Week 4 Day 3: Stacking Intrigue – JFK

[jay miracle]

What I learned rewriting my scene was I greatly increased the stakes of what the men were facing in their mission and how overwhelming it could be. It added an exponential amount of tension.

[Susan Willard]

Week 4 Day 3: Stacking Intrigue – JFK

Scene: “A Meeting with X.”

SETUP: JFK was assassinated in Dallas, but the crime is being investigated from New Orleans. Prosecutor Jim Garrison meets with an Intelligence Officer to get the real story.

Watch first time for:

Basic scene components —

Scene arc:

§ A General, Intelligence Officer, meets with a prosecutor, to discuss his case in the JFK murder.

§ He talks consistently and asks questions in the 4 minutes of interaction, leaving little time for the prosecutor to ask questions.

§ By the end of the interaction, the prosecutor has more questions than answers, just like the Intelligence Officer, leaving them needing more information to be able to know the truth.

Situation:

§ The prosecutor from New Orleans in the JFK assassination case, located in Dallas, is trying to find answers by talking to an Intelligence Officer to get the truth.

Conflict:

§ The assassination happened in Dallas, the case is being investigated from New Orleans, and all the information from the Intelligence Officer indicates a well-organized, military style, government involved plot and coverup.

Moving the Story Forward:

§ The layered non-stop four-minute dialogue from the informant, layered with flashback pictures of the assassination scenes, background noises and music, combined to leave the audience pinned to the screen, waiting for what is next.

§ The fast-paced start of the Intelligence Officers dialogue of sixteen plus factual statements, layered with unknown answers to pivotal questions in the first minute and a half.

§ Followed by the next two minutes of the Black Operations set up of the assassination, back with seventeen plus facts, and riddled with unanswered questions.

§ Supported by the last minute and a half of challenges in facts and questions, laying out for the prosecutor the three questions he needs to answer to prove his defendant innocent.

Entertainment Value:

§ The layered non-stop dialogue from the informant, with the flashback pictures of the assassination scenes, and the background noises and music, combined to leave the audience pinned to the screen, waiting for what is next.

Setups:

§ Come from the informant, Intelligence Officer’s, information.

§ 1. The plot to kill JFK, based on the 16+ facts, and more speculative questions he asks.

§ 2. The organizations, or people, who planned and executed the assassination.

§ 3 The open questions remaining, and how to follow up with to find the truth. – Who had the power, money, and knowledge to accomplish the assassination?

Payoffs:

I have not seen the movie, but hopefully the payoffs come from finding out and dealing with:

§ The details of the JFK assassination plot.

§ The combined activities that pulled off the assassination.

§ Who planned and executed the assassination plot?

Watch second time for:

What makes this scene great?

§ The dialogue pace and details.

§ The scenes of the assassination are in the form of flashbacks.

§ The way the dialogue built the tension and rose to more questions by the order of information put forth.

How most of the questions and statements cause intrigue?

§ By the quick pace of rapid fire, leaving no time for interruption.

§ By the order picked to give the information causing thoughts and questions to build on latest information.

Different forms of intriguing lines.

§ Short statements of facts.

§ Statements that pull multiple facts together.

§ Questions based on stated facts.

§ Speculative questions based on a combination of facts and or other questions.

§ Leading questions with facts to back them up.

§ Challenging facts and questions – requiring more information, thought, and subtext.

The effect of stacking a series of intriguing statements on top of
each other.

The effect of stacking a series of intriguing statements is to pull the audience into the scene with more focus of information given, give the audience information for the things to come, to think about, to question, and to raise the audience tension for what is going to come next.

What are your insights into intriguing dialogue and stacking
intrigue?

This scene demonstrated to me that there are unlimited techniques for utilizing stacking dialogue, dialogue with visuals, and dialogue with audibles, in script writing.

Our imagination is our boundaries in stacking for intrigue.

What I learned in rewriting my scene.

When I rewrote my scene, I found that if I leave it alone when I think I have stacked enough, I come back to find out that there is more stacking to do. I will be learning stacking for intrigue for a long time. (That is a good thing.)

[Anna Burroughs-Merrill]

Stacking Intrigue: JFK

Watch 1st time for basic scene components:

· Scene arc: Garrison interviews “X”, a former spook boss in Kennedy’s administration. X educates Garrison about all the unusual things that were done to get the usual people who were responsible for Kennedy’s safety out of the way, or to get them to stand down. He concludes with stating {{{they}}} are making the public chase their tails with the how in order to prevent them from asking WHY.

· Situation: Garrison is investigating JFK’s assassination.

· Conflict: Garrison vs. the Deep State machinations.

· Moving the story forward: X gives Garrison lots of hidden information about all the things that didn’t add up about Kennedy’s security that day.

· Entertainment value: The scene is intriguing because we catch a glimpse inside the secret life of the Secret Service and government protection.

· Setups/payoffs: I haven’t seen this movie, so I’m not sure whether there are payoffs here (other than the act X agreed to meet with Garrison). But there are a lot of potential setups as X explains all the irregularities that day, things that Garrison can follow up on later, I presume.

Watch 2nd time for:

· What makes this scene great? There is a conspiratorial tone to this scene. X is succinct as he outlays the questions that Garrison needs to be asking, and he paints a compelling tale of a government assassinating its own leader and getting loyal party members out of the way to do it.

· How most of the questions and statements cause intrigue: Ever word out of X’s mouth is a setup for an intriguing fact, all pointing to the probability that Kennedy was murdered by his own intelligence agencies.

· Different forms of intriguing lines: X’s monologue is succinct, a very condensed laying out of facts that will presumably be investigated later. Every single fact is intriguing and conspiratorial.

· The effect of stacking a series of intriguing statements on top of each other. This has some of the most intriguing stacking of conspiracies that I’ve seen in a movie.

o X sent to the south pole so he wasn’t there to verify security

o Regular security was told to stand down

o The general in charge’s objections were ignored

o The president’s cabinet was out of the country

o Soldiers who normally would have been there to provide security were up in the air, chasing their tail on a fool’s errand

o There were other intelligence assets there that day, but nobody knows who they were

o No usual 3-day-beforehand visit by the secret service

o The appalling lack of security, especially insofar as monitoring all the upper stories of buildings and windows, potential sniper spots. There should have been snipers watching those windows.

o There should have been at least 200 agents along that road

o The bubble-top should have been kept on the car

o The route should not have been with that curve in the road, where the car had to slow down to 10 mph

o All of the phones in Washington, DC went down during the shooting for an hour

· What are your insights into intriguing dialogue and stacking intrigue? Garrison has very little to say at this point. X is the star of this scene. Every word out of his mouth is intriguing because it points to a real life murder (JFK).

[Zev Ledman]

<b align=”center”>Stacking Intrigue – JFK

Intrigue means we are perceiving that there is something underhanded, covert, or dangerous under the surface

1. Please watch this scene and provide your insights into what makes this scene great from a writing perspective. The verbalization of uncharacteristic actions and directives by assorted agencies makes the audience question who was truly involved in the coordinated conspiracy to assassinate the president. At first, it seems like just some right-wing theory. But as more and more statements are expressed about unusual activities and procedures initiated both before and after the assassination by so many government personnel, we believe more and more in the unthinkable.

2. Read the other writers’ comments and make notes of how you might use intriguing dialogue in your script.

3. Rethink or create an Intriguing Dialogue scene for your script using your new insights and rewrite the scene. Then post the answer to the question, “What I learned rewriting my scene…?” and post it in the 6 PM daily post here. One adds to the depth and strength of the intrigue by adding more and more layers of intrigue.

SETUP: JFK was assassinated in Dallas, but the crime is being investigated from New Orleans. Prosecutor Jim Garrison meets with an Intelligence Officer to get the real story.

Watch 1st time for:

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