Script To Screen: “Moonstruck”

A pivotal moment in the movie Moonstruck, written by John Patrick Shanley.

Setup: After a date, Ronny walks Loretta home. Or does he?

Here is the scene from the movie:

The dialogue is almost word for word identical to the script. It figures seeing as the screenwriter John Patrick Shanley is also a playwright and you generally don’t mess with a dramatist’s dialogue.

I’ll see you in comments for a discussion of this terrific scene from Moonstruck.

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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