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This weekend Mystery Man is hosting a blog-athon of people’s favorite screenplays. As he suggests, favorite screenplay turns out to be a tougher question than you might assume on first consideration. One’s favorite film isn’t necessarily one’s favorite screenplay. It took a while for me to settle on the right choice.

At first, my thoughts turned to my go-to “favorite” movie, The Princess Bride. That film’s tone remains unmatched, in my opinion. I’ve only seen shooting script copies, however, and there are so many “CUT TO:” directives riddling the pages that you can barely get through it. (Isn’t Goldman generally given credit for ending the practice of writers calling transitions?) Overall, Goldman has a very definite voice that gets in the way of the story he’s telling. Loved it in the novel, don’t love it in the screenplay.

My next thought was Blade Runner. If you are a writer and haven’t read this script on paper, do so. The visual descriptions are poetry. It’s a fluid read, more like a novel, and yet mostly staying this side of too many words. In the end, though, it collapses under it’s own weight a bit, and makes a better movie than a read. (That’s a compliment of course, and what a screenplay is supposed to do, but if I’m picking a FAVORITE…)

I considered Alien. See my thoughts on Blade Runner. There’s magic to be found in The Muppet Movie, but there’s also a whole lot of groan-inspiring puns, so it’s out. Good Will Hunting was a contender, but then I’d have to credit Ben Affleck with writing my favorite screenplay.

In the end, I had to choose the first screenplay ever to enter my collection: “Rita Hayworth & Shawshank Redemption, screenplay by Frank Darabont, based on the novella by Stephen King, third draft, 2/22/93.”

Shawshank‘s screenplay delivers everything. The story is beautiful, the dialogue is tight, and the descriptions strike a perfect balance between vivid and unobtrusive. Camera descriptions show up, but only when very necessary and useful. The screenplay makes as excellent a read as it made a movie.

Have you ever noticed that Shawshank is nobody’s favorite movie? And yet, it’s everybody’s number two or three? I think that might speak to the simplicity of the story. In comparison to the big movies that get tossed around as “Best Ever,” Shawshank lacks the epic romance versus Nazi threat in Casablanca, the audacious slap at an icon of Citizen Kane, or the constant intimidating tension of mafia life in The Godfather. Still, there’s a universality to the idea of a man getting an unfair shake but then defeating his oppressors, and that’s why Shawshank triumphs. To my taste, stories of redemption are some of the best there are, and this one has it right in the title.

The screenplay begins with a hot sex scene. And I mean hot. Consider paragraph three: “He enters her right then and there, roughly, up against the wall. She cries out, hitting her head against the wall but not caring, grinding against him, clawing at his back, shivering with the sensations running through her. He carries her across the room with her legs wrapped around him. They fall into the bed.” Then we discover Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins) outside their bungalow, unshaven and drunk in his car, able to hear the sounds of their passion. That’s his woman in there, and she’s not with him. At the top of page two, he pulls a gun from his glove compartment. (The movie mixes this up a bit.)

Say what you will, sex and violence ain’t a dumb way to get my attention in the first minute of a movie.

My own synthesis of all the various how-to’s on story structure breaks down something like this…

• Page 1: hook
• Page 10: inciting incident
• Page 30: objective identified, obstacles made clear, journey undertaken
• Page 60: shift in tactics, redoubling of effort
• Page 90: setbacks, estrangement from friends
• Page 95 to 100: inspiration, regrouping and final conflict
• Somewhere from page 105 to page 120, (depending on script’s length): Victory, followed by a few pages of wrapping up

It doesn’t have to fit exactly, of course, but people have been telling stories this way for thousands of years. There’s something to it. Here’s how things size up in Shawshank:

• Page 1: Andy has a gun in his hand as his woman does another man
• Page 7: A judge gives Andy two life terms in prison
• Page 32: Andy dares to give tax advice to Hadley, the head guard, setting in motion his elevated status.  Now he can build a library, teach prisoners to read, etc.
• Page 60: Brooks dies, and Andy reminds the convicts never to get institutionalized, in part by broadcasting Mozart over the loudspeaker
• Page 82-87: Tommy provides proof that Andy is innocent, but when Andy asks for a new trial, the warden gives him a month in the hole and kills Tommy

So the first big beats synch up nicely with where they should be.

The end is a little abnormal. Andy escapes, and we spend about fifteen pages learning how he did it, and how he proved the warden and Hadley guilty. The shape is unique, but it simultaneously still fits the basic formula. Andy is found missing from his cell on page 95, but it is on page 104 when, “He raises his arms to the sky, turning slowly, feeling the rain washing him clean. Exultant. Triumphant. A FLASH OF LIGHTNING arcs from horizon to horizon.” So the flashback of how he escaped functions as a final battle, in its way.

The conclusion is a bit longer than usual, with the tagged-on sequence in which Morgan Freeman’s character is freed, choses not to kill himself, but instead keeps his promise to Andy and checks under the specific rock by a specific tree in a specific field. But we have a lot invested in Red at this point, and we’re happy to watch him spend time getting to the final reveal that Andy really made it all the way to Mexico.

Good feelings all the way around. Great screenplay.

In rereading this script for the sake of this post, I was struck by a few dissimilarities to the movie. In one scene, the convicts all show their penises to an obnoxious reporter who wants them to speak in support of the warden’s work program. In another, the cons bury Jake, the crow that old institutionalized Brooks was raising. The moment serves as their vicarious funeral for their friend, and demonstrates nicely how Andy’s leadership has brought a sense of civility and society to the men in the prison. The Mozart scene pretty much serves the same purpose, so I can see why it was cut.

And one bit of dialogue didn’t make the final cut, perhaps wisely, but it is such a good illustration of Andy’s character that I almost wish it were in there. In my draft, Red describes how Andy paid for his rock hammer, posters, etc.: “When they check you into this hotel, one of the bellhops bends you over and looks up your works, just to make sure you’re not carrying anything. But a truly determined man can get an object quite a ways up there. That’s how Andy joined out happy little Shawshank family with more than five hundred dollars on his person. Determination.” It’s extreme, but it’s definitely what Andy is all about.

An interesting technique Darabont uses is underlining a few choice words. Individual words underlined. Because he does it seldom, and because it come at shocking moments like the queens trapping Andy or when Brooks kills himself, the impact is great. I will have to add that to the bag of tricks.

Thanks to Mystery Man for suggesting the exercise. Always a great idea to learn from an awesome script.