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(Posted by Sveta)
Carson is one magical creature but he can’t do it all himself. So…we’re hiring interns!
Do you read Scriptshadow every day?
If you answered yes to the first two questions, this may be the internship for you!
If you answered yes to the last two, you should probably seek counseling.
There are TWO TYPES of intern positions available:
1. Reader Intern – You can live anywhere on planet earth and do this as long as you have regular access to the internet. We are looking for people with an impeccable sense of story and and an eye for picking out exceptional writing. Carson will use your recommendations to decide what to read and what to pass on.
2. Local Intern – You must live in Los Angeles. This position will assist in the daily operations of Scriptshadow as we expand into producing. College credit (we can discuss individual situations) will be available.
TO APPLY
Email your resume to svetshadow@gmail.com and include a paragraph (under 250 words) in the body of the email describing what makes a specific favorite movie or script that you love great.
Both types of positions are unpaid for the time being, but as Scriptshadow Productions comes to fruition in the coming months, there will be a number of opportunities for paid positions.
Genre: Animation/Film Noir
Premise: In a futuristic world co-habitated by aliens and humans, the last human private eye is hired to investigate the fidelity of a well-known pop star.
About: Ray Gunn is an old project that writer-director Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol) wrote. He’s gone on record as saying he’d like to revive the project, and might even do so after his next film, the earthquake pic, 1906. Co-writer Matthew Robbins has had a long and interesting career, writing Spielberg’s first movie, The Sugarland Express, then later writing such films as Dragonslayer, Mimic, and Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark. He’s currently working on the Guillermo Del Toro big screen adaptation of Pinocchio.
Writers: Brad Bird and Matthew Robbins (story by Brad Bird)
Details: 112 pages – June 28, 1996 draft
For those of you who’ve been told that you’re bad spellers or bad grammarists or bad at, you know, writing the right “their,” there is hope! In 1996, Superstar director Brad Bird apparently didn’t know the difference between “it’s” and “its.” For those of you wondering (and there should be a lot of you wondering – since I see this mistake ALL the time), “it’s” means “it is.” If you’re writing “it’s” and it doesn’t mean “it is,” then you’re using it wrong.
And speaking of “it’s,” it’s a bad idea to write an animation spec! Why? Because animation specs never get purchased! Those wily egotistical studios like to develop their animation ideas in-house. Bastards! However, if you’re really really into animation and want to write animation films someday, then writing a sample animation spec may be a good idea. Just know that you probably ain’t going to sell it!
Okay, now that I’ve depressed you to pieces, let’s pick up those pieces and see if we can’t re-discover an amazing forgotten screenplay.
Raymund Gunn is a private eye in a future world where the private eye business has gone blind. Or in other words, people don’t hire dicks anymore. It’s much easier to get a spybot to do the job for you. They’re cheaper and way better at the job. So I guess you could say Ray is the last of a dying breed.
One day, the eccentric and very rich Arnold Dom pops into Ray’s office and offers him a much needed job. He believes his wife, the ubiquitous pop star, Venus Envy, is cheating on him with another man. So Ray goes off to do what he does best, and finds that Arnold is right. Venus is intimately involved with a dude. But not just any dude – an alien.
However, when Ray hands the photo proof over, he notices something odd. Venus – or the woman he thought was Venus – is missing a tattoo on her hand. Ray’s been had. This is Venus’ body double in the salacious pics, not Venus. And Arnold chose Ray (instead of a spybot) specifically because he knew he’d miss that detail. Now, armed with this “proof,” he can clean up in the divorce settlement.
Feeling used, Ray stumbles around town all depressed-like, eventually running into Venus, who likes to sneak around town in disguise and sing her own songs under her alter-ego, Red. The two start to fall for each other, but when Venus’ body double is murdered, Venus becomes the main suspect, and Ray will have to prove she’s innocent or lose the woman he’s fallen for forever.
Let’s start with the obvious. Bird and co-writer Robbins have written an animation film about people cheating on each other and having sex with one another. A PG-13 animation film is box office suicide. So I’m confused as to why these two ever thought this was a viable project.
But even without that, there’s something very cliche and predictable about this story. I suppose you have to play by the genre’s conventions to a certain extent but that doesn’t mean you should make every obvious choice in the book. Private Eye. Hired to prove a woman is cheating. Ends up falling for the woman. It all just felt so…familiar. Even the whole alien-futuristic setting felt “been there-done that.”
If I’m being completely honest though, I’m not the best judge of film noir material. I’ve said this before, but I need to feel emotionally connected to the characters to care about them and their story. Film Noir seems to be more about the world to me – about the “cool” factor. About the dirt and the grime and the double-crossing and the dialogue. To me, all that stuff is icing on the cake, not the cake itself. I’d rather explore a person’s flaws, their relationships, the overcoming of their past. This just doesn’t seem to be the genre to explore that, so I’m typically bored.
And to heap even more honesty onto this review, these scripts are REALLY HARD to read. You’re digging through miles and miles of world-building (describing your big unique sci-fi world) just to find the occasional dramatic moment, or read the rare entertaining scene. Tack onto that an overly-complicated quadruple-crossing plot, and it becomes more like work to read Ray Gunn than fun. Once that happens, it’s check-out time.
So the lack of an original story, the lack of excitement over this genre, and the messiness of this narrative just didn’t endear me to it. Will be interesting to hear what you guys think though, especially you film noir fans!
What I learned: A screenplay should never feel like work to the reader. The second it feels like work, you’ve failed.
Recently I’ve been talking a lot to John Jarrell, a screenwriter who’s been working in this business for over 20 years, and learning quite a bit from him. When he mentioned he was putting together a class, I told him that I had to promote it on the site, especially since I’ve been getting so many e-mails recently asking where the best screenwriting classes are. I think you’ll be able to tell right away how awesome John is and how much damn knowledge he’s accumulated over his career. But probably the best thing about John is what an awesome guy he is. He’s just a great champion of screenwriters everywhere and really wants to help. Enjoy the discussion and if you like John, sign up for his class here in Los Angeles!
SS: So tell us a little about yourself. Who are you?? What’s your screenwriting backstory?
JJ: Basically, I was a young guy who took on $50,000 worth of student loans to go to NYU Film and chase a dream of making movies one day. I literally drove out to L.A. in late 1990 with nothing but $200 dollars and my trusty ’66 VW Bug to my name. The old “confidence of ignorance” approach. (Not recommended, by the way.)
Five months later, with my Hollywood hopes and dreams being pulped into cream corn, I hit a clutch do-or-die shot and sold my first script. I was over the moon. Next thing I knew, I had real cash in my pocket and was flying home on a private G-3.
It had happened so fast, it all seemed to be too good to be true. Of course it actually was too good to be true. Which I learned pretty quickly.
My script didn’t get made and within a year I was broke and unemployed again. What followed was five unrelenting years of struggle simply trying to survive and put food in my mouth. (also not recommended)
But I did survive, and in ’97, based on a fresh spec, I got a break. I was signed by this small new agency called “Endeavor”. Things kinda took off after that.
Since then I’ve written films and tv pilots for many of the major studios and have worked with some of the best producers and directors in Hollywood. These include — Jeffrey Katzenberg, Neil Moritz, Joel Silver, Terence Chang & John Woo, Mike Medavoy, Richard Donner, Luc Besson, James Foley, Carl Beverly and Warren Littlefield.
Among other projects, I wrote “Hard-Boiled II” and a remake of Peckinpah’s “The Killer Elite” for John Woo, was one of the many, many writers on “Live Free, Die Hard” at Fox, and scripted the animated family film “Outlaws” for Dreamworks. I’ve also sold four tv pilots and just finished my first book — the real life memoir of a legendary Chinatown gangster from the ’70’s and ’80’s.
a. What do you think the key is to breaking into this industry?
b. What do you think the key is to staying in this industry.
JJ: A) To get a start in this Business, first and foremost, you need a great script. Not merely good, but GREAT.
Twenty years ago screenwriter Larry Marcus (“The Stuntman”) told me that if you have a great script it may take a week, a year, or even ten years, but if you’ve written something undeniably fantastic, someone will find it. Why? Because there simply aren’t that many great scripts out there. It’s straight-up supply and demand.
I was pretty young at the time, and remember thinking, “That’s bullshit.” But what he said was right, and I’ve seen that dynamic play out with both my friends and myself as we’ve pursued our careers.
The other key elements to “getting a break” are timing and luck, and unfortunately, as most of us know, you can’t always control those. But I do believe you can “create your own luck” to an extent by working relentlessly to push your project. Meet people, network, send your script out knowing 99% of the time you’ll probably hear “no thanks”, but don’t let that discourage you.
See, this is the real key for any aspiring writer — “It only takes one buyer”. That’s what my first agent told me, and it’s just as true today. You can hear 1000 “No’s”, have a million doors slammed in your face, but just one simple “Yes” validates everything. As a writer, I’ve always found strength and inspiration in that. You don’t have to conquer Hollywood, you just need to find that one buyer out there who gets it.
SS: What’s your general philosophy on screenwriting? What do you think makes a script work?
Having an airtight structure backstopping your script is absolutely critical in my opinion, especially these days when the window for experimentation and/or ambiguity is largely slammed shut.
Want to give execs and producers immediate confidence in whatever they’re reading of yours? Land your story’s structure. It allows them to “see the movie” straight out of the gate and provides a solid foundation for you as the writer to do your very best work. Structure is a key element of what we do at Tweak Class.
SS: Your big strength is probably action. I don’t see many good action scripts these days. In your opinion, what’s the secret to writing a good action script?
JJ: With the films I’ve written, I’ve always focused on creating “intelligent action” — elevating above and beyond genre expectations by making things smarter and more real. If there’s any “secret” to the process, that’s probably it. “Bourne Identity” may be the high-watermark in this department. It provided proof positive that when you raise the bar on intelligence and realism that high, you can reach a vast audience… even people who don’t usually like action films.
Remember, just because a project is labeled “action” doesn’t mean it has to be stupid. Yet, I feel like a lot of writers play down to that, even unconsciously. Repeating the shopworn clichés — the ball-busting, froth-spewing Police Lt., the scowling, uni-browed Russian drug lord, etc.
Sure, they still make movies with these one-D characters. But as an aspiring writer, you’re being held to a much higher standard than that. The limited pool of buyers out there want to see something fresh and inventive — even if they ultimately dumb it right back down to the most basic clichés (picture me laughing here).
Two rules I try and live by — 1) Never write something you yourself wouldn’t want to read. 2) Whenever you find yourself writing a scene that feels stock, like you’ve seen it a million times before, cut it and start over. Believe me, if you don’t, sooner or later someone in the food chain will call you on it, and it may kill your read.
Bottom line, guys, make your scripts as smart and interesting and badass as you would want a film to be if you just forked over $12 to see it. That’ll help keep you honest and keep the quality of your writing high.
SS: For me, personally, I need some depth in an action script to respond to it. But you obviously talk to these action producers all the time. In your experience, what are they looking for?
JJ: Just like the rest of us, great action producers want something fresh and fun, a badass idea that gets them totally pumped. Christ, you can see their faces light right up in the room when you pitch ’em one they legitimately love. Remember, at heart, these guys are all big fans of action, just like we are.
The Business is making a lot less movies these days, so producers are even more selective about what they can finance. The good news is that they’ll always make action movies — the genre is old as Hollywood itself. So as a writer, help increase your odds of survival by thinking smart, badass and fun as hell — even if it’s a dark fun. Brother, if your world, characters or premise feels stock, you’re already dead and buried five pages in.
One more thing I’d like to add — Don’t kid yourself about “action” producers being ridiculous cartoons or “not getting it”. I’ve worked with Joel Silver, Neil Moritz, John Woo/Terence Chang… believe me, these men are SHARP. They have a depth of knowledge when it comes to genre that is outright intimidating.
Joel in particular was incredibly bright, one of the smartest men I’ve met in my life. When I wrote “Romeo Must Die” he had crossed the $100 Million Dollar mark FOURTEEN times. You don’t get there by accident, believe me. Man, that was such an incredible learning experience for me as a writer. Joel was a true connoisseur and had an incredible love for the genre, which he himself largely helped define.
SS: A lot of people don’t know the journey a script takes when it leaves your computer to getting sold. Can you tell us how that works? From when your agent sends it out to the sale, what happens?
JJ: Well, a lot of that has changed in the past four years. Pre-2008 when you wrote a great spec, you gave it to your agent and they would send it out to the different studios and producers that were logical, legitimate buyers.
Today, the emphasis is really on packaging. To a large extent, the studios have gotten out of the development business because of the expense, so now the agencies play a lot of that role. When an agency gets a viable spec, they try and attach a director or star in-house from their client lists first. Once they’ve cobbled together an appealing package, THEN they shop it to studios and financiers. The thought is that it increases their odds of selling it, and doubles or triples their profits because they rep the attachments involved.
“Naked specs” (scripts without attachments) still do sell, just in much, much smaller quantities. Attachments are king right now. But regardless of the Business of it all, what I said at the start still holds true — having a great script is always your best bet for navigating through the Hollywood crazy factor.
SS: What are a few of the best lessons you’ve learned over the years about screenwriting, stuff that’s really improved your writing?
JJ: Wow, there’s so many at this point, twenty years later. William Goldman’s advice to try and “begin each scene at the last possible moment” is a great one. Paddy Chayefsky’s “If it should occur to you to cut, do so” is also spot-on — even if it hurts like hell for a writer to do it. And there’s always Hitchcock’s dictum that “Movies are real life with the boring parts cut out”, which is an excellent guide for any writer constructing a screenplay.
In Tweak Class, we also get into very practical, real life advice for helping writers during the long struggle to finish a feature. Features aren’t sprints, they’re marathons, and there’s a psychological battle to fight every bit as much as a creative one.
Stuff like recognizing when you’re past it, when you need to stop for the day because you’re not generating good material is really important. As Dirty Harry so famously said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Page count means nothing, page quality everything. It took me years to get hip to this, to understand there’s no shame in calling it a day when you’re wasted.
Another thing I push hard, which may seem self-evident to some, is that you should NEVER, EVER edit the fresh pages you’ve written the same day you write them. You’re burnt out by then, snowblind. Give them a day minimum, a week’s even better, before starting to mark them up. From vast personal experience, I can testify this is the quickest and easiest way to destroy material that would have actually been pretty good upon later, clear-eyed reflection. (laughing again)
End of the day, I firmly believe that Writing is Momentum and a writer has to protect that forward progress at all costs. My class gets into a lot of workable ways to do just that.
SS: We all have weaknesses as screenwriters. What’s your biggest weakness? And how do you work around it?
JJ: One key weakness for me is simply not writing enough. When I look back over my career, I feel like I could have — and should have — written twice as much as I did. Writing is damn hard work, and facing a blank screen and all that comes with that is not exactly my idea of fun. Still, despite 27 features and 4 sold pilots, if I could do it over again, I would write a lot more.
Another weakness is driving myself way too hard when on a project. I have a bad habit of beating myself to a pulp psychologically, talking myself down during tough days. Funny thing is, it does not provide better results. If anything, it hampers your process. “Pressure is the enemy of art.”
Henry Miller has that great quote about writing — “Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.” He also said to “Keep Human” while writing. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to approach screenwriting from either of those perspectives. For me, for better or worse, it’s mostly war all the time… and believe me, I don’t recommend it to others.
SS: If you were a young screenwriter today, what kind of script would you write to give yourself the best chance to break in? And what would you do after you wrote that script to break in? What would your process be?
JJ: I suppose I’d do the same thing I did way-back-when — I’d cook up something commercial and put it right down the middle. My first script was pretty dark, tough Irish kids in the old Jersey City, and while it was good, we couldn’t find a buyer. I was new to Hollywood, and my first agent just flat out said — “Write me something I can sell.”
I was juiced up on youthful indignance back then, taking my script’s rejection way too personally, and decided that goddamnit, this business would not beat me! I resolved to write something they would have to buy — something a complete stranger would willingly give me money for. And that’s precisely what I did.
After that, I would try to line up a paying gig while writing a second spec even stronger than the first. Young writers have to keep WRITING. But back then, like a dummy, I didn’t do that. There’s a tendency for young writers to rest on their laurels and celebrate, and I was no exception. Within two years my script had gotten shelved and I was out of work. (more laughter)
SS: You work with the biggest agency in town, WME. How did you end up there? And where did you start as far as representation? Can you give us the journey from your first rep to your current one?
JJ: I ended up at WME through Endeavor. I was signed at Endeavor when it was just starting out, at the very inception. It was tiny and really felt like family back then, just the coolest environment and best ENERGY you can imagine for an agency in this dog-eat-dog town. Being involved at that time was an absolutely amazing experience, one of the high points of my professional life. Hard to imagine today, but I would just stop by and hang out with the agents, bouncing jokes off each other, having a blast, all that. There were some really special people there.
Of course, what happened later is history. Endeavor blew up, became WME, and many of those agents became superstars. Now it’s a completely different world. But often I think of those early days with a big smile in my heart.
My career prior to that was probably like many writers out there — boutique agencies that couldn’t quite get it done, agents that didn’t have the juice needed to get me in the room on things. And to be fair, I wasn’t exactly lighting the town on fire with my writing back then.
But ultimately, again, there aren’t any shortcuts. My getting signed at Endeavor came as a direct result of my finally writing a script worthy of getting noticed by the people I wanted to notice me. That’s how this game works, like it or not. You have to prove you belong.
SS: What’s the best screenplay, produced or unproduced, you’ve ever read, and why?
JJ: I have a massive vintage script collection at home and here are a few of my all-time favorites —
Larry Kasdan’s Body Heat. Good God, what a great read! Every single detail is so artfully laid out and seeded in, and the heat of it, the naked lust and desire, just bleeds right through the page.
Hampton Fancher’s early draft of Blade Runner — For pure writing’s sake, I much prefer this to the Peoples’ rewrite. It’s just more textural and evocative to me, with some slight differences that I really enjoy. A magical script in my opinion.
Oliver Stone’s Scarface — People these days forget what a world-class screenwriter Stone is, one of the greatest who’s ever lived in my opinion. What’s so mind-blowing about this particular draft is that damn-near EVERY LINE in the film is right there on the page as Stone intended it. As badass a screenplay as you’ll ever read.
Paddy Chayefsky’s Network — Pretty much the Holy Grail for screenwriting as far as I’m concerned. His command of subject, character and dialogue is unparalleled here. You’re reading these long, thick passages of dialogue — something you could never get away with today — and suddenly realize that every last word counts. It’s entirely surgical, and coming at you at lightning speed. Unreal. Do not attempt this at home!
Lastly, Andy Kevin Walker’s Seven — The greatest serial killer movie ever written, and one that’ll never be equaled. I remember reading it when it first hit town and having it scare the absolute shit out of me. I was living in a tiny Venice Beach studio by myself, and when I got to the sequence with the desiccated guy “Victor” and the Polaroids, I got up to make sure nobody was hiding in my closet. Andy really is the master of the brilliant twist on top of the brilliant twist.
SS: What’s your teaching philosophy?
JJ: I’d never really thought of it in those terms, but I suppose it’s that there are no magic bullets or secret potions. Screenwriting is a craft you have to work very, very hard at, and nobody, no matter how experienced or successful, is exempt from that. Making money at it and being good at it are entirely different things, as many of us well know from reading an ocean of shitty big money drafts.
I want my students to be legitimately good at it. To develop the skill set needed to make a career out of writing — not just hope they’ll get lucky optioning a script or two every ten years.
Most of all, I see all the writers in my class as peers. Anyone can come up with a great idea — the right idea — at any time, regardless of experience. I’m a produced screenwriter. So what? Does that give me a monopoly on great ideas? Hell, no. The cool thing about screenwriting is that the blank page is the great equalizer — anyone can work hard and excel there, regardless of who they know, who their parents are, who they’re connected to, and so on. That’s one thing I really love about it. That anyone can participate and succeed.
SS: I know your class is a little different from the other classes out there. Can you tell me what you focus on? What can your students expect from your classes?
JJ: “A little different” is a polite way of putting it :) What surprises new students is how much FUN we have — and how much great work comes out of that. The class is extremely interactive, and that support and synergy can be outright electrifying at times. There’s no better rush than having a class get on a creative roll together.
But hey, don’t just take my word for it, check out our Facebook Group Page (“Tweak Class Screenwriting”) or the website (tweakclass.com) and see what my students have to say. Hell, go ahead and PM them and get their takes firsthand.
End of the day, I guess the Log Line here is that writers who join my class can expect to learn how the day-in, day-out business of screenwriting is actually practiced by professionals — both creatively and business-wise.
Not just the writing stuff, which is essential, but how to pitch, how to read a room, how to surf the million-plus curveballs any situation can throw you. It’s hard to win the big game if you don’t know the rules, right? Tweak Class focuses on getting your “A” game together in every sense, getting individual projects successfully plotted and First Acts written by the end of the ten weeks.
Every single member of my classes has accomplished both these goals, and trust me when I say you will too.
Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: A strapped-for-cash woman agrees to be part of a lab study where participants are placed in a room for a month, but begins to suspect that she’s been in the room for much longer than that.
About: Don’t know much about this one other than that the movie is being made by Vital Pictures and will come out sometime next year. You can see the writer’s early attempts at a Kickstarter page here, which has a trailer and some cool concept art.
Writer: Seda
Details: 108 pages
Liberace. Madonna. Beyonce.
And now…Seda.
Two names is so passé. These days, it’s preferable to cap it at one.
Okay, am I thrilled that a screenwriter has given himself one name? No. Does it scream pretentiousness? Yes. But I have to remember that this is the entertainment industry. You gotta market yourself to stand out. And maybe I have a teensy bit of sympathy since I’m not using my real name on this blog either.
One name or not, when I started reading Subject 6, a script heavily influenced by Cube and The Matrix, I started to exert all kinds of worriedness. I’ve read these kinds of scripts before. And when I say “these kinds of scripts,” I mean scripts with a bunch of fucked up things happening for seemingly no reason. The fear? That the “seemingly no reason” is because there IS NO REASON. The writer’s constructed a setting that allows him to make a lot of cool trippy fucked up things happen without having to come up with that all-important explanation Which is why I almost universally hate these screenplays. If you want to know what I’m talking about, read the pointless 2:22.
Now it started off okay, with our heroine, known only as “SIX” (in reference to the number listed on her fatigues), waking up in a bare-bones icy room that carries only the necessitates – bed, toilet, floor, ceiling. There’s also a TV, which inexplicably allows our subject to watch hundreds of other people in their own experiment rooms.
From what we can gather, the experiment is some sort of psychological test. Participants are paid 20 grand to come in and simply sit in a room for 30 days. You can opt out of the experiment any time you want by pressing a big red button in your room, but if you do, you forfeit your payment.
Naturally, there isn’t much to do other than sit around and talk to the other participants. Yes, for some reason, you have a video phone in your room that allows you to talk to any of the other rooms. Seems like an odd freedom for the experimenters to allow, but anyway, it introduces Six to 33, a strapping young slacker philosopher type.
The two hit it off and pretty soon they’re planning a rendezvous inside the walls between their rooms (they happen to be placed right next to each other). But the rendezvous goes bad when these things called “Technicians,” huge men in nuclear-fallout-type suits, intervene and shock Six, who wakes up once again in her room at the beginning of the experiment, as if none of her previous experiences happened.
Six grows suspicious and escapes through a ceiling vent. It’s there where she’s rescued by a group of people who tell her the truth. There is no 30-Day experiment. The people who are here are stuck here forever. The technicians just keep resetting them over and over again. Which is why this group has formed. They’re trying to find a way out – an escape. But this facility – whatever it is – is ginormous. So it ain’t going to be easy.
Another issue is that Six keeps flashing back to some psyche ward doctor’s office where a man is evaluating her. He asks her about this experiment, about these “technicians,” about her escape, and Six begins to doubt whether any of it is real. Is she crazy? Is she just a looney chick locked up in a padded room imagining all this shit? Her fellow escapees tell her “no,” that it’s all a part of the experimenters’ plan – to destroy the mind, to make you lose confidence in your reality. But Six isn’t so sure. And neither are we.
Is Six nuts or does this place really exist? And if it does, how did she get here? Or, if the psych ward’s real, what happened in her past that led to her insanity? All those questions are…sort of answered in Subject 6.
Wheel me in and call me Sally cause I don’t know what to make of Subject 6. There are moments where this script absolutely shines and there are others that left me searching for a bottle of aspirin. I’ll say this about the script. I rarely knew where it was going. And anyone who reads this blog knows that goes a long way with me. 90% of the scripts I read are as predictable as the sun setting, so when one has me genuinely wondering what the next page holds, that’s impressive.
BUT, the thing that kept bothering me was all the silly random stuff, like the repeated religious references that seemed to be there for no other reason than their inherent creepiness. For example, when we see a dead character in a hallway with the word “Foresaken” scrawled on the wall behind him in his blood? Commence the eye-rolling. What the heck does that have to do with the story? As far as I could tell, nothing other than it looked cool.
There was also one obvious derivative component that bothered me – the Matrix team. I mean, the group that takes Six in does so in a way that’s so eerily reminiscent of The Matrix that I thought I was watching an aborted take from the film. And then you have this really HUGE Jabba The Hut like leader man named “One” who weighs 800 pounds. All I kept thinking was…wait a minute here – this group has to go on super risky scavenger missions for food and one of them is 800 pounds? How exactly is this possible? Is he eating the other members when nobody’s looking?
Having said all that, I *did* want to turn the pages. I mean, the script genuinely had me wondering where the hell it was all going and, more importantly, I wanted to find out. But the big reason I’d recommend this to others is that the third act really comes together. Which was surprising. Because the third act is usually where these scripts fall apart, since the writer can’t answer all the questions he’s been asking.
But as Six keeps flashing back between the Insane Asylum and the Experiment, not only was I wondering which one was real and which one wasn’t, but I genuinely found myself empathizing with Six. I wondered what it would be like to go “crazy” in this manner. What if this really was your life? Is this what people with mental diseases really go through? Do they live this kind of life every day? How fucking terrifying.
Once the script crossed that fourth wall, it’d done its job with me. I didn’t agree with all the choices. I thought things got a little goofy in the second act when the team was introduced. But the recovery in the third is what saved it. For that reason, I say check this one out.
What I Learned: The introduction of One (the huge Jabba The Hut leader of the underground) is a perfect example of a writer wanting something so badly (the image of this huge overweight barely moveable leader) that he puts it in there without considering how illogical it is. I mean, from what we’ve been told, this group has to risk their lives going out to find scraps of leftover food to stay alive. Yet somehow we have an 800 pound man chilling out? Does that make any sense? These are the moments when readers lose faith in writers because they’re not doing their due diligence. We all want to include cool things in our scripts, but if you’re going to do so, they have to MAKE SENSE. If they don’t, ditch them or come up with an explanation.
Genre: Sports Drama
Premise: An aging baseball scout who’s losing his eyesight must enlist the help of a daughter who hates baseball to scout a young prospect.
About: This one has a really interesting backstory to it and should give screenwriters everywhere hope that it can happen, if not on the timeframe they planned. Writer Randy Brown wrote this 15 years ago and actually had Dustin Hoffman attached at one point. But Hoffman and the producer didn’t get along, so the project went belly-up. 15 years later, Randy’s writing for some MTV shows (and running a cafe). He met a producer through a mutual friend, who gave it to someone close with Clint who thought it would be great for him. Now this is where you’re really going to freak out as you realize just how important timing is in this town. Clint couldn’t do it because he was doing A Star Is Born with Beyonce. Well, Jay-Z got Beyonce pregnant and all of a sudden, Clint had an opening in his schedule. The script was purchased for a million bucks and the movie is coming out later this year. How bout them apples?
Writer: Randy Brown
Details: This says it’s a 2011 draft but the references in it clearly indicate it’s the original draft from 15 years ago.
Usually, when a script has been ignored for 15 years, there’s a reason for it. It’s just not good enough. Either that or its time has passed it by. Or sometimes, when there’s a popular script in town that can’t get made for one reason or another, everyone in Hollywood plunders ideas from it, to the point where the original script now feels derivative. I remember that happened with The Tourist, a famous script that keeps coming up on many people’s “Best Of The Unmade” lists.
So to be honest, I kind of expected Curve to be terrible, some barely-above-average screenplay whose only redeeming quality was a prominent senior role for Clint Eastwood. But boy was I wrong. Curve is almost textbook in how to write a screenplay. I’ll get more into that in a sec, but right now, here’s the breakdown.
Senior citizen Gus Lobel is baseball scouting royalty. Credentials? Oh, he only found Hank Aaron. And he was the guy who scouted Micky Mantle and bet his career he would become a hall-of-famer, something many people ignored, only to find out 30 years later how wrong they were.
But Gus is also a stubborn crotchety old fuck. And he doesn’t listen to many people besides himself. So nowadays, with all these fancy-schmancy computers coming around, detailing RBIs and OBPs and OBGYNs, giving new scouts a whole new arena to judge baseball players on, Gus is insistent that none of that shit does anything.
Which is why the upper levels of the team he’s working for, the Atlanta Braves, are starting to have questions about if Gus is stuck in the dinosaur ages. Sure he knows his stuff, but as one executive points out, “Nobody cares who scouted Hank Aaron anymore.”
But that’s only the beginning of Gus’ problems. Gus is also losing his eyesight. He’s had to rearrange his entire apartment, in fact, so that he doesn’t randomly bump into furniture. Because Gus is so stubborn, he’s in denial about this, but he’s going to have to figure it out fast. The team is sending him out to scout Bo Gentry, an 18 year old phenom who’s projected to be the next Mark McGuire.
Across town, we’re introduced to Gus’ 30-something daughter, Mickey. Yes, Mickey was named after Mickey Mantel, even though she’s a girl. That right there shows you what Gus’ priorities are. It’s baseball first – daughter second. And that isn’t lost on Mickey, who loves her dad more than anything, but when you show up for family dinner only to find out you’ll be watching a 3 hour baseball game…well…EVERY SINGLE TIME, you begin to hate baseball more than hell.
But when Mickey catches on to her father’s eyesight problems, she worries for him, and imposes herself on his latest roadtrip, something he’s vehemently opposed to. But as he follows Bo Gentry from game to game, he realizes it’s impossible for him to SEE whether this guy is the real deal or not. And that means he has to depend on his daughter, a girl he groomed to love baseball when she was growing up, but who hates it now, to save him. In the strangest of ways, this dependency brings them together in a way no other experience could.
Okay, to start things off, let me reiterate that you should NEVER TRY TO SELL A SPORTS SCRIPT that isn’t based on a true story (or novel) unless it’s a boxing script or a comedy. Trouble With The Curve is the rare exception to the rule, although I will say that when this exception comes around, it’s usually with a baseball script.
Okay, now on to the script itself. The writing here is amazing! And I don’t mean it’s beautiful to read. I don’t mean the prose makes my heart sing. That’s not what a good screenplay should do. When I say the writing is amazing, I mean that every sentence is carved down to only its bare essence, only the words we need to know, and nothing more.
I bring this up because of a couple of scripts I read recently. The first was a confusing mess and a big reason for that was that there were too many words. The writer kept tripping over himself because he was constantly navigating through a sea of alphabetical albatrosses. He was trying to be too clever by half when he should’ve stuck with the “half,” as that’s how many words you should be shooting for when you’re writing screenplays.
I also compare it to tomorrow’s script, which is well-written and clear, but every page feels like it’s taking twice as long to get through because of the extra verbiage. This kind of writing gets exhausting to read. I mean, I’m enjoying the script because it’s an interesting mystery (I’m not finished yet), but I find it hard to get through because of that excessiveness. And I’m not even talking like HUGE BIG PARAGRAPH CHUNKS here. It’s more that the simplest sentences, something like, “He darts over to the phone,” become, “He peers at the surrounding walls, which seem to be closing in on him, then darts to the phone across the room.” It’s twice or three times as much reading as the reader needs to be doing.
But what I really liked about this script was the character work, and more specifically the relationship work. It’s simple but clever, and very well done. You have a man who thinks a sport is more important than his daughter, who must now depend on that daughter to save his position in the sport, even though she hates the sport because of him. I don’t know if you can come up with a more beautifully constructed triangle of conflict. Watching Gus start to reluctantly rely on his daughter, and the ironic way in which that brings them closer – it was perfect.
I could go on about this script. It’s just really well done. I don’t know if it’s Oscar worthy. That’ll depend on if it’s directed well. But the foundation is definitely there. This one surprised me!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Let me tell you when I knew I was dealing with a professional here, and not an amateur, or one of these pros who got lucky and cheated their way into the system. The stakes and the deadlines. Only the good writers know to contain their screenplays with them. First, the end of Gus’ contract is coming up (deadline). So if he doesn’t prove his worth with this prospect, he loses his job (stakes). Then there’s Mickey, who just got a job at a prestigious law firm. Now she has to go on this trip with Gus. They’re upset and tell her, “That’s fine, but you need to be back to meet with the client by Thursday. (deadline)” The implication is, “If you screw this up, we’re letting you go (stakes).” From there, we keep cutting back to the Atlanta Braves’ offices, where the club’s brass are pushing harder and harder to eliminate Gus if he screws this up (raising stakes). Stakes and deadlines need to be everywhere in your script. They’re the plot mechanics that keep your audience invested in the story.