UNDERSTANDING SCREENWRITING: Good, Bad, Good, Hard to Tell

A Gem.

A Real Pain (2024. Written by Jesse Eisenberg. 90 minutes)

I loved this movie before it even started.

You may remember that I have complained on a number of occasions about movies that start with logos of all the production companies involved, which are then followed by separate title cards with the names of each of the companies.

What A Real Pain does is list all the production companies on one title card and then jumps straight into the movie. Nothing like smart filmmakers to please a grouch like me.

And it does not slow down after that. We pick up on Benji Kaplan in an airport. Everybody else is running around and he is just sitting here looking at people. He gets a phone call from his cousin David Kaplan, who is frantically trying to get to the airport and calling Benji every few minutes to let him know his status.

By the time David gets there and meets Benji, we know these characters, and know them better than we know some movie characters at the end of their movies.

Jesse Eisenberg, who wrote the movie, has been working on the material in several forms for some time. For a long time it was just about David going on a trip to Poland to find the house his (and Benji’s; they are cousins) grandmother lived in. At one point he did it as a stage play, but he was never satisfied with it. His solution was to add the character of Benji, which gives the film a dynamic I assume the play did not have. Eisenberg also plays David, which he has perfectly written for his acting talents.

David is the quiet, reserved one, Benji is the one whom you never know what he will say or do. Sometimes Benji is charming and funny, and sometimes he is obnoxious. He keeps us on our toes because we never know what he will say or do next. At one point Benji leaves the tour dinner table and goes into another room, and Eisenberg gives himself a great monologue about how he feels about Benji.

Related: UNDERSTANDING SCREENWRITING: Oldies and Newbies, Take Your Pick

Eisenberg also directs (this is his second film) and he has learned his craft. Look at the way he moves the camera during the opening scenes where everybody is running to get a plane, a train, or a bus. What could have been a very static film (see the relentless two-shots in The Day of the Fight, which I reviewed here last month) is a very energetic one. As a director Eisenberg keeps the balance between the dialogues between the characters and the characters’ movements through the variety of spaces we pass through..

So David and Benji (a brilliant performance by Kieran Culkin) join a tour of Poland. We get lots of scenery, which does not overwhelm the story or the characters. Eisenberg has also written some interesting secondary characters, but he understands they are secondary and does not push them any more than he needs to.

The film gets more serious when the tour goes to an actual concentration camp. We just see the remains of it, with no horror footage, which is in keeping with the tone of the film.

Finally the cousins leave the tour and find the house their grandmother lived in. It is not a big scene, but then this is not a big picture. The boys get back to New York and Eisenberg ends the film on a nice note.

…And Then There Are Others.

All We Imagine as Light (2024. Written by Payal Kapadia. 118 minutes)

I have written before about films that are big hits at film festivals and then die when exposed to real life paying audiences.

This one is one of those others. It won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival last year and there are some critics who love it. The audience and I that saw it in a regular theatre did not share their enthusiasm. I cannot remember when I have heard an audience squirm so much as they did with this one.

We are in Mumbai, India, mostly in a hospital. You know how fast American hospital dramas start: a romance, two heart transplants, and some comedy schtick before the first commercial break. Not so here.

Prabha is middle-aged nurse whose husband is off working in Germany. She seldom if ever sees him. Anu, a younger nurse is her roommate who flirts with a doctor, which Prabha warns her against, but nothing comes out it. Parvaty is an older cook on the hospital staff. Very little happens to them in the first hour of the film. OK, Chekhov showed you can do scenes you can do scenes in which not much happens, but Kapadia (who also directed) is no Chekhov.

About an hour in, Parvaty is kicked out of her apartment and decides to go back to her village. Prabha and Anu for some reason decide to go with her. I think we are supposed to approve of the women leaving the very, very bustling Mumbai (we get a lot of shots of traffic) to the peaceful seaside village. The women do seem to be happier. Anu gets it on with a local, and Prabha uses her nursing skills to save a man who floats into the village. Who is the most obvious person he could be? Yep, you guessed it. How he got from where he was to this village is, well, a bit difficult to believe.

Related: Interview with 'The Brutalist' Filmmakers Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold

Anyway, they all decide to stay in the village. As a small town boy myself who went to a big city, I think they ought to go back to the city. They could all get jobs with those infamous Mumbai scam companies that call wanting to fix your Microsoft computer.

Post Script: After I saw the film, I read the long interview with Kapadia in the December 2024 issue of Sight and Sound. Kapadia is one of those filmmakers who talks a better film than she makes. She explains a lot of things in the interview that she does not make clear in her script or her direction.

After I read the interview I saw the trailer on the internet. The lines that set up the present for Prabha are Anu talking as she unpacks the gift that has arrived. Anu looks at it and reads the label, “It says made in Germany. Isn’t that where your husband is?” From that we are supposed to get that it is from Prabha’s husband. OK, you may get that reading it, but probably not just hearing it. In screenwriting, Rule #9 is that you have to make things clear to the audience. The dialogue here is not.

Another example: The man Anu takes up with in the village is…the doctor she has been flirting with at the hospital. But none of the others, who know who he is, mention his name. And Kapadia in her direction has not shown him in a close-up at the hospital so we will recognize him at the village. If you have to been clear in your screenwriting, you have to be clear in your direction, or hope your director will be.

My Checkered Past.

Wicked (2024. Screenplay by Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox, based on the musical stage play book by Winnie Holzman, based on the novel by Gregory Maguire, and (uncredited) based on characters created by L. Frank Baum. 160 minutes)

I have had an odd past with Wicked. I suppose first I should mention that I do not love The Wizard of Oz, the 1939 classic film. Like it but not love it.

When the stage musical Wicked opened in the 2003-2004 season its success surprised a number of people. One was New York reviewer who had seen the San Francisco tryout run. He was interviewed in a documentary film called The Road to Broadway (2004 - the video version is called Wicked: The Road to Broadway), and he said something along the lines of it’s well done, “but there is no audience for it.” When the documentary was released theatrically, audiences howled at that line, since the show was already a monster hit, which it remains to this day. But he was right. At the time the show was trying out there was no recognizable audience for a show like Wicked. Wicked created its own audience of teen and especially tween girls, but there had never before been an audience like that for Broadway shows.

I did not see the original production, but I quickly developed a grudge against it. Also in that season was another musical called Caroline, or Change. Its star was Tonya Pinkins, a first-rate actress (winner of one Tony and with nominations for two more) who happens to be a former student of mine. So I was rooting for her for the Tony, but she did not defy gravity like Idina Menzel, who won the Tony.

My granddaughter was a tween at the time the show opened and already a musical theatre nerd. She lived in Denver and tried to figure out how to see the show. At one point my wife and I were in Denver and we all did a road trip to Durango. My granddaughter brought along her CD of the cast album, and since it was a long ride, I said I would listen to it. I liked it a lot and could see why it created a tween audience for a Broadway show. It is about two young girls who have never met, who do not get along but then do, and then, well, you know the rest.

One of the road companies of the show was playing at the Pantages in Hollywood at that time and about to finish its (first) run, so I figured we could probably get good seats. The pace was packed and my wife and I ended up in the second row from the back of the balcony. Which turned out OK to watch the show’s visual spectacle. I loved the show, and thought about seeing it again when it came around for its annual visits to the Pantages, but I never got around to it.

And now the film. I am put off by a lot of hype for a film, between the hype (there are two hundred different pieces of merchandise for the film) and the news stories about audiences singing along with it. I also thought it was over three hours and my limit for medical reasons is about 160 minutes without a visit to the restroom, so I was hesitant. Then I found out the film was only 160 minutes. I found a theatre that only runs ten minutes of trailers.

So I went. And I got through the whole film and trailers without leaving my seat, although I did leave a few minutes before the end credits, which went on and on…and on.

The first thing that struck me is that they have turned the show into a movie. A lot of movie musicals look like filmed plays ( I am thinking of you My Fair Lady [1964]), but here they have rethought the material in film terms. If you have not read Susan Kouguell’s interview with Winnie Holzman in scriptmag.com you should read it here. Holzman goes into a lot of detail of how the collaborative process worked on the film. They were determined to make it an interesting film and they have succeeded.

The script moves very quickly, even though they have added some material to the stage script. But it never drags. Director Jon M. Chu’s camera keeps moving, not just for the sake of movement, but to keep up with the story and the characters.

Related: Interview with 'Wicked' Editor Myron Kerstein

The production values are lavish, but they do not get in the way. I am not sure you need all the dancers they have, but I am generally in favor of full employment for performers.

I never did see Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel, but their parts as Galinda and Elphaba are, as written by Holzman and Fox are almost actor-proof. Notice I say “almost,” Galinda could be a real pain in the wherever, but I think Kristin Chenoweth has defined the role so well that it may be some time before an actor screws it up.

My granddaughter’s boyfriend, also a musical theatre nerd, thought he was going to like Ariana Grande’s (Galinda) singing better than her acting, but he was even more impressed with her acting, as I was. Cynthia Erivo is a powerhouse as always, which will come in handy later this year in Part Two.

I am not certain about Jeff Goldblum’s Wizard. He gives it his usual quirky attitude, which I am not quite sure is right for the character.

Universal, the distributor of the film, seemed to keep it under wraps that this was just Part I. I thought that audiences might get upset by only seeing half a movie, but that does not seem to be the case. It may be that the stage productions have built up such audiences that Wicked devotees will put up with anything with this show.

I saw the film in the first week after New Year’s, and the matinee audience was not large. A friend of mine said that she thought that the original tween girl audiences were now grown up and would be taking their tween daughters. I did not see that in the audience I saw it with. I did see one family, but all the kids were boys. I guess the parents were trying to turn them into feminists.

I Think It’s a Good Movie…

Conclave (2024. Screenplay by Peter Straughan, based on the novel by Robert Harris. 120 minutes)

If you want a writer to adapt a novel about men conniving about things, Peter Straughan is the guy you want. One of his best scripts is The Debt (2010), an adaptation of an Israeli thriller. You can see how much I like it in my review here.

The following year he did the feature film adaptation of John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011). You can see how much I like it here.

So he is the perfect choice to adapt Robert Harris’s novel Conclave. The situation is that the old Pope has died and now a conclave of Cardinals of the Catholic Church have to get together in Rome and elect a new pope. I, and I am assuming you, have always suspected there was a lot of politicking going on in the process.

Harris has provided Straughan with a lot of wheelers and dealers and they are all interesting characters. The main character is Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) who is assigned the job of running the conclave, which means various characters approach him to try to get him to help their chances. Those characters provide great scenes.

Related: On the Musicality of Writing: Peter Straughan Discusses ‘Conclave’

Usually in a story like this, the character of Lawrence, who has no interest in becoming Pope himself, ends up with the job. What I liked about the script is that he does not. I am not sure I agree with his choice, but it is an interesting choice, and then Harris and Straughan pull off a great final twist. Now I would like to see a film about their choice’s reign as Pope.

About my snarky subhead that I think it is a good movie. This is one of those movies that seems to be filmed way too dark, which means you cannot often tell who is who because they are all wearing the same costumes and you do not get the detail of their expressions as well as you should. Some of this may have been the theatre I saw it in, but after I saw the movie, I looked at the trailer on IMDb and while it is not as dark as the film, it is not as clear as it needs to be. Then later I saw a trailer on network TV and it was very clear. So maybe you should catch it on streaming.

A couple of days after I saw the film I was watching a couple of regular TV series (High Profile and The Rookie, if you must know) and they were both dazzlingly bright and clear. Bring back bright and clear!!!

After I had written this, I got an email from the WGA West with a link to an interview their Lauren O’Connor had done with Straughan. It is on video and you can see it here. It is a much-watch for any of you interested in the process of adaptation.