Script To Screen: “Jacob’s Ladder”

A truly creepy scene from the 1990 movie Jacob’s Ladder, written by Bruce Joel Rubin.

Setup: Mourning his dead child, a haunted Vietnam vet attempts to discover his past while suffering from a severe case of disassociation. To do so, he must decipher reality and life from his own dreams, delusion, and perception of death.

An ORDERLY pushes the gurney through a pair of sliding doors. JACOB
tries to get up but the pain keeps him immobilized.INT. CORRIDORS - NIGHTJACOB begins a journey down what appears to be an endless series of
corridors. The wheels of the gurney turn with a hypnotic regularity.
The smooth tile floor gives way to roguh cement. The ORDERLY's feet
plod through pools of blood that coagulate in cracks and crevices along the way. The surface grows rougher, the wheels more insistent. Body parts and human bile splash against the walls as the gurney moves faster. JACOB
Where are you taking me? Where am I? ORDERLY
You know where you are.JACOB, panicked, tries again to get up but to no effect. He glances to the side and sees mournful CREATURES being led into dark rooms. No one fights or struggles. We hear muffled screams from behind closed doors. Occasionally he glances inside the rooms and sees mangled bodies in strange contraptions, people in rusty iron lungs, and hanging from metal cages. Dark eyes peer out in horror. In one room a baseboard heater bursts into flame. No one seems concerned. A door opens. A bicycle with plastic streamers on the handlebars lies crushed and mangled. One of its wheels is still spinning. JACOB cries out but it is not his voice we hear. Rather it is a familiar unearthly roar. His whole body stiffens. As he rounds the corner he sees a figure, its head vibrating in endless terror. it is the same image he has seen before. JACOB screams.INT. ROOM - NIGHTJACOB is wheeled into a tiny ROOM. A numer of "DOCTORS" are waiting. As they draw closer JACOB notices that something about them is not right. They bear a subtle resemblance to Bosch-like DEMONS, creatures of another world. JACOB tries to sit up but winces in pain. He cannot move. He tries to scream but no sound comes out.Chains and pulleys hang from the ceiling. They are lowered and attached with speed and efficiency to JACOB's arms and legs. He screams. JACOB
Oh God!The "DOCTORS" laugh. There is the sound of a huge door closing. JACOB is left in semi-darkness. Suddenly a new group of "DOCTORS" emerges from the shadows. They are carrying sharp surgical instruments. They surround JACOB, their eyes glistening as bright as their blades. JACOBis panting and sweating in fear. One of the "DOCTORS" leans over JACOB. He gasps with horror. It is JEZZIE. JACOB
JEZZIE!She pays no attention to him. He stares at her, THE CAMERA TILTING DOWN HER BODY. As it gets to her foot we see it is a decaying mass, swarming with maggots. The "DOCTORS" laugh. They take great pleasure in his suffering. Their voices are strange and not human. Each utterance contains a multitude of contradictory tones, sincere and compassionate, taunting and mocking at the same time. The confusion of meanings is a torment of its own. JACOB
(continuing)
Get me out of here. "DOCTOR"
Where do you want to go? JACOB
Take me home. "DOCTOR"
Home?
(they all laugh)
This is your home. You're dead. JACOB
Dead? No. I just hurt my back. I'm
not dead. "DOCTOR"
What are you then? JACOB
I'm alive. "DOCTOR"
Then what are you doing here? JACOB
I don't know. I don't know.
(he struggles like an
animal)
This isn't happening. "DOCTOR"
What isn't happening? JACOB
Let me out of here! "DOCTOR"
There is no out of here. You've been
killed. Don't you remember?A "DOCTOR" approaches JACOB. As he turns, we notice with horror that he has no eyes or eye sockets. He extracts a long needle from his belt and positions it over JACOB's head. Like a divining rod it locates a particular point near the crown of his head. With a powerful thrust the "DOCTOR" shoves the needle into JACOB's skull and pushes it slowly into his brain. JACOB howls.

Here is the scene from the movie:

Two things:

• Much of what screenwriter Rubin indicates in scene description appears on film, but there are several images included in the movie not in the script. It’s a case of the screenwriting suggesting a mood, atmosphere and tone, and providing several examples of possible visuals, then the director working with his crew to come up with additional scary images.
• We are barely three decades away from when this script was written, but screenplay style has changed dramatically. For example, you would never see anything nowadays like the third paragraph which is 13 lines long. Today each of those camera ‘shots’ would be separated out into individual paragraphs.

Per this last point, a word of warning: While it’s great to read older scripts, do not look to them as guides to screenplay style. You must read scripts written in the last 5 years to provide stylistic touchstones for your own writing.

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 weekly series on GITS where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.

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