screenplay club - like a book club, but screenplays

Excellent idea clive! Count me in.

Fantastic, Boz. Good on yer

I've already read the first few pages and what really impresses me, is that right from word one just how compelling this script is to read.

I was really surprised by the opening, which isn't part of the action, but nutshells the primary theme of the film in just a few words. The writing is also a lot more literary than I expected. I think I've always avoided that in scripts, getting too novelic, but it makes this piece so easy to read.

I'm really enjoying this. Paul Schrader is just such a great screen writer.

clive said:

Hi Guys

I've been reading Filmy's top ten "non writing tips" and in it he talks about reading a screenplay every week. Which I think is just great advice and something I always mean to do and somehow never quite get round to.

Anyway, in the UK people have book clubs, where they all read the same book and then get together to chat about it.

I was thinking that I'd like to do the same with screenplays, with anyone in the forum up for it.

So, over the next two weeks I'm going to read the screenplay to "Bringing Out The Dead" written by Paul Schrader.

If anyone else would like to read it as well, I'll post any thoughts I have about the screenplay as I'm reading. I invite you to do the same.

If it works well, in two weeks I'll throw ask someone to suggest another screenplay.

You can find the screenplays for free by doing a Google search "free screeenplays"

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Love the idea... Never read the script but have always meant to... I even have it already... LOL. I'll try to get through it by the end of the weekend...

filmy

I'm on page 48 and plan on finishing it this weekend. Yes, lot's more 'tone' than I've seen in most screenplays. Makes me wonder if this guy kept true to the screenwriter's montra, "I am not the director." LOL

There are a few interesting writing style things in this screenplay.

There's a big anti '"We see" a man lying on the street' thing in screenplay writing these days. Paul Schrader has got round that instinctive way of writing a screenplay by just not writing "we see" but writing the rest of every descriptive sentence as if it was there. So he'd just write "a man lying in the street", which so does the job and is something I'm going to adopt myself as it's close to a Hemmingway style of writing that I have a real affinity for and which I think is ideal for screenplays. It's very readable.

The writing is very precise and Boz is right, the whole film shot for shot is there in this first draft, all Mr S needed to do was decide how to frame the shot. I think Paul Schrader's directorial experience really shows in this film. From this script I don't see how Mr S could ahve shot it any other way.

What's interesting for me is that this has always been by favorite Mr S film, and yet it is so unlike all his others. Now I understand why. This so much more a Paul Schrader film than a Scorsese film, and also the closest yet to Taxi Driver, which of course Schrader wrote as well.

I'll get in on this too.. but I think I shall wait 'til next week, as this week is almost over.

This one's a two weeker.

Poke

PS I'm in, but I ain't makin' the java.

Hi Poke and Will, glad you're both in on this thing.

I wish I'd thought of this sooner, because I'm getting so much out of reading this screenplay.

Very fast read...

clive said:

Hi Poke and Will, glad you're both in on this thing.

I wish I'd thought of this sooner, because I'm getting so much out of reading this screenplay.

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I love screenplays that are a fast read and don't bog you down...

This one definitely fits that bill...

Only on page 21 but I got there pretty damn fast...

Lots to learn here...

filmy

EDIT: On page 51 now...

I'll probably just go ahead and finish reading now... I'd be curious to read where anyone thinks the act breaks are in this screenplay... Very interesting.

filmy

Okay, just finished...

I'll try to get this out before I have a lot of time to think about it...

I normally ask myself 4 main questions AFTER I read a screenplay:

1) Who is the main character?
2) What is the main character trying to accomplish?
3) Who is trying to stop the main character from accomplishing his goal?
4) What happens if the main character FAILS to achieve his goal?

Frank is obviously the main character here... What he's trying to accomplish is just a little harder to figure out... Maybe, it's several things... I came away from this script feeling that Frank is just trying to figure out HOW to deal with all the blood, the guts, and death. He's not been doing too well dealing with it hence, the reason he's drinking and not sleeping very well, if at all...

So, drawing from the story, I think Frank's life as a paramedic is bittersweet... On one hand, he feels like he's doing good but on the other, most of his patients die. The real problem? How does he cope with all the deaths?

Which brings me to question #2... What is Frank trying to accomplish? What's underneath? I think it's fairly simple... Frank wants to be normal. Frank wants DEATH not to bother him... His job is to SAVE lives yet he's not feeling very successful lately. He's been on the job for 5 years already and most of his patients are dead.

He's at the point where he no longer cares about his job i.e., he wants to get fired but down deep, he knows they won't fire him because in reality, he's good at his job... Death simply can't be cheated forever... It's part of living life.

Question number #3 is a little harder... At first I thought it might be the city... Then I thought maybe DEATH was the antagonist... After writing up to this point, I'm now thinking that Frank is in fact his own worst enemy...

We watch the other paramedics deal with the same day in and day out magma of the job and they all seem to have their own ways of dealing with it... Something Frank hasn't quite figured out YET, I got the impression that somewhere inside of him, he actually knows that he just has to let it go... Let DEATH happen and in so doing, realizing that death is part of of life and you just have to live and let live...

There is no life without death and there is no death without life. They're part of the same coin and you can't have one without the other...

Somewhere in Frank's psyche is the idea that he has to save everyone and in the 5 years he's been on the job, he's not let go of that attitude... The fact that he has been unsuccessful at it is manifesting itself...

He cares but he doesn't care... He would like to be fired but this is his calling. He's in a struggle with himself...

What happens if Frank fails to come to terms with death?

The ghosts will keep haunting him... He'll drink himself to death... He'll waste away...

It's important to see how he went ahead and saved Noel at the end of the script yet he allowed Mary's father to die in peace... Again, two sides of the coin and you can't have one without the other...

I think Frank saved himself by coming to terms with DEATH and once he conquered the struggle within himself, he was finally able to lay down and sleep...

Lots of symbolism here...

Not quite the kind of screenplay one could go shop around... LOL. But one you can definitely learn from...

At least that's my take after having just read it...

filmy

Interesting take Filmy and also an interesting way of taking the film apart.

I think you've hit the nail on the head when you say that this film is atypical. It's not a story with a clear good guy/bad guy or a struggle between them that is finally resolved in blood and conflict.

Frank is in conflict with death, or more accurately with the fact that he can only feel good about himself when he's saving lives. Frank's thinks that his struggle is to save one life and by that get some kind of redemption for himself, whereas his actual journey is to find acceptance of his own humanity. Yes, it 's true that he couldn't save Rosa, but his resolution is when he manages to forgive himself.

The irony of the film is that the only person he manages to save is Noel, who was nearly kicked to death by his partner. Frank is in part responsible for endangering the life he saves. This means that it is helping Mary's father die which is his real act of redemption.

I think redemption is the key word in this film, because the remdemption of the central character is the main theme of this movie.

In that sense it's got a lot in common with a lot of Paul Schrader's work. The Exorcist, after all, is the story of a priest who is loosing his faith and only regains it at the point he scarifices himself to save Megan's soul.

I really like this screenplay, it was superbly well written and the characters are beautiful. It's a very intelligent, thoughtful and well crafted script. I also like the fact that it's atypical.

I've still got somemore of it to read, so I'll come back to this later.

Ah, it's here already.

Printed out, the first draft script is only 68 pages. Ok, given that there'll extra pages with proper line breaks, but this seems way below the recommended. Is this acceptable? Because jeez I'm breaking my back aiming for this 100+ mark.

I'm learning to write scripts and there seems to be stuff in here that seem to be big no-nos. Liking mentioning what a character is thinking. He also seems to encroach the director's arena a lot.

My first impression was that this movie would never have been made (by big studios) if the author wasn't famous. To my untrained eye, the format and content are just so different to normal scripts and to what would sell.

What is the "high concept"? A jaded paramedic has to come to terms with the nature of his work or end up in despair. (Mmm... I'm starting to see how this would sell.)

What is the hook? Looks to me like we want the audience to identify with the character in his dissatisfaction with everyday life. Rat race angst.

All in all I liked the script. It was easy to read and a captivating story on a normal guy and his journey through solving his emotional problems. The characters came alive (colour me green with envy). I learnt loads but is this really the type of scripts I should be reading when learning the basics?

Now all that's left is to watch the movie...

I'm learning to write scripts and there seems to be stuff in here that seem to be big no-nos. Liking mentioning what a character is thinking. He also seems to encroach the director's arena a lot.

Click to expand...

This script was written when Paul Schrader was already a big name in the industry, so I guess many of the rules just don't apply to him. Plus he's also a name director, so I guess that must help him get away with being so specific.

I think it's a delicate balance between giving enough information to tell the story visually and doing the directors job for them. My ex-business partner said the trick was to write the screenplay in such away that it could only be shot the way you enviaged it, but in such a way that the director felt that they'd had all the ideas. A neat trick if you can pull it off, especially when it has through a producers's hands before it even get's seen by a director and a stronger visual description, allowing them to visualise the film is probably a selling point.

I think this scripts real stength is in Paul Schrader's clear vision of what the film is meant to be. I know the film well and this script is pretty much the film as it was produced.

I think you raised a good point about whether this is a good script for someone who is just starting our? I'll open a new thread to discuss what script we should do after this one when I get back from Croatia next week. It would probably be a good idea to do something that is more of a straight "high concept, easy mainstream sell."

I was really self indulgent with the first script because I'd wanted to read it more than anything else I've seen for years and I really rate Paul Schrader. Interestingly enough the other screenwriter I really rate uses a very conventional style as well, that's Bruce Robinson who wrote "Withnail & I," and "The Klling Fields"

Oh, I used to have problems getting my scripts upto the 100 page mark as well. That's before I started using Movie Outline to structure my scripts before writing. I've found that it you stick to the basic 45 sequeces to your stroy that Movie Outline uses as standard you end up with about 110 to 130 pages of screenplay.

I started reading Withnail and I and I think its one of the best scripts I read thus far. I'm planning to read something from Josh Friedman next. After reading his blog at http://hucksblog.blogspot.com I'm keen to see more.

I'm downloading Movie Outline to check it out, this 45 sequences guideline sounds interesting. It brings me to another intereeting point i.e. methods of analysing scripts. FilmJumper did wonderfully by outlining his method and then applying it. Another possibility is trying to break the script into sequences and then see the progression of the film. Something else I read recently talked about roughly dividing the film into 8 portions of 12min each and superimposing that on Aristotle's 3-act structure.

Of course there are many ways of analysing scripts (and infinite permutations of combining those ways), but it would be nice to get a general idea of what other people feel works for them.

...after rereading my post though, I'm thinking I might just be a bit too pedantic. After all, I'm looking to write better scripts, not analyse them better. But it'll help I suppose.

You really should check out filmjumpers writing guru section. His 4 Act structure is way ahead of the three act structre and also neatly fits into Movie outline's existing pattern.

..after rereading my post though, I'm thinking I might just be a bit too pedantic. After all, I'm looking to write better scripts, not analyse them better. But it'll help I suppose.

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Not at all pedantic, structure is everything. It's the area most writers really struggle with. Anyone can come up with an idea, but structuring it into a workable movie is a whole other ball game.

Paul Schrader...

clive said:

This script was written when Paul Schrader was already a big name in the industry, so I guess many of the rules just don't apply to him. Plus he's also a name director, so I guess that must help him get away with being so specific.

I think it's a delicate balance between giving enough information to tell the story visually and doing the directors job for them. My ex-business partner said the trick was to write the screenplay in such away that it could only be shot the way you enviaged it, but in such a way that the director felt that they'd had all the ideas. A neat trick if you can pull it off, especially when it has through a producers's hands before it even get's seen by a director and a stronger visual description, allowing them to visualise the film is probably a selling point.

I think this scripts real stength is in Paul Schrader's clear vision of what the film is meant to be. I know the film well and this script is pretty much the film as it was produced.

I think you raised a good point about whether this is a good script for someone who is just starting our? I'll open a new thread to discuss what script we should do after this one when I get back from Croatia next week. It would probably be a good idea to do something that is more of a straight "high concept, easy mainstream sell."

I was really self indulgent with the first script because I'd wanted to read it more than anything else I've seen for years and I really rate Paul Schrader. Interestingly enough the other screenwriter I really rate uses a very conventional style as well, that's Bruce Robinson who wrote "Withnail & I," and "The Klling Fields"

Oh, I used to have problems getting my scripts upto the 100 page mark as well. That's before I started using Movie Outline to structure my scripts before writing. I've found that it you stick to the basic 45 sequeces to your stroy that Movie Outline uses as standard you end up with about 110 to 130 pages of screenplay.

Click to expand...

Paul Schrader can pretty much write a screenplay about taking out the garbage every Tuesday and get it made... Especially if he also directs...

You know... I haven't seen BRINGING OUT THE DEAD for a couple of years but I don't remember it being too much like the script... Now I'm gonna have to watch it again just to see...

Anyway, that's the beauty of having written some outstanding stuff... Doors are opened up to you that might not ever be otherwise...

filmy

You know... I haven't seen BRINGING OUT THE DEAD for a couple of years but I don't remember it being too much like the script... Now I'm gonna have to watch it again just to see...

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First twenty pages are pretty much frame for frame. I'm still reading.

I'm in on this. I'll look to read the screenplay before see the film. It's one of those I've not gotten around to seeing yet anyway.