Room Service
Poring over* somebody’s screenplay, I’ve realized something: detail is a lost art.
Have you ever read an old-timey screenplay, something from the ’40s or ’50s? The screenplay for Treasure of the Sierra Madre is ridiculously vivid, jammed with visual information and nuance you don’t get in a modern screenplay. I can understand a desire to be concise for the sake of the reader. The most important rule in any kind of writing is to know your audience and cater to them, and the audience for a screenplay is generally “overworked readers who only read the dialogue” and “barely-literate producers who would rather read a two-paragraph synopsis.” However, there’s a big difference between brevity and eliminating necessary details.
For instance, this screenplay opens in an office. The slugline just says INT. OFFICE - DAY, there is a short sentence about a character — who isn’t even given a physical description — sitting at his desk, then dialogue. So what we get from this is (a) the scene takes place in an office, and (b) the character has a desk. Oh, and I mustn’t forget: it’s daytime.
Some might say, “Well, Stan, you dick, offices share a general sameness that is often a topic of stand-up comedy and David Fincher movies.” I hate to whip out my street cred here, but as a veteran of no fewer than 630,000 office jobs, I can tell you: yes, in a very, very, very general sense, offices have a great deal in common. There are still a shitload of important differences, so when you’re forming your mental picture of this office, it’s important to know things: cubicles or no cubicles, gigantic corporate building or one-story shitbox, cluttered with crap or pristine and antiseptic? If you get one idea stuck in your head because there’s no description, it’s jarring to read something later like, “Johnny steps out of his cubicle.” You’re like, “What the fuck? What cubicle?! All it says is he has a desk!”
It’s the same basic problem as the lack of physical description on the character: because there was none, based solely on his dialogue, I imagined the character as Dian Bachar from Orgazmo. So then later, the fact that he’s dumpy and huge becomes a plot point. Tell me that upfront so I’m not baffled.
I will acknowledge that part of this is my fault, because I’m obviously jumping to the wrong conclusions. With nothing to go on, what else am I supposed to do?
What’s wrong with a little bit of description? I’m not talking a Stephen King description that starts with a three-page description of the office, then veers off into a 30-page tangent about a tertiary character’s struggle with alcoholism, then six pages on a figurine somebody keeps on a shelf in the break room. It can be sparse and simple, like An enormous cubicle maze spreads out as far as the eye can see. A little hyperbole doesn’t hurt anyone. JOHNNY, early 30s and enormous, manages to wedge himself into his desk chair, which groans with disapproval. It’s possible a sloppy reader might think this is a talking chair or something, but doesn’t that paint a clear — perhaps redundant — picture of Johnny’s hugeness? If his being fat serves the plot, we need to know. Do we need to know that he’s blond and has a crew cut? No. Do we need to know that I may have unintentionally described Drew Carey? Not unless you’re a casting director.
Even if the type of office we’re in doesn’t strictly matter to the plot, it builds atmosphere. Even if Johnny’s fatness matters for one isolated joke, it’s integral to his character and our vision of him. Envisioning a fat, tall guy instead of a scrawny, tiny guy paints a different picture — while the dialogue doesn’t change, the way we read it does. So what the fuck, writers? Why are you leaving all this shit out? I know you’re told people in “the industry” don’t like to read, but they also don’t like being frustrated.
*Where “poring” means “indifferently skimming between ADD-induced trips to IMDb and YouTube.”
Posted by Stan on April 17, 2008 6:34 PM | Permalink | Career-Based Rambling | Digg It
Post a Comment
Powered by Ajax Comments