Script To Screen: “Get Shorty”

A scene from the 1995 movie Get Shorty, screenplay by Scott Frank, book by Elmore Leonard.

Plot Summary: A mobster travels to Hollywood to collect a debt and discovers that the movie business is much the same as his current job.

Here is the script version of a scene where Chili gets a Hollywood education about screenwriting.

Here is the scene from the movie:

Have to love that take on how easy screenwriting is. I suspect a lot of people think it’s like that.

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 Script To Screen posts, go here.