I know, and I'm sorry, I did a June on you all. I started the last video with a promise and then kept you waiting for the answer until this one. But today you will get it. You'll also get the top 10 lessons from the Sicario screenplay and a fascinating discovery from the hidden metadata inside this and another Taylor Shadon script. You'll see that what I earlier believed to be coincidence is not. After Avatar came out, James Cameron went back to his screenplay and cut out everything from the text that wasn't filmed or that ended up on the cutting floor. He started with 151 pages and finished with 110. He cut down his script by more than 40 pages. It confirmed to Cameron that if Avatar, then any story fits within 110 pages. Therefore, he famously gave everyone a Fox permission to quote, shoot him in the head if he'd ever deliver a longer script. So I put the Sicario script to the same test. I looked at script and movie side by side and cut out all the scenes that didn't make it into the final film. The Sicario script you can find online is 105 pages or 104 without the title page. It turns out the deleted scenes constitute 10 full pages. That's almost 10% of the script. Gone. Not quite as much as Avatar, but it's still significant as we started from a much tighter script. It shows that even a complex story like Sicario can be told in 94 pages if it's written well. It's a good exercise to do with your favorite films. Compare the movie to the script, see what didn't get used and think about what you can learn from that. From 10 to 1, here are the standout insights from copying the Sicario screenplay. The movie's POV is largely limited to Kate. Apart from Act 3, they took out almost every scene that wasn't about her except for the Sylvieux and Alicia storyline. Teller Shared and Loves We See, but even then it is mostly used when we're not in Kate's POV and when characters are looking through binoculars or night vision goals. A tight writing style limits the page count, but Shared and Goes further. He reduces the space before slug lines and sneaks parentheticals inside the dialogue. This script only describes the essence clearly, directly and elegantly. Instead of cluttering the description with cutting back and forth, Shared and Simply adds a note. He doesn't use beat a lot. After all, it doesn't add meaning and only extends the script's length. Instead, he describes what's visible or what we should be feeling from what preceded in the story. Even though Shared and claims to be allergic to exposition, there are about four major expositional scenes in the script, which is more than Hell of Highwater, which has exactly one. Expert terminology gives the script a sense of realism. Frazes like, on your six or weapons free, are introduced cold, but then later explained from the context. Sicaria is a film but clearly a Shared and script. It includes slices of ordinary American life and discusses themes like the cost of keeping a certain way of life. The script breathes a clear sequential structure, often climaxing on Kate's confrontation with one of two main characters, Matt and Alejandro. Shared and does not follow any structure or rulebook, but the story has mythical resonance, with a clear call to adventure, a threshold, an ordeal, a mentor and so forth. And this concludes our study of Sicario. One more thing. I mentioned that Taylor Shared and his brother published a book in 2011 titled To Die in Mexico. I also said that it may be a coincidence that Sicario played in the same universe. But when we study a screenplay, we don't just study the text, we also study the subtext, and I'm going to take that quite literally. When you look under the hood of a PDF screenplay, it looks like this. Hidden in there somewhere is information called Metadata. If we look at the metadata for Sicario, we find the following. The file was created in July of 2011, the same year John Ghibler published To Die in Mexico. The chance of coincidence is shrinking if you ask me. And now we're on the scent of unraveling the mystery, let's keep following the breadcrumbs. Definitive piece of evidence comes from Sicario 2 Day of the Soldado. Let's go straight to the metadata again and see what we find. There it is, staring us in the face to die in Mexico. So there is a direct line, no mere coincidence. Soldado and most likely Sicario go back to the 2011 book written by Taylor Sheridan's brother John Ghibler. To my knowledge, he was never credited, acknowledged, or even mentioned by Sheridan. If you know a place where he does mention John Ghibler, please let me know in the comments below. So what else lies buried in the metadata of Sheridan's screenplay? Well, you'll find that Taylor Sheridan writes on a Mac and his final draft copy was registered to his wife. We already knew that she boarded for him when he was a struggling actor, making ends meet by coaching actors like Jennifer Lawrence. So your turn now to be the script detective, tell us in the comments what secrets you have uncovered from the metadata of your favorite screenplays. If you haven't already, check out the full playlist of videos where I copy the Sicario script. Happy watching, happy writing, cheers!