The Player

In my script analysis class, we read Michael Tolkin's first draft screenplay for The Player, based on his excellent novel of the same name, and then compare the draft with the final cut. In our discussion, we look at the structure according to formulae suggested by three writers, Syd Field in Screenplay, Michael Hague (Writing Screenplays that Sell) and Christopher Vogler ( The Writer's Journey). We also ask why the final cut is superior to the first draft in terms of tension and suspense.

INT. JOE LEVISON'S RECEPTION AREA - DAY

Briefly, the camera shows us a mural of a Hollywood set before we see a hand holding a slate, marking the beginning of Scene 1, Take 10. A telephone rings, and A YOUNG SECRETARY answers it, "Joe Levison's office." She informs the caller that Levison is not yet in and, when she hangs up, she's firmly reprimanded by Levison's administrative assistant, a rather imposing middle-aged woman named CELIA. "Never tell anyone he's not in his office," she says. "Tell them he's busy or in a meeting. Who was it?" The secretary tells her, "A Larry Levy." "I hope there was nothing in the trades this morning," Celia says, and then tells the secretary to run to find Levison; she wants him back here before Levy arrives. The secretary runs out of the reception area and

THE CAMERA FOLLOWS HER OUTSIDE, TO THE STUDIO LOT

As the secretary runs off across the lot, the camera finds a black Range Rover driving up. A writer, ADAM SIMON rushes up to greet the driver, studio vice president GRIFFIN MILL. Even before Mill is out of his car, Simon gushes, "I know we're not supposed to meet until next week," and then proceeds to try to give him his story pitch, early. Mill tells him he can't see him now; go talk to Bonnie Sherow, the story editor. As Mill walks up the steps into his office, the camera picks up and follows WALTER STUCKEL, head of studio security, and JIMMY, the mail boy. Stuckel is bemoaning the style of contemporary pictures, where it's all CUT, CUT, CUT; Hitchcock was better, he says, or Welles. A Touch of Evil opens with a tracking shot of six minutes, he says. When Jimmy asks him, "Six minutes?" he says, "Well, three-and-a-half or four." The camera then comes to rest outside Mill's office, shooting in, through the venetian blinds over the window. Mill is hearing a pitch from BUCK HENRY, for a remake of The Graduate, 25 years later. In the midst of the pitch, Mill's secretary, JAN, enters, asking him what to do with a stack of scripts. "Give them to Bonnie Sherow," Mill tells her, "and find out from studio security how Adam Simon got on the lot." Henry continues his pitch and, just after he has suggests that Julia Roberts could play Benjamin and Elaine's daughter, the camera trucks right to pick up Adam Simon, giving his pitch to BONNIE SHEROW, now. She tells him she can't take it in like this; he should write it down. He says he can't do that. It's not about words, he says, it's about pictures. In the midst of their conversation, we hear some loud voices and the sound of a collision, and the camera follows Sherow and Simon as they rush over to where Jimmy, the mail boy, has been knocked down by someone driving a golf cart. The camera moves in for a close-up of a stack of mail with a postcard on top, and then pulls back as Sherow helps Jimmy to his feet and then continues to pull back to a long shot of a white Porsche driving onto the lot. The driver stops and asks a young actress where he can find Joe Levison's office. "Joe Levison? The head of the studio?" she asks, and then gives him directions. As the Porsche drives off, the camera picks up a walking tour of Japanese men and women; the guide informs them that this area of the lot is where the executives make all the decisions about which pictures get made. From them, the camera picks up a black car, the young secretary jogging alongside. It stops, and JOE LEVISON gets out and goes into his office. The camera then picks up a trio of executives coming out of that office and walking across the studio lot. They talk about the fact that changes are in the wind. One of them says, "I hear we're looking to replace Griffin." "With whom," asks another executive. The first executive then names three possible choices, the last being Larry Levy. The camera continues to track until it is once again shooting through the window of Mill's office, where he is hearing a pitch from two women writers. His phone rings and when he answers it, he demands to know how Adam Simon got on the lot, and then hangs up and continues to listen to the pitch, for a film in which a TV star goes to Africa and becomes worshipped by a tribe of little people. "Kind of like The Gods Must be Crazy except the Coke bottle is now an actress," he suggests. One of the writers counters with, "Sort of like Out of Africa meets Pretty Woman." The camera trucks right again, picking up Alan Rudolph, who asks Jimmy where he can find Mill's office and, as he enters, the camera once again picks up Walter Stuckel, this time bemoaning the fast cutting of contemporary pictures to Buck Henry: "Rope, now there was a picture," he says. The camera then picks up Bonnie Sherow and her assistant, walking across the lot. Sherow scolds her assistant for being late, and the assistant excuses herself by saying she was hearing a pitch from Alan Rudolph. Sherow scolds her further, saying she's not supposed to be hearing pitches from Alan Rudolph, or anybody. The camera continues to truck right, past them until for a third time, it is outside Mill's office, where Rudolph is making a pitch for a political thriller/comedy--a Ghost meets Manchurian Candidate, he says. In the middle of it, Mill's secretary comes in with the mail, the ominous postcard on top. Mill turns it over and we can read it, "I hate your guts asshole." Thoughtfully, he looks out the window for a moment, before turning his attention back to Rudolph. (CALL TO ADVENTURE) 8:07

INT. JAN'S OFFICE - DAY

She takes a call from an irate, anonymous male voice who demands to talk to Mill. As she talks to him, Mill comes down the corridor, talking to still another writer making a pitch. The writer tells him he wants someone dangerous for the film, "someone like Bruce Willis," he says. As Jan and Mill talk briefly about the call, Sherow comes in, complaining about a difficult script that features a 50-year-old female circus performer, a fire eater, and then confirms a lunch she and Mill had set up for later that day. Mill meets Sherow on the lot. She asks him if he's ready to go to the lunch. If he is, they can ride together. No, he tells her, he has to go to Levison's office. "Order me a Caesar Salad and a Crystal Geyser," he says, and then they kiss. As he goes up the steps to Levison's office, he eyes with interest the white Porsche parked outside it.

INT. LEVISON'S RECEPTION AREA - DAY

Mill comes in, asking Celia if Levision is there. "You can't go in," she tells him, but he does anyway.

INT. LEVISON'S OFFICE - DAY

Levison is meeting with Walter Stuckel and Reggie Goldman, the son of a Boston banker heavily invested in the studio. Levison introduces Mill to Goldman, and Goldman begins asking Mill about various actresses; are they available, he wants to know. "Talk to Walter," Mill says, "he has everyone's number."

INT. LEVISON'S RECEPTION AREA - DAY

Mill begins to ask Celia a question, but she tells him, "Don't ask." "Don't ask, you don't know or don't ask, I don't want to know." She tells him, "Just don't ask. But if it's Reggie Goldman you're worried about, don't be." "It's not Reggie Goldman I'm worried about, it's Larry Levy." "Larry Levy? He's at Fox, isn't he?" The phone rings, saving Celia from more inquiries, but Mill makes one more, "Should I be looking for a job?" Celia doesn't answer, but talks to the caller, informing him that the studio had been unable to sign Angelica Huston to a film because she was booked for the next two years. 11:24
Note: Notice how so much of the film is set up in the first 10 percent of it: We learn about the threat to Mill's job; the first postcard shows up; we learn about Mill's relationship with Sherow. Notice, too, how the film foreshadows so much here. We begin with a ringing telephone, which is answered by Levison's secretary. He's not in yet, she says, and is promptly reprimanded by Celia, Levison's assistant: "Say he's busy or in a meeting," suggesting that there is a right way and a wrong way to survive in the business, which prepares us for Sherow's character, who, we quickly learn, has never taken to heart this Hollywood way of doing business. In that first moment, too, we learn Larry Levy's name--the person who will threaten Mill--and we learn that something is afoot, although we don't know what: "I hope there was nothing in the trades this morning." What might have been in the trades? we wonder, and we have our first little arc of curiosity and mild suspense. The film then almost instantly heightens the moment of curiosity by adding Celia's sense of urgency: Run to find Levison, she tells the secretary. Then, we have the seemingly meaningless encounter between Mill and Simon. He seems just a little pest, Simon does. But in the middle of Mill's meeting with Henry, Mill tells Jan to find out from studio security how Adam Simon got onto the lot, thus setting up two aspects--one, the importance of studio security, and two, the fact that security can be breached, something that becomes important when the most threatening postcard shows up and Mill demands of Jimmy and Jan that they find out immediately how it got onto the lot. Mill's encounter with Simon also prepares us for the significant way in which Mill's secure world will be breached. Often, films work in this fashion. Remembering that frequently the most interesting journeys--to borrow from Vogler's model--involve a reluctant hero (Cary Grant in North by Northwest, Arsenic and Old Lace and Bringing Up Baby, Farley Granger in Strangers on a Train (and Billy Crystal in the comedic version, Throw Momma from the Train) Robert Donat in The 39 Steps, Kathleen Turner in Romancing the Stone, Tom Cruise in Rain Man and The Firm, Bill Paterson in Comfort and Joy, Harrison Ford in Patriot Games, The Fugitive and (in many ways) the Indiana Jones trilogy, Richard Dreyfus in American Graffiti, Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, Kramer vs. Kramer, Marathon Man and The Graduate), the writer sets up his/her protagonist in a seemingly secure world and then finds the tiniest chink in the wall that protects the hero from the difficult circumstances that lie outside the wall and provide the hero with his chance to journey toward the challenge. So Tolkin and Altman locate that chink in the wall and begin digging away at it slowly, beginning with a small hole and them steadily working until it is gaping enough. Other aspects of the film foreshadowed here: Bonnie Sherow's tragic innocence. When Simon tries to give her his pitch (interestingly for a science fiction film, set on an alien world with two sons), after Mill has (significantly) directed him to her (dumped him on her), she tells him to write it down, that she can't process it like this. "It's not about words," he tells her, "it's about pictures." We know that Mill, the successful one, does not deal with written words-- the only things we see him reading are the postcards and, later, the speech he delivers at the gala. But Sherow does, because she does not know the ways of Hollywood and the studio, which is why she finds herself banished at the end. Also foreshadowed here, the part that Japan will play in the film, introduced in the brief studio tour we see right after Levy drives onto the lot. Also, in the brief scene in Levison's office, we learn that Walter Stuckel exerts enormous influence as head of studio security. Lastly, notice how Mill's barging into Levison's office is echoed at the end of the film, when that office is his: Sherow the outcast, tries to push past Celia just as Mill does here, but while Mill succeeds, Sherow does not, defeated by her tragic sense of propriety.

EXT. RESTAURANT TERRACE - DAY

Huston and John Cusack are making a pitch to Larry Levy. Mill comes in and greets Sherow and their lunch companions; they discuss Larry Levy. Mill suggests, "If Levy had half a brain he'd be dangerous."

EXT. STREET OUTSIDE RESTAURANT - DAY

Mill takes his leave of Sherow, gets into his car and drives off. He finds, beneath his windshield wiper, a second postcard, depicting Humphrey Bogart pointing a gun. "You said you'd get back to me," it reads. (CALL TO ADVENTURE)
Note: Notice how the presence of the postcard on the windshield foreshadows the presence of the snake at the film's mid-point.

INT. MILL'S OFFICE - DAY

Mill puts the postcard into a drawer with perhaps a half dozen others (there's also a book, How to Write a Screenplay in 21 Days), and his secretary asks him if he shouldn't tell Walter Stuckel about it. Mill doesn't want to do it; he's already vulnerable, and asking for protection from some crank would make him seem foolish. Jan leaves, Sherow comes in, and Mill invites her to a party that night. (REFUSAL OF THE CALL)

INT. DICK MELLON'S HOUSE - NIGHT

It's a Hollywood party. Mill and Sherow come in, greeting Marlee Matlin at the door. Mill tells her that a script she'd submitted was good and he thought they could do something with it. He introduces her to Sherow, and Sherow tells Matlin that she'd be perfect for the part she wanted to play; she thought they needed to make one or two changes in the third act. After they leave Matlin, Mill gently upbraids Sherow, telling her it was not proper to talk about script changes at a party. Sherow then points out Larry Levy, coming downstairs, listening to a pitch from Jeff Goldblum. Mill leaves Sherow with Harry Belafonte, and asks Dick Mellon, his lawyer, about Larry Levy's presence at the party that night. Mellon tells Mill not worry and then Mill confides that he's been getting threatening postcards. (MEETING WITH THE MENTOR)
Note: Sherow's ineptitude is once again demonstrated here, in a slightly more obvious fashion. Notice, too, the progression in which Mill discusses the postcards. The first person he talks to is his secretary, Jan, in the previous scene. Here, he is all bravado: he's not going to seek help. Second, in this scene, he turns to Dick Mellon for help, but Mellon has none to give. In the subsequent scene, he'll once more talk about them, to Sherow, but this time he seeks advice and gets it--but from the one person in the film who lacks savvy.

EXT. HOT TUB AT MILL'S HOUSE - NIGHT

Mill and Sherow are in the hot tub, Sherow reading aloud an insipid sex scene from a script for a Western. Mill asks her a hypothetical question about how long she thought it would take for someone to become so enraged at not having a phone call returned that it would make them dangerous. Five months, Sherow suggests. "Can we go to bed, now?" she asks, rolling over on top of him. "I'm starting to wrinkle." (A SECOND MEETING WITH A MENTOR)
Note: Mill not only asks for and takes advice from the one person who lacks savvy in the film, but he asks for advice couched in a fictional scenario. This belief in the infallibility of the Hollywood world will be his downfall--at least momentarily.

EXT. RESTAURANT TERRACE - DAY

Levy and Levison are breakfasting. Levy gets up and, on his way out, greets Burt Reynolds and his breakfast companion. After he leaves, Reynold's breakfast companion remarks that Levy was at Fox. "At least until this breakfast he was."

EXT. PARKING LOT OUTSIDE RESTAURANT - DAY

Mill pulls up and sees Larry Levy coming out, this time getting into a black Mercedes.

EXT. RESTAURANT TERRACE - DAY

Mill enters, greets Reynolds, and then goes over to a table where Levison is waiting for him. (Reynolds remarks under his breath that Mill is an asshole.) Mill tells Levison he won't work for Levy. "I report to you," he says. He'll quit if he has to report to Levy. Levison tells Mill he can't quit; there is stilla year and a half left on his contract. Mill leaves, angry.

INT. MILL'S OFFICE - DAY

He finds a third postcard, actually an elaborate chain of postcards. On the back of one it reads, "I'm going to kill you." After Mill demands of Jan, "How'd this get here," he sends her and Jimmy to the mailroom to find out.

INT. JAN'S OFFICE - DAY

Mill searches calendars, computer records of meetings, records of phone messages and of calls returned and not returned, until he settles on a likely suspect: a David Kahane, an unproduced writer.

EXT. KAHANE'S HOUSE - NIGHT

Mill pulls up outside the house, gets out of his car carrying his cellular phone, and dials Kahane's number as he walks toward the house. Through the lighted window, we see JUNE GUDMUNSDOTTUR, working on a painting. Mill asks for Kahane; June calls for him but then remembers he's gone out to a movie. Watching her through the window, Mill flirts with her, asking her questions about herself. She's from Iceland, she tells him. Before she hangs up, she tells Mill that Kahane has gone to a movie theatre in Pasadena to see The Bicycle Thief.
Note: The superiority of this scene over that on pages 18-21 of the first draft. Here, we have an additional layer of suspense as well as an additional level of superior knowledge: We wonder whether June will see Mill (suspense), and their conversation also operates for us on more than one level because we know that Mill is watching June, but she doesn't know that. Also, note how much more of an outsider she is in the final cut as opposed to the first draft of the script. There, she had an ordinary job in the midst of an extraordinary world, so she was indeed an outsider. Here, however, she is alien, which is appropriate, since much of Mill's journey is one that takes him outside of the protective walls of the studio and the entire system. Here he encounters someone who comes from elsewhere (a place of origin we later learn is fictional). Note, too, that she is also someone who never watches movies. Her arrival was prepared for (and is appropriate) because, remember it was Mill who asked at lunch, in the first scene outside the studio, whether he and his companions could talk about something aside from Hollywood for a change. Just as the Cantina at Mos Eisley space station is an alien place for Luke in Star Wars (a fitting condition for the first threshold, in Vogler's parlance), so too is the first threshold an alien place for Mill, populated by an alien being. Note, too, how June Gudmunsdottur is a more interesting and formidable threshold guardian (again borrowing from Vogler) than is June Mercator in the first draft.

INT. THEATRE - NIGHT

Mill enters the darkened theatre, stepping over the legs of one patron, who's sprawled with then out in the aisle. The last five minutes of the film are playing out. The theatre is sparsely populated. At the conclusion of the film, Mill stands up and scans the crowd, then leaves for the lobby.
Note: The Bicycle Thief is an appropriate film. One, it's a foreign film, not a Hollywood film at all, so it acts both as a transition to the Japanese karaoke bar and a herald that Mill is crossing a line here. Two, in the end of Thief, the father--although he does not get away with the bicycle--gets away with his crime, as the crowd of people decide not to pursue legal punishment for him. Mill, of course, will do him ten better (at least), getting away with the crime, the dead man's girlfriend, and the studio presidency.

INT. THEATRE LOBBY - NIGHT

Mill approaches one patron and asks him if he's David Kahane. It's not. Mill spots another and, pretending coincidence, approaches him. Kahane obviously dislikes Mill, but Mill convinces Kahane to go have a drink with him.

INT. JAPANESE BAR - NIGHT

There's a man singing along with a karaoke machine. Mill and Kahane are served their drinks and Kahane thanks the waitress in smooth Japanese. Mill tells Kahane he's interested in making a deal with him, but Mill spurns him and leaves the restaurant in a fit of anger.
Note: One, this is still another alien place. It's also an alien place in which people pretend to be what they are not-- using the karaoke machine to pretend they're singing stars. Note, too, how the scene here is more efficient than the one that plays out on pages 24-26. While Kahane demonstrates in the scene in the first draft that this bar is his turf (he sings the song in Japanese), he does the same here by thanking the waitress in Japanese. It's more of a shorthand method than having his character sing a song for a minute or more.

EXT. STREET OUTSIDE RESTAURANT - NIGHT

Kahane is outside, pissing against a wall. A woman walking down the street eyes him with suspicion and then, clutching her purse more tightly, moves on past. Mill comes outside and Kahane emerges from the shadow, berating him. Mill tells him to come to the studio in the morning; they can make a deal. But Kahane chides him for his vulnerability; Mill's on his way out; it's Levy Kahane should talk to, he says. That does it for Mill. He follows Kahane to the parking lot, where Kahane continues to berate Mill. In the middle of their argument, Kahane accidentally knocks Mill off a ledge into a shallow concrete culvert. When he comes down to help Mill, Mill rears up in anger, and shoves Kahane against a wall and then throws him to the ground, face down in four inches of water. Screaming, "Keep it to yourself, keep it to yourself, keep it to yourself," he pounds Kahane's head against the concrete, holding his face in the shallow water. Mill gets up and walks away, but then comes back to help Kahane up. But he's dead. Mill takes Kahane's wallet and watch and then starts to walk off, but then notices there's a handprint on the passenger side window on Kahane's car. Mill's handprint. He smashes the window and leaves.
Note: Mill's accidental killing of Kahane allows us to maintain a semblance of sympathy for him, something that becomes more difficult if the killing is a directly willful act. Note, too, the clumsy fashion in which Tolkin describes the killing on page 30 of his first draft.

INT. CONFERENCE ROOM - DAY

Sherow, Levy and other execs sit around a table, talking. They're waiting for Mill, who's late to the meeting.

INT. LEVISON'S OFFICE - DAY

Levison is talking with Stuckel. Celia tells Levison that Mill still isn't there, but she thinks they really ought to start the meeting. Levison agrees. "Do you know D.O.A.?" Stuckel asks. Yes, Levison tells him. "That's what we have on our hands here," Stuckel says, ominously.

INT. CONFERENCE ROOM - DAY

Through the window we can see Mill pull up. Jan tells him he's late. As the others settle in for the meeting, Mill comes in. Levison urges Levy to continue with what he was saying. Mill goes on to say that maybe the studio coddles writers too much; it's unnecessary. The studio can find their own ides, in the newspaper, and then it would save them money. Pick out any story, he urges. One after another, an executive does it and Levy retells the news item in a kind of Hollywood pitch-ese. A story about a mudslide, a demonstration for better education, the bond market falling -- can become films. Eyeing a page of the newspaper with an article about Kahane's murder, Mill tells Levy that it's an interesting idea, eliminating the writer -- from the artistic process.
Note: Notice how Levy's possession of the newspaper with the story of Kahane's murder allows the final cut to work more effectively here than does the first draft. There, the scriptwriter needs almost an entire page (pp. 34-35) to get Mill out of the meeting and out to the studio store to buy a newspaper. Here, it's handled in a single stroke. Too, notice how the tension is greater when there are potential witnesses to the news story; note how the stakes are higher in that case than in the script. Part of The Player concerns Mill's attempt to maintain and increase his power; it's therefore riskier for him if there are witnesses to his Achilles' heel. Also note here how Sherow again exposes her unsuitability for the world of the studio, when she makes fun of Levy's game and then cracks wise about Wall Street, only to be corrected by Levy who cites the Oliver Stone film's commercial success as the only necessary barometer of success.

INT. MILL'S OFFICE - DAY

Walter Stuckel comes in and tells Mill that the Pasadena police are interested in him; witnesses placed him in the company of Kahane the night before, just prior to the murder. In the middle of their conversation, Mill receives a fax: the outline of a postcard, with the single word, "Surprise!"
Note: Again, note how much more effective this scene is, when compared to the scene in the first draft, on page 31. Again, the stakes are higher, because Stuckel is present and therefore a potential witness to Mill's vulnerability.

EXT. CEMETERY - DAY

It's Kahane's funeral. Another writer is blaming the Hollywood system for the death. Mill stands off to one side. A man, standing at a slight distance, eyes him with peculiar interest. After the eulogy, which is more a harangue, the service breaks up. June walks up the hill to where the cars are parked. She greets Mill, telling him he's not a writer; then she remarks that he's the only one she knows here. They talk for a minute and then she asks him to give her a ride home; she can't take the crowd of people, all expecting her to grieve, something she can't do.
Note: It's June who invites Mill to drive her home--she extends the invitation for him to cross over into the world outside of his comfortable Hollywood life. Note how she takes the lead throughout: In the scene between them following Mill's confrontation with the snake, she refuses when he asks to make love, and then tells him to call her for a proper date; when they go on that proper date, and he asks if he should come in, she refuses, and tells him, not tonight, but soon. Too, notice again how superior this scene is to the funeral scene in the first draft, on pages 40-45. (Note, too, how Mill spends so much of his time on the telephone in the first draft, and how weak that is: Mill talking to June on the telephone from his office before he goes to see Kahane, Mill calling Variety to place an ad, Mill talking to June again when she calls after hearing from the police, Mill calling her after being chased upon leaving the hotel where he met Civella and Oakley, Mill talking to her on the telephone when she returns his call, Mill talking to Susan Avery who invites him down to H.Q. to answer some questions, Mill talking to Levy on the phone when he sets up the pitch from Oakley when Levy's in his car, Mill talking to the postcard writer when he responds to the ad in Variety, again when he talks to Avery about his relationship with June Mercator, and then in a series of phone calls from page 111-114, when he calls Jan for his messages and then talks to Mellon who tells him Levison is out and then talks to Avery who asks him to come down to the station for a line-up and then calls back to talk to Mellon's office to inquire after the name of a good criminal lawyer, and then talks to the criminal lawyer, asking him to come down to the Pasadena Police HQ when Mill goes in for the line-up. Note how the phone conversations in the final cut are all more efficient and interesting, because the stakes are higher. In the final cut, there are four phone calls, and all of them are key in some way. The first one has him spying on June outside Kahane's house, the second has him talking to Levy on Levy's car phone while Oakley makes his pitch for Habeus Corpus, the third has Mellon tracking him down at the hideaway and has Mellon doing the work of four phone calls in the first draft--telling him Levison is out, telling him that the Pasadena Police want him for a line-up, has him telling Mill he's already arranged for a criminal lawyer to meet him at HQ.) The fourth, an echo of the second, has Mill hearing a pitch on his car phone for The Player.

EXT. KAHANE'S HOUSE

Mill and June pull up and go inside.

INT. KAHANE'S HOUSE

Mill and June talk. She tells him about herself, shows him her work. Both are flirtatious. Her work has an odd quality to it, all about Icelandic myth, she tells him. Then she begins taking his photograph with a Polaroid. Her art is not for sale, she says; it's just for herself. Mill tells her why he wanted to talk to David that night; he had an idea about his Japan script. It needed a new ending: Up, as opposed to down. Then she tells him she wants to paint him, as an Icelandic god. "He's a thief," she says. "Made of fire."
Note: The contrast between Mill and June, here: her work is not for sale; his is all about being for sale.

INT. MILL'S OFFICE - DAY

Detective Susan Avery, her assistant and Walter Stuckel are all waiting for Mill to come in. When he does, she begins asking him questions about that night in Pasadena. He pretends to cooperate, and after awhile Stuckel ends the interrogation.

INT. SCREENING ROOM - DAY

Mill, Levison, Levy and others are watching the screening of a film. In the middle of it, Jan comes in with a message from a Joe Gillis, who says he'll meet Mill that night at a hotel lounge. Mill asks if anyone knows who Joe Gillis is. Levison tells him, he's the writer who gets killed in Sunset Boulevard.

INT. HOTEL LOBBY - NIGHT

Mill comes in, meets Malcolm McDowell who upbraids him for talking behind his back.

INT. HOTEL LOUNGE - NIGHT

A writer/director named Oakley and an agent named Civella are talking to Andie McDowell. Mill comes in; Civella greets him, draws him into the conversation with the three of them. When McDowell leaves, Civella and Oakley try to pitch a story, but Mill begs off; he's meeting someone. He goes out to the pool to wait. We see, lurking in the lobby, the same watcher who showed up at Kahane's funeral.

EXT. HOTEL POOL - NIGHT

Mill sits waiting. Civella comes out, sits down and begins talking to Mill; at first, Mill thinks Civella is the postcard writer, but it turns out he's just being persistent in his attempt to make a pitch. Oakley joins them. Civella convinces Mill to listen, and Mill relents. Oakley pitches Habeas Corpus, a social commentary/thriller centered on the death penalty and justice gone awry. Oakley insists that, a.) there are to be no stars and, b.) that the woman must die in the end. No stars; no happy ending. Mill is intrigued; he tells them to make an appointment to see him tomorrow. In the midst of the pitch, a bellhop brings Mill a postcard: "I told you I'd meet you alone."

EXT. STREET OUTSIDE HOTEL - NIGHT

Mill gets in his car and drives off. His phone rings; it's a fax. "Look under your raincoat," it says. Mill picks up his raincoat. There's a box under it, marked, "Do not open until Christmas." Mill lifts the lid; it's a rattle snake, coiled and angry. Mill, frightened, drives crazily for a moment, narrowly avoiding accident after accident, before he pulls over. He gets out of the car, takes an umbrella out of the back and thrashes the snake, screaming, "You don't try to kill me! You don't try to kill me!" He drops the dead snake on the ground.
Note: This scene is superior to that in the first draft. For one, the presence of the snake seems much more ominous that does a routine chase scene as called for on page 65 in the first draft; the snake, being inside Mill's car, is far more intrusive. Second, the scene in the final cut becomes kind of a one-car chase, which is much more novel and interesting than the routine chase in the first draft. Also, it's appropriate, given Mill's challenge to confront his sense of identity.
Midpoint
Hague's Point of no Return
Vogler's Supreme Ordeal

INT. KAHANE'S HOUSE - NIGHT

June is working. Something draws her attention to her window. Mill is outside, looking in. He looks like hell. She lets him inside. He is distraught, unable to talk, making small talk only: "Is it too late? What time is it?" She tells him to sit down, she'll continue to work, he can talk when he's able. Finally he confesses that he came very close to dying that night and all he could think of was her. He confesses his voyeurism of the night of Kahane's killing. She asks him if he's making love to her. Yes, he is; yes, that's what he wants to do. She tells him it's too soon, isn't it? She tells him to go; call her tomorrow, invite her on a proper date.
Note: See how altering the confrontation from being over the telephone to being face to face increases the tension in the scene. Also note the symmetry, how this scene reflects Mill's first encounter with June, when he spied on her as he called from his cellular phone. Often, repetition is a means to establish growth or progress; perceiving that this scene echoes the first time Mill spoke with June, we have a convenient benchmark by which to judge just how stripped down he's become, how the journey he confronts affects him.

INT. MILL'S OFFICE - DAY

Mill is there with Oakley and Civella. Mill calls Levy on Levy's car phone and Oakley repeats his pitch of the night before, repeating his admonition: no stars, no happy ending. Mill tells Levy that Levison will love it, and the two agree to meet in Levison's office. After Civella and Oakley leave, Jan comes in. He tells her their idea won't work; they have no second act. But he'll swing it so that levy ends up shepherding the project. Both he and Levison will get burned, and Mill will step in to save the day.
Note: Notice how this scene is echoed later, at the end of the film, and note how the repetition again provides us with an opportunity to gauge Mill's progress.

INT. LEVISON'S OFFICE - DAY

Levy is making the pitch; it's obvious he has the form down, cold. His pitch is efficient. Levison says to go ahead and gives the project to Levy, despite Bonnie Sherow's objection that it was Mill's project to start with. Levison tells Mill he wants him to go to New York, read Tom Wolfe's new book, make a deal on it. Mill tells Levison to send Sherow. Sherow objects; Mill convinces her to go, promising her that it will land her a vice presidency; Levison agrees with Mill and tells Sherow to go to New York.
Note: Mill succeeds here in his ploy, setting up the inevitability of the ending: Although he initially feared Levy, his ability to con him into taking on the project of Habeus Corpus establishes his superiority over Levy, which is finally realized in Levy's deference to Mill at the end of the film. Also, note again Sherow's difficulty in navigating the tricky waters of studio politics here: She criticizes Levy for taking over Mill's project, which foreshadows her criticism at the end of the film. Also, her criticism of Levy demonstrates that she is at last an outsider where Mill is concerned; she does not know of his play: He took Jan into his confidence, but not Sherow.

INT. LOBBY OUTSIDE LEVISON'S OFFICE - DAY

Sherow catches Mill and asks him why he wants her to go to New York. He tells her he's just trying to help her career and asks if she's afraid of success. She asks him if he's trying to get rid of her; she asks him if he's seeing someone else. he looks her int he eye: There's no one else, he tells her.

EXT. GALA HOLLYWOOD CELEBRATION - NIGHT

A voiceover provided by that woman from Entertainment Tonight tells us (and presumably the television audience) that the gala tonight is in honor of the studio's giving prints of 25 of its classic films to the Los Angeles County Museum. We see star after star coming in, with the crowds cheering them and the photographers' flashes going off. Mill enters with June.

INT. GALA - NIGHT

Mill is seated at the table with others from his studio. Among the crowd, we see the watcher who's continuing to pay attention to Mill. Mill gets up and makes a speech filled with platitudes, about movies and the museum, and then sits back down. Under his plate, he finds another postcard. Putting it into his pocket, he invites June to dance.
Note: In the final cut, Mill does not directly encounter the watcher in this sequence as he does in the first draft. Also in the first draft, Mill learns that the person following him is a police detective. Note how the withholding of information serves to raise the stakes here, to give us another thread of suspense.

EXT. KAHANE'S HOUSE - NIGHT

A limousine pulls up. Mill and June are wrestling, in a joking way, in the back seat. The chauffeur opens the door for them, and the watcher's car pulls up, slightly down the block. Mill asks if he can come in, but June tells him, no, not yet. But soon. Mill invites her to Mexico for the weekend, and she accepts.

EXT. MILL'S HOUSE - DAY

The watcher pulls up at Mill's mailbox, opens it, finds it empty, and then drives up to the gate leading to Mill's driveway. He gets out and hides behind a stone post at the gate. Mill comes out, gets into his car, and starts to pull out of the drive when the watcher steps out from behind the post, showing a badge: Pasadena police. He invites Mill down to headquarters to look at some mugshots.
Note: The arrival of the watcher at Mill's house suggests to us a showdown of a kind. Altman and Tolkin, here, intend for us to assume that the watcher is the writer. Instead, they give us a twist, a bit of a surprise: It is, indeed, a showdown, but not the one we anticipated. In a script, the writer has to allow the audience to anticipate events--it's one of the roots of suspense--but the scriptwriter also has to surprise us. Generally, effective surprises occur when the scriptwriter delivers what he/she promised, but in a different fashion. The protagonist receives a message that he/she is to meet the killer, say, and the killer turns out to be his/her brother/sister/husband/wife. (Think about the way the writer uses the Jeanne Tripplehorn character in Basic Instinct, for example, or the Bonnie Bedelia character in Presumed Innocent.) Also, note how effective it is that Mill closes this chapter of the film--the thread of suspense regarding the identity of the watcher--by a direct confrontation.

INT. PASADENA POLICE STATION - DAY

It's a hellish place; men and women, dragged off by police, scream and yell. Mill comes in and sits down to look at the mugshots, but the cops just blather away about this and that. Avery asks Mill is he's ever seen a movie called freaks, and the watcher/detective begins repeating, in a monotone, "One of us. One of us." Avery and the other female detective begin a mild argument about tampons, and Mill becomes increasingly uncomfortable as he sits there. finally, they give him a book of mugshots. While he goes through them, Avery asks him about his relationship with June; are they sleeping together, she asks, in a crude fashion. Mill gets his hackles up and demands what right she has to ask that question. "This isn't Iran," he tells her, indignant, and makes a movie- speech about individual rights. It's impassioned, but they begin laughing uproariously.
Note: Mill is a fish out of water here: he goes to the wrong office at first. Second, the detectives laugh because he's making a Hollywood speech, which works in the movies, but not in Pasadena--and Avery is quick to point out that Mill is not in L.A. anymore, he's in Pasadena.

INT. MILL'S OFFICE - DAY

Walter Stuckel tells Mill it's time he got a lawyer. Mill tells Stuckel everything is all right. Two writers come in, asking for a long-term deal. In the middle of their spiel, Bonnie Sherow comes in. She got the Wolfe book. Mill congratulates her. She asks him if he took another woman to the gala the night before. He tells her he did. She asks him if he's going out of town with the woman. He tells her he is. She leaves, brokenhearted.
Note: See how the effectiveness of the scene increases because there are witnesses to Mill's humiliation of Sherow; also note how the scene was foreshadowed, when he publicly upbraided her for her reluctance to go to New York, following Levy's pitch of Habeus Corpus in Levison's office.
  • Field's Plot Point Two
  • Hague's Setback
  • Vogler's Return and Road Back

EXT. AIRPORT - DAY

Mill and June pull up and begin taking their things out of the back of his car. Mill spots the Pasadena detective, coming towards him with two uniformed police officers. He makes an excuse and suggests to June that they not go to Mexico but somewhere else instead.

EXT. DESERT - DAY

Mill's car drives along a desert highway, past a field of windmills.

EXT. DESERT - DAY

Mill's car drives along a desert highway, past an outcropping of rocks in the foreground. Coiled there, hissing, is a rattlesnake.

EXT. OASIS - DAY

Mill's car drives into the Oasis.

EXT. ENTRANCE TO HIDEAWAY - DAY

Mill is ushered through the gates by an attendant, who calls him Mr. M.

INT. HIDEAWAY DINING ROOM - NIGHT

Mill and June have dinner.

EXT. HIDEAWAY GROUNDS - NIGHT

A couple swims, nude, in a pool. Mill and June dance and then walk the grounds. He tells her why Kahane's script didn't work: it didn't have certain elements we look for: suspense, laughter, violence, hope, heart, nudity, sex and, most of all, a happy ending.
Note: Mill makes first one confession to June and then, in the subsequent scene, a second, more meaningful confession.

INT. BEDROOM AT HIDEAWAY - NIGHT

Mill and June make love. In the heat of their passion, he confesses that he was responsible for David's death. June tells him not to tell her that.

EXT. MUD BATHS AT HIDEAWAY - DAY

Mill and June lie in their baths, silent, June eyeing Mill in an odd way. A bellhop comes up and tells Mill that his lawyer is on the phone. Mill gets out of the bath.

INT. CABANA - DAY

Mill talks to Dick Mellon on the phone. INTERCUT:

EXT. TERRACE AT DICK MELLON'S HOME - DAY

Mellon tells Mill that Levison is out at the studio. Who's in, Mill wants to know; Levy? Mellon tells him it hasn't been settled yet. Mellon also tells Mill that he needs to be at Pasadena police headquarters in four hours for a line-up; he's arranged lawyer for him.
Note: Again, note how much more efficient this scene is, when compared with the scenes on pages 111-114 in the first draft of the script.

INT. PASADENA POLICE HEADQUARTERS CORRIDOR - DAY

Mill arrives and is greeted by Susan Avery and by a criminal lawyer, who explains that the police have a witness who thinks she can identify the killer.
  • Hague's Climax
  • Vogler's Resurrection
  • Walter's Big Gloom

INT. LINE-UP VIEWING ROOM - DAY

The room is crowded; Avery is there, as is Mill's criminal lawyer, and the witness and other detectives. We watch the line-up through the one-way glass, from the P.O.V. of those in the booth. As, one by one, the subjects in the lineup step forward, the witness pays particular interest to suspect number, 3, the detective/watcher. Although Avery tries, not so gently, to turn her attention to Mill, the witness insists that the detective is the one.
Note: Notice how the scene carries more suspense and more emotional weight from this perspective as opposed to that of the first draft, which has us in the lineup room with Mill, waiting, not knowing what's going on behind the glass. The argument between Avery and Mill's lawyer adds to this, as does the notable uncertainty of the witness. The scene is a long one--1:45.

EXT. PASADENA POLICE HEADQUARTERS - DAY

Mill and his lawyer come out. The lawyer tells Mill he's free, although Avery and the other detectives think he got away with murder. FADE OUT
  • Denoumente
  • Vogler's Return with the Elixer

FADE IN TITLE:
ONE YEAR LATER

FADE OUT

FADE IN:
INT. SCREENING ROOM - DAY

Levy, Oakley, Civella and Sherow are watching the ending of Habeas Corpus. It bears no resemblance to the pitch Oakley gave; the murder suspect is Julia Roberts and, just as the pellets drop in the gas chamber, Bruce Willis bursts in and blows out the glass of the gas chamber, rescuing Roberts. Everyone in the screening room applauds, save Sherow. She's livid; why'd they change the ending? The old ending tested poorly, Oakley tells her. Levy fires Sherow, but she tells him she's going over his head.
Note: Notice how the film that plays out on the screen uses the same concept the first draft called for all along--the D.A. rescuing his innocent lover, but notice how much more interesting and meaningful it is, given the original pitch-- that the D.A. fail in saving his lover, and that the film employ no stars. It's a final betrayal.

EXT. STUDIO LOT - DAY

Sherow striding, in a fury, across the lot. She stumbles, breaks the heel of her shoe.

INT. MILL'S OFFICE- DAY

Mill and Stuckel are playing with Mill's miniature basketball hoop.

INT. CELIA'S OFFICE - DAY

Sherow comes in, bumping into man leaving; she drops her paper son the ground and scrambles to pick them up. She looks dishevelled now. She has to see him, she tells Celia. At first Celia tells him, no, but then relents, and goes into Mill's office.

INT. MILL'S OFFICE - DAY

Mill tells Celia that he can't see Bonnie; he promised to get home early. He gets up and leaves.

INT. CELIA'S OFFICE - DAY

Bonnie pleads with Mill to save her job. She follows him outside.

EXT. STUDIO LOT - DAY

Mill tells Sherow he can't do anything for her. She'll land on her feet, he tells her. She collapses on the step, sitting there, weeping.
Note: Notice how this sequence turns another Hollywood cliche on it's ear: In a Doris Day film, for example, Doris would be late for a meeting with Rock Hudson (whom she doesn't yet know), and she'd have taken great pains to look her best-- maybe she wants a job, or maybe she wants him as a client, or something. On her way to see him, she'll fall, breaking a heel, messing her hair. Embarrassed, she'll stumble along, limping, only to come round a corner, bump into Hudson, and spill all her papers onto the floor. Flustered now, she'll try to pick them up, and drop them, and then drop them a second time. She's embarrassed, but Rock is bemused, charmed and then, finally, smitten because of her vulnerability. In a picture of that ilk, Hudson would be the studio exec; he'd see Sherow, weeping, holding her broken shoe, and have a change of heart: "How could I have been so foolish; you're the right one for me, Bonnie, you clean-cut American girl." Here, however, Sherow is not the one for Mill: Vulnerability has no place in this world.

EXT. STREET - DAY

Mill is in his car. The phone rings. It's Levy. He has a writer in his office with a pitch that he wants Mill to hear right away. The writer (sounding suspiciously like the eulogist at Kahane's funeral) asks Mill if he remembers him; it's the postcard writer. He pitches a story about a studio exec who gets threatening postcards and then kills the person he thinks if responsible, only it turns out to the be the wrong man. But, you know what? he gets away with it? Mill asks him if the writer can guarantee that ending. The writer tells him he can; they have a deal, Mill says.

EXT. GROUNDS OF MILL'S HOME - DAY

Mill puts into the drive and June, obviously pregnant, comes out to greet him. They embrace.
THE END
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