36) THE LIFE OF WRYLIES
“Wrylies” are the insider term for parentheticals, and there’s even a whole play written about them by Izzy Diamond (“The Apartment”) called “Quizzically” that I’ve seen performed by Jack Lemon and Walter Matthau at the WGA’s Words Into Pictures conference about 15 years ago. The basic use of Wrylies is to tell an actor how to deliver a line… and actors hate them. Often new writer’s screenplays are littered with Wrylies, and usually one (or more) of three reasons is behind this:
Basic confidence – new writers often worry that readers won’t understand what they mean and try to spell out everything. Though there *are* readers who miss things, and directors who miss things, and development executives that don’t get things – most of them will understand your intentions and don’t need you to hammer them home by over-explaining what the line means. They get it!
Trying to fix a bad line – sometimes a writer will try to make a defective line work by adding a parenthetical to explain what they meant to say. The problem here is that the parenthetical doesn’t actually fix the line at all, it’s kind of a Band-Aid. The best thing to do is make sure all of your dialogue works and is understood without the parenthetical. If the line isn’t clear, work on it until it is.
Overly controlling – and sometimes the writer is micro-managing the script and wants everything to be *exactly* as they envision it, without the slightest difference. “This line must be delivered *exactly* like this!” These screenplays are usually the ones with all of the shots broken out as well. The writer doesn’t want to leave any room for interpretation or change. Film is a collaborative medium and everyone involved is some form of artist.
Not only will they want to interpret your screenplay, you will *want* them to add their artistic skills to yours. The sum is greater than the parts.
The reason why actors *hate* Wrylies is the same reason anyone hates to be micro-managed and told how to do the job they’ve trained their whole damned life to do. They have a creative contribution to make to the film and want to be able to make the decisions that deal with their particular discipline. I have seen actors cross out Wrylies before they even read the script for the first time, and I have seen them *purposely* do the exact opposite of what is written. Actors and directors and everyone else on a film are *just like us* - when you push them they get angry and push back. Yes, people will tell us how to do our job and that sucks, but we can’t expect someone else to like it when we tell them how to do their jobs!
Plus, you *want* a good actor to use their talent when they interpret the line and the way the line is supposed to be delivered. In “The Killers” (1964) Lee Marvin plays a violent hit man tracking some stolen money. The trail leads to auto mechanic Claude Akins, and Marvin interrogates him. Akins isn’t cooperating, pretends he doesn’t know anything… but he’s obviously lying. So Marvin ramps up the threats – and you know the line was written to be in anger. It’s the sort of line that accompanies a pistol whipping. But Marvin makes an interesting delivery choice, and leans in close to Akins, whispering the threat in a calm, quiet voice… and it’s a hundred times more chilling than if he lost his temper and shouted the line. The words are exactly the same – but the quiet, intimate, whisper makes it more powerful. If the writer had written (shouting) and Marvin had delivered it that way, I wouldn’t be telling you about the scene now. It would have been the scene we were used to seeing instead of the scene that stands out. Let the actors do their jobs! Let the directors do their jobs!
But why do they have ‘em if you can’t use ‘em? You *can* use Wrylies – and no one is going to kick you out of Hollywood if you litter your script with them, but we have a limited amount of space, so let’s use it wisely. If you think the line will be confusing without a wrylie – use one. Sometimes without (joking) or (sarcastic) someone really might completely misread the line. Now, some of this can be done just with the introduction of the character – if they are a jokester, the reader will figure out the line isn’t serious. But when you have a character who isn’t established as someone who might joke or use sarcasm says something that we misinterpret, you need to use a wrylie to make the meaning clear. So you may end up with a handful or so in your screenplay. That’s cool – there’s no rules saying exactly how many you use… and sometimes you can completely subvert whatever “rules” there are for fun. I read a script by the Dahl Brothers (“Red Rock West”) about a feud between two lawyers that had a parenthetical after *every single line of dialogue*!
JOE
(I could easily stab you with this knife)
Can I cut you a piece of cake?
Sure, part of it was breaking the “rules” as a stunt, but without the subtext would you have thought “Can I cut you a piece of cake?” was a threat of violence? It can be played that way by the actor, so it wasn’t breaking any “rules”. Something like this – where every line has a wrylie - is a fun read, but the script never made (and I don’t even remember if it
sold). Like with everything else that people call a “rule” - you can break them for a reason, ust not because you are lazy or to prop up writing that needs work.
37) ACCENTS 37) ACCENTS
Accents are like “Wrylies” in a way – they are often more part of performance than required by the story. Usually whether a character speaks in an accident is part of the character, and ends up being a decision made by the director or the actor. In many World War 2 films, Nazis spoke with *British* accents! I have no idea why they made this decision – maybe to make them sound different than Americans, speak English (so that we could understand them) and also sound “superior” and aloof. This carried over into Cold War movies sometimes… but sometimes in Cold War movies the Russians had *German*
accents. Huh? When Sean Connery played a Russian in “Hunt For Red October” he had a Scottish accent. Even though Connery is from Scotland, it seemed more pronounced than when he played James Bond – so maybe that was a decision. “Sound foreign” - and Scottish is foreign, right?
Usually just noting in the character description that the character speaks with an accent is sufficient, but if you want to add the flavor of their accent to the characters dialogue know that a little goes a long way. Remember, your goal is to have the reader understand your dialogue without having to stop and wonder just what the heck that word is supposed to be. The occasional “Y’all” or foreign word thrown in every few pages gives us the flavor without adding too much confusion. We’ll look at subtitles in the supplemental section later in the book.