Guest reviewer Andrew Page gets a chance to review a screenplay about one of his idols, Jimi Hendrix.

Hello all. As I work tirelessly around the clock to bring you some fun Scriptshadow changes in the coming months, I’ll be depending on longtime Scriptshadow readers to fill in with the occasional guest review. Today, I want everyone to welcome Andrew Page, who’ll be reviewing a genre I avoid like the plague, the biopic! All you biopic fans rejoice, cause you know these don’t come along often. I’ll be back tomorrow with a strange sci-fi spec.

Genre: Biopic/Drama

Premise: The Life Story of Guitar Legend Jimi Hendrix.

About: From Deadline Hollywood - This project was in development with financing from Legendary Pictures CEO Thomas Tull. Several leads were considered for the role of Hendrix, including Outkast’s Andre 3000, Eddie Murphy, and Will Smith, but each approach was rejected by the Hendrix estate, which is currently controlled by Janie Hendrix, the adopted daughter of Hendrix’s late father. Tull went ahead anyway in 2009 and paid Max Borenstein to write a script. Tull and producer Bill Gerber figured they’d bring a package to the Hendrix estate. The script landed The Bourne Ultimatum and United 93 helmer Paul Greengrass, and they approached Anthony Mackie to play Hendrix. The Hendrix estate once again rejected the package in 2010. Without a change in heart from the estate, the project is dead in the water.

Writer: Max Borenstein

Details: 122 pages – 2009 Draft

Good morning to all the movie writers and enthusiasts out there. This is a different voice than you’re used to hearing. That’s because I made a special request to Carson to write a guest post about one of my favorite subjects, Jimi Hendrix. This Black List script was once set to film with funding from Legendary Pictures, had Anthony Mackie to star, and Paul Greengrass in the Director’s chair. Ultimately the Hendrix estate balked on the deal. No idea where it is now.

I have always loved music. In elementary school I would listen to K92’s top 10 every single night until I fell asleep. When I was twelve my parents bought me a boom box with a CD player. I can’t recall the specific details of how or why, but the first album I ever got my hands on was Hendrix’ 1968 release, Electric Ladyland. It was my first love, I listened to it over and over, memorizing every nook and cranny of the music. To this day it is still my favorite album and the body of work that has influenced me the most.

My dad got me my first guitar when I was seventeen. It was Hendrix that made me want to learn to play. But I am not a rockstar or legend. I’ve only ever been on stage once with my guitar. I’m just someone who appreciates music and likes to make his own sounds every now and then. I’d be surprised if Max Borenstein isn’t a musician himself, because he understands exactly what that feels like. One thing that impressed me most about this script was Borenstein’s ability to dial back this huge icon and focus on the human being that Jimi Hendrix was. Throughout the story we are always in-tune with our hero’s outer struggles and how they’re so strongly influenced by what’s going on inside. It makes for a story of dichotomies, constantly exploring both sides of his existence. The question is, is this story genius like its subject? Or novice like me?

JIMI opens in the biggest possible way, with Hendrix himself on stage at Woodstock amidst a rendition of Voodoo Child Slight Return. An important image for us to remember. It’s Jimi at the top of his game, singing from the top of the mountain. And yet, he’s lost. He’s sees something in the audience, something spectacular. An angel, dancing in the crowd. Other-worldly. Is he on drugs? Or is it real?

Move to one week prior at a hotel, Jimi is struggling to escape the fanatics that constantly surround him. He’s searching for a quiet space, somewhere where he can write. Alone. There’s a song desperate to come out. But there’s no quiet to be found. A couple of groupies present him with a Tarot reading. Nowhere to turn, he draws a card. A jack, bearing strong resemblance of himself, the reading speaks of pain and old wounds. Jimi is fascinated. The next four cards are queens, the women you’ve hurt in the past, the root of his pain. He examines the faces of the queens, strikingly familiar...

Back to Woodstock, Jimi is grooving. His own VO continues as he plays during a trippy scene, telling him to “Seek them out. Resolve this past to clear a path to your future.” He scans the crowd, searching for the angel, but she’s gone. A confusing, emotional moment sparks the famous rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. The whole crowd is speechless.

We’re back at the hotel, drawing the final card. A graveyard. Judgment. Jimi realizes, says it himself. “I’m going to die.”

Jimi’s journey continues in present day 1970, Seattle, at home for the first time in two years. He’s there for a show, all the while searching for meaning in his fame and drug-infested existence. He constantly fights with his money-hungry producers, he runs away from his popularity, he battles his own demons. His life is a struggle, but it wasn’t always that way...

Flashback to 1966, Jimi’s in London, 23 years old, with the only woman who could ever handle him. Kathy. His spirit is much younger, he’s yet to prove himself, and he puts on a show for Clapton’s band Cream at a local bar, winning one for his team on the road. Kathy doesn’t like it, or the attention he’s getting backstage ;). But cool Jimi always finds a way back to his woman. When they’re together, he’s just Jimi. Puppy eyes from humble beginnings that likes to strum a guitar.

The story continues on in this fashion, flashing back and forth from the present to different moments in the past. As you can probably figure out, there’s not a lot of GSU going on here. Definitely goal-less. Definitely urgency-less. But Borenstein frames the story in a particularly clever way in the first ten pages. There are four queens from Jimi’s past that he must come to terms with, so every time we flash back we know we’ll be dealing with one of the queens who influenced the man he is in the present. Combine this with the fact that he’s facing his own inevitable death, and we have enough of a structure that we don’t get lost in the story and high stakes keep us invested.

Not to mention we’re examining one of the most interesting artists in history. This guy was the most talented person in the western world at the thing its culture deemed coolest: music. He was a tall, handsome, black man from Seattle sporting outrageous colors. He was divine in many eyes. Controversial. Arrogant. Inspiring. Sincere. And TALENTED! Think about writing half a dozen brilliant screenplays (screenplay = album) before your 27th birthday that people watched over and over. Borenstein handles this with grace, showing not only the most iconic moments in Hendrix’ career but also the moments of intense struggle (conflict!) that helped him get there.

Between his structural technique and the way the ‘quiet’ scenes relate to the ‘louder’ scenes, Borenstein creates a fascinating perspective on expression and the notion of muse. This is what the story is about. The duality of the artist. Pleasing the crowd while staying true to yourself. Many times during the story Hendrix gets caught up in his own act, only to be hit with a more humbling moment as a love from his life abandons him. As artists this material is very thought-provoking if not too familiar (even if on a fraction of the scale). Each scene is loaded with conflict rooted in the fact that the characters never know who’s going to show up, the wild man or the puppy dog. I really think Borenstein does a brilliant job crafting these scenes.

Aside: one thing I love about music is that theme can be demonstrated when looking at the difference between a studio/live version  of this song...

...and the acoustic version...

This is what the writer is after, expressing the difference between our hero’s outer struggle and his inner struggle.

Some thoughts on the writing itself... there are LOTS of unfilmables. For the most part they add to the moment in painting a better picture of who Jimi was, but sometimes got a little heavy-handed. Unfilmables are dangerous not only because they are things we can’t see, but they radiate with confidence, which creeps into arrogance in certain moments, and can be very off-putting. You never want to rub a reader the wrong way with your mastery of subject matter. To his credit, Borenstein does a pretty good job of balancing the arrogance of his own writing. When Jimi is getting cocky, the writing gets more confident. When Jimi shies away with fear, the writing grows more timid. It enhances the mood. There were just a few moments where I was like, okay. I get that he’s awesome.

The movie itself would be a spectacle full of excitement, spirituality, and tragedy. It takes us through the course of a cultural renaissance, following the movement’s biggest star and feeling the presence of many others. No doubt a spectacular and fulfilling experience. The only reason this doesn’t earn an impressive is because there are no moments in the storytelling that surprised me emotionally. Still, I think the writer manages to tell the man’s story in a special way.

( ) Wait for the rewrite

( ) Wasn’t for me

(xx) Worth the read

( ) Impressive

( ) Genius

What I learned: I like biopics, but they’re so tough to pull off. When you remove goals and mysteries (engines) it’s extremely difficult to keep a reader interested in your story because we’re no longer concerned with what happens. BUT when you choose to investigate the source of a particular person’s inspiration, you create a reverse-mystery. We are the detectives witnessing the person of the present, seeking the mystery of what happened in the past to yield such a result. It’s a character study, a quest to understand the complexities of a truly unique individual. JIMI is a great example of this technique done well.

Finally, if nothing more than my opportunity to publicly say thank you to Jimi Hendrix for how his music has moved and inspired me, then let this be so. Hope you’re listening.

Today's screenplay tackles that age-old screenwriting question: How does an alien spy save planet earth?

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: Behind the scenes of a modern day earth, the leaders of the world learn that a faraway civilization is planning to wipe them out. So they send in a spy – one of the aliens who came to warn them – to extract information about the attack in order to defend against it.
About: This script sold at the end of last year in a minor bidding war that Sony won, paying $300,000. Nice! The writer, Daniel Kunka, has one produced credit to his name, the John Cena vehicle, 12 rounds, a 2009 film about a detective who must complete 12 challenges to save his kidnapped girlfriend.
Writer: Daniel Kunka
Details: 119 pages – March 3, 2011 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).

Hey, it may not be the bidding wars of the 90s, but grabbing $300,000 for a spec script is pretty darn sweet (correction - a commenter points out that this sold for much more than 300k.  300k is the amount Neal Moritz, the producer on the deal, personally paid in addition to the studio, to close the deal). And WHY did this particular spec script sell? Especially when it’s “just another alien invasion movie” (as some people have pointed out)?

Well, that’s the thing. It’s not just another alien invasion movie. We’re not talking Battle: Los Angeles here, where the only thing alien is the plot. This is an alien invasion movie about a spy who flies to another planet to save earth. Now I can’t definitively say that that’s why it sold, but I can tell you it’s THESE KIND OF UNIQUE ANGLES that set your script apart from every other spec out there. Go ahead, write your alien invasion flick. But just know that there are hundreds if not thousands of writers doing the same thing. So if you can find an angle that’s different, like Agent Ox, you may find yourself jumping up a few tax brackets.

That said, all that scribbling still has to dance. Just because the outfit’s original doesn’t mean you should wear it to the club. So does Agent Ox tear it up? Or fall on its ass?

Agent Ox is ambitious. It starts out by telling us everything we know is a lie. Remember that purported alien crash back in Roswell in the 40s? It turns out that really WAS an alien crash. Or, more specifically, an FUI’ing “Oxialitian,” who’d come to earth to warn us that in about 70 years, his people were going to come here and rape the earth of all of its energy, killing us all in the process.

As time went by, more Oxialitians (who look similar to humans in most respects) came, giving the leaders of the world secrets about their technology, enabling them to build an entire series of underground weaponry, the kind of stuff that makes nuclear missiles look like IEDs. The bulk of this technology was used for an immense super-cannon that would be placed on the far side of the moon, awaiting the arrival of the Oxialitians.

Since you don’t want to tell the entire human race that there’s a good chance they’ll be wiped out (I find that sort of thing never goes well), this development was all done on the sly. Only people in the highest positions of government knew about it.

And still, that isn’t enough. They need intel. They need someone on the inside. So a 20-something Oxialitian named Tim is asked to participate in the most ambitious mission in earth’s history. Go to the Oxialitian’s planet, secretly infiltrate their government, and keep Earth abreast of any new developments in their plan.

And that’s what the main storyline’s about. It’s the present day (on Earth at least) and Tim is living on this alien planet (which is about 100 years more advanced than ours), working for their government and quietly sending back intel to earth.

None of this is easy of course. Tim ends up falling for and living with another Oxialitian while there. And, as you would expect, the government begins to suspect that one of their own is a spy – although not necessarily Tim. This is terrible timing, as the Oxialitians decide to move on Earth sooner than expected. So Tim needs to be able to get that intel back to Earth ASAP but because everyone’s being watched so closely, it will be near impossible. As the attack nears and Tim keeps moving higher on the suspect list, he will have to pull off a miracle to save mankind.

This script was so unlike anything I’d read before that I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I mean it’s just kind of “out there,” and yet it’s all handled with just enough skill to keep you reading. Or at least keep sci-fi geeks like myself reading.

What’s funny is that I don’t like the spy genre. We just established this last week. But the second you put an alien spin on it, I’m interested. And actually, even though this takes place in a completely imaginary universe, it nailed every single structural component that previous abomination of a spy spec (Wencesles Square) did not. We have a goal (Find out when/where the attack will take place). We have stakes (if he screws up, the earth is destroyed) and we have urgency (there’s only a few days left before they attack). So from a structural standpoint, Agent Ox got everything right.

Where it starts to get a little wobbly though is in the characters and their relationships. This is EXTREMELY common in the sci-fi scripts I read, as writers interested in science fiction generally aren’t interested in the human component. So you get these murky characters, murky character flaws, and relationships that don’t have a lot going on in them.

Exhibition A – Tim. I knew nothing about him. Here this guy is, going off to this alien planet to be a spy, and I never got a sense of what he thought of this. I’m not even sure why he goes. He just seems to do it because people want him to. What’s his motivation?

And what’s his flaw? What’s holding him back in life? What is it from his past that he’s trying to resolve? What are his dreams/aspirations? His life goals? These are the things that tell us who characters are, that expand them beyond a two-dimensional piece of paper. Yet none of them were addressed save for maybe the backstory, which leaned on the cliché “father was a drunk” crutch that invariably indicates the writer either doesn’t know how to create an interesting backstory or is too lazy to come up with something original.

And if you have a murky character, it’s almost impossible to create a compelling relationship. The whole reason relationships are interesting is because they challenge who a character is, what they believe in, what they want, what their flaws are. If we don’t know any of these things, then you’re stuck doing something murky and generic with the relationship. The extent of Tim’s relationship with his girlfriend is that she’s a little concerned because he’s been distant lately. That’s not enough to carry an entire movie. Say what you will about Avatar but the relationship there was actually about something. He was ignorant. He didn’t care about anything beyond himself. She had to teach him how to appreciate and care about his surroundings.

So that was disappointing.

Still, because the structure was so solid and the stakes were so high, it kept you reading. There were also some cool inventive sci-fi things that were worth nerding out over. Watching this huge alien ring suck the cover off an alien planet was both awesome and terrifying. And I loved the idea of aliens cleaning themselves on a molecular level. A device literally turns you into trillions of molecules so it can clean your insides. I’d never read anything like that before. And I liked how Kunka worked that into a key plot point as well.

So could this be a good movie? That’s tough to say. The great thing about an original idea is that it gets industry attention. The bad thing about an original idea is that those same industry people are afraid to pull the trigger. Anything that hasn’t been done before is a gamble and an earth spy on an alien planet hasn’t been done before. So we’ll have to see what happens. I didn’t love Agent Ox, but I liked it enough to recommend to other sci-fi geeks.

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

What I learned: One of the most compelling situations you can create in a movie is giving your hero two WRONG CHOICES. Think about it. Give a character an easy choice and there’s no drama. But give them two “wrong” choices and now things get interesting. (Spoiler) Late in the script, Tim’s girlfriend is misidentified as the traitor, which means she’ll be killed. So Tim has a choice – tell the truth, that he’s the real traitor, saving his girlfriend, or let his girlfriend die in order to save earth. No matter which one he chooses, the consequences are staggering. (note: They would’ve been a LOT more staggering though, had the relationship and characters, particularly the girlfriend, been better established – Just having a tough choice in theory isn’t good enough. We have to care about the people involved).

Screenwriters everywhere beware. You will not be the same after this review. That's because this screenplay is...well, I'll just come out and say it.  It's puppet noir.

Genre: Puppet Noir
Premise: When a serial killer starts murdering the cast of a once-famous puppet show called The Happytime Gang, two detectives, one a man, one a puppet, try to find the killer before the entire cast is DEAD.
About: The Happytime Murders recently jumped into the Hollywood spotlight when Katherine Heigl came aboard to play one of the leads. There appears to be some confusion over which role Heigl will play though. Reports have her as a detective – yet there are no female detectives in the draft I read. There are, however, some hot and heavy lesbians. So either someone else has been misinformed or they’ve since rewritten one of the leads for a woman. Either way, all this news is just bizarre. I guess it’s only natural that a bizarre script would warrant a bizarre casting choice. Todd Berger, the main writer on the script, most recently penned Kung Fu Panda 2. Learn more about Todd here. He seems like a great guy who worked his butt off to get to this point.
Writer: Todd Berger (story by Todd Berger and Dee Austin Robertson)
Details: 98 pages – 11/24/08 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

No, you didn’t misread the genre. No, you didn’t misread the premise. You wanna know what’s even scarier than not misreading either of those? Going into what you thought was a normal screenplay and reading this opening line: “Detective Phil Phillips stands on the front porch of a farmhouse. Phil is a small blue puppet with shaggy yellow hair and a tired disposition.”

Say-whuh?

Whereas before I was tired and droopy, after this line I straightened up and was ready to go. It was a lesson I’ve preached a thousand times before but it bears repeating. If you come up with something unique and different (GOOD unique and different – not dumb unique and different – there’s a HUGE difference!), you’re going to catch a reader’s interest. Because readers read the same stories over and over again.

It’s only natural, then, that they’d get excited when something out of the norm shows up. However, sitting up doesn’t mean I’m staying up. Yeah, you’ve got my attention, but now you gotta tell a story that’s going to keep it. Hey, I’m rooting for you Weird Puppet Noir Script. If you’re good, it tells writers everywhere that it’s okay to take chances. But if you bore me, you might find yourself as the cheapest item at the next Carson Reeves Yard Sale.

We’ve already met private detective Phil Phillips, the blue puppet detective with a seriously messed up past. Phil used to be a real policeman, partnered with a human, his best friend, a man named Edwards. But then…DUH DUH DUHHHHH… “the incident” happened. Now they hate each other.

In this half-human half-puppet world, puppets are looked at as second class citizens. Especially lately, as puppet-human tensions have risen to an all-time high. You get the feeling that unless something is done soon, bad shit is going to happen.

But instead of something coming along to ease the tension, something comes along to make it worse. Back in the 80s, there used to be this popular puppet show called “The Happytime Gang.” It featured characters like Mr. Bumblypants and Larry Shenanigans. Well, it turns out a huge syndication deal has been made whereby all of those shows are going to play again. Which means one thing: It’s time for these once-famous puppets to get paaaaaid.

But just as the celebration begins, one of the Happytime cast members is killed! Murdered. In cold…puppet…cloth…bits. It’s time to do something about this, Phil says. But unfortunately Phil doesn’t have the kind of access he needs to investigate the case. Which means he’s forced to team with, you guessed it, his old human partner, Edwards.

As the two start looking into the murder, another Happytime member is killed, then another, then another. After some investigating, our detectives find out that that syndication deal is set up so that the money’s split up between the REMAINING members of The Happytime Gang. Which means the less members there are, the more everyone gets paid.

Obviously, this means one of these puppets is killing off the rest so he can get rich! Or…maybe…wait……um, he’s killing MOST of the Happytime members because if he kills them all, then finding the killer would be pretty easy. So I think he’s killing most of them. Actually, I’m not sure. But who cares. It’s puppet noir. Just roll with it.

So let’s jump straight to the business on this one. Hot lesbians. If everything goes right, that’s what Catherine Heigl is playing. Surely her carefully constructed marketing team is begging her not to do this and there’s still no guarantee that she will. But even though Heigl is – hmm, how shall we put this – one of the bitchiest actresses to come along in a long time, she’s still quite talented. And she’s hot. So I’m all for her playing a hot lesbian in a puppet noir. I mean can you imagine her dressed up in a tight black dress, skimpy near the top, a temptress, a vixen, one of those women that has you making inadvertent cat noises whenever you see them. Rreeoowwww. I wouldn’t mind--

Wait a minute, where were we again? Oh yeah, script analysis!

Plotwise, the script is clever as hell. The set-up – A once-famous puppet show going into syndication with all the puppets getting rich off it, resulting in motivation for murder - was really well done. I mean you can go a million different directions in a movie with puppets. I thought this direction was perfect.

We’ve also got GSU here. We have a goal (find the killer) we have stakes (lives are at stake) and we have urgency (the longer it is before they find him, the more puppets die).

But there was just something…missing. Maybe it was our lead, Phil, who I didn’t give a flying puppet about. I didn’t relate to him in any way (yes, I’m complaining about not relating to a puppet – work with me). He’s a big downer actually. But I guess that’s par for the course with the noir genre. That’s how these detectives act. They’re always drinking and droning on about how depressing and miserable their lives are. Which is fine. But it’s hard for me to get onboard with a character like that. And I’m actually confused as to why this genre used to be so popular in the first place. A guy whining on in voice over about how shitty everything is while keeping a permanent buzz? People in the 40s must have been really bored.

Anyway, I don’t think the writers did a very good job of conveying Phil OR Edwards for that matter. For example, we learn early on that Edwards is one of the top cops in taking down puppets, who he seems to hate. But as soon as we learn that, he helps a puppet out when no one’s looking. So does he like puppets? Does he not like puppets? Does he only secretly like puppets? Did he just feel sorry for this one puppet? I didn’t know so I never got a good feel for the guy.

And Phil – I couldn’t tell you anything about him even though he’s the main character, other than he has a goofy “incident” from his past that got him kicked off the force. I think every aspect of him (the drinking, the voice over, the incident from his past) was deliberately steeped in cliché for humorous effect. I suppose that might be funny to lovers of the genre. To me, though, it just made our hero cliché.

Then there was the whole racism allegory, which the writers never fully committed to, so it left you wondering what the point of it was in the first place, other than it was an obvious thing to do. If you’re going to make your script an allegory, then make sure the thing you’re allegory-izing is part of the plot. The racism stuff had nothing to do with the main plot (puppets being killed for monetary reasons).

This is a hard script to judge. I love how wacky it is. I love the plot setup. Structurally, everything is in place. I LOVE when writers take chances so I have to give it to these two for coming up with this in the first place. By all measurements, this is a well-written professional screenplay. And yet, the combination of a main character I didn’t care about, my dislike of the genre (not their fault), and execution that felt a little too on-the-nose, leaves me feeling let down. For that reason, it barely misses a “worth the read.”

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[x] wasn’t for me (but an interesting read nonetheless!)
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: I can’t stress this enough. The people who I see moving up the ladder the fastest are people who go out there and do it themselves. I know we’re writers. I know we’re all lazy. But people look at you differently when you’re out there doing shit. I bumped into a girl, Cathy, on Twitter the other day, a writer who told me she was editing her latest film. Immediately in the back of my mind, I noted her as someone to watch out for. Because she was making a damn film! Instead of waiting around for things to happen! This is the approach writer Todd Berger took to get to this point. He wrote and directed short after short after short, finally getting enough attention to nab some big writing jobs. Most recently, he wrote Kung Fu Panda 2, and is up for some other huge Hollywood projects. We even have a long-time Scriptshadow reader who just wrote an award-winning short. I see her in a completely different way now. Simply because she didn’t wait for that Willy Wonka golden ticket but went out there and made her own ticket. Go out there and do it yourself. Hell, connect with some people right here on Scriptshadow. Write a short and shoot it. Stop waiting!

Guest screenplay reviewer Amy Suto buys a box of chocolates in preparation for today's 2009 Black List script and recent Sundance purchase, Celeste and Jesse Forever.

Hey everybody. As I continue to close in on the book release and re-launch of the site, I once again turn to Scriptshadow readers to help me meet my review quota.  I figured it's Valentine's Day (ahem - did you get your significant other something nice yet??) so why not go with a Romantic Comedy! Today's entry is probably the most controversial entry on 2009's Black List. The script was so universally panned that the Black List conspiracy theorists were out in full force - and with good reason (I read it and thought it was awful).  But hey, it's the most love-focused day of the year. It's a day when you celebrate your significant other.  So maybe guest reviewer Amy Suto will let the mood whisk her away to a positive review....  Maybe. 

Genre: Romantic Comedy

Premise: (from IMDB) A divorcing couple tries to maintain their friendship while they both pursue other people.

About: (Carson breakdown) This film just debuted at Sundance.  "Parks and Rec" star Rashida Jones wrote the script with actor Will McCormack.  The movie stars herself and Saturday Night Alive alum, Andy Samberg (whose Pirates Of The Caribbean video is still one of the funniest things I've seen ev-er).  The film was directed by up-and-comer Lee Toland Krieger, who won the 2009 Emerging Filmmaker award for his film “The Vicious Kind” at the Denver International Film Festival (a movie that starred fellow "Parks and Rec" cast member Adam Scott).  

Writers: Rashida Jones and Will McCormack

Details: 109 pages – March 18th, 2009 (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).

Rashida Jones from Parks and Rec and Andy Samberg from SNL are set to star in Celeste and Jesse Forever, written by Jones herself alongside Will McCormack. The star-studded cast also includes Emma Roberts and Elijah Wood. How could this project that's drawn so much attention not be exciting?

The opening montage is set to Sunny Levine's sentimental (and kind of offbeat) “Love Rhino.” We see Celeste and Jesse grow up as the penultimate “will they won't they?” best-friends-with-sexual-tension cliché we all know so well. Through this montage we learn that long time best friends Celeste and Jesse finally get married in a heartfelt montage and everything is hunky dory... or is it?

Skip to present day, where Celeste and Jesse are singing along to said song. We learn that she's a professionally-minded trend forecaster, and he's a perpetual man-child who cares more about having fun then pursuing a career, and he sort of annoys Celeste because she can't change him to be more like her.

Later, Celeste and Jesse decide to go on a double date with Beth and Tucker, two friends from college who are engaged, when... SURPRISE! We learn that a few months back Celeste and Jesse decided to break off their marriage, yet they still hang out every day and participate in their quirky inside jokes as if nothing ever happened.

But now, Celeste begins to wonder if spending so much time with her ex (who is living out of her guest house because he's broke) is a good idea. What healthy human being tries to stay friends with their divorced spouse? There's gotta be some resentment there.

Skillz, Jesse's pot-selling fellow man-boy dispenses advice (and a gratuitous amount of drugs) throughout the story, although his role in actually moving the story forward is nonexistent. He convinces Jesse to ask the Yogurt Shop Girl out on a date and he does. She talks about herself, he is bored, and so are we. Once again, this encounter appears to have no lasting significance on the story.

Jesse then realizes that an old flame of his is pregnant with his kid, and they fall in love. This woman – Veronica – is only described as happy, elegant, and likeable. Naturally, Celeste gets jealous, and goes out and dates random men and complains to everyone about how her ex is moving on and she isn't.

The rest of the movie is basically Celeste in a downward spiral, being snarky and cynical and laughing at gay sex jokes and kind of helping a celebrity re-do her image by telling her off.

The end of the movie fizzles out without any major change in the characters or an attempt at a theme, and (SPOILER ALERT!) Celeste and Jesse will not be together forever.

Let's bring this back to Carson's age-old wisdom of utilizing your GSU-- goals, stakes, and urgency. This script had none of the above. In fact... it had very little plot or direction at all, and progressed like a series of meaningless vignettes.

But, in all seriousness, what is Celeste's goal? To get back together with Jesse? No, she outright tells him that the two of them aren't getting back together after a session of drunken sex. Is her goal to move on? Not really, because she blows off all the guys she meets.

From the logline, it appears to be that Celeste's goal of sorts is to remain friends with her ex. But... they're already best friends at the beginning of the movie, and they stay friends the entire time. Jesse actually disappears for most of the discernible Act 2, but it seems that they can't stay mad at each other for too long.

As for stakes, it's not like achieving her goal will make her happy; whenever a character makes it her goal not to change, the story is most often self-defeating. The story starts and ends with the characters still friends, but it leaves the reader unsatisfied because nothing has happened. Nobody has learned anything because things are, in essence, the same.

What about urgency? She has a cushy job, and really isn't in danger of losing it. There's no ticking time bomb or attempt at pacing. Her and her new love interest Paul have a good thing going, even with his judgmental attitude towards her job at first and his strange yoga sayings (which actually are the highlight of the movie.) There's no conflict there.

This script doesn't work because Celeste is a passive main character – perhaps the single deadliest sin any screenwriter can commit. Things happen to her and she merely reacts. She reacts to Jesse's news that he's impregnated a girl he barely knows by complaining to other people about him, and by telling him off. But does she actively try and change his mind? No. Does she actively pursue him? No. She does drugs and drinks herself into a whiny stupor so she won't have to make any decisions. Celeste spends most of the movie telling people off and not much time actually doing anything.

The characters fall flat on the page. Scott, her boss, is described as “gay but very straight,” but is really just a bland excuse for a character who spouts unfunny jokes. Beth, the best friend, has no definable traits other than she is described as “energetic”, but she essentially only serves as a sounding board for Celeste's complaints. So what? These characters' vaguely interesting quirks cannot carry the story.

The part of the script I did like was Jesse and Celeste's relationship prior to realizing they are divorced. Their quirky memories, ridiculous inside jokes, and fake German accents all were the highlight of the script. It reminded me a little of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, but without the charm. If these characters had a different goal – to get back together, a la It's Complicated with Meryl Streep and Adam Baldwin – then the story could have meant something, perhaps exploring the thread of what it takes to mend a broken relationship. But just “staying friends” without learning something along the way? That's not a goal that can carry a movie.

By divorcing the characters and not allowing them to get them back together or mend their broken relationship, the audience can't really root for them. In fact, I liked Jesse and Celeste's other love interests. Paul's deadpan hipster humor and Veronica's niceness seemed more appealing than Jesse and Celeste getting back together or even staying friends. We also never really know why they divorced in the first place. If they're such good friends, why couldn't they make it work? I smell movie logic.

Basically, this script can be boiled down to: Boy and girl break up. Jealousy on both ends. They date other people. It works out after awhile. Cue bittersweet ending and... roll credits. I was rooting for this script to be... something. Maybe an earnest depiction of the hurt feelings left in the wake of divorce. Maybe some conflict-charged scenes between Jesse's new girl and Celeste (which did not arrive). But by page 50 I was banging my head against the wall and begging for the script to be over.

Now, this is a draft from 2009, so we can still hope that some substantial changes have been made to the script. I'm rooting for these guys! It just goes to show that screenwriting is a tough craft to master, even for those working in other areas of the industry.

[x] What the hell did I just read?

[ ] wasn’t for me

[ ] worth the read

[ ] impressive

[ ] genius

WHAT I LEARNED:

Your characters need to be actively working to achieve some sort of victory (goal), with a looming fear of failure (stakes), while some sort of time-sensitive motivator fuels the story's fire (urgency). Otherwise, you end up with some disconnected scenes that don't tell any story at all.

Carson touts character development on here a lot, but it bears repeating – especially in this case. All of the minor characters could have benefited from actually having definable traits and goals of their own. Memorable characters are everything in a romantic comedy, and without them your story will not even last as long in the minds of the audience as Celeste and Jesse's relationship did. Forever, indeed.

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Red-hot screenwriter Aron Eli Coleite bursts into the Top 10 of 2011's Black List with his end-of-the-world screenplay, "The End."

Genre: Drama/Sci-fi/Apocalypse
Premise: (from Black List) Four people – a veteran broadcaster in London, a sixteen year old girl and her best friend in Ann Arbor, and a devoted family man in Shanghai – each try to make peace with their lives before an interstellar event ends the world in six hours.
About: This script was purchased by Warner Brothers and made the 2011 Black List, finishing with the 9th best tally of the pack (28 votes). Writer Aron Coleite’s career has really picked up in the last year. The former Crossing Jordan and Heroes writer recently wrote an episode of ABC’s new show, The River (co-created by Scriptshadow Top 25’er “The Voices” writer, Michael R. Perry), sold a pitch to New Regency for mid-six figures (a supernatural prison break movie), and also sold a new procedural to Jerry Bruckheimer. I’d say that’s a pretty good year. Too bad he’s chosen to end the world before he can enjoy all that success.
Writer: Aron Eli Coleite
Details: 104 pages, September 23, 2011 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

I used to love end-of-the-world screenplays. We all know how I feel about Seeking A Friend At The End Of The World (which just came out with its first trailer! Hooray!). And then of course there’s Top 10 script How It Ends. Since then, however, I’ve read about five of these puppies, and for whatever reason, my Apocalypse funny bone isn’t being tickled anymore. I don’t know if I’m looking for a new angle (puppets maybe?) or if the effect has simply worn off, but I just don’t get jazzed for life as we know it being scrambled in a galactic frying pan anymore.

Part of the reason this script didn’t work for me was because it was a real downer! I mean, this is an extra large serving of depression, hold the onions. Not that that can’t work. Deep Impact – another depressing end of the world movie – brought in a lot of dough. But after reading this I was just like….I need to go buy some ice cream or something. I’m depressed!

The End follows three main characters (in three separate storylines) six hours before the world’s obliterated by a gravitational black hole or something. It’s not clear when the information of the world’s demise is received (Are they just learning about it now or have they known for days – not sure) but the point is, time’s running out!

The first of our characters is a 35 year old Wae, a janitor at a Shangai Wal-Mart who only cares about one thing, finding the perfect egg (the egg must be a very specific measurement - still not sure what that was all about). It’s the middle of the night in Shanghai, and Wae plans to walk home, with the world crumbling around him, so he can make his son an egg for breakfast.

Next there’s Sir John Bainbridge, a 70-something BBC radio personality. While everybody else in the world has run home to their mommies, John’s decided to stay on the air. He is, therefore, the only person on the radio, which means everybody’s tuned into him. What starts off as one man’s assessment of the world’s destruction (and a clever way to dish out exposition) eventually becomes an exploration of a broken old codger’s dysfunctional family.

Finally, there’s Olive, a 16 year old Christian whose family is struggling to make it to church for the End Of Days sermon, which I’m hearing is one of the most popular of the year. It might even beat Christmas. However, as she gets closer, she thinks that instead of spending her final moments listening to some boring priest drone on about, like, death and stuff, she should spend that time with her secret (older) boyfriend! And maybe, if she can find a way to him in time, she can marry him, lose her virginity, all before she’s beamed up to Cloud City. So she enlists the help of her childhood best friend, the goofy “Zebulon,” and the two race against time to make it happen. Of course, while locating everything they need for the wedding, it becomes clear that Zebulon’s secretly in love with Olive.

Okay so we have three separate storylines here. Here’s my opinion on multi-storyline scripts. You better make sure each storyline kicks ass. Cause if even one is average, your movie will suck. Nobody goes to see 2/3 of a good movie.

What USUALLY happens in these scripts, actually, is that the writer has a main storyline idea, but since he wants multiple narratives, comes up with two or three lesser storylines to fill out the script. These stories are never as good as the first one, because they were added after the fact.

Whether one thinks that’s what happened here will depend on the individual, but personally, I thought the only story worth telling was Olive’s. We have a goal (get to the boyfriend and get married), stakes (this means everything to her), and if I have to tell you where the urgency comes from, you’re going on a permanent screenwriting sabbatical. There’s also conflict and dramatic irony (we know Zeb loves her, but she does not), so this storyline really shined.

The next best storyline was Wae’s. Wae does have a clear goal (get back to his kid) but it doesn’t carry the same weight as Olive’s (make breakfast for his kid?). Also, he’s not traveling with any other characters, so there are no opportunities to explore his internal conflict through his relationships, like we see with Olive and Zeb. Instead, the only conflict he experiences is external. This results in some cool sequences (a jousting sword-slicing motorcycle duel), but overall, his trek is relatively uneventful.

That leaves us with the third and least interesting storyline, John the radio personality. To me, this storyline’s purpose was expositional (to give us a running play-by-play of the events as they unfold) with a family storyline shoe-horned in to make it SEEM like it was more than that (something about a brother he never talked to or something). There were no goals, no stakes, and somehow no urgency (despite the world ending in six hours). On top of that, it’s an old man sitting in a room for two hours. So that one was hard to get up for.

That said, there were definitely some cool moments in The End. The gravity bumps will guarantee some “holy shit” moments in the trailers. Watching two people float up above the ground as they kiss with rain shooting upwards around them, yeah – that should sell a few tickets. And when you juxtapose that with a jousting motorcycle duel to the death, I can see some teenagers saying – “dude, we gotta go see that!”

The question is, what will they be seeing? No matter which way you shake it, The End is depressing as hell. It’s like a sci-fi Babel. It makes The Grey look like a bunch of dudes who just won the Anchorage lottery. Not sure how eager people will be to run off and get depressed for two hours. Of course, I could be looking at this the wrong way. Maybe this is about the triumph of the human spirit amongst the end of times. I don’t know. I just wish I didn’t want to curl up with my teddy bear afterwards and cry myself to sleep.

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

What I learned: The best character goals meet two criteria. First, the character must desperately want to achieve the goal. So in Zombieland, even though Tallahassee’s goal was “just” to find a Twinkie, he so desperately wanted to find that Twinkie it was still compelling. Second, the goal itself must be big. So in The Hangover, the goal was to find Doug and get him back to his wedding in time. That’s a big goal. The combination of a BIG GOAL that your wants along with that goal being one he DESPERATELY WANTS TO ACHIEVE is what gives a story the most pop. That’s not to say you always need both of them. Like I just said, Tallahassee’s goal wasn’t big at all. It was merely personal. I’m just saying that your goal won’t be as powerful if it only meets one of those two requirements. That’s how I felt with Wae. I knew how important it was for him to make his son breakfast (personal side of the goal). But just the act of making breakfast wasn’t big enough for me. So I didn’t care if he achieved it or not. Olive’s goal, on the other hand – to get married – that was a goal that was both big (getting married is a big deal!) AND personal (she really really wanted to do it!).

Today's amateur screenplay offers us the rare combination of Nazis and children's books. Can these two elements coexist? Read on to find out.

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

Genre: Biopic/Action/Drama
Premise: (from writer) With only the clothes on their backs, and a Manuscript in-hand, a Jewish-German couple narrowly escape the 1940 Nazi March on Paris, thus beginning an odyssey to save themselves and one of the most beloved children's book characters for generations to come. http://www.sendspace.com/file/jo6f6n
Writer: Brantley Edwards
Details: 110 pages

Uh oh. What’s wrong. Why am I reviewing a biopic? Have I been held at gunpoint? Maybe I’ve gone insane. It wouldn’t be the first time. Everybody remembers my Super Bowl Tweet Party. Maybe this time I’ve gone LIN-sane!

For those of you visiting this review for the first time, I posted today’s AF script WITHOUT A REVIEW earlier in the day, allowing you, the readers, to weigh in on it first. Sometimes I feel like I influence your opinions and, for once, I wanted to get your thoughts before I gave mine. Well, now that the opinions are in, it’s time to give you my take…

It’s January, 1940. Paris, France. 38 year old illustrator Hans Reyersbach has everything going for him. He’s got a new wife (the beautiful Margaret), a baby on the way, and he’s about to release a successful children’s book. He’s like the 1940s version of Lady GaGa! Actually, disregard that analogy. He’s not like that at all.  That was dumb.

Anyway, what’s putting a dampener on all this happy-time is this pesky European war going on. You know, the whole World War 2 thing? Those meanie Germans just can’t keep their paws out of anything and rumors are they’re snatching up Jews in the night. As Hans is Jewish, he’s not a fan of these rumors. But at least he’s in Paris. The Germans would never invade Paris. Would they?

Actually, it turns out that’s the least of Hans’ worries. A Nazi special agent named Wilhelm Schultz has been sent to Paris to retrieve Hans at all costs. Apparently, the infamous Joseph Goebbels read Hans’ book to a group of children at a publicity event, only to find out later that – gasp - it was written by a Jew! Embarrassed beyond belief, and in trouble with the Furher, Goebbels decides to get a hold of this author and make him dead.

Ironically, Hans and Wilhelm actually knew each other as children, even used to play together. This allows Wilhelm the opportunity to befriend Hans – then lure him into his trap. The problem is, just before he executes his plan, word of Germany’s arrival sends Jews fleeing south. Hans decides it’s a good idea to go with them. So he and Margret flee.

But not before Wilhelm, posing as a fleeing Jew himself, gains Hans’ trust. The trio travel by foot, bicycle, and train in hopes of catching a boat to America, where Hans has a once-in-a-lifetime chance to publish his new book in the biggest book market in the world. But will his childhood friend prevent that dream from coming true? Will he snatch Hans and Margaret away in the night? Oh, and who is this Fifi fellow? Is he related to Jeremy Lin? All these questions will be answered in, “Fifi, A Monkey’s Tale.”

Fifi has a lot going for it. We have a clear goal (escape!). The stakes are high (getting caught by Nazis is typically a bad thing!). There’s tons of urgency with them always being on the run.

There was some nice use of dramatic irony as well. Wilhelm joining the fray, pretending to be “one of them,” but secretly planning to capture and ship Hans and Margaret back to Germany. That led to some suspenseful scenes early on.

(spoiler) And the twist at the end – that this is in fact E.E. Henry, the famous author of the Curious George franchise, was also a highlight, and something I wasn’t expecting at all. So all those elements made for a fun read…at times.

“At times” is the key phrase here. Because there were other times where it became clear that Brantley was still a young screenwriter finding his way, starting with the relationship between Hans and Margaret.

There just didn’t seem to be anything to this relationship. Which is a strange thing to say because the two experience a miscarriage, several near-captures by the Nazis, and Margaret almost dying. So how can I possibly say that?

Well the main issue was their dialogue. It was too on-the-nose, too generic, too bland. They were either talking about how they felt towards each other (“I love you.” “But I love you more.”) the logistics of getting to the next destination (“We have three days to get to the Brazil port..”) or the occasional exchange about how hungry they were. But that was it. Honestly, those were the only three topics of conversation for about 80% of the film. There was no drama in any of these conversations, no internal relationship issues that needed to be resolved. Just two people talking about matter-of-fact things for 100 minutes.

And since this relationship took up the majority of the script, it was impossible for the script to recover. If the central relationship isn’t interesting, there’s no way your movie is going to be interesting, no matter how cool the plot is. And I’m not saying that the characters needed to be arguing or fighting, but there needed to be SOMETHING there.

For example, Margaret has had a couple of miscarriages. So what if she’s told by the doctor that if she tries to carry a baby to full term, there’s a high probability that she’ll die (which, so far, is in the script)? Then, early on, have Margaret get pregnant, and she still wants to have the baby. Hans, on the other hand, does not, because of the danger it poses to his wife.

Now, instead of a gaggle of “I love yous” and “No, I love you mores,” the two have something to disagree about (conflict!). You could complicate this by the pregnant Margaret starting to bleed as the journey goes on (I think some of this is in here - but it's not given the right focus). The stress has increased the chances of another miscarriage, and now there’s a very real chance Hans is going to lose both his unborn baby and his wife.

Still – even if you nailed that – there was still something missing in this relationship. I didn’t know these two *at all*. They spoke to each other so generically, in such basic terms, that I never got a true sense of the pair and therefore never cared for them. And obviously, if I’m not caring for the characters being chased in a movie, there’s no movie.

So I believe a couple of big long character biographies need to be written before the next draft. Hans and Margaret’s entire lives need to be documented by Brantley. They need to have issues which need to be worked out. They need to have character flaws, which I don’t believe they have now (character flaws are basically a prerequisite for biopics – the genre was designed to explore character – so if we’re not sure what’s going on internally with the character, there’s no movie).

Another problem for me was the logistics. Despite there being a lot of chatter about where people were heading, and which boats they were getting on, I constantly found myself confused as to where we were, where we needed to go, and by how much time. I think there were a couple of boats they needed to get on but then they missed one, so now they were going to catch another one? Maybe? It was confusing and because I was never quite sure where they needed to get, it was hard to care.

There were some other things I had issues with as well. In a thrilling ride like this, it’s hard for me to imagine the characters on bikes. There’s something so…I don’t know…I kept visualizing the “Singing In The Rain” sequence in Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid. Like they’re just biking away, backs erect, smiles on their faces. I couldn’t match that image with Nazis chasing them.

Commenters have mentioned the characters changing back and forth between languages. I agree that it’s too confusing. Any time you have to read something twice to get it means the writer hasn’t done their job. And every time someone would speak in a different language, I would have to read it twice. If this served some purpose, I could let it go. But the read would’ve been so much easier had we stayed with one language the whole time.

And then there are the clarity and dialogue issues commenters have brought up. The dialogue does feel stilted and on the nose here – most of the time repeating things we already know. This goes back to learning how to dramatize a scene. If there’s no drama in a scene, there’s nothing for your characters to say. So if you put words into the mouths of characters who have nothing to say, you’re going to get bad dialogue.

But if you *dramatize* the scene, it’s a different ballgame. Now the characters HAVE to talk because they need to deal with the situation. For example, let’s say Hans and Margaret are on a train. However, that’s *all* the scene is about – them on a train. Go try and write that scene. I’ll wait.

Let me guess. Not a very good scene right? I mean you might add some exposition there (“We have to get to Spain by Monday”), and to fill up the rest of the scene, your characters may talk about each other (“Are you doing okay? How is your wound?”). But this is just logistical stuff. You can’t build an entire scene around logistical stuff.

However, let’s change the scene around and say that, earlier, Margaret snuck on the train because they didn’t have enough money. So she doesn’t have a ticket. Her and Hans are sitting there when they notice the conductor coming down the aisle checking for tickets. Uh-oh. Oh, and did I mention that a minute ago, two Nazi officers just sat down next to them?

Go write that scene. I’ll wait.

A million times better right??!! These are the things you learn as a writer making those first steps. I know it sucks because you want to convince yourself you’ve figured it out already. But it takes time to learn these things. It takes trial and error to realize, “Oh, if I just have two people talk to each other about stuff that’s going on, it’s boring.” But when you do learn this stuff, your writing really takes off. So like Matt pointed out yesterday, keep writing!

I think Brantley is where a lot of writers are who come to Amateur Friday. They’ve got some good things going on in their writing. They’ve learned to write a cool character or a cool scene here and there. But there’s still a lot to learn before their scripts can truly shine. So I’m just going to say: Stay at it Brantley! Jump to that next script, write something new, learn more, do it again. Come back to this script afterwards and apply what you’ve learned. Right now, Fifi is a fun ambitious little script. But it’s not there yet.

Script link:  Fifi, A Monkey's Tale

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

What I learned: I’m going to dish out some really important advice here: The opening scene of your screenplay is CRUCIAL. Why? BECAUSE IT’S THE OPENING OF YOUR SCREENPLAY! It’s the very first scene the reader will read. They’re going to form an opinion on you as a writer and this story as a story before the scene is over. So why would you open with a scene that lacks drama, conflict, suspense, action, or anything that would draw an audience in? Fifi opens with two people sitting at a zoo watching animals. You do *not* want to open your screenplay with a scene that uneventful. You have to give us more! Give us a reason to want to read the next scene!

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One of the most successful Nicholl Fellowship winners in history hits Hollywood with his brand new Yeti spec.

Genre: Horror
Premise: Sent to a remote arctic outpost during World War 2, a disgraced soldier learns of a giant flesh-eating beast killing the locals, and decides that defeating the monster is his one shot at redemption.
About: This script has not yet been purchased, but was written by Bragi Schut, who penned 2011’s Season Of The Witch, a former (2003) Nicholl winner. As you can see by my review of the script, I really liked it. Unfortunately, the filmmakers misjudged the tone of the script and what I saw on film was not what I read on paper. BUT, it officially put Bragi on the map, and now he has another big film lined up, The Voyage Of The Demeter, about the ill-fated ship that transported Dracula’s coffin. The film stars “Dragon Tattoo” star Noomi Rapace, Jude Law, and Ben Kingsley. Abomination is his latest spec script, which he hopes will continue his hot streak.
Writer: Bragi Schut (story by Bragi Schut and Chato Hill)
Details: 112 pages - undated (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).

This week is about as delicious as it gets. Not only is one of the top living authors in the world getting reviewed tomorrow with his first script, and not only is that script being reviewed by a long-time-in-hiding Scriptshadow Reviewer from the past, but we also have our first amateur script going into the Top 10 this week! And I’m talking AMATEUR amateur. No agent. No manager. This guy’s a total unknown. I can’t WAIT to tell you guys about it. Friday can’t come soon enough!

So how does our friend Bragi hold up on one of the biggest weeks in Scriptshadow history? Read on to find out.

Sergeant Harry Wilkins arrives in the Arctic Tundra a disgraced man. He hasn’t been sent to this remote outpost to fight any battles. You don’t get to fight battles when your cowardice led to eight of your fellow soldiers dying. Nope, you’re sent to Bumblefuck, Antarctica. All alone. Where you can’t hurt anyone. All you can do is think. Think about how bad you screwed up.

And think he does. Outside of the snow, the whistling wind, and the whines and barks of the snow dogs, there isn't much to do here. It’s 1944 remember. There’s no playstation.

But then one day Wilkins receives a surprise visit from some Eskimos. They look worried. They look afraid. And through their broken English, tell Wilkins he has to come with them. He has to help them stop a beast that’s been killing their people. Wilkins is intrigued by the offer but going AWOL after, you know, killing eight people, isn’t exactly the best route to a promotion.

Still, there's something telling Wilkins that he needs to do this. So he treks the 20 mile trail to the Eskimos’ isolated village and meets up with the men who visited him. Time is short so almost immediately they begin planning for the beast’s arrival.

Their first plan is to trap it. So they set out some bait and wait for Mr. Snowshoes to fall for it. Unfortunately, when the beast shows up, it's unlike anything Wilkins imagined. It's part polar bear, part human, part beast. And it's all angry. You could shoot this thing til you ran out of bullets. It wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t go down.

So after the trap fails, they realize the only way they're going to kill this thing is if they find its lair and take it on there. Not surprisingly, there aren’t a lot of Eskimos eager for Operation Lair Battle. Might have something to do with a beast who treats humans like Pringles chips. But Wilkins will go even if he has to do it alone. He needs to kill this thing. He needs to find redemption.

If you've been paying attention for the last two years, you already know I've been looking for the preeminent Abominable Snowman screenplay. We reviewed one a long time ago on Amateur Friday.  But that one never quite made it out of the snow.

Here, we’re obviously being guided by much more skilled writer. And you feel it. I loved the set-up of Abomination. I loved that this took place in the 1940s. I loved the World War 2 connection. Something would’ve been lost had this been happening in the present day. Making it a 70 year old tale gave it real texture and weight.

But I think the biggest difference you'll see in this script (compared to Ascent: Day 3) is the character development. This isn't so much about a scary beast killing people as it is about a man's redemption. It's about accepting responsibility for your failures and trying to atone for them. There’s some real meat to the character of Wilkins here.

Not only is redemption a great character trait to explore, but it’s perfect for a screenplay, since if your character’s seeking redemption, he has no choice but to be active. He has to go out there and make things happen, which in turn propels your story along.

Where I think the screenplay stumbles a bit, however, is in the Eskimo storyline and the second act in general. We’ll start with the Eskimos, who I thought were fine. But “fine” was as intense a feeling as I felt for them. Looking back, they were all pretty much the same. I don’t feel like I got to know any of them well.

I thought Avatar did a good job of this actually. We really *spent time* with the Na’Vi and got to know their culture and their way of life. The scene where they climb the floating island and Jake Sulley tries to connect with his first dragon - I really got a sense of what these people valued – what their world was like. I never got that sense with the Eskimos. There was nothing unique or interesting or new or exciting about their lives that made them stand out. I had a very general understanding of Eskimos going into this script. And I have just as general an understanding of Eskimos leaving it. I don’t think that can be the case in this movie.

This affected the story because the story is about saving these people. And if I don’t really know the people being saved – I hate to be crass but – I don’t care if they’re saved or not.

So if I were Bragi, I'd look to get Wilkins to the village sooner. I’d look to create more of a bond between him and the Eskimos. I’d look at create a couple of original/unique experiences with the Eskimos so that they really stick out. It feels like there needs to be more here. I mean there’s even a hint of a love story with one of the women, but as soon as it arrives, it’s gone, erasing yet another opportunity for us to connect with and care about these people.

It's funny because a part of me was bored by the Eskimos, so my initial reaction was: we have to get to the monster sooner. But when I stepped back and looked at it, I realized it wasn't that I wanted to get to the monster quicker. It was that I didn't know or care about these people enough to be around them. So if that can be fixed, I think the whole script improves.

I also would've liked a scarier buildup to the beast. I wasn't afraid in this draft. There's a moment early on where Wilkins is scouting the footsteps of the beast, and he puts his hand down onto the beast’s footprint. I don't remember exactly how the wording went, but it was something like "the footprint is a little bigger than his hand.” Now I don’t know about you, but footprints that are barely bigger than my own hand aren’t scary. If the footprint were FIVE TIMES bigger than my hand, THAT would be scary! (like the picture I posted above!) And that was par for the course with this thing. The beast had me worried. But it never had me TERRIFIED.

I’ll tell you what though, this script really picks up in the final act. When our hero decides to take on the beast through hell or freezing water, I was into it. And when he finally battles that thing in its lair, it’s pretty freaking awesome! That whole final act almost made up for the problems above. It’s a good reminder that if you can write a great ending, it can cover up a lot of faults. So, indeed, the ending was just enough to pull this into “worth the read” territory. I just feel like the script can be so much bigger/better. I hope Bragi takes advantage of that potential and kicks some Yeti ass in the next draft.

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

What I learned: The thing I take from this script is that if you create a movie where you place your hero inside a unique culture, like Avatar, like Dances with Wolves, like Abomination - you need a few scenes that show the characters experiencing the unique aspects of that culture together. Knock Avatar all you want but it had a TON of these scenes. From the dragon scene to learning how to run through the trees to learning how to ride horses to shooting arrows to killing animals the right way to learning about the Tree of Souls to learning about “the bond.” I truly felt that Jake Sulley was embedded into this culture after those scenes. That wasn’t the case in Abomination. I sort of remember a hunting scene but overall, I never got a sense of the Eskimos’ culture, never got a sense of them as a people, and as a result, I didn’t care if they were saved or not. And I know this script is more about Wilkins’ redemption than it is about a man learning the Eskimo culture. But if you’re going to design a movie where a man saves people, we have to care about those people.

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Another Black List sci-fi thriller makes it way to Scriptshadow. But how does the screenplay hold up to other recent sci-fi thrillers on the site?

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: (from Black List) An extremely wealthy elderly man dying from cancer undergoes a radical medical procedure that transfers his consciousness to the body of a healthy young man but everything may not be as good as it seems when he starts to uncover the mystery of the body’s origins and the secret organization that will kill to keep its secrets.
About: Writer-director brothers Alex and David Pastor are best known for writing and directing the 2009 film, Carriers, about a group of friends fleeing a pandemic. The film starred Chris Pine and Emily VanCamp. Before that, the brothers made tons of shorts (the new way to break into Hollywood – Go make some shorts people!). This most recent script, which I'm assuming they're on board to direct as well, finished in the bottom quarter of 2011’s Black List, with six votes.
Writers: Alex and David Pastor
Details: 118 pages – June 27th 2011 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).

Selfless looks like a job for Shia!

Selfless is eerily reminiscent of another 2011 Black List script I reviewed a couple of weeks ago, Flashback. Not in plot. But in tone, the way it’s written and overall feel. These scripts could easily be considered kissing cousins. But while it’s always fun to kiss your cousin, the reality is, that’s as far as it can go. There’s no way you can be in a relationship with your cousin. Which leaves you with a sorta nice, if ultimately confused, memory, and nothing more. That pretty much sums up my experience with Selfless.

Selfless follows Damian Hayes, a rich old codger who owns a huge company worth Facebook money. But Damien’s currently learning one of life’s harshest lessons. That there’s one thing money can’t buy. And no, I’m not talking about love. Damien is dying of cancer. He only has a few months left to live.

At least, that's what he believes at first. It turns out there's a super secretive – albeit shady – company that snatches up healthy young individuals, wipes them of their memory, then maps the brain scan of their ready-to-die clients onto their brain, turning our senior citizens back into the junior variety.

Not wanting to kick it just yet, Damien gives Shady Incorporated every penny in his Swiss bank account, and to his surprise, it goes well. He’s got this young hot bod to run around in. He can exercise as long as he wants to (I’d debate whether this is a good thing or not). Ladies look at him again. He doesn’t have to expense adult diapers anymore. The only downside seems to be not getting the senior discount at the local AMC anymore.

However, every once in awhile, Damien gets these little memory glitches. It’s like for a brief moment he’s…..well he’s in someone else’s body, experiencing someone else’s life.

It takes Damien a lot longer than us to realize that the person who used to own this body is still a part of him. But things really get turned around when a woman named Madeleine bumps into him and starts freaking out. He eventually comes to realize that this is his “wife,” and she thinks Damien is her husband.

After some eat-pray-love-like soul-searching, Damien starts to wonder if what he did was kosher. So he goes back to Madeleine, pretending to be her husband, and starts investigating who the man in his body used to be. The more he investigates, the more guilty he feels. And to make matters worse, “The Company” learns what he’s up to and comes after him. They expect their Switcheroo App to be quite popular in the coming years and don’t want Damien screwing up their star rating. So Damien must figure out a way to…well, I'm not sure to be honest. I think expose the company? Or just find out more about his body? It’s not 100% clear. But what I do know is that in the end, Damien’s probably going to learn to be a lot more SELFLESS.

Much like Flashback (aka Source Code 2), Selfless was an easy breezy little sci-fi thriller that practically read itself. I exerted so little effort in ingesting this that it almost felt like cheating. And yet, that’s sort of my problem with it. I’m not sure there’s enough story here. I’m not sure there’s enough going on.

You know what it feels like? It feels like the logline is a beat sheet for the entire movie. I mean if you read the logline I wrote above, you read every major plot point in the script. There were no surprises here, no big twists or turns. You got EXACTLY what you paid for. I’m reminded of my friend Jim Mercurio’s term, “story density.” There was no story density here. Then again, I felt the exact same way about The Adjustment Bureau, one of the thinnest scripts I read in 2010, yet people seemed to like that movie. So maybe I’m asking for too much?

The way I see it, there are two phases when you write a script. The first phase is getting the story down on paper. You’ll go with a lot of “first choices” in this phase, even if they’re generic, just so you can get the script out.

After you’re done with that, you move to the second – and way more important – phase. Populating that story. You start to add detail, you explore the relationships between characters, you add unexpected twists and surprises. This is really the phase where your script becomes a movie.

And I feel like Selfless never got to that phase. At least not with this draft. I always go back to what Ben Ripley told me about Source Code - how the movie started off as a Blake Snyder beat sheet. There's a train wreck. Some mysterious guys show up. They bring in a new technology that allows them to go back in time. Our hero’s then zapped back onto the train before it crashes. And his job is to find out what happened. That version, he said, was fine. But it just didn't have any punch.

Once he got to Phase 2, he really started challenging the direction of the script, and that’s when he came up with the idea to place the character on the train from the very first frame. The script felt fresher, denser, more populated, more detailed. And that came directly from the Phase 2 process. Selfless could benefit a lot from the same approach.

Outside of that, I don't have much to say about Selfless. It's a solid treatment of a neat idea. I just feel it has the potential to be so much more.

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

What I learned: I want you to take a look at the opening scene to Selfless, which on the surface seems like just another “Table Scene.” In it, a young man approaches two older men (one of them Damien, our protagonist) about a deal he just closed. I always tell you: Don't write Table Scenes (lunch/dinner scenes heavy on dialogue). And definitely don’t start your movie with one! But the difference here is that the writers immediately inject conflict and suspense into the scene. A young man walks up to two older men, flush with excitement over beating them out on a 200 million dollar contract. But as the other men begin to congratulate him, we sense that they know something he doesn’t. Suspense and mystery slip their way into the scene. We’re wondering: “What do they know?” Over the course of the next few minutes, they drop a few more clues and we learn our character did not, in fact, close the deal, like he believes. Not only that, but there’s a good chance his entire career is about to be flushed down the toilet. It’s a slow-building scene with lots of conflict and plenty of suspense, and it’s quite good! So the lesson here is that while you SHOULD avoid Table Scenes, if you can inject enough conflict, mystery, and suspense into them, you should be okay.

Moratorium: From this point forward, I’m retiring all protagonist peanut allergies in screenplays. We've had too many of them. You can no longer give your hero a peanut allergy, Skippy.

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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.