Over the next month and a half, Scriptshadow will relaunch its site.  I have some great things in store for readers, but one of the things I’m most excited about is the time it will free up for me to start working on my next project – Developing a new system to find great screenplays from unknown screenwriters.

For 100 years, Hollywood has basically used the same system for finding screenplays.  Each company, whether it be a studio or agency or whatever, has readers cover all incoming scripts, and anything the readers like gets passed up to their superiors, who if *they* like it, pass it on to their superiors, and so on and so forth.

Here’s the thing though.  Over the past 5 years, the script-sending game has changed dramatically.  The obvious difference is that scripts are now sent digitally as opposed to via a hard copy.  This has led to a more instantaneous flow of scripts, and I feel like it should be ushering in a new filtering process.  But it hasn’t.  The model for weeding through screenplays has pretty much stayed the same.

Well, I want to change that.  I feel we need some new ideas and some new voices.  We need the younger generation – the generation not tethered to these outdated models – to look around and say, “How can we do this better?”  I’ve already started looking for new ways to find great scripts, starting with my Twit-Pitch contest.

But I’d like to develop a large all-encompassing model for finding great screenplays that’s smarter, faster, and more efficient.  I want to do what the studios and the agencies are too lazy to do.  I want to change the system.  And I thought, “Who better to ask for advice than the very people submitting these screenplays?”

So, I’m interested to hear what you guys would do if you were me.  I’d like you to come up with a system for weeding out the bad screenplays and finding the good ones that takes into consideration today’s technologies and new avenues.  There was no Scriptshadow 5 years ago.  There wasn’t a huge community of people reading screenplays for enjoyment and education every day.  There was no Twitter.  PDF scripts were a luxury at the time.

Pretend that you’ve just been given the job at Scriptshadow Studios to build a better mousetrap.  I have thousands of scripts coming into me from Amateur writers.  How do we weed those down efficiently and find the good ones?  The sooner we figure out how to do this, the quicker we revolutionize the business.  So, I’m leaving it up to you guys.  I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments section.  Show me what you got!

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

Genre: Thriller?
Premise: An illusionist’s next trick is to make the world disappear.
Writer: James Taylor
Details: 96 pages

Man, yesterday was quite the controversial post.  I think I was denounced by half the screenwriting community as the devil for liking Prometheus.  It was….awesome!  I love debate.  And even better, screenwriting debate.  As long as we’re talking about these things, we’re learning.  It’s when a screenplay has nothing to talk about that it’s in trouble.

Which is why today’s review should be just as fun.  Let me give you some background.  While procrastinating away on Twitter, someone sent me this tweet.  It was just, “If you want to read it,” and then a link to this page (sorry it’s blurry).

It was the perfect pitch!  It was short.  It was a great little marketing approach.  And on top of that, the idea sounded cool.  I was in!

After I sent the script out to the community, word began to come back on Twitter.  “That script was amazing!”  “That script was horrible!”  “Just finished ‘The Grand Illusion.’ Wow!”  “Just finished ‘The Grand Illusion.’ I want to punch myself in the face!”

Hmmm… How could a script get such divided opinions?  And which side was right?  Well, I’m here to put the definitive word on that.  Read on…

Our hero is a man named “Sand.”  Sand is an illusionist.  David Copperfield without the creepy-factor.  Sand is also realllllly moody.  I mean, this guy is DEEP.  You get the feeling he’s never smiled in his life.  The reason for this is that Sand has been reading some philosophy books lately and come to the conclusion that the world is a figment of his imagination.  In other words, if he wasn’t around, then the world would cease to exist.

That’s….about as much as I could understand in this script.  Seriously.  Everything was so weird, so out there, that I couldn’t find a story buried underneath all the psycho-babble.  I mean we get scenes where Sand is talking to a woman who then…turns into Sand!  So Sand is talking to Sand!  Sand will all of a sudden find himself out in a desert (no idea how he got there) getting philosophical advice from an Apache Chief.  And every five pages or so, we’d get dialogue like this: “Maybe. Because maybe I am your ego personified. Maybe your father is intuition incarnated. Maybe being an illusionist is a microcosm for interpreting the world. Maybe everything is a projection of your psyche — your wife, your daughter, the grass, the sky, the earth — everything is just a thought or a feeling.”

Ummm…huh?

I was able to glean a few more things about the plot.  Sand has a brother named Vic who’s also an illusionist. The two don’t get along at all, and when Sand inadvertently ruins one of Vic’s big live illusions, Vic’s credibility goes down the tubes.  It doesn’t really change anything, though, since Vic already hated Sand.  But now he just hates him more.

But the real row between the two happened when they were children when their mother was driving them somewhere.  The car broke down, they got stuck on the side of the road, and the mom went off to look for help, never to be heard from again.  Sand has always blamed himself for this, and now wants to find out exactly what happened during that night.

To me, that’s the only thing in this script approaching somewhat of a narrative.  And it’s a sporadic one at that.  We don’t really get to it until later in the script.  Also, Sand only seems to look for her when it’s convenient.

That was easily my biggest problem with the screenplay and I don’t mean to sound harsh because Jamie is a really cool guy.  He’s been awesome on Twitter, excited about the review, and very thankful that I would take the time to read his script.

But the thing is, this is the kind of script that’s going to get people mad.  When it feels like a bunch of psycho-babble, when it feels like armchair philosophy, when for most of the story the reader’s trying to dig through the mess to try and figure out what’s going on, you get frustrated.  And I was frustrated.  I just wanted SOME story to emerge, and one never did.

And I feel like this is a basic fix. I mean, revolve the whole thing around a show.  This is an illusionist.  He’s a showman.  Why, then, are there next to zero shows in the script, replaced instead by a bunch of armchair philosophy scenes in small rooms?  That’s what this script amounts to.  People going into small rooms and opining about whether the world is real or not.

Sand needs to announce a huge show in Vegas in 3 weeks where he’s going to make the world disappear.  It should catch the media attention.  Everyone should want a ticket.  He disappears in the interim.  People have no idea if he’s going to show up to his show or not.  I mean at least now your story has some FORM and PURPOSE.

Trying to connect a narrative via a couple of VERY LOOSE threads about where his mom disappeared and “is the world real or not,” is not enough for a movie.  Your movie needs FORM.  It needs a destination, a goal, a ticking time bomb.  A show would provide that.  And you know what?  Maybe there even was a show set up.  I don’t know.  But if there was, I missed it because there were so many weird pointless scenes with people debating each other in rooms about reality.

And that’s another thing.  We talked about this the other day.  You don’t want repetition in your second act.  Scenes shouldn’t repeat the same beats or the same information.  Yet we have about a dozen scenes in the second act where people are debating the same things.  Is the world real? Yes it is.  No it isn’t.

On top of that, you can’t rest your climax on a bunch of unclear philosophical ramblings.  You can’t say “quantum physics” four times during the script and expect that to explain (HUGE SPOILER) why the world disappears at the end.  There needs to be a clearer connection there – a setup that logically leads to that payoff – preferably something VISUAL (show, don’t tell!).  It would be like, in The Sixth Sense, if instead of Cole seeing and helping a bunch of ghosts throughout the movie, people just debated if ghosts were real for two hours and then Bruce Willis learned he was dead.

Again, I love Jamie the person.  The guy rocks and has been so cool to me.  And, at to his credit, he took some chances and wrote something different.  I respect that.  But this script is so vague and the narrative is so all over the place, that I just couldn’t engage.  The good news is, this script does have some fans.  So let’s see those Team Jamie posts in the comments section.

Script Link: The Grand Illusion

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

What I learned: You are in a new age.  You have to get creative when pitching in order to stand out.  Taylor found a way to stand out amongst thousands of people to get me to read his script.  I see posters and images becoming a bigger and bigger part of pitching and selling screenplays every day, which is why I’m lining up poster artists to offer the service on Scriptshadow (p.s. e-mail me if you want me to set you up with them in the meantime).  It just seems so logical.  Movies are a visual medium.  If you have the resources, why not use visuals to sell your script to others?  It’s the perfect way to stand out.

I just want to apologize for today, and really, the next two weeks. As I gear up for the LA trip and then actually go there, my posts are probably going to be late. But I’m going to bust my ass to get them up as soon as possible, so I’m still hustling! Anyway, better late than never, right?

Genre: Thriller-ish Crime Drama
Premise: A computer poker player is hired by an offshore poker giant to run his company. But as his fortune and status grow, the player begins to sense that something is amiss.
About: Justin Timberlake baby! JUS-TIN TIMB-ER-LAKE. In this script, Justin reprises his Social Network roll as a sort of hotshot wonder boy who uses computers to build his wealth. The script sold earlier this year. Dicaprio’s production company, Appian Way, is producing with Double Feature.
Writers: Brian Koppelman & David Levien
Details: 124 pages – undated

I played poker once.

I lost.

I never played again.

The End.

Okay, maybe not “the” end. But it was the end for me. Despite how much I disliked this strange game that operated by screwing people like me out of my hard earned money, I’d always been fascinated with poker from afar. When two people go “all in” (whatever that means), and there’s all that money on the table and only one person gets to win it? I mean, isn’t that the very definition of stakes?

But the online poker business brings a whole new spin to it. You don’t have to leave your house anymore. You can just hang out in your bed all day, play against other lazy home-dwellers, and rake in the digital dough.

How easy is THAT?? Very. Until you start losing your kids’ college tuition. Yup, not so easy anymore. But check this out. Even the ones who WON at online poker STILL got screwed. That’s because the government decided their Pa-pa-pa-poker game was illegal or something. So all that money that those places horded? All gone. And some players never saw a dime. Talk about the chips being down.

Ah, but there’s still one online poker joint still kicking! Ivan Block’s. Block’s set up an online poker haven in the Caribbean, somehow safe from the jurisdiction of U.S. governments. The man is raking in hundreds of millions of dollars and when you pull in that kind of cash, people get mad. People want a piece. Especially the IRS. But they can’t do anything about it. Even though they were able to do something about the other poker places.

More on Block in a second. Back in the real world, grad student Richie Furst is trying to scrape together enough money to pay for his Princeton education. And since he doesn’t have a lot of dough, he decides to gamble what he does have on some online poker. And he kills it. We’re talking tuition and then some! But as you already know, greed is a nasty little devil that has no mercy.

Richie keeps playing, and then, impossibly, within a ten minute span, loses every single cent he has. It would be devastating if there weren’t something odd about it. It was like, all of sudden, his competitors played completely irrationally. It’s suspicious enough that Richie goes to one of his Stanford Tech Buddies and has him run an analysis on his hand history. Tech Buddy confirms that, yup, the ace of spades made sure the ace got paid. And Richie ain’t the ace in this conversation.

So Richie, being Justin Timberlake, decides rather illogically to go to the Caribbean and confront the owner of the site, our tax-evading entrepreneur Ivan Block. I’m not sure anybody would do this in real life but hey, I’ll go with it. Once there, Richie uses his charm to get in front of the big guy, show him that he cheated him, and demand his money back. Well Block goes one better. He HIRES Richie.

You see, Block’s competitors are catching up (but aren’t they all out of business??) and he needs a boy-genius to give him an edge. So Richie does what he does best – computerizes shit so it’s better. And the money starts rolling in. But as the great…some rapper…said, “Mo money, mo problems.” And Richie definitely starts experiencing more problems. Going to deliver some dough to one of Block’s friends results in a Tyson-worthy pummeling. A few FBI agents on an extended Caribbean vacation keep popping up to remind Richie that if he doesn’t quit soon, he’ll never step foot in the US again. Cry me a river indeed.

But worst of all, Richie learns that Block may not be shooting straight with him (who woulda thought?) and that if he doesn’t do something soon, lack of vacations in the ole U.S. of A will be the least of his worries.

Runner Runner is a good script. I wouldn’t say there’s anything special about it but the execution is nearly flawless. If it weren’t for the familiarity, it would’ve gotten a much higher rating. But as it stands, it’s just good solid entertainment that does exactly what it sets out to do.

On the negative side, there are a few things that popped out to me. You get the feeling that this project started before the whole Online Poker collapse. Then when it happened it was sort of like, “Oh shit, what do we do now?” And it’s explained away with a two line snippet of dialogue that basically amounts to, “Oh yeah, those companies fell apart. But we didn’t.” Except Block’s company is doing the exact same thing and is based out of the exact same area. Not a script-killer. But it did raise an eyebrow.

Another thing that didn’t quite work was the Richie-Rebecca relationship. Rebecca is someone involved in the poker company when Richie gets there and the two fall for each other. But I couldn’t for the life of me figure out if Rebecca was with Block or wasn’t. Sometimes we’d hear that Rebecca “used to be” with Block a long time ago. Yet her and Richie seemed to be sneaking around trying to avoid Block. So were her and Block together or weren’t they?

The lack of clarity here is a big deal because it’s the difference between adding a whole other level to all the Richie-Rebecca-Block scenes or having them completely devoid of conflict. Don’t you want that tension there? That subtext?. If we know Richie and Rebecca are together even though Rebecca’s with Block and Block doesn’t know about it, that creates all sorts of potentially tense scenes. Though that was never explored here. Or if it was, it was done half-heartedly, I believe because the writers didn’t even know which way they wanted to go. There was no commitment!

I also would’ve loved for Block to be meaner. I was just never scared of the guy. These movies work best when the bad guy starts off your best friend but then slowly devolves into a monster, with a pivotal scene that just scares the shit out of us about the guy. I wanted that pivotal scene but never got it. I liked Block – but he definitely needs more. Where’s that danger??

But hey, the script moved like a bullet train and the writing was about as clean as it gets. After reading all these Twit-Pitch scripts where it takes writers 3 sentences to say what they easily could have said in 1, it was nice to read some professionals who could pack a sentence full of information to keep the line-count down. All writers need to learn how to do this!!!

Not great, but a pretty good script.

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

What I learned: You can never fudge a relationship or a plot point. You have to COMMIT to it 100%. Because if you figure, “Ehhh, I don’t wanna do the work. We’ll just leave it be and they probably won’t notice.” Trust me, we ALWAYS notice. If you’re unclear about something, it comes off as unclear in the script. So this whole Rebecca-Block thing. It was never clarified if they were together. Therefore everything between Block and Rebecca, Block and Richie, Richie, Block and Rebecca – always had a cloud of confusion hanging over it. Clear that up and you could’ve had a whole boatload of great scenes between the three.

What I learned 2: Never say in three lines what you can say in one. Come on, guys. Work hard to make the read easier on your poor reader.

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

Genre: Drama/Western/Period/Mystery/Thriller?
Premise: A left-for-dead rancher wakes up in the middle of the desert with no memory of who he is. He goes off in a search to find out what happened.
About: This script came to me via my notes service.
Writer: Ryan Binaco
Details: 104 pages

 

So at the last second, the writer who was having his script reviewed for Amateur Friday e-mailed to tell me that he wanted to rescind his review. Maybe he was afraid of trying to follow Kelly Marcel’s amazing interview, but whatever the case, this was a nightmare scenario for me. You guys can probably tell that I’m overworked as it is. Now I’m reading two scripts for one review.

But it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I’d just finished giving notes on a script which I thought was really interesting. I told him I didn’t know who to send it to because it doesn’t fit into any particular genre. But at the same time, it’s one of the few scripts I’ve read this year that’s kept me turning each page in anticipation.

So while the script isn’t easily categorizable (word?), there’s something about it where if it found the right person, someone who knew what to do with it, it could be special. And that’s why I decided to review it.

The script has a great opening. The year is 1846. We see the dead body of a rancher in the middle of the desert being pecked away at by buzzards, when all of a sudden his eyes shoot open. He’s still alive. The rancher stumbles up, swatting away at the birds, quickly noticing the huge gash on his head, something that whoever left him here did to him.

If only that was the worst of it. That gash – or the result of it – has left him without any memories. He doesn’t know his name, he doesn’t know how he got here, he doesn’t know anything. All he knows now is that he’s in the middle of the desert, dying of thirst, with no idea where to go.

So he just starts walking, eventually finding a disheveled man living in a cave. Cave Man, Damian, takes him in and shows him how to live off the land, even when the land has little to offer. The problem is that he’s very possessive. Every time the rancher tells him he wants to leave to find out who he is, Damian tells him that it’s a stupid idea. He has a safe place to live and is well fed. Why give that up?

Not only that, but there seems to be some animal/ beast stalking them on the outskirts of the camp. Even if Rancher did decide to ignore Damian and go out on his own, chances are this “thing” would get him.

At a certain point, however, Rancher discovers that Damian has a deep dark secret, one that explains why he doesn’t want Rancher to leave. This forces Rancher to high-step it out of there and, once again, stumble through unfamiliar terrain to find out who he is and where he came from.

Eventually, he makes it out of the desert and comes upon a farm. The farm’s owner, an older man named John, lives there with his daughter, Terry. Initially, John doesn’t believe the rancher’s story and locks him up in his barn. But over time, he loosens up and allows the rancher to stay with them. After a while, he finally decides to take John to town and find out if anyone recognizes him.

When the rancher does discover the truth, it’s not what he had hoped, but this will lead him down a new path, one where he’s accepted into John’s family. However it’s at that home that a dark secret threatens to destroy John, Rancher, and John’s daughter.

At first I didn’t know what to think of this script. Actually, that’s a lie. This script confounded me almost the whole way through. But in a good way. One of the things I’m always preaching to you guys is to take your stories in a different direction – one the reader doesn’t expect. That’s a lot easier said than done because the direction still has to make sense. It still has to feel like a logical story as opposed to a bunch of weird scenes blended together. I actually just read the first ten pages of a script over in Twit-Pitch. I was definitely surprised by the way the pages evolved, but it was too random to make sense of, too unfocused to be coherent.

With Ryan’s script here, we go from a guy stuck in the desert, to a guy being nursed back to health by a strange man, to a guy living on a ranch with an old man and his daughter. Each successive storyline was unpredictable, and yet it all fit together through the prism of this specific mystery our hero had to solve. I was really impressed by that.

Another thing that sticks with you when you read this script is Ryan’s voice. He has an uncanny ability to create atmosphere by finding the beauty (and the darkness) in seemingly mundane things. For example, he’ll highlight the way the shadows dance against the wall via moonlight right before Rancher goes to sleep.

This is another thing where if you do it wrong, it turns into a disaster. It’ll feel like a writer focusing on mundane details that don’t add anything to the screenplay other than a higher page count. But Ryan uses such a sparse writing style to begin with that this attention to detail adds instead of detracts from the story. Where this kind of thing becomes problematic is when writers are writing seven line paragraphs describing a room. Here, Ryan picks and chooses the “atmosphere” moments and keeps them very short. No more than a line or two.

Another thing I loved about the script was the way Ryan dealt with his amnesiac main character. I think when I read the logline about a man waking up in the desert with no idea of how we got there, I was expecting another Buried clone. It was going to be cliché – beginning with an intense first 20 pages, only to peter out quickly after the writer ran out of ideas.

But Ryan seems to be genuinely interested in how amnesia affects his hero. There’s a deep set need for Rancher to find out who he is. It isn’t just a function of the story – a goal without substance. It’s an organic character goal. I don’t often see amateurs caring so much about these things, yet these are the exact things that separate writers from the pack. You need to explore your characters on a deeper level and get into what they want. You have to commit to them.

And I like the little ways Ryan keeps you interested. When you have a “slow” script like this one, you must utilize tools like mystery and suspense and anticipation so that we’ll want to keep watching. Primarily, we’re interested in who the rancher is. But there are also other things that keep our interest. For example, John makes it clear that the one thing the rancher cannot do is look at his daughter in an inappropriate way. If he does, he’ll kill him.

Also, John has a room that he forbids Rancher from going into. It’s a small thing, but in the back of our heads, we can’t stop thinking about that room and what might be in it. By doing this, you don’t have to rush the script along at a breakneck speed. The mystery does the work for you. If we want to know the secret behind something, time will appear to move faster, so even though the script is “slow,” it seems fast.

I did have a few issues with the script, however. The first one was the beast at the beginning. I was never clear what the beast was – was it real or fake? To be honest, it kind of felt like one of those “film school” choices. Like, “Ooooh. Maybe the beast is him!” I don’t know, it didn’t quite fit for me.

But my big issue was the ending. At a certain point, we learn who Rancher is. Yet there were still 30-40 pages left in the script. This is always a dangerous choice. The primary problem you’ve set up at the beginning of the screenplay drives the story. If you answer it – what’s left for the audience to latch onto? Why do they want to keep reading if the main question has been answered?

For this reason, the final act essentially becomes a “wrapping up” of the family story. There is sort of a final twist, but I felt like it was telegraphed too clearly earlier on (it was really the only way for the story to go), so it landed with a whimper. This left the final act to be the weakest of the screenplay, and as we all know, you can’t do that.

But I’ll tell you this. Ryan is definitely a writer to watch out for. I’m not sure how to turn this into a sellable movie, again because the genre is so wishy-washy. But I’m hoping somebody out there “gets” Ryan and helps him maximize his potential. He has a ton of it.

This one is worth the read.

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

What I learned: I’d be wary of answering the question that drives your story too early. It puts you in a bind for your third act because we already found out what we wanted to find out. I know who Rancher is, so I’m done. If you *do* need to answer the big question before the final act, replace it with another equally or bigger question. I think Ryan tried to do this with the mystery of who Damian was. But we already knew who Damian was, so it fell short. For example, maybe Rancher finds out what happened to him and who did it, but he still doesn’t know *why* it happened. And the *why* can be the big final act reveal.