GITS birthday suggestion #5: Great Scenes
Our final installment of suggestions for using some of the GITS resources to enhance one’s understanding of the craft of screenwriting. We’ve talked about the nearly 100 interviews with screenwriters. About reading screenplays. Tips on how to write a script. Learning about how a script reader approaches their job.
But what about scene-writing. Let’s say the average length of a scene is 2 pages. If you figure 120 pages for the average script, that works out to be 60 scenes per screenplay. That’s a lot of scenes. Clearly it behooves you to know how to write good scenes. And even better if you can write great scenes. Which is one reason every Friday I post an example of a great scene. As of today, if you go here, you can find 41 great scenes — going from A (A Clockwork Orange) to Z (Zorba the Greek). Normally I include the actual script pages, then the clip from the movie, so you can study the relationship of the printed word to the cinematic images.
Sometimes I focus on the scene for its dialogue. Other times for the visuals. I’ve talked about themes and symbols. Death scenes and birth scenes. Funny scenes and shocking scenes. But in each case, I picked the scene because it is memorable. And that’s one of the most important requirements for a Great Scene: That is has something about it which sticks in the reader / viewer’s mind.
Hollywood’s first great producer Irving Thalberg said that if a writer gave him a screenplay with at least 5 great scenes, he could make a successful movie out of it. Studying Great Scenes will give you a deeper understanding how to write memorable scenes in your own screenplay.
Here’s one example of a Great Scene that I originally posted on Nov. 7, 2008:
Courtroom dramas. A staple of Hollywood cinema for decades. From a string of great films nearly a half-century ago Anatomy of a Murder (1959), Inherit the Wind (1960), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) to more recent hits including Presumed Innocent (1990), A Few Good Men (1992), and Erin Brockovich (2000), movie-going audiences have shown a sustained interest in legal dramas.
One staple of courtroom dramas is the closing argument. I think it’s fair to say that most screenwriters would tend to go over the top and have their lead character ratchet up the drama through their dialogue. But in the fantastic movie The Verdict (1982), starring the late Paul Newman as alcoholic lawyer Frank Galvin, screenwriter David Mamet resists that temptation to go bigger. Instead the power of Galvin’s words form from their simplicity and honesty.
INT. COURTROOM — JUDGE HOYLE’S P.O.V. — FULL COURTROOM — DAY
All looking slightly to their right.
ANGLE
JUDGE SWEENEY Mr. Galvin…?
ANGLE — GALVIN
In front of the full jury box. Beat.
GALVIN
You know, so much of the time we’re
lost. We say, ‘Please, God, tell us
what is right. Tell us what’s true.
There is no justice. The rich win,
the poor are powerless…’ We become
tired of hearing people lie. After a
time we become dead. A little dead.
We start thinking of ourselves as
victims.
(pause)
And we become victims.
(pause)
And we become weak… and doubt
ourselves, and doubt our
institutions… and doubt our
beliefs… we say for example, ‘The
law is a sham… there is no law…
I was a fool for having believed
there was.’
(beat)
But today you are the law. You are
the law… And not some book and not
the lawyers, or the marble statues
and the trappings of the court…
all that they are is symbols.
(beat)
Of our desire to be just…
(beat)
All that they are, in effect, is a
prayer…
(beat)
…a fervent, and a frightened prayer.
In my religion we say, ‘Act as if
you had faith, and faith will be
given to you.’
(beat)
If… If we would have faith in
justice, we must only believe in
ourselves.
(beat)
And act with justice.
(beat)
And I believe that there is justice
in our hearts.
(beat)
Thank you.
He stands still a moment, then surveys the still courtroom.
Paul Newman takes these words and with his voice barely above a whisper, leaving plenty of room for silence, he drives home his point, one human to twelve other humans on the jury — making it a truly great scene.