Burn After Reading is a rare example of a brilliant comedy with dark undertones which is why every screenwriter not only needs to watch it but also to read the script. Now that the DVD's out as well as the script, you can do both - and be sure to make notes. Why?
Because they've done it again. With Burn After Reading the Coen Brothers have taken another movie genre and exploded all the rules.
It's a spy thriller, set in Washington, with a wonderfully silly convoluted plot, where no-one knows how to behave like figures in an espionage movie. Everyone's going through a mega personal crisis, but with absolutely no idea of how to deal with it.
It's fast, funny, and full of dark undertones.As always, with the Coens, they offer some of the best examples available on how to write description - whether it's of place or of character.
AND STUDY THE SCRIPT
The script's out now, available here, and I urge you to read it. You can buy it here clicking on the images. Any script by the inventive screenwriters who are creating interesting screenplays today is worth studying. Burn After Reading offers some great insights into how to write intelligent comedy.
And look at the economy of the Coens' script using the fewest words to maximum effect, and learn valuable lessons in pacing.
This is a must-read for all screenwriters. Get the script above.
Wanting To Create An Outstanding Screenplay?
It will have to be outstanding to get a nod from an industry script reader. If you'd like to find out about my on-the-pulse new-style script coverage service
click here.
Writing Parts for the Actors
Ethan and Joel Coen are famous for refusing to be too serious when talking about their movies. They told a news conference at the Venice Film Festival in August where Burn After Reading opened the fest and was shown out of competition that they didn't know why they chose the spy genre.
Ethan Coen said: "It was an exercise in thinking about what kind of parts these actors might play - all their parts were written for them."
He was characteristically vague when answering questions.
"Um.. Don't know. We just said 'Let's do a spy movie'. I think mostly because we had never done one before.
Honestly, it could have been a dog movie or an outer space movie. We just kind of landed on a spy movie".
One of the funniest moments at the press conference was when a reporter asked: "Critics tend to divide your work into the light-hearted movies and the grim ones. Is this a division of your making?"[!]
Joel, with great restraint and diplomacy, answered after a very long pause:
"Um, we're sort of vaguely aware which ones are the comedies and which ones aren't, yes."
That's what I love about the Coens - the wit and the irony of their personalities that goes into their movies.
IT'S HERE! THE AMAZING SCREENWRITING VISUAL GRAMMAR GUIDE YOU CAN'T AFFORD TO MISS - AND IT'S FREE
SUBSCRIBE TO
Screenwriting They Can't Resist The Newsletter for Screenwriters Who Seriously Want to Succeed.And receive YOUR FREE UNIQUE GUIDE TO SCREENWRITING VISUAL GRAMMAR PLUS! As well as your free Visual Grammar Guide I'LL REVEAL THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOUR SCRIPT MUST HAVE (It's not what you may think!) Just fill in the form below and click on the subscribe button.
Screenwriters/Directors, Joel and Ethan Coen on the set of Burn After Reading. Mike Zoss Productions. Studio Canal. Working Title Films.
Burn After Reading The Trailer
So Brad Pitt plays a dumb, gum-chewing sports trainer, who takes sadistic pleasure in inflicting pain on his hapless clients, with an seemingly addictive relationship with his iPod.
"We have a long history of writing parts for idiotic characters", Joel Coen said at the press conference.
All the main parts were tailor-made for each actor. Brad Pitt joked:
"After reading the part they said was handwritten for myself, I was not sure if I should be flattered or insulted.. "I'm still a bit unsure."
In Burn After Reading 'Intelligence is Relative'
As the movie poster says, 'Intelligence is Relative.'
Brad Pitt has certainly shown himself willing to clad the famous body in garish lycra and behave like an idiot.
Brad Pitt as Chad Feldheimer. in Burn After Reading. Screenwriters/Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen Mike Zoss Productions. Studio Canal. Working Title Films.
George Clooney plays a paranoid hypochondriac federal marshal, for whom the word philanderer must have been invented.
George Clooney as Harry Pfarrer in Burn After Reading. Screenwriters/Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen Mike Zoss Productions. Studio Canal Working Title Films.
Playing one of the idiotic characters in the movie hasn't bothered George Clooney. This is his third film with the Coen Brothers, completing what he called his "trilogy of idiots" after O Brother, Where Art Thou? (for which he won a Golden Globe for best actor) and "Intolerable Cruelty."
At the Venice Burn After Reading conference he said:"I enjoyed working with them, he said of the Coen brothers, "and playing an idiot."
John Malkovich as Osbourne Cox in Burn After Reading. Screenwriters/Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen Mike Zoss Productions. Studio Canal. Working Title Films.
John Malkovich is a sacked CIA analyst, seriously neurotic.
Frances McDormand as Linda Litzker, and George Clooney in Burn After Reading. Screenwriters/Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen Mike Zoss Productions. Studio Canal. Working Title Films.
Frances McDormand (wife of Joel Coen), obsesses endlessly about her perceived physical defects and dreams of the body the plastic surgeon's knife can create.
It's a wicked satire on the modern female obsession with looks.The scenes where the plastic surgeon adds up how much it's going to cost the McDormand character to slice the "chicken fat" off her buttocks, upper arms, and belly, and augment her breasts is the kind of dark humor the Coen Brothers relish.
What the poor woman doesn't know, as she trawls internet dating sites is that her boss is mad about her.
Tilda Swinton plays Malkovich's stuck-up wife, who's having an affair with Clooney's character.
Tilda Swinton in Burn After Reading. Screenwriters/Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen Mike Zoss Productions. Studio Canal. Working Title Films.
So, another new twist on a movie genre. After the majestic solemnity of No Country For Old Men, the Coens have turned to a spoof spy thriller, where national security suit meets gormless lycra-clad gym trainer; marital adultery and betrayal are bedfellows to the cult of knife tucks and stuffing breasts with chemical polymers. And if its humour is a light touch, there's the dark underbelly which, as the Coens are increasingly coming to realise, is something the audience must be made to detect.
Joel and Ethan Coen seem to want to do more than play around with genre. Are they inventing new ones?
What do we call Burn After Reading?
Don't forget to sign up for the Screenwriting They Can't Resist Newsletter to receive your Free Screenwriting Visual Grammar eBook. Just fill in the form.
