2007 Screenplays

It's awards season in Hollywood, and that means "For Your Consideration" websites from the studios, with downloadable PDFs of screenplays. Here's what I could find; get 'em while they're up:

• Fox Searchlight — The Darjeeling Limited, Juno, The Namesake, Once, The Savages, Waitress
• Universal — American Gangster, The Bourne Ultimatum, Breach, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, The Kingdom, Knocked Up
• Paramount Vantage (Flash link) — A Mighty Heart, Into The Wild, The Kite Runner, Margot At The Wedding, There Will Be Blood
• Miramax — No Country For Old Men, The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, Gone Baby Gone, Hoax

You might have to click posters and "screenplay" or "script" links at each website.

It's interesting to see how the final film differs from what's on the page. The PDFs are all "shooting scripts" — basically final drafts — so they don't show how the screenplay may have evolved from what the studio or filmmakers originally saw. What you can see, though, is what was changed on-set, ad-libbed, or edited out after filming.

I skimmed through Juno's screenplay, since it was still fresh in my mind from having seen it a couple of weeks ago. What you see on the screen is mostly there on the page. Contrast that with a comedy like Knocked Up where certain scenes are edited together from the actors' ad-libbed riffs. Diablo Cody's script supposedly improved compared to early drafts, and there were a number of lines cut from the shooting script too. It was clear that leaving those lines in would have pointlessly extended some scenes and disrupted the overall flow of the film, just to squeeze in a few more bits of quirky dialogue. The pair of shots from Juno's POV as she walks through the masses of students at her school, which visually depict her transition from unnoticed to "cautionary whale", are also notably present on the page — I thought those might be a contribution of director Jason Reitman, who Cody credited in an AP article with the "tone" of the picture.

Next up for me is probably There Will Be Blood, which alliesglove and I saw last night, and which I will need to delve into to help me process everything that happened in that epic film. I've already noticed some differences in the ending. Apparently there are also some lines in the script that spell out some of Daniel Plainview's motivating issues (Spoilers!). Most likely, I will be happy that those lines were left unsaid in the final picture.