Screenplays read in 2025#
There's Something About Mary#
A screenplay for "There's Something About Mary" was the first comedy I've read. I recall reading somewhere years ago that if you don't laugh while reading it, you're not gonna laugh while watching it. So I was curious. And I laughed, but less than I would hope so. Funny how Pat Healy seemed to be written for Matt Dillon, albeit, not being the first choice.
Looper#
The screenplay for "Looper" felt better than the movie, but I saw the movie very long time ago, so I take it with a grain of salt (I was, for instance, very strict about time-travelling rules back then). It read a bit like a future-noir kind of story. The foreword mentions that the order in the actual movie was changed for the pacing reasons and maybe why it works so well in writing: it's more adjusted fot the medium.
No Country For Old Men#
I was actually curious how the script for "No Country For Old Men" would fare compared to the book. The book is better. The writing is actually surprisingly bland, but maybe Coen brothers were writing for themselves and they didn't need to impress anyone with it. There aren't many deviations from the movie, apart from a couple of things that were actually in the book, but were cut out of the screenplay. They ended up in the movie anyway.
Perhaps due to the so-and-so quality of writing, but Anton Chigurh is nothing like in the movie. The whole creepy and towering presence of him looks like a sole work of Javier Bardem. Impressive.
Lost in Translations#
The screenplay for "Lost in Translation" is probably scene-to-scene with the movie (it's been a while), but Sophia Coppola knew what she wanted to shoot, so it's not surprising. The language is terse and it reads very well. I didn't see Bill Murray or Scarlett Johansson during the reading. Or at least, not that much. It impressed me that all the songs are part of the script, not a realisation-time or later addition. Sophia Coppola really knew what she wanted.