Twit-Pitch Review - Gunplay

Genre: Drama/Thriller

Premise: (Original Twit-Pitch Logline) A terrorist with a $10 mill bounty, a callous soldier of fortune and a mysterious man with no name walk into a bar in Afghanistan.

About: For those recently joining Scriptshadow, I held a contest a few months back called "Twit-Pitch," where anyone could pitch me their screenplay on Twitter, as long as it was contained within a single tweet.  I picked my 100 favorite loglines and read the first 10 pages of each (which I live-reviewed on Twitter), and then from those, picked the Top 20, which I've been reading the entire screenplay for.  

Writer: Patrick Green

Details: 96 pages

Of all the Twit-Pitch First-10-Pages I read, this was tied as far and away one of the best two.  I had high hopes for it.  My only concern?  A wandering story.  The logline piqued my interest but as you can see, it doesn't exactly tell us what the script's about.  So I was really hoping this wasn't one of those scripts that shows kick ass writing skills for the first ten pages and then just...never turns into anything.  Those are always killers as a reader.  You can tell the writer can write.  They just haven't figured out how to tell a story yet.  Two very different skills.

But this one felt good.  I knew I was putting it in the "Definite" pile within the first two pages.  I mean go ahead and read the first 10 yourself.  Look at how confident the writing is - how self-assured.  You feel like you're in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing, which is rare when you read an amateur screenplay.  But it's one thing to make it last 10 pages.  It's a whole nother to make it last 110.

So in case you're wondering, Gunplay is about terrorist bounty-hunting.  It's kind of cool when you think about it. Those "Reward - $500" mugshots that were everywhere in the Old West days? They STILL do that.  But here, it's 5 million dollars instead of 500.  And the players aren't Two-Barrel Terry, but international terrorists who want to kill Americans in the name of Allah.

Our big daddy, the 5 million dollar jackpot (not sure why it's changed from 10 mil in the logline) everyone's after, is a man named Musab.  Musab is actually an American who's turned on his country, zigzagging through the Pakistani/Afghanstan countryside, trying to escape all the newfound attention he's gotten after becoming the last big paycheck on the Terrorist Most Wanted List.

There are two bounty hunters he's gotta worry about.  The first one has no name.  He's known only as "Stranger."  This is the kind of guy that gives Clint Eastwood the willies.  He's just a badass aging bounty hunter with one thing on his mind.  MONAY!  And he'll do anything to get it.  The other dude is 50-something Wyatt, whose face is a "road map to hell and back."  Wyatt's got some other business to tend to as well, something about tracking down 25 million dollars of stolen moolah.

The story weaves through their individual pursuits until they eventually come together, as at one point all three men (including Musab) must escape some baddies, namely a corrupt policemen and a warlord or two.  Soon the 5 million dollar paycheck seems like a pittance compared to that big 25 million dollar payday.  But will they find it before it's too late, or before they all kill one another?

In short, this is the best writing in the contest so far.  However, my biggest fear was realized.  The story starts out great, but becomes less and less coherent as it goes on.  In fact, when I reached the halfway point, I realized I had only a vague sense of what was going on.  You know when you're reading something and all of a sudden you realize you weren't paying attention the last two pages and have to go back and read it again?  I had to do that like 5 or 6 times, and I realized at that point that Gunplay had lost me.

So how did it lose me?  Well, let's see.  It starts with Musab.  Here was this guy who was known as the most dangerous terrorist left on the U.S. Wanted List, and he didn't seem dangerous at all.  In fact, he seemed like a normal guy.  So the whole time I was wondering, why is this dude worth so much money?  He's just like you and me.  To be honest, I don't even know what he did to get that price tag on his head.

So now you have two bounty hunters chasing a villain who isn't really a villain.  Why do we care if they catch him?  That was another problem.  What's the urgency here?  Why do they need to catch him now?  He doesn't seem to have any immediate plans to kill more Americans, at least nothing concrete.  So why the rush?  And what are the stakes?  Again, it doesn't matter if he escapes cause he's got nothing planned.  So the stakes are nil.

Same thing with Stranger and Wyatt.  Why do they need the money so bad?  What's so important about having 25 million dollars?  I mean sure it makes them "rich," but who cares?  That's such a boring reason for needing to do something.  Why can't the pursuit be personal, for at least one of them?  What if Musab killed one of their daughters in an attack?

On top of this, Wyatt's storyline was murky.  He was working for someone who wanted to recoup 25 million dollars that some thieves swindled from him.  But I could never really decipher the specifics of what happened.  And again, since Wyatt's working for someone else who wants the money, the stakes were low.  Why couldn't he have lost the money himself?  Or maybe he's not hunting a terrorist, but rather someone who said they'd pay him if he killed a terrorist, but disappeared once the deed was done.  Now it's personal.

Maybe this is the nature of going with bounty hunters as your protags.  Bounty Hunters go after things for money, not personal reasons.  But I guess I just wanted more.  At least somewhere.

But what really killed Gunplay for me was that the further the script went on, the less clear it became.  All of a sudden we're in some compound with men using little boys as sex slaves and I'm thinking, "How did we get here?  What does this have to do with the rest of the story?"  None of it was set up very well so it all came out of nowhere.  To be honest, it felt like yet another script that was rushing to meet a deadline.  The best pages were the first 30, since they'd been worked over so many times.  And then you could tell that the last 70 didn't get nearly as much attention, which is why they got so murky.

To me, this comes down to good old fashioned stakes and urgency.  A storyline needs to be written in that Musab is trying to get somewhere, and if he gets there, people are going to be killed.  That way, there's some immediacy to the story.  Cause the way it stands now, nothing really happens if he gets away besides our bounty hunters not getting their money.

Since stakes and urgency are always intertwined, you have the same problem on the stakes end.  There's nothing Musab is trying to do other than escape, so nothing bad happens to anyone if he gets away.

Another thing I'd consider doing is making Musab REALLY BAD.  This guy's a terrorist.  Let's find out what he did and hate him for it.  The worse of a person he is, the more we'll want him to get caught.  That was part of the problem.  Since he was a normal guy, I wasn't invested in whether Stranger and Wyatt caught up to him.

If you want to make Musab a hero - someone we root for - then make it so he's been wrongly accused.  He's not a terrorist.  He's just been tabbed as one because of bad information or a mix-up.  Audiences love rooting for wrongly-accused characters (The Fugitive anyone?), and now we'll be invested cause we'll want to see him get away.  I mean when it comes down to it, I didn't care if Musab was caught, and I didn't care if Stranger or Wyatt caught him.  And that just can't be the case.

Script Link: Gunplay

[ ] what the hell did I just read?

[x] wasn't for me

[ ] worth the read

[ ] impressive

[ ] genius

What I learned: In a chase movie, you want to show the bad guy do something bad, so we'll want him to go down (Darth Vader chokes a man to death while interrogating him).  If you can't do that, then show the good guy do something good, so we'll root for him to succeed (Obi-Wan saves Luke from the Sand People).  In Gunplay, we don't get either, so we never become interested in the chase.

Screenwriting Article - The Great Space Tag-Team Theme Coaster

Hello my fellow Scriptshadowians.  So I've wanted to write an article about theme for the longest time now but the truth is, it's not one of my strengths.  I understand the broad strokes but there are times when theme flat out confuses me.  For that reason, I've brought in a tag-team partner, Tawnya Bhattacharya from Script Anatomy, to help me out.  She's a theme guru and I figured if I had her, I could at least hide some of my ignorance.  The way I thought we'd do it is this - Tawnya will give you her breakdown on theme and then afterwards, I'll give you mine.  For the most part, we're on the same page, but I feel like my approach is a little less strict.  Afterwards, I'd love to hear your own thoughts on theme.  I often learn just as much from you guys as you do from me. :) With that said, let's bring in Tawnya!

I’m feeling punchy and maybe slightly ornery. It’s hot as hell even with the AC on. I don’t feel like I’m dropping enough L-B-S’s with my latest fad work out. And my writing partner and I have been waiting all summer to hear if “Fairly Legal” is getting the pick up (Magic 8 Ball says, “Outlook not so good”) and lately, we’ve been on pins and needles waiting to find out if we’re going to land a new gig after a series of meetings. I even offered to do a cartwheel during the last meeting to seal the deal. I’m not talking any old cartwheel but an aerial in honor of the recent Olympics. A private closing ceremony, if you will, starring me. This is no small feat as I haven’t done one since 1989, but I’m willing to take one for the team, people! Anyway… The. Wait. Is. Brutal. It’s been 72 hours and counting… One of the fun things you have to try to get used to, because it should happen over and over again in your career if things are going well. If it’s not then something’s wrong.

What’s my point? I almost forgot. Theme! Carson asked me to write an article on theme and I was giving you a little preface (I’m feeling punchy) on why I’ve decided to basically interview myself. So, here goes.


WHAT IS THEME?

1) Theme is Structure. It is the foundation on which your story is built. In fact, it’s like the gravity of your script holding everything together and in place. Without it, nothing’s anchored and scenes, moments, characters, setpieces will just drift off into space.

2) Theme is not only the spine and core of your movie but the Heart and Soul of your story. It’s the moral and lesson of your story that gives your screen or teleplay universal meaning. Ultimately, it’s what unifies your story and makes it emotionally significant. It’s your “voice” – it’s what you want to say. Stories teach us how to be human through symbolic experiences.

3) Theme is your “Voice” because it is your reflection of humanity – what you have to say with regard to your core beliefs and values. Someone said there are only 7 stories. And we know writers use the same themes over and over again. But it doesn’t matter. It’s all about how YOU tell that story from your unique point of view.


HOW DO YOU APPROACH THEME IN YOUR WORK?
When thinking about theme, I think it’s important to start with yourself. What do you feel strongly about? What are your core beliefs and values? What stories are you drawn to – are there common themes in those stories? Write down a list of all of your story ideas and see if common thematic patterns emerge. Think about your life experiences – maybe start with the major moments of your life – the good and the bad – and see what comes up there. Your passion and voice are stronger when you are writing what is personal to you - what’s “close to the bone.”


HOW DO YOU ILLUSTRATE THEME IN A SCRIPT?
Theme is kind of like the subtext of the overall story. You are expressing it through character, relationships, conflict, dialogue, symbolism and visual imagery… but hopefully you’re being subtle about it so you aren’t hitting people over the head. Samuel Goldwyn said: “If you want to send a message, call Western Union.” I think that’s why it’s important to explore different facets of theme. If you are proving the opposite thematic point of view through a secondary character or storyline as well as your main thematic point with primary characters, then you are giving us perspective and will hopefully steer clear of becoming preachy.

I think the most important and effective way to illustrate theme is through your main character. Theme is expressed through your main character’s transformational arc during the journey. How do you show this transformation? To express transformation, the need for transformation has to be established - hence the Character FLAW. Remember this: Theme is the opposite of the character’s flaw.

Theme is the lesson the character learns from going on the journey. Theme, therefore, must be illustrated through the character’s experience: The character is one way in the beginning of your movie (fully living in their flaw), but the relationships and conflict during the journey of the movie will lead the character to change/grow and end up a different way at the end (cure flaw to a degree) to get to the theme.

Many people have asked me over the years: Can my character be his own opponent? No. They are, in a sense, their own worst enemy because ultimately it is the Character’s flaw that is stopping them from getting what they want. And they will have to cure that flaw to some degree to get the goal in the end. This is why we are on the journey in the first place. This makes sense in life too. We all have certain flaws and misbehaviors that have a way of recurring and creating obstacles on our path, preventing us from getting what we want. In order for us to stop coming up against the same blocks - the same bad relationships, the same job issues, the same insecurities - WE HAVE TO GROW AND CHANGE! If you don’t have an external antagonist (someone or something) you lose the opportunity for your character to grow and change because conflict and obstacles and relationships are what force the character to confront their flaw and either remain the same or grow and change (arc) to get to the goal and the thematic lesson. Conflict and obstacles give your story stakes and momentum. Conflict comes from the fact that there is a FLAW. So…

Theme is directly related to FLAW, BECAUSE FLAW IS OPPOSITE OF THEME. Again, flaw is what the MC (main character) has to confront along the way to get to the breakthrough place, which is the THEMATIC LESSON. Here’s an easy way to approach character flaw, theme and the transformational arc. Think of it in terms of a logline.

A MAIN CHARACTER with a FLAW embarks on SECOND ACT with a CATALYST CHARACTER (S) and because of CONFLICT AND RELATIONSHIPS, CHANGES and GROWS ALONG THE JOURNEY, thus LEARNING LESSON “X” by the end.

If you know the character flaw, you know the theme. If you know the theme, you know the character flaw.

CARSON'S TAKE

All right, all good points.  I see things slightly differently though.  Not saying it's right or wrong or superior to Tawnya's version, but just how I see it.  Theme is simply the overall "thing" you're trying to say with your story.  Conveying a "message" in a screenplay gets a bad rap, as noted by Goldwyn above, but the truth is, that's what you're doing.  We all have big opinions about the world, about life, about humanity, about society.  It's why we're artists.  We want to express those opinions in our work.  Well theme is merely the focus of those opinions.  You want to pick a core idea you feel strongly about and use your screenplay to express it.  Don't overdo it.  Like Tawnya said - you don't want to sound too preachy.  But that's the basic approach for applying theme.

Now where does theme go bad?  In my experience, it's when writers get too ambitious with it.  They try and make their theme really profound and complicated.  They believe their message must change the world - the very molecular structure of how us human beings interpret life.  So they create some big lumbering thematic point-of-view that's too convoluted to express, leaving their story and message weighed down and unfocused.  You want to know what the theme of Ferris Bueller's Day Off was?  "Carpe Diem."  Seize the day.  That's it!  It's so simple and yet insanely effective.  After watching that movie, you want to go out and live in the moment!

In that sense, one of the best things you can do is pick themes that resonate with people.  They call these universal themes and there's a reason they've been around forever.  Because they affect us.  Because they come up in our lives again and again.  Because they make us think.  With Ferris, I believe the Carpe Diem theme was just as important to the movie's success as its characters.  All of us wish we spent less time worrying about the past and future and enjoyed the now.  So it's those UNIVERSAL THEMES that are going to give you the most bang for your buck.

Even though I prefer a statement, some writers like to tackle their theme in the form of a question.  So for example, your thematic question might be, "Is it ever really possible for someone to change?"  Most people get to a point in their lives where they are who they are, for better or worse, and won't change.  Our story might follow a protagonist, then, who's been selfish and deceitful for the first three decades of his life.  We want to see if it's possible for him to become kind and trustworthy.  But the great thing about theme is you don't stop at the main character.  You also explore this question with your other characters, just in different situations and variations.

For some characters, the answer to the question might be positive.  They can change.  For others, it will be negative.  They always go back to what they're comfortable with.  The up and down nature of the way these characters and scenes explore the question is - you got it - the exploration of your theme.  Then, like Tawnya said, the definitive answer to the question will come via your main character in the third act.  Is he able to change?  This will be your personal opinion, as the author, of the "correct" answer to your thematic question.  You control whether the audience leaves feeling hope or feeling hopeless.  You're telling them whether it's possible to change in this world.

Now how do you find a great theme for your specific script?  It's easier than you think.  Take a second and mentally scroll through all the things that are going on in your life right now.  What gets you riled up?  Passionate?  What recent argument did you have with someone that still resonates?  You should be able to find themes you feel passionately about in those experiences.

For example, the "change" theme I used above.  That came from a friend and I discussing whether it's really possible for people to change.  He stood by as his biggest fault destroyed his relationship. Now he wanted to change it.  But he acknowledged that he'd had this problem for 15 years and didn't think he could change it.

The tricky part is matching up the right theme with the right story.  So let's say I'm writing a movie about aliens trying to hijack a super train.  Hmm...my whole "change" theme might be great for a character-driven drama, but not so much for Aliens On A Train.  Which just means I have to go back and explore more themes in my everyday life and find the right fit.  I know of a friend, for example, who recently moved to LA to escape a rocky past.  That's an interesting theme.  "Is it truly possible to leave your past behind or will it always catch up to you?"  So maybe I make the protagonist a guy who's taking this train to escape his past.  And hey, maybe that's what these aliens are doing too!  That's why they left their planet.  You see how the theme is now weaving itself into the story?  That may not be the perfect theme for this screenplay but you can start to see the genesis for finding a theme that fits.

As far as the application of theme, I always encourage writers to go into their first draft with AT LEAST a vague understanding of their theme.  It doesn't have to be rock solid.  But you should have a general feel for what you're trying to say.  The reason it's okay to be vague at first is because your story's going to be changing a lot in those first few drafts, and you have to have the flexibility to let your theme change with it.  Once you get to your fourth and fifth drafts, your theme should be solidifying, and your characters and scenes (and dialogue) should start to reflect that.

I think theme is fascinating because it's one of the more formless aspects of screenwriting.  You can't boil it down to an outline or apply it as a rule.  There's a lot more "feel" involved in it than the average screenwriting component.  You have to "weave" it in as opposed to "place" it in, which may be why there's so many opinions on how theme should be applied.  I know when I hear about writers trying to prove or disprove their theme in every single scene, that I feel that's going too far.  I look at theme as something that should have a dominant background presence but never get too close to the front of the stage.  It should guide your story but never control it.  That's what the plot and the characters are for.  But that's just my opinion.  What about you guys?  What are you thoughts on theme?

Screenplay Review - Cloud Atlas

Genre: Period/Epic/Sci-Fi
Premise: (from IMDB) An exploration of how the actions of individual lives impact one another in the past, present and future, as one soul is shaped from a killer into a hero, and an act of kindness ripples across centuries to inspire a revolution.
About: Wachowskis again!  This script was adapted by the Wachowskis as well as Tom Tykwer of Run Lola Run fame.  The three also directed the film together.  Cloud Atlas is a 2004 novel written by British author David Mitchell, who had written two books previous to Atlas.  The film stars Tom Hanks and Halle Berry.
Writers: The Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer (from the novel by David Mitchell)
Details: 230 pages

A PDF script is usually compressed in two different ways.  There's the "smart" way, where the program compresses it down to a computer friendly 200 kilobytes.  And then there's the "dumb" way, where the program creates a big lumbering 4-6 MB file.  I hate the big 4-6 MB files.  They take longer to download.  They take longer to send.  And they just obliterate your hard drive space.  So whenever I see the 5 megabyter, I roll my eyes angrily at whoever originally compressed the thing.

Naturally then, I was pissed off when I saw the 6.7 MB file size of this one.  Another dumb compression.  That is until I opened it and realized Cloud Atlas was 2 million pages long!  This wasn't a dumb conversion, just a really long freaking screenplay!

The question that comes to mind when analyzing Cloud Atlas is, "What do you get when you try and tackle every question humanity has ever had since the beginning of time?"  Yes, Cloud Atlas is ambitious.  Maybe the most ambitious movie ever attempted.  There are six storylines spanning four different centuries.  And two of those centuries haven't even happened yet.

Many of you have probably assumed I'll give this one a thrashing.  I complain about the length on 120 page scripts.  Surely it would be impossible for me to like a 230 page one.  Well, a couple of things about that.  First, this was written by the Wachowskis.  Not Joe Beginner from Proudfoot, Wyoming.  Is it unfair that I give a pro more leeway than a newbie?  I don't think so.  If someone has an established track record, you're going to give them more rope than someone you've never heard of before.  Also, it was adapted from an extremely ambitious novel.  So I'd been prepped going in for what I was up against.  I knew I was going to have to reallllly focus.  Joe Beginner doesn't have that luxury.  Nobody knows anything about his spec until they start reading it.

With that being said, the Wachowskis...I mean they just...they're really going for something spectacular here.  And when you see the trailer, it makes you a believer.  I mean how often do we get thoughtful sci-fi, something that's well done and actually makes us think?  Every 7 years maybe?  Still, it's gotta work on the page.  Those images are beyond beautiful, but the black pixels must be formulated on the white screen in a way that makes sense and that moves us.  Does Cloud Atlas succeed?

Leprechaun 10??

Like I said, there are six storylines.  Some of them are clear, others not so much. The first is set in 1846 with a lawyer named Adam Ewing.  He's on a boat crossing the Atlantic and finds an African-American stowaway.  The captain wants to kill him, but Ewing fights for his life, and the stowaway proves his worth.  Ewing is also keeping a diary that I believe is being read in one of the other time periods, which is how it's (very loosely) connected to the other storylines.

The next story occurs in 1931.  A young closeted homosexual composer named Foshbinder leaves his lover, a man named Sixsmith, to train with the greatest composer in the world, a genius named Ayrs.  Ayrs is old and sick and therefore needs an assistant to help him.  Foshbinder secretly falls in love with him, and must decide whether to tell him the truth or keep it a secret.

In 1974, a reporter named Luisa Ray is investigating a nuclear power plant when she runs into Sixsmith - yes Foshbinder's lover from the 1931 storyline.  Sixsmith seems to be holding a big secret, a secret he's being chased for, and after meeting Luisa, wants to offload it on her.  Unfortunately he's shot and killed before he can tell her, but he does leave behind the letters between him and Foshbinder, which she begins obsessively reading.

In 2009, an older gentleman named Cavendish, who used to be one of the biggest publishers in the world, checks into a hotel only to wake up the next morning and realize it's an "elderly care" center.  It isn't clear whether Cavendish is suffering from dementia or he was really wrongfully placed here.  Either way, he gets a group of fellow seniors together to try and escape the prison-like building.

In the year 2144, a clone named Sonmi-451 is being interrogated about being the first clone to break away from what she was programmed to do, which is be a slave to man.  We go back in time (as if jumping around to six different storylines wasn't enough!) to see her story, which amounts to a human named Chang bringing her to a resistance movement in the 22nd century where she will become a key piece in the plan to free all the clones.

In the year 2346, your guess is as good as mine as to what's going on.  The original author really went crazy here, imagining a world where people talk like insects might if they gained intelligence.  People are spitting out gibberish in copious amounts, but basically, a guy named Zachary who sees an imaginary Golum-like creature wherever he goes (I'm assuming Leprechaun up above?) is coupled up with, I think, an alien, who's taking him to a place that can save his dying daughter???  Beats me.  This storyline, by far, is the most wacky.

Hanks in disguise!

So how did it all fit together?  Well, if you ever saw that movie Red Violin, you'll love this, because Cloud Atlas is Red Violin on crack.  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Mitchell was inspired by that Canadian film.  But just like Red Violin, it suffers from a lot of the same problems, namely that you're trying to find out why these six different stories really need to be told together and you come to the conclusion that they probably don't - or at least most of them don't.

There's two ways to connect the stories in a movie like this.  One is with plot and the other with theme.  Plot tends to be the more audience friendly because everything ends up making sense.  With plotlines from one story intersecting plotlines from another, it's sort of neat to see how it all comes together.  Cloud Atlas is NOT that kind of screenplay.  I mean, there's a little plot overlap, but it's vague and doens't really go anywhere.

That leaves us with theme, and unfortunately, that doesn't really work either.  Why?  Because it felt like Cloud Atlas was exploring every theme in the book.  Just watch the trailer.  At the end when the titles proudly claim, "Time, love, death, birth, hope, courage, everything is connected."  This script REALLY IS trying to tackle every single one of these themes.  And as a result, it just never finds its footing.

But here's the strange thing.  I still liked it.  While I'm against epics in principle because they're so hard to get right (all but the best writers fail at them), I have a place in my heart for when they're done well.  They're the most emotionally rewarding of all the genres.  And if there's one thing Cloud Atlas has, it's a sweeping epic scale.  We're just taken to so many different places and are following so many interesting disparate characters that you have to read on if only to experience the grand scale.  And to look at the trailer and see that they actually had the money to pull off what they were going for - I mean it's pretty damn inspiring.

I will take this time to point out, however, why writing these kinds of movies is so challenging.  The reason this is 230 pages is not because the story wanders.  It's 230 pages because they covered six different stories.  And when you do that, you NEED MORE SPACE.  I mean think about it, following one normal movie storyline takes 110 pages.  So had you told Cloud Atlas' six tales in any less than the 40 pages each section received, it probably wouldn't have been enough.  For the epicness and scale of this movie to work, those storylines needed to breath.  So attempt these multi-storyline scripts at your own risk!  Your scripts WILL get fat.

I would not encourage anybody other than experienced screenwriters (10 years of writing or more) to try something like this.  It's just way too challenging, so I don't want you to interpret my "worth the read" as some kind of endorsement to go write your own epic.  I just thought this script was so unique and so weird and so ambitious, that I enjoyed reading it.  So say it is and it shall be.

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

What I learned: I was JUST dealing with this in an amateur script. If you jump around in time a lot in your screenplay, it's INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT that you KEEP US ORIENTED TIMEWISE.  The amateur script I read didn't, and I was constantly unclear about where we were in the story, what year it was, if this was a flashback or flashforward.  At the end of every slugline in Cloud Atlas, they put the year (aka "YEAR - 1931") - so we ALWAYS know exactly where we are.  Again, this is a huge mistake beginners make.  They think you're in their head with them so if they decide to randomly jump back to 1912, they don't need to tell you.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Screenplay Review - Gold

t

Michael Mann still thinking Gold??

My friends...it's been awhile.

We haven't had a bona-fide good script to read since forever ago.  In fact, here are some quick factoids about how long it's actually been...

1) Gangnam Style still hadn't hit the internet.
2) K-Stew and R-Patz were still living together.
3) I hadn't moved out to LA.
4) Kennedy was still alive.

So imagine my surprise when I started reading Gold and...it was actually good!  It was such a foreign experience to ENJOY a screenplay that I wasn't quite sure how to handle it.  I actually stopped several times just to savor the moment in case it all fell apart.  But it never did.  In fact, it had one of the best endings I've read all year, securing an "impressive" rating.  So how did this script strike gold?  Read on to find out.

40-something David Walsh enjoys the finer things in life.  Like food.  And booze.  And...well mainly food and booze, if his body is any indication  His gut could be mistaken for one of the Hollywood hills and his dress code could be mistaken for "homeless chic."  When we meet Mr. Sloppy, he's being interviewed about his involvement with a man named Mike Guzman.  This Guzman fellow is apparently pretty important because the guy asking about him is very keen to find out how the two met.  And indeed that's where our story gets juicy, but before we go there, we learn a little more about Walsh first.

Walsh is a prospector - someone who looks for mineral deposits below the earth.  He then buys the land and tries to sell it to companies who have the money to mine those deposits.  Now at the top of this game are big-name dudes who sell land with millions of dollars of potential deposits, shit like gold and diamonds.

Not the case with the guys at Walsh's level.  Walsh has the occasional property in the middle of Utah that may or may not have some nickel 100 feet underneath them.  Basically, he's the Jerry Lundergarten of prospecting - a desperate salesman trying to offload land that nobody gives a shit about.

That's until he has "the dream."  Seven years ago, Walsh was in Indonesia watching a man named Mike Guzman work.  Guzman is a famous explorer/scientist who specializes in geological surveying.  If a volcano collapsed somewhere 5 million years ago and has left tons of nickel deposits 500 feet under the earth, he's the guy who can probably find it.

Problem is, Guzman's hit a rough patch, just like Walsh, and needs a big strike.  So when Walsh shows up and says he had a dream that he and Guzman would find gold in Indonesia, Guzman can't help but get excited.  But looking for gold costs money.  You need equipment, permits, workers.  This isn't panhandling in the local river.  This is trudging through miles of dangerous jungle terrain then digging hundreds of feet into the ground.

But not long after they start looking, they find something.  Gold deposits.  Lots of them.  And from that moment on, everything changes.  Some of the biggest banks in the world want a piece of this zero turned hero.  And soon, Walsh and Cruz have themselves a full-scale multi-million dollar mining operation housing potentially 30 billion dollars worth of gold.

But naturally, as all the rappers seem to agree, mo money equals mo problems, and Walsh finds himself swimming inside a whole new kind of shark tank.  These sharks are genetically modified to extract all of your money and spit you out.  One moment, Walsh is on top of the world.  The next, he's further under it than the very gold he's digging up.

But none of that will compare to the utter shock that all men involved will experience when the "Holy shit" final act comes around. This one leaves you with eyes the size of hubcaps going, "No fucking wayyyyyy!"  And to think that it's all true??  Wow.

Gold has an interesting but strong structure.  It's divided into four equal quarters, each of which has its own gameplan.  The first quarter is about the struggle.  It's when we meet our hero and see that he's on the bottom of the barrel.  It's an important part of the script because it establishes the character type that audiences always root for no matter what: THE UNDERDOG.  Walsh is as underdog-y as they get and because we see him kicked around by other characters, we immediately sympathize with him and want him to succeed.  This is a huge reason why this script works so well.

The second quarter is about hope.  It's about our two underdogs digging for gold - literally.  Because this whole section is based on suspense (will or won't they find the gold?) we're entranced.  The combination of desperately wanting our underdogs to take over the world along with the curiosity of if they'll find the gold or not has this section moving at a million miles an hour.

The third quarter is the aftermath of success.  In my opinion, this was the worst section of the script.  "Aftermath of success" is always hard to do in screenplays because it almost always goes the same way.  The hero doesn't have time for his girlfriend anymore.  He starts to believe in his own hype.  He enjoys his success too much.  He loses perspective.  Been there, done that.  However, the stuff with the other companies trying to screw him over keeps this section alive.  All of that stuff was entertaining.

The fourth quarter is the fallout - what happens after it all unravels.  This section works for a couple of reasons.  First, we knew it was coming.  And we want to see how bad it's going to get.  As gruesome as car crashes are, it's impossible for us humans to look away from them.  And second, there's a great twist.  I'm not going to spoil it here.  It's one of those twists that defines the entire movie.  So seek out the real world story yourself or wait til the movie comes out.  But it packs a wallop.

The big take from Gold might be the use of this 4-Act structure.  For those who don't know, most movies are broken up into 3 acts - the first act is 25-30 pages, the second act is 55-75 pages, and the third act is 20-25 pages.  But over time, because that second act is so big, some writers have decided to break it up into two parts.  This creates 4 acts then, instead of 3.

It can be simpler to write a movie this way because you basically write 4 equal sections of 30 pages each.  That's a little easier to grasp than a short act, a really long act, and another short act.  In fact, it's almost like you're writing 4 little half-hour stories.  Now remember, the story you're telling has to fit into that structure, like Gold does, but it's a great little option to bust out if you're one of the many writers who get lost in the second act.

Another thing I noticed about this script is how compelling it is to watch the "desperate salesman" character.  We saw it with Jerry Lundergarten in Fargo.  We saw it with Jack Lemmon's character in Glengary Glen Ross.  And we see it here with Walsh.  I don't know what it is but the desperation that reeks from these characters makes them impossible to look away from.  I'm sure there are examples of these characters not working, but I can't think of one.  Writers need to remember this for future screenplays!

Overall, this script just worked.  Great characters.  Moved well.  Fascinating story with lots of twists and turns, particularly that whopper of an ending.  It was incredibly well researched.  Dialogue was authentic and strong all the way through.  Hard to find many faults with this one outside of the 3rd act I mentioned above.  Definitely check out Gold if you can find it!

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

What I learned: The delayed character description.  In almost all cases, when a new character hits the page, you want to describe him immediately.  The reason for this is that it's standard practice, which means readers expect it.  Therefore, when you tell us "JOE" just walked into the room and there's no description of Joe, or "JOE" starts talking yet we haven't met the guy, it's annoying and confusing to the reader.  However, there are a few situations where adding a description to a character intro interrupts the flow of the read.  If Joe charges onto a battlefield and you have to stop to tell us he's tall and gangly and has a spider-web collection, it kind of kills the moment. So the delayed description is motivated.  In Gold, Walsh is introduced pouring a drink, exchanging a few words with an investigator, and THEN getting his description.  To me, this falls under the category of a delayed description for no reason.  So it's one I would've avoided.  The ultimate lesson here is, describe your character right away unless there's NO OTHER WAY to do it.  You'll keep the reader happy.

What I learned 2: Always pick a more interesting verb!  Describing a car on page 4, Massett and Zinman don't say, "It pulls into a spot," they say "it lumbers into a spot."

Twit-Pitch Review - Kitty Hawk

Genre: Comedy

Premise: (Original Twit-Pitch Logline) In 1903 North Carolina, the Wright bros attempt the first flight, but shenanigans arise when they fall in love with the same woman.

About: For those recently joining Scriptshadow, I held a contest a few months back called "Twit-Pitch," where anyone could pitch me their screenplay on Twitter, as long as it was contained within a single tweet.  I picked my 100 favorite loglines and read the first 10 pages of each (which I live-reviewed on Twitter), and then from those, picked the Top 20, which I'll read the entire screenplay for.  Today's script is not to be confused with a competing Wright Brothers project written by Scriptshadow reader Brooks Elms.  

Writer: Dillon Magrann-Wells 

Details: 117 pages

I open the script.

I see "117 pages."

For a comedy.

My heart sinks.

"No," I think.

After all the effort I've put into this?  After saying time and time again never to write a comedy spec over 110 pages.  Comedies HAVE TO MOVE because there's no such thing as a good slow comedy.  If you bloat your script up to 117 pages, I guarantee you it's going to be slow.  We're going to have a bunch of long scenes, pointless scenes, repetitive scenes, and probably a story that loses itself several times. That's how scripts become 117 pages - the writers haven't figured out how to focus the story yet.  And we become the unwitting lab rats who suffer through that unfocusedness.

Sigh...

BUT!  There are always exceptions to the rule right?  Every once in awhile a long comedy comes along that's good!  Judd Apatow's scripts are like 140 pages, right?

Yeah but his scripts usually suck.  He doesn't start figuring things out until the shooting process.  Hmmm...there's gotta be SOME examples of long comedy screenplays that are good.  When Harry Met Sally was a long screenplay!  Then again, I'm not sure they formatted it correctly.

What the hell am I babbling about?  Well, it's Friday, so cut me some slack.  I'm about to go to something called a "Hollywood Breakfast" and I'm not sure how those work.  Are they different from a Hollywood lunch?  Do you talk about different things?  Is it too early in the day to pitch an idea?  Sometimes I wish I was one of those homeless people on Sunset and Vine. They don't have to worry about anything but acting crazy.  Now that's a life I could get used to.

The year is 1903, and bike-makers Wilbur and Orville Wright are struggling to keep their business above land (get it? ABOVE...LAND??). You'd think bike-making would be pretty lucrative back then, seeing as there weren't many cars around.  But our poor brothers can barely make the monthly payments on their lease.

Of the two, Orville is the business-minded one and Wilbur the creative one.  And Wilbur's got a creative solution for their failing business: start up again on that "flying machine," they've been dilly-dallying with in their spare time, then make a million bucks when they get it to work!  Orville not-so-secretly thinks the flying machine's a bust, so he's not down, but when some local thugs come around asking for money on a failed invention the brothers sold them, they have no choice but to run off to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina and throw all of their eggs into this flying basket.

Once there, they meet the beautiful but slightly bitchy Hannah Clifford, who's the daughter of the local mayor.  She agrees to find them free housing if they'll vote for her father in the upcoming election.  Jesus, I wish someone would've offered me that kind of deal on my apartment.

They begin work on the flying machine but distractions soon arise.  The first is Hannah herself, who takes a liking to Wilbur, which threatens to disrupt their building schedule.  And the second is the president of the Smithsonian Institute, who wants to stop the Wright Brothers from getting their flying machine airborne before he and his much more prestigious institution are able to do so.

When Orville finds out that Wilbur is shacking up with Hannah, he becomes furious, and begins a blueberry pie-inspired sabotage campaign to keep them apart. In the process, however, Orville takes a liking to Hannah, and she decides two brothers are better than one and sleeps with him K-Stew style!  Which, like, is so slutty for back then.

In the end, just about everything that can blow up does, and one of the most heralded achievements in US history is in danger of never happening.

Kitty Hawk has some nice things going for it.  It has a clear goal (create a working flying machine), some urgency (the Smithsonian dude and the thugs from back home chasing them), conflict between the two main characters, a love triangle.  For all intents and purposes, it should work.  And it kind of does at times.

But there's something missing here that keeps it from ever rising above average.  And I'm not sure what it is.  I run into these scripts every once in awhile - scripts that are "fine," but are missing those key ingredients that push them into memorable territory.  Maybe more could've gone wrong.  And, more specifically, could've gone wrong sooner.  Things are a little too breezy through the first half of Kitty Hawk.  The bad guy doesn't get there until page 70 or something.  The second romance (between Hannah and Orville) doesn't get started until page 75.  So there's a huge portion of the script where there isn't any tension, suspense, or conflict.

Another issue I had was that Dillon didn't differentiate the brothers when we first met them.  This is CRITICAL since these are our two main characters and will make up 90% of the screenplay.  All we're told is that one of them, Wilbur, is bald, and that he's more the "inventor" of the two.  That's something but it isn't nearly enough.  It wasn't until the midpoint that I truly knew who was who when they were talking.  And this can be traced back to that first introduction.  Always try and give your characters a unique introduction that shows exactly who they are and why they're different from EVERYONE ELSE.   So if Wilbur's the inventor, show him inventing something.  This is a movie about the Wright Brothers so I see no reason why you wouldn't start with him working on a plane anyway.

The character of Glenn Curtis (Smithsonian Dude) was also unclear.  I had no idea who he was, what his institution did, why he was trying to find the brothers, what his ultimate plans with them were.  It was all very vague.  So when we get this giant climax of him showing up at the Kitty Hawk church to announce his own plans to build a plane, I was sitting there going....uhhhhh, huh???  This is another case of a writer not being clear enough.  You have to be clear to your audience about who your characters are, what they're there for, who they work for, what their motivation is, etc.  If any of that stuff is murky, then the character is shot.  We never get a good feel for them.

The area where I really checked out though was when Orville put together a children's work force to build the plane.  At that point the script just became too silly, and when that happens, it's hard for me to take anything seriously.  It's hard for me to care about the characters and their situations.  So I politely read through the rest of the script but knew it had no chance of reeling me back in.

While one of the better Twit-Pitch entries so far, this is another script that showed plenty of writing skill, but didn't entertain enough in the story department. :(

Script link: Kitty Hawk  

[ ] what the hell did I just read?

[x] wasn't for me

[ ] worth the read

[ ] impressive

[ ] genius

What I learned: You don't want to wait too long to institute the plot points that are the main salable components of your script.  This is a script that touts itself as two Wright Brothers going after the same girl.  Yet that isn't fully realized until page 75.  PAGE 75!!!  I mean come on.  This speaks to a larger issue though, which is that too many writers wait too long to get to the good stuff.  What are you waiting for?  That's why we came here.  The good stuff!  So get to those plot lines sooner and you'll see your script come to life.

Screenwriting Article - How to Rewrite

So I put the question out there to you guys - What would you like to see a Thursday article about?  I got a lot of suggestions, but by far, the one readers wanted most was an article about rewriting.  Apparently the claim last week that you should write ten drafts before showing your script to anybody scared a lot of people.  Many of you are just starting out and hardly know what to do on a second draft, much less a tenth.

This stems from the beginner assumption that once you've written "The End," you're done.  I mean you put all that work into it!  Like four weeks!  Why in the world would you need to change anything?  I'll tell you why.  Because first drafts suck!  Even if you outline, you oftentimes get to the middle of the script and start changing things up, adding new characters, new subplots, paying off stuff you didn't set up cause you thought of it after-the-fact.  The first draft is a draft of discovery. You're figuring things out. Therefore when you're finished, you usually have a roaming patchwork of good and bad, something that needs major surgery.  Rewriting will get you there.  But how does one go about the rewriting process?

Well before we get to that, let's just make clear that everybody writes differently.  There are writers who take the "discovery" aspect of the first draft literally, unafraid to follow any little rabbit hole they find.  Then there are writers who outline meticulously, so they know exactly what they're going to write down to each line of dialogue.  The point is that different writers are further along after a first draft than others, which makes it difficult to come up with a "one size fits all" method for rewriting.  Having said that, after talking to hundreds of writers, this approach seems to be the most often used.  Here are the general steps the majority of writers take.

1) OUTLINE - One of the most common mistakes young writers make is not outlining.  Therefore they have no idea what's going to happen from one scene to the next.  They just go with what their gut tells them.  This can be an exciting way to write, since you essentially become the reader, discovering the story as it happens.  But these drafts are easily the messiest, and it often takes five to six EXTRA DRAFTS just to rein in all your crazy ideas, story tangeants, unnecessary characters, etc.  By outlining, you're structuring (most of) the story ahead of time, which means at the very least, the structure will be in place.  Since changing structure is the hardest thing to do (with every structural change, you might have to rewrite up to 30 pages), you'll save a lot of rewriting by getting this down ahead of time.

2) 1ST REWRITE (STRUCTURE) - When you finish your first draft, you'll often feel like you've just finished your masterpiece.  The adrenaline will trick you into believing you need to practice your Oscar speech - NOW!  That is until you read it a week later.  You realize there are huge gaps of randomness, lots of repetitive scenes, and that the characters aren't very deep or interesting.  Welcome to the beginning of rewriting. There are lots of ways you can go about your first rewrite, but I advise getting the structure fixed first.  Even if you outlined, the draft never seems to turn out exactly the way you planned.  So make sure your first act turn, your midpoint, and your 3rd act turn are all where they need to be.  Make sure your characters always have clear goals and are pursuing those goals.  Scripts die when goals are unclear or there are large gaps between the end of one pursuit and the beginning of another. Make sure every 15 pages or so, something important happens, something that raises the stakes (if possible), keeps the script moving, and keeps it interesting.

3) REWRITES 2-6 (TROUBLESHOOTING) - Now it's time to do some heavy lifting.  If you have the time, I advise putting your script down for a couple of weeks.  You're going to need fresh eyes.  Once you have that distance, read the script again, taking note of everything that bothers you.  Maybe you think a character sucks.  Maybe pages 20-35 are boring for some reason and you can't figure out why.  Maybe you hate a set-piece or you think a crucial scene doesn't hit the emotional beat it needs to.  You'll likely have somewhere between 30-40 issues that need to be dealt with, some big, some small.  For that reason, this will be the most time-consuming portion of your rewrite process.  It could take a month.  It could take a year.  All depending on how much time you have, how bad the problems are, and how good you want to make your script.  Some writers are okay with subpar solutions to problems.  The good ones, though, won't stop until they're happy with everything that's on the page.

Basically what you do is you start with the biggest problems, jot down potential solutions for those problems, and apply the best solution you can come up with.  Let's take yesterday's script, Dead In The Water, as an example.  In that script, Carrie's segment starts getting repetitive.  Her and her group keep running into zombie after zombie.  There's nothing new there.  It feels like every other zombie movie.  So the question I might ask is, "How do I make this less repetitive?" or "How do I make this segment more unique?"  I'd then force myself to come up with ten solutions.  Some of them might be bad, but I find that bad solutions spark ideas that lead to good solutions.  So just brainstorm and write down whatever you can think of.  Now if you remember, the script was divided up into three segments - one that follows Carrie, one that follows husband Brian, and one that follows Suparman.  Well, the first solution might be to come up with a FOURTH person.  This would cut down Carrie's segment, getting rid of some of those repetitive scenes.  Or, if we wanted a more creative solution, we could include a scene where one of the characters falls into the ocean and the group has to save him, all while zombies are approaching.  Not an ideal solution, but if I brainstormed it for an hour, I might be able to come up with a pretty cool scene that ISN'T your traditional "characters in a dark room with zombies nearby" sequence.

This is the hardest section of rewriting because it takes a LOT of thinking.  Creativity gives way to brute brainpower - just trying to come up with enough solutions that something cool eventually pops up.  You'd do this for the 5-6 main problems, fix them, then you'd start over again for the next couple of drafts, address the 15-20 medium problems and try to come up with solutions for them.  After that, you'd do the same for the small issues, until you've happily solved all of your script problems and have story solutions you're proud of.  Now if you've convinced yourself that you don't have at least 20 script problems after your first draft, you're either lying to yourself or you've set the bar incredibly low for yourself. Part of rewriting is being honest with yourself about your work.  Don't be satisfied with "okay." Make sure everything you've written is the best you can possibly do.

4) INTERMEDIARY DRAFTS - Intermediary drafts occur because during the rewrite process, you get new ideas. You might realize that the main character shouldn't be a chef, but rather a ninja warrior!  Or it might hit you that there have been 10,000 zombie movies released in the past six months, so maybe it's better if you make your bad guys aliens instead.  Or that coming-of-age movie that takes place in San Francisco?  You realize it'd move faster as a roadtrip movie.  Whatever the case, these decisions often require massive rewriting, sometimes changing up to 70% of the screenplay.  My advice to you is, don't make a change that big unless you're POSITIVE it makes your script a lot better.  Rewriting takes a lot of time, so you want to make sure that every choice is worth the time it takes to incorporate it.

5) SEVENTH REWRITE (CHARACTERS) - You don't have to wait until the seventh draft to start rewriting your characters.  You could do it right away. You could also include character fixes in the "Troubleshooting" section of the rewrites.  But I think characters deserve their own rewrite segment as they are the most important part of your screenplay.  Lots of professional writers will even dedicate single rewrite drafts to each key character in the script. Yes, that's why you hear about scripts going through 30-40 drafts.  The idea here is to make sure that the character is as interesting as he/she can possibly be.  Are they likable?  Are they active?  Do they have a flaw they must overcome?  Do they have personality?  Do they have an unresolved issue with another character?  I read so many boring characters in scripts so make sure your characters are dynamic and interesting.  Here's a good place to start.

5) EIGHTH REWRITE (SMOOTH IT OUT) - The thing with rewriting is that it's a very segmented process.  You work on individual segments to make them better, whether it be a character, a scene, or a portion of dialogue.  Then, when you go back and read the screenplay as a whole, it has no flow.  All the parts look pretty, but you haven't connected them yet.  That's what this draft is for.  And it can be really annoying because it's the least creative stage of rewriting.  For example, you may have a scene where a character gets attacked while walking from the grocery store to her car, only to realize that the same character was at the grocery store just three scenes ago.  So now you have to put her at another store (and come up with a reason for why she's there) or move those scenes further away from each other so the second grocery store trip makes sense.  There are tons of little annoying things like this but if you don't figure them out, then smooth them out, your script will feel choppy and lazy.

6) NINTH REWRITE (DIALOGUE PASS) - Yup, you're waiting ALL THE WAY UNTIL NOW to do your dialogue pass.  Why now?  Because very few scenes from your original draft actually remain in the final draft.  Which means you spent countless hours perfecting dialogue for scenes that aren't even around anymore.  I don't know what you call that but where I'm from that's called 'wasting time.'  You want to wait until your script is as solid as possible before doing a final dialogue run so that you know all this dialogue is actually going to be in the script.  Also, we tend not to really know our characters until we're almost finished.  Therefore, we have a much better feel for what they'd say or do late in the game.  Hence the dialogue should be more authentic and fun.

7) TENTH REWRITE (SPELLING, GRAMMAR, TECHNICAL) - The easiest way to tell you're dealing with an amateur is to read a script where the writer doesn't give a shit about these things.  So make sure there are no mistakes here. "Technical" refers to things like sluglines and name changes.  You might have originally put "DAY" in your slugline but changed the scene to "NIGHT" at some point and forgot.  Somewhere in the rewrite process "JOE" became "RANDY" and you still have both names scattered about (this will drive a reader crazy btw, so make sure you fix it).  Or your protagonist may be working at a store called "INITECH" but you have all your characters referring to it as "INICORP."  These things happen over the course of months of writing.  So make sure all that stuff is fixed!

What I've written above is just a guideline.  Everybody has their own process that works for them.  Some write less drafts.  Most write more drafts.  But if you don't have a process yet, this is a good template to start with.  The main thing I want to convey is the idea of breaking down the problems in your screenplay and really making an effort to come up with solutions for them.  This is where a bad script can turn into a good one, or a good script can turn into a great one.  The more time you dedicate to rewriting, the more time you dedicate to coming up with the best possible choices for your story.  I'm sorry, but one or two drafts just isn't going to cut it in the competitive professional world of screenwriting.  Good luck guys.  Now go rewrite that jumbled mess of a first draft!

Screenplay Review - Dead In The Water

Genre: Horror/Zombie
Premise: A married couple goes on a cruise to heal their wounds after losing their son, but when the ship rescues a strange sick man, they soon find that their own lives are in danger.
About: Hey, how often do we get to read a script by TWINS?  Touchstone bought this spec back in 2010.  Alexi Hawley scripted the 2004 Exorcist prequel, Exorcist: The Beginning, and more recently was story editor on the Nathan Fillion show, Castle.  Brother Noah was a writer on the TV show, Bones.  
Writers: Alexi and Noah Hawley
Details: 110 pages

In all honesty, had I known this was a zombie script, I wouldn't have read it.  Dead In The Water was a random script I had in my screenplay pile which I knew nothing about, which is exactly why I wanted to read it.  I was hoping for another Ends Of The Earth or Dead Of Winter.  But didn't get it.  I got a zombie flick.

I'll tell you what, though.  Before I knew this was a zombie script - in other words throughout the first act - it was pretty damn good.  And once it became a zombie flick, the darn thing kept going.  It took some chances along the way - did things a little differently - and therefore, gasp, kept me fairly entertained.  I'm still not sure what to make of it on the whole.  There's a character called Suparman who feels like he's been beamed in from a different movie...on a different planet.  But all in all, I think there's more good here than bad.

The script starts out with a great opening scene.  A group of doctors are out for a spin on their sailboat when they spot a couple of men on a trawler dumping bags into the ocean.  The trawler speeds away and the doctors decide to investigate, only to find that the bags aren't just bags.  They're body bags.  And as they move up to get a closer look, one of the bags...STARTS MOVING.

They open the bag up to save the individual but it turns out it's not him who needs saving.  Blood splatters.  There are screams.  And we CUT to a cruise ship.  This is where we meet Brian and Carrie Lake, a couple grieving over their dead son.  Both are devastated but Carrie's ready to move on. Brian, a cop, can't let go however, and would rather sleep in their room all day than go out and "have fun."

So Carrie heads out on her own, and while up on deck, spots something in the water that stops her cold.  It's a man!  Drifting along on a piece of debris!  She calls out to the ship's crew and the next thing you know they're lifting the man up on deck.  Well waddaya know?  It's one of the doctors!  And he's not looking good.  In fact, he starts vomiting blood all over the place!  Mmmmmm...blood vomit.

Carrie relays the experience to Brian, who continues his bed brigade, so Carrie goes to take a nap on deck.  When she wakes, however, something is off.  There's...nobody around.  It's like everyone from the cruise just disappeared.  Oh, until she sees a man with a blood-stained mouth coming after her.  And then another one.  And then another one.

Carrie runs off, where she's able to find a few more people, and the group quickly realizes that a virus has spread throughout the ship, bringing the dead back to life, dead who are hungry for human flesh.  Let this be a lesson about picking up strangers.

Carrie now has a single-minded goal - finding her husband, and this is where the script does something different.  It starts out with a segment called "Carrie," which follows Carrie's journey as she tries to find Brian.  Then, when that's over, we cut to the "Brian" segment, where we show Brian trying to find Carrie.  If that were it, the script still may have been too predictable for me.  But then, for some odd reason, we also have a final segment titled, you guessed it, "Suparman."  Suparman is a 22 year old Indonesian man who is some sort of circus acrobatics expert, able to wield duo-machetes which allows him to slice and dice zombies like they're tomatoes.  I honestly have NO IDEA what Suparman was doing in the script, and yet, I was glad he was.  It gave the story this slight level of absurdity that differentiated it JUST ENOUGH from typical zombie faire to give it an edge.

The first thing I want to point out is what an advantage CONTAINING a horror scenario is.  For those who read or saw Contagion - if you were like me, you saw a movie trying to cover so many countries and so many scenarios that it eventually lost itself.  It's hard to sell mass death when there are so many places to hide, so many islands and areas safe from contamination.  On something like a cruise ship, however, there's nowhere to run.  You're trapped.  And that makes the situation a thousand times scarier.

I thought the cutting to different people was a smart move too.  It broke up the conventional zombie structure of a group trying to move from point A to point B (while avoiding zombies).  That's where I think a lot of these scripts die.  Because once the mystery is over, once the group knows they're zombies and have to get to [some location] to survive, the scripts become very technical.  They're just moving on rails while avoiding zombies.  All the creativity is gone.  Now I'm not saying Dead In The Water completely eliminated this, but the structure break-up was just enough to keep us on our toes.

As far as the characters here....hmmmm... I guess they were okay.  The whole "dead child" thing is a little stock.  I've seen it before.  In fact, it was the main storyline for another "dangerous person comes aboard a boat" flick, Dead Calm.  I don't know what it is about this backstory but I've never been a fan of it.  First, there's something just too sad about a dead child.  It doesn't translate well to screen.  And second, it's almost impossible to avoid melodrama with it.  The couple has to be sad, they have to discuss how sad they are, and it always comes off as too much.  I'd avoid this backstory unless you have a fresh take on it.

Anyway, the ultimate point is this - if I were a producer, I would buy this script.  It's a money-maker for sure.  Zombies on a cruise ship?  Never been done before (at least to my knowledge).  You got the contained setup, nowhere to run.  Zombies on a cruise has potential for a lot of fun scenarios, as proven here with the unforgettable shark climax.  And then of course, you get to top it all off with Suparman - the machete-wielding alien from another planet.  What's not to like?


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


What I learned: The isolated character name is a good way to imply the screenplay equivalent of a close-up during a key moment.  -- Remember guys, you don't want to write "CLOSE-UP" in your script.  It's too technical.  So the isolated character name is a great way to imply that the camera is on the character.  Here's an example from page 40...

They turn and run as the infected flood the stairs behind them.

ERYN

reaches a doorway.  Ducks through it and onto...

EXT. PROMENADE DECK - DAY