Script To Screen: “American Pie”

The infamous apple pie scene.

A scene from the 1999 movie American Pie, written by Adam Herz.

Plot Summary: Four teenage boys enter a pact to lose their virginity by prom night.

Here is the scene in the script:

Here is the movie version of the scene:

This is a payoff to a previous scene in which Jim and his pals are talking about sex in terms of the first base-second base-baseball euphemism.

Presented with an opportunity to test said description with an actual apple pie, well… we see what Jim does. And so does his father.

Trivia: When submitting his script to studios, screenwriter Adam Herz titled it, “Untitled Teenage Sex Comedy That Can Be Made For Under $10 Million That Most Readers Will Probably Hate But I Think You Will Love”. It was later changed to “East Great Falls High”, then “Great Falls”, and finally, “American Pie”.

The title may have changed, but this scene never did.

One of the 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.