I consider screenwriting in itself to be an obscure art form. When I tell people that I'm a screenwriting major, or that I write movie scripts, most (if not involved in the film business) will look at me like I'm crazy. Isn't the dialogue concocted from the actors? You wouldn't believe how many times I've been faced with that question. And don't even get me started on the director being the "auteur" of the film. Where would they be without a script? No story to work from, no characters to make come to life, no visual construction of the scene? They'd be nowhere. No, it's the screenwriter who makes the movie in its purest form, the screenwriter who makes the characters come to life, the SCREENWRITER as auteur. But that doesn't mean we are exclusive. Some do both writing and directing.
I've seen a lot of movies. There are a lot of good ones out there, in case you haven't noticed. But the one that still continues to blow my mind is Disney/Pixar's Wall-E. A story is told about the life of a small trash-collecting robot who goes on an adventure to save the fate of mankind while chasing the love of his life. It's complex, moving, brings you to laughter and tears and yet there is almost no dialogue between the two main characters: Wall-E and Eve. They communicate through emotive beeping, sometimes saying each other's name in a tonally different way each time, and the audience gets it. Their behavior in each scene is what defines them, and to me, that's screenwriting at it's best.
One of the many rules of screenwriting is "show, don't tell". Dialogue is not like any natural conversation that wanders about from topic to topic; no, it moves the story forward. It should be sparse. Character should develop from not what they say, but what they do. It is said that you should be able to turn the volume off of a movie and still be able to understand what's going on. That's all action-based. So being the innovative company that Pixar is, talking about their introduction of 3-D animation to the feature film world, they decided that they could do away with dialogue and still produce a heartwarming film. The credit, I feel, goes to Andrew Stanton, who is credited with the original story and screenplay of Wall-E.
This name may or may not ring a bell for you. But if I were to mention the other movies he's done: Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., A Bug's Life, and Toy Story, you'd probably recognize them all. As the second animator hired at Pixar, he's been around since 1990. I love all of these films, don't get me wrong, but there's something about Wall-E that transcends them all. The secret, I believe, lies in the script. When you read it, it's pure poetry. Every detail is so exact that you feel like you're right alongside Wall-E, the structure is sparse but effective, like pure poetry in action. To quote Mr. Stanton in an interview about his recent slew of six Academy Award nominations:
"But it was actually harder to write 'cause screenplays are all about structure, and dialogue is usually there to support the structure. So here we had just structure. I worked really hard on that screenplay so it was really a huge boost to have that acknowledged."
And it shows. I don't often cry at movies, but the climax of this movie is so effective that even after watching it three times, it still gets me.
(note: it's around 2:12 in the video)
The filmmakers at Pixar are doing something right. I hope that Wall-E gets all of its nominated awards, but especially the one for Best Original Screenplay. Andrew Stanton deserves it.
