Do you speak Archi and is it dialogue?
The Cannes Film Festival ended some weeks ago and one writer/director admired by most of his peers but who always draws controversy with a wider audience, is Quentin Tarantino. Whether you like his work or not he is a true cinema devotée and an incredible craftsman. I just saw the trailer of his new film Once Upon A Time… In Holiywood. The movie promises to be a hilarious celebration of Hollywood by a master filmmaker. Yes, with plenty of violence but, Tarantino’s violence in my view is always in the spirit of a sendup and to make a point. And for a moment of personal pleasure and pride I must mention the success of writer/director and one time student, Anja Murmann. After three showings at the Cannes Festival, this time Anja as producer of the film “Mickey and the Bear,” landed a distributor there. Watch for it later this year
Not at the festival and in stark contrast is a new release The Souvenir, from writer/director Joanna Hogg. A small film coincidentally about a film student and an unsettling gauzy intimacy. Two young people trapped in their interior landscape of folly. On the surface we’ve seen it all before but there’s nothing ordinary about this film which won The Grand Jury prize at Sundance this year.
And now to the BIG question: Do you speak Archi? Is it dialogue?
“You lost me. What?” you say. That’s my point. I want to lose you. When it comes to dialogue many writers seem to have a disconnect between the written word and spoken language. In film, the visual is how audiences experience the story viscerally in time and space, while the words give life to the characters, and are the cognitive undercurrent that drives the story and its progression. Oops! I know, that’s a mouthful!
So let’s look at words…first at some memorable lines from past films…
“Frankly my dear I don’t give a damn.” from Gone with the Wind, perhaps the most famous movie line ever. “You talking to me?” the famous De Niro line from Raging Bull. “Take the gun. Leave the cannoli.” Not sure if that was in The Godfather movies or the book by Mario Puzo; great line all the same. “Why are you trying to fit in when you were born to stand out?” from What a Girl Wants.
With television the exchanges are sometimes acid spiked and delivered at the speed of a ticker tape. Each character spewing their own supremacy over the other. From the series Billions which is packed with dialogue, “And when I win… I will run over you like in Tiananmen Square.” Slicing and dicing skulduggery on every page and entirely fitting to our times where standards of morality and values are in free fall by the minute. They seem so natural, so effortless, yet believe me much time and practice went into each one of those lines.
That said, everyone of you reading this blog can also come up with great lines and good dialogue, it just takes a lot of listening. Staying focused. A lot of making notes…on to the page… not in your head! And… the great master…TIME.
Dialogue is an essential in writing for film. Some material calls for more, some for less. To justify dialogue on a page it must be written in 1. a way that is true to the nature and background of the characters. 2. it must reveal motive and intention and information, that moves the story forward. 3. above all it must be believable. All that so that your audience takes the ride and becomes complicit in the telling.
There are some people who have a natural ear for dialogue and are often the ones drawn to screenwriting. They quickly learn that there is however a lot more to writing a screenplay than good dialogue. Writing a screenplay is to write visually which involves craft. Put very simply, if the visual in your description says, ‘we see a man jumping off the roof of a building, you don’t follow it with your character saying, “Oh my God he’s jumping off the roof.” Why? Because you SEE a man jumping off the roof. Your character might just say, “Oh my God call 911.” Sort of bland. Or, say nothing then to reveal more of the character, in the subsequent scene you might have her/him standing on the sidewalk, shaking, talking to the police, saying, “I saw it…yes my God i saw him jump.”
It’s like the tango. One leads the other and sometimes it is the other that leads, but all the while there is always the dance between the visual and dialogue. Key word…SPOKEN, not in description, or, “he thinks this or that” but spoken. Everything I’m saying here may seem so basic to some, yet in my experience more often than not, budding screenwriters have a hard time with dialogue.
I love this exchange. Joan Crawford, who on a grocery store line was asked, “Miss Crawford why don’t you ever play the girl next door?” To which she answered, “My dear, if people wanted to see the girl next door, they’d go next door.” Not in a movie but should be. Write it down immediately. Capture it exactly as you hear it. The cadence, the exact arrangement and choice of words. Don’t rely on your memory. Think of words like paint on canvas. At times with bold outlines or striking, in vivid colors or soft lyrical pastels. Your characters are refined like in a Botticelli or simple and direct like in a Haitian primitive painting. Or complicated like in a Pollock.
A useful exercise i like, is one I adapted from my days as an actor. Take an ordinary phrase and write it in four different ways. Toss them off, don’t think too much.
Christ I’m hungry and there’s no EXIT for another thirty miles. (sort of straightforward)
I wonder how far it is to the next EXIT. (a character who is proper and polite)
Why the heck did you leave the f*ing banana in the refrigerator. (aggressive character)
Mmmm baby I’ve got a rumble down there and its aching for some fooood. (slinky, sensual character)
You need to play with everything you write. You need to relish writing, taste it. Don’t avoid profanity if it’s true to character. Notable, as I remember, in the 2001 epic 16 hour TV series Band of Brothers, about paratroopers in combat in the unimaginable hell of war, and yet the ‘f’ word was not used once. Sixteen hours! It’s unfortunate that times have changed but I urge you (my preference) just don’t overdo it.
OK so now let’s talk about two people in ordinary conversation. Here we want it to be true to each character, have an emotionally believable dynamic between them, and as well convey information necessary for the progression of the story.. Here’s a bit from one of my own scripts.
Two men, we’ll leave them nameless and not written in film form for the example:
MAN 1 - Yup I lived in Greenwich Village when art had more value than real-estate.
MAN 2 - Man way before I moved here.
MAN 1 - (chuckles, leans back) Emilio’s. Great place. A bar. Restaurant too. But the draw was the long bar and the big open fenced yard in back. Pebbles. Yea…(deep inhale then exhaling the memory) …metal tables and chairs. A few long wooden ones. Nothing fancy but away from city noise. Fresher air. Never packed.
MAN 2 - Where was it?
MAN 1 - Just past Waverly on Sixth. Now it’s mostly tattoo places. The playground across Sixth is still there. Great games. Heck, better than the Garden sometimes.
A believable exchange. Evokes a sense of place and time. Reveals information and is in character.
Then this I just came up with:
STEVE - (in tennis garb, all sweaty) Where’s the alarm clock?
CAMI - He’s sleeping.
STEVE - (at the coffee pot) Shit he sleeps all day.
CAMI - Oh come on Steve! Pour me a cup too would you.
STEVE - Yea but he wakes up at 5 in the friggin’ morning and bangs around the house like it was his.
CAMI - So talk to him.
STEVE - Hell he’s your brother. You talk to him.
If you internalize your characters the easier it becomes. Your characters will start speaking to you.
Screenwriting calls for choices at every turn because you are looking for the distilled essence all the time. The concentrate. The extract. Perfume in contrast to cologne.
And I can’t say this too often, creativity cannot flourish in a vacuum. So go out and find ways to be stimulated. Not just movies. Go to the theater, to art exhibits, go with a friend and spend an afternoon in a grungy bar, or in a children’s park and watch the interactions between the kids and the grown-ups too. And just as you go to the gym three times a week, read the newspaper three times a week or better, every day. They’re a never ending a source of ideas.
Back to Cannes for one last mention. Real talent does not fade with years. The writer/director Claude Lelouch’s new film, The Best Years of a Life with Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant. A reuniting of three major talents. Lelouch’s A Man and A Woman won the Oscar for best foreign film that year. I saw it when I was very young and loved it. Perhaps his new film won’t match up to it but I am struck by the generosity of the creative spirit that keeps on giving.
I leave you now with something David Mamet said “Storytelling is like sex. We all do it naturally. Some of us are better at it than others.” I’d like to add that each one of us can get ‘better’… at screenwriting.
Without adding innuendo, if you have enough passion it’s all there, you just have to lift the lid.
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See you next time!