Genre: True Crime/Thriller
Premise (from writer): After the arrest of David Parker Ray, one of the most sadistic men in US history, the consequences of his heinous crimes unfold through the eyes of different characters in search of countless missing victims.
Why You Should Read: I’ve been obsessed with this little-known true story ever since I read about it a year ago. Although it’s filled with shocking turns and twisted details, I wanted to focus on a theme more relevant to today: the search for truth in a world where there are as many versions of it as there are individuals. For those faint of heart, I can assure you, I didn’t want to write a cheap and gruesome horror movie, instead, this is something more human. I could’ve written this like a real-life version of Saw, but why bother turning it into a torture-porn movie when the investigation after his arrest became greater than anyone could have imagined. For anyone willing to give it a try, I would be eternally grateful and will obviously try my best to be part of any discussion.
Writer: Kit Anderson
Details: 114 pages
Mucho movie news has been hitting the internnoying this week, starting with reviews for Venom, a film that has a wild amount of support despite its sub-30% Rotten Tomato Score. And Jon Favreau, who’s building the new Star Wars TV show, announces a director line-up so diverse, Twitter usage has decreased 26% due to the SJW Mob’s inability to criticize his choices.
While it’s tempting to dedicate an entire post to that, I’m happy to announce that today’s script is so captivating, you won’t be thinking about symbiotes or mandalorians by the end of the review. Truth or Consequences is definitely going to end up on my Top 10 Amateur Scripts of the Year List. But how high will it rise? Follow me and we can find out together.
It’s 1999. We’re looking at a window on the outside of a mobile home in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico, when CRASH, a hand shoots out. Soon-after, a woman, Cynthia, completely naked, beat up and bloody, metal collar strapped around her neck, breaks out and starts running for freedom. She makes it to a nearby home where an older couple take her in and quickly call the police.
Cynthia is taken to the hospital, and we slide over to a fresh-out-of-school cop, Costa, who joins a gaggle of policemen inspecting the trailer Cynthia was held captive in. They find that virtually the entire home was built to capture women and make them sex slaves. The home’s owner, David, would mostly lure prostitutes in, then he and his girlfriend would torture them.
But here’s where things get weird. The evidence points to David not killing these women, but rather brainwashing them and sending them back into society, with no memory of what happened. The cops aren’t sure if they buy this, but it’s a key detail, since it’s the difference between this guy being a serial killer or a serial torturer.
The script makes the ballsy decision to follow a new protagonist every 15 pages. First it’s Cynthia. Then it’s Costa. Then it’s an FBI agent. Then it’s a female cop. Then it’s David himself. Then it’s Costa’s girlfriend, Sally. That’s who we’re left with 13 years after the original crime. Now a reporter, Sally is attempting to learn the whereabouts of a woman whose ID was found in David’s home. Sally hopes to not only provide closure for the girl’s mother, but to prove once and for all that David didn’t simply release these girls back into society, but killed each and every one of them.
Let me start by saying I’ve never read anything like this. It’s quite the mesmerizing script. In fact, the first thing I want every writer here to do is download and read the first 15 pages of this script. I tell you so many times you have to GRAB THE READER RIGHT AWAY. Yet there’s all this debate about what that means and what kind of scenes qualify as “grabbing the reader.” This. THIS is how you grab the reader. Go ahead, open this script. I DARE YOU to stop reading through the first 15 pages.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about why this script kicks butt. For starters, I never knew what was coming next. The protagonist-swapping mechanism ensured that even if I did know where the plot was going, I was never sure whose eyes I’d be experiencing it through. Not only that, but the character journeys themselves were unpredictable. (Spoiler) One of the most shocking moments in the script is when we follow a cop for 10 pages only to see her blow her brains out afterwards. Once you do something that shocking to the reader, you’ve got them, because now it’s impossible for them to know what’s coming next.
On top of this, the script introduces a non-traditional take on the serial killer genre. What does an investigation look like when you’ve captured the killer within the first 20 pages? That added a whole new twist to everything because as David is being interrogated, denying everything, I’m wondering, “Are they going to let this guy go? Are they going to screw this up?”
Then there was just all this weird stuff. David made these audio tapes which were instruction-based rules for every woman he captured. The tapes explained, in detail, what would happen to the women and what they should prepare for. In addition to this, he had a separate mobile home known as “The Toy Box” where he brought the torture up another level.
When you combined these things with the constantly changing protagonists, you can understand why this was unlike anything I’ve read before.
But did it all come together in the end?
Unfortunately, that’s where I had some issues with the script. I’ve always told you guys to watch out for big time jumps. Every time you jump forward in time, you pop the tension balloon you’ve been building. Once you jump to 2000, then 2011, you’ve taken so much air out of your story, it’s nearly impossible to blow it back up. And that’s what happened here. You hooked me with intensity. But as the script went on, the story became more drawn out. It felt like I’d been sold a bill of goods.
On top of this, the latter part of the story focuses on a random news reporter we barely met in the first act, looking for the body of a random girl who we never met so that we can bring peace to a random mom who we knew for 2 scenes. You were introducing crazy cool characters one after another throughout the first 50 pages. Why, then, are we spending the climax with, arguably, three of the least interesting people in the script?
This script reminds me a lot of Zodiac. To some of you, that will be good news. But my issue with Zodiac was that the longer it went on, the more pointless it got. We began to realize that we were never getting the truth. So what was the point of sticking around? The point that Fincher would argue is that it mirrored the real case and how that would’ve felt to the detective. I suspect Kit would make the same argument here. And it’s a valid argument. Lots of people loved Zodiac. So who am I to say it’s the wrong choice?
Despite that issue, this script has too many positives not to be celebrated. The writer takes some huge chances. He makes unconventional choices. He weaves a story that’s impossible to predict. This script and the writer have so much potential that this will definitely end up in my Top 5 Amateur Scripts of 2018. Worth a weekend read for sure!
Script link: Truth or Consequences, New Mexico (updated draft)
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Time = connection in a script. The more time we spend with a character, the more connected we’ll be to them, the more invested we’ll be in them succeeding. We don’t spend enough time with Sally early on, which is why it’s hard to stay invested in her pursuit later. If I were Kit, I would add a large “Sally” section to the first half of the script. Make her one of the more memorable protagonists. That way, when she comes back later, we’ll care a lot more about her pursuit of this girl.
