For the fully immersive 4-D experience, make sure to read today’s review on your commute to work!
Amateur Friday Submission Process: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script with your title, genre, logline, and finally, why I should read your script. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. 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: Sci-fi found-footage (although the writer prefers the term: “live streaming event”)
Premise: A trio of car-poolers who podcast their commute every morning come upon a mysterious van that begins defying the laws of physics. The longer they follow the van, the stranger and more suspicious it becomes.
About: Writer Bryan Stumpf is looking to either sell Commute outright or raise money to direct it himself.
Writer: Bryan Stumpf
Details: 90 pages
So Wednesday night, I was getting through the last of the pilot scripts in preparation for PILOT WEEK (which is next week. Yahooo!), and, not surprisingly, I was losing my sanity. I had to read so many scripts back to back that my eyeballs had courier font burned onto the retinas. But these moments are often the most enlightening as a reader. When you read so many scripts next to each other, you realize how few people actually write anything unique.
We’re all telling the same stories with the same characters, using the same writing style, with the same plot twists and the same endings. Sure, there are little differences here and there, but the majority of writers are rehashing their favorite movies in one form or another, copying their favorite writer’s style, instead of looking for new ideas and telling stories in new ways. So when one of those scripts does come around, it’s impossible NOT to notice. It’s like, “Oh, finally, something different.”
“Commute” is not a pilot. It’s a feature. But when I picked it up, I noticed right away that I hadn’t seen this idea before. First and foremost, we’re introduced to a new take on found footage. A video podcast commute. Okay, I’ll admit, it was a little weird. But it was so unique, I wanted to know how it would play out.
The man in charge of this podcast is Adam Earling, a 25 year old who works at a ski resort outside the city and therefore must make a long commute to work every day. He’s decided to create a commute podcast with two of his co-workers (cameraman Jorma and Tweet-Girl Dawn) to move the ride along faster, and it’s worked out pretty well. For a tiny podcast, they’ve amassed a substantial audience. Nobody’s going to confuse them for the Adam Corolla Podcast, but at least folks find them entertaining.
On this particular day, the commute seems to be going fine until a black van crashes into them, then drives off as if nothing happened. Curious (and let’s face it, because it’s the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to them on their commute) Adam starts following the fan. Strangely enough, the thing isn’t speeding away. Rather it seems… determined. Determined to reach its destination.
As Adam and crew document this strange event, they receive news updates that a huge irregular meteor shower hit last night. When Adam notices the wheels on the van seemingly skidding across the ground, he starts putting together a theory. What if this black van and those meteors were related somehow?
As the real-time event continues, Adam’s listeners tweet him with their opinions on what to do. Some say to engage the van, others say to stay away. But it’s what Adam, Jorma and Dawn hear on the news next that really changes the game. People are spotting these black vans all over the world. And just like this one, they’re barreling forward, knocking into cars, and continuing on.
Eventually, it becomes clear why the vans are acting so strange. They’re alien. Adam theorizes that each of them, then, is trying to get to a particular spot on the planet where they can “triangulate” a laser, allowing them to take out the whole damn planet. Adam figures that if you take out one link in the chain, you take out the whole chain. In other words, our podcasters are the only shot at saving the world. And because these vans seem to be indestructible, they’re going to have a hell of a time figuring out how to stop theirs.
Commute is a hard script to analyze. At first glance, it has a lot of good things going for it. It’s different. It takes chances. It reads fast. It’s short. There’s a clear goal. It builds. The stakes are sky high. It’s marketable. There are lots of mysteries. There are some fun sequences (like having to throw one of their cameras inside the van to see what’s inside).
Despite all this, when you’re reading Commute, something about it feels off. And I struggled to figure out what exactly was causing that feeling. One of the issues, I surmised, was the characters. They didn’t feel real enough. Yesterday we talked about flaws, inner conflicts, and vices. I barely saw any of that with these characters. And the one sort-of inner conflict happening with our hero, Adam, surrounded a race-car past that was too cheesy and on-the-nose to take seriously.
The way these characters interacted just never felt genuine, particularly early on, and that’s the time you need the reader to latch on to your characters the most, not pull away. I pulled away early and for that reason, I never became invested. I say this time and time again. We need to either fall in love with or become fascinated by your main characters right away so that we care for and root for them immediately. If we don’t, we’ll tune out before we get to the meat of the story.
But the big issue with Commute was that there were too many strange and unbelievable choices being made. Take the lack of cop cars for example. While the alien van isn’t doing anything “wrong” at first (besides hitting them), and because the world starts falling apart in the second half of the script, an argument could be made that there’d be no cops. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t envision a scenario where tons of cops weren’t following and trying to stop this thing.
Then there were strange things like a motorcycle podcast fan riding next to them, tweeting them his communication. A motorcyclist communicating by text? Then there was the fact that our characters became super-human due to their proximity to the alien van. Super-heroes? Then at one point, they realize the van is held together by a sort of gelatinous compound. So to destroy it, they start scooping parts of it out with their hands. Scooping?
Alien vans, a gelatinous construct, no cops, characters with super-powers, a motorcycle accomplice communicating via tweeting. At a certain point, there are just too many things for the reader to buy into. If you challenge a reader’s suspension of disbelief enough, sooner or later it’s going to break. That’s how I felt here. I mean it’s hard enough to buy into the fact that aliens are constructing vans. You’re asking a ton from your reader right there. So to keep laying more and more outrageous things on top of that? Like superpowers? You’re really pushing the envelope at that point.
With that said, there’s something to this idea. There were moments where I could see a movie here. But it needs to be stripped of all its outrageousness and weird choices, and approached from a more grounded point of view, not unlike the tone of War of the Worlds. Some really crazy shit happened in that movie. But the execution of the film was always straight-forward and realistic.
So, what about you guys? How was your commute?
Script link: Commute
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: There’s a moment early on in Commute where Kawasaki Karl (our motorcyclist) tells Adam (via tweet) to check his Youtube channel for some info on the meteors. Adam does, and we see that Kawasaki Karl does a show of his own called, “Rooftop Stoners.” During the video, we hear a meteor crash, seemingly the point of Karl’s request, but instead of cutting out there, the conversation shifts between Karl and his co-host to Adam. The two start discussing how Adam used to be this amazing race car driver until he got into this big accident. An accident he could’ve avoided if he hadn’t froze. Now to Bryan, our writer, this is a necessary moment. He wants to inform the reader that Karl used to race, as that will come into play later as he chases the alien van. But to us, it feels really obvious and on-the-nose and “let’s stop the movie so we can tell the audience Adam’s backstory.” This is an important lesson. It doesn’t matter how badly you have to get some exposition or backstory into your story. Until you can get it in in a way that’s invisible and doesn’t draw attention to itself, you haven’t tried hard enough. Because audiences will spot this kind of thing every time.
