The Awesome Script I’m Reading/A Question to You, Rudy-
September 2, 2008
OMG, you guys! I’m reading the best screenplay right now. It started out where this old guy hired a young woman as his right hand lady in an all-male company, thinking it would show him to be the maverick he claimed to be rather than a capricious old coot. And then almost immediately after he hires her, she’s all, “oh crap. I forgot to tell you some stuff,” and proceeds to unload on him in the middle of the board of director’s meeting that she’s got all this family scandal following her around. And then it comes out in the papers that she’s even more of a lifetime movie than she’s admitted to him and may have faked a pregnancy to protect previously mentioned teen daughter and that she is crazy backwoods scandal lightning rod, with a bunch of investigation pending. And the guy who hired her is like “holyfuckingshit!” and totes doesn’t know what to do. I can’t wait to see what happens next in this movie!
Oh wait, i guess it’s not a screenplay. It’s the New York Times on the GOP’s first woman V.P. I sure am glad the woman who is making history for them is going to be mainly discussed in terms of what is happening in her vagina/her Gossip Girl-like personal life. Because that’s what we ladies are all about! I hope she takes time in her speech on Wednesday to talk about shipping and her period. Who’s with me, girls?? Let’s go get some cosmos and watch!
End off-the-cuff, short blog part one. Begin part 2.
I’m swamped with scripts and other projects, so no eight page blogs that take 7.5 pages to get to the point today. Sorry. I know you were looking forward to that. But I did have a question that I want to consider for next week and I was hoping for some input:
A friend asked me to read his script, which used a little voice over in the first few scenes. He wanted to know if it was obnoxious or not. I was told in screenwriting class back in college that it is a sin to use voice over, flashbacks, or phone conversations unless it’s absolutely necessary. Because the first one can seem pretentious, the second one stops the forward momentum of the script, and the third one is pretty static and dull to look at. Additionally, all three are kind of lazy. Yet all three have been used to great effect in lots of movies. I would hate it if there were no voiceover in Raising Arizona, for example. And i notice i’ve become less aware of these elements in scripts i read and movies i see lately, because they’re so often used and I kind of enjoy a little hand-holding to tell me EXACTLY what is going on. Because I’m kind of lazy, apparently.
Thoughts? Are these rules too stuffy or rigid? Do these elements bother you when you see them? Under what circumstances should they be used?
Any discussion welcome. Or else I will just form my opinion and write 8 pages on it next week.
The Robert Mckee voiceover rule is to take it out, read the script and if the story still makes sense, put the voiceover back in. The voiceover in Raising Arizona and Woody Allen’s Radio Days provide counterpoint to the action, they don’t explain what you are watching while you’re watching it. Fight Club and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang spring to mind as other examples of narration that is adds a lot of fun to a film but isn’t essential to understanding the action.
Hope citing Mckee isn’t too Scriptwriting 101, but there it is…
yes, that’s a good rule of thumb. I think i am more accepting of voiceover in general if it’s well done, even if it’s telling me some of what’s already being shown. probably because i like film noir. still, people go to it too quickly, without trying to show what they need to show in other ways.
I have no problems with voiceovers. If it’s good enough for Truffaut, Godard, Kauffman, et al, then it’s good enough for me.
I say that it’s time to start breaking all of Mckee’s rules. Yet, he’s correct in theory that if it works…. use it. I have a screenplay that uses two flashbacks. They’re integral to the story and they help the viewer gain insight to the character that would otherwise be impossible without them. However, I’m struggling with one particular screenplay - which is an intersting story - but when I wrote the novel I wrote it as a narrative. Yikes, it’s tough.
I’m a huge fan of when writers and directors break the rules. Big fan.
Voiceovers are fine; the only time people complain about them is in regards to screenplays.
Flashbacks almost always destroy forward momentum(every episode of Lost ever), except in cases like Arrested Development or Memento or Eternal Sunshine, where they are part of the story moving forward; i.e., now the audience can move forward with the knowledge that _____ happened.
Phone calls are horrible and are used so abusively these days. The movie Crank takes place almost ENTIRELY on the phone. Gross. One or two phone calls aren’t going to destroy the whole screenplay, but come on- there is ALWAYS something else you can do than write in a phone conversation.
(Also, that really only has to do with phone conversations. As soon as it is a walkie-talkie or better yet, a CB radio, then it’s more engaging.)
Love this blog, keep up the good work.
Comics used to be the worst abusers of voiceover. A panel of Peter Parker climbing out a window as he puts on his Spiderman mask would invariably be accompanied by a caption boldly stating “Peter swiftly climbed out his window, deftly pulling on his mask so as not to be recognized as he assumed his secret identity as the wall-crawling hero.”
Thought bubbles have been long abused in comics as well. So much so that they are all but completely absent from today’s graphic novels. Like voiceovers, captions and thought balloons are traps for the lazy writer, but a talented writer who isn’t afraid of hard work can use any device effectively, be it flashbacks, voiceovers or phone conversations.
I don’t see anything wrong with using voice overs, flashbacks or phone conversations.
Now if the script is full of the three elements, then without a doubt, it’s bad… but if the elements are used where it makes sense, and if not used, would decreased the value of the story/script, then yes, keep the elements in.
My scripts, if I use any of the elements, use a very small amount of voice overs, flashbacks and phone coversations, but you better believe it, when it’s needed, I use it.
~CJ
An amazing percentage of Oscar-winning films/scripts begin with voice overs. As do many on AFI’s lists. So, it seems that the rulebreakers rule… .
For me narration is okay if the narrator is a character in the movie with quirks and flaws as in every Coen Bros movie. (I say every but it is probably some not every. Raising Arizona, Big Lebow, Hudsucker Prox come to mind) It is part of why I love Terrence Malick’s movies so much. What is not fresh beans at all is when the director thinks he’s terrence malick but makes the narrator a boring, omniscient windbag. I’m looking at you Assassination of Jesse James. I’m also giving you the finger.