Screenplay Review - The Telemarketer (Amateur Friday)

He claims his script is better than every script sale out there. He repeatedly trashed Disciple in favor of his own masterpiece. But does writer Jai Brandon deliver on the goods?

Amateur Friday Submission Process: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send it in PDF form, along with your title, genre, logline, and why I should read your script to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Keep in mind your script will be posted in the review (feel free to keep your identity and script title private by providing an alias and fake title). Also, it's a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre: Thriller/Crime/Serial Killer
Premise: (from writer) The lives of two opposing forces collide, after an argument escalates between a telemarketer and the recipient of his phone call – an active serial killer. Unfortunately for this serial killer, the man that he threatened is no ordinary telemarketer.
About: Jai Brandon has been pushing me to read his scripts for over a year. His constant hyping of The Telemarketer has made him impossible to ignore.
Writer: Jai Brandon
Details: 100 pages

I have experienced my share of confident screenwriters. I, like most of you, lived through Trajent Future (for the time of your life, grab some popcorn and read through the 500 comments of that post). The House That Death Built taught us that the quality of a man’s script is dependent not on one’s bravado, but rather one’s writing. Jai Brandon seems to have ignored this lesson. He places his screenplay up on the highest pedestal, betting that it’s not only better than recent entries such as The Disciple Program, but even some of the classics that have graced our movie theaters for years.

I’d tell Jai that’s a recipe for disaster, but I don’t think he’d listen. However, I’ll give Jai this. At a time where I've received more script submissions than any other time in Scriptshadow’s history, this man figured out a way to get me to read his script. True it was done through incessant badgering and enough e-mails to break Gmail’s servers (true story – I opened one of his e-mails and Gmail crashed), but you gotta get your name out there somehow and Jai did it.

Of course, this brings us to the actual script, and I'm not going to lie. I was expecting it to be somewhere between really bad and extremely terrible. My experience has taught me that those who yell the loudest usually have the least to say. The good news for Jai is that the script did not fall inside that category.

But it did fall inside a new category I like to refer to as, “Logic, flow, and tone be damned.” This has to be one of the strangest scripts I've read in a while in that Jai actually has a lot of talent, to the point where you occasionally wonder if you’re reading a pro. Unfortunately, that talent is eclipsed by a poor story sense. The script has so many weird combinations going on as to make it almost indecipherable. I'll get into that in a second but let's deal with the plot first.

20-something James Walker is a deliveryman. Well, that's not entirely true. He's a telemarketer. He’s a telemarketer/deliveryman, working delivery by day and telemarketing by night. Confused? So am I. I guess James doesn’t have to sleep. But neither did Edward Norton in Fight Club so I’m going to let it slide.

Our favorite telemarketer/deliveryman goes to deliver a package at a house only to see three burglars holding a woman hostage inside. Since James is not the kind of person to sit back idly, he sneaks in through the window and systematically kills the men. Add ass-kicker to James’ resume.

Later, a couple of detectives stop by to try and figure out what happened but come to the conclusion that no man could have taken these burglars out the way they did. It would have been impossible.

Off in another home we meet a man known as The Clown Face Killer. This Caucasian fellow likes to dress up in blackface and an afro wig and kill African American women. He also has Alopecia (he’s hairless) which means he never leaves a single trace of DNA evidence wherever he goes. He's the perfect killer. The perfect CLOWN FACE KILLER.

In the meantime, those “savvy” detectives find a delivery notice on that burglarized lady’s front porch. So they head over to James’ telemarketing job to ask him some questions, namely why the notice is marked with the exact time this burglary took place. But James is as cool as a Kumquat (and as sarcastic as a snapping turtle) and convinces the doofus detectives that he wasn’t involved.

Across town, Mr. Clown-Face Killer continues attacking young unsuspecting African-American women, but during one of these attacks, James calls the house as part of his telemarketing gig. He and Clown Face have a brief conversation and the clown killer decides he's going to make this personal. He then begins killing everyone in New York named James Walker – our hero’s name!

In the end, the Clown-Face Killer with alopecia gets so worked up that he actually targets James’ own mother. James will have to call on not only his telemarketing and delivery skills to take this man down, but his mercenary skills as well. Wait, what?! Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. James used to be a mercenary too! Will he succeed? I'm not sure. Nothing is certain in…..The Telemarketer.

Okay, so like I said, Jai shows a lot of skill in his writing. Open up this script and read the first scene and you’ll notice the writing is crisp, lean and professional.

The problem is, Jai’s lack of storytelling sense becomes increasingly problematic as the story goes on. What I mean by “storytelling sense” is the combination of structure, tone, understanding of genre, and how to build a story in a believable, compelling and logical way. The Telemarketer builds, but nothing is ever believable. And rarely is the tone of the story consistent. It kind of feels like a pastiche of several different genres slapped together in no particular order.

But let's back up for a second and start with the title. The reason I resisted reading this in the first place was that the title and the logline didn’t jive. It sounded like a set up for a comedy as opposed to a thriller. A telemarketer taking on a man with alopecia who dresses up in blackface and an Afro wig? I don’t know. That just doesn’t sound like a subject matter you can treat seriously. So that was the first problem I had, and that was before I even opened the script (again – why testing your concept is SO important!).

The next problem I had was the dual jobs. I understand some people work two jobs to make ends meet, but in this case, the two jobs were obviously created for the purpose of instituting key plot points. Jai needed James to be a deliveryman/vigilante killer in order to get the detectives after him. And he needed his hero to be a telemarketer so he could call the woman that would begin Clown Faced’s obsession with him.

My question is, since the deliveryman job has absolutely nothing to do with the story, why not ditch it? Just make him a telemarketer. That's the name of the movie anyway. By calling a movie “The Telemarketer” and starting off with your hero as a deliveryman, you’ve already confused your audience. In the very first scene! That's a big problem with the writing here. It just seems to go wherever it wants in order to make the story work for the writer.

In addition to these problems, we just have these really weird scenes that appear out of nowhere. For instance, in addition to being a telemarketer and a deliveryman, it turns out that James also used to be a mercenary. So right in the middle of the script, for no discernible reason, we jump back to James during his mercenary days taking down Somali pirates. To the writer, this may all seem completely logical. “Of course he’s a mercenary. That’s my hero’s backstory!”

But to a reader, it’s utter confusion. We’re adding on to a character who already feels schizophrenic the title of mercenary??? How can an audience take that seriously? It would be like in Silence Of The Lambs if, 60 minutes in, Jodie Foster participated in a local disco competition, won, then went right back to hunting Buffalo Bill. You can't just do whatever you want in a story. It has to make sense, it has to feel natural, it has to fit within the theme. If it doesn't, it just feels random.

Another scene that came out of nowhere was James driving his delivery truck and getting stopped by some detectives, but it turns out those detectives were fake and actually robbers! Who rob him! The scene is just some random isolated incident that has NOTHING to do with the plot at all! These moments kept coming in The Telemarketer. Which was a big part of what made the read so frustrating.

The thing is, Jai really does have some talent. And despite his insane bravado, he actually seems like a nice guy. I don’t think he’s going to be telling everybody here (along with myself) that we’re all worthless and don’t know what we’re talking about and he does, a la Trajent Future. But he needs to back up and study storytelling a little more. Storytelling isn't about throwing a bunch of shit on the page you think is cool. It's about slowly building up a story where all the pieces fit together in a natural way. There are very few pieces in The Telemarketer that fit together and that's why, despite the talent, the story doesn't work.

What did you guys think? Is this better than The Disciple Program, as Jai claims? Or is my review completely off?

Script Link: The Telemarketer

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Be elegant in your plot construction. The more you strain, the more we’ll notice. In other words, never push an improbable or illogical plot point onto your story just because you *really need* something to happen. Here, Jai wanted these detectives to pull his hero, James, into the story. So he created this deliveryman job, which allowed his hero to murder these men, so that the detectives could question him. Keep in mind this job has NOTHING TO DO with the rest of the story. Never once is delivering something ever broached again. So it obviously feels false. You easily could’ve achieved this plot point without adding another job. Why can’t James be the woman’s neighbor? He’s about to go to work and sees something suspicious going on? Or maybe part of the telemarketing gig is delivering flyers about the service. You must be elegant in the way you weave things into your story or you’re going to pull your reader out of that story.

Screenwriter Interview - Allan Loeb

Allan Loeb embodies the dream scenario for any screenwriter.  Well, sorta.  After having inconsistent success in Hollywood for awhile, he fought through a crippling gambling addiction that nearly sent his life spiraling out of control. He eventually recovered, writing two scripts, The Only Living Boy In New York and Things We Lost In The Fire, that finished Top 4 on the inaugural Black List in 2005.  The buzz around those scripts began an insane hot streak for Loeb, who sold six projects in a single year. He's since went on to write many movies, including 21, Wall Street 2, and Just Go With It.  In addition to feature writing, he has moved into TV producing, and is looking to have the same success in that medium.

SS: I originally heard it took you 12 years to finally sell something. Is that accurate? Can you tell us how you fought through that and were able to keep writing?

AL: I actually sold a pitch my fifth year writing, then a script two years later (guild minimum) and another (guild min again) a few years after that. So my career has actually been lived in three stages, five years of total rejection, about six or so of being on the bottom rung as a “baby writer” and finally eight years now of success. I didn’t actually fight through it, I -- more or less -- avoided the scary real world by doing the only thing I felt comfort in doing… making shit up.

SS: What did you do to pay the rent and what do you suggest other writers do job-wise to pay their rent yet still have time to work on their writing?

AL: I’m reluctant to say how I paid the rent for fear some of your readers may try it. It wasn’t smart and it should’ve ended in disaster. I gambled, day traded, ran through an inheritance and lived off credit cards. I sold my car in 2002 to pay rent and spent two years walking/taking the bus in LA. I sold an X-Box to a UCLA college student in 2005 for $90 and signed at CAA a week later. If I didn’t sign there or sell Only Living Boy shortly after… that $90 would’ve been my net worth.

SS: There seem to be levels for a writer. There’s the “get noticed with a good script” level. There’s the “get an agent level.” There’s the “sell your first script level.” Those are the levels I’m familiar with. What levels come after that? How many are there?

AL: There are so many levels after that. Most people are so consumed with the initial three that they never consider all the rungs in the middle. I’d say after “sell your first script” there’s the “do the rounds around town and get these people to like you” level. Then there’s the “get a job or sell something to them” level.

Then comes the most important level of all… “DELIVER!” This involves making your partners (producer, studio, director, movie star) feel heard and happy without compromising the quality of your work and your voice. It’s extremely delicate and challenging and if you can do it… you’ll work for a long time. It’s my opinion that most writers get spit out of the business at this level by the way.

From there the result in the market place matters. So the levels are “the box office gross level” and the “critical acclaim level” I have failed up at this level many times (but fortunately succeeded a bit too) and it’s extremely painful.

SS: My favorite script of yours is “The Only Living Boy In New York.” What inspired that script for you and when am I finally going to get to see it?

AL: I wanted to write my version of my favorite movie “The Graduate” with kind of a “Manhattan” love-letter to New York flourish to it. I went to New York in 2004, leased a loft for the summer with no air conditioning, cable or internet. The shower was a big sink I had to climb into. I just read everything I could about the city, met some really cool New Yorkers, partied till morning on the Lower East Side and somehow came back to LA with that script.

I’m hoping you’ll see it soon… it has new life to it that may finally get it made. Stay tuned.

SS: "Things We Lost In The Fire" was an independent movie script. But I remember it was very celebrated at the time. Without getting into specifics, can you sell those types of scripts for a lot of money or is every independent script more likely to result in a small sale?

AL: You can sell dramas like Things We Lost but you really need big talent attached. What drove that sale for me was Sam Mendes and his sway at Dreamworks. Sam loved the script and at first wanted to direct it. (He ended up producing it with me) 

SS: Can you take us through the specific process that led to Things We Lost In The Fire being found, bought, and ultimately made? It's always fun to know the details of how these things come about.

AL: I gave it to my agents on Friday. Sam had read it and was attached by Monday. Dreamworks paid me a lot of money for it with-in a week. I’ll give credit where credit is due… CAA.

SS: When you first break out as a screenwriter, you're the new guy and everybody wants to meet you and know what else you have and if there's some way you can work together. What can you tell us, from your experience after your break out, as far as what opportunities came up and how future screenwriters should handle that situation should they break in? Should they be taking advantage of every opportunity and trying to sell every pitch they can because they're hot, or should they just focus on meeting people and developing relationships?

AL: Yes, yes and yes. This is such an important part of the business. It’s as important as the words on the page. Connect with these people you’re meeting on a human level. See what movies they love and where your tastes align. Get their email addresses and follow up and update them to what you’re doing… stay on their radar.

Most of them are smart, most of them are perfectly nice, most of them want to make good movies… they are not the enemy. If they believe in you, if they genuinely like you, if they think you’re going to make a good partner… they will stop at nothing to pay you real money to make shit up on a computer (while drinking coffee in between naps.)

SS: What do you think is the toughest thing about screenwriting?

AL: Handing the shit in.

SS: I'd love to get two pieces of advice from you. First, what's the most important lesson you learned about the craft of screenwriting? And second, what's the most important lesson you learned about the business side of screenwriting?

AL: The most important thing about the craft… economy/befriend the reader.

Say it with economy… don’t over describe. They get it. They’re reading quickly. They want to know what happens next. They don’t give a shit about most of the things you think they do… they just want to know what happens next.

The most important thing about the business… fun, enjoyable collaboration/be a pro.

Be open, be collaborative, they’re your partners, this is not poetry or Ibsen… it’s a business and you’re building a product with a team of people. Have fun, don’t freak out and be open to what your partners need or they will find someone else. Now you have to do that without totally killing your voice and particular story and that’s the dance… that’s where the game gets really fragile and difficult. You have to defend what makes this story great and make them happy. You have to play offense and defense… you can’t win by just playing one.

And it’s critical to be a pro. Hit every deadline, be calm, be available, be Kevin Durant at the foul line, don’t be an emotional basket case. You’re their doctor. Be their doctor… don’t be their frantic child.

SS: Now I don't know this from any personal experience but I've heard that once you have a couple of hit movies, people just throw gobs of money at you to write their screenplays. I imagine that presents some dilemmas for you. Like getting offered, say, a million dollars to write something big and marketable yet artistically unfulfilling, and $250,000 to write something smaller and less marketable but very artistically fulfilling. Have you been in that situation before and how do you handle it?

AL: This is an issue for many writers but not for me so much. I’m a lover of movies of all genres and I write in all genres. I’m not precious and I see as much merit in a big rom-com as I do in a Terrence Malick film. There’s something for everybody and people simply get too judgmental when it comes to what stories they believe people should be told. It becomes a personal thing. I’m lucky that I get as excited about a big commercial idea as I do a small character piece… they’re just two different types of food to me. One is not inherently better than the other. I’m just as proud of “Just Go With it” as I am about “Things We Lost” -- who’s to say which has more merit? To me… that’s arrogance.

So I can cash a big check and be fulfilled at the same time… I guess that’s called being a hack :)

SS: Having spent that early part of your career struggling for so long, what advice can you give writers from that experience so that they don't make the same mistakes that you did, and can break out sooner?

AL: Don’t chase the market. Work on your specific voice and not what you think they want. Keep your day job.

Don’t get to the point where you’re selling your X-Box to a UCLA kid because getting lucky from under that stupidity only happens once and I already cashed that chip.

SS: Now I know you do a lot of assignment work. Are you able to still find time to write your own material? Are you still putting your own specs out there? What are you working on now?

AL: It’s a good question. I don’t spec. I’m transitioning a bit into writing a script a year for me and seeing where the chips fall but it’s been hard. I truly love what I do and most of that is incoming work.

I’m currently rewriting an action movie for Universal, finishing up a baseball comedy for Disney and working on a pilot for 20th/NBC.

Screenplay Review - Desert Demons

A former Nicholl-finalist is back in the saddle with a new horror screenplay which combines elements of Pitch Black and The Descent!

Genre: Horror
Premise: When they open up a well that hasn’t been looked at since dinosaurs were around, a group of locals find themselves fighting off a large group of prehistoric flying monsters.
About: Brian Logan finished in the Top 10 in the 2003 Nicholl finals. This is his latest script, which hasn’t yet sold. You can find out more about the Aussie at his website, “ThatActionGuy.com.” To learn more about co-writer David J. Sakmyster, head over to his website here. 
Writers: Brian M. Logan & David J. Sakmyster
Details: 99 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).

Pitch Black meets The Descent? Uhh, yeah, I’m in. Those are two damn good movies. But could this script live up to those lofty cult classics?

We start out in a full-blown desert town appropriately called "Desert Springs." In this small town, water is in short supply, which means the local water plant is going to have to open up a new well. It just so happens that 37-year-old Jake Mitchell, a former Marine and our hero, works as a security guard at the plant and is dealing with some of the headaches that come along with opening up this fifth well.

To make matter worse, he's tasked with showing around local TV personality Emma Flynn, a 30-year-old ambitious newscaster will who will do anything to get the story and nothing for you. Why she's coming to this boring middle-of-nowhere town to do a story on a water plant is anyone's guess, but we need ourselves a movie so come she does!

Jake and Emma are oil and water from the start and when a couple of kids start lighting firecrackers near the wells, she gets her camera rolling to check out what Jake does every night. When he gets there, he learns that one of the kids who ran away, the Mayor’s grandson, fell into the NEW FIFTH WELL. Uh oh. That can’t be good.

The kid seems fine at first but a local scientist finds a strange leaf attached to him that turns out to be over 250,000 years old. It appears that this well dates back quite a ways and since this is the first time it's been opened up, there are some nice treats hidden inside, and this leaf is just the first of them.

Next thing you know, a pterodactyl’ish creature shoots out of the well and starts treating people like cheesecake (Peoplecake?). Pterodactyl 1 is quickly followed by Pterodactyls 2-50 and pretty soon these paleolythic party-crashers are munching and mangling their way to a human buffet. Jake and Emma must run around and save the few humans who are left, as well as figure out a way to destroy these disastrous dinos, all while struggling with their escalating feelings for one another!

You know I was talking to Tyler the other day, who's been keeping me updated on all the meetings he’s been taking, and one of the things he says he keeps hearing about his script is that it isn't just that the writing's good, it's that he wrote a *movie*.

I loved Origin Of A Species. I thought it was an awesome script. But would I touch it as a producer? Not unless I had Sam Mendes directing and Christian Bale starring. And that's the thing you have to remember when you're writing. Producers are looking for MOVE-IES. They're looking for stuff that they can actually put up onscreen that will bring people to the theater. So if you write a movie like The Disciple Program or you write a movie like Desert Demons, you’re way up the ladder as far as getting Hollywood to notice you. To that end, I liked the script’s approach. It's the kind of thing I could see a producer wanting to make.

Having said that, there was something that never quite made it past the Ice Age with Desert Demons. I think one of the big pitfalls with this kind of script is that it can very easily turn into a bunch of people running around in circles. If the writer isn't ON IT as far as keeping every character goal-oriented, keeping every character motivated, keeping the story objective crystal clear to the audience, then things start to unravel. And that’s sort of how I felt. I just wasn’t really clear what was happening after awhile other than chaos.

That's what I loved about Aliens so much and why I think it's the best script in this genre. That group always had a plan. It might have been as simple as boarding up all of the entryways so the aliens couldn't get in. It might have been rescuing Newt. It might've been sending Bishop out to the remote post to get the ship to send them down another plane.

In Desert Demons, I started to lose track of what the characters were after and what was going on. It seemed like we were just running back and forth between points A, B, and C. Since our characters began to drift, so did my concentration. And I think that's a hugely important lesson. Characters drift = we drift. If Brian and Dave were to make their objectives bigger, clearer, with higher stakes and more focused directives, I think this script would be a lot more exciting. I was just never able to lock onto any clear goal while jumping between the two teams of characters.

The story is also missing a kick-ass hero. While I admit protagonists are not as important in horror movies as some other genres, I still think you need to give us someone awesome. I was disappointed by the cliché background of Jake being involved in a military accident. I feel like that's the easiest backstory to go with. There was a little bit of intrigue with his superior, Danny, and what happened to them back in the war. But overall nothing stood out about it, or stood out about that relationship in general.

Another thing I would've loved was a monster that was more original. Now I know it’s difficult to create an original-looking monster on the page. Usually that stuff is done in pre-production. But just from a writing perspective, in my head these things looked exactly like the things in Pitch Black. They were flying. They were monsters. So it just felt way too familiar.

When you combine characters who start wandering with a protagonist who's not very original with a monster we’ve already seen before… it's hard to get me invested, especially because this isn’t my go-to genre to begin with.

What I’m curious to see, however, is how others who LOVE this genre respond. I remember saying a lot of these same things about Attack The Block, which a lot of people loved. So I’m wondering if horror fans are going to dig this for what it is – a fun little creature feature. I mean, look, watching monsters kill people is fun. I need a little more going on than that personally but I have a feeling that this script might have satisfied the hard core genre fans. I’ll be reading the comments closely to see if that’s the case.

I know you can request a copy of Desert Demons from Brian Logan at his site. You just need to include your name, position, company and email address.

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Maybe it's because Pitch Black was brought up in the pitching of the script and that's one of my favorite sci-fi scripts ever, but the big thing Desert Demons reminded me of was how important a memorable main character is. As it stands, “Demons” didn't have that one big character that brought the story to the next level. That's why I liked Pitch Black so much - because of Riddick. It didn’t matter if that script would’ve happened on an alien planet or on the beaches of Hawaii, we would've remembered that character! It’s been about 5 days since I read Desert Demons and I barely remember anyone. That CANNOT happen. You need to have that character that’s IMPOSSIBLE TO FORGET in your story, preferably your hero. This script could’ve benefited immensely from that.

Screenplay Review - The Driver (Guest Review)

Is recent screenplay sale "The Driver" the driving movie that confused "Drive" moviegoers were desperately expecting?

So my book is finished. The problem is, editing takes a lot longer when you’re dealing with a book than when you’re dealing with a script! But we’re still on target for a late March release. I was going to make it April 1st, but I figured I’d be opening myself up to WAAAAY too many jokes, heh heh. And since I’m planning for this book to be the most helpful screenwriting book ever written, I couldn’t risk that. So late March it is! For those wondering about Twit-Pitch, we’re still working on it, but I’m thinking it could happen within the next 2-3 weeks. So finish those scripts! In the meantime, because this stuff is keeping me busy, the Tuesday guest reviews will continue. Today we have Aussie Gary Murphy taking a crack at a recent spec sale, The Driver. Enjoy!

Genre: Mystery/Thriller

Premise: David Weaver is on his way to work when he finds a stranger tied up in the trunk of his car, along with a bomb and a cellphone. What started out as a simple commute to the office ends up as a fight to save his own life and that of his family.

About: This script was picked up in December by Voltage films (The Hurt Locker) and according to IMDB is in pre-production. Spenser Cohen, one of the writers, is slated to direct what appears to be his first feature.

Writers: Zach Luna and Spenser Cohen

Details: This review is based on the July 2011 draft.  Since it was written I have read a later draft dated January 2012.  Very little has changed in that draft other than changing city locations.

The last script I read was Origin Of A Species, a script where absolutely nothing happens for 50 pages, so it was fairly weird to then pick up a script where the action does not stop - I mean literally it does not stop - for a single beat. I honestly cannot remember the last script I read that never had a single moment to pause, especially like this one where the lead character is in every single scene.

I decided to read The Driver because I knew absolutely nothing about it, not even a log-line. Not knowing what the script is about is a rare enough treat that I thought I would give it a go and see where it took me. For an idea of where it did take me, if you imagine a mash-up between ‘Phone Booth’ and ‘Collateral’, with a little bit of Reservoir Dogs and The Usual Suspects thrown in, then you would not be far off.

It begins with our hero, David Weaver, a guy about to give the most important presentation of his career and desperate to get to work on time. We first meet him at breakfast with wife, Samantha, and two young daughters. He drops his kids off at school and then continues on his way to work. But on the way he hears a strange noise coming from his trunk. When he pulls over and opens the trunk, he is slightly surprised to find a guy tied up in there. Not just a guy though, because attached to his jacket is a cellphone. Mega-confusion. And not just from David either. The guy in the trunk seems just as confused.

The phone rings and a “Woman’s voice” informs David that he is not just carrying an extra passenger but also a rather large bomb - David checks it out , he sees wires and stuff - its true! - this is getting serious.

David’s told he has thirty minutes to drive to an address and wait for further instructions. No police, no funny business, or the bomb will detonate and kill them both. David’s obviously seen these kinds of films before because he doesn’t need to be told twice.

Anyway, after an eventful drive that includes the obligatory traffic cop stop scene (which sees David get a ticket for running a red light) he finally makes it to his first destination. As soon as he pulls over, a guy dressed in a suit (called “Suit”) climbs into the back of the car and gives David the next address. He too has a phone and appears to be getting his instructions by text message.

We then have another drive across L.A. with some brief chitter chatter as more of the mystery unfolds before us. Next they pick up a Russian guy (called “Russian”) followed by another drive across L.A. and the pick-up of a guy named “Duffle Bag” (I’ll let you guess what he’s carrying).

None of these guys seem to know each other, and although little is actually said, it’s clear that they are all like David, following instructions on their cellphones. What follows is a script full of twists and turns and while the direction it takes is not always a huge surprise, it is fresh and different enough to be an enjoyable and quick read.

I loved both Phone Booth and Collateral.  I remember both times I read the scripts before I saw the films and thought both were among the best scripts I’d ever read. Mainly because they were exactly what I have been trying to come up with myself - a simple edge-of-your-seat thriller with limited characters and locations.

From a screenwriting point of view, while the script has its faults, it has an awful lot going for it as well. A stand out and something I know is close to Carson’s heart is that every scene had a sense of urgency - literally the clock was always ticking, to the point where it was impossible to put the script down. Something was always happening.

Also, 90% of this script takes place in a single location, David’s car, and it meant that the writers really had to nail the characters. I think they did a pretty decent job of it. We got a fairly good understanding of David, who has a crappy job and obviously cares a lot about his family. The Driver never pretends to be a character study, but enough time is put into the characters to keep us involved.

What I really loved, though, was the three supporting characters, I thought they were brilliantly written and really made the difference between an average script and one worth the read. All three stood out as completely different, so much so that their very character traits were the source for much of the drama.

I loved how they were named, and it certainly goes back to last week’s script, ‘Run all Night,’ where one of my issues (and I know many others too) was keeping track of who was who. While there was nowhere near the number of characters here, it was still a stroke of genius to not give them real names. I guess this only works when your characters don’t have real names in the dialogue, so it’s not very often you’d get to do it, but here it worked brilliantly and I think really played a part in how easily and naturally the action kept flowing.

I did notice one potential plot hole in The Driver, and something that bugged me a bit. What would have happened had David been playing music in the car and not heard the banging in the trunk? Surely he would have just driven to work? That did confuse me and I thought the final twist explained it, but looking back again, I’m not sure that it does.

Anyway, questions aside, this was a very good script which I enjoyed reading.

[ ] Wait for the rewrite

[ ] wasn’t for me

[xx] worth the read

[ ] impressive

[ ] genius

What I learned: If your characters don’t need names then don’t give them names. Calling them something that alludes to a key character trait or physical feature makes so much more sense. This script has a good flow and stopping to remember which one was “Anthony” only serves to pull me out of the script.

Screenplay Review - The Knoll

The JFK conspiracy is back in full force with this latest Black List screenplay. But does the script bring JFK back from the dead or just shoot itself in the foot?

Genre: Thriller
Premise: A rookie cop and his old flame witness JFK gunned down from the grassy knoll on November 22, 1963. Within hours, they’re on the run from the murderers who desperately need them silenced.
About: Finished with 19 votes on the 2011 Black List. Christopher Cantwell used to write on a comedy series called "Vicariously." Christopher Rogers is new to the screenwriting game.
Writers: Christopher Cantwell, Christopher Rogers
Details: 117 pages – Aug 5, 2011 (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 feel like a lot of air went out of the JFK conspiracy balloon after Oliver Stone's film. There was that three-month period where it's all anybody talked about and then, I don't know, it seemed like it just wasn’t important to people after that.

You can take that two ways. The first is that the idea is bankrupt. You're not going to get any more mileage out of a JFK conspiracy film. On the flip side you can argue that there’s reason to believe the JFK conspiracy is ripe for an update. The writing team of Christopher and Christopher would like you to choose Door #2.

Now before I get into this review, I'm going to share with you an observation. If you can nail all the technical aspects of formatting, structure and style in screenwriting, you can work in this business. Now that’s a lot easier said than done. But the thing is, all of it can be taught. You can be taught to keep your paragraphs lean. You can be taught where a first act turn and midpoint are. You can be taught to keep your scenes tight and focused. All of that is teachable. If you can plop all of that into a nifty concept, people will take notice.

But I’m not going to lie. That upsets me a little bit. Because I feel like more should be required for a screenplay to be celebrated. The Knoll is a quick exciting little thriller that nails its formatting and structure. And yet you don’t remember a thing about it after it’s over.

There’s no depth here. There’s no character development. Everything happens exactly the way you expect it to. See here’s my big problem with that – is that it’s great the script nails the fundamentals. But if that’s all it’s doing, then the reader is always aware he’s reading a screenplay. He never gets lost or pulled into the story. That’s what happened while I was reading this. I was *always* aware I was reading a script. I admired the craft in which it was written. But there was nothing extra – no X-Factor to really pull me in.

This is a consistent recent trend. I saw it in Selfless. I saw it in Flashback. I saw it in Bodies In Rest. Everything in those screenplays is technically correct. But there isn't anything extra.

The screenplays Run All Night, Source Code and The Disciple Program are examples where the writers are giving you a thriller, but they're also looking deeper. They've actually put some thought into their characters. They’ve actually challenged themselves not to make obvious choices – to take their stories in interesting directions. Run All Night for example. There’s a HISTORY between the main characters involved, leading to a much deeper and more nuanced story.

I didn’t get a whiff of that here. And with that ringing endorsement, let’s take a look at The Knoll’s plot.

The Knoll is set on that dreadful day of November 22nd, 1963. We happen upon a familiar face: Lee Harvey Oswald. He's getting ready to gun down the president in the most famous assassination in American history.

Cut to 18 hours earlier where we meet Jim Nolan, a young cop who’s…well, a young cop (there's really nothing more going on with him which is the reason for all my yakking above).

Jim happens upon Marina Oswald, Lee Harvey's wife, who's been beaten up recently. They're trying to find Lee Harvey to get some questions answered but it turns out an FBI agent named Barstow needs Oswald for other matters.

Jim is suspicious of Barstow but there's not much he can do about it so he leaves it alone. In the meantime, he runs into his old girlfriend, 22 year old Rebecca (Old girlfriend?? When did these two date, Jr. High?). She’s since become a journalist and is here getting documentary footage for a story. She’s not happy to see Jim but it turns out he can get her the kind of access she needs for a great shot, so she reluctantly joins him.

After setting up her shot, the president makes his fateful drive down that infamous street. A loud bang is heard followed by ANOTHER loud bang. It just so happens Rebecca has her camera trained on the grassy knoll where that second bang came from. Which means that – yes – she just recorded the notorious “second shooter” in the JFK conspiracy theory.

Jim also notices something amiss on the knoll and goes racing up there, only to be met by his old buddy Barstow, who is now calling himself a “Secret Service Agent.” Jim jumps on that. “Well which are you? FBI or Secret Service?” Before he can get a straight answer, the chaos escalates, and he’s torn in multiple directions.

Eventually Barstow learns that Rebecca has a film of him involved in the shooting. So he puts all of his immediate manpower – which isn't that much (another problem with the script) – into chasing her down to get the film. Jim then joins up with his old sixth grade crush to help her escape.

Okay, so, here’s what I liked about the script. I liked this idea that there's a fall guy in every operation. I actually thought the plan our bad guys executed made sense. They put Oswald up in a window taking a hopeless shot at the president so that when they killed JFK, he got blamed.

But everything else in the story was just too generic. The relationship between Jim and Rebecca, especially, had absolutely zero going for it. He's 26 and she's 22? Is this Spy Kids 5? These two need to be older. There at least needs to be the appearance of history, of some weight to their relationship. I kept expecting them to bust out cotton candy every time they went on the run. I don’t know. There was just no weight to these two at all.

On top of that, I never once feared for either of their lives. Barstow was definitely a meanie but he was not somebody who scared me. He never did anything clever or scary, something that would indicate this was a man worth fearing. I mean look at Samuel Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones) in The Fugitive. He’s one of the most capable antagonists I've ever seen in a film. You really think he’s going to catch Richard. THAT’S what made him so scary. Barstow, on the other hand, felt like a grumpy agitated old man. Again, there was no WEIGHT to his character.

If you don't feel the weight of the protagonist and you don't feel the weight of the villain, how can you emotionally involve yourself in the story?

I get that sometimes you have to just let go and enjoy something – especially with thrillers. I can dig that. That's why I like Die Hard. That's why I like The Fugitive. That's why I like Taken. But there's still a minimum level of depth you need to achieve in order for people to suspend their disbelief. And I don't think that level was met here.

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Your style of writing is your style of writing. But just remember that too much of anything negates its effect. So in The Knoll, every other paragraph is in all capital letters or underlined. So after a while, none of it means anything anymore. The whole point of underlining or capitalizing something is to bring attention to it. How do you bring attention to something when everything else is exactly the same? I know that one of the most successful writer combos in the world does this as well (Kurtzman and Orci), but just know that it's probably better to use a device sparingly, so that when you *do* use it, it means something.

Screenplay Review - Flat Pennies (Amateur Friday)

Day 2 of The Gauntlet is here! Yesterday, we looked at a contest winning script. Today, we look at the contender!

This is the second day of "The Gauntlet." The Gauntlet is when an amateur script takes on a pro script to the death. Yesterday’s script was the Amazon Studios Contest winner. Robert’s script, Flat Pennies, did not advance in the same competition. But that didn’t affect Robert’s belief that his script was better. And he was willing to put it up here for all of you to see to prove it. Once again, you can download the winning script here and today’s script, Flat Pennies, here. For future Gauntlet challenges, e-mail me at Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. You must take on a script that has not yet been reviewed on the site. Be sure to include the genre, title, logline and a pdf of your script. Keep in mind your script WILL be made available in the review.

Genre: I would say it’s a drama but Robert characterizes it as a “Psycho-noir.”
Premise: A troubled teen becomes the errand boy for a former train engineer living in a world of heroic fantasies and untold guilt until a revelation ends it all.
About: Robert’s script didn’t advance at Amazon. But that doesn’t mean it can’t advance in the minds of Scriptshadow Nation! Seeing the way a lot of you reacted to Origin Of A Species, it might actually be a close competition.
Writer: Robert Ward
Details: 116 pages

There are two words every screenwriter dreads: “Nothing happens.” Of course “happens” is a relative term. As long as you’re writing about a character doing something, something is “happening.” Even if he’s just reaching for a beer. So maybe the more appropriate phrase should be “Nothing interesting happens.” And in my opinion, nothing interesting happens in Flat Pennies for way too long.

Now here’s the funny thing. You could make the same argument for yesterday’s script, Origin Of A Species. We meet some people. Some dogs escape. There ain’t a whole lot going on there. So how come I liked yesterday’s script so much better than I liked this one? Read on and find out.

Flat Pennies introduces us to Alex Rutledge, a 17 year old kid, kinda hip-hoppy, drunk on whisky, yelling at some train tracks about how his life sucks. From what we can gather, Alex has been adopted and he’s pissed off that his real parents left him. He wants some answers dammit!

Across town we meet Ian Crocker, a recluse of a man who spends his days working on an elaborate model train set inside of his apartment. Ian used to be a train engineer but was injured during a massive crash, relegating him to a wheelchair. Now he collects disability and uses the money to buy new pieces for his set. But all is not well in Ian’s hermetically sealed train station. Looks like they’re cutting down his disability. Which means his train set is at a standstill.

Despite household budget cuts, Ian needs a new errand boy and guess who gets the job? That’s right, our booze-loving teenager, Alex. After a rocky start, the two begin an awkward but fulfilling friendship.

The thing is, they don’t really do much. They mainly sit around and talk about their lives. Alex, at every opportunity (and I mean EVERY opportunity), brings up how his birth parents left him. And Ian keeps going back to that damn train crash. It so bothers him that he’s plagued with strange daydreams, many of which revolve around people dying. As we choo-choo towards their final destination, it becomes evident that their meeting was not by accident, and that the two have more in common than they ever could’ve predicted (no, Ian is not his father).

I already contacted Robert and told him some of my problems with Flat Pennies and I’m going to repeat those here. The script’s biggest problem is how on-the-nose everything is. And its second biggest problem is how melodramatic everything is. Both of these things are HUGE amateur tells. So you want to avoid them at all costs.

Let’s listen to some of Alex’s dialogue in the opening scene, where he’s drunk near some train tracks, yelling to himself. “Why did you pound me into a pile of dirt!” “I’m not even worth a mosquito’s ass.” “There was no reason for what you did. No reason!” “Was I a piece of litter to throw away?” “How could you…leave me, the boy who made the papers?! I was such a good boy. Should’ve never abandoned me.”

First we have melodrama. A drunk guy crying about his life. Ehh, not good. Then we have loads of on-the-nose dialogue. Alex says no less than five times, directly to the reader, that he’s been left. This is the equivalent of lacing your screenplay with anthrax. You don’t want ANY of this stuff in your script. Ever.

And yet it continues. On page 21, Alex picks up a puppet and has a conversation with it where he asks, “Why did my parents desert me?” and the puppet replies. “Alex, you weren’t worth keeping.” Whoa.

On top of that, there’s no drama to any of the scenes (recognize the dramatize!). It’s just Alex coming over to Ian’s and the two talking about their lives, their pasts, and their feelings about one another. They don’t do anything. There’s no goal driving them forward. It’s just a continuous string of “scenes-of-death” with no conflict or purpose.

This is why I always tell you to give your characters a goal, no matter how mundane. Because if they don’t have anything to do, you won’t know what to do with them. Which leaves you writing scenes with people talking to each other even though nobody has anything to say. There are like 10 screenwriters in the world who can make a dialogue scene work with no goals or drama. And even they’d prefer to avoid them. So you gotta stay away from this situation.

Why not make Ian’s problems more urgent? His late rent is hinted at here but never takes center stage (so we don’t take it seriously). Maybe he’s got a week before he has to be out. Now he has a goal – find money or find a new place to stay.

Or, if that’s too obvious, give him something he has to focus on. Maybe his landlord just found out about his elaborate train set and considers it a fire hazard. He wants it out of the apartment within a week or Ian’s out. Now Ian has something to focus on – figure out what to do with his train set. Taking down the set also symbolizes moving past the accident.

Another issue is Ian’s daydreams. We’re not sure if they’re real, if they’re flashbacks, or if they’re made up. Because they’re so different from everything else in the script (Out no nowhere, Ian will be climbing a mountain), they never feel organic, and therefore leave us confused. Now they do pay off, but to just randomly cut to Ian climbing a mountain without cluing the reader in as to what’s going on is a bit jarring.

And this is the thing with screenplays. These kinds of things are forgivable when the script is popping. But when the pace is slowed by a lack of narrative drive, urgency, drama, or conflict, it’s much easier for the reader to get tripped up by these moments.

So this script has a lot to fix. Moving forward, I’d tell Robert to learn how to dramatize scenes (people talking about their lives is not a scene!). I’d tell him to ditch all the melodrama. I’d tell him to get rid of all the on-the-nose dialogue. And I would add some bigger character goals for both Ian and Alex. By making those changes, this script would improve drastically.

And here’s why I care. Despite how boring this script is, it actually has a great ending. Like “holy shit” level ending. I was shocked. But the problem is, nobody’s going to get to that ending because everything that precedes it is too boring. If Robert can somehow nail the first 100 pages of this script – no small feat, I know - he has a story worth telling.

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

GAUNTLET WINNER: ORIGIN OF A SPECIES (Who was your Gauntlet winner?)

What I learned: If you have an interesting question you’re bringing up in your story, don’t answer it right away! Keep your reader curious by drawing it out for 5, 10, 15 scenes. Here, we have a nice reveal when we see that Ian’s in a wheelchair. Alex immediately asks him what happened, and Ian launches into the story of the train crash. Noooo! Ian needs to not answer him! He needs to tell him much later in the story! Keep the reader curious!

Screenplay Review - Origin Of A Species

A young up-and-coming writer takes on the Amazon Contest winner in a two-day experiment I call "The Gauntlet."

I'm unofficially introducing a new feature here on Scriptshadow. I call it "The Gauntlet." It's when an amateur screenwriter believes with all of his heart that his screenplay is better than a professional’s, or in today's case, a contest winner. Gauntlet rules are simple. Two scripts enter. One script leaves. The contest in question? Amazon (who else?). Tomorrow’s writer, Mike, took one look at Origin Of A Species, the Amazon winner, and was confident his entry was better. So today we’ll look at the winner (which you can download here) and tomorrow we’ll look at Mike’s script (which you can download here - fixed) and decide which script wins the GAUNTLET!

Genre: Drama/Thriller
Premise: An ex-cop finds himself in a precarious situation when his 3 dogs begin a killing spree across town.
About: This was the winner of Amazon Studios script contest. Matthew Gossett, the writer, took home the biggest winning contest check ever for a screenplay - $100,000. Amazon practically branded itself the “High concept” competition. It was the anti-Nicholl. They wanted to celebrate big ideas that they could turn into profitable movies. So it was a bit of a shock that one of the least commercial scripts took the top prize. Must mean they really loved it. But is that love deserved??
Writer: Matthew Gossett
Details: 111 pages - 1st 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).

What a great script to discuss after last week’s behemoth, The Disciple Program. That script had a goal (find out who killed his wife), stakes (hero’s life constantly at risk), and urgency (someone always on our hero’s tail). This script has…well, none of that really. Or at least, it doesn’t have it for awhile. This is such a weird story, I feel like I need a map to explain my reaction to it.

I’ll start off by paying it a weird compliment. I don’t think I’ve ever liked a script this much where nothing happened for so long. I mean no plot emerges in this script for forever. And yet it still managed to reel me in.

“Origin” introduces us to 36 year old Bonnie and 16 year old Dan. They’re out swimming in the middle of nowhere and we’re not sure what the connection between them is but we sense that their relationship isn’t on the up and up.

Afterwards we meet Jim, Bonnie’s husband, a former cop who lost his leg in the line of duty. These days, he collects disability while running a private K-9 drug-sniffing business. But he spends most of his time dealing with annoying Larry Givens, his elderly next door neighbor who insists, at every opportunity, that Jim’s fence is on his property.

We also end up learning where Bonnie and Dan met. At school! As in, she’s his teacher. So we meet all these characters, get a feel for their situations, and then the script sort of drifts out to sea for awhile. But somehow it drifts in a good way. Whenever you have a secret dominating your plot (Bonnie and Dan’s relationship), the audience subconsciously wants to stick around until that secret comes out. We want to be there when this affair gets revealed.

Finally, a plot starts kicking in. Jim’s drug dogs start acting strange. They start missing drugs they usually sniff out and they’re not as responsive as they usually are. Earlier in the script we learned of a rabies outbreak sweeping the territory. It looks like Jim’s dogs have caught it. But before anyone realizes this, the dogs escape, and that’s when everything changes.

The cops find a young boy mauled to death. Later, Jim finds his neighbor, Larry, chewed to a pulp, along with a horrifying secret inside his home. And the dogs are getting worse. They’re roaming around town, looking for anything to sink their teeth into. In the end, they’ll find our inappropriate duo of Bonnie and Dan. Will they make them their last supper? Or will Jim stop them before they do?

Holy Schnikes. This script was *different*. Like I said, there’s no true narrative to speak of here. The plot doesn’t kick in for awhile. When urgency does arrive in the story (they have to stop the dogs before they kill more people), it’s so random (rabies-infested dogs don’t target specific people) that it’s hard to worry. I mean yeah they do end up going after people we know, but it’s all by coincidence. They could’ve just as easily continued killing randoms.

So then why the hell did I like this thing? Well, let’s start with the conflict. Gossett has an amazing ability to find the conflict in every situation and exploit the shit out of it. This is so important in a script like this because there isn’t much holding the story together. So if the scenes aren’t interesting – if they aren’t conflict-filled – we’ll become bored easily. Since there’s always conflict present, however, it distracts us from the fact that there’s no story to speak of.

There’s an early scene in a scrap yard, for example, when Jim is looking for his dog (this is before the dogs have gone nuts). He all of a sudden spots the junked cop car he totaled his leg in. Spooked but intrigued, he sits down in it. That’s when he hears his dog and tries to get out. But his pants get stuck on a metal divot. So he’s trying to rip his pants away so he can get his dog before she disappears again, but he can’t. He can’t get out.

And it’s the simplest scene. A guy trying to get out of a car. And yet it’s really good because it utilizes the full gamut of GSU. Goal – get his dog. Stakes – his dog being lost. Urgency – if he doesn’t get out soon she’ll disappear. Throw in some conflict (his leg gets stuck) and you have yourself a scene. I was amazed at how much drama Gossett could milk out of these tiny little moments.

This script reminded me A LOT of When The Streetlights Go On actually. There’s just a mood and tone here that permeates throughout every page. There’s a sense of foreboding. I wouldn’t say the writing is as good as Streetlights (those writers could paint a scene like no other) but boy does Gossett know how to build tension and ambiance. I mean there’s this random insignificant scene where Bonnie has to put the dogs away and gets caught behind them in the doghouse. They’re all just looking at her. And for a brief moment, we realize that she could actually die here. It was freaky man. I guess I was just constantly amazed at how Gossett could do so much with so little.

The thing is, I can’t really argue with people who hate this script. And there seem to be many. I mean, like I pointed out, it doesn’t have any of the key ingredients that make a story go (GSU). Instead it uses less obvious story engines (suspense, curiosity, dramatic irony). But that’s what’s so impressive. Anybody who’s read a ton of scripts can tell you, coming up with a story that works without using those big engines is one of the hardest things to do. Shit, it’s hard to write a good story when you DO use GSU. So I have an immense amount of respect for any writer who’s able to pull off what Gossett did here.

On the technical side, it looks like there’s two versions of this script floating around. There’s the 8th draft and then there’s this one, the 1st draft. People who have hated the script have been mentioning the 8th draft. I’m wondering if the 8th draft is the last draft in a long attempt to turn this into a traditional narrative? I think that would be a huge mistake. The whole charm of this story is that it’s so weirdly constructed. You’re unsure of where it’s going next and if you try and structure that, the script loses that X-factor that makes it unique.

You know what I just realized this reminded me of? A Haruki Murakami novel. The narrative’s loose but there’s a lot of weird interesting shit going on to keep you engaged. So if you like Murakami, you’re definitely going to like “Origin.” If they could get “The Ice Storm” Ang Lee to direct this. Or Atom Egoyan? It could become an indie classic. Hey, I know I hated Ben Franklin. But I have to give it to Amazon. They absolutely picked the right winner. This is impressive stuff!

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Order of information – Be aware that the order in which you reveal information in your story has a HUGE impact on the how the reader emotionally processes it. By moving just a few scenes around, you can create a completely different reaction. In “Origin,” we start out with Bonnie and Dan. We don’t know much about these two, but we know their relationship isn’t appropriate. This rouses our curiosity. How did these two meet? How do they know each other? How did this come about? A little while later, we get a classroom scene and realize Bonnie is Dan’s teacher. Oh! That’s how they met. In class. Consider if we would’ve changed the order of these scenes. If we start with Bonnie and Dan in class first, you lose the lingering curiosity of “How did this come about?” You also start with a boring scene that means nothing to us at the time as opposed to an interesting one, which gets us thinking. I’m not saying you should never reverse the order of these scenes. There are some story situations where you want an affair between two people to be a surprise. But just make sure you’re thinking about your scene placement. You always want to order things in a way to maximize the story impact.

What I learned 2: That even the tiniest scenes can be really good with a cleverly introduced element of conflict. The “getting stuck in car” scene and the “Bonnie trapped by the dogs” scene were perfect examples of this.