I’m taking the next couple of weeks off to finish reading all the Scriptshadow 250 scripts. I’m going to try and publish mini-posts here and there but can’t promise a post every day. I’ll most certainly comment on the Black List, which I’m assuming will come out later today (I’ll comment on it the day after – so likely Tuesday). In the meantime, feel free to comment on Star Wars The Force Awakens (opening this week!!!), the weekend at the box office (a disaster!), or anything else screenwriting/movie related that sparks your fancy.

As far as this weekend goes, the big story was the box office failure of In the Heart of the Sea. Except the only surprise here is that Warner Brothers didn’t see this one coming from a mile away and kill the project.

Ron Howard is probably the nicest guy in Hollywood, but he still thinks it’s the 90s. His movies have an old-fashioned feel in a marketplace that wants fresh and new. And Deadline was right. Why would anyone think that Chris Hemsworth’s fan base would want to see him in non-fantasy driven over-serious period piece?

So how did he end up in the picture? This is one of the major chinks in Hollywood’s system, and something they haven’t figured out in 30 years. When you’re shopping a movie to actors, you have “The List.” “The List” consists of your dream casting choice for the lead that’s simpatico with the studio’s need for an actor who drives box office.

So it’ll go something like “1) Christian Bale, 2) Ben Affleck, 3) Leonardo DiCaprio” and so on down the line. The thing is, if none of those actors bite, you now dip into people who are no longer right for the role but who the studio will still greenlight the movie for. Because you want to get the movie made, you go with them, convincing yourself you’ll “make it work.” And while sometimes they work out (Keanu Reeves in The Matrix) they usually don’t.

When they don’t, you get something like In the Heart of the Sea, a movie that needed an older more established actor who audiences identified with in this kind of genre. Bale actually would’ve been perfect. Still, even if you get all these things right, you’re still making a movie where the main goal is to kill a beloved animal. This isn’t a shark. It’s a whale! I just don’t know why anybody thought this would work.

Speaking of whales, the trailer for the new Independence Day film just dropped and I have to say, something very strange is going on here. The initial reaction is over-the-moon when I could swear this isn’t even better than the trailer for Battleship. I started looking into the commenters, to see if, coincidentally, this is the first time they’d ever commented on something. But many of these commenters have established history. Am I off my rocker here? Do people actually think this looks good? It doesn’t even have that “must-see” shot that made the original’s trailer so famous. Help me understand, Scriptshadowers!!!

TWITTER FUN!

Moving on to a funner topic, The Force Awakens premieres TODAY exactly 6 blocks from my place! I’m going to try and make it up there and tweet a few pictures. And speaking of tweeting, since I’ll be reading contest scripts non-stop the next 2 weeks, I’ll be live-tweeting script-thoughts throughout. Just follow me at (@Scriptshadow) on Twitter to hear my sometimes insightful but mostly disposable thoughts. You can also search for the hashtag – #ss250 – to see all tweets related to the Scriptshadow 250 reads. Enjoy!

Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: A teenage boy, Caleb, and his friends, all of whom live on a moon mining colony, take a road trip to an old cave to fulfill a wish from Caleb’s father.
About: This script just finished NUMBER 1 on The Hit List, which is the screenwriting community’s appetizer for the later-to-come Black List. The Hit List is run by The Tracking Board and consists of the best SPEC screenplays of the year (the Black List, by contrast, tabulates the best of all scripts, including assignments). Because most professional writers are being hired by studios to write their projects, and because the best way to break into the business is still with a good spec, the majority of the writers on The Hit List are writers getting noticed for the first time. To give you a little perspective on the list, Bubbles, which I thought was great, finished number 2. The Water Man, which I reviewed last week and absolutely loved, finished number 4. And Collateral Beauty, written by Allan Loeb, which created some debate on the site, finished number 19. Actually, a script that was featured here on the site, Carver Gray’s Unlawful, finished in front of Collateral, in the number 12 spot. Congrats, Carver!
Writer: John Griffin
Details: 113 pages

So to start off, a lot of you have been asking about the Scriptshadow 250 and when the damn announcements are going to be made. And I feel your impatience! The two hundred and fifty script reads amongst an already busy schedule was always going to be a challenge, but maybe I wasn’t prepared for just how challenging it was going to be.

So the reality is, if I have any hope of finishing this month, I’ll likely need to take a week off from posting to do so. And that week will likely be next week. I’ll be hunkering down like a Jawa during a sandstorm and calling upon my speed-reading Force powers to get things finished. I’ll keep you posted on how that’s going. But there’s a chance this could eat into Scriptshadow posting throughout the month, with Christmas Week coming right after that, and then the weird “nothing week” between Christmas and New Years.

What sucks is that we’re swinging into the heart of “Awards Season” for screenwriting, with The Hit List coming out last week and the Black List soon to follow. At the very least, we’ll get one of those scripts in to review, as “Crater” nabbed the top spot on this list. Let’s see if its lunar pattern matches up with good screenwriting.

It’s sometime in the future where we now have a mining colony on the moon. Caleb O’Connell, 14, is a son of one of the miners. A big reason Caleb’s father and the rest of these miners agreed to this gig was that their children got to go to “Omega,” a utopia planet that, normally, only the richest people get to go to. That timeline gets accelerated if your parent dies in the line of work, and Caleb’s dad just did. Which means in 72 hours, he’ll be on a ship to Omega.

The thing is, Caleb doesn’t want to leave his friends: the rebellious Dylan, the wimpy Borney, the slow-witted Marcus, and his newest friend, Addison. Addison isn’t like these kids though. She actually grew up on earth. Her father was a scientist, which makes her the one “scholar” of the group.

What we come to learn through Caleb’s flashbacks with his father, is that his father made him promise that if he ever died, Caleb would go on a road trip with his buddies to deliver an old piece of memorabilia (a bobblehead), that Caleb’s father once gave him, to a deserted moon cave. So that’s what Caleb does. He steals a moon rover with his four friends and the group heads out to complete the mission.

All of them then talk about the difficulties of being a moon miner’s kid, get their flirt on with the one female in the group, and ultimately learn to let their de facto captain (Caleb) go. The question is, when they run into trouble, will they be able to make it back to the moon colony alive?

I’m not sure I was prepared for this. I saw a number 1 script on the ultra-hip Hit List, I saw the genre “sci-fi,” I saw a title, “Crater,” that elicited a degree of edge. I went into this thing (keep in mind this was before I read the logline) thinking I was about to read something maybe Darren Aronofsky would want to direct.

So I was not expecting what I eventually got, which was “The Maze Runner meets Earth to Echo.” It was kind of like ordering a ribeye at the best steak house in town, only for a grilled cheese sandwich to show up. I like grilled cheese sandwiches… when I’m in the mood for them. In this case, I wanted the steak.

Griffin’s heart is in the right place. He’s trying to create a nostalgic teenage road trip film with heart – I’m guessing “Goonies on the moon?” And I have to give it him, he definitely created something unique.

The structure is pretty solid too. I liked that we had a time crunch here (they’ve got 72 hours). The stakes are high. These are the last moments these guys will ever spend together. There’s obstacles too. The meteor shower looms over their trip. And then, of course, there’s the goal of getting to the cave.

But the script starts sending out red flags almost immediately. One character is described as, “14 going on 15.” Ummm… what other age would he be going on to? And then the flashbacks to Caleb’s father begin. I don’t like flashbacks. But I can live with them if the rest of the script is good. However, we’d go into a flashback with Caleb and his father, only to then jump into Caleb’s father’s flashback of HIS OWN father. So we’d get a flashback within a flashback.

???

Caleb’s motivation is also murky. His father received an astronaut bobblehead from Caleb’s grandfather. So Caleb’s father gives the bobblehead to Caleb, making him promise that, if he dies, he’ll bring the bobblehead to the caves. Which I guess means that Caleb’s goal is to deliver something for a grandfather he’s never met??

Even more egregious, there’s a lot of sitting around and talking in Crater. The characters talk about everything from what earth’s like to religion to their parents’ divorces.

This kind of thing drives me crazy because it feels to the writer like they’re being “deep,” like they’re letting you into their character’s lives and learning more about them. But these scenes never resonate with readers. We don’t care if someone’s dad used to be mean or if someone is scared because when they were nine, their mom made them turn off the bedside light every night.

We care about NOW, specifically the actions our characters take. For the most part, movies are about putting your characters in peril (whether that peril be losing your food supply, like in The Martian, or losing your mind, like in Still Alice) and then seeing how they react to that peril. Actions will always speak louder than words.

Go watch Cast Away, which barely has a lick of dialogue for 90 minutes. Watch how that entire character is built on his actions. Even the similar Stand By Me, reveals so much more through action (running from the train, escaping the junkyard) than through sharing stories about each other.

And even small moments are botched in Crater. There’s a moment when the group has infiltrated an old deserted base. Late in the sequence, Addison walks into a room and sees a tree standing in the middle of it. She’s taken aback, gob-smacked, can’t believe what she’s looking at. But wait a minute. Isn’t Addison the one character who used to live on earth and therefore has seen a billion trees? Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to have one of the characters who’s never seen a tree be the one to discover and be gob-smacked by it?

I don’t know. Maybe that early bias put me on the offensive here. But even if I’d gone into this knowing what I was getting into, these issues are pretty huge. The concept’s different. So that’s good. But man, this was tough to get behind. There was so much that felt “off” about Crater. I’ll be honest. I’m kinda surprised this finished number 1.

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

What I learned: Everybody in your story needs motivation to do what they’re doing. Mad Max doesn’t join Furiosa cause he’s up for a rollicking adventure. He joins her because teaming up with her is his best option at escape. One of the common mistakes I see in these “group goes on a journey” scripts, is that it doesn’t make sense why half the people are there! At some point the writer, usually through feedback, is alerted to this. They then try to solve the problem by doing what I call, “retrofitting motivation.” This is where they have one of the characters ask the motivation-less character why they’re doing this, and that character gives a vague unsatisfying answer of sorts (here, the answer from Caleb’s friends is, “You go where your friends need you to go.”) The writer now believes they’ve solved the problem but all they’ve done is highlight it. It’s so much better if you do the hard work ahead of time and give each character a personal reason for going on the journey – or, at the very least, something they need to achieve before the journey’s over. The character ends up feeling more like an individual as well as more active. I didn’t get that from any of the supporting characters here, which contributed to my issues with the script.

Thanksgiving is coming up next week. And if you’re anything like me, you’ve purchased a stomach expander on Amazon to prepare for the event. I’ll tell you what I’m not prepared for though. Another one of these Hunger Games movies. Which one are we on now? Breaking Flames No. 7 Chapter 19? How is a movie about hunger games still going if it’s no longer about hunger games? It’d be like if you made a Star Wars movie about trade negotiation. If you’re looking for something to watch instead of JLaw, check out Jessica Jones. Not because I recommend it. I haven’t seen it yet. But it’s supposed to be the greatest show on television, so I’ll be discussing it on Tuesday. If you want to join in on the conversation, best get your binge on.

Title: Let the Punishment Fit the Crime
Genre: Thriller/Drama
Logline: Hollywood icon Chad Burroughs is America’s best-loved human being. But the world is about to find out that Mr. Perfect has had his daughter locked in his basement for the last 13 years, and that she is the mother of his children – the ones he hasn’t disposed of.
Why You Should Read: This is my fifth script, and I’ve tried to incorporate everything in it that I have learned from this site over the years: it has GSU, shocking turnarounds, a bitchin’ Bad Guy, a big reversal on page 24, dialog that “pops”, a low character count, a short time-span, dramatic irony, it’s a thriller…
On the other hand, it is based on factual events and does break a few rules.
I would love to know what people, and in particular Carson, think.
Even if you don’t get that far into this script, I would really appreciate it if you could read the turnaround on page 24 and let me know what you thought of it.

Title: Language of the Birds
Genre: Urban Dreamed
Logline: (The Fisher King meets Charles Dickens) A famous bi-polar Linguistics Professor retracts from the modern world and ends up homeless in NYC to live the vicarious life of Charles Dickens. Through the language of birds, he discovers the syntax of living ‘in the moment’ and sets out to build a monumental Christmas tree in Times Square, to reconnect with his daughter.
Why You Should Read: I’ve crashed and burned many times into the pit of Scriptshadow sorrow, but like all of us committed to this dream, we dust off the pride and search for that next big cathartic script. ..Only to find ourselves in another writing frenzy and come out the other side burnt. Well, I haven’t crashed yet! This is an original story from the heart, pitched at those of us that linger in old fashioned literature, in a modern world of language reduced down to 140 character ‘tweets’. It also touches on mental illness and the homeless, especially on Christmas Day; the loneliest day of the year for a lot of people in NYC. Despite all that, it’s a fun and uplifting story of humanity, when we’ve all been guilty of awkwardly side-stepping that homeless person. Those ‘crazies’, that dare to live in the moment, inside their heads…Give them some empathy next time, most are probably failed screenwriters! A little bird told me that I should wait; I might have a better chance with this script in next year’s Scriptshadow 2500 contest. The Grand Prix of Pits… Enjoy.

Title: HEXEN (Witches)
Genre: HORROR/THRILLER
Logline: When a desperate man drags his depressed wife and step-daughter to rural Germany for family support; what he discovers instead are dark cult roots, an isolated hippy haven, and the terrifying realization that they may not be free to leave alive.”
Why You Should Read: My name is Alex Ross, and my screenplay, HEXEN, won the grand prize in the Script Pipeline competition (out of 3,500 scripts) and is also highly rated on the Black List as “top unrepresented horror”. Here’s why I would like the script to be reviewed: I see HEXEN as a fresh take on a very stale and predictable genre. It’s a throwback to the thrillers from the 70’s (Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining, Don’t Look Now), but with a modern, realistic approach. It purposely breaks the tired “rules” of horror storytelling, which audiences have come to expect by now. A main protagonist vanishes half-way through, character’s motives are ambiguous, and the ending is left somewhat open-ended. Say what you will about the script… one thing it’s not, is predictable. However, it has alienated some who are looking for something a little more mainstream, and I’m finding it difficult to find industry pros who can see outside the box, and who are willing to take a chance and get behind it. I need all the help I can get…

Title: Mind Crime
Genre: Thriller
Logline: An unlawfully convicted man serves every day of his 25 year sentence, but when released he finds out only two weeks have passed from his sentencing date.
Why You Should Read: I know this is a bold statement, but I challenge everyone who reads this that you will not be able to guess what is going on until YOU READ until the end. No cheating. Whatever you think it is, when you find out, you’ll even be more shocked. Everyone wants originality, and by the second Act, you’ll be steeped in it. Maybe a little too far. It is truly hard to find a thriller idea that keeps you guessing, but when this one came to MIND, I had to take a stab at it. I have written for some actors such as Ron Perlman, Ving Rhames, and producer Steve Whitney. But so far, I haven’t luck with the Hollywood patience game.

Title: DESTRUCTO
Genre: Black Comedy/Sci-fi
Logline: Struggling financially, a young man retrains as a programmer and discovers that robots are walking among us. When one murders his brother, he sets out to find their origin and their mission.
Why You Should Read: I was disappointed when this one didn’t make the 250. From your columns, I believe my logline didn’t show enough conflict. So I’m trying AOW with a revised logline. And one more thing – robots. Like in your April 23 article, Hollywood’s Subject Matter of Choice. Ring a bell?

Get Your Script Reviewed On Scriptshadow!: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and finally, something interesting about yourself and/or your script that you’d like us to post along with the script if reviewed. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Remember that your script will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effects 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: Sci-Fi
Premise (from writer): When a young man serving on the zeppelin Hindenburg discovers that a deadly, shape-shifting alien is hidden on board, he must defeat it or the girl he loves will suffer a fate worse than death.
Why You Should Read (from writer): I already sent you two of my other scripts for the Scriptshadow 250 contest, but what you wrote about the lack of big idea scripts inspired me to send you my biggest idea script. With its love story on a doomed vessel coupled with an alien which can assume the form of anyone it devours, it’s like TITANIC meets THE THING… I worked hard to make the script as easy to read as possible (no paragraph over 2 lines, only 97 pages) and to keep it moving and entertaining. If you’ll like it I’d really love for you to come on board as a producer!
Writer: Tal Gantz
Details: 97 pages

A little Ansel for David here?

I’m throwing EVERYONE for a loop today. There was a lot of discussion over last week’s group of scripts, but not a lot of voting. I think that says something. If people aren’t compelled enough to even type “I vote for [x]” in a comment, then something’s missing from your script. So I decided to look into it more deeply until I finally figured out what the problem was. I can’t believe, in retrospect, how obvious it was.

The writers didn’t center their title pages.

As we all know, the most important part of any screenplay is not just the title page, but how well you center that title. I try to get this across to new writers all the time. It’s not about character or dialogue or structure. It’s about centering. Think I’m exaggerating? Let me put it this way. I heard that the best script ever submitted to the Nicholl Fellowship was rejected because the title wasn’t centered properly.

Yes.

I got in touch with the writer and apparently his centering was 4 and a half pixels off. In his defense, his title included a hyphen and an ellipses, which confused the matter, but you know what? That’s no excuse. He should’ve known better. You can’t have an improperly centered title page and expect this industry to take you seriously.

All of this forced me to go back a few Amateur Saturdays to find a script that DID center its title properly, and boy am I excited. This script exuded one of the most center-positive attitudes I’ve ever seen. So much so that I’m nominating it for the prestigious “Center Award,” which as you all know rewards the most centered objects of the year. It is time, my friends, to review a script that dares to care about the things that really matter. Let’s take a trip back to… The Hindenburg Alien.

It’s 1937, a year before the world lost its innocence, and when Germany graced us with the largest flying machine anyone had ever seen, the Hindenburg. We join this gargantuan airship while its loading up passengers for its impending flight. This is where we meet 20 year-old David Grant, a ship hand who’s trying to kick ass and not be a Nazi.

David is joined by his comic relief co-worker, Harry, and the demonstrably stodgy captain, Mr. Lehman, along with a host of other worker bees that make flying the Hindenburg so exciting, when it’s not bursting into flames and roasting its passengers alive that is.

Shit gets Nazi-real when a professor rolls up a giant iron box that looks like it could be a Steampunk transformer “before” picture. Following him is 19 year-old Anna, the girl of David’s dreams, who is unfortunately followed by Hans Muller, her Nazi fiancé. So much for that love connection. I’m guessing that’s nazi-gonna happen.

After the Hindenburg takes off, David wanders downstairs in time to see a co-worker, Eric, get pulled into the iron box and EATEN by whatever’s in there. David runs upstairs to tell the captain, but when they come back down, it appears that Eric is fine. OR IS HE? Eric’s acting strange, and after a bit of sleuthing, David figures out that whatever was in that box has taken the form of Eric.

David eventually finds Anna, and because she’s just so darn dreamy, he informs her of what he saw. She believes him and wants to help, but her evil fiancé, Hans, keeps hanging around and being all clingy. Those Nazis. We eventually find out that Anna is only marrying this jerk because he’s agreed to smuggle her father out of the country to safety.

While evil alien-monster thing jumps form one host to the next, David realizes that if this planet-hopper lands, there’s a good chance it’s going to spread its seed and earth as we know it will turn into an intergalactic truck stop. So David must overcome his fears and take Alien Yucky Head on. One on one. May the best… biological… living creature win.

I’m digging the concept here. Tal’s obviously been influenced by Titanic, but he knows if he takes that approach, it just becomes Titanic on the Hindenburg. And we’ve seen “Titanic on the…” films before and they never end up well (Pearl Harbor). So he wisely turns this into a sci-fi film and makes it more of a monster-in-a-box movie.

Here was my issue while reading The Hindenburg Alien though: It was too darn simplistic. And I know this might sound confusing because I’m always harping on you guys for being too complex. But rarely does ANY extreme work well, and that includes being too simplistic.

I don’t want this to come off the wrong way but “Hindenburg” felt like it was written by a third grader. That’s not to say there were a lot of spelling or grammar errors. But the grammar was devoid of any color or nuance. There was no flavor to the way anything was written, leaving the script feeling so basic that it was hard to get excited about anything.

Here’s an example: “David and Harry sneak into the deck. All is silent and still. Eric is nowhere in sight.”

You see how rudimentary and lifeless those sentences are? Even the book our romantic lead is reading is titled: “Romantic Poems.” The only title I can think of more generic than that would be, “Written Stories.”

I can overlook colorless prose sometimes if the character work or dialogue is exceptional. But both of those suffer from the same problem. Here’s a dialogue exchange from when David meets up with Anna. David: “How did you know it was me?” “Your footsteps gave you away. Quiet, but strong. Just like you.” Is it just me or does that sound like it was spoken by an animatronic automaton?

You know, it’s funny. Technically speaking, Tal does what myself and many screenwriting folks teach in regards to dialogue. Keep the lines sparse and to the point, usually under three lines. But while this sounds great in practice, if EVERY SINGLE SPOKEN LINE OF DIALOGUE is like that, it feels generic and lifeless (and worse – predictable). And plus, in the real world, everyone talks differently. Some do keep it short and to the point. But others can’t shut up. I didn’t get enough of a sense of different personalities and talking styles here. To that end, changing up the dialogue length for each character would’ve helped a ton.

But yeah, in general, we needed more color to everything. In the description, the dialogue, the backstory, the plotting. A basic plot point would be “Let’s follow Eric” and at a certain point I felt like I’d asked for a Chinese chicken salad and they’d brought me a head of lettuce and a few ketchup packets.

I will say this about The Hindenburg Alien. It’s not as simplistic as Monday’s “Free Fall,” which sold. And Tal’s got the right idea here. This is a big enough concept that it could be turned into a movie. But if he wants to improve his chances, he needs to add more complexity to the characters and the plotting, and he needs to add some color to the writing himself. I would recommend he check out Osgood Perkins’ script, “February,” for how to add color through prose, and Aaron Sorkin’s, Jobs, for tips on how to write more colorful dialogue.

Good luck, my friend. You’re on your way to something here. ☺

Screenplay link: The Hindenburg Alien

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

What I learned: Be mindful of long absences by your characters (30+ pages). You can’t just bring them back whenever. It’s very likely we’ve forgotten who they are. Or even if we remember their name, we’ve forgotten the exact circumstances by which they’re attached to the story. That’s what happened here. We meet Anna’s father, Rosen, when he arrives on the ship, but I’d forgotten about him by the time he showed up again 50 pages later. I thought to myself, “Wait, did we see him board in the opening?” I wasn’t sure. And because there were a lot of dream-scenes in The Hindenburg Alien, I thought she may have been dreaming about her father. To eliminate confusion, add another scene with Rosen somewhere between those two scenes. That way he stays prominent in our minds, and we’re not playing the “Who’s This Dude Again?” screenplay game (a game I have to play way too much!).

Today is a day for you guys to do some writing! I’m holed up reading Scriptshadow 250 scripts all day and haven’t been able to come up for air long enough to write something of any substance. If it helps, I will let you in on what kind of scripts I’ve been reading that haven’t been making the cut. The scripts tend to fall into two categories.

1) Way too complicated (too much going on).
2) Zero voice (extremely standard executions that display nothing in the way of a unique point-of-view).

At first glance, these may seem to contradict each other. To create something with a unique voice, don’t you need to move away from simplicity? Give the story more variables? In short, NO! What you need is to come at your idea from a unique angle. Steve Jobs could’ve written “Jobs” as a cradle-to-grave biopic. Instead, he chronicled the 45 minutes before the three most important product launches of Jobs’s life. As you can see, the story was still very simple.

Feel free to comment about that or use today’s post to pitch potential ideas you’re working on or ask the community for help on specific problems you’re dealing with in your current screenplay. I’ll see you tomorrow!