Yesterday we looked at an excerpt from the Orci & Kurtzman screenplay for Star Trek, focusing on how the scene description reflected the fact that it is an action / sci-fi movie.

Today we check out The Hangover, the screenplay written by Jon Lucas & Scott Moore. I pimped this movie hard on GITS, starting with this post on September 26, 2008, the movie’s first day of shooting, then again here and here. And while I’d like to take credit for the fact that The Hangover went on to become the highest grossing R-rate movie ever, this is a case of the stars aligning: great comedic premise, script, cast, and directing, the latter by Todd Phillips who deserves every nickel of the supposedly $35M+ he earned on the gamble he made on the cast of this movie.

Since it’s a comedy, we would expect that Lucas & Moore’s scene description would align with the story’s genre — that is, the SD would contribute to the laughs. Here is an excerpt from the script, where the guys wake up the morning after The Night:

SMASH CUT TO:

THE NEXT MORNING

Shafts of white desert sunlight pour into

THE DEAN MARTIN SUITE

THE CAMERA follows a LIVE CHICKEN as it walks through the
totalled suite.

Furniture is broken, the minibar is ransacked, and the floor is
covered with remnants of the night before: empty beer cans,
platefuls of room service food, a cowboy hat, the Gideon
Bible, half-eaten skinless mangos, a bra, a battle axe, etc.

SNORING on the couch, wearing only his jeans and one shoe,
the word ASSHOLE written in Sharpie across his chest, is Stu.

TITLE CARD: “SATURDAY, 11:15AM”

The chicken struts across the top of the couch, until it
reaches a plastic coin cup from Bellagio blocking its path.
Beat. Then the chicken pecks it off… onto Stu.

The cup hits Stu in the face, and stale beer splashes all
over him. Stu spastically jerks awake and flips off the
couch, onto a pile of newspapers.

PILE OF NEWSPAPERS
OWW! Get off! Get off! Jesus!

Confused, Stu clambers off the pile of newspapers — to find
Vick sleeping underneath. on the floor, fully dressed. Vick
pulls himself onto the couch, clearly in pain.

VICK
Damn, dude, why are you retarded?

Both men are ragingly hungover.

A long beat as both of them rub their faces, then:

VICK (CONT’D)
Um, Stuey?

STU
Yo.

VICK
Why do you have a mullet?

Stu does, in fact, have a mullet haircut. But he’s too
hungover to understand.

STU
What?

VICK
You know, business on top, party
down the back?

Stu still looks confused. This is excruciating for Vick.

VICK (CONT’D)
Your hair, dude. You have a mullet.

Stu touches his hair. Then he stumbles into the bathroom.
After a beat, we hear his voice:

STU (O.S.)
Dude…I have a mullet.

Then we hear ALAN’S VOICE in the bathroom, groggy:

ALAN (O.S.)
Just give me ten more minutes,
Beck…

STU (O.S.)
Whoa, did you sleep in the tub?

Beat, then Stu pokes his head out of the bathroom.

STU (CONT’D)
Check it out: Alan slept in the
tub.

VICK
Get him up. I’m hungry.

Stu disappears back into the bathroom. We hear the SHOWER
turn on. Beat. Then we hear Alan slowly awaken:

ALAN (O.S.)
Wet. Water. Jesus, what’s–?!

There’s a THUD as Alan falls out of tub. Beat.

Then Stu and a very confused, very hungover, very wet Alan
stumble out of the bathroom.

Alan appears to be wearing his polo shirt from the night
before. Only, as we PULL BACK, we see that his shirt is cut
off at his chest — he’s naked from there down.

VICK
Jesus, dude, put away your sack.

Alan looks down at his hairy nakedness, totally bewildered.

STU
Yeah, and it might be time for some
manscaping, bro. Your bush looks
like Yanni.

Alan looks back up again, squinting, hungover.

ALAN
What did we do last night?

First off, the scene is about the guys — and the reader — adjusting to the previous night’s antics, so the SD takes a pretty documentary view on matters, Lucas & Moore slowly doling out a few mysterious details including a cowboy hat, a bra, and a battle axe. Funny.

The choice to use a chicken as a means into the scene is also funny as is its Rube Goldberg procession to the cup, then pecking it off, sending stale beer onto Stu, and waking him up.

Then there are some notable descriptors: “totalled suite… spastically jerks awake… ragingly hungover… hairy nakedness.” Also funny.

The choice to have some of the action occur O.S. also lends a humorous element to the scene leaving the business in the bathroom to our imagination.

But the critical choice is something that is present in its absence, something the guys don’t even notice until they’re downstairs trying to have breakfast: Where’s Doug? It’s like Lucas & Moore are expecting the reader – who is not ragingly hungover – to grasp Doug’s absence (especially given Vick’s confession on P. 2 that “We lost Doug”) when the dudes do not. And that plays as subtext through this scene. The following hallway scene. The elevator. And the restaurant. Which means that sometimes the best scene description is no scene description – choosing not to include a character in the action.

For extra credit, you can go through The Hangover script and compare how L&O handle action scenes. There’s a particularly good one on P. 93-95. It’s got action, just like the excerpt from Star Trek, but it’s also laced with humor – befitting a comedy.

Come back tomorrow for a different take on scene description.