KINETIC by Chris Dennis!!!!!
Here’s the logline for Kinetic: “Following a harrowing phone call while out on the road, a long haul trucker with a tormented past must deliver a tank of liquid crystal meth before sundown in order to save his pregnant wife.”
If you missed it, you can see all five finalist loglines here.
To be honest, today’s winner was a difficult call. Crescent City, Mother Redeemer, and Kinetic were neck and neck all weekend as I tried to decide who the winner was. The argument for Crescent City was its deep interesting mythology, its modern lead character, its enormous potential as a franchise, and it being the highest concept of the bunch. The argument for Mother Redeemer was that it had the best character development, the lowest budget, and has an amazing third act. Mark my words, when this movie gets made, the line “I’m the Mother Redeemer, motherf#cker,” will be one of the most quoted lines of the year.
In the end, the reason Kinetic edged out the others is that it knew exactly what it wanted to be and gives the audience exactly what they want. This is a good old fashioned action movie. It’s about a dude in a truck who some bad people decide to f*ck with and in the process they unleash the kraken. There’s no other script in the top 5 that has a clearer poster or trailer than Kinetic.
It’s The Equalizer. It’s John Wick. It’s Taken. But wrapped in this dirty messy rural universe. Clay, the main character, feels like a descendent of the cowboys from those old Clint Eastwood movies. And the trucker angle is just unique enough to set this movie apart from its influences. This is the blue collar version of Taken. And I have no doubt there’s a huge audience for that.
On top of all that, I see franchise potential. This main character is such a badass that he could carry three or four more Kinetic movies if we want. That factored into the win as well. Because like I told you guys from the very beginning of this contest. I wanted to find MOVIES. Not scripts. MOVIES. And this is the most movie script of all 2000 entries I received.
There’s one more thing that pushed Kinetic over the edge. The main character, Clay, is surprisingly deep for an action movie hero. Chris Dennis, the writer, explains what he was thinking when he conceived of the character:
“Clay isn’t your typical one-dimensional hero seen in this sort of script. He’s broken. He’s unsure of himself. He’s planned out this life with his wife but he’s not sold on it. Only when he realizes that he’s about to lose it all does he steel himself to recover it at all costs. There’s been mention of the cocaine scene in the truck, the one where Clay is forced by his captor to snort it off the steering wheel. The cocaine isn’t his ‘Popeye spinach’… no. It’s symbolic of this life he’s worked desperately to put behind him. The hurt, the loss, the pain of everything he’s experienced encapsulated in that thin white line. And when that asshole puts a gun to his head and forces him to partake, Clay sees that life he’s built starting to crumble, and realizes that the only way out is if he takes matters into his own hands. It’s devastating for him in the moment, but if he doesn’t act, what follows will be even more heartbreaking!”
If you’re wondering how Chris wrote such a great script, his story should be inspiring to all of you. It’s basically what I’ve been telling you guys all along. Keep writing, keep reading, and keep learning. You do that long enough, you’re going to write something great. Here’s Chris on how he got to this point:
“For a brief time I thought I wanted to direct films, even went to school for it, but as I became more aware of the movie making process, I was instinctively drawn to how films looked on the page, which led me to buying Syd Fields’ classic, “Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting.” From there, I started to track down the screenplays of my favorite movies to read and compare them with how they looked on the screen, which helped me understand how the written word is translated visually (I also read a certain spectacular blog! – Carson note: I added the word “spectacular”). I played around with writing screenplays for a bit, wrote some absolutely utter crap, but it was around ’08/’09 that I fully committed to taking writing more seriously, to really try to hone my craft and find my voice. I scheduled time to write; tried to never miss a day unless I absolutely had to. Ever since then I’ve made it a goal to write 2-3 feature length screenplays a year – some years it’s easy, others it feels like a monumental task (and that was in pre-pandemic times!).
“A lot of people pause when I tell them I’ve been at this for over a decade now without ‘breaking in.’ Sure, it’s a loooooooong time, I know, but I keep going because deep down I love screenwriting. It satisfies some strange desire in me, and I figure if I love it enough to do it for free, it’ll be that much more fulfilling the moment someone wants to write a check for me to do it. Plus I’m an optimist… I just know my next script is going to be my best. I won’t say the journey’s been easy… not at all. The entire time I’ve been writing I’ve had to juggle a ton of obligations, ranging from full-time jobs to being a husband and a father to 3 kids under the age of ten. But I still find time to write. I wake up at 3 am before the rest of my day starts to write. I stay up late on the weekends to write. And much to the chagrin of my wife, I often skip out on non-essential family functions to write. Why? Because I love it, and because deep down I know that I still need to hone my craft.
“Though I’ve yet to ‘break in,’ I have some modest success in contests along the way, which keeps signaling to me that I’m on the right path. I’m a 3-time Page Awards winner (Grand Prize shy of the Grand Slam), a 3-time Launch Pad Feature Finalist, WeScreenplay Feature winner, along with high placements in several other contests. Now I can add another to this list — THE LAST GREAT SCREENPLAY CONTEST!!!!!!!!!!”
I also asked Chris what inspired him to write Kinetic specifically:
“The seed of the idea came to me while driving and listening to the song “Thinking On A Woman,” by Colter Wall. The song is kind of a lamentation on the tragic side of long-haul trucking… about missed time, lost love, and the vices a man turns to in order to ease his troubled mind. I had been on the search for an idea that was somewhat contained, so I took the character of this song and flipped his situation. What if he’s overcome his demons? They’re there, sure, but he’s managing to keep them at bay. And what if he’s on his last haul, heading home to a pregnant wife to leave this lonely life on the road for good? But what if that happy life he’s heading home to is suddenly put into jeopardy? What lengths would this man go to in order to preserve that little slice of heaven that he’s built?
So with that as my jumping off point, I molded this truck driving character, Clay Cutler, as a disgraced Special Forces veteran and a recovering addict, who’s nearly got his life back in order when the shit hits the fan and he has to overcome obstacle after obstacle to get that life back. I set out to write an old school action flick with no filler, semi-contained (pun intended), with one hero and one goal: to get his wife and unborn child back, no matter what it takes. And once Clay makes that decision, there’s nothing that’s going to stop him.”
As I’m reading back Chris’s answers, I’m reminded of something else I loved about the script – the recklessness of both the story and its hero. I’ve been reading a lot of screenplays lately where the writers let up on the gas, which leaves the script feeling neutered. Kinetic, true to its title, barrels forward in a way that other writers are scared to do. It’s almost like they’re afraid they’ll be unable to keep it up til the last page. Kinetic is this don’t-stop-til-the-last-credit-rolls force of nature. It really wants to deliver on its promise for a great fun action movie. And it does that.
So what’s next for Kinetic, Chris, and myself?
GETTING THIS MOVIE MADE, BABY!
I’ve just started talking to close contacts about Kinetic. I’m trying to find out which production houses want to make a movie like this. I’m going to be coming after Original Film (Fast and Furious guys). I’m going to be coming after 87Eleven (Stahelski and Leitch’s company). G-Base (Gerard Butler’s company) is going to get a call. Atlas Entertainment. Village Roadshow. Thunder Road. Millenium.
And hey, if you’re a production house that makes movies like Kinetic and you’re reading this post right now, E-MAIL ME (carsonreeves1@gmail.com). I’ll jump on Zoom with you tomorrow and if we click, we’ll set this up somewhere by the end of the week! I see this as a slam dunk. It’s not a matter of if it will get made. It’s a matter of who makes it with us.
Congratulations to Chris Dennis one more time. By this time next year I hope we’ll be sharing with you all the crazy stories from the set. :)
WANT YOUR OWN SCRIPTSHADOW GLORY? – This is a reminder that the next Amateur Showdown (High Concept Showdown – where only high concept scripts can compete) is coming in March! So get those scripts ready! If you don’t know what a high concept is, check out this post here…
Amateur Showdown Genre: HIGH CONCEPT
Where: Entries should be sent to carsonreeves3@gmail.com
What: Include title, genre, logline, why you think your script deserves a shot, and a PDF of your script!
Entries Due: Thursday, March 4, 6:00pm Pacific Time
