Excerpt: William Goldman's
Adventures
in the Screen Trade.
p.180
HARPER My name is Lew Harper. To see Mrs. Sampson.
After a pause there is a click. After the click, the
gate swings open. HARPER gets back in his car and starts
to drive forward.
CUT TO
HIS FIRST VIEW OF THE SAMPSON HOUSE. It is enormous,
surrounded by a vast expanse of lawn. Among other things
VISIBLE are a tennis court, a swimming pool with patio
and pool house, a large garden filled with flowers.
CUT TO
HARPER, driving along, taking it all In.
This is a perfectly adequate opening to a movie. (We
don't know it's a detective story yet.) What we do know
is a guy in a beat-up car is expected, for some reason
or another, at a mansion.
It doesn't tell us much more than that but at least
it's direct. If something interesting happens soon,
we'll be interested; if not, not.
And that was how the movie opened when production began.
I was back in New York when I got a call from the coast
saying they needed a sequence immediately to cover the
opening credits.
What?
Just a credit sequence and fast. Whatever it was, they'd
shoot it. Get it in the mail. I hung up. Get what in
the mail? I sat at my desk and did what any hopefully
professional writer would do when he is asked to do
something he doesn't know how to do.
I panicked. |
