Blog 5: McKee vs Weston!

First off, I’ll say that Sex Lies, and Videotape is a perfect script for analyzing beats and values because it’s so dialogue heavy, definitely more so than any script we’re read so far. The action is sparse and the story is told through what the actor’s are saying.

I went ahead and re-read McKee’s Casablanca analysis, then I tried Weston’s way of doing it. McKee’s is a lot more black and white, and he has definite structure to it, much like his idea of how screenplays should be. McKee is a fast, simple approach of picking an opening and closing value, and separating it into beats. This works well for someone who has to analyze many scripts, trying to get to the point of the scene as fast as he can to understand why it’s in the script.

The conflict of the scene is the subtle subtext between Graham and John, with Ann caught in the middle. The value of the scene is definitely pride or accomplishment, from the men’s point of view. These guys haven’t seen each other in nine years, and they are trying to see how each of them has turned out over time. They both stress about where they are right now in life, and they are putting up fronts about how happy they are, and each man is pretending to be better than the other. Like Weston says, at the end of the scene, both men feel like they have won, with Graham’s lawyer joke, and John’s way of getting everyone out of the house so he can meet Cynthia there.

I agree with Weston when she says there are five beats in the scene. I’d possibly make it six beats, separating the apartment hunt and the lawyers and taxes talk.

Speaking of Weston, her approach is a more easy and flowery interpretation of the scene than McKee. She asks the analyzer to ask a lot of questions about what they just read about your ideas, images you associate with, choices, and the overall view of the scene. I believe this analysis works best for the screenwriter himself, who has to look at a random scene of his critically to see why it is in his story and what the characters accomplish.

Questions:

All the characters in Sex, Lies, and Videotape lie and put up fronts, not giving the reader all the information until later. Who do you believe was the most fully developed and interesting character in the script?

The script and the movie are a little different. Some clever lines of dialogue (such as the naked unicycling line in this scene) are taken out of the script, but the performances on camera are also very good. For those who have seen it, which is better, Soderbergh’s writing or his direction?