"Stage Play" indies?

Randall_Oelerich

Randall_Oelerich

Veteran
What are some examples of good 'stage play' feature indie films to study for screenplay storylines, etc? I have heard it said that a good way to make an indie cheap and easy (relatively speaking) is to write a 'stage play' screenplay. Simple one or very few locations, lots of dialogue. One example that comes to mind is the recent film "Catch and Release" with Jennifer Garner, Kevin Smith; almost the entire story takes place in and around a house, plus an easily accessible shore along a river; no special effects, no action sequences.
 
I sure liked "Night of the Iguana". John Huston, Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Tennessee Williams. Dream team. Basically one location, small cast. Great suff. Anything by Tennessee actually.
 
I won't say good or bad but:
Tape.
The Cube.
My Diner with Andre.
Open Water. (mostly)
Evil Dead I & II (mostly)
Reservoir Dogs (mostly)

EDIT:
Also worth mentioning, two films by Chris Noland.
Memento
Following

MEMENTO has what I would call few locations. If you're getting the locations for free or next to nothing and there are very few of them and you make sure you don't have to do a company move during the middle of a shoot day, then I think you can get a lot of the benefits of a single location shoot.

FOLLOWING (CN's first film, at SlamDance the year before Memento was at Sundance I think) turns the single location idea on it's ear. Found a way to make multiple locations cheap. Basically the story revolves around a voyeur who teams up with a burglar. So they break into different people's houses. But you don't need the various locations for a whole shoot and to maintain continuity. He has two main actors and can just borrow locations from friends by asking them to use their apartments for a weekend at a time. Very different than, can I shoot ten days at your place. So he just had to nail down apartments for shot periods of time. I mention this film to show how he went against the single location idea to find an option that was just as cheap.
 
I wish I could write a compelling 'stage play' script.
Maybe after reading these films I would be able to.
 
Hard Candy was also single location. All in a house. (Plus a couple minutes in a coffee shop.)

Was made for $2M but can easily be done for MUCH less.
 
Hard Candy was an intense film, yeah shows what can be done inside a house setting with a great script. Yeah seems like it could have been done for $100,000 or so easily. Or even $10,000 on a budget.

GageFX said:
Hard Candy was also single location. All in a house. (Plus a couple minutes in a coffee shop.) Was made for $2M but can easily be done for MUCH less.
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Here are others worth studying:

Good Will Hunting (nearly every scene is two characters in a room talking. Very simple. Could easily be done on 100K)
Clerks (which I can't stand, but it still meets your criteria)
El Mariache (which was shot entirely in one small Mexican town for 7K)
Reservoir Dogs (I'm stunned someone hadn't mentioned this before. Tarantino wrote this specifically as a ultra-low budget project. He was planning on doing it for about 100K. Harvey Keitel became interested and an exec at LIVE fell in love with the script and his budget was increased to approx 1 million...but, this is the perfect film to study as a low budget "stage play" project.)


Then, consider studying big budget adaptations of actual stageplays. Just because a studio spent a fortune on them doesn't mean they can't be useful to you.

- A Few Good Men (from a play by Aaron Sorkin. The final act of this movie is one 25 minute scene. Two characters have 99% of the dialogue. This proves that well structured dialogue is inherently dramatic. One scene 25 minutes long! Amazing!)
- Steel Magnolias (okay, yes it is a chick flick. But, it was a stage play first. And despite the sappy elements it isn't all that bad.)
- 12 Angry Men (the ultimate example. A jury sequestered in a jury room.)
- Anything by Tenessee Williams (this was said earlier by someone else. It's worth repeating.)
- Stand By Me (okay, this is based on a novella...but, it's a movie about four kids in the woods. It feels bigger than it is...which is the point of this thread. Simple productions that result in great movies.)

Robert Rodriguez wrote that the key to independent filmmaking is to write a list of locations, props, costumes and other items that you have free access to. Only then should you be thinking of a story. We took his advice for our 200K feature film, A Lonely Place For Dying. We had access to a local abandoned prison and wrote a story for that. The result is a cold war thriller that feels far bigger than the movie actually is.

In my opinion, this is the best way to approach making an independent feature film. For me personally, many of these films are my favorites. I've watched A Few Good Men 25 times. I've seen Good Will Hunting at least 20. I love dialogue driven movies.
 
Prodigi Pictures said:
....
Reservoir Dogs (I'm stunned someone hadn't mentioned this before. Tarantino wrote this specifically as a ultra-low budget project. He was planning on doing it for about 100K. Harvey Keitel became interested and an exec at LIVE fell in love with the script and his budget was increased to approx 1 million...but, this is the perfect film to study as a low budget "stage play" project.)
Click to expand...
:Drogar-Mark-07(DBG)
see post #4 (ducks and runs for cover) : D
 
"BUG" (Ashley Judd), recent release. I had forgotten about that one. Actually was written as a screenplay from a performed stage play. Entire movie except for a very brief bar scene takes place in a cheap ass roadside motel-- so imagine filming that, mostly two actors in a $30 a night cheap motel room. Location could double as the lodging for the actors. Brilliant.
 
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