Script To Screen: “Pulp Fiction”

The dance scene at Jack Rabbit Slims from Pulp Fiction.

Setup: Mia wants to dance. Vincent has no choice.

Vincent and Mia walk up to the microphone.ED SULLIVAN
Now let's meet our first contestants
here this evening. Young lady, what
is your name?MIA
(into microphone)
Missus Mia Wallace.ED SULLIVAN
(into microphone)
And, uh, how 'bout your fella here?MIA
(into microphone)
Vincent Vega.ED SULLIVAN
(into microphone)
All right, let's see what you can
do. Take it away!Mia and Vincent dance to Chuck Berry's "YOU NEVER CAN
TELL". They make hand movements as they dance.Here is the scene from the movie:

Only one thing to focus on here: Check out what they do to take "they make hand movements as they dance" to what ends up on the screen.I’ll see you in comments for a discussion of this memorable scene from Pulp Fiction.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 weekly series on GITS where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.

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