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Genre (from writer): Horror/Survival
Premise (from writer): Deep winter in Civil War Era Missouri – A Union Deserter, a Priest and an Assassin must fight for survival when they are stranded in the wilderness and hunted by a terrible Sasquatch.
Why You Should Read (from writer): Liar. Coward. Judge is a script that has been written out of frustration as much as ambition. As a conscious reply to those horror scripts that turn a blind eye to character, theme and subtext it is a pitch black descent into madness that treats the Sasquatch myth with rare seriousness. It is a savage horror with a truly unique setting that is driven not by the relentless movement from jump scare to gore gross-out but by the development of characters. — Most of all though you should read Liar. Coward. Judge because it doesn’t just ask that cliché question; “who will survive?” but wants you to ask yourself; “does anyone deserve to?”
Writers: Mark and Christopher Webster
Details: 109 pages
Okay, I’m going to bust out a sports analogy today because it’s been awhile since I’ve done so. I am a sad supporter of the abysmal excuse for a football franchise known as the Chicago Bears. My poor stumbling team is 3-5 in the standings, a far cry from what many predicted would be a successful season.
A lot of people have come up with reasons why the Bears are so terrible, but one in particular has stuck with me. “They have no identity,” an analyst pointed out. “Look at the New England Patriots,” he continued. “They’re going to sling the ball around on offense and put up a lot of points. Or the Baltimore Ravens. They’re going to play physical smash-mouth defense and win tight low-scoring games. Even the old Bears had an identity. They were going to run the ball to draw out the clock, keep the score close, then win the turnover battle.”
This Bears team has no identity. Nobody’s really sure what they’re trying to do.
I think this need for an identity can be transferred over to movies as well. As readers (or audience members) we demand that a film have some kind of identity. We want to know what we’re getting into. This is usually measured by genre. Horror, thriller, crime-drama, action-adventure. But it can also encompass a certain type of story. The “home invasion” movie, for example.
While I was reading “Liar Coward Judge,” I started to realize that I didn’t know what the movie was. I didn’t know its identity. It wasn’t exactly a horror film. It wasn’t exactly a thriller. I’ve seen movies where a town is threatened by a beast. This wasn’t that. I’ve seen movies where a group of people are trapped inside a space, hunted by a monster. This wasn’t that.
The more I read of “Liar Coward Judge,” the less clear I was on what kind of movie I was reading.
The premise for “Liar Coward Judge” starts out like a bad joke. “A priest, an assassin, and a rapist walk into the woods.” Of course, it’s a little more complicated than that. The year is 1870, after the Civil War has ended, and an assassin has been hired by a Confederate Commander to kill a man named Matthew Jefferson, a rapist and a killer.
Meanwhile, we meet a Union war deserter, who happens upon a church. Back then, even if you were doing bad things, the rules were that churches were sanctuaries. Once inside, nobody could hurt you. So the deserter finds a church, where he meets our priest, and also this Matthew Jefferson fellow.
The next morning, Jefferson is gone, but a new man arrives. Our assassin! Once he realizes our duo knows Jefferson, he forces them to head into the woods and find him. They don’t go far before finding Jefferson, who’s hanged himself.
It would seem that the mission is over, except that they run into some huge monster-type-thing that’s killing everyone in the forest. They become an impromptu team, running from this evil beast, all the while trying to find their way out of the forest and to safety.
Does a movie like Interstellar have an identity? Should it have one?
So let’s get back to that question. Does a script need an identity? An argument can be made that if you want to write something unique, you want to AVOID an identity, right? I mean what is the identity of Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar?” Or Charlie Kaufman’s, “Being John Malkovich?”
It’s a fair argument but, as always, the further you walk off the beaten path, the more likely it is you’ll get lost. And somewhere along the way, “Liar Coward Judge” got lost.
It’s interesting that Mark and Christopher bring up character as their focus here, because I think, after the identity problem, that’s where the bulk of the problems lie. There’s this belief that if you’re handling your characters in a serious manner, you’re somehow creating a compelling character piece. And you do feel an intensity behind each of our character’s motives in “Liar Coward Judge.”
But strangely enough, I didn’t sense depth to any of the characters. They were all surface-level people. A priest who’s a dedicated priest. An assassin who’s a mean assassin. A deserter who’s a coward.
The best characters tend to be dynamic. Bad people who have good qualities and good people who have bad qualities. That unexpectedness adds a rich extra layer to the character that makes them far more interesting to watch. Think of one of the most popular characters in the history of cinema – Batman. He’s a good person, but he’s not above doing bad things to push his agenda. We don’t see any of that subtlety here. With some minor exceptions, everyone here can be taken at face value all the time.
The Walking Dead and Lost are two shows that were masterful at this. You’d think a character was bad (Locke), only to find out you were wrong, only to LATER find out you may have been right. As I watch more TV, I’m starting to see that the best shows do exactly this. They make you wonder who a character is for awhile. You have to work to find out their true colors. Here, the true colors are established right away and never change.
The Deserter had the most potential to be a cool character. He was the one we knew the least about. And there was an indication that he had some secrets. But alas, none of these secrets ever came to light. He was as straightforward a coward as they get.
I have a feeling the Websters locked into these archetypes with the very intention of exploring them at face value. A coward as a coward. Which is why we don’t get any surprises here. While that sounds good in theory, sometimes you have to abort your original intentions if they’re not working. Because they were so obvious, these characters stopped being interesting (to me) around page 20. To keep them exciting, we needed them to evolve over the next 90 pages. But they never did.
Also, when your movie focuses on a small group, it’s important that each character be different from the others. The way they talk, the way they act, the choices they make, must all be unique to them, so you get the most conflict out of the interactions in the group. Strangely, everyone here was pretty similar, especially the priest and the deserter, who both just wanted to get the hell out of here. The assassin was a little different, but honestly, not much.
The thing I kept wondering was, why don’t we put this square in the middle of the Civil War (instead of afterwards) and place one hardcore Confederate and one hardcore Union in the group. These foes, who hate everything the other stands for, must now team up (with the priest or an altogether new character) to defeat this Sasquatch.
Finally, there’s the “likability” factor. The Websters point out in their “WYSR” that you’ll wonder, while reading this, if any of these characters deserve to survive. As is implied by that statement, nobody here was likable. A character doesn’t HAVE to be likable for the audience to care about them, but it’s a lot harder to keep the audience on your side with unlikable characters than with likable ones. Indeed, I didn’t care if any of these three lived or died, due to all of them exhibiting annoying or unlikable qualities.
Look, I love Sasquatches. I remember being fascinated by Sasquatches as a kid. So I think there’s a movie to be made where a Sasquatch is featured. But the exploration of the Sasquatch here is secondary to the exploration of the characters. Normally, that would be good, IF the characters warranted the scrutiny. These characters aren’t interesting enough, likable enough, or unique enough to handle the spotlight of the story. I would intensify the involvement of the Sasquatch in the movie, then go back to the drawing board with the characters. Make them deeper, more dynamic, with more secrets, and make them truly different from one another so there’s more conflict. Good luck. ☺
Screenplay link: Liar Coward Judge
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned 1: Face value is a bad thing. Just like in real life, you shouldn’t be able to take your characters at face value. There should be layers there. There should be more going on underneath the surface. Obviously, there will be exceptions to this, but for the most part, a character who can be taken at face value is a boring character.
What I learned 2: Your main characters must evolve over the course of the story. You can do this in a number of ways. You can reveal secrets about their past that change our perception of them (someone we thought was good ends up being a rapist). You can present them one way (a coward) only to later have them act the opposite (be brave). A character can learn something over the course of the story that grows their confidence (Neo in The Matrix). A great movie to see all this in action with is Pitch Black. Watch how each character grows into something different from what you originally perceived. I saw the characters in “Liar Coward Judge” staying pretty much the same from opening to closing credits. That led to me being bored with them pretty quickly.
