Script To Screen: “American Beauty”

One of the most memorable scenes from the 1999 movie American Beauty, written by Alan Ball, a plastic bag dancing in the wind.

Logline: Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation for his daughter’s attractive friend.

He puts the platter back into the cabinet and shuts the door,
then notices Jane looking at him oddly. RICKY (CONT'D)
What's wrong? JANE
Nothing. RICKY
(concerned)
No, you're scared of me. JANE
No I'm not.But she is. Ricky studies her. RICKY
You want to see the most beautiful thing
I've ever filmed?INT. FITTS HOUSE - RICKY'S BEDROOM - MOMENTS LATEROn VIDEO: We're in an empty parking lot on a cold, gray day.
Something is floating across from us... it's an empty,
wrinkled, white PLASTIC BAG. We follow it as the wind carries
it in a circle around us, sometimes whipping it about
violently, or, without warning, sending it soaring skyward,
then letting it float gracefully down to the ground...Jane and Ricky sit on the bed, watching his WIDE-SCREEN TV. RICKY
It was one of those days when it's a
minute away from snowing. And there's
this electricity in the air, you can
almost hear it, right? And this bag was
just... dancing with me. Like a little
kid begging me to play with it. For
fifteen minutes. That's the day I
realized that there was this entire life
behind things, and this incredibly
benevolent force that wanted me to know
there was no reason to be afraid. Ever.A beat. RICKY (CONT'D)
Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it
helps me remember... I need to
remember...Now Jane is watching him. RICKY (CONT'D)
(distant)
Sometimes there's so much beauty in the
world I feel like I can't take it... and
my heart is going to cave in.

Here is the movie version of the scene:

There are a couple of minor, but significant differences between this draft and the movie at the very end. Can you spot them? Why do you think they made the changes they did?

Here is a later version of the script:

After a moment, Jane takes his hand. Then she leans in and
kisses him softly on the lips. His eyes scan hers, curious
to see how she reacts to this...

This is much smoother and natural for the actors. Jane simply “leans in” and kisses him, doesn’t have to shift her body position. Plus why reference the TV by having Ricky turn it off? The focus shouldn’t be on the TV, but rather Ricky and Jane. Although I do like the line of description: “then just sits there lost in thought, not unlike his mother.”

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