Visual Diary. Entry 6

June 23, 2020

Everyone knows (and if they don’t, they should) that a screenplay is the foundation of a movie: you may have a good screenplay and still make a bad movie, but to make a good movie, you must have a good screenplay to begin with.

Not every script (and as a result) movie will have high concept premise, riveting plot, three-dimensional characters, set pieces, etc: that depends on the genre, budget, director’s vision and many other elements But every script must be properly formatted so that every department working on a movie will be able to do their jobs and have the same idea of what movie they are making.

This is an example of great screenwriting. Lester is being honest and nonchalant when he tells Colonel that he doesn’t care about his wife’s whereabouts or her unfaithfulness and he openly calls his marriage a charade and admits to being abnormal. Now, Colonel, a repressed and closeted homosexual himself, goes in for a kiss and gets rejected. Now, there are two plausible explanations as to why he then kills Lester. 1) He gets mad because of a rejection as he was in fact attracted to Lester, who he thinks is gay too but just not into him; and 2) He realized that Lester’s not gay, and that his ‘secret’ is now out, and he could not allow anyone else to find out about it. By the end of the movie, Lester made such an amazing character arc by taking control of his destiny and actually enjoying himself. And yet, his life is ended abruptly because some psychologically deeply scared Colonel got confused many times over.