It’s going to be a loooooonnnnnng weekend. No Scriptshadow til Tuesday (Monday is a holiday here in the U.S.). But the good news is when I come back, I’ll be reviewing the book that just became the hottest project in town. I’m a quarter of the way through it, and the writing isn’t great. But both the main character and story are awesome. A reminder that you don’t have to be the best writer to break in. But you do have to be a good storyteller. That means crafting clever suspenseful plots with unique flawed characters. The hero in this story is about as flawed as they get. To be continued…
If you haven’t played Amateur Offerings before, read as many of this weekend’s scripts as you can and VOTE for your favorite in the comments section. Voting closes on Monday, September 3rd, 11:59pm Pacific Time. Winner gets a review next Friday. — If you’d like to submit your own script to compete in Amateur Offerings, send a PDF of your script to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the title, genre, logline, and why you think your script should get a shot.
Title: Parking Enforcement
Genre: Buddy Comedy
Logline: When two forty year-old parking enforcement brothers uncover a Boston police department conspiracy, they must devise a way to take down the very people who control their shot at a badge. (Step Brothers meets 21 Jump Street)
Why You Should Read: Structure is always a great conversation in screenwriting and this remains my most outlined script to-date, so I’d love to see how that comes across to readers. I fell in love with this concept of Parking Enforcement, but in a Jonah Hill / Will Ferrell style comedy. Would anything that happens in this script happen in real life? Other than the cops being crooked? Not likely. But, I also wanted to make the central core of the script universally relatable — people who feel they are better than where they are and always striving to get to that place, no matter the label that is given to them by others. This is a goofball script meant for big laughs, but also with big heart, so I’d love to see if it resonates with the audience.
Title: The Janitor
Genre: Crime/Drama
Logline: A mob rib breaker turned high school janitor seeks to redeem his violent past by preventing a young girl from making the same mistakes he did, but when drugs and gangs overrun her school, he must risk his cover to clean it up.
Why You Should Read: Writing is the reason I get up in the morning. I have been a Nicholl Fellowship quarterfinalist multiple times, a Page semi-finalist and was the 2016 winner of Screamfest with my screenplay “Plum Island”. My day job working with troubled youths allows a consistent reservoir of unique experiences that I draw upon when creating realistic and fleshed out characters. Why read? “The Janitor” perfectly portrays human complexities in a gritty urban setting and creates cinematic characters that are both mythic and believable.
Title: Salvage
Genre: Horror
Logline: As a remote Alaskan town prepares for winter, a young woman from out of town is brutally killed at the motel, and the sheriff – still obsessed with the unsolved murder of his daughter six months earlier – embarks on an investigation that turns many in this tight knit community against him and leads him to suspect the woman’s death may be connected to his little girl’s tragic slaying.
Why You Should Read: I studied screenwriting at Writers Boot Camp and Hofstra University and have worked in the industry as a script reader, production assistant, casting assistant and agency assistant in between writing scripts which garnered me three agents over the years, two options, and actor attachments from the likes of Armand Assante and Eric Roberts. Alas, no actual sales yet. Salvage is my personal favorite, the original draft of which was largely written while heavily medicated following surgery.
Title: THE OPERATIVES
Genre: Action Spy Thriller
Logline: When a global terror plot is exposed, five top agents (from Russia’s FSB, Israel’s Mossad, China’s MSS, Britain’s MI6 and America’s CIA) are forced to work together to stop the threat.
Why You Should Read: I’m a screenwriter in Sydney and love writing true stories and thrillers. I took and stunt-driving course, started on my helicopter license, and boxing lessons. Learning to know what I write, rather writing what I know. THE OPERATIVES takes the locomotive intensity of Bourne and Bond, and creates a 5-man-band in the vein of Mission Impossible, Suicide Squad and The A-Team.
Title: Inky Magicat & The Lonely Magicians
Genre: Family Comedy
Logline: When the world’s greatest magician loses the magic talking cat that makes his tricks work, the timid boy who rescues her tries to reunite the cat with her family before their careers are ruined.
Why You Should Read: Inky Magicat is a never-ending joy ride featuring a wide array of likable and entertaining characters. With solid goals, stakes, urgency, and a strong dose of comedy sprinkled with grounded sequences of emotion inducing drama, Inky Magicat touches on themes of how crime doesn’t pay, and features a relatable coming of age arc to be enjoyed by people in all walks of life. Billed as PADDINGTON meets THE PRESTIGE, Inky Magicat is a four quadrant comedy suitable for international audiences, and we believe it has the potential to become a strong family movie franchise.
