Script Analysis: ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ — Part 3: Characters

Read the script written by Aaron Sorkin which won the Golden Globe and is nominated for the WGA and Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay.

Reading scripts. Absolutely critical to learn the craft of screenwriting. The focus of this bi-weekly series is a deep structural and thematic analysis of each script we read. Our daily schedule:

Monday: Scene-By-Scene Breakdown
Tuesday: Plot
Wednesday: Characters
Thursday: Themes
Friday: Dialogue
Saturday: Takeaways

Today: Characters.

Characters are the players in our stories. They participate in scenes, move the plot forward through action and dialogue, influence each other, evolve and change. Each has their own distinct backstory, personality, world view, and voice. When a writer does their best, digging deep into their characters, tapping into their souls, the players in our stories magically lift up off the printed page and come to life in a reader’s imagination.

But there’s this: In a screenplay, characters exist for a reason. Hence my principle: Character = Function. Writers can shade and shape a story’s character in limitless ways. But if you dig down deep enough, you can find each character’s narrative function, and that can become a lens through which you develop the players in your stories.

Same thing with script and movie analysis: Look at each character and think about why they exist and what their function is.

This week: The Trial of the Chicago 7. You may download the screenplay here.

A list of the key characters in order of appearance:

Rennie Davis (SDS)

Tom Hayden (SDS)

Jerry Rubin (Yippies)

Abbie Hoffman (Yippies)

David Dellinger (The Mobe)

Bobby Seale (National Chairman of the Black Panthers)

Thomas Foran (Federal Prosecutor)

Richard Schultz (Federal Prosecutor)

John Mitchell (Attorney General)

William Kunstler (Defense Counsel)

Leonard Weinglass (Defense Counsel)

Fred Hampton

Lee Weiner

John Froines

Judge Julius Hoffman

Ramsey Clark (former Attorney General)

Written and directed by Aaron Sorkin.

Plot summary: The story of seven people on trial stemming from various charges surrounding the uprising at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois.

Writing Exercise: Think about each character. What’s their respective narrative function?

Major kudos to Andrew Lightfoot and Karen Liu for doing this week’s scene-by-scene breakdowns.

To download a PDF of either or both breakdowns for The Trial of the Chicago 7, go here and here.

Here is an interview with Aaron Sorkin and some of the movie’s cast:

For Part 1, to read the Scene-By-Scene Breakdown discussion, go here.

For Part 2, to read the Plot discussion, go here.

To access over 90 analyses of previous movie scripts we have read and discussed at Go Into The Story, go here.

I hope to see you in the RESPONSE section about this week’s script: The Trial of the Chicago 7.