The Stones play "Sympathy For The Devil" in the b.g.; the MUSIC is low. I'm glad they took that out because it would have been really distracting to see Mick and Keith and the others stand there playing their song. I'm also glad that Eszterhas wrote They lie next to each other on the bed. The CAMERA faces them. It would have been a shame if the camera had pointed somewhere else instead of at the actors. The editor would have been all "Man, there's no footage of the actors here. I can't use this. All we see is the crew. Why didn't the screenwriter put it in the script that the camera has to face the actors? That idiot!" And thank goodness that Eszterhas kept reminding us that we see everything that's going on. Can you imagine if he hadn't written that? We would have been completely lost and asking ourselves "Wait. Are we seeing this or not? The screenwriter isn't making that clear."

Right with you, on the above, Teddy. That said... ...I'm still reeling from seeing these two blog posts side by side to each other in the conjugal bed of creativity that is GITS -- The final scene of CASABLANCA snuggled up against the ending of BASIC INSTINCT. Whoa...

Ditto about the music. Much too distracting. The script indicates several long pauses, this helps the suspense. The "I love you" dialogue was left out. Much better without it I think actually would have ruined that scene since Katherine was never ever honest with Nick. I'm guessing the director decided but maybe the actors.

Very funny. I wonder though, is this coming with present day hindsight? Has the spec market got so competitive, and screenwriting 'rules' so widespread particular, that we can't stomach the slightest bit of overwriting now... or did the readers back in 1990 scoff at Esterhas's clumsy style.

Three things. First it's helpful to read older scripts to realize how screenplay style and format can change over time. Serves as a reminder that we are not bound by rules in this regard, we can bend and mold how we present what we present in scene description to fit our narrative voice and best serve the telling of our stories. Second when you read a script like Basic Instinct, which may not read [per one's individual opinion] like all that well-written a script, it reminds us of how important story concept is. Flip to the beginning of this script, the first scene, which I featured here, where the tone and central conceit of the story gets laid out in one page, and it's not hard to imagine why a potential buyer would get... er... aroused enough to think this is a winning idea for a hit movie [which, indeed, it did become]. Third, I honestly believe that screenwriters today write better. It's like there was an initial wave of enthusiasm for screenwriting based on the first set of books by Syd Field et al that disseminated out to the general public [along with news of million dollar spec script sales], and so there was a general learning curve among the masses for a couple of decades. But now, when I read scripts by this new generation of screenwriters, they just seem to read better, crisper, smarter. It's like the core ideas of narrative and style have settled more deeply into popular consciousness. Understand, I'm not talking about story per se, but rather more specifically screenplay style. Wilder, Hitchcock, Huston et al were all great storytellers and new writers can only hope to create stories as great as theirs. But the general awareness of making each word count, of how a script page can look, of thinking of a screenplay as a more 'literary' narrative form, and not just a blueprint to make a movie, it just feels to me there has been a 'positive' evolution in that regard. Which is perhaps one reason why when we read a script like Basic Instinct, now two decades old, it may come across as less sophisticated to us.

@ Teddy -- Gotta say -- Lighten up. This is well written. It has the tone down. It has intrigue. A reversal. And a twist (reveal). It also doesn't live on the twist alone, which is where the reversal comes into play -- that she probably would have stabbed him had he stuck to his guns on wanting children. I actually think the film version is a touch heavy handed. The director needed to motivate the reach down better -- kept it slightly more ambiguous. I do like that when she grabs him, it's quick. It works both as a AHH! she's gonna stab him and as a move of passion. There's also a great look Sharon Stone gives when he says "Fuck the rugrats." If you're going to bash a scene for word choice that you wouldn't make and not see the fundamentals of how the scene works, I'm not sure what you're getting out of these blog posts. They're filled with gold. This was a million dollar script. The opening scene and this one are why.

Lighten up yourself, James. You must realize that I was just poking a little fun.