Reading Professional Screenplays

THE PLAYWRITING SEMINARS > FILM > PLAYS vs. FILM > REALITIES > TIPS > HUSTLE > READING

'The longer you're in this [film] business . . . you realize that the end of the first stage is the script, and the minute you take that material to the next stage, you are doing a translation that you have to turn into visuals, and often the visuals afford you great economy; you don't need all those words. The audience gets it.'

-- Joan Tewkesbury

In screenplays, the 'stage directions' -- as theatre folks might call them -- are everything. Here, you're not reading for Voice, but for the sequence of visual images that tell the story. And you need to read slowly enough to allow yourself to see each image, at least in your mind's eye.

But reading screenplays is not as simple as it sounds, simply because they're hard to find.

Book publishers don't think there's much of a market for screenplays and when they occasionally do get published . . . Be Careful. What you'll get is often a "Let's Write Down Everything that Happens in the Film" sort of thing. This usually has little connection to what the screenwriter wrote. And worse, the visual descriptions and indications typical of screenplays are often rewritten in a style resembling low-grade novels. An exception to all of this is CHINATOWN -- it's one of the greats and one of the best models for understanding the story side of this business in its highest form.

The shooting scripts that may find their way to your local library are serviceable for seeing how the pros tell these stories, but they're also misleading about how much of this visual business screenwriters include in first drafts.

The best source right now for American screenplays is Scenario: The Magazine of Screenwriting Art.

Each issue has four screenplays in the draft the screenwriters liked best. There's a mix of current films and less recent 'classics' with author interviews in each issue. Scripts are not printed in Screenplay Format for dialogue, but the rest is close enough for you to catch on to the short-hand of screenwriting. The magazine's expensive, but this is a case where you get much more than you pay for, especially when a current USA subscription averages out to only about $3.75 a script.

You can order subscriptions to Scenario [4 issue -- 16 screenplays -- per year] from the source . . .

Scenario
3200 Tower Oaks Blvd.
Rockville, MD 20852
USA

(800) 222-2654
SCENARIOrc@aol.com

You also need to see a lot of films flickering on the wide screen -- or as wide as they get in your local cineplex. What you get on the Tube with your VCU cranked up is only a meager substitute for the real larger-than-life thing.

And go see at least a few films you'd never tell your friends you're going to. Stanley Kubrick says all there is to say on this . . .

'I was aware that I didn't know anything about making films, but I believed I couldn't make them any worse than the majority of films I was seeing. Bad films gave me the courage to try making a movie.'