This may sound like a shocking statement, but I believe anybody can be a screenwriter. Everybody in the world has at least one interesting story in them. Life is too crazy not to have an awesome story in the vault. But the reality is, it takes a shitload of time to learn how to *tell* that story in the bastardized format that is a “screenplay.” How long it takes generally depends on how talented you are. For some people it only takes a couple of years. For others, it may take two decades to figure out. So a lot of screenwriting comes down to perseverance and a willingness to learn.

I bring this up because every screenplay is kinda like a final exam. It’s a test of everything you’ve learned *up to that point.* So while you may ace that particular exam, it doesn’t mean you know everything about the subject. I guess an analogy would be, passing the bar proves you know a hell of a lot about the law, but it doesn’t mean you’re ready to try your case in the Supreme Court.

So what I thought I’d do is help you avoid some of the more common misguided screenplay attempts I see amateurs make. I wouldn’t say these scripts are easily avoidable because if they were, I’d see a lot less of them. But at least this way you can ask the question. “Am I about to write this script?” Or “Did I just write this script?” As long as you’re asking the question, you have a chance at salvaging the material. So below are five and a half types of bad amateur screenplays I keep running into. And I consider myself an expert. I’ve written each one of these at least once!

THE TECHNICALLY PERFECT BUT ULTIMATELY BORING SCRIPT
This is a toughie. Even professional writers make this mistake and that’s because the line between technical and natural isn’t always easy to identify. However, these scripts usually come from writers who take the screenwriting books a little too literally and who outline every single beat of their story down to the commas. The main character has a clear goal. The act breaks come at the right time. The character motivations are strong. Twists and turns happen at just the right moments. And yet…and yet there’s something extremely boring about it all. Even if we don’t know what’s going to happen, nothing that happens is ever surprising to us. There’s no heart, no soul, no life in the screenplay. “A+” from Robert McKee and Blake Snyder. “F” from the reader.

How to avoid it: There are two main reasons these kinds of scripts happen. First, like I mentioned above, it happens when writers follow the rulebook too literally. If the reader can feel the beats of the story, if they can see the first act turn coming a mile away, if the midpoint is accompanied by a billboard, you’re not doing your job. Great writers learn that in addition to following the rules, it’s their job to MASK the rules, to cover them up so it all flows naturally. This is usually achieved by rewriting – going back into your story and smoothing out all those obvious technical beats. Second, you still have to make interesting choices. Giving your protagonist a goal is one of the most basic elements of storytelling there is. But that doesn’t mean any goal will work. In fact, 100 writers might come up with 100 different character goals. Your job is to beat out the other 99 writers and come up with the most interesting one. Take a movie like Back To The Future for instance. Imagine if once Marty got back to 1955, he didn’t have to get his mom and dad back together, but instead had to win a rock and roll contest at the high school. That choice would’ve made the movie way worse, right? So don’t just make choices, make bold and interesting choices.

THE FAUX MASTERPIECE
I’m going to give credit for this one to Jim Mercurio. When he spoke of the “faux masterpiece,” he described it like this: “That’s when you try to tackle something huge like a critical piece of history – the Holocaust, slavery, World War II – or try to set an expensive politically-charged love story against that sort of backdrop. You might be a deep thinker and have an unparalleled understanding of the subject, but as a beginning writer, your craft is not going to be able to do the story justice.” I’d expand this definition to include huge Lord of The Rings like fantasy epics, or overlong sci-fi epics like Avatar. These “masterpieces” require so much skill it’s terrifying. They need to be historically accurate on everything from the dialect to the activities people do. It’s hard enough to build a couple of interesting characters into a script. These scripts require dozens of characters, all of whom are usually thin and boring. With these extra characters come extra subplots. Weaving these subplots in and out of the central plot requires a tremendous amount of know-how for even a 100 page screenplay. There may be 10 screenwriters on the planet who know how to do it for a script that’s 150 pages. These scripts also tend to require an inordinately massive goal to keep the story interesting for such a long period of time (i.e. William Wallace’s pursuit of freedom for an entire country in Braveheart; The Marines trying to destroy the Na’vi homeland in Avatar) which amateur writers almost never include. It’s basically everything that’s hard about screenwriting times a thousand. That’s why taking on an epic masterpiece is…well…an epic mistake.

How to avoid it: I honestly wouldn’t touch an epic unless you’ve written at least seven scripts or a few novels.

THE ACCIDENTAL HOMAGE SCRIPT
Oh man, every writer is guilty of this one. The Accidental Homage script is a script where a writer goes out and sees a movie they love, then writes a script on a similar subject matter which ends up being THE EXACT SAME MOVIE. Young writers are the most susceptible to this because they haven’t yet trained themselves to recognize when they’re inadvertently copying material. The ideas flow through their fingertips as naturally as the breeze and they bang out 50 pages in 3 days, citing divine inspiration. They don’t realize that the reason it was so easy was because they were essentially writing a movie they’d already seen. This can happen with your favorite movies as well, although writers tend to be a little more aware when they’re copying those. Here’s the thing: Inspiration – true inspiration – is the best thing a writer can experience. It’s writer crack. But you have to keep an eye on it. You have to be aware of when the inspiration is coming from inside of you, or coming from the euphoric influence of that great movie you just saw.

How to avoid it: My suggestion would be to not write anything that sounds similar to a recent movie you loved. So if you saw District 9, don’t go home and write an alien invasion movie. It’s just too hard to be objective about the subject matter and you’ll inevitably use too much from the film, destroying any chance of your story being original.

THE COMEDY WITHOUT A STORY SCRIPT
Okay, I talk about this one a lot so pardon me if you’re tired of hearing it. This is the script I probably see the most of because the majority of people coming into the spec world start with comedies. It makes sense. Everyone thinks they’re funny. Everyone outside of Hollywood thinks they can write a better movie than the one they saw in the theater. You put those two together and you have a lot of writers crashing Hollywood with comedy specs. Roughly all of these attempts make the same mistake. There’s no story. OR, if there is a story, it’s so neutered as to be nonexistent. Instead, the writers come up with an idea that’s just use an excuse to string a bunch of funny scenes together. Little do they know that the second they decided to do that, any chance of writing a good script died. Why? Well, let’s say you have 10 good-to-great laughs in your script, which is a lot. That means we have to slog through 9 and a half minutes of pointless nothingness to get to that one laugh. Does that sound fun? That’s why I always say: Story first, comedy second. If you have a story, something where we’re actually interested, then those other 9 and a half pages are actually entertaining. They’re something to look forward to.

How to avoid it: When you’re writing your comedy, always put your story (and your characters) before the laughs. The irony is that the script will be funnier for it.

THE NEVER STUDIED STORYTELLING ON ANY LEVEL SCRIPT
Okay, this makes the “Comedy without a story” script look like Shakespeare. It invariably comes from a first timer and someone bold enough to believe they can write a good screenplay without any previous storytelling experience whatsoever. Signs of a NSSOALS? There is no overarching plot/character goal to speak of. The script reads as if the writer is making everything up as he/she goes along (because they are). The script often jumps back and forth between genres. Because the writer hasn’t learned how to build characters yet, the characters contradict themselves constantly (i.e. An introvert will try and get his friends to go out to a party). The writer often makes the mistake of infusing “real life” into the script, and is surprised when the randomness and lengthy dialogue scenes reminiscent of real life are categorized as boring by the reader. Instead of using screenplay real estate to develop already introduced characters, new characters are brought in as if they’re coming out of a clown car, even though they have no real connection to the story and we’ll never see them again. Seemingly important subplots will end lazily or disappear altogether. Characters tend to spend most of the story talking about their situations as opposed to being actively involved in situations. Since there’s no central goal for the main character, the writer rarely knows what to do with the ending (if there’s nothing being pursued, then there’s nothing to conclude). In short, the setup is confusing, the middle has no conflict, and the resolution is unsatisfying.

How to avoid it: Here’s the good news. These scripts are actually okay to write, as long as you don’t show them to anyone else! Your first few scripts should be for you and you only (or maybe a couple of close friends). I’m warning you, you don’t want to burn a potential great contact on one of your first three scripts. Make sure you know what you’re doing first. And hey, before you write anything, there’s nothing wrong with studying the basics of storytelling. There is an art to it that’s been around for hundreds of years. It wouldn’t hurt to study that art. Also read a ton of screenplays, both good and bad. The more you read, the more you’ll be able to spot all those negatives I listed above.

THE SURREALIST TRIBUTE SCRIPT
Finally, here’s a writer friend of mine who’s read twice as many scripts as I have. I told him what I was doing and asked if he wanted to submit any “script types to avoid.” His e-mail was cryptic and I’m still not entirely sure if he was sober, but this was his submission: The “oh-so-clever quasi-surrealist tribute to Bunuel and Fellini with a little Greenaway and a lot of Lynch thrown in amidst reams of dialogue that is nothing more than misquoted monologues taken from whatever novels the author happened to have on his bookshelf in order to impress female guests on Friday nights… and heaven forbid he should take the time to correct typos, grammatical blunders and unclear/incomplete visuals since all three are, of course, part of the ‘art’ of writing one of these brilliant opuses” script.

How to avoid it: I think I know what he’s talking about. These are those purposefully random scripts that are supposed to, like, have higher meaning ‘n stuff. Basically, the scripts are more about the writer proving how smart he is than they are about the story. These scripts invariably bring about a lot of eye-rolling. As always, ask yourself if you’re putting the story first. If not, stop writing.

Watch Scriptshadow on Sundays for book reviews by contributors Michael Stark and Matt Bird. We won’t be able to get one up every Sunday, but hopefully most Sundays. Here’s Stark with his review of The Man Who Ate The 747!

Welcome once again to Scriptshadow’s Sunday Review of Books where we make the jobs of sexy studio story editor’s even easier by picking some primo books that they need to be turning into flicks. Plus, for our faithful readers learning the craft, we suggest some light beach reading cause who really wants to get sand up in their laptops?

Today, watch me pull something out of my hat that I know our site’s creator will really like. It’s perhaps the magic hybrid producers have been in search of for decades now – A chick flick that guys will actually want to go see!

Don’t judge me cause I like the occasional chick flick. Maybe I’m just a little Estrogen dominant from all the bottled water and hormone injected happy meals I’ve had. Hell, those great screwball comedies of yesteryear were all romcoms – just with snappier dialogue, double beds and way better actors.

Ben Sherwood’s The Man Who Ate the 747 is a wonderful, old fashioned screwball comedy about an obsessed man who ingests a bunch of screws, bolts and metal shavings for the gorgeous gal he loves. This is something that would definitely appeal to old movie buffs, date night audiences and the whole Focus on the Family Crowd. The curb appeal is wide!

Why do I think this is a flick that guys would line up to see? The dude is eating a fucking plane!!! Ze Plane, Boss!!! He’s eating a Snakes on a fucking Plane plane!!! He’s eating a Joey, do-you-like-movies-about-gladiators Airplane!!! What real man wouldn’t want to see such extreme competitive eating?

Sherwood, a former producer for Good Morning America already has his second book, The Death and Life Of Charlie St. Cloud, heading towards the silver screen with Zach Effron in the lead. Old posts indicate that 747 was optioned by Bel Aire Entertainment and even at one point destined for Broadway as a musical. My research may be off, but nothing seems to have yet taken flight.

C’mon, Hollywood, let’s correct that error with a gentle nudge.

For the record, the book chronicles the story of the greatest love ever.
And, that chronicler should know. J.J. Smith has traveled the globe a few thousand times over for the World Book of Records. He has measured the world’s largest, unbroken apple peel; calculated the furthest flight of a champagne cork from an untampered bottle and documented the longest ever attack of the hiccups.

He is best friends with pole sitters, corn palace builders and the guy with the world’s longest and dirtiest fingernails. J.J. has a really cool, freaky job!!! Another excellent man-draw for the film. Groovy gig aside, the man is stuck with a head full of statistics and a heart hopelessly set on autopilot.

Luckily, hearts, like world records, are about to get broken!

We start out in Paris, where we find a couple pulling a tres romantic Robert Doisneau, trying to break the record for the longest kiss. Merde, they miss it by a mere four minutes and J.J. high tails it out of there. Second place means nada in his book.

Although J.J. specializes in the superlative, he is actually rather ordinary – an average man with average looks and an average height and weight. His parents didn’t exactly set him apart, saddling him with the truly unremarkable name of John Smith.

Written in 2000, we’re thankfully free of American Idol, Jackass and You Think You Can Dance. But, the World Book of Records still has some serious competition with Cops, When Animals Attack and America’s Most Awesome Videos. To save his job, J.J. now needs a story his readers can really sink their teeth into.

He finds that story from the santa-sack-sized-stack of letters that arrive daily to their office.

A story that takes him to America’s heartland – the small, small town of Superior, Nebraska. Now, I’ve spent a few years in a small town. It wasn’t anywheres as romantic. It was pretty much a rural prison sentence in one of the few places that Starbucks and Barnes & Nobles forgot.

Superior is a folksy, charming place chock-full of eccentric characters that would rival Twin Peaks, Stars Hollow and whatever fanciful town the Runaway Bride just couldn’t run away from.

Seems, a few years back, a 747 crashed landed in Wally Chubb’s field and he started eating it as a testimony of his pure (but unrequited) love for Willa Wyatt, the only person in town who dutifully showed up to his 10th Birthday party.

Note to producers, I see Karen Black safely landing that fucking plane in the flashback.

Willa (Can you say O Pioneers!) has grown up into a real firecracker, sticking around Superior to take over her dad’s newspaper. Now, what kind of screwball comedy would it be without a sharp shooting, crack reporter in the mix?

She has good reason to be suspicious of strangers. Traveling salesmen and hucksters have passed through here before, pursuing the beauty and breaking her heart. She’s pretty guarded when J.J. comes to town, trying to find the jet-eating curiosity. He may not be the slickest city slicker, but she vows to protect her quirky town from him and the media circus that soon follows.

And, of course, J.J. quickly falls head over heels in love with her.

Wally has no interest in breaking any records or getting an endorsement deal with Pepto Bismol, so J.J. has to connive and convince the farmer to continue his fancy feast. He needs the story so he can stay close to Willa – even if his great scoop may have some fatal colon-colliding-consequences!

I’m not gonna spoil any more of the nuts and bolts of the tale. Go read it. The Man Who Ate the 747 could be your next Nothing Sacred. Your next what??? For you whippersnappers without subscriptions to Turner Movie Classics, I recommend you start delving deeper into the history of cinema. There were some rather great romantic comedies made before Lopez and Anniston hijacked the genre.

Now, cause I want this filmed soooo badly, I might as well cast the whole project for you. I see the serious-sided Jim Carrey as J.J., Jenna Fischer as Willa and Patton Oswalt as Wally (cause the man is a damned underused genius). Get the writing team of Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who wrote the freak fantasy dejour, Ripleys Believe It or Not, to adapt this to screen (Hell, I’d pimp myself for the gig, but there’s that pesky non-self-promotion clause in my Scriptshadow contract). And, to direct – Duh – Gary Marshall. For you newbies who just moaned, you best pick up a copy of his amazing bio. “Wake me Up When It’s Funny.” If you don’t soil yourself laughing while reading it, you are either an uber snob or in a vegetative state

What I learned: Whimsical is sometimes pretty hard to pull off. Especially in these United States. Set something far off in the Caribbeans and you can go all Gabriel Garcia Marquez on it. Place it in modern day America and you’ll have to tread more carefully. The TV show Pushing Daisies nailed it perfectly. Cougar Town, on the other side of the slug, better start watching its whimsy factor, Stat! Ugh, it’s like getting force-fed 18 bags of Mint Milanos every episode. Who knows? Maybe they’re willfully turning their audience into Foie Gras.

So, for discussion: How does one balance their magic and romance with their realism?

Stark’s further rantings and rave-ups about both trash and culture can be viewed here: http://www.michaelbstark.blogspot.com/

For the month of May, Scriptshadow will be foregoing its traditional reviewing to instead review scripts from you, the readers of the site. To find out more about how the month lines up, go back and read the original post here. This first week, we’re allowing any writers to send in their script for review. We warned them ahead of time that we’d be honest and judge their material aggressively, so put that Kleenex box away. There’s no crying in screenwriting. Actually, there’s lots of crying in screenwriting but that’s besides the point. On Monday, Roger tackled “Hell Of A Deal” by Joe Giambrone. Tuesday , I took on “The Deja Vu Of Sidney Sumpter Stu.” Wednesday was the controversial review of “Blackball.” Thursday the high concept “Premeditated” and today, I’m reviewing the drama, “The Disappearing World.”

Genre: Drama
Premise: After witnessing a string of suicide attempts, a young doctor quits his job to see if he’s really rescuing people or simply interfering with their free will. He examines the lives of two survivors that he had saved from suicide; a boy in his early teens now without a voice, and a young woman who he begins to fall for.
About: Script 5 for Amateur Week.
Writer: Mark Fleming
Details: 97 pages

How does that old saying go? Cheater cheater pumpkin eater? If so, it’s Halloween here at Scriptshadow cause I cheated. But I’m not ashamed to admit it. Most of you cheated too. I told you exactly how your script submissions had to look but you ignored me and added long paragraphs about why I needed to pick your script anyway. Which I admired of course. You gotta try, right? But now I’m getting back at you.

So I said I was only going to look at loglines, but after some of the comments made in the previous reviews, I really wanted to find a script I could get behind (or, at the very least, a writer I could get behind). There was no way I was going to read scripts all the way through, but I did start peeking through the first few pages to see if the writer had talent. There were actually some great loglines, but the writing wasn’t there yet. For example, Frank Cristelli and Eric Gegenheimer came up with this awesome premise: “The story follows a group of vampire hunters who, thinking they have finally rid the world of vampires once and for all, are forced to get real jobs and confront the terrors of everyday life.” Not bad, right? But when I opened up the first page, it had an 18 line paragraph! Frank and Eric, I’m not saying your script would’ve been bad, but you can’t have 18 line paragraphs. A spec script should be 2-3 lines max!

I leafed through about 80 more scripts until I found this one. And right from the beginning, I could tell the writer had something. One of the mistakes young drama writers make is stringing together like 10 depressing scenes in a row to start their screenplay. They basically bore you out of the story. But here, something interesting was happening right away. So that was a good sign. The prose was also confident and sparse. The writing overall had a sharp quality to it. The only thing that worried me was the premise, which I knew was going to turn a lot of you off (aggh! A boring drama??!). But you have to trust me. This, by far, was the best writing I’d seen out of any of the pages I’d read this week. In fact, if we were going on writing alone (and not story), this probably would’ve finished top 2 in my contest a few months ago. I don’t think there’s any doubt that Mark Fleming has a bright future ahead of him. So what’s his script about?

Allen is a 30 year old emergency room doctor, a professional life-safer. One of the unfortunate side effects of this business is that he’s forced to save a lot of people who don’t want to be saved. Apparently, Emergency Rooms are suicide havens. This is where we find him at the beginning of the story, trying to save 14 year old outcast Peter, who’s swallowed a bottle of Drano. Allen is able to do it, but in the process must sacrifice Peter’s vocal chords. He’ll live, but he’ll never be able to speak again.

Soonafter, Allen must save another suicide attempt, this one the beautiful 25 year old Caroline, whose issues with her bitter live-at-home mother have resulted in her downing a bottle of Vicodin. Allen saves her, but afterwards he begins to question if what he’s doing is right. If a person chooses to take their life, does he have a right to interfere?

So bothered by the dilemma is Allen, that he ups and quits his job. He becomes semi-obsessed with the people he’s saved. What happened to them? Did they continue to be miserable? Did they recover? Did they just try again a few days later? He decides to follow his last two saved patients, Peter and Caroline, who both have no idea he was their doctor, to find out. It starts innocently, with notes and recorded conversations to himself, but soon he’s meeting with and talking to them.

With Peter, Allen is so guilt-ridden for stealing away his voice, that he’s compelled to help him learn sign-language. And with Caroline, he introduces himself as an architect, so she won’t think he’s some crazy doctor stalker. We cut back and forth between these storylines, as well as between each individual person’s life. Before long, Allen is deeply in love with Caroline, but too far gone to admit the truth. In the meantime, Peter meets the smooth-talking Ryan at school, who’s impressed with Peter’s bravery (for his suicide attempt). The two become unlikely friends, and Peter finally starts seeing a purpose to live.

In the end though, we know what Allen’s doing is going to cost him. These two people he’s sought out are troubled souls unsure of their place in this world. His connection gives them hope. So what happens when he reveals that he robbed them of their true wish?

I don’t know what it was about this odd story but it just got to me. The big strength here is the character work, which I’m just not used to seeing in amateur screenplays. Every character had a purpose and their motivations stemmed from deep believable problems/issues. For example, Allen’s obsession with survivors of failed suicides seems trivial at first. But later on, we realize there’s a deep-seated reason for it, which totally legitimizes his plight. Even the secondary characters, such as Peter’s friend Ryan, have an incredible amount of depth and originality.

And this script just did so many quirky things right that aren’t supposed to work in screenplays. For example, you never want to spend a full scene listening to someone drone on about their past. It’s always boring. But during one 5 page scene in the middle of the script here, Allen extensively details to Caroline why he’s estranged from his father, and it had to be one of the most interesting backstories about a father I’ve ever read.

As far as the dialogue in general, it’s really strong. One of the common things I find about good dialogue is that it’s not the dialogue itself that makes it good, it’s the situation built around the dialogue that makes it good. In The Disappearing World, the scenes between Caroline and Allen aren’t normal boring back and forth scenes where two people talk at each other. Allen is hiding something. He’s lying to her about who he is. Caroline is also hiding something, that she tried to commit suicide recently. And of course, Allen already knows that, but he can’t tell her that. So their conversations always have several layers under them. And then with Peter, he can’t talk at all. It’s all one-sided. So you’re dealing with unique or compelling dialogue sequences in almost every scene.

The script is not without its problems though. My biggest concern is all the history-related monologues. Allen, for instance, talks extensively about how there was nothing artificial on this earth until opposable thumbs came around. Caroline explains the surprising history behind contemporary art. And Peter’s friend Ryan knows everything there is to know about Socrates. Individually, I LOVED all these passages. I know you’re probably thinking “Oh god, how pretentious.” But the confident smart writing here easily avoids that pitfall. My problem was that, while fascinating, when every character’s an armchair historian, they start to lose their individuality. Each character has to sound unique, like their own person, and that one quality began to make them all sound the same. However I really liked the Socrates stuff and pretty much anything that Allen talked about. So it might be as simple as losing the Caroline art monologue.

Some other quibbles. Ryan’s abusive stepfather was too cliché. Caroline’s suicide attempt is a little too sudden (all we’ve seen is that her mom is kinda mean). The relationship between Allen and Ryan isn’t nearly as strong as the one between Allen and Caroline. And a few times, I wondered why Allen couldn’t have just approached Caroline from the get-go as the doctor who saved her. It would seem like a more natural starting point for a relationship. But I think all of those fixes, even the last one, are relatively simple.

In the end, this reminded me a lot of Peter Morgan’s script, “Hereafter,” which Clint Eastwood is now directing with Matt Damon. It’s dark and it’s slow and it’s character-driven. And there are definitely a few patchy areas. But I thought this script was MUCH better than that one, to the point where I feel sorry for Eastwood that he didn’t find this first. It explores the same themes in a much crisper way. And I just really enjoyed how different it was. I never knew what was going to happen next. And to do that inside the framework of a cohesive structure isn’t easy. If you’re an agent or a manger out there looking for a new client, I would snatch this guy up. If not for this script than for the next higher concept idea he comes up with.

Great job Mark. You really surprised me in a week I didn’t expect to be surprised. :)

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

What I learned: In the age old debate of how long a script should be, I thought I’d offer up the events that led to me choosing this script. It was getting late and I hadn’t found anything yet. I was tired and running out of patience. As I clicked through the submissions, I noticed something I was doing without realizing it. I was mentally noting the page count and corresponding reading time of each script. In the back of my head, I was saying, “Okay, that will take me 90 minutes to read,” “That will take me 110 minutes to read.” “That will take me 2 hours to read.” The review came down to two scripts. This one, where the writing was better but the concept was weak. And the other one, which had a strong concept but the writing wasn’t as good. That other script was 121 pages. This was 97 pages. I did the math (I’ll save 24 minutes on The Disappearing World) and picked this script.

Now I’m not saying it’s the only factor. Had the writing been better in the other script, I may have picked that one. But to pretend like page count is never a factor is fooling yourself. Everyone in Hollywood is overworked and exhausted by the end of the day. They all have tons of scripts to read and it very well might come down to page count as the determining factor, like it did for me today. I know that page count is kind of thrown out there arbitrarily as an issue. I just wanted to show a real life situation where it came into play.

For the month of May, Scriptshadow will be foregoing its traditional reviewing to instead review scripts from you, the readers of the site. To find out more about how the month lines up, go back and read the original post here. This first week, we’re allowing any writers to send in their script for review. We warned them ahead of time that we’d be honest and judge their material aggressively, so put that Kleenex box away. There’s no crying in screenwriting. Actually, there’s lots of crying in screenwriting but that’s besides the point. This is not a final judgment of your script, just how we see it in relation to the other scripts we read. We’re hoping the original writer can learn something and so can you. Roger is here with the first script, Hell of A Deal, by Joe Giambrone.

Genre: Thriller (?) Mystery (?) Drama (?) Black Comedy (?)
Premise: An aging Hollywood film mogul makes a deal with a mysterious man who is selling an experimental medical treatment that promises youth. In exchange, the salesman wants to use the mogul’s resources to make a movie, but the only catch? The salesman may or may not be the Devil.
About: Blindly chosen from the ScriptShadow slush pile for Amateur Week. I received this screenplay in my inbox with this attached email from Carson, “I literally closed my eyes and clicked. This is what came up.” The title page indicates this script is based on an original novel by the screenwriter, but upon further investigation (Google!), I couldn’t find any information about said novel on the Internet.
Writer: Joe Giambrone

I dove into this script with nary a logline nor a clue as to what genre I was about to read. All I had was the title, “Hell of a Deal.” Would it be a Mark Twain social satire like The Prince and the Pauper, a picaresque Horatio Alger rags to riches story, or would it be something more Faustian? And, more importantly, what sort of ramifications would it have for the next few hours of my life?

After I studied the title page, I looked at the first page. I examined the formatting and the prose in the Action/Direction lines. This is always telling. For example, you can always look at the A/D lines on the first page to gauge if this is going to be a safe read or not. By safe, I mean, does the writer have a competent command of not only the English language, but Screenplay Shorthand? Can they string words together in a clear and concise way that creates tone, atmosphere and description of not only character, but action? In other words, can the writer set the stage (scene) and describe what happens on the stage (scene) with prose?

If the answer is ‘Yes’, then it’s possible you might be in safe hands. But even if it’s obvious the writer has a skill with words, sometimes they come from the world of novels and prose fiction and the A/D lines may be overwritten, redundant, too dense (some may also argue that the prose is too spare) for the brevity required in screenplays. If the answer is ‘No’, then your luck is cut out for you and you’ll find yourself in what can be described as a frustrating foray into clumsy A/D lines that will have you both confused and pulling your hair out.

But luckily, with “Hell of a Deal”, the A/D lines looked safe so I continued my journey.

What’s it about, Rog?

This is a morality play about a Hollywood mogul named Al Smith. When we meet him, he’s seventy-three years old and he’s walking on a treadmill, staring at a plasma screen monitor that features living wills and trusts.

Al doesn’t have a lot of time left here on earth. He spends his days exercising on his treadmill, looking for that next original screenplay and keeping final cut away from the death merchant directors that make movies for him.

But then Lou Seaford arrives in his life, a shark-like salesman hawking a veritable fountain of youth. Al is suspicious, as of course he’s researched all the latest medicinal treatments, but he seems to cave in pretty fast when Lou talks about nano machines and shows him a video of his assistant, Katya, dressed up as a naughty nurse, injecting an old mangy mutt with a serum that transforms the dog into a puppy so realistically that Al is convinced it’s CGI.

Al is all too ready to sign up for the treatment, but when he asks how much this is gonna cost him, Lou answers, “I want money, I go to a bank. I come to you, Big Al Smith, the king of Hollywood, and of course?”

“You want to make a movie.”

But what are the conditions?

Well, of course, the studio cannot go beyond an R rating. “No male genitalia. No mutilation.” Lou doesn’t understand, as Al’s last movie had tons of blood. But they move on.

Al emphasizes that Lou must stay within budget, a generous twenty million. But then they get into an argument and Lou talks a hard bargain, driving the budget up to a hundred million dollars.

When Al tells Lou that the studio has final cut, Lou threatens to walk away. But Al is desperate to be young again, so not only is he gonna give Lou the hundred million, it also seems like surrendering final cut to this odd salesman is going to be negotiable.

The next thing we know, a waiter carries over a contract on a tray, but when Al tries to sign it with his pen it suddenly runs out of ink. Lou hands his pen over, and Al notices the ink is blood red. As he’s signing, the lights seem to dim.

All this and he doesn’t know yet what the movie is going to be about.

So how does the treatment go?

After he experiences some chest pains, an ambulance ferries Al from his Beverly Hills home, where his daughter Victoria sees him off with promises to visit later, to the treatment center.
Victoria’s decision to go do “a shoot” instead of accompany her father (who appeared to be having a heart attack) to the treatment center puzzled me. I just can’t rationally or logically accept it. Characters should act like real people in these situations, and as a loving daughter, I would expect her to go with her father in an emergency like this. It could be the last time she sees him, after all.

At the treatment center, it’s a chaotic scene as Al is losing consciousness. Lou is yelling at him to choose an age before he administers the drugs, and Al passes out and has a flashback about his deceased wife.

What happens in the flashback?

Al is in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco with a crew of film students. He’s pushing them to film a drum circle of Ojibwe as they’re out looking to score footage of a police riot or topless girls. “Sex and violence. Don’t waste film otherwise.”

One of the Ojibwe women confronts Al, a gal named Lisa. But they seem to have an attraction to each other and the next thing we know they’re doing LSD and making love. They share a bond now, and Al proposes to Lisa.

Then we’re out of the flashback, and the age Al screams out to Lou before he passes out again is “Thirty!” This was Al’s age in the flashback and that’s the age he returns to when he awakens from the treatment.

If he’s 30 again, how does Al deal with Victoria and the film studio?

By pretending to be Al, Jr. I didn’t have a problem with this tricking the film studio, but I did have a problem when it came to convincing Victoria. It felt too easy and it didn’t feel as graceful as it should have.

I have a hard time getting past a plot glitch like that, and this brings me to my main criticism with “Hell of a Deal”. I’m going to be honest here, and my negative feedback may seem harsh, but as writers, we should be used to feedback, both positive and negative.

There’s a lack of verisimilitude, that quality of stories and storytelling that uses the right details to create the appearance of truth. To make something made up seem realistic. As storytellers, we are basically spinning lies into truth. And we must become masters at it if we want to succeed.

This lack of verisimilitude rears its head in the scenes dealing with the examination of the film business. And as the rest of the story is about Lou’s movie, well, this absence of truth plagues much of the script.

So what’s Lou’s movie about and what’s his end game?

Lou’s film is called, ‘Terra: Earth Under Terror’. Much of the second act is focused on Al dealing with Lou’s demands as they hire a screenwriter to script the project. After that, we see what happens when they send the script out to the latest leading men to see who’s gonna bite.
This movie within the script is pretty weird. Lou explains it, “It’s about the Supermen of the Homeland…like the Nietzsche Ubermenschen…,” who rise up to defend civilization against the terrorists.

Except these Supermen are into gangrape, torture and killing.

Basically, things come to a head during an Angel Heart-like moment when we learn that Lou Seaford is really Lucifer. His movie is hopefully gonna be as effective as La Fin Absolue du Monde from John Carpenter’s Cigarette Burns when it comes to inciting madness and homicidal urges in people, in turn causing World War Four and the end of civilization as we know it.
So the third act becomes a court case where Al is trying to block the release of ‘Terra’, but is then sued for a billion dollars by Lou’s team of lawyers.

Does Al succeed?

Strangely, no.

We have a heavy-handed finale where Al urges Victoria to live a happy life and “make moral art” before Lou comes to collect his soul, welcoming him into the gates of hell.
This sequence kind of blind-sided me as an attack on violence in cinema, especially violence in the “Torture Porn” genre.

I mean, as a dude that saw Kick-Ass three times in the same week, I felt like I was being personally condemned for being entertained (and finding value) in the Cinema of Violence.
But personal feelings and ego aside, that wasn’t my issue here. My issue is that the sequence felt pretty preachy, and I wish it was more subtle.

So, what’s your final verdict, Rog?

Well, despite my criticism concerning the plot glitches and character logic, I think there’s a good use of the three act structure. There’s a good macro-structure here. The writer nailed his over-all structure.

My criticisms deal with mostly the micro stuff, the stuff that happens in the scenes. I found that the scenes ran too long or lacked the realism they required. Instead of feeling like I was glimpsing into a window of a real-life mogul, it felt more like a hasty approximation of what one imagined this mogul’s life to be.

It ultimately ran off the tracks for me when it came to Lou’s movie. It was just really strange.
My advice to the writer would be to focus on making his scenes feel realistic, on making his characters feel like real people. Study genres and their tones, what makes them work, and apply appropriately.

Script link: Hell Of A Deal

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

What I learned: Does your screenplay have a message? It does? Okay, kill it. No, seriously. Dismember it and bury it under your story. Because chances are, unchecked, this message has grabbed the reins from story and has shattered through the fourth-wall and has punched the audience member in the face, breaking his or her nose. The audience is coming to your movie because they want to be told a story, not a sermon. Sure, a theater can be sacred like a cathedral if you’re an audience member passionate about cinema, but it’s still not a church.

Here’s the analogy: Say you’re writing a science-fiction tale. The fiction comes first, not the science. The story is the center. If there’s no story at the center for the audience to be moved by, then they might as well be reading a text book on quantum mechanics.

All screenplays address an idea or ideas, something we can refer to as theme. If theme is a bell, then every scene should ring this bell. However, watch out for those moments where it seems like the character has stepped on a pulpit and is ringing the bell so hard it’s clanging and hurting our ears. And if you’re telling a morality play, aim for subtlety. Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight was a morality play, but its message was always in harmony with the story.

To get in touch with Roger, you can e-mail him at: rogerbalfourscriptshadow@gmail.com

note 1: Cruel remarks such as “This is f’ing terrible” or “This story sucks” will be deleted. I want you to be honest and I want to have a discussion about the writing but be respectful to the writer.

note 2: I’m sorry that the comments aren’t working for some – try using different browsers while I continue to work on it. Ever since upgrading it’s been a nightmare. Unfortunately, like most computer shit these days, they won’t let you downgrade back to the old version. If you have any experience with Disqus and/or commenting problems and know what the problem may be, e-mail me please: Caronreeves1@gmail.com

Genre: Real Life Political Thriller
Premise: The story of Valerie Plame, a CIA agent who was outed after the U.S. could not find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
About: Fair Game stars Naomi Watts as Valerie Plame and Sean Penn as her husband, Joe Wilson. It was directed by Doug Liman and will be premiering at the Cannes Film Festival (in what may be the most brilliant marketing tactic ever – an anti-Iraq War film premiering in France). For those who remember, Liman directed the original Bourne Identity, so this is somewhat familiar territory for him. Oh, and for Modern Family fans, of which I am one, Ty Burrel also has a small part in the movie, playing one of Valerie’s friends. The writers, Jez and John Butterworth, also wrote Michael Mann’s next film, about war photographer Robert Capa’s relationship with fellow photojournalist Gerda Taro while they were each covering the Spanish Civil War.
Writers: Jez and John Butterworth (based on the memoir by Valerie Plame Wilson)
Details: 114 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).

So this is the big script I was talking about the other day that a friend recommended to me. This is a guy who reads a lot of scripts and he proclaimed to me, point blank, that this was the best script he’d read in three years. When a fellow reader says that to me, I have no choice but to put it on top of the reading pile. But there was only one problem. We didn’t discuss what it was about. And if we had, we probably would’ve determined that it never stood a chance with me.

“Fair Game” explores the inner workings of the CIA leading up to the Iraq War, specifically in relation to their hunt for weapons of mass destruction. Ah yes, the whole WMD fiasco. Did we or didn’t we know the truth ahead of time? That is the question. Well, let me just explain why I never got into the whole debate. To me, WMDs were never the real issue with Iraq. We were going into Iraq no matter what. We’d been wanting to get rid of Saddam Hussein for 15 years, and September 11th gave the U.S. that opportunity. If it wasn’t going to be WMDs, it was going to be something else. I guess people were interested in the scandal and the government lying. But to me it was like, “Well no shit they lied. They needed to start a war and they needed to do it quickly.” I would’ve been more surprised to find out they hadn’t lied. So the whole conspiracy had no drama as far as I was concerned.

But for the sake of the review, let me lay out the story because the script has a funky structure to it that I think is worth discussing. “Fair Game” takes place not long after September 11th, and introduces us to Valerie Plame, a young CIA agent who’s been tasked with gathering intel on Iraq’s weapons program. Around that time, Iraq supposedly made a purchase from Niger that included millions of aluminum rods, the kind of rods that scientists use to enrich uranium. You know, so they can build nuclear bombs. So Valerie put together a small group of undercover Iraqis who agreed to go into Iraq and question family members in the weapons program to find out if they had nuclear capability. In return, she promised, she would get them and their families out of Iraq and into safety.

So away her footsoldiers went and they found out what we know now. There were no weapons. The nuclear program had been dissolved over a decade ago. As Valerie then tried to give her report to her superiors, the U.S. decided they had the information they needed, and invaded Iraq anyway. After the invasion, when no WMDs were found, the press started sniffing around, and the U.S. realized they had to cover their tracks. So those same people Valerie swore she would protect were now marked targets of the U.S. Government. Since they could attest to the fact that the U.S. knew there were no WMDs before their invasion, they had to be taken out.

Just as this fallout starts ramping up, however, the script takes a big left turn, shifting abruptly to a Washington Post article that outs Valerie as a CIA operative. What appears to have happened is that Valerie’s husband, a U.S. ambassador, had written an article accusing the U.S. of knowing the truth about the WMDs because of a report he had given to them. In retaliation, someone from the White House leaked Valerie’s CIA status to the Washington Post.

Whereas everything up to this point (a good 60-70 pages) had been about the plot which led to the invasion of Iraq, now the script became this personal journey about how a CIA operative lives with being outed. She has to go to all her friends and apologize for lying to them for 20 years. She has to explain to her kids why she’s being publicly shunned. Things like that. I suppose this won’t matter as much if the marketing for the film educates the public on Plame’s story, so that they anticipate this turn of events, but for me, someone who didn’t know anything about her, I was stuck going, “What kind of movie is this supposed to be??”

Because if you think about it, this easily could’ve been four different movies. We start out with Valerie being a James Bond/Jason Bourne like super-agent, traveling the world and gaining access to top foreign leaders. Then the story shifts into this extensive procedural about the minutiae of how we gather information and the specifics that led up to the invasion of Iraq. Then the script shifts to the fallout of said invasion. And finally, it shifts to Valerie’s life after she was outed. Each one of those could’ve been explored as a full film. So having them all in the same film was a bit jarring for me.

But, like my buddy who recommended this, I expect those of you entrenched in the WMD scandal and in Plame’s story in particular to eat this up. It reminded me, in many ways, of Michael Mann’s “The Insider.” (not surprising then, that he liked the writers enough to hire them on his next film), which is another film that demands a lot from you. So, if you enjoyed Russel Crowe’s turn in that movie, you’ll want to check this out for sure. Oh, and I’d be remiss not to mention the great reveal/payoff at the end of the script. It’s truly terrifying, and will definitely make you think twice about what’s going on inside our government’s walls. If only this story would’ve been a little more straightforward, I may have enjoyed it. But my simple brain can’t handle all this zigging and zagging. Just wasn’t my thing.

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

What I learned: A common mistake writers make in their pursuit of trying to get you to like their hero, is being too transparent in their attempt. They’ll have the hero save a dog in the opening scene, or carry groceries up for the old lady who lives next door. Having your character be helpful (or “heroic”) isn’t the only way to get us to like them, and many times, can be so obvious as to have the opposite effect. In Fair Game, they get us to like Valerie in a pretty nifty way. In the opening scene, Valerie is on a mission to speak with a very rich Arab man on false pretenses (she’s presenting herself as a business woman). But she must first make it past his suspicious nephew, who starts asking pointed questions, questions it seems like Valerie isn’t prepared for. The first is if she’s from America. No, she assures him, she’s from Canada. Toronto to be precise (hoping that will be the end of it). He quickly asks her if she’s a Maple Leafs fan. No, she tells him, she’s not (we believe so that she won’t have to answer any specific questions about the team). Really, he notes. So then you’re the one person who lives in Toronto who’s not a hockey fan? A pause. Is she busted? What does she do now? Then, out of nowhere Valerie says, “Oh I’m a fan. Dad’s from Vancouver, so I’m a Canuck. Between us, the Maple Leaves suck. They should never have signed Mark Bell. Guy’s a liability on an off the ice. So who’s your team?” — And boom. Right there, we like Valerie. How did they do it? Simple. They had the main character outsmart an asshole (or “bad guy”). Everybody likes a person who puts the bully in their place. So just remember, be creative with your scene that makes us like your hero. If you’re too transparent, we’ll see through it and dock you for trying to manipulate us.