One of the harder genres to get right is studied today as we bring you Amateur Friday a day early!

Amateur Friday Submission Process: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, a PDF of the first ten pages of your script, your title, genre, logline, and finally, why I should read your script. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Your script and “first ten” will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effects of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: In 2049, a government employee is wrenched into an anarchist plot to destabilize a dystopian U.S. government.
Why you should read (from author): This screenplay is 1984 meets North By Northwest, by way of V For Vendetta, with a splash of Breaking Bad for good measure. It’s set in a realistic future, one not all that different from 2013, where the dystopian elements of society hide under bridges and behind CIA doors. It uses the classic Hitchcock trope of an ordinary man thrust into an extraordinary situation.
Writer: Casey Giltner
Details: 116 pages

What I’ve noticed since switching to this format, where you guys test drive the amateur options every week and choose the best ones, is that the overall writing level for the script I ultimately review has improved tremendously. There’s no doubt about that. Little to no spelling or grammar errors. Crisp and easy-to-understand description. A professional polish to almost every one. But like an imitation Rolex, once you look closer, you start to see the imperfections.

Those imperfections usually boil down to one of two things (and usually both) – our good friend’s story and character. With story, there’s often a lack of understanding as to what drama is. The writer doesn’t know how to consistently place his characters in situations that are entertaining to the reader, leaving large gaps of the script that feel plain and therefore boring. On the character front, I often read characters that are either a) not unique enough, b) not likable enough, or c) not deep enough.

This is one of the most frustrating levels a writer attains during his career. He’s reached a point where he’s taken seriously, but watches on, confused, as his scripts are continually passed over. The problem is they’re not yet good enough to understand what they’re doing wrong, and therefore can’t fix the issues plaguing their screenplays. The only way off Confusing Island is to keep writing, keep getting feedback, and keep improving upon their previous work. Eventually, they start to understand where their weak points are, how to fix them, and therefore how to get their writing up to Hollywood standards.

Operation Vertigo is a good example of this. I can see why it was the top pick of the weekend. It has a good opening, some solid writing, and a professional polish to it, but it quickly runs out of steam, not really giving us anything new or exciting to keep us satiated. I’ll get to all that in a second, but first let’s look at the plot.

The year is 2049. We live in a state of government oppression. Everywhere we go, we’re watched by the man. Every time we turn something on, it’s logged. This all-watching system is known as THE GRID. And while the government spins it that the GRID is a good thing, it’s pretty obvious that it’s being used to control us.

James Donovan is a senior department technician for the company that operates THE GRID (I think – I’m still a little unclear on that). But right now, the old GRIDDLE is the least of his worries. It turns out his wife is banging a freaking senator! That sucks no matter how far in the future you are. So James decides he’s going to take things into his own hands and kill her, or the senator, or both. So he sneaks into their little rendezvous hotel room, but just as he’s about to kill them, somebody ELSE wearing a mask comes in and kills them FIRST!

Okay, that’s a pretty cool opening. I’m intrigued.

James is quickly targeted by someone named “Investigator” (that’s her name throughout the script) from the CIA. She thinks he had something to do with the killing but can’t prove it. James is so torn up about the whole thing that he goes drinking late into the night (not easy to do as there’s a curfew in this future world) only to be approached by a chick named Zooey, who wants him to join her cause called “Vertigo,” (a bunch of people trying to expose the government for their evil ways).

When a bomb then blows up the bar they were JUST IN, James finds himself at the mercy of CIA agent “Investigator” once again! Investigator thinks it’s really suspicious that James happens to be around all these places where bad things happen. But she keeps lacking evidence so she has to let him go. Eventually, James hooks up with Zooey again, who introduces him to her underground crew of fellow Vertigoians, and they tell him they need him to be an inside man for them, since he has access to the all-powerful GRID.

Now that he’s been seen cavorting with the enemy, the CIA makes a strong move to take down Vertigo, forcing James and Zooey on the run. The agency eventually captures Zooey, and Vertigo tells James that they can help him break in and save her. But they’re going to need him to turn off the GRID first. James does exactly that, but quickly realizes that he wasn’t meant to go in and rescue Zooey after all. This was just one giant setup, and he’s the sucker who just got duped.

Okay, so I’m Asshole Producer Guy with no filter. You may think this is a bad thing. It’s actually a good thing. Nice Producer never tells you what’s wrong with your script. He just ignores your phone calls and e-mails and never calls you back. Being Asshole Producer Guy, this is what I would say if asked what I thought of Operation Vertigo: “There’s nothing special here. There’s nothing new. I mean this movie is basically The Matrix without all the cool stuff.”

Okay, I’m putting Asshole Producer Guy away now. But I admit that I agree with him. This script is lacking that big hook. Everything explored here (the overbearing government, the lack of privacy, etc.) has been done to death. We’ve seen it already so it comes off as generic. And that’s not to say you can’t still explore these issues, but you need to do so with a new angle.

However, even if you get past that, the story isn’t that fresh either. You got a guy on the run. He hooks up with a renegade operation. One of them gets kidnapped and he has to save her. It’s a very basic storyline that follows the template for these thrillers way too closely. To fix this I’d advise the exact same thing. Give us something NEW. Give us a plot development we DON’T expect as opposed to a dozen that we do. The scripts I hate most are the ones where I’m 30-40 pages ahead of the story. And here, I was probably 40-50 pages ahead of the story. The mark of a good storyteller is to anticipate the audience’s expectations and then give them something else. Make their anticipation work against them. That never happened once here. Even James getting double-crossed at the end was telegraphed.

Finally, the characters are stereotypes and way too bland. None of them are struggling with any internal conflict (i.e. Neo struggles with his belief in himself in The Matrix). They’re not involved in anything other than straightforward relationships. I don’t want to sound like I’m piling on, but you can tie this issue into the first two. The concept is too generic, the execution is too generic, and the characters are too generic. In other words, you’re not pushing yourself here. You’re not asking questions every writer should be asking before they write a script or a character or a scene, which are: “Is this something I’ve seen before?” and if the answer is yes, then, “How can I make my take different?”

It’s not easy asking yourself those questions and it’s even harder to find answers for them. But that’s the thing you have to remember – if it’s all coming too easy, it’s probably because you’re writing a version of something you’ve already seen before. By asking those tough questions – even though it ends up taking you a lot longer to write everything – you’re more likely to end up with something original.

Start by asking, “What can I add to the concept here that gives it that special unique quality?” In previous movies it’s been bending the laws of space and time (The Matrix) or people being arrested for murders they haven’t committed yet (Minority Report). But it’s gotta be SOMETHING. It can’t just be a garden variety take on government oppression in the near future. We’ve seen that too many times before. We need something more!

Script link: Operation Vertigo

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

What I learned 1: Don’t give one of your main characters a generic monikor as their character name. Major characters need official names. Here, “Investigator,” is probably the most memorable character in the script, yet she’s called “Investigator,” which doesn’t make sense.

What I learned 2: Sci-fi is a concept-driven genre. Therefore, when writing sci-fi, you absolutely have to have to have an idea that’s never been done before or have a unique take on an old idea. If you aren’t doing one of these two things, your sci-fi script doesn’t have a shot. I can guarantee you that.

Author Ira Levin’s book about a woman impregnated with Satan’s child was deemed so commercial that legendary producer Robert Evans snatched up the rights before the book was even finished. He then recruited European director Roman Polanski to write and direct the film, which would become Polanski’s first foray into American cinema. Polanski wanted his wife, Sharon Tate, to play the part of Rosemary, but Evans convinced him to go with Mia Farrow, despite the fact that her husband at the time, Frank Sinatra, wanted her to quit the profession. In fact, when she officially accepted the part, he filed for divorce. The film’s adapted screenplay went on to get nominated for an Oscar and was a huge box office success, grossing ten times its budget. Some, however, believe that because of the movie’s subject matter, its principal participants were cursed. Polanski, of course, lost his wife in the Manson murders, then later sexually assaulted a young girl, forcing him to flee to France and never set foot in America again. And Mia Farrow, after being left by Sinatra, eventually married Woody Allen, which of course ended in tragedy when she found out Allen was having a sexual relationship with her adopted daughter from a previous marriage. Regardless of all that, Rosemary’s Baby is one of the best movies from the 60s, and therefore ripe for its share of screenwriting tips.

1) The Villain Goal – I often talk about giving your protagonist a goal, as that goal will drive the story. However, if your protagonist doesn’t have a goal, you can transfer the goal over to the story’s villain. That’s the case with Rosemary’s Baby. The story is being driven by a goal held by Rosemary’s elderly neighbors, Roman and Minnie Castevet. The two need a woman to carry Satan’s baby. And she’s been chosen.

2) DRAMATIC IRONY ALERT – Remember what Dramatic Irony is. It’s when we know something one of the key characters does not. And it works best when the thing we know is something that puts our character in danger. Almost all of Rosemary’s Baby is based on this device. We know that she’s carrying the devil’s baby and that all these people around her are manipulating her, but she doesn’t. We want to scream, “Run! Get away from everyone!” which is usually when “dramatic irony” is working best.

3) Look for your scares using human psychological elements – When most writers think about scares, they think of the cliché stuff. Ghosts, demons, witches, etc. Rosemary’s Baby is a horror film without any real “scares.” Its horror comes from its psychological nature, the fact that Rosemary is being manipulated. To me, the scariest situation of all is when the person you’re supposed to trust the most deceives you, which is a big part of why this movie works so well. Rosemary’s own husband has sold her off to the devil. If you can’t trust your own spouse, who can you trust?

4) When writing a horror film, jump into your mysteries right away – You need to hook your reader immediately in a horror script, and one of the best ways to do this is to introduce a mystery inside the first couple of scenes. Here, we see it when Rosemary and her husband, Guy, are checking out the apartment. They discover an armoire hiding a closet. Keep in mind, this is the 60s. If the screenwriter is jumping right into the mysteries in a 1968 film, you better hope you’re doing it in 2013, where audiences are 10,000 times less patient.

5) Contained movies require writers adept at adding conflict – Remember, when writing a contained film (almost all of Rosemary’s Baby takes place in an apartment), you need to add AS MUCH CONFLICT AS POSSIBLE. You do this in three main areas – internal level, relationship level, and external level. On the internal level, Rosemary battles with her desire to make everyone happy, even though inside everything’s telling her to look out for herself. That line of conflict stays present throughout the entire movie. On the relationship level, Rosemary is having marital issues with her husband, Guy, who seems to be putting his career ahead of Rosemary. This causes lots of conflict during their time together. And of course, externally, Rosemary is battling the invasion of her elderly neighbors, who are trying to control her life. Conflict should be present in all your films, but you better PACK IT IN if you’re writing a contained film.

6) Nice Villains Finish First – I continue to believe that nice villains (when done right) are the scariest villains of all. Asshole cruel dickhead terrible villains are often cliché and boring. Whereas there will always be situations where scary or “clearly bad” villains are necessary (i.e. Buffalo Bill wasn’t very nice), nice villains should at least be considered when writing your script. Here we have neighbors Minnie and Roman Castevet, who have orchestrated the rape and manipulation of our heroine, Rosemary. But they’re always there for her with a smile. They’re the first people to help here whenever there’s a problem. This movie just does not work if these two are forceful and mean and clearly cruel.

7) Don’t let your protagonist be wimpy for too long – In this kind of movie, everything is predicated on our character being duped. So for a good portion of the movie, the protagonist must play that role. But if this goes on for too long, we start to get frustrated by the character, sometimes even turning on them. We don’t like characters who don’t do anything to change their shitty circumstances. So at some point (usually in the second half of the second act) the protagonist should start rebelling. Here, it’s when Rosemary throws her own party. From that point on, Rosemary begins making her own decisions, as opposed to letting the decisions be made for her.

8) Build up suspense by allowing your audience to see their presents the night before Christmas – Waiting for the horror to finally arrive is one of the more enjoyable aspects of watching a horror film. But it’s a lot more fun when the writer teases that horror. It’s kind of like getting to touch and lift and shake your gifts the night before Christmas. It gets your mind spinning, excited and curious about what could be in those boxes. Here we get the armoire blocking the closet. We also get Rosemary’s friend, Hutch, warning her about all the strange deaths in her building. We see it later in the first act when Rosemary’s new friend seemingly commits suicide by jumping to her death. These moments are just like getting to hold and shake those unwrapped gifts. They make us eager to see what’s inside.

9) Whoever has the goal that’s driving the movie (even if it’s your villain) should encounter obstacles along the way – This is important to remember. When your hero is driving the movie with their goal, what makes their journey interesting are all the obstacles they encounter along the way. This same approach must be applied if your villain is the one driving the story. Since our villains’ goal is to guide Rosemary through her pregnancy so she has a healthy baby, Polanski creates ways to foil that plan. First, Rosemary’s friend Hutch shows up, who becomes suspicious of Rosemary’s neighbors. Then later, Rosemary insists on throwing a party with all her old friends, friends who could conceivably convince her how strange her pregnancy is. Regardless of who has the goal in your story, they should always encounter obstacles.

10) Go against the obvious with your horror ending – Again, most writers believe that a horror ending has to be the grandest scariest freakiest craziest spookiest scenario possible. As a result, a lot of the endings to horror scripts end up being similar. What separates Rosemary’s Baby and a big reason it’s such a classic, is that it does the exact opposite with its ending. Rosemary walks through a brightly lit apartment with people everywhere, sitting and talking in very non-threatening ways. Nobody really says or does anything when they see her. She’s allowed to be in the room without retaliation. What makes it so spooky is just how un-spooky it is!

These are 10 tips from the movie “Rosemary’s Baby.” To get 500 more tips from movies as varied as “Aliens,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “The Hangover,” check out my book, Scriptshadow Secrets, on Amazon!

Genre: Drama
Premise: A woman is kidnapped, drugged, and robbed of her life’s savings. She must now figure out how to reclaim her life, a task made easier when she meets a man on a train. Plus there are pigs.
About: Shane Carruth became a breakout sensation in the filmmaking world a decade ago when his first film, Primer, shocked Sundance and became the Grand Jury Prize Winner. The time-travelling mind-bending thriller shot for under 10 grand gave young filmmakers everywhere hope that they, too, could shoot films on the cheap and become star directors. But in the years after, Shane’s inexperience with the Hollywood system led him to dead end after dead end, unable to put together another movie. He then shocked the film world (once again) when this new film of his showed up at Sundance this year, a film no one knew he had even made. Carruth wrote, directed, and starred in the movie.
Writer: Shane Carruth.
Details: 97 minutes

Upstream Color was one of the most frustrating movies I’ve ever seen. It was a movie designed to destroy you, to make you detest it. It challenged you to be the one person in the theater who came away saying, “I liked that.” Even still, if you managed to be that person, you didn’t know why you were that person, why you liked it. Or maybe you did. Maybe you convinced yourself you did. Like Carruth’s first movie, Primer, it’s a film that makes you feel smart if you can follow along. It makes you feel superior. It’s a recipe that Carruth’s used to gain his cult following: Make the puzzle complex enough so that you feel good if you can put it together.

But there’s a difference between being a skilled puzzle maker and just throwing a bunch of pieces on the screen. In fact, I think there are many parallels here to Shane Carruth’s career and Richard Kelly’s. Both broke through with these strange puzzle-centric stories and made them jusssst weird enough that you weren’t sure if their intrigue was created on purpose or the result of pure luck. Kelly’s mess of a second film, Southland Tales, proved that it was probably the latter. And Upstream Color, in my opinion, proves the same.

Let me give you some background here. Keep in mind I heard this through the grape vine. It’s by no means fact. But I did hear it from a couple of independent sources so I’m willing to believe it. Shane came out of Primer with Hollywood in the palm of his hands. Everyone wanted to work with him. They tabbed him a young Kubrick. So Shane went around pitching a half thought-through idea about some marine biologists that was part drama, part romantic comedy, part sea adventure, etc. Nobody really understood what the movie was about so Shane went back and wrote this script called “A Topiary,” about kids who used star burst energy to create and control flying dragon-like creatures.

It was 244 pages long. (for those who are mathematically challenged, that would be a 4 hour movie)

Despite this, Shane had some big people who wanted to help him. How big? Try David Fincher. Fincher wanted to shepherd his career, guide him along, produce his films. So Shane showed him his script and then waited for the money. Except Fincher (and others) had some problems with the script. It was long and wandering and devoid of drama. They wanted to give Shane notes. Shane was SHOCKED. Shocked! I mean, are you serious? You’re not just going to give me a hundred million dollars without any strings attached and let me make my movie??? And thus began why Shane Carruth hasn’t made a movie in ten years. Cause he told guys like David Fincher to go fuck themselves.

Now some of you might be holding up your fists and screaming, “you go, girl.” “Fuck Hollywood.” Except David Fincher isn’t just anyone in the land of smog and billboards. Fincher notoriously went through hell with “the system” when he made Alien 3. It’s something that still affects him today, and why he tries to stay somewhat outside the system even as he’s working within it. In other words, Fincher is one of the few people who actually understands what it’s like to be in Shane’s shoes. He’s sympathetic. So if Shane’s having trouble with this guy, I can only imagine how he rubbed everyone else.

Now the reason I bring this up is because Upstream Color plays like a movie that nobody else but Shane has seen. You know how you screen things for friends or let friends read your scripts so that you can iron out the things that don’t make sense? Things that don’t seem to be playing the way you intended them to? This film didn’t go through that process. Or if it did, Carruth ignored any and all feedback. Because the storytelling here is a mess. It’s like the ultimate experimental student film. Zero script and a bunch of experimentation.

So what is it about? Well, I needed to consult with a few other people to come to this summary, but here’s the best I could do. There’s this woman, a film editor or something, I think. She gets kidnapped by this guy who’s created these “drug-worms,” little maggots infested with some sort of mind-control chemical. Once swallowed, the victim basically becomes a mental slave. The guy who kidnaps her then tells her to clear out all her bank accounts and give him all the money. She wakes up a few weeks later, having no idea why she’s broke and can’t remember anything.

But that becomes the least of her worries when she notes a worm swimming through her body up around skin level. She tries to keep cutting it out but with no success. She then hears a noise, a loud “WOOOMP WOOOMP” that draws her from her home out to a pig farm. She tells the strange pig farmer that she can’t get this worm out. No problem, the pig farmer says, and performs surgery on her, inserting (I believe) some pig parts inside of her. This seems to eliminate the problem. Or so we believe.

The woman then wakes out of her mental stupor, realizing that she’s lost her job and that a couple of months have gone by. As she attempts to put her life back together, she meets a dude on the train who has a sketchy (potentially illegal) hotel job. Sketchy Hotel Guy takes a liking to the woman and keeps asking her out. But because the last dude she met led to worms and pig parts inside her body, she’s understandably reluctant. Eventually, however, his persistence pays off, and the two start dating. Except this is REALLY DEPRESSING DATING. Like, both of these people have extremely mundane boring lives and talk about the most boring things imaginable. So we must endure banal, directionless, sad dialogue between them for many many scenes.

Eventually, Sketchy Hotel Guy realizes that Pig Girl isn’t all mentally there. Clue number one is that she likes to take a bag of rocks to the local swimming pool, dump them on the swimming pool floor, recover them one at a time, reciting lines from an obscure book while doing so. Observing this, it occurs to Sketchy Hotel Guy that the two of them might be under some mind control.  So he and Pig Girl do some investigation, locate the pig farmer, go to his place, and realize that each of the pigs he owns is some sort of psychic counterpart to a human being out there in society. Which means they’ve both been psychically pig-abducted. I think. They then go out, tell all of the psychically abducted pig people that they’re being controlled by pigs, and those people come to the pig farm to look at their pig counterparts, coming to terms with the reality that they’re… sorta pigs too, now. Then they all go home and order pizzas with extra pepperoni (okay, I made that last part up).

Okay, I’m just going to state the obvious here. This idea is dumb. I’m sorry, but it’s just dumb! Psychically controlled pig people? There’s no screenwriting gobbledy-gook that needs to be mentioned or applied here. It’s just a DUMB IDEA. I don’t care how you dress it up. You put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig.  Someone needed to tell Shane Carruth that this was a dumb idea and to not to make this movie! But, see, Shane Carruth isolated himself from Hollywood so that nobody could tell him no. He’s like the indie version of George Lucas.

I mean, nothing really matters if the idea is stupid, right? If people aren’t on board with the idea, they won’t give a crap about the story. Except for the rare case when you get a really awesome storyteller who can make a bad idea interesting. Shane Carruth, however, is not that storyteller. You’d have a better chance translating Mayan scripture than one of his stories. And some people think that’s by design. I don’t. I believe that the success of a storyteller is dependent on the audience understanding his work in the way he intended for it to be understood. If he’s trying to make you see “A” and you’re seeing “B,” that’s a failure. And I don’t think anyone but a scattered few are interpreting Shane’s work the way he intended. And this could’ve been avoided by simply – oh I don’t know – LISTENING to other people. Other people’s opinions are not the devil. You don’t even have to make the changes they suggest. Just LISTEN to them. If you did, you might be able to make more than one film a decade.

Personally, I think the movie would’ve been better if the guy who kidnapped her originally (who hypnotized her so she wouldn’t remember who he was) was the one she later started dating, instead of Sketchy Hotel Guy. I mean, now you have some actual dramatic irony. We know this guy is dangerous, that he’s stolen this woman’s money, and she’s falling in love with him. That’s a scenario I would’ve been intrigued by.

But there’s nothing as skilled as that here. It’s all just strange ideas mixed in with an awkward romantic relationship storyline. I did like a few things. I liked the title. I liked the cinematography. I liked the score. The first few minutes of the movie were captivating in a purely cinematic way. But it always comes back to the story for me. If you don’t know how to dramatize situations, how to add suspense or create compelling relationships or clear conflict. Or just make sense! You’re going to fall on your face. And Upstream Color, along with all the little piglets it birthed, falls squarely on its face.

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

What I learned: Dumb ideas make bad movies. I know this sounds obvious but I see a TON of scripts that are doomed before I even read the first line because the ideas are dumb. Simple test. Throw your idea in with a bunch of others, send them to some friends, don’t tell them which one is yours. Ask them to rank the ideas from best to worst. If your idea isn’t coming out near the top, don’t write it. Or just pitch your idea to people. Regardless of what they say (they’re all going to tell you they “like” it to be nice to you), look at their eyes. Are they excited, or are they confused and bored? A sign of a good idea is when they jump in and start adding ideas. Or they’re just excited. If someone looks genuinely excited about your idea, you know you have something good.

Amateur Friday Submission Process: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, a PDF of the first ten pages of your script, your title, genre, logline, and finally, why I should read your script. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Your script and “first ten” 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: Horror/Comedy
Premise: (from writer) When the girl of his dreams is kidnapped by a legion of monsters and her sorceress-possessed father, a timid teen must rally his misfit friends and faithful mummy to save his crush before her sacrifice unleashes Armageddon.
About: Day 2 of The Smackdown is here. The rules are simple: Two scripts enter, one script leaves. Why is this happening? A couple of weeks ago, you guys voted on the best of the 5 Amateur Offerings. But the votes were too close to count. So instead of picking one, I decided to review both – The Turning Season was yesterday. And Monster Mash is today. Who’s going to win? That’s up to you!
Writer: Daniel Caporetto
Details: 102 pages

Josh Hutcherson for Will?

When I imagined the Smackdown in my head, it made a lot more sense. Two horror scripts duking it out for Week of April 8th supremacy on Scriptshadow. How could it go wrong? But now that I’ve read Monster Mash, I’m not sure I’m down with the Smackdown. These scripts couldn’t be more different. Turning Season bobs where this weaves. It ducks where this dunks. We’re comparing a heavy horror drama to a goofy horror comedy. Emotion vs. laughs. Can such a thing be done?

Well, let’s start by asking the big question: Was Monster Mash funny? Let me answer that question this way. If you’d told me this was from the same guys who wrote Harold and Kumar, I probably would’ve believed you. So that’s something. The problem is, lots of folks will say that that’s not a good thing. I’d respond by saying writing a goofy script that actually works is hard as hell. It’s such a fine line between funny and stupid. I mean we have zombies giving hummers and mummies RECEIVING hummers here. High-brow this ain’t. Yet for all its craziness, I think it achieves what it’s trying to do.

Our story begins back in the Egyptian ages n shit. No idea how long ago that was but we’ll say 3000 years, give or take like…3000 years. A Kim Kardashian-looking Egyptian princess, Manzazuu, is going about her daily routine, trying to sacrifice her daughter to the Gods for eternal power or something like that, when her hubby comes flying out of nowhere demanding she stop. She refuses so he chops off her head. Apparently domestic dispute laws were really lax back then.

Cut to the present where 18 year old slacker Will is trying to figure out a way to snag school hottie Sandra from her asshole jock boyfriend, Mark. It’s actually working, as Sandra seems to like him, but for whatever reason, he can’t seal the deal. The good news is, there’s a Halloween party tonight, and he, along with his best friends Chuck (vulgar asshole) and Dom (really long bangs) are going to go there to sort their female problems out.

Unfortunately, across town, a new package has just showed up at the museum. A package of DEATH!!! Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration. It’s an Egyptian exhibit. But this exhibit is a teensy bit more interactive than the museum is prepared for. That’s because a couple of short mummies pop out, and a scepter-staff thing channels a long ago power that possesses an overweight worker named Tim. And guess who the possessor is? That’s right: Manzazuu! She’s back. In a severely out-of-shape man’s body!

Manzazuu’s first order of business is to secure an army. So she raises the dead, infesting the local town with lots of zombies. She also sends out her wolf guards to find Sandra, as Sandra happens to be her great great great great great great great great great great great grand daughter or something, which means Manzazuu can sacrifice her to raise the serpent God of Death, who will, of course, help her destroy the world.

This means Will, Chuck, Dom, Dom’s crush (male-energy Lila), and one of Manzazuu’s zombies they’ve converted, must suit up, arm themselves, and get to the museum to stop this sacrifice, all the while working through their problems with each other.

If I worked at a production company and someone asked me point blank, “What did you think of Monster Mash?” my response would be something like, “It wasn’t bad. It moved quickly. It had some funny moments. The guy knows how to write. But it was just too goofy for my taste.” “My taste” is the operative phrase here. I’m not 21, though I have a feeling I’d be a lot more into this if I were. That’s the tough thing about judging a script that isn’t your cup of tea. You have to guess what the target demo will think of it. And my guess is that they’d like Monster Mash.

I mean there’s some funny stuff here. When Manzazuu comes back in the body of a middle aged overweight man, yet still dresses like Kim Kardashian… that was funny. When the Chubby mummy can’t talk and therefore communicates via charades…that was funny. The mummy getting sexually molested by the high school slut…that was funny. The script kept a good stream of laughs coming.

But in the end I just wanted more from these characters. I don’t even know if this feeling is relevant anymore because I DO see a lot of professional comedy scripts that ignore character development. But I’m of the belief that if you make us believe in and care about your characters, that their escapades are going to be that much funnier, because we’re always more emotionally invested in people we care about.

Caporetto DOES make some inroads into this department, or at least tries to. Sandra’s dealing with the loss of her mom, for example. But for the most part, it was a bunch of surface level kids without a care in the world. If you look back at The Hangover, you’ll notice how intensely the stakes were set up. That wedding meant everything to Doug’s fiancé. And it meant everything to Doug himself. So when Doug gets lost, we know how important it is for them to get him back to his wedding on time. It’s not like Doug woke up in the opening scene trashed out of his mind with two hookers on his side. That scene might’ve been funny, but it doesn’t make us care about Doug. You’re just playing with fire when the pillars of your story are jokes.

On top of that, those pillars need to be clear. For example, I couldn’t figure out the relationship between Sandra and Will. She clearly likes him. There’s even an implied history there (they used to be together??). Yet he’s afraid to tell her he likes her? Why would he be afraid when she’s practically throwing herself at him? That whole relationship just needed to be better defined. I probably would’ve had Sandra more openly rejecting Will, making his job a lot tougher.

I also don’t like when different relationships in a movie tackle the same problem. Will’s wondering if Sandra likes him. And Dom’s wondering if Lila likes him. It’s the same thing and therefore lazy. Have Dom’s problem be something different. Maybe he’s trying to BREAK-UP with his girlfriend of two years, but she won’t let him. Anything so that two of your main characters aren’t tackling the exact same issue.

Some of this laziness crept in to other parts of the script as well (two of our main four characters have parents who work at their high school). It’s a little too neat, too cozy. And it’s not to say these things are script-killers. But they’re things experienced readers notice. They want to know that you, the writer, have exhausted every choice before deciding on one. And if the parents of two of your main characters are both teachers, that implies you’re not really trying that hard.

Monster Mash is one of the better scripts I’ve read in this genre in awhile, which is a tough genre to write. But personally, it was too goofy (and not deep enough) for me. I wanted to latch onto these characters as opposed to simply observe their antics. What did you guys think? Am I being too harsh? Should I not take this too seriously and loosen up? Oh, and which script won the Smackdown?? It was close, but I’d cast my vote for The Turning Season.

Script link – Monster Mash

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

What I learned: Make sure each character has a problem independent of the story. In other words, if none of these crazy mummies and zombies had showed up, would your characters still have an issue they had to overcome? The answer should be yes. Here, Will is trying to get Sandra. That’s his problem he needs to solve. It’s not done very well because Sandra appears to already like him. But the idea behind it is good. Try to do this for EVERY character. Give them a problem independent of the story. That way, parallel to solving the giant overall goal, they’re trying to conquer these smaller more personal goals.

Upstream Color will have to wait another week. So today’s script will take on one of the most famous baseball players in history. The question is, is he interesting enough to have a movie written about him?

Genre: Sports Drama
Premise: (from IMDB) The life story of Jackie Robinson and his history-making signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers under the guidance of team executive Branch Rickey.
About: Writer (and director of this film) Brian Helgeland, is the only screenwriter to win both an Oscar (for L.A. Confidential) and a Razzie (for The Postman) in the same year. While sticking mainly to writing, he does occasionally plop down in the director’s chair, such as when he directed Heath Ledger in the 2001 film, A Knight’s Tale (for which he also wrote the script – which sold for 2.5 million). Helgeland is one of Hollywood’s super-writers, brought in for million dollar rewrites when crap needs fixing (which is often). But this is a project he clearly wanted to be involved in from the beginning to the end. The film comes out this Friday and stars Harrison Ford as Jackie Robinson’s manager.
Writer: Brian Helgeland
Details: 125 pages (September 27, 2011 draft)

Man, there is a lot to talk about here. And I’m not even referring to the screenplay. First off, the sports drama is hard to pull off. Sports movies just don’t make money. So to see this splashed all over my TV and my neighborhood makes me think we’re talking AT LEAST a 70 million dollar marketing campaign. On top of the budget for the film, which was maybe 60 million, that means the movie has to clear 130 million just to meet its production and advertising budget (and since a movie has to make 3 times its budget to start making money, actually much more than that!)? Why do I have a hard time seeing 42 making that kind of money?

Then again, I have to admit, the trailers for this thing have been kick-ass. The marketing takes a 60 year old topic and makes it feel current and exciting. Despite that, I probably won’t see this until it comes out on Itunes. Which is surprising because I actually like baseball. I’d consider myself the core audience for the film. But Jackie Robinson’s story has been told so many times before. Why will this one be any different? What’s supposed to excite me about this new take besides the admittedly cool Jay-Z music in the trailer?

Then there’s the race angle. I don’t think race is an insignificant discussion by any means, but Jesus Christ has it been explored to death in cinema. I have to now endure another one of these cliché situations? There’s actually a lot of irony here because while this movie celebrates African-Americans breaking into baseball, we live in a time where African-Americans are becoming extinct in baseball. There are only a few dozen black baseball players left in the majors. They are gradually phasing out of the sport as the average African-American kid would rather play basketball or football. Baseball, for the most part, has become a Latino dominated game.

Then there’s just baseball in general. The sport is dying. It was created in a time where people actually had patience. Where they were willing to sit and watch a 3 hour game practically built to be boring. It’s been on a downward slope for awhile now. There’s really only one compelling story left in the sport in my opinion, and that’s “When are the Cubs going to win the World Series?” They better hope it never happens because as soon as it does, baseball is dead in my eyes.

So where does this leave my anticipation for 42? Not that high. I will say that these biopics are only as good as how interesting the main character is. If he’s complex, interesting, strange, has secrets, has demons, has personality, and lived an exciting life, put me in coach. But if this is just a by-the-book retelling of the most memorable moments from Jackie Robinson breaking into the major leagues, throw me out of the game.

Everyone knew 26 year old Jackie Robinson had the talent to play in the big leagues. But back in the 1940s, baseball was a white man’s game. I’m talking literally. Like there wasn’t a single black player in the league. And that’s because they weren’t allowed. There were even laws in some southern states where black men could not play baseball with white men. So if the cops were to see this, they’d arrest the black man (a scene that plays prominently in the movie).

Enter Branch Rickey, the owner of the New York Dodgers (yes, this is before they moved to Los Angeles). A little bit old, a little bit prickly, Rickey felt it was time that baseball had a black player. But he was unapologetic in saying he was just as interested in winning a world series. And he felt Jackie Robinson gave him the best chance of doing so.

While we expect this to be about Jackie’s anointment onto the Dodger team, most of the movie takes place before that monumental moment, back when he was playing for the Dodger’s Triple-A team. As he kicks ass in the minor leagues, word spreads that he’ll be coming to the Dodgers soon, and a lot of players don’t like it. In fact, a petition is put together for Branch Rickey from the entire Dodger team saying they won’t play if Jackie is brought up.

But Rickey doesn’t scare easily. He tells his players if they don’t want to play for him, no problem. He’ll trade’em. With that plan backfiring, Jackie does make his famed major league debut on April 15, 1946 and all the players but one are there to accept him. Well, “accept” might not be the correct word. As you’d expect, Jackie’s not exactly bombarded with Facebook friend requests upon his arrival. For the most part, everyone just tolerates him, and as one sportswriter puts it, Jackie has become the “loneliest man in baseball.”

But Jackie keeps fighting, doing the one thing he knows he does best – play baseball. And play it he does. His combination of strength and speed is like nothing baseball has ever seen. And with him leading the team, the Dodgers put themselves in position to do the unthinkable: Win the pennant. That’s if Jackie can weather the storm his entrance into the sport’s created.

This movie is called “42,” which stands for Jackie Robinson’s number. This movie is about Jackie Robinson. So if Jackie Robinson isn’t a compelling character, this movie is dead. And guess what? Jackie Robinson (in this draft at least) isn’t a compelling character. Now sure, the events surrounding him are compelling. Everything he goes through is compelling. But the character himself? Well, okay I’m just going to say it…he’s kinda boring.

I mean first his flaw is too simplistic. He’s a hot head. So wherever someone tests him, whenever some white Klansman-wannabe tells him to go back to the cotton field, Jackie must resist his first impulse, which is to beat the living hell out of the guy. This isn’t easy since it happens multiple times a day every day he’s in the big leagues. Hmm, I’m not sure how deeply that’s exploring our hero.

Second, he’s got zero personality. I mean ZERO. He just nods a lot, bristles a lot, keeps to himself a lot. He has no sense of humor, no compelling quirks. He’s just a super serious boring guy. This very well may have been how Jackie was and they didn’t want to mis-portray him, but that doesn’t mean he gets a passing grade. Boring is boring.

Finally, and most importantly, Jackie is not an active character. This entire movie is about how he reacts to what’s happening. He’s told he gets to be in the big leagues. He’s told how to handle it. Whenever someone tells him to do something, he does it. The character isn’t driving any apect of the story except for maybe the pennant race, which is given very little focus. Look at two other famous African-Americans in history, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. These are people who were ACTIVE. Who DID things. Jackie Robinson was thrown into a situation and we watched how he reacted. And for whatever reason, his reaction just isn’t that compelling.

In fact, I would argue that Branch Rickey (played by Harrison Ford) is the main character here. He’s the one who made the decision, who has the most at stake, who’s driving the story with his choices. And that’s fine. It’s cool to know more about this person who played a big part in the Jackie Robinson story. But this movie isn’t called “Branch Rickey.” So why the hell does he get more attention as a character than Jackie?

Then there’s the structure. So much of the movie is leading up to this moment when Jackie joins the team, that after it happens, I’m not really sure why I’m watching anymore. I mean, it’s interesting to see the kind of resistance he runs into (even if it’s predictable), but we’ve already covered a lot of this while he was in the minor leagues. After awhile, I got impatient and asked, “Where is this going?” Eventually, this late-emerging pennant-race storyline popped up and I just sort of went with it. But since it wasn’t given a lot of emphasis, it lacked that engine that really drove our interest.

That’s not to say the script was bad. It had a strong, if a little safe, voice to it. There were a few nice moments, such as when the Phillies manager came out on the field and, in front of the world, reporters and all, told Jackie he was a monkey and to go back to the cotton fields. THE PHILLIES MANAGER. Not some player. That one stuck out. But because Jackie Robinson himself was so bland, and so reactive, I was never truly invested in the screenplay.

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

What I learned: I’ll say this until the day I die. It doesn’t matter how interesting a person’s life is. If the person themselves isn’t interesting, don’t write a movie about them.