Script To Screen: “Cast Away”

From Cast Away, written by William Broyles, Jr..

Setup: After surviving on an island for years, Chuck [Tom Hanks] sets sail in a makeshift raft, accompanied only by his faithful friend Wilson… a volleyball.

Here is the scene from the movie:

Two small, but significant changes from script to screen:

• The film version draws out the scene for a longer period of time. Chuck dives into the water. Starts swimming. Heads back to the raft. Grabs it by the rope. Swims again in Wilson’s direction. Loses hold of the rope. Has to go back to grab it. By that point, Wilson is too far away. Chuck returns to the raft.
• An added series of lines by Chuck in which he keeps repeating, “I’m sorry, Wilson. I’m sorry.”

The net effect is to make for a more dramatic and emotionally gripping moment where we see how deeply Chuck has been committed to his ‘friend’ Wilson.

I’ll see you in comments for a discussion of this scene from Cast Away.

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.