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Slumdog Millionaire.
Unique Insights into How Simon Beaufoy Wrote
The Screenplay
The script for Slumdog Millionaire is a case study of great screenwriting. Danny Boyle's direction is superb, but with this movie, you have to give equal credit to Simon Beaufoy. And one of the most valuable things to know about the making of the screenplay is how Beaufoy went about the task.
So how did he go about writing the screenplay?
READ Beaufoy's SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE SCRIPT
AVAILABLE HERE
It's a script worth getting because you'll want to keep it on your desk for reference - and inspiration.
Just by studying one scene you can see how Slumdog Millionaire screenwriter Simon Beaufoy layers the script elements into a deeply meaningful whole. For unique insights into the working of a brilliant screenwriter, read on.
Although the movie is adapted from Virus Swarup's novel, Q&A, and uses the game show and other elements from it, it's a very loose adapatation. Beaufoy built a love story around the game show plot.
Beaufoy Talks About His Inspiration for
Slumdog MillionaireBeaufoy was sure that the theme had to be bigger than a slum kid striking it rich. He has talked of how he went to Mumbai and found it a very passionate and romantic place. "And I suddenly understood those Bollywood films -- the singing and the dancing and the romance - and I thought, that's it, it's got to be a love story. That's what will override this money thing. I just didn't want to write a story about a guy getting rich, and I knew that was it."And Beaufoy made the love story work brilliantly. Let's join Beaufoy in his preparation for writing the script. He's spending months hanging out in Mumbai, soaking up the sights, smells, sounds, talking to people, listening to their stories, watching how people go about their everyday lives. Colour and vibrancy, hardship and an indomitable will. Seeing how the slum kids survive on their quick wits, exhuberance and mischievous tricks. You can see from the finished movie, that all this would be translated into the exciting dynamics of the script and enhancement by the direction, the editing, the score, and ultimately result in the incredible on-the-pulse experience of the filmgoer.
Writing A Screenplay or Written One?
If a script's going to inspire screenwriters to sharpen up their screenplays, Simon Beaufoy's will.If you're ready for some really practical help with your script, you might want to consider a screenplay coverage report. For more details about me and the kind of script assessment I offer, please click on the links.
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Researching The Setting for
Slumdog Millionaire
Beaufoy sees appalling scenes of poverty, but also people interacting with kindnesses, sharing jokes, laughing. The air is charged with some unease by the strained relations between Hindu and Muslim.
This is where the film will be set. From here, this is where characters will be developed, and the movie's story evolve.
Anatomy Of A Scene From Slumdog
Millionaire Screenwriting
Then Beaufoy comes across something that he knows he must write about in the script. On piers, a row of latrines in the vast slums where people pick through mountains of rubbish to find scraps they can use or sell, is right next to a private airport. As you sit and shit straight into a hole in the ground, you can watch the planes carrying the wealthy and the rich movie star celebrities, landing.
Look how research into your film's setting can provoke brilliant ideas for the script. Here's Simon Beaufoy on the genesis of the scene that has audiences falling in love with the movie: "Those piers are in the Juhu slum. They're big, long piers with wooden shitters at the end, which are open, and you can sit there and watch the film stars landing at the private airstrip - a grandstand view! I thought I really had to write that in. The scenes just come at you like a train in a place like that." And that became the marvellous scene where the boy Jamal, sitting on the latrine, looks up and sees the plane that his movie star hero is on. And now see how this prompted Beaufoy to give it so many layers of meaning. How?
VISUAL GRAMMAR
He took that physical relationship between airport and slum to show poverty and riches existing side by side.
By superb use of visual grammar - Beaufoy's script shows all the hallmarks of a writer who has steeped himself in the atmosphere and mood of the film's setting. Slumdog Millionaire is a masterful lesson in cinematic storytelling.
CHARACTER
By showing not only the slum boy's hero-worship of a super-rich star, but Jamal's character - he's determined to get the star's autograph, and he's willing to do whatever it takes to get it.This prepares us for his story as a slum kid who's going to succeed against all odds.
And this is reinforced by one of the funniest, albeit disgusting scenes in the film. Beaufoy gets Jamal's brother to lock him in the latrine so there's only one way he can get the autograph of his hero - by diving into the cesspit to emerge jubiliantly covered from head to toe in shit.
But there are more deep signifiances in this short scene - and it's only just over 5 minutes long.
Moral Questions As Entertainment
Jamal's brother is shown to be tougher and we get the first glimpse here of the less-moral character that he will develop as the film progresses. We'll remember this moment when he mischievously tricked his brother, much later in the film when things turn tragic.
And just look at the use of contrast. We want to cheer when Jamal gets his autograph. But then his brother steals it to selland we want to boo.
For me, the triumph of Beaufoy's script and Boyle's execution of it is that Slumdog Millionaire sets up moral questions with such subtlety by enetertaining us first, getting us to think next.
This is the true mark of a great movie.
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