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Genre: Drama/Action/Period/Western
Premise: (from writer) When a woman is kidnapped in Texas during the Dust Bowl, her husband embarks on a harrowing odyssey where he’s forced to confront danger in the forms of Mother Nature and man and also the mysterious past he buried years ago.
Why you should read: (from writer) Who am I? I’m 28 years old, live in Boston and have a day job in PR. For the last several years I’ve been moonlighting , weekending and every-free-fucking-second-I-have-ing as a writer. I’m hell bent on breaking in, by any means necessary. Anyway, back to the script. Sunny Side of Hell is set during a time where most us who frequent SS wouldn’t have lasted a week — the Dust Bowl. My grandparents actually lived through it and their stories set the backdrop for SHOH. The script, although a first draft, has a page-turning plot, interesting characters, compelling themes and a couple twists and turns to keep everyone locked in.
Writer: John Eidson
Details: 118 pages
Scriptshadow pick for Sam: SCOTT EASTWOOD!
Oh boy. Not a period piece. When I see 1 am and “period piece” on the same computer screen, a part of my script-reading mojo dies. It’s not that I don’t like period pieces. Two of my top 5 favorite unproduced scripts are period pieces. It’s just that when you’re stuck reading a bad period piece, it’s a lot worse than being stuck reading a bad present piece. They’re slower. They’re over-described. They’re mired in that drab “history lesson” snore-y fashion.
BUT! But when they’re good, they’re good. And you know what I’ve found? I’ve found that the writers of period pieces, on average, are usually better writers than their contemporary cohorts. I know that sort of contradicts what I just said, but hear me out. When someone wants to write a period piece, they’re usually a pretty smart guy. Most history buffs are knowledgeable folks. So there tends to be more depth to their work than the average script. Whereas a lot of contemporary writers who have more marketable concepts tend to write more from a “I like movies, so I can do it too” perspective. They don’t have that same appreciation for how difficult it is to create an imaginary world. So there isn’t as much attention paid to depth and detail.
So if we could somehow MARRY these two types of writers into a high concept detail-specific super cyborg writer… why, we could print money. Hmm, a cyborg writer. Now that’s an idea. I’m gonna look into that. But in the meantime, let’s take a look at John Eidson’s script. We’ll see if he’s one of those rare writers that can make a period piece fly.
Everything’s bigger in Texas. Like dust storms in the 1930s. Yup, try to plant an orange tree back then and it’ll be more like Tropican’ta than Tropicana, if you know what I mean. You see, before there were sharknados? There were dustnados. And maybe they didn’t have Great Whites doing 360s inches from your face, but if you ever got some dust in your eye? Well, shoot. You weren’t going to be opening that eye until AT LEAST tomorrow morning.
35 year-old husband Sam is trying to make the best of a situation that’s looking increasingly dire. You can’t grow crops in dust. So he and his wife Hannah are looking at all options in the survival game. One of those options is to take a big hunk of money from the town judge, Reginal Barron (who also happens to be Hannah’s father), and move west, where they haven’t figured out how to screw up crop fields yet.
Sam would rather starve than take handouts from Asshole Von Barron, whom he figures is enacting some scheme to separate him from his wife. So he tells him to dust off. That whole skirmish becomes secondary, however, when a day later Hannah is kidnapped! Turns out someone wants their brother out of jail, and they figure they’ll use the judge’s daughter for a trade.
Sam works with Barron to do the trade, but when he gets to the drop-point, the only wife waiting for him is a couple of smith and wessons! This is the kind of three-way I don’t want any part in! Bang bang. Bang some more, and somehow everybody’s dead except for Sam. So Sam keeps following Hannah’s trail, willing to go through hell or swirling dust to make sure the “death til you part” part of his vows doesn’t happen yet.
Along the way, Sam runs into a stampede of jackrabbits (not kidding), a sickly leatherface like family (sorta kidding), and some lesbian cannibals (definitely not kidding). In the end, he’ll learn the truth about his wife, and (spoiler) have to team up with his mortal enemy to take down the big bad shocking puppeteer of this farce of a kidnapping.
Okay, I’ve watched Miley Cyrus’s “We Can’t Stop” video, so I can safely say that I’ve seen everything. But Sunny Side of Hell is like Miley Cyrus’s long lost screenplay cousin. I mean, this is one weird little script. Case in point. I’ve never seen a jack-rabbit stampede crashing a 1930s motorcycle and turning our protagonist into road goo before. So Eidson gets a point for that.
But man, I mean, as for the rest, I don’t know where to stop. Because I can’t stop. And we won’t stop. I mean, know where to start. START. No, I’m not twerking right now.
So here’s the thing with this script. It’s very well-written. When you’re writing a period piece, you have to establish mood. And you do that by crafting words in a pleasingly descriptive way. A.K.A. Unlike that sentence I just wrote. Eidson is really good with description. There are a lot of paragraphs like these: “Golden stalks of wheat swaying gently from side to side, set against a great pale blue sky. The scorching sun roasts the fragile stalks.” – It’s really the perfect balance. It’s not over-described. It’s accurately described, and doesn’t give us any extra words or sentences we don’t need. That’s what I like. I don’t want the writing to be too flashy. I like it to be invisible, with just enough depth and imagery to place me in the world.
Ditto with the dialogue, which was consistently authentic. I mean, I could pick a hundred lines out of this script that sounded just like this one: “Lots a that goin’ on these days. Dust storms scaring folks outa’ here faster than a bee-stung stallion. Good for you fellers though I suppose?” That sounds to me like a real Texan from 1930s middle-of-nowhere, right?
But just like everything in this script, where there was a positive, it was coupled with a negative. There were sooooo many errors in here, and that’s WITH the “newer version” Eidon sent me. I’m not sure there’s a single correct usage of “your” in here. “Sees” is written as “see’s” for some reason. And there were just a lot of mistakes like that. So this beautiful writing was constantly being pulled down by silly mistakes.
As for the story, I have to admit I wasn’t sure what Eidon was doing for awhile. We start off with a clear goal – Sam’s wife’s been kidnapped. He must go after her. However, it’s as if the immediacy and importance of that goal are constantly thrown out the window in favor of these strange stops along the way. I have no idea why a 15 page chunk was dedicated to this strange sickly band of folks holed up in their mansion. It just felt like a completely random diversion. Ditto the lesbian cannibals.
After awhile, I began to wonder if what Eidon was trying to do was use this forum as a sort of cinematic postcard for the Dust Bowl. Because showing the scorched fields and the sickly families, at a certain point, became more important than our main character’s pursuit of his kidnapped wife. And while I sometimes found these people interesting, in the back of my head I’m going, “Why the hell is he hanging out with these people when his wife is in danger of being murdered at any minute?”
In addition to that, Eidon telegraphed his twist way too clearly. Going to be some southern spoilers here. By having the rift between Sam and Barron so out in the open and obvious, in combination with Sam showing up at the drop point only to find out it was a set-up, I mean it was pretty obvious to me at that point that Barron was the one setting him up. Yet another 60 pages go by until we’re told this. In the next draft, I’d advise Eidon to make Barron much more subtle, or maybe make him the opposite of how he is now – overly nice, so we don’t suspect him. Because that twist is supposed to be a big moment, and we were way ahead of it.
Despite all that, there’s definitely something here, if not with this particular script, then with the writer. There are two questions I ask myself after I finish a script in order to determine how I REALLY feel about the screenplay 1) Do I want to push this up the ladder (pass it on to people)? And if not, then 2) Do I want to read what this writer writes next? In this case, I definitely want to read what Eidson writes next. But right now, he’s not there yet. He needs to work on focusing his narrative and not losing sight of the plot. This drifted too far off the main road too many times, and in the process, got stuck in the dust. But the great thing about writing is you learn something with every script you write. Hopefully this only makes Eidson stronger.
Script link: Sunny Side of Hell
SCRIPT
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
WRITER
[ ] still figuring out basic English
[ ] needs to write a lot more scripts
[x] someone to keep an eye on
[ ] this guy should already be a pro
[ ] the next coming of Aaron Sorkin
What I learned: Guys guys guys. I can’t stress this enough. Please send your best stuff the first time out. When you e-mail a day later and say, “Here’s the new one. Don’t use the last one,” I die a little inside. Because I don’t understand why you didn’t make it perfect the first time. You’re basically admitting that you didn’t meticulously make sure everything was perfect the first time out, which is what you need to do! If you’ve done a major rewrite, that’s different. But whenever you’re submitting a draft of a script, make sure it’s “the one.” And remember that I’m SUPER LENIANT about this compared to the rest of the industry, who probably will delete you forever if you try and pull that stunt.
What I learned 2: There’s this new thing being done in scripts that I don’t know if I’m on board with. When a line or two of description interrupts a person speaking, and that same person speaks again, the writer doesn’t include the name above that second chunk of dialogue. So it’ll look like this (my apologies for not being able to format it correctly).
JOE
I was racing for years, Mac. YEARS I say. But it wasn’t until I got the cancer that I realized how much I loved cycling. It’s funny how that is, right? How you don’t know what you got until it’s gone? But that’s when they hit me with the whopper. It was ass cancer. Ass cancer. I would never be able to sit on a motorcycle again.
Mac looks at Joe before finally reaching over and giving him a hug. It’s emotional for both of them.
Maybe if I had got more of these from Mom, I never would’ve got the ass cancer. Never would’ve got it…
So the name “JOE” should be above the line that starts with “Maybe…” but in this new format people are using, they don’t do it. Does this make it easier to read? That’s debatable. One less name to ingest means possibly. The thing is, whenever I see that, I THINK about it. And that’s the problem. I mentally stop for a second and THINK about how the writer’s using this unorthodox device, which takes me out of the story for a second. And as a writer, your job is to NEVER let your reader out of your spell.
