Script Analysis: “The Wolf of Wall Street” — Part 3: Characters

Reading scripts. Absolutely critical to learn the craft of screenwriting. The focus of this weekly series is a deep structural and thematic analysis of each script we read. Our daily schedule:

Monday: Scene-By-Scene Breakdown
Tuesday: Major Plot Points
Wednesday: Characters
Thursday: Themes
Friday: Takeaways

Today: Characters.

Characters are the players in our stories. They participate in scenes, move the plot forward through action and dialogue, influence each other, evolve and change. Each has their own distinct backstory, personality, world view, and voice. When a writer does their best, digging deep into their characters, tapping into their souls, the players in our stories magically lift up off the printed page and come to life in a reader’s imagination.

But there’s this: In a screenplay, characters exist for a reason. Hence my principle: Character = Function. Writers can shade and shape a story’s character in limitless ways. But if you dig down deep enough, you can find each character’s narrative function, and that can become a lens through which you develop the players in your stories.

Same thing with script and movie analysis: Look at each character and think about why they exist and what their function is.

I think there are five primary character archetypes we see in movies all the time. They are:

Protagonist: The lead character, the character through whose perspective the story is told, the character who typically goes through the most significant metamorphosis.

Nemesis: Provides opposition to the Protagonist, often represents the Protagonist’s shadow, their dark impulses, tied somehow to the Protagonist’s goal.

Attractor: Characters who are most intimately tied to the Protagonist’s emotional development, often a love interest, Heart.

Mentor: Characters who are most intimately tied to the Protagonist’s intellectual development, wisdom, Head.

Trickster: Characters who test the Protagonist, switching allegiance from ally to enemy, enemy to ally, intentionally or not helping to prepare the Protagonist for their Final Struggle.

Today we discuss the characters in the script for The Wolf of Wall Street. You may download a PDF of the script — free and legal — here. A list of the key players:

Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio)

Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill)

Brad (Jon Bernthal)

Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey)

Naomi Lapaglia (Margot Robbie)

Teresa Petrillo (Cristin Milioti)

Agent Patrick Denham (Kyle Chandler)

Max Belfort (Rob Reiner)

Screenplay by Terence Winter, book by Jordan Belfort.

IMDb plot summary: Based on the true story of Jordan Belfort, from his rise to a wealthy stock-broker living the high life to his fall involving crime, corruption and the federal government.

Writing Exercise: Think about each character. What’s their function? And see if you can use character archetypes to help in your analysis.

For Part 1, to read the Scene-By-Scene Breakdown, go here.

For Part 2, to read the Major Plot Points, go here.

Tomorrow: We reflect on themes in The Wolf of Wall Street.

REQUEST: We have some incredible scripts in the GITS library which we have yet to analyze including 12 Years a Slave, The Way Way Back, and many more.

NOTE: We have new scripts from 2015 movies including Trainwreck and Ex Machina.

I am looking for volunteers to read a script and provide a scene-by-scene breakdown for it to be used as part of our weekly series. What do you get? Beyond your name being noted here, my thanks, and some creative juju, hopefully you will learn something about story structure and develop another skill set which is super helpful in learning and practicing the craft.

The latest volunteers:

Birdman — Doc Kane
Dallas Buyers Club — Devin Dingler
Frozen — Doc Kane
Gone Girl — Ashley
Looper — Michael Perkins
Nebraska — David Joyner
Nightcrawler — Marija
Wild — Jacqui Corcoran
The Wolf of Wall Street — Paul Graunke

Thanks, all!

To see examples of scene-by-scene breakdowns, go here. Part of the goal is to create a library of breakdowns for writers to have at their disposal for research and learning.

You may see the scripts we can use for the series — free and legal — by going here.

To date, we have analyzed 47 movie scripts, a great resource for screenwriters. To see those analyses, go here.

Thanks to any of you who will rise to the occasion and take on a scene-by-scene breakdown.

And for those of you who have volunteered, please send me your scene-by-scene breakdown as soon as possible!

Circling back to where we started, reading scripts is hugely important. Analyzing them even more so. If you want to work in Hollywood as a writer, you need to develop your critical analytical skills. This is one way to do that.

So seize this opportunity and join in the conversation!

I hope to see you in comments about this week’s script: The Wolf of Wall Street.

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