Adventures in the Screen Trade (17 page)

The reasoning (if you can call it that) is, I believe somehow, that extra energy translates itself to the page, and from there to the reader. Maybe it does, anyway. Maybe sometimes. As an example of the "deliberation" mentioned above, I'd like to talk briefly about the writing of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

I first read about Butch and Sundance in the late 1950's, and the story of the two outlaws fascinated me. I began researching them in a haphazard way; there weren't many books about them then, but there were articles and I would seek them out and read them. The more I read, the deeper my fascination be- came.

In 1963 I met a movie producer, Lawrence Turman (The Graduate), and talked to him about the material. He was tremendously helpful in trying to figure out a story line.

Because as colorful as the material was, it had inherent problems. It covered a number of years, it moved from continent to continent. Terribly sprawling. Now, if you're writing an epic, you can sprawl to your heart's content, but this was no epic; rather, I thought it was a personal story of these two unusual outlaws. Eventually, I'd done all the research] could bear, I hoped I

had a story that would prove coherent, so I sat down and wrote the First draft in 1966. It took four weeks.

When someone asks how long it takes to write a screenplay, I'm never sure what to answer. Because I don't think four weeks is what it took to do Butch. For me, eight years is closer to the truth.

In any case, before you begin, you must have everything clear in your head and you must be comfortable with the story you're trying to tell. Once you start writing, go like hell- -but don't fire till you're ready. . . .

Subtext

You are standing on top of a hill with a snowball in your hand. You swing your arm back and let it go. If the snow is dry, the object that reaches the bottom of the hill will look very much like the object that left your hand. But if the snow is moist, if it's good packing, what reaches the bottom of the hill will have traveled the same path as when the snow was dry, but it will have accumulated size and weight. That accumulation brings us to the problem of subtext. This is going to be very brief, since subtext is worthy of many volumes of discussion. Probably no narrative work in any form of any quality can exist without it and, probably again, no narrative form can exist without it as easily as the screenplay. (Be- cause the camera expresses so much of it for us.)

What is subtext? Just what the word implies. The text is what's written on the page. Sub- means "under" or "beneath." Subtext, then, is not staled in the words, but it is the pulse beating beneath those words; it is the unexpressed subconscious life that brings size and weight to your writing. Three examples, the first from Raymond Chandler, in describing correctly, I think, decent movie writing.

A man and his wife arc riding silently upward in an elevator. They are silent, the woman carries her purse, the man has his hat on. The elevator stops at an intermediate floor. A pretty girl gets on. The man takes off his hat.

This is not a scene about manners. It's about a marriage in trouble. The subtext tells us, with wonderful economy, a helluva lot about that married couple. If, for example, the couple's destination is a divorce lawyer, I wouldn't be a bit surprised. Wherever they're heading, they're not giddily enchanted with each other. And if, a few pages on, they have a wild fight, the simple act of his removing his hat for the pretty girl would make a logical and movingly human trigger.

The World According to Garp. More specifically, the scene where we first meet Robin Williams as the grown-up hero.

Mary Beth Hurt is sitting on the grandstand of the college athletic field, studying. In front of the .grandstand is the running track. Robin Williams appears on the right-hand side of the frame, runs to the left out of the frame. Pause. Now he reappears, running backward. Then he leaves the track and begins running up and down the bleachers, right next to where she's studying, and he says something like I hope I'm not bothering you, and she says something like no, not at all, and he keeps on going up and down as they get into what it is she's studying.

This is a scene about neither athletics nor academics, it's about making love.

All About Eve, the glorious central twenly-five-minute party sequence. (It's where Bette Davis utters the now famous line "Fasten your seat belts; It's going to be a bumpy night." It's also where Marilyn Monroe scored so heavily as an aspiring actress, "a graduate of the Copacabana School of Dramatic Art.")

The setup for the party is this: Davis is a great, flamboyant aging (she's just turned forty) Broadway star. She is in love with Gary Merrill, her director, who is in love with her. As well as being talented, he is also thirty-two. Merrill has been in Hollywood, directing his first film, but now, the night of his return, is his birthday.

Davis is upstairs, dressed, her guests about to arrive. Thelma Ritter tells her that Merrill has already arrived and has been downstairs for twenty minutes, talking with Anne Baxter, Davis's secretary. Everybody loves Anne Baxter except Davis, whom Baxter is driving mad with her kindness.

Davis goes downstairs, interrupts Baxter and Merrill. Baxter leaves them. They have a fight: Why didn't he come upstairs? He explains gently that Eve is fascinated with Hollywood and they were just talking. She doesn't buy. He gets angry.

There are eight more scenes that follow in which a lot of narrative happens, important to the movie but not to this discussion. During the course of the party, Davis starts sober, gels increasingly drunk, and manages to insult everyone in the world near and dear to her.

She behaves outrageously, but you don't hate her. Because the sequence isn't about how Merrill was late, and it isn't about Davis being jealous of Anne Baxter.

It's about her terrifying fear of aging. And it's funny. And it's sad.

You can categorize movies in infinite ways. One way that pertains here is this: There are three kinds of movies-

(1) movies that aspire to quality and succeed (2) movies that aspire to quality and don't succeed (3) movies that never meant to be any good at all.

The third group, alas, comprises the majority of commercial films. It's hard to define this kind of film, but try this: movies for which the original pulse was either totally or primarily financial. Rip-offs, spinoffs, sequels, etc. This is the sort of film that we want to avoid, but few of us are so lucky.

And in this third group, subtext is not a word much bandied about. You don't fret a whole lot about subtext if you're writing Halloween VI or Conan the Barbarian.

But if you, as a writer, aspire to quality, it must be alive under every page you've done. Look at what you've written: If all that's going on in your scenes is what's going on in your scenes, think about it a long time. Then repack your snowball. . . .

Protecting the Star

Bogart.

... I won't play the sap for you . . . you killed Miles and you're going over for it . ..

... I ain't sorry for you no more, you crazy, psalm- singing, skinny old maid . . .

... you gotta get up pretty early in the morning to outsmart Fred C. Dobbs . . .

. . . my health. I came to Casablanca for the waters . . .

. . . of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she had to walk into mine . . .

. . . if she can stand it, I can: Play it ... . . . we'll always have Paris . . . . . . here's looking at you, kid. . ..

This is just a personal opinion, but I don't think any other star got to deliver as many memorable dialog lines as Bogart. With Gary Cooper we think "Yup." Gable got the famous "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." Brando had "I could have been a contender," and Tracy-1 can't come up with a single line to associate with that great actor.

But perhaps no line in any Bogart picture is as germane to this discussion as a wonderful zinger from The Barefoot Contessa, a 1954 movie written and directed by Joseph L.Mankiewicz and starring Bogart and Ava Gardner. Here's the line:

. . . what she's got, you couldn't spell, and what you've got, you used to have. . . .

I'll try and set up the situation where the line appears. Bogart is an on-his-uppers movie writer/director. He is given a job and, in Spain, discovers Ava Gardner. In the course of the first hour or so of the action, they do three movies together, all of them vastly successful, and Gardner becomes the leading sex symbol of the world.

Nothing of a sexual nature ever happens between Bogart and Gardner because, when they meet, he is already in love with a script girl, whom he marries. The part of Bogart's wife is tiny, with no more than a few lines to speak in the entire film. Totally unimportant to the plot. (I suspect she only exists as a character because Mankiewicz wasn't interested in a Bogart-Gardner romance and the wife conveniently enabled him to ignore that problem.)

The scene where the line takes place is a big Hollywood-type party. Bogart is playing backgammon with his wife. Gardner sits and watches them. Now a drunken blonde intrudes.

She is jealous of Gardner, whose personal sex life is a mystery. Who are you sleeping with, she asks. Great big sex number-she hasn't even got what I've got. Now comes that wonderful line-

. . what she's got, you couldn't spell, and what you've got, you used to have. .

-only Bogart doesn't say it, his wife does. Mankiewicz is one of the masters, and the line works in the scene. But that was 1954; studios still had power. Today, that simply isn't the case.

And giving that line to the wife, in today's movie world, is not just incorrect screenwriting, it is lethal. Today, you must give the star everything.

There is no single more important commercial element in screenplay writing than the star part. As we've seen over and over, studios crave stars, and more likely than not, what will make stars commit is not necessarily the quality of the project as a whole but the part they're going to play.

Some movies have three stars, but they are uncommon- Gunga Din, 9 to 5. A lot have two-"buddy" pictures, most romantic comedies. The majority have but one, and that vehicle role is what we're going to talk about now. How do you best go about protecting the star? There are no concrete rules here any more than anyplace else in the movie business. But here are some thoughts on the subject.

(A) GET THE STAR IN EARLY

There arc exceptions to this-Paul Newman in The Sting, for example. But when Newman got that script, Hill was already committed to direct; Redford was aboard. They had done Batch. So I don't think it's illogical to assume that Newman was saying yes to a package, not an unattached script that came his way.

Stars count pages. If you're fifteen pages in and the star has yet to make an appearance, maybe you've misstructured.

(B) DESCRIBING THE STAR

If any part of your screenplay requires skillful writing, it's this. Because you've got to indicate a lot with a little. The reader must know the vehicle role has just appeared on the page. But you can't go overboard in loading on attributes. Plus, you've got to be, if at all possible, vague. Here is an example of a damaging description:

CUT TO

CHALK BROCKTON IN CLOSE UP.

CHALK stands silent, a dead cheroot between his lips. Fifty years old, six foot four, you get the feeling there's not a lot his blue eyes haven't seen. Nothing nowadays surprises him anymore, and nothing ever has made him feel fear.

What's so terrible about that? He's obviously not the water boy: Anyone reading it would know the star has just put in an appearance. And it fits the general mold for most star parts the Byronic hero. (The Byronic hero, to oversimplify, is this: it tall, dark, handsome man with a past.) So what's the problem?

Here's another star description that has the same flaw-this time the female lead.

CUT TO

DAHLIA GRACE IN CLOSE UF.

DAHLIA stands in the doorway a moment before joining the party. She is simply beautiful, but there is no ego about her. She has. Instinctively, a model's grace. Seventeen years old, blonde, very tall, she is the most beautiful girl in any room she's ever entered,

Dahlia's obviously some cutie. And she hasn't let it go to her head. (We like her for that.) Maybe she's even going to turn out to be perfect. (Remember, all stars are always perfect.)

The problem with both descriptions is this: They're too specific. Chalk can only be Eastwood; Dahlia, Brooke Shields. Do you know what a studio executive might do if he had some interest in the Chalk Brockton script. He would try and get a reading from Eastwood's agent or, if he could, from the man himself. And if the answer came back in the negative, your script would suddenly develop all kinds of heretofore hidden but fatal flaws. Which is why you must be vague.

Most stars are, relatively speaking, interchangeable. If you can't gel Jane Fonda or Streisand, there's always Keaton or Streep. The same is more true of the men, because there are more male stars. Burt Reynolds recently announced that he would do a role originally slated for De Niro, not an uncommon kind of occurrence.

So what you must do is make your description something that can encompass any of them. Don't make Chalk fifty, don't make him tall. (Most stars aren't tall.) This is a less damaging description for the man.

CUT TO

CHALK BROCKTON IN CLOSE UP.

CHALK stands silent, but he doesn't ever have to say much; the man has presence, He's long since been a kid, but he moves with the grace of a young athlete. And he sure Isn't old, but there's not a lot he hasn't seen.

And then you can go on, if you want, and load up some ad- jectives. If you don't want, that's okay too. But we can go to damn near anyone with that description. Reynolds, Eastwood, Redford, Travolta, Pacino, De Niro, Newman, Bronson, Nicholson, on and on.

They all think they have presence because they do. They all fantasize they move with an athlete's grace because we all do. And they've all been around.

If you can, make your star description like stretch socks-one size fits all.

(C) EXPOSITION

Stars, without exception, hate carrying the plot.