Gunfight at an El Paso Hotel by Gary Murphy - Short - This script contains spoilers for the movie "No Country for Old Men", don't read if you haven't seen. It attempts to portray a scene that many people felt should have been included in the movie in the first place. This was only a writing exercise of mine to help develop my action writing and only posted because it came out OK. 8 pages - pdf, format

I thought it was a pretty good scene, but I'm not sure if this is something you did on your own or if this was in the book but not the movie.  No biggie, just curious.

From a writing standpoint, it was put together pretty cleanly, and I like how you utilized the German porn film description.

You mentioned writing this on the No Country for Old Men thread, so I thought I'd check it out. I don't really have a lot say. I thought it was economically written and the descriptions were good. I liked the TV reference to Regan.

The only line that didn't feel right to me was: a female reporter is stood outside a hotel. Perhaps, a female reporter stands outside a hotel, would be better. But apart from that I think you did a pretty good job.  

Hi folks, thanks for the read and thanks Don for posting!

I know this really is not a proper script and just re-reading it now I wonder if it should have been submitted anyway. Maybe if I was a seasoned pro at all this I would not have, but I have not really wrote much at all and am probably just too keen to post scripts.

Shelton, no I have not read the novel and as far as I am aware the novel skips this section just like the movie does. So this is just my imagining of what happened, though to be fair probably does not take much imagination as there was only one way this story was going! I think I messed up the dialogue at the end because I was so needing to get the mexicans name just to make the real name of the script work - really sad I know but I thought it was funny at the time and it became the whole hook of the script - which is silly I know!

But anyway this was a serious attempt at sorting my writing out with regards to description and action which I have not fared too well at in my first couple of scripts and I think I am getting there, so thanks for reading and your comments  -  much appreciated.

Cheers Murphy

hey murphy, really interesting exercise.  i was one of those frustrated by the exclusion of this scene, so was very curious.  i thought your first 5 pages did a great job.  and they way you get him out of the room by saying 'might as well get in a little more', or something to that effect, was clever, and made me smile.  but after that i felt it took kind of a downturn.  i thought the arrival of the antagonist should have maybe been set up a little more.  i also felt that there was too much dialogue in the final scene, which took away from the effect,  one of the great things about the movie was there was so little dialogue at times, and as an audience member you were terrified because you didn't know where javier bardem's character was, and it was very quiet, and it made you nervous.  with them constantly talking too each other, you always know where the antagonist is, so that fear is eliminated.  i think you should keep working on those final 3 pieces without the dialogue, or use the loud jet noise (nice touch, by the way), for more effect.  but it was a nice effort

Hey Murphy;

NIce job...Didn't see the movie, but on my list...a good excercise. Actions were pretty tight, but slightly over-descriptive, such as the description of Carson Wells....

Joe

Quoted from Blakkwolfe Actions were pretty tight, but slightly over-descriptive, such as the description of Carson Wells....

I think that was an inside joke for the people who've seen the movie.

By the way, Murphy, your script has two titles. On the thread it reads "Gunfight at an El Paso Hotel," but the title page of your script reads “The Assassination of Llewelyn Moss by the Coward Roberto Vado.”  

Yeah I know Chris, I was concerned about spoiling the movie for those who had not seen it and the real title is a bit of a bad spoiler but I wanted to keep the real title in there as it made me chuckle when I came up with it - 'Vado' is spanish for 'Ford'

Cheers

Good one.  

Hey Murph,

I haven't seen 'No Country for Old Men', but I thought I'd use this story as a preview to see if I still want to see the movie.  I'm interested in seeing it, but I'm such a big fan of Joel and Ethan Coen, I was going to see it anyway.

This isn't too bad of a piece.  Well done, because it's interesting and now I really want to know more about the movie.

There were still some problems in keeping the script in present tense.  For example:  'a female news reporter is stood outside a Hotel.'  I won't go into as many examples as 'Fake Plastic Girls'.  :-)

All in all, a pretty good short exercise that I hoped help you with action scenes.

One quick question, just because it's nagging at me.  Is the last line of dialogue supposed to be 'Call the police', or is it supposed to be 'Call police'?  And who is the Man whose voice it is?  Is he important at all?

- Mark