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Genre: Horror
Premise (from writer): When a young geneticist attempts to save the world’s forests from a rabid insect infestation she unwittingly unleashes a plague of apocalyptic proportions.
Why You Should Read (from writer): A new, original monster for the horror/nature gone wild sub-genre based on real science and current environmental concerns – and it’s a pretty swift read at 103 pgs. Plus, the first and last lines of dialogue are ‘fuck’ and ‘beautiful’ ;)
Writer: Drew Bryan
Details: 102 pages

Ellen Page for Gemma?

I’m open to these kinds of scripts because they make movies. It’s not high art. It’s not Citizen Kane. But you have to see a script for what it’s trying to be, and judge it on if it succeeds. If you’re trying to be a dumb fun horror film, then you gotta try and make the “A” version of that. I downloaded a cheap fun B-movie called “Splinter” from Itunes the other day and loved it. It was stupid. It was ridiculous. And it was the exact kind of movie you want to watch on a Saturday night.

I need to find the people who like to make these movies though cause when I find a good B-horror script, I don’t know who to send them to. Lots of producers are afraid to touch these because they don’t want to be known as the “B-horror” guys, even though there’s a lot of money in B-horror. So if you’re one of these producers, e-mail me. Cause I wouldn’t mind being part of the next Tremors franchise.

Is Gripper one of the winners?

Well, it sure has a hell of an opening. We’re in the middle of a forest fire with two firefighters, 25 year old Gemma and 25 year old Bobby. This fire is bad news. So bad that it four-walls them. No way out and not wanting to burn to death, Bobby allows Gemma to kill him. So she takes a fire axe and SPLITS HIS HEAD OPEN! Good thing he axed nicely.

Before Gemma can join Bobby, a small hole opens up and she’s able to escape the fire. Gemma is so scarred by the ordeal that she does some investigating and finds out that forest fires are created by a certain beetle that eats away at the trees and makes it really easy for forest fires to spread. So if she can find a way to kill that beetle, she can stop the forest fires, and she won’t have to split anybody’s head open anymore.

So Gemma, who’s now a scientist of some sort, finds this fast growing-fungus that kills these beetles. But when she tests it, the fungus is out of control. It’s a bust. But it’s enough for Gemma’s former lover and boss, the darkly handsome Darius, to take the product out in the filed and test it.

So he hires a bunch of clueless assistant-types and takes them to a recently burned-down forest to see if he can get this fungus operating. Meanwhile, Gemma heads out to another part of the same forest to perform some other fungus related experiments with her new boyfriend, surfer-dude, Tor.

After a night of crazy sex though, she wakes up to find Tor not in the tent, but up on a tree, frozen in a strange comatose like state. It’s creepy. And it’s also the exact same thing the beetles in her experiment did when they were infected with the fungus. Uh-oh. This could be bad.

So Gemma heads over to Darius’s little operation, since she knows they have better equipment than her, and asks for help. They hike there, cut Tor down, but he’s acting nutso, twitching and cracking in weird ways, and desperately trying to get back up on that tree. This begins the infestation, where one by one, our team will get infected, with no help in site. Will they figure out a way to stop the mad fungus before it turns them all into fungus-creatures? Click on the link at the end of the review to read the script and find out!

Gripper started off great. I was NOT expecting that first scene. But then things start to get a little messy. We get one giant 10 minute scene (split into two halves) documenting this beetle experiment, and that was the first time my impatience set in. You never want to give a scene any more time than it needs. As soon as the reader feels like we’re hanging around too long, we get uncomfortable. And this goes double for anything within the first fifteen. Readers expect you to have them laser-focused during that time, or else how can they expect you to keep their interest 60 pages from now?

In addition, it was unclear to me why our main character, Gemma, who was a firefighter in that first scene, was now a scientist. Those are two completely different jobs that require two completely different skillsets. In retrospect, maybe they were in that fire AS SCIENTISTS and not firefighters, but if that’s the case, that needs to be made clear.

From there, we set out to this dead forest, and I was confused again. I thought Darius and Gemma were going out there together. I swear there was something in the dialogue that implied that. So later, when Gemma comes to Darius’s camp for help and he asks her what she’s doing out here, I was confused as hell. I eventually realized that they had both come to the same forest, but separately, for different reasons. That seemed overly-complicated. Why wasn’t the story written to get them there all together?  Having two teams just confuses things. It makes it harder for you to write. And it makes it harder for us readers to follow. So it’s a lose-lose.

From there, I don’t think the story got going soon enough. I believe I was on page 50, halfway through the script, before they tried to get Tor out of that tree. That’s 50 pages without very much happening. Remember that you need STORY DENSITY in your script. You need to fill the pages up. Not drag things out. I felt like things were being dragged out.

The characters were okay. But nobody felt “real” enough for me to really care. Gemma herself was a strange character. It appears she has three different boyfriends in this (Bobby, Darius, and Tor), which is fine. I’m all for banging as many people as you want, but in a script, it just looks unfocused. We don’t know what to make of it.

And then when Tor starts turning into one of these spore-like hybrid monster thingeys, Gemma is strangely unaffected. She’s more concerned about capturing and quarantining Tor than she is losing someone she cares deeply about.

When you’re writing one of these movies, which is basically a zombie movie (or an “infected” movie), this is one of the best conceits you have. Is having someone love someone else, and then that person gets infected, and our hero has to figure out whether to kill them or not. Watch that opening episode of Walking Dead, where that father has to decide whether to shoot his zombie wife. How hard it is for him. That emotion is pouring off the screen. We don’t get any of that here. Nobody really seems to care about one another so it doesn’t really matter if someone gets hurt. That needs to be fixed.

This is all very hard for me to say because I think there’s something here. I think the monsters Drew’s created are borderline genius. I’ve never seen anything like them before. Where I see writers fail in this genre, is when they make monsters that they just think are cool. They haven’t really thought about them, their origins, their evolution, the reasons for why they look the way they do.

Gripper put a lot of thought into its monsters. I love the way they crick and crack and twist. The way they have to climb up high on the tree, just like the beetles did, the way the long spine grows out of their mouths and the spores explode up out of them, populating more areas in order to spread the disease. It’s freaky as hell and is going to make for one hell of a visual.

But none of that matters unless this other stuff is shored up. Cut down all the techno-babble in that early ten-page scene. Get them out to the site sooner. Make it one group, with Darius and Gemma together, instead of two separate groups. Cut down your character count. There are way too many people here and it was hard to keep track of them. And then just work on your character building. Make sure people actually care about each other so that when they start dying, there are emotions involved.

Oh, and one more suggestion. Usually in these movies, there’s one big final ‘super version’ of the creature. This is a really cool creature you’ve created. I wouldn’t mind seeing a version of it that’s balls-to-the-wall insane.

There’s something here, Drew. It’s just not there yet. Good luck on the rewrite though. You seem like a fungi. ☺

Script link: Gripper (note: This is an updated version of the script from the one in Amateur Offerings with changes made based on commenter feedback)

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

What I learned: Before you kill off a character, make sure there’s someone who cares about that character. That’s the only way you’re going to get emotion out of us. My favorite example of this is in Aliens with Vasquez and Drake, who were best friends. When Drake got killed, Vasquez went nuts, so we actually cared. Had they not known each other, our reaction to Drake’s death would’ve been less intense. That was my problem with Gemma and Tor. I didn’t think Gemma gave two shits about him. So who cares if he turns into a monster. And they don’t even have to be boyfriend-girlfriend for this to work. They could’ve been best friends since they were kids. But they need to care for each other.

This man could SERIOUSLY benefit from a writing group. (“Ehhh, you could probably lose the werewolf made out of grass, Mr. Night.”)

One of the more frustrating things about reading amateur scripts is seeing the same mistakes being made over and over again. These are simple mistakes that, had the writer had any sort of feedback community, they’d have nipped in the bud a long time ago. This is why writers can go 5-6 years without significant improvement. They have no idea what they’re doing wrong because they have no community to tell them that they’re doing anything wrong.

I also get a good e-mail a week from writers looking for writing partners. They ask me where the best place online to find a writing partner is, and their hearts sink when I tell them there isn’t one. At one point, I was going to create a Scriptshadow Social Network that highlighted and paired writers looking for partners, but it would’ve taken a year and too much money so I gave up on it.

Today, I’m going to solve both of these problems. You, my slug line slinging friends, are going to use the comments section to set up writers groups and find writing partners. The process for how you do this is up to you, but let me offer a few suggestions.

1) Tell us the genres you like to write in.
2) Tell us how many scripts you’ve written.
3) Tell us what level you’re at.

The third one is a little subjective, but it’s important, since no one likes to exchange work with people significantly below their level. So I’d suggest using my Screenwriting Rating System as a general scale. Keep in mind – and this is just in my experience – that women will tend to be honest with this scale, while men will rate themselves one or two levels higher than they are. C’mon guys, you know you do it.

Once you find someone you think could make a great partner or group member, contact them and trade a script with them. Lots of writers talk a big game, but there’s no way to know if their stuff is any good unless you read it. If you’re looking for a partner, you should really like the writing, since you’ll be working closely with the person. You can be a little more lenient if you’re looking for a group member, though. You don’t have to love someone’s work. You’re just looking for another set of eyes to give you feedback. As long as the person seems like they have a good grasp on the craft, they’ll probably be a good fit for your group.

Another reason I wanted to set this up was that it was a good opportunity to talk about feedback. Feedback is one of the most critical components to becoming a good writer. Not everyone has money for a professional consultation or is friends with a professional writer who’ll spend 8 hours breaking down your script and helping you. Agents and producers usually reject scripts with a form letter, so they’re not helpful when it comes to feedback. And while some contests offer notes, you don’t really know who’s giving those notes. It could be some 21 year old who doesn’t know the difference between irony and Iron Man.

Other writers reading your work, then, is your only real chance at getting critical feedback. However, feedback is not as simple as it sounds. It’s actually kind of complicated. There’s a little hidden language that goes on, and it changes from person to person. It’s important that you know how to speak this language, or you’ll have no idea if your script is actually good or not. So here are a few tips to keep in mind.

NOBODY’S MEAN
People are inherently nice (well, except for Grendl). They understand how much work you put into your script and how much you care, so if they don’t love it, they’re not going to anoint themselves your dream-crusher. They’ll look for any positives they can and focus on those. It’s actually hard to find someone who will be brutally honest and tell you your script sucks, so every bit of praise you hear during feedback should be taken with a grain of salt. How do you get honesty out of readers then? I’ll get into that in a bit.

FOCUS ON THE MEAN
For this reason, when you’re getting feedback, move past the compliments and focus on the negatives, even if the negatives weren’t that negative. Because the reality is, if someone says they thought your script was okay, it means they didn’t like it. If they say they didn’t like it, it means they thought it was awful. Nice people hide truths in between compliments. So it’s your job to read between the lines, find out what they didn’t like, and address those issues the best you can.

FAMILY AND FRIENDS
Family and friends are necessary to making us writers feel good. Writing is such a lonely journey, that there aren’t many opportunities to get praised. Giving your script to a family member or friend, someone you know is going to be supportive, is important for your self-confidence. But do not base any major script decisions on the feedback you got from family or friends. They are the least reliable in terms of if your script is any good.

EVERYBODY’S GOT AN ANGLE
One thing I’ve found over years of feedback is that everybody who gives feedback has an angle. And it’s your job to identify that angle and factor it into the feedback. For example, if a professor is giving you feedback, his angle is that he’s there to encourage you. So his notes are going to skew towards the positive. I’ve seen plenty of instances in “opposite sex script trading” (which sounds worse than it is) where one of the people secretly likes the other. Naturally, their feedback is going to be really positive in the hopes that you’ll like them. Even past history can influence script feedback. If you give a script to someone and they rip it apart, which sends you into a spiral of despair and lots of drinking, well, what do you think is going to happen when you give that person your next script? They’re not going to want to ruin your life again, so they’ll be a lot nicer. It’s your job to sniff out what the angle is of the person giving you feedback, and factor that in.

FIND THE MEANIES
We’re writers. Which means we’re insecure. We want praise so badly that we’ll do anything to get it, including deluding ourselves. We’ll seek out that guy or girl who has a crush on us to read our script, because we know they’re going to tell us everything we write is great. But if you really want to improve with your writing, you want to seek out those people who are mean (or, at the very least, brutally honest). The people who you know are going to tell you when something sucks. As long as they’re willing to tell you WHY they thought it sucked, so you can learn from their feedback, these people are invaluable. Because the truth-sayers are the only ones who are going to improve your script. When I give notes, the writers I like the best are the ones who say, “Be brutal.” Because they know that sugar-coating problems isn’t going to solve anything. Don’t look for Paula Addul. Find your Simon Cowell.

ASK ASK ASK
The best way to get true feedback is, after someone’s given you their thoughts on your script, ask specific questions. I’ve found that while people are really nice in their prepared post-read statement to you, that filter comes off once you start asking questions. For example, they may have casually mentioned that the characters didn’t pop off the page, making it seem like it was a minor problem. But when you ask them specifically about your hero, Jack, they get snarky. “I don’t know. He just seemed like an asshole.” Listen not only to what they’re saying, but HOW they’re saying it. Do they seem annoyed? Pissed? These are important emotions to track because they’re not the emotions you were hoping for. The more you can sniff out these problem areas through questioning, the better off your script is going to be.

HONEST FEEDBACK
The best way to get HONEST feedback from fellow writers is through a long-term relationship with them. The more scripts you trade with someone, the more you begin to trust each other, the more honest the feedback becomes. Just like any relationship, comfortability sets in, and you’re less worried about hurting each other, since you know that you’re both after the same thing, writing a better script. Let’s start that right now. Use the comments to find that group of people (or partner) who are going to help guide your writing through your amateur, as well as your professional, career. Good luck!

Genre: Sports
Premise: A football GM finds his personal and professional life falling apart on the biggest day of the year, draft day.
About: This script finished numero uno on the 2012 Black List. Paramount bought the script last year, but didn’t want to hold onto it for some reason, so it went into turnaround. Summit/Lionsgate, looking to expand their audience outside of the 15 year old girl demographic, decided to take a chance on it. Ivan Reitman, who just yesterday dropped out of the Ghostbuster reboot, directed the film, with Kevin Costner playing the lead. Co-writer Rajiv Joseph is a playwright and was a 2010 Pulitzer finalist for his play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo. He was working on the Showtime show, Nurse Jackie, when he wrote this. Co-writer Scott Rothman sold his first script (appropriately titled “First Timers,”) to New Line, and sold a script called Frat Boy to Warner Bros. The writers were classmates at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Writers: Rajiv Joseph & Scott Rothman
Details: 107 pages

Before I get to the script itself, which I loved, I have to say the trailer worries me a little.  What was cool about this script was the grit, the darkness, the way that Draft Day for a football organization was no different than when the team was down there in the trenches fighting for every yard.

Instead, the movie looks way more colorful and happy than the script. The message with that kind of directing is: “Everything is going to be all right.” Screenwriting is about creating doubt, about making the audience feel like they’re not going to get what they want. And the writers did that. Not so much with this brightly colorfully directed film.  I hope I’m wrong though!  Because Reitman’s got a great script to work with.

Everyone that I know who’s read Draft Day has praised it. And it supports this new theory of mine, which is that if you write a sports movie, focus on people other than the players on the field (unless it’s a true story). Because no matter what you do with the “big game” in these sports scripts, it’s going to come off as “been there, done that,” since every “2 outs in the bottom of the ninth” scenario has already been used up.

Instead, write about guys like the General Manager of a football team, guys we don’t typically know anything about (or the Coach, in Hoosiers, or the Agent, in Jerry Maguire). Find out what the biggest day is for that person, and write a movie about it. That’s what Rajiv and Scott did here.

40-something Sonny Weaver Jr. is the general manager of the biggest laughingstock in the NFL, the Buffalo Bills. Okay, maybe “laughingstock,” is an exaggeration. But the Bills aren’t very good, and haven’t been for awhile. The one thing they had going for them was a beloved coach, Weaver’s father, who Weaver fired a couple of years back. Yes, our hero fired his own father. And as we come into the story today, we find out that Sonny’s father has just died. It’s a sad day for Buffalo.

But as Weaver Sr. would probably agree, there’s no time to dwell on the past. Not today. Today is draft day, the day that makes or breaks a professional football GM. If you don’t pick the guy your entire city is counting on you to pick, you can be ostracized. You can endure months, even years of ridicule in the press. Draft day is a pressure cooker of the highest order.

Which is where we find Sonny. He’s picking 7th today, and pretty much everyone in the city and in the organization wants him to pick Ray Banks, a franchise-changing running back. But Sonny is looking really hard at a Ray Lewis-like linebacker named Vontae Mack (for those who don’t follow the NFL, Ray Lewis is one of the most charismatic passionate well-liked players in the game). Vontae doesn’t have the accolades that Banks has, so it probably won’t be the most popular pick, but he thinks it’s the right one.

Well, until he starts assessing his day, his job, his life. When you’re a GM, draft day is the day when you separate yourself. If you can pull off a miracle trade, a miracle move, you can be beloved by your city forever. And Sonny can’t stop thinking about can’t-miss-superstar Quarterback Bo Callahan. Problem is, Callahan is going #1. And Sonny is picking #7. But that doesn’t mean Sonny can’t trade up for him.

So that’s when he calls up the team picking #1 and does something unheard of. He trades his team’s first round picks for the NEXT FOUR YEARS to get the pick. That’s kind of like trading your next four children for a brand new 4k TV. True you get an awesome TV, but boy is that going to sting in the long run.

As pissed off as his organization is, AT LEAST they know they’re getting Bo Callahan now, a hall-of-famer in the making. Or are they? With just a couple of hours before the pick, Sonny announces that he wants everyone to find out as much as they can about Bo Callahan. “But wait,” they ask. “This is a no brainer. We’re picking Bo Callahan, right?” “Not necessarily,” Sonny explains. If they’re going to pay the 30 million bucks that a first round pick is guaranteed, they have to make sure they pick the right guy.

When people talk about the best spec scripts they’ve read, they almost always say the same thing about them: they MOVE. A script that moves, that never slows down, is so advantageous in a craft packed with limitations. Readers are finicky people. They’ve read a million scripts and therefore need a high level of stimuli to stay focused. Industry folks are finicky people. They have so many things on their plate, that unless you can keep their interest with every single page, they check out.

Draft Day is PACKED with GSU. But ESPECIALLY the U. We have the clear goal – find out if Bo is worthy of the number 1 pick. We have stakes. If you screw up, your organization and the entire city will hate you (and you’ll likely be fired). And we have urgency. Sonny’s only got a couple of hours to make his decision.

That was the first genius move by the writers. See, if Sonny already had the number 1 pick going into the day, there’s no drama. They would’ve had 5 months to research Bo. By creating a trade at the beginning of the day, it gave them only a tiny amount of time to figure out who Bo was.

I also loved the mystery aspect of Draft Day – that Bo, the can’t miss QB, has a secret – that he has a weakness nobody else has picked up on yet. The writers did a really great job setting up the stakes of that mystery. They mention Ryan Leaf, another can’t-miss-quarterback picked the same year as Peyton Manning. At the time, many were trying to figure out which one would be better. Leaf’s career crashed and burned immediately and he’s now considered the biggest bust in American sports history. Sonny doesn’t want to pick the next Ryan Leaf. So he HAS to find out what other players are alluding to when they infer that Bo’s got a secret weakness. “Look at the tape” they say.

And the urgency here! What I loved about it was that we’re used to seeing this kind of cut-throat urgency in an action-thriller (you have three hours to come up with the money or we kill your daughter). The problem with that is, we’ve seen so many of those situations, that even though they’re TECHNICALLY intense, we’re bored by them. So the urgency doesn’t work as effectively as it used to. We’ve never seen this kind of urgency applied to a SPORTS MOVIE though. So it feels wholly unique. I love when writers do this – infuse techniques from one genre into another.

The urgency also dominated the story in such a way that the script practically wrote itself. You have the coach who wants to talk to Sonny RIGHT NOW, the owner who needs to talk to Sonny RIGHT NOW, the receiver who needs to talk to Sonny RIGHT NOW, all of Sonny’s potential draft picks – their AGENTS need to talk to Sonny RIGHT NOW. All the other GMs who want to make deals need to talk to Sonny RIGHT NOW. Even Sonny’s girlfriend, who works as his assistant, needs to talk to him RIGHT NOW. Because Sonny always had someone to talk to RIGHT NOW, and because each one of these conversations were imperative, there was never a dull moment.

If there’s one thing I didn’t like, it may have been some of the personal backstory. I thought the stuff with Sonny having to fire his dad was a bit over-the-top and, ultimately, unnecessary. But even though I didn’t agree with it, the writers committed themselves to it and made it work. This was a really good script!

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

What I learned: One thing I LOVED here was that the writers looked for every single opportunity to make this job as DIFFICULT as possible for their hero. For example, when Sonny gets the number 1 pick, fans start tailgating in the parking lot, chanting their excitement about getting Bo Callahan, putting extreme pressure on Sonny to pick Bo. Or word comes in that their current quarterback, Brian Drew, had the best offseason of his career and looks like a superstar. This makes Sonny wonder, “Do I even NEED to pick Bo?” Later, people in the organization tell him, if you don’t pick Bo, we’re quitting.  Pressure pressure pressure!  Things should rarely be easy for your hero because when they’re easy, there’s no drama.

Genre: TV Pilot – Period/Drama
Premise: (from AMC) Set in the summer of 1778, “Turn” tells the story of New York farmer, Abe Woodhull, who bands together with a group of childhood friends to form The Culper Ring, an unlikely group of spies who turn the tide in America’s fight for independence.
About: “Turn” is a new show that premieres on AMC this April. For those hardcore fans of Billy Elliot (“Go Billll-ly!”) who are waiting for that Kickstarter campaign to fund a sequel, here’s a consolation prize. Billy Elliot himself, Jaime Bell, is starring in “Turn” as the main character, Abe. Writer Craig Silverstein has written on shows like Bones and Terra Nova.
Writer: Craig Silverstein (based on “Washington’s Spies” by Alexander Rose)
Details: 60 pages – 11/01/12 draft

One of the things I’m still trying to figure out is if it’s harder to sell a feature script or harder to get a TV pilot on the air. The more I look into it, the more I’m finding that it’s really hard to get a show on the air. When you’re outside of it, and you see new shows on TV all the time, you just assume everyone who wants a show gets one.

But I suppose that’s the same way I saw movies before I moved to LA. There were so many of them, I erroneously assumed that all you had to do was write something reasonably competent and you could start planning your red carpet poses. Once you entrench yourself in the industry, however, you realize how few of those coveted golden tickets are being handed out.

Personally, I think the TV industry is about to enter a tough phase. Everything’s looking rosy now, but what everyone’s finding out is that just because you come up with a hip unique idea, it doesn’t mean people are going to watch it. The competition is so fierce and spread out amongst so many platforms and channels, that more and more shows are arriving with a thud. AMC found that out when they premiered Low Winter Sun.

I mean what if I told you that JJ Abrams was producing a supernatural show and Gravity director Alfonso Cuaron was going to direct the pilot episode. You’d say, “Home run,” right? Well, I don’t know if you saw the pilot or not, but Believe is a lot closer to a strike-out than a home-run. And that gets you thinking – if THOSE GUYS can’t create a sure thing, then who can??

Well AMC takes a lot of pride in their development style and their shows, so let’s see if they’ve gotten back on track with a formula.

It’s Connecticut, 1778. Now my history is a little rusty. But I thought that was 2 years after American gained independence. That doesn’t appear to be the case though, as Connecticut, as well as many other states on the East Coast in “Turn,” appear to be under English rule. Maybe we only signed our Declaration of Independence in 1776, but it took us a few more years to actually get everyone else to realize it?

Jesus, I couldn’t even tell you what year Scriptshadow started. Why am I trying to give you a history lesson about America?

Anyway, a young farmer named Abraham Woodhull is struggling to get his cabbage crop ready to sell (everyone knows, if you need quick drama, add cabbage), but it turns out half of it is rotten. Woodhull’s forced to sell the remaining cabbage on the black market, where he can get a higher price, but while he’s away, a key British general is killed, and he’s blamed!

Luckily, Abe’s father is in tight with the British (he even lets them stay at his house!) and convinces them to let his son go. Since Abe’s father’s maid knows how to cook a mean pulled pork sandwich, the British figure they’ll overlook Abe’s errant ways and blame some other innocent soul.

This would end up being costly, however. Soon after, Abe’s approached by the rebellion (sorry, I only know how to use Star Wars terms sometimes) and asked to start SPYING on the British so the Yanks can get a leg up on when and where they’re being targeted.

To complicate matters, Abe must include his secret childhood love interest in the ruse, even though both he, and her, are married to other people! Scandalous! With his lover’s house being at the top of a hill, it’s viewable by all, and therefore the perfect hill to send messages from.

His lover starts using special laundry drying combinations to alert the Americans when and where the British are going to attack next. Can you believe that! We’re alive today because of somebody’s laundry! Which reminds me that I have to do my laundry. Hmm, I wonder if my laundry will save someone someday.

How will Abe justify a life where he’s lying to the person he loves most in the world (his father) and loving a woman who he can never have in his life (his childhood sweetheart), all while trying to run a business and not allow anyone – his wife, his friends, the Redcoats – to find out that he’s helping America win their independence? You’ll have to watch Turn to find out.

Despite being off my rocker, I knew I was going to like Turn within a couple of pages. It had a really good opening scene specifically because it said “f*ck you” to the period piece.

What I mean by that is, when a reader opens a period piece, they’re expecting boring men in costumes to talk about politics and the latest price of silk. Your job is to let them know that you’re not going to be that writer. You want to tell a story. Doesn’t matter if it’s 1778 or 2278. You’re going to give them a compelling dramatic scene that could work in any script.

So here, we’re coming in just after the British have massacred a group of American soldiers. The liefeless soldiers are on the ground, and a British soldier is going to each one and PLUNGING his bayonet into them to make sure they’re dead. But we learn something early on that the British soldier doesn’t know (dramatic irony!). The final American soldier is still alive!

The British soldier gets closer and closer. When he gets to our soldier, he JAMS his bayonet down, only for the American to spin out of the way and stick his own knife in the British soldier’s groin, then killing him soon after.

But there’s another problem. The rest of the British soldiers are up on a nearby hill, waiting for this soldier to finish the job. So our American must discreetly switch uniforms with the Brit. When he stands, he’s immediately spotted by the other soldiers, but since he’s facing the other way, they assume he’s still their soldier.

They ask him what’s taking so long, and in order to sell the ruse, he has to go back through all of his soldiers, soldiers he was fighting with 15 minutes prior, and stab them one by one with his bayonet.

It’s a wonderful scene, and it draws its power not from anything distinctly “period,” but from a clever use of suspense and dramatic irony. A lesser writer might not have shown that our soldier was still alive as the bayonet got closer. They might have waited until the British soldier tried to stab him before revealing the American was alive (there goes the suspense!). They also might have had the American run for it right afterwards. But Silverstein knew he had a great scene in the making and so he milked it, creating a SECOND leg to the scene where our American had to pretend to be a British soldier. It was really good stuff.

“Turn” is also a show that utilizes one of the most powerful storytelling techniques in our writing arsenal – the secret. Give your character a secret and make the stakes of revealing that secret HIGH (such as death), and you can captivate an audience for hours.

This is why spy films and TV shows (Alias, for example) do so well. The main character is usually hiding something from everyone else, which means there’s subtext built into every scene they’re in. When Abe is forced to lie to his father in front of the British, we feel his struggle. We could never feel that if we didn’t know he was lying, or if there was no lie to be told in the first place.

Go ahead and try it. Give one of your characters in your current script a big lie, then put him in a scene with people who would be negatively affected by that lie, if it came out. I bet you you’ll have a pretty good scene.

There were simple other things that worked too. People didn’t say to each other on-the-nose lines like, “Oh, the crops are rotten again.” We SHOWED Abe bend down and check his cabbage, only to find maggots on it. By disgustedly hurling the cabbage into the field, that’s all we needed to know the cabbage was rotten. Much more effective than a dialogue line (always SHOW, don’t TELL).

Silverstein also avoided a common period piece pitfall, one that many amateurs make – slow plodding scenes they believe are excused by the fact that it’s “period.” Despite it being 1778, most scenes here were taut, driven by some urgent need from one character or another.

For example, when Abe goes to his old girlfriend’s place (Anna) to set up their first signal, Abe isn’t allowed to just sit down, have a lemonade, and talk about whatever comes to mind, no worries in the world. He had to be quick. He couldn’t be seen with Anna, less others get suspicious. So the two are trying to talk about a million different things at once, but Abe must leave, terrified that the British could be back at any second. There was never a “safe” feeling in this script. Everyone was always looking over their shoulder, worried about something. And those are the things that elevate a script, that give it that next-level dramatic punch.

The only bad thing I have to say about “Turn” is that I could care less about the Revolutionary War! Go Paul Revere. Go Johnny Appleseed and Paul Bunyan. I love all you guys. But when I have free time, I’m not checking out how many soldiers got knee wounds in the Battle of Terre Haute. It just isn’t my thing. And as I’ve stated before, a script can only wow you so much if the subject matter isn’t your cup of tea.

So I’m afraid some of my rating has to be dumped along with that tea into the Boston Harbor. And just a day after St. Patty’s Day. Still, this was a really well-written pilot. Definitely worth checking out if you can find it. Or just wait until April.

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

What I learned: Sometimes the threat of danger is more compelling than danger itself. Anna was living alone until a slimy nasty British General was positioned at her home. You knew this guy was bad news, that it was only a matter of time before he did something awful to Anna. But the thing was, it never happened. It didn’t have to. Just the THREAT of it happening was enough to put us on edge. Writers are so obsessed with having something terrible happen, that they forget the IMPLICATION that something terrible is going to happen can have so much more power.

What I learned 2: When in doubt, add cabbage.

Genre: Mystery/Drama/Comedy
Premise: (from IMDB) Years after walking away from her past as a teenage private eye, Veronica Mars gets pulled back to her hometown – just in time for her high school reunion – in order to help her old flame Logan Echolls, who’s embroiled in a murder mystery.
About: If you hadn’t heard by now, Veronica Mars was a TV show that aired on UPN which ran for three seasons. It was cancelled seven years ago because of low ratings. The silver lining was that star Kristin Bell carved out a nice little career for herself (appearing in movies like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Couples Retreat, and most recently, Frozen). But the fans of the show, impassioned as they were, never gave up on seeing Kristin and their favorite show again. They hemmed and they hawed every year. But it wasn’t until creator Rob Thomas took a unique approach at raising the money for the film by going to Kickstarter (their original goal was 2 million dollars, but they got nearly 6), that that dream became a reality. Just this weekend, the film debuted simultaneously in theaters and digitally. Creator Rob Thomas’s career has been an embattled one. He seems to get things on the air only for them to be cancelled within 1-3 years. He’s written a bunch of pilots that have gotten to within a splinter’s width of going to series, only to be axed at the last second. Rob has gone on to say that it’s very rare that a cast and crew love making a show as much as everyone on Veronica Mars, which is part of why he wanted to make this movie so much.
Writers: Rob Thomas and Diane Ruggiero
Details: 107 minutes

We’re approaching that spot in the yearly schedule where distributors are actually starting to place movies they care about into theaters. A short climb up almost any hill and you can see summer coming. Need For Speed is by no means a behemoth, but it was something that was hoping for blockbuster status (I’m afraid it didn’t get there). Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel is slowly expanding, and it’s looking like one of Wes’s better movies. I considered reviewing both movies today.

But I decided to go with Veronica and Co., only because it has a lot of talking points, what with its Kickstarter campaign and its taking a show that was never very popular in the first place, has been dead for seven years, and turning it into a film. It’s probably one of the more bizarre examples of a movie ever being made.

The challenge is tying all this into screenwriting. Because this project is so darn unique, it’s almost screenwriting proof. What, the story doesn’t make sense? That’s because you never watched the show and therefore don’t know the intricate backstory. What, the parts of the story you did understand were ridiculous and over-the-top, like a random sex-tape subplot that had nothing to do with anything? Silly non-original-Veronica-Mars-watcher, that’s a reference to well known episode 17 of season 3, when Veronica joked that at least she wasn’t stupid enough to ever make a sex tape. What, the dialogue feels turned-based and overly-written? That’s because it’s based on a TV show originally meant for teenagers who favored that kind of dialogue. As I played around with the idea of critiquing this movie, which I didn’t like, I realized that everything I came up with had an excuse. In that sense, Rob Thomas, the creator, is a freaking genius.

So what was this once-in-a-lifetime movie experience about? I will only say that if you are a Veronica Mars buff, you will want to skip my summary, because as hard as I tried, I was able to pick up only about 2/3 of everything that was happening. There was always a plot point seeping into the story that made no sense either due to bad writing or proprietary TV backstory new viewers weren’t privy to.

But from what I can tell, Veronica Mars, now in her late 20s or early 30s, had once been a high school private investigator in the small town of Neptune, California. She was considered a troublemaker and now, 10 years later or whatever it was, was on her way to becoming a lawyer. She’s even got the perfect boyfriend. Neptune is finally in the rear-view mirror.

OR IS IT!

This is where it gets confusing. Veronica Mars’s old high-school boyfriend (who we can only assume was on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again, a constant unknown in her tumultuous life) is being accused of killing his girlfriend, a well-known pop star – because former boyfriends who now date pop-stars and then are accused of killing them is, apparently, very plausible in the Veronica Mars universe.

So Veronica heads back to Neptune to “help” Old Boyfriend find a good lawyer (you know, since she’s about to become a lawyer and all). In a baffling non-turn of events, her current boyfriend has zero issues with her going home and spending time with a guy she had a steamy on-again-off-again affair with for three seasons. Yup, makes sense to me!

Oh but wait! It gets better. Turns out that she and Old Boyfriend have a sex tape together! And that it just appeared on Perez Hilton! When this sex occurred (when they were in high school? Recently?) is never clearly explained. But that’s not the craziest part. It has absolutely no bearing on the story. It doesn’t affect the plot or what’s going on at all. Again, I guess this kind of stuff is commonplace in the Veronica Mars universe and we’re just supposed to “go with it.”

Naturally, Veronica Mars settles back into her old P.I. ways and starts investigating who killed this pop star. After Veronica’s sex tape is shown at the high school reunion to humiliate her and a giant bar fight breaks out for no other reason than they got more money from Kickstarter than they planned, she eventually traces the killer back to an old high school bitch who hated her who may or may not have hired a guy she was banging to do the job. This was all wrapped up, of course, in the very simplistic and shoddy way you’d expect a weekly episode of an average WB TV show to wrap up. Hooray!

Most boring actor in the history of cinema?

One of the hardest parts of viewing Veronica Mars: The Movie, was trying to figure out what in the world people liked about the show in the first place. I’m not trying to be snarky, really. I honestly want to know. It felt like literally anything you’d see if you turned on the WB between 7-9 pm any night. Teenage characters spouting out really obvious over-written dialogue at each other. Except these days, at least those teenagers have powers. So it’s actually kind of cool!

I guess the show may have succeeded due, in part, to its unique concept? Putting a high school girl into the role of a private investigator was kind of ironic, seeing as when you hear “private investigator,” you usually think of an alcoholic middle-aged man whose life has fallen apart. I agree that that’s kind of different.

But almost every decision the creators made in regards to this show seems wrong. I can honestly say that I have not seen a more boring uncharismatic actor in the last 20 years as the guy who plays Veronica Mars’s “love interest,” this “Logan” guy.  There were times where I had to actually pause the movie to make sure he wasn’t sleeping.  He alone was probably responsible for driving away the millions of fans this show needed to stay on the air. I’ve seen more personality and acting ability in a chicken embryo.

Ahh! And don’t get me started on the dialogue. I’m guessing this is the component that kept Veronica Mars TV fans coming back every week. And I say that not because I liked the dialogue, but because it was clear that the writers LOVED writing the dialogue and the actors LOVED performing the dialogue. You can actually see the actors licking their chops getting ready to deliver lines like, “You get the cliches?” when asked “You know what you get when you mess with the bull?”

Maybe what was so strange about this was that when the show originally aired and every character was in high school, starting each scene with characters making fun of each other with witty one-liners for five minutes made sense, at least in the universe of a TV show about high school. But here, with grown men and women delivering the lines, the banter now felt like it’d stumbled out of a cryogenic chamber.

So little makes sense in the storytelling and the plot and the dialogue when you watch Veronica Mars, that after awhile, you feel like you’re eavesdropping on a conversation that wasn’t meant for you. And every time you try to get closer to hear more so you can make SOME SENSE of what they’re saying, Veronica and everyone else turn around and glare at you, shaming you for even considering trying to understand a movie meant for only the purest of fans.

Look, I get it. You have to give the people who made this movie happen priority. Those are the fans of the original show who donated on Kickstarter. But I guess I was hoping for at least an attempt at bringing new fans in, since this movie isn’t going to spawn any sequels (which is what Thomas is hoping for) unless it makes more believers out of us. Unfortunately, I didn’t see anything to believe in.

The bigger question, of course, is “Did the Kickstarter model work?” Is this something that’s viable for the industry moving forward? Veronica Mars’s Kickstar success story was celebrated when it happened, but since there’s this thing called the internet, any happy koala bears and rainbows must be destroyed before happiness can spread, and the media quickly turned on the model, claiming that it basically gave studios permission to double-dip from us poor unsuspecting ticket-buyers. Make them pay to fund the movie, then make them pay to buy it.

Some of you might be saying that everyone who invested in the Veronica Mars Kickstarter Campaign got a free movie ticket, so that argument’s not relevant. But from what I understand, these ravenous fans are ALSO paying out of pocket to see the film to beef up its box office so it can spawn MORE incomprehensible plots and bad dialogue. Sigh. I don’t know what to believe. I think any other avenue to make movies is a good one, since the kind of money needed to make a film is always out of reach for the average (and even semi-successful) filmmaker (although call me when Zach Braff’s “Wish You Were Here” comes out and my opinion may change).

Veronica Mars was a bizarre trip into movie no-man’s land that I’m still trying to find my way back from. My advice to Kristin Bell is to stick with that little Frozen franchise instead. Sure, it may not make complete sense, but it makes more sense than this planetary drek.

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

What I learned: Beware of “wait your turn to burn” dialogue, the kind of dialogue where every character seems to be waiting to ZING the other person with a perfectly constructed overly-clever “burn” that no real life person could’ve possibly come up with that fast. Real people don’t talk this way. There is a time and place for this kind of dialogue (high school based TV shows where the “clever burn” is part of the conceit) but using it in any other type of setting (save for some high-school-based comedy films) is going to sound unnatural and overwritten.