Friday, January 13, 2012

Script review – “The Last Detail” by Robert Towne


Sad, rich, bittersweet, moving - Chekhov in a way, and demonstrates again what a fine writer Towne could be – although written in the early 70s about sailors, it’s sympathetic, warm, feels very true, doesn’t make them out to be buffoons, doesn’t praise the hippies to the sky (the person who advises the young man to flee to Canada follows it up with a chant). Chinatown is always used as an example of a perfect script with it’s every-scene-progressing-action structure but this shows another coin of what screenwriting can be: character focused, plot light (you could even swap sequences around which is usually a no-no).

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