I Give You Props!

You have a concept so amazing that people demand to read your script after you pitch it. You’ve created a world for your story that’s intriguing. You have written a great lead character that is sure to win someone an Oscar. Your story takes place in an interesting and exotic location...that everyone wants to visit...and has a 40% production rebate. Your dialogue is to die for - everyone in the production office is repeating your lines. Your actions are vivid and exciting. Everything about your screenplay is amazing...

But...what about the props?

Have you even thought about the props in your story? There are no Oscar Awards for props, but maybe there should be? Props can be an important part of your story, and sometimes props can even be the star of the film. The pair of scissors on the desk in Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M For Murder (based on a play by Frederick Knott - who "created" those scissors) are so famous that they pop up in Scott Frank's great thriller Dead Again. I don't think they could get the same pair of scissors 37 years later, but they got a look-alike. Dial M has three starring roles for props - those scissors, a phone, and a key. Hitchcock realized the importance of Props As Stars with another key with "Unica" printed on it in the movie Notorious - it's on the poster along with stars Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. But you might have never thought about writing a starring role for a prop that might end up on the poster.

Props, those physical objects on the set like that sled called "Rosebud" or the head of Alfredo Garcia or the Infinity Stones can be an important part of your story. But we need to think about those props as "stars" instead of just a key or a pair of scissors on a desk. We need to make them the focus of both the shot and the story. 

To do that, we need to give each prop a meaning and an important "role" in the story. As a mystery reader (and writer) there are always clues at the crime scene - and those clues may or may not lead to the killer. So the empty matchbook in Agatha Christie's Death In The Clouds is the most important thing in the story. Even if you are not writing a mystery, props can have a deep meaning in your story. The harmonica in Once Upon a Time in the West that Charles Bronson plays whenever Henry Fonda is around...the same harmonica was part of Bronson's brother's murder (by Fonda) when he was a child. So you can think of a prop as a clue to the character.

Summer of 2024 we had a Channing Tatum Triathlon with Fly Me To The Moon, Deadpool & Wolverine, and Blink Twice.

For a first-time writer and director, Zoë Kravitz knocked it out of the park in Blink Twice, a thriller that's "Cinderella Goes To Hell". The film looks great and is like a fever dream. Her use of weird random scenes (that pay off later) makes us feel like we have been partying on this island for a week and are drunk and high and don't really know what is going on...like the protagonist. As the 24-hour party on the island goes on, we become more and more disoriented.

Frida (Naomi Ackie) is the perfect Cinderella (who loses her heel at the grand ball!). A server at high-end events in NYC along with her roommate cute Jess (Alia Shawkat), they smuggle evening gowns to a party they are working (Billionaire Channing Tatum's Tech Company's annual gala) and go from servers to Cinderellas...And Frida meets Prince Charming, Slater (Tatum), and he invites both of them to vacation with him on his private island. There will be a handful of women and a handful of wealthy businessmen for a couple of weeks of living the great life. The two go from barely able to scrape up rent for their crappy apartment to living like billionaires. Gourmet food, vintage wine, lots of drugs, and every morning a new wardrobe is provided for them. It's heaven!

Or is it?

One of the great things in this film is the use of props. Small things become very important, and the props are built up in the story - each having its own story and becoming a character. Because these props are critical to the story, it wasn't a crew member on set who created all of these props...it was the screenwriter. In many cases, these props are "stars" of the film...and clues to what is really happening.

When the joints are served on a silver platter, everyone asks if someone has a lighter. Jess has a beat-up old disposable cigarette lighter. She's afraid that someone might swipe it, so she writes her name on it. In every scene in the story where anyone smokes anything, that lighter is a co-star in the scene. It's the only lighter on the island! But it also becomes important to the story in maybe a half dozen scenes. The story itself changes direction a few times because of that lighter. The prop is given meaning and importance in the story, and there are scenes where it pops up and you might gasp.

Spoiler: There’s a scene where Frida sees the lighter and realizes she hasn’t seen Jess for a few days. Everyone on the island has been drunk and stoned and lost track of time and each other...and the group of women who spa and party together have trouble even remembering the missing woman. That lighter with her name written on it is proof that she existed, and isn’t just a figment of Frida’s imagination. This is a movie about extreme gas lighting, the film that Don’t Worry Darling wanted to be.

That lighter is a clue to what happened...and Frida has to piece it together before she loses her mind.

Similarly, the Wealthy Businessman/Amateur Chef (Simon Rex) has a super sharp knife that becomes almost mythical as the story unfolds. Its meaning and purpose are constantly evolving. He's very protective of the knife and doesn't want anyone else using it...And drunk, stoned people who might need to open a beer bottle or open an envelope or use the knife for all of the wrong reasons? That triggers our Amateur Chef. Bringing out his character!

There's a great scene where two people are having an angry conversation and that knife just happens to be between them. In my Scenes Blue Book I talk about just adding a weapon to a scene to increase the tension, using the scene from Kill Bill where Bill is making sandwiches with a super sharp knife as he has a calm but threatening conversation with The Bride. The Amateur Chef’s knife just keeps popping up in scenes that are close to erupting into violence...and there’s a weapon!

There’s a small sculpture on Billionaire Slater's office desk that keeps coming into play in the story. I know that seems odd, but there are a half dozen scenes where the sculpture is part of the story unfolding. It’s not just a sculpture, it’s a clue that there’s been an intruder in the office, it’s a potential weapon, etc. The script does a great job of making us forget that it's on the desk a couple of times...so the sculpture itself causes us to gasp in one scene. It’s one of the stars of the movie!

The Billionaire’s ditzy older sister Stacy (Geena Davis) is always carrying bright red goody bags, and dropping them sometimes. She’s always picking them up off the ground or the floor or somewhere else. There's a great scene where she goes to talk to some people in the pool, sets the bags down carefully, then just putters into the water fully clothed so that she can speak with them face to face. The red bags are more than just a distinctive prop for her to carry, they are an important part of the story several times. The bags even change meaning and purpose a couple of times - and end up a major clue to what has been going on while everyone has been drunk and stoned on the island. Those goody bags become ominous at one point!

There's also a Polaroid camera that people take pictures of each other with throughout the story. When I first saw it in the film I wondered where they got all of the film (though this is a film about a billionaire, so he could afford to buy a warehouse full). But that camera keeps entering into the story again and again, and becomes critical to the story at one point...some of those pictures add up to the mystery of the island...including a shocking picture of Frida that she doesn’t remember happening.

This is a film where memories of what happened yesterday have faded due to all of the drugs and alcohol consumed on the island. The photos can be fuzzy memories or things that nobody remembers, or...something strange and sinister. Though the story begins with Frida and Jess living the Cinderella life on Fantasy Island, where everything they wish for can come true... there’s a mystery and some horror underneath it all. When Jess seems to vanish after being bitten by a snake, Frida needs to quietly put together the pieces (the props are clues) and figure out what is really going on. The Polaroids are a major clue, and all of those props that we’ve seen in the background now become part of the foreground.

Perfume is one of the things in the goody bags, and we see our female characters put on perfume throughout the film. Hey, like everything else on the island, it’s expensive and free! But a bottle of that perfume becomes a major plot point later. One of the great things about this is that the perfume and all of the other goodie bag stuff is ubiquitous, in every scene where any of the women on the island is preparing for another day of partying. We don’t even notice it...until it suddenly becomes important to the story,

There's a strange maid (María Elena Olivares) who has the job of killing local snakes with a huge machete in the background of scenes...This is freaky on its own, but the snakes that come out of the jungle into the mansion area figure into the story several times, and in several different ways...in addition to Jess being bitten. This is a Thriller that's "Horror adjacent" and snakes, that huge machete, and even that strange maid whose full-time job is to keep the snakes from biting the guests not only add a fear factor to the story, by the time this story's secret is revealed...it's all about the snakes!

Though snakes aren't exactly props, they are one of those background things that we don't think are anything more than snakes (a little scary) when they are an element that changes the story several times.

But how can you use props in your screenplay? Here are seven easy steps:

1) Think of Props as clues. Clues to the story, clues to the character, and characters in and of themselves.

2) Think of how you are going to introduce your prop, just as you think about the best scene and event to introduce your human characters. You can choose to introduce a prop in an unassuming way if that prop is going to be part of a big twist in the story later, like that disposable lighter in Blink Twice.

3) Or you can introduce your prop with importance and “gravity” like the gun in The Disappearance of Alice Creed (2009). Once you see that gun, you know that someone is going to be killed by the end of the film (ask Anton Chekov) but who? Some props you will want to make shocking and frightening to the audience right up front. Whoever holds the gun has the power in that film, and whoever the gun is pointed at could die in an instant.

4) Then you want to find as many ways to use that prop as possible - to give it scenes where it's the star. Where its importance builds and builds. Where different aspects of its "character" are shown. It's a cigarette lighter and proof that Jess existed...and disappeared. She wouldn't have left her lighter behind, would she?

5) Try to pick "movie star props" that can be used for multiple purposes. That super sharp chef's knife as a bottle opener? Make a list of ways the prop can be used, and "alternative ways" that it can be used. How many of those fit your story? Just like an important character that you don't want to leave out of half your screenplay only to pop up at the end, you want to keep those important props in the scenes. The best thing about the chef's knife as a bottle opener is that you are afraid these drunk partygoers are going to slice off a finger...or that the chef will spot them and yell at them.

6) Think of each character’s relationship with the prop, just as you would each character’s relationship with each of the other characters in your story. How can you show that? How does the relationship change as the story progresses?

7) You also want a big payoff for the prop - that "Oscar-winning scene" for the prop. Those red goody bags (filled with expensive perfume and other nice things) and the Polaroid pictures (that help them remember that party last night) end up paying off in a big scene at the end of the story, where we learn the secret of the island and why Jess vanished. Also, think about "He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword" in these big payoffs - can the villain who has threatened everyone with their gun be shot with their own gun? Can the hero be saved by something that has been in the background of a bunch of scenes like a bottle of expensive perfume?

Props are not just things on the set like that pencil the actor might pick up in a scene, they can be a star of that scene. You can give that pencil character and meaning and turn it into something memorable about your screenplay. "Did you read that script with the pencil?" If you don't think of the idea of a pencil being something memorable about a screenplay, have you read Derek Kolstad's Scorn? Or seen the movie made from it, John Wick?

“I once saw him kill three men in a bar... with a pencil.”

Need more thrilling script secrets, tricks, and techniques from William C. Martell? Gift yourself a copy of his book Hitchcock: Experiments In Terror (Hitch For Writers Book 3)