Seeing the Story Seminar: Working the Script
For this exercise we were asked to find a script for a film that we hadn't seen or known very much about and read through the entire script twice. We were to then write various analyses on the what we had gathered from the film. I have chosen to read the script for Shallow Grave, directed by Danny Boyle. I chose this as it is a film that I have always heard of but never really known what it is about. However my primary reason for choosing this film is because I recently discovered it was directed by Danny Boyle, the same guy who directed Trainspotting, a film with a brilliant script and story, and also strongly themed on drugs and violence in the U.K, themes which I find very interesting; so am hoping for this film to roll somewhere in the same direction.
Tasks 1. Write an outline. (Present tense short story form concentrating on what the audience will see and hear. It also summarizes dialogue.)
The story begins with three friends/tenants interviewing potential candidates to live with them in the spare room of their upmarket Edinburgh flat. Alex (a journalist), Juliet (a doctor) and David (an accountant) are upper-middle class snobs and shun away all candidates based on first appearances.A conservation between Alex and a candidate:
ALEX Good. Well, you've seen the flat?
CAMERON Yes.
ALEX And you like it?
CAMERON Oh, yes, it's great.
ALEX Yes. It is, isn't it? We alllike it. And the room's nice too, don't you think?
CAMERON Yes.
ALEX Spacious, quiet, bright, well appointed, all that sort of stuff, all that crap.
CAMERON Well, yes.
ALEX So tell me, Cameron, what on earth -- just tell me, because I want to know -- what on earth could make you think that we would want to share a flat like this with someone like you?
They finally accept a man called Hugo to share the flat with them on the basis of being 'interesting'. (Elsewhere two thugs, Andy and Tim, violently assault and rob a man in the streets.)
The morning after Hugo moves into the flat, the three friends find him dead in his bed from drug overdose. They are about to call for emergency services when Alex finds a bag full of money in Hugo's room. Over the next few days the three contemplate whether to call the police about the body and risk losing the bag of money, or keeping the money and disposing of the body....they decide on the latter. They cut up and mangle the body beyond recognition and bury it in the forest; David who is least keen on the whole idea is opted to do everything. (Meanwhile Andy and Tim drowned a man in a bath during after interrogating him.) Alex and Juliet seem undeterred by what they have done, while David who cut up the body is obviously a little edgy. They hide the money in the attic for safety.
(Andy and Tim interrogate yet another man this time using a deep freezer).
The trio are at a charity ball enjoying themselves as if nothing has even happened although David seems a bit paranoid and more aggressive than before. The next day Alex and Juliet go on a stupendous shopping spree and record it using their new camcorder, David is angry about this and shows increasing paranoia. David is woken at night by a break-in in the downstairs flat, the women has been beaten badly.
David's paranoia begins to peak as he begins living in the attic and missing work to look after the money. The following evening the thugs,Andy and Tim, break into the flat, they tie up Alex and Juliet before smashing Alex's shin with a crowbar, they are looking for the money and Alex tells them its in the attic.Tim goes up to look for it but David is waiting in the darkness with a hammer.There is a thud and Andy goes up to investigate.Moments later the two dead bodies of Tim and Andy fall from the attic.Once again the three friends go into the forest to bury another two bodies.
Alex is on edge. Juliet buys a one-way plane ticket to Rio De Janeiro.David continues to spend his time in the attic guarding the money, his paranoia escalates further as he drills peepholes through the attic floor so he can spy on people in the flat. Alex and Juliet begin to get very worried about David's mental health and talk in the garden while David goes searching through their stuff. Two detectives, McCall and Mitchell turn up at the flat and question David about the break-in downstairs.
Alex decides to go up into the attic to speak to David while Juliet waits by the ladder.David is not there so Alex looks for the money while David has gripped Juliet forcefully by the head downstairs.When Alex gets down from the attic, David is there with his electric drill, he holds it to Alex's head while interrogating him about the police.He is suspicious that Alex and Juliet called them, he lets them go after mildly cutting Alex with the drill.
The three bodies in the forest are found and Alex is sent to cover the story by his newspaper.Meanwhile David and Juliet have a heart-to-heart.Alex is taken to the crime scene in the forest but can't handle it and runs away.Detective McCall notices this.
The next day the two detectives, McCall and Mitchell question each of the friends individually about the murder of Tim and Andy...their car had been found right outside the flat.The detectives know they have something to do with the bodies but can't prove anything yet. Alex awakes froma nightmare, Juliet is at the end of his bed, she informs him that her and David are an item and they plan to leave together.
David is awake late at night in the attic, he takes the money and gathers his passport and clothes etc.Meanwhile Alex is trying to telephone Detective McCall.Juliet is awake too and is planning to leave with David, though David had 'forgotten' to wake her.David informs Alex that they are leaving; everything is on good terms until it comes to light that Juliet has only bought a plane ticket for herself and is planning to run with the money.Alex tells David that he bought one too and was planning to leave with Juliet;feeling angry and betrayed David tries to leave on his own with the money, Juliet tries to stop him and is punched to the ground.A brutal fight breaks out between Alex and David and ends with David stabbing Alex through the chest pinning him to the floor, but before he can finish him off, he is stabbed in the throat by Juliet. Juliet takes the bag of money and plane ticket leaving them both to die. However Alex dies with a smile as it appears the bag Juliet has taken only contains scraps of newspaper while the money has been secretly stashed underneath the floorboards.
David lies dead in the morgue.A voiceover of David says:
"Oh, yes, I believe in friends, I believe we need them, but if, one day, you find you can't trust them any more, well, what then, what then?"
David's body is slid into a morgue slot.Darkness.
2. Write a premise. (Couple of sentences that will summarize the underpinning ideas regarding the film’s dramatic structure and development.
The main premise of the script for this film is story of three good friends and respectable members of society being driven to soulessly mutilate and dispose their dead flatmate's body in order to keep his bag containing a large amount of money . The money proves more trouble than its worth though as police and drug dealers close in on them, and as paranoia begins disintegrate their friendship.
3. Point of view. What belief or outlook does the story seek to express?
The story seeks to express the evil of money and overall to remember to never value money over your friends. This is shown from the beginning as Alex, David and Juliet being respectable citizens and the best of friends until the money comes into their lives. The three's friendship becomes increasingly distant and mistrusting of each other and they are forced to perform increasingly wrongful deeds, until they eventually end up alone and dead. It shows that money can destroy even the best of friendships; and in some cases, one's sanity.
Although the script is written from an audience point-of-view much of the story seems to be based around David's increasing paranoia over the money, the police and his friends. David who is originally the more sensitive of three is turned into a paranoid murdering lunatic throughout the story. He is the one who draws the short straw and is opted to mutilate the first body himself. He therefore feels more responsible for what they have done and becomes increasingly paranoid and aggressive which is one of the focal points for much of the story and creates the tension between the friends.Later in the story this is proven when he happily murders two people with no questions asked, this forces the story to escalate to a next level, and Alex and Juliet who after the first mutilation had carried on as completely happy and normal, now start to feel the paranoia and pressure.David is therefore responsible for the progression of the story which I feel makes him the primary character in the script.
4. Post a summation of your views on your online journal. Make intelligent reference to other work available by the writer. Whether that be other screenplays, novels, poetry, etc.
I actually quite enjoyed reading this script, was like reading a book in a tenth of the time, hearing a new story but a briefer version of it. I liked this script, it had a kind of black comedy feel to it...although a lot of the events are in reality quite disturbing, the script seemed to take a lighter approach to it. For instance the way the characters seemed completely unphased at discovering a dead body in their home is quite surreal. Although the story is obviously based around Alex, David and Juliet and their friendship, I would have liked to have had more character development and background story from other characters such as their dead flatmate Hugo and the two thugs Tim and Andy. However I generally found the main characters relationships compelling and the story and dialogue fairly interesting to read and to see how the story developed.
This was the writer John Hodge's debut film script before writing the screenplay for Trainspotting two years later. I can see a lot of similarities in style and context between the Shallow Grave script and the film Trainspotting, particularly the way in which the story is based around a group of friends who's true friendship is tested over money. Although in Trainspotting it is more apparent from the start that the friend's friendship wasn't made to last seeing that the three of them are thieving heroin users and one a violent psychopath, a lack of respect for each other is also apparent, however they are still 'mates'. But in the end given the chance of escape from the junkie way of life with a suitcase full of money, one of them betrays his friends and takes off.
I found that the use of violence in both stories was also quite similar, both being pretty brutal; Shallow Grave has a scene where two thugs repeatedly smash an innocent man's face into a cash machine in order to take his cash, while trainspotting shows one of the main characters glass a man in the face and kick his head in for spilling a pint on him.
However the two films are very different in the fact that Shallow Grave is written from a audience P.O.V. never really displaying the events from any singular characters point of view, where in Trainspotting the script is written from the main character,Renton's, controlling point of view, therefore the majority of action and shots are centred around him and from his perspective.
