One Slack Martian's Screenwriting Blog

Here are some that I've collected. This is a copy and paste project and some of the formatting is wonky.

TEDDY LAURSON, rock n’ roll arsonist.

BRIDGET GREGORY, bitch-ringmaster-goddess.

The NEW HUSBAND. He exudes the quiet confidence of a successful businessman who played college football, takes expensive skiing and sailing vacations, and hasn’t read a novel since high school.

DARRYL comes trotting down the stairs. Polyester was made for this man, and he’s dripping in “men’s” jewelry.

This is RICKY FITTS. He’s eighteen, but his eyes are much older. Underneath his Zen-like tranquility lurks something wounded . . . and dangerous.

MRS. BOWMAN, painfully thin, with the perpetually surprised look of a woman who’s had her eyes done more than once.

NEO, a young man who knows more about living inside a computer than living outside one.

WARDEN SAMUEL NORTON strolls forth, a colorless man in a gray suit and a church pin in his lapel. He looks like he could piss ice water.

NICK CURRAN is 42. Trim, good-looking, a nice suit: a face urban, edged, shadowed. GUS MORAN is 64. Crew-cut, silver beard, a suit rumpled and shiny, a hat out of the 50's: a face worn and ruined: the face of a backwoods philosopher.

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(this shows how to introduce scene with large cast)

Past the uniformed guys... nods... waves... past the forensic men... past the coroner's investigators... they get to the bedroom.

INT. THE BEDROOM

They walk in, stare -- it's messy.

It's like a convention in here. LT. PHIL WALKER, in his 50's, silver-haired, the Homicide guys:
JIM HARRIGAN, late 40's, puffy, affable; SAM ANDREWS, 30's, black. A CORONER'S MAN is working the bed.

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INT. OFFICE - PROCESSING HALL - AFTERNOON -

A FULL CLOSEUP OF TONY MONTANA

The scar-faced one, in the young angry prime of his life. We dwell first on the scar which he likes to scratch now and then. We move to the eyes, pure in their fury. Finally we encompass the face -- the face of a man about to explode -- muscle, tissue, brain -- a man willing to live or die and on the increment of a moment, inflict or receive either one. He is clothed in rags crossed with holes, his shoes broken cardboard, his hair unkempt, his complexion sallow from prison.

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One of them is ERICA, Marin's Mother. The other is Erica's Younger Sister, ZOE.

ERICA is in her mid-fifties and is a poster girl for growing old. It's actually hard to imagine 55 looking any better. And not because she looks 35, but because she makes 55 look graceful and right. Erica is the "girl most likely" who went beyond expectations but didn't realize until recently that being sure of herself was a handicap. She doesn't try to be intimidating, she just is.

Her sister, ZOE is in her forties. Zoe's the loose one. She wears draw string pants and a T-shirt that says, "BOYS LIE".

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The man talking is big, looks like an over-stuffed kid. "LEON" it says on his breast pocket. He's dressed in a warehouseman's uniform and his pudgy hands are folded expectantly in his lap. Despite the obvious heat, he looks very cool. The man facing him is lean, hollow cheeked and dressed in gray. Detached and efficient, he looks like a cop or an accountant. His name is HOLDEN and he's all business, except for the sweat on his face.

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His eyes closed, head rested against the glass. Ten years ago, DECKARD might have been an athlete, a track man or a welter-weight. The body looks it, but the face has seen some time -- not all of it good.

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INT. INSPECTOR BRYANT'S OFFICE - NIGHT

The INSPECTOR is in his fifties. The deep creases in his face, the broken capillaries in his nose say brawler, spoiler, drinker, but the diplomas on the wall say something else.

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The woman is pretty, a touch of gray in her hair, kind and blue-eyed. MARY looks like an American dream mom, right out of "Father Knows Best." The man also resembles a tradition: the gym instructor, short cropped hair with the body of a drill sergeant, but the eyes are grey and chilling.

ROY BATTY is a presence of force with a lazy, but acute sense of what goes on around him.

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THE CAPTAIN -- brutal and impatient -- watching from the door.

MARSHALL, a CIA bigwig has the remote control. And the floor.

MR. APFEL -- anal Zurich banker -- waiting there.

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[MRS. DOYLE IS MINOR CHARACTER INTRO]

Five people in this darkened room: AN ENGINEER working the board. CONKLIN looking sour. ZORN in the shadows. ABBOTT sitting there waiting for analysis.

MRS. DOYLE. She's late sixties. A long-time spy shrink. An eminence. A diamond-hard, seen-it-all intelligence.

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That's DOLLY, a waitress, (50, been here too long.) Speck looks up, smiles thinly, "No." Dolly heads off. Speck returns to his article, underlining a particular passage.
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We're looking at the F.B.I.'s "Ten Most-Wanted List." Starkey is #7 on it. He's 40, white. His crime are listed as rape,murder, kidnapping.

THOMAS MACKELWAY stares at Starkey's image. At the eyes...

Mackelway is 34, bred for success - bred for stardom in fact, a whiz at everything he's ever attempted.

So what the hell is he doing in Wichita Falls, Texas...?

EIGHT AGENTS, in cubicles, with a ring of outer offices. Quiet phones, lousy take-out options, hardly a dream gig.

CHARLTON (O.S.)
Got a spot set up for you, Tom.

That's RICK CHARLTON: late 40's, thinning hair, friendly.

Charlton heads around a corner. Mackelway follows.

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BOONE COULTER – a tortured man tired of living but too skilled a fighter to die – jerks up from his bedroll, shaking, sweating.

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From Cameron Crowe’s ELIZABETHTOWN:

DREW BAYLOR is 27. He sits rigidly upright, a man facing his destiny, even though he’s seated backwards. He’s the only passenger in this company helicopter whistling over the tops of tall Oregon trees. In the distance, the magnificent Mount Hood. Drew looks at the large open side-window to the helicopter. It beckons, a tempting way out.

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Drew arrives at the desk of ELLEN KISHMORE, 24. She’s a high level assistant with great style, poise, memorable green eyes and a few too many magazine photos of Jude Law on her cubicle wall. She greets Drew with a not-quite-disguised look of horrified concern. Frankly, she’s shocked he’s still on two feet.

The Airport. She walks the thoroughfare. It’s mostly empty, just a crying baby and a group of stray late-night passengers. She dutifully shows an armed guard her Airline security badge. There is a little romance left in what was once a glamour profession. She took the job for freedom and travel. Lately she feels like a cop. She is CLAIRE COLBURN, built for travel, tired by nature, and she pauses to adjust her shoe.

Drew faces the gimlet-eyed reporter, HERBIE GONSALVES, 46, a poker-faced professional.

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It is late. The supermarket all but deserted. We are tracking in on a fortyish man in Bermuda shorts and sunglasses at the dairy case. He is the Dude. His rumpled look and his relaxed manner suggest a man in whom casualness runs deep.

A boy is seated near the back of a moving bus. This is TODD BOWDEN, 15, as All-American as they come.

ANNIE SAVOY, mid 30’s, touches up her face. Very pretty, knowing, outwardly confident. Words flow from her Southern lips with ease, but her view of the world crosses Southern, National and International borders. She’s cosmic.

AS MAX PATKIN CONTINUES HIS ROUTINE, PLAYERS WARM UP, AND THE MANAGER, JOE RIGGINS, 45, known merely as SKIP, short for “Skipper”, a chaw of tobacco in his cheek, stands with his pitching coach, LARRY HOCKETT late 30’s, an ex-big leaguer whose body has seen too many cocktail lounges.

THE DOOR OPENS — A PLAYER ENTERS, in street clothes, carrying his suitcases. CRASH DAVIS, 30, older than the other players. And different. More than just opinions, he actually has a point of view. A career minor leaguer, hanging on wherever he can get a job. Unlike Ebby–Crash knows a lot about the world without baseball. Also unlike Ebby–he loves baseball desperately.

TYLER has the barrel of a HANDGUN lodged in JACK’S MOUTH. They struggle intensely.
They are both around 30; Tyler is blond, handsome, eyes burning with frightening intensity; and JACK, brunette, is appealing in a dry sort of way. They are both sweating and disheveled; Jack seems to be losing his will to fight.

MARLA SINGER enters. She has short matte black hair and big, dark eyes like a character from Japanese animation.

GREG, the head Surf Nazi, sits in one of the carousel’s benches with his arm around his girl, SHELLY. He thinks he’s King of the Boardwalk.. And doesn’t like it one bit when Shelly casts an appreciative glance toward David.

LUCY ANDERSON drives — late thirties, sexy, warm, comfortable with herself — a bit of a free spirit. SAM, 11, a victim of too many afternoons in shopping malls watching Bratpack movies, sits next to her in his trendy duds, suffering the foreign coastline with his large Malamute dog NANOOK.

GRANDPA, a rugged individualist wearing old denims, Indian moccasins, long grey braid down his back, is a lifeless form on the front porch.

He is L.B. JEFFRIES. A tall, lean, energetic thirtyfive, his face long and serious-looking at rest, is in other circumstances capable of humor, passion, naïve wonder and the kind of intensity that bespeaks inner convictions of moral strength and basic honesty.

The CAMERA FRAMES and MOVES with the lone horseman. He is ETHAN EDWARDS, a man as hard as the country he is crossing.

ANDY DUFRESNE, mid-20’s, wire rim glasses, three-piece suit. Under normal circumstances a respectable, solid citizen; hardly dangerous, perhaps even meek. But these circumstances are far from normal. He is disheveled, unshaven, and very drunk. A cigarette smolders in his mouth. His eyes, flinty and hard, are riveted to the bungalow up the path.

Leonard enters, confident, smiling at the man behind the desk, BURT (fat, sweaty, 40’s). Burt smiles back.

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INT. A CRACKHOUSE. DAY.

COLIN, four years a veteran of the gang unit, is on the job, on a raid, clearing rooms, part of a team working with massive aggression. He moves through a door. A SAD SACK OF SHIT is throwing drugs out a window.

COLIN
(calling to other cops)
Douchebag!

COPS enter past Colin and pigpile the man. COLIN is chewing
gum, all testosterone and aggression, glad to be a cop. The
smartest guy in the room.

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LAZIO, the Fed, comes in and sits down. With folders, pencil.
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**Good intro for numerous characters

INT. A HORRIBLE BAR IN SOUTHIE. NIGHT

A slow night. BILLY IS AT THE BAR bent over a glass of cranberry juice. The women available are two CRONES. [Dialog on separate document]. Stark contrast to COLIN'S EVENING. A BOOKMAKER on the phone. BILLY, by the glances of people looking at him, has made his bones. He’s treated with respect. His hand and wrist in a cast. Out of nowhere (though Billy is aware conversation has stopped he does not look around).

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**Notice how the Character Description is ALSO the name:

A HARD GUY sitting reaches inside his coat. BILLY in a flash breaks his jaw with a pistol barrel and then covers the sprawled HARD GUY with the gun.

HARD GUY
(spitting teeth)
I was going for my fucking
cigarettes...

He was. They fall from his fingers.

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INT. A HARBOR RESTAURANT. BOSTON. DAY

A lobster-bib kind of place. DAYTIME DRINKERS, MICKS in bad boat shoes, hyper-aware of... COSTELLO and BILLY in a back table. COSTELLO, having finished his lunch, is drawing. Billy is unused to being the subject of so many stares. He has sort of a coked-out nervousness, dirty hair.

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[NOTE: 2 minor characters – appearance not important]

Jeremy’s FATHER is a commodities trader, remarried to a dental hygienist named MINDIE. Jeremy’s MOTHER is two valiums and three stiff drinks into the afternoon. She’s trying to figure out how to work the disposable camera.

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note: first we hear about the character before we meet him:

RONNA
I don’t need Simon. I’m going to Todd.

MANNIE
Todd GAINES?

CLAIRE
Who’s Todd Gaines?

MANNIE
Simon’s dealer.
Claire sits forward in the seat, suddenly worried.

CLAIRE
You can’t do that, can you?
I mean, go around Simon.
She looks at Mannie. He shrugs, unsure.

[Then we meet him and get a description]

Shades drawn, the room is completely insulated from reality. The light bulbs have been markered over, casting eerie pools of red and green light. Broken CD’s dangle off a tiny Christmas tree by the stereo. Slacker seasonalism.

GAINES (O.S.)
Don’t let the cat out.

Ronna closes the door behind her.

TODD GAINES emerges from the darkened bedroom, tying thestring on a pair of sweat pants. That’s all he’s wearing.

RONNA
I didn’t wake you up, did I?

GAINES
Nah.

He settles into an overstuffed couch and lights a Marlboro. Adjusts himself in the crotch. Motions for her to take a chair. She’s more nervous than she wants to let on.

Check out Blake Snyder for the importance of having a plus or minus emotional change in each scene. The +/- indicates how the tone evolves during the scene. (Just like every good movie, every good scene has to have clear conflict and some emotional shift from start to finish.) If the scene’s main character (might not be the hero) comes in on an emotional +, then the scene must end on an emotional – to have change. If there’s no change in the scene from + to – or from – to +, ask yourself if the scene is necessary. And you better have a good answer! Do this to really amp up your tension in each scene.

Lt. Kaffee goes from minus to plus in this scene from A Few Good Men, and Kendrick goes from plus to minus.