On this National Screenwriters Day, I want to talk about my most recent movie-watching experience and what it showed me about “getting it right.”
Last weekend, I sat in the theatre waiting for the opening frames of THE BOYS IN THE BOAT, worried. I love the book, and translating from book to screen is about as simple as translating from English to, say, squirrel.
When I’d first read terrific book, The Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown in 2013, I knew how I’d write the film’s opening. Start with a tight shot, gradually move out, and then cut to something completely different:
EXT. LAKE – DAY
Silence. A single oar slices through murky water. And again. And again.
Breathing. The deep and strained breathing of one man.
Now more oars, EIGHT to be exact, unite to shoot a sleek scull through the water.
COXSWAIN (O.S.)
Sprint! Now! Now! Now!
The sounds of breathing are replaced by an the roars of an unseen crowd as THREE EIGHT-MAN RACING SHELLS sprint to an unseen finish line.
EXT. GOLD AND RUBY MINE CAMP- OLD SCHOOLHOUSE – DAY
Scruffy 10-year-old JOE RANZ sits on worn wooden steps while birds sing above the dirt, mud, and despair at this Godforsaken goldmine.
HARRY RANTZ, his father beaten down by the Depression, exits the school. followed by a bespeckled SCHOOL TEACHER. The two men shake.
Harry descends the rickety steps. Joe looks up as his father, whose face flashes a few seconds of regret. With a curt nod to his son, Harry heads down a muddy track. He doesn’t look back to see little Joe standing, watching, and swallowing hard.
And so forth.
In the theatre, the film began — and its opening scene was on the water. Woot, woot … But, wait, it’s a clumsy kid. Huh? Soon we meet Joe Rantz, circa 1930s, as a UW freshman.
As I watched the next two hours, I thought how these two hours would have been condensed into my second and third acts. Act 1 would have been Joe’s Depression-era childhood, being abandoned by his evil stepmother at the age of 10. I wanted more of Joe.
But screenwriter Mark L. Smith and director George Clooney know what they’re doing. So does author Daniel James Brown.
Realizing how many drafts must have gone through the development wringer, I think this was, indeed, the right script. This movie was exactly what Joe Rantz would have wanted. In the book Brown describes their first meeting when Rantz gave him his marching orders:
I shook Joe’s hand again and told him I’d like to come back and talk to him some more, and that I’d like to write a book about his rowing days. Joe grasped my hand again and said he’d like that, but then his voice broke once more and he admonished me gently, “But not just about me. It has to be about the boat.” — Prologue, The Boys In The Boat
This script honored all those young men — “the boat” — who in that extraordinary moment in 1936 did something remarkable. This script and movie, let us share in that.
Nicely done.
PawPrints Productions 