Studying successful screenplays and films is a key part of learning how to write them yourself! In this article, we take a look at the Oscar-winning Green Book and attempt to draw out a few useful take-aways that we can all use to improve our own writing.

Director: Peter Farrelly

Writers:  Nick Vallelonga, Brian Currie and Peter Farrelly

Screenplay: Script Slug

Synopsis: *Minor spoilers* 1962. Tough working-class Italian-American New Yorker, Tony ‘Tony Lip’ Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen) loses his job as a nightclub bouncer. To make ends meet, he agrees to go to work for refined black classical pianist Dr. Donald Shirley (Mahershala Ali) as driver/security on a tour through the Deep South. While the two men come from very different worlds and have conflicting personalities, as the tour progresses, they begin to form a tentative friendship. The ‘Green Book’ of the title refers to a guide to the hotels that black travellers in the Deep South during this time were permitted to use.

(The following gives away key plot points…)

So, what can we learn from Green Book?

1. Take the time to really build your characters

Developing fictional characters is often portrayed as an antiseptic exercise involving choosing from a list of traits and quirks. However, what you’re really doing is revealing a person who lives and breathes on the page (and screen).

This means infusing them with: strengths (S), weaknesses (W), talents (T) and flaws (F).

Focusing on just one of these (there are lots more) for each of the two main characters in Green Book, we find:

Tony – Keeps cool under pressure (S) / Unable to express himself (W) / Good at driving (T) / Bigoted (F)

Dr. Shirley – Truthful (S) / Drinks too much (W) / Musical genius (T) / Emotionally closed-off (F)

One of the reasons why Green Book is such a useful learning tool for screenwriters is that it highlights how these elements can be continually used to drive the story and the conflict.

These elements (particularly the flaws) also offer an opportunity for characters to achieve meaningful change by the end of the story.

Just taking the one flaw mentioned above, look at how each man’s attitude has changed by the final scenes of Green Book:

• Tony on page 8 (when he drops the glasses in the rubbish) compared to page 112 (when he scolds one of his family members for making a racially derogatory comment)
• Dr. Shirley on page 50 (talking coldly about his own family) compared to page 113 (when he visits Tony’s family)

2.  Real life-inspired stories can take liberties with the ‘truth’

Co-writer of the script, Nick Vallelonga, is the real-life Tony Lip’s son, so the filmmakers had plenty of access to the family, allowing them to source anecdotes, details and even cast members, all of which add greatly to the film’s authenticity. For writers working on the true-life tale, securing the participation of those involved in the actual events can really help in getting into their world.

However, Green Book is billed as simply being ‘inspired by a true friendship’, and while the filmmakers reached out to surviving relatives of Tony and Dr. Shirley, there is still an element of dramatic licence at play. In fact, Dr. Shirley’s brother was even quoted as saying, “My brother never considered Tony to be his ‘friend’; he was an employee”.

But while it may not adhere slavishly to the ‘truth’, what Green Book does is take an episode from history and transform it into an effective screen story that is designed to retain the spirit of the real-life events and people it portrays.

3. Keep things simple and fluid

One of the great things about the Green Book screenplay (and the film) is how well it’s paced. This starts from the opening pages, where we meet Tony and get all kinds of background information that sets up his character and the journey he is going to undertake.

Within the first act (around 30 pages or screen minutes), we are clear about the direction the story is going to take and have started to understand the conflict and obstacles the characters face. These include:

• Tony’s propensity to violence (page 3)
• Tony’s stated mission to complete the tour with Dr. Shirley (pages 17/18)
• Tony and Dr. Shirley’s conflicting personalities/moralities (pages 16, 17, 30)
• The fact that Tony won’t get all his money if Dr. Shirley doesn’t play each scheduled date (page 24)
• The introduction of the Green Book, alluding to the racial climate awaiting Dr. Shirley in the Deep South (pages 24/25)
• Tony’s ‘deadline’ to be back at home with his family in time for Christmas (page 27)
• Dr. Shirley’s possible drinking problem, denoted by him asking for a full bottle of liquor each night (page 29)

When you consider the structure of the entire screenplay, each of the units of action is in place, from the inciting incident (on page 4) through to the end of act one (to page 28), the long act two (with the midpoint on page 57) and act three (from page 92), with its climax and resolution. By the end, we know if Tony has completed the mission and we have also seen the main characters arc (i.e. meaningful and lasting change has taken place).

It is also interesting to note how the writers factor in the characters’ backstory and also achieve the ‘set up / payoff’ technique. One example is the small piece of information dropped into the story about Dr. Shirley playing at the White House (page 37). As well as giving us (and Tony) insight into the regard in which Dr. Shirley is held, the information also pays off later in the story (pages 88/89).

4. Use every opportunity to ramp up tension

Green Book is a character-driven story, which means that much of the conflict is emotional and much of the ‘action’ relates to human interaction (as opposed to, for example, a disaster film, ‘creature feature’ or action movie when the conflict is largely driven by external forces – extreme weather, scary monster, Goldfinger, etc.).

However, it is still a movie that is infused with internal/external conflict at every level and this leads to tension that builds to the climax and resolution. The writers skilfully build this tension throughout, with ebbs and flows of action that keep us, the viewer, engaged and on tenterhooks to see what’s coming next.

When you read the screenplay, you can see all the different ways the writers ramp up the tension using the opposing characteristics and morals of the main characters; and the racial climate of the Deep South. This extends to the third act, as Tony battles to get back home for Christmas.

5. Subvert expectations and conventions

Screenplays and films are all about ‘conventions’ and ‘expectations’. Filmgoers expect certain elements of a film to be in place. Often, these are related to the genre. For example, in a love story, at some point the lovers meet and by the end, they generally get together. Other times, they can be related to how a character behaves.

While these conventions and expectations can be satisfying for the viewer, they can also lead to cliché and the feeling that we, the audience, have ‘seen it before’. So, the skilled writer subtly plays with them to satisfy the audience while creating an element of surprise. A couple of the ways in which the writers of Green Book accomplish this are:

a.) The set-up and payoff relating to whether Tony has a gun (pages 58, 105)

b.) The ending when there’s a knock on the door and we expect Dr. Shirley to be standing there (page 113)

Overall, Green Book is a great example of a script that effectively tells a strong screen story. It harnesses the tools available to the screenwriter to convey information, reveal character and drive action. This is a screenplay that is extremely complex and efficient, yet, at the same time, is simple in terms of the linear story and character arcs.

As film fans and students of screenwriting, we can learn much from how the writers and filmmakers brought Green Book to the big screen.