Script To Screen: “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery”

A scene from the 1997 comedy Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, written by Mike Myers.

Plot Summary: A 1960s hipster secret agent is brought out of cryofreeze to oppose his greatest enemy in the 1990s, where his social attitudes are glaringly out of place.

Here is the scene from the movie:

Not many differences, some additional lines for Dr. Evil and the therapist. Why? Probably to give Mike Myers and Carrie Fisher a bit more flavor within the scene. Interesting to note that Dr. Evil’s long monologue is pretty much delivered by Myers word for word. He probably worked over that speech a long time and liked where it ended up.

Any Austin Powers fans out there?

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.