There’s a soft spot in my heart for The Long Kiss Goodnight.  Maybe it’s because it combined two sub-genres I am a sucker for: spy chicks and amnesia.  Or maybe because Geena Davis’ Charlene Baltimore could certainly take down Angelina Jolie’s Evelyn Salt in a fight.  Or maybe because it had director Renny Harlin doing his very best John Woo impression.

Certainly, Shane Black’s quirky script helped elevate the material above its genre conventions, as seen when Samuel L. Jackson’s grimy private detective delivers a cavalcade of threats to a man he is conning.  It’s funny in its profane creativity, and made all the better with Sam Jackson letting it fly.

I’m not quite sure why his character is “Young Man” in dialogue, but you can watch the exchange on YouTube to see what Sam Jackson does with it.

  A DOOR KICKED OPEN, WHAM-! Splintered. Lock shattered.

               INT. MOTEL ROOM - AKRON, OHIO - NIGHT

               A NUDE COUPLE on the bed. They look up, startled -- as three
               men burst through the door. The LEADER: a haggard-looking
               man sporting a soup-stain on his tie, whoops, that's the
               design, sorry. MITCH HENESSEY, private investigator and con
               man extraordinaire. He flashes a phony badge:

                                     YOUNG MAN
                         POLICE. DON'T MOVE.

                                     MAN ON BED
                         What the hell is this...?!!

                                     YOUNG MAN
                         Don't give me an attitude, sir. You're
                         assuming I won't shoot your sorry
                         ass, and everyone knows when you
                         make an assumption, you make an ass
                         out of u and mption. I'm Sergeant
                         Madigan, Vice, and if you cop a 'tude,
                         jerkoff, I will see to it you spend
                         the next ten years in prison getting
                         ass-fucked, and if the case is thrown
                         out because my arrest is too violent,
                         then I will personally HIRE men to
                         ass-fuck you for ten years. So if
                         you're an ass-fucking fan, go ahead
                         and mouth off, but meanwhile you're
                         under arrest for the crime of
                         prostitution, now shut the fuck up
                         before I cut out your kneecaps and
                         use 'em as ashtrays.
                              (beat)
                         Officer Donleavy, read him his rights.

You can read the full script at IMSDb.

Colin Farrell in Martin McDonagh's "In Bruges" © Focus Features

I somehow hadn’t even heard of In Bruges prior to its nomination for 2008′s best original screenplay Oscar.  While I certainly don’t see everything that comes out, the fact that I hadn’t so much as heard the title surprised me.  And one of the things that struck me about the black comedy was its opening…

I really dig the opening. I love how Ray’s introductory monologue belies the stark gothic images it plays over, how it begins as a dark confession and ends as a quasi-joke.  I remember laughing because, honestly, I didn’t even know where Bruges was either.

It’s a good tone-setter for a black comedy that effortlessly mixes pathos and wit.  And lots and lots of profanity.

• Download the In Bruges PDF script from davidmelkevik.co.uk

Richard Harris played Marcus Aurelius in "Gladiator" © Dreamworks

Even ancient Rome had “Win one for the Gipper” pre-game speeches.  At least, Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius did in the first draft of the Gladiator screenplay by David Franzoni.

The final film’s screenplay is credited to Franzoni and John Logan and William Nicholson, with story credit to Franzoni.  It opened with Russell Crowe’s Maximus (Narcissus in the original version), and I always thought it was a particularly nice touch for a period epic to open on its hero.

By contrast, the original script’s opening pages brought in all the major players prior to the battle, and even introduced Commodus first (a scene that comes after the battle in the film).  Narcissus/Maximus is practically just a face in the crowd in these pages.  Yes, it’s still the same battle against a Germanic horde, but by giving Marcus Aurelius an extended monologue to rouse his soldiers, it painted a larger picture and underscored that this is as much a story of Rome as it is of one of its generals.

In comparison to the film that was eventually produced, was it too much?  Marcus Aurelius is, of course, the one who sparked the plot — his disdain for his own son precipitated his murder and kick-started Maximus’ journey into the gladiatorial arena.  So, the question is: how much real estate should be devoted to a character who is essentially a plot point?  The film went with less for the emperor, and more for the star.

For what its worth, it’s a nifty monologue.

Matthew Modine and Vincent D'Onofrio in "Full Metal Jacket" © Warner Bros.

From The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick by Norman Kagan, Kubrick’s approach to creating, and revealing, character in his scripts:

“I think it is essential if a man is good to know where he is bad and to show it, or if he is strong, to decide what the moments are when he is weak and to show it.  And I think that you must never try to explain how he got that way or why he did what he did.”

This thought compliments William Goldman’s belief that movie heroes require mystery.

Note that these aren’t necessarily catch phrases, though some catch phrases are threats. They are simply a character warning of danger, be it from themselves or the world at large.

And why not begin with one of the most quoted, from William Goldman’s master fencer in The Princess Bride.

WESTLEY, INIGO, AND FEZZIK

moving toward them. Actually Fezzik is dragging Westley, who
is, in turn, dragging Yellin's sword like a stiff dog
leash --Westley simply hasn't the strength to raise it.

						CUT TO:
							 108.

COUNT RUGEN

as the confrontation is about to start.

		RUGEN
	Kill the dark one and the giant,
	but leave the third for
	questioning.

And as his Warriors attack --

Inigo goes wild, and maybe the Warrior's are good, maybe
they're even better than that -- but they never get a chance
to show it because this is something now, this is Inigo gone
mad and the six-fingered sword has never flashed faster and
the FOURTH WARRIOR is dead before the FIRST ONE has even hit
the floor. There is a pause. Then --

		INIGO
		(to Rugen, evenly and soft)
	Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya.
	You killed my father. Prepare to
	die.

						CUT TO:

COUNT RUGEN

For a moment he just stands there, sword in hand. Then he
does a most unexpected thing. He turns and runs the hell away.

I was re-reading the latter, and despite a few dated pop culture references, it’s still enormously entertaining and incredibly insightful. In the section about the writing (and possible reason for failure) of The Ghost & the Darkness, he uses this wonderfully witty exchange from Casablanca to illustrate the point that movie heroes must have one thing going for them: mystery.

What does “I was misinformed” tell us about Rick? As Goldman writes,

What it tells us is this: Don’t ask. What it tells us is this: Bad things happened, it’s dark down there, and I will die before I tell you. A lot of that comes from the dialogue, a lot from the speaker of the dialogue.  If the Hansons are in Casablanca, you know it’s because they have a gig there.  Or some high school girl they like is taking summer school.  But Bogart–Bogart then–forty-four years old, with the gravel voice, the sad wrinkled face, that man understands pain.  And no power on earth will make him talk about it, it’s that awful.

The character of Rick, of course, is very old — he is the Byronic hero, the tall dark handsome man with a past. Most movie stars–actors, not comedians–have essentially all played that same role.  And they have to always face front, never turn sideways–

Because, you see, there’s nothing to them. Try and make them full, try and make them real, and guess what?  They disappear.

I thought this was especially interesting considering that the audience does eventually find out via flashback what the deal is. But in the first act of the film, Rick is very much a mysterious, larger-than-life figure who even pokes fun at the rudimentary file the Germans have on him (“Are my eyes really blue?”). The flashback works as an answer to the mystique. Imagine if the film instead opened chronologically, with the Paris sequence serving as a kind of teaser… not as good, right?

The "CRI hub" in The Bourne Ultimatum. © 2007 Universal Studios

Most movies involving government agencies inevitably have scenes set in some sort of control room. And though the technology has evolved, the basic idea is the same: show flashing lights and flurries of activity. This type of scene is a distant cousin of the Walk-and-Talk since both share the objective of making exposition visually exciting.

The simplest method I’ve seen of writing these scenes comes from The Bourne Ultimatum screenplay. The Bourne films are chock full of CIA technicians sitting in front of banks of screens. What do these technicians do? Well, their specialty is teching. “Frenzied teching” to be exact, as used in the Waterloo Station sequence where they are tracking a reporter, Ross, while Bourne tries to throw them off and get him out.

Curiously, the screenplays for The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy don’t use the word. Frankly, Ultimatum only uses it twice. I don’t think the writers were trying to coin a new word. I can only guess that writer Tony Gilroy and the others who worked on the Bourne series (Ultimatum is also credited to Scott Z. Burns and George Nolfi) got tired of describing techs furiously typing and bringing up images and otherwise describing flashing lights and flurries of activity. Hey, flashing lights can drive a guy crazy…

Much has changed from Kurt Wimmer‘s original screenplay for Salt, starring Angelina Jolie. For starters, the title: Edwin A. Salt, probably the easiest part of the revision process after Tom Cruise left the project and Angelina Jolie came aboard.

Though the basic plot structure is essentially the same, the rewrites done for what has become a Jolie action franchise-in-the-making are all improvements. The action beats in the 2007 draft range from fantastic to fantastically stupid, though Wimmer writes them all with a strong narrative voice. In fact, one of the few action set pieces to remain more or less intact has Evelyn (née Edwin) going the MacGyver route to escape a CIA tactical team that has her cornered.

When compared to what was eventually filmed, I think it becomes a good example of the balance between details and suspension of disbelief.

In general, I like the way Wimmer’s words flow — he makes good use of the ellipsis and spacing. But for me, highlighting the ingredients of the homemade bomb actually undermines my suspension of disbelief. It raises more questions than it needs to (Is there really enough ammonia nitrate in plant food to act as an explosive? If the solution is so volatile, why won’t it explode when hit by pressure from the fire extinguisher? Really, there happens to be a telescope there?), whereas the final film smartly just shows the manufacturing of the weapon. Shots of chemicals, shots of assembly, and voila: weapon.

The screenplay even needs the Winter character to narrate what’s happening, in case it isn’t clear what Salt is doing, and it shows that the phrase “the devil is in the details” clearly cuts both ways. Sometimes, details can bring life to a scene. But in this case, the less the audience is told, the better. The revisions made Salt a better action film because they don’t stop for a close up of a plant food box.

• Download Edwin A. Salt (March 2007 draft) by Kurt Wimmer

Interesting side note: While doing my Googling for this post, I found an IGN interview with Wimmer from 2002, when he was promoting Equilibrium. In it, he mentions a screenplay that’s “very much about me and my wife” called The Far-Reaching Philosophy of Edwin A. Salt.

One of my favorite examples of this comes from L.A. Confidential, written by Brian Helgeland & Curtis Hanson. (The following excerpts are from a March 1996 draft credited to Helgeland.) In it, Ed Exley declares his intention to apply for the Detective Bureau, much to the chagrin of Captain Dudley Smith.

I love how seemingly simple the scene appears to be. But, in hindsight, it’s actually loaded with little plants and hints that pay off as the film unfolds.

In addition to conveying Exley’s goal, this single scene touches on the following:

1. Exley has daddy issues.
2. Exley thinks his way bests the traditional way. In other words, he’s arrogant.
3. How Exley will accomplish his goal. Dudley lists three things detectives do. Over the course of the film, Exley watches others (primarily, rival cop Bud White) doing the first two. He performs the third in the film’s climactic shootout, thus accomplishing his goal.
4. Over the course of the film, Exley goes from self-serving “political animal” to hardened detective. His entire character arc is outlined.
5. Dudley’s resistance appears to be a protective act since he was friends with Exley’s father. In hindsight, it’s because Dudley is the film’s real villain and knows Exley will get in the way.
6. The eye glasses line becomes a recurring joke in subsequent scenes, with Exley hurriedly taking them off or putting them on, underscoring his vanity.

I list Exley’s daddy issues first because the screenplay actually has a second scene for Exley to state his goal. It occurs on page 90, by which point Exley has already begun to change. Exley’s goal of being a detective was actually his method for accomplishing a larger, more personal goal, which he explains while trying to convince Jack Vincennes to help him.

• Click through to myPDFscripts to download the March & May 1996 drafts of the LA Confidential screenplay.

So it is with Grace Kelly’s entrance in Rear Window. In the previous scene, James Stewart’s character, LB “Jeff” Jeffries, fends off the question of marriage to his yet-to-be-seen girlfriend Lisa on the bounds that she is too perfect for an adventurer like himself. “Too beautiful, too talented, too sophisticated, too everything — but what I want.”

Lofty expectations for the character. It would’ve been a wasted opportunity to simply have her walk through the door in her first scene. Instead, writer John Michael Hayes gives her an ethereal, dream-like entrance befitting Jeff’s perception of her. It’s one that also serves as a good reminder that the first impression of a character can and should be a lasting one.

• Download Rear Window (PDF) from Daily Script