Genre: Horror
Premise: A woman tries to exonerate her brother, who was convicted of murder, by proving that the crime was committed by a supernatural mirror.
About: Oculus is the newest movie from horror kingpin, Blumhouse Productions. Everyone who made the film (writers and directors) are fairly new to the business. The film came out in theaters this weekend and finished third at the box office, with around 12 million dollars (behind Captain America and Rio 2). Coolest thing about Oculus? Definitely not the movie itself. But rather Rory Cochrane, who played the iconic Ron Slater in the classic Dazed and Confused, starred as the father in the film.
Writers: Mike Flanagan and Jeff Howard (based on a short screenplay by Mike Flanagan and Jeff Seidman)
Details: 105 minutes

Rory Cochrane in Oculus

Blumhouse is an interesting story. For a long time in Hollywood, people were making 20-40 million dollar horror films. If you were lucky, those films would make 70 million at the box office, and then some more money on DVD.  Blumhouse came in and said, “There’s gotta be a better way to do this.”

How? Well, scaring people doesn’t take a big budget. It just takes a good concept and a smart script. So they started making these movies budgeted at under 5 million dollars, that were still getting those 70 million dollar box office returns (or more!). All of a sudden your profit was 65 milllion dollars instead of 30. Paranormal Activity, Insidious, The Purge, Sinister are a few of the films that have benefited from this model.

This approach really shook the industry up. Why make big-budget horror movies anymore? We can just give Blumhouse a few million bucks and print money. Blumhouse might as well of called itself Powerhouse.

That is until today. Today, Blumhouse proved why its model is imperfect, exposing a big challenge in writing these kinds of films. I’ll get to that in a sec. But for those who didn’t see the film this weekend, here’s a recap.

Oculus follows a brother and a sister who experienced one hell of a shitty childhood together. When Kaylie and Tim were young, their father (whose job is still a mystery to me) worked in his office at home, where (for reasons that are still a mystery to me) he’s purchased a really really really old mirror that doesn’t go with the rest of the office at all.

Kaylie and Tim watch as this mirror starts to possess their father, which in turn drives their mother mad. In order to save himself and his sister, little Tim is forced to kill his dad at just 10 years old. But that’s not the main storyline. The main storyline actually takes place 11 years later, with Tim finally being released from the mental institution he’s been rehabilitated at, as he is now deemed fit for society.

When he meets up with his sister for the first time in forever, he thinks they’re going to go bowling or grab a big mac or something. Instead, she tells him they’re fulfilling their promise from when they were kids – to destroy the mirror that possessed their dad.

Tim is shocked to find that Kaylie still owns their parents’ house after all this time (which makes zero real-world sense, of course), and actually HAS THE MIRROR. She’s set up a bunch of monitoring equipment throughout the house so she can document what happens and prove the truth – that the mirror possessed their dad and made him crazy.

The problem is, during the past 11 years, Tim has been brainwashed by the world’s best psychiatrists, who’ve told him that everything he experienced in that house was his imagination. That the mirror wasn’t evil or possessed at all. Tim was just a deranged boy. So Tim is trying to convince Kaylie that she’s nuts.

While all of this is happening, flashbacks are inserted to show us just what happened with Dad and the mirror that fateful summer. We already know he and the mom were killed, but the writers want us to know how. And therefore, we get a sort of dual-storyline, 60% present, 40% past, which all takes place in this house, with this mirror.

Rory Cochrane in Dazed and Confused!

What is the worst mistake a horror movie can make?

Anyone?

Anyone?

NOT BEING SCARY.

Oculus is a horror movie and it isn’t even scary! It’s just two young adults talking to each other for 90 minutes. When you write a horror movie, scary needs to be a given. On top of that, scary movies need that one huge super memorable scary freaking moment that you know audiences will be talking about afterwards. In The Ring it’s when the girl climbs out of the TV (amongst other things). In The Exorcist, it’s when the girl’s head spins around. In Rosemary’s Baby, it’s the rape dream. What is it here?

It’s not even that it didn’t have this scene that bothered me. It’s that it DIDN’T EVEN TRY TO HAVE ONE. There wasn’t even an attempt. It was all just a bunch of talking and dumb jump scares.

But anyway, here’s the problem when you try to make the 5 million dollar horror movie. When you make the 5 million dollar horror movie, you have to limit your locations heavily. You usually get one big location, maybe a few early outside shots to imply a bigger world, and that’s it.

So if you look at all of the Blumhouse movies, they almost all take place exclusively at one home. Now if you have a solid premise, like, say, The Purge, this can work. But when your premise is thin, you’re screwed. You’re already making it tough on yourself by giving an audience only 5 rooms to spend the entire movie in. Now you tell them that you don’t have much to do in those rooms??

I have no idea how Oculus was approached as a story, but I can take a guess. They had this idea of this brother and sister and a mirror in a house, and as they started to construct a plot around it, they realized they didn’t have enough story. Again, this is the danger you run into with the Blumhouse approach. One location = only so many story options.

So they said, “Hmm, we need to add more story somewhere.” And that’s when someone came up with the brilliant idea: “Why don’t we spend half the movie in flashbacks seeing what happened to the family when the kids were younger?”

As soon as I picked up on that, I knew the story was dead. If you’re spending that much time in the past, it means you don’t have enough of a story for the present. Think about it. We didn’t need a SINGLE flashback for this story to work. We would’ve always understood what was going on in the present without it. So what was the point of adding it? The only logical answer is “to fill up space.”

You never want to only FILL UP SPACE when writing a script. A story should feel like it’s bursting with possibilities, like there isn’t enough time to tell it all. I guarantee you, if you’re using flashbacks to elongate your story, the audience will feel it, and they’ll start getting bored, which is exactly what happened here.

I’m not sure if this exposed the Blumhouse model for the house of cards it is, or if we’ve just reiterated something we’ve known about screenwriting forever: A weak concept will always result in a weak script. I mean WHAT IS THIS ABOUT??? A mirror that sort of possesses people (but maybe not) and also makes people imagine things?? So two people try to “kill it?” Are you kidding me?? Throw if off a cliff. Story over.

Here’s another way to easily tell if a script is going to suck: One of the characters spends TEN CONSECUTIVE MINUTES talking to another character with nothing but exposition (as Kaylie does to Tim when they come back to the house). There are only two possibilities for why anyone would do this. One, they’re not a good enough writer to know how to hide exposition. Or two, they’re trying to add as many pages as possible to get to the minimum run time for a feature. Neither scenario ever results in anything good.

Anyway, this script, at least when it’s watched as a film, is really bad. It’s one of the more disappointing films I’ve seen in the last calendar year.

[x] what the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Screenwriting 101 – Make use of your premise! This is a script about a mirror. But there were NO MIRROR-RELATED SCENES! Actually, check that. There was one. That didn’t have anything to do with the story (it actually takes place before they even get to the house). It’d be like if you wrote Ghostbusters and there was one ghost. It was baffling. Here’s a tip: If you write a movie like Oculus, and you can substitute ANYTHING for the mirror (a haunted record player, a haunted table, a haunted painting) and it would still be the exact same movie, then you’ve done a terrible job writing that movie.

This is your chance to discuss the week’s amateur scripts, offered originally in the Scriptshadow newsletter. The primary goal for this discussion is to find out which script(s) is the best candidate for a future Amateur Friday review. The secondary goal is to keep things positive in the comments with constructive criticism.

Below are the scripts up for review, along with the download links. Want to receive the scripts early? Head over to the Contact page, e-mail us, and “Opt In” to the newsletter.

Happy reading!

TITLE: LOST IN THE SUPERMARKET
GENRE: Dramedy
LOGLINE: While working part-time in a supermarket, an ordinary college guy tries to save a bipolar jazz genius from self-destructing — but falls for the musician’s girlfriend, and finds himself in the process.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: This is my third script to make the Nicholl Fellowships quarterfinals (two prior scripts were psychological/supernatural thrillers) and while I have had some success in other contests with different screenplays before, this is my most personal statement about what it means to be an artist, who is struggling against the odds to leave your mark in whatever creative endeavor you choose. It’s about the heartache and joy of doing something you love, regardless of the outcomes.

Get Your Script Reviewed On Scriptshadow!: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and finally, something interesting about yourself and/or your script that you’d like us to post along with the script if reviewed. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Remember that your script will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effects of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre: Crime/Drama
Premise: (from writer) Calvin Barry, lost and adrift in his 20s, falls victim to the charms of Gwen Summers, a seductive young beach bunny. Soon, with the help of Gwen and her stoner roommate Amy, Calvin embarks on a binge of sex, drugs, and violence – a downward spiral he may not be able walk away from…if he even wants to, that is.
About: (from writer) Big fan of ScriptShadow. I’ve been a reader on and off for awhile, and I finally talked myself into submitting a script for Amateur Friday consideration. I’m Caleb Yeaton, a (hopeful) writer from around Chicago. I’ve been writing for a little over fifteen years, although I’m way too cheap to shop my scripts around to contests…which, considering my lack of connections, may be the wrong approach thus far. Anyway, I’m trying to get my current script, California Dream, a little more exposure – it’s been well-received on several workshop sites, and, while those reviews are helpful, I’d love the extensive Amateur Friday treatment. As for why you should read the script? California Dream drags the old-fashioned noir genre into 2014 with style – it’s dark, sometimes unpleasant, occasionally funny, and it’s been fine-tuned over a dozen drafts into a clean, tight story. Not convincing? Okay, there’s also a lot of sex and nudity in it.
Writer: Caleb Yeaton
Details: 103 pages

I don’t know who this is but she looks like she’d be perfect for Gwen.

So I was sitting there with Miss SS after reading California Dream and, like she always does when I finish a script, she inquired, “How was it?” I wasn’t sure what to say. I liked the writing a lot, but this isn’t really my thing. Every reader has their “things,” the genres and types of stories they respond best to, and this didn’t fall into any of my categories. So I was trying to decide if my disinterest in the genre was clouding my judgment on whether this was “worth the read.”

Usually, I know the rating within 10 pages of reading a script, but here it was a different story. Do I give this a bump because I liked the writer? If I heard John Lennon sing for the first time, but the song was mediocre, I’d still tell people to check him out, right? Not that this script was mediocre. It was pretty good. But I may have to make my way through the review before deciding what rating it deserves.

California Dream is about 26 year old Calvin Barry, a lost soul who’s been forced to move back in with his parents in Los Angeles. Desperate for independence, he starts looking for a job, but finds 18 year old hottie Gwen Summers instead. One look at Gwen and you know she’s bad news. But she’s hot bad news, and Calvin, being a young American male, cannot say no to hot bad news.

So Calvin starts hanging out with Gwen and her also hot pot-head bikini-clad roommate Amy. The three indulge in a little drinking, a little drugs, a lot of sex, and a whole lot of robbing. Yup, poor Calvin, whose father is a cop mind you, finds himself accompanying Gwen to her nightly liquor store hold-ups, and it isn’t long before he starts holding the gun.

Greed is a powerful force, however, and pretty soon liquor stores aren’t enough. If they want big money, they have to go after drug dealers. This decision comes with a price though. Calvin accidentally kills one of these dealers during a robbery, and now must face the fact that he’s a murderer. Strangely, the girls don’t seem concerned. They just want to buy more drugs, drink more vodka, and party til sunrise.

Naturally, this all catches up with them. Plenty of these liquor stores have security cameras. However, it’s not the girls the cops focus on. It’s Calvin. So he’ll have to decide whether to get out before it’s too late. Unfortunately, the girls want to do one last major hit. And because they’ve got Calvin wrapped around their finger, what do you think he’s gonna say?

California Dream is sort of like Bonnie and Clyde meets Juno meets Y Tu Mama Tambien meets Wild Things. I believe that’s quite an accurate description, as sometimes “Dream” meets the depths of a “Bonnie and Clyde” or “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” but occasionally flashes the kind of Skinemax scene that reminds you of “Wild Things.”

The Juno comes in with the way the girls talk, specifically Gwen. Here’s the thing when you’re writing female dialogue that’s trying to be witty and raw and clever and current – if you try too hard, it shows. And California Dream skirts that line throughout. Sometimes I was okay with it, but other times it felt like too much. Here’s what I mean: “Mmm. It’s not like we had a fuckin’ choice, you know? We’re besties. Her parentals kicked her to the curb because drugs. Like, not even a warning. Just get the fuck out. She needed help gettin’ a place. I was sick of my stepdad anyway. Dude went all pedobear as soon as I discovered my tits, you know? (shrugs) So, boom. Roommates.”

Unfortunately this is a “feel” thing. As a writer, your job is to ask, “Am I trying too hard here?” If you’re not sure, the answer is probably yes. I understand this dialogue gave Gwen a lot of her personality, and it’s a big part of what makes her so memorable. But I’d probably dial it back some.

There’s a much bigger issue here, however. And that’s our main character, Clyde. You’re almost always going to have a problem when most of the other characters are more interesting than your hero. I’d put Gwen, Amy, Ian (Gwen’s other boyfriend), and Taryn (Clyde’s sister) above Clyde on the interesting level.

It’s not impossible to make this work (Obi-Wan, Han, Chewbacca, Darth Vader, R2-D2, C-3PO and Princess Leia are all more interesting than Luke Skywalker) but it’s really hard. You usually run into this problem when you have a really passive hero, and that’s what I saw here. Clyde doesn’t make any decisions in the script. Everyone else makes them for him. It’s so hard for the reader to connect with someone like that.

There were also a few false moments. One of the things you have to make sure of when you write, is not to let your desire to make a scene work take precedence over it making sense. The scene where Calvin and Gwen meet was an example of this. The scene is designed to have Calvin apply for a fast-food job and Gwen to comment on it (“You don’t wanna work here”) which opens up their first conversation.

But here’s a girl Calvin sees while going into this place, who he clearly finds very attractive. You’re not going to apply for a job at a fast food joint right in front of a super hot girl you’re hoping amongst all hope you’ll get to talk to. It’s embarrassing and it’s love suicide. I’d suggest rewriting this scene. Calvin waits until Gwen leaves THEN asks for the job application. He fills it out, goes outside, Gwen’s sitting right there or by his car and ‘catches’ him. “Getting a job at Biggie’s huh?” Have Calvin lie and say it was for his friend or something, she calls him on it, and the conversation can evolve from there.

On the plus side, this script builds better than any I’ve read in awhile. One of the problems I see with a lot of screenplays is that they build up right away, then fall down early in the second act. They then stagnate for 60 pages, until exploding in the finale. California Dream had this nice steady “slow-build” pace to it, pulling me in more and more as it went on.

In the end, my suggestion to Caleb would be to make Calvin a more active and interesting character. I understand that he has to be lost in order to be pulled in by these girls. But there’s got to be a way you can do that AND make him compelling. And eventually, he has to be active. He can’t let Gwen call the shots the whole way through. He’s got to grow and become a man of his own. And really, that’s what this should be about – a guy who’s finally taking control of life instead of letting life control him.

Very very close. But I’d say this is a smidgen below ‘worth-the-read.’ Still, when Caleb has a tastier premise that’s more up my alley, I will gladly check it out. ☺

Script link: California Dream

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

What I learned: Passive or “Reactive” protagonists usually only work in comedies (40 Year Old Virgin or The Graduate) where they’re constantly getting in a lot of funny situations and making us laugh. Since in any other genre, we won’t be laughing, we’ll start to get frustrated with the lack of drive these characters display.

There’s this old Catch-22 in Hollywood. You can’t get an agent to read your script unless you’ve sold something. And you can’t sell something unless you have an agent pushing your script. You can probably up that number to Catch-24 or 25, since most production companies and studios won’t read your script unless it’s coming from an agency. There are two reasons for this. First, nobody wants some unrepped script coming in that could end up in a lawsuit. And second (and I think this is the more likely reason), they know the script is going to be terrible and don’t want to waste their time on it.

Yes this is the dirty little not-so-secret about sending your scripts out. 95% of the time, the scripts are terrible, which means if the agents go by the odds, your script will be be terrible, too. As someone who receives and reads lots of scripts myself, I can confirm this. And you guys have seen it, too. You know those 5 scripts you tear apart for Amateur Offerings every week? Those are the good selections. There are tons of submissions that don’t even get past the query stage because of spelling, grammar, lousy concept, lousy logline, or just an inability to form a coherent query (not everybody, mind you. Sometimes we just haven’t gotten to your submission yet).

So the question for today is, how do you get an agent when the odds are so fiercely stacked against you? Well, there are a few ways to go about it, but before we get to those ways, you must first…

BE READY
Nobody likes to hear this one, but your writing has to be ready for the big time if you’re going to get a respectable agent (you can shoot for a not-so-respectable agent, but that’s another story). Most writers press for agents too early. I see this ALLLLLL the time. And the writers say to me, “Why am I not getting an agent?” And I say, very respectfully, “I don’t think you’re ready yet.”

So how do you know when you’re ready? I don’t think you should send agents anything until you’ve written at least three scripts. And the safer bet is probably six. Still, I know people who are on their tenth script who aren’t ready. So this is not a guarantee of anything other than you’ve put in the work, are serious, and know all the basics (the three-act structure, that a script probably shouldn’t be over 110 pages, what a character arc is, etc.).

From there, it gets a little tougher. I’ve found that “readiness” can be gauged fairly accurately through screenplay competitions. Say you enter four screenplay contests. You should at least get to the second round of two of them (that’s typically the top 100-250 submissions). That’s the bare minimum of “readiness.” I would say getting to at least one semi-final in a good competition is necessary (that’s roughly top 20) before querying anybody. I’ve read every type of script there is. Second rounder, quarter-finals, semi-finals, finalists, winners. From dozens of competitions. So I have a pretty good feel for this. Even the finalists scripts usually have problems. So a second-rounder’s going to have a lot of problems. However, I understand that sometimes it comes down to the right reader “getting” a script, and you might not find that reader in four contests. BUT, if you’ve entered four contests and four separate vetting processes didn’t advance you beyond the first round, I wouldn’t query agents yet. I’d read more professional scripts and I’d buy more screenwriting books. Come back when you’ve gotten stronger.

Another way to know if you’re ready is through feedback. Submitting to Scriptshadow and being graded by your peers is a great way to do this. But not everyone gets that opportunity. Feedback from writing groups is helpful, although can be misleading if you’re still in the early stages when everyone wants to be nice and no one wants to hurt anyone’s feelings. Long-term feedback is the best bet. The longer you get feedback from someone, the more honest they’ll be, and the more reactions you have to compare between. It becomes easier to figure out which of your scripts is getting the best response, and therefore which one might be ready to send out.

Okay, now let’s talk about the three ways to get your script to an agent.

William Morris Endeavor

COLD QUERYING
Querying is pointless. Targeted Querying is where it’s at. This means finding all the movies of the past ten years or so that are like your script. Then find out the writers of those scripts along with their representation (both agent and manager). You can find this info from places like Google, Spec Scout, The Tracking Board, IMDB Pro, and the WGA. Does this take forever? Yes. But whoever said this was easy? You’re competing for prime agent real estate against hundreds of thousands of other writers. Of course it’s going to be hard.

You’ll then write your query e-mail to these people. And guys, please check your query with a friend before you send it out to a hundred agents. Like I said before, I can knock off 60% of queries right away due to a grammatically incorrect e-mails or terribly written loglines. If you don’t know what to write, try something along the lines of: “Hi, I just wanted to say I’m a huge fan of “Terminal Cyborg.” It was one of my favorite films from last year. I understand that you represent the writer. I was wondering if you might want to read my script, “The Robot Files,” which is in the same vein. It’s about a group of robots who fight for robot rights in 2073 Mississippi.” If you have a noteworthy contest finish, bring it up. “The script recently finished in the semifinals of the Nicholl and has placed in many other contests. If you’re interested, let me know and I can send it over.” Personally, I’ve found that even quarterfinal Nicholl finishes are only “okay.” I don’t know if others feel that way too, but I’d probably only bring up semi-final or higher finishes and only in well-known competitions.

Another little trick you can do is… well… stretch the truth. You know that friend who USED to work at JJ Abrams’ “Bad Robot” as an intern for three months? The one who read your script? Well, technically, if you said that your “script is into Bad Robot and they’re considering it,” you’re not technically lying. The truth about Hollywood is, people tend to only want things when other people want them. So if there’s a way, in your query, to imply that other people are after your script, do it. I admit that I’ve been duped by this a few times myself. And while the scripts weren’t any good, they at least got me to open them.

Hearing back from an agent will depend on a lot of things. How well your query was written, how good your concept is, how big the agent is. Big agents often don’t have time to take on new writers, or even give their scripts a read. But if your concept is amazing or your query stands out in some way (it’s funny or really well written), they might read your first five pages and get hooked. The more likely scenario is that some of the mid and lower level agents will respond. That is, anyone who isn’t WME, UTA, or CAA. If Paradigm, ICM or APA responds, you’re still in good company. And then there will be smaller agencies still. Once you get down to the really small guys, you have to ask yourself if it’s worth it. There’s often a good reason these guys are hanging onto the bottom rung.

Querying is all about the efforts you put in. If you half-ass it, you’re going to get half-ass results. You have to have a great concept to start with. Then you have to do all that research, finding the agents who like the material you write. Then you have to find their e-mails. Then you have to write a great query letter that passes your friend’s inspection test. Doing this takes time. But it’s the only way querying is going to work for you.

THE MANAGER
The Manager Route takes a little longer but it’s the route a lot of writers are going these days. If agents are about selling your material, managers are about managing your material. Whereas an agent might never give you a drop of feedback, most managers will read your scripts and give you notes, helping better you as a writer. Because managers are willing to work with you, they’ll usually take you on as a client when you’re a little greener. In other words, it’s easier to get a manager. Once you have a manager, it’s much easier to get an agent, since managers have a lot of relationships with agents (they’re often working as a team for their clients) and the agents trust their taste. You query managers the same way you query agents. And you should get a little better response.

NETWORKING
Writers hate this term because it’s so nebulous. There’s no A+B=C in networking. Rather you meet someone who may eventually meet someone else who a year down the line remembers your script which they give to someone else who likes it who gives it to their boss who happens to be an agent. Since it’s a lot harder to measure how all that’s going to work, writers would rather focus on the writing part. But of these three options, this is the one that will lead to the most success.  People who know you are more willing to pass your stuff on to others, or to read it themselves. Nobody wants to read something from someone they don’t know unless they’ve heard it’s amazing. The great thing is, it’s so damn easy to network in this day and age. Pick one of the many screenwriting boards on the internet, from this site to Simply Scripts to Amazon Studios to Trigger Street and be nice to people in the comments. Make friends. Trade scripts. Join a writing group. The bigger your network is, the more people you will have access to. You guys will get better together, until one of you breaks in. That person will then share his new contacts with you, and before you know it, you’ll have ins with agents who want to read your stuff. This is the slowest of the three options I’ve given, but it also results in the most success. You gotta network, guys.

IN SUMMARY
Like anything else in life, getting an agent depends on how much time you want to put into it, both on the writing side and on the looking side. You have to do a lot of research. You have to know who sells the kind of stuff you write. You have to come up with the perfect query letter. And all of this is dependent on you a) writing a concept that gets an agent excited, and b) executing that concept with a really good screenplay. Those last two things are the things that take the most time, but they’re really the only two things the agents pay attention to, so you gotta nail them first. The thing is, all the people who don’t want to do that? Who try to take short cuts? They’re the ones who get frustrated and give up. They’re the reason you’re going to make it and they aren’t. Because you’re willing to work harder and do more than they are. Getting an agent boils down to good old fashioned hard work. Either you’re willing to put in that work or you’re not.

Genre: Drama
Premise: A small-town insurance salesman finds himself embroiled in a series of violent mishaps after a chance meeting with a mysterious man.
About: One of the best films of all time is being turned into a TV show after a long winter hiatus. That’s right, Fargo, which won Joel and Ethan Coen a screenplay Oscar, has been reimagined as an hour-long drama which will premiere on FX next week. It should be noted, however, that while the brothers are executive producers on the show, it’s unclear how involved they’ll be. The pilot script (and many of the other episodes) will be written by Noah Hawley, who’s probably best known for writing on the show, Bones. However, he also created the short-lived 2009 series, The Unusuals, and has written four novels.  The show stars everyone’s favorite hobbit, Martin Freeman, and Billy Bob Thorton.
Writer: Noah Hawley
Details: 66 pages (April 3, 2013 Draft)

On the surface, this looks like both a good idea and a bad idea. A bad idea, because how do you turn a very specific movie like Fargo into a TV series? To fans of the iconic film, it looks like a cheap ploy to get us to pay attention. It’s a good idea because the TV world is desperately looking to fill the Breaking Bad void, and the Fargo universe is about as close, tone-wise, as you’re going to get to the Meth TV Empire without it looking like a direct rip-off.

Plus, you’ve got Billy Bob Thorton in it. And while Thorton’s been missing in action for awhile now, there was a time (when this movie came out in fact) where he was hot shit, winning Oscars and marrying Angelina Jolie ‘n stuff. Hey, anybody who can bag the Angster’s gotta have something going on, right? So what do Billy Bob and the rest of the Fargo production team have in store for us? Can they pull off a miracle and match the cagey wicked hilariousness of the film? Or was this just a big, fat Fargoian mistake? I shall Far-go that answer for the time being.

40 year-old Lester Nygaard is a big fat wimp. He’s got the body of a pimple-faced teenager. He’s got an insurance job that he sucks at. He’s married to a wife who doesn’t respect him. And he lives in a cold, small, miserable town. Whatever the American dream is, Lester is living the opposite of it.

That’s put on display when the town bully, Sam Hess (who has been beating Lester up since high school), starts badgering him during a trip into town. Sam dresses Lester down with a series of insults, and to add more insults to injury, he does it right in front of his own kids. Lester gets so scared during the harassment, that at one point he turns around to run away and runs smack dab into a store window.

It’s at the hospital where he meets the unstable and unpredictable psychopath Lorne Malvo, one of those crazy ass people you NEVER look in the eyes. Lorne asks Lester what happened, and Lester eventually gives him the replay. Lorne is baffled that Lester would allow a man to humiliate him like that, and off-handedly says that if he were ever around that man, he would kill him for Lester. Lester’s a little freaked out but he doesn’t say not to do it. And that’s all Lorne needs.

A few pages later, Sam Hess ends up dead. But the crazy thing about Fargo the TV show is that things don’t end there (major spoilers ahead). When Lester goes home, his wife tears into how worthless he is, and Lester just loses it. To the tune of bludgeoning his wife with a hammer. Ouch! But that isn’t even the end of it. I don’t want to spoil too much but we’ll just say, there’s more blood to come, courtesy of Lorne. And when all that blood settles, it looks like Lester and Lorne are going to have to work together to make sure they don’t get nabbed as the murderers.

Initial impressions?

This is a good, but not great, pilot. My biggest concern after finishing it was, did they blow their load too early? I mean, the killing of Sam Hess was enough to start the ball rolling. They could’ve easily had Lester kill his wife in a subsequent episode. But they killed her here, too. And then someone else. The body count of Fargo started to look like Rambo.

I actually just read an interview with Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad, and he said one of the biggest things he learned while doing Breaking Bad was to hold back. He originally wanted to pack all this shit into the first season but he realized if he had done that, he wouldn’t have had a show for very long. He said it was okay to draw things out. And that’s the opposite of what they’re doing in Fargo. I mean, a nuclear bomb just dropped in this pilot.

Another interesting thought that came out of this was, can you root for a character that does horrible things? Walter White (in Breaking Bad) becomes a bad person and we still root for him. But that’s because we got to know the guy as a good person for three seasons. Here, Lester bludgeons his wife with a hammer. It was so shocking I actually jolted backwards, and I don’t experience that often when I’m reading. So in that sense it was good. But now you’re asking for us to root for a guy who bludgeons his wife IN THE FIRST EPISODE.

Again it goes back to, did you really need to do that? Lester was already indirectly responsible for Sam’s murder, so you gave us something he needed to cover up (which provided more plots for future episodes). And we still would’ve liked him. I’m just surprised they went with the wife-killing angle. I guess they wanted that “talk-about moment” to get people discussing the show?

I’m also wondering where the show’s longevity is going to come from, seeing, as of now, that the only goal our main character will have is covering up this mess. In Breaking Bad, Walter White spends a lot of time doing that as well. The difference is, Walter White is active. He’s not just running away from things. He’s building a meth empire. He’s making money to help his family. The “dodging the cops” stuff was always secondary. I don’t know if you can have a show where a character is solely reacting to the past.

The standout character from Fargo is definitely Lorne. He’s that Gaear Grimsrud (the awesome Peter Stormare) from the film who would rather stare you into terrified oblivion than answer whatever stupid question you’re throwing at him. And when he does say something, it’s weird or unsettling.

I noticed that the Coen brothers have gone to well with this character, as we see another version of Gaear in No Country For Old Men (Anton Chigurh). These villains are so chilling in their interactions with people that maybe more writers should be stealing them for their own scripts. Start with characters who bore into your good guys’ souls and ramble on about unsettling shit then add your own flourishes. They’ve done it again here with Lorne and it works.

One of the things that made the Fargo film so memorable was the dialogue, and while the teleplay doesn’t quite reach those levels, it holds its ground. We get exchanges like Lester giving his insurance pitch: “What happens if you have an accident at your job?” “I work at the library.” And that glorious silly Midwestern banter: “Geez. Ya think this was, like, an organized crime thing? A hit or the like?” “Don’t know what I think yet. Except that I was warm in bed a half hour ago.” I was mostly entertained by whatever anybody was saying.

Truth be told, I was really into the whole script until the mountains of bloodshed started raining down from the sky. Fargo the movie had this laid back feel to it that doesn’t gel with so much happening in such a short amount of time. But the characters are interesting enough where I’ll definitely watch a few episodes. I’m curious to see how the show is going to evolve.

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

What I learned: It’s tempting to throw everything you can think of into your pilot. We’re all scared that readers (and viewers) won’t stay interested long enough to get to the end. But it’s okay to be patient. Scenes with subtle tension between characters can trump huge bloody shootouts if they’re written well. So don’t blow your load in your pilot. Learn to take your time.