What is your favourite screenplay?

EDM17 said:

Another one I forgot to mention would be Bergman's The Seventh Seal. As far as dialogue goes it's the most beautiful script i've ever heard. Every line is like poetry.

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Did you read it in Swedish - or an English translation?

Is this a formatting problem or are most screenplays' scenerios terrible? Thanks!

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I think that often they are written very pragmatically, with the sole purpose of getting information over. This makes them harder to read than a novel where the writer is attempting dealing directly with the audience, no fancy camera work or soundtrack to cover over the failings of the writing.

I know that many people in the UK industry encourage this very dry approach to screenwriting and it's something I think is a shame. Good writing is good writing, it is lyrical, expressive and has a form all of it's own before it becomes a film. I know that that is what I am looking for in my own work. I feel that the screenplay should be able to stand alone as a piece of writing. But, that's just me.

I know with Bruce Robinson's screenplay's that there are jokes in the screenplay that aren't part of the film and never could be because they are novelic asides about the situation or the character. He often get's criticised for this, but my beleif has always been that it is in this expanded vision of the film that those who made it got a higher level of understanding that made it onto the screen in their interpretations.

I think there is too much emphasis on the differences between screeen writing and other artforms. Personally I get more from reading someone like Hemmingway who had a real sense of how to work with the language.

I agree Clive. Screen writing seems more and more like a science at times to me. Novel writers seem to have such great freedom to delve into so much more than can be conveyed in a script. I find myself dissapointed with any scene that I write as script. A total antithesis to how I feel about it when written as a scene for a novel. If I were a pinball machine, a screenplay can only hit me in some places, whereas a novel with its greater freedom of space and movement, well, touches me in all the places (right and wrong).
Maybe I am reading the wrong screenplays....

I think the general consensus among screenwriters is that the script should be as bare bones as possible, simply because it's what the industry calls for (execs only want the story, no fruity novel prose). But most screenwriters I have spoken with, create large backstories for their characters, and some of them write out short stories and novellas that delve into character's pasts all in an attempt to create deeper characters and in the end a better script.

Poke

Yeah - I'd certainly say that is the general consensus. I just wish that we had more fat to chew sometimes.

25th Hour