Game Of Thrones (TV)

Genre: Fantasy
Premise: The death of the king's right hand man results in a reclusive knight being recruited to replace him. Not only is the world he’s about to join filled with backstabbing and murder, but is threatened by the looming reemergence of a mysterious ghost-like species to the north.
About: Game Of Thrones is the new series debuting on HBO this April. A sort of weird hybrid of knight-ly tales mixed with Lord of The Rings like influences, the series is based on the novel of the same name. The pilot was written by the ultra-successful pen of David Benioff, who makes more on a three week rewrite than most of us make in five years, and D.B. Weiss, whose bounty hunter spec script “Kashmir” sold a couple of years ago. (note to Thrones fans: I do not know the vernacular of this world well.  I apologize in advance if I misappropriate titles and such.  It was hard enough to keep track of the 30+ characters and dozen storylines).
Writers: David Benioff & D.B. Weiss, (based on the novel “A Game Of Thrones” by George R.R. Martin)
Details: 59 pages – 3/27/09 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

You asked for it. You’re getting it. A teleplay! Lots of e-mails from writers wanting me to cover more TV. The reason I don’t is because I don’t know the TV world nearly as well as I know the feature world. I’m not as familiar with how a series gets made. I’m not as familiar with how a show is supposed to be structured. But dammit if I’m going to let that get in the way of me pretending like I do! Truthfully though, the reason I decided to review this was because HBO creates some of the best programming on television, and since they’re heavily promoting this, I wanted to take a look. Okay, that’s a lie. I’m reviewing it because it’s 60 pages.

Game Of Thrones is packed with TONS of characters, and the first half of the script is pretty much an introduction smorgasbord. The most important of these people seems to be Lord Eddard Stark, a 40 year old knight who mans the northernmost castle in this imaginary land, a few short miles from “the wall,” a sort of “Great Wall of China” but bigger. Way bigger. What’s beyond that wall remains a mystery for this episode, but we get hints that an 8000 year old species of…human once lived there, and even though 8 millennia have passed, nobody has any interest in taking the wall down. Man, talk about a legacy. People are still afraid of you 8000 years after your extinction!!??

After an unexpected death by the king's hand, King Robert takes a trip up to Eddard’s northern fortress to ask for his help. He wants Eddard to replace his enforcer and help manage his kingdom. While this would up his family’s profile quite a bit, Eddard is noticeably reluctant. He likes hanging out up here in the middle of nowhere – living the simple life so to speak. This would change his world considerably, and he’s not sure the pros outweigh the cons.

The rest of the script is a series of tiny subplots setting up a multitude of characters. We have an angry sex-crazed dwarf named Tyrion who's so much like Charlie Sheen you wish Mr. Tiger Blood himself could turn into a dwarf so he could play the role.  We have a young woman being forced into a marriage for political gain by her evil power-obsessed brother. We have the beheading of a prominent knight for deserting his duties after supposedly seeing a clan of ghosts. And we have the king’s 8 year old son accidentally seeing something he should not have seen, resulting in a shocking “guaranteed to get you back for a second episode” finale. All in all, a very jam-packed episode of TV.

Okay, there’s a secret being whispered about in the back rooms of Hollywood screenwriting channels. It’s one of those things you tell your feature-loving friends behind closed doors, but not dare say in public as doing so would be admitting a horrifying truth – that TV has become more interesting than film. I was watching The Walking Dead marathon this weekend on AMC and it hit me: This is really fucking good. But more importantly, it was different. It was challenging. It was unique. It took chances. Does any of this sound familiar? Of course not. That’s because movies stopped doing any of this stuff ten years ago (some would argue even 20 or 30 years ago).

This is a particularly interesting conversation as we were just debating this with last week’s Amateur submission, Glastonburied. Sean argued, soundly, that writers shouldn’t always follow the rules and should instead take chances and let their instincts guide them. But therein lies the rub. Just being different does not equal “better.” In fact, the large majority of the time, different means much worse, and that’s because most of the people being different don’t even know how they’re being different, cause they never learned how to be the same. It’s an ugly confusing state us cinema lovers are in right now because we need vision, we need to take chances like these television people do, but I’m not sure enough people know how to take good chances that pay off. The reason The Walking Dead is so good is because it’s produced by Frank Darabont, one of, if not the, best screenwriters in the business. He knows how to be different because he understands all the rules he’s breaking.

Getting back to Thrones, this show is indeed a unique shifty story that could only be made on TV these days, and that’s a crying shame, as it ambitiousness is exactly what the feature world lacks at the moment.  But is Thrones different good?  Or is it different bad? 

Maybe it’s because I’m not as familiar with TV, but holy moses smell the roses there are a TON of freaking characters introduced here. The first 30 pages consist entirely of characters being set up. Ugh, I felt like I was swimming in the La Brea tar pits. What made it even worse was that everyone was a “Ser” or a “Lady” or a “Lord,” There were so many damn sers and ladies and lords I felt like I was at a Dungeon and Dragons convention. But if you stick with it, if you push past this early portion of the script, Game Of Thrones starts to get good.

It starts with Eddard. There’s something broken about this man that we want to know more about. He’s given this great opportunity to change his life. So why is he so reluctant to do so?  We also get a large dose of conspiracy, as we find out that the king's hand might not have died, but instead was murdered. Hmm... And don’t get me started about this strange mythical species on the other side of the wall. Who the hell are these guys? What exactly did they do to have a kingdom keep a wall up 8000 years after their extinction? We have emerging nemeses with studly knights. We have beheadings. We have forced marriages. We have incest. There’s a lot of interesting fucked up shit going on here.  It kind of feels like Tudors on steroids.  And acid.  Lots of acid.

One of the reasons I believe reading TV pilots is important is because the medium depends more on its characters. Story is important, but not nearly as much as the people who populate that story. For that reason, all of the characters tend to be richer, more detailed and more interesting.

For example, Eddard’s oldest son must bear the brunt of being a bastard child, born from one of his father’s whores. This reality clearly eats away at him every second of every day, to be a lord’s son, and yet not be one, and we can already tell that at some point, this situation is going to explode. In its short running time, Game of Thrones introduces tons of characters like this, all battling some inner unresolved conflict, and when reading features, I rarely see that attention to detail in what's going on INSIDE of everyone.  Not every character hits in Thrones, but a lot of them do.

The one thing I do know about TV is you need that last minute cliffhanger to bring the audience back for week 2, and while I wouldn’t call what happens at the end of Game of Thrones a “twist,” the way they used to throw around shockers on Lost, it’s shocking enough that you won’t believe it happened, and I guarantee you that you’ll be checking in next week. I’ll be checking in for Week 2 of Game Of Thrones and I haven’t even seen the first week yet.:)

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

What I learned: A great reminder that your characters should be battling some inner conflict.  Whether it's with their own identity (being a bastard son), with a belief in themselves, their commitment to family, selfishness, obsession with power.  The characters in Thrones are all fighting battles inside, which is why they all feel a cut above normal movie fare.

Y The Last Man

Genre: Sci-Fi/Comedy
Premise: Every man in the world is dead except for a young slacker and his pet monkey, leaving a world entirely populated by females.
About: Brian K. Vaughan is a comic book writer, a TV writer (Lost), and has sold a few spec screenplays. This is an adaptation of Vaughan’s own comic book, Y The Last Man, which he sold a few years back.
Writer: Brian K. Vaughan (Based on the series from Vertigo Comics Created by Brian K. Vaughan & Pia Guerra)
Details: Draft 1.2 (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

There are few screenwriters out there who have as much geek cred as Brian K. Vaughan. You say his name and geeks everywhere smile unintentionally, their cheeks turning red the way a 13 year old girl reacts when the school stud says hi to her in the hallway. I, however, am still undecided on Vaughan. I loved the majority of Roundtable, his Ghostbusters-like spec sale from a few years back about modern day knights trying to save the world. But The Vault left me colder. I liked it enough to recommend it, but parts of it were just so weird and out there. The guy’s imagination is so deep it gives George Lucas pause, and at times that gets him into trouble. But I knew this one was supposed to be good. Plenty of people have recommended it to me before, so I was more than happy to finally read it. Indeed, it starts out with a great question: What if you really were the last man on earth?

Y The Last Man starts the way a spec script should: with something happening. And boy is something happening. Moms are driving their dying husbands and sons to the hospital. Businessmen are keeling over mid-stride. 747s are crashing into the middle of cities. It appears we’re smack dab in the middle of the Apocalypse. Well, sort of anyway. We realize quickly that this apocalyptic event is selective, only killing off the men in the world, sparing the ladies and girls completely. Within 5 hours, every damn living creature with a y chromosome is a burnt pop tart, el officio deadondo.

Or wait, not EVERY living man. It appears that eternal slacker Yorick Brown and his pet monkey, Ampersand, have somehow survived this ordeal. We’re not sure how yet but a guess is that the monkey has something to do with it. So Yorick throws on a gas mask to disguise himself, and heads to his mom’s place, where he hopes she’ll know what to do. Shock City then when his mom betrays him and calls the CIA!

Yorick grabs the monkey, jumps out the back window (don’t you love how awesome back windows are in movies?) and sprints for his life. A test subject for the remainder of his existence does not sound like fun. The last Yorick heard, his girlfriend, Beth, touched down in Los Angeles, and the poor romantic sap feels like if he can just make it to her, everything will be okay. Too bad finding your girlfriend in an apocalyptic wasteland isn’t as easy as jumping out the back window.

Unfortunately, Colonel Alter Tse-Elon, a female soldier in the Israeli defense force, hears about Yorick and makes it her mission to find him. She believes (I think – I wasn’t clear) that if Yorick is found alive that the earth could be repopulated with men, the root of all war, and that once again Israel would be subject to attack. Finding and killing off Yorick would essentially ensure world peace.

And you know what? She’s not the only one who wants to take Yorick down. A huge female biker gang that may or may not be hardcore feminazi lesbians, discover the presence of Yorick and want to pave his way down the Highway to Hell as well. Ugh, not good.

Luckily Yorick runs into Agent 355, a smoking hot secret agent for…some really secret agency, who decides to help him get to Los Angeles. She’s really the only thing that stands between him and capture, as she fights off the biker chicks and Israeli army at every turn, all the while trying to convince Yorick to offer himself to science so they can repopulate the world with men. Will this happen? Will the world’s biggest slacker be able to save mankind? We’ll have to see.

Y The Last Man is as crazy as it sounds. And that’s both its biggest strength and its biggest weakness. What I like about Vaughan is that he gives you what every reader asks for. Surprise. Show me something different. And when Vaughan writes, indeed, you’re never quite sure what’ll happen on the next page. But it’s a double-edged sword, since what you get isn’t always satisfying, and occasionally is so broad that even the developers of those weird Japanese video games step back and say, “Whoa dude, not bi-winning, too far.” A lesbian biker gang? The Isralei army? A pet monkey? It’s not as out there as The Vault, but you definitely need to be up for the absurd when reading one of Vaughn’s scripts.

On the technical side, I wished Vaughan had explored his premise a little more. What if there really were no men left in the world? There’s a great little scene early on where this super-hot chick pulls up in a garbage truck (which she can barely drive), clumsily screwing up her job at every turn, and we’re going, “What the hell is this girl doing driving a garbage truck?” And she explains how she used to be a model, but when all the men disappeared, there was no use for models anymore, forcing her to take the lowliest of lowly jobs. True it was a gimmicky scene that had nothing to do with the plot but I loved that it was actually exploring the premise in a clever way. And I wanted to see more of that. There’s a little of it (the energy sector was dominated by men so there’s basically no electricity anymore) but I was hoping for more.

Structurally, the script has some good and bad things about it. You have a main character with a clear goal (“Get to Beth”) and plenty of urgency behind the goal, since Yorick is constantly being chased. Remember, if you don’t have a ticking time bomb in your script, a great supplement is to create a chase scenario. If someone’s always on your hero’s heels, it creates the illusion of a ticking time bomb. And whenever you have a road trip scenario, you probably want someone chasing your characters anyway, as it gives the story an added edge.

On the stakes front, I’m not sure the script achieves its goal. While Yorick IS the last man on earth, and therefore the last chance to save mankind, that’s not what his mission is about. His mission is to get to his girlfriend. It’s not like Will Smith in I Am Legend, where his goal was to come up with a cure to save makind, truly high stakes. Yorick is trying to get to Beth, which doesn’t really do anything but…get him to Beth. If you look at a movie like The Day After Tomorrow, where a father is trying to find his son, him finding his son actually means something, since he (as well as everyone) is in danger. Beth’s not in danger. And on top of that, when we last saw these two together, she didn’t even like Yorick, so the stakes driving the story are a little soft.

The biggest misstep, however, was one I noticed only because I’d watched Raiders recently. Every third or fourth scene In Y The Last Man is Yorick and Agent 355 in a safe setting (on a train, on the side of the road) talking. These scenes are weak because the story isn’t being pushed forward in any noticeable way. Instead, the characters are talking about their pasts or discussing the effects of the plague. They’re not TERRIBLE scenes because Vaughan is good with dialogue (i.e. “You know what the strongest muscle in the human body is?” “The heart?” “No, it’s not the heart, you sappy fuck. It’s your jaw muscle. Even a scrawny dude like me has five hundred pounds of bite strength.” “Great, that’ll come in handy when you’re fighting food.”) but there’s no outside force or conflict or subtext going on during them. It’s just two people talking.

Compare that with the “dialogue” scenes between Indiana and Marion in Raiders. When he first finds Marion, he has to convince this woman whose life he ruined to help him. Or later on when they’re talking in Cairo, the baddies are moving into place to attack them. Or when she’s dressing Indy’s wounds, probably one of the truest “straight dialogue” scenes in the movie, even there the sexual chemistry that’s been building through them the entire movie is about to burst. In other words, there’s ALWAYS SOMETHING GOING ON in those scenes, whereas here in Y The Last Man, it just feels like two people talking. This is more a testament to how good Raiders is than any defining statement about Y The Last Man, but it is a reminder to add layers to your dialogue scenes.

In my opinion, Y The Last Man is too broad, too loose with the reigns, but there’s no denying that Vaughan always keeps you guessing and has some of the more unique characters you’ll find in a script. You want to talk about a unique voice, a voice that separates a writer from everybody else out there, go ahead and read one of Vaughan’s scripts. And for that reason alone, I think Y The Last Man should be read.

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

What I learned: I’m surprised I’m bringing this up with a Brian K. Vaughan script, since I just championed his originality, but this is proof that even the top writers fall into the same traps as the rest of us. No less than six days ago – SIX DAYS AGO! – I read an apocalypse script where in the opening scene, a jumbo jet crashes into the city. What happens in the opening scene of Y The Last Man? A jumbo jet crashes into the city. This is proof that ALL WRITERS THINK ALIKE. We think apocalypse and we imagine a plane diving into the middle of New York. It’ll be epic! But did we ever stop to consider that everyone else who’s writing an apocalypse script would think of the same thing? For that reason, always keep your competition in mind. Ask yourself if another writer would write the same thing. And if they would, write something else. Maybe an oil tanker with no one at the helm plows into the port instead. I don’t know. But keep in mind that that cool original scene you just wrote? A reader may have just read it last week. Which means you’re playing the role of second fiddle.

10 Screenwriting Tips You Can Learn From Raiders Of The Lost Ark

A couple of weeks back I posted my “10 Great Things About Die Hard” article and you guys responded. To quote Sally Fields: “You loved it! You really loved it!” Since I had so much fun breaking the movie down, you can expect this to be a semi-regular feature, and today I'm following it up with a film I’ve always wanted to dissect: Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

When it comes to summer action movies, there aren’t too many films that hold a candle to the perfectly crafted Raiders. Many have tried, and while some have cleaned up at the box office (Mummy, Tomb Raider) they haven’t remained memorable past the summer they were released.

So what makes Indiana Jones such a classic? What makes this character one of the top ten movie characters of all time? Here are ten screenwriting choices that made Raiders Of The Lost Ark so amazing.

THE POWER OF THE ACTIVE PROTAGONIST
At some point in the evolution of screenwriting, a buzz word was born. The “active” protagonist. This refers to the hero who makes his own way, who drives the story forward instead of letting the story drive him. I don’t know when this buzz word became popular exactly, but I’m willing to bet it was soonafter Raiders debuted. One of the things that makes Indiana Jones such a great character is how ACTIVE he is. In the very first scene, it’s him who’s going after that gold idol. It’s him driving the pursuit of the Ark Of The Covenant. It’s him who decides to seek out Marion. It’s him who digs in the alternate location in Cairo. Indiana Jones' CHOICES are what push this story forward.  There’s very little “reactive” decision-making going on. And the man is never once passive.  The "active" protagonist is the key ingredient for a great hero and a great action movie.

THE ROADMAP TO A LIKABLE HERO
Indiana Jones is almost the perfect character. Believe it or not, however, it isn’t Harrison Ford’s smile that makes Indy work. The screenplay does an excellent job of making us fall in love with him, and does so in three ways. 1) Indiana Jones is extremely active (as mentioned above). We instinctively like people who take action in life. They’re leaders. And we like to follow leaders. 2) He's great at what he does. When we see Indiana cautiously avoid the light in the cave, casually wipe away spiders, or use his whip to swing across pits, we love him, because we’re drawn to people who are good at what they do. And 3) He’s screwed over. This is really the key one, because it creates sympathy for the main character. We watch as our hero risks life and limb to get the gold idol, only to watch as the bad guy heartlessly takes it away. If you want to create sympathy for a character, have them risk their life to get something only to have someone take it from them afterwards. We will love that character. We will want to see him succeed. I guarantee it.

ACTION SEQUENCES
When you think back to Indiana Jones, what you remember most are the great action sequences. Nearly every one of them is top notch. And there’s a reason for that. CLARITY . Each action sequence starts with a clear objective. Indiana tries to get the gold idol in the cave. Indiana must save Marion in the bar. Indiana must find the kidnapped Marion in the streets of Cairo. Indiana must destroy the plane that’s delivering the Ark. It’s so rare that we see action sequences these days with a clear objective, which is why so many of them suck. Look at Iron Man 2 for example. What the hell was that car race scene about? We have no idea, which is why despite some cool lightning whip special effects from Mickey Rourke, the scene sucked. Always create a clear objective in your action scenes.

REMIND YOUR AUDIENCE HOW DIFFICULT THE GOAL IS
High stakes are primarily created by crafting a hero who desperately wants to achieve his goal. I don’t know anyone who wants anything as much as Indiana Jones wants that Ark. But in order to build those stakes even higher, you want to remind the audience just how important and difficult it will be for your hero to achieve that goal. For example, there’s a nice little quiet scene in Raiders right before Indiana goes on his journey where his boss reminds him what finding the Ark means. “Nobody’s found the Ark in 3000 years. It’s like nothing you’ve gone after before.” It’s a small moment, but it’s a great reminder to the audience. “Whoa, this is a really big freaking deal.”

IGNORE THE RULES IF IT SUITS YOUR STORY
Part of becoming a great screenwriter is learning when rules don’t apply to the specific story you’re telling. Each story is unique and therefore forces you to make unique choices. One of the commonly held beliefs with any hero journey is that there must be a “refusal of the call.” When Luke is given the chance to help Obi-Wan, he backs down, “I can’t do that,” he says. “I still have to work on the farm.” Indiana Jones, however, never refuses the call. And Raiders is a better movie for it. Because the thing we like so much about Indiana Jones is that he’s gung-ho, that he’s not afraid of anything. So if the writers had manufactured a “refusal of the call” moment, with Indy saying, “But I have to stay here and teach. I have a dedication to the university,” it would’ve felt stale and forced. So whenever you’re trying to incorporate a rule into your story that isn’t working, consider the possibility that you may not need it.

GIVE A GREAT INTRO TO YOUR FEMALE LEAD
I can’t tell you how many male writers make this mistake (and how many female writers make this mistake in reverse). You need to put just as much thought into your female lead’s introductory scene as you do your male’s. Raiders is a perfect example of this. Indiana Jones has one of, if not the, greatest introductory scene in a movie ever. If you don’t give that same dedication and passion to Marion’s introduction, she’s going to disappear. That’s why, even though her entrance doesn’t compare to Indiana’s, it’s still pretty damn good. We have the great drinking competition scene followed by the battle with German/Nepalese thugs. The girl is badass, swallowing rum from a bullet hole leak in the middle of a life or death battle! Always always always give just as much thought to your female introduction as your male’s.

ADD IMMEDIACY AT EVERY TURN
The pace of Indiana Jones still holds up today, 25 years later. Not an easy task when you’re battling with the likes of Michael Bay and Steven Sommers, directors who have ruined audience’s attention spans with their ADD like cutting. Raiders achieves this pace not through dizzying editing tricks, but through good old fashioned story mechanics, specifically its desire to add immediacy to the story whenever the opportunity arises. Take when Indy arrives in Cairo for example. The first thing he’s told when he gets there is that the Germans are close to finding the Well of Souls! What?? This was supposed to be a simple one-man expedition! Now he’s in direct competition with a team of hundreds of men??? Because of this added immediacy, the stakes are raised and Indiana’s pursuit of his goal is more entertaining. So always look to add immediacy to your action movie where you can!

IF YOU HAVE A BORING CONVERSATION, INJECT SOME SUSPENSE INTO IT
You are always going to have two person dialogue scenes in your movie. These scenes can get very boring very quickly, especially in an action film. There’s a scene after Indy and Marion get to Cairo where they walk around the city. Technically, we don’t need this scene but it does help establish the relationship between the two, which is important for later on. Now a lesser writer may have sat these two in a room and had them divulge their pasts to each other in a boring explosion of exposition. Instead, Kasdan has them walking around, and *cutting to various bad guys getting in position to attack them.* This adds an element of suspense to the conversation, since we know that sooner or later, something bad is going to happen to our couple. MUCH more interesting than a straight forward dialogue scene between your two leads.

MOVING ON FROM DEATH IN AN ACTION MOVIE
Many times you’ll run into an issue where a major character in your movie dies. Yet you somehow must make us believe that your hero is willing to continue his journey. The perceived death of Marion creates this problem in Raiders. The formula to solve the problem?  A quick 1-2 page scene of mourning, followed by the hero being placed in a dangerous situation. The mourning shows they properly care about the death, then the danger tricks the audience into forgetting about said death, allowing you to jump back into the story. So in Raiders, after Marion “dies,” Indiana sits back in his room, depressed, then gets a call from Belloq. The dangerous Belloq questions what Indie knows, followed by the entire bar prepping to shoot him. After that scene you’ll notice you’ve sort of forgotten about Marion, as crazy as it sounds. This exact same formula is used in Star Wars. Obi-Wan dies, we get the quick mourning scene on the Falcon, and then BOOM, tie fighters attack them, seguing us back into the thick of the story.

INDIANA’S ONE FAILURE – CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
Raiders is about as perfect a movie as they come. However, it does drop the ball on one front. Indiana Jones is not a deep character. Now because this is an action movie, it doesn’t really matter. However, I’d argue that the script did hint at a character flaw in Indiana, but ultimately chickened out. Specifically, there’s a brief scene inside the tent when Indiana discovers Marion is still alive. This presents a clear choice: Take Marion and get the hell out of here, or keep her tied up so he can continue his pursuit of the Ark. What does he do? He continues his pursuit of the Ark. This proves that Indiana does have a flaw. His pursuit of material objects (his work) is more important to him than his relationships with real people (love). However, since this is the only true scene that presents this flaw as a choice, it’s the only time we really get inside Indiana’s head. Had we seen a few more instances of him battling this decision, I think Raiders would’ve hit us on an even deeper level.

Tune in next week when I dissect Indiana Jones and The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull!

Red Lights

Winning....

Genre: Thriller
Premise: (from IMDB) Centers on a psychologist, and her assistant, whose study of paranormal activity leads them to investigate a world-renowned psychic.
About: Red Lights is the follow-up effort of Rodrigo Cortes, the director of Buried. Not only is Cortes directing the movie, but he also wrote the screenplay. The cast is a good one, including Cillian Murphy, Sigourney Weaver, Robert De Niro, and new breakout star after her performance in Sundance darling, Martha Marcy May Marlane, Elizabeth Olsen. The movie started shooting a couple of weeks ago.
Writer: Rodrigo Cortes
Details: 124 pages – October 2010 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

One thing I worried about after reading Buried was, “Will an audience be able to handle staying in a single enclosed space for the entirety of the movie?” The answer to that, of course, would depend on the director. So when I finally saw the film and spent 90 minutes in a coffin never once wishing we were cutting to an exterior location, I knew they picked the right guy. It’s probably not a surprise, then, that Cortes has found himself as one of the more in-demand young directors in Hollywood, evidenced by the sweet cast he’s secured for this project.

But then I found out Cortes would also be writing the movie. Directors, by their very nature, tend to put more emphasis on the visual than the written word. They’re thinking of crafting that perfect shot or that unique sequence nobody’s ever seen before, not rewriting the living hell out of a plot point until it sings on the page. There are exceptions of course (early Cameron Crowe, early James Cameron, Tarantino) but I always feel like we’re getting the short end of the writing stick when a director writes his own script, and although I love to be proven wrong, it usually doesn’t happen.

But hey, I was willing to give Red Lights a chance. The premise sounded cool and his debut American movie worked. So why not?

59 year old Dr. Margaret Matheson has dedicated her life to debunking psychics, those fakers who claim to have otherworldly powers, who are able to peek into the unseen dimensions that exist just outside our realm of consciousness. If you say you saw an alien, can talk to the dead, can read minds, can move objects with your brain, Matheson will calmly walk through your door and prove that you can’t.

She’s accompanied by 33 year old physicist Thomas Buckley, who has a little more faith in the supernatural than Margaret, but is quietly shocked as again and again Margaret is able to expose every “real” case they encounter.

While the two debunk cases including a haunted house (that turns out to be one of the daughters banging on the wall) and a faith healer (who’s being fed information about his victims through an earpiece), the most popular psychic in history, the blind Simon Silver, is gearing up for a comeback. The man used to be an iconic figure, one of the only popular psychics to have ever stood up to scientific scrutiny. When he books a series of shows, Thomas is eager to go after him. If they can prove that this guy is a fraud, they can basically prove that the whole field is a sham. But for whatever reason, Margaret refuses to mess with Silver. There’s something different about this one, something that doesn’t quite add up.

But when Silver finally agrees to allows his powers to be scrutinized by top level scientists to once and for prove he’s not a sham, Thomas will do anything to get on the committee, as he suspects Silver will try and manipulate the results. However when Silver gets wind of this man’s personal vendetta, he becomes fixated on him, and Thomas quickly realizes that he may be in over his head.

Red Lights is a funky little thriller that captivates you when it’s working and baffles you when it’s not. Imagine Fringe mixed with The Prestige and you have a pretty good idea of the script. I think the big problem here is that the story is weighed down by too many unneeded scenes, scenes that go on for too long, and scenes that are redundant. For example, you really only need one scene to establish your hero’s abilities – in this case the scene where she exposes the fake haunted house. But we also get two additional scenes reinforcing this ability. This would be fine if they pushed the plot forward in some way.  But they do not.  One of those scenes in particular, when they go to the preacher’s sermon, just goes on forever. It could’ve accomplished the same thing in half the time but refused to end. These are things pure screenwriters will endlessly work out until they get it right. But here, the mantra seems to be “more is more,” and as a result, it takes us a really long time to get to the plot.

In fact, I would say that the plot (take down Silver) isn’t revealed until halfway through the script . Complicating this is that it’s never entirely clear what the motivations of our main characters are for doing this. Margaret has an experience from her past that sort of explains why she’s so intent on exposing these people, but she doesn't want to mess with Silver, so it's not really applicable.  Thomas, on the other hand, never explains why he needs to take down Silver so bad, which is problematic, since he eventually becomes the driving force behind the story.  If we’re unclear on why our main character is doing what he’s doing, your story is in some trouble.

But all is not lost. What Red Lights loses in the structural department, it finds in the mood/tone department. The entire script is eerie, especially the character of Silver, who we’re constantly trying to figure out. It’s a nice little dance. Silver seems to not want to be exposed for something. Yet if he’s afraid of being exposed, how is he able to make all these otherworldly attacks on our heroes? That simple question drives our need to find out how this ends.

In fact, I would say Silver is the key to this screenplay working. Much like both characters in The Prestige or Edward Norton’s character in The Illusionist, that central mystery of “How does he do it?” implores us to watch on. We want to know how Silver is pulling it off. So even though the story takes too long to get going, and gets bogged down in redundancy, the power of that question keeps us intrigued.

And really, this is what writing comes down to. How do you keep the audience’s interest? You should be able to randomly point to any page in your script and explain why, at that very moment, the audience will still be interested in what’s going on. Is it because you desperately want the character to achieve his goal (get the Ark in Indiana Jones), is it because you desperately want two people to be together (When Harry Met Sally), or is it powerful mystery (Is Silver real or not?). That just might be enough for your script to work.

Do I have some issues with it? Sure, of course. Besides the issues I mentioned above, this is yet another script where there’s very little conflict going on in the central relationship (Margaret and Thomas). But Red Lights is a spooky script with an intriguing antagonist that has enough mystery and a unique enough story rhythm to keep you guessing til the end. I’d say it’s worth the read.

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

What I learned: When I see a script that’s this long (125 pages), the first thing I think is, I'll bet anything there's too much fat here. But I always ALWAYS allow the writer to prove me wrong. If I read that first act and the writer isn’t reintroducing his character three times, if he isn’t staying in scenes for 2-3 pages too long, if he’s not writing scenes that don’t push the story forward, if we get to the inciting incident early, I gladly tip my hat and say, “Okay, you proved me wrong.” But after reading hundreds of 125+ page screenplays, you know how many times that’s happened? Once. These huge page counts go hand in hand with these mistakes. I mean, do you really think it's a coincidence that in a 125 page screenplay, the plot doesn't emerge until page 60?  So if you’re going to write a 125 page script, prove that you need all 125 of those pages! Don’t rewrite the same scene in a slightly different location ten pages later. Don’t write scenes that establish the same things about your character you've already told us. Don’t write scenes that aren’t pushing the story forward. You have to be sparse. You have to be diligent. You have to get to your story quickly.  Cortes has a little bit of an excuse because he may be shooting stuff he knows he’s going to cut, but in the spec world, you don’t have that luxury.

World War Z

Genre: Zombie/Political
Premise: Five years after zombies nearly destroyed mankind, a government official is tasked with finding out the truth about how the zombie uprising started.
About: World War Z is based on the best-selling novel of the same name and is the unofficial sequel to the writer's first book, The Zombie Survival Guide. Brad Pitt’s Plan B Productions took on Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way for film rights to the book, with Pitt snagging the rights in a high six figure deal.  Marc Forster (The Kite Runner, Stranger Than Fiction, Quantum of Solace) is tabbed to direct. This is a 2008 draft but apparently the project hasn’t been greenlit yet, as they’re still fine-tuning the script. Despite this patience, many people have told me how much they love this draft from Michael J. Straczynsky. Straczynsky has been writing forever, working on such TV shows as The Twilight Zone, Jake and The Fatman, Murder She Wrote, and Babylon 5. He broke through into the A-list writing group, however, after penning Clint Eastwood’s Anjelina Jolie-starrer “Changeling.” He recently worked on the big Marvel tentpole pic, Thor.
Writer: Michael J. Straczynsky (based on the novel by Max Brooks)
Details: 118 pages – revised 3rd draft, April 23, 2008 (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

It’s fair to say I had absolutely no idea what I was walking into when I picked up World War Z. But ever since that Dead Island trailer hit, I’ve been in zombie mode, searching out anything and everything “zombie.” Then I remembered, probably the most recommended screenplay from e-mailers to me over the past year has been World War Z. I never picked it up because the title implied a generic ride. A bunch of zombies attacking the world. Uhhhh, isn’t that every zombie movie ever made? Little did I know that World War Z would be the single most original execution of a zombie premise I’d ever encountered. I mean this is truly a unique direction to take a zombie film in. The question, of course, is “How unique is too unique?” When do you stray so far from the appeal of a genre/concept that you’re no longer giving the audience what they want? That’s a question all of us face when trying something different, and it’s one that will determine the success of World War Z.

Government official Gerry Lane is being informed by one of his friends in the CIA to get the fuck out of Philadelphia. Like, now. The reason for the immediacy is the tens of thousands of zombies that are storming towards the city. Nobody knows how the situation got this bad this fast, but at this point, it’s everyone for themselves. So Gerry grabs his wife and two kids and hightails it into the country.

Typical zombie movie right? Now we watch as Gerry and other survivors stave off zombies, possibly in a remote town somewhere, ultimately succumbing to their doom?

Uhhhhh no. Not even close.

After succeeding in their escape, we flash-forward five years, to where the zombie threat has been neutralized. The world’s actually begun to reestablish some normalcy. That’s when Gerry gets a call from an old co-worker. They want to set up a small two-person committee to investigate how the zombie outbreak was able to happen. In short, a blame-game. It’s time to hold some people accountable for this mess.

So Gerry teams up with the no-nonsense Moria and they head off to China, where it’s believed that the outbreak began. But almost immediately, Gerry realizes the investigation isn’t on the up and up. The people they’re being booked with are low-level bureaucrats who know nothing. And even the big names they get to talk to aren’t spilling the beans. Strangely, Moira seems okay with this. And that’s when Gary realizes this whole thing is a sham – a PR stunt meant to make it *look* like they did something. But there’s no desire here to tell the truth.

Well, if they wanted that kind of report, they shouldn’t have asked Gerry to write it. Gerry goes off the map, visiting and talking with people he shouldn’t be talking to, and begins to connect the dots to a shocking truth which proves that most countries, especially the U.S., knew how bad the zombie threat was and refused to do anything about it. But when Gerry finds the elusive recluse Radecker (spoiler), the man secretly in charge of devising a plan to save the world in case of a zombie attack, that’s when the real shit hits the fan, as it’s discovered just how many people were sacrificed to save others, all because a government was too damn lazy to deal with the problem when it was manageable.

During this time, the powers-that-be keep telling Gerry to ease up, implying that if he doesn’t, his family will stay stuck out in the unprotected zones. But Gerry pushes on til the bitter end, determined to find out what really happened, so the people who did this can be held accountable for their actions.

The great thing about World War Z is exactly what I hinted at at the beginning of the review. It’s different. It’s really different. In fact, you can’t believe you’re actually reading an international procedural about the investigation of the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. That alone kept me turning the pages, because I just had no idea where it was all going. I say it to you guys all the time but here’s more proof of it. Find an angle to a genre that hasn’t been done before. Assuming the concept is solid and the execution is there, you’ve put yourself way above your competition because you’ve given readers something they rarely see – SOMETHING DIFFERENT.

At the same time, I can see why they’re having some problems with this one. The lack of any imminent danger for any of the major participants in the story, namely from…well…zombies, is probably having some studio execs scratching their heads. There’s a sequence of flashbacks during the script where we see Gerry and his family trying to survive during the apocalypse, which has some potential, but instead the scenes are used to explore a strange subplot with their sick daughter that doesn’t go anywhere.

Although I was enjoying the investigation, that question kept popping up in my head. “Where’s the danger?” While Gerry gets a few slaps on the wrist and some stern talking to, I never once felt like he was actually in danger for doing what he was doing. And that definitely needs to change. In particular, a lot more could have been done with the family. The threats coming from the U.S. are that his family won’t be let back into the safety zone if he keeps pushing. But if his family was safe enough for Gerry to leave them there in the first place, how much danger could they really be in? I thought they needed to do a lot more, like threaten the family’s life, so that Gerry would have to make a tough decision (this could have also led to the family going on the run in a zombie-infected countryside with the government chasing them – allowing zombie lovers to get their zombie fix).

Another issue I had was that the central relationship between the two investigators was boring. He and Moira had nothing going on between each other and therefore all of their discussions amounted to on-the-nose surface-level arguments about their duties as investigators. Obviously, Gerry has a family, so maybe you can’t create a relationship between the two. But what if they had a past? What if they had an affair or a one-night stand, anything so that one of the two wanted something the other didn’t (conflict). That would’ve made all their external decisions more interesting, since they would’ve conflicted with their internal feelings.

 Marc Forster

For example, I just watched the indie film “The Disappearance Of Alice Creed.” (Major spoilers ahead). In that film, the main character has a relationship with the girl they kidnapped *and* with his partner. He, of course, is keeping this secret from both. So when his partner says they’re going to leave the girl in an abandoned warehouse, where she might die if they’re unable to come back, that decision is extremely complicated for him. He must act as if he doesn’t give a shit, while at the same time working out how he’s going to save his girlfriend if things do, in fact, go wrong. That’s the kind of shit you want to be putting your characters through. Have their external decisions conflict with their internal decisions. I thought World War Z could’ve created a more interesting dynamic between Gerry and Moira if they’d played with the relationship more.

But in the end, this script won me over because despite the lack of conflict between the investigators, I found myself sympathizing with and admiring Gerry’s plight. It’s said that World War Z may be based on the Hurricane Katrina response, and much like we wanted people to be held accountable in that situation (and in 9/11, and in the mortgage crisis), we have that same feeling here. Nobody likes when a government takes advantage of its people, and so there’s a natural instinct to see justice served. And the mystery into the zombie uprising itself – while no Chinatown – was still pretty damn interesting. For that reason, World War Z is definitely worth the read.

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

What I learned: Are you exploring your central relationship to its fullest potential? Whenever you pair two people up for an entire movie, you want to create some sort of interesting dynamic between them. The resulting conflict is what fuels the audience’s interest to watch them then for the next two hours. In a comedy, it might be as simple as them hating each other (Rush Hour). In a romance, it might be an obstacle keeping them apart (The Notebook – she’s getting married to another man). In a boxing movie, it might be your brother/trainer sabotaging your career with his drug problem (The Fighter). You want to create as interesting a dynamic as possible between the two leads because ultimately your movie is going to live or die on that relationship. Despite Seven having some wonderfully memorable sequences, I think something that really kept it from reaching true classic level was that the relationship between Pitt and Freeman’s character had so little going on in it.