C is for Character: Screenwriting Tips from the Silent Pics

It might be hard for the modern screenwriter to imagine what the pages of a Hollywood script circa 1920 might have looked like.  After all, this was the era of Silent Film, which meant the story was not expressed through dialogue.  The hero didn't speak to the villain.  Only occasionally, in the middle column of the script, were type-print lines of "narration" or titles squeezed between the rows of action description.  Below is an example from Anita Loos's 1916 script "Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages" directed by D.W. Griffith:

 

If these scripts only had the titles to set the stage and action was the only means of propelling their stories forward, how was the audience meant to become involved?  The obvious, though not-so-obvious, answer is this: characters.   

That's right Marilyn (as seen in the adaptation of Loos' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.)  Characters are the key.

 

Well not that kind exactly.  Think of it like this.  Professors repeat one screenwriting motto above all others:  It's not what the characters of the film say that counts, it's what they do.  Less dialogue can be more.  Sounds easy enough. 

But students of screenwriting (myself included) almost universally indulge in unnecessary dialogue.  Frankly, it's a waste of script space.  Writers of the early Hollywood Era, like Loos, implemented select adjectives and subtle behaviors to build the properties of their characters.  Let's take a look:

The lead, Mrs. Jenkins, is an aging woman at a ball who loses a proposition to dance when a handsome man chooses a young girl over her.

Note "bitterly" and "sadly," but also the premise.  Competition, especially romantic competition, inherently produces joy or sadness, victory or defeat.  The writer needs to clarify which character falls into which category. 

Now, how does one individual react to a particular scenario?  Not everyone will respond the same and that's what will make the character unique.  If Loos went on to write "Miss Jenkins tilts up her chin and proudly exits the ballroom," that would obviously be a very different woman.

So we have premise and response.  Let's look at two silent films and how they create tone with their characters, remembering that every action on screen was born from a word on the page.


First up, 1928's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc starring Renee Jeanne Falconetti.  The film, chronicling the conviction and execution of Joan of Arc, is regarded as pioneering for film production, directing, and acting.  Though there are translated copies of the screenplay online, let's imagine, for our own sakes as writers, what adjectives these images might have corresponded to.

Stunned, Overcome, Aghast.

Pensive, Absorbed, Sober.

Accusatory, Disparaging, Critical.

Fearful, Disturbed, Emotional.

Accepting, Resigned, Enduring.

Joan doesn't need to say a thing for the audience to understand her torturous predicament.  The screenwriter simply defines the character's narrative arc with sharp, dramatic vocabulary.

On the other end of the spectrum is the choice of humorous language.  Charlie Chaplin's 1921 comedy (or dramedy as we might refer to it now-a-days) The Kid is the story of an orphan boy whom the Tramp adopts and enrolls as his partner-in-crime.  No script is available online but one can imagine that little Jackie Coogan's orphan is described as "confident," "mischievous," and "precocious."  Chaplin's Tramp is usually a victim of circumstance or coincidence, but in the instance of The Kid he might be scripted as "scheming," "restless," and "agitated."  

 

 The combination of neurotic adult and assured child lead to the naturally comedic climax in the scene below.

Find this Film: Award-Winning Documentary "Marwencol"

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend a screening of the documentary Marwencol on the campus of Boston University.  I had never heard of the film before or of its subject Mark, a man who suffered brain damage after being attacked outside a bar and subsequently created a 1/6th scale World War II-era town in his backyard.  This film is bizarre, unexpected, and entirely affecting.  Marwencol won the Grand Jury Prize at the South by Southwest Film Festival, the Boston Society of Film Critics gave it Best Documentary, and Rotten Tomatoes awarded it the Golden Tomato-Best Documentary of 2010 (among many other awards.)  The film is in very limited release but it is worth checking to see if it is playing in a town near you!  Below I have posted the Theatrical Trailer as well as a list of where Marwencol is currently (and soon-to-be) screening.

 

NOW PLAYING

Portland, OR - Living Room Theaters - January 7th - February 10th

Bloomington, IN - The Ryder - February 3rd-12th

Milwaukee, WI - Times Cinema - February 7th-10th

Ithaca, NY - Cornell Cinema - February 8th & 10th

San Diego, CA - Reading Gaslamp - February 11th-17th

COMING SOON

Gloucester, MA - Cape Ann Community Cinema - February 12th-17th

Honolulu, HI - Interisland Terminal - February 15th & 17th

Pleasantville, NY - Jacob Burns Film Center - February 18th only

St. Louis, MO - Webster Film Series - February 18th-20th

Cleveland, OH - Cleveland Museum of Art - February 25th-27th

Maitland, FL - Enzian Theater - February 25th - March 3rd

Quebec City, Quebec - Le Cinephobe - February 26th only

Worcester, MA - Cinema 320 - March 1st-6th

Phoenix, AZ - FilmBar - March 3rd-16th

Dallas, TX - Angelika Film Center - Starting March 4th

Nelson, British Columbia - Capitol Theatre - March 9th only

Boulder, CO - International Film Series - March 10th only

Detroit, MI - Detroit Film Theatre - March 11th & 13th

Rochester, NY - George Eastman House - March 25th & 27th

New York, NY - Museum of Modern Art - April 1st only

Notre Dame, IN - Browning Cinema - April 28th only

Asheville, NC - Asheville Art Museum - May 19th only

DVD Recommendation: Waking Sleeping Beauty

One of the most fascinating and well-made films I saw this past year was Disney's Waking Sleeping Beauty, a documentary chronicling the decade known as the Second Golden Age of Disney.  It is now available on DVD (and Netflix) and I can't recommend it enough.

Below are the film's trailer and my review from last fall.  Enjoy!

Part of Your World

Waking Sleeping Beauty

Review by Cate Hahneman

I am a child of Disney.  Films like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King defined my youth in many ways; the songs rolled constantly through my cassette player, my closets were filled with the movies’ Happy Meal figurines, and my birthday cakes were iced with Disney princesses.   My younger years are a testament to the ways in which the company has capitalized on its brand; over several decades, Disney erected theme parks across the globe, plastered their logo on lunchboxes, and infiltrated the imaginations of children everywhere.  But in the years before I was born, the corporation had lost its way. The animation department, which gave Walt Disney’s company clout with 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, was all but demolished. As Roy Disney, the master’s nephew, delicately stated, mass marketing the characters without creating new animation is like “running a museum.” That just would not do.

Director Don Hahn’s intimate documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty details the company’s decade-long recovery between 1984 and 1994, championed by three executives from Paramount: Michael Eisner, Frank Wells, and Jeffrey Katzenberg.  The trio could not be more different; Eisner is the doughy-faced CEO, Wells the daring man behind the curtain, and Katzenberg plays the self-promoting, tyrant boss. The movie is about what show business does to the egos of ambitious men, but it’s also about the universality of animated features, especially those with music as a core ingredient. It’s a refreshingly honest amalgam of film clips, corporate stock footage, amateur home video, and photographs that reanimate (pun intended) this revolutionary period. There are no talking-head interview shots, only voices echoing over caricatured versions of the company’s leaders, likely sketched by amused employees. We don’t need to see who these executives are now, because this is a story about who they were back then, when everything changed.

The lowest point at Disney came when the studio’s feature The Black Cauldron, which had exceeded its budget by millions, lost at the box office to The Care Bears Movie. The company’s dominant legacy was swiftly fading. Soon after, the bustling animation department received a memo evicting them from the historic building in which the earliest versions of Mickey Mouse, Peter Pan and Sleeping Beauty appeared in graphite strokes. The artists were moved to a shabby fort in Glendale, where they willfully surrendered their jobs in a mock reenactment of Apocalypse Now. The film cherishes the hidden animators of Disney, likening them to Walt himself; they’re children at heart. The craftsmen wear wrinkled t-shirts to the office and throw impromptu margarita parties. You can even spot a recognizably sullen Tim Burton hiding beneath his bushy hair. On the surface their jobs look like a lot of fun, tinkering with models and flipping frame after frame to make sketches come alive. But a closer look reveals that the animators are slaves to their drafting tables, sometimes seven days a week. Their eyes look wearily on as Katzenberg leads a meeting early enough to beat the sunrise. Making magic is a lot of work; many of the artists felt a strain on their marriages and, ironically, a distance from their children. The second Golden Age of Disney animation left a bittersweet toll.

The grown-up in me is a bit disillusioned at the chance to peek inside the magician’s hat; beneath the drawings is a jumble of creative tug-o-wars and public jealousies. After Frank Wells is killed in a helicopter crash, Katzenberg offers himself as a replacement, something both Eisner and Roy Disney disdain. They retaliate at a crew screening by announcing a new multi-million dollar headquarters for the animators. Katzenberg is scorned, knowing nothing about it. It’s strange to watch adult men act like petty boys, but this is the crux of the documentary. The kid in all of us is why these movies are successful in the first place.

Don Hahn discretely narrates from a screenplay (yes a screenplay) written by Patrick Pacheco. After all, this is a movie, released in a surprising twist by the studio itself. Waking Sleeping Beauty is a film as triumphant and tragic as any of Disney’s animated tales. Eisner, Roy, and the artists are a bumbling bunch of heroes and Katzenberg, fairly or unfairly, is the villain. There is tangible drama when members of the Disney family are lost; in addition to Wells, composer Howard Asher succumbs to AIDS before ever seeing Beauty and the Beast completed. In the film’s most heart-breaking moment, it’s revealed that Asher died wearing his purple “Beauty and the Beast” sweatshirt. Even as I write this, I feel a crushing ache in my chest because I realize these men, who I’d never known or even considered before viewing this documentary, loved the Disney movies as much as I did. This leads us to the joy of the film. Floating in the wake of money and business are stories that have saturated our pop culture from vaulted VHS tapes to Broadway shows. Twenty years later, the impact of these films on feature-length animation is still felt in the box office (hello Pixar). As the credits roll, Ariel belts out The Little Mermaid’s anthem “Part of Your World,” a song that was nearly scrapped after a poor test screening. Every lyric remains stamped somewhere deep in the folds of my brain, recalled with a nostalgic ease. In a strange way, I’m grateful for the chance to be part of their world too.

The Making of Pixar's Short Film "Day and Night"

Nominated for Best Animated Short Film in this year's Academy Awards, Pixar's Day and Night played before their other Oscar-nominated film Toy Story 3.  Take a peek!

A Glimpse At the World of Pixar Animation Studios

Courtesy of the New York Times.

And the Winners for the Writers Guild Are...

Aaron Sorkin for his adapted screenplay The Social Network and Christopher Nolan for his original script Inception!

Popular scripts of the season including The King's Speech by David Seidler, Another Year by Mike Leigh, Winter's Bone by Debra Granik and Anne Rossellini, and Toy Story 3 by Michael Arndt were ineligible under guild rules.

This was a particularly exciting recognition for Nolan who has only been nominated for a WGA award for his writing of The Dark Knight but has never won before.  "Nothing is more important than recognition from my peers. There were some notables left off the list this year." Nolan said.  "I'm not going to name them, for fear that it boosts their chances at the other show. (the Oscars) I hope next year the person who stands up here can give thanks without qualification."

Sorkin has been recognized by the Guild many times for his television writing, and even won once for his contribution to The West Wing.  "You can imagine how I feel to get recognition like this," Sorkin said. "I wrote a good screenplay, but David Fincher made a great movie."
  

It's Groundhog Day -- Time to Examine Bill Murray's Plight

Today is February 2nd, more famously known as Groundhog Day, a holiday centered on a critter named Phil who emerges once a year to look for his shadow.  Luckily this year, after a tormenting winter, Phil saw his silhouetted self on the frosty earth and predicted an early Spring.

It's during this same time a year when we recall the film Groundhog Day, directed by Harold Ramis and released in 1993 (has it been that long?).  Many people, including myself, think Bill Murray gives his best performance as a conceited local weatherman sent to Punxsutawney, PA to record the holiday event. 

Murray's character begins to inexplicably relive the day over and over again.  His only escape is to genuinely learn to be honest and selfless.  The movie might be a comedy but it's also one of Murray's more dramatic roles, confronting issues of immortality and living a purposeful life.

Despite several attempts over the years to keep track of just how many days Murray's character Phil spends in the revolving world of Groundhog Day, I have always come up short.  With keen eyes, a handful of extended fingers, and a yellow pad of tally marks, the result may end with a grand total of 38 days.  That we see on screen.  But director Harold Ramis has stated in the past he thinks the time line is upwards of 10 years.

Well, today I have stumbled on the solution or at least a solution. 

That's right Bill.  According to obsessedwithfilm.com Groundhog Day's protagonist probably survived far more than five weeks in the chilly February backdrop.  More like 12, 403 days.  So nearly 34 years!

For an exact and detailed account of just how Phil spent his time in Punxsutawney, click here.

And fingers crossed for that early Spring!