Script To Screen: “The Usual Suspects”
From The Usual Suspects (1995), written by Christopher McQuarrie, the final sequence in which all is revealed.
From The Usual Suspects (1995), written by Christopher McQuarrie, the final sequence in which all is revealed.
Setup: Dave Kujan, U.S. customs officer, has just released Verbal Kint. And uh-oh!
The ending scenes from the script:
Here is the scene from the movie:
There is one HUGE difference between script to screen: TONS OF VOICEOVER NARRATION! Various characters, mostly Verbal, connected to some quick editing spotlighting key words which Kint used in his interrogation.
The V.O. certainly makes clear what Kujan is stitching together as he stares at the wall. There’s even an added line from a fellow cop who says to Kujan about the mess of his desk, “It all makes sense when you… you gotta stand back from it.” Which is exactly what Kujan does.
In reverse engineering this change, I’m left to ask: Was this a directing decision? A studio note? A good question for screenwriter McQuarrie. He’s on Twitter: @chrismcquarrie.
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.