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My new screenplay has a scene where the two characters are revealing their autobiographies to each other, and they are too long. One's tale is 21 lines, the other is 29. It's important for them to open up to each other about their pasts; however, I don't see how to do it without the way-too-long-to-be-cinematically-palatable chunks. I'm open to suggestions. Thanks, gang.
W : )

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So - are they finding they have things in common? If so, turn it from speech to conversation. When one person says something, the other person answer's with that aspect of their life.
- Bill

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[nq:1]My new screenplay has a scene where the two characters are revealing their autobiographies to each other, and they are ... their pasts; however, I don't see how to do it without the way-too-long-to-be-cinematically-palatable chunks. I'm open to suggestions. Thanks, gang.[/nq]
All I can say is, whoa, I wouldn't do that. I would reveal something major and let your readers fill in the rest. It sounds like there are a lot more details than necessary here.
Perhaps you could post something similar change the name and places and let us take a look at it.

RonB
"There's a story there...somewhere"

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[nq:1]My new screenplay has a scene where the two characters are revealing their autobiographies to each other, and they are ... I don't see how to do it without the way-too-long-to-be-cinematically-palatable chunks. I'm open to suggestions. Thanks, gang. W : )[/nq]
Scenes can be long or they can seem long.
A scene where two people simply recite monologues about themselves to one another strikes me as something that is apt to seem long, simply because it doesn't strike me as a scene that it likely to be very interesting.
You say that it's important for them to open to each other about their pasts. The question is important to whom? I fear that it may be more important to you in the sense of being important for the larger purposes of the story, than it might actually be for the particular characters at the particular time to say the things that they have to say to one another.
I can't ever recall a situation where I was desperately in need of providing a mini auto-biography of myself to somebody and of immediately getting the same from that person right away.

I'm not saying that such a situation might not arise. I'm just saying that it doesn't strike me as a common situation outside of the exposition/set-up.story arc realm of story-telling.

The question that you have to answer is, in any scene what is the need and what is the obstacle? You have to have both to have a real scene (unless it's just, "Bob drives down the street, or "Jane climbs the stairs and enters").
I appreciate that you haven't laid the scene out in any detail, but as you've described it, you simply have one person relating information that's needed by the other, and then the reverse. So two people need something. Two people get something.
What obstructs them?
The scene exists in the need, whether it's the need to tell or the need to hear, in collision with some obstruction that which prevents the person from saying what needs to be said, or gaining the information that they need to hear.
In Silence of the Lambs, Clarice Starling doesn't want to talk about the painful memories of her childhood that are driving her. Certainly she doesn't want to talk about them with Hannibal Lechter. In fact, she's been warned explicitly not* to talk to him about her private life. But she *needs* to find out about Buffalo Bill and the scene plays out in such a way that she is *forced to reveal things that she doesn't want to reveal in order to try to gain something that she desperately needs.
It's a secret that Lechter has to drag out of her.

And that's a long scene. And it works because you have those two elements need and obstruction.
So the question is what, within this scene, are the immediate needs of your characters, the needs that drive the scene. And what is obstructing each of them from achieving that need. And how can that process overcoming obstruction to achieve need be used to reveal what needs revealing.
And it's important to remember that the need and the obstruction don't necessarily have to relate directly to those things from their past. Those revelations may simply be means to an end within the context of the scene.
NMS

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Some talky scenes work best when broken up. There's a character in a great movie called Dinner Rush who spends the whole time sitting at the fancy restaurant bar nursing a drink while chatting up a pretty woman, until it is revealed what he's really doing there. But his chatting scenes are broken up with a lot of action of the mains. I'm a big fan of exposition on the fly, like in Terminator, when the guy from the future has rescued Sarah Connor and they're racing away in the car from the relentless Terminator, and he's explaining who he is at eighty miles an hour while she's freaking out.

Not sure I'd have the patience for My Dinner With Andre - all talk - and there's an endless dinner-talk scene in A Man and a Woman - with small children who are unbelievably silent throughout the talk talk talk. Yet there was that movie a decade or so ago, where the American boy and the French girl spend a night walking and talking and falling in love - very popular, I'm blanking on the title. (imdb break) Before Sunrise.

I guess it depends on how entertaining you make it. I'd prefer to see less talk.

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[nq:1]I can't ever recall a situation where I was desperately in need of providing a mini auto-biography of myself to somebody and of immediately getting the same from that person right away.[/nq]
How many times has someone just met me and just wanted to know every single thing about me, just because they could tell I look different? Half the time, I might never see that person ever again, or the interval will be so long that they will forget. I'm glad that I can now refer them to Facebook, my FAQs of life, because otherwise, why bother? I've never been nearly as fascinated with the other person, mainly because they've never been a very attractive person of the opposite ***.
Anyway, the double barrel probably happens, but it's excoriating to sit though.
So the first and most important question is: WHY?
Why do they have to open up to each other about their PASTS?

In the examples Neal and Mary gave, the exposition is traded for information needed about the present. Life and death are the best stakes to play for, whether we are talking about an innumerable number, or one character of personal importance.
So if you actually have a good enough reason, you can get away with 30 line monologues, but those reasons are very hard to come by.

Suggested material where I remember a trade of character background taking place: the first SAW, and the BONES pilot (available on Hulu), and the lunch scene from Roman Holiday.

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[nq:1]My new screenplay has a scene where the two characters are revealing their autobiographies to each other, and they are ... I don't see how to do it without the way-too-long-to-be-cinematically-palatable chunks. I'm open to suggestions. Thanks, gang. W : )[/nq]
Well, they do have mutually exclusive goals, right? Why is it important that they open up? Important to the writer, or the characters?
I have never written an expository scene that wasn't deeply rooted in hard-core conflict.
Well, I ALWAYS write them in first draft, but they don't survive

Good luck!
Mysti

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[nq:1]My new screenplay has a scene where the two characters are revealing their autobiographies to each other, and they are ... I don't see how to do it without the way-too-long-to-be-cinematically-palatable chunks. I'm open to suggestions. Thanks, gang. W : )[/nq]
Dueling home movies edited together on laptops in hand. Or Powerpoint presentations if they're both geeks.
If it's that important to you. Doesn't seem terribly entertaining.

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I'd kill the life stories.
Good dialog, courtesy of Clint East Eastwood:
Q: What kind of childhood did you have?
Clint: Short.

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[nq:1]My new screenplay has a scene where the two characters are revealing their autobiographies to each other, and they are ... their pasts; however, I don't see how to do it without the way-too-long-to-be-cinematically-palatable chunks. I'm open to suggestions. Thanks, gang.[/nq]
Two models:
'Jaws' Quint's monologue about delivering the bomb. 'Capricorn One': Dr. Kelloway's explanation of why the deception is necessary.
Anyone got transcripts...?
W.

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[nq:1]'Capricorn One': Dr. Kelloway's explanation of why the deception is necessary.[/nq]Dr. James Kelloway: Okay, here it is. I have to start by saying that if there was any other way, if there was even a slight chance of another alternative, I would give anything not to be here with you now. Anything. Bru, how long have we known each other? Sixteen years. That's how long. Sixteen years. You should have seen yourself then. You looked like you just walked out of a Wheaties box. And me, all sweaty palm and deadly serious. I told everybody about this dream I had of conquering the new frontier, and they all looked at me like I was nuts.

You looked at me and said, "yes." I remember when you told me Kay was pregnant. We went out and got crocked. I remember when Charles was born. We went out and got crocked again. The two of us. Captain Terrific and the Mad Doctor, talking about reaching the stars, and the bartender telling us maybe we'd had enough. Sixteen years. And then Armstrong stepped out on the Moon, and we cried. We were so proud. Willis, you and Walker, you came in about then.

Both bright and talented wise-*****, looked at me in my wash-and-wear shirt carrying on this hot love affair with my slide-rule, and even you were caught up in what we'd done. I remember when Glenn made his first orbit in Mercury, they put up television sets in Grand Central Station, and tens of thousands of people missed their trains to watch. You know, when Apollo 17 landed on the Moon, people were calling up the networks and ******** because reruns of I Love Lucy were cancelled.

Reruns, for Christ's sake! I could understand if it was the new Lucy show. After all, what's a walk on the Moon? But reruns! Oh, geez! And then suddenly everybody started talking about how much everything cost. Was it really worth twenty billion to go to another planet? What about cancer? What about the slums? How much does it cost? How much does any dream cost, for Christ's sake? Since when is there an accountant for ideas? You know who was at the launch today? Not the President.

The Vice-President, that's who. The Vice-President and his plump wife. The President was busy. He's not busy. He's just a little bit scared. He sat there two months ago and put his feet up on Woodrow Wilson's desk, and he said, "Jim. Make it good. Congress is on my back. They're looking for a reason to cancel the program. We can't afford another *****-up. Make it good. You have my every good wish." His every good wish! I got his sanctimonious Vice President! That's what I got! So, there we are.

After all those hopes and ll that dreaming, he sits there, with those flags behind his chair, and tells me we can't afford a *****-up. And guess what! We had a *****-up! A first-class, bona-fide, made-in-America *****-up! The good people from Con-Amalgamate delivered a life-support system cheap enough so they could make a profit on the deal. Works out fine for everybody. Con-Amalgamate makes money. We have our life-support system. Everything's peachy.

Except they made a little bit too much profit. We found out two months ago it won't work. You guys would all be dead in three weeks. It's as simple as that. So, all I have to do is report that and scrub the mission. Congress has its excuse, the President still has his desk, and we have no more program. What's sixteen years? Your actual drop in the bucket! All right. That's the end of the speech. Now, we're getting to what they call the moment of truth.

Come with me. I want to show you something.

W.

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