Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: When a male skeleton holding a gun is found inside the fossilized remains of a T-Rex, a young paleontologist must get to the bottom of how it happened.
HOW TO SUBMIT: Every Friday, I review a script from the readers of the site. If you’re interested in submitting 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).
Writer: Darren Howell
Details: 115 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).

Finally! We get some high concept action up in this joint!

Strap on your jetpacks tadpoles. This is about to get loopy.

Paleontologist or fossil-seeker (whatever you call them) Dr. Rosy Kean, has just made a major discovery. An entire T-Rex fossil buried in the ground. But that’s not all. This T-Rex has inside of its “stomach” a skeleton – a skeleton of a man. A skeleton of a man with a GUN. Uh-huh. Yeah. Things just got interesting.

So Rosy calls up her old flame – used to be FBI agent, now a security guard – Danny Wallace, to get a match on the gun. Danny looks up the serial number and guess what? It’s the same serial number as HIS CURRENT GUN. Naturally, Danny thinks this is all a joke and doesn’t really pay attention to it. Especially because there are other things going on in the world. Like in Iran where a 9.2 earthquake just rocked one of their nuclear facilities.

Anyway, Rosy gets a call from her old friend Cassandra Wallace, the richest woman in the world (who also happens to be Danny’s mother) who wants her to come back to the U.S. ASAP. She’s got something she wants to tell her.

Rosy does, but in the meantime, all over the world, there are these strange “gravity bumps” where everything jolts out of place. Certainly there’s gotta be something going on here. And Danny wants to get to the bottom of it. But when an oil tanker falls out of the sky into the middle of New York, that’s when it gets really bad. People need answers now.

Danny does some digging and eventually finds out that the government has some sort of secret new weapon they’re working on that creates controllable black holes. I mean, screw nuclear weapons. That’s old school. If you can control black holes, you could decimate anything. Then afterwards you just close them back up. The question is, where do these black holes end? Where are they sending this stuff back to?

Eventually Rosy, Danny, and Cassandra all meet up and – and this is where my understanding of what happens gets a little shaky – decide that Danny’s going to go back in time where these black holes are sending all this stuff to. He does (spoilers), which is where he meets his fate with the dinosaur. We then jump forward to 1960, where we find out the truth behind who Cassandra really is, and the mystery behind her tremendous wealth.

Whoa. First Man On Earth indeed.

Initial thoughts on this one? Intriguing. Exciting. But messy. I mean, this script explores a TON of ideas. But it makes a mistake a lot of writers make early on. Trying to throw everything and the kitchen sink into their story. A looming world war isn’t enough. It has to be a world war with wormholes and time travel and ships falling out of the sky. I actually liked some of this stuff because it was unique. But the truth is, there was too much going on.

I’m reminded of what happened with Good Will Hunting’s development. The original script for that had Will Hunting on the run with the government chasing him and a bunch of thriller craziness. But the producers told them, “Whoa, let’s slow this down. It looks like you have some better characters here than you’re giving yourself credit for.” Subsequent drafts concentrated more on the relationships between the characters and the movie went on to win a screenwriting Oscar.

I would suggest some of that here, but maybe not to the degree that they did it. I think the time travel stuff is intriguing and reveals an interesting final twist. But I’m not sure I like all the wormhole this and wormhole that and quantum physics breakdown and boats falling out of skies and Russia and China joining forces and U.S. secret weapons. That stuff is cool if you’re making a Roland Emmerich movie, but I think this has the potential to be more. The strange triangle relationship between Danny, Rosy, and Cassandra can be mined for more drama. Then build a simpler story around that. You don’t lose much because you still have your high concept (time travel). Yet now your story doesn’t seem like it’s cluttered or trying too hard. I mean, I’m still not sure why the hell we started this movie in Iran.

I’m also not sure the FBI angle works. I would stay consistent with the movie’s hook. Make Danny some kind of scientist, like Rosy.

This script had other issues as well. Sometimes we can be so focused on giving our characters problems and flaws, that we just throw something in there cause it checks the box. Danny hating his mother because she gives him “too much love” may be the dumbest reason for a relationship disconnect ever. Even if it were realistic, the fact that Danny’s droning on about how difficult it is to have someone love him so much is not only stupid, but it makes him look like a total asshole. I can somewhat understand why this was used after the twist was revealed, but it creates too much frustration for the reader in the 90-some pages leading up to the twist to justify its use.

I also thought the Mallinson storyline (Mallinson is a character who tries to take credit for the T-Rex discovery) was too on-the-nose, had no story value, and crumbled under the weight of how “cliché bad guy” Mallinson was. I couldn’t understand why we were spending so much time with him. Our villains needed to be direct adversaries of Rosy and Danny. Not 10,000 miles away.

Speaking of, the fact that the T-Rex discovery was off in a different place than was the rest of the story gave me the uncomfortablies. Almost like the writer wanted to get the dinosaur hook in, then get to the U.S. as soon as possible. If there’s any way to keep the story more centralized, I’d recommend that. For example, if Danny and Cassandra were flown over there as opposed to the other way around, and everything took place in a nearby foreign city, sort of like how the bulk of Raiders takes place in Cairo, I’d recommend that. I just don’t like jumping all over the world unless it’s absolutely necessary. And these characters didn’t absolutely need to be in the U.S. Especially if you get rid of all that FBI stuff.

Another big issue here is over-information. And this often happens when you’re throwing everything and the kitchen sink at your story. At a certain point, there’s just too much to explain. And that this script felt part Quantum Physics course was not a good omen for a story that already had to explain the connection between current black holes and the extinction of the dinosaurs, as well as why China and Russia were turning into one big super-country.

Here’s the thing. Sometimes we feel like we have to “prove” to the reader that we’ve researched this or know what we’re talking about, so we dedicate pages upon pages of characters spouting out boring exposition as to how the whole thing works. It’s good to do research, but always remember that you’re entertaining your audience first. Tell them what they need to know but nothing more – ESPECIALLY if you already have a ton of other crazy shit you have to explain.

I can’t give this script a “worth the read” because it’s too sloppy and there’s too much going on and I’m not sure all the parts fit together. But I will say this is a great concept to be working with for a spec script. It’s going to get the writer reads. And if Darren can find the story somewhere inside of all this madness, First Man On Earth has a chance of becoming something really good. I believe that.

Script link: First Man On Earth

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me (very close to worth the read)
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Beware of the residual effects of an exposition heavy movie. You become so satisfied with making everything make sense, that you don’t realize you’re having to jam character backstory in all the way down on page 84 (with Rosy). This is a direct result of not having anywhere to put this stuff earlier, where it should be. This is the same reason why we know nothing about any of the characters in Inception besides Cobb, and thus why they feel so empty. So much time needed to be spent on explaining the never-ending rules of dream-navigation that there wasn’t any time left for character development. Only give us the information/explanation we need and nothing more.

Genre: Action
Premise: (from writer) Halloween night, 108 mercenaries seize Manhattan to hold it hostage for 48 hours and a PTSD suffering Iraq war vet must find redemption and save the day.
About: Every Friday, I review a script from the readers of the site. If you’re interested in submitting 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).
Writer: Sun-kyu Park
Details: 119 pages

I got two words for you. South Korea represent. Assuming we can classify South Korea as one word. It’s been awhile since we’ve seen a good action script. In fact, I don’t see many straight action scripts on the spec market these days at all. Or at least any that sell. I don’t know if companies figure they don’t need scripts for action movies anymore or the straight-to-video action market is so strong that nobody bothers making big-budget action movies anymore. That can mean only one thing. That the straight action film (Die Hard, Speed, Cliffhanger) is primed for a comeback. Is Siege Of Man that comeback?

To say that Siege Of Man starts off with a bang would be like saying Cameron Crowe casually enjoys placing his favorite songs in his movies. That is to say, a MASSIVE UNDERSTATEMENT. It’s clear after reading the opening sequence in Siege that Sun-kyu is disturbed, unstable, and insane. Lucky for us, because this has gotta be one of the more memorable openings to a screenplay I’ve read in a long time.

We’re in Baghdad. A group of soldiers prepping for another day in the heart of danger. There’s Max, a roguish photographer. There’s Joe, a blue collar corporal. And there’s Chang, a soldier just trying to make it through the day. The group is driving around the city when they’re surprise-attacked. There’s chaos and shooting and bombs and cars blowing up and pedestrians being used as decoys and even though these guys are prepped daily for these types of situations, this one is totally out of control.

At some point a man named Henri The Mercenary comes to them like an angel from the heavens and ushers them to safety. Or at least tries to. As they get to their helicopters, Henri doesn’t make it, is captured, and thrown inside a Baghdad movie theater. Just before he’s about to get tortured like no other human in history, a hardcore military man named Ash walks in and saves him. He tells him he’ll get him out of this mess, but only if he’ll help him do something.

Cut to a year later and we’re in Manhattan. Our boy Max ended up winning the Pulitzer for the pictures he took during that battle, while Joe is a drunken mess. A drunken mess who’s also a cop. Little do they know, Ash is prepping a hundred some mercenaries for some hardcore New York City takeover action. And oh yeah, it’s Halloween.

Within a 30 minute period, two of the bridges connecting Manhattan are blown to pieces. A couple of mid-sized blimps with multiple dirty bombs are sent up above the city. The internet’s taken out. Cell phones are taken out. And just like that, Ash has taken over New York City. He lets everyone know via speaker systems that if they don’t do as he says, they’re going to get their mouths washed out with dirty bombs.

Meanwhile, Max and Joe, who run into each other by coincidence, are tasked with figuring out what the hell’s going on and how to stop it. That’s not going to be easy since Joe is still pissed at Max for caring more about his stupid pictures than saving people on that fateful day. Luckily, they run into Army Sergeant Kirk, who helps bridge the chasm between them and give a more sound plan to saving the city. So what is Ash doing exactly? What is his plan? Click on the link at the end of the review to find out.

One thing’s clear. Sun-kyu can write. All you have to do is read the first 20 pages to see that. I thought I was in for a typical “American soldiers get attacked” Baghdad sequence when I started reading. And that’s how it starts. But where Siege Of Man is different is that it keeps going. And going. And going. And shit just keeps getting worse. And worse. And worse. As our heroes pull out their weapons to fight back and see nothing but a wall of pedestrians, it’s just terrifying. Particularly because cars are blowing up around them and men are shooting at them from rooftops. And they’re in the middle of the city and there’s nowhere to run. What’s so cool about this opening sequence is that you can SEE IT. You can see the movie playing out before your eyes. That’s a powerful talent to have as a screenwriter.

Here’s the thing with Siege of Man though. While Sun-kyu is great at writing action, the plot itself is confusing and the character development isn’t very good. This is a common problem many writers run into. They get an idea for a movie – like someone taking over New York – and they become really into WRITING THAT. But they never sit down and specifically map out WHY this would happen or HOW all the characters are involved. As a result, you get something that’s comprehensible but not enjoyable. All the dots connect, but with really weak lines – like the kind you get when using a No. 3 pencil.

For me it began with Ash. A cool bad guy. He wants to take over New York. I’m into it. But for the majority of the screenplay, WHY he wants to take over New York is kept a mystery. When you keep something that important a mystery for that long, you better wow us when it’s finally revealed. And I was definitely not wowed when I heard Ash’s plan. That’s because I still don’t understand it. Apparently, Ash is going to insert a virus onto the Fed’s mainframe, destroying the United States’ ability to move money. This will then – I think – result in worldwide chaos, and countries will start attacking each other. And then we’ll have World War 3.

I’ll try and say this as politely as possible but….what?

Next we have Joe and Max. I can’t quite put my finger on it but I was never interested in either of these guys. Despite experiencing that intense battle with them at the opening of the movie, I have no idea who they are. One has a drinking problem and is pissed at the other. The other feels guilty about his Pulitzer. It’s really barebones stuff and hardly complex enough to emotionally pull us into their journey. I was just watching Psycho the other day, and noticed how much Marion had going on as a character. We know she’s in a taboo relationship. We know she’s thinking about giving up her life to be with this man full time. She steals money to achieve this goal and leave her old life forever. She’s lying to everyone she meets from that point on. There’s a TON going on internally with this woman. You can practically see the conflict playing out within her every time she opens her mouth. Granted, Siege Of Man is an action flick and not a horror film, but I needed a lot more going on with my heroes.

Next we get into logic issues. In broad terms, if you don’t really think about it, the takeover sort of makes sense. The bad guys have blown up bridges, cut out the cell phone towers, and set up massive bombs if anyone does anything stupid. But Ash has around (I believe) 150 men at his disposal. 150 men would have trouble keeping order in Central Park. Manhattan’s small but it’s not THAT small. So this idea that enough bad guys were patrolling the streets to keep things in order didn’t fly.

The final problem is that the script just runs out of steam. This is what I was talking about yesterday with the second act. If you’re not exploring your character’s flaw, if you don’t have a couple of compelling relationships that need to be resolved, and if those aren’t coupled with an escalating plot, your second act is going to fall apart. Joe and Max do have a fractured relationship, but it’s pretty murky what needs to be resolved (Joe wants Max to acknowledge not caring during the Baghdad battle?). This forces Sun-Kyu to resort to Michael-Bay-itis, covering all these deficiencies up by MAKING SHIT EXPLODE.

The thing is, Sun-kyu knows how to make shit explode. He’s very visual. He’s imaginative. He knows how to paint the type of scene you’d want to pay ten bucks for on a Saturday evening. And for that, he should be commended. But here’s the weird thing about Hollywood. Yes, it’s true, that when a big-budget movie races towards production, producers could give two shits about logic and character development. In fact, most of them freak out and do their best to dumb down and ruin the movie as much as possible, which is why we get abominations like Transformers. However, when you’re an unknown writer trying to break in with a spec script? Those same things become incredibly important to producers. Ironically, they WANT character development. They WANT your plot to be intricate and logical and make sense. Is it hypocritical? Sure. But these are the guys writing the checks. Even though they’re going to turn your screenplay into an incoherent piece of shit a year and a half from now, right now, it needs to be perfect.

While Siege Of Man didn’t do it for me in the end, it’s the best writing I’ve seen in an amateur script in awhile. If Sun-Kyu keeps working at this and improving the non-action portion of his writing, he’s going to become a working screenwriter in Hollywood.

Script link: Siege Of Man

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me (but recommend the writer)
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: One of the reasons James Cameron’s films have grossed more money than any other writer’s films in history is that he’s the only action writer I know who cares just as much about character development as he does action. Watch any of his movies and you’ll see that. I mean, he gives the damn Terminator a character arc in Terminator 2. Let me repeat that. He gives a ROBOT A CHARACTER ARC. The truth is, most writers who love action aren’t interested in character development. And most writers who love character development aren’t interested in action. So think about it. If you put equal emphasis on both, you could be unstoppable. Just like James Cameron.

Many of you know Mastai’s work through “The F Word,” one of my favorite scripts I’ve read here on the site, and a 2007 Black List member. Since then he’s done a lot of assignment work, and it’s really paid off recently. He wrote an upcoming film starring Sam Jackson called “The Samaritan,” and is currently working with Oscar winner Alan Ball on his next directing project. This is one of my favorite interviews yet.  There’s a ton of great screenwriting advice in Elan’s answers. 

SS: How much time had you put in as a screenwriter before you finally found success? Are we talking years? Decades? How many scripts had you written?

EM: The short, simple answer is about seven years and fifteen scripts before I wrote “The F Word” and it launched my career in LA, scoring me my agents and manager, getting on the “Black List” and picked up by Fox-Searchlight, and opening doors for me to start writing studio projects, which I’ve now been doing since late-2008.

The longer, convoluted answer is that of those fifteen scripts, four got produced as low-budget independent features of varying degrees of quality, three got optioned but never made, five were assignments I got hired to write or rewrite, one of which also got produced but without my name on it (thankfully, because it’s atrocious), and three were semi-successful attempts to figure out what kind of writer I wanted to be, what my quote-unquote “voice” was, that I never did anything with because I knew they weren’t there yet.

Even though I was making a living as a screenwriter (in Canada, where I’m from), it wasn’t as rewarding as it maybe should’ve or could’ve been, because I wasn’t writing stuff in my own voice.

So, a super-low-budget movie I co-wrote premiered at Sundance in 2007. And everyone was very complimentary and all that, but deep-down I knew I couldn’t really present that movie, or any of the scripts I’d written to that point, to anyone as an example of what I felt I could really do as a writer. I realized I needed to re-think my approach to screenwriting.

And that led to me writing “The F Word”, which was the first script I wrote that conveyed my point of view, told the story in a way that only I could. In retrospect, it makes sense that it was the script that got me all kinds of attention in LA. But I had a lot of kinks to work through in my writing before I had the solid storytelling skills to pull off a script as low-concept and voice-driven as “The F Word”.

SS: During that time, when everything’s so uncertain, and that big beautiful dream of being a “professional” screenwriter is so unclear, what kept you going? How do you know whether to keep pushing through or not?

EM: Basically, I met other aspiring filmmakers through film festivals and film-related events. We watched movies, talked movies, made short films, read each other’s stuff and gave candid feedback, helped each other improve, kicked each other in the ass a little when it was needed.

In general, though, I’m pretty clear-eyed about my strengths and weaknesses as a writer. So I also spent those seven years writing scripts that allowed me work on my weaknesses. I wrote, like, kid’s movies, horror flicks, crime thrillers, teen comedies, sports movies, anything that would teach me something I didn’t know and fill in a blank in my toolkit.

It was very cool to read your review of “The F Word” and the ensuing comments thread because, whether people love or loathe the script, they’re seriously engaging with my writing. That’s awesome. But it’s also a little odd for me because the draft everyone’s discussing is, like, three-and-a-half years old. I’m proud of the script and it’s been a fantastic calling card for me, but I’ve also had the chance to rewrite it twice for Fox-Searchlight and write four or five other movies since then. And it’s funny because all the points being discussed in the comments are the exact same debates I had with the producers and execs when I was rewriting the script. I’d say, in fact, basically all the criticisms you voiced in your review have been dealt with in subsequent rewrites.

My roundabout point is that being hyper-aware of your strengths and weaknesses as a writer, without being so self-critical that you paralyze yourself from actually writing anything, is just as important before you break through as it is once you have.

Working as a professional screenwriter in LA, you have to present this confident, positive version of yourself to potential employers and creative partners. But you also have to be chronically objective about your limitations in order to improve as a writer. So the arguments in the comments thread (is my writing innovative and hilarious or overrated and boring?) are the same ones I ask myself every single goddamn day when I sit down at the keyboard to write something new.

SS: You’re from Canada. How difficult was it breaking into Hollywood from a different country, and what do you think the key was? (i.e. Did you have to travel there a lot? Get a second home there?)

EM: I’ve never lived in Los Angeles. I got my agents, manager, and lawyer and set up all of my studio projects coming to LA for a week at a time every few months. In between trips, I keep in touch via phone and email. I have a good long-distance plan on my cell.

But the key was definitely getting great representation. If my agents and manager weren’t doing the day-to-day groundwork for me in LA, it would’ve been impossible to build a career without living there.

SS: Every writer has their own journey finding their first agent. How did you find yours?

So, this is a story that people either find kind of inspiring or totally aggravating…

I didn’t do anything.

I wrote “The F Word”. It actually started as an assignment to adapt this one-act play, which was very funny and charming, but ran about 30 pages, only had two characters in it, and was confidently “stagey” in execution. Which was great because, like a good short story, it allowed me to fill it out to movie-size with my own eccentric inventions.

The plan was to make it as a low-budget indie. So the original producer (Marc Stephenson of Sheep Noir Films, currently working hard to get the movie into production) sent it to a few agencies hoping to attract interest from someone who represented an actor who might possibly meet our at-the-time hilariously low standards of “bankability”…

So, what happened was, people at the various agencies liked the script and, for reasons I’ll never entirely understand, passed it along to other people at other companies. And those people liked it enough to do the same. And so, without me even knowing it, my script started circulating through Hollywood. And I’d cite all these people by name but I don’t know who any of them are. They’re total strangers who basically gave me a Hollywood screenwriting career by liking my script and recommending it to other people, who did the same thing, all for absolutely no possible personal gain, until it somehow ended up in the in-box of my future agents at Gersh. And they called me out of the blue one day and said, you know, they love my voice as a writer and they’d really like to meet me sometime to talk about my future.

Honestly, it was completely crazy and before it happened to me I’d have been way too cynical to ever believe that’s how this stuff works. Random strangers read your script and recommend it to other random strangers and eventually someone reads it who can change your life.

So, I don’t know, you tell me: inspiring or aggravating? Kind of both, right?

SS: What’s your number 1 tip for aspiring screenwriters? How do you break in?

EM: I wish I had some magical secret insight to offer. But all I have is the usual advice that’s so easy to give but so tough to actually take: write your ass off until you find your voice as a writer, and then choose a story to tell that will highlight that voice in the clearest possible way. Because your voice, your unique storytelling point of view, is the thing that creates a market for your work. If anyone else can write a script the way you do, why should anyone hire you instead of them?

SS: As I pointed out in my review, The F Word is sort of a low-concept idea. With the screenwriting market being so competitive, what do you think the key is to sending a script out that doesn’t have that obvious high concept hook? How do you make up for it? And do you recommend it?

I think it has to be the right kind of low-concept. In the case of “The F Word”, the draw was the universality. Everybody has been through their personal version of this story, either from Wallace’s point of view (falling for someone who is in a serious relationship and convincing yourself you’d be happy as just friends) or Chantry’s point of view (being in a relationship and meeting someone you find really interesting and convincing yourself there’s no reason you can’t be just friends) or both.

So I took a lot of generals with development executives who spent most of the meeting telling me about the time they had an experience just like the one in “The F Word”. Or even better were going through it right now. So instead of a stressful quasi-job interview kind of thing, we bonded about our personal relationship histories and how they made us who we are today. So, for me, the universality of the story was a huge boost.

I think that, fundamentally, the audience doesn’t care about anything other than empathizing with characters. Everything else in a movie is window-dressing on empathy. Now, in an absence of characters that the audience cares about, well, yeah, they’ll accept explosions and nudity and shocking plot-twists that make no sense when you really think about them.

So, with “The F Word”, I guess going low-concept showed people I could write characters you care about, especially since they weren’t operating in this propulsive plot-engine with world-rumbling stakes. Low-concept can be a great way to show off your pure writing skills. But, look, first you’ve got to spend a lot of time developing those pure writing skills. Or at least I had to.

SS: Your dialogue is great. Any tips you can give us to write better dialogue?

EM: Well, something to remember is that your dialogue will be read many times in script-form before it’s ever spoken by actors. So I use a lot of simple modifiers to make the dialogue read better.

Off the top of my head, here’s a flat line of dialogue: “She’s not coming back.”

Or you could write it like: “Look, I mean, you know she’s not coming back, right?

The two versions contain the same essential information. And I’m sure a great actor could make the former version sound awesome. But the latter version imbeds a lot of implied character information into the dialogue itself, the written-equivalent of all the nonverbal nuances an actor will eventually bring to the delivery.

Of course, you can overdo it with the “likes” and “you knows” and “wells” and “I means”. That’s why I read and re-read every line of dialogue out loud until the balance is there.

I also do live script-readings with actors. I did five full readings of “The F Word”, each with a completely different cast, so I could hear every line of dialogue in a different actor’s voice, hear what each line sounds like with varying intonations, pauses, verbal tics, emphases, and so on.

SS: One of the interesting things I found about The F Word was that the situations our characters found themselves in were situations I’ve seen characters in before. For example, we’ve seen the “both in the changing room scene” in Tootsie. Yet I still loved all of them. Knowing that you’re walking on ground that’s already been walked on, how do you still make your own scenes fresh?

EM: I guess my approach is, look, how many times have you had a “first kiss” moment in your life? Is it ever boring? Every first kiss I’ve been involved in was pretty electrifying because I really wanted to know what was going to happen next.

A person pointing a gun at another person can be tedious or riveting if you care about the people involved. The bond you create between your audience and your character, right off the top, that’s the fuel for the rest of your story.

The thing is, the audience brings certain expectations to every genre. And expectations are meant to be fucked with. When the audience anticipates something because they think they’ve seen it before, their guard goes down and that gives you a lot of narrative power to play around with them, sometimes without them even realizing it.

I mean, I don’t want to overstate it, because “The F Word” isn’t exactly “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”. But basically I think about what the audience expects to happen in a given set-up and how I can mess with that a bit. And if you do that a few times, the audience gets a little off-balance, unsure whether their assumptions are correct, and that builds a useful slow-burn tension the audience isn’t necessarily even aware they’re feeling. Then if you do go for the expected result of a set-up every once in a while, the audience gets a little jolt of pleasure from being correct. And then on the next set-up you throw them off-balance again, and so on.

SS: You got to work with Alan Ball, who I think may be the best screenwriter on the planet. Did you learn any screenwriting advice from him? Feel free to go on as long as you’d like with this one. :)

EM: Well, look, I’m in the middle of the working relationship right now, so I don’t have a sweeping, incisive analysis of the experience for you. It’s a work-in-progress. And out of respect for the process, I don’t want to get too into it.

But, I mean, it’s been a fantastic experience so far. Alan is a writer first, thinks like a writer, talks like a writer, has a shockingly laser-like eye for raising stakes, revealing character details, propulsive storytelling. He’s the real deal and I’m lucky as hell to be working with him.

And, yeah, I know that’s all kind of vague and self-congratulatory and unhelpful to anyone reading this. So, okay, here’s something specific. When you introduce your main characters, give them an immediate decision that tells the audience who they are, right away. It doesn’t have to be a big moment. It can be a small, everyday choice. But it lets the audience notice that they probably would or wouldn’t make the same choice that the character just did. And that immediately tells them something important about who that person is.

SS: What do you think is the most common mistake beginning screenwriters make?

EM: Probably waiting for their big break to magically appear instead of writing as much as possible as often as possible. Because when you do get your big break, it really sucks if you’re not developed enough as a writer to take full advantage of it.

I say that as someone who did have their big break magically appear. But when it happened, I was more or less ready to jump on it. I was (thankfully) a much better writer than I’d been in previous years because I’d spent the previous years writing as much as I could.

SS: The relationship comedy genre is a crowded one. It seems like every 20-something writer is trying to break in with one of these specs. What do you think the key is to writing this kind of script successfully?

EM: The thing I really like about relationship comedies is that it’s the one genre you can’t hide in. You can hide inside horror flicks and family comedies and crime thrillers and sci-fi epics. But everyone is an expert in attraction. Everyone has intimate personal experience with falling in love and heartbreak and unrequited feelings and romantic longing and sexual tension and flirtatious banter and unforgettable first encounters. So what you have to say about those things exposes you in a very personal way to whoever happens to read your script.

Of course, many relationship comedies are bad. And the bad ones tell you a lot about the person who wrote them. Maybe it’s telling you they’ve got really screwed up ideas of what’s attractive to another person. Maybe it’s telling you they’ve had their ass kicked by love and still can’t stand up. Maybe it’s telling you they can’t open themselves up to a genuine human connection. Or maybe it’s telling you they’re not funny.

If there’s a key to writing a relationship comedy, it’s taking a good long look in the mirror and asking yourself if what you might accidentally show people is something you’re okay with them seeing.

SS: Screenwriters are constantly evolving, learning new things all the time. What’s your most recent revelation that you’ve been applying to your writing?

EM: I have the kind of brain that tends to not learn from other people’s advice, so I need to make the mistake myself to figure out how not to do it again, even if it probably seems like totally obvious screenwriting territory.

Like, here’s something completely self-evident and basically corny when you boil it down to a snappy sentence: there’s no success without risk. I know, I know, such a brilliant piece of advice that no one has ever mentioned before…

But the point for me is to always try, as much as it’s possible, to work with people I can fail in front of. Because unless you take some real chances with your storytelling, try something bold enough to potentially veer into humiliating failure, you’re never going to truly excite anyone. Especially in comedy, but really in any genre. Anytime I’ve played it safe with a script, because I didn’t feel like I could take the chance of screwing up, I ended up with a screenplay that everyone liked but no one loved. And if no one loves it, it’s never getting made.

Now, taking bold chance with the storytelling means being potentially divisive. Some people may hate it. Hopefully the people who love it have more clout. It’s risky. But it’s the only way to get your material to stand out.

So, yeah, it’s a well-worn notion. But when you’re actually doing what you always wanted to be doing, writing studio movies, it’s so easy to not want to screw it up by doing anything too bold, even though being bold is what got you there in the first place.

SS: And finally, the question we’ve all been waiting for…Can a man and a woman really be just friends?

EM: Probably. But it kind of depends on your definition of “just”.

It comes down to whether or not both people are being honest about what they really want from each other. And that includes being honest with themselves.

Which is a good screenwriting lesson too. Being honest with yourself about whether or not your script is ready for outside eyes. About what your strengths and weaknesses are as a writer. About what you’re doing to enhance those strengths and bolster those weaknesses. About whether every line of dialogue sounds like an actual human could say it, since an actual human will have to when it gets made. About whether you’re avoiding that last polish because the script is really perfect or because you just want it to be done. And so on.

If there’s a basic theme to all my writing it’s this: You can’t lie your way to happiness.

Genre: Western (TV pilot)
Premise: In 1865, a town physically moves across the frontier, following the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad.
About: Hell on Wheels is an AMC show set to debut either this year or early next year. Tony Gayton won the Jack Nicholson Screenwriting scholarship at USC, where he attended, over a decade ago. After graduating, he worked as a production assistant for John Milius. He also wrote the Val Kilmer film, “The Salton Sea” as well as writing (with his brother), “Faster,” last year’s film starring The Rock. Here’s an interview he did with his brother leading up to the film’s release.
Writers: Tony & Joe Gayton
Details: 44 pages – 8/3/2010 draft (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).

AMC has its shit together. In a world where creativity is shunned, this channel is one of the growing few that is willing to take chances. Okay okay, I admit it. I stopped watching The Killing after three episodes (I sensed they were basking a little too comfortably in their “anti-procedural” proceduralness. Sooner or later, you gotta start answering questions – I still haven’t seen the finale but I hear it proved me right. What did you guys think?). But overall, you gotta give it to AMC for not creating Law & Order CSI 50.

Friday, we dissected the amateur period piece, The Triangle, which afterwards left serious doubts as to whether it’s possible to make period pieces exciting for a modern-day Twitter-centric audience. But Hell On Wheels proves that with some good old fashioned story sense, an eye towards milking the drama, and an infusion of as much conflict as possible, you can make any story exciting.

It’s 1865. The Civil War is over. Lincoln is dead. America is trying to get back on its feet. But they’re having a rough go at it. Each side is bitter about how things went down (particularly the, um, losing side) and they’re not hugging it out saying “good game.”

Hell On Wheels starts off the way every show should start off, with a good scene. Bring us in right away and never let go dammit. A local soldier goes to a church to confess the sins he perpetrated during the war but seconds later the priest he’s confessing to puts a bullet through his head. Or who we thought was a priest. This is Cullen Bohannon, an ex-Confederate soldier with revenge on the brain. Something really bad happened to this man during the war. And now he’s going after the Union soldiers who did it, one by one. This is the second to last. He’s got one more to go.

Cut to the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, the thing that’s going to change America. The thing that’s going to connect the East to the West. The railroad is being built by a dishonest tyrant of a man named Thomas “Doc” Durant. Doc could care less about America’s noble pursuit to expand. All he cares about is making this construction go as slowly as possible so he can milk the government for every penny they’ve got.

This is where Cullen is headed. And where many people are headed for that matter. Building a railroad requires a lot of work so, obviously, they need workers. Once there, we meet a few more of the major players. There’s Elam, a black man dealing with the ongoing testiness of men who still don’t believe he should be free. There’s Joseph Black Moon, a Cheyenne Indian who’s acting as a sort of intermediary between his people and the railroad workers. There’s Daniel Johnson, a mean son of a bitch who carries a hook for a hand. There’s Lily and Robert, a married couple who are dealing with Robert’s deteriorating health. As the train moves further and further into Cheyenne Country, and the threat of violence with the natives becomes more of a reality, he’s begging her to go home where it’s safe, but she insists on staying by his side.

And then of course there’s the biggest character of them all, the thing that sets the show apart from everything that’s come before it, the town itself. “Hell On Wheels” is a moving town, a series of makeshift tents that trudges along the frontier, following the expanding railroad. This was my favorite aspect of Hell On Wheels because I’m always asking, “How do you make a Western different?” They’ve done just about everything already. Not only is a moving town unique, but it brings up a lot of opportunities you’d never get to see in a traditional Western (for example, the concept of moving further and further into dangerous Native American territory). In other words, it’s not just a gimmick.

That combined with the intriguing main character, Cullen, who we’re not sure if we should like or fear, gives this pilot an edge that you just don’t see in movies or TV shows. Out of all the Westerns I’ve seen or read in my life, Brigands comes first. And this would be second.

So what does it do right? A lot. There’s conflict everywhere you look in Hell On Wheels. Cullen seeking revenge against the men who ruined his life. A Hitler-esque railroad developer who challenges everyone he meets. A character on the brink of death from disease. The looming threat of a war with the Cheyenne Indians. Racial tension on the building lines. That’s why this teleplay is so damn great. There isn’t a single scene where something isn’t clashing with something else (or leading up to a clash). We’re never bored here.

Which leads to the next thing. In a TV pilot, you want to set up/allude to as many major character conflicts as you can. You want the audience saying, “Hmm, I wonder how that’s going to play out?” Or, “I wonder how that’s going to evolve.” When someone finishes watching that first show, you want them pissed off that the next episode isn’t on RIGHT NOW. So here, when we learn that Cullen’s final mark is here in this town, we can’t wait to see how he’s going to get to him. When we see the Cheyennes discussing how they’re going to treat this invasion onto their land, we can’t wait to see if they’re going to move in. We can’t wait to see how Joe, the Cheyenne who’s in the middle of it all, is going to react. Will he choose his people? Or his new friends? And of course we can’t wait to see the unique machinations of this moving city, this “Hell On Wheels.” There are so many intriguing threads here.

I loved the little touches in Hell On Wheels as well. Like when Durant gets pissed at his builders for trying to build the railroad straight. “What the fuck are you doing?” he asks. If you build the railroad straight, you complete the railroad faster, which means I don’t get paid as much money. So he insists they make it curvy. This had me wondering, is this really what happened? Were our ancestors so corrupt that still to this day we have inefficient railroad paths twisting through our country? I love when screenplays break that fourth wall and make you think.

You know, I recently watched the abysmal pilot for the Spielberg produced TNT series, Falling Skies. And I found myself comparing the two scripts, wondering why a script about the old west, something I have little interest in, was so much better than something about aliens, which is a subject matter I love.

The answer came quickly. There wasn’t a single character that stuck out in Falling Skies, that popped off the page. None of them had anything unique or interesting going on. Everything about their existence, their goals, their desires, was humdrum, basic, generic. But here, in Hell On wheels, you had characters enacting revenge, characters torn between two sides, lovers in denial about impending death, corrupt dictators. One of the sure signs of a good screenplay (or teleplay) is that you REMEMBER the characters afterwards. And the way to do that is to give them real lives, real problems, real fears, real conflicts. Hell on Wheels had that in spades, and it’s the reason it’s so damn good.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Create looming conflicts. Conflict is not just about the right now. It’s not just about two characters who don’t like each other or don’t agree on something in the moment. It’s about the future. It’s about hinting at conflict that is to come. When you do that, you create a powerful force – anticipation. If we’re anticipating an event, a future showdown, we’re more willing to keep watching. The two instances that really got me here were the looming clash with the Cheyenne Indians and Cullen’s last mark. I needed to see those two things resolved. Pack your pilot with a handful of these and people will want to tune in for the next episode.

Genre: Romantic Comedy
Premise: A guy begins hanging out with a girl under the pretense that she’s single, only to later find out she has a boyfriend.
About: The F Word has been in my Top 25 since the beginning of my blog! And I’m finally getting around to reviewing it. Don’t worry all you lonely screenplays out there. With a little patience, you too will get your shot. This script made the 2008 Black List with 10 mentions (just below Everything Must Go and with the same amount of votes as Up In The Air). The script seems to have impressed big-time writer Alan Ball so much that he’s working with Elan (the writer) on his next directing project.
Writer: Elan Mastai (based on the play “Toothpaste and Cigars” by T.J. Dawe and Michael Rinaldi)
Details: November 28, 2007 draft (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 have a bad habit of avoiding scripts I read and loved from a long time ago, only because I’m afraid they won’t live up to their original awesomeness. That’s why I STILL haven’t seen Everything Must Go. And an experience I had this weekend seeing another one of my favorite scripts turned into a movie did not help (Tune in Thursday for the full scoop on that debacle – yuck squared).

So anyway, that’s why I’ve been avoiding reviewing The F Word, a script that’s been in my Top 25 since the beginning, but a script I don’t remember a whole lot about to be honest. I’ve read over 2000 scripts since then and am much harder to please these days. Would it still hold up? Or would the unthinkable happen? Would I need to take The F Word out of my Top 25??? I can tell that the suspense is killing you so let’s get to the review, shall we?

Wallace and Chantry are a couple of 20-somethings doing what 20-somethings do on a Saturday night. Hanging out at a party that they don’t really want to be at. Wallace is conservative, nice, a little quirky. And Chantry is fun, intriguing, a little sarcastic. The two find themselves meeting in the kitchen and putting together goofy sentence combinations with those refrigerator letter magnets (“THIS TURKEY SANDWICH SAT IN MY HAT ALL WINTER”)

The two clearly have a connection, but later that night after walking home, right when it seems like they’re about to have the kiss to end all kisses, Chantry mentions that she has a boyfriend. Oops.

Wallace goes home and confesses to his best friend Allan (who also happens to be Chantry’s cousin) that he can’t stop thinking about the girl, which eventually leads to them beginning a friendship. They go to movies, talk on the phone, eat at fine establishments. For all intents and purpose they act like a couple. But they’re not a couple. Because Chantry has a boyfriend.

Complications arise when Chantry’s boyfriend goes off to Paris for his job, and the two are allowed to spend even MORE time together, resulting in them getting even closer. They go shopping together, camping together, skinny dipping together. And yet, Chantry is steadfast on keeping the line drawn. They’re just friends. And Wallace completely respects that.

The F Word asks that question that has been debated since the caveman era. Can men and women JUST be friends?

So how did The F Word hold up after all this time? Would it be meeting up with another word, the 26th word, if you know what I mean? (I mean placing it outside the top 25). The answer, thankfully, is no. But I’ll tell you this. I was worried there for a little while. The F Word starts out slow. The alphabet refrigerator letter scene, while cute, goes on for way too long (it feels like a holdover from the play) and it makes you wonder if this is going to be one of those talky indie relationship movies that make you hate hipsters.

This is followed by a second rough patch, before the relationship actually begins. Chantry hangs out at work. Wallace tries to forget the other night. Very little seems to be happening. I kept thinking to myself, “Hmmm, this isn’t nearly as good as I remember.”

But once we hit Wallace and Chantry’s friendship, the quality of everything, from the story to the characters to the dialogue, jumps up a few notches. Mastai does a great job of building this relationship, nailing the “trifecta rule” of romantic comedies: We like the guy. We like the girl. We want to see them get together. If you’ve achieved this, you’re 70% of the way there in your Rom Com spec.

The next rule is having a legitimate reason why your couple can’t be together. The F Word may have gone with the most basic solution to this problem, but it works. Chantry has a boyfriend. It’s clean, it’s identifiable. We do not question why Chantry and Wallace don’t just get together. Now while I admit to not believeing Chantry truly liked her boyfriend, Mastai made up for it by selling Chantry as a loyal woman with strong morals. I believed that Chantry didn’t want to cheat, and that sold everything that came afterwards.

In fact, my favorite thing about The F Word was how Mastai constantly puts his leads in situations that test their resolve, such as throwing them in a changing room together or having them go skinny dipping together. We’re constantly wondering as an audience, “Are they going to break here?” “Are they going to break here?” And if your audience is excitedly asking those sorts of questions, you’re in good shape, particularly because the majority of the time, readers are asking questions like, “Good God, when does this end???” “How come it’s page 80 and I still don’t know who the main character is?” “For the love of all that is Holy, end this now!” (yes, that last one is considered a question by readers).

The key here is making things TOUGH on your characters. That’s what creates drama and that’s what keeps things interesting. These two going on a group date to the Opera and sitting five seats away from each other isn’t a difficult situation for either of them. Swimming in the moonlit water naked less than a foot away from each other? Now THAT’S testing your characters.

There are a lot of things this script has to be proud of actually. Once you get past the opening, where I felt the dialogue was a little forced, it gets really good. And Mastai threw in all these little touches to take the script away from the stage (where it was born as a play). We have Chantry’s animated robots having conversations with her. We have Wallace imagining jump cuts of what Chantry’s boyfriend looks like. We have an “asking questions about each other” montage that takes us through 20 locations, cleverly selling the evolution of their relationship. It isn’t 500 Days of Summer inventive. But it has that same sort of vibe.

The negatives are few. Chantry’s boyfriend could’ve been a little better developed. I never got a sense of him. But in a strange way, that almost helped (I imagined this is how Wallace saw him too – as this vague entity). The script needs to start faster or have more going on early. Technically, things are “happening” in the opening ten pages, but you get the feeling that it’s not as good as it should be. I’d like to see Mastai get into that party more, have Wallace and Chantry dance around each other a bit, as opposed to just standing in front of a refrigerator for 12 pages. The Allan-Chantry connection (being cousins) felt a little convenient. But these are minor quibbles in an otherwise excellent script.

The F Word is that rare bird. It’s a clichéd “been there, done that” idea that is so well executed that you don’t realize how “been there, done that” it is. It’s a reminder that the key to any screenplay, in the end, is simply creating characters that we care about. If you do that, we’ll be willing to go anywhere with them, even to places we’ve been before. After last week’s crop of duds, it was nice to remember what a great screenplay looks like.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive (TOP 25!)
[ ] genius

What I learned: If you have two romantic leads who aren’t allowed to be together, you better be tempting them CONSTANTLY. This is what the audience came to see – your leads being tempted. So create as many of these scenarios as possible. Put them in a dressing room half-naked together. Put them in a lake completely naked. Make them sleep in the same sleeping bag. Tempt tempt tempt!