Genre: Drama? Comedy?
Premise: Inspired by the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal, The Libertine follows the aftermath of a French politician accused of sexually mistreating a hotel maid.
About: A hot spec script that sold to Warner Brothers a few months ago from Ben Kopit, an up-and-coming screenwriter who only recently graduated from UCLA’s MFA screenwriting program.
Writer: Ben Kopit
Details: 99 pages

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Gerard Depardieu for Maurice??

This script has gotten a lot of heat around town the last few months. The only reason I’ve avoided it is because it’s not my thing. I don’t even know who Dominque Strauss-Khan is, nor do I care about world leaders in other countries and their extracurricular activities.

But the script won’t go away. It finished high on the just-released Hit List, and with its political leanings, you can bet your ass the politics-obsessed Black List is going to give it high marks. Which brings us to today. I guess I’m reviewing The Libertine!

Maurice Lunel-Caspi, 60, is a major player in the French government. Which makes the fact that he inappropriately touched a maid at a New York hotel a big deal. The maid went to the police, and now Maurice is being kept in New York on house arrest until trial, where his media titan wife, Edith, is reluctantly staying with him.

“Reluctantly” may actually be an understatement. Edith HATES her husband. Not because she knows he’s guilty, but because she knows he’s been fucking anything with a protruding chest for as long as they’ve been together, and therefore, it’s likely that whatever he’s been accused of is true.

The Libertine is possibly the most unambitious screenplay I’ve read this year. All we do for 99 minutes is hang out in this dreadfully boring apartment while Maurice, Edith, and their angry daughter, Jaqueline, argue. I guess later on, Maurice’s lawyer makes an appearance to update him on what’s happening with the charges. And maybe that could be considered “story.” But it’s dealt with so passively that it could just as easily be seen as an interruption.

In the end, the fighting only increases, and everyone’s hate for one another grows from a 7 to an all out 10, until finally, in the end, through no doing of our characters’ actions (because god forbid our characters actually have an effect on the story) Maurice learns that the charges against him have been dropped because the maid has some shady immigration issues.

Were you one of the people who, after seeing Jobs, said to yourself, “Man, I wish there was a movie out there with a main character 180,000 times more of an asshole than this guy,” then my friends, I’ve found you your movie!

I have never – I don’t think in all of my script reading – read a script with a more deplorable main character. I don’t know if Maurice touched this maid or not (and neither does the script – it’s not interested in exploring anything that involves mystery, drama, interest, or suspense). But what I do know is that this married gentleman whose wife has given him unimaginable wealth, invites over prostitutes the second she leaves the building, jacks off when he’s bored, goes to online sex chat rooms to order women around, takes his wife’s favorite pen and, when she’s not around, rubs it inside his crotch and asshole before replacing it, and after somehow finally getting his wife to care enough about him to have sex with him again, starts surfing porn sites not five minutes later.

But here’s the thing about The Libertine. It’s not just Maurice. EVERYBODY in this script has more anger, sadness, evilness, negativity, narcissism, whininess, and overall shitiness than anyone you will ever meet in your life. Edith, the wife, is a bitch as well. And the one person who had a chance at being a likable character, the social crusading daughter who hates what her dad has done, is just as big of an asshole as her parents.

Everybody just yells at each other here. And there’s NO STORY. NONE! What is the goal? What is anybody attempting to do?? Even the problem, the thing that needs to be dealt with, is being tackled by a lawyer character in a storyline that never reaches the screen. So we’re not even seeing the interesting stuff. We’re just watching these miserable despicable human beings argue while the real story happens behind them.

The killer for me was the mid-point. We get this dinner scene with another man being kept under house arrest in the same building – a financial swindler. Why does this dinner occur? Oh, because Maurice feels like having a dinner with another person under house arrest. There’s no actual STORY REASON for this dinner to occur, of course. It’s there because this script is so threadbare, so devoid of a point, that if it wasn’t there, it would be 70 pages at most. So sure, why not invite a random character with no ties to anything and no reason to actually be in the story into the mix. Makes sense to me!

And if you had to make a bet, would you put money on this gentleman and his wife being nice caring people? You know, maybe to create some contrast in the conversation for once? Of course not! They’re total swindling assholes JUST LIKE OUR MAIN CHARACTERS. I guess when you’re holding an Asshole Fest, the policy is only assholes allowed.

The Libertine attempts to conclude its “story” with some sort of ironic anecdote. Maurice, in order to get back in his daughter’s good graces, pulls a favor to get her a job with an old friend. But when she meets this friend, he ends up making a pass at her. I guess we’re supposed to feel some karmic retribution that this man finally understands what it’s like to be on the receiving end of sexual abuse. But we hate everybody in this script so much, including Jacquline, that this moment leaves us feeling nothing other than contempt for coming this far only to be subjected to a half-assed cobbled-together ending. It’s one last-ditch attempt for the script to seem relevant.

I’m begging those of you who liked this enough to vote for it. Tell me what I’m missing. What is it that makes this script appealing? I honestly can’t find a thing. I suppose the dialogue moves quickly, but it’s laced with so much anger that the snappy rhythm is undermined by pure hatred. Help me understand!

In the meantime, please don’t let anything with a heartbeat near this script less they turn to stone. Now excuse me while I go google puppy images for the rest of the night.

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

What I learned: One of the things that works well in screenwriting is contrast. You want extremes clashing against each other. So if someone’s a real asshole, you want to put them in a room with someone who’s really nice. That clash in ideology typically results in a lot of interesting dialogue. But if all the characters are assholes, there is no contrast. It’s just empty conflict, a lot of yelling and disagreeing with the same boring predictable tone. That sums up every single page of The Libertine.