Script to Screen: “Joker”

Joker kills Murray on live TV in the 2019 movie, written by Todd Phillips & Scott Silver, based on characters by Bob Kane, Bill Finger, and Jerry Robinson.

IMDb plot summary: In Gotham City, mentally troubled comedian Arthur Fleck is disregarded and mistreated by society. He then embarks on a downward spiral of revolution and bloody crime. This path brings him face-to-face with his alter-ego: the Joker.

In this scene, Arthur finally gets the opportunity to appear on the TV show of his one-time idol Murray Franklin… with a plan in mind.

Here is the scripted version of the scene:

The movie version of the scene:

There is some added dialogue, but the main difference is an editing choice: Instead of cutting away to Sophie, the police, or even the director’s booth, the point of focus stays on Arthur. I’m guessing they shot that other footage, but once they assembled footage and saw Joaquin Phoenix’s performance, they realized they couldn’t cut away from him.

One of the single best things you can do to learn the craft of screenwriting is to read the script while watching the movie. After all a screenplay is a blueprint to make a movie and it’s that magic of what happens between printed page and final print that can inform how you approach writing scenes. That is the purpose of Script to Screen, a series on Go Into The Story where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.

For more Script To Screen articles, go here.