Amateur Friday Submission Process (read – slightly new!): To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and finally, something interesting about yourself and/or your script that you’d like us to post along with the script if it gets reviewed. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Remember that 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: Drama
Premise: When a man involved in a fatal hit-and-run accident learns the victim is his brother’s wife, he must decide whether coming clean and appeasing his conscience is worth the risk of shattering his family.
About: Since the last time Recovery was up for AF consideration, back in November 2012, it’s undergone a page-one rewrite. The resulting draft garnered a quarterfinal placement in this year’s still active Page Awards, and I feel it’s ready for another shot at AF glory.
Writer: Harj Bains
Details: 90 pages
I don’t know why, but I see Joel Edgerton in this for some reason.
So what is a “page-one rewrite” (mentioned above in the About section) anyway? A page-one rewrite is when you scrap everything in your story and start anew. There are times where we write scripts that have inherent problems, and no matter how many times we rewrite them and rewrite them and rewrite them, it’s like adding a new shade of lipstick to a pig. It cleans’em up a little, makes them prettier. But the rewrites never seem to fix the underlying problem in the script.
Now most of the time when this happens, you eventually move on to the next script. At a certain point it just becomes so tiring trying to fix something you can’t figure out, that the best thing to do is to move on. But occasionally you have an idea that’s so good, or that you love so much, moving on isn’t an option. In these cases, where you refuse to give up, the best thing might be a page one rewrite. You see, one of the reasons it may be so hard to fix things is because you’re obsessed with some character or plotline or sequence that’s actually crippling your story. It made sense in that first draft. But as the script evolved and become something else, it doesn’t anymore. However, you’re so close to the material you can’t see what that troubling element is and therefore don’t know to eliminate it.
By starting over, by accepting that nothing in the previous script is necessary and you can take the idea anywhere you want again, you open up the potential of where the script can go NOW. Since today’s script is called “Recovery,” the proper analogy might be to see your script as a drug addict. And one day he wants to change. He wants to get off drugs. The problem is, all his friends are drug addicts too. It’s impossible for him to stop because he’s surrounded by drugs ALL THE TIME. It’s only when he eliminates those friends from his life that he can actually move forward and change.
Okay, enough with analogies. I’m not even sure Recovery is a true page-one rewrite. I just saw the author mention it and felt it was a good topic to bring up since we haven’t discussed it before. Now on to the script!
Recovery follows two 30-something brothers, Tommy and Daniel. Tommy is a functioning heroin addict. He’s got a job and everything, but he lives solely for his next high. Daniel is the brother who’s got his shit together. He’s got a nice job and a nice wife, Anna, who he loves with all his heart.
Well one morning, Anna wakes Daniel up because the treadmill isn’t working. He promised to fix it yesterday and she wants to get a run in before work. She asks him to please fix it but he’s too tired. He tells her to take a jog and he’ll fix it later today. He promises. She’s pissed but heads out for a jog.
In the meantime, Tommy, who’s exhausted coming off the high of one of his many shoot-ups, is forced to drive across town dead tired to sign a stupid form for work. On the way back, he’s falling asleep at the wheel, and wouldn’t you know it, there’s Anna running, and there’s Tommy not seeing her and BAM, he gruesomely slams into her.
Tommy’s awake now. At this point, he doesn’t know it’s Anna (we don’t know Tommy and Daniel are brothers yet, either). So he shoots off, freaking out and wondering how the hell he’s going to get his car fixed without someone reporting it. It’s a small town. If he’s not careful, the wrong people are going to know that the front of his car has a person-indent in the front, and then it’s only a matter of time before he goes to jail.
Not long after, Tommy is called over by his and Daniel’s parents. They’re all mourning the loss of Anna by a hit-and-run driver. Of course, they don’t know that their own blood, Tommy, was the hitter-and-runner. And it doesn’t help that Daniel is beating himself up over it. If he just would’ve taken the time to fix that damn treadmill, none of this would’ve happened. His wife would still be alive. Not to mention the fact that exercise is supposed to extend your life. What a lie that was.
After an elongated game of Tommy feeling awful as everyone around him curses this “anonymous” hit and run driver, Tommy decides to come clean. He tells Daniel that he did it. Daniel’s outraged at first, but realizes it was an accident. The event actually becomes the impetus for Tommy getting clean. He goes to rehab, even meets a girl he falls in love with, and a few months later he’s drug-free and ready to start a new life with this woman.
Uhhh, Daniel is NOT cool with that. His brother kills his wife, then gets a wife of his own out of it!!?? No, that’s not cool at all. Daniel’s rage takes him to the darkest of dark places, and we get the feeling he’s going to take care of this problem his own way. All of this is happening while detectives get closer and closer to finding out who hit Anna. But will they find out before Daniel decides to get revenge for his wife’s death?
I can see why you guys wanted me to read Recovery. Its first ten pages are kind of awesome, culminating in a brutal and memorable hit-and-run. But the rest of the script is kind of hit-or-miss. It’s actually quite the unorthodox story. It starts off as this thriller of Tommy trying to hide this dark secret, which is the section that had the most potential.
But then he actually tells his brother he did it. And when that happened, the story lost something. I mean, it was a brave choice. It was totally unexpected. And I love when writers take stories in an unexpected direction. But every choice must be the best choice for the story dramatically. It’s good to surprise the audience, but not if that surprise results in a loss of tension or conflict, which is what this choice did (in my opinion).
Harj tries to keep that tension up by cutting back to the detectives, who are trying to find the person who hit Anna. But there was something that didn’t quite work with that. We’re constantly reminded that if Tommy gets caught, he’s only going to jail for a year. In other words, the stakes aren’t very high.
The script ramps up a little towards the end when Daniel becomes enraged after finding out that Tommy’s getting married. We know that’s going to come to an explosive head. But that still left this big chunk in the middle of the script where the tension is non-existent.
Speaking of that middle, part of the problem is that Tommy’s girlfriend never felt real. Even now, 12 hours after reading the script, I can’t remember her name. She’s barely in a few scenes, and when it became clear to me what was going to happen (Tommy was going to fall for her and Daniel was going to get mad), I was disappointed. The girlfriend was a tool, a plot point. She was there to get Daniel mad. But she was never a REAL PERSON.
I see writers do this a lot. They need to create a plot element to advance the story, but they don’t make that element real. For this to work, we have to see Tommy FALL IN LOVE with this girl. We need long scenes showing these two losing themselves to one another. We need to give her her own hopes and dreams and problems and backstory so she feels like an actual person. Not just a plot point. Because the ending is based on this idea that (spoiler) Daniel’s going to kill Tommy for the love that he has and we don’t believe in this love. This moment needs to be TRAGIC. We have to die at the idea of this love being destroyed. But since we never get to know the girl, we don’t really care.
I think Recovery is an interesting script but it needs a little more meat. It’s only 90 pages long and it’s a drama. I always push for shorter scripts but dramas are typically the longest scripts out there because the genre DOES allow you to get into your characters more. And that requires more space and time. So this script should be at least 110 pages and those 20 extra pages should probably be dedicated to building the relationship between Tommy and his girlfriend into something more real. And making HER more real! I don’t think that’s going to fix everything. But it’s definitely going to give the script more weight. I wish Harj luck with it. ☺
Script link: Recovery
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Don’t just lay down an empty plot element. Every element in your story must feel real and authentic. If it doesn’t, we’ll see through the façade and know it’s only there for some plot reason. So with Tommy’s girlfriend, since she was never really explored as a character, we became keen to the fact that she was going to be used for something. And she was – Daniel’s motivation for revenge.
