Union Screenplay

[MarVelo]

I'm writing a screenplay about workers in a 1904 shoe factory whom are going to try and form a union. I have about 10 pages so far but I'm a little stuck, mostly beacuse i'm terrible with dialogue. If someone can give me some input and help with what I have already i'd much appreciate.


Download the .PDF ----->
http://relixnet.awardspace.com/unioNation.pdf

EDIT: Oops, fixed that.

[esper]

Doesn't appear to be working.

[Stupot]

it just doesn't appear.

[MarVelo]

Fixed the linking error, sorry.

[esper]

All right. I've gone through, read it, and noted some things that are good and some things that are not so good. First, the good: you have a decent prerequisite character base built up. You've got the n00b who I suppose is the guy who's going to try to bring about change, you've got the rough and tumble oldbie with a heart of gold, you've got your dick authority figure and you've got your unseen boss towering over the lot of them. Let's use a certain excellent novel/movie which came to mind as I saw these characters unfold: Steven King's "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption," better known as the movie "The Shawshank Redemption." You've got your Andy Dufresne, Ellis Redding, Byron Hadley, and Sam Norton. Click here if you aren't familiar with it.

Second in the good department is the idea... Overall, it's the type of thing good movies are made of.

Tertiarily, you've got a good setting and background events which are building up to foreshadow the eventual outcome, and the need for the union.

Now, on to the not-so-good.

As you mentioned, your dialog is really quite bland. Bad in fact. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I'm a professional author (although I aspire to be) and that I'm a master of conversation, but I think that my strong point is dialog, and I'll tell you what I do to get good dialog in my story: I put down the goddamn pen (or laptop, as the case more commonly is), get up, and start talking to an invisible area of the room. When I conclude speaking to it, I move into the empty area I was speaking to and reply to myself. Being a good improvisational actor is key to being a good dialog writer. I would even suggest you (this is going to sound really lame, but hear me out) get a digital recorder and record these semi-monologues, then transcribe what you've said onto paper, changing it only by making it more readable and grammatically correct.

There's another issue: your grammar, and in some places, your spelling, leave a little to be desired. Having studied the fine art of manuscript submission (and subsequent refusal), I can tell you that even a second-rate script will at least get glimpsed if it has good spelling and grammar. A ton of great manuscripts and screenplays find their way into, and never again out of, a slush pile due to these little oversights that an editor will see right away and not be able to let go of. DON'T allow your grammar checker and spellchecker on your word processor to do the job for you. If you want to screenwrite, you have to think of it as your baby. You can't just fart a baby out of your womb and then stick it in an incubator. You have to take care of it yourself, and at the very least hand it over to another human being who knows what they're doing (an editor, in this case). This is really glaring in the misspelling of "door knob" as "door know." Know is a word, so how is your computer going to knob it's wrong?

Next: as I was mildly interested in writing a screenplay once, I looked into it a bit. I don't remember exactly what it said, but I think I remember one site saying each page of the script is supposed to equal about ONE minute of screentime, except in long sections of quick dialog. I read through this script and quickly lost interest because it seemed like a series of quick-cuts, more like a music video about unions rather than a movie about them. You need to stretch this ten pages into twenty or so to give your screenplay an appropriate introduction. Introduction is the most important part of a movie, because no matter how great the rest of the storyline is, without an appropriate introduction as a foundation to base the rest of the film on, everything else falls flat. You can't rush it.

The scene where McCuntley is beating the shit out of absolutely everyone felt more like a scene from the Incredible Hulk to me. Me mad! You worker! Me bang, bang, BANG! In a movie like this, bashing people about is a PRECIOUS COMMODITY!!!!! You got that right, I said it was a precious commodity! The beating of the main character, and especially the destruction of his hand, is something that will get the audience to push themselves into the next level of active awareness, like moving into a higher realm of plot-consciousness. Take, once again, the Shawshank Redemption (if you haven't seen it, by the way, I must suggest you do, especially if you want to know how to write a successful movie script that people will be talking and thinking about for years after they see your film)... In the beginning, we have a minor character that is never again seen in the movie being beaten nearly to death by Captain Hadley. Ooooh, the viewer thinks, this does not bode well for our hero, Andy. Then, you have some minor beatings of Andy and his friends. Ouch, thinks the viewer, this is getting worse and worse for him. Something had better happen soon to change that poor man's luck. Then, you've got one of the bigger "ouch" scenes in the movie, where Andy gets raped by "the sisters." But this is the kickoff, and things start to change. Andy gets motivated. He enlists the aid of Hadley by helping him with a money issue (employing his knowledge from his past life as a banker) and in return sees the head of the sisters pay for what he did. Later on in the movie, we see the final blow fall when Warden Norton has one of Andy's friends killed to cover the secret money laundering and bribe-taking that has been going on in the higher echelons of the prison, and that is what gets Andy to finally get busy, escaping the prison and screwing over everyone who's ever screwed him.

So, using this as an example, you see why you can't just throw this beating scene in what should be for all intents and purposes less than ten minutes into the opening of the film. Ration it out. Don't stick the main character's hand in a mechanical press in the opening scenes of the movie. You had the bit of foreshadowing about the guy who died... that's great. I bet we'll find out the foreman did it later on in the story. That matches with the minor character getting beaten up in the beginning of Shawshank. Now wait a bit... Let things get a little more sticky before chucking him down the stairs, beating his ass and ruining his hand.

There's a lot more that I could say, but I'll let you give this a look and if you want more input I'd be happy to give it. Here's a couple sites that might help...

http://www.screenwriting.info/ is a site devoted entirely to helping screenwriters through the process.
Fiction Factor is another one of the many websites I use for help when it comes to all things write-oriented. http://www.fictionfactor.com/scriptwriting.html is their section for screenwriters. I suggest you look over each of the articles carefully, even the ones you think you already understand (such as the one about genres). There's always something to be learned.

And remember, don't just write off what I've said by saying "But that's how it really would have happened" or "but I just don't think that fits..." Hollywood knows what fits. They know what makes a good movie. I've heard a lot of people complain about Hollywood's movie making techniques, and I'm one of them. The movies put out in the 80's and early 90's had much more intricate plots and story than anything they put out today (albeit they may have been fairly cheesy, but that's just because of the mindset of the people of the time and their limited technology). No one would make a movie like Back to the Future or Red Dawn or Highlander or Aliens or Ghostbusters or Waterworld or The Postman (those last two are two of my favorite movies, although I know not many people liked them) today, unless they were remakes (and you'll notice many remakes being made today). That's because people are stupider today, and they want their movies to follow a certain format so they can be familiar and not wind up getting lost in a plot that someone actually thought about and cared enough about NOT to add tremendous amounts of explosions, gunshots, and CGI to (I'm looking at you, George Lucas, you bastard!). The sad but simple truth is this: if you want to sell a movie, you've got to follow Hollywood's pattern.

[Helmut Kravitz]

At the risk of veering off-topic, I think esper's comment needs an amendment. I wouldn't aim for formula for the sake, because Hollywood  can also recognize a movie they've already made that's being rehashed in a more generic form. MarVelo, do work on your dialogue, but keep this in mind primarily: if you don't care about and understand your characters, no one else will. I don't mean that to sound overly critical, just as a simple foundation that works - people care about real people more than symbols.

Also, esper, I don't think you've been to the movies lately. Pan's Labyrinth, Children of Men, The Fountain, Thank You For Smoking, June Bug and Prairie Home Companion are just the movies I can think of off the top of my head that came out of major Hollywood studios only in the past year and were all completely original, creative, poignant and brilliant films.

[esper]

Looking back, this is an extremely long post. I probably shouldn't post it, as it is also very off-topic, but I think any topic related to movie production can be quite helpful for an aspiring screenwriter.

Actually, I've seen three of the six, and although I thought them excellent, and extremely original (especially Pan's Labyrinth) there are obvious ways, to me at least, that they were made to be marketable. To be marketable here is the key phrase... I didn't, in my initial post (and maybe, looking back, I didn't make this very obvious) mean that a movie that is going to be sold to a Hollywood production company needs to be a form-baked recipe passed through a cookie-cutter machine in a factory run by slavemarket Cambodians. Pan's Labyrinth, to me, has the distinction of being one of the best, most original movies to be made in quite a long time, but it is not without marketability. It was designed, through and through, to have a marketability value. Of course, there are other factors to be looked at: just like a certain Mr. Steven King, who wrote one bestseller and now, according to Family Guy, can get away with writing books about lampshades and have people flock to him, Pan's Labyrinth is the child of one Mr. Guillermo Del Toro, THE official Mexican movie man, next to Alfonso Cuaron (who, by the way, is responsible for yet another movie on your list: Children of Men).

Let me also draw your attention to movies like Jet Li's Fearless and Hero, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, House of Flying Daggers, and the recent unfortunate flop Curse of the Golden Flower. These constitute movies that were tremendous Chinese/Hong Kong box office smashes. Hollywood didn't make them, produce them, or assist with the making of them in any way. An American production company paid money in order to be the vehicle for their being brought to American cinema, and for the reason that they were tremendous in their country of origin and the production company rightly assumed (except in the case of the last film mentioned) that they could make them money. You would never see a similar movie to these being made by Hollywood itself, because they aren't marketable to American audiences until someone slaps all the different laud on the box that the movie got in it's country of origin. It helps that they feature Chow Yun Fat, Ziyi Zhang, Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh, or Jackie Chan, who have become famous in America. Some of the most brilliant films being produced today come from Asia. Although I must say I absolutely love Ringu and Ju-On, there are so many better movies being made in Japan that will never find their way to America unless someone remakes the hell out of them so they're more suitable for American audiences.

I've got the problem solved... I write movies and make them myself. Independent movies have a much greater appeal to the intelligent filmgoer, and every now and then one slips through the cracks and becomes mainstream. The thing that makes that happen, however, is when a film is found to have marketability. Even going completely outside the norm makes for a type of marketability... then they can slap "New and Brilliant" on the box (but only if it has passed the test of becoming popular in its own independent circles first). Blair Witch Project, which in my opinion was one of the stupidest movies ever made, had the distinction of being a completely original piece the likes of which had never been seen before (this is an untrue statement... movies like "The Last Broadcast" had been making their rounds in the indie circuit for quite a while beforehand). This in itself is marketable.

A movie has to be pretty damn innovative before production companies will decide to purchase it if it isn't already made like every other movie. Either that, or it has to have SOME redeeming market quality (do you honestly think Star Wars: Episode 1, AKA the lamest movie ever made, would have been made if it hadn't been attached to the Star Wars franchise or George Lucas?). Production companies, by and large the responsible entities in getting movies made, don't care about the entertainment industry itself... they don't see the inherent brilliance or beauty of the pieces they decide to shell out for... they see only dollar signs.

This having been said, a movie about unions and shoe factories in the early 1900's, on its own, has no marketable value. As I read the script, and even Marvelo's introductory post in this thread, I began to see grandiose visions of where this might go if given the proper treatment. On its own, however, such a movie has no marketable value. Unless it is, for example, about something extraordinary like Pan's Labyrinth or Children of Men, it has no power to stand on its own. However, such a movie with great writing and dialog, a poignant plot and plot devices which really strike the viewer can go on to become a big success. Look, for example, at movies like October Sky... how crappy do you think a movie about kids who play with rockets would be... but the movie itself is brilliant, beautiful, and heartwarming. Newsies, about kids who deliver the newspaper, is one of the most memorable movies in cinema. It doesn't seem like the same Hollywood that produces such bullshit as Fast and the Furious and Van Wilder would be responsible for that type of thing... but still, they were made and enjoyed success because they were made to be marketable. October Sky was supposed to have been a true story. No it wasn't! I know people who were involved in the real story, and the movie was completely remade to fit what would be marketable. Sherman O'Dell was, in real life, two different people, but according to the production company, they already had too many main characters.

So, not to detract from your post, friend, but if a movie is going to be made by a mainstream production company, it must have certain redeeming qualities... ie., it must be able to make the production company a large sum of money.

[MarVelo]

Thanks a lot esper and Helmut, you have given me many things to think about and i'll be back hard at work today. I'll be taking into consideration all of the things you say because they make a lot of sense to me.
Thank you so much for your input.

[Neil Dnuma]

Just a quick tip. Normally screenplays are written from the inside, meaning you put down the basic premise first in one, two sentences. Then move on to the synopsis, plot outline, treatment, and then the first draft. This helps you greatly getting the structure right (acts, plot points, "the dramatic curve"), having only the scenes you need in the script and so on. It seems you're writing from the outside, right onto the first draft. That normally means you'll get stuck at some point, unless you're a true genius.

[MarVelo]

I'm not writing on the fly, I have a folder full of notes on scenes and characters, not entirely complete but somewhat. I've been working extensivly on my notes as well as writing what I have.