Screenplays with a voice
Any examples of (good) genre screenplays written with a particular voice? Not looking for different just for different sake, but would like something that feels unique.
The overwhelming amount of screenplays I’ve read in recent years feel like they’re all written by the same person. Same stylistic choices on the page, similar word choices, punchy and too often what I assume are meant to be clever sentences. Obviously the brevity of the format is a major contributing factor to this as things tend to be boiled down into economical language, but I also feel like some of this is due to writers mirroring each other and stylistic trends and perhaps just not bothering to do much interesting with their words on the page. The lack of variety has actually made reading scripts a bit of a chore at times.
Although it’s much older, UNFORGIVEN by David Webb Peoples is a good example I found where the language and description feels very unique, deliberate, and specific. It’s more prose-like. Sentences tend to run on in a Cormac McCarthian way (perhaps even more than McCarthy’s own scripts) and that gives it a very particular energy, but it also doesn’t feel over-wrought for the medium. I like it a lot.
Any recs?