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?

EXT. RONNY'S APARTMENT BUILDING - NIGHT She looks. It's Ronny's building. LORETTA
This is your place. RONNY
That's right. LORETTA
This is where we're going! RONNY
Yeah. LORETTA
The deal was if I came to the Opera
with you you'd leave me alone forever. She looks for his response. He makes none. LORETTA
I went with you.
(pause, nothing)
Now I'm gonna marry Johnny and you're
gonna leave me alone.
(pause, nothing)
Right?
(nothing)
A person can see where they've messed
up in their life, and they can change
how they do things, and they can
change their Luck. Maybe my nature
does draw me to you, but I don't
haveta go with that. I can take hold
of myself and say yes to some things
and no to something that's just gonna
ruin everything! I can do that.
Otherwise, what is this stupid life
that God gave us for what?
(pause, nothing)
Ronny? Are you listening to me? RONNY
Yeah. LORETTA
I'm really afraid. RONNY
Why? LORETTA
I'm afraid of who I am. RONNY
I was. LORETTA
And you're not now? He shakes his head. LORETTA
Why not? RONNY
I don't know. Everything seems like
nothing now against that I want you
in my bed. I don't care if I burn in
hell. I don't care if you burn in
hell. The Past and Future is a joke
to me now. I see that they're nothing,
I see they ain't here. The only thing
that's here is you. And me. I want
you to come upstairs. Now. I tried
to take everything last night, like
you told me, but I couldn't. I
couldn't take everything in a hundred
years. It's the way we are. We
compound each other. LORETTA
Let me go home. RONNY
No. LORETTA
Let me go home. RONNY
No. LORETTA
I'm freezing to death. RONNY
Come upstairs. I don't care why you
come. No, that's not what I mean.
Loretta, I love you. Not like they
told you love is and I didn't know
this either. But love don't make
things nice, it ruins everything, it
breaks your heart, it makes things a
mess. We're not here to make things
perfect. Snowflakes are perfect. The
stars are perfect. Not us. We are
here to ruin ourselves and break our
hearts and love the wrong people and
die! The storybooks are bullshit.
Come upstairs with me, baby! Don't
try to live your life out to somebody
else's idea of sweet happiness. Don't
try to live on milk and cookies when
what you want is meat! Red meat just
like me! It's wolves run with wolves
and nothing else! You're a wolf just
like me! Come upstairs with me and
get in my bed! Come on! Come on!
Come on! Loretta follows Ronny into his building. NOW WE SEE THE STREET Just as the door shuts. A moment passes. Lights go on
in Ronny's apartment. Out of a doorway on the
opposite side of the street steps the figure of a
woman. She walks to the middle of the deserted street
and looks up at the lighted windows. NOW WE SEE THE WOMAN CLOSE UP -- IT'S CHRISSY FROM
THE BAKERY Her heart is about to break. She loves this man. She
looks up at the lighted windows, her feelings hanging
by one slender, slender thread.

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