Over on the Screenwriter’s Network we’re discussing our favourite character introductions because, well, we’re screenwriter’s so I guess anything is preferable to actually doing some work and this almost feels constructive.

Except I can’t shake the feeling that when it comes to those hair on the back of the neck moments of cinema, screenwriters are rarely in the driving seat. As a writer director I have a foot in both camps though for sometime now my brother and I have been concentrating more on the writing and it was writing that first drew me into film; so it’s with no small pain above the heart that I come to this conclusion.

Screenwriters are a bit like mothers in that everyone insists on their importance but rarely take their advice. I’ve yet to meet a producer, a director or an actor who doesn’t bang on about how the first and most important thing is to have a great script and yet you rarely feel like the lack of this is ever actually holding up production. When the “Best Screenplay” category is announced I’m usually feeling like they’re being kind to some decent efforts rather than feeling terrified at the list of ruthlessly astonishing artworks all vying for top position.

Also, I can think of a great many films that I have enjoyed massively that have, if I’m honest, pretty awful screenplays, and I’m not just talking about Star Wars. Crucially for the current argument, when you start to break down those introduction moments, you find not the power of great screenwriting but the real power of great direction and great actors.

The example at hand is the introduction of Cameron Diaz in the film Mask. I have to fess up and admit that I’ve not seen the film in question because I fall within the 1% of the population who always found Jim Carrey physically repellant. A trip to see Cable Guy many years nearly ended a friendship and still sends a shudder of pure hate down my spine. (obviously I make exception for Man On The Moon where he is perfectly cast as the endlessly irritating Andy Kaufman).

In today’s bulletin Jon Rolls gamely suggests that “It was the camera-work, presumably based on the way the script was written that made Cameron’s character so memorable for me.”

Well, I’m a writer with the internet at my fingertips and a whole load of stuff I’m trying to avoid doing in advance of watching France fall gracelessly out of the World Cup so lets have a quick Google search for the script of Mask and see how her introduction kicks us on paper…

(full script here…)

INT. BANK – FOYER

A young woman scurries into the bank holding a newspaper over her
head. She’s soaking wet and pauses in the foyer to straighten
herself out.

Charlie immediately notices her…

CHARLIE
Hold the phone. Killer at three
o’clock.

Stanley follows his gaze.

STANLEY’S P.O.V.

CAMERA does a classic CHEESECAKE TILT-UP starting with the
woman’s million dollar legs as she squeezes some of the water out of her
skirt… up past her body, which through her damp summer clothes is
undeniable proof that there is a God… up… up… to her face as that
newspaper is tossed aside. She’s a heart-stopping woman/child with a
Cupid’s bow mouth and ice blue eyes. In other words she’s trouble.

Big trouble, also known as TINA CARLYLE.

Which, to be fair to Jon is a pretty good match for how it ended up…

(readers not on my blog will have to do their own google search for the opening of The Mask).

…though quite how this wretchedly derivative piece of trash flutters a heart beat I fail to comprehend. Is it just me or was that the first time they’d done that tracking move? Who knows, another couple of passes and you could get that quite smooth. Or I am being unfair? Is it just the unsympathetically juddering cut back to Carrey that makes this feel so cheap? Ghastly. (though respect to whoever edited this clip for the upload… “hmm, what a man’s talking, who cares cut it there…”)

At least what on the page reads as laboured juvenile over-excitement comes off on the screen merely as a crudely rendered retread of cinematic cliche with perhaps some slight reference to the Red Hot Riding Hood cartoon (I’m guessing here because The Mask was, as far as I can remember from the time, predicated on using CGI to improve Carrey’s naturally rubbery talents into a sort of live action Tex Avery homage).

The director may well have followed the written word but to ask for the “classic cheesecake tilt-up” is certainly not screenwriting at its best and to slavishly follow the command is definitely not inspired direction. Not that I’m saying Jon is wrong to remember this scene… only that since everything about it is entirely copied the only thing that can possibly be making this scene live on in his memory is that this is not just any cheesecake but Cameron Diaz cheesecake.

I don’t mean to turn this into an attack on Jon’s taste in cheesecake. I did want to show you some other clips of actresses similarly shot so you can see how important the performer is but apparently putting “sexy legs” into google is not such a clever idea unless you know how to delete your browser’s history (oh that’s right guy in the Window’s 7 Advert, it’s a “present for your wife” your buying when she’s out and your alone with the internet, that’s why you’re using private browsing isn’t it, because you’re buying a “present for your wife” with your free hand.)

Instead of that though lets take my own personal favourite moment possibly in the entire history of cinema. Harry Lime.

(Full script here)

CLOSE SHOT – MARTINS

at street corner, calling off CR to doorway.

MARTINS
What are you tailing me for?

LONA SHOT – DOORWAY

with kitten on step from Martins’ eye line.

MARTINS (O.S.)
Cat got your tongue?

MED. CLOSE SHOT – MARTINS

walking down stage RL, looking off R.

MARTINS
Come on out!

LONG SHOT – STREET

outside the doorway. Martins CL, calling across the street
toward it.

MARTINS
Come out – come out wherever you are!

CLOSE SHOT – KITTEN

in doorway, playing between Lime’s feet. Sound of a motor car.

MARTINS (O.S.)
Step out in the light, let’s have a
look at you.

LONG SHOT – WINDOW

from street below. Light goes on. A woman calls off from
inside the room.

WOMAN
Was ist den da los?

Music starts.

CLOSE SHOT – HARRY LIME

in the doorway, looking up, full face CL. The light from the
window falls onto his face.

WOMAN (O.S.)
Was bilden sie sich ein…

CLOSE SHOT – MARTINS

looking off CR, starts forward, reacting to glimpsing Harry
Lime.

WOMAN
…sind sie teppert. So.

CLOSE SHOT – LIME

looking off L.

WOMAN
Wie kommen sie…

CLOSE SHOT – MARTINS

looking off CR for Harry – transfixed.

WOMAN
…einen krowall zu machen!

LONG SHOT – WOMAN

at the open window, looking down off CR for the disturbers.

CLOSE SHOT – HARRY LIME

CAMERA TRACKS IN to CLOSEUP. He is looking off CL, smiling.

CLOSEUP – MARTINS

looking off R for Harry.

MARTINS
Harry!

CLOSE SHOT – LIME

looking off CL.

Now don’t get me wrong, this is a great screenplay. Granted all I can find online is this version which reads like a shooting script and is probably something subsequently annotated from the screen rather than anything that either Greene or Reed ever hammered out themselves. However it’s still worth a read because even in this format it is witty, bleak, sparse, humane and utterly gripping. Similarly Greene’s novella, which though subsequently published was written more as a treatment for Reed, may be a minor work by a great writer but it’s still a cracking little book. But in both cases the introduction of Harry doesn’t come close – cannot come close – to Orson Welles standing in that shaft of light, smiling that slight smug smirk…

I hear they’re remaking this and setting in Mexico, I guess to try and multiply the Wellesian references. Brave. Very brave…