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I love you Melanie. Just not your film.

I generally like to bust out the optimism here on Scriptshadow. There are too many people bringing others down in this business. “You can’t do this.” “You can’t do that.” Everything, according to these folks, is terrible. The truth is, the people who make it in this business are the people who ignore the naysayers – who don’t get caught up in the negativity. That being said, I’m a moviegoer just like everyone else. And while I respect the fact that thousands of man-hours were put into these pieces of entertainment, I’m just as mad as anyone when the product I paid for is junk. So I’ve reserved one day of the year to air out my frustrations. I should note that I haven’t seen “In Time” or “My Sister’s Retarded” (or whatever that Adam Sandler movie is called), both of which I hear are beyond terrible. And of course any year with a Transformers movie means that movie is automatically number 1 – so I won’t even bother putting it on the list. As for the rest of these films, each of them took my breath away. As in, I almost died of boredom watching them. Beware of what follows. It gets ugly.

10) Win-Win – Maybe Win-Win shouldn’t be on this list. It’s a competently made film with some okay moments. But I’m including it because it was the most average film I saw all year. And “average” can sometimes be worse than “bad.” I’ve had a problem with McCarthy’s films for awhile now, never quite understanding all the love they got, but going along with it because they were independent and Rotten Tomatoes always seemed to give them high scores. I figured it was my fault I didn’t like them. But after this movie, I’m not falling for it anymore. The narrative in Win-Win is all over the place. The central relationship between the boy and the coach is uninspired. I’m not even sure what the motivation of our protagonist is. To win a wrestling championship? I don’t get the sense that’d change his life in any way. So where are the stakes? The kid is boring. The grandfather scam is okay but ultimately unsatisfying. The mom stuff is cliché. There’s just nothing to grab onto here. It feels like one giant exploratory first draft.

9) Everything Must Go – I can't tell you how much it pains me to put this on my list. For those readers new to the site, Everything Must Go was my favorite script a couple of years ago. I thought it was such a clever story - the idea of this guy being kicked out of his house, forced to live on his lawn with all his “stuff,” then realizing that stuff was a symbol of his past and that in order to move on, he would have to get rid of it all, which he does in a yard sale. Unfortunately, I can't remember a movie where the performances were as dead as this one. The kid was boring. Will Ferrell was boring. Even the captivating Rebecca Hall seemed confused. Like “Am I supposed to like you or just be a helpful pregnant neighbor?” It was as if the entire cast was sleepwalking through the movie. And when your entire movie takes place in one location, the performances need to be amazing. I learned a lot from this film. Unless you’re writing a thriller or a horror film, be wary of placing your movie in a single location.

8) Cowboys And Aliens – Here’s a question for you. Who wins in a fight? Cowboys? Or Aliens? No wait, let me be more specific. Who wins in a fight? People 140 years less advanced than us? Or aliens 1 million years more advanced than us? Hmmm, let me think about that for a second. I don’t know. It’s a tough call. I mean the cowboys do have horses. Oh yeah, wait. THE ALIENS DO! But apparently the producers of this movie thought this was some sort of even battle, not realizing that any rational person would realize that if the Cowboys won, it would only be because the writers cheated. But that wasn't this script’s only problem. The writers decided to write a movie where nothing happens for 60 minutes. I mean seriously. What happens in the first hour of this movie? The highlight for me in this film was realizing that one of the actors was Captain Hadley from The Shawshank Redemption.

7) No Strings Attached – Look, Ashton Kutcher seems like a nice guy. No, really, he does. And I’m not even mad at him for cheating on Demi Moore. But come on. This guy cannot act to save his Twitter Account. When you then combine his talents with Natalie Portman, who is to rom-coms what Snooki is to book clubs, you get the abomination that is No Strings Attached. Not only do these two look uncomfortable in their own skin, but they have zero chemistry together. No. They have negative chemistry together. Is it possible to have negative chemistry? I’m going to look that up because if not, we may have just made a major scientific discovery. Which would mean at least something good came of this film. It didn’t help that Liz Merriwether’s original script was sanitized down to a faux-edgy piece of fluff. Natalie, I love you. But stay away from anything resembling comedy. Ashton, I love you, but stay away from anything resembling movies.

6) The Dilemma – I just…I just don’t know what to say about this terrible film. Actually, I do. How is it that you can overlook a story flaw so big, it eclipsed the sun the day the final draft was turned in? A movie about whether a guy should tell his best friend that his wife is cheating on him? That’s not a movie. That's a subplot. That's a scene. But if you think you're going to keep an audience's interest for an entire film with that sort of secondary conflict, you need to be sent to screenwriter jail. No chance of parole. This is a movie! The conflict has to be bigger!! Our main character’s girlfriend is the one who has to be cheating. But even if you don't take that into account, it still doesn't make sense. Should you tell your best friend that his girlfriend is cheating on him or not? Hmmmmmm…um YEAH! You should. Movie over. And on top of all this we have to endure Vince Vaughn and Kevin James bumping into things for 90 minutes. Here’s a dilemma for you. Do you tell an established producer that the movie he’s about to make is going to be terrible?

5) Happythankyoumoreplease– Oh Josh Radnor. I still remember the day I read your script. I still remember thinking how beautiful the writing was, how amazing the characters were, how original the story was. Yeah, it was a bit self-congratulatory in places. But overall, I was amazed by your talent as a screenwriter. And then you had to go and direct the film even though you’d apparently never picked up a camera before. Long shot, close up, close up. Long shot, close up, close up. All that was missing was a wind-up bolex and 3 reels of 8mm black and white film. I can't remember a single moment where a character was actually moving. Everybody always seemed to be sitting down in small rooms. And then of course there was the…..duh duh DUHHHHH…. COUPLE OF DEATH! I will never forget that couple, the way they argued over and over again about the same thing. About how depressed they looked. About how depressing they were. Those scenes were so torturous that I don’t think I’ll ever fully recover from them. R.I.P. The Couple Of Death. R.I.P. Happythankyoumoreplease.

4) Somewhere – Look, I’m all for experimental film…WHEN YOU’RE A FILM STUDENT. But when you’re asking people to pay ten bucks for your movie, a cohesive storyline is required. Or a goal. Or a purpose. Or a point. “Somewhere” is a film that feels cobbled together from random dailies and rehearsal takes. Isn’t one of the first things you learn as a writer to cut out all the boring parts? When you start putting theme and symbolism and experimentation ahead of entertainment, you’re playing with fire in a fireworks factory. People will only travel down that path for so long before they start asking where you’re going. Coppola better be careful. She’s quietly directing herself out of the business. The title to this film is appropriate: “Somewhere.” Unfortunately, neither the director nor the audience knew where.

3) Sanctum - James Cameron should be ashamed of himself for producing and supporting this crap. What disappoints me so much is that Cameron understands the value of story. He made his living as a screenwriter before he became a filmmaker, and while it's not his biggest strength, he’s pretty darn good at it. So why, then, does NOTHING HAPPEN IN THE FIRST 50 MINUTES OF THIS MOVIE??? I remember a 7 minute helicopter landing scene. I remember 20 minutes of people radioing each other back and forth in a cave about NOTHING. There was no main character as far as I could tell. No point to any of the action. It’s never good when nearly a full hour into the film you’re still asking the question, “What is this movie *about*?” I mean I could’ve improved this script by 1000% had you just given me 30 minutes. If your movie revolves around a mysterious and fascinating cave, then DON’T ALREADY START in the cave. We have to go in there together. Discover it together. Build some actual suspense. Where’s the fun in everybody already being inside? And you know what? I actually would’ve been okay with this IF the reason for it was so we could jump right into the story. Except we get there, then listen to people radio each other back and forth for 50 MINUTES! So the whole point to starting late isn’t even taken advantage of. I wish somebody would’ve pushed me into this cave also.

2) Beginners – No no no. Make it end. The memories of this film still burn inside of my brain. Pretentious. So pretentious. Have not seen a movie this pretentious since film school. Subtitles whenever the dog talks. Make it stop. Entire movie told out of order for no other reason than the writer wanting to be weird and different. 83 year old father coming out and going to clubs that play house music so he can pick up 30 year old men. Non-stop voice over telling us insignificant things or stuff we already know. 83 year old newly gay father is also dying of cancer. Of course he is! We must make this indie and different and as pretentious as possible! No story here. Just a writer trying to be “deep” and different for different’s sake. Sometimes random images would flash across the screen. Because of the pretentiousness. They hadn’t hit the quota yet so they had to keep going. This movie was a cinematic fatwa. The only reason it isn’t number one on my list is because of Melanie Laurent who was as cute as a jelly bean. Thank you Melanie for saving me from a boredom coma.

1) Skyline – Sometimes Redbox sends me codes for free movies. I used one to get Skyline. I still want a refund. Apparently a couple of visual effects wizards figured they’d skimp on screenplay costs and, what the hell, WRITE THIS MOVIE THEMSELVES. As a result, we get 47 scenes in a hotel room that I’m pretty sure were the same scene from 47 different angles. Oh, and 5 scenes where they peek outside and see aliens. I couldn’t begin to tell you what the plot was here. Some guy is staying at a hotel. Maybe he’s an actor. His friends come by. I think one of them just won a Ferrari in a game show or something. Game Show Ferrari Guy gets mad at our hero because, um, well because it’s a movie and people get mad at each other in movies. People’s faces turn blue sometimes because, um, room service sucks? I have no idea. Note to aspiring filmmakers out there. Not anyone can write a script. Find some money and pay someone who knows what they’re doing. At the very least your movie will be coherent.

Oh man. I really needed that. Those were some pretty awful movies. But stay tuned for tomorrow when Happy Carson returns. My 15 favorite movies of the year, which I promise will contain some surprises. See you then. :)

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“Writing Movies for Fun and Profit” is one of the more interesting books to come along in the screenwriting community in a while. Its authors, the writers of such movies as Night at the Museum and Herbie Fully Loaded, seem to take the opposite approach when it comes to writing than mainstays such as Robert McKee and Blake Snyder. Gone are long chapters on how to develop your characters. Absent is any in-depth look at structure. In their place is a single core piece of advice: Write big fun family "four quadrant" movies and rake in the dollars.

Despite the actual screenwriting advice being some of the worst I've ever encountered, the backstage insider look into the business side of screenwriting is nothing short of amazing. Basically, the book tells you what happens after you break into the club. It's funny, it's sad, it's interesting, but if you ever wondered what it's really like to be a working screenwriter or you want to prepare yourself for when you finally make that big jump, this is definitely a book for you.

Before I get into some of the more interesting aspects of the book, I'd like to warn you about its biggest weakness - its unequivocally terrible advice when it comes to writing a screenplay. You see, these guys believe it's as easy as slapping together a bunch of funny scenes and making a $1 million sale. Let me tell you why they think this and why they're wrong. As the authors point out in their book, on most big projects there are a lot of writers. Oftentimes, new writers are brought in to beef up the weak portions of the screenplay. So if the dialogue is bad, the producers will bring in writers who are good with dialogue. Once they're finished, the producers may realize that the structure is sloppy. So they'll fire the dialogue guys and bring in some structure guys. What our authors seem to understand but not acknowledge is that they’re the "comedy" guys. They're the writers you bring in when you want jokes. But the between the lines message here – and I'm not even sure our authors are aware of it – is that when the producers want people who actually know how to write a screenplay, who understand the guts, the depth, how to add heart, and all those things that actually make a story resonate with people, they bring in writers who actually know how to write. So while our authors implying that none of that "deep" stuff really matters may be true for their own specific experiences, it has nothing to do with Joe Nobody’s approach to a screenplay. Joe Nobody still has to display an intrinsic understanding of the craft to impress a reader. It would be nice if all you had to do was tell a couple of jokes to make a million bucks. But that's simply not the case.

The good news is, none of that stuff is the focus of the book. The main focus here is the business end. And I have to give it to these guys. They taught me a hell of a lot about how things work once you're a highly paid screenwriter. Here are some of the highlights.

OH NO
My favorite chapter (and probably the most terrifying chapter you'll ever read if you're a screenwriter) is the one that deals with the authors' experience writing Herbie: Fully Loaded. Now if you ask me, I'm not jumping up and down begging somebody to let me write another Herbie movie. But hey, everybody's got their thing. So these guys pitched Herbie to the studio president and she loved it. She thought it was the greatest idea ever and quickly made Herbie the most important movie on the studio’s slate. She then set them up with a producer who basically had zero interest in making a Herbie movie and therefore tried to make a version of what she believed a Herbie movie for people who don't like Herbie would be like. She then proceeded to make the writers change every single aspect of their story, even though those were all the things the studio fell in love with. And they couldn't do anything about it. When you're the writers, you can't just call the studio president and say, "Hey, this producer is making us change all the things you love.” There is a hierarchy. You're not allowed to go over anybody's head. So all they could do was stand on the deck and watch the Titanic sink.

This is what I don't get about Hollywood. It would seem to me that one of the more important decisions you would make as a president would be to match up a project with a producer who understands and cares about that project. It sounds like a producer was just randomly assigned to these guys. I don't see how good movies could consistently be made under that process (note to readers: the authors assure us rather proudly that that producer is no longer working in the business). But what should really tickle your noodle is that these guys also wrote Taxi – a movie in which the development process went as smoothly as newly churned butter. Now comparing Herbie to Taxi is kind of like comparing Jersey Shore to Basketball Wives. But in a close race I would still say that Herbie comes out on top. Which begs the question: How much does development really matter?

PITCHING
One of the big changes in your life after your first sale is that you'll now become a human pitch machine, pitching your own projects or pitching yourself as the best option for someone else's projects. This is an element of the business that very few people talk about outside of working screenwriters. And these guys do a pretty good job of preparing you for it. Probably the most important advice they give you is that whatever movie you’re pitching should have a main character a movie star will want to play. Because no matter how much movie blogs and Hollywood insiders are trying to convince us that stars no longer matter, the easiest way to get financing and confidence behind a project is to have a movie star attached. They also point out that your idea should be different but shouldn't reinvent the wheel. It should sound like a cross between two really successful films (they use the example "Die Hard" meets "Home Alone" but I'm pretty sure they were joking – although it's hard to tell – these are the guys who wrote Taxi remember). The rest of their advice about pitching is rather practical – be excited about your movie, don't be afraid to act out some of the parts, and keep it short (a typical pitch is 15 min. long). But the point is, this is the part of Hollywood that most screenwriters have no clue about until they're thrown into the fire. It sure is nice to get a look at the logs before the match is lit.

PAGE LENGTH
One of the more amusing chapters I ran into was in regards to page count and page formatting. For everybody who thinks that the length of their screenplay doesn't matter, wait till you start writing for a big studio. The studios are so obsessed with page length that they actually have their own specific formatting requirements. They give you specific indents and formatting rules you must enter into your screenwriting software when you write drafts for them. If you turn a script in that doesn't follow that formatting data, they will chop off your fingers. The reason for this is, obviously, every page is roughly equal to a certain amount of screen time, usually 1 min. And each of the studios have perfected a formatting template that allows them to best measure the length of a movie based on the length of the screenplay. So for those of you freaking out about page length now, wait until you have to start formatting a studio script. That's when shit gets real.

GETTING PAID
One of the most enlightening chapters in the book is the chapter about getting paid. I can't tell you how many writers have asked me how much they should expect to make selling their first screenplay, and then, if the screenplay gets made, how much they should expect to make on the back end. These are the details I've always wanted answers to and the book goes into as much minutia as I've ever seen on the matter. So how much is the minimum one can make from selling a screenplay? The short answer is, the Writers Guild requires a writer be paid at least $110,000 for an original screenplay. However, you aren't in the Writers Guild. And that means somebody could pay you 200 bucks. Where things get interesting though is on the backend. This is where the writing business gets messy. The reason that those writing credits are so coveted – even on total pieces of shit like Paul Blart 3 – is because as long as you have an official credit on the film, you'll be getting paid for the rest of your life. All those writers who worked on the script but didn't get credit? They don't get diddly squat outside of their rewrite fee.

The fight for that coveted credit has created one of the most highly controversial arbitration processes in any union. Without getting into too much detail, in order to determine who gets the credit on a screenplay, a bunch of your fellow writers read all the drafts from all the people who worked on the project, and decide who to give the credit to. Each writer is also allowed to give a written argument as to why they believe they should get the credit. Oftentimes, credit is given to the writer with the most persuasive argument. So Writer A may have done a lot more work on the screenplay than Writer B, but Writer B came up with a much better argument, so he wins. This has become such an intense process, that there are actually arbiters out there that you can hire for thousands of dollars who'll write your argument for you to give you the best chance at getting written credit on the film.

This has also led to some really shady practices in the screenwriting community, some of which actually encourage writers to sabotage a good script. If you're hired to rewrite another writer, and you want to make as much money as possible, it's in your best interest to rewrite as much of the story as possible, regardless of if that new story is better than the current story. If you know that the movie you're working on is already getting made, then it's practically demanded of you to change as much as possible so you can get final credit on the film. This is at least part of the reason why there are a lot of bad movies out there. The system is rigged to encourage writers to change what's working. There are actually standard tricks of the trade – like changing all of the characters names – to help it look like you've written the majority of the story. Arbitration is one of, if not the, most heated topic amongst professional screenwriters. I can't say I know how to fix it but from the way these guys lay it out, it's clear that the process is broken. Maybe some savvy Scriptshadow readers have some ideas on how to fix it and can share their ideas in the comments section.

IN SUMMARY
What I've highlighted above is just scratching the surface. There are a ton of other topics that the book covers (including how to take notes from Martin Lawrence – well kinda). Despite some of the worst pure screenwriting advice I've ever read (please, don't listen to anything these guys say when it comes to the actual writing), I have to admit that I've never seen this kind of insight into the professional plight of a working screenwriter. Not all of us are going to hang on long enough to become screenwriting superstars, but for those of you who are in this for the long haul and expect to be looking at real estate in the Hollywood Hills at some point in your life, you'll definitely want to read this book. For those who have already bought it, feel free to offer your opinions in the comments section.