Script Analysis: “Jackie” — Scene By Scene Breakdown

Here is my take on this exercise from a previous series of posts — How To Read A Screenplay:

After a first pass, it’s time to crack open the script for a deeper analysis and you can do that by creating a scene-by-scene breakdown. It is precisely what it sounds like: A list of all the scenes in the script accompanied by a brief description of the events that transpire.

For purposes of this exercise, I have a slightly different take on scene. Here I am looking not just for individual scenes per se, but a scene or set of scenes that comprise one event or a continuous piece of action. Admittedly this is subjective and there is no right or wrong, the point is simply to break down the script into a series of parts which you then can use dig into the script’s structure and themes.

The value of this exercise:

• We pare down the story to its most constituent parts: Scenes.
• By doing this, we consciously explore the structure of the narrative.
• A scene-by-scene breakdown creates a foundation for even deeper analysis of the story.

Today: Jackie (2016). You can download a PDF of the script here.

Written by Noah Oppenheim.

IMDb plot summary: Following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy fights through grief and trauma to regain her faith, console her children, and define her husband’s historic legacy.

Jackie
Scene by Scene Breakdown
By Karen Dantas
GoIntoTheStory.blcklst.com

Pages 1–4: The story opens with Jackie Kennedy suffering alone in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and it’s 1963. Cut to Jackie meeting the uneasy Journalist inside the Kennedy Compound. He offers his condolences and then acquiesces to Jackie’s request that they rescue the memory of her husband from bitter old men by publishing her version of what happened.

Pages 4–11: Flash back to the White House, 1962. Jackie, her social secretary, Nancy Tuckerman, and CBS News Anchor Charles Collingswood tape the legendary White House Tour which she did as she insisted, for the American People. Nancy reminds her to smile. Cut to the Journalist tapping in to her sense of royalty, tradition, the arts and beauty. He reveals to her he is trying to get to the truth in his job as a reporter, which she dismisses. She surprises him when she reveals that she used to be a reporter and knows what he is looking for — her moment-by-moment account of the day when her husband was killed.

Pages 11–14: Flashback to November 22, 1963, Dallas, her husband’s state. Jackie carefully prepares to greet the public with her husband President John F. Kennedy in her now famous pink, pillbox hat and Chanel suit. Cut to Jackie spilling an emotional stream of consciousness description to the Journalist of what she was thinking in the motorcade, as she held her husband. When she finishes her recount, she firmly tells the Journalist that she will not allow him to publish that version. They start over.

Pages 14–15: Flashback to the Presidential Motorcade. Bang! Jackie holds her husband’s head in her hands. Cut to Jackie alone in a room in Air Force One, covered in the blood of her dead husband, a mess. She is about to give in to her grief when O’Brien knocks on her door. Again she prepares to face her public.

Pages 15–17: The swearing-in ceremony of President Lyndon Johnson aboard Air Force One. Jackie holds herself together. She knows everyone has already moved on with the new President.

Pages 17–20: Jackie questions Clint Hill, head of her Secret Service in detail on the kind of bullet that killed her husband, but he stops the discussion. She immediately moves to discuss the funeral, but everyone is being very awkward. She refuses to heed Hill’s plan to disembark from the airplane from the back to avoid the press and insists on disembarking as they always did. She refuses the new FLOTUS Lady Bird’s offer to change into fresh clothing and resolves to allow the press to see her still covered by her husband’s blood.

Pages 20–24: Jackie watches from inside Air Force One as they prepare to unload her husband’s casket and is greeted by a tearful Bobby Kennedy. They ride in the ambulance with the casket for the autopsy. She wrestles with why her husband was killed and breaks when she sees his body laid out on the operating room.

Pages 24–26: Walter Cronkite reports on the activity of President Johnson and how the government is moving forward. Jackie and Bobby are back in the ambulance and Bobby is fuming over how quick Johnson has been to step in to take over the reins. Jackie realizes that no one remembers former Presidents who were killed while they were in office, except for Abraham Lincoln, as he won the Civil War and abolished slavery.

Pages 26–27: They return to the White House and Jackie checks in on her sleeping son John Jr. Finally alone in her bedroom, she undresses and removes her bloody outfit, weeping as she cleans her husband’s blood from her body.

Pages 27–29: The Journalist directly asks Jackie to share something personal. Jackie once again dodges his request. Flashback of Jackie discussing the funeral procession with friend and cultural advisor, Bill Walton. She insists on a big beautiful procession that people will remember, but he advises her to take the children and disappear out of concern for her security.

Pages 30–31: Jackie faces the challenge of telling her young children about the death of their father.

Pages 32–35: Jackie, her family and JFK’s family gather to mourn in the White House. The delicate subjects of the funeral as well as the pressure for Jackie and the children to move out of the White House so the Johnsons can move in is raised. Jackie mentions that Lincoln’s widow died destitute and this silences everyone. She ponders selling some of the furniture and other collectibles she bought for The White House in order to pay for her children’s education.

Pages 35–37: Flashback to CBS Tour of the White House, 1962. Jackie and Collingswood discuss Lincoln and his legacy in the White House.

Pages 37–40: Jackie discusses with Bobby about where they should bury her husband.

Pages 40–41: The Journalist talks with Jackie about where she could live in her new reality, and reminds her how she brought life to a cold house before. They acknowledge how difficult it must have been for her to leave the White House.

Pages 41–42: Flashback to Jackie and Bobby discussing logistics of the transfer of the White House to the Johnsons as well as the security challenges, but Jackie is firm on the funeral processional.

Pages 42–44: Jackie is alone, drinking vodka, restless. She slips into her husband’s private bedroom, dressed up, and plays music from the musical Camelot, and continues her drunken rumination about their life in the White House. We cut to Jackie asking the Journalist how he would depict what she just described in the press. He reads out what he has written and she dictates back her changes, ending with the firm denial that she is a smoker as she exhales.

Pages 44–48: Cut to Jackie meeting with a Priest, who tells her that God is only interested in truth. She debates the Priest about God’s cruelty and true nature and brings up not only the loss of her husband, but of her two other babies, the fall of her relationship with her husband, her current lack of standing amongst men and the sad acceptance that her time with her husband was intertwined with good and not good memories.

Pages 48–50: Flashback to Jackie chain-smoking as she discusses with Nancy the details of the funeral. As Nancy goes through the list of foreign dignitaries confirming their attendance, Jackie lights up with pleasure, and they also discuss what is ahead for them.

Pages 51–55: Lee Oswald is assassinated on TV while Jackie is getting ready with the children for the funeral. Bobby gives orders for no one to discuss with Jackie of this new development until he does. Jackie gives the direction that the press should capture the images of the children also grieving their father.

Pages 55–58: Jackie affirms to the Journalist that she has always valued her privacy, but he challenges her in the fact that she allowed her children to be put on display to the whole world when the casket was moved to the Capitol. Jackie reiterates to the Journalist that they are not “most people” and reminds him that she had to make these kinds of decisions mere hours after watching her husband being murdered. Flashback to Jackie and the children honouring the casket inside the Capitol Rotunda.

Pages 58–60: Jackie confronts Bobby with the fact he hid Oswald’s assassination from her and that the children could have been in danger and she wants to call the entire processional off.

Pages 60–61: Cut to Jackie speaking with the Priest, regretting her life so far. The answer he gives her leaves her unsatisfied.

Pages 61–63: Flashback to Jackie in the Oval Office, surrounded by the mementos of her husband’s presidency. She is pleased with the new carpet, a part of her restoration, but bitterly accepts that she allowed the lines between reality and performance to blur because of her vanity. Walton reminds her that the people need their history, that real men actually lived in the White house, and that her work mattered.

Page 63: Jackie celebrates John Jr’s 3rd birthday.

Pages 63–65: Bobby informs Jackie that he had spoken to President Johnson and that there will be no walking procession. Jackie speculates if Lincoln’s widow knew that monument to her husband would be built. Bobby acknowledges the historical legacy of Lincoln signing documentation in the same room they were in that would free millions from slavery but the Kennedy legacy has been a waste.

Pages 65–70: Workers are packing their belongings but Jackie is having a hard time letting go. As Valenti starts to unpack his things in Bobby’s former office, she argues with him about the procession. It looks like he wins the fight when he points out General De Gaulle has been receiving threats and might refuse to march, causing others to follow. As she prepares to depart, she asks that he inform all the foreign dignitaries that she will be walking with the casket, alone if need be, but that General De Gaulle is free to ride in an armored car if he wishes, and the millions of viewers watching around the world will not blame him.

Page 70: Cut to Jackie telling the Journalist to write down this exchange. They argue over if her husband actually deserved the scale of the funeral, that unlike Lincoln, he did not win any war, but their argument ends with the Journalist assuring her that it was indeed a spectacle.

Pages 71–75: Flashback to the Funeral Procession. Jackie surveys with triumph the many dignitaries and throngs of mourners who have assembled for her. Cut to her confessing to the Priest that all the pageantry and demands were not done to honor her husband or his legacy, but for her. She also confesses that she had wanted to die and that she had hoped someone would assassinate her as she walked with the casket. She also confesses she did remember in detail her husband’s death though she consistently lied to people that she did not, and that she had a moment where she could have saved his life but did not. As her husband is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, she recalls the horror of her holding his shattered head in her hands and wished to die with him.

Pages 75–76: Jackie reviews the Journalist’s piece as he tells her that she has left her mark on the country, which had lost their father in the President and that she was its mother. He tells her that the people will remember her.

Pages 76–77: Flashback to the White House Tour with CBS. President Kennedy appears in the broadcast and he enthuses over the efforts she has made to make the American People to be more intimately connected with all of the men who had lived there.

Pages 77–78: It’s time for Jackie to leave the White House. She spots the new First Lady, Lady Bird, reviewing new fabric swatches with Walton. And just like in the first scene of the White House tour, Nancy encourages Jackie to smile.

Pages 78–79: Jackie tells the Journalist one important detail — her husband loved to

listen to music from the musical Camelot. Flashback to a ball in happier times in 1961, as Jackie tells the Journalist how much her husband loved history, and that history made him. She describes Camelot as ordinary men banding together to fight for a better world, and that her husband had ideals that he could rally others to believe in. She says the ideals will live on, but there won’t be another Camelot.

Pages 79–81: Cut to Jackie speaking with the Priest, intercut with shots of her playing with the children. He acknowledges her doubts and struggle for answers, and tells her that he faces the same struggle also. And that he, like her and everyone else will repeat the cycle each day, but God in His wisdom, has made sure it is just enough for them all.

Page 81: The Journalist dictates over the phone the last of his article to his editor, emphasizing that Jackie wants people to always remember that for one brief shining moment there was a Camelot.

Pages 81–83: Cut to the Priest asking if her interview helped heal her, and if she believed she had done her husband justice. She acknowledges that people like to believe in fairy tales. The Priest prompts her that it is time to go to the cemetery, where he presides over the re-interring of her two lost babies beside their father.

Page 83: Walton mounts a plaque in the White House outside of Jackie’s bedroom, commemorating JFK’s presidency there.

Pages 83–84: We hear the music from Camelot. Flashback to Jackie observing from inside her car, store mannequins who look like her being set up in a Macy’s window, all wearing reproductions of the outfits she has been wearing for the past five days. Flashback to the White House tour as Jackie tells Collingswood how happy she is that her husband is proud of her. Flashback to her watching a performance of Mendelssohn in the East Room of the White House while seated between her husband and Bobby. As the music crescendos, flashback to Jackie dancing with her husband in ball room of the White House, smiling.

Writing Exercise: I encourage you to read the script, but short of that, if you’ve seen the movie, go through this scene-by-scene breakdown. What stands out to you about it from a structural standpoint?

To download a PDF of the breakdown for Jackie, go here.

Kudos to Karen Dantas for doing the scene-by-scene breakdown.

For more movie scene-by-scene breakdowns, go here.