Script Enabler

When I was a Teaching Assistant for Screenwriting at UCLA, I showed the following clip from The Shield, “Extraction” written by Kurt Sutter, to my class and asked them to describe what they saw.

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Lucky for me, few of them watched The Shield and hadn’t seen the episode. The consensus was that the scene was about a lonely guy (Kavanaugh) trying to be friendly to a woman he just met (Corrine). Then I showed them the following scene between Kavanaugh and Aceveda which I told them happened 10 minutes earlier.

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Then I asked them to describe again the action of the first scene between Kavanaugh and Corrine. Believe it or not, it was completely different. They actually mentioned the stick of gum the second time (no one mentioned it the first time around). The scene between Aceveda and Kavanaugh informed the scene between Kavenaugh and Corrine.

Why is this important?

All Kavanaugh has to do is offer Corrine the gum and we the audience can figure out the subtext. Forest Whitaker doesn’t have to indicate he’s conniving or scheming. We know he’s testing her. The actor doesn’t have to play that he’s testing her. He’s just offering her a stick of gum. No sinister music, no shadowy lights are needed to let us know something evil is going on.

For the screenwriter it means you don’t need to use a parenthetical. For the actor it means you don’t have to act.

When you don’t have to put an emotional spin on an action it’s uninflected. It’s played without a second intent layered into the performance. The action is pure.

There is something very satisfying about paying off a setup with an uninflected action. As audience members we feel smart because we figured something out. As a screenwriter we’ve made our script less dependent on performance and more on story structure.

However, uninflected actions that have built in meanings are clichés. Pulling out a photograph and staring at it is the universal signal for longing or loss. The trick is to take a movement or gesture that you would not think twice about and imbue it with a special meaning.

As with all tools, it can be used well or used poorly. One example where it was used well was in The Godfather, written by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola.
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If you’ve never seen The Godfather it looks like Tessio is merely arranging a meeting between Michael and Barzini. If you have seen the movie, then you know what Tessio is doing. You should also know which scene sets this scene up.

Here’s one more example from Donnie Brasco written by Paul Attansio. A picture’s worth a thousand words.

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