Script To Screen: “The Godfather”
Compare screenplay to movie: The famous horse head scene in The Godfather, written by Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo, based on Puzo’s novel.
Setup: After refuting Mafia consigliere Tom Hagen’s ‘request’ to select Johnny Fontane for an upcoming movie, Hollywood producer Jack Woltz sleeps in his mansion when…
INT DAY: WOLTZ'S BEDROOM (SUMMER 1945)It is large, dominated by a huge bed, in which a man,
presumably WOLTZ, is sleeping. Soft light bathes the room
from the large windows. We move closer to him until we see
his face, and recognize JACK WOLTZ. He turns uncomfortably;
mutters, feels something strange in his bedsheets. Something
wet.He wakens, feels the sheets with displeasure; they are wet.
He looks at his hand; the wetness is blood. He is
frightened, pulls aside the covers, and sees fresh blood on
his sheets and pajamas. He grunts, pulls the puddle of
blood in his bed. He feels his own body frantically,
moving, down, following the blood, until he is face to face
with the great severed head of Khartoum lying at the foot of
his bed. Just blood from the hacked neck. White reedy
tendons show. He struggles up to his elbows in the puddle
of blood to see more clearly. Froth covers the muzzle, and
the enormous eyes of the animal are yellowed and covered
with blood.WOLTZ tries to scream; but cannot. No sound comes out.
Then, finally and suddenly an ear-splitting scream of pure
terror escapes from WOLTZ, who is rocking on his hands and
knees in an uncontrolled fit, blood all over him.
Consider just the words describing the horse:
the great severed head of Khartoum lying at the foot of
his bed. Just blood from the hacked neck. White reedy
tendons show... Froth covers the muzzle, and the enormous
eyes of the animal are yellowed and covered with blood.Here is the scene from the movie:
Did the movie capture the drama and horror detailed in the script? I think most assuredly so!
I’ll see you in comments for a discussion of this terrific scene from The Godfather.
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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