Genre: Crime/Action/Thriller
Premise: A stunt driver moonlighting as a getaway driver gets caught up in a job that’s over his head.
About: Drive is adapted from James Sallis’ novel of the same name and will star Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, and…Albert Brooks? Relatively unknown Nicolas Winding Refn will direct. Bryan Cranston, whose stock is building hourly with his show “Breaking Bad,” is also said to be cast in the film. The writer, Hossein Amini has a half a dozen produced credits, the most well-known of which might be “The Four Feathers,” starring Kate Hudson and Heath Ledger. Personally, I would’ve cast Brooks in the role of Shannon. But man, if he can somehow pull off the heavy role, his career’s going to have a huge resurgence.
Writer: Hossein Amini (adapted from the novel by James Sallis)
Details: 121 pages – undated (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

Is Drive the thinking man’s “Fast and Furious?” That’s what I thought when I first heard about the project. When hardcore thespian Ryan Gosling teams up with critical darling It Girl Carey Mulligan on a film titled Drive, it’s the equivalent of hearing Oprah’s interviewing the cast of Jersey Shore. The two worlds just don’t collide. Was Gosling tired of all the serious roles and wanted to have some fun? Did Mulligan simply sign up to work with Gosling? Truth be told, I didn’t know what to expect when I opened Drive, and through the first 20 pages, I found the script chugging along as if it hadn’t had an oil change since 2003. But as this story unfolded, I realized we were on the cusp of a potentially great film. We may start out on the backroads, but we end up at the Indy 500.

Drive is a richly layered script with lots of moving parts but I’m going to try and simplify it for you. Our hero on this journey is nameless. We refer to him only as “Driver.” Yes, I thought this was pretentious too. But fire up the dual climate control. It gets better.

Driver is a stunt driver for movies shooting in the greater Los Angeles area. But because that doesn’t pay the bills, he moonlights as a getaway driver. Driver isn’t an ordinary getaway driver however. He works independently. You tell him where to be and when to be there and he’ll get you to safety, guaranteed. He doesn’t want to know what you’re stealing, how much you’re stealing, or what you plan to do with it. His only job is to outrun the cops and at that, he’s the best.

As you might have guessed, Driver isn’t the social type (he doesn’t even have a real name!) but the one person he trusts more than anyone is wily veteran stunt driver, Shannon, the man who hooks him up with these getaway jobs. Shannon’s getting tired of this dangerous lifestyle though and has a long-term goal in mind for his Mario Andretti’esque superstar. He wants to buy a car and have Driver race it competitively – get out from all this seedy underworld shit.

So Driver moves into a new place and meets his gorgeous neighbor, Irina, along with her young son. Although Driver prefers to take the Robert DiNero from Heat approach to relationships, he can’t help but fall for Irina. Pretty soon he’s over there every free chance he gets. This is trouble, however, since Irina’s husband, the gangbanging Standard, gets out of jail early, crashing any chance at romance. And I get the feeling he doesn’t come with passenger side airbags.

Standard smells Driver’s intentions but he also smells a criminal and right now he needs a criminal. Bad. Standard owes some bad people a lot of money and if they don’t get it soon, it ain’t Standard they’re going to make pay. It’s that cute wife and son of his. Standard lays it all out for Driver. He needs him to drive getaway on a bank robbery so that he can pay these thugs back.

Driver never deals with criminals this low on the totem pole but he knows this woman he’s fallen for is in danger and therefore has no choice. Driver tries to do it by his rules – just tell him where to be – but these men want to meet him, want to know who they’re entrusting their money to. He’s pulled in a little deeper than usual, exposing his identity, and that will come back to haunt him later.

The bank robbery is the central set piece and it’s the moment where I officially fell in love with this script. Whatever you think is going to happen, you’re wrong. And I’m not going to spoil it for you because it deserves to be read, but let’s just say nothing goes as planned and afterwards, nothing is the same, creating an intense and seriously awesome game of cat and mouse for the last sixty pages. If you like movies, you will love this script, period.

Drive starts off like an 88 Ford Taurus. Sllloooowww. I’ve seen giraffes shorter than these blocks of text. It was strange because I was already planning my review as I read these first 20 pages and it was going to focus on how huge blocks of text kill a screenplay, whether you’re an amateur or a professional. Oops. I’m not going to say I loved the writing style and part of me thinks he wrote it this way in order to keep it under 120, but I can tell you by the end, the story was so good I wouldn’t have cared if he told it in iambic pentameter.

The victories of this script are too numerous to count but Drive reminded me, once again, what every great script has in common. GREAT CHARACTERS. It all starts with the protagonist, who has to be complex on some level, and Driver aces this exam easily. See we always love watching heroes who bestow a moral code on immoral actions because of the built-in irony. Driver is a getaway driver who refuses to get mixed up in the nuts and bolts of his jobs. He’s “just” the driver, so technically he’s not doing anything wrong. I don’t know why but this always works in movies.

I also love how all the characters here have something going on and the dynamic that creates whenever they’re together. Driver wants something. Irina wants something. Standard wants something. Shannon wants something. Even the kid wants something. Every character here wants something and THEY WANT IT BADLY and that’s usually the basis for a great character piece.

There’s this scene early on in the second act where Driver, Irina, Standard, and the boy are all together that rocks the house because of this pre-established dynamic. Driver wants Irina but knows he can’t have her. Irina wants Driver but knows she can’t have him. Standard senses they like each other but he needs Driver, so he can’t do anything to him. Driver would never lie to Irina, but knows he must keep his job with Standard a secret to protect her. Irina suspects Driver and Standard may be in cahoots, but she can’t prove it. Irina loves Driver but can’t let Standard know. The kid is torn between his real father and Driver, who he’s developed a relationship with. There’s just A LOT OF SHIT GOING ON between everyone. Now, a nice normal dinner scene turns into the greatest fucking scene ever because there’s SO MUCH going on underneath the surface.

I could keep going on. I love how we learn everything about Driver through his ACTIONS and not what he says (because he rarely says anything). In the very first scene, the initial getaway scene, he barely says anything and we find out that he’s crafty, clever, calm, and collected, and a leader – everything we need to know about him moving forward.

You know I always say that I don’t like crime/mob films and people ask me why and I say, “Cause they’re always the same.” Some guy’s dealing drugs. Some other guy rats him out. Someone kills someone. Someone else kills someone in retaliation. This was my big problem with Richard Price’s 36. It was all just basic boring cliché criminal stuff. I’ve always said, “Show me a crime/mob film that does something different and I’ll be interested.” And that’s exactly what Drive does. This script goes through so many permutations, starting off as a getaway driver film, moving into a relationship film, and finally morphing into a crime thriller. It was just so different and unique and unpredictable. In the end, that’s what every reader is looking for. A compelling well-told story told from a slightly different angle.

People have been upset with the fact that a film titled “Drive” doesn’t end with a huge car chase but this never bothered. I think it’s because by the end, I only cared about the characters. I didn’t care if they were digging a hole to china or jumping out of an airplane. Even the last shot of the movie is character driven and it’s one of the most poetic coolest endings I’ve read in this genre. If they do this right, I’m telling you, people are going to win Oscars.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive (Top 25!)
[ ] genius

What I learned: Have your characters hide things from each other (whether it be a secret or their true feelings — whatever) to create great subtext in your scenes. One of the reasons this script works so well is because of everything that’s going on UNDERNEATH the surface. Everyone is keeping something from everyone else and in most cases they’re keeping multiple things from each other. Driver has to keep from Irina that he’s working with Standard. Standard’s hiding what he plans to do to Driver once this job is over. Irina is hiding her love for Driver from Standard. Shannon is forced to hide things from the heavies and from Driver. Create a complicated dynamic between your characters and your scenes will reign with subtext. This is a great script to study for this and so many other reasons.

Doing something a little different today. Roger is reviewing a script from a professional reader. Does he have what it takes to write a great script? While reading a ton of scripts helps your own screenwriting, I’ll be the first to admit it doesn’t ensure success. Each script has its own unique challenges and there’s no guarantee, regardless of whether you’re an amateur, professional or semi-professional, that you’ll be able to overcome them. I look back at shitty scripts of mine all the time and think “This sucks. There’s no way it can be salvaged.” What I love is that Dan was like, “Have at it. Grade it just as hard as you grade everything else. Grade it harder.” One thing I love about readers – they know the value of straightforward criticism cause nobody tells you the truth in this town. I know Dan offers notes, as do I (feel free to e-mail me for prices: carsonreeves1@gmail.com) so if you’re interested, drop me an e-mail.

The rest of the week is Odd Fever. I tackle a straight action script, a moody spooky period piece that a certain star has been trying to get made forever, and at the end of the week, for Amateur Friday, I review…a zombie script?? What the hell is going on?? Anyway, it promises to be a different week at Scriptshadow. Hope you enjoy it!

Genre: Supernatural Thriller, Horror, Drama
Premise: An orphaned teen returns un-aged from a mysterious 10-year journey to battle a powerful minister for control over a gateway to hell.
About: Dan Calvisi was a Senior Story Analyst for Miramax Films for over five years and now runs the script consultation service, Act Four Screenplays. As a professional reader, he worked for Fox 2000, New Line Cinema and Jonathan Demme’s former production company, Clinica Estetico.
Writer: Daniel P. Calvisi

“Donnington” has the type of logline I eat up.

Not only does it mention a gateway to hell, but it has the phrase, “un-aged from a mysterious 10-year journey”. It’s such a bizarre detail (Why is the character un-aged? Where did he go? What happened to him? Again, why didn’t he age?) that captured my imagination and made me want to read the script.

Weaned on horror movies, Ghostbusters and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, I am always very interested in gateways to hell. All of my favorite myths involve characters like Orpheus or Hercules entering such gateways to rescue or retrieve loved ones or creatures from the shadowy, fiery underworld.

And, I’m here to report, this script is about a boy who disappears into such a doorway to claim a mythic mantle and returns to the ordinary world (yep, un-aged and ten years later) with a supernatural boon that may bring death to every other person he encounters in the natural world.

Cool. Who’s the boy?

Seventeen year-old Ben Danvers officially becomes an orphan when his father dies in jail. We meet our protagonist at his father’s funeral, where we also learn that the townspeople hate his father. Donnington is a town devastated by a horrible mine explosion that killed thirty-three people in the early 80s (in fact, the script begins with a creepy cool prologue that captures events in the mine just before the cave-in, which involves a miner fleeing into a red light with a baby in his arms).

Ben’s caseworker has enrolled the pagan teenager (during the funeral, he spouts his knowledge of Greek and Roman mythology to the minister) at a top-notch school, a prestigious private institution called the “Donnington Lamb of God Evangelical School for Christian Leadership and Development”. So, not only do the townspeople express resentment for Ben because of his paternal pedigree, but he’s being placed in an educational environment that violently clashes with his own personal beliefs.

It’s at the evangelical school that we meet Cassie Harken, a goth-y gal who is immediately attracted to Ben, especially when he announces that his topic for his senior term paper will be disproving the existence of Hell. Her own topic for Senior Themes? Vampirism in the bible. This is a match made in the bowels of a heavily religious and right-wing environment, the common denominator being that both characters have a mutual disdain for authority figures.

They bond when they visit the cemetery and start to make myths, or make-up stories about the people behind the names on the headstones of the graves.

At this school, not only do we get to meet Ben’s reluctant teacher, Mr. Grabash, we also witness the school’s painful version of required chapel, which is the daily assembly led by the school’s figurehead, Brother Gabriel.

What’s the story behind Brother Gabriel?

Brother Gabriel is known for dressing all in black and delivering not so much a fire and brimstone sermon to the young sheep at his school, but for pontificating about a place he calls “Outer Darkness”. I suppose the place is related to the Cormac McCarthy novel in that both are about the concept of Hell, although Brother Gabriel also refers to it as a physical, geographical place while McCarthy seems to only be concerned with the moral and emotional metaphor.

Basically, Gabriel makes kids weep by talking about the complete solitude of Hell and paints word scenarios where they must imagine being trapped there, and that it’s too late to call on Jesus for help. It’s important to know that Gabriel and his school rose to power because he’s the only known survivor of the Golgoth mine cave-in of 82. He reminds the kids and the townspeople that not only is survival a miracle, but that his purpose on earth is to save the youth from Hell.

Ben gets in dire straits with Brother Gabriel while trying to interview him for his term paper. Not only does Gabriel dislike Ben, but he doesn’t appreciate him challenging his authority. To complicate the situation, Ben also learns that Gabriel is also possibly molesting Cassie.

Does supernatural stuff start to happen?

Yeah. One day, at the Jesuit house Ben lives in (where his caseworker finds him lodging) he receives a mysterious letter that has strange symbols and glyphs on it. There’s a phrase that says, “Return back. Mine.” So, accordingly, Ben is drawn to the Golgoth mine, but the townspeople warn him that it’s condemned because of mercury poisoning. Undeterred, he explores the hillside and encounters the Charon-like Duey, the old punch-in clerk from the prologue who now wanders the hills as a sort of guardian. In their first encounter, he demands to inspect Ben’s tongue.

The first act turn approaches when Ben learns about Cassie and Gabriel and when the strange birthmark he has on his body starts morphing into a map on his body. He lines it up with another map and it all leads to a particular entrance of the mine called Raven Hill. Under the cover of night, Ben goes to the mine and encounters three men (perhaps the mysterious authority trio Gabriel answers to at the school) in hazmat suits are inspecting creek water. He’s chased into the mine…

…where he disappears for, apparently, a really long time. Now, for me, this was the most intriguing part of the script. We’re treated to a time-lapse of the outside of the mine, and although we’re not sure how much time is passing, we suspect that whatever is happening must be supernatural. Sure enough, Ben emerges from the mine with a beard and his face is weathered by the elements.

And, he’s holding a lacquered wooden strongbox with iron latches.

It reminds us of the circular, mossy door he fled into in the mine.

What’s in the box?

That’s part of the mystery. No matter what Ben does, he can’t seem to open it. And no matter where he leaves it, it seems to magically reappear wherever he’s at. Yep, it’s an inanimate object that follows him around. There’s also a scene where the villains are searching for the box, and although it’s in plain view, they’re unable to see it. Ben spends the rest of the script carrying the box around with him.

So, ten years passed while Ben was in the mine?

Yep. Ben returns to Donnington to find that the town is eclipsed by the gigantic new mini-mega church that spires up into the sky. He meets Mr. Grabash, who is now a drunken hobo that wanders the streets, and Cassie, who is ten years older while Ben isn’t. She’s super confused, and tells a tale where she thought he disappeared for good.

We discover that Brother Gabriel is now calling himself Prophet Gabriel, and that he’s built an institution that seats fifteen thousand people. Parents from all over the state enroll their kids at the school. Gabriel seems to employ most of the town. Gabriel isn’t too happy to discover that Ben has returned, and the mysterious three men are on alert to snatch him and interrogate him about his experience in the mine.

Which he has no memory of.

He gets mysterious flashes of what happened to him down there, and well, they’re not always pretty.

And, now, Ben is plagued with more strange events. While he tries to discover who Gabriel really is and what he’s up to, he becomes aware of phenomena with the box. Disconcertingly, everyone in contact with him seems to die soon after. There’s a cool detail when he interrogates a photographer and we learn that, in the photos of himself, he seems to have a dark smudge-like tail following him around.

Does Ben learn about the mysterious men that employ Gabriel?

Yep. We learn that they’re part of a consortium called The Alchemy Group, and that they’ve been interested in the mine for a very long time. And they’re very intrigued by Ben and his bloodline.

It all culminates into a bloody finale (one that actually made me sick to my stomach) where Ben may or may not become a popular mythical figure. Pay attention to the clues: references to the Valkyrie, gargoyles, Tartarus and a certain scythe-wielding icon.

Does it work?

It’s a very intriguing mystery. In a good way, it reminded me of “Donnie Darko”. The tone and the element of mystery is both its strength and weakness.

There’s some character and plot stuff that can get confusing at times. Just lots of goals that seem to get lost in the 2^nd act shuffle: Ben is trying to clear his father’s name, but he’s also trying to expose Gabriel, and he’s also trying to solve the mystery of not only the mine, but the Alchemy Group, and his true nature. It can feel convoluted.

I also felt that, at times, the author was grinding an axe rather than simply telling a story.

All in all, it’s a cool puzzle narrative that reminded me of “Carnivale” and stuff by Stephen King. It also has a really cool concept at its heart: It’s about a boy whose inheritance is related to the Grim Reaper. And for that, it’s definitely worth reading.

Please contact Dan at dan@actfourscreenplays.com for the script.

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

What I learned: There’s a quote by Richard Kelly that I’m pretty fond of, “For me, for fantasy to truly work, there has to be an undercurrent of absolute realism.” When you have birth marks morphing into maps, a character disappearing into the underworld for ten years and returning with no memory of the experience, an ornate box that you can’t open but follows you around no matter where you leave it, and encounters with a supernatural realm that culminates into a boy becoming a scythe-wielding mythical figure, it’s important to ground everything in a realistic setting with characters that feel like real people. I think Donnington could benefit by not only making its setting, the town, more realistic, but by depicting the town in such a way that makes it feel like an actual character. From “It’s a Wonderful Life” to Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” to the more modern “Lars and the Real Girl”, there’s something to be said for giving a community, a collective of people, a character arc. Donnington is a town that has suffered a great tragedy and has turned belly-up, but the setting never quite felt realistic. I think it could benefit from being fleshed out more. How do you do this? You depict more characters from the community who have different backgrounds. For example, I’ll point to Karl Gajdusek’s “Pandora”, which portrayed multiple characters who inhabited a town. They were all different ages and from different social stratas with different jobs. All together, the varying perspectives felt like a tapestry of characters that gave weight and soul to the setting. I’m not advocating turning this script into an ensemble piece, but if “Donnie Darko” can make a town feel like a character, so can “Donnington”. At one point, a character says, “God left this town long ago.” It’s a literal Ichabod (the departure of God’s glory). For the audience to believe that a setting is truly cursed, first they have to truly believe the setting.

note: Okay, comments seem fixed.

Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Premise: (from IMDB) A man is wrongly convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage against the U.S. He’s offered his freedom if he can rescue the president’s daughter from an outer space prison taken over by violent inmates.
About: This sci-fi actioner is being pitched as “Taken in outer space” but it appears that’s due more to whose involved (Luc Besson and Maggie Grace – both Taken alums) than the actual script itself. I’d probably call this more “Die Hard in space,” due to the contained nature of the story and the somewhat cartoonish aspect of the plot. It’s nice to see Guy Pearce getting some work again (he plays the lead – Miller). He’s one of the most underrated actors out there. This draft of the script was written back when the project was titled, “Section Eight.”
Writers: Luc Besson, James Mather, Stephen St. Leger
Details: 107 pages – 2nd draft, revisions March 2009 (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

Huge fan of Luc Besson. Still remember seeing The Fifth Element which was YEARS ahead of its time effects wise, and being blown away by the extensive mythology of the world. How different it was. How ambitious it was. And how surprisingly funny it was. It was too weird to ever find the mainstream success Star Wars did, but it’s arguably the second best sci-fi fantasy film ever made outside the Star Wars universe.

Unless I’m mistaken, this is Besson’s first foray back into science-fiction since Element, and that makes it worthy of discussion. However, I was upset to find out that the draft I read was really rough. And I mean rough enough to be mistaken for sandpaper. Take this early dialogue exchange for example, where a character asks what happens with their space suits once they’ve escaped the station: “And what if we get sucked into earth’s gravity?” “It won’t happen – you’re fifty miles outside the Earth’s gravitational pull.” “But what if it does?” “Not that it’s a problem but the suits are precisely designed to withstand a re-entry. They come equipped with chutes.” Hmmm…I wonder if these chutes are going to come into play later?

There’s “on-the-nose” and then there’s “ON-THE-NOSE” and it looks like they were still at the stage where you’re using dialogue to spell out your story for yourself, planning to smooth it out later once everything’s in place. This is how most writers work so it makes sense and it means this will be a more “broad strokes” examination of script. I’m figuring (hoping) it will change a lot in the time being.

Luc Besson likes his heroes tough and simple and Miller is no different. He’s a government agent in the year 2088 who possesses a unique talent for getting into and out of tight places without getting caught. Unfortunately, Miller is convicted of killing his partner on his latest mission and is sentenced to 30 years on Section 8, the space jail that houses the worst criminals in the world.

In the meantime Emile, a journalist and the daughter of the president of the United States, is going up to Section 8 for a little expose on the jail. Seems that they freeze all the prisoners to keep costs and problems down and that there are rumors that this freezing process causes permanent brain damage. Emile is interviewing a few of the inmates to see if she can break a 60 Minutes like story.

Naturally, one of these rapists-murderers she interviews, a degenerate aptly named Hydell, is able to slip out of his handcuffs, pickpocket a gun, and start shooting up the place, which of course ends in the release of all 500 prisoners from their medical-induced slumber. Alex, the smart villain (and Hydell’s brother), emerges as the brains of the operation, and realizes he can use the jail’s workers as bargaining chips to get back to earth.

Lucky for the good guys, Alex doesn’t realize he has the biggest bargaining chip of all right in the room with him…the president’s daughter. For this reason, a few of the president’s advisors come up with a risky plan. Sneak one of their men up into the base, have him find Emilie, and get her out of there. But who are they going to find to pull that off?

I think I have an ide-aaaaaaaa.

Miller accepts the job for a chance at freedom and, in one of the lazier subplots of the story, to save a friend who’s also up there. The rest of the story is pretty straight-forward, with the two running around like chickens with their heads cut off, trying to escape the prisoners and the jail. Miller and Emilie, predictably, despise each other in that “I hate you but I still want to have sex with you” way, which makes their goal all the tougher, but they suck it up because it’s not like there are a lot of options up here. Unless you like getting raped and murdered by 500 prisoners.

In case you haven’t figured it out, this is basically an extended trippy R-rated version of the “Escape the Death Star” sequence in Star Wars.

Unfortunately, in its current form, the script reads like it was written by an amateur, or at the very least three professionals in a hurry. I mean the characters here are painfully underdeveloped. Miller is a tough guy who’s, well, tough. Hydell is an evil bad guy who’s, well, evil. Alex is a mastermind who’s, well, smart. And every character here communicates in a bravado so macho they make the original cast of Predator sound like a bunch of metrosexuals on a field trip to Bergdorf. For example, there’s a lot of this: “And who are you?” “I’m your fairy fucking godfather.”

Oh boy.

Ironically these were some of the same arguments lobbed at Taken, but a couple of key differences were in play with that film. The connection between the pursuer (Neeson) and the pursued (the daughter) was personal. He was her father, which added a whole emotional component that this doesn’t have. Nobody seems to care about anyone or anything in Lockout but themselves. Taken also did a good job carefully constructing the relationship between father-daughter in the first act. The setup here seems more concerned with a murder-mystery that doesn’t have anything to do with the story (whether Miller really killed his partner or not).

In the end, this is a lazy treatment of a well-tread premise. It has some potential, especially with Besson overseeing it, but it’s going to need some major rewriting, particularly in the character department, to truly stand out. Hopefully all the rewriting since 2009 has taken care of this, since I’d love nothing more than to see another awesome Besson sci-fi flick.

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

What I learned: A lot of people are intimidated by the second act. And they should be. It’s scary. I’m scared right now just thinking about it. But to ease the pain, I have a tip for you. It’s called “Escalation Nation.” Use the second act to place obstacles in front of your character’s goal with each obstacle being slightly bigger than the previous. At first all Miller has to do is find Emilie (obstacle) but then he learns that she’s in a room that’s running out of oxygen (bigger obstacle). Alex learns about their plans and sends his baddies after them (bigger obstacle). Alex makes an announcement over the speaker to all the prisoners that Miller and Emilie are trying to escape and to stop them at all costs (bigger obstacle). The escalation of these obstacles will keep the story moving at a brisk pace and since each problem is bigger than the last, we rarely get bored. Of course, this is assuming you’ve already developed characters that we want to root for.

Remember, you can’t spell “characters” without “care.”

No, that last part was not meant to be serious. Shame on you if you thought it was.

Genre: Love Story/Dark Comedy
Premise: A married woman falls for another man while on a business trip, only to learn later that he lives right across the street from her.
About: Actor/Director/Producer/Writer Sarah Polley made waves a couple of years ago with her directing debut, Away From Her. This is her follow-up effort, which stars Seth Rogen (who will be playing the smaller part of the husband – not the “other man”), Michelle Williams, and Sarah Silverman, and is filming as I write this. The script landed on last year’s Black List with 10 votes (the same amount of votes as scripts “Buried” and “My Mother’s Curse.”) One wonders how close “Take This Waltz” is to Polley’s own life. She married film editor David Wharnsby, her companion of seven years, in 2003 and had this to say: “My relationship [with him] is the thing I’m proudest of in my life. I had a lot of opportunities to end up in some pretty bad situations and, despite all my faults, I had the sense to find someone like him and make the decision to be with him. You spend a lot of time wanting to be with the wrong person and I just feel incredibly lucky because I’ve succeeded at that one thing. I figured that out.” A few years later, the two divorced. Might Polley’s desire to be with the wrong person have done her in and also been the inspiration for this script? The ending of this story will have you wondering.
Writer: Sarah Polley
Details: 110 pages – May 26, 2009 (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

I’m always game for a good infidelity script because the subject matter fascinates me. That’s why Last Night is in my Top 25. It’s slow, I’ll admit that, and a few people have e-mailed me to unleash their vitriol over reading it via my recommendation, but what I love about infidelity stories is that they put a character in an ideal situation for drama by forcing them to make a choice that will change their lives. That’s the best way to explore a character and create a dramatic situation, is to put your characters in predicaments where they have to make choices with high stakes attached. The lead up to and fallout of those situations is always interesting.

Take This Waltz explores this choice from the vantage point of Margot, a 28 year old journalist. She and her husband, Lou, have been married for five years, and have hit that place in a marriage where, well, let’s face it, it’s boring. Or at least Margot’s half is boring. Lou, a chef who exclusively cooks chicken, seems perfectly content with where they are (why is it so easy for us guys to be content?). It’s not like the couple is on the outs or anything. They still tell each other how much they love each other, albeit in bizarre strangely unsettling ways (“I love you so much I want to put your spleen through a meat grinder.”) It’s just that their marriage is as boring as an Everybody Loves Raymond rerun.

So one weekend, while on a business trip, Margot meets Seth, an offbeat guy with a unique take on life who kinda reminds her of herself before she got married. Their time together is quick – just a few flirty exchanges – and if that were it, Margot’s life would’ve been fine.

But then the two find themselves next to each other on the flight home. The five hour flight proves to be an irresistible chance to get to know each other and they eventually give into it. And if that were it, Margot’s life would’ve been fine.

But then Margot finds out Seth lives directly across the street from her. This terrible cosmic coincidence is the hook for the film and pretty soon Seth’s close proximity sinks its hooks into her. She’s clearly fallen in love with this man, and there he is, only 40 feet away every night.

The excuses to go over there are innocent at first – a hello here, a walk there – but soon these meetings are turning into planned lunches. And once you hit the planned lunch well, let’s face it, there’s only one place it can go from there.

But that’s the unique thing about Take This Waltz. It doesn’t go there. In fact, Take This Waltz takes its sweet time about answering the big question of the movie: Will they or won’t they? And since the traditional course of this genre is: resist, consummate, break up, get back together, we’re impatiently waiting for that time tested song to hit the jukebox. Eventually we realize we’re not going to hear anything until the end. For those who follow the site, you know why I LOVE this decision. Keeping your romantic leads apart for as long as possible is the WAY TO GO because it keeps the conflict and suspense high. If you don’t believe me, go watch a little movie called “When Harry Met Sally.”

To be honest, I didn’t think this script was going to recover from its opening. I can already hear the commenters now: “It’s so BOR-ING!” “Nothing HAP-PENS!” And I’d agree there were times early on where the script felt like it was perched on top of a Galapagos turtle. A dead Galapogos turtle. But I’m telling you, as Seth and Margot’s relationship builds, you want to know what she’s going to do. And if you think you know, you don’t know. Margot’s no fluzie who runs off with the first cute guy who smiles at her. She truly values her marriage. But she’s fallen in love with this other man and she can’t find a satisfactory way to resolve the situation, so she just drifts into the Demilitarized Zone, hoping that somehow the decision will get made for her. Or she’ll get shot.

What I really loved about the script though was the emphasis Polley put on theme. Theme’s a funny thing. A lot of writers are intimidated by it or don’t think it’s important. I confess I once fell squarely in this camp. But when you know the central idea you’re trying to convey to your audience, you can shape everything from the characters to the plot to the dialogue around it. A well-integrated theme avoids the kind of scripts I see so often from amateurs, where everything is so disconnected and random that you’re continually losing focus trying to read it. Everything needs a center to revolve around, and that’s what your theme does.

And hey, themes don’t have to be complicated . Most of the time they’re actually quite simple. The theme here is: “Is the grass really greener on the other side?” It’s a question all of us ask in multiple areas of our life so it’s something that resonates, that makes you think. And I was definitely thinking along with these characters, wondering what I would do if I were them.

Yes there were some annoying things about Waltz. Margot and Lou were downright weird at times, bordering on an inside joke so exclusive that *they* were almost on the outside. I’m not sure telling someone you love them so much you want to watch them burn in an oven is okay no matter how well you know each other. I also was NOT cool with Seth’s job, which is a rickshaw driver. If ever there was a more quirky movie-ready job that had no basis for existing in a real-life version of this situation, this would be it.

But like I said, in the end, it won me over. The ending, in particular, is not what you’d expect from a romantic comedy (which IMDB claims this to be). And it’s just nice to see this kind of movie tackled from a different point-of-view, particularly if that point-of-view is Sarah Polley’s.

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

What I learned: Put your characters in uncomfortable situations. The more uncomfortable they are, the better. If your characters are comfortable for too long, you don’t have a story. Why? Well because if a character is comfortable, there’s no drama. And drama is the key to story, right? There’s a great scene towards the end of Take This Waltz. It’s Margot’s anniversary, and she’s across the street talking to Seth. Lou comes home early and spots them. He walks over, having no idea of their relationship over the past month, and kindly introduces himself. He informs Margot that he made them a dinner reservation and they’re already late. Seth – jealous, disappointed, amused – offers to take them in his rickshaw. Margot is horrified by the idea and tries to get out of it, but Lou is already climbing in, eager to get to dinner. The scene works because Polley creates the most uncomfortable situation possible for her protagonist. Look for these opportunities in your own script. They almost always work.

I’m taking a break today and bringing in Aaron Coffman to review a script that you couldn’t get me to read with an AK-47 pointed directly at my nose. 244 pages?? That means at page 120 you’re not even halfway finished! When James Cameron says your script is too long, that’s when you know your script is too long. But that’s why I’m bringing in AC, a Primer fan who wrote one of my favorite scripts of Amateur Week, The Translation. He’s read this thing not once, but twice, sacrificing his entire 2009 to do so. So I thought the least I could do is give him a platform to tell us about it. Here’s Aaron with his review of Shane Carruth’s “A Topiary.”

Genre: Sci-fi?
Premise: This may be the first script in Scriptshadow history that can’t be described in premise form.
About: Shane Carruth burst onto the scene with his low-budget sci-fi brain teaser “Primer,” which won the grand prize at Sundance in 2003. Strangely, Carruth doesn’t have a single credit to his name since that film (although he may have done some uncredited writing work). If I had to guess why this is, I’d say it’s because this film (which he’s trying to make himself) sounds like it would cost 150 million dollars, which may be a tad ambitious when the only other budget you’ve worked with is 10,000 bucks. As a side note (this is Carson here), I went to a question and answer session after a screening of Primer in 2004, and I remember Carruth being very nice and quite overwhelmed by the Hollywood Machine. He told us that he had no idea you were supposed to go into meetings with ideas for future movies ready to pitch. His thinking was, “I just spent the last 3 years making this movie and it’s finished. Why do you want me to talk about something I haven’t even written yet?” I always remember that and thinking afterwards, “You know what, he’s got a good point.”
Writer: Shane Carruth
Details: 244 pages

Let’s just get this out of the way, right here and now, and then we can get on with things… A Topiary is 244 pages long and there is a very good chance I’m not smart enough to understand what it’s really about. I’ve read it twice now, and I’m still not sure exactly what’s going on.

The script begins with a 68 page first act in which Acre Stowe, a city employee, has been tasked with finding the perfect spot for a first response facility. The idea is that they want to build this building close to where all the accidents happen to cut down on response time. By taking data from the past seven years he’s come up with a weighted average that pin-points the spot where the contractor should build.

Lobbyists aren’t happy with the location and give Acre data that they suspect will get a location more to their liking. And yet, when he breaks it down and plugs their data into his equation, he comes up with the same location.

An intersection.

This leads him out to this specific location, and it’s here where he sees a starburst glistening off a skyscraper. And it’s within this starburst that he sees a pattern. A pattern that he starts to see everywhere. He begins following the pattern to different locations around the city, marking each location on a map. And eventually, realizing that the locations on the map create a design that looks like the starburst.

The journey blossoms as the first act spans around eight years or so and Acre meets and joins a cult-like group of scientists who are investigating the same phenomenon. To go into more detail would be counter-productive as it’s not entirely clear what they’re looking for or what they find. In fact, the first act ends with Acre resigned to the fact that they’ve hit a dead end.

Acre’s story ends here, and we pick up with ten boys, aged 7-12, who discover something called a ‘Maker’ which ejects strange discs. Without much explanation the boys discover that the discs have strange abilities and eventually the boys can build rocket-like toys out of them and control their flight with small ‘controller’ discs. By holding or wearing these controller discs they merely have to yell, “launch” and the rockets take flight.

Then slowly, as they toil with their rockets they discover that they can in fact create creatures with these discs and control their actions. The controller disc now acts like a Wii remote…

…I think I’m going to stop here, because I don’t think I can clearly describe what comes next. Let’s just say that over the next 176 pages the boys learn to make more sophisticated creatures, they discover the discarded pieces from the creatures they created have bloomed into a fort, and then a war breaks out between them and what I think are the scientists from the opening act. And it’s during this war that the boys use their creatures like that giant war elephants in that last Lord of the Ring movie. Beyond that, I’m still confused as to what exactly happened.

Oh, except I do know that the boys eventually make a full-scale flying dragon. That part was pretty clear.

Now despite my confusion, and inability to properly describe what happens with much detail, I can say that I really hope Carruth gets to make this film. As a fan of Primer, there were a lot of things that I loved about that film that he brings back here.

First, Carruth has talked in the past about how All the President’s Men was a big influence on Primer. More specifically the idea that you don’t have to explain everything to the audience as long as the two characters who are talking onscreen seem to know exactly what they’re talking about. In A Topiary Carruth does the same thing both with Acre in the opening act and again with the boys. They clearly know what they’re after, but it’s not made entirely clear to the reader just what that is. While some might find this annoying, in this case I found it interesting and it helped keep the story moving at a clip and kept my confusion at bay.

While reading this script I couldn’t help but think of the pacing of Magnolia and how the sequences almost had an operatic quality to them. Each sequence would start out slow and then build and build and build and then move suddenly into the next sequence. I think this helps keep a long script feeling energized as it moves towards its conclusion. It really helped in this instance as the script was, well, long.

Something else Carruth does here that he did very well in Primer is to sound like he knows what he’s writing about. In Primer it felt like everything the characters were doing was based in real-world research and that is the case here as well. In the opening act I felt that Carruth had taken his time to do his research, not just in the fantastical details, but even the smallest details. For instance, when Acre interacted with the other municipal workers it sounded real. There was a short hand to the way the characters spoke to each other.

“Look, we’ve gotta get the –”
“Yeah, it’s on its way, has he called light and power –”
“This morning. Paperwork is on my desk. Just need your signature on the I-9 –”

Now, I personally felt there were some issues with the script, specifically there were a lot of names given to the strange objects the boys come in contact with and I had a difficult time keeping them all sorted out, especially as the story went along. Each time something was given a name, and then became a big part of the story I had to step back for a moment to take inventory of everything that had been introduced to make sure I still remembered what it all did. The ‘Maker’ did this, the ‘funnel’ did this, the ‘governor’ did this’ the ‘petals’ did this, the ‘flowers’ did this, etc, etc…

Lastly, I could probably discuss the formatting that Carruth used, since it did feel as if it had been written in MS Word, but ultimately because Carruth is directing this, the format isn’t really a major concern.

Let me just end this mess with restating that I hope Carruth finds the money to make this film. The script can be frustrating and it can feel long at times and it can lose you at others, but it also feels like it was written by someone who knows exactly what they want to do with it and have a clear vision on what it should look like in the end. It’s an original work and boy do we need more of those right now.

[ ] What the Hell Did I Just Read?
[ ] Wasn’t for Me
[x] Worth the Read
[ ] Impressive
[ ] Genius

What I Learned: If you’re writing a script that you plan on directing yourself, then you can pretty much do whatever you want. Sure, eventually someone will need to understand what you want to do so they can give you some money, but until then, write the script however you want. If you’re writing a spec, I don’t think this should be your blueprint. If you are trying to secure an agent or make a sale there are ways to write this story in a more traditional way. That’s not to say you can’t be original when writing a spec and it’s not to say you can’t try and do something different, but if you want that agent, handing them a 244 page script probably isn’t the best idea. I imagine if this script found its way onto the desk of a reader, that person would get maybe halfway down the first page before tossing it into the recycling bin — and I’m not even talking about the shred-only box that contains Amy Pascal’s receipts from her last trip to Vegas — I’m talking about the blue bin for bottles and plastic cups that sit next to the dumpster out back.