Over on Cinematical today is an interesting post titled “Screenplays you should read.” It falls under their “Cinematical Seven” category in which various writers make lists of seven … whatevers. (In this case, obviously, screenplays to read.) With the enormous number of great movies throughout history, it’s obviously quite difficult to come up with a list of just seven of anything. Lists of 10 are hard enough. In this case, Erik Davis provides a pretty interesting list. Importantly, however, he mentions a certain criteria I should note: “While the screenplays below aren’t the seven greatest of all time, they all share a unique and interesting voice.”
That distinction between “greatest of all time” and the simple criteria of “unique and interesting” is a complicated one, and obviously all of this is subjective. But as I started writing a comment to the post on their site, I realized I could quite easily come up with a list of seven myself, so why not? Except I couldn’t keep it to seven, and as I’m not writing a “Cinematical Seven” post, I suppose I don’t need to. Therefore, mine is a somewhat more standard list of 10, although I only have nine bullet points. (it all makes sense in the end.) The key thing to understand with my list, though, is that I specifically am referring to reading the screenplay, as opposed to inferring how good or bad the script may have been simply from watching the resulting movie. As I’m sure many of you can probably relate to, when you’ve read as many screenplays as I have for pleasure and for work, it doesn’t take too long to see that it is quite possible for a filmmaker to screw-up a great script. In fact, it happens regularly.
So my list, while also not simply the greatest scripts ever (if only because I haven’t read as many scripts as I’ve seen films), is simply a list of worthwhile reads. I have actually read some version of them all — sometimes post-release version, others earlier drafts, occasionally final shooting scripts. With one exception, they’re all screenplays of films that are among the greats or that should have been great, and that one exception is in a ballpark of its own. Additionally, some of these may seem surprising (maybe not); but all of them (uhm, with that one exception) are examples of brilliant screenwriting.
In no particular order:
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Sunset Blvd.: Yeah shocker. But it’s my favorite film, and it’s a genius piece of writing. It’s actually quite hard to pick any one Billy Wilder script, from his days of collaboration with Charles Brackett or I.A.L. Diamond. I could list seven of their scripts, probably, and be just as safe — except I haven’t read seven, I don’t think. Some Like It Hot and The Apartment are, I imagine, great reads, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually read them. Sunset Blvd., however, is pitch-perfect storytelling, and if you find a copy of the final shooting script, it includes the original prologue that test audiences convinced Wilder and Paramount to cut. The film starts with the same famous shot of the ambulance traveling down Sunset Blvd., but after picking up Joe, it takes him to the morgue where all the corpses are discussing how they died. When it gets to Joe’s turn, we launch into the story. (If you have the DVD, one of the extras are these pages of the script. Unfortunately, the actual footage, which was shot, is apparently lost.) But more importantly, this movie about a failed screenwriter is just nearly flawless and utterly economical. There is not one unimportant moment (well, maybe that morgue scene!); not one meaningless piece of fluff. Every line of dialogue, every scene is important to the characters and story. Also, if Wilder gets criticized for anything, it’s often that he was a better writer than director, and from a visual standpoint, he doesn’t really do much. Sunset Blvd., maybe more than any other of his films, argues this point, and comparing the final product to the screenplay is a great way to see how. The environment of the house, the lighting of so many of the scenes, the staging of sequences, all are at best hinted at in the script but add so much to the meaning of the final film. (Most immediately coming to mind are two scenes: 1) when Norma stands in front of the projector with her eyes bulging and hand raised like a claw, depicting the insane monster that she is; or 2) when she’s waiting for DeMille in his director’s chair and “Jonesy” puts the spotlight on her from afar, yet the shot from above still shows her as a small shrouded fish in a big pond.) Oh, just go read it and then watch the film again already!
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Network: Another “duh!” Anybody who’s been reading my blog for any period of time knows how much I worship this film, and for everything that the great Sidney Lumet added to it, Network was Paddy Chayefsky’s movie through and through. As I’ve repeatedly mentioned, I’m constantly amazed at how Chayefsky predicted the current state of the media roughly 20-25 years before any of it happened. From reality television to the blurring of news and entertainment … I mean right now CBS News — which for decades because of Murrow and Cronkite and 60 Minutes was the bastion of broadcast journalism — has been murmuring about changing the entire format of its evening news to encompass a more modern sensibility with multiple anchors and longer, more newsmagazine like stories. If there’s not a direct conceptual line to that from the “UBS Network News Hour” with Sybil the Soothsayer and “another edition of ‘Vox Populi’ et al., I don’t know what is. And then you throw in the entire rant Ned Beatty’s character gives about corporate ownership of major media and … well, I’ve said all this before. It’s all in the script, and it’s screenwriting at its best.
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The Lady Eve: I don’t even have a copy of this anymore, but I read it many many years ago. I hesitate to choose it above almost any other Preston Sturges script just because they’re all so clever and brilliant. My personal favorite Sturges movie is Sullivan’s Travels, and The Palm Beach Story is pretty incredible too. His writing is so smart. So clever. In watching The Palm Beach Story not too long ago, I marveled at his wordsmith abilities, especially in creating memorable jaw-dropping dialogue. Lines like, “That’s one of the tragedies of this life – that the men who are most in need of a beating up are always enormous.” Or this exchange between Hackensacker and Princess Centimillia:
Hackensacker: You don’t marry someone you just met the day before; at least I don’t.
Centimillia: But that’s the only way, dear. If you get to know too much about them you’d never marry them.The screenplay for The Lady Eve is as clever. As brilliant as Barbara Stanwyck is as Jean Harrington, it’s not necessary to hear her line reading to recognize the combination of wit and meaning in dialogue like, “You see Hopsi, you don’t know very much about girls. The best ones aren’t as good as you think they are and the bad ones aren’t as bad. Not nearly as bad.” My only reason for selecting Eve over Palm Beach is a preference for the overall situation, set-up and ultimate structure.
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Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: I’m not including Robert Towne‘s Chinatown primarily because Cinematical did, although call it my eighth unmentioned. I do think it’s impossible to overlook this masterpiece of late 1960s screenwriting, however. Lots of people have read William Goldman‘s screenplay (at least some version of it) thanks to its inclusion in his book “Adventures in the Screen Trade” — still one of the best books about screenwriting out there. Goldman’s work is also a worthwhile read because — unlike most screenwriters and in opposition to how most novice screenwriters should write — it’s simply exciting. His script contains a lot of color and energy. It jumps off the page and turns into a movie in your head. It does so in a way that most people would be accused of directing the movie in the script. But in this case, for the purpose of screenreading, that’s not a bad thing.
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Back to the Future: So this may (or may not) be surprise number one, but this screenplay written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale should be utilized in every version of Screenwriting 101 taught anywhere. I would even be happy to argue with Robert McKee as to why the script to Back to the Future could, and maybe even should, take the place of Casablanca in his three day “Story Structure seminar.” Back to the Future, in script form, is a nearly flawless work. In terms of story structure, it is absolutely remarkable, made even more so due to the complications inherent in this specific story with parallel timelines and actions, future, past, and all that jazz. Again, I’m not arguing that Back to the Future is one of the all-time greatest movies — although it is a personal fave, and I consider one of the best of the ’80s — and whatever themes it relates about life — be confident, follow your dreams, etc. — are relatively simplistic, but at its most fundamental, when movies are stories and moviemaking is storytelling, this screenplay does everything right.
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CopLand: I’ve always had a very simple idea as to the most basic job of a director. Basically, there are three kinds of directors to my mind: great ones, competent ones, and bad ones. The relationship between director and screenwriter — even if they’re the same person — is a tricky one, but I believe reading a script and then seeing the resulting movie clearly details which of these three categories a director might be placed. I think it’s easy for a bad director to utterly fuck-up a great script. I think it’s harder for a great director to make a good movie out of a bad script, but it’s always possible for him/her to make it better. And that’s how this little judgment of mine works. If the film is worse than the script, bad director. If the film lives-up to the expectation from the script, competent. And if the film surpasses the script, that’s a good director for you.
James Mangold is a great writer and a lousy director. While I haven’t read the scripts for his films past CopLand, the resulting movies lead me to the same conclusion: seemingly interesting ideas, but ultimately boring execution. I had the opportunity to read a relatively early draft of CopLand because I worked at the agency that represented Mangold at the time of its sale. This script was phenomenal. A magnificent melding of ’70s police drama and ’50s Western with a dash of ’40s noir. It was a riveting read, and I couldn’t wait to see it. And then I did. And what a bore. That may be overstating things a bit, but the resulting film does not live up to the promise of its screenplay whatsoever which is a real shame. I’ve always wondered how much better it might have been with another director.
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Natural Born Killers: I’m not talking about the ultimate screenplay credited to Oliver Stone and his pals, and I’m not really knocking the final film much either. But what’s on screen is pretty different from the original script by Quentin Tarantino. To be frank, I don’t remember the script so much, but I do remember my reaction to it. I believe I read it while the film was casting, and I’m fairly certain it had yet to be touched by rewrites other than possible by Tarantino itself. It was darker and grittier with more of Tarantino’s own sarcastic tone. I liked Stone’s film, but it would have been interesting to see Tarantino’s.
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The Truman Show and Gattaca: Speaking of people who can write but not direct, Andrew Niccol possibly tops that list. He wrote and directed Gattaca which on the page was a fascinating film that questioned the very philosophical ideas of who we are at our genetic core. The movie? Not as fascinating. A bit dry and dull. He also wrote The Truman Show that looked at many of the same questions from a different perspective while also critiquing the modern propensity for peeking at the lives of others through reality television. Peter Weir took that script under his wing and what we got was one of the best films of 1998. Niccol came back a few years ago with S1m0ne — again playing both roles of writer and director — which sounded like a great idea but was awful on screen. I haven’t seen his film from this year, Lord of War so I can’t include it in the equation, but I wish he would write more and make less. The Truman Show and Gattaca were both great on the page, but only one fulfilled its promise on screen.
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Lolita: Now let’s be very specific here. When I say Lolita, I don’t mean anything related to the more recent Adrian Lyne adaptation, and I also don’t mean anything resembling a final shooting script of Stanley Kubrick’s film. Although Vladimir Nabokov, the author of the original novel, has sole screenwriting credit on Kubrick’s movie, the director did several rewrites of his own, changing the vast majority of the script. However, it is possible to buy “Lolita: A Screenplay” in published form, and this book contains the original script written by Nabokov before Kubrick’s tinkering. I love Nabokov. I think he’s one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century and I know that my writing in the only language I’ve ever known how to speak fluently will never flow as nicely or be as beautiful as the prose he wrote in what was his third/fourth/fifth language — whatever English was to him. I love the original novel of “Lolita.” But his screenplay is terrible. Reading this version of the script is a great example of the differences between writing fictional prose versus a screenplay. Nabokov obviously had very little understanding of the language of cinema and what was necessary to include. He tries to hard to remain literal to his novel, including an overabundance of inconsistent narration. It reads long and slow and is ultimately kind of dull. This is a script to read in order to see how not to do things. This is a script to read before rewatching the Kubrick film and after rereading the novel, and once you do, you might see how and why Kubrick’s Lolita actually perfectly captures the spirit of Nabokov’s novel even as it departed heavily from it as well as the author’s own adaptation.
I know there are arguably many other great choices. This list is by no means definitive, and some of the other scripts listed in the comments to the Cinematical post are good choices too. But if someone was to ask me to give them 10 screenplays to read, this would be my list, and the reasons why.
Out of Focus 