Genre: Drama/Love Story/French
Premise: A high school girl becomes involved with an older artist and the two soon find themselves falling in love.
About: Okay, so this movie has received a lot more publicity than your typical French import for a couple of reasons. First, there’s a lot of graphic lesbian sex in it (have I got your attention, guys?). And second, the actresses who played the leads are now saying that they were forced to do a lot of things sexually that they weren’t comfortable with. The film won the prestigious Palme D’or at the Cannes film festival, and that’s when the heavy scrutiny began. Director Abdellatif Kenhiche, who was at first defiant against his actresses and their accusations of him, has done an about-face, pretty much shutting down when asked about the controversy. His most recent interviews imply that he realizes he may have gone too far and it may have even affected his desire to direct again.
Writers: Abdellatif Kechiche & Ghalia Lacroix (based on the comic book, “Le Bleu est une couleur chaude” by Julie Maroh)
Details: 186 minutes long

Hey, a French film about a young woman’s sexual awakening. Where have I seen this before? Oh yeah, that’s EVERY SINGLE FRENCH MOVIE EVER. Didn’t we see it as far back as Seinfeld? When the Seinfeld crew tried to go see Rochelle, Rochelle?

Okay, so maybe it’s not EVERY French movie. I’m guessing there are only a handful of French genres they can market over here in the States, and “sex between young women” is one of them. There are probably tons of more diverse French films we’ll never see because distributors know there’s no way they can do well in the ultra-competitive American marketplace.

As far as this film, I’ll be the first to admit that the only reason I went to see it was because of the controversy behind the sex scenes. I had to see myself just how far they supposedly went, and also if I could detect any clear discomfort on the actresses’ part or see if they was forced into something they didn’t want to do. I wanted to make the call myself.

Here’s the funny thing about what happened though. There was so much damn sex in this movie, that after awhile, the shock value wore off.  What you realize is that, along the way, you’ve been pulled into this relationship, a relationship authentically constructed and universal enough to make you see yourself in it, and in that sense, care about the fate of these two girls, even if that fate took 186 minutes to get to!

17 year old Adele is in high school. She’s a pleasant enough girl, but you get the feeling she’s uncomfortable in her surroundings (and, in many ways, her own skin).

As is the case in most high schools, Adele’s friends are peer-pressuring her into doing things she doesn’t want to do, particularly have sex with a hot guy who’s into her. Adele eventually does go out with the guy and DOES have sex with him, but there’s clearly something missing from the experience. She needs more.

After an unexpected kiss with a female friend, Adele becomes obsessed with women, and finds herself at a lesbian bar one night, where she meets the mysterious older Emma, a blue-haired maven who’s as confident as Adele is timid.

The two immediately hit it off, spend all their time together, and start falling in love, as is on display every night with their extremely passionate love-making.

A year passes and Adele is now out of school (teaching pre-school) getting her shit together. Her relationship seems to be going well also, as she’s helping Emma (who’s an artist) get ready for a big art showing. The problem with Adele is that she can’t shake the feeling that she’s doing something wrong by being with a woman. It’s a subtle feeling, but intense enough that she ends up cheating on Emma with a man (partly brought on by a suspicion that Emma may be cheating on her).

Emma finds out and the entire relationship unravels. Emma kicks Adele out and Adele is completely lost. A couple of years go by and, still, Adele misses Emma. She tries her best to reconcile but Emma’s moved on. Poor Adele is left with an uncertain future, which she now knows will never include the love of her life. Fin.

So why is it that this movie, despite ignoring most of the screenwriting principles I promote on this site, still worked? That’s a great question. To start, you have to understand that this is a relationship movie. With relationship movies (which includes romantic comedies), there isn’t always a goal. The story’s intrigue rests more on “What’s going to happen between these two people?” The movie only works if you care about the answer to that question. And you only care about the answer to that question if you a) like the lead, b) like the romantic interest, and c) want to see them end up together.

So the rules are a little different (from the typical GSU model). And I think “Blue” succeeded on all three of these fronts. I mean, the acting in the movie was amazing, but if the story was written with the same specificity as it was acted, I think it would’ve worked just as well on the page.

But there were a few other reasons why it worked. Conflict conflict conflict conflict and conflict. If you’re going to write a slow story (whatever the genre is), it must be infused with conflict. Because you have to remember – we don’t have anything STORY-RELATED to look forward to. We don’t have Indiana Jones trying to get that Ark. We don’t have the Pacific Rim robots trying to stop those monsters. We don’t have little miss sunshine trying to get to that beauty pageant in time.

For that reason, you have to use OTHER tools to keep the reader/viewer interested. And conflict is the most effective of these tools. And in this case, it starts with INNER CONFLICT. Adele is unsure if she wants men or women. We see her battling with this dilemma throughout the first 40 minutes of the movie. When she finally gets a woman, there’s a part of her that’s still nervous about whether she should be with her. We see that in scenes like when she brings Emma over for a family dinner. She can’t tell her parents the truth about Emma. She’s too ashamed. And then when Emma breaks up with her, all Adele can think about is that she’s not happy without her.  In all of these instances, Adele is battling some sort of inner conflict.

But there’s plenty of external conflict as well. From getting into fights with her schoolmates about her sexuality to trying to start a relationship with the friend who kissed her (who then rejects her) to hiding from her parents that she’s dating Emma to being underage and dating Emma to being pulled by this man at work to eventually cheating on Emma to trying to get Emma back.

Despite some of the early scenes where Emma and Adele were in the honeymoon period, there was conflict in every scene. You never felt 100% comfortable during “Blue.” You always felt like something was unresolved, and that’s why you needed to keep watching. You had to see that resolution.

And, you know, I was surprised by just how many plot developments they packed in here also. Usually, in these relationship or coming of age movies, whether they be American indies or foreign films, it takes FOREVER for anything to happen. But stuff kept happening here all the way through. Adele is pushed to go out with a guy. She does. It doesn’t work out. She kisses a girl.  She’s excited and pursues her.  She’s rejected.  She hangs out at a gay club. She meets a girl. She starts dating her. She meets Emma’s parents. Emma meets her parents. She helps Emma prep her art showing. A new woman is introduced into Emma’s work life who Adele is jealous of. Adele cheats on Emma. I always felt like things were HAPPENING, that stuff was DEVELOPING here. And that’s why it never got boring.

And you know, the thing that this script is getting hammered for, the over-the-top sex – was actually necessary. Because it showed how attached these two were. The passion in their sex showed how much they loved each other. And I’m not sure I would’ve known how much they were in love had that not been shown. I mean I wouldn’t have felt Adele’s desperation to get Emma back in the final third of the film had I not seen that passion.

After I walked out of “Blue,” I had to ask myself a tough question. I’d enjoyed the film. Yet I constantly tell writers not to write a film like this. Would I have to reevaluate that stance? Should I do a 180 and start preaching, “Go forth and write 180 page relationship movies if that’s what you want to write!”

After giving it some consideration, the answer is still no. I have to remember that I’m teaching people how to break into Hollywood, not Pariswood. And in Hollywood, creating marketable material with complex characters and a story that moves is still the easiest way to break through. If you want to write the next “Blue is the Warmest Color,” because it’s a story you NEED to tell and you won’t be able to live your life unless you write it, by all means, don’t let me or anyone else stop you. Sometimes passion is the best storyteller, so there’s a possibility it comes out great. Just know that, at the end of the day, you’re trying to sell a product to someone who will be trying to sell that product all the way up the Hollywood ladder. As long as you know that this process becomes infinitely harder when you try to sell the entertainment business the kind of movies it doesn’t like to make, go for it. I’m not going to hold it against you if you take a chance. Just make sure what you write is great because it will need to be!

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

What I learned: The Honeymoon Period. Relationship movies (including romantic comedies) are all about conflict. They’re about your protagonist being unable to find someone (conflict), to experiencing everyday life obstacles (conflict) and then when they find someone, it’s about things affecting that relationship, like cheating (conflict), everyday relationship problems (conflict), work (conflict), other people (conflict). Your relationship films should be PACKED with conflict. The one time in the script, however, where it’s okay to be conflict-free, is the “Honeymoon Period.” When your characters first get together and start hanging out, it’s okay for them to have fun (this can last anywhere from 3-8 scenes). But sooner or later, conflict should start creeping into that relationship, or we’ll get bored.

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: Reception
GENRE: Found Footage Horror
LOGLINE:  A videographer tries to track down his missing girlfriend after a mysterious outbreak turns wedding reception guests into primal killers.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ:  I paid close attention to your post about “How to Write a Found Footage Film” (1/5/2014) and believe I’ve hit most if not all of the points addressed.  Camera holding motivations, emotional anchors, short run time… I also use a Glidecam for a different look to found footage than shaky cam (some really cool videos on youtube). Characters change through the circumstances surrounding them vs. a traditional story arc and hell, maybe you’ll find a character funny.  One reader in the very early drafts thought it was a zombie comedy (it’s not).

TITLE: What The Hell Happened?
GENRE: Comedy
LOGLINE: A drunkard, an anxious CEO of a tv station, and a timid security guard’s lives are all affected after a little league baseball game goes awry and a man ends up storming the field naked and throwing up on a child.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: My name is Etai Shuchatowitz and I’m a high school senior who has been reading you for the better part of four years. I’ve been trying to write for a long time, and after many disastrous results, I think this might be one that I got right. At least, I hope. It’s a comedy, so it’s not supposed to make you cry hard like Terms of Endearment or Armageddon (yeah, I’ll admit it. I cried at the end of Armageddon). But, it is a comedy that deals with a some hopefully mature themes and characters. I really like it and hope that you would too.

TITLE: Brother Cody
GENRE: Comedy
LOGLINE: The party boy heir to a bankrupt Milwaukee brewing empire infiltrates a monastery to steal the recipe of their legendary beer.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: I moved to LA a few years ago to try my hand at screenwriting.  I’ve had some success in contests, and one of the scripts I co-wrote last year actually made the AOW listings, but alas didn’t make the final cut.  Hopefully Brother Cody can do better.  I took my time, got feedback from both friends and pro script readers, and this newest version has received some good responses.

TITLE: The Procurist
GENRE: Sci-fi Thriller
LOGLINE: A callous identity-thief-for-hire, who specializes in genetically altering his clients so they can assume another person’s identity, falls for his latest victim and must risk his own life to protect her from his ruthless employers.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: I set out to write a fast-paced, action thriller with a hint of real-world sci-fi, grounded by an intriguing protagonist and a tangible setting that is a character itself. A movie with a marketable concept and a strong theme that would appeal to producers, directors, and actors. A movie inspired by gritty ‘70s thrillers that takes the audience on a breakneck ride. I’d very much appreciate the opinions of Carson and the Scriptshadow community to tell me if I’ve succeeded.

TITLE: Culture Crash
GENRE: Dark Action Comedy
LOGLINE: Stuck with only each other, five kids from four very different worlds, end up on the run after their lives intertwine through the death of a greedy drug dealer. “Breakfast Club” meets “Pulp Fiction.”
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: Without going into my entire bio – I’m in my twenties and have been committed to writing for a very long time. I’m honestly not being lazy, but feel like a script should speak for itself. Chances are, if you’re not interested in the material/characters after the first couple pages, you’re not going to be interested in it at all. However, that being said, there’s no way in hell I would have sent you this material if I did not think you would enjoy it. Please give the first ten pages a read.

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: Comedy
Premise (from writer): Based on a true story, a group of college kids in the 60s pose as royalty from a made-up country (Marchentia). What starts out as innocent fun, spins out of control when the media turns their arrival into the most important visit in the city’s history.
About: Well, we didn’t have an Amateur Offerings two weeks ago due to Holiday madness, so I had to pick an amateur script on my own to review today. Long-time reader of the site, Matt Hirschhorn, recently won a comedy contest with this script, and since we haven’t reviewed a comedy for Amateur Friday in awhile, I thought it was time the Scriptshadow community stopped screaming at each other (ahem – Grendl), and started having some fun again.
Writer: Matt Hirschhorn
Details: 110 pages

The sure to be classic, Fishbein!

The second I read Matt’s premise, I loved it. The best comedy ideas are the ones where you can immediately start imagining the funny scenes. But the reason you don’t see me reviewing much comedy on the site anymore is because despite all these fun premises, THE SCRIPTS ARE NEVER FUNNY! Not to mention that the execution is always terrible, often sliding between lazy and cheap. What makes a lot of funny people funny, it seems, is what also makes them lazy. They just don’t put in the effort required for a polished “take me seriously” screenplay.

But Thallus isn’t like that. It’s actually quite intricate. There are a lot of storylines going on here, and they’re all rather well balanced, building and interweaving cleverly as the script goes on. There’s a strong sense of purpose for both the story and everyone in it, and, most importantly, there are a lot of laughs. Imagine that, a comedy with laughs. I guess it’s still possible!

The story is set in 1968 and centers around a Buffalo college kid named Marty Goodman. Marty’s your average frustrated chump. He’s in love with a girl, Eve Ryan, the daughter of a senator, who’s way out of his league (she dates guys like O.J. Simpson, not short Jewish boys with questionable haircuts). Marty complains about Eve all the time to his best friend, Herbie, an overweight James Bond wannabe who’s in denial about his lackluster fitness regimen.

So one day, while spitballing ideas for a social experiment Marty must do for class (he must show how people go along with the herd rather than question the masses), he and Herbie stumble across a couple of plants Herbie’s studying for a test (the “Thallus” and the “Marchentia”). They joke that, when thrown together, they sound like the title of some prince from a tiny country. One thing leads to another, and Marty gets the idea to become the “Thallus of Marchentia” for his experiment. He’ll fool the campus and get an ‘A’ on his paper. Added benefit? He’ll finally have a shot with Eve!

The two enlist their annoying acquaintance, school reporter Fishbein, to write about the Thallus’ arrival in the school paper. Fishbein reluctantly agrees, and sure enough, when the article is printed, everyone is talking about the Thallus’s arrival. Which then spreads to the local newspapers. Which then spreads to the local television outlets. And within 24 hours, everybody in Buffallo, including the Mayor himself, can’t wait to meet the Thallus of Marchentia!

As things get bigger, the group finds themselves expanding their story. They’re now a Uranium-rich country who’s in the middle of a war with the Communists, a war only slightly smaller than Vietnam. They’re coming to Buffallo to hopefully open a Uranium plant and expand their relationship with the United States. Things get even more complicated when Senator Ryan (Eve’s mom) wants to get some of that Thallus money to fund her campaign.

Then, of course, there’s local college activists Zen, Cloud, and Wolf, who want to make a difference but are sick of their current SDS group’s lack of action. So they decide to take matters into their own hands by kidnapping the Thallus and getting him to remove all American troops from Marchentia. All of this while Marty desperately tries to take advantage of this one and only chance to bed Eve Ryan, an opportunity that’s quickly slipping away with each passing hour.

What The Thallus did well that I don’t see with a lot of amateur comedies is it was really soundly structured. And what I mean by that is that it always had thrust. Every section had characters going after important things, and each of those pursuits had some level of immediacy behind them. For example, Marty, when he first becomes the Thallus, only has that day to try to hook up with Eve. Fishbein only has one shot to secretly record Senator Ryan offering political favors for money. Senator Ryan only has one shot to get money from the Thallus.  Zen and Cloud are running out of time to record the Thallus to get American troops out of Marchentia.

Screenplays work best when characters are all going after something, and the characters need that something immediately. That’s why Back to the Future is one of my favorite screenplays of all time. It’s all about characters constantly needing something RIGHT NOW. And while I’m not saying the Thallus is up to the level of that masterpiece, I loved that it latched on to the same storytelling principle.

I think the big thing with comedy though is that the characters have to stand out on the page. And not just the protagonist, but everyone. Because everyone has to be memorable and everyone has to be funny in their own unique way. Matt did a great job of that here. I dare you to read this and not remember these characters two weeks from now. Herbie, Fishbein, Zen, Cloud, Wolf. These were all hilarious characters with their own unique shit going on. Herbie, especially, with his obsession of dieting and exercise, despite never going through with anything or ever actually putting any work into his regimen. His White Castle breakdown binge was classic.

I also thought Zen and Cloud’s bickering was hilarious. I thought Herbie’s really bad version of James Bond was funny. Loser Fishbein and his dream to one day go on a “Canadian Adventure” with friends.  I even loved the out-of-left-field Russian agents who were there to assassinate the Thallus because Russia’s president “hated Marchentia” (despite the fact that it didn’t exist). I loved watching them dance awkwardly in the club and argue whether you can only do “The Twist” dance to the song “The Twist” or if it was allowed during other songs as well.

And I think what elevated this beyond your typical comedy was that Matt was actually trying to say something with the story. We do follow the masses at the expense of our own opinion. I was just talking about this the other week in regards to what movies we feel we’re allowed to “like” and “dislike.” There was a theme building here that we’d rather pretend we know what everyone’s talking about and go along with it rather than do a little research, form our own opinion, and rock the boat.

There were a couple things that didn’t work for me though. Every once in a while, the scenes felt a little stilted, particularly early on, and I think that’s because Matt was setting up so much story. That’s one of the hardest things about writing an intricate plot like this one, is that almost everything in your first act – all your scenes – double as set-ups. You’re setting up how we come up with the Thallus idea. You’re setting up who Eve is and that Marty wants her. You’re setting up Zen and Cloud’s problems with the system, so we understand why they kidnap the Thallus later. No matter how good of a writer you are, if you have to pack a lot of exposition into your story, it’s going to bleed through at times and make scenes feel a little artificial.

The only thing you can do to combat this is keep working on the scenes and keep simplifying the setups for all these later events. The less information you have to give the audience, the more you can focus on the making the scenes themselves entertaining, which is doubly important in a comedy, since it’s hard to make people laugh when you have to cram a lot of information into the scene as well. Matt did a pretty good job of this in places, but in other spots it felt like the exposition overwhelmed the scene and gave it that “stilted” feel.

The only other big problem I had with the script was the final act. This is where all the storylines intersected. While it was easy to identify who was who in their own separate worlds, once everyone came together, since there were so many of them, I had to read everything twice to remember who the characters in the scenes were, how they knew each other, and what all the subtle but important story points were between those characters so I could fully enjoy their interactions. We have a three-way car chase for example, and I was trying to remember who everyone in each car was and how they were related to one another, as well as those subtle intricacies between all of them. Because of that I had to read everything twice. The end of the script is so important. It’s when the reader should be flying through the pages because things are building and moving quickly towards the climax. If you’re stopping to read everything twice, it’s the exact opposite experience of what you want the reader to go through.

Despite those problems, I really liked this. You don’t often see an amateur comedy (or a comedy in general) that has this much story going on, yet always stays so focused and entertaining. If you’re a comedy fan, you’ll definitely want to take the Thallus for a spin.

Script link: The Thallus of Marchentia

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

What I learned: Once you’ve set up everything in your first act, go back through those scenes and try to smooth them out as much as possible. Do everything in your power to hide the setups, or else your opening act will feel like a bunch of exposition as opposed to a bunch of entertainment.

“The Sequence what??”

Edit: A couple of people in the comments section have told me that someone (Chris Soth) already uses the term the “mini-movie method,” so I’m changing the terminology back to the original “Sequence Approach.”  

Why is writing a script so difficult? I can answer that easily. Because there are a lot of damn pages to fill! Specifically, it’s that second act that kills everyone. That’s where the enormity of the story hits you, and when a lot of writers realize they don’t have enough to fill up all that space. I mean when you think about it, writing a first act isn’t that hard. You set up your characters, introduce your concept, get the plot rolling. Anybody can do that. But as soon as you get past those first 30 pages, you find it harder and harder to move on. All of a sudden filling up even five pages feels impossible. You just want to get to the damn end so you can resolve the story.

I recently got to thinking, “What’s the problem here? What is it about that vast amount of white space that trips people up so much?” And I realized it’s the lack of structure within that space. It’s a little like wanting to be a doctor and thinking about all that schooling you need. 10 years. 10 YEARS! How the hell are you supposed to get through that?

But when you start breaking it down into years and then semesters and then classes – in other words, into MANAGEABLE CHUNKS – it starts to feel doable. And it’s the same thing with screenwriting. You need to find a way to break those 120 screenplay pages down into manageable chunks.

This brought me back to a screenwriting philosophy I keep gaining more and more respect for as time goes by: “The Sequence Approach.” This is not my creation. I learned about it through Paul Gulino’s book, “The Sequence Approach,” (the only book I link to on the site besides my own) and he learned it because it’s how pre-1960 Hollywood used to format their screenplays. Now I never liked that name: “The Sequence Approach.” It sounds too mathematical for a craft that’s supposed to be creative. But it is what it is so it will have to do!

Now like I said, our big problem here is the fact that when we look at a screenplay as a whole, it’s too big. Even if we break it down into 3 acts, that’s still 50-60 unstructured pages we have to fill up in that second act. It’s too daunting! We need a way to create manageable chunks within that framework, portions small enough that they don’t intimidate us.

The Sequence Approach basically states that instead of writing one giant 110 page story, we write eight 12-15 page smaller stories.  Think about it.  Everyone can write a 15 page short, right?  That’s easy.  And if you can write one 15-page short, you can write eight 15-page shorts.

All you have to do is come up with a movie concept that features a protagonist with a goal, then write 8 mini-scripts with that protagonist (or in some cases, supporting characters) pursuing 8 linked mini-goals. The pursuit of these mini-goals will last 12-15 pages each, and be little mini-scripts in themselves, with their own setup, conflict, and resolution. Let me show you how it works in action.

I thought up a movie idea not long ago that I kinda dig. It’s not great, but it will serve our purposes for this article. Here it is:

TITLE: Trust Fund Dan
GENRE: Comedy
PREMISE: A 40 year old trust fund baby who’s been living off his dead parents’ money for the past 20 years, is informed that an overlooked banking error from 1990 has resulted in the termination of his trust fund. For the first time in his life, he’ll have to get a job and learn to live in the real world.

So before you write your script, you want to lay out all eight of your sequences and write out the objective of your protagonist within each. Each of these eight objectives will drive the story forward until the next sequence arrives. In addition to listing the goal of your character in each sequence, list the purpose of the sequence itself (a general breakdown of where you want it to go) along with any other ideas you may have. So this is how the sequence outline for Trust Fund Dan might look like:

Sequence 1
Goal: Dan tries to put together the ultimate party.
Purpose: Establish that Dan is rich and lives off his trust fund.  The purpose of this sequence is to show how easy Dan’s life is and how out of touch he is with the real world. Sleeping in, getting his next stash of pot, and attending parties are really his only three obligations. Establish, as he calls people and puts together this lavish party, that he’s a moron who’s never worked a day in his life and doesn’t even understand the concept of money. At the end of the sequence, he’ll get the call from his lawyer and learn that all of his money has been taken away.

Sequence 2
Goal: Dan tries to get his money back.
Purpose: Now that it’s gone, Dan desperately tries to figure out what happened and how to get his money back. He goes to the Trust Fund lawyers, the banks, everyone associated with his money, to figure out what happened. But because he’s so stupid and knows nothing about the real world, he fails to understand any of what they’re telling him. But the consensus is clear: He’s broke. He asks his friends for money, but finds out that none of them were his real friends. They were just leeching off him. At the end of the sequence, he doesn’t even have enough money to buy food. He realizes he needs to get a job.

Sequence 3
Goal: Dan tries to get a job.
Purpose: Much like the scenes in Step-Brothers, these scenes will show just how clueless Dan is about “jobs” and how the real world works. Have fun with these scenes. He goes through a montage of job interviews and makes a complete fool out of himself. He finally gets stuck as a part-time janitor at a local community college.

Sequence 4
Goal: To figure a way out of this mess.
Purpose: When Dan realizes just how shitty real work is and how little he gets paid, he starts plotting a way back to his life of luxury and invests in every get-rich quick scheme he can find. From spending his entire month’s pay on scratch-off lottery tickets to starting up sketchy internet businesses that rely exclusively on porn advertising. His scary co-janitor, a former gang-member, even enlists him in a vague business venture that involves something about “credit cards.” He fails at everything because he doesn’t know anything. He also occasionally runs into a very pretty teacher there who he instantly falls in love with.

Sequence 5
Goal: To ask the teacher out (or find a way to spend more time with her).
Purpose: Because Dan has no idea how to manage money, he’s unable to pay rent and is kicked out of his apartment. He is now officially homeless and starts secretly living at the college. In his pursuit of the teacher, he starts hanging out in her lectures and, for the first time, starts to actually learn something. Because he’s also the worst janitor ever, he’s always in danger of being fired. But he eventually convinces the teacher to go out with him on a date (which should be a funny scene, since he won’t be able to pay for it).

Sequence 6
Goal: To get back on his feet.
Purpose: Despite the teacher starting to affect how Dan sees the world (she helps him see the value of hard work), Dan finds out that his little co-venture with his fellow ex-con janitor buddy has panned out! They’re bringing in the dough! Dan quits his janitor job and starts spending money like crazy again, taking the teacher on an extravagant date of the likes he used to experience all the time. Dan’s on top of the world again and he couldn’t be happier. But alas, he has no idea that his “business” involves stealing people’s credits cards, and at the end of the sequence, he’s arrested and thrown in jail. Mortified at what he was doing, the teacher leaves him.

Sequence 7
Goal: To figure himself out.
Purpose: After a short stint in jail, Dan’s mysteriously bailed out. It’s his lawyer, who informs him that he was able to pull off a miracle and retain half the money from the original trust fund, enough for Dan to live comfortably for the rest of his life. Dan should be excited, but he isn’t. For the first time, he wants to know what he really wants out of life. He finds out more about how his parents earned their money, how hard they worked for it, and again that theme of “the value of hard work” is hit upon.

Sequence 8
Goal: Get the girl back.
Purpose: Dan decides that instead of wasting money on a bunch of stupid boring shit, he’s going to invest it in a degree and pursue a real career. So he enrolls at the college he was a janitor at. He enrolls in all of the teacher’s classes, but she ignores and rebuffs all his advances. In the end, he pulls out of all of her classes and focuses on getting a degree. Finally, he’s learned to appreciate the “value of hard work.” By chance, one day after school, he sees her in the parking lot and her car won’t start (Her car not starting will be set up multiple times throughout the script. This will be the big payoff). He smiles. Walks towards her. Cut to black.

So this is obviously a rough and tumble outline of the story. But that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be. It’s a first run-through. The idea is to get your 8 sequences down so you have a game plan in place. As you get started on the script, you’ll add more detail to each sequence, move things around, and add scenes and characters. I might make Dan’s Trust Fund lawyer a bigger character, for example. I might have him befriend a few of the kids at the college and give those characters some arcs of their own. I might make some of these sequence goals more concrete (Number 7, “To figure himself out,” feels a little vague. I’d like to improve upon that). I’d try to introduce the love interest earlier somehow.   All of that will be added as you either write your script or do successive drafts of your outline.

Now it’s not always going to be this simple. Each script is different. Things get tricky when there isn’t a clear goal for a sequence, which is the case, for example, with a lot of romantic comedies. I don’t recall any sequence goals in When Harry Met Sally. But in that case, you’d still divide your script into 8 smaller scripts. You just need to work harder to figure out what each of those smaller stories will focus on. A story is easiest to tell when the main character is trying to achieve something. But since you don’t always have that, you might instead say, “The opening sequence in When Harry Met Sally is about Harry and Sally getting to know each other.” In other words the “goal” is transferred over to you the writer. You write the 15-page sequence where Harry and Sally ride to New York together with a strong emphasis on getting to know each other. The idea here is that by breaking everything down into these manageable chunks, it’ll be easier to create some element of focus for each “chunk,” and therefore you should be able to get through the entire script more easily.

There ya have it, an easy-peasy way to write a script. Try it out. You may be surprised at how simple it is!

Genre: Period/Drama/Comedy?
Premise: A group of Allied men is tasked with going into Europe during World War 2 and saving all the culturally important pieces of art before they’re stolen by the Nazis.
About: George Clooney co-wrote and directed this film. The film stars himself, Matt Damon, John Goodman, Bill Murray, and Cate Blanchett. It was originally supposed to be released in 2013, but Clooney couldn’t finish it in time, so it’ll be released February 7th. This is Clooney’s 4th writing effort (2 features and one TV movie). Co-writer Grant Heslov is Clooney’s co-writer in crime, working with him on two of those movies, but is probably better known as an actor who’s appeared in over 60 TV shows and films.
Writers: George Clooney & Grant Heslov (based on the book, “The Monuments Men” by Robert M. Edsel).
Details: 4th draft – June 15, 2012

The Monuments Men feels like that odd-duck of a movie writer-director George Clooney is trying to make more of in an increasingly derivative Hollywood that caters too heavily to 13 and 14 year olds. You gotta love Clooney for taking on the likes of billionaire Daniel Loeb recently, who tried to trash the studio he invested in (Sony) for making so many duds, which Clooney said was “dangerous to our industry” for someone who didn’t know jack about filmmaking to say.  Indeed, the more you push studios to only go with the super safe bets, the less originality we’re going to get. Clooney believes in taking chances, in making adult movies like The Monuments Men. And I’m all in with him. We need to celebrate when our biggest and brightest stars create diversity in the market. If all I’m going to get is Transformers movies for the rest of my life, I’m walking off the stage without finishing my speech (Miss SS: “That’s the first time I thought Michael Bay might be an android that someone forgot to charge all the way.”)

So I bet you’re thinking, “Wow, Carson must’ve really loved the script for The Monuments Men with that kind of introduction,” right? Oh how wrong you’d be! You see, I want diversity just like the Cloonester. But I want diversity with GOOD WRITING, not the wandering unclear narrative that The Monuments Men turned out to be.

So it’s 1942, and Professor Frank Stokes brings it to the president’s attention that while, yes, millions of people are dying in that little war over in Europe, the bad guys are stealing all the great art and bringing it back to Hitler, which is pretty bad too. Not only that, but guys with grenades and tanks don’t pay much mind to the 900 year old paintings that are inside local churches.  If someone in the know were there, those paintings could be protected, even saved!

He proposes getting a group of men together, stodgy old art-scholar types, men who know the difference between Picasso and Park LaBrea, head directly into the war, and start saving all that art. The prez agrees and off they go, but not before a trailer-perfect basic training montage of all these out-of-shape men trying to climb over a wall.

Of the men we have Granger, a painter, Garfield, a sculptor, Savitz, the president of the Harvard Society For Contemporary Art, Campbell, an architect, and Jean-Claude, director of design at a well-known university.

Once they get to Europe, the men decide to split up, with some going to Normandy, some going to Belgium, etc. etc. From that point on, things get a little unclear. I want to be as nice as possible, but it was hard to keep track of who was where and why. For the most part, these pairs were in the forest, following one lead after another, trying to find any Nazi-stolen paintings they could and getting them back.

As they collect clues, the end of the war nears, and they get closer to the front line of Germans who are stealing this art, eventually figuring out where they’re going to be before they’re there, and trying to head them off at the pass. They’re able to get there, but with the Germans still lingering, and the Russians coming in to claim their share of the loot, it won’t be easy to get all those paintings back.

Sheesh, at 145 pages, this script was a World War in itself.  I felt like I was storming the beaches of Boremandy.  So what is a reader’s biggest fear when he opens a script this big? Why do they always complain when they see a page number this huge? Because 999 times out of 1000, it means the script is UNFOCUSED. It means the writers lost themselves somewhere along the way, following multiple threads and multiple characters into unchartered wars, and couldn’t find their way back to shore.

So guess what The Monuments Men’s biggest problem is. Any takers? Shouldn’t be that difficult.

I’m not sure how many drafts Clooney and Heslov wrote after this (this is the 4th). So maybe they fixed this issue. But boy is this script all over the place. One of the biggest problems is that the monuments men SPLIT UP. They go in pairs to different countries. So instead of getting to see all these personalities work together in a cohesive format, they’re sent off to do their own thing. That seemed like a really odd choice to me. Wouldn’t it have been so much better to see these guys tackle this thing as a group?

And that brings me to THE biggest problem. The goal here is too vague. It’s not clear exactly what everyone has to do. When you give your protagonist a goal, it’s best for them and the audience if it’s specific (Indiana Jones goes after THE ARK, not a bunch of different religious artifacts). Here, everyone’s going after “art.” Not any specific piece of art. Just as much or whatever art they come across.

I couldn’t help but think this script would’ve been a thousand times better if they were going after one very important piece of art, not unlike how they structured Saving Private Ryan. Can you imagine a funnier version of Saving Private Ryan (which is kind of how they’re marketing this anyway) with these old guys searching for a particular painting in a giant war fought by 20 year olds? It may have even been cooler if a really rich criminal hired 7 guys to go into the middle of World War 2 and steal him one of the most important paintings in the world under the cover of all this chaos (hmmm, future heist film?). Or, if they wanted to stick closer to the real story, then at least have them going after a particular group of paintings (that were all being transported together), anything that made the goal singular, as opposed to randomly spread all over the place. Because it was the “randomly spread all over the place” characters that made this thing feel so damn unfocused.

In fact, the likely reason they’re having so much trouble editing this is because they don’t have that clearly laid out goal that EVERYONE is going after. It’s all so spread out and unclear, that likely everyone in the editing room is unclear about who they should be following and who they should give the most time too.

That was another issue. Who was the protagonist? I’m not sure. I’m sure the writers would tell me, “Fuck you. Who says you only need one protagonist?” And I’d say, “Okay, fair point.” But if you don’t have a clear protagonist leading the story, you need to have clarity in the other parts of your story to offset that, and this did not.

Likewise, a ticking time bomb would’ve really helped here. There doesn’t seem to be any end in sight. Characters sit around and talk about the war and we’re unclear where they’re going or how long this is all going to last. Again, this comes back to the goal, that they must “get art,” and not a specific piece of art. How can you create a ticking time bomb on getting something if there’s no clear piece of art (or grouping of art) to get?

Probably the biggest thing that surprised me, though, was how similar all the characters were. Clooney, being an actor, knows how important characters are. But nobody really stuck out here. There was no big personality, no one who popped off the page. Often times I’d be reading and have no idea who was talking. Then I’d look at the character names and realize I didn’t remember who was who. That’s a real killer for a script, especially an ensemble, when you’re writing a bunch of characters and you want those characters to stand out from each other.

This was an ambitious idea, and something that had the potential to be cool. Despite the 1 billion stories that have been told about World War 2, I’d never heard of this one before, so, yeah, why not make a movie out of it?

But the story feels uneven on the page, and I suspect that’s the same thing that’s happening in the editing room. I know Clooney is about trying new things and not always catering to the Hollywood machine, but this script could’ve been so much better had it followed some basic storytelling devices like having a concrete goal and more urgency. The biggest problem with it, though, is that it spread itself too thin. Too many characters in too many places with not enough meat/drama packed in those places to keep us interested. Should be interesting, though, to see what the final cut comes out like.

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

What I learned: When reading a two person scene, it’s usually easy to tell who’s who, even if you’re not looking at the character names. But in a scene with multiple characters, it’s harder, because a lot of people are talking. These scenes are the true test for screenwriters, then, to see if they’re good with dialogue. If the reader is able to tell who’s who in these scenes without looking at the character names, you have done an amazing job differentiating your characters and dialogue. If not, it means all your characters sound the same, and you must put more effort into making them sound different (i.e. one always swears, one stutters, one barely speaks, one can’t stop talking, one’s a wise-ass, one’s a know-it-all, one’s a tough guy, one always sees the worst in everything, one’s religious and always bringing up God). So go into one of your scripts and pick a scene where all of your characters are talking. Without looking at the names, are you easily able to pick out who said what? If so, good job!  If not, fix it!