Script To Screen: “Basic Instinct”
No matter what you think about Joe Eszterhas, the fact remains that at one point in time, he was the hottest screenwriter in Hollywood…
No matter what you think about Joe Eszterhas, the fact remains that at one point in time, he was the hottest screenwriter in Hollywood, specializing in selling million dollar spec scripts. Perhaps the most notable one: Basic Instinct which sold in June, 1990 for a cool $3M and went on to become a hit movie grossing $352M worldwide. Here is the story’s final scene.
Setup: Nick [Michael Douglas], a cop assigned to a murder case, has fallen in love with Catherine [Sharon Stone], who may or may not be a psycho killer. Case solved, it looks like she is the latter. But…
Here is the scene from the movie:
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.