Today was a good writing day. I managed to get quite a bit accomplished. So far I seem to have knocked 23 pages off the script. It would have been more, but I had to add two scenes. One may not be that important and I can certainly shorten it or cut it.
I have introduced The Interpol High Command Leader, Max Frisdale into the movie. He is the exact opposite of Jack a man that Elizabeth admired and respected. (More on him in the third movie as he unravels a huge Manning family secret.) Max isa climber and will do anything to succeed even if it means stepping on a few toes. I introduced Max into the first movie after I wrote the second one, to explain some backstory, but after reading the last draft of Derby Double, I saw that I didn’t do a very good job and he became an obstacle. I have corrected the obstacle, by putting him into the movie far earlier. He now shows up around the first half hour rather than an hour and a half in. In the sequel he’s a much bigger character and he will become very prominent in the last movie in this trilogy. By putting him in the first half hour of the movie, I had a chance to develop his contentious past with Elizabeth. I got a sense the scene worked. In the scene, Elizabeth wants to be involved in whatever undercover operation that involves putting Renneville behind bars. She has no idea what the plan is, but feigns that she does and turns the tables on Max. Suddenly Max realizes he needs her for the plan to work Max is forced to pull Elizabeth out of retirement and makes her a part of the plans.
The second scene was interesting. I didn’t really have a scene where I explored the relationship between Trevor and Elizabeth. Elizabeth thinks of him as an older brother and a mentor from her days at Interpol. I thought it would be cool to have them talk about Mick and how she duped Max into putting her on the case. I got a sense that these two are close, which I really hadn’t before, even though I had put them in other scenes together.
A lot of the scenes I cut today, were necessary and didn’t really move the script along. It dragged it out. I prolonged Elizabeth’s grieving period over her Father’s death. I cut the scene where she finds out about her father’s death. I Once again I had to cut what I thought was a neat idea at the time. In the scene, Elizabeth has read her Father’s diary and gone into his computer, where she finds a lot of files on Albert Renneville, who had been embezzling money to himself through IRA connections. I thought it would be neat, if Lord Manning through the diary played a game of riddles and that is how she found out the truth. The problem with the scene was it dragged and some of it may have made sense at the time, but after re-reading it, I couldn’t figure out where I was going with it. So I dumped it and jumped to his funeral. I was going to cut the Trevor scene at the Cemetery, but I decided to utilize it to make the Max scene work. All in all this was a good day. I am getting there piece by piece. On to the next scene tomorrow. This is how Roary returns and joins forces with Interpol to help disrupt Renneville’s gun smuggling and betting schemes.
The Script is the thing 