14 Days of Screenplays, Version 3.0 -- Day 3: The Apartment

Today is Day 3 of the "14 Days of Screenplays, Version 3.0" challenge and the featured screenplay is for the movie The Apartment (1960). You can download the script from myPDFscripts.com here.

Background: The Apartment was co-written by the great writing duo Billy Wilder & I.A.L. Diamond, with Wilder directing the movie as well. The movie was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, winning 5 including for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen.

In this Playboy interview in 1963, Wilder responds to those who try to find deeper meanings in his movies:

Playboy: Analytically inclined reviewers are fond of "discovering" secondary levels of social and satirical comment in your films, even in the comedies. Do you consciously inject such messages?

Wilder: I am not really a message man. Pictures like Love in the Afternoon and Sabrina are not in any way a comment on the world. Maybe The Apartment had a few things to say about our society, but it was not meant to be a deep-searching exploration of how we are. On certain levels, once in a while, maybe we smuggle in a little contraband message, but we try never to jump in their faces with our naked pretensions showing, because they'll recoil. In certain pictures I do hope they'll leave the theater a little enriched, but I never make them pay a buck-and-a-half and then ram a lecture down their throats.

Certainly Wilder was an entertainer and a storyteller first and foremost. But as this June 16, 1960 New York Time movie review suggests, the subject matter of The Apartment was pretty scandalous for the time period, and there is certainly some messaging going on throughout about sexual politics in an office environment.

I'll be honest: The Apartment is one of my top five favorite movies and I've read the script more than a few times. But this time going through it, I had a few new insights, I guess typical of a truly great movie like this Wilder & Diamond classic.

I want to give time for people to weigh in about the script, those who have read it for the challenge as well as anyone else who has read the script in the past. I'll update this post with my thoughts on the script later tonight.

What did you think of The Apartment?

For links to all 14 scripts in the challenge, go here.

And remember: We'll be reading 1 script per day and discussing them through November 22. I'll be posting something everyday at 4PM U.S. Eastern Daylight Time / 1PM PST for your comments.

The script for Day 4 of the challange is The Sixth Sense, available at myPDFscripts.com.

UPDATE: As I was reading The Apartment, I stepped all the way back out of the story to try to get into the mindset that Wilder & Diamond might have had as they brainstormed the idea from the ground floor up – starting with the concept.

THE CONCEPT: Protagonist (C.C. Baxter) stuck letting guys use his apartment for sexual trysts

QUESTION: Why would anybody do that?

Money?

No, then P is nothing more than a pimp (unsympathetic)

Why would anybody do that – unless they were forced to do it

And who could force someone

The guy’s boss

Better yet, make that plural

Makes P more of an underdog, one versus many

QUESTION: How can I help make the audience relate to P?

Doesn’t he seem like a weakling, bossed around?

What if that’s only half the reason

The other is that his bosses keep promising him a big promotion, if he keeps playing ball

QUESTION: But don’t we run the risk that people still won’t understand?

Not if we create the right job environment

It’s not just a job P’s got

It’s a demeaning job, a peon, a worker bee

Make him a number, that’s what he is, one of a million

Everybody can relate to that

Offered a chance to bust out of that hell-hole, now the audience will understand

Promotion = P’s Want

QUESTION: Even if the audience can relate to P in wanting to get ahead at work, is that enough for them to like him?

Every chance we get, we’ll make P a nice guy, everybody likes him

His co-workers, his landlord, his neighbors

And I have a feeling some of those secondary characters might come in handy down the road

QUESTION: At some point, P gets the promotion

Which means that’s the end of the story, right?

Not if P decides to fight back

Why would he fight back?

He has to fight back

He has to live life on his terms, not boss

He has to change

Underdog storyline: Prevails over tyranny

QUESTION: What makes him fight back?

Could be that he just gets sick of being treated so shabbily

What provokes him to do that?

What could possibly cause him to go against his goal (promotion)

Remember that a Protagonist’s goal can be two-fold: Want and Need

Want: Promotion

Need: Soul-mate

Enter the Attractor (Fran Kubelik)

QUESTION: P starts seeing A, and wants to spend time with her in his own apartment, so he tells his bosses to buzz off

That could work

But where does P meet A?

How about she is a co-worker

Someone he’s had a crush on

Never gotten up the nerve to ask her out

So he finally does

QUESTION: A couple of dates, and he takes on his bosses? Doesn’t seem very dramatic

Okay, what if…

P doesn’t know that A is the mistress of the Nemesis (Sheldrake)

The girl P longs for turns out to be the Big Boss’s kept woman

And what if…

N hears about his VPs who have arrangement with P, his apartment

And what if…

P finds himself called up to N’s office

Thinking this is his big break

All his patience and hard work has paid off

Only to find N wants a key to P’s apartment

So he can take A there…

Reverse engineering the story like that, you can see how it all may have evolved so naturally. It certainly shows in the script and the movie, both of which flow seamlessly.

No wonder The Apartment is one of the most beloved movies of all time – and is the favorite film of people like writer-director Cameron Crowe.