Script To Screen: “The Truman Show”

From the 1998 movie The Truman Show, written by Andrew Nichol.

Setup: Truman has just come to the ‘end’ of his world and is talking to ‘God’.

Here is the script version of the scene:

Here is the scene from the movie:

That very much matches the script. However, compare to this earlier version of the ending:

It’s pretty easy to see why they either cut this footage or revised the ending at the script stage to culminate the way the movie does. Truman’s decision to leave is the apex of his psychological journey, capped off beautifully with the callback line, “In case I don’t see you — good afternoon, good evening and good night.”

Sometimes a movie doesn’t need a big Hollywood ending. Sometimes an intimate, personal moment offers the most emotionally resonant way to round out a story.

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 Script To Screen articles, go here.