Script Example -- The Usual Suspects

How to make a film, using the opening of The Usual Suspects, and how not to make one, using some extracts from student scripts.

One of the best Making A Film seminars yet saw us study the script and film of the opening few minutes of The Usual Suspects, one of my favourite films of all time.

TUS -as I'll call it from now on-- was made on a shoestring budget. Since Bryan Singer went on to direct big budget X-men and other big budget films, I assumed it was a major release. It just goes to show that big budgets do not necessarily make better films.





A script is available here; it's worth noting that if a script is very, very close to the finished film, the chances are that it's actually been written after the film was shot. In the case of the date on this script, it's actually about 12 - 18 months prior to release date, and the script is a little more bare bones -- Keyser Soze doesn't appear in the script version of the opening scene.



What's striking about the opening sequence is the music clearly identifies the film's genre (thriller), and the judicious use of sound with the striking match, the fizz of the petrol catching and the stream of urine as Keyser Soze puts out the fire.


The opening five minutes provide a textbook example of providing an arresting opening, while the next five are an equally model example of pipe-filling, to use an industry term for setting a scene. In this case it's through a montage of action scenes.


But to contrast all of this this, we also looked at examples of badly written scripts, from detailed lists of camera shots (scripts aren't there to tell the director which shots to make but to outline action and dialogue), scripts littered with typos, to those written in past tense.

A great morning which makes we want to get hold of TUS and watch it again, leavened only by sadness at the loss of Pete Postlethwaite, whom I met briefly in a pub outside Chichester in 2000. I can't claim anything profound was said, but he seemed a genuinely nice, down-to-earth guy.