Cast Away - Script Notes

Cast Away. Directed by one of my favorite directors, Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future(s), Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump). Critically successful with numerous award nominations, mostly for Tom Hanks performance. Also commercially successful, raking in $430 mill .

Interesting points:
1. Product placement, most specifically of FedEx and Wilson, was a key element of this movie. Yet neither brand paid for placement. FedEx reportedly had a heart attack reaction over the crash of the FedEx plane in the story, although the overall portrayal of FedEx was seen as positive.

2. Wilson the Watson. I’ve previously used the term Watson to describe an archetypal story character who functions as a device for natural exposition. Usually a Watson is human. In CA (Cast Away), it’s a volleyball. Does anyone have plausibility issues? I don’t; it worked great for me.

3. Choice of protag. Imagine the early brainstorming sessions for this script. Zemeckis, writer William Broyles Jr., etc. working on the story. Someone asks, “Who is this person that we strand on a desert island? What kind of person could physically and mentally survive the experience. What background would provide the conflict we want?” Perhaps they discussed him from the pov of theme, i.e., time, and said, ‘We want someone who’s life is dominated by time.” Saying it in a different way, imagine if the protag had been: A US Navy Seal, a bum being deported from Thailand, or Paris Hilton. How different would the story have been?

4. Killer role for an A-list actor.
Successful scripts include roles that actors will kill for. That’s part of the Hollywood dynamic: if an actor likes your script and is attached to it, it has far greater chance of success. Roles like:
- Meryl Streep in the Devil Wears Prada
- Sam Jackson in Pulp Fiction
- Susan Sarandon in Dead Man Walking
- Sandra Bullock in the Blind Side
- Kevin Spacey in American Beauty

So, how does a writer create said killer role? What are the traits of a role that actors will kill for?

Qualities:
- Strong
- Committed
- Unusual qualities
- Very bad or very good
- Make it a challenging role that calls for major emotional shifts
- PASSIONATE
- Shows qualities we all admire or hate
- Out of the boxness
- Supported by the rest of the story.

To be continued and explored.

5. Dramatic Scenes
There are some great ones in this film. My favorites are:
- The crash.
- The aborted escape from the island.
- The successful escape from the island.
- Rescue by tanker.
- Return to Kelly.
So, how do you create great dramatic scenes like these? The plane crash is purely an action scene. Note that most of the other great scenes occur late in the film. That means, they were set up by the earlier drama. I'd say the greatness of the scenes is directly proprtional to the audiences emotional involvement in the outcomes. For example, escape from the island is the climax to act 2 and resolves the act 2 tension, which is, "Will Chuck survive the island?"
So, can we conclude that great dramatic scenes often happen late in films, when the audience has had time to learn and become emotionally invested in the objectives? Are great dramatic scenes comprised of more parts subjective drama than objective drama?