Page One: “True Romance” (1993)

Written by Quentin Tarantino

The opening scene for the movie:

Trivia: The genesis of the film began with a fifty page script by Roger Avary titled “The Open Road”. Avary described the plot as being about “an odd couple relationship between an uptight business man and an out-of-control hitchhiker who travel into a Hellish midwestern town together.” When he had trouble finishing it, he asked his friend and fellow Video Archives clerk, Quentin Tarantino, to give it a shot. After several weeks, Quentin handed him over five hundred hand-written pages of, what Avary described as “the Bible of pop culture”. Roger typed and edited the behemoth, working with Quentin on further story ideas. According to a Film Threat article from 1994, the final script was a combination of this movie and Natural Born Killers (1994). Reportedly, it followed Quentin’s original Natural Born Killers script until after the prison riot. After escaping, Mickey and Mallory decide to find and kill the screenwriter who wrote the glitzy Hollywood movie about their exploits. The writer goes on the run, and True Romance was the movie he writes while trying to evade the two psychotic killers. It was told in trademark Tarantino chapter fashion, out of chronological order. When it became obvious that the miniseries-length script would never sell, they split the two stories into separate movies.

You may download the screenplay here.

FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY!

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.

For more Page One posts, go here.