Genre: Sci-fi Thriller
Premise: In a future where a portion of the population displays exceptional intelligence, an agent for the U.S. government must stop these “brilliants” from starting a war.
About: “Brilliance” was adapted from the best-selling novel of the same name. The producers have been out there working hard to get an A-lister attached, but haven’t succeeded yet. For awhile, Will Smith was attached. When he dropped out, they went after newly minted Oscar winner Jared Leto, but he passed. They look to be regrouping before they target their next actor. Marcus Sakey, who wrote the novel, is best known for writing crime novels set in Chicago, making Brilliance a departure for him. David Koepp, who adapted the book, is one of the top 5 scripters in Hollywood. He’s the big gun you call in to make people in town take your project seriously.
Writer: David Koepp (based on the book by Marcus Sakey)
Details: 126 pages – August 11, 2013 draft

What would you do if you were 100 IQ points smarter than everyone else? What would be your first order of business? Personally, I’d learn how to predict the stock market, become a billionaire, buy Twitter, then only allow one user, myself. And I’d tweet only 80s movies catchphrases like, (Ah-nold accent) “I let him go”. I know, I know. Cliché. But when you’re a genius, being cliché no longer bothers you. Your very existence is unique enough to negate all cliches.

Brilliance is about the smartest men in the room, which I always find interesting because if you’re writing about the smartest people in the room, don’t you need to be the smartest man in the room? How can you write genius if you, yourself, aren’t a genius?

Then again, “Lucy” did a jammin job of creating a genius hero. And Luc Besson can’t be that smart, can he? He created Ruby Rhod in The Fifth Element. I suppose with a combination of intense research and clever writing, you can fool the audience. But it’s not easy. And I didn’t expect it to be easy in “Brilliance.”

It’s been 30 years since a small subset of people on Earth started displaying extreme intelligence. Enough time to develop a system to identify these people, cultivate them, and integrate them into society in ways to help the planet become a better place.

Unfortunately, a sort of intelligence racism has evolved, due to a large group of “abnorms” jetsetting around the planet and blowing things up. These intelligence terrorists, led by a mysterious figure known as John Smith, are gearing up for a war, a war that may make anyone not an “abnorm” abnormally part of the past.

Enter agent Nick Cooper. Nick is an abnorm himself, and an expert at reading people. We meet him as he’s tracked down a terrorist at a bar. He tells her he knows she’s got a disk drive in her pocket because, like, he’s smart n stuff. That drive contains information on the next terrorist attack. Unfortunately the woman, Shannon, gets away, and Nick must chase her halfway across the country.

He finally catches her and, as you’d expect, realizes not everything is what it seems. Turns out his agency wasn’t telling him the whole truth. (spoiler) These attacks were actually coming from within the government. And wouldn’t you know it? The terrorist leader? John Smith? Turns out he’s a pretty good guy!

After Nick comes to grips with this news, he races to stop the next attack, an attack that may set off World War 3. That’s easier said than done since almost everyone he encounters is an abnorm. But Nick is a resourceful guy.  And let’s not forget, smart.  If there’s anyone who can save the world, it might be this guy.

Brilliance seems to be the ideal book adaptation. The story was made for the big screen. An active main character. A world on the verge of war. A hero who’s always on the run. A hook you can sell on a poster.

But that blessing is also the book’s biggest curse. This story was so perfect for the big screen that it doesn’t have anything else to offer. It’s your garden-variety Hollywood thriller.  Which is ironic, since as you can see on the cover, Lee Child notes it’s a story you’ve never read before.  And I just linked to an article by Lee Child Monday.  But I feel like those author quotes are always friends helping each other out.  It’s hard for me to take them seriously.

The hook, our supposed “fresh” take, is that a number of people are “brilliant.” Unfortunately, my worst fears were realized. Nobody really seems that brilliant at all. At least actively. Yeah, there’s the guy who bought Wyoming after figuring out the stock exchange, but we don’t SEE that intelligence in action. It’s relayed to us after the fact.

As far as what’s happening in the moment, nobody seems that smart at all. For example, Shannon, who’s “smart specialty” is being elusive, is able to blend into a crowd seemlessly. I don’t know what that has to do with intelligence.

I have a lot more admiration for the Lucy film now, as at least that displayed some thought into how intelligence works. The way Lucy was able to read people’s minds through the vibrations coming off of their heads.  How each level up in intelligence was accompanied by a more autistic disposition. How her cells were accelerating out of control to keep up with all the changes.

The most intelligent thing we see anybody do here is a character saying, “You already know what I’m feeling, don’t you?”

I guess what I’m trying to say is, if you’re going to sell us on really intelligent people, there has to be a ‘wow’ factor involved with those people, something where we go, “Holy sh*t, they are f*&king smart!” I had that moment a few times in Lucy. I didn’t have it here.

As for the structure of the script, it felt off. In the first half, Nick’s playing for the good guys. At the midpoint, he says he has to infiltrate the terrorists from the inside, so he goes and pretends to be a part of the bad guys.

I didn’t buy this. Why would the terrorists, who know Nick, believe he’s one of them now? I never took Terrorism 101, but I know one of the first lessons they teach you is not to take a high-ranking official from the other team at his word when he says, “I’m one of you now.”

The personal stakes feel low here as well. Remember, the overall stakes are different from the personal stakes. The overall stakes are what happens on a large scale. Those were there. If Nick didn’t succeed, World War 3 was going to happen. But the personal stakes were Nick’s “abnorm” daughter, who the agency had just found out about, being placed in an “abnorm” school, where Nick wouldn’t be able to see her often.

This is important to remember. Stakes are relative. If you’re writing an indie movie about a mother and her new boyfriend and the boyfriend wants to put the woman’s daughter in a boarding school so he can have her all to himself, the stakes in that situation feel high.

But here, in a world where World War 3 is about to happen, a girl being forced into a special school feels like a minor inconvenience for the main character. We needed personal stakes that matched the gravitas of the rest of the script.

If Brilliance is going to work, it can’t feel like a garden variety on-the-run thriller. The “powers” of the intelligent people need to be bigger and more imaginative, the kind of things that get audiences talking. A woman so intelligent she can blend into crowds doesn’t exactly get me firing up the Tweet Deck (“Did you see that girl blend into the crowd!? Yikes. Now that was a girl who knew how to blend!”). You need those moments like in Lucy, the kind of moments you can feature in trailers. Sadly, I didn’t read a single trailer moment here.

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

What I learned: Designating description as passive or active. – When it’s time to describe something in your script, the first thing you need to do is decide whether the element is active or passive. An active element is anything that’s going to factor into the story somehow. If you’re describing a new building where an adjacent crane is going to become a part of your characters’ escape later on, you want to take some time and describe the crane. It’s an active element. If, however, the building is just a building and won’t be used in any unique way after the scene, it becomes a passive element, and therefore deserves no special distinction. Keep the description as short and generic as possible.

I bring this up because amateurs tend to think everything should be described as an active element. It doesn’t matter if it’s a house, a refrigerator, a street, a car. They over-describe these things to death and it KILLS the read because it forces the reader to trudge through a bunch of description that ultimately doesn’t matter. Imagine, for example, your character is flying into Washington D.C. How might you describe the approach?

The beginner writer focuses on the way the moon reflects off the building windows and how the people on the ground look like ants in some sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland. Blah blah blah. NO! Here’s how Koepp describes the approach.

Gliding silently through the sky over Washington, D.C., we see the familiar landmarks — the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the White House.

That’s it. That’s all we need because the city is a passive element in this context.  Now if your hero was flying into Dubai, and a key scene takes place later on the city’s tallest skyscraper, that makes the skyscraper an active element, which means you might want to give it a more elaborate description. But it all comes down to designating what the element is.  Figure out if it’s active or passive, then describe accordingly.

Jared is all about Mish-Mashing!

This whole month has been nuts, giving me very little time to get 5 posts a week up. Monday has been suffering, which I apologize for. But it may stay that way for the next few weeks so bear with me.

So what’s been going on in the world? Well, this past weekend was the worst box office frame of the year, ending an even worse summer. We’re down 20% in receipts from last year. Less and less people are going to see movies, and if they don’t figure out why and stop it, something bad is going to happen.

I recently watched the Jared Leto documentary, Artifact, about how his band sold 5 million albums, only to come home from their tour and be told by their label that they (the band) owed them (the label) 2 million dollars. The band tells them to eff off. The label then sues them for 30 million dollars. The documentary is about Jared and his group debating whether to release their next album independently in the midst of this lawsuit.

The doc is good, but it was a section near the middle that really got me. It covered the downfall of the music industry over the last couple of decades. Basically, everything was changing around the music business (most prominently, the move from physical to digital) and the people working at the music lables were too dumb to realize it in time. They watched as the entire world changed around them before doing anything, and by the time they did, it was too late. A company that previously knew nothing about music, was now taking all their money (iTunes). The labels now make half as much money as they did 15 years ago.

I often wonder – is the same thing happening to the movie industry? Like the music business, are we too slow to recognize the effects of the changes happening around us? Long-form media (television) with movie-like production value has pulled more and more writers away from the movie business, and now it’s pulling the talent too.

Indie movies are simultaneously debuting in both theaters and on Itunes, slowly moving towards a world where the indie producer skips the traditional distribution method and looks for ways to go straight to Itunes without having to pay a hefty cut to a third party.

Kickstarter is allowing filmmakers even more independence. If you’re a smart young director, you shoot a bunch of shorts, post them on Youtube, gain a following, get better, so that by the time your Kickstarter campaign begins for your feature, you have a kick-ass reel to show to inspire confidence from your investors. Ditto if you’re a writer. Learn how to direct and do the same.

I’m not saying the movie industry is screwed or anything. The international grosses are too big. But it doesn’t feel like the people in charge are moving fast enough to adapt, and they look out of touch in the process. The last time the movie business did something that actually made me want to go to the theater was adding the stadium seats. And that was 15 years ago. Itunes and Netflix intermittently come up with ways to make me want to use their services every month. They’re really staying on their toes – almost like they enjoy being cutting edge. I don’t get the sense that the studios are doing this at all.

The one thing the movie industry CANNOT do anymore is raise prices. When movies were under 10 bucks, I didn’t blink about seeing the latest movie each weekend. I’d even watch Step-Up 3 if it was the only thing playing. Why not? I love film and I don’t care how I’m entertained, as long as you entertain me. Now that I’m paying 18 dollars a film, I always calculate whether going to the theater is worth it. And many times the answer is no. In other words, there didn’t use to be a barrier to entry. Movies were priced in a way where you didn’t think twice about going. Now there’s a barrier, and you can’t put up a barrier at the very moment your business is losing 10% each year.

What’s the answer? I honestly don’t think it’s difficult. People crave something new. They think they want Spider-Man 2. But what they really want is a dancing tree. Until you show them the dancing tree, though, they’re never going to know they wanted it. Look, studios will always need their Transformers and their Fast and Furiouses. I get that. But each studio needs to set aside a division for taking risks, for trying out new things. Call it R&D. It’s the reason why Apple became the biggest company in the world. They knew if they didn’t allocate a bunch of money to trying out weird and new ideas, that they’d never grow, that people would eventually get bored of their products. I want to see some products that come out of the movie studios’ R&D divisions, not the cookie-cutter Teenage Mutant Ninja Electro Boogaloo nonsense I saw this summer. A decline of 20%  in a year is your consumer telling you you need to work harder.

Speaking of R&D (if R&D stood for “really depressing”), I finally saw Draft Day last week. Now some of you might remember that Draft Day was the number 1 screenplay on the Black List a couple of years ago, a story that seemingly came out of nowhere (a sports script topping the Black List??? Unheard of!). I thought the script was worth the hype. It was a different kind of sports movie. It had urgency. It had mystery. No cliche last second touchdown. Really lived up to the hype in my opinion.

Now a lot of people ask me how a good script gets turned into a bad movie. Well, this would be how. Three crucial mistakes were made that doomed this great screenplay. First, the edgy gritty script (about football in Cleveland – one of the dirtiest grungiest cities in America) was given a romantic comedy color-popping scheme for reasons beyond logic. If you’re looking to grab your core audience, the football fan, you probably don’t want to shoot your movie to look like Dolphin Tale 2.

Second, Kevin Costner played the role all wrong. Like wrong wrong wrong. In the script, our hero was a guy who knew his job was on the line, who was desperate to do anything to help his team win. He had fire, he had energy. And you could SMELL the pressure on him in every scene. It was exciting watching this guy scramble for his life while pretending to have it together on the outside.

Costner, however, played the part like a sad disinterested IRS agent. Whenever he was approached by any character, he looked like he was going to shake his head, say “I give up,” then go take a nap. He sucked away every ounce of energy this character had with his performance.  I felt horrible for the writers.

But the most critical mistake was a directing one. For those who haven’t seen the movie or read the script, a lot of it takes place over phone calls. Costner’s character is a general manager on Draft Day, and he’s calling everyone all over the country to figure out who he’s going to pick. Every 3rd scene was a phone scene. These intense mano-a-mano scenes, in many ways, defined the energy of the story.

So it was baffling when director Ivan Reitman decided to create split screens for all of the calls. But it wasn’t just that.  It was that CLEARLY none of the actors were actually talking to each other during the shoot. For example, P. Diddy would shoot his half of a phone conversation and then two months later, Costner, talking to a stand-in, recorded his half of the conversation.

Because the actors weren’t actually talking to each other and because Reitman insisted on using split-screens (which meant no cutaways), there were these giant gaping moments of silence after each actor’s line. Costner: “I want to go with Bryant as our quarterback!” 1 Mississippi . 2 Mississippi. 3 Mississippi. Diddy: “Fuck you. He’s not good enough!” Imagine an entire day of conversations with people where, after you said your line, they waited three seconds before responding. That was every phone call in Draft Day.

And the funny thing is, I know what Reitman was thinking. He thought he’d use the split-screen to infuse energy into the calls – having both the actors right there on screen together battling it out. Ironically, it had the opposite effect. It locked him into a situation where he couldn’t cut for timing, and the dialogue just died on the screen as a result. It’s scary how easy it is to screw up a good script. I mean you know Costner, notorious for being a hands-on actor, lobbied to play this character as a slow tired broken down General Manager, despite it being completely wrong for the story.  And what can you say when your lead actor tells you that’s how he’s going to play it? “No?” He’s just going to do it anyway.  A great script down the tubes based on one bad decision made by an actor.

Luckily, I’m going to leave you with something that’ll blow your little screenwriting mind and make you forget all about the Costner! It’s the best article about suspense I’ve ever read, and the author, Lee Child (author of the Jack Reacher books) gives one of the best analogies about a writing tool I’ve ever read. Any attempt to summarize it would cheapen the article, so I’m going to let you read it yourselves.

And finally, thanks to everyone who contributed to this weekend’s Pitch Post. It was fun to see some of your pitches get so much love from the community. Did anyone tally the best five so we have some surefire amateur scripts to review? I tried to go in there a few times and count myself but got lost in the 900 posts!

Genre: Comedy/Period
Premise: A 1950s Hollywood fixer finds himself on his first job he can’t fix – the star of the studio’s biggest movie ever is kidnapped by a group of communists.
About: This is the Coens’ next movie. As you’d expect, actors are lining up in the hopes that the brilliant character-building brothers can put them in a position to win an Oscar. So this film is stacked. It will star Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Josh Brolin, Jonah Hill, Tilda Swinton (who it should be required is in every weird movie from here on out until the end of time) and, of course, George Clooney.
Writer: Joel & Ethan Coen
Details: 111 pages

There’s this rumor going around that I don’t like any movies/screenplays that don’t fall under the traditional safe Hollywood paradigm. This rumor started because I hated scripts and movies such as Upstream Color, Inside Llewyn Davis, Somewhere, and Winter’s Bone.

But it’s simply not true. I like plenty of indie movies. I enjoyed Blue is The Warmest Color, Silver Linings Playbook, Black Swan, Rushmore. What I don’t like is bad storytelling. And because indie film is a place where filmmakers take more chances, the results typically play at the ends of the spectrum, which leads to extreme reactions. So when I don’t like something, I really don’t like it. Inside Llweyn Davis still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I mean you had the biggest asshole main character of the past decade in a movie without a plot.

And that’s what I don’t get. The Coens are always at their best when they’ve got a good plot going. The Big Lebowski, No Country, and Fargo all had big plots thrusting the story forward. Inside Llewyn Davis had… a lost cat. That was the plot.

And you know what? I don’t even require a plot to like a movie. I need a plot OR great characters. Just one of the two. Like Swingers. Swingers didn’t have a plot. But the movie had great characters, so you enjoyed the ride.

Which leads us to today’s script, the Coens’ latest. And I can start off with some good news. This one actually has a plot. Is that plot any good? Well, let’s take a trip into the Coen Brain Collective (bring any drugs you can locate within the next 10 seconds) to find out.

Eddie Mannix is a fixer. Hollywood in the 1950s is a lot like Hollywood today, with one major difference – it was easier to control the image of its stars. Which was important. Because studios used to OWN stars back then. There wasn’t any of this “free agency” shit. A studio had you under contract. So if you drank a lot, got arrested a lot, were gay, backed up your files on icloud – it was in their best interest to keep that information out of the papers. And that’s where Eddie Mannix came in.  He was the master at getting rid of these problems.

Until this movie of course, when something goes horribly wrong. Mannix’s studio loses the star of its latest Ben-Hur-like film, “Hail, Caesar!” Baird Whitlock is yanked off the set by a bunch of commies, which was a really bad thing to be back in 1951 in Hollywood. These Commies, who happen to be screenwriters, are pissed! They’ve been writing all these movies for Hollywood, but other writers are getting the credit (hey, how is that any different from today?). So they do the obvious thing to enact revenge – they kidnap Baird and demand 100 thousand dollars from the studio (which I’m assuming was a lot of money in 1951).

As word starts to leak out that Baird may have been kidnapped, Mannix must work the phones to keep all the gossip columnists from publishing the story in tomorrow’s paper and ruining his studio’s investment forever. This little event also threatens to rekindle an old rumor of Baird’s that has plagued him since he first got into the business. We’re talking about the “On Wings as Eagles” rumor, which is something so big, so dark, that even Richard Gere would find it disturbing. Mannix has certainly got his work cut out for him. Can he save the day one last time? We shall see!

Let’s start out with the good. This is a lot better than Inside Llweyn Davis. It’s actually fun. In fact, it’s closest in tone to the Coens’ Big Lebowski. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have the same super memorable characters as Lebowski. Eddie Mannix is a wild-eyed work-hound, but I’m not sure I know anything about him beyond that.

Traditionally, we get to know the main character in a screenplay, understand the flaw holding him back, empathize with him, sympathize with him, hope that he changes, and that’s really why we go along for the ride. We’re rooting for this person to become better and succeed.

The Coens’, as you know, don’t always subscribe to this approach. Their characters have great big flaws, but those flaws aren’t always figured out. Look at The Dude in The Big Lebowski. His flaw is obvious. He’s a lazy irresponsible bum. He has no initiative and does nothing in life. In a normal movie, we’d watch as The Dude realized this, and eventually learned to take initiative.

Instead, The Dude keeps on being The Dude at the end. He’s The Dude. Nothing’s going to change about him. The question is, why does this work when every screenwriting book in the world tells you your main character has to have a flaw and that, over the course of the movie, they must overcome that flaw? It works because The Dude is also one of the most lovable characters ever created. Which means, purposefully or not, the Coens’ are drawing on one of the oldest screenwriting tricks in the business. They made their main character super-likable. And sometimes that’s enough.

Conversely, this is why, I believe, Inside Llewyn Davis didn’t catch fire with the public. The main character was a huge dick.  Maybe this would’ve worked had Llewyn showed growth. Audiences have proven with movies like Groundhog Day that they’re willing to watch a dick if he shows signs of improving. But Llewyn never did.

If you’re going to give us an asshole character AND they’re going to remain an asshole character throughout the movie, fuggetaboutit. I mean the Coens are so amazing at creating secondary characters that they can keep their movies at least watchable (John Goodman and Justin Timberlake were great in Llewyn Davis), but in the end, it’s that protagonist who’s either going to lead you to the promised land or not.

Which brings us back to Hail Caesar. Eddie Mannix was so busy running around saving everybody else’s ass that I never got to know him. So I never really cared. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized the Coens missed a major opportunity in connecting us and making us care about Eddie. Eddie didn’t have a major relationship in the film. He never had a girl he liked, a family member he wasn’t getting along with, an important friendship or work relationship. He didn’t have that one thing that got us into his head. Again, look at The Dude. He had Walter (John Goodman). That was the entryway into The Dude’s mind so we could get to know him. That wasn’t here with Eddie.  And it really hurt the screenplay.  I mean how many screenplays survive when you don’t feel like you know the main character afterwards?

So despite having a few fun moments, Hail Caesar was a bit like a runaway chariot race. It eventually went scurrying off the tracks.

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

What I learned: The hero’s key relationship in the story (girl, family member, friend) is one of the easiest ways to get the audience into the hero’s head. It’s through dialogue with these characters that we get to see your hero’s problems, his worldview, his flaws, his fears, his dreams, his insecurities – all the things that make him him. If your main character doesn’t have anyone to talk to, it’s going to be really hard for us to connect with him.

What I learned 2: Frack for drama!  Never forget the importance of stakes for your main character.  If there aren’t major consequences for your hero failing, you’re only mining a fraction of the drama you could be in your movie.  The Coens, who are usually pretty good with stakes, had none here for Eddie (another problem with his character).  I didn’t get the sense that he would be in any trouble if he didn’t find Baird.  We needed that scene where the big scary mobster-like studio head took Eddie aside and said, “This is our biggest movie ever.  I don’t want it to bomb because you didn’t do your job.  You know what happens to people who don’t do their job, right Eddie?”  And that’s all we needed.

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This week’s amateur picks are linked below. Offer your constructive criticisms and then vote for the best one of the bunch in the comments!

TITLE: Spooked
GENRE: Horror-Comedy
LOGLINE: Two slackers with dead-end jobs try to turn their haunted past into reality TV stardom.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: This was my first attempt at writing a feature-length screenplay and it became a Finalist in the 2013 PAGE International Screenwriting Awards.  It also garnered a Fresh Voices nomination for “Best On Screen Chemistry.”

I’m not a comedy writer, but always thought ghost hunting shows lent themselves naturally to humor because
they take it so seriously — just like my protagonists.

After a year of rejections, I feel like I’m ready for whatever reaction you (and the SS community) can offer.  Plus, I’m more
than a little annoyed about a recent TV web series springing up with the same name and subject matter.  What
do I have to lose now?

I should also note, that a certain character quirk was written LONG before I ever watched Zombieland. (It took me a while
to get this one finished.)  And I think my version plays out funnier anyway.

My 2nd feature is in a completely different genre (historical fantasy) and took 6 months of research/developing, 1 month to write.  It’s currently placed as a semi-finalist for this year’s PAGE Awards.

TITLE: NERVE AND SINEW
GENRE: Action Thriller
LOGLINE: When an ex-UFC fighter reluctantly accepts a kidnapping job from the Russian mob, he sneaks into an upscale apartment complex to capture the target but finds himself in a high intensity hostage situation when armed terrorists simultaneously take over the building in a Mumbai-style attack.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: Been hacking away at this craft for several years now. Have written several scripts, read countless others. It can be a frustrating grind — writing scripts and trying to find success with them. Sometimes I’d love to quit. But I just can’t. Nothing else even remotely interests me the same way.

This is a classic blood-pumping action thriller with a modern touch that should be a fun ride if it ever makes it to the screen. But don’t take my word for it. One reviewer had the following to say: “Although there are big budget explosions and gun fighting scenes, the script never feels cliche in its execution of plot. It doesn’t lean on the violence and pays close attention to staying original and dark throughout. This could be a big, blockbuster film that would attract a broad audience and potentially an A-list actor.”

Also, it’s a quick 105 pages with sparse, vertical writing. At the very least you won’t get a headache reading it.

It’s done well in contests (initial draft was top 15% in Nicholl) and on the Black List (revised draft recently received an overall rating of ‘8’), but I’d love to get it some more exposure. The more eyes on it, the better, right?

TITLE: THE SANDMAN
GENRE: period thriller
LOGLINE: In 1940’s LA, an orphan young man must unravel the mystery of “The Sandman” – a legendary lost film – before the beautiful blind girl he loves falls victim to the sinister forces who seek it
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: because it is a story for anyone who loves movies with a passion and finds in the cinema not only escape from life but life itself. If a young Dickens or Poe would have written a script in collaboration with Roger Ebert, I’d like to think they would come up with something like this.

TITLE: Goodnight Nobody
GENRE: Contained Thriller
LOGLINE: Besieged by “monsters” that have emerged from their toddlers’ closet, a couple must keep their wits about them if they hope to escape their house alive.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: Whenever you read in a release from a prodco that they may have independently developed a similar idea, I’m the guy they’re talking to. Ten years ago I wrote a script about a lonely boy whose stuffed animal comes to life, and is still around when he’s an adult. I’m not saying that I was ripped off – my script would never have been in the same zip code as Seth McFarlane to have even seen it – but I had a similar idea once upon a time that just didn’t find its way up the chain despite my manger-at-the-time’s best efforts. Five years ago a script I wrote with a partner generated a little heat. It was a reinvention of the King Arthur saga. Then three other Arthur scripts sold before we could cash in on that heat. Our script withered on the Hollywood vine and died. This summer I almost sold a script to “Lifetime”, but turns out they had a too similar project already in the works. And, just this week, “Pivot” sold which has a very similar idea to a sci-fi spec I wrote earlier this year, so it’s another labor of love I get to throw into a drawer. I just need my luck to change. I always feel like I’m on the precipice, and just need to figure out what it is that’s holding me back. Maybe you guys can help me figure out what that is.

TITLE: Hellscape
GENRE: Horror
LOGLINE: When a teenage Scout troop becomes lost in the Utah desert, they experience terrifying hallucinations that point to a supernatural stalker.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: Hellscape was actually inspired by a real-life event. A few years ago, I learned about a group of Boy Scouts who found themselves in a brutal heat wave while hiking the Grand Canyon. Before long, they were suffering bizarre, disturbingly realistic hallucinations. And that’s when the idea struck me – what if those hallucinations were something else, something paranormal? What better place for demonic mind games than a sweltering, Mars-like wasteland far from civilization?

Writer Joseph Gangemi is debuting his new show “Red Oaks,” on Amazon today.  Red Oaks is produced by Steven Soderbergh and the pilot was directed by Pineapple Express director David Gordon Green.  It’s about a tennis pro’s crazy adventures back in the summer of 1985.  As some of you know, I used to support myself by teaching tennis, so I couldn’t resist getting Joe in for an interview.  What transpired was a full on course study in how to get into television writing.   So any screenwriter looking to break into TV is going to want to take notes.  Also, you can check out Joseph’s show on Amazon right now!  For free!

Rising star Craig Roberts (Submarine, Neighbors) plays the lead in “Red Oaks.”

SS: Hey Joe.  Why don’t we start off with you letting us know a little about who you are and how your writing career came about.  

JG: Sure!  I’ve been a member of the WGA since ’97 when I sold my first spec to New Line. That same year as luck would have it I also sold my first novel, which I’d written with a friend back in college and that had been sitting in a drawer for years. (It was eventually published under a pseudonym, so don’t bother Googling!) The serendipitous sales of novel and spec enabled me to quit my day job in corporate America and turn to full-time writing. It’s helped that I’ve done it from Philadelphia, where the cost of living is lower than LA, and where there are fewer distractions. (Though my agents and manager are constantly after me to relocate.)

Since then I’ve worked for most of the studios on open writing assignments, published another novel—this time under my actual name—and had two of my specs reach the screen, WIND CHILL, which starred Emily Blunt and came out in 2007, and STONEHEARST ASYLUM, staring Kate Beckinsale, Michael Caine, and Ben Kingsley, which will be released this October 24th (Shameless plug!) In that time I also began writing for TV, and to date have sold three projects, including “Red Oaks.”

Television is a really appealing medium for a writer, and especially a novelist. Whenever my writer friends bemoan the shortening of attention spans and the death of the novel I point out that audiences still seem just as addicted to long, sprawling, episodic storytelling as they did in the Victorian era when the novel was born—they’ve just embraced a new delivery system. Not that novels and episodic TV offer identical experiences; but I do think they offer audiences some overlapping pleasures, like immersion in richly populated worlds thick with subplots and digression, a greater sense of the passage of time, etc.

So I didn’t need much arm-twisting to try my hand at TV. Also, TV is enjoying a golden era akin to that of indie movies in the ’90s—it’s the place where offbeat storytelling is still welcome, where niche audiences are cultivated and anti-heroes celebrated. Whereas the economics of filmmaking and especially marketing have forced the studios to narrow their offerings to a specific bandwidth, namely tent poles and those few high concept comedies that can withstand translation into other languages.

I sold my first TV pitch to Lionsgate and ABC seven years ago. It was called “The Lodge” and was a haunted hotel show. Unfortunately like a lot of pitches it didn’t survive the development process—an all too common case of seller and buyer not realizing until too late what kind of show we were making. (I thought it should be “Twin Peaks,” they wanted “Fantasy Island.”)

Eager not to repeat the experience, I decided with my next TV idea—another hour-long drama called “Strega,” which is a kind of male “Rosemary’s Baby”—to once more write it on spec. “Strega” had a lot of heat in the marketplace and eventually sold to ABC-Signature, where it’s now in the process of being packaged before being shopped further. (TV can be confusing because the studios are free to develop shows for other places besides their parent networks, hence the reason an end card on an NBC show might read “CBS Studios.” Studios produce TV shows, which are then licensed to networks for broadcast; it’s akin to how movies are made by studios and then licensed to theaters. The big difference being that in TV the networks weigh in creatively during development.)

When I was approached about “Red Oaks”—a show I sometimes half-jokingly describe as “‘Caddyshack’ with tennis”—I decided again to write the pilot on spec, in part because I was co-writing with a friend I’d never collaborated with before (Greg Jacobs, whose life story loosely inspired the show). But also because I was switching genres and needed to prove to myself I could write funny.

SS: As is always the case when I bring writers in, I’d love to know how you got your agent.  

JG: I came by my agent in an unusual way. (Though the more breaking-in stories I hear the more I think there is no “usual” way.) Around ’96 a novelist pal of mine, Jon Cohen, invited me to tag along on a trip to LA, where he was meeting about a spec screenplay he’d just sold. (Jon would go on to write “Minority Report.”) Over dinner one night I met his agent Howie Sanders, who, upon learning I was a published short-story writer and aspiring screenwriter, graciously offered to read anything I might submit. When I got home I promptly FED EX’d him a romantic comedy spec. He called to say “I can’t break a new writer in with a romantic comedy—” Things were very different in ’96!—”but you have talent and you should write a horror movie or a thriller.” Since I liked horror (my first, pseudonymous novel was horror and eventually won a Bram Stoker Award for best first novel) I pitched him a few ideas. He responded to one, which I proceeded to outline and write and sent back to him for notes. We went back and forth for about six months, fine tuning to get it ready for the marketplace. Howie went out with it in October of 1997 and sold it to New Line. Which is what earned me my WGAE card— and Howie a place in my heart!

SS: Amazon has a unique way of creating pilots.  Can you tell us how their system works?

JG: At the networks, cable channels, HBO, etc., pilots are only ever seen by executives and the occasional focus group, and all decisions about series orders are made behind closed doors, in corporate boardrooms. Amazon makes its pilots public, basing its series orders on the number of customer views, reviews, and five-star ratings, as well as chatter on social media. And just to clear up a common misconception, you don’t need to be an Amazon Prime subscriber to stream these pilots—anyone can go to the Amazon site now and screen “Red Oaks.”

What’s appealing about this model for a writer is that if you make an Amazon pilot you at least know your friends and family will get to see it. Which with networks is only the case if your show gets ordered to series and put on the schedule. There are many pilots that have been made but shelved, regardless of cast and pedigree. For instance HBO’s pilot of Jonathan Franzen’s bestseller “The Corrections,” starring Ewan McGregor. Also with the Amazon process at least you can sleep at night knowing you got your story “out there” where it can live or die based on its own merits and not whether it fits some corporate mandate at one particular moment in time. (“We need more shows that appeal to high earning males age 24-42.”) So there’s a meritocratic element that’s unique.

SS: And what was the process of you selling your script to Amazon?  How did that happen?

JG: Greg Jacobs and I first met when he directed my spec “Wind Chill” (a spec co-written with my pal Steven Katz.) In addition to being a director Greg is Soderbergh’s longtime producer—in fact he won an Emmy last year for producing “Behind the Candelabra.” For years Greg has been regaling us with funny stories about his summer job as an assistant tennis pro in suburban New Jersey. When Soderbergh started getting involved in TV, he encouraged Greg to develop a show based on his misadventures, and Greg suggested bringing me in to help write it—because I’m a buddy, but also because I could bring some outsider perspective to the material and help transform autobiography into good  drama. We outlined, which is where all the heavy lifting is really done, and then began passing a first draft back and forth until all parties felt it was ready to package with a director. David Gordon Green responded very quickly, and with him attached, we began shopping it.

SS: For the newbies here, can you talk about how the traditional pilot system works, so we can get some context?

JG: Summer is “pitch season.” In June you partner with a like-minded producer to pitch your project to studios, in hopes that one will take a shine to it and take it off the market with some sort of financial deal. At which point your new studio backer takes the lead in shopping the project in order to “set it up” at a network. As with spec scripts, the more competitive the interest in a project, the more likely you can get a more lucrative or desirable outcome. For instance you’ll often read in the trades that a hot project got a “put pilot” commitment from a network, which means that the deal struck carries a hefty penalty that the network must pay if they decide not to order the pilot. And every year there are a handful of direct-to-series orders, where a show’s creator is guaranteed his or her full writing/producing fee for X number of episodes (usually 12, or half of a network season) regardless of whether they are made and aired. Often this occurs when the creatives behind a show are household names, like David Fincher (“House of Cards”) or Soderbergh (“The Knick.”) But occasionally it happens with an unknown, as it did recently with Mickey Fisher and “Extant.”

If you sell a pitch in the summer, you spend the autumn going back and forth with the network, studio, and producers getting notes on the outline. Then around November 1 you finally get the go-ahead to start “writing pages,” with a goal of delivering the best draft you are capable of producing no later than the Christmas holidays when all the network execs jet off to Aspen. You sweat bullets throughout January, and then around February everyone holds their breath and hopes theirs is among the projects ordered to pilot. If you are among the lucky ones you make your pilot in the spring and deliver it in time for the “up fronts” in New York, when the networks begin touting their new shows to advertisers. Then around June you either get a series order, or go back to square one and start over.

The above is only for network development. AMC, HBO, Netflix, Amazon, etc., aren’t tied to the calendar and therefore have no official pitch season. Theirs is more like the “rolling admissions” policy of some universities.

SS: What do you think is the key to not just selling a pilot, but getting it on the air?  Is there a formula for that?

JG: That’s the problem with a lot of network programming. It’s formulaic. (e.g. Legal Thriller; Forensic Procedural, etc.) Which is why so many of the cable shows are eating the Nets’ lunches and stealing their Emmy’s. Not to mention their viewers. And network execs—who are not dumb—realize this, and are trying to develop material that feels more “cable-like.” Darker themes. Anti-heroes. Period pieces.

SS: I’m curious about the financials for television.  How much does a writer a) get paid for selling a pilot, b) get paid for being staffed on a high-rated show (Scandal) and c) get paid for a smaller show (like, say, Teen Wolf).

JG: There are guild minimums for every format and length of show—that’s the baseline. How much more you make for writing a pilot depends on (a) your quote (if you’ve sold pitches or been hired to write teleplays in the past), and/or (b) how much competition there is among interested buyers. A ballpark number I’ll throw out there for, say, an hour long network drama (because Guild rates differ depending on whether a show is network or cable) that isn’t subject to a bidding war could be around $90,000, give or take. This is called the “guarantee,” meaning the studio guarantees to pay you this much for your writing services provided the project is “set up” at a network, and regardless of whether the script is ever ordered to pilot. Once you get a pilot order, additional fees kick in—perhaps a production bonus, definitely some sort of producing fee. Remember in TV the writer-creator is also typically a producer. Often an Executive Producer (the highest position in TV credits.)

I’ve never been on a writing staff so it’s more difficult for me to give sample numbers. But back in the 90s I was invited to audition for the writing staff of one of the later seasons of “The X-Files,” and I recall being offered a contract that guaranteed me a certain amount per week for six weeks, after which the producers had the option of extending my employment for the rest of the season. And I think at the time I did the math and figured out I would have made about $125,000 if they kept me around for a full season. Which isn’t chump change by any stretch—especially if you are single, with no dependents, as I was at the time. But since I was only guaranteed six weeks of employment I concluded that it wasn’t worth uprooting and relocating to Los Angeles. So I politely declined. And heard that the producers—who were riding pretty high in the ratings then—were flabbergasted and outraged.

SS: If you’re a young writer who wants to get into TV, in your opinion, what’s the best route to take?

JG: As with features writing, there’s really no one best route—many roads lead to Rome. Take my friend Ben Cavell. He went to Hollywood with one spec script in hand (a cop show set in 19th century Boston, and this was back before period pieces were in vogue) and a single well-reviewed short story collection, and managed to land an entry level staff job writing on “Justified.”

My point is, talent and perseverance will pave just about any path you choose into this industry.

That said, writing a spec pilot of an original idea—as opposed to a spec episode of a show already on the air—seems like the best way to get noticed. Even if the show itself isn’t commercial or viable, the fact that you chose the tougher challenge of world-building shows people that you have moxy.

SS: And how do you get on to a writing staff?  I have a talented writer friend who wants to get on a staff and learn but he has no idea where to even start.

JG: There’s a good piece on this subject in Mike Sack’s recently published book “Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations With Today’s Top Comedy Writers.” It happens to be by my TV agent Joel Begleiter, who talks about the pros and cons of writing an original versus a spec episode. He also gives some good advice on how to get the attention of guys like him, at big agencies like UTA.

I’ve heard that there are junior positions on writing staffs where you are called something like “story editor” or “writer’s assistant” or somesuch, where you can learn the business and eventually graduate to full-fledged Writer. But I’m not sure what qualifications you’d need to get those jobs. But a snappy spec pilot couldn’t hurt!

SS: What is the TV world looking for right now?  Does it vary because there are so many outlets?  Or is there a particular type of show that’s hot (aka – a show like Breaking Bad)?

JG: At present I’m hearing that the market is oversaturated with procedurals, that “light hour longs dramas” (think “Desperate Housewives”) are out of vogue, and that “noisy” dramas—the higher concept the better—are what execs are hungry for.

Also, genre is white hot. Nine out of ten genre shows are performing well, and in the case of  “Game of Thrones” and “Walking Dead”—spectacularly so. (“‘Walking Dead’ is doing ‘ER’-in-the-’90s numbers internationally,” an exec gushed to me recently). Of course writers have to be smart—it makes no sense to pitch a vampire show when there are so many already on the air. And I would think it would be hard to do a high fantasy in the long shadow of the juggernaut “GoT” unless it’s based on a piece of fancy IP (Intellectual Property in Hollywood-speak) like Terry Brooks’ Shannara series or Anne McCaffery’s Dragonriders of Pern sequence.

SS: You’ve written features as well.  Is that a world you’re still interested in?  Or are the opportunities so good in TV right now that it’s not even worth it?

JG: I remain very interested in features and in fact Greg Jacobs and I have a film adaptation of Castle Freeman’s novel “Go With Me” that starts shooting in November. The screenplay form is so difficult to crack, and so satisfying when done well, that it presents an irresistible challenge I don’t think I’ll ever entirely master or get tired of tackling.

Writing for TV scratches a different creative itch and presents a different set of challenges—plotting out season-long story arcs, stage-managing a large cast of characters, evoking the passage of time, etc. Also, as you might guess, the sheer volume of writing a typical network requires to fill its schedule means there are that many more job opportunities for the working writer trying to maintain his WGA health coverage! And besides the networks there are countless cable channels, premium channels, subscription services like Netflix and Amazon and Hulu, websites like Funny or Die and emerging platforms like Xbox TV—all of which are hungry for content.

From an economic standpoint also TV is a sector of “showbusiness” that far outstrips boxoffice earnings. In my friend Lynda Obst’s book “Sleepless in Hollywood” (an essential state-of-the-industry book that should come shrink-wrapped with every newly issued WGA card) she points out that TV contributes nearly ten times more revenue to a studio’s bottom line than do feature films.

It reminds me of a time I was on the Fox lot to see a film exec friend. En route from the parking structure I noticed a huge new building being built across from the historic old Hollywood (and somewhat shabby) film building where I was headed. I asked my film exec friend about the new building and he gave a weary sigh and said, “That’s the new Fox TV building… that ‘The Simpsons’ built.”

SS: Wait, so you’re saying that a movie like The Avengers doesn’t make nearly as much money as, say, Gray’s Anatomy? 

JG: Yeah, it kind of blew my mind too to learn that TV revenue so far outpaces film. Now I’m not sure if that includes ancillary income from things like Avengers lunch boxes and back packs. It might just be box office and DVD / download revenue (on the film side) versus licensing and syndication fees (on the TV side). But according to the numbers Lynda quotes in her book, TV generates ten times the revenue. Crazy. But maybe not when you consider that a hit show like “Walking Dead” is being viewed by something like 50 million people a week, worldwide. Can you imagine how valuable a show like that is in syndication? Not to mention the money that studios make spinning off international versions of hit American shows. “CSI: Moscow.”  “The Office: Brazil.” Keep in mind also that American audiences only go to the movies on average a few times a month. (If that.) Now think about how many hours of TV the average viewer watches per week.

I don’t want to send your aspiring screenwriters scrambling for the exits, or turn them into TV converts. But I think there’s no reason they shouldn’t open themselves to alternate forms of storytelling. That’s a good career move in general. Not to mention a good way to keep yourself creatively engaged over the course of a career. I’d recommend writing novels as well. And graphic novels if you are so inclined. Hell, even videogames if you have the opportunity. It’s all storytelling, and makes you a better rounded storyteller.

Rafael Nadal

SS: And finally, since Red Oaks is about tennis, which do you think is harder?  Winning a point against Rafael Nadal or selling a pilot script?

JG: That’s a tough one! Though I can say facing off against Soderbergh in a notes meeting is equally intimidating.