let me spoil the ending!
Hitchcock has always said he had an ending for this film that the studio wouldn’t let him use - Lina writes a letter to her mother that Johnnie is killing her slowly with poison he learned about from the mystery writer, but she is allowing it to happen because she loves him. She seals the letter in an envelope, stamps it, and then Johnnie comes with the poisoned milk. She asks him to do her a favor and mail the letter to her mother... then drinks the milk and dies. Johnnie takes the letter to the post box - not knowing it contains the information that will lead to his arrest and conviction - and drops it through the slot. Cool ending... but there has always been a dispute about whether it ever existed or not. There is no trace of a script with that ending.
The ending of the film - where Johnnie seems to be trying to push her out of the speeding car, but ends up saving her, then tells her the poison was for himself because he’s facing jail time for embezzling money and would rather kill himself than shame her - was *not* the original ending... even though it fits the “guilty”/”innocent” pattern. There was a previous ending that test audiences hated...
Lina drinks the glass of milk she believes is poisoned, hugs Johnnie and tells her that she loves him no matter what he has done... Johnnie realizes she thinks he has been trying to kill her, and that does not trust him. He is ashamed and leaves her... and then World War 2 breaks out, and just like in ATONEMENT they lose track of each other.
Later, she is on a train - in a scene similar to the opening scene - sees him in a newspaper as an RAF fighter pilot in uniform like her father. She goes to the airbase where the Commander tells her that he is their best pilot - a hero who has risked his life for his fellow pilots again and again - and the nickname of the plane he flies is “Monkeyface” - his nickname for Lina. He may not return from his current mission - attacking Berlin. Lina realizes he is an honorable man who really did love her. The End.
That ending seems designed to not work... making me wonder if the plan all along was to replace the ending all along with the one Hitchcock claims he always wanted...
And when we look at the Leitmotif - letters and stamps - and add Johnnie’s line to the conductor after he uses Lina’s stamp to pay the difference on his train ticket, “Write to your mother”, it all seems to be leading to that ending that Hitchcock described. I suspect Hitchcock wanted his mailbox ending from the very beginning, but knew the studio would not let it fly with a star like Cary Grant in the lead (other actors like Edmund O’Brien were considered for the lead, and before Hitchcock was involved Orson Welles was going to play the lead in a version where Johnnie *was* a killer and later shot down by the police after a chase)... so he waited until test audiences rejected the original ending, then let the studio “discover” the logical ending with the mailbox so they would think it was their brilliant idea... and instead we ended up with Johnnie’s completely out of character wish to commit suicide to save her from the shame of being married to an embezzler.
Neither the original ending nor the ending we ended up with, fit the movie that comes before them. It’s the most out of place ending of any Hitchcock film - including TOPAZ’s post production suicide ending.
Though there is no record of the ending *on paper* with Johnnie poisoning Lina while Hitchcock was involved in the production, *I* would not have a written version ready, either. One of the skills a screenwriter develops is the ability to make the other guy think he came up with the idea - so having that ending on paper would ruin any chance of having it end up on screen, since it would obviously have been *Hitchcock’s* idea. Best way to play this is to have nothing on paper and let the Executives watch the movie and realize that all of the pieces are leading up to this idea *they* thought of - the poisoning of Lina and the letter to her mother. But what if you set this all up... and the executives *don’t see the obvious*? I think the ending Hitchcock always talked about in interviews is the ending he intended... but then got screwed by the studios - a star as big as Cary Grant could not be a killer, even if it *was* the obvious ending.
Sound Track: Good score by Franz Waxman who would later do REAR WINDOW.
By the way - part of the Hitchcock loyalty of working with the same people - the gal who plays the maid will also play the woman with the dead baby in LIFEBOAT.
Except for the iffy ending, SUSPICION still works as a romantic suspense film, and is probably the predecessor of movies like JAGGED EDGE and SEA OF LOVE. And like INCEPTION, the ending provokes a great deal of conversation and debate. I think after he saves her from falling out of the car, he drives her home and poisons her - the end.
- Bill
The other Fridays With Hitchcock.
BUY THE DVD AT AMAZON:
This is another one of those movies that I know all of the dialogue to (“A passionate hairdresser!”) and could do a one man show, if suddenly required to save mankind from some horrible fate. I don’t really know why I have seen this film so many times, but I suspect it was one of those films from my childhood that was *always* on TV, and also the kind of movie I love... so if my choice was between SUSPICION on one channel and some other movie that always played on TV on another channel, I’d watch SUSPICION again. I identified with the female lead - not because I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body or because Cary Grant is my “Mango” - but because the first time we see her she is reading a book, and books are her life. That was me as a kid. In fact, this was one of many films that had me riding my bike to the library to check out the novel it was based on. As a shy, bookish, boy, I understood what it meant to secretly love someone way out of your league (Debbie Morrow in grade school)... and know that your heart will be broken again and again because they are just out of your league.
Nutshell: Shy, bookish Lina (Joan Fontaine) comes from a wealthy family - her mother and father (Dame May Whitty and Sir Cedric Hardwicke) expect her to die an unwed virgin, she’s approaching thirty and never even been kissed! On a train she meets handsome, charming, lady’s man Johnnie Aysgarth (Cary Grant) who hides from the conductor in her first class compartment... and when caught, asks her if she will pay for the balance of his ticket. Their paths cross a couple more times, with Johnnie always asking her for something... and they begin dating. He sweeps her off her feet - one of the most eligible men in all of England, and he picks *her*! It’s like Cinderella... and although Johnnie is charming, is he a prince? More the male version of a gold digger. Her parents (and just about everyone else) don’t approve of Johnnie, so they elope - getting married at a Justice Of The Peace and honeymooning in Europe. But, did Johnnie only marry her for her money? Though he lives like a millionaire, he has no money of his own - just his good looks. He has spent his life living off wealthy women. He seems to always have some get rich quick scheme that never works... and *he* never works - he is a born freeloader. He bets on horses, embezzles money from relatives who offer him jobs, sells Lina’s family heirlooms, and does all kinds of awful things - but is always funny and charming and the perfect husband.
When Johnnie enters into a scheme with his wealthy college pal Beaky (Nigel Bruce), Lina begins to suspect that Johnnie may be planning to murder his pal for the money... and when Lina’s father dies and she is in line to inherit, she begins to suspect that Johnnie plans to kill *her* for the money. Johnnie befriends a local mystery writer to find untraceable poisons... and Lina *has* been feeling a little strange lately. Has he been giving her a slow-acting poison? Will she call the police and report the man she loves to the police... or die a happily married woman?
Experiment: Though there is that great shot of Cary Grant climbing the staircase with a *glowing* glass of milk (Hitchcock put a light *inside* the glass to call attention to it) and several other cool shots, the film doesn’t have any obvious ground breaking experiments except the “did he or didn’t he” plot which seems rather daring for a movie starring Cary Grant... and the unfilmed ending. I’m going to save the ending discussion for the end of this blog entry - with SPOILER notices all over the place first.
Hitch Appearance: Dropping a letter in the mailbox... which is part of the film’s leitmotif, which we will discuss in a minute.
Great Scenes: The two great screenwriting lessons we can find in SUSPICION are the “did he or didn’t he” scenes of suspicion, and the use of mailing letters as a leitmotif throughout the film.
Unreliable Character:
One of the keys to creating suspicion about a character is to make sure they are unreliable - that we have room to doubt them. Cary Grant is a romantic lead - who would ever believe he *might* be a bad guy? So the story contains scenes that throw his character into question again and again. These are like the Suspicion Scenes we will discuss in a moment, but are more about establishing the untrustworthy character.
The meet-cute has Johnnie hiding from the conductor in her first class car, and when he’s discovered, he asks her for money to pay for the ticket. Not your most dependable person... yet right after he pays off the conductor, she sees his photo in a society magazine. He tracks her down, showing up at her parent’s house on Sunday morning and asking if she will go to church with him. Except he doesn’t take her to church - she takes her on a walk in the country and tries to kiss her. Later, he says he’ll pick her up at 3pm to go out... then calls to cancel. A week goes by and she doesn’t hear from him - on the day of a big party, she gets a telegram saying he will see her at the party. She dresses up - looks hot - and goes to the party... and he’s a no-show. When he finally does show up at the party, he has no invitation and tells the doorman that he’s Lina’s father’s guest. Lina’s father is not happy about this. After one dance, Johnnie “borrows” Lina’s father’s car and takes her on a drive - kissing her in the car. After the make out session, he asks if she will marry him - um, kind of sudden! By having him break rules, be unpredictable and undependable, yet still be suave, charming Cary Grant; we don’t know what to expect from him throughout the movie. He becomes attractive *and* dangerous. The *character* of Johnnie is suspicious!
Suspicion Is Tearing Us Apart:
As promised in the SHADOW OF A DOUBT chapter, this film is a great example of how to maintain suspicion without ever telling us if he did it or not. As I said in that entry, at the heart of every screenplay is the central question. It's what propels the story forward and keeps the audience involved. In a romantic comedy, the central question might be: Will they hook up or not? In a disaster movie it might be: Will they survive, and *who* will survive? The story begins with the introduction of the central question and then keeps us wondering how it will be resolved for the next 100 pages. This question is what keeps the story going - and will not be answered until the end of the movie. It is the fuel that propels the story, and the moment the question is answered, there is no more fuel for the story.
To keep the question “alive” and keep the suspense growing, we need to keep that question in the foreground - and not let the audience forget it. I call this “poking the tiger” - we will forget that a tiger is dangerous if we allow it to fall asleep and the audience to forget it. So we need to keep poking it throughout the story. Which is where suspicion comes in - we need to suspect that Cary Grant is guilty... yet when Lina gets ready to confront him, have a logical explanation for every bit of suspicion she has. But *keep* the suspicions mounting so that we don’t forget what that central question is and *always* wonder if he is guilty of something. Unlike in SHADOW OF A DOUBT, we never know whether Cary Grant’s Johnnie is guilty or innocent until the very end - so we never know whether Lina is in real danger or just has an over-active imagination until the very end. This keeps the suspense simmering throughout the film.
Creating and maintaining suspicion is an important tool in screenwriting, no matter what genre you are working in. Obviously it’s part of many thrillers and mysteries, but it can be used in comedies and romances and dramatic films. Does the guy love the gal in the rom-com or not? Was our hero betrayed by his best friend or not? Is she married or not? Is the protagonist about to lose their job or not? Suspicion is a great tool that we can use in every genre.
Guilty: When they return from their No-Expenses-Spared honeymoon in Europe, Johnnie gets a letter from a friend asking for money... The money he borrowed to finance the honeymoon.
Guilty: When they arrive at their new house, the decorator has the bill in hand and wants to be paid. Johnnie tells him to put it on that nice little table near the door and leave.
Guilty: When Lina asks how Johnnie intends to pay for all of this, he has no answer - he has never had a job in his life, and has no skills. Lina tells him her parents are *not* going to support them... and that’s when her father calls.
Guilty: Johnnie tells her father that he has been offered a job by his cousin Captain Melbeck that will pay the bills.
Innocent: After hanging up, Lina gets angry with Johnnie for lying to her father about the job offer from Captain Melbeck... but Johnnie pulls an envelope from his coat pocket with a letter from Melback (Leo G. Carroll) offering him a job. He was hoping not to have to work for a living, but if he must...
Guilty: Lina’s father is giving them a special wedding gift... Johnnie is hoping for bags of money, but it ends up being a pair of antique chairs. When Lina comes home the next day, the two chairs are missing. Johnnie’s friend Beaky says the odds are 20 to 1 that Johnnie sold them and went to the race track. When she asks, Johnnie hems and haws and then says he sold them to an American for $200. The next day, Lina sees them in a pawn shop window while walking with local mystery writer Isobel Sedbusk (Auriol Lee) - who says she has seen Johnnie at the race track when he was supposed to be at work. Johnnie comes home with gifts for everyone - he’s won $2,000 at the race track on a bet of $200. Lina asks where he got the $200, and forces him to admit he pawned the chairs...
Innocent: But then he produces the receipt for the chairs - he’s bought them back with his winnings. Not exactly innocent, but he’s done the right thing, right?
Guilty: Lina goes to Captain Melbeck to find out how Johnnie can be at the track when he’s supposed to be working, and discovers that Johnnie was fired... because he embezzled $2,000! The exact amount he supposedly won at the race track. Did he really win the money? Melbeck doesn’t want to go to the police, and has given Johnnie a few months to find the money to reap him.
Innocent: When Lina goes to confront him, he breaks the news that her father has died, and comforts her like the perfect husband.
Guilty: Early in the film, Johnnie tells Lina, “A girl like you is going to come into lots of money eventually.” So when Johnnie and Lina go to the reading of the will, Johnnie is sure that Lina will inherit the half of the old man’s money that doesn’t go to his widow. But they end up inheriting the painting of the old man in full military uniform... and Lina will continue to receive her allowance. Johnnie says he doesn’t know what he would do if Lina were to die first... is he plotting to kill her?
Innocent: The great thing about “not knowing what he would do if she died first” is that it’s ominous... but also romantic. You can take it either way.
Guilty: Once again, Lina asks Johnnie why Melbeck fired him... and he answers “We just didn’t get along.”
Innocent: This continues to build throughout the story - getting worse.
Guilty: Johnnie forms a partnership with Beaky to buy some property on a cliff overlooking the ocean and develop it. Johnnie’s plan, Beaky’s $30,000 - after Beaky agrees, he calls Melbeck to say he’ll soon be able to repay that $2,000 he stole. While Johnnie is making that call in the next room, Lina tries to warn Beaky that this may not be a good investment, maybe he shouldn’t trust Johnnie so much... and Johnnie enters and overhears this. He threatens Lina, tells her not to meddle in his business. It’s *obvious* he plans on ripping off Beaky.
Innocent: The next day he apologizes to Lina for losing his temper, and has decided not to go through with the deal.
Guilty: Instead of just calling off the deal, Johnnie insists on taking Beaky out to the cliff-side property the next morning to show him the reason why he no longer wants to do the deal. Beaky says he doesn’t need to see the reason, he trusts Johnnie. This conversation takes place while the three are playing Scrabble, and Lina arranges her letters to form a word - “Murder” - and a couple more letters make it “Murderer”. She has a flash of Johnnie pushing Beaky off the cliff into the sea far, far below.
Guilty: When she wakes up the next morning, Johnnie and Beaky have already left to look at the cliff-side property. She gets in her car and speeds out to stop the murder. But when she gets there, it is too late. No one is there... just tire tracks leading *over* the edge of the cliff! And Johnnie’s footprints. She looks over the cliff, can see no sign of the car. The sea has already washed away the evidence. She races home to confront Johnnie... and finds him *alone* in the living room. No sign of Beaky. He really did kill his friend for $30,000!
Innocent: Until Beaky pops his head up. Alive! He says he *almost* died, when he put the car into reverse and almost drove over the cliff, but Johnnie jumped in and saved his life.. almost killing himself in the process.
Guilty: Johnnie begins reading books by local mystery writer Isobel Sedbusk... why the sudden interest in reading about murder? He was never one to read before...
Guilty: Johnnie wants to go to a dinner party at Isobel’s house because her brother - the London medical examiner - will be present. Huh? Johnnie asks the brother about untraceable poisons... discovers there is one. Cleverly questions him until he finds out more about the poison Is Johnnie planning on poisoning her?
Innocent: Isobel tells Lina that Johnnie has been asking her many questions about crime because he plans on writing a mystery novel. Is this how Johnnie plans to earn a living?
Guilty: Earlier in the film, Beaky quaffs a snifter of brandy and has a seizure. Johnnie does nothing - just stands there watching his friend suffer. He says Beaky knows he shouldn’t drink brandy, has had this reaction before, and he will either live or die - not much they can do to help.
Guilty: Beaky has to go to Paris to return the $30,000, and Johnnie wants to go with him. Beaky says that’s not necessary... so Johnnie insists on going with him to London, then sticking around London to look for a job.
A couple of days later, a pair of Homicide Detectives ring the bell and want to talk to Johnnie. Lina says he’s away, asks what it’s about... Beaky has died in Paris from drinking a snifter of brandy. He was with another Englishman who dared him to drink a full snifter quickly. The Paris police found papers in Beaky’s pocket about the partnership with Johnnie. When will Johnnie return so the police can question him? Lina says he’s in London looking for a job...
Guilty: When the two Detectives leave, she phones Johnnie’s club in London to talk to him... but he checked out the same day as Beaky left for Paris.
Guilty: Lina asks Isobel about the brandy seizure thing, and Isobel says people have used it to murder in the past, in fact, there’s a book about it on her research shelf... but when Isobel looks for it, it isn’t there... then she remembers: She loaned it to Johnnie a few weeks ago.
Innocent: Johnnie comes home, heart-broken over Beaky’s death. He warned him that drinking brandy might kill him. He did not go with Beaky to Paris, instead looked for a job in London... and checked out of his expensive club to stay in a cheaper hotel... he has a reason for everything that makes him look guilty.
Guilty: Hey, but what about that untraceable poison? Johnnie gets a letter from an insurance company... that he hides from Lina. She sneaks over, pulls it out of his coat pocket while he is in the shower, reads it. (Great suspense scene.) It’s about borrowing on *her* life insurance. Says the only way he can get any money from the policy is in the event of her death.
Guilty: That night he brings her the glowing glass of milk...
Innocent: Though I’ve pretty much spoiled the whole movie, I’ll spoil the end in the section called “Unfilmed Ending”...
By having a reason or explanation or excuse for everything that makes Johnnie look guilty, Johnnie is never proven guilty... just stays under that cloud of suspicion. If there was no explanation for any of these things, we would *know* he was guilty and wonder why the heck she didn’t get out of the house NOW! But this way we wonder, as Lina does, if all of this is in her mind. Does she have an over-active imagination? Is this her insecurity at being a homely woman married to a handsome man making her jump to conclusions? Because there is a potentially innocent reason for everything he has done, she sticks with him... and we don’t think she’s stupid for doing that... and the story can continue to ratchet up the tension without reaching a conclusion as to whether he is guilty or not. Johnnie is certainly not innocent of everything - he *is* an embezzler and ex-womanizer and lazy bum pretty-boy... but whether he’s a killer or not, and whether he plans to murder Lina, are unanswered questions that remain unanswered until the end of the film. That “guilty or innocent” question is what drives the story, so we don’t want it to be answered until the very end.
Leitmotif: A "leitmotif" is a recurring theme, phrase or image associated with a person, situation, or idea. Robert McKee calls them "image systems", but they aren’t always images. Whatever term you use, it's an additional thread connecting pieces of the story, and often a way to explore theme through recurring images. Instead of arbitrarily forcing a leitmotif on your script, you should grow one naturally from the plot and characters. In SUSPICION the leitmotif is letters... not the kind Vanna White turns on Wheel Of Fortune, but those things people wrote on paper before the invention of e-mail.
The way to spot a leitmotif is to look for story elements that connect to each other that are their due to a choice or decision on the part of the writer. So when Lina is digging in her purse to find some money to pay the train conductor for Johnnie’s ticket, she pulls out a postage stamp... and Johnnie says that will do - it’s as good as money - then tells the conductor to use the stamp to write to his mother. He *could* have just used the coins she pulled out, but the writer made a decision to use a postage stamp... because it has to do with letters (and maybe another reason we will look at in a moment).
After Johnnie cancels their first date... then seems to disappear... Lina goes to the post office and asks if there are any letters for her that may have been misplaced.
When Lina decides to elope with Johnnie, she tells her mother and father that she is going to the post office in town... she could have said she was going to the store, but letters and the mail are the leitmotif.
Johnnie has that letter from Captain Melbeck offering him a job in his pocket.
The letter from the insurance company that Lina sneaks a peak at.
And at least a half dozen more instances. Throughout the film, letters and the post office are an additional thread connecting parts of the story. You might even add in those Scrabble letters - they could have been playing any game. These are conscious choices on the part of the writer - just as the use of *water* is the leitmotif in CHINATOWN and sharks are the leitmotif in LADY FROM SHANGHAI and mirror reflections are the leitmotif in PSYCHO. The leitmotif isn’t something required to tell the story, they are and additional element. All of these letters and stamps and post office visits seem to be leading to something... the ending that Hitchcock claims he wanted to use, but the studio wouldn’t let him.
Unfilmed Ending:
SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!
Hey, now that I’ve spoiled all of the suspense in the film, let me spoil the ending!
Hitchcock has always said he had an ending for this film that the studio wouldn’t let him use - Lina writes a letter to her mother that Johnnie is killing her slowly with poison he learned about from the mystery writer, but she is allowing it to happen because she loves him. She seals the letter in an envelope, stamps it, and then Johnnie comes with the poisoned milk. She asks him to do her a favor and mail the letter to her mother... then drinks the milk and dies. Johnnie takes the letter to the post box - not knowing it contains the information that will lead to his arrest and conviction - and drops it through the slot. Cool ending... but there has always been a dispute about whether it ever existed or not. There is no trace of a script with that ending.
The ending of the film - where Johnnie seems to be trying to push her out of the speeding car, but ends up saving her, then tells her the poison was for himself because he’s facing jail time for embezzling money and would rather kill himself than shame her - was *not* the original ending... even though it fits the “guilty”/”innocent” pattern. There was a previous ending that test audiences hated...
Lina drinks the glass of milk she believes is poisoned, hugs Johnnie and tells her that she loves him no matter what he has done... Johnnie realizes she thinks he has been trying to kill her, and that does not trust him. He is ashamed and leaves her... and then World War 2 breaks out, and just like in ATONEMENT they lose track of each other.
Later, she is on a train - in a scene similar to the opening scene - sees him in a newspaper as an RAF fighter pilot in uniform like her father. She goes to the airbase where the Commander tells her that he is their best pilot - a hero who has risked his life for his fellow pilots again and again - and the nickname of the plane he flies is “Monkeyface” - his nickname for Lina. He may not return from his current mission - attacking Berlin. Lina realizes he is an honorable man who really did love her. The End.
That ending seems designed to not work... making me wonder if the plan all along was to replace the ending all along with the one Hitchcock claims he always wanted...
And when we look at the Leitmotif - letters and stamps - and add Johnnie’s line to the conductor after he uses Lina’s stamp to pay the difference on his train ticket, “Write to your mother”, it all seems to be leading to that ending that Hitchcock described. I suspect Hitchcock wanted his mailbox ending from the very beginning, but knew the studio would not let it fly with a star like Cary Grant in the lead (other actors like Edmund O’Brien were considered for the lead, and before Hitchcock was involved Orson Welles was going to play the lead in a version where Johnnie *was* a killer and later shot down by the police after a chase)... so he waited until test audiences rejected the original ending, then let the studio “discover” the logical ending with the mailbox so they would think it was their brilliant idea... and instead we ended up with Johnnie’s completely out of character wish to commit suicide to save her from the shame of being married to an embezzler.
Neither the original ending nor the ending we ended up with, fit the movie that comes before them. It’s the most out of place ending of any Hitchcock film - including TOPAZ’s post production suicide ending.
Though there is no record of the ending *on paper* with Johnnie poisoning Lina while Hitchcock was involved in the production, *I* would not have a written version ready, either. One of the skills a screenwriter develops is the ability to make the other guy think he came up with the idea - so having that ending on paper would ruin any chance of having it end up on screen, since it would obviously have been *Hitchcock’s* idea. Best way to play this is to have nothing on paper and let the Executives watch the movie and realize that all of the pieces are leading up to this idea *they* thought of - the poisoning of Lina and the letter to her mother. But what if you set this all up... and the executives *don’t see the obvious*? I think the ending Hitchcock always talked about in interviews is the ending he intended... but then got screwed by the studios - a star as big as Cary Grant could not be a killer, even if it *was* the obvious ending.
Sound Track: Good score by Franz Waxman who would later do REAR WINDOW.
By the way - part of the Hitchcock loyalty of working with the same people - the gal who plays the maid will also play the woman with the dead baby in LIFEBOAT.
Except for the iffy ending, SUSPICION still works as a romantic suspense film, and is probably the predecessor of movies like JAGGED EDGE and SEA OF LOVE. And like INCEPTION, the ending provokes a great deal of conversation and debate. I think after he saves her from falling out of the car, he drives her home and poisons her - the end.
- Bill
The other Fridays With Hitchcock.
BUY THE DVD AT AMAZON:
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Lancelot Link: The Search For Spock!
Lancelot Link Thursday! 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 six cool links plus this week's car chase...
1) Horror Filmmakers: Take Pride In Your Work, Please!
2) 40 Rare STAR WARS Behind The Scenes Photos!
3) Justin Samuels - Writer Suing Agencies For $8m - Rebuttal!
4) HOllywood Can Make A $450 Million Movie Unprofitable!
5) JONNY QUEST in stop motion!
6) Was RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES a political film?
And the Car Chase Of The Week:
VIOLENT CITY (1975) aka FORCED IMPACT. The cool thing about this chase is that it's old school - camera mounted behind the wheels and all of those classic shots from BULLITT and FRENCH CONNECTION.
- Bill
Here are six cool links plus this week's car chase...
1) Horror Filmmakers: Take Pride In Your Work, Please!
2) 40 Rare STAR WARS Behind The Scenes Photos!
3) Justin Samuels - Writer Suing Agencies For $8m - Rebuttal!
4) HOllywood Can Make A $450 Million Movie Unprofitable!
5) JONNY QUEST in stop motion!
6) Was RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES a political film?
And the Car Chase Of The Week:
VIOLENT CITY (1975) aka FORCED IMPACT. The cool thing about this chase is that it's old school - camera mounted behind the wheels and all of those classic shots from BULLITT and FRENCH CONNECTION.
- Bill
Fade Out Does Not Equal A Sale
Congratulations! You have finished your screenplay! It was a lot of hard work, and you deserve to be rewarded, so do something nice for yourself. You deserve something special!
“Swell, do you have Spielberg's address? I think he'd be he perfect director!”
Okay, now to the reality check: just because you have made the major accomplishment of finishing a screenplay does not mean that that screenplay is great. It just means it's finished.
“Okay, how about Uwe Boll's address?”
Now, I'm not saying your screenplay *isn't* great – I haven't read it. I'm just saying that because it is finished is no reason to believe that it is great. It may suck. At this point, you are just so happy that you finally got to type FADE OUT that you probably are not the best judge. Later, after you have rewarded yourself for your excellent hard work, and maybe had a few days or weeks to just bask in FADE OUT, you might take a closer look at the script to see if it needs one of those rewrites you keep hearing about.
“Wait a minute! You mean once I finish it, I still have to keep rewriting it? Even for Uwe Boll?”
Lots of new writers (and probably some old ones) figure that once they type FADE OUT they have a salable screenplay – something they can send out to agents or managers or producers or their best contact. But just finishing a screenplay is like just finishing a foot race – you can come in last place and you have still finished.
“You're not going to make me run, are you? I'm, uh, a little out of shape.”
The problem is, just like that race, you aren't the only one running. There are around 75,000 scripts (etc) registered with the WGA every year, plus the things registered with the copyright office, plus the things that are not registered at all. Here's the thing – assignments and scripts adapted from other materials are usually *not* copyrighted or registered, because they are based on previously copyrighted material. So, I guess there are at least 100k scripts (etc) written every year... and it's common for a screenplay to stay in circulation for a decade – you often read about scripts like THE UNFORGIVEN that were bouncing around Hollywood for 10 years before they were finally bought... and that gives us about a million screenplays in circulation at any one time. And how many of those million sell? Well, last year it was 53.
“What you talking about? 53 total? That's impossible!”
Thanks to the brilliant Scott Myers, here is the list.
“Wow, that's all? But... well... my script might be better than those. It has a better title than some of them. BLOOD OF THE NAKED MUTILATORS. See? That's gotta be close to winning, right?”
But what that means is that if you were running that foot race and came in #54, you would still have lost. And there would be 999,946 people behind you!
“Crap.”
Wow, I probably just depressed the hell out of you. Sorry. The point is, just because you finish a screenplay does not mean what you have written is going to sell or get you an assignment or even get you noticed. Each of those things is a step. The first step is finishing your screenplay, then you keep climbing those steps getting better and better until you reach the point that you *are* one of those 53 winners. But that's probably not going to happen with your first screenplay. Might, but odds are kind of against it.
“Running, and now *steps*? This sounds like work to me.”
One of the things that frequently happens is people write their first script and become disappointed when it doesn't sell or get them work. They have unrealistic expectations.
“What is unrealistic about selling my first script to a studio for $1 million and having Spielberg direct it?”
Though Han Solo doesn't want anyone to tell him the odds, imagine how much confidence he would lose if he kept failing at something he thought was easy? When you golf, each hole is clearly marked with the level of difficulty *before* you tee off. A board gave gives you a guide for what age groups will be able to play it. So, telling you the odds is not to burst your bubble but to tell you that this isn't going to be easy, so if you try and fail a bunch of times – so did everyone else. All of your favorite screenwriters? Failed a lot. *A lot*. Part of the learning curve.
“Running, steps, now *golf*? That was bad enough, but now you are saying that I am going to *fail*? But I don't want to fail! I'm not a failure! I'm gonna be a huge success and win all of the Oscars!”
I wrote an article for Script Magazine in the 90s that took a bunch of famous Oscar Winning screenwriters and listed the number of unsold and unproduced scripts they'd written – my source was a big book called Film Writers Guide which no longer exists anymore. But once you saw how many great writers had screenplays that had “failed” - often after they were famous – you realized how tough this business is, and hopefully didn't feel so bad when your script did not sell.
“Well, I'm not feeling good about it. But if you have to fail to succeed, I guess I can do that.”
Once you write FADE OUT, you still have a lot of rewriting to do – and maybe page one rewrites where *everything* changes. Yes, everything - even that title of yours. And even then, they can't all be winners. It's a major accomplishment to finish a screenplay, but that doesn't mean it's going to be great... and doesn't mean it's going to sell. So, put off pricing the Ferraris for a while.
"Okay, but I just finished my first short film, how do I enter it in Sundance?"
- Bill
“Swell, do you have Spielberg's address? I think he'd be he perfect director!”
Okay, now to the reality check: just because you have made the major accomplishment of finishing a screenplay does not mean that that screenplay is great. It just means it's finished.
“Okay, how about Uwe Boll's address?”
Now, I'm not saying your screenplay *isn't* great – I haven't read it. I'm just saying that because it is finished is no reason to believe that it is great. It may suck. At this point, you are just so happy that you finally got to type FADE OUT that you probably are not the best judge. Later, after you have rewarded yourself for your excellent hard work, and maybe had a few days or weeks to just bask in FADE OUT, you might take a closer look at the script to see if it needs one of those rewrites you keep hearing about.
“Wait a minute! You mean once I finish it, I still have to keep rewriting it? Even for Uwe Boll?”
Lots of new writers (and probably some old ones) figure that once they type FADE OUT they have a salable screenplay – something they can send out to agents or managers or producers or their best contact. But just finishing a screenplay is like just finishing a foot race – you can come in last place and you have still finished.
“You're not going to make me run, are you? I'm, uh, a little out of shape.”
The problem is, just like that race, you aren't the only one running. There are around 75,000 scripts (etc) registered with the WGA every year, plus the things registered with the copyright office, plus the things that are not registered at all. Here's the thing – assignments and scripts adapted from other materials are usually *not* copyrighted or registered, because they are based on previously copyrighted material. So, I guess there are at least 100k scripts (etc) written every year... and it's common for a screenplay to stay in circulation for a decade – you often read about scripts like THE UNFORGIVEN that were bouncing around Hollywood for 10 years before they were finally bought... and that gives us about a million screenplays in circulation at any one time. And how many of those million sell? Well, last year it was 53.
“What you talking about? 53 total? That's impossible!”
Thanks to the brilliant Scott Myers, here is the list.
“Wow, that's all? But... well... my script might be better than those. It has a better title than some of them. BLOOD OF THE NAKED MUTILATORS. See? That's gotta be close to winning, right?”
But what that means is that if you were running that foot race and came in #54, you would still have lost. And there would be 999,946 people behind you!
“Crap.”
Wow, I probably just depressed the hell out of you. Sorry. The point is, just because you finish a screenplay does not mean what you have written is going to sell or get you an assignment or even get you noticed. Each of those things is a step. The first step is finishing your screenplay, then you keep climbing those steps getting better and better until you reach the point that you *are* one of those 53 winners. But that's probably not going to happen with your first screenplay. Might, but odds are kind of against it.
“Running, and now *steps*? This sounds like work to me.”
One of the things that frequently happens is people write their first script and become disappointed when it doesn't sell or get them work. They have unrealistic expectations.
“What is unrealistic about selling my first script to a studio for $1 million and having Spielberg direct it?”
Though Han Solo doesn't want anyone to tell him the odds, imagine how much confidence he would lose if he kept failing at something he thought was easy? When you golf, each hole is clearly marked with the level of difficulty *before* you tee off. A board gave gives you a guide for what age groups will be able to play it. So, telling you the odds is not to burst your bubble but to tell you that this isn't going to be easy, so if you try and fail a bunch of times – so did everyone else. All of your favorite screenwriters? Failed a lot. *A lot*. Part of the learning curve.
“Running, steps, now *golf*? That was bad enough, but now you are saying that I am going to *fail*? But I don't want to fail! I'm not a failure! I'm gonna be a huge success and win all of the Oscars!”
I wrote an article for Script Magazine in the 90s that took a bunch of famous Oscar Winning screenwriters and listed the number of unsold and unproduced scripts they'd written – my source was a big book called Film Writers Guide which no longer exists anymore. But once you saw how many great writers had screenplays that had “failed” - often after they were famous – you realized how tough this business is, and hopefully didn't feel so bad when your script did not sell.
“Well, I'm not feeling good about it. But if you have to fail to succeed, I guess I can do that.”
Once you write FADE OUT, you still have a lot of rewriting to do – and maybe page one rewrites where *everything* changes. Yes, everything - even that title of yours. And even then, they can't all be winners. It's a major accomplishment to finish a screenplay, but that doesn't mean it's going to be great... and doesn't mean it's going to sell. So, put off pricing the Ferraris for a while.
"Okay, but I just finished my first short film, how do I enter it in Sundance?"
- Bill
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