When it comes to creativity, I scoff at formal training. Instead I think the best way for me to get good at writing scripts is simply by reading them. Come along as I embark on my script reading journey, beginning here with the classic rom-com “When Harry Met Sally.” Perhaps I’ll make this into a series – we’ll see. Plus, I throw in a couple of detour stories about the time I trained to be a Bible study leader and why I’m reducing my social media intake. Finally, I’ll end with some of my favorite lines from the script and explain why I like them so much. Disparate as some of this may seem, it all ties back together…or so I think. You be the judge.
Unlike books, I can read a script in one sitting. Of course one sitting for me might be hours on end, but at least it’s not days, weeks, or dare I say it, even the months that it takes me to read a book depending on how long it is. So I’m kinda excited about that, because it means I just may be able to pull off one script a week.
When it comes to creativity or even curiosity, I’ve never been a fan of formal training – that is insofar as the formal training isn’t necessary (did I really just say insofar as?). Like if I wanted to play the guitar or the piano, formal training, for me, would be necessary. Even then, after I learned the basics, I would compose stuff the way I wanted – no need to follow rules. I mean who established these rules anyway?
I began writing a script for the first time towards the end of 2017. I was applying for a screenwriting program that required one, but I didn’t have any. I checked out a bunch of screenwriting how-to books from the library to help me out, but they were so bogged down with minutiae, I didn’t feel creative trying to follow those rules. All those books were saying how you have to write in a three-act structure, and they were being very technical about teaching me how to do so. That was enough to make me ditch the how-to books for simply reading scripts.
One that was most influential to me at that time was the script for “Thelma and Louise” by first-time screenwriter Callie Khouri. I had never seen that movie before I read the script. After I watched it, I felt like I’d seen it for a second time – that’s how clean and crisp her script was. I’ve read other scripts after seeing the movie and was confused by how different they were from what finally made it on screen, but not with Callie’s script. The movie was damn near a live-action carbon copy of Callie’s words. I did a little research on her afterward and I believe she was self-taught. Don’t quote me though, it’s been a minute. But yeah, she got the Oscar for that script – well deserved.
At the same time, I have to be careful with relying on creating my own inspiration by reading scripts solely. I don’t want to get so caught up in myself that I’m not open to someone else’s perspective.
That reminds me of the time I was in college and took a short training to become a Bible study leader. I wasn’t picked, by the way, which hit me pretty hard because damn near everyone else, if not everyone else, was picked except me, and I really, really wanted to do it.
Let me tell you the story right quick.
Bible Study Leader Story
While I didn’t go to church regularly growing up, I went to Christian school, where, in addition to mandatory Bible classes, we also had mandatory weekly chapel, which was essentially a church service during school hours. Around my junior year in high school, I started studying the Bible on my own a lot. By the time I was a sophomore in college, when I went for the Bible Study leader position, I was pretty confident about my ability to hear from God and interpret scripture in a way that I could make it make sense to others.
When I got to college, one of the first things I did was join a Christian club. This Christian club held weekly Bible studies on campus, including several in the dorms. I attended one in the dorms and wanted to lead one as well. In order to become a Bible study leader, you had to go through training. As a part of the training, I was given a passage of the Bible to study and then facilitate a discussion in a small group which would be evaluated by the person who could okay me to be a Bible study leader. This wasn’t a paid position. It was just a position you could hold as a member of the club. The person who could okay me was paid, though. She was not a student. She was an employee of the club.
The passage I got was the one where Jesus takes two fish and five loaves of bread and feeds five thousand men, not to mention the women and children. I had studied that passage so many times in school as well as on my own in addition to hearing it preached (by this time, I was a regular viewer of preacher’s like T.D. Jakes and Joyce Meyer on Christian TV), that I was so confident in my ability to deliver a powerful message. But not only that, I couldn’t wait to show off my scripture-interpretation skills. I couldn’t wait to get the proverbial pats on the back for the way I would be able to elucidate that passage in a way they had never seen before.
And behold, I did just that. The people in my small group were amazed. They loved my study. They had such good things to say including the one that I’d hoped for – that I was able to make them see the passage in a new light. It was a slam dunk. Surely, I was going to be one of the new Bible study leaders. But alas, a week or so later, when it was time for the big reveal, I was told I didn’t make the cut. I can’t quite remember why. I think they gave some bullshit reason like I was too young. But I think perhaps the real reason was that I was too good. People often don’t like it when somebody younger than them is better at something than they are. Not to mention I was also the only black person in that training crop. Sure I may have been a little full of myself, but these people weren’t perfect either. Ultimately, that was a great lesson about dealing with Christian people – a lesson in not being surprised when they act in a way that’s not very Christian-like. I stayed in that Christian club for the entirety of my time on campus, but I never tried out for the Bible study leader position again. I didn’t think they deserved me.
But that’s not the point I wanted to make with this story. I have the tendency to go off on little tangents. The point I’m trying to make with this story is…well, let me expand on the story. There was another girl, an older girl, and by older I mean 24 – I was 18 at the time – who was given the same passage to use to lead a Bible study. Interestingly enough, her interpretation was completely different from mine, and here I was thinking I had the meaning of that passage on lock. Secretly I thought there’s no way her study could be better than mine. After all, I had heard directly from God (not audibly, but a knowing in my spirit) after years of intense prayer and study that began way before I ever knew these people existed. And there she was giving an interpretation that had never even entered my mind.
Funny thing is, even though this girl was a believer, she also had her doubts. She was a baby Christian. I, on the other hand, was already saved, sanctified, washed in the blood sold out for Jesus. And yet she was able to deliver a study that was just as powerful as mine. In fact, all these years later and I don’t even remember my interpretation of that scripture – I’m sure I could probably find it in one of my old notebooks that I kept from back then – but I still remember hers. The jest of it was to use your resources. It was so simple. So practical. And coincidentally – or maybe not so much – quite apropos to where I am in my life right now.
So, I said all that to say, it’s important to get other people’s perspectives as well. God speaks to us in different ways. And life speaks to us in different ways. I guess you just have to balance that with knowing that just because someone else has a good idea doesn’t mean that yours can’t be good as well and vice versa. I don’t want to fool myself into thinking that I can’t learn from others. When it comes to creativity, I just don’t want to learn in a formal setting.
Limiting Social Media
The other night I turned the TV on and did something I hadn’t done in I don’t know how long. I flipped through the channels to see what was on, then stopped at something at random and enjoyed it. I love the idea of being introduced to something new. I miss the idea of it. That’s how I discovered the movie “Crossing Delancy,” which I came to adore. I was flipping through the channels, saw one of the girls from the movie “Carrie” and was just interested in seeing her play a different character, so I stopped and watched the movie. I found the dialogue to be so unpredictable in that movie…like in a good way – it wasn’t cliché. How I expected the characters to respond to something that was said was, at times, totally different in this movie then what I was used to. It was so refreshing.
Just seeing what’s on TV, or keeping it on the same channel after something I was interested in went off, is how I started watching shows like “Perfect Strangers,” and “Step by Step.” It’s how I came to watch the movie, “Point of no Return” which ended up being one of my favorites. These are shows and movies I would have never sought out on my own had I not haphazardly come across them the way I did. And that’s, I think, the danger of the algorithm and the way social media is set up, where it just gives you more of what you’ve searched for and rarely introduces you to something different. Sometimes I want something different. So I stopped scrolling on Instagram to get reintroduced to my imagination and see where my mind can wander on its own.
On top of that, when it comes to Instagram, I must admit, I’m kinda sick of seeing a bunch of regular people, who’ve now become experts since they have a platform and followers, giving me advice. Not that I’m judging those people. I’m a social media follower of some of those people. I regularly take in their advice. Furthermore, I don’t even believe you need to be a so-called expert to give good advice. But at the same time I also want to be influenced by happenstance. I want to be influenced by regular ole life – I believe it’s the best teacher.
That’s not to say that I’m completely eliminating my Instagram and YouTube time. I’m just significantly reducing it. No more scrolling for hours. Besides, I think my attention span has been significantly reduced because of it. Even when I’m on Instagram, if people don’t get to the point fast enough, I scroll away. I feel like that impatience has seeped into my writing time making it harder for me to concentrate. If I can’t think of something to write fast enough, my mind wanders, I get bored, I want something else to do. No, I need to slow it down, get back on track. So I’ll see what this does.
When Harry Met Sally
That is why I’m teaching myself how to write scripts. I’m finding them on the internet, reading them then watching the movie, or watching the movie then reading the script. First up is the romantic-comedy said to have changed the game – “When Harry Met Sally.” I really like this romantic-comedy. I feel like I’ve been saying that a lot lately, but it’s true. I like this movie for the simplicity of it. There is no huge plot twist, no heart-wrenching drama, or overarching climax. It’s really just a series of conversations with friends and lovers.
Even though I’ve seen it several times, it’s been years since I’ve seen it last, so it was interesting recreating the scenes in my mind. I believe the script that I discovered was the shooting script, not the original script that was used before they started filming because it already has the current ending. I was watching a clip of Rob Reiner, the director, on The Drew Barrymore Show stating that originally (spoiler alert) Harry and Sally didn’t end up together, but that he met his wife during the filming of the movie and changed the ending after that.
He also mentioned that Billy Crystal, who plays Harry, added several lines, like that famous line he says to Sally at the New Year’s Eve party, and that famous line the older woman in the diner says, “I’ll have what she’s having” after Sally fakes an orgasm at a table nearby. It would be interesting to compare the original script to this one, but I was happy just to have something to read.
Reading this script made me feel really good about my script – the one script that I’ve completed, but am still feverishly tweaking. It’s helping me to realize that my script isn’t so bad after all, and that maybe all this tweaking is a moot effort. There is only so much I can do at this stage. It’s just a testament to how much a movie is truly a collaborative effort. And that unlike a novel, all the feels you get when you see the movie don’t come from the writing alone. Unlike a novel, a script really needs actors and all the other players to make the story come alive.
So I think reading these scripts will be really good for me. I think it will help make it easier for me to eventually let the ones that I’m writing go.
Favorite Lines from the ‘When Harry Met Sally’ Script
Much like my Movie Scenes that I Love series, where I highlight a scene from a movie that stood out to me in some way, I came across some lines in this script that I particularly enjoyed. I thought they cleverly made a subtle statement.
I don’t remember if these lines made it into the movie, but reading them gave me something to write about.
The first one came from Harry talking to his friend Jess about his wife leaving him. Here it is:
As someone who is perpetually single, one of the things that gives me some comfort about my singledom is how fucked up so many marriages, if not most marriages are. In all my 46 years of living, I have never seen a happy marriage. And that’s not to say that I don’t believe marriage can work, because I do. I even belief in love at first sight. I just think that good marriages are rare – rarer than even the divorce rate indicates. My only reference of a good marriage would be the stuff that I see on TV and in movies. I’ve only seen marriages that are either bad or ones I haven’t observed enough to form an opinion on.
People talk about marriage and treat marriage as if the marriage itself is the prize. But I don’t believe that marriage is the prize. I think the prize is finding someone who loves you and who you love in return. But wait, ‘cause it doesn’t stop there: that love then has to manifest itself in the way they treat each other. It’s not just about two people who are attracted to each other, or tolerate each other. It’s about love like it’s spelled out in Corinthians chapter 11…or is it 13? Read your whole Bible, you’ll find it.
Unfortunately, that type of love is not a prerequisite for marriage. People get married for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with love – social pressure, familial pressure, they’re getting older, they’re settling, they want to have someone to come home to, tax breaks, they want to move up in their career, on and on and on. I may be single and unmarried, but there’s an awful lot of single married people out there too.
So that’s why I was taken by these lines from Harry, particularly the last one where he’s recounting his wife telling him, “I don’t know if I’ve ever loved you.” It was a true example of art reflecting the charade that so many marriages are.
Then, as a read down a little further, I came across these lines from Sally:
What really stood out to me about her lines came towards the end where she talks about spending time with her friend’s little girl, and the little girl spotted what she called a family. Also how she tells her boyfriend that they never just up and go to Rome.
I found this to be particularly poignant because it alludes to the lie some of us childless singles tell ourselves about being unmarried and/or without kids. It’s a status that some singles pump up for the said freedom you have to do what you want when you want without having to consider the wants or needs of others like a husband and/or kids, when in reality, for many, the absence of these people can be devastating. It’s like that Kanye West song says, “On that independent shit. Trade it all for a husband and some kids.”
As much as I can appreciate not being in a sham marriage and don’t mind doing things alone like eating out or traveling, I have to also admit that, while doing those things, there is always a moment, or a few, where I think it would be nice if someone else was there with me.
I remember the time when I was staying at a hotel, enjoying a relaxing night swim, when suddenly, a dad and his young brat, who had escaped the chaos of the family pool, invaded the serenity of the adults only pool – the younger of the two doing cannonballs, much to his father’s delight, into the calm water. I had the mind to go tell on them – yeah, I’m that chick – but no need, the pool staff was on it. They kicked the petulant pair out, despite the father’s protest. While I took pleasure in watching them go, as father and son walked back to the crowded family pool, just a short distance away, I couldn’t help but think that it might be nice if I were the one heading over there with my precious progeny to float on one of those giant blow-up cheerios, watching whatever kiddie movie they were playing.
The freedom of singleness is often touted by singles. But freedom is relative. It just depends on what type of free you want to be.
So yeah, I love that these lines from Harry and Sally touched on these perspectives of marriage and singleness, even if in an elusive way.
In the meantime I’ll be plotting my next solo trip. I mean, I currently can’t afford it, but a girl can dream. Right now I have my sights set on Detroit, London…perhaps a stop in Belgium, for waffles.
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