Adventures in the Screen Trade (16 page)

When I began researching the Woodward-Bernstein book, before it was published, it seemed, at best, a dubious project. Politics were anathema at the box office, the material was talky, there was no action, etc., etc. Most of all, though, people were sick to fucking death of Watergate.

For months, whenever anyone asked me what I was working on, and I answered, there was invariably the same reply: "Gee, don't you think we've heard enough about Watergate?" Re- peated often enough, that can make you lose confidence.

Because, of course, we had. Heard enough and more than enough. Years of headlines, claims and disclaimers, lies, and occasional clarifying truths.

I decided my best shot was to try and surprise people. So I opened, intentionally, with the most cornball shot in the world-the Washington Monument lit up at night. Then another totally predictable shot-the Watergate complex, also at night. Then inside the building to the Democratic National Committee offices and a bunch of men, quietly and expertly, starting the famous break-in.

I truly hoped at this point the audience would be groaning. "What are we doing here for chrissakes? We know it all al- ready."

The robbery went on, tautly and expertly in silence-only they had the wrong keys. They goofed and had to leave the place, frustrated and angry.

The reason I opened that way was because people didn't know it all. The famous break-in was either the third or fourth attempt, and what I wanted was to have people suddenly look- ing at each other and thinking, "Hey, maybe I better pay attention, there's stuff here I hadn't heard about."

The opening was never shot because the movie always had a length problem and the feeling was we didn't need the red herring to start off with. And that was a very sound decision. If the original opening had been incorporated, and you looked at it today, I think you would wonder what the hell it was doing there.

At the time, though, at least in theory, it had a purpose. To set up a world, a world in which there would be traps and surprises.

In a sense, a screenplay, whether a romance or a detective story, is a series of surprises. We detonate these as we go along. But for a surprise to be valid, we must first set the ground rules, indicate expectations. And that's what beginnings are all about. . . .

Endings

Near the conclusion of North by Northwest, Gary Grant finds himself in something of a pickle.

His true love, Eva Marie Saint, is dangling helplessly in space on the face of Mount Rushmore. If she falls, splat. The reason she has not fallen is that Grant is holding her with one hand while with the other he grabs a rock ledge. Not easy. Watching all this is Martin Landau, the subvillain, who stands a few feet away, holding the precious statuette that contains valuable microfilm inside, said microfilm being of great danger to America should it fall into enemy hands. Grant, desperate, looks up at Landau and asks for help.

Landau walks over to Grant and, instead of bending down and aiding him, puts his foot on Grant's fingers and begins pressing down. He grinds his shoe down as hard as he can. That's the pickle.

Now, between that moment and the end of this superb Ernest Lehman-Alfred Hitchcock collaboration, the following occurs.

(a) Landau is made to cease and desist. (b) Grant saves himself. (c) Grant also saves Eva Marie Saint. (d) The two of them get married. (e) The microfilm is saved for America. (f) James Mason, the chief villain, is captured and handed over to the authorities. (g) Grant and Saint take a train ride back east.

That's a lot of narrative to be successfully tied up. And I would like you to guess how long it takes in terms of screen time for it to be accomplished. Got your guess? Here's the answer-forty-three seconds. Here's how they do it, from the moment where Landau is crunching Grant's hand. The camera's in close up on the shoe and the fingers. A shot rings out. The shoe begins to slide away from the fingers. Next a cut of the statuette falling safely to the ground and cracking, revealing the microfilm inside. Now Landau falls to his death off Mount Rushmore. Now another part of Mount Rushmore, where Leo G. Carroll, a good guy, thanks a police officer who is holding a rifle. Behind Carroll is Mason, flanked by more officers. Now back to Grant and Eva Mane, him saying you can do it, her saying I can't, back and forth, quick cuts between them, and then a really brilliant shot of Grant pulling her up, only now he's not on Mount Rushmore, he's in the upper berth of a train, and he brings her to him, calls her "Mrs. Thomhill"- Thomhill being his last name, so we know they're married now-and as they embrace, a final shot of the train roaring into a tunnel as The End flashes on the screen.

I don't know a more adroil ending to a film. Lehman wrote it that way for two reasons. "All the essentials were on the screen. And there was so much unexplained that the one shot of Leo Carroll and Mason and the authorities took care of. People might have asked, 'How did Leo Carroll get there? How did he find the authorities? How did they capture Mason?' If we had had more, it would have made us vulnerable to looking like an entire grocery shelf of open cans of peas."

I am not suggesting that you have to go like a streak when you're running for curtain. In Butch Cassidy, for instance, after they are shot and the Bolivian cavalry arrives, getting the cavalry into position takes sixty seconds. It could have been done in one: You could have seen the officer giving instructions (as you do) and then, instead of shot after shot of armed soldiers running up stairs, you could have just gone to the final shot when they're all in position; the same information would have been given.

But not the emotion. Because since, in theory, we're rooting for the heroes to get away, the awesome number of troops ranged against them has an impact that has nothing to do with numbers. Endings, frankly, are a bitch.

A proper ending for a film is one in which an expectation is fulfilled for the audience. But once they get a sense of it coming, often they're ahead of you. You don't have to rush. But you must never waste even a single shot-because I think the ending requires the most delicate and thoughtful writing of any part of a movie.

Example of a misconceived ending: Excalibur. The movie is the story of the Arthurian legend, and Excalibur, of course, is this magical sword that Arthur possessed.

Okay, we're into the closing minutes and Arthur is mortally wounded. He lies there bloody while a knight, Percival, drops beside him. Arthur says to take Excalibur and find a smooth stretch of water and pitch the sword into the water. Percival doesn't want to do it. Arthur says "Go."

So Percival goes. And he rides and he finds some pretty lake .or whatever and he rides into it and he takes Excalibur, brings it up to throw it-

-but he can't bring himself to do it. We're in on Percival's face now and we see he's suffering. He's got his orders, but this, after alt, is a magical sword. Finally, he turns his horse around and rides back to Arthur, still clutching the weapon.

Arthur is still expiring. How'd it go? he asks. Percival says, I couldn't do it. Arthur says, well, you've got to, because someday, when a worthy king comes by, Excalibur will rise again from the waters for him. Back, Percival gets on his horse. Back to the pretty lake or whatever. He hesitates, finally does what he's been told to do, and the sword magically disappears beneath the surface. Now he goes back to Arthur a second time, only Arthur's dead and gone, drifting mystically out to sea in some boat. Credits start to roll. Why is that so terrible?

Because that entire first trip of Percival, where he can't bring himself to follow orders, deflates the ending of the movie dreadfully. You sit there (I did, anyway) getting pissed at the flick just when you're supposed to be most deeply engrossed: My God, King Arthur is dying.

And it was all so unnecessary. Percival could have made his objections and Arthur could have explained about some future king passing by and the sword rising for him, the first time. That extra ride to the water and back-and we're not talking about much more than a minute of screen time-was, for me, irritating and damaging.

I think I can guess why it's there. Excalibur is a very valuable article, and even when his dying King gives an order, noble Percival can't follow it. In other words, the creators of the film were setting up the sword.

But this is the end. If we haven't established after close to two hours that Excalibur is not your everyday weapon, we are m very big trouble.

This identical sequence would have worked just fine at the beginning of the film. Because then Percival's disobedience would have told us something we didn't know: Excalibur is the most valuable sword in the world. But to tell us something we already know at the end of a Film is deadly.

Screen time is a most mysterious thing: The same scene must be written differently depending upon where it comes in the narrative, beginning or middle or end. Because the more information an audience has, the less additional information it requires. And the ladling out of when and where something is necessary is one of the requisite components to skillful storytelling.

As has been said for years, it's possible to conceive narrative as an endless piece of string. The writer makes two snips, one for the beginning, one at the end, and the placement of those snips may be as important as anything a writer does.

Narrative as I sec it has nothing whatsoever to do with what you consider the story. We are moved by different things, interested in different aspects, confident in making different confrontations work. So we will cut the string in not remotely the same spots.

It's usual to note that in a screenplay, not only do you attack each scene as late as is possible, you attack the entire story the same way. The camera tells you-so much so quickly that you arc always forced to get on with it.

Jaws began with the shark snacking on the girl, but it didn't have to; 2001: A Space Odyssey didn't begin in the future but thousands of years in the past. You could have done the same with Jaws-shots of little one-cell sea creatures and then structures a little more complex and then the tiniest minnow and then a bigger minnow and then a small fish that shockingly bites a smaller fish and then to piranhas and then, all the time with the music building, maybe a barracuda and then a small

shark, music very loud now, and then a bigger shark until-climax, crash of cymbals-Peter Benchley's monster comes roaring at us on the screen. Might have worked. Sure didn't hurt 2001. You must cut the narrative string yourself, with what you emotionally feel is sound. No one can tell you how or when. Because there are no rules.

To try and validate that, let me end this discussion with an- other film directed by the man who directed North by Northwest, Mr. Hitchcock. More specifically. Psycho, my favorite of his work and a film that a film freak recently referred to as "the greatest splatter film."

Two points about Psycho, one briefly dealing with screen time, and then on to its ending.

My guess is, when that movie is mentioned, everyone first thinks of the shower scene. Janet Leigh and what happens to her. But when we say "the shower scene" we don't mean the lady adjusting the water temperature before she lathers up and we don't mean Tony Parkins doing his household chores later, getting the tub all nice and tidy again. We mean this: the knifing. I don't know if there are that many more famous sequences in modern films. The impact, the shock, all of it. From first stab to last, it runs seventeen seconds. To repeat: Screen time is most mysterious.

Now to the ending. For me perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Psycho is this: I don't know of another major film that has as atrocious, as boring-as in all ways wrong-an ending. In the last reel, Janet Leigh's sister, Vera Miles, goes into the main house and she's in panic and alone and she runs just where we don't want her to run-into the basement.

Now she's in a room down there and turns on a light revealing-sitting alone, her back to us-"Mother." She goes to the old lady, turns the chair (and I can still hear the audience scream), and in close up comes this chilling-in-the-deepestsense shot of the skeleton with clothes on. Vera screams in terror, turns-and whammo, there's Tony Perkins in drag, the killing knife in his hands. More screams as he starts to attack, and then the hero, John Gavin, leaps into the room and the light bulb is swaying as he wrestles with Perkins and the music is blasting away and we have the fight intercut with Vera's hysteria and these shots of "Mother," her skull changing in front of us as the light bulb in the ceiling swings and swings. Fabulous.

It's sure as hell a high spot, and I'm willing to bet it's the last thing most of us remember clearly, but it's not the ending. The ending is seven full minutes away. And five of those seven minutes are taken up with one of the great snooze scenes, where the local shrink comes in and delivers this agonizingly primitive course in Freud, where he tells us that Perkins is a nut-cake.

Well, we've been pretty clued in to that fact by this time. I can only guess as to why that doesn't mar the movie; I think the high points are so extraordinary that we're more than satisfied, we'll forgive anything. When I saw the movie, in 1960, I remember the audience screamed so much during the basement sequence that they were almost relieved there was nothing more to jolt them-there was nervous laughter and chitchat from the basement till the end. Nobody listened to the psychiatrist.

In any case. Psycho, for me, remains unique. The most important minutes of the film are totally soporific, and yet the film is still a glory. Amazing. Maybe Hitchcock is the only director who could have pulled it off.

After all, he spent half a century getting away with murder. ...

Speed

I think screenplays should be written with as much speed as possible-and with even more deliberation.

By "as much speed as possible" I don't mean to suggest you should throw a bag over its head and do it for Old Glory. But I do believe that you should push yourself hard and continually.

What's important to decide here is your own specific pace. If, for example, when you're going well, you do one to two pages a day, when you write a screenplay, I would try and reach the sec- ond number. If you do seven to ten when you're rolling, try and get to ten.