Genre: Drama/Period
Premise: In Prohibition-era Kentucky, a moonshiner’s plan to save the family farm goes awry when his brother steals a prized dog from a local mobster.
Why You Should Read: Heck is an inventive retelling of Homer’s Trojan War epic. Instead of Trojans vs. the Greeks, my story takes place in 1920s Kentucky, pitting a family of moonshiners against a local crime boss and his Prohibition Agent brother. Part O Brother Where Art Thou and part Lawless, it’s an epic tale of bootlegging, boxing, and of course, a giant Trojan horse.
Writer: Chris Hicks
Details: 109 pages
I am going to propose the impossible.
The irrational.
The sensational!
I don’t know if you guys are even ready for what I’m about to say.
A moment of silence…………
Okay. Here it is. Is “Heck,” A John Wick prequel?
I know it sounds ridiculous. But let’s look at the author’s name. “Chris Hicks.” Hmmmmm… Hicks? Wicks? Hick? Wick? Notice any similarities?
What am I babbling on about?
Well, you see, both of these movies rely heavily on a dog. You could say both rely heavily on an outrageous dog plotline. Somehow, John Wick made its dog storyline work. Did Heck? Let’s find out together!
It’s Prohibition. No alcohol and all that. Heck makes the best moonshine in Kentucky. Not easy when you consider what’s happened to his family. His mom just died. His dad’s got a permanent broken heart. And his little brother, Perry, is a bit of a weirdo. Oh, and they’re four mortgage payments behind with the bank. They need to start making money fast.
Heck goes to the biggest client he can find, Matthias, a boxing manager and secret bar owner. Matthias wants to buy thousands of bottles of Moonshine from Heck. However, right after they strike a deal, Perry secretly steals Matthias’s cute little puppy. Why? Because he thinks it’s cute!
As soon as they get home, Heck has a fit. What are you doing stealing people’s dogs for?? He demands that Perry give it back. But Perry says no. Fine, Heck says. Wow, that was easy. It doesn’t take long for Matthias to find out his dog has been stolen, so he comes to Heck’s farm and demands it back. They say no. Furious, Matthias teams up with the dirty G-Man, Augie, to take Heck down any way possible. Oh, and if it wasn’t obvious, the deal is off.
This forces Heck to strike a deal with Apollo, a guy who runs an underground bar in the next county. Like, literally. They deliver the moonshine to this guy in underground caves. Unfortunately, Augie and Matthias round up a mob to ambush Apollo’s place and a lot of people are beat to a pulp.
Heck realizes that the only way he’s going to square this situation is to fight Matthias’s best boxer. While Heck ain’t too shabby in a ring, he’s no match for Beast Mode Gideon, Matthias’s guy. Gideon beats Heck to a pulp. It looks like Heck is going to lose the farm and go to prison. It will be up to Perry, who started all this, to come up with a plan to save his brother.
A couple of things I want to say right off the bat. I haven’t read “Homer” since high school. So I have no memory of what it’s about. And I don’t think it’s the best idea to write a script like O Brother Where Art Thou on spec. O Brother is 75% direction and 25% script. It’s too hard to convey semi-humorous offbeat tones on the page. It’s difficult for the reader to know just how funny something was meant to be and just how serious other things were meant to be. This is why these scripts are almost always a package deal with the writer and director being the same.
With that out of the way, how was this?
Heck was really well written. We can start there. Regardless of what you think of this script, it’s the embodiment of professional and easy to read. This isn’t even my jam and, still, my eyes were flying down the page.
However, the second the dog thing happened, my brain left my body. I felt suspended in confusion. Your brother steals a dog of the man who’s going to help you save your farm. And when said brother says he wants to keep it, you let him? How does that make sense?
Somebody might throw this back in my face if it’s a direct plotline from Homer. But even if it is, one of my pillars of screenwriting no-no’s is to NEVER HAVE shaky inciting incidents. The inciting incident is the entire reason the movie exists. So if it’s weak or murky or nonsensical, you’re building your story on a shaky foundation. Not to mention, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a inciting incident that was initiated BY our heroes. Inciting incidents are supposed to happen TO our heroes.
How this directly relates to this script is that a lot of people, like me, are going to say, throughout the movie, “Why don’t you just give the dog back?” It solves every problem. Or, if they’re not going to give the dog back, provide us with a convincing reason WHY they wouldn’t give it back. That explanation definitely never came in “Heck.”
Maybe Chris’s counter-argument would be that it’s supposed to be funny. And that’s my point about quirky humor. We’re not sure how much leniency on plot issues we’re supposed to allow because of humor. Am I just supposed to laugh at the glaring plot hole and go with it? Sorry but I can’t.
With all that said, the dialogue here is good. The structure is top-notch. The characters all have big personalities and therefore pop off the page. So it’s not like Heck doesn’t have anything going for it. But when you plop me down 100 years ago, you’re already at a disadvantage. It’s so not my jam. Therefore, I never quite saw this as anything other than a curiosity. I was interested but I was never invested. So as strong as the writing was, I can’t give it that ‘worth the read.’ I will say that the writer is worth keeping an eye on though. If Chris has got any other scripts set in present day that are more marketable, submit them to Amateur Offerings.
Oh, and one last thing. If Chris is doing a rewrite, I think it would be funny to give Apollo a dog and have Perry steal him too. I’m joking of course. But that would be funny.
Script Link: Heck
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Something every writer should take into consideration when they’re deciding what to write next is: Is this the kind of movie that excites people? Both the kind of people you need to get the movie made and the people who buy the tickets. Because I read a lot of scripts like this one, where I nod my head afterwards and say, “good job.” But the script doesn’t get me excited enough to tell other people about it.
What I learned 2: A fun easy way to spice up dialogue is to use role play. No, not that role play. You create a fun moment where the characters can address each other as something other than themselves. Remember that characters talking directly to each other about what’s in their head is the definition of on-the-nose dialogue. So you should always look for ways to play with the dialogue instead. This is one of the easiest ways.
