Woody Allen's scripts

[Rantanplan]

Anyone here read a lot of his scripts? I'm a huge, huge fan of his work, especially the older stuff, circa Keaton and Farrow and older more recent stuff like Bullets over Broadway, Small Time Crooks.

However, the scripts make for a fairly laborious read because every single little gesture of the character is described... "nodding, nodding and swallowing, gesturing, laughing, laughing and chewing, coughing, standing next to, biting her carrot" etc. There is hardly a single character entry without a parenthetical !

Obviously he writes with the direction in mind, the camera movements and all the elaborate blocking he is so famous for and so on. But also obviously, a spec script written the same way would probably get shot down instantly.

Thoughts?

Well, I guess the answer is, when you get to be Woody Allen, you can write the scripts any damn way you please

[ScriptShadow]

Re: Woody Allen's scripts

I'm a fan of parantheticals. "No" can have 600 different meanings, one of which could be "yes." Wouldn't know that without the explanation in a paranthetical. Plus it's easy for the reader to skip over them if he/she wants.

[Rantanplan]

Re: Woody Allen's scripts

I actually like parentheticals also, a lot, but seriously, I'm reading Hannah and Her Sisters, one of my faves, and it's almost unreadable. Endless paragraphs of action without ANY scene headings; dialogue that spells out the stammering to a T --"I-I-I, uh, I, well, eh, I (cough), you know (pulls at her shirt), what I'm saying is that (looks away)...."; montage sequences that are all in one LONG block; and because he's writing AS he's blocking the scene in his mind, it's "LEE (off screen) then LEE (camera back on her), HANNAH (off screen), HANNAH (overlapping as camera moves around table to her), HOLLY (nervous, off-screen), HOLLY (camera on her) ---all within a few lines.

It's an absolute total mess !

Nobody but a famous writer-director could get away with that. Actors would be incensed because every single one of their expressions and gestures is dictated to them, and obviously a director wouldn't even look twice at a script like that, same thing.

Now THAT is power --to be able to write a script that gives the reader a headache and be given the money you need to make your wonderful films. For those of us who dream about being writer-directors, which is my case, wow, that would be the end-all dream.

For me, instead of what Allen does, I would introduce a scene and say, in the action, "Character stammers nervously" and then let the dialogue play out, instead of writing out every single stammer and every last syllable... actors aren't idiots, they can figure out the mood of a scene, as can directors.

[evepeabody]

Re: Woody Allen's scripts

What published versions of the scripts have you read? The published collections of his scripts that I've seen consist only of transcripts, not the original drafts; in other words, someone watched the films and transcribed the action and dialogue. Nothing like seeing an original draft with the writer's style.

[Rantanplan]

Re: Woody Allen's scripts

Ah, yes I bet that would make for an easier read. The one for HANNAH I found on Simplyscripts. I'm going to look for others. Either way it's interesting to read because it's Woody Allen, but the characters come much more alive in my opinion when the text flows easily and uncluttered and can be "heard" mentally without all that interruption.

[Maclean]

Re: Woody Allen's scripts

Yeah, those are just transcripts of someone watching the film and then writing the script. Not the actual script.

I think the best thing to do is go out and get his book of one act plays. That's what I did at least.