Genre: Crime Drama/Action
Logline (from writer): When a routine prison transfer turns into a precarious hostage situation at a rural gas station & grill, a curmudgeonly small-town sheriff on the cusp of retirement must team up with a hardened Native American inmate to dodge gunfire and keep each other alive as a rebellious pack of insubordinates seek to finish off the ‘old guard.’
Why You Should Read: Here’s what the Blacklist’s story analyst had to say about my script: “The story is rife with conflict and remains engaging from beginning to end, and the dialogue is really strong. The relatively contained setting also makes this a more affordable film to produce – especially considering the amount of action – which can open up wider range of potential financiers. And, the best crime dramas can absolutely draw large audiences; this is a very commercial film.”
I feel like it’s ‘almost there’; it’s been read by some reputable companies (like Screen Gems, Blumhouse, WWE Studios, etc.), and it’s helped me get some of my other scripts in a few reading piles on the strength of my writing voice, but thus far, no one’s pulled the trigger and said ‘Yes, I’d like to option this’.
It’s a little different (which can be refreshing in a genre like crime drama / action); it borrows more cues from movies like ‘The Breakfast Club’ than it does from movies like ‘Die Hard’. I want to keep the emphasis on the characters in a way that isn’t boring, in the sense that ‘The Breakfast Club’ isn’t primarily a movie about a bunch of kids trying to sneak out of detention (although they do, in fact, sneak out of the library at one point). Would love any and all feedback from the Scriptshadow universe. Thanks in advance for your consideration!
Writer: Trevor Lanz
Details: 104 pages
Usually, after I finish reading the Amateur Friday winner, I know exactly what I’m going to say. But this one was different. The script was well-written. It was coated with that professional screenwriter sheen. But it wasn’t landing with me the way I needed it to. So I went back to the comments to see what you guys thought, and that helped.
The conclusion I came to is that there’s something a little too comfortable about the execution. While I never knew exactly where the story was going, I had a good idea. And that’s because the plot never evolved that much. A big reason for this was that we’re sitting in the same spot for 50 pages – two characters behind a truck. That’s hard to make work, even for a 1 Mil Per Assignment screenwriter.
The Last Shot follows 76 year old diabetic sheriff Chuck Massey on his last day of work. Chuck plans to sit back, listen to the background noise of the phone ringing every 90 minutes, then call it a career.
Unfortunately, the state police call in to ask Chuck and his sketchy deputy, Travis, to watch a transferred prisoner for 30 minutes while the driving team has their mandated lunch break in their town.
So Chuck and Travis head over to The Last Stop diner, where our transfer truck is having lunch, and wouldn’t you know it, four bad men – Snipes, Kyle, Big Pabi, and J-Lo – are there to kill the prisoner being transferred, a Native American named Johnny, who Chuck ironically put in prison a decade ago.
Chuck is able to stave off the bad guys and save Johnny from the initial kill, but now the bad guys and Deputy Travis – who it turns out was working with them all along – are inside with a dozen hostages. Travis yells out at his boss that he’s going to start killing hostages unless he can kill Johnny, who we find out is going to rat out a bunch of drug dealers.
Chuck and Johnny then spend the entire day in a stand-off with the crew, hiding behind the transfer truck, and trying to come up with a plan so that Crazy Travis doesn’t keep killing people. Eventually, it’s “shit or get off the pot” time, they charge in, violence ensues, and they’re able to kill Evil Travis.
However, now that the bad guys are taken care of, Chuck and Johnny’s alliance is over. Put plainly, that means Johnny doesn’t need Chuck’s help anymore. Will he continue on with Chuck to court? Or will he kill him and run free?
So yeah, I can tell you where this script ran into trouble with me.
It was about 20 pages into Chuck and Johnny sitting behind that truck. I’ll tell you why. When you’re staying with two characters for that long, the audience needs to understand what the conflict is between those characters that needs to be resolved. We need this because these characters are the story within the story. Their “end point” is essentially the climax of the film. So if I don’t know what it is they’re trying to come to an agreement on, then the story has no direction.
I never knew what that was with these two. I’m not saying the writer didn’t know. But I didn’t. And if I don’t have that, then I’m just listening to two people talk for 50 pages. And that’s hard for a writer to keep entertaining.
I’ll give you a popular relationship example of what I mean. Iron Man and Spider-Man. What are they always going on about? Spider-Man thinks he’s ready. Iron Man is trying to explain to him that it takes time. That’s their dynamic in Homecoming. That’s their dynamic in Infinity War. Wherever they go, everything comes back to that conversation. And so I always knew what it was they needed to resolve.
Plus, I just don’t think it’s a good idea to put two characters in that limited of a location for that long. You’re making things so hard on yourself as a writer. This script needed a couple of more plot twists in the second act. And it needed a couple more location changes for those two as well.
I mean I love how confident Trevor was that he thought he could get away with this. But you have to be realistic.
I also agree with a few of the commenters that Travis’s plan was murky. I eventually figured it out. But way later (page 75?) than I needed to. I mean, I wasn’t even clear, at first, that Travis wanted Chuck to hand over Johnny so they could kill him. Or why Travis wanted Johnny killed in the first place.
I know screenwriters are afraid of big exposition scenes but when it comes to “THE PLAN,” that’s something that’s got to to be clear to the audience from the start, unless you’re deliberately keeping plot points a mystery, which I don’t think was the case here (I may be wrong).
A big change that could really help this script is to make Chuck and Johnny more active. They end up sitting there doing NOTHING for hours on end, while innocent people keep getting shot (Travis kills a hostage every half-hour that Chuck doesn’t turn Johnny over). Going the simple route of having these two DO MORE to fix their situation, you get them out from behind that truck and you have yourself a more evolving plotline, as opposed to a static one.
I should also point out that this is a hard analysis to be 100% sure on. Because if I liked the relationship stuff more, I probably wouldn’t have minded that we spent so much time behind the truck. But because I didn’t, I focused more on the lack of variety in the plot. So you never know. Maybe you fix the characters stuff and then the plotting isn’t as much of a problem.
Still, my gut’s telling me that a more active plot with additional twists and more movement is what the doctor ordered. Despite that criticism, I want to be clear that I think Trevor is a strong writer. I’m not surprised he ran away from the competition. But he specifically asked why we think the script has hit a wall. And this would be my guess.
Script Link: The Last Shot
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Static Introductions – A static introduction is when you introduce a character just to introduce him. He isn’t doing anything. These are the hardest characters for readers to remember, even if they’re described well. Readers associate characters with their actions, so it’s best to introduce characters doing something if possible. Bad guys Snipes, Kyle, Big Pabi, and J-Lo all had static introductions, so it wasn’t a surprise that I never had a good feel for them as characters throughout the script.
