First of all, congratulations are in order for Jason Gruich. Jason won the last Amateur Showdown and got the super-rare [x] impressive review from myself. I have a good relationship with Scott Stoops over at Good Fear. The two of us have extremely similar taste. So whenever I read something good, he’s one of the first people I call. I told him about Cop Cam, he read it, and he loved it. Since then, Jason has signed with Good Fear and they’re going to go wide with the script soon. They’re doing something really smart, which I hadn’t thought of. They’re marketing Jason as the next big “cop writer” in town. So even if nobody buys the script (as many of have pointed out, there are several other cop cam movies in development), Jason should get some assignment work in the cop/crime genre. I don’t know all the details. I’ll let Jason fill you in. But it just goes to show what can happen if you write a really sharp script.
Now let’s see if we can do it a second week in a row!
If you haven’t played Amateur Showdown before, it’s a cut throat single weekend screenplay tournament where the scripts have been vetted from a pile of hundreds to be featured here, for your entertainment. It’s up to you to read as much of each script as you can, then vote for your favorite in the comments section. Whoever receives the most votes by Sunday 11:59pm Pacific Time gets a review next Friday. If you’d like to submit your own script to compete in a future Amateur Showdown, send a PDF of your script to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the title, genre, logline, and why you think your script should get a shot.
Title: The Carolers
Genre: Horror
Logline: After a savvy thirteen-year-old singer and her teenage cousin survive a brutal home invasion, they must use all their wits to fight their way out of the confines of a sadistic family of masked Christmas carolers if they hope to survive the night.
Why You Should Read: I’ll make no claims that this script is high art. It’s a horror film for horror fans, of which I’m one of the biggest. I teamed up with a buddy to write a movie we’d want to see, and had a blast doing it. After we’d honed the script, we worked with a pro graphic artist in the film biz to create a top-notch pitch, then partnered with some filmmaking friends in Tampa to shoot a series of four teaser trailers to pair with the above in hopes of getting some industry traction. After a slew of emails to various horror heavyweights a horror producer/talent manager jumped aboard and is currently pitching the project to many of the larger horror producers around town, including Blumhouse. As happy as we are with the script, it absolutely could be better. It hasn’t found a home yet, and any help we could get from this community to tighten up our story could only help us in our quest to get this movie made. As a final argument… here’s the link to the teasers. A script can be fun. A script with a paired movie… even better, right?
Title: Britt Johnson
Genre: Western
Logline: After Comanche raiders kill his son and abduct his wife and daughter, former slave Britt Johnson joins an infamous Texas Ranger to bring them back.
Why You Should Read: Britt Johnson’s story is truly incredible. A slave taught to read by Harriet Tubman herself, sent west to pay a blood debt, he found his family destroyed when the Comanche paid Elm Creek, Texas a visit. 1864 West Texas was a land of chaos, with the vast majority of men and material sent east to support the Confederate war effort, the Comanche and other raiding tribes could cross the frontier at will. This left a power vacuum where the responsibility of frontier defense fell to a few hundred Texas Rangers – they were literally the last line of defense. This script captures the unlikely partnership of two men, slave Britt Johnson and Texas Ranger captain Quarrel Hayes in their quest to reunite their families.
Title: Agent Thumb
Genre: Action Comedy
Logline: A raunchy fairy tale about Tom Thumb, the world’s tiniest screw-up who is forced to go undercover for the DEA to bring down Hollywood’s biggest drug dealer.
Why You Should Read: Agent Thumb is co-written by Alison Parker and Rodriguez Fruitbat, who some may remember as the writers of “Log” and “Mermaniac”, respectively. They met on SS and, after realizing they shared the same fucked up sense of humor and Canadian roots, decided to put their questionable talents together to offend as many people as possible. Conceived as a Seth Rogen-style sex comedy, Agent Thumb is inspired by the Grimm fairy tale “Thumbling”, and is written along the lines of “Sausage Party” meets “Central Intelligence”. Each script download includes an unredeemable coupon for a thimble-sized beer at Hamburger Mary’s in West Hollywood!
Title: Black Hole Blue
Genre: Dark Comedy
Logline: A backwoods dry county is turned upside down by a bored housewife’s investigation into their bootlegging operation – and a crashed meteor.
Why You Should Read: I absolutely love the Coen Brothers, so I wrote this as if they might consider directing it, as long as a shot as that is. It’s got dumb people making bad decisions that leads to a lot of bloody death. It’s got a great starring role for an older actress. Most of all, I think it’s a funny script with a weird and interesting cast of characters and I really want to make it the best it can be. AOW has proven invaluable historically to writers open to feedback and I am hopeful with some help this can be the script that gets my foot in the proverbial door. (Carson note: Currently in the Nicholl QF)
Title: Repo
Genre: Comedy-Thriller
Logline: A young thief finds her calling in the dangerous world of vehicle repossessions, drawing the ire of a vengeful billionaire after boosting one of his prized vintage rides.
Why You Should Read: I have a friend who works in vehicle repossessions, and he has told me some of the craziest stories about what people are willing to do to keep their cars, and more importantly, what some repo agents are willing to do to get them back. It’s a goldmine of intrigue, and I can’t believe that the industry hasn’t been covered in cinema yet (besides a few mediocre older films), so I decided to take a crack at it. I was struggling for a while with the story until I decided to swap the protagonist’s gender to female, which opened up a whole new dimension to the tension and themes. There is also a humorous undertone to offset some of the heavy elements and to avoid melodrama, and I think it turned out pretty well. I’m hoping to tune up this script and would love whatever feedback the AO community can offer! I’ve spent several past Amateur Fridays ripping apart the scripts of other candidates, so I think it’s only fair to submit myself to the same treatment. Have at me, fellas!
Heads up! Going to share some good news tomorrow about Jason Gruich, who wrote “Cop Cam.” Let’s keep the good vibes going. Submit your script for this weekend’s Amateur Showdown Contest! You can find the submission rules here. See you soon!
One of the best ways to learn dialogue is through comparison shopping. You compare similar scenes between bad dialogue and good dialogue. Or you take a great scene of dialogue you remember from a movie and, without rewatching it, write your version of the scene, then go back and compare the two. Trust me, you’ll learn a thing or two about how to write good dialogue.
The show with the best dialogue going right now is, without question, Succession. Succession follows a Rupert-Murdoch-Slash-Robert-Iger type, named Logan Roy, who has a stroke, forcing his incompetent family to take the reins of the business. The show manages to perfectly balance a serious tone with offbeat humor. And that’s your first dialogue lesson for the day. Most of what we think of as “good dialogue” has a humorous component to it.
So here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to write your own version of today’s featured scene before you read it. You’re then going to compare it to the real scene. It doesn’t matter that you haven’t seen the show. I’m going to give you some background on the scene in a second. For those of you brave enough, post your scene in the comments. Let’s see if anyone can top the dialogue from the show. I doubt it will happen. The dialogue here is really good. But if you get a ton of upvotes, I’ll concede.
The scene in question occurs after Shiv (Logan’s daughter) and Roman (Logan’s youngest son) are flying with their dad in a helicopter. During their conversation, the dad has some kind of head rush and passes out. They rush him to the hospital and have a quick talk with an Indian doctor before they’re reassigned to a new room with the rest of the family. They don’t have an official diagnosis yet but they think it may be a brain hemorrhage. The point of the scene is for the family to find out what just happened and then decide what to do next.
The five characters in the scene:
Kendall Roy – 30s, a Donald Trump Jr. type. Talks a big game but is insecure. He’s the leading contender to take over the company but the rest of the family has zero confidence in him.
Roman Roy – late 20s, Kendall’s eccentric younger brother who hates work and just wants to screw around and have fun. Very much a “dialogue-friendly” character.
Shiv Roy – 30s, the sister. The most level-headed of everyone. The only one here who’s more concerned about dad’s health than the company.
Connor Roy – Oldest son from a previous marriage of Logan’s. A bit of a weirdo who goes off on tangents.
Tom – Shiv’s fiance. We’re not sure if this guy loves Shiv or loves that he’s found a way into the Roy family. The family is a little hesitant about him.
I couldn’t find the script for this show, so I’m transcribing the dialogue myself. I’ll only refer to action when it’s necessary. But the description here is not the writer’s. It’s mine. Okay, let’s get to it!
Now if you have an acute dialogue eye, you’ll notice something off about this dialogue. IT SUCKS. That’s right. It sucks. I call this “Basic B@%$# Dialogue.” It’s dialogue anybody could write. You could literally pluck a tourist off the streets of LA and teach him to write this dialogue in ten minutes. I wrote this dialogue. To teach you a lesson. That dialogue can be so much more than you make it. Wanna see the actual dialogue? Okay, here it is.
Same situation. Same things are accomplished. Why is the dialogue in the second version so much better? For starters, note that we’re playing against the obvious emotion here. This is a sad scary situation, yet we’re still injecting humor into it. There’s something else going on here that you see throughout the show and I brought it up during the last dialogue article. There’s a sense of playfulness in the writing, a desire to take chances and go outside the strict confines of a nuts and bolts conversation. If you want to write better dialogue, be more playful. Have more fun.
Now let’s look at some specific moments. Notice Roman’s response to Kendall’s initial question. “Uh, I don’t know, ‘exactly.’ It was weird. Um, it happened fast, we were just sitting there—“ “We were talking—“ “We were talking. Shiv kind of started hard-balling Dad a little bit—“ To be honest, I don’t know if the “ums” and “uhs” were written or if they were an acting choice. But I’m going to assume they were written. Normally, writers would be afraid to write a response like this. There’s something “unclean” about it. One “um,” maybe. But two? In one response. They would be scared of that. And yet it’s what helps the dialogue feel so natural.
In addition to that, notice how the character isn’t allowed to finish before another character butts in. Interruption is ANOTHER thing that helps make dialogue feel natural. So doubling up on these “naturalistic” flourishes is already selling the dialogue way better than the Basic B@%$# version.
Notice also that when someone asks a question, the answer is not a robotic 1 or 0. It isn’t “This” or “That” happened. Roman takes the answer off on an aside. “Shiv kind of started hard-balling Dad a little—“ Already, we’re drifting away from the straight-forward on-the-nose dialogue in Basic B@%$#. Not only that, it gets Shiv to defend herself, which further derails us from getting the answers. This is the trick to dialogue. You don’t want it to be a straight-forward exchange of information. You want it to be messy, like real life! And that’s what the writer was doing here.
What really brings the scene up a notch, though, is Connor randomly bringing up cryogenics. First off, this dialogue is born out of character. It’s not just a writer trying to be funny. This is who Connor is. He’s a weirdo who’s an outcast of the family. He always says stupid stuff like this. This keeps his tangent grounded. If Shiv had said this, it wouldn’t have worked. It works because it’s born out of character. And now we’ve gone even further away from getting the answers we need. Which is what you want to do with dialogue. You don’t want it to be easy. You don’t want everybody to agree and read each other’s minds with perfect responses. You want it to be difficult. Because that’s how conflict is created and what keeps the dialogue fresh and fun.
So what about you? What differences did you notice between the Basic B@%$# version and the real version? What differences did you notice between the real version and your own version? Compare compare compare. The more you compare your dialogue to the best dialogue in the industry, the better you’re going to get at it. Now let’s see how your own scenes turned out.
Yo, do you have a logline that isn’t working? Are those queries going out unanswered? Try out my logline service. It’s 25 bucks for a 1-10 rating, 150 word analysis, and a logline rewrite. I also have a deluxe service for 40 dollars that allows for unlimited e-mails back and forth where we tweak the logline until you’re satisfied. I consult on everything screenwriting related (first page, first ten pages, first act, outlines, and of course, full scripts). So if you’re interested in getting some quality feedback, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: “CONSULTATION” and I’ll get back to you right away!
Genre: Vampire
Premise: After the United States survives a vampire war, a young human girl going through puberty learns that she may be turning into a vampire.
About: Bill Kennedy is best known for writing a number of episodes for House of Cards. With this spec, he got onto last year’s Black List, garnering a respectable 10 votes.
Writer: Bill Kennedy
Details: 95 pages
One of the tricks that savvy screenwriters use to gain traction in this industry is to take a big idea and execute in a small way. The way it works is that you get the conceptual residue of the big idea, but you do it in an affordable manner. The backstory for this script revolves around a giant war with vampires. Yet we never see that war. We’re just living in a small town 25 years after it’s ended.
If you do it right, the reader is imagining this big expansive world all by themselves. You don’t have to show any of it. And because there are no big production expenses, the number of potential buyers for your screenplay skyrockets. This is similar to what they did with the movie Maggie. Although I would argue that Kennedy does it better in Just a Girl.
In addition to introducing this trick, Kennedy incorporates another time-tested narrative, which is to use a flashy gimmick as a metaphor for puberty/adolescence. In this script, our 16 year old hero is turning into a vampire. But what she’s really turning into is an adult. You savvy Scriptshadow readers probably remember a few similar scripts I’ve reviewed here. In one of them, a 16 year old girl is turning into an insect. And, in another, one is turning into a superhero.
The great thing about these two “tricks” is that not many writers know about them. So you can use them and, assuming you execute them well, look like a genius. So how did Just A Girl turn out? Let me down this Big Gulp cup full of blood first and I’ll tell you.
We meet 16 year old Samantha in her small town during a parade. But this parade’s a little different from the ones you’ve been to. It’s celebrating the anniversary of the end of the Human-Vampire war. 25 years ago, humanity finally figured out how to defeat the vampires, and since then, the planet has been a vampire free zone.
Samantha’s best friend is Annabeth. The two are somewhat outsiders at high school. They’re pining over the popular boys who already have their popular girlfriends. But the cool kids start taking a liking to Annabeth, who eventually pulls away from Samatha to join the popular clique.
Samantha is devastated by the loss of her best friend, but it turns out she’s got bigger fish to fry. She’s starting to crave blood for some reason. Finally, one day, she can’t take it anymore, so she kills a squirrel and drinks its blood. The experience is euphoric so it isn’t long before she’s killing bigger animals. Meanwhile, she’s getting stronger, and more importantly, stops giving a sh*&.
This “whatever” attitude ironically gets the boys’ attention. And Samantha isn’t shy about letting those boys know she wants to lose her virginity. Soon, her and Annabeth are hanging out again and it isn’t long before Samatha is pressuring Annabeth to do naughtier things. Let’s get drunk. Let’s go to parties. Let’s have sex with boys. There’s a recklessness to Samantha. She needs constant chaos.
Unfortunately, Samantha’s parents become suspicious and when she least suspects it, the cops show up and take her to the hospital for tests. They find out she’s a vampire, which is impossible. There hasn’t been a vampire on earth for over two decades. It’s clear what they have to do but Samantha is able to escape before they do it. She finds Annabeth and prepares to make a run for it. Will they make it into the wilderness in time? Or will they both be hunted down and killed?
This was quite good. Not only is the premise clever. But the execution is sound.
And this is where most new writers falter. They’ll come up with a premise like this and not have a plan for what to do next. They’ll have 4-5 scenes in mind. They know Samantha’s going to be at school a lot and get into some dustups with the popular girls. They know she’s going to have sex at some point. But that takes up 30 pages of the script. What’s the rest of the story? You could argue that this is the crux of the screenwriting struggle. Who can only fill up 30 pages of material and who can fill up 90. I know a lot of people who can fill up 30. Very few who can give us another 60.
So what’s the trick to it? Besides the basics, one of the tricks is escalation. And what escalation is, is that every 12-15 pages, the story needs to make a jump. Let’s say you write a version of this movie where Samantha and Annabeth go to school and deal with the typical issues that teenage girls deal with. Okay. Go ahead and do that for 15 pages. But then you have to escalate. You have to give us something new that makes these next 15 pages feel a little bigger and a little different from the previous 15.
So Bill has Samantha being shy and introverted at first. And then 15 pages later, she starts killing and drinking animal blood, resulting in a bolder more reckless Samantha. And then 15 pages later, she’s gone full-goth and needs to have sex at all costs. And then 15 pages later, she’s getting in a fight with the entire LaCrosse team, using her vampire strength to beat all of them down. In other words, the story keep escalating. Each 15 pages feels bigger than the last.
And to some of you, this might sound obvious. But I can promise you, based on all the amateur scripts I read, it is anything but obvious. For some new writers, it’s just that they don’t know that the story has to keep advancing. But the bigger fault lies with writers who DO know this rule, and yet they love their writing so much that they feel they’re exempt it. They see this as a “gimmick” that their script is somehow above. They believe that they can write 45 pages of Samantha and Annabeth chilling out at school with no major plot advances. But the reality is, you’re boring us. You need to keep your story going. You need to keep escalating it to the next level. Especially a story like this that’s stationary. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of writing a passive story when your characters aren’t physically moving anywhere.
Ironically, that leads to the script’s one fault, which its ending. In the desire to keep upping the stakes, the ending of this script becomes… I don’t want to say like a superhero film. But, tonally, it felt like the wrong ending. Going on the run and having police chase you doesn’t quite work. We needed to finish this in the town. But to be clear. Escalating the stakes to make the climax bigger than the rest of the script was the right move. I just didn’t like the creative choice of going on the run and making it Dark Phoenix 2.
Still, I’m very happy that I reviewed this script. It’s yet another in a string of scripts I’ve reviewed these past two weeks which are all great examples of spec scripts you should be writing. From Don’t Worry Darling to Pyros to Cop Cam and now Just A Girl. Each of them have components that make them spec sale friendly. Check this script out if you get a chance.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you’ve ever received the note that your script is “repetitive” or that “not much happens?” these are indicators that you don’t escalate your script every 12-15 pages. After 12-15 pages of story, try to imagine that there’s a ladder that you have to climb your script up to get to the next level. Cause if it stays down here on the street it’s been on for the last 15 minutes? Chances are people are getting bored.
Genre: Sci-Fi/Drama
Premise: Nineteen years after his death, a man’s consciousness is revived in the body of a recent suicide victim, and he sets off on a journey through an unfamiliar world to find the wife he left behind.
About: This script finished with 19 votes on last year’s Hit List. The shortest combined name co-writing team-up in history, Matt Kic and Mike Sorce, are huge believers in the screenwriting contest circuit. They semi-finalled in everything from the Nicholl to Austin to BlueCat. More recently, they wrote for the show, Jack Ryan, on Amazon.
Writers: Matt Kic & Mik Sorce
Details: 115 pages
Sci-Fi hard dramas are some of the most difficult to make work. Because the thing about sci-fi is that it’s fun! So when you hear a sci-fi premise – going into the future or heading up to space – you’re craving the adventure-like quality that only a fun science-fiction premise can bring. When you take the fun out, it’s a lot tougher. Look no further than Interstellar or Blade Runner 2049. These movies have their fans, but most people find them tedious. The writer presents us with all these toys but then tells us we can’t play with them. That’s why a lot of sci-fi dramas will morph into sci-fi thrillers. It gives us some of that fun we were promised. With that said, I root for these scripts because there isn’t a lot of science-fiction for adults out there. We’re getting one later this year in Ad Astra. But, after reading that script, I’d say it’s the perfect example of why adult sci-fi is so hard to get right. It strips out every ounce of fun from its premise and becomes an overly tedious dramatic snore. I’m hoping today’s script doesn’t take us on that same journey. Let’s check it out..
In 2009, 35 year old Ben Haskins found out he had cancer. Which sucks because… well… who wants cancer? It’s especially tricky for Ben because he and his wife, Katherine, have been in love since they were teenagers. It’s not just that he’s going to lose his own life. Katherine will have to go on without him.
Luckily, there’s a new experimental procedure that allows you, if you’re terminally sick, to go into stasis and then, when they figure out how to transfer one’s brain consciousness to another body, put you in one of those new bodies. Ben decides to do that and when he comes out of it, he and Katherine can be together again. So Ben initiates the suspension and wakes up in 2029 inside the body of a killer good-looking dude who recently committed suicide.
Immediately, Ben learns some horrifying news. Katherine didn’t wait up for him. In fact, she signed a document making it illegal for him to look for her. Because of additional laws surrounding suspension, they ship Ben out of Illinois, which he can’t come back to for five years, all to make sure that he and Katherine never cross paths.
One night, while drowning his sorrows at the bar, a hot young woman named Abby bumps into him. Remember, Ben’s a super hot stud in his new body, so girls are all over him like flies. While Ben has rejected every other girl who’s come his way, there’s something special about Abby that he can’t put his finger on. That night, he unloads his entire sob story on her, and she’s so mesmerized by it she encourages the two of them to go find Katherine, laws be damned.
After some investigating, they find out she lives in a small town and has remarried a man named Raymond. It just so happens the two are celebrating their 15th anniversary this weekend. Ben and Abby decide to pull a Wedding Crashers and pretend to be part of the extended family. There’s a big plan involved but the second he sees Katherine again, he loses all rationale. He must talk to her. He must find out why she left him. Unfortunately, Ben’s about to find out that maybe he shouldn’t have come here after all.
First impressions?
Good script!
The mistake that these sci-fi dramas tend to make is that they take themselves too seriously. They think they have to create some elaborate narrative and sit inside endless scenes where characters share their feelings. But Second Life has a pretty basic structure to it. The goal is to find Katherine. The stakes are, it’s the love of his life. And the urgency… well, there’s not a lot of urgency to be honest. Which tends to happen in dramas. But the narrative is at least clear and we can participate in a dramatic question driving the film: “What will happen when he confronts Katherine?”
What surprised me about the script was that it started out really hardcore sci-fi. It was clear that these writers did their homework with their mythology. There were new laws in place regarding body-jumping. There was this elaborate re-introduction into society phase that felt realistic to me. And whenever we discussed anything around Ben’s procedure, it all felt organic and well-constructed. But then we move out of the city, and, by doing so, completely abandon the sci-fi element of the story. It basically becomes people hanging out at a wedding for the weekend. And while I’ll never say this is an incorrect choice, I’m always reluctant to pursue storylines that venture away from the promise of your premise.
Don’t get me wrong. There are still revelations to be made regarding the body-hopping. But I was reminded of Rian Johnson’s, “Looper.” Where we start off in this big cool city setting and end in some boring farm.
Luckily, the script still worked because Ben’s character creation was so strong. One of the things you can do to make readers care about a character is to give that character something they want more than anything. It’s hard not to root for someone, or want to follow someone, who is desperate to achieve something – anything really. But especially something that’s personal to them. I don’t know how you read the first 10 pages of this script and not want to keep reading til the end. You absolutely have to find out if Ben and Katherine get back together.
And another great screenwriting lesson that you can find here is to double up the mystery. Sure, the mystery of where is Katherine and why did she leave is a good one. But why give the reader one chocolate chip cookie when you can give them two? There’s obviously something off about Abby. She’s not telling us the whole truth about herself. So there’s that secondary mystery driving us to turn the page. Now we have TWO reasons to read til the end.
The script isn’t perfect. It makes some weird choices. For example, I don’t know why Ben goes into this program in 2009. We all know that there is no such thing as this type of program in 2009, which means it would have to be secret, which means how does he know about it? And it’s such a simple fix. Set Ben’s cancer storyline in 2023. And then set the future storyline in 2043. I don’t know why you’d set this in a year that doesn’t make any sense.
But it all comes together in the end. In fact, there’s a last second twist to the whole thing that caught me by surprise. Usually in these scripts, the twists are lame. But this one had me nodding my head and thinking, “Nice. Didn’t see that coming.” I’m going to let you guys guess what that twist is in the comments. We’ll see who the most savvy screenwriters on the lot are. And if no one else reveals the twist by the end of the day, I’ll reveal it.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Sci-Fi Dramas are HARD SELLS on the market. Just yesterday I presented a script that makes things SO MUCH EASIER for the writer because of how many “these types of scripts sell the most” boxes it checks. Whereas with sci-fi dramas, they rarely get bought because of how bad they tend to do at the box office. My suggestion, if you really love a dramatic sci-fi idea? Is to write it as a novel. That’s where the audience for this sub-genre is. And, who knows, if the book is a best-seller, they’ll turn it into a movie. Everybody wins.
Genre: Found footage/Crime-thriller
Premise: Told through the lens of a police-worn body camera, a retiring cop with a baby on the way faces the most harrowing shift of his career after a traffic stop devolves into a violent mess affecting both sides of the law.
Why You Should Read: I’ve always thought a found-footage film involving a cop’s body camera would be an interesting concept to explore. Police-worn body camera footage persists as some of the most controversial, yet fascinating forms of real-time-media in existence today. Think about it, when’s the last time you didn’t click on a “contains graphic content” police video that was shared to social media? The footage always tells a story, but rarely captures the facts in their entirety. As a police lieutenant, I watch countless hours of body cam footage from the officers under my watch and am rarely ever bored. On the contrary, they typically inspire movie ideas for my scripts. For “Cop Cam”, I wanted to infuse elements from some of the most disturbing videos I’ve encountered into a grounded, found-footage crime-thriller told from the first-person perspective of one cop’s final day on duty. While most found footage films deal in supernatural horror, I aimed to bend the genre here into purely thriller territory, although a lot of feedback has mentioned it certainly flirts with horror. The script just received positive coverage from WeScreenplay: “This high-octane, action-packed thrill ride is a rip-roaring page-turner told with unflinching authenticity. The amount of story, twists, and turns in this tight script is a strong showing of narrative economy. A cops and robbers caper that unfolds like a beautiful car wreck with a continually worsening state of affairs that’s likely to appeal to mass audiences. This is one flat out cool movie.”
Writer: Jason Gruich
Details: 92 pages
It’s funny that just Wednesday, I reviewed a script, “Don’t Worry, Darling,” where the ‘What I Learned’ section touted the power of the “Beginning of the Second Act” twist. And, more importantly, the key to pulling it off, which is to keep the First Act short. That way we get to the twist faster. Because once they get to that twist, you’ve got’em. It’s only before the twist that you might lose them.
I bring that up because there were definitely moments early in Cop Cam where I was wavering. Jason did a nice job keeping the writing sparse so that the eyes moved down the page. But there were some scenes where I felt like we were dragging on. Conversations were taken to their logical conclusion and then they’d start talking about something else. And then, once that conversation was over, we’d switch over to another conversation that was similar to that one.
Now if I were Jason’s Storytelling Lawyer, I would argue that the longer First Act brings us closer to Angel. The longer we’re with this guy, the more we’re going to like him, which means the twist is going to hit us harder. And I understand that argument. When you weigh the pros and cons of long first acts, one of the pros is we get to know the characters better before they go off on their journey. I’m just worried because we live in a world that’s dominated by distraction.
Just last night, I was watching an episode of HBO’s, “Succession,” which at one point I paused because I had to answer an e-mail, which, after the e-mail, I remembered I still had to finish an episode of Million Dollar Listing on Itunes, which, after making dinner, I decided to pause so I could watch the first episode of the NFL’s, “Hard Knocks” on Youtube. At no point did I plan any of this. Each change resulted from a distraction. And I think this is the way a lot of people source their entertainment. If you’re not entertaining me, I have other options.
And the thing is, once Cop Cam gets to the twist, it’s unstoppable. It’s an almost perfect script. I was riveted from page 42 to 92. But we’ll get back to that opening in a minute. For those who haven’t had time to read Cop Cam, here’s a quick breakdown of the plot.
MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW!
40-something Sgt. Angel Castillo is ready to retire. His wife is pregnant and it’s a much better game plan to have a kid when you’re not putting your life on the line every day than when you are. So Angel’s got one day left on the job. He suits up and makes sure his glitchy cop cam is working.
It’s an eventful day. Castillo wrestles down a perp, and while putting him in the squad car, the perp spits on him. Castillo reacts, punching him. Unfortunately, someone records the incident on their phone and uploads it to Youtube. Very quickly, “Crazed Cop Punches Man in Handcuffs” goes viral. Not a big deal though. This is par for the course for a cop.
Castillo is then assigned to take down a drug car. Standard bust. Not supposed to be a big deal. He and his partner, Griffin, stop a van but it looks like they may have stopped the wrong car. There are three passengers in their twenties. The driver, Clay, is a white guy. Marcella is in shotgun and looks terrified. And Rico is in the backseat, looking even worse than Marcella.
Castillo’s assessment is that they’re just kids and starts to ask basic questions. Comfortable that this will be an uneventful stop, he takes his guard down. And that’s when everything goes wrong. As Castillo is talking to Clay outside, gunshots fire out the back of the van window. Castillo and Griffin take cover but they’ve got the jump on them. Seconds later Marcella comes over, puts a gun in Castillo’s face, and just like that – BAM – OUR MAIN CHARACTER IS DEAD.
Marcella is freaking out. She’s now a cop killer. Clay is terrified. Rico is yelling. All the while, Castillo’s cop cam is blurting out that backup is coming. Rico freaks and says to grab the thing. Marcella rips the cop cam out and the three run back to the truck and off they go. We’re now watching them through the cop cam. Marcella calls her uncle, tells him the bad news and asks what to do. He tells her to meet a point man at the highway stop up ahead. He also tells her what they need to do to Clay. And so – BAM BAM – Clay’s dead too. They cover his body with a blanket. Poor Clay. Just trying to get a head start on that student debt.
Marcella and Rico pull up to the truck stop to wait for the point man, but are horrified when a rent-a-cop, Winston, approaches them. They think they’re toast. But Winston is just an admirer of cars who likes to chat. And chat he does, blah blah blah, riffing about whatever comes to mind. Marcella and Rico exchange glances. Can you believe this? After Winston leaves and the two are trying to decide what to do, they see Winston coming back with another cop. And he’s pointing at them. Time to get out of here!
But before they can go, County Cop puts a bullet in Rico, who dies. Marcella speeds away but County Cop is on the highway behind her almost immediately. As he gets closer and closer, out of nowhere, he gets CLIPPED from behind by a truck, and his car goes zig-zagging off into a ditch. It’s their contact, Cartel Cowboy, who pulls up even with her and tells her to pull over. She does, reluctantly.
Cartel Cowboy says they have to move, get Clay’s body transferred. She helps him out, and as soon as they’re finished, he raises a gun, shoots Marcella in the eye. We’re with Cartel Cowboy now. Or, at least, that’s what we think. County Cop has emerged from his car crash and he’s ready to rock. He’s got the drop on Cartel Cowboy and shoots him dead. County Cop seems to be after one thing. He leans into the car – there it is: the cop cam! He grabs it and now County Cop becomes our POV.
I could keep going but I’d like to save some of the surprises for the script itself. You get the picture, though. The real main character is the cop cam itself, or, if you want to be specific, us. And it’s the uncertainty of where we’re going to end up next that makes this script so exciting.
There’s a lot to get to here and I don’t know where to start so I’ll start with the title page. I love that Jason puts “Written by Lieutenant Jason Gruich, Biloxi P.D.” It immediately lets us know that everything we’re about to see is based in real life police rules. A lot of times when you’re reading, something will happen that seems unbelievable, and often, because writers are the kings of making stuff up, we assume that you made it up. But when you know you have a real lieutenant writing a police script, you know that’s how it would go down.
With that said, I did have some issues with the first 40 pages. I didn’t feel like enough was happening plot-wise. Which is okay if you’re dramatizing scenes so that they’re entertaining. But most of those first 40 pages was exposition and set-up. If this was a ten page challenge script? I may not have continued. It would’ve been right on the bubble. With that said, Jason counteracts with a very vertical writing style. I don’t remember any description chunk lasting more than 2 lines. And there’s a ton of dialogue. So even though the story isn’t moving at a pace I’d like, he makes it really easy to get through it.
The strange thing about writing, though, is that sometimes a negative can become a positive. Here I am, reading through this with a very neutral eye. I’m staying with it, but I’m not fully engaged. And then, OUT OF NOWHERE, comes one of the best scenes I’ve read all year. The level of tension that builds during Castillo’s stop of the van is incredible. It’s a great scene. And I’m not sure it would’ve hit me as hard if the story was operating at a more entertaining clip. It was almost as if we were lured into that same sense of “everything is okay” that Castillo was when he put his guard down.
And then Castillo is killed and it’s like WHOA! This writer just pulled a Psycho. And it worked! Because one of the reasons Psycho is the classic that it is, is that it doesn’t just kill off its main character after 40 minutes. It makes you sympathize with the character who killed them, which is really hard to do. And that’s exactly what happened here. When we switched to Marcella, I was scared for her. This poor girl is in over her head and we’re hoping she can find a way out.
And for Jason to then kill off Marcella too?????? I was gobsmacked. I was in that space that every reader dreams of being in: “I don’t have any idea where this is going but I need to find out!” A long-time moviegoer only gets that experience three or four times a year. And somehow, Jason pulled it off. Usually, when your script is dependent on shock value, the story doesn’t live up to all the shock. But this story comes together quite nicely at the end. I was surprised.
Now.
It’s time for my main gripe and my call to Scriptshadow readers to help me out with this. This movie is dependent on the Cop Cam POV changes being organic and believable. And I had a few issues there. For starters, I wasn’t sure why Marcella would take the cop cam. My thinking would be that it could be traced. Isn’t that what all criminals are worried about? And this feels like the most traceable thing you could grab. So that’s my first request. Can someone come up with a reason why she would take the cam.
Next up, was it just me, or were there times in this script where you didn’t know exactly what you were looking at because you weren’t clear where the cop cam was? There were several times where I thought we may have taken an omniscient point of view, not unlike a master shot, until it was time to go back into the cop cam again. If you felt this, how would Jason write it so that it was clear where we were at all times? That’s critical when reading this because a producer is going to need to know where the camera is at all times to know if the gimmick works.
The next time I had trouble was when County Cop grabbed the cop cam and put it on his mirror. I suppose he’s picking up the camera for someone else so, even though we don’t know that yet, it makes sense in retrospect. However, why would he put it on his mirror? It seems a little too perfect. And then, the rest of the way through, I found myself wondering here and there, “Where is the camera?” If you had this same issue, tell us in the comments and explain why you think that was. Then, let’s try to fix it. How do we organically hand off this camera every time?
One last thought. A few of you mentioned cop cam movies in development. Can you provide more info? Because even if they are, I would be willing to bet my retirement fund that this script is better than whatever they have. So if someone were to pick this up, they’d easily have the best cop cam script in town.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: This is basically the PERFECT SPEC. This is EXACTLY what you want to do with a spec script. It’s got a little gimmick to it. It takes place all in one day. The writing is very sparse. It’s 92 pages. If there was a class in writing the kind of spec that gets noticed the most, this script would be the ideal example. It stacks all the odds in its favor.
What I learned 2: It’s really good to have a script where people have to warn other people of spoilers. “Beware of spoilers” indicates that interesting enough things happen in the script that people are actually warning other people to avoid those things if they want the experience to be fresh. It’s not that every script needs to be a “Beware of spoilers” script to be good. But it definitely implies that a fun experience is ahead. Think about it. When someone says to you, “You need to watch One Man Cargo. Don’t let anybody spoil it for you ahead of time though!” Of course you’re going to go and watch One Man Cargo as soon as possible.
Note about the comments: I didn’t want to lose some of the script reactions from the earlier thread so I’m combining this post with the last one. If you want to see the latest comments, you can use the Disqus drop-down menu below to sort by “Newest.”
