Script To Screen: “A Few Good Men”

A scene from the 1992 movie A Few Good Men, screenplay by Aaron Sorkin based on his play.

IMDb plot summary: Neo military lawyer Kaffee defends Marines accused of murder; they contend they were acting under orders.

This is directly after the famous “You can’t handle the truth” outburst.

Here is the scripted version of the scene:

Here is the movie version of the scene:

There’s one cut of significance, this side of dialogue by Jessep: “I saved lives. That boy was — there was a weak link. I saved lives, you hear me?” Probably because it is repetitive of content that has come before. And it gets right to Jessep’s line: “You fuckin’ people,” which is a better direct response to Ross’s question.

There is a beat described in scene description that is missing from the movie:

I note this to make a point. Sorkin is known for his dialogue, but if you read his scripts, he also uses lots of commentary in scene description to convey the inner thoughts and feelings of characters. Yes, another example of a professional writer breaking the so-called rule against writing unfilmables.

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 Go Into The Story series where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.

For more articles in the Script To Screen series, go here.