DZ-117: Pulling Off Tonal Shifts — Transcript

Not only does it allow us to accept the mother's death, but it allows them to really go for emotion because they've already taught us that throughout the film, there will be these moments.

That is very interesting because when you told me to read them, you did not tell me why? Hi, I'm Mel Killingsworth.

And I'm Chaz Fisher.

And welcome to Draft Zero, a podcast where three and recently temporarily two Australian screenwriters try to figure out what makes great screenplays work.

And today, in today's episode, we are doing tonal shifts. It is very much a continuation, and perhaps even the goal of two previous episodes was to get to this very episode. So the previous two episodes, which I believe were episode 105 and 106, they were on establishing tone and we happened to look at two different groupings of films and just quite by accident, those two groupings of films, one was really great examples of establishing tone through the action lines and the second one was establishing the tone through the characters that you were presenting without doing much work in the action line. So, those two episodes and this episode on tonal shifts is all about how to replicate those things, tone, tonal shifts, on the page. And specifically today, for this episode, we are looking at Shaun of the Dead, written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright. We are looking at Sorry to Bother You, written and directed by Boots Riley. And we're looking at Swiss Army Man, written and directed by The Daniels. Is it their film immediately prior to Everything Everywhere all at once?

Correct. It's their first feature.

And why are we doing this? I mean, first of all, we're doing this because Mel requested it as one of the episodes. But it was one that Stu actually feels grumpy about missing because it's been on Stu and my list for quite some time. I think Stu and I are attracted to films that successfully pull off tonal shifts because I think there's a sort of pressure in Western cinematic storytelling to be monotonal, that if you change tones, that's somehow a bad thing or doesn't fit or doesn't work. And then you can see other cultures of storytelling, particularly I think of East Asian storytelling cultures where... It's almost expected.

Bollywood, baby.

Yeah.

Or Korean cinema, like K-horror.

Japanese.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. So just want to take a moment to repeat what we sort of assessed tone to be in the previous episode and then ask you, Mel, whether you agree, disagree, have any other suggestions. Stu came to tone as being like the rules of the story that you were telling, separate to maybe the character rules or the world rules, but really the storytelling rules. And he saw tone as quite linked to theme. And that's because Stu takes a broader understanding of theme than I find useful in my own work, even though he says his is the correct one. And I found it more useful when talking about tone to actually, and especially when we're going into this exercise, which is like, how is the tone of these pieces replicated or not on the script is for me to go how is this story teaching us to understand it so it is similar to stew's idea of rules but i think films and tv and all content needs to teach us what its tone is so that we can enjoy it and understand it in a certain way how do you feel about that mel i made you re-listen to a draft zero episode as homework for this.

I think um to be very democrat both of you are right but uh i i think i would describe it almost more as vibe and what's really interesting and obviously we'll get into it but the script, feels reading the script makes you feel a certain way and there are certain rules that some of these scripts do that then they change like they might these scripts do one thing and it's almost an unofficial way that they've set you up and then when the tone shifts it might change the way it's being written but not all scripts do that like so scripts establish tones sometimes in different ways depending on the writer but i think it's how it's trying to make you feel and you have fewer tools on the page than you have on the screen yeah and so how you're using those tools to give the reader a sense of what you're feeling what i found really interesting and we did this very accidentally, is that we picked three scripts written by their directors.

Well, you said it's accidental. It actually happened with every other script that we've chosen in Exploring Tone. And I know we did it accidentally.

Karen Kusama didn't write the Yellow Jackets pilot, did she?

No, correct.

Anyway. We went over several other scripts as potentials, not all of which were written by their directors. But I do find it interesting in that if I do think some of these tonal shifts we're going to look at, if they weren't planning on directing it, they might have had to push a little harder.

Yeah, that's fair.

At certain things to make sure that it was clear to the reader that there's going to be a tonal shift. But when in your head, you know what the emotional shift is going to be, you don't have to signal the reader quite so hard.

I think that's fair. But I also think that because they're writer directors, they're more confident in going, we know that we will be able to pull this off.

Absolutely.

And so there were possibly more tonal shifts in these pieces of work because they're by writer directors.

And I also think that if you are an established writer-director and you know that it's going to happen, you can kind of do one thing. But there's also something to be said for, like what we talked about, a lot of Western cinemas are afraid of massive tonal shifts, right? There's maybe something also to be said for, you know how you want to direct it, but you don't want to scare off your potential buyers by making too massive of a tonal shift on the page. But then when you actually direct it, it's a huge shift. So there's something maybe pragmatic in pulling back just a little bit on the page, knowing that in your head, it might be huge, but not wanting to, you know, scare away any potential investors, producers, if you are trying to pitch and sell it. So there's certainly a tightrope to be walked.

Yeah. And as always, Draft Zero is brought to you more often by our amazing patrons. If you want more drafts here and more often please do join our patrons but we polled them for previously did extensive polling on unusual tones that's how we came up with the previous two episodes homework we repeated it again looking for shifts and patreon in particular calling out patron rye waters who gave us the cohen's uh his he said take your pick but burn after reading and i agree i think burn after reading is uh emblazoned in my mind and i think there's a tonal shift in that. He also mentioned Three Billboards Outside of Epic, Missouri and Banshees of Inner Sheeran. And it was interesting for me listening back to that Banshees of Inner Sheeran episode. I was like, we should come back to this as an example of changing tone. And we haven't done it. Maybe we'll do it in the future. But I quite like the examples that we've chosen as being different from things that we've explored before. And you and I were both super keen to do everything everywhere all at once. And Stu, I feel, kept gently nudging us away from a film that we've done. A whole podcast episode on even though it had nothing to do with tone and also like to call our patron jen jen schubert who for our was a big supporter of our last episode the writing physical comedy and she it's in the show notes to that episode but she referenced the every frame a painting video essay on edgar wright's directing of physical comedy and i think that is what resurfaced in my mind, Shaun of the Dead and one of my favorite all-time movies to discuss for tonal shifts.

What a great setup to our lead-in.

I know, but as always, I'm just going to squish it a bit because I do want to, when we were prepping for this episode, I want to distinguish between genre shifts and tonal shifts because I do think they're two separate but deeply related things.

They're separate things that can definitely happen at the same time.

I think most genres, you can have different tones right you can have comic horror and bleak horror and gory horror or with any particular genre you can have lots of tones but sue and i often come back to that switch and we did it for midpoints where alien stops being a sci-fi film where there's lots of awe and dread well.

It doesn't stop it, shifts what it is primarily.

Being yes into.

Uh into that being like a secondary or tertiary type of.

But in that so it's it shifts from i would say being a science fiction film to being a horror film almost you know yes it's a horror film in space it's jaws in space blah blah blah but the first half of that is not a horror film i don't think it there's lots of unease and and dread and paranoia but there's also lots of awe and you know establishing of characters and theme and all that other kind of stuff and so when the the genre shift happens there is also a big tone, shift as well i think and.

I think we've picked three films that none of them shift genre.

At the point where.

They shift tone.

And i think i'm really excited to explore that because i think we were wanting to look at everything everywhere all at once and i think nearly all of the tonal shifts in that film are attached to genre shifts as well not not for or.

At least stylistic shifts yes if not genre shifts because i think that's a third thing yet again.

Sure which.

Is something one of the reasons i wanted to do this episode is i'm writing a feature film script which shifts into types of scenes quite often where sometimes you you have a scene where someone's imagining something and then there's a shift into slapstick and then there's a shift into like a mini time travel and then there's a shift into a flashback and some of those things don't necessarily shift genre but they almost all shift style and tone.

And.

So everywhere everything everyone wants does that whereas these if you're looking at something that does it more subtly you can always key it up.

Sometimes it's.

Harder to figure out how to dial it back.

Yeah i agree with you i i feel that it's harder to perhaps have a tonal shift where you're not changing genre and i don't mean hard is not quite the right word but when you have a genre shift it's going to be very hard to maintain the same tone i think it's almost inherent that there'll be maybe as you say there'll be a style shift because.

Genres have a prevailing tone.

Right like.

We were talking about horror that has a prevailing tone that is very different than comedy.

Yeah and like promising young woman when we were talking about the rom-com side to the you know the i guess serial killer psycho thriller stalker side they swapped genres did they change tones i don't want to end up using promising young woman as like the polarizing example for like every episode of draft zero from here until eternity for listeners benefit mel is leaning back in her chair arms crossed ready with like this.

Is a whole back matter episode we need to have this entire other argument.

Because you can also argue if.

You argue it didn't would you argue it should have and that.

Would have made it a better film and maybe its message.

Would have been a little clearer.

And perhaps sometimes deciding.

To do something that is interesting tonally undercuts your entire thesis and maybe you're unaware of it if you were for example not a great writer but a good director.

I don't know one might argue but that is a totally separate topic i mean that that is how i felt coming out of banshees of in a sharon a movie that i found incredibly moving and powerful i still you could hear it in that tone episode I still don't have a grip on what it was trying to say and she was like well it's an analogy for the Irish Civil War I'm like well that's overtly in the background but I feel like the film is about more than that but I couldn't grasp onto whatever it was that it was trying to explore like it wasn't just about the Irish Civil War it surely is about how that is reflective of something today but I couldn't quite figure that out and I had a similar reaction to Seven Psychopaths as well. Whereas for me, in Bruges and Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri, I got much clearer, I guess, themes coming from them. Anyway, let's get into Shaun of the Dead.

Do you ever think that modern life is not for you do you do the same dead-end job every day is your love life, Baby, you're not alone. Piss it.

One of my all-time favourite films, written and directed by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright. Shaun of the Dead was described by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, I remember, as a Zomromcom. It is a romantic comedy set up during a zombie apocalypse. So, the way that I thought we would tackle these is we would discuss what we thought the tones of the film are. We discuss what we think the shifts are and then get into the pages to see like the homework was read the first five pages to try and see how the writers are establishing those tones what tools they may or may not be using because you're right mel they're not using necessarily all the tools that their availability so it's worth seeing what they are using to establish tone and then seeing how they may or may not be shifting that but um i feel like there's going to be a couple of back and forths here and I suspect one of them is you telling me that it wasn't a tonal shift at all. So, Shaun of the Dead is a very, very funny film. It's a lot of rapid-fire jokes and visual jokes and quick editing and it works, I think, so well because it treats the violence as definitely like funny. You are supposed to laugh when a lot of people get dismembered and a lot of the gags are when the zombies die or don't die or kill some of the friends off they are funny but the moment that struck me is there in the film and I still remember it often is the moment where Sean has to his mom's been bitten she has died and she's come back as a zombie and he has to shoot her and in my memory it's a really powerful moment and it's so powerful because in my memory they take that moment super seriously. And then it was interesting on my rewatch now, there is a period where they do take it super seriously, but it is surrounded by a barrage of gags as well.

I think it's like I picked the other two films that I really wanted to lean into. I'd seen all three of these before, but I didn't revisit any of them before I suggested them, neither the script nor the films. And so it was really interesting saying, I, in my head, already know which... Tonal shift I think is going to be, or in one case, I think there's only one major tonal shift in the thing and then revisiting it going, was I right? Were there more? Was it as big as I thought it was? You know, sometimes there's such a huge emotional impact that you might overstate how big the tonal shift is in memory, et cetera. And so this was fascinating revisit.

Yeah. And for each of these, I did watch the film again and then went to the scripts. So that may color this exercise in some way.

I went the opposite way.

Okay, great. Well, hopefully we come to different observations at that point. So, the first five pages of Shaun of the Dead are predominantly dialogue. Shaun and Liz are at the Winchester, the pub where the entire third act of the film happens, and the Winchester is also the source of both the location of Ed and Shaun's love for each other, but also the source of conflict between Sean and Liz. And they are at the Winchester, apparently on a date, but there's two visual gags revealing that they're talking about the issues of their friends being involved. And then first of all, they reveal that Ed is there, and then they keep discussing, and then they reveal, after talking about Liz's friends, Daphs and Diane, that they are there with two wonderful whip pans.

It's not that I don't like Ed. Ed, it's not that I don't like you. It's alright. Just be nice if we could. Fuck. It's been a bit more time together. Bullets. Just the two of us. Cock it. It's just with Ed here, it's no wonder I always bring my flatmates out, and then that only exacerbates things. What do you mean? Well, you guys hardly get on, do you? No, what does exacerbate mean? It means, um, to make things worse. Right. Well, I mean, it's not that I don't like David and Di, you know? Guys, it's not that I don't like you. It's not that.

And they're both, the way that they're framed also is in between them, so literally coming, you see them, and then it jumps back to a wide shot, and then it frames them all with their friends standing in between them, essentially.

Yeah. And referring to the page, they do have the we reveal Ed right next to them, playing a horror-themed fruit machine. We reveal David and Diane. And so, some of the physical gags are on the page, but most of these pages are dialogue. And where there is big print, there's not a lot of gags in the big print. The big print is there often to facilitate the gags that come in dialogue. Like, is it necessary to know where we're looking or what the focus is or the perspective is so that a gag can work in dialogue? Would that be fair? Did you get a lot of tone from the big print?

I didn't really. I think I got most of it from the dialogue, but also there were a couple of points. And I read all of all three scripts. And I thought that Shaun of the Dead in particular sets up a lot of the sight gags that only work where the sight gags fall in the dialogue. And it does that in the very first scene as well. It also had cut quite a bit. So it made it a bit shorter. The opening scene is now a bit snappier. And I thought that worked. Was more about establishing the relationship between these four people.

Yeah um.

And how they how they fit into each other and then how they feel about each other.

Yeah i mean so what does it establish on the page it establishes you know rapid fire comedy and there's some suggestion of the visual gags so the through the reveals but not as much as they the sort of match frame like the fact that it opens on Sean staring straight down the barrel and on the page it's Sean stares blankly into space and there's to me there's a big tonal difference between Sean staring straight at us versus staring blankly into space so you know a lot of the style directorial style of Edgar Wright is not necessarily on the page and look it is setting up that it is about these characters and the the relationship conflicts between them but there's very little setup as to like there's not a cold open with a zombie killing so we we're not being taught in these opening five pages we're being taught that this is a comedy but we're not going to be taught what the reaction to violence is and this is going to be my my big takeaway from this because uh i i wrote mel message like all right your homework will be first five pages and then these three or four pages where the mother is shot and then I watched it. And I'm like, I'd also like you to read these two pages and these four pages over here. Because what I found was that the film actually does breadcrumb these quiet, non-humorous, emotional punches and they escalate throughout the film such that I think not only does it allow us to accept the mother's death, but it allows them to really go for emotion because they've already taught us that throughout the film there will be these moments.

That is very interesting because when you told me to read them, you did not tell me why you told me one of them was to be in contrast. You said these read these two pages. I think it contrasts. And again, I read the whole script, but really concentrating on these sections. And then you didn't tell me why the others. And I actually have a note for one of them like, but this is similar. This is very much the same. What do you mean? This is different, even though it comes, you know, like 40 pages prior. So if you're saying that that is there to sort of be, you know, a number nine on the emotional scale and then let mom's death hit as a number 10, then that makes a lot more sense in terms of the tone.

Okay. So there was, because I rewatched it first and then started suggesting pages.

Might have been faster for you to suggest pages that I shouldn't read, really.

Yeah. Because the mom's death was about Sean having to actually shoot the reanimated corpse of his mother, it made me, as I was watching it building up to that point, I'm like, well, how have they treated Sean having to kill zombies prior to this? How have they taught us what Sean's experience of the violence is?

Which I do think is important, but real quick, we'll jump back to the first five pages because in the first five pages and it is all in dialogue they discuss sean's mom oh.

Listen to me, We're going to sound like your mum. Not that I know what she sounds like. You still haven't met his mum. Not yet. Don't you get along with your mum, Sean? No, it's not that I don't get along with her. Are you shamed by your mum, Sean? No, I love my mum. Yeah, I love his mum. Ed. She's like butter. Ed. Sean. Guys. Sean. Liz.

In the first five pages, they spend an entire page talking about Sean's mum. So they're telling not showing, but they're doing it with some jokes and some rapid fire and different things. So we know what he thinks about his mom. And then we get a lot of experience of Sean and zombies and violence.

Yeah.

And having to kill zombies. And then we get him having to deal with his stepfather's death, somebody that he certainly has a relationship with but is not as close with as his mom. And they've established that. And then we get his mom's death.

Yeah.

So, yes.

So I want to tackle these in chronological order because my big learning from this is like how they breadcrumbed the the build-up to what felt like a tonal shift to me but it's actually teaching me this exercise has taught me they deliberately had some nudges in that direction to prepare us for it so i'm going to page 41 where for those of you don't remember the film sean and ed are largely oblivious of the zombie apocalypse even though it's got this great one-er of Sean walking through his neighborhood that is a repeat of the previous day before the apocalypse starts except there's all these very obvious clues like bloody handprints on the fridge and he slips in viscera and just like keeps on walking and there's like no one around other than a couple of shuffling zombies coming slowly towards him and he doesn't notice any of that. So Sean and Ed have noticed a woman in the backyard of their house her name is Mary.

Oh my God. She's so drunk.

Mary is trying to bite Sean and they think that she's drunk and trying to make out with Sean. And at the bottom of page 40, it says, she keeps coming. Sean loses his patience.

Now, seriously, Mary, I'm warning you. Okay. I'm gonna have to get physical. I mean it. This is it. I'm gonna... Fuck off.

Sean shoves Mary hard in the chest. She stumbles down the garden, falls backwards and impales herself, in caps, onto the rusty remnants of a freestanding clothesline. The metal pole protrudes through her stomach. Blood oozes through her top. Sean puts his hand to his mouth. Ed bites his lip. Squelch. She gets up. Sean is momentarily relieved before seeing the gaping hole in her stomach. Ed starts to wind the fun camera, Sean bats it out of his hands. Those are only two paragraphs, a five-line paragraph and a three-line paragraph. And they've really broken up the previously established rhythm on the page of using action lines. It's usually much shorter than that. So, they put this big block of text in there. And I'm highlighting this because I think the other two scripts both do this. They change the rhythm of the big print when they want us as a reader to stop and pay attention to what they're doing. And they do have Sean and Ed's reaction to the violence when they think they've accidentally murdered someone. But it's just Sean puts his hands to his mouth, Ed bites his lip. It's very small. And the film doesn't give us much time anyway because it's focusing on Mary.

And we know what's happening already. We're clear that she's a zombie.

Yes, but unlike what happens later in the mum scene, we're not dwelling in Sean's going, oh my God, I've accidentally killed someone, what are we going to do? They very, very quickly, almost instantly let the characters off the hook of that experience and go straight into the laughs, which on the page is done with Ed starting to wind the fun camera, which is a hilarious beat. But what is missing is the visual gag is you see Sean and Ed's reaction to this through the gaping hole in her stomach. And so I was wanting to contrast them because this isn't a tonal shift at all I don't think on the page but the next one that I want to contrast with is they go back inside and then another zombie comes in to their house and Ed ends up killing that zombie with an ashtray and this is how it reads on the page suddenly Ed grabs a heavy glass ashtray and brings it down hard on the suited man's head. Crack, he falls backwards, lifeless, skull split open. Sean and Ed stand panting.

I'm going to shut the front door. You see that guy?

Now, what happens on screen is we hold on Ed and Ed is, has adrenaline pumping through his body, he's breathing hard, he's like super charged, aggressive, and he's somewhere almost having enjoyed that experience. And they don't put any of that performance direction or possibly it was Nick Frost on, on the page but to me it was suddenly a tonal reminder in the film that that there is real consequences or real character reactions to this violence and it's not on the page i the way that the tone shift it was very subtle it went from like oh my god there are zombies and it's funny when we kill them to no this is violence is real and has a real effect on these characters so that was a shift between those two and then there was a it's in the same sequence it's when ed and sean kill the two zombies who are in their backyard one of them being mary there's a hilarious sequence about them trying to kill them like by throwing stuff at them and going through the records and trying to choose which records uh are eligible for being trying to kill zombies with now.

Some of these aren't limited what was that um i think it was blue monday that was the original press sake purple rain no sign of the time definitely not the batman soundtrack.

And ultimately they get some blunt objects it's a cricket bat and i.

Believe it's a.

Spade yeah.

Yeah and this this one is more that they have to repeatedly whack and whack and whack until finally the blows become frenzied and in perfect sync mary and the hulk are finally dead sean and ed stop hyperventilating together their hands bloodied their clothes spattered their face is shocked a baptism of gore so you've got this like triplet like their hands bloodied their clothes spattered their face is shocked a baptism of gore and it's really like this is the first one where you actually feel like they get the weight.

Of

What's really happening you know there's an actual like yeah if you watch the film it's, becomes funny and then it kind of does that rule of comedy where you're like ha ha ha then they keep going and then it kind of comes back around again but this is the first time where it's really hit them how serious this is.

Yeah and it is not funny neither how the zombies die is funny nor is sean and ed's reaction to having to kill the zombies like we then go into other bits where sean is like running across a green to get to liz's apartment and then coming back out again where they're just like whacking zombies left and right. And then you've later got them all trying to kill John the bartender where their blows are like syncopated to Queen playing on the jukebox. Like there are definite funny deaths in this, but there are also serious ones. And this one is the first one where on the page, that bit that you just read out, where I think they've gone and done a lot of work in telling the reader the tone of that moment and how it's very different to everything that's gone before.

Hand i think of all the scripts this certainly has the most tonal shifts there's many many tonal shifts and this is one of them it goes from funny hilarious you know with the records to them recognizing the seriousness to a smash cut of them in shide and they're shaken but then it also is a big callback to a scene before where it's you've got red on you whereas before it was ink and now it's blood and then you know the the tonal shifts here come quickly and some come from a smash cut from a scene to a scene some come within the scene and i think the example of his mom's death is actually massive tonal shifts within that scene yeah.

Absolutely. I do feel that it kind of shifts between two established tones, perhaps.

Yeah, I would agree with that. Actually, I think maybe three, really, because of the way that he interacts with David, but still. And it does run for several pages.

Yeah. So, I mean, this is a lot of build up to get to the actual key scene. But as I was watching it, oh, you know, Sean has two parents die on him and he has emotional scenes with both of them. So I may as well talk about Phillips. But Phillips is interesting because the emotion happens entirely in dialogue. So, Philip has been bitten, he's dying, and they have all squeezed, and when I say all, I mean Ed, Sean, both of Sean's parents, Barbara and Philip, and then Liz and Daphs and Diane are all squeezed into the jag heading for the Winchester.

And there's a rifle above the bar. We think that's deactivated. It's not, I'm telling you. John's connected, Big Al says so. Yeah, well, Big Al also says dogs can't look up. They can't. No, can't they? No, they can't. Of course they can. Are you sure? Yes, look, the pub is the right place to go, okay? Everything is going to be fine, I promise. Sure. I turned it off, all right? It's not easy. What? Being a father is not easy. What? You were 12 when I met you. Already grown up somewhere. I just wanted you to be strong and not give up because you lost your dad. Philip, you don't have to explain, are you? No, I do. I always loved you, Sean. I always thought you had it in you to do well. You just need motivation. Somebody doesn't look up to. I thought it could be me. Just take care of your mum. He's a good boy. He's a good boy. Pull over.

But nothing is in the action lines. Not to be critical of it. I'm just like, okay, what are they doing on the page? They've gone from a series of like three pages of one line, quick exchanges of dialogue to Philip's lines where he says goodbye is five lines. So again, And I think the writers are deliberately using pace on the page to draw our attention, to slow us down so that we can feel differently about it. And that's maybe the tonal effect that they want is they want us to feel differently. They want us to be emotionally engaged rather than primed to laugh.

Yeah, he doesn't get a monologue per se, but he certainly gets several large chunks of being able to say goodbye after there's been a lot of like, no, they can't. Can't they? They can't. Are you sure? Of course they can. You know, like where there's been a lot of this sort of like multiple people talking all at once. Now it's mostly it kind of narrows down to Philip and Sean. And even when Sean is saying things, Philip gets longer to talk and sort of respond.

Yeah there's.

A little bit of action line in terms of like philip puts his hand on sean's shoulder and then the action line tells us when philip actually dies but it's minimal.

Yeah and it's interesting the the scene opens with diane saying is your dad all right and sean saying he's not my dad instinctively and then at the end of that for the rest of the film he says uh calls philip dad I.

Suppose there's an argument, or not even an argument, a question to be made there, whether that's an emotional shift or whether that's an attempt to self-soothe his own guilt. But, you know, it could be both.

I mean, certainly a psychological shift on Sean's part. So, anyway, that's all the scenes that really stood out to me as a build-up to that scene where Barbara dies. Gets reanimated and sean has to shoot her so it's on page was it 110 so.

110 is where the whole thing starts.

Um so.

We've got the bottom of 109 barbara sean.

Sean hold.

On mom you're going to be fine and then it goes and it goes for about essentially five pages of.

Lots.

Of other things happening.

Yeah and out of most of those five pages there is still a lot of dialogue and when there are action lines they're very clear action lines that are kind of taking the place of character interactions because what the argument is essentially about you've got the scene between where Barbara gets to say goodbye to Sean is only six lines long it's almost an eighth of a page i.

Never thanked you for what for these two wonderful mum it's been a funny sort of day hasn't it, oh no no no no no come on come on stop it stop it stop it come on please don't go.

And then Barbara dies, so her death moment is not given even the same amount of time that Philip's is, but then immediately we get to, there's a click of the rifle, and it's Dav's pointing the rifle at Barbara, and then it's the argument about whether to shoot her or not.

Well, it's an argument about whether to shoot her or not, which becomes an argument about like a lot of other things about well actually you're in love with oh but actually i thought this you know and so they're they're talking about their own history they're talking about complicated interpersonal relationships it's really again obvious how much david and sean's sort of like anger slash rivalry comes to the fore like lots of meandering you know that thing where you start arguing with your partner and suddenly it's about this thing that happened eight years ago that neither of you have a hundred percent let go even though you both say you've let it go and then especially if there's been a third person involved that's exactly what happened so this just goes on and on and on with every once in a while them touching again on sean and sean being like nope can't shoot my mom yeah.

Like the fact that daft is pointing a gun at my mom i'm not the one who's being unreasonable pickle for christ's sake she's not dead she's finished for a hero you're quite a hypocrite you're the one that's gone from being a chartered account, I'm not a chartered accountant. Well, you look like one. Yeah. I'm a lecturer. You're a twat. Yeah. She's not your mum anymore. In a minute, she'll be just another zombie. Don't say that. We're not using the said word. Please, can we just calm the fuck down?

And then finally, Liz and Sean start to have this moment. And then that's when Barbara reanimates.

Yeah.

Again, in between them. And that's when suddenly, I don't think we've had in these five pages once, we've had an action line that's more than one line long. We've got one or two slightly longer ones, but mostly it's dialogue entirely two pages that are nothing but dialogue one action line one action line and then the top of 115, so the very last line of 114 barbara off screen oh and then 115 giant chunk of action.

Yeah so similar to what we were talking about before and i think we'll find this again and again maybe not so much in swiss army man but definitely i noticed it and sorry to bother you where like you said the writers because they're writing for themselves they may not have to do their heavy lifting and expressly telling the reader how to feel about this moment but what they are doing is telling the reader stop pay attention something is happening here with just the rhythm of the action lines so if you don't want to get into like a whole uh Shane Black like it's almost comical kind of description of how to feel about this, then this is, I guess, one way potentially. Now, it only works, I'm not saying like, start overwriting your big print. It works because they've established a visual rhythm on the page of how big print is used. And then at these moments, they are slowing the pace down deliberately and it makes you read it.

And I like, well, obviously we'll get to it, but sorry to bother you does something similar, but also the complete reverse. So, you know, there's more than one way to do this thing. But one thing I found through all of the pages is contrast is king. That contrast is where you're getting a lot of your attention. They all do it different ways, but it's about the contrast. Yeah.

So the block of text is, Barbara is standing upright behind David. Everyone stops at the sound of her mournful wine. Her eyes are milky white, skin a lifeless gray, face twisted, almost pleading. Sean takes the rifle from David and points it at her. His hands shake, his eyes fill with tears, his finger tenses.

Again, that three thing, which is what he did earlier, which is really interesting, like the cadence of it and the rule of threes and all of that.

And they've done on the page something that they changed in the edit. Which is Dab says, do it. And then the action line, it says, Barbara looks at David, her expression twists into a scowl. Zombie Barbara hisses and lunges forward. Sean says, I'm sorry, mom. Bang. And what they've done in the edit is Sean apologizes to his mom, but refuses to shoot until she snarls. And like, he can't shoot her while she's looking like his mom. And it's her stopping to becoming a zombie, like acting like a zombie. That he can finally shoot her. And after that, bang, David is flecked with blood. Zombie Barbara drops. Total shock, in all caps. Sean lets the rifle fall to the floor. Everyone is speechless. David takes off his glasses to clean them. So, that's kind of the moment. And the one observation that I had from this exercise is, A, it wasn't as unique a moment in the film as I had thought it was just an escalation building on a lot of previous moments and they yeah mainly use big print to draw attention to the action like a baptism of gore those that you know dropping into those those rhythm of threes and staccato short sentences something that they've repeated as well but like you're saying those things are contrasting. From all the big print that has happened before they are contrasting from in this this argument about it's it's four pages of pure dialogue of them back and forth arguing and like you say that the argument moves from what to do about sean's mom to it being about how dabs feels about sean to diane and dabs having it out about their relationship then there's just some wonderful comic relief repeated jokes from ed where he just says yeah in a really gruff voice again and again they repeat the exacerbated joke from the very first scene repeats the joke from earlier in the film of we're not using the z word so there is so much just quick rapid humor about this more so than i had remembered like i think i remember the the feeling of being in sean's shoes and having to shoot his own mother. I remember that so well that I've colored it in my mind. I thought there was more around it that was tonally at odds. Whereas I think it's almost more impressive that it is so powerful in such a short dose.

Because it almost immediately moves on to an angry confrontation between Sean and David, and then a ridiculous over-the-top David getting pulled out by a horde of zombies. Kind of funny, kind of gross. You know, it moves on, it gives you this beat with Sean and Barbara and then it blows past into two other different tones.

Yeah. So I've said breadcrumbing and longer changing the big print rhythm. You've got contrast. Is there anything else that you took from Sean of the Dead?

No, I think that was my big thing. And I do think of the three that we covered, this one has constant tonal changes all the way throughout. Um, and so seeing how it specifically leverages the, the bigger emotional beats. And I really like not just breadcrumbing, but the escalation of the breadcrumbing is pretty good. Yeah.

All right. So, and, and Rye Waters appreciated your suggestion of sorry to bother you, but why don't you summarize, uh, sorry to bother you.

I'm just out here surviving. And what I'm doing right now won't even matter. Baby, baby, it will always matter. Hey, Cash, how much longer I gotta wait for my money? God made this land for all of us. Greedy people like you wanna hog it to yourself and your family and- Me and my family? Yeah. Cassius, I'm your uncle. I just really need a job. 40 on two. This is telemarketing. Stick to the script. Hey, hello. Um, Mr. Davidson, Cassius Green here. Sorry to bother. Let me give you a tip. You wanna make some money here? Use your white voice. My white voice? I'm not talking about Will Smith's wife. Like this young blood. Hey, Mr. Kramer, this is Langston from Regal View. As always, we'll be getting that out to you right away.

So Sorry to Bother You is a film by Boots Riley about... It's a very... As all Boots Riley projects are, It's kind of difficult to describe exactly what it's about without giving you the world. So I think, honestly, maybe just jumping into sort of the first five pages and explaining what it does there and then moving on, because it is a, depending on who you ask, you'll get a lot of different answers. It's an absurdist allegorical satire potentially futuristic i'm going to argue and this is what i'm most interested in because you had not seen this and you were watching it and i was wondering what you would think about where the tonal shift was and a lot of people think where i think the tonal shift is is also a genre shift and i don't think it is and this is where i know we're an audio medium, but I have a visual representation of what I think sums it up. When it opens, I think the two big takeaways that I had from this script were the same. It was about contrast in the action lines versus the thing. But also, Boots Riley does a really interesting thing throughout the entire script. Now, I read the whole script, and it's one of the really interesting things to me is the way he uses color. And that is established right in the first five pages. So in the first five pages, we meet Cassius Green. And it has his name in the big print and it has his name in the dialogue and it uses this throughout but it also uses a lot of other colors within the very first page we've name checked vanna white green is repeated many many times we're talking about the color of his car we're talking about lots of other things and color is consistently signposts throughout the whole script i'm talking about like purple right that's a that's a basic color but like nobody says mauve right when they when they're talking about like your basic color palace but everything that we're talking about here is like gold black white red and black and white being very important because they are key so the opening five pages set up that Cassius Green is trying to get hired to work for this telemarketing firm. He does get hired. He goes home. You meet him and his girlfriend. They start making out. Then suddenly the garage door flies open and you realize they're living inside of a garage and they are both very broke and trying to make it in this dystopian world where we get some commercials and some hints of what we see going on around them that really honestly feels very soylent green. So the first five pages establish their situation, they establish. Tone. And then they establish this, you know, on page five, we see Cassius watching this TV commercial, which is talking about the Worry-Free Solution.

Everyone is talking about the Worry-Free Solution. Worry-Free is a revolutionary new business and lifestyle model taking the world by storm. When you sign a Worry-Free contract, you're guaranteed employment and housing for life. Stop worrying and get worry-free. The worry-free living quarters are state-of-the-art. The worry-free food is to die for.

Very much this tone that is both 50s style, you know, selling a housewife and new appliance commercial and also futuristic dystopian world that is going to turn you into food source commercial.

The description of the housing of the people working for the worry-free is, TV shows a chic-looking room with six bunk beds, like a prison done up by a hip interior decorator.

So that's the tone.

Well, no, you haven't said what the tone is. What do you think the tone is?

The tone is satirical. And then the interesting thing that I find is that I think a lot of people would put, if I'm saying satirical blank, 10 people watch this film, 10 people fill in that blank differently.

Yeah.

Because there's a lot going on. And I think that satirical dystopia is where I would put it.

Yes. I think it does that. I would say there's a few large chunks. It does spend in these first five pages quite a bit of time talking about some of the production design. So the very opening is like spends quite a bit of time talking about Cassius's employee of the month plaque that he's holding up.

And it won't stop.

Yes.

Every time his girlfriend gets a new pair of earrings, the script describes the new pair of earrings. We get elevator descriptions in detail, car descriptions in detail. Like there's a lot of description of the surroundings and those all show up on screen and they're all very important.

So talking about their studio apartment, Cassius and his girlfriend Detroit lay in bed in a very small studio apartment. On the nightstand, there is a faded sepia tone 1980s photograph of a sharply dressed man posing in front of a Lincoln Continental. The man has a very proud expression on his face. Cassius stares at the ceiling while Detroit lays her head in his chest. There's these very long paragraphs about a lot of production design and world building.

And I think that's very key. There are a lot of very long paragraphs. Every time we enter a new scene, we get a long paragraph setting up the scene. Setting up what Cassius is holding, like with all of the plaques, or the neighborhood that he's walking through, or the car that he's driving. Like there's a lot of long blocks of text that are setting this visual for us.

Yeah. And there's. There's two more plotty things that I want to talk about, which go towards your dystopia. And also, I think that you say dystopia, but really, I think it's quite a specific, capitalist, technology-driven dystopia. It's like- Absolutely. Basically, where we're heading to itself.

This is what I mean by the number of descriptors that you could use for this are, like, I could come up with 10 and they might be 10 different, but still accurate ones than you would.

But Cassius is in a job interview and has gone to the lengths of lying on his resume about two key employment positions he's had previously and bringing in an employee of the month plaque and an enormous trophy. The on the page description does not actually give credit to how enormous the trophy is. It's like three trophies, one on top of the other. and the person who's interviewing him calls him out.

That is intriguing. Mainly because I was the branch manager at the Bank of Oakland between 2014 and 2016. And you, Mr. Green, you never fucking worked there.

And then ends up giving him the job.

Okay, Cassius Green, listen up. Okay, this is telemarketing. We're not mapping the fucking human genome here. I don't care if you have experience for this. I'll hire damn near anyone. You know what this bootleg trophy tells me? Tells me the only thing I need to know. You have initiative and you can read.

And to be honest, being able to lie is something that they're looking for in their telemarketers. So really, it's actually a plus for them.

And then, like you said, you've got the worry-free commercial. So, they're definitely telling us how stylized this world is, like I think through your emphasis of color and the amount of time they're spending in production design. And that stood out on the page because what surprised me when I went back was how far into the movie the surrealism starts. Because I think it's page nine or 10 when he does his first telemarketing call.

Oh, sure. Right.

And when he has his first telemarketing call, he falls through the floor and he's on a call with someone at a dining room table, but they're also looking at each other. And Cassius is like in his space, but at his telemarketing desk because it's fallen through into this other person's room. And then that person hangs up, Cassius makes the next caller and it's falling into someone else's room and it's a couple having sex on the couch and then falls into a third room and he finally gets into a discussion with the lady and he sticks to the script to the point where he is trying to sell this lady, I think, encyclopedias when she's saying that her husband's dying of stage four cancer.

And it exacerbates that craziness of like, this is what is actually happening. You might be a telemarketer calling someone on the worst day of their life, But to actually then realize that situation is fantastic, but makes you feel as a viewer so strange. You're like, oh, yeah, we are literalizing and realizing in the actual term of the word how horrific and surreal and strange this whole experience is. And then it's not till page 14 that we get the second real kicker that becomes a runner throughout the whole thing, which is when Cassius meets Langston.

Yeah.

You want to make some money here? Then read the script with a white voice. People say I talk with a white voice anyway, so why did it help me out? Well, you don't talk white enough. I'm not talking about Will Smith's wife anyway. Why is this his proper? I'm talking about the real deal. I hope they seem like it. Hello, Mr. Everett. Cassius Green here. Sorry to bother you. You got it wrong. I'm not talking about sounding all nasal. It's like sounding like you don't have a care. Got your bills paid. You're happy about your future. You're about ready to jump in your Ferrari out there after you get off this call. Put some real breath in there. Breezy. Like, I don't really need this money. You've never been fired. Only laid off. It's not really a white voice. It's what they wish they sounded like. It's like what they think they're supposed to sound like. Hey, Mr. Kramer, this is Langston from Regalview. I didn't catch you at the wrong time, did I?

This exchange between them, this long scene, which is the first scene where we stop getting so many chunks of tech. Like, there are multiple scenes that are nothing but action lines. They're only action lines. There's zero dialogue whatsoever. It's just description. Now we're on page 14. We're in the scene 23. And now it's solely conversation. And the conversation when they are using their white voice they're overdubbed by white actors and not just white actors like very well so you have i.

Picked david cross and and patten oswald like.

Yes you can just hear.

Them and see them.

Well-known people who also do voice acting and are as white as it gets you know whereas danny glover's voice is as not white as it gets um so clearly again contrast being very strong and it adds this other layer of surrealism where Yeah, they're dubbing, but obviously the mouth looks like the ADR is extreme.

Yeah. They are very much in the production, making it very obvious to the viewer that this is not real. And it says, but only in parenthetical, overdubbed by a white actor. It doesn't make a huge deal out of it.

And I think this is where you get when you are a writer-director and again, trying not to scare off producers maybe. You know if you were to write this is played by Danny Glover and he is overdubbed by David Cross the producer's like oh that's too weird or oh we can't get that or oh whatever he just sort of glazes past it and then it becomes a huge part of the movie but, don't need that for the dialogue that's on the page to do its job and so he just sort of yeah notes it and moves past it.

I just want to note that on page 13 so just before that scene was the first point where i felt the surrealism was part of their real life so we'd mentioned the the calls where he's falling through the the floor but those i thought at that time is like this could just be a visual metaphor for how he feels he's intruding on their lives but the film is called sorry to bother you sure and it wouldn't have surprised me at that point and i don't think it is really supposed to be his every time he makes a phone call his desk is actually falling into people's living rooms that's not what it's supposed to be but the white person voice is real in their world right it is a surreal hint but just before Cassius is with his friend Sal in a bar and Cassius goes into a VIP room and it is a whole page of text describing the VIP room it's very straightforward description. About how crowded the room is and getting more and more crowded and Cassius feeling more and more uncomfortable so there's not a lot of tone as i would say coming through the big print like when i say that they're just telling us what we're seeing they're not telling us how either cassius really or we as the reader are supposed to feel about that scene but when i saw it on screen it's like he was stepping into another world this was not a real world they'd gone from a believable san francisco dive bar into a back room that felt It's surreal is the only way I can describe it.

So would you say that this film or script specifically is doing something similar where it's sort of escalating as it goes, like escalating, escalating the breadcrumbs, as it were?

Yeah. I just think it's perhaps, like you say, as a writer-director, they're avoiding actually just how bonkers it's going to be.

So bonkers. I love it.

So one of my favorite films is Brazil. And this feels like a wonderful, modern, African-American take on Brazil. A more, perhaps, coherent narrative, but it's definitely, like, absurdist. And when I say absurdist, I mean like from the theatrical tradition, like waiting for Godot kind of absurdist humor. And so when you asked me where the tonal shift was, I was like, I don't think there was a tonal shift for me because honestly, the way this film made me feel, and I think it's super impressive, is that from those first five pages, if I then went and read the last five pages, I'd be like, what the fuck has happened? There's no way these two collections could occupy the same narrative story within X number, 104 pages.

Absolutely.

Right? Just simply impossible. So there's clearly a huge tonal shift across the movie. But as watching it, I felt like I was a boiled frog because nothing threw me out of the movie or made me take note. Like everything, as it happened, I was like, it was escalating constantly, but it felt like a narrative escalation rather than a tonal escalation. And that just meant that they were managing my tonal experience of the film sublimely well. Because the first five pages of this has really got nothing to do with Detroit's art show, for example, does not belong in the first five pages of this film.

Tonight, we will have a transformative experience. In those containers, there are broken cell phones, used bullet casings and water balloons filled with sheep's blood. Cell phones can only work with a mineral coltan, which is found in Africa's Congo. The profit involved in this has created hardship and wars. I will stand here. If you feel so moved, you may throw the items in the containers at me. While I'm standing here, I will be reciting excerpts from the timeless Motown produced movie entitled The Last Dragon.

None of the plot events, I would venture to say, belong with the first five pages of this film. The first five pages of this film could be Punch Drunk Love, as what we were talking about earlier. Like, really, those fit. And none of the rest of these plot points belong in Punch Drunk Love at all.

Yeah. And so you buy two African-American men, like that Danny Glover sort of mentor scene, you buy using the white voice, right, and them describing it. And it's interesting that on the page, they describe what the white voice is before they bring it in. So they tell us what it means so that even though that overdub is so obvious and so like surreal and so bonkers, right? Like deliberately shaking us.

Jarring.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It doesn't feel that way because they've taken like a whole page to tell us what's about to hit us. I don't know if that's throughout, but the moment that I think that you told me you think is the tonal shift, and I'm fully prepared to be convinced on this front that it is a significant tonal shift, I think it's really important what comes just before it.

Right. So I think that, so I'm skipping forward to page 68. I do agree that there is a lot of gradual escalation up into this point. Lots of other things happen. Though I think does happen is I would say that we go from a funny, surreal satire into a horror surrealist satire. So you've got two of the same three tones, but there's a massive shift from a funny and uncomfortable straight into horror. And the tone is signposted in two really specific ways. The first is, so the actual shift, I would argue, happens on page 71. And it starts getting signposted on page 68. And the first way it starts getting signposted is we start using different words for colors. So he, Boots Riley has used all, like, I literally went through and highlighted them all. My script is pockmarked with him using all these colors and all white, blue, purple, gold. And suddenly, and in big print and in dialogue, people say Cassius Green's name all the time. And this is, you can't say, oh, it just happens. This is literally a script that makes a huge deal about A, black, B, white, and C, the fact that the main character's name is Cassius Green, which is repeated over and over and over and over again. It's in a script about capitalism.

And Cassius is shortened to cash. Yes.

You cannot tell me that it is just a coincidence. It's suddenly on page 68. Stuff starts being referred to.

I mean, isn't that a line in there somewhere? Like, doesn't he say to Detroit at some point, isn't Cash Green?

They talk about Cash, I think more than once.

Yeah.

I think he calls it out. And then I think someone else uses it almost as like a offhand term about, oh, yo, Cash.

Like, this film is not subtle.

They also, interestingly, somebody, I don't remember who it is, but someone when he's doing the telemarketing picks up and they go yellow, which is kind of slang, but it's also a color. And again, this is very intentional in a script that is literally all about color. So all of a sudden the words for color change the fancy suit guy says uh oh go through this third door it's the magenta door and then he finally gets to the door which is painted magenta and goes through it and then we're going in and we talk about the thing he's talking to steve and then he says you know oh i have to you know i actually have to piss and steve says okay fine It's the jade colored door. Hurry back. And then he goes and finds the jade door and rushes in. And then it becomes a plot point in a couple of pages that they get into an argument. He's like, I went through the jade door. He's like, no, that door is clearly olive.

Mm-hmm.

Jade door. No, that's an olive door. That's very clearly an olive door. That's a jade door. You got to get me the fuck out of here.

The color usage shifts, which is to signal to us that something's about to happen.

Yeah. So let's just set the scene ever so slightly.

Yes.

Cassius has become a power caller, which has led him to get into the telemarketing of selling weapons and slavery. And, you know, his first call wins $10 million. And their main client is Worry Free is the prison decorated by interior decorator. And they are at a party of Steve Lift, who I think is quite appropriately now played by Armie Hammer. Like it actually works.

Delicious casting. Actually works so much better now.

Who is the CEO of Worry Free, but is also basically playing a Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg.

Well, he's playing the Winklevosset twins, you know, 20 years later in Corporate World. Like absolutely it works on so many levels yeah so yeah so steve has invited him to this party which has gotten wildly out of control um and then you know invites him up to his private room there's all these signposts about horses which have been sprinkled throughout he snorts a large line of cocaine off of a plate like a commemorative horse racing plate and then steve says you know i want to propose something to you we need you at worry free i see something in you they have you know The conversation goes, and then Kesha says, I need to take a piss. And he's kind of annoyed. Steve's like, uh, and ignores him, starts playing a commercial on the TV. And Kesha's like, I actually hella have to piss. And then he's like, fine, out the door. It's the jade-colored door. Hurry back. Kesha just rushes out the door, goes to the right, finds the jade door, and rushes in. This is the scene where most people argue that this film makes a genre jump, like a huge genre swing. I argue it does not make a genre swing at all, that it stays within the genre. And this is what I have created. I know we are an audio medium, but I have created a visual for you, which we will get to in a moment. But he goes into the washroom and there's one stall and he's like, oh, God damn it, someone's in there.

I mean, it's a dirty...

Oh, it's grody.

Like medicinal. It looks like a sort of unloved army barracks bathroom, potentially also like a slaughterhouse bathroom.

And it's very dingy. Like suddenly there's like a lot of, you know, haze machines have been pumping for five minutes before they shot this scene to make it feel like the air feel oppressive and heavy.

Should we use Boots' own description?

Yes.

The room is darkly lit, yet sanitary looking room with bathroom tiles on the walls, a sink, a mirror, some curtains, and what seems like showers and one metallic stall. We can see that there's a guy in the stall because we see his head.

Now again, so that's four lines, four giant lines of text. Guy says, can you help me? Then there's more lines of text. And then this is what happens where everyone says, suddenly this film, most people would say jumps the shark, genre swing, Cassius opens the stall door and Guy in stall falls out onto the floor, revealing that he's a naked part man, part horse line break. There is no hair on his entire man horse body, save for the normal patches of hair that a hairy man might have. Unlike a mythical centaur, there are no extra limbs. His hind legs have human feet. His front legs have human hands. He is very sweaty and has humongous horse-like nostrils. So that is all one giant paragraph. Yeah. And all of a sudden, everything shifts. For the first time, there are lines that are describing the exact same thing that every single sentence is its own line break. And it's very discombobulating when we've had multiple scenes that have had long descriptions that are several sentence paragraphs that kind of flow that are describing this thing. All of a sudden, his human eyes show that he is terrified. Full line break. He is chained and collared to the stall. Full line break. He lets out a chilling whinny. Full line break. Cassius is suddenly terrified and screams out while backing up. Full line break. Cassius. Fuck, shit. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. What the fuck? What the fuck? Guy in the stall. Please, help me. I'm hurting. He lets out a whinny. Full line break. So we've gone from this, here's a description of the room. Here's a description of the man to like the moment Cassius registers what has happened. Everything is just like, bam, bam, bam, very short, sharp, and discombobulating. So the tone has shifted. And then Cassius flees and then starts seeing all these other man horses. And there's other heads of men and women stick out of the curtains, whinnying, neighing, and saying, please help us. And he bolts out of the door straight into Steve lift who's blocking his exit so this scene halfway through suddenly shifts and then in a very interesting move steve tries to calm cassius down cassius can basically only say what the fuck and then a smash cut back into the room where cassius essentially holds a gun on him and is like let me explain remember that commercial that i was about to show you all right we're gonna watch this commercial now and then he runs this dystopian commercial about how he's created a drug that will transform all of his employees into horse people and.

So our scientists have discovered a way a chemical change to make humans stronger more obedient more durable and therefore more efficient and profitable, We are proud to announce to our shareholders that a new day in human productivity is dawning. Our workforce of equisapiens will make Worry Free the most profitable company in human history.

And this, again, isn't quite on the page. As in, it's not explicit in the big text, but I think it's very signposted and implicit in the dialogue, where Steve, played by him, is completely calm about all of this. He's completely matter-of-fact, where Cassius can just say, what the fuck? Ah, Steve's like, dude, I can't let you go without explaining. If you would have seen the video, you wouldn't have gotten scared. Let me show you this video. And now, here is my picture's worth a thousand words proof of why this is not, in fact, a sci-fi, but is actually just a satire. So these are still frames from the video that Steve shows next to Brian Johnson. I'm calling this sorry to Brian Johnson you. And I think I'm going to make this a repeating bit within my life where hilariously Bucciarali has essentially predicted Brian Johnson 10 years ago. Because the video of how they are trying to optimize humans literally looks exactly like the guy who is drinking his own kid's blood to try to live forever, down to the white boxer shorts and poses that they are each making. It is horrific. And yes, readers, I will put this in the show notes for you because it is fascinating. But I argue that the shift when he sees the horse people is not a genre change. The dystopia has been completely there from the get go. Sure, it's been escalating as Cassius gets deeper and deeper into the system. The whole thing is there, except it's funny until he sees it fully realized in front of him and the shift is into horror.

Yeah. I think I agree now that it's a tonal shift. Certainly, I really admire what he's doing on the page to really, again, through contrast, draw our attention to it. It worked for me because this film is surreal and to me it was like an escalation of the surreal. But what makes it a tonal shift is that they did do it this way around like if Seablift had successfully made Cassius watch the ad which in the script is directed by Michelle Gondry and on film is Michelle Dongery I think yeah in the script it's.

Signpost Michelle Gondry but clearly they've had to change it probably for legal.

Reasons so.

The script is signaling to us what the tone.

Is and.

Then it's clearly a riff but it's like michael don.

Dongri or something like.

That in the finished film yeah.

But if he had managed to show us that film first so that we were expecting horse people then it would have felt i think less like a tonal shift what they've really deliberately done it this way around so that we're confronted with the horror of i mean it's the dehumanization of people by a.

Giant corporation like Amazon.

Capitalism and tech companies yeah and that's and the the satire of it is that eventually we'll get to a point where they see people so little as people that they can be equisapiens and.

He treats it, The character treats it like we're helping these people. Like, why would they want to feel as much pain in their broken down bodies having to go through all of these these grueling jobs when we can simply pump them full of things so that they will feel so much better about it? And I think the real genius is that part of the plot up till this point, and again, there's so much in this film, is that Cassius has been butting heads with his girlfriend and one of his co-workers and et cetera. And the deeper and deeper he gets into this the more he's sort of tantalized and buying the work thing but also he's not really seeing how problematic it is and then him being confronted with this the shift from oh isn't this it's kind of over the top and it's a bit ridiculous he's uncomfortable but it shifts tones so hard into horror for him and for us that the impact is In.

The pattern of threes, they have signposted for Cassius twice. Well, no, a multiple of times. So, making moral compromises until he finds himself in this position. So, initially, there's a guy played by Steven Yeun in the telemarketers, and they're starting to try to unionize the shop, as it were. And initially Cassius is on board and it reveals unbeknownst to Cassius that his girlfriend Detroit is also a separate workers rights activist as well as a performance artist whose performance art is about exploitation so there's all this like bonkers tie and stuff but after the first strike that they go on mini strike the first bit of collective action that they do Cassius offered a promotion to be a power caller and he takes it and then on his first day as a power caller Mr. Blank or Mr. Beep also in the is it fancy suit guy on the script tells them what they're selling and Cassius is like I don't think I'm comfortable with this and they show him his starting salary and he's like yes all right and then you've got two escalation scenes of Cassius being a scab with escalating stakes, like Detroit saying it on the second one, if you cross that picket line again, we're not going to be together. And he crosses it. So there's all the way up to this point. And this is the line where, you know, Steve Lift offers him a hundred million dollars to become a equisapien.

The Martin Luther King Jr. of horse people.

Yeah.

Literally.

I'm a manager for fucking horse people. A Gwisabian Martin Luther King Jr. One that we create. One that we control. So you want to have a false leader for these fucking horse people, but at the same time he works for you? Yeah. Keeps shit simple.

And Cash just says no. And one of my favorite points in this whole movie that made me feel like the Brazil connection, was the only way cash can get the evidence that he has of this out is by going on this talk show which is going to beat the shit out of you or something like that gets the shit beaten out of him gets dumped in a vat of shit literal shit is standing there coated in shit so that they will play the video evidence he has that steve lyft is turning people into horses and steve lyft's company's stock explodes yeah.

It just goes through the roof.

It's been one day since a viral celebrity leaked to the world's new scientific achievements made by worry-free and their genius ceo steve lift which caused worry-free stocks to skyrocket at a rate faster than any other company in history.

And it just feels like we're in that kind of dystopia now i i love the the commentary this film is very unsubtle it's almost this feels akin to the substance in like how on its sleeve it is but.

I will also point out that after this scene where he confronts him once we're back into quote unquote that world that boots shifts back into using basic words for.

Primarily colors he shifts.

Back into using the giant chunks of text.

And describing.

The things like, like that section is so horror laden, but then it's almost as though, well, we're going back to where the rest of the world is just accepting this as given and not seeing the full horrors of it.

Yeah. They have soft boiled frogs as well.

Right. Exactly. And I think that is incredibly telling and it's even more effective because of the contrasts around it that you have the big moment and then it's like we've had this massive horror and then oh he's back into the funny uncomfortable surreal satire as opposed to the deep horrifying body horror surrealist world and those shifts but now we know it exists we know it's there but we're not seeing it represented on the page the same way that we don't see it represented for a while again on the screen.

I want to make two observations about perhaps why they also made that tonal shift work for me, where I'm like, yeah, of course there's horse people in this movie.

So-

First of all, I hadn't noticed this because I hadn't got to this point, but once they've established the white guy voice, every single character, the name of a character in dialogue, when they're using the white guy voice, it will say Cassius dash overdubbed by a white actor, every single character name. So, they're just like hammering it visually that this is happening, repeated again and again and again for both Cassius, for Detroit, although I don't think detroit was overdubbed by a british actor i feel like tessa thompson was just doing a british voice but the the reason why i felt primed for equisapiens is at this party there's a scene where they're all sitting in a like amphitheater around a it's a room uh with a fireplace but they're all seated in like a tiered seating of like five tiers and it's just cassius sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace. And it's just nonstop dehumanization of him.

What about you, Cash? You ever had to bust a cap in anybody's ass? Green, no. Shut the fuck up. Talking to the man of the hour here. Come on, man, have a seat. Come on. I want to hear about some of that Oakland gangster shit, man. Oaktown. Just right here? Just sit down? Well, uh, luckily, I have not had to put a cap in anyone's ass or head or anything. So I don't have any cool stories. Sorry. All right. Well, I mean, give us something, right? These boring cunts are at every single one of my parties. You're different, man. Make an impression. At least take off the white voice. And I know you can bust a rap, right? No, actually, I can't. I don't know. Bullshit. Come on. Bullshit. I can't, man. I mean, I can listen to rap well, but I just can't rap. It's actually embarrassing.

Like, it's just so overemphasizing how they see him, that they see him as a product of his race and nothing else and make him rap. And the rap is...

Nigga shit, nigga shit, nigga, nigga, nigga shit.

Oh, it starts terrible. He has like a couple of lines that are just like the worst, you know, like kindergarten you've ever done. and then he starts doing other things and then suddenly all this giant group of white people start essentially mosh pitting.

To it and shouting it back at him yep and so he had just been so dehumanized and he's in this like the party is also escalated because like they're in this there's this tracking shot it's following the fancy man to go and find cassius just through Like, eyes wide shut almost levels of sexual activity around them. And then it's the only line in the whole film where Fancy Suit Guy does not use his white guy voice. And this is what he says.

Look here, young blood.

And it's hugely powerful. So I'm primed. Like the surrealism is jacking up. You've got the color cues changing. You've been exposed to Armie Hammer. Cassius has been completely dehumanized and I'm primed for something enormous to happen. So I think that's how there's been a lot of groundwork to that tonal shifts.

Absolutely. I think it really works, but I don't think it works like you said if you read the first five pages and then suddenly you jump to that page it doesn't work at all but it has been growing to that point and then it it's like been slowly turning the dial yeah and then you know we've moved from like a one to an eight and now we're like and we're at an 11 but it works because it exactly bread crumbed you there yeah.

Cool is there any other lessons that you took from that that helped you with this tonal shift of introducing equisapiens into this satirical dystopia.

I think the the really interesting like there were different use of we talked a little bit about detroit's art and we also had a couple of other commercials and some animated sequences and so doing some pieces like that that are a little bit more visually out there as well really help set that up.

And there's also like the the verhoeven like that show that that's been established a couple of times the game show just.

Yeah people.

Go on the show and get the shit beaten out of them it's almost like yeah verhoevenesque and it's overt satire.

I mean yeah we've almost gotten to the point where we can't satirize it like you watch that show and go yeah that's about where we're at now cool cool cool cool cool but um Anyway, yes, in summary, Boots Riley, genius, the end.

I was about to say a lot less bleak than our final film by the Daniels, but I think the very shift that we're going to talk about is open to interpretation as to whether it's bleak or not.

Well, my thesis is bleak as fuck, so let's go with that. Cool. So let's talk about Swiss Army Man.

Just have to remember that we're all here for a purpose and the universe picks its time. I need you to help me get home. Okay, buddy? Okay, buddy. No!

Now, again, this has been on my watch list for an incredibly long time, as has, sorry to bother you, so really, really glad that this episode has made me watch both these films. But the fact that it was written and directed by the Daniels made me go, all right, yeah, sure, I'm on board. But what was it that drew you to choosing it for this episode?

So this, for me, is a little bit like Shaun of the Dead for You, where the moment that I had in my head was so emotionally impactful when I very first saw it. And to be honest, still emotionally impactful now for me watching it, that I think I still do think it's a tonal shift. But I think I overemphasized in my head how much of a shift it is because of the emotional impact that it has. So it is a tonal shift that has a great emotional impact. And I think because of the emotional impact it has, it doesn't need to be huge it.

Still works.

But i certainly maybe over emphasize it in memory.

Yeah so i'm gonna have a crack at summarizing the film we.

Certainly did not pick ones that are easy to sum.

Up so paul dano plays hank who the film opens on him trying to kill himself trying to hang himself as a castaway on a desert island And... Corpse played by Daniel Radcliffe washes up on the beach just as Hank is trying to hang himself and the corpse manages to fart so profusely that Hank is able to use ride the corpse like a jet ski and I think it even says like a dolphin on the page through the waves to get off the desert island and back to humanity, although they arrive at a deserted stretch of beach and are trying to make their way through heavy woods back home. And as they embark on this journey, Hank learns that the body, played by Daniel Radcliffe, has very special powers. It starts with just his flatulence, but then can produce water, like a well, like you crank an arm and water pours out of him.

His dick's a compass, like let's just, you know.

His dick is a compass, he can wind up and let him go to like be a jackknife, he becomes like a projectile shooter from his mouth, he is a Swiss army man. But most importantly is that the corpse, initially through mimicking Hank, is my understanding of how that works, starts talking and then as it starts talking, it's as if it's a child in the body of a man and because it's a child it's displaying all this innate curiosity while also because it's a corpse is inherently has things that might be considered gross by contemporary standards what.

Do i do now hank nanny just look at them imagine them without their clothes on what what's underneath their clothes you know their boobs and vaginas butts, what do you do with those many.

And hank is trying to teach the corpse which identifies as manny hank tries to teach manny about life and then throughout the film as they're working their way back to civilization, it turns out that Manny actually teaches Hank. About life. Is that a reasonable summary?

That is a reasonable summary. And along the way, part of what we are learning in bits and pieces. So Hank has a cell phone that is almost entirely out of juice that he is looking at, like he turns it on every once in a while to see if he still has service and we can watch, you know, the battery go from 10% to 8% and down. And there's a photo of a girl on the phone that he's looking at that Manny starts asking about, and Hank kind of doesn't want to talk about it. So at first, you think maybe this is an ex, and they've had a breakup, and maybe that's why he was trying to hang himself. And then he starts telling Manny a story of how they met on the bus, and we see it from sort of different perspectives, and we think, did that go badly? And then they try to reenact it, and Hank comes out as the girl. And the girl is played by mary elizabeth winstead so you've got this very manic pixie dream vibe to it and then because of this they start talking about relationships and love and falling in love and, how do you fall in love do you fart in front of the person that you love um what is sex and love and all these sorts of things when.

You put the cork up my butt was that sex.

Uh reader yes it was so yeah that's uh that is essentially the plot and there's i think intentionally the film never thoroughly answers how much of this is you know an occurrence at owl creek bridge type of moment where everything is flashing through hank's imagination in the moments between you know him stepping off the esky and not or whether it's all a dream or whether it's all happening or whether There's some of it is and some of it's not. It doesn't go there because that's not the point.

Sure. I hadn't even really thought about that at all.

Mm.

So... Clear on the tone i'd seen the trailer for this film a few times read reviews i knew it was about it was the fighting corpse movie and i assumed from looking at the trailer that hank riding manny like a jet ski was going to be somewhere near the culmination and climax of the movie right.

As opposed to within the first five pages.

Yes right so in terms of what tone does this film is established in the first five pages i think the tone is very clear on the page more clearer than any of the previous two films that we've looked at in that okay what do i mean by that the big print goes to greater lengths to tell us how to feel as an audience it is still very descriptive it's not like it doesn't have a whole lot of unfilmables necessarily but i think the action is inherently so surreal that even in describing it, it's teaching us how surreal and how sort of dark and gross and scatological, but ultimately cathartic it will be.

Would you say it's accurate to call it a fart fantasy?

Yes, I think that is. I mean, in the whole of the first page is a guy trying to kill himself and thinking that this body that's washed up might be alive and might cure his loneliness. And it ends with a rush of gas expels from the man's rear hank's face drops that's the the bottom of page one so it's like taking it seriously building up to the the gag and then hank has got quite a big monologue about what it might have meant to him you.

Know i i'd always hope right before i died my life would flash before my eyes and I would see wonderful things a life full of parties and friends and, And how I'd learned to play the guitar and maybe there'd even be a girl. But as I was hanging up there, I didn't really see much of anything. But I did see you. And I know it sounds dumb, but I really thought for a moment that maybe, just maybe there was a reason that you can...

And then he goes to hang himself again and then there's just a lot of this is what i mean about how it uses action lines so hank stares at the farting body it's an existential black hole it obliterates all meaning in hank's mind now none of that there's not a black hole on screen it's not being literal at all it is using a metaphor and then it says hank stands there trying to decipher what is happening right it is putting us in not only hank's experience but very firmly in our experience as viewers of the film as to what this means and how to feel about what it means that.

Is a tool that this script uses far more than the other two.

Yeah um.

And i think that really comes into the tonal shift as well it's whose point of view are we within who are we sympathizing and empathizing with and that is really set up within these first few pages is hank we are within Hank's experience.

Yeah. And I was really interested after watching it, so in these pages, Hank is singing and then it starts looping his voice so that it grows into different harmonies and beats and rhythms and- and it's quite beautiful, like... I've got subtitles on most times I watch things and the lyrics of the song often because it's quite sort of haunting slow repeated melodies it sounds like gibberish but there's actually like often they're just singing about their friendship and their relationship and what's happening at any given point in time but I was wondering is that on the page and it absolutely, is Hank begins to sing again as he sings he appears increasingly confident and his own voice loops underneath to create a growing chorus of voices. And then later, as Hank is riding Manny's body out into the ocean, after a bit, Hank stops singing and looks down at the insanity of the situation. Behind him, the island is increasingly distant, and ahead of him is just wide open ocean. What is he doing? How is this possible? That is one of my favorite, for me personally chas here favorite things is to ask questions of the audience in action lines i think it really orients them in what they're trying to feel or think if you're feeling this you are feeling the correct way and if not like try and orient them he pumps a fist in the air and sings at the top of his lungs it's rapturous it's pure freedom the beauty of the moment overtakes the logic in his mind and he lets go so that's the bottom of page four so that it clearly establishes for me the surrealism of the movie and it grows and grows what happens is that hank needs manny's penis to guide him to sarah johnson the lady like.

A divining rod.

Yeah and so he starts hank starts telling Manny the story of Hank's own love for Sarah, but as if it's from Manny. And Manny believes it's his own memories that he's feeling, that he has loved Sarah Johnson, that Sarah Johnson has loved him. And they are recreating Hank's memories. And Hank builds all these elaborate like.

Hank would pick up my hand okay now put it on her hand, okay i want to look at her, my name is manny, My name is Seth. Sarah. Sarah. That's her name. Sarah Johnson. Sarah Johnson. Yeah, Sarah Johnson. Man of your face. Oh, this is what I look like when I'm happy.

So speaking of Michelle Gondry, it feels very Michelle Gondry-esque. Like as they move from location to location through this forest, they'll recreate different scenes. So like a bus and he's building it out of scrap and junk and things that they find along the way they recreate a party they recreate their own home and they genuinely fall in love with each other like whether it's romantic love or not like they there's a kiss that then hank feels very awkward about and creates a bit of friction for them for a while until they almost drown and then they come back together again look.

I think that it is all of the above. I think that they fall in love in every way. And I also think that Hank's feeling awkward about the kiss is completely in line with everything else he feels awkward about and feels that Manny should feel awkward about, but because Manny is a corpse, feels no shame. Manny goes, well, why do you feel shame about masturbating? Why do you feel shame about farting in front of someone if you love them? Why do you feel shame about having these thoughts and and wanting to express love and hank just feels shame about everything so there's this really lovely thing where where hank's trying to teach manny well you don't need to share absolutely everything and then manny's saying well why not and you're realizing that where our lines are are often arbitrary are often personal and are sometimes ridiculous and holding us back, yes however to live in a society we do still need some of these lines and why is the question you know and do you still need to hold on to those lines if you're about to die and your only companion is a farting corpse maybe not.

And so mel just one more thing before you get to the tonal shift as they're doing this i just want to give more of a vibe like those metaphors That use of big print is reflected in the feeling of the film because there's vibrant green from the forest, like really vivid green, and like they find an old couch that they then rip up and turn into dress and the bus and things like that. And so there's lots of yellow green. Gold lots of really soft focus shots it feels like michelle gondry-esque it feels whimsical and as they're falling in love with each other you're falling in love with them and you're falling in love with the the humor of the situation and the there's a lot of sort of montages and movements and it's yeah i just want to set all that up as the feeling of the film as we arrive at the tonal shift.

And this is where i definitely think of again. All the scripts being written by the people who plan to direct them but i think of all of the scripts in fact one of of all the scripts i've read which is a lot this is one of the scripts that i think is one of the most difficult to visualize the first time i read it because there's such a specific vision that they are enacting in terms of you know these two people alone in the woods reenacting and creating a memory slash fantasy slash simulation to try to understand life better and they are clearly very visual directors and they're writing what i'm sure in their head is quite clear and i think it's beautiful on the page but it's nothing compared to what they actualize and how sort of yeah fantastical it is they get a lot of it across in these lines about like and then his dick starts moving you know the the lines feel like a Farrelly brothers movie sometimes when then you watch it and you're like oh that's not what this is because I think we're used to seeing those sorts of lines and action lines in a certain type of film but what I do think it does this really interesting is like what you were talking about is putting us inside a character's point of view and when it puts us in a character's point of view it's a really beautiful thing yeah.

Even when it's as absurd as these two characters' situation.

Sometimes more.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Because they really do find a lot of beauty in, yeah, complete absurdity and things that can't happen in real life, you know. And there's jokes that have been made about it's a gay necrophiliac love story because if you literalize it, it is. But they're not treating it literally. They're simply treating it as fact. And those are two very different things.

So what's the tonal shift?

Okay, so the tonal shift is essentially on page 80. So a lot of things have happened. Chaz, you summed up most of them. They've gotten to civilization, but still quite far away from, you know, like the city. They got attacked by a bear and manny is now carrying he is very slowly throughout the course of the film gained powers of speech and then gained ability to move his limbs and finally has gained mobility so um when hank gets hurt with the bear attack um he passes out he wakes up being carried on manny's back and so scene 121 at the bottom of page 80 manny says wow.

There she is.

Hank squints through the sunlight to see that he and Manny are walking through some trees toward a house. A grill, a lawnmower, a driveway with a red sports car parked next to the garbage cans. And you get the point. It's civilization. Through the glass, in the flesh, doing dishes, is none other than Sarah. This is a callback because Hank has taught Manny the tune and they have hummed Jurassic Park several times. so we're like oh this is a callback this is triumphant Oh.

Shit. No. Manny, stop saying! Manny! Hey, what are you doing? No! This is home! No! This is what we've been fighting for, right?

And then manny and hank start having one of what is kind of their classical typical arguments where hank is like no manny this is a bad idea manny's like what's the problem and for me like the tonal shift comes with the introduction of Sarah. And really, because for the first time, we get introduced to a point of view that is neither Manny's nor Hank's. Suddenly, interior Sarah's house continuous. Sarah hums to herself doing dishes. She's totally oblivious that over her shoulder, Hank and Manny are rolling around the yard like idiots. Then we jump back to the yard. They're fighting and suddenly, hello?

Maybe everyone's a little bit ugly. Yeah, maybe we're all just ugly, dying sacks of shit, and maybe all it'll take is one person to just be okay with that, and then the whole world will be dancing and singing and farting, and everyone will feel a little bit less alone. Penny, you have no idea how nice that sounds. Hello. Are you dressed up for Halloween? No, no, we're just a little dirty and tired. What's wrong with your face? Nothing, we just need some help. My name's Manny, and this is my best friend, Hank. I used to be dead, but then he brought me back to life. And we were lost out there in the woods for a very long time. But we survived because I have special powers.

So off screen, Chrissy, the first time that there has been another actual quote unquote living character in with them. And it's an interesting one because, again, the tonal shift, I think, is a little bit more gradual here than I had remembered it. But I think it's quite clear with the introduction of two other people. And then there's a realization that is slowly dawning throughout this scene. That Sarah comes running outside, you know, because her little kid. And she's like, Chrissy? Manny and Hank turn around to see Sarah staring right at them in slow motion. This is the moment. She is so beautiful up close. But as she looks at the two of them, her expression quickly turns to disgust and horror. And the realization actually takes a little while to build. And I think that it's crucial that through the film, we've only ever seen or heard about Sarah from Hank. Sure, we've seen her in fantasy and in flashback and whatever, but it's all through this unreliable narrator, through his point of view, and through all these fantasies that, you know, he said lots of things. And most of the things that we're seeing them interact with is only fantasy. And suddenly we're realizing Sarah does not even recognize this guy at all, has no idea who he is. And that we're recontextualizing in our head that when Hank was looking at her Instagram and saw him with another guy, that's not like, oh, her new boyfriend that she's moved on with, which was the impression that I first got when I saw it. And the script doesn't give us anything to indicate that's not the fact. You're just like, oh, you know, when your ex breaks up with someone and they move on and you get that really unhealthy obsession with like looking at the photos of them together and comparing yourself to them and thinking you're better looking than them or not as good looking at them or whatever. And suddenly you realize she has no idea who he is. And it says there's just one action line that literally just says she has no idea. And you realize, holy shit, he's not been remembering something. He's not been fantasizing something that didn't happen because she broke up with him. He stalked this woman and that's the tonal shift where you suddenly and i actually think it's quite interesting because it's really clear on screen when it happens and on the page there's a couple of different times where it becomes could become clear depending on how fast you're reading like it makes it very clear but there's a couple of different times you could notice it because it doesn't spell out at first that sarah doesn't recognize hank when she comes outside you're Just like, oh, she's freaked out because he's, you know, got this beard and she's freaked out because her kid and she's freaked out because Manny's the corpse. It is a slow dawning realization, but it is a big tonal shift.

Mm-hmm. And I asked you what you thought the tonal shift was I felt one and I don't think it was a maybe it was a tonal shift I felt one tonal shift in the bear attack scene because basically at that point there's a point in that scene where where Manny is gonna let Hank get eaten by the bear, and that was just where I'm like oh this film could end really badly and and that was a big shift but it was still fighting corpse movie but that was the first time where I I was unsettled as a viewer deliberately and then when you said this was a tonal change i thought back on it and not only like you said you've got a massive plot reveal which recontextualizes the whole film you also have the way it's shot and the way that the color grade changes it becomes bluer it looks more like quote-unquote real life there's more like sort of i'm trying to think of how to describe it but the the editing becomes less stylized and the framing becomes less stylized the color or the shot selection becomes less stylized it's like we're watching a true crime thing of how a mother and their little daughter finds a homeless guy and his dead corpse friend in their backyard right and then they deliberately have a news reporter appearing and there was one shot that really stood out to me is hank's father has been told that hank is dead and it's a one-shot.

Because they've misidentified Manny as Hank.

Yeah. And it's all a bit sort of confusing at that point. Like Anna was like, oh.

Intentionally, I think.

Yeah, absolutely.

There's a lot of confusion, realization, mistaken identity, lots of stuff happening at once.

Yeah. And so the reporter is about to interview Hank and I'm just going to read it out. She walks over to her cameraman as Hank notices something in the street. He nervously sneaks away from the news team as his dad walks onto the driveway. An older man with a sullen face, he looks more or less just like the dummy self from the forest. Hank watches from behind the ambulance as his father is escorted toward the body bag with Maddie inside. When he sees the body bag, Hank's dad simply shakes his head, no, turns and walks away without realising it's not Hank. Careful not to be seen, Hank follows his dad through the crowd. He is right behind him, but right when he could say something, he chickens out and hides behind the white fence in the front yard. As Hank hides there by the fence, we can see Hank's dad in the distance, beginning to break down and cry by his truck. Now, all of that is a one-er and it feels very different. It feels almost like we're in like a David Fincher thriller movie. It's like almost something out of the front of Ben Affleck's house in Gone Girl kind of vibe. Not as formalized as Fincher. I'm overdoing it here, but in terms of the tone, the directors and the writers are using a lot of different tools to change the tone of this moment. It's not just the plot reveal. It's not just the perspective change. It's not just that Hank's been stalking Sarah and Sarah's not been known Hank. It's that Hank's relationship with Manny is not normal. It's been normalized in this whole film. And then suddenly you've got many people external to Hank all seeing it as not normal. And so these are almost violent juxtapositions with everything that's gone before. And that's what leads to the tonal shift.

I think where Shaun of the Dead does a lot of back and forth tonal shift, right? And where Sorry to Bother You has like... Well it's very slow escalate and then one massive tonal shift for me it's almost as if swiss army man is mostly one tone throughout and then from page like 81 to page 90.

Probably 91 so for 10.

Pages you almost get tonal shift tonal shift where it's ratcheting up where it's all instead of one giant shift all at once which is open stall door oh my god there's a horseman.

It's.

Oh suddenly there's a kid oh suddenly sarah's here oh suddenly sarah doesn't recognize oh suddenly he's a stalker oh suddenly his dad is figuring this out oh suddenly sarah realizes that he's her stalker like you've got all of these things and you're shift it's like you're shifting i don't know how to drive a manual car but you.

Know instead of shifting.

From first to sixth you're going from one to two to three to four to five to six and it's just it's giving you these tonal shifts all going the same direction but all in these slow doses.

As

Opposed to big click.

I would argue that the the tone of the film shifts when they arrive at the backyard because that's when tonally the cinematography style changes the color grade changes the editing style changes there's no music that's.

Page 81 but that's.

Yeah you're.

Arguing from the film and i.

Think because.

They're directing they know that's where it shifts.

And that's.

Yeah page 81 is where i think it starts.

Can i phrase it differently i'm arguing as the viewer that's when it shifts so then i'm like all right if that's when it shifted as the viewer what have they then done on the page right and that's where they're doing all the the things that you're talking about right but the other observation that I want to make which is about contrast like we've read this out this is out of the three scripts this one's got the most stylized big print there is very little stylization in the big print in that scene where Chrissy the young girl is being terrified by Manny the talking corpse and it's all very descriptive you know Hank and Manny stare at Sarah in silence no clue is what to say awkward pause like very descriptive not a lot of performance very.

Matter of fact.

Yeah i think yeah but then there's a beautiful moment where sarah and hank hug and cry because she thinks he's a lost man who's survived the wilderness with a corpse and she's rescuing him so hank begins to cry on sarah's shoulder she thinks he's so happy to be home she has no idea no idea manny just left no idea he was ever alive in the first place or that he loved her only hank knows so he cries so obviously that's a big bit of the filmmakers on the page telling us as the audience how to feel in this moment, But then from then, all the way, there's not a metaphor from there until page 94. There's like a seven page, in a script where almost every line is loaded with metaphor, there's like a seven page gap where it becomes almost as documentary a matter of fact as it's being portrayed on screen.

Yep. And I think we've kind of shifted, and I think that's because we've shifted to having this empathy and sympathy with Sarah. In those pages where, you know, where we talked about contrast. This is contrast. We've had, you know, 80-odd pages of fantasy and of seeing Hank's point of view is normalized and all those things. So when it suddenly shifts and stop using metaphor and we start understanding this thing about Sarah and it's very factual and laid out, the contrast really makes us feel that tonal shift that they realize on screen with other things like color and sound, but it's here.

And those pages are basically Hank absconding with Manny's body, now inanimate once again, and trying to run back to free the body because he's heard that the body will be basically buried in an unmarked grave. And it's also Hank pleading with Manny's body to come back to life. And it's all very matter of fact they're running back through all the sets that they've built and all the people chasing them including sarah her husband chrissy the daughter cops they're all chasing they're finding the sets that they've built so the sets were real right.

He really built.

All this.

Stuff in an old you know broken down bus in the middle of the woods.

But it looks it with this color grade insane and the wide shot it looks crazy it looks like something out of True Detective season one, right? And it's deliberately the case and the description is a very matter of fact. And it's So, matter of fact, like on page one, sorry, scene 142, it's page 95, Hank gives up and simply cradles Manny in his arms looking for a sign of life, anything at all. Unseen by Hank, Sarah is standing completely still 20 feet away, just watching a guy talking to a corpse. Right it's just it's so sad just from the description of it it doesn't have to tell us to feel sad but it takes the conclusion is Hank has to fart in front of everyone to inspire Manny that people are willing to be ugly in front of each other to come back to life and the the music resumes Manny's body manages to propel itself with farts back into the ocean and he's you know looking back with a grin on his face.

Manny's body shoots away against the waves like a beautiful dolphin.

Yeah. And so the metaphors come back. And even though that's about Manny and Manny's freedom, I think the sadness for me comes from the fact that Hank is definitely not free. He is an incredibly lonely person and has lost the one friend or connection that he's ever had. Yeah. Yeah. wonderful choice wonderful movie and i'm i like seeing that that each of these scripts use different techniques but i think you're right that you could summarize them all as contrast they all in similar we've uh stew and i found something when we were looking at the sense and sensibility script by emma thompson that she used different writing styles when writing for her character as opposed to uh the kate winslet sister like the the action lines actually reflected the outlook the worldview of the characters depending on whose perspective you were in so.

Like i guess if i had to summarize it i would say that all three of these scripts use different tools but the same principles.

Yeah where.

It's about contrast and also especially with Swiss Army men, but to a very smaller extent, the others as well. It's about point of view and who we're empathizing with in any given moment.

I think I agree with your really early observation that if I were writing this not to direct myself or writing something with this level of tonal shifts in them, that I would have to take a more Swiss Army man approach where I'm having to do a little more handholding in the action lines to tell the audience how to feel about any given moment but then they abandon that principle when they want the audience to be like emotionally detaching and and being fearful for Hank you know so it's not that they had to use it all the time and that the contrast was super powerful. Another thing that I learned from this is that all three scripts did a lot in setting up that pattern to contrast it with. You can't just go, oh, I've learned all these techniques and I'm going to drop them in where the tonal shift is because then it will feel out of place in the script in the same way that it will feel out of place in the movie or the TV show that you're doing unless you've done that set up work like the amount of work that they did in shawn of the dead to establish real world relationships real world stakes real world experience to violence juxtaposing it with the humor but that it wasn't all humor all the time because then we would have gotten to that mother death scene and it would have felt not as powerful not earned yeah not earned wouldn't have been as impactful all.

Three of these really escalate to the tonal shifts.

Whereas the tonal.

Shifts like with shawn of the dead the tonal shift kind of whips back and forth with swiss army man it takes 10 pages to wretches up and with sorry to bother you it's like bam tonal shift and we're out but all of them in the lead up i think the lead up is you know 70 pages is.

The shortest um.

So there's quite a bit of work that goes into these massive tonal shift scenes.

Well, the fact that Sorry to Bother You, which I think is just as surreal at the end as Swiss Army Man is, right? But opens with a different director would have not felt surreal at all. You know, the first nine pages of that script. So really took its time in educating us as to how this movie is going to be treated.

I would argue, it's interesting that you found it happening in that club scene on the page. I think because I'd seen the movie before, I didn't really find it till page 14.

Oh, I didn't find it on the page. I felt it in the film and then looked for it on the page and could see.

Right, right, right.

Not that it was telling me how that was going to feel so different, but it's interesting to see like a huge page of text.

Yep.

Whereas I think the scene, it would not have been a minute of screen time in that VIP room. It felt like an almost violent assault that was much shorter than that. But they took the time to make you go, oh, there's a reason why I'm experiencing this very tiny room becoming slowly more absurdly crowded.

I love that, that you feel really crowded while watching in a tiny room. And then the page is literally just crowded with text. Like there's no white space on that page. Pun intended.

Yeah. Awesome.

Cool.

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