THEY SET THE SCENE

FOR some, it happens years before the script has been started. For others, it follows weeks of ignoring a blank screen and a producer’s frantic calls. An idea for a scene, or even a line comes up and something ineffable clicks into place, like a tumbler on a lock, setting the story free.

We asked a few writers to discuss a scene that helped them bring their films into focus. Their responses -- over the next three pages -- cover some film moments in such depth that a simple spoiler alert isn’t sufficient. Caution: There may be one or two sentences in the following story that don’t give away key plot points.

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Tony Gilroy,

“Michael Clayton”

In his film about a law firm “fixer” up against forces he can’t control, a scene halfway through the movie imparts background and plot, and sets up the thriller aspect to follow.

“It’s the scene where Michael goes to his boss’ Upper East Side town house to ask him for money. I remember it was a very critical scene to write because, just from a utilitarian standpoint, it has some real important plot aspects to it. It’s at the moment when Michael Clayton realizes that this is not something casual -- the stakes are really raised for him, he has to take this very, very seriously. It’s a huge scene in terms of the back story as well; it really gives me a chance to blow back through their history in a really efficient, unsentimental, sneaky way. You’re going through the movie up to that point trying to figure out where the power lies and how much of a hole Michael Clayton is in, and this scene drops the floor out from under him completely. It’s the scene where you find out exactly how he feels about his job, and his past, all the things that he squandered, where he sits on the food chain in the law firm, and that’s the next level.

“The third part of it, which is the part that goes unnoticed, is that this is not a movie star scene, in any way shape or form. . . . This is not a cool scene, this is a scene about a guy coming in almost as a child; It’s ‘I could have been a contender’ in a way. He’s so bereft . . . he’s so clinging to the idea that he could go back to court -- ‘I was good at it.’ It’s such a weak [moment] for his character, and he ends up just so emasculated by it. I think that’s what’s so fascinating.”

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Tamara Jenkins,

“The Savages”

Jenkins tells the story of two siblings who have to put their estranged father in a nursing home. The first scene she worked on inspired the rest of the film, but not until years later. In it, Wendy calls her brother in the middle of the night to tell him about an alarming act by their possibly demented father.

“That scene -- when I wrote it originally, I must have written it a million years ago -- it was almost in a preconscious state. I wasn’t working toward a screenplay, it was one of those scenes that you write and you throw it in your drawer and you don’t know what it’s connected to. So it really was a kind of nucleus scene, and only many years later, when I started locating the idea of the story and I had an interest in writing about adult siblings, [did I revisit it]. . . . I didn’t know who these people were, I didn’t know what I was after, except it was clear that I was interested in these two siblings that had to confront something really primal and intense.”

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Ronald Harwood,

“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”

When, after weeks of struggling with the material, Ronald Harwood figured out how to convey his protagonist’s paralyzed condition, he knew how to proceed with the rest of the story.

“I put in bold capitals, ‘THE CAMERA IS JEAN-DOMINIQUE BAUBY.’ And that was the breakthrough, that first page was the moment of release. Everything else flowed. I could use his voice-over, I could select the memories, I could use his alphabet as I wanted to. That was a marvelous moment. I knew I was onto it.

“Prior to that, in the weeks I was stuck, I tried to imagine what it would be like to be paralyzed, and to write with one eye, and I used to get a kind of constriction of the throat and feel terribly claustrophobic. I just couldn’t do it. What I knew this would do, but only in retrospect, was that it would put the audience through it. It’s all right to say they must identify with him, but how do you identify with a guy lying in bed, who can’t move anything but his eye?” As the movie opens, the camera -- and the audience -- sees only what Bauby can see.

“Later, in that first scene, where he realizes that they can’t hear him, I realized I would have to carry that through for the picture. He couldn’t respond until somebody understood that he could blink. It’s a very important moment because it really opened my eyes to the fact that I’d have to keep that going -- that he couldn’t communicate. It hit me that it was such a massive thing for the movie. When you think of it in dramatic terms, that’s when it crystallized for me.”

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John Carney,

“Once”

Carney’s film tells the tale of two young, unnamed musicians who discover that they make sweet music together.

“The scene where the girl and the guy are standing on Killiney Hill. The guy’s trying to figure out to what extent the girl feels for her husband and he asks her to quote a little bit of Czech, ‘Say “the sea” in Czech,’ and a few little yeses and nos, and she tells him how to do that. Then he ends the scene by asking, ‘How do you say, “Do you love him” in Czech?’ and she duly responds.” He then repeats the sentence back to her in Czech, asking her if she loves her husband. Smiling, she answers him in Czech. He has no idea what she says.

“He’s confused by it. It’s a quaint idea in a way, and it’s quite clear that she has said, ‘Actually, I love you,’ or that she’s being playful in her response, and it leaves him not knowing quite what she said or where their relationship is going to go. I quite like it in a way because it sums up what the film was about for me.

“The film for me was about a guy who meets a girl who he fancies but who, he realizes, ‘It’s more important that I have this time with this girl and hang out with her and respect her as an artist, and that in a week’s time I’m able to tell my girlfriend all about her.’

“In a way, I think her saying in Czech, ‘No, I love you,’ is a way of avoiding the actual confrontation and the fact that they’re having this little affair together and that they’ve fallen in love. It’s a way of saying it without actually screwing up their lives and their other relationships.”

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Paul Thomas Anderson,

“There Will Be Blood”

Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” (opening Dec. 26) was inspired by Upton Sinclair’s book “Oil!” But Anderson’s own inspiration occurred when he wrote a scene that wasn’t in the novel. In it, the hard-driving, misanthropic oil magnate played by Daniel Day-Lewis shows a little heart, telling the daughter of an abusive rancher that there will be “no more hitting” by her father, within earshot of the man.

“I had been dutifully re-creating some scenes from the book and that was the first original, truly original, scene that just came up. I remember feeling really excited about writing it, feeling like, ‘OK, that’s a good scene. Or whether it’s a good scene or not, I’m kind of on a new road. . . . I can keep writing now without having to adapt this book. I’m just going to start writing this story, whatever it is.’ ”

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Noah Baumbach,

“Margot at the Wedding”

For Noah Baumbach, the film’s opening scene on a train gives hints of the tension and distance to come in his latest dysfunctional-family drama. It also gave him the impetus to continue writing the movie.

“What interested me in writing the movie was the scene with Margot and her son on the train. I think starting a movie with two family members leaving the rest of the family, and beginning in movement on a train, with the landscape changing outside the windows, is an active transition. It created a lot of potential for me and made me want to write this script.

“The whole movie, in some degree, is about change and how change doesn’t always announce itself as a major event, it’s this drip, drip of experience, this accumulation of experience, the things we hold on to from our lives and family and how those things keep revisiting us throughout our lives.

“This scene had all of that in it, although I didn’t know that necessarily when I was writing; it was more of a feeling in the beginning. But now that I’m done I can analyze it.”

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Diablo Cody,

“Juno”

Cody’s film, which opened last week, tells the story of Juno, a pregnant high schooler who decides to give her baby up for adoption, but nothing goes quite according to plan.

“It’s the one that came to me first; it’s the image that sort of inspired me to write the entire movie. It’s when Juno and her father arrive at the house of Mark and Vanessa Loring, the potential adoptive parents. The Lorings are there with their attorney, and Juno and her father, Mac, are ill at ease, and the interplay with these five people is so awkward and yet so hilarious, that for me it sets the tone of the movie.

“It’s a turning point. It’s funny, it’s a little bit dark and it’s poignant because you can see the longing in Vanessa’s eyes, you can see how brave Mac is being, you can see how intimidated Juno is, and you can see how overwhelmed Mark is. I think all the characters are at their most raw in that scene, even if they may be projecting an air of hospitality or friendliness.

“And when Juno and Mark go upstairs, the brief conversation between Vanessa and Mac is pretty funny because there’s a lot of class interplay at work. . . . Then we hear Juno and Mark kind of rocking out on the guitars upstairs. Vanessa goes up there and you can tell that she’s completely unsettled by the whole situation. It’s the collision of two different worlds.

“That’s the point in the film when it goes from being a movie about a pregnant girl to a movie about a pregnant girl and the seismic consequences of her actions.”