MONDAY'S SCRIPT TIP:
FOCUSED SUSPENSE
Suspense scenes are often based on a "focus object" which the suspense revolves around, like the key to the wine cellar in Ben Hecht's NOTORIOUS that manages to build suspense for an entire sequence - probably more than ten minutes! Another Hitchcock film, Ernest Lehman's NORTH BY NORTHWEST uses a matchbook in a very tense scenes.
Our protagonist, Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant), is a Madison Avenue advertizing man mistaken for a C.I.A. Agent George Kaplan by a group of deep cover Soviet spies lead by Van Damm (James Mason). No matter how much he protests, no matter how many times he shows his I.D. proving he's not Kaplan ("They make such good ones") Van Damm still tries to kill him again and again. While trying to find the real Kaplan, Thornhill meets the beautiful Eve Kendall on a train and falls in love with her. When he lights a post-dinner cigarette, she jokes about the initials on his monogrammed matchbook: ROT.
After spending Act 2 unable to find Kaplan but able to find all kinds of trouble, Thornhill is told by the head of the C.I.A. (Leo G. Carroll) that Kaplan doesn't exist, he's a decoy created to keep the heat off their actual agent - Eve Kendall. Now, Eve is not some kick ass Emma Peel who knows 57 ways to kill a man with her bare hands, she was Van Damm's girlfriend, and when she discovered he was a badguy, she went to the CIA, and was convinced *not* to break up with him - instead get closer to him and report all of his secrets. And tonight she's going behind the Iron Curtain with Van Damm... and Thornhill is supposed to just let the woman he loves go deeper into danger. So the man who has spent the whole film insisting he's *not* a man of action, ends up becoming a man of action to save the woman he loves....
Roger goes to Van Damm's house, sneaks under the living room window... where he overhears sinister henchman Leonard (Martin Landau) and Van Damm talking about the plane that will land soon to take them away... and Leonard tells Van Damm that Eve is an American agent... and their plan to deal with her? They are going to throw her out of the plane! Roger climbs to a section under Eve's window and throws rocks at her window. What happens next? When she *finally* looks out the window, Roger is forced to hide from Van Damm and Leonard... and she doesn't see him! Instead of things going according to plan - the opposite happens. No easy scenes, here. Roger climbs up to her room... just as she's left her room and gone downstairs!
And now we come to the focus object: one of Roger's monogrammed matchbooks.
Roger is upstairs, hiding on the balcony, and Eve is downstairs sitting on the sofa in the same room as Van Damm and Leonard. How does he stop her from going with them? How does he tell her they know she's a CIA agent?
Roger pulls out a monogrammed matchbook, jots a note inside, and throws it from the balcony to the ashtray on the table directly in front of Eve while Leonard and Van Damm are looking out the window as the plane lands. The matchbook misses the ash tray. It misses the table. It hits the floor halfway to Leonard's feet. Nothing easy here... and it gets worse. The matchbook is the "focus object" - an object that creates suspense.
It is sitting there, on the floor, between Eve and Leonard & Van Damm. It has Roger's initials on it. It has a note inside from Roger. If Leonard or Van Damm spot it before Eve does, they will kill her and then kill him.
The conversation continues, with that monogrammed matchbook on the floor. Tension builds. And builds. And builds.
Leonard turns and walks toward Eve, sees the matchbook, picks it up!
Suspense - because we know if he opens the matchbook and reads the message, Eve is dead and so is Roger. We are focused on that matchbook... will he open it? Examine it? Realize that ROT stands for Roger O Thornhill?
But here's the thing - he thinks Roger is George Kaplan... and ROT means nothing to him. So he places the matchbook in the ashtray in front of Eve. But Eve knows ROT - and now must *not* look at the matchbook while Leonard is talking to her. More suspense based around that matchbook.
When Leonard turns away, she grabs the matchbook, reads the message... but the plane has landed, and Van Damm and Leonard hustle her out of the house so that they can leave... and they can throw her out of the plane later. Twist!
The suspense in the scene is generated by that matchbook, just as suspense in NOTORIOUS is generated by the wine cellar key.
WATER TORTURE
In the middle ages sword and sex cheesefest FLESH + BLOOD, Princess Jennifer Jason Leigh has been kidnaped by Mercenary Rurger Hauer, and eventually becomes his mistress. Hauer is leader of a band of Mercenary soldiers - knights in rusted armor - who are raping and pillaging their way across Europe. They were double crossed by the evil Prince who Jennifer was engaged to, and now they are doing everything possible to make that Prince's life hell on earth. Eventually they capture the Prince, and chain him up near a well. Princess Jennifer, Hauer's mistress and the Prince's finace, is about to have a meal with all of the other mercenaries celebrating the capture of the Prince.
Before the other mercenaries reach the table, the Prince grabs a piece of plague infested meat from the trash and drops it in the well, poisoning the drinking water.
Jennifer sees this, and the question is - will she tell anyone? As the water is brought from the well to the table, tension builds. The water in the jug becomes the "focus object". Water is poured into glasses of several mercenaries who were not kind to her when she was kidnaped. She wants revenge against them, so she says nothing.
The Prince watches her, waiting for her to tell them that the water is poisoned. She sees the shackled Prince watching her, and she watches the mean mercenaries drink the poisoned water one-by-one.
That jug of poisoned water goes from mean mercenaries... to women and children. The poisoned water is poured into their glasses and they start to drink it... will Jennifer tell them it is poisoned? Suspense builds.
The Prince watches her, waiting for her to stop them from drinking. But both of them watch as the women and children drink the poisoned water.
Then the jug of poisoned water is passed to Rutger Hauer, her lover. He pours a glass of water. Will she let him drink it? She is torn between the man she was engaged to and the man she sleeps with every night. What will she do? Hauer is having a conversation with some of the others, and every time he grabs the glass to drink, someone says something and he responds instead of drinks. Suspense builds.
The Prince, shackled by the well smiles at her. What will she do?
As Hauer lifts the glass to his lips, she...
See how focus objects work? They create suspense by giving the protagonist and the audience the same secret information that is tied to an object... and then places that object where the secret can be discovered by characters who can not know that secret.
KISS ME DEADLY
In my cable film HARD EVIDENCE there is a scene where our businessman hero Ken (Gregory Harrison) and his drug running girl friend (Cali Timmins) have to cross a border with $4 million in cash and heroin in a suitcase. Now, this suitcase is specially designed to pass through an ex-ray machine (it has an etched lead picture of clothes, and that's what the ex-ray will show), but the minute a Customs Agent opens it, our hero is in jail for the rest of his life. In the script it was a brutal Mexican jail, but because they shot the USA Network movie in Vancouver it ended up being a Canadian jail on screen - not much of a threat... but let's go with the brutal Mexican jail scenario...
In the script, they fly into LA and go through the customs line at the airport. As they wait their turn, suspense builds. Everyone in the line has a suitcase, but theirs is filled with heroin and money from a dope deal gone wrong - our hero ended up killing a DEA Agent! As they get closer and closer to the Customs Agent, suspense builds. Someone in front of them has their luggage searched thoroughly. Their suitcase gets closer and closer to the Customs Agent. Tension builds.
Their turn. The Customs Agent examines the suitcase exterior and asks them questions. His fingers move to the latches... will he open it? The girlfriend makes a joke, the Customs Agent smiles, and passes them through without opening their luggage.
In a story conference, one of the producers wanted to change the location from the airport to a drive through check point.... they had a beautiful one they could get for the film. I argued: The focus of the scene needs to be the suitcase filled with drugs and money. If we drive a car through the checkpoint, the focus becomes the CAR. The Customs Agent will want to search the trunk, check to see if anything is hidden in the spare tire, and feel the seats for suspicious lumps. Sure, he might search the suitcase, but it's one of SEVERAL items in his search, not the FOCUS of his search.
The producer ended up agreeing with me that the airport scenario was better than the check point, even if the location wasn't as exciting. The scene as written was focused and suspenseful... through there is no line in the filmed version, and not much suspense. The curse of TV movie direction - it's all shot coverage style instead of using the best shot to tell the story.
FOCUS ON THE PAGE
Even though we don't control whether how the director shoots the scene, we want to make sure the focus object is used to build suspense on the page. As they say, if it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage. I don't know if TRANSPORTER 3's focus object was used to create suspense on the page, but it seemed to be ignored on the screen.
TRANSPORTER 3 has a big high concept focus object swiped from some other movie... one that starred Rutger Hauer, coincidentally! Our tough guy driver Frank (Jason Statham) and the girl he's transporting each have an explosive bracelet around their wrists - if they get 25 feet away from the car, the bomb is activated, 50 feet away from the car and the bomb is set to go off... and 75 feet away from the car? Blam! Frank is blown to a zillion pieces in a massive fireball and explosion. So, it's best not to leave the car. This leads to some great scenes - one where the car is stolen and Frank has to keep up with it and get it back, using a bicycle and anything else he can grab.
But the director never shows us the danged bracelet in this chase - green you're okay, yellow at 25 feet, orange at 50 feet, red at 75 feet before you blow up. I want to know how much trouble Frank is in from minute to minute! They come up with this great suspense "focus object" and then never focus on it! No shots of it! Now, those "shots" may have been on the page or they may not have been - but *our* job is to make sure they *are* there. The action on the page includes milking that focus object for everything it's worth and making the scene a nail-biter of a read. We want to show that bracelet changing from green to yellow... and then changing from yellow to orange... then have Frank get close enough to the car that it goes back to yellow again. And keep that happening again and again throughout the scene. Once you create that focus object, it's your job to create the suspense that goes with it.
The great thing about focus objects is that you can use them in any genre. From action and suspense to rom-coms and comedies. Any time you want to charge a scene with suspense, just figure out what object shouldn't be in that scene... then put it there. A love note from the protag's ex? A skunk at the formal banquet? Once you've added the focus object, don't forget to milk it throughout the scene by creating a bunch of close calls... that escalate to keep the suspense building. What is the focus object in your suspense scene? Suspense comes from the ANTICIPATION of an event... the focus object is the physical (visual) representation of that event. It can be as simple as a glass of water or a matchbook.
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