Chop Shop: LOOPER
Happy Friday!
If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while you know I’m a big fan of George Saunders, both as a writer and a teacher. His book about writing, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, opened up a whole new way of thinking about my own work by teaching me a new way to read.
He’s doing the same thing in his Story Club newsletter, assigning short stories for his subscribers to read. The first time you read it through for pleasure. Then you read through it again taking note of what’s happening in your mind along the way. By slowing down and being more thoughtful about your experience you start to understand how the story is working on you (or not) and hopefully you gain some insight into why the writer made those choices.
I want to take a page from George this week and spend some time looking at the first few pages of the script for one of my favorite movies, LOOPER, by Rian Johnson, slowing way down to think about the things I notice, the way it makes me feel, the voice, etc. I'm going to strip these pages down to their essential parts and see what I can learn (steal) from them. Chop shop.
But also... rather than posting images of the pages in screenplay format I'm going to break them out into blocks of text here. I’m curious if looking at it away from the format I’m used to, even just getting away from the Courier font, will shine a light on things I might otherwise miss. I invite you to do the same thing George suggests. Read through the whole thing once for fun, then a second time, taking note of what you respond to.
I’ll put the entire three pages in one chunk first.
Without further ado...
LOOPER
By Rian Johnson
Outside. Edge of cane fields. Day.
A pocket watch. Open. Ticking. Swinging from a chain.
Held by a young man named JOE in a clearing beside an endless field of thick sugar cane. Sky pregnant with rain.
Waiting. Practicing French with audio lessons on wireless earbuds.
He checks the watch, removes his earbuds, stands.
Without much ceremony a BLOODIED MAN in a suit appears from thin air, kneeling before the young man. Hands and feet tied. Burlap sack over his head. Muffled screams, gagged.
With no hesitation Joe raises a squat shot gun and blows the man apart with a single cough of a shot.
LATER
Cuts open the back of the body’s jacket, revealing FOUR bars of silver taped to the dead man’s back. Joe takes them.
Joe tells us in voiceover, “Time travel has not yet been invented. But thirty years from now it will have been. It will be instantly outlawed, used only in secret by the largest criminal organizations.”
Outside. Industrial plant. Day.
Massive, in the middle of nowhere. Black smoke.
Joe’s voiceover continues, “It’s nearly impossible to dispose of a body in the future. I’m told. Tagging techniques and whatnot. So when these future criminal organizations in the future need someone gone, they use specialized assassins in our present, called loopers.”
Inside. Industrial plant. Day.
Cavernous and empty. Joe carries the body to an iron hatch, opens it, and dumps him in.
Joe, “And so. Thirty years from now. My employers in the future nab the target, they zap him back to me, their looper. He appears, hands tied and sacked, and I do the necessaries. Collect my silver. So the target has vanished from the future, and I’ve just disposed of a body that technically does not exist. Clean.”
The body slides down a long chute. Vanishes in a little flare of angry red fire.
Outside. Diner. Day.
A sidecar roadside diner in the middle of nowhere. Joe’s truck out front.
Inside. Diner.
Nearly empty, Joe at a booth listening to headphones. A waitress sets down coffee.
Her bright red name tag: BEATRIX.
Beatrix says, “Bon jour, Joe.”
“Bon jour, Beatrix.
“How’s the French?”
“Slow. How’s the coffee?”
“Burnt.”
Cream in the coffee. White clouds boil deep down.
Outside. Farmland road. Day.
Joe’s truck zooms from the flat fields towards a mid sized city on the horizon.
Outside. Pawn Shop. Day.
A dingy pawn shop facade, set in city streets teeming with vagrants. A hover bike (called a “slat bike”) zooms by.
Inside. Pawn shop. Day.
Grungy, heavily fortified. Joe enters and puts his gun in a basket labeled “LOOPERS - BLUNDERBUSSES HERE”
Slips down a narrow passage, which ends at a steel wall with a protruding duct taped camera and microphone.
Joe says, “Two, Jedd.”
Joe fishes the two silver bars from his jacket.
A small narrow slot slides open in the wall, and gnarled old hands take the silver bars. It slides shut again.
In the background the front door to the pawn shop dings open.
The slot slides open and Jedd’s hands push a wad of cash.
Joe pockets it, and backs around Dale, another Looper.
Dale, “Hey Joe. Be at the club tonight?”
Joe, “Yup.”
Dale hands four silver bars through the slot as Joe retrieves his guns and exits.
Dale, “Four, Jedd.”
Inside. Joe’s apartment. Afternoon.
High ceilings, big clean windows overlooking a sooty city.
Smokes, eats pineapple out of a can. Studying from a French book. A soul LP plays on a turntable.
LATER
On the bed, shooting at the ceiling with his fingers.
Joe says, “Bon jour, mademoiselle. Bang!”
Inside. Car garage. Late afternoon.
Suit-and-tie Joe pulls a tarp off a cherried-out 1992 Mazda Miata. Lingers over it. His baby.
That’s it, we’re at the bottom of page 3.
I’m going to break it down almost line by line at first for myself and talk about what's going through my mind.
Outside. Edge of cane fields. Day.
A pocket watch. Open. Ticking. Swinging from a chain.
I’ve talked about opening images before and this one is great. It’s a movie built around time travel loops. The very first thing we see is a circular representation of time. If I were coming to this totally cold I might wonder if this was a period piece set in a time when people use pocket watches. If it’s present day or in the future, it tells me something about the person carrying it. Could be a personality quirk, the kind of person who appreciates antiques or has a retro style. The other possibility? It has sentimental value, handed down from someone this person loved.
Held by a young man named JOE in a clearing beside an endless field of thick sugar cane. Sky pregnant with rain.
“Sky pregnant with rain” alerts me to the presence of the writer. But it also makes me think overcast. Foreboding.
Waiting. Practicing French with audio lessons on wireless earbuds.
Fun character detail.
He checks the watch, removes his earbuds, stands.
Whatever he’s waiting for, it’s about to go down.
Without much ceremony a BLOODIED MAN in a suit appears from thin air, kneeling before the young man. Hands and feet tied. Burlap sack over his head. Muffled screams, gagged.
Now I’m grinning. This image is so weird and disturbing, the fact that he appeared out of thin air, the fact that he’s clearly in distress, all of that has my complete attention. Not even halfway down the first page.
With no hesitation Joe raises a squat shot gun and blows the man apart with a single cough of a shot.
I didn’t know Joe had a gun. If Rian had told me at any point up to now I would have assumed he was waiting here to shoot somebody, which would have ruined the surprise. I also notice that Joe does this without any hesitation, there’s no indicator of emotion. That, coupled with the fact that he’s got a system and a schedule, tells me he does this a lot. I’m assuming squat gun is a fun way of saying, “Sawed off.”
LATER
He does a time cut within the scene. I do the same thing, simple and clean. Keeps the action flowing. I’m on the hook and want to know what happens next, any digression puts that at risk.
Cuts open the back of the body’s jacket, revealing FOUR bars of silver taped to the dead man’s back. Joe takes them.
Joe is getting paid for this in silver bars. That’s much cooler than if there had been stacks of bills taped to the man’s back, but as I’m typing this I realize that wouldn’t have worked anyway. The gunshot would destroy the paper money. Now I’m wondering if getting paid in silver was a worldbuilding choice from the beginning, or did he have a moment where he saw stacks of bills in his head but came to the same conclusion I did.
Joe tells us in voiceover, “Time travel has not yet been invented. But thirty years from now it will have been. It will be instantly outlawed, used only in secret by the largest criminal organizations.”
All of this, including the voiceover, happens in a little over half of the first page. It starts as purely visual storytelling, then he jumps in to giving us very straightforward exposition, but it’s interesting and I’m on the hook.
Outside. Industrial Plant. Day.
Massive, in the middle of nowhere. Black smoke.
Black smoke continues that foreboding tone.
Joe, “It’s nearly impossible to dispose of a body in the future. I’m told. Tagging techniques and whatnot. So when these future criminal organizations in the future need someone gone, they use specialized assassins in our present, called loopers.”
“Tagging techniques and whatnot” strikes me as an elegant hand wave around the big question of, “Wait, why do future criminals go through all this trouble?” I wonder if there were notes that led to that, or if there were notes about it afterward. I bought it as an audience member then and I buy it as a reader now.
Inside. Industrial plant. Day.
Cavernous and empty. Joe carries the body to an iron hatch, opens it, and dumps him in.
Joe, “And so. Thirty years from now. My employers in the future nab the target, they zap him back to me, their looper. He appears, hands tied and sacked, and I do the necessaries. Collect my silver. So the target has vanished from the future, and I’ve just disposed of a body that technically does not exist. Clean.”
The body slides down a long chute. Vanishes in a little flare of angry red fire.
Again, super straightforward exposition. I feel like everything he just gave us in these voiceovers would be the first thirty-seconds of the pitch. That’s the first part of the high-concept idea. In the future, criminals use time travel technology to send victims to the past where specialized hitmen called loopers kill them and dispose of the body. It’s the futuristic version of putting somebody in cement boots and dropping them in the Hudson. Got it.
I want to take a second to talk about the voice here. I like his sparse style. I kind of gravitate toward that myself when I’m left to my own devices, trying to do as much as I can with as little as possible. Thinking of it like haiku. The images and the dialogue give it a noir-ish unsettled tone right away. Criminals, shotguns, hit men, silver bars, black smoke. All working in harmony in the first two pages.
I love that last little detail in the voiceover, “Clean.” It’s a batshit crazy operation. Bad guys in the future nab the victim off the street, send them back through time, somebody here shoots them, collects SILVER BARS from their back, then incinerates them. But because there’s no evidence in the future, because the victim maybe doesn’t even exist yet, there’s no trace of the body for “tagging techniques and whatnot” he thinks of it as clean. Tiny bit of foreshadowing, obviously this is going to get messy.
Outside. Diner. Day.
A sidecar roadside diner in the middle of nowhere. Joe’s truck out front.
Cane fields, old factory, now a diner. Joe drives a truck. It’s giving rural south. A departure from the big city dystopian noir of stuff like BLADE RUNNER.
Inside. Diner. (he omits time of day)
Nearly empty, Joe at a booth listening to headphones. A waitress sets down coffee.
Her bright red name tag: BEATRIX.
Beatrix says, “Bon jour, Joe.”
Speaking French. Is this why he’s learning French? To hit on Beatrix?
Joe replies, “Bon jour, Beatrix.
“How’s the French?”
“Slow. How’s the coffee?”
“Burnt.”
Cream in the coffee. White clouds boil deep down.
Joe’s a regular here, this feels like their routine. The French thing comes up again. Saunders talks about the writer “throwing bowling pins in the air” that will eventually come back down again as the story comes together. Joe learning French starts to feel like a bowling pin going up in the air. The dialogue keeps that hard-boiled vibe. That last image of the cream swirling in the coffee feels unsettling.
Outside. Farmland road. Day.
Joe’s truck zooms from the flat fields towards a mid sized city on the horizon.
No specific city. Letting our imagination fill in the blanks.
Outside. Pawn Shop. Day.
A dingy pawn shop facade, set in city streets teeming with vagrants. A hover bike (called a “slat bike”) zooms by.
That foreboding tone turns slightly more dystopian. Teeming with vagrants, so a lot of people aren’t doing so well in the future. The hoverbike is the first little detail that really tells us this is the future, if I’m not mistaken. So far he’s resisted cramming in a bunch of worldbuilding gadgets. There wasn’t a robotic arm dispensing coffee in the diner or anything like that, so until this moment it actually could have been taking place today.
Inside. Pawn shop. Day.
Grungy, heavily fortified. Joe enters and puts his gun in a basket labeled “LOOPERS - BLUNDERBUSSES HERE”
Slips down a narrow passage, which ends at a steel wall with a protruding duct taped camera and microphone.
The use of the word “blunderbusses” keeps that noir tone going. I love that the camera and microphone are duct taped. Low-fi sci-fi.
Joe says, “Two, Jedd.”
Joe fishes the two silver bars from his jacket.
But he took four from the dead guy?
A small narrow slot slides open in the wall, and gnarled old hands take the silver bars. It slides shut again.
In the background the front door to the pawn shop dings open.
The slot slides open and Jedd’s hands push a wad of cash.
Joe pockets it, and backs around Dale, another Looper.
Dale, “Hey Joe. Be at the club tonight?”
Joe, “Yup.”
Dale hands four silver bars through the slot as Joe retrieves his guns and exits.
Dale, “Four, Jedd.”
None of this seems super important, other than establishing the protocols and Joe’s routine. He does these hits, brings the silver here, they exchange it for cash he can use in this world. We meet Dale briefly but there’s nothing noteworthy about him or their relationship, no point-of-view about each other.
Inside. Joe’s apartment. Afternoon.
High ceilings, big clean windows overlooking a sooty city.
Joe’s doing okay. He’s got a nice place with big clean windows to look out on the sooty, slightly dystopian city. A step up from the vagrants on the street.
Smokes, eats pineapple out of a can. Studying from a French book. A soul LP plays on a turntable.
LATER
On the bed, shooting at the ceiling with his fingers.
Joe says, “Bon jour, mademoiselle. Bang!”
The French thing comes up again here. So now I know that bowling pin is coming down later. The other details seem like personality quirks?
Inside. Car garage. Late afternoon.
Suit-and-tie Joe pulls a tarp off a cherried-out 1992 Mazda Miata. Lingers over it. His baby.
Now that I’m at the bottom of page three I’m thinking about it and I don’t really know anything about Joe as a character. I know his job, I know he does it without feeling, I know he’s got a routine. But nothing’s happened yet to really tell me who he is. I do get the sense that he cares about one thing, this car.
Which leaves me feeling like the first three pages did an excellent job of laying the foundation for the big concept and the world but it hasn’t really hooked me yet on his character.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen the movie so I went back and watched how these first few pages play out. It’s very similar to what’s in the original script but for a couple of small details. It’s much sunnier than I was imagining and instead of sugar cane he’s in a corn field. When Joe gets ready for the man to appear he brings up his gun and racks the pump to cock it. There's a tarp spread out in front of him. The moment basically flips the surprise -- what's he going to shoot? The guy appears, it happens in a split second -- then TITLE CARD. Even though I knew it was coming it was still shocking.
Right after the opening scene there’s a super that tell us it’s KANSAS 2044. I wonder at what point it was added. It makes sense. He gives us so much specific information to anchor us in the concept but not the time and place. I wonder if was added after test screenings and audiences expressing a desire to know those things.
It was fun to go back and see how the scene in my head differed from the finished product. I think one of the benefits of using this method is that it really gets you thinking about what the writer’s intentions may have been and how successful they were in terms of communicating that to you. It’s changed the way I read other peoples’ material and give notes now.
I think I’m going to do this same exercise on the first five pages of my own WIP this week. Maybe I’ll post it next Friday. When I sit down to write I’m always trying to work from an intuitive place, letting my imagination go and making choices on gut instinct. Less thinking, more feeling. Pulling my scenes out of the screenplay format and taking a beat to look at my pages as if I'm reading some other writer may shine a whole new light on them.
FYI, I have a bonus edition coming your way on Tuesday. I'm excited about that one.
Hope you have a great week!
Want to Support This Newsletter?
There are a couple of ways to do it. One, you can help spread the word to anybody you think may find it useful. Two, you are welcome to “buy me a coffee” at the link below. There are no obligations or expectations. You can do it one time for $5, you can make it monthly, or not at all.
Mostly, I just appreciate the fact that you read down this far.
Buy MickeyFisher73 a Coffee. ko-fi.com/mickeyfisher735846 - Ko-fi ❤️ Where creators get support from fans through donations, memberships, shop sales and more! The original 'Buy Me a Coffee' Page. — ko-fi.com Become a supporter of MickeyFisher73 today! ❤️ Ko-fi lets you support the creators you love with no fees on donations.