Ooooh, let the spookiness begin. Halloween Week is upon us, along with its first entry, the horror-comedy, “Grabbers,” which Roger’s been very eager to review. But can I just say something about Halloween first? Because it’s something that’s really been bothering me. Can we all agree that pumpkins are disgusting? You don’t have to look at a pumpkin long to know that it wasn’t meant to be eaten. Yet when Halloween rolls around, all I see at the grocery store are pumpkin muffins, pumpkin bread, pumpkin spice cookies, pumpkin milk. I don’t mean to sound like a 13 year old girl but…Barf! If we weren’t interested in eating pumpkin-flavored food for the other 11 months of the year? We’re not interested in eating it now. Pumpkins weren’t meant to be eaten! There. Rant over. Take it away, Roger.

Genre: Horror, Comedy, Creature Feature
Premise: When an island off the coast of Ireland is invaded by blood-sucking aliens, the heroes discover that getting drunk is the only way to survive.
About: A 2009 Brit List script that ended up in a tug-of-war between many production companies. It’s now optioned by Tracy Brimm and Kate Myers of Forward Films with John Wright as director. They’re the same team responsible for the slasher-comedy, “Tormented”.
Writer: Kevin Lehane. According to his blog, he created a bunch of specs but had trouble getting them read. When they weren’t ignored, they were rejected. But thanks to Danny Stack, a writer for “EastEnders” (among others) and one of the founders of The Red Planet Prize, Lehane’s luck changed and the same scripts that were initially rejected or ignored were suddenly coming back with strong, positive responses. “Grabbers”, which had sat on his desk for a year, was suddenly in a tug-of-war.

“Tremors” is a movie that has one of my favorite lines of dialogue ever, spoken by mercenary homemaker, Heather Gummer (a fantastic name), played by Reba McEntire. “You didn’t get penetration even with the elephant gun!” Somehow, Reba delivers her line with the requisite mixture of incredulity, innuendo, and cornpone charm.

I’m not sure if there’s a line as good as that one in the Irish version of “Tremors”, called “Grabbers”, but that’s not to say that this Brit List script isn’t a fun ride with its own share of gleeful moments of horror-comedy. Proudly wearing its creature feature, B movie, drive-in pedigree on its Lovecraftian tentacles, “Grabbers” is a breezy, bloody read that had me grinning like a drunken horror aficionado all the way through.

I like the way this script opens. We’re at sea on a lonely fishing tug called The Merry Widow when an arc of light streaks across the sky and crashes into the ocean, catching the attention of the crew. It’s a simple, evocative image that establishes our mysterious alien menace, which, of course, proceeds to pull our trio of fisherman overboard. There’s something eerie about the image of an extraterrestrial threat dwelling in Earth’s own uncharted aquatic deep.

And we’re quickly introduced to our sullen hero, Ciaran O’Shea, a Garda gone to drink on the enchanting Erin Island. My scant knowledge of the Garda is limited to Ken Bruen novels, but in good grace to us readers on the other side of the Atlantic, Mr. Lehane explains that “An Garda Siochana” are the unarmed Irish police force. O’Shea is zombie-shuffling through life and duty in an alcoholic haze, and Erin Island, with all its non-existent crimes and vacationing families, is the perfect environment for a low-achieving, apathetic Garda.

Sergeant Kenifick is skeptical about leaving O’Shea to run administrative duties alone for two weeks, so he’s saddled him with Lisa Nolan, a by-the-books, overachieving workaholic from Dublin who will fill in and keep a watchful eye on O’Shea while the Sarge is on leave. Of course, there’s some friction between the two opposite personalities and, entertainingly, budding sexual tension.

The duo meet up with the resident physician, Dr. Gleeson, and Adam Smith, a marine ecologist, who have discovered a pod of beached whales that bare some distinctive wounds.

It looks like they’ve been whipped with a huge cat-o-nine tails.

O’Shea takes charge and cashes in a favor with a contractor, Declan Cooney, and soon Cooney and his construction crew are tasked with the disposal of the beached whales. In true creature feature fashion, we discover many dark grey eggs deposited in the sand nearby. At this point, something crawls out of the ocean and quite possibly does something horrible to Cooney and his crew.

Meanwhile, a fisherman named Paddy Barrett (quite possibly my favorite character) captures what might be a sea creature in a lobster trap, which he promptly takes home and deposits in his bathtub, with disastrous results. In a horrifying sequence that made me both squirm and laugh maniacally, Paddy fights the spidery, tentacled grabber whilst completely pissed on homemade potcheen (an Irish moonshine).

The little fucker is pancaked to the ceiling of his bathroom and it shoots its barbed tongue at him, and it reminded me of Ripley fighting off a face-hugger in one of the Alien movies. Except this is more Sam Raimi-ish, but maybe not so cartoonish and Three Stooges-like (although in the next scene, there’s a direct reference to the Evil Dead when a corpse is used like a marionette doll). There’s a wicked Irish wit to the humor that I really dig, which is laced throughout the story.

Lehane does a good job setting up Erin Island and introducing all of the important players that inhabit island. It’s an interesting community sketched well, and it’s balanced with some tautly structured scare sequences. In a way, very Stephen King-ish, and I like that.

By the end of the first act, there’s a pretty significant body count for O’Shea and Nolan to tend to and investigate, and when Paddy comes to O’Shea with proof of his ordeal (which he somehow survived), this monster movie is off and running.

I think the true grisly delight of this tale is when it injects a killer concept into the tried and true monster movie form (monster arrives, monster kills people, heroes dissect monster, heroes figure out how to beat monster, heroes prepare for final showdown with monster). It’s a fucking great idea, and maybe its genesis owes fealty to Jackie Chan and “Drunken Master”, but whatever. It’s fantastic and funny and really brings the story to life.

Through an experiment that’s reminiscent of John Carpenter’s “The Thing”, our heroes learn that Paddy only survived his alien encounter because of the blood alcohol level in his bloodstream, which poisoned the vampiric monstrosity.

Basically? If our heroes don’t want to be monster food, they have to maintain a blood alcohol level of Point Two.

Which doesn’t fare will for Miss Nolan, as she doesn’t drink, nor has she ever been drunk in her life. And her character is milked for comedic and dramatic effect, in both her drunken exclamations and actions. She’s really a great counterpoint to O’Shea, and this is somewhat of a redemption story for him. I don’t want to give away his back story, but it’s something that’s only mentioned in a line or two of dialogue and it’s very effective (a true economy of words). It reminded me of this quote, “Strong reasons make for strong actions.” It’s something dramatists learn early on, courtesy of Shakespeare.

Without telling you How or Why, the humungous male grabber sets its sights on O’Shea for wholly amorous and lustful intentions. There’s some nice monster mayhem in the 3rd act, when our heroes barricade themselves and their loved ones in a pub and endure a siege. It’s like something out of a George Grosz nightmare as our heroes drunkenly fight off all the egg hatchlings and the (in heat) Shoggoth-like Big Daddy grabber.

I don’t think “Grabbers” quite transcends its genre roots to gain an impressive rating, but then again, it doesn’t need to. It’ll be a great movie, anyways. For you horror hounds out there, this script just might be the crown jewel of this year’s Brit List.

In all honesty, this is a script I wish I’d written. Not only is the logline comedic horror gold, but I find the script is really growing on me. An inspired, tight, and clever spec that clocks in at under 100 pages. Not only can I wait to see the movie, I can’t wait to own it on Blu-ray right next to my copies of “Shaun of the Dead”, “Tremors”, “The Thing”, and “Evil Dead 2”.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] barely kept my interest
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: That the Irish spell tires “tyres”. And that when it comes to writing monsters, it’s more effective to gently offer the right details than go overboard with a painstaking description. Remember, it’s more powerful to simply suggest what a monster or creature or alien looks like with a few key words or phrases. Let the reader create their own image of what it looks like in their head, because that’s usually what’s going to be scarier, anyways. As Stephen King says, writing is telepathy. Lay down the general gist, let the reader do the heavy lifting.

Let it be known: Roger does not like everything! And he proves that today. I can’t say I know much about this project, but I know that when Jan De Bont is attached to anything, that project is in trouble. Let’s go back a decade shall we? Do you remember The Haunting? A 100 million dollar scary movie that managed to not be scary…in any capacity? Do you remember Speed 2? Jan De Bont actually wrote the sequel to a movie called “Speed” and set it…ON A CRUISE SHIP. Everyone who signed up for that premise deserves what they got, but De Bont’s the one who wrote it. So when I hear his name associated with this project, I’m not surprised it never made it in front of the cameras. De Bont’s last directorial effort was 2003’s Lara Croft sequel, “The Cradle of Life.” Can’t say I saw that one. Maybe it was great.

For those of you curious about the logline contest, I’ll be making the official official announcement next Monday. So warm those loglines up people. I will say that there’s been a major change. You will only be allowed to submit 1 logline. And that must represent a script that’s already been written, as I’d like to speed up the timeframe of the contest considerably. If you’re wondering how to write a logline, here’s a good place to start. But before you go anywhere, read Roger’s review of “Ghost Riders In The Sky.”

Genre: Western, Science Fiction
Premise: As the U.S. military wars against the Apache, two Civil War veterans set out to help a woman find her missing anthropologist father. Everyone gets more than they bargained for when the Apache make contact with a race of creatures that might be from another planet.
About: In 1998, Warner Brothers postponed one of the many iterations of “Superman” and pulled the plug on the Protosevich-scripted and the Arnold Schwarzenegger-leading, “I am Legend”. Over at Fox, they decided to sideline an event pic of their own, an alien western helmed by Jan de Bont called “Ghost Riders in the Sky”. With a budget ballooning over $100 million and purported script concerns, Fox ultimately killed the project. However, everyone knows that the project’s death was directly tied to the disastrous box office of Speed 2, De Bont’s previous effort. Ironically, this was all Fox’s doing, as they were so desperate to set up a summer tentpole project, they announced Speed 2 without even an idea in place. De Bont spitballed a bunch of his ideas with his people, including an idea that would’ve focused on volcano bombing, but ultimately settled on a cruise ship, because he had so much fun D.P.’ing on Hunt For Red October. Keanu saw that idea and bolted. The only reason Bullock signed on was because she owed her career to De Bont. It is said that nobody at De Bont’s company understood what he saw in “Ghost Riders In The Sky,” a script that was plucked out of the slush pile by an intern.
Writer: Draft by W.D. Richter; Rewrite by Mark Protosevich

One of my first movie memories is of my dad showing me “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension” (another is of him renting “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen”; I have a cool dad), so I have much fondness for the name W.D. Richter. As screenwriters and lovers of movies, how can anyone not have appreciation for a writer whose oeuvre includes John Carpenter’s “Big Trouble in Little China” and Philip Kaufman’s “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”?

Admittedly, the only flick I’ve seen that has Mark Protosevich’s name attached is “The Cell”, which I like. I have not read his scripts for “I am Legend” or “Thor”, and rather than proffer an uninformed opinion, I’ll just say, “I hear good things about them”.

Which brings us to a script, a proposed sci-fi western that has both of these dude’s names on the cover. For some reason, Samuel L. Jackson’s name is on the cover as well (plastered in ominous fat font, no less), yet I’m hard-pressed to guess which character he might have played.

Isn’t “Ghost Riders in the Sky” the name of a legendary country song?

So it is. A scared-straight song about a cowboy who has a haunting vision of The Devil’s herd: red-eyed, steel-hooved cattle thundering across the sky.

In our script there’s a red-eyed motif and a copious use of thunder and lightning (and ice, for that matter), but our beasties ain’t flying cattle. They’re more of the flying serpent variety.

Ever wonder where the inspiration for the Aztec god, Quetzalcoatl, came from? According to this script, it comes from the “chilling, gorgeous images of god-like bird humans” who serve as the eponymous aliens to our scared cowboys.

Who are our cowboys?

That would be Buck and Reb, Gettysburg veterans who abandon the railroad crews to venture to California, with the hope of making it big in the citrus industry.

Easily the best part about this script, Buck and Reb are a Union and Confederate screwball duo who aren’t above robbing trains in inventive fashion. Like when they try to use the corpse of a cow to stop a train, only to find that something else entirely has killed everyone on board and stripped the corpses and the locomotive of metal.

They have a lot of funny dialogue in an otherwise frustrating and messy script.

BARTENDER
Might say so. Betcha fifty cents can’t tell me what this is.

Out from under the bar…set down in front of Reb and Buck. A dark crusty object about a foot in length, sweet potato in shape.

REB
Sorry. Not a gamblin’ man.

BUCK
(however)
You’re on. It’s a yucca root. Been roasted in hot coals for…

REB
Buck…

BUCK
Fifty cents, Reb.
(back at the bartender)
…about five hours I’m guessin’. Makes for damn fine eatin’.

Buck picks it up, to smell it. He’s starved.

BARTENDER
You lose. It’s Luke Smith. Poor bastard was standin’ guard on the rail line last night when the Devil roared through.

This screwball duo becomes a screwball trio when they hook up with Alice Butterworth, the dainty daughter of an English anthropologist who disappeared while researching a mysterious Native American myth (our bird-god Quetzalcoatl thingies, which will later be referred to as ‘Sky Knives’) near the town of Mesa Gulch.

She’s searching for her aforementioned father, possessing one of his last letters sent from the Mesa Gulch post office. In an eyebrow-raising aside, she gets drunk with our clumsy cowboy lotharios after she shoots a man dead when he tries to rape her. The binge-drinking ends the next morning when all three of our players wake up in the same bed.

Yep, a risqué screwball ménage a trois.

What’s the big picture?

Let’s backtrack to the first 10 pages of the script. It’s an interesting break from form, where instead of being introduced to the heroes of the piece, we get an extended action sequence that establishes the historical climate and the alien menace.

A group of thirty Calvary soldiers trap the notorious Indian gunslinger, Wild Gun, and his band of Apaches in a box canyon. The Apache medicine man, Hawk Dreamer, works some of his juju and it’s not long before something sentient swoops out of the sky and comes to their aid.

The Calvary troop is massacred by streaks of gold light and fireballs that descend out of the sky, leaving behind frozen corpses and scorched earth. Trust me, it’s as weird as it sounds.

Anyways, defying the old showbiz adage, the Mesa Gulch Massacre is not good publicity for Philander W. Beckwith, powerful railway magnate obsessed with manifest destiny. This captain of industry is so powerful he even gets into a public screaming match with the President of The United States, Ulysses S. Grant.

For a character that only has one scene, Philander sure has a lot of sway over our nation’s leader. “Well, then do something about reality. Because if you don’t, I will,” he tells The Hero of Appomattox.

Not to worry, the President is already on it. “I have cut loose a force of nature. I have summoned The Eradicator.”

What pray-tell is The Eradicator?

Not what, but whom. The Eradicator is no other than Colonel Harry Loveless Knowland, a scripture-quoting bounty hunter tasked with assassinating Wild Gun and any other Apache he and his mercenary army run across.

Not only is he a hypocrite, dickhead, and cold-hearted killer, he also has his eyes set on the presidency.

Things get dicey when Alice offers Reb and Buck one hundred dollars each to accompany her to Thunder Mesa, where she hopes to find the “Cave of Stars” and her father. Both cowboys (being broke and in love) are tempted by the offer, but ultimately decide they don’t want to get scalped by Apaches.

So they opt to rob the Mesa Gulch bank instead.

Only problem is, The Eradicator shows up for reasons I still don’t understand (perhaps he wants to rob the bank, too) and Reb pisses him off royally by escaping his clutches. Shenanigans ensue as Buck and Alice pretend to be a married couple and are taken under the wing of the Colonel and his men.

And for muddled reasons we’re all rollicking towards Thunder Mesa and the grand finale. There’s a stage-coach chase and another appearance by the Sky Knives, who save our heroes and whisk Alice away to the “Cave of Stars”. Reb surrenders to the Colonel so he can help Buck rescue Alice, as The Eradicator is hell-bent on getting to Thunder Mesa so he can kill Wild Gun.

The ruse is up when Buck helps Reb escape and the third-act showdown begins as The Eradicator receives back-up from the U.S. military to wipe out the Apache stronghold.

There’s a lot of The Weird (but more importantly, Confusion) as Alice discovers what happened to her father and witnesses the awe and wonder of the alien creatures. Which falls flat, because it’s opaque and I couldn’t figure out what the fuck was going on.

But I’ll try. Apparently her father is in some kind of trance, or perhaps he’s just frozen in time within the Cave of Stars, I can’t tell.

But inside the “concave bowl” within a mountain, she discovers that these golden serpent thingies are melting metal and mounds of gold coins and are feeding the molten liquid to their young. There’s also lightning shooting out of a hexagonal hole in the center of this milieu.

Yeah, don’t ask me, I only read the thing.

So, there’s a big battle, which for some reason is written in ALL CAPS, and the Sky Knives make a big show of killing some people but sparing others, and then their space ship flies out of the mountain and they leave planet Earth, presumably to teach The Eradicator (and you, dear reader), that violence is bad.

Hrrmph.

Why the long face, Roger?

This script has all the bizarro ingredients to create a feast that appeals to my oddball palette, but as a whole, it’s a savorless mess that leaves behind a disorderly kitchen with way too many dirty dishes.

It’s a screenplay that’s plagued with unclear storytelling. Just now, as I was trying to recap the plot for you guys, I felt like a mortician trying to make sense of a corpse mangled beyond all recognition.

There are a lot of prose passages in this thing. Which, personally, I don’t mind in a screenplay. I can read something by Walon Green, William Goldman, or hell, even Frank Darabont’s Indy script and feel like I’m rewarded for my patience. Nothing wrong with lots of words as long as they are good words strung coherently together.

But I do mind when the sentences are in ALL CAPS, and instead of periods there are copious amounts of ellipsis and comma splices. I don’t know, maybe that’s just an aesthetic preference, but my eyeballs had a fuck-all time wading through the long blocks of description and action. So much so that at times I lost all sense of narrative spatial awareness. I was constantly back-tracking trying to figure out what was happening on stage (or on the movie screen in my head).

I hate to say it, but there was some sloppy writing and use of language in this script.

Seems like whichever exec made the hard decision to pull the plug on this $100 million dollar turkey was struck by a sobering dose of wisdom and saved Fox some major face.

[x] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] barely kept my interest
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Economy of words, people. Economy of words. Are your lines of action/prose passages clunky? Do you trip over them or run out of breath while trying to read them aloud? If the answer is ‘Yes’, then you might want to experiment with brevity. I’m all for dense and compelling lines of action, but I think there’s something to be said for the 3-sentence rule. If anything, if you limit your lines of action and description to 3 sentences, you’ll at least simulate a breezy read.

Genre: Drama
Premise: We chronicle the infamous career-long battle between screen legends Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, specifically on the set of the only film they ever made together, “Whatever Happened To Baby Jane.”
About: I believe this script is optioned but has not been purchased. The details are a little sketchy. What I can tell you is it came highly recommended from a trusted source. The main film it chronicles, “Whatever Happened To Baby Jane,” was made in 1962 for 980 thousand dollars.
Writers: Jaffe Cohen & Michael Zam

Can somebody say, “Cat Fight?” Rrrreow. I’m going to be honest with you, I’d never seen a Joan Crawford or a Bette Davis film until yesterday. In fact, my cinema I.Q. goes down about a hundred points when discussing anything before 1960. I love Jimmy Stewart. Citizen Kane is rad. Hitchcock rocks. But outside of a few other highlights, it’s all a bunch of black and white over-glamorized over-acted close-ups. I know, I know. The Golden Era of Film and blah blah blah. It’s just really hard for me to get into that time. That’s a long way of saying I knew very little about Joan Crawford and Bette Davis before reading this script. And I definitely didn’t know anything about this lifelong rivalry/feud of theirs. So before I read it I did a little research into the women that pioneered the word “diva” and came away convinced that both of them were completely fucking nuts.

I’m basing this off the writers’ descriptions but for the uninitiated, *on-screen* Joan Crawford was basically the hottest movie star on the planet (Megan Fox type?) and *on-screen* Bette Davis was basically the best actress on the planet (a kind of Kate Winslet?) But we’re not meeting these actresses in their prime. No no. We’re meeting them after all the bright lights and adoring fans have disappeared. They’re in their 50s now, still respected but too old to be headlining anything.

Joan approaches auteur director of his time, Robert Aldrich, with a book she wants to turn into a movie called, “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” You might recognize Aldrich’s name. He was the director of The Dirty Dozen. But see that movie was still another five years away. At this point, he had about as much clout as Pauly Shore in getting his next movie made. Anyway, “Baby Jane” seemed like a good bet as it was a contained dark thriller, and another contained dark thriller had just opened in the U.S.. You might remember it. It was called “Psycho” (How appropriate, right?). The issue was a simple but daunting one. The movie centered entirely around two women in their 50s, and Joan wanted Bette Davis to play opposite her. Everybody knew these two detested each other but the reality was, they had become a couple of old movie stars cashing in on their former glory. But the press and media attention surrounding them working together would be unmatched – potentially catapulting them back into superstardom, particularly if the movie delivered. As reluctant as Bette was at first, she too recognized the opportunity here, and signed up.

Now here’s where things get funny. The synopsis of the film reads, “Two aging film actresses live as virtual recluses in an old Hollywood mansion. Jane Hudson (Bette Davis), a successful child star, cares for her crippled sister Blanche (Crawford), who’s career in later years eclipsed that of Jane. Now the two live together, their relationship affected by simmering subconscious thoughts of mutual envy, hate and revenge.” Not only were they playing opposite each other, they were playing opposite each other in roles that perfectly fit their real life personas! It would be like putting Bruce Willis in a Michael Bay movie about an actor and director who hated each other (then again it seems like everyone hates Bruce Willis these days).

As soon as production began, the claws came out. Joan gave all the crew members gifts so they’d treat her better than Bette. Bette way overdid her make-up and costume to make sure she upstaged Joan. The two pouted, threw fits, talked behind each others’ backs to the media. And poor Aldrich had to endure it all, spending the majority of his time playing babysitter to these alcoholic chimney smoking lunatics rather than directing (I hear those eyebrows alone are a direct result of helming “Baby Jane”). And yet because there was so much real life going on behind each performance, the dailies came back celluloid gold.

To be honest though, I was a little disappointed with this portion of the screenplay because my research led me to believe this was the on-set battle to end all on-set battles. Yet the actual blows seemed minor by today’s standards. For example, in a scene where Bette serves Joan a dead rat, Bette switches out the rubber one with a real one. Or later, Joan replaces Bette’s chocolates with packed meat. Packed meat?? I thought these two hated each other. What about poison?? Then there was a scene where Bette, who had a bad back, had to pick up Joan, so Joan added a belt of heavy weights underneath her clothes to make herself extra heavy. Is it just me or are these the kinds of hijinks you might expect on an episode of I Love Lucy? When I compare them to what went down with someone like Orson Welles, who was basically blacklisted out of Hollywood for upsetting William Randolph Hearst…it just didn’t feel like that all-out war I was hoping for.

Luckily, Best Actress wasn’t just about “Baby Jane.” It was about what happened afterwards when Bette Davis was a shoe-in for an academy award then lost because Crawford called all of Hollywood and told them not to vote for her. It’s about these desperate actresses so terrified of being left behind, that a year later after each had endured another bomb, they actually worked together again (in a movie Crawford was later fired from), choosing pure misery if it gave them even an inkling of a chance to hold onto that spotlight for a little longer. And it’s about these two kooky human beings developing a strange bond and respect for each other, despite all that happened between them.

Best Actress was fun. It taught me about a piece of history I knew nothing about and it did so in an entertaining way. The strength here is obviously these two titans, their obsession with fame, and what it brings out in them. I actually realized after finishing the script that its structure was quite loose. Yet it works because we were so obsessed with these insanely complicated characters. As far as its faults, there are a few. I did wish their on-set war was a bit more extreme. Audiences these days aren’t going to think much of an actress trying to throw out another actresses’ back. You might be stuck with history here, but if there’s any way to make these things more menacing, more intense, I believe the script will benefit from it. But other than that, Best Actress was a nice change of pace from all the thrillers, comedies, and action flicks I’ve been reading of late. Check it out if you’re in any way curious. Then do what I did and go rent “All About Eve” and “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” Watching each is a riot once you have some background on the two.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] barely kept my interest
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Despite its loose structure, Best Actress works. Why? Simple. It goes back to the most basic element of drama: conflict. You have two people who hate each other. That simple conflict drives the entire movie. Now conflict comes in many forms and you don’t want to have two people at each others’ throats for every movie. But if it fits, that intensity, that energy, can add a surprising amount of drama to your story.

Genre: Dark Comedy
Premise: A sex-addicted former car magnate tries to put his life back together.
About: Solitary Man stars Michael Douglas, Mary-Louise Parker, Susan Sarandon, Jenna Fischer, Danny DeVito, Jesse Eisenberg, and is directed by David Levien & Brian Koppelman. The sex-addicted character of Ben is one that Douglas understands well as he was diagnosed with sex addiction back in 1990 (take that you copycatter David Duchovny). The film was produced by Paul Schiff and Steven Soderbergh.
Writer: Brian Koppelman

As the Tornonto Film Festival gears up for its return, a lot of future indie darlings are prepping and hoping to get their name out there with a great screening. Festivals are like Grand Slam tournaments for indie projects (tennis reference) and they know that a good showing can be the difference between a wide indie release and a debut on your local video store shelf. Festival titans like Werner Herzog, Alejandro Amenabar, Lars Von Trier, and Terry Gilliam will be vying for your indie hearts and trying to generate buzz. But one movie that no one seems to be talking about is Solitary Man, the much less publicized starring comeback of Michael Douglas (he’ll also be starring in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street sequel). Well, if the script is any indication, this is a movie that should not only be on everybody’s radar, but could nab Douglas an Oscar nod if he takes advantage of what’s on the page.

Ben may be 60 years old, but he doesn’t act a day over 30. Everything he does, from dying his hair to the way he dresses, represents a man desperately trying to hold onto his youth. Back in the day, Ben was a shark. The guy owned one of the biggest car dealerships in New Jersey and was such a high roller, even the mayor knew who he was. But greed and carelessness resulted in some sketchy financial practices and Ben lost it all. It’s been some years now and Ben’s running out of his ‘fuck you’ money. He needs to make something happen fast or this “everything’s fine” façade he’s put up will fall away faster than a Cameron Crowe script review.

Which explains why he’s with Jordan, a 40 year-old divorcee who’s hot enough to land a role on Desperate Housewives. But Ben has no interest in Jordan. Ben has no interest in any relationships. It so happens that Jordan’s ex-husband runs in some high-class circles and Ben needs funding for his brand new car dealership – the business that’s going to put him back in the game. Ben slyly convinces Jordan to set up a meeting between the two so he can do what he does best: Sell.

Ben is not thrilled then when Jordan tells him that as long as he’s going up that way, he can take her daughter Allyson with him and introduce her to the Dean of the nearby college she wants to attend. Since it’s Ben’s Alma Mater, he can put in a good word for her. Neither Ben or Allyson is hip to this idea *at all*. Allyson is quite the bitch and it so happens she’s actually caught Ben cheating on her mom. Not that she cares. She hates Ben. But she hates her mom even more. The two actually agree to fake the trip and lie to the mom afterwards. But at the last second Ben grows a conscience and decides to do the right thing.

Once at the school, Ben both watches over and tries to stay out of the way of Allyson, as she seeks out one of those memorable self-destructive college visit nights (come on, we’ve all been there). In the process he meets uber-nerd Daniel (played by Jesse Eisenberg) and teaches him how to use car salesman tricks to talk women into sleeping with him. The two actually develop a bit of a friendship, and Ben watches proudly as Daniel emerges from his shell. Later at a bar, he spots Allyson talking to some douchebag, goes to save her, and the two actually find that they have more in common than they’d like to admit. One thing leads to another and before we know it the two are back at the hotel doing all sorts of self-destructive things.

Yes, Ben just slept with his girlfriend’s daughter. Have you stopped reading yet?

Here’s the thing. This doesn’t play out the way you think it will. At first glance it seems like Ben is the predator. But the next morning, we realize that he was actually the prey. For the first time in his life *he’s* been fucked. In a little karmic justice, Ben desperately tries to court Allyson, only to be fed a line he’s fed a lifetime of women: “Last night was fun. But that’s all it was.” Once home, Ben continues to desperately court Allyson. She realizes the only way to get him off her back is to do the unthinkable: She tells her mother she slept with him.

Bye bye car dealership!!!

And pretty much bye bye everything else. Ben’s life comes crashing down. He loses the financing. He loses his home. He’s forced to beg his ex-wife for money. He has no friends to turn to because he’s burned every bridge he’s crossed – usually for a one night stand. And finally, here, this man, clinging to the last rung of respectability, doesn’t have anywhere to turn.

Ben is a sad sad character. You actually wince while reading him. Every scene is an exercise in saying, “No. No. Don’t do it!” And then he does. There’s a scene late in the movie, after Ben has helped Daniel land a beautiful girl who he ends up falling in love with. And they’re all hanging out at the bar and Daniel goes to the bathroom and it’s just Ben and the girlfriend. And you close your eyes and say, “Please. Please don’t do it.” But when you open them, there he is, asking her if she’s really satisfied with Daniel. Telling her that all he wants is one night. Daniel will never know. It’s sad and it’s disgusting and yet it’s incredibly compelling.

You see, despite it all, we’re rooting for Ben. He’s like Darth Vadar. We want him to change. We want him to see the light because somewhere deep inside him, we know there’s good. There’s a great final scene where he actually gets this opportunity. On one side is the hope of an honest life, and on the other, the mistakes that define his past. It’s a clever little moment with an ending that brought a smile to my face.

But hey, I’m not going to pretend like this is for everyone. Women, in particular, will probably find this character unbearable. But we’ve all known a Ben, maybe even have been him for awhile, and for that reason it’s a fascinating character study. Can’t wait to see what the reaction to this is coming out of the festival.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] barely kept my interest
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: When you have this repulsive of a character, you need to give us something so we can root for him. If he’s 100% bad, we’ll hate the guy. Koppleman achieves this by giving Ben a grandson who he loves more than the world. In the scenes where the two are together, they get along so well and Ben is so happy to be with him, it allows us to see that good side. It helps us sympathize and gives us hope that he can become a better person.

Genre: Period Romance
Premise: Set (I think) in early 20th Century Paris, a penniless journalist worms his way into the city’s upper crust, seducing all the ladies in his path.
About: Robert Pattinson is in it. What more do you need to know?
Writer: Rachel Bennette (based off the short story by Guy de Maupassant)

Oh R_Patz. Where art thou R_Patz? What the *hell* are you doing R_Patz?? Did you even read the script you signed up for? No you didn’t, did you. You so did not read it. But you were interested in making this movie R_Patz weren’t you? Yes you were. You were interested in making this movie because the coverage said you’d be spending the majority of the 120 minutes banging three of the hottest actresses in Hollywood. Yes you were R_Patz. Don’t you lie to me Mr. Sharp Fangs. We both know the truth. Because here you were Mr. Twilight Vampire Man thinking you would get the pick of the litter. Three sultry celebrities you could take back to your coffin every night after filming. Real sex after fake sex. Menage et quatro. Be honest with me R_Patz. That’s why you signed up for this movie, isn’t it?

Well because you didn’t read the script, let me break it down for you. Your character, Georges, is a bit of a low life. He’s slumming it up in Paris circa sometime-a-long-time ago (the author chose not to disclose the actual year because she hates me). Apparently Georges used to be a soldier, but the only thing he fights now are the gargantuan cockroaches that try to share a blanket with him in his tiny attic apartment.

Low and behold though, wouldn’t it be Georges Porgies luck that he runs into an old friend while trying to spend his last two shillings on a low-class whore. The friend, Charles, has since become very rich, running his own newspaper, The Parisian. Charles offers George a job at the paper, despite the fact that Georges has never written anything in his entire life.

The job and Charles’ friendship allow him a tiny opening into Paris’ upper crust, which he exploits to the nth degree. You see Charles’ and his two best buddies just happen to be married to the three most beautiful women in France. There’s Madeline, Charles’ impeccably smart and beautiful wife. There’s Clotilde, the slutty one. And then there’s Luc Rousset, the innocent Redhead. I think we all know where this is going, right?

Yes, Georges begins to seduce the women one-by-one with varying degrees of success. He starts off with Madeline, who he has the strongest connection to, but she thwarts his advances and claims, “I will never be your lover.” So he moves on to the easiest target, Clotilde, who is so slutified that she actually buys the two a bang bungalow, a special place exclusively for their daily bang. But this is not enough for Georges. He craves excess. And when Charles succumbs to some distant cousin of the Bubonic Plauge (an early version of swine flu maybe?) Georges swoops in and marries his true love, Madeline.

Oh but if it were that easy. After marrying Madeline, he learns that she just isn’t that interested in him. In fact, she pulls out the virtual chastity belt and basically tells him “You do your thing, I’ll do mine.” So what does Georges do in return? What do you think he does! He makes a move on Luc Rousset (who’s a woman – I know, it’s confusing) and starts a dangerous fling in the bang bungalow that Clotilde bought specifically for them. If there was a Renaissance version of Cheaters, this shit would be ripe for the season finale.

Because Georges is a moron, he doesn’t realize that you never cheat on anyone with a girl with red hair! Because when a red hair shows up in your bed, you can’t explain it away. “Uhh, maybe your hair is turning red?” Doesn’t work. I’ve tried it. So Clotilde leaves him. He leaves Luc Rousset. And Madeline won’t even return any of his texts. Is this Bel Ami or The Real Housewives of Atlanta?

Anyway, Georges ends up just as poor and helpless as where he started in the movie, before making a last-second power play and marrying Luc Rousset’s daughter of all people (who up til this point hadn’t even spoken a line). It was such a bizarre turn of events I sent my life size poster of Robert Pattinson to the closet for a time out. Luc Rousset plays the least important role of the three ladies, so what they were trying to say by having Georges marry her daughter is a complete mystery to me.

There were some good moments tucked into Bel Ami. The relationship between R_Patz and Madeline was interesting, as she tended to treat him like he treated everyone else. But outside of that, this felt like a salacious excuse for a bunch of smelly French sex.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] barely kept my interest
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: All joking aside, if you have an unmarketable screenplay, try to target actors who like taking chances. Very few A-list actors would take on a role like this and therefore Bel Ami was destined to wither in screenplay obscurity. But Pattinson seems interested in trying new things (he’s also playing a Cherokee Indian in Unbound Captives) so a script like Bel Ami is something he might actually read. The owners of the material took a chance and it paid off. As writers, you’re always looking to add to the “package” of your screenplay with actors and directors. Even if you have a slow non-mainstream piece, if you’ve done your homework and know a few actors who might be interested in your offbeat independent film (Dicaprio with The Low Dweller, Pattinson with Unbound Captives, Nicolas Cage with Leaving Las Vegas), you might find your script going from unwanted to the hottest screenplay in town. Now getting to those actors is another thing altogether. But it’s another avenue to pursue.

p.s. If you’d like to read about a much better Robert Pattinson project, go here.

EDIT – FURTHER THOUGHTS ON BEL AMI: So I’m kind of getting deluged with e-mails from Twilight fans saying I didn’t give the script a fair chance and that I was snooty in my review. They also want more details. So let me say a couple more things.

The thing I liked best about the script was the character of Madeline. She informs Georges from the beginning of their marriage that he can never question her, and cannot be jealous. She is her own woman and expects to be treated as such. Within weeks Georges begins coming home to suspicious visits by an older man named The Comte. It doesn’t take George long to start suspecting that something’s going on between The Comte and his wife. But a healthy dose of denial convinces him his wife can’t possibly be interested in this old bag of bone. Madeline’s icy response to his desperate attempts at closeness finally level the playing field of a man who’s been playing by his own rules without consequences. As they’re both pretty despicable people, watching their marriage deteriorate is quite fun.

The character of Luc Rousset is also quite funny, as she clings desperately to Georges after even a whisper of an interest from him. As he has sex with her the first time, she screams out, “I love you! I love you! I love you!” over and over again. Man, and I thought my ex was clingy. When his world starts crumbling around him, he literally kicks Luc Rousset to the curb, telling her she makes him sick and that he never even had the slightest interest in her. To add insult to injury, he ends up marrying her daughter.

There’s also an uninteresting sub-plot about the men at The Parisian taking advantage of France’s invasion of Morocco – buying up a lot of businesses so that when the country officially becomes theirs, they’ll all be rich. They purposefully exclude Georges from the club, ensuring that he’ll end up with nothing, which he becomes extremely angry about – despite the fact that he’s been fucking all their wives behind their backs.

A few people have asked me about the dialogue. I have a very simple philosophy about dialogue. Unless we’re talking comedy, the more invisible the dialogue, the better. The only time I notice dialogue is when it’s really atrocious or really over-the-top. I dislike both. When dialogue flows with the story organically, it should feel like real people talking, and in that sense, Bel Ami does a good job. The dialogue was smooth and realistic, even with the extravagances the script sometimes took.

If you have questions, please ask in the comments section instead of e-mailing me as that way, future readers can have their questions answered as well.