Expulsion

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: When terrorists detonate the biggest bomb ever built, a group of survivors find themselves in an impossible-to-imagine scenario.
About: This spec was just purchased by Warner Brothers, whose unexpected buying spree continues. The writer, Gregg Hurwitz, is first and foremost a novelist, who’s written a couple of novels that have been optioned, including They’re Watching, about a writer who receives some strange DVDs showing video footage of him in intimate situations. His most recent novel is “Trust No One,” about a terrorist threatening to blow up a nuclear power plant. Hurwitz is also a consulting producer on ABC’s “V.” This is his first spec sale.
Writer: Gregg Hurwitz
Details: 121 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).

I have never read anything like Expulsion.

Let me repeat that. I have never read anything like Expulsion.

Why is this important? Well, because when you read scripts non-stop, almost everything you read is something you’ve read before. So when something comes along that doesn’t feel like all the other scripts, you sit up and take notice.

Now let me clarify this. Expulsion is a disaster movie mixed with a Star Trek episode. It’s not unique in the way Memento is unique. But some of these scenes, some of the things that happen “onscreen” are things you’ve never seen on a movie screen before.

I remember first arriving in Los Angeles and lucking out with a meeting for a really terrible script I’d written. I’d bullshitted my way past some dumb people and gotten the script into the hands of a big agent, someone I had no business meeting with. It was the moment I realized you can trick some people, but you can’t trick the true professionals. Indeed, this gentleman told me straight up, your script is horrible. He then proceeded to tell me that in order to separate myself from the glut of screenplays that land in agents and producers hands every day, you have to give the audience something they’ve never seen before. You had to give them a dinosaur theme park before there was Jurassic Park. You had to give them live-action anime before there was The Matrix.

I didn’t really understand what he was talking about since 99% of the movies I saw getting advertised were exactly the same as everything else I’d ever seen at the movies. Now it’s taken me a long time to understand why all the derivative stuff gets made and how that’s not really a part of the spec game, but I’ve finally realized he was right. If you want a legitimate chance at getting noticed, you gotta give’em something they’ve never seen before.

While Expulsion doesn’t keep that rule going for the entire script, the holy-shit-what-the-hell-just-happened first act may just make up for it.

Expulsion starts out like any disaster movie. It’s 2015 and a couple of suspicious middle-eastern men walk into a random skyscraper with a strange device, turn it on, and the building collapses in on itself, imploding into nothingness, killing everyone inside.

The president’s cabinet is then informed that there are more of these imploding bombs set to go off soon. The president’s play is a tough one since the attackers are rogue, but eventually he decides to neutron bomb the countries that are sponsoring this terrorist activity to send a message.

This only pisses off the terrorists more though (surprise surprise), and a group of them is somehow able to steal the largest bomb America’s ever created, a bomb so powerful that there is no way to measure it’s potential destruction. Well, they detonate the bomb and we find out.

Thus begins the most insane fucking sequence you will ever see onscreen. If any of you have seen the movie 2012, this makes the destruction of that film look like a bunch of ping pong balls bouncing around on mouse traps. No, that is not hyperbole.

I don’t even know if I can describe what I read but basically, the earth’s crust gets ripped from its core, as if you were tearing the felt off a tennis ball. The bomb is so powerful that it demagnetizes the entire solar system, causing space time to no longer exist. The moon gets shot INTO THE SUN within a matter of seconds. The president and a small number of others are able to get underground into a special de-magnetized bunker. This bunker, along with the rest of North America, are shot out into space. I believe North America crashes into Mars. Somehow, this bunker continues on though, slicing through the rings of Saturn, then shooting out into unknown space and out of the solar system, until it finally crash lands on a mystery planet.

Yes, you read that part correctly. North America crashes into Mars.

After recovering from this sequence of events (I’m talking about myself of course, not the characters), we’re left with a team of survivors led by a president unsure of his leading ability, who must now figure out where they are and what to do next. The story becomes a cross between Pitch Black and Land Of The Lost (the TV show) with a little original Star Trek (the TV show) thrown in for good measure. The planet itself is extremely hostile, with all sorts of weird creatures, and even though there’s a couple dozen survivors, we realize pretty quickly that only a few people are going to make it out of this alive.

I don’t even know where to start with this one. I guess we’ll focus on the male anatomy. Specially, balls. And what kind it takes to rip your characters off an exploding planet earth and have them land on a random planet 8 quadrillion miles away. The event is so beyond what any character in any movie has ever had to deal with before, it almost makes it impossible to tell a story. I mean there’s human fortitude when your plane crash lands on an island. There’s human fortitude when a tsunami wipes out your city. Then there’s your planet blowing up and you somehow crash landing on a planet in another solar system. How do you reconcile moving forward after that one?

I don’t know about you but I’d need at least 48 hours sitting on the ground, staring at a rock, saying to myself, “Did what just happen really just happen?” You have to remember, all this happens within MINUTES! And yet, this is exactly why I kept turning the pages. This is the kind of thing writing should do. It should make you think. It should make you wonder. What would I do if I were in that situation?

Unfortunately, when the script moves onto the new planet, it begins to feel a little too familiar – and even worse, it feels kind of like a Star Trek TV episode. We’re still thinking about the crazy shit that just happened, yet now we’re having to focus on huge lizard birds. The exploration of the planet has a very “At The Mountains Of Madness” feel to it, but Mountains had a slow build up to its location, making the location the star. In Expulsion, the location never quite lives up to what came before it.

I liked that Hurwitz attempted some character exploration here, but again, it’s kind of like, who cares about whatever middling problems you had back on earth when the earth’s crust has just been ripped from its core like an orange peel and you’ve been shot into the Buttfuck, Iowa of solar systems. It’s almost like the situation is too big for the characters to exist in. Even as I contemplated summarizing the characters, I realized, “Is it really worth it?” They're like ants compared to the grandiosity of this situation.

I’m not really sure what to do with this one. All I can say is kudos to the author for creating the single greatest destruction sequence of all time. But the stuff on the planet has to live up to the opening act. Right now it feels like a television episode and the characters themselves are too cartoonish. Again, this might be because, relatively speaking, the opening sequence will cast a shadow on anything that happens afterwards, disallowing for any sort of reality to emerge. But for this to work, the last three-quarters have to be elevated to the highest level possible or this will always be perceived as uneven.

So a ton of work needs to be done here.  But this is worth the read for the first act alone.

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

What I learned: This is a nice reminder to always ask yourself before you start writing, “Has this idea been done before?” But don’t stop there. When you come upon a scene, ask yourself “Has this scene been done before?” When you come across a character, ask yourself, “Has this character been done before?” Sometimes the answer will be yes and you’ll write that character or that scene anyway because it’s right for the movie. But the more elements you give the reader that are unfamiliar, the more original your script will be. You can always ignore this advice and take a time-tested idea and try to execute it perfectly, which *is* possible. It’s just a lot harder.

Buttercup

Genre: Indie Drama/Dark ComedyPremise: A woman is forced to help her aging "ladies man" father get his life back together after a drunk-driving arrest.
About: Buttercup will be directed by Niki Caro, the writer-director of one of my favorite movies from 2002, Whale Rider. It is written by newcomer Alice O’Neil, of whom this will be her first produced credit. The project is set to star Jennifer Aniston and indie-film mainstay Alan Arkin.
Writer: Alice O’Neil
Details: 114 pages – 2/12/09 Draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

I don’t know why I’m so fascinated with Jennifer Aniston’s career but I am. I think her being hot is part of it. But also the fact that here’s this woman with all the money in the world, who’s beautiful and smart and funny, and yet it is and will always be impossible for her to find a man. Your dating “level” when you’re that high profile includes like 4 guys, and you already lost one of them to Angelina Jolie. Ah yes, Scriptshadow, sponsored in part by Us Weekly.  But seriously, they should make a movie about that. An actress who has it all but has no chance at finding a husband because her lifestyle is too big.

Anyway, Aniston will next hop into the role of Rosemary Boyle, a confused 30-something woman still trying to figure out her life. She doesn’t know what she wants to do. She doesn’t know who she wants to be. She has an artist boyfriend who she’s considering moving in with, yet also has phone sex with her boss every evening. It’s not clear what Rosemary gets out of either relationship, but the point is, this woman’s having a hard time getting it together.

However, Buttercup is less about these issues and more about her relationship with her father, 73 year old Mike Boyle. Mike was Axe Body Spray before there was Axe Body Spray, the kind of guy who could get laid off a wink and a smile. So far be it from him to let some silly 30 year marriage get in the way of this Wilt Chamberlin like lifestyle. Mike tallied up more women than some small countries and even now, at 73 years old, he’s still looking for the next big score.

Poor Rosemary was too taken by her father’s charm to notice this when she was younger, but now that her mom’s dead, she’s finally come to terms with the reality of the situation: her dad is a fuck-up. At 73, Mike still hasn’t grown up. And if you ask him, it’s because he never planned on living this long in the first place. Mike is living hand-to-mouth, using the little money he does make to drink and pick up girls at the bar.

So it probably isn’t a surprise that one night, after pulling a Jerry Buss and landing a pair of 21 year olds, Mike crashes into a tree. He and the girls are fine, but the judge, who sees Mike more than her own children, has finally had enough of him. The only way she’s not throwing him in jail is if she takes away his car privileges and Rosemary agrees to take care of him. If he gets in trouble, not only will he be fucked, but Rosemary will as well.

Rosemary uses this as an excuse to avoid her own problems (her boyfriend wanting to move in) and starts hanging out with her father more, who of course doesn’t believe he needs help. And all of this is complicated by the fact that in the end, Rosemary just wants her father’s attention, his love. And how do you ask for that love when you’ve been officially designated to keep your father in line.

I started this review out with way too much estrogen so I’m going to emit some testosterone for a second to even it out. There was a famous Monday Night Football game back in 2006 where the heavily favored Chicago Bears eeked out a win against the sacrificial lamb Arizona Cardinals. Afterwards, the slighted Cardinals coach, who clearly was upset about being picked to lose by 50 points, screamed out, “The Bears are who we thought they were!!!”

The Chrernobyl worthy meltdown led to the team’s self-destruction but that’s a conversation for another day. The point is, Buttercup is exactly what you think it is. It’s a slow slice-of-a-fucked-up-life indie flick that isn’t trying to be remarkable. It just wants to exist. It wants to explore that awkward time in the life cycle when the kids start becoming the parents and all the weirdness that comes along with that.

Does it succeed in making that story entertaining? I’d say for the most part, yes. Mike is definitely a fun character and there are parts of the script that keep the pages turning, such as Rosemary’s inappropriate relationship with a priest.

But the big problem I had with Buttercup is the character of Rosemary herself. I never really understood who she was. There seems to be this great opportunity to explore her father’s “player” lifestyle and how it’s affected the way Rosemary sees relationships. She has a “perfect” boyfriend, yet she has a phone-sex relationship with her boss, yet she starts trying to bang a priest. So the opportunity is there to show how her father's lack of commitment has doomed her to the same fate. Yet all three of these relationships feel incidental, as if they’re simply there to spice things up, ignoring a possible connection with her dad even though that might be more interesting. 

One of the hardest things to do in a script is create a complicated character.  The way films are designed, there isn't a lot of time to get too in depth with a character.  Most of the time, we really only have the opportunity to explore that one "fatal flaw" a character may have and see if we can't resolve it by the end of the film.  If you create too many competing characteristics, sure, you've created a complex character, but in the process you may have confused your audience as to who that character is.  I felt a little of that going on here. Rosemary has so many different things going on that I was never able to identify her defining traits – the things that locked down who she was as a person. Was she a player like her father who could never settle down? Was she having a mid-life crisis? Was she someone who had a problem making decisions?

One of the things I loved about Everything Must Go is you knew who the main character was right away. He was a recovering alcoholic who lost his job, his wife, and his house. We know exactly where he is and where he needs to go to fix himself. But here, I kept asking, Who is Rosemary? What is it we’re supposed to be getting from her?

I also thought O’Neil could’ve forced the issue to create more conflict. In the solid “Smart People,” when Dennis Quaid’s uptight character becomes immobile, he’s forced to ask his deadbeat brother Thomas Hayden Church to move in and help with the responsibilities. Because Quaid is so dependent, he has no choice but to let Church, whom he’d otherwise never trust, help. That creates a great amount of conflict within the living situation.

Here, we’re told by the judge that Rosemary has to take care of her father, specifically his driving duties. But almost immediately, we realize she doesn’t have to do this. Mike still drives his own car, ignoring the court order. And Mike continues to live his own life, with Rosemary popping in occasionally for an awkward conversation or two. Although the court-appointed order may have a sitcomish feel if it’s executed too literally, I felt that if you’re going to do it, let’s commit all the way. Move Rosemary into the house. Make it so she doesn’t allow Mike to drive, that she doesn’t allow Mike to do the things he’s used to doing. Create that conflict that’s going to force these two characters to address the issues they’ve been ignoring for the past 30 years.

Despite these problems, I thought there was enough here to make it worth the read. There are some funny moments (my favorite is when a drunk Rosemary goes to the seminary at night and starts throwing rocks at the priest’s window), Mike is a solid character, and I think it has some nice things to say about arrested development and making yourself accountable for your actions. I was just looking for more conflict, more of a commitment to the plot.

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

What I learned: Use your protagonist’s job to tell us who she/he is. One thing I didn’t dig here was that we’re not really sure what Rosemary’s job is until late in the story, and this contributed to the reason I couldn’t get a feel for her character. Jobs are one of the easiest ways to tell us who a character is. If your character is an accountant, that might tell us they’re analytical and boring. If they’re a producer, that might tell us they’re a Type-A personality. If they’re a tattoo artist, that might tell us they’re rebellious and/or laid back. Create your character’s job with the intent of telling us who your character is.

Shrapnel

Genre: Thriller
Premise: Two war veterans play a deadly game of cat and mouse up in the mountain wilderness.
About: This is the project John McTiernan, director of Die Hard and Predator, signed onto right before he started his year stint in jail for lying to the Feds over wiretapping. The script has actually been around for a while, making the 2008 Black List, and the writer may be familiar to you, since I just reviewed his 1.5 million dollar supersale of “Snow White And The Huntsman” a couple of weeks ago. As I mentioned in that post, this is the script that won the 2008 Script Pimp Screenwriting Contest. After the win, Evan was contacted by several managers and ultimately signed with Energy Entertainment. He moved to LA and a few months later he met with some agents, finally signing with UTA.  Daugherty went to NYU Film School and had written 9 screenplays before he broke through with Shrapnel.
Writer: Evan Daugherty
Details: 91 pages, 10-3-08 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).

Your script length is what it is. If you’re telling a sprawling epic over six time periods, it’s going to be long. If you’re telling a thriller about a man stuck in a coffin, it’s going to be short. But as a gentle reminder, nobody has time in Hollywood. Or at least the people who matter don’t. So when they stare down a 130 page behemoth, they already hate you. They hate you for making them say they’d read a script that’s going to take 130 minutes out of a schedule that's already requiring them to work 2 hours longer than they or their family want them to that day.

Now I’m no Hollywood producer, but Friday I had a million things going on, so there was no way in hell I was picking a script that was taking two hours. I needed something in the 90 minute range. When I saw Shrapnel at 92 pages, I said, “Perfect.” I’m not trying to start another page length debate here. Brigands of Rattleborge is humongous (which it should be) and it’s number 3 on my Top 25 list. All I’m saying is, keep in mind who your audience is – people who are constantly in a hurry. You want to make their experience as enjoyable as possible.

Anyway, Shrapnel is a simple story in the vein of Deliverance or The Most Dangerous Game. It’s the 70s, around the time of the Vietnam War, and an out of shape 50 year old World War II veteran named Ford has decided to live the rest of his life in the wilderness, free of society, free of complications or relationships. This man has paid his dues. Now he just wants to be left alone.

His only inconvenience is the shooting pain up the side of his leg that comes around every so often, the result of some wayward shrapnel from back in the war. It slows Ford down but it never stops him.

One day, while driving through the winding mountain roads, Ford’s car breaks down. It just so happens that a man is passing by at the time. He’s ragged, late 40s, talky but for the most part unremarkable. We’ll get to know him as Osterman. Osterman helps Ford fix his car which leads to Ford inviting him to his cabin to wait out the approaching storm.

The two get to talking and Osterman encourages Ford to join him for some hunting the next day. Ford’s reluctant but Osterman seems like good company and it’s not like Ford’s planner is bursting with activity. It’s pretty easy to cancel “Stare at plants for an hour.”

So off the two go, splitting up at one point, staying in contact via walkie-talkie, innocently concocting a strategy, when all of a sudden Osterman starts blurting out random German, his cordial friendly tone ditched for a sinister-as-shit one. It doesn’t take us or Ford long to realize that Osterman didn’t come here to hunt animals.

He came here to hunt Ford.

And so begins a mano-a-mano duel in which Ford tries to escape Osterman, whose relentless pursuit indicates that there is something personal going on here, something that goes back way before two guys meeting on the side of a mountain. So when these two men clash, when they twist and turn and squirm and try and take the life from one another, a troubling secret will be revealed that ties it all together in the end.

Shrapnel is one of those simple concepts that, if done right, can be really good. But with only two characters, it’s hard to stretch these puppies out to feature length. They usually require a handful of things to make them work.

The first is the surprises or twists in the film. If you have a large cast of characters in your script, when things slow down in one storyline, you can always jump to another one. Can’t do that here. These are the only characters you’ve got. So when things get slow or when it starts to feel like not much has happened in a while, you need to throw in a surprise or a twist to spice things up again.

In this case, during one scuffle, Ford notices a permanent scarred “O” on the back of Osterman’s neck. His reaction tells us he knows what this “O” means. This seems to change Ford’s assessment of the situation. We’re not exactly sure why, but we know that at some point we’re going to find out. So this little “twist,” this little “surprise” spices the screenplay up at a moment where it was getting repetitive. I mean what are we going to do, watch these men battle for 70 straight minutes? You need to break up the monotony somehow.

Next, it’s really important to change the dynamic of the situation at least once in the script. Again, because the plot is so simple, it’s easy to get bored. So at some point, Ford turns the tables and gains the upper hand on Osterman. Ford is the hunter and Osterman is the hunted.

Finally, the ending has to be really satisfying in these flicks. Remember, you’re not giving us a whole lot to work with here. The plot is merely one man versus another. So you want to make the journey worth it. You want to reveal something at the end that makes us reevaluate everything we just watched. Indeed, there’s a specific reason Osterman is hunting Ford, and that reason comes out in the end. Is it a good reason? Well, it wasn’t bad. I mean it didn’t knock my socks off or anything but I thought it was strong. Regardless, I liked the attempt at the ending. The writer took a chance and came up with something unexpected and interesting.

I also thought the theme was strong here. We’re exploring the atrocities of war and how they affect the soldiers of that war, no matter what the time period. What happens to soldiers, people trained to kill, when they’re thrown back into a society that sees killing as the ultimate atrocity? It’s obviously going to fuck with your mind. And the ones who adapt without a hitch are probably the ones you need to worry about the most. I thought Shrapnel tackled that subject matter well.

Shrapnel isn’t a world-beater but it’s a solid script. I liked it much better than a similar script that got a ton of pub a couple of years ago titled “Villain.” Let’s hope that the Los Angeles Correctional Institution allows for some pre-production offices in its cells so McTiernan can set this thing up faster than a wiretap.

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

What I learned: World War 2 is the single most mined real-world event in the history of movies. Which is fine. It’s one of the most important events of our planet. But when you start making World War 2 movies about a guy and his piano…I think it’s time to admit that the well is dry. I didn’t mind the World War 2 connection in Shrapnel because it was more of a backdrop and not a piece of the present-day storyline. So I’ll just say this. If you’re going to explore World War 2 in your story, make sure you have a unique angle that’s never been used before. “Life is Beautiful” is a perfect example. A comedy set in World War 2? In a concentration camp no less? I still remember hearing that idea and thinking, “Man, I have to see that. I’ve never heard of a story like it before.” This goes back to the same principal I was harping on with Memento. Take a concept, a genre, an idea, and turn it on its head.
*

Green Arrow: Escape from Supermax

 Man, to prove how ignorant I am about comic books, I have no idea what the difference is between Green Arrow, Green Hornet, and Green Lantern.  There was a time when I believed they were all the same character.  And I'm still not sure that they aren't.  All I can tell you is that, of the three, this is apparently the only one not in active development, which is surprising, as almost everyone who's read the script has told me it's great.  As for the rest of the week, we have a Ben Stiller flick, a duel that dates back to Nazi days, and possibly the craziest freaking script I've read all year.  I'm not going to say it's crazy good, but there are scenes in this script that you have never read before nor will you ever read again.  I can guarantee you that.  I'll save that one for Friday.  Right now, here's Roger with Green Lantern.  I mean Green Hornet.  I mean Green Arrow!  I think. Who's on first?

Genre: Crime/Superhero/Heist

Premise: When the vigilante known as Green Arrow is framed for murder, he’s imprisoned in the Supermax Penitentiary for Metahumans, where he must team-up with the super criminals he once captured if he wants to escape and clear his name.

About: Justin Marks is the scribe responsible for drafts of Voltron, Grayskull: The Masters of the Universe, Hack/Slash and was the writer working on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for Warner Bros. and director McG. He’s also written for videogames, contributing some levels to the Electronic Arts sequel to Army of Two, The 40th Day. He originally wrote Green Arrow: Escape from Super Max as a spec, an original idea he developed under the guidance of David S. Goyer and his wife, producer Jessika Goyer.

Writer: Justin Marks

Details: Draft dated March 5, 2008

I’ve never read one Green Arrow comic in my life. 

My only exposure to the Green Arrow is limited to the appearance of the character in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and the CW’s Smallville. I’m more of a Marvel guy than a DC guy, and I am in no way familiar with the B and C-list villains of the DC Universe (although some are criminal analogues of super-powered characters in the Marvel U) who inhabit the prison of Green Arrow: Escape From Supermax.

But, what I discovered, is that I didn’t have to be a fan to be sucked into its story. 

It’s a superhero tale that eschews the origin story template for an ironic logline: Masked vigilante is arrested and thrown into a prison designed to contain super-powered criminals and he must team up with the bad guys he put here to escape. You have to admit, we’ve never seen a superhero movie quite like that before.

At all. 

If you’re a fanboy or girl, it’s hard not to be intrigued by the scribe, Justin Marks, who has penned the script adaptations for some major 80s cartoons and toy-lines. From Voltron to Grayskull: The Masters of the Universe, he’s the guy that got a lot of Internet buzz for being attached to such geek-friendly projects but was crucified by angry talk-backers when Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li was released (which contains an inscrutable performance by Chris Klein). But, in Hollywood, the reality of a writer’s job is different than the naivette that can characterize online screenwriting forums. You take an assignment, you turn in a draft, and then everything else is outta your hands. The movie in the can may not honor the vision that was on the page, and suddenly, on the film websites, you become that guy. 

For anyone who has ever negatively criticized Marks for his craft, you haven’t read this take on the Green Arrow.

Because he absolutely nails it with this script. 

I haven’t read the Green Arrow either, Rog. Who is he? 

We’re introduced to Oliver Queen by his lawyer and childhood best friend, Will Hackett, at a high society dinner in honor of all the social work he’s done. He’s a trust fund kid that was known for falling off a yacht in the Caribbean ocean and disappearing for three years until he returned to society a changed man. A billionaire industrialist, he’s compared to a modern day Robin Hood for Queen Industries’ efforts in battling organized crime and corporate fraud.

This speech is intercut with the introduction and murder of Col. Taleb Beni Khali, the five star officer in charge of the controversial Checkmate Initiative, a government operation concerned with safeguarding the public from masked vigilantes, “Those who don the mask and cape should not be permitted to call themselves enforcers of the law.” A high-tech cowled archer is attacking Checkmate HQ, and successfully makes it through Khali’s bodyguards to assassinate him. 

Queen, about to give his big philanderer speech, is listening to police band radio when he decides to ditch the high society function and go fight some crime. Armed with his toys (zip lines, badass bow, trick arrows and wrist-mounted crossbows) and wearing his classy Robin Hood-esque ass-kicking suit, he stealthily investigates Checkmate HQ and discovers the body of the Colonel.

Right as a SWAT TEAM discovers him, hovering over the body. 

There’s a cool action sequence where we see the Green Arrow in action. It’s a chase that leads to the rooftops, where he’s ultimately captured by the Police Chief. 

Why this is a great ten pages: First off, everything we need to know about the character is established. Not only that, but the main conflict and mystery is set up. We’re introduced to Marcus Cross, the manipulative CEO whose motive for framing Queen is part of the very hostile takeover of his company. And, it’s done so in a very clever way. We see the Green Arrow in action, but initially, it’s not him. We’re introduced to his abilities and modus operandi by a very capable imposter. It’s just not your average introduction of a hero.

So the Green Arrow has been outed as Oliver Queen and he’s been set-up by Marcus Cross? 

I’m not giving away anything here, as we know Cross is the main antagonist from page one. Or, is he? 

Certainly, he wants to takeover Queen Industries, but it turns out he has friends in very high places and part of the fun in the script is discovering who he’s working with. 

Of course, the trial of Queen is a fiasco. While the city’s district attorneys have been anxious to capture the vigilante for a while now, and while the law enforcement may not take a shining to the idea of some masked archer stealing their thunder (sore that the Green Arrow does a better job than them), the citizens of Star City love the guy. He protects the people that live in the slums. He is their symbol of justice. This presents a problem for the Judge in charge of the case, as he’s in league with Cross and he can’t exactly sentence the guy to death. And, they can’t hold a renowned escape artist in a normal prison. 

So, where do they send him?

Cross, indeed, has some friends in very high places, and he convinces the Judge to surrender Queen to the Checkmate Initiative so he can suffer a fate worse than death. 

Which is the Supermax Penitentiary for Metahumans. 

That just sounds kind of fucked up, doesn’t it? Queen, while certainly resourceful and clever, isn’t exactly a super human. He may have super marksmanship, but when you get down to it, he’s a human being that has to rely on his natural talents and gifts. The situation is that this normal guy is being incarcerated in a place that houses people who can manipulate the elements and the environs around them with their minds, who can teleport or are super strong or can shoot bolts of electricity out of their hands. 

And many of them?

They’re imprisoned because of the Green Arrow. 

Things ain’t looking too bright for Ollie Queen, and the rest of the script is about Queen trying to survive super-criminal prison life while trying to figure out a way to escape so he can clear his name and take down Cross. There are a couple questions in our minds. Will the angry villains holed up in here eat Queen for breakfast? And, will Queen even still want to escape after the warden and guards break his will and shatter his sanity and destroy his hope? 

How is Supermax different from other prisons?

In an interview with MTV, Marks has said, “I majored in architecture in college, and design is actually how I started in...designing that prison, it had to be the kind of thing that was a character in and of itself. We’re in a world where instead of just trying to contain a guy who’s really big, you’re trying to contain a guy, in the case of Icicle, who can freeze things. What kind of a cell would a guy like that need in order to have his powers neutralized? So to escape from Super Max they have to go through the most elaborate heist we’ve ever seen, involving superpowers. Because the prison itself kind of has superpowers!”

And, I have to say, the guy isn’t exaggerating. 

I don’t know if it’s the most elaborate hest I’ve ever read, but it’s certainly clever and fun and full of obstacles and twists and double-crosses. For those of you that complain the heists in Nolan’s The Dark Knight are all payoff and no set-up, you might not be disappointed in the approach Marks takes in this escape adventure. 

The formula for writing a good heist: Define the lay of the land and the players and the problem, then show these characters as they gather all the intel and devices and tools they need so they can go about solving the problem; and when it comes time for the actual heist, have many things go wrong so you can show the characters thinking on the fly. Solutions shouldn’t be pat, but should be set up earlier in the story so they don’t feel like they’re coming out of left field. 

The key here is showing versus telling. During the set-up, we need to see the problem. We need to get the general gist of the plan, have a broad feel for it. But, when it comes time for the heist to unravel, it still needs to be full of surprises. It’s a tricky balancing act.

But, what can you tell us about Super Max?

Ollie is transported to the prison and is implanted with a computer chip called a Parallax Device. He’s renamed to prisoner 9242 and the warden is Amanda Waller (who I’m told is the leader of the Suicide Squad), and she shows him that should he misbehave, she can render his body useless and send him into a world of pain by with the push of a button. The Parallax Device also acts as a tracking beacon, as the entire prison is monitored with video and audio and cutting edge surveillance technology. It’s insane voyeurism.

Sure, each cell is equipped specifically to deal with a criminal’s powers. For example, Cameron Mahkent, also known as Icicle, is kept in a glass cell that is kept at high heat to neutralize his powers. The prisoners are categorized by their level of threat. Green suits are mortals and Queen learns there aren’t many of him in here. Blue suits are geniuses who are doped up on a counter-balance that keeps them dumb and drooling (Lex Luthor cameo). Orange suits are the metahumans, the guys with the powers. 

To really complicate matters, the prison layout is reconfigured and rearranged every night, “a giant hydraulic calculus of dancing lights, where each light is another prison cell, dangling from hundreds of giant mechanical claws, moving the cells in concentric circles, spinning them into new locations...”

How the hell can you even begin to try and escape out of something like that?

Queen is thrown into solitary confinement for six weeks due to some misbehavior (perhaps holding his own against superpowered freaks in the cafeteria), and it’s in here that he begins to lose hope. 

But, it’s also in here that he makes a friend. 

There’s another prisoner named Hartley Rathaway, the Pied Piper, who can control all creatures that can be manipulated by high sonic frequencies. He’s interested in escaping, and he forms a friendship with Queen by communicating through him with ants. He helps restore the man’s hope and purpose, “The Green Arrow is dead, but he can be reborn. He is the only man who can show the world that cages like this should never exist.”

And, from there, we’re on. 

They begin recruiting a team and formulating their plan, and it’s always interesting because most of the team members hate Queen. What I really like about the script is that we get quick flashes of their history with Queen, and we also get enough characterization to make us care about them. Many of them have an emotional reason for escaping this prison, and like any good men-on-a-mission journey, not all of them make it. And, it effects you when these guys bite the dust. 

I also liked how the imposter that framed Queen is sent into the prison (thanks to corruption and double-dealers) to assassinate him. It’s a visceral and bloody prison fight with two guys who have a long history together. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a prison fight that incorporates a bow constructed from items you can find in such an environment. And, man, the third act has a great snow chase that is both grueling and emotional.

It’s also interesting because much of the conflict is generated from Queen having to work together with criminals, and when he actually begins to see that some are not horrible people, just men and women that have made mistakes and want redemption, it’s hard not to root for everyone involved. 

In the end, Green Arrow: Escape from Super Max is a unique mash-up of the superhero tale and heist film. Sure, we get the origin story, but it’s not the focus here. This is a creative take on a beloved DC comicbook hero that isn’t exactly the most well-known, and the solution is to set this character inside a prison break movie populated with a who’s who of secondary villains and characters. Not only is it full of twists and surprises, but it has a lot of heart. It really is a pulp masterpiece of sorts, and it’s a story that can be portrayed through multiple media outlets: It’d be a kick-ass movie, graphic novel and videogame. Seriously, this needs to be on the fast track to production! 

[ ] What the hell did I just read?

[ ] wasn’t for me

[ ] worth the read

[x] impressive

[ ] genius

What I learned: The obstacles the protagonist has to overcome in this script are insane. Not only is our protag a hero that’s imprisoned with guys who hate him, they have super powers and he doesn’t. He has friends that turn out to not really be friends. You never know who is going to betray him next. And, you never know what villain is going to turn out to be a friend. Lots of contradictions and subversions of expectation. It’s like a game, trying to figure out who he can trust and who he can’t trust. Not only is breaking out of this super prison an impossible task, when the plan is executed, seemingly everything goes wrong. In this script, nothing is ever too easy. Instead, everything seems too hard. As such, you never know how Queen is going to win. The solutions don’t seem pat, but logical, and everything is set up accordingly. David Mamet says that our, job, as dramatists, is simply to keep the audience wondering, “What happens next.” You want to keep a reader wondering what happens next? Make them care about a character, then present that character with a problem that seems impossible to overcome.

Screenwriting Book Review - Tales From The Script

The other day I posted my “favorite books” list and in the comments section a few people mentioned Tales From The Script as a must read. Hey, if you were laying down a challenge, why didn’t you just say so? Actually, I’ve heard about “Tales” from a handful of writers over the years and your ringing endorsement put me over the edge. I decided to delve in. And man I wish I would've found this earlier.

Basically what “Tales” is, is a series of interviews with 50 working screenwriters broken down into individual topics. So one chapter might be about breaking into the industry. Another chapter might be about the development process. Still another about the pitfalls to watch out for.  It’s just a bunch of insider stuff and the greatest thing about it is the sheer quantity of quality advice.  That's because the writers giving it to you are top notch. You have titans like William Goldman and Frank Darabont. And you have proven superstars who demand million dollar paychecks like Ron Shelton and Shane Black.

Another feature I liked about the book were the interviews with the industry people who surround the writers.  So you have an agent discussing the ratio of scripts read per scripts sent to screen or a professional reader discussing the dos and don’ts of script presentation.  You have Greg Beal, the coordinator over at Nicholl, talking about what he tells the contest readers to look for. It’s just really comprehensive stuff.

There are a ton of great observations and a lot of sound advice, but here are some of my favorites. Adam Rifkin, a writer with over a dozen produced credits, says about the pursuit, “You’re a boxer. Your job is to get punched in the face and keep swingin. It’s easy for anybody to say, “I wrote five scripts. None of them sold. I gave it my best shot. I’m moving back to Chicago.” You can’t do that. If want a career in Hollywood, you can’t fail. You can quit, which most people do when they don’t achieve success as quickly as they’d like, but you can’t fail. There are as many opportunities as you can create for yourself. You can write a script a day, every day, for your whole life, if you’re that motivated.”

Andrew Marlowe, who’s writing the upcoming Nick Fury film opines about why scripts are sold, “They're looking at you as an investment in their own career. They’re saying, “Okay, if I trust this guy with $80,000 – or $800,000 – is that an investment that’s gonna pay off for the studio, and pay off for me personally in my career?” All these people are worried about their jobs, and if they bet on the wrong horse too many times, they’re gonna get fired, and they’re not gonna know how to feed their families and pay their rent. I met a lot of writers early on in my career who seemed to have this entitled attitude of “I’m talented. Why don’t they invest $80,000 in this story about my grandmother’s trip to Russia?” Well, maybe they didn’t think that was the best investment.

Or Mark D. Rosenthal: “I always get in trouble when I say this: I believe there is no great screenplay that hasn’t at least been optioned. I believe there is no great screenplay that doesn’t get the writer into the business. Most screenplays are mediocre or just okay. Really great writing always, always gets noticed in Hollywood. When I hear someone say, “It’s who you know,” or “I couldn’t get it to the right agent,” that is the consolation of failure. When it really works, it might not get made, because you need a Jupiter effect of a perfect director and perfect actor – but if the writing is great, you always get into the game.”

You even get Shane Black reeling about “likable” heroes. “Movie stars are gonna give you your best ideas, because they’re the opposite of development people. Development people are always saying, “How can the character be more likable?” Meanwhile, the actor’s saying, “I don’t want to be likable.” You know, they give you crazy things like, “I wanna eat spaghetti with my hands.” Crazy’s great. Anything but this sort of likable guy that everyone at the studio insists they should play.”

The book is a particularly nice alternative for writers who hate screenwriting books, cause this isn’t about some formula or some method. It’s real writers giving you real-life advice. That’s it. Thanks for recommending it to me guys. What should my next one be?

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

Edit: As someone pointed out to me, the book inspired a Tales From The Script documentary as well.
*

Inception Script Review (Nolan Theme Week)

This is Nolan Theme Week, where we'll be breaking down Christopher Nolan's five most popular writing-directing efforts in hopes of learning something about how he crafts a story.  Monday Roger reviewed The Dark Knight.  Tuesday I took on Batman Begins.  Wednesday was The Prestige, which surprisingly has garnered some of the more heated talkback, Thursday was the film that put Nolan on the map, Memento. And today, to finish it all off, I'm of course reviewing the script for his most recent film, Inception!

Genre: Crime/Sci-Fi/Thriller
Premise: (from IMDB) - In a world where technology exists to enter the human mind through dream invasion, a highly skilled thief is given a final chance at redemption which involves executing his toughest job till date, Inception.
About: Inception came out in the summer and is currently the 5th highest grossing film of the year behind Toy Story 3, Alice in Wonderland, Iron Man 2, and Eclipse. It cost 160 million dollars to make, opened with 62 million at the U.S. Box Office, finished with 290 million, and has made over 800 million worldwide, unheard of in this day and age for an original property (unless your name is James Cameron of course). Nolan is said to have worked on the script for ten years. When asked if he had done any dream research for the script, Nolan had a surprising response: “I don’t actually tend to do a lot of research when I’m writing. I took the approach in writing Inception that I did when I was writing Memento about memory and memory loss, which is I tend to just examine my own process of, in this case, dreaming, in Memento’s case, memory, and try and analyze how that works and how that might be changed and manipulated. How a rule set might emerge from my own process. I do know because I think a lot of what I find you want to do with research is just confirming things you want to do. If the research contradicts what you want to do, you tend to go ahead and do it anyway. So at a certain point I realized that if you’re trying to reach an audience, being as subjective as possible and really trying to write from something genuine is the way to go. Really it’s mostly from my own process, my own experience.”  For some further Nolan reading, there's a nice profile on him at the New York Times.
Writer: Christopher Nolan
Details: 146 pages – shooting draft

Okay, if you’re a big fan of this film, you might want to steer clear of this review. I’m about to get into it with Inception because after watching Nolan’s five most popular movies this week, I’ve concluded that Inception is by far the weakest of the bunch. The attention to detail – the care he put into those other films – isn’t there in Inception. Things feel rushed, smooshed together, as if Warners gave him gobs of money with a note attached that said, “as long as you give it to us quickly.”

As I pointed out yesterday in my Memento review, Nolan was so careful and clever in how he slipped his exposition into the film. Here, it’s like he doesn’t even care, spraying it around like gang graffiti. This is the heart of my problem with the film, but there are plenty of other things to talk about so let’s quickly recap the plot.

Inception follows Dom Cobb, a “dream thief” who travels into people’s minds to steal information. Early on he’s approached by Saito, a man who owns one of the largest energy companies in the world, to break into his biggest competitor’s mind (a man named Robert Fischer) and plant a piece of information (an “inception”) in him that will eliminate him as a competitor. Cobb initially resists until Saito promises he can reunite him with his children, who he lost after being accused of his wife’s murder.

Cobb recruits the perfect team to complete the task and constructs a multi-layered dream within a dream within a dream approach to get to the center of the mark’s subconscious. Complicating the mission is Cobb’s wife, who has died in the real world but who still lives inside Cobb’s dreams. If he’s going to succeed with the inception, he’ll need to reconcile his relations with her first.

Okay, so I’ve seen Inception twice now and read the script once. While the most important viewing of any movie is the first, Nolan’s films are constructed to be viewed multiple times, in my opinion not only to make for a richer viewing experience, but to make him and the studio richer. On that front, compared to the rest of his films, Inception is a failure.

Why?

One word. Exposition.

One of the reasons we’re repeatedly told as writers to hide our exposition is because bad exposition is one of the quickest ways to alert an audience that what they’re watching isn’t real. If you hear someone say, “We gotta go here to do this and then we gotta go there to do that and we only have 3 hours to do it or we all die unless Joey can somehow deliver the money to Frankie in time,” you say, "Oh yeah, this is a movie." Why? Because people don't talk that way.  Because it’s not real life. It’s the mechanics of the plot translated into words in order to condense key plot points for the audience’s benefit.

So what you do is two things. You hide it as much as you can. And you only tell the absolute minimum of what you have to. Now there are a lot of ways to hide exposition. Back to The Future is pure exposition, but it’s hidden in comedy. We’re more focused on these two bickering back and forth than we are on that everything they say is so the audience knows what’s going on.

But that first rule, keeping exposition to a minimum, that doesn’t require nearly as much skill – just discipline. You’re simply looking to keep things short. That’s it. Nolan completely ignores this rule here, spending not one scene, not two, not three, but a full one hour of scenes on exposition. And he doesn't stop there either!  We are getting exposition all the way into the 120s!  For that reason, when you try and watch this movie a second time, you are bored to death during the opening hour of the film.

I mean I’m just shocked at how sloppy it all is.

Now the script definitely picks up, and all of that explanation enables us to enjoy the complicated second half of the story, but I don’t think you ever really feel immersed in this movie the way you do in Memento or Batman Begins because the opening hour is essentially Christopher Nolan onscreen reading you the rules of his universe from a notepad. There’s no subtlety, no attempt to suspend your disbelief, and that’s probably why Inception feels less satisfying than his other films.

Having said that, it’s interesting to note that all the classic Nolan-isms are at play here, particularly his patented triple-crossing narrative opening to the film. This time we’re cutting between Cobb visiting an older Asian man, Cobb asleep in a hotel room with an approaching group of rioters, and Cobb asleep on a train. What I find fascinating here is that Nolan’s taken this device to its extreme. The opening of Inception is so confusing and so weird that we absolutely have to pay attention to keep up. It’s proof positive, as he’s done this now 5 times, how effective the device is.

Another thing I find interesting about Inception is that there’s no villain and there’s no love interest. In fact, what Nolan tries to do is insert both of these into a single character, Cobb’s wife. She’s this kind of fucked up love interest as well as a villain - the biggest obstacle to him achieving his goal. All the other “bad guys” in the film are essentially faceless. Unfortunately it doesn’t work, as Mal’s character in general is more of a confusing idea than a well-formed character.

The fact that our main character does not encounter these two dynamics (love or hate) in the story, is the reason I believe the film lacks any emotional resonance with the audience. And it seems like it shouldn’t be that way because Cobb himself is feeling SO MUCH emotion during this story.  But since we never see him have someone to love, since we never see him have someone to hate, we never feel any of that emotion ourselves. The emotional core of the movie is limited to Cobb trying to find closure with this woman who, for all intents and purposes (at least from how we see her), is kind of a bitch. Am I supposed to be emotionally connected to that?

In fact, this gets into a much deeper issue, which is that Cobb is the only character Nolan has put any effort into. We know barely anyting about Joseph-Gordon Levitt’s character. We know barely anything about Ellen Page’s character. Tom Hardy and the Indian Guy? I still don’t even know why they were in the movie! We’re talking about a 150 minute movie here, and only a single character is being explored on a deeper level. There’s no other reason to HAVE a 150 minute movie than to use that time to explore a bunch of characters!

So how did this happen? I’ll give you a guess. That’s right, because Nolan wasted the first hour of his film having his characters spout exposition! We can’t learn about characters if their only function is to explain things or ask questions!

Look, I enjoyed this movie. Nolan does enough right here to make the film work. The score alone is worth the price of admission (easily the best of the year - maybe the last five years). And as long as I’m bashing some of his writing mistakes, I have to give him props for how he wrote the dream within a dream within a dream climax.  I can imagine how complicated that must have been and yet it definitely holds our interest.  But when you read this script on the page, you really start to see its weaknesses. When it's all said and done, I’d say this is his second worst film (behind Insomnia).

Although I can't share the script, it is available, with concept art storyboards and handwritten notes by Nolan. 

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

What I learned: The biggest lesson I learned after watching Nolan’s films this week is to challenge the audience. There’s a misconception out there that the audience is dumb, that you need to serve them everything on a platter. Audiences are smarter than you think and they want to be challenged. Just know that there is a skill behind this and that skill is built through a ton of writing and a bunch of trial and error. You have to find out what works for you. You can’t just say, “Well Nolan cuts between 3 different storylines so I’m going to cut between 5!” and assume you’ve created a masterpiece. Being different, pushing boundaries, has great rewards, but it also means failing a lot bigger and more frequently. If you’re okay with that, then it may be something you want to try.