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Genre: Action Thriller
Premise (from writer): A troubled state police officer teams with his cantankerous war veteran father when he tries to rescue his younger brothers, two muscle car street-rodders who have gotten in over their heads transporting marijuana for a team of ex Special Forces assassins.
Why You Should Read (from writer): Because it’s a polished draft in a classic genre, with strong characters, crisp dialogue, and set in a unique world. This is by definition a low concept genre exercise, and yet these types of movies seem to get made all the time, albeit straight to VOD and DVD, so I’m hopeful that an AF spotlight might help get this script in front of the right eyes. It’s gotten a little bit of love on the contest circuit (Page Semi Finals and two rounds at Austin), and I’m optimistic that many of the great SS Faithful will enjoy it and that it will rise to the top if given a spot on AOW.
Writer: Scott Martin
Details: 105 pages
I pointed out in last week’s Amateur Offerings how much I liked this logline. A lot of you countered that it was too long. I agree that it’s long. But good writers can make long sentences work. And Scott’s a good writer who definitely made this work. I never had to reread the logline or stumble through any odd phrasing, something I do regularly with amateur loglines. I don’t know, something about this logline clicked.
And when Dead Drunk ended up winning the weekend, I felt vindicated. One of the truths screenwriters don’t want to admit is that a logline matters. If a reader reads a logline that’s unfocused, unsure of itself or badly written, they know that the script is going to be the same way. While the skill required to write a logline is different from the skill required to write a screenplay, good writers recognize that the logline is the bridge to a read and therefore practice until they get it right.
The only thing wrong with Dead Drunk’s pitch is that I’m going into it with high expectations. Good logline, runaway winner in the voting. I’m expecting a lot here. Let’s see if the screenplay delivers…
It’s Oregon circa 1974, right after the soldiers started returning from Vietnam. One of those soldiers is 25 year-old Jarret Westin, a ferry captain. Now since ferry captains don’t exactly rake in the dough, Jarret supplements his income by making marijuana runs into the big city with his older brother, resident troublemaker, Sylvan.
Ironically, these two have another brother, Wes, who’s a state cop. And when he gets word that his brothers are running drugs, he gives them a firm talking to and tells them it has to end. This leads to Jarret and Sylvan NOT ENDING anything, and picking up their latest shipment from the local pot farm.
While there, they don’t see a secret team of men stick the 1974 version of a car tracker (they had those?) on their car. Jarret and Sylvan don’t know it, but they’re about to be followed.
The two eventually catch whiff of the baddies following them and decide to make a run for it cross-country. The mysterious bad guys follow them, and then Wes and the brothers’ father, World War 2 hero, Delbert (does anybody in this family have a normal name?), follow the bad guys. As you’d expect, these three cliques all come crashing together, and not everybody survives the melee, with even the studs at risk of leaving the pile dead, drunk, or naked.
As I read through the first five pages of Dead Drunk and Naked, I started getting those stars in my eyes, those special Scriptshadow stars that lead me to call up industry folks and tell them that I think I found a winner.
We’ve got guys transporting drugs. We’ve got a brother who works for the state police trying to stop them. We’ve got some mystery dudes secretly throwing a tracker on their car. We’ve got a unique voice. A unique subject matter. This futhermucker was rolling in the right direction.
But I’ll tell you when the script slipped out of gear for me. It was in the first bar scene. Here we spend the first ten pages building up this exciting story, and then we pause all that to have our characters drink a beer for no other reason than to set up other characters, cover some exposition, and sling in some backstory. It was like going down that first drop on a roller coaster and then, right before you hit the loops, the coaster stops.
But while my harness may have loosened, I still wanted to complete the ride. There were so many promising signs. Like the way that Martin would take an extra beat every once in awhile to give us slightly more detail. Here’s what he writes in describing the main characters’ hometown:
Small-town Oregon in the heart of the Willamette River Valley — Willamette Falls, population 900 and shrinking.
Now that might not seem like much. But that last line is brilliant. Where most amateurs would’ve stopped at “Population 900,” Martin adds, “and shrinking.” With two simple words, he’s said so much about this town. It’s dying. An amateur would’ve spent a bunch of endless description detailing the abandoned town. Martin gives us, “and shrinking” and we know exactly what’s going on.
Also, I liked the mystery behind these killers. That’s the main thing that kept me turning the pages. I needed to find out who they were and what they wanted with Jarret and Sylvan. Because it wasn’t just about the drugs. They could’ve taken the drugs back at the farm. There was something more that they needed. And I needed to know that something.
But here’s where the script struggled. When you write a road trip film, and the people on that trip know each other, they need to be working through something. If there’s not some deep-set issue there, then there’s nowhere for the relationship to go. It’s just a bunch of dead dialogue. And we don’t get that only once (with Jarrett and Sylvan). We get it twice (with Wes and Dilbert).
Wes is probably the most interesting character of the bunch, as he’s the only one who has had anything of significance happen to him – his wife and kids have left him. But his wife is nowhere to be seen the entire movie. The person he’s with is his father. And his father appears to be supportive of him. Supportive fathers may be great for real life. But they’re horrible for movies. We need unsupportive. We need unresolved. And we weren’t getting that anywhere.
I read a script not long ago that had a similar setup, and the adult-son was still mad at his father for leaving his mom. So there was some actual conflict between the characters, something for them to work through over the course of the movie. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. You want your characters to agree on as little as possible. Disagreeing leads to conflict leads to relationship strife leads to relationship resolution, which is what movies are all about.
And look, I know you can go overboard with this stuff. The dreadful Free Fall proved that. But when I bring these things up, I’m not thinking about the cheesy on-the-nose version of events. I’m thinking about the “real world” version. I imagine authenticity dictating the plot – not “conflict for the sake of conflict.”
Now maybe the lack of relationship development would be acceptable if – IF – the characters were working through their own flaws. But out of our four main characters, I didn’t identify a single one that was battling something within himself. If you have a movie where the main characters aren’t trying to work through their own shit, I’m not sure you have a movie.
While I enjoyed the writing here, Dead Drunk & Naked suffers from a story that has too much stopping, too many meals, too many bar stops, and too much conversation about things that don’t matter. I’d love to see a story that’s more plot focused, that relies more on suspense (think the famous Cop across the street scene in Psycho), that has more urgency, and that has more character and relationship development.
Remember that character is not created through characters talking about one another. It’s created through action. Matt Damon doesn’t talk about how he wants to get off of Mars. He works on something every day to help him get off Mars. Dead Drunk & Naked needs more of that. Good luck, Scott!
Script link: Dead Drunk & Naked
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Two characters talking about a third character in a non plot related way is almost always boring. Here’s some made-up dialogue to sell that point: “What do you think about Frank?” “I think he has issues, you know?” “Man doesn’t know right from wrong ever since he got fired from his job.” People don’t care. If you want to tell us who a character is, do it through an action FROM THAT CHARACTER. Which of these does a better job at conveying character? Luke: “Hey Obi-Wan, what do you think of that Han guy?” Obi-Wan: “Don’t like him. He’s entitled, you know? And he doesn’t even believe in the force.” Luke: “I haven’t seen him help anybody yet unless it benefits him.” Obi-Wan: “Selfish bastard.” VERSUS “Come help us save the Princess.” “No, go save her yourself.” “You’ll get a reward.” “Okay, what’s the plan?”
