First page – Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

 

Here’s the first page of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  The brilliant Charlie Kaufman breaks at least two rules here:  (1) starts with a block of action description that is 16 lines long (any more than four and everyone will know you’re an amateur!), (2) tells us what is printed on his tie (not the writer’s business!), and (3) introduces a voiceover to tell us what is happening (verboten!).

What I love most about this is the quick start.  We meet Joel right away.  We know that som...