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5 Screenplays You Need to Review, Now

By Jameson Brown · September 12, 2014

One of the best pieces of advice we can give you to better hone your screenwriting skills is read good screenplays. In fact, read bad screenplays. Read any screenplay you can get your hands on. Doing this will unknowingly train your brain on pacing, structure, formatting and dialogue exchange. Here are five screenplays that are genuine pieces of art, all for different reasons. 

 

5. Ravenous

Ted Griffin wrote this film as his “out of the box” feature that broke the mold, and it worked. It worked quite well actually. Ravenous may lack in certain areas, but where it has holes it more than makes up for them with originality. This is a great example of how to sit down and let creative storytelling takeover – do not be afraid of a story that seems “out there.” As long as you apply a backbone of a solid storyline, your story will be allowed to run free. I mean, Colqhoun sure did. 

More here.

 

4. Ordinary People

Ordinary People made the list because it’s an example of what happens when every aspect of filmmaking and storytelling come together as one. Redford’s meticulous direction paired with a well-worked adaptation from Sargent is what incubates the cast enough to a point where they delve into each role with precision. Robert Redford, though, is the nucleus of this film’s success. Good work, Red. 

Find it here, via IMSDB. 

 

3. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Originally supposed to be from the angle of Chief, OFOTCN is confined storytelling at its finest. Stories based in one environment like this are challenging in the aspect that dialogue takes more of a front seat, while still having to produce events that propel the story forward. How is this done? A genuinely unique cast of characters to fill the ward – with Ratched acting as the head of the snake. Not that any screenplay should favor one piece over another, but know that confined screenplays (and road screenplays) will heavily rely on strong, unique characters (many of them) with sharp dialogue exchanges. 

Find it here, via IMSDB.

 

2. Stand By Me

Now to switch to the road movie setting, Stand By Me follows (yes, you guessed it) four unique characters – all completely opposite of the other three – down a train track with one goal: find that dead body. What do they discover on the way? Themselves. Looking back, this strcuture is formulaic, but at the time it was not as basic as it has become now. With road films, make sure you plant multiple small oppositions throughout, leading to a final struggle that must be overcome to get to the final destination (that destination being either internal or external/tangible). 

Find transcript here, via Simply Scripts.

 

1. Magnolia

One of the most meticulously crafted screenplays, Magnolia is an expert level effort in storytelling. Pacing and structure sort of go out the window here as P.T. Anderson had the creative arm space to do whatever he wanted (including the poster design – boy, if only that could be done today). I would recommend reviewing this screenplay further down the road once you have gotten past level two. Due to the multiple storylines, characters and themes, it packs a compounded punch. 

Find it here, via IMSDB.