DZ-105: Establishing Tone through Big Print — Transcript

The tone is being called out in the big brand it is telling us before we're about to get into this sequence how we are to feel and interpret the action that's to follow. Hi I'm Chas Fisher.

And I'm Stu Willis.

And welcome to Draft Zero a podcast where two Aussie filmmakers try to work out what makes great screenplays work.

In this episode and in our forthcoming episodes not just this episodes we are going to be working out what makes. Great tone? Great? We want to be talking about tone in screenwriting. And this is important, and you can interrupt me at any time, Chas, because I've actually gave this speech today. So, when we think about tone in films, I think, you know, obviously there are examples like, you know, David Fincher on one end, and Wes Anderson on the other. And we often associate tone with directors. You know, how does this film feel? How does it make us feel? And I think that's partly because directors and the filmmakers in general have so many tools at their disposal to influence tone I got lighting they've got music they've got performance they've got editing they've got production design they've got.

I don't think you didn't get to cinematography but yeah.

Oh, I talked about lighting. I mean, yeah, obviously there's composition and camera angles and all that fun stuff, right? They've got all those tools to create tone to the point where in the American system, not so much in the Australian system, that on TV shows, directors have tone meetings with writers of their episodes and they go through scene by scene. So the question for us, and the reason I think we're interested in doing that is if you're working in the spec world, which a few of us and most of us are, you need to sell the tone on the page, but we have far less tools, in fact, the only broad tool we have is words, so it's us looking at scripts that are kind of got interesting tones, so, you know, what we're doing in the next little while is looking at scripts that have got interesting tones, and looking at the tools that they seem to be using to create those tones, would you kind of agree with that?

Yes and before I ask the big question which is what do you think tone actually is Stu as always when you know choosing the homework for these episodes we hold our patrons and we. Got so much content back as well as you know constant discussions with our editor Chris that we decided to break it up and approach we're going to start out trying to explore what is time and then we're going to look at. Darker films with unusual light flourishes and by contrast lighter films with perhaps unusual. Tunnel flourishes we're going to look at whimsy we're going to look at coming of age.

Magical I would say.

Yeah magic realism yeah or fantasy.

And this is going to be interesting because magical realism is a genre.

Yes.

You see I would say honey is connected to genre.

And then finally we think we want to do a whole episode just looking at really great tonal shifts in films and and we're going to go back to the scripts and see how they manage that. And today we're going to try and do darker tones and we are looking at the nice guys written by Shane Black and Anthony Bagherozzi. And we're going to do the Banshees of Inisheeran written by Martin McDonagh and we are hopefully going to do the pilot episode for Yellowjackets written by Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson. Just to let everyone know the the mission with this first episode is more focusing on establishing tone and to that end we have just looked at the first five pages of these projects. So Stu what do you think tone is and I feel like this is going to be a perfect time to throw in was it that US judge in that pornography case which is like. I can't say what it is but I know it when I see it.

I can't find pornography but I know when I see it right.

And I feel like tone is kind of the same thing in that we all kind of know what we're talking about when we talk about tone but when you try and define it it becomes a pretty murky thing.

And I think that is part of the reason that quite a number of the scripts that we are talking about are written by writer directors and they're particularly interesting their writers that moved into directing I think that's partly because they wanted more control over their tone of their work right and I think that speaks kind of the more effusive nature of it right. That the direct the writers go I know what time I want when I see it right I can be you know in the end they shoot seven takes and they you know fifty takes or whatever and go that's the time that's the performance I want because it it's got the tone that I want, you know when I think you're in particularly maybe that's why in in television the writers are so heavily involved in the edit because I can kind of control or or steer the tone a little bit in the edit so. Correct to your question of what tone is, because I gave an example of how you can control tone, what tools and levers that you have. I kind of been thinking about this in a couple of ways. One of them was in terms of our stand-up special that we did with Alice Fraser and when she introduced us to this idea of the rhetorical triangle, right? That the rhetorical triangle has three components, the logos, the pathos, and the ethos, and they all work together. And so the Logos is kind of the message of it. And then the Pathos is kind of the emotion behind the message, and the Ethos is the kind of the form and the manner. And I actually think tone is sitting somewhere between the Pathos and the Ethos, right? It is how the story is being told, not necessarily what the story is. Though it intersects it because form as I think we'll talk about particularly say with a yellow jackets form does have an impact on the tone that you are of the story.

I don't I don't think you can divorce a tone from the subject matter because plot choices inform tone.

Dialogue informs tone.

Yes I mean so for me I think it I am not disagreeing with anything you're saying but I I feel like tone is almost a step further back and it's kind of a unifying concept for any kind of. In this instance we're talking about story we're talking about film and television but to me tone dictates what goes in and what goes out of that story.

So what then makes tone different from theme.

So for me theme is entirely about messaging and form and yet to your point tone can have more elements such as how you're delivering that message what form you are choosing and more.

So, I mean, I sort of disagree with you because I, and we've talked about this in our theme episode way back when, theme and worldview, that to me, theme, there's two aspects to theme, right? There's the theme, what is the message, and a lot of people talk screenwriting, like, oh, screenwriting needs to deliver a moral. Whereas I take a broader view of theme as the organizing principle or the principles behind the story. And theme is obviously then connected to tone. And so for me, I think tone is not just kind of the way the story is told to the audience, though that is often what it is, I think it is the rules around how the story is told to the audience. Are we meant to laugh at the violence in this, or are we meant to be horrified at it? Are we meant to be finding these people funny or not? Is this story lonely or not? you know, and that how the rules around how we understand the work obviously then intersects with how we feel about it and how we think about it. And so I think this is why obviously writers are so passionate about getting the tone right for their work because I think tone and theme are connected and that's why it's interesting in terms of the rhetorical triangle you might go well a tone is bigger than that it's all of it. You know but that makes it so hard to kind of talk about and why we're gonna be spending so many episodes breaking down good examples because you even said when you like all we could do banshees have been a sharing. First because there's not much tone on the page but if you're saying that tone is everything then there should be all the tones on the page.

Okay I will get to banshees of in a share and but my my feeling was all the time came from just one tool. Predominantly and didn't screenwriting tool and did not use as many tools as I expected and in each of these examples if and when we get to them, I did go and watch the material straight after reading it just to have a comparison.

One up on me.

That's a low bar.

I I pick the homework for this.

Yep thank you.

Just so everyone knows as much as like we like to create this impression and I'm like.

Stu is doing all the heavy lifting on this episode.

I'm like gowned off the fucking grey I turn up whenever I want to be like blah blah blah and I'm like oh by the way these are the scripts that we are doing. I'm obviously exaggerating my tone. And this is the thing. This is what makes it hard to talk about, but also why it's so important. People talk about writer voice, and what they're talking about is what tone does a writer bring to the material, but it also means then what lens are they bringing to the material for help me understand it. So tone is inextricably linked. And it's also, I'm going to get controversial here, and I think we'll probably end up talking more about this in Backmatter. I think it's actually, tone is one of those things. Kind of generative AI, in terms of screenwriting, is going to be useful for but bad for. Because people, like, you know, you can use it in terms of, here's a sentence, can you give me a version of this sentence that's more sarcastic? Great. It pops it out. But AI, generative AI, is actually just generative statistics. It actually has no intelligent understanding of what it's telling you. But I think it will actually average out. And so, what you're going to get a bunch of people that use it in terms of screenwriting is actually going to be making their voices less distinct, right? As much as it may be helping them solve story problems or not it'll actually be kind of rounding them out so if you as a screen one and want to stay ahead of the curve in a world where people are running stuff through whatever it is tools to make their writing better you actually kind of need to be more in control of these tools that's what's going to make you distinctive that's kind of my controversial not controversial take.

I just want to pick up on a few things that you've already said because I think I agree with all of them and it's I think it's some good context with which this conversation can move forward because as always as much as you and I are starting out on the super esoteric, I think the point is that you and I in our own writing we often bring a tone that doesn't always successfully land.

Independently or together.

So far I think only together but it's also been my experience separate to you.

I was going to say that's all you buddy.

Often we find things funny and we're failing on the page perhaps sometimes to teach the audience to laugh at the things that we're laughing at.

Yes like dry sense of humour can be easily misinterpreted and I think you know maybe we'll end up doing in the voiceover episode but I think the killer, you haven't seen the killer yet. It is super dry the sense of humour is so dry that there's obviously people that are just misinterpreting the work because it's it's it's it's not as exaggerated as a lot of the examples that we're going to look at even though I feel like I saw it in the cinema I'm one of the few people that actually went and saw it in the cinema and I was probably the only person laughing at some of those jokes.

You mentioned voice and I think tone for some screenwriters can be very attached to their voice. Like their their voice. Translates to a tone I think where's Anderson's voice translates generally to a very similar tone but I think there are screenwriters, who have a got a mastery of tone but we don't think of them of having a strong voice like they're not imposing themselves. I mean Andrew Kevin Walker for example I you know you mentioned the killer when I think of Andrew Kevin Walker I think of someone who's got a mastery of tone I don't think of him as like it. A strong voice for I don't know that these are these are perhaps semantic discussions but I really like.

Perhaps maybe in the what you really talking about then is branding.

Yeah possibly.

Voices then connected to your brand it's like I can do this time but that time that I can do that no one else can quite specifically do is my it's the reason you go and watch my films right Aaron Sorkin, is has a voice that is his tone but it's literally just be like he can't do anything but that.

Yeah I think that's definitely part of it but I I really want to latch on to something that you said because I think it's the closest definition so far is tone. Is the teaching of the audience how to watch your film because I was thinking of how do you know when something feels a tonal how do you know when something feels wrong or out of place. In a in a piece and often I say oh it's like you know it's totally uneven or it's not in the same tone or something like that and it's. Possibly because the piece of work hasn't taught the audience to accept that thing that the creators wanted in there.

And I think culturally broadly speaking Western cinema tends to be more monotone people want this time and they just want you to stay with that time and when it changes time people get confused right and react where is I think in world cinema particularly like, South Korean, Japanese films, but even like masala Bollywood films, they're quite happy. I mean, to the point where Bollywood is known for this, that it's like, oh, we're going to do the romantic bit, and now we do the action bit, and now we do the singing bit, and now we do the, you know, and they lean into the cheese, and the cheese has its own tone, right? But in Western cinema, it's like, okay, you were selling me the ticket for a brutal horror film, you better give me that.

But the other thing that I was going to say is I mean look you bring up South Korean God they are just the masters of time because even though they change tones a lot within it they never feels out of step. They are guiding you they are bringing the audience with them even when they have violent. Tonal shifts and I think that's what I'm trying to learn from these exercises is how do I teach the audience how better to accompany on the journey because often feedback I get on stories is this moment feels wrong or this moment feels untrue and I'm like. No it is true I have just failed to tell the story in a way that this moment works for you.

Can anything that's a what you doing totally on the page.

I look sometimes isn't it's not time sometimes it might be character and other things but I think it's a. Is especially from a writer when all we have is words and we're trying to teach the reader in their painting of the picture of the story. You know we're talking about screenwriting here so film television short films whatever better you know you're you're trying to get as close as you can to the experience and you and I've spoken a lot about writing experience and tone is teaching people that I mean boiling it down to the pragmatic. How do people feel you've mentioned violence right are they supposed to enjoy the violence are they supposed to feel horrified by the violence are they supposed to feel titillated by the violence are they supposed to feel complicit in the violence those are all things that we can teach the audience how to experience and our word choices are crucial to that and I say words broadly. Not just talking about precise word choices although a lot of time comes from that I mean I'm talking about everything like narrative choices character choices. Everything we've got available to us as writers should be feeling that tone and and you can talk about violence is an easy obvious one to reference but it could be the same with sex like you know we were laughing on discord about how sexless the Maverick Tom Cruise Jennifer Connelly scene was.

In Top Gun Maverick. Or just this is because I had considered doing this for this episode you you have seen the man from uncle right the the.

Yes oh yeah.

The man from uncle is a fucking horny film that's just super horny and what is amazing about it is the problematic king of the nerds.

Mr cannibal army hammer. Henry Cavill.

Yes so problematic keep giving it to recover basically pays a psychopathic bisexual right and what is fascinating and film is Tom Cruise was originally. Was was cast before him right and so it's like that. Would have been such a different film it would have been a lot more like the new mission impossible where Tom Cruise kinda has this attraction to it but to other characters the kind of less. Attracted like they're not horny for Tom Cruise that kind of morning or of him you know and I think that's a tone thing in terms of casting so that I guess how do you then write the this is a horny Henry Cavill or a sexless Tom Cruise in your script. I mean maybe you could you could literally just write that this is more horny Henry Cavill than sexless Tom Cruise, I'm sorry if you listen to this Tom I'm sorry, appreciate what you're doing for your agent.

But the other films that you and I really loved when they came out were Matthew Vaughn's early films with Jane Goldman, especially for me Kick-Ass and The First Kingsman where you know the violence is. To be enjoyed right like he's inviting you to enjoy it it is supposed to be entertaining and at times comical but he's also not shying away from the brutality of it because to me it's almost. Highlighting our own enjoyment of it is like trying to bring our attention to all we shouldn't be enjoying this.

Yeah, it was definitely had these moments. I mean, I think the brilliance of Kate Goldman, was it in some ways, I'm not sure, Matt Vaughn, I think Matt may have just enjoyed the violence and she was able to find a way to write it. To add the satire to it. And cause I think he's less self-conscious of that stuff than like Paul Verhoeven. And you know, like Paul Verhoeven is a director with a very clear kind of tone, but, and you know, he's consistently worked with, you know, Ed Neumann, in terms of creation of that time. But you said that my phrasing was teaching the audience how to read the story. What I actually wrote in the Discord, because I think there is a subtle difference. And I want to unpack that a little bit, that what I wrote, establishing tone is about establishing the rules of how a story is being told, whereas you're talking about teaching the audience about how to feel about their story. And I think there is a a subtle difference in me, and they're a good example of tone, right? Because establishing the rules is kind of like a passive thing, but really what I'm calling talking about is the patterns, right? These are the patterns. Whereas teaching the audience is implying a degree of interactivity with the audience, right? That this is an interactive thing. If you've ever done any teaching, you know, you're like, you do the, well, you know, you understand, you check, you kind of find ways of rephrasing things to see if people understand. And it's kind of interesting in stories that you can kind of teach people how to do it but there's it's not as interactive games can teach you how to play them right you know that they're going to unlock unfold this big game play in such a way that you learn mechanics and new mechanics and new mechanics right and obviously you can't progress the next stage until you learn mechanic a we've all done the tutorial right so in some ways you is your opening couple of pages the tutorial mission of your film and will you pilot I mean in a way it is but it's like. Audience is going to progress to the second stage whether or not so they can't pass the test.

Yeah but and that's why I think there are films that just really work for some people and really don't work for others without anything being objectively right or wrong with them it's whether the tone worked for you. Well one of my favourite recent TV experiences was the Aussie show Deadlock which was written by Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney who are two Australian like they. Are hilarious comedians who started on a web show like on Facebook and they were just amazing and. Their first show. Or like yeah big TV show it's in on Amazon is a very dark neo-noir and it's got a lot of humour to, it, humour that I really like a real black comedy and it's got a lot of different competing, like contrasting flavours that mix really well for me but I think it struggles in the first maybe one or two episodes I think it's about 10 episode run, because those flavours weren't mixing well initially and it I'm I hate those people who say, just stick past the first five episodes and then the show gets really good I'm like fuck off and here I am saying if you if you don't like the opening episode of Deadwood sorry deadlock, give it at least one more because it's a almost like a buddy comedy show, And the two leads are quite deliberately from two different tonal planets and initially that doesn't work and it's only when. The farm or comedic off the wall. Batchit crazy detective actually lets their guard down a little bit and becomes a bit more vulnerable and they stop being in opposition to each other that it actually really starts to sing and their contrast bounce off each other.

Flavours is an interesting term or metaphor for tone right it's adding. Flavours to it because you can add particularly in terms of what you're doing you can kind of just cook some protein, but you could put protein with salt, you could do protein with paprika, like there's different flavours that you can add to the corner of the meal, you know? Here's your protein, here's your carbohydrates, what are you doing with them? You can tell I'm not a cook, I'm not a chef, right? But I think that comes back to the rhetorical triangle thing, because in a way the recipe is absolutely dependent on the flavours, but there's also things that you can do to this core idea in terms of what spices and what other things that you presented and textures and all those things that will change what the experience is for the audience, right? And that's kind of what we're doing. And so coming back to words on the page, if your goal as a writer is to write the experience in an important part of your film, whether you like it or not, it's going to be the tone, right? And you don't have complete control over the tone because the filmmakers will do their own thing, right? But you can kind of suggest something to it might be the opulence of something, it could be the fear of something, and in a way you're kind of then guiding those filmmakers because hopefully the reason they want to make your script is because they like the tone of it, you know? Or not, I mean there's definitely been examples where it's like, oh we could- I'm sure we've all pitched on materials where we are like, we could do a rewrite on this but we're going to be changing the tone. But then that's, it's like then what levers are you pulling, right?

Yeah.

I know I think there's things that we can talk about so talking about mismatched detectives. Do you want to go into the nice guys?

Yes, You're a private investigator my profession is very complicated, It's nuanced. That is a lot of blood. You beat people up and charge money? Yeah, sad, isn't it? How much would you charge to beat up my friend Janet? What? How much you got? 30 bucks? That's good, this conversation is over. The mob is trying to spread its operation to Los Angeles. Somehow, my daughter Amelia is involved. Please, find her. You seen this girl? Who's in it for me? Oh, we can do this the easy way. Ow! We're currently doing it the easy way. Whatever happened to offering me 20 bucks? It's the recession. Why do you think everyone involved with this case is dying? Before we go solving the crime of the century, let's deal with the rotting corpse. I got a plan. Run.

I let let let let's play down an approach here I think what we could do is it so we were attracted to these projects because they were more unusual tonally right because we want to explore whether these scripts do something on the page to. Provide those patterns that may or may not teach the reader how to experience the story. May you set down the rules for telling the story. So what for you is the tone of the nice guys?

I think Shane Black's one of our favourite, both of us really like Shane Black's writing, not just in terms of the finished films, but his screenplays. And in fact, one of the first screenplays I ever read was Lethal Weapon. Right, and I've always kind of been influenced by him and that's why I'm so excited to actually meet with him. Meet with him. Got it. Makes it sound like we actually had a bookie. I met him when I was at the Austin Film Festival. And sorry that we didn't invite you to see Terminator the Musical with us, Shane. You would have loved it. We just didn't pick up on the social cues. Sorry. I think that Shane Black's voice in most of his stuff, not all of his stuff, a lot of his stuff is what I would call smarmy, right? It's kind of sleazy, but not in a, I feel, dirty way, but in a kind of having fun dressing like 70s and wearing a moh and a leather jacket, right? Like, it's having fun with the sleaziness of it, and I think it's got that kind of slightly like, I guess that's what I mean, Sami, it's like we're getting taken into this kind of underbelly, and I think that's, you know, lethal weapons got elements of that, obviously, kiss, kiss, bang, bang, and this, so I think it's definitely kind of comedic, some of it, but it's not zingers, you know, there's definitely some funny lines, I think there's a lot of slapstick, particularly in The Nice Guys, I've got a whole thing on Shot Zero about how how I think Ryan Gosling's character in this is played as a clown. It's funny, it's kind of got a little bit of awkwardness to it, and it's kind of surprising. And a lot of that comedy is black. You know, we laugh at the violence, but we don't necessarily enjoy the violence. And I think. But I think that's the funniness that's kind of the key to what he's doing and how the comedy kind of positions us, because you know, I really love The Last Boy Scout, but I don't think it's as funny as his other films. It's kind of leading more into the sleaze element. And as you say, this is a period film. It's set in the 70s. It's about smog. The murder mystery is less overt in terms of the plotting. It's almost more of a hangout film, right? But I think one of the differences in terms of technique is that Kiss Kiss Bang Bang has Robert Downey Jr. Narrating the whole way through, and we'll probably end up talking about it when we do a voiceover series next year, hopefully, within the next year, let's not make too many promises, but you know, Robert Downey Jr., the voiceover is literally telling us how to interpret the story, right? And the nice guy starts with voiceover, but the voiceover kind of just disappears. It's a way of us to get into the world of the characters, rather than this very conscious, like, I'm telling you the story, you know, and I'm going to have fun with it, which is what you're getting kiss, kiss, bang, bang. We've got two drafts of the script, and we've read them both, and there's some confusion or lack of direction on my part. Chaz read the earlier draft, watched the script, watched the film, went, oh, this is a bit different, and then went back and read the 2016 version of the script. So it'd be interesting to dive into, because you're actually probably being more conscious of the differences, I think I started reading one and went, ah, this is the wrong one, and went to the other one, in terms of what he's doing on the page and the decisions that he's making to kind of create that sense of that feeling that he wants for us. New jazz.

I think I think you've actually hit all the beats I love your use of smarmy and sleazy the main reason why I wanted to choose the nice guys over other Shane black is. The film on my first viewing didn't work for me that well and I've since watched it. Many times and it works better and better for me with each viewing and I think and I compare it like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is one of my all-time favourite movies, and that is I think a slicker film than this and I think it distances itself, from the horror of the violence, in it and makes more fun of it then this film does. I think this film is a dirty a grimey a more violent film. We still has that humour and that commentary on it and I think that's why I struggled with it initially and part of it is about the period setting and I think a lot of it is about how young both the victims. And the point of view characters often are in this film anyway so then we can go into these five pages and look at how do the words on the page layout those rules for telling this story did anything jump out at you first.

Yeah, I mean, I think Shane Black's talked about this before, and his kind of debt to William Goldman, which is that he writes as if he's telling you a story. He's writing from his perspective, from the script. And I mean, we've used his stuff in Unfilmables for a reason, because of that, you know, this looks like the kind of house that I would buy when I sell this script for a million dollars, whatever it was, right? He's writing from the point of view of a character. So he's doing that. We are going to do a series voiceover probably in the next year but I think the voiceover is a part of the tone and it's interesting you talked about KISS comparison to KISS KISS BANG BANG and I think KISS KISS BANG BANG because he uses voiceover more consistently and it's very clearly from one narrator I think it makes it easier to sell tone right and so sometimes I think we'll talk more about that in the voiceover episode but I think voiceover is actually a key way to sell tone I think there's little things there's the so there's obviously the action lines and this kind of the conversational style of the I mean the main things the main choices I want to talk about that are on the page I'm mainly around the the car accident so that the film opens with a young boy. Sneaking one of his dad's porn magazines and he's watching it and as he's looking at it sorry the porn star that he's looking at drives a car through his house.

And I think the the way that Shane black and Anthony. The way the writers talk about the car. Is very the words on the page are so great in terms of making it clear that this is a slightly comedic and entertaining and there's even one line where it's called out how we should be feeling about the car before it happens. Is so I mean probably the the way that he's talking just about this kid walking through the house and getting the magazine and like you said I'm Shane black. In his writing likes to tell a story and he's got a technique that I love and often use myself certainly in early drafts they often get deleted later but where the writer is asking the reader a question like. The boy turns heads towards his room a man with purpose do we want to know this purpose question mark so we. The writers there are talking about us as the reader and.

Full context that's after he's grabbed the stack of porn magazines.

And I love he stops damn forgot something jogs back with up with us in tow. Crosses to the fridge opens it grabs a bottle of milk of course forgot the milk where's our thinking. He is making us complicit in that it in that joke and in a joke that like I rewatched it later I didn't get the forgetting the milk.

It's possibly that cut it cut it for time.

Yeah so then a car drives through his house and before the car hits the house you see it through a window way in the distance and it's got the line here. It's almost comical the tone is being called out in the big print it is telling us before we're about to get into this sequence how. We are to feel and interpret the action that's to follow.

Okay so I'm going to read the whole thing in context you know okay so after he's remembered his milk right he's he stands the kitchen window at his back and pours himself a glass and that's when we see something he doesn't dash dash out the kitchen window. That's it a mini slug mini slug a car way in the distance a powder-blue, trans am it peers out of nowhere punching through the guardrail up on my Holland with a fog muffled clump it's almost comical half obscured by Bobby's head the car crosses our POV showering earth then it's gone gone in capital letters blink and you missed it window boring again holy shit Bobby oblivious leaves the kitchen, actually yanks our POV away, walks, juggling the sandwich and magazine into the living room, raises the glass of milk, takes a sip, the wall explodes, just disintegrates, the whole damn thing, part of the ceiling going with it as the powder blue Trans Am, again in a mini slag, mini slug, mini slag, the mini slug, blasts into the house, moving impossibly fast, showering debris, trailing trees, bush, dot dot dot dot, It hurtles across the room, detonates obstacles, blows them to splinters, sweeps the place clean, doing 50 half at its side. Then just as properly departs, sails out the opposite wall, into the night, just like that. So the reason I'm reading it to you is to make it clear that his control of rhythm is awesome. It's almost comical, right? Very short sentence, half obscured by Bobby's head, The car crosses our peer review, long sentence, sharing a short sentence. Then it's gone short sentence blinking. You missed it. He's reinforcing the idea window boring again. There's this kind of like a like syncopation almost jazzy way of writing. I mean this is I mean Shane Black is definitely like Tarantino has read a lot of books right I think that comes across in his writing he's he's someone who likes literally likes pulp fiction. The other thing it's doing I think in terms of it is as you say making us complicit is we're an audience and he's describing what we are seeing but what is interesting about this when we talk about camera direction, people say, Oh, you shouldn't say, you know, what the camera is doing. It's because the cat, most people's description of what the camera is doing is boring and technical. And what it makes us feel like is the camera move is boring and technical, right? We dollied down the hallway. Well, cool. What is that actually communicating to me on an emotional experience? So when you were writing, we had, we dolly, you know, we do a dolly push down the hallway. The emotional information you are giving me as a reader is zero. The experience you were telling me is me being self-aware of a camera move. Compare that to, and then we see something he doesn't, car by in the distance, like all that description of what we are seeing is how amazing it is. It's almost comical. It is because it's literally saying we are seeing Bobby in the foreground and there's stuff going in the background. It is comical, right? Showering earth, blinking you missed it, window boing again. So in describing the camera, he's done it in such a way that he's telling us what the experience of the camera, and It's not even like a camera move it's not like you're saying massive crane up or anything is literally just describing what the background action is but in such a way that we are feeling the thrill of it the comedy of it it's kind of it's it's not boring.

But then talking about camera movement actually yanks our POV away that's him describing. What the camera is doing but what the feeling of it is like we are left as an audience wanting us and Bobby to look out the frickin window but we can't.

Holy shit Bobby oblivious like it's great like coming I miss it in a guest in this episode is related to I'm showing balls but we can't expanding the idea of unfilmables and how they connect to tone right.

Well I think we've got some good examples in here that are not unfilmables and- Holy shit Bobby Oblivious clearly very filmable, car behind him. And we're going to contrast this with Yellow Jackets where we've got a- Yellow Jackets I think has a similar rhythm, to it, it's got that staccato pace but and it's using, similar tricks to get us very much, into a certain point of view but and it and it like Shane Black here is talk talks to the audience so I'll repeat all of that when we get there but. This is telling us to enjoy this moment to laugh at it we are not worried for Bobby here. We are kind of reassured that Bobby, almost in the writing before it happens, that he's going to be okay. And the way that it talks about the car, we enjoy it coming through the house, the way that he uses his words. And I love the- how the car exits and is like, then just as promptly departs. I love just that use, that's that really dry word departs. And then the car keeps going and not only that as the cars keeps on going he tells us in the big print unbelievable there it is still going. So he's writing our experience as the audience to us as we're reading it.

And his word choices reflecting what he wants our experience to be right and what his intentions are so after the car has crashed. Bobby, knocked off his feet by the inputs, stands shakily, stares out what used to be the back wall of his house. Bobby staggers downhill. He eventually stops dead, transvict, misty mountains, lies against a rock, completely nude, the famous curbs bruised, discoloured, in brackets, this is to be handled, italics, taste, entalics, fully. So, tastefully with taste in italics. It's interesting because it kind of reads as a joke, it's the punchline, put it at the end of the sentence. You know, Stop, Stand, Tread, Chase, Misty Mountains, this will be handled tastefully. Then it describes it. He's deliberately made a point of structurally putting it at the end of the description as it's an instruction, but it's reading a little bit as a punchline, which is kind of how it reads in the film, right? There is this moment where she is kind of dying and looking at us, and it's kind of gazey, but kind of not like it's a really interesting line that he's kind of walked with that moment because it's a little bit I guess for lack of a better way of describing a little bit art directed right it's a little bit kind of removed from it.

Well I also thought and this hasn't been called out in the big print but when Bobby looks at Misty Mountains in the magazine in the centrefold she's deliberately in the same pose.

Ah yes.

Tim it to my mind that's what I thought was being referenced that she's in the same pose but she's been in a car accident and is dying and so he's seeing. Exactly what he's just been looking at that was supposed to be sexually arousing him and he's actually seeing it in real life but in this context of this dead woman or dying woman and it's not erotic at all when you see it the. Not second time so I think this is to be handled tastefully is perhaps talking to. Because it's not that's not about the experience that's about how they gonna handle it right that's not saying this is not erotic at all.

I think tastefully is a little bit of the experience but the next little bit is Bobby can't help staring he tries to make sense of what he's saying this that's Misty mountains that's her in the flesh so I'll make this comment now. Because I think it'll be interesting to see where the other scripts over the series do the same thing. Because we've had this conversation with producers about overriding or writing any kind of direction around performance, right? And, oh, you shouldn't be writing the expressions. And I certainly don't think you should be micromanaging the expressions of the actors. But what this line is doing is telling us the tone of the performance, right? It is well written enough that it's not just telling us what he's thinking, it's done it in such a way that there is a tonality to what is going on there, right? And I think there'll be other scripts, potentially, will be writing some of the tone of the performance in the big print, not just in the dialogue, right? It does shift. She convulses, spasms once, twice, blood jets from her mouth, so there is actually a tonal shift within this scene that we've gone from the kind of, whoa, big car crash, to kind of him seeing her and there's something slightly strange in it, to something that's a little bit more like gruesome. She dies staring at him, the strangest moment of this kid's young life. And that again is speaking to the tone and he is using the word to tell us what this tone should be, which is strange. It's not erotic, it is just strange. And then after that, the strangest moment of this kid's young life, the two of them in tableau, sirens close now, winds gusting. So it is ending on this strange beat. And then Bobby does something odd, so it's kind of reinforcing the fact that the tone is shifted from something that's like, well, unbelievable to this is just strange. And the other thing it does, and I'm curious to see your read on it, is it starts using line breaks, not carriage returns. To explain that, that means it's starting a new sentence on the immediate next line, not with a sentence, empty line, new sentence, right? Which is a carriage return. It's going sentence, new line, so immediately underneath it, another sentence. And it's grouping ideas, so it's creating breaks. Like, she dies staring at him, new line, the strangest moment of this kid's young life, right? It could have broken them. Do you think that's a tonal thing? Do you that's grouping related moments or do you think he's just trying to make sure that this cold open ends on page 3.

I definitely think so we you know we chose to only read the first 5 pages and it was fascinating to see how much at the end of those 5 pages there were like hard beats. I do think ending on page 3 was a something that he was planning on doing but this feels very deliberate because the the first line in each of those is shorter than the second line so they're supposed to look like a paragraph but they also step up in each. Wait so they they're creating like a visual pattern as well. So I think it's a group an idea you know you could have laid this out in a lot of different ways without missing that page 3 cut to black roll credits.

I do think it does speak a little bit to time because he's slowing the read down in a week in a weird way it's. You know, she dies staring at him, new line, the strangest moment of this kid's young life. He could have rolled those two sentences together, and I think that would have actually read faster than just splitting them over two lines. Because weirdly, I find that technique, what he's doing here with the new line rather than the courage return, is actually slower than if he just did courage returns, that really kind of like white space, white space, you know, completely new sentence, white space, new line, white space, new line, he creates a really full momentum. This is kind of slowing it down a little bit. He wants us to be in the strangeness.

I definitely yes and to me the the strangeness I really like that he's called it out because this moment it wasn't in the previous draft that we read and this moment. To me summarises so much what the tone of this film is we've just had an action sequence essentially that we've been told taught both in the language and outright to find entertaining and comical.

And then and then strange.

And then we drifted into this moment where this boy being confronted with a dead porn star in front of him can only react with kindness. And the you know confronted with the strangeness and the absurdity of the situation and that there's a lot of that in this film. So I think the the presence of this beat this boy doesn't feature in the rest of the story he is a point of view character for the inciting incident but. His reaction to what he's being presented with is very important tonally.

Great now did you want to continue talking about the next couple of pages with this which is the introduction to Healy.

Happy to to me it's much more classic Shane black and I'm much more classic film noir. You know Healy is talking to us he can sell us on the jokes right we can. Hear it another interesting difference between the previous draft in this draft was it was an 18 year old boy with a younger but age not defined girl as opposed to a 39 year old man and a 13 year old girl.

And they cut the sex scene I think which was only ever played for me exterior of Healy hearing it but yes they definitely tone down that.

So I I'm I'm actually happy to either throw to you and your observation.

Yeah yeah I I agree with all that I'm going to jump forward and I know you I just kept on reading this script this is the script is is really fun to read and it's just one of those things that I'm kind of hanging out with these characters that I love right and having a good time and there's this great moment. Um, which is part of the, you should all watch the clouding video where basically March, right? Holland, March, he's trying to get information about this person. He's tracking down Holland, March by, by Ryan Gosling as a detective, private investigator, to be clear. Uh, he's gone to a, a bar looking after this person. Tried to bribe him, the person's like, fuck off. Cut to, it's now night, the club, the person's locking up, March is watching him, he's giving his voice over. You know, pine to March, behind a dumpster, dark sweater, black cloth clap, he takes a rag, proceeds to wrap his knuckles, back door of club, March lines up whistling, glances both ways, braces himself, punches through the glass pane, pulls his hand back, his wrist is bleeding, fuck, he puts pressure on it, Red seeps through his fingers, damn that's a lot of blood, this isn't I'm just reading the big print damn that's a lot of blood he takes a rag from his knuckles try to cover the wound the rag turns red instantly start stripping. And then marches like wow wow wow oh wow lots of blood so much dialogue repeats the big print right and you're in the fact that you're laughing, is what helps sell the joke of how funny this moment is going to be in the film lots of blood now okay okay much sex. It's, um, takes a few steps back, stumbles, suddenly dishing down, God damn. That's a lot of blood. It's like the big print. So it's repeated the phrase, that's a lot of blood, big print in dialogue. And then in big print gone from damn, that's a lot of blood to God damn. That's a lot of blood. Right. And it's just a great way of selling. Cause we looked at this, I think maybe I can't remember, but on film wheels, we're talking about the toilet scene with him banging the door and all that kind of stuff. I came back to like how did he make this moment work and the answer is through repetition humour right and you know what else uses repetition humour.

Banshees of innocerence. I was gonna squash it though I just asked how do these first five pages. Teach you how to what the tone of the nice guys.

Okay it tells me and this is like a just a world building them it tells me that but like porn or sleaze is going to be part of it to expect nudity to expect like.

Tasteful nudity.

Tasteful nudity to expect kind of like the like the car flying through the air with the kid watching is kind of like I don't know what kind of humour you'd call it but it's definitely humour for us that we're going to find stuff funny so it's, it's making that there is something as surprising as a car ripping through a house, and then into the strangeness of it. Like, it's giving me kind of an indication of what all these tones are. The Healy stuff, which we're not going to go into in terms of detail, but him going into the voiceover, the PI stuff, see him talking about cynicism and the loss of innocence, and kind of what the times are changing, you know, because the kids are watching a movie, an ancient educational film about grandma and then the narrator says Jonathan has a gay towel and the kids and it writes classroom erupts in laughter apparently this is the funniest thing ever one kid actually falls out of his seat right and so it's kind of going it's kind of creating contrast in terms of the rules of the world stuff right um so at that point like the moving from that cold open is now telling me that the story is a private investigator film and it's partly going to be about generational differences I mean Healy specifically says kids these days you know he's basically you know they're different and that kind of in sets up in some way Healy's a wannabe white night stuff.

Yep sleaze humour. Entertainment like we are going to eat the laugh there is going to be. Like the way that car accident could have been written it could have been written as terrifying it could have been written as strange and terrifying as the button on that scene. For little Bobby. But they chose to have it to be like this entertaining, it's almost comical and unbelievable tone to it that then it also teaches us there will be depth, there will be pathos, it will recognise the horror of these situations.

I mean this is a film where there's a a do be smoking in the back of the convertible so there's definitely as you kind of you've kind of alluded to this the film is a little bit rougher it's kind of it is someone telling you a story but it's kind of got those meandering little moments and stuff like that.

Which a part of his charm they just I think it took me certainly more to get into where is the banshees of in a Sharon. Very clearly got me into it on first viewing.

That's the bare minimum but exciting for us Australians it has it for both US letter and A4. Crazy. But it is advanced tools for storytellers that are actually easy to use you can seamlessly move between drag and drop beat cards into a treatment and into a screenplay and back and forth at any time and you can colour code your beats super useful whether you want to tag your beats for characters, Narrative point of view, thematic sections or however you want. We got to use all of that on a project where we took it back to cards and then from cards to outline and from outline to pages. The development process was intuitive and powerful. All the while, it was the best remote collaboration experience we've had in screenwriting software and we've tried a lot. I loved looking at a line of dialogue that Chaz had edited, going to the edit history and changing it back to the line that I wrote. It really is as easy to use as Google Docs. And this development workflow has worked so well that Chaz has decided he doesn't need me anymore and he's using it on a solo project because it's not just from collaboration and I know I'll be using it on one of my own projects because the development workflow really is that intuitive. We've noticed ArcStudio Pro is being constantly updated and the development team is super approachable and responsive. They've now introduced the new notes feature which facilitates that collecting of all your scraps of ideas and allowing you to get into the flow of free writing and figuring all your structure all within one spot. Join the thousands of screenwriters from amateurs to pros and everyone in between who've already made the leap. ArcStudio offers a completely free plan because starting to screenwrite shouldn't cost you anything. But you can also get $30 off the pro plan if you want some of these pro features if you visit the link in the show notes or go to arcstudiopro.com slash draft zero that's draft zero without a hyphen. And now for the third hour of a screenwriting podcast.

You can't just stop being friends with a fella! He's Donald, Siobhan. But he's always been Donald. Maybe this whole thing has just been about getting you to stand up for yourself. How are you, fatty? Dancing with your dog, is it? What did you come here for? Kick your door in and give you a slagging. Why aren't you talking to Polly no more? That wouldn't be a sin now, would it, Father? No, but it's not very nice either, is it? What I've decided to do is this. I have a set of shears at home, and each time you bother me, I'll take one of my fingers off with them. Starting from now. But shush thy Polly. You know, shush like. Yeah, I'd shush like.

Do we need to summarise what the film is or just the opening because in some ways- I think that's just the opening but I mean yeah okay no summarise the film because because I'm interested in how I don't think the tone of what the film becomes is necessarily in the opening I think there is a tonal shift along the way.

How would you describe the tone of this film.

Having watched it all the way through I would call it poetic. Definitely like funny there's a sense of humour through it deeply sad. I know those those would be the main the main tones for me.

What is interesting is God I feel I feel like I'm a high school student the Banshee of Inisheeran is a. Two thousand and twenty two black tragic comedy film directed written and co-produced by Martin McDonagh as described by Wikipedia. Wikipedia describes black tragic comedy and it's like that is three times. And they're all genres, right?

Yeah.

So it's like, it is tragic comedy. I do think the genre is like. Tragic comedy, and the Blackness is part of the sense of humour. So, it is that. So, yes, I do think the film becomes increasingly Black. Have you read or watched The Pillar Man, one of Martin McDonagh's plays? It's pretty surreal, right? And I think what's interesting about his tone, his tone is like, and look, when we come back to the generative AI, I think Martin McDonagh is a great example of people are going to watch those films because he's written them, right? And I don't think AI, generative AI, is going to have enough to cling to to be able to be like, write me a script in the style of Martin McDonagh, right? So I think people, if you can write like Martin McDonagh, he's going to be able to make work, whether it's a play or a film, until he decides he no longer wants to. I think part of what makes his films work is this a slight surrealist element. The reason that the surrealism works is, and I've talked about this before, why particularly film is good at surrealism, is surrealism requires an exquisite, exacted- not always, but like the most famous proponent, particularly like Salvador Dali or René Magritte, whose name I probably just butchered. They were incredibly realistic painters, right? They were absolutely able to almost paint photoreal, so when they did stuff that didn't feel like reality, it felt unusual because it clearly wasn't abstract, right? And I think part of Martin McDonagh's ability to incorporate the surrealistic elements, particularly in The Pillar Man, but the kind of what is perceived as the black comedy elements, because spoiler alert- Colm or Patrick? Colm, yeah, yeah. A character basically starts cutting off his fingers. It feels like that to me is kind of slightly surrealistic, but it's presented with such a commitment, like just a casualness, an offhandedness that is what makes it so kind of, like, all tragic comedy in black all at once, right? And it's because it's treated in such a sparing way. So, you said that you didn't feel they must much tone the page. I just used the keyword. I think part of what the page is capturing here, in terms of the big print, is the sparseness and the sparingness of the environment, right? And the environment in this film, I'm sorry, we're going to summarize it.

Yeah.

The film is basically on a fictional island off the west coast of the island in the 1920s, that's important thematically. It's about these two friends who basically are having a breakup, right? And one of them, basically the character played by Brendan Gleeson, who's calm, has decided he no longer wants to be friends with Patrick, played by Colin Farrell, right? And then the situation escalates because Colin Farrell doesn't really understand why they're no longer friends and it's like part of the mystery is like why are we no longer friends and then calm takes more and more drastic measures to convince Patrick that they shouldn't be friends including cutting off his fingers is that a decent enough summary. There's other things going on there's the Siobhan which is Patrick's sister Dominic played by Barry Keogh but none of that's introduced in the first five pages Siobhan's introduced in the first five pages but none of the subplots are.

Yeah I feel like I'm being misrepresented I think there's a lot of time in the first five pages I think it is all or almost entirely in dialogue and very little in the big print and. The biggest summary for this I can think of is the very first paragraph which is exterior various island locations day the island of in a share in 1923, Patrick Sullivan Sullivan in a good looking man of 35 or so walks the islands winding stone walled lanes past thatch cottages the ancient graveyard castle ruins a little like, pass the islands small dockside town and the boats tied up there pasta startled cow that makes him smile.

Okay, I'm going to counter argument you with the first line of the very next scene, a lonely cottage overlooking a wild Crescent Beach. A lonely cottage is tone.

For sure. I'm not saying. I'm when I think of this film and I went and rewatch the first five minutes there is underneath that paragraph there is a huge burst of coral. Irish Gaelic music happening there's a fucking rainbow over the distance this entire film is shot in glorious landscape wides of. Charcoal seas and vibrant green hills cut by these ancient stone walls like the there is a there is a scale and a grandia to what Martin McDonagh does, on screen that he is not deliberately choosing I feel. Not putting on the page because he's more interested in the page on getting to the characters which as you say there is a lot of repetitive humour in there.

Look I I would say I didn't rewatch it but I do think that what you're talking about in the landscape grand jury what I remember about the landscapes of this is, kind of what we talked about in an earlier episode about kind of like the pathetic environment, the environment kind of recreating the emotion of these characters, the like the desolation, the loneliness of these characters, the fact that it's all a little run down. So him describing what he's walking past is speaking to the production design, the lonely college, college, cottage at Wild Christmas Beach. I just think he is, there's a sparseness in the film as well. And the big contrast to the nice guys is, um, which is why we did this second is the nice guys is, is actually kind of like the, the ADHD storyteller telling a whole bunch of stories and like, like diverting your attention and controlling. It's like they're orchestrating what you're looking at. Banshee's is very sparse in its writing style, but it does mean that I think it is giving you, subtle tonal hints, particularly in terms of like the production design, but the mood in the writing is very sparse, right? And it's kind of got a loneliness to it. Patrick arrives at the cottage, a dog on the grass outside, which he gives a pat to, gives Eddie, it gives him a lick. There's just like this very little information but it kind of adds more to it right.

Yeah I I'm just saying the reading of the script and watching it were very different experiences for me and I feel like what you're saying is true that what. The tone that McDonagh is trying to convey on the page is focusing on the sparseness and the loneliness.

Yeah so pub Padraic comes to the local pub a lonely building also overlooking the sea empty table on the grass outside that imagery is reinforcing the isolation and the loneliness of the of the place.

Yeah and we can't like most of these five pages. Is Padraic having the exact same conversation with three different characters and we can't do it justice will only have to we can only accept a little bit because our Irish accents are atrocious well I'm going to I'm not going to speak for you Stu my Irish accent is atrocious.

I wouldn't do it in like I mean I think we should accept it but the fact is the excerpts are going to be telling us giving us performance.

Yeah.

This is funny on the page.

Yeah, it's hilarious on the page. I mean if you want we do you want to do like us performing Siobhan and Padraig and then Jojo and Padraig.

Yes.

Essentially Padraig goes to Colm's house Colm refuses to acknowledge Padraig's existence.

So the set up for this is Patrick knocks on the door, Colm are you coming out to the pub Colm, he has the door funny, are you not coming out to the pub Colm, it's 2 o'clock like, Colm's grandfather clock chimes 2, that's a joke, it's 2 o'clock like, you're due to the pub, clock rings, it's 2 o'clock, like this is setting up their relationship but it's also played as a joke. Calm smokes again staring head so there's that joke you know you coming to the pub being it's two o'clock in taking a smoke right. Patrick are you having a fag for yourself print parenthetical pause shall I see you down there so question mark pause. I'll see you down there so so you get the rhythm like the pause the pause is really important using parenthetical but you also go try seeing you down there so I'll see you down there so like that rhythm is within page one we're gonna we're actually already learnt this. Repetition humour that it's doing.

Podrick then goes to talk to Siobhan about this, then to the bartender and also goes back to Colm's house. Meanwhile, Colm has escaped to the pub. Podrick comes back to the pub. And column gets up and leaves and then finally the one of the regular other regulars at the bar then also essentially repeats the same conversation that. Project has had with both Siobhan and the bartender.

But yes let's do so you're saying you're going to play.

Non podrick.

Ok.

What are you doing home brother what are you doing home.

I knocked on comms door and he's just sitting there.

Sitting there doing what.

Sitting there doing nothing smoking.

Was he asleep?

He was smoking Siobhan, how do you smoke in your sleep like?

It wasn't just lit and in his hand?

No, it was lit, it was up to his gob, it was down from his gob.

Have you been rowing?

We haven't been rowing, I don't think we've been rowing, have we been rowing? Why wouldn't he answer the door to me?

Maybe he just doesn't like you no more.

Alright, so looking at how he builds on, this is kind of like improvisational yes and, sitting there doing what, sitting there doing nothing, smoking, right? The idea of, have you been rowing? We haven't been rowing, I don't think we've been rowing, have we been rowing? Like, the words are passed around and built upon, right? And that reinforces the idea, this is kind of like something for writers to think about. And we've kind of talked about this as like the language systems- not sorry, the language systems, like the image systems that the characters are using within the world of the story. Is kind of this repetition humour is a similar idea which is that you kind of confining what the characters are saying right. I think part of the time I think this is not very bright so the reputation him repeating things is him kind of working it out allowed. So this is Patrick and this is him at the pub right the lonely building.

Is calm not with you.

No.

Colm's always with you.

I know.

Did you not knock for him?

I did knock for him.

Well, where is he?

He's just sitting there.

Sitting there doing what?

Sitting there doing nothing, smoking.

Was he asleep? I think we should read that bit of big print Padraic decides against getting into that one again and just shakes his head John Joe pause the rest of the pint have you been rowing.

I don't think we've been around rowing.

Well it sounds like you've been rowing.

Does sound like we've been rowing well I try him again.

That'd be the best thing.

Patrick has a worried sip, Beth leaves. I mean, okay, so tone is definitely in the performance, Patrick has a worried sip, that is tone, right?

Yeah.

Patrick decides against getting into the one and just shakes his head. That's performance, but it's kind of leading a little bit into the tone of who this character is. Um, and obviously there is that kind of like heightened dialogue, comes always with you, come what with you, comes always with you, did you not knock for him, I did knock for him. like again that kind of repetition humour in it.

And so I think I mean those two conversations I feel like you know highlight just how well written this is like if we were doing a dialogue episode this would be perfect and I think it is as you say a very sparse and and lonely and bang on rendition of actually the film that we see and perhaps it's because I've seen the film before. I've read this, that I was expecting. More of the poetry of the experience of watching the film in there like there's various scenes of him walking down there he these hills and getting to the lonely building and and stuff like that where, that they're grand they're epic and that grander and epicness was not. Coming across to me in this and and that's not a criticism I think this script is focusing us on what the writer wants us to focus on.

I think what it's focusing on perhaps is two things and maybe this is all you can do as a writer in some ways if you unless you get on the Shane Blackwright route is it's it's mood and mood is a subset of tone I would say for me the tone is a little bit more. All encompassing there's a mood that's like that desolation the rundown island the loneliness right in the mood and then it's in character and the performance of the characters. Yeah right as as kind of what he's focused on this script. Would you I mean there's would you would you agree that that's me am I wrong in thinking that moon is.

I think you're right I just think that I feel that reading the script it's so funny that I felt the humour of it more than I felt the sadness and the sadness is definitely there even in the first five minutes particularly when he goes back the second time to Colm's house. Here's how it's described in the script no one there musical esoteric details hang the brightly painted walls Padraic sees the half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray the mug of tea beside it still warm see something far, off out the window he picks up comms telescope from a shelf looks out the window so that's how it's described there that moment in the house. It lingers in that moment he touches things he looks through a mask he goes upstairs and sees a very bare bedroom in contrast to the brightly painted walls is a very bad bedroom with the dog there it looks like a lonely life like the sadness in how these people live. Is not it's brought out more in the film then is on the page here to me.

It's interesting because I think he's doing it some of it structurally so after he has seen calm he kind of spies come through the telescope right, Patrick tries to catch up with the disenchantment along the winding high walled lanes called in some place all right. Patrick is he scaling the walls of what is he up to Patrick climbs a wall and sees calm scaling wall into a distant field in which there's a bull. He is Patrick he is scaling the walls well thank you so I don't be careful that bull calm confidence the bull with a clench fist in the bull backs away she officially ok right so there's it away Patrick is speaking voice over loud. Yeah yeah. Right like he's doing what what nice guys was doing and they create a humour out of it but the sadness comes with him Patrick where he's going to there's nowhere to go to exterior. are. Patrick trudges back to the exterior pub. Patrick trudges back to pub. There's a peal of laughter inside. Patrick looks to the window. Colm is sitting at the bar, laughing with John Joe and Gerry Mullins, another older regular. Right so you actually have these comedy moments in the path is coming to the just a position in the left the pub is kind of pursued calm through these fields it is comical moment and then he sees calm having laughing with someone else.

Doing exactly what he wants to be doing. Yeah I mean look it's a it's a beautiful film that I.

And they have another are you rowing discussion at the end.

Oh yeah yeah with the third a third person yeah absolutely look I love in Bruges I have mixed feelings about three billboards outside Ebbing Missouri I don't like what how that film narratively treat Sam Rockwell's, character and in this film I came out of it going I just had a really moving experience like I cried and I laughed and it's hugely powerful but I struggled to kind of go what was all that for at the end and I probably need to watch it again.

Yeah it's kind of interesting how they made a decision to set a film at the kind of the tail end of the Irish Civil War about two friends that are no longer friends I wonder what this film is about.

I get the metaphor Stu.

Allegory surely.

I think the closest I got is Podrick has an amazing monologue somewhere in the middle of the film it's not near the end where he's talking about how he's not very bright and his life isn't worth much but he's kind and that kindness has to be worth something. thing.

I suppose niceness doesn't last then, does it, Padraig? But will I tell you something that does last? What? Don't say something stupid like music. Music lasts. Knew it! And paintings last. And poetry lasts. So does niceness. Do you know who we remember for how nice they was in the 17th century? Who? Absolutely no one. Yet we all remember the music of the time. Everyone to a man knows Mozart's name. If I don't, there goes that theory. And anyway, we're talking about niceness. Not what's his name. My mummy, she was nice. I remember her. And my daddy, he was nice. I remember him. And my sister, she's nice. I'll remember her forever. I'll remember her. And who else will? Who else will what? Remember, Siobhan, in your niceness. No one will. In 50 years' time, no one will remember any of us. Yet the music of a man who lived two centuries ago... Yet, she says, like he's English. Come on, Padraig. I don't give a feck about Mozart, or Borvó Vinn, or any of them funny-name feckers. I'm Padraig Sullivan. And I'm nice. So you'd rather be friends with this fellow, would you? A fellow who beats his own son black and blue every night that he's not fiddling with him. I never told him that, Daddy. He's just drunk now. You used to be nice. Or did you never used to be? Oh, God. Maybe you never used to be.

We chose this film even though I loved it because I think tonally it is very unique and I think I was expecting. A little more I hadn't this is the first McDonald's script I've read so maybe that's it I was expecting a little more hand holding tonally. Yes he's very confident in. The characters what he's doing is very little unfilmable in this compared to the nice guys and when we get to yellow jackets yellow jackets.

Yeah and it could be he I mean different film systems like Shane Black was developing the nice guys as a TV series which is perhaps why it feels like a hangout film before it became a movie and it should be a franchise but he's also working to you don't have to get actors and, and money and it's like there's so much more at stake like I'm Martin McDonagh I'm sure is like oh yeah this couple of million dollar film. I can get my friend Brendan Gleeson in it and then I'm calling in it. I'm from do do this with them already and it's just like off up to races right so what he needs to communicate on the script is, is character and plot and maybe mood in terms of like the production design right like what is it in terms of like it is just the nuts and bolts are we need to find this house we need to find a lonely pub we need to find a house that's got this feel we need to find fields that have got this. Right like it's a lot more of like for lack of a better word a blueprint of this is the feel of the things that we actually need to do, But I don't need to overly describe what the specific moment is with the camera and the you know we're looking this way in the car is doing this and all that kind of stuff because he doesn't need to convince people because he is a writer director of a film at a certain scale where he knows I'm sure he, everyone struggles with finance but I'm sure if you say I've got Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson doing this film and they love it because these characters in the dialogue is so funny. You know it's kind of a different process I think that's part of the reason that if we if we jump into Yellow Jackets that Yellow Jackets is so heavily written on the page because they're trying to sell a big idea.

Yeah and maybe maybe we even come back with that because this episode is about establishing time right teaching. Or establishing the patterns setting the the rules and maybe because this film has quite a dissent into darkness that maybe we revisit later parts of the script.

Banshees.

Later episode yeah.

So what time do you think it's teaching you that it has in the beginning of the film. Back on the script what is the script let's just divorce your understanding what the film is what is the script telling you what this time this film is. Funny.

Pretty much purely that a funny a funny story set in a remote location I don't get the vibe that it's about to intensely lonely people because we see. Podrick engaging with a number of other people and their main fight is over who gets to hang out at the pub.

I mean it's obviously I've seen the film first so it's hard I'm kind of reverse engineering what's on the page definitely the funniness I get the. Kind of get more of the black comedy like him following is you know that the bit of the field is quite funny in the way it's written I read is black I do get. The pathos particularly in terms of the environment right that this is kind of like a lonely possibly run down place. So that island thing that this remote that I'm getting what the remoteness means I that is a little bit being communicated to me. And in terms of the what it's teaching me in terms of the time is this to specifically teaching me that's gonna be a lot of juxtaposition that there's gonna be a lot of repetition humour right and so it's teaching me the rules about it's comedy. Which is time right like repetition humour and all that and man and particularly Patrick being kind of like a little bit of an idiot.

But this this film does not end being a comedy and I'm not saying just like it has a tragic ending which it does but I think even though from my memory of my one viewing in cinemas the entire third act is not. Comedic anymore.

Yeah, okay, maybe it is worth revisiting for that, because as you say, it doesn't hint towards what the tragedy of this will be.

Which is fine.

Yeah. I mean. Look, we talked about this with the two genre episodes that we did like beginning of last year, with this idea of what is the emotional contract for the audience. And in some ways, tone is part of that. The tone of the film is telling you what the emotional contract of the film is. And it's interesting because the banshees of In Assurance, specifically if it's trying to make it this descent into something that's like surreal and darker, right? It's got to start lighter that you're kind of laughing and then take you on a journey and doesn't want to tell you too much that it's gonna end tragically. Whereas the nice guys at the beginning is basically telling you this is- you're gonna have a good time and there's gonna be some strange moments and there's gonna be- it's, like page eight but that scene with Ryan Gosling that I read out with Holland where he punches the glasses telling you that the violence is gonna be kind of awkward. The violence isn't fun but it's not- it's gonna be awkward and kind of dangerous right the violence in the film is played as dangerous but not as brutal where is yellow jackets I think the violence in the yellow jackets is particularly brutal.

I used to think all the sex the drinking the drugs I used to think I did those things because of what happened out there. What I saw, what I did. Hello, Misty, you crazy bitch. It's been a while. I take it you know why I'm here. Okay, I'm out of here. We agreed, say no more than we have to. The truth is, the plane crashed, a bunch of my friends died. And then the rest of us starved and scavenged and prayed until they finally found us.

Do we need to do much of a summary of what Yellowjackets is or do you want to summarise what the opening is.

Oh look I think I'd be interested in you summarising like obviously without going into too much spoilers I've managed to avoid Yellowjackets spoilers so far, so anyone who's watching who hasn't seen it I also have not seen the show I've only watched the first five minutes after reading these, Pages. So, yeah, but I think discussing what you think the show is and what the tone of it will be helpful.

Yeah. So, the series opens with a young girl dressed only in a nightgown running through snow, and then she falls into a trap, which I think Described as a tiger trap and then is kind of like I don't in this in the fish series is definitely dragged away with these girls wearing like animal for some masks right but we also realise that they're wearing these yellow jackets t-shirts and, the girl is in the pilot is she actually do we see this girl get and get killed slaughtered.

I haven't seen the whole pilot I've only watched the first five minutes.

So when does it end what is the moment that it ends with her.

The hunter like is looking at her steps up and walks away she's still left in the tiger trap dead.

Okay alright so perhaps giving you a little bit too much but this is like what is interesting about this I'm in the shop version that we then cut to. I interview are talking to these people are talking to camera basically doing a story about the. A plane crash in the 90s where a group of young soccer players from high school are in a plane, the plane, there's something, they crash when they're in the wilderness for a while but then they came back. Right that's kind of what we see in the first five pages yeah.

Yeah so there's and then you've got a third flashback where you actually see them playing soccer. So there's within the first- there's three timelines in the in the first five, pages and look I- this was a great topic for us to move out of our usual film centric. Focus and go to pilots because pilots have got such a challenge to establish tone with an audience because they're doing it for. You know potentially hours of content not just a two hour story and this. Script does such a remarkable job of establishing three different times because each of those. Sequences in the first five pages are totally very different and they are written very differently.

What would you say the tones that you got from the pilot and then because you did the reverse you actually read the script and then you watch it which unlike the other two where you saw first. What time were you expecting based on these but we'll go into the details but what time we expecting what did the show end up doing.

So the tone of the wilderness was kind of very visceral very in the moment. Horror the montage of interviews in the quote-unquote present day with the reporter trying to find out what happened and it's 20 years later roughly.

23.

Yep 24 we'll get there in the end.

25 1994 to 2019 is going to be 25 surely.

Yes you are correct. Add that this the present day sequence the 2019 sequence felt like a comedy the way that it was written like a satirical dry comedy what did it remind me of.

A little bit mockumentary ask for the slightly over the top interviews talking camera so it's got a little bit of echoes of like Christopher guests work but also you know the office.

Not as slapstick as that but yeah along those lines the writing and I want to get into this was making fun of the characters it was teaching us as a reader to laugh at these characters in the big print before we get to what they're talking about.

Yeah and then what did you think that the third timeline was going to be.

So that one's harder for me to tell because just in this one sequence it's it's a flashback to a game a soccer game and it's very poetic the way that it's written very drawn out and reveling in these quiet moments. I mean they're not quiet it's it's it makes it feel slow I mean.

The paragraphs are very long, like we've gone from like horror, one or two sentence paragraphs to by page five, there's like a paragraph with like six.

Nine, nine lines.

And half the page has no dialogue and it's super dense.

Yeah.

And that is contrast to the previous scene with these interviews where it's actually quite dialogue driven with these kind of witty, this witty big print.

So I don't know how accurate I am I that moment with the soccer thing it didn't feel like that's going to be the tone of that timeline it felt like that was a moment trying to get us to like an experiential moment to fall in love or relate to these girls. When they're most sort of comfortable and successful I don't know.

You're not wrong I think the show definitely the stuff in the wilderness is a little bit more horror right and it's kind of a small psychological horror though definitely has these moments of gore, which kind of the the opening does kind of indicate you gonna see some gore in the first season there is the 2019 storyline but the investigation, really plays a backseat so that kind of mockumentary feel dissipates very quickly which is interesting.

I thought that was gonna be the main.

It's a point of view character to help us get to know the survivors of the incident and then there is in the first season a lot of flashbacks to their life before as teenagers before the accident right so we get the, This is the character we're focusing on this week and this is where we learn that kind of a tragic backstory or not trying to backstory and that tone of like this is being a moment but it's like it's a little bit poetic but it's not horror. Is it more in the in the third act and in the in that third time like the second season which I just finished watching someone spoilers you don't really see much if any moments of before the before the plane crash. So they kind of spend a lot more time in the in the present day and the 1994 in the wilderness but they kind of amp up the horror stuff and I think they do a good job so this is actually really great example of three different tones and choosing the running style. Appropriately and I would say the one it's them. And it's interesting to notice the differences. The horror sequence, the opening of the girl running, is very much talking to you as an audience. The mockumentary, no. It's a lot cleaner and it's a lot less dense and that's kind of making the comedy come to the front. And then this little bit more, we're in the moment experiencing what the girls are experiencing, is again a little bit more dense in terms of writing. You know, and that's interesting that it's just an interesting contrast that Banshees of Innisfree, which plays more comedic, actually also has a sparse writing style. And when this needs to do comedy, it also goes, thins out and focuses on the dialogue. And it'd be interesting to see when we see lighter, when we do our episode in lighter tones, whether they're actually thinner in terms of the big print. And whether they, yeah, go on.

I mean, these, you picked this and it's the perfect example for this episode. Where else are we going to, within five pages, find such three contrasting tones in something? And it's a pilot, like the balls on them to do that. And to your point, you know, they've bitten off this huge challenge for these first five pages. And so I think they do a lot of handholding for the audience.

So the opening, I'm just gonna read out a few lines that I like rather than the whole thing. The kind of darkness you only find thousands of miles from the warm safe room you're sitting in right now. That's really interesting. He is in second person. He's directly talking to you. This is the second paragraph in the opening. It's like literally almost at the top of the page, you know? So it is telling you a lot about the setting, but it's also telling you how you're meant to be feeling, because it actually, you know, the kind of dark is a safe room you're sitting in right now, dot, dot, dot. And then it introduces a slug line because it doesn't even open with a slug line, just opens with the sound of breath, right? Another line that I like, we do not get to hear you look at her face, her face being the runner. We will, and soon, in brackets, though fair warning by then it would be too late, in brackets. That in big print is creating that kind of dread that good horror directors with the running and the music and the camera work, we're like, oh, she's fucked. And look, they are dealing with a trope. They're using this trope to twist it. They're doing the girl in the run in the wilderness, and then they're going to up the ante because what we're going to realize is that she's not being hunted down by like Alaskan chainsaw massacre dude, like, you know, whatever the Alaskan version of Leatherface is, Furface. That that wolf face this hunter is actually another girl and that's so they're going to lean into the trope then subvert the trope at the end so part of the big print is being so confident in the writing right and leaning into those tropes that it's saying like trust us we're going to do a good job.

Yeah and and and you do have to have a measure of trust because I would definitely on a screenwriting perspective call this cheating I think it's very good cheating but throughout these. In this sequence and then they do it again in the third sequence where they're playing the soccer match they are telling you in the big print information that you cannot possibly show on the page the fact that we will as an audience only get to look at her face once she's dead and that that will be soon no way of knowing that.

No but we can feel the dread because of.

For sure and that's what it does by them cheating that way what they do is they recreating the feeling of dread. And it's not by coincidence that it, the very next line is, and she is terrified.

You probably noticed with me bringing those lines back to back was we've gone from them speaking to you in second person to we. So they've shifted into the we and that creates a tonal thing that makes us feel like we're in the moment. The darkness you're in the safe thing is about us being distant and then they're bringing us in into this visceral moment. And look, it's just amazing. Each gasp, a spectral apparition in the freezing air. Amazing, right?

Yeah.

But they're using this kind of language, you know, broken blood smeared apparition. They're using the language of horror. The image system, or the word system, whatever you want to call it, as they're going, as they're writing, adds to it, right? You know dozens of eyes carved in threading trees around them talisman hang from the branch branches fashion from bow and bow you know a single stranded scream. And as answering trick I mean this is visual but the terminology the air is filled with eerie inhuman whales like it is so evocative.

Yeah.

And this is classic I mean the other script that this reminds me of that we read was The Invitation like also very powerful language in the moment.

Do you know Karen directed both this and The Invitation same director.

Yes yeah last time we spoke about her I completely butchered her name so.

Karen Kusama yes.

Yeah.

She's an EP on this and we obviously did her. Destroyer, so I wonder if part of the reason that she got interested in this or got asked to do this was because her skill of interweaving timelines. And again, this is writing the experience very much in the moment from the audience, then as suddenly as it began, so this is after the Inhuman Whales, then as suddenly as it began, the woods fall totally silent. Almost somewhere behind her a branch cracks, snapping them right out of a terrified trance, she bolts. This is tropey stuff, but really with that confidence.

Well, I and I think them cheating so much right up front brings us into the terror. And from there you can just lean into the that almost classic, you know, sparse, staccato, fearful, short sentences, very evocative choice of words. I was really interested when it when that sequence wraps up the Hunter. Goes and looks at the mangled body and the paragraph reads as follows the hunter stands seemingly satisfied then as the first of her coat part revealing the tattered coed naked soccer shirt. In brackets get your kicks on the grass close brackets beneath and as I was reading that I'm like I wonder in the show. If I'm watching it I will get that level of detail from the t-shirt because it's almost like a gag it's almost. No get get your kicks on the grass the fact they've written out that funny tagline it made me laugh when I was reading it and I was wondering whether it would make me laugh. In the show and when I went watch the show sure enough I can see that it's a soccer shirt there's a big picture of a. Football on the shirt and it's ragged and worn but I get no other detail from that it doesn't look funny I can't see a tagline. I'm one of the really cool things that they do in the show is. The hunter when she approaches the edge of the tiger trap it's a close up on her feet and she's wearing like. Almost like faded red converses that are also similar image by colour palette to the blood against the snow but you can see there like a young almost innocent the contrast a lot with the furs.

Yeah creates the contrast yeah you're absolutely right and that that is a tone and they could have written that in there in the script as well like that's obviously something they realised was such a great juxtaposition you know.

And that might have happened later.

Yeah. So this is an interesting tonal transition because the hunter appears and then she looks down into the pit, the tiger pit where the runner has fallen into. Angle on the runner, splayed at the bottom of the pit, limbs bent at terrible unnatural angles, body impaled on thick wooden spikes, the bloodied points protrude through her chest, her thigh, her face now nothing but a gory mess from chin to brow, a small god on charm glints around her neck. That's a big chunk of paragraph really detailed quite gory the time is in your ears is kind of just the facts man but leaning into the kind of the goal. I mean you've got that moment about then is the first her coach part and then there's a pre lap of dialogue from woman's voice on the forget the day I heard their plane had gone missing. And it's the transition of this gory moment full like body horror. Bent and broken body to this part thing and going there's a bit of a joke and then the pre-lap really glitchy guiding us into the next thing and the time.

I'll never forget the day I heard the plane had gone missing. I mean that could have been me.

Well yeah and what is that using you over the tunnel shift. Right that's what they're doing in the script they're going we are now going to move you from one time to a very different one and they taking two paragraphs to do it.

Okay so women's voice on never forget the day I heard their plane had gone missing cut to do you want to read the opening description of the.

I love this so much yes please. A middle aged woman shifts on a sofa in what an over enthused realtor would almost certainly describe as a great room. Vaulted ceiling, vases inexplicably filled with feathers, French country as interpreted by Carmilla Soprano. She takes a drag on her cigarette and then a sip from her glass of Pinot Gris. Like that's the, that's the paragraph, sorry that's two different paragraphs, the cigarette and Pinot Gris is a second paragraph, but that first paragraph is, that is the writers inviting us to laugh at this woman.

And then what do they call this woman in the dialogue? What's her character tag?

Wine Lady.

Right? Oh, obviously I was devastated. I still get chills just thinking about it. I mean, that could have been me. I mean, I'm reading in this Heinen dialogue, but the context before it is making me interpret that block of text, specifically she's called Wine Lady, as through it. And it is creating the juxtaposition where this core idea that these girls went through something traumatic in the wilderness and the way it's kind of then being talked about in the present day right that they're almost celebrities at this point.

But they also they take four four line paragraph to teach us I don't think they really care what the room looks like right I presume wine lady is not a big recurring character in the show moving forward right nor her house. And they're doing it for tonal reasons they're letting us know that we are about to embark on a. At least somewhere where we're going to laugh at wine lady and it allows them as they introduce the other characters who were also kind of invited to laugh at but their introductions are only like. One or two lines except no I take it back they they spend a lot of time in the gentleman's club on Randy. Posters of girls cases of booze a money counter on the desk on the manager Randy according to his name tag forties paunchy probably a diehard gun G&R fan as he ponders the question. With these characters there is comedy in the dialogue right but it would have been so. Jarring in the read to get to these gags in the dialogue after what we've just seen with the horror without those hefty comedic intros. So I mean there was a line in here where I laughed out loud where Jessica the interviewer says to wine lady, Do you think do you keep in touch with any of the survivors and wine lady says I mean we're all survivors in a way don't you think and then it says then in parentheses so it gives us a beat they cancelled our prom. Prom being in italics and so they could have like. If they had opened this montage with those two lines it's still a funny line but without that intro that we wouldn't have been had a handheld tonally to get into this.

Speaking of handheld tonally so they use this question and answer to lead the to the vice principal and it says and finally on the vice principal. All I know is what happened was a tragedy, a terrible tragedy. I probably shouldn't say this, but some of these kids, eh, no big loss, for honest, but these kids were special. They were, as he considers, and this is in the big print, as he considers how to express the magnitude of his loss, fade to a girl's high school soccer game in progress. Vice Principal continues, they were champions. And then, in big print, the action plays out in some dappled slow motion, giving the sequence a lyrical dreamlike quality, a rhapsody in youth. Talk about telling us what the tone of this is. And then, the super is 1994. Why are you saying okay? Because again, it's doing a pre-lap, it is chaining, like he's doing the tonal transition at the end of the previous- Yeah. It's not doing it in this, the tonal transition is to the slow motion, but it's using the post lap, not the pre lap, the post lap, the L cut, as Mel would say, to move us into this new sequence, and then it can change the tone, but it makes it feel less disjointed by literally making them more joined. It feels less disjointed because they're joined.

I just wanted to call out one line in that lyrical Rhapsody and Youth where it says like the girls they just scored a goal and everyone is coming together and then it says, this is it the moment the yellow jackets qualified for the US girls national championships but for now all we care about is this girl and then it moves on to a discussion a description of, Jackie Taylor but when I watch the show there was no like and now they've qualified for the you are the yellow jackets of qualified for the US girls national championships like. That is signposting for us I presume something important that that we come back to this moment.

It's so good so good and then it ends look people say you shouldn't write songs into it but they actually write music up so it's like it's hanging on Jackie because you know for now all we care about is this girl is Jackie casually jogs back into position with a loose and triumphant joy music up living on the edge by Aerosmith as we cut to. Aerial shots right I think look some people may disagree with me and that's fine but I have written music you choosing to scripts and no one seems to care because it's about time.

Yeah I mean so I'm writing a my biopic is set in the seventies in Australia but I've been having so much fun like. Researching chart toppers in Australia because there's some real weird ones in there like up there cause I only old man emu I mean. I go to Rio was huge it was like there's enormous chart topper so in a month all the other like great seventies music we know like Australia had some quirks.

So you can do it is basically what you're saying is you produce a push back on that because they understand that you're not saying it needs to be this song you're saying this has got the tone of this.

I mean I I'm trying to protect myself a little bit from that I'm like something quirky and cheerful like don't fall in love by the ferrets.

I mean, even the fact that the band was called The Ferrets is almost a joke. I mean, look, the writing style in this continues, you know, it's just so good. You know, Jesse, Jew Jersey contains multitudes, but right now we're interested in one particular house, in one particular town, as totally unique and fundamentally the same as all the others, bringing us to, right, like, it is got a little bit more of that shame, black, I'm telling you this story and I am helping you understand what it is.", But it is just interesting that there is, like, even with the context of them hand-holding you a little bit, they are shifting between modes, right? You get the punchier action lines of the horror, you get the kind of more emphasis on dialogue and environment, you know, the kind of, like, what we talked about, I think we called it, like, a environmental portraiture back in, you know, seeing characters in their environment and using that to talk about characters like Randy around all the porn, you're getting a bit of that and it's a little bit thinner and when it goes into this lyrical quality, it is a little bit more praiseworthy in the language it is using, you know, it is describing stuff in more detail and that is contextualized by the fact that it literally says this sequence is in slow motion. But it doesn't say in slow-mo colon, it tells us what the tone and the purpose of this thing is in slow motion in order to give a lyrical dreamlike quality you know and then obviously it can continues this throughout.

And look this this script was ballsier than I would be in my own writing but I just felt it felt so confident the I've I was. Riveted in reading it I wanted to keep reading and when I went and watched it. Like it was shot perfectly well but I was suddenly disappointed by the constraints that reality was imposing on it is like almost like reading a book like the picture my head was so much more vivid than what they could do. in reality.

And look, this script was so far developed, right? We're not reading the script that they sold to Showtime. We are reading the green revisions, right? So it's like three, four drafts on the approved white production draft. They got the name of the director on the front page. This is a shoot- Cast list. It's the cast list. Like, this is the real fucking deal. So they're probably empowered to be bolder, right? Maybe they knew they had the Aerosmith song at that point, but I wouldn't be surprised if we went back to the draft of the script, if we could somehow find it, and if you as a listener have access to it, if we went back to that, that it has a lot of what we're saying in here anyway, because it is compelling.

I would hope so. Because they're bold choices allow them and look we it's not throughout it's interesting to see that they quote unquote cheat or lean on bolder screenwriting choices. In the introduction to scenes and then that lets them gives them more leeway because we now they've taught us the tone of what we're about to see and then we bring that with us throughout the rest of the scene or sequence.

It's almost comical right and it's interesting like when you think about it it seems so simple but it's almost comical it's different from it is it's hilariously comical or it's this is not funny right like it's almost comical is actually kind of a tone.

I didn't look it just with the nice guys you know when is describing Misty Mountains and her nudity and saying this will be handled tastefully I think if they done that from Bobby's point of view if there's like Bobby can't help but stare at the least erotic thing he's ever seen that would. Who the fuck am I to rewrite Shane Black but he does it successfully I think in brackets that this will be handled tastefully feels like it's written not for the reader but for concerned. People stakeholders.

Which may be the reader I look I think it worked for me as a reader. I've seen the film many times. Look, I am happy to steal stuff. I hate to say I steal stuff from writers. One of the earliest things I'm conscious of stealing, it's not the earliest, I stole quick cuts from Die Hard. Once upon a time at uni, in my undergrad, I actually wrote quick cuts, new line, dash, whatever it was, whatever it was, and I took that from Die Hard. I took from Battlestar Galactica, a writer, Jane Espenson, she gave an example of a scene where her entire action line for the scene was grim colon and then the scene. And I'm like, hmm, and I used that in the Paleo Chop film, like, as the midpoint of the scene was just like, he says something and then it's like grim colon and the rest of the scene. Great, so would I steal this would be handled tastefully? I possibly would. It have to be but it is the funny thing about it by drawing attention to it it comes across to me it comes across as a bit of a joke like not in a it's not gonna be tasteful but like this like a slightly rise into human so it would have to depend on the script. I would say to whether I would use this will be handled tastefully but to play with the italics.

I will definitely and I think I have previously you know when I say. Like you know those times when you introduce a character and you're not going to find out who they are or what their name is for a while. But you don't want to just call them like wine lady until you find out their name and who they are so often I will say something along the lines of we will learn that this blah blah blah person or we'll get to know them better in time but for now all you need to know is XX and X.

You haven't done that we'll call them.

My my current script has got bratty friend and dickhead surgeon but to me you don't have to call that out just the name does that.

Their name is bratty friend.

Yeah in the night by naming the character bratty friend or dickhead surgeon. I'm telling the audience or the reader you don't have to spend time worrying about this person they're not going to become.

Yes that's true where is like you know this is the Brady friend of the dickhead surgeon will get to know them as you know Chaz and who can I call a dickhead surgeon. Peter Dutton. Right like you could you could say what they are give a sense of their personality and then actually name the characters in a way and that would speak to the tone of the script so I mean we're obviously into kind of wrap up in, and stray observations and all that stuff key learnings is there anything that you're you gonna take from this and anything in a take from this and continue using to look at the next batch of scripts.

I think I can be bolder when it comes to time.

Even bolder than you.

Yes these scripts like the nice guys in yellow jackets are bolder.

Interesting interesting it's a shame we haven't got hold of deadlock maybe we should try to get hold of deadlock because I'm curious about whether the fact that those scripts are American. Like, Banshees of Ynyshiren is not American. Different system, different culture, different film culture. I wonder if Australian films are written a little less boldly because we just- like a combination of the tall poppy thing, but also the fact that our film industry is, you know, a little bit more agency-driven. And look, I've read Australian scripts. It's not like- it's just hard- it's harder to get hold of them, so it'd be curious to know. The stuff that I've read isn't as bold but the pilots I've read are not as bold as Yellow Jackets for example.

I mean Yellow Jackets is bolder than I'm prepared to go but I liked, you know it's almost comical or unbelievable the car like calling out. I think the main thing that what I mean by bolder is that. Is calling out the experience.

It's telling you exactly what the time is but without it just being like this is horrifying this is terrible and look I know some readers like that I dislike that because they like don't tell me how I'm I'm in to feel from your saying and it's like I mean that's literally what a music does.

I mean you and I got in in our with our script our slightly less bold version our producer said look the pros was a little purple there was a bit more. Stuff happening in the big print than I normally like but I was ok with it so maybe I'm trading the fire trading the line. Now for Australian.

In that in that specific example I think we could lean a little bit more yellow jacket see for the first because you could do the total like the tunnel shift in yellow jackets like it being so heavy and big is part of what makes the joke into the mockumentary work so it's like you up the ante on the. The title and John Ray expectation so you can subvert them if you end up not being bald then you get that thing of like is this meant to be subversive.

And that and that's the thing that I'm wanting to learn from this is how to avoid that those moments where people go oh. Especially when tone gets misinterpreted like. I is this racist is this misogynist is this you know when you might be trying to be the opposite of that you might be trying to be satirical or what have you and if you haven't successfully done that.

You meant you're trying to be satirically racist.

No but when you have a racist character do you know how does the reader experience that character are they aware that you are. Where you is the right or the creator or where the project or the story is going to sit in judgment of that are you going to be made to feel complicit in it. These are very careful moments.

Like specifically can you just would you specifically describe that characters repulsive to make it clear that you as the right of you this character is repulsive.

Yes I mean it was it was in a sitcom where there was a my lead character was a foul mouth. Like hater of everything did all the isms was racist sexist ageist all the things and it was. A lot of people found that character very funny and I didn't think that people had to. Be told that those things about her were bad.

You talking about the fine lines with satire and certainly I think that there is if there is the opportunity for us to speak more to satire then we should I mean I don't want to make a like spend six months of next year doing tone, Any episode for every single time but satire is its own particular thing and there is big satires and there's very small satires and what are they doing on the page indicate what they are because obviously you can, Miss fire with the tone of of satirical stuff right or or the opposite you can get people that just like oh yeah I understand that this is is not real.

If people don't get that you're laughing at something like with wine lady if we weren't told so clearly to laugh at wine lady then we might take a seriously for a bit too long.

And then that telling that joke about they cancelled our prom is less funny because it's almost like that joke works later on because we know what the kind of person that she is and so it's like of course that's what she's it isn't a, Surprise revelation about the character is like a weird confirmation about the character if it does that fine line make sense.

Yeah well especially when you know she's talking about shared trauma and that line could be quite genuine we were all traumatised by a plane full of a. Cohort going missing you know that line could be delivered genuinely not as a gag.

Yeah, yes. All right, anything else for me? Character names, which is a friend of the podcast, previous guest Brad Johnson actually had pointed out when we were talking on... Exeter, Twix, I really don't want to give, but we were, unfortunately, we're still using fucking Elon Musk's fucking disaster zone. He pointed out that one of the tools that writers have control over is character names. And I actually hadn't thought about that. And then lo and behold, and I was like, oh yeah, good observation. But Wine Lady is a great example of that. And look, you get films like Top Gun that have got like Maverick and Iceman. And it's like, Yeah this is kind of leading into the cheese and then you get the action movies with a character called like I don't know Charger and you kind of know what it is I mean he's John Wick called John Wick because it's like you've lit the wick I don't know but it doesn't, it doesn't really, He's a slow bird. Yeah he's going to explode it doesn't come across like that you know.

I should have called him John Fuse.

This character that only looks after himself, let's call him Han Solo, and then over-explain that in the prequel. So that was an interesting revelation to me, and thinking about the contextualizing of early in the scene, to kind of tell you how you're meant to read the scene. And I think it's harder to shift tone within a scene than it is to- and it'd be interesting to if we ever find examples where they shifted. I mean, the closest is the nice guys where they've gone from the car to the weirdness, but I think once he's out outside and looking for Misty Mountains, it's kind of playing a little bit weird anyway. So I don't think they're shifting tone within the scene. It feels like these scripts, even when they do shift tone, shift it. In this, like it's scene is tone, scene one is tone A, scene two is tone B, if they do it. All right, all right, many thanks to Lily, Alexandre, Malay, Kazimir, Jennifer, Thomas, Randy, Jesse, Sandra, Theus, and Krob. And also special thanks, shout out to Claire, a friend of my mother's, that has been listening to the show. And she's been listening to a long time but I love that we like big with the 70 70 something set.

Thank you Stu for as much as your the tone of your persona in the podcast is very contrasting for handling all the logistics and getting me to this microphone tonight.

I hope you all feel like arguing with either Stu or myself. About anything on this episode or anything in general. And you can find many ways of getting in touch with us at our website. At draft-0.com. At the website you'll also find the show notes for this and all our other episodes. As well as links to support us and spread the word for free via a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Very important for spreading the word. Or if you think that what we do here is worth a dollar or preferably more than a dollar then you can also find links to our Patreon page to support us getting these episodes to you quicker thanks. And thanks for listening. And now for back matter.