Toy's House

Genre: Alternative Comedy
Premise: When fourteen year old Joe Toy and his buddies tire of their parents overbearing ways, they decide to build their own house in the woods, away from the restraints of the lives they have come to know.
About: Toy’s House finished in the Top 15 of the 2009 Black List with 15 votes. Indie production company, Big Beach Productions (Sunshine Cleaning, Little Miss Sunshine, Away We Go) purchased the script. Chris Galletta has no previous film credits or sales. He did work as a staff member on The Late Show with David Letterman in 2005.
Writer: Chris Galletta
Details: 116 pages (9/9/09 draft)


Toy’s House poses the question, what if you actually followed through on your childhood fantasy of running away and living on your own? Ah, sounds like another recent film you say? Yes, the similarly themed "Where The Wild Things Are" explored the same idea. There’s one small difference between the two stories though. Toy’s House is actually good.

We all had those moments as teenagers where home felt more like a prison cell than a place of residence. There were all these, like, rules we had to abide by. Rooms had to be cleaned. Homework had to be done. If we went somewhere, we’d have to let our parents know when we’d be back n’ shit. But the thing that really troubled us was the simple fact that parents didn’t *get us.* They spoke an alien language. Talked about how everything we did now would affect our "future." No offense but, who the hell cares about the future when you’re a kid?? All that matters is right now. And right now is a 24 hour cycle of stupidity. We can’t have fun. We can’t let loose. Why can’t there just be a place where these freedoms exist? All the time!

Joe Toy is a 14 year old Freshman who wants to *do* something about this problem. His dickhead divorced father is so out of touch with even the most basic parenting skills that whenever Joe starts beating him in Monopoly, his father actually cheats to win. Their icy relationship has deteriorated to the point where Joe calls the police simply if his dad's being an asshole. Clearly, this situation can't go on any longer.

Joe’s best buddy is the creature-of-habit Patrick, one of those kids cursed with really weird parents. I remember I had a friend like this and to this day I can’t believe my parents let me hang out at his house since everyone assumed, like they do here in Toy’s House, that his parents were serial child molesters. I survived that friendship unscathed but my poor friend, like Patrick, had to live with those weirdos for the rest of his childhood. Having weird parents really is a no-win situation. It’s not like one day they can magically become un-weird. And their weirdness definitely rubs off on you. It has to. You’re around them 24/7. Needless to say, Patrick’s social life is the high school equivalent of 2012.

So when Joe poses to Patrick the radical idea that they run away and build their own house, Patrick, at first hesitant to break from the norm, decides to stand by his best friend. They need to recruit one more member in their not-so-traveling pants gang so they choose Biaggio, an insanely bizarre kid who’s kind of like the Italian version of Pedro in Napolean Dynamite. If Pedro was 100 times more retarded that is.

Their secret society set, they sneak out into the desolate forest (which is actually just a tiny forest preserve a hundred feet from their suburb) and build a barely habitable shack/living quarters.

I was actually a little thrown by Toy’s structure, as when I read the premise, I assumed the building of the house was going to be the main focus of the plot. So when the house is finished early in the second act, I wondered, “Where does this story go now?” Luckily the story shifts nicely into Joe’s obsession with Kelly, his wise-cracking beautiful best friend who he’s secretly in love with (but is going out with some guy who looks like he’s 30).

Because Patrick was hesitant to commit himself to this idea in the first place, he’s none too pleased to find out that Joe’s real motivation for building the house has nothing to do with escaping society – but was merely a ploy to convince Kelly that he’s just as grown-up as her 800 year old boyfriend. It’s a wonderful turn of events then, when he finally brings Kelly by, and is so close to closing the deal, only to see his entire plan foiled at the last second by…well, let’s just say the last person you'd expect.

Things spin drastically out of control after that, and Joe becomes some sort of faux-mountain man, defiantly standing by his idea of roughing it and breaking off from society even though everything about the house is an epic failure. His and Patrick’s friendship deteriorates while the community searches for them. And Biaggio becomes so entrenched in nature he may never leave. It’s a nice take on why fantasies should probably remain fantasies and that while the grass may be greener on the other side of the hill, it’s still the same dirt underneath.

It’s no secret why I liked this script. It’s got Wes Anderson written all over it. Shades of Rushmore. Shades of Junior Executive. Shades of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Galletta’s got a gift for offbeat humor and an ear for quirky dialogue that’s actually funny (as opposed to certain writers whose quirky dialogue sounds like a desperate plea to be funny).

The weirdness of these characters is the real strength though. Watching Patrick’s clueless mom try to convince her son that the new “Bruce Die-Hard” movie is called “Festival” (she’s unknowingly referring to The Fifth Element) or watching Biaggio camouflage himself up against a tree for hours at a time, even though everybody can see him, just gives these characters a comedic edge you don’t find in a lot of these cookie-cutter comedies. There’s even some nice character work here, particularly in relation to Joe’s broken family and how that’s shaped his reckless approach to life. It’s all nicely done.

You know, I’ll be honest, I was really skeptical during the first 15 pages of this script, even going so far as to warn a couple of people to stay away from it. But it ended up being the funniest script I’ve read in months.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: You know I hate bringing up the “First Ten Pages” rule because I think it sends writers the wrong message. “Make the first ten pages of your script amazing so you reel in the reader!” Umm, okay, but hold on. Doesn’t that imply that once those ten pages are over, you can half-ass the rest of the script? Shouldn’t you strive to make *every* page amazing?

But Tree’s House reminded me why the rule is pertinent. I almost gave up on this script ten pages in. The first scene has Joe doodling in school. The second has him talking to a girl. The third has him dealing with his father at home. Nothing fun or exciting or unique or surprising is happening here. And the strength of the script - its offbeat humor – doesn’t come off right away. The ONLY reason I kept reading was because it was a Black List script, which gave me some indication that other industry people thought it was worthy of continuing. Now since you don’t yet have the luxury of having 15 other industry vets vouching for you when you send your script to someone (yet), you gotta do something that makes us take notice in those first ten pages. It doesn’t have to be a car blowing up. It doesn’t have to be a murder. But it should be something. If I were you, I’d pinpoint the one thing you do best as a writer, and try to write pages that highlight that strength. So if you’re great at dialogue, then the opening scenes should be dialogue. If you’re a great action writer, then the first scene should be action. If you’re a master of description (S. Craig Zahler for example), then build a scene around that. Whatever the case, particularly if your script is more character-based (aka slow), figure out a way to make those first 10 pages pop. Just don't let off the gas when they're over.

Kick-Ass

Genre: Action Comedy
Premise: Dave Lizewski is an unnoticed high school student and comic book fan who one day decides to become a super-hero, even though he has no powers, training or meaningful reason to do so. (from IMDB)
About: Kick-Ass is Matthew Vaughn’s third directing effort (behind Layer Cake and Stardust). What some people don’t know about Vaughn is that before he became a director, he was Guy Ritchie’s producer, producing such films as Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, and even the Madonna debacle, Swept Away. Kick-Ass stars Nicholas Cage and McLovin, as well as Chloe Moretz and Aaron Johnson.
Status of Draft: Development – 2nd Draft
Status of Project: Completed
Writers: Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn (based on the Marvel/Icon comic mini-series from Mark Milllar and John Romita Jr.)
Details: 105 pages (Because this is a 2nd draft, many things may have changed in the final shooting script, although I will say that pretty much everything I saw in the trailer is in the script).


I dig anyone brave enough to shun convention. Matthew Vaughn, however confusing and divisive his choices may be, doesn’t really give a shit about posters and, quote unquote, marketability. He just goes out and makes movies he’d like to see. Hollywood can sort out the rest. I know there are people who absolutely despise Stardust, and I won’t argue that it’s a mixed bag, but hell if it isn’t divinely inspired in places. I loved Robert DiNero’s character, and the “dead-man” sword fight near the end attempts something so few writers ever even try, which is to take a well-known device and put a spin on it.

What’s interesting about Kickass is that it’s probably the most predictable of his ideas (even though it's not technically his idea). The “normal guy becomes a super-hero” angle is about as popular a screenplay choice as American Idol is a TV show. We’ve seen it in the simultaneously overrated and underrated Unbreakable, the hideously bad Mystery Men, the most annoying actor in movies’ (Michael Rapaport) film, “Special,” and those are just the ones that made it into production. I see the idea in countless spec screenplays all the time (both sold and unsold). For all these attempts, however, nobody has cracked the formula. So I welcome people to keep trying. Until someone gets it right, the idea is fair game.

When I watched the trailer for Kick-Ass, I found myself saying, “This guy gets it.” The characters look inspired, the tone feels fresh, and the movie just looks downright fun. The only issue here is that we’re still talking about Matthew Vaughn. The man can have inspired moments of genius but follow them with head-scratching tangents that are about as organic to the story as that popcorn butter they serve in the theater. As a filmmaker, I trust this guy. But as a writer? I’m still not sure. Let’s find out if he and Goldman brought it.


Dave Lizewski is your average dork, dweeb, nerd. He isn’t noticed at school. And on the rare occasion that he is, it’s usually because he did something stupid. Dave gives you direct insight into his life via voice over, which runs pretty much throughout the entire script, and is overwhelmingly present here in the first act. I have no problem with voice over as a choice and it seems to fit the mood here so I went with it.

Kick-Ass’s first misstep is in its flimsy motivation for why its main character decides to become a superhero. Nothing really pushes Dave into becoming a super-hero other than he wakes up one day and wonders why normal people can’t be superheroes. With the tone of this script being so light, I suppose you could forgive this, but it would’ve been nice to see his choice stem from something more personal (or at least a personal experience).

So Dave stitches together a costume, grabs a couple of sticks, and goes out to fight crime as his brand new superhero alias: Kick-Ass. His first attempts don’t exactly land him in the super hero Hall of Fame though, as he’s beaten to within inches of his life. Back at the hospital, Vaughn comes through with his first bout of randomness, inserting a scene where Dave has daydreams about Chinese families telling him he’s going to be reincarnated, as well as the obligatory giant talking spider! I will give Vaughn this. The man's unpredictable.


Meanwhile, we meet Damon Macready and his 11 year old daughter, Mindy (aka “Big Daddy” and “Hit Girl”). These two are *real* super-heroes. Or wait. They’re normal people pretending to be super-heroes but who are *really* good at it. I'm actually not sure what they are, since even though they've been around a lot longer than Kick-Ass has, nobody knows about them. Also in the mix is mega-rich crime boss Frank D’Amico and his son Chris D’Amico (played by McLovin). Frank is trying to keep his strangle-hold of the city’s drug trade in line while the isolated Chris is just trying to lead a somewhat normal existence.

When Dave’s follow-up attempts to fight crime start to (sorta) work, he becomes a Youtube sensation, which gets the attention of real-life crimefighters Big Daddy and Hit Girl, as well as Chris, who eventually wants a part of the action and invents his own superhero persona, “Red Mist.”

Much like the trailer, the tone here is light and easy, with plenty of jokes to keep you smiling the whole way through (particularly if you like masturbating. There is lots and LOTS of masturbating in Kick-Ass). Here’s the problem though. After finishing this script, I still didn’t know what it was about. There’s no clear-cut plot. There’s no real story here to speak of other than a bunch of semi-super-heroes attempting to fight crime. It’s as if that obsession with character was so great, that Vaughn forgot to give the characters anything to actually do. I mean if I was pressed for it, I’d probably say the plot was for the superheroes to disrupt Frank’s drug trafficking, but since this angle didn’t seem to have any obvious consequences (i.e. if they didn’t succeed, it's not like anything that bad would happen), I wasn’t sure what the focus was supposed to be.

I'll admit this is my problem with origin stories in general though and I understand the unique challenges in writing them. Usually the first act of a movie sets up the main problem. But comic book origin movies always end up getting fucked in this respect because they have to spend the first act introducing our character and how he becomes a superhero. This then forces you to set up your problem in the second act, and by that point the structure is already so fucked up that the entire rhythm of the story is thrown out of whack. Still, I would've liked for the threat to be made more clear in Kick-Ass.


As I mentioned before, the characters are, admittedly, hilarious and you can’t say “Red Mist” coupled with the thought of McLovin’s face without laughing (whoever did McLovin's hair in this should get a make-up Oscar next year). But once we reached that third act I just wasn't sure what I was supposed to be rooting for. "Drug people = bad" isn't enough for me these days. If there were any major changes in the subsequent drafts, I'm hoping that these are the issues they addressed.

I'll still go see this for the hilarious character work but if anything needed a kick in the ass here, it was the plot.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: You want there to be stakes in your finale. You want it to feel like if your characters don’t succeed, that the consequences will be devastating. If there’s nothing at stake in the final battle, why should we care about it? You can argue that just the fact that your hero’s life is at stake is enough, but you'd be wrong my compadre. Because stakes go both ways. What your hero *gains* from winning the battle is just as important as what he loses by losing the battle. So if he just gets to stay alive by winning, that won’t cut it. He has to foil something, save someone, disrupt or end something that would’ve otherwise ruined mankind. At the end of Star Wars, Luke doesn’t just survive the Empire, he destroys the damn Death Star! Since I was never clear what Kick Ass gained or lost from the final battle (which stemmed from an unclear plot), I wasn’t as involved as I wanted to be.

Galifianakis and Rudd in Will

Zach Galifianakis and Paull Rudd will star in "Will," the spec screenplay written by Demetri Martin which was sold a couple of years ago. Wanted to give both of these guys and Paramount kudos for taking a chance on something different. Longtime readers will remember I reviewed the script earlier in the year.

Surprise Contest!

A quick surprise contest.

The first person who answers this special Scriptshadow trivia question - I will read your script and give you three pages of notes for free! As longstanding readers of the site know, I offer script notes for a fee. But I want to reward those same readers with a question that only they should know, as it goes back deep into the annals of Scriptshadow history.

Here is the question: When a film gets an official release, it is no longer eligible for the Scriptshadow Top 25, and must be taken off the list. What was the very first script that was taken off the Scriptshadow Top 25 list?

Leave your answer in the comments section along with your e-mail. The first person to get it right wins the prize. One pick per comment. Up to three tries per person (I'm watching IP addresses). If you can't access the comments, try Firefox. If you still can't access them, I'm sorry. E-mails will not be accepted.

UPDATE! IT TOOK A LITTLE LESS THAN 2 MINUTES BUT WE HAVE A WINNER - 1219 STUDIOS!!!

The First Five Scripts I’d Put Into Production If I Were Starting a Studio

We all do it. Every time we see a movie like "Gamer" or "Inkheart" hit the cineplexes, we shake our heads, rolls our eyes, and say, "I know I could do better than that." We imagine ourselves as studio bosses, greenlighting a dozen District 9s, Hurt Lockers, or Up In The Airs. We'd make quality films, films that actually had something to say dammit! I mean let's be honest, the only reason Transformers 2 and G.I. Joe made any money is because they had 100 million dollar marketing campaigns. Right?

Hmmm. Not so fast. Think about it. Really think about it. If you had a job that paid you 5 million dollars a year and allowed you more power than almost anyone in town, would you really be gambling it away on trying to find the next "Good Will Hunting?" It's easy to play armchair studio boss from the confines of your living room. But I'm not sure any one of us, if put in that position, wouldn't be calling Michael Bay, promising him tens of millions of dollars, if he would just please commit to Transformers 3. It's sad, but it's true.

Well lucky for me, this article isn't reality. It's a pseudo-quasi reality where I'm opening my own studio and trying to come up with my first year's slate. I'd imagine, since this is my first studio, that my investors wouldn't be giving me a billion dollars. They'd probably give me around 150-200 million (yeah, totally). I'd use this money to make five movies in the roughly 20-50 million dollar range. With that money, these are the five scripts I'd immediately put into production.

DEAD LOSS by Josh Baizer and Marshall Johnson - Thriller

Premise: A crew of crab fisherman rescue a drifting castaway with a mysterious cargo.

Do you remember the cinematic atrocity that was The Perfect Storm? They got us to pay ten dollars to go see a 15 second sequence of an enormous computer generated wave that we had already seen in the previews! That was the only memorable part in the entire movie! Dead Loss is the movie The Perfect Storm should've been. It's got a good story, deep characters, intriguing twists and turns, in addition to a subject matter we haven't seen on the big screen before. True it's set on water and water is always trouble for productions, but after seeing this Youtube video, I've realized that elaborate sets simply aren't a problem anymore. Which means you're basically spending all your money in one place, the boat. You could be flexible and keep it under 25 million with B-level stars, or make it in the 50 million dollar range with one A-lister. Also, as long as contained thrillers are done reasonably well, they'll always make money.

SOURCE CODE by Ben Ripley – Sci-Fi Thriller

This may seem like an obvious choice but I actually went back and forth on it for awhile. Source Code, like Dead Loss, takes place in limited locations (2 to be exact) so it'd be super cheap to make. My big fear with Source Code stems from this same issue however. Is it big enough for the average sci-fi fan? I know the kind of people who went to see Moon will line up for Source Code, but does it jump into that larger sci-fi appeal that is District 9? In the end, I have to go with the old adage that story is king. When you look at a similar movie like Déjà Vu (I think the biggest spec sale ever, at around 4.5 million dollars), they tried to make this huge sci-fi action movie but it didn't amount to anything because it never made any sense. Source Code's story is so sound (the Ripley draft at least – which is what I'd go with) that word of mouth will carry this film. So I'm including it on my slate.

THE CHEESE STANDS ALONE by Kathy McWorter – Romantic Comedy

Premise: A loveless man who believes he's dying meets a woman who turns his life upside-down.

For those who don't know, The Cheese Stands alone has become sort of this infamous screenplay in Hollywood, and for a lot of people, a cautionary tale. When the script sold for the most money a comedy spec had ever sold for back in 1991 (1 million bucks), studios began mumbling that they had gone too far, that they were swimming in excess. Unfortunately, as year by year went by and The Cheese Stands Alone wasn't made, it provided enough ammo to turn that cheese into swiss, and now the script is used as an example why never to pay too much for a screenplay. But see here's the thing, none of that matters anymore. And this script, which at the time was maybe a little bit cliché (reminiscent of movies like Moonstruck and Mystic Pizza) has entered an era where it would be completely original. As Hollywood complains about the dismal state of the romantic comedy, this script turns all of those horrid clichés on their head and feels, ironically, like a brand new voice. Not to mention, the dialogue here is better than 99.9% of the dialogue I read in any modern-day screenplay. But most of all, when I read this script, I just get this sense of fun. You can't read it without smiling and you can just tell that that's going to show up onscreen. It baffles me that no one's even attempted to make this in the last five years.

SUNFLOWER by Misha Green – Thriller

Premise: Two women are held hostage in a prison-like farmhouse.

If you're starting a studio, your best bet is horror and thrillers. Why? They provide the most bang for their buck. Cheap to make and don't require huge stars to get their money back. Sunflower is another contained thriller (single location – cheap) that adds a twist. Instead of a single woman trying to escape a madman's prison-like home, it's two women. In other words, it's a horror-thriller with a unique twist and a potentially sexy undercurrent. Hello? Two super-hot women clawing and scratching their way to freedom – only one survives? I'm in. This script would actually be so cheap to make (you could probably do it for 5-10 million) that I could use the extra cash to land a couple of A-listers in my other movie choices. So Sunflower is a definite go picture at Scriptshadow Studios.

THE DOGS OF BABEL by Jaime Linden - Drama

This would be my one big gamble but it's a gamble I'm comfortable making because the script is freaking awesome. It's just a great great story. From what I understand, the big problem with The Dogs Of Babel is that there's no appeal for male actors to play the lead role. But I think this role is meatier than actors give it credit for. It's very similar to the role Jodie Foster played in Contact, where she was going on this impossible journey, but refused to quit no matter how many obstacles were thrown in her path. Because she refuses to give up, she emerges as the protypical hero, the kind of person we all want to be (which she garnered an Oscar nomination for). That's the same kind of reception a male actor would get from playing this role. But regardless of that (let's just say we throw a B-Lister in the part), the female lead is a wonderful and challenging role for an actress. You're basically playing a bi-polar dead person. That sounds to me like a role with all sorts of potential. Add into that the ten cajillion dog lovers in the U.S. and I just find it very hard that this movie wouldn't find an audience. This is the kind of script that if done right, would be up there at Oscar time. I have no doubt about that.

SPECIAL MENTION – BRIGANDS OF RATTLEBORGE by Craig Zahler – Western

If any of these movies fell apart at the last second, I would put Brigands Of Rattleborge on my slate. Why? Because it has the potential to be the best Western of all time. I'm not saying it *would* be, but it has the potential to be. The reason this doesn't get Top 5 mention is because…well let's face it, it's a Western. And how well do Western's do in the marketplace? But the reason I know this would do well is because I don't like Westerns. And I love this script. So I'm betting there'd be other people out there just like me, non-Western fans ready to crossover if you give them a reason to. And the reason here is simple: the character of Abraham. The mysterious tortured vengeful killer who has more ingenuity in his killing practices than Hannibal Lecter and Dexter combined. I still don't know why they can't target every serious A-list actor in town because I can't imagine a single one of them reading this part would not want to do it. The big stumbling block here is obviously the director. It ain't like 30 years ago when you had ten directors who were proven to be able to pull off a Western. Nowadays, you don't know who's Western-worthy, which results in the assumption that only the A-list directors can handle the challenge. And we all know how easy it is to get one of them to commit to a project. Because this would be the hardest project to set up of the six mentioned, I'd only do it if something else fell through. But hell if this wouldn't be a cool movie.

Well, those are my picks. Would my studio crash and burn? Can you do better? If you were starting your own studio, which five scripts would you make first?

The Book Of Eli

Here's number 2 in our Tuesday Apocalypse Double-Header. This review originally aired a few months ago but we had to take it down. Now, with Book Of Eli screening, we're putting it back up! Here's my quick take on Book of Eli. It's the perfect way to approach a spec script. You have a high concept easy to understand story with a badass hero and lots of martial arts type mayhem. Where Book of Eli gets bogged down is probably in its ambition. It bites off way more than it can chew and the pieces come spitting out of its mouth all over us. Even its more basic ambitions - like the town sequence, which makes up most of the script - left me wanting more. And don't get me started on the "twist" ending, which makes absolutely no sense. I had a hard time digesting this. Let's see what Roger has to say about it.

Genre: Post-apocalyptic action-adventure.
Premise: In a post-apocalyptic world, a lone hero guards the Book of Eli, which provides knowledge that could redeem society. The despot of a small, makeshift town plans to take possession of the book.
About: Produced by Joel Silver. The directorial return of the Hughes brothers, whose last film was 2001’s From Hell. This was a big spec sale in 2008 from Gary Whitta, who hadn't sold a screenplay before this. So first timers trying to break in, this is your reference point.
Writer: Gary Whitta, former editor-in-chief of PC Gamer. Presumably this script scored him a writing gig on the (now dead) live-action adaptation of the manga-epic, Akira.


Say this mantra with me.

Story is the heart, Story is the soul. Story is the heart-soul of a screenplay.

Now, get ready, because we’re about to...

FADE THE FUCK IN:

Eli backs away, but TWO MORE ARMED BANDITS drop from hiding in the trees behind, cutting off his escape, surrounding him.

BANDIT LEADER
What you got there in your pack?

ELI
Nothing.

BANDIT LEADER
Yeah, that’s what they all say. How about you take it off real slow and tip it out so’s we can take a look.

BANDIT #2 notices the shotgun strapped to the pack.

BANDIT #2
He’s got a gun.

BANDIT LEADER
Shit, it ain’t loaded. They never are. Ain’t that right, old man? (beat) Open the fucking pack or die. ELI I can’t do that.

The bandit leader steps forward aggressively. Now within striking distance of Eli. He grins, teeth filthy and rotten.

BANDIT LEADER
Want us to do it for you? We can get it off real easy after we’ve hacked your fucking arms off.

ELI
No. I mean I can’t die. I’m on a mission from God, and under his divine protection. You stand in my way, you stand in his. And he will strike you down, through me, his faithful instrument.

WOOOOAAAAAH! Who the fuck is this Eli character, and is he really that bad-ass?

They call him the walker. But he is many things. A watcher. A scavenger. A saint. A killer. A samurai. A gunslinger. He’s a mad prophet that wandered out of the Old Testament and armed himself with a shotgun and a samurai sword. He wears threadbare Converse All-Stars he found on a mummified corpse. He never takes his tinted goggles off. He’s a man of few words but when he speaks it’s the Biblical voice emanating from the storm, the fire, the burning bush. He doesn’t start fights. But he finishes them. And the Spirit of God’s Wrath may or may not be hovering over him, brooding over him, infusing him with supernatural combat skills. And his best friend is a pet rat that lives in the folds of his iconic duster. And yes, he is a man on a mission.

What’s the mission?

To travel West. And to never stray from the road, for he is to deliver a book to an unknown destination, but a destination that he believes to exist based solely on faith.

He is the keeper and protector of a book...

So what’s The Book of Eli?

It’s a bible. A King James Bible battered by the elements, worn from wear and tear.

That’s it? Just a Bible? We can walk into a motel room, open the night-stand drawer, and get one of those for free. What’s the big deal?

Oh, did I mention that this is the post-apocalypse? Did I mention that a guy named CARNEGIE is looking for this book? Did I mention that this demented tent-pole-revival-crooked-preacher-faith-healer-like manipulator of men is to be played by Gary Oldman? And did I mention that his First-in-Command and Sergeant-at-Arms, a burly dude named REDRIDGE, to be played by Ray Stevenson, will do anything it takes to retrieve this book once they find out Eli is the owner?

No?

Oh. My bad. Because all this is true. And the conflict between these characters is the palette and brush that’s gonna paint this monochrome tinted world bloodbath-red.
Niiiice. Does it work?

I want it to...I really want it to...

God, I’m torn about this script, guys.

We have all the ingredients to make a smart and epic post-apocalyptic yarn. But...I hate to say it, man I do...but something’s off.

The first 10 pages: I’m all in. I’m invested, alright? Never mind that the writer is taking a risk by having no dialogue in the first four minutes. The first four pages is a quiet character-establishing sequence, a prosaic sequence of world building that seems like it was ripped right out of McCarthy’s “The Road”. I enjoy dry, sepia-toned slugs of description. I’m into that kind of shit. But when the protagonist, whom we just met, proceeds to tell a group of bandits that it’s impossible for him to die because he’s on a mission from God? And when the bandits laugh this off, and attempt to rob him anyways, only to be sliced-and-diced to ribbons by a dude who moves with uncanny, preternatural speed?

Count me the fuck in.


Look, the first act is interesting. We have downtrodden wanderers who are pushing buggies with wobbly wheels along desolate highways in a scorched-earth world, remnants of a lost civilization just trying to survive. Something we’re going to see in another movie come Oscar season, but I digress. It’s still cool. We have Eli watching a man and a woman, presumably husband and wife, from afar. When they get attacked by a motorcycle gang, Eli debates whether he should get involved. When they rape the woman, Eli decides it’s not his concern. He listens to them kill the couple, catches a glimpse of them rifling through the dead couple’s belongings. The obligatory Mad Max in “The Road Warrior” scene.

Keep this image in mind: Eli arrives at a fork in the road. One road continues West. One road leads to a town. The road that leads to a town is a diversion, a rabbit-trail. Which way is he going to go? Which way should he go?

Eli has a dilemma. His ancient iPod has no juice, no power. That’s right. Eli has an iPod. It’s one of his prized possessions. Not as prized as his Bible, but it provides him with moments of peace, moments of joy, moments of hope as he listens to Mozart’s Concerto No. 20 in D Minor. To charge it, he hauls around a car battery in his backpack. The problem is...his car battery is dead.

He thinks the town might have an “engineer” who might be able to help him out and charge the battery.

So...he takes the rabbit-trail.

And when he gets to town, there’s definitely some weird shit going on.

There’s a bizarre, craven and idol-like statue fashioned out of clay erected in the center of the road. There’s a chain-gang of emaciated, blind men and women roped together at the waist, being led to a destination where they will be required to perform some kind of back-breaking work. The kind of work that ostensibly requires lashings from a brutal chain-gang boss.

Enter the world according to Carnegie.

I’m intrigued. What’s the problem?

Dissonance. That bothersome whisper trapped in the hollow of your skull while you’re experiencing story. The further the story goes along, the louder the whisper becomes, “We’ve been led astray.” It’s a domino effect of characters in the story struggling with their Creator like Jacob wrestling the angel. Except the difference is that these characters want to follow the road less travelled. But instead they are forced onto the rabbit-trail, shoved past the road marker that’s labeled “DETOUR”. And soon the Story is submerged, chained to anchors that pull it towards the bottom of an obscure pool.

There are moments where you feel the Story trying to push its way back to the surface.

You can feel the characters wanting to say, “Based upon everything you know about us, we want to make this decision. In fact we would make this decision,” and the characters point at the screenwriter, “but this guy needs us to be in this action sequence over here.”

They might give us other examples:

“He needs us in this house for the Act 2 break, with this cannibalistic couple who look like they crawled out of Grant Wood’s painting, American Gothic.”

SOLARA, Eli’s cub to his lone wolf, might say:

“I know we’re repeating the same note within 15 pages of each other, but there needs to be another cool scene of Eli saving me from bad men. I know, I know. He saved me from Carnegie. Then abandoned me right after. But the writer says we can have another cool scene of Eli slaughtering brigands if he has to save me again.”


Carnegie delivers a lengthy monologue where he reveals why possessing the King James Bible is so important to him. And there’s dissonance, because you wonder if such a monologue is necessary. And if this information is necessary, is a monologue really the best way to communicate it?

Act 2 feels like a labyrinth of rabbit-trails. Decisions made that go round-and-round the heart of the story (and the other more interesting possibilities). And the concentric circles don’t lead to the center, the heart. Instead, they take you farther and farther astray.

Okay, okay. I get the point. Was there any good stuff after the first act?

Holy shit, yes. After emerging from the muck of Act 2 and the beginning of Act 3, I was blindsided by the ending. It was like going zero to sixty, from disappointment to...being drop-kicked by awe.

There’s a sequence tucked into the tail-end of the 3rd Act that felt like a fist was plunging into my soul; God plunging his hand into Adam and plucking out a rib.

No, I’m not talking about the final scene, the epilogue.

I’m talking about the moment Eli completes his pilgrimage and arrives at his destination and enters its walls. I’m talking about the scene audiences are going to be talking about when they walk out of theaters come January.

It’s like the writer laid his head on the stone in the desert, and Jacob’s ladder unfurled out of the heavens and he ascended its rungs, only to return clutching this sequence in his hands like Prometheus stealing fire.

At a recent writing session, I tried to tell one of my co-writers about this script. I was having trouble because my voice kept cracking. But when I finished he said:

“Just hearing about that gave me chills.”

I have a roommate that watches the shit out of Edward Zick’s “Glory”. One of her cherished movies. She wanted to know about the new Denzel joint, and I attempted to tell her about this script. About the ideas behind it. And I was weeping halfway through my attempt, much to her embarrassment and horror. The last time this happened to me was a few years back, and I was reading the novel, “The Kite Runner” and was burning through the last 100 pages when my girlfriend at the time asked me why I was crying like a little bitch, curled up underneath the sheets.

Some things have power.

And there are story elements, themes, and concepts in “The Book of Eli” that have real power. And they need to be woven together like a fine tapestry in order for the denouement, the revelation, the end to work. And I’m sad...because right now...the tapestry needs to be rewoven.

And it only feels like it’s half done.

Some threads aren’t bright enough, aren’t clear enough, are muddled and frayed and need to be taken back to the loom. Given back to the weaver.

There’s a concept that concerns who Eli was before he set out on his mission. And when I first read the detail, I was confused. It wasn’t clear. But then I realized what the writer was trying to convey.

And it’s this: If you look at the Judeo-Christian scriptures, there’s a pattern that emerges. When it comes to divine tasks, God always chooses those who are the least among us to perform these tasks. It’s like taking a beggar and showing him that he is really a King. It’s like taking a prostitute and showing her that she is really a Queen.


It’s much more than...”ordinary guy discovers he’s a hero.”

This is not Neo in the Matrix.

This is the guy you would fuckin’ ignore on the streets if he came up to you asking for change. This is the disabled man working at the local Wal-Mart who helps other people with disabilities to their scooters. This is the guy on your periphery who might as well be an automaton.

When you look at who Eli is at the end of the script, and think about who he might have been before we met him...it has the power of a parable. And it’s heart-wrenching.

But – these moments are not clear. And I don’t mean they’re just subtext, stuff you have to dig for. These are character moments, themes, emotions...the good stuff that makes up Story. And the way they read, the way this story is structured, the choices made for each scene...creates a domino effect that muddles these elements when they should be translucent. There should be no confusion whatsoever. All of this stuff should shine. But sadly, they don’t.
So that’s the damage? It reads like a first draft?

Yep. Look. There’s some great prosaic lines in this thing – “Deadwood filtered through the eye of an apocalypse.” There are lofty ideas: Restoring freedom, hope and joy to a lost, enslaved and downtrodden people. A great tone. Wonderful atmosphere. Cool action. A killer ending.

But, beautiful wordsmithin’ cannot hold up story. Story is the heart. Story is the soul. All the beautiful language in the world cannot camouflage a story that lacks proper cornerstones.

Cool action should not be duct-tape. An audience knows when a house of cards is about to tumble. If it hasn’t been built correctly in the first place, even a fragile whisper can knock the house off its foundation.

Pretend you’re in a fantasy world. What beefs would you address?

The time-line of this story. I might be wrong, but I think the script spans only three days. If that.

This puppy is going to be advertised as an epic journey across a post-apocalyptic America.

Which would be false advertising.

This movie focuses on the final three days of an epic journey. And we don’t travel across America. We travel through a section of California. On foot. So there’s not much mileage traversed in this thing.

And it’s frustrating, because you feel like you’re missing out on tons of cool shit. With this kind of world, with this kind of backdrop, why not open up the timeline? Show us the beginning, the middle, and end of Eli’s two-and-a-half decade trek/adventure. Or, be ballsy, and keeping with the Biblical theme...structure this like the 40 Days of Eli (taking a cue from The 500 Days of Summer).

I’m just day-dreaming here, but there are lines in the prose passages that describe Eli as an avenging angel, and I thought it would be cool if they gave him a preternatural antagonist. An Anti-Eli (forgive me, “Lost” junkie here). Someone who also can’t be killed and is sent by whoever to stop Eli.

The point is, a story like this is brimming with possibilities, and it’s confined by its (chosen) dimensions of narrative time and space.

So...are you glad this thing’s almost in the can?

I’m glad that this script sold and is being made into a movie with great actors...but my hope is that a veteran screenwriter took a look at this thing, diagnosed the symptoms, gutted what needed to be gutted, and put in shiny new parts that makes this thing run like a beautiful, savage beast.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I Learned: You guys wanna know why this script is now going to be a movie with Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman, with Joel Silver as a producer? It’s like what Brian Cox says as Robert McKee in Adaptation: “I’ll tell you a secret. The last act makes a film. Wow them in the end, and you got a hit. You can have flaws, problems, but wow them in the end, and you’ve got a hit. Find an ending, but don’t cheat, and don’t you dare bring in a dues ex machine. Your characters must change, and the change must come from them. Do that, and you’ll be fine.”

The Gunslinger

Man oh man, to quote "Big Fan," that's the last time I ever trust Hawaiians with my pizza. Yesterday's ham and pineapple surprise has left me swimming and sniffing in a murky haze. So I'll keep this nice and short. Roger's going to review The Gunslinger today. Later in the week I have 2010's first writer interview. There's also a script I wasn't liking when I started but somehow it came back from the dead with a vengeance (hey! staying with today's theme - see below). I also have a script review of an upcoming release whose recent trailers have left fanboys giddy with anticipation (no, it's not Inception - I'm fairly sure Nolan has snipers perched across the street for if I ever post a review of that script). There's another review I'm doing for a script that I can't remember at the moment. That can't be a good thing. Oh! And we may finally get to post Roger's review of Book of Eli again, since it'll be coming out on Friday. As always, here's Roger with his Monday review...

Genre: Western, Action Premise: When a Texas Ranger is horrifically tortured and killed, his sharp-shooter older brother, Sam Lee Hensley, plots revenge against the mysterious, sadistic leader of a notorious drug cartel. Sam Lee's quest for vengeance will cost him seven years in prison, his right hand and one eye. It will imperil his young nephew and wreak havoc on the lives of those who love him. And it will not bring him peace. About: Nabbed by Warner Brothers with Andrew Lazar (Jonah Hex, Akira) producing through his Mad Chance banner. This is the first feature spec sale for Hlavin, who was once an assistant to Nick Thiel, show-runner of NBC's Lax. The Gunslinger finished as the 9th highest rated screenplay on the 2009 Black List with 21 votes. Writer: John Hlavin


Was it wrong of me to think of Roland and The Dark Tower when I first saw this title on the Black List? Was this the first portion of the adaptation by JJ Abrams, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse?

Not according to the logline, friendo.

A few pages in, I discovered that all things don't necessarily serve the beam. But that's okay, I wasn't too disappointed. Because Sam Lee is carved from the same inimitable rock as Roland (The Man With No Name, or Uomo senza nome if you want to get spaghetti about it). Which is to say he's someone who doesn't talk about his feelings much, just another grizzled whiskey-and-sawdust tough guy who's a whiz with a gun.

The perfect suit to wear to a revenge tale.

But is Sam Lee worthy enough to join the table with his cinematic predecessors?

I think so.

For an actor who wants to get his Bronson, Eastwood, and Lee Marvin on, the role of Sam Lee is for you.

If you're at a crossroads and you have to choose between projects, I guess the only question you can really ask yourself is, "Do I want to be a badass, or not? Well...do I?"

Sometimes I don't want my heroes to have diarrhea of the mouth, cracking jokes like clowns and running from page to page pontificating witty one-liners. Sometimes I just want them to shut-up so I can watch them kill the men that wronged them, silently and mercilessly going about their business the way only a man with gun and heart-on-fire can.

And that's where Sam Lee comes in. Sam Lee is the reason to read "The Gunslinger". It's that simple.

So it's a revenge tale, right?

Correctamundo! And why not?

Sometimes I need my cinematic violence to be cathartic.

Sometimes I just need to go on a good Vengeance Quest.

That's a weird thing to say, isn't it? Why are we drawn to stories where vengeance is the answer? Where destruction is the resolution? In reality, I don't think vengeance ushers in a blanket of peace for people (something explored in Jeff Nichols' excellent Southern flick, Shotgun Stories). Or does it?

Surely, the Vengeance Quest violates our sense of ethics, certainly our morals, but yet it exists in the world of Story for a reason. And when well told, a Vengeance Quest comes off as therapy. An emotional purging or cleanse.

We accept the Vengeance Quest because it works.

So what's the revenge plot, Rog?

It starts out simple enough. We open on the crime scene of Danny Hensley, a Texas Ranger who has been brutally murdered. It's particularly distressing because the used syringes on the coffee table and the multiple needle marks on Danny's arm suggests that he was kept alive for maximum torture.

The local Sheriff and a Captain with the Rangers, Phil, discuss the possibility that although Danny wasn't into the drug trade, he was probably murdered by members of a Mexican cartel to serve as a warning or a challenge to American law enforcement.

Danny's brother, Sam Lee, arrives on scene. His world changes. Cut to the funeral where we meet Danny's widowed wife, Deborah. In her grief, she comes to Sam Lee with the question, "Why'd this happen, Sam Lee?" To which he replies, "I don't know. I intend on finding out, though."

And that's not all. Disregarding Phil's advice to not "let anger be his true north", Sam Lee accepts his quest for vengeance and we're plunged instantly into the fray with him.

Soon we're in Snow's Bar with Sam Lee as he interrogates a small-time dealer named Flip. Sam Lee needs to find out who owns the shack his brother was murdered in. Instead of answering Sam Lee, Flip sasses him.

Wrong move.

It's here, on page 8, where we learn why this script is titled "The Gunslinger". Sam Lee has Flip on the floor. He crouches above him. The bartender behind Sam Lee moves in with a baseball bat.

Sam Lee blasts the bartender's baseball bat into smithereens based purely on the reflection of it in Flip's sunglasses. Needless to say, the bartender pisses himself.

Sam Lee, using the info he got from Flip, arrives at the track house of a major dealer. A guy named Diego. Things don't go well for Diego and his crew because Sam Lee isn't really here to ask more questions. He's here to kill the people who tortured his brother. Which, with his requisite scary gunplay, he does.

Thing is, Diego threatens that the man he works for will do much worse to Sam Lee than he did to Danny. However, Diego dies before Sam Lee can get the man's name.

But as our tale would have it, we discover that Sam Lee killed a CI (confidential informant) for the DEA. Phil loses his job with the Rangers (he threw Sam Lee his first clue, which he acquired illegally from DEA files) and Sam Lee is promptly whisked off to prison.

But that's not all she wrote, because seven years later, Sam Lee is released back into the world and the first thing he does is fortify his ranch house. Why? People are still looking to avenge Diego's death.

Then, out of the blue one day, a woman arrives at his ranch.

Who is she?

Her name is Estrella and she claims that she is the mother of Danny's son. Apparently, Danny was having an affair with this woman. Estrella wants Sam Lee's help because her son, Carlito (now Sam Lee's nephew), has been kidnapped by a Sinoloa child-snatcher named Emilio.

Of course, the location for an old-fashioned money-for-the-kid exchange is set up, and as we can all guess, it's all a ploy to pull Sam Lee out of hiding.

Although Estrella really is the mother of Sam Lee's nephew, we learn she only became pregnant to blackmail Danny. For what (and why?), I'm still a little confused about.

Sam Lee is captured by and brought to the leader of the Tarto Cartel, Francisco Moreles.

Ah, the man behind the curtain. Is he a good villain?

He's certainly set-up as one. His best scene is his first, where he tortures Sam Lee while telling us his Scarfacian story. He's a doctor by trade, but early on, tragic circumstances taught Moreles he could make more money as a drug trafficker. It's a really great torture sequence that reminds me of Richard Stark's Parker novels.

It's the scene where Sam Lee loses a hand and an eye.

By pure Texan moxie and resourcefulness, Sam Lee escapes and takes refuge with Deborah, who is a nurse, and she fixes him up as best as she can.

The story then sort of acquires the engine that drove Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, which is basically a journey to rescue the nephew of a murdered brother.

Does "The Gunslinger" achieve catharsis?

For the most part, I really like the first half of this script. It opens confidently and it's fun to read. There are some events that push the limits of suspension of disbelief, but I guess you're willing to roll with them.

At first.

But the cumulative effect really weakens the second half. I'm no pedant, but if I have to tell you about the problem areas of this draft I'd point you in the direction of not only the story, but the plot as well.

Rationally, I understand why Sam Lee wants revenge.

Emotionally, I wasn't completely hooked. And that has to do with the reveal concerning Sam Lee's brother and what he was up to before he got himself murdered. There's some convolution in the telling. I was being told that Danny had issues in his marriage. As a result of these issues, I was also being told that he went and had an affair and had an illegitimate child. Fair enough. But then there's some double-dealing with the mother of this child, and that's where cracks started to appear in this backstory. By being told all of this information, I was forced to think about it. Perhaps if I was simply shown this information I would have been too busy emotionally connecting with the characters than scrutinizing their history.

Plot-wise, I wondered if the Sam Lee's 3^rd Act plan was a miscalculation. It's a plan of last resort, and plans of last resort work if we don't question their logic. I don't question a last stand when I know, "Oh well, they're really at a dead-end here. What else can they do?"

And that was my issue. It felt like Sam Lee could have done a lot of other things besides using himself and his nephew as bait. Really? Making a last stand in front of a panic room your nephew is in? It's certainly interesting, but is it the most interesting choice to make? Does it come from character? It just didn't feel like the proactive choice for Sam Lee to make.

Unlike little Macaulay in Home Alone, Sam Lee ain't no little kid.
He's the fucking gunslinger! Let him come to the antagonists, not the other way around. In Death Wish and Dirty Harry, Kersey and Callahan always pursued their victims, no matter how dangerous these villains were. Hell, Harry had the balls to confront robbers with an empty gun. Granted, Sam Lee is injured, but he's a Texan. Unless it's The Alamo, Texans are the de facto aggressors, not the guys in hiding.

Would it also be too comicbooky to suggest that I would have liked to see a foil, a badass obstacle, in the form of a nemesis who was just as good with guns as Sam Lee? I mean, maybe it's my videogame mentality (when I play them I drool), pulp urges, and my love for Chigurh from No Country for Old Men, but I wanted Moreles to have a crony who wasn't just there for a headshot. A living, breathing secondary villain. An anti-gunslinger. Think of that badass boss battle.

Give this Roland his Eldred Jonas, amirite?

Regardless, "The Gunslinger" may not be as melancholy and tumultuous as its logline promises (yet), but it's a solid and grim actioner with a protagonist that already feels iconic. Let's all cross our fingers and hope it gets made, because Sam Lee is the type of role that will be written about in the cinema books.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: "The Gunslinger" has some complicated backstory we have to catch up with. It's not Byzantine or anything, but I think, as screenwriters, we have to be careful molding our character motivations and our narrative events. There's a type of Complicated a screenwriter can hit that seems to convolute a story. Unlike television, a feature can't always devote the necessary time to properly tell (but by tell I mean show) a backstory. Brevity and clarity are required. With limited screen-time, the tendency is for a writer to just try and tell an audience the necessary details. The only problem is, showing is more powerful than telling. When it comes to correlating Point A with Point B in a narrative, you want to make the connection as clear and direct as possible. Subtlety may seem complicated, but an audience catches those subtle moments if they're paying attention. Subtlety is sometimes best left to the actors. Build an easy-to-follow roadmap for your audience so they can feel the story without having to think too much about it. In short? Simplify your conflict.