American Beauty and The Sixth Sense: Good ‘poetic’ writing

In my current online screenwriting class, we have a thread going about poetic or ‘imagematic’ writing, as reflected in scene description — tight, lean, vivid — and the use of objects as metaphors that convey deeper levels of meaning. One student asked for my opinion about two scripts she liked particularly well — American Beauty and The Sixth Sense. Here are my comments:

Like you, I think American Beauty and The Sixth Sense are excellent screenplays. Specifically in terms of their scene description, one aspect that’s impressive is how restrained they are, especially notable because each is writing in genres that invite OTT (Over The Top) writing: Satire and Thriller.

And yet as restrained as they are, both screenwriters make maximum visual and emotional impact with a minimum of words. Here’s the very first scene in The Sixth Sense:

INT. BASEMENT — EVENING

A NAKED LIGHTBULB SPARKS TO LIFE. It dangles from the ceiling
of a basement.

LIGHT, QUICK FOOTSTEPS AS ANNA CROWE moves down the stairs.

Anna is the rare combination of beauty and innocence. She
stands in the chilly basement in an elegant summer dress
that outlines her slender body. Her gentle eyes move across
the empty room and come to rest on a rack of wine bottles
covering one entire wall.

She walks to the bottles. Her fingertips slide over the
labels. She stops when she finds just the right one. A tiny
smile as she slides it out.

Anna turns to leave. Stops. She stares at the shadowy
basement. It’s an unsettling place. She stands very still
and watches her breath form a TINY CLOUD IN THE COLD AIR.

She’s visibly uncomfortable.

Anna Crowe moves for the staircase in a hurry. Each step
faster than the next. She climbs out of the basement in
another burst of LIGHT, QUICK FOOTSTEPS.

WE HEAR HER HIT THE LIGHT SWITCH.

THE LIGHTBULB DIES. DRIPPING BLACK DEVOURS THE ROOM.

“A naked lightbulb sparks to life.” That right there — poetry. And much like a poem that can take a moment — a butterfly on a flower, an old man nodding off asleep on a front porch, the drip of an icicle — and find a universe of meaning in it, this scene does as well. External World: Anna gets a bottle of wine. Internal World: She gets spooked — by the darkness, being alone, her breath. Of course, it’s a simple little way of framing the tone and genre of the movie, but also tips off something of the danger lurking inside their house that very night.

Likewise American Beauty and its use of poetic language. Here’s where we meet the Protagonist Lester Burnham:

FADE IN:

EXT. ROBIN HOOD TRAIL — EARLY MORNING

We’re FLYING above suburban America, DESCENDING SLOWLY toward
a tree-lined street.

LESTER (V.O.)
My name is Lester Burnham. This is
my neighborhood. This is my street.
This… is my life. I’m forty-two
years old. In less than a year, I’ll
be dead.

INT. BURNHAM HOUSE — MASTER BEDROOM — CONTINUOUS

We’re looking down at a king-sized BED from OVERHEAD:

LESTER BURNHAM lies sleeping amidst expensive bed linens,
face down, wearing PAJAMAS. An irritating ALARM CLOCK RINGS.
Lester gropes blindly to shut it off.

LESTER (V.O.)
Of course, I don’t know that yet.

He rolls over, looks up at us and sighs. He doesn’t seem too
thrilled at the prospect of a new day.

LESTER (V.O.)
And in a way, I’m dead already.

He sits up and puts on his slippers.

INT. BURNHAM HOUSE — MASTER BATH — MOMENTS LATER

Lester thrusts his face directly into a steaming hot shower.

ANGLE from outside the shower: Lester’s naked body is
silhouetted through the fogged-up glass door. It becomes
apparent he is masturbating.

LESTER (V.O.)
(amused)
Look at me, jerking off in the shower.
(then)
This will be the high point of my
day. It’s all downhill from here.

EXT. BURNHAM HOUSE — MOMENTS LATER

CLOSE on a single, dewy AMERICAN BEAUTY ROSE. A gloved hand
with CLIPPERS appears and SNIPS the flower off.

CAROLYN BURNHAM tends her rose bushes in front of the Burnham
house. A very well-put together woman of forty, she wears
color-coordinated gardening togs and has lots of useful and
expensive tools.

Lester watches her through a WINDOW on the first floor,
peeping out through the drapes.

LESTER (V.O.)
That’s my wife Carolyn. See the way
the handle on those pruning shears
matches her gardening clogs? That’s
not an accident.

Lester doesn’t just “turn off” the alarm — he “gropes blindly” for it, an apt description of his current life-condition, his mid-life crisis.

Then “Lester thrusts his face directly into a steaming hot shower.” Compare to the lifelessness of the previous scene. These words are enlivened:thrusts, directly, steaming, hot. Those sound sexual, yes? Of course, they frame the irony of Lester “jerking off” in the shower, the routine nature of it, lifeless, joyless. But these words suggest an angle into Lester where he could still have some life — sexuality. And, indeed, that is where and how he does come to life — through his obsession with his daughter Jane’s friend Angela.

Beyond the poetic approach to scene description — strong visual words and imagematic writing — American Beauty makes great use of objects as metaphors to deeper meaning. Take roses:

* The title of the movie is the name of a type of rose, but that is metaphorical for suburban life, Carolyn’s dreams of herself and success, Lester’s faded dreams of amounting to anything, etc.

* Carolyn is a good gardener and knows how to prune rose bushes to produce flowers; and in her very first scene, we see her in action — “SNIPS off the flower.” Contrasted to Lester masturbating, that is a demasculating image.

* And what do roses mean to Lester? They become the bed upon which he fantasize Angela frolicking naked, so whereas Carolyn has a controlling power over her flowers, Lester’s sense of roses is freedom, sexual and otherwise.

So yes, American Beauty and The Sixth Sense are great reads in part because the writers, Alan Ball and M. Night Shyamalan, write so well — tight, clean, vivid, imagematic writing, reflective of a ‘poetic’ approach to language.

What other scripts have you read that strike you as particularly ‘poetic’ in the writer’s approach to language / scene description and metaphors?

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