ScriptShadow: Screenwriting and Screenplay reviews

Friday, May 7, 2010

Don't forget to sign up for The Champion Screenwriting Contest!

Remember guys, you have one week left to get the early discounted fee for the Champion Screenwriting Contest. If you missed the original post, check out my interview with Jim here. And if you're ready to sign up now, just head straight over to his site!

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Amateur Week - The Disappearing World

How does that old saying go? Cheater cheater pumpkin eater? If so, it’s Halloween here at Scriptshadow cause I cheated. But I’m not ashamed to admit it. Most of you cheated too. I told you exactly how your script submissions had to look but you ignored me and added long paragraphs about why I needed to pick your script anyway. Which I admired of course. You gotta try, right? But now I’m getting back at you.

So I said I was only going to look at loglines, but after some of the comments made in the previous reviews, I really wanted to find a script I could get behind (or, at the very least, a writer I could get behind). There was no way I was going to read scripts all the way through, but I did start peeking through the first few pages to see if the writer had talent. There were actually some great loglines, but the writing wasn’t there yet. For example, Frank Cristelli and Eric Gegenheimer came up with this awesome premise: “The story follows a group of vampire hunters who, thinking they have finally rid the world of vampires once and for all, are forced to get real jobs and confront the terrors of everyday life.” Not bad, right? But when I opened up the first page, it had an 18 line paragraph! Frank and Eric, I’m not saying your script would’ve been bad, but you can’t have 18 line paragraphs. A spec script should be 2-3 lines max!

I leafed through about 80 more scripts until I found this one. And right from the beginning, I could tell the writer had something. One of the mistakes young drama writers make is stringing together like 10 depressing scenes in a row to start their screenplay. They basically bore you out of the story. But here, something interesting was happening right away. So that was a good sign. The prose was also confident and sparse. The writing overall had a sharp quality to it. The only thing that worried me was the premise, which I knew was going to turn a lot of you off (aggh! A boring drama??!). But you have to trust me. This, by far, was the best writing I’d seen out of any of the pages I’d read this week. In fact, if we were going on writing alone (and not story), this probably would’ve finished top 2 in my contest a few months ago. I don’t think there’s any doubt that Mark Fleming has a bright future ahead of him. So what’s his script about?

Allen is a 30 year old emergency room doctor, a professional life-safer. One of the unfortunate side effects of this business is that he’s forced to save a lot of people who don’t want to be saved. Apparently, Emergency Rooms are suicide havens. This is where we find him at the beginning of the story, trying to save 14 year old outcast Peter, who’s swallowed a bottle of Drano. Allen is able to do it, but in the process must sacrifice Peter’s vocal chords. He’ll live, but he’ll never be able to speak again.

Soonafter, Allen must save another suicide attempt, this one the beautiful 25 year old Caroline, whose issues with her bitter live-at-home mother have resulted in her downing a bottle of Vicodin. Allen saves her, but afterwards he begins to question if what he’s doing is right. If a person chooses to take their life, does he have a right to interfere?

So bothered by the dilemma is Allen, that he ups and quits his job. He becomes semi-obsessed with the people he’s saved. What happened to them? Did they continue to be miserable? Did they recover? Did they just try again a few days later? He decides to follow his last two saved patients, Peter and Caroline, who both have no idea he was their doctor, to find out. It starts innocently, with notes and recorded conversations to himself, but soon he’s meeting with and talking to them.

With Peter, Allen is so guilt-ridden for stealing away his voice, that he’s compelled to help him learn sign-language. And with Caroline, he introduces himself as an architect, so she won't think he's some crazy doctor stalker. We cut back and forth between these storylines, as well as between each individual person’s life. Before long, Allen is deeply in love with Caroline, but too far gone to admit the truth. In the meantime, Peter meets the smooth-talking Ryan at school, who’s impressed with Peter’s bravery (for his suicide attempt). The two become unlikely friends, and Peter finally starts seeing a purpose to live.

In the end though, we know what Allen’s doing is going to cost him. These two people he’s sought out are troubled souls unsure of their place in this world. His connection gives them hope. So what happens when he reveals that he robbed them of their true wish?

I don’t know what it was about this odd story but it just got to me. The big strength here is the character work, which I’m just not used to seeing in amateur screenplays. Every character had a purpose and their motivations stemmed from deep believable problems/issues. For example, Allen’s obsession with survivors of failed suicides seems trivial at first. But later on, we realize there’s a deep-seated reason for it, which totally legitimizes his plight. Even the secondary characters, such as Peter’s friend Ryan, have an incredible amount of depth and originality.

And this script just did so many quirky things right that aren’t supposed to work in screenplays. For example, you never want to spend a full scene listening to someone drone on about their past. It’s always boring. But during one 5 page scene in the middle of the script here, Allen extensively details to Caroline why he’s estranged from his father, and it had to be one of the most interesting backstories about a father I’ve ever read.

As far as the dialogue in general, it’s really strong. One of the common things I find about good dialogue is that it’s not the dialogue itself that makes it good, it’s the situation built around the dialogue that makes it good. In The Disappearing World, the scenes between Caroline and Allen aren’t normal boring back and forth scenes where two people talk at each other. Allen is hiding something. He’s lying to her about who he is. Caroline is also hiding something, that she tried to commit suicide recently. And of course, Allen already knows that, but he can’t tell her that. So their conversations always have several layers under them. And then with Peter, he can’t talk at all. It’s all one-sided. So you’re dealing with unique or compelling dialogue sequences in almost every scene.

The script is not without its problems though. My biggest concern is all the history-related monologues. Allen, for instance, talks extensively about how there was nothing artificial on this earth until opposable thumbs came around. Caroline explains the surprising history behind contemporary art. And Peter’s friend Ryan knows everything there is to know about Socrates. Individually, I LOVED all these passages. I know you’re probably thinking “Oh god, how pretentious.” But the confident smart writing here easily avoids that pitfall. My problem was that, while fascinating, when every character’s an armchair historian, they start to lose their individuality. Each character has to sound unique, like their own person, and that one quality began to make them all sound the same. However I really liked the Socrates stuff and pretty much anything that Allen talked about. So it might be as simple as losing the Caroline art monologue.

Some other quibbles. Ryan’s abusive stepfather was too cliché. Caroline’s suicide attempt is a little too sudden (all we’ve seen is that her mom is kinda mean). The relationship between Allen and Ryan isn’t nearly as strong as the one between Allen and Caroline. And a few times, I wondered why Allen couldn’t have just approached Caroline from the get-go as the doctor who saved her. It would seem like a more natural starting point for a relationship. But I think all of those fixes, even the last one, are relatively simple.

In the end, this reminded me a lot of Peter Morgan’s script, “Hereafter,” which Clint Eastwood is now directing with Matt Damon. It’s dark and it’s slow and it’s character-driven. And there are definitely a few patchy areas. But I thought this script was MUCH better than that one, to the point where I feel sorry for Eastwood that he didn’t find this first. It explores the same themes in a much crisper way. And I just really enjoyed how different it was. I never knew what was going to happen next. And to do that inside the framework of a cohesive structure isn’t easy. If you’re an agent or a manger out there looking for a new client, I would snatch this guy up. If not for this script than for the next higher concept idea he comes up with.

Great job Mark. You really surprised me in a week I didn’t expect to be surprised. :)

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

What I learned: In the age old debate of how long a script should be, I thought I’d offer up the events that led to me choosing this script. It was getting late and I hadn’t found anything yet. I was tired and running out of patience. As I clicked through the submissions, I noticed something I was doing without realizing it. I was mentally noting the page count and corresponding reading time of each script. In the back of my head, I was saying, “Okay, that will take me 90 minutes to read,” “That will take me 110 minutes to read.” “That will take me 2 hours to read.” The review came down to two scripts. This one, where the writing was better but the concept was weak. And the other one, which had a strong concept but the writing wasn’t as good. That other script was 121 pages. This was 97 pages. I did the math (I’ll save 24 minutes on The Disappearing World) and picked this script.

Now I’m not saying it’s the only factor. Had the writing been better in the other script, I may have picked that one. But to pretend like page count is never a factor is fooling yourself. Everyone in Hollywood is overworked and exhausted by the end of the day. They all have tons of scripts to read and it very well might come down to page count as the determining factor, like it did for me today. I know that page count is kind of thrown out there arbitrarily as an issue. I just wanted to show a real life situation where it came into play.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Amateur Week - Premeditated

People wanted horror. I tried my best. But in the end I couldn't find anything I knew had a good shot with me, so I kind of compromised, bringing in this psychological thriller with a horror feel to it. I mean, what's a scarier setting than a psyche ward, right? Despite the debate about what, if anything, this week is accomplishing, I push on. And I bring you good news. This is the first script not to receive the lowest rating. As you can see, it's got a nice hook, but what's it about? Well, keep reading.

“Premeditated” begins with one of those lines so good, you can actually see the trailer. Evan Gaither has just walked into a psychiatric ward with blood all over his body. He’s met by a resident doctor, the pretty and overly-caring Angela Bates. The mumbling Evan is barely keeping his shit together, clearly disturbed by the evening's events. “I killed someone,” he sputters. “Who did you kill?” Angela replies. Evan looks up at Angela for the first time. “You.”

Boom! Lol. Are you hooked yet? I know I am.

“Premeditated” understands what it is, a complex psychological thriller in a simple setting. In fact, the script involves only four key characters, three of whom may be responsible for the murder that occurred. Or, I should say, the murder that's going to occur. See, the reason Evan believes he killed Angela, even though she’s very much alive, is that Evan has somehow already been to the future and experienced the murder. How he traveled there isn’t clear yet, but it has something to do with his rapidly deteriorating mental state.

Most nurses would be wary of someone who’s just told them they’re their killer, but Angela is so caring and curious that she decides to personally take Evan on as her patient. Her pursuit of the truth behind his claims is complicated , however, when the detective assigned to Evan’s case is none other than her ex-husband (John). Although the reasons for their break-up remain a mystery, it’s obvious there’s still some unfinished business between these two.

Throwing this already whacky set of circumstances into further disarray, we learn about a recently unsolved missing girl case that police suspect might be tied to Evan. John specifically thinks that Evan is involved and warns Angela to let the system take care of it. But Angela can't keep her helpful mits off Evan, and soon finds herself in numerous creepy sit-downs with him as he slowly unravels the clues to the killing. The question is, which killing??

In the meantime, John puts some feelers out and gets some disturbing results. The blood on Evan’s clothes when he walked in that first day? It matches Angela’s. Angela also, courtesy of Evan's directions, has found a mysterious knife covered in dried blood. John, torn between loyalty and suspicion, is now begging Angela to stay away from Evan, as his partners back at the precinct are starting to suspect that Angela has some connection to this missing girl.

The final variable in the equation is Evan’s evil older brother, Lee, who spent much of his childhood beating the shit out of Evan. Lee is actually also a patient here at the facility, and may have something to do with Evan targeting the facility in the first place. When Angela starts questioning Lee, who gives her a second avenue into Evan’s behavior, she begins to wonder if he isn’t the mastermind behind the missing girl. So what is going on exactly? Did Evan kill this girl? Did Evan kill Angela? Did Lee kill the girl? Is Angela involved in the kidnapping? What exactly is going on in Premeditated?

I think there were some really nice things about Premeditated. Out of the three scripts I’ve read so far, it probably showed the best understanding of 3-Act structure, so it had a nice flow to it. I thought all the characters had interesting backstories and relationships with one another. The initial mystery really hooked me and I was genuinely wondering all the way until the end if Evan was going to kill Angela.

But I also had some problems here. First of all, the story became repetitive in places. After awhile it just seemed like the same things were happening over and over again with slightly different variations. Evan’s cryptic personality also began to wear on me. He spoke in stutters and half-finished sentences and while early on, this was intriguing, after awhile I wanted more substance from him. This issue was compounded by his brother Lee, who also spoke in a series of riddles and since a lot of the scenes took place with Angela and Evan or Angela and Lee, you felt like you weren’t getting enough of a return on your investment. You wanted more to *happen* in these scenes.

Coming from someone who liked “repetitive”-themed scripts like Source Code and All You Need is Kill, I’ll try and explain what the difference here is. The key to making ideas like this work are the revelations. They have to be big enough to break up the monotony inherent in the repetitive structure. In Source Code, each revelation makes you see the story from an entirely new perspective. Here, the revelations don’t so much make you see everything differently as they do verify what you were already suspecting. The blood on Evan’s clothes being hers for example. We kind of knew that was coming. So it didn’t change the story enough. That’s probably the first thing I’d tell Mark. Is make the twists in here bigger and more challenging. You have to really jolt the reader. Remember, they've seen EVERYTHING before.

My other big problem was that I had a hard time linking the missing girl storyline and the “Angela future murder” storyline. I liked the idea of it. It was a good way to give all of this a “real-world” explanation. But the way Angela’s accused of being involved in the murder didn’t’ make a whole lot of sense. She’s a doctor who’s never been arrested in her life and has no motive whatsoever to kill a girl. Why would she start now? Also, the conclusions drawn as to why she was involved don’t hold water. For example, if it was her blood on Evan, what does that have to do with a completely separate person’s disappearance? This might’ve worked better had Angela had some suspicious history. For example, maybe her old child went missing a few years ago and was never found (which is what led to her divorce with John) and the community always suspected her of being involved. Now the reader can start drawing logical conclusions between the two storylines. And if I’m being honest, I think this would’ve led to some higher quality mysteries. What if, at some point in the story, for example, Angela started suspecting that Evan knew where HER child was? Isn’t that more interesting than the whereabouts of some random girl nobody in the story has any connection to?

There were some minor quibbles as well. Why was Angela so intent on helping this random man she didn’t know? Why would Angela willingly walk into a man’s cell at night with no one else around who less than an hour earlier claimed to have killed her? Logic things like these need to be addressed.

I think in the end the script walks that fine line of confusion fairly well. It reminded me in many ways of “The Butterfly Effect” and that Adrian Brody-Keira Knightly flick, “The Jacket,” where you’re never quite sure what’s going on. But those types of movies tend to divide audiences severely. They either love them because they get to fill in the gaps themselves, or hate them because they haven’t been given enough information. I lean more towards needing information. I don’t need my I’s dotted and my t’s crossed, but I do like to feel like it all made sense. And because the pieces didn't quite become a "whole" here, it wasn’t for me. But I have to admit, it was still an interesting script.

Script link: Premeditated

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

What I learned: If you're writing a drama or a thriller, when you’re thinking up your hero’s romantic interest, consider bringing in someone who has unfinished business with them. Recent breakups, divorces, a key event that drove the two apart. It's a staple in drama but almost always a great B-story because there's so much history already built into the relationship. The conflict is there from the very first scene. You can always bring in someone new, but it's going to take you time to build up that relationship to achieve that same level of conflict.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Amateur Week - Blackball

So did Blackball (good title btw) break the string of two consecutive “What the hell did I just reads?” Let’s give this script its close-up and find out.

Hank Penders is a 40-something minor league lifer. This guy was born on the buses that travel through the heartland from ballpark to ballpark where dozens, and on a good day, hundreds of people come out to watch his team play. But poor Hank is nearing the end of his career, and when you’ve been doing the same thing for 40 some years, it’s not easy to imagine the next stage of your life.

Which is why Hank can’t believe his luck. The owner of the Yankees is in town to scout one of his teammates! Now by luck do I mean he takes the opportunity to make a case for his own promotion. ha ha ha. No. Hank notices that the town whore has seduced the owner back to her hotel. So he follows them and snaps a couple of primo pictures of the couple getting down to biznass. And just like that, Hank is in the most powerful position he’s ever been in in his long uneventful life.

So does he want with this power? Money? No. Women? No. Celebrity? No. Hank just wants to play for the New York Yankees.

So he blows into the Big Apple, and when the Yankees owner sees those pictures, he’s ready to give Hank everything he wants. The next thing you know, Hank is playing first base for the most storied sports franchise in American history. Except there’s one problem. Hank sucks. And I mean, he really sucks. He’s batting like .016, and he’s lucky to catch the ball even when it’s thrown directly into his mit. Immediately, the players, the fans, and the whole city, hate Hank. Wherever he goes, he gets booed and hissed at. So what does he do? Well, he complains. Hank really likes to complain. He complains to the manager when he doesn’t start. He complains to the owner when he gets suspended. He complains to other players, he complains to the other team, he complains to the umps. If I had to use one word to describe Hank, it would probably be: a Class-A complainer.

(spoilers below)

Anyway, with less than two weeks from the end of the season, New York likely out of the playoffs, Hank decides, the hell with it, I’ll take steroids! Hank then becomes the greatest player in the history of the world for two weeks. He hits like .900, racks up a bunch of home runs, is a gold-glover. He single-handedly wins the division for the Yanks. And just when his dream is about to reach its peak, the media suspects Hank of using steroids and he gets kicked off the team. Wah-wah-wahhhhh.

And that’s it. That’s the script.

I feel a little bit like Randy Jackson here but I’m just going to get into it. Dustin, you know I love you dog. You know I’m a fan, right? Okay, I’m going to be real here, because there are a bunch of mistakes that need to be addressed in this script.

First, Hank is an alienating protagonist. We don’t really like him because all he does is complain. You’d think Hank would be thankful for this rare opportunity to play for the Yankees. If I got away with something like conning my way onto the best team in baseball? I’d shut up and count my lucky stars until someone wised up and got rid of me. Instead, all Hank does is demand more from everyone. He’s never satisfied and always complaining about his situation.

Second, there’s no character development here. Hank’s not trying to overcome anything. Take Tim Robbins’ character “Nuke” in Bull Durham for instance. He’s trying to overcome his recklessness. He’s trying to find control, both in his game and in his life. Since Hank has nothing to overcome, he’s too simplistic. And simple = boring. When you get notes telling you your character isn’t “three-dimensional,” or doesn’t “rise above the page,” this is usually what they’re referring to.

Next, the story is too linear. It feels like we can see all the way to the end of the screenplay from the very first page. There are no major subplots, no big twists or turns, and no aforementioned inner journey. You have to mix it up more, give your main character more problems to solve. Give other characters more things to do. Shock us with a few reversals. We need to turn a corner every once in awhile. You want your script to be more Grand Prix and less drag race.

The biggest problem with Blackball, however, is that there’s no clear-cut character goal in the story. All we know is that Hank wants to play for the Yankees. Well Hank starts playing for the Yankees on page 60. Now what? What’s the end goal? What’s the story about? Is it just to see him get to the end of the season? That’s not very compelling. We need a clear-cut goal, a ticking time bomb to center the story. Otherwise we’re just sitting there wondering what the point is. Take Rocky, for instance. We know Rocky’s going to fight Apollo, so the movie always has that clear motivation and destination pushing it forward.

Finally, the ending solution for Hank was too easy and it came out of nowhere. All Hank had to do was take steroids and he’d become the greatest player in the world? That's it? The big solution? Even if you make this a morality tale (steroids are bad), since Hank had never struggled with steroids or talked about steroids or had an opportunity to take steroids at any previous moment in the screenplay, this choice comes out of nowhere. If you don’t set up the big plot points in your movie, it’s going to feel like you’re making it up as you go along. And that’s how it felt here.

There are other things we could talk about but those are the bullet points. If I was only able to tell Dustin one thing, I’d tell him to explore his main character more. Dig deep, figure out his flaw, then build a story around him that consistently challenges that flaw. Rocky doesn’t believe in himself. That’s his flaw. And everything in the story, from the environment to the other characters, is a reminder that he SHOULDN’T believe in himself. That’s what makes his story so compelling, watching him fight that perception and finally overcome it in the fight with Apollo. And I know I’m comparing a drama to a dark comedy but it doesn’t matter what genre you’re in, you have to explore your main character.

Script link: Blackball

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

What I learned: I’m going to keep this simple. You don’t ever want to make your main character a whiner or a complainer. It’s one of those qualities that’s universally despised. Think about it. Do you know anyone who constantly whines and complains that you like? Of course not. So don’t give your hero those qualities.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Amateur Week - Untitled Time Travel Script

Okay so look, Michael Stark e-mailed me and said, “You realize you’re about to break 5 screenwriters’ hearts.” And I thought about that and I realized that the writers of these scripts are going to be affected by how their scripts are rated. I get that. But what I want to make perfectly clear is that these are not definitive statements about the writer. They’re statements about the scripts submitted. All of us are in different phases of this frustrating journey called screenwriting, and just because this script isn’t any good, doesn’t mean the next one won’t be, or the one after that.

One of the reasons I wanted to have this week was to show just how hard screenwriting is. Most writers I’ve encountered believe they’re better than they actually are and all that leads to is a lot of frustration and a resistance to learn. Mind you it's an understandable stance. You (we) tend to judge ourselves against all the shitty movies Hollywood makes. It’s one of the oldest clichés in Tinsletown: “I could write something better than that.” And I’m not going to get into the hundreds of reasons why this is a fallible argument. I’ll just say this: You need to become good at screenwriting to realize how bad you are at it. And I don't say that from a place of superiority. I say it as someone who finally understood the craft well enough where I could look back at a lot of the scripts I'd written and go...jesus, those were terrible.

Anyway, all this talk about bad screenplays isn't exactly looking good for today's script. But I think I’ve picked the perfect screenplay for my first review of Amateur Week. It represents a writer with talent and imagination who wrote a screenplay that’s all the hell over the place. You’ll find these kinds of scripts everywhere in Hollywood, and chances are, we’ve written one ourselves. But nobody tells us why these scripts of ours that display flashes of brilliance and loads of potential don’t get past the first reader on the totem pole. Well I’m about to tell you why.

Sid Stu, a 17 year old on the verge of becoming a stud of a man, and Bane Barley, a 16 year old who has a pet chicken, are best friends living in a rural Texas town. Sid lives with Virgil, an older machine shop owner who took Stu in when his parents left him. Virgil spends a lot of his time dabbling in time travel literature, and even fiddling with old washing machines in the backyard, hoping to one day create a porthole that can travel back and forth in time.

Sid leads a pretty normal existence, hanging out with Bane and doing normal kid stuff. But recently, Sid’s been seeing one of those old men with “End Of The World” signs everywhere. This wouldn’t be a big deal except that there’s something familiar about this old guy. Hmm, we’ll get back to that later because an army captain has just moved into town and he’s brought with him the most beautiful vision Sidney's ever laid eyes on, 16 year old Cilla. Sid instantly falls in love, and although the Captain doesn’t approve, the lovestruck teenagers take the long slow road to becoming an item.

Unfortunately, this puts Bane on the outs, and like a wounded ex-lover, Bane begins to despise Cilla. This starts with him growing a beard (can 16 year olds grow beards?) and ends with him luring Cilla over to his house where he kills her. When Sid comes over to see what happened, Bane blames it on the fact that he’s become a werewolf. It should be noted that Bane isn’t *actually* a werewolf. He just thinks he’s a werewolf.

Around this time the crazy sign man visits Sid at his house, where he informs him that he’s him, from the future. He goes into an elaborate explanation about how there are multiple dimensions and that in each dimension, Bane, out of jealously, has killed Cilla. This older Sid has been traveling back in time from dimension to dimension trying to prevent the murder from happening, but no matter what he does, he can’t stop it. So then Young Sid joins older Sid to go dimension-hopping in an attempt to find a way to stop Bane from killing Cilla, so that Sid and Cilla can be together.

Okay. Wow. That’s a handful. “Untitled Time Travel Script” is a perfect example of a writer being too far inside his own head, and not taking into account how his audience is processing the information he’s giving them. There are actually some pretty inventive and interesting ideas going on here. We have time travel, we have multiple dimensions, we have a Romeo and Juliet love story, we have a character who thinks he’s a werewolf. But when you try to mix all of those things into one screenplay, you don’t have a story, you just have a bizarre mash-up of ideas. This is a common habit for a lot of young screenwriters. They use their early screenplays as a vessel to cram as many cool sounding/interesting/crazy things into it as possible. In their mind, they’ve created the ultimate original movie. But to us, the people who aren’t privy to all the information that led to those choices, it just feels like a big hot confusing mess.

Now even if you get past the overabundance of ideas in this script, you still run into some major structural problems. When you come up with a concept for your screenplay, you want to make sure the screenplay is about that concept. This may seem obvious, but I see writers screw it up over and over again. Here’s the concept for “Déjà vu:” A future version of a teenager teams up with his younger self to try and prevent the love of his life from dying. THAT’S YOUR STORY. That’s what it needs to be about. Yet we don’t even find out that there’s a future version of Sid until page 60, halfway through the screenplay!!! This means for an entire 60 pages, you’re depriving us of the whole reason we came to see the movie! Imagine The Matrix if Neo didn’t meet Morpheus until page 60. Imagine Avatar if Jake Sulley didn’t get to the Na’vi clan until page 60. Once you identify what the main hook (the reason your audience comes to see the movie) is, you need to get to that point by the end of your first act. There are only a handful of successful examples where this isn’t the case, and most of them are from a bygone era. In this day and age, unless you have a hell of a reason not to, get your story started early.

So here, I’d set up the Cilla and Sid relationship by the second or third scene. I’d have them in love by page 15. And I’d have her killed by page 25. Then I’d bring Future Sid in to inform Young Sid that he has a chance to save her. And the second act would then be dedicated to multiple tries in multiple dimensions of them trying to save Cilla.

I mentioned this before. The writer has some interesting things to say. He has imagination, and if you can combine imagination with an understanding of this craft, you have some good times ahead of you. But right now, in this screenplay, the story is too unfocused, it starts too late, it dwells on too many pointless sequences, it gets too confusing, it tries to do too many things, its title misrepresents the script (it implies it's a comedy), as well as some smaller problems I don't have time to get into…The point is there are just too many marks against it for me to give it a passing grade.

Script link: Untitled Time Travel Script

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

What I learned: It’s simple and it’s been said a million times but oh how true it is. Whatever amount of time you think you need to set up your story, you’re wrong. You need less. If someone put a gun to your head and said, “set up this story in half the time,” I’d bet every last penny in my bank account that you’d figure out how to do it. Get your story set up by the end of the first act so that your main story can start between pages 25-30.

note: You may not believe this, but thanks to a helpful reader, I think the comments might actually work for everyone right now. Please try commenting to see if your long standing inability to comment is now fixed.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Amateur Week - Hell Of A Deal

For the month of May, Scriptshadow will be foregoing its traditional reviewing to instead review scripts from you, the readers of the site. To find out more about how the month lines up, go back and read the original post here. This first week, we're allowing any writers to send in their script for review. We warned them ahead of time that we'd be honest and judge their material aggressively, so put that Kleenex box away. There's no crying in screenwriting. Actually, there's lots of crying in screenwriting but that's besides the point. This is not a final judgment of your script, just how we see it in relation to the other scripts we read. We're hoping the original writer can learn something and so can you. Roger is here with the first script, Hell of A Deal, by Joe Giambrone.

Genre: Thriller (?) Mystery (?) Drama (?) Black Comedy (?)
Premise: An aging Hollywood film mogul makes a deal with a mysterious man who is selling an experimental medical treatment that promises youth. In exchange, the salesman wants to use the mogul’s resources to make a movie, but the only catch? The salesman may or may not be the Devil.
About: Blindly chosen from the ScriptShadow slush pile for Amateur Week. I received this screenplay in my inbox with this attached email from Carson, “I literally closed my eyes and clicked. This is what came up.” The title page indicates this script is based on an original novel by the screenwriter, but upon further investigation (Google!), I couldn’t find any information about said novel on the Internet.
Writer: Joe Giambrone

I dove into this script with nary a logline nor a clue as to what genre I was about to read. All I had was the title, “Hell of a Deal.” Would it be a Mark Twain social satire like The Prince and the Pauper, a picaresque Horatio Alger rags to riches story, or would it be something more Faustian? And, more importantly, what sort of ramifications would it have for the next few hours of my life?

After I studied the title page, I looked at the first page. I examined the formatting and the prose in the Action/Direction lines. This is always telling. For example, you can always look at the A/D lines on the first page to gauge if this is going to be a safe read or not. By safe, I mean, does the writer have a competent command of not only the English language, but Screenplay Shorthand? Can they string words together in a clear and concise way that creates tone, atmosphere and description of not only character, but action? In other words, can the writer set the stage (scene) and describe what happens on the stage (scene) with prose?

If the answer is ‘Yes’, then it’s possible you might be in safe hands. But even if it’s obvious the writer has a skill with words, sometimes they come from the world of novels and prose fiction and the A/D lines may be overwritten, redundant, too dense (some may also argue that the prose is too spare) for the brevity required in screenplays. If the answer is ‘No’, then your luck is cut out for you and you’ll find yourself in what can be described as a frustrating foray into clumsy A/D lines that will have you both confused and pulling your hair out.

But luckily, with “Hell of a Deal”, the A/D lines looked safe so I continued my journey.

What’s it about, Rog?

This is a morality play about a Hollywood mogul named Al Smith. When we meet him, he’s seventy-three years old and he’s walking on a treadmill, staring at a plasma screen monitor that features living wills and trusts.

Al doesn’t have a lot of time left here on earth. He spends his days exercising on his treadmill, looking for that next original screenplay and keeping final cut away from the death merchant directors that make movies for him.

But then Lou Seaford arrives in his life, a shark-like salesman hawking a veritable fountain of youth. Al is suspicious, as of course he’s researched all the latest medicinal treatments, but he seems to cave in pretty fast when Lou talks about nano machines and shows him a video of his assistant, Katya, dressed up as a naughty nurse, injecting an old mangy mutt with a serum that transforms the dog into a puppy so realistically that Al is convinced it’s CGI.

Al is all too ready to sign up for the treatment, but when he asks how much this is gonna cost him, Lou answers, “I want money, I go to a bank. I come to you, Big Al Smith, the king of Hollywood, and of course?”

“You want to make a movie.”

But what are the conditions?

Well, of course, the studio cannot go beyond an R rating. “No male genitalia. No mutilation.” Lou doesn’t understand, as Al’s last movie had tons of blood. But they move on.

Al emphasizes that Lou must stay within budget, a generous twenty million. But then they get into an argument and Lou talks a hard bargain, driving the budget up to a hundred million dollars.

When Al tells Lou that the studio has final cut, Lou threatens to walk away. But Al is desperate to be young again, so not only is he gonna give Lou the hundred million, it also seems like surrendering final cut to this odd salesman is going to be negotiable.

The next thing we know, a waiter carries over a contract on a tray, but when Al tries to sign it with his pen it suddenly runs out of ink. Lou hands his pen over, and Al notices the ink is blood red. As he’s signing, the lights seem to dim.

All this and he doesn’t know yet what the movie is going to be about.

So how does the treatment go?

After he experiences some chest pains, an ambulance ferries Al from his Beverly Hills home, where his daughter Victoria sees him off with promises to visit later, to the treatment center.
Victoria’s decision to go do “a shoot” instead of accompany her father (who appeared to be having a heart attack) to the treatment center puzzled me. I just can’t rationally or logically accept it. Characters should act like real people in these situations, and as a loving daughter, I would expect her to go with her father in an emergency like this. It could be the last time she sees him, after all.

At the treatment center, it’s a chaotic scene as Al is losing consciousness. Lou is yelling at him to choose an age before he administers the drugs, and Al passes out and has a flashback about his deceased wife.

What happens in the flashback?

Al is in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco with a crew of film students. He’s pushing them to film a drum circle of Ojibwe as they’re out looking to score footage of a police riot or topless girls. “Sex and violence. Don’t waste film otherwise.”

One of the Ojibwe women confronts Al, a gal named Lisa. But they seem to have an attraction to each other and the next thing we know they’re doing LSD and making love. They share a bond now, and Al proposes to Lisa.

Then we’re out of the flashback, and the age Al screams out to Lou before he passes out again is “Thirty!” This was Al’s age in the flashback and that’s the age he returns to when he awakens from the treatment.

If he’s 30 again, how does Al deal with Victoria and the film studio?

By pretending to be Al, Jr. I didn’t have a problem with this tricking the film studio, but I did have a problem when it came to convincing Victoria. It felt too easy and it didn’t feel as graceful as it should have.

I have a hard time getting past a plot glitch like that, and this brings me to my main criticism with “Hell of a Deal”. I’m going to be honest here, and my negative feedback may seem harsh, but as writers, we should be used to feedback, both positive and negative.

There’s a lack of verisimilitude, that quality of stories and storytelling that uses the right details to create the appearance of truth. To make something made up seem realistic. As storytellers, we are basically spinning lies into truth. And we must become masters at it if we want to succeed.

This lack of verisimilitude rears its head in the scenes dealing with the examination of the film business. And as the rest of the story is about Lou’s movie, well, this absence of truth plagues much of the script.

So what’s Lou’s movie about and what’s his end game?

Lou’s film is called, ‘Terra: Earth Under Terror’. Much of the second act is focused on Al dealing with Lou’s demands as they hire a screenwriter to script the project. After that, we see what happens when they send the script out to the latest leading men to see who’s gonna bite.
This movie within the script is pretty weird. Lou explains it, “It’s about the Supermen of the Homeland...like the Nietzsche Ubermenschen...,” who rise up to defend civilization against the terrorists.

Except these Supermen are into gangrape, torture and killing.

Basically, things come to a head during an Angel Heart-like moment when we learn that Lou Seaford is really Lucifer. His movie is hopefully gonna be as effective as La Fin Absolue du Monde from John Carpenter’s Cigarette Burns when it comes to inciting madness and homicidal urges in people, in turn causing World War Four and the end of civilization as we know it.
So the third act becomes a court case where Al is trying to block the release of ‘Terra’, but is then sued for a billion dollars by Lou’s team of lawyers.

Does Al succeed?

Strangely, no.

We have a heavy-handed finale where Al urges Victoria to live a happy life and “make moral art” before Lou comes to collect his soul, welcoming him into the gates of hell.
This sequence kind of blind-sided me as an attack on violence in cinema, especially violence in the “Torture Porn” genre.

I mean, as a dude that saw Kick-Ass three times in the same week, I felt like I was being personally condemned for being entertained (and finding value) in the Cinema of Violence.
But personal feelings and ego aside, that wasn’t my issue here. My issue is that the sequence felt pretty preachy, and I wish it was more subtle.

So, what’s your final verdict, Rog?

Well, despite my criticism concerning the plot glitches and character logic, I think there’s a good use of the three act structure. There’s a good macro-structure here. The writer nailed his over-all structure.

My criticisms deal with mostly the micro stuff, the stuff that happens in the scenes. I found that the scenes ran too long or lacked the realism they required. Instead of feeling like I was glimpsing into a window of a real-life mogul, it felt more like a hasty approximation of what one imagined this mogul’s life to be.

It ultimately ran off the tracks for me when it came to Lou’s movie. It was just really strange.
My advice to the writer would be to focus on making his scenes feel realistic, on making his characters feel like real people. Study genres and their tones, what makes them work, and apply appropriately.

Script link: Hell Of A Deal

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

What I learned: Does your screenplay have a message? It does? Okay, kill it. No, seriously. Dismember it and bury it under your story. Because chances are, unchecked, this message has grabbed the reins from story and has shattered through the fourth-wall and has punched the audience member in the face, breaking his or her nose. The audience is coming to your movie because they want to be told a story, not a sermon. Sure, a theater can be sacred like a cathedral if you’re an audience member passionate about cinema, but it’s still not a church.

Here’s the analogy: Say you’re writing a science-fiction tale. The fiction comes first, not the science. The story is the center. If there’s no story at the center for the audience to be moved by, then they might as well be reading a text book on quantum mechanics.

All screenplays address an idea or ideas, something we can refer to as theme. If theme is a bell, then every scene should ring this bell. However, watch out for those moments where it seems like the character has stepped on a pulpit and is ringing the bell so hard it’s clanging and hurting our ears. And if you’re telling a morality play, aim for subtlety. Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight was a morality play, but its message was always in harmony with the story.

To get in touch with Roger, you can e-mail him at: rogerbalfourscriptshadow@gmail.com

note 1: Cruel remarks such as "This is f'ing terrible" or "This story sucks" will be deleted. I want you to be honest and I want to have a discussion about the writing but be respectful to the writer.

note 2: I'm sorry that the comments aren't working for some - try using different browsers while I continue to work on it. Ever since upgrading it's been a nightmare. Unfortunately, like most computer shit these days, they won't let you downgrade back to the old version. If you have any experience with Disqus and/or commenting problems and know what the problem may be, e-mail me please: Caronreeves1@gmail.com

Sunday Book Review

Watch Scriptshadow on Sundays for book reviews by contributors Michael Stark and Matt Bird. We won't be able to get one up every Sunday, but hopefully most Sundays. Here's Stark with his review of King Suckerman!

KING SUCKERMAN Book Review By Michael Stark

Think fast. It’s pop culture trivia night at the Cassaday Tavern in New Brunswick, NJ and you have the choice of one of the following famous ringers for your team: Quentin Tarantino, Diablo Cody, Nick Hornby or George Pelecanos. Answer me quick, bro, who the hell ya gonna pick?

You’re choosing not cause you want to get stinking drunk and shoot the shit with the guy or hand them your precious jotted-on-the-back-of-a-napkin idea of a webisode, but to actually win this fucking thing. There’s a 20-pound smoked turkey as the grand prize and your doll baby back home is just jonesing for some proper stuffing, cranberry sauce and tryptophan.

Obviously, all the aforementioned are completely fluent in American pop and trash culture. You’d probably do no wrong with any of ‘em. Now, Hornby might flub a few of the sports related questions, but so would I -- and I’m a bloody national.

Time’s up, bro. I believe the only one that would definitely lead you to a drumstick wielding victory dance would be Mr. Pelecanos.

Why am I so sure? Cause in King Suckerman, cool references shoot out at you like hydra heads at some mutant carny whack-a-mole booth. Throughout the whole book, he deftly defers to dozens of the coolest flicks, tunes, reads, muscle cars and basketball moves in anything I’ve ever seen before -- I’m talking in any form of media.

His opening gambit is two hard-broiled paragraphs that not only gets the story jump-started, but somehow casually name drops: Five Fingers of Death, Black Caesar, James Brown’s “Down and Out in New York”, Angels Hard as They Come and The Master Gunfighter, an oater starring both Tom Laughlin (Billy Jack) and Ron O’Neil (superfly).

One wonders if Little Pelecanos had been conceived during a grind house triple bill at the local drive-in.

GP, as you may know, was a writer and producer for HBO’s The Wire. An ex journalist, he’s also written some of the grittiest, hyper-realistic stuff (Shame the Devil and Hard Revolution) I’ve ever read. Stephen King has called him "The greatest living American crime writer." And, has Uncle Stevie ever steered us wrong?

Now, King Suckerman is a little less noir neorealsim and far more fun and funky than his other reads. I discovered this book about 12 years ago while waiting in an underground, alternative medical clinic where they were gonna guinea pig me for a few weeks of questionable treatments which would either cure me or kill me. (It did neither) So, I’m in the waiting room, scared out of my mind, and I find this garish green paperback with a dude with a huge ‘fro on the cover. I picked it up and immediately started laughing out loud. I was pretty thankful -- it totally took the edge off the grim situation I was getting myself into. And, even then, as this quack center was about to drain my lifesavings, I thought to myself. “Damn, this book would make a great fucking movie!”

The action is set in DC during the sweltering Bicentennial summer. Just about every character is itching to see the new super pimp movie that’s about to hit the silver screens, King Suckerman. “Not any old pimp, The baddest player that ever was. The man with the Master Plan Who’d Be Takin’ it to the Man.”

Marcus Clay, our hero, owns a not so thriving record store. It’s a far cooler, more soulful establishment than the one John Cusack had in High Fidelity. Charismatic Clay could also easily steal any of Cusack’s old flames and kick his puny, white ass in the process. See, the guy did time in ‘Nam and he basically just wants to lay low, run his business and stay out of trouble.

Unfortunately, his best friend and hoops shooting buddy, Dimitri Karras, is a trouble magnet. He’s an aimless pothead who deals a bit on the side to make ends meet. He’s also is a little misguided, debating that Robin Trower is in the same fucking league as Hendrix. What heresy! His record collection contains Captain Beefheart and Big Star, so he’s instantly likeable. Well, to us music snobs anyway.

With his usual connection on Vacay, Karras and Clay get their weed directly this week from the low-level-mook-mobster, Eddie Spags. They enter his warehouse right in the middle of a coke deal about to go bad. A deal with some rather bad-ass ex-con mothers just up from South Carolina.

When Karras is caught eyeing Spag’s hot, underage girlfriend, she gets a slap across the maw and the guns suddenly come out.

Our plucky, somewhat stoned heroes walk out of there with the gal, a pile of money that isn’t theirs and two different set of killers now hopped up on revenge.

The dudes from the Carolinas aren’t ones you would ever want to cross. Wilton Cooper, the movie-loving head psycho, has all the best scene stealing, Samuel L. Jackson lines. He picks up the “White-boy-wanna-be-black-boy cracker", Bobby Roy Clagget, at the drive-in after the kid kills the projectionist just for smiling at him too much. “You ever think, B.R. – and I’m just makin’ conversation here – that the man was smilin’ just to be friendly?”

The Kid is the ultimate loose cannon and patsy. Think Elisa Cook Jr, but with a petri dish of acne all over his face. The poor sap keeps getting himself beat up, shot and buggered.

Stylistically, its very much Elmore Leonard charted territory. Kind of his Rum Punch after Tarantino changed it to the blaxploitation homage, Jackie Brown. This actually wouldn’t be a bad gig for one of the many Tarantino copycats that have since spawned after Pulp Fiction.

But, Pelecanos does his hard-boiled noir with both heart and soul. It’s all about taking a stand, loyalty to your best bud and even redemption. Karras, realizing how wasteful his drug dealing life has been, makes amends to the great karmic wheel by taking on Wilton’s gang just as the floorshow of Fourth of July fireworks fall over the Capital.

That character arc isn’t something you see much in these Tarantino cover band flicks. I loved the heart as much as all the jive talking.

And, of course, I adored the gazillion pop culture references. From the Kool cigarettes they smoke to the National Bohemian Beer preferred by the motorcycle gang the southern psychos will tangle with.

Now, Scriptshadow doesn’t necessarily want to lighten the burden of product-seeking producers. There are just a ton of books we’d love to see made into movies. Natch, Our Sunday reviews.

Hell, King Suckerman is already franchisable. Clay and Karras will show up in three more of Pelecanos’s “D.C. Quartet Series”. I’m surprised HBO didn’t pick this up already. It would make a fun little cable series like Justified.

As far as I can tell, this gem has been sitting for 12 years in development hell. It was originally option by Sean “Puffy” Combs with his hopes to play Clay. Personally, I can’t really see Puff Daddy in a hyper violent, stoner flick, but what do I know? He’s the mogul; I’m the schlub. I gotta give the man cred for picking a fine, fine project though.

Suckerman is the kind of material that sucks you right in. It’s a fast and furiously funny read. I recommend that Scriptshadow followers start here and then explore Pelecanos’s weightier works.

And, if ya wanna crib some kools-tinged dialogue, you might as well learn it from one of the old masters.

WHAT I LEARNED: Yes, guys, screenwriters can learn a thing or two from prose writers. Open up a tome every once in a while! (Disclaimer. Stark does own a used bookstore.)

Pelecanos, like Elmore Leonard, effortlessly cuts from one character’s POV and storyline to another. Their various plotlines will eventually intersect as their narratives all blend together. This isn’t always the easiest trick for a scripter to pull off. I’m thinking it worked well in Go and Jackie Brown. So, for discussion, which films have tightly pulled this technique off and which films have ended up just a confused jumbled mess? Please, chime in.

Stark’s further rants and ramblings can be followed in his blog: www.michaelbstark.blogspot.com