30 Days of Screenplays, Day 24: “Moonrise Kingdom”
Take up the challenge! Read 30 screenplays in 30 days!
Why 30 screenplays in 30 days?
Because whether you are a novice just starting to learn the craft of screenwriting or someone who has been writing for many years, you should be reading scripts.
There is a certain type of knowledge and understanding about screenwriting you can only get from reading scripts, giving you an innate sense of pace, feel, tone, style, how to approach writing scenes, how create flow, and so forth.
We did 30 Days of Screenplays: Vol. 1 and you can access each of those posts and discussions here. This time, we’re trying something different: I invited 30 GITS followers to read 1 script each and provide a guest post about it.
Today’s guest columnist: Jon Raymond.
Title: Moonrise Kingdom (download a PDF version of the script here).
Year: 2012
Writing Credits: Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola
IMDb Rating: 7.8
IMDb Plot Summary: September, 1965, a storm is three days away from the New England coast. At an island camp, a Khaki Scout’s gone missing: he’s Sam, 12, a bespeckled misfit, an orphan. Ward, his by-the-book scoutmaster, organizes a search after calling Captain Sharp, the local police. Sam is running away with Suzy, his pen pal, the laconic oldest child in a quirky and unhappy household of two lawyers (one of whom is having an affair with Sharp). As Sam and Suzy sort through their own issues, they stay a step ahead of the searchers while the storm gets closer. Social Services suggests Sam may need electroshock therapy and an orphanage. Is there scouts’ honor, and what of the sad Sharp?
Tagline: A tormenting and surprising story of children and adults during the stormy days of the summer of 1965.
Awards:
Oscar nominated: Best Writing, Original Screenplay
Golden Globes nominated: Best Motion Picture — Comedy or Musical
BAFTA nominated: Best Original Screenplay
AFI: Movie of the Year
American Cinema Editors nominated: Best Edited Feature Film — Comedy or Musical
Cannes Palm d’Or nominated: Wes Anderson
Casting Society of America: Outstanding Achievement in Casting — Studio or Independent Feature — Comedy
Many others
Analysis: This is another Wes Anderson writer-director film. Though Roman Coppola is a co-writer, he is also an experienced director of his own work. Obviously Wes Anderson has a pronounced style in his directing. But it stems from his writing. The first thing I noticed was the musicality of the writing. It is like a series of short beats, like music in 4/4 time with a note on every beat, like a metronome. His sentences are short, poignant, and concise. I would liken it to a preschool reader in the vein of “See Jane run.” But of course it is much more sophisticated with an overall theme and very detailed deep characters. Short phrases and sentences of subject, verb, and predicate (often in just three words combine into substantial paragraphs of actions lines, which detail any relevant characterizations or visuals, down to what the characters wear, and the environment. This is reflected In the directing, which often can be mapped, shot by shot, to each short sentence. It’s as if the writers see each shot, described concisely as possible. Consider this action paragraph:
Scout Master Ward studies the lanyard briefly. He looks
perplexed. He pats Roosevelt on the back gently and does a
secret handshake with him. Gadge makes a note. Scout Master
Ward strides away.An off-road motorcycle races by in the background behind the
tents. It jumps a mound of dirt, kicks sideways in the air,
and revs away riding a wheelie. Scout Master Ward frowns.Scout Master Ward stops in front of a pile of boards and logs
stacked six feet high. A thick-set scout with black hair and
a crooked tooth approaches with more logs in his arms. He is
Skotak.
These simple sentences and phrases set the scene, the story, and the characters. It’s genius how so simple writing combines into a structured complex cinematic story. It’s the conciseness that makes it work. Being concise in your writing should be a goal in doing rewrites, I think. But also in the story itself. You need to cut it down to the relevant particulars to focus only on what matters. This is not an easy thing to do. I’d be interested to find out if the writers went through a lot of rewrites to get there. The writing describes not only the set and the character’s actions but also the actor’s feelings and detailed visuals. It takes more than one sentence or phrase to get all that down for a shot that lasts shorter than what it takes to write it out. So I think this tends to make the screenplay longer than one page per minute (by about 10 pages). In this way, it approaches prose. But the writers keep it so concise and simple that there is nothing described at length. They leave room for the camera and actors to do that. It’s very stark and matter of fact, also reflected in the directing. I think the writers see each shot as they write, and allow the imagery and acting to suggest something deeper. Unlike the Coen brothers, they do not use explicit camera diction. But like the Coens, thet seem to plan out the production phase in the script stage.
One rule I’ve learned was to never write detail actor actions. Let the actors work that out. The writers sometimes break that rule, but gently. The actors seem to take to it and have fun with it anyway.
Another sometimes rule is to break a paragraph for each shot. This script has the short concise sentences and phrases running into one long paragraph (as above), broken only by the prose style of major ideas. The script would be out of control to do otherwise, since the writers tend to detail, shot by shot.
I noticed that the two lead characters, Sam and Suzy, have most of the screen time as we watch them become acquainted and fall in love. The actors are relatively unknowns among the remaining ensemble cast of many huge names. By limiting the screen time for the name characters it is much more affordable to use all of them. Yet each character is strongly characterized in concise detail, making for attractive roles. Was that intentional? It works both economically and creatively, I think.
The story is wonderful in describing a first love or discovery of romance, faced by the pressures of their world to stop them. It think it resonates broadly for this reason. I related to it, as I’m sure many do. It’s classic in a Romeo and Juliette sense.
Most Memorable Moments: The scene where we meet Scout Master Ward builds and sets up a number of characters and the runaway theme all in a short sequence of about three pages. He emerges from his tent and walks through the camp to see, one by one, each of the scout characters, each one seen and defined in their own element, leading up to the discovery of the missing scout, Sam Shakusky. This sets up dialogue about his unliked character as a outcast.
The church play, where Sam meets Suzy in the dressing room is another great sequence. We see Sam’s bold defiant nature when he walks into the dressing room of girls, unmoved by their protests and stares. He is focussed only on Suzy. It’s a love at first sight sort of moment. In that moment when he asks about her hurt hand (she tells him how she smashed a mirror out of frustration). We (and they internally) feel the kinship they have, both outcast in their worlds, and both bold and independent enough to defy it.
When they are finally caught, they are in their tent, having spent the night. Captain Sharp appears with his entourage of deputies including Scout Master Ward, the scouts, and her parents. When Sam and Suzy refuse to acknowledge them her father pulls up the tent in one swipe, revealing them in each others’ arms. Her mother has to pry Suzy away from Sam. It’s a great scene with all the main characters and illustrates the theme of their love being torn apart by parents and authorities.
Most Memorable Dialogue:
Captain Sharp cooks sausages on a skillet in a kitchenette.
He has a bottle of beer in his hand. Sam sits waiting at a
fold-out table with a glass of milk in front of him. He says
without looking up:SAM
I admit we knew we’d get in trouble. That
part’s true. We knew people would be
worried, and we still ran away, anyway --
but something also happened which we
didn’t do on purpose. When we first met
each other. Something happened to us.Captain Sharp stirs the sausages in the pan. He nods. He saysSeriously:CAPTAIN SHARP
I agree with you. That’s eloquent. I
can’t argue against anything you’re
saying -- but I don’t have to, because
you’re twelve years old.
This little bit of dialogue, especially Captain Sharp’s lines, make a very profound statement that gets to the heart of the internal worlds of Captain Sharp and the other adults as well. They are all ultimately sympathetic to Sam and Suzy. Yet they ignore this and go with some external compelling conformance to keep them apart; because they ‘…can’t argue against anything they’re saying — and don’t have to, since Sam and Suzy are twelve years old.’ It’s a sort of power over the children, just for the sake of convenience, power and control; not for any logical or moral reason (not externally anyway). Of course I’m reading into it. But I think this is deliberately stated to make that point and to explain the internal dissonance of the adult characters, each of whom eventually come to resolve their own dissonance. When I first heard Captain Sharp reply to Sam, I was expecting some kind of sympathetic line about how we all have to do things we don’t like, or that they’re too young to understand. But no. His explanation is clearly only about his right to ignore Sam, not to try to understand him.
What did I Learn about Screenwriting from Reading this Script: Mostly I learned about the beauty and proficiency of simplicity. The simplest story can be great. This is just a boy meets girl story. But adding the background of the leads as outcasts, and the compulsivity of the adults, makes for a compelling story that writes itself. Every character acts as you would expect, except Sam and Suzy, who you expect to be unpredictable. This is a good way to place an unpredictable protagonist in a world full of convention and predictability. It’s like mixing oil with water (or maybe sulfuric acid in a bathtub) to watch the conflict happen.
I learned about the musicality of action and dialogue. The idea of it falling into place like timed beats in music make it rhythmic and flowing. The script is a very fast easy read.
I learned about the power of being concise. By limiting the script to the bare essentials you end up with pretty much a shotlist. It’s amazing that you can come up with deep complex characters this way. That has to be the talent of the writers, or perhaps their hard work in rewrites.
And once again, rules are meant to be broken.
Thanks, Jon! To show our gratitude for your guest post, here’s a dash of creative juju for you. Whoosh!
To see all of this year’s 30 Days of Screenplays: Vol. 2, go here.
