Script to Screen: “Witness”

The movie’s title exists for a reason: Samuel witnesses a brutal murder.

From the 1985 movie Witness, screenplay by Earl W. Wallace and William Kelley, story by William Kelley and Pamela Wallace & Earl W. Wallace.

Setup: Samuel, a young Amish boy, is traveling with his mother. Needing to use the facilities, he enters the bathroom at a train station in Philadelphia.

Here is the scene from the script:

Here is the scene from the movie:

Lots of small differences between screenplay and movie:

• It’s not really a point in the movie, but I like how the script uses the “gurgling” sounds of the urinals to “intimidate” Samuel. It not only ups the tension, it also provides a rationale why the boy uses a stall, not a urinal… which is absolutely necessary for the scene to play out the way it does.
• In the movie, the victim never sees his assailants coming after him. That creates some dramatic irony in that we see what the victim doesn’t see.
• In the movie, the Black Man (Danny Glover) is much more calm and composed than the script, taking time to wash his hands, straighten his tie. I’m not sure what that adds to the scene other than Glover’s character is persnickety about his looks, but there you go.
• In the movie, Samuel makes a tiny noise which draws the attention of the Black Man. That makes more sense than the script where he’s about to leave, then for no apparent reason pulls out his gun and starts inspecting the bathroom stalls.
• In the script, Samuel spies the victim’s body on the floor. In the movie, the scene ends with a close-up of Samuel’s face frozen in fear.

Overall, the scene is very much like the screenplay, but while we can’t reverse engineer the rationale for some of the changes made in the movie, with others it’s apparent why the alterations were made.

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 series on Go Into The Series where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.

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