This is a re-post of the original Disciple Program review that I posted on February 24th because….The Disciple Program just sold! With Mark Wahlberg and Morten Tyldum attached, an awesome new director who directed a film called “Headhunters” (google for the trailer). Congrats to Tyler. I know he had higher offers out there but his goal was to get this movie made so he’s been carefully working with WME packaging the thing so that this is a movie and not just one of the 9 in 10 script sales that never gets made. I’ll be putting together an interview with Tyler soon so we can go over all of the nitty gritty details with you guys. It’s been pretty interesting watching the entire process of a script from that crazy first day to finally selling. Lots of stuff I never knew goes on behind the scenes. So for the weekend, chalk one up to SS and a fellow Scriptshadow reader. We’re on the board!

A review of the screenplay that’s turned into one of the rarer more interesting screenwriting stories in awhile.  And yours truly found himself in the middle of it. :)

Amateur Friday Submission Process: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send it in PDF form, along with your title, genre, logline, and why I should read your script to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Keep in mind your script will be posted in the review (feel free to keep your identity and script title private by providing an alias and fake title). Also, it’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so that your submission stays near the top of the pile.

Genre: Thriller
Premise: A man begins an investigation into his wife’s mysterious death, only to find that it goes much deeper than he imagined.
About: The first amateur script to ever crack The Scriptshadow Top 10. Tyler was an unsold unrepped writer out of Brooklyn when he sent this to me. After I sent the script out to half a dozen industry contacts on Wednesday, the script has found its way into every agency, management company, and studio in town. Late yesterday, Tyler finally made his decision to go with WME, who will put a package together for the project and go out with it in the near future.
Writer: Tyler Marceca
Details: 114 pages

As the creator of this blog, I dreamt of this moment. I wanted to find a script that nobody else knew about, that no studio or producer or agent or manager knew existed and celebrate it here in front of the world for the first time. I was hoping to do this on a regular basis. But as we’ve found out together over the past three years, good scripts are hard to come by.

Well, I finally found one. And it all happened rather unexpectedly. Tyler contacted me out of nowhere to consult on his latest screenplay. My prices have gone up a bit in recent months so I got the feeling he was reluctant. But in the end, he decided to go for it, and sent me a script called “The Disciple Program.” “Cool title,” I thought to myself, then prepared to note away.

I don’t know what time travel feels like but I’m assuming it feels something like this. I remember starting the script, then looking up and seeing that I was on page 30! *And I hadn’t written a single note down.* Just for reference, I usually have a couple pages of notes by the end of the first act.

Hmm, I thought. That’s odd. This never happens. But a small part of me was still worried. I’ve read a lot of good first acts, only to find a writer who doesn’t know how to navigate a second act. So I kept waiting for the jenga pieces to crumble. Not because I wanted them to. Good God, finding a great script is every reader’s dream. But because that’s what usually happens. I didn’t want to get my hopes up.

But ten more pages passed and it still wasn’t crumbling. Ten MORE pages passed, and it actually *started getting better.* And then the midpoint came and I realized, Holy Shit, this is the real deal.

And when you hit the real deal as a reader, it’s the most exhilarating feeling in the world. The only thing better are those divine moments of inspiration you get as a writer.

So afterwards, naturally, I called up Tyler and said, “Where the f&%* did you come from???” And he said, “Brooklyn.” After talking to him for awhile, I learned that this script had actually started from a contest – The Writer’s Store “Industry Insider Screenwriting Contest.” They do a unique thing where they give you a high concept yet slightly generic logline from a professional screenwriter (in this case it was Robert Mark Kamen – the writer of “Taken”) and then you send them ten pages at a time, for which they provide feedback, and in the end they name the winner. He informed me that he had just won that contest. (I believe their new logline for this year’s contest is out if you want to check it out!).

That didn’t surprise me at all. In fact, Disciple Program looks like a winner from the very first scene. It takes that old screenwriting axiom of “Make your first ten pages great” and crushes it with a thousand megatons of failed screenplays. Great is for amateurs. It goes for amazing.

We meet Jocelyn, a psychiatrist at a mental hospital – that’s gotta be a rewarding job – who’s been tasked with probing the mind of a convicted serial killer. He’s not quite Hannibal Lecter territory. But I’m guessing this guy’s nibbled on his share of human flesh.

At this point I’m musing, “Okay, this might be a cool scene. Scary ass lunatic in a tiny room with a vulnerable woman. Only one guard nearby. I’m digging it.” Well, a few pages later, the man regurgitates a shiv, grabs the guard, stabs him a dozen times before he can blink, then, still handcuffed to the chair, he starts reaching out, desperately trying to do the same to Jocelyn, who’s inches out of his reach.

As long as she stays in this exact spot, he can’t get to her. That is until he starts CUTTING OFF HIS OWN HAND WITH HIS SHIV, desperate to get across that table and kill Jocelyn. Who the fuck is this guy? Is he nuts?? Well, yeah, I guess he is. But this goes beyond “nuts.” It’s like he values killing this woman more than his own life. That can’t be normal, can it? Then, just when it seems like he’s going to succeed, guards race in and save her.

In the meantime, we meet Jocelyn’s husband, Roger, one of those predator drone pilots. He gets to send planes into hostile territory, take the enemy out, fly home, without ever leaving his computer. When Roger hears about the attack on his wife, he hurries over to the hospital. But when he tries to console her, she’s stand-offish, distant. We realize that even a near-death experience can’t repair the issues these two have going on. Roger clearly wants to be closer to his wife. But she’s put up a wall.

So Roger takes Jocelyn home, figuring a little rest will calm them both, and maybe he can deal with this tomorrow morning. But he never gets that opportunity. When he wakes up, he finds Jocelyn dead in their swimming pool.

The coroner calls it an accidental drowning, but Roger has a funny feeling about it. Something’s not right here. So he looks deeper, going so far as to inspect the body himself, and what he finds is shocking. On the back of her neck is a piece of carefully placed synthetic skin, meant to blend in with her real skin. He rips it off to find a small pin prick.

There’s no doubt now. Somebody killed his wife. But who? And why? She’s just a psychiatrist who works at a mental hospital.

That’s where Roger begins the investigation. He wants to talk to Cut-Off-His-Hand Dude. Not surprisingly, the guy isn’t the best conversationalist. But to his credit, it’s looking like his attack and her murder are unrelated. Yet when Roger checks the security tapes, he sees that in the hour leading up to his wife’s attack, every camera in the facility was turned off. Hmm…Strange.

It doesn’t take long for Roger to realize that if someone wanted his wife dead, they probably want anyone looking into her death dead too. As if on cue, a couple of highly trained killers move in, Nurse Kathy and The Arsonist, gas Roger in his home, and take him out to a remote cliff to put an end to his life.

Roger barely squirms out of that one, and when he does, he realizes just how bad this is. While Nurse Kathy and The Arsonist are two of the most lethal killers on the planet, they’re chicken feed compared to the people he just pissed off. These men will stop at nothing – NOTHING – to kill Roger. What they don’t account for, however, is that Roger’s just as determined as they are, and he WILL hold responsible the people who killed his wife.

Where do I start with this one? I basically loved everything about it. Surprise, huh? Seeing as I’ve been tweeting about it every 10 seconds for the last 72 hours. The only thing that sucks about The Disciple Program is figuring out where to start with its awesomeness.

I guess I’ll start with its consistency. Bad amateur scripts have one good scene followed by 10 average scenes. Then another good scene, followed by 6 bad scenes. Tyler made sure EVERY – SINGLE – SCENE was worth reading here. There were no bridge scenes. He didn’t take any scenes off. Every single scene mattered. Every single scene was *dramatized.* That’s what was so cool about The Disciple Program. It never allowed you to NOT like it.

The next thing I noticed was the intelligence. Most bad scripts feel like they were slapped together by someone who keeps “Jackass 3” saved on their Tivo and eats Fruit Loops for dinner. There’s no depth to the writing. There’s nothing about the world they create that you haven’t seen before in other films or TV shows. So it all feels generic. Here, there was a genuine intelligence, uniqueness and understanding of the world in the writing. It was so convincing, in fact, that I called Tyler afterwards and asked him how long he’d been on leave and when he had to go back. He laughed and assured me he’s never been in the military. But I don’t know. I think there’s more to that story.

What really made this stand out though were the characters. Every single character in this script is memorable. I can’t BEGIN to tell you how rare this is. From the wife to Roger to the nurse to “The Arsonist” to the big man in charge, Ambrose, to the military men Ambrose hires (Arroyo and Vickrey) to the even bigger man in charge, Beau. This is the area that really separates the top dogs from the lap dogs. Strong writers know how to make their characters unique. Newbies don’t put any effort into character creation, therefore it’s rare for any of their characters to stand out.

I’ll say it again but they – along with everything else – felt so SPECIFIC. The way Ambrose goes about recruiting a couple of dangerous U.S. soldiers with sordid pasts to help him take down Roger – I’ve never read a scene like that. It was just so convincing. I’m used to writers bullshitting their way through those scenes. I felt that Tyler had either been in that exact same situation himself (yes I REALLY thought that) or he’d researched the shit out of how these conversations typically go down (which is even scarier when you think about it – where do you find people who have been in that kind of situation before?).

And the scene construction here – it’s just SO good. Every single scene BUILDS. There was suspense, conflict, curiosity. It was like each scene had its own story. Each scene stood on its own.

One of my favorite scenes was when Nurse Kathy and The Arsonist gas Roger. He wakes up, paralyzed in a car. He can SEE The Arsonist and Nurse Kathy in front of him, but he CAN’T MOVE. They’ve drugged him. So all he can do is watch helplessly as they set up his fake suicide – a plan that includes manually inserting a liter of whisky into his stomach then pushing his car off a cliff.

It was one of the most intense scenes I’ve ever read. He’s just WATCHING them casually plan his death and there’s nothing he can do about it. All you’re thinking is, “How the hell is he going to get out of this one??”

(spoiler) Then, just as the arrogant gloating Nurse Kathy puts the finishing touches on her Rembrandt, she looks into his eyes, as if to taunt him one last time. And there’s something she sees that’s not quite right. In a brilliant payoff (that’s too complicated to get into here), Roger wasn’t paralyzed at all. He swiftly GRABS her and proceeds to take both her and The Arsonist out, forcing Kathy, in particular, to suffer just as horrible a death as she was planning for him.

And that’s the thing about this character – he was so badass! He was so capable, so clever. Usually, when I read these screenplays, the methods by which the characters get out of situations are entirely dependent on the writer helping them. Here, Tyler writes himself into corners, practically daring himself to find a way out. This forces him to come up with really clever solutions to things. Every time it happened, I would just get this big smile on my face. A smile of, “I fucking never see this in screenplays. This is nuts!”

Another thing I’m always telling you guys to do is to make sure your script builds. Make sure that each challenge in the script is bigger than the last. Most of the scripts I read go in the opposite direction. Writers throw everything into those first 45 pages then don’t know what to do next. So the rest of the script is one long balloon deflating.

We start Disciple with serial killer Edmund, move up to third tier villains The Arsonist and Nurse Kathy. Then we get to Ambrose, who’s just about the coolest most confident villain you’ll ever meet. He hires two military men and goes on a personal vendetta to end Roger’s life. But Ambrose is nothing compared to our final villain, the man above him, Beau. This guy practically runs the CIA with an iron fist. So you really get the sense that our character is going up against bigger and bigger obstacles.

I haven’t even gotten to the dialogue, which was amazing (Go read the scene where Beau and Ambrose are out on their respective building decks with Beau giving Ambrose the business – fucking awesome). This had some of the best monologues I’ve read in a script. There wasn’t a single moment in the story where I didn’t believe what was coming out of a character’s mouth. That NEVER happens when I read a script.

Let’s see…the pace was great. The structure was great. The writing was top-notch. Am I leaving anything out? I mean, when I read a script, I’m charting about 8 things that show a mastery of the craft. They include things like character, structure, dialogue, pacing, conflict, theme, that sort of stuff. Most amateur scripts I read are lucky to have 1. This may be the first script I’ve read to have all 8.

There were really only a couple of things I thought could be improved. There are times when the prose feels a bit overwritten. I discussed this with Tyler and he’s just a guy who likes words. He’s not out to prove that he knows more than you. His inspiration is writers like Brad Ingelsby (The Low Dweller) so that’s just his style. I’d like him to keep it a little simpler but then again, I’m not the one who wrote this great script. So I’ll trust him.

And next, I felt like there was a missed opportunity with the Predator Drone. It pops up late LATE in the script. But I would’ve liked to have seen it featured somewhere. I mean you have this guy who pilots predator drones. That’s got set-piece scene written all over it. I suggested a scene to Tyler of having to access the drone from some ratty old laptop when surrounded in the remote cabin (he’s stuck in a remote cabin near the midpoint) and have to use a really bad internet connection to get the drone out there to kill his assassins before they move in and kill him. Tyler’s response to that idea was about five seconds of silence, lol, so I knew where I stood with that one. I’m just going to leave the writing to him. But I would like a bigger predator drone scene.

A couple of weeks ago, finishing Disciple, I knew I had found something special. I knew that these kinds of moments don’t come around often – finding a really great script from an unknown writer. But I had no idea that it would blow up as big as it did over the past few days. I mean, I had producers calling me saying they’d been forwarded the script by four different people in the last hour. I heard over a dozen producers were flying around trying to put the project together with multiple packages. My phone blew up (I don’t know how – nobody has my number) as I quickly realized I was in a strange sort of interim manager position since Tyler didn’t have any reps. That’s what was so unique about this. Usually when this kind of thing happens, it’s a calculated thing with agents and managers carefully orchestrating the buzz. It’s never really been done like this before so nobody knew – even seasoned producers – where to go or what to do. Including myself!

And it was a little nerve-wracking and fun talking with Tyler during the process, who when I first told him I was going to send the script out to some contacts, expected to field 3 calls, maybe 4 tops. He didn’t expect to be on the phone for 8 straight hours two days in a row. He didn’t expect to have to turn down calls from producers who just days ago he would’ve sold his left arm to talk to. It was insane.

But towards the end of yesterday, when Tyler finally signed with WME, and he finally had a second to just breathe, he said something that really stuck with me. He said, “Carson. I don’t want to deal with any of this stuff. I just wanna write.” And it was a really cool moment because I remembered that all of this craziness was just that – craziness. And what matters most is the writing. To that end, I think Tyler’s set for a long time.

Screenplay Link: The Disciple Program

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive (Top 10!!!)
[ ] genius

What I Learned: I have a funny little postscript to this experience. So after I finished The Disciple Program, raced to my phone, called Tyler, and asked him where the hell he came from, we had a couple of laughs and then he casually mentioned that he’d sent me a script 8 months ago for notes. What?? I said. You’ve sent me a script before?? There’s no way I would’ve forgotten a script by this writer. So after the call, I went back through my notes and indeed, found an old script that I covered for him. I quickly remembered it. It was a script with all sorts of talent. But the story itself was all over the place and muddled. And I remember giving him that note. That he needs to focus his story more because the talent is clearly there. And just 8 months later, he came up with this. And I think that should serve as a motivator to every writer out there. You’re going to learn with each script. You’re going to get better with each script. You just have to keep writing. So stay inspired. Your own breakout moment could be a script away. :)

Knights. Zombies. Guaranteed awesomeness or guaranteed awfulness? Read a script from a very UNIQUE screenwriting team and come to your own conclusion.

NEW Amateur Friday Submission Process: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, a PDF of the first ten pages of your script, your title, genre, logline, and finally, why I should read your script. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Your script and “first ten” will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effect of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre: Zombie/Period
Premise: (from writers) A war-battered knight returns from the Crusades to find his homeland terrorized by victims of a lethal fever who rise from the dead, hungry for human flesh. Sir Thomas shepherds survivors to the Castle Bridgenorth, where he leads a war of attrition against an army of the undead – even as he battles his own demons.
About: Zombie Knights was sort of the sleeper logline hit of our mini-logline contest a few weeks ago that produced “Breathwork” and “Soundtrack.” Here was their “why you should read our script” argument in their query letter: “Hollywood, they say, is looking for the same — but different. Our screenplay is an effort put a fresh spin on the tried-and-true zombie flick by setting it in the Middle Ages. We also try to use the format to address greater themes of faith and humanity. And, oh yeah, with lots of killing zombies with axes and swords and maces and stuff.”
Writer: Clint & Taylor Williams
Details: 103 pages

Well this is a first. I can safely say that I’ve never read a script by a father-son writing team before. In fact, this may be the first father-son writing team in the HISTORY OF SCREENWRITING. That’s pretty cool but, man, I’m assuming it would cause some unique challenges. I mean what happens when the son gets grounded and the Nicholl deadline is days away? “No, you can’t go see your friends tonight! But could you clean up the dialogue in the dungeon scene?” Awk-warrrrrd.

As for the age-old complaint that we have YET ANOTHER ZOMBIE SCRIPT, I’ll give it to the Williams’s…es that a middle ages setting does feel different. But I don’t care if it’s set in the Paleolithic ages – bottom line is the script has to deliver. So is Zombie Knights one of those freaking crazy ass sprinting zombies from 28 Days Later or is that half-bodied pathetic one-armed dragging zombie from the pilot of The Walking Dead?

It’s the 11th Century when things like polio and leprosy were commonplace. Catch a couple of those miscues and you could actually BECOME a zombie without being a zombie. Add on to that that you had to hunt your own food and we are talking major suckage.

But what sucks even more is that a terrible plague is spreading through the land. It makes the dead rise up and want to eat your brains. Of course, since it’s a thousand years before George Romero and Wikipedia, nobody knows what this disease is. They do know that if they shoot the diseased through the head with an arrow, though, they die. And that’s good enough for now.

After coming back from a work trip (also known as the Crusades) a group of knights led by rough and tumble Thomas and the clean-cut Clinton, realize that the place they left no longer exists. Everybody’s dying and after they die, they get up and try to eat you. While these strange undead creatures are harmless by themselves, they’re quite dangerous in bulk.

And when the bulks get too bulky, our Crusaders realize they have to flee the city and find safety somewhere else. So they take all the remaining townspeople and take a field trip across the land until they find an abandoned castle. Hey, zombies may be dangerous but they ain’t too good at scaling walls, so it seems like a good place to set up camp.

Things are nice and safe for awhile, but the zombie hordes outside the castle keep getting bigger, making a trip to the grocery store that much more difficult. Naturally, supplies get low and they realize that if they don’t find a way out of this undead mess, they’re going to starve to death. So the group comes up with the idea to dig a tunnel underneath the castle, Great Escape style. But will they be able to pull Operation Dirty Fingernails off in time? Click the script link below and find out for yourself.

Okay, Zombie Knights. A neat idea. Some solid writing. But a lot of beginner problems. Beginning with the very first scene.

Why are we opening a movie with knights being welcomed back from battle? I understand that it introduces the characters. I understand that it sets up how important these characters are. But it’s not a SCENE. A scene has decisions to be made. It has choices for your heroes. It has a PROBLEM that needs to be solved. That’s when a scene is exciting/interesting. And if there’s any scene that needs to be exciting and/or interesting, it’s your first one. Cause that’s the scene that’s either going to draw your reader in or not.

I would start this movie off with the crusaders in battle, beating ass and taking Old English names, and then at the end of the battle, after everyone’s been slaughtered, one by one, the dead bodies start getting up. What the f*ck is going on??? They have to defeat each of them a second time! This is off the top of my head and you’d probably need another 10 drafts to come up with a cool original version of it, but THAT’S a scene. THAT’S something happening. People galloping in on horses isn’t a scene. And it definitely isn’t an opening scene.

This opening is then clouded by the death-knell – a dozen characters being introduced all at the same time. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! Why God why?? The bulk-introduce is a well-known script-killer. You’re practically begging the reader to forget every character in your script by doing this.

Anyway, this is followed by a strange montage sequence of our knights fighting a bunch of battles over the years. However it wasn’t clear that time was actually passing (there was no mention of any “MONTAGE” anywhere, which was the source of the confusion) so we had this sort of comical scenario where our heroes would fight a HUGE battle, go have lunch in the forest, go fight another HUGE battle, go have dinner in the forest, go fight another HUGE battle, go have breakfast in the forest. It was funny. It was like they defeated 8 huge armies in two days. A simple “MONTAGE” slug would’ve helped this.

Then, when they get to the castle, we run into a problem I’m always warning you guys about. The “sit still and wait” problem that occurs when you place your characters in a static location. It’s just not interesting to watch people hang out and wait. Waiting is boring. Audiences want characters who are ACTIVE. That’s why the “stuck in places” movies that work are the ones where the characters are desperately trying to get out (i.e. Aliens).

The next problem is that there’s no urgency at all. I think the characters actually have months to hang out in this castle. That’s not a movie. And it’s definitely not a zombie movie, where we have to feel the urgency of the zombie threat getting closer. If I were the Williams’s…es, I would make this a 1 week deal. They get to the castle, the zombies start scratching at those rocks, and bit by bit they’re able to dig pieces of that wall off. They’re getting closer and closer to getting in. So our guys build the tunnel and you play those two angles against each other. Our guys have to finish the tunnel before the zombies break through that wall.

Because if you don’t have urgency in a movie like this, you don’t have a movie.

Also in this kind of movie, you need conflict. You need people disagreeing with each other about how shit needs to be done. That way the characters aren’t just fighting zombies, they’re fighting each other. Drogo, a character who joins the group before they get to the castle, should be this character. He needs to be the dissenter. He needs to be the one who wants to do things differently. And it can’t be polite either. It needs to be some heavy ass conflict where you’re wondering if these guys are going to kill each other before the zombies kill them.

Like I said, this was well-written, but it needs some stronger storytelling. Goals, urgency, conflict, that sort of stuff, before this zombie script can play with the big boys.

Script link: Zombie Knights

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Tell a story with your scene! That opening scene really bothered me because there was no story being told. It was just introducing characters. You have to entertain the audience, remember. Look at the opening scene in Aliens. We’re in some frozen ship. We’re not really clear what’s going on. Some sort of lazer thing starts cutting through the door. There’s mystery here. There’s anticipation. Something INTERESTING is happening. And this approach shouldn’t just be used for your opening scene. ALWAYS try to tell a story in your scene.

What I learned 2: The bulk-introduce. Guys, stay away from the bulk-introduce if at all possible. Because if we start mixing up your characters right away because they’re lost amongst a dozen introductions? We’ll be confused during every aspect of your story because we’re going to keep saying, “Who’s this character again? What’s their relationship to the story?” And that’s a script-killer.

Note: No review today.

For those playing catch-up, Twit-Pitch was a contest I held where anyone could pitch me their screenplay as long as it was contained within a single tweet.  These are the Top 100 from a list that included nearly1000. These 100 will send me the first ten pages of their scripts, from which I’ll pick 20-25 full scripts to read.  To read a discussion of the loglines and contest, head over to the 1300-comment post that occurred afterwards.  You should also follow me on Twitter for updates, as I’ll occasionally be tweeting my responses to pages. 

There’s been a lot of discussion about what I picked and what I didn’t pick and I wanted to give you guys some insight into why I chose what I chose. I’ve run a few logline contests now and I’ve learned a few things in the process. The first is, wacky comedies tend to be the worst written scripts I read. The more broad something is, the less the writer seems to care about character and story (instead focusing solely on the jokes). And as you know from reading the site, character and story are the most important things to me. So that might explain why I didn’t pick that many comedies despite the fact that there were some pretty funny ideas out there. I was tired of getting burned.

The other thing I learned is that loglines that end with a vague mystery usually result in vague unsatisfying screenplays. So if you wrote something like, “A man discovers a secret room in his house that leads to a horror that he could’ve never imagined.” There’s just not enough information there. If I’m going to take two hours to read a script, I want to know what the script is about. So many of these loglines didn’t get chosen.

Now let me get into why I chose some of the ideas I did. You’ll notice that a lot of the ideas I picked contained irony. A writer who understands the value of irony in storytelling is usually ahead of the writer who doesn’t. In other words, if I was to come across this logline…


A lawyer wakes up on the day of his biggest trial only to learn that he cannot tell a lie.

I’d pick it over this one…

A lawyer wakes up on the day of his biggest trial only to learn that he can hear people’s thoughts.

Both of those ideas are high concept but the second one doesn’t contain any irony. The lawyer can really be anybody. So it’s not nearly as exciting of an idea.

Also, since everything that happened with The Disciple Program, I’ve been fortunate enough to talk to a lot of producers in the industry. And the thing I continue to hear is, “Bring me a movie I can sell.” Not “Bring me a movie that can win a BAFTA.” Not “Bring me a movie that will fill me with emotion.” But, “bring me a movie I can sell.” That’s not to say that emotion and character development and plotting aren’t important. You guys know now how much I value all of these things. But if those things aren’t inside a package a producer can put on a poster, or sell to the next guy above him, then they’re not interested. Remember, Good Will Hunting sold as a thriller. It wouldn’t have sold as a character piece.

So when I looked through these loglines, there was that little voice in the back of my head reminding me: Is this something you can give Producer A or Producer B and they’ll be interested? The only real producer in town who can get significant character development movies made without having to jump through a million hoops is Scott Rudin. And it’s hard to get to that guy.

Finally, my taste factored into this. You guys all know that I like time travel stuff. I’m also a bit of a sci-fi geek. So you saw a lot of those ideas here. I’m not really into witches and covenants, so loglines like those were at a disadvantage. And you know, sometimes I just took chances. I know the loglines weren’t traditionally ‘sound,’ but something said to me, “This sounds like a unique writer.” The Detroit salt mines one. It felt different. The dwarf opening a pizza shop. It felt different. The dead whale one. It felt different. And those were simply chosen on gut. Unfortunately, that’s not something you can predict when you’re constructing your idea. You never know which gut is going to be looking at your logline.

Now, on to the Twit-Pitch 100. The first 76 were my original picks, and the last 24 were new picks. I chose these by going back through the comments section in the massive Twit-Pitch post and seeing what people liked. I also browsed back through the pitches myself and added a few that didn’t hit me the first time.

I decided to bypass the direct-messaging I promised earlier because it takes a ridiculous amount of time to direct tweet on Twitter for some reason. Therefore, anybody who was favorited and anybody who shows up in the 23 alternates here, you have until Sunday midnight (pacific time) to send me your first 10 pages (to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with subject line: TWIT-PITCH). I’ll let you know next week what the due date is for the entire script, which will be roughly 2 months. Enjoy the pitches!

1) A pill-pushing psychiatrist must connect with his patients when a dissatisfied customer curses him with all of their disorders.

2) Early 1980s New Jersey: a 12-year-old decides to profile the local mob boss for his seventh grade English project.

3) North Atlantic, 1825. A whaling Captain and his mutinous crew are trapped on the body of a dead whale and must fight for survival.

4) A “This American Life” type documentary covering a monster attack on NYC, using found footage, like the 1st anniversary of 9/11

5) Werewolves on The Moon: It’s always a full moon on the moon.

6) After winning a nationwide lottery a man must decide what to do with his prize, fifteen minutes of advice to give to his younger self

7) Genesis Y2K: A Christian broadcasting network hires two failed filmmakers to create a TV series of the Bible before the apocalypse

8) After being framed for his father’s murder, an ex-Army medic goes on the run and uncovers a vast secret buried in Detroit’s salt mines

9) West Side story but hip-hop. Rival barber shops: Hella Cutty vs. Get Faded. Step it up 3 meets Leprechaun in the hood

10) On a dare, a young woman shaves her head… only to discover a pirate’s treasure map tattooed onto her scalp

11) When his fiancee gets promoted, a man must plan their wedding on his own. But he risks losing his bride when he becomes a groomzilla.

12) A troubled teen suspects his father may be trying to kill him for a life insurance payout when he’s involved in several “accidents”

13) A man trying to solve the mystery of his con artist grandfather must overcome his own beliefs and the resistance of his broken family.

14) An uptight half-white half-Latin man confronts his repressed heritage when he’s mistaken for a druglord while on business in Guatemala

15) An orphan grows up in a projection booth. He must use all he learned from movies to survive outdoors or lose his true love

16) A group of friends returns from a time-travel fieldtrip to find a nerdy student has altered his past turning him into a living legend.

17) A hoarder finds the girl of his dreams only to lose her in his apartment.

18) A TV executive is held hostage by the characters from a show he recently cancelled, who demand they be put back on the air.

19) An astrophysicist Jesuit priest suffers a crisis of faith triggered by the discovery of a destroyed civilization lightyears from home.

20) One man unaffected by a world inexplicably frozen in time, seeks a way to end the stasis, and finds to his peril that he’s not alone.

21) Firstclass: Mailmen vs. meter maids, battle in the secret civil servant war for control of the streets while trying to get disability.

22) A down on his luck Ice Cream Man agrees to transport stolen stem cells to Mexico only to find these cells are not from this planet.

23) A team of animals organize to fight the omnipotent Taxidermist after he inflicts their community with a deadly parasite

24) A 30 year old woman who dated twins in college believes that one of them was “The One”, if only she could remember which.

25) Two guys have one weekend to battle for the coveted ‘Godfather’ title to their best friend’s new daughter.

26) A terrorist with a $10 mill bounty, a callous soldier of fortune and a mysterious man with no name walk into a bar in Afghanistan

27) Secrets revealed, lives evaluated and relationships SLAUGHTERED after a small town reality cast deals with the murder of their lead.

28) A paranormal debunker is unknowingly invited to investigate a home by a ghost who is terrified by another evil entity lurking upstairs

29) Ex-CIA assassin unionizes an eclectic group of freelance hitmen to “negotiate” with their mob employers. Norma Rae meets RED

30) When the world’s biggest superhero agreed to grant a dying boy’s last wish, he didn’t count on the boy wishing for all his powers

31) When a suicide cult oddly resurrects in a small town, an ex-cop must uncover the truth, and find his own dead son has also risen

32) 9 strangers wake in a deserted Mexican town besieged by killing machines: they must discover why they’ve been brought there to survive

33) In 1903 North Carolina, the Wright bros attempt the first flight, but shenanigans arise when they fall in love with the same woman

34) The ghost of a legendary star gets tangled up in his own biopic when he needs the help of the heartthrob cast as him

35) Small town funeral home begrudgingly inherited is failing so the owner starts killing for business. Soon, his model goes national.

36) Can it get any worse than living next door to a serial killer? It can if you live on CRIMSON ROAD… the whole street is full of them.

37) Driven into exile by a goblin invasion, a mythological dwarf struggles to adapt to life as a pizzeria owner in upstate New York

38) When a lonely masochistic chubby chaser is abducted by two fat lesbian serial killers, it’s the best thing that ever happened to him.

39) Determined to find a date for his high school reunion, a loser hires a lifecoach who turns out to be his old school bully

40) An imprisoned Japanese-American doctor and a Caucasian nurse fall in love amid mounting tension inside a WWII internment camp

41) ORBIT – A team of astronauts orbiting the Earth find they may be the world’s only hope during a devastating alien attack.

42) When a billionaire sociopath is sent to death row, he offers $100 million cash to anyone that can successfully break him out

43) SPECIMEN – An amnesiac surgeon who wakes up chained to a steel slab must uncover why doctors are performing grisly operations on him.

44) While investigating a popular student’s unexplained disappearance, a high school psychologist realizes her stepson is a prime suspect.

45) After a series of murders, three survivors must help police piece together the previous night’s events. Rashomon meets Reunion

46) RE-ENACTMENT: A civil war expert and his son must fight to survive a reenactment organized by a dangerous southern cult

47) Douche Patrol: Two partners in the newly created Douche Patrol try to expose a plot to douchify the masses through a reality TV show

48) An ex-cop awakes in an alternative reality where normal people are locked up in mental institutions and society is runned by lunatics

49) After checking into a hotel to escape her abusive husband, a woman realizes guests in the next room are holding a young girl hostage.

50) 3 days after his wife and child die, a man discovers he can travel into the past, one day at a time, as long as he never falls asleep.

51) ActingCoach:a hi-school drama teacher becomes coach of the varsity basketball team, forcing his theater philosophies on the jocks

52) With his favorite fast-food sandwich facing its final week before it’s phased out forever, an obsessed man leads a protest to save it.

53) 3 men kill a friend for suspiciously losing their winning lotto ticket, only to later discover the missing ticket was in fact a loser

54) Head of time travel program learns world’ll be destroyed in 25 years and must stop the terrorist responsible: his 25-year-older self.

55) Desperate to divorce but cash-strapped, ornery newlyweds must put their feuding aside to sell their house, much less agree on a price.

56) AIRBORNE An outbreak of a lethal, unknown virus threatens the passengers and crew of a commercial airliner, forcing it to stay aloft

57) Futuristic re-imagining of SLEEPING BEAUTY. A young woman, cryogenically frozen for 100 years, is discovered in deep space.

58) A warrior sets out to track and kill the last giant – a lonely, anguished creature… and last link to an ancient, beautiful world.

59) The little known true story of how Matisse & Picasso went from being fierce rivals to BFFs.

60) To save his Mom’s home, an obnoxious 40 year old is given one chance: enter the teen TV quiz he had a meltdown on 25 years ago.

61) A group of last-minute shoppers trapped in a mall on Christmas Eve are stalked by a demon-possessed Santa. Horror/Comedy

62) A lowly museum curator races to find Pandora’s box before the resurrected Greek gods destroy the modern world.

63) A famous chef has a nervous breakdown and recovers while working at McDonald’s, where he rediscovers his love for food.

64) RomCom-Man loves woman whose dreams predict future, but future she sees isn’t with him. Can he convince her to choose love over fate?

65) A car thief finds a drug mule tied up in the trunk of his latest grab, then finds himself in the sights of the man who wants her back

66) Emilie can control time at will. When she’s hired to change a key event in a mathematical genius’s life, time begins to collapse

67) A lifelong bachelor accidentally proposes to his clingy girlfriend then tries to trick her into dumping him, but the tables soon turn

68) After forced to choose between her two children during a fire, Sarah fears she is now being haunted by the dead son she left behind.

69) A divorced dad adopts a puppy to fix his family but troubles arise when his ex’s new boyfriend joins his Puppy Kindergarten class

70) DEVIL’S DUE: A cave rescue team fights to escape a collapsing abandoned mine stalked by inhuman ghouls who can mimic victims.

71) After running away from home, an eight foot tall teenager stumbles upon a retirement town for sideshow performers.

72) When a U-Boat vanishes in the 1940s, it leads a team of American GIs to a terrifying secret trapped beneath the ice of Antarctica

73) A dwarf on the run from the mob impersonates the 7-year-old host of an irreverent children’s TV show.

74) After thwarting a terrorist hijacking, passengers debate what to do with the surviving bomber, who’s still set on finishing the job

75) ‘The Tradition’ 1867 After losing her father, a woman unwittingly takes a job as a maid at a countryhouse of aristocratic cannibals

76) After perfecting the ability to send data backwards in time, a brilliant quantum physicist must avert his future murder.

AND NOW – FOR THE ALTERNATES (YOUR PICKS!)

77) The Lipschitz Affair: When an art heist interrupts a wedding at the Guggenheim, everyone’s a suspect — even the bride and groom

78) The Shit List: With the help of his best friend, an underachiever seeks revenge on the people he blames for ruining his life #tp12

79) When a solar storm strands a lonesome geologist in the Canadian wild, she must journey through the dark to survive. “Borealis”

80) When fired by God, a hardworking guy decides to change path and ends up appointed CEO of Hell (, Inc).

81) A bridge appears over the Miss. river. A city official forms a blockade, but news that it travels you back in time starts a hysteria.

82) A chicken farmer watches in horror as his simple life is manipulated by a documentary filmmaker into a feature film.

83) Documentarian interviews Environmentalist Leader only to discover he’s a pawn of the Mob, disposing of bodies in newly created parks.

84) 22yrs old and tired of the pain and suffering of being a real boy,Pinocchio embarks on a journey to get turned back into a puppet.

85) A team of scientists lands on Mars to begin the terraformation process, but Mars fights back in RED MENACE.

86) A mundane father returns to his childhood imaginary world, only to find it has been corrupted by his life as an adult.

87) After a chance encounter, a young couple reunites a few months later only to find their love threatened by a dark secret.

88) It’s 1901. Terrorists have just taken over the White House. And only Theodore Roosevelt can stop them.

89) A high school senior discovers there is a conspiracy to stop him from having sex before graduation.

90) 3 girls spend their last summer before high school rebuilding a old fort and their crumbling friendship.

91) A bounty hunter has 30 days to catch his nemesis before the last spaceship departs, leaving him stranded and alone on a dying earth.

92) BLACKHATS: A hacker for hire finds himself in a deadly web of corporate espionage after being hired to steal the 1st sentient A.I.

93) Haunted by his daughter’s death, a reclusive CIA interrogator saves a suspect he’s ordered to torture; a young girl of alien origin.

94) Ecotourists stranded in a radioactive ghost town at Chernobyl face the threat of wolves, disfigured locals & their own social meltdown

95) 1022 BC. Family corruption and fierce enemy tribes plague the young warrior David as he plots his own rise and ascension to Israel’s throne.

96) Chris Kartje ‏ @chriskartje
When, on Xmas Eve, Santa lands on a frat house & eats all the pot cookies, itʼs up to the last sober Jew to be his designated driver.

97) A failed Elvis impersonator travels back in time to steal the life & career of the real Elvis.

98) New York 2029. The whole city is a walled in maximum security town for the wealthy. The world most dangerous criminal just dropped in.

99) Trapped in an increasingly nightmarish limbo, a dead boxer keeps returning to the ring, desperate for the win that’ll change his fate.

100) A rising young actress struggles to keep her sexuality a secret while falling for her female castmate & trying to succeed in Hollywood

While you may not be able to go back in time and Twit-Pitch a better logline, you can head back in time with today’s screenplay, Safety Not Guaranteed.

Genre: Indie-Comedy
Premise: Based on a real ad, SNG is about a small-time group of journalists investigating an ad in the classifieds that states – “WANTED: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. P.O. Box 322 Oakview, CA 93022. You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before.”
About: Yes, this story is based on a real ad. However, if I’m to understand it correctly, the rest of the script is completely made up. While the writer, Connolly, has a distant TV movie credit back in 2005, this seems to be his first “real” produced credit. Rising star Jake Johnson, along with the weird chick from Parks and Recreation, star. The film debuted at Sundance, where it was received well.
Writer: Derek Connolly
Details: 93 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

 

I like these scripts with pseudo-magical premises. I like that there’s the possibility of stuff we haven’t figured out yet or can’t understand. Shit, I even liked K-Pax with Kevin Spacey! Actually that’s not true. I liked it for 45 minutes and then it got stupid (“You’re an alien. No, you’re an abused child!” Uhh, what??). I guess what I’m saying is, I like the idea that there’s more out there and I enjoy movies that explore that possibility in a grounded way.

Which leads us to Safety Not Guaranteed, a whimsical little drama/comedy that feels like it was born inside Sundance’s womb, with the intention of playing there once then disappearing forever, kind of like that old Apple commercial that only played once during the Super Bowl.

The script starts out in disastrous territory, introducing us to our lead character, Darius. Now when I say “Darius,” tell me what the first image that comes to mind is. Is it a 13 year old Caucasian girl? Ding ding ding! If you guessed yes, you’d be correct! Except I know you didn’t. Because no intelligent person would. So I will make this plea for the 842,000th time. Do not give your female characters male names. And if you’re going to give them a name that’s usually popular in another ethnicity, you better have a darn good reason for why. It’s not clever. It’s confusing to the reader.

So yeah, right away, I was ready to kick this script’s ass. However, as I was putting on my ass-kicking boots, the story slowly started to rebound (how could it not? It started at such a low point). We learn that the now 22 year old Darius is an assistant at a weird but assumingly popular magazine where she’s desperate to move up. I like characters who want to move up. Makes them active. I stopped tying my boots.

As the employees gather to pitch their latest story ideas to the editor, one of the lead writers, 29-year-old Jeff, pitches his idea on a classified ad about a guy asking for a partner to go back in time with. The guy lives up the coast in a beach town called Ocean View, and he figures he could take a couple of assistants up there and interview the guy. The editor agrees so Jeff chooses Darius and the overtly shy Arnau.

On their way up, Darius pleas with Jeff to get her name on the article while Arnau sits in the back doing his best to look confused (something he’s very good at). Once we get there, we find out Jeff wasn’t interested in the story at all. He actually came here to reconnect with a girlfriend he hasn’t seen since childhood.

Darius is pissed that her boss is a fraud but it actually opens up a great opportunity, since she can now write the article herself. So she goes off to meet the mysterious adster, Kenneth, and finds him as weird as advertised. He’s a terribly awkward combination of autistic and paranoid, convinced that some Men in Black are on to him, trying to prevent him from his mission (just out of curiosity – Why do crazy people always think the government is after them? Is there a Crazy Handbook out there that requires this?).

Kenneth takes to Darius immediately and she goes along with it to get the story. But the more she gets to know him, the more she starts to understand him. He wants to go back in time to prevent a girl’s death. That hits close to home because Darius’s mother died a decade ago and she, too, wishes she could go back and save her.

The closer we get to the big jump, the closer the Men in Black dudes close in. Jeff and pointless Arnau start to question whether Darius has lost her mind because she’s actually starting to believe him. Oh, and then there’s Kenneth, racing around, stealing materials from local corporations, trying to finish up his time machine, which puts the community on high alert. This means they have to speed up the time table. And as the big launch approaches, everybody – the characters and us – are wondering, is this real? Or is Kenneth crazy?

Safety Not Guaranteed started out as one of those “trying too hard to be a hip indie comedy” films that make you laugh and groan in equal measure. Everybody wears a vintage sweater. Everybody’s ironic. And everybody has a perfect little quip in response to a line of dialogue. In other words, if films had necks, you’d want to strangle this one.

But then the screenplay stops trying to impress us and starts focusing on the characters. And when that happens, it actually gets pretty good. I really liked our heroine, Darius. I liked how she hid behind this wall, afraid to feel, afraid to show emotion. I like how she masked it by making fun of others. And I loved how that wall eventually began to drop as the story went on. A little Screenwriting 101 here. Walls are good! Characters who have walls give you a natural place to go with them (breaking those walls down). So add walls to your characters!

I also liked a lot of the choices the writer made, specifically how he wanted the story to remain ambiguous. For example, Kenneth is going back in time to save this girl. (Spoiler) Yet later, Jeff tells Darius he did some investigating and found out the girl Kenneth is going back to save is still alive. When Darius confronts Kenneth about this, he’s confused, but then starts to wonder, does that mean they already went back in time and succeeded? And it was at that moment that I really started to appreciate the script. It genuinely had you wondering – is this real or isn’t it?

I also liked Jeff’s journey. Jeff is clearly a ladies man whose flaw is that he only sees people from the outside. So when he finds the girl from his childhood who’s now… a lot bigger, he has to decide if he’s willing to make a commitment to someone he’s not attracted to. Watching him battle this and come to terms with his flaw was surprisingly touching.

But you can’t win them all, and the game of Anau was definitely lost. I mean could there be a more pointless character in screenplay history? I don’t know if they just wanted a funny Indian guy in the trailer or what but this character was a disaster. His goal was to get laid? Or something? Huh?

Really, that’s the only thing I didn’t like, well besides the Darius name thing of course. The only reason this doesn’t rank higher is because it carries that Sundance Indie tag that seems to limit a story’s ceiling. I can’t really explain it other than to say those movies only tend to be so enjoyable. And while I did enjoy this, I wouldn’t go out telling everybody they have to read it. Still, if you like this kind of story, you should definitely check it out. It’s pretty solid.

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Beware the “show off” first act. Some writers feel it’s necessary in the first act to prove how good of a writer they are and therefore push too hard. It’s the equivalent of a first date where you’re trying realllllly hard to be funny or cool. It never comes off natural because you’re pressing. The best dates are when you just relax and be yourself. Your first act should be similar. Don’t try to impress anybody or prove that you’re a great writer (overly quirky dialogue, overly cute names, false “movie” moments). Just tell your story!

Peter Pan mixed with Lord Of The Flies mixed with…zombies? Sounds like an interesting little screenplay. Let’s find out if guest reviewer Amy Suto liked it…

Since I’m tired of giving you guys vague updates about my book, the site re-launch, and Twit-Pitch, I’m putting together an official schedule (with real dates!) that I plan to post this weekend. I’m like the U.S. Government. I’m posting about a post that I’ll make later. Heh heh. In the meantime, I’m bringing back guest reviewer Amy Suto, (who reviewed Celeste and Jesse Forever a month ago) to take on some zombie madness. Or, errr…are they zombies? I’m confused. You know what, I’ll just let Amy clear it up.