Page One: ‘North by Northwest’ (1959)

Written by Ernest Lehman

This excerpt is yet another example of how script format and style has evolved over the years (note the long paragraph of scene description / A SERIES OF STREET SCENES which is 13 lines long, something we would not see in contemporary scripts).

What about the specific images in that paragraph? Check out this interview with Lehman in which he talks about working with Hitchcock:

“Hitch and I acted out the entire crop-dusting sequence in his living room. Then I incorporated every move into the script, and that was the way he shot it.

Storyboarding is really an illustrator’s work for the director. A motion picture illustrator puts pictures on paper and puts them on boards. In story-boarding a script for a Hitchcock film, the illustrator is told what pictures to put on the boards by the script, which has benefited from my conferences with the director. Of course, I participate in what is going to appear on that storyboard, because even without the storyboard the script describes exactly what is going to be on the screen. Hitch would have it no other way. The script even describes the size of the shot, whether it’s a medium or a tight close-up, whether the camera pulls back and pans to the right as the character walks toward the door, whether it tilts slightly down and shoots through the open doorway, getting the helicopter as the lights go on outside. That’s why Hitch says it’s a bore for him to get the picture on the screen, because it has all been done already in his office.”

What’s in the script is all worked out beforehand with Hitchcock acting out the scenes. The screenplay for North by Northwest is a production draft, so writers today should read the script to appreciate the story, but not the style.

Page One is a daily Go Into The Story series featuring the first page of notable movie scripts from the classic era to contemporary times. Comparing them is an excellent way to study a variety of writing styles and see how professional writers start a story.