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The Nice Guys and the Importance of But (Video Essay)

Uses The Nice Guys to demonstrate the difference between scenes connected by causality ("but" and "therefore") and scenes that merely follow one another ("and then"). Argues Shane Black's script stays tight because nearly every beat complicates the one before it.

Gosh, I Love Movies · 9 min · Intermediate · THY · Film Theory · 2021

What you take away

Rewrite a scene list from a script using only 'but' and 'therefore' to see where the causality breaks.

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