Script To Screen: “The Elephant Man”
A scene from the 1980 movie The Elephant Man, screenplay by Christopher De Vore & Eric Bergren & David Lynch.
A scene from the 1980 movie The Elephant Man, screenplay by Christopher De Vore & Eric Bergren & David Lynch.
Setup: Treves [Anthony Hopkins] has been working with a patient Merrick [John Hurt], now presenting him to Treves’ superior Carr [John Gielgud] about possibly taking in Merrick for long-term care.
The scene from the script:
A gut-wrenching scene in which Merrick’s fate hangs in the balance. Here is the scene in the movie:
I’ll see you in comments for a discussion of this scene from The Elephant Man.
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.
For more articles in the Script To Screen series, go here.