Genre: College Rom-Com/Heist
Premise: To get the girl of his dreams, a spoiled momma’s boy enlists the help of a feisty cat burglar who needs help blending in with their elitist law-school classmates, but her criminal antics put both of their careers at risk.
Why You Should Read: I like to combine genres that don’t often appear together, and so American Pie and Ocean’s Eleven collide to form The Cat Burglar. I also like to create stories with two polar opposite main characters who require each other’s help in some sort of symbiotic relationship that forces them both to overcome their flaws, so here we have a spoiled timid young man who is too afraid to talk to the girl he likes, and a stubborn female cat burglar who is trying to blend in with the rich and wealthy and funding that lifestyle by stealing from them. He can help her with her problem and she can help him with his, but because of their contrasting personalities there are fireworks and much needed drama. At least that’s the plan! Right now I’d love to hear the wisdom of the SS community. Thanks in advance.
Writer: Paul Clarke
Details: 100 pages
The Rom-Com.
Is it dead?
Most seem to think so.
However, if there is a space for it, this is where it would be, in that 16-22 demographic. Either a rom-com set in high school or a rom-com set in college. And maybe that segment just out of college, since there’s some inherent conflict in dating in the real world for the first time.
Paul Clarke won last week’s Amateur Offerings rather handily and continues to be one of the strongest contenders come Amateur Offerings Weekend. It makes me want to have a Super Amateur Offerings Weekend, where we get the perennial AO All-Stars to all submit their latest script on the same weekend. That could be fun. Let me know if that’s something you’d be interested in in the comments and maybe we could set it up. Also, who would be in it?
Anyway, how is Paul’s latest? Let’s find out.
19 year-old George isn’t exactly a loser… eh, check that. He is a loser. The Stanford College freshman still lives at home and spends his days climbing the tree in his backyard and taking pervy pictures of his beautiful neighbor Julie, who he used to go to grade school with. While George’s alpha-male father is trying to prep him for a job at his law firm, George would rather become a nature photographer.
Across town we meet Alice, a fellow student at Stanford who doesn’t have the family financial backing that George has. So, being the entrepreneur that she is, she burglarizes homes. And one day, she burglarizes George’s home, stealing that juicy multi-thousand dollar camera he uses. The one that still has a memory chip in it with pictures of Julie. Uh-oh.
When George recognizes Alice at school (through the sounds she made when she robbed him that night), the two face off. Actually, that’s not accurate. George is such a spineless wimp that he lets Alice dictate the negotiation. It starts off as, “I’ll return your stuff and not tell anyone you’re a peeper if you don’t tell anybody what I do,” but later turns into, “I’ll help you get this Julie girl if you get your dad to hire me as an intern at his law firm.”
Alice holds up her end of the bargain, beating George into submission until he asks Julie out. But George’s evil father is a tough nut to crack. He doesn’t hand out favors easily. So George lies to Alice, telling her she’s got the job, despite that not being the case. Meanwhile, George gets a date with Julie to the ball, and Alice convinces George to help her scope out her last big job, the one that’s going to fund the rest of her college. How is this all going to end? Check out the script to find out!
As is always the case, when you read a Paul Clarke script, you know you’re dealing with someone who understands the craft.
The problem is that Paul’s fighting an invisible demon. And he doesn’t know it.
The single biggest issue with romantic comedies is that their structure is too obvious. We’re going down the same beats we’ve seen time and time again. And that was prevalent here. I remember being 60 pages in and thinking, do I even need to finish this? I already know what’s going to happen.
The only way to fight this is through the characters. If the characters are special, the reader doesn’t care as much about the Save The Cat structure. And when you look back at all of your favorite romantic comedies, that’s what sticks out the most. It’s that you loved those characters.
Which leads us to the obvious question – are the characters in The Cat Burglar special? To answer, I’m going to put each character through the Scriptshadow-Special-O-Meter, which rates character specialness from 1-10. Ready? Beep-beep-boooop-chuckuchuchuchchucah…
George: 3 out of 10
Alice: 5 out of 10
Let’s look at each rating in more detail. My big issue with George was that he was suuuuuccchhh a wimp. He was so spineless and so weak and so afraid to do anything… that I didn’t root for him. I was actually thinking, this guy deserves to fail. I mean he doesn’t do ANYTHING. In one of the biggest moments in the plot – him needing to ask Julie out – he doesn’t do it. It’s done off-screen by Alice.
Now it’s true that you usually have to start your rom-com male lead in a place of weakness so that they can arc to a place of greatness. But they can’t have NOTHING going for them. I’ve found that the best way to make a character like this pop is to MAKE THEM FUNNY. You see it with Ben Stiller in There’s Something About Mary. You see it in all the Judd Apatow rom-coms. If they’re not funny, we feel like we wasted our money.
Alice is a much better character. But Paul doesn’t push her enough, and when measured against similar characters, she seems fairly average. I’ll give you an example from Wednesday’s script – June from The Great Nothing. If you go back and read June’s dialogue and you read Alice’s dialogue here, you’ll notice that June’s dialogue is flashier, more clever, more untamed. Alice has some nice lines and moments, but not enough of them. This character type really needs to stand out. And as written, she dances somewhere between okay and good. “Okay” and “Good” are fine for compliments. Not so much for readers wanting to pass on your work.
Also, this script needs to be more populated. It’s too isolated on Alice and George. These two go to a college and yet we never meet anyone from college (save for a professor – sort of). When you do that – when the bulk of your characters’ lives revolve around one place (college) – and yet we never see them engaging with other people from that place, something feels off. It feels like pages are missing. Combine that with the fact that George lives at home, and it’s almost like the whole college thing is a lie. So I would definitely add more college time and more college characters (students or professors) to this.
Finally, the plot points here were too artificial. Whenever you’re resting on the “Let’s make a deal” plot-forwarding technique, you’re asking for trouble. And it seemed like every 20 pages, the two were striking a new “I’ll help you if you help me” deal. I’ll help you get a date if you get me a job. I’ll help you learn how to dance if you help me scope out this place. It’s too contrived.
So when you add all of that up, the script was pleasant and well-written, but it wasn’t pushing the boundaries in any one area. It needed some unexpected plot turns or some wilder characters or for Alice to be a bigger character (crazier maybe). You know what it is. It’s like Paul doesn’t want to be offensive. He wants to write a safe sanitized rom-com. And I don’t think that’s the right way to go. He mentions American Pie as an inspiration. One of the reasons American Pie was a breakout hit was because it pushed boundaries. It was racy for its time. For a movie about stealing, this felt way too safe.
Script link: The Cat Burglar
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I don’t think enough writers ask themselves the question, “Why would STUNNING MODEL GIRL A want to be with LOSER WEAK PATHETIC MALE CHARACTER A?” Cause if you don’t have an answer to that question, then the only reason the girl goes for the guy is because the writer needs it to happen so his story works. I had no idea why Julie was interested in George at all here. It didn’t feel honest. And in a movie about relationships, you have to be honest with why your characters are doing what they’re doing.
