Script To Screen: “Grosse Pointe Blank”

From the 1997 movie Grosse Pointe Blank, screenplay by Tom Jankiewicz and D.V. DeVincentis & Steve Pink & John Cusack, story by Tom Jankiewicz.

Setup: Martin Blank [John Cusack] is a professional assassin. He is sent on a mission to a small Detroit suburb, Grosse Pointe, and, by coincidence, his ten-year high school reunion party is taking place there at the same time. Here he meets with Grocer [Dan Aykroyd], another assassin.

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 Script To Screen posts, go here.