When Roger pitched this idea to me, I loved it. Mainly because I’m always looking for another good book to read, but also because I know he devours books like I devour scripts. So here he is with his article, “Ten Books That Need To Be Movies.” All images are link-ified!

Well, first you mustn’t. You can’t learn to write that way –- by writing directly for the screen. Wait until you’re 30. You’ve got to learn how to write! Screenplays are not writing. They’re a fake form of writing. It’s a lot of dialogue and very little atmosphere. Very little description. Very little character work. It’s very dangerous. You’ll never learn to write. You’ve got to learn to write well and then you can survive. You must write all kinds of things: Essays, poetry, short stories, novels, stage plays, and screenplays. That’s what I do. All those things.

-Ray Bradbury, upon being asked, “But let’s say a young writer really wants to break into Hollywood, how can it be done?”

Narrative is my drug of choice and I’d take it intravenously if I could. But you know what? It’s even simpler than that.

I just love words.

Screenplays are pretty great. They can be pure story (and in some cases, works of art), but for all intents and purposes, they are firstly blueprints for a narrative not told in words, but in images.

And in a world (coughHOLLYWOODcough) where sometimes the best a scribe can do is write a spec that’s “fresh but familiar”, it will come as no surprise that the most narrative freedom, originality, and evolution of pure story is going to be found in the world of books.

A question for you, dear reader: When you read a book, does the language unspool into a reel of words, projecting a movie on the screen of your mind?

Yeah, me too.

And there are some books, where the unfolding story is so cinematic, where the narrative seems just at home inside the cathedral that is a movie theater as inside of the prosaic Pandora’s box that is a novel, that when I finish them, I need to see the movie version immediately.

Here are ten books I would love to see as movies.

1. Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski

Duane Swierczynski is the wheelman for a crew of noir writers that includes the criminal minds of Ken Bruen, Charlie Huston, and Meg Abbott. His sentences pop like strings of firecrackers and his characters are literal time-bombs and human weapons. His plots, which meld noir and espionage, operate like clever traps whose ticking clocks and high-stakes make Crank seem like it moves in molasses-slow bullet-time.

When Jamie DeBroux, a former newspaper man, shows up to his boring PR job at Murphy, Knox & Associates, his boss informs Jamie and his six other co-workers that he’s gonna have to let them go.

Literally.

The fire exits have been rigged with sarin gas, the phones don’t work, and the elevator has been set to bypass the 36^th floor (where they’re located). They are on terminal lockdown.

They are presented with a choice: Drink a poisoned mimosa that will usher them into the Big Sleep, or take a bullet to the head.

Chaos ensues when Molly Lewis, a mild-mannered office girl, shoots the boss in the head, revealing that she is some kind of super-assassin.

In fact, Jamie, the everyman, is surprised to find out that he’s the only one who isn’t a spy. It’s a fight for survival as the spies scatter, forming alliances or going rogue. Also, we notice that the entire floor has been rigged with cameras. Molly seems to be auditioning for a new gig with some type of super-secret spy organization that watches from the other end of a feed in Scotland.

Her test?

To torture and exterminate all the other spies in the building, exhibitionist-style.

Jamie has to somehow survive all of this so he can return to his wife and new-born child at home.

You don’t need any more plot details to know that this is an exciting premise. To mention Diehard, Alias, Hostel and The Most Dangerous Game almost cheapens the experience, but since this is a blog about movies, I guess I should throw that out there.

Severance Package is the ultimate “contained thriller”.

2. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

This is a steamrolling behemoth of a tale in the world of YA (Young Adult) Fiction. My twitter feed went apeshit a couple weeks ago when the title and cover of the final and third book was announced. Most of my favorite novels come from the YA Fiction section of the bookstore. And this is without a doubt one of the best.

After the destruction of North America, a nation called Panem rises out of its post-apocalyptic ashes. It is comprised of twelve poor districts and a rich Capitol (which is located somewhere in the Rocky Mountains).

Sixteen-year old Katniss Everdeen is from District 12, which we know is Appalachia because of its coal-rich soil. Her father has been killed in a mine explosion, so Katniss is the sole provider of her family. To feed her sister and grief-stricken mother, she becomes an expert hunter, archer and trapper.

Every year, one boy and one girl are selected by lottery to participate in The Hunger Games, a televised event where the children are forced to fight to the death in a deadly outdoor arena. Its participants are called tributes and the games end only when one tribute is left standing.

When Katniss’ younger sister, Prim, is chosen as District 12’s tribute, Katniss volunteers to take her place.

And like that, we’re off Battle Royale-style.

Things get complicated when Peeta, the male tribute from District 12, publically declares his love for Katniss. The audience goes into a frenzy over the two star-crossed lovers. But is Peeta’s declaration of love just a ploy to win over the audience?

The Hunger Games are so competitive, half of the twenty-four tributes die in the first day. Katniss is able to survive because she’s like a teenage Ellen Ripley or John Rambo. She’s got some skills, man.

The Hunger Games is a four quadrant movie and then some. You’ve got a badass teenage heroine, a riveting love story, a dangerous post-apocalyptic world and visceral first-person shooter action.

Not only that, it’s smart-science fiction with rich allegorical soil.

Let Suzanne Collins write the screenplay, let Kathryn Bigelow direct it.

‘Nuff said.

3. Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow

This free verse novel has all my favorite things: the raw-knuckle peril of crime fiction, the somber horror of the werewolf tale, and the quest for redemption required of true noir. All told in a tapestry of multiple story threads. Kinda like a modern day Beowulf, but with werewolves.

Anthony Silvo is lonely. He takes a job as a dog catcher. It’s what he perceives to be a simple job, but soon discovers it’s a lot more dangerous than he could have ever imagined. The man he’s replacing, a catcher that sold a few dogs to a fighting circuit, has disappeared. He soon finds himself in the world of the drug trade. If that’s not all, Anthony also falls in love with a mysterious unnamed woman who might possibly be a werewolf.

Lark is leader of the most dangerous wolf-pack on the streets. A lawyer whose pack controls the undercurrents of power in Hollywood (think film agents who are really werewolves), he is ultimately betrayed and finds himself trying to start a new pack from scratch. His motivation is to get revenge against the pack of lycanthrope hitmen who are attemping to take over the LA crime world.

Detective Peabody follows a blood trail and is strung along by a mysterious man who hints that something else has been set loose on the streets besides impending gang warfare. He may or may not discover a race of beings that can change back and forth into dogs.

All these threads are woven together, the story culminating into all-out war on the streets of LA. Consider this tableau: Blackhawk helicopters and snipers unleashing hell on things that are, apparently, more than human.

If there’s ever a werewolf story that could work on screen, it’s this one. It has the potential to be a supernatural crime epic. It’s Traffic, but with fang, fur and claw.

4. Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

Think John Carpeneter’s Escape from New York but set in an alternate Civil War-era Seattle. In 1860, the Russians are searching for gold in the Alaskan ice. Leviticus Blue creates a machine called Dr. Blue’s Incredible Bone-shaking Drill Engine for the job, but at a demonstration gone awry, ends up drilling through several Seattle blocks, releasing a gas called the Blight. As banks are looted and people are killed, Leviticus and his machine disappear in the chaos.

And the Blight?

It turns people into rotters (zombies)!

Fast-forward to the 1880s and the Blighted remnants of Seattle have been walled off. Briar Wilkes, the scorned widow of Leviticus and outcast of the Great Blight, scrapes by with her teenage son, Ezekiel, in the Outskirts. The rest of America is a dangerous Civil War Zone ravaged by the machines of war (read dirigibles and steampowered tech). On a mission to exonerate his family’s name and discover the truth about Leviticus, Zeke dons an antiquated Blight-mask and ventures into the Blighted city. When an earthquake destroys Zeke’s only escape route out of the city, Briar sets off in an airship to rescue her son.

It’s an American steampunk world ruled by the eerie Dr. Minnericht, who wears a skull-like gas mask of pipes and valves and views the world through glowing blue lenses. The atmosphere is thick with yellow gas and air pirates conduct their trade over the city in giant zeppelins.

It’s hard to deny that this novel would make one helluva a movie. In many ways it’s a family adventure story about hope. But how many family adventures have zombie chases, cyborg barmaids and steampunk weapons named Doozy Dazer? Not a lot! Sure, it’d be expensive, and many of the actors would be wearing gas masks for much of the screen time, but hell, we can all dream right? At the very least, pick up the book and check it out for yourself. It’s worth it for the cool cover alone. And if you can’t get enough of Cherie Priest’s writing, I recommend her Eden Moore trilogy, the supernatural Southern Gothic novels Priest cut her teeth on.

5. The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

He was one hundred and seventy days dying and not yet dead…

Gully Foyle is shipwrecked in space. A brute, a mental simpleton, he’s been alone on the Nomad for six months, waiting for rescue. When a spacecraft named the Vorga arrives to scope out the ship, Foyle sets off signal flares. The Vorga ignores him and continues on its way.

This is where something interesting happens to Foyle.

This snub triggers his rage and he is driven by only one thing. Revenge. But because Foyle isn’t that smart, and doesn’t realize that something like the Vorga is piloted by actual people, the object of his vengeance becomes the Vorga itself. This galvanizes him into action and he soon finds his way back to Earth. Through it all, he develops the ability to “jaunte”. Which is basically teleporting through the power of the mind. Of course, the thing is, no one has ever been able to jaunte through outer space.

When an attack on the Vorga fails, he is thrown into the Gouffre Martel, a series of underground caves in the Pyrenees. He’s tortured by Saul Dagenham, a brilliant scientist who can only be around other people for a limited time because he is radioactive. It’s a prison of total darkness, and it’s so disorienting Foyle can’t jaunte away (he has to be able to form a picture of the location in his mind). It’s here that he meets Jisbella McQueen, a woman who educates him and teaches him how to properly hone and cultivate his revenge.

Because this is a retelling of Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, Foyle escapes the prison and transforms himself into a rich, educated dandy. He’s also used his wealth to enhance his nervous system with military tech that allows him to burst into combat at super-human speeds. He uses all resources available to him as he goes after the individual people who were aboard the Vorga.

Do I really need to explain why this would make an awesome action movie? Alfred Bester is kinda the father of cyberpunk, as he was playing with its concepts in 1956 when he wrote this novel. There’s fascinating and inventive set-pieces, not limited to kidnapping telepaths on Mars to infiltrating a catacomb fortress where inhabitants live in total sensory deprivation to battles with physically enhanced commandos.

The book is a tour-de-force, and in the right hands, would make a classic revenge-fueled science-fiction thriller.

6. Alabaster by Caitlin R. Kiernan

Caitlin R. Kiernan has been described as the spiritual granddaughter of H.P. Lovecraft. Besides Cormac McCarthy, she is probably my favorite modern day novelist. An amazing prose stylist, her novels and short stories are dizzying, lyrical pieces with powerful imagery that is comparable to the work of someone like Angela Carter. Adapting any of her novels is going to be a tough (but rewarding) gig for any A-list filmmaker, and I remember reading somewhere that Guillermo Del Toro was flirting with her novel Threshold.

I believe her most cinematic work is a melancholy and razor-sharp short story cycle called Alabaster. These five stories, which tick by and fit together like a sinister grandfather clock, are just brilliant pieces of storytelling.

Dancy Flammarion is a thirteen-year old monster killer on a mission. An albino, she has haunting visions that may or may not come from some type of guardian angel, telling her to seek out “the ancient monsters who have hidden themselves away in the lonely places of the world.” These spells slowly drive her mad and test her sanity. She sets forth on foot from the swamps of North Florida, armed with only a duffel bag and a very large knife, hunting creatures from Heaven and Hell on the red-clay Georgia and Alabama backroads.

To quote Publishers Weekly, “the fey girl is one of many human avatars fighting small skirmishes on earth that have cataclysmic repercussions across planes of reality. In Les Fleurs Empoisonnées, Dancy is taken captive by a matriarchy of necrophiles whose decaying mansion is a nexus point for perverse and grotesque phenomena. Bainbridge interweaves multiple story lines that cut across time and space to show the far-reaching efforts of Dancy’s to exorcise an ancient evil infesting an abandoned church.”

It’s going to take a genius fantasy and horror filmmaker to bring this to celluloid, but if you’ve read the stories, you’ll agree with me that it’s something that needs to be done. There’s no doubt in my mind that there’s a director out there who was born to make this happen.

If you love monsters and monster hunters, character-driven, mind-bending horror stories, fairytales, rich mythology, and just plain balls-to-the-wall storytelling that sings of pure imagination, then do yourself a favor and order a copy of Alabaster right now. You won’t be disappointed.

7. Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie

My parents have always fed me books. In middle school it was The Lord of the Rings trilogy. A few months ago it was Joe Abercrombie’s First Law series. And I love filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, and although Abercrombie writes fantasy, it was apparent that he loves these filmmakers, too. It’s another case of cinema inspiring an author, and I love that overlap.

Monza Murcatto, an infamous mercenary and general for Duke Orso, is getting a little too influential and respected for her employer’s tastes. Orso believes that he can become king of the land by coming out on top of the civil wars raging between the competing city states, but he’s scared of Monza. So, he lures her and her brother into his palace and has them killed. Monza and her brother’s body are tossed off a balcony and left on a mountainous incline.

Of course, Monza is still alive. She’s suffered massive injuries and she’s found and nursed back to health by a strange surgeon. She’s still pretty fucked up (one arm is pretty much useless), but this doesn’t stop her from putting together a fascinating team of death dealers.

There’s Shivers, a remorseful barbarian from the Northlands who is kind of the moral compass and foil to Monza and her dark vendetta. There’s Morveer, the master poisoner and his ambitious assistant, a gamine named Day. There’s Friendly, a Rain Man-like serial killer who is obsessed with numbers and wields cleavers. And there’s Monza’s ex-mentor, Nimco Cosca who was once the leader of an army known as The Thousand Swords, but is now a drunk who is a savant with a sword.

Monza is fueled by hatred and rage to take down the seven men who plotted and witnessed her betrayal. Yes, this is a Point Blank revenge story set in a fascinating fantasy world that’s just as gritty as the best noir settings. There are awesome set-pieces set against the scope of heists, break-ins, cities under siege, and civil war. Not only that, but when Orso realizes that Monza is still alive and is after him, he employs the most feared bounty hunter in the land to take down her team, a guy who can seemingly bend the laws of time and space and who fights in a style I like to call gore-fu. It’s scary shit.

It can be adapted into a stand-alone movie, or if you want to capture every nuance and moment, would feel at home as an HBO mini-series. It’s a story that will have you laughing maniacally at the sheer spectacle and rage in one scene, to weeping softly in another. If people are looking for the next bloated epic fantasy to adapt, why not pull a hat trick and pick this stand-alone tale that will appeal to fans of not only high fantasy, but crime capers and the cinema of violence?

8. The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

With this book, I’m gonna have to quote a titan of YA Fiction, Scott Westerfield.

Zombies have been metaphors for many things: consumerism, contagion in an overpopulated world, the inevitability of death. But here they resonate with a particularly teenage realization about the world –- that social limits and backwards traditions are numberless and unstoppable, no matter how shambling they may seem at first.

And so it goes with Carrie Ryan’s The Forest of Hands and Teeth, a book that begins seven generations after the zombie apocalypse. Mary lives in an archaic village under a matriarchal religious sect called the Sisterhood. They enforce tradition and everything about Mary’s life, from birth to marriage to death. The village is surrounded by a chainlink fence, and no villager is allowed to cross this threshold unless they want to die in the forest, which is populated with zombies.

Mary spends her days dreaming and questioning the traditions of the Sisterhood. She wants to know about technology. She wants to know what caused the Return. She wants to know about romance, about love. Her crazy mother is the one who tells her tales about a mysterious place filled with water, an “ocean” that is free from the danger of the undead. When the Unconsecrated breach the village’s defenses, Mary ventures into the forest to find another safe haven, perhaps another village like her own.

And it’s weird to say this, but this is a moving story about searching and pursuing your dreams, about following your heart, even if it’s in a post-apocalyptic world where zombies are trying to eat you. It’s the type of rich novel I imagine only a woman raised on zombie movies and coming-of-age novels could write, and it’s all the more powerful for it. Although it’s probably unfair to say this, but I think The Forest of Hands and Teeth is the movie M. Night’s The Village should have been. With a female teenage heroine, romance, and zombies, what other bases does a movie need to cover? Audiences will eat this up. I promise.

9. Already Dead by Charlie Huston

Let’s talk about Charlie Huston for a moment. I think any of Charlie’s books could make a great movie. I could write about all of them (except Sleepless, haven’t read that one yet, but it’s sitting on my desk here), and I’m faced with the problem of only picking one. And in the spirit of picking something that’s anti-Twilight, I’ll choose the first in his pulp-noir horror Joe Pitt Casebooks.

Huston has created a Middle Earth-like Manhattan, a parallel universe whose underworld is ruled by vampyre clans. There’s the largest clan, The Society, corporate suits who rule midtown from 14^th street to Harlem. There’s the East Village Society, basically a group of progressive liberals. To me, the most interesting is a group called The Enclave, who are the smallest but the most feared. They live in a lower West End warehouse starving themselves to nirvana, whose bodies have found a balance with the raging vampyre virus, giving them super-supernatural speed.

Joe Pitt is a rogue, constantly scrambling and hustling to survive. In true Chandler-esque fashion, Pitt takes two jobs: He’s hired by Marilee Horde, a prominent New York socialite whose daughter Amanda has gone missing and may be slumming with homeless goth kids in the East Village; and The Coalition hires him to find and destroy a “carrier”, basically a science experiment that’s bringing unwanted attention on the undead community because it’s spreading an infection that turns people into shamblers (more zombies!).

It’s a very entertaining foray into a world populated by Stoker archetypes. There are Renfields (humans who want to become vampyres), Lucys (those who have over-romanticized vampires and dote over them like groupies), Minas (who know the truth and fall in love with them anyways), and the occasional Van Helsings (vampyre killers). It’s just a great fusion of Chandler, Cormac McCarthy, and horror. What astounds me the most about it is the moral sophistication of the tale and the exploration into the nature of evil that lies within its pages.

It’s no surprise to me that the screenwriter of Johnny Diamond, Scott Rosenberg, bought an option on this book in February 2007. I think it’s a good match and I hope they’re able to make it happen. Until then, I recommend any of Charlie Huston’s books, especially if you like both crime and horror.

10. Peace Like A River by Leif Enger

Last but not least is a novel that doesn’t contain the usual story staples I’m interested in. Nary a zombie, monster, sword, steampunk setting or action set-piece to be found. I suppose this is something that could be categorized as a “literary novel”, in the sense that it’s not horror, science-fiction or fantasy, and that it contains beautiful language.

It also contains miracles.

Reuben Land appears to be born still-born, and the first miracle appears when his father, Jeremiah Land commands, “In the name of the living God I am telling you to breathe.” And he does. Eleven years later we’re in the 1960s and Rube’s dad is a widowed school custodian. Jeremiah struggles to raise Rube and his two siblings, Davy, who will become an outlaw, and Swede, a precocious girl who writes poems about cowboys and gunplay.

Our story takes off when Davy shoots down two bullies and brigands during a home invasion. He’s put on trial for murder, but he ultimately escapes the jail and heads towards the Badlands. This turns the Land family on its head and it’s not long before Jeremiah puts Rube and his sister in a car and they’re off to find Davy before the FBI does.

The whole time we’re praying that this broken family will be reunited, and through a child’s eyes, we watch the father grapple with the concepts of justice, a father’s duty, and morality. It’s a prosaic and wondrous tale, as beautiful as the worlds contained in the snowflakes Enger writes about.

A simple story told beautifully, not unlike something as heartwrenching and true as Crazy Heart. Because of the lens it brings into the world of hope, love and the supernatural, I much prefer this book to something like The Lovely Bones. I believe this could be a magical movie, a character study in the vein of Southern Gothic stories like A Love Song for Bobby Long, Sling Blade or The Apostle, except the difference here is the setting isn’t the South, but the wondrous winter wonderland of Minnesota. The nature and weather are just as important as the characters.

It’s a tale about true heroism.

TITAN WEEK 4 OF 5 OF 1

We’re 4 days into the Titan Theme Week. We started with Shane Black. Moved on to Amanda Peet’s husband, David Benioff. Then we tackled the dynamo writing duo of Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. And today, we’re reading ourselves some Darabont.

Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: In a dystopian future, Firefighters start fires instead of put them out.
About: I don’t think there’s any question that Darabont is a true titan in this business. The Shawshank Redemption is one of those examples of screenwriting perfection. It does a lot of things most writers would tell you not to do. Its tone is depressing, it’s long and drawn out, probably has too many characters, depends too much on voice over, and doesn’t have a female lead. Yet it’s pure unadulterated awesomeness, and while credit obviously goes to Steven King, what Darabont did by taking one of King’s most unmarketable ideas and turning into an Oscar-nominated screenplay was pretty amazing. Darabont is easily one of the most respected writers in town. If a script needs fixing – not pampering or gloss, but actual fixing – this is the man that will come in and do it. – This particular script, Farenheit 451, has been in development for something like 25 years. Darabont’s adaptation of the material is believed to be one of the best unmade screenplays in Hollywood.
Writer: Frank Darabont (based on the novel by Ray Bradbury)
Details: 121 pages (September 2005 draft)

I have a secret.

I’ve tried to read Farenheit 451 on three separate occasions and couldn’t get past the first 10 pages. I’m sure you want to know why, so I’ll just come out and say it.

Robot dogs.

I’m sorry but I just can’t wrap my head around robot dogs. And I’m a sci-fi geek! Why would robot dogs ever need to exist?? If you need something that only dogs can do, why not get a real dog? But if something is so complicated as to require a robotic equivalent and you have the technology to create that robot equivalent, why not just create a robotic human instead? Doesn’t it make more sense in the context of what the human robot would be able to do? I understand this was part of the original novel, but in a post-Transformers world, robot dogs sound kinda lame.

The truth is, I chose this theme week specifically for this script, as I’ve wanted to read it for a long time, despite the robot dog issue. Lots of people who I’ve talked to love it, and I really wanted to at least say that I’d read the thing. So here goes.

Guy Montag is a fireman. But not the kind of fireman you and I know. Montag likes to start fires, not end them. In fact, all the fire departments we depend on when we accidentally throw a Wendy’s Chicken Club with the tin foil wrapper still attached into the microwave, have no interest in putting out fires anymore. Their purpose is to find people who still like to read a good John Grisham novel, and BURN THEIR HOUSE DOWN.

Cause in this future, the government hates books. Thinks they corrupt us. Brings out impulses we wouldn’t otherwise have. Man, if only these guys would’ve come around before Peter Jackson read The Lovely Bones.

Firefighters in this far off future, which by now is probably the far off past, since Bradbury wrote the novel back in the 1600s, are basically militarized. Their operation is honed and disciplined to take down offenders quickly, and to evoke a sense of fear in the community. We watch as they storm into houses, tear down walls and burst through ceilings to find these compilations of devil paper. And then burn them! If you don’t like it, you’ve got an angry robot dog to deal with.

Eventually Montag gets curious what all the fuss is about and sneaks home a copy of Lord Of The Flies. Even though he watches Lost every Tuesday at 9, the book is a revelation to him, and it feeds his curiosity for more. So now when Montag goes in with the crew to burn a house down, he stashes more books down his pants than The Situation stashes phone numbers. And the more he reads, the more enlightened he becomes.

Unfortunately, the Firefighter Chief starts getting suspicious of Montag, whose book reading has brought about a moodiness that didn’t before exist. People Montag has conspired with start getting caught, their houses burned and their families taken away. Montag’s wife pleads with him to get rid of the books, but he refuses. Eventually, Montag can’t run anymore, and must face the consequences for his actions.

The problem with Fahrenheit is that the world has changed so much since 1953. As I listen to these characters confide in each other about how important or how scary books are, their plight doesn’t resonate on any level. I suppose there are some places in the world where Fahrenheit’s themes are actually still relevant, but America isn’t into burning books anymore and hasn’t been for a long time.

I’m not saying this couldn’t have been fascinating 50 years ago when people rode around on chariots. But today? The internet is essentially one giant book that we have access to 24/7. If Iran can’t keep its citizens from using Twitter, we ain’t going to be able to stop people from ordering the latest Dan Brown novel on Amazon. Not to mention Facebook! Can you imagine the outrage from the community if we destroyed Facebook?? The implications of a world without Farmville are too much to bear. The day I don’t know when my friend Alandra just planted a patch of strawberries is the day that civilization is dead my friend. The day it is dead.

But seriously, it’s an issue. Darabont doesn’t even mention the internet here, which implies we’re observing this through some sort of alternate future. And from what I understand, this is why lead actors like Mel Gibson and Tom Hanks keep dropping out. Trying to imagine a future without internet is like trying to imagine a future without cars and airplanes. How do you make that leap? This is not to mention music, TV and movies, which essentially pose the same problem as books, and yet for whatever reason aren’t held to the same standards.

Despite that, there’s still a lot of care that went into this script, a lot of love. And you can feel it on the page. The prose and the attention to detail are all top notch, and as a result, you’re able to ignore some of the problems. But in the end, the logistical issues run too deep, and I can’t see this being made without a major rewrite.

How would you rewrite it? I think you’d have to embrace technology instead of ignore it, and probably focus the script on the government wanting to destroy our access to all information, from the internet all the way on down to the written word, a true modern-day telling of the story. That could be interesting. Just please, for my sake, don’t include any robot dogs. :)

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

What I learned: What I like about Darabont is he doesn’t write to impress you. He writes to tell the story, yet ends up impressing you in the process. So whereas a lesser writer might over-write their descriptions to try and impress the reader, Darabont makes sure that everything he describes is motivated. For example, here, he describes the fire truck starting: “The ENGINES START, a turbine WHINE exploding to a DEEP BASSO ROAR. Like a dragon waking up. Ready to breathe flame.” So descriptive. But not gratuitous. Remember, descriptions don’t sell screenplays. Concept, story, characters, and plot do. So resist that 8 line poetic description of how your character walks from his house to his car, and just tell the story instead.

TITAN WEEK 3 OF 5

Day 1 we brought you Shane Black. Day 2 we tackled questionable titan David Benioff. And now on our third day of Titan Week, we bring in the two highest paid writers in the business, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman! This oughta be fun. :)

Genre: Thriller
Premise: A widowed social worker receives a strange message that forces him to reevaluate what happened the day his wife was murdered.
About: How can you have a Titan Week without Kurtzman and Orci!! The two most beloved and respected writers in Hollywood!? Heh heh. You knew I had to pull these guys out. They’re the highest paid and most sought-after writers in town. And absolutely nobody thinks they should be but the people who hire them. Kurtzman and Orci first came on the scene in 2005, when they wrote Michael Bay’s “The Island.” They followed that with the second Zorro film, Mission Impossible 3, Transformers, Star Trek, and of course, the single greatest movie to ever be made, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen. But “Tell No One” is the script they wrote before all that success, all the way back in 2002. Now some of you may already be familiar with “Tell No One” as a French film that made some waves on the independent circuit in 2008 (it was released in France in 2006). I didn’t see it because I’d been burned too many times by supposedly groundbreaking French Films which turned out to be mind-numbingly horrible. I don’t think there’s anything worse than sitting through a bad French film. I’m glad I ignored it, because it allowed me to have this amazing reading experience. Now a few of you have probably noticed that the dates don’t quite match up. How can Orci and Kurtzman have adapted a 2006 film in 2002? Simple. Orci and Kurtzman have a time machine. It’s what allows them to know what we’re going to like before we like it. I’m just kidding. Or am I??? Actually, the French film was an adaptation of a novel written by American writer, Harlan Coben. I’ve never read a Harlan Coben book before, but people tell me “Tell No One” was one of his lesser efforts. Anyway, Kurtzman and Orci adapted the book before the French did. The French just beat them to the theaters. I still think this deserves the Hollywood treatment though. It’s a can’t miss baby.
Writers: Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (based off the novel by Harlan Coben)
Details: 122 pages (5th Draft, 2002)

Warning: If you know nothing about this script or this movie and you like thrillers, stop now, download the script, and read it. You’ll thank me.

Uhhhhh, can someone tell me WHERE THE HELL THIS SCRIPT WAS HIDING??? What a freaking gangbusters screenplay. I haven’t flown through a story that fast since The Cat In The Hat. And I thought The Grey was a good thriller. This is the executive suite of thrillers. 3000 square feet. Sweeping views of Vegas. TVs that pop out of the floor. Tell No One? Tell everyone!

But I’ll get to that in a second. First, we gotta deal with Orci and Kurtzman.

Every burgeoning writer in town cites these two as the oozing puss-filled sores of the screenwriting world. They point to the Transformers movies as their main argument. Anybody, they say, responsible for writing those movies, cannot be a good writer. And I will say this. The Transformers movies are two of the most incomprehensible mainstream movies I’ve ever seen, especially the second one. The thing is, the fault doesn’t lie squarely with them. These guys were brought in to realize a vision from a director who has no interest or understanding of story, to plug in characters that the toy company forced them to, to come up with a believable scenario by which aliens came to earth taking the form of transforming motor vehicles, to integrate pre-existing action sequences into a story that hadn’t been written yet, and to push all of this together in a few weeks, due to the writer’s strike (on the second one). In short, they were set up to fail. Any single one of us would’ve failed as well. It’s hard enough coming up with a good script when NO ONE is telling you how to write it. But when everyone is? And in a few weeks? There’s no way.

However, I’m not here to try and convince you to like Orci and Kurtzman. I was simply curious about reading a screenplay of theirs before they hit the bigtime. These are the scripts that usually GIVE these writers a shot at the big time, so it’s interesting to see what warranted that shot. And holy shit, this shot hit the bullseye.

David Beck and Elizabeth Parker are in love. They have been ever since they were 12 years old, doing the whole “carve the initials in the tree” thing. There’s only one issue affecting their otherwise bliss-filled relationship. David has seizures. Intense full-on blackouts where he doesn’t remember a thing. And one day, not long after the two are married, David is hit by something, triggering a seizure, and he blacks out. When he wakes up, he learns that his wife has been brutally murdered – the only thing he’s ever loved, stolen from him forever.

Four years later, David, now a social worker for abused children in Philadelphia, is trying to put the pieces of his life back together. He’s even dating a doctor, Anna, who helps some of the kids he brings in. Even though it’s not what he envisioned for himself, it’s a job Elizabeth was passionate about, and he feels a duty to carry it on. But the job is taxing, difficult, and he’s thinking about moving on to something more lucrative, something that’ll give him a cozy life, something that will help him finally move on from Elizabeth.

HUGE SPOILERS – PLEASE STOP READING NOW IF YOU HAVE ANY INTEREST IN THIS SCRIPT

And then David gets a message on his computer. He clicks a link. A live video feed. Of Elizabeth. At a park. Older. Today. Right now! Looking up into the camera!

It can’t be. There’s no way. His wife is dead. Isn’t she?

As David tries to make sense of the nonsensical, a car containing two murdered men is found in the lake next to where Elizabeth was murdered. These men were killed at the same time and with the same weapon that Elizabeth was. There are grave implications to this news. The serial killer who killed Elizabeth was thought to have only killed women. That’s why he supposedly left David alive. But if two men were also killed, why was David’s life spared? David has gone from mourning widow to number one suspect.

The worst thing about that? David’s not sure he *isn’t* a suspect. And actually, he’s not sure of anything anymore. Was the video feed of Elizabeth real? A fantasy? Could his fractured seizure-ridden mind be creating this vision to cope with the fact that he killed his wife?

Forced to go on the run or end up on the wrong side of the death penalty, David must scrape together the pieces of his wife’s secretive life, and find out what really happened to her that fateful day. Old friends, old family members, co-workers – no one can be trusted, and yet he needs all of their help to survive.

Tell No One takes its cues from the best, namely The Fugitive, and actually improves on the formula. Whereas The Fugitive has two gargantuan driving forces – the chase and Ford having to find out who killed his wife, Tell No One adds two additional mysteries: Is David the killer and is his wife still alive? With all these amazing threads going on at once, there isn’t a single sub-standard moment in the script. My admiration for this screaming fast story grew by the page because I’m so used to these things falling apart under their own weight. The twists stop making sense. The character motivations become ludicrous. The finale turns out to be a letdown. But Tell No One is the opposite. Every single story decision here is perfect. In fact, if I were teaching a class on how to write a mystery thriller, this is the script I would use to teach it. It’s that good.

And why is it that good? It’s no different than what we were talking about the other day with Taken. Tell No One gets the emotional component right. In the beginning, we see David and Elizabeth grow up together, fall in love together, get married, and start their life. So when Elizabeth is killed, it’s not just David who’s lost someone. It’s us. We watched this girl grow up. We watched her love. We watched her dream. We loved Elizabeth just as much as he did, and as a result, when she returns, we’re just as desperate for David to find her as he is. But the point is, if you stripped this thing of all its twist and turns, we’d still be pulling for these characters, because we like them that much.

As for the writing itself, it’s pretty solid. Kurtzman and Orci created a nice device that I really enjoyed. In general, I dislike unmotivated flashbacks because of their tendency to feel unnatural. Throughout the script, K and O use David’s seizures as a way to flash back to the day of the murder. It’s a little thing, but it plays nicely because it’s motivated by character (specifically – this character’s seizures). Always look for natural ways to move into your flashbacks, as opposed to just hitting us with them out of nowhere. It makes a difference.

The one thing that drove me crazy were Kurtzman and Orci’s use of underlined dialogue. Normally, this kind of stuff doesn’t bother me. But these two, for whatever reason, underline nearly every word of their characters’ dialogue (I guess to give it emphasis?). But instead of giving it emphasis, it gives us headaches, as we’re forced to change the way we read, starting and stopping so we can mentally annunciate the underlined words. It took me half the script to force myself to ignore it, and man was it annoying.

I’m sure some of you will be comparing this to the French film, and with that film nabbing a 93% approval on Rotten Tomatoes, I’m preparing for the barrage of reasons why this doesn’t match up to it. But I’ve never seen the film, so this was a totally new experience for me, and I think they hit it out of the park. Really great script.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive (Top 10)
[ ] genius

What I learned: The “found key that leads to the mysterious lockbox” device is one of the few things you can count on to ALWAYS WORK in a screenplay. Every. Freaking. Time! Cause we’re inherently curious about what the hell could be in that box. You can never go wrong with this device. (Just try and make sure what’s inside is something unique!).

Back before the internet, film studios used to spend untold millions on predicting the box office. The closer they could get to predicting a movie’s opening weekend, the more accurately they could plug the numbers into their “hit-maker” equation for the next round of summer tentpoles. Of course studios still spend a ton of money playing Nostradamus, but let’s face it – These days, anyone with a love for film and a few key movie blogs bookmarked can predict a film’s opening weekend within three million dollars. We know the hits before they hit us. We know the duds before they’re dumped on us. It’s not like the mid-nineties, where guessing a movie’s opening gross made you some sort of internet rock star.

However, even with all their tools and their stat-charts and their polling and their surveys and their test-screenings. And even with our Playlists and our Slash-Films and our First Showings and our Colliders…every once in awhile a film comes along that bucks the predictions. You would think this would be cause for celebration. But oh how it is not. It is a cause for fear. If a movie ends up being way bigger than the professional trackers thought it would be, that means they didn’t do their jobs. So everyone scrambles to try and figure out: What the hell went wrong?

Their answers quickly turn into a list of excuses. And most of those excuses revolve around two words: “Middle America.” Middle America can pretty much be used as an excuse for any miscalculation ANYWHERE. I’m not just talking about movies. You accidentally put too much ketchup on your hot dog? Middle America’s fault. Your boss is pissing you off? Middle America. Celebrity Trump? Middle America. Okay, maybe that last one is true. But come on, let’s be serious for a second. We can’t pin all our bad predictions on the that pudgy central section of the country. Sometimes, we have to take responsibility for our actions (the key word here is “sometimes” – not always).

So it’s with this spirit that I want to take a look at five surprise hits and see what we can learn from them as screenwriters. I do not claim to have all the answers here. I merely want to figure out what I believe we can learn from each film, and open up a discussion for you guys to add your thoughts.

Now I know a lot of people are going to point out that marketing and casting and directing had a much bigger effect on these box office successes than anything a screenwriter did. While I won’t discount that there are many variables involved in a film’s success, I will say that it all starts with the writer, and he/she has a much bigger impact on that final number than he/she’s often given credit for. The writer (assuming the idea is theirs) is responsible for two things: A great concept – something that can be easily presented and marketed in posters, TV spots, and trailers. And secondly, of course, a great story – something that moves audiences, something that titillates, excites, and entertains them. The former brings them into the theater, the latter brings them and their friends back. Except for adapted material, writers are responsible for both of these things. So keeping that in mind, let’s see what we can learn from these surprise hits.

ZOMBIELAND
Rough Projected First Weekend Gross: 12-15 mil
Actual First Weekend Gross: 24 mil
Rough Projected Total Gross: 35-42 mil
Actual Total Gross: 75 mil
Written by: Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick

What we can learn: People kept trying to get me to read this before it came out but as his been my M.O., I wasn’t exactly thrilled by another zombie clone. Then I saw the trailer and I realized this was anything but the newest boxcar on the stock zombie train. This was a film that took the zombie premise and turned it into something fun. That fun is what brought so many people into the theater. But where Zombieland excels, is in how it keeps you in the theater. The script does something rare for a film aimed at a young audience – it put its characters first. In a world where we’re used to zombie films birthing cardboard cutouts whose depth is measured by how many three-syllable words they can use, Zombieland dares to go deeper. And in a straight comedy no less. Each of these characters is trying to overcome a lifelong series of walls they’ve put up to guard against the world. Each of these characters is trying to learn how to connect with other human beings. In other words, they’re going through the same types of things that a lot of us are. Columbus has led his entire existence shutting himself off from the world. Tallahasse hides behind his anger. Wichita refuses to trust anyone besides her sister. These clearly defined characters are what separates Zombieland from so many other horror films out there. Now you may be saying, “Carson, do you really believe that character development has anything to do with why this film did well at the box office?” Hell yes I do. Giving us characters with depth in a genre known for its lack of depth is exactly what gave this film such a fresh feel. When you don’t do that right in a horror comedy, you get Jennifer’s Body, a movie that by all accounts should’ve left Zombieland in the dust at the box office. It co-starred two of the hottest young actresses in Hollywood for Christ’s sake. And yet still it bombed. So never underestimate the power of character depth, particularly in genres where it’s usually ignored.

DISTRICT 9
Rough Projected First Weekend Gross: 20-23 mil
Actual First Weekend Gross: 37 mil
Rough Projected Total Gross: 60-70 mil
Actual Total Gross: 116 mil
Writers: Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell

What we can learn: There are two ways to approach spec screenplays. Two ways to write a screenplay that sells. The first is to take a known formula, and execute it perfectly. Think the heist flick Inside Man, the buddy cop film 48 Hours, or the romantic comedy Notting Hill. None of those movies rewrote the book on screenwriting, but they were all expertly executed for what they were. The reason I don’t favor this approach is that it’s really hard to execute anything perfectly. Of course it *seems* easy – but once you start writing, you realize it isn’t easy in the least. It’s much smarter (and easier) to do it the way District 9 did. Take a well-known story and find a new angle to it. I just talked about this yesterday in my review of “The Resident.” We’ve seen “Fatal Attraction”-type thrillers a hundred times. But we hadn’t seen it with shifting points of view. Same thing happens here with District 9. We’ve seen the “aliens invade earth” plot a thousand times. Aliens come down, aliens try to wipe out or enslave humans, humans fight back. So director Neill Blomkamp said, “Well what if aliens came down, and instead of them trying to enslave us, we tried to enslave them?” Every single thing you knew about the genre was flipped on its head. Every area you explored was going to be unique because it’d never been done before! This is why District 9 feels so fresh and new. And fresh and new is what brings people into the theater. So when you get an idea, you need to challenge yourself. You need to ask yourself if it’s been done before. And if it has? You need to pick at it and pry at it and flip it and redesign it until it’s unique. I’ll give you a scary fact. The number 1 reason a screenplay fails is that its concept isn’t interesting enough to be made into a movie. So stop worrying so much about what’s happening IN your story, and make sure it’s a story worth telling in the first place.

TAKEN
Rough Projected First Weekend Gross: 10-12 mil
Actual First Weekend Gross: 25 mil
Rough Projected Total Gross: 50-60 mil
Actual Total Gross: 145 mil
Written by: Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen

What we can learn: Taken explores one of the most powerful dramatic situations there is, the kidnapping. The genre itself is pretty simple. All you have to do is: a) Make us fall in love with a character. b) Have that character get kidnapped. c) Have our protagonist try to find him/her before it’s too late. But while most writers enjoy focusing on “b” and “c,” they forget that the key to making the genre work is “a.” WE – MUST – LOVE – THE – CHARACTER WHO GETS KIDNAPPED. Period. Surprisingly, writers don’t spend enough time introducing us to this character. As a result, we don’t care if our hero finds them. And if we don’t care about the chase in a chase movie, honey child, you don’t have a movie. HOW much time you should take introducing the character is up to you. But the less time you give us with them, the more impactful those scenes must become. Great writers can make us fall in love with a character in a single scene. But for most of us, it takes longer. Taken actually takes a big chance– spending a full 25 minutes with the daughter before she’s kidnapped. In my opinion, this was the big risk that made Taken work. The first act definitely dragged in places, but because we were around this daughter so much, because we were allowed to see the love our protagonist had for her, it solidified our understanding of their relationship, and sent our desire to see them reunited through the roof. – A side note to all this is that the “kidnapped” genre is very similar to the “revenge” genre. In both cases, our protagonist is going after the bad guy. There’s one key difference though. In the kidnapped genre, there’s the benefit of the character being found alive. This not only gives us the hope of a happy ending (translates into: more marketable) but it includes a natural ticking time bomb. Every second that our protagonist doesn’t get to our bad guys is an extra second where the kidnapped character could be killed. In that vein, it’s a smarter genre script to write than revenge, because in the revenge script, there is no urgency or ticking time bomb (they’re already dead) and there’s no hope for a possible happy ending (did I mention they were dead). I liked “Edge of Darkness,” but it was clear as soon as the daughter died that the script was going to end very darkly. Unfortunately, as great as this formula is, the market’s been saturated with Taken-like scripts for the better part of a year. So you’ll have to wait awhile to write yours. The only way to make it work now is to put another spin on it (read “District 9” above). Set it in the Old West. Show both points-of-view. But please, don’t write another staright-forward Taken clone.

THE BLIND SIDE
Rough Projected First Weekend Gross: 14-18 mil
Actual First Weekend Gross: 34 mil
Rough Projected Total Gross: 50 mil
Actual Total Gross: 245 mil
Writer: John Lee Hancock (based on the book written by Michael Lewis)

What we can learn: Whoa. Just give me a second here. Whoa. This is the one movie surprise that I still haven’t wrapped my brain around. And for that reason, I’m very tempted to blame Middle America. But being the good soldier and screenwriting-warrior-in-search-of-truth that I am, I will look to find another reason why The Blind Side became the most shocking surprise hit of the year. Maybe I should explain why I’m shocked first. It’s quite simple really. The screenplay for The Blind Side wasn’t very good. The story, as far as I could tell, is about a well-off family who takes a homeless kid in who ends up parlaying the opportunity into an eventual career in the NFL. Despite this, there isn’t a single down of football played until page 60! The first 59 pages are dedicated to the family getting to know the kid. Sixty! Pages! To make matters worse, despite all that extra time, the character development outside of Sandra Bullock and the boy is paper thin. But alas, as I dug further into this scrap pile for meaning, there IS something I realized we could can learn from it. It doesn’t exactly explain why the film made 245 million dollars. But it does help that struggling screenwriter looking for an advantage over his competition: Write a screenplay with a compelling female lead character. Remember, the majority of writers out there write screenplays with male protagonists. This leaves virtually no options out there for A-list actresses in search of a great lead role. This forces them to search out meaty parts on the risky independent circuit (i.e. Charlize Theron in “Monster”). And the problem with that is, that world is extremely hit or miss. So when a Super Femme A-Lister finds a great leading role AND that role is in a film that will actually be seen? They’re going to fight over that can of meat like a pack of rabid wolves. Once you have an A-Lister like Bullock attached to your project, you’re going to get your big payday, and your shot to become next year’s surprise shocker being debated on a tiny screenwriting blog. Like The Blind Side.

THE HANGOVER
Rough Projected First Weekend Gross: 30-33 mil
Actual First Weekend Gross: 45 mil
Rough Projected Total Gross: 90-100 mil
Actual Total Gross: 277 mil
Written By: Jon Lucas and Scott Moore

What we can learn: Let’s get something out of the way quick. The Hangover gained a lot of momentum coming up to its release. So it wasn’t a total shocker like a few of these others. But nobody, and I mean nobody, expected it to make 277 million dollars and finish as the 6th highest grossing movie of the year! With that said, let’s get into it. — If there’s any film on this list that owes its success to its screenplay, it’s this one. The script was widely accepted as one of the funnier scripts around town before it was made (It was in my Top 25 before it came out), it didn’t have any stars to guarantee an opening weekend, it went up against the best of the best – the 150-200 million dollar behemoths studios put out in the summer, its word-of-mouth was the best of the summer. If you are a comedy screenwriter and you are looking for your next idea, The Hangover is your bible. But what is it you’re specifically supposed to take away from this film’s success? Well, it reinforces one of the oldest and most important rules of screenwriting: Concept Concept Concept. The Hangover did 90% of its work before it was ever written: It came up with a high concept highly marketable idea that inspired an endless supply of comedic scenarios. I remember reading an earlier version of the script, and there were 3 or 4 main sequences that were different from the final film. And they were all just as funny. Legendary producer Lynda Obst once said about the film “Flashdance,” which was famously developed for over 10 years and had dozens of different incarnations, that in the end it didn’t matter. It was the concept of a female dancer who was a steel worker that ensured the movie would succeed. Same thing holds true with The Hangover. So before you do any writing, you need to make sure you have that great concept. But how do you know whether you have that great concept? Well, you gotta do something that not a lot of writers are comfortable doing and it’s something that Blake Snyder used to publish entire books about. You have to pitch your ideas to people and you have to force them to be honest with you. Preferably, do it to their face or on the phone. It’s so easy to tell if your idea is good just by the look on someone’s face. Do they look confused? Is there a long pause? Are their eyes dead as you explain it to them? Are they drifting? These clues tell you everything you need to know about your concept. You know your idea’s good when people immediately get excited about it. When their eyes come alive, when they’re offering suggestions or actively engaging you as you explain it to them. Another approach I’ve learned is effective is to mix in your idea with a few other ideas you have, and then include some other movie ideas as well (good ideas of films in development that the general public doesn’t know about). Send that list out to 20 of your best friends and ask them what their top 3 favorite ideas are. If your idea isn’t consistently finishing 1 or 2, I’ve got bad news for you, it’s probably not good enough.

To summarize, right now you should be thinking of a high concept idea that flips a typical plot on its head, where someone gets kidnapped, the lead role is played by a woman, and all of the characters are well-developed. Anyone care to pitch their new concept in the comments section?

Poor Sherlock Holmes! By even the most conservative estimates, the movie was a solid success, and yet no one I know has even mentioned it to me. Why? Because it was swallowed up by the Na’vi! Those giant blue creatures stole Guy Ritchie’s thunder, and probably millions of dollars from the film’s coffers. This movie could have been a sensation, blanketing movie blogs with stories about “the return of the most popular movie character of all time.” By that internet real estate was given to James Cameron’s behemoth. Poor Robert Downey Jr. Who knows if his career will ever recover. Anyway, friend of the site and sometimes reviewer Michael Stark is here to give us his take on another Sherlock Holmes project that was bandied about but never made. Let’s give him our full undivided attention, assuming we’re not strapping on our 3-D glasses and watching Avatar for the fifth time.

Genre: Mash-up of gothic horror and action/adventure.
Premise: Holmes vs. Drac. Nuff said, Pilgrim.
About: Christopher Columbus would have directed this unproduced fanboy fave if it wasn’t for that damned Harry Potter. Jude Law was ironically considered as Holmes. Script sold for 700k against 1.1 million. Marc Gordon is the producer on the project. Sony is currently still sitting on the project.
Writer: Michael B Valle
Details: 126 pages (I imagine an early if not first draft)

We are the Sherlock Holmes English Speaking Vernacular Help save Fu Manchu, Moriarty and Dracula
“The Village Green Preservation Society” – The Kinks

Professor Stark once again will take the Wayback Machine down to the lowermost levels of development hell, armed only with a crucifix, a feather duster and his trusted fireplace bellows to brush off an old spec script that deservedly– and with due market diligence — should rise again.

It’s elementary, my dear execs. After the rollicking success of the DowneyRitchie Sherlock Holmes and the non-stop obsession of all things bloodsucking, Sherlock Holmes and The Vengeance of Dracula seems a no-brainer to un-stake and re-slate.

Holmes vs. Drac (my shorthand retitling) is an action adventure based on existing material (in the public-freaking-domain) that has had proven worldwide appeal for over one hundred years. So, why not, in the entrepreneurial spirit of Alien vs. Predator, Freddy vs. Jason and Godzilla vs. Mothra put these two Victorian superstars together in one, big, expensive, creature feature?!! Hell, Columbia, you already own the script.

Holmes vs. Drac was a spec written by novice scribe, Michael Valle, bought by Columbia in 1999 for $700,000 against a cool million with Christopher Columbus eager to direct. Aging fanboys will recall that ChrisCo wrote the Spielberg produced, Young Sherlock Holmes way back in 1985. Cause all spec scripts must be heavily rewritten, Rand Ravich was later hired to change things up a bit. Valle unfortunately passed away in 2001 and the project seemed to slip from ChrisCo’s consciousness as he embarked onto Harry Potterdom. The script is such an industry and fan favorite that Uberfanboy Harry Knowles openly pleaded with ChristCo to turn the beat around on his “favorite unproduced script”. Now, I too join Harry’s battle cry, adding only:

Just don’t turn the damn thing into Van Helsing!

I did indeed dig Holmes vs. Drac. But, heck, it’s my kinda Weird Tale. I’m a genre-mash-up-period-piece fanatic who loves penny dreadfuls, gothic ghost stories, Victorian bodice rippers, rickety steam powered contraptions, the foggiest of moors, extremely haunted castles, clockwork turks, consulting detectives and the whole lot of Universal Movie Monsters as long as they are terrorizing the Village Green or Queen Vic’s London.

Hell, my writing partner and I just finished scribbling one of these period piece mash-ups ourselves. (Will the usually lazy copyeditor, Carson, let that little self-promotional plug remain? Only the Shadow knows.)

Now, intrepid reader, if you don’t like pulp novels, old movies and comic books, this definitely won’t be your cup of tea. You may want to skip ahead to the next romcom or contained thriller soon to be reviewed here. But, for those few intrepid souls still standing – err, seated — let’s enter the inner sanctum and deconstruct this mother.

Now, these two dudes have crossed swords previously on paper in Fred Saberhagen’s “Seance for a Vampire” and Loren D. Estleman’s “Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula”, proving once again there is very little new under the sun, especially when you’re hijacking famous characters for your plots.

So, how does Valle bring our two literary icons together? Knowledge of the Stoker and Conan Doyle universes is handy but not altogether mandatory to enjoy this ripping yarn. Count Dracula returns to England to exact revenge on Van Helsing, Dr. John Seward and Lord Godalming, who kind-of-almost-sort-of defeated the evil Romanian in the original canon. The stake through the heart wasn’t quite enough to kill the Nosferatu. I hate to say I told you so, but you needed to cut his bloody head off too.

Vengeful Vlad goes after Godalming first, setting up his murder as a convincing suicide. Unbeknownst to the Count, the guy had a perky & pretty Nancy Drew of a cousin, Constance Bracknell, who is suspicious enough to hire the world’s most famous consulting detective to take a closer look. Usually I can’t stand the contrivance of the spirited young lady playing junior detective, but somehow Valle charmingly pulls it off. Maybe cause I really have a crush on this fictional character. Is that wrong? She’s awfully hot.

Meanwhile, Holme’s arch enemy, Professor Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime, is intrigued by the rusty ship the vampire sailed in on. Thinking he is robbing some priceless artifacts, his men unwittingly disturb the Count’s coffin. The surviving thug’s story of the bat-attack piques the Prof’s interests even more than the silver and gold he thought he was stealing.

So, now it’s a race against time between Holmes and Moriarty to see who finds Dracula first. Holmes vows to stop the monster before he kills again. Moriarty wants to become a vamp himself, making him the ultimate, unstoppable, immortal mastermind criminal.

Now, that’s an awesome premise right there. But, it gets even better. The Professor gets to Dracula first and when the vamp eventually betrays his new best friend, Moriarty must suck it up and team up with Holmes to stop the Count from taking over London (and then the world) with his fiendish Fu Manchu worthy plot.

Moving forward, the ante amazingly keeps getting pushed further up with Holmes becoming a fugitive from the law, Watson getting bit and Constance literally torn between two lovers.

Whew! That’s all the plot I’m gonna spoil, cause you’re gonna read it. Right?

The script definitely lives up to its thrill ride status. Even at a bloated 126 pages, it kept me turning and guessing till the end. The only thing noticeably absent was the mandatory action flick humor. Given, neither Sherlock Holmes nor Dracula were exactly known for cracking wise, but previous screen incarnations would use Watson or Drac’s human lackeys for a little comic relief. Downey’s re-invention gives the detective a healthy dose of sarcasm and narcissism for our amusement. We’ll compare the choices between these two scripts later.

For your mandatory character arc, Valle’s Sherlock must open his mind to the unscientific possibilities of the supernatural (faith vs reason, Jack) and his hermetically sealed heart to Constance, who Dracula, of course, has sized up as a tasty potential lifemate.

Holmes vs. Drac is both a throwback to the atmospheric Universal and Hammer horror flicks and the Spielbergian reinvention of serialized amazing adventure stories. There are some fantastic action sequences (some tailored made for a theme park ride), colorful secondary characters (I especially liked Mollie, the hot, trampy vamp) and enough violence and gore to keep the young kids from texting throughout the whole deal.

There’s even a scene out of The Lost Boys where our two unlikely allies drum up some monster-killing weapons with their limited Victorian-tech. How I love Steampunk, clockwork Victorian tech. Ach, it’s my geeky weakness. Oh, Lord, how I want a mechanical woman with her gear shafts showing.

Eek, have I turned into Roger Balfour???

Okay, it’s quite up my creepy alley, but the script is not without its flaws. I know that I probably read the first draft and that I’ll incur the wrath of Knowles for saying it, but the thing may be a ton of fun, but it still needs some tinkering.

That brings us to our first point of discussion. Does a script have to be perfect to sell? Or to even be brought to market? Can it skate by with just a nifty high concept alone? In today’s incredibly shrinking spec script market, can one still sell by premise alone? Was the bought-for-mega bucks Medieval anywhere near faultless? Faithful Script Shadow readers please make voice in the comment section.

The biggest bit of trouble with Holmes vs Drac is that there’s a hell of a lot of dialogue. Vast pages and pages and pages of it. Although the speech is authentic to the pulps and penny novels of the time, it clunks on cement by today’s standards. I’m sure the first thing the execs ordered was a STAT dialogue polish. Which brings us to our second topic of discussion for the boards. How do you write a period piece that will both appeal to purists, fanboys, tweens and civilians alike?

We may find the answer by comparing this Holmes to the recent blockbuster. While Valle voices every detail of the detective’s great deductive process ala the early Rathbone films, Ritchie’s writers show it instead of just telling it. Guy’s characters aren’t Thoroughly Modern Millies, but they sidestep some of the more cliched conversational conventions of the genre. Valle’s draft unfortunately is awash with loving lemons like “You foiled my daring plot.” And “Your primitive brain has no conception how precious this treasure is.”

Even for an old movie buff like myself those exchanges made the read a little plodding at times.

So, how do you hold onto the nostalgia and romanticism without getting too quaint and corny? How do you avoid turning this awesome homage into another League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Somehow those producers wove genius source material into dull straw, managing to destroy our collective memories of Alan Quatermain, Captain Nemo, Mr. Hyde and the Invisible Man in one fell swoop.

On the other side of the slug, how do you avoid making a Van Helsing? Obviously that team had a great love and respect for the pantheon of Universal Monster Movies, but the film didn’t just run off the rails, it didn’t have any rails to begin with. It was a little too much fun!

What’s the proper mix? When does a retro feel suddenly slide into parody? Do you think The Rocketeer pulled it off? The Mummy? Or Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow? The first Indiana Jones is still the gold standard for this kind of flick, a formula that even Spielberg himself hasn’t always been able to duplicate.

Valle’s script affectionately keeps Conan Doyle’s and Stoker’s characters extremely true to textbook form. But does that form still fly today? These are reboot times where even Spiderman, a film only nine years young, is going through a total retooling. Can the likes of Dracula and Sherlock Holmes dare remain the way they always were? Or must they be transformed into emo teens and bare-knuckled, shirtless brawlers for today’s tastes?

Truth be told, Sherlock Holmes and The Vengeance of Dracula probably could have used a minor face-lift. I’d like to have seen his Holmes a lot less Jeremy Brent and a bit more Robert Downey Jr. And, Dracula needed to be channeling his inner Gary Oldman rather than his legendary, long-winded Lugosi.

If a writer dares to bring an iconic literary figure into their work, I still believe they can bend the rules a bit and make them totally (kinda-sorta) their own creation.

I give this script an impressive. Cause even with the few warts exposed, I think the writer was just a draft or two away from totally nailing it. It being a huge tentpole franchise that would’ve rained money down from heaven. You write the next Pirates of the Caribbean and I’ll be pretty impressed by you too.

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

What I learned: It isn’t always easy borrowing famous characters for your narrative. If you re-imagine them too much, you can have more protestors than The Last Temptation of Christ. Plus, being both in the public domain and the collective consciousness, a few hundred other writers are probably putting Alice in Hoboken and Robin Hood on Mars just like you are.

Also, Holmes vs. Drac confirmed Professor Stark’s Fourth Rule of Screenwriting – always end your movie with a 50-foot tall monster. Hell, nothing less will do.