Based off a comment by Aline Brosh McKenna in Scriptnotes Episode 60, I decided to read the screenplay for True Grit. Written by Joel and Ethan Coen, it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Although there are close to seventy years separating this script from the last one I read, Mr Smith Goes to Washington, this one is also bereft of slug lines. There are secondary headers, but no formal INT. LOCATION – DAY slugs.
The writing is very spare. Economical.
But it doesn’t need more detail. Reading it, it doesn’t feel like anything’s missing. It doesn’t need it. It doesn’t want it. Each sentence has a job to do, and does it succinctly. In fact, it is difficult to imagine it being written in a more prosy manner.
This is a principle I need to ensure I follow in my own writing. Cut, cut, cut. Every word must be essential.
This is not to say that understandability is sacrificed. At no point is the narrative clouded or hard to follow. In fact, by tightening the writing, it sharpens the focus, ensuring the narrative’s forward drive is maintained, making it easier to track through the story.
Another aspect of note was how each of the main characters had a pay off. The main character, Mattie Ross, was rightly the one to ensure that justice was brought to bear. Her pay off is the main outcome of the movie.
But the two supporting characters, Rooster Cogburn and Leboeuf, also have pay offs, albeit not overshadowing Mattie’s pay off.
In my own scripts, I need to make sure that it is not just the protagonist that arcs and has a pay off, but major supporting characters should arc and have a pay off. At the very least, they should have the opportunity to arc, even if their choice is not to learn the lesson.
Lastly, there is some great dialogue. Most of the conversations are short and sharp. There are only a few longer monologues. Some of them seemed to exist mainly to bring out some back-story, rather than drive the narrative forward, but they did help us understand more about the characters.
There were some very funny lines, and they were particularly funny given the serious tone of the script. The lines weren’t comedy lines, but in the context they were quite scathing, and the humour derived from that.
If you are looking for a script to read, it is well worth the short time it will take to read the modern version of True Grit.