Script To Screen: “12 Monkeys”
From the 1995 movie 12 Monkeys, screenplay by David Webb Peoples and Janet Peoples.
From the 1995 movie 12 Monkeys, screenplay by David Webb Peoples and Janet Peoples.
Setup: A miscalculation sends Cole [Bruce Willis] back in time to 1990, and he finds himself incarcerated in an insane asylum with a clearly insane Jeffrey [Brad Pitt].
COLE sees a partially completed puzzle of the well-known painting,
THE PEACEABLE KINGDOM, depicting a serene world of animals in harmony.
JEFFREY
What’d they give you? Thorazine? How
much? Learn your drugs — know your doses.
COLE
I need to make a telephone call.
JEFFREY
A telephone call? That’s communication
with the outside world! Doctor’s
discretion. Hey, if alla these nuts
could just make phone calls, it could
spread. Insanity oozing through telephone
cables, oozing into the ears of all those
poor sane people, infecting them! Whackos
everywhere! A plague of madness.
(suddenly sly and confidential)
In fact, very few of us here are actually
mentally ill. I’m not saying you’re
not mentally ill, for all I know you’re
crazy as a loon. But that’s not why
you’re here. Why you’re here is because
of the system, because of the economy.
(indicating the TV)
There’s the TV. It’s all right there.
Commercials. We are not productive
anymore, they don’t need us to make
things anymore, it’s all automated. What
are we for then? We’re consumers. Okay,
buy a lot of stuff, you’re a good citizen.
But if you don’t buy a lot of stuff, you
know what? You’re mentally ill! That’s
a fact! If you don’t buy things…toilet
paper, new cars, computerized blenders,
electrically operated sexual devices…
(getting hysterical)
SCREWDRIVERS WITH MINIATURE BUILT-IN
RADAR DEVICES, STEREO SYSTEMS WITH
BRAIN IMPLANTED HEADPHONES, VOICE-
ACTIVATED COMPUTERS, AND…
A woman orderly, TERRY, turns from the feeble PATIENT she’s helping.
TERRY
Take it easy, Jeffrey. Be calm.
Abruptly, JEFFREY stifles his hysteria, takes a deep breath and
continues, completely calm now. But COLE isn’t listening. He’s
mesmerized by the TV.
JEFFREY
So if you want to watch a particular
program, say “All My Children” or
something, you go to the Charge Nurse
and tell her what day and time the show
you want to see is on. But you have to
tell her before the show is scheduled
to be on. There was this one guy who
was always requesting shows that had already
played. He couldn’t quite grasp the
idea that the Charge Nurse couldn’t
just make it be yesterday for him, turn
back time ha ha. What a fruitcake!!
This last thought actually penetrates COLE’S focus on the TV and
he turns to JEFFREY who’s picking up speed again.
JEFFREY
Seriously, more and more people are
being defined now as mentally ill. Why?
Because they’re not consuming on their
own. But as patients, they becone
consumers of mental health care. And
this gives the so-called sane people work!
(hysteria again)
WHOOO! SHOCK THERAPY! GROUP THERAPY!
HALLUCINATIONS! THERAPEUTIC DRUGS!
IGGIDY DIGGIDY DIG! PERFECT! THE
SYSTEM IN HARMONY LIKE A BIG MACHINE…
TERRY
Okay, that’s it, Jeffrey, you’re gonna
get a shot. I warned you…
JEFFREY
(calming himself, smiling)
Right! Right! Carried away, heh heh.
I got “carried away”. Explaining the
workings of…the institution.
Just then, TJ WASHINGTON, a somber-looking African American in a
bathrobe, taps COLE on the shoulder.
TJ WASHINGTON
I don’t really come from outer space.
JEFFREY
This is TJ Washington, Jim — he
doesn’t really come from outer space.
TJ WASHINGTON
Don’t mock me, my friend.
(to Cole)
It’s a condition of “mental divergence”.
I find myself on another planet, Ogo,
part of an intellectual elite, preparing
to subjugate barbarian hordes on Pluto.
But even though it’s a totally convincing
reality in every way…I can feel, breathe,
hear…nevertheless, Ogo is actually a
construct of my psyche. I am mentally
divergent in that I am escaping certain
unnamed realities that plague my life
here. When I stop going there, I will
be well. Are you also divergent, friend?
The movie scene:
Questions to ask to analyze the scene:
- What elements in the movie scene are the same as the script?
- What elements in the movie scene are different than the script?
- Regarding the differences, put yourself in the mindset of the filmmakers and speculate: Why did they make the changes they did?
- How did the changes improve the scene?
- Alternatively are there elements in the script, not present in the movie, that are better than the final version of the scene?
- Note each camera shot in the movie version. Which of them does the script suggest via sluglines or scene description?
- How does the script convey a sense of the scene’s tone, feel, and pace through scene description and dialogue?
- What ‘magic’ exists in the movie that is not indicated in the words of the script? How do you suppose that magic emerged?
I’ll see you in comments for a discussion of this scene from 12 Monkeys.
One of the single best things you can do to learn the craft of screenwriting is to read the script while watching the movie. After all a screenplay is a blueprint to make a movie and it’s that magic of what happens between printed page and final print that can inform how you approach writing scenes. That is the purpose of Script to Screen, a weekly series on GITS where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.
For other Script to Screen articles, go here.