I’d like to declare a SCREENWRITING STATE OF EMERGENCY!
The year’s not quite over, but with all the scripts I’ve read so far, and believe me, I could build a fortress with all the scripts I’ve read, I’ve concluded that there’s an epidemic crisis in screenwriting today - LACK OF TENSION! Good ahead and laugh! The sad part is - I’m not even kidding. No one seems to care about it, or try to master it, or effectively use it in little genres like THRILLERS. I am so sick and tired of reading scripts, not just amateurs but pros as well, that fail to foster all the hair-raising, nerve-frazzling, unbearable tension I love.
Consider this. It’s an opening sequence to a classic movie from the late seventies, which you haven’t seen. That’s right. I guarantee that you have not seen this classic movie. Okay? Here’s the opening sequence in the film as described by the screenwriter:
A man sits in a car holding a bouquet of chrysanthemums. It’s evening, getting dark and raining. The car is a Humber Hawk and it’s parked on a cobblestone service road, next to a high brick wall. The man with the mums is listening to a voice we can’t quite make out. It could be the car radio, but his ear is cocked slightly toward the flowers.
The camera moves toward the windshield, descending slightly as it dollies forward peering into the car, about to show us what the man is doing with those mums. But when the camera arrives at the car, it surprises us, and further piques our interest, by panning off the windshield, over the wet cobblestone road, toward the brick wall. As the camera climbs the rough red bricks, going steadily higher, inducing dizziness in the viewer, the voice we’ve been hearing becomes clearer, as if the camera were hunting it. It’s an angry voice, an upper-class Oxbridge accent. “I’m here… hurry on now… can you hear? I said, I’m here.” When the camera is at the top, and before its descent, we get a glimpse of the surroundings on both sides of the wall. But instead of clarifying, it only serves to tease us more. In our one glance, from this height, we can see that inside the wall is a prison. There’s a tower, a few searchlights, and rude-looking cell blocks. On the outside, beyond the service road, we glimpse another large institution and a sign that says “Hammersmith Hospital.” But before we know what to make of that, the camera, our guide, moves down the wall toward the voice.
Inside, a tall, imperious man, dressed in prison garb, is huddled against a wall avoiding the lights and speaking urgently into a primitive walkie-talkie. “I’m here, damn it. I’m here. Now move.” The camera cuts to the outside (the very first cut in the scene) to the interior of the car. The driver speaks soothingly into his flowers. “That’s right then, I’m here. You’ll be fine… stay calm.” He starts to get out of the car, but his eyes register surprise and he stops talking. Across the service road, another car has parked and its headlights have gone off. There’s a young couple in the front, and they’re embracing feverishly. The man in the Humber Hawk mutters “Damn…” into his flowers and the voice from the other side, desperate now, says, “What is it? What’s the matter?”
“It’s bloody lovers’ lane.” He silences his flowers and then flashes his headlights at the second car, leering at the couple. They pull apart quickly, frightened by the light. The woman averts her eyes and her thwarted lover scowls and drives away. The mums are turned on again and a torrent of abuse comes from inside the prison. “Where the bloody hell are you..? You’ve bollixed it. You bloody Irish ass. I’m not going back. I’m not. I’m not going back.”
That’s all he says in his book. But I’ve read his script, too, and there’s more to this opening sequence. Man gets out of the car, turns off the flower-mic-thingee, and gets out a rope ladder. Headlights illuminate his boot as an old car approaches him. Inside’s an elderly couple. The woman leans across her driver husband and asks for directions. He answers. She can’t hear him. He repeats himself. Then there’s a question about where to park. Inside the prison, a movie’s about to finish and guards and prisoners will be entering the compound any minute. The prisoner’s getting frantic, yelling for the ladder. Outside, the elderly woman notices the flowers and wants details. Where did he buy them? Then she talks about her daughter-in-law whose liver is shot to hell. Inside, the prisoner is practically screaming for the ladder. There’s movement. They’re about to come out. Outside, not only is the couple still talking, but the man notices that there’s also a shift change at the hospital next door and more people are coming out into the street. Finally, the couple leaves. Rope ladder is thrown. The prisoner hurries over the wall just barely making it before getting caught but falls as he comes down and severely hurts himself.
TENSION, BABY!
Of this film and its screenwriter, well, I’ll let him explain it to you:
It could only be Hitchcock. Daring, outrageous, and complicated. Several things are happening at once, each component of the scene both clear and mysterious. It’s what Hitchcock liked to call “pure cinema.” By that, he meant a telling of a story in a way that has no effective equivalent in written narrative. It’s an emphasis on the visual, rather than the verbal. In the scene just described, the camera is doing one thing – traveling toward the mysterious mums; then before we can know what the flowers are, and who that fellow in the car is, the camera moves toward and then up and over the prison wall toward the angry voice. Now the soundtrack contains two unexplained voices, one desperate, the other soothing, while at the same time, the exact location of the activity is teasingly unclear. There are cars, a prison, a hospital, searchlights, and a rainy night that makes it even harder to know what we are being drawn toward. That all these things can happen simultaneously, and before we’re more than 45 seconds into the picture, is unique to the medium. Pure cinema. In fact, it was to be the opening of Hitchcock’s 54th film. Mortality intervened.
Of course, that film was to be called The Short Night but Hitch died, regrettably. It’s a fabulous, classic 70’s movie… in my head. And those quotes I provided came from screenwriter David Freeman and his book, The Last Days of Alfred Hitchcock.
Is it me or is that sequence just a hell of a lot of fun? How many new writers today would think to include an old couple asking a million questions in order to send the tension to excruciating heights? I LOVE the escalating tension! I love the way they slowly revealed important details non-verbally to the audience. I especially love the camera work, and yes, something like that CAN be written in a spec without using camera angles, without mentioning the camera, or writing (God forbid) “we see.” Just think about it. It’s not difficult.
Instead of me writing an even longer article in which I’d meditate on all the ins and outs of tension throughout cinema history, I’d like to throw this question out there to all of my brilliant readers:
What are the keys to tension?
-MM
The year’s not quite over, but with all the scripts I’ve read so far, and believe me, I could build a fortress with all the scripts I’ve read, I’ve concluded that there’s an epidemic crisis in screenwriting today - LACK OF TENSION! Good ahead and laugh! The sad part is - I’m not even kidding. No one seems to care about it, or try to master it, or effectively use it in little genres like THRILLERS. I am so sick and tired of reading scripts, not just amateurs but pros as well, that fail to foster all the hair-raising, nerve-frazzling, unbearable tension I love.
Consider this. It’s an opening sequence to a classic movie from the late seventies, which you haven’t seen. That’s right. I guarantee that you have not seen this classic movie. Okay? Here’s the opening sequence in the film as described by the screenwriter:
A man sits in a car holding a bouquet of chrysanthemums. It’s evening, getting dark and raining. The car is a Humber Hawk and it’s parked on a cobblestone service road, next to a high brick wall. The man with the mums is listening to a voice we can’t quite make out. It could be the car radio, but his ear is cocked slightly toward the flowers.
The camera moves toward the windshield, descending slightly as it dollies forward peering into the car, about to show us what the man is doing with those mums. But when the camera arrives at the car, it surprises us, and further piques our interest, by panning off the windshield, over the wet cobblestone road, toward the brick wall. As the camera climbs the rough red bricks, going steadily higher, inducing dizziness in the viewer, the voice we’ve been hearing becomes clearer, as if the camera were hunting it. It’s an angry voice, an upper-class Oxbridge accent. “I’m here… hurry on now… can you hear? I said, I’m here.” When the camera is at the top, and before its descent, we get a glimpse of the surroundings on both sides of the wall. But instead of clarifying, it only serves to tease us more. In our one glance, from this height, we can see that inside the wall is a prison. There’s a tower, a few searchlights, and rude-looking cell blocks. On the outside, beyond the service road, we glimpse another large institution and a sign that says “Hammersmith Hospital.” But before we know what to make of that, the camera, our guide, moves down the wall toward the voice.
Inside, a tall, imperious man, dressed in prison garb, is huddled against a wall avoiding the lights and speaking urgently into a primitive walkie-talkie. “I’m here, damn it. I’m here. Now move.” The camera cuts to the outside (the very first cut in the scene) to the interior of the car. The driver speaks soothingly into his flowers. “That’s right then, I’m here. You’ll be fine… stay calm.” He starts to get out of the car, but his eyes register surprise and he stops talking. Across the service road, another car has parked and its headlights have gone off. There’s a young couple in the front, and they’re embracing feverishly. The man in the Humber Hawk mutters “Damn…” into his flowers and the voice from the other side, desperate now, says, “What is it? What’s the matter?”
“It’s bloody lovers’ lane.” He silences his flowers and then flashes his headlights at the second car, leering at the couple. They pull apart quickly, frightened by the light. The woman averts her eyes and her thwarted lover scowls and drives away. The mums are turned on again and a torrent of abuse comes from inside the prison. “Where the bloody hell are you..? You’ve bollixed it. You bloody Irish ass. I’m not going back. I’m not. I’m not going back.”
That’s all he says in his book. But I’ve read his script, too, and there’s more to this opening sequence. Man gets out of the car, turns off the flower-mic-thingee, and gets out a rope ladder. Headlights illuminate his boot as an old car approaches him. Inside’s an elderly couple. The woman leans across her driver husband and asks for directions. He answers. She can’t hear him. He repeats himself. Then there’s a question about where to park. Inside the prison, a movie’s about to finish and guards and prisoners will be entering the compound any minute. The prisoner’s getting frantic, yelling for the ladder. Outside, the elderly woman notices the flowers and wants details. Where did he buy them? Then she talks about her daughter-in-law whose liver is shot to hell. Inside, the prisoner is practically screaming for the ladder. There’s movement. They’re about to come out. Outside, not only is the couple still talking, but the man notices that there’s also a shift change at the hospital next door and more people are coming out into the street. Finally, the couple leaves. Rope ladder is thrown. The prisoner hurries over the wall just barely making it before getting caught but falls as he comes down and severely hurts himself.
TENSION, BABY!
Of this film and its screenwriter, well, I’ll let him explain it to you:
It could only be Hitchcock. Daring, outrageous, and complicated. Several things are happening at once, each component of the scene both clear and mysterious. It’s what Hitchcock liked to call “pure cinema.” By that, he meant a telling of a story in a way that has no effective equivalent in written narrative. It’s an emphasis on the visual, rather than the verbal. In the scene just described, the camera is doing one thing – traveling toward the mysterious mums; then before we can know what the flowers are, and who that fellow in the car is, the camera moves toward and then up and over the prison wall toward the angry voice. Now the soundtrack contains two unexplained voices, one desperate, the other soothing, while at the same time, the exact location of the activity is teasingly unclear. There are cars, a prison, a hospital, searchlights, and a rainy night that makes it even harder to know what we are being drawn toward. That all these things can happen simultaneously, and before we’re more than 45 seconds into the picture, is unique to the medium. Pure cinema. In fact, it was to be the opening of Hitchcock’s 54th film. Mortality intervened.
Of course, that film was to be called The Short Night but Hitch died, regrettably. It’s a fabulous, classic 70’s movie… in my head. And those quotes I provided came from screenwriter David Freeman and his book, The Last Days of Alfred Hitchcock.
Is it me or is that sequence just a hell of a lot of fun? How many new writers today would think to include an old couple asking a million questions in order to send the tension to excruciating heights? I LOVE the escalating tension! I love the way they slowly revealed important details non-verbally to the audience. I especially love the camera work, and yes, something like that CAN be written in a spec without using camera angles, without mentioning the camera, or writing (God forbid) “we see.” Just think about it. It’s not difficult.
Instead of me writing an even longer article in which I’d meditate on all the ins and outs of tension throughout cinema history, I’d like to throw this question out there to all of my brilliant readers:
What are the keys to tension?
-MM
