Script to Screen: “Zombieland”

The very beginning of the movie Zombieland (2009), screenplay by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick.

The script version of the scene:

Here is the movie version of the scene:

With the zombie attacking and killing the cameraman, the script pretty much gets across the horror theme of the movie. But what about the comedy?

• “This Land Is Your Land” and the upended Presidential limousine — a funny contrast.
• “The CAMERAMAN SCREAMS and SCREAMS and SCREAMS, accompanied by ripping, cracking, CRUNCHING” — the redundancy of the “screams” and the visceral sounds of the zombie assault, one we can only imagine, not see.
• “Then he gacks and falls SILENT” — use of the word gacks.
• “We hear munching” — that’s just funny.
• The zombie belches which fogs the camera lens — zombie belch and a humorous visual touch by the writers re fogging the camera lens

With their opening, the writers have (A) established the post-apocalyptic nature of things in the United States, (B) introduced the presence of zombies, © conveyed that this is a horror story, and (D) gotten across that it is also a comedy.

Not bad for 1 1/2-pages

A good lesson in using scene description to establish the tone upfront of a cross-genre script.

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 Story where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.

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