A WRITER’S VOICE: ‘Trainwreck’ – The Game Of The Scene
Jacob Krueger discusses a concept called “the game of the scene” using Trainwreck as an example.
Oftentimes if you’re an emerging screenwriter, it’s easy to imagine that the professionals must totally know what they’re doing, write one draft and it magically comes to fruition. But the truth of the matter is that Amy Schumer’s process on this screenplay was very similar to the process that a lot of you go through.
Writing a great screenplay does not happen overnight. This screenplay took Amy years and many drafts to write. And interestingly it started off as a completely different movie.
Judd Apatow tells a story about working for about nine months with Amy on a completely different version of the film. And then one day the two of them realized that this wasn’t the story they really wanted to tell. And Judd Apatow told Amy Schumer, despite all the work they’d put into the draft, that he was really more interested in those personal stories that she was telling when he first heard her jokes. When she was talking about her father and his real experience with M.S. and what that real relationship looked like.
And so, eight or nine months into the process, Amy Schumer completely re-conceived the movie, refocused what it was really about, and made it personal.
You can see how putting that personal stuff on the page brought this movie into instant focus. Not only for the writer and director, but also for the audience, and for the character.
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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.
