A WRITER’S VOICE: ‘Black Mass’ & ‘The Departed’ – The Art of Revision
Jacob Krueger discusses how the writers of Black Mass tried to do the same thing by finding a different element around which to build their Whitey Bulger story than the one at the center of The Departed.
At the center of Black Mass is Jimmy “Whitey” Bulger, a psychotic gangster, played by Johnny Depp who is playing both sides, secretly betraying his mafia enemies as an FBI informant; at the same time he plays the FBI, by using his connections to run rampant in the world of organized crime.
If it sounds familiar, that’s because it is. You’ve seen this story before, in a much more complicated form, in Martin Scorcese’s The Departed. In fact, Whitey Bulger was in many ways the inspiration for the Jack Nicholson character in The Departed.
And despite Black Mass’s true-life story pedigree, well-written script, and excellent direction and performances this poses a real challenge for the screenwriter. A question that many of us face at some point in the writing of our stories:
What if it’s not good enough? What if it’s all been done before?
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- More articles by Jacob Krueger
- Script Notes: Where Story Begins - Premise
- The Craft: The Challenge of Attaching Actors to Scripts
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The founder of Jacob Krueger Studio, Jacob has worked with all kinds of writers, from Academy and Tony Award Winners, to young writers picking up the pen for the first time. His writing includes The Matthew Shepard Story, for which he won the Writers Guild of America Paul Selvin Award and was nominated for a Gemini Award for Best Screenplay. To follow Jacob’s blog or learn more about his Screenwriting Workshops, Online Classes, and International Retreats please visit WriteYourScreenplay.com.