I'd like to thank Billy for coming back from the Great Beyond to offer the best screenwriting tips anyone could learn, which makes sense since he's one of the best if not THE best screenwriters ever. Thanks, Billy, I owe you one.
That's a very weird coincidence. I had never heard "Let the audience add up two plus two" before until yesterday. It was in this video, that I watched because YouTube recommended it. It's about No Country for Old Men,and gives several examples of that rule. https://youtu.be/KADoPXknQCI
Ken, we are of like mind re Billy Wilder: simply the best writer / director Hollywood has given us. My favorite film: SUNSET BLVD. Sheer brilliance. The most perfect comedy ever made: SOME LIKE IT HOT The most perfect romance film: THE APARTMENT I've often felt that any film study course should begin and end with Billy Wilder. Study every one of his films. Over and over again. And be lucky enough to have I.A.L. Diamond as your collaborator. Favorite Wilder story: He goes to meet with a young studio exec. to pitch some film idea. Studio exec says to Wilder: Tell me about yourself. Wilder leans forward, says to studio exec.: You first!
"If you have a problem with the third act, your real problem is in the first act."
That resonates very true. A first act that runs out of steam, or doesn't establish an expolition by the end is really just one-act or a skit, which are a great art forms in themselves, but it ain't a screenplay. The second act may as well be irrelevant.
So glad to see #8. It's not the simplistic rule "voice-overs always bad" or the slightly better "show; don't tell," but a concise explanation of how to use voice-over if you have to. Even for a noir pic like Double Indemnity, it's as only as much as needed.
I wish some youtube or technical wiz could post Shawshank or Goodfellas fully intact except without any voiceover--I wonder how much the movie would really suffer.
Regarding number 8: Casino was much worse than Goodfellas, in terms of both the amount of narration and the proportion of it that simply described what was already being shown.
Wilder sent you home with something to argue about. SUNSET BOULEVARD: The narrator was already dead! SOME LIKE IT HOT: Did Oswald know all along that "Daphne" was a man? (He's rich but he's not a complete idiot.) THE SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS: If only Lindbergh's public life had ended right there and he had never gotten involved in politics. THE LOST WEEKEND: He's not going to write that novel, is he?
Today it's usually "There's two (or three) hours I won't get back."
@Troy McClure, I'll disagree on LORT for two reasons. First, because the multiple endings were faithful to the book and second, because after three three-hour movies with those characters, it was nice to see how the whole adventure affected all of them and how they'd get back to their lives. Just destroying the ring didn't mean there'd be a happy-ever-after for any of them.
I went to a screening of SOME LIKE IT HOT a few years ago, which I had seen only once, when I was a kid. I was surprised at how leisurely the pace was at the beginning, with several non-comedic scenes, before they go on the lam. I can't imagine a studio doing that today.
Troy McClure, didn't that film win the Oscar for Best Picture?
So why did Wilder ignore most of his own rules when he made The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes?
If Peter Jackson had left out that last hour of The Return of the King he'd have been roasted alive by Tolkien fans. He caught a lot of Tolkien-flack as it was for omitting "The Scouring of the Shire," the novel's penultimate chapter, when the hobbits return to The Shire only to find it under the thumb of a strongman fascist dictator called "Sharkey" who had taken it over while they were gone, and who turns out to be Saruman, who has conquered the Shire as revenge. The Hobbits, having just cleaned Sauron's clock, then depose Saruman, and his and Wormtongue's deaths occur then, not at Orthanc, as in the Extended Edition of the movie.
Jackson eliminated it as it was one climax too many, and hardly able to follow the more spectacular climax at Mount Doom. Tolkien felt it essential as it represented what he felt he'd discovered when he returned to England after fighting in Europe in World War I. Of course, England had not been taken over by fascists in his absence, but Tolkien HATED technology, a true Luddite at heart, and he felt the industrial revolution had "spoiled" England. "How Green Was My Shire."
In being snide about Return of the King winning Best Picture, you're ignoring that that Oscar was really for the entire trilogy. The Oscar rules did not allow for giving the award to the entire The Lord of the Rings, and could do only what it did, but everyone realized that that Oscar was really for the entire 11-hour saga, which was and remains a hell of an achievement and a very great movie.
The narration point is a good one. I do so loathe narrators describing to us what we're seeing when we can see what we're seeing. In general, narrations should avoided altogether, as they are uncinematic, to put it mildly, and are evidence of not trusting the audience, and an admission that "We couldn't figure out how to show this, so we're telling you this instead." In cases like Sunset Boulevard, it's there because Wilder fell in love with his gaudy prose. If you totally eliminated the narration from Sunset Boulevard, the movie would still work perfectly well. Same criticism applies to Double Indemnity.
I wrote a stage adaptation of Dracula which received a quite-lavish production in 1978. I had narration from Harker's diary between scenes, covering set changes (The sets were HUGE!) Why did I do that? To include passages of Stoker's prose I loved, and because I was 26 when I wrote it and didn't know any better. Were I to have that play remounted now, I would cut all the narration.
17 comments :
His 11th commandment (for directors mostly): "Do not shoot from inside the fireplace. That is from the point of view of Santa Claus."
Point #9 is the problem I had with Vicki Christina Barcelona. It was a fun movie ruined by pointless narration.
That's a very weird coincidence. I had never heard "Let the audience add up two plus two" before until yesterday. It was in this video, that I watched because YouTube recommended it. It's about No Country for Old Men,and gives several examples of that rule.
https://youtu.be/KADoPXknQCI
Ken, we are of like mind re Billy Wilder: simply the best writer / director Hollywood has given us.
My favorite film: SUNSET BLVD. Sheer brilliance.
The most perfect comedy ever made: SOME LIKE IT HOT
The most perfect romance film: THE APARTMENT
I've often felt that any film study course should begin and end with Billy Wilder.
Study every one of his films. Over and over again.
And be lucky enough to have I.A.L. Diamond as your collaborator.
Favorite Wilder story: He goes to meet with a young studio exec. to pitch some film idea. Studio exec says to Wilder: Tell me about yourself. Wilder leans forward, says to studio exec.: You first!
"If you have a problem with the third act, your real problem is in the first act."
That resonates very true. A first act that runs out of steam, or doesn't establish an expolition by the end is really just one-act or a skit, which are a great art forms in themselves, but it ain't a screenplay. The second act may as well be irrelevant.
Yeah, he was great, but nobody's perfect.
So glad to see #8. It's not the simplistic rule "voice-overs always bad" or the slightly better "show; don't tell," but a concise explanation of how to use voice-over if you have to. Even for a noir pic like Double Indemnity, it's as only as much as needed.
I wish some youtube or technical wiz could post Shawshank or Goodfellas fully intact except without any voiceover--I wonder how much the movie would really suffer.
We all owe Billy Wilder at least one, credit-wise.
Regarding number 8: Casino was much worse than Goodfellas, in terms of both the amount of narration and the proportion of it that simply described what was already being shown.
If only someone had told Peter Jackson about number 10 before he made Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which had about twenty ending scenes.
CLOCKWORK ORANGE had effective narration. Kubrick might have had it in mind to lull us into liking the cuddly scamp.
"any film study course should begin and end with Billy Wilder." Who would pay for that course?
Wilder sent you home with something to argue about. SUNSET BOULEVARD: The narrator was already dead! SOME LIKE IT HOT: Did Oswald know all along that "Daphne" was a man? (He's rich but he's not a complete idiot.) THE SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS: If only Lindbergh's public life had ended right there and he had never gotten involved in politics. THE LOST WEEKEND: He's not going to write that novel, is he?
Today it's usually "There's two (or three) hours I won't get back."
@Troy McClure, I'll disagree on LORT for two reasons. First, because the multiple endings were faithful to the book and second, because after three three-hour movies with those characters, it was nice to see how the whole adventure affected all of them and how they'd get back to their lives. Just destroying the ring didn't mean there'd be a happy-ever-after for any of them.
I went to a screening of SOME LIKE IT HOT a few years ago, which I had seen only once, when I was a kid. I was surprised at how leisurely the pace was at the beginning, with several non-comedic scenes, before they go on the lam. I can't imagine a studio doing that today.
Troy McClure, didn't that film win the Oscar for Best Picture?
Dixon
Yes, The Return of the King won best picture. As did Braveheart and A Beautiful Mind.
So why did Wilder ignore most of his own rules when he made The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes?
If Peter Jackson had left out that last hour of The Return of the King he'd have been roasted alive by Tolkien fans. He caught a lot of Tolkien-flack as it was for omitting "The Scouring of the Shire," the novel's penultimate chapter, when the hobbits return to The Shire only to find it under the thumb of a strongman fascist dictator called "Sharkey" who had taken it over while they were gone, and who turns out to be Saruman, who has conquered the Shire as revenge. The Hobbits, having just cleaned Sauron's clock, then depose Saruman, and his and Wormtongue's deaths occur then, not at Orthanc, as in the Extended Edition of the movie.
Jackson eliminated it as it was one climax too many, and hardly able to follow the more spectacular climax at Mount Doom. Tolkien felt it essential as it represented what he felt he'd discovered when he returned to England after fighting in Europe in World War I. Of course, England had not been taken over by fascists in his absence, but Tolkien HATED technology, a true Luddite at heart, and he felt the industrial revolution had "spoiled" England. "How Green Was My Shire."
In being snide about Return of the King winning Best Picture, you're ignoring that that Oscar was really for the entire trilogy. The Oscar rules did not allow for giving the award to the entire The Lord of the Rings, and could do only what it did, but everyone realized that that Oscar was really for the entire 11-hour saga, which was and remains a hell of an achievement and a very great movie.
The narration point is a good one. I do so loathe narrators describing to us what we're seeing when we can see what we're seeing. In general, narrations should avoided altogether, as they are uncinematic, to put it mildly, and are evidence of not trusting the audience, and an admission that "We couldn't figure out how to show this, so we're telling you this instead." In cases like Sunset Boulevard, it's there because Wilder fell in love with his gaudy prose. If you totally eliminated the narration from Sunset Boulevard, the movie would still work perfectly well. Same criticism applies to Double Indemnity.
I wrote a stage adaptation of Dracula which received a quite-lavish production in 1978. I had narration from Harker's diary between scenes, covering set changes (The sets were HUGE!) Why did I do that? To include passages of Stoker's prose I loved, and because I was 26 when I wrote it and didn't know any better. Were I to have that play remounted now, I would cut all the narration.
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