Just Effing Entertain Me

Rouge Wave Pinch Hitter

Hello Wavers. My good friend Bob Schultz of The Great American Pitch Fest is filling in for the Wave-inatrix today so we can keep good content on the Rouge Wave while I recover from and deal with my family emergency. God bless his cotton socks. So, here’s Bob -

(WARNING: The following contains possible spoilers for “There Will Be Blood.” If you haven’t seen it yet, what are you waiting for? Go! Now! We’ll wait.)

It’s my choice for the best film of 2007, but Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” has only made around $31 million at the box office, far from a blockbuster. Yet somehow, the dialogue from Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) to poor, devastated Eli (Paul Dano) at the end of the movie has launched itself into the zeitgeist. T-shirts, websites, articles, and blogs have all been created to pay tribute to this line:

DANIEL PLAINVIEW
I drink your milkshake.

On the page, it doesn’t look like much. Taken on its own, who among us would rank it on the same level as “Live long and prosper,” or “Here’s looking at you, Kid,” or “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night?” Who among us at The Script Department would have given note on this script, seen this line, and written, “Amazing. This is going to blow up all over the place!”?

And yet it has.

On Super Tuesday, political supporters of all stripes were electrified, advocating for their candidates, getting out the word, pounding the pavement to get out the vote. As clichéd as it sounds, this was America at its best. Millions of people, proud believers of what they could accomplish, focusing on potentially the most important and historic time of their lives.

As the results started to roll in, with Senator Barack Obama winning and winning and winning again, an electric charge crackled through the hotel bar where I was watching results come in. The crowd kept getting louder and louder, more excited to hear about the latest upset victory. Then, from a horseshoe booth at the back of the room, lubricated by several beers, a man’s baritone boomed out:

“I drink your delegates, Hillary!” After a long sluuurping noise, he belted out, “I drink them up!”

The whole room – old, young, Republican, Democrat, you name it – burst out laughing, despite the fair (but not amazing) box office numbers.

Had I written that script, that moment would have been the zenith in my career. Regardless of box office success, overhearing my own dialogue quoted by a stranger would be the ultimate measuring stick of my success: My words affected people to such a degree that they spread into parts of the culture unrelated to my movie. In essence, like Plainview’s straw, Paul Thomas Anderson’s words reached all the way across the room and took over. DRAINAGE!

How about you? Would you be satisfied with modest success from the perspective of audience size, if it meant a place in the national lexicon? Would you be willing to trade the dream of box office treasure for a place in etymological history?

Bob Schultz is a screenwriter, and Executive Director of The Great American Pitchfest. Click hereto learn more about the Pitchfest or email Bob.

Rejoinder: Dialogue SHOULD be that good

Rouge Waver LaFemmeAnkita offered a fantastic, informed rejoinder to my Rouge Wave post about annoyingly good dialogue on her blog. Check it out, it’s a great read and she makes wonderful points. I love a good rejoinder.

Can Dialogue be TOO Good?

I was listening to a review of JUNO on NPR and one of the commentators said something interesting. She said that the dialogue in JUNO was so hip and witty that it felt inorganic, like a writer’s conceit of a character – not a real character. The commentator went on to give the movie a great review but her comment on overly-witty, self-conscious dialogue was first and foremost. Having just seen JUNO, I would have to agree, sort of. But the movie is so crazy-fabulous that Ellen Page’s impossibly amazing performance as a sixteen-year old with the vocabulary and thought-processes of a thirty year old wins a viewer over as the conceit of this movie. But I digress.

My daughter used to watch The Gilmore Girls. And that show drove me nuts for the same reason. Amy Sherman-Palladino is a gifted woman, there’s no doubt about that, and the show definitely took a turn for the worse when she moved on from the show – but during her tenure, I often cringed at the dialogue. Not because it was bad – it was so good – uber good, creepy good, resentfulness-inducing good – because nobody can be that witty all the damn time!

In The Gilmore Girls, every character was super witty and smart – all the bloody time. And worse – ultimately every character had the same voice – presumably, Palladino’s. So there was a grating sameness to the dialogue in the show and worse, a gratingly high level of witty! sharp! clever! Dialogue. In every. Damn. Scene. At least JUNO was limited to one story. Not thirty episodes a year for seven damn years. I may have those numbers wrong – but I don’t care! Self-conscious dialogue in which the character is clearly the writer’s alter-ego is grating.

When you watch a movie or a television show and literally every cast member is cooler and smarter than you – if they never stumble over their words, if they don’t say the wrong thing or the less-than-brilliant thing – it can distance a viewer from the material.

An extreme example of idiosyncratic dialogue strongly reflective of the writer’s voice is of course David Mamet’s dialogue. His trademark is herky-jerky, hiccupy dialogue. And when you watch a Mamet movie you just settle in for that experience because that’s the way it is and that’s what you signed up for and there you go. But that’s David Mamet. And surely – Palladino was quite successful so in a sense, my argument becomes just a personal rant. Or does it? Can dialogue be too good? Inorganically good?

If you are writing stylized dialogue as an affection of your story, as literally part of the delivery system, I give my stamp of approval – that’s very clever. But if you really want the story to be front and center, remember to watch out for dialogue that is too self-conscious.

Listen to how actual people talk, the next time you’re out. The silences in-between the words can mean more than the words themselves. Or sometimes the words can weigh a ton. This, overheard from a Wave-inatrix neighbor just the other day: Let’s have brunch at that place, remember that place? Yeah. And it’s in the ‘hood so it will be funny!

The Wave-inatrix was agape. What did it mean? These are nice neighbors. Gak.

Bad dialogue speaks for itself. (Ha). It is monochromatic, bland, on-the-nose and stilted. All the characters sound the same – like the writer, more or less. Characters sound either totally homogeneous or like stereotypes. There is no nuance or subtext to what they say.

Good dialogue is snappy, real-sounding, organic and specific to each character.

Great dialogue is all of the above and reveals everything you’ll ever need to know about that character; their world view, prejudices, social class and belief system. It will be idiosyncratic but imperfect. They won’t always say the right thing. And sometimes characters are silent.

In 3:10 to YUMA which was hands down one of my two favorite movies of 2007 (the other being JUNO so go figure) Christian Bale whispers one of the most memorable pieces of dialogue I have ever heard in my life. And he’s upset and he’s scared and what he says is so utterly courageous and heartbreaking at the same time that the scene moved me to tears.

Semantics is a Bitch

I’m no Betty Friedan or Germaine Greer but I feel I owe powerful, intelligent women a debt. Women like the aforementioned. Women like Susan Sontag, Madame Curie, George Sand, Susan B. Anthony, Madonna, Oprah Winfrey, Naomi Wolf, Hilary Clinton, Helen Keller – oh I must stop now because I’ll offend someone, somehow with an inclusion or exclusion but you get my drift. In a world where the bodies of 40 women were recently found on the outskirts of Baghdad, in a ditch, with notes on their mutilated bodies explaining that they met their deaths for not wearing proper headscarves, powerful, influential trailblazers who just happen to be women pave the way for a better world.

When I was a kid, a bitch was a nasty, unpleasant woman. It was a pretty dirty word. It was also a female dog and that was the only way we kids could attempt snickering subterfuge. But today bitch has taken on a hyper ugly meaning of subjugation. Men can be bitches. Anyone can be a byotch, the ha-ha internet-censorship-free version of bitch which has taken on a life of its own.

I hear the word bitch used almost daily by Jon Stewart, by friends, by my daughter to her friends, on the radio – seemingly everywhere. One of my friends said it to me the other day on the phone and we both laughed an uneasy laugh before it trailed off into discomfort. I wonder – how have we come to this? How have we come to tolerate a word that could not possibly embody a deeper, uglier belief about the way in which women are esteemed in this world? We can have women senators and judges and television anchors but at the end of the day, in jest which burns in acidic truth – they’re just bitches and Jennifer Love Hewitt, all (I’m guessing) a hundred eighteen pounds of her – has a fat ass.

Bitch is a lose-lose word. To call a man a bitch is to say he is being either snippy, needy or hysterical OR that the bitch label recipient is in some way owned by the speaker in the most final, definitive way possible. She’s my bitch. Where’s my beer – bitch? I slapped that bitch. That’s what I said – bitch.

The use of bitch with this new, more keen, deeply misogynistic twist of total subjugation seems to have emerged from rap music. Nobody shoot me – that’s just my anecdotal observation. And no, it’s not pc. The Wave-inatrix, with her playful moniker which connotes domination knows that Rouge Wavers are smart enough to know that this is playful nickname that stuck and bears no relationship to my views or demeanor. So no pot calling kettle black comments about hair-splitting semantics, please. This discussion is important.

Regardless of the derivation of this new usage, I do wonder – is this okay, this new use of bitch? What does it say about us as a society? Do we accept a word as a joke but overlook it’s deeper meaning because that’s being over-analytical? Or is this something we should be paying attention to?

To paraphrase George Orwell, who understood deeply that language matters, it is my opinion that the use of the word bitch is double-plus ungood.

Don’t Throw it Away

One would think that a “throw away” is a small joke or just a line of dialogue that is completely disposable. But nothing in your script should be disposable. Every word is there for a reason. Every. Word. Does your character crack a little joke on their way out the door? Then make it funny, make it memorable and make it matter. What do I mean by make it matter? Make it connect to the DNA of your script – the theme.

Learn to recognize a throw away and learn to walk away from them without emotion. Soon, as your experience as a writer grows, you’ll learn the difference between a sly witticism, a clever remark or pithily profound statement that is deeply connected to the theme of your story – and a fluffy throw away that may or may not be funny or meaningful whatsoever. If you swatted a fly over that line of dialogue, unless it was BRAZIL, would it matter?

Check out these movie bon mots – do you recognize their source? Sure you do. Because they are memorable.

…we’re gonna need a bigger boat.

…I’ll have what she’s having.

…I’ve been slimed.

….Here’s Johnny!

….the shoe! the shoe!

…well, snap out of it!

…I like to watch.

…Attica! Attica!

The first Rouge Waver to identify the source of all eight examples wins a free cupcake. I really mean it this time. You have to live in LA and you have to take me with you but we’ll go have a cupcake and come up with some sugar-induced zingers.

Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? Great.

By Andrew Zinnes

Irascible. It’s a great word. Easily provoked to anger. Testy. Touchy. Short-tempered. I can get down with irascible for as I mentioned in my The Waiting is the Hardest Part blog, I’m an Aries and patience, well, that virtue never made it to my brain.

Irascible. It’s what my uncle would’ve called a $20 word. As in “that word cost $20 of your education!” It’s a big word; a word that someone who knows words would use. Someone like a writer.

I’m only getting on this soapbox because I just put down a screenplay that had so many $20 words in it I thought it was either the author trying to show us how smart he is or reminding us of sure fire winners in Scrabble. My guess is that it was the former. Irascible was the one that stuck out the most to me because that’s how I felt after I read it.

But here’s the problem – humans rarely use a word like that in everyday speech. In fact, if you listen to a normal conversation between two people most of the words would either be one or two syllables in length. It is only when we are being expository like giving directions or discussing something incredibly specific that we start to crank out the dictionary and thesaurus. And since the best dialogue sounds as if it is coming from a live human being, the words that your characters should use should mostly contain one and two syllable words. It’s been said that most screenplays are written on a 5th grade reading level and this is exactly why.

Now you can throw a big word in there every now and again, but as in real life, when someone goes for the $20 word, those listening remark on it in some way. For example, take THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION. There is a moment when Andy DuFresne learns that there is evidence that supports his innocence claim and he tells the warden about it. The warder shines him on stating there’s no point in checking – it’s a waste of time. Andy calls the warden “obtuse” and gets thrown in the hole for two months to think about his impertinence. At the halfway point of his sentence, the warden comes into the hole to tell Andy that his young protégé has been killed and that the scams will continue or else Andy will have all his privileges revoked. “Are you getting my drift? Or am I being obtuse?” the warden smugly replies. He’s thrown the big word back in Andy’s face because he wants him to know he’s just as smart as Mr. Dufrense – and it works brilliantly.

Please remember, I am not advocating dumbing down your screenplay in terms of plot or character development. I am merely saying that much can be done to convey intelligence through the reality of who we are.

All of this reminds me of the best exercise I ever had in film school. We were told to go to a local café and eavesdrop on others’ conversations. You learn tons about vocabulary, slang, intonation and subtext doing that. You also learn how freaky people are – including yourself. Try it, but don’t get sanctimonious or pietistic doing it.

Hey!

Has anybody else noticed that over the past few years, “hey” has become the new “hello” or “hi”?

Think about it. When was the last time you said “hello”? Maybe when you answer the phone? Do you say “hi”? Or “hello”? How about “howdy?” Or are you a “hey”-er?

The way we speak to each other changes all the time. Remember when you said “groovy” and it wasn’t retro to say it? If you can’t remember, you’re just too durn young. How about “rad”? or “wicked”? Or “dope”?

Start paying attention to the language used all around you every day. How you greet and are greeted. Do you say “good night” to your beloved or do you simply say “’night”?

How do your characters greet each other? Do they use a greeting at all or launch into a tirade?

Hello, good morning, how are you? Good evening, good afternoon, pleased to meet you?

How about goodbye? Later, goodbye, bye, see ya, until we meet again?

The Wave-inatrix has noticed a new trend and that is that when one wishes to acknowledge that something is self evident, one says “I know, right?” I hear it constantly and yes, I have begun to say it myself.

Slang, colloquialisms, dialects and speech patterns can be trendy and/or tied to current events. William Safire writes a wonderful weekly column in the New York Times Magazine on this very topic.

Be aware of your speech patterns – hey versus hello, ‘night versus goodnight, cool versus dope, etc. These word choices that you make are dependent upon a lot of things: how old you are, where you are from, the fact that it is 2007, and the situation you are in. For example, you probably won’t say “hey” to your grandmother. The Stanford educated lawyer you just hired, even though he’s all of 26, probably doesn’t say “wow, that’s so dope that the client settled!” – it would be situationally inappropriate.

How about f*ck yeah! Versus heck yeah! Depends on who is in the room when you make that choice, doesn’t it? And can you picture a 38 year old RN and mother of two saying that? Maybe. That would make her pretty interesting, wouldn’t it?

So when you write dialogue for your characters, take the same types of things into consideration:

Age
Gender
Provenance
Education
Time period
Situation

Another Great Question

Our very own Rouge Waver of the Month, Geena writes:

…of the five areas Premise, Structure, Storyline, Character, Dialogue, which do you think is the biggest shortcoming for a new screenwriter? I’ll guess and say storyline – structure. I think most of us come up with a decent ideas, then fail getting substance and flow to our stories.

Actually, Geena, total newbie writers tend to fall down in both areas and primarily in premise. Most new writers do not have the tools to test whether their premise is unique, original, compelling entertainment. Well – let me rephrase that – they either don’t have the tools to test the premise or they just can’t imagine that their idea would NOT be entertaining to someone else. So you get these self-referential, navel-gazing stories about coming of age or partying or the girl who falls for the rock star.

Most premises from new writers are too small and too “soft”. Remember, last week when I included two “vague dramas” in what I had read that week? I see TONS of those. Just sort of soft, vague stories with few exciting or memorable moments because the whole idea is just not that compelling. It’s not enough to sustain a three-act feature film. Writers get an idea that is actually more a situation than a premise which suggests enough entertaining conflict to draw out over 100+ pages. And it follows that if your premise is weak, no structure in the world can save it.

Geena had another question:

…also I come across mixed comments on dialogue. The keep it four lines max [rule]. But then folks who want the whole grammatical sentence in there, like ” I am never going to return to that cave again”, and I get jumped for this “Not going back –” as being on the nose.

I’ve never heard specifically to limit dialogue to four lines but yes, you do want to avoid big chunks of dialogue. It gets tedious to read, it loses that kinetic quality of the cinema and it can also be an exposition trap for the writer. As for full, grammatical sentences – that sounds crazy to me. The character should speak in the way that is totally natural and organic for them! Just bear in mind that writers, especially screenwriters, are always looking for the perfect mixture of economy and impact – whether that’s in dialogue, action lines or anywhere else.

Emphasizing Words

Should you underline, italicize or all-cap words for emphasis within dialogue?

Sparingly, sure. A reader is not going to have a fit if you underline or italicize a word to place emphasis on it. And sometimes, it’s hard to avoid. Writers know that focusing on a particular word in a sentence can change the meaning entirely.

Harriet: Marcus, it’s time that you knew, this is not your child!

She holds out a freakish creature, wrapped in a blanket.

***

Harriet: Marcus, it’s time you that knew, this is not your child!

She beckons Marcus’ brother Cedrick to step forward.

***

Harriet: Marcus, it’s time you know, this is not your child!

She points to the baby in the stroller nearby.

***

We have talked before about ALL-CAPPING words for emphasis and we know that can be very effective in action lines. But in dialogue, use an all-cap emphasis extremely rarely. Here is an example with no emphasis, an italicized word and an all-cap. Each one has a slightly different intonation.

Lawrence: Deirdre, I am on fire tonight!

Lawrence: Deirdre, I am on fire tonight!

Lawrence: Deirdre, I am on FIRE tonight!

Place emphasis on words in your dialogue is all right here and there. Sparingly. It is not absolutely verboten, which is the misconception most writers labor under. But do take it easy. Don’t lean on it. Write your scenes with such clarity of context that there would never be a doubt as to whether Lawrence is aflame and in need of medical attention or whether he was aflame with desire.

Words are like musical notes, we use hyphens, ellipses, italics, underlines or all-caps to direct the eye and the attention to where we want it. Used sparingly, it’s no problem for a reader. It just might help you make your point in a funnier, scarier or more urgent way.

Over use of any of these condiments will absolutely mark you as an amateur though. Do not use more than one per page for dialogue and no more than two or three per page in your action lines. That’s not a hard-and-fast rule, there is no Reader Issue Word Emphasis-o-Meter, but writers, particularly less experienced ones, should be quite judicious with this.

I recently read a script by a very good writer who had a PEASANT CLANG a large BELL loudly THREE TIMES until the SOLDIERS arrived along with the GENERAL and just as he arrived a SPEAR hit the dirt in front of him, all turned and the WARRIOR KING stood PROUDLY.

Lemme tell ya – it’s exhausting and it makes you look like you’re shouting. And as a reader, all I am seeing is the all-capped words. It’s like playing Wheel of Fortune instead of staying with the action.

How to Indicate Another Language

What if you have a character who speaks another language entirely? Do you need to indicate that every time they speak, subtitles will be necessary? Well, yes. Sort of. How you indicate this is key, however.

I have seen writers do this:

Howard and Rolfe punt across the river. Rolfe speaks Russian.

Rolfe (In Russian)
I’m beginning to regret this vacation.

All right. Not only have you annoyed your reader mightily very quickly (and imagine, Rouge Wavers, this method of indicating Rolfe’s language extending the length of a script) you are also being redundant and using up precious space. This is not the way to indicate that Rolfe speaks Russian. Also, if your script is being considered here in the US, it’s a given that it’s written in English and that all characters speak English. So you don’t need to indicate that Howard speaks English – of course he does. But we do have the problem of Rolfe.

Here’s how you approach that. The very first time we meet Rolfe, describe him as you normally would a new character but note that he speaks a different language.

ROLFE, (20) muscular with Slavic features and a Faberge egg tattoo on his right forearm, speaks only Russian.

Howard: You want to go rowing?

BUT what if Howard is English but speaks and understands Russian? Well, that’s simple. You can do one of two things:

Rolfe: (in Russian) I have a great fear of drowning.

Howard: No worries, dear boy. I’m a certified punter. I’ve never lost a tourist yet.

You see? It’s clear that Howard understood Rolfe judging by his answer.
Here’s another way:

Rolfe: (in Russian) You don’t understand – I have nightmares about Virginia Woolfe!

Howard: (in Russian) I said it’s almost tea time, don’t you think?