“The Sequence what??”

Edit: A couple of people in the comments section have told me that someone (Chris Soth) already uses the term the “mini-movie method,” so I’m changing the terminology back to the original “Sequence Approach.”  

Why is writing a script so difficult? I can answer that easily. Because there are a lot of damn pages to fill! Specifically, it’s that second act that kills everyone. That’s where the enormity of the story hits you, and when a lot of writers realize they don’t have enough to fill up all that space. I mean when you think about it, writing a first act isn’t that hard. You set up your characters, introduce your concept, get the plot rolling. Anybody can do that. But as soon as you get past those first 30 pages, you find it harder and harder to move on. All of a sudden filling up even five pages feels impossible. You just want to get to the damn end so you can resolve the story.

I recently got to thinking, “What’s the problem here? What is it about that vast amount of white space that trips people up so much?” And I realized it’s the lack of structure within that space. It’s a little like wanting to be a doctor and thinking about all that schooling you need. 10 years. 10 YEARS! How the hell are you supposed to get through that?

But when you start breaking it down into years and then semesters and then classes – in other words, into MANAGEABLE CHUNKS – it starts to feel doable. And it’s the same thing with screenwriting. You need to find a way to break those 120 screenplay pages down into manageable chunks.

This brought me back to a screenwriting philosophy I keep gaining more and more respect for as time goes by: “The Sequence Approach.” This is not my creation. I learned about it through Paul Gulino’s book, “The Sequence Approach,” (the only book I link to on the site besides my own) and he learned it because it’s how pre-1960 Hollywood used to format their screenplays. Now I never liked that name: “The Sequence Approach.” It sounds too mathematical for a craft that’s supposed to be creative. But it is what it is so it will have to do!

Now like I said, our big problem here is the fact that when we look at a screenplay as a whole, it’s too big. Even if we break it down into 3 acts, that’s still 50-60 unstructured pages we have to fill up in that second act. It’s too daunting! We need a way to create manageable chunks within that framework, portions small enough that they don’t intimidate us.

The Sequence Approach basically states that instead of writing one giant 110 page story, we write eight 12-15 page smaller stories.  Think about it.  Everyone can write a 15 page short, right?  That’s easy.  And if you can write one 15-page short, you can write eight 15-page shorts.

All you have to do is come up with a movie concept that features a protagonist with a goal, then write 8 mini-scripts with that protagonist (or in some cases, supporting characters) pursuing 8 linked mini-goals. The pursuit of these mini-goals will last 12-15 pages each, and be little mini-scripts in themselves, with their own setup, conflict, and resolution. Let me show you how it works in action.

I thought up a movie idea not long ago that I kinda dig. It’s not great, but it will serve our purposes for this article. Here it is:

TITLE: Trust Fund Dan
GENRE: Comedy
PREMISE: A 40 year old trust fund baby who’s been living off his dead parents’ money for the past 20 years, is informed that an overlooked banking error from 1990 has resulted in the termination of his trust fund. For the first time in his life, he’ll have to get a job and learn to live in the real world.

So before you write your script, you want to lay out all eight of your sequences and write out the objective of your protagonist within each. Each of these eight objectives will drive the story forward until the next sequence arrives. In addition to listing the goal of your character in each sequence, list the purpose of the sequence itself (a general breakdown of where you want it to go) along with any other ideas you may have. So this is how the sequence outline for Trust Fund Dan might look like:

Sequence 1
Goal: Dan tries to put together the ultimate party.
Purpose: Establish that Dan is rich and lives off his trust fund.  The purpose of this sequence is to show how easy Dan’s life is and how out of touch he is with the real world. Sleeping in, getting his next stash of pot, and attending parties are really his only three obligations. Establish, as he calls people and puts together this lavish party, that he’s a moron who’s never worked a day in his life and doesn’t even understand the concept of money. At the end of the sequence, he’ll get the call from his lawyer and learn that all of his money has been taken away.

Sequence 2
Goal: Dan tries to get his money back.
Purpose: Now that it’s gone, Dan desperately tries to figure out what happened and how to get his money back. He goes to the Trust Fund lawyers, the banks, everyone associated with his money, to figure out what happened. But because he’s so stupid and knows nothing about the real world, he fails to understand any of what they’re telling him. But the consensus is clear: He’s broke. He asks his friends for money, but finds out that none of them were his real friends. They were just leeching off him. At the end of the sequence, he doesn’t even have enough money to buy food. He realizes he needs to get a job.

Sequence 3
Goal: Dan tries to get a job.
Purpose: Much like the scenes in Step-Brothers, these scenes will show just how clueless Dan is about “jobs” and how the real world works. Have fun with these scenes. He goes through a montage of job interviews and makes a complete fool out of himself. He finally gets stuck as a part-time janitor at a local community college.

Sequence 4
Goal: To figure a way out of this mess.
Purpose: When Dan realizes just how shitty real work is and how little he gets paid, he starts plotting a way back to his life of luxury and invests in every get-rich quick scheme he can find. From spending his entire month’s pay on scratch-off lottery tickets to starting up sketchy internet businesses that rely exclusively on porn advertising. His scary co-janitor, a former gang-member, even enlists him in a vague business venture that involves something about “credit cards.” He fails at everything because he doesn’t know anything. He also occasionally runs into a very pretty teacher there who he instantly falls in love with.

Sequence 5
Goal: To ask the teacher out (or find a way to spend more time with her).
Purpose: Because Dan has no idea how to manage money, he’s unable to pay rent and is kicked out of his apartment. He is now officially homeless and starts secretly living at the college. In his pursuit of the teacher, he starts hanging out in her lectures and, for the first time, starts to actually learn something. Because he’s also the worst janitor ever, he’s always in danger of being fired. But he eventually convinces the teacher to go out with him on a date (which should be a funny scene, since he won’t be able to pay for it).

Sequence 6
Goal: To get back on his feet.
Purpose: Despite the teacher starting to affect how Dan sees the world (she helps him see the value of hard work), Dan finds out that his little co-venture with his fellow ex-con janitor buddy has panned out! They’re bringing in the dough! Dan quits his janitor job and starts spending money like crazy again, taking the teacher on an extravagant date of the likes he used to experience all the time. Dan’s on top of the world again and he couldn’t be happier. But alas, he has no idea that his “business” involves stealing people’s credits cards, and at the end of the sequence, he’s arrested and thrown in jail. Mortified at what he was doing, the teacher leaves him.

Sequence 7
Goal: To figure himself out.
Purpose: After a short stint in jail, Dan’s mysteriously bailed out. It’s his lawyer, who informs him that he was able to pull off a miracle and retain half the money from the original trust fund, enough for Dan to live comfortably for the rest of his life. Dan should be excited, but he isn’t. For the first time, he wants to know what he really wants out of life. He finds out more about how his parents earned their money, how hard they worked for it, and again that theme of “the value of hard work” is hit upon.

Sequence 8
Goal: Get the girl back.
Purpose: Dan decides that instead of wasting money on a bunch of stupid boring shit, he’s going to invest it in a degree and pursue a real career. So he enrolls at the college he was a janitor at. He enrolls in all of the teacher’s classes, but she ignores and rebuffs all his advances. In the end, he pulls out of all of her classes and focuses on getting a degree. Finally, he’s learned to appreciate the “value of hard work.” By chance, one day after school, he sees her in the parking lot and her car won’t start (Her car not starting will be set up multiple times throughout the script. This will be the big payoff). He smiles. Walks towards her. Cut to black.

So this is obviously a rough and tumble outline of the story. But that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be. It’s a first run-through. The idea is to get your 8 sequences down so you have a game plan in place. As you get started on the script, you’ll add more detail to each sequence, move things around, and add scenes and characters. I might make Dan’s Trust Fund lawyer a bigger character, for example. I might have him befriend a few of the kids at the college and give those characters some arcs of their own. I might make some of these sequence goals more concrete (Number 7, “To figure himself out,” feels a little vague. I’d like to improve upon that). I’d try to introduce the love interest earlier somehow.   All of that will be added as you either write your script or do successive drafts of your outline.

Now it’s not always going to be this simple. Each script is different. Things get tricky when there isn’t a clear goal for a sequence, which is the case, for example, with a lot of romantic comedies. I don’t recall any sequence goals in When Harry Met Sally. But in that case, you’d still divide your script into 8 smaller scripts. You just need to work harder to figure out what each of those smaller stories will focus on. A story is easiest to tell when the main character is trying to achieve something. But since you don’t always have that, you might instead say, “The opening sequence in When Harry Met Sally is about Harry and Sally getting to know each other.” In other words the “goal” is transferred over to you the writer. You write the 15-page sequence where Harry and Sally ride to New York together with a strong emphasis on getting to know each other. The idea here is that by breaking everything down into these manageable chunks, it’ll be easier to create some element of focus for each “chunk,” and therefore you should be able to get through the entire script more easily.

There ya have it, an easy-peasy way to write a script. Try it out. You may be surprised at how simple it is!

Genre: TV Pilot – Cop Procedural
Premise: (from IMDB) The lives of two detectives, Rust Cohle and Martin Hart, become entangled during a 17-year hunt for a serial killer in Louisiana.
About: This was a huge spec pilot that went out that a lot of networks were bidding for, with HBO finally winning. It stars Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson and will premier this Sunday. Creator Nic Pizzolatto is an award-winning novelist and short-story writer. He’s an author of the novel ‘Galveston.’ Originally from Louisiana, he taught literature at several universities, including the University of Chicago, before going into screenwriting in 2010. His only other credits are writing a couple of episodes for, what sounds like, the exact same show, in Fox’s “The Killing.”
Writer: Nic Pizzolatto
Details: 52 pages

I remember when this show first sold. There was a TON of talk about it, the kind of talk usually reserved for some super high-concept spec sale or a new Christopher Nolan movie. I read through the description of the show several times, trying to figure out what the big deal was, but as far as I could tell, it was just another procedural.

I guess it did have Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson involved, two established film stars, and since you don’t usually see that in a TV show, it was worth noting. But I was still trying to figure out why the trade sites were going batshit over this thing. I felt like I was missing something. Uhhhh, so it’s a procedural about detectives trying to catch a killer? Haven’t we, um, seen that before? Well, with the script in hand, it was time to find out what all the fuss was about!

True Detective begins oddly. Former Detective Martin Hart, 56, is being interviewed about a couple of things, his relationship with his old partner, Rustin Cohle, and an old case he was involved in 20 years ago, where a young woman was killed and posed as an angel.

Most of that discussion, strangely enough, centers on Cohle, who appears to be a weirdo to the tenth degree. There are some people on this planet who don’t believe in God. Cohle is the thousand times multiple of that person. He buys and reads dozens of books to help define his belief, how we’re all a bunch of meaningless nobodies floating inside a meaningless construct of time and space. Your typical upbeat stuff!

Anyway, we’re soon interviewing Cohle as well, getting his thoughts on that old case with the dead woman posed as an angel, but more so Hart and Hart’s thoughts about him. An inordinate amount of time in True Detective is spent on Hart’s thoughts on Cohle, and Cohle’s thoughts on Hart’s thoughts on Cohle. Sounds exciting right? Well it isn’t!

While we do eventually begin talking about the most interesting part of the story, the dead girl posed like an angel, the description of her and what they think happened to her is actually quite brief. Instead, the writer decides to make the centerpiece of True Detective a visit Cohle made to Hart’s house for a family dinner. Cohle doesn’t like being around people, so he gets wasted beforehand. We assume this is probably some insight into a huge drinking problem Cohle has or the beginning of some major event that caused a fracture in their friendship, but it’s neither. He just comes over. He’s drunk. And he talks to Hart’s wife and kids. Wow, way to build up something that goes absolutely nowhere!

In actuality, this entire pilot, where nothing happens, is a setup for one line, the final line, the only line in the script that actually gets you excited. Unfortunately, BECAUSE it’s the last line, it gets you excited for an episode to come, not the episode you just watched, where you feel beyond gypped that you just spent an hour of your life watching/reading. (Spoiler) That line is when Rustin Cohle says to the guys interviewing him: “It’s started again, hasn’t it? The killing. Him. And how can that be possible, when we got the bastard in 2000?”

So how is it that a script/show like this can get so much heat, and land on such a quality network like HBO, when its pilot is so subpar? GREAT QUESTION! I’m trying to figure that out myself. But I’d like to venture a guess. Cohle is an interesting character. I mean, I wasn’t interested by him. His bleak depressing persona actually kinda put me off. But his whole extreme philosophy about how life is meaningless along with the crazy attention to detail he has for investigating murders – I can see an actor wanting to play that role. And in writing, that’s really what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to create characters so compelling that actors can’t NOT want to play them. That’s exactly what happened, with suddenly hot Matthew McConaughey coming on. He legitimized the project, which gets a known actor wanting to play opposite him (Harrelson), and all of a sudden everyone’s saying this pilot is genius, when in reality, it’s simply a well-known actor wanting to play a challenging role. If I were the head of HBO and someone came to me with a shitty pilot that Matthew McConaghey was attached to, I’d probably buy it too.

And I hate to use that word – shitty – but come on. The majority of True Detective is people talking about each other! That’s never ever interesting. I think the biggest faux pas the script commits is that it masquerades as something deep, when in reality there’s zero depth. The writing is dense, with thorough descriptions of characters and events (such as the way the dead angel body is posed), giving the illusion that we’re dealing with something profound here. But it’s all a magic act. Description is boring. Remembering old times or people when they were younger is boring. If your story is devoid of conflict or drama, then you don’t have a story. And there is ZERO conflict/drama in True Detective.

The only real thing the script has going for it is the unanswered question of “why the fuck are we interviewing these guys?” I admit, that was the only thing I was looking forward to – the answer to that question. But not because the story did a good job making me want to know. Because I was dying to find some kind of point to what I was reading!

If this had showed up in my Inbox for an Amateur Friday slot, I would’ve been positive it was from a beginner. It takes good writers ONE SCENE to set up who their characters are. Not 20 pages! And the whole dead angel girl isn’t even original. It feels like every other setup for a serial killer. So I guess I’m not surprised that Pizzolatto is fairly new to screenwriting. I mean maybe he goes into actually telling stories in future episodes. But this episode was one big boring setup where nothing happens.

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

What I learned: As David Mamet has often said, one of the most boring things you can write is a character talking about another character. There is nothing inherently interesting about it. Since this entire pilot is based around people talking about other people, it’s pretty easy to see why it doesn’t work.

Get Your Script Reviewed On Scriptshadow!: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and finally, something interesting about yourself and/or your script that you’d like us to post along with the script if reviewed. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Remember that your script will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effects of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre: Contained Horror Thriller
Premise (from writer): A woman fights to escape an isolated home controlled by an Incubus, a demonic force that feeds on sexual energy. A task made more difficult by her co-hostages, who are content to remain under the creatures spell.
Why You Should Read (from writer): Something interesting about me: Watch the pilot episode of “The Wire” and you will see my elementary school in the background behind the young Barksdale dealers. I went from playing marbles to shooting craps on the same corners where many of the show’s stories were ripped. I’ve loved movies and writing since childhood. They provided a 90 minute respite from an oft times less than ideal environment. I’ve had many people tell me that a career as a writer was a dream beyond my reach. Admittedly, I believed them. But even without the hope of making a dime let alone a living, I kept writing, reading scripts, and consuming all I could to learn about the craft from sites like Scriptshadow. I can’t stop writing. I’ve tried. It is a part of me. A part I want to make better. A goal I work on daily. “In the Flesh” is a sample of that effort. I believe a good one. One that people will one day read and enjoy. If I’m wrong, I’ll write something better tomorrow.
Writer: Ken Alston
Details: 91 pages

note: I read this without knowing the logline (Miss SS picked the loglines for Amateur Week) which I think really helped my enjoyment of it.  

Whoa, the last Amateur Offering Post was a dead heat. 172 comments long and at the end, I still didn’t know which script had come out on top. A little backstory might help explain why I went with In the Flesh. If you received the last newsletter (the new one JUST WENT OUT – if you didn’t get it, check your SPAM now!), you know I touted a big surprise in those offerings. Well, that surprise was that none other than Grendl had written one of the scripts (Tall, Dark and Handsome). I figured it might be interesting to put one of his screenplays in there under an alias. As we all know, the cave-dwelling commenter can be a bit antagonistic, and that makes it hard to read his stuff objectively.  Without anything cluttering our judgment, I anticipated a fair contest.  It seemed to work for awhile until a couple of long-time readers sniffed out the surprise, recognizing his style from previous posts.

The thing was, Tall, Dark and Handsome did well, going neck and neck with In The Flesh, but when it was all said and done, I decided to give the review to the writer who hadn’t had a review on the site before. And I mean, how can you not love Ken after that “Why You Should Read” section? His comments convey hard work, overcoming adversity, a love of screenwriting, humility, and a great attitude. A little more heartwarming than, “Because I wrote it.” That’s not to say I’ll never review Grendl’s script. I probably will at some point. Just not this week.

Weak heroines not apply in “In The Flesh.” Alison, 28, is the kind of girl who goes after what she wants. And tonight, after a couple of drinks, she wants Cole, the one guy in the bar sexy enough to make her forget about morals.

The two spend a wild night in the throes of drunken passion, and upon waking up, Alison isn’t ashamed. This isn’t the kind of guy you wince at come morning wondering how you’re going to spin it to your friends (“Well, he was wearing nice… shoes?”).   Cole’s the real deal.

The thing is, the real deal isn’t around (they never seem to be once the morning comes).  But he was forward-thinking enough to leave her some brand new undergarments. Which begs a few questions Alison doesn’t want to ask. Weird clue #2 is when she goes downstairs and tries to leave, there’s no doorknob on the front door.

It’s here where she runs into Breeze, an airhead-ish hippy who’s as sweet as a bowl of cookie batter. Alison assumes Breeze will have answers, but she seems just as clueless as Alison is. In fact, Breeze assumed that Alison lives here. Hmmm, now things are getting really strange.

Alison quickly realizes that if they don’t get out fast, they’re going to be decorating the wormy underground of the backyard. So she tries to break out the window. Unfortunately, she’s met with electrified bars! Eventually, Alison meets a third tenant, Doyle, a proper British gentleman who seems to have been here for awhile. Doyle informs Alison that she should stop trying to get out because… no one gets out.

That night, Alison’s introduced to another piece of the puzzle in the form of a beast-like growl coming from the basement. Are they all food? A constant influx of main courses accompanied here for late-night consumption? We certainly think so. But the great thing about In The Flesh is that it never quite goes where you think it will. Things keep changing, and with every change, we become more unsure of our heroines’ fate.

One of the marks of a good script is if you don’t typically like the genre that you’re reading, yet you’re still into it. Actually, the setup for In The Flesh was right up my alley. A woman waking up in a strange house with a bunch of locked doors, each with their own mysterious tenant? I was in.

But then later (spoilers) we learn that there’s a monster in the basement. And usually that’s where I go “Ehhhhh, no thanks.” But the characters were all so well-drawn and expectation-defying, and the script kept tripping me up as far as where it was going, that I wanted to find out what would happen.

So when we do find out what’s in the basement (a person) and see how it acts towards our protagonists (tries to bite them), we assume it’s a vampire. But again, the great thing about In The Flesh is that it’s constantly going against convention. It’s not a vampire at all, but a Succubus (or Incubus?). Now I’ve never seen a Succubus used as a monster in a script before, so I thought that was a nice twist.

The monster fit the tone and theme of the script well. This was about flesh, about sex, about want. A Succubus (or at least this succubus) survives by sucking all the life out of you through sex. We see this nicely handled not only with Alison and Breeze, but with the mysterious frail girl living in one of the rooms who’s only a shell of her former self (she’s been sucked dry) as well as the overtly subordinate Doyle.

Which makes Alison stand out all the more, because she’s the only one here who wants to get out and will do anything to do so. In other words, she’s ACTIVE, which is exactly what we want our main character to be. I mean this is easily one of the strongest female leads I’ve read in awhile.

Also, this horror script succeeded where so many others fail in the emotional component. We need a relationship to latch onto, something to play with, something that changes over time. That’s what gets us through the second act. Here it’s Alison’s relationship with Breeze. At first she’s disgusted by Breeze, calling her a moron, a retard. She even offers her up to the Succubus in a deal for a better room! But after awhile, she becomes attached to Breeze, and she wants to save her just as much as she wants to save herself.

I did have a few problems with the script. It was a little too bloody for me. I prefer the “cutaway” approach, cutting away before the blood starts gushing. And to Ken’s credit, he does that sometimes (the scene where the Succubus attacks Breeze in her room for example). But at the end, there’s so much blood, it almost becomes comical, and I think it undermines how clever the script has been up to that point.

I also thought some of the rules in this universe were unclear. I never fully understood why the Succubus slept during the day. I thought it lived by similar rules to the vampire in that it had to avoid sunlight. But this seemed to be true sometimes and not true others? I don’t now. It was confusing. A minor problem to clear up though.

Oh, and let me say this. This may be the first sex scene I’ve ever read in a script that I’d consider “hot.” Usually sex scenes are boringly or awkwardly written, but when Breeze makes a move on Alison, I am not going to lie, I forgot I was reading a screenplay. Yeah yeah, I know everyone will be saying, “Girl on girl. What guy isn’t going to like that??” I’m telling you, I don’t care what the sex scene is – I’m always aware I’m reading it.  This was the first time in forever that I got lost in one.  Kudos to Ken for pulling that off.

So the verdict is, this was a darn good script. It’s great to find and celebrate another talent here on Scriptshadow. ☺

Script link: In The Flesh (note: this is a newer draft of the script that Ken wrote after the comments he got on Scriptshadow.  So it’s probably even better than the draft I read)

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

What I learned: Try to store something in the freezer for your readers. One of the issues I see with amateur writers is they lay everything out right away. If a character shows up, they explain him. If something weird occurs, we’ll get three minutes of dialogue telling us why. Good writers give you a glimpse of something, then store it in the freezer for later consumption. I love how Ken introduced the Frail Girl, but before we could figure out anything about her, she was tucked back in her room, not to be seen for another 20 pages. We want to know what’s up with that girl, but we only get to find out when the writer takes her out of the freezer.

Genre: Drama/Black Comedy/Thriller
Premise: A Midwestern wife/schoolteacher begins to suspect that her husband’s cheating on her, so enlists the help of a fellow teacher she has the hots for to catch him in the act.
About: This was the #1 script on the 2013 Black List. Some of you will probably be depressed to hear that the writer, Andrew Sodroski, attended Harvard, implying that in order to be a top screenwriter, one must be Ivy League educated. But fear not, Sodroski’s road was not an easy one. He’s been writing since at least 2007 (when he wrote his only other known credit, a video short titled, “The Handmaid”), and therefore had to put in plenty of blood sweat and tears to get to this point. Wait, I don’t know if that makes us feel better or worse. If someone from Harvard is having a tough time breaking into Hollywood, what does that say about the rest of us?? Anyway, the script is being directed by heavy-hitting documentarian Errol Morris (this will be his first feature) and have Naomi Watts in the lead role.
Writer: Andrew Sodroski
Details: 117 pages

I suppose I should be excited that I’m one of the few people reading today’s script who’s actually BEEN to Holland, Michigan. I’m thinking that makes me better than everyone else somehow. Not sure how that would be, exactly, but I’m working on it.

What I don’t seem to have perspective on is why the number 1 Black List script had so few votes this year (45 I think?). I remember a couple of years ago when The Imitation Game, the number 1 script on the list, had like 120 votes. What does this mean? That not as many people are voting on the Black List? Or does it mean there are actually a lot more good scripts in town and the votes are more evenly dispersed (or possibly the opposite – there’s nothing good so they’re more evenly dispersed)? I’m not sure. But the low vote count is tickling (tee-hee) my concerned bone. Let’s untickle it with a little review, shall we?

“Holland, Michigan” is a strange little script. The first half is basically a combination of past Black List entries “The Details,” “The Oranges,” and “Jeff Who Lives At Home.” It’s a quirky little story about a Midwestern teacher named Nancy Vandergroot (nailed the Midwestern name) who’s feeling a little stuck in life. Much of this is via her own doing, though she doesn’t realize it. This is that woman in town who lives by God’s word, and who’s never performed an evil deed in her life.

Nancy has a wonderful little boy, Harry, and an optometrist husband, Fred, who spends the majority of his free time on his elaborate train set in the basement. To say that Nancy is a little jealous of that train set is a Midwestern understatement.

Well one day, Nancy is going through her jewelry box, only to realize that one of her earrings is missing. At first she suspects the babysitter, but after conferring with another teacher at her school, reformed bad-boy Dave, he convinces her to look deeper before she convicts anyone. She does, and is surprised when she stumbles across a group of Polaroid pictures in her husband’s basement.

Strangely, most of the pictures are of the model houses he’s built into his train set, but one is of a woman, and this is when she begins to suspect what was previously unfathomable. That her husband is cheating on her. After doing some more investigating, she gets a reluctant Dave (who she’s beginning to see romantically) to follow her husband on his next business trip in hopes of catching him in the act.

Dave does, and here is where we move past the mid-point, and EVERYTHING changes. I will say this. I was wondering what the big deal was about Holland, Michigan through those first 60 pages. I mean don’t get me wrong. It was good. A fun look at Midwestern America. I just didn’t understand what about it was “No. 1 Worthy.” However, when we find out what Fred is REALLY doing on these business trips and what’s really going on with his elaborate train set, let’s just say you immediately understand why the script snagged the top spot.

Okay, since you can’t discuss this script without spoilers, I’ll warn you when they’re coming. But I wanted to start by saying even before the twist came around, there was some pretty good writing to admire.

What stuck out to me was that all the characters had something they were doing. In a character piece, that’s essential. I see too many amateur writers giving only their hero and romantic lead “things” to do. Good writers give everyone something to do. So here, Fred, the husband, is all about his train set. Harry, the son, is all about getting ready for a dance he’s doing at the upcoming fair. Nancy is first obsessed with her missing earring, and then later with her husband’s potential infidelity. And Dave is trying to help a struggling student in one of his classes. These pursuits are what individualize and deepen your characters. Without them, they’re more “words on a page” than “people in a world.”

And as I always say, even when you’re writing these smaller character-driven pieces, you still want to use a goal to drive the story. That’s because goals KEEP YOUR MAIN CHARACTERS ACTIVE, which is exactly how Nancy is drawn. At first, she’s looking into who stole her earring, and that leads to her following clues to determine if her husband is cheating on her. This is the action that drives the story along. It’s why we keep turning the pages. If Nancy’s simply hanging out with friends, bitching about her husband, we get bored quickly. She NEEDS THAT GOAL. The story NEEDS TO PUSH TOWARDS SOMETHING.

(spoilers) Okay, now we’ll get into why this script kicks ass. Holland, Michigan has a great little twist. We realize that Fred is not, in fact, having affairs. He’s killing these women. And all the beautifully crafted perfectly detailed houses on his model train set? Those are his trophies. Those are the houses of all the women he’s killed. Oh no!

I LOVED this twist. Twists are always a balancing act. You can’t oversell them beforehand or we’re going to know they’re coming. You can’t undersell them either, or when they happen, we’re going to be like, “Where the hell did that come from?” Holland, Michigan got that balance about as right as I’ve ever seen it. Because when it happened, I was shocked. But at the same time, I said, “Of course!” And remembered all the clues that had been set up. An expertly crafted major twist is the kind of writing that gets Black List voters drooling.

My problem with the script is more about what comes afterwards. I’m not going to get into details, but I think the script tried too hard to live up to its huge twist, and have that third act feel just as big and crazy as the twist itself. As a result, we get a series of questionable choices (Dave deciding to clean up the crime scene he caught Fred in?) and a finale that felt more like an ode to Fatal Attraction than the unique genre-bending script we’d been reading.

Then again, that’s the gamble you take with a script like this. We essentially have a quirky indie black comedy in the script’s first half, then a straight up thriller in the second. Whether you like it or not, there’s going to be some screenwriting collateral damage from that choice.

But man, that twist was so damn good and unexpected, it made me remember why I love reading scripts so much – it’s to find stuff like Holland, Michigan. It’s by no means a perfect script, but definitely worth the read.

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

What I learned: Characters who are stuck in life (like Nancy, or Lester from American Beauty) who are then “set free,” are always interesting because they’re essentially fish-out-of-water characters, and fish-out-of-water characters are fun to watch. Here are these people who have been “good” all their lives, now getting to be “bad.” – I mean how can you screw that up?  Indeed, Nancy is fun to watch for this very reason.

What I learned 2: A friendly reminder to always look for ways to spice up your dialogue. Never go with the expected response. In a great little scene where Fred (who’s an eye doctor) gives Dave an eye exam, they finish up and Fred tells Dave that his eyes are good. Now I want you to think of how you’d write that line of Fred’s. Go ahead, write down what you might have him say. A lazy writer might throw in something like, “Everything looks good.” Sure, it gets the point across, but it’s boring, right? Instead, Sodroski has Fred say, “Well sir, we like to say that only God has perfect vision, but you come pretty darned close.” It’s a sentence that has so much more life to it. What line did you come up with? Share it in the comments. ☺

Genre: Crime/Period
Premise: The 1970s-set true story of a con-artist, who was forced to work with a federal agent to turn the tables on other cons, mobsters, and politicians – namely, the volatile mayor of Camden, New Jersey.
About: I reviewed this script back in April in my newsletter.  Since I’m gearing up for a big 2014, I haven’t had time to put many new posts together.  Hence this is a re-post of that review.  I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I will soon, and I’m interested to see what they changed.  This draft (aggressively titled “American Bullshit”) was written by Eric Warren Singer.  Since then, David O. Russell (who also directs the film) rewrote it.  Singer made his mark over a decade ago when he sold a wild screenplay titled “The Sky Is Falling” that had all of Hollywood a-buzz.  He then went ten more years (selling a few more screenplays) before one of his scripts, The International, was produced.  Singer’s got a pretty interesting backstory worth checking out.
Writer: Eric Warren Singer (based on a true story)
Details: 133 pages – 9/2/10 draft

Okay, let’s get to the important stuff right off the bat. Bradley Cooper is dating a 20 year old?? And her name is Suki Waterhouse?? What’s up with that?? Didn’t Cooper blow off his Silver Linings Playbook co-star, Jennifer Lawrence, because she was “too young”? Well Bradley, she was 22. Which is two years older than your current girlfriend. And Suki Waterhouse? That name is only cool if you’re a movie star. Not cool otherwise.

Now what were we talking about? Oh yeah, David O Russell’s next project. Looks like we’re going back to the 70s for this one. Russell’s been playing with tiny budgets for 15 years now. I guess when you get two actors Academy Awards though, and your last two “artsy” movies made over 250 million dollars, the studio’s willing to open up the offers. Hence, we get a big grand period piece.

Russell’s taking on a tough genre though – the crime flick. The only one who makes consistent money in this genre is Scorsese. You saw what happened when they gave a non-Scorsese the reigns to one of these films (Gangster Squad). It landed like a piano being dropped from a tenth story Manhattan apartment. So there’s an inherent risk there. Now, personally, I didn’t think the script to Gangster Squad was all that. When you’re writing a crime flick, it’s gotta have some BITE. It’s gotta have tough scary guys pulling the strings, the kind of guys who make you wet your pants with a glance. Gangster Squad didn’t have that. American Bullshit does.

It’s 1979 and Mel Weinberg (Christian Bale) is living the life. The LYING life. Mel is a professional bullshitter. And lucky for him, he lived in a time where you could make a living bullshitting. There was no Google to do a quick background check. People had to take you at your word. And if you were a fast-talker, charming, and you knew how to smile at just the right time, you could convince a lot of people to do things that they didn’t want to do.

What Mel does for a living is a little complicated. Basically, he gets people to invest money in companies that don’t exist. By the time these investors find out these companies don’t exist, Mel and his partner/lover Maxine (Jennifer Lawrence) are long gone. This works out for him for awhile, but eventually the FBI catch on to what he’s doing and shake him down.

They give him a choice. You can either go to jail, or help us take down some other guys – guys doing the same thing you are. Mel’s first instinct is to go to jail, but when they threaten to throw Maxine in the slammer too, he changes his mind. Fine, he’s in. The catch is, he doesn’t get to work alone. FBI Special Agent James Boyle (Bradley Cooper) will have to work with him every step of the way.

Here’s where things get fun. In order to take down the FBI’s primary target, an influential New Jersey mayor who has his dirty hands in all the Atlantic City casinos, they have to create the kind of pretend investor that would attract him. So they build up this fake Arabian Sheikh who’s willing to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at Atlantic City. The plan ends up working, but a little TOO well.

When rumor spreads that a Sheikh is going to be dumping money into every building with a slot machine in it, everybody wants a piece. But one of those folks sticks out a little more than the others. Arthur Zelnick. Zelnick is the top dog. He controls Atlantic City. Nobody makes money in this town unless he’s taking most of it. If this Sheikh wants to play, he’s going to need to play through Zelnick.

But that’s not the best part. Zelnick is able to operate because he’s paying off congressmen and senators. All of a sudden, the FBI realizes that they’re no longer going after a bunch of nobodies. This could be one of the biggest government corruption busts in U.S. history. What started as a thin story about a fake Sheikh all of a sudden requires elaborate planning and backstory so that nobody suspects the ruse. And the puppet show will be constructed by the biggest bullshitter of them all, Mel.

I’m going to tell you why this script worked so well. STAKES. I don’t know why I keep forgetting how important stakes are. But if you use them wisely, they can make any story interesting. The key is to keep raising them as the story goes on. So at any moment in the script, the pressure and intensity are twice as high as they were 15 pages prior. That’s especially important for crime movies cause what’s the point of a crime movie if the problem isn’t getting more dangerous as the story goes on?

First it’s Mel trying to survive on his own. Then he gets caught. Then he’s told they have to take down 5 small fries. One of those guys leads them to the mayor. Then a couple of bigger guys want the action. Then Zelnick wants the action. If Mel gets caught at the beginning, he gets a black eye. If he gets caught in the middle, he’s going to jail. If Zelnick finds out he’s a sham, he’s dead. Plain and simple. So when we get to that point, we FEEL the enormity of the moment. Mel has EVERYTHING to lose. That’s how you know if your stakes are high enough. How much does your character have to lose if he fails?

The big problem with the script is the female roles. They’re terrible. It’s as if Singer’s never met a woman before. Maxine is a total waste. She has one or two scenes where her and Max have heartfelt conversations but that’s it. Now that I think about it, she just disappears from the last third of the story. I don’t even remember her.

Strangely enough, Mel is married in the story. So you’re thinking that sooner or later he’ll have to make a choice between the two women. Or there’s going to be a confrontation between them. Or his wife is going to find out about Maxine. Anything so that the conflict from that personal part of his life will play into the story. But nothing like that ever happens. It’s so bizarre. I’m guessing that they’re totally rewriting this part for Jennifer Lawrence. Russell’s pretty good at writing female characters so I’m sure he’ll take care of it.

It’s weird. Whenever I see an amateur tackle one of these scripts, it’s a disaster. There are tons of characters and no direction. So when I read something like American Bullshit, where the storytelling is so effortless, it’s a little deceiving, because it tricks you into thinking it’s easy. It’s not. Singer was smart in that he laid out the goal very clearly: We’re using you, Mel, to take down the bad guys. I mean, that’s the story right there. And it worked. This was a good script!

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

What I learned: This complex subject matter (crime, period piece, lots of characters) makes writers think that they have to live up to a certain complexity with their story. But some of the best crime films are really simple, like this one. I mean, the narrative basically amounts to “Good guys go after bad guys.” I think this can be applied to any genre. No matter how big your story is, always ask yourself if you can plot it simply.