To arrive at an Oscar-worthy screenplay, scribes must fend off writer’s block, fill in plot holes, and solve even the thorniest writing puzzles. These four writers wrestled with, and eventually conquered, scenes that proved to be nightmares:
Writer-director of “Beginners”


“Their problems (are) all these ghosts in their head. Really hard to (write) that without people thinking that they’re annoying, narcissistic, self-pitying, all that stuff. It’s hard to say enough but not say too much,” Mills says.
“I really like solutions like when they have that big blowout argument, you don’t hear what they’re saying because it doesn’t matter what they’re saying. It matters what they’re feeling and they’re feeling all this fear and all these old stories in their head,” Mills adds.
“50/50” scribe


“That line to me, that line completed this puzzle,” without it, the second act of the movie wouldn’t have made sense, he says.
“Coriolanus” adaptor


“To me one of the most brilliant things about that amazing play is that for all the complexity it really comes down to a mother and son,” says Logan, adding it was “important and challenging to try to communicate how insular their relationship is.” His toughest scene is when Volumnia describes to Coriolanus her political ambitions for him and is briefly interrupted by Coriolanus’ wife, Virgilia (Jessica Chastain). It was Logan’s idea to set that scene inside a bathroom, while Volumnia bandages Coriolanus’ wounds.
“That was a way to suggest she’s been intimately taking care of him, the same way your mom bandaged your knee on the schoolyard.”
“A Dangerous Method” writer


The question was where to end the story. “If you haven’t got a deathbed scene, where do you draw back from the subject? I was really lost for a long time.”
Then he learned of Sabina’s last letter from Jung, dated 1913, saying she might be passing through Switzerland. He imagined a last meeting between them, when he’s on the verge of a breakdown and she’s recovered and a psychologist herself. Their situations have reversed. “So you get that rather satisfying circle, which somehow had not occurred to me until the scene was actually written.
“You operate so much on instinct in these matters. And occasionally your instinct comes up with the goods.”
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