10.4.18 - The Keystone Doc

A cover letter that expresses pure intent, coupled with executive text, is a really powerful combo.

I think of the Declaration of Independence as a cover letter for the Constitution. That's basically how Lincoln saw it. The relationship between the two was that the C was an executive text, designed to be followed and optimized for that purpose. Minimalist, prosaic, confined, conservative. Sober in the responsibility of creating a new reality. The Declaration, meanwhile, was the interpretive text. The keystone. It conveyed the spirit through which and in which the execution was to be done. It burst with aspiration and unproven hopes. Florid, expansive, ambitious, revolutionary. Thrilling and motivating in its promise.

A screenplay is similar to the Constitution. It can contain beautiful writing, but the document itself is spartan. Its style is enforcedly rigid. Like the Constitution, a screenplay is sober in the responsibility of creating a new reality. As the foundation of a project with infinite details and endless meanings, its job is to undergird, not to deliver the full impact of the project.

There's no corresponding cover letter for the screenplay. You know, a cover letter really works best when it's helping someone interpret the resume with which it arrives. It provides details. One document tells the facts, the other explains. Is that the ideal way to deliver an executive text? Maybe.

Anyway, this keystone document has one job: to be pure. It works best not when it contains multitudes, but when it expresses an idea so pure that it serves as a touchstone in any situation that arises in the execution instructed by the factual document.

The point of this, apart from identifying the benefits of this relationship between two texts, is to suggest that a screenplay always be accompanied by a keystone. A document of maybe 10 pages, where the screenwriter expresses the pure distillation of the energy that founded the script. The point is that the whole thing will be then more comprehensible, and also it's the last say the writer has before handing it off to someone else to proceed with their own interpretation.