Original poster for Blow Out (1981)
Jesse Pasternack makes his case for why Brian De Palma’s screenplay is such a crucial part of his 1981 masterpiece Blow Out.
There are a lot of sounds you might associate with Blow Out (1981). The hooting of an owl before a tragic “car crash.” The whirring of sound equipment as its protagonist tries to discover proof of a violent political conspiracy. A woman crying for help in a way that you will never forget. But, for me, the sound I always associate with Blow Out has nothing to do with any of those things. Actually, it’s not even in the movie.
David Foster Wallace once described the joy he felt in reading or writing fiction as “click moments” which gave him “a special sort of buzz” that he had previously found only in solving logic proofs. You might describe “the click” as a moment when everything falls into place and works perfectly, like something you might hear a machine make. It is a sound you can hear in any great work of fiction, and it is one I hear every time I watch Blow Out.
Brian De Palma is best known as a director. That’s mostly because a lot of his trademarks as a filmmaker, like elegant tracking shots and split-screens, are visual in nature. But he is also a writer, and the screenplay that he wrote for Blow Out is his best one. Everything about it — the perfect pacing, structural brilliance, as well as vivid yet realistic characters — provides a solid foundation that helps De Palma create his best film.
One of Billy Wilder’s rules for screenwriting was “grab ‘em by the throat and never let go,” which is one that De Palma obeys in his first shot. It’s from the point-of-view of a serial killer who stalks a sorority girl, the type of thing that had become a cliché to audiences who had seen it in Halloween (1978) or Friday the 13th (1980). But when the killer has finally cornered his victim, she opens her mouth to make a terrible, weak scream. This joke subverts everything we’ve expected the scene to be, like having a question mark at the end of a sentence whose energy demands an exclamation point. It also expertly sets up the plot of the movie.
Jack Terry (John Travolta) is a sound-effects man working on schlocky genre films, most of them horror. Producer Sam (Peter Boyden), angered by the awful scream he recorded, demands that he find a better one. Later, while recording local sounds for his collection, Terry witnesses a car going out of control and diving into a creek. He rescues Sally (Nancy Allen), a sex worker and aspiring makeup artist, but is unable to save the driver, who was a popular governor about to run for president. Terry becomes convinced that someone assassinated the governor and ropes Sally into helping him. He starts to discover a sinister plot that, in the end, may help him get that scream his boss so desperately wants.
John Travolta in Blow Out
One of the strongest things about Blow Out from a screenwriting perspective is its pacing. Every scene leads into the other, but it does so in an economical yet unhurried way. De Palma expertly shows Terry discovering the truth while also finding time for a flashback sequence that gives him a good backstory as well as a surprisingly sweet romance with Sally. He keeps everything moving at a good rhythm that enables you to understand everything perfectly, which is an essential task of screenwriting.
In addition to its pacing, this movie has a great structure. It makes good use of news broadcasts to provide exposition in an interesting way, which is always a hard task of screenwriting. De Palma also wonderfully creates a subplot involving the villainous Burke (John Lithgow in a memorable performance) trying to cover his tracks that exists in perfect counterpoint to the main story. By the time the third act happens and Burke’s subplot collides with Terry, it hits you like an express train because of the care that De Palma has taken in structuring the film and setting up the climax.
John Lithgow and Nancy Allen in Blow Out
But this film’s structural pleasures would fall flat if De Palma’s screenplay didn’t provide another of the best and most elemental pleasures in a film: great characters. Every single one is evocative yet realistic. They all have distinctive personalities and vocal tics (the creepy way Burke repeatedly calls his boss “sir” even though he has no respect for him, the innocent way Sally talks about makeup whenever possible), but feel like they could be people you might meet in real life. One piece of advice which every screenwriter gets is that you should be able to distinguish which character is which on a page by covering up their name. That is a test which this film would pass with flying colors.
Though it underperformed at the box office when it first came out, Blow Out has undergone a critical reevaluation that has led many people to think of it as a masterpiece. Still, its new reputation rests primarily on De Palma’s use of cinematic pyrotechnics (including some literal fireworks during a stunning shot) and its immersive sound design. Nevertheless, its impeccable screenplay deserves more recognition. It deserves admiration for its economy of storytelling, fascinating characters, and an ending in which everything feels like it has perfectly clicked into place.
Blow Out will be screened at IU Cinema on April 1 as the concluding film in the series I Like to Watch: Voyeurism in Cinema.