Paul Joseph Gulino, Associate Professor at Chapman University Dodge College of Film and
Media Arts: Okay, so here’s an interesting problem that you see with scripts that maybe
don’t work that well, they have talk but no dialogue.
Talk, human speech can be poetic, it can be witty, clever, polite, moving but it isn’t
dialogue unless there is action under it and that’s something to look for.
There’s really two elements with dialogue that you can learn about.
It isn’t simply a talent.
Some people have a natural talent, they can have an ear for it and capture it.
But it goes beyond that.
You can actually learn how to do this and by action…well let me explain it this way.
In a dramatic scene you will often find…not a dramatic scene, in a scene the problem is
no drama, the students will come with what I call “Q&A dialogue”
“How are you today?”
“Okay, how about you?”
“Well not bad.
I think I’ll go to the store.
What about you?”
“Well I think I’ll not go to the store.”
That’s Q&A dialogue, it doesn’t really qualify as dialogue.
It’s useful to think of dialogue (especially in the rewrite stage and I’d emphasize that)
in the first draft just pour it on the page and don’t worry if it’s Q&A dialogue,
don’t worry about it.
It will only block you up if you worry about it.
But once it’s on the page and if it’s working and everybody loves it you say “We’re
done.”
If it isn’t working there are some diagnostic tools to study your dialogue to see what you
can do with it.
There is this concept of subtext in dialogue and I’ll have to give you a warning I use
the term different from pretty much everybody else.
I’ve seen that news like in the [Robert] McKee book where he talks about subtext and
dialogue and there’s a passage in there where he says lets say you have two lovers
and they are at a table and it’s beautiful and candlelit and one says to the other “Darling
I love you, I love you.
I love you.”
Well that’s not actable because it’s too on-the-nose (on-the-nose dialogue).
Well there really needs to be subtext and it would be better if you give them action
and give the example of a couple that is repairing a flat tire and we get from that action that
they are in love but they don’t ever say it.
I mean I look at that and I think I feel that I’ve been in that situation where I’ve
been with someone and said I loved them and it was actable because I did it.
Why isn’t it actable?
Well that version of subtext I’ve never found very helpful.
I get the idea and you want to say things without saying it otherwise it’s too on-the-nose.
But I think it’s more useful to think of subtext as the underlying format.
What am I doing?
What am I doing in the scene?
An actor is asked “What am I doing?”
Dialogue is action with words, that’s all it is.
It’s somebody doing something but they’re using words instead of actions, physical actions.
So it’s a useful thing when you have a scene that is already written to just see whether
you can reduce each line of dialogue to a verb.
And the kind of verbs you’re looking for are things like attack, defend, deflect, persuade,
seduce.
Those are the kinds of verbs you want the lines to have.
You don’t want to explain (it’s just emotionally neutral) and that’s where the Q&A thing
comes in.
So if you have the dialogue “How are you today?”
And the person says “Well, I didn’t sleep much last night.”
That’s Q&A.
But if you have a character who says “You look like hell?”
And they say “Well I didn’t sleep much last night.”
You see now you’ve got attack/defense.
“I didn’t sleep much!”
So you transform it into something that actually moves.
That actually is dynamic and we’re following action.
And that’s the other thing, if you want to know what people…what’s the next screenplay
that works, that gets people going, one other element is that people follow action which
is somebody doing something or something doing something.
And even in your description you keep that in mind that in a stage play you’re going
to list all of that stuff that’s on the stage but in a movie you want a character
to walk through a room and pass by a fancy couch with a cat on it and move to a pick
up a…you want it to be all contained in action because people watch that.
So that’s subtext.
I think it’s a useful way of thinking of subtext, what’s the action?
What’s the verb that is underlying it?
And you can stray a little bit from that but most of the time you want to be able to identify
with that.
What is the person doing?
The question of on-the-nose dialogue is not related to subtext.
On-the-nose-dialogue is defined as characters say exactly what they are thinking and it’s
straightforward and it’s boring.
So in that example okay man says to the woman “I love you, I love you.”
Okay, that’s a bit on the nose.
But the way to attack that again is in the rewrite stage not when you’re trying to
come up with it.
There are simple literary devices that are ancient that you can employ and the easiest
one in irony.
You take a character who says “You look like hell.”
Okay that’s straightforward attack.
And says “You look beautiful.”
Just flip it completely upside down.
And they’ll be like “What do you mean?
I couldn’t sleep last night!”
You know they’ll defend themselves because they’re going to get it.
Because a lot of human interaction is ironic and we talked about it in the other book The
Science of Screenwriting there are theories that human beings in order to function as
a society need to have plausible deniability.
You need to test things out like an explosive issue like love relationships and dating.
What if you’re interested in somebody but you’re not sure if you should ask them out
because maybe there’s a problem so you could go up and tell them a story.
“There was this guy I know who was in love with this girl but she was already involved
with somebody.”
And the other (the target of the seduction) may know exactly that they are talking about
her but if the person says “I’m married.”
Well I wasn’t saying anything.
I was telling a story, see?
So you have irony.
Irony is basically saying two opposite things at the same time like “It’s pouring rain.
I love this weather!”
And people get it.
Or “Nice shoes you’ve got there.”
And people go “What wrong with them?”
They’re going to understand it.
It’s in the tone and in the way that you do it.
But it’s like “I didn’t say anything.
I just said those are nice shoes.
That’s all.”
So irony is a useful one and then there’s TROUBLE IN PARADISE again (a great movie that
everyone should watch).
But there’s a scene where there is two guys that are rivals for the same woman and one
of them goofed up and what did he…oh he lost something that belonged to her on a date
and the other guy is riding them.
So what do they do?
They meet each other in a shop where you can buy another one of what she lost (a purse).
And the guy comes in and says “Oh, how are you doing Major?”
And then he says “You’re looking fine Major.”
And then he says “I’ve had enough of your insulting remarks.”
And it works very well.
So irony is one.
Then another one is metaphor that you’ll see people speaking and people do this a lot.
So instead of subtext I think a preferred term would be indirection (it’s indirect
speech) or sometimes you could call it conflicted speech.
A speech that is rich because it has double meanings and a great example that I like from
the DOUBLE INDEMNITY picture, it’s a very famous scene in which a man is interested
in a married woman.
And all he says when she says “My husband won’t be back at 8 o’clock.”
He implies “I don’t want to see you anymore.”
And she says “There’s a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff.
45 miles an hour.”
And he says “How fast was I going officer?”
She says “I’d say about 90.”
He says “Why don’t you get off of your motorcycle and give me a ticket.”
“Suppose I let you off with a warning this time.”
The whole thing is carried on indirectly through metaphor and that’s a powerful way of doing
it.
Plus he can say “Hey, I was just talking about traffic.
I was talking about a speeding ticket.
I wasn’t going after your wife, it’s fine.”
So that’s part of the reason you have it but also having it in your script makes it
richer, makes it like “Wow, this is really pop and powerful.”
That’s the other thing to keep in mind about a screenplay as opposed to a novel is it’s
a limited amount of time so it has to be richer.
Everything they say in a novel is gossip, drama is scandal.
Instead of walking, you’re running.
So if you have dialogue, it’s precious and you want it to be rich.
So indirection can help.
Another one is…by the way THE SOCIAL NETWORK is a great study and he uses irony in it an
awful lot with a character saying “I’m heartbroken about that.”
You know that he is just fooling them.
Or somebody saying “This is really classy.”
But said indirectly.
“Let me let the classiness waft over me.”
One character says and it’s clear his meaning is not that.
Or another one on a cease and desist letter “I guess that cease and desist letter really
scared the stuff out of him.”
It means it didn’t have any effect.
All of what Sorkin did was flip them into irony but he also uses metaphor.
“Well if these two characters want to stand on my shoulders and pretend they’re tall,
that’s fine.”
Well they’re big, they’re not going to stand on their shoulders.”
But he is using metaphor.
Metonymy (something stands for something else), again going back to THE SOCIAL NETWORK.
He tells the story about the founder of Victoria’s Secret who sold out too soon.
He could have made 500 million, he only made 5 million.
He threw himself off of the Golden Gate bridge, right?
That’s the story that’s told.
And then he tells the Mark Zuckerberg character “You know, you don’t want to sell out
too soon because the waters of the Golden Gate are very cold.
He doesn’t have to say that you’re going to regret this.
That’s on-the-nose dialogue.
If you say “The waters are cold” that’s a much more way of doing it.
And metonymy is standing for something, the class of things.
The bridge stands for harming one’s self or depression or failure.
That’s what you can do to make dialogue not on-the-nose.
And I would say subtext you want in every line if you can.
In direction is more like spice (you add it as needed) and look for opportunities but
people don’t use it all the time so you don’t need to use it all the time.
Film Courage: Well even in SHARP OBJECTS where Amy Adam’s character goes back to the little
town where she was raised and she doesn’t really want to be there she says in the beginning
of the show when they say “Bless Your Heart.”
That doesn’t mean what it means (it basically implies the opposite).
That’s what so great about the show too is a lot of stuff is caged in this sweetness
but doesn’t really mean it.
In fact I think it’s with Adora (the fantastic character played by Patricia Clarkson) who
is the mother and is so skilled at that kind of dialogue where stuff is said to take the
power away from someone and it’s done so well.
Paul: Yes, well there’s a movie I saw recently again (going back a little further) called
A BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK with Spencer Tracy.
And it’s not a Western, it’s set in Arizona but it’s not a Western.
It involves a guy showing up in this small town where nobody has been…the train has
not stopped in the last three years and it suddenly let’s off this guy.
It usually goes straight on through.
Nobody comes to Black Rock anymore and everybody is acting real suspicious.
“Who is this guy and what does he want?”
And he’s trying to get information to go find somebody and the moment they mention
the name it’s like nobody wants to help him.
So the dialogue is very functional, the indirect dialogue is very functional because he can’t
say “Okay, did somebody hurt them?
What happened?
Did somebody hurt him?
What’s going on here?”
He’s got to ask questions and the don’t want to give him a lot of answers.
So it’s all this verbal maneuvering and it’s a sight to behold how they pulled that
off.
It’s worth it.
It’s an exciting movie.
It’s also worth looking at just for the way indirection was used.
Asking questions without asking them, answering them, giving warnings to people without warning
them.
That kind of thing, so it makes for rich screenwriting.
That would be another element if the dialogue has power to it (power in the sense of action
and it’s not all on-the-nose and uses indirection and subtleties the way humans do talk.
Then it’s going to be more successful and that’s it.
It just takes practice and it just takes rewriting.
It’s not that hard to do actually.
Especially irony, just look at your stuff and see what happens if the character says
the opposite and find out.