Script To Screen: “The Insider”

For you Michael Mann fans, a dialogue-driven scene which crackles with life from this 1999 movie.

From the 1999 movie The Insider, screenplay by Eric Roth & Michael Mann, based on an article by Marie Brenner.

Setup: A research chemist comes under personal and professional attack when he decides to appear in a “60 Minutes” expose on Big Tobacco. Lowell Bergman [Al Pacino] finds himself at a crossroads with his cohorts at CBS.

Here is the scene in the movie:

This is a dialogue driven scene where the transition to screen is all about the nuances of actors working with the words they say. The power play between the characters is great, back and forth. Excellent conflict.

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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