Script To Screen: “The Artist”

A cute scene that turns into a significant plot point from the 2011 silent movie The Artist, written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius.

Plot Summary: A silent movie star meets a young dancer, but the arrival of talking pictures sends their careers in opposite directions.

Here is the scene from the script:

Behind George, the two set hands come back with a new screen
of sky scenery, and wait, standing just next to George. As
they are holding it, there is a three foot gap underneath.
While the producer is talking to him, George's attention is
drawn by a lovely pair of women's legs that have come to
stand behind the screen, the top half of the body being
hidden by it. George acknowledges the sight with a smile and
is about to bring his attention back to the on-going
discussion, when his attention is drawn away again by a
noise, that of the tap steps the female legs are making,
presumably as a warm up. George smiles in recognition and
responds with a few tap steps of his own. The women's legs
instantly stop, seem to think a moment and then answer back,
but with a jump in the complexity of the steps. A tap
dialogue ensues between the two pairs of legs, until the set
hands - the path before them now cleared - pick up their
screen of scenery and walk off with it. The screen moves away
and as it disappears reveals that the upper body belongs to a
young woman. She pulls a face meaning 'Here I am!!' And of
course it's Peppy, except that she immediately realizes who
she is dealing with - visibly she wasn't expecting this at
all - and feels completely ridiculous and uncomfortable.Her joyful expression gradually becomes one of abject
apology, but George is roaring with laughter.After a short pause, Zimmer makes the connection. He checks
the front page of the paper, and recognizes her!Then he begins shouting at her and all she can do is lower
her head, unable to reply. He gestures that she's fired and
for her to get out, and she starts to go, completely
distraught.

Here is the scene in the movie:

It’s interesting to note that the movie mimics silent film not only in what’s on screen, but also in one key respect with the script itself: Big blocks of scene description! For instance, here is a script excerpt for the 1903 silent film The Great Train Robbery:

Scene 1: Interior of railroad telegraph office. Two masked robbers
enter and compel the operator to get the “signal block” to stop the
approaching train, and make him write a fictitious order to the engineer to take water at this station, instead of “Red Lodge,” the regular watering stop. The train comes to a standstill (seen through window of office); the conductor comes to the window, and the frightened operator delivers the order while bandits crouch out of sight, at the same time keeping him covered with their revolvers. As soon as the operator leaves, they fall upon the operator, bind and gag him, and hastily depart to catch the
moving train.Scene 2: Railroad water tower. The bandits are hiding behind the tank as the train, under the false order, stops to take water. Just before she pulls out they stealthily board the train between the express car and the tender.Scene 3: Interior of express car. Messenger is busily engaged. An unusual sound alarms him. He goes to the door, peeps through the keyhole and discovers two men trying to break in. He starts back bewildered, but, quickly recovering, he hastily locks the strong box containing the valuables and throws the key through the open side door. Drawing his revolver, he crouches behind a desk. In the meantime, the two robbers have succeeded in breaking in the door and enter cautiously. The messenger opens fire, and a desperate pistol duel takes place in which the messenger is killed. One of the robbers stands watch while the other tries to open the treasure box. Finding it locked, he vainly searches the messenger for the key, and blows the safe open with dynamite. Securing the valuables and
mailbag, they leave the car.

Contemporary screenplays put a premium on white space with paragraphs typically no more than 4–5 lines with some types of scripts, action genre in particular often having 1–2 line blocks of description.

That said, the script for The Artist does a great job conveying not only action, but also the mood of the characters within the piece.

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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