Introduction to the script for His Girl Friday

This is an edited version of an article first published in the MWA's KIH (part 1 is here, part 2 is here).

First, what is a script? It is a specially formatted way of telling a story with a visual emphasis. For the "grammatical" rules of screenplay structure, see Christopher Riley's The Hollywood Standard, David Troltter's The Screenwriter's Bible (now in the 6th edition), or his Ask Dr. Format, or try to find a free source on the internet, such as Deemer's site. Here is a very simple example:

Example

INT. JONES ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, CLASSROOM - DAY


School is in session and dozens of STUDENTS, including JANE (7, female), are working at their desks. First grade teacher MRS SMITH (40) is looking over the shoulder of Jane who is drawing something.

MRS SMITH

That's lovely! What are you drawing?

JANE

I'm drawing God!

MRS SMITH

Oh but deary, no one knows what God looks like.

JANE

They will in a minute.

In the beginning...

Odd formatting aside, the child Jane is drawing a picture in Mrs Smith's classroom. Pretty clear isn't it? Yes, the formatting is funny at first, but simply put, the basic idea is to tell a compelling story in a visual medium, and the formatting is there to efficiently give the cast and crew necessary information on how the scenes should be set up and performed.

Suppose you are interested in learning about movie scripts. The way I look at it, reading and writing a movie script is, in the end, not much different than reading or writing a short story or a novel. You need (a) a compelling story and (b) some knowledge of the genre you are writing in. If you are really new to this, the format might look strange at first, but you'll get used to it. Writing the story down is the hardest part, and besides, there are lots of computer programs out there that will help format it for you as a script (for example, both Trelby and Celtx are free).

How to start? Scott Myers, a very experience teacher and screenwriter, whose blog Go Into The Story is one of the most popular screenwriting blogs on the planet, has a recommendation that he expresses succinctly as "1-2-7-14":

• Read 1 screenplay per week.
  
• Watch 2 movies per week.
  
• Write 7 pages per week.
  
• Work 14 hours per week prepping a story.
  

You all know how to write and prep, but how do you find scripts to read? You would be amazed how easy it is to find good scripts for free on the internet - just google "(movie name) script". For example, if you google "Casablanca script" you will find the script that the Writers Guild of America voted as the best script of all time. Sadly, not every script ever written is on the internet but there are plenty out there to learn from and enjoy. Check out dailyscript.com or imsdb.com and try to find your favorite movie or TV show there.

Homework: watch a movie!

Here is an assignment: pausing as necessary, watch a movie while reading the script! If you want to get started, here are two movie \& script suggestions:

1. 
   His Girl Friday, by Howard Hawks, starring Cary Grant and Rosiland Russell. The film in public domain in the US and can be watched online, or downloaded to your computer, and the script is available online as well . All free, no hassles with registration
   or anything like that.
   
   Logline from imdb.com:
   A newspaper editor uses every trick in the book to keep his ace reporter ex-wife from remarrying.
   
   

   
   

   caption: Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday (source: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HisgirlFriday.jpg)

   
   
Stanley Donen's Charade, starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Like HGF above, this film in public domain in the US and can be watched online, or downloaded to your computer, and the script is available online as well. All free. Logline from imdb.com: Romance and suspense in Paris, as a woman is pursued by several men who want a fortune her murdered husband had stolen. Who can she trust?



caption: Audrey Hepburn in Charade (source: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Charadehepburn.jpg)

Interesting story about Peter Stone's script: Apparently, he and Marc Behm had tried to sell a script to Hollywood executives, and failed. They gave up and Peter Stone rewrote the script as a novel and sold it to Redbook (a women's magazine which still is published today), where it was serialized. Someone in Hollywood who reads Redbook liked it. They bought the book rights, from which Peter Stone wrote the script!

Note the two "loglines'' above. A logline is essentially a very concise description of the story and plot. Lots more examples are given in the Script Lab's Logline Library.

His Girl Friday

His Girl Friday (1940), a film in the public domain whose script is also online. It is a screwball comedy directed by Howard Hawks, starring Cary Grant and Rosiland Russell. This is one of my favorite movies and the rest of this post will talk more about that film and its script.

His Girl Friday is based on the 1928 play The Front Page, by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (also made into several other movies). MacArthur won one Academy Award for writing (with Ben Hecht) and was nominated for two others. His brother is John D. MacArthur, co-founder of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the benefactor of the "genius awards". Ben Hecht, another widely admired writer, won two Academy Awards and was nominated for four others (all for writing).



FADE IN:

INT. ANTEROOM CLOSE SHOT SWITCHBOARD

Two telephone operators sit at switchboard busy plugging in and out answering calls.

1ST OPERATOR

This is the Morning Post... The City Room? Just a
moment, I'll connect you.

(plugs in call)

2ND OPERATOR

Morning Post... Sports Department? Just a moment --

(plugs in call)

CAMERA PULLS BACK to disclose the rest of the anteroom. To Camera left are the elevators ­at back wall directly behind switchboard are chairs and a table for visitors. Next to switchboard are stairs leading downward to the next floor. A waist­high iron grill with a gate in it separates the switchboard from the anteroom, a similar grill separating it again from the city room which stretches on beyond switchboard. At a table in the switchboard enclosure sits an office boy, about fifteen, doing a crossword puzzle. The big clock on the back wall shows that it is nearly one o'clock.

CLOSE SHOT OFFICE BOY

as he bends over paper. We catch a glimpse of the squares of a crossword puzzle.


Although the movie did not follow this verbatim, it is pretty close to what the first 20 seconds of the film. A few things are worth pointing out.

• First, notice the font. For reasons not entirely clear to me, two and only two fonts are "allowed" - Times Roman and Courier (12 pt). No bold, italics, etc. Richard Walter, who teaches screenwriting at UCLA, reads and comments on so many scripts that he has deveoped a system of notation for "script mistakes" to make his suggestions for improvement more efficient. When Walter reads a script which has a font error he writes nofx in the margin, meaning no word processor "effects". Only what the manual typewriter can do is considered standard.
  
• Second, notice the camera directions ("close shot", "camera pulls back"). This indicates that this script is a "shooting script". A shooting script is written after the original script is finalized and the film is moving into "pre-production." Basically, it gives the crew directions on what scenes to light and how the camera operator should get his shots. Please ignore these. Although the original script is preferable, we are lucky that any version of the script is available for this great film!
  
• Third, notice that the movie begins with motion and fast-paced dialog. Charles Lederer, the screenwriter who adapted the play into the film script, is known for his pioneering role in screw-ball comedies. When Walter reads a script which is not moving fast enough (in proportion to the time and money a potential audience member spends watching it), he writes $? in the margin ("is this part of your script worth the money?"). The nice thing about His Girl Friday is that it moves quickly starting at the beginning, all the way to the end.
  
• Fourth, I'd like to point out something that you might not have noticed. For each scene, there is generally a "slug line" or scene heading, such as
  
  
  INT. ANTEROOM CLOSE SHOT SWITCHBOARD
  
  (INT. means that the location is inside, "interior," as opposed to outside, or EXT.). This is generally followed by the "action lines" - a short scene description, which could include a description of any characters, at least those with a speaking part or some other important role, who first appear in that scene. For example,
  
  
  Two telephone OPERATORS sit at switchboard busy plugging in and out answering calls.
  
  However, in the version script we are looking at, the word "operators" is not in all upper case letters, as is typical for characters who first appear in that scene. I'm not sure why that is. (Maybe it was not the standard back in the 1940s or possibly the caps were left out in the shooting script?) In any case, after this first appearance, usually the character name does not appear in all caps again. However, this is not universal either for older scripts and some use caps for all characters. (For example, the online script by Peter Stone for Charade (1963), does this.)
  

These are some basic comments on the part of the Lederer script covering the first 20 seconds of the movie His Girl Friday. I hope this encourages you to watch the film, which you can view for free online.