Genre: Comedy-Drama
Premise: When an aging irresponsible meat truck driver learns he’s fathered over 500 children via artificial insemination, he does everything in his power to help them, as long as they don’t find out who he is.
About: Well this is a bit of a rags to riches story. Writer-Director Ken Scott was making small indie movies in Canada for a decade when he conceived of “Starbuck.” The small-budgeted film made all of 1.6 million dollars at the global box office. Then Vince Vaughn saw the movie and wanted to make an American version of it. Instead of going the typical Hollywood route of hiring a flashy big-name screenwriter to adapt the film, he hired Scott himself. Not only to write the film, but to DIRECT it. Talk about getting your shot. Apparently, Vaughn liked Scott so much, he’s having him direct his next film, the Walter-Mitty-like “Business Trip,” as well (which I’ve read and thought was quite good). So I guess there ya go. You stick with it long enough and good things come to you.
Writer: Ken Scott (adapted from the film “Starbuck” written by Ken Scott and Martin Petit)
Details: 103 pages – February 2012 – First Draft

As long as we’re laying our cards on the table, I gotta be true to you.

I kinda liked the Google movie. The one with Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson? You have to keep this between us because I don’t want anyone else to find out.

I don’t even remember what it was called. Google Guys? Google, The Film? Don’t Loogle On My Google? Whatever the case, I assumed it was going to be horrible because it was so clearly an ad for Google. Yet it was fascinating to watch in the oddest way. You’d have these situations – like this evil villainous Indian character who worked at Google – and you’re wondering, how bad are they going to make him? Because if they make him too bad, they’re basically saying, “If you come work at Google, really angry Indian men are going to yell at you all day and make your life a living hell.” Which isn’t the best endorsement for the company. At the same time, the story requires a villain to work. So the writer wants Angry Indian Man yelling at all these poor interns.  You, then, get to watch this push-pull battle between Google and the writers in real time, desperate to find out who wins! Okay, maybe that’s not as fascinating as I originally thought it was, but for someone obsessed with screenwriting, this is prime entertainment.

What does this have to do with today’s script? Everything!!!! Actually nothing. But being dramatic always sounds better. I didn’t know a whole lot about Delivery Man going into it. I just knew that this was supposed to be the beginning of Vaughn’s resurgence as an actor. He’d been making these really terrible goofy movies for a decade now (with the exception of a couple) and I guess he just got sick of it. Call it Matthew Mcconaughey Syndrome. Let’s see if he’s indeed changed his ways.

David Wozniak never quite grew up. He’s 42 years old. He works as a delivery man for his family business (a “Meat Store”) and he’s the low man on the totem pole. If somebody needs something done, they DON’T call David.

But David’s not a bad guy. He sort of wants to be better. But it’s hard to change your habits when you’ve been doing them for 42 years. Take the fact that his girlfriend, Emma, is pregnant. David KIND OF wants the baby. He just isn’t confident he’ll be able to handle it when the shit hits the… diapers.

Well David’s about to get a crash course in fatherhood. A lawyer breaks into his loft and informs him that twenty years ago, when David donated his sperm to a fertility clinic, “complications” resulted in that sperm being given out to 700 women. Which has translated, today, into 533 children, 342 of whom have put together a class-action suit to find out who their father is.

While at first, David can barely handle this burden, he eventually becomes obsessed with all his children, doing what anyone who’s been told they have 500 children would do – he stalks them (no word yet on whether Scott is applying the Rian Johnson Looper approach of digitally super-imposing Vince Vaughn’s features on all the kids’ faces). He finds out one is a professional basketball player, another is a wannabe actor, another a drug addict, another an emo goth, another black, another gay, and yet another developmentally challenged. David does his best to touch and guide these childrens’ lives, but there are so many that he can only do so much.

Eventually, the class action suit starts heating up and David must do everything in his power to protect his identify, even as the story about the “mystery donor of 500 children” goes global and everyone in the world wonders who this man is. In the end, David will have to decide whether to disclose his identity or not, a decision that will go to the very core of whether or not he’s finally ready to grow up.

Starbuck (aka Delivery Man) was pretty good. I mean this is definitely not your typical Vince Vaughn flick. The scene where David finds out that one of his kids is developmentally challenged alone has more emotional layers than Fred Clause, Dodgeball, Couples Retreat, and The Watch combined.

I think the big takeaway here, though, is the notion of turning an idea into a story. This particular idea (of someone fathering tons of kids via artificial insemination) has been all over Hollywood for the past 15 years. But nobody was able to get it right in movie form. And the reason for that is, they weren’t able to take the IDEA of a man who fathered a bunch of children through artificial insemination and figure out how to build a STORY around it.

Think about it. Let’s say you’re starting to spitball this idea into an outline. A guy has fathered 500 kids. That sounds funny, right! Yeah! Err, but what happens after the scene where the lawyer tells your protagonist he’s fathered 500 kids? Uhhhhh… Have you thought that far? Because most writers don’t. You can’t have your character go meet every single one of his kids because you don’t have enough time. So then where’s the story? Does he only meet a few kids? Then what about all the others? You can see how it starts to get complicated.

Delivery Man uses an offbeat cobbled-together approach to create its story, but manages to make it work. David sees and helps five of his children, then Scott amps up the class action suit against him, so that David must hire a lawyer (his friend – who’s the worst lawyer in the world) to protect his identity. In the meantime, David continues to see his children (anonymously) and even attend the meetings for the class action suit (anonymously).

Everything is building up towards the judge’s decision, and so that becomes the engine that drives the story. Without Scott discovering the class action suit, I’m not sure this ever becomes more than an idea. Because with the suit, we have a destination. And once you have a destination, you have a story.

While I believe the script on the whole is good, I don’t think it fulfills its promise (at least not in this draft). (spoilers). That’s because we’re supposed to be worried about David being exposed as the father, and I’m not sure we do. Scott does his best. He shows articles and talk shows discuss how horrible this anonymous donor is for doing this, in hopes that we’ll say, “Oh my God! David will be roasted on national TV if he’s found out!” The problem is David hasn’t done anything wrong. It was the clinic that fucked up. David was just a stupid 20 year old desperate for cash. I guess I just didn’t see how it was bad if he was exposed.

Despite that, Delivery Man was packed with enough heart, charm and earnestness to make up for its faults. It really is a step up for Vaughn. And I’m curious to see it. I know Business Trip (Vaughn and Scott’s next collaboration) is a very visual director-y type script. So I’m curious to see how Scott is as a director as well. Can’t wait.

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

What I learned: The problems with this script come down to stakes. As a screenwriter, you always have to ask, what happens if my character “loses” at the end of the film? If the answer isn’t something catastrophic (his job, his wife, his kids, his life) then the stakes probably aren’t high enough. In this case, what happens if David gets discovered? He becomes a national media topic for a week. Then his life probably goes back to normal.  He may even become a minor celebrity.  I’m just not sure that’s bad enough.

Man, I’m going off-book for every post this week. I said I was going to do ten tips for The Karate Kid or Rain Man, but instead, I’m going with another 80s movie, The Road Warrior! Now The Road Warrior may seem like an unlikely choice for a plate of screenwriting lessons. The script focuses mainly on action, which doesn’t translate very well on the page. But look closer and you’ll find that how the script tackles action is the secret to its success. Today’s studio films are so jam packed with action, they’ve lost track of why they’re adding it in the first place. Maybe to fill up their trailers. Maybe because they’re afraid the audience will get bored. I don’t know. But The Road Warrior comes in at a lean 95 minutes, and only includes action sequence when they’re necessary (true, the smaller budget probably contributed to this, but that may be a lesson in itself – don’t spend money if you don’t have to). What sticks with you when you watch The Road Warrior are its amazing set pieces (read: car chases), and particularly the climactic chase. These may not be as flashy as the stuff you see today, but they’re definitely more brutal and real. That’s because there were no special effects.  Everything you saw was real.  The problem with these digitally-aided chases today is that they all carry a sheen of fakeness. And “fake” feels safe – the exact opposite of how you want your audience to feel in the theater. But I’m getting off track here. Let’s reach back to one of the greatest action movies ever and see if we can’t learn something from it.

1) Never underestimate a simple story – I see so many writers writing themselves into corners because they’re trying to do too much with their story. Look at the plot of The Road Warrior. The good guys must find a way to escape the bad guys with their fuel in tact. The great thing about a simple plot is that the audience is never confused. Everybody always knows what’s going on. These days in movies like Transformers 2 or Pirates of the Caribbean 4, that’s rarely the case.

2) Universal Motivation – Movies work well when there’s universal motivation. This means every character is motivated by the same thing. In this case, it’s fuel. Every character wants it. No character wants to give it away. This provides ample opportunities for conflict, since all of your characters are fighting over the same thing.

3) If your hero doesn’t say a whole lot, make sure he does a whole lot – A character who doesn’t speak much must speak with his actions. Max isn’t a talker, but he’s very active. If he’s not outrunning the road pirates, he’s stopping to inspect curious objects (the gyro-copter), forming his plan to get into the fuel yard, heading out to get the fuel truck. He’s always DOING something. If you have a character who doesn’t speak and doesn’t do, you have a boring character.

4) Script Exercise: Pretend that sound isn’t working on set today – Pretend you’re a writer on set and the director’s just informed you that the sound equipment broke. Hence, you need to come up with a version of the scene that doesn’t contain dialogue. As a guideline, watch the scene in The Road Warrior where Max befriends the Ferrel Kid. There’s no dialogue in it but it’s very powerful. Max takes out an old music box he found on the road and starts playing it. The kid is intrigued. Max plays a little more before tossing it to him. The kid spins the crank, the music comes out, and he gets excited. It’s a simple scene, but it establishes a solid friendship between the two. The Road Warrior has a few really nice moments like these.

5) Establish the danger in your world – If we don’t feel the danger, we won’t be afraid.  And you need your audience to feel afraid of the bad guys.  Early on, we watch a band of the road pirates mercilessly kill a man and rape his wife. Admittedly, this would be a hard scene to show today. But it really established how dangerous this world was. If you do this right, it will pay dividends throughout the rest of the movie. When the bad guys are chasing Max in the truck, for example, we know if they catch him they’re not simply going to put a bullet in his head.  There will be torture, pain, horrible things done to him that we can’t even begin to imagine.  Which is why we don’t want him to get caught!

6) Urgency in the form of an ultimatum – One of the easiest ways to create urgency is through an ultimatum. The road pirates come up to the oil yard and broadcast an announcement that the good guys have 24 hours to leave the yard or else they will be slaughtered. Urgency is one of your best friends as a storyteller (as evidenced by yesterday’s article), and this is a really easy way to instigate it.

7) Make characters memorable with their actions, wardrobe, disposition, possessions – Too many writers try to make characters memorable with their words. Instead, look for ways to make them memorable with their actions and outfits and overall disposition. Helicopter Guy wears goggles and has a quirky flying machine. The Ferrel Kid speaks in grunts and has a bladed boomerang. Max eats dog food to survive. It’s these extracurricular things that the audience typically remembers, not what your characters say.

8) You want your hero going into the climax at his worst – The worse your hero is prepared for the climax, the better. Max is nearly dead when he takes control of that tanker. He’s got one leg, one eye, and one arm (think about that – he has only ONE ARM to drive this tanker!).

9) You want your bad guys going into the climax at their best – It shouldn’t be a fair fight. The bad guys have 30 cars and hundreds of weapons to Max’s 1 car and handful of weapons.

10) Find irony in your set pieces – Set pieces are supposed to be big and action-packed and crazy. So writers look for the biggest most action-packed craziest way to do them. By taking this approach, however, they often miss out on the more nuanced moments that make a set piece memorable. Many times it’s the TINIEST thing that can be the stand out moment in a set-piece. For example, in the ending of The Road Warrior, a final shotgun shell rolls out onto the hood of the truck. It’s out there dangling on that dashboard and getting that final bullet turns out to be the only thing we care about for two minutes.  This amongst an insane car chase with over 30 cars!

As great as this movie is, there’s still one thing I haven’t been able to figure out about it. Max is a really selfish hero.  He doesn’t care about anyone but himself.  He’s not very talkative.  He’s a dick to everyone.  I mean there’s a moment where he’s about to save somebody but before he does he says, “I’ll only do this if you give me gas.”  But we still love this guy.  Why?  Is it as simple as that he has a dog?  That he connects with the little kid?  Is it that the bad guys are so much worse?  Max today would probably be rewritten to be more “likable.”  And it would’ve ruined the character.  So my question to you is, why do we like Max?  I feel like if we can figure that out, we can shed some light on just what “likable” means.

Genre: Sci-fi Comedy
Premise: A plucky teenage boy is accidentally sent 30 years into the past, where he inadvertently prevents his parents from meeting, in the process threatening his very existence.
About: This is the very first draft of Back to the Future, written in 1981.
Writers: Robert Zemeckis & Bob Gale
Details: 110 pages (but the formatting here is really tight – this feels more like 130 pages) 1981 draft

I swear. I tried to see Thor 2 this weekend (as I said I would in my newsletter). With every fiber of my being I tried to go. At one point I actually constructed a catapult on my couch (from nearby items like couch pillows and a floor lamp) that would physically propel me towards the door so that I’d be forced to go.

But in the end, I just couldn’t (make the catapult work or see the film). I never did get into the whole Greek God thing in English anyway. Much like my distaste for Doritos and Everybody Loves Raymond, they were wisps of popular culture I never understood.

Instead, I decided to do something different today – read the first draft of Back To The Future! From what I’d heard, it wasn’t very good. The word on the street was that every studio in town passed on it. True, neither Zemeckis or Gale had done much at the time (Zemeckis’s first movie, Used Cars, had just come out and done so-so at the box office) but even if they had, nobody was drinking the McFly juice yet.

And therein lies the reason I must review it. I want to show screenwriters what can be done with a bad script. As long as there’s a good idea at the core, you can turn something bad into something good. It takes time (it took these guys 3 years). But if the script has potential and you’re willing to put in the work, there’s hope.

Back to the Future Alpha is essentially the boring version of the movie you’ve come to love. The script starts off strangely with Marty McFly perfecting his video pirating skills. He’s even trying to get Doc to streamline his bootlegging process so he can sell films out on the street before they hit theaters! I’m not kidding. And this is 1981!

Marty hangs around Doc’s place before and after school, shooting the shit. Doc’s always talking about power sources and how he needs more power for his latest project – oh, and there’s a secret locked room that he refuses to allow Marty to see.

Marty’s parents are both here, but their personalities haven’t been fleshed out yet. Likewise, Biff is operating on about 25% of his eventual personality. Marty’s still got a girlfriend (her name’s Suzy) whom he passes notes to in long classroom scenes where the teacher warms about the upcoming nuclear apocalypse.  There are no siblings here, though (and therefore no famous disappearing picture).

One day Marty’s hanging out at Doc’s and, out of curiosity, pours some Coke into one of his devices. This causes a chemical reaction that turns out to be exactly what Doc needs for his mysterious behind-the-locked-door project. Coke (due to its secret formula) actually plays a big part in this version of the story.

We finally learn that the thing behind the door is a time machine. It needs incredible amounts of energy. And the mix of Coke and plutonium generate that energy. There is no car here. No 88 miles per hour. Just a machine in a lab. CIA agents eventually show up at that lab looking for the plutonium Doc stole. There’s a shoot out, and Marty accidentally gets caught in the machine and travels back 30 years.

After realizing where he is, Marty runs to his mom’s house and she’s, of course, his age now. He asks her what’s going on. She doesn’t know what he’s talking about or who he is. Marty passes out and when he wakes up, Doc has come to pick him up (Marty had Doc’s name in his pocket from earlier, so they called him).

Doc seems to know what’s happened right away in this version (Marty doesn’t need to convince him he’s from the future), and sets about getting Marty home. He tells Marty he MUST stay in his house in the meantime so he doesn’t upset the space-time continuum. But Marty gets bored and heads to school (because, why not!) where he sees his mom again, who starts falling in love with him.

From that point on, everything happens pretty much the way it happens in the film, except for the final sequence, where instead of the clock tower, we get Doc and Marty driving to Nevada to channel energy for the time machine from the very last nuclear bomb test in America. And in a sequence that would come back to haunt moviegoers worldwide three decades later, Marty will have to hide inside a refrigerator to survive the nuclear blast.

The biggest change you see from this draft to the final one is that of URGENCY. Everything in the final draft MOVES FAST. Characters are always late. Characters are always on the move. Characters always have somewhere to be.

In this version, Marty’s just hanging out at Doc’s place with all the time in the world. Then he’s hanging out in his classroom with his teacher droning on about nuclear bombs. The story ISN’T MOVING. It’s GETTING READY TO MOVE. And that’s one of the major things that rewrites change. You locate all the places in your story that are GETTING READY to happen, and you replace them with things that HAPPEN.

Take Doc’s time machine, for instance. In this version, Doc’s still in the process of building it. He hasn’t come up with all the answers yet. This means four or five scenes of Doc wondering how he’s going to do it. In the movie, DOC’S ALREADY FIGURED THIS OUT. He already has the time machine ready. So the story’s already on the move. He calls Marty to the mall and we’re off to the races.

Or look at the classroom scene. The final draft would NEVER have a classroom scene. Characters sitting around while a teacher slowly doles out exposition? No way! Instead, Marty’s late for class. He’s getting stopped in the hallway by the principal. He’s trying to set up his date with Jennifer. We don’t have time for class! There’s always somewhere to be!

You also see a lot of forced set-ups here, which is one of the easiest ways to spot an early draft. Take Marty’s skateboarding. Obviously, one of the key scenes in the film is when Marty outmaneuvers Biff in Town Square on a makeshift skateboard. So we need to set that up. In this version, in the first act, Marty is walking home with Suzy and some kid’s skateboard shoots off towards Marty. Marty hops on it, does all these ridiculous tricks for no reason (other than to set up he’s a master skateboarder), then hands the board back.

Contrast that with the final draft. The skateboard is an integral part of Marty’s everyday routine. It’s how he gets around. We see him hop on it and hurry to school as early as the second scene of the film. That’s one area where rewriting helps, is taking those isolated ideas and interweaving them into the fabric of your screenplay.

The same thing can be said for stuff like the Clock Tower, the lightning bolt, the car-as-time-machine, the 88 miles per hour. We saw seeds of those ideas here, but they needed time to grow in order to be realized. Doc is living in the main building in town, which looks like it eventually became the Clock Tower. And the idea of them only getting one shot at this lightning bolt originated from the one and only shot at catching energy from the nuclear bomb test.

Speaking of the ending, that was another huge problem with this draft. You don’t keep your characters in one location for 90% of the movie, then put them in a car and drive them on a six hour road trip for the climax. It feels clumsy and disjointed. I’m guessing Zemeckis and Gale eventually realized this, which necessitated a more local solution. Hence the atomic bomb turning into a lightning bolt.

Also of note is the movement of a key plot point that really helped the structure of the second act. In this version of Back To The Future, Marty doesn’t disrupt his parents from meeting right away. Instead, he runs into his mom, then goes to Doc’s, then Doc tells him to hang out while he works on sending him back to the future.

Despite Doc hammering Marty on how dangerous it is to interact with anybody, Marty leaves the house and heads to school out of boredom. It’s only then that he screws up the meeting between his mother and father. This, of course, makes zero sense. Why would Marty go to school and potentially endanger his existence if he doesn’t have to?

In the final draft, they wisely changed the position of this plot point to maximize motivation. Marty saves his father after he falls out of the tree, getting hit by the car INSTEAD of his dad, and getting taken into his mom’s house, where she falls in love with him (instead of his father). All of this happens BEFORE he meets Doc. This way, when Marty and Doc game plan sending him back, they realize that Marty has already endangered his existence by having his mom fall for him instead of his dad. Marty now HAS NO CHOICE but to go to school and correct his mistake.  This works so much better than, “Eh, I’m bored. Let’s go to High School.”  Right?

I think to some of you, all of this is obvious. “Yeah, it was an early draft. Of course it wasn’t as good as the final draft.” But this is the draft Zemeckis and Gale were originally trying to sell. And that’s the problem. I see a lot of writers going out there with drafts like this. Drafts with huge potential but where the writers haven’t come close to maximizing that potential.

Think about it. Is your ending the refrigerator-in-a-nuclear-explosion ending? Or is it the Delorean racing 88 miles per hour while Doc swings from the clock tower lightning bolt ending? Sure it takes lots more drafts and lots more time to get the lightning bolt ending, but how the hell do you think you’re going to beat the competition with a subpar product?

I don’t think this draft of Back To The Future was bad. But it reads like a lot of early drafts do. Some fun ideas. Some decent characters. Some clumsy exposition. A start-and-stop story that’s still trying to find itself. But it didn’t feel FINISHED.

The lesson here is to look at what can happen when you rewrite. I heard stories about how these two, after getting rejected, wrote draft after draft after draft of this script, debating every single detail of the story until it got to where it needed to be. That takes dedication. And that’s what every screenwriter needs in order to succeed.

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

What I learned: Every time you get an idea, it’s just a seed. Your job is to water that seed and help it grow to as big as it possibly can. Too many writers are too impatient to do the watering. And their scripts always reflect that.

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 it gets 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: Dark Thriller
Premise: (from writer) When a child killer is sentenced to death under dubious circumstances, the investigating detective discovers that the very man being executed holds the keys that can solve the crime.
About: (from writer) You mentioned in this week’s review of Escape From Tomorrow, “If you can find a way to break the rules in an interesting way, to create an excited discussion around your film or script, then the doors to Hollywood will open right up.” This script does just that! It’s a genre bending story that catches most readers off guard. — Just a note; it placed in the top 15% at Nicholls this year and finished in the top 10% in the PAGE AWARDS.
Writer: Shawn Davis
Details: 111 pages

Okay, I want to apologize here. In last week’s newsletter, I said that “Gravity Kills” was going to be the Amateur Friday script, when I meant to put “What Doesn’t Kill You” in there. Apparently I think anything with the word “kill” in it is the same thing. The biggest apology goes to Thomas, who wrote Gravity Kills. I’m incredibly sorry for the mix-up, buddy. Hopefully I’ll get to review your script another time.

Now that we got that screw-up out of the way, we can discuss what REALLY matters. Star Wars 7 in 3-D!! As in NO, Star Wars is NOT supposed to be in 3-D!!! Why would you go through all the hassle to be the last studio project to shoot on film if you were going to make it 3-D? I’m thinking JJ and Iger (Disney prez) struck a deal – “We’ll let you push the date back to the end of 2015, but you gotta give us 3-D.” The only silver-lining in this is that I think JJ did it for the screenplay. He knows it’s not ready to shoot. He knows they need more time to get it right. Star Wars isn’t just the creation of a story. It’s the creation of an entire universe. Imagination (TRUE imagination) takes time. So if the big reason we have Star Wars in 3-D is for the script, then JJ, 3-D it is.

What the heck am I talking about Star Wars for during Amateur Friday?? Because Star Wars is big enough that it can be talked about in any post. And since lots more Star Wars news is coming over the next couple of years, no post is safe!

“What Doesn’t Kill You” focuses on Clive Washington, a 45 year-old African-American detective with salt-and-pepper hair (hmm, I wonder which actor Shawn had in mind here) who’s had a rough month. He was involved in a skirmish that ended up getting another cop killed.

But that’s just the beginning of his problems. Three little sisters were murdered a couple of months back and they just found the bodies. All signs point to a lonely bachelor named Derek who splits his time between watching really sick porn and buying drugs (porn and drugs – not good for you, folks).

Derek doesn’t stand a chance with his city-appointed lawyer and gets the death penalty. To add insult to injury, a new law just passed that allows killers of multiple people to be revived after the execution, so they can be executed again. The state finds these killings so brutal, they want Derek to die three separate times.

When Derek is hit with his first execution, his “metaphysical body” is transported to the house where the killings took place. It’s here where we find out Derek isn’t the killer. It was someone else, a mysterious man in a black mask. Derek must gather as many clues as he can before he’s revived the first and second time to prove that he isn’t the killer (he gets a day between each execution).

In the meantime, Clive is starting to have doubts that Derek’s their guy. But what can you do when you’ve already technically executed someone? Derek is not legally alive. So you can’t turn him loose. This seals Derek’s fate, but that doesn’t stop Clive from trying to find the real killer before he continues his killing spree. And if you think you know who the killer is and what’s going to happen here?  Think again.  “What Doesn’t Kill You” keeps ya guessing until the very end.

Whenever you open a script, you’re always looking for something unique – a new voice, new concept, characters you haven’t seen before, a unique execution (no pun intended). You get that with What Doesn’t Kill You. I have some problems with this script, most notably the fact that it’s needlessly violent in a lot of places (brutal descriptions of violent acts against little girls often go too far). But if Shawn can dial a lot of that back, he may have something here. This reminded me a lot of Prisoners. And I think it may even be better than that script.

Here’s the catch, though. This “execution/revive” thing has to be real. Although it sounds made-up, I’m very trusting of the writer and wondered, “Could this law have snuck in there without me knowing it?”  When Shawn had the characters talking about the lone inmate in recent history upon which is was tested, I thought, “Hmm, I vaguely remember reading something about that… I think.”   So I googled it but got nothing.  If it’s indeed made up, I don’t know if this script can work. You can’t just make up a huge law like that and expect the public to go along with it.  I’d love to be proven wrong though.  Can anyone think of one? (Double Jeopardy was a real law, albeit used liberally in the film)

What was cool about that though, was it gave the script that “wild card” element a procedural needs to stand out. Seven had the really bizarre killings. Lambs had Hannibal. But no one’s really been able to catch that wild-card element since. This is definitely a wild card and is the main reason the script feels so different. Remember that without the wild-card, you have a cop chasing clues looking into a murder. We can see that every night on TV.

(spoilers) Besides the graphic violent description, another squeaky wheel is Derek’s character. Derek hasn’t done anything terrible (by “terrible” I mean hurt or kill anyone). But he is introduced looking at young girls online. Later, we’re asked to essentially root for this guy. And kudos to Shawn because he almost makes us do it. But we’re not going to get over that kind of thing. So he probably needs to dial that way back or take it out.

The thing is, it’s kind of essential to the story. We have to believe this man is our killer. And the fact that he looks at young girls online is the main reason he gets convicted for killing these three young girls. Screenwriting occasionally puts us in this position, where we’re forced to talk out of both sides of our mouth. We must make Derek likable enough to root for later, but terrible enough that it’s believable he’d get convicted. That’s some of the toughest stuff to make work.

The thing is, (major spoilers) Derek’s fingerprints and hair were planted on the scene. So if you just made him watch really fucked up porn (not little girls) and those two pieces of evidence put him at the scene of the crime, I think that’s enough to convince the police (and us) that he did it.

What I really have to give Shawn credit for is the out-of-body stuff. Technically, it shouldn’t have worked. You have your main character having an out of body experience. Then Derek has them three times while dead. It feels like we’re giving the story too much string – that it’s getting too “out there.” But it worked for me. I’m not sure why, but it did.

This script definitely needs a few tweaks, but I think we’ve found a cool new voice in Shawn Davis.

Screenplay link: What Doesn’t Kill You

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

What I learned: When dealing with extreme violent acts, do what directors do. Show the raised bat then cut to the next scene. There’s no need to show the swing and hear the thump. It’s too much. Remember at the end of Seven, we never saw Gwyneth Paltrow’s head (although I’m sure plenty of middle-aged women would’ve wanted to).

If you’ve been pursuing screenwriting these past few years, chances are you’ve heard of Dan Fogelman. WHY should you have heard of Dan Fogelman? Only because for one stretch there in 2010, he sold two scripts and one pitch for a total of 7 million dollars. In other words, he is the embodiment of the screenwriting dream. It started with his 2.5 million dollar sale for Crazy, Stupid, Love, was followed by a 3 million dollar sale for Imagine (a movie he’ll make his directing debut on) and ended with a “Political Jerry Maguire” pitch that sold for 2 million. I’ve read almost all of Dan’s scripts, and as he says later in the interview, he has an amazing ability to write readable scripts. This weekend yet ANOTHER one of Dan’s scripts is being released, Last Vegas. He was cool enough to hop on the phone and answer a few questions I’ve had about that amazing stretch he had.

SS: Hi Dan, how are you?

DF: I’m doing well, thanks.

SS: Now I know you’re busy working on your first directorial effort, Imagine, so I thought I’d jump into the questions right away and maximize our time. There’s a lot I’d like to ask.

DF: That’s great. Works for me.

SS: Back in 2010, you had that amazing streak of spec sales. But before we go there, I was interested in how you got started. What was the first script you sold?

DF: My first script didn’t sell, but it did get me my agents. I was 26, maybe twelve years ago, decided I’d take a crack at screenwriting and had a buddy who actually now runs my company… I wrote a script, like a Wonder Years style script about my bar mitzvah, figured a Jewish agent would read it and identify with it and yeah, that was basically the plot. So I bought myself Final Draft. I had never studied screenwriting or anything and wrote it and handed it to my buddy and had no idea if it was any good. I thought I’d pass it on to a few people and it all happened very quickly. He had a manager at his company who’s now a gigantic manager and my manager to this day and she read it and all of a sudden I had agents and everything just started from there. The script never sold. But it got me my first job, which was at Pixar.

SS: You were able to get into the industry off your FIRST written screenplay??

DF: Yeah, I was very lucky. I got very lucky.

SS: Wow, that’s amazing. Now when you look back at the script now, how do you feel about it? Do you feel it was up to snuff?

DF: I haven’t looked at it in a long time – I really loved it and I’ve taken elements from it and it was very VO heavy, very “Daniel Stern,” looking back on his childhood. I’ve taken a lot of characters and used them for a lot of TV shows or elements for funny scenes. I think it probably holds up. I once had a meeting with Hans Zimmerman about it, to produce it, and I remember he had a very heavy German accent and he said, “It’s very funny script, I’ve always thought the Jews were so funny.”

SS: That sounds like Hans.  Now regarding getting that job at Pixar. That was writing the Cars movie, right? That must’ve been a HUGE deal. I mean, the bigger production companies rarely hand out assignment work to anyone who isn’t super-proven. What did you say in that room to get that job? What was your pitch?

DF: I believe a bunch of up-and-coming writers were up to do it. It was more Pixar’s model at the time – and they may still do this – they bring in writers who can shape and reshape the story over a long period of time, as opposed to paying a ton of money for a big writer. That might’ve been why I got the job. You go up there and you don’t know anything about the film so it’s not like I was going in there to pitch a take – They just said it needed to be a movie about cars and that’s kind of all I knew – cars that ‘come to life.’ So they put you in a room where John Lasseter and others were and I benefited from not knowing anything about the business, I was relaxed, so I kinda bullshit it for half an hour. And I got home and they called and said ‘We want to offer you a job where, for 2 weeks, you move up to San Francisco.” 2 weeks eventually became 2 months and, in the end, I stayed there for a year and a half. I got along with everyone. It was a real starting point for my career. John Lasseter, he’s an amazing guy. He was a real mentor to me – having never studied screenwriting or film, it was like going to college for a year.

SS: Flash-forward a bit, and you start selling all these spec scripts. All for a lot of money. I remember it was a really big moment in the screenwriting community because it allowed writers to dream about that huge sale again. What do you think was the reason for those scripts selling for so much? Did you learn anything from that or know why it happened?

DF: What I learned was that, I work best as a spec writer. I’m not gonna do a book adaptation or if someone comes to you with an idea or an actor – taking that risk of writing something someone might not want after spending all that time on it. Crazy Stupid Love was kind of a game changer for me. At the time I’d written these scripts that were taking so much time to get through the system (The Guilt Trip and Last Vegas), and they just weren’t coming together- the scripts were there, people liked them, but they weren’t moving. And so I decided to go out and write something without any obligations, something where I didn’t have to please anyone, and that was Crazy Stupid Love. I wrote it very quickly. I have a little cabin up in Joshua Tree and I wrote it very quickly and I sent it to my agent and manager and said, “Here, I wrote this on spec and I think it’s good” and here I was, half-picturing Steve Carell in the lead and within a week my agent had gotten it to Steve Carell, who, as fate had it, wanted to do this exact kind of movie next. So he wanted to come onto it and help produce it and so they bought it and we were literally shooting the movie months after. It never happens like that. It had the right people – that was an anomaly how it happened, all of it. But Steve’s attachment was obviously the main reason why the script sold for so much.  And then when that happened, my other projects started moving through the system a lot faster.

SS: Okay, so when you move into a script like Last Vegas, obviously The Hangover did well and this puts a new spin on the Vegas trip – do you ever think about marketing when you write a script or do you just write what you love?

DF: The thing is, I wrote Last Vegas before The Hangover, and while I was writing it, The Hangover came out and I actually thought, ‘Oh this’ll never get made now.’ It takes movies so long to get made that it’s the nature of the beast that you’ll write a movie, it doesn’t get made right away, something similar gets made in the meantime, then your movie comes out, and it looks like you wrote it because of this other movie. That’s one of the crazy things about the business.

SS: Okay, last question. And I’m asking this one for the readers of the site. Pretend you’re 15 years younger and were still an amateur screenwriter. You have what you consider to be a good script. How would you go about trying to sell it?

DF: Ooh, that’s a good question. I mean, on my iPad right now are 17,000 emails from friends, family friends, all of who have screenplays they’d like me to read. My advice is – and this is going to sound bad – but my advice is, “I wouldn’t want to do this.” I tell them if you’ve got something else in your life, something that you like just as much as screenwriting, I would choose that over screenwriting. It’s a brutal existence, and it’s so rare that it pays off. But, if people come back after that and say, “No, screenwriting is the only thing I wanna do,” and they have a script, I usually say, “You just gotta bombard people.” I mean the truth is, there are SO many scripts out there. You know this as well as anyone.  And anyone can get a computer and buy Final Draft. More people think they can be a screenwriter or a writer than think they can be a professional baseball player. And you can tell by 5 pages whether it’s going to work or not – and you get emails about the premise and how it’s nothing that’s ever been seen before, but 9 times out of 10, your first script isn’t going to sell. But if you can work at it and get good and write something that really connects with people, you can start a career. I mean I don’t know if I’m good, or great, but I have a weird ability to write readable scripts. I don’t know if that makes me a genius, but it’s a skill. You gotta work hard and develop that skill and then, when you have something worthy, you have to bombard the world with it.

Having said that, it’s important to know that everyone’s story of how they made it is different. I haven’t met anyone who’s come into this the exact same way. So as long as you continue to get better at this skill and look for opportunities to break in, the hope is that sooner or later, you’ll be successful.

SS: Alright, Dan. Thank you for taking some time to help out Scriptshadow Nation. Good luck this weekend with Last Vegas and good luck with finishing Imagine.

DF: Thank you, Carson. I enjoyed it.

Post-interview thoughts: Wow! Dan broke through on his VERY FIRST SCRIPT. And here I’m always telling you that that can’t be done. I suppose we can add one more member to the exception list. Also fascinating to hear that Pixar likes to bring in inexperienced writers (who have potential) to write their movies. For a studio known as having the best-written movies in the business, there’s gotta be a lesson there. I know one thing I keep hearing a lot is that producers love young hungry writers because they’ll work like crazy for them. They’ll write a hundred drafts if they need to. Whereas older established writers come with big quotes and a lot more attitude. So maybe that plays into it. Anyway, it was a blast to talk to Dan and get at least a little bit of insight into how those big sales come together. I wish I had more time to really get into the details of all that but I hear directing a film takes a lot of time so I guess I’ll let Dan off the hook.  And of course, go see Last Vegas!!!☺