The Toughtest Scene I Wrote: Screenwriter Chris Terrio on ?Argo ...

All hail Vulture for this:

Over the next few weeks, Vulture is talking to the screenwriters behind 2012?s most acclaimed movies about the scenes they found most difficult to crack. What pivotal sequences underwent the biggest transformations on their way from script to screen?

In this article, Argo screenwriter Chris Terrio reflects on a tricky scene:

One of the more common critiques of a screenplay one is likely to hear in Hollywood is that a script has ?too many men in rooms talking? (which always strikes me as bizarre, since roughly two thirds of The Godfather consists of men in rooms talking. Taken to heart, this note would have given us the tarantella and not ?I believe in America? as the opening of the greatest Hollywood film ever made). I knew before I even attempted to write what became Scene 58 of Argo?? a scene of nine men sitting in a conference room talking through various scenarios for a cover story to get Americans out of Iran ? that the scene would be more difficult to pull off than any of the more (ostensibly) complicated set pieces in the film.

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As I wrote and rewrote the scene, trying to get the tone right, I found myself returning to screenplays by writers like Chayefsky and Goldman, two masters who were writing at the time that Argo takes place (Goldman is, of course, still writing and still a master). In their films of the period, one line spoken by a man (or a woman) in a room could change the tone not only of a scene, but of an entire film. And these writers could do it without grandiloquence, but with precision, and often with spitballs ? shifting a conversation with an ironic barb that could render the boardroom of a television network or an editorial meeting at the Washington Post speechless. How would these guys write the scene?

I settled on the idea that Mendez would throw a spitball into the self-serious conversation by making a joke about giving the bicycle escapees Gatorade. (Which meant I had to determine whether Gatorade was on the market and a commonly recognized brand in December of 1979. I celebrated when I found a Time Magazine from the year before featuring a dehydrated athlete with a Village People?style mustache: ?Gatorade: When You?re Thirsty to Win.? So the Gatorade could stay.) Mendez would make his off-hand joke. The table would go silent. The attention of the room would shift to the court jester speaking truth to power.

Here is the scene from the script.

?Talking head scenes.? If you?re Chayefsky or Sorkin and you receive your dialogue from the gods, that?s one thing. But movies are primarily a visual medium. So the default mode should be show it, don?t say it.

However sometimes, you?ve got talking heads in a room. Then all bets are off. You have to do whatever you can to up the entertainment? even finding one line to spin the atmosphere and pivot the point of narrative attack like Terrio did in this scene.

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When these future Vulture articles appear, please email or Tweet me the links. They are not only outstanding learning opportunities, but also a way to uplift the role of screenwriters in the filmmaking process.

Source: http://gointothestory.blcklst.com/2012/12/the-toughtest-scene-i-wrote-screenwriter-chris-terrio-on-argo.html

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