Four Screenplays: Studies in the American Screenplay: Thelma & Louise, Terminator 2, The Silence of the Lambs, and Dances with Wolves - Softcover

Field, Syd

 
9780440504900: Four Screenplays: Studies in the American Screenplay: Thelma & Louise, Terminator 2, The Silence of the Lambs, and Dances with Wolves
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0440504902 ISBN 13: 9780440504900
Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 1994

Inhaltsangabe

Yes, you can write a great screenplay. Let Syd Field show you how.

“I based Like Water for Chocolate on what I learned in Syd's books. Before, I always felt structure imprisoned me, but what I learned was structure really freed me to focus on the story.”—Laura Esquivel

Technology is transforming the art and craft of screenwriting. How does the writer find new ways to tell a story with pictures, to create a truly outstanding film? Syd Field shows what works, why, and how in four extraordinary films: Thelma & Louise, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, The Silence of the Lambs, and Dances with Wolves.

Learn how:

Callie Khouri, in her first movie script, Thelma & Louise, rewrote the rules for good road movies and played against type to create a new American classic.
James Cameron, writer/director of Terminator 2: Judgement Day, created a sequel integrating spectacular special effects and a story line that transformed the Terminator, the quintessential killing machine, into a sympathetic character. This is how an action film is written.
Ted Tally adapted Thomas Harris's chilling 350-page novel, The Silence of the Lambs, into a riveting 120-page script—a lesson in the art and craft of adapting novels into film.
Michael Blake, author of Dances with Wolves, achieved every writer's dream as he translated his novel into an uncompromising film. Learn how he used transformation as a spiritual dynamic in this work of mythic sweep.

Informative and utterly engrossing, Four Screenplays belongs in every writer's library, next to Syn Field's highly acclaimed companion volumes, Screenplay, The Screenwriter's Workbook, and Selling a Screenplay.

“If I were writing screenplays . . . I would carry Syd Field around in my back pocket wherever I went.”—Steven Bochco, writer/producer/director, L.A. Law, Hill Street Blues

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Syd Field (1935–2013), the internationally renowned “guru of screenwriting,” was the author of eight bestselling books on the subject, including Screenplay, published in twenty-three languages and used in hundreds of colleges and universities nationwide and around the world. He was inducted into the Final Draft Hall of Fame in 2006 and was the first inductee into the Screenwriting Hall of Fame of the American Screenwriting Association. He was also a special consultant to the Film Preservation Project for the Getty Center.

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In a field being transformed by technology, Syd Field shows you what works and why and how to find new ways to create a truly outstanding film using four extraordinary examples: "Thelma & Louise, "Terminator 2: Judgement Day, "The Silence Of The Lambs, and "Dances With Wolves.

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Chapter One



The Phenomenon of Thelma and Louise:

Callie Khouri

When Thelma and Louise was first released in the spring of 1991, I
was conducting a screenwriting workshop for Austrian filmmakers in
Vienna, a city of great beauty and culture, the home of Mozart,
Beethoven, Goethe, Schiller, Strauss, Mahler, and Freud, to name just
a few, and more recently, the homeland of Billy Wilder and Arnold
Schwarzenegger.

That spring MGM was in financial turmoil and executive chaos, and it
was possible that many films that were on the verge of release might
be locked up in legal limbo until the traumatic events could play
themselves out.

One of the films that was affected was a moderately budgeted film
called Thelma and Louise, starring Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis,
written by Callie Khouri, and directed by Ridley Scott, director of
such highly stylized films as Blade Runner, Black Rain, and Aliens.

But after the legal hassles had been somewhat resolved and the film
finally opened, everybody in the Austrian film industry was talking
about Thelma and Louise. Word of mouth spread very quickly, and I was
asked a million questions about it. I simply attributed the hype to
Hollywood and promptly forgot about it.

When I returned home several weeks later, people were still talking
about Thelma and Louise, and it continued to be the subject of
discussion and debate. It even made the cover of Time. I didn't know
what the film was about, but it seemed everybody had an opinion about
it, and nobody agreed about anything. I liked that.

So I finally went to see Thelma and Louise. I had no idea what to
expect, so I put all my expectations on the seat beside me and spent
the first ten minutes thoroughly enjoying myself. I thought it was a
comedy.

Then came the scene with Harlan in the parking lot. He has Thelma
spread out against a car, and he's going to rape her. It's starting
to turn ugly. He shoves her face down on the hood of a car, spreads
her legs open, shoves her dress roughly above her hips, and starts
ripping her panties. Wait a minute, I thought, this is getting
serious. I thought it was a comedy, and now this is happening.

When Louise comes out, gun in hand, and forces Harlan to stop, I was
on the edge of my seat. And when she actually blows him away, shoots
him in the chest, I was shocked.

As that green '66 T–Bird barrels out of the parking lot, I didn't
know what to expect. I was set up to watch a comedy, and now this
happens. But the great thing was that it worked! This film literally
grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and forced my attention to be
focused on the screen.

Suddenly I understood what everybody had been talking about. This
film was fresh and funny, the relationships insightful, the humor
laced believably through the dramatic situation. Every moment took me
deeper and deeper into the characters and story. I experienced the
film scene by scene by scene, and I trusted the screenwriter and
director to take me where they wanted me to go—the ending.

I don't see too many films like that.

As the film progressed, I still thought it was a comedy, and it took
me a while to realize that these two women had committed a murder,
and somehow they were going to have to deal with the consequences of
their actions.

How is this movie going to end? I asked myself. I can usually spot
the ending within the first few minutes, but in Thelma and Louise I
didn't have a clue. It was only when Hal climbed into the police
helicopter to join the chase that I knew how it was going to end. I
knew they were going to die; I didn't know how it would happen, but I
knew I didn't want it to happen. I wanted them to live. Somehow.

But I had to let go of my last shreds of hope as the two women said
their good–byes on the lip of the Grand Canyon with a wall of police
cars behind them. Only when Louise floored it and they sailed out
over the eternity that is the Grand Canyon did I breathe easily. It
worked. The whole film worked.

Over the next few days I kept thinking about the film. Moments of
their relationship, the rape sequence, the truck driver sequence,
little bits and pieces of visual memories flooded through me and kept
replaying themselves in my head.

The more I thought about the film, the more I liked it. It was a
script worth reading and studying, so when I decided to write this
book, one of the first films I chose was Thelma and Louise.

At the Time I was working with Roland Joffe (director of The Killing
Fields and The Mission) on City of Joy (Mark Medoff), and one day
when I was in the office, I saw a copy of the script of Thelma and
Louise.

I found that it was a great read. From the very first page it had a
strong visual style; it was truly a story told with pictures. It
didn't matter to me whether there were unrealistic moments in the
screenplay. You always have to suspend your disbelief when you read a
script or see a movie. You must try to accept any story for what it
is, regardless of whether it coincides with reality as you perceive
it. When the unbelievability of the story punctures the willingness
of your belief, the film doesn't work for you.

Who was this Callie Khouri person who had written this screenplay? I
had never heard of her before, but I did manage to get hold of a
videotape from a Writers Guild question–and–answer session with
Callie Khouri, and the producer, Mimi Polk, and some of the
production team. Callie Khouri was bright and articulate, and when
she started talking about the film I was impressed by the way she
spoke about her characters.

It was hard for me to believe that this was her first screenplay; to
be this good she must have had some writing experience. You just
don't sit down and write this kind of screenplay.

When I started telling people that I was writing about Thelma and
Louise, some of my writer friends went nuts. "The characters are
stereotypes," said one. "It's antimen," said another. "I can't
believe the relationship between the two women," said another. "She
didn't have to kill him," the wife of a writer friend told me. "There
were other ways she could have gotten out of that situation," she
said. Everyone had an opinion. Even my aunt, an elderly woman who
never goes to movies, went to see it. Somehow Thelma and Louise hit a
common chord and jangled people's emotions. What was it that sparked
so much emotion?

I did a little research. I went to the Academy of Motion Pictures
Arts and Sciences Library and pulled out the review files of Thelma
and Louise.

I was astonished.

It was classified "a crime movie of a different stripe," with headlines like "Desperadas," or "Girls just wanna have guns," and there were statements and judgments about two "strong women who have struck out on their own in a world of men who are either pigs or hapless creatures who try to help and can't." It was labeled an "unabashedly feminist script" with "an explicit fascist theme," and it seemed to represent some kind of focal point in the "battle between the sexes."

It was branded a "pathetic stereotype of testosterone–crazed
behavior," yet the movie launched a fashion spin–off on blouses and
jeans that seemed to become a comment...

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Verlag
Random House Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
1994
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0440504902
ISBN 13 
9780440504900
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
336
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