7/6/23
Newsletter #388
The Crack of Dawn
By the time I took my first filmmaking class in 1974, a modern, new approach had infiltrated film education. The idea was this: film is a visual medium therefore you shouldn’t say your idea, you should show it. That’s a perfectly reasonable way to look at a story as you’re writing a screenplay – is there a way to visually express this idea without flatly coming out and have a character just say it? And sometimes there is, and sometimes, most times, there isn’t. And like much good advice over the course of time, it got garbled and misinterpreted, and became bad advice.
Here's a great example of taking something verbal and making it visual. Akira Kurosawa was working his way up the ladder in the film industry in the 1930s and worked with a specific director-writer a number of times as an assistant director, and they became friends. Kurosawa confided to the director that he wanted to be a screenwriter, and he’d written a script, and would this director read it and give him advice? The director said yes, read the script and gave it back to him with notes in the margins. In the script a samurai comes into a town to find that everybody is looking horrified as they read a new edict from the shogun, posted on a wooden pole, that taxes are going up, or whatever. The samurai goes back to his village and tells them what he read, and they become upset. The director wrote in the margin that the samurai should read the edict, then instead of going home and telling the villagers what he read, he should just throw the pole and the edict on the ground at the villagers’ feet. We heard it once, we don’t need to hear it again, and throwing down the pole is an angry action that informs us of who the samurai is. It's great advice, and any time information can be conveyed like that is brilliant.
But somehow in this movement toward visualization, dialogue was downgraded to being inferior and second-class to visuals, so one needn’t pay as much attention to it as the visuals. Well, in almost all movies or TV shows, most of the drama is made up of people talking to each other – dialogue – and though perhaps you’d like it to be visual, it isn’t, it’s people talking to each other. Therefore, if most of what you’re watching (and listening to) is people talking, the dialogue is more important than the visuals, simply because there’s so much more of it.
The reason that the dialogue is better in older movies is because we used to live in a more literate word, where people say plays and read books. Nevertheless, everybody still loves good dialogue. If a movie or TV show is good, we remember and repeat the lines. “Do you feel lucky today, punk?” Well-delivered dialogue by good actors is the best goddamn thing in movies and TV shows, not the fucking visuals!
Here is a wonderful example from Martin Scorsese’s first hit movie, Mean Streets (1973). Scorsese has a bunch of striking visuals in the movie, and does some cool cinematic shit, but what you’re about to read is the best thing in the movie, and it is dialogue.
I say, there’s nothing better than great dialogue delivered by good actors. In this case it’s Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel at their youngest.
Near the end of Mean Streets, Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro), who is a supreme and total fuck-up, has borrowed thousands of dollars from the local mobster, Michael, who is leaning on Johnny Boy’s best buddy, Charlie (Harvey Keitel), to get Johnny to pay up. Charlie gives Johnny $35, sits him down in the bar, then goes and gets Michael so that Johnny can give Michael the $35 — as opposed to the multiple thousands he owes him — as a gesture of good will.
Michael: What's the story, John? I was here earlier tonight. You kept me waiting for an hour.
Johnny: Hey, I'm sorry, Mikey, but you know... ...I had somethin' to do. But I got somethin' for ya. Not much, but I got somethin' for ya. (He hands Michael a ten dollar bill.)
Michael: Where's the rest?
Charlie: Yeah, where's the rest?
Johnny: I bought a few rounds of drinks while I was waitin'. You know what I mean? Tony says my credit ain't no good no more.
Michael: You know $10 is enough of an insult. But I'd take it for Charlie here.
Michael crumbles up the ten dollar bill and throws it in Johnny’s face. Johnny picks it up, uncrumples it, then lights it on fire.
Johnny: You're really somethin', you know that? You too good for this $10, huh? It's a good $10. You know somethin', Mikey? You make me laugh, you know that? I borrow money all over this neighborhood... ...left and right, from everybody, and I never paid 'em back. So I can't borrow no money from nobody no more, right? Who does that leave me to borrow money from but you? I borrow money from you because you're the only jerk off around... ...that I could borrow money from without payin' back, right? 'Cause that's what you are... ...that's what I think of you, a jerk off. He's smilin' because you're a jerk off. You're a fuckin' jerk off. And I'll tell you somethin' else. Mikey, I fuck you right where you breathe... ...'cause I don't give two shits about you or nobody else. Easy! Come on, fuck-face! I got somethin' for ya, motherfucker! Come on. I'm a big shot. Come on, D.D., disappointed dunce-ski. Right, asshole! Come on.
Michael: You don't have the guts to use it.
Johnny: I don't, huh? I don't have the guts? Come on, asshole. Come over here. I'll put this up your ass! Hey, asshole, this is for you asshole. Fuckin' asshole.
Michael leaves. They take the gun from Johnny and find that it has no bullets.
I’m saying, in defiance of everything they’re teaching in every film school everywhere, dialogue is better than visuals. Great dialogue is more important than great visuals. Visuals are wonderful – sunsets are always beautiful – but dialogue is what it’s really all about.
Truly.
The dawn has broken. The day begins.