What a wonderful and unexpected Christmas present. An amateur script that gets an IMPRESSIVE!! Christmas is really here script readers!!!
Genre: Christmas, Action, Fantasy
Premise: 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.
Writer: Reggie Christmas
Details: 87 pages
This.
Script.
Is.
Hilarious.
And it had a pretty steep mountain to climb to get me onboard. Because as funny as I thought this logline was, I’ve seen so many outrageous loglines like it fall by the wayside within the first five pages of the script itself. It seems as if the wackiest ideas are accompanied by the most undisciplined writers. Or writers who haven’t been writing long enough to realize that a wacky concept doesn’t write itself. It’s way harder to write than a sensical concept because sensical concepts at least make sense. Where screenwriters get lost is when they’re offered too many options. And wacky no-holds-barred stories don’t have any parameters, which is why it’s so easy to steer them off the rails.
Jingle Hell Rock isn’t like that at all. This script is surprisingly disciplined. And CLEVER. There’s a lot of funny clever comedy here that, quite frankly, surprised the sh#t out of me. I cant’ wrap my head around the fact that a writer not only came up with this idea. But actually put in the work to make it good. It’s too bad this script came out today because it would’ve made the Black List for sure. It’s certainly better than “Move On.” So what’s it about?
We start at the North Pole on Christmas – Santa gone for the night – with elves walking the perimeter strapped with machine guns. Just over the hill, a bunch of Satan’s demons are lying in wait. Without warning, they storm the village, killing the guards and taking all the toymakers. When Santa comes back, he learns they’ve taken the toymakers so that Satan can make toys for the naughty!
When Santa sees the speculative future of the planet should naughty kids be rewarded (it’s bad), he knows he has to go to Hell and stop Satan. But he can’t do it by himself. So first he recruits 6th century pirate Ching Shih. She’s also the only person to have escaped from Hell and made it to Purgatory. It’s not easy to convince her, but after giving her a special gift, she’s in.
And now Santa must recruit his most difficult teammate – Krampus. Krampus and Santa have a complicated past, dating back to when they used to work together and Krampus would handle the naughty kids. But Santa felt punishment wasn’t right for Christmas and ditched Krampus. He’s hated Santa ever since. But now Santa offers him the chance of a lifetime. After they kill Satan, they’ll need someone new to run the place. That someone can be you, Santa tells him.
Off to Hell they go, where Santa is shocked to see Krampus turn on him! He was playing for Satan’s team all along. Rats. Satan sends Santa and Ching into the dreaded PIT OF ANIMA DANNATA, where the only way out is facing the Custodians. In a scene reminiscent of the climax in Ghostbusters, Santa will have to take down the last person he expected, someone he’s been running from for over 16 centuries. Who? You’ll have to read this great script to find out!
Let’s start by dealing with the elephant in the room.
It would be impossible to make this. It’s so freaking crazy. And it’s not that crazy stuff can’t be made. But the crazier your script is, the cheaper it has to be, not the more expensive. There are people in Hollywood who like to make weird stuff, yes. But there’s a dollar number they won’t go past if a project is too risky.
Ask yourselves, what’s the riskiest big-budget movie that’s been made in the past 10 years. Something where the filmmakers were legitimately taking huge chances and the movie cost over 100 million dollars? Maybe Passengers? And that wasn’t nearly as crazy as this is.
But maybe – MAYBE – a streamer would take a chance on this. Maybe if you did an animated version of it? Or what might be funny is if you did it in the old school clay stop motion animation style they used for Frosty the Snowman? Or maybe there’s just some crazy rich dude out there who would want to make it and you’d hire Reggie to do what they did for the original Matrix script where they got rid of a few expensive set pieces.
Anyway, let’s get to the script.
There’s so much funny and clever here, I don’t know where to start. Everything from the description (describing Satan’s new sleigh: “Balthazar smirks as he removes the tarp to reveal — A demonic SLEIGH. Forged with iron and hate.”) to the dialogue: SANTA CLAUS: Who are the Custodians? CHING SHIH: We won’t find out until we make the wager. SANTA CLAUS: Who were they when you last fought them? CHING SHIH: Genghis Khan, Vlad the Impaler and a Spartan General… I don’t remember his name. SANTA CLAUS: Leonidas? CHING SHIH: I said I don’t remember. SANTA CLAUS: Was it Gerard Butler’s character from the movie Three-hundred? CHING SHIH: I don’t know what movies or Gerard Butlers are.
…to the set pieces themselves. I think that’s what surprised me the most. This isn’t the first time I’ve read a script about soldiers going to Hell to take on Satan. One of the problems with that script was – well, there were a lot of problems – but I remember the set pieces being fuzzy and unclear about the objective and what was going on onscreen.
Every set piece here is very clear. We know the hero’s objective in the scene. We know what’s standing in their way of it. The geography of the scene – often overlooked – is clearly laid out on the page. I remember reading that Hellified script and never having a clear idea of what I was looking at. Good writers make all of that stuff crystal clear so the only thing we have to worry about in a scene is enjoying ourselves as opposed to trying to figure out who’s where and what they’re doing and why we’re here in the first place.
And did I mention the script was CLEVER! Reggie threads in this killer backstory of the Butcher of Byzantium, which is who Santa Claus really was at one point in history. He was this soldier who killed a bunch of people. He just got re-worked and repurposed over the years into this happy jolly figure (Satan reveals this news to Santa’s #1 Helper, Bobo – BOBO: “That was all before his conversion. He’s not like that anymore.” SATAN: “You think twenty-first-century cancel culture gives two shits about stories of redemption.”)
But the sequence that said, “someone HAS to take a chance on this” was the Pit scene. It occurs after Krampus double-crosses them (by the way, you know a script is working when even obvious twists, like Krampus double-crossing Santa, surprise you). That’s when they get thrown into PIT OF ANIMA DANNATA and they’ve got to fight their way out. And Santa is asking Ching how she got out of here before. She explains that they have to defeat the three Custodians. Here’s what happens next…
It’s such a great nod to Ghostbusters without being lazy. This is a choice that feels organic to this movie. And it would be awesome enough. But then the third person arrives.
Sure, you could’ve brought another goofy character in there. But instead, Reggie makes the more interesting choice and wheels in the last person Santa wants to see. The pure evil that he used to be. That’s REALLY GOOD screenwriting there, guys. I don’t see thoughtful writing like that in scripts often.
And Reggie gets the little stuff right as well. When Santa and Krampus have to go find some weapons in the real world, there’s this moment where they’re walking down a busy street with a lot of people around. And the people are all staring at Krampus. Krampus, by the way, is a tall blue demon creature with horns. So a savvy reader is thinking, “a blue demon can walk down the street and all he gets are stares?”
But here’s the quick exchange that occurs between Santa and Krampus. SANTA CLAUS: “I thought you could use magic to make normal people see you in human form.” KRAMPUS: “I am. But even in my human form, I’m one ugly son-of-a-bitch.”
Now the screenwriting newcomer is going to look at this exchange and think, what’s the big deal? I’ll tell you what the big deal is. In 99 out of 100 amateur scripts, the writer would have awkwardly drawn attention to this exchange in order to clumsily convey the relevant exposition that Krampus is using a spell to make himself look human to the world. Something like: “These people can’t see me, remember. I’m using my human form right now.” By doing it Reggie’s way, we’re not even aware that it’s been explained to us why a tall blue demon can walk around in a city and nobody says anything. It’s truly invisible exposition, which is the mark of a skilled screenwriter.
And there’s so much more here, guys. I almost want to go back and read it again (which I NEVER DO with Amateur Friday scripts because I’ve mentally moved onto the weekend) just because I wasn’t giving it the benefit of the doubt initially. Now that I know Reggie brought the goods, I’m sure I missed a handful of clever and funny moments.
You still have to figure out how to get this thing made. That’s a giant challenge, probably more difficult than killing Satan. But if there’s someone out there with money and eclectic taste, this is one hell (no pun intended) of a fun screenplay. Something all the readers of Scriptshadow should unwrap this Christmas and check out!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: No matter how wacky your premise is, Jingle Hell Rock proves that you level up your script when you inject a personal internal battle into it. The most surprising thing to me about this script was Santa having to take on his former evil younger self. It was well set up. There was a commitment to the storyline (it wasn’t lip service). These things matter to readers who are so used to reading surface level forgettable garbage all the time. It took this script to another level.
Best easter egg: Nothing to learn with this tip. Just an added star for actually working a “McClunkey” line into this script. Bravo!
