Scene Description Spotlight: “Unforgiven”
The ‘folksy’ narrative voice in sync with the movie’s Western genre and a clean read with strong bursts of imagematic writing.
I remember reading the script to Unforgiven (1992) and being struck by two things: It was a clean read and it was a compelling read. This scene, which takes place in Act Three, is a great example of both.
Feels like the transcript of someone telling the story orally. And how about some of the descriptors:
There is a general whoop and hubbub...a sudden silence that has swept the bar like a brushfire...Skinny stares pop-eyed from behind the bar...and his eyes show how he feels about it...A real ‘folksy’ feel in the language. And to really drive home the narrative voice:
but this is it, what all those Easterners dreamed about,
the showdown in the saloon.“Those Easterners” — as compared to the narrator who is not from the East. All of that adds to the compelling nature of the story.
Each line in the shoot-out suggesting a camera shot, you can just see the action right there on the page.
Here is the movie version of the scene:
Unforgiven, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for screenwriter David Webb Peoples, is a great example of a writer using scene description to the story’s benefit: The ‘folksy’ narrative voice in synch with the movie’s Western genre and a clean read with strong bursts of imagematic writing.
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