A forgotten great script from the writer of Gladiator with a connection to Kurosawa?? Uhh, sign me up!
Genre: Drama/Period
Premise: A New Orleans club owner in 1944 finds himself in a deadly power struggle when his old partner is released from prison.
About: There aren’t too many screenwriters more successful than John Logan. He’s written a bunch of Bond films, The Aviator, The Last Samurai, Gladiator. He even lent his pen to Prometheus 2. This script was supposed to be Scorsese’s big Oscar entry in 2006. Instead, he went off and did The Departed. As a result, this script has been lost in time. But maybe it shouldn’t have been……. (that’s me creating suspense, with all those little dots)
Writer: John Logan (based on the Drunken Angel screenplay by Keinosuke Uegusa and Akira Kurosawa)
Details: 109 pages (December 16, 2005 draft)
You can learn a lot from today’s screenplay.
When you don’t read anything good for awhile and then you stumble upon something that is good, it’s like childhood memories returning after a bout of amnesia. It becomes clear what the good writers do that the bad writers don’t. The appropriately titled “Storyville” may as well be a classroom study on how to write a deep, thoughtful, yet still entertaining, drama.
It’s 1944. The war is going on. And it’s changed New Orleans. The town seems to be a place where people live to live. They know with those millions of soldiers dying overseas, that each day is a gift. So they take advantage of it.
Kit Tibbedeaux is sure taking advantage of it. He owns the swankiest club in town and business is booming. Kit’s made the controversial decision to allow black folks to work at his club. If he has to do what others won’t to make a buck, he’s got no problem with that.
Kit’s club gives him sky high status as well, and boy does he take advantage of it, drinking as much booze and smoking as many cigarettes as one man can digest. And probably more. That is until he gets shot and has to visit one of those gangster doctors, an older black man named Warren. Warren will do anything to pay the bills, including abortions.
Warren fixes Kit up but also gives him shitty news. Kit’s got TB. Now you and I don’t have to worry about TB today. But back in 1944, TB was a first class trip to one of the most horrible deaths a man could imagine. We’re talking a single breath was like fighting an entire war. Warren tells Kit that unless he eases up his lifestyle, the TB will get him.
As if that isn’t bad enough, Kit finds out that Stokes, his old partner, has just gotten out of prison. Stokes is pissed as all get-up that there are now black people working in his establishment.
It’s clear that only one of these men is going to own this club by the end of the month. Who that is will depend on which one does their best Bob Sugar impression – rounding up the key players and getting them on their side.
Will the fast-deteriorating Kit be able to fend his fiery out-for-blood partner off? Or will he succumb to death, which he faces around every corner?
One of the things we talk about here at Scriptshadow is GOALS. Give your characters a GOAL. If they have a goal, they’ll drive the story forward. They have to save their daughter, destroy the Death Star, get to White Castle. You’ve got a movie if you have a goal.
Storyville is a reminder that there’s another way to look at it. Instead of thinking, “I have to add a goal,” think, “I have to add a PROBLEM.”
A problem creates a situation whereby, technically, there’s a goal (you must deal with the situation caused by the problem). But it’s not a straight-forward goal like you see inTaken. It’s more a looming thing that needs to be dealt with.
To help explain this, I’m going to use the tried and true cooking analogy. A goal is like cooking an omelette. An omelette is cooked fast, so you’re always adding to it, massaging it, working it until the moment you put it on the plate. A problem is more like making spaghetti sauce. It simmers all the way up til when it’s time to serve.
So here, the problem is Stokes coming back into the mix. Notice how that’s different from a clean goal. It’s not like Star Wars or Taken where the characters are actively pursuing something. It’s more, “We know this issue is going to come to a head, so we the audience want to stick around to see what happens when it does.”
Problems, folks. They can be your solution.
Moving on, screenwriters always ask me, “How do I add depth to my screenplay?” It’s such a vague term: “Depth.” It can be interpreted in so many ways. Well one of those ways is through subplots. Now subplots can be tricky. Where and how do you add them? As is the case with most things in screenwriting – keep it simple.
Imagine an arrow going from the bottom of the page to the top of the page. That’s your main plot. So here, that would be Stokes coming back from prison and forcing a showdown with Kit. Now if you wanted to JUST deal with this in your screenplay, that would be fine. You’d still have a good screenplay. But you want to add depth, right? Okay, so we need to add another arrow.
This arrow will also run from the bottom of the page to the top and parallel to our main arrow. However this arrow may be thinner and shorter. It all depends on how intense and how long you want the subplot to run for.
The subplot here? Keeping in mind that Storyville is a script based on problems (as opposed to goals), the subplot is Kit’s tuberculosis. That’s the second PROBLEM he has to address. This adds a lot more depth to the story, as it’s one more thing we, the audience, have to worry about.
Now where you REALLY see the mettle of a screenwriter, is how the main plot and subplots intertwine. Weak screenwriters will have subplots that have nothing to do with the main plot. Good writers know that if you’re going to write a subplot that doesn’t have anything to do with the main plot, then it’s not worth writing at all.
Here, the tuberculosis subplot works in direct contrast to the main plot. Kit is going to need every ounce of energy he can muster to take down Stokes. Yet his doctor is telling him that the only shot he has of beating TB is to stop everything and rest. It’s genius.
How many subplots should you add to your screenplay? That’s up to you. But usually you have one big one that majorly affects the plot (like the TB here) and then increasingly smaller ones. For example, there’s a subplot in Storyville between Stokes, his girlfriend, and Warren (the doctor) that takes up a total of 4 or so scenes.
On top of all this, this script is ridden with actor and director crack. On the actor side we’ve got characters speaking in this tongue-twisting 1940s New Orleans slang. Holy fuck do actors love that shit. And on the directing side, we get to recreate 1940s New Orleans. A director would chop off his right foot to have that opportunity.
I get that it’s not a marketing slam dunk, but there’s enough here that I’d be surprised if this weren’t made into a movie at some point. What a pleasant Sunday evening surprise. :)
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I’ve read a million “Meet the Boss” scenes in these scripts. There’s this tough shadowy top-dog boss that we eventually have to go to for help or confrontation or because we’re caught, or because we’ve caught them. And the bosses are all the same. They’re sitting in a low-lit room, stoic, steely, looks like nothing phases them – like some version of the Godfather. I’ve seen it so many times that I’ve accepted it’s how it will always be. Storyville’s “big boss” scene was the first one I’ve read in awhile that was different. It wasn’t wildly different. But it was creepy and weird, and that was enough to differentiate it from everything I’ve seen before. You guys will have to find the script and read the scene for yourselves (it’s around page 90) to see what I’m talking about. But yeah, always push yourselves on these “we accept the cliche because that’s how it is” scenes and come up with something different.
