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.
The Sixth Sense#
Screenplay to "The Sixth Sense" by M. Night Shyamalan was an interesting read. It's rich in details, far more richer than the average of what I read so far, sometimes to the point of being ridiculous ("she's an angel," kind of statements), but it doesn't stand in the way of the story. Reading it now, I was surprised that I didn't see the twist coming 25+ years ago. But hey, these were new back then.
A side note. I didn't realise (or completely forgot) that Toni Collette played Cole's mother.
The Usual Suspects#
I had a lot of fun with a screenplay for "The Usual Suspects" from Christopher McQuarrie. It's a shooting script, so close to the final material (which I shall confirm next week with a rewatch of the movie). The funniest bits are dialogues between the titular characters, who are outright mean to each other, which was a communication style back in the 1990s. I also learned that it was impossible to eat decently after 1:00 in Los Angeles (from a point of view of a New Yorker).
An interesting thing that I noticed now is that I used to think that Verbal Kint told the truth the way Customs Agent Dave Kujan missed who he's dealing with, but it's way deeper: it's impossible to say what really occurred. Probably what Kujan says, but all the rest, including scenes in retrospect, are anyone's guess. I saw something similar to that end in Netflix's "Ragnarok."
I just clicked in the #TheUsualSuspects tag and learned that Giancarlo Esposito starred there, and I was like, "But where?" Quick googling with DuckDuckGo, and there it is, agent Baer. This retro-recognition places the actor much earlier that I thought. But wow, just wow.