Night and the City: In the Labyrinth

Night And The City (Directed by Jules Dassin)

‘Night and the City’ is Jules Dassin’s masterpiece and one of a string of superb film noirs Dassin made in the late 1940s and early 1950s which included ‘Brute Force’, ‘The Naked City’ and ‘Thieves Highway’. With his career in the United States over as a result of the McCarthy witchhunts, Dassin made his way to England and, with the backing of 20th Century Fox, began production on this dark uncompromising tale based on a novel by Gerald Kersh which tells the story of small-time hustler Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) looking for his one big break. Dassin’s vision of post-war London is of a bleak, scarred Dickensian Inferno. From the opening scenes at St. Paul’s Cathedral to the final scenes at Hammersmith Bridge where Fabian’s journey ends, London is portrayed as a dark maze-like city from which there is no escape. Dassin’s remarkable use of camera angles, with the assistance of cinematographer Mel Greene, traps Fabian in a net of his own making. At the end of the film there is no redemption for Harry Fabian, just the bleak realization that he took on the city and lost. As part of the Criterion Collection’s DVD edition of ‘Night and the City’ film critic Paul Arthur contributed a fine essay from which the following extract is taken:

Within film noir’s unparalleled roster of resonant titles – Kiss of Death, Out of the Past, Where Danger Lives, to name three – none is more emblematic or iconographically cogent than Night and the City. Juxtaposing two of noir’s essential, virtually ontological qualities, the title of Jules Dassin’s underrated elegy for a self-annihilating hustler reminds us not only that darkness is the visual corollary of almost all consequent action in noir—the idea of a ‘daylight’ noir being as perverse as a ‘nocturnal’ Western – but that nighttime functions throughout the series as a sort of Platonic entity, embracing a host of nonliteral meanings. Along with common associations of mystery and moral ambiguity, darkness takes on a specifically urban coloration. Indeed, film noir caps a long-standing cultural tradition in which cities are cast as a dominion of shadows and corruption. And perhaps no noir city is quite so hellish, so imbued with the stench of mortality, as the London depicted in Night and the City...

Working in and around London’s Soho district, rather than the familiar haunts of New York or Los Angeles, Dassin and company did not have to subtly evoke lingering effects of wartime bombing; they are clearly inscribed in blasted, nightmarish landscapes recruited for the film’s climactic scenes... Like The Third Man, made in Vienna the previous year, Night and the City maps the downward journey of an unabashedly American adventurer against a prime locus of European destruction, yielding the specter of the ‘secret’ city to which all film noir, regardless of actual setting, pays unspoken tribute. 



Dassin’s tour guide to this anxious, fearful milieu is Harry Fabian, a nightclub tout and would-be wrestling promoter whose overweening desire to ‘be somebody’ is curdled by a relentless exploitation of human vulnerabilities, his own included. Harry, famously referred to by a romantic rival as ‘an artist without an art,’ is a figure of palpable instability, always in the midst of a surefire shady venture, some criminalized shortcut to what he describes as ‘a life of ease and plenty.’ Unfortunately, every jittery step he takes brings him closer to immanent disaster and death (in addition to morbid visual cues, variants of the phrase ‘You’re a dead man’ are a key dialogue motif). Worse still, his precipitous actions drag down everyone around him – although, with the exception of his mistreated girlfriend, Mary Bristol, these underworld characters largely deserve their malign fates. Mary works at the same sleazy club to which Harry lures unsuspecting tourists. The grotesque owner, Phil Nosseross, barely tolerates Harry’s loan requests but fails to register the illicit connection between Harry and his wife, Helen, a liaison founded less on sexual passion than mutual greed. Harry’s current scheme involves tricking an aging Greco-Roman wrestling champion, Gregorius, into matching his young protégé against the Strangler, a vulgar but popular entertainer employed by Kristo, shady kingpin of professional wrestling and, not coincidently, Gregorius’s estranged son.



Given Harry’s history of entrepreneurial fiascos, it is only fitting that his dream of a wrestling empire seems doomed from the start. Narcissistic to a fault, Harry pays no heed to warnings about Kristo’s vicious power and is slow to intervene in a chain of calamitous miscalculations until it is too late. Once the tenuous leverage he held on Kristo’s hunger for revenge vanishes in a heap of dying flesh, Harry must flee for his life, unsuccessfully seeking refuge with former underworld colleagues for whom he is now the mere object of a lucrative bounty hunt. Closing a circle that began with the film’s opening shots, Harry becomes the archetypal man-on-the-run, an image he himself sadly admits, pursued this time not by a single angry creditor but by an entire rogues’ gallery. In contrast to the majority of noir heroes, Harry is not an inveterate loner cut off from potentially redemptive social connections. Until near the end of Night and the City, he navigates smoothly through London’s subterranean network, engaging in a flurry of illegal transactions. Thus the early demonstration of a secure, outlaw niche makes his ultimate isolation even more emotionally wrenching. If noir protagonists in general lose markers of a stable identity as they descend the social ladder, Harry’s loss is particularly extravagant. 



The frenetically disjunctive movements accompanying Harry’s flight might well have expressed personal anxieties specific to Dassin’s life. On the heels of several relatively successful Hollywood outings, including pioneering work on semi-documentary techniques in The Naked City, the director was, like many of his creative friends, caught up in the anticommunist hysteria of the late 1940s. Under imminent threat of being forced to testify before HUAC, and almost certain blacklisting, Dassin says he was told to ‘beat it’ to England to avoid persecution. The project that awaited him, a loose adaptation of Soho denizen Gerald Kersh’s 1938 novel, struck him as somewhat frivolous, and he would later downplay the film’s artistic merits. Nevertheless, it is not far-fetched to read Harry Fabian’s predicament in part as Dassin’s allegorical response to his own hasty emigration, and to the paranoid atmosphere of betrayal and cutthroat ambition he left behind in Cold War Hollywood. 



Stylistically, Night and the City represents the flipside of The Naked City, with overheated lighting patterns, bizarre angles, and claustrophobic compositions replacing the more methodical, unhurried organization of the earlier film. Further, the dire Dickensian—or perhaps Brechtian, given latent parallels with The Threepenny Opera – vision of London on display belies the kind of sober, social realist sketch of class divisions and antagonisms evident in The Naked City. 



At the heart of Night and the City is a master trope: the urban labyrinth. Cities in film noir are not simply dangerous, or bristling with iconographic menace—they are visualized as death traps, spaces from which there can be no escape. This common pattern finds summary expression in Dassin’s film. Nearly every setting is crammed with architectural grids, frames, culs-de-sac, narrow stairways, perspectives that choke off the mobility and freedom of human subjects. The wrestling ring is a venerable symbol of existential constriction; far more original, and more depressing, is Nosseross’ cage-like office and the vertiginous brick tower in which Harry takes brief refuge during his flight. In early scenes, Harry commands secret urban passageways, rooftop bridges, and back alleys that afford easy transit between private and public, legal and illicit sites of operation. Once he is branded an outcast among outcasts, his knowledge of the labyrinth can no longer save him from extinction. Instead, he is forced to abandon familiar routes as he plunges into the city’s forlorn margins: first, an eerie construction site whose minatory shapes resemble canvases by Bosch or maybe de Chirico, then the riverside shack of black-marketeer Annie, a last stop before his suicidal bid to complete one profitable con. By the end, Harry is a virtual zombie, his slimy ebullience reduced to morbid self-pity. Without engendering genuine sympathy, the exhausting gyrations of this character eventually produce a spark of recognition, albeit trailed by a black cloud of dread.

– Paul Arthur: ‘Night and the City: In the Labyrinth’. From the Criterion Collection DVD.

Bresson on Bresson

A Man Escaped (Directed by Robert Bresson)

A Man Escaped is based on the memoirs of Andre Devigny, who was imprisoned by the Gestapo in France during the second world war for his work with the French Resistance. Bresson filmed A Man Escaped at Fort Montluc prison in Lyons, where Devigny was imprisoned, in an effort to maintain the credibility of his tale. In fact, the jail retained Devigny's ropes and hooks when he tried to escape, Bresson reproduced them diligently. Although Devigny is referred to in the film as Fontaine, the narative is so similar to his experiences that Devigny merits his remarkable preface: "This story is true. I give it as it is, without embellishment." Bresson had the moral right to claim such authenticity, he, too, had been imprisoned by the Germans during the war.

The way Bresson recreates the physically constrained picture of war is through the use of sound. Because the views of Fontaine from his confinement are so limited, he can only develop his cognitive map of the world which he cannot see, through noises, many of them terribly faint and sprinkled about him. These noises begin to grow and mutate inside his head and inside our minds, to become essential, to be weighted with fatal peril for a moment, and the next with faint optimism. 

There is no cohesive explanation of these noises at first. Fontaine merely attempts to put them together to work out what is happening beyond his surroundings. The initial sequence of the film establishes the tone of this strict restriction of information, and is well-known as one of the most understated passages of a film predicated on understatement. But soon, an escape scheme is formed in the feverish brain of the tireless Fontaine. Then there is only one question for him and us as we listen to every sound for the rest of the film: can they hear me? 

Bresson took painstaking care with all his films; throughout his lifetime he only finished 14 movies. A Man Escaped was the first film to be created without aid for a whole script, and, like every picture, it's defined by a precision of detail and reality, which Bresson thought was not just a filmmaker's grasp, but a moral request, the art of cinema made to all those who would practise it. 

Ascetic and idealistic, Bresson was one of his generation's very few directors who would be taken up by French New Wave film revolutionists. Eric Rohmer, who was a reviewer for the prominent cinema journal Cahiers du Cinema during the publication of A Man Escaped, was one of the best New Wave directors. Rohmer named his assessment of the film "The Miracle of the Objects" Because, even although the noises in the picture have been "explained" carefully, every sound has an incredible role in the desperate Fontaine's existence.

This is an extract from a 1970 interview with Bresson by Charles Thomas Samuels in which the great French director reflects on his career up to that point. In this section Bresson discusses ‘Pickpocket’ (1959) and the compelling ‘A Man Escaped’ (1956) based on the memoirs of André Devigny, a prisoner of war held at Fort Montluc by the Nazis during World War II. 

S: I want to ask some questions about A Man Escaped, which, by the way, seems to me your greatest film. Incidentally, does that judgment upset you?

B: I don’t know how to make such comparisons. But there may be something in what you say. When I finished it, I had no idea about its value. Yet I had, for the first time in my life, an impulse to write down everything I felt about the art of filmmaking, and for that reason A Man Escaped is precious to me...

S: A Man Escaped shares with The Trial of Joan of Arc an implication of French nationalism. Did you want that?

B: No, the prisoner could have been a young American or a Vietnamese. I was interested only in the mind of someone who wishes to escape without outside help….

S: Though you create very well the experience of being in prison, you never show the brutality. For example, you don’t show Fontaine being beaten. You only show him afterward. Why?

B: Because it would be false to show the beating since the audience knows that the actor isn’t really being beaten, and such falsity would stop the film. Moreover, this is what it was like when I was a prisoner of the Germans. Once I heard someone being whipped through a door, and then I heard the body fall. That was ten times worse than if I had seen the whipping. When you see Fontaine with his bloody face being brought back to the cell, you are forced to imagine the awfulness of the beating - which makes it very powerful Furthermore, if I showed him being taken from his cell, being beaten, then being returned, it would take much too long.

S: There is another wonderful effect of concentration in this scene: Fontaine says, ‘After three days I was able to move again,’ although only a few seconds of film time have passed. This suggests how quickly he restores himself and how much courage he has.

B: That is very important. His will to go on establishes a rhythm of inexorability that touches the public. When men go to war, military music is necessary, because music has a rhythm and rhythm implants ideas.

A Man Escaped (Directed by Robert Bresson)

S: Whenever we see the window in Fontaine’s cell, it glows like a jewel. Was that a special effect?

B: No, but I do remember that I worked with my cinematographer to obtain just the right degree of light from both window and door.

S: There is one thing in the film that seems uncharacteristic in its patness. When Fontaine is sentenced, the scene takes place at the Hotel Terminus...

B: Every city in France had such a hotel where the Gestapo stayed during the occupation.

S: You didn’t desire the pun?

B: Of course not. Everything in this film is absolutely factual. I had no trouble inventing details and was familiar with the history of the place. All of the characters’ actions take place exactly where they occurred in real life.

S: You search for mystery in your films. It seems to me that here you really attain it because although the title tells us that he will escape, the film is very suspenseful.

B: The important thing is not ‘if’ but ‘how’. Here is another mystery: Although every detail of the film came from the report of Andre Devigny, I invented the dialogue with the young boy who is finally brought to Fontaine’s cell. When I read it to Devigny, I was very worried about his reaction. Do you know what he said? ‘How true!’ This shows that truth can be different from reality, because in the actual event, as Devigny told me, he behaved as if the boy were a woman he needed to seduce in order to make good his escape. In my film, on the other hand, I show Fontaine dominating the boy. You know, I wanted to call the film ‘Help Yourself,’ and that’s why I showed Devigny as dominating in the last scenes. Help yourself and God will help you.

S: There are other great moments in the film. For example, when Fontaine tells the old man in the next cell that his own attempt to escape is being made for the old man, too, or the moments when a community is achieved by means of men tapping on the walls. I could go on. This film is your greatest, I think, not because it is technically superior to the others but because it is richer in content.

B: Mouchette is rich, too!

S: I would place Mouchette with A Man Escaped among your greatest films.

B: But it seems to me there is a little too much spectacle in Mouchette.

Pickpocket (Directed by Robert Bresson)

S: You added a lot to the Bernanos novel in Mouchette. Conversely, Pickpocket, which is an original, appears to be inspired by Crime and Punishment. For the viewer aware of this parallel, there is a problem in Pickpocket. In Crime and Punishment, whether justifiably or not, Raskolnikov thinks of his crime as benefiting humanity and thus earns a measure of sympathy. Your hero has no excuse for the crime and thus seems a little pretentious in his desire to be taken as a superior being.

B: Yes, but he is aware that pickpocketing is very difficult and dangerous. He is taken with the thrill of that. He is pretentious perhaps, like Raskolnikov, but on quite a lesser scale. Like Raskolnikov, he hates organized society...

S: What I am trying to explore with you is the emotional problem for the spectator.

B: I never think of the spectator.

S: But you can see that your hero might appear unsympathetic.

B: He is unsympathetic. Why not?

S: I am also puzzled, in view of your uninterest in psychology, at the heavy psychological emphasis in this film. Let me explain. As we see the hero stealing, we don’t know his motive, but toward the end of the film we find out that he previously stole from his mother. We then realize his psychological motivation; he stole from his mother, felt guilty about that, was ashamed to confess to her, and, therefore, commits crimes so as to be punished and fulfill his need for penitence.

B: Perhaps, but only a psychiatrist would explain it like that. As Dostoyevsky frequently does, I present the effect before the cause. I think this is a good idea because it increases the mystery; to witness events without knowing why they are occurring makes you desire to find out the reason.

S: But this doesn’t answer my question. Here, in the first of your films from an original story, you, who profess to dislike psychology, are at your most psychological. Why?

B: You think it’s psychological? I didn’t mean it to be. I simply showed a man picking pockets until he was arrested. I included the fact that he stole from his mother simply to provide evidence the police needed in order to be put on his track.

S: In other words, you didn’t put it in as explanation but rather as plot device?

B: Yes. It is only to make the chief of police certain that Martin is a thief. What interested me is the power this gave the inspector, because the inspector liked to torture him – as in that long scene, where the hero doesn’t know how much the inspector knows. In fact, I originally wanted to call the film ‘Incertitude.’

S: There is something else I rather doubt you wanted in the film. The hero of your film is a criminal in two ways: He is a thief, and he denies God.

Pickpocket (Directed by Robert Bresson)

B: On the contrary, I make him aware of the presence of God for three minutes. Few people can say they were aware of God even that long. This line of dialogue is very personal; it shows that although influenced by Dostoyevsky, I made my story benefit from my own experiences. At his mother’s funeral, a singer sings the Dies Irae in exactly the same simple way another singer sang it at my mother’s funeral in the Cathedral of Nantes, where, apart from ten nuns, my wife and I attended the service alone. Somehow this Dies Irae made a strange impression on me; I could have said then, like my pickpocket, ‘I felt God during three minutes.’

S: This raises another question. You are famous for maintaining your privacy. I didn’t even know you were married, and it was a great surprise when your wife came to the door. Isn’t Pickpocket a game of hide-and-seek since, according to you, it reflects so much of your personal experience, although if you hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have known it?

B: I hate publicity. One should be known for what he does, not for what he is. Nowadays a painter paints a bad painting, but he talks about it until it becomes famous. He paints for five minutes and talks about it on television for five years.

S: That reminds me of Godard. He makes bad films, but he defends them so interestingly.

B: His films are interesting. He upsets the official cinema, which cares only for profits. He taught films how to use disorder.

S: Don’t you think his purpose is more important than the individual results – which aren’t very good?

B: When he uses professional actors, I don’t like his films, but when he doesn’t, he makes the best that can be seen.

S: On this matter of your zeal for truth: There are moments in Pickpocket which seem to me to be true only to your peculiar style. For example, in the opening scene where the hero steals the purse, the people at the racetrack are preternaturally calm. I can’t believe that people watch a race so impassively.

B: But not every part of a racetrack crowd reacts in the same way. There are always certain people who watch impassively. I didn’t want him to commit his theft when people were shouting; I wanted it to happen in silence, so that one could hear the crescendo of the horses’ galloping.

S: But such a scene, even among sympathetic viewers, raises the question of whether we are seeing truth in your films or the reflection of a very deliberate and personal style. I ask myself that question occasionally in Pickpocket and almost always in The Trial of Joan of Arc.

B: If that happens, it is my fault. My style is natural to me. You see, I want to make things so concentrated and so unified that the spectator feels as if he has seen one single moment. I control all speech and gesture so as to produce an object that is indivisible. Because I believe that one moves an audience only through rhythm, concentration, and unity.

Interview with Robert Bresson – Charles Thomas Samuels, Encountering Directors, New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons, 1972.

Akira Kurosawa on ‘Stray Dog’

Stray Dog (Directed by Akira Kurosawa)

A bad day gets worse for young investigator Murakami when his gun is stolen on a sweltering, crowded bus by a pickpocket. Desperate to remedy the injustice, he goes undercover, combing the hot streets of Tokyo for the stray dog whose desperation has driven him to a life of crime. With each step, the lives of the cop and the criminal grow more inextricably linked, and the probe becomes a probe of Murakami's own shadowy side. 

Stray Dog (Nora Inu), starring Toshiro Mifune as the rookie cop and Takashi Shimura as the seasoned detective who keeps him on the right side of the law, is more than a crime thriller; it delves into the sordid reality of postwar Japan and the criminal psyche.

Kurosawa portrays postwar Tokyo as densely populated, with individuals piled on top of one another. Worse yet, it's hot. No scenario shows this more than Murakami's opening scene on a crowded bus, sweat flowing down not only his face, but also the faces of everyone else on the vehicle. The voiceover reinforces this point by noting, “Murakami was beat. And then there was that awful heat. On the bus, the air was so thick, he felt woozy. A wailing infant shook with tears, and the woman beside him reeked with the stink of cheap perfume. ” Murakami frantically tries to untighten his collar, eager for enough breath. 

Or consider the passages in which Murakami disguises himself as an everyday man in desperate search, as many of the individuals he comes across are. Individuals in search of food, employment, and a place to sleep — something to do. At night, people sit next to fires, swapping cigarettes, or huddled together in one room to avoid the rain. Under any other director's direction, these episodes would appear fake and unsympathetic in their attempt to bring light to individuals on the periphery. However, Kurosawa stands out from other film directors in that he depicts these events with tremendous candour and takes care not to condemn them.

These are the kind of events that set Stray Dog apart from any other film noir, detective story, or cop film of its type. There is a true human understanding at work here, coupled with an uncommon amount of empathy.

If Kurosawa's ability as a director elevated Stray Dog to greatness, Mifune's equally measured performance as rookie detective Murakami elevates Stray Dog to near perfection. In truth, Stray Dog would not exist without Mifune, and it would be difficult to find somebody capable of matching his performance. Despite the fact that this is one of his early parts in his collaboration with Kurosawa, the two would be some time apart before collaborating on some of their more famous work, such as Yojimbo in 1961. Even so, one need not look too far into the future to understand that their collaboration is loaded with possibilities. Rashomon is just around the bend, as is Seven Samurai.

The following is a brief excerpt from Kurosawa’s autobiography, Something Like an Autobiography, in which he discusses the writing and production of Stray Dog.

Maupassant instructed aspiring writers to extend their vision into realms where no one else could see, and to keep it up until the hitherto invisible became visible to everyone. 

I first wrote the screenplay of Stray Dog in the form of a novel. I am fond of the work of Georges Simenon, so I adopted his style of writing novels about social crime. This process took me a little less than six weeks, so I figured that I’d be able to rewrite it as a screenplay in ten days or so. Far from it. It proved to be a far more difficult task than writing a scenario from scratch, and it took me close to two months.

But, as I reflect on it, it’s perfectly understandable that this should have happened. A novel and a screenplay are, after all, entirely different things. The freedom for psychological description one has in writing a novel is particularly difficult to adapt to a screenplay with­out using narration. But, thanks to the unexpected travail of adapting the descriptions of the novel form to a screenplay, I attained a new awareness of what screenplays and films consist of. At the same time, I was able to incorporate many peculiarly novelistic modes of expres­sion into the script.

For example, I understood that in novel-writing certain structural techniques can be employed to strengthen the impression of an event and narrow the focus upon it. What I learned was that in the editing process a film can gain similar strength through the use of comparable structural techniques. The story of Stray Dog begins with a young police detective on his way home from marksmanship practice at the headquarters’ range. He gets on a crowded bus, and in the unusually intense summer heat and crush of bodies his pistol is stolen. When I filmed this sequence and edited it according to the passage of chrono­logical time, the effect was terrible. As an introduction to a drama it was slow, the focus was vague and it failed to grip the viewer.

Troubled, I went back to look at the way I had begun the novel. I had written as follows: ‘It was the hottest day of that entire summer.’ Immediately I thought, ‘That’s it.’ I used a shot of a dog with its tongue hanging out, panting. Then the narration begins, ‘It was unbearably hot that day.’ After a sign on a door indicating ‘Police Head­quarters, First Division,’ I proceeded to the interior. The chief of the First Detective Division glares up from his desk. ‘What? Your pistol was stolen?’ Before him stands the contrite young detective who is the hero of the story. This new way of editing the opening sequence gave me a very short piece of film, but it was extremely effective in drawing the viewer suddenly into the heart of the drama.

Stray Dog is made up of many short scenes in many different settings, so the little sound stage we used was cleared and redecorated with lightning speed. On fast days we shot five or six different scenes on it. As soon as the set was ready, we’d shoot and be done again, so the art department had no choice but to build and decorate sets while we slept.

At any rate, the filming of Stray Dog went remarkably well, and we finished ahead of schedule. The excellent pace of the shooting and the good feeling of the crew working together can be sensed in the completed film.

I remember how it was on Saturday nights when we boarded a bus to go home for a day off after a full week’s hard work. Everyone was happy. At the time I was living in Komae, far out of the city near the Tamagawa River, so toward the end of the ride I was always left alone. The solitary last rider on the cavernous empty bus, I always felt more loneliness at being separated from my crew than I did joy at being reunited with my family.

Now the pleasure in the work we experienced on Stray Dog seems like a distant dream. The films an audience really enjoys are the ones that were enjoyable in the making. Yet pleasure in the work can't be achieved unless you know you have put all of your strength into it and have done your best to make it come alive. A film made in this spirit reveals the hearts of the crew.

– Excerpt from ‘Akira Kurosawa: Something Like an Autobiography’ (Vintage Books, 1983)

Terrence Malick: Days of Heaven

Days of Heaven (Directed by Terrence Malick)

One-of-a-kind filmmaker-philosopher Terrence Malick has created some of the most visually arresting films of the twentieth century, and his glorious period tragedy ‘Days of Heaven’, featuring Oscar-winning cinematography by Nestor Almendros, stands out among them. In 1910, a Chicago steelworker (Richard Gere) accidentally kills his supervisor, and he, his girlfriend (Brooke Adams), and his little sister (Linda Manz) flee to the Texas panhandle, where they find work harvesting wheat in the fields of a stoic farmer (Sam Shepard). A love triangle, a swarm of locusts, a hellish fire — Malick captures it all with dreamlike authenticity, creating a timeless American idyll that is also a gritty evocation of turn-of-the-century labor. (via criterion.com).

Where his debut feature Badlands was tightly scripted, Malick’s follow up film was a more loosely constructed affair. Malick allowed himself the latitude to film not just the principal actors but also on the earth, animals, and groups of extras. Malick took this method to higher and more experimental durations in his future films. This is a completely valid creative process that seeks – as in Wong Kar-wai or Jacques Rivette's cinema – to discover the film during its material production instead of in the 'abstract' stage in its writing. 

Writing remains, of course, crucial to Malick, an outstanding stylist of words. Days of Heaven's script isn't much like a final film—in many cases, complicated dialogue passages have been condensed into a sentence or two, a secret response shot and a cut off from some natural phenomena. The literary aspects of the concept are however already visible on the page: the elaborately stylized and poetic vernacular of speech, the expressive cycle of seasons and a fundamental line (in essence) gathered from many biblical sources. This early, mythical narrative, however, finishes as completely displaced in the New World as the mythology of John Smith and Pocahontas. It is scarcely surprising to find that Shepard, who is a beautifully frightening presence in the movie, believed he was playing someone who was less of a psychological flesh and blood than some sketch, shadow or ghost. 

The Australian reviewer, Meaghan Morris, previously stated that Heaven's Days is a picture in perpetual motion, in fact about all sorts of movement: human, natural, mechanical. Filmmaker Nestor Almendros — whose work on François Truffaut's "triangular" costume drama Two French Girls (1971) might have inspired Malick — likes to describe the form of the complex arrangements of the film: the camera tracking and dollying up and down in the farm house, the strange mansion in the middle of a huge field, while the different players enter and depart in the frame. Indeed, even the simplest shots have a trace of such structure: the layout of Days of Heaven aims less at fluid continuity in images or gestures — it is indeed a remarkably elliptical film— than it is when each filmic "unit" was created as a cell that nonlinearly refers to every other part of the film, through echos, comparisons, subtle flashbacks and flash-forwards. 

In May 1979, Terrence Malick candidly explained the origin of his ideas for Days of Heaven and how he went about making it happen. This interview was originally published in French and is sourced from the book Quinze Hommes Splendides by Yvonne Baby. 

It was in Austin, Texas that I had the idea for Days of Heaven. I found myself alone for a summer in the town I had left when I was a high school student. There were those green, undulating hills, and the very beautiful Colorado river. The place is inspired. It is inspiring, and there the film came to me all together.

I had not liked working at harvest time, I have a very good memory of it, of wheat, and the comings and goings in the fields, and of all the people I met. They were mostly petty criminals who were on their way to Phoenix, Arizona or Las Vegas for the rest of the year.

Like those of the film, these were not people of the soil, but urban dwellers who had abandoned their city, their factories. Rather than criminals, it would be fairer to say they lived on the margins of crime, fed by elusive hopes. At the time of the film, those who worked the seasons hated their jobs and the farmers did not trust them. They could not touch the machinery: if something was breaking, they had to signal by raising their hat on a stick. To distinguish themselves, they were always putting on their best clothes. I had noticed that myself when I was a teenager. To the farmers they were bringing – and this is still true – a piece of their homeland and of new horizons. And farmers sat down to listen – charmed – to hear the story of these workers. Already the farmers were almost nothing more than businessmen and they felt nostalgia for those days of yesteryear where they were themselves caretakers of their earthly riches. Workers and farmers were embodying people whose hopes were being destroyed, some more than others, by opulence or poverty. All were full of desires, dreams, and appetites, which I hope permeates the film. For these people, happiness comes and goes, they are fleeting moments. Why? They don’t know, just as they don’t know how to achieve happiness. If they see before them another season, another harvest, they feel unable to build a life.



Though this is familiar to a European, it may seem puzzling for Americans. Americans feel entitled to happiness, and once they manage to find it, they feel as if they own it. If they are deprived of it, they feel cheated. If they feel it has been taken away from them, they imagine they have been done wrong. This guilt I have felt from everyone I've known. It's a bit like a Dylan song: they have held the world in their hands and let it slip through their fingers.

As for the title, it is a feeling that a place exists that is within reach and where we will be safe. It is a place where a house will not rest on the sand, where you will not become crazier by fighting again and again against the impossible.

Linda [Manz], the teenage girl, is the heart of the film. She was a sort of street child we had discovered in a laundromat. For the role, she should have been younger, but as soon as I spoke to her, I found in her the maturity of a forty-year old woman. Non-judgmental and left to her own imagination, she had her own ideas [for the role] giving the impression of having actually lived this life instead of having to invent and play within another.

At first it was a bit frustrating to work with her. She couldn’t remember her lines, couldn’t be interrupted, and was difficult to photograph. Despite this, I started to love her and I believed in her more than anything else. She transformed the role. I am glad that she’s the narrator. Her personality shines through the film’s objectivity. Every time I gave her new lines, she interpreted it in her own way; when she refers to heaven and hell, she says that everyone is bursting into flames. It was her response to the film on the day when she saw the rushes. That comment was included in the final version. Linda said so many things that I despaired being unable to keep them… I feel like I have not been able to grasp a fraction of who she really is.

With Nestor Almendros, we decided to film without any artificial light. It wasn’t possible in the houses at night, but outside, we shot with natural light or with the fire. When the American team was saying, ‘This is not how we should proceed,’ Nestor Almendros, very courageously insisted. As we filmed, the team discovered that it was technically easier, and I was able to capture absolute reality. That was my wish: to prevent the appearance of any technique, and that the photography was to be processed to be visually beautiful and to ensure this beauty existed within the world I was trying to show, suggesting that which was lost, or what we were now losing. Because he is also a filmmaker, Nestor Almendros understood Days of Heaven in every way.

I wanted the omnipresence of sound, so I used the Dolby system. Dolby purifies sound and is able to record multiple audio tracks (e.g. wind, the rustle of corn stalks, the pulse of crickets). I wanted to remove any distance from the public. It was my secret intention; to make the film experience more concrete, more direct. And, for the audience, I am tempted to say, experience it like a walk in the countryside. You’ll probably be bored or have other things in mind, but perhaps you will be struck, suddenly, by a feeling, by an act, by a unique portrait of nature. That’s what I wanted, that is how the Dolby and technological developments improved our work.

It would be difficult for me to make a film about contemporary America today. We live in such dark times and we have gradually lost our open spaces. We always had hope, the illusion that there was a place where we could live, where one could emigrate and go even further. Wilderness, this is the place where everything seems possible, where solidarity exists – and justice – where the virtues are somehow linked to this justice. In the region where I grew up, everyone felt it in a very strong way. This sense of space disappearing, we nevertheless can find it in cinema, which will pass it on to us. There is so much to do: it’s as if we were on the Mississippi Territory, in the eighteenth century. For an hour, or for two days, or longer, these films can enable small changes of heart, changes that mean the same thing: to live better and to love more. And even an old movie in poor and beaten condition and can give us that. What else is there to ask for?

– An interview for Le Monde with Terrence Malick from 1979, translated by Hugues Fournier and Paul Maher Jr., from the book by Yvonne Baby, Quinze Hommes Splendides. Article available on Justin Wiemer’s blog here.

Ben Ripley: Writing And Sacrifice

Source Code (Directed by Duncan Jones)

Ben Ripley wrote the script for the sci-fi thriller Source Code while doing studio re-writes on horror movies. His initial pitches to studio executives left them baffled by the complex storyline. Eventually he had to put it on the page to make his case. 

The film is skilfully directed by Duncan Jones whose feature debut was the excellent Moon. Source Code is a thrilling and satisfying science fiction action-adventure story with nods to the films of Christopher Nolan and Hitchcock.

Source code ranges over a wide range of conspiracies and altered states, playfully unlikely but done with cool conviction. There is a resemblance with Christopher Nolan's Inception, which also focuses on altered states of minds,  time and spatial disruptions.

The film revolves around U.S. Army helicopter pilot Colter Stevens (played by Jake Gyllenhaal), who has crash-landed in Afghanistan after running out of fuel. Upon regaining consciousness, he discovers himself onboard a busy commuter train in civilian clothing arriving in Chicago just in time for a beautiful summer day. Opposite sits Christina (Michelle Monaghan), who is seemingly unconcerned by their escalating flirtation but who grows increasingly disturbed as Colter becomes unstable and frantic. 

Once the 8-minute mark has passed, a cataclysmic event strikes, sending Colter back into a predicament that is at least as confusing. He is dressed in his military uniform, is hurt, and looks to be inside a damaged military aircraft. Is this the actual thing? Is it the train, or is it just our perception of it? He must now be able to speak with the lady who has replaced him as his commanding officer over a video display. Vera Farmiga's character, Goodwin, behaves in the same mysterious and unreadable manner that Kevin Spacey's android-like voice did with Sam Rockwell in Moon. 

Colter has been kidnapped and used against his will as a guinea pig in the application of future technology known as "source code" which forces him to replay the last eight minutes on a Chicago commuter train over and over again until he uncovers knowledge that can benefit society. Ripley and Jones, demonstrate how each metaphysically complex situation unlocks new information, with each resulting in Colter becoming more fond of Christina and making the possibility of losing her seem more painful. 

In a recent interview with Scriptshadow, Ben Ripley discussed his writing process:

‘Once I have an idea that I think works, my first step is to take pages and pages of notes, whatever comes into my head. Research is important. You need to steep yourself in whatever subculture you’re writing about, enough so that you develop a confidence to invent within it. Next I try to come up with some compelling central characters. This is always the hardest part for me to get right, but it’s a critical one. If your characters aren’t distinct, comprehensible and somewhat relatable, you’ll never hear the end of it from your readers. And it’s really about the hard work of understanding who these characters are and what makes them interesting.

‘I’m not much attracted to Everyman characters. I’m more intrigued with mysterious, unusual or even extraordinary characters. If you look at Stanley Kubrick’s films, most of his characters are compelling for who they are. They’re not ordinary people who depend on a movie situation to come alive in. The outline comes next, but I don’t get overly detailed with it. I like to leave some open spaces for discovery. Only when you get in there writing scenes, writing description and dialogue, will the best things about your script occur to you.

‘That said, I absolutely know what my three acts and midpoint are, even if they sometimes shift around during the writing. The more I write, the fewer pages per day I turn out. I wish I wrote faster, but I tend to consider pretty carefully each moment. I take my time with the language until it feels right. I never gloss over stuff. After that, I always go back and find material to remove. You can always say things with greater efficiency, always trim and tighten action. You look at any good film and you realize just how economical and propulsive the scenes are, especially in the first act as they work to set up the world. You can never get too good at that skill.

‘A midpoint is a plot turn that happens in the middle of a movie. The midpoint in Jaws is when Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss pile into the fishing boat and head out to the open ocean to hunt the shark. The midpoint of the original Star Wars is when the Millenium Falcon reaches the Death Star in order to rescue the princess. It’s the point to which the action of the first half of the story is ending and, as a result, sends the second half of the story in a new – or at least more focused – direction. A good midpoint turn will differentiate the action between the first and second half of the movie and keep things from seeming monotonous. The post-midpoint portion of the second act (pages 60-90) is often where you get much closer to the story’s real themes and you’re not as much focused on straightforward action.

‘The reason I’m a screenwriter today is that I believed in my talent and made the sustained sacrifices to become one. I eschewed other career paths. I worked day jobs to support myself. I wrote on weekends when maybe I would have had more fun at the beach. I started and finished scripts and then started new ones that were better. I kept at it. There are no shortcuts. The dues-paying process can be bewildering and lonely, but its job is to separate out the professionals from the merely curious, and when it’s over, you’re oddly thankful for having asked a lot of yourself…

‘I remember being so impatient for my difficult, outsiders life to stop and for my ’real’ life as a working writer to start. It’s easy for professional writers to be benignly nostalgic about their early days coming up, forgetting that those days often felt tedious, frustrating and unsustainable. But your life shouldn’t depend on getting an agent within the next month. If it does, there’s something wrong.

‘You should never let your life get to the point where you look at screenwriting as a lottery ticket that’s going to save you. What saves you is your belief in yourself and your commitment to getting better at your craft, regardless of when that craft is rewarded. And a decent script probably won’t get you an agent. If you’re still at the point where you’re writing “decent” scripts – as opposed to great scripts – you’re not ready for an agent. But the magic of Hollywood is that the appetite for great scripts far exceeds the supply of great scripts. So when and if you finally write that great script, word will get out. People will ask you to read it, not the other way around. Stay optimistic. Stay focused. Write well and the agents – and the success – will come.’

- Ben Ripley

Method Writing: Tarantino and Elmore Leonard

Elmore Leonard was born in New Orleans in 1925, moving to Detroit when he was six years old where he lived for the rest of his life. Following high-school graduation, Leonard served in the US Navy, then after graduating from the University of Detroit became a copywriter for an advertising agency. At the same time, Leonard was pursuing a burgeoning writing career, something he’d been interested in since childhood. His initial interest was in the Western genre. After the success of his novel Hombre, successfully filmed by Martin Ritt and starring Paul Newman,  Leonard decided to quit his job to write full-time. As the Western genre became less fashionable, Leonard turned his attention to crime novels, and was immediately successful. He has since received multiple honours including the Edgar, National Book Award, and the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award. His novels Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Jackie Brown (based on the novel Rum Punch), Hombre, and 3:10 to Yuma have all been turned into major motion pictures. He is widely regarded as one of America’s greatest crime writers. Leonard died in 2013.

Initially published in the Jan/Feb 1998 issue of Creative Screenwriting the following interview with Quentin Tarantino was conducted shortly after the release of Tarantino’s Jackie Brown. Described as ‘a comic crime caper based on Elmore Leonard’s novel Rum Punch,’ Jackie Brown was Tarantino’s first adaptation. Tarantino’s screenplay closely follows Leonard’s plot line, dropping some minor characters, developing others (most notably Ordell Robbie), while inserting some new scenes. Tarantino has openly acknowledged the impact of Leonard’s writing on his own writing style: ‘Leonard opened my eyes to the dramatic possibilities of everyday speech’, he claims. In Jackie Brown Tarantino successfully defers to Elmore Leonard’s low-life naturalism to produce arguably his most mature work. In discussing Leonard and his writing roots Tarantino sheds light into his world and his technique as a ‘method writer.’

CS: How exactly have Elmore Leonard’s books influenced your writing style?

QT: Well, when I was a kid and I first started reading his novels I got really caught up in his characters and the way they talked. As I started reading more and more of his novels it kind of gave me permission to go my way with characters talking around things as opposed to talking about them. He showed me that characters can go off on tangents and those tangents are just as valid as anything else. Like the way real people talk. I think his biggest influence on any of my things was True Romance. Actually, in True Romance, I was trying to do my version of an Elmore Leonard novel in script form. I didn’t rip it off, there’s nothing blatant about it, it’s just a feeling you know, and a style I was inspired by more than anything you could point your finger at.

CS: The strongest scene in True Romance is the confrontation between Cliff [played by Dennis Hopper] and Coccotti [played by Christopher Walken]. How did you approach crafting that scene?

QT: The way I write is really like putting one foot in front of the other. I really let the characters do most of the work, they start talking and they just lead the way. I had heard that whole speech about the Sicilians a long time ago, from a black guy living in my house. One day I was talking with a friend who was Sicilian and I just started telling that speech. And I thought, ‘Wow, that is a great scene, I gotta remember that.’ In True Romance the one thing I knew Cliff had to do was insult the guy enough that he’d kill him, because if he got tortured he’d end up telling him where Clarence was, and he didn’t want to do that. I knew how the scene had to end, but I don’t write dialogue in a strategic way. I didn’t really go about crafting the scene, I just put them in the room together. I knew Cliff was going to end up doing the Sicilian thing but I didn’t know what Coccotti was going to say. They just started talking and I jotted it down. I almost feel like a fraud for taking credit for writing dialogue, because it’s the characters that are doing it. To me it’s very connected to actors’ improv with me playing all the characters. One of the reasons I like to write with pen and paper is it helps that process, for me anyway.

True Romance (Directed by Tony Scott)

CS: What’s the relationship between your acting and your writing?


QT: I think they’re almost inseparably married. When I describe things in my writing I never use writing adjectives. I don’t know what a writing adjective is. I always use acting adjectives. To me writing’s almost the same thing because you’re acting like a character and that’s what acting is all about, the moment. You don’t want to be result oriented, you don’t want to say, ‘Okay, this is what’s going to happen.’ No, you start with your character and anything can happen, like life. You shouldn’t try to predestine where you’re gonna go and what you’re gonna see. You can hit the nail on the head, but you want the kind of freedom that allows for something you hadn’t even imagined to happen. I’m very much a man of the moment. I can think about an idea for a year, two years, even four years all right, but what ever is going on with me the moment I write is gonna work it’s way into the piece.


CS: Can you think of an example where your perspective at a certain moment really changed the way you approached something?


QT: Well anything that’s really personal I wouldn’t want to talk about because that’s not what the scene’s about, it’s just underneath it there. But like something more on the surface would be Vince’s whole thing in Pulp Fiction about Amsterdam. I was in Amsterdam for the very first time in my life when I was writing that script and it was kind of blowing my mind. And it was blowing Vince’s mind too, he’d just come back from there too. When I spent time in Amsterdam I was just going there to be by myself, but it worked its way in ‘cause that is what I was going through and that was gold.


CS: What adaptations of Elmore Leonard’s books do you admire?


QT: I liked Get Shorty a lot, I guess where he was funny and I really liked 52 Pick-Up. I think that’s the only other crime one that I’ve really liked.


CS: Did other adaptations suggest anything for your own approach?


QT: No, I’ve never really felt that anyone got [Leonard] in the prime zone.


CS: What about Scott Frank’s adaptation of Get Shorty?


QT: Well it’s funny because he came pretty damn close. I actually read his script and thought he did a really good job with it. But there was still something lost in the translation. I’ve always been kind of a perfectionist about the idea of adapting a Leonard novel because I just wanted to have the feeling of the novel, those long dialogue scenes where a character is slowly revealed. To me, that’s the fun of adapting it. I’m not dissing Frank at all. I think he did a great job with Get Shorty, but there’s another aspect of Leonard’s novels that I’m interested in.

True Romance (Directed by Tony Scott)

CS: You’ve voiced concern in the past that your own voice, your own dialogue might someday become old hat, that people might grow tired of it. Was that one of the reasons you decided to go with an adaptation rather than an original script for your next film?

QT: Well, that wasn’t the reason but it does very conveniently serve that purpose. It’s a nice way of kind of holding onto my dialogue, of holding onto my gift and whatever I’ve got to offer. I don’t want people to take me for granted. The things I have to offer I don’t want wasted. When you watch something David Mamet’s written you know you’ve listened to David Mamet dialogue. I want to try and avoid that if I can. I want to try to avoid that as a writer and I want to try to avoid it as a filmmaker. I want people to see my new movie not my next movie. Does that make sense? You’ve gotta remember, I’ve done two movies before this, so wait till I’ve done six movies to start pigeonholing me. I tend to do different types of things. Dogs, Pulp Fiction, True Romance, and my script for Natural Born Killers take place in kind of my own universe. But that doesn’t make them fantastical. Larry McMurtry writes with his own universe. J.D. Salinger writes with his own universe and it’s a very real universe and I think mine is too. But having said all that, this movie doesn’t take place in my universe.

CS: It doesn’t?

QT: This is in Elmore Leonard’s universe and it was interesting making a movie outside this little universe that I created. This was Dutch’s universe, and because of that, I wanted it to be ultra-realistic. I used a different cinematographer to kind of get a different look. It still looks great but just a little bit more down to earth, a little less like a movie movie, a little bit more like a '70s Straight Time. I actually like building sets. In Jackie Brown I didn’t do that. Every single solitary scene in the movie was shot on location. Some things were written for specific locations in the south [of LA] that I went out and found.

CS: I think one of your great strengths as a writer is that you have been able to define your own vision, your own universe, and set your stories within that. In looking at the difference between that and where you see Jackie Brown, what elements would you say define the Tarantino universe of film?

True Romance (Directed by Tony Scott)

QT: Well, that’s kind of a hard question to answer because a whole lot of this stuff is subliminal. It just comes out. One of the ways other writers have created their own universe is through overlapping characters, which I think is very interesting.

CS: I understand what you’re saying about it being kind of subliminal but you’re also a smart guy. I’m sure you get analytical about some of it too, especially as far as where you take your universe.

QT: To tell you the truth, I try not to get analytical in the writing process. I really try not to do that. I try to just kind of keep the flow from my brain to my hand as far as the pen is concerned and, as I’ve said, go with the moment and go with my guts. It’s different than when you’re playing games or trying to be clever. To me, truth is the big thing. Constantly you’re writing something and you get to a place where your characters could go this way or that and I just can’t lie. The characters have gotta be true to themselves. And that’s something I don’t see in a lot of Hollywood movies. I see characters lying all the time. They can’t do this because it would affect the movie this way or that or this demographic might not like it. To me a character can’t do anything good or bad, they can only do something that’s true or not. Basically, my writing’s like a journey. I’ll know some of the stops ahead of time, and I’ll make some of those stops and some of them I won’t. Some will be a moot point by the time I get there. You know every script will have four to six basic scenes that you’re going to do. It’s all the scenes in the middle that you’ve got to—not struggle, it’s never a struggle—but you’ve got to write through—that’s where your characters really come from. That’s how you find them, that’s where they live. So I’ve got basic directions of how to get to where I’m going, but now I’m starting the journey. I can always refer to my directions if I get lost, but barring that, let’s see what we see. I think that is how novelists write. That’s how Elmore Leonard writes.

CS: Do you think that repetition of a phrase or word in dialogue enhances its power for an audience or detracts from it?

QT: Well I do that a lot. I like it. I think that in my dialogue there’s a bit of whatever you would call it, a music or poetry, and the repetition of certain words helps give it a beat or a rhythm. It just happens and I just go with it, looking for the rhythm of the scene.

CS: Some people have criticized your use of certain words such as ‘nigger,’ and you have always responded that no word should have that much power in our culture. I’m not sure I buy that. I’ve got to be frank. Aren’t you also using powerful words to electrify your dialogue, to make it more interesting?

Jackie Brown (Directed by Quentin Tarantino)

QT: You know, if you didn’t know me, I could see where you’d come up with that. I mean, I am a writer, I deal in words. No, there is no word that should stay in word jail, every word is completely free. There is no word that is worse than another word. It’s all language, it’s all communication. And if I was doing what you’re saying, I’d be lying. I’d be throwing in a word to get an effect. And well, you do that all the time, you throw in a word to get a laugh, and you throw in this word to get an effect too, that happens, but it’s all organic. It’s never a situation where that’s not what they would say, but I’m going to have them say it because it’s gonna be shocking. You used the example of ‘nigger.’ In Pulp Ficiton, nigger is said a bunch of different times by a bunch of different people and it’s meant differently each time. It’s all about the context in which it’s used. George Carlin does a whole routine about that, you know. When Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy do their stand-up acts, and say nigger, you’re never offended because they’re niggers. You know what they’re fucking talking about. You know the context in which it’s coming from. The way Samuel Jackson says nigger in Pulp Fiction is not the way Eric Stoltz says it, is not the way Ving Rhames says it. They’re all coming from different places. That word means something different depending on who’s saying it.


CS: Ordell uses ‘nigga’ a lot in Jackie Brown. How is his use of the word different than that of the characters in Pulp Fiction?

QT: Actually Ordell probably doesn’t use it any different from Jules. Actually when Jules and Marcellus use it in Pulp Fiction they’re comin’ from the same place, but having it mean different things. Marcellus is very much like, ‘You my nigger now,’ and that was Ving Rhames who came up with that. But Ordell’s comin’ from the same place, he’s a black guy who throws the word around a lot, it’s just part of his dialect, the way he talks. And if you’re writing a black dialect, there’s certain words that you need to make it musical. Nigger’s one of them. If you’re writing about that kind of a guy, motherfucker’s another. Those are two of the key words that are appropriate for that guy. Sam Jackson uses nigger all of the time in his speech, that’s just who he is and where he comes from. That’s the way he talks, so that’s the way Ordell talks. Now what do you have to say to that?!

CS: That’s a good question! I think you have a valid point if that’s where you’re going with the character. Certainly the word nigger is part of the universe you’ve created. It’s one of the things that stands out about your writing.

QT: Also, I’m a white guy who’s not afraid of that word. You know most white guys are deathly afraid of that word.

CS: You’re right.

Jackie Brown (Directed by Quentin Tarantino)

QT: I just don’t feel the whole white guilt and pussy-footing around race issues. I’m completely above all that. I’ve never worried about what anyone might think of me ‘cause I’ve always believed that the true of heart recognize the true of heart. If I’m doing what I’m doing and you’re comin from the same place, you’ll see it, no question about it. And if you’re comin with an axe to grind, with your own baggage and your own hate, then you might react strongly to where I’m comin from. Now what I just said there is that if you have a problem with my stuff you’re a racist. I practically said that. Well, I truly believe that.

CS: You always tend to write long, I mean 500 pages for Pulp Fiction, and then cut back. Do you think that’s a good process in bringing out the best in material?

QT: It works good for me, all right, but I don’t actually think about anything like that, for most of the script. I start getting responsible about length in the third act. You can do all kinds of shit at the beginning of the movie that you don’t have the fuckin’ patience for when it gets to the end. You want to see how it ends. I also tried to get away from 120 pages on Jackie Brown. I think in the screenplay there is too damn much importance given to the page count. It's structural thing. I mean, when it came to Jackie Brown, it was like you know what? I'm in a position now I can just say fuck the page count. I know the movie's gonna be about two-and-a-half hours long. All this page count stuff is for the production manager. It has nothing to do with me. So I'm not gonna dumb down my writing to keep the page count down. I end up still kind of pulling back towards the very end of the process because it was getting pretty excessive. But you know it used to be I would write all this description and everything and I would be all happy with it and I would be battling page count by the end, and it would just turn into Vincent and Jules walk into a room and start talking. On this one I'm not gonna even fucking worry about it. Also because now my scripts are getting published now, this is gonna be the fucking document. I'm not writing novels, these screenplays are my novels, so I'm gonna write it the best that I can. If the movie never gets made, it'd almost be okay because I did it. It's there on the page.

CS: How did the writing of Jackie Brown differ from Pulp Fiction?

QT: It was kind of funny because when I wrote Pulp Fiction I wrote that by myself. The middle story I adapted from a script that Roger Avery wrote, but you know it was me at page one and it was me at the end. It wasn't like we were doing it together or anything. I adapted it myself and I made all these changes I was gonna do. My name alone is on the script for Jackie Brown, I'm the guy that did it. But, I think Elmore Leonard almost deserves credit on the script. We never talked about anything but there was a real collaboration . . . actually I was the one doing all the collaborating. So much in fact, that I kept a lot of his dialogue exactly the way it was and I wrote a lot of my own and now as time has gone on, I don't really almost remember what was mine and what was his. I don't think his stuff stands out or my stuff stands out—I think it works like a really happy marriage.

Pulp Fiction (Directed by Quentin Tarantino)

CS: You've optioned four of Leonard's books? Why did you make Rum Punch first?

QT: Again, it was extremely organic. I actually read Rum Punch before it was published. It turns out Elmore Leonard's agent is a really really good friend of Lawrence Bender, my producing partner. So they sent us the book and I loved it, but I didn’t want to do his books as big budget movies, because they are actually very modest stories and can’t bear a $50 million price tag. So we were getting ready to go into Pulp Fiction, and were talking about a deal where we could option it for very little money and shoot it for very little money. But his agent very rightfully said, ‘Now guys if we’re gonna do this, and he’s gonna pass up millions of dollars, you guys gotta commit to do this after Pulp Fiction.’ You can never really do that, all right, cause who knows who I'm gonna be after I get done with a movie. I couldn't really commit to it 100 per cent, so I let it go. And it so happened it became available again with these other three novels. I was going to give it to another director to do, so I read it again so I could talk about it. In reading it again I remembered exactly what it was I wanted to do when I read it a long time ago, it was like I saw the movie that I made in my head a long time ago, and let go of, that movie came right back. It came right right back. That’s what I'm gonna do. So that's how that one became the one. You know if you love something, set it free? Well I did, and it came back!

CS: Were there any techniques or any ideas you had, to bring the numerous ‘talking head’ scenes in Jackie Brown to life? To keep the interest of the audience?

QT: It was funny ‘cause I thought about that when I was writing the script. There were a whole lot of scenes with people talking to each other, right? But I thought about it and said, ‘That’s what it is. Don't be afraid of what it is.’ All right? And I made a pact with myself that there are two different styles going on here—the first half is about character and the second half is about action.

CS: Okay.

QT: I’m not necessarily going to try to show off to the world what a great filmmaker I am in the first half. ‘Cause the way you service that is you just get the best single performance you can from the actors and you edit it the right way so that their best work is showing and then you can have talk for ten fuckin’ minutes, twenty minutes or an hour, it doesn't fuckin’ matter. But in the second half we’re going to crank it up. It almost ties back to what you were saying about the editing really kicking in in the third act. There was a lot less flash there I mean, just boom, boom, boom, boom, as opposed to the longer character scenes up front. Yeah, definitely.

Pulp Fiction (Directed by Quentin Tarantino)

CS: In reading your interviews you shield it a little bit, but I think you take a little pride in the way you presented Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction in non-linear formats. In Jackie Brown you moved to a linear format. Why did you decide that? Was it just the material?

QT: Yeah, I'm proud of what I did in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. I’m not too proud of it, ‘cause I think that everyone should be able to do that, and it just seemed like the best way to present those stories. I don’t have any one way to tell a story, all right. I don’t have any rule book of how it’s supposed to be done, you know? But I’ve always said that if a story would be more emotionally involving told, beginning, middle, and end, I’ll tell it that way. I won’t jigsaw it, just to show what a clever boy I am. I don’t do anything in my script just to be clever. That’s the first thing that goes, it has to . . .

CS:. . . be true to itself?

QT: Yeah, emotion will always win over coolness and cleverness. It’s when a scene works emotionally and it’s cool and clever, then it's great. That’s what you want. In the case of Jackie Brown, this story is told better this way. And the sequence where the money is switched three times? That’s how I saw it when I read the book. It’s not in the book that way, but that’s how I saw it.

CS: That’s interesting on the screen.

QT: Yeah, I love it. I was just watching the movie in my mind as I was reading the book and thought, ‘That would be really cool.’ Before Jackie Brown, the most interesting character I ever wrote was Mia [in Pulp Fiction].

CS: Why is that?

QT: Because I have no idea where she came from. I have no idea whatsoever. She’s not from another movie, she’s not somebody I know, she’s not a fantasy girl, she’s not really a part of me, she’s not a side of me. I knew when I was writing that story, I knew nothing more about Mia than Vincent did. All I knew were the rumors. I didn’t know who she was at all, until they got to Jack Rabbit Slim’s and she opened her mouth. Then all of a sudden this character emerged with her own rhythm of speech. I don’t know where she came from and that's why I love her.

Natural Born Killers (Directed by Oliver Stone)

CS: When you’re developing a character, what do you do to get into their mind? Do you do a kind of back story on them? What do you do to get a character down?

QT: That’s a very interesting question. Maybe I should actually—I don’t. I do that as an actor though. That’s very interesting. Maybe I should start doing that in my original stuff or even on this stuff. No, in the case of Jackie Brown by the time I started writing the script I was pretty damn familiar with the material so I felt I knew these people. I don’t know, because part of that process is discovering them as I’m writing them. It’s different from acting. I won’t even think now about acting in a role where I didn’t do a back story for a character. Sit down with pen and paper and bring them up to this point. All right. But there’s a birthing process when you’re writing.

CS: In the past you’ve been real open about how you’ve cannibalized your own work in building new scripts. Is that a way of drawing stories into your own unique universe?

QT: Initially, when I first started doing stuff like that it was just so I didn’t have to write that part of it, it was a way to save time and pages. But it never quite works like a slam dunk anymore. By the time I get through with it I’ve usually rewritten it so much to make it work for whatever I’m doing that I might as well have written a new scene. I haven’t done that in a while actually.

CS: I didn’t notice any borrowing in Jackie Brown.

QT: Oh yeah, not at all. I think it was more like I save my writing and everything, and I never throw anything away. And I’ll just take something and read it, and get excited about it again. ‘That’s good, oh God, why did I stop doing that, that was really good.’ So it’s just an attempt to not let it go to waste. To find some way to fit it in.

Reservoir Dogs (Directed by Quentin Tarantino)

CS: The only script of yours that I haven’t read is Open Road.

QT: Yeah, no one has read that. I never finished it. That was like the first time I really wrote a script. Roger Avary had written a script called Pandemonium Reigns that was forty pages long and really funny. It’s like these two characters on the road and there’s this hitchhiker and it’s a surreal, wild comedy. Then they get to this kind of crazy, surreal town. Then he ended it in this way that I didn’t like at all. Because I had never finished a script, I had just written scenes, I asked him, ‘Could I take that? Like rewrite it, just do my own version of it?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, go for it.’ I don’t think he was going to do anything with it—I don’t think he liked his ending either. I started with getting the guy on the road, I wrote forever setting up the thing—now that you bring it up, I had forgotten, but there’s actually a really funny, like violent comedy scene in it that’s really good. I get really annoyed with people saying that I ripped off the Mexican stand-off stuff. Open Road was like way before I even knew who John Woo was. It had a Mexican stand-off scene, True Romance has a Mexican stand-off scene. I wrote that like in 1985 or 1986, way before I had seen A Better Tomorrow or anything. Way, way before. That Mexican stand-off scene is mine as much as it is his. That’s always been in my shit. So I really set-up this big fuckin’ deal to finally get him on the road. But I ultimately found out that I didn’t have a good ending for it either, I saw no way to end it.

CS: Did you incorporate any scenes from that script into your later scripts?

QT: I never really did because The Open Road was just so damn specific—well, I did you know, that's a big lie, cause actually I did do one thing, the character I was going to play—a guy named ‘F. Scarland’ was in my very first draft of Natural Born Killers that most people never read. I later did a complete rewrite on Natural Born Killers but in the first draft, F. Scarland was like the third lead in the piece...

- Method Writing by Erik Bauer. Portions of this interview were previously published in the January/February 1998 issue of Creative Screenwriting. To purchase this issue, visit creativescreenwriting.com