Full Roster of the Twit-Pitch Top 100 Coming Tuesday
type='html'>Hey guys. I'm going to do a little shifting around this week. I'm moving my Tuesday review to Wednesday so I can do a full post about Twit-Pitch on Tuesday. I want to answer some questions, explain why I chose the loglines I did, and just shed a little more light on the process. I'll also be revealing the 25 alternates that made the list. In the meantime, I've been closely monitoring the comments section. I've picked 13 of the 25 based on your collective enthusiasm so far. So keep the discussion alive. Oh, and thanks! That post will be the first ever 1000 comment post in Scriptshadow history!!!
The Official Scriptshadow Twit-Pitch 100
type='html'>Note: No review today.
For those playing catch-up, Twit-Pitch was a contest I held where anyone could pitch me their screenplay as long as it was contained within a single tweet. These are the Top 100 from a list that included nearly1000. These 100 will send me the first ten pages of their scripts, from which I'll pick 20-25 full scripts to read. To read a discussion of the loglines and contest, head over to the 1300-comment post that occurred afterwards. You should also follow me on Twitter for updates, as I'll occasionally be tweeting my responses to pages.
There's been a lot of discussion about what I picked and what I didn't pick and I wanted to give you guys some insight into why I chose what I chose. I’ve run a few logline contests now and I've learned a few things in the process. The first is, wacky comedies tend to be the worst written scripts I read. The more broad something is, the less the writer seems to care about character and story (instead focusing solely on the jokes). And as you know from reading the site, character and story are the most important things to me. So that might explain why I didn't pick that many comedies despite the fact that there were some pretty funny ideas out there. I was tired of getting burned.
The other thing I learned is that loglines that end with a vague mystery usually result in vague unsatisfying screenplays. So if you wrote something like, "A man discovers a secret room in his house that leads to a horror that he could’ve never imagined.” There's just not enough information there. If I'm going to take two hours to read a script, I want to know what the script is about. So many of these loglines didn’t get chosen.
Now let me get into why I chose some of the ideas I did. You'll notice that a lot of the ideas I picked contained irony. A writer who understands the value of irony in storytelling is usually ahead of the writer who doesn't. In other words, if I was to come across this logline…
A lawyer wakes up on the day of his biggest trial only to learn that he cannot tell a lie.
I’d pick it over this one…
A lawyer wakes up on the day of his biggest trial only to learn that he can hear people's thoughts.
Both of those ideas are high concept but the second one doesn't contain any irony. The lawyer can really be anybody. So it’s not nearly as exciting of an idea.
Also, since everything that happened with The Disciple Program, I've been fortunate enough to talk to a lot of producers in the industry. And the thing I continue to hear is, "Bring me a movie I can sell.” Not "Bring me a movie that can win a BAFTA.” Not “Bring me a movie that will fill me with emotion.” But, "bring me a movie I can sell.” That's not to say that emotion and character development and plotting aren’t important. You guys know now how much I value all of these things. But if those things aren’t inside a package a producer can put on a poster, or sell to the next guy above him, then they’re not interested. Remember, Good Will Hunting sold as a thriller. It wouldn’t have sold as a character piece.
So when I looked through these loglines, there was that little voice in the back of my head reminding me: Is this something you can give Producer A or Producer B and they'll be interested? The only real producer in town who can get significant character development movies made without having to jump through a million hoops is Scott Rudin. And it’s hard to get to that guy.
Finally, my taste factored into this. You guys all know that I like time travel stuff. I'm also a bit of a sci-fi geek. So you saw a lot of those ideas here. I'm not really into witches and covenants, so loglines like those were at a disadvantage. And you know, sometimes I just took chances. I know the loglines weren’t traditionally ‘sound,’ but something said to me, “This sounds like a unique writer.” The Detroit salt mines one. It felt different. The dwarf opening a pizza shop. It felt different. The dead whale one. It felt different. And those were simply chosen on gut. Unfortunately, that’s not something you can predict when you’re constructing your idea. You never know which gut is going to be looking at your logline.
Now, on to the Twit-Pitch 100. The first 76 were my original picks, and the last 24 were new picks. I chose these by going back through the comments section in the massive Twit-Pitch post and seeing what people liked. I also browsed back through the pitches myself and added a few that didn't hit me the first time.
I decided to bypass the direct-messaging I promised earlier because it takes a ridiculous amount of time to direct tweet on Twitter for some reason. Therefore, anybody who was favorited and anybody who shows up in the 23 alternates here, you have until Sunday midnight (pacific time) to send me your first 10 pages (to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with subject line: TWIT-PITCH). I'll let you know next week what the due date is for the entire script, which will be roughly 2 months. Enjoy the pitches!
1) A pill-pushing psychiatrist must connect with his patients when a dissatisfied customer curses him with all of their disorders.
2) Early 1980s New Jersey: a 12-year-old decides to profile the local mob boss for his seventh grade English project.
3) North Atlantic, 1825. A whaling Captain and his mutinous crew are trapped on the body of a dead whale and must fight for survival.
4) A "This American Life" type documentary covering a monster attack on NYC, using found footage, like the 1st anniversary of 9/11
5) Werewolves on The Moon: It's always a full moon on the moon.
6) After winning a nationwide lottery a man must decide what to do with his prize, fifteen minutes of advice to give to his younger self
7) Genesis Y2K: A Christian broadcasting network hires two failed filmmakers to create a TV series of the Bible before the apocalypse
8) After being framed for his father's murder, an ex-Army medic goes on the run and uncovers a vast secret buried in Detroit's salt mines
9) West Side story but hip-hop. Rival barber shops: Hella Cutty vs. Get Faded. Step it up 3 meets Leprechaun in the hood
10) On a dare, a young woman shaves her head... only to discover a pirate's treasure map tattooed onto her scalp
11) When his fiancee gets promoted, a man must plan their wedding on his own. But he risks losing his bride when he becomes a groomzilla.
12) A troubled teen suspects his father may be trying to kill him for a life insurance payout when he's involved in several "accidents"
13) A man trying to solve the mystery of his con artist grandfather must overcome his own beliefs and the resistance of his broken family.
14) An uptight half-white half-Latin man confronts his repressed heritage when he's mistaken for a druglord while on business in Guatemala
15) An orphan grows up in a projection booth. He must use all he learned from movies to survive outdoors or lose his true love
16) A group of friends returns from a time-travel fieldtrip to find a nerdy student has altered his past turning him into a living legend.
17) A hoarder finds the girl of his dreams only to lose her in his apartment.
18) A TV executive is held hostage by the characters from a show he recently cancelled, who demand they be put back on the air.
19) An astrophysicist Jesuit priest suffers a crisis of faith triggered by the discovery of a destroyed civilization lightyears from home.
20) One man unaffected by a world inexplicably frozen in time, seeks a way to end the stasis, and finds to his peril that he's not alone.
21) Firstclass: Mailmen vs. meter maids, battle in the secret civil servant war for control of the streets while trying to get disability.
22) A down on his luck Ice Cream Man agrees to transport stolen stem cells to Mexico only to find these cells are not from this planet.
23) A team of animals organize to fight the omnipotent Taxidermist after he inflicts their community with a deadly parasite
24) A 30 year old woman who dated twins in college believes that one of them was "The One", if only she could remember which.
25) Two guys have one weekend to battle for the coveted 'Godfather' title to their best friend's new daughter.
26) A terrorist with a $10 mill bounty, a callous soldier of fortune and a mysterious man with no name walk into a bar in Afghanistan
27) Secrets revealed, lives evaluated and relationships SLAUGHTERED after a small town reality cast deals with the murder of their lead.
28) A paranormal debunker is unknowingly invited to investigate a home by a ghost who is terrified by another evil entity lurking upstairs
29) Ex-CIA assassin unionizes an eclectic group of freelance hitmen to "negotiate" with their mob employers. Norma Rae meets RED
30) When the world's biggest superhero agreed to grant a dying boy's last wish, he didn't count on the boy wishing for all his powers
31) When a suicide cult oddly resurrects in a small town, an ex-cop must uncover the truth, and find his own dead son has also risen
32) 9 strangers wake in a deserted Mexican town besieged by killing machines: they must discover why they've been brought there to survive
33) In 1903 North Carolina, the Wright bros attempt the first flight, but shenanigans arise when they fall in love with the same woman
34) The ghost of a legendary star gets tangled up in his own biopic when he needs the help of the heartthrob cast as him
35) Small town funeral home begrudgingly inherited is failing so the owner starts killing for business. Soon, his model goes national.
36) Can it get any worse than living next door to a serial killer? It can if you live on CRIMSON ROAD... the whole street is full of them.
37) Driven into exile by a goblin invasion, a mythological dwarf struggles to adapt to life as a pizzeria owner in upstate New York
38) When a lonely masochistic chubby chaser is abducted by two fat lesbian serial killers, it's the best thing that ever happened to him.
39) Determined to find a date for his high school reunion, a loser hires a lifecoach who turns out to be his old school bully
40) An imprisoned Japanese-American doctor and a Caucasian nurse fall in love amid mounting tension inside a WWII internment camp
41) ORBIT - A team of astronauts orbiting the Earth find they may be the world's only hope during a devastating alien attack.
42) When a billionaire sociopath is sent to death row, he offers $100 million cash to anyone that can successfully break him out
43) SPECIMEN - An amnesiac surgeon who wakes up chained to a steel slab must uncover why doctors are performing grisly operations on him.
44) While investigating a popular student's unexplained disappearance, a high school psychologist realizes her stepson is a prime suspect.
45) After a series of murders, three survivors must help police piece together the previous night's events. Rashomon meets Reunion
46) RE-ENACTMENT: A civil war expert and his son must fight to survive a reenactment organized by a dangerous southern cult
47) Douche Patrol: Two partners in the newly created Douche Patrol try to expose a plot to douchify the masses through a reality TV show
48) An ex-cop awakes in an alternative reality where normal people are locked up in mental institutions and society is runned by lunatics
49) After checking into a hotel to escape her abusive husband, a woman realizes guests in the next room are holding a young girl hostage.
50) 3 days after his wife and child die, a man discovers he can travel into the past, one day at a time, as long as he never falls asleep.
51) ActingCoach:a hi-school drama teacher becomes coach of the varsity basketball team, forcing his theater philosophies on the jocks
52) With his favorite fast-food sandwich facing its final week before it's phased out forever, an obsessed man leads a protest to save it.
53) 3 men kill a friend for suspiciously losing their winning lotto ticket, only to later discover the missing ticket was in fact a loser
54) Head of time travel program learns world’ll be destroyed in 25 years and must stop the terrorist responsible: his 25-year-older self.
55) Desperate to divorce but cash-strapped, ornery newlyweds must put their feuding aside to sell their house, much less agree on a price.
56) AIRBORNE An outbreak of a lethal, unknown virus threatens the passengers and crew of a commercial airliner, forcing it to stay aloft
57) Futuristic re-imagining of SLEEPING BEAUTY. A young woman, cryogenically frozen for 100 years, is discovered in deep space.
58) A warrior sets out to track and kill the last giant – a lonely, anguished creature... and last link to an ancient, beautiful world.
59) The little known true story of how Matisse & Picasso went from being fierce rivals to BFFs.
60) To save his Mom's home, an obnoxious 40 year old is given one chance: enter the teen TV quiz he had a meltdown on 25 years ago.
61) A group of last-minute shoppers trapped in a mall on Christmas Eve are stalked by a demon-possessed Santa. Horror/Comedy
62) A lowly museum curator races to find Pandora's box before the resurrected Greek gods destroy the modern world.
63) A famous chef has a nervous breakdown and recovers while working at McDonald's, where he rediscovers his love for food.
64) RomCom-Man loves woman whose dreams predict future, but future she sees isn't with him. Can he convince her to choose love over fate?
65) A car thief finds a drug mule tied up in the trunk of his latest grab, then finds himself in the sights of the man who wants her back
66) Emilie can control time at will. When she’s hired to change a key event in a mathematical genius’s life, time begins to collapse
67) A lifelong bachelor accidentally proposes to his clingy girlfriend then tries to trick her into dumping him, but the tables soon turn
68) After forced to choose between her two children during a fire, Sarah fears she is now being haunted by the dead son she left behind.
69) A divorced dad adopts a puppy to fix his family but troubles arise when his ex's new boyfriend joins his Puppy Kindergarten class
70) DEVIL'S DUE: A cave rescue team fights to escape a collapsing abandoned mine stalked by inhuman ghouls who can mimic victims.
71) After running away from home, an eight foot tall teenager stumbles upon a retirement town for sideshow performers.
72) When a U-Boat vanishes in the 1940s, it leads a team of American GIs to a terrifying secret trapped beneath the ice of Antarctica
73) A dwarf on the run from the mob impersonates the 7-year-old host of an irreverent children’s TV show.
74) After thwarting a terrorist hijacking, passengers debate what to do with the surviving bomber, who's still set on finishing the job
75) ‘The Tradition’ 1867 After losing her father, a woman unwittingly takes a job as a maid at a countryhouse of aristocratic cannibals
76) After perfecting the ability to send data backwards in time, a brilliant quantum physicist must avert his future murder.
AND NOW – FOR THE ALTERNATES (YOUR PICKS!)
77) The Lipschitz Affair: When an art heist interrupts a wedding at the Guggenheim, everyone's a suspect -- even the bride and groom
78) The Shit List: With the help of his best friend, an underachiever seeks revenge on the people he blames for ruining his life #tp12
79) When a solar storm strands a lonesome geologist in the Canadian wild, she must journey through the dark to survive. "Borealis"
80) When fired by God, a hardworking guy decides to change path and ends up appointed CEO of Hell (, Inc).
81) A bridge appears over the Miss. river. A city official forms a blockade, but news that it travels you back in time starts a hysteria.
82) A chicken farmer watches in horror as his simple life is manipulated by a documentary filmmaker into a feature film.
83) Documentarian interviews Environmentalist Leader only to discover he's a pawn of the Mob, disposing of bodies in newly created parks.
84) 22yrs old and tired of the pain and suffering of being a real boy,Pinocchio embarks on a journey to get turned back into a puppet.
85) A team of scientists lands on Mars to begin the terraformation process, but Mars fights back in RED MENACE.
86) A mundane father returns to his childhood imaginary world, only to find it has been corrupted by his life as an adult.
87) After a chance encounter, a young couple reunites a few months later only to find their love threatened by a dark secret.
88) It's 1901. Terrorists have just taken over the White House. And only Theodore Roosevelt can stop them.
89) A high school senior discovers there is a conspiracy to stop him from having sex before graduation.
90) 3 girls spend their last summer before high school rebuilding a old fort and their crumbling friendship.
91) A bounty hunter has 30 days to catch his nemesis before the last spaceship departs, leaving him stranded and alone on a dying earth.
92) BLACKHATS: A hacker for hire finds himself in a deadly web of corporate espionage after being hired to steal the 1st sentient A.I.
93) Haunted by his daughter’s death, a reclusive CIA interrogator saves a suspect he's ordered to torture; a young girl of alien origin.
94) Ecotourists stranded in a radioactive ghost town at Chernobyl face the threat of wolves, disfigured locals & their own social meltdown
95) 1022 BC. Family corruption and fierce enemy tribes plague the young warrior David as he plots his own rise and ascension to Israel's throne.
96) Chris Kartje @chriskartje
When, on Xmas Eve, Santa lands on a frat house & eats all the pot cookies, itʼs up to the last sober Jew to be his designated driver.
97) A failed Elvis impersonator travels back in time to steal the life & career of the real Elvis.
98) New York 2029. The whole city is a walled in maximum security town for the wealthy. The world most dangerous criminal just dropped in.
99) Trapped in an increasingly nightmarish limbo, a dead boxer keeps returning to the ring, desperate for the win that'll change his fate.
100) A rising young actress struggles to keep her sexuality a secret while falling for her female castmate & trying to succeed in Hollywood
For those playing catch-up, Twit-Pitch was a contest I held where anyone could pitch me their screenplay as long as it was contained within a single tweet. These are the Top 100 from a list that included nearly1000. These 100 will send me the first ten pages of their scripts, from which I'll pick 20-25 full scripts to read. To read a discussion of the loglines and contest, head over to the 1300-comment post that occurred afterwards. You should also follow me on Twitter for updates, as I'll occasionally be tweeting my responses to pages.
There's been a lot of discussion about what I picked and what I didn't pick and I wanted to give you guys some insight into why I chose what I chose. I’ve run a few logline contests now and I've learned a few things in the process. The first is, wacky comedies tend to be the worst written scripts I read. The more broad something is, the less the writer seems to care about character and story (instead focusing solely on the jokes). And as you know from reading the site, character and story are the most important things to me. So that might explain why I didn't pick that many comedies despite the fact that there were some pretty funny ideas out there. I was tired of getting burned.
The other thing I learned is that loglines that end with a vague mystery usually result in vague unsatisfying screenplays. So if you wrote something like, "A man discovers a secret room in his house that leads to a horror that he could’ve never imagined.” There's just not enough information there. If I'm going to take two hours to read a script, I want to know what the script is about. So many of these loglines didn’t get chosen.
Now let me get into why I chose some of the ideas I did. You'll notice that a lot of the ideas I picked contained irony. A writer who understands the value of irony in storytelling is usually ahead of the writer who doesn't. In other words, if I was to come across this logline…
A lawyer wakes up on the day of his biggest trial only to learn that he cannot tell a lie.
I’d pick it over this one…
A lawyer wakes up on the day of his biggest trial only to learn that he can hear people's thoughts.
Both of those ideas are high concept but the second one doesn't contain any irony. The lawyer can really be anybody. So it’s not nearly as exciting of an idea.
Also, since everything that happened with The Disciple Program, I've been fortunate enough to talk to a lot of producers in the industry. And the thing I continue to hear is, "Bring me a movie I can sell.” Not "Bring me a movie that can win a BAFTA.” Not “Bring me a movie that will fill me with emotion.” But, "bring me a movie I can sell.” That's not to say that emotion and character development and plotting aren’t important. You guys know now how much I value all of these things. But if those things aren’t inside a package a producer can put on a poster, or sell to the next guy above him, then they’re not interested. Remember, Good Will Hunting sold as a thriller. It wouldn’t have sold as a character piece.
So when I looked through these loglines, there was that little voice in the back of my head reminding me: Is this something you can give Producer A or Producer B and they'll be interested? The only real producer in town who can get significant character development movies made without having to jump through a million hoops is Scott Rudin. And it’s hard to get to that guy.
Finally, my taste factored into this. You guys all know that I like time travel stuff. I'm also a bit of a sci-fi geek. So you saw a lot of those ideas here. I'm not really into witches and covenants, so loglines like those were at a disadvantage. And you know, sometimes I just took chances. I know the loglines weren’t traditionally ‘sound,’ but something said to me, “This sounds like a unique writer.” The Detroit salt mines one. It felt different. The dwarf opening a pizza shop. It felt different. The dead whale one. It felt different. And those were simply chosen on gut. Unfortunately, that’s not something you can predict when you’re constructing your idea. You never know which gut is going to be looking at your logline.
Now, on to the Twit-Pitch 100. The first 76 were my original picks, and the last 24 were new picks. I chose these by going back through the comments section in the massive Twit-Pitch post and seeing what people liked. I also browsed back through the pitches myself and added a few that didn't hit me the first time.
I decided to bypass the direct-messaging I promised earlier because it takes a ridiculous amount of time to direct tweet on Twitter for some reason. Therefore, anybody who was favorited and anybody who shows up in the 23 alternates here, you have until Sunday midnight (pacific time) to send me your first 10 pages (to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with subject line: TWIT-PITCH). I'll let you know next week what the due date is for the entire script, which will be roughly 2 months. Enjoy the pitches!
1) A pill-pushing psychiatrist must connect with his patients when a dissatisfied customer curses him with all of their disorders.
2) Early 1980s New Jersey: a 12-year-old decides to profile the local mob boss for his seventh grade English project.
3) North Atlantic, 1825. A whaling Captain and his mutinous crew are trapped on the body of a dead whale and must fight for survival.
4) A "This American Life" type documentary covering a monster attack on NYC, using found footage, like the 1st anniversary of 9/11
5) Werewolves on The Moon: It's always a full moon on the moon.
6) After winning a nationwide lottery a man must decide what to do with his prize, fifteen minutes of advice to give to his younger self
7) Genesis Y2K: A Christian broadcasting network hires two failed filmmakers to create a TV series of the Bible before the apocalypse
8) After being framed for his father's murder, an ex-Army medic goes on the run and uncovers a vast secret buried in Detroit's salt mines
9) West Side story but hip-hop. Rival barber shops: Hella Cutty vs. Get Faded. Step it up 3 meets Leprechaun in the hood
10) On a dare, a young woman shaves her head... only to discover a pirate's treasure map tattooed onto her scalp
11) When his fiancee gets promoted, a man must plan their wedding on his own. But he risks losing his bride when he becomes a groomzilla.
12) A troubled teen suspects his father may be trying to kill him for a life insurance payout when he's involved in several "accidents"
13) A man trying to solve the mystery of his con artist grandfather must overcome his own beliefs and the resistance of his broken family.
14) An uptight half-white half-Latin man confronts his repressed heritage when he's mistaken for a druglord while on business in Guatemala
15) An orphan grows up in a projection booth. He must use all he learned from movies to survive outdoors or lose his true love
16) A group of friends returns from a time-travel fieldtrip to find a nerdy student has altered his past turning him into a living legend.
17) A hoarder finds the girl of his dreams only to lose her in his apartment.
18) A TV executive is held hostage by the characters from a show he recently cancelled, who demand they be put back on the air.
19) An astrophysicist Jesuit priest suffers a crisis of faith triggered by the discovery of a destroyed civilization lightyears from home.
20) One man unaffected by a world inexplicably frozen in time, seeks a way to end the stasis, and finds to his peril that he's not alone.
21) Firstclass: Mailmen vs. meter maids, battle in the secret civil servant war for control of the streets while trying to get disability.
22) A down on his luck Ice Cream Man agrees to transport stolen stem cells to Mexico only to find these cells are not from this planet.
23) A team of animals organize to fight the omnipotent Taxidermist after he inflicts their community with a deadly parasite
24) A 30 year old woman who dated twins in college believes that one of them was "The One", if only she could remember which.
25) Two guys have one weekend to battle for the coveted 'Godfather' title to their best friend's new daughter.
26) A terrorist with a $10 mill bounty, a callous soldier of fortune and a mysterious man with no name walk into a bar in Afghanistan
27) Secrets revealed, lives evaluated and relationships SLAUGHTERED after a small town reality cast deals with the murder of their lead.
28) A paranormal debunker is unknowingly invited to investigate a home by a ghost who is terrified by another evil entity lurking upstairs
29) Ex-CIA assassin unionizes an eclectic group of freelance hitmen to "negotiate" with their mob employers. Norma Rae meets RED
30) When the world's biggest superhero agreed to grant a dying boy's last wish, he didn't count on the boy wishing for all his powers
31) When a suicide cult oddly resurrects in a small town, an ex-cop must uncover the truth, and find his own dead son has also risen
32) 9 strangers wake in a deserted Mexican town besieged by killing machines: they must discover why they've been brought there to survive
33) In 1903 North Carolina, the Wright bros attempt the first flight, but shenanigans arise when they fall in love with the same woman
34) The ghost of a legendary star gets tangled up in his own biopic when he needs the help of the heartthrob cast as him
35) Small town funeral home begrudgingly inherited is failing so the owner starts killing for business. Soon, his model goes national.
36) Can it get any worse than living next door to a serial killer? It can if you live on CRIMSON ROAD... the whole street is full of them.
37) Driven into exile by a goblin invasion, a mythological dwarf struggles to adapt to life as a pizzeria owner in upstate New York
38) When a lonely masochistic chubby chaser is abducted by two fat lesbian serial killers, it's the best thing that ever happened to him.
39) Determined to find a date for his high school reunion, a loser hires a lifecoach who turns out to be his old school bully
40) An imprisoned Japanese-American doctor and a Caucasian nurse fall in love amid mounting tension inside a WWII internment camp
41) ORBIT - A team of astronauts orbiting the Earth find they may be the world's only hope during a devastating alien attack.
42) When a billionaire sociopath is sent to death row, he offers $100 million cash to anyone that can successfully break him out
43) SPECIMEN - An amnesiac surgeon who wakes up chained to a steel slab must uncover why doctors are performing grisly operations on him.
44) While investigating a popular student's unexplained disappearance, a high school psychologist realizes her stepson is a prime suspect.
45) After a series of murders, three survivors must help police piece together the previous night's events. Rashomon meets Reunion
46) RE-ENACTMENT: A civil war expert and his son must fight to survive a reenactment organized by a dangerous southern cult
47) Douche Patrol: Two partners in the newly created Douche Patrol try to expose a plot to douchify the masses through a reality TV show
48) An ex-cop awakes in an alternative reality where normal people are locked up in mental institutions and society is runned by lunatics
49) After checking into a hotel to escape her abusive husband, a woman realizes guests in the next room are holding a young girl hostage.
50) 3 days after his wife and child die, a man discovers he can travel into the past, one day at a time, as long as he never falls asleep.
51) ActingCoach:a hi-school drama teacher becomes coach of the varsity basketball team, forcing his theater philosophies on the jocks
52) With his favorite fast-food sandwich facing its final week before it's phased out forever, an obsessed man leads a protest to save it.
53) 3 men kill a friend for suspiciously losing their winning lotto ticket, only to later discover the missing ticket was in fact a loser
54) Head of time travel program learns world’ll be destroyed in 25 years and must stop the terrorist responsible: his 25-year-older self.
55) Desperate to divorce but cash-strapped, ornery newlyweds must put their feuding aside to sell their house, much less agree on a price.
56) AIRBORNE An outbreak of a lethal, unknown virus threatens the passengers and crew of a commercial airliner, forcing it to stay aloft
57) Futuristic re-imagining of SLEEPING BEAUTY. A young woman, cryogenically frozen for 100 years, is discovered in deep space.
58) A warrior sets out to track and kill the last giant – a lonely, anguished creature... and last link to an ancient, beautiful world.
59) The little known true story of how Matisse & Picasso went from being fierce rivals to BFFs.
60) To save his Mom's home, an obnoxious 40 year old is given one chance: enter the teen TV quiz he had a meltdown on 25 years ago.
61) A group of last-minute shoppers trapped in a mall on Christmas Eve are stalked by a demon-possessed Santa. Horror/Comedy
62) A lowly museum curator races to find Pandora's box before the resurrected Greek gods destroy the modern world.
63) A famous chef has a nervous breakdown and recovers while working at McDonald's, where he rediscovers his love for food.
64) RomCom-Man loves woman whose dreams predict future, but future she sees isn't with him. Can he convince her to choose love over fate?
65) A car thief finds a drug mule tied up in the trunk of his latest grab, then finds himself in the sights of the man who wants her back
66) Emilie can control time at will. When she’s hired to change a key event in a mathematical genius’s life, time begins to collapse
67) A lifelong bachelor accidentally proposes to his clingy girlfriend then tries to trick her into dumping him, but the tables soon turn
68) After forced to choose between her two children during a fire, Sarah fears she is now being haunted by the dead son she left behind.
69) A divorced dad adopts a puppy to fix his family but troubles arise when his ex's new boyfriend joins his Puppy Kindergarten class
70) DEVIL'S DUE: A cave rescue team fights to escape a collapsing abandoned mine stalked by inhuman ghouls who can mimic victims.
71) After running away from home, an eight foot tall teenager stumbles upon a retirement town for sideshow performers.
72) When a U-Boat vanishes in the 1940s, it leads a team of American GIs to a terrifying secret trapped beneath the ice of Antarctica
73) A dwarf on the run from the mob impersonates the 7-year-old host of an irreverent children’s TV show.
74) After thwarting a terrorist hijacking, passengers debate what to do with the surviving bomber, who's still set on finishing the job
75) ‘The Tradition’ 1867 After losing her father, a woman unwittingly takes a job as a maid at a countryhouse of aristocratic cannibals
76) After perfecting the ability to send data backwards in time, a brilliant quantum physicist must avert his future murder.
AND NOW – FOR THE ALTERNATES (YOUR PICKS!)
77) The Lipschitz Affair: When an art heist interrupts a wedding at the Guggenheim, everyone's a suspect -- even the bride and groom
78) The Shit List: With the help of his best friend, an underachiever seeks revenge on the people he blames for ruining his life #tp12
79) When a solar storm strands a lonesome geologist in the Canadian wild, she must journey through the dark to survive. "Borealis"
80) When fired by God, a hardworking guy decides to change path and ends up appointed CEO of Hell (, Inc).
81) A bridge appears over the Miss. river. A city official forms a blockade, but news that it travels you back in time starts a hysteria.
82) A chicken farmer watches in horror as his simple life is manipulated by a documentary filmmaker into a feature film.
83) Documentarian interviews Environmentalist Leader only to discover he's a pawn of the Mob, disposing of bodies in newly created parks.
84) 22yrs old and tired of the pain and suffering of being a real boy,Pinocchio embarks on a journey to get turned back into a puppet.
85) A team of scientists lands on Mars to begin the terraformation process, but Mars fights back in RED MENACE.
86) A mundane father returns to his childhood imaginary world, only to find it has been corrupted by his life as an adult.
87) After a chance encounter, a young couple reunites a few months later only to find their love threatened by a dark secret.
88) It's 1901. Terrorists have just taken over the White House. And only Theodore Roosevelt can stop them.
89) A high school senior discovers there is a conspiracy to stop him from having sex before graduation.
90) 3 girls spend their last summer before high school rebuilding a old fort and their crumbling friendship.
91) A bounty hunter has 30 days to catch his nemesis before the last spaceship departs, leaving him stranded and alone on a dying earth.
92) BLACKHATS: A hacker for hire finds himself in a deadly web of corporate espionage after being hired to steal the 1st sentient A.I.
93) Haunted by his daughter’s death, a reclusive CIA interrogator saves a suspect he's ordered to torture; a young girl of alien origin.
94) Ecotourists stranded in a radioactive ghost town at Chernobyl face the threat of wolves, disfigured locals & their own social meltdown
95) 1022 BC. Family corruption and fierce enemy tribes plague the young warrior David as he plots his own rise and ascension to Israel's throne.
96) Chris Kartje @chriskartje
When, on Xmas Eve, Santa lands on a frat house & eats all the pot cookies, itʼs up to the last sober Jew to be his designated driver.
97) A failed Elvis impersonator travels back in time to steal the life & career of the real Elvis.
98) New York 2029. The whole city is a walled in maximum security town for the wealthy. The world most dangerous criminal just dropped in.
99) Trapped in an increasingly nightmarish limbo, a dead boxer keeps returning to the ring, desperate for the win that'll change his fate.
100) A rising young actress struggles to keep her sexuality a secret while falling for her female castmate & trying to succeed in Hollywood
Twit-Pitch Review - Ridin' The Gravy Train
type='html'>
Genre: Comedy
Premise: (original Twit-Pitch logline) With his favorite fast-food sandwich facing its final week before it's phased out forever, an obsessed man leads a protest to save it.
About: For those recently joining Scriptshadow, I held a contest a few months back called "Twit-Pitch," where anyone could pitch me their screenplay on Twitter, as long as it was contained within a single tweet. I picked my 100 favorite loglines and read the first 10 pages of each (which I live-reviewed on Twitter), and then from those, picked the Top 20, which I'll read the entire screenplay for. Yesterday I thought, "What better way to kick off the reads than to review one of the finalists on Scriptshadow?" So here we are. Welcome...to the first entry in the Twit-Pitch Top 20!
Writer: Jerry Hernandez.
Details: 103 pages
I met today's writer, Jerry Hernandez, AND his beautiful wife, at the Scriptshadow meet-up last week (at a bar called The Village Idiot - keep all jokes to yourself please). Like everyone I met, he was extremely nice and fun to hang out with. Which of course means I won't be able to say anything bad about his script.
However, this is a competition, which means not everyone wins the gold medal. And there were some things that worried me going into a full Gravy Train feast. I love Jerry's opening scene, which is why I advanced it. But the end of the ten pages started to peter out just a little, and it had me wondering: Can Jerry extend this premise out to an entire feature-length film? Let's find out.
Rough-around-the-edges Middle School teacher Bronson Matas has one love in his life - Going to his favorite fast food restaurant, DJ's, and ordering the "Gravy Train." Sure, the Gravy Train (a mound of turkey, gravy, bread and grease) is 4000 calories and cuts a month out of your lifespan whenever you eat one. But dammit, isn't that the American way? To be able to physically watch yourself get fatter during a meal in hopes that one day you can be one of those Walmart shoppers riding around in those shopping scooters?
Bronson thinks so.
Unfortunately, DJ's doesn't think so. Lawsuits from overly obese customers who somehow weren't aware that 4000 calorie meals make you diabetes-ridden Jabba the Hut clones, have destroyed store margins, leaving DJ's on the brink of bankruptcy. One of the execs has an idea though. The Veggie Train. Not only is it healthy, but it costs 1/4 the budget of the Gravy Train to make!
And so the unthinkable happens. An announcement is made that The Gravy Train will be phased out. Well this, like turkeys, just doesn't fly with Bronson. The Gravy Train is his f*cking LIFE! So he grabs his best friend and roommate, Randy (who ironically hates the Gravy Train) and begins a campaign to save the sandwich.
However, things get tricky when PETA clone "Animals Are People Too" come out in droves to make sure the Gravy Train stays dead. Bronson realizes that if his campaign is going to get noticed, he'll have to add numbers. So he launches a Twitter campaign that finds him...well, the exact kind of people you'd expect to find wanting to save a 4000 calorie sandwich (a bunch of losers).
Concurrently, Bronson is trying to get with his old high school flame, Golda, who's since gone on to create a Tia Tequila-like empire for herself, singing pop songs as deep as desert puddles. Bronson and Golda used to make love while eating Gravy Trains, so there's obviously a personal attachment here. But when Golda switches allegiances and sides with the Veggie Train, Bronson will have to make the most difficult decision of his life - Love.....or sandwich.
Usually when I go back to a script I liked, I see the flaws more clearly, since I'm more concentrated on the writing than the story. But surprisingly enough, I actually liked Ridin' The Gravy Train's first 10 BETTER the second time around than the first. It's my kind of humor. And there was just an effortlessness to the way Hernandez wrote his pages. One of the most powerful tools a writer can possess is the ability to make a screenplay not seem like a screenplay, but rather real life happening before our eyes. And I felt that during those first ten.
But things did start to get bumpy after those initial pages, some of which had to do with the thin premise and some of which had to do with the hero himself. First of all, I'm not sure we like Bronson. That's not to say we NEED to like the lead in a comedy script. The funnier a character is, the more we'll put up with. And Bronson is funny. But he's just such a loser and is so selfish and so mean-spirited, I had a hard time rooting for the guy.
In fact, Bronson gets more unlikable as the script goes on. He becomes more selfish (never once listens to his friends and only looks out for his own interests), more angry (thinks all his students are idiots and treats them like shit) and consistently acts like a loser (his only real goal besides saving the sandwich is getting high).
And I understand it's a delicate line. A lot of humor can be mined from anger/cruelty/selfishness. Look no further than Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. But I think that character is the exception to the rule. Most heroes, particularly when they're not yet embodied by an actor America's familiar with, need at least one thing to make us like them. Because if we like them, we want to root for them. I'm not sure what that trait needs to be with Bronson, but I'm pretty sure he needs it.
Another issue was the structure. The Gravy Train sandwich is eliminated from the menu about 12 pages into the script. However, after another 12 pages, it's put back on the menu, and we go from "Gravy Train is gone" to "Gravy Train is back for a month and gets a farewell tour." I don't think Jerry meant for it to come off this way, but it felt like the plot was stalling. It was a weak development, since both issues were essentially the same. Why not have him come in the first time and learn that the Gravy Train is starting its farewell tour? Then you're not wasting 12 pages. It's not a huge deal, but in a script where people are going in questioning the premises' legs, it looks bad when you're already repeating similar plot developments in the first act.
The last couple of issues I had were motivation-based. I wasn't sure why the bad guys wanted to eliminate the Gravy Train so badly. Yeah, there's the cost-cutting thing, but that was a throwaway line. These guys are fighting our hero tooth-and-nail throughout the screenplay to eliminate this sandwich. If I'm not sure why they're doing it, then the conflict between them and Bronson feels manufactured. Why not make it so a new evil Vegan CEO takes over the company, and it's his idea to turn the franchise vegan. I'm not sure a Vegan villain has been done before, so that could be kind of funny.
The other motivation issue was the road trip. I'm not sure why we went on it. Yeah, it was a way to introduce some entertaining set pieces (I particularly liked the Anti-Mexican Infestation Militia - self-proclaimed protectors of the Border), but I wasn't clear on why the characters didn't just stay in LA. It felt like they would've gotten a lot more publicity there. Maybe if, say, they realized they needed to drive to the company headquarters in Omaha to make a real impression, that would've made sense. But the way it came off in the script was, "Let's go on a road trip." "Why?" "Because I want to."
Now all of this might seem like nitpicking, but motivation is actually very important in comedy. If we're not convinced that the characters need or desperately want to do what they're doing, then the situations aren't nearly as funny. For example, in Bridesmaids, when Annie and Helen are trying to out-toast each other at the wedding shower, that scene doesn't work unless we know how deeply each one wants to prove that they're Lillian's best friend. Without that motivation, they're just two characters on a stage goofing off. So you want to make sure motivation is always strong in a comedy.
Having said all of that, Jerry's a good writer and this script has some great moments. The character of Courtney Langdon, an overtly angry FBI agent who's torn between his love of the Gravy Train and his duty to the FBI, was a highlight. In fact, there was never a moment during this read where I didn't have a smile on my face. I'm just stuck wondering if there's enough of a story here to carry an entire movie. Either way, I'll be looking forward to Jerry's next!
Script Link: Ridin The Gravy Train
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn't for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I Learned: The title of Jerry's document is "RTGTNicholl," which I assume means this is his Nicholl draft. Here's a tip folks. Never submit a comedy to Nicholl unless you're doing something TOTALLY ORIGINAL with the script. Tell your story backwards, out of sequence, in a made-up language, in the first person, whatever. But I have never, in all the years Nicholl's been running, seen a traditional comedy win. They're just not comedy-friendly over there.
Genre: Comedy
Premise: (original Twit-Pitch logline) With his favorite fast-food sandwich facing its final week before it's phased out forever, an obsessed man leads a protest to save it.
About: For those recently joining Scriptshadow, I held a contest a few months back called "Twit-Pitch," where anyone could pitch me their screenplay on Twitter, as long as it was contained within a single tweet. I picked my 100 favorite loglines and read the first 10 pages of each (which I live-reviewed on Twitter), and then from those, picked the Top 20, which I'll read the entire screenplay for. Yesterday I thought, "What better way to kick off the reads than to review one of the finalists on Scriptshadow?" So here we are. Welcome...to the first entry in the Twit-Pitch Top 20!
Writer: Jerry Hernandez.
Details: 103 pages
I met today's writer, Jerry Hernandez, AND his beautiful wife, at the Scriptshadow meet-up last week (at a bar called The Village Idiot - keep all jokes to yourself please). Like everyone I met, he was extremely nice and fun to hang out with. Which of course means I won't be able to say anything bad about his script.
However, this is a competition, which means not everyone wins the gold medal. And there were some things that worried me going into a full Gravy Train feast. I love Jerry's opening scene, which is why I advanced it. But the end of the ten pages started to peter out just a little, and it had me wondering: Can Jerry extend this premise out to an entire feature-length film? Let's find out.
Rough-around-the-edges Middle School teacher Bronson Matas has one love in his life - Going to his favorite fast food restaurant, DJ's, and ordering the "Gravy Train." Sure, the Gravy Train (a mound of turkey, gravy, bread and grease) is 4000 calories and cuts a month out of your lifespan whenever you eat one. But dammit, isn't that the American way? To be able to physically watch yourself get fatter during a meal in hopes that one day you can be one of those Walmart shoppers riding around in those shopping scooters?
Bronson thinks so.
Unfortunately, DJ's doesn't think so. Lawsuits from overly obese customers who somehow weren't aware that 4000 calorie meals make you diabetes-ridden Jabba the Hut clones, have destroyed store margins, leaving DJ's on the brink of bankruptcy. One of the execs has an idea though. The Veggie Train. Not only is it healthy, but it costs 1/4 the budget of the Gravy Train to make!
And so the unthinkable happens. An announcement is made that The Gravy Train will be phased out. Well this, like turkeys, just doesn't fly with Bronson. The Gravy Train is his f*cking LIFE! So he grabs his best friend and roommate, Randy (who ironically hates the Gravy Train) and begins a campaign to save the sandwich.
However, things get tricky when PETA clone "Animals Are People Too" come out in droves to make sure the Gravy Train stays dead. Bronson realizes that if his campaign is going to get noticed, he'll have to add numbers. So he launches a Twitter campaign that finds him...well, the exact kind of people you'd expect to find wanting to save a 4000 calorie sandwich (a bunch of losers).
Concurrently, Bronson is trying to get with his old high school flame, Golda, who's since gone on to create a Tia Tequila-like empire for herself, singing pop songs as deep as desert puddles. Bronson and Golda used to make love while eating Gravy Trains, so there's obviously a personal attachment here. But when Golda switches allegiances and sides with the Veggie Train, Bronson will have to make the most difficult decision of his life - Love.....or sandwich.
Usually when I go back to a script I liked, I see the flaws more clearly, since I'm more concentrated on the writing than the story. But surprisingly enough, I actually liked Ridin' The Gravy Train's first 10 BETTER the second time around than the first. It's my kind of humor. And there was just an effortlessness to the way Hernandez wrote his pages. One of the most powerful tools a writer can possess is the ability to make a screenplay not seem like a screenplay, but rather real life happening before our eyes. And I felt that during those first ten.
But things did start to get bumpy after those initial pages, some of which had to do with the thin premise and some of which had to do with the hero himself. First of all, I'm not sure we like Bronson. That's not to say we NEED to like the lead in a comedy script. The funnier a character is, the more we'll put up with. And Bronson is funny. But he's just such a loser and is so selfish and so mean-spirited, I had a hard time rooting for the guy.
In fact, Bronson gets more unlikable as the script goes on. He becomes more selfish (never once listens to his friends and only looks out for his own interests), more angry (thinks all his students are idiots and treats them like shit) and consistently acts like a loser (his only real goal besides saving the sandwich is getting high).
And I understand it's a delicate line. A lot of humor can be mined from anger/cruelty/selfishness. Look no further than Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. But I think that character is the exception to the rule. Most heroes, particularly when they're not yet embodied by an actor America's familiar with, need at least one thing to make us like them. Because if we like them, we want to root for them. I'm not sure what that trait needs to be with Bronson, but I'm pretty sure he needs it.
Another issue was the structure. The Gravy Train sandwich is eliminated from the menu about 12 pages into the script. However, after another 12 pages, it's put back on the menu, and we go from "Gravy Train is gone" to "Gravy Train is back for a month and gets a farewell tour." I don't think Jerry meant for it to come off this way, but it felt like the plot was stalling. It was a weak development, since both issues were essentially the same. Why not have him come in the first time and learn that the Gravy Train is starting its farewell tour? Then you're not wasting 12 pages. It's not a huge deal, but in a script where people are going in questioning the premises' legs, it looks bad when you're already repeating similar plot developments in the first act.
The last couple of issues I had were motivation-based. I wasn't sure why the bad guys wanted to eliminate the Gravy Train so badly. Yeah, there's the cost-cutting thing, but that was a throwaway line. These guys are fighting our hero tooth-and-nail throughout the screenplay to eliminate this sandwich. If I'm not sure why they're doing it, then the conflict between them and Bronson feels manufactured. Why not make it so a new evil Vegan CEO takes over the company, and it's his idea to turn the franchise vegan. I'm not sure a Vegan villain has been done before, so that could be kind of funny.
The other motivation issue was the road trip. I'm not sure why we went on it. Yeah, it was a way to introduce some entertaining set pieces (I particularly liked the Anti-Mexican Infestation Militia - self-proclaimed protectors of the Border), but I wasn't clear on why the characters didn't just stay in LA. It felt like they would've gotten a lot more publicity there. Maybe if, say, they realized they needed to drive to the company headquarters in Omaha to make a real impression, that would've made sense. But the way it came off in the script was, "Let's go on a road trip." "Why?" "Because I want to."
Now all of this might seem like nitpicking, but motivation is actually very important in comedy. If we're not convinced that the characters need or desperately want to do what they're doing, then the situations aren't nearly as funny. For example, in Bridesmaids, when Annie and Helen are trying to out-toast each other at the wedding shower, that scene doesn't work unless we know how deeply each one wants to prove that they're Lillian's best friend. Without that motivation, they're just two characters on a stage goofing off. So you want to make sure motivation is always strong in a comedy.
Having said all of that, Jerry's a good writer and this script has some great moments. The character of Courtney Langdon, an overtly angry FBI agent who's torn between his love of the Gravy Train and his duty to the FBI, was a highlight. In fact, there was never a moment during this read where I didn't have a smile on my face. I'm just stuck wondering if there's enough of a story here to carry an entire movie. Either way, I'll be looking forward to Jerry's next!
Script Link: Ridin The Gravy Train
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn't for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I Learned: The title of Jerry's document is "RTGTNicholl," which I assume means this is his Nicholl draft. Here's a tip folks. Never submit a comedy to Nicholl unless you're doing something TOTALLY ORIGINAL with the script. Tell your story backwards, out of sequence, in a made-up language, in the first person, whatever. But I have never, in all the years Nicholl's been running, seen a traditional comedy win. They're just not comedy-friendly over there.
Twit-Pitch Review - Douche Patrol
type='html'>Genre: Comedy
Premise: (Original Twit-Pitch Logline) Two partners in the newly created Douche Patrol try to expose a plot to douchify the masses through a reality TV show.
About: For those recently joining Scriptshadow, I held a contest a few months back called "Twit-Pitch," where anyone could pitch me their screenplay on Twitter, as long as it was contained within a single tweet. I picked my 100 favorite loglines and read the first 10 pages of each (which I live-reviewed on Twitter), and then from those, picked the Top 20, which I'll read the entire screenplay for. This is one of the finalists.
Writer: William A. Lawrence
Details: 103 pages
We're back with another Twit-Pitch contestant. There are 20 finalists and as of now I have.......18 left to read. I'm so cruising. And I'm not going to lie - there's a bit of planning involved in reviewing these scripts. I'm saving the ones I think are going to be best for last. That's not to say I'm expecting the scripts I review early to suck. They just have little things that concern me here and there, like today's script, Douche Patrol.
Douche Patrol has one of those loglines that makes you laugh but also makes you wonder, "Is this an entire film?" I mean can you extend a premise like this out for a full 100 minutes? That's what I was worried about, even though I laughed my ass off during those first 10. Well, let's hope William pulls it off. He's been the epitome of an anti-douchebag to me on Twitter, so I'm rooting for him.
Late 20s Ryan Connor has a problem with douchebags. His parents were killed by one. Which is why he's the star cop in a new police division specifically built to take down douchebags. If you're driving a lime green Honda Civic, blasting obnoxious music, reclined 70% back, talking on your phone? The Douche Patrol is going to get you.
Ryan's partner is the alcoholic overly shy Jenna Snow. Jenna believes just as much in taking douches down as Ryan. She's just not as vocal about it. In fact, Jenna has such a problem voicing her opinion on anything, she's turned heavily to the drink and secretly goes to public speaking courses at night.
After a routine takedown of a douchebag, Ryan and Jenna are led to a sex bomb MILF named Marlene Cardrow (think Sharon Stone). Marlene seems to be associated with a lot of douchebags, and they want to know why. But Marlene is cool as a cucumber. It turns out she's a casting director for reality TV shows. It's her job to go out there and look for douchebags to put on these shows.
That's good enough for Ryan, who's instantly smitten by Marlene, but Jenna's not swayed. Something more is going on here. It takes her awhile to convince Ryan, but she finally does, and this leads them to realize Marlene is working for a huge reality TV show producer who's using reality TV to douchify the masses so that he can get them to buy all the stupid douchey things that douchebags buy. It will take everything in Ryan and Jenna's arsenal to eliminate this producer's douchiness and stop the douchefying before it's too late!
I'll be frank with you - I'm still not sure what constitutes being a douchebag. I think about this often actually. Isn't the saying that if you don't see the big deal about something, then maybe you ARE that something? So maybe I'm a douchebag. I don't know. I mean I definitely don't own a lime green Honda Civic. So I'm probably not a major douchebag. But still.
All right, we're getting off track here. Which is douchey. Douche Patrol is pretty much what I was afraid it was going to be. It's a funny idea for about 25 pages, and then when story and character development need to kick in, it loses steam.
That's not for lack of trying on William's part. He does his best to add a story here. But the thing with really broad premises is that it's difficult to add depth to them. Broad and depth just don't mesh. That's why broad usually works best in a half hour format (Seinfeld, Family Guy, etc.) where it doesn't have to come up with some big elaborate storyline to keep you involved.
I mean take Jenna for instance. William worked really hard to create a developed character here, but it just didn't fit. Jenna is an alcoholic?? In a movie about douche patrolling? That doesn't work. Indeed, her storyline (where she sneaks off after work and downs bottles of whiskey) feels as awkward as cleaning up a used douche. In a drama, sure. But not in a kooky broad comedy.
Speaking of Jenna, if I were William, I would turn her into a guy. I know making her a girl is unique - but different doesn't always mean better. In addition to that, the whole thing where she's quiet doesn't play. Scripts don't work well with silent characters because we just end up forgetting they're there. And again, in a movie as broad as this, you want the sidekick to be fun, not mute. Turning Jenna into a guy and making him a lot funnier is definitely the way to go here. Jenna, as she stands, is the worst part of the screenplay.
The plot also had problems. Once we arrest Lime Green Honda Civic Dude, Ryan seems hellbent on finding and questioning Marlene. But it's never clear exactly why. She's been seen in a picture with him, but I don't know why that constitutes concentrating an entire investigation on her. Also, because the reasoning for questioning her is so murky, I'm never sure what he's asking her for or about. I get that in general it's about her hanging around douches, but again, that's not enough.
If I were William, I'd establish that they've been looking for a MYSTERIOUS SUPER DOUCHEBAG (possibly the producer) for a long time. But as of now, he's just a mystery man to them. There are no leads. When they find Marlene, there's some suspicious backstory on her that alludes to her maybe knowing this Super Douche, and that's why they go after her. There are fragments of this approach in the script, but they're too vague. They need to be clear. Remember, this is the plot point that's driving your entire investigation. It can't be confusing.
This is where a lot of comedy scripts end up. They have funny moments, but not enough story. Coming up with a comedy interesting enough (and with high enough stakes) to last an entire 100 minutes is one of those challenges that screenwriters get paid the big bucks for. Make us care beyond the gimmick and you're golden.
Premise: (Original Twit-Pitch Logline) Two partners in the newly created Douche Patrol try to expose a plot to douchify the masses through a reality TV show.
About: For those recently joining Scriptshadow, I held a contest a few months back called "Twit-Pitch," where anyone could pitch me their screenplay on Twitter, as long as it was contained within a single tweet. I picked my 100 favorite loglines and read the first 10 pages of each (which I live-reviewed on Twitter), and then from those, picked the Top 20, which I'll read the entire screenplay for. This is one of the finalists.
Writer: William A. Lawrence
Details: 103 pages
We're back with another Twit-Pitch contestant. There are 20 finalists and as of now I have.......18 left to read. I'm so cruising. And I'm not going to lie - there's a bit of planning involved in reviewing these scripts. I'm saving the ones I think are going to be best for last. That's not to say I'm expecting the scripts I review early to suck. They just have little things that concern me here and there, like today's script, Douche Patrol.
Douche Patrol has one of those loglines that makes you laugh but also makes you wonder, "Is this an entire film?" I mean can you extend a premise like this out for a full 100 minutes? That's what I was worried about, even though I laughed my ass off during those first 10. Well, let's hope William pulls it off. He's been the epitome of an anti-douchebag to me on Twitter, so I'm rooting for him.
Late 20s Ryan Connor has a problem with douchebags. His parents were killed by one. Which is why he's the star cop in a new police division specifically built to take down douchebags. If you're driving a lime green Honda Civic, blasting obnoxious music, reclined 70% back, talking on your phone? The Douche Patrol is going to get you.
Ryan's partner is the alcoholic overly shy Jenna Snow. Jenna believes just as much in taking douches down as Ryan. She's just not as vocal about it. In fact, Jenna has such a problem voicing her opinion on anything, she's turned heavily to the drink and secretly goes to public speaking courses at night.
After a routine takedown of a douchebag, Ryan and Jenna are led to a sex bomb MILF named Marlene Cardrow (think Sharon Stone). Marlene seems to be associated with a lot of douchebags, and they want to know why. But Marlene is cool as a cucumber. It turns out she's a casting director for reality TV shows. It's her job to go out there and look for douchebags to put on these shows.
That's good enough for Ryan, who's instantly smitten by Marlene, but Jenna's not swayed. Something more is going on here. It takes her awhile to convince Ryan, but she finally does, and this leads them to realize Marlene is working for a huge reality TV show producer who's using reality TV to douchify the masses so that he can get them to buy all the stupid douchey things that douchebags buy. It will take everything in Ryan and Jenna's arsenal to eliminate this producer's douchiness and stop the douchefying before it's too late!
I'll be frank with you - I'm still not sure what constitutes being a douchebag. I think about this often actually. Isn't the saying that if you don't see the big deal about something, then maybe you ARE that something? So maybe I'm a douchebag. I don't know. I mean I definitely don't own a lime green Honda Civic. So I'm probably not a major douchebag. But still.
All right, we're getting off track here. Which is douchey. Douche Patrol is pretty much what I was afraid it was going to be. It's a funny idea for about 25 pages, and then when story and character development need to kick in, it loses steam.
That's not for lack of trying on William's part. He does his best to add a story here. But the thing with really broad premises is that it's difficult to add depth to them. Broad and depth just don't mesh. That's why broad usually works best in a half hour format (Seinfeld, Family Guy, etc.) where it doesn't have to come up with some big elaborate storyline to keep you involved.
I mean take Jenna for instance. William worked really hard to create a developed character here, but it just didn't fit. Jenna is an alcoholic?? In a movie about douche patrolling? That doesn't work. Indeed, her storyline (where she sneaks off after work and downs bottles of whiskey) feels as awkward as cleaning up a used douche. In a drama, sure. But not in a kooky broad comedy.
Speaking of Jenna, if I were William, I would turn her into a guy. I know making her a girl is unique - but different doesn't always mean better. In addition to that, the whole thing where she's quiet doesn't play. Scripts don't work well with silent characters because we just end up forgetting they're there. And again, in a movie as broad as this, you want the sidekick to be fun, not mute. Turning Jenna into a guy and making him a lot funnier is definitely the way to go here. Jenna, as she stands, is the worst part of the screenplay.
The plot also had problems. Once we arrest Lime Green Honda Civic Dude, Ryan seems hellbent on finding and questioning Marlene. But it's never clear exactly why. She's been seen in a picture with him, but I don't know why that constitutes concentrating an entire investigation on her. Also, because the reasoning for questioning her is so murky, I'm never sure what he's asking her for or about. I get that in general it's about her hanging around douches, but again, that's not enough.
If I were William, I'd establish that they've been looking for a MYSTERIOUS SUPER DOUCHEBAG (possibly the producer) for a long time. But as of now, he's just a mystery man to them. There are no leads. When they find Marlene, there's some suspicious backstory on her that alludes to her maybe knowing this Super Douche, and that's why they go after her. There are fragments of this approach in the script, but they're too vague. They need to be clear. Remember, this is the plot point that's driving your entire investigation. It can't be confusing.
This is where a lot of comedy scripts end up. They have funny moments, but not enough story. Coming up with a comedy interesting enough (and with high enough stakes) to last an entire 100 minutes is one of those challenges that screenwriters get paid the big bucks for. Make us care beyond the gimmick and you're golden.
Script Link: Douche Patrol
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn't for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I Learned: Make sure the tone of your characters and story match. If you're writing a broad comedy, you can't have one of the characters be a hardcore alcoholic. Their flaw should be funnier (more broad!). Maybe Jenna's weakness is that she's always gone out with douchebags, and is inherently attracted to them. She's a reformed douchebag dater. So she's constantly at war with herself when she's arresting these guys.
Twit-Pitch Review - Tundra
type='html'>
Oh yeah baby. It’s Tundra time. Tundra is the first Twit-Pitch script I’m reviewing from my “definite” pile. Now as many of you know, when I reviewed the first ten pages of the Twit-Pitch finalists on Twitter, I had three piles. Pass (didn’t make it to the next round). Maybe (I would look at it again later). And Definite (automatically made it to the next round). There were only 7 definites. This was one of them.
Originally I said I was only going to save the best scripts for last but I really wanted to read something good so I moved Tundra to the front of the line. Please Tundra, don’t let me down.
We're somewhere near Antarctica inside a German U-Boat. The year is 1942, which means we're smack dab in the middle of World War 2 when these pesky Germans and their Enigma machines were occupying every centimeter of every ocean and blowing up whatever ship they wanted. If we didn't figure out a way to crack this Enigma code (the way the Germans communicated with each other) soon, it was looking like there'd be a statue of Hitler outside New York instead of a Statue Of Liberty.
Unfortunately, the Germans in this U-boat won't be around to see any statues because their ship is attacked by a mysterious entity, jostled around like a can of coke inside the hands of pissed off juggler, and they all die. Cut to black.
Enter the Marines two weeks later. They've been sent over from the good ole U.S. of A. to grab themselves a FREE Engima machine courtesy of the mysterious water creature that burped that submarine up to the Antarctic surface. The centerpiece of this operation is a soldier named Sam Gavin, who's just come back from a recent court martial which you can bet your ass he refuses to talk about.
When they get to the 10 million square foot skating rink, however, they find that things aren't exactly as they expected (are they ever??). Some guy named Tillman, who's part of a separate operation out in the Antarctic, has lost his entire camp due to some mysterious attack. Tillman's here to guide them, I guess, first to his camp where the massacre occurred, and then to the U-Boat.
The marines aren't too perked about this little side-mission, but they soon learn that the two incidents might be related. Once at the camp, they find a bunch of footprints heading off to the submarine, which we see is sticking ass-up out of the ice about a mile down.
When they finally get to the U-boat, however, they're attacked by a plane. It's the Germans, who've come to get that Enigma machine before the Americans do. A few marines die but it turns out they're the lucky ones. You see, the Germans aren't the only ones out there. An unknown species that looks like a werewolf with a shark head has placed the marines squarely in their sites and plan on killing every one of them.
So to summarize we have marines, Nazis, and werewolf creatures. We have a U-boat, an enigma machine, and also some glowing blue rod that I forgot to mention, that's found inside the U-boat. Not sure what that's all about, but I think Tillman wants it. In fact, Tillman wants more than that. Guy wants to capture a few of these Hunter creatures and take them back to the U.S. to study. And he's willing to kill a marine or five to do it. With all of this chaos, who's going to come out alive? And oh yeah, what the heck did Sam Gavin get court-martialed for?
Tundra started out great. Of course it started out great. That's why I put it on my "definite" pile. But I started getting a little nervous soon after. Something about the dialogue felt off. I don't know many writers who can pull off this "tough guy" marine talk well and I'm not sure Kearney succeeds either. I've said this before but it feels like a writer who's watched a lot of movies with characters who talk like this as opposed to giving the marines their own distinct unique voices.
Too many writers make this mistake. Yeah, you're writing a fun sci-fi horror thriller. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't dig into your characters' backstories and find out what's unique about them so that they can talk and act in a unique way. If you don't do that extra work, you'll fall back on cliches and stereotypes, such as...you guessed it...previous movie characters you've watched. Don't think for a second that the reader doesn't pick up on this. We do. And it's a sad moment, because we know from that point on, the story's going to lack an element of originality.
On the plus side, we jump into the story REALLY FAST. I mean after we meet the marines it's off to Antarctica and the mission begins. However immediately after they get there, I started getting confused. I couldn't figure out who exactly Tillman was or what he had to do with anything. He was the only survivor of this nearby camp? Yet he didn't know what attacked him? Later, when we go to his camp to try and figure things out, they find footprints heading off to the submarine. If Tillman survived this thing, how come he didn't already know everyone else ran to the submarine? Why is he finding this out for the first time with the marines? There were little pieces of information here and there that were kept from us that we needed to know in order to understand Tillman's situation. So his whole storyline was a challenge to keep up with.
After the Germans show up, the story starts to lose form. The goals aren't as clear. The marines split up into two groups. Tillman starts going after the hunters, which is a clear goal, but I'm not sure what Gavin and Decker (another marine) were doing in the U-boat.
As I've always preached on the site, you want to give your characters a clear goal - something they're after. This it the MAIN thing you'll need to do to keep the story focused. If you decide to split your characters up into two (or even three) groups, then, you need to give BOTH GROUPS clear goals. This is super-important because you're now asking the audience to keep track of two separate story lines. If one of those story lines is unclear, then you've failed as a writer because we can't properly follow the story anymore. I could never quite figure out what Gavin was doing in his half of the storyline and that did Tundra in for me.
Finally, I thought the end of the story could've used some original choices. We find out there's a ship under the snow. It's essentially an alien "Noah's Ark," with a bunch of alien animals being let loose. I've seen lots of versions of this before. I've even reviewed a spec detailing this exact same scenario. So I was sort of let down as I wanted something new and different. It's a cool idea. But you have to remember that you're competing against millions of imaginations. If you don't dig deep enough, chances are you're writing something that's already been written.
On the technical front, the script was a quick read. The writing was descriptive and succinct. Formatting was excellent. A couple of typos but nothing terrible. If I were Burke, I would work harder on character backstory and really trying to come up with characters who are unique. Don't just base people off your favorite movie characters. This would clear up some of the dialogue issues I had. In addition to that, challenge yourself more with plot. Dig a couple levels deeper so you erase any chance of writing something unoriginal. Oh, and clarity! Make sure the reader always knows what's going on.
This is stronger than your average amateur effort for sure. But it's not quite up to pro level for the reasons I listed. However, Burke has enough talent to take this feedback and kick ass on his next effort.
Script link: Tundra
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I Learned: Remember that movies primarily stimulate two senses – what you see and what you hear. Therefore, when you’re writing description, you want to focus on images and sounds. Read the first few pages of Tundra and you'll see why I put it in the "definite" pile. The “lazy groaning of steel under pressure.” Or “Icy winds batter white-tipped waves.” “A periscope breaks through.” It points towards the “misty mass of Antarctica.” You want to transport your reader into a world. Focusing on sounds and images is the best way to do that.
Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: (Original Twit-Pitch Logline) When a U-Boat vanishes in the 1940s, it leads a team of American GIs to a terrifying secret trapped beneath the ice of Antarctica.
About: For those recently joining Scriptshadow, I held a contest a few months back called "Twit-Pitch," where anyone could pitch me their screenplay on Twitter, as long as it was contained within a single tweet. I picked my 100 favorite loglines and read the first 10 pages of each (which I live-reviewed on Twitter), and then from those, picked the Top 20, which I'll read the entire screenplay for. This is one of the finalists.
Writer: R. Burke Kearney
Details: 98 pages
Oh yeah baby. It’s Tundra time. Tundra is the first Twit-Pitch script I’m reviewing from my “definite” pile. Now as many of you know, when I reviewed the first ten pages of the Twit-Pitch finalists on Twitter, I had three piles. Pass (didn’t make it to the next round). Maybe (I would look at it again later). And Definite (automatically made it to the next round). There were only 7 definites. This was one of them.
Originally I said I was only going to save the best scripts for last but I really wanted to read something good so I moved Tundra to the front of the line. Please Tundra, don’t let me down.
We're somewhere near Antarctica inside a German U-Boat. The year is 1942, which means we're smack dab in the middle of World War 2 when these pesky Germans and their Enigma machines were occupying every centimeter of every ocean and blowing up whatever ship they wanted. If we didn't figure out a way to crack this Enigma code (the way the Germans communicated with each other) soon, it was looking like there'd be a statue of Hitler outside New York instead of a Statue Of Liberty.
Unfortunately, the Germans in this U-boat won't be around to see any statues because their ship is attacked by a mysterious entity, jostled around like a can of coke inside the hands of pissed off juggler, and they all die. Cut to black.
Enter the Marines two weeks later. They've been sent over from the good ole U.S. of A. to grab themselves a FREE Engima machine courtesy of the mysterious water creature that burped that submarine up to the Antarctic surface. The centerpiece of this operation is a soldier named Sam Gavin, who's just come back from a recent court martial which you can bet your ass he refuses to talk about.
When they get to the 10 million square foot skating rink, however, they find that things aren't exactly as they expected (are they ever??). Some guy named Tillman, who's part of a separate operation out in the Antarctic, has lost his entire camp due to some mysterious attack. Tillman's here to guide them, I guess, first to his camp where the massacre occurred, and then to the U-Boat.
The marines aren't too perked about this little side-mission, but they soon learn that the two incidents might be related. Once at the camp, they find a bunch of footprints heading off to the submarine, which we see is sticking ass-up out of the ice about a mile down.
When they finally get to the U-boat, however, they're attacked by a plane. It's the Germans, who've come to get that Enigma machine before the Americans do. A few marines die but it turns out they're the lucky ones. You see, the Germans aren't the only ones out there. An unknown species that looks like a werewolf with a shark head has placed the marines squarely in their sites and plan on killing every one of them.
So to summarize we have marines, Nazis, and werewolf creatures. We have a U-boat, an enigma machine, and also some glowing blue rod that I forgot to mention, that's found inside the U-boat. Not sure what that's all about, but I think Tillman wants it. In fact, Tillman wants more than that. Guy wants to capture a few of these Hunter creatures and take them back to the U.S. to study. And he's willing to kill a marine or five to do it. With all of this chaos, who's going to come out alive? And oh yeah, what the heck did Sam Gavin get court-martialed for?
Tundra started out great. Of course it started out great. That's why I put it on my "definite" pile. But I started getting a little nervous soon after. Something about the dialogue felt off. I don't know many writers who can pull off this "tough guy" marine talk well and I'm not sure Kearney succeeds either. I've said this before but it feels like a writer who's watched a lot of movies with characters who talk like this as opposed to giving the marines their own distinct unique voices.
Too many writers make this mistake. Yeah, you're writing a fun sci-fi horror thriller. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't dig into your characters' backstories and find out what's unique about them so that they can talk and act in a unique way. If you don't do that extra work, you'll fall back on cliches and stereotypes, such as...you guessed it...previous movie characters you've watched. Don't think for a second that the reader doesn't pick up on this. We do. And it's a sad moment, because we know from that point on, the story's going to lack an element of originality.
On the plus side, we jump into the story REALLY FAST. I mean after we meet the marines it's off to Antarctica and the mission begins. However immediately after they get there, I started getting confused. I couldn't figure out who exactly Tillman was or what he had to do with anything. He was the only survivor of this nearby camp? Yet he didn't know what attacked him? Later, when we go to his camp to try and figure things out, they find footprints heading off to the submarine. If Tillman survived this thing, how come he didn't already know everyone else ran to the submarine? Why is he finding this out for the first time with the marines? There were little pieces of information here and there that were kept from us that we needed to know in order to understand Tillman's situation. So his whole storyline was a challenge to keep up with.
After the Germans show up, the story starts to lose form. The goals aren't as clear. The marines split up into two groups. Tillman starts going after the hunters, which is a clear goal, but I'm not sure what Gavin and Decker (another marine) were doing in the U-boat.
As I've always preached on the site, you want to give your characters a clear goal - something they're after. This it the MAIN thing you'll need to do to keep the story focused. If you decide to split your characters up into two (or even three) groups, then, you need to give BOTH GROUPS clear goals. This is super-important because you're now asking the audience to keep track of two separate story lines. If one of those story lines is unclear, then you've failed as a writer because we can't properly follow the story anymore. I could never quite figure out what Gavin was doing in his half of the storyline and that did Tundra in for me.
Finally, I thought the end of the story could've used some original choices. We find out there's a ship under the snow. It's essentially an alien "Noah's Ark," with a bunch of alien animals being let loose. I've seen lots of versions of this before. I've even reviewed a spec detailing this exact same scenario. So I was sort of let down as I wanted something new and different. It's a cool idea. But you have to remember that you're competing against millions of imaginations. If you don't dig deep enough, chances are you're writing something that's already been written.
On the technical front, the script was a quick read. The writing was descriptive and succinct. Formatting was excellent. A couple of typos but nothing terrible. If I were Burke, I would work harder on character backstory and really trying to come up with characters who are unique. Don't just base people off your favorite movie characters. This would clear up some of the dialogue issues I had. In addition to that, challenge yourself more with plot. Dig a couple levels deeper so you erase any chance of writing something unoriginal. Oh, and clarity! Make sure the reader always knows what's going on.
This is stronger than your average amateur effort for sure. But it's not quite up to pro level for the reasons I listed. However, Burke has enough talent to take this feedback and kick ass on his next effort.
Script link: Tundra
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I Learned: Remember that movies primarily stimulate two senses – what you see and what you hear. Therefore, when you’re writing description, you want to focus on images and sounds. Read the first few pages of Tundra and you'll see why I put it in the "definite" pile. The “lazy groaning of steel under pressure.” Or “Icy winds batter white-tipped waves.” “A periscope breaks through.” It points towards the “misty mass of Antarctica.” You want to transport your reader into a world. Focusing on sounds and images is the best way to do that.
Twit-Pitch Review - Cut Copy Past(e)
type='html'>Genre: Comedy
Okay so I know I've been harsh this week. I've taken down two professional scripts so far, giving both of them the lowest possible rating on Scriptshadow. I don't know if the stress of the move is getting to me or what. Actually, that's probably it. I have so much stuff to get done before next Thursday that time is of the essence. Therefore when I sit down to read something, my expectations are high and my patience is thin. I don't want to feel like I've wasted two hours of my time, and by association, two hours of yours. Which is why it's taking every molecule in body to stay calm after reading today's Twit-Pitch script. Or, I should say, the first 30 pages of today's Twit-Pitch script, since I didn't read the rest.
When I envisioned the Twit-Pitch contest, the idea was to give writers opportunities who don't usually get them. I wanted to find 2 or 3 great screenplays and get the writers of those screenplays into the industry. It's partly my fault for constructing the contest like I did (only requiring a logline at first), but I'm really disappointed in writers who used this opportunity to pitch a logline they hadn't written a script for, and then tried to write a script in the 4-5 weeks before the deadline.
This is what I do FOR A LIVING. Read scripts. Do you really think you're going to write a script in 5 weeks that's going to impress me? I read scripts from pros who have worked a year on their scripts and still have flaws. I read scripts that have been in development for years at studios and still have flaws. Do you really think, as an amateur, as someone without as much experience or knowledge as those writers, that you're going to whip up something in a matter of weeks and I'm not gonna be able to tell the difference? Are you that delusional? Do you really disrespect me and this profession that much?
I did this to help you guys. And this is what I get in return? This is what I get for all my hard work? I didn't have time for Twit-Pitch. I had a move coming up, a book coming up, a site-relaunch coming up. Those last two things have pushed back specifically because of the time it's taken to do Twit-Pitch. And this is my reward?
Here are some of the sentences in the first act of "Cut Copy Paste..."
"Printed below the is the name, JEREMY WOODSTOCK." (this was on the first page btw)
"...an brand new camera."
"technics" (techniques)
"LEA THOMPSON, age 16 would give Winnie Cooper a run for her money, in his mind she is his soulmate." (No, you're not hallucinating. This sentence does have four errors in it)
"Oh my god, were screwed."
"Oh god...Your right."
"He reaches his hands in to picks it up."
I could go on but what's the point?
Look, guys, let me tell you something. You don't get second chances with people in this business. If you show your script to an industry contact and it's a half-assed piece of garbage? You're done with that person. They will never read anything from you again. They've officially labeled you a bad writer, or at the very least, a writer who doesn't take his profession seriously. So that's it. You've forever burned that bridge.
One of the biggest mistakes amateur writers make is believing the bar in this profession is low. That if they just whip something together with a funny premise and a few laughs, that they'll be on their way to dozens of million dollar paychecks. In their head, their script is funnier than that latest Adam Sandler movie. So therefore, they should get paid Adam Sandler money, right??
Besides the fact that their script isn't even a tenth as well written as the Adam Sandler script (as scary as that sounds), it's just a terrible way to approach screenwriting. If you want to be a professional screenwriter, you have to be fucking serious about it. You have to study the shit out of the craft. You have to read all the books, take some classes, read tons of screenplays, write tons of screenplays. You need to live and breathe this stuff. If you think that all you have to do is be a movie fan and buy a copy of Final Draft, you're wasting your time as well as the people's time who are reading your scripts.
I mean there's no fooling going on here. I know when I'm reading a first time screenwriter, as do all the gatekeepers in this business. For that reason, raise the freaking bar. If you're a young screenwriter (as in you're still under 3 completed scripts), here's some advice: Wherever you think the bar is? Multiply it by 100. That's your real bar. Will you be able to reach it within your first few screenplays? Probably not. But at least now you're aiming for the kind of quality that Hollywood expects.
For those who were wondering what Cut Copy Paste was about, I admit I can't tell you much because I never got to Act 2. I know in Act 1, besides all the spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors, there were a lot of scenes where nothing happened. I think an entire scene was dedicated to two people trying to text each other. Nothing was moving forward. Time was stalled until we got to the second act turn.
This is one of the reasons there are so many bad movies out there. Because writers don't hold themselves up to a higher standard. I'm so disappointed right now.
Script link: Cut Copy Past(e)
[x] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] Wasn't for me
[ ] Worth the read
[ ] Impressive
[ ] Genius
What I learned: I often run into writers who are rushing to get their script ready for an industry contact they just met. They ask me, "Should I take my time and make sure everything's perfect, or should I hurry up and get it to him while I'm still fresh in his head?" After this review, I hope you know the answer to that question. Who cares if you get a script to someone if it sucks? Even if you consider it 75% ready. Or 85% ready. That's not good enough. Do not give your script away until it is 100% ready. Until you can go through every single scene in your script and say, "I cannot do better than this." Every one!
Premise: (Original Twit-Pitch Logline) A group of friends returns from a time-travel fieldtrip to find a nerdy student has altered his past turning him into a living legend.
About: For those recently joining Scriptshadow, I held a contest a few months back called "Twit-Pitch," where anyone could pitch me their screenplay on Twitter, as long as it was contained within a single tweet. I picked my 100 favorite loglines and read the first 10 pages of each (which I live-reviewed on Twitter), and then from those, picked the Top 20, which I'll read the entire screenplay for. This is one of the finalists.
Writers: West McDowell & Thomas Mahoney
Details: 101 pages
An early time-travel device. Only wish it was real so I could go back in time to before I read this.
Okay so I know I've been harsh this week. I've taken down two professional scripts so far, giving both of them the lowest possible rating on Scriptshadow. I don't know if the stress of the move is getting to me or what. Actually, that's probably it. I have so much stuff to get done before next Thursday that time is of the essence. Therefore when I sit down to read something, my expectations are high and my patience is thin. I don't want to feel like I've wasted two hours of my time, and by association, two hours of yours. Which is why it's taking every molecule in body to stay calm after reading today's Twit-Pitch script. Or, I should say, the first 30 pages of today's Twit-Pitch script, since I didn't read the rest.
When I envisioned the Twit-Pitch contest, the idea was to give writers opportunities who don't usually get them. I wanted to find 2 or 3 great screenplays and get the writers of those screenplays into the industry. It's partly my fault for constructing the contest like I did (only requiring a logline at first), but I'm really disappointed in writers who used this opportunity to pitch a logline they hadn't written a script for, and then tried to write a script in the 4-5 weeks before the deadline.
This is what I do FOR A LIVING. Read scripts. Do you really think you're going to write a script in 5 weeks that's going to impress me? I read scripts from pros who have worked a year on their scripts and still have flaws. I read scripts that have been in development for years at studios and still have flaws. Do you really think, as an amateur, as someone without as much experience or knowledge as those writers, that you're going to whip up something in a matter of weeks and I'm not gonna be able to tell the difference? Are you that delusional? Do you really disrespect me and this profession that much?
I did this to help you guys. And this is what I get in return? This is what I get for all my hard work? I didn't have time for Twit-Pitch. I had a move coming up, a book coming up, a site-relaunch coming up. Those last two things have pushed back specifically because of the time it's taken to do Twit-Pitch. And this is my reward?
Here are some of the sentences in the first act of "Cut Copy Paste..."
"Printed below the is the name, JEREMY WOODSTOCK." (this was on the first page btw)
"...an brand new camera."
"technics" (techniques)
"LEA THOMPSON, age 16 would give Winnie Cooper a run for her money, in his mind she is his soulmate." (No, you're not hallucinating. This sentence does have four errors in it)
"Oh my god, were screwed."
"Oh god...Your right."
"He reaches his hands in to picks it up."
I could go on but what's the point?
Look, guys, let me tell you something. You don't get second chances with people in this business. If you show your script to an industry contact and it's a half-assed piece of garbage? You're done with that person. They will never read anything from you again. They've officially labeled you a bad writer, or at the very least, a writer who doesn't take his profession seriously. So that's it. You've forever burned that bridge.
One of the biggest mistakes amateur writers make is believing the bar in this profession is low. That if they just whip something together with a funny premise and a few laughs, that they'll be on their way to dozens of million dollar paychecks. In their head, their script is funnier than that latest Adam Sandler movie. So therefore, they should get paid Adam Sandler money, right??
Besides the fact that their script isn't even a tenth as well written as the Adam Sandler script (as scary as that sounds), it's just a terrible way to approach screenwriting. If you want to be a professional screenwriter, you have to be fucking serious about it. You have to study the shit out of the craft. You have to read all the books, take some classes, read tons of screenplays, write tons of screenplays. You need to live and breathe this stuff. If you think that all you have to do is be a movie fan and buy a copy of Final Draft, you're wasting your time as well as the people's time who are reading your scripts.
I mean there's no fooling going on here. I know when I'm reading a first time screenwriter, as do all the gatekeepers in this business. For that reason, raise the freaking bar. If you're a young screenwriter (as in you're still under 3 completed scripts), here's some advice: Wherever you think the bar is? Multiply it by 100. That's your real bar. Will you be able to reach it within your first few screenplays? Probably not. But at least now you're aiming for the kind of quality that Hollywood expects.
For those who were wondering what Cut Copy Paste was about, I admit I can't tell you much because I never got to Act 2. I know in Act 1, besides all the spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors, there were a lot of scenes where nothing happened. I think an entire scene was dedicated to two people trying to text each other. Nothing was moving forward. Time was stalled until we got to the second act turn.
This is one of the reasons there are so many bad movies out there. Because writers don't hold themselves up to a higher standard. I'm so disappointed right now.
Script link: Cut Copy Past(e)
[x] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] Wasn't for me
[ ] Worth the read
[ ] Impressive
[ ] Genius
What I learned: I often run into writers who are rushing to get their script ready for an industry contact they just met. They ask me, "Should I take my time and make sure everything's perfect, or should I hurry up and get it to him while I'm still fresh in his head?" After this review, I hope you know the answer to that question. Who cares if you get a script to someone if it sucks? Even if you consider it 75% ready. Or 85% ready. That's not good enough. Do not give your script away until it is 100% ready. Until you can go through every single scene in your script and say, "I cannot do better than this." Every one!
Twit-Pitch Review - Crimson Road
type='html'>Genre: Dark Comedy/Horror
Premise: (Original Twit-Pitch Logline) Can it get any worse than living next door to a serial killer? It can if you live on CRIMSON ROAD... the whole street is full of them.
About: Twit-Pitch Review Week - For those recently joining Scriptshadow, I held a contest a few months back called "Twit-Pitch," where anyone could pitch me their screenplay on Twitter, as long as it was contained within a single tweet. I picked my 100 favorite loglines and read the first 10 pages of each (which I live-reviewed on Twitter), and then from those, picked the Top 20, which I'll read the entire screenplay for. This week I'll be reviewing four of the Twit-Pitch scripts.
Writers: Anothony Filangeri
Writers: Anothony Filangeri
Details: 103 pages
Just like that first president of ours, I cannot tell a lie. This whole Twit-Pitch thing? I'm starting to have my doubts. We all know what happened on the last Twit-Pitch script I reviewed, and it only got worse when I went back through the finalists e-mails while looking for four scripts to review this week. I thought I'd be opening e-mails with scripts attached. Instead, I received four e-mails that basically said this: "Hi, err, um, Carson. So I was thinking about my script and I realized that, um, I have a job, and because of my job, I can't finish my script in time, for, um, the deadline? So I'm probably not going to enter. I hope that's okay and you're not upset."
*sigh*
I knew this would be an experiment. I said so at the beginning. But this is still an amazing opportunity for unknown writers to get noticed and nobody seems to be taking it seriously. I know I could go back through the Top 100 and find replacements for these entries, but I'm probably not going to. It's hard to drum up enthusiasm for people who don't take this profession seriously.
With all that said, I *have* read the first Twit-Pitch screenplay that's given me hope. Unfortunately, you're going to have to wait until tomorrow for that. Today's script, Crimson Road, doesn't quite live up to its premise. However, today's and tomorrow's scripts are a great contrast in what a writer must do to rope in a reader. Whereas tomorrow's entry takes some hardcore chances, Crimson plays its inspired premise surprisingly safe. Let's check it out.
17 year-old Jill Harris has just been released back into the wild after spending a couple of years in the looney bin. Which is why no one believes her when, on one of her first nights back, she sees a man chasing a girl through the woods. Even her former boyfriend, Stu, and her Deputy big brother, Hunter, give Jill the "Uh huh, we totally believe you" spiel.
But Jill isn't giving up so easily. She's going to prove she's not the wacko everyone thinks she is. So she jaunts over to Crimson Road, a block full of houses plucked out of a Norman Rockwell painting, and targets the one unkempt house on the block. It's here where she pops open a trash can and finds the bloodied shirt of the girl she saw in the woods!
The cops race in and arrest the house owner and it's looking like the case is solved. But not so fast. The police receive a DVD of an old man in a basement getting tortured! Have they captured their killer or not?? And if that isn't bad enough, Jill's Uncle Fred, who molested her when she was a child, just got out of jail and moved onto Crimson Road, stirring up all sorts of bad memories in the community.
We eventually come to learn that this block is a community of serial killers who have a set of rules they abide by to ensure never getting caught. But when Jill begins relentlessly looking into them, they realize that in order to keep their secret, they're going to have to kill her AND her friends. Although Uncle Fred seems to be the ringleader, a calculated Anthony Perkins type named Ethan is the go-to killer when big jobs need to get done. So that's who they set loose on Jill. Will she survive? Will anyone survive? That's a question that will continue to be asked as long as there's a Crimson Road.
I think Crimson Road wants to be Scream. Not so much in the self-referential way. But it wants to be smart and funny while at the same time conveying a sense of danger for its characters. The thing is, at least with how it's constructed now, it's neither smart nor funny. Why do I say this? Well, the area that's really going to set you apart in these categories is dialogue, and the dialogue here is painfully standard.
Whenever anybody talks to anyone in Crimson Road, it's the most straightforward conversation you can imagine. People say EXACTLY what they're thinking all the time, making for one boring on-the-nose scene after another. For example, I don't remember a single character uttering a single sarcastic line in Crimson Road. And this is about high school kids! Sarcasm is their second language!
Here's a conversation between Jill's friend Michelle and her ex-boyfriend, Stu. MICHELLE: "So. Who do you believe?" STU: "Her parents. I think." "Do you think she is lying?" "But that is just it. It isn't like she is aware it's a lie. Her dad thinks the medication she's on somehow screws with her head." "We don't know if it didn't happen. What she said a few years back definitely happened, did it not?" "And last week? You believe someone tried to run her off the road? I get it, lightning sometimes strikes. It did earlier in her life. Several times --" "--so why couldn't it strike again last week? Or last night?" "Maybe last night did happen. But what are we supposed to do? Believe there's some psychopath in town?" "(remembering) Shit...I forgot. Her and I are supposed to walk to school together. What do I say?" "Oh. When's she gonna be here?" "Any minute now." "I should probably get going then."
Not only does this not sound like two teenagers talking, it doesn't sound like two people talking. This is a writer trying to convey information to the reader through two people talking and that's it. There's no nuance, no naturalism, no flavor. Now let's listen to a conversation between two teenagers in Scream. Notice the huge difference...
TATUM: "Do you believe this shit?" SIDNEY: "What happened?" "Oh God! You don't know? Casey Becker and Steve Forrest were killed last night." "No way." "And not just killed, Sid. We're talking splatter movie killed--split open end to end." "Casey Becker? She sits next to me in English." "Not anymore. Her parents found her hanging from a tree. Her insides on the outside." "Do they know who did it?" "Fucking clueless--they're interrogating the entire school. Teachers, students, staff, janitors..." "They think it's school-related?" "They don't know. Dewey said this is the worst crime they've ever seen. Even worse than...(stopping herself) Well it's bad."
Notice how much more fun this dialogue is! Notice how much more flavor it has! "We're talking splatter-movie killed." "Her insides on the outside." "Fucking clueless." "She sits next to me in English." "Not anymore." As a writer, one of your jobs after you get the logistics of the dialogue down is to add flavor to it. It doesn't feel like Anthony ever did that. He just got the relevant information down and stopped there. Now granted dialogue must be catered to the type of story you're telling and the types of characters speaking it. But I know this - there isn't any situation where teenagers speak like robots. "Do you think she is lying?" should at the very least have a contraction: "Do you think she's lying?"
On top of this, there's zero subtext. And subtext is what makes dialogue fun! Characters need to be in situations where they're saying one thing but meaning another. They have to be in situations where we know they're hiding something from the person they're talking to.
Take the above scene for example. Stu used to be Jill's boyfriend before she went to the looney bin. But it appears that Stu's now with Jill's best friend Michelle and neither of them have told Jill yet. Okay, that's a perfect set-up for subtext! Stu's over at Michelle's house and Jill shows up unexpectedly. Michelle and Stu freak out as she's coming up the stairs and she pushes Stu into the closet. Jill pops in and now you have a conversation between Michelle and Jill. You could have Jill confide in Michelle that she misses Stu but doesn't know how he feels. Blah blah blah. You get the idea. A fun scene! Instead, Anthony has Stu leave right before Jill shows up. Boring!
Dialogue was just one element of this script that needed work. I thought the choices here were way too safe and Jill's investigation was way too simplistic. A solid attempt was made at giving Jill a backstory with her molesting uncle, but it felt mega-forced. I mean how is it that Uncle Fred has gotten out of jail and moved back into town and nobody from the family knows about it?? There's just no way that happens.
But I wouldn't worry about that for now. If I were Anthony, I would focus this next draft on dialogue. Learn to have more fun with it, to let the characters go instead of making their conversations so stilted and on the nose. Learn to incorporate subtext as well to juice things up. As for what I mean about the choices being too "safe," tune in tomorrow and I'll show you a script that does anything but make safe choices. You'll be able to see the difference. Until then, what did you think of Crimson Road?
What I Learned: After you've come up with your premise, try to put your hero as CLOSE AS POSSIBLE TO DANGER in regards to that premise. For example, if you're writing a story about the attack on Pearl Harbor, you probably don't want to focus on a character in Montana whose brother is stationed in Hawaii. You want to focus on the brother stationed in Hawaii! And you want to put him on one of the ships that's attacked! Same thing here. I thought this script would have been a lot better if Jill lived on Crimson Road herself, and slowly began to realize that her father was one of the serial killers (or maybe even her mother!).
Emma Roberts as Jill?
Just like that first president of ours, I cannot tell a lie. This whole Twit-Pitch thing? I'm starting to have my doubts. We all know what happened on the last Twit-Pitch script I reviewed, and it only got worse when I went back through the finalists e-mails while looking for four scripts to review this week. I thought I'd be opening e-mails with scripts attached. Instead, I received four e-mails that basically said this: "Hi, err, um, Carson. So I was thinking about my script and I realized that, um, I have a job, and because of my job, I can't finish my script in time, for, um, the deadline? So I'm probably not going to enter. I hope that's okay and you're not upset."
*sigh*
I knew this would be an experiment. I said so at the beginning. But this is still an amazing opportunity for unknown writers to get noticed and nobody seems to be taking it seriously. I know I could go back through the Top 100 and find replacements for these entries, but I'm probably not going to. It's hard to drum up enthusiasm for people who don't take this profession seriously.
With all that said, I *have* read the first Twit-Pitch screenplay that's given me hope. Unfortunately, you're going to have to wait until tomorrow for that. Today's script, Crimson Road, doesn't quite live up to its premise. However, today's and tomorrow's scripts are a great contrast in what a writer must do to rope in a reader. Whereas tomorrow's entry takes some hardcore chances, Crimson plays its inspired premise surprisingly safe. Let's check it out.
17 year-old Jill Harris has just been released back into the wild after spending a couple of years in the looney bin. Which is why no one believes her when, on one of her first nights back, she sees a man chasing a girl through the woods. Even her former boyfriend, Stu, and her Deputy big brother, Hunter, give Jill the "Uh huh, we totally believe you" spiel.
But Jill isn't giving up so easily. She's going to prove she's not the wacko everyone thinks she is. So she jaunts over to Crimson Road, a block full of houses plucked out of a Norman Rockwell painting, and targets the one unkempt house on the block. It's here where she pops open a trash can and finds the bloodied shirt of the girl she saw in the woods!
The cops race in and arrest the house owner and it's looking like the case is solved. But not so fast. The police receive a DVD of an old man in a basement getting tortured! Have they captured their killer or not?? And if that isn't bad enough, Jill's Uncle Fred, who molested her when she was a child, just got out of jail and moved onto Crimson Road, stirring up all sorts of bad memories in the community.
We eventually come to learn that this block is a community of serial killers who have a set of rules they abide by to ensure never getting caught. But when Jill begins relentlessly looking into them, they realize that in order to keep their secret, they're going to have to kill her AND her friends. Although Uncle Fred seems to be the ringleader, a calculated Anthony Perkins type named Ethan is the go-to killer when big jobs need to get done. So that's who they set loose on Jill. Will she survive? Will anyone survive? That's a question that will continue to be asked as long as there's a Crimson Road.
I think Crimson Road wants to be Scream. Not so much in the self-referential way. But it wants to be smart and funny while at the same time conveying a sense of danger for its characters. The thing is, at least with how it's constructed now, it's neither smart nor funny. Why do I say this? Well, the area that's really going to set you apart in these categories is dialogue, and the dialogue here is painfully standard.
Whenever anybody talks to anyone in Crimson Road, it's the most straightforward conversation you can imagine. People say EXACTLY what they're thinking all the time, making for one boring on-the-nose scene after another. For example, I don't remember a single character uttering a single sarcastic line in Crimson Road. And this is about high school kids! Sarcasm is their second language!
Here's a conversation between Jill's friend Michelle and her ex-boyfriend, Stu. MICHELLE: "So. Who do you believe?" STU: "Her parents. I think." "Do you think she is lying?" "But that is just it. It isn't like she is aware it's a lie. Her dad thinks the medication she's on somehow screws with her head." "We don't know if it didn't happen. What she said a few years back definitely happened, did it not?" "And last week? You believe someone tried to run her off the road? I get it, lightning sometimes strikes. It did earlier in her life. Several times --" "--so why couldn't it strike again last week? Or last night?" "Maybe last night did happen. But what are we supposed to do? Believe there's some psychopath in town?" "(remembering) Shit...I forgot. Her and I are supposed to walk to school together. What do I say?" "Oh. When's she gonna be here?" "Any minute now." "I should probably get going then."
Not only does this not sound like two teenagers talking, it doesn't sound like two people talking. This is a writer trying to convey information to the reader through two people talking and that's it. There's no nuance, no naturalism, no flavor. Now let's listen to a conversation between two teenagers in Scream. Notice the huge difference...
TATUM: "Do you believe this shit?" SIDNEY: "What happened?" "Oh God! You don't know? Casey Becker and Steve Forrest were killed last night." "No way." "And not just killed, Sid. We're talking splatter movie killed--split open end to end." "Casey Becker? She sits next to me in English." "Not anymore. Her parents found her hanging from a tree. Her insides on the outside." "Do they know who did it?" "Fucking clueless--they're interrogating the entire school. Teachers, students, staff, janitors..." "They think it's school-related?" "They don't know. Dewey said this is the worst crime they've ever seen. Even worse than...(stopping herself) Well it's bad."
Notice how much more fun this dialogue is! Notice how much more flavor it has! "We're talking splatter-movie killed." "Her insides on the outside." "Fucking clueless." "She sits next to me in English." "Not anymore." As a writer, one of your jobs after you get the logistics of the dialogue down is to add flavor to it. It doesn't feel like Anthony ever did that. He just got the relevant information down and stopped there. Now granted dialogue must be catered to the type of story you're telling and the types of characters speaking it. But I know this - there isn't any situation where teenagers speak like robots. "Do you think she is lying?" should at the very least have a contraction: "Do you think she's lying?"
On top of this, there's zero subtext. And subtext is what makes dialogue fun! Characters need to be in situations where they're saying one thing but meaning another. They have to be in situations where we know they're hiding something from the person they're talking to.
Take the above scene for example. Stu used to be Jill's boyfriend before she went to the looney bin. But it appears that Stu's now with Jill's best friend Michelle and neither of them have told Jill yet. Okay, that's a perfect set-up for subtext! Stu's over at Michelle's house and Jill shows up unexpectedly. Michelle and Stu freak out as she's coming up the stairs and she pushes Stu into the closet. Jill pops in and now you have a conversation between Michelle and Jill. You could have Jill confide in Michelle that she misses Stu but doesn't know how he feels. Blah blah blah. You get the idea. A fun scene! Instead, Anthony has Stu leave right before Jill shows up. Boring!
Dialogue was just one element of this script that needed work. I thought the choices here were way too safe and Jill's investigation was way too simplistic. A solid attempt was made at giving Jill a backstory with her molesting uncle, but it felt mega-forced. I mean how is it that Uncle Fred has gotten out of jail and moved back into town and nobody from the family knows about it?? There's just no way that happens.
But I wouldn't worry about that for now. If I were Anthony, I would focus this next draft on dialogue. Learn to have more fun with it, to let the characters go instead of making their conversations so stilted and on the nose. Learn to incorporate subtext as well to juice things up. As for what I mean about the choices being too "safe," tune in tomorrow and I'll show you a script that does anything but make safe choices. You'll be able to see the difference. Until then, what did you think of Crimson Road?
Script link: Crimson Road
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn't for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I Learned: After you've come up with your premise, try to put your hero as CLOSE AS POSSIBLE TO DANGER in regards to that premise. For example, if you're writing a story about the attack on Pearl Harbor, you probably don't want to focus on a character in Montana whose brother is stationed in Hawaii. You want to focus on the brother stationed in Hawaii! And you want to put him on one of the ships that's attacked! Same thing here. I thought this script would have been a lot better if Jill lived on Crimson Road herself, and slowly began to realize that her father was one of the serial killers (or maybe even her mother!).
Twit-Pitch Review - Fatties
type='html'>Genre: Dark Comedy
Premise: (Original Twit-Pitch Logline) When a lonely masochistic chubby chaser is abducted by two fat lesbian serial killers, it's the best thing that ever happened to him.
About: Twit-Pitch Review Week - For those recently joining Scriptshadow, I held a contest a few months back called "Twit-Pitch," where anyone could pitch me their screenplay on Twitter, as long as it was contained within a single tweet. I picked my 100 favorite loglines and read the first 10 pages of each (which I live-reviewed on Twitter), and then from those, picked the Top 20, which I'll read the entire screenplay for. This week I'm reviewing four of the Twit-Pitch scripts.
Writers: Matthew Ballen
Details: 92 pages
Hey, what do you know? More serial killers! These delightful little rascals are dark comedy gold, which is why they never stray too far from a slugline.
Problem is most writers think that their character being a serial killer is enough. As if that alone will capture our imagination. Nope. Fraid not. Just like any subject matter, serial killers need a fresh take. And today we get that fresh take. Sealed up in a giant zip-lock bag. Along with kittens. And anal fisting (more on that in a bit).
Yesterday I complained that serial killer spec "Crimson Road" made too many safe choices, taking what should've been an exciting premise and boiling it down to a generic version of Scream. If you're going to tackle something as ubiquitous as serial killers, you need to give us more than that. You need to treat the idea in a unique way. When I pointed that out, I told everyone to tune into today's review to see what I meant.
Fatties will offend a great portion of the people who read it. But one thing you can't say about Fatties is that it's predictable. Or obvious. Or generic. Imagine reading the same stories over and over and over again. That's my life. So when a writer has the balls to try something different, it ALWAYS stands out. And I'm happy to have finally found a Twit-Pitch script that stands out.
Kathy and Linda are large and in-charge lesbian lovers. Actually, Kathy's the one who's in charge. She's the one tipping the scales at 400, and she uses every one of those ounces to get what she wants. Poor Linda, who's a comparatively slight 300, basically spends her days making Kathy happy any way she can - usually sexually. If the image of 700 pounds of naked flesh rolling around in a bed accompanied by phrases such as, "Yeah, that's how momma likes it" terrifies you, you probably don't want to read Fatties. Because there's plenty of that. Way too plenty!
Oh yeah, Kathy and Linda are also serial killers. When we meet them, they have a cheerleader tied up in the basement. As you'd expect, this is mainly Kathy's idea. Linda goes along with it because she's terrified of making Kathy angry. She remembers what it was like before Kathy came along - how lonely she was - and if she has to support her lover's little killing habit to keep her happy, well, it's a small price to pay.
Unfortunately, Linda's kindness allows the cheerleader to escape. But before she can get very far, Kathy pops out of nowhere and chops the bitch's head off. The killing happens way sooner than Kathy would've wanted, and that means finding a new piece of meat to torture. Kathy turns to the Craig's List personals where she finds a man in search of a large woman.
Enter Gary - the single nicest guy in the world. Gary's skinny, wiry, and has a lot of the same problems these women have - mainly that he's an outcast. Nobody pays attention to him. Nobody gives a shit about him. If he can just find someone - anyone - to talk to, he'll be happy. So when he puts up a personals ad looking for a large woman (to cuddle with - Gary loves cuddling), he's thrilled to get an e-mail back from a COUPLE. Two big and beautifuls for the price of one. Jackpot!
Gary heads over to meet the couple and is instantly smitten. Of course, Gary would be smitten with a wireless router if it showed interest but still. He really likes these chicks. Which is a bit of surprise to them since nobody likes them. But while Gary is looking for something more...emotional, Kathy is looking for something more... sexual.
She takes Gary home that night and completely degrades him, first by sitting on his face and second by...sitting on his face some more. She has no interest in giving Gary any pleasure in return. She just wants to treat him like the trash she believes he is. The problem is...Gary likes it. In fact, he LOVES it. This infuriates Kathy so much that she starts slapping Gary while forcing him into repeated acts of sexual depravity. But Gary likes it. So she starts beating the crap out of him. But Gary likes it. Gary is like the Life Cereal Mikey of subservient sex. No matter how many shades of gray Kathy throws at him, Gary likes it.
She finally stuffs him in their basement of torture, tells him he's going to be their slave, and that at some point in the near future, they're going to kill him. But Gary likes it. Humph. Kathy is at a loss as to what to do. She's not used to any of her victims liking anything she does.
Now during these slave sessions, it's Linda's job to come down and feed the captors. Normally, Kathy's able to control Linda - reminding her that these aren't really people but rather playthings for their amusement. But Gary is just so darn earnest that Linda starts to like him. She begins to realize that the real enemy here is Kathy, who's taken advantage of her loneliness all these years to essentially make her a "slave with benefits." Once Linda gets this in her head, she starts planning an escape with Gary. Except Kathy's no dummy. She figures it out and her plan to kill Gary turns into a plan to kill Gary AND Linda. Will Linda figure this out in time? Will her and Gary be able to escape? And how will Gary fend Kathy off with only one arm (more on that in a sec)? Fatties offers all these wonderful answers and more. Much MUCH more.
Did Fatties make me sick? Yeah. Did Fatties make me want to hurl several times? Yeah. But did Fatties make me want to keep reading? Yeah. And in the end, that's all that matters. If the reader wants to keep reading, you're doing your job.
But the reason this script stands above all the other Twit-Pitch entries (so far) is that it makes unique choices. Focusing the script around a large lesbian couple? Never seen that before. Making them serial killers and having them keep a wiry mustached chubby chaser as a sex slave? Never seen that before. A killer amputating a character's arm and then using it to anally fist him, all shown lovingly via a shadow on the wall? Never seen that before.
But if this script were ONLY about the shock value, I wouldn't have given a shit. What Matt does here is he actually creates characters. He actually incorporates theme! This script is about loneliness, and the depths humans will go to to avoid it. For some it's being with a person they hate, if only because it's someone to lay their head down next to at the end of the day. For others it's allowing yourself to be murdered, if only so you don't have to die alone. I mean, it's freaking sad but you *do* sympathize with these characters because they're experiencing real-life relatable problems. You feel their pain and care for them. Which is why, even though they're being anally fisted with their own decapitated arms, you still want to see what happens next.
If I have a complaint about Fatties, it's that Kathy was a wee bit over-the-top. And when I say "wee bit" I mean Mach 50 completely out of control batshit Gorilla-scary insane. I mean at one point when her and Linda need money, they pop by an ATM and Kathy stabs a dude to death and steals his cash. I know this isn't reality, but come on. She'd be a little more careful than that seeing as she regularly keeps future murder victims in her basement. Matt did such a good job bringing out the humanity in Linda and Gary. Maybe a pass focusing on Kathy's past and her own humanity will add some depth to the character so she's not so dependent on shocking actions.
This script is weird. This script is disturbing. But I'd rather have weird and disturbing over "predictable" any day.
Rosie O'Donnel for Kathy?
Hey, what do you know? More serial killers! These delightful little rascals are dark comedy gold, which is why they never stray too far from a slugline.
Problem is most writers think that their character being a serial killer is enough. As if that alone will capture our imagination. Nope. Fraid not. Just like any subject matter, serial killers need a fresh take. And today we get that fresh take. Sealed up in a giant zip-lock bag. Along with kittens. And anal fisting (more on that in a bit).
Yesterday I complained that serial killer spec "Crimson Road" made too many safe choices, taking what should've been an exciting premise and boiling it down to a generic version of Scream. If you're going to tackle something as ubiquitous as serial killers, you need to give us more than that. You need to treat the idea in a unique way. When I pointed that out, I told everyone to tune into today's review to see what I meant.
Fatties will offend a great portion of the people who read it. But one thing you can't say about Fatties is that it's predictable. Or obvious. Or generic. Imagine reading the same stories over and over and over again. That's my life. So when a writer has the balls to try something different, it ALWAYS stands out. And I'm happy to have finally found a Twit-Pitch script that stands out.
Kathy and Linda are large and in-charge lesbian lovers. Actually, Kathy's the one who's in charge. She's the one tipping the scales at 400, and she uses every one of those ounces to get what she wants. Poor Linda, who's a comparatively slight 300, basically spends her days making Kathy happy any way she can - usually sexually. If the image of 700 pounds of naked flesh rolling around in a bed accompanied by phrases such as, "Yeah, that's how momma likes it" terrifies you, you probably don't want to read Fatties. Because there's plenty of that. Way too plenty!
Oh yeah, Kathy and Linda are also serial killers. When we meet them, they have a cheerleader tied up in the basement. As you'd expect, this is mainly Kathy's idea. Linda goes along with it because she's terrified of making Kathy angry. She remembers what it was like before Kathy came along - how lonely she was - and if she has to support her lover's little killing habit to keep her happy, well, it's a small price to pay.
Unfortunately, Linda's kindness allows the cheerleader to escape. But before she can get very far, Kathy pops out of nowhere and chops the bitch's head off. The killing happens way sooner than Kathy would've wanted, and that means finding a new piece of meat to torture. Kathy turns to the Craig's List personals where she finds a man in search of a large woman.
Enter Gary - the single nicest guy in the world. Gary's skinny, wiry, and has a lot of the same problems these women have - mainly that he's an outcast. Nobody pays attention to him. Nobody gives a shit about him. If he can just find someone - anyone - to talk to, he'll be happy. So when he puts up a personals ad looking for a large woman (to cuddle with - Gary loves cuddling), he's thrilled to get an e-mail back from a COUPLE. Two big and beautifuls for the price of one. Jackpot!
Gary heads over to meet the couple and is instantly smitten. Of course, Gary would be smitten with a wireless router if it showed interest but still. He really likes these chicks. Which is a bit of surprise to them since nobody likes them. But while Gary is looking for something more...emotional, Kathy is looking for something more... sexual.
She takes Gary home that night and completely degrades him, first by sitting on his face and second by...sitting on his face some more. She has no interest in giving Gary any pleasure in return. She just wants to treat him like the trash she believes he is. The problem is...Gary likes it. In fact, he LOVES it. This infuriates Kathy so much that she starts slapping Gary while forcing him into repeated acts of sexual depravity. But Gary likes it. So she starts beating the crap out of him. But Gary likes it. Gary is like the Life Cereal Mikey of subservient sex. No matter how many shades of gray Kathy throws at him, Gary likes it.
She finally stuffs him in their basement of torture, tells him he's going to be their slave, and that at some point in the near future, they're going to kill him. But Gary likes it. Humph. Kathy is at a loss as to what to do. She's not used to any of her victims liking anything she does.
Now during these slave sessions, it's Linda's job to come down and feed the captors. Normally, Kathy's able to control Linda - reminding her that these aren't really people but rather playthings for their amusement. But Gary is just so darn earnest that Linda starts to like him. She begins to realize that the real enemy here is Kathy, who's taken advantage of her loneliness all these years to essentially make her a "slave with benefits." Once Linda gets this in her head, she starts planning an escape with Gary. Except Kathy's no dummy. She figures it out and her plan to kill Gary turns into a plan to kill Gary AND Linda. Will Linda figure this out in time? Will her and Gary be able to escape? And how will Gary fend Kathy off with only one arm (more on that in a sec)? Fatties offers all these wonderful answers and more. Much MUCH more.
Did Fatties make me sick? Yeah. Did Fatties make me want to hurl several times? Yeah. But did Fatties make me want to keep reading? Yeah. And in the end, that's all that matters. If the reader wants to keep reading, you're doing your job.
But the reason this script stands above all the other Twit-Pitch entries (so far) is that it makes unique choices. Focusing the script around a large lesbian couple? Never seen that before. Making them serial killers and having them keep a wiry mustached chubby chaser as a sex slave? Never seen that before. A killer amputating a character's arm and then using it to anally fist him, all shown lovingly via a shadow on the wall? Never seen that before.
But if this script were ONLY about the shock value, I wouldn't have given a shit. What Matt does here is he actually creates characters. He actually incorporates theme! This script is about loneliness, and the depths humans will go to to avoid it. For some it's being with a person they hate, if only because it's someone to lay their head down next to at the end of the day. For others it's allowing yourself to be murdered, if only so you don't have to die alone. I mean, it's freaking sad but you *do* sympathize with these characters because they're experiencing real-life relatable problems. You feel their pain and care for them. Which is why, even though they're being anally fisted with their own decapitated arms, you still want to see what happens next.
If I have a complaint about Fatties, it's that Kathy was a wee bit over-the-top. And when I say "wee bit" I mean Mach 50 completely out of control batshit Gorilla-scary insane. I mean at one point when her and Linda need money, they pop by an ATM and Kathy stabs a dude to death and steals his cash. I know this isn't reality, but come on. She'd be a little more careful than that seeing as she regularly keeps future murder victims in her basement. Matt did such a good job bringing out the humanity in Linda and Gary. Maybe a pass focusing on Kathy's past and her own humanity will add some depth to the character so she's not so dependent on shocking actions.
This script is weird. This script is disturbing. But I'd rather have weird and disturbing over "predictable" any day.
Script link: Fatties
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn't for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I Learned: Quentin Tarantino once said, "You gotta be a little embarrassed when you give your script to someone. You gotta be uncomfortable with some of the stuff you've put in there," I think there's some truth to that, especially when it comes to dark comedies. If there isn't a single scene or character or moment in your dark comedy that makes you nervous about what people are going to think once they read it, you haven't pushed far enough. Safe is always going to be boring.
Twit-Pitch Review - The Last Rough Rider
type='html'>(Thursday review up early since I'm on the road to LA baby!!!)
Genre: Action
Genre: Action
Premise: (Original Twit-Pitch Logline) It's 1901. Terrorists have just taken over the White House. And only Theodore Roosevelt can stop them.
About: Twit-Pitch Review Week - For those recently joining Scriptshadow, I held a contest a few months back called "Twit-Pitch," where anyone could pitch me their screenplay on Twitter, as long as it was contained within a single tweet. I picked my 100 favorite loglines and read the first 10 pages of each (which I live-reviewed on Twitter), and then from those, picked the Top 20, which I'll read the entire screenplay for. This week I'm reviewing four of the Twit-Pitch scripts.
Writers: Matthew Merenda
Details: 118 pages
I'm not sure it's ever a good sign when a contest entry comes with the e-mail, "Sorry for any typos. I ran out of time."
...........
You hear that?
That's the sound of my chin hitting my chest accompanied by a long slow wheezing sound. I suppose I should be used to it by now - the lack of effort put into these Twit-Pitches. But yesterday gave me hope! It made me a believer in Twit-Pitch again! I had fallen down the Twit-Pitch mountain but I had gotten back up and I climbed, oh how I climbed, to the top of that mountain again and I said to the people in the valley, "HALLELUJAH!"
Only to get shot in the back and tumble off the cliff once more.
Now we're not talking about a "Cut Copy Paste" reunion here. The writing was competent. And ironically, I only saw a couple of typos. But this script confused me. The first five pages were some of the strongest of the competition - with a group of 1901 terrorists breaking into a tower and stealing blueprints to the White House. But for some reason - maybe from the logline? - I thought this script was going to be an action comedy. But that's not the case. It's a straight action film. Which definitely took some getting used to (I think I gave up looking for laughs around page 30). But even once I realized it was a straight action movie, I was frustrated by how little freaking happened! I mean, there's a TON of action in this script. More than a night in the Jersey Shore house. But there's zero story. It's as if Matt bought himself a case of Mountain Dew and wrote one giant 110 page action sequence all weekend. I'll get more into that in a second.
Like I said, The Last Rough Rider begins in 1901 with a group of Columbians stealing the White House blueprints. The scene creates intrigue. It creates suspense. It sets up a mystery. What are they stealing the blueprints for? Whatever are they planning to do?
We then meet Theodore Roosevelt and his 12 year old son, Kermit, hunting. Teddy is big, tough and manly, whereas Kermit is weak, squeamish, and uncomfortable. He's only here to impress his father but it's clear he'd rather be reading books or playing ches---HOLY F*CK! OUT OF NOWHERE A BEAR LEAPS AT THEM! Teddy and Kermit roll out of the way. Now whereas most people would run AWAY from a thousand pound bear, Teddy Roosevelt runs AT the bear. And wrestles it. And kills it!
Yes, Teddy Roosevelt IS the last true rough rider. And to drive this point home, he hauls the bear carcass into a cabinet meeting and starts gutting it (strangely, this is the only comedic scene in the movie). Oh yeah, Mr. Roosevelt isn't president yet. He's only vice-president. And apparently he gets on a lot of people's nerves, to the point where no one thinks he's presidential material. He's just not very...sensitive.
Anyway, while the cabinet bickers about a dead bear in the middle of the Oval Office, our evil Columbian terrorists sneak through the gate and take over the White House Hans Gruber style! You gotta remember this was pre 9/11....by 100 years, so security wasn't very tight.
They hold everybody hostage in the Oval Office except for Teddy, who they send off to a remote room. Teddy isn't there for long, as taking out two guards is the difficulty equivalent of eating a stack of pancakes for him. And from that point on....well...Teddy runs around the White House trying to save the good guys and kill the bad guys. That's....about it. There's nothing else that really happens in the story. Which makes it kinda boring.
Now you may be saying, "Well isn't that exactly what Die Hard did?" Yeah, but here's the difference. Die Hard had plot developments. Things were happening. They were trying to open the 7 layers of the safe. The media showed up. McClane befriended the cop. The power was cut.
Nothing happens in this story. It's the most under-plotted script I've read all year. It's just Roosevelt running around aimlessly. There's no form to it. There's no structure. It's just the same scene over and over again. I know this because when I read these scripts, I take notes on all the major and minor plot developments that happen so I can write a summary of the story in the review. I went 80 pages here and didn't write a single thing because there wasn't a single development.
The only plot element driving the story was the admittedly cool X-Ray machine that the Columbian scientist was using to see what was inside the White House walls. This is apparently what they came here for. The problem is, we see this happen at the beginning of the takeover, and then we don't hear about it again for another 90 PAGES! So the only interesting thing about the story was barely in the story!
It's your job as a writer to make something happen every 10-15 pages. Give us a twist. Introduce an unexpected element. If the same thing keeps happening over and over again, we're going to get bored. And that's why this feels like it was written in a weekend. There just didn't seem to be any thought put into the plot. It was just, "Let's have Teddy Roosevelt run around."
This is the kind of script that would've benefited greatly from clear "mini-goals." Instead of only having a giant vague goal of "saving the White House," which leaves open the possibility of too much general-ness, lay out specific tasks Roosevelt needs to accomplish one after another to GET to the point where he saves the White House. These mini-goals are the key to focus.
For example, John McClane's first goal is to contact the police. Then it's to stop the police from mucking up the situation. Then it's to evade the terrorists Hans sends after him. Once you break your action movie down into these little chunks, giving your hero sequences to conquer instead of entire movies to conquer, the story becomes much more manageable.
To make matters worse, the only plot point in the movie (the x-rayed wall plot) didn't even pay off in an interesting way. In fact, I don't even know if it made sense. The Columbians were basically looking for the blueprints to the Panama Canal so they could...control it? Or something? How would blueprints allow you to control the canal? And why did blueprints to the Panama Canal need to be hidden inside the White House walls? And my history is shaky. Had the Panama Canal been built yet? Were they trying to control something that was already there or control something that would be there in the future? No idea. And why do we need an x-ray machine to check inside the wall to see if something is there or not? Why not - oh I don't know - KNOCK DOWN THE WALL!?? Seems like it would be a lot cheaper and a lot faster.
I'm going to take a wild guess here and say this was written AFTER Twit-Pitch. Once again, I'll remind you: We readers know when a script has been rushed. You're not going to trick us. The choices are generic. The plot is basic. The characters are plain. To get that stuff right takes time and a lot of rewriting. So as much as you'd like to think you'll be the exception, you're not fooling anybody. If you don't put in the work, it always shows.
This is sad because I was thinking Rough Rider would be a dark horse in the competition. Instead it's a dead horse. :(
Teddy Roosevelt - resident badass
I'm not sure it's ever a good sign when a contest entry comes with the e-mail, "Sorry for any typos. I ran out of time."
...........
You hear that?
That's the sound of my chin hitting my chest accompanied by a long slow wheezing sound. I suppose I should be used to it by now - the lack of effort put into these Twit-Pitches. But yesterday gave me hope! It made me a believer in Twit-Pitch again! I had fallen down the Twit-Pitch mountain but I had gotten back up and I climbed, oh how I climbed, to the top of that mountain again and I said to the people in the valley, "HALLELUJAH!"
Only to get shot in the back and tumble off the cliff once more.
Now we're not talking about a "Cut Copy Paste" reunion here. The writing was competent. And ironically, I only saw a couple of typos. But this script confused me. The first five pages were some of the strongest of the competition - with a group of 1901 terrorists breaking into a tower and stealing blueprints to the White House. But for some reason - maybe from the logline? - I thought this script was going to be an action comedy. But that's not the case. It's a straight action film. Which definitely took some getting used to (I think I gave up looking for laughs around page 30). But even once I realized it was a straight action movie, I was frustrated by how little freaking happened! I mean, there's a TON of action in this script. More than a night in the Jersey Shore house. But there's zero story. It's as if Matt bought himself a case of Mountain Dew and wrote one giant 110 page action sequence all weekend. I'll get more into that in a second.
Like I said, The Last Rough Rider begins in 1901 with a group of Columbians stealing the White House blueprints. The scene creates intrigue. It creates suspense. It sets up a mystery. What are they stealing the blueprints for? Whatever are they planning to do?
We then meet Theodore Roosevelt and his 12 year old son, Kermit, hunting. Teddy is big, tough and manly, whereas Kermit is weak, squeamish, and uncomfortable. He's only here to impress his father but it's clear he'd rather be reading books or playing ches---HOLY F*CK! OUT OF NOWHERE A BEAR LEAPS AT THEM! Teddy and Kermit roll out of the way. Now whereas most people would run AWAY from a thousand pound bear, Teddy Roosevelt runs AT the bear. And wrestles it. And kills it!
Yes, Teddy Roosevelt IS the last true rough rider. And to drive this point home, he hauls the bear carcass into a cabinet meeting and starts gutting it (strangely, this is the only comedic scene in the movie). Oh yeah, Mr. Roosevelt isn't president yet. He's only vice-president. And apparently he gets on a lot of people's nerves, to the point where no one thinks he's presidential material. He's just not very...sensitive.
Anyway, while the cabinet bickers about a dead bear in the middle of the Oval Office, our evil Columbian terrorists sneak through the gate and take over the White House Hans Gruber style! You gotta remember this was pre 9/11....by 100 years, so security wasn't very tight.
They hold everybody hostage in the Oval Office except for Teddy, who they send off to a remote room. Teddy isn't there for long, as taking out two guards is the difficulty equivalent of eating a stack of pancakes for him. And from that point on....well...Teddy runs around the White House trying to save the good guys and kill the bad guys. That's....about it. There's nothing else that really happens in the story. Which makes it kinda boring.
Now you may be saying, "Well isn't that exactly what Die Hard did?" Yeah, but here's the difference. Die Hard had plot developments. Things were happening. They were trying to open the 7 layers of the safe. The media showed up. McClane befriended the cop. The power was cut.
Nothing happens in this story. It's the most under-plotted script I've read all year. It's just Roosevelt running around aimlessly. There's no form to it. There's no structure. It's just the same scene over and over again. I know this because when I read these scripts, I take notes on all the major and minor plot developments that happen so I can write a summary of the story in the review. I went 80 pages here and didn't write a single thing because there wasn't a single development.
The only plot element driving the story was the admittedly cool X-Ray machine that the Columbian scientist was using to see what was inside the White House walls. This is apparently what they came here for. The problem is, we see this happen at the beginning of the takeover, and then we don't hear about it again for another 90 PAGES! So the only interesting thing about the story was barely in the story!
It's your job as a writer to make something happen every 10-15 pages. Give us a twist. Introduce an unexpected element. If the same thing keeps happening over and over again, we're going to get bored. And that's why this feels like it was written in a weekend. There just didn't seem to be any thought put into the plot. It was just, "Let's have Teddy Roosevelt run around."
This is the kind of script that would've benefited greatly from clear "mini-goals." Instead of only having a giant vague goal of "saving the White House," which leaves open the possibility of too much general-ness, lay out specific tasks Roosevelt needs to accomplish one after another to GET to the point where he saves the White House. These mini-goals are the key to focus.
For example, John McClane's first goal is to contact the police. Then it's to stop the police from mucking up the situation. Then it's to evade the terrorists Hans sends after him. Once you break your action movie down into these little chunks, giving your hero sequences to conquer instead of entire movies to conquer, the story becomes much more manageable.
To make matters worse, the only plot point in the movie (the x-rayed wall plot) didn't even pay off in an interesting way. In fact, I don't even know if it made sense. The Columbians were basically looking for the blueprints to the Panama Canal so they could...control it? Or something? How would blueprints allow you to control the canal? And why did blueprints to the Panama Canal need to be hidden inside the White House walls? And my history is shaky. Had the Panama Canal been built yet? Were they trying to control something that was already there or control something that would be there in the future? No idea. And why do we need an x-ray machine to check inside the wall to see if something is there or not? Why not - oh I don't know - KNOCK DOWN THE WALL!?? Seems like it would be a lot cheaper and a lot faster.
I'm going to take a wild guess here and say this was written AFTER Twit-Pitch. Once again, I'll remind you: We readers know when a script has been rushed. You're not going to trick us. The choices are generic. The plot is basic. The characters are plain. To get that stuff right takes time and a lot of rewriting. So as much as you'd like to think you'll be the exception, you're not fooling anybody. If you don't put in the work, it always shows.
This is sad because I was thinking Rough Rider would be a dark horse in the competition. Instead it's a dead horse. :(
Script link: The Last Rough Rider
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn't for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I Learned: You can't string medium-level plot mysteries out for an entire script. The reader will get bored. The whole "X-Ray of the wall" thing was kind of cool - but it wasn't "Wait for 90 Pages to Find Out What They're After" cool. Audiences give you grace periods on your mysteries relative to how interesting they are. Finding out what's inside a wall...I might give that 20-25 pages TOPS before it needs to be answered. But freaking 90 pages? No way.
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