I've been trying to get in the habit of reading at least one screenplay each week. I'm going to try to set aside at least one day each week on the blog to talk about that screenplay and maybe share anything I may have learned from it. We'll see how long that lasts.
A few days ago I finished the first draft of Not Dead Yet, and since I'm waiting until Sunday to start my first revision just to give me a little distance, I quelled my zombie jones with a little World War Z. It's a really good script, scary and tragic in parts and with a clear sense of theme, but it doesn't beat you over the head with the point.
But what I really want to talk about is the screenplay for No Country for Old Men.
I have not seen the film, but I'm sure it's a fine piece of cinematic spectacle. The action is constantly pushing the story forward and the characters are interesting and there's plenty of cool dialogue.
BIG OLD SPOILERS AHEAD
For example, check out this scene with CHIGURH* (The Bad Guy) and some road side PROPRIETOR:
Chigurh is digging in his pocket. A quarter: he tosses it. He slaps it onto his forearm but keeps it covered.
CHIGURH
Call it.
PROPRIETOR
Call it?
CHIGURH
Yes.
PROPRIETOR
For what?
CHIGURH
Just call it.
PROPRIETOR
Well -- we need to know what it is we're callin' for here.
CHIGURH
You need to call it. I can't call it for you. It wouldn't be fair. It wouldn't even be right.
PROPRIETOR
I didn't put nothin' up.
CHIGURH
Yes you did. You been putting it up your whole life. You just didn't know it. You know what date is on this coin?
PROPRIETOR
NO.
CHIGURH
Nineteen fifty-eight. It's been traveling twenty-two years to get here. And now it's here. And it's either heads or tails, and you have to say. Call it. A long beat.
PROPRIETOR
Look... I got to know what I stand to win.
CHIGURH
Everything.
PROPRIETOR
How's that?
CHIGURH
You stand to win everything. Call it.
PROPRIETOR
All right. Heads then.
Chigurh takes his hand away from the coin and turns his arm to look at it.
CHIGURH
Well done..
Here's the thing that's pretty brilliant about that scene. Chigurh is flipping the guy for his life. You know enough about this guy to know that he's letting this coin toss determine whether or not he comes back to the house later tonight and murders the Proprietor. But he never has to say a word about it. That's terrific characterization.
However....
I have a major problem with this script. Half the time I have no idea what the hell is going on. I assume this is a Cohen thing - I've never read one of their scripts before - but the exposition tends to be a bit hard to follow at times. For one thing there are places where a character we've been introduced to is listed as MAN for a while for no real reason since I'm assuming we'll know it's the same guy when we see him on screen.
Speaking of which, there are a LOT of characters and dead bodies listed as "Man," which gets mighty confusing since half the time I thought two people were one person and vice versa.
But it's little stuff like this I had the hardest time with:
The truck stops and Moss opens the passenger door and swings the case in and climbs in after. The driver, an older man, gapes at him, frightened.
MOSS
I'm not going to hurt you. I need you to-
The windshield stars.
A quick second round pushes part of the windshield in.
"The windshield stars"? As clever as that may sound, it's confusing. I had to stop a second and reread the line because I wasn't sure what it meant. So I was like, huh? Wha.... oooh.
Or this:
Wells looks at Chigurh, waiting for a decision.
The low chug of the shotgun.
Aside from his finger on the trigger, Chigurh hasn't moved. He sits staring at Wells's remains for a beat.
Again, very poetic and in the moment, but it took me a second to figure out what happened. I was like, did he just.... was that.... oh, okay. He's dead.
There are also scenes where I have a hell of a time trying to figure out where the characters are in relation to each other or the geography of a room in a scene where that information would be immensely useful.
Part of me wants to chalk that up to style points and get over it. But part of me does not like the way I had to constantly pay close attention to understand what the hell was going on in this script. The story should flow like a story, not feel like an assignment for my college English class.
Is it just me?
*Isn't Chigurh a great villain name? It's memorable, different and it reminds me of chiggers. And for those of you who didn't grow up wandering barefoot in backwoods North Carolina, chiggers are tiny little bugs that crawl in your skin and make you itch.
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