Script To Screen: “You Can Count On Me”
A key scene from the excellent 2000 drama You Can Count On Me, written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan.
A key scene from the excellent 2000 drama You Can Count On Me, written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan.
Plot Summary: A single mother’s life is thrown into turmoil after her struggling, rarely-seen younger brother returns to town.
In the scene: The younger brother Terry and his nephew Rudy.
Here is the version of the scene in the movie:
This is a good example of the type of script by a writer-director who chooses not to do much in the way of including camera shots in scene description. By my count, there are 25 cuts in this scene compared to just a handful in the script. One thing is for sure: All those cuts contribute to the frantic pace of Terry’s packing which itself is a projection of his riled up energy.
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.