The best scripts

I love screenwriting, it’s a particular kind of technique that takes serious logic, vision, and preparation. You have to craft speech that must remain believable.

But, its also gotta pull you in, not beat you over the head or send you into a deep slumber. It requires that you remain alert.

And, more often than not, memorable lines aren’t deliberate. What makes them memorable in the first place is that they’re organic to that story and that story alone.

Last year, The Social Network – the story of the creation of Facebook, directed by David Fincher, written by Aaron Srokin - proved that a select few have that magic touch.

I left the theater at 2.30 in the morning telling myself that if I could write a script like that, I could die a happy person. Aaron Srokin’s a whip-smart writer and got that entire film so right.

Not a single piece of the puzzle was missing; everything was in its rightful place.

Never has a secondary factor influenced me, and given me cause to push myself, more than The Social Network.

Starting to dissect that entire script would require a whole Masters dissertation, and I haven’t gotten to that point just yet.

But, I can give the long and short that would make a strong argument as to why this is the best scripted movie ever.

Every single word, every single description and movement is absolutely intended. And, I can guarantee, that the order in which those things appear is nothing short of brilliant when it comes to this script.

Think about the first fifteen minutes or so. After Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) gets dumped he heads back to his dorm at Harvard University and proceeds to blog at a furious rate.

His voice-over is conscious and in the moment; it’s natural and it sounds like someone’s thoughts literally racing through their mind.

But what does Sorkin choose to cross-cut this stream of consciousness with? A private bus filled with particularly attractive college girls, passing makeup and joints across the aisle on their way to a party hosted by a certain Finals Club – the very same thing that Zuckerberg is hung up on in the film’s opening scene.

What makes this sequence work besides the obvious link of the Finals Club is what the entire point of the film is, the entire point of the creation of Facebook – exclusivity.

While those girls are headed to an exclusive party, one that Zuckerberg no doubt would die to be part of (although he’d never admit it), he’s blogging away on the open internet about things that are more than just personal. Not to mention, he takes it a step further with his own form of female objectification.

He doesn’t have a bus-load of girls but he has a computer and genius behind him, so he creates a campus-wide application that takes all the hacked-into profiles of the school’s female student body and pits them against each other based on who’s hotter.

When Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss (Armie Hammer) are introduced in the script, they’re described as “identical twins who stepped out of an ad for Abercrombie and Fitch.” They’re in the middle of a rowing race, holding back their full potential - “Cameron: Is there any way to make this a fair fight? Tyler: We could jump out and swim. Cameron: I think we’d have to jump out and drown.

Tyler: Or you could row forward and I could row backward. Cameron: We’re genetically identical, science says we’d stay in one place. Tyler: Just row the damn boat.” In this moment, the twins, as the script says, “kick into full gear.” The timing of that very short sequence is impeccable.

It’s smart, it’s quick, and it says everything you need to know about the characters without even knowing their names at that point. Every single beat is perfect, each movement of the dialogue effortless.

I can’t imagine how it would have felt to be the first person to read the completed script. I’ve seen people describe it as “a lightning rod of a script.”

It really is. I mean, if you want to be blown away by a mere script, this would be the one to sit down and read.

And of course, it didn’t hurt that every single person working on the film was perfect. See what can happen when you entrust a great director and cast with your gem of a script? I pray it happens at least once to me.