type='html'>

A fellow screenwriter who burst out of nowhere with a 750k sale returns with his newest spec, which sold last month.

Genre: Crime/Drama/Thriller
Premise: A washed up hitman is pulled back into the game when his estranged son accidentally gets tangled up in a bad situation with his former employer.
About: Brad Ingelsby jumped onto the scene when he sold The Low Dweller a few years ago. The 750,000 dollar spec sale was spearheaded by getting Leonardo DiCpario attached. This is his new spec, which he just sold last month.
Writer: Brad Ingelsby
Details: 107 pages – 1/3/12 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).

Collin Farrell for Mike?

What better word-lover to follow Tyler than ANOTHER word aficionado, Brad Ingelsby! With these two on the Hollywood Scrabble board, it’s like a word-topia. It’s like a word-a-palooza. I have a feeling if it was just me, Tyler, and Brad at a bar, I would quickly be nudged out of the conversation. They’d be like, “Carson, could you parsimoniously pass me my drink?” And I’d counter with one of six four-syllable words I know – something like “affirmative” – and that would be it. I’d be out.

Anyway, this is Ingelsby’s second big script. I may not have been The Low Dweller’s biggest cheerleader, but hey, you know me. It’s hard for a slow-paced script to pull me in. Maybe that same thought nudged into Ingelsby’s noggin, because he did title this one, “Run All Night.” Promises of something faster paced? Read on to find out.

Jimmy Conlon is a hitman in Philadelphia. To give you an idea of what Philadelphia's like – they boo Santa Clause there. No, I’m not kidding. Santa Clause showed up to an Eagles game once and they booed him. So the kind of people who live in this city? Not the huggable types. Important to know for later.

Anyway, Jimmy’s finally hung up the gun (do you hang up a gun) and spends his days in cushion land getting wasted all day. While I understand this is the de facto writing method for 30% of the screenwriters out there and can be really fun when combined with the internet, it definitely doesn’t suit our friend Jimmy. Clearly, he’s wasting away.

So Jimmy’s got a son, Mike, who he hasn’t stayed in touch with. Mike drives a limo. Has a family. Lives a clean life. He’s basically the opposite of his father.

That’s about to change, however. Mike is unknowingly tasked with bringing a couple of low-lives to a guy named Colin McGuire’s place, who’s also a low-life, but with lots more money and guns. And when these guys ask for their payment, Colin gives them a bullet sandwich instead (yes, I just used “bullet sandwich” in a sentence. Roll with me here. I’m still upset about being kicked out of Tyler and Brad’s conversation).

Once Colin realizes these guys came in a limo, well naturally he has to kill the limo driver too. Which is exactly what he tries to do. But Mike narrowly escapes. This leaves Colin with a problem. A virtual eye-witness to his murders. Now here’s where things get interesting. Jimmy, Mike’s father, used to work for Shawn McGuire – as in COLIN’S FATHER. That’s who he used to kill people for.

So now Mike has no choice but to go to his father and ask him what the hell he should do. Jimmy, back in business mode, says he’s going to try and take care of this diplomatically. So he calls his old boss, explaining that it’s all good – that his son isn’t going to say anything. But while this is happening, the loose-cannon Colin sneaks in to kill Mike. When Jimmy realizes what’s going on, he runs into the room, just as Colin is about to pull the trigger, and shoots him dead.

Jimmy then tells Shawn what happened – that he just killed his son. Shawn agrees that he did the right thing. If he were in his position, he would’ve pulled the trigger too. But he follows this with a really chilling sentence: You know how this has to end, right? Jimmy knows. So he grabs his son, and the two have to “run all night,” and not just from Shawn, but from everyone in the town that Shawn owns, which is everyone, including the cops. Will they make it out alive?

Run All Night starts with a very un-reader friendly gaggle of Irish names. Everybody’s named Shawn or Frank or Collin or Conlon or Maguire or Dorsey. My guess is Brad doesn’t read a lot of scripts or else he’d know how difficult it is for a reader to keep track of that kind of character spread. If I’m looking at a large character count, I’m using everything in my arsenal to make those names individual and memorable. I’ll use nicknames, unusual names, monikers (Fat Bill). I’ll push unimportant character intros to later so they don’t get lost in the slog. But it really gets hard if all the names are one nationality like this. I was checking my notes every 30 seconds to keep track of who was who.

But after that…Run All Night gets good. Really good in fact. I got goosebumps after Jimmy kills Colin, makes the call to Shawn to tell him he just killed his kid, and Shawn, somewhat understanding, replies, “You know how this has to end.” That was my official "sit up" moment (Whenever I sit up, it means a script's got me).

Brad also makes the wise decision – WHICH I ALWAYS TELL YOU GUYS TO DO – to create an unresolved relationship between Mike and Jimmy. Once you have an unresolved relationship, the audience emotionally invests themselves in the journey until it’s resolved. So it’s one more way to pull the audience in besides the cool plot of running from the bad guys. Was the relationship here a little too familiar at times? Yeah, probably. But Inglesby added just enough of his own spin to make me believe these two were real people with real issues.

And, you know, I always like when a writer throws in the wild card character. I remember how this very device SAVED a script that I would have otherwise forgotten. We also saw it work for Everly. Here, it’s Andrew Price, a trained killer who looks like he never outgrew his high school mathlete days. Shawn hires him to dispose of his son’s killers and boy does he pull out every trick in the book to do so. I don’t know what it is but there’s something about the wild card character that just shakes shit up. You don’t feel like you have as good of a beat on what’s going on. They create uncertainty and unpredictability and I love that.

Scriptshadow vets (not to exclude the Disciple newbies) may have also noted a key Scriptshadow truism– our character’s goal. Remember, if you just have the characters on the run the whole time, it’s probably going to get boring. Your characters need a purpose! They need somewhere to go! So Ingelsby uses the kid who witnessed the murder as the character goal. They need to find that kid so they can prove that Colin, did indeed, kill those men.

Did I love this goal? No, I didn’t “love” it. I kept flashing forward to the court room with Shawn using one of the best lawyers money can buy to discredit the shit out of this boy. So I think something stronger could be used. But the point is that there’s a goal in the first place. Beginner writers wouldn’t even use a goal in this scenario so the characters would just be running around aimlessly with the audience asking, “What’s the point of all this again? Where are they going?”

But I was definitely entertained bythis one. It feels like Ingelsby is growing as a writer. Let’s hope that continues cause he’s frighteningly talented.

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

What I learned: You never want your characters wandering around aimlessly for too long in these “on the run” movies. They can be running from someone. But within 2-3 scenes, you want to give them a plan, something to do – because wandering around aimlessly gets repetitive. For that reason, always be asking yourself, “What can my characters be *after*? What can they *need to do* right now?” The sooner they have a plan in place, the sooner your script gains that essential focus that all good screenplays have.

type='html'>Genre: Comedy/Romantic Comedy
Premise: After committing her first ever one-night stand, a young woman begins her walk of shame, only to realize she’s been snowed in. But the worst is yet to come. When the man she slept with wakes up, she quickly realizes she hates him.
About: 2 Night Stand finished in the middle of the 2011 Black List. This is Mark Hammer’s breakthrough screenplay.
Writer: Mark Hammer
Details: 98 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).

Emma Roberts for Megan?

I really hope today’s writer, Mark Hammer, isn’t the same Mark Hammer who starred as “Old Man” in Meet The Parents, seeing as that Mark Hammer died back in 2007. That would reflect REALLY badly on the Black List, if dead people were making it. Although I guess it would explain all the zombie scripts.

Lame jokes aside, it’s time for some lame jokes INSIDE. As in “Inside” this script. Haha. Actually, that’s not true. Two Night Stand is by no means a bad script. But unless you’re 22 years old, I’m not sure you’re going to like it too much. It’s sort of like Scenic Route but with a vagina. And if I remember correctly, you guys weren’t loving that one (I still stand by it as an interesting piece of screenwriting!).

But I will say this. You are one bold motherf*cker if you try and write a romantic comedy that takes place in one room. This isn’t a contained thriller where you can throw in a bunch of sweet twists and turns the second things go slow. It’s just two people talking about their issues and stuff. Which means if those two people aren’t captivating beyond all reason? And their dialogue isn’t the greatest dialogue in the universe? It’s going to be Bore City. So, is this script Ricky Gervais circa the 2011 Golden Globes or is it Ricky Gervais circa the 2012 Golden Globes? Read on to find out.

22 year old recent college grad (and I’m assuming very cute) Megan spends her days surfing the internet and watching TV. In other words, she’s my hero. Her gorgeous roommate, Faiza, has been enduring this for months and is finally fed up with it. She confronts Megan on why she’s been such a lazy worthless pile of excrement and tells her she needs to get a job!

But see, Megan’s still getting over her devastating breakup with her fiance and, as a result, can’t muster up the enthusiasm to re-enter society. So Faiza gets an idea. Megan needs to get laid. She needs to meet some random dude and take him to the bone zone! This’ll put a period on her mourning and allow her to move on. Megan’s a little reluctant at first but decides, “What the hell?” It just might work. Pause it. If I can just interject here for a moment. WHERE THE HELL ARE THESE WOMEN WHEN I’M OUT ON THE TOWN?? Unpause. Right, so, after Megan can’t get into a bar, she comes home and meets some random guy on the internet and asks him if she can come over and have sex with him.

Pause it again. WHERE THE HELL ARE THESE WOMEN WHEN I’M ON THE INTERNET??” Unpause. Megan goes over, the two get drunk, and we cut to the next morning, after a wild night of sexual escapading. Embarrassed that she’s stooped this low, Megan gets her clothes together and tip toes out the door, trying to disappear before the guy wakes up. Pause it.

WHERE THE HELL ARE THESE WOMEN WHEN I’M…

Kidding! Just a joke there ladies. Sort of. So yeah, Megan gets outside only to realize the biggest snowstorm in New York since Pocahontas and John Smith shared a tent, has trapped her in this apartment. With this dude. Who she doesn’t know. And had sex with.

Up until this point, I kind of liked the script. We were moving towards something. The story was pushing FORWARD. But here’s the issue with one-location scripts. Once we get into that location, there’s no more going forward. Your characters are stuck together. And now, it’s purely about how interesting those characters are and how entertaining you can make their interactions.

Your best tool once you’ve backed yourself into this corner is conflict. And that conflict has to be pretty intense because the whole movie rests on the drama in this room, and if you can’t create drama, you don’t have a movie. The problem with Two Night Stand, at least in my opinion, is I didn’t feel that conflict was authentic. I see this in a lot in romantic comedy scripts, where the writer knows he has to keep things interesting, so he makes the characters hate each other, without really knowing why. He just knows that it needs to happen.

So out of nowhere, these two just started hating each other. I don’t know how. I don’t know why. It just happened all of a sudden. This led to a lot of forced dialogue where they attacked each other about their sexual prowess, their relationship status and everything else in between. Some of it was definitely amusing but the whole time I couldn’t stop wondering what had caused these two to get so worked up about each other in the first place.

Here’s an idea (spoiler alert). Later in the script, Megan finds out that Alec (oh yeah, that’s the guy) has a girlfriend. Instead, she should’ve found that out right away, like as soon as she woke up. She finds some piece of evidence that proves he has a girlfriend. She’s disgusted with him. Tries to leave. And when she has to come back and face him, she just starts going off on him about it. THAT I could believe. Now the conflict has some basis in reality.

OR possibly she doesn't tell him she knows, which could lead to all sorts of dramatic irony during their conversations.  He could tell her that he's one of the most loyal men in the universe.  His middle name is loyalty.  And Megan is just stewing inside, waiting for the right moment to pounce on him about what she knows.  

I also would’ve looked for ways to involve the rest of the building somehow. You may not have the luxury of space to play with. But you do have, presumably, a building full of potentially interesting characters. Have a few memorable people you can shift in and out of the apartment. The creepy maintenance guy. The hot neighbor Alec formally had a fling with who does NOT like Megan at all and who Alec never officially “ended” it with. If the Koreans next door were also the managers, and Alec was late on rent, that could lead to some interesting conflict when Megan had to go over there to use the bathroom (the bathroom in Alec’s apartment has overflowed). Alec begs her not to go but she does anyway, which leads to the manager storming over and, of course, demanding Alec’s rent. I don’t know, it just seemed like there was so much more opportunity to play here, and instead we stayed focused on these two talking to each other for 60 straight minutes. It’s not that it’s bad. It just gets a little…stale. I mean usually when you pull out the “You wanna get high?” scene, it means you’re plum out of ideas.

I also had a bit of a problem with the tone. Parts of it felt like an indie-comedy (especially the premise), with a 500 Days Of Summer vibe to it. Other parts (like scaling the building) were broad enough to be outtakes from How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days. But I don’t think you can write a movie like that that takes place in a single apartment. I mean, this isn’t a part a Matthew McConaghey type would play. Not that there are rules to that sort of thing. But I just felt the indie vibe lent itself to a slightly more realistic tone.

Anyway, I’m probably over-thinking this. Like I said, the script wasn’t bad. It’s just that the forced conflict threw me and the single location got stale after awhile. I was hoping for a little more out of this one.

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

What I learned: Do not repeat in your description what your characters have just said or done. In Two Night Stand, when Megan and Alec first wake up, they make a few jokes to defuse the awkward situation. Right afterwards, we get this line of description: “They’re making the best of the awkward situation with humor.” You don’t need to tell us that. We just saw it ourselves.

What I learned 2: Scriptshadow Moratorium. I am disallowing, from this point on, female character backstories that include finding out their old boyfriend/husband was gay. I have read this in possibly over 200 screenplays. I’m begging the writing populace out there. Stop using this. Please!

type='html'>Genre: Horror
Premise: One night every year, strange creatures attack the major cities, killing thousands. Nobody knows who or what these creatures are, and no one can stop them.
About: Grim Night made last year's Black List AND was purchased last year.  The sale was best known for the writers' inventive idea of making a trailer for their script.  Now I've been promoting making one-sheets for scripts (e-mail me for details), but I never thought it would go so far as people making trailers for scripts.  Cool idea.  Check out the trailer below.
Writers: Brandon Bestenheider & Allen Bey
Details: 117 pages

I'm trying to be better.  I know I don't review enough horror scripts on the site and I want to change that.  I just got back from a meeting where everyone agreed that the most risk-free way to make a movie was to a make a horror film.  So it's a really lucrative market to explore as a screenwriter.

Why, then, don't I review them?  Cause they're often juvenile and horribly written, moreso than most genres.  Horror writers care about scares and gore and disgusting imagery.  They don't have any interest in story or characters.

Well, Grim Night was a popular sale so I decided to give it a shot.  Imagine my reaction, then, when a longtime Scriptshadow reader told me, "You shouldn't have picked that.  It's the worst screenplay I've read in ten years."

OUCH.  Here I was, taking a chance on a horror script, and I happened to pick the worst one in ten years??  Talk about bad luck.  However, myself and this reader have disagreed on many scripts in the past (he liked Hugo!!??), which I pointed out to him.  He assured me, however, "This one we'll agree on.  Trust me."  Hmmmm...So, did I agree?

Grim Night starts "downtown."  Downtown where?  Big city?  Medium-sized town?  No idea.  The slug just says, "Downtown."  Okay, I'll just make up a location for myself then.  Ummm, big city.

Everywhere around this city are warnings.  "Never forget," these warnings warn warningly.  "37,112 dead."  News footage fills us in on the rest.  Every year, these things called the "Grims" come around and kill thousands of people in all the major cities.

They're kind of like really nasty trick-or-treaters.  They come to your door, ask you for something you don't want to give them (a watch, a lock of hair), and if you don't give it to them, they kill you.  So for that one night, everybody stays indoors, huddled up, and prays that the Grims don't bother them.  Most people make it through the night just fine.  37,000 deaths is a lot.  But over ten years?  In all the major cities?  As someone points out, you have a better chance of being struck by lightning twice.  However, there are others who aren't so lucky.

Our hosts for Grim Night are the Green family.  There's the father, Paul, who's just a normal dad who's occasionally late getting home.  There's the overtly brave 15 year old Sasha.  There's younger brother Josh, whose character development consists of owning a samurai sword.  And there's wife Liz, who takes Grim Night the most seriously (believe it or not, there are some people who don't worry about Grim Night at all).

The night begins, and after a few false alarms (Josh's buddy Cooper plays a joke on them), the real Grims show up.  The Grims hide under giant "Grim Reaper" like cloaks so you can't see their faces and instead of walking, they prefer to glide across surfaces.

The Grims are also cheap-asses, because instead of going off and buying their own wives a wedding ring, they demand that Liz give them hers.  She reluctantly does and that's it.  The family feels like they've passed the test and they can go on with their lives.

Not so fast.  Next, the Grims want a lock of Sasha's hair.  And after that, they want Sasha!  Paul tries to fight them off but the Grims take Sasha into the night and Paul realizes that as soon as the sun rises, Sasha will be gone forever.  So they need to chase the Grim who stole her!  Grim-chasing is an inexact science and there are a few stumbling blocks along the way, but in the end they catch up to her and somehow get her back.  But, is this Sasha still the Sasha they know?  Or is she...like...ummm...evil Sasha now??

The big question: Was this the worst screenplay of the last 10 years?  Umm, no.  Not even close.  Was it a good screenplay?  Ehhh...sometimes?  I mean, there's definitely something spooky about what's going on here.  Creepy dudes in cloaks coming to your door and asking for shit.  Then killing you if you don't give it to them.  I mean that's the stuff horror's made of, right?  Being in a completely helpless terrifying situation.

My issue is that I just didn't buy it.  The beginning of the script establishes that this has been going on for years, even though it's present day.  So...going on for years where?  In an alternate universe?  So you're asking me to now buy into a world that doesn't exist?  Sure, that's part of movies.  Star Wars doesn't exist.  But the difference here is that everything else is the same.  It's depicted as "reality" when it isn't reality.  The writers have changed our planet's history in order to set up this scenario, and I just couldn't get past that.

The other issue I have is how nonsensical everything is.  The Grims come by to...take your ring?  What are they going to do with a ring?  Pawn it at the local pawn shop?  I don't get the sense that after Grim Night they all sit around and play cards, gambling away the things they've stolen for kicks.  So there has to be some motivation here - some reasoning for this odd behavior.  But we never get it.

If you're going to build a mythology THIS BIG (evil creatures killing thousands across the world), I suggest you know why your antagonists are doing what they're doing.  And I'm not sure the writers know this.  Whenever writers don't know why their characters are doing things, the writing takes on a murky generic feel.  The less you know about the why, the more you have to fake it.  And readers can always tell when you're faking it.

Then of course there's absolutely zero character development.  I mean ZERO.  Like we don't even know what was going on in a single character's life before this screenplay started.  The dad could've been a lion-tamer a month ago for all I know.

Then there were weird choices that made no sense, like right in the middle of all this terror, Sasha goes upstairs and takes a bath?  Uhhh, what???  There were just a lot of weird things like that that popped up.

In the end the script just felt thin.  The real coup here is the trailer.  The writers understood - as I've been telling you guys - that the landscape is changing.  You have more avenues to get yourself noticed than you've ever had before.  Take advantage of them.  Try new things.  They may not always work out.  But remember that you could have Citizen Kane on your hard drive.  But if you don't figure out how to get people to read it, it doesn't matter.

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

What I learned: Use anticipation to reel a reader in.  If you use Anticipation correctly, it's almost impossible to lose the reader.  I dare anyone to read this first act of Grim Night and not want to keep reading.  That's because the writers do a great job of building up our anticipation for the Grims' arrival.  We absolutely HAVE to see what they look like and if they'll go after our family.  Anticipation is one of the easiest ways to rope a reader in so if you can write a story that takes advantage of it, consider it.  Just remember, once you've burned that anticipation (and we meet the Grims) you have to use other tools to keep us invested, like suspense and original choices and twists and turns and character development.  I don't think Grim did that effectively.

type='html'>Welcome to Amateur Week!  All week we're reviewing scripts from amateur writers that got the best response from this post.  We've already had one script perform REALLY WELL in "Fascination 127."  Will "Chase The Night" be the next big amateur script to celebrate?  Let's find out!  

Genre: Drama
Premise: (from writer) On his 25th birthday, a troubled orphan receives information about his estranged mother, sending him into a world of corruption as he investigates the circumstances behind her life and death.
About: I knew this one depended on how unique and compelling the choices were behind the main character's investigation.  That's what sorta worried me about this logline - that a specific compelling circumstance wasn't mentioned, but rather a general blanket set of circumstances which were implied.  The logline felt a little cold in that respect.  But I liked the emotional component of the story, so I was interested to see if it connected on that level.
Writer: Thomas A. Schwenn
Details: 115 pages
Status: AVAILABLE

Timberlake for Tommy?

Star Wars Tuesday.  Blood List Wednesday.  Disciple Program finishing #1.  Halloween yesterday. How is "Chase The Night" supposed to follow all this?  Good question.  And I'll tell you my biggest concern reading the logline.  I thought it sounded a little boring.  That's not to say it *would* be boring.  Just that the logline made it sound that way.  Remember, your logline is like the billboard or trailer for a movie.  It's the only thing you have to promote your screenplay.  So like a great billboard or trailer makes us want to see the movie, a logline has to make us want to read the script!  It has to sound exciting!

Just to remind everyone, faulty loglines can be broken down into two categories.  The first is that you haven't adequately conveyed the excitement of your script.  There is no excuse for this.  If your script is exciting, you better workshop the HELL out of your logline to make sure it's perfect and conveys the coolness of your script.  The second issue is much more concerning.  The concept itself stinks.  This goes well beyond workshopping a logline.  It means scrapping the entire script.  Because no matter how you dress up your logline, how many times you reword it, it's still going to convey an idea that isn't very good in the first place.  Which is why I always say, get your logline figured out first.  Because eventually you're going to be using that to market your script, and if it doens't work now, it's not going to work then.

Actually, I've seen this lead to a long-standing trend of trying to dress loglines up into something the script isn't in order to get reads. You realize, "Ooh, if I stress the ghost aspect more in the logline, even though it's barely in the script, it'll sound better!"  This is how I would classify Monday's script, "Pocket Dial," which promised a lot of modern technology relationship humor in its logline, but didn't give us any of that in the actual screenplay.  Not only is that going to piss readers off, but my question to these writers is, "If that makes your logline better, why didn't you write that script in the first place?"

Okay, enough bitching and moaning.  It's supposed to be a happy day, a day in which we gorge on all the candy we accumulated last night.  Oh, not that I went trick-or-treating last night.  No, not at all.  Why would someone my age go trick-or-treating?  That's ridiculous for you to even suggest that.  I'm just saying that if I *was* a kid  and I *did* trick-or-treat yesterday, that I would have a lot of candy that I'm eating right now - or that *that kid* would be eating right now.  Not me.  Cause I didn't go trick-or-treating......Man, is it hot in here?

25 year old Tommy Young is not a happy compadre.  He carries an old picture around with him showing a young woman, who we'll come to know as Mariah, hanging out with two friends, Jack and Sam.  Although we're not sure why yet, Tommy has some business with these guys and that business needs to be addressed pronto.

He eventually finds one of the men, Jack (now in his 50s), washed up, drunk, and demands to know about Mariah.  It's here where we get a little more info on the woman.  It appears that many years ago, Mariah was charged with killing her parents - Tommy's grandparents.  Yes, Tommy is Mariah's son.  He wants to know the truth about what happened that day, cause he's convinced his mom would never do such a thing.

Well he's not going to get that information from Jack because Jack's Daniel (that's my clever way of saying he's wasted).   So off Tommy goes to find the other dude, Sam, who's since become a cop.  Jack ends up kidnapping Sam no problem, then ties him up and starts asking questions.  Sam denies knowing anything about Mariah, but starts to crack a little as Tommy puts the heat on.

In the meantime, Sam's precinct gets word that he's missing and starts looking for him, forcing Tommy to take Sam on the run.  It's here where we're introduced to the main detective on Sam's case, Frank Marshall.  While Tommy and Sam skitter all over the city avoiding capture, Frank interviews friends of Tommy to get a beat on where he may be holding Sam.

At some point, Sam decides to help Tommy figure out what happened to his mom, although this was a seriously confusing part of the script.  Sam is constantly asking to be let go, while also providing details and clues for Tommy to find out if his mom really killed his grandparents.  Is he trying to get away or is he trying to help?  To be honest, I was never sure.

And that's pretty much how the rest of the script goes. It's Tommy and Sam finding clues to help their case while Frank Marshall finds clues to save Sam.  I wish I could provide more plot points but there really weren't any.  This was pretty straightforward.  Which was the first problem of many I had with "Chase The Night."

This was a strange script.  Because from a distance, it had a lot of components that make up a good story.  You have a guy looking into his mother's murder case.  So there's a goal and a mystery there.  And you have the chase aspect going on as well, in that at any moment, Frank could catch them.  You also had high stakes, in that Tommy's trying to free his mother from jail.  But despite all this, the script struggles mightily to keep the reader's attention.

We'll start with the logline, which states that an orphan receives information from his estranged mother. I never saw that anywhere in the script.  So I didn't even know Tommy was an orphan.  And because of that, I coudln't figure out why he all of a sudden needed to do this.  Why didn't he do it earlier?  And to be honest, I couldn't even tell you what Tommy was trying to do!  He just had this picture with these people in it.  It wasn't until halfway through the story that I understood what Tommy's goal was.  I still don't know if that was done by design or by accident.  But plot murkiness is a script killer, and this plot was murky.

But what really bothered me was how detached the writing was.  Everything was so...clinical, so cold.  The main character wasn't very interesting.  The story wasn't very interesting.  And a big part of that had to do with how little "voice" there was to the writing.  All the words were where they needed to be.  And it actually read quite well.  But it was just so...I don't know how to put it..."distant."  And that left me bored.

Also, I'm not sure the information in this story is dispensed in a way as to garner the most drama.  For example, I didn't know why Tommy was looking for Jack at first (other than that he was in the picture) so I didn't care.  I guess you can argue that you're playing up the mystery behind the picture, but if you misjudge how interested the audience is going to be in regards to that mystery, you end up with a really bored reader.

Finally, I could never figure out what the rules of this Tommy/Sam pairing were.  Did Sam want to get away?  Did he want to help?  It seemed like sometimes he wanted to bail ("Just let me leave.  They'll never find you.") and other times he was Watson to Tommy's Sherlock.  There was this vague implication that Tommy'd convinced him to "do the right thing" and help him find out what happened to his mom, but even that was never clearly laid out.  So it just felt comical that these two were running around town together.  Are they friends?  Are they enemies?  I didn't know!

If I were to give Thomas advice for his next script, I would say to add more character and color to his writing.  Let's have it pop off the page more.  Try to be more clear with your plot and motivations as well.  We need to know, definitively, why Sam is hanging around Tommy this whole script.  We need to know, definitively, what this picture is about, how it got in Tommy's possession, and why it's motivated him to become Liam Neeson in Taken.  And try to have a few more unexpected things happen during the story.  This story unraveled way too predictably.  I wish Thomas good luck on his next screenplay.  Sorry I couldn't get into this one.

[ ] what the hell did I just read?

[x] wasn't for me

[ ] worth the read

[ ] impressive

[ ] genius

What I learned: Your 3rd Act twist has to have a properly weighted setup, or else you end up with a "WTF" moment. (Spoiler) So the big twist here is that Stan Bell, the chief of police, covered up his son's murdering of Tommy's grandparents, blaming it on Mariah.  Except here's the thing, I hadn't seen Stan Bell since page 15, where he was introduced for .5 seconds, then disappeared until the final sequence.   How is that a satisfying twist?  Shouldn't we know the person who the twist is centered around so that we care?  Shouldn't he have 4-5 scenes of him dispersed evenly throughout the script so his reveal isn't a total "wtf" moment?  Make sure to properly weight your setups people, particularly if they're setups to a big final payoff.