STORY IN ACTION #2

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THE BOURNE MOVIES

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 by
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William C. Martell

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 FIRST STRIKE PRODUCTIONS

The Bourne Movies

First Digital Edition
ISBN:
Copyright 2016 by William C. Martell

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or
telepathic, including photocopying, recording, or any information and
retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the Writer, except
by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

First Strike Productions

11012 Ventura Blvd #103
Studio City, CA 91604

http://www.ScriptSecrets.Net

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
Nice Guy Assassin
The Screenplay
The Star
The Reshoots
The Bourne Movies
BOURNE INDENTITY
Introduction
Revolutionary?
Opening Hook
Paranoia
Intelligent Thrillers
Embassy Chase
The Red Bag
Drive He Said
Conflicted Quest
Shocking Action
Stay Or Go?
European Car Chase
A New Identity
The Big Plan
I'm The Bad Guy?
Love On The Rocks
Buying The Farm
End Of Love?
Act Three
I Spy
Confrontation
Twist
Conclusion
BOURNE SUPREMACY
Introduction
Nobody Loves A Sequel
Opening Hook
MacGuffin
Our First Chase
Dis-Harmonic Convergence
Character Purpose
Connections
The Unusual Way
Mano-a-Mano
Meet Me In Berlin
Someplace Public
Will he Kill Her?
Crimes Of The Past
Police Foot Chase
The Guilty Party
The Ladder Of Villains
To Russia With Guilt
Kirill Foot Chase
Moscow Car Chase
Into The Darkness
Interlude #1
Contrition
Interlude #2
Conclusions
BOURNE ULTIMATUM
Introduction
Opening Hook
Story Flow
Tradecraft
Camera Paranoia
Clever Locations
Get Jason Bourne!
Just MacGyver That!
Cross-Cutting
What's At Stake?
 Call Backs & Echo Scenes
Planned Suspense
Poking The Tiger
Eight Minute Chase Scene
Savage Fight Scenes
Which Side Are We On?
The New Clues
Dc Al Coda
Coming Together
Two way Clues
Final Car Chase
Coming Home
Crippled By The Past
Confrontations
Denouement
Conclusions
BOURNE LEGACY
Introduction
Opening Hook
The Arrogance Of Sequels
Mass Elimination (part 1)
Drone Chase
Still No Act 2
Mass Elimination (part 2)
Long Term Parking
When Aaron Met Marta
Midpoint?
Number 5 Is Alive!
Can This Be More Boring?
Nothing Driving
All Too Easy
Stall, Stall, Stall
Talk Your Way Out Of This!
Hide & No Seek
Nonsense Plotting
Are We In Act 3 Yet?
Act 2 Chase
 Vehicle Chase
Will We Ever Get To Act 3?
Every Movie Should End With A Bang!
Conclusions
JASON BOURNE
Introduction
Re-Bourne
Stern Fathers
Public Meeting #1
Fast Walking Chases
Countdown
This Time It's Personal!
Cyber Paranoia
Public Meeting #2
What Happens In Vegas
American Style Car Chase
Mano-A-Mano
Loose Ends
Conclusions
SERIES CONCLUSIONS
AFTERWORDS
Help Me, Help You!
About The Author
Other Works
Secrets Of Action Screenwriting
Hitchcock: Experiments In Terror
Hitchcock: Mastering Suspense
Story In Action Series
Blue Book Series
Coming Soon

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 INTRODUCTION
“Who has a safety deposit box full of money and six passports and a
gun? Who has a bank account number in their hip? I come in here, and the
first thing I'm doing is I'm catching the sight-lines and looking for an exit. I
can tell you the license plate numbers of all six cars outside. I can tell you
that our waitress is left-handed and the guy sitting up at the counter weighs
two hundred fifteen pounds and knows how to handle himself. I know the
best place to look for a gun is the cab of the gray truck outside, and at this
altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.
Now why would I know that? How can I know that and not know who I
am?”

The Bourne Series almost never happened.

“The word on Bourne was that it was supposed to be a turkey,” Damon

said in an interview with GQ Magazine. “It’s very rare that a movie comes
out a year late, has four rounds of reshoots, and it’s good.”

Screenwriter Tony Gilroy told The Playlist, “Oh yeah, oh man, nobody
was more surprised (at its success) then me.”

The film was supposed to be released on September 7, 2001... then got

pushed back to February 2002 and then pushed back again to May 31st
2002.

The film was plagued with so many problems that everyone expected it
to bomb... they were hoping that it might recoup it’s (fairly inexpensive)
production cost before it died.

Just as the Bourne movies are similar to “Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde” with
Bourne as both a nice guy and a trained assassin struggling to cohabit the
same body, both the hero and villain of “The Bourne Identity”s production
problems were the same person - director Doug Liman. Without him there
wouldn’t be a Bourne franchise... but with him the franchise almost died in
its very first film.

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 NICE GUY ASSASSIN

Liman had read the novel “The Bourne Identity” by Robert Ludlum in
High School, and it was his dream project to make it into a film again.
(“Wait, the movie is based on a novel?” A big best-selling beach read in
1980. “Wait, *again*?” Yes, it was a TV miniseries which ran on ABC in
1988 starring the king of mini-series, Richard Chamberlain.) Liman was
*obsessed* with the novel, and after his indie success with “Swingers” in
1996 decided to go after “Bourne”... but at that time Warner Brothers still
owned the rights from the TV miniseries and was considering developing a
movie version since they owned the rights. But after Liman directed “Go”
in 1999 he discovered that Warner Bros. hadn’t been able to put their
version together and allowed the rights to lapse. So Liman decided to option
the novel himself, by flying his private plane to Ludlum’s house in
Montana... only one problem: he’d just received his pilot’s license and this
would be his first solo flight. He ended up getting lost... and the National
Guard had been called out to search the mountains for the wreckage of his
plane. Liman isn’t much of a planner, likes to do things like fly cross
country to meet a best selling novelist on a whim... and in an interview with
Entertainment Weekly said, “I had just become a pilot, and it was my first
solo flight. I had woefully miscalculated my arrival, so by the time I got
there the National Guard was looking for me. I didn’t understand I had to
slow down to cross the Tetons.” This sort of unplanned recklessness appears
to be Liman’s trademark. On his way back from Ludlum’s house, his plane
ran out of fuel and he *did* have to be rescued! But Liman is the hero of
this franchise because he believed in that story enough to fly to Montana
and personally option the film rights from novelist Robert Ludlum. Without
that, there would not be a “Bourne Identity” movie in the first place, let
alone the now four films which have followed in the series.

But just as Bourne is both the nice guy and the brutal assassin, Liman is
also the villain of this story due to that recklessness and lack of planning.
His friend Sarah Polley calls Liman a “Complete mess who can barely keep
track of his possessions.” People who are not his friend are often less kind.
Liman was born on July 24th, 1965, the son of prominent New York lawyer
Arthur L. Liman best known for his work on the Attica Prison Uprising
Commission and the Iran-Contra Investigation. Doug Liman graduated
from Brown University and USC School of Cinema, and when I first saw
“Swingers” I thought this was a great screenplay shot by a barely competent
director. Heck, it was a low budget movie - $200,000 - so you have to cut
them some slack... but didn’t look much better than “Clerks” which was
made for under $28,000... and wasn’t nearly as well directed as “El
Mariachi” which was made for $7,000. The reason why “Swingers” was a
success was the writing... so I was surprised when the director landed the
gig directing “Go”. And, once more, I though the great thing about “Go”
was the screenplay rather than the direction (which was ragged looking).
Hey, maybe I’m just a mainstream guy, but that chaotic indie style where
everything seems unplanned and shots don’t cut together smoothly always
looks like the work of an amateur or someone who had no plan at all...

And that’s Liman.

Stories about Liman are legendary, like the one where he completely
destroyed a set on “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” even after being told there were
more scenes to be shot on that set. Oops! They had to rebuild the set
elsewhere to shoot those scenes. On “Bourne” he would just shoot things on
the fly at a location, with seemingly no plan... and often would have to go
back and do pick up shots because he forgot to shoot some critical footage.
“Universal hated me. I had an arch enemy in the studio. They were trying to
shut me down! The producers were bad guys,” Liman said in a 2008
interview in New York Magazine. The problem was, Liman was not
working like a professional... and running the film way over budget and
way behind schedule. When he forgot some critical shots at a train station
and the studio would not pay for reshoot time, there was “A huge epic
screaming fight, the biggest screaming fight ever on the set!” In the
commentary track of the DVD Liman talks about sneaking off with Matt
Damon and a camera and shooting the forgotten shots guerrilla style... and
was proud of that.

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 THE SCREENPLAY

The screenplay was a mess as well. Liman originally hired William

Blake Herron (“A Texas Funeral” with Robert Patrick and “Ripley
Underground” with Barry Pepper - oddly a sequel to “Talented Mr. Ripley”
*without* Matt Damon) who was first writer on the project, which lands
him a credit due to WGA rules at the time. That screenplay was rewritten
by several other writers, including David Self (“The Haunting” remake) -
but the studio was still not happy. So they put Pulitzer Prize winning
playwright and two time Oscar nominee Tony Gilroy on the project (“The
Cutting Edge”, “Dolores Claiborne” and “The Devil’s Advocate”). Gilroy
and Liman didn’t seem to get along, Liman calling Gilroy arrogant, Gilroy
saying that Liman “Didn’t have any sense of story or cause and effect” in
the New Yorker article. What’s funny about the draft of the Gilroy
screenplay I read is how the chaos of Liman’s production even ends up on
the page, with “place holder” sluglines like: “DOUG'S ROUGH DRAFT
OF THE BIG ACTION SEQUENCE” and the occasional Doug Has An
Idea For Something Here. It’s obvious that Liman was making things up as
he went along, and Gilroy was trying to make sense of it all on the fly.
Trying to hold the production together.

Liman also seems to have been undecided on just what kind of film he
was making... a character study of a man with amnesia or a big dumb
Hollywood action flick. Throughout the commentary track he talks about
wanting to make the un-Hollywood version of this story that was more
character oriented and more like the indie films he had made
previously.“Every time I had to make a decision, my inclination was against
making a traditional action movie,” Liman told the New Yorker. “I wanted
to make an art film the studio could sell as an action movie with trailer
moments to trick the audience. They had no idea what to make of this.” But
Gilroy said the script by the previous writers had written “a huge fifteen
gunmen on the (Paris) Metro blowing the fuck out of everything kind of
movie.” Which was it? Art film or Action movie? Liman seemed not to
know, and maybe it changed from day to day. This is another example of
the “Jekyll And Hyde” nature of the project... was it an art house indie film
or a big studio summer blockbuster?

When Liman came to Universal with the project, Head Of Production

Stacey Snider initially loved the idea of the two very different halves of the
project, “I was intrigued by the pairing of an independent-minded
filmmaker with a familiar studio genre. Look, I’m a moviegoer and I’m
bored. I’m getting tired of movies that all look the same,” she told the Wall
Street Journal.

But somebody had to merge those two halves of the project into one,
and that ended up being screenwriter Tony Gilroy. When I first read the
novel back in the early 1980s, it was a bit of a disappointment... a “beach
read” that was much like Dan Brown’s novels today - a cool idea and lots of
big exciting scenes, but only competently written. Gilroy told the New
Yorker, “Those (books) were never meant to be filmed. They weren’t about
human behavior, they were about running to airports. The filter that readers
put on to read a certain kind of fiction is very forgiving.” Gilroy thought the
key to merging both halves of this project was to make the story about a
nice guy with amnesia, “who finds out the only thing he knows how to do is
kill people.” This is what created the movie’s unique quest and conflict:
Bourne is a man with amnesia who needs to know who he is... but the more
he discovers about his past life, the more he realizes that he is a villain.
Does he really want to know more about himself?

This “amnesia plot” is really nothing new. Though there may be some
previous film version that I’m not aware of, in my book “Secrets Of Action
Screenwriting” I note the earliest version that I’m aware of, Cornell
Woolrich’s great Noir novel "Black Curtain" which was filmed as "Street
Of Chance" (1942) about an amnesia victim trying to uncover his past, who
uncovers the frightening fact that he is a murderer. In the 1970's, novelist
David Ely came up with a Cold War variation where a mild mannered
amnesia victim was brainwashed to forget that he used to be a government
assassin. Now as he tries to uncover his past, the CIA is out to kill him. The
movie "Total Recall" (1990) made it science fiction. The amnesia/brain
wash victim goes to Mars to uncover his past, and finds out he was an
interplanetary spy (and his own worst enemy). Shane Black took the
concept back to earth in "The Long Kiss Goodnight" (1996) making the
amnesia victim a June Cleaver like mom and housewife, who has to protect
her daughter when she uncovers her past as a government assassin. That
film is interesting in that Brian Cox who plays Ward Abbott in the Bourne
movies was one of the stars. Small world! But Gilroy’s Bourne movies gave
us the gritty version, with Jason Bourne as an amnesia victim whose search
for identity uncovers that he was one of several top secret government
assassins involved in regime changes around the world.

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 THE STAR

Universal had a “go” project, but who would they get to play Bourne?
Richard Chamberlain played the role in the TV movie. In an interview with
the BBC Liman said, “I met with a wide range of people when casting for
the film, people like Russell Crowe and even Sly Stallone at one point.” For
a while it looked like Matthew McConaughey might play the role, but then
they found their Jason Bourne... Brad Pitt.

That’s right - Brad Pitt was Jason Bourne throughout much of

preproduction. This is actually where Pitt and Liman first discussed “Mr. &
Mrs. Smith”. Everything was set for production to begin with Brad Pitt as
Jason Bourne... except due to production delays (possible due to Liman not
understanding the expenses of actually shooting the film on location in
Paris) the project bumped into Pitt’s next project “Spy Games” with Robert
Redford, and Pitt had to choose which film he would drop out of. He picked
Bourne, and did the film with Redford. Now they had a film with a start
date and no star! Who would play Bourne?

The Guardian from Thursday May 25, 2000 supplied the answer:
“Following the last-minute exit of Brad Pitt, Matt Damon is Universal's top
choice to star in The Bourne Identity, a paranoid thriller to be directed by
Doug (“Go”) Liman. Damon is currently in final negotiations with studio
executives, and insider sources report that the picture is scheduled to begin
shooting in September or October. The presence of respected left-field
director Liman behind the camera suggests that “The Bourne Identity” may
well adopt the same tack as “The Talented Mr Ripley” in converting an
essentially pulp-thriller source book into a weightier, more high-brow
picture. The identity problems of Bourne's central character echo that of the
blank and predatory character that Damon played in Ripley.”

Now we have a go project and a star and production began in Paris... but
according to the film’s editor Saar Klein, "Bourne was overly chaotic."
Liman has said in the past that he has a tendency to “find” the film as he
makes it, and Akiva Goldsman who produced “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” said:
"Doug is a self- and semi-managed tornado. It's chaos." During that film
Liman had screenwriter Simon Kinberg write 40 or 50 different endings...
and then picked the ending from the original draft of the screenplay.
Production on “Bourne Identity” was a mess!

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 THE RESHOOTS

At one point original producer Richard Gladstein left the shoot and
Universal sent in Steven Speilberg’s producer Frank Marshall... who also
has experience directing (“Congo”) to marshal the troops and keep Liman
on track... which was not an easy task. Liman insisted on a French crew...
and no translator! Though Liman didn’t want the crew to get their
instructions from a middle man, this created all kinds of communications
issues due to Liman’s High School French being slightly less than perfect.
Add to this: Liman was like a little kid, "There were 15 or 20 people
working in golden time so Doug could play paintball in the forest,"
Marshall told the LA Times in an interview. Tension between Liman and
Marshall and Liman and the studio escalated, and Liman even considered
selling off his director’s credit on e-bay as a protest. Yes, you could have
been the credited director of “The Bourne Identity”!

But instead something else happened behind the scenes, something that
we may never know the details of, and there were reshoots...

Four rounds of reshoots.

It’s amusing to listen to Liman’s commentary track on the film when he

says that the big car chase was done by a second unit director or that Frank
Marshall helped him out by shooting a few scenes. This sounds a bit like
Liman may have been fired, or at least not had an active role in some of the
reshoots (or maybe all of them). Everything after the Country House scene
is brand new material. In that version of the screenplay that I read, there
was no Country House - that scene took place in downtown Paris with all
kinds of run-and-gun action on the city streets. Pretty expensive to shut
down streets in a city like Paris, so I suspect even the change in location
from city to country was part of Frank Marshall’s work. Liman says on the
commentary that he doesn’t like the car chase at all, which makes me
wonder if Liman knew about that second unit work.
 But when you combine the Jekyll & Hyde scenario of a disorganized
indie director making a big Hollywood summer film and the Jekyll & Hyde
method by which the project came to be made it all seems to work for the
Jekyll & Hyde character of Jason Bourne, and the film was a huge success
either despite all of these problems or because of them. So the Bourne
Movies became the perfect series for the second installment of Story In
Action books where we take a look at different film franchises.

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 THE BOURNE MOVIES

There have been books and articles on one film or even two films, but
why not look at *all* of the films in a series? Compare them, see how the
stories connect, who the characters age and change (or don’t). Since
Hollywood has become a big sequel machine, let’s take a look at all of these
sequels. Are the new films as good as the old films? Are there themes or
plot threads that run through all of the films? Since every film that makes
money ends up being the beginning of a franchise (whether they like it or
not) I’ve decided to look at a dozen of these franchises over the next few
years.

Though I am a screenwriter, and tend to watch films with a writer’s eye,

this book is focused on the story elements of the films and how they work.
But I love movies, so much of this book will be devoted to finding a deeper
appreciation of these films just as a film lover. While talking to a friend of
mine about this new series, I told him it would be like the analysis of “Die
Hard” in my “Secrets Of Action Screenwriting” book, and he told me he’d
seen “Die Hard” a dozen times and never noticed many of the things I had
pointed out in that chapter, like the symbolism of Holly’s watch throughout
the film. So if you are just a movie lover or a fan of the “Bourne” movies,
there will be all kinds of fun cool stuff you may never have noticed before.
Hey, you can impress your friends the next time you watch the films.

Because the new film just came out, I thought we’d take a look at the
five films so far in the “Bourne” series, but first a note on each chapter.
Because I believe that pacing is an important part of screenwriting and
filmmaking - and even film viewing - I have noted the time in minutes and
seconds that have elapsed since the beginning of the movie in parentheses
before most major scenes. So (62:15) means that this scene begins 62
minutes and 15 seconds since the film has begun. This is done for every
film except “Jason Bourne” since they wouldn’t let me into the screening
with my *phone* let alone a stop watch or tape recorder. One of the reasons
why I do this is to compare the pacing for each film and also so that you
could compare the length of action scenes or dramatic scenes or suspense
scenes from one film to the next.

I’ve also supplied the box office numbers, budgets, running times, both
Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes scores, and the results of the Cinemascore
audience polling to give you more data to compare. Which made more
money in the United States, “Identity” or “Superiority”? You can find out.
Though some of these numbers may not mean anything to you, they are
often an indicator of things like whether we will ever see the next two
movies in the proposed “Bourne Legacy” trilogy.

But enough about the raw statistics, let’s look at the movies!

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 THE BOURNE IDENTITY
Release date: June 14, 2002
Starring: Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, Clive
Owen.
Writer: W. Blake Herron and Tony Gilroy, based on the novel by Robert
Ludlum.
Director: Doug Liman (and Frank Marshall)
Producer: Frank Marshall.
Production Company: Universal, Kennedy/Marshall.

Budget: $55 million... around $63 million after reshoots.

Domestic Box Office: $121,661,683
Total Box Office: $214,034,224
Running Time: 119 minutes.
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Tagline: “Matt Damon is Jason Bourne”.

Rotten Tomatoes: 78% (top critics)

Metacritic: 68
Cinemascore: A-

Quest: Who am I?

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 INTRODUCTION

The first film in the series was a very troubled production, and we
covered most of that in the Introduction chapter, so let me begin this chapter
with how I became a fan. I mentioned that back in the early 1980s I bought
the novel in paperback (big conch shell on the cover - a beach read) and
struggled through it. Great ideas, pedestrian writing. Somehow I missed the
Miniseries version with Richard Chamberlain and Jaclyn Smith. Then, in
2002 I landed the assignment from hell with a crazy French-Canadian
producer who had been making movies of the week for MGM Television
and wanted to make a low budget thriller starring Jamie Lee Curtis which
would be a theatrical through MGM. I pitched him five or six ideas, he
loved one about a bride on her honeymoon whose new husband gets
kidnapped and she turns Rambo to get him back. But this producer could
not make up his mind, and after I wrote that story he asked if I could make
a minor change - could the husband be her son and could she be a widow?
Sure, no problem...

This producer was also looking for the best production deals, and found
a studio in Mexico that had been headquarters for the “Tarzan” TV show
which had just been cancelled and wanted to take advantage of the deals
they were offering. Could the story take place on the coast of Mexico?
Easy!

Then he found a better deal in Portugal, and asked if I could do a

rewrite for Portugal... oh, and could I come up with some new story ideas
about two college girls on summer vacation (because he’d been told that
younger characters sold better). Sure - I pitched him five or six new ideas
and he picked one that had an espionage background. I wrote that up... and
that went through a bunch of changes.

Somewhere in here I saw a press screening of “The Bourne Identity”

and mentioned it at our next meeting... which was a good thing, because the
next major change ended up being shooting in Dubrovnik and the story now
needed a male lead because he was putting together a deal with Jean-Claude
Van Damme and director Ringo Lam... and MGM (which had been in
financial trouble after releasing a slate of expensive duds) was looking at
this film as it’s big summer release. Wow! I pitched a handful of new
Bourne inspired ideas and he picked one and I wrote that up. After the
Crazy French-Canadian saw “The Bourne Identity” he had even more
notes... like adding a big car chase since he had a connection to the French
precision driving team who had done the chase in “Bourne”. My script
already had this crazy thing called “parkour” in it, which I’d seen in a shoe
commercial the year before when I was on the jury at the Raindance Film
Festival in London. When I showed him the commercial, he screamed
“They’re like monkeys! They can climb anywhere!” We would have been
the first film with parkour.

My parkour JCVD version of “Bourne” was about an agent who gets

burned by his government and goes on the run after his fingerprints are
found at an assassination scene and they think he’s gone rogue... so now he
must find the real assassin to prove himself innocent, and to stop him from
assassinating the head of the UN at a meeting in Dubrovnik and leaving his
prints behind there as well. One of the cool things I came up with was
swapping prints in the database, so the assassin could leave his prints at a
crime scene and when they ran them, they’d match the hero’s prints on file.
As I write this in 2016, there’s a big news story about hackers stealing
people’s finger prints... I had that story almost 15 years ago!

But as MGM put more focus on our film, the crazy French-Canadian
producer began to choke - worried that he’d fail - and kept changing his
mind about everything (a bit like Liman) and found a better deal in South
Africa and wanted me to come up with a handful of ideas about diamond
smuggling and as “The Bourne Identity” was becoming an international
success our project was slowly dying as JCVD and Lam got tired of waiting
and jumped onboard another film. Eventually our project died (along with
that incarnation of MGM) and that middle version that was inspired by
“The Bourne Identity” went onto a shelf somewhere along with all of the
other versions I’d written for the crazy French-Canadian. Collecting dust
somewhere.
 But crazy French-Canadian producer couldn’t stop talking about “The
Bourne Identity”....

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 REVOLUTIONARY!

When people talk about “The Bourne Identity” they often say that it
revolutionized the thriller genre and changed the way those stories were
told. The quasi-reboot of the James Bond franchise is usually credited to the
success of “The Bourne Identity”. There’s a screenwriting guru who even
has a class on how you can learn the new revolutionary thriller paradigm
created by “The Bourne Identity”! I don’t remember what this guy charges
for this class, but it’s much more than the cost of this book...

Where you will get the information for free as a bonus.

What you will discover when we look at “The Bourne Identity” is that it
follows the basic pattern of thrillers all the way back to Hitchcock’s “The
39 Steps” (1935), but is remarkably similar to “Three Days Of The Condor”
(1974). Both “Condor” and “Bourne” are about CIA agents who go through
a trauma and find themselves outside the CIA - with a rogue section of the
CIA actually gunning for them! They use their wits and clever,
unpredictable methods to survive, and eventually uncover the rogue section
of the CIA and cause it to implode... but they are left outside the
organization and maybe still a target. We’ll look at the similarities in a
moment, but obviously “The Bourne Identity” has no revolutionary
paradigm. It’s just a very well done thriller.

But wait, “The Bourne Identity” is revolutionary because Jason Bourne

is an anti-authority character chased by the authorities, where James Bond
is an authority character who does things on orders from the authorities.
Certainly that makes it different! Shall we go back to Hitchcock’s “The 39
Steps” (which I look at in “Mastering Suspense”) which was released in
1935? In that film we have an anti-authority character chased by the
authorities... in a spy story! In fact, so much of “The 39 Steps” is anti-
authority and subversive: the head of the enemy spy group is the most
respected member of the community! But we can also go back to “Three
Days Of The Condor” and find an anti-authority character being chased by
the authorities and doing everything in his power to remain an outsider.
Turner, just like Bourne, may start out wanting to come in and rejoin the
“community” of spies, but that’s a trap! So both remain outsiders. Once
more, no new ground broken but “Bourne Identity” is just a damned good
thriller.

The other thing that someone might point to as being different is the
level of reality in the fight scenes... and even that is nothing new. Before the
“James Bond” movies became a parody of themselves, they had some very
realistic and savage fight scenes. The Connery era was filled with the same
kind of hand-to-hand fighting you’ll see in the Bourne movies. Check out
“From Russia With Love” or the opening sequence in “Thunderball” for
some great examples of fight scenes that are brutal and realistic... and also
use found objects as weapons. “Casino Royale” wasn’t anything new in
Bond films, it was a return to where the series began... only to revert back
only a couple of films later in “Spectre”. So even the type of action in “The
Bourne Identity” is really nothing new... just really well done.

There’s a new development phrase you may have heard, “Elevated”, as

in “Elevated Thriller”. That doesn’t mean a thriller screenplay that is placed
on top of a ladder or read on the roof of a very tall building... it’s just
Hollywood code for “good”. I find it troubling that Hollywood has to make
up some code word for “good” to distinguish good screenplays from bad
ones and good films from bad ones, but that is the world we are living in. If
a screenplay has actual characterization and explores a theme and examines
the human condition and has great dialogue and actions it is “elevated”. If it
has crappy characterizations and isn’t really about anything and has merely
adequate dialogue and actions it is considered just a normal screenplay or
movie. “The Bourne Identity” is an “elevated thriller”, which just means
that despite all of the behind the scenes hell while making the film, it turned
out *good*! Really good! Let’s take a look at how the movie works, shall
we?

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THE BOURNE IDENTITY

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OPENING HOOK

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 Opening image:
Bourne floating in the sea in a raging storm.

The story begins with a bunch of sailors are playing poker on their
fishing boat, and when one goes outside... he spots the floating body! This
is the middle of the ocean, how did it get here? They bring it onboard... and
the seemingly dead Man is alive! When the Ship’s Doctor cuts off his
wetsuit, he finds bullet holes - the Man has been shot in the back several
times! He removes the bullets, cleans the wounds, then spots another scar -
cuts it open. Inside is a capsule! Weird. When he examines it, the capsule
has a mini laser that projects the name of a Swiss Bank and a secret account
number on the wall of the ships cabin. Weirder still!

So we begin with a normal world, and then one strange thing after
another. Story is conflict and story is change. Instead of opening with the
Man alive in the water, which would offer no change, we begin with the
Man seemingly dead. The key to great storytelling is Always Be Leading
(the audience). We lead the audience to believe the Man is dead, but he’s
alive. We lead the audience to believe the Man was the victim of a
shipwreck or something, but he’s been shot. When we lead the audience to
believe something, then the change is a little twist.

(4:50) Then someone attacks the Ship’s Doctor! The Man has
awakened, and is angry! The Ship’s Doctor explains (between punches) that
they pulled the Man from the water, there was a strange capsule under the
skin in his hip, what’s that all about? The Man then collapses... wounded. “I
am Giancarlo, what’s your name? What’s your name?” “I don’t know.” The
Ship’s Doctor lays the Man back on the table so that he can rest.

What is your name? I don’t know. We’re just over five minutes into the
story and we have introduced the big quest in the story. The question that
must be answered. The thing that drives our story from beginning to end. In
the “Story In Action: Terminator” book the thing that drove those stories
(except for “Salvation”) was *pursuit*, in this series the thing that will
drive all of the stories (again, except for the 4th entry in the series) is a
quest, a question that must be answered. Where the 4th entries in both series
fail is in violating the very thing that drives the stories.
Meanwhile...

(5:50) CIA, Langley: Young CIA Assistant Danny Zorn (Gabriel Mann)
reports to his boss Conklin (Chris Cooper) that the mission failed. Conklin
looks at a photo of a luxury yacht from his file folder - which is a visual
clue that will connect elements later. Though the main mystery in this story
is “Who am I?” when it comes to Jason Bourne’s character, the rest of the
story is also told like a mystery - giving the audience clues and allowing
them to assemble the story themselves. This is not a stupid Hollywood
blockbuster where the story is spoon fed to the audience, this is an
“intelligent thriller” where the audience has to figure things out as the story
unfolds. But that means the *writer* has to carefully give the audience all
of the clues they will need to assemble the puzzle. We know a CIA mission
failed. We know a Man was found in the sea after being shot. We know the
CIA mission had something to with a yacht. Hey, do you think that Man
had something to do with the CIA mission?

(6:30) The Man has become part of the ship’s crew, now - a fisherman.
He has no memory of who he is, where he came from. He speaks many
languages. He knows how to tie knots. He can read and write... but he has
no memory of who he is. He’s frustrated as hell, confused. The Ship’s
Doctor assures him that it will all come back. The Man is not so sure.

The cool thing about all of these odd skills is that they are clues to who
he is, but clues that don’t make any sense. What kind of person knows how
to tie all kinds of knots... but also speaks a dozen different languages?

Though this unknown Man is played by a movie star, we don’t know

anything about the character... except how he interacts with others. His
relationship with the Ship’s Doctor allows us a window into his frustrations,
and a way to see that he is a nice guy. They have a friendship. In a situation
where the protagonist doesn’t know who they are, it’s important to establish
that they aren’t a complete jerk - especially if they’ve recently been shot.
Just showing the Man working hard on the fishing boat and having a friend
makes him “likable”.

(8:50) When they pull into port, the Ship’s Doctor gives the Man a
handful of cash... donated by the crew. Enough money to get him to
Switzerland - where that bank account from the capsule is. The Man hops
off the boat like the other fisherman and walks across the street...

And vanishes when a 3 wheeled vehicle passes in front of him.

This is the first the “Bourne vanishing” thing is used, and though it
seems like something that would be continued throughout the series. It’s
really mostly used in the trailers for the films rather than the films
themselves. Probably the reason for that is because it doesn’t seem to have
any real meaning... it’s just “cool”.

(9:50) On A Train: The Man looks at his reflection in the window, then
at the capsule. This is a great way to show him wondering about his
identity.

This is a small moment, but one of the things that separates this film
from some big bombastic action flick. “Bourne Identity” may have an
awesome car chase, a bunch of amazing fight scenes, and even an explosion
- but it never loses sight that it is about the *character*. It’s a story about a
man on a quest to discover who he is, and a small moment like this doesn’t
add much to the film’s running time, but adds a lot to its feeling that this
story is about the characters. This “elevates” the story.

(10:30) Switzerland. Night. The Man has no money, so he sleeps on a

park bench.

A pair of Police Officers roust him in the middle of the night. They ask
to see his papers, and he responds in perfect Swiss-German that he has lost
his papers. One of the Officers, pushes his nightstick into the Man, tells him
he must leave. The Man moves quickly, using the nightstick to knock out
both Officers, taking one’s gun in the process, and then aiming the gun at
the two unconscious Officers. All by reflex.
 What? The Man ejects the magazine from the gun, ejects the shell in the
chamber, throws it all in a trash can. How did he know to do these things?
Who is he?

This is a great scene because it gives us some action *and* further

advances the question that is driving the story by giving us more
information about who the Man may be - but as will all of the other
information, it doesn’t quite make sense... so it just adds to the mystery.

(11:40) Mugabe-like African dictator Wombosi (Adewale Akinnuoye-

Agbaje) holds a press conference, saying there was an assassination attempt
on his life and he has proof that the CIA was behind it...

The CIA Department Chiefs lead by CIA Director Marshall (named

after Frank Marshall?) (played by David Selburg) watches the press
conference. For the past few years Wombosi has been living in exile in
Paris, and blackmailing the CIA. It seems he was a CIA puppet placed in
power in his un-named African country who could not be controlled. He
knows all kinds of damaging things about the agency that he will write a
book about - unless they put him back in power. CIA man Ward Abbott
(Brian Cox) is one the Department Chiefs in the meeting... he is one of the
important characters in the series.

Abbott has a conversation with Conklin about Project Treadstone, and

the Wombosi problem. Treadstone is an ultra black-bag operation within the
CIA which is run by Cooper which perform’s secret assassinations. They
were *supposed to * assassinate Wombosi, but he seems to be still alive and
having press conferences which may embarrass the US Government.
Cooper tells Abbott that they lost communication with the man they sent to
perform the assassination, and he’s presumed dead.

And the audience puts two and two together - our Man without a
memory is that assassin.

(13:30) In Switzerland, the Man enters the bank. After asking about his
account, he is escorted down to the safety deposit boxes, which require a
biometric palm scan. His palm passes: this is *his* numbered account. In a
privacy room, they bring him the safety deposit box... the answer to all of
his identity questions.

Inside the box: A passport with a photo of him in the name of Jason
Bourne. Also some documents with that name and a residence address. “My
name is Jason Bourne. I live in Paris.” He now knows who he is... or does
he?

In the lower compartment of the box: bundles of money in currencies

from around the world, an automatic pistol, and more passports from many
different countries... under different names! Every passport has *his* photo,
and a different name and home country. Russia? Spain? Canada? A British
passport under the name John Michael Kane is planted here, to be paid off
later in the story.

Bourne grabs the wastepaper basket, which has a red cloth liner bearing
the name of the bank, and dumps everything from the safety deposit box
*except for the gun* into the bag. The gun goes back in the box, the box
goes back to the Attendant. Bourne asks when he was here last - three
weeks ago. He leaves the bank with the red cloth bag...

One of the guards watches him go, then dials his cell phone. A great
paranoia builder. Little touches like this are what make Political Thrillers
work - they are based on paranoia and the possibility that anyone could be
part of the conspiracy... so having some bystander do something suspicious
helps to build that paranoia. Whether that suspicious action is actually part
of the conspiracy or not doesn’t matter - it’s creating the impression that
*anyone* could be part of the conspiracy. In this case, that guard *is* part
of the conspiracy - his information will eventually end up on Conklin’s
hands.

(18:30) Bourne calls directory assistance in Paris and asks for the phone
number for a Jason Bourne, is connected, hears his own voice on the
answering machine! Okay, he is Jason Bourne and he lives in Paris. He is
getting closer to solving the mystery of who he is (so he, and the audience)
thinks). Whenever there is a mystery in a story, we want to make sure the
audience thinks the protagonist is making progress. We don’t want them to
think the story is just spinning its wheels. Often that means a false solution
is created to make the audience believe they are closing in on the solution.

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 PARANOIA

(19:00) As he walks down the street, a pair of Policemen stare at him...

paranoia?
He turns the corner.
A siren coming from behind him... just an ambulance.
He crosses the street, and at the next intersection - another pair of
Policemen are walking towards him. He crosses against traffic, narrowly
being missed by a pair of street cars... and the two Policemen follow him.
One speaks on his radio.
More sirens in the distance.
Two Police Cars are headed right towards him.
Coming for him?

See how paranoia builds in this scene? In “Three Days Of The Condor”
after Turner discovers that all of his co-workers have been killed while he
was out getting sandwiches, when he walks down the street *everyone*
seems to be acting suspicious. There’s a woman pushing a stroller who
suddenly stops in front of him and reaches into the stroller... for a gun? To
kill him? No, just for her kid. But there moments of small (suspicious)
details builds the tension in a scene where Bourne is just walking down the
street...

Except, they really are following him.

Paranoia is one of the basic elements of every thriller, but in a Political

Thriller it is often in the foreground of the story because some element of
the government - the authorities - are involved in the conspiracy. In my
Thriller audio class and the upcoming book on writing thrillers, we look at
paranoia in films like “Breakdown” and “The Lady Vanishes” where it’s
often the side-effect of the protagonist being an outsider or people just not
wanting to get involved, so they turn against the protagonist. In other
subgenres of Thrillers the protagonist can not go to the authorities due to
some other element - in “Dirty Pretty Things” the protagonists are
undocumented and will be deported if they go to the police. In “North By
Northwest” the protagonist was arrested for drunk driving, and the police
think his judgement is impaired - so anything he says about people out to
get him is just more crazy talk. But in a Political Thriller like “Bourne” or
“Three Days Of The Condor” the authorities are *part of the conspiracy*.
When story skeptics ask: “Why don’t they just go to the police?” the answer
is - because they are part of the conspiracy! Here, Conklin is behind the
scenes manipulating the local Police Department to capture Bourne.
Throughout the story, Conklin and Treadstone send out wanted bulletins to
Police Departments which turns every local cop into one of their agents
working to capture (or kill) Bourne. So this pair of Police Officers really are
following Bourne and really are a threat to him.

Our man Bourne spots an American Flag - the American Embassy is on

the block ahead of him. He walks quickly to the front doors, shows his USA
Jason Bourne passport to the Marine Guard at the door and is allowed
entrance. The two Policemen following him are stopped at the door - this is
American soil. So those two Policemen really *were* following him. He
had good reason to be paranoid.

(20:00) Bourne stands in a long line waiting to be helped. A woman

who finally gets her turn at the window, Marie Kreutz (Franka Potente), is
having an argument with the Official behind the window - a bureaucratic
foul up. She has lost her apartment, has no address, no phone number, so
she has no way to obtain a visa. She has a pile of papers that she has
dumped from her purse which she is digging through to substantiate all of
this. This woman is a disorganized mess!

Bourne notes each of the security cameras in the lobby... watching him.
A pair of Marine Guards walk past, scanning the lobby for trouble - and
look right at him.
A Security Guard with an earpiece on the other side of the lobby looks
right at him.
Bourne gets nervous, moves out of the line...

And another Security Guard yells, “You, red bag, stay right there! Put
your hands up!”
 That Security Guard has a pair of handcuffs.
Now *everyone* is looking at Bourne.
He puts his hands up.
The Security Guard walks up to him, a Marine Guard puts his hand on
Bourne’s shoulder...

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 INTELLIGENT THRILLERS

(21:10) And Bourne springs into action. Quickly fighting both Security
Guards and the Marine Guard, sending all three to the floor as he snatches
the Marine’s pistol.

Everyone who has been waiting in line in the lobby rushes for the exit
doors. Complete panic. A pair of Marine Guards come around the corner -
Bourne aims the gun at them and they retreat... momentarily. Bourne grabs
his bag and takes off running - racing through an employee door in the back
of the lobby. He tosses the gun in a waste basket, races up a flight of stairs,
punches a Security Guard at the top of the stairs in the gut before the man
can tell him to stop... and the man bounces down the stairs. Bourne doesn’t
keep running up, he follows the unconscious Guard’s body down the Ways
to stairs, grabs the earpiece and radio from his pocket, then races back
upstairs.

In the weapons room: All of the Marine Guards grab military assault
rifles.

Bourne, now wearing the earpiece, walks calmly down a hallway filled
with panicked employees. He stops for a moment and grabs the In Case Of
Fire exit map off the wall... Which is a genius touch and what makes this an
“intelligent thriller”.

What the heck is an “intelligent thriller”? Basically the protagonist is

clever and makes smart choices. You would think that should be every
thriller... and that is probably true. But Hollywood loves to come up with
these code words like “intelligent thriller” and “elevated genre film” which
basically just mean *good*, so that they don’t have to admit that some other
films are not good. Ways to “elevate” a thriller include having an intelligent
protagonist, having the story deal with larger issues, and being more
character oriented... things all stories should be!
 So Bourne does intelligent things instead of stupid things. Bourne does
things that are clever instead of stupid. When writing an “intelligent
thriller” the writer may have to stop and think about the clever way to deal
with a problem so that the protagonist can do it instinctively. That is the joy
of writing fiction - you can take two days to come up with something
amazing and clever that happens instantly in the story. When Bourne goes
back down the stairs to grab the guard’s earpiece so that he can hear what
they are doing, when he grabs that fire map; these things may have taken a
while for the writer to come up with... but the character does them
instinctively. The protagonist is intelligent and clever and we admire them.
They do smart things! We wish we were that smart!

What you never want to do is have the protagonist succeed through the
stupidity of the antagonist, since that makes the whole story stupid. Nobody
wants to watch a “stupid thriller”.

When Bourne grabs that fire map, he now knows every exit out of the
building - every escape route.

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 EMBASSY CHASE

This is the first of several chases in the story which brings up one of the
common genre questions: “What makes a story a thriller rather than an
action story?” Chases are actually part of the answer. Genre is usually
defined by the “juice” - the type of emotional response in the audience,
which is created by the type of scenes used to create those emotional
responses. So let’s take a moment to compare action to thriller stories:

In a Thriller the protagonist runs away or hides from the conflict.

In an Action movie the protagonist confronts the conflict.

In an Action movie when someone shoots at the protagonist, they take

out their gun and shoot back.
In a Thriller when someone shoots at the protagonist, they run away.

In an Action movie when someone punches the protagonist, they punch

back.
In a Thriller when someone punches the protagonist, they try to get the
heck out of there.

Though Bourne fights back when attacked (action), through most of the
story he is trying to avoid conflict in order to solve the mystery of “Who am
I?”. Until Act Three he doesn’t go after Treadstone, he tries to avoid being
discovered by Treadstone (and the police). He avoids conflicts instead of
searching them out. Part of this is tied to the character element of the story -
Bourne may have been an assassin before he lost his memory, but now he is
trying to be a “good man” and *not* kill people (more on this in the next
film). Even when Bourne goes to confront Conklin in Act Three, he just
wants to know who the hell he is rather than seeking out vengeance for who
he was. Bourne is avoiding conflict - and that means he’s running from
those Marines chasing him instead of trying to take them on like Chuck
Norris or Arnold Schwarzenegger might. Remember, he threw the Marine
Guard’s gun in the trash. He isn’t planning on shooting his way out of this
and killing a bunch of Marines. That would not only sour the audience on
the character, it would change the story dynamics and turn this into an
action flick. This will be a story fueled by chases... which makes it a thriller
(even though it has action scenes). Bourne is a man on the run...

The employees of the Embassy are closing their office doors and
sheltering in place. Soon Bourne will be alone in the hallways. He needs to
start running now! Bourne looks at the map - you are here - and looks for
the fire exits... there’s a stairway just down the hallway. Escape!

The Marine Guards and their assault rifles climb the stairs as if this is a
commando raid. They are chasing Bourne.

And he is running. Bourne opens the door to the stairway... hears the
*army* of Marine Guards coming up for him. No escape!
Has no choice but to race *up* the stairs instead of down the stairs.
Why is that difference important?

Well, in Roger Ebert’s Little Movie Glossary one of the silly movie
tropes he identifies is the Fallacy of the Climbing Villain, in which villains
always make the mistake of heading for a high place which always leads to
the Falling Villain, where at the end of almost every action flick, the villain
falls from a great height onto a hard surface... usually crashing backwards
through a plate glass window and landing on an automobile. Bourne, being
intelligent, knows that climbing up is a mistake... but those Marine Guards
chasing him aren’t going to let him slip past because he has read Roger
Ebert’s Little Movie Glossary... he has to keep climbing up those stairs!

On the fifth floor, the halls are almost empty... if the Marine Guards
catch up to him on this floor he will be captured or be forced to try and fight
them all. Bourne uses the fire map to find the door to a storage room. In the
storage room he heads to a padlocked door with a sign that says “Danger:
Do Not Open”. He uses a fire extinguisher to break the padlock off the
door, and then opens the door...

Beyond the door: A very narrow catwalk with a very long fall below.
Bourne follows the catwalk to a door that says: “Fire Exit” - his goal from
that map - but there’s a sign taped over the door that says: “Do Not Enter”
and there are locks on the door. Trapped!

This is a great example of using small conflicts and dangers to escalate

the overall conflict. That first padlocked door could have lead directly to the
Fire Exit - but that would be too easy! The greater the conflict, the greater
the excitement - so we have some added complications: that narrow catwalk
over a very long fall if Bourne misses his footing, and then another locked
door. We have a series of problems that Bourne must solve *while he is
being chased* by a bunch of armed Marines. These details add suspense
and prevent the story from seeming sketchy (as in: not fully formed).

He kicks open the door, steps out on the fire escape platform... but the
ladder from the fifth floor down to the street is gone! Rusted out. That
explains the sign, right? Now he is trapped on this very narrow fire escape
platform, with that army of Marines right behind him!

Bourne looks up at the roof eaves above him. If he stands on the narrow
metal railing of the fire escape platform, he might be able to reach the edge
of the roof. He steps up onto the rickety fire escape railing! The whole thing
is rusted, falling apart, may not be able to support his weight. When his
finger tips find purchase on the roof, the fire escape platform tears out of
the wall! His red bag drops off his shoulder onto the snowy alley five
storeys below. Bourne carefully lowers himself back onto the fire escape
platform...

Trapped.

The army of Marines has reached the fifth floor, searching for him.

Bourne carefully climbs down the three rungs left of the ladder, trying
to find someplace where he might climb down the wall or enter a lower
floor’s window. Of course, there’s nothing! Just a small ledge a few inches
below his feet, where there was once a window. He has to stretch his toes to
get close to it.
 A group of Marines kick open the door to the catwalk, spot the fire
escape door, and one of the Marines kicks open the fire escape door.

Bourne drops to the ledge - hands gripping the wall to keep from
falling. How long can he hold on before he falls?

The Marine looks out the door, carefully steps on the shaky fire escape
and looks down, then left, then right, then up to the roof for some sign of
Bourne. The longer he takes to look, the more likely it is that Bourne will
lose his grip and fall five storeys into that alleyway below. How long can he
hold on? How long can he remain silent and motionless? What if the
Marine looks through the ladder hole and spots him, what can he do to
escape?

I have a list of 20 Iconic Thriller Scenes, and this combines several of

them. Trapped, having to be quiet while someone is nearby, strength and
endurance in order to escape, the clue hidden in plain sight (red bag in the
very white snow below). It has several different suspense elements all in the
same scene!

Moments tick away. The Marine looks at everything - everything - until

he is satisfied that Bourne is not here, then goes back inside, closing the
door behind him.

Bourne looks all the way down to his red bag in the snow - that’s the
direction he is headed. The fast way if he’s not careful. He gingerly scoots
on the narrow ledge to the edge of the building, moves around to another
window, uses that to get down to a ledge that is more than an inch wide, and
then climbs down the side of the building like a human fly. How does he
know how to do that? Who is he? Once he gets to the alley, he goes to
retrieve his fallen bag.

(Just a note: that really is Matt Damon climbing down the side of the
building. Some rock climbing lessons and a safety harness visually erased
in post production means the star can do incredibly dangerous things - and
you can see his face as he does them.)
OceanofPDF.com
 THE RED BAG

I mentioned that crazy French-Canadian Producer I was writing a script

for in the introduction, and the first thing he said after seeing this film was,
“Where do I get one of those red bags!” He thought the red bag was the
coolest thing he’d ever seen, and thought Universal could make a fortune
selling replicas. I realize that might sound a little silly, but it’s really a great
idea. One of the things about modern day Hollywood is that they are
“diversified” - no, that doesn’t mean they hire minorities and women to
direct their films, it means they have divisions that sell music and toys and
games and make TV shows and have clothing lines. They milk every dollar
they can get out of a film, and often they decide which films to make based
on the amount of merchandise that film might generate.

That’s why an expensive summer blockbuster that flops might be a

better business decision than a great little inexpensive drama that makes
decent money at the box office. Once you add in all of the merchandise
revenue, that flop blockbuster is a huge money maker. The James Bond
franchise might be the best example of this, because they merchandise and
license the hell out of those movies. Bond wears a specific wrist watch, uses
a specific brand of mobile phone, drinks a brand of beer when he’s not
ordering a martini, wears suits from a specific designer, drives cars from a
specific company when he’s not behind the wheel of his Aston Martin, if
there was ever a scene where Bond used the bathroom you better believe
there would be a toilet paper tie in! Charmin, the only toilet paper to touch
Bond’s bum.

Though none of us want to think about that, or any of these other

merchandising elements; they are part of modern filmmaking... and even
part of making films going back at least as far as the 1940s. I have some
movie tie in novels (hardback) from the 1940s! If you’ve seen “A
Christmas Story” you know that a Red Ryder BB gun can shoot your eye
out... but did you know Red Ryder was a TV cowboy and that BB gun was
merchandising for the show? I’m sure some silent film made a deal with a
flour company to promote their brand in the film... this has been going on
forever. If we try to avoid it when writing a screenplay, that’s not going to
stop it from happening once they start making that screenplay into a movie.
So why not at least try to do something creative?

That Red Cloth Bag was cool. An interesting prop that some folks in the
audience wish they could have a copy of. There is a whole business built
around movie prop replicas - I had a bunch of “Star Trek” and “Man From
U.N.C.L.E.” stuff when I was a kid. So when creating your story, think
about what cool props you can invent that may make it off the screen and
into a toy store. Instead of just using some bland prop, create an interesting
one. That’s not just good for the crass commercial merchandising side of
the business, it’s good for the story, too! Imagine opening that briefcase
from “Pulp Fiction” and there’s just some papers inside. Not nearly as
interesting as that green glow. That briefcase full of glow is an homage to
the 1950s Noir flick “Kiss Me Deadly” - which has a “Pandora’s Box” of
radioactive material that everyone is after.

You want interesting props, but not so strange that they don’t fit in the
world of the story. You want to make them stand out because they *belong*
in this story and have an impact in this specific story. In my “Secrets Of
Action Screenwriting” book I look at “Touchstones” and “Twitches” - props
that have a strong emotional component and are used to show what a
character is thinking or feeling. In “Bourne Supremacy” he will keep one
photo of Marie after she has been killed, and when he looks at it you know
exactly what he is feeling. This is one way to give a prop or object
significance in the story. The red cloth bag is filled with money, and
becomes symbolic of Bourne’s possible future. “There’s enough in there for
you to make a life”, Bourne tells Marie later in the story as he gives her the
red bag. Bourne could have used a paper grocery bag to put the money and
passports in, or just stuffed them in his pockets, right? But that red cloth bag
is much better. Go for the cool stuff instead of the bland stuff!

While we’re talking about the red cloth bag, can we talk about why it is
red and not blue or white? Two reasons (you may not have even thought
there was one!). First, if this bag symbolizes Bourne’s future then it is
something important... and needs to show that his future contains conflict.
So the bag *stands out*. Imagine if the bag had been white and fell in the
snow below where Bourne was hiding... it would blend in. When the
Marine Guard orders Bourne to stop in the Embassy, he identifies him by
the red bag. Red is a much easier color to spot in a crowd than blue or green
or some other color they might have made the bag. The bag causes trouble
for Bourne... but it is his future! He can’t just abandon it! He can put it in a
train station locker and put his future on hold for a while, but eventually he
will have to retrieve it... and once more deal with the trouble that it brings.
The second thing: what color is Marie’s car? Do you think this means that
she is part of his future? If you look for it, you will see that red cloth bag in
the very last scene when Bourne is reunited with Marie.

OceanofPDF.com
 DRIVE HE SAID

(25:15) At CIA HQ: Danny tells Conklin that Bourne was spotted in
Zurich, he went to the bank, cleared out the safety deposit box... but left the
gun. What does that mean? Conklin is confused. “I liked it better when I
thought he was dead.”

At the end of the alley Bourne was dangling over, a beat up old Austin
Mini-Cooper. Marie walks to it, digs through her purse for the keys, when
Bourne approaches her and offers her a deal: “You need money, I need a
ride out of here.” She tells him this isn’t a taxi. He offers her $10,000 to
drive him to Paris. Now she’s sure that he’s crazy - who would pay that
much, even if they had that much? This guy who looks a bit homeless sure
as hell doesn’t have $10,000. Then he shows her the money.

“What is this, a joke? Some kind of scam?” He tosses her the $10,000
(she catches it) and Bourne tells her he’ll give her another $10,000 once
they get to Paris.

A police car roars down the street, siren blaring, and Bourne presses
against the wall. She notices this, and says she has enough trouble already.
If she’s not going to drive him, he wants his money back and holds out his
hand.

Next shot - Bourne in the car as she drives him.

A small thing you may not have noticed, but instead of Bourne just
telling her he has $10,000 or showing her the money - he *throws it to her*
so that she is forced to catch it, forced to take it. Though this is a great
technique to convince people to do what you want and I’m sure it’s some
self help books and a whole bunch of books on how to be a better salesman;
it works great on film because it *shows the decision*. That bundle of
money symbolizes what Bourne wants, and as long as it is in her hands she
will drive him to Paris. If she throws it back to Bourne, she will not drive
him to Paris. The money becomes symbolic of the decision that Marie must
make - it externalizes her thoughts.

There was a cut portion of this scene where she *did* throw it back, and
then later took it from him as she agreed to the task. This part of the scene
was cut for time, and that brings up a second element - cutting directly to
them driving as a way to show her decision. One of the things about film is
that time is “plastic” - it does not follow the rules of reality, but more
closely follows the rules of dreams. In a dream you can be at one location,
and then magically be at another location (without the travel time in
between). This is true for film as well. Hitchcock said that film was life
with the dull bits cut out, and we want to snip out anything that might be
even close to dull. Especially in a Thriller. When you have a character in
their home in Omaha grab their luggage and then the next scene shows
them on the beach on Hawaii sipping a cocktail, no one in the audience is
going to ask how they got there. Film compresses (and sometimes even
expands) time, and can jump from location to location just like in a dream.
The audience fills in the part where they waited for an hour in line for TSA
screening and then waited in the airport because their flight was delayed
and then the flight and that layover in Denver that knocked $200 off the
price of the ticket, and then all of the other stuff that comes between Omaha
and Oahu. The audience figures it out - movies work by dream rules, not
reality rules. As long as you set it up, the audience figures it out.

And when we cut to Marie driving Bourne in her little car, the audience
laughs. But cutting out all of the stuff in between, we end up with a set up
(she refuses to drive him) and then directly to the punchline (she’s driving
him). That’s funny.

(27:00) From this point on, Bourne and Marine are partners in crime.
This is a variation on the “kidnap trope” from thriller movies like “Three
Days Of The Condor” where the protagonist involves a stranger in their
danger, and that stranger becomes the love interest. In “The 39 Steps” the
protagonist attempts to evade the police on a train by hiding in a
compartment with an attractive woman and kissing her passionately as the
police look in. A similar thing happens in “North By Northwest” (“Seven
parking tickets.”) When you have a lone person on the run, the most
common way to introduce romance is through some form of kidnapping.
Here Bourne pays Marie, but later in the story she will realize she wasn’t
paid nearly enough - and she is stuck sharing his danger.

At the CIA: They are searching traffic camera footage outside the
embassy - and spot Bourne.

Side note: the tech guy going through all of the footage is played by
Walt Goggins from “Justified” before we knew who he was! He has a
couple of lines of dialogue in this scene.

Conklin tells Danny he wants everyone activated - everyone - he wants

Bourne in a body bag by sundown. The conflict has now been escalated -
Bourne knows that people are after him, but doesn’t know why... and
doesn’t know that they will now be trying to kill him.

Now we cut to the Treadstone assassin know as “The Professor” (Clive

Owens), in Barcelona, as he tutors a child. He gets a text on his phone.
“Prep mode and arm ready for transport. Hold pattern until further notice.”

The Treadstone assassin known as “Manheim” (Russell Levy) in

Hamburg gets the same text message at a business meeting.

The Treadstone assassin known as “Castel” (Nicky Naude) in Rome

gets the same text message, goes to his weapons room where there are all
kinds of deadly toys. Plus a locked box which contains everything that was
in Bourne’s safety deposit box: different passports, different types of
currency... we now know that all of these guys are like Bourne. By showing
us that Castel’s box is a duplicate of Bourne’s, we know that Bourne and all
of these others are part of the same organization - they are sending
Treadstone assassins to kill a Treadstone assassin. The audience makes the
connection without dialogue.

(29:15) Bourne and Marie drive through winding snow covered back
roads, she is talking like crazy - and though the purpose of dialogue at this
point in the story is to show us that she talks and talks and talks and Bourne
is a man of few words; this is a “two-fer”, because what she’s talking about
is the surf shop in Spain that she and some friends pitched in money to
lease, only to find out that they’d been scammed... and a version of that surf
shop is how Bourne will find her at the end of the story. This is a set up for
a much later pay off.

She says he’s only said ten words since they left Zurich. She knows
nothing about him. He tells her he’s got a million things on his mind -
troubling him - but listening to her talk has pushed them to the back of his
mind, relaxing him. He wants her to keep talking. She asks him what kind
of music he likes... and he doesn’t know. He tells her that he has amnesia,
and can’t remember anything before two weeks ago. She’s skeptical - I
mean, *amnesia*? That’s like something from the movies or a book. Real
people don’t have amnesia.

(32:00) At the CIA: Conklin and the researchers look at all of the
available traffic camera footage... and they spot Bourne making his deal
with Marie in the alley... and they spot the licence plates of her car!

Walt Goggin’s character gets to do the briefing on Marie. She has no

known address, a drifter. Conklin wants every piece of information they
have on Marie - everyone she has called in the past six years. Every place
she has lived. This investigation into Marie’s past sets up the later scene at
the farmhouse. Conklin wants photos of Bourne and Marie sent to the Paris
Police which will make the police an unknowing part of this conspiracy...
henchmen who have no idea they are henchmen.

(33:25) At Treadstone HQ In Paris (yes, the Eiffel Tower is in the

background of the shot, as it is in every Hollywood movie that takes place
in Paris), CIA & Treadstone Coordinator Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles)
creates the Wanted flier to give to the Paris Police. This is her introduction
scene, and even though she may seem like a minor character at this point,
her role will grow with each film (skipping “Legacy”) until she becomes
the female lead in the new film.

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 CONFLICTED QUEST

(33:50) In a roadside diner, Bourne shows Marie all of his fake

passports, trying to convince her that he’s not crazy... something is strange
about all of this. Who is he? What kind of person is he?

“I come in here and the first thing I’m doing is I’m catching the sight
lines and looking for an exit. I can tell you the license plate numbers of all
six cars outside. I can tell you that our waitress is left-handed, and the guy
sitting up at the counter weights 215 pounds and knows how to handle
himself. I know the best place to look for a gun is the cab of the gray truck
outside. And at this altitude, I can run flat-out for half a mile before my
hands start shaking. Now, why would I know that? How can I know that,
and not know who I am?”

This gets in to what makes Bourne a great character - he is at war with

himself. His quest, his goal, has a conflict at its heart. Bourne wants to
know who he is... but the more he learns about himself, the less he likes
himself. Does he really want to know who he is? Every new piece of
information he discovers is like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle - and though he
wants to solve the puzzle, each new piece is assembling a picture that he
fears. He wants to be a good person, but he’s afraid that he’ll find out that
Jason Bourne was a very bad person... and those bullet holes in his back are
indicative of who he really is. Should he continue his quest to discover his
identity? Or quit before he discovers the truth that he fears? This makes
Bourne a deeper and more interesting character than someone like Bond
who just does his missions because it’s his job and never really thinks much
about the consequences.

Marie drives all night while Bourne sleeps - the first real sleep he’s had
since getting off the fishing boat.

(35:45) Paris: Marie wakes Bourne up - they are parked on the side of
the Seine River. There’s a great 360 shot here as Marie asks if Bourne
thinks there will be a wife and family waiting for him at his apartment.
Great subtle way to show she’s attracted to him. Bourne doesn’t know - let’s
go find out.

They drive to his apartment, Bourne has her park across the street. He
pays her off - she is now free to do whatever she pleases. But she *decides*
to go with Bourne to the front door to the building. They ring the doorbell -
no answer, Marie says he isn’t home. He front door is locked. Bourne has
no key. But a nice Concierge Woman opens the door for him, calling him by
name. She recognizes him as Jason Bourne.

So he *is* Jason Bourne.

Bourne and Marie climb the stairs, and enter his apartment. It is empty...
and kind of strange. He lives here, but doesn’t recognize anything. It’s like
breaking into a stranger’s apartment and looking around... weird and creepy.

Marie notes that the apartment is *huge* - with a giant kitchen... he

must be rich. Bourne looks through the paperwork in his office and tells her
he thinks he’s in the shipping business... but he has no memory of any of
this. This is a stranger’s apartment and a stranger’s books and a stranger’s
kitchen.

Marie asks to use the bathroom to take a bath. Sure.

Bourne picks up the office phone and hits redial... Hotel Regina, Paris.
He asks if they have a guest registered named Jason Bourne. No. He almost
hangs up, then asks about the name on the British passport, John Michael
Kane. He gets transferred to the Hotel Manager who tells him he has some
very bad news - John Michael Kane died two weeks ago in an automobile
accident. His brother came for the things he left in the room. A rather
suspicious dead end.

One of the great things in this telephone call is that Bourne picks up a
ballpoint pen from his desk to write down any information... just as anyone
would. Except that pen isn’t going to be used to write. This is one of those
subtle plants that pay off in a minute.
OceanofPDF.com
 SHOCKING ACTION

(42:30) Bourne hears a noise. Something is wrong - he senses it... how?

Creeps down the hallway. Marie calls out that there is no hot water - and
she wants to take a bath. Bourne says he’ll check to see if there’s hot water
in the kitchen, and she should stay in the bathroom. He creeps into the
kitchen, turns on the water... and grabs a big effing knife. Searches the
house with knife in hand.

When Marie comes out of the bathroom... Bourne hides the knife
behind his back. They have an awkward conversation about cold baths...

(44:00) WHAM! An assassin with a machine gun crashes through the

window behind Bourne, scarring the crap out of me as I watched the movie
again for this book. It’s really sudden and the shattering window is violent
and it was a quiet moment just before.

That’s a good lesson on how to make people who have seen the movie a
dozen times before and know what is coming still jump out of their seats -
you really need to have an organic, quiet moment, where the audience
believes this is what the scene is really about, and then a loud and violent
entrance by the assassin. The contrast between one second of story and the
next second of story is immense! There is no middle ground between those
two seconds. It’s a quiet scene about a man who is having a conversation
with a woman he’s attracted to (“You’re the only person I know”) about her
getting naked and taking a bath in his apartment, and where that might or
might not lead to, and his weird feeling that something is wrong... but what,
exactly, is he really fearing here?

He walks slowly towards the window... Then an explosion of glass and

noise as a man with a machine gun blasts through the window only a few
feet away... blasting bullets everywhere.
 Fewer than 20 minutes since the previous action scene in the Embassy...
and those 20 minutes have set up almost all of the story that follows.

This fight scene is one of the things that made this film a hit. Before the
“Bourne” movies, most fight scenes were choreographed and looked it.
They were carefully staged so that stuntmen could do the actual fighting
and stars could be cut in for close ups. Hollywood fight scenes are often
like Hollywood movies - big and empty. Here, we get something different,
and it shook up the industry enough to have this style of action scene
replicated in the James Bond reboot “Casino Royale”. This fight scene is
not pretty...

Bourne and the Assassin Castel grapple with the machine gun between
them - firing all over the place, Marie diving for cover - until Bourne
disarms him.

Then they have a savage, realistic hand to hand fight - it does not look
choreographed and it *is* Matt Damon rather than a stunt man (at least in
shots where you can tell - I hit pause a bunch of times in the middle of the
action and looked at the face, and it was Damon. The background material
says that Damon did all of his own fights and stunts, but I’m always
skeptical about things like that... so I hit pause and look). The kicks and
punches are messy and seem to have impact (none of those shots where it’s
obvious the punch missed by a mile). These two guys ended up with bruises
after this.

The background material also identifies the type of martial arts used by
as a combination of Filpino Kali along with Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do - you
can see the Bruce Lee influence in the short, precise, movements which
have a rhythm. When you are writing a fight scene like this, it’s all about
the reversals rather than the punches. It’s about how the story changes and
how characters are explored through the action. Though the fighting style
may not be important, I have always thrown in a handful of martial arts
terms for “seasoning”; to give the reader the feeling that this is an actual
fight rather than something I’m just making up off the top of my head.
 What’s funny about practical stunt scenes - and the Bourne movies
specialize in them - is that even if it had been a stuntman in the fight instead
of Damon, *someone* took those punches and *someone* really got hurt.
There are shots in this fight scene where Damon has his back to the camera,
and maybe that was a stuntman who looks like Damon - but that human
being still did this stuff. The audience knows what’s real and what’s CGI.
They also know when a punch lands in a different city than the guy who
supposedly got hit. Here we see Damon’s face in scenes where punches
land. Now, there may be all kinds of padding under his clothes, but that’s
still gonna leave a mark.

The Assassin Castel pulls a really cool knife that fits between the
fingers like brass knuckles, and there’s a moment where we worry that
Bourne may be killed. There’s a chapter in “Secrets Of Action
Screenwriting” called “Weapons For Weirdos” that looks at how you want
to come up with interesting weapons (they are props, just like the red cloth
bag) and make sure they match the character using them. A character’s
weapon will help the audience identify that character, and help to make the
character distinctive. A character who prefers to use a knife is different than
a character who prefers to use a sniper rifle. Castel’s cool little knife is
something we haven’t seen before and tells us this is a character who
prefers things close and bloody.

Bourne tries to keep the knife from slicing into him, but eventually
backs away... stopping when he hits the desk. Cornered. But remember that
ballpoint pen? This is one of those elements you find in great action scenes
- Jackie Chan style found weapons. In a Hong Kong Jackie Chan movie,
anything at the location becomes a potential weapon. (The next time you
walk into a room, I want you to identify all of the potential weapons you
can use in case of Sudden Ninja Attack. Who knows when SNA will strike?
Best to be prepared!) This planted pen is another great things about the fight
that makes it look non-choreographed and real... but it was set up in that
earlier scene where Bourne was writing down information while on the
phone with the hotel. As a writer, I plant things like this in the screenplay so
that they can be paid off later in action scenes.
 Bourne grabs the pen, uncaps it (great touch), and then they fight for a
moment - knife against pen - until Bourne jams the pen *through* Castel’s
hand. Ouch! The pen is mightier than the knife, I guess.

Castel drops the knife. Then steps back and calmly pulls the pen out of
his hand. Double ouch! He rushes at Bourne, who savagely breaks his arm
and knocks him to the floor. This action scene is just over 2 pages in the
screenplay.

“Who are you?” He slams Castel’s head to the floor. “Who are you?”
Bourne tosses Castel’s backpack to Marie, who finds papers inside with
Bourne’s photo and every alias from every passport Bourne has... plus a
page with her photo and all of her information. Castel wasn’t just there to
kill Bourne - he was there to kill her as well. Marie freaks out and rushes in
to attack Castel. Bourne moves to his feet to calm her. When Bourne
presses Marie back towards the door, Castel pops up behind him - arm limp
- turns and jumps out the window to his death! WTF? You might expect
Castel to attack Bourne, or try to escape - but jump out the fifty storey
window to his death? That’s just weird.

OceanofPDF.com
 STAY OR GO?

(46:30) While Marie attempts to process all of this, Bourne scoops up

everything he’s going to need on the run and asks Marie where her shoes
are. She’s in shock. Bourne grabs her, gets her shoes on, and guides her
down the stairs... passing the nice Concierge Woman who let them in - shot
in the head and dead. Marie barfs - one of those realistic reactions you
never see in an action film. People *reacting* to violence the way real
people would react.

There’s a mirror shot in the lobby, where Bourne and Marie have two
images on screen simultaneously - as if there are two versions of them...
and maybe there are? This kind of subtle touch is something you notice on
repeat viewings, and something the first time viewer notices
subconsciously. A great movie is dense with information, some of it the
audience gets consciously and some finds its way into their subconscious.
You want there to be layers of information, not only in dialogue but visually
as well. Much of this is up to the director, but sometimes the writer can find
the way to sneak it in.

Outside the apartment building doors - a crowd around the splatted

Castel. Is Marie going to barf again? Bourne tells her not to look. Police
and Ambulance sirens on the way. As Bourne and Marie cross the street,
one Man in the crowd looks up and notices them. This is one of those great
touches that helps amplify the audience’s paranoia and fear. As noted
earlier, in the scene after Turner discovers the hit on his book-reading office
in “Three Days Of The Condor”, there are people on the street either acting
suspicious or glancing at him, and the audience wonders if those people are
assassins and will kill Turner, or just regular people? Without those shots,
and without creating those moments on the page, it would just be a scene of
Turner leaving the building and walking down the street. Without that Man,
this would just be a scene of Bourne and Marie crossing the street.
 (47:45) Treadstone HQ Paris: Nicky calls Conklin at CIA Langley to
tell him that Bourne killed their assassin, and the police are all over it. No
way to sweep this under the rug.

(48:30) Bourne and Marie pull up at a train station, and he tells her to
stay in the car while he goes in and stashes the money. “I’ll be back in ten
minutes.”

Great scene, because now a paranoid and freaked out Marie is left alone
in a car in a public place where people are all around her. There are some
great POV shots from her of Bourne walking away leaving her alone with
the world around her. Then a great bit of visual storytelling as Marie looks
at the key dangling in the ignition of the car, looks at the $20,000 in her
purse. Okay, folks, what is she thinking?

Should she stay or should she go?

Bourne enters the Train Station and we have a similar moment when he
looks at the Departures Board and all of the destinations that trains will
soon be going to. He is standing between the Departures Board and the
Lockers, and looks from one to the other. Okay, folks, what is he thinking?

Should he stay or should he go?

These two scene are around the 49 minute mark, and Bourne and Marie
became partners in crime at the 27 minute mark. Now the big question: will
they remain partners? Will they stick together or will they split up? They
don’t really know each other or owe each other. They are strangers who
have been forced together by circumstances. And now Bourne is between
the Destinations Board and the lockers and must make a decision - one that
we can see because he will physically walk towards one or the other. He
picks the lockers.

Walks out of the train station. The car is there... but Marie is gone. A
moment where he’s sure she run away from him... then she shows up with a
small grocery bag.
 (50:00) Together in the car, he’s angry that she left the car. She opens
the bag, pulls out a pint of booze, takes a big drink. Bourne now gives her
the choice that he just made - tells her to leave him, go to the police, tell
them the truth. That she is not involved, he hired her to drive him to Paris
and she ran away when she realized he was trouble. Marie lifts the page
with her photo and name and information from Castel’s bag and asks how
this is possible. Bourne says he doesn’t know - he doesn’t know anything.
He doesn’t know who he is, what he’s done, why these people are after him,
who these people who are after him are. This restates the big question of the
story, and adds that Marie is now a part of this story. Bourne gives her
permission to leave, she says she’s with him (his actual line is “I have to
figure this out”, her’s is “Then figure it out”).

Bourne looks out the window, sees all of those regular people walking
around in front of the train station... in the middle of them a Police Officer
on foot who is lifting his radio and looking at their car.

“Do you take care of this car?” Bourne grabs the map of Paris and
studies it (more “intelligent thriller” material). A police car pulls up behind
them, lights flashing. The Officer gets out of the car and approaches.
Another Police Car pulls up in front of them. This is a great moment
because it is filled with suspense. Suspense is the anticipation of action, and
we know there is either a shoot out with the police or a car chase coming.

“Last chance, Marie.”

Marie reaches to the car door... and grabs the seat belt/shoulder harness
strapping herself in.

That little reversal moment is awesome. You think she may be going for
the doorhandle to leave, instead she’s locking herself into a dangerous
situation with him. Click goes the seatbelt. Okay, folks, what does that
mean?

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 EUROPEAN CAR CHASE

(52:45) As a handful of Police Officers approach the little red car,

Bourne starts it up, shifts into gear, and roars out of there! The car chase has
begun.

Just as the fight scenes in the “Bourne” movies changed action and
thriller films forever with their ragged realism, so did the car chases. The
big difference between the car chases in the first two Bourne movies and
the standard Hollywood action flick car chase is the difference between
European car chases and American car chases... and you only have to watch
John Frankenheimer’s “Ronin” to figure out what that means. An American
car chase is all about car wrecks - even in a comedy like “The Blues
Brothers” the chases are all about crashing cars into each other and into just
about anything else a car can crash into. Another one of those Roger Ebert
Little Movie Glossary entries is the “Fruit Cart”, where no matter where a
car chase might take place a car will always run into a fruit cart and spray
fruits and vegetables and melons all over the place. The car smashing into
the fruit cart leads to even more smashing of all of the fruit! And that’s the
key to an American style car chase. It’s all about smashing into things.

But European car chases are all about *precision driving*. *Not*
smashing into things. Amazingly avoiding those car wrecks that American
car chases are all about. European car chases are *graceful* and *elegant*.
They are cars doing ballet moves that amaze the audience. Spinning and
turning and narrowly missing other cars. This was actually the same
precision driving team that did “Ronin”, and the same team that crazy
French-Canadian producer was in contact with on our film that never
happened. You’ve seen their work in many French films, including “The
Transporter”.

Though this car chase was shot using hand held cameras to give it the
feeling of a documentary, they still used an image stabilization system like
Steadycam to keep the audience from getting queasy. The best of both
worlds. You can see the whole car chase on the big screen, unlike in the
second film.

And a small car means they can go down alleyways that police in cars
can not fit through... but police motorcycles roar after them. “We’ve got a
bump coming up” - the car can “drive” down pedestrian stairs. They can
drive onto sidewalks, drive the wrong way on a highway with motorcycles
chasing behind them zig-zagging through oncoming traffic. In this section
of the chase there are some real motorcycle wrecks - that’s gotta hurt!
There’s a nice bit where they are roaring down a sidewalk, pedestrian
scattering and someone opens a glass phone booth door - which shatters
into a million pieces. So we get some of the destruction from and American
car chase, but mostly it is amazing precision driving where cars *almost*
hit each other, but miss due to the amazing skills of the drivers. After losing
the police, Bourne pulls into an underground parking lot and the car chase
ends at 56:30... making it just under 4 minutes long. How long was it in the
screenplay? Um... it was a reshoot - one of those action scenes that Doug
Liman said he didn’t want in the film, and in the commentary he says that a
second unit filmed it. Somewhere there may have been a revised version of
the screenplay with this scene, but I could not locate it.

OceanofPDF.com
 A NEW IDENTITY

(56:30) In the underground parking garage Bourne says: “We can never
come back to this car. We’re going to clean it out, wipe it down, and we
walk away.”
One of the things that happen in thrillers is that the protagonist loses
their identity and also loses everything they once owned that gave them that
identity. Since the story starts with Bourne already having lost his identity,
the story shows *Marie* losing her identity in this segment of the story,
beginning with her little red car. They have to leave it behind. In the
screenplay it isn’t even Marie’s car - she borrowed it from a friend, but in
the filmed version it *is* her car, and probably the most valuable thing she
owns. Now she has to give it up...

(57:00) At The Paris Morgue: Our Third World Dictator in exile

Wombosi wants to look at the corpse of John Michael Kane who died in
that car accident a few weeks ago. After signing in and bribing the Morgue
Attendant they pull out the corpse and... this is not the man. This is not the
man who tried to assassinate him. Is the man who tried to assassinate him
still out there somewhere, alive?

Now Bourne and Marie have a new potential adversary... that they don’t
know about.

(58:00) Nicky calls Conklin to report that Wombosi knows the body is
not Kane (one of Bourne’s aliases), and that Bourne is still out there
somewhere, alive.
When Conklin hangs up, Danny asks him what he wants to do about
this problem...

(59:00) Treadstone assassin The Professor gets a text with Conklin’s

answer. He is being sent to kill someone - Bourne?
 (59:15) In a cheap hotel room, Bourne dyes Marie’s hair. Both she and
Bourne are changing identities - shedding their old skins to become
someone new. Marie has given up her little red car and all of her belongings
and now is giving up her hair color and the way she looks. She is losing one
identity to gain another. Bourne is doing something similar. As characters
lose one identity in a thriller they often take on another identity - so in
“North By Northwest” Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) keeps being
confused for CIA Agent George Kaplan... and at some point (after he’s lost
everything and is on the run) just goes with the flow and “becomes”
Kaplan. In “Breakdown” Kurt Russell’s character loses everything (his
SUV filled with all of his belongings crashes into a river and is swept away)
and the only way to make sure they don’t kill his wife is to convince them
that he has the money to ransom her... so he claims to be the “Donut King”
who owns a huge snack food company. In “Three Days Of The Condor”
Turner starts out not even remembering that his code name is “Condor” -
he’s not a spy, just a guy who reads books - but as the story unfolds and he
loses everything (can’t return to his apartment because it’s being watched,
loses the woman he loves, loses his best friend) he *becomes* Condor and
turns into that spy. So Bourne and Marie are changing their identities -
becoming different people - and for Marie that includes having her hair
dyed dark brown.

This is an oddly romantic scene as Bourne washes out the extra dye,
massaging her head, close to her. Strangely intimate. Then he cuts her hair,
giving her a new hairstyle. After he’s finished, they try to get around each
other in the small bathroom... but come together... and kiss. A tentative kiss,
then another, then a really good kiss.

They take off their clothes, and we get another mirror shot, and that shot
keeps going - out of the bathroom, across the room, out the hotel window,
into the street, down the street until we can see the whole side of this
nondescript street somewhere off the beaten track and that cheap hotel in
the middle. No one will find them here... or will they?

(62:00) The next morning, Marie awakens (short very dark brown hair)
and looks at Bourne, sitting in a chair across from her. He has already
wiped the place down for fingerprints. Marie asks if she can walk around,
or will that leave footprints. They smile at each other. This is a nice
moment, because it shows it wasn’t just hormones that brought them
together the night before - they understand each other. She jokes, he knows
it’s a joke, they smile together.

One of the potential problems whenever you have a movie star who
falls in love with a movie star is that you might think that’s all you need.
He’s the handsome guy, she’s the pretty girl - of course they’re in love! But
just like in a match problem in grade school, you have to “show your work”
- give the audience moments like this where they see that it’s more that just
two pretty people hooking up, they have something in common. They mesh.
This isn’t just physical, there’s something personal and emotional as well.
Laughing together helps with that... and it’s also the first time we’ve seen
Bourne look happy in this story. We are just over halfway through the story,
and this guy *can* smile. He *can* feel joy. He *can* live a normal life.
And that’s what this story is all about - once Bourne discovers who he is,
can he live a normal life even if he ends up with a past he doesn’t like? Is
there a chance at peace for this character?

Bourne tells her he needs to go to the Hotel Regina where John Michael
Kane stayed and find out what they know about him (which is Bourne) and
get the hotel bill (which will list outgoing phone calls). “It’s slightly
complicated, though...” “Because you’re dead.” “Right.”

(63:20) At Wombosi’s Paris House, Wombosi wants his security team to

find Kane (Bourne) and bring back his head so that they can put it on a
stake in front of his house. BANG! In the middle of this rant, as Wombosi
walks past a stairway window, he is shot it the head and neck a handful of
times. Shocking, sudden violence!

On the roof of a house way down the street, the Professor begins
disassembling his sniper rifle. The sniper rifle is his weapon, and it shows
his character. Detached and precise.

OceanofPDF.com
 THE BIG PLAN

(64:00) At the Hotel Regina: Bourne has Marie talk through her mission
as if it is a commando raid. Pay phone number? Exits? Escape plan? Signal
for if she thinks she’s being followed. The reason for this plan scene is so
the audience will fear things will go wrong, and then things *will* go
wrong. It’s anticipation of a known action, which generates suspense. By
knowing what is expected to happen in the next scene we can fear the
unexpected and worry when those things happen. Without knowing how it
is supposed to work, the audience can’t know when it begins to break down,
right?

Bourne is worried about sending her in, but she smiles and says, “We
need this, right?” Not *you* need this. Now Bourne has to watch this
woman he has feelings for go into a possible trap - unable to help her if she
gets into trouble. This is both the scene where Lisa breaks into Lars
Thorwald’s apartment in “Rear Window” and the scene where Kathy goes
into the CIA building in New York to identify (and later help kidnap)
Higgens in “Three Days Of The Condor”. In fact, if you were to watch
“Three Days Of The Condor” and then watch “The Bourne Identity” you
will find all kinds of similarities!

Marie is supposed to count her steps when she gets inside the hotel, and
count the number of people in the lobby, look for security. This is reckon
for Bourne’s later plan to steal the information. While she is inside casing
the joint...

Bourne calls the hotel from a payphone and has Marie paged - so that
she can give him the information. But the phone rings and rings and rings.
What has happened to Marie? Did they capture her? Has everything gone
wrong? Are they coming for him now?

A knocking on the phone booth door. Some impatient person wanting to

use the phone? The police to arrest Bourne? The Professor here too kill
him?

No. Marie. Instead of this whole commando raid thing, she just went up
to the clerk at the desk, said she was Mr. Kane’s assistant, and asked for a
copy of the bill. This is a great reversal, because after all of that build up we
expected the kind of scene you would expect in a big action movie... and
what’s clever about this film is that it never does what is expected. She just
asked for the information and they gave it to her. Of course! People do that
all the time.

(66:30) At CIA HQ Langley: Abbott storms into Conklin’s office -

Mombosi was just assassinated in Paris. It’s all over the news. Conklin
says: “It was Bourne... “ fulfilling his assignment. An agent reports in
within 24 hours after completing the assignment, so there’s nothing more to
worry about when it comes to Bourne. Completely under control. Conklin
has a scheme that Abbott is not part of. Schemes withing schemes! Again,
like in “Three Days Of The Condor” where there’s a secret spy organization
within in the CIA... and one group has no idea what the others are up to.

(67:30) Bourne tracks down the phone calls he made from the hotel
from a payphone - untraceable, I have no idea what you would do today.
Burner phones like in “Bourne Ultimatum”?

Meanwhile: The police find Marie’s car in the underground garage.

Meanwhile: Nicky hears about the car on the police scanner.

Meanwhile: Danny reports to Conklin that the police found the car.

Meanwhile: The Professor gets another text.

And Bourne gets a lead: Alliance Maritime Security in Paris... he will

go there tomorrow.

(69:00) At Alliance Maritime Security: Bourne exits the elevator and a

Woman recognizes him, “Mr. Kane?” (Wait, Kane is supposed to be dead...
this could be a problem, and that creates suspense.) Bourne is shown right
in to meet an executive who starts talking about a Palmer-Johnson Tri-
Deck... and Bourne has to pretend to know what the guy is talking about.
Since this will be a boring conversation we cut to...

(70:00) A Café after the meeting, where Bourne is looking over

brochures, information and documents about the Palmer-Johnson Tri-
Deck... which is a hella expensive yacht.

But Bourne is completely confused - is he Bourne or Kane? Did he just

assume that he was Bourne because that was the first passport he picked
up? What if he’s really Kane and Bourne was a fake passport. Who is he?
Then Marie discovers that the current address of John Michael Kane is the
Paris morgue!

At the Morgue: A $100 bribe to the Morgue Attendant gets him a look
at the body... which is *missing*! Someone has stolen the body of John
Michael Kane! That’s when the Coroner shows up, demands to know what
Bourne and Marie are doing there. The Attendant says they came to view
Kane’s body, the Coroner says it was released to his brother yesterday...
then gets officiously angry at Bourne and Marie - they need an appointment
to view a body, they need to sign in at the desk, they need to go by the
book! Not just wander in and take a look. This is a serious place!

Now, you may not have noticed all of the exposition in that scene (or
maybe you did because I just gave you the important parts of the scene) but
while the Coroner was having his little rant he gave Bourne all kinds of
information. Bourne insists on signing in now, goes to the registration book,
tears out a bunch of recent pages from the book and gets the hell out of
there. If everyone has to sign in, that means the “brother” who took the
body and anyone else who viewed the body will have their name in that
book.

Bourne notes that one of the people who viewed John Michael Kane’s
corpse was named Wombosi... and one of the owners of a Palmer-Johnson
Tri-Deck yacht who had a state-of-the-art security system installed by
Alliance was named Wombosi - there’s even a picture of him in the
brochure.
 (72:45) Bourne and Marie go to Wombosi’s address - which is crawling
with cops. They don’t stick around to find out what happened, as the police
are likely to arrest them.

Bourne buys a newspaper with information about Wombosi’s

assassination, his history as an African Dictator In Exile, and how three
weeks earlier Wombosi told police that an assassin had come onto his yacht
and tried to kill him, but Wombosi shot him twice in the back and killed
him. Left him floating in the sea.

“It says I’m an assassin.” The more Bourne finds out about himself, the
less he likes who he is. Is he a political assassin?

OceanofPDF.com
 I’M THE BAD GUY?

(74:00) Bourne and Marie take a taxi through the city at night - both lost
in thought about this new information about his past life. As they get closer
to their hotel, a pair of police motorcycles zooms past them - lights and
sirens. Bourne tells the Taxi Driver to pull over.

There’s a nice lesson in this scene, because the Taxi Driver argues that
this isn’t the address, they aren’t there yet. Bourne demands he pull over.
Now, I’m sure the Taxi Driver is arguing because he wants his full fee for
the trip instead of stopping early... but this creates a great conflict because
we fear that the police are at the hotel and if the Taxi Driver takes them to
the hotel’s front door Bourne and Marie will be arrested. Bourne can not get
the Taxi Driver to pull over and let them off - so he opens the car door!
Now the Taxi Driver pulls over. Bourne pays hm off and they get out of the
cab... only half a block from the hotel. There are police cars parked in front
of the hotel!

Marie starts towards the hotel (that’s where they’re going, right?) and
Bourne has to grab her and pull her in the opposite direction. “We’re
blown.” To add to the suspense in this scene, a Police Officer approaches
the car and tells the Taxi Driver he can’t park there. Will the Police Officer
spot Bourne and Marie walking away? Will the Taxi Driver tell the Police
Officer about the crazy passenger who opened the door of the moving cab?
A small thing like this can add all kinds of tension to a scene.

There are dozens of Police Officers and police cars milling around the
hotel... and in the crowd of people watching - The Professor.

Bourne and Marie pass an empty Police Car parked down the street and
Bourne breaks the window, reaches inside, and pulls out that wanted flier
that Nicky was working on over 40 minutes ago. Marie sees her picture,
freaks out and runs away.
 Bourne chases her down on the street, grabs her, tells her they must stay
together. She says that was before they knew who he was - an assassin.
Marie gives a voice to everything Bourne has been thinking about himself -
that he is a bad guy, that the reason why people are after him and trying to
kill him is that he is a bad guy, and Marie may be killed because he
involved her in his life. He can’t say these things in the story without it
being expositional, but she can.

Bourne tells her that he will take her anyplace she wants - any place she
thinks she will be safe - and then leave. She never has to see him again. She
agrees to this.

(76:20) CIA Langley: Conklin is angry about Paris Police blowing it

and causing Bourne and Marie to run.

Abbott is putting pressure on Conklin to resolve the Bourne issue before

his big Congressional budget meeting.

Conklin has his team dig deep into Marie - she’s the key to finding
Bourne. They check phone records of her relatives and come up with all of
the places they think she has lived in the past six years. Five locations.

OceanofPDF.com
 LOVE ON THE ROCKS

Meanwhile: Bourne and Marie are driving to one of those five

locations... an old country house used as vacation property by one of
Marie’s ex-boyfriends, a married man. She phoned the house - no answer.
So they think the place will be vacant when they arrive.

(78:45) Bourne and Marie open the gate and enter the country house
grounds. Marie knows where the front door key is hidden... but can’t find it.
Bourne kicks in the door.

Once inside: Christmas lights and a Christmas tree - someone is here.

“We gotta go.”

Then a car drives up... Eamon (Tim Dutton), Marie’s ex-boyfriend.

Marie goes to talk to him, says they didn’t know he’d be here, they were
just going to stay for a day, and... in the car Eamon’s two children. And they
have to pee. Awkward!

Eamon asks Bourne if Marie talked him into this - a great line, because
obviously Marie talked Eamon into doing things in the past. Eamon’s wife
is away for two days, but she’ll be returning soon.

(81:00) Marie cooks as Eamon sets the table... and Bourne supervises
the two kids playing outside. Eamon is asking all kinds of questions about
Bourne that are perfectly normal conversation... except Bourne is an
assassin with amnesia wanted by the police and on the CIA’s hit list -
making them difficult for Marie to answer. “What does he do for a living?”
“Is he good to you?” This is a great example of verbal suspense, because
Bourne has a secret, Marie knows the secret, and Eamon’s innocent
questions may accidentally uncover that secret. Marie have to find answers
to casual questions that don’t sound evasive and weird... or Eamon may
begin asking more probing questions. Secrets are a great suspense generator
- as long as someone is digging around and may uncover them (either by
accident or on purpose).

That night, Eamon shows them to a guest room. Bourne says he’ll sleep
on the floor - what was once a couple now isn’t. The romance plot thread in
this story is interesting. It isn’t static. Once they become a couple they do
not stay a couple. They are still on the run together, but they have basically
broken up at this point... she isn’t sleeping with a government assassin.
Story is change, story is conflict - you want to make sure there is change
and conflict in all of the relationships within the story to keep those threads
alive and interesting. One of the interesting things in “Bourne Identity” is
that it’s really a love story between these two lost people. Though it was a
troubled production and the ending you see in the film is not the original
ending they shot, every version of the story’s ending was about Bourne and
Marie. The ending for a love story, not a thriller or action flick. So this
major bump in the road to romance is a big emotional moment - the
audience worries that the relationship is over.

(81:45) At CIA Langley: Walt Goggins’ nameless CIA Tech guy has
them traced to the country house, and Conklin briefs Abbott.

At an Amusement Park, Nicky meets the Professor and gives him the
information on Bourne and Marie’s location.

(82:30) Marie wakes up in the middle of the night and Bourne is gone.
She looks through the house for him, finds him in the children’s room...
watching the kids sleep. Bourne says he doesn’t want to know who he is
anymore. That who he was in the past doesn’t matter. He asks Marie if she
would run away with him, hide, start new lives. It’s his last ditch effort to
keep the relationship, but because everything is connected in a story, it is
also Bourne dealing with the “more he learns about himself the less he likes
himself” story thread. Marie isn’t sure she wants to run away with him... the
more she learns about his past, the less she likes him. He was a killer - is he
still a killer? What if he regains his memory and turns back into what he
was? This is a great, painful, scene in the romance story thread.
OceanofPDF.com
 BUYING THE FARM

(84:00) The next morning the kids are playing in the yard and Eamon is
having breakfast, Marie and Bourne have packed and are preparing to leave.
The kids run in and say that the dog is missing. That’s strange - this is when
they usually feed him. What kind of trouble has that dog gotten himself
into?

Bourne immediately tells Eamon to take the kids and get in the
basement. Now. Marie tries the phone - it’s dead, lines cut. Hey, if this film
had been made a couple of years later everyone would have a mobile phone
and that wouldn’t matter. But all of this is building suspense - we know
something is wrong, that Treadstone has found them, and soon the attack
will begin. Though we always want to start a scene as late as possible,
because suspense is the *anticipation* of an action, we want to start when
that anticipation kicks in. Why isn’t the dog here to eat?

Bourne searches the house for weapons, finds some duct tape and a box
of shotgun shells in a drawer. Shotgun shells means a shotgun, so he
searches places a man with children would put a shotgun (nice visual
storytelling as he begins looking for the shotgun, sees toys scattered around,
then begins looking higher - where kids can’t reach). On top of a bureau he
finds the gun. Marie is worried about the kids, Bourne says “That’s not
gonna happen” (he’s a good guy, not an assassin). This is also one of those
strong, tough, trailer lines.

Bourne goes out into the yard with the shotgun, fires at the giant
propane tank - exploding it into a massive fireball. A diversion, and a
smoke screen.

On a hill above the house, the Professor can no longer see the house
through his sniper scope due to the huge black smoke cloud. Bourne
reloads, races across a clearing and into the trees - gunfire chasing him. He
races up to where the Professor hides... causing the Professor to run down
the hill to one side of a field filled with tall weeds.

The Professor is on one side of the field of tall weeds, Bourne is on the
other. But the weeds are so tall that neither can see the other. Now we get a
great stalking scene that is filled with suspense due to those tall weeds.
Neither knows where the other is. The weeds are like the water concealing
the shark in “Jaws” - we know that the Professor is in there somewhere,
ready to strike... but where is he? When will he strike? Is he yards away... or
only inches? One of the “20 Iconic Suspense Scenes” is “The Maze”, and
this is a great example. A maze builds suspense because you don’t know
what is around the next corner, and the closer you get to that corner the
more the suspense builds. If you’ve ever played “Doom” before you know
how much suspense and anxiety builds around each corner of that maze. A
maze can be anything that creates suspense by having a thread hidden
somewhere within - and each corner might bring the protagonist and that
threat face-to-face and put the protagonist’s life in danger. Think of all of
those Act 3 warehouses and abandoned buildings and shipping container
yards and parking lots. All of those are mazes. Here we have a maze of
weeds. Somewhere in there is the Professor and his sniper rifle. Every step
deeper into that field could bring Bourne face-to-face with the Professor.

Bourne sees a flock of birds, fires his shotgun, scattering the birds - a
nice diversion.

The Professor abandons his big sniper rifle and pulls a handgun from
his bag. By the way - same style bag as the Assassin Castel had in Bourne’s
apartment.

Creeping through the tall weeds.

Suspense builds.

Bourne spots movement - runs and fires the shotgun - hitting the
Professor and knocking him down. The Professor’s handgun lands a few
feet away, and the Professor begins crawling for it...
While Bourne reloads the shotgun...
Who will finish first? Suspense!
 The Professor crawls closer to his gun. Bourne slides two shells in. The
Professor grabs the gun, moves to his feet, aims right at Bourne! Who blasts
him with the shotgun. The Professor goes down. Bourne advances on him -
shotgun aimed - grabs the fallen handgun. “Who else is out here?” “I work
alone... like you.”

Cool line. The Professor is Bourne’s mirror image. We’ve had mirrors
in the set decor in several scenes up until this point, and used in several
shots to call attention to Bourne’s dual identities - the Past Bourne and the
Present Bourne; but now we have Bourne face-to-face with someone who
represents his old self, someone he can have a conversation with about who
he used to be.

The Professor wants to know what Bourne’s territory is, Paris? They are
both assassins for Treadstone. “Treadstone?” “Do you get the headaches? I
get such bad headaches.” Bourne says he does get the headaches. This is a
set up for a plot thread that really doesn’t get explored until “Bourne
Legacy” - about conditioning the assassins with drugs.

Bourne tries to get more information about Treadstone, but the

Professor is shot and dying and not making much sense. “Look at what they
make you give”, the Professor says as he examines his wounds... then dies.
Is this a symbolic death for the old Bourne?

OceanofPDF.com
 END OF LOVE?

(90:00 - exactly) Eamon and the kids pack up and get into their car - the
house is not safe. Bourne gives Marie all but $30,000 from the red bag,
gives it to Marie... “That’s it?” “That’s all I got.” She tells him that’s not
what she meant. He says that she will be in danger with him. This is a big
emotional moment, and after Bourne sleeps on the floor the night before, it
seems that Marie still has very strong feelings for him. He had that great
moment watching the kids sleep, and then did everything he could to
protect them before the attack. Maybe he isn’t such a bad guy after all? But
here he is, just giving her money and sending her on her way and seeming
not to care about her.

Meanwhile Eamon in revving the car engine, telling Marie to get in now
or he’s leaving. Hey, suspense and conflict even in this little scene! Bourne
tells her there’s enough money for her to make a new life - no connections
to anyone from her old life. “You get low, you stay low, No more friends,
nothing familiar.” She asks him what he’s going to do. “End it.” She gets in
the car (no goodbye kiss) and Eamon zooms away. What color is his car?
Red.

This is a great scene in the romantic plot thread which echoes

“Casablanca” - Bourne doing his best to hide his emotions so that Marie
will leave... and be safe. He is sacrificing his love for her in order to protect
her. If he becomes emotional about it, she will also become emotional and
may not want to leave him. This is a man who was trained to close off his
emotions, who has opened up to Marie (he smiles at her and jokes with her)
and now he must make this huge sacrifice, and can’t even kiss her goodbye
for fear that she’ll want to stay with him. She is his future, and to some
extent he is divorcing himself from that future... the red car drives away
from him.

I keep comparing this film to “Three Days Of The Condor”, and there’s
a similar scene at a similar point in that film as well, when Turner sees off
Kathy at the train station before going to war with the CIA. Here Bourne
sees off Marie before going to war with Treadstone and the CIA. He’s going
to End It....

OceanofPDF.com
 ACT THREE

(91:45) Bourne empties the Professor’s bag. Some weapons. A cell

phone. He hits redial....

At CIA Paris, Nicky hears the ring, grabs a headset.

At CIA Langley, Conklin picks up the hotline as does Danny... Abbott

listens in. Danny asks for the Professor to code in now that he has
completed his assignment. No voice on the other end of the line.

Danny keeps asking for him to code in. Bourne’s voice comes over the
phone, “The man you sent is dead, so whoever this is, you better start
talking.” Bourne! Conklin tells Bourne there are only two choices: come in
and make this right, or they keep sending assassins until he’s dead. No
answer from Bourne. Conklin suggests Bourne ask Marie what she thinks
he should do. Bourne tells him she’s dead, he killed her. No longer useful,
so he killed her. Bourne tells Conklin to meet him at 5:30 pm in Paris on the
Pont Neuf bridge. No weapons. Then hangs up.

Bourne has stopped running, and is now going to confront the problem
head on. We are in Act Three.

Typically in a thriller story the protagonist is on the run for Act One and
Act Two, and then gets pinned against the wall and is forced to fight in Act
Three. Being on the run is what generates suspense instead of action - since
suspense is the anticipation of an known action, once we have the action we
have lost the suspense. So trying to avoid action is usually at the center of
most thrillers. That doesn’t mean there are no action scenes - we’ve had
hand-to-hand combat and a car chase. But while the protagonist is trying to
avoid those action scenes we are building suspense... but just as you can
only anticipate action for so long before you must have that action on a
small scale, we also will need to have that action on the larger scale of our
story. You can only run and hide for so long, then you have to turn and fight
and “End it”.

Conklin goes into action: ordering a plane, ordering Nicky to find

assassin Manheim, telling Abbott that it’s past bringing Bourne in and onto
ending the problem. Permanently.

OceanofPDF.com
 I SPY

One of the things that happens around Act Three of a Thriller story is
that the protagonist spies on the antagonist or overhears them discussing
their plans and gains valuable information. In “North By Northwest” Roger
Thornhill climbs the side of villain Van Damme’s house and hears their plan
to smuggle the microfilm in the pre-Columbian art out of the country by
plane... and throw Eve Kindle out of that plane once they are over the
ocean. In “Breakdown” Taylor climbs up into the loft of Red’s barn and
discovers they have been car jacking and killing travelers... and plan to kill
his wife Amy.
In “Three Days Of The Condor” Turner taps into the phone lines and
makes his call to assassin Joubert, who then calls Atwood - who is the man
behind the conspiracy within the CIA. This is part of the Thriller pattern
that seems to exist in almost every subgenre of thriller, and it’s here in
“Bourne Identity” as well...

(95:00) In Paris: Bourne scopes out the bridge.

Conklin and his team prepare to take down Bourne.

Bourne watches the bridge through a sniper scope from the roof a
hotel... spots the suspicious people on the bridge who are probably
Treadstone agents. This is obviously a trap, and from Bourne’s vantage
point it’s clear that Bourne expected this... and has a plan of his own. He is
turning the tables on the antagonist.

Conklin, wearing an earpiece, begins across the bridge - listening to all

of the Treadstone agents planted on the bridge make their reports. He takes
off his coat (the signal Bourne asked for) and looks around at anyone on the
bridge who is not Treadstone... and we get an interesting reversal of the
scene where Bourne leaves the Bank and everyone on the street looks
suspicious... except now it is *Conklin* who is paranoid. This is a great
touch in a “turning the tables” scene and one I don’t remember seeing
before.
 Bourne calls Conklin on his mobile phone, “I told you to come alone.
So get this - I’m gone.” Then he hangs up.

As Bourne leaves the hotel, he passes the Treadstone panel truck that
Conklin and his team arrived in and places a tracking device under it.
Compare this to the “Three Days Of The Condor” phone trace that leads
Turner to Atwood.

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 CONFRONTATION

As they leave the bridge, Conklin activates assassin Manheim, then

calls Nicky and has her close shop in Paris - pack up everything and wipe
down the room. Not a trace that Treadstone was ever there. Okay, now who
is on the run and who is pursuing?

Conklin arrives at the Paris HQ of Treadstone... not knowing that

Bourne is close behind him. Conklin walks upstairs to the office and helps
Nicky shred documents. One of the things that’s great about the Bourne
movies is that they do things which are grounded in what the audience
perceives as reality - and small touches like shredding all of the
incriminating documents is one of those things that you wouldn’t see in a
James Bond movie (too mundane) but is featured in this series. Realism is
often achieved by small details that big Hollywood films tend to leave out.
If you include those small details and realistic character reactions to events,
you create a feeling of truth.

(100:00) Later that night... car alarms begin going off up and down the
street in front of Treadstone Paris HQ. This distracts the Security Team on
the street while Bourne climbs up the side of a building like a human fly.

Inside, Nicky looks at the security monitor as random windows and

doors trigger alarms - basically impossible. Conklin grabs a gun. The power
shuts off. The phone goes dead. All of this builds suspense - but suspense
where Conklin is the object of the anticipated action. What’s interesting
about suspense is that it works “against” either the protagonist or the
antagonist or any other character. One of those interesting Hitchcock
experiments was placing the “villain” of the story in a suspense situation
and seeing if the audience responded - and they did! So we worry that the
dinner party guests might discover the dead body hidden in the trunk in
“Rope” and worry that the car won’t sink into the swamp in “Psycho”.
Suspense is one of those techniques which works no matter who the
anticipated action is “against” - hero or villain. This scene builds suspense
around our *hero* showing up to attack our *villain*, and it works. We
may not like Conklin, but this is one heck of a creepy scene as lights go out,
the phone goes dead and Conklin and Nicky realize...

“It’s Bourne.” Conklin creeps through the offices, gun ready.

A voice from behind him: “You move, you die - gun down.”

Bourne.

Conklin drops the gun. Bourne wants to know if Conklin is Treadstone,

and his response is that Bourne is a malfunctioning $30 million weapon.
Conklin tells him that the plan was for Bourne to kill Wombosi in a way
that made it look like it was done by a member of Wombosi’s own security
team. “I don’t send you to kill, I send you to be invisible.” Conklin is angry
that Bourne failed the mission, and yells at him point-by-point about the
failed plan - which is a great way to give us the denouement exposition of
what happened the night Bourne lost his memory. Conklin’s anger makes
the exposition “play”. And as Conklin goes through the plan, Bourne has
flashes of memory...

(103:20) On Wombosi’s Yacht: Bourne creeps up behind Wombosi, puts

his gun to the back of the exiled dictator’s head and...
Sees Wombosi’s little girl on his lap.
The little girl looks up at Bourne.
Can he shoot a man and splatter his brains all over the man’s child?
Wombosi carefully moves his little girl out of the line of fire, glances a
few feet away...
Bourne follows his glance - to where Wombosi’s two little boys are
sleeping. Can he kill a man in front of his children? Can he ruin those three
innocent lives forever?

Bourne lowers his gun and runs. Wombosi follows - shoots Bourne in
the back, and...

We’re back to Bourne’s body floating in the sea - where our story
began.
 End flashback.

(104:45) Conklin notes that now Bourne *does* remember what

happened. He knows who he is, what he is... what he will always be.

Bourne says he doesn’t want to do this anymore, punches Conklin and

tells him that Jason Bourne is dead. “I swear to God, if I even feel
somebody behind me there is no measure to how fast and how hard I will
bring this fight to your doorstep. I’m on my own side, now.”

Then Bourne notices the earpiece walkie - on. And realizes they are
already coming for him. He knocks out Conklin, looks at Nicky... friend or
foe? Hears noises from beyond the front door...
Suspense. Someone is out there.

As the door blasts open, Bourne hits the Security Man, grabs his gun
and shoots him in the leg, knocks him out, then pops outside with both guns
blazing at the other Security Man outside. This is all one very quick bit of
action.

A quiet moment as Bourne listens for more...

Then the first Security Man pops to his feet and hits Bourne!
Another savage hand-to-hand fight on the stairway landing, ending with
Bourne knocking out the Security Man again.

Machine gun fire blasts up from the building lobby at Bourne - killing
the unconscious Security Man. Bourne pulls back, out of the line of fire.
That last Security Man starts up the stairs towards him. Okay - he’s
basically trapped - the only way down, the stairs, has a man with a machine
gun racing up to kill him. How would you escape?

This is where the writer looks for the unusual solution to the problem.
Not the one you’ve seen in some other movie, the one the audience has
never seen before. When I reach a situation like this, I open up my
imagination, kick out that little critical dude that sits on my shoulder and
tells me which ideas are stupid (which kills creativity), and make a list of
every possible idea for escape and every *impossible* idea for escape. No
filtering at this point. Anything is possible. The reason why you want to
consider every idea no matter how crazy is because sometimes the crazy
idea can be made to work. How can you get down the stairs with a gunman
coming up? Well, you could jump, right? Stupid idea - nothing to break
your fall. But what it you had some sort of cushion? You’d still probably
end up injured, but at least not shot full of holes by that guy with the
machine gun, right? Okay, where would you find a cushion? Hey, that dead
Security Man! His body would make a good cushion!

So Bourne kicks out the banister, grabs the dead Security Man, and
jumps - riding the dead guy down - shooting the Third Security Man
running upstairs with the machine gun along the way. Hits the floor (hard)
the dead Security Man acting as a cushion (yech!) and Bourne is messed up,
injured, maybe a broken arm, but alive! He staggers to his feet just as
Conklin bursts out the door above him, gun ready.

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 TWIST

(108:00) Bourne staggers down the street...

And assassin Manheim, sitting in his car, spots the Man staggering
down the street towards him. Waits until the Man gets close, steps out of his
car and aims his silenced automatic at the Man...
Who is Conklin.
Instead of Manheim lowering his gun - he kills Conklin.

Wait, what?

One of the great things about Conspiracy or Paranoia or Political

Thrillers is that they often end with the conspiracy still alive. In “Three
Days Of The Condor” after Atwood’s death we get that great speech from
Higgens, “We have games. We play games. What if? How many men?
What would it take? Is there a cheaper way to destabilize a regime? That’s
what we’re paid to do. It’s simple economics. Today it’s oil, right? In ten or
fifteen years? Food, plutonium... and maybe even sooner. Now, what do you
think the people are going to want us to do then? Not now - then? Ask them
when they’re running out? Ask them when there’s no heat in their homes
and they’re cold? Ask them when their engines stop? Ask them when
people who have never known hunger start going hungry? You want to
know something: They won’t want us to ask them. They’ll just want us to
get it for them.” These films are like horror movies in that they often end
with this chapter resolved - Michael Myers has been shot and fallen to the
ground below - but the larger problem still out there, unresolved - when
they look down, Myer’s body is gone. Though Conklin and Treadstone may
have been resolved, the CIA is still out there plotting... so they’ve killed
Conklin to keep their dirty tricks departments secret.

(108:40) At CIA Langley, Danny turns to Abbott and says, “It’s done.”
Abbott tells him to shut down Treadstone - how do we show that? Danny
turns off all the computers and monitors and turns off all of the lights in the
office until it is dark. There is no more Treadstone. Danny follows Abbott
out (setting up the two as a team for the next film).

(109:00) Bourne walks through the streets of Paris at night... a free man.
Or is he?

If Manheim killing Conklin isn’t enough proof that the conflict this
chapter may have been resolved, but the CIA’s dirty tricks department is
still out there...

Washington, DC: With Danny at his side, Abbott testifies to the Senate
Intelligence Committee that Treadstone has been closed down, and gives
them a complete BS description of what the project was all about.
“Advanced game program” and “Training platform” and “Strictly
theoretical exercise”. Games? Just like in “Three Days Of The Condor”s
ending! Once Abbott has closed out Treadstone, he brings up another
program that needs funding: Blackbriar. The dirty tricks continue!

This scene echoes the end on another great Paranoia Political Thriller
“The Parallax View” where another assassination organization with
potential ties to the government ends with a Warren Commission like
committee announcing that there was no conspiracy and it was all the work
of a lone gunman... even though we know from the film that is *not* true.
Covering up the cover ups. We leave the cinema knowing that the evil is
still out there, and the authorities can not be trusted.

(110:00) Mykonos, Greece: Now we come to the resolution of our

romance story thread...

Marie is running an oceanfront restaurant that also rents motor scooters

to tourists... similar to the surf shop in Spain she mentioned earlier. A
beautiful location. A great life. Between lunch and dinner, the restaurant is
empty and Marie is cleaning up. If you look carefully here, you can spot
that red cloth bag that Bourne gave her. That bag symbolized Bourne’s
future, but it became Marie’s future - the money within was used to start
this business in an interesting part of the world where nobody knows who
she is and the Treadstone conspiracy can not find her. Or can they?
 A Man walks in, “Is this your store?” The more he speaks, the more she
recognizes his voice, and turns around. Jason Bourne stands in the doorway.
She runs up and embraces him...

Cut to the Moby song “Extreme Ways” which will be used for closing
title credits on all of the films... even the new one!

OceanofPDF.com
 CONCLUSION

So despite the behind the scenes chaos - or maybe because of it - “The

Bourne Identity” became a financial and critical success, so Universal
decided to make a sequel using the same star (Matt Damon, who actually
became a box office star with this film) and the same writer (Tony Gilroy
who saved the day with his rewrites during shooting and his reshoot work)
and the same producer (Frank Marshall who also saved the day), but a
completely different director. Doug Liman was banned from ever directing
a Bourne film again, even though he was the one who dreamed of making
this film and bought the rights to the novel personally from Robert Ludlum.
“I lost my baby”, Liman told the New Yorker.

But the success of “The Bourne Identity” opened all kinds of doors for
Liman, and when Brad Pitt was finished with “Spy Game” he hired Liman
to direct “Mr & Mrs Smith”. Liman continues to direct big budget films in
his own chaotic way to this day, on “Edge Of Tomorrow” with Tom Cruise
he spent three months shooting a scene scheduled for only two weeks. He
also gets an Executive Producer credit on every Bourne film, due to buying
those film rights after that disastrous airplane flight to Ludlum’s home in
Colorado.

The second film in the series would be an even bigger success, shall we
take a look at it?

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 THE BOURNE SUPREMACY
Release date: July 23, 2004
Starring: Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Joan Allen, Brian Cox, Karl
Urban, Julia Stiles.
Writer: Tony Gilroy (with a polish by Brian Helgelund)
Director: Paul Greengrass
Producer: Frank Marshall
Production Company: Kennedy/Marshall, Universal
Budget: $75m
Domestic Box Office: $176,241,941.00
Total Box Office: $288,500,217
Running Time: 108 minutes.
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Tagline: “They should have left him alone.”

Rotten Tomatoes: 74% (top critics)

Metacritic: 73
Cinemascore: A-

Quest: Can he be forgiven for his first assassination? As he seeks

revenge for Marie’s murder by a fellow assassin.

OceanofPDF.com
 INTRODUCTION

One of the interesting things about the Bourne movies is that all of them
ended up being experiments... though nobody knew that at the time. The
first film took an indie director and handed him a studio genre film. Though
horror movies have done this in the past in an attempt to “elevate” the genre
by giving a genre that Hollywood often disdains to the low budget indie
flavor of the month director... which often leads to a horror film that doesn’t
deliver the scares but might get good reviews. But horror movies tend to be
made on the cheap, unlike big spy thrillers and action flicks. But Stacey
Snider at Universal decided to stick to the winning formula of the first film,
and Paul Greengrass was hired to direct this installment. Of course, no one
realized there was an experiment going on this time around...

Because the project went to screenplay before the director was hired...

Once Greengrass was brought onboard, there was a finished screenplay

that everyone loved. Though there may have been small changes made on
set, Greengrass had no input on the screenplay and basically had to directed
the story he was handed. An article from a January 6, 2012 Hollywood
Reporter about the series says that Paul Greengrass and Tony Gilroy had
problems working together. “Tony and Paul have clashing styles. Tony does
all of the work before and delivers a finished script. Paul wants the script to
be ever-evolving during shooting,” a source told them. So by the time
Greengrass was hired the script was basically set in stone, and being the
new guy on this big studio film Greengrass was in no position to throw his
weight around. Even though Brian Helgelund was brought in to do a couple
of drafts, there are very few differences between the screenplay and the
movie. Not much onset improvisation. So the experiment in this film ends
up being: Director is not involved in developing the screenplay and
basically shoots what is written. For third film we will look at what happens
when the director is involved in developing the screenplay and brings in his
own writers, and for the fourth film in the series we will take a look at what
happens when the writer gets a chance to make the film with basically
complete control, and for the fifth film (the new one) what happens when
the director makes a film without the writer. No one planned these
experiments, they just happened as the films were made. But each
experiment impacted the finished films in interesting ways.

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 NOBODY LOVES A SEQUEL

The problem with any sequel is that it will be compared to the original,
and though that may seem fair, there is no way to replicated the experience
of seeing a story unfold for the first time. When you saw the first film you
had no idea what it would be like, and so much of “Bourne Identity” felt
new and exciting. You hadn’t seen a film like this before. The combination
of that independent film feel, the reality of the action scenes, the almost
procedural feel in a spy film, and the focus on character (both protagonist
and secondary characters) were things we really hadn’t seen in the same
film. We’d seen pieces of these elements in other films, but put them
together and we have a unique experience... and now we were going to get
that same experience again. Impossible not to feel a little let down because
this is the same combination of elements as that first film, so it’s not new
anymore. There is no surprise and discovery in a sequel. So every sequel is
a challenge, especially the first one because we only have that original to
compare it to.

So “Bourne Supremacy” ends up a couple of points lower on “Rotten

Tomatoes”, though a few points *higher* on Metacritic. I believe that this is
either the best film in the series or a strong #2 after the first film (depending
on the day you ask me) - which means it’s probably equal to the first film.
The writing is great - each character is well defined and serves a specific
story purpose (we’ll look at how Abbott and Landy symbolize the choice
that Bourne must make in the story in a moment). The story is both
shocking and haunting and ends up being about guilt and remorse and the
hope for forgiveness - pretty deep stuff for a thriller. But many of my
friends were initially disappointed and when I asked them why they pointed
to the story. When I asked them to elaborate, not a single person I spoke
with could pinpoint a problem... except the “shaky cam” action scenes.
Hmm, that doesn’t sound like the story to me. Afer I saw it, I said that the
final car chase was probably the best action scene you’ve never seen. I’m
sure that stuntmen and stuntwomen did an amazing job in those driving
scenes, but I couldn’t really tell what was going on. I think the shaky cam
was the real problem with this film.

There are two elements to the shaky cam problem:

1) Where Doug Liman used a Steady-cam rig in his scenes, Paul

Greengrass uses hand held with no stabilization. One of the fascinating
things about Liman’s direction was that he shot hand held with a Steady-
cam rig... and then in many scenes did not allow the cameraman to witness
the rehearsal, so that when the scene was shot the cameraman would have
no idea who spoke next in a dialogue scene and his camera movement
would be a beat behind the line of dialogue. That’s just an odd method, but
it results in kind of an “anti-Hollywood” feeling where instead of a
carefully composed shot, the camera was trying to keep up with reality.
More of the way a news camera would behave. This gave the scenes a
feeling of reality... without sacrificing image quality. The Steady-cam rig
smoothed out the shots so that we could easily see the image on the big
screen. Greengrass used no stabilization, so the shots were all just damned
shaky! Especially in fast moving scenes like that car chase, where all of the
vibrations of the automobile and all of the sudden turns often turned the
image into one big blur. If you use the pause button (the way I used it to see
if that was really Damon in the fight scenes) you often get an image that can
not be identified at all! Just blur.

2) The other factor is screen size. An image that shakes back and forth
by an inch on your big screen TV is moving back and forth by *two feet*
on a cinema screen. So the larger the screen, the more extreme the “shake”
in a shaky cam shot. Paul Greengrass began his career in television on the
documentary series “World In Action”, then began making TV movies on
issues, then gained recognition for “Bloody Sunday” which was made for
Grenada Television which landed him the “Bourne Supremacy” job. So this
is a director used to making films for a small screen who was now making a
film for the big screen - and screen size does matter when we are dealing
with hand held camera. What would have been an acceptable shake on a TV
sized screen becomes extreme on a movie screen. Combine the shaky cam
with today’s fast cuts and if you saw this movie for the first time in a
cinema it was probably a confusing experience. What the hell did I just see?
 In later films Greengrass would get his shaky-cam aligned to the larger
screen, but here - his first film designed for the big screen - it’s often a
problem. I think one of the main reasons why people had problems with this
film was that there was a whole lotta shaking going on... but on a smaller
screen it works much better. Hey, shall we take a look at this experiment?

OceanofPDF.com
THE BOURNE SUPREMACY

OceanofPDF.com
 OPENING HOOK

Opening Image: A Nightmare: Bourne’s first mission. Conklin’s voice

telling him the training is over. A hotel, a room number, a photo of a father,
mother, child. Fractured memories. Opening with a nightmare about the
past will become a series motif that extends all the way to the fifth film,
“Jason Bourne”. Though dream openings are considered a cliche, this is a
“cliche that works” in a series about a man who is haunted by his past.
When Bourne wakes up from his nightmare he is in...

Goa, India: Bourne (Matt Damon) wakes up and goes into the
bathroom. Marie (Franka Potente) wakes up and finds half the bed empty.
She finds Bourne in the bathroom where he tells her he just has a headache.
But she knows better. This small domestic situation shows us their
relationship. At the end of the first film they had just met again and we had
no idea if this relationship based on basically kidnapping a stranger would
work out. This small scene shows us that the relationship not only worked
out, but this is a real emotional relationship. That passion that explodes
when people first meet (and is often fleeting) has eased into a relationship
based on friendship and love. A scene where they were kissing or making
love would have shown the passion but not the underlying friendship and
trust and love. So this small scene is really a big scene.

They talk about his dream... Marie tells him he should write it down in
his notebook, with the other memories. Bourne says he would rather think
about good memories - like his past two years with Marie. Two little pieces
of exposition slipped in there, we know how long they have been together
in order to reach this comfortable place in their relationship and we get our
first mention of the “Memory Book”. The “Memory Book” is a great way
to externalize something completely internal - how do you show memories?
How do you show Bourne *thinking* about those memories? Trying to
assemble those memories and find the connections? How do you show his
quest to remember his past? Just showing him “thinking” gives us very little
on screen - a dude sitting there not doing anything. He could just be zoning
out for all we know! On screen we always need to find a way to externalize
what happens in someone’s mind - turn thoughts into actions. The “Memory
Book” is a great invention which accomplishes this... and much like the
way that Bourne and Marie met, you can find its roots in “Three Days Of
The Condor”. In that film, while Turner is hiding out at Kathy’s apartment
he wakes up early and uses a notebook to figure out who might have killed
his friend Sam and why this conspiracy might be after him. We get to see
him thinking when he writes in that notebook... and I’m sure that inspired
the “Memory Book” in this film.

In Berlin: Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) oversees a CIA Mission to buy

information - the “Neski Files”, which are our MacGuffin. What’s a
MacGuffin? We’ll talk about that in a moment. Landy’s Team has
surveillance teams and cameras all over the place and they are monitoring
the entire deal. This is an interesting carry over from the first film (and a
basic in the thriller genre of being secretly watched by the authorities)
because here the bugs and video monitors are going to be used to *frame*
our protagonist. This adds an additional level of paranoia - not only do we
need to worry about being watched by the authorities 24/7/365, we need to
worry that someone (maybe even the authorities) will be able to use all of
that monitoring to create false evidence that “proves” we committed a
crime. Instead of Walt Goggins playing the unnamed Tech who gets the
handful of lines of dialogue in these scenes, we get Michelle Monaghan
(“Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”, “Mission Impossible 3 & 4"). The Team watches
as the deal unfolds, unaware that...

Russian assassin Kirill (Karl Urban) is in the basement of the building

where the deal is taking place attaching explosives to the power lines... and
leaving false fingerprints behind.

When the explosives take out the power (and turns all of the CIA’s
video monitors dark), Kirill enters the office where the deal is going down,
kills both buyer and seller, grabs the information (Neski Files) being
purchased and the money and splits before the CIA can get anyone into the
building. They have no idea who killed their agent and stole the information
they were trying to buy.
 (8:30) A Hotel Room in Berlin: Kirill enters and greets Gretkov (Karel
Rodin) a Russian oil billionaire who has gone from rags to riches in six
short years thanks to oil field investments. Kirill delivers the stolen Neski
Files... which hold some secret that Gretkov would kill for. We don’t know
what that is at this point in the story, because that is one of the mysteries
that will drive this story. That information is linked to the dream-memory
that Bourne is struggling with. We have two plot threads which will
eventually connect with a major clue in the next scene, because Gretkov
tells Kirill he has a plane to catch... to India. But, wait, you said something
about a MacGuffin...

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 MACGUFFIN

A MacGuffin is a physical device which drives the story - the thing that
everyone is after. The Maltese Falcon is probably the most famous one, but
the Lost Ark is also a good example. The term comes from Alfred
Hitchcock who once defined a MacGuffin as a device for capturing the
indigenous lions in the Scottish Highland... but there are no lions in the
Scottish Highlands... hence, no such thing as a MacGuffin! Except, there's a
MacGuffin in almost every Hitchcock movie.

Hitchcock’s thriller “North By Northwest” has two MacGuffins - the

little pre-Columbian statue that villain Van Damm is determined to buy at
the auction (because it is filled with top secret microfilm) and the CIA spy
George Kaplan who everyone has confused protagonist Roger Thornhill for.
So we have a double MacGuffin – Thornhill must find Kaplan, and Kaplan
is chasing Van Damm to get the pre-Columbian statue and microfilm.

The MacGuffin is what drives the story: where would “The Maltese
Falcon” be without The Maltese Falcon? It is the most important element in
the story. Rare coins, rare books, murder weapons, plans to the Death Star,
the letters of transit in “Casablanca”, the identity of Rosebud in “Citizen
Kane”, the ring in “Lord Of The Rings” and all kinds of things that both
good guys and bad guys must posses which propels the plot forward are
MacGuffins. In Hitchcock's “The Lady Vanishes” the MacGuffin is a
*tune* that is really a code. In “The 39 Steps” it's a formula that Mr.
Memory has memorized. The more interesting an unusual your MacGuffin
the better!

One of the things that you may have noticed about many of these
MacGuffins is that they involve *information*. “The Bourne Supremacy”
uses that concept of information in two different ways - both a physical
MacGuffin (the Neski Files) and Bourne’s memories of his first
assassination assignment. Much like in “North By Northwest” these two
MacGuffins will eventually converge and become a single MacGuffin
which drives both story threads because it is the same information, just in
two different forms.

Using *information* as a MacGuffin is one of the motifs in espionage

thrillers, but back in the time of “Three Days Of The Condor” that
information came in *books*. That was 1975, and two years later the man
Fortune Magazine’s called "America's most successful entrepreneur" Ken
Olsen (founder of Digital Equipment Corporation) said, "There is no reason
anyone would want a computer in their home." Of course, now we have a
computer in our pocket that is connected to *everything* so the paranoia
part of a thriller is even more extreme - big brother really is watching us. In
“Bourne Identity” they tracked Marie through where her phone calls
originated from and were made it. The Bourne movies take place in these
times of the NSA spying on every American and the Patriot Act and facial
recognition software and security cameras and (by the time we get to the
new movie “Jason Bourne”) the idea of using other people’s cell phone
images as a source of surveillance information. In “Three Days Of The
Condor” computers were huge things and they had to schedule time on the
*one* computer available to them... odds are, you are reading this on some
form of a computer right now. Is someone watching you read from the other
side of the world?

Paranoia is so much easier today...

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 OUR FIRST CHASE

(9:45) Goa, India: A beautiful beach side town that is off the beaten
path. Marie is shopping in an outdoor market, while Bourne is jogging
along the beach. When Marie gets home, she looks through Bourne’s
“Memory Book” - all of his memories of his past life, the life he left behind.
All of those fragments of past missions when he was an assassin.

As Bourne buys a bottle of water in town, he spots a luxury rental car

on the street... unusual. At the wheel of the rental car is Kirill.

Kirill parks the car and begins showing shop owners a photo and asking
if anyone knows this man. Bourne thinks this is strange and jogs to find
Marie. At the telegraph office, Kirill shows the photo to the Man behind the
counter, says there has been a death in the family, does the Man know
where Kirill can find this person? The photo is of Bourne (the photo on his
Russian passport).

At a beachfront restaurant (where motorscooters can probably be

rented) Marie is working. Bourne pulls up, tells Marie they’re blown, they
get in their Land Rover, and zoom away... as Kirill arrives and spots them -
the chase is on.

In an action movie, the protagonist is usually the one doing the

pursuing. In a thriller story, the protagonist is usually the one being pursued.
In an action movie the protagonist confronts the problem, in a thriller story
the protagonist usually tries to hide or escape from the problem. Bourne and
Marie are trying to escape after they have been hiding in this town for a
while.

(13:30) Marie wants to know how Bourne can be sure that they’re
blown, and we get some minor exposition in the midst of this car chase
through the crowded streets of Goa. If you’re going to have expositional
dialogue, put it in the middle of a car chase! There’s an element here of
Marie thinking that Bourne is just being paranoid which is used to prompt
Bourne’s exposition on why he thinks this guy in the luxury rental car is not
a tourist... but is Treadstone coming to take care of him.

As they race through a dirt alley between ramshackle buildings, Bourne

tells Marie to take the wheel - she’s going to drive. “Switch!” and they
switch places at high speed. This turns the scene into more than just one car
chasing another - we have excitement inside the car as well as they switch
places without slowing down or losing control of the car. Bourne tells her to
head to the bridge, as he pulls his gun from the glove box.

Now Bourne and Marie in the Land Rover and Kirill in the luxury car
are on different roads, running parallel to each other. When Bourne hits the
end of town, he tells Marie to cut to the field - their vehicle can go off road,
Kirill’s can not. Kirill sees them off road, stops his car, pops the trunk, pulls
out his sniper rifle bag. Bourne and Marie are headed straight to the bridge -
as the crow flies. When they pop up on the road - it’s in the middle of
speeding traffic, and they almost get hit. This is a great detail within the car
chase because like switching places so that Marie is driving, it shows them
working together as a couple. This car chase is also a *character scene* that
highlights the between Marine and Bourne. Bourne tells Marie to head
home. On the other side of the bridge he’s going to jump out and stop the
man who is chasing them. Permanently. This moment helps to show the
conflicted nature of Jason Bourne - he still has the suppressed killer gene.

Kirill stops running and assembles his sniper rifle.

Marie doesn’t want Bourne to kill this man... that’s not who he is
anymore. Bourne says he told Treadstone to leave him alone, but now they
have sent this man... he doesn’t have a choice. Marie says, “Yes, you do.” A
nice moment - is the only solution for Bourne to keep killing? Treadstone
turned him into a killer... will he continue to be a killer due to them? This
all ties in with his nightmares of that first mission - when they changed him
into an assassin. This is the big emotional question that Bourne deals with
in these films - the reason why these films are so popular. They aren’t just
mindless action films, they are about a *person* dealing with a big
emotional problem. Does he have a choice? Or is he a killer by nature? Can
he jettison his past and lead a peaceful life? Or will Treadstone keep
sending these people and will he keep having to run and hide and then
eventually fight the pursuers to the death?

BANG!
Kirill’s sniper rifle fires...
Hitting Marie as she drives the Land Rover over the bridge.
The Land Rover plows into the bridge railing, breaks it, plunges into the
river!
Water pours inside as it sinks...

Inside the Land Rover, Bourne struggles to remove the seat belt from
Marie as they sink to the bottom of the river. This is a bit of genius, because
not only is it a great suspense builder - will Bourne be able to undo the seat
belt and save Marie from drowning; it also ties back to the first movie
where they are in Marie’s little car parked at the train station as the police
approach and Bourne tells her to get out, tells the police she was kidnapped
so that she’ll be safe... and instead of opening the car door to leave she
grabs the seat belt / shoulder harness and clicks it in place to show that she
is with Bourne in the car chase that is to come. One car chase to another,
two years later. One seat belt tells Bourne that she is with him all the way to
the end... and this seat belt in the sinking car symbolizing the destination
with Bourne... The end.

Bourne unhooks the seat belt, but can’t get Marie’s door open. Swims
through the back of the Land Rover, opens the door from the outside, and
Marie floats out. Bourne tries to give some of the air in his lungs to her -
underwater mouth-to-mouth - but Marie is unresponsive. A cloud of blood
around her head... She is dead. Bourne gives her a last kiss, and lets go...
she floats away like an angel, hair haloing her face. Oddly enough, this is a
beautiful, romantic scene. If you are going to kill a beloved character, make
sure it is a memorable death. Here we have Bourne’s final image of Marie
as an angel floating away from him. Haunting.

(18:10) On the bridge: A crowd has formed looking down at the river.
Kirill is part of the crowd, looking for some sign of Bourne: He does not
pop to the surface. He is dead. Kirill puts on his sunglasses and walks away
as if this is just another day in his life.

Now we have set up our entire story. All of the pieces have come
together from Bourne’s dreams to the CIA. We have our protagonist and our
antagonist and a revenge story which will put Bourne back on the CIA’s
radar... and back to his first assassination for Conklin. There are a few more
pieces of the puzzle, but that will be part of the mystery that is unfolding in
this film.

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 DIS-HARMONIC CONVERGENCE

(18:45) Berlin: Police at the building where Kirill killed the two men
involved in the deal - there were two explosives attached to the power lines,
but only one went off... the other has a clear set of fingerprints. The German
Police have not been able to identify them, but Pam Landy has snagged
them and runs them through Langley... where she gets a positive match: in
the dismantled Treadstone Program (which is above Landy’s clearance
level). Landy says, “Book me a flight: we’re going to Langley.”

Cut to: Airplane landing... in Moscow. Kirill gets off the plane. See how
the different plot threads can be connected through images to create flow?
Landy says “Book me a flight” and we see a plane land and Kirill gets off -
one scene flows into the next, no abrupt shifts that confuse the audience.

Gretkov is waiting in his limo at the airport, Kirill hops in. Reports that
Bourne is dead. “It’s finished. Bourne. The files. The fingerprint.” Kirill
and this line ties together the Berlin scene where Kirill killed the two men
and stole the file, and Jason Bourne. These are all part of the same story,
even though what the story may be a mystery at this time. Bourne films are
quests into the past for information, and we know that something about that
stolen file is connected to Bourne’s past. Gretkov hands Kirill a huge bag of
money and says he’ll be in contact within a month.

(20:30) Goa: Bourne stands on the side of the river as a crowd on the
bridge watches the police pull the Land Rover out of the river. There’s a
glint of a tear in his eyes. He turns and walks away.

(21:00) Bourne burns all of the pictures of Marie. All of her false
passports. The last photo is of Marie and Bourne together... he does not
burn it. This will be what I call a “Twitch” in my “Secrets Of Action
Screenwriting” book - a physical representation of an unresolved emotional
conflict. This photo will represent Bourne’s quest for revenge and remind
him (and the audience) of Marie from time to time in the story when he
brings it out and looks at it. This is a way to turn an emotion into something
we can see. Bourne never has to say, “I miss Marie” or “I want to find the
bastard who took Marie away from me and kill him”, he just needs to pull
this photo from his pocket.

By the way - this is one of two photos used for this purpose in the story,
the other is that photo of the father and mother and child from Bourne’s
dream / memory.

Bourne goes into the house and gather up all of his false passports and
weapons and money from their hiding places. Grabs his “Memory Book”.
Then he hops a bus out of town... leaving this life behind.

(22:00) CIA HQ Langley: CIA Director Martin Marshall (this time

played by Tomas Arana) dresses down Pam Landy: “Two men dead, $3
million in cash gone, no Neski files, and all very public.” Landy tells him
they have a lead - a fingerprint left by the assassin. “It’s one of us.” Landy
wants level 5 clearance so that she can get into the Treadstone files and find
out who is responsible. Who this fingerprint belongs to. Marshall gives her
the clearance.

(23:00) Naples, Italy: Bourne on a ship about to dock... reminiscent of

the beginning of the first film.

Landy sends the fingerprints through Treadstone’s computer files... and

that positive match is Jason Bourne. Landy ends up locked in a room at CIA
HQ with all of Jason Bourne’s files and all of the Treadstone files. There
are dossiers on Danny and Nicky and Conklin and all of the players from
the first film. This leads Landy to call Ward Abbott (Brian Cox) to set up an
immediate meeting. Abbott has inherited Conklin’s executive assistant
Danny Zorn (Gabriel Mann).

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 CHARACTER PURPOSE

Landy and Abbott meet in a secure room, and she asks him about
Treadstone. Abbott thinks this is all a political move on Landy’s part - she’s
ambitious and wants his job and wants to drag him through the mud with
this failed program.

Landy wants to know where Bourne is now. Abbott doesn’t know,

doesn’t want to know. Bourne is bad news, better to bury it. Landy says
Bourne has resurfaced - and tells him about the Neski file buy gone wrong.
This discussion / argument between these characters is an important
element of the story and a great indicator of good writing (which is missing
from the new film).

As I noted in the “Supporting Characters & Subplots” Blue Book, every

character in your screenplay needs to have a *story purpose* - a reason for
being there. Supporting characters aren't just thrown on the page to give our
protagonist someone to talk to in this scene, or someone to kiss in that big
scene on page 73; they are part of the story itself. Any character that can be
removed from the story without harming it, *should* be removed from the
story. You also should combine characters who serve the same story
purpose into a single character - if the protagonist has two best friends who
are there to support him, he may only end up with one. Combining two
characters who serve the same purpose helps to better focus the story. Here
we have two CIA Agents who are both hunting for the protagonist - so what
is their difference and why is that important to the story?

“Bourne Supremacy”, is also about a buried secret about his past that
Bourne is now trying to uncover. The secret of his first assassination
mission – which was so top secret it's not even recorded in any of the CIA
or Treadstone's files. Whatever that first mission was is what drives the
whole story – with both Bourne and Pamela Landy at the CIA trying to
figure it out. Spy movies like this are usually *filled* with secrets, and
often secrets are what drive the stories of *secret agents*.
 Though Pamela Landy and Ward Abbott aren't the lead characters,
they're both CIA Agents, but each is completely different... and each
*symbolizes* a potential path that Jason Bourne might take. Supporting
characters are often struggling with the same issue as the protagonist or
symbolize a potential outcome for the protagonist. In that Supporting Blue
Book I look at how all of the characters in “The 40 Year Old Virgin” are
dealing with romantic issues similar to the protagonist’s, and each is an
exaggerated version of what might happen to the protagonist in a
relationship. The two women he might have a relationship with are also
symbolic - one is all about sex, the other all about a comfortable
relationship. This way, the protagonist can be *shown* making decisions.
Instead of *thinking*, we can see him relate to an actual person, which is
dramatic. The same sort of thing is why we have two main CIA agents
hunting Bourne, Landy and Abbott.

Landy is a digger - she'll do anything to uncover the secrets behind the

Treadstone operations (even if it puts her career in peril). Ward wants to
cover everything up - bury the past (and Treadstone) and get on with CIA
business. These are two very different approaches to the same job... and
they are also the two choices facing Jason Bourne. These two supporting
characters are there to support the story - and are different aspects of the big
decision Bourne must make in the story. Bourne can either hide from the
secrets in his past or dig into his past and discover some more frightening
secrets about who he was... maybe even who he is. So just as Bourne's
character is all about secrets, so are Landy and Ward's characters. All are
different aspects of how people deal with secrets. And all three are dealing
with the big secret which is driving the entire story: Bourne’s first mission.

When you are writing a story, always look at each of your supporting
characters and ask: "What is the purpose of this character? Is he/she/it
necessary to the story? Why is this character important? What is their
function? Are there two characters who serve the same story purpose?" If so
- get rid of one of them! We need both Landy and Abbott to show not only
the potential results of Bourne’s big decision, but also to symbolize the
conflict within Bourne - should he keep digging into his past or start
burying it and pretend it never existed.
But what *is* his past?

OceanofPDF.com
 CONNECTIONS

(26:30) Bourne at Customs shows his passport. His actual passport with
his real name.

CIA HQ London: A ping from a computer monitor as Jason Bourne

shows up in Naples, Italy passport control. Red flag. Detain.

At Customs, a pair of Security Men flank Bourne and take him through
a door in the back of Naples passport control....

(27:15) Pam Landy reports to Marshall and the others on the team at the
CIA: “Seven years ago, $20 million in CIA funds disappeared during a wire
transfer through Moscow. In the investigation that followed we were
contacted by a Russian politician, Vladimir Neski. Neski claimed we had a
leak and had been ripped off by one of our own. We were negotiating a
meet with Mr. Neski (to find out who the leak was) when he was killed. By
his wife. The case had gone cold until a month ago when we found a
source: another Russian in Berlin who claimed to have access to the Neski
murder files. We thought we had another bite at the apple. Turns out the
assassin was one of our own: Jason Bourne.”

Landy searched the hard drive to Conklin’s computer and found a

hidden file with a secret bank account of almost a million dollars. Landy
believes that Bourne and Conklin were in business together, and that the
Neski files contained information Bourne didn’t want released, so he came
out of hiding and killed two men to obtain that file.

That’s when Danny comes in and says Jason Bourne’s passport just
popped up in Naples, they have detained him, and a local CIA guy has been
sent to interrogate him.

(29:10) Cut to: The local CIA guy pulling up in his car to interrogate
Bourne. He shows his papers to the Policeman at the desk and is shown to
an interrogation room.

In the Interrogation Room: Bourne sits behind a desk with an armed

officer standing nearby. The CIA guy, John Nevins (Tim Griffin) shows
Bourne his ID, says he’s from the US Consulate, studies Bourne’s passport.
Asks him a few questions about where he’s coming from and why he came
to Naples... but Bourne not only doesn’t answer, he completely ignores
Nevins. It’s as if Bourne is sitting alone in the room. Nevins snaps his
fingers in front of Bourne’s face - no response at all. Nevins’ cell phone
rings - it’s Langley telling him that Bourne is a priority target... dangerous.

Nevins pockets the phone and unholster’s his gun, and Bourne springs
into action from his almost zen-like trance. Takes the gun from Nevins,
knocks the Guard out before he can get to his gun, knocks Nevins out. Over
in a second. He grabs Nevins’ cell phone, pulls out the SIM card, attaches it
to a device from his backpack, downloads all of the information, returns the
SIM to the phone and drops it next to Nevins. Grabs his keys, leaves the
room and slides a file cabinet under the door handle, and walks out to the
parking lot clicking Nevins’ alarm key fob until he spots the blinking lights
of Nevins’ car. Swaps out the license plates, gets in the car, takes off. Now
he has a car, a gun, and a head start. All of this happens in a flash - Bourne
goes from prisoner to completely in control and driving a stolen car through
Europe.

This brief action scene and details like showing Bourne swapping out
license plates of Nevin’s car and doing whatever he did with the man’s
phone are some of the elements that turn this into a “smart thriller”. Bourne
is so many moves ahead of those chasing him that we admire him and wish
we were him. These are the details that make the series successful - this
isn’t a series about a guy who can punch people, this is a series about a
*clever* guy who sometimes punches people.

(32:00) Landy calls Nevins... and both Nevins’ and Bourne’s cell
phones ring. Aha - that’s what Bourne was doing with the SIM card! The
lesson here - you don’t need to tell the audience everything at once, you can
leave some things as little mysteries that will be solved a minute or two
later.
 Bourne listens in to the conversation as Nevins wakes up and answers.
“He got away.” Bourne writes down Landy’s name when she gives it, writes
down the phone number she is calling from. Then Landy tells Nevins that
Bourne is armed and dangerous and last week he assassinated two men in
Berlin. Bourne stops writing - what? He wasn’t in Berlin, he was watching
the woman he loves die. Landy says she’s hopping a plane to Berlin and
Nevins needs to call her in 40 minutes with an update, and she’d better be
impressed by whatever he has to say.

When Landy hangs up, so does Bourne - he starts the car and gets out of
there.
Heading to Berlin.

More of the Landy and Abbott conflict about digging or burying:

Abbott tries to wrestle this away from Landy - Abbott knows more about
Treadstone and Bourne than Landy, who just read a file. Marshall breaks up
the turf war and tells them *both* to be on that plane and to work this
together. Abbott brings along Danny, of course. Marshall says this time they
are going to do what they should have done last time: Kill Jason Bourne.
Abbott is all for that... it buries the problem.

But, here we are just over a quarter of the way into the story and the
conflict has escalated - they are going to kill Jason Bourne. This comes
directly from the Director Of The CIA...

OceanofPDF.com
 THE UNUSUAL WAY

As he drives, Bourne listens again and again to his recording of Landy

saying that Bourne killed two men in Berlin a week ago. He’s headed to
Berlin (we know this because he pulls out a map and opens it to Berlin). As
he drives, the echoes of Conklin’s voice from his nightmare... a vocal
flashback. In “Hitchcock: Experiments In Terror” I look at the way Hitch
used voice over as a kind of vocal flashback when Marion Crane is driving
in the rain. This is an interesting technique that you don’t often see, that
allows the audience to hear what a character is thinking about without
resorting to the character having a voice over of their thoughts. Sort of
audio show rather than audio tell.

Conklin’s voice segues into the nightmare flashes, and we get more
information than last time. Faces. Voices. A child crying. What does it all
mean?

(34:30) Bourne wakes up from the nightmare. In his car, parked on the
side of the road. The dream was used to bridge his travel from point A to
point B.

(35:10) In Amsterdam: Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) walks down the

street smiling... until she sees Abbott standing next to a towncar. He opens
the door for her. This is a great little reversal in a scene that lasts seconds.
Instead of the boring way to re-introduce Nicky and debrief her about
Treadstone (they just call her in for a meeting or something) we get this
moment of Nicky happily living her life... and then they are waiting for her
with a car. It’s like a little twist (which may be a big twist in Nicky’s life -
since she seems to have left Treadstiine behind her and has returned to her
life as a college student studying abroad... and now is being pulled back
into danger for three more movies.) Always try to find the most interesting
way to do things, even if they are small things like re-introducing a
character or getting from one location to another. Look for the unusual way.
 (35:30) Abbott and Landy (and Cronin) interview Nicky about
Treadstone. She explains that Treadstone assassins had side effects -
headaches, anger issues, depression, sensitivity to light. But no amnesia
until Bourne. After the debriefing, Nicky thinks she’s off the hook, but
Landy tells her, “You were with him the night Conklin died, you’re coming
with us.” Again, the scene leads us to believe that they have finished with
Nicky and she is free to go, then we get that little twits at the end of the
scene.

Always Be Leading the audience. Always make them think or allow

them to think they know where this scene is going, then twist it. That makes
the story seem unpredictable.

(36:45) Nicky and the team hop a plane...

While Bourne drives on a curving mountain highway.
Everyone is heading to Berlin, they are on a collision course.

(37:00) CIA Berlin: Abbott, Landy, Cronin and Nicky arrive, and the
unnamed Tech played by Michelle Monaghan tells them that Naples sent
them a video of Bourne at passport control. It *is* Bourne - but why would
he use his own passport? A mistake? Nicky says Treadstone assassins don’t
make mistakes. There’s always a reason, always a target. “The targets
always came from us, who’s giving them to him now?” Nicky answers:
“The scary version? He is.”

That’s a great line, and even though it wasn’t used in the trailer, it’ll bet
it was on the short list for the trailer. I know this sounds obvious, but you
always want great *original* dialogue in your movie. Memorable lines that
haven’t been used before. These clever lines are especially important when
you have a character like Nicky who is basically an exposition machine in
this scene. Because she was Bourne’s handler in the first film and one of the
last people from the agency to see him, her purpose in this scene is to give
Abbott and Landy (and the rest of the crew) all of the background
information on Bourne’s melt down from the last film - she’s kind of the
“Last time on The Bourne Saga”. This could be boring for everyone who
has seen the last film (and that’s just about everyone in the cinema) unless
the way she said things were entertaining and amusing. The more
expositional the dialogue, the more it has to be entertaining!

OceanofPDF.com
 MANO-A-MANO

(38:20) In the suburbs, Jarda (Marton Csokas) drives up to his house,

enters, punches in the security code, takes off his jacket and... Bourne walks
up behind him, gun drawn. Jarda grabs his hidden gun and aims it at
Bourne, who says: “I emptied it.” Jarda smiles, “It seemed a little light.”
Bourne throws him plastic riot handcuffs, which Jarda puts on - trying
everything to gain an advantage, Bourne catches him each time. Bourne
wants to know who is running Treadstone now. “Nobody, they shut it down.
We’re the last two.”

Wait... what about Manheim from the last movie? He was still alive at
the end of that film! Was there a casting issue and they couldn’t get the
actor back for the second film so they created a new character? For
whatever reason, they are hoping we forget about Manheim and just accept
that Bourne and Jarda are the final two Treadstone assassins. Either way -
what is important is that both of these men are equals. All of those clever
things that Bourne can do? This guy can do them as well. Maybe even
better.

Bourne kicks Jarda out of his chair, “If it’s over, why are they coming
after me?” Jarda knows nothing. As Bourne looks through Jarda’s passport
stash, Jarda apologizes: “I thought you were here to kill me.” He hit the
alarm’s panic button - a CIA team are on their way...

The phone rings suddenly and Jarda slams his handcuffed hands into
Bourne’s gun hand and the gun goes flying. Jarda slams Bourne in the face,
and the two men have a savage fight - with Jarda still cuffed! The room has
venetian blinds over the windows, which are smashed and mangled in the
fight - and offer some interesting lighting. One of the things we look at in
my “Secrets Of Action Screenwriting” book are locations and found
weapons, and the blinds offer a little of each element. They add to the fight
scene, even though neither is in much danger of being mortally wounded by
any cuts they might get from being smashes up against the blinds.
 Jarda gets into the kitchen, and grabs a big knife in his cuffed hands.
Slashes at Bourne. Bourne ends up kicking him into a piece of glass
shelving, which shatters - more use of location elements to enhance the
fight. Add to that, Jarda now uses a piece of shattered shelving to slice the
plastic riot cuffs from his hands. He rushes at Bourne with the knife.

Bourne grabs a magazine from the table, rolls it up, uses it as a club.
This is a great example of a found weapon, probably even mentioned in my
Action Book. A rolled up magazine not only works as a club or stick, the
end can be ground into someone’s eye socket with all of those pages slicing
away. A papercut that can blind. One of the fun assignments in that book is
to look for the found weapons in any room or business that you walk into in
case of sudden Ninja attack. Here we get another great, savage, hand-too-
hand fight (well, knife to rolled up magazine fight) like the Bourne’s
Apartment Fight from the first film. It’s all close fighting, looks ragged and
un-choreographed, and I hit “pause” a bunch of times to confirm that it
really is Matt Damon doing all of these moves. Lots of kicking and hitting
and slamming, and more found weapons with Jarda grabbing a light’s
power cord and twisting it around Bourne’s neck at one point. Bourne gets
the cord off his neck, flips it onto Jarda’s neck, and strangles him dead.

Then Bourne breaks the gas line, takes that rolled up magazine and puts
it in the toaster, grabs his fallen gun, and slips out the back doors...

As the CIA Team - three men armed with Uzis - pulls up in front of the
house and carefully approach the front doors like commandos.

Ding - the toast is done - BLAAAM! A giant fireball blasts out of the
front of the house knocking all three CIA guys all the way across the front
yard. Bourne gets into his car and drives away, as the police race down the
street to the explosion and fire.

Can I just point out the genius of having that toaster “ding”? That got a
laugh in the cinema. “Body Heat” screenwriter and director Lawrence
Kasdan (who also wrote some movies for George Lucas you may have
heard of) said, “I want everything I do to have humor in it, because it seems
to me that all of life has that.” Humor is an important component of Thriller
movies - and things like that toaster “dinging” to signal a massive explosion
is a perfect example. It’s a common, mundane sound... which leads to a big
spectacle moment! The humor comes from how incongruous that is.

(44:00) Bourne goes into a restaurant men’s room and washes the blood
off of his hands, scrubbing them like Lady MacBeth, then looking at
himself in the mirror. Is he still an assassin?

OceanofPDF.com
 MEET ME IN BERLIN

Bourne drives to Berlin...

(45:00) At the Berlin Airport, he puts his bags in a locker, keeping only
what he needs day-to-day, uses a payphone to call *every hotel in Berlin*
asking for Pamela Landy. He has his Berlin Guidebook, open to hotels, and
crosses off each one that doesn’t have a Pamela Landy registered. Again,
details like this not only show us how he finds Landy, and make Bourne
look clever; they take us inside the specific world of a spy/assassin. So
that’s how they do it! Bourne finds out she’s staying at the Westin Grand.

(46:45) At the Westin Grand, Bourne enters the hotel lobby and calls the
front desk on his cell phone. While Landy’s room phone is ringing, he
pockets his cell phone and asks the clerk at the front desk to call Pamela
Landy... and watches as the Clerk punches in the room number - 235. Now
he knows what room she’s in. The Clerk tells him the phone line is busy,
and he says he’ll call later... hangs up his cell as he walks away. So that’s
how they do that!

When Pamela Landy leaves her room, Bourne watches, follows her out
the doors, sees her get into the CIA van with the team and drive off...
Bourne gets into a cab, “Follow that car.” Follows them to the Berlin CIA
HQ. Bourne climbs the stairs of the building across the street, gets onto the
roof. We cross-cut between Pamela Landy being very intelligent and
efficient as she comes up with ways for the team to find Bourne... and
Bourne on the roof of the building across the street assembling his sniper
rifle.

Landy has Danny go to the “scene of the crime” where they lost the
Neski files and search for clues and information the police and previous
CIA Team may have missed. This may seem like just one of the dozens of
things Landy says to the team, but it will be very important later in the
story. One of the ways to hide a clue or make sure something doesn’t seem
like obvious plotting is to hide it in a bunch of similar things. Poe’s
“Purloined Letter” theory. Everyone is getting an assignment from Landy in
this scene, including Danny. Later Danny’s assignment will uncover critical
information, but if this scene was only about Danny’s assignment the
writer’s plotting would stick out like a sore thumb.

Bourne looks through the scope of the sniper rifle, sees Landy through
the window, pulls out his cell phone and dials her cell phone. “This is Jason
Bourne.”

There’s a nice little piece of suspense generated, when Landy points to a

CIA guy to have the call traced, and he says, “We need 90 seconds to
triangulate this call.” Okay, now Landy’s goal is to keep Bourne talking for
90 seconds. Is she succeeds, they will find Bourne. Now this phone call has
been made twice as exciting.

Okay, maybe three times as exciting, because Bourne keeps his finger
on the trigger of the sniper rifle during the entire conversation, and keeps
Landy in the cross-hairs of his scope. He could kill her at any moment.

Bourne asks if she’s running Treadstone? She tells him it was shut down
two years ago. “Then what do you want with me?” Now we get a great
piece of writing, that you may not have noticed first time around. This is
why specific words are important in dialogue. Landy says, “Have you
forgotten what happened in Berlin? You killed two people, Bourne.” And
this triggers a Bourne flashback. Because his first mission was in Berlin,
and he killed two people. Landy is talking about her recent mission in
Berlin where Kirill planted Bourne’s fingerprint and killed two people... but
Bourne wasn’t there for that, he was with Marie in Goa. This line of
Landy’s has two meanings: recent past and distant past. If it had been
worded differently, it might have only referred to the recent past incident
and not triggered the Bourne flashback. This is one of the reasons why I
hate when actors reword lines, they often remove the multiple meanings the
writer has worked so hard to create.

One thing to note about the Bourne flashbacks of that first mission.
Each one gives us new information - a closer look at what happened on that
first mission. This past mission from the flashbacks / nightmares is the
puzzle that Bourne is trying to assemble throughout the film, and by giving
us another piece or two each time, the audience is with Bourne as he tries to
put those pieces together and see the big picture. I love “runner” flashbacks
like this which parcel out information a little bit at a time throughout the
story, and have used this technique in screenplays many times (the original
version of “The Base” before it was rewritten by others did this). You can
use this technique to turn backstory information about a character into a
mystery, which makes it more interesting and less expository.

When Bourne comes out of the flashback, his sniper scope is not longer
on Landy, it’s on Nicky. He recognizes her. “I want to come in.” Landy asks
how he wants to do it, as the tech tracing the call says they need 35 more
seconds. Suspense. “I need someone I know to bring me in. There was a girl
in Paris, part of the program. She used to handle logistics.” He wants Nicky
to meet him at Alexander Strasse plaza in 30 minutes under the clock. Send
her alone, give her your phone. Landy says she may not be able to find her
in 30 minutes... “She’s standing right next to you.” Bourne hangs up. Landy
looks out the window... the building roof way across the street. Can see no
one. They haven’t found Bourne, but Bourne has found them!

Not exactly the midpoint of the film, but a great twist in the story. The
hunters have just realized they are the hunted... and standing there in plain
sight.

Because this line shows that Bourne is several steps ahead of them, and
has outsmarted them, it’s another thing that makes him look clever and
turns this into an “intelligent thriller” instead of the other kind.

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 SOMEPLACE PUBLIC

(51:00) Now the CIA team is scrambling, looking at maps of the

location. This is a public place, no way to give Nicky any cover. Abbott
wants as many snipers as they’ve got surrounding that location... to kill
Bourne on sight. Landy doesn’t want snipers - she wants Bourne alive so
that she can get information from him. Once more each of these characters
demonstrates a different method of resolving problems - dig or bury.

Nicky is in the middle of this debate - and scared. Landy is beginning to

believe that Abbott knows something about this that he *wants* to keep
buried. What? Does Abbott have a secret, too? Something else for Landy to
dig away at. In the end, Landy decides to put the snipers in place, but only
as a precaution.

(52:50) Nicky on the street’s plaza under the clock... as snipers on the
rooftops sight in on her. There are CIA guys on the sides of the plaza, trying
to blend in - and failing. The whole thing is a trap set for Bourne. This
builds suspense because we know it is a trap but Bourne does not - will he
be captured? Will he be killed by one of the many snipers in place? But
letting the audience in on the situation but *not* letting the protagonist in
on it, the audience wants to scream at the screen “It’s a trap!” Suspense
builds as they wait for Bourne...

Then the Protest March enters the plaza - maybe a hundred students
with signs and banners. Bourne knew there was a protest march scheduled
for the plaza before he arranged the meet. Though we don’t see him reading
about this in an earlier scene or anything, Bourne’s *character* has been
established in this film and the previous film as someone who gathers
information and thinks before he does anything. (There is actually a poster
for the protest march in the background of an earlier scene - just in case
someone complained. Development people and some producers always
want this stuff spelled out, “Yes, he’s a brain surgeon... but how does he
know how to set a broken arm?” I’m sure that poster was in response to
someone’s sill note.) But these “So that’s how they do that” scenes reinforce
the believability of Bourne knowing this, even if no one noticed that poster.

Now Nicky is surrounded by protesting students, and no snipers can get

a clean shot and none of the CIA guys trying to blend in are close enough to
do anything. Nicky’s phone rings. “There’s a tram coming towards you, get
on it.” And a light rail tram moves into the plaza and stops for passengers.
The rooftop snipers are looking for Bourne in the crowd - no sign of him.
Nicky steps onto the tram, the doors close... and she leaves the rooftop
snipers and CIA guys behind. She is now alone - with no back up, no
protection. See how we began worrying about Bourne being ambushed and
now we’re worried about Nicky. Story is change, and we want to keep the
story evolving so that it stays unpredictable and interesting.

The CIA guys *run* to the next stop. When the doors open, one is there
to jump on...

But Bourne, who was on the tram all along, hooks Nicky’s arm in his
and gets off the tram. The look like any other couple. The doors close, and
that CIA guy begins looking for Nicky... who is no longer on the tram.

OceanofPDF.com
 WILL HE KILL HER?

(50:50) As Bourne drags Nicky through the crowd, he says: “I said

leave me alone, leave me out of it.” At CIA HQ Berlin they are listening to
every word - Nicky is miked. Bourne asks Nicky about the end of
Treadstone, Pamela Landy... and why Landy is trying to kill him. She tells
him all of the info he doesn’t know, and Bourne blows his top when she
tells him they have his fingerprints at the murder scene. “Last week I was
4,000 miles away in India watching Marie die. They came for me, they
killed her instead.” Bourne is motivated to find Marie’s killer, which
motivates him to become involved in this... Because this story has two
connected plots (Marie’s murder and the Neski files) it’s important to show
the connections so that they become one plot to the audience and you don’t
end up with something episodic. At this point Bourne doesn’t see the
connection between these two things - but a piece of dialogue like this
shows that there *is* a connection somewhere, and assures us that part of
the story will be connecting these plot threads. Bourne takes Nicky to a
service door at the station, and they go inside... the room interferes with
Nicky’s transmission signal, and Berlin HQ gets static. All part of Bourne’s
plan - he has thought that far ahead.

Bourne interrogates Nicky: Why is Landy trying to frame him? Kill

him? Nicky tells him she was out of it, just trying to live her life, when
Abbott dragged her into this. “Abbott? Who’s Abbott?” “Conklin’s boss.”
“Did he run Treadstone?” “Yes.” She tells him that Abbott is here in Berlin.
Nicky is frightened, crying, this is a trained assassin who allowed her to live
the last time they crossed paths - will he kill her this time? Always go for
the emotions in a scene, and make the scenes emotional.

Bourne asks what Landy was after. “Stuff on a Russian politician.” And
that jogs a memory and we get a quick memory flash. “Neski.” Bourne asks
her when he was in Berlin before - she knows his file. Nicki says he never
worked in Berlin... Bourne thinks she’s lying, presses a gun against her
head. Nicky freaks out. Nicky swears he never worked in Berlin. Which
means that first assignment was off the books... something for Conklin but
not for Treadstone. More quick memory flashes. Bourne lowers the gun and
walks out of the room, leaving Nicky sobbing on the floor.

One of the reasons why we want to make sure scenes are packed with
emotions is not only so that the audience experiences those emotions (never
forget that we are making *emotion pictures*) but also so that actors get a
chance to act. Though Nicky is a regular character in the Bourne series, at
this point in time there is no series - this is the sequel to a film with so many
problems that the last time Nicky and Bourne crossed paths on screen, Julia
Stiles wasn’t even in that scene! That scene was in one of those four rounds
of reshoots and Stiles was not available, so they used footage from a
previous scene in that office and outtakes to make it appear as if she was in
the scene! So they probably had to find ways to entice Stile back for the
sequel, and a good, meaty emotional scene like this is something that actors
are looking for. It doesn’t matter what the genre is - actors want to act! So
give them great emotional scenes where they can display their craft!

(58:15) Meanwhile at CIA HQ Berlin: The station maps show an old

World War 2 bomb shelter - unused for decades - where Bourne may be
keeping Nicky. Landy decides to release his picture to the Berlin Police and
check out his story about Marie’s death in India. Abbott says, “You’re in a
big puddle of shit, Pamela, and you don’t have the shoes for it.” Abbott
wants to take over this operation because he was in charge of Treadstone
and Bourne may unearth some secrets that will end his career... which
makes that line a great example of subtext. He doesn’t say anything obvious
like “You’re going to screw up, so let me handle this”, he talks about her
*shoes*! Always be looking for the way to say something that hasn’t been
used before, and the way that is character specific. One of my favorite
villain threats in “Air Force One” has to do with perspiration stains on a
shirt. Always find the clever way to say something - the line we haven’t
heard before.

Abbott tells Landy that if Bourne knew Nicky was wearing a wire, he
would say all kinds of things to lead them astray - like the girlfriend in India
thing and that he wasn’t involved in the assassinations during Landy’s buy.
“His mind is broken - we broke it!” Landy counters with: “Terminate him?
You’ve been pushing that agenda ever since we got here.” Again, we get the
two sides of the argument raging in Bourne’s mind: dig deeper into the
painful past, or bury it completely. Landy wants to keep digging, Abbott
wants it buried. Abbott tells Landy that Bourne is coming for *her* and in
the interests of self preservation, she should have him killed. Landy wants
to keep digging.

When Abbott storms away, Danny snags him: “I need to show you
something.”

OceanofPDF.com
 CRIMES OF THE PAST

One of the basics in the mystery genre is a crime in the present covering
up a crime in the distant past so that to solve one crime the detective must
also solve the previous crime. From Raymond Chandler to Dash Hammett
to Ross McDonald to Agatha Christie, a past crime is often at the center of
whatever the present crime is. This is a way to create plotting with layers
and depth. In Chandler’s “The Big Sleep” the murder of Geiger is
connected to the murder of Sean Reagan in the past. In Christie’s “Murder
On The Orient Express” the murder of Ratchett on the train is connected to
a past kidnapping. Even when we are dealing with original screenplays, the
murder of Mulwray in “Chinatown” is connected to the identity of the girl
who may or may not be Mulwray’s mistress... who is she? (“She’s my
sister, she’s my daughter!”) And in “The Last Of Sheila” the murder on the
yacht in present day is directly connected to the murder of Sheila a year
earlier. “The Bourne Supremacy” uses this complex plotting method to
connect Bourne’s first mission to the murder of Marie.

(59:45) Bourne goes to an internet café and searches for information on

Neski. Finds all kinds of stuff: Neski was a Russian democratic idealist who
was against the privatization of oil fields due to corruption and the Russian
mob. Neski was murdered in Berlin by his wife, who then took her own life
at the Hotel Brecker... while their daughter was asleep in the next room. The
little girl discovered the bodies of both her dead parents - an emotional
component. Bourne brings up the address of the Hotel Brecker, and he’s
off...

(61:00) Meanwhile, Danny takes Abbott down to the basement of the

building where the assassinations took place, he has something he wanted
to show Abbott before making his report. Danny is completely loyal to
Abbott. Says that Conklin was a nut, but not a traitor - Conklin wouldn’t
have stolen that money decades ago. Add to that: something is just wrong
with this recent assassination. Why were there *two* explosives charges?
And why did the one with Bourne’s fingerprints all over it *not* go off?
The one that didn’t go off was attached to a power line that didn’t matter,
anyway. Bourne would know it didn’t matter, so why go to all of the trouble
of attaching an explosive device to it? The only answer: Bourne is telling
the truth, he wasn’t involved in this - someone planted that second
explosive device to frame him. “What if someone was trying to cover their
tracks by blaming Conklin and Bourne? What if Bourne didn’t have
anything to do with this?” That’s when Abbott grabs Danny and breaks his
neck. Twist!

This is a shocking murder in many ways: We have grown to like

Danny’s character. Without any big scenes or saving cats or petting puppies,
Danny has become someone we know and like in the background of scenes
just by being loyal and working hard. He’s the kind of fresh-out-of-
university assistant who does all of the work for a fraction of the pay - and
he seems to like his job and do it exceptionally well. So when he’s killed,
it’s as if a friend of ours is being killed. Add to that, the killer is Abbott.
Heck, we think of him as one of those harmless bureaucrats who sits behind
a desk and sends *other people* to do his dirty work. The idea of this
chubby desk jockey killing his own assistant is shocking! A big moment.
Also, a great acting moment for Brian Cox - if he had any qualms about
returning for a sequel, reading this scene probably ended them.

(62:30) Bourne stands across the street from the Hotel Becker... voices
from the past echoing in his head. Flashes of memories blossom into more
detailed memories: A rainy night as Bourne leaves to perform the mission
while Conklin watches... entering the Hotel Brecker. Present day - no rain -
Bourne enters the Hotel Brecker. At the front desk, Bourne asks for room
645 - the room that Neski and his wife were killed in. Bourne has more
flashbacks while waiting at the front desk - everything here triggers
memories of that night long ago. Room 644, across the hall, is empty. He
takes it. Passport and signature gets him a key. Walking down the hallway
of the sixth floor triggers more memories. Bourne past and present are
intercut... and we see the same location in both time periods.

At the hotel desk, a FAXed photo of Bourne is shown to the clerk - who
recognizes him, phones the police. Now we have suspense - the police will
soon be on their way, but Bourne doesn’t know this.
 In the hallway, Bourne waits until a Maid goes into a room before
approaching room 645 and trying to break in. Wait... is this a thriller trope?
I’ve seen a stack of thrillers were the protagonist breaks into a hotel room to
look for clues, including Hitchcock’s “North By Northwest”! Probably one
of the reasons for this is that hotel rooms offer all kinds of different ways to
get caught - the occupant can return, the maid can enter, etc. So there are
several different types of discovery that can generate suspense. Also the
protagonist may have to pretend to be the occupant if discovered by a maid,
and this can also generate suspense. Once inside, Bourne walks through the
room...

Downstairs, a pair of plainclothes detectives go to the front desk.

Ratcheting up our suspense. They compare the photo on Bourne’s passport
to the wanted photo. Match.

Upstairs, Bourne walks through the room, memories returning.

At CIA HQ Berlin: They’re notified that Bourne is at the Brecker Hotel,

and Landy and a team head out to the hotel.

Upstairs, Bourne continues to collect memories...

Downstairs, the Berlin SWAT Team collects information before going

upstairs. A half dozen guys in riot gear with automatic weapons - Bourne is
supposed to be armed and dangerous. It’s more likely that they will kill him
than arrest him. So this isn’t just that Bourne will be captured by the Berlin
police and maybe handed over to the CIA, he’s likely not to make it out of
the hotel alive. One way to ratchet up suspense is to increase the threat level
within the scene. We’ve gone from two plainclothes detectives to a heavily
armed SWAT team in riot gear!

And Bourne has no idea there is any threat.

Upstairs, Bourne has a full memory flash of that night: creeping into the
hotel room, seeing Neski and his wife embracing, waiting for them to pull
apart, grabbing Mrs. Neski and shooting Neski in the face, then shooting
Mrs. Neski in the side of the head - close up - and planting the gun in her
hand. Grabbing some papers on the way out... and spotting a family photo
with Neski, his wife... and their daughter.

What’s interesting is that the first film had Wombosi’s children as the
line that Bourne would not cross in his assassinations, which led to his
memory loss. Here we have Neski’s daughter as the element that creates
guilt which makes him continue to dig into this past event. Will his target’s
children play a role in the third and fifth movies in the series?

Bourne comes out of his flashback, looks into a mirror - is he a killer? Is

he the man from the past or the man he is now?

The phone rings, startling him. He hears sounds in the hallway...

The SWAT Team creeping to the door!

Bourne sees shadows under the hotel’s front door... they are out there in
the hallway, right in front of the door! He looks through the peephole - sees
the SWAT Team taking positions through the fish-eye lens. Moves away
from the door...

As the SWAT Team kicks in the door!

The door to 644 across the hall.

Bourne is out the window and climbing up a drain pipe.

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 POLICE FOOT CHASE

(68:00) The SWAT Team finds room 644 empty...

Landy and her team pull up...

In an alley, Bourne climbs down the fire escape ladder of the building
next door to the Hotel, drops into an alley, and walks away.

Landy and the team enter the Hotel lobby, and Landy wonders what
Bourne was doing here? Why did he come here? What piece of the puzzle
is this? She is digging for information.

Bourne walks down the street - not knowing that every policeman has
his wanted flier in their hands with his picture on it. An Police Officer spots
him, radios for back up. Bourne stops at a Metro schedule - watching the
Police Officer behind him in the reflection *and* checking the time table
against his watch. As Police sirens get closer, Bourne walks quickly away.
This is similar to the fire exit map in the first film - using posted, public
information to give himself an edge. What’s great about things like this is
that it shows how clever Bourne is, and it uses innocuous information that
is all around us. *We* could have done this!

(69:00) When Police Officers begin chasing him, that quick walk turns
into a run.

Now we have a chase scene. Bourne runs across a busy street, down
sidewalks, through speeding traffic - an army of Police Officers and
motorcycle cops and police cars chasing him through the city.

He runs up the stairs to an elevated Metro train platform, and steps

inside the train... looking at his watch. A bunch of Police Officers follow
him up the stairs to the platform, see the waiting train (doors open) and hop
inside just before the doors close. They’ve goy him!
 But Bourne hops *out* as the doors close, jumps off the platform, runs
in front of a speeding train on the other side (which almost hits him), up
onto the next platform, down to a bridge where he jumps over the railing
onto a garbage barge in the river below!

By the time the police get to the bridge, the garbage barge is long gone.

On the barge, Bourne has injured his leg in the fall, gets to his feet and
hobbles around the barge to the side not facing the street. A good thing,
because a Police Car is following the barge on the street, signaling the barge
to pull over.

On the “dark side” of the barge, Bourne grabs a boat hook, climbs up
the side to the cabin roof, and when the barge goes under a bridge he hooks
onto the underside of the bridge and pulls himself up. Hiding in the
structure of the bridge as the barge pulls to the side of the river and stops to
be searched by the police. Bourne hops onto an elevated pathway, hobbles
to the next elevated train stop, where a train is waiting. Jumps in just before
the doors close, and he’s gone...

Once again we have a clever chase scene where it isn’t that Bourne
outruns or outguns the police officers chasing him, he *out thinks* them.
One of the other elements the separates the thriller genre from the action
genre is that protagonists usually use brains instead of brawn. That’s not
that Bourne would have trouble in a fist fight - we’ve seen that isn’t true -
but that he’s *smart*. One of the other things that makes the Bourne series
great is that Bourne is not Superman or James Bond... he’s injured in his fall
onto the barge and will continue limping throughout the rest of the film. He
can be hurt... and that escalates the suspense in any scene. If you can’t hurt
the protagonist, we won’t worry about him... and the suspense won’t work.

OceanofPDF.com
 THE GUILTY PARTY

Because we are now in the second half of Act Two, all of the pieces
begin coming together...

(72:00) Abbott arrives at the hotel, finds out the Bourne is gone... and
he released Nicky hours ago - she’s back in her room at the Westin Grand
Hotel shaken up, but okay. He let her go? Abbott asks if anyone has seen
Danny? (Great cover for his actions.) When Abbott sees the name of the
hotel - Becker - there is a moment where he stops, worried. We can tell he
knows the name of the hotel... that he knows about Bourne’s first mission.
Abbott decides not to go into the Brecker, but to go back to his hotel (the
Westin Grand) instead. To avoid any potential conflict in the Brecker... to
avoid dealing with the past. It’s too late to bury the hotel, so Abbott is going
to bury his head in the sand instead.

In the Brecker, Landy is getting information on what Bourne was doing

there from Cronin (who has talked to the police). Through he checked in to
room 644, for some reason he had broken in to room 645. What was he
doing here? They look over the room, and it seems familiar to Landy. She’s
seen it in a photo - a file photo. She remembers the chalk outline of Neski
was over there. His wife’s body was over there. Landy asks Cronin if he
still thinks Mrs. Neski killed her husband and then herself? After digging
around, it’s beginning to look as if both were murdered six years ago.

Then they get the word that someone has found Danny Zorn’s body.
Landy tells Cronin to keep after Bourne, and have Abbott wait at the Westin
Grand Hotel for Landy... while she deals with the death of Danny.

Abbott goes to his hotel room... calls Gretkov, tells him they are onto
Neski. Gretkov has to kill Bourne to cover the tracks. Gretkov says what
happens to Abbott no longer concerns him... which triggers some exposition
from Abbott. “You bought those oil leases with $20 million in stolen CIA
seed money. You owe me!” Gretkov says he already paid Abbott his cut,
owes him nothing. Hangs up on Abbott. Abbott lowers the phone,
wondering what he’s going to do now...

As a figure steps out of the shadows behind him...

Bourne.

(75:15) Bourne accuses Abbott of having Marie killed. Abbott says it

was a mistake - they were supposed to kill Bourne. The information Landy
was buying would link Abbott to Neski’s murder (by Bourne) and to the
theft of the $20 million in CIA money. If they thought Bourne stole those
files they would chase after Bourne. If Bourne was already dead in India
where they didn’t know his real name and his body would be long gone,
they could be chasing a phantom Bourne for decades while Abbott walked
free, retired from the CIA with full pension, and lived the good life on his
share of the money.

“Is that why Neski died? Is that why you killed Marie?”
“You killed Marie... the minute you climbed into her car. The minute
you entered her life, she was dead.”

Bourne rushes across the room, slams Abbott’s head down on the desk
and presses his gun into Abbot’s neck. Bourne just wanted to be left alone,
live his life in peace. Abbott says that was never possible, “It’s what you
are, Jason - a killer. You always will be. Go ahead, do it!” Bourne has to
make the decision: old version of Bourne or new version? Past or present?
Is he an assassin or not? “She wouldn’t want me to. That’s the only reason
you’ve alive.” And Bourne pulls the gun from Abbott’s neck, and it’s *not*
a gun - it’s a tape recorder! Nice reversal! Bourne has Abbott’s confession.
He sets his gun down on the desk near Abbott’s head and leaves.

(76:30) Bourne limps to the Berlin Train Station, to the locker where he
stashed his bags, opens a bag and flips through passports - selecting one.

(77:00) Landy returns to the Westin Grand, knocks on Abbott’s door.

No answer. She enters, finds Abbott drinking in the bedroom. When she
approaches him, he says “I’m a patriot. I serve my country.” Landy asks
him about Danny - she knows that Abbott killed him. Abbott lifts his gun -
aimed at Landy. She asks, “What happens now?” Abbott quicky moves the
gun to the side of his head and blows his brains out!

This is a great reversal. Landy could have just found Abbott dead by
self inflicted gunshot, she could have just witnessed him putting the hun to
his head and killing himself (after trying to convince himself that he’s a
patriot who serves his country, and having innocent people killed for money
was okay). But the first scene would have been as “dead” as Abbott -
everything would have happened *before* the scene; and the second scene
might have been shocking that a character killed themselves but not
unexpected. The version we get in the movie works better due to the
reversal - we fear that Abbott might kill Landy as he killed Danny. This
gives the audience an “expected scenario” so that when Abbott kills himself
instead of Landy it is unexpected. Always be leading the audience! Lead
them away from what is going to happen and the scene becomes
unexpected.

OceanofPDF.com
 THE LADDER OF VILLAINS

(78:00) Bourne on a train shows his passport and ticket to the

Conductor. A Russian passport with a Russian name. The Conductor returns
the passport and ticket, and when Bourne puts them in his coat pocket he
finds the photo of himself and Marie. Looks at it.

This is a big emotional moment using that “twitch” of the photograph

which symbolizes Bourne’s emotional pain after losing Marie. You can’t
show what Bourne is thinking or feeling, but you can show a photograph
and infuse it with those emotions.

(79:00) As Cronin at Berlin CIA HQ and the team look at videos from
airports and train stations for Bourne...

Landy finds a tape recorder in her room... with Abbott’s confession. A

gift from Bourne.

Then they spot Bourne on a video getting on a train... to Moscow.

Moscow is where the end of our story will take place, as Bourne goes to
get revenge for the murder of Marie... but wait, wasn’t Abbott behind the
murder of Marie? How many villains does this film have?

That’s a great question to look at, because the villain brings the conflict,
and story is conflict; so if you have three villains you end up with three
stories in one script. Difficult enough to tell one story in a 110 page
screenplay, let alone three. This may explain why those Joel Schumacher
“Batman” movies with a half dozen villains didn’t work. If you have four
villains with four Villain’s Plans going on at the same time it’s like playing
pinball with the hero - he just bounces back and forth between stories until
the story turns to mush. You end up with a bunch of subplots instead of one
main plot.
 Movies like “Point Blank” and the original “Get Carter” and “The
Limey” and “Bourne Supremacy” create a “ladder” of henchmen that the
hero climbs to get to the main villain behind it all. Each character we think
is the villain is just a rung of the ladder - an employee of someone else.
Eventually our hero gets to the top of the ladder - the actual villain who
employs all of these henchmen. We have one Villain behind it all and one
Villain’s Plan, but the hero may not know that as he is climbing the ladder.
Bourne knows that Kirill killed Marie, but why? On orders. Whose orders?

Because this story has a mystery element, one piece of the puzzle
exposes another piece of the puzzle and one “villain” exposes the villain
above them. Kirill is working for Gretkov... and so was Abbott and Conklin
and unfortunately Bourne in that first assassination. So the “ladder” leads
from Kirill to the CIA and Neski’s assassination, which leads to Conklin
and Abbott, and that takes him back to Kirill and eventually Gretkov.
Bourne is kind of climbing blindly up the ladder not knowing where it
leads, but as a writer we need to see the inverse of that ladder so that we
know which rungs he should grab as he climbs. We need to know where
he’s going. If we don’t, it’s possible for Abbot to be the top rung and kill
himself and then Bourne is climbing in the wrong direction. Gretkov is the
man on the top of the ladder - so that must be the final rung.

So Bourne’s next step is to go to Russia...

OceanofPDF.com
 TO RUSSIA WITH GUILT

(80:00) In Moscow, Russia: Kirill is summoned out of a strip club by

Gretkov who informs him that Bourne is still alive - his vacation is over.

Meanwhile, Bourne arrives in Moscow, goes to a group of Taxi Drivers

and asks one to take him to an address. When the Taxi leaves the train
station, several police cars roar towards the station...

Kirill gets into his car... an unmarked *police car* with flashing lights
and siren. Weird twist - the assassin is with the Russian Secret Police. One
of the basics of a thriller is that the protagonist can’t go to the authorities.
Earlier we mentioned movies like “The 39 Steps” and “North By
Northwest” where the protagonist is accused of a crime, which prohibits
them from going to the authorities. But one of the elements of a political
thriller is that the authorities are in on it - part of the conspiracy! So, where
Bourne (like Turner in “Three Days Of The Condor”) couldn’t go to the
CIA for help because they were part of the conspiracy, now that he’s in
Russia we find out that the assassin he is hunting is also part of the
authorities. Who would be believed - Bourne or this ranking member of the
Russian Secret Police?

At the train station the police officers show taxi drivers a wanted flier
with Bourne’s photo... eventually they will get to a taxi driver who was with
the group that Bourne found his driver in. There is some minor suspense in
this, in that they show the photo from one driver to the next getting closer
and closer to a driver we recognize.

Police on the streets now have Bourne’s wanted flier, are showing it to
people.

When Bourne’s taxi reaches its destination, he tells the driver to wait for
him, gets out and rings a house’s doorbell. No response. Spotting an Old
Woman sweeping up the walkway one house over, he goes to talk to her.
 In his taxi, the driver gets a call on the radio.

The Old Woman tells Bourne that the Neski girl moved out of the house
and out of the city. She now lives in the Orannyi Projects, number 16... but
the Old Woman isn’t sure of the apartment number. Though this may seem
like a throw away scene, what it does is make sure that finding the Neski
girl isn’t easy. Had he just knocked on the door and there she was, it would
seem *too easy* and false. So instead of easily finding her, one step leads to
the next step which seems more realistic. Of course, complications ensue...

Bourne’s taxi speeds away... abandoning him. Bourne immediately

starts moving, even though the Old Woman is still talking to him.
Something is wrong. Police sirens in the distance close in. Bourne takes a
pedestrian underpass along the river...

Kirill speeds to the area, looking for Bourne - thinks he spots him on the
pedestrian path near the river and pulls over for a better look.

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 KIRILL FOOT CHASE

(85:30) Bourne is walking (still limping) down the path as a gunshot

tags him in the shoulder!

Kirill aims from the bridge, preparing to fire the kill shot...

When a police car pulls up and Police Officer’s aim their guns at him,
ordering him to drop the weapon. He raises his hands and says he’s with the
Secret Police, and has ID in his pocket. As the Police Officers take Kirill’s
gun and pat him down, Kirill watches Bourne get away. By the time they
look over his ID and realize he *is* a member of the Secret Police, Bourne
has a sizeable head start.

We get a sequence where Bourne walks quickly through various places -

a tunnel filled with shops, a outdoor marketplace - and then we see Kirill
walking quickly through those same locations. A compressed following
scene - we don’t need to see every step Bourne takes, just enough to know
that Kirill is taking those same steps.

Bourne enters a supermarket, grabs a magazine from the rack, grabs a

bottle of vodka from the shelf, knocking a few others onto the floor and
alerting the store’s Security Guard. When the Guard approaches him,
Bourne aims his gun at the Guard, disarms him, knocks him down and tells
him to stay down. This causes panic in the store.

Kirill sees some panicked shoppers run out of the supermarket... and
heads towards it.

Bourne pops out the back door of the supermarket onto the street,
pretends to be drinking the vodka as he approaches an empty parked taxi,
preparing to steal it. Bad news - the Taxi Driver Comes up behind him, tells
him to get away from his cab. Worse news - Two Police Officers come to
see what the problem is. Bourne knocks down the Taxi Driver, spits vodka
into one of the Police Officer’s eyes (blinding him), knocks the other Police
Officer to the ground, and steals the Taxi Cab - zooming away.

Kirill comes out of the back door of the supermarket, sees the injured
Police Officers, grabs a walkie talkie from the unconscious cop and
commandeers a woman’s Mercedes S Class (Land Rover type).

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 MOSCOW CAR CHASE

Often the details make the film. Here we have a second car chase with
the same two drivers: Bourne and Kirill. The first chase was in Goa, India
which had open fields and outdoor markets. This chase is in Moscow - a
completely urban environment. No one will be cutting through any fields
here. The previous chase ended on a brings, this one will end in a tunnel.
The other detail that is different? In the previous chase, Bourne was driving
the Land Rover and Kirill was in the mid-sized four door... and that is
reversed in this chase. Interesting detail.

(88:30) And now to our car chase...

Bourne is being chased by a couple of police cars. He glances at a map,

takes a turn. Stealing a taxi cab was a smart move on Bourne’s part, because
a taxi would be most likely to have a handy map of Moscow - taxi drivers
frequently have to drive to areas they are not familiar with. Another
“intelligent thriller” element. The police cars follow Bourne, one radioing
the location.

Kirill hears the location on his walkie talkie, zooms to join the chase.

In the middle of the chase, Bourne pulls back his coat and shirt to
examine his shoulder wound, pours vodka on the wound, uses the magazine
as a compress... all while trying to evade a couple of speeding police cars.
When he zooms across a street, a third police car T-bones him, spinning his
car out of control! The third police car crashes, Bourne steers out of his spin
and zooms away - two police cars still behind him.

One of the police cars calls for high speed pursuit vehicles...

And we see these huge gates open and a bunch of tricked out Mercedes
police cars roar out onto the street. Escalating the conflict. This is not a
static car chase - there are things happening within Bourne’s car (taking
care of his gunshot wound) and things happening outside the car (the police
chase, Kirill’s chase, the escalation of the chase with new standard police
cars and now these high speed pursuit vehicles) and changes in terrain and
other elements yet to come. You don’t want a static car chase. You want
your car chase to evolve and change and become more exciting as it goes
on.

There are a series of smaller obstacles involved in the chase as well -

from blocked intersections which cause Bourne to drive on the sidewalks to
barricades that he plows through. Though not all of these may be on the
page, some of them will be. We want to make the scene on the page as
exciting to read as the scene on the screen. That means you won’t have
every single detail of the chase (that would be boring to read) but you will
have all of the really exciting high points and reversals. Reversals are the
key to an exciting action scene.

A big reversal: just when Bourne has out maneuvered the two police
cars, the three high speed pursuit vehicles enter the chase. Can Bourne out
drive them? He sure as hell can’t outrun them in that taxi cab, so this will
take driving skill and intelligence.

Bourne zooms over the center divider into oncoming traffic. One of the
high pursuit vehicles that follows him over the center divider doesn’t dodge
oncoming traffic as well and gets hit by a truck. One down, two to go...

Make that three as Kirill has intercepted Bourne using the police walkie
talkie information and T-bones him at an intersection. The taxi goes
spinning out of control for a moment, but Bourne recovers and gets away -
with only the two high speed pursuit vehicles behind him. Where is Kirill?
Bourne roars down the highway on one side of a river and notices Kirill on
the road on the opposite side of the river. The last time Bourne and Kirill
were on a road next to a river Marie was killed. Both roads on opposite
sides of the river converge ahead! Bourne turns quickly in front of a bus -
then parallels the bus, using it to hide from Kirill.

But Kirill spots him, and resumes the chase - behind the two high speed
pursuit vehicles. Bourne blasts through a parking lot into the middle of fast
moving traffic on a highway, almost getting hit by a truck. The high speed
pursuit vehicle behind him takes the hit. Though the math is wrong - we end
up with Kirill and Bourne as the last standing vehicles in the chase (the
other high speed pursuit vehicle may have crashed in the parking lot off
camera - it was out of control for a moment in a shot).

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 INTO THE DARKNESS

Bourne enters a long tunnel with Kirill right behind him.

Now we have a claustrophobic chase in the tunnel where collateral

damage wrecks cause all kinds of problems. Kirill catches up with Bourne
and rams him a few times, then smashes out the window of the Mercedes
and fires his gun at Bourne - who ducks as bullets fly into his car. Kirill
rams Bourne’s car against the side of the tunnel, and Bourne spins around
the front of the Mercedes to the opposite side - throwing it into reverse and
speeding *backwards* - the two men exchanging gunfire like two ships in a
pirate movie firing cannons at each other. A great way to create a new and
unusual scene is to imagine it in a different genre - so pirate movie concept
gives us an action beat in this car chase that we haven’t really seen before.

Bourne aims at Kirill’s tires - blowing them out and causing Kirill to
lose control of his vehicle. Bourne does some amazing auto ballet, pushes
Kirill’s vehicle *sideways* towards a tunnel pillar, and prepares for impact.
One of the great things that came out of the film “John Wick” was the term
“car-fu” to explain the odd idea of having cars strike each other at a point
that spins or flips them. These are graceful, balletic moves by speeding
automobiles, and that is what happens here. The cars *dance* with each
other. This isn’t a European Style Car Chase like in the first movie - these
cars collide with each other and parts of the terrain - but they do so with
grace rather than just big explosions. It’s auto ballet!

(93:00) Well until Kiirill’s Mercedes S Class slams into the pillar, and
Bourne’s vehicle spins away - and he controls the spin and stops safely.
This has been a five minute car chase, constantly evolving and escalating
and changing terrain. By this point, both cars are completely destroyed...

And now it is time to get revenge for Marie’s murder.

 Bourne grabs his gun, limps to where Kirill is severely injured (but still
alive) in his vehicle, and aims the gun at Kirill’s head. This is the man who
killed Marie. This is the man who made the CIA come after him again. This
is the cause of all of Bourne’s pain and problems - and Bourne can pull the
trigger and kill him. But he lowers his gun and walks away. He is *not* an
assassin anymore. Actions speak louder than words, so this is the
conclusion of a visual character arc - first he doesn’t kill Abbott, now he
doesn’t kill Kirill. He is a changed man.

Bourne walks out of the darkness of the tunnel into the light, which is
nice when you can set up a visual like that at the end of a big action scene.

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 INTERLUDE #1

You won’t notice it when watching the film, because it kind of hasn’t
happened yet - but a strange thing occurs at this point in time. There is a
scene from “The Bourne Ultimatum” which happens here... but we won’t
see it until the next film. That film has a mixed up chronology and part of it
takes place here. We will look at those scenes in the next chapter, but I
thought I’d mention that there are “missing scenes” which take place at this
point in the “Bourne Supremacy” time line that we won’t get to see until the
next film...

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 CONTRITION

(94:30) Gretkov - the villain at the top of the ladder - is walking to his
limousine when a pair of police cars blocks the street in front and behind
him. Wait a minute - Gretkov is a powerful man, a man with government
connections. What do they want? Why are they delaying him? Don’t they
know how important her is?

Across the street Landy and Cronin watch as the police put Gretkov in
cuffs and in the back of a police car.

(95:00) A young woman walks down the snowy streets to her

apartment... who is she? Actually, that’s a pretty good question - do you
know who she is from reading this? I think all of the clues have been
planted in the story for this, and the audience can figure it out. This is a
great example of Billy Wilder’s advice “Let the audience add up two plus
two. They’ll love you forever.” The audience is always trying to figure
things out, so let them! The young woman enters her little apartment, closes
the door... and there is a man sitting in her kitchen.

Bourne.

Okay - what began our story? Bourne’s nightmares of that first mission.
So what needs to end our story? The beginning of a story tells you the
ending. They are connected. Bourne feels guilt for that first mission, guilt
for being an assassin. He has shown that he is no longer a killer when he
spared Kirill’s life, but that is only one thread of this story. Now we go back
to that initial thread - the nightmare.

Bourne tells Neski’s daughter Irena that her mother did not kill her
father and take her own life - he is the man responsible. He confesses his
sins. This is a big emotional ending, a closure scene for both Bourne and
the young woman. After Bourne apologizes, he leaves the apartment and
walks across a snowy courtyard.
OceanofPDF.com
 INTERLUDE #2

A major chunk of “The Bourne Ultimatum” takes place here. Probably

three quarters of the film occurs between Bourne leaving the Neski
daughter’s little apartment and the next scene in New York City. Weird,
huh? Almost a whole film that happens between scenes in the previous film.
We’re getting into some “Pulp Fiction” stuff here!

In fact, the following scenes are duplicated in both films, but with
different story meanings, which is really kind of clever. For “Bourne
Supremacy” here’s what happens:

(100:10) At CIA Headquarters in New York City: Landy’s cell phone

rings. Bourne says, “I hear you’re still looking for me.” She thanks him for
the tape and tells him it’s over. She apologizes to him and tells him
something from his file that he does not know: His real name is David
Webb. He was born 4/15/71 in Nixa, Missouri. She asks if he will come in?
Bourne says, “Get some rest, Pam, you look tired.” Bourne is in New York -
spying on her from the building across the street!

Our final image is Bourne walking down the street in New York City
and entering the crowd of people on the sidewalks until he can no longer be
seen.

(101:50) We go to titles. No head titles on this movie, everything is in

the tail... with that Moby song again. Getting their money’s worth by using
it in two films.

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 CONCLUSIONS

Whether the shaky-cam made you queasy or not, this film managed to
make over $55 million more in the USA than “Bourne Identity”, which
means this sequel wasn’t going to be the only one. This was now a
*franchise* for Universal, and someone was dreaming of a Bond type series
of a couple dozen films... maybe when Damon got too old they would hand
it off to a new young star! There are ten books in the series, so there will be
at least eight more films, right? Mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money! Every
studio wants as many franchises as possible because every new film means
sales of the old films in whatever today’s new media is, plus you don’t
really need to advertize them (though they do) because the audience is
already familiar with the character and they know what to expect. If they
had a pleasant experience watching “Bourne Supremacy” they will want to
have that same experience for the next eight films! Universal was looking
for franchises (they don’t have any comic books) and needed one after “2
Fast 2 Furious” didn’t make 2 Much Money... could “Bourne” it?

Our experiment continues when they put a third film into the pipeline
with the same creative team as this film. Though using the same people in
each new film seems like a safe bet, sometimes “new blood” helps to keep a
franchise fresh. There’s even another theory that changing directors with
each film helps to make sequels unique - the “Mission Impossible” movies
with Tom Cruise used that theory - hiring a different director known for
their unique style on each new film. DePalma to Woo to Abrams to Bird...
with each bringing on their own screenwriter. But Bourne movies would all
have a screenplay by Tony Gilroy (either rewriting or being rewritten by
others) until this most recent film. Though for the next film, Paul
Greengrass had creative input from the very beginning... and that created
some friction with Gilroy. Shall we take a look at what happened in “The
Bourne Ultimatum”?

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 THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM
Release date: August 3, 2007
Starring: Matt Damon, Joan Allen, Julia Stiles
Writer: Tony Gilroy, Scott Z Burns, George Nolfi.
Director: Paul Greengrass
Producer: Frank Marshall, Patrick Crowley.
Production Company: Kennedy/Marshall, Universal.

Budget: $110m
Domestic Box Office: $227,471,070.00
Total Box Office: $442,824,138.00
Running Time: 115 minutes.
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Tagline: “This Summer Jason Bourne Comes Home”

Rotten Tomatoes: 96% (top critics)

Metacritic: 85
Cinemascore: A

Quest: Who turned me into an assassin?

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 INTRODUCTION

Now that “Bourne Supremacy” was a big financial success,

Universal didn’t just have a sequel they had a *franchise*. Every
studio wants as many franchises as possible because they are
money making machines - think of all of those movies with numbers
in the titles that eventually get rebooted and turned into TV shows
and then rebooted again. How many actors have played Batman?
How many have played Spider-Man? How many have played James
Bond? Bourne was looking like Universal’s version of James Bond -
a franchise that could last *decades* and the great thing was that
Matt Damon was a fairly young man... he could make a new Bourne
movie every couple of years for a couple of decades! Then Universal
could reboot the series starring someone who may not have even
been born when “Bourne Identity” was first released! If a studio gets
three or four franchises they can operate on auto-pilot!

So Universal put a third Bourne movie on their release schedule.

Motion pictures are a collaborative medium - a huge crew of

people working together to make a single film for tens of millions of
ticket buyers worldwide. We’re all supposed to work happily together
like one big family... except families are often at each other’s throats
during Thanksgiving Dinner and the Holiday Season. The same thing
happens on films. Often what happens is that there is a struggle for
power and control... and that leads to a civil war behind the scenes.

So imagine you have a franchise where the screenwriter saves

the first film and then wrote the second film and both were huge
successes. And a director who directed that second film. Now, they
*should* be working together as a family and focusing on making the
best third film possible, right? But instead we get some behind the
scenes fighting, which begins with the first of two times that Paul
Greengrass wanted to take first crack at the screenplay, so that he
controlled the story... and the producers let him. Screenwriters know
that they are going to be replaced, so fighting for control is a waste
of time... but in a case where the screenwriter might be construed as
the real talent behind the franchise, for some reason directors like to
nip that in the bud and show that *they* are the real reason for the
success of the films.

So we come to the third part of our experiment where our director

is in control of the development of the project and our writer is
subservient.

Except that’s not exactly what happened, because Robert

Ludlum’s estate was a co-producer on the series and also owned the
underlying property... and they imposed a deadline for “Bourne
Ultimatum. The film had to start by a specific date or Universal would
lose the rights to their franchise. Greengrass didn’t have a finished
screenplay and didn’t seem to be close, so they gave the
screenwriting duties back to Tony Gilroy. Stacey Snider said in an
interview, “It was an important franchise, we went to Tony and said,
‘Can you come up with something?’”

Gilroy wouldn’t be able to do anything other than a first draft

because he was scheduled to direct his own film “Michael Clayton”.
Of course, Gilroy is also the guy who “does all of his work before and
delivers a finished script”. Gilroy delivered his script and went on to
direct “Michael Clayton”.

But the behind the scenes struggle for power and control bubbled
to the surface. Greengrass hated Tony Gilroy’s screenplay, and Matt
Damon told GQ Magazine, “I don't blame Tony for taking a boatload
of money and handing in what he handed in. It’s just that it was
unreadable. This is a career-ender. I mean, I could put this thing up
on eBay and it would be game over for that dude. It's terrible. It's
really embarrassing. He was having a go, basically, and he took his
money and left.”
 The only problem with that is Universal’s Stacey Snider loved
Tony Gilroy’s draft and Head Of Production Donna Langley says she
was “Thrilled with the script Tony submitted and greenlit the film
based on that script.” So, it seems that Greengrass and Damon’s
public opinions don’t match what the studio thought of Tony Gilroy’s
screenplay. Writers constantly get replaced in this business, so if
Gilroy’s script wasn’t the best that it could be Snider and Langley
would have just hired another writer - that happens every day!
Instead they released the funds to make the movie. You don’t write a
check for $110 million if you don’t like the script. So the Greengrass
and Damon objections to the Gilroy screenplay seem to be a power
play.

And a silly power play, since Greengrass still brought in his own
writers to work on the screenplay and “make it his own”. But as
Ernest Lehman (“North By Northwest”) said, “It’s okay, it’s just the
first draft. Beware of that thought, because it’s ten times more
difficult to go in a certain direction once you’ve already gone in
another direction. The longer you can hold off putting a word down
on paper, the better you are. Rewriting is largely cleaning up things
that aren’t clear to you, or trying to shorten a scene that’s too long, or
realizing now that you’ve written scenes at the end of the story,
maybe the scenes at the beginning should be a little different to help
set up a scene that comes at the end.” Once you have a first draft,
everything else comes from that draft - and the other writers
Greengrass hired started with Gilroy’s first draft... actually, his
*second draft*, as he had time to do a little extra work. I’ve read that
draft, and even though some specific locations are different (instead
of a scene at a train station that scene takes place at a house) much
of it is exactly the same as in the film - the great Landy/Vosen
scenes are the same. So this was not some crappy draft that didn’t
make any sense, and the rewrites all *started* with that draft.

This still ends up being the most action oriented of the films until
the new movie “Jason Bourne”... and the most “Hollywood” of the
films. Let’s take a look at how it works, shall we?
Oh, first the really good news - less shaky cam!

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THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM

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 OPENING HOOK

Opening Image: Bourne limping through the snow.

In Moscow, Russia: Bourne is being chased by the Police, limps

to a train station and onto a train... walking through the cars as the
police search the train. As it begins moving, Bourne jumps off,
hides... as police cars zoom past looking for the “suspect in the
tunnel shooting”. So this story begins *immediately after* the car
chase in the last film, but *before* Bourne apologizes to Irena Neski
and then goes to New York City (the end of the last film). As I said in
the last chapter, there’s some “Pulp Fiction” mixed up chronology
going on!

Paul Greengrass said, “One of the first decisions that was made
on the film was to start in Moscow, to start the film earlier than where
‘Bourne Supremacy’ had ended. That was an important choice....
Tony Gilroy’s choice, actually.”

Bourne spots a closed medical clinic, breaks in, takes care of his
bullet wound from the foot chase in the last film. As he looks at his
blood in the sink, he has a flashback - before he was Bourne, when
he was David Webb - being taken to Dr. Albert Hirsch (Albert Finney)
who was in charge of conditioning for Treadstone, who keeps asking
him: “Will you commit to this program?” And David Webb keeps
answering, “I can’t”. They put a black hood over his head and do
something between sensory deprivation and torture.

The flashback is interrupted by a pair of Russian Police Officers

who have found him. Bourne knocks one out, aims his gun at the
other... who begs him not to kill him. “My argument is not with you,”
Bourne says, and lets him go.
 And here, off screen in this film, is where Bourne goes to Irena
Neski and apologizes in the last film.

(4:00) Six weeks later: CIA HQ Langley - CIA Director Ezra

Kramer (Scott Glenn) and a group including Pamela Landy (Joan
Allen) and Tom Cronin (Tom Gallop) listen to the tape of Abbott’s
confession from the last film. Landy briefs Kramer on Bourne,
Marie’s death, etc... in case anyone missed the first two movies.
Kramer thinks Bourne is gunning for them, and needs to be taken
care of. Landy believes Bourne is just trying to find out things about
his past... things they know about him that he does not know. They
could just give him the information, and Bourne will leave them
alone. Kramer thinks it’s probably safer to just kill him.

Again we have two different methods of dealing with the “Bourne

problem” at the CIA, but these don’t connect to Bourne’s dilemma in
this story at this point in time. “Cooperate or Kill” doesn’t really work
for Bourne because he’s already decided he’s no longer an assassin
- heck, he let the man who killed Marie live (though, not for long... as
Kirill was dying from injuries in the car wreck). So this difference
between the two methods at the CIA is kind of sloppy writing a this
point - it has nothing to do with Bourne - and I suspect the later
version that works was from Gilroy’s original version of the
screenplay. One of the problems with bringing in other writers is that
they often don’t know the meanings behind the details in the original
writers screenplay... and muddy things. But at least we get a
discussion about larger issues - war or diplomacy. That helps elevate
this entry in the series at this point in our story - around five minutes
in. This is what we expect from a Bourne film.

(5:50) In Turin, Italy: Guardian reporter Simon Ross (Paddy

Considine) meets with CIA Bureau Chief Neal Daniels (Colin Stinton)
about Jason Bourne. Ross is an investigative reporter, doing a story
on some suspicious activity revolving around mystery man Jason
Bourne.
 (7:15) In Paris, France: Marie’s brother Martin (Daniel Bruhl)
comes home to find Bourne sitting in his apartment. He tells her his
sister is dead and that, “Someone started all of this, and I’m going to
find them.” The someone who started all of this is the man who
turned David Webb into Jason Bourne... so, here just over seven
minutes into our story we know what the quest is - what will drive the
rest of the film.

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 STORY FLOW

(9:45) In London: Ross calls his editor from the airport after his
plane lands, tells him that Daniels knew *everything* and that
Bourne was just the tip of the iceberg - Operation Blackbriar is the
next lead.

At CIA HQ London, their cell phone monitoring gets a hit on

“Blackbriar” and flag it for the NSA who sends all of the information
to CIA Deep Cover Anti-Terrorism HQ in New York City, which is run
by Noah Vosen (David Strathairn) - and his second in command
Wills (Corey Johnson) briefs him on Ross, and they listen to Ross’
phone call. Vosen says he wants Ross’ source... and wants an
“asset” mobilized. Vosen tells his team he wants *everything* on
Ross, and goes down a frightening list of personal information they
need about him.

Though the previous two films have used all of the various kinds
of electronic surveillance, this film is going to focus on it. We have a
lot more to be paranoid about in paranoid thrillers these days!

In Paris: Bourne buys a copy of The Guardian and hops a train...

where he reads Ross’ article “Who is Jason Bourne?” which includes
a picture of Marie... and that triggers a flashback of Bourne and
Marie from the first film, which bleeds into a flashback of Hirsch’s
team “conditioning” him, which leads to a flashback of Marie’s death
from the second film. There’s a great moment where Jason and
Marie’s kiss from the first film is cross-cut with Jason trying to give
Marie mouth-to-mouth while underwater after the car crash in the
second film... and Bourne being pushed under water by Hirsch’s
people. All of this connects the previous two films to this story.

Finding a *motif* like the kiss and the water to connect random
elements of past stories (or even the story you are telling now) is a
great way to create “story flow” and also mimics the way human
memory works. Things are connected in our memories in unusual
ways. I like to think of films as shared dreams - a bunch of strangers
sit in a cinema, the lights go out, and we all share the same dream
as it unfolds. Because a film is more dream than reality, it uses
“dream logic” where things are often connected in unusual ways.
Films are also like dreams in that one moment a character can be in
one location and the next they can be in another location - check out
Buster Keaton’s “Sherlock Jr.” for an amazing example of this!
Movies cut between locations, just like dreams! Movies also have
that “flow” of a dream, where it doesn’t seem like disjointed pieces,
but one thing just bleeds into the next. We always want to create that
“flow” so that it seems as if this is all one long piece of film without
any jerky stops and starts. Using something to link scenes or shots -
something like a kiss or water - makes the story more dream-like and
more coherent.

OceanofPDF.com
 TRADECRAFT

(14:00) Ross arrives at The Guardian Newspaper offices... as

CIA Agents watch from across the street and Vosen watches live
video in NYC. There is no privacy. Ross tells his editor that Daniels
was scared - of Blackbriar. The meeting is interrupted by a call for
Ross on another reporter’s phone line... from Bourne.

Vosen in NYC wants to know why he can’t hear this

conversation? Reason: they have Ross’ phone line tapped, but not
this other reporter’s. Bourne tells Ross to meet him at the Waterloo
Station, south entrance, in 30 minutes.

Calling the person one desk over when you fear the phone might
be bugged is a great example of *tradecraft* - which is one of the
basic elements of espionage novels, films, poetry and modern dance
(I don’t know of any spy modern dance, but I hope that somewhere
someone is working on the Goldfinger Ballet or something).
Tradecraft are the clever things that spies do as part of their job to
get information safely and prevent being caught or killed (but the
Secretary will disavow them). John LeCarre novels are filled with
great examples - using chalk marks to indicate directions to a
meeting place and warn of problems. I think in the TV version of
“Smiley’s People” one of the first things a character does when
returning to the spy world is to buy a box of playground chalk. There
are signals for meets - a flag on a balcony, a window shade open, a
potted plant in a specific location... this is kind of the spy version of
those signs a business uses when it needs a UPS pick up. We can
trace things like this back to non-spy movies like “Murder, My Sweet”
where opening the curtains is a signal. Though Bourne is a clever
character who does things like grab the fire exit sign to find a way
out, “tradecraft” isn’t the things one does on the fly, but part of
established methods to maintain secrecy in the espionage game.
Things like codes and cyphers are part of this. One of my favorite
bits of “tradecraft” comes from one of my favorite spy films “The
Ipcress File” where our protagonist Harry Palmer is told to go to T-
108 for a meet... T-108 ends up being a park bench maintenance
number used by park maintenance when the bench needs to be
cleaned or repaired. T-114 might be a bench in some other park. The
idea that something as mundane as a maintenance number could be
part of tradecraft is brilliant. Because quite a bit has changed since
George Smiley worked at “The Circus”, Bourne’s tradecraft
techniques include things like burner phones and anonymous
internet cafes instead of chalk markings.

When Ross leaves the newspaper building, the CIA men

watching him use sensitive microphones to capture Ross telling the
cab driver his destination. Vosen sends the London team to Waterloo
station, and mobilizes the “asset”...

(16:00) The “asset” - a Treadstone-like assassin name Paz

(Edgar Ramirez) - gets the call, grabs his gun bag, and heads to
Waterloo Station.

At Waterloo Station: Bourne gets off his train, heads to the South
entrance - security cameras watching his every move. On the way,
he buys a pre-paid (burner) phone with cash... when he walks past
Ross, Bourne drops the burner phone in his pocket... noticing the
CIA cars that have followed Ross as he walks away.

Ross’ phone rings. Wait, it’s not ringing. The ringing is coming
from his pocket. He pulls out the strange phone - how did that get
there? “Hello?” Bourne tells Ross that he’s being followed and
watched, and tells him where the CIA vehicles and people are. Ross
looks at each place - spots the CIA watchers. How can he “shake”
them? Bourne tells Ross to walk to a bus stop, start talking to a man
wearing a blue sweatshirt. When the bus comes it will block the CIA
Agents’ view, that’s when he walks up the stairs to a news stand and
waits for further instructions.
 Meanwhile, Vosen and his team are scrambling - that isn’t Ross’
phone, they have no idea where that phone came from, they can’t
hear a damned thing! Nice piece of modern tradecraft.

The bus comes, Ross seems to vanish...

The CIA agents board the bus, grab the guy in the blue
sweatshirt, inject him with something, and drag him off the bus!

Bourne takes out one of the CIA agents watching.

Two CIA Agents are racing to find Ross.

Ross turns a corner in Waterloo station and a man grabs him!

Bourne.

“What’s your source’s name?” Ross tells him that Treadstone has
been reborn as Blackbriar... the Bourne spots the two CIA Agents
coming towards them. Bourne tells Ross to stay on the phone and
start walking towards the escalator.

Now we get a great suspense scene where Bourne coaches

Ross in evading the CIA Agents in the train station, at one point
telling Ross to tie his shoe *now*! Ross bends down to tie his shoe
just as a CIA Agent looks over the crowd. Great split second timing!

OceanofPDF.com
 CAMERA PARANOIA

Meanwhile at CIA HQ in NYC: They tap into all of the security

cameras at the train station and try to find Ross for the agents in the
station. This taps into our current “Big Brother Is Watching” paranoia
- in a movie like “Three Days Of The Condor” the paranoia was often
those people on the street who seem to be paying too much
attention to you - but now there are cameras *everywhere* watching
you. How can you escape being seen? How can you hide? Hiding
(like running) is one of the main elements of a thriller, and now that
technology has “upped its game” the protagonist must be even more
clever to avoid detection.

Bourne tells Ross to walk in a specific path that is between the

security cameras - they won’t be able to see him. But Ross sees a
suspicious looking Janitor pushing his cart *right at him* and freaks.
When the Janitor stops and reaches into the cart, Ross is sure that
he’s going for a gun and is about to be killed - and bolts away. Right
into the sight of a security camera! This is a great example of “old
school” paranoid thriller (humans) and modern paranoid thriller
(security cameras) creating a conflict. Which takes priority?

Greengrass says about this scene, “Very often we were making it

up as we went along.” So I read the production draft (June 20, 2007)
and the details of this scene are on the page. Now, things are slightly
different due to production - but there are no story beats that are not
already in the screenplay. The hoody guy, tying his shoe, the janitor -
all in the screenplay. If it ain’t on the page, it’s unlikely to end up on
the stage.

Vosen and his team spot Ross, see that he’s still on that phantom
phone, and send their team on the ground after Ross.
 Now all of the CIA Agents in the train station are coming after
Ross! Bourne coaches him - telling him to go into the store, which
has a back exit. Bourne takes out one of the CIA Agents - punching
him *hard* in the stomach. Ross enters the store, goes through the
back door closing it behind him. The Two CIA Agents race into the
store, go to the back door... Ross has locked it from the other side.

One of the CIA Agents finds a service door next to the store.

Ross is in the maze of service hallways behind the stores and

shops in the train station. He turns a corner...
There’s the CIA Agent who just went through the service door!
With a gun...
Aimed at Ross’ face!

Bourne comes up behind the CIA Agent and knocks him down,
takes his gun. The Two Agents break through that back door, and
Bourne fights them as well. A third Agent comes down the hallway,
and Bourne is fighting three men at once. He knocks them all out,
throws away their guns... approaches Ross. Then notices the
security camera at the end of the service hallway - aimed right at
them!

OceanofPDF.com
 CLEVER LOCATIONS

In NYC, Vosen sees the live video feed from the security camera,
“That’s Jason Bourne.” Vosen is sure that Bourne is Ross’ source -
orders that all of the exits be blocked and give the “asset” the green
light to kill Ross and Bourne.

“Asset” Paz has found a sniper spot behind an articulated

billboard overlooking the station. The billboard has venetian blind like
levers that move back and forth, changing the image on the opposite
side. Paz assembles his sniper rifle...

That articulated billboard is a great location. One of the

challenges in writing a story in any genre is that “it’s all been done
before”, yet you still need to make your story, scenes, dialogue, set
pieces and moments unique. Here we have a sniper preparing to
shoot someone, a scene we’ve seen a hundred times before. How
can we make it different? Well, we can’t really change much about
what happens in the scene itself, and because the Bourne movies
are ‘realistic” we can’t come up with some weird high concept killing
method which would make the scene unique. They could have made
the shooter someone unique - who would be the least likely
assassin? (Hey, were are the female assassins in the Bourne
universe? That’s not even on my least likely list, but it would be
different in this series.) When you go down the list of things that can
be changed in a scene to make it unique and interesting, you
eventually come to *location*, which is close to the bottom of the list
but still an element that can impact a scene. Whether this decision
was made at the script stage or once they found the location (or both
- production rewrites usually make the script work for whatever
location has been secured), this articulated billboard makes the
scene unique.
 Signs and billboards have been used in sniper scenes in past
films, including the previous film where Bourne used the giant letters
of an advertisement on the roof of a building as cover in the previous
film, and in the James Bond movie “From Russia With Love” where
an advert painted on the side of a building disguises an open window
(which is the woman in the advert’s mouth). But this billboard is
unique because it is two billboards in one - and the venetian blind-
like levers turn on regular intervals to turn one billboard into another.
During those turns, there is a moment where the sniper can look out
over the railway station from above... and take his shot. So this is a
“solid” billboard that completely hides the sniper until it changes into
the other billboard, then - for a moment - the sniper can be seen...
and he can see his target. Not only does this make it almost
impossible to spot the sniper immediately after the gunshot, it also
creates a mini ticking clock for the sniper - they must fire when the
“window” is open. A great location!

Meanwhile, Bourne tells Ross that he must do exactly what

Bourne says if he wants to stay alive. Ross is freaked out, Bourne is
calm - thinking. This contrast between the two characters gives us
character information about each of them. We already know what it
tells us about Bourne, so the bulk of the information the audience
gets is about Ross - he is way over his head. Bourne walks out from
the service hallways into the train station, looking for CIA Agents....

This is cross cut for suspense with Paz assembling the sniper
rifle, sliding in the magazine, setting it on the tripod, looking through
the scope, getting a cell phone message with Bourne and Ross’
photos, looking through the scope for his targets when one billboard
changes to the other. Going back and forth between Bourne and Paz
builds excitement - will Bourne figure out something is wrong before
Paz gets his gun ready and shoots him?

Back in NYC, Vosen has the security cameras at the train station
turn away from the impending assassination - no visual record of
what happens for the police. This is a clever little moment that adds
to the paranoia and conspiracy - with all of the cameras in the world
today, certainly one of them captured the assassination, right? Well,
not if the conspiracy controls all of the cameras!

Bourne notices the security cameras moving towards the walls.

What? Tells Ross that something is wrong, and to stay put until
Bourne figures it out.

But Ross sees a clear path from the service hall door to the
station’s exit. He is beginning to freak out, and tells Bourne he’s
going to make a break for it. Bourne yells no, Ross runs anyway -
and is shot dead by the sniper... as the billboard changes. The crowd
in the train station screams. Police officers run in to find out what
happened. Bourne sneaks up to Ross’ body pretending to help him,
but grabs all of the notes from Ross’ bag and bolts towards the
doors.

Paz follows Bourne with his scope, looking for a clean shot, but
Bourne manages to run behind people and columns and other cover.
There’s a nice shot through the scope showing the audience that
there is no clear shot - Bourne is an expert at this.

Paz disassembles his rifle as the police begins to close down the
station and look for the shooter. Bourne races up some service stairs
in the back of the station... to the area behind the articulated
billboard. But no one is there... then he spots Paz turning a corner at
the end of a narrow passage. Gives chase.

Paz races down to the tube (subway) with Bourne not far behind.
In the crowded subway station Bourne searches for Paz, thinks he
sees him, races for a subway train. Is he on this train? Bourne looks
through the windows, not spotting him. Suspense builds as time ticks
away to the train’s departure time. In Paz on the train or somewhere
on the platform or did he find a maintenance door? Tick, tick, tick.
The train doors close and it starts slowly leaving the station, and
before you can say “French Connection” Bourne spots Paz inside
one of the subway cars as it moves past him. The two men lock eyes
for a moment. Then the train picks up speed and Paz is gone.
OceanofPDF.com
 GET JASON BOURNE!

When we look at the antagonist’s side of the story, at this point

the “leak” has been traced from Ross (eliminated) to Jason Bourne
(still a threat), so they focus their energies on finding and eliminating
Bourne... which kicks us into Act Two of our story. Bourne is now the
primary target, so he is trapped in the conflict.

From our protagonist’s point of view, Bourne knows that he is not

the leak... but all of these CIA people are gunning for him, which
means he must find the real leak and figure out what this is all about
in order to survive. He is now forced to deal with this CIA problem
whether he likes it or not... which kicks us into Act Two of our story.
How does each side deal with this struggle? Let’s take a look...

(27:50) At CIA HQ NYC - Vosen makes a call...

Landy gets pulled out of a meeting because CIA Director Kramer

wants to see her, *now*!

Bourne goes to an anonymous internet café in London (not one

I’ve used when I was on Vacation there) and looks through Ross’
notebooks. He finds the name of an investment firm, Googles it, and
finds an address in Madrid, Spain, turns off the computer and leaves.
This gets us from London to Madrid without confusion - the audience
sees the address in Madrid and naturally assumes that’s where
Bourne will be going next. But this also creates “flow” and links this
scene with...

(29:00) In Madrid, Spain: Daniels is watching the news about

Ross’ murder-by-sniper in the office of that bogus investment firm
that Bourne just Googled. Daniels scrambles to the safe, opens it,
and pulls out some Top Secret documents, then puts them in a bag.
He puts his gun in his pocket, then leaves the office and gets into his
car - speeding the hell out of there. If they’ve killed Ross, he knows
that he will be next. All of this is done without any dialogue on
Daniels’ part - just actions that the audience understands.

(30:00) At CIA HQ NYC (that’s a lot of letters, isn’t it?) - Vosen

has a breakfast meeting with Landy. That emergency meeting with
CIA Director Kramer? Was to put Landy on Vosen’s team, since she
knows more about Bourne than anyone else in the agency still alive
(Abbott and Conklin are dead). Vosen tries to flex his authority, but
Landy is having none of it. And we get a conversation about Bourne
that is really about the differences between Vosen and Landy - how
each sees the “problem” and how they plan to deal with it. This is the
version of this debate that makes sense and ties into Bourne’s
character - so I suspect that it was from Gilroy’s original screenplay
before the rewrites kicked in. Like the pairing of Landy and Abbott in
the last film, this pairing shows two very different ways to resolve
conflicts. Landy believes Bourne is one of their agents with a
problem, and they can help him solve it by giving him information.
Vosen believes Bourne is one of their agents with a problem, and
they should kill him before Vosen or the Agency gets blamed for that
problem. Just as in the last film, these two characters put a face on
different ways that Bourne might solve his problem. Help (and put
yourself at risk) or hurt (and avoid risk). This is the most important
scene in the story, though most people might think it’s just a down
moment after that big action/suspense scene at Waterloo Station.

Though rewritten, the core of this scene and much of the

dialogue is from the Gilroy draft.

(31:45) In Madrid, Spain: Bourne gets off a train, gets in a taxi,

and heads to that spurious investment firm. Bourne rings the bell of
the firm - no answer... but a pair of Police Officers are walking down
the street towards him. This is that “old school” paranoia of
suspicious people watching you or maybe coming for you that you’d
find in “Three Days Of The Condor.” Hey, works in our “big brother is
watching” age, too. . Bourne walks away, avoiding the Police
Officers.
 At CIA HQ NYC: Landy (with Cronin) takes control of Vosen’s
team - who have no idea what they are dealing with when it comes
to Bourne. She wants everything they have on Ross - his
movements for the past week. They discover he was in Turin, Italy
yesterday. Round trip plane ticket, departed and arrived the same
day. Unusual. Landy tells Vosen this means Bourne was *not* Ross’
source - and when Vosen asks how she knows that, Landy breaks it
down logically piece by piece. This not only shows us that Landy is
intelligent, it adds realism and logic and maybe even clues in some
of the slower folks in the audience.

Vosen wants all of Ross’ cell phone calls to Italy, and Landy
explains that the source is someone with a clearance above Top
Secret who is committing treason by talking to Ross - would they
really have a traceable cell phone conversation? Smart people do
smart things - you aren’t going to find them by looking for dumb
things. Vosen’s man Wills asks if Landy has any ideas on how to find
the leak?

Never challenge someone more intelligent than you - Landy has

the answer. Who had their cell phone *turned off* during the time
Ross was in Italy? They wouldn’t want to take any official calls while
committing treason, would they? Only three CIA people had their
phones turned off during that period... and when they check notes
found in Ross’ apartment they spot the initials “N.D.” - Neal Daniels.
Station Chief in Madrid....

Vosen and Wills look at each other - this name means something
to them. He orders Daniels arrest, and wants the Marines to go in
“heavy” (armed and ready to kill). Landy wonders why they would
need to be ready for a gunfight when Daniels is a middle aged desk
jockey. Vosen says it’s possible that Bourne will be there, right?
Landy isn’t sure she believes this is the real answer.

(35:00) But Bourne *is* there. Night, and the streets are empty
and no patrolling Police Officers. He breaks into the building, breaks
into the CIA office, disables the alarm, and starts poking around.

That great Vosen and Landy scene was written by George Nolfi,
by the way.

OceanofPDF.com
 JUST MACGYVER THAT!

Meanwhile at CIA HQ NYC: Vosen is told the CIA hit team arrives
in 3 minutes. We have our ticking clock and our suspense.

Bourne finds the empty safe, but also finds an old photo on the
floor: Neal Daniels and Dr. Albert Hirsch... triggering another
flashback. Daniels was the CIA recruiting officer that took him to
Hirsch back when he was David Webb. One of the people
responsible for turning him into an assassin! The flashback becomes
more intense - Hirsch is torturing him. Bourne comes out of the
flashback on the floor... and when he gets up, he sees a car pulling
up in the security monitor. The hit squad has arrived.

Bourne moves into action, grabbing an oscillating fan from the

desk, some other items: scotch tape, a fire ax, a flashlight. Wait,
what is he going to do with that stuff?

I often use “MacGyver” as a verb, which is a credit to both the TV

series and the great concept behind it. Not only was “MacGyver” a
hit show the first time around, it managed to spawn a series of
Saturday Night Live skits that was turned into its own movie... and
now we have a new version of the TV series. The show was clever,
and we all have that “do it yourself” gene and wish we could figure
out how to combine a bunch of unrelated objects into *something*...
let alone something that could save the day. This completely fits the
“intelligent thriller” and “clever protagonist” elements of the Bourne
movies.

Of course, MacGyver wasn’t the first person to do things like this,

I have a copy of “The Anarchist’s Cookbook” on my shelf (don’t tell
the FBI, that would put me on a watch list) because it has all of those
recipes to turn household products into explosives or knock out
gasses or whatever else my protagonist might need when they get in
trouble. I’m guessing the creator of MacGyver had that book as well,
and it may have been an inspiration for the TV show. The Remo
Williams novels were written by a pair of writers who once got into a
fight, so each wrote half of the novels for a while and then shipped it
to the other guy to write the other half. One of the things they did in
this war of the coo-authors was to end their half with an impossible
situation so that the other guy had to figure out how to resolve it, and
once Remo was thrown out of a plane without a parachute - but he
had a #2 pencil and a rubber band and a couple of other things... so
he knew he could survive. Then the other writer had to figure out
how those things would save him!

One of the tropes in caper movies is to have a list of items they

will need to break into the bank or casino or rare coin show or
whatever - and then not tell us why they need those things! This
creates all kinds of great mystery about how these things will play
out in the clever burglary. One of my favorites in this genre is “11
Harrow House” starring Charles Grodin and the film uses the list of
unusual items they will need to pull off this crime in the tagline on the
poster:

“This is like no robbery you've ever imagined

THE CHALLENGE: Steal 12 billion dollars in uncut diamonds
THE TASK: Break into the most securely guarded fortress
devised by man
THE PLAN: Use amateurs armed with ingenuity, guts, a
cockroach, a thin cord, and a vacuum cleaner.”

Wait... a cockroach and a vacuum cleaner? The entire list also

includes things like nail polish. How will these things allow them to
rob the world’s secret diamond supply vault? You have to watch the
movie to find out! And that’s the fun of MacGyvering something in a
scene - you have to watch the scene to find out. There is a mystery,
and anticipation - so this creates a different kind of suspense. So
what does Bourne use all of those various things to build?
OceanofPDF.com
 CROSS CUTTING

Now we have a three way cross-cut sequence: Bourne, the two

man Hit Team, and Vosen and Landy watching live on monitors at
CIA HQ. This builds all kinds of suspense as the Hit Team gets
closer and closer to the office that Bourne is in.

Suspense cross-cutting moves back and forth between two

subjects, with suspense building as the two subjects become closer
to each other. Whether this is a man searching a house while the
homeowner gets closer, or a killer stalking a victim hidden in the
closet of an old dark house, or two trains on the same track racing
towards each other; cross cutting takes two people or objects we
*don't* want to see in the same scene and puts them on a collision
course. In my “Hitchcock: Mastering Suspense” book I use the scene
in “Rear Window” where Jimmy Stewart sends the woman he loves,
Grace Kelly, to search the suspected killer’s apartment for
incriminating evidence... while he watches through binoculars. When
Stewart spots the suspected killer (played by Raymond Burr)
returning home early, we cross-cut between Kelly finding the
evidence, Burr getting closer and closer to his front door, and
Stewart watching from across the courtyard helplessly. Lots of
suspense! Here, we don’t want to see the Hit Team and Bourne in
the same scene... and cutting to Vosen and the CIA guys just
*stretches* that suspense a little more. Since suspense is the
anticipation of a known action, any time you can stretch out that
anticipation you can magnify the suspense!

The Hit Team enters the office, guns ready, searching for some
sign of Bourne (and Daniels). They discover the alarm has been
turned off - Vosen is sure Bourne is there. The safe is empty - and
this makes Vosen calmly freak out, he wants Daniels’ passport
tracked NOW! The office is empty, no sign of Bourne. Then the Hit
Team notices light from under the bathroom door... and shadows
moving in that light. The Hit Team advances on the door quietly. As
one covers the door, the other shoots through the wall into the
bathroom. They kick in the door to find... that oscillating fan with the
flashlight taped to it. What? Bourne blasts out of a closet door behind
them with that fire ax, knocking the gun from one of their hands with
the heavy end, then using that same (non-bladed) end to slam the
other in the stomach. That only slows these two guys down for a
moment... now we have a hand to hand fight. It’s quick and brutal
and realistic, like all of the fights in the series. Bourne knocks both
down and out...

The live video feed goes dark, Vosen yells to get the second
team over there NOW!

Then Bourne spots the security monitor again - someone is

coming up the stairs to the office! He grabs one of the fallen men’s
guns and prepares for the second wave...

The door opens.

Bourne waits in the shadows until the person walks in, then
springs out with his gun, aiming it squarely at...

Nicky (Julia Stiles).

“What are you doing here?”

Nicky was transferred to this office... then the phone rings. What
do you do? Ignore it? Answer it? Have Nicky answer it? Bourne has
Nicky answer it (at gunpoint). It’s Vosen - at CIA HQ - Landy
recognizes her name, Nicky was Treadstone and helped hunt
Bourne (in the last movie) in Berlin. Vosen gives Nicky an “ID
challenge” and has her code in “Sparrow”. On Vosen’s computer this
brings up possible responses: “Ruby” if under duress, “Everest” if
everything is normal. Bourne is aiming a gun at Nicky, how will she
respond?
 Stories and characters are based on *decisions* and this gives
us a great one. Not only is this moment jam packed with suspense,
but what Nicky does will show us whether she’s more sympathetic to
Bourne or to the CIA. Which side she is on? Whether she is with
Bourne or against him... and Bourne will never know which she
chooses at this point. She could easily betray him... and that second
Hit Team is already on the way, right? There’s a moment where
Nicky looks at Bourne, aiming the gun at her... which will she
decide? Eventually Nicky responds, “Everest”.

Vosen questions her - how long has she been there? Are there
two agents there? “Yes, both unconscious but alive.” Is Daniels
there? Is *Bourne* there? Nicky says Daniels is gone, and she
thought the Bourne case was closed after Berlin.

At CIA HQ Landy chimes in on the call, “Some people still think

Bourne is a threat, I disagree, but to find out, I need to talk to him.”
This causes Vosen to put Nicky on hold while he and Landy have
another discussion about the best way to resolve this: Bourne dead
or Bourne alive. Vosen asks when the second Hit Team will arrive - 5
minutes. He gets back on the phone, tells Nicky to secure the
premises, back up will arrive in an hour. Then hangs up.

(42:00) Nicky tells Bourne he has three minutes. Confirmation of

which side she’s on. Nicky says her car is outside and she knows
where Daniels is.

Bourne grabs the phone, calls the police, and in perfect Spanish
gives them this address and says that he’s heard gunfire and two
men shouting in American. Then he hangs up, fires some shots,
grabs Nicky and leaves.

Nicky tells him that at 8am Daniels wired $100,000 to a bank in

Tangier - probably where he’s heading. Follow the money.

As they leave the building, the second Hit Team pulls up. Will
they be spotted? Suspense...
 But only for a moment as they *are* spotted! They keep walking
to Nicky’s car. The second Hit Team draws their weapons and jogs
towards them. They’re going to be caught and shot! Twist: Police
sirens - and Police Cars pull up, spot the two armed men, and draw
on them - ordering them to drop their weapons. The second Hit
Team is surrounded by armed police officers, so they are forced to
drop their guns and raise their hands. Bourne and Nicky get in the
car and drive away, while the second Hit Team is being handcuffed.

(43:30) Vosen issues a standing kill order on Jason Bourne,

effective immediately.

OceanofPDF.com
 WHAT’S AT STAKE?

Because these films have a mystery element (usually revolving

around Bourne’s past) clues and bits of information are parceled out
throughout the story - a piece at a time - and both the audience and
Bourne try to put those pieces together as the story progresses.
Usually these films have a pair of intersecting mysteries - Bourne’s
past and the reason for the incident which forces him out of hiding.

(44:00) Landy goes into Vosen’s office and asks what is *really*
going on. What does Daniels have? What is Operation Blackbriar?
She pushes *hard* and gets some answers - Blackbriar is
Treadstone reborn, plus every black ops the CIA has.
Assassinations, surveillance, rendition, experimental interrogation,
worse. And Vosen is in charge - no red tape, no Congressional
oversight, whatever they want to do they can do. “We are the sharp
end of the stick now, Pam.” Which leads to another discussion of
methods - and a discussion of larger issues. Should NSA style wire-
tapping of every American be allowed... if it nets one terrorist? How
much freedom should we give up for security? Is an individual (like
Jason Bourne) more important than the Nation? And, even if Bourne
has done nothing wrong, is it better to kill him for the safety of the
Nation? Daniels was the Blackbriar man in the field, and had all of
the information on the program - so they have to find Daniels,
destroy that information... and kill Daniels.

Landy says there is something more to this - a reason why

Bourne is going after Daniels. They need to discover what that
reason is, because if they don’t know the *why* part, killing Daniels
and Bourne could just create larger problems. Vosen doesn’t care
what Bourne’s reasons are.

These discussions of methods allow for a genre film to explore

larger issues. As mentioned in the chapter on the first movie, these
are “Elevated Thrillers” which means they work on multiple levels.
Not just as a thriller, but as a story that will explore larger issues.
There will be a focus on theme, character, moral issues, and even
politics. The political thriller genre often works as a platform for larger
conversations - even in superhero movies like the Russo Bothers’
“Captain America: Winter Soldier” and “Captain America: Civil War”,
both of which are throwbacks to 70s political thrillers. Those are
“elevated superhero movies” (which doesn’t mean the characters
can fly... though they can). Here we have a more grounded story, but
it is still elevated - we not only get an exciting and suspenseful
thriller, we’re going to examine privacy issues as well. Even though
this film began with a Tony Gilroy screenplay, I think issues of
privacy are something that interests director Paul Greengrass as
well.

One of the problems when dealing with something topical, like

the NSA spying on everyone; is that you run the risk of having
today’s news becoming no longer relevant tomorrow. You always
have to take “shelf life” into account with a story because films end
up having second and third and fourth and fifth lives on new media
platforms. In the old days, a movie was released in cinemas and that
was the end of it. Then there was the cinema release and then the
TV release and then the late late show. Now we have all kinds of
physical media releases and then streaming and then whatever they
invent next. So every old movie becomes new again when they
release it in a new format. But will that story that was ripped from the
headlines in 2016 still be relevant in 2116? A hundred years from
now? That may seem like an extreme to you, but a few months ago I
watched a restored film from 1916! In a cinema. That film will be
getting a release all over again in all of those other forms of media,
and in 2116 it may get yet another release in whatever is the new
form of media then - direct brain plugs or something. That 1916 film
was “Shoes” and it was about the working poor (who have to choose
between buying food or new shoes), something that is still topical
now. So when you “rip from the headlines” make sure to focus, not
on the specifics of those headlines, but on the larger issue - and in a
way that will still be relevant a hundred years from now.
 Another part of “elevated” that Bourne succeeds at is that all of
the characters are intelligent. A frequent problem is when they make
the villain stupid so that the hero can outsmart them. That’s a race to
the bottom! Instead you want a clever villain who doesn’t make any
stupid mistakes... and a hero who is even more clever - the race to
the top! No villain mistakes! Yes, that makes writing the story more
difficult - you have to be twice as intelligent, twice as clever! But that
makes a better story.

OceanofPDF.com
 CALL-BACKS & ECHO SCENES

A “call-back” is a comedy term for when a line or gag from the

past is used again for a second helping of laughter. Often the second
time around the call-back will be used in a different way, using a
familiar punchline to create a completely different joke. Call-backs
can also be used in stories and films - whether comic or not. An
“echo line” is a repeated line of dialogue whose meaning changes as
the story progresses. A line like “I understand” can have many
different meanings, and a clever screenwriter can show the changes
in a character by using the same line in many different ways.

There are also “echo scenes” where the same scene or moment
is repeated in order to show the changes in a character or situation.
In “Hitchcock; Mastering Suspense” I show how Ernie’s Restaurant
is used as the same background to show the changes in Jimmy
Stewart’s character - by keeping the location the same, it’s easier to
see the differences in the character. But echo scenes can be used in
a variety of ways, and this film uses echo scenes as a call-back -
reminding us of a scene in one of the previous Bourne movies by
repeating it here. This can infuse a common scene with emotions
because we remember what happened the previous time.

(46:10) In a call-back to the first film, Bourne and Nicky are in a

roadside diner similar to the scene with Bourne and Marie from the
first film. Nicky wants to know why Bourne is looking for Daniels, and
Bourne pulls out the photo he found on the floor - Daniels and
Hirsch. The photo makes it visual and cuts down on a bunch of
boring exposition. Bourne is looking for Hirsch, and Daniels knows
where to find him... all of that with a photo. Even though she was
working for Daniels, Nicky doesn’t know who Hirsch is. Bourne says,
“He was there are the beginning. Something happened to me and I
need to know what it was.” Though we’re not quite at the midpoint of
the story, we have a nice restatement of his quest. Bourne needs to
know who made him a killer, and how that came to be, before he can
be at peace.

There are two things about this scene that smell of fish and I
suspect where the result of rewrites:

1) Nicky tells Bourne that he was the very first Treadstone agent,
which makes the whole world all about Bourne: a massive
coincidence, we’ve seen a bunch of other Treadstone agents from all
over the world, so what are the odds of the one who lost his memory
also being the very first one? Too many unusual things. Plus, it
serves no real story purpose for Bourne to be so super special.
Whether he was the first or the fiftieth doesn’t change anything... so
why do that?

2) When Bourne asks Nicky why she’s helping him, she alludes
to a past romantic relationship with Bourne before he lost his
memory. Say what? I have just watched the previous two films, and
there is *zero* indication of any past relationship in either of those
two movies. To the point of Nicky being scared to death when
Bourne is around her in both films - because he’s a malfunctioning
$30 million weapon. An actual loose canon. There is nothing in those
two previous films that sets up this relationship, and it seems like a
lame reason to help him... as if they couldn’t figure out something
better. Contrived. Since Nicky is the female lead in the new film, will
there be Bourne flashbacks to their relationship?

Greengrass explains, “It was actually the idea of Tom Stoppard,

who was one of the (uncredited) writers on the film on how we could
develop the Bourne and Nicky relationship, and he had this idea that
you could create a scene where Bourne would realize from what
Nicky was saying that they had a past together. Out of that idea it
went through various versions (with each new writer). This was
George Nolfi’s version.”

The better answer for Nicky would have been: “You didn’t ask for
this, you don’t deserve this.” This not only makes Nicky’s character
sympathetic, it reinforces Bourne’s quest *and* takes Landy’s side in
the big debate at the center of the story. Always go to theme or the
central conflict whenever you can’t figure out an answer or
motivation or even an action. Though the story is about Bourne’s
past, it’s not about his romantic past... and even if you did want to go
there - it would be about his romantic past pre-Treadstone. Not some
fling he may have had with fellow agent Nicky. How does office
romance tie into this story? Are Landy and Vosen gonna get busy
later in the story? I hope not! The only thing worse than that would
be a flashback to a Landy / Abbott make out session!

The conversation is thankfully interrupted when a pair of

policemen enter the diner, and Bourne and Nicky decide to leave
before they may be recognized.

In the Gilroy draft, Nicky is adversarial - she is still with the CIA
and tries to capture Bourne in the “Daniels’ Office Scene” (which
takes place in Tangier at the Canadian / Morocco Arts Council in that
version) - their conversation is all about Bourne searching for
information about his past.

By the way - no mention of a Bourne / Nicky romance in the new

movie at all.

OceanofPDF.com
 PLANNED SUSPENSE

(48:45) CIA HQ - Daniels has entered Tangier.

There’s a nice plant in this sequence where Vosen, in his office,

opens his safe using his thumb-print and voice (saying his name)
and pulls out a dossier marked Top Secret. He makes a phone call to
*someone*, saying they’ve found Daniels.

Landy is advised by Cronin that they have found Daniels in

Tangier and have mobilized an “asset” to assassinate him.

(50:00) Tangier. Bourne and Nicky arrive by ferry, go through

customs.
The “asset”, Desh (Joey Ansah), hops a cab at the airport.
Daniels gets out of a taxi at the Hotel Vasquez, near the bank
where his money has been transferred.

At CIA HQ NYC, they keep tabs on everything.

Bourne and Nicky check into a hotel, and Nicky uses her laptop
to access CIA info... discover that Desh is the assassin assigned to
kill Daniels.

This is cross-cut with Desh preparing for the assassination -

getting a motorscooter, gun, other weapons... and a bomb.

Bourne has Nicky call Desh for a meet at a café for last minute
briefing, as a way to follow him to Daniels... hopefully with enough
time to get to Daniels before Desh kills him. So we have now set our
plan, and as we noted in the first film - once we know what the plan
is, suspense is generated by how the plan begins to go wrong. If we
don’t know what is supposed to happen, we can’t fear what might go
wrong. So make sure the audience knows what the plan is!
 (53:00) The CIA notices that Desh is going off course for some
reason... and stopping. What? Desh spots Nicky in the café, she
hands him a cell phone without a word, he gets back on his
motorscooter and zips away...

Bourne steals a motorcycle and zooms after him.

At CIA HQ NYC: They note that Desh is back on course to the

assassination...
But they’ve intercepted a text that sent him to a café... from a
computer belonging to Nicky Parsons. Vosen orders that Desh be
sent after Nicky when he’s done with Daniels. Nicky will be with
Bourne, so kill them both. This does not sit well with Landy. “You do
not have the authority to kill her.” “Oh yes I do... and you have better
get on board.” “She is one of us. When you start going down that
path, where does it end?” “It ends when we’ve won.” Awesome
exchange. Both sides clearly defined...

And because this conversation takes place in the middle of the

operations room with all of those tech people at monitors
surrounding them, we get *the group* wondering which side they are
on in this debate. The techies are kind of a Greek ChorusXXX who
will sway this way and that as this debate escalates.

(56:00) Desh gets a message with Bourne and Nicky’s photos...

then notices Bourne on the motorcycle behind him. This sets up
Bourne vs. Desh - two equally matched opponents who will be
playing against each other in this sequence. The great thing about all
of these movies is that it isn’t Bourne vs. Some Normal Person, it is
Bourne vs. Someone With Equal Training And Skills.

There’s nothing interesting about an expert playing against a

novice - we pretty much know that the expert will win. Boooring!
Even in a film like “Three Days Of The Condor” when we have our
trained assassin Joubert playing against our book worm Condor, it’s
made clear that what makes Condor an equal is that he reads...
everything. Condor may not have done things, but he knows
theoretically how to do them... and the suspense comes from the
experienced expert against the knowledgeable amateur. We usually
want our protagonist to the underdog - the major mistake is in
making the protagonist Superman fighting a bunch of idiot earthlings
who don’t stand a chance. No fear that Superman might fail. Though
the audience loves to fantasize that they are Superman (or Jason
Staham or James Bond) there’s no excitement if battling the
antagonist is easy. A story is a rollercoaster, and we don’t want one
that’s just one long flat straight-away! We want frightening falls and
scary curves.

Back at CIA HQ NYC, Vosen is told two minutes until Desh

reaches target Daniels. And we have our ticking clock! Vosen has
the bank release the $100,000 and call Daniels and tell him that he
can come pick it up.

Daniels gets his phone call, leaves to get his money...

Pulls his car out of the hotel garage.
Desh rides his scooter down the street towards him...
Bourne right behind him...

When Desh stops his scooter, Bourne stops a half block behind
him... gets off and approaches on foot. Bourne watches Desh drop a
bag under a car on the street. Note that point of view is involved -
this isn’t just a random shot of the bag being dropped, this is through
Bourne’s eyes - and he’s the audience identification character. So
*the audience* sees the bag being dropped. This puts the audience
in Bourne’s shoes - what will *we* do?

When Daniels’ car turns the corner and heads towards that
hidden bag, Bourne lifts his hands, “Stop!”

Bourne then looks at Desh who is walking away - for a moment,

both men lock eyes. This has been a chess match, is Bourne a move
ahead of Desh or a move behind him?
 Bourne notices that Daniels’ car has stopped parallel to where
Desh parked is scooter.

A move behind - Desh hits the detonator and blows up his

*scooter*! Destroying Daniels’ car and throwing Bourne across the
street. The bag was a decoy!

The explosion rocks the city - smoke billowing into the sky.
Panic in the streets - people running and screaming,
At the cafe, Nicky realizes something has gone wrong.

Bourne lays on the street, unmoving.

Desh grabs Bourne’s stolen motorcycle and zooms away. Two
targets down, one to go...

OceanofPDF.com
 POKING THE TIGER

Bourne staggers to his feet, messed up but alive. He sees Desh

zoom away and limps down a hill, which gives him a head start. He
finds some parked motorcycles and hot wires one... just as a Police
Car rolls past and gives chase!

(59:00) Now we get a “poke the tiger” shot of Nicky at the cafe.
She is Desh’s target, and it is important to remind the audience that
she is still there waiting for Bourne...

So when we cut back to Desh on his stolen motorcycle weaving

through traffic to get back to the cafe and kill her, we will have
suspense. The audience needs to know what action might happen in
order to anticipate it. That way Desh speeding towards Nicky, while
Bourne speeds after Desh, while the Police Car speeds after Bourne
creates an exciting three way chase where the audience can fear
that the Police will slow down Bourne and Bourne will not be able to
stop Desh... and Nicky will be killed. We need to clearly establish the
stakes in any action or suspense scene, and here that’s Nicky’s life.
So we need to “poke the tiger” with that shot of her (or a line in the
screenplay with her at the Cafe to remind the reader).

More Police Cars enter the chase, and Bourne uses his
motorcycle to take a bunch of cool short cuts - up stairs, through
alleys, down *crowded* stairs - to try an evade the police and get to
Nicky before Desh.

OceanofPDF.com
 EIGHT MINUTE CHASE SCENE

And now we have an eight minute chase scene (which is 5 pages

of screenplay)... how do we keep a chase scene that long exciting
and suspenseful on the screen and on the page? Reversals!

What's a reversal, you ask? Let Shane Black (“Lethal Weapon”,

“The Nice Guys”) explain: "A reversal is like a good news, bad news
joke. The bad news is, you get thrown out of an airplane. The good
news is, you're wearing a parachute. The bad news is, your rip cord
breaks. The good news is, you have a back up 'chute. The bad news
is, you can't reach the cord. Back and forth, just like that, until the
character reaches the ground. He's gonna die... no, he's not...
Reversal, reversal, reversal."

There are two types of reversals – Story Reversals and Scene

Reversals. Story Reversals are when a character has a plan or the
audience has an expectation and it runs into a dead end, so that the
character must figure out a new plan. In thriller films like the Bourne
movies there is often an information source that can help them solve
the problem, but when they get to that source he or she is killed... so
they must now find a different source. Ross being killed earlier in this
film is a good example. Story Reversals are like rocks and
mountains in the way of a river – the river will still flow to it's
destination (the sea), but it will have to work its way around the
obstacles.

Shane was talking about Scene Reversals, which are the

cornerstone of any great action scene. These are little things that
come in the way of moment-by-moment plans. The hero reaches out
to grab a fallen gun and the villain kicks it away. By filling your action
scenes with Scene Reversals you keep them exciting and involving
and unpredictable. It's not just two people fighting – which can get
boring after a sentence or two – it's a battle where advantage
changes with every line. And when the advantage changes, we
worry that the protagonist might not win...and that creates suspense!

In my “Secrets Of Action Screenwriting” book I use that great

scene with the flying wing from “Raiders Of The Lost Ark” as an
example - that’s a lengthy action scene, but it’s never boring. You
could use any scene from “Raiders” as an example - what makes all
of those scenes exciting is the use of reversals. Here we have an
eight minute chase scene, so let’s look at some of the reversals that
keep it exciting.

Nicky sees all of the police cars coming and walks away from the
cafe...
Desh zooms around a corner and sees Nicky on the sidewalk...
Nicky walks quickly down the sidewalk, disassembling and
destroying her phone...
Desh zooms closer to Nicky (but he’s moving against the crowd,
which is headed in the direction of the explosion to see what
happened).
Nicky heads down a crowded pedestrian alley filled with little
shops.
Desh gets off the (loud) motorscooter and walks down the alley
after her.

Bourne gets to the cafe, ditches the motorcycle and runs to the
table where Nicky was. Empty. She’s gone!
He spots the trashed phone and runs in that direction.

In the alley, Desh is slowly catching up to Nicky.

Bourne spots Desh’s scooter, and heads down the crowded alley.
We now have a three way foot chase...
Make that four way, as four Police Officers on foot blow their
whistles for Bourne to stop! The alley is choked with people checking
out the little shops.
 Bourne grabs an aerosol can of something as he races past a
shop, lights it and throws it in a trash can - BLAM! - police officers
have something else to deal with. But a couple of Police Officers
head towards Bourne and he quickly fights them, taking the gun from
one of them. The police have provided him with a weapon.

With the rest of the police right behind him, Bourne kicks through
the door to an apartment building and starts climbing stairs to the
roof... with the Police right behind him!

On the roof, Bourne closes the door behind him - wedging it

closed - then looks down to the alley below... and a whole bunch
more Police Officers coming after him! He turns to the other side of
the roof and spots Nicky walking down the alley... with Desh not far
behind.

As Nicky runs through the crowded alley to evade Desh, picking

a side alley and trying to open door after door in hopes that one is
unlocked...

The Police are now chasing Bourne over the rooftops. More
improvised escape tools - when Bourne runs past someone’s
laundry on a clothes line, he grabs some things without slowing
down. There are maybe six Police Officers chasing him... and some
are pretty damned fast! Bourne comes to a wall between building
roofs which is lined with broken glass bottles, uses the stolen clothes
to protect his hands as he hoists himself over it. This gives him an
advantage, but the police are still close behind.

In the alleys below, Desh pulls out his pistol and screws on the
silencer as he gets closer to Nicky.

Nicky tries door after door - all locked!

Desh is getting closer in the maze of alleyways.
Nicky finally finds and open door and zips inside, closing the door
quickly behind her...
Seconds before Desh turns the little corner, gun ready.
 Nicky races upstairs, kicks open the roof door, runs to the edge of
the roof - trapped.
In the alley, Desh hears the noise of Nicky kicking open that door
and begins walking around the buildings looking *up*.

Bourne runs from rooftop to rooftop, until he hits a dead end. No

more rooftops, just a great view of the city. The Police are a couple
of rooftops away, and they stop and aim their guns at him. Bourne
moves to another side of the roof - spots Desh and his gun in the
alley, then spots Nicky on the edge of a rooftop...

Nicky looks across the alley from the edge of the rooftop... then
*jumps*! Makes it across, but Desh spots her as she flies overhead!
Races to the building she jumped to.

Bourne sees Desh running, jumps off the edge of the roof to a
roof below... then jumps from the edge of that roof across the alley
and *through the window* of an apartment! Running past a shocked
family.

Nicky runs across the roof to a door leading down stairs...

Desh opens a door in the alley and starts going up stairs...

Bourne continues cutting across to where he saw Nicky by

jumping out one building’s window - over the alley - and into another
building’s window. There is an awesome shot in here where the
camera (and a cameraman!) does the same jump behind Bourne -
following him across the alley and through the next building’s
window. Though not necessarily the writer’s job, nothing says you
can’t write the action in such a way that the director has a brilliant
idea to do that shot. Much of the writer’s (secret) job is to word things
in such a way that the reader imagines an angle or shot or stunt
(without coming right out and saying it) so that the *director* comes
up with the amazing idea (that the writer hinted at). If it’s *their* idea,
they’re likely to do it. If it’s something the writer spelled out, they may
avoid it (because it’s not their idea).
 Bourne races through several apartments with shocked families
until he looks out to the building across the alley and sees Desh in
one window and Nicky in another - on a collision course - and makes
one last jump. All of this has been leading to a scene where all three
are in the same location, and now we have that! This has been an *8
minute* chase sequence! The reversals and details make is exciting
all the way through!

OceanofPDF.com
 SAVAGE FIGHT SCENES

(67:00) In the flat, Desh fires at Bourne, and the two fight hand-
to-hand with the gun between them. When Nicky pokes her head
into the room, the gun goes off - almost hitting her!

Once Bourne knocks the gun from Desh’s hands, the fight turns
savage - people being thrown across the room and slamming into
walls. Now, Nicky could just stay behind cover as the two men fight -
but that would be stupid. This is an *elevated thriller* and characters
don’t do stupid things. So when Desh is pummeling Bourne, she
jumps on his back, reaches into his mouth and tries to tear his face
off. I have no idea if that would work in real life, but it looks really
painful on screen.

Desh knocks her off his back and just slams the hell out of her
with his fists and elbows. But this gives Bourne time to get to his feet
and continue the fight. There’s an awesome moment where Bourne
twists Desh’s arm behind his back and Desh flips out of it. Yikes!
How can Bourne win against this guy?

Though everyone says that “Casino Royale” and its brutal fights
were in answer to Bourne, this savage fight scene is inspired by
*Bond*. The old Connery Bond films often had fights (like in the
beginning of “Thunderball”) where no piece of furniture in the room
was left in one piece. Everything in the room is a weapon, too - and
here in “Bourne Ultimatum” we get a heavy candlestick holder vs. a
serving dish, and the awesome use of a hardback book. Bourne
uses the hardback book to pummel Desh in the face. That’s gotta
hurt! When the fight moves into the bathroom, we get straight razor
vs. towel. The apartment is trashed by the time Bourne chokes Desh
to death, and so are all three combatants. Broken, bloody, messed
up - Bourne and Nicky are still standing.
 One of the fun “assignments” in my Action Screenwriting class is
to look for the weapons in any room or store or restaurant or café
you enter in case of sudden ninja attack. Look around you - what are
the weapons? If this were a hardback book instead of an ebook, this
could have been one of them.

OceanofPDF.com
 WHICH SIDE ARE WE ON?

(69:00) Bourne searches Desh, finds his phone, tosses it to Nicky

and has her send the code that tells Vosen that Bourne and Nicky
are dead.

At CIA HQ NYC, Vosen is notified Nicky and Bourne are dead

and we get a strange moment of silence from all of the tech people
behind monitors in the room. They aren’t much different than Nicky.
Has Vosen overstepped his authority? Vosen orders the CIA Station
Chief in Rabat to go to the location and have the bodies secretly
removed, then leaves the room. The techies are not cheering this as
a win... and they watch him leave.

In his office, Vosen makes a call to tell an unseen Man that

Bourne and Nicky are dead. The Man wants to make sure both are
really dead. Vosen assures him every leak will be eliminated
permanently, and if anything goes wrong - Landy will be seen as the
one responsible. Who is this villain? When the Man hangs up the
phone, we see that it is CIA Director Ezra Kramer. Twist!

Last chapter we looked at the “Ladder Of Villains” and now we

have finally exposed the top rung. Any thriller does something to
remove the authorities as a method of solving the problem for the
protagonist - in “North By Northwest” they attempt to kill Cary Grant’s
character with bourbon and a stolen sports car - so when he goes to
the police they think he’s just a drunk with an over active
imagination. In “Breakdown” Kurt Russell’s character has a police
officer stop the truck of the man who kidnapped his wife, and they
open the cargo area in the back... to find it empty - which makes the
police officer think that maybe Russell’s wife left him and Russell is
scrambling to blame people other then himself for having a marriage
on the rocks. In a political thriller like the Bourne movies, the
authorities *are in on it*! There is a conspiracy which involves the
authorities (or some of them) so the protagonist can’t go to them for
help with his problem because they *are* his problem. Unlike in
“Three Days Of The Condor” where it’s a rogue section inside the
CIA who is behind the problem... here that problem goes all the way
to the top!

(70:40) Now we get another call-back to “Bourne Identity” in a

crummy hotel as Bourne sits on the hotel bed, looking at his battered
hands and Nicky comforts him the way Marie did. Bourne tells her he
doesn’t know all of the names of the people he’s killed...

While Landy goes through his file at her office - flipping through
pages of assassination assignments with those names. Deeper in
the file is some information on Hirsch and Bourne’s initiation into
Treadstone... and Daniels who was the one who recruited him. The
pieces come together.

In that crummy hotel room Bourne tells Nicky that he’s tried to
apologize for what he’s done, for who he is... but it doesn’t help. This
gets us back on track for the quest - who made him a killer?

Because we’re still in call-back mode, Nicky dyes and cuts her
hair just like Marie did. The crummy hotel room itself may be the
same set from the first film. One of the great things about this call-
back is that we know what happened to Marie in the last story... does
this mean Nicky will die?

(74:45) Remember when Bourne gave Marie the red bag of

money and said goodbye at the farmhouse in the first film? This time
there is no red bag of money, and it’s at a bus station. He says
goodbye to Nicky... and then goes to put an end to this.

OceanofPDF.com
 THE NEW CLUES

Bourne goes to the morgue to look at Daniels’ personal effects -

everything is burned from the explosion. But in his briefcase, one of
the burned fragments was part of the cover of the Top Secret dossier
which contains the CIA’s address in New York City.

(76:00) Wills informs Vosen that only one body was recovered in
Tangier - Desh’s. Bourne and Nicky are still alive.

Cronin grabs Landy, tells her that one of Bourne’s fake passports
just cleared customs... in New York City! Landy wonders why Bourne
is using a passport that traces back to him... is he communicating
with us? Landy decides to communicate back - without Vosen
knowing - and has an announcement at the airport that the fake
name on the passport’s “party is waiting for him”.

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 DC AL CODA

(78:00) Now we are back to the end of the last film, as Bourne
uses his sniper scope to look across at Landy in her office. The
difference this time around is that Bourne *also* looks across at
Vosen in his office as well, just as Vosen puts a Top Secret file on
Blackbriar into his safe. Now we get the exact same scene from the
end of “The Bourne Supremacy” as Bourne calls Landy, asks if she’s
still looking for him. She thanks him for the tape with Abbott’s
confession, etc.

But this time we also see Vosen as he and Cronin secretly listen
in on the call (“Fifty seconds to trace!”). Landy tells him his real name
is David Webb (quick flashbacks) and he was born 4/15/71 in Nixa,
Missouri. Exact same dialogue. “Get some rest, Pam, you look tired.”
This time, while Landy is looking out the window, Vosen is organizing
the capture of Bourne.

And instead of going to that Moby song, Landy tells Cronin she’s
going to go down to the street and show herself, to see if Bourne will
talk to her.

Greengrass says, “The idea for bringing Jason Bourne back to

New York was Tony Gilroy’s. In a sense, the story is about Bourne
coming home. Tony had this idea that you could create ‘The Bourne
Ultimatum’ where the first two acts took place between the last two
scenes of ‘Bourne Supremacy’. So you could come to the last scene
of ‘Bourne Supremacy’ the phone call between Bourne and Landy
that we remember from that film and you would understand it in a
different way in ‘Bourne Ultimatum’. It would replay in a different way.
It was a great idea.”

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 COMING TOGETHER

Bourne looks down to the street and sees Landy walk out of the
building... with two of Vosen’s men tailing her. Bourne sends her a
text - intercepted by Vosen. “Tudor City Pl & 42nd. Ten Minutes.
Come alone.” Vosen now has six men following Landy, mobilizes
more to go to Tudor City Plaza, grabs Wills and they go to his car.

A cell phone buzzes with a text, and a man in a hotel looks at it -

the assassin Paz from the Waterloo Station scene at the beginning
of the film. Hey, you may have forgotten about him, but he’s still out
there waiting for assassination orders. Paz grabs his weapon and
goes to kill Bourne. Once more we have several different parties
converging for action.

(81:45) On the streets of NYC:

1) Landy walks down the streets.

2) Six CIA Agents follow her.
3) Vosen and Wills and a couple of other CIA guys in an SUV.
4) Bourne walks down the streets.

In Vosen’s SUV they look at a map of Tudor City Plaza - it has a

dead end, making it a terrible place for a meet because there is no
exit. Why would Bourne pick this place?
They pull up at the location.

Meanwhile, Bourne opens a building’s door and begins climbing

stairs. Just a note - there are a helluva lot of stairs in this movie.

Meanwhile, Landy arrives at Tudor City Plaza... and is spotted by

Vosen’s team (they are all over the place - dozens of them!).
Everyone prepares to capture and kill Bourne. Landy stands there -
waiting. Waiting. Waiting. No sign of Bourne. Is he in disguise?
 Then Vosen’s cell phone rings. This exchange is one of the
reasons why Bourne movies are great - one element of a “smart
thriller” is that the protagonist is clever and outsmarts his pursuers,
and here’s a great example of how that works in dialogue:

“Noah Vosen,” Vosen says into his phone.

“This is Jason Bourne.”
“I was wondering when you were going to make this call. How did
you get this number?”
“You didn’t actually think I was coming to Tudor City, did you?”
“No, I guess not. But if it’s me you want to talk to, perhaps we
can arrange a meet.”
“Where are you now?”
“I’m sitting in my office.”
“I doubt that.”
“Why would you doubt that?”
“If you were in your office right now, we’d be having this
conversation face to face.”

Bourne hangs up, revealing that he is in Vosen’s office! And he

has taken a copy of Vosen’s finger print from the office phone! And
when he places that print on the biometric fingerprint reader on the
safe, and plays back Vosen saying his name on a tape recorder from
the conversation they just had - that safe opens right up! Bourne
takes all of the classified Top Secret stuff!

That dialogue exchange is great because of that awesome

“stinger in the tail” last line - where Bourne shows that he’s
outsmarted Vosen.

(84:00) Vosen orders everyone to get back in their vehicles and

get back to the damned office!

On his way out, Bourne triggers the alarm - locking down the CIA
offices. When Vosen has someone go to check his office, they can
not get in! The automatic locks have sealed it off! They end up
shooting out the glass door, entering Vosen’s office... and finding the
safe open and cleaned out! Vosen wants a four block perimeter set
up around the building and every inch of the building searched - it’s a
similar bit of dialogue to Tommy Lee Jones’ bit in “The Fugitive”
about searching ever dog house and out house.

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 TWO WAY CLUES

When all of Vosen’s men have left, Cronin pulls up and picks up
Landy - and he tells her that Bourne cleaned out Vosen’s safe. And
now we get a clever bit of dialogue repurposing: there’s a thing in
mysteries I call a “two way clue”. It’s a clue that can be taken one
way and lead to a dead end, but when taken in a different way
actually leads to the solution of the mystery.

In the Noir & Mystery Audio Class the examples that I use are
from “Chinatown” - the main one being the glasses found in the fish
pond that Gittes thinks prove that Mrs. Mulwray murdered her
husband in their back yard... except her husband did not wear
bifocals. Dead end. Until Gittes realizes that another potential
suspect *does* wear bifocals, and the glasses didn’t belong to the
victim but belonged to the killer. Same clue - works two ways. These
are great clues because once they hit the dead end the audience
tends to disregard them.

In this case the two way clue was Bourne’s date of birth. That
was a line (and probably the same shot) from “Bourne Supremacy”.
4/15/71. But it’s not a date of birth, it’s an address - 415 East 71st
Street - where Dr. Hirsch’s operation is located. Landy tells Cronin to
take her there.

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 FINAL CAR CHASE

(85:30) But that four block perimeter creates a problem for

Bourne - someone spots him on the street and calls for back up.
Vosen tells all agents that they have shoot on sight authority, as he
races to the scene.

Bourne takes off running - across a street against traffic, into a

building and up an escalator, up stairs to a rooftop parking lot where
he tries to break into a car... but a pair of armed CIA agents find him
and try to stop him... but fail. He gets into the car and hot wires it.

When Bourne tries to zoom away, a car comes after him and he
puts it into reverse and zooms backwards. They fire at him, so he
ducks down, uses the mirror on the passenger side visor to see what
is behind him as he steers while keeping his head down. That mirror
on the visor thing is brilliant - one of the things I like to do before
writing an action scene is look at the terrain and then think like
Jackie Chan - what are the weapons or the tools available in this
location? My car has a mirror on the passenger side visor, never
thought about using it in an action scene.

He crashes that car, steals a police car, and we get a car chase
@ 87:45.

Meanwhile, Wills has discovered that the birthday Landy gave

Bourne was wrong. Why would she do that? It must be a code. Wills
has the room full of tech guys stop what they are doing and figure
out what it might mean. They come up with all kinds of crazy
answers based on those numbers... but Vosen figures it out. Hirsch’s
training facility. Vosen orders all of the mobile teams to meet him
there, including Paz the assassin.
 Bourne races through the streets of New York City, being chased
by a bunch of CIA vehicles. Because this is an American Car Chase
- there are many crashes. Bourne rams cars, smashes cars, knocks
cars into other cars - anything that might cause a crash or a car to go
flying in a really cool way. There is much destruction.

Because screenwriter Tony Gilroy was off making “Michael

Clayton” and director Greengrass had hired a couple of other writers
(some directors are collaborative by nature, others need to be the
most powerful person on the set and work to remove anyone who
might challenge them... so they replace screenwriters instead of
listen to them), I suspect this American Style Car Chase was part of
the rewrites. There is a similar car chase in the new film which was
made without Gilroy. Though there is nothing wrong with a *clever*
car chase where there is much destruction, often the destruction is
covering the lack of character and story information in the chase. It’s
just junk action and you can remove it from the story without
changing anything. Remember an action scene needs to be a
character scene and a story scene or it’s garbage.

Eventually it comes down to Paz the assassin and Bourne

smashing into each other in cars.

Greengrass says, “I didn’t want us to succumb to big-movie-itis.” I

think he may not have succeeded in this action scene.

(91:00) After the final big crash, Bourne gets out of his destroyed
car and walks up to Paz who is trapped in his car. Bourne aims the
gun at Paz the same way he aimed his gun at Kirill at the end of the
car chase with much destruction in the last film. And, just like in the
last film, he lowers the gun and jogs away. Only this time there is no
backstory where this is the man who murdered Marie, it’s just some
dude. So lowering the gun and leaving doesn’t give us an emotional
moment as it did in “Bourne Supremacy”.

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 COMING HOME

Vosen calls Dr. Hirsch to warn him that Bourne is on his way.
“He’s coming home.”

Bourne gets to 415 East 71st Street... and has another quick
flashback. When he gets to the doors, Landy is waiting for him.
Bourne tells her they’ll kill her for giving him the address, why did
she do it. She says Treadstone, Blackbriar, all of these black ops -
“This isn’t us.” It’s what the bad guys do, not what the good guys do.
Bourne gives her his bag with all of the stuff from Vosen’s safe and
tells her to do something about it. Landy asks why Bourne doesn’t
come in with her, they can make things right together. “This is where
it started for me... This is where it ends,” he says as he enters the
building.

(94:00) Landy starts to walk away, when Vosen and a bunch of

CIA vehicles pull up and spot her. She bolts into the building behind
Bourne.

Now we have two tasks - Landy needs to get the information out
before the CIA guys find her, and Bourne needs to get answers from
Hirsch before the CIA guys find him.

Bourne gets to Hirsch’s floor by the elevator, then hits the fire
alarm - which seals the elevators so the CIA guys have to use the
stairs. Clever!

Landy gets to an empty office with a FAX machine, starts faxing

all of the files.

Vosen heads to security, has them play back everything until he

spots Landy. Clever! Then Vosen goes after her. Once again, the
three-way cross cutting keeps this sequence really exciting. We
worry about Bourne *and* Landy.

Then Paz the assassin enters the building, and we have a four-
way.

Vosen finds Landy in the empty office, spots the last page of the
Top Secret files going through the FAX machine. He runs to the
machine... getting there just as it gives off the confirmation beep.
“Better get yourself a good lawyer,” she says as she walks out. Great
exit line! Always find a good exit line - actors love them and so does
the audience.

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 CRIPPLED BY THE PAST

(96:00) Bourne gets to Hirsch’s training facility, and the

flashbacks come again. He has been in this hallway, he has been in
these rooms. He comes to the door where they tortured him and
stops... Hirsch walks up behind him. The great thing about Hirsch
and the casting of Albert Finney is that the character is kindly and
paternal - Bourne’s lovable father. Not some evil villain - a likeable
one. This is the man who made him an assassin. The man who
turned David Webb into Jason Bourne.

A father figure.

They have a nice little conversation. “Why did you pick me?” “We
didn’t pick you - you picked us. You volunteered.” That means
Bourne is the man who made Bourne as assassin. He is the villain,
not Hirsch!

Hirsch unlocks the door to the “conditioning room” where they

tortured him and we get a fatherly conversation from Hirsch and
horrible flashbacks from the past. Bourne aims his gun at Hirsch’s
head. “You can’t outrun what you did, Jason. You made yourself who
you are. You chose to become Jason Bourne.”

And then we get the big flashback, where Bourne is given a gun
and told to shoot a man with a black hood over his face... just as
Bourne had a black hood over his face in some of the flashbacks.
This is some other recruit who failed... and Bourne blows the man’s
brains out. Bourne really is the villain of his own story.

(101:00) Still flashback: After killing the hooded man, Hirsch tells
him that he is no longer David Webb, from now on he will be known
as Jason Bourne.
 Out of the flashback, Bourne lowers his gun from Hirsch’s head.
Bourne says he’s going to let Hirsch live - no hero’s funeral - Hirsch
is going to be arrested and tried for his crimes. Hirsch’s expression
says he’d rather be killed.

Greengrass says about the Bourne / Hirsch scene: “It began with
Tony Gilroy, then developed by Paul Attanasio (uncredited) into a
fuller confrontation, and then developed further by George Nolfi.”

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 CONFRONTATIONS

(102:00) Banging at the door: the CIA guys have gotten up the
stairs. As they break the door open, Bourne jumps out the window
and heads up some more stairs to the roof...

Paz the assassin chases up the stairs after him.

Both end up on the roof. Two assassins from the same program.
Two equals. Paz asks why Bourne didn’t kill him at the end of the car
chase with much destruction. Bourne asks Paz if he knows *why*
he’s supposed to kill Bourne? Why am I supposed to kill you, why
are you supposed to kill me? What’s the point? What’s the reason?
“Look at us. Look at what they made you give.” That line is an echo
from the first film, the last words of the Professor (played by Clive
Owen). This is echoing a line from previous films done right - you
have to remember this odd line all the way back to that first film. Paz
just aims at Bourne - not pulling the trigger and wondering who *he*
is. Why he is doing these things.

More CIA guys begin coming towards them, including Vosen - it’s
now or never. Bourne walks to the edge of the roof overlooking the
river. Paz lowers his gun... what is Bourne doing? Jumping off the
roof of this New York skyscraper? That’s crazy! But as Bourne jumps
off the edge of the roof, Vosen raises his gun and *shoots Bourne*!

Bourne falls all the way down to the river, body splashes into the
water and then floats to the surface. And now we get a duplicate of
the opening shot of the first film - Bourne’s body floating in the water.
We end where we began - which is awesome.

There’s a moment where Bourne’s body floats and we see the

city at night. It’s over for Bourne. The three films are a unit, a trilogy.
This is the end of our story.
OceanofPDF.com
 DENOUEMENT

(104:25) Landy testifies before a Senate investigation...

On the news - they report that CIA Director Ezra Kramer is under
criminal investigation for running the secret Blackbriar assassination
program. Nicky is watching the news in some far off country. Hirsch
and Vosen have also been arrested (and we see both in cuffs). They
report that David Webb, also known as Jason Bourne, who was
instrumental in uncovering the Blackbriar Program is missing and
presumed dead after being shot and falling off a Manhattan rooftop
into the East River... though his body has yet to be found. On that,
Nicky smiles...

And we see Bourne’s floating body as it starts to move... and

then swims away.

The end at 106:00 (exactly!) and then on to that danged Moby

song.

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 CONCLUSIONS

Even more financially successful than the first film, which is one
of the interesting things with franchises - people may not have
caught the first film or two when they were released in cinemas, but
thanks to DVD and BluRay and cable TV, have now become fans of
those first films and want to see the new movie. So now Universal
has this huge money making franchise that is not only loved by
audiences, but critics as well. This is the highest rated film in the
series on Rotten Tomatoes by top critics. Hey, those “Fast And
Furious” movies also make a lot of money, but don’t exactly get
critical praise. So this is a huge win-win for Universal and when
Bourne swims away at the end of this film I’m sure everyone at
Universal imagined he was swimming towards at least seven more
movies (there are seven more novels in the series).

As for our series writer and series director experiment? Well, that
may get a little tricky as when Tony Gilroy went off to direct his little
movie “Michael Clayton”. He returned with a movie nominated for
Best Picture Oscar, and Gilroy was nominated for Best Director and
Best Screenplay... and some other Oscar nominations as well. How
will that change the dynamics? Let’s find out...

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 THE BOURNE LEGACY
Release date: August 10, 2012
Starring: Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton, Stacy Keach,
Zeljko Ivanek, Dennis Boutsikaris.
Writer: Tony Gilroy, Dan Gilroy.
Director: Tony Gilroy.
Producer: Frank Marshall, Pat Crowley
Production Company: Kennedy/Marshall, Universal.

Budget: $125m
Domestic Box Office: $113,203,870.00
Total Box Office: $276,144,750.00
Running Time: 135 minutes (Longest Bourne movie by 20 minutes!)
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Tagline: “There Was Never Just One”.

Rotten Tomatoes: 55%

Metacritic: 61
Cinemascore: B

Quest: Get Me Drugs!!!!

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 INTRODUCTION

Now that we’ve had one experiment where the director basically
directed the screenplay that had been written without his input and one
where the director had input and his own writers rewriting the screenplay,
we come to the first of our really strange experiments...

Screenwriter with no director.

Paul Greengrass decided that “Bourne Ultimatum” would be his last

film in the franchise. Hey, no problem - they’d just hire another edgy indie
director, right? Well, wrong, because Matt Damon said that if Greengrass
wasn’t directing the next Bourne movie, he wasn’t starring in it. Oh, crap!
There are seven more books in the series to swipe titles from and then come
up with their own original story... how can this be a series if the *star*
doesn’t return? I’m sure everyone at Universal was in a panic mode. Factor
in the “The Fast And Furious: Tokyo Drift” had completely flopped, killing
off that franchise. Universal had decided to take the Fast & Furious
“franchise” to their home entertainment division and make direct to video
films... would they have to do the same with Bourne?

To keep Greengrass and Damon on the team, Universal produced the

$100 million (plus) “Green Zone”... which only grossed $35 million
domestic and less than $60 million overseas... not even coming close to the
film’s production cost (let alone P&A and all of the distribution costs).
They didn’t expect the film to be successful - at this point in time the most
successful Iraq war film had been “Jarhead” (also Universal) with $62
million domestic - hardly worth investing a $100 million plus budget in a
similar film. So this was basically a bribe to continue making Bourne
movies... and the bribe seemed to fail. Greengrass didn’t want to work with
Tony Gilroy on a screenplay, and even though Universal allowed him to
work on his own developing a script - he was unable to come up with a
screenplay in the allotted time. Though Greengrass had written both
“Bloody Sunday” and “United 93" those films were based on actual events
which played to his strengths as a documentary filmmaker and were well
documented. A Bourne screenplay would be spy fiction with complex
characters and plotting... not Greengrass’ comfort zone. This may be why
he was unable to come up with a screenplay before his deadline.

In November of 2009, President & CEO of Universal Ron Meyer,

Universal Chairman Adam Fogelson, and Universals Head Of Production
Donna Langley flew to New York and took Damon to dinner, explaining
that they wanted to make another Bourne movie and since Greengrass was
unable to come up with a screenplay they were going to hire series writer
Tony Gilroy. Because Greengrass and Gilroy were practically sworn
enemies at this point, that would probably mean hiring another director.
Damon said there was no Bourne for him without Greengrass directing.

This is one of the series problems in the film business - movie stars tend
to form a bond with the director who they work with every day on set and
have little to no interaction with the screenwriter, whose work is generally
done by the time production begins. I’ve told the story a dozen times of
going to the premiere of my first “Hollywood movie” on the 20th Century
Lot and when every name appeared in the credits there was a huge round of
applause from the cast and crew... but when my name came up: nothing. No
one in the cast and crew had ever met me, except for the producers and
director. The craft services guy (who brings donuts and snacks to the set)
got more applause than I did! Of course, he also brings the coffee in the
morning, so maybe that’s understandable.

But what’s not understandable is how Hollywood stars focus on the

director instead of the writer and screenplay. In this case, Tony Gilroy had
been the force behind three of the Bourne films that Damon had starred in
and Greengrass had only directed two of them. If there was a “throughline”
in the Bourne films it was Tony Gilroy’s screenplays - he *saved* the first
film and then made the second and third films the major successes they
became. Even with Greengrass hiring his own writers on “Bourne
Ultimatum”, the concept and interesting structure were Gilroy’s. The other
writers worked from what Gilroy had created. Though the relationship
between Greengrass and Gilroy may have been a rocky one, sometimes the
best work comes from adversarial relationships. The competition forces
each side to up their game. Instead of trying to broker peace between the
two sides of the Bourne franchise, Damon decided to choose sides... and
instead of selecting the one created the story and characters and scenes and
dialogue and actions... he went with the guy who he knew better because he
worked with him every day on set. So, Matt Damon passed on Bourne
without Greengrass, and Donna Langley said, “You just have to move on
with your business. The franchise can live on. If at some point it can
include Matt Damon, fantastic. If it can’t, we’re reconciled to that.”

So Tony Gilroy wrote a screenplay about another top secret CIA agent
from a black bag operation that was similar to Bourne and even allowed for
Matt Damon to show up in a cameo role if he changed his mind as a way to
connect this new character to the character from the previous three films in
the franchise... but who would star?

Taylor Kitsch, Shia LaBeouf, Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Hartnett, Tobey

Maguire, Adam Brody, Garrett Hedlund, Luke Evans, Paul Dano, Joel
Edgerton, Oscar Isaac, Alex Pettyfer, Dominic Cooper, Michael Fassbender,
Kellan Lutz, Benjamin Walker, Ethan Arkin, Logan Marshall-Green and
Michael Pitt were all on the very long short list to play that other guy spy,
but Jeremy Renner who was hot off the latest “Mission Impossible” movie
and some superhero movie nobody had ever heard of called “The
Avengers” ended up in the lead role as Aaron Cross.

Damon did not return for a cameo, he was done with Bourne.

And Tony Gilroy, who had written and directed the drama “Michael
Clayton” which had been nominated for Best Picture Oscar and Best
Original Screenplay Oscar and Best Director Oscar as well as four other
Oscars... and won for Best Supporting Actress (Tilda Swinton), was
available to direct. So the writer of the Bourne franchise was hired to write
and direct “Bourne Legacy”... which means there probably wouldn’t be any
of that friction between the writer and director. How would that work out?
Let’s find out by looking at the new experiment in the Bourne franchise...

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BOURNE LEGACY

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 OPENING HOOK

Opening Image: Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) floating on top of the

water that calls back “Bourne Identity”... then he swims down the bottom of
a frigid Alaskan lake to grab a item.

Cut to Simon Ross (Paddy Considine) from “Bourne Ultimatum”...

Cut to new CIA Director Ezra Kramer (Scott Glenn) in a house in

Maryland reporting to Mark Turso (Stacy Keach jr) about Ross - where we
get a recap of the “Bourne problem”...

Like “The Bourne Ultimatum” this film has a bit of that “Pulp Fiction”
thing going on, but in this case it’s a story that takes place concurrently with
“Ultimatum” but focuses on a parallel top secret black bag assassination
program called “Outcome”. Jason Bourne was “Treadstone”, that was
replaced by “Blackbriar”, but at the same time they were developing
“Outcome”... which I think even makes the list in the new film. As I
mentioned, at some point in time it was possible that Matt Damon may have
come back to play a cameo, so this story was designed for that possibility.

Back to Aaron in the wilderness surrounded by wolves...

Cut to Ric Byer (Edward Norton) jogging in the rain in Virginia...

Back to Aaron studying a map in the wilderness and looking at a

container with blue pills - but no way to count the remaining pills so they
don’t work as a tricking clock... big mistake. If you have a character
running out of pills, give the audience an easy way to count them and clue
them on how often those pills need to be taken. That way the audience
“participates” in the story and is put in the character’s shoes. As they count
down to no pills, the audience does as well. Rookie mistake.
 Cut to National Research Assay Group in Washington DC, where Ric
Byer and his team (a half dozen character actors like Corey Stoll who are
not really introduced, we just jump into the conversation) discuss
Treadstone, Blackbriar, Outcome and LARX - the secret programs that no
one is supposed to know about. The last two are new to this series of films.

Back to Aaron in the wilderness taking a sample of his own blood...

Cut to Waterloo Train Station in London as a sniper kills Ross before he

can meet with Bourne (from “Bourne Ultimatum”). This is supposed to tell
us that all of these things are happening at the same time, but they end up
being kind of confusing because we are not given any context. What the
hell does Ross have to do with Aaron?

Cut to Ric Byer watching the news about Ross’ murder... and we get
some exposition about Ross from several news sources.

Back to Aaron who watches the wolf pack that has been following him
take down a deer. He takes a pair of pills: one blue, one green.

As if there wasn’t enough stuff to keep track of...

Cut to Sterisyn Morlanta labs as Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz)

drives through security because Dr. Hillcott (Neil Cunningham) needs her
to give “Number Six” (Rob Riley) a physical. Dr. Foite (Zeljko Ivanek)
briefs her on the patient. Number Six is wearing a dog tag-like pill
container just like Aaron.

So, that was the first ten minutes of our story, and it’s all over the place
and confusing. You need to be keeping notes to figure out what the heck is
going on and who all of these people are. Though I’m sure they thought that
integrating all of that footage and those characters from the previous film
would be a good way to convince the audience that this really is a Bourne
movie even if Matt Damon isn’t in it, that completely backfires. Not only
does all of that added footage just manage to confuse us, it also prevents us
from identifying with our (new) protagonist because we aren’t given
enough time with him before we cut away to some other character... and on
top of that it’s trying too danged hard to remind us that this is a Bourne
movie - which only makes us wonder why Matt Damon isn’t in it. Would
have been better to just pretend that the previous films didn’t matter and
focus on Aaron Cross and once the audience was invested in that character
*then* give us these other characters and place Cross in the context of the
previous films. So this movie begins on the wrong foot, a rookie mistake.
You never want to start out by confusing us!

The solution to character confusion is not to introduce all of your

characters at once but to use something I called the "String Theory" in my
Hook Em In Ten Blue Book, which has nothing to so with quantum
mechanics or particle physics or Stephen Hawking... it's just a method to
introduce characters by having one character lead us to the next character as
if they are all connected by a piece of string. This way, instead of suddenly
cutting to some unknown character, we have a character we "know"
introduce us to them... so we at least know who they are in relation to the
person we have already been introduced to. Think of this as being at a
cocktail party and have the host introduce us to the guests one by one...
instead of just saying: "This is everybody!" which would leave us knowing
none of them. The “string theory” gives the story a flow, allows us to be
introduced to one character at a time, and allows us to be introduced to each
new character as they relate to a character we already know.

Once we know each character, it’s possible for us to cut to a scene

featuring them without the being introduced again. The audience is never
confused, and all of the story threads eventually weave together into a
single story. You introduce a protagonist and once we get to know them
continue down the "string" to the next character. Instead of doing it all at
once, we introduce our characters one at a time as they relate to another
character. Oh, this is Bob's wife, oh, this is Bob's best friend, oh, this is
Bob's boss, oh, this is Bob's rival at work, oh, this is... This way all of the
characters have a logical connection to each other in the reader's mind and
we don't become confused. Think of your characters as connected by a
piece of string and introduce them in your story one at a time. There is a
*context* to each new character. We could have gone from Aaron saying he
doesn’t know who is in charge of this program... and then cut to that
character - they don’t have to actually know each other, we just need that
connecting string. Instead - we have confusion.

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 THE ARROGANCE OF SEQUELS

Part of the problem may be the arrogance of sequels. Often writers and
directors and producers believe that because this is a sequel, the audience
already knows the characters and everything else, so they don’t need to
spend any time establishing any of that. But a sequel comes at least a year
after the previous film, and in the case of “Jason Bourne” we’ve had nine
years between movies - how well can the audience remember details? Heck,
after a year most people aren’t going to remember everything. So a sequel
still needs to introduce us to characters - even if we’ve already met them.
Even if just a “refresher” is required - it’s still required! You can’t just jump
into the middle and hope everyone watched their BluRay of the previous
film the night before. This is where the skill of the writer is important,
because you want to reintroduce characters in a way that reminds them who
this person is without boring them. Think of an interesting scene that
demonstrates their occupation and skills and whatever else we may need to
remember about their character.

Shall we see how the next ten minutes works? Will it clear up all of this
confusion? Or just add to it?

We cut from Dr. Marta and Patient Six back to Aaron as he jumps
across a chasm cut in the center of a mountain - an impossible distance, but
he makes it. How is that possible?

Cut to a video tape of Albert Hirsch (Albert Finney) making a speech in

honor of Dr. Hillcott... being watched by Ric Byer and Turso and Ward
(Dennis Boutsikaris). They are afraid that the video will link Hirsch
(Treadstone) to Hillcott (Outcome), so they want to close down Outcome.
Ward is against it, and argues a lot.

Here’s an odd side problem: in the middle of all of this confusion we

have a character named Ward who is not played by Brain Cox (whose
character was named Ward in the first two films). This can’t be the same
person, that person is dead... so why the heck does this character have the
same name? Did the CIA need a person with the same name as a
replacement? Was that a job requirement? It’s never a good idea to give
characters similar names or even names that begin with the same letter
because it can be confusing to readers and viewers... but the same *name*?
Do they want us to remember previous films in this series... but forget that
there was a character with this name before? Rookie mistake.

Back to Aaron who hides his dog tag-like pill container in his boot. He
has reached his destination - a cabin in the woods - where “Number Three”
(Oscar Isaac - pre-“Star Wars”) is hiding in the trees guarding the cabin.
Aaron sees him, and “Number Three” drops out of the tree onto his feet.
Also an amazing superhuman action. What’s up with these guys?

They have a conversation: Aaron beat the record for the course by two
days. No one has figured out the way to come over the mountain (that
chasm always gets in the way). Aaron says he had to hurry because he lost
his pills - they fell off a cliff. He needs his meds! This turns into a debate -
Aaron wants his pills, “Number Three” says he can’t give them to him.
Meanwhile, a drone will land in 3 hours to collect Aaron’s blood samples.
They’d better draw the blood soon, then they’ll talk about the pills.

We are now fifteen minutes into the story...

Cut to CIA Deep Cover Anti-Terrorism Bureau, NYC where Noah

Vosen (David Strathairn) announces that Bourne is in NYC and Willis
(Corey Johnson) sneaks out to call Ric Byer with this information. This is a
composite of scenes from “Bourne Ultimatum” and some new footage...
and a bunch of new characters for us to remember.

Back to Aaron and “Number Three” as “Number Three” puts the blood
samples in the drone - the label on the blood sample case says “Sterisyn
Morlanta”... if you hit pause on your BluRay player. This clue is supposed
to help the audience link Aaron and Dr. Marta in that lab scene earlier - but
it’s so quick I missed it when I saw the film on the big screen and only
noticed it by using the pause button on disk. So this doesn’t help us connect
all of these plot threads - they all still seem like part of a different movie.
 The drone takes off... and Aaron still wants his damned pills! Asks all
kinds of questions... Aaron wonders why he was pulled off assignments to
do this survival test - and why “Number Three” is here as well. Theorizes
that “Number Three” fell in love and was demoted to this job. “Number
Three” wants him to leave in the morning.

And now we are at the twenty minute mark...

Aaron tries to sleep in one of the cabin’s bunk beds, and reads names
carved into the bottom of the bunk above - including Jason Bourne’s. More
attempts at connecting this story to the other three that kind of backfires
because it’s there. Instead of making this part of the series, it just reminds
us that it’s not part of the series.

Cut to Seoul Korea where “Number Four” (Jennifer Kim) hands in her
blood samples to Mrs. Yun (Page Leong) and is given *yellow* pills instead
of blue and green ones.

Cut to a diner where Ric Byers is talking to General Don Paulsen (John
Thompson) about shutting down Outcome. Even more characters! How can
we remember all of these people! Compare this to “Bourne Identity” where
we only have a handful of characters in the whole film! Here we are with
another first film (there is supposed to be a trilogy of Aaron Cross films)
and instead of following the lead of “Bourne Identity” and making the first
story simple and easy to understand with a clear cut goal and clear cut
obstacles we get too many characters to keep track of and a really confusing
story told in a really confusing way! We cut back and forth between this
conversation between Byers and Paulsen in the diner and “Number Four”
and Mrs. Yun in Korea, to further confuse matters. We don’t even know
who these characters are and we’re splitting up the scenes into little pieces.
This is writing and directing and editing - and all three dropped the ball.

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 MASS ELIMINATION (PART 1)

Now we’re 25 minutes into the story, and somewhere around here we
should be kicking into Act Two because we should be done with
establishing the characters and the conflict... but there are still more
characters to come!

Cut to Karachi, Pakistan where “Number One” (Adi Hanash) takes his
yellow pill. Another character in another country with some other plot line!

Back to the diner where Paulsen points out an article in the Washington
Post about Jason Bourne’s escape in NYC to Byers. Just a reminder - this
*is* a Bourne movie, even though Matt Damon is only seen in a couple of
photos.

Cut to “Number Six” walking on the docks as he drops dead.

Cut to Pakistan where “Number One” drops dead.

Cut to Korea where “Number Four” drops dead.

Hmm, now maybe we are in some for of Act Two... or maybe the story
is just kicking in. I’ve been comparing these films to “Three Days Of The
Condor” because the first film follows the pattern of that film, so in this
film we have now hit the incident that *begins* “Three Days Of The
Condor” - the killing of all of the agents who may know something (or may
prove to be an embarrassment). That happens twelve minutes into
“Condor”, and here we are over 25 minutes into this story! But, wait - we
aren’t really in Act Two yet because Aaron hasn’t been locked into the
conflict, yet - they haven’t tried to kill *him*.

Back to Aaron and “Number Three” in Alaska eating breakfast and still
debating the meds... when Aaron hears something - the drone returning.
Aaron grabs his backpack and heads into the woods to check it out from a
better vantage point... but the drone fires a missile at the cabin, blows it
(and “Number Three”) up.

Cut to Drone Command in Virginia where two pilots and a commander

notice that there is still an active tracking device on the move, and send the
drone in to get Aaron.

We are now 30 minutes into the story, end of the most confusing Act
One in the history of thrillers, and Aaron is now on the run. We’re in Act
Two... or at minute nineteen in “Three Days Of The Condor”. So not only
has this been confusing, it’s also been slow going - we haven’t had our first
suspense or action scene, yet. But at least the protagonist is finally involved
in the conflict, except...

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 DRONE CHASE

We cut back and forth between Drone Command trying to figure out
how they could have missed Aaron with the drone strike and Aaron on the
run. Aaron turns his bright red jacket inside out and puts it back on so he is
now is difficult to see in the falling snow... but he still has his tracking chip
in his thigh. He tapes his mess plate over his thigh and they lose sight of
him at Drone Command. Aaron assembles his sniper rifle, aims at the drone
- fires a couple of times and takes it out. The drone crashes behind him as
he disassembles the sniper rifle. Not really much of a chase - no reversals
(except the reversible jacket). The drone is a wreck - and Aaron finds traces
of shattered pill bottles and blue and green stains in the snow. He needs his
meds dammit!

Total Drone Chase Time: one minute and forty seconds... most of that
in Drone Control as they talk about why Aaron wasn’t killed in the first
drone strike. No actual chase involved - no scenes with Aaron trying to hide
from the drone or take cover in the trees or anything else which might have
been exciting. Basically, they turn the drone around to take another pass to
get Aaron, but Aaron shoots it out of the sky. The end. No excitement at all!

Cut to Ric Byer and his assistant Dita Mandy (Donna Murphy) as they
race down the freeway demanding immediate clearance for something. We
cut back and forth between this and...

Back to Aaron as he goes back to the wrecked cabin looking for meds.
This dude is an addict! He grabs some tools he thinks he might use and
takes the time to cut the tracking device out of his leg (a capsule like in
“Bourne Identity”), and captures a wolf (!) and force feeds the tracking
device capsule to it by hand (!).

Cut to Ric Byer who is now at Drone Command where they have
launched another drone and are honing in on the tracking device. One of the
Drone Pilots asks what kind of weapons system Aaron has and the answer
is “a rifle”. Problem here is with specifics - “weapons system” is vague -
and might even include a rifle. The Drone Pilot should have mentioned
something specific like SAMs (surface to air missiles) or RPG (rocket
powered grenade) or something else that’s heavy arms so that “a rifle” has
more impact. Instead we get “what kind of weapon - a rifle” which just
sounds like an answer. Though the Drone Pilot gives a shocked look after
the rifle line, it’s using the actor’s expression instead of creating a situation
where the *audience* feels how amazing that answer is.

The story should be all about what the audience feels, and sometimes
you need to bend reality a little to create those emotions. The Drone Pilot
may never have listed possible heavy arms that were used to take out the
drone in real life (only thought them) but in a story we need to get that
information to the viewer or reader!
The drone finds the tracking device and they prepare to fire.

Aaron runs, the wolf chasing him. Now, this could have been a great
suspense scene where Aaron has to find ways to keep the wolf from getting
too close to him (because that might put him in the drone’s blast zone) but
instead - missile fires from drone, wolf gets blowed up real good, Aaron is
far enough away that he is never in trouble for a minute. Another seconds
long “action scene” that provides no actual thrills. But does give us Byer
believing that Aaron is dead at around the 40 minute mark.

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 STILL NO ACT TWO!

Which means we aren’t in Act Two yet! The protagonist is not

struggling with the conflict - they think that he is dead. So we are still stuck
in Act One after 40 minutes of confusion without much action... and instead
of a quest for identity, it’s a quest for *pills*! Great if your target audience
is drug addicts, not so good if you are aiming at a general audience. But it
does make me wonder if drug addicts liked this film more than general
audiences.

Because the story is still stuck in Act One, we get a flashback to Aaron
and Byer in some danged Middle Eastern country (not identified, unlike
every other location in the film so far, which just feels odd) - backtracking
to fill us in on why Aaron was taken out of the field to do that survival test
course in the first place. Byers tells Aaron that sometimes civilians get in
the way in a mission and must be killed, just the way it goes. Byers says he
and Aaron are “sin eaters” - they do terrible things for the greater good and
must keep those feelings buried deep and hidden away. We are still setting
up the story!

We come out of the flashback into a scene that’s more glue attempting
to attach this to the other Bourne movies, where Byer and Turso and Ward
discuss Pamela Landy’s upcoming Senate hearing testimony.

Somewhere around page ten Byer should have just said: “Shut it down,
kill everyone” and we could have avoided all of this stalling and all of these
scenes that take us out pf this story to remind us that it’s somehow
connected to some other story. The problem is - this film is confusing and
slow moving and doesn’t seem to have anything on its mind worth thinking
about during the 98% of it that is “slow spots”. At least we have connected
Byer to Aaron Cross. One character connected, a few dozen others to go
including...
OceanofPDF.com
 MASS ELIMINATION (PART 2)

Cut to Sterisyn Morlanta labs as Dr. Foite runs some tests and watches
Hillcott in the next room. He walks into the room - removing the exterior
door knob and locking the door, that’s odd. Pulls out a gun and kills
Hillcott, then goes around the lab shooting everyone else.

At one point, Dr. Marta hides under a desk, and there’s some pretty
good suspense generated as Foite walks right past her.

You remember that scene that’s twelve minutes into “Three Days Of
The Condor” where all of the agents who could have possibly known the
secret are killed? This is part two of that in this film... well over 40 minutes
into the film!

While Security tries to find someone with a security card with clearance
for the room (everyone with a card at that level of security is in the room)
Dr. Marta ends up the only person Dr. Foite has not killed - so instead of
staying in the hiding place which has kept her alive to this point, she runs to
a room and closes the door - which can not be locked - and Dr. Foite comes
after her. She uses her lab coat to jam the door closed, but Foite fires
through the bullet proof window on the door until he runs out of shells.

While he’s reloading, Dr. Marta opens the door, knocking him to the
floor, and goes back to hiding under a desk. Dr. Foite reloads and goes to
shoot her... but is saved by the bell as a Security man has gotten the lab door
open and shoots Dr. Foite, wounding him. Foite turns the gun on himself
and blows his own brains out. The scene last exactly 3 minutes... and could
have better if Dr. Foite had have kept a count of people killed, as a sort of
ticking clock. In “Three Days Of The Condor” the hit squad at the
beginning has an actual list (with photos) that they go down person-by-
person crossing each one off, until it’s only Condor left alive.
 Not only is Dr. Foite stupid for not having a list, Dr. Marta is stupid for
running from a safe hiding place to an unsafe one... so instead of making
our characters smarter (the way the previous films did) this time our
characters are dumber and have to out dumb each other to survive. This is
not good.

Cut to some dude in Alaska pulling his pick up truck up to his plane
hanger... which is empty. WTF? Who is *this guy* and how is he connected
to this story? This film has been super confusing up until now, and it seems
as if they are trying to make it even more confusing (if that is even
possible).

Cut to Aaron Cross flying the plane low to the ground to avoid radar...

Oh, so that guy is the owner of the plane that Cross stole? It’s like those
two scenes were backwards - the punchline then the joke.

Cut to Byer watching a TV news report on the workplace violence at

Sterisyn Morlanta labs and how Dr. Marta managed to survive.

Cut to Marta being questioned by the police about what was going on at
Sterisyn Morlanta labs... she doesn’t answer, but we get another
backtracking flashback to show Dr. Marta examining Aaron Cross in the
lab. Aaron tries to have a conversation with him and she is all business.
Hey, more flashbacks showing how two characters out of all of these folks
are connected! Which is another form of punchline and then the joke.
Flashbacks are supposed to move the story forward, not plug a plot hole...
but here they are only used to plug plot holes... and I hope they bought a
Costco-size case of them because there are all kinds of things that still seem
to have little to no connection.

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 LONG TERM PARKING?

In the first Bourne movie, Jason Bourne has a laser thing planted in his
*hip* with the name of a Swiss Bank and an account number... where he
finds a safety deposit box filled with money and fake I.D.s and a gun - his
emergency kit. In other films in the series we often see other Treadstone or
Blackbriar assassins with similar emergency kits hidden in logical places
that only they had access to. In their homes, in their locked garage with
their motorcycle, etc. All of that makes sense - the plot of “Out Of Sight”
revolves around stealing a millionaire’s “go bag” of hidden cash somewhere
in his mansion. Hey, I live in earthquake country and lived through the
Northridge quake (which damaged the building I was living in), so I
understand having a go bag ready for when you’ve got to go. Like crime
films and spy films, the Bourne movies have a stash bag - a go bag that is
hidden somewhere in case of emergencies. Bourne had to go to the bank,
some of the other characters have had them hidden in their house or garage
like a normal go bag. So now we have Aaron Cross on the run, going for his
hidden go bag. Where do you think it is?

Cut to Chicago, as Aaron breaks into a car in long term parking, takes
off the door panel to expose a dozen different license plates and an envelope
filled with false IDs and passports. He selects an ID and drives the car
away...

Wait, what? Who pays the parking fees on that car? What if someone
tried to steal the car and got his I.D.s and money and all of that other stuff...
but didn’t know it? This is the craziest place to keep your go bag I’ve ever
heard of! I wish he would have gone to the garage and found the car
missing... towed away by the garage parking company because the car had
obviously been abandoned.

While zooming down the road we get a shot of the Chicago Sun Times
on the seat beside Aaron with a headline about the Sterisyn Morlanta lab
shootings and a photo of the only survivor - Dr. Marta.
 Cut to Dr. Marta’s old house in the middle of the woods - this is the first
time there has been a “bridge” between diverse scenes to create a “flow”.
From the newspaper picture of Marta to Marta. If only the previous 52
minutes of the film had done this, it would have been much less confusing.
Film is all about *persistence of vision* - each frame connects to the next
frame creating a flowing moving image (even if it’s digital). And each
scene needs to flow naturally into the next so that it is all part of the same
moving image, the same story. One thing needs to lead to the next. So far
this film has been a jumble of seemingly unconnected scenes and characters
and ideas. Often the problem has been scenes seem to be told backwards on
purpose - beginning with confusion and ending with the connection that
would have made the scene make sense to the viewer. Had the scene just
been more organized the film would be less frustrating. But, I’m afraid this
one instance of “flow” is just a coincidence because the story continues to
be a jumbled mess...

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 WHEN AARON MET MARTHA

In her old house, Dr. Marta packs a suitcase...

While Aaron changes shoes. Huh?

In her old house, Dr. Marta answers the phone. It’s an NSA Team here
to interrogate her - driving up now. A whole minivan full of agents lead by
Dr. Connie Dowd (Elizabeth Marvel) a psychologist. She does the
interrogation - it seems that Dr. Marta bought a plane ticket to visit her
sister in Canada and the FBI thinks that’s suspicious. Plus, it seems that
crazy Dr. Foite had all kinds of photos of her in his apartment - he was
obsessed with her. Marta always thought he was Gay. Dowd says this
obsession is why Dr. Foite let her live. Marta says he didn’t let her live - he
was about to kill her when the Security Officer shot him. Marta thinks
Connie is asking all the wrong questions, they should be looking at Dr.
Foite’s blood work to find out if he was given some of the experimental
“behavioral design” drugs which might have “programmed” him to kill.
Kill *everyone* in the lab. That’s what makes the most sense...

And then one of the other Agents comes in with Dr. Marta’s gun,
“Found it.”

Then Dowd holds Marta down in her chair while the other Agent fights
to put the gun in Marta’s hand and hold it to her head to kill her and make it
look like a suicide.

A second before the Agent pulls the trigger and kills Marta, Aaron busts
out of the closet directly behind the Agent and knocks the gun out of his
hands. How long was Aaron in that closet? Hours? Why did he wait until
now to burst out and save the day? Why didn’t anyone on the NSA team
find any evidence that he was there - and why didn’t the NSA people who
were probably watching Marta’s house this whole time see him enter? This
is one of those plotting things that just rings false - and you can maybe go
back and figure out that Aaron used his abilities to sneak onto the property
and hid in the closet when the NSA Team arrived and was going to wait
until they left to talk to Marta... but jumped out when he realized they were
going to kill her; but that’s a lot of thinking *after* the fact instead of just
setting it up before the fact. There’s a difference between a great surprise
scene and confusion... and once again we get confusion.

But we also get an action scene.

And this deep into the movie, we *need* it.

Aaron fights Dowd and the Agent, Marta scoops up the fallen gun and
runs upstairs. A couple of shots are fired in here, and that brings the rest of
the Team in from outside - all of them have automatic weapons. Aaron
breaks Dowd’s arm and kills the Agent, escaping the room. Running
through the house he is shot at by the other Agents. He gets into the cellar
and grabs a fire extinguisher and some nails and turns them into a gun (cool
- MacGyver stuff!).

Marta hides upstairs and the injured Dowd goes to find her - but no real
suspense is generated.

Aaron fires the nail at the Agent, then the two get into a hand-to-hand
fight... and he kills the Agent and takes his holstered pistol, leaving the
automatic weapon. Why would he take the time to search for a less effective
weapon instead of just grabbing the better weapon right there on the floor?
Who knows.

Meanwhile, the other Agent goes down to the basement... as Aaron

comes out of the basement’s exterior doors, runs up the side of the building
(all in one shot - this is Renner doing the stunt - super cool) and breaks
through the attic window, shooting Dowd dead before she could generate
any suspense at all in her search for Marta. It’s as if the story was *trying*
to be boring. No reversals. No suspense. Nothing that would make the scene
exciting.
 Aaron raises his hands and walks into the room where Marta is hiding,
says he’s not here to hurt her. “Do you want to live?” He tells her to do
exactly what he says and gives her his wrist watch. We don’t get to hear
what he says... only that she’s looking at the watch and at a certain point
fires her gun.

The final Agent has climbed the stairs and is on the landing, turns when
he hears the shot, and that’s when Aaron fires through the door of the closet
where he was hiding and kills the Agent. How could he know that the agent
would be there based on *time*? Why is he spending so much time in
closets? This action scene is five minutes long, which is much better than
any previous action scenes, but without reversals and suspense it’s kind of a
dull action scene.

If we go back to “Bourne Identity” and look at the Embassy Scene

where the Marines are chasing Bourne, it has all kinds of suspense: like
when Bourne opens what he thinks is a fire exit door but there are no fire
stairs and no ladder... but a Marine is right behind him so he can’t go back.
He hangs from the platform as the Marine opens the door and looks for him
- and we worry that Bourne will lose his grip and fall or make a noise and
the Marine will look down and see him - and that scene is stretched out for
maximum suspense. How long can he keep his grip? But in “Legacy” we
get none of that... just 5 minutes of kind of bland action.

The first thing Aaron asks Dr. Marta after they are safe? “Do you have
any program medication here?” Pills! This guy is an addict! Why are we
supposed to care about this addict? It’s almost as if there was a story note
that asked “What is his goal?” and the first answer that popped into Tony
Gilroy’s head was “Pills! Drugs!” (I’m not sure what this tells us about
Gilroy.)

Aaron basically goes ballistic about the pills - demanding to know

where he can get some. Dr. Marta says she has no pills at the house. Aaron
looks into her eyes - as if he can tell if she is lying or not - and decides to
believe her. Then he says they have 8 minutes to clear out before a second
squad comes to kill them. Where he got the 8 minutes I have no idea, but it
does give us a potential ticking clock... except it’s unused.
 Aaron grabs some big cans of gasoline from the basement (because
everyone keeps big cans of gasoline in the basement, I know I do) and
pours them all over the house - the stairs, the floors, the dead Agents...

Then one of the Dead Agent’s walkie talkie beeps and an Agent in a car
watching the street asks when they’ll be finished. Aaron grabs the walking
talkie and says “Ten minutes”, then goes back to spilling gasoline all over
the place... even creating a gasoline “fuse”. Then Aaron goes up to Marta,
pulls out his cigarette lighter (??) and hands it to her - she gets to torch her
own house.

Aaron and Marta run through the woods as the house bursts into flames
behind them and the Agent on the street drives up to the burning house.

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 MIDPOINT?

We are now at the halfway point in this very long film... and even
though both Aaron and Dr. Marta have been attacked by our conspiracy,
both are still thought to be dead at this point so we haven’t gone into Act
Two yet. Though the Byer Conspiracy has actively involved them in the
story by trying to kill them, they have stopped searching for Aaron Cross
and at this point have no further attempts on the life of Dr. Marta Shearing
planned. We are getting close to Act Two, on the edge of Act Two... but still
not really there yet. The ball is in the villain’s court, and when Byer hits it
back we will be in Act Two. The problem is we have spent half of the
movie setting up this situation where we have Aaron and Marta teaming up.
Each had their own Act One, and that has taken up the first half of this
movie. Even if we were to look at this moment where they team up and go
on the run together as the beginning of Act Two (because we know that
Byer will eventually come after them) it’s still really late in the story.

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 NUMBER 5 IS ALIVE!

In his car, Aaron and Marta zoom down the road as fire trucks pass
them. Aaron says that her new identity is “June Monroe” and his name is
“James”. She wants to know if that’s his real name - she only knows him as
“Number Five“. Aaron tells her that she has examined him thirteen times
over the past four years and he’s just a number to her. We get a talky
exposition dump here where we find out there were nine participants in the
program - now all are dead except Aaron and everyone in the lab is dead
except Marta... and Aaron wants his damned pills!

She wants him to stop the car so that she can get out, and he stops the
car.

So now we get a *stagnant* talky exposition dump. After a bunch of

talk (most of which is Aaron wanting his damned pills) we learn that the
pills are manufactured in Manila, Philippines. To make this even more
stagnant that a stopped car, they both get out and we get more exposition as
they *sit on the hood of the unmoving car* - where we learn that the green
pills he was taking were placebos and he was given a “permanent dose”
through a case of the flu with a genetic modification attached. Marta can do
the same with the blue pills if they can get to Manila.

The problem with all of this exposition, aside from becoming more
static with each block of talk, is that it’s all at the same time. One block of
talk after the other. Why not spread it out with action in between each
chunk of exposition? Or, better yet, instead of talk - find some way for
Aaron to physically discover this information. Turn it into the kind of
mystery that Jason Bourne deals with in the previous films and have him
learn bits and pieces along the way and then assemble them into the
answers. The green pill thing would have been fairly easy to do by showing
him able to do some amazing physical activities even after he had run out of
pills (the greens are physical, the blues are mental).
 The larger problem is, here we should be in Act Two and we are still
setting up the basics and setting them up in the least interesting way
possible. The story just grinds to a halt. This chunk of exposition might
have worked if it were in the middle of a car chase, but instead the car is
parked on the side of the road and they are *sitting* - not even the
background is moving! The story just dies. You don’t want a start-stop
story, you want a story that is like a freight train hurtling to the destination.

This big discussion of science vs. responsibility doesn’t really go

anywhere, it doesn’t really explore the question at all! It’s just filler conflict
to make the big chunks of exposition seem easier to swallow... but they
aren’t. Instead, it just stretched out the time spent on exposition... and
makes it take much longer to get to the point that everyone else figured out
minutes ago: they have to go to Manila.

Cut to Candent Pharmaceuticals as they have a stock holders meeting

about their new drug lines. WTF? Is there anything more boring than a
stock holders meeting? And what does it have to do with our story?

Well, *pills*!

Cut to Byer and Turso and Ward in a room discussing the failed mission
to kill Marta - because we need even more sitting & talking in the story at
this point. Byer says he can’t run this operation from this room, he need a
“crisis suite” (whatever that is - though I suspect it’s a room with big video
monitors where people sit and talk). Some people need pills to get by,
others need suites.

Back to the car and more exposition between Aaron and Marta... this
time about why the flu is a great way to change DNA. So it’s *boring*
scientific exposition while seated in a car.

Cut to Marta’s house as hazmat crews enter (that’s the cover story) and
then cut to Byer in his “crisis suite” watching this all on the big screen - so
we are no longer watching the action, we are watching people watching the
action on television!
OceanofPDF.com
 CAN THIS BE MORE BORING?

In an airport hotel we get a scene where Aaron and Marta make up false
passports... which unfortunately reminds us of the same scene in “Bourne
Identity” where they change their hair colors and radically alter their looks.
Here, no change in the looks of either one, though Marta puts on her
glasses. It’s almost as if they *want* to be spotted on the airport security
footage a few scenes from now! But also, we get more stand and talk
exposition about how everyone thinks they are dead and she needs to stop
worrying about her sister and family. Which points up a major structure
problem - at this point the bad guys think both are dead and are not
searching for them, so there is no threat, no suspense, nothing!

Just to add to that, Aaron gives us his backstory - he shows Marta his
obituary on the computer. Everyone he knows thinks he’s dead. He also
finally mentions the reason why he needs to get those damned pills: he’s
stupid. They lied on his documents to get him into the program and added
some IQ points so that he was somewhere near normal. But really, this is
“Flowers For Algernon” as an action film - if he doesn’t get the blue pills
he will get more and more stupid until he won’t be able to outsmart the
badguys and they’ll kill him. You know, I kind of like that... but we are over
81 minutes into the film and it’s way too late to explain why he needs the
damned pills. That’s Act One material - setting up the conflict. The problem
with this story is that there is no one chasing them and up until now we
haven’t had any motivation for him to need his pills. This could have been a
swell ticking clock - can Aaron get the medication before he gets too stupid
to survive? But over 81 minutes in?

Exposition, exposition, exposition!

Cut to that “crisis suite” where Byer and Turso and Ward talk about the
bodies and shell casings found in Dr. Marta’s house - but no Dr. Marta. Oh,
there’s a big screen somewhere in the room while they discuss this, but it’s
not on camera.
 Marta and Aaron use their fake passports to get on a plane - no suspense
at all generated, they breeze right through. Separately. Once in the waiting
section at the gates, Aaron calls Marta and they have a phone conversation
from opposite sides of the waiting area - all of the excitement of a phone
call while the characters are sitting down! He tells her how she should find
someone to walk behind when she boards the plane... now, here’s where we
might have generated some suspense. The way the planning scene in a heist
movie works is the audience understands how the plan is supposed to work,
and then unforseen things go wrong. But nothing goes wrong here.

Cut to that “crisis suite” as they try to figure out how Marta escaped her
house.

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 NOTHING DRIVING

In the airport, Aaron takes his last blue pill - again, no use of the pills as
a ticking clock, he just takes a pill. One of the details they get completely
wrong here is that the pill has some blue powder around it - dust from all of
the pills that have been in the dog tag like container over the past four years
- and that powder ends up in his palm. Does he *lick* the powder off his
palm? This is his precious drug, the thing that should be driving the story,
but instead he just wipes off his palm. What? Was Aaron never a kid? Was
Tony Gilroy never a kid? When you have melted chocolate on your hands
you lick it off! And this is the drug that is supposedly driving the story!
What this does is show us that the drug really isn’t important, it’s just an
excuse... like everything else in this soulless story.

The TV in the airport gate is showing a news broadcast about the hunt
for Jason Bourne, just to try and paste this film into the Jason Bourne
universe. Fails.

On the way to the gates, Dr. Marta spots a newspaper with her picture
and some made up headlines about how she was a dangerous and mentally
unstable person. She grabs the paper and reads it - even though the photo
looks just like her (just without glasses).

Aaron gets into the plane - no sign of Marta. Suspense! What if she
doesn’t make the flight? But less than a second later she gets on the plane.
So no real suspense.

Cut to that “crisis suite” as they look at really small monitors showing
satellite footage of two people getting into a car near Marta’s house - it
could be her. Now all they have to do is find more footage so they can
follow that car and then find some security camera footage from someplace
to identify Marta because it might be some other woman getting into that
car. Oh, and identify the man, too. We are treated to the team making phone
calls to get permission to get footage, because that’s exciting as hell! Phone
calls dealing with bureaucracy!

On the plane - Aaron and Marta sit in their seats and fly to Manilla...
real edge of your seat stuff!

Cut to the “crisis suite” as they get some footage that shows their target
car pulling into a drug store parking lot. The drug store security footage
shows Dr. Marta... getting a passport photo taken! “Get me security footage
from every airport in the area!”

The plane lands in Manila, they go through customs... and again we get
a chance for some suspense, but instead they basically breeze through.
Seriously, I’ve had more problems at customs going to a film festival!

Meanwhile in the “crisis suite”, more phone calls getting permission to

see security footage from airports.

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 ALL TOO EASY

In Manila, Aaron and Marta take a taxi cab from the airport. You can’t
imagine the amount of excitement this generates. They are sitting in the
back seat of a taxi! You know, they don’t even show us the meter running as
a ticking clock. Again, once I landed somewhere for a film festival,
changed my money, and ended up not having much in my wallet. So there
was some suspense based on the taxi cab’s meter - would I have enough?
Would the cab take an American credit card? Would I need to figure out
how to stop at an ATM and get more money in order to pay off the cab?
That meter was ticking away, and taking more and more money from my
wallet. I was not in a suspense film, I was just going to a film festival. Here
- no meter, no suspense, just boring shots of people in a taxi going
someplace.

In the “crisis suite” they find security footage of Marta looking at the
newspaper at Kennedy Airport.

In Manila, Aaron and Marta try to get past security to get into the
Sterisyn Morlanta labs... but it is the middle of the night, and really weird
for them to be here at this time. Think of all of the things that could go
wrong! Except, there’s a Security Guard who recognized Marta and lets
them through without any problem. No suspense, no conflict - easy as pie.

In the “crisis suite” they have security footage showing Dr. Marta
handing over her ticket on the flight to Manila. Byer wants the full
passenger list from the plane. Now here’s the thing - there is no chance of
them capturing Marta at this point because the plane has already landed.
They know that she is somewhere in Manila. Instead of jumping to Manila
and trying to find her there (or even just using their heads and wondering if
Sterisyn Morlanta has a lab in Manila), they want to know who else was on
that plane.
 Okay, maybe they want to know who helped her escape, but they could
get that information by following the trail to Manila - and finding out who
just walked into the lab. So this is a completely stupid and unmotivated
action on Byer’s part. Done only to stall the story so that Marta and Aaron
can get further along in their plan... and to stall the reveal that Number Five
Is Alive... and to stall Act Two from beginning.

In Manila, Aaron and Marta walk though the pharmaceutical plant

where a night shift is bottling pills. Guess what? Marta’s security card still
opens the doors to the Sterisyn Morlanta lab offices in the plant.
McDonalds probably voids your employee card five minutes after you’re
fired so that you can’t get back into the cash registers to get a little
severance pay, but at this top secret CIA black bag operation, her card’s still
good.

Of course it is!

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 STALL, STALL, STALL

In the “crisis room” they are going to go through the photos of everyone
on that flight to Manila. Now, this might seem like some sort of ticking
clock kind of thing, except what’s the “explosion”? What is at stake?
Nothing. They will know that Aaron Cross is alive. Um, they still have to
catch him. So it doesn’t really impact the story in any way. But we get to
see the faces of every single passenger on that flight. I wonder if the actors
whose faces are shown on the monitor get paid for that? What do you think
they get paid? $50? $100?

Oh, and Byer makes a big speech about looking through the faces
before we even get started. Oh, and then we get a conversation between
Byer and Ward and Turso about why Marta would go to Manila... and how
many trips she has made there previously... yet no one seems to ask “Is
there a Sterisyn Morlanta lab over there?” Because that would make sense
and cut to the chase. Except there is no chase in this film. It’s all people
talking about stuff.

At the 95 minute mark they get to the passenger photo of Aaron, and
Byer knows that Number Five Is Alive, and we are getting close to entering
Act Two (where the chase begins). Up until now, no one has even been
*looking* for Aaron since that scene where the drone fired at him. There
has been no conflict involving Aaron. So we were still in Act One. Now
they know that Aaron is still alive, and might come after him. 95 minutes
into the film. We should be getting into Act Three by now! But we are just
now getting close to Act Two!

But instead of going after Aaron and Marta in Manila, they spend some
time discussing how it is possible that Aaron is still alive. Then they discuss
why would Aaron and Marta go to Manila. Then someone mentions there is
a Sterisyn Morlanta lab over there.

Finally!
 Except then they debate why she would go to the lab. It’s really just a
small “kitchen” where they make the pills. This debate goes on for a while
until someone mentions that Marta may be “viralling out” Aaron by giving
him the flu. Hmm, in that case, maybe we should start thinking about
checking out the lab in Manila and seeing if they might be there.

Marta injects Aaron with the blue pill flu, so now *his goal* has been
achieved. At no time did Byer and those guys get in the way of Aaron
achieving his goal. They didn’t even know that he was alive! So no real
conflict involved in obtaining that goal!

All of these are rookie mistakes, and make me wonder about Tony
Gilroy. Gilroy is Hollywood royalty - his father was award winning
screenwriter and director Frank Gilroy, and his brothers are writer-director
Dan Gilroy (“Nightcrawler”) and editor John Gilroy (“Narc”), and he broke
in with the original screenplay “The Cutting Edge”... but after that he wrote
a bunch of adaptations like “Dolores Claiborne” and “The Devil’s
Advocate”. He is mostly known for adaptations and rewriting existing
screenplays. His originals like “Proof Of Life” and “Duplicity” are often
problematic. As much as I love “Michael Clayton” its strengths are
characters and scenes rather than plotting. Many (probably most) of the
upper echelon Hollywood screenwriters are skilled at *making things
better* rather that making things from scratch. Though the previous three
Bourne movies were only loosely based on their novels, there was still a
jumping off point. Something to make better. This film was the first in a
parallel new series that has little to do with the previous films (even though
they keep trying to convince us that it does). Basically an original
screenplay. Even though his brother Dan was a co-writer on this, neither is
known for being a “hard story” or “hard structure” writer, let alone an
expert. Maybe Gilroy would have been better off finding some writer with
those skills to collaborate with? Or just writing and finding someone else to
direct (or vice versa). Without having anyone to challenge him, the script is
flabby and dull. Having the protagonist achieve their goal with no real
struggle or conflict is the kind of mistake you expect to find in a new
screenwriter’s first screenplay... but here we have Marta giving Aaron the
blue pill flu injection, which solves Aaron’s problems.
OceanofPDF.com
 TALK YOUR WAY OUT OF THIS!

On the other side of the lab, the phone rings and the Australian guy who
is probably night shift manager answers and asks if they’ve seen Dr. Marta
and Aaron. Sure, they’re in the lab on the other side of the building... we
already sent three security guys to talk to them. Byers says to lock down the
building but *don’t* try to take them. They’ll send someone. Okay, because
no one has been sent, we still aren’t really in Act Two yet!

Those three security guards get to the little lab where Aaron & Marta
are, and instead of action or suspense we get a conversation. Aaron and
Marta try to talk their way out, but that doesn’t work... and eventually we
get a quick action scene where Aaron knocks out all three security guards in
a second and then they decide to escape the lab.

*Now* Dr. Marta’s security card won’t work on the exit door, but
Aaron picks up a giant wrench that was just laying around a medicine
manufacturing plant and knocks the door open. No suspense, no real
difficulty. They are now running down a hallway at the pharmaceutical
plant.

At 99 minutes into the film - the chase has begun!

Except it hasn’t.

The Australian Shift Manager guy orders people to do things...

And Aaron and Dr. Marta calmly walk across the pharmaceutical plant
floor between conveyer belts, past employees, towards the exit. Now, there
might be some suspense generated here had there been people looking for
them - but nobody is doing that. In a similar scene in “Minority Report”
suspense is generated by Tom Cruise’s character trying to get across a large
open mall space as teams of police are actively looking for him. Remember,
he has to wait until the balloon vendor walks past? That scene built all
kinds of suspense. Here, nothing.

Then Aaron does something really stupid - no one is looking for them,
so he takes his gun and fires at a panel which sets off the fire alarm. Okay,
the reason why he might have done this is that it creates a crowd of
employees running to the exits and they can maybe blend in (though the
employees are all wearing pink scrubs and pink surgical masks and pink
hair caps and Aaron and Marta are in dark colored street clothes). Outside,
Aaron knocks down the Australian guy and calls for security to help the
man... and they easily escape.

Meanwhile back at the suite, Byer is discussing this with the team - they
need to find Aaron and Marta. Notice, he isn’t *doing anything* to find
them. He isn’t taking a jet to Manila. He isn’t trying very hard to find them.
He’s basically passive. A passive antagonist. I’m really not sure we’re in
Act Two, yet, because Byer is still talking and not really doing anything. As
they discuss what to do, Vendel (Cory Stoll) suggest they use a LARX
program agent in the area to find Aaron and Marta.

Now we get a big steaming pile of exposition about the LARX program.
Because that will delay any actual chase or action in this film even longer.
Stall, stall, stall!

OceanofPDF.com
 HIDE AND NO SEEK

Meanwhile in Manila, Aaron is getting the flu so Marta finds them a

place to stay... and we get another flashback which is still *setting up the
story*! 102 minutes into the film, and we’re still in Act One!

In the flashback, Aaron Cross joins the program run by Dr. Hillcott...
and that flashback bleeds over into a video that Byer is watching of Aaron
and Hillcott. The flashack and video is a big steaming pile of exposition
that tells us Aaron used to be an Army guy named Kenneth James from
Nevada before he was taken into Hillcott’s Outcome Program and turned
into an experimental super soldier.

Okay, “Bourne Ultimatum” has a similar scene, but Jason Bourne is

driven by his amnesia - he doesn’t know who he is or how he came to be
this way, and when your life is a big mystery every piece of information
about it is a big reveal moment where the audience goes “Aha!”

But Aaron knows who he is and knows how he came to be here - this is
his flashback - so there is no “Aha!” moment, instead it’s just boring
information *that he already knows* which doesn’t change anything.
Bourne had no idea he was Bourne, let alone that he was somebody before
he was Bourne. Aaron knows all of this stuff, so there’s no real reason to
tell us about it. Doesn’t change anything.

Now we go back to that room where Aaron is suffering from the flu and
Dr. Marta is taking care of him. He tells her there’s money and fresh
passports in his jacket in case anything happens to him. But at this point
there is *no one chasing him* and “no one actively looking for them* so
there is no actual threat to either of them. Well, Aaron has the flu. He’s
probably pooping and puking a lot off camera - but we just see him shirtless
and sweaty.
 Does anyone else thing these “flu scenes” seem a lot like withdrawals?
Hey, Aaron won’t have to take the pills anymore as long as he suffers with
the flu for a while. Between the “quest” of this story being drugs and now
the need for drugs ending with these withdrawal-like symptoms, you start to
wonder if this isn’t really a Bourne story but maybe a story about drug
addiction. And maybe even a personal story. Gilroy’s “Michael Clayton”
has a main character with a substance abuse problem. I believe that all good
screenplays are autobiographical. But can a screenplay be *too*
autobiographical?

If the audience pays for a thriller, they expect to see a thriller. Now, the
autobiographical elements can be woven into the story and even used in the
theme. But the story still must work as a thriller, and in this case using the
drugs to drive the story makes it all about the drugs... instead of something
in the background of the story, or used symbolically through the theme.
This flu scene and the lack of actual thriller scenes makes me think this is
all about the substance abuse story. Whether that’s autobiographical, I have
no idea - but it gets in the way of this Bourne movie instead of
complimenting it.

At the 95 minute point, the LARX program agent lands in Manila and
begins actively searching for Aaron and Marta. Hey, we’re finally in Act
Two!

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 NONSENSE PLOTTING

Okay, let’s say you are trying to kill everyone in a top secret project so
that the press can’t find out about that project. You want to make sure there
is “minimum footprint”, and go so far as to create a workplace violence
incident and then send in a squad to force the only survivor to commit
suicide after planting all kinds of evidence which points to them thinking
that workplace violence may have been triggered by them rejecting a
romantic relationship with the perpetrator. Everything has to look like an
accident, because your goal is to keep this top secret program top secret.
Everyone who knows about the program is killed in ways that will not
attract any suspicion. So why would you use an assassin from another top
secret program (which you were supposed to close down - so logically this
guy can’t even exist at this point in the story) to find and publically kill
Aaron and Dr. Marta? Wouldn’t that *call attention* to both Outcome
*and* LARX? Wouldn’t that be twice as bad as just letting Aaron and
Marta vanish on their own?

In my “Secrets Of Action Screenwriting” book I look at silly villains

who have committed perfect crimes, and would have gotten away with
them except for our hero who thinks something is suspicious... and
eventually confronts the silly villain at a big party filled with hundreds of
witnesses. Now, everyone in the world except our hero believes that the
silly villain has nothing to do with these crimes... but as soon as the silly
villain is confronted by the hero, he or she takes out a machinegun at this
big party and begins firing at the hero! Where there was one person who
thought the silly villain was guilty before whipping out that machinegun,
there’s a whole guest list at the party who *know* the silly villain is guilty
afterwards. This does not make any sense. Wouldn’t it make more sense to
just tell the hero that he or she is mistaken, and then have their high priced
lawyer take care of it if the hero tries to make an arrest? Why do the very
thing that publically proves you are guilty?
 Why send in a hitman in the top secret LARX program to kill Aaron
and Marta to cover up the existence of the top secret Outcome program?
Makes no sense at all! This is just stupid story plotting! It’s forcing action
into the story instead of having it grow naturally from the situations and
characters. And it screws up Act Three - which we will get to in a moment.
But Byer sends in this LARX assassin to deal with Aaron and Dr. Marta.

OceanofPDF.com
 ARE WE IN ACT THREE YET?

Now we get some shots of people watching monitors in the “crisis

suite” and some shots of Aaron sleeping with the flu while Dr. Marta
watches. Shots of people sleeping? Actually, there’s a shot in the “crisis
suite” of Ward dozing off watching the monitors, too! It’s almost a sleep
montage! Why are people sleeping when we should be in Act Three?

We cut to our LARX assassin sitting in his unmoving car listening to a

police scanner... he might be getting sleepy, too.

While Aaron is sleeping, he has a fever dream about Hillcott, wakes up

- fever broken. Alone in the room. A note from Marta saying she has gone
to get medicine. Hey, she’s a doctor, shouldn’t she know that his fever was
coming to an end and that the flu was in its final stages? This is more forced
plottting!

We cut to Marta at a Philippino pharmacy as the Pharmacist gives her

dosage instructions on the medicine (“Four times a day”) which is just
*riveting* dialogue...

When several police officer race past on the street. Marta runs out of the
pharmacy, watches the police officers run to their room.

Aaron dresses, hangs the dog tag-like pill container on the mirror... and
we get some actual suspense due to the cross cutting!

Marta watches as the police officers close off the street and a SWAT
Team prepares to break into their room.

The LARX assassin on the street watches the SWAT Team prepare to
break into the room.
 Now, this suspense could have built for a while, but instead Marta yells
“Aaron, run!” then takes off running herself.

Aaron hears this, grabs his backpack and takes off! He sees the SWAT
Team and goes to the roof of the building to avoid them.

Police Officers are chasing Dr. Marta through the streets of Manila.
Hey, I think we finally made it into Act Two! We are over 109 minutes into
this film and Act Two has just begun!

To compare...

In “Bourne Identity” Act Two beings when Danny tells Conklin that
Bourne cleaned out his safety deposit box, 25 minutes into the film.

In “Bourne Supremacy” Act Two begins when Bourne uses his passport
and is detained in Naples, 26 minutes into the film.

In “Bourne Ultimatum” Act Two begins when Vosen sees Bourne on the
video and says “That’s Jason Bourne” and orders the asset to shoot him,
24:30 minutes into the film.

Act Two can’t begin until we reach that place in the story where Bourne
becomes the target and is now trapped in the conflict.

OceanofPDF.com
 ACT TWO CHASE?

Because the chase has begun, we cut back to the “crisis suite” so that we
can see that team sitting around listening to a translator explain what the
police are saying.

Exposition!

Exciting!

Not!

Then we cut to the LARX assassin in the room after the police have left,
*sniffing* Aaron’s clothes. Okay, this might have been cool earlier in the
story because we’d think this guy was maybe part bloodhound, but at this
point in the story we are expecting all kinds of action scenes, so a guy
sniffing clothes just seems out of place and weird. Does he have a fetish?
Then a Police Officer enters the room, asks him what he’s doing here - and
the LARX assassin kicks the Police Officer and takes off running. Is he
running from the police? Shouldn’t he have been chasing Aaron? So the
only people actually chasing Aaron and Dr. Marta at this point are the local
police?

A couple of local Police Officers chase Marta through the streets...

As Aaron follows them on rooftops - jumping from building to building

- to try and catch up with Marta.

Oh, and now the LARX assassin joins the chase - on rooftops like
Aaron.

Marta ducks into a doorway, the police race past... then she notices a
little girl in the room across from her and holds up her finger to the kid
telling her to keep quiet. Now, there might have been some suspense here,
except the police have *already run past* and are no longer a threat.

Aaron races across rooftops, and somewhere the LARX assassin races
across rooftops. There is no shot to show that one is chasing the other, for
all we know they are running in different directions. Nothing to give us a
clue to geography.

The little girl’s mother comes though the doorway, sees Marta, starts
yelling at her. Marta runs out to the streets again.

Aaron hears this (um, okay) and changes directions on rooftops to

reconnect with Marta. In here somewhere we finally get a shot that shows
the LARX assassin spotting Aaron and becoming part of the actual chase.

Marta runs down a narrow alley - then a Police Officer blocks her exit,
and another Police Officer blocks her retreat. She’s trapped. Both Officers
slowly advance.

On the roof overhead, Aaron jumps down onto one Officer, and then
fights the other, takes his gun and they escape... *walking* down the street.
Chase over.

For a moment.

Then police cars come down the streets, and Aaron looks up at a rooftop
and sees the LARX assassin... um, how does he know who that guy is?

This is one of those Story 101 things that it’s hard to believe a big
budget studio film could get wrong - Aaron Cross has never seen this
LARX agent before but knows who he is because the *writer* knows who
he is. Each character only knows what they know - they do not know
everything that the writer knows. Even though the audience knows this
information as well, the problem is that it rings false to them... they
probably won’t consciously know the reason why it seems wrong that
Aaron recognizes this guy he’s never seen before, but somewhere in their
subconscious it triggers a “this is wrong” sensor and they begin questioning
the reality of the scene and moment and even the whole story. Things just
seem wrong... and you don’t want that! When I do my rewrites I usually do
one pass for each major character looking at the story through their eyes
and making sure their dialogue and actions are consistent throughout the
story. A mistake like this might slip past a writer if it was one of those
dozens of character in the crisis suite, but this is our *protagonist*! This is
our lead character - how did this slip past? How did this get all the way to
the screen?

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 VEHICLE CHASE

Now the chase is between the LARX assassin and Aaron & Marta, with
the police as a side story. Aaron hijacks a small motorcycle, pulls Marta
onto the back, and they speed off. The LARX assassin hijacks a police car
and follows. We are now at 114 minutes into the story. Most movies would
be over by now. In fact, the previous Bourne movies would be in closing
credit roll by now! But we have *just started* the chase!

If you compare this movie to “Three Days Of The Condor” or “North

By Northwest” - two films where we have a couple on the run for part of
the story - those films are almost all chase. Here our chase doesn’t really
begin until 114 minutes into the film!

But now we get a three way chase: Aaron and Marta on the little
motorbike, the LARX assassin the stolen police car, and a handful of police
officers on big motorcycles. They zoom down crowded streets, in and out of
traffic, there’s a stunt or two, some cars ramming cars, a weird stunt where
Marta loses balance on the back of the cycle and grabs a passing bus - half
on the cycle, half on the bus - until Aaron pulls her back on the bike, and a
big car crash where the LARX assassin’s police car wrecks so he hijacks
one of the big police motorcycles. No reversals. No excitement. All kind of
dull.

I haven’t read the screenplay for this film, but I have read the previous
three and Tony Gilroy does an okay job of writing the action scenes. So
maybe the problem here is either Tony as a director or the Second Unit
Action Director being a moron... but it does point out the importance of
actually *writing* in the action scenes. If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the
stage. You can’t depend on the stunt guys or second unit action directors or
even the director having the imagination and creativity to come up with
those reversals and exciting moments on the set. Though the scene where
Marta is between the bus and the motorbike is a great idea - it just isn’t
fleshed out.
 Aaron and Marta get off the road and go up some stairs, and the LARX
assassin chases them. Then we are back on the streets - again, no reversals -
just stunts.

The LARX assassin and Aaron trade gunfire for a moment - Aaron gets
hit in the thigh, the LARX assassin gets hit in the shoulder...

Then we come to that outdoor fruit and vegetable market that Roger
Ebert predicted a couple of decades ago would be in this chase. Heck,
maybe more than that, since I subverted that cliche twenty years ago in my
“Black Thunder” film for Showtime which featured a character named
Rojar Ebair who owned a produce truck. Here, there is nothing new,
different, fresh or interesting - just the cliche. The LARX assassin crashes
his motorcycle into the several fruit stands in the outdoor market and we
have fulfilled that cliche in the most cliche way. It’s almost as if this were a
scene from the “Airplane!” version on the movie!

The LARX assassin is messed up, but gets up from the smashed fruit,
rights the motorcycle and rejoins the chase. So this really had little to no
impact on the chase.

Marta wants Aaron to pull over because he’s been shot, he says they’ll
stop when they get to the water.

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 WILL WE EVER GET TO ACT
THREE?

Hey, it’s time to cut back to everyone sitting around the “crisis suite” so
that we can get a discussion of what’s happening in Manila. Why watch the
chase when we can have people discuss it? This also points out a huge
structural problem with the story - we are still in Act Two. Yeah, it only
started a few minutes ago, but we are on the other side of the world from
where Act Three should be taking place.

In “Bourne Identity” Jason Bourne stops running from Treadstone at the

end of Act Two and goes to their Paris headquarters to confront them -
attacking Treadstone and killing the person in charge of hunting him
(Conklin). Here, those people in charge of hunting him are clear on the
other side of the world - back in Washington DC - and Aaron and Marta
have gotten farther and farther away from them instead of closer and closer
to them. So we are nowhere near Act Three, yet... and 2 hours into the
movie!

William Goldman said that “Screenplays are structure” - and one of the
major problems with movies that don’t work can be found in flawed
structure. One of the things that amazes me is how often big name
screenwriters make these simple structural mistakes. Part of that may be
that screenplay structure is something that is learned, and screenwriters (and
all writers) are often nonconformists who hate rules and time clocks and all
of the other things that are part of a structured world. They have amazing
writing skills, but their stories are all over the place. A mess. But when
starting out, structure is so important that they learn about it and use it in
their screenplays as they break in and establish their careers. Once those
amazing writing skills have been noticed, they throw away the training
wheels of structure... and for a while they keep the balance between their
wild talent and structure. But after a while they *forget* structure and their
screenplays begin to lose balance and sometimes wobble and tip over and
crash. This is when those big name, highly paid writers need to hit the
books and put on the training wheels again. Relearn what they have
forgotten. This may be the case, here.

Back to our motorcycle chase, which is now just the LARX assassin
chasing Aaron and Marta. They race through an industrial section near the
docks, into a warehouse... where Aaron passes out while speeding through
the warehouse and Dr. Marta kicks the LARX assassin so that his
motorcycle hits a pillar and flips.

That’s pretty much it for the chase - no real excitement because there
are no reversals, and the “asleep at the wheel” thing isn’t really an issue
because they are in an empty warehouse driving straight ahead. Imagine if
they were still out on the crowded streets weaving through traffic and Marta
(who has never ridden a motorcycle before) had to become a backseat
driver, and then there was a series of obstacles, and then Aaron began
falling off the motorcycle, and then... well, none of that happened. Instead it
was an empty warehouse and the motorcycle just went straight and the
moment the LARX assassin got close to them Marta first hit him with her
helmet then kicked him into the pillar.

As they come to the end of the warehouse, Marta knocks the bike to its
side and they slide on the cement. Aaron is okay. A guy runs up, and Marta
asks if he can help them.

Cut back to the “crisis suite” where everyone is watching a police video
of the room Aaron and Marta were hiding in. We get to see the whole
damned room, inch by inch, until we come to the mirror with the dog tag-
like pill container... and Aaron has written on the mirror “No more”. WTF?
Are those two words supposed to be Act Three? If so, couldn’t they have
come up with a better couple of words? Something that made more sense
and had more impact?

Something that had been set up earlier so that this was an amazing pay
off?
OceanofPDF.com
 EVERY MOVIE SHOULD END WITH
A BANG!

The LARX assassin’s death is kind of anti-climactic. He hits a pillar and

the crashed. No fireball, though there’s a CGI version of the fellow who
comes off his motorcycle. But one of the things we’ve learned from this
film is that these people who have taken the blue and green pills are almost
superheroes - they can jump from the tops of huge trees and land on their
feet and be ready to fight, they can get shot and crash into a series of fruit
stands and then get up and rejoin the chase previously in progress... so can
we be sure that LARX assassin is really dead?

Nope.

Can we be sure there is any resolution of anything at this point.

Nope.

Another rookie mistake! I’m sure that Gilroy was thinking that this is
the first in a trilogy, so he didn’t really need a big resolution... except
without the Death Star exploding at the end of “Star Wars” the movie
doesn’t work. We need a satisfying ending, even if this is the beginning of a
trilogy. Every movie has to stand on its own. They should have used
“Bourne Identity” as a model - it had a solid ending! They should have had
Aaron Cross and Dr. Marta face off against Ric Byer, tell him to leave them
alone, and have a nice big end action scene ending with Byer’s death (hey,
can even be by his own assassin as in the first film) and Aaron Cross and
Marta being free... until something happened to create the conflict for the
next film. We need a solid ending, a resolution to the conflict. But here we
just get a dull ending where the LARX assassin is dead... but Byer and
everyone else is still looking for them!
 But all the same, the *chase* is over. When the action ends in an action
movie or thriller, the audience is already reaching for their coats. There is
no more story, so the movie is over... and anything that happens after that
may be playing to an empty cinema. In fact, multi-Oscar winning
screenwriter Billy Wilder said: “The third act must build, build, build in
tempo and action until the last event, and then - that’s it. Don’t hang
around.” So at this point in time the movie should be over... except there are
*12 minutes* left in the running time. What?

Well, we need to see a bunch of scenes from “Bourne Ultimatum” at the

Senate Investigations of people testifying like CIA Director Ezra Kramer
(Scott Glenn). What could be more exciting than that? And we need to see a
bunch of footage from that previous film of Pamela Landy (Joan Allen)
leaving the Senate Hearings and dodging the press... and then making a
statement. And we really need to see the guys in the “crisis suite”
*watching* the TV as Pamela Landy dodges those reporters and then
eventually makes a statement - in order to tie that old footage from the
previous film into this story which really has nothing to do with Jason
Bourne.

Finally we need to see a longish scene of a boat captained by that guy

who Marta asked for help in the warehouse as it sets out to sea... eventually
revealing the Aaron and Marta are on the boat. They discuss where they
should go from here... this is a full chapter on the DVD! Of course, part of
this is the “Bourne” theme song by Moby over pretty shots of the boat with
the sky filled with wispy white clouds in the background. Gotta have that
theme song to fully cement this to the other three “Bourne” movies!

Sure hope Moby was paid well!

OceanofPDF.com
 CONCLUSIONS

Wouldn’t it have been cool if this story had been that “Flowers For
Algernon” as a thriller version where we knew from the beginning that
without meds Aaron Cross would begin to lose his intelligence - his edge
when on the run from the CIA guys - and our ticking clock would have
been him becoming less able to figure out ways to escape until he finally
became “mentally challenged” by the time they got to the lab in the
Philippines and Marta had to take care of him as if he were a child? Then
the “blue pill flu” would be the only way he could get back to his previous
intelligence so that they could escape the assassins sent to kill him and take
out Ric Byer (who could have been established as a super genius who could
easily predict someone’s next seven moves) and Byers final hit squad?

I have this theory that often when big name screenwriters get a chance
to direct they blow it by making their dream script (which may be
completely non-commercial) instead of making the type of mainstream
commercial films they had written in order to get to this point in their
careers. So that film they’ve worked so hard to finally make ends up
flopping and they are sent back to square one. Hey, maybe they can still
find indie funding, but studios aren’t going to reward them with a film
directing gig again unless they write a bunch of hit films that will be
directed by others. I think some of that may be at work, here. Gilroy had
just been nominated for Best Director, Best Picture and Best Original
Screenplay for “Michael Clayton” and had nothing to prove. He was the
best, he could do anything! Tony Gilroy is great at drama, but without the
pressure from a director (and maybe without much oversight from the
studio since he was the golden boy of this franchise) the screenplay for this
film ended up less mainstream thriller and more of a talkfest with a
motorcycle chase.

It probably didn’t help that Gilroy surrounded himself with other people
who shared his last name: his brother Dan co-wrote the screenplay and his
other brother John edited the film (which may account for why it’s the
longest of all of the Bourne films). He surrounded himself with people who
would support him instead of challenge him to do better. I have this thing I
call the “challenge draft” of a screenplay, where you have been hit hard by
producer notes... so you question *everything* in the story and write the
draft that is bullet proof. My example is, in “Empire Strikes Back” why
does Darth Vader have to be Luke’s father? Couldn’t he be his uncle? A
challenge draft takes every single thing in a screenplay and questions that
choice - which often results in the realization that there *was* a better
choice, so you rewrite the screenplay to use that better choice. That’s the
kind of thing that happens when you have that adversarial relationship with
a director (or someone else with authority) and you have to up your game.

So, for various reasons the “Writer Only” experiment failed... but how
do you think the other half of this experiment will work with only the
director? Let’s find out...

OceanofPDF.com
 JASON BOURNE
Release date: July 29, 2016
Starring: Matt Damon, Tommy Lee Jones, Julia Stiles, Alicia Vikander,
Vincent Cassel, Gregg Henry.
Writer: Paul Greengrass & Christopher Rouse
Director: Paul Greengrass.
Producer: Frank Marshall
Production Company: Universal.

Budget: $120m
Domestic Box Office: $59 opening weekend... "Bourne Ultimatum"
opened $10 million higher, with $69.3 million but was playing on nearly
400 fewer screens than "Jason Bourne" and at ticket prices 20 percent lower
than today's prices... so that may not be a good sign for the film. The 62%
drop in second weekend was also not a good sign.
Running Time: 123 min
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
MPAA Rating: PG-13

Rotten Tomatoes: 52% (top critics) (lower than “Legacy”!)

Metacritic: 58 (also lower than “Legacy”!)
Cinemascore: A-

Quest: Not really clear - maybe “who will I become now?” or “Who
killed my dad?” For a script written by the director and the film editor of
the previous films, it seems as if it was written by committee.

OceanofPDF.com
 INTRODUCTION

First, let me say that this chapter is FULL OF SPOILERS!!!

But let’s begin with the preview type material and then I’ll warn you
when we begin the SPOILER part, okay?

Shall we look at the second half of our extreme experiment? “Legacy”

was the series writer without a director, and this film is the series director
without the writer... in fact, without *any* writer. How does that work?

“Jason Bourne” is a somewhat fun summer action film which seems to

be designed to relaunch the series and maybe wash the taste of “Bourne
Legacy” off our palates... but it leaves a very different taste in our mouths
than the first three films. In the first book in this series on the “Terminator”
movies, I noted that after a disastrous fourth film (“Terminator Salvation”)
they decided to make a “Greatest Hits Films” which offered the best scenes
from the first two films in the series woven into a slightly different story.
The result was that the fifth film (“Terminator Genisys”) was enjoyable, but
also kind of disappointing because the original versions of all of the scenes
were so much better in those original films. Though there is a little bit of
that “Greatest Hits Film” scenario in “Jason Bourne”, I think it’s really
something slightly different - a “Reintroduction Film” which is also a
“Transition Film”.

Though the story does have echoes of scenes from the first two films, it
also seems to exist to remind people of what they love about the series
while setting up future films - a “Transition Film”. The problem with a new
Jason Bourne film is right there in the tagline on the poster: “You know his
name”. Well, if the audience knows his name, so does the character - at the
end of “Bourne Ultimatum” Jason Bourne learns who he really is and who
made him an assassin... so that can’t really drive the series anymore. How
many movies can we have about a guy who remembers one more
assassination from his past and then that leads him into trouble in the
present? That’s going to get old fast! So they have to find a new direction to
take the series, and that means we’ll need a story that takes the old type of
Bourne Story and uses it to introduce a new type of Bourne Story. A
Transition.

Paul Greengrass said, “When I first saw Doug Liman’s ‘Bourne

Identity’ it was a wonderful collision of mainstream Hollywood mentality
and an Indie mentality, and that’s what makes the Bourne franchise so fresh,
and it was that collision that I tried to keep alive. I didn’t want us to
succumb to big-movie-itis.” Unfortunately the transition seems to involve
shedding the indie aspect of the films and focusing on the mainstream
Hollywood big-movie-itis aspects... and I think the poor reviews and
lackluster box office reflect the disappointment in that decision. The things
that made the Bourne movies special are missing in this film.

No matter what that tagline says, we know that his name is *not* Jason
Bourne, it’s David Webb. But they couldn’t make that the title of the film,
and part of the transition is to bury David Webb and make our new series
about Jason Bourne - CIA assassin. So we begin with the typical Bourne
flashback - a memory from his forgotten past - and start with that as part of
his quest... though this film is so unfocused that there isn’t a single quest
that drives the story and it becomes kind of a grab bag of scenes and plot
threads that makes it seem as if a room full of writers each wrote one scene
and handed it to the next... each one writing a different movie with the same
characters.

One of the odd issues with this film is that it is not only the first film in
the series not written by Tony Gilroy, as I said earlier - it also has *no
screenwriter*. It was co-written by the editor of the previous films (the guy
who cuts the film together) and the director. The first writing credit ever for
the editor, and the first writing credit in a decade for the director. I think
what this film really needed was a screenwriter to take all of these different
ideas and turn them into a single story. That screenwriter also might have
added some of the clever things that made the previous Bourne movies
great, since they’re missing from this film. Oh, wait, I got ahead of myself...
 Bourne follows the flashback, deals with a new CIA guy who wants to
sweep him under the rug permanently (though without the motivations of
previous characters like Ward Abbott or Conklin) and sends a series of
assassins with interesting names after Bourne... this time it’s only one
assassin and he has no name at all! I always hope that someone in these
films will realize that Manheim from the first film is still out there
somewhere and send him after Bourne, but that’s probably never going to
happen. But one of those multiple plot threads is about the concept of
bringing Bourne in and making him a CIA Agent again. Part of the
organization. He’s a patriot, he wants to come home, he wants to do all of
these large scale action scenes *for us* rather than *against us*! If we
could bring Bourne back into the CIA, all would be wonderful! That would
also greatly help any future films have a story that isn’t about Bourne trying
to remember something from his past that the CIA doesn’t want
remembered. So along with reminding viewers about Jason Bourne, this
story is also designed to turn Jason Bourne into the American version of
James Bond... which may explain why there are these big Michael-Bay-
style action set pieces instead of the more clever small scale action scenes
from previous Bourne films. They are preparing the audience for the next
group of Bourne films.

Of course, the biggest mistake they made in that transition is the *title
of the film*. We’ve had four films titled “The Bourne ___” and one of them
didn’t even have Bourne anywhere in the film! But if the plan was to
remind us of these films, having a title that follows the pattern of the other
films is a basic... and if this is a transition to a new group of Bourne films
how will this title set the precedent for the new films? After “Rocky
Balboa” they had no place to go with titles other than “Creed”... will the
next Bourne film be titled “Landy” or “Zorn!” or “Heather”? That won’t
make any sense! Until now, the films have shared the titles with the novels,
even though they haven’t shared much else with them. So here are the titles
of the novels:

1. Bourne Identity
2. Bourne Supremacy
3. Bourne Ultimatum
4. Bourne Legacy
 5. Bourne Betrayal
6. Bourne Sanction
7. Bourne Deception
8. Bourne Objective
9. Bourne Dominion
10. Bourne Imperative

And there was a time that this new film was unofficially titled “The
Bourne Betrayal”, which is a damned good title even if the film’s story has
nothing whatsoever to do with the novel’s story. It also works perfectly as a
reminder of the previous films and even transitions us to “The Bourne
Sanction” when he’s back in the CIA’s fold as an assassin. I have no idea
why they didn’t use that title, and think whoever made the decision to use
“Jason Bourne” should be shown to the Hollywood City Limits and told not
to return. But that’s the title we’re stuck with, so let’s take a look at this fun
summer action flick!

DO NOT READ FURTHER UNTIL AFTER YOU HAVE SEEN THE

FILM!
SPOILERS!

OceanofPDF.com
JASON BOURNE

OceanofPDF.com
 RE-BOURNE

Opening Image: No strong opening image this time around. The

familiar haunting John Powell score over darkness with Bourne saying, “I
remember... I remember everything”, which leads to the flashbacks of
David Webb (Matt Damon) meeting and being conditioned by Dr. Hirsch
(Albert Finney) in order to be transformed into Bourne from “Bourne
Ultimatum”... and Hirsch telling him, “You made yourself into who you
are.” After a montage of flashbacks from the third film to bring the
audience up to date...

Bourne wakes up in the back of a truck headed to the Greek-Albanian

border. Older, rougher... recent bruises and scars. The truck stops in the
middle of nowhere, where a crowd has formed - and where illegal bare
knuckles boxing matches are held. Bourne has become part of a human
cockfighting ring... as one of the fighters. As Bourne wraps his hands with
torn strips of cloth, bets are made. Most in favor of the *huge* Russian
opponent. No way to win against a guy that big!

When the fight begins, Bourne just steps up and K.O.s him with one
punch.

This is Bourne’s life - paying penance for past sins being beat up and
dishing out a beating in illegal fights.

Meanwhile in Iceland: Nicky (Julia Stiles), looking as if she’s been

fighting since the past film, too; uses a code word to gain access to a secret
computer hacker’s stronghold. Hackers from around the world within -
hacker heaven. She hacks into the CIA’s system to download all of the files
on Treadstone, Blackbriar, and any new CIA Black Op assassination
programs (I think I saw Outreach and LARX in there). She’s working for an
Edward Snowden or Julian Assange type guy named Christian Dassault
(Vinzenz Kiefer). As she uncovers files about a CIA Analyst named
Richard Webb (Gregg Henry) who created the Treadstone program, she also
discovers that Richard Webb had a son named David... Jason Bourne! His
father created the program which turned him into a monster!

Meanwhile at CIA HQ Langley: Young, ambitious CIA Cyber Expert

Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander) gets a ping that someone has hacked into the
CIA’s mainframe and begins countermeasures to find the hacker and infect
their computer with a tracking virus. This is what the story will be about -
the world of online security and online spying. Heather traces the hacker’s
signal as it bounces from computer to computer, country to country,
continent to continent until it finds that hacker’s heaven stronghold in
Iceland... and she cuts all of the power to the building.

Nicky has downloaded all of the files onto a super secure thumb drive
just as the power goes out. All of the other hackers are in party mode -
drinking and having fun during the blackout - but Nicky goes into ultra-
paranoid mode. She pours vodka on her computer and lights it on fire, and
when one of the other hackers bumps into her she pulls a gun on him. This
tells us what her life has been like since the last chapter - she really has
been fighting the whole time.

OceanofPDF.com
 STERN FATHERS?

Heather Lee reports to CIA Director Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones)
about the hack. Dewey is less concerned about the Treadstone and
Blackbriar materials than about whether the new programs: IronHand and
Deep Dream were uncovered - they were. Dewey is old school CIA and
doesn’t fully trust Heather and all the computer and cyber threat elements
that he does not understand. This makes Heather work harder to gain her
stern father-figure’s approval. Though this is not as thematic as the
relationship between Pamela Landy and Ward Abbott in “Bourne
Supremacy”, it does give motivations and subtext to the characters. Dewey
is the stern father, Heather is the ambitious daughter looking for approval.
Though Bourne and *his* father are an important element in this story, that
relationship doesn’t echo the Heather/Dewey relationship.

Heather reports that they have traced the computer that hacked the CIA
Mainframe to a user nicknamed “NightRider” and then used all kinds of
somewhat frightening tracing programs to find that is Nicky Parsons - ex-
CIA, ex-Treadstone. All of those frightening spying programs have used the
billions of security cameras and cell phone pictures from around the world
to find Nicky... arriving in Athens, Greece. Dewey worries that Nicky
means that Bourne is involved - and Bourne is a problem from the past that
was never solved. This is going to take the big guns. Heather doesn’t want
Dewey to give the job to anyone else and assures him, “I’ll deliver Parsons,
the files, and if he’s out there - Bourne as well.” Dewey gives her the job.

Meanwhile in Rome: An unnamed assassin simply called “The Asset”

(Vincent Cassel) gets a call from Dewey. “I need your help.” Dewey orders
him to go to Athens...

Meanwhile in Athens: In yet another crappy hotel room, Bourne washes

his face and looks at himself in the mirror. I believe this is the only mirror
shot in the whole movie, and this is also the first movie where elements of
Bourne’s identity don’t really come into play.
 In an underground parking lot: Bourne is involved in more bare
knuckles fighting. This time the scene is about his penance - Bourne allows
himself to get the crap beat out of him by the larger opponent. He isn’t
putting up much of a fight. The crowd is getting angry - they came here for
a fight! They’ve got bets placed! Then Bourne spots Nicky in the back of
the crowd and we get a variation on the chess master scene in “From Russia
With Love” where Bourne suddenly stops being a punching bag and just
K.O.s his opponent with a massive punch... so that he can go talk to Nicky.

Nicky is gone, but there is a hidden note where she was standing telling
him to go to a downtown plaza...

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 PUBLIC MEETING #1

Where there is a massive protest against austerity measures (this *is*

Greece). We get that scene from “Bourne Supremacy” at the protest where
Bourne and Nicky meet and it’s timed so that the CIA has trouble following
them. Same scene, done a little differently with less suspense.

At CIA HQ Langley: Every single camera that exists in the world is fed
into some facial recognition program and is looking for Nicky. They have
traced her to the protest, and that’s when Heather has them focus on social
media from the protest - everyone has their mobile phones out at the protest
filming away, and all of that footage goes through the software until Nicky
pops up, hiding in a spot where the traffic cameras can’t spot her. Once they
have found Nicky, they begin looking for Bourne.

The Asset arrives at the Athens Airport, and on his way out a Man
bumps into him - handing him a bag with a sniper rifle and other weapons.

Dewey is notified: “The Asset has landed.”

CIA “Alpha Team” has been sent to the protest to find and capture
Bourne and Nicky. They search for Nicky.

Nicky at the protest as it begins to get out of hand - rocks are being
thrown at police in riot gear and molotov cocktails begin to make an
appearance. The protest becoming a full fledged riot is a way of injecting
conflict from the outside, and though it mostly works here - it’s still *not*
realistic (even though stuff like this does happen and it is Greece, right?)
because it is still only coincidentally connected to the story. When Bourne
has Nicky meet him in the middle of the protest in “Supremacy” that is
clever because he knew in advance the protest would be held there and used
it as a meet point because there would be a big crowd to get lost in. But
here in “Jason” there is no way to predict that the protest would turn into a
riot - so that is a coincidence helping the story. Though having it become a
riot amplifies the suspense, it’s also a key element in having Nicky and
Bourne escape, as we’ll see in a moment. Coincidence - either for or against
you protagonist - is a reality killer... even though things like this do happen
in the real world. “The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction
has to make sense.”

As the protest turns into a violent riot, things are getting frightening...
and then Nicky is discovered!

By Bourne.

She tells him that she’s uncovered information about his father, plus
information about a new program called IronHand that is about to launch.
Bourne disapproves of her working for Dessault - doesn’t think that
destroying the CIA is the answer (which gets into our muddy and unfocused
story - is it fathers and children or whistle-blowers and patriots or revenge
or am I David Webb or am I Jason Bourne or...?). “All that matters is
staying alive, getting off the grid.” Nicky says, “You’ve tortured yourself
for what you’ve done, but not what they did to you. You need to read these
files.”

Bourne notices they have been spotted and are being followed by Alpha
Team and tells Nicky they will split up and meet again at the Statue of
Athena.

OceanofPDF.com
 FAST WALKING CHASES

As Bourne walks past a protester, he snatches the molotov cocktail from

his hands and tosses it in front of the Alpha Team guys, then runs to a
stopped streetcar and jumps in. The Alpha Team, being made up of a pair of
alpha males, runs through the fire and hops onto the streetcar - fighting with
Bourne. No suspense here where the streetcar is about the close doors and
leave - should have done that. Love that semi-electronic voice on streetcars
and subways that warns “The doors are closing”, but we don’t get that.
Instead Bourne quickly beats them up, steals their guns and hops off the
streetcar.

But some police in riot gear see him with the gun and charge for him.

Bourne throws the guns away and runs through the crowd, police
chasing him.

Meanwhile - the protest has exploded into a full scale riot and Greece
has issued a state of emergency. Fires, explosions, teargas - this has become
an urban war zone.

At the CIA: Heather and her frightening facial recognition program

spots Nicky, and she sends in the Beta Team. Since they’re #2, they must
try harder, right?

So while Bourne is being followed through the crowded streets by

police, Nicky is followed by the Beta Team. This is kind of a chase - except
everyone is just walking fast. No one is running.

Bourne steals a police motorcycle, and that gives us a short chase as

other police on motorcycles follow him until he lures them into a police
water cannon being used on protestors. The police are knocked off their
bikes, Bourne heads to the Statue of Athena.
 CIA HQ: Dewey is informed that the Asset will be at the Statue of
Athena in 2 minutes.

At the Statue: When Bourne spots Nicky, he also spots Bravo Team and
uses some motorcycle-fu to knock them down, then grabs Nicky and pulls
her onto the cycle as he roars out of there.

CIA HQ: Heather and her team (which doesn’t seem to have any
featured members like Walt Goggins or Michelle Monaghan) give the
Bravo Team real-time information for finding Bourne and Nicky... except
the Bravo Team is down and Dewey is forwarding this information to the
Asset. Heather wants to bring them in alive, Dewey wants them dead.

OceanofPDF.com
 COUNTDOWN

The Asset spots Bourne and Nicky on the stolen police motorcycle and
gives chase in his rental car. Bourne uses that molotov cocktail gag again,
this time throwing at the Asset’s car, so that he is chasing them while the
hood of his car is on fire. Then Bourne lures him into a wall, where he
crashes the car. Bourne and Nicky on the cycle go up stairs and escape...

CIA HQ: Heather and her team end up giving the Asset directions to a
rooftop that Bourne will have to drive under, since the police are blocking
off streets, creating a maze where Bourne will always have to turn left at the
next intersection. Bourne is “Coming at you in 55 seconds.”

One of the things that’s different here is that it’s *Heather* who has the
street map showing the blocked off streets instead of Bourne. One of the
things that made “Bourne Identity” a hit was how clever Bourne was in
chase scenes - instead of just running faster than his opponent, he was
clever and used his brains in addition to his brawn. He grabs that fire exit
map off the wall when being chased by the Marines in the Embassy and
now knows where every hallway and doorway leads and what the best
escape route is. But in this film Bourne never does anything like that in the
entire film! It’s the antagonists who have the street maps with the
barricaded streets noted. They know where Bourne is going, but Bourne
really has no idea where he’s going. He and Nicky are just riding the
motorcycle down the path of least resistence which will lead him right into
the Asset’s gun-sights in 55 seconds.

On the rooftop the Asset quickly assembles his sniper rifle against the
clock. Heather gives a countdown in his earpiece - 30 seconds, 20 seconds,
10 seconds, 5 seconds - he gets the sniper rifle assembled and looks through
the scope. The streets are filled with smoke from all of the riot fires, making
it difficult to spot Bourne and Nicky... but he does, and fires!

Nicky is hit. The motorcycle and Bourne go down.

 As the Asset prepares to take another shot...
A Police Helicopter overhead shines its spotlight on Nicky and the
crashed cycle.
The Police Helicopter then spots the Asset on the rooftop and calls for a
SWAT Team to get him.

The Asset is told that a SWAT Team is on his way to capture him, get
out of there now. But the Asset says he won’t leave until Bourne is dead.

Bourne moves from behind the cover of a car and crawls to Nicky.
The Asset takes aim at Bourne.
Nicky tries to say something - but Bourne can’t hear it over the noise.
The Asset has a perfect shot at Nicky - takes it.
As Nicky dies she tosses a locker key to Bourne... and it slides along the
street falling way short - Bourne will have to crawl out from behind his
cover to grab it. He takes the chance, grabs the locker key, darts back
behind cover.

All of this is cross-cut with the SWAT Team headed to the roof where
the Asset is, and we cut to them arriving, finding the roof empty with a rope
dangling down to the alley below. So Bourne was saved by the SWAT Team
- kind of contrived.

This is basically the end of Act 1: Bourne is now back in the game and
one of the dozen plot threads will be Bourne avenging the death of Nicky.

OceanofPDF.com
 THIS TIME IT’S PERSONAL!

Heather asks Dewey why the Asset refused to leave - does the Asset
have some personal agenda against Bourne? If so, that’s a problem. This is
not supposed to be personal. If the reason why they are after Bourne is that
he has resurfaced for revenge, aren’t we just as bad if we send a man after
him who is only out for revenge? Seems the Asset was part of Blackbriar
and was captured after Bourne exposed that program in “Ultimatum”, so it
*is* personal... and the Asset has all kinds of nasty looking whip scars on
his back from when he was captured. There will be an alternate explanation
of why this time it’s personal later in the story, you can choose whichever
makes more sense to you.

Bourne takes the locker key to the train station and finds Nicky’s bag
complete with her gun, all of her notes, and the secure thumb drive with the
stolen CIA files. In her notes are information about his father, and a nice
drawing showing Treadstone with an arrow to Ironhand... and the phrase
“Deep Dream”. What does that mean?

Deep Dream: Mark Zuckerberg type social media mogul Aaron Kalloor
(Riz Ahmed) is talking to the press about the importance of privacy.
Afterwards he gets into a car, where Dewey sits in the shadows. Ends up
that Deep Dream (a Facebook like app) is really a CIA plot to get all kinds
of information from regular people in order to spy on them and maybe even
control them. Kalloor is *very* reluctant to have his company as part of this
scheme and tells Dewey, “Privacy is freedom - maybe that’s what you
should be defending.” But Dewey is blackmailing Kalloor...

In Berlin: Bourne cracks an easy and pretty obvious code to find

Dessault in Berlin, breaks into his apartment and gives Dessault the thumb
drive with all of Nicky’s stolen information. The two do not approve of
each other, but had Nicky in common as a friend. Dessault opens the files
and tells Bourne that his father was the man behind Treadstone and he was
recruited by a man named Malcolm Smith, possibly with his father’s
blessing.

There’s another flashback in here somewhere that shows Bourne when

he was still David Webb having lunch with his father Richard Webb (Gregg
Henry) in Beirut of all places, as his father apologizes for something he has
done, then walks away and is blown up in an explosion. If anyone can
explain to me why they are having lunch in Beirut rather than some diner in
Nixa, Missouri where he’s from and his family supposedly lives (according
to “Supremacy”) I’ll give them a prize of some sort. Oh, and while we’re on
inconsistencies in the series, that past romance that Nicky talks about in
“Ultimatum” which never existed in any frame of “Identity” or
“Supremacy” also doesn’t exist in any frame of this film. I love when a
sequel goes back to the original and finds some detail, using it to create a
reverse-engineered story that completely works when you watch the two
films back to back... but that’s not what happened here. David Webb was
just some normal soldier from small town America who volunteered for
what he thought was some sort of special forces kind of thing, and it ended
up being Treadstone’s team of assassins. So this whole father back-story
doesn’t match anything in the three previous films and seems contrived just
so everything in this story can be some form of “this time it’s personal”.
Bourne is avenging Nicky’s murder *and* his father’s murder and dealing
with all kinds of other plot threads and motivations.

CIA HQ: Ping! That virus thing that Heather planted on Nicky’s
computer made it onto the thumb drive and they now know where Bourne
and Dessault are.

OceanofPDF.com
 CYBER PARANOIA

While Bourne is reading information about Malcolm Smith and his

father, Heather is using Dessault’s mobile phone which is sitting next to the
computer to wipe the hard drive of the computer and destroy the files on the
thumb drive. Wait, you can do that? This is a different kind of paranoid
thriller - a cyber paranoid thriller. They can tap into your mobile phone to
see what you are doing, they can use your phone to delete files on your
computer, they can tap into traffic cameras and the security cameras of
businesses to spy on you... there is nowhere to hide! They don’t have to
plant a bug in your house anymore, you have a bug in your pocket: your
mobile phone.

(There was an episode of “The Avengers” from 1966 where

businessmen had pagers - which was science fiction at the time - to alert
them of important phone calls. But the villain had found a way to send an
electrical current through the pager that disrupts a person’s heartbeat and
induces a heart attack. Because these pagers looked like pens, the
businessmen kept them in their shirt pockets... right next to their hearts!
This was a cool idea *fifty years ago* that could easily have been part of
this cyber conspiracy story... but wasn’t. Hey, maybe you can swipe it for
your story?)

Dewey has sent the Berlin Alpha Team to capture Bourne and Dessault
(or kill them).

As that mobile phone is secretly deleting files, and Bourne still hasn’t
found the information about Malcolm Smith connecting him to his father;
Dessault decides to attack Bourne for some reason and they have a hand to
hand fight that also uses a broken chair leg for some stick fighting. Though
Bourne can end a massive professional bare knuckles fighter with a single
punch, this fight drags on for a while so that the hard drive and thumb drive
can be deleted before Bourne gets all of the information he needs.
 As Bourne prepares to leave, Dessault’s phone rings. Bourne answers it
- it’s *Heather* who seems to be giving him information about the CIA
currently hunting him.

At CIA HQ: Heather is telling Bourne about Malcolm Smith, and we

pull back to reveal Dewey right behind her! Except he *knows* she is
talking to Bourne, and tells her to keep him on the phone for two more
minutes - that’s how long it will take the Alpha Team to get there. But as
she talks, she secretly texts Bourne to tell him to get the hell out of there.
Whose side is she on?

Bourne splits...
In the hallway he pushes the elevator button.
Downstairs, the Alpha Team races to catch the elevator. Misses it. One
runs up the stairs while the other waits for the elevator to descend... gun
ready. But Bourne is standing on the elevator’s counter weight and zooms
to the ground floor and escapes.

At CIA HQ: Heather tells Dewey she wants to bring Bourne in alive -
she believes that Bourne is a patriot and *wants* to come in. That killing
him is a mistake. He could come back to work as a CIA Agent and kick ass
for *us* instead of against us. Dewey lets her go to London where Malcolm
Smith is... and where Bourne is headed next.

Meanwhile - Kalloor is served with legal papers, which is just Dewey

threatening him to continue to have Deep Dream be part of the CIA’s plan
to take over FaceBook and use it against everyone. You know that picture
of your dinner you posted today that was in direct conflict with the calorie
counting diet you’re on? Blackmail material!

Kalloor tells his assistant that he wants *every single piece of info
relating to the CIA’s plan to use Deep Dream to spy on people* collected
and ready for the big Consumer Electronics Show coming up in Las Vegas.

OceanofPDF.com
 PUBLIC MEETING #2

London: Bourne calls Malcolm Smith (Bill Camp) and arranges a meet
at Paddington Plaza - a public place similar to the bridge in “Bourne
Identity”.

Both Heather and the Asset stake out the location... the Asset and his
sniper rifle on a rooftop. Heather has no idea that the Asset is there, has no
idea that Dewey is secretly using her to trap Bourne... and using her teams
as bait.

Bourne also watches the location - spotting all of the CIA Agents from
the UK’s Alpha and Beta Teams attempting to look inconspicuous and
failing. Lots of obvious earpieces.

The Asset shoots the Alpha Team! When Heather can’t get any response
from them, Dewey criticizes her for losing communications with an entire
team. How is that possible? He warns her that her plan to bring in Bourne
alive will never work. “There’s no bringing in Bourne. He has to be put
down.” Then Heather loses contact with the Bravo Team - she has
completely lost control of the situation.

As the Asset gets Malcolm Smith in his gunsights and prepares to kill
both Bourne and Smith, Bourne breaks into one of the buildings
surrounding the fountain and pool and wires a mobile phone to the
electrical panel. Then does the same in the other buildings surrounding the
pool. Suddenly the fire alarms in every building go off at the same time,
emptying every office in every building out to the plaza.

Bourne grabs Malcolm Smith in the crowd and guides him through the
hundreds of panicked people. But Heather spots Bourne... and Bourne spots
Heather. They lock eyes. She allows him to take Smith into one of the
buildings...
 Bourne shoves Smith into an elevator and interrogates him on the way
to the roof. On the roof, Bourne allows gravity to aid in the interrogation,
dangling him over the edge! Smith tells him that his father *did not* hand
him over to Treadstone... the opposite. When he found out that Treadstone
had recruited Bourne he threatened to expose the assassination
organization... and they had him killed in Beirut.

That’s when the Asset begins firing at them from another rooftop,
killing Smith and forcing Bourne to dive for cover. Bourne grabs a cable
attached to the roof and tries to use it as a rip line, but it breaks, sending
Bourne swinging down to the Plaza where he hits the ground hard.
Complete panic - not only are the fire alarms going, but Smith is splattered.
Police are on their way. Heather’s entire operation has gone to hell and
Dewey will be holding her responsible.

Bourne escapes from the Asset’s sniper rifle in the panic... and kidnaps
Heather in the confusion. She tells him that Dewey is headed to Las Vegas -
and the Consumer Electronics Show (called something else in the film,
probably for legal reasons). That IronHand is all about using Deep Dream
and other social networks to spy on everyone in the world. Dewey is into
Black Ops, and all kinds of secret and illegal surveillance. Heather and
Bourne have a common enemy - Dewey - so they team up against him.
Heather gives him a burner phone and says she’ll see him in Vegas... which
brings us into some form of Act Three.

OceanofPDF.com
 WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS...

Las Vegas: Everyone arrives for the Consumer Electronics Show, from
Dewey to Bourne to Heather to Kallorr and the Deep Dream crew to the
Asset.

Bourne texts Heather that he will meet her by the elevator banks... then
wanders through the show grabbing all kinds of new high tech toys:
tracking devices, tablets, etc. Nobody seems to notice him stealing all of
this stuff.
Meanwhile, the Asset is studying the storm drains and sewer system
under the city as his getaway after the assassinations...

Dewey’s plan: in the middle of a panel discussion on privacy, kill

Kalloor on stage, shoot Dewey in the hand so that it looks as if he was a
target as well. It seems a little weird that the head of the CIA would be part
of a panel discussion on privacy, since the CIA is forbidden to spy on
Americans in the first place (that’s the FBI’s job), and that Heather would
also be part of the panel, as well as another FBI Agent. The panel doesn’t
make any sense. But this is going to be a version of the sniper scene from
the end of “Manchurian Candidate” and the end of “Parallax View”..

While Heather waits for Bourne, Dewey’s right hand man Craig Jeffers
(Ato Essandoh) who has been in the entire story up until now but I
neglected to mention him, spots her. Dewey wants to see her right away. As
Jeffers leads her away, Bourne passes by and drops a tracker in her pocket...
then texts her to put the tracking device in Dewey’s pocket.

Before you can say Robert Kennedy assassination, the Asset sneaks into
the convention center’s kitchen, steals a waiter’s uniform and name badge,
and blends with the crowd. He heads to a door to the catwalk above the
main hall, finds a vent in the back of the theater, and begins assembling his
sniper rifle. Between the catwalk and the vent overlooking the theater,
we’ve covered both “Parallax View” and “Manchurian Candidate”. Dewey
tells the Asset (who has an earpiece, but a really good one that isn’t visible
from a mile away) that after he kills Kalloor he should kill Heather, *then*
shoot him in the hand.

Meanwhile, Bourne steals an ID badge and enters the theater where the
lecture is going to take place with the crowd. It’s a packed house. As the
panel files onto the stage to take their seats, Dewey gets a phone call and
holds back. The phone call was a ruse by Kalloor, who takes the podium
and starts talking about how the CIA has corrupted Deep Dream and is
using it to spy on Americans (which is still the FBI’s job - we all have our
201 Files where the FBI keeps all kinds of information about us... just in
case you were not paranoid before). The Asset realizes the clock has been
moved way forward and prepares to kill Kalloor and Heather, but Bourne
spots the vent at the back of the room, and swings one of the spotlights that
was aimed at the stage to the vent. The Asset is blinded just as he takes his
shot, Kalloor goes down - but is still alive. Panic in the theater. More shots -
but nothing hits its mark.

Security tries to take Dewey out of the convention center to safety, but
he insists upon going up to his hotel room for no apparent reason (except
that allows Bourne to find him there later - completely contrived).

The Asset in his waiter’s uniform looks just like everyone else in the
panicked crowd of the convention center. Bourne is also part of the crowd -
he beats up some CIA guys who spotted him in the theater.

But this is a story about how there are cameras watching us at all times,
and the CIA guys spot Bourne in the hotel’s security camera feed and give
chase. Bourne hops on an elevator, opens the control panel, and disables all
of the other elevators in the bank so that Jeffers and the CIA guys have to
run to the other side of the hotel to find an elevator. “Bourne is on his way
up to you!”

Bourne enters Dewey’s room. “You took a long time to get here, Jason.”
“It all ends tonight.” Dewey takes a page from Heather’s playbook: “You
came here because it’s time to come in.” Trying to sweet talk Bourne,
telling him that he *volunteered* to join Treadstone. “I volunteered because
I thought enemies killed my father.” “No, You volunteered because you are
Jason Bourne, not David Webb.” Bourne puts his gun to Dewey’s head,
ready to blow his brains out. “I’m trying to find another way...” Dewey
smiles at him, “And how is that working out for you? It’s time to come in.”

Jeffers enters and sees Bourne with his gun aimed at Dewey, then shoots
Bourne (in the stomach) which leads to a scuffle between Bourne and
Jeffers. Bourne knocks him out. But during that scuffle, Dewey grabs his
gun and aims it right at Bourne’s head. Bourne is seconds from being killed
when the door opens and BANG! Heather kills Dewey. Bourne tells her:
“You were never here.” She says, “This can stop now, you have a choice.”
But does he? Is he Jason Bourne or David Webb? The assassin or the farm
boy?

OceanofPDF.com
 AMERICAN STYLE CAR CHASE

Hey, it’s time for a big action scene, so Bourne spots the Asset in the
lobby filled with panicked computer nerds. The Asset steps outside, where a
million police cars have arrived due to the sniper fire, along with a SWAT
truck and a SWAT team. The Asset kills the driver of the SWAT truck, hops
in and takes off. Before you can say American Style Car Chase, Bourne
grabs a Dodge Charger from valet parking and races after him. Oh, and all
of those police in all of those police cars decide they want to be part of the
fun, too!

Remember back in the chapter on “The Bourne Identity” when I

explained the difference between a European Style Car Chase and an
American Style Car Chase? This will be our example of the latter, because
it’s as if Michael Bay directed the whole thing. The great thing about being
in an armored SWAT vehicle is that you can plow through every car in front
of you, causing much destruction! What *specific* kinds of destruction?
Let’s take a look!

1) Location: The Las Vegas Strip. You always want an interesting

location or some sort of underlying concept for your car chase. Something
that makes it unique. Here we have two elements, the armored SWAT truck
(rather than a normal car) and the location. The Las Vegas Strip at night is
brighter than most streets during the day! All of those sparkling lights from
the signs and billboards! It’s kind of symbolic of the shallow glitz of the
city. Plus, if you’ve ever been stuck in traffic on the strip, it’s just insane. It
can take you half an hour to travel a couple of blocks sometimes. So many
people skip driving and use the pedestrian bridges and those wide
sidewalks... which are usually filled with people trying to force some advert
for some off-strip strip club on you. Lights, traffic, crowds - great location
for a car chase!

2) We have a three way car chase: Bourne in his black Dodge Charger
chasing the Asset in the SWAT Truck, and a dozen Police cars chasing
Bourne... and their own SWAT Truck. So we have different possible
combinations of chases, which allows the chase to change it up every once
in a while.

3) The SWAT Truck hits some traffic on the strip, and I mean it actually
*hits* the traffic, sending the cars *flying* right and left as it barrels
through them.

4) When Bourne catches up, the SWAT Truck swerves into his car -
batting it like a fly, onto the side of the road. Bourne plows into all kinds of
things.

5) While Bourne gets his car back on the road, the SWAT Truck slams
around some Police cars.

6) When Bourne gets back into the chase, the SWAT Truck comes upon
a red light ahead - and a dozen cars waiting for the light to change. The
Asset doesn’t wait for change - he just slams through all of the cars,
smashing them into the air and out of his way.

7) When Bourne gets ahead of the SWAT Truck, the Asset T-bones
Bourne’s car and pushes it at high speed *sideways* towards the entrance
to a hotel. Smashing anything in it’s way. Bourne skillfully steers out of this
and we’re back to Bourne chasing the SWAT Truck...

But a Police Helicopter has entered the chase - shining its light down on
them.

8) The SWAT Truck crashes its way into an underground parking garage
with a spiral ramp leading down to each level. Bourne *smashes* through a
railing so that he can skip a level - and catches up with the SWAT Truck.
Both vehicles race out of the underground garage, taking out a valet stand in
the process.

9) The police set up a barricade of a dozen Police cars blocking the road
ahead. Police ready with weapons drawn. Of course, the SWAT Truck
doesn’t even slow down - in fact it *speeds up*! The Police officers scatter
as the Truck smashes through the barricade, sending Police cars flying!

10) The SWAT Truck is unstoppable! It will get away unless Bourne
does something drastic... like when the SWAT Truck zooms past Bally’s
Hotel, Bourne drives his Dodge Charger up the parallel parking ramp at
high speed, then smashes through the railing and *flies* through the air
landing on the roof of the SWAT Truck. No way for the Asset to get rid of
him now!

11) Well, one way - the Asset aims the SWAT Truck at the entrance to
the Riviera Casino, smashes its way inside, knocking Bourne’s car off in the
process. The Dodge Charger slams onto the sidewalk in front of the Casino
- air bags deploying - and Bourne staggers out.

Inside the Casino - the SWAT Truck smashes through several banks of
slot machines on its way to the poker tables. It completely destroys the
casino (which is okay, the Riviera - where almost every Hollywood movie
films (including one of mine) was already closed and set for implosion to
make way for a more modern casino). The SWAT Truck comes to a stop
and the Asset staggers out and starts running to his planned escape route -
the storm drains of Las Vegas. Bourne chases after him.

Okay, where a European Style Car Chase as seen in the first film is all
about amazing precision driving to *avoid* crashes, an American Style Car
Chase is all about how many crashes we can have and how much total
destruction the chase can cause. I have no idea how many cars were
destroyed in this case - probably well over a hundred. Plus just about
everything else on that stretch of the Strip gets pretty much mangled, and
the Riviera Casino gets turned to rubble before they even had a chance to
implode it! One fun thing to look for is that Walgreens Drug Store that’s in
the middle of the Strip next to a Denny’s Restaurant - they drive past it
several times in this car chase, which shows that they probably only closed
down the block that it was on for the chase and diverted traffic around that
block.
OceanofPDF.com
 MANO-A-MANO

Which sounds really macho, but just means hand-to-hand. Now that
we’ve had our big Michael Bay massive destruction scene, it’s time to make
it more personal... and that means a hand-to-hand fight between Jason
Bourne and the Asset - who is the man who killed his father in Beirut.
What? Oh, yeah - that flashback was in here somewhere. We get the
flashback of Bourne’s father being blown up after they have lunch in Beirut,
and this time we see the Asset in a car on the street with the detonation
trigger. In this mess of plot threads that never really come together, we get
back to the “Who killed my father?” plot thread for the ending of the movie.

By the way, if the Asset was part of the Blackbriar Program, that came
*after* Treadstone (Ward Abbott is pitching it to the Committee for funding
at the end of “Bourne Identity”), which means it did not exist when
Bourne’s father was killed. So how could the Asset’s “this time it’s
personal” be that Bourne caused the Asset to be captured and tortured when
Bourne blew the Blackbriar Program (which didn’t happen until
“Superiority”/”Ultimatum”/”Legacy”)? The Asset was already an asset long
before that - before Bourne even signed up for Treadstone... before Bourne
was even Bourne! In trying to make it personal for the Asset they screwed
up the story that makes it personal for Bourne! Maybe it should never have
been personal? I’m waiting for the movie with the tagline: “This time it’s
professional”.

But back to our mano-a-mano fight scene in this storm drain filled with
trash. After some nice, close, martial arts fighting the Asset pulls a knife,
and Bourne finds a discarded frying pan which he uses as a shield and a
club. “You’re a traitor, you’ve always been a traitor,” the Asset tells Bourne.
That’s another plot thread poking its head into the fight scene. They end up
strangling each other... and Bourne gets his revenge against the man who
killed his father in that chronologically challenged flashback by being the
better strangler.
 Which is not sweet revenge, and makes no sense after he *didn’t* kill
Kirill, the man who murdered the only woman he ever loved (that he can
remember) in that tunnel at the end of “Bourne Supremacy”. Didn’t that
earlier story show that revenge is *not* the answer? So why would it be the
answer in this story? I think someone gave them a story note that it would
be more satisfying if Bourne killed the man who killed his father, but it
ends up less satisfying. I know this seems to be at odds with the “exploding
the villain” theory in my “Action Screenwriting” book, but the problem
here is that this is a thriller story rather than an 80s action flick starring Ah-
nuld or Stallone, and that requires a more *clever* ending. One where
Bourne *outsmarts* the villain, instead of just out-strangles him. This has
been a series of *intelligent thrillers* up until now. This is the end of a
dopey action flick. Hey, I love dopey action flicks... but I wanted something
where Bourne’s brains solved the problem.

The better ending would have been a “hoist by his own petard” ending
where the Asset had some final plan to kill Bourne, and Bourne used that
plan against him. Or even something as simple as the Asset in his SWAT
flack jacket gets strangled unconscious, and Bourne walks away, and the
Asset wakes up, grabs his gun and aims it at Bourne’s back. Calls his name,
Bourne turns - unarmed - the Asst ready to pull the trigger. And Bourne
raises his hands... where each finger on one hand contains grenade pin
rings. BLAAM! We get out exploding villain and that villain is exploded by
his own weapons. Not a great ending by a long shot, but at least not just the
strangle thing.

The other problem with this ending is that it’s indicative of the
unfocused story element - not only have “Bourne Supremacy” and all of the
previous films in the series (well, except “Legacy”) been kind of a Dr.
Jekyll & Mr. Hyde story about a good man who fears that he was a very bad
man in his past; there is a line in *this film* only a few scenes ago where
Dewey says, “You volunteered because you are Jason Bourne, not David
Webb.” The villain of the story telling him that the’s the very bad man. Was
the villain right? Is that the point of the story? That, after three films where
Bourne fights against his past sins... he just gives in to them? That end
negates the previous films and even makes most of this film pointless. This
movie really needed a screenwriter.
OceanofPDF.com
 LOOSE ENDS

Bourne movies tend to end with Congressional or Senate Committee

meetings. One of the things that makes the series great is how they turn all
of this excitement into some mundane budget thing... which makes it seem
very real. One of my favorite 1960s era spy films is “The Ipcress File”
where Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer character has to fill out paperwork in
triplicate throughout the spy mission, as if it’s any other government agency
that he works for. That makes the film seem “real” - we know the
government is all about filling out forms and reports because we’ve done
our taxes and gone to the DMW to get our driver’s licenses renewed and
filled out building permits for the remodeling job we did on the kitchen last
year. The Committee meetings in the Bourne movies also serve to ground
the films and make it seem like something that could have really happened
as opposed to a James Bond film that is pure fantasy.

But this film? No Committee meeting.

Instead, we get a shot of Kalloor leaving the hospital - alive - and

making a statement to the press about the importance of privacy...

And Heather Lee in a CIA towncar cruising through Washington telling

the new CIA guy that Dewey’s methods were... unsound. And that her plan
is to try and bring in Bourne - make him part of the agency again - and if
that fails, he’ll have to be put down.

Then Heather meets with Bourne in the Constitution Gardens park and
*says* she is giving him a rubbing of his father’s name from the CIA’s
Memorial Wall but actually gives him a silver star with his father’s name on
it in a box. “Things have changed in the agency, we need you to help
protect us. Come back in.” Bourne says that he’ll think about it and walks
away...
 Heather gets back in her car, and there’s a camera on the seat... she
plays the video. Her telling the new CIA guy that if they can’t bring Bourne
in he’ll have to be put down...

And on to that danged Moby song again!

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 CONCLUSIONS

Even though this isn’t really a “Greatest Hits Movie” like the fifth
“Terminator” film, the fifth film in the “Bourne” series ends up with many
of the same problems. It’s not as clever as the three previous films, isn’t an
“intelligent thriller”, and seems completely unfocused and emotionally
hollow. If the plan is to turn the “Bourne” series into James Bond, they’ve
managed to do that in the worst way - Jason Bourne has been a troubled
character who was consumed with guilt about his past and struggling to
become the person that Marie would want him to be... and by the end of this
film he’s kind of a shallow action hero who knows how to drive cars really
fast and punch people. Jason Bourne or Jason Statham? Heck, Statham has
made films better than this!

In transitioning into the next incarnation of Bourne they have

accidentally shed the very things that made us love these films in the first
place. Bourne is not clever, not an outsider, and this is not that mix between
indie sensibilities and mainstream Hollywood that Greengrass said is what
attracted him to the series. Though I think this film is a million times better
than “Legacy”, it’s not nearly as good as the first three films in the series. I
think that's what's responsible for those low critic's scores... and the low box
office.

My original plan was to have this book finished before the new film
came out, and this chapter was written before the film was released (so I
had no idea what the MetaCritic and RottenTomato scores were going to
be). By the time it was published (August 26) “Jason Bourne” had been out
for less than a month... and was already playing in my local dollar cinema!
These are the “dog days of summer” when business is slow and a half-good
movie can make money... but “Jason Bourne” topped out at $144 million
domestic and worldwide $282 million (foreign is usually 70% of a film's
worldwide earnings, here it's just over 48%). Adjusted for inflation, “Jason
Bourne” ranks just above “Bourne Legacy” in domestic earnings, and way
behind the first three. This is a break even film at best, and that does not
bode well for the series. Will there be a couple more sequels to this film? Or
is this the end of Bourne?

Perhaps this is just growing pains, and once the transition is complete,
the next film in the series will take us back to the Bourne character that we
love.

I think for that we’ll need a combination of strong screenwriter *and*

strong director, which is what made the first three films work. Greengrass
may not like Gilroy, but I think the two should be forced to work together
on future entries. I also think if there are any future “Legacy” entries,
Gilroy needs to fire the screenwriter and just direct... or fire the director and
just write. And *not* surround himself by family and exclude anyone who
might challenge him. Hey, maybe the next film should combine the two
Bourne threads into one and feature both Bourne and Aaron Cross?

What do you think they’ll title the next film? “Landy”? “Zorn!”?
“Heather”? “Jason Bourne 2: Electric Bugaloo”? If they decide to go with
“Heather” I think it would be cool to cast Christian Slater as the duplicitous
CIA Department Head and Winona Ryder as the assassin trying to kill him
and get Shannen Doherty to take over Juila Stiles’ place in the story and
Alicia Vikander’s CIA Cyber Person Heather Lee trying to hold the whole
thing together. But, then, I’m the guy who wrote a role for Hugh Laurie in
my script for the remake of the classic 80s horror flick “House”.

I’m kinda liking “Zorn!” Danny Zorn’s mom vows vengeance against
Bourne...

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 SERIES CONCLUSIONS
“The Bourne Identity” and its sequels are less of a big game changer in
the thriller genre and more of a return to the type of paranoid thrillers that
were made in the 1970s like “Three Days Of The Condor”. Those thrillers
were “Political Thrillers” because they often dealt with conspiracies like
Presidential assassinations and overthrowing overseas governments and
deals with Nazis and dirty tricks behind the scenes. Though there were
thrillers like this in the past, the “father” of this subgenre is “The
Manchurian Candidate” (1962 – just after the Kennedy Assassination) and
you can trace that savage fight scene in Bourne's office in Paris back to that
film. I think this subgenre blossomed in the 1970s due to the Watergate
break in which traced back to the President of the United States – heck, if
the President can be behind a burglary and hiding listening devices to spy
on opponents and all of the other illegal criminal acts hidden behind the
scenes, maybe we are all under secret surveillance? So the Political Thriller
subgenre became popular. Today we have the NSA listening in on our
mobile phone conversations and all of the other government programs that
would make the subgenre popular again, and Jason Bourne who is both a
part of that secret world and an outsider in that secret world as the perfect
protagonist for this new century. So long as Bourne was an outsider in the
cross-hairs of some secret government agency he was the perfect hero... and
I think this new film stumbles by trying to bring him into the fold and
laying the groundwork for Bourne becoming an American James Bond.

One of the things we've learned from these films is that this type of
story needs a strong quest that is established at the beginning of the story. In
the first three films we know exactly what Bourne is searching for almost
from the opening scenes (“The Bourne Identity” opens with Bourne
suffering from amnesia, “The Bourne Supremacy” opens with that
nightmare flashback, and “Bourne Ultimatum” has a flashback to Dr.
Hirsch asking him if he will commit to the program in the first couple of
minutes). “Bourne Legacy” and “Jason Bourne” suffer from having a
muddled quest or a quest that we do not understand. For the audience to
“participate” in the story we have to know what is at stake as early as
possible. At least by the end of the first ten minutes. The “Legacy” issue of
holding back what is at stake until 81 minutes in just kills the whole film.
“Jason Bourne” has a quest so muddled you wonder if it was an
afterthought created to link action set pieces.

Though I think the idea of “Elevated Thrillers” is silly – all movies

should be “elevated” - in this series having characters who do inventive and
clever things and using a genre to explore larger issues (often through
supporting characters who take opposing sides of the issue with Bourne's
life in the balance) is critical. That's what makes the Bourne films work, and
when you remove the clever elements and add more action the film
becomes a typical dumb Hollywood action flick. The films are no longer
special. The experiment of mixing an indie director with a genre only works
if that indie director has a skill set within that genre and if that director
maintains their indie sensibilities. The minute they begin to think like a
mainstream Hollywood director the experiment doesn't work. Maybe the
answer to this is to take the “Mission Impossible” series route and hire a
new director for each film? A new indie director to balance out the
mainstream thriller writer?

The opposition between the supporting characters brings the theme to

the surface, and maybe that opposition is what is needed behind the scenes
as well? Though, as a screenwriter I have dealt with my share of crazy
director's notes (“Why can't everyone on the SEAL Team look and act and
sound exactly the same, they are a team, right?”) I believe without being
challenged by an equal on the creative team your story will never be the
very best it can be. The never-ending war between Screenwriters and
Directors is actually a *good* thing! But that only works if those two jobs
are looked at as equals. The moment one becomes subservient to the other
we end up with that crazy scene where Nicky and Bourne were once lovers,
even though there was never anything in previous films to support that. In
fact – the opposite was shown in previous films. Without the checks and
balances of Screenwriters and Directors who are equals in the process, it's
easy for one to take control and make a completely wrong turn (“Legacy”
and “Jason” being examples). If film is really a “collaborative medium” that
means that *everybody involved* needs to collaborate. “Bourne Identity”,
like “Casablanca”, was a troubled production where despite that trouble (or
maybe even *because of it*) the finished film turned out great. Challenges
force creative people to raise their game and acquire new skills in order to
solve problems. Without those challenges or people on the project who
challenge you, the artist becomes complacent and maybe even lazy. Nothing
is *forcing the artist* to do a better job, and they may end up doing just an
adequate job. Even though “Jason Bourne” is entertaining as a big dumb
summer action movie, that's not what we paid to see. We wanted a clever
thriller.

At the conclusion of the first book in this “Story In Action” series on

the “Terminator” movies, I said it was unlikely that there would be two
more films in the new trilogy... but likely that someone would buy the
property and start a whole new trilogy (which might only last one film). I
think something similar will happen with Bourne. There are six more titles
of Bourne novels that can be used (maybe more – someone may have begun
writing new novels in the series... they love sequels in the book world as
well). I suspect that Bourne will return, maybe transformed into a James
Bond type or maybe as an outsider who tackles government conspiracies
(an espionage version of “The Equalizer” TV show?), and with the right
script we may even get a couple more Aaron Cross films.

Until then, the next book in this series will look at the “Matrix” movies
in early 2017 and the “Mission Impossible” movies in July of 2017. Thank
you for reading this!

Bill

(Studio City, California, August 25, 2016)

IMPORTANT TECHNICAL NOTE: Go to Amazon, click on “Your

Account” (upper right area near your cart), now find the “Digital Content”
box and under “Digital Management” you will see “Manage Your Content
And Devices” and click that. Often in a yellow strip near the top of the page
is a box you can click for Automatic Book Update”. Click it. If there is no
yellow strip, on the left side of that page near the bottom of “Your Device
And Settings” you will find “Automatic Book Update” and click that.

Now any typos will magically begin to vanish from this Hitchcock
Book and revisions and new examples will magically appear whenever
there are updates.

Okay, Amazon has informed me that this is *vaporware* at this point in

time, but that just means the automatic version doesn’t work... I am still
constantly correcting typos and solving problems with these Books, so
chances are - any typo you find today will be gone tomorrow (or, shortly).
The magic of ebooks is that any problems of errors you see today will be
gone tomorrow. As creative writers we tend to be right brain oriented and
that often leads to creative spelling and the ability to ignore simple things
like that which less creative people find troublesome... but they still get
fixed on a regular basis. Eventually the automatic version of Amazon’s
Automatic Update will actually exist, and your Books will magically
correct typos whenever you open them.

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 HELP ME, HELP YOU!

I never set out to write screenwriting articles and books, I'm a working
pro screenwriter with a couple of producers wondering where their script
is... But back in 1991 I complained to the editor of a screenwriting
newsletter that no one writing for them had ever sold a script that got
made... and ended up being an unpaid writer for them. Now I had to figure
out how to explain how screenplays worked and why they sometimes didn't
work. Suddenly I found myself writing about writing for a bunch of
publications including Writers Digest and Movie Maker and the
Independent Film Channel Magazine. Oh, and Script Magazine. Some
written advice I gave some fellow pro writers ended up becoming my book
“The Secrets Of Action Screenwriting” and the Blue Book series followed.
Once I began looking at how scripts worked (or did not) I couldn't stop
writing articles – and now have a website and a blog and a bunch of books
worth of screenwriting articles on my hard drive.

If you liked the information in this Blue Book and want more - for
*free* - check out my Script Tip of the day at http://www.ScriptSecrets.Net
- there are 380 of them in rotation, and when I get to 500 I'm putting it on
automatic and going to the beach.

I also have a blog where I chronicle my adventures in Hollywood and

talk about my favorite films and generally complain a lot. http://sex-in-a-
sub.blogspot.com Don't let the title fool you, there is no sex involved, it's a
terrible note I got from HBO on my “Crash Dive!” movie. You can read
about it on the blog.

You can also follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/wcmartell

every once in a while I might say something funny, and I often post links to
articles from my vault.

And if you could do could do me a favor and write a review of this

Hitchcock Book at Amazon, that would be great. I'm not asking you to lie –
be honest! If it was helpful or if you learned a new technique or even if it
just reinforced what you already knew, mention those things in the review.
And if you *did* like the book, if you would be so kind as to tweet your
friends, FB status them, mention it on message boards, Google Plus your
circles, and call everyone in your cell phone contact list at 4am while drunk
and tell them you liked it; that would be great! My Books have always been
a word of mouth thing – no advertizing, people who like them tell their
screenwriting friends. So if you liked it, please don't keep it a secret!

OceanofPDF.com
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

William C. Martell just handed in the first draft for the studio remake of
a classic 1980s horror film, and has written 19 films that were carelessly
slapped onto celluloid: 3 for HBO, 2 for Showtime, 2 for USA Net, and a
whole bunch of CineMax Originals (which is what happens when an HBO
movie goes really, really wrong). He's been on some film festival juries,
including Raindance in London (four times - once with Mike Figgis and
Saffron Burrows, once with Lennie James and Edgar Wright – called back
to "jury duty" in October of 2009 and again in 2012 and 2013 with Julian
Assange). The late Roger Ebert discussed his work with Gene Siskel on his
1997 "If We Picked The Winners" Oscar show. He's quoted a few times in
Bordwell's great book "The Way Hollywood tells It". He has written a
column for Script Magazine since 1991, and is now “Editor At Large”
(which he suspects may be a dig at his weight) and has a column in every
issue. His USA Net flick HARD EVIDENCE was released on video the
same day as the Julia Roberts' film Something To Talk About and out-
rented it in the USA. In 2007 he had two films released on DVD on the
same day (one from Lions Gate, one from Sony) and both made the top 10
rentals.

His book “The Secrets Of Action Screenwriting” is an industry

standard. Last year a copy of his book THE SECRETS OF ACTION
SCREENWRITING sold on e-bay for $999.00 – he didn't make a cent off
the deal.

Mr. Martell's book, THE SECRETS OF ACTION SCREENWRITING

has been called: "The best book on the practical nuts-and-bolts mechanics
of writing a screenplay I've ever read." - Ted Elliott, co-writer "The Mask
Of Zorro", "Shrek", all of the "Pirates Of The Caribbean" movies.
 "William C. Martell knows the action genre inside out. Learn from an
expert!" - Mark Verheiden, screenwriter, "Time Cop", "The Mask" and TV's
"Smallville" and “Falling Skies”.

"This book is dangerous. I feel threatened by it." -Roger Avary, Oscar

winning screenwriter, "Pulp Fiction".

"My only complaint with SECRETS OF ACTION SCREENWRITING

is that it wasn't around when I was starting out. The damned thing would
have saved me years of trial and error!" - Ken Wheat, screenwriter, "Pitch
Black" and "The Fly 2".

"Finally a screenwriting book written by a working professional

screenwriter. Bill Martell really knows his stuff, showing you how to write
a tight, fast screenplay." - John Hill, screenwriter, "Quigley Down Under".

Mr. Martell was born in the same hospital, in the same month, as Tom
Hanks. Many believe they were switched at birth, and Bill should be the
movie star. He lives in Studio City, California, and can be found most
afternoons at some coffee shop writing some darned new script on his
laptop.

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 OTHER WORKS

THE SECRETS OF ACTION SCREENWRITING – revised for 2011.

The screenwriting book recommended by Oscar winners and screenwriters
of mega-hit movies. “The Secrets Of Action Screenwriting is the best book
on the practical nuts-and-bolts mechanics of writing a screenplay I've ever
read,” Ted Elliott, co-writer of the “Pirates Of The Caribbean” movies,
“Shrek”, “Mask Of Zorro”, and many others.

EXPERIMENTS IN TERROR: SCREENWRITING LESSONS FROM

HITCHCOCK – Hitchcock films experimented with form, structure, and
story, and this book uses twenty of his films as examples and illustrations of
advanced and experimental screenwriting techniques.

MASTERING SUSPENSE: SCREENWRITING LESSON FROM

HITCHCOCK – Hitchcock was the master of suspense, specializing in
thrillers, many with twist endings. This book uses seventeen of his films as
examples of different methods to create suspense in your screenplay.

VINTAGE SERIES #1: ANITA LOOS' HOW TO WRITE

PHOTOPLAYS – Screenwriting books have been around as long as films
have. This series reprints vintage screenwriting books with a new
introduction and history, plus new articles which look at how these lessons
from almost 100 years ago apply to today’s screenplays.

THROUGH THE RINGER – A Mitch Robertson Mystery. Hollywood

screenwriter Mitch Robertson is hired to find out why an award winning
screenwriter's new script stinks, and discovers a behind the scenes
Hollywood conspiracy.

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 STORY IN ACTION SERIES

STORY IN ACTION #1: THE TERMINATOR MOVIES - This book

looks at all five “Terminator” movies from a story standpoint - what makes
them work (or not)? What are the techniques used to keep the characters
and scenes exciting and involving? How about those secret story details you
may not have noticed? Containing a detailed analysis of each of the five
films so far, this book delves into the way these stories work... as well as a
complete list of box office and critical statistics for each film.

STORY IN ACTION #2: THE BOURNE MOVIES - All five “Bourne”

movies (including “Legacy” and it’s potential sequels) - what are the
techniques used to keep the characters and scenes exciting and involving?
Reinventing the thriller genre... or following the “formula”? Five films -
each with an interesting experiment! A detailed analysis of each of the
films, the way these thrillers work... as well as a complete list of box office
and critical statistics for each film.

STORY IN ACTION #3: THE MATRIX MOVIES - The first three

“Matrix” movies with a preview of the rumored two new films. What
makes them work (or not)? What are the techniques used to make sure that
action scenes are *character oriented*? A detailed analysis of each of the
three films plus the “Animatrix” shorts, this book digs into the way these
stories work... as well as a complete list of box office and critical statistics
for each film. (2016)

STORY IN ACTION #4: THE MISSION IMPOSSIBLE MOVIES -

This book looks at all five “Mission Impossible” movies and their five
*different* directors: What makes them work (or not)? What are the
techniques used to keep the characters and big set piece scenes exciting and
involving? Contains a detailed analysis of each of the five films so far plus
a preview of the sixth film, this book delves into the way the stories in this
spy series work. (2017)

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 THE BLUE BOOK SERIES

All are coming to Kindle, Nook, and other e-platforms soon!

#1 YOUR IDEA MACHINE -- How to generate great ideas and create

that killer concept. High concepts, hooks, clear concepts... and how to
create them! 170 pages!

#2 SECRET OF OUTLINING -- Various outline methods (beat sheets,

cards), examples of outlines, pacing your script, more! Organizing your
thoughts into a screenplay.

#3 STRUCTURE IN ACTION: THE MATRIX -- Learn basic script

structure. 3 Acts, Strange Structures.

#4 SECRETS OF STORY: WELL TOLD -- How stories work, subplots,

elements, theme. using LIAR LIAR.

#5 FORMAT BASICS – All of the basic format issues you’ll need to

write a screenplay.

#6 HOOK ‘EM WITH YOUR FIRST TEN PAGES -- Top tips to grab
readers! Using THE GODFATHER, GODFATHER PART 2, and
CASABLANCA as examples. Your first ten pages, your first *page*, your
first *word*!
 #7 CREATING STRONG PROTAGONISTS -- Prevent passive
protagonists! Top tips! Characterization. Creating interesting lead
characters.

#8 VISUAL STORYTELLING SECRETS -- How to show character

without dialogue. Show don't tell. How to make your screenplay more
visual.

#9 DESCRIPTION -- It's 50% of your screenplay... Top Tips to make

sure it's pulling 50% of the weight! Description (really “Action”) needs to
be as exciting to read as it will be to see on the screen.

#10 DIALOGUE -- Learn the secrets of creating sparkling dialogue!

Individualized dialogue, subtext, realistic sounding dialogue, banter.

#11 SCENE SECRETS -- Learn how to tune up your scenes, link

scenes, add spice to existing scenes! What is a scene?

#12 SUPPORTING CHARACTER SECRETS -- Creating memorable

supporting characters. Individualizing characters. More!

#13 ACT 2 SECRETS -- Get rid of the Act 2 blues with these top tips!
Why Act 2 is the *easy* act to write! Midpoints. Character conflict Act 2s
vs. Plot conflict Act 2s.

#14 WRITE A BLOCKBUSTER -- Write a big summer blockbuster!

Using "Gladiator", "Planet Of The Apes" and other examples!
 #15 TITLES, NAMES, GENRES – How to come up with great titles
and names, and how genres work.

#16 GRAND FINALES -- Creating great endings for your scripts. The
different types on endings. Resolving conflicts.

#17 REWRITES -- How to cut your script, rewrite to strengthen

character and theme, and get your script ready for market. How to trim that
long script down to size!

#18 RESEARCH GUIDE – How to research your screenplay without

getting sidetracked. How much research do you need? When can you ignore
research?

#19 TREATMENTS AND LOGLINES -- How to write a logline,

treatment, synopsis, one pager, leave behind, and one paragraph synopsis!

#20 BREAKING IN: SELLING -- From Query Letters and e-queries to

Guerrilla Marketing and from Agents to Managers. How to make
conections in Hollywood & your Hometown. Assignments, different kinds
of meetings and how to prepare for them. Almost 400 pages on breaking in
to the business!

The Next Blue Books to be expanded into Kindle/Nook versions are:

STRUCTURE and DESCRIPTION. Look for them in 2016!

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 COMING SOON

HITCHCOCK: THE STORY, THE STORY, THE STORY – Hitchcock

said the three most important things in any film were The Story, The Story
and The Story - so let's look at how stories work using seventeen of
Hitchcock's films as examples. NORTH BY NORTHWEST and MARNIE
and many others.

VINTAGE SERIES #2: THE PHOTOPLAY (1911) by Ralph P.

Stoddard - The second book in the series looks at the screenwriting book
phenomenon with this how-to book by a non-screenwriter journalist.
Cashing in? Taking advantage? Or just giving valuable information? A
reprint of the vintage screenwriting book with a new introduction and
history, plus new articles which look at how these lessons from over 100
years ago apply to today’s screenplays. (2017)

CORMAN’S POE FILMS - Halloween Treat For The Whole Family! A

look at director Roger Corman’s series of spooky horror flicks based on
Edgar Allan Poe stories which he made in the 1960s, many featuring
Vincent Price. Analysis of each film! October 2016.

YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW HOW THEY MAKE IT – in 2004 I

was on the jury of the Raindance International Film Festival in London...
and worked on a friend's low budget indie film. A comic look at the gritty
world of indie filmmaking and the luxurious world of watching those films.

LOW & NO BUDGET SCREENWRITING – how to write a low

budget and ultra low budget screenplay. Hundreds of tips and techniques on
writing for a budget, from “Confined Cameos” to limiting locations and
character. Whether you are writing an art house indie a Made For TV
Movie or a B movie slasher flick or a crowdfunded film, these are the
practical production oriented writing lessons you won't find anywhere
else... plus interviews with filmmakers who have done it!

ALL THE LOSERS IN HOLLYWOOD – Spend 20 years working in

the trenches of Hollywood and you meet all kinds of strange characters.
Meet some of the crazy people on the fringes of the business in this book...
so you can avoid meeting them in real life!

ALTITUDE: JASON BOLT #1 – a novel. The Chicago to DC shuttle is

hijacked... a bomb attached to an altimeter will explode if the plane flies
below 20,000 feet. Disgraced threat management expert Jason Bolt must
organize the passengers against the hijackers as they circle Washington
National Airport... but what if the bomb is nuclear, and the target is DC? Is
this the second wave of terrorism? Or a group of clever thieves cashing in
on 9-11 paranoia to cover a daring mid-air heist?

Http://www.ScriptSecrets.Net

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