True Stories 43: 10s—The Irishman

The critics liked this movie. A lot. I didn’t. I thought it was OK, but it’s far from the masterpiece that some would ask you to believe that it is.

Written by Steve Zaillian—whose stuff I normally love—The Irishman dragged for me. Maybe the directing? Maybe a combo of writing and directing?

If you haven’t seen the film—be forewarned—it’s 3 ½ hours long. And in these days of most films being closer to an hour and a half, that’s a long movie. How, you might ask, does that happen? As a writer, you’re told to keep your scripts under 120 pages, i.e., under 2 hours.

But when you have a powerful director, he/she can convince the studio that the time is needed to tell this complex story. And if you have a proven track record, the studio might let you have all that extra time.

True story—I had a writing assignment where the producer wanted a long script—he wanted an epic two hour and forty minute film, ‘on the order of Titanic’ he said. He wanted time to showcase all the special effects that he was planning for the film.

So I went away, did my research [this was a war film] and turned in a 160 page script—which is about two hours and forty minutes on screen. The film never got made and when it looked like it was being resurrected—written by other writers—he talked in an interview about how great I was to work with but how they just couldn’t afford to shoot a two hour and forty minute film.

But… he’d asked for that length of a film! What’s the deal?! The deal is, the writer is an easy scapegoat, so be careful out there. If you’re asked to write a film longer than 120 pages, be sure the studio and money people are onboard with that. This is, of course, hard to do when you’re only a writer, but it’s a great example of how it’s a minefield out there.

In terms of the structure of The Irishman, we’re seeing an old, forgotten man reminisce about his life—from learning to kill in WWII, to learning to steal as a truck driver, to learning to be a bodyguard to important mobsters. And he’s mentored along the way by some of the biggest mobsters in the crime biz. Take a look at the trailer.

The crucial moment, though, comes when he’s given the job of killing one of his mentors—a killer, sure. But the boss has been good to our hero, so it’s a tough thing to do.

Our hero. Well, not exactly. It’s hard to feel much for this guy. He’s kind of a one-dimensional enforcer… and I never felt like I got under his skin.

But hey, probably just me. As I said, a lot of critics loved this one.

Next week we move from the criminal element to the divine—in The Two Popes.

Copyright © Diane Lake

09Apr23

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