Himelfarb

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A socially unaware blissfully inept moron named Doug Himelfarb falls in love with a woman on their first date and surprises her by showing up at her parent’s home for Thanksgiving.
About: Himelfarb sold as a spec script to Warner Brothers back in 2006 and was the first sale for writers Paul and Mogel. It also finished in tenth place on the 2006 Black List. The writers got their first produced credit with Jim Carrey’s “Yes Man” a few years back and have a half dozen projects in development, including “Harvey and Marky: A True Story of Friendship and Betrayal” about childhood friends Harvey and Marky, who reach an impasse when the shy Marky falls in love and the domineering Harvey hires a fake girlfriend in order to show him up. Paul is also an actor and has had many bit parts in movies and TV. He was also a staff writer on a few series, including Stargate: SG1.
Writers: Jarrad Paul and Andrew Mogel
Details: 117 pages, June 20, 2006 (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).

After reading Himelfarb, I was convinced that Jarrad and Andrew, the writers, had somehow managed to build a time machine, travel back to the year 2009, watch The Hangover, travel back, and write this script. “Oh no,” you’re saying. “Not another Hangover clone.” Oh don’t worry. Himelfarb is nothing like The Hangover. My theory is based on the premise that these two managed to write the perfect character for Zach Galifianakis before anyone knew about Zach Galifianakis. I mean, try to read a single line of Himelfarb’s dialogue without thinking of the portly Between Two Ferns host. Seriously. At certain points, I would physically see an animated version of the comedian dancing on my screen between lines. It’s that obvious.

Doug Himelfarb’s been hurt, man. He’s been scalded by the pain of love. His old girlfriend, who he broke up with by the way (according to him) has left a hole in his heart that he doesn’t know how to fill. Luckily he’s got his filmmaking career to fall back on, if you consider making self-funded test commercials for companies that ignore you a “career.”

Himelfarb’s partner in crime is his younger brother, Sandy. After their father died, Himelfarb’s become the father figure of the clan, and has made the still mourning Sandy his personal assistant, a position Sandy takes very seriously, despite having no idea what a personal assistant does and rarely doing his job right.

Himelfarb feels that it’s finally time to get back on the dating horse, so he sets up a blind date online. When the attractive small-town actress, Julia, first sees Himelfarb, she tries to escape, but he spots her just before she’s able to slip away, and the date begins. Within ten minutes, Himelfarb proceeds to break up with her because he realizes that while he’s ready to love, he’s still not over his ex, still not ready to move on. Julia, who’s terrified by Himelfarb and wants nothing to do with him, points out that they can’t break up if they’re not together. But Himelfarb won’t hear such nonsense. He assures her that even though this relationship is over, they can still be friends.

Over the ensuing weeks, Himelfarb suspects that he made a mistake, and starts writing Julia, and calling Julia, and writing Julia, and calling Julia. He begins to suspect that something’s wrong because Julia doesn’t write or call back. He remembers her talking about going back to her hometown for Thanksgiving during their date. So he grabs Sandy, drives cross-country, and prepares to surprise her.

Back at Julia’s parents’ house, Julia’s dealing with everybody’s favorite time, the annual Thanksgiving Break “Why The Fuck Don’t You Have A Husband Yet?” parental interrogation. So to get them off her back, she tells them she’s met a guy, using Doug’s name because he was the last person she went out with. How could she have possibly known that Doug would then show up a few minutes later?

The parents are thrilled, taken by Himelfarb’s strange but optimistic demeanor, and we quickly morph into “Meet The Parents: Bizarro World” version, as Himelfarb tells Julia he’s ready to take the next step and Julia tries desperately to get him the hell out of here, a task that’s proving more and more difficult as Himelfarb burrows his way further into the family’s good graces. The big question is, will Himelfarb be able to win over Julia herself? The answer, of course (spoiler alert), is no.

You’ll rarely get me to say I liked a script with a weak story. But sometimes, if the main character is interesting/unusual/funny enough, it can happen. Such is the case with Himelfarb. I couldn’t tell you what happens once Himelfarb gets to Julia’s house. There’s something about a pagent and Julia’s younger adopted sister or something. I don’t know and I didn’t care. All I cared about was hearing what this majorly delusional weirdo would say next, because most of the time, it was hilarious.

I would go so far as to rate the first act of Himelfarb “genius.” Watching Julia mistake a much handsomer more charming man for him on their blind date, then Himelfarb cutting in and saying, “Actually, I’m your date,” seeing her devastated reaction, yet still soldiering on excitedly, was perfect. Watching HImelfarb break up with Julia ten minutes later. Classic. Watching him teach his brother, Sandy, how to be more socially aware, despite being the most socially unaware person on the planet. Hilarious.

Of course the script changes radically once Himelfarb gets to Julia’s place. And that’s where things start to dissolve on the story front. Julia just happens to tell her parents that she’s dating Doug mere minutes before he shows up, forcing her to go along with Himelfarb’s claim that they’re together? I’d call that quite convenient timing for the story and we never quite buy it, knowing that in the real world, she would’ve had him out on his ass within 60 seconds.

But here’s where the genius of Himelfarb lies. You don’t care. You don’t care because Himelfarb is so damn funny and so damn clueless that it doesn’t matter. When he starts directing the rehearsal for the pagent, and is in charge of coaxing a realistic performance out of Julia (who, amongst other things, is dealing with her imminent failure as an actress), and tells her that she’s doing it all wrong….just seeing the rage build on Julia’s face is enough to make you forgive the script's many other shortcomings.

On a technical note, I loved what these writers did with parentheticals. A lot of writers stay away from parentheticals because they consider them “directing the actors,” which is supposedly a no-no in screenwriting. But parentheticals can be a very handy tool in comedy, as long as they enhance the line or the line reading. “not interested at all,” “dramatic pause,” “very uncomfortable,” “annoyed,” all added context to the lines that followed and made them much funnier.

Predictably, where this script loses its mojo is in its length. At 117 pages, it’s 17 pages too long and you feel it with every pointless scene. Not only that, but this is a thin premise. Guy crashes girl’s Thanksgiving. You don’t need 117 pages to tell that story. I can buy 117 pages if you have a character going back in time trying to reunite his parents before attempting to get back to the future. But this is a story that takes place at one house on a Thanksgiving weekend. Why so many pages??

Also, please people, no more adopted Asian daughters in your comedies. These guys get a pass cause they wrote this 5 years ago but if I had a buck for every time I saw an adopted Asian daughter in a screenplay, I’d be palling around with Mark Zuckerberg.

This would’ve probably received an impressive if the screenplay was condensed and they did a better job convincing me that Julia wouldn’t have kicked Himelfarb out 2 seconds after he walked in. But as it stands, it’s still damn funny.

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

What I learned: When writing a screenplay, you don’t always have to start with an idea. You can just as easily start with a character. Think about it. When looking back at movies, the first thing you remember are the characters. So why not start with one? Create someone interesting, unique, strange, quirky, original, someone that people will remember, and then build your movie idea around him/her. I don’t know if this is how Himelfarb was constructed or not. But I’m willing to bet it was.

Saw Myself Some Super 8

I knew nothing about Super 8 going in.  I heard Spielberg was involved, J.J. Abrams was involved, and that they were making a movie called Super 8.  That's all I needed.  I can't remember the last time I walked into a summer Blockbuster knowing absolutely nothing about the plot or what I was about to see.  And the experience was both satisfying and thought-provoking.  Obviously, this is Abrams making a homage to the Spielberg movies he grew up on.  And boy does it feel like Spielberg (the kids, the messy home life scenes, all the backlighting, the late monster reveal).  It really did feel like we'd stepped back into the 1980s.

Overall, I thought the movie was good but not great. -- (Spoilers) -- The monster was oddly utilized, and I wasn't always sure what he was doing in the movie besides popping up every once in awhile to scare everyone.  On the flip side of that, it was pretty damn ballsy to put all the emphasis on the drama and the character development.  This was a love story and a friendship story and a broken family story way before it was a monster story.  And I guess that leads to my biggest question.  I'm bursting at the seams wanting to hear what the 18-24 demographic thought of this.  These days, moviegoers are treated to a full-on shot of the monster 15 minutes into the film (or earlier - before the film is even released).  How are impatient high school and college kids who are used to their fixes when and where they want them, reacting to having to wait the entire movie to see the monster?  Cause I'm guessing some are furious and tabbing this the worst movie ever as a result.  So, tell me, what'd you think?

And for everyone else, if you saw Super-8 this weekend, were you transported back to your Spielbergian youth?  Or was this a cheap wanna-be copy of the master during his prime.

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

Is The Princess Bride The Perfect Movie?

Remember going to the video store with your friends back in the old days and trying to find a movie that EVERYBODY wanted to watch? Impossible right? And that was just for 4-5 people. Imagine trying to find a movie that EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD wanted to watch. That’s like trying to find the chupacabra. Or Bigfoot. Or evidence of UFOS. But believe it or not, there are a few movies out there that EVERYBODY likes. And The Princess Bride is one of them. Now I don’t know about you. But when I see a movie that everybody likes, I think to myself “screenwriting goldmine.” I mean this is the Holy Grail we’re talking about. A screenplay which has somehow managed to rope in every single person who’s seen it. If we’re not mining that puppy for secrets, then why the hell even bother with screenwriting? So, here are ten screenwriting not-so-secrets I learned from watching The Princess Bride.

LOVABLE CHARACTERS
We talk often about trying to create “likable” characters. Well look no further than these three. You will not find a more lovable group than Westley, Fezzik and Inigo Montoya. Why are they so lovable? Well, let’s take a look. The Man In Black (Westley) is loyal (will not stop until he saves his true love) respectful (will defeat but never hurt his enemy, as long as they respect back) great at everything he does (swordsman, fighter, thinker), he’s active (he pursues a goal throughout the entire movie) and funny (has a ton of hilarious one-liners – “Sleep well and dream of large women”). We love Inigo and Fezzik because they’re enslaved by a lunatic who constantly berates and reminds them how pathetic they are (creates sympathy). Fezzik is slow, giving us one more reason to root for him (underdog). We love Inigo because he not only lost his father (another sympathy vote), but he will not stop until he finds the man’s killer and avenge his death (active). If you want to learn how to build likable characters that rock the shit out of a screenplay, look no further than this movie.

BREAKS THE RULES
Remember, almost every great script breaks some of the rules. The main thing breaking the rules does is it gives your movie a level of unpredictability. If you’re deviating from the formula, then we can’t possibly predict what’s going to happen next. The two major deviations here are that the main goal (“save Princess Buttercup from her captors”) is achieved by page 35. That’s when Westley defeats the bad guys and saves his true love. This early achievement then forces The Princess Bride to reboot its story and become something else (a movie where he’s now being chased as opposed to doing the chasing). In fact, the cool thing about The Princess Bride is that the story continues to reboot itself throughout its running time. First he’s chasing, then he’s being chased, then he loses the princess, then he must get her back again. The constantly changing goals keeps Princess Bride fresh. Next, there’s no true main character. “Bride” starts out with Westley and Buttercup being the main characters, then it becomes Vizzini, Inigo, and Fezzik, then it becomes Westley again, then it becomes Inigo and Fezzik again. One thing they tell you to ALWAYS do in your screenplay is have a clear cut hero. They don’t do that here in The Princess Bride, and it ends up paying off in a big way. Now it’s important to remember that William Goldman is a master screenwriter and knows how to make this unorthodox choice work, so tread carefully if you plan to do it yourself. But still, it’s always nice to see someone deviate from the norm and have it pay off.

THE GOALS ARE IMPOSSIBLE
One of the greatest things about this movie is how difficult the writer makes each task for his heroes. Think about it. Fezzik and Inigo need to get into the castle so Inigo can kill the six-fingered man. Their only hope is to use The Man In Black to formulate a plan. So they get to the Man in Black, AND HE’S DEAD! Talk about making things difficult. And how do you storm a castle with a man who’s speaking gibberish and can’t stand on his own? Talk about difficult. Westley must defeat our villain while comatose in a bed! Talk about difficult. Each goal is made out to be so impossible, that we’re perpetually on the edge of our seats racking our brains trying to figure out how they’re going to pull it off.

THERE’S NEVER A SINGLE MOMENT WHERE THINGS ARE OKAY FOR OUR HEROES
The second your heroes are happy and content and satisfied is the second your movie is over. There should always be problems, always be conflict, always be obstacles. Westley must battle three titans to get to Buttercup. But when he finally gets to her, he’s only allowed a quick moment of happiness. Seconds later they’re being chased by Humperdink, pushed into the Fire Swamp, dodging fire spouts, quicksand, and Rodents Of Unusual Size. When they get out of the forest, they’re immediately captured, and Westley is strapped onto the deadly “Machine.” Watch this movie and you’ll find there isn’t a single minute that goes by where the heroes are okay. That’s why the movie keeps us involved. There’s danger in every moment.

URGENCY
Goldman utilizes every trick in the book to keep the pace of this story moving. In every sequence, someone is either being chased, doing the chasing, looking for someone, or needing to do something by a certain amount of time. Chasing is one of the best ways to add urgency to your story, and what makes it work so well here is that the “chaser” keeps changing. First it’s Westley, then it’s Humperdink, then it’s Fezzik and Inigo. I think if it was one person the whole time, this movie wouldn’t have been as good as it is. Also, note that when we finally get off the road, and there’s no more official “chasing,” Goldman immediately institutes a ticking time bomb to keep the urgency going, that of the wedding.

LOVE
Love seems to be at the center of a lot of popular movies. It’s one of the few things that every single person on earth can relate to. And I think it’s a big reason for The Princess Bride’s success. Now don’t mistake a “love story” for only being about a man and a woman. Morgan Freeman often talks about how The Shawshank Redemption was a love story, and I’d agree with him. Look at a few of the highest grossing films of all time. Avatar. Titanic. E.T. Casablanca. Gone With The Wind. Love is the central theme in all of those films. The Princess Bride is one of the best love stories ever made. And I don’t think it’s an accident that so many people gravitate towards it.

UNEXPECTDNESS.
What I love most about The Princess Bride is that it’s packed with unexpected moments. If a reader can predict your story, you’re dead, cause that means they’re ahead of you. And if they’re ahead of you, they’re bored. Look at all the unexpected things that happen in The Princess Bride. Our hero dies! Twice! When the Man In Black and Inigo battle, Inigo tells him he’s right handed…only to have the Man In Black tell him that he’s right handed too! Inigo spends his whole life looking for the man who killed his father, and when he finally finds him, THE GUY RUNS AWAY! Our bad guys eventually become our good guys. Our hero doesn’t fight the villain in the end. Princess Bride is one of the most surprise-packed movies ever made, which is a huge reason for why it’s so satisfying.

EVERY CHARACTER HAS INCREDIBLY STRONG MOTIVATIONS
Remember, wishy-washy motivations lead to wishy-washy characters. Usually when I read a script, one or two characters will have strong motivations, and everyone else is window dressing. Every character’s motivation in Princess Bride is rock solid. Westley wants to save Buttercup. Humperdink wants to catch and kill Westley. Vizzini wants his money for kidnapping Buttercup. Inigo wants to kill the Six-Fingered Man. Even Fezzik, who you could argue has the weakest motivation, is dedicated to helping and saving his friends. When everybody wants something? Then every scene in your movie is strong because those wants clash up against one another, creating conflict.

DIALOGUE
If you’re writing a drama that’s deftly plotted with compelling characters, you can get away with “okay” dialogue. But if you’re writing a comedy, your dialogue has to be great. Dialogue is what separates the great comedies from the average comedies. And the dialogue here is just amazing. I don’t know if there’s a more quotable movie than The Princess Bride. And it’s hard to pinpoint why the dialogue is so good, but my guess it it’s because of the characters. Goldman knew each of these characters so well, that the dialogue wrote itself. I’m not sure the dialogue is as perfect had Goldman not written the novel for The Princess Bride first, as I think that’s where he got to know these characters so well.

THE BIGGEST THING I TOOK FROM THIS
The biggest thing I took from this is the “Impossible Comeback” device that Goldman institutes again and again in The Princess Bride. Almost every character in this movie experiences a setback so severe, so crippling, that we believe there’s no chance they can ever recover from it. That way when they do, our emotional reaction is a billion times more intense than it would normally be. I mean, take Westley for example. Early in the story, he dies. And we’re devastated. Because we know that he and Buttercup can never be together again. Then we find out Westley is alive again! We’re overcome with emotion. But then Westley REALLY dies. Like we see him die. Now we REALLY know there’s no hope for him. And somehow, still, he manages to defeat the villain and save the princess. When Inigo finally finds the Six-Fingered Man, he gets a knife to his gut, and looks up to the heavens and says, “I’m sorry I failed you father.” NO! This can’t be! Inigo has failed???? After all this???? But then he overcomes his injury and wills himself to victory. It happens when Buttercup gets married (what?? She’s married?? But our hero was supposed to save her!!). It happens when Grandpa tells us that Humperdink lives (the villain LIVES?? No way! That’s not possible!). This “impossible comeback” scenario is freaking genius. I mean, sure, winning a basketball game feels great. But winning a basketball game after you’re down 20 points with 5 minutes to go is the greatest feeling in the world. To me, that’s the golden tip I take away from The Princess Bride.

The Keep

Genre: Ghost/Horror
Premise: Two friends reunite as adults to renovate a castle. But their inability to get into the castle’s Keep raises questions as to what, or who, is inside.
About: The Keep is an adaptation of a bestselling book by Jennifer Egan. Ehren Kruger (who adapted The Keep) has received some heat over the years, and I’m not sure why. He broke in with Arlington Road, a great screenplay. He then went on to write Reindeer Games, The Ring, and the underrated The Skeleton Key. I suppose he gets shit for writing Scream 3 and 4, as well as Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen. But I mean come on. Those are obviously million dollar assignments where quality is not of the utmost importance. Would you turn down a million bucks to rewrite an unsaveble Transformers screenplay? I know I wouldn't. An interesting side note here is that Niels Arden Oplev is attached to direct The Keep. Niels is the director of the original “Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” trilogy.
Writer: Ehren Kruger (based on the novel by Jennifer Egan)
Details: 119 pages (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).

99 times out of a 100, if a script hasn’t hooked me by page 20, it’s not going to hook me. I’ve had the pleasure of proving this statistic often as I rarely, if ever, stop reading a script. That means even though I know a script is terrible 1/5 of the way through, I continue enduring all the gory details until the bitter end. So count me surprised when I’d all but given up on The Keep 20 pages in, only to watch it perform a miraculous comeback Dallas Mavericks Game 2 style. I’m not sure what happened or how it pulled it off, but I’ll do my best to figure it out.

30-something rough and tumble Danny is on his way to an old discarded European castle which his former friend, Howard King, recently purchased to turn into some kind of new-age hotel. The old friends could not be leading more different lives. Danny is single and always looking for his next paycheck. Howard is embarrassingly successful with a beautiful wife and son, both of whom are joining him on his first visit to his new purchase.

The reason they’re here is to start preliminary efforts on the renovation. But perhaps more importantly, Howard would like to get inside the Keep (the tower at the edge of the castle), which hasn’t been opened in more than a century. For those who don’t know what a Keep is, it’s the last line of defense in an attack, a 17th century version of a “Panic Room” if you will. This Keep has been closed up pretty good, and that means it’s going to take everything they’ve got to get inside.

Halfway across the world (back in California), 33 year old Holly Farrell, a failed writer, has taken a job to teach prison inmates how to write. Now I’m not sure I’d personally approve of an endeavor where I put a hot young vulnerable woman in front of a bunch of horny murderous inmates for a few hours a week, but hey, to each warden his own.

It’s here that Holly meets Ray Dobbs, a reclusive inmate who seems to be the only one in her class interested in learning. Holly assigns the group a series of writing assignments, and Ray attacks them with particular vigor. While the rest of the inmates laugh at Ray’s over-enthusiasm, Holly sees in him a writer with immense talent, more talent than she’s ever dreamed of having herself.

What frustrated me most about The Keep was that these two worlds had seemingly zilch to do with one another at first. Why the hell were we cutting back and forth between a stupid pretend haunted castle and a woman giving writing lessons to a bunch of rapists? But then the first of many twists in The Keep arrives. Danny and Howard’s tale is the story Ray is writing in Holly’s class. Not coincidentally, this is when The Keep began to get good. Really good.

Back at the castle, Howard and Danny are doing everything they can to get into the Keep, to the point where Howard sends his young son into a tiny hole in order to unlock the Keep’s door from the inside. Howard’s son sees something inside the Keep, but we don’t. We’re on the outside, hearing all of this play out invisibly - forced, like any great scary story - to fill in the gaps with our own imagination.

Danny also starts seeing things, like an old woman up in the Keep’s window, only to find out later that the castle is full of pictures of her – a woman known as the Baroness, who used to own the castle. Danny could’ve swore he saw a real person. But maybe it was just one of the paintings. Impossible to know for sure.

Back at the prison, Holly starts finding strange invitations to The Keep, invitations that only existed in Ray’s story. As her husband and the guards start to fear for her life, they beg her to give up the class. But she is so taken by Ray’s enormous talent that she’ll stop at nothing to see his story through til the end. But what will the ending be? What is inside The Keep? And is this just a story? Or something more?

I’m just going to say it. This was awesome. Let’s start with the uniqueness of the idea. I always ask for something different, something we’re not used to. And the dual-storylines here present a unique narrative. Not only are we jumping back and forth between two opposing story threads, but each thread is so different from the other that you really have no idea how they’re going to come together.  All you know is you want to find out. .

Despite the unorthodox structure, the writers still use powerful tried-and-true storytelling techniques to keep our interest. Our characters aren’t just bumbling around a castle running into ghosts. They have a strong goal (to get into the Keep) and a strong mystery to solve (find out what’s in the Keep). These two things alone would've made this story worth reading, but the great thing about this script is that they’re just two small pieces in a much larger puzzle.

To build on that curiosity, they also incorporate a huge screenwriting no-no…….FLASHBACKS. No! Not the F Word! There’s good reason for screenwriters to avoid flashbacks. They often stop the story cold, killing the momentum. Since 99% of writers struggle to keep the momentum WITHOUT using flashbacks, using flashbacks is typically a death knell. Even worse is when the flashbacks contain characters that aren’t in the story! In fact, we were just talking about this during Andrew’s Amateur Friday entry a couple of months ago, where the flashbacks, while imaginative, didn’t add enough to the story to justify their existence. The difference here is that each of the flashback stories are extremely well-crafted and entertaining. I mean there’s no other way to put it. They were just good stories. From the secrets of the Baroness’ past, to the slaying of one of the former families, down to the Monk fire. All of them had this intense detailed depth. And even better, they’re all paid off later in the screenplay.

But what really sets The Keep apart is the ending. Any story is elevated by a great ending, but especially ghost stories, where there are often many unanswered questions going into the third act. Keep’s ending is a doozy and I’m going to partly spoil why, so look away if you need to. The Keep keeps (no pun intended) your focus on the “A” storyline, which (in my opinion) is the castle, while secretly using its B storyline for a series of setups that will pay off later in a huge way. The jail storyline is almost one big diversion tactic, in that the writers keep it just uninteresting enough so that we’re more focused on the castle storyline, but interesting enough so that we still care. In the end, we believe it’s only there so Ray can skip around in the story, kind of like they do with The Princess Bride. However, when that’s flipped on its head, and we realize that there’s actually much more going on there, it ends up resulting in a brilliant payoff. Endings are so hard to get right. But when you nail one, you can easily have a classic on your hands. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say The Keep’s ending is a classic, but it’s easily the best ghost story finish since The Sixth Sense and The Ring.

For the record, there are a few warts here. The latter half of the “prison writing contest” is clumsily executed and almost kills the awesome late reveal. Also, Holly’s boyfriend (or husband) is such an over the top asshole with no nuance whatsoever that you might as well have changed Holly’s name to Smurfette and called the boyfriend Gargamel. I don’t know why writers make this mistake. Your bad guys can’t be one-dimensional assholes, constantly berating your protagonists for no other reason than you want the reader to hate them. It always comes off feeling false.

But outside of that, this script brought the goods. Just good enough to sneak into the Top 25.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive (Top 25!)
[ ] genius

What I learned: Today is a good reminder to look at your idea from all angles before you start. Sometimes we jump on the easiest ride because it’s the one we feel the most comfortable on (the single protagonist single goal story). But that story’s been told so many times before, it’s hard to make it stand out. This dual-protagonists dual-storyline approach really keeps The Keep fresh all the way through, and that’s what makes it such a memorable read. So remember: The most obvious way is not always the best way.

R.I.P.D.

Genre: Action Comedy
Premise: (from IMDB) A recently slain cop joins a team of undead police officers working for the Rest in Peace Department and tries to find the man who murdered him.
About: RIPD is an adaptation of a comic book written by Peter M. Lenkov. Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges are attached. I might be insane, but I thought I heard Jack Black was attached to it as well. Maybe someone can clarify this for me. I’d love to know, since I think Black and Reynolds would make an interesting pairing (which would then make Bridges the bad guy). Though from the comic cover, it looks like Bridges may be one of the two cops. Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi, the writers, wrote Aeon Flux, The Tuxedo, Clash of The Titans, and Crazy/Beautiful.
Writers: Phil Hay & Matt Manfredi (revisions by Brian Koppelman & David Levien) (Current Revisions by Phil Hay & Matt Manfredi) (Based on the comic by Peter M. Lenkov.)
Details: 9/12/08 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).

I can’t decide if RIPD is a really cool update of Ghostbusters or an eerily similar retread of Men In Black. But I can tell you this. It’s damn fun. And funny too. It wouldn’t have mattered if they weren’t coming out with a second installment of the MIB franchise (or third - depending on how you classify MIB2) soon, but since we’re going to be re-reminded of this format, RIPD will have to differentiate itself somehow. Then again, they did just digitally overlay Thailand on top of The Hangover and called it Hangover 2 and it made a bajillion dollars. So maybe being an exact replica doesn’t matter. What’s strange is the element that makes RIPD so similar to MIB doesn’t need to be in the story if you think about it. More on this in a bit.

Nick Walker is a good cop. Except he’s also a bad cop. Well, not “bad” bad, but bad enough where he’s buried a box of gold he helped steal with his partner, which he of course plans to use for good things – like setting up a safe future for him and his wife. The problem is, Nick gets shot dead a day later while pursuing Chicago’s most notorious criminal, a man they simply call “Lime.”

Instantly, he’s recruited into the Chicago R.I.P.D. – The Rest In Peace Department - the police department responsible for keeping the undead in check. You see, since so many people die every day, certain souls are able to slip through the system, souls who are almost certainly on their way down, which means there are plenty of bad dudes hanging around the city needing a little undead justice.

There are a couple of caveats. First, Nick’s not allowed to make contact with anyone he knew in the real world. That means no booty calls with the wifey. Second, he’s paired up with Bo, a veteran cop who died all the way back in the 1800s and was originally a sheriff in the Old West. Bo is particularly prickly because he once had the greatest partner in the world and no one – and he means no one – can ever measure up to him. Especially Nick. Which he is going to let Nick know about every step of their undead journey together.

Anyway, these two bickering badges are tasked with taking down Lime, who we find out is not only the kingpin of the real criminal world, but also the ghost world. The plot thickens when we find out that a certain key Lime is looking for that will release all of the undead into the real world happens to be locked in that box of gold Nick buried at the beginning of the movie and since the bad dudes can’t get a hold of Nick, they go straight to his wife to find out where the box is. With his wife in danger, Nick and Bo will need to figure out a way to save her without being able to contact her, and oh yeah, then save the world.

Okay, heres’ the skinny on RIPD. It’s good. Dare I say it has the potential to be super-good, which is a level of good just under awesome but still above sweet. But here’s the issue that keeps rearing its ugly head. Every bad guy in RIPD sounds exactly like an alien out of MEN IN BLACK. They’re big. They’re slimy. They have tentacles. They’re basically monsters. My question is: Since when do dead people become monsters? Aren’t ghosts and monsters two different things? The obvious answer is that big tentacled 20 foot tall monsters are a lot more cinematic than invisible people. However, I think the audience is savvy to this cheat. So before this goes any further, the writers need to at least explain why once you become a ghost, you turn into a chowder-slinging dump-truck sized pile of pus. Either that or just go with ghosts. Maybe the ghosts have cool powers, and that’s where the sizzle needed for the trailers happens (although I guess you could argue that there were a lot of monsters in Ghostbusters – though in my memory that was explained better somehow).

The next issue is that it’s unclear how the dead world and the living world interact. It seems like there are no ill-effects on the real world when something happens in the dead world, lowering the stakes for all of the action that happens. When our guys are racing through Dead Chicago, chasing the bad guys, nobody living even notices. Something feels wrong about that. There needs to be an effect on the real world somehow.

Now on to the good. And there’s a lot of it. This is a great execution of a high concept summer movie premise. Remember, whenever you’re writing a summer adventure movie, you’re dealing with characters who don’t exist in the real world. If you and I were both chasing a 40 foot tall killer squid, for example, you wouldn’t start humming “Under the sea” to lighten the mood while we dashed and ducked our way to turning him into sushi (that doesn’t happen here – I’m just using it as an example). Because characters don’t act in anything resembling a real-world manner, it leaves the writer out in left field as to how to make their actions believable. I felt that Hay and Manfredi pulled that off here.

One of the ways they did this was with the wife character. Putting Nick’s wife in peril gave the story a sense of real-world stakes. We wanted her to live and were therefore willing to suspend our disbelief to see if she did. Making it so that Nick couldn’t contact her was also a stroke of genius as it had us asking the terrifying question of, “Well then how is he going to save her??”

I also loved Bo. I loved him talking about his old partner and getting all emotional about the Old West and how it wasn’t as easy as everybody thought it was. I can’t remember a time this year I laughed as hard as when Bo offers the revelation about what happened between his skull and a coyote. I guess I’m just so used to these pairings being by-the-book, that having a crotchety old ghost harping on about shit that happened to him 130 years ago was just… different. I loved it.

The script also did the little stuff well. Like I’ve noted before. If you’re writing a high-concept film, you HAVE TO HAVE a ticking time bomb. This provides URGENCY for your movie. If you don’t have urgency in a summer movie, I got news for you fella. You don’t have a movie. The 56 hours til Full Moon is the clock here. There’s also lots of twists in RIPD, another necessity in a movie like this. You gotta keep your audience on its toes. They’re not here just to watch special effects. They want to be engaged in the story. That means you need to be unpredictable, you need to turn things on their head every once in awhile. For example (spoiler), when we find out Nick’s partner sold him out, it hits us hard, because we trusted him.

In the end, this nails that fun high concept feel a big blockbuster should have. Sure there are little problems here and there. The rules connecting the two worlds haven’t been ironed out yet. And it’s convenient that that little buried box has so many things in it that so many people want, but the chemistry between the leads is great, there’s a satisfying emotional element in the Nick/wife relationship, and overall, it’s just fun.

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

What I learned: I have a friend I speak to about once a week. He likes movies, but is not in, nor does he know anything about, the movie business. At some point during our weekly conversation, he asks me if I’ve read any cool scripts lately. Now on an average week, I can read anywhere between 10-20 scripts. Despite this, there are weeks where I can’t think of a single idea worth telling him about. Think about that for a second. 20 ideas. Nothing worth telling another person about. Since the pursuit of this profession is all about getting people to read your screenplays, that’s a problem. So the next time you’re gearing up to write a screenplay, ask yourself that. “Is this an idea that someone would want to tell someone else about?” It’s a simple but very important question. A movie about dead cops who patrol the afterlife is an idea I’d tell my friend about. Now that doesn’t mean that every idea has to be a summer movie type idea. It just means the idea has to have something interesting, unique, clever, or cool about it. Something that - simply - gets other people talking about it.

I Hate You Dad

Genre: Comedy
Premise: Donny, infamous for impregnating a schoolteacher when he was 13, must reunite with his bitter son 25 years later on the eve of his marriage.
About: David H. Caspe is the co-executive producer of the new sitcom “Happy Endings.” He sold “I Hate You Dad” as a pitch to Columbia back in 2008, for Happy Madison (Adam Sandler’s company) to produce. "Dad" also made the lower third of the 2010 Black List.
Writer: David H. Caspe
Details: 115 pages – 12/04/08, 2nd 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).

Okay, I pretty much hate the Happy Madison banner. I think the whole team has been mailing it in for over a decade. And I say that with the knowledge that they’re not trying to win Oscars. They’re only looking to make people laugh. Still, their concepts and their execution are so garden variety vanilla that they actually suck all other flavors into a vortex. Having said that, you won’t find a more perfect casting/concept pairing than this one. Adam Sandler playing Andy Samberg’s father is one of those pitch perfect “duh” marriages that you put in a trailer and everyone in the world will go see the film. Or at least, everyone in Middle America. So now all that’s left is writing a great script. Easy, huh?

One of the things I liked about “I Hate You Dad” was that it did a few things you didn’t expect it to do. The opening is a good example of that. 13 year old Donny is hot for teacher in that special 80s way where it was pretty hot to be hot for teacher. The difference is that the teacher is hot for Donny back, so much so that when Donny makes his big move, she reciprocates, and has sex with him right there in the classroom!

With comedies so obsessed with playing it safe these days, starting a script off with pedophilia was a bit of surprise. Cut to 25 years later and the offspring of that wonderful day, Todd, is preparing for his wedding. Now Todd hasn’t told his wife that he’s the love child of that scandalous affair, and for good reason. The teacher ended up going to jail, the trial was a media circus, and Donny became an early Z-list celebrity before the Z-list was officially invented (btw, they’re considering adding a new letter to the alphabet to make a list even worse than the Z-list, for the specific purpose of classifying Chyna). Donny actually owns a hot tub business that allows him to cash in on his famous hot-for teacher exploits. This is so disturbing to poor Todd, that he’s gone so far as to change his name so that his father can’t find him.

Here’s the problem though. Donny is in a lot of trouble. Getting his tax advice from Richard Hatch (another candidate for the post-alphabet list), Donny decided not to pay taxes for a decade (hey, sort of like Happy Gilmore’s grandmother…hmmmm), and now, unless he comes up with a lot of dough, he’s going to jail. How convenient then, that his estranged son is a very successful stock broker. I think we know where this is going.

Donny shows up at Todd’s house just as the whole wedding party has arrived, claiming he’s his father, which seems odd, since Todd’s told everyone that his father is dead (he died in a massive explosion). Todd assures them all that Donny is joking and is just passing through, but when Donny refuses to leave, he’s forced to claim that Donny is his best friend. Naturally, um, hilarity ensues.

This one was somewhere between bearable and decent, though not enough of either to get excited about. As you’d expect, all the jokes here are rehashes of jokes we’ve seen in other Sandler films. You have the joke Sandler loves more than anything, which is to have one of the characters repeatedly say, with reckless glee, that another character is dead. You have the ubiquitous D-list celebrity show up (here, it’s Ian Ziering of 90210 fame). You also have something about Todd being really fat when he was younger, which, not surprisingly, has nothing to do with his character or the story whatsoever.

I’m not really sure what to say here since the script, outside a couple exceptions, was so exactly what you expected it to be. My biggest gripe was probably that the wife character was so under-written. She’s basically there so we can use the wedding as a ticking time bomb, but never once did she feel like a real person. I keep telling male writers this: put just as much effort into your female characters as you do your male characters. Your scripts will be a lot better for it. I promise.

Also, the concept was plagued with a near fatal flaw. Obviously, this story works best if nobody in the wedding party knows Donny as the famous “Hot For Teacher” father. But doing that is impossible, since they’ve made Donny a mini-celebrity. So now Todd has to pretend Donny is his best friend, which sort of makes the big secret (that he’s his son) pointless. They’ve already accepted “Hot For Teacher” Donny as Todd’s friend. How much worse is it if they find out he’s his son? The bigger faux-pas, however, is that Todd’s fiance seems to have no opinion on this slimy piece of filth being her fiance’s friend whatsoever. Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t think the two even have a scene together. It’s almost like the writers just didn’t want to deal with it.

Structurally, the script is pretty good. We have the goal (get married), the ticking time bomb (the wedding), and the main source of conflict (the father). I’m getting tired of the wedding angle for comedies but the reason people keep using it is because, admittedly, it’s the easiest template to structure a story around that there is. And you know, the last 20 pages of I Hate You Dad were actually pretty good. In most of these movies, you can predict what’s going to happen down to the individual scene, up to 30 pages in advance. So I was surprised when “I Hate You Dad” did not take the most obvious route, making the final act, at the very least, unexpected.

Combined with the opening, that meant the script had two big surprises. My problem is that everything in between is so blasé. It was like a sandwich made with two slices of freshly baked Tuscan cheese bread, but with bologna and miracle whip slapped in the middle. What the hell is Tuscan Cheese Bread? Not important. I love the poster and trailer for this project, but the script needed a second act kick in the ass.  I wouldn't go as far to say "I Hate You Script," but I would say, "You Have Problems You Need To Work On Script Before We Can Be Friends." 

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

What I learned: In a comedy, you have an advantage if you can convey the central source of conflict right there in your movie title. “I Want To Fuck Your Sister.” We know the main character will need to fend off (conflict) people from trying to have sex with his sister. “Ghostbusters.” We know our characters will need to defeat (conflict) some ghosts. “I Hate You Dad.” We know a father and a son are going to go at it (conflict) for most of the movie. Even “40 Year Old Virgin,” indicates a man trying (conflict) desperately (and probably unsuccessfully) to get laid. This all seems rather insignificant and obvious once a 70 million dollar marketing campaign is behind your film, and you’re watching trailers and posters that convey all this stuff in excruciating detail, but at the spec stage, your title is often the only marketing tool you have. Use it to your advantage.

Monday Review will be posted late

It's a travel day folks.  So the Monday review will be posted around 4pm Pacific Time.  See you then! :)