I have to give it to you guys with these holiday entries. You came hard and you came strong. Where else is someone going to pitch you this logline – “After a great white shark eats Santa and absorbs his magic, two elves with the help of a con woman, a cop and a cranky sea captain fight to stop the shark as it embarks on a bloody holiday feast.” It’s like someone was watching Sharknado while drinking a gallon of eggnog the night before Christmas then challenged themselves to write the entire script on Christmas Day.
Or this one, titled “Red Frosting and Broken Graham Crackers,” a holiday neo-noir: “Are cookies accidentally falling in the river? Or is the truth behind these disappearances far more sinister? When his friend is listed among the missing, a miserly cookie hits the streets to search for answers in an unforgiving city of gingerbread houses and graham cracker skyscrapers.”
While I don’t quite think sharks and Christmas go together, and while I’ve never come across a noir holiday film before, we’ve got a few fun-sounding entries this weekend. One of them in particular had me pronouncing, “That right there is a movie!” By the way, that’s one of the highest compliments you can give a script. So many concepts don’t have a logline that says “movie.” So when you come across one, it sticks out. I can’t tell you which concept I’m referring to cause I don’t want to influence the voting. But I’ll let you know after voting closes.
Amateur Showdown is a bi-weekly tournament where I pick five screenplays that were submitted to me and then you, the readers of the site, read as much of each script as possible and vote for your favorite in the comments. The winner will receive a review the following Friday that could result in props from your peers, representation, a spot on one of the big end-of-the-year screenwriting lists, and in rare cases, a SALE!
The NEXT Amateur Showdown will occur on January 17th and that one will be CONTAINED THRILLER SHOWDOWN. So if you have a contained thriller, a contained horror thriller, a contained sci-fi thriller, a contained dramatic thriller, GET THAT THING READY! And if you don’t yet have one, you’ve got almost 35 days to write one (January 16th is the deadline). More details on that in the new year.
In order to participate, e-mail me at carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Include your script title, the genre, a logline, and a pitch to myself and potential readers why you believe your script deserves a shot. It could be long, short, passionate, to-the-point. Whatever you think will convince someone your script is worth opening, make your case. Just like Hollywood, the Scriptshadow readers are a fickle bunch. So be convincing!
Merry Christmas, ho ho ho and good luck to the holiday contestants this weekend!
Title: Off the Hook
Genre: Family / Animation
Logline: Set in a world where a Christmas tree’s star is actually a secret transmitter used by Santa Claus to identify all of the active Christmas homes throughout the world, a ‘by the book’ toy soldier must lead a group of Christmas tree ornaments in a desperate race against time to find their missing star so Santa doesn’t skip their house.
Why You Should Read: Because it’s Toy Story on a tree! — Off the Hook is my shot at writing a Pixar-style four-quadrant family adventure. Every Christmas tree has a story with its own endless supply of colorful characters and I’ve always thought if I could just nail down a unique plot this could be a fun world to play in. Once I (finally!) figured out the star Off the Hook found its unique plot and I was off to the writing races.
This is a fast read at 91 pages stuffed full of GSU that has done well on the contest circuit. Here is what the Tracking Board had to say when it made their top 75: — “With a unique take on a Christmas tradition that will delight both kids and their parents, the writer is able to make this story their own by providing the Christmas tree ornaments with individual personalities and keeping them active with clear goals and purpose. The banter is witty and fun and keeps the story moving even before they leave the comfort of the living room. Once the adventure starts, the high stakes escalate with every obstacle and the addition of the ticking clock, counting down to when Santa arrives, is both adorable and the perfect motivation. Ending with positive themes of family, friendship, and the holiday spirit, this script has the potential to touch generations of kids.”
It’s time to reinvent the Christmas tree ornament because in my imagination those aren’t boring stationary objects on my tree – they’re toys with hooks!
Thanks for your consideration and merry Christmas to you and the Scriptshadow community!
Title: 100 Days of Christmas
Genre: Action-Adventure
Logline: When the South Pole attacks the North Pole one hundred days before Christmas, an aging Santa Claus passes the reins of his empire to his reluctant civilian son.
Why You Should Read: Hi Carson, I’ve been a long-time follower of ScriptShadow (since 2009) and without exaggeration, one of my favorite parts of each morning is reading your script reviews. I learn from every post and love how you champion stronger, more entertaining, more original stories that aim to elevate cinema to a higher level. I hope I’ve gleaned some of these lessons and incorporated them into my own work including “100 Days of Christmas”. This is a story I’ve developed over many years as I tried to write the kind of Christmas movie I would love to see — a sweeping, modern, romantic adventure that captures the wonder, beauty, and meaning of Christmas through characters I love and worlds that interest me. I hope you have as much fun reading it as I had writing it. Most of all, I hope it leaves you with that holiday feeling we all crave as we head into the last few weeks of the year (and decade). Thanks again for what you do. Much appreciated, Paul.
Title: Tinsel
Genre: Christmas Horror
Logline: Two young siblings struggle to survive Christmas Eve after they become stranded on a massive Christmas tree farm and hunted by a supernatural, child-eating monster.
Why you should read: One of my previous scripts, an hour long pilot, was optioned to a producer in LA. After that fell into limbo, I decided to refocus on my first love of writing features. I then wrote and submitted a horror/dark comedy spec to Carson, who chose it to compete in an amateur showdown, where it finished second. It was a great experience and motivated me to continue writing.
‘Tinsel’ also falls along those lines of horror/dark comedy, but it’s also heavy on the holiday/Christmas atmosphere. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become less and less excited about Christmas and holidays in general, but I have an unmistakable nostalgia for that time of year when I think back to my childhood, as I’m sure a lot of other people do as well. So, I wanted to take my love of horror films and combine it with that nostalgia to try and tell a fun and fast paced horror story that takes place over Christmas Eve.
I’ve generated some interest from some producers/managers with this script, and I’d be happy to hear from the scriptshadow community as well, and hopefully from Carson himself. Thanks for your time!
Title: Jingle Hell Rock
Genre: Christmas, Action, Fantasy
Logline: When his elves are kidnapped by the Devil to make planet-conquering toys for the naughty, the only way Santa Claus can save Christmas and the world is by pulling off the rescue mission from Hell.
Why You Should Read: First off – Yes, my real last name is Christmas, but that probably isn’t going to be enough to earn me a spot in this year’s Holiday Showdown. Luckily I have a killer concept to go along with my festive surname. Seriously, why isn’t this a movie already? It’s such a simple premise – the elves get kidnapped, and Santa has to rescue them. It’s Taken with a festive-fantasy twist. Surely, I couldn’t be the first person to think of this. Well, while researching Santa Claus movies, not only did I find out that nobody’s ever explored this premise, but I also discovered something shocking. Of the over 95 movies about old St. Nick, for some reason, almost all of them are told through the point of view of some entitled little brat drowning in first-world problems or one of Santa’s overly ambitious helpers who defiantly took the short-bus to toy-making school. And for some reason, it’s always one of these two knuckle-heads that end up rescuing Santa and saving Christmas. What the hell are we doing, people? After all the joy he’s brought to the world, can we not even let Santa be the hero of his own damn movie? Well, Jingle Hell Rock will fix all that and if you guys have 1/10th of the fun reading it as I did writing it, then you are all in for a very Merry Christmas. God bless us, everyone.
Title: Boy Santa
Genre: Family/Animation
Logline: Boy Santa tells the untold life story of a chimney sweep who grew up and created Christmas.
Why You Should Read: I’m a Santa expert. I could tell you about reindeer on the Mongolian steppes who get high gorging on Amanita muscaria mushrooms––those red-and-white spotted ones growing beneath pine trees on Victorian Christmas cards. I could tell you how the village shaman collected the reindeer urine––now filtered of its toxicity––and shared it in the communal yurt with the herders. Of the stories they told of flying with their reindeer while passing around a bowl of psychoactive brew. How the shaman wore a red coat with white spots in homage to the sacred fungus; how when the entrance was covered with a snow-drift he’d enter the yurt through the chimney opening. Or how those Silk Road traders brought this story back to the west to create the man in red we know today. And the lucky charm of the chimney sweep was that mushroom known as the ‘fly ageric.’
That’s the truth, and here’s the fiction.
In the flood of biopics one beloved character has been overlooked…Santa Claus. Boy Santa is an origin story that explains all the myths: the red coat, the elves, the gifts, his immortality…everything. Boy Santa is about friendship, family and giving, filled with memorable, larger-than-life characters who learn to believe in themselves when others do not. Seen through Rudolph’s eyes with a childlike sense of wonder, it’s a highly marketable IP idea with repeated seasonal revenues. I hope you enjoy the script. Thank you for your consideration. Merry Christmas to you and yours!
