Scenes of Militarization: What the “Sweet Smell of Success” Can Teach Us About Conflict

I can’t tell you how exhausting it is to sit down and write a script to try to make it sound both good and like real life. You see, real life is boring most of the time. But films should be entertaining.

Even when you think you’ve conquered the scene and extracted all the information you need from it, there are times when I look back and find that the reading is flat, predictable and painfully effective.

When I’m stuck, I like to go back and watch the movies I love to see why they work. And today I came across a video dissecting Alexander Mackendrick’s 1957 masterpiece, Sweet Smell of Success.

It was written by Ernest Lehman and playwright Clifford Odets. The film is legendary for its sharp dialogue and the way it hides a complex plot in plain sight.

But to get there, the writers struggled with the script, just like us.

So let’s take a look at how a simple rewrite transformed a two-person interaction into one of the greatest dialogue scenes in cinematic history.

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

Functional but flat

I love any type of YouTube video that describes the craft of screenwriting. I always feel alone writing features, so it’s cool to hear how universal this stuff and the feeling of rewriting is.

Regardless, in Ernest Lehman’s first version (based on his own short story), his introduction of the tyrannical Broadway columnist JJ Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) was fairly straightforward.

We got a scene where unscrupulous press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) approaches Hunsecker’s table at the 21 Club and interrupts Hunsecker, who is sitting with some of his buddies. The trio leaves. Sidney sits down and they discuss why Sidney didn’t break off Hunsecker’s sister’s romance with a jazz musician.

The scene worked, but it didn’t pop.

Director Alexander Mackendrick wanted to find a more dramatic path.

They therefore reinvented the motivations of the scene.

Mackendrick brought in playwright Clifford Odets to polish the pages, and here’s how they did it.

1. Raise the stakes before the scene even begins

In the rewritten version, Odets decided to make JJ Hunsecker a legendary figure of New York nightlife. In fact, he made sure we heard his name mentioned 23 times in the first 20 minutes before we saw his face.

This built a total mythos around the guy before we even saw him.

So when we finally meet the character in the scene, Odets creates an immediate barrier. Sidney can’t just come to the table. He has to lure JJ using a phone call to the restaurant.

This also shows that Sidney is resourceful.

Now we layer character and plot.

The goal here is to never make it easy for your protagonist to get what they want. If they need to have a conversation, bar the entrance. Make them fight just to get into the room.

“Sweet smell of success” Credit: MGM

2. Arm your exhibit

One of the hardest things to do in screenwriting is explaining the mechanics of a world without putting the audience to sleep.

In Sweet Smell of Success, audiences must learn exactly how the parasitic ecosystem between press agents and columnists works.

It’s not just about dialogue, but about world-building.

Again, you have to tackle this scene and find a way to get into it. So instead of having Sidney explain this to a neutral party, which is flat, Odets introduces a foil character in Senator Walker, who asks the questions the audience is thinking about.

Now the whole exhibition is motivated.

The takeaway here is that if you have to deliver boring stuff to make the story make sense, deliver it through conflict.

3. The art of the trio

The final part of Odets’ rewrite was to bring out the dialogue and add group dynamics.

Throughout this five-minute scene, the characters rarely speak directly to each other. Instead, Character A talks to Character B, but he’s actually directing the subtext toward Character C.

It’s a very strange piece, but it works perfectly in this context.

For example, JJ wants to humiliate Sidney as soon as he sits down. Instead of looking at Sidney, JJ looks at the senator and says, “I often wish you were deaf and wore a hearing aid…with the flick of a switch I could silence the eager whisper of little men.”

And we know exactly what he really means.

By the end of the scene, Odets has executed an entire microplot with a beginning, middle, and end for three minor characters, while simultaneously deepening the psychological warfare between our two protagonists.

And that makes the scene stand out.

Summarize it all

Next time you’re editing a scene that seems a little too polished, add a little conflict. Work on the characters and see if you can add both layered and personal conflict into the scene.

For a deeper dive into classic screenwriting techniques, check out our articles on how to write subtext in dialogue and secrets to mastering the pacing of a scene.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

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