Genre: Comedy
Premise: In the fast-rising sport of Bricklaying, an anti-doping agent and disgraced former champion must take down the champion’s former nemesis, who they suspect is using a bricklaying-enhancement drug known as “Brick Dust.”
Why You Should Read: Bricks of Glory was inspired by a real life event called the Bricklayer 500 which takes place in Vegas every year. They take the top 20 bricklayers from around the world and compete to see who can build the highest (and most structurally sound) brick wall in 60 minutes. A friend of mine’s husband won the Regional Competition in my area so I went to Vegas to watch the show and attended the World of Concrete convention as research. Man, what a trip. I mean they seriously treat this like a major sporting event! I find it so hilarious! So in my script, I completely exaggerate this and make it a much bigger, funnier, spectacle of a sport. Bricklayers use flair, like lighting their walls on fire and juggling bricks, and the competition is so fierce, they resort to taking performance enhancing drugs. I’ve put a lot of work into this script, even doing table reads with stand up comedians to help me punch up the jokes. But if you want to see what inspired it, here’s a video recap of the Bricklayer 500 which should sell it better than I ever could: https://youtu.be/zR69ZFdldH0
Writer: Alison Parker
Details: 103 pages
It’s been 20 years, but the sequel to one of my favorite movies ever – Braveheart – has FINALLY come out (The Outlaw King). Yes, the adventures of Robert the Bruce, starring Chris Pine, arrived on Netflix this morning. The film is stuck at 60% on Rotten Tomatoes. But keep in mind that most of those reviews came in before the director cut 20 minutes from the film after festival showings, massively streamlining it. I’ll be watching Braveheart 2 this weekend and reviewing it Monday.
Today, we’re taking on one of my favorite AO comedy premises of 2018. I’m really excited about this since comedy gets a bad rap on this site. This sounds like a truly fun idea. And while kooky sports comedies have fallen out of favor in recent years, it’s a genre that can easily get hot again. Will Bricks of Glory be the script to do it? Let’s find out!
In the 1960s, when sports like baseball and football grew to record-breaking ratings, greedy sports CEOs looking to take advantage of their fans began charging unheard of sums for balls. The strategy backfired, and within a couple of years, fans completely abandoned ball-centric sports, sending all major leagues into bankruptcy. All of this allowed for non-ball-related sports to flourish, which is how bricklaying became the biggest sport in the U.S.
It’s now 1987 and the star of the sport is 27 year old Wayne Walker, whose theatrical style and killer catch-phrase (“Get laid!”) made him an instant celebrity. His number one fan is his young daughter, Harley, who couldn’t be more proud of her dad. That is until it’s discovered Wayne is using steroids to win! The disgraced champion is stripped of his trophies and given a 20 year ban from the sport!
Cut to 2007 and Harley now works for the World Anti-Doping Agency. Harley is given a task from the president of the agency himself. There’s a new super-powerful steroid being used in bricklaying called “Brick Dust.” The president asks Harley to reconnect with her estranged dad, get him to enter the Bricklayer 500, and exploit his contacts to identify who’s using the steroid so they can shut them down. Along the way, Wayne figures out what’s going on, but forgives his daughter, then enlists her as his bricklaying assistant. The two then team up to try and win the Bricklayer 500 together!
From the moment bricks started getting laid in Bricks of Glory, things were uneven. Alison invents a world where balls become too expensive and all sports collapse, paving the way for bricklaying to become the biggest sport in the world. My issue with this is that you don’t need it. You could popularize bricklaying without having to mention other sports. By introducing this loopy mythology, you rewrite the history books. I mean, we’re supposed to believe that since the 1980s, there has been no basketball, baseball, football, or soccer in the world. I know this is a comedy but that’s some MAJOR buy-in for a premise that didn’t need it.
From there, we have several time issues. The first part of the movie takes place in 1987. A featured scene in that section has our hero being tazed. But police didn’t have tazers in 1987. We then jump forward 20 years, where the rest of the movie takes place. So this movie takes place in 2007? That feels like a really odd year to set a mainstream comedy in if it doesn’t need to take place in that year for the plot to work. If you’re going to set a movie close to modern day, wouldn’t it be smarter to just set it in modern day?
Just to take you into the mindset of the seasoned reader, I’m assuming one of two things at this point. One, that the script is old and the writer never updated the timeline. Or two, they wanted Wayne’s heyday to be in the 80s because it’s funnier than the 90s. They also didn’t want Wayne to be too old when his ban was over, therefore choosing a 20 year ban (making him 47) as opposed to 30 years (making him 57) and accepted the year 2007 as the story year because they didn’t want to do the hard work to figure out how to get us to 2018.
I’ve told you this a million times already but I’ll say it again. If a script starts sloppy, it’s almost impossible for it to recover. I’ve already made so many judgements by this point that I’m nowhere near where the writer needs me to be – which is inside the story, not questioning anything. Again, I realize this is comedy. You can’t apply too much logic. But I also know that comedy works best when it’s simple. And it seems like way too much effort was put into an opening that could’ve easily introduced this premise in a simple way. The concept of bricklaying as a sport alone is funny! You don’t need a bunch of nonsense surrounding it.
As for the plot, I liked that the story was built around a family relationship. I think that’s smart. It grounds the story. It allows us to connect to the characters, as we’re rooting for this broken relationship to be fixed. I just found the whole steroid thing to be uninspired. Who cares about steroids in sports these days? Nobody. But there’s a way bigger screenwriting-related issue at play here. When you come up with a unique concept, you want the problems that arise to be related specifically to that concept. In other words, steroids can be applied to a hundred sports. What’s unique about bricklaying?
I like the idea that people are cheating in the sport. So maybe they suspect that the villain is using an illegal type of brick that’s 10% lighter or something. Or he’s using some caulk (is that what it’s called) that’s 50% stickier, allowing him to stack bricks quicker. Use your imagination. But steroids? I feel like I’m stuck in a time-warp with that storyline.
Bricklaying as a sport is a funny premise. Let’s not overcomplicate it. Set the story in the present. Wayne has been the sport’s poster child ever since videos of him bricklaying went viral a year ago. He’s recently gone Hollywood and isn’t doing the work (think Ronda Rousey). This has allowed a new young Justin Bieber like phenom to gain popularity (who beats him in the regionals). With the Bricklayer 500 coming up, everyone’s picking sides. Use the Rocky 4 structure. Wayne fears that he’s too old to hang with these young guns (which is funny since the sport has only been around for a year and he’s 28), and has to train with the original bricklayer who started it all, go “back to his roots” so to speak, to defeat this young upstart.
Script link: Bricks of Glory
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Times, ages, and dates. Readers are really good at picking up weird time-related issues in scripts. Which is relevant because timing is always changing in scripts. You might decide in your third draft, for example, that your hero’s brother should be 15, not 12. But then you forget to change the age later in the story, when you’ve jumped forward 5 years. You introduce this older version of the brother as 17 (12+5) as opposed to 20 (15+5). When you forget to do this stuff, it looks sloppy. It feels like you’re not on top of things. And that’s how I felt here. Just the fact that the story randomly takes place in 2007 is bizarre to me. And most readers are going to notice that. As annoying as it is, get your times, ages, and dates sorted out before you send your scripts anywhere. It seems like a small thing. But readers tend to judge this stuff harshly.
