Genre: Drama/Thriller
Premise: Based on the famous monologue from one of the most popular movie characters of all time, The Fisherman tells us what really happened to the “Jaws” character, Quint, that terrible week in the ocean at the end of World War 2.
About: People have been obsessed with the story of the USS Indianapolis for 30 years now. At one point, Steven Spielberg himself was going to film the real-life story of the fated battleship. But the fickle director eventually moved on to other projects. The Fisherman is written by Will Dunn and finished fairly high on last year’s Black List. I reviewed one of Dunn’s scripts before – Ion – which was, at one point, going to star Channing Tatum. I didn’t like it. Let’s hope today’s dorsal fin fares better.
Writer: Will Dunn
Details: 109 pages (10.22.15 draft)
The Fisherman ranked high on last year’s Black List, so let me tell you why it’s taken me a year to review it. The script follows a practice I’m not fond of, which is taking characters from previously established works and writing a movie about them, usually a backstory to tell us how they got to be who they are.
What’s your issue with this, Curmudgeon Carson? I’m glad you asked that question, disembodied voice of my reading audience. The way I see it, Jaws has been made. As has Star Wars, Peter Pan, Romeo and Juliet, The Godfather. Why can’t we let the perfection of those stories be? Why do we have to waste an idea on the backstory of one of them when we could – wait for it – WRITE AN ORIGINAL GREAT MOVIE OURSELVES!?
That’s my biggest issue. Hollywood barely gives us anything new anymore. And it’s not their fault. They have to answer to people in boardrooms who, when an original idea tanks, ask, “Why the hell did you make a movie about something nobody’s heard of when you could’ve adapted a bestselling book or commissioned a sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean?”
The amateur screenwriter IS THE LAST PERSON who can still write original ideas. Once you become professional, you’ll be writing episode 7 of the second season of The Exorcist on Fox or a spin-off film of Pinocchio’s character from Shrek. So as long as you still can, why not write something new?
Cause guess what? If you do that and it WORKS? Not only will it get made, but you’ll be heralded as one of the few people in the industry who writes original ideas. And that’s pretty fucking awesome.
There’s a flip side to this argument. Everyone in this business came to it because they loved movies. And Jaws is one of the main movies that made people want to write and direct films. So I get how exciting it is to write one of those characters yourself. But that doesn’t mean I agree with the idea.
The Fisherman follows four storylines. The first is Quint, a few months after the war, in 1946, out on his lobster boat. His boat is rendered inoperable after a great white shark attacks it, and he must defeat the shark or die.
The second is Quint in 1945, on leave from the Navy, where he meets a lovely woman named Laura Foster, and falls in love with her.
The third is later in 1945, when Quint is shipped off to the war, only for his ship, the USS Indianapolis, to get blown out of the water by Japanese subs, and for the survivors to slowly roast in the ocean waters for a week while hundreds of sharks eat them up.
And the fourth is Quint in 1946, right after he came back from that tragedy but before he goes out on his lobster boat. It’s here where he questions whether he’s good enough to be with Laura, and where his battle with the bottle begins.
Will Dunn makes a couple of smart choices with this script. The first is he wraps this screenplay around a love story. That’s a bit of an unexpected choice when it comes to a character like Quint, who’s supposed to be the drunken rowdy badass who you’d think wouldn’t trouble himself with things like “love.”
But it’s a nice reminder that choices tend to turn out well when you go against type. If we only focused on the macho-ness of Quint in this story, it would’ve felt obvious. And remember, guys, if your choices are obvious, your screenplay is boring. Anybody can make obvious choices. Screenwriters make bold and unexpected choices. Good screenwriters, at least.
The other thing Dunn does here is he institutes a multi-storyline approach. Multiple storylines, particularly ones where you’re jumping back and forth in time, can be tricky. They always make perfect sense to the writer, since he’s got the timeline laid out in his head. But it’s never as clear on the page as you think it is.
So you really have to hold the reader’s hand when you do this. You have to make extra sure that you’re being CLEAR on where we are. And the more timelines you have, the harder you have to work at this. Four is a lot.
But Dunn does a good job. Once the timelines are established, I was able to keep up, with the minor exception being the timeline between the USS Indianapolis and Quint alone on the boat.
The nice thing about the multi-storyline approach in this case is that it keeps us off-balance on our way to what we all know is coming – the USS Indianapolis sinking. Dunn knows that that’s his money sequence. So he’s gotta make sure you’re paying attention beforehand and not just speeding through so you can get to that part.
If this were told in a predictable linear manner, readers might have responded like, “Okay, we get it. Quint has a girlfriend. I WANT TO SEE SHARKS EAT BURNED SAILORS NOW!!” and start skimming. I never wanted to do that though, which is a good sign.
But the real reason The Fisherman succeeds is that it does something I’ve been talking to a director friend about a lot lately. It takes a big concept and it approaches it from a CHARACTER POINT-OF-VIEW.
Pay attention to that guys, cause it’s the secret ingredient to writing good scripts. Everything in this script is character driven. When Quint’s on that boat by himself, he’s battling the ghosts of that war tragedy, his place in it, and if he’ll ever be the same person again.
When he’s not battling that tragedy, he’s battling the fact that he can no longer be with the love of his life. Even before the Indianapolis crashes, Dunn introduces us to Quint’s best mates, two guys whose fates will be tied to the sinking of that ship, and how their fates affect Quint to this day
My favorite scene in the script is the last scene involving one of these friends which I didn’t see coming at all. Surprisingly, I even found myself tearing up. So obviously, Dunn was doing something right.
Despite this, this world isn’t my world. I’m not a huge shark guy (even though I recognize their marketing value to a concept) and I’ve always seen Jaws as a solid flick but nothing like the classic everyone claims it is. When you combine this with the fact that we’re going backwards into old ideas instead of building new ones, I ended up throwing my “impressive” back in the water and settling for the “worth the read” I caught.
With that said, I expect Jaws fanatics to LOVE THIS. Let me know what you think ya Benchley cheerleaders.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Note the date of this draft (10.22.15). If you’re trying to make the Black List, late October, and the majority of November, is a GREAT time to send your script out to the town. This way, Black List voters voting on December 8th are highly likely to remember you above scripts sent out earlier in the year.
Bonus Question: Which actor would play Quint in a modern-day movie about him?
