Perfectly Tight: How Punch-Drunk Love Proves That Masterpieces Don’t Have To Be Long
For the most part, Paul Thomas Anderson films all sort of have a similar ring to them: they’re grand in scope, intricately written, usually long, and tend to connect stories from a wide variety of characters (and most of the time they’re masterpieces). But when looking through his filmography, there’s one film that deviates from these patterns and instead focuses on the unexpectedly simple story of a socially awkward man who falls in love. Of course, I’m talking about Punch-Drunk Love.
The 95-minute-long feature starring Adam Sandler (in his first leading dramatic role) changed the way the public viewed Anderson as a filmmaker and proved that he doesn’t need to swing for the fences to achieve something marvelous. Additionally, it showed that a masterfully crafted screenplay doesn’t have to be long at all. In fact, this screenplay so perfectly illustrates what a tight screenplay should be that I think it’s a crime if it isn’t taught in film schools everywhere. Every line, every scene, and every act perfectly achieves what it set out to do without having any unnecessary fat on it, and it does this without feeling the least bit rushed.
If you’re a writer struggling with keeping your scripts tight, I suggest you read the screenplay for Punch-Drunk Love right away (and the rest of this article).
OPENING IMAGE
The film opens with a shot of Barry as he sits alone at a desk in a warehouse, talking to an airline representative on the phone.
From this interaction alone, the audience can take away several key aspects of Barry’s personality: First, he’s a loner. His desk being shoved into the corner of a large room, along with the nature of the conversation, tells us that he probably doesn’t have a lot of friends or that he doesn’t enjoy the company of other people. Second, he’s a bit odd. His off-beat manner of speaking and the fact that he’s wearing a nice suit in such a non-formal environment tell us that he’s definitely not an ordinary individual. Third, he’s a deep thinker. His ability to recognize such a major loophole within the fine print of a promotional sale tells us that the gears in his mind are constantly going (whether this is a good thing or a bad thing has yet to be determined). But the point remains: we’re one page in, and Anderson has already successfully introduced the audience to a very complicated, dynamic protagonist.
SET UP
After his phone call, Barry marches through the warehouse as he prepares for his day. It’s revealed that he’s the business owner and has shown up to work hours before anyone else working there. With his morning coffee in hand, Barry walks outside to get some sunlight. As he takes in the surroundings, a car driving by suddenly flips over and rolls violently down the street. As Barry stares down at this accident in shock, he suddenly notices another car hastily pull over in front of his business, drop off a harmonium (basically a little piano), and then skirt away. Despite a significant, violent event having just occurred right in front of him, something about this instrument captures all of his attention: beauty within chaos. Barry turns around without taking any further action.
Before Barry is able to get back into his office, yet another car rapidly pulls into the driveway and parks in front of him. Out comes a woman named Lena, who asks Barry if he can give her keys to the mechanic next door when it opens.
Barry, obviously attracted to Lena, agrees to do her this favor. Just after she leaves the premises, Barry sprints over to the harmonium on the sidewalk, picks it up, and takes it back to his office. He can’t risk something that beautiful getting away from him.
While nothing more comes from the car accident and no further context is provided regarding the harmonium, this scene provides us with some key context regarding Barry’s personality and properly introduces us to the love interest of the story, all within two pages. Take notes, people!
Later, once Barry’s workday actually begins, we get a glimpse into how stressful his life really is. We learn that he has seven sisters, none of whom respect him as a person. One by one, they keep calling him during business hours to make sure he’s going to a family dinner later that evening (often bullying and harassing him as they do so). We learn that he sells plungers when he gives a customer a durability demonstration of the newest model (during which Barry shatters the product and likely loses the sale). And we learn that his only moments of peace are when he’s able to escape to his office and be completely alone (and with his newly acquired harmonium). He’s weird, he’s anxious, and he’s not great around people, but he’s trying.
Suddenly, one of his sisters (Elizabeth) makes a surprise visit to his office. She tells him that she’s planning on bringing a date for him to the family dinner. Barry naturally despises this idea.
After work, Barry focuses on himself by going shopping. At the grocery store, he discovers yet another flaw in the airline miles rewards program: by purchasing a four-pack of pudding, he can actually quadruple the amount of airline miles he receives per purchase. Not wanting to miss out on this once-in-a-lifetime offer, he purchases every pack of pudding available in the store.
Later that night, Barry goes to the big family dinner. While he’s almost immediately berated with embarrassing stories and ridicule, he’s relieved to discover that Elizabeth did not bring him a date.
As the group continues to spend the entirety of the dinner making fun of Barry, he finally snaps. In an instant, he gets up, walks over to the room’s floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and shatters them into pieces.
We cut to several minutes later, where Barry is speaking privately to Walter, one of his sister’s husbands. He apologizes for breaking the glass and asks him if he knows any psychiatrists.
Now we know a little more about Barry. Not only is he socially awkward, but he can lose his temper quickly (and rightfully so). On top of that, we now know that he knows he has issues and desperately wants to fix them, but he’s embarrassed by the possibility of anyone finding this information out (we’re only 23 pages into this script, by the way).
Later at home, feeling especially lonely after the disaster of a dinner he just had, Barry opens up the Yellow Pages and calls a phone sex hotline. The woman on the other end asks him for all of his payment and personal identification information, which makes Barry especially uncomfortable. But he needs someone to talk to, so he obliges. They talk for a little while, and the woman keeps trying to escalate the conversation sexually. But Barry’s not doing this for sexual gratification, he just wants company. She keeps pushing, even asking Barry for more money. The chaos grows.
He declines, and she escalates things even further by threatening to tell his girlfriend about him calling the phone-sex service in the first place (Barry obviously doesn’t have a girlfriend, but she doesn’t know that). He hangs up the phone.
INCITING INCIDENT
Two events can be considered the inciting incidents of this film, and they occur almost simultaneously (like I keep hammering down on, this script is perfectly tight).
The next day at Barry’s work, Elizabeth shows up with Lena (the girl who left her car). Turns out, she’s the friend who was going to come to dinner. Barry is completely blindsided by this. With an office storing hundreds of pudding cups and a broken harmonium, he’s worried that he’s going to look crazy in front of this girl and completely panics during their conversation.
Anyway, when Barry answers the phone, he’s shocked to hear the voice of the phone sex operator on the other line, who is now threatening to outright blackmail him.
At this moment, Barry has two different conflicts colliding. He likes this girl and has to overcome all his social issues in order to pursue her. Additionally, he’s now being blackmailed by the phone sex company. Just when more chaos has entered his life, he’s once again met with more beauty. These two events are what drive the rest of the plot.
Now, although this script is perfectly paced and to the point, the inciting incident does not happen until the end of the first act (which is mainly focused on understanding Barry as a character). Normally, this is something to avoid, but in the case of a character-driven film that doesn’t exceed 100 pages, it’s perfectly fine. And in the case of this script, it actually works better than the alternative.
DEBATE
The walls are closing in on Barry all at once. His sister dragged Lena into his place of business, the phone sex operator won’t stop threatening him, and things are falling apart in the warehouse.
Embarrassed and belittled, Barry finally convinces Elizabeth and Lena to leave. But just before they reach the exit, Lena rushes back into Barry’s office to talk to him in private.
Just what Barry needed. Without the added pressure of his family, his employees, and the phone sex operator hanging over him, he was able to secure a date with the woman of his dreams. Not only that, but we also come to realize that Lena isn’t like anybody else in Barry’s life. She should have been put off by this whole interaction, but she wasn’t. She should have been weirded out by all of the embarrassing stories Elizabeth told her about him, but she isn’t. All of these imperfections seemed to actually make her more intrigued by Barry, which is exactly the kind of companionship he needs in this moment.
Now comes the debate: does Barry fight to take control over everything holding him back to win over Lena, or does he fall victim to the social and mental flaws that have been haunting him his entire life?
BREAK INTO TWO
The second act opens in Provo, Utah, where we’re finally able to put a face to the phone sex operator: a young woman by the name of Latisha working at a bar owned by a mysterious, sketchy older man named Dean. Determined to get some money out of poor Barry, Dean hires a group of brothers to travel to Los Angeles to intimidate him in person.
Once again, in a very short amount of time, the audience is able to infer a whole lot about these characters. We now know that the phone sex company Barry called is just one of Dean’s many scams. We also figure out that Dean, as scary as he tries to come across, is just a “used car salesman” type trying to be bigger than he is. And in doing so, he makes his living off of taking advantage of people more vulnerable than he is (like Barry, the brothers, anyone else who calls his company, and likely Latisha). Paul Thomas Anderson once again achieves this in no time at all. There’s no need for Dean’s backstory, there’s no need for any other explanations regarding his businesses–we’re just able to figure it out in the context of the scene. And we’re also able to figure out that during Act 2, Barry is in for some real trouble (as dumb as these antagonists may be).
MIDPOINT
At the midpoint of the film, we find Barry out on his date with Lena. It’s going awkwardly, as expected, but it’s clear Lena enjoys these little quirks of Barry’s. She mentions that she’s going to Hawaii soon for a work trip, and Barry lies and says he is too. Maybe they’ll see each other there! For a moment, things actually start to look up for him. However, when she innocently brings up an embarrassing story about Barry that Elizabeth told her, he loses control.
Naturally, the two are asked by the restaurant manager to leave. Barry drops her off at her apartment, they share an awkward hug goodbye, and that’s that. What could have been an amazing night turned sour, all thanks to Barry being himself.
Just when he’s about to exit her apartment building, the front desk receptionist stops him and says he has a call. Confused but passive, Barry answers.
He drops the phone and runs to her. Down the halls, up the stairs, and finally right up to her door, where they share a passionate kiss. Beauty from chaos.
BAD TO WORSE
Riding high from his wonderful night, Barry returns home blissfully. Before going to bed, he takes the trash out to the alley, where he’s met with more chaos: the brothers are there waiting for him.
They take all the cash Barry has on him, and even make him go to an ATM to get some more. He’s completely emasculated. These people are here now, right when he finds a shining light in his life, and they’re never going to leave him alone.
BREAK INTO THREE
Act 3 begins with Barry desperately searching for an escape, which may or may not come in the form of pudding. The next day at work, he convinces his employee/only friend, Lance, to come with him to the store to buy more, in hopes that he can redeem enough airline miles to leave this troubled life behind.
FINALE
The third act is where the pace of the film really picks up. Barry feels as if he’s running out of time to save himself and begins to move quickly. He calls the pudding company and requests the airline miles he’s owed immediately, but they say they can’t do that.
He finally decides to take charge of his life and just buys a plane ticket to Hawaii. This is a huge moment for Barry because it shows that, for once, he isn’t going to be pushed around. He isn’t just going to let things happen to him. He wants to do this, he wants to see Lena, and he isn’t going to let the circumstances of his situation interfere with that.
Barry lands in Honolulu without any plan or direction of where to go from here, so he calls his sister Elizabeth and asks her for Lena’s hotel. She starts teasing and making fun of him, like she always has, but this is a different Barry. He doesn’t let things happen anymore, he makes things happen.
He gets the number and calls Lena, who’s absolutely ecstatic that he’s there, and they decide to meet up right away.
When Lena and Barry get back to Los Angeles after a fairytale experience, they’re almost immediately harassed by the brothers (who still want more of Barry’s money). But, like I said before, this isn’t the Barry they met earlier…
While Lena gives a statement to the police at the hospital, Barry sneaks away to confront the man behind it all. These people hurt his woman, and they cannot get away with that. He goes to his office and calls the phone sex company, demanding to speak with whoever’s in charge.
And he keeps running (figuratively), eventually making his way to the headquarters of Dean’s phone sex operation, D&D Mattresses in Utah.
CLOSING IMAGE
The final scene of the film has Barry getting back from Utah and arriving on Lena’s doorstep. In her mind, Barry had just abruptly abandoned her at the hospital, so she’s feeling heartbroken. He’s aware of this, but knows that in order for them to be together, he had to deal with all the issues of his past.
Luckily, she forgives him, and the two share a hug. With this, the film ends on a beautiful note about seeing people for who they truly are and overcoming their flaws, whatever those may be.
WHY IT’S EXCELLENT
If you made it this far into the article, it’s clear that I absolutely adore this script for an abundance of reasons. The primary one being that it achieves so much with so little. I feel that a modern film trend is that everything must be explicitly explained, which I never quite understood. If this film were made today, people would certainly be complaining about not knowing more about Dean, or not believing him as an antagonist because we don’t have more context around his various crimes, or not appreciating Barry’s depiction of mental illness because he doesn’t explicitly come to terms with it. But all that’s bullshit. Paul Thomas Anderson showed everyone that if you want a shorter script to pop, all you really have to have are interesting characters, a plot that grabs you, and a point that deserves to be said.
But why do we love the characters so much? And how do these characters drive such a simple, straightforward plot? Well, with Barry, he represents some of our deepest insecurities: being disrespected, being pushed around, not doing well in social situations–the list goes on. And as he overcomes each of these obstacles, it gives us hope. That’s what we all wish to do in our lives, and as Barry achieves this, it makes us feel that we can too.
With Lena’s character, she represents the ideal companion: someone who is willing to appreciate us for who we are, despite our flaws. The person we’ve all been looking for. And with Dean’s character, he represents past mistakes coming back to bite you in the ass. We’ve all been there. But these mistakes don’t necessarily make you a bad person, and at the end of the day, you’re able to overcome them. A new, better life is just around the corner. If it can happen to Barry, it can happen to you.
