Writing By The Seat Of Your Pants / Film

• Charlie Chaplin never used scripts when making his movies — his films would always be made by constant trial and error at his own expense, focusing on the personality of the characters rather than the story. Even his features only used a little pre-planning for the story, but no fully written scripts. The one exception was Monsieur Verdoux which had a script by Orson Welles. Chaplin rewrote it to fit his interests, but otherwise retained Welles' structure.
• According to the book The Disaster Artist, everything that fans love about The Room (2003) was ad libbed. Despite kicking off with a formal script (which his best friend Greg Sestero was the first to read), Tommy Wiseau was writing, directing, casting, rewriting, and acting by the seat of his pants, practically making up the film as he went.
• Casablanca was being written as it was filmed. Some things had to be changed to comply with The Hays Code, and it took a while to come up with a satisfying ending.
• In Iron Man, the actors came up with so many good things on-set that halfway through they just threw away the script (having previously rewritten it every night) and instead wrote outlines of each scene instead. Jeff Bridges said that it felt weird doing it this way, then realized that he had to treat it "like a 200 million dollar student film".
• The second and third Pirates of the Caribbean movies were both being written as they were filmed.
• Tim Burton's Batman (1989) was constantly being expanded, edited, and rewritten. Burton himself once recounted a situation wherein he had The Joker take Vicki Vale hostage and move into the Church, with no idea what to do storywise after that point.
• David Lynch infamously wrote Inland Empire scene by scene during filming. What effect this had on the film's (lack of) coherence is up to debate. Seeing as it's David Lynch, however, it really doesn't matter too much.
• The '90s movie of The Fugitive was largely made this way, on the fly—although one would never suspect by watching it, as it looks very carefully planned.
• The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy was shot like that. Even as the cameras kept rolling, scenes and plots were being rewritten again and again - some versions of the script reached not just the double digits, but went up to 40 and above. Actors frequently got their lines only the night before the shooting and major revisions resulted in whole scenes being re-shot. Ironically, the writers insist that each iteration was ultimately closer to Tolkien's work and even stated that some of the remaining controversial changes might have been gone too, had they not reached a deadline by then.
• Production of The Hobbit trilogy was rushed and the script was constantly being rewritten, meaning that when Peter Jackson rather quickly was called in to cover the directing, he often had to come up with lines and sequences as he was shooting. Whereas the cast of the previous trilogy might get their dialogue the night before, dialogue for The Hobbit was practically being written on set. He'd have the cast and crew break for long lunches so he could have the time to develop ideas and everyone would have something to do in the afternoon. Many scenes had to be cobbled together from randomly scened takes, that were done with no reason (such as the Dwarves vs Smaug, and the climax of the second film).
• Befitting its chaotic production schedule, Apocalypse Now was made largely with this and Throw It In!. Francis Ford Coppola didn't even have an ending, as he'd considered John Milius' ending (Willard joins Kurtz, and the film ends with Kurtz shooting at American warplanes bombing his temple while screaming about his erection) ridiculous. This, and much more, is shown in the making-of documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse.
• Scanners was written like this, which was forced upon David Cronenberg because of the way the production had to be structured due to financing reasons. There was virtually no pre-production, so he had to start shooting with an unfinished script. He would write in the morning, and film the rest of the day, mostly out of order. On top of that, they often had to drive around at random, looking for places to shoot scenes. So literally everything about Scanners was done by the seat of their pants. He talks about it at some length in Cronenberg on Cronenberg.
• Stranger Than Fiction has an in-universe example. We see Karen Eiffel writing Death and Taxes while she's still trying to figure out the ending.
• Lawrence of Arabia. Shooting was just about to start when David Lean threw out Michael Wilson's original script completely. Robert Bolt was brought on to rewrite the script as filming began. As a result, the movie was filmed almost chronologically - a rarity then or indeed now, especially on such a large-scale film.
• Stanley Kubrick seemed to be this for many of the cast members during production of The Shining. He would often spend the morning before shooting on completely re-writing the scenes that were to be shot that day, causing more than one of the actors to almost have a nervous breakdown, although that was a combination of this and Kubrick's perfectionism on takes. It has been argued, given his chess background, that this and other psychological tactics on the shoot were him being a Magnificent Bastard to get the performances he wanted.
• During one of his Q&As, Kevin Smith admitted to have written Red State without a clear plan in mind. He only had two thoughts in his head: the overall topic (a horror movie inspired by a Fred Phelps interview), and the idea that the audience nowadays has already seen every story and knows every formula and cliché. The challenge he gave himself was to jump to a different scene with a different set of characters the moment he knew where the scene he was currently writing could be heading.
• Aaron Sorkin wrote The Social Network as Ben Mezrich was writing the book it was based upon The Accidental Billionaires because David Fincher optioned the project based simply on a book proposal. Mezrich would write a chapter and hand it off to Sorkin, who would then write the screenplay based on it.
• Basic Instinct went from initial story idea to final draft in ten days without the use of a computer.
• Clifford Odets was hired on short notice to rewrite the script to Sweet Smell of Success. As soon as he had finished writing a scene in his hotel room, it was rushed to the location for director Alexander Mackendrick to shoot. According to Burt Lancaster biographer Gary Fishgall, pages were distributed to the crew after they had been shot
  • Tony Curtis had stated he once found Odets typing in a prop truck between filming.
• The ending to Being There came about because of a comment that Hal Ashby made to a friend about how impressive Peter Sellers was in his performance and his willingness to try new things: "I could have this guy walking on water at the end of the film!"
• Richard Linklater noted that the script for some scenes in Boyhood was finished the night before they were to be filmed.
• Production on Days of Thunder began without a finished script; scenes were often written the day of filming. During one driving sequence, Tom Cruise actually had to read his lines off cue cards attached to his windshield, which resulted in a minor car accident. For subsequent driving sequences, Cruise was fitted with a special earpiece to have lines fed to him.
• The script for Death Wish 4: The Crackdown was rewritten during filming. Charles Bronson constantly had problems with the dialog and he requested further rewrites of certain items of dialogue and action scenes. Writer Gail Morgan Hickman recalled going through several rewrites on a daily basis.
• Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda did not write a full script for Easy Rider and made most of it up as they went along. They didn't hire a crew but instead picked up hippies at communes across the country, and used friends and passersby to hold the cameras and were drunk and stoned most of the time.
• While making 8 Mile, Eminem had very little time to work on "Lose Yourself" while shooting the film and used any given opportunity to have a pen and paper in front of him to scribble down lyrics. In some cases, he was writing as he was being filmed, such as Jimmy's ride home on the city bus after his first rap battle.
• The script for Gilda wasn't finished when filming began. According to the film's choreographer, the pages would arrive on the day they were to be filmed and it was mostly made up on the spot.
• Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers - the man in black's identity was constantly changing due to producers not knowing whether or not he would be a blood relative of Michael Myers.
• Mission: Impossible Film Series:
  • The first film went into pre-production without a script that the filmmakers wanted to use. Brian De Palma designed the action sequences but neither David Koepp nor Robert Towne were satisfied with the story that would make these sequences take place. Towne ended up helping organize a beginning, middle, and end to hang story details on while De Palma and Koepp worked on the plot. Towne rewrote scenes literally between takes during filming.
  • For Fallout, Simon Pegg revealed that when production began, the film's script was only 33 pages long, in contrast to typical 85-100 page scripts. As a result, Christopher McQuarrie had to make events up throughout the filming process.
• Streets of Fire originally ended with Diane Lane singing Bruce Springsteen's "Streets of Fire" - this was actually filmed. However, just before production finished, Universal admitted they wouldn't get the rights to the song by the release date. Walter Hill then asked Jim Steinman to write a replacement; he wrote "Tonight Is What It Means to be Young" in two days. Hill wrote and shot the new ending in the few days remaining.
• John Woo went into filming The Killer with only a short treatment and wrote the details of the script while filming.
• 28 Days Later:
  • The original plan was to reveal that the virus had spread worldwide. Midway through shooting, they opted to change things to keep the virus more ambiguous. Since the film was shot almost entirely in-sequence, this is the reason for Sgt Farrell's dialogue theorizing the quarantine. The sequel confirms his theory.
  • The entire second half of the original script was scrapped; originally the heroes find that the beacon is automated and there are no actual survivors around, and coincidentally end up at the same research station the infected animals were released from. One scientist is still alive there and informs them that the infection can be cured by replacing every drop of blood in the person's body with someone else's, leaving them to be infected instead. The crew quickly realized how ridiculous this was ("What do you do, clean out every capillary and vein with bleach?") and quickly came up with the story of the soldiers to replace it.
• Star Wars:
  • Zigzagged with the original trilogy. After the success of A New Hope, an outline was created planning possibly nine films. However, while the sequel was being written, the hired writer died, leading George Lucas to a Creator Breakdown that made him change things around (most importantly, Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader became the same character, and the film would become Episode V of IX), and also push some elements to the sixth (namely the revelation of Luke's sister and the appearance of the Emperor) - which in turn would become the Grand Finale as Lucas decided to just end at 6 films, though the prequels would take a while to appear.
  • The reboot series produced by Disney ran into this issue as a result of their initial plans fell through. Originally each film was supposed to be directed by a different director (Episode 7 by J. J. Abrams, Episode 8 by Rian Johnson, and Episode 9 by Colin Trevorrow) like they did with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There was a vague plan when making the trilogy that each film would have key focus on one of the three main characters from the Original Trilogy, with Episode 7 focused on Han Solo, Episode 8 focused on Luke Skywalker, and Episode 9 focused on Leia (more on this below). Disney left it to the directors to make the plot and characters, hoping that each one would build off of the previous film to create a unique story that had different directorial flairs to it. This limited pre-planning caused some issues when Rian Johnson stepped up for his film, because he wanted to go in a different direction than expected with the film (especially since Episode 7 repeated several key plot elements from A New Hope) instead of simply "building off" from the previous movie, as his film The Last Jedi essentially wrapped up or changed many of Abrams's plotlines from the The Force Awakens, leaving the final film with a limited number of plot-points to work with. Colin Trevorrow would leave as well, forcing Abrams to return to direct the last movie and follow up on the few remaining plot points left from the previous film. Most notably, Rian said that the next film could very well retcon his own idea of Rey's parents not being anyone special, although Daisy Ridley also said that the one answer J. J. Abrams had in mind was about Rey's parents, and it was the same as Johnson's. As it turned out in The Rise of Skywalker, while Abrams was fine leaving Rey's parents "nobodies", he still made her grandfather somebody, as in Emperor Palpatine, who himself wasn't even originally intended to return and become the overall Big Bad in the initial draft of the film's script that Trevorrow produced. Basically, Disney was hoping the directors would be able to write the story themselves in such a way that each film would give the next director material stuff to use for it, but this loose control over directors in maintaining a single vision caused there to be no unifying ideas, and lead to inconsistent writing and plot threads.
  • This tradition was tragically enforced after the unexpected death of Carrie Fisher (Leia), who was supposed to have a huge planned role in The Rise of Skywalker. Her death reportedly left the writers scrambling. They ultimately brought back some unused shots of her from The Force Awakens and added some Fake Shemp moments to cobble together an ending for her arc. In fact, several analysts argue that it is Fisher's Death, rather than the loose overall planning, that really threw a wrench into the original plan of the Sequel Trilogy, especially since Rian Johnson decided, out of respect, to leave her final performance fully intact instead of altering the film to kill Leia.
• Rather surprisingly given their typical high-quality work and tight scripts, Pixar does it all the time. One of them described it as jumping out of a plane and hoping you can build a parachute on the way down. However, this has less to do with time constraints and more with how much every aspect of the film is done and re-done until making further changes would be unfeasible, just to make them as perfect as possible.
• Jaws, which Richard Dreyfuss described as having started "without a script, without a cast, and without a shark", had the script for each scene typically finished the night before it was shot, after writer/actor Carl Gottlieb had dinner with Steven Spielberg and members of the cast and crew to decide what would go into the film, and often incorporated improvisations that happened there.
• Kevin Williamson had always intended for the Scream series to be a trilogy, and had written plot outlines for the next two films at the same time that he wrote the screenplay for the first. Problem was, the outline for Scream 3 had to be thrown out in its entirety just weeks before it entered production, as the Columbine High School massacre and resulting backlash against violence in the media had made its plot — about one of the killers from the first film being alive, in prison, and leading a group of obsessive Slasher Movie fans to carry out a new teenage murder spree^note Williamson would later get to use this plot for the TV show The Following — suddenly hit much too close to home. Since Williamson was busy with other projects, new writer Ehren Kruger was hastily brought in to come up with a brand new story and script in a matter of weeks. Naturally, the script was still unfinished when the film went into production, with pages usually completed the day they were to be filmed.
• Back to the Future Part II: The first film's ending was never meant to lead into a sequel, it was intended to be a simple Here We Go Again! gag to end the movie on rather than a Sequel Hook. Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale have said putting Jennifer in the Delorean with Marty and Doc caused a ton of headaches until they resorted to simply putting her to sleep for most of the movie. Crispin Glover's refusal to return also caused serious writing issues, which led to the alternate 1985 timeline where George was murdered by Biff and recasting George with actor Jeffrey Weismann, who was shown obscured, as well as using footage from the first film to show George from 1955 (Glover would sue the producers, saying they misappropriated his likeness, which led to the Screen Actors Guild writing new rules about stock footage).
• Robert McGinley, the producer, director, and writer of Shredder Orpheus, made the film without having gone to film school and learned the process as he went. By his own admission, he had no idea how hard it was going to be.
• Surviving Christmas was shot without a completed script. As a result, there were many delays and arguments over what to shoot. James Gandolfini admitted in a behind the scenes interview that most of the film was "improvised".
• According to comments made by some of the cast and crew, parts of Chaos Walking (2021)'s script were still being written during filming; sometimes they would film scenes that had been written just the previous night. Daisy Ridley stated in an interview that at times it seemed no one knew exactly what was supposed to be happening and they were left "figuring it out as [they] went along".
• Lethal Weapon 4 was fast-tracked into production so Warner Bros. could have a reliable moneymaker in 1998. This meant it started filming six months before its scheduled release without a finished script, which kept on being rewritten and didn't even have an ending set.
• The DC Animated Movie Universe, a series of direct-to-DVD movies, was a case of this due to Executive Meddling both creating and ending the franchise. However the executive producer James Tucker, who was mainly the one in charge, has said that he enjoyed this as he would have found the job of planning out the universe daunting and he felt it allowed the universe to develop organically.

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