Script To Screen: “Celeste & Jesse Forever”

A memorable scene from the 2012 movie Celeste & Jesse Forever, written Rashida Jones and Will McCormack.

Plot Summary: A divorcing couple tries to maintain their friendship while they both pursue other people.

In this scene, a guy Celeste (Rashida Jones) has just met tries to hit on her.

Here is the scene in the movie:

The dialogue is almost word for word the same. One small tweak in the middle of the scene where they take the scene description — Paul scoffs at the notion that this is a real career — and put it into dialogue:

PAUL
Trend forecaster. Yeah.

He grins, thinking it’s a joke. They stop. He looks at her. 
She’s not joking.

PAUL
Are you serious? I’m sorry, 
I thought you were just —

Two questions: (1) Why do you think they made this change? (2) What do you think Paul was going to say before Celeste interrupted him? I have thoughts on both questions, but would like to hear from you first. Hit Reply and post your thoughts in comments.

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.

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