The Toughest Scene I Wrote: “A Most Violent Year”
Once again, Vulture does screenwriters a solid:
Over the next few weeks, Vulture will speak to the screenwriters behind 2014’s most acclaimed movies about the scenes they found most difficult to crack. Which pivotal sequences underwent the biggest transformations on their way from script to screen?
In this article, J.C. Chandor, writer and director of the movie A Most Violent Year, talks about a key action sequence toward the end of the movie:
What I wanted to do was have that big final chase sequence be visceral and exciting, all the things that are why I love action movies. I wanted to give you those same thrills, but have it be representative of what the movie is about, which is realistic and human-scaled. It’s an emotional chase sequence, basically. There’s an ethical decision at play.
As a writer-director, my scripts are normally very locked by the time I’m shooting the movie, but I’m then able to be very comfortable on set and try things because I know the movie I want to make. That whole chase sequence was something where I knew what I wanted and I knew what I had written, and I realized I could continue to have it grow as we shot it. The real change for the entire sequence was the shoes. Oscar came out for one of the early shooting days, and the stunt person was asking me to put him in black sneakers that looked like his dress shoes. Oscar’s a pretty good athlete, and I realized that if we put him in sneakers running around, it wouldn’t look like this guy being lured into revenge — he’d be flying through it, looking like Tom Cruise. Throughout the film, he’s wearing these leather-bottom loafers, and the fact that he’s running around corners and hobbling over rocks like a real person in his dress shoes … that’s when it all clicked for me, that’s when I understood what I wanted that scene to be about. Sadly, it led to Oscar falling on his ass. Which is in the film!
For the rest of the article, go here. Kudos to Vulture for this annual series which puts the spotlight on screenwriters.