Script To Screen: “The Day the Earth Stood Still”

Klaatu first emerges from his space ship and is involved in an altercation with the U.S. Army… which leads to Gort. A great scene from the classic 1951 science fiction thriller The Day the Earth Stood Still, screen play by Edmund H. North, story by Harry Bates.

IMDb plot summary: An alien lands and tells the people of Earth that they must live peacefully or be destroyed as a danger to other planets.

Here is the script version of the scene:

SERIES OF INDIVIDUAL CUTS

1. Civilians in the crowd, their eyes and nerves taut
with suspense.

2. A young soldier, who grips his rifle and moistens
his lips nervously, his eyes never leaving the ship.

3. A tank commander blinks from the tension of
staring at an unmoving object.

4. The last cut is of the ship itself.

PEARSON'S VOICE
(over scene)
As you can see for yourself, the
Army has taken every precaution to
meet whatever the situation may
require. Every eye -- every weapon --
is trained on the ship. It's been
this way for two hours and the tension--

CLOSE SHOT - PEARSON

as he interrupts himself excitedly, his attention
riveted on the TV screen.

PEARSON
Just a minute, ladies and gentlemen!
I think I see something moving!

EXT. THE MALL - MED. LONG SHOT - DAY

We are at the actual location now, not looking at TV.
We see the ship surrounded by soldiers, two medium
tanks, two artillery pieces, and a couple of machine
guns. Some distance away is a suggestion of the crowd
of civilians, held back by police. Prominent in the
scene are newsreel and television cameras. OUR CAMERA
MOVES IN to MED. SHOT. As it does so, we see a couple
of metal objects rising slowly from the top of the
ship. One, which is an oddly-designed coil of wire,
slides up and revolves slowly. The other is a section
of vented pipe with a convex cap on it.

REVERSE ANGLE

on the soldiers, their eyes glued to this first sign
of activity from the ship. They shift uneasily,
gripping their rifles more firmly.

MED. SHOT - THE SHIP

After a long, tense moment, a ramp appears silently
out of the side of the ship and slides down to the
ground. There is an audible gasp as a man appears at
the top of the ramp. He looks around at the crowd
with cool and imperturbable dignity. This is KLAATU.
He is completely human in appearance. The only
unearthly thing about him is his clothing. He wears a
tunic that is very good looking, but at the same time
thoroughly comfortable and practical. On his head is
a metal helmet that obscures most of his face. (It
would be impossible to identify him later.) The
design of this helmet gives the impression that it is
more a formal headdress than for protection. Klaatu
is above all an impressive man -- a man of tremendous
dignity and presence. He has the tolerant superiority
that comes with absolute knowledge.

INDIVIDUAL REACTION CUTS

of soldiers, people in the crowd, and policemen. The
newsreel and TV men are busy at their cameras.

MED. CLOSE SHOT - KLAATU

After an impressive moment, he raises his arms in the
universal gesture of neutrality. Then he speaks, in
perfect English, his voice amplified as though through
an enunciator.

KLAATU
We have come to visit you in peace --
and with good will.

Klaatu walks slowly down the ramp toward the
soldiers. As he does so, he draws from inside his
tunic a strange looking object, longish and tubular.
It might be a a telescope -- or it might be some
strange kind of weapon.

MED. SHOT

shooting from the side, showing Klaatu advancing
slowly toward the line of soldiers. He holds out the
mysterious object in front of him in a gesture that
is actually one of offering but could be
misinterpreted as menacing. There is a growing,
uneasy rumble of muttering among the soldiers as
Klaatu advances. They are clearly frightened of what
he may do.

CLOSE SHOT - PLATOON LEADER

A young second lieutenant, standing in front of his
platoon. As Klaatu advances, the lieutenant unslings
his carbine.

MED. SHOT

Klaatu starts toward the platoon leader, raising the
object he holds toward the man, trying to make clear
his intentions. Misinterpreting this as a menacing
gesture, the platoon leader raises his carbine to his
shoulder.

MED. CLOSE SHOT

of one of the tank commanders in the turret of his
tank. He is watching Klaatu advancing toward the
platoon leader and he has drawn his pistol. Convinced
that the lieutenant is in jeopardy, the tank
commander aims at Klaatu and fires.

MED. SHOT

as Klaatu falls to the ground wounded. The object he
was holding has dropped from his hand and smashed.
The soldiers start to gather around Klaatu excitedly
when suddenly there appears in the entrance to the
space ship a huge robot. There is a gasp of amazement
from the crowd and the solders draw back at sight of
him. The robot is ten feet tall, is made in the
almost-perfect image of a man. He is to be played by
an actor and his flesh appears to be made of a
greenish metal. His eyes flash as though lighted
internally. His perfectly-fashioned, muscular body is
covered only with a loincloth. This is GORT.

There are cries of amazement as Gort walks slowly
ponderously, down the ramp to the ground. As he does
so, the ramp closes behind him. Gort's face is, and
always remains, utterly expressionless. He stops to
look at Klaatu, lying on the ground. Then he looks
around at the soldiers, the tanks and guns. All the
guns have been traversing to follow him.

CLOSE SHOT - GORT

From inside him there comes an ominous crackling
sound, as though power were being generated within
him. His eyes flash toward the tank from which Klaatu
was shot.

MED. CLOSE SHOT - TANK

There is a great metallic clatter and the Sherman
tank is suddenly reduced to a pile of junk metal, its
parts completely disintegrated. Only a piece of tank
track and twisted gun barrel emerge from the heap on
the ground to identify what had been there. The
tank's crew has remained unharmed.

CLOSE SHOT - GORT

The crackling sound continues as his eyes start to
sweep in a semicircle taking in all the troops.

MED. SHOT - THE TROOPS

SHOOTING FROM BEHIND Gort, with the back of his head
in f.g., CAMERA PANS to follow Gort's sweeping gaze.
In a growing crash and clatter of metal, every weapon
in sight is destroyed. The two machine guns are
little heaps of junk. The 75's are larger heaps. The
second tank, like the first, is a three-foot pile of
scrap. Rifles have dropped from the soldier's hands
and lie on the ground as little mounds of wood and
metal. None of the men has been harmed, but their
faces show the utter terror of what they have
experienced.

Here is the movie version of the scene:

I always find it fascinating to read scripts from decades ago. Beyond the many reminders that our contemporary approach to style and format is significantly different than that of our screenwriting forebearers, I’m often impressed by the writer’s use of language. Some examples from this script excerpt:

• “Klaatu is above all an impressive man — a man of tremendous dignity and presence. He has the tolerant superiority that comes with absolute knowledge.” This is very much in the vein of how contemporary screenwriters introduce characters: Provide a 1–2 line summation of the character’s core personality. Also note: Technically, this is a so-called ‘unfilmable.’ Yet another example you can cite when your script literalist buddy says, “You can’t include unfilmables in a screenplay!”
• “It might be a a telescope — or it might be some strange kind of weapon.” A great way to pose the question on the crowd’s mind. Is it safe… or dangerous?
• “The robot is ten feet tall, is made in the almost-perfect image of a man. He is to be played by an actor and his flesh appears to be made of a greenish metal.” If you’re looking for a clear sign this is a production draft, it’s this note: He is to be played by an actor. Ha! The director telling the writer to tell the crew, he doesn’t want some clunky, fake-looking robot, rather he wants Gort to move like a human. Indeed, Gort is played by an actor named Lock Martin, who was seven feet three inches tall.
• “None of the men has been harmed, but their faces show the utter terror of what they have experienced.” Screenwriter Edmund North does a good job throughout the scene describing the psychological state of being of the human characters.

I loved this movie as a kid. My friends and I used to take turns playing Gort, stumbling over boxes we set up in the back yard while the other ran around yelling, “Klaatu Barada Nikto!”

Takeaways: Obviously, we don’t include specific camera references in spec scripts. Nor do we write paragraphs of scene description which are 10+ lines long. But what North does with character introductions and dipping into the psychological lives of the humans is all good stuff.

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.

For more articles in the Script To Screen series, go here.