Let’s leave it at that.
One of the great truths of the movie business is that movies are fragile. And even the most successful are only a step away from disaster. Every step of the way …
----
Courtroom Scenes
There are no rules to screenwriting, as we all know, but one of them is this: you must never ever open your first draft screenplay with a courtroom scene.
What we are talking about here is this: limitations of the form.
If you will look at Ephron’s Harry and Sally scene or what the Farrellys did to poor Ben Stiller, I would argue that those scenes are better in a movie than anyplace else. I don’t care how talented the poet, his version of the zipper madness is not going to be as wonderful as the flick was. And no novelist’s orgasm scene is going to be as wonderful as what Billy and Meg did in the Carnegie.
I don’t think those scenes work as well on the stage either. Oh, they would get laughs, but you would not have the immediacy, you would not see the horrible embarrassment of the two chief men in the movies.
No, these are movie moments, great ones, and best left there.
But the screenplay, like any other form, cannot come close to doing everything. Let me write a little of the courtroom scene and I think the problem becomes clear.
FADE IN ON
A majestic courtroom. You sense decades and more of history here, you feel the tears of those who lost, the exultation of the winning side. You sense, more than anything, that this is a place where justice, that rare and valued commodity, could actually breathe.
CUT TO
The Defense Team. Half a dozen lawyers, led by one solid man. This is MELVIN MARSHALL, a bulldog in the courtroom. Short, powerful, he seems almost to be bursting out of his custom-made suit.
Seated beside him is The Defendant, and if MARSHALL is the beast in this story, then WAVERLY DIAMOND is the beauty. She has never had a day in her adult life when men did not turn in her direction, study her eyes wondering how anything could be that blue. Watching her now, it seems inconceivable that she could have knifed her husband to death in cold blood.
CUT TO
The one man alive who seems most intent on proving that she did kill wealthy WALTER DIAMOND. This is the most famous prosecutor in recent San Francisco history, the legendary TOMMY “THE HAT” MARINO.
MARINO has come a long way from his Mafia-ridden boyhood. The son of the famous HARRY “THE HAT” MARINO, the terrifying waterfront boss of all bosses, TOMMY has spent his life trying to prove that a man can come as far from his childhood as he so desires.
TOMMY “THE HAT” stands now, as does everybody else in that great room, for here he comes, and we see him close as we
CUT TO
JUDGE ERIC WILDENSTEIN himself. Here is what you must know about him--
Okay, enough. You must see by now that in spite of all my dazzle, your eyes are glazing over. You have been given too much information in too short a time about which you don’t give a shit, no wonder you’re bored.
You can open a movie with a courtroom scene—easy, because we see the faces of the actors so their identities register.
And you can open theshooting script—after you are in production—with a courtroom scene. You aren’t trying to sell quite so hard when you’re in production.
I guess what I’m trying to say is don’t ask the screenplay to do what it has trouble with.Information overload is one of those trouble spots. There are many others and if I made a list of all those that I know, it would do you no good at all. You will want to find your own disasters …
----
The Ghost and the Darkness
[1996]
----
I have been a professional writer for over forty years now. (I began my first novel, The Temple of Gold, on June 25, 1956.) And in all that time, I have come across but two great pieces of material. The first, dealing with Butch Cassidy and his adventures with the Sundance Kid, became a famous movie around the world. But it was unknown material before that.
The
One of the great truths of the movie business is that movies are fragile. And even the most successful are only a step away from disaster. Every step of the way …
----
Courtroom Scenes
There are no rules to screenwriting, as we all know, but one of them is this: you must never ever open your first draft screenplay with a courtroom scene.
What we are talking about here is this: limitations of the form.
If you will look at Ephron’s Harry and Sally scene or what the Farrellys did to poor Ben Stiller, I would argue that those scenes are better in a movie than anyplace else. I don’t care how talented the poet, his version of the zipper madness is not going to be as wonderful as the flick was. And no novelist’s orgasm scene is going to be as wonderful as what Billy and Meg did in the Carnegie.
I don’t think those scenes work as well on the stage either. Oh, they would get laughs, but you would not have the immediacy, you would not see the horrible embarrassment of the two chief men in the movies.
No, these are movie moments, great ones, and best left there.
But the screenplay, like any other form, cannot come close to doing everything. Let me write a little of the courtroom scene and I think the problem becomes clear.
FADE IN ON
A majestic courtroom. You sense decades and more of history here, you feel the tears of those who lost, the exultation of the winning side. You sense, more than anything, that this is a place where justice, that rare and valued commodity, could actually breathe.
CUT TO
The Defense Team. Half a dozen lawyers, led by one solid man. This is MELVIN MARSHALL, a bulldog in the courtroom. Short, powerful, he seems almost to be bursting out of his custom-made suit.
Seated beside him is The Defendant, and if MARSHALL is the beast in this story, then WAVERLY DIAMOND is the beauty. She has never had a day in her adult life when men did not turn in her direction, study her eyes wondering how anything could be that blue. Watching her now, it seems inconceivable that she could have knifed her husband to death in cold blood.
CUT TO
The one man alive who seems most intent on proving that she did kill wealthy WALTER DIAMOND. This is the most famous prosecutor in recent San Francisco history, the legendary TOMMY “THE HAT” MARINO.
MARINO has come a long way from his Mafia-ridden boyhood. The son of the famous HARRY “THE HAT” MARINO, the terrifying waterfront boss of all bosses, TOMMY has spent his life trying to prove that a man can come as far from his childhood as he so desires.
TOMMY “THE HAT” stands now, as does everybody else in that great room, for here he comes, and we see him close as we
CUT TO
JUDGE ERIC WILDENSTEIN himself. Here is what you must know about him--
Okay, enough. You must see by now that in spite of all my dazzle, your eyes are glazing over. You have been given too much information in too short a time about which you don’t give a shit, no wonder you’re bored.
You can open a movie with a courtroom scene—easy, because we see the faces of the actors so their identities register.
And you can open theshooting script—after you are in production—with a courtroom scene. You aren’t trying to sell quite so hard when you’re in production.
I guess what I’m trying to say is don’t ask the screenplay to do what it has trouble with.Information overload is one of those trouble spots. There are many others and if I made a list of all those that I know, it would do you no good at all. You will want to find your own disasters …
----
The Ghost and the Darkness
[1996]
----
I have been a professional writer for over forty years now. (I began my first novel, The Temple of Gold, on June 25, 1956.) And in all that time, I have come across but two great pieces of material. The first, dealing with Butch Cassidy and his adventures with the Sundance Kid, became a famous movie around the world. But it was unknown material before that.
The
Similar Books
