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My friends…it’s been awhile.

We haven’t had a bona-fide good script to read since forever ago.  In fact, here are some quick factoids about how long it’s actually been…

1) Gangnam Style still hadn’t hit the internet.
2) K-Stew and R-Patz were still living together.
3) I hadn’t moved out to LA.
4) Kennedy was still alive.

So imagine my surprise when I started reading Gold and…it was actually good!  It was such a foreign experience to ENJOY a screenplay that I wasn’t quite sure how to handle it.  I actually stopped several times just to savor the moment in case it all fell apart.  But it never did.  In fact, it had one of the best endings I’ve read all year, securing an “impressive” rating.  So how did this script strike gold?  Read on to find out.

40-something David Walsh enjoys the finer things in life.  Like food.  And booze.  And…well mainly food and booze, if his body is any indication  His gut could be mistaken for one of the Hollywood hills and his dress code could be mistaken for “homeless chic.”  When we meet Mr. Sloppy, he’s being interviewed about his involvement with a man named Mike Guzman.  This Guzman fellow is apparently pretty important because the guy asking about him is very keen to find out how the two met.  And indeed that’s where our story gets juicy, but before we go there, we learn a little more about Walsh first.

Walsh is a prospector – someone who looks for mineral deposits below the earth.  He then buys the land and tries to sell it to companies who have the money to mine those deposits.  Now at the top of this game are big-name dudes who sell land with millions of dollars of potential deposits, shit like gold and diamonds.

Not the case with the guys at Walsh’s level.  Walsh has the occasional property in the middle of Utah that may or may not have some nickel 100 feet underneath them.  Basically, he’s the Jerry Lundergarten of prospecting – a desperate salesman trying to offload land that nobody gives a shit about.

That’s until he has “the dream.”  Seven years ago, Walsh was in Indonesia watching a man named Mike Guzman work.  Guzman is a famous explorer/scientist who specializes in geological surveying.  If a volcano collapsed somewhere 5 million years ago and has left tons of nickel deposits 500 feet under the earth, he’s the guy who can probably find it.

Problem is, Guzman’s hit a rough patch, just like Walsh, and needs a big strike.  So when Walsh shows up and says he had a dream that he and Guzman would find gold in Indonesia, Guzman can’t help but get excited.  But looking for gold costs money.  You need equipment, permits, workers.  This isn’t panhandling in the local river.  This is trudging through miles of dangerous jungle terrain then digging hundreds of feet into the ground.

But not long after they start looking, they find something.  Gold deposits.  Lots of them.  And from that moment on, everything changes.  Some of the biggest banks in the world want a piece of this zero turned hero.  And soon, Walsh and Cruz have themselves a full-scale multi-million dollar mining operation housing potentially 30 billion dollars worth of gold.

But naturally, as all the rappers seem to agree, mo money equals mo problems, and Walsh finds himself swimming inside a whole new kind of shark tank.  These sharks are genetically modified to extract all of your money and spit you out.  One moment, Walsh is on top of the world.  The next, he’s further under it than the very gold he’s digging up.

But none of that will compare to the utter shock that all men involved will experience when the “Holy shit” final act comes around. This one leaves you with eyes the size of hubcaps going, “No fucking wayyyyyy!”  And to think that it’s all true??  Wow.

Gold has an interesting but strong structure.  It’s divided into four equal quarters, each of which has its own gameplan.  The first quarter is about the struggle.  It’s when we meet our hero and see that he’s on the bottom of the barrel.  It’s an important part of the script because it establishes the character type that audiences always root for no matter what: THE UNDERDOG.  Walsh is as underdog-y as they get and because we see him kicked around by other characters, we immediately sympathize with him and want him to succeed.  This is a huge reason why this script works so well.

The second quarter is about hope.  It’s about our two underdogs digging for gold – literally.  Because this whole section is based on suspense (will or won’t they find the gold?) we’re entranced.  The combination of desperately wanting our underdogs to take over the world along with the curiosity of if they’ll find the gold or not has this section moving at a million miles an hour.

The third quarter is the aftermath of success.  In my opinion, this was the worst section of the script.  “Aftermath of success” is always hard to do in screenplays because it almost always goes the same way.  The hero doesn’t have time for his girlfriend anymore.  He starts to believe in his own hype.  He enjoys his success too much.  He loses perspective.  Been there, done that.  However, the stuff with the other companies trying to screw him over keeps this section alive.  All of that stuff was entertaining.

The fourth quarter is the fallout – what happens after it all unravels.  This section works for a couple of reasons.  First, we knew it was coming.  And we want to see how bad it’s going to get.  As gruesome as car crashes are, it’s impossible for us humans to look away from them.  And second, there’s a great twist.  I’m not going to spoil it here.  It’s one of those twists that defines the entire movie.  So seek out the real world story yourself or wait til the movie comes out.  But it packs a wallop.

The big take from Gold might be the use of this 4-Act structure.  For those who don’t know, most movies are broken up into 3 acts – the first act is 25-30 pages, the second act is 55-75 pages, and the third act is 20-25 pages.  But over time, because that second act is so big, some writers have decided to break it up into two parts.  This creates 4 acts then, instead of 3.

It can be simpler to write a movie this way because you basically write 4 equal sections of 30 pages each.  That’s a little easier to grasp than a short act, a really long act, and another short act.  In fact, it’s almost like you’re writing 4 little half-hour stories.  Now remember, the story you’re telling has to fit into that structure, like Gold does, but it’s a great little option to bust out if you’re one of the many writers who get lost in the second act.

Another thing I noticed about this script is how compelling it is to watch the “desperate salesman” character.  We saw it with Jerry Lundergarten in Fargo.  We saw it with Jack Lemmon’s character in Glengary Glen Ross.  And we see it here with Walsh.  I don’t know what it is but the desperation that reeks from these characters makes them impossible to look away from.  I’m sure there are examples of these characters not working, but I can’t think of one.  Writers need to remember this for future screenplays!

Overall, this script just worked.  Great characters.  Moved well.  Fascinating story with lots of twists and turns, particularly that whopper of an ending.  It was incredibly well researched.  Dialogue was authentic and strong all the way through.  Hard to find many faults with this one outside of the 3rd act I mentioned above.  Definitely check out Gold if you can find it!

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

What I learned: The delayed character description.  In almost all cases, when a new character hits the page, you want to describe him immediately.  The reason for this is that it’s standard practice, which means readers expect it.  Therefore, when you tell us “JOE” just walked into the room and there’s no description of Joe, or “JOE” starts talking yet we haven’t met the guy, it’s annoying and confusing to the reader.  However, there are a few situations where adding a description to a character intro interrupts the flow of the read.  If Joe charges onto a battlefield and you have to stop to tell us he’s tall and gangly and has a spider-web collection, it kind of kills the moment. So the delayed description is motivated.  In Gold, Walsh is introduced pouring a drink, exchanging a few words with an investigator, and THEN getting his description.  To me, this falls under the category of a delayed description for no reason.  So it’s one I would’ve avoided.  The ultimate lesson here is, describe your character right away unless there’s NO OTHER WAY to do it.  You’ll keep the reader happy.

What I learned 2: Always pick a more interesting verb!  Describing a car on page 4, Massett and Zinman don’t say, “It pulls into a spot,” they say “it lumbers into a spot.”

Genre: Horror/Zombie
Premise: A married couple goes on a cruise to heal their wounds after losing their son, but when the ship rescues a strange sick man, they soon find that their own lives are in danger.
About: Hey, how often do we get to read a script by TWINS?  Touchstone bought this spec back in 2010.  Alexi Hawley scripted the 2004 Exorcist prequel, Exorcist: The Beginning, and more recently was story editor on the Nathan Fillion show, Castle.  Brother Noah was a writer on the TV show, Bones.  
Writers: Alexi and Noah Hawley
Details: 110 pages

In all honesty, had I known this was a zombie script, I wouldn’t have read it.  Dead In The Water was a random script I had in my screenplay pile which I knew nothing about, which is exactly why I wanted to read it.  I was hoping for another Ends Of The Earth or Dead Of Winter.  But didn’t get it.  I got a zombie flick.

I’ll tell you what, though.  Before I knew this was a zombie script – in other words throughout the first act – it was pretty damn good.  And once it became a zombie flick, the darn thing kept going.  It took some chances along the way – did things a little differently – and therefore, gasp, kept me fairly entertained.  I’m still not sure what to make of it on the whole.  There’s a character called Suparman who feels like he’s been beamed in from a different movie…on a different planet.  But all in all, I think there’s more good here than bad.

The script starts out with a great opening scene.  A group of doctors are out for a spin on their sailboat when they spot a couple of men on a trawler dumping bags into the ocean.  The trawler speeds away and the doctors decide to investigate, only to find that the bags aren’t just bags.  They’re body bags.  And as they move up to get a closer look, one of the bags…STARTS MOVING.

They open the bag up to save the individual but it turns out it’s not him who needs saving.  Blood splatters.  There are screams.  And we CUT to a cruise ship.  This is where we meet Brian and Carrie Lake, a couple grieving over their dead son.  Both are devastated but Carrie’s ready to move on. Brian, a cop, can’t let go however, and would rather sleep in their room all day than go out and “have fun.”

So Carrie heads out on her own, and while up on deck, spots something in the water that stops her cold.  It’s a man!  Drifting along on a piece of debris!  She calls out to the ship’s crew and the next thing you know they’re lifting the man up on deck.  Well waddaya know?  It’s one of the doctors!  And he’s not looking good.  In fact, he starts vomiting blood all over the place!  Mmmmmm…blood vomit.

Carrie relays the experience to Brian, who continues his bed brigade, so Carrie goes to take a nap on deck.  When she wakes, however, something is off.  There’s…nobody around.  It’s like everyone from the cruise just disappeared.  Oh, until she sees a man with a blood-stained mouth coming after her.  And then another one.  And then another one.

Carrie runs off, where she’s able to find a few more people, and the group quickly realizes that a virus has spread throughout the ship, bringing the dead back to life, dead who are hungry for human flesh.  Let this be a lesson about picking up strangers.

Carrie now has a single-minded goal – finding her husband, and this is where the script does something different.  It starts out with a segment called “Carrie,” which follows Carrie’s journey as she tries to find Brian.  Then, when that’s over, we cut to the “Brian” segment, where we show Brian trying to find Carrie.  If that were it, the script still may have been too predictable for me.  But then, for some odd reason, we also have a final segment titled, you guessed it, “Suparman.”  Suparman is a 22 year old Indonesian man who is some sort of circus acrobatics expert, able to wield duo-machetes which allows him to slice and dice zombies like they’re tomatoes.  I honestly have NO IDEA what Suparman was doing in the script, and yet, I was glad he was.  It gave the story this slight level of absurdity that differentiated it JUST ENOUGH from typical zombie faire to give it an edge.

The first thing I want to point out is what an advantage CONTAINING a horror scenario is.  For those who read or saw Contagion – if you were like me, you saw a movie trying to cover so many countries and so many scenarios that it eventually lost itself.  It’s hard to sell mass death when there are so many places to hide, so many islands and areas safe from contamination.  On something like a cruise ship, however, there’s nowhere to run.  You’re trapped.  And that makes the situation a thousand times scarier.

I thought the cutting to different people was a smart move too.  It broke up the conventional zombie structure of a group trying to move from point A to point B (while avoiding zombies).  That’s where I think a lot of these scripts die.  Because once the mystery is over, once the group knows they’re zombies and have to get to [some location] to survive, the scripts become very technical.  They’re just moving on rails while avoiding zombies.  All the creativity is gone.  Now I’m not saying Dead In The Water completely eliminated this, but the structure break-up was just enough to keep us on our toes.

As far as the characters here….hmmmm… I guess they were okay.  The whole “dead child” thing is a little stock.  I’ve seen it before.  In fact, it was the main storyline for another “dangerous person comes aboard a boat” flick, Dead Calm.  I don’t know what it is about this backstory but I’ve never been a fan of it.  First, there’s something just too sad about a dead child.  It doesn’t translate well to screen.  And second, it’s almost impossible to avoid melodrama with it.  The couple has to be sad, they have to discuss how sad they are, and it always comes off as too much.  I’d avoid this backstory unless you have a fresh take on it.

Anyway, the ultimate point is this – if I were a producer, I would buy this script.  It’s a money-maker for sure.  Zombies on a cruise ship?  Never been done before (at least to my knowledge).  You got the contained setup, nowhere to run.  Zombies on a cruise has potential for a lot of fun scenarios, as proven here with the unforgettable shark climax.  And then of course, you get to top it all off with Suparman – the machete-wielding alien from another planet.  What’s not to like?

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

What I learned: The isolated character name is a good way to imply the screenplay equivalent of a close-up during a key moment.  — Remember guys, you don’t want to write “CLOSE-UP” in your script.  It’s too technical.  So the isolated character name is a great way to imply that the camera is on the character.  Here’s an example from page 40…

They turn and run as the infected flood the stairs behind them.

ERYN

reaches a doorway.  Ducks through it and onto…

EXT. PROMENADE DECK – DAY

Genre: Dark Thriller
Premise: A wayward aspiring chef moves into a homeless shelter only to learn that the food they cook here is a little more…exotic than he’s used to.
About: The Wachowski Brothers’ first script sale was “Assassins.”  But they’d actually written plenty of scripts before that, including this one, which, after The Matrix, landed at Trimark.  In fact, many moons ago, George Romero was rumored to be directing it.  Unfortunately it never went anywhere, which is too bad, cause it was certainly better than those Matrix sequels.
Writers: Andy and Larry Wachowski
Details: 113 pages

Wachowskis!

Where have you been all my life?  Or at least since The Matrix.

My Chicago brethren have been lost at cinema sea since that amazing classic, scuttlebutting out two Matrix sequels that didn’t make any sense, something bright and shiny called Speed Racer, a gay military project called Jupiter Ascending, and adapting the most unadaptable book ever, Cloud Atlas, which just debuted its trailer a couple of weeks ago.

To say these two have been squandering their amazing talent is an understatement.  These Chicago hot dogs have all the talent fixings, including tomatoes, pickles, mustard, peppers, and celery salt. The problem is they’ve set up their hot dog stands in the wrong locations.  Hey, I’m all about taking chances, senor.  But if you travel too far away from the epicenter, you lose everybody, and I think that’s what’s happened to this duo.

Now the way I understand it, before the Wachowskis got their big break with Matrix, they were big name writers, hired to pen a lot of the hot jobs in town.  Carnivore was written before their Matrix success, which I’m hoping indicates a team still trying to prove their worth.  Let’s check it out.

John Bunyan, who, no, does not carry an axe, stumbles into Chicago with nothing but the clothes on his back and a deep fried dream of becoming a chef.  Speaking of food, he stops at a dingy old diner to grab some grub, where he runs into the insanely beautiful but broken down Ophelia.  Ophelia is being escorted by her total asshole of a date, Roman Links, a weasel of a human being who’s forcing her to eat a dinner she doesn’t want to eat.

John steps in, sticking up for the damsel in distress, and the two get into a fight, with John barely registering a TKO.  Feeling terrible, Ophelia tells John she knows of a place where he can stay, and takes him to “The Mission,” a homeless shelter run by a creepy dude named Rex Mundi and an older woman who likes to be called “Granny” even though she’s nobody’s grandma.

John enjoys the place about as much as someone can enjoy a homeless shelter but what he’s really surprised about is the food.  It’s DELICIOUS!  Granny makes some sort of Granny Stew that puts even the freshest In and Out cheeseburger to shame.  Mmmmmmm…

In the meantime, Ophelia and John start hanging out.  You get the feeling that this girl has reallllly low self-esteem because I don’t know many hot women who date homeless dudes.  But I guess after you’re with Roman Links, the elephant man would seem better.  Speaking of Roman, he’s not taking their break-up too well.  In fact, he sneaks into Ophelia’s apartment late at night wearing nothing but a flasher jacket and pees everywhere.  Yup, a real winner this guy is.

John wants to do something to this asshole but he’s getting more and more preoccupied by Granny’s cooking.  It’s just so delicious.  Unfortunately, it has some troubling side effects, such as a hefty sexual appetite for biting human flesh.  I think we know where this one’s going boys and girls.  Yup, it turns out that stew John’s been eating (spoiler) has a certain special ingredient.  Human flesh!!!  And now John’s making Ethan Hawke and those Andes plane crash victims look like they were dining on baked beans and cheerios.  Much like Twilight before the K-Stew betrayal, John NEEDS Ophelia’s flesh.  He needs human meat to survive!

So what’s going to happen here?  Is John going to be able to pull away from his newest craving?  Or is he going to make Ophelia a Taco Ten Pack?  Lucky for everyone here, you get to find out.  There’s a link to the script at the bottom of the review!

Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading sooooo many bad scripts lately, but I actually enjoyed this delicious mess.  It was kind of like eating a Chipotle burrito right after a few Sprinkles cupcakes.  Together, they make you feel sick.  But you liked each of them at the time of consumption.

First of all, the Wachowskis have a great style of writing.  They’re flashy enough so that you’re impressed by their writing, but they never let it get in the way of the story.  It’s always about providing atmosphere and bringing you into their fucked up universe.  A lot of amateurs make the prose the star.  They try to wow you with their wordsmithing ways, to the point where you’re wading through an ocean of syllables simply to figure out that a character has walked from his car to his house.

You can really see the power of the Wachoskis in their scene transitions, one of which I’ve highlighted here. In the scene, a nameless character is running for his life.  He’s barely able to get to his car.  This is what happens next…

He jumps into the car, locking the door and jams the key into the ignition.  // Suddenly, a baseball bat arcs down so that the twisting of the key seems to shatter the windshield.  The explosion of glass becomes–

INT. DINER – NIGHT

The crash and tinkle of dirty plates being thrown into a bin by a busboy clearing them from the table of an old diner.

The visuals here practically scream cinema.  You’re not reading.  You’re seeing the movie up on the screen.  That’s one of the goals of screenwriting, placing your readers in the movie theater.  You have to admire how the Wachowskis are consistently able to pull that off.

From a geek standpoint, one of the more interesting things about the script is how obsessed the Wachowskis were with dreams even back then.  There are a ton of dream sequences and you can practically smell the inspiration for The Matrix.  I’m not sure they were entirely necessary for the film, but they were fun nonetheless, especially since the Wachowskis are so strong visually.  The nightmare where Ophelia (a vegetarian) eats meat for the first time and catches a rare disease where one’s cellulite calcifies into thick gobs of bone underneath the flesh had me squirming in my seat.

But in the end, what set this script apart for me is something I always preach here on Scriptshadow.  It was different. I didn’t know what was coming next.  It was a horror film without the cliche horror trappings.  The Roman Links character – when he sneaks into Ophelia’s place and pisses all over it, then growls at her like an animal as he attacks her – I was like, WTF???  There were enough weird moments like this where I had to keep reading.

It goes to show that this medium truly celebrates writers with a unique voice.  If you’re not blindly following the crowd or trying to ape your favorite movies, but rather writing something only YOU can write, then assuming you have some talent and skill as a writer, you’re going to make it in this industry.  And if that doesn’t come naturally to you, you have to work at it.  You have to push yourself away from your inspirations and focus on what you can bring to the table that nobody else can.  I felt like this was only a movie the Wachowskis could make.  I’d like to see that same individuality from more screenwriters!

You can find the script here in text form! – Carnivore

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

What I learned: One of the EASIEST ways to make us like your protagonist is to have them stick up for somebody.  When Ophelia is getting attacked by her date in the opening diner scene, John comes to her rescue, telling Roman Links to lay off.  We instantly like John from that point on.

Genre: Cop/Procedural
Premise: (from Black List) Four hardened New York detectives race to apprehend a relentless spree-killer who’s executing victims from Queens to Southampton in the span of a single day.
About: This script finished in the middle of the 2011 Black List with 10 votes. Co-writer Alex Paraskevas has one produced credit, the 2005 Jason Patric movie, Walker Payne. Jordan Goldberg has a bit of a more interesting past.  He wrote on the animation series, Batman: Gotham Knight, and seems to be in tight with Christopher Nolan, as he co-produced and associate produced The Prestige, The Dark Knight, Inception, and The Dark Knight Rises.
Writer: Alex Paraskevas and Jordan Goldberg
Details: 116 pages

One of the problems with watching the Gangnam Style video 642 times in a weekend is that you begin to lose touch with reality.  Nothing you do or see is quite good enough when compared to a deranged Korean pop star sitting on a toilet belting his heart out.  This has particularly hurt my reading, as I find myself bored by the simplicity of black words on a white page.  I want color.  Lots and lots of color!  And grown men having dance-offs in underground parking lots.

Which is probably why Gun Eaters was the worst possible script for me to read this weekend.  I do this thing where I pick out a Black List script without knowing anything about it.  I’ve found some really awesome scripts this way – namely because it’s fun to figure out the premise as I go along.  But as soon as I realized this was a cop procedural, I deflated.

Procedurals have become such a staple in the television world that it’s nearly impossible to do anything new with them.  Therefore, if you’re going to write a movie procedural, it better have some unique-ass angle to it – something that warrants people paying 10 bucks for it instead of just staying home and watching one of the two-dozen procedural shows they can see on TV.

Sadly, Gun Eaters was not the exception to the rule.  The script follows two cops, 29 year old Detective Berendan Byrne and 48 year old vet, Detective Warren Salvo.  The two cops couldn’t be more different.  Byrne is young and idealistic, the kind of cop that makes all the other cops look bad, and Salvo is the grizzly vet who gave up that idealism a long time ago.  As he puts it, he’s learned that you’re never going to be able to win this war.  Your goal is simply to break even.

The two get put on a case where a man’s body parts have been dropped all over the city.  That’s usually…not good.  They soon find out that the man was an employee of Youngerman Health Incorporated, a company that went belly up after it was revealed that their CEO, Quentin Youngerman, was embezzling lots of money.

Blahbity blah blah, more people start dying, also employees of this company, and it’s eventually revealed that Youngerman was the main health insurance provider for all the city workers.  Once he went bye-bye, all these families started going bankrupt because they couldn’t pay their medical bills.  One would suspect, as our cops do, that their killer was probably one of these city workers.

BUT!  It turns out it goes much deeper than that.  When Salvo gets attacked one on one by the killer (who’s behind him so he doesn’t see his face), he notices that the gun he’s using is police issued.  Our killer’s a cop!  Duh-duh-duh-duhhhh!!!  Not only that, but he appears to be working with OTHER COPS.  Once Salvo and Byrne realize this, they’ve gotta find a way to get Youngerman to safety since he appears to be the ultimate target.  But how do you find safety for someone if you can’t use any of your police resources?  And the even more frightening question:  Can Byrne and Salvo trust each other??

So to be straight up here, my biggest fears were realized.  I just didn’t think this plot was worth writing about.  It’s a very average.  Very unspectacular.  A killer’s out there killing people.  And his reason is…something about health insurance???  I mean is it just me or is that uninspired?

And I’m still trying to make sense of it.  The people who were affected by the company going under were government workers, right?  Okay, so, if a company insured by the government is responsible for someone’s health benefits and they go belly-up, doesn’t the government still pay those benefits?  I mean they don’t just say, “Oops, we trusted the wrong company.  Wish we woulda done better research.  Sorry guys!”  They still pay the medical bills, right?  So is anybody really affected here?

On top of that, the cop pairing was forced conflict to the extreme.  The two cops hated each other because…because that’s how these movies work!  The partners have to hate each other!  I’m not opposed to conflict, of course.  Conflict is good!  I just pointed out how much End Of Watch sucked because the partners had no conflict with one another.  But the conflict has to feel organic.  It can’t just feel like they hate each other because the writer knows it’ll make for better scenes.

If you look at Lethal Weapon, you saw two guys with completely different lives.  One lived in a trailer and grieved every day over his dead wife, a loss that’s made him suicidal.  The other had a huge family with a loving wife and great children.  You could tell why these two wouldn’t get along.  And the cool thing about that Lethal Weapon pairing was that it wasn’t one-note.  The two had issues with each other in the field but actually got along quite well off it.  Their relationship was dynamic as opposed to one-note, as was the pairing here in Gun Eaters.

I guess I was just waiting for something unique to happen and it never did.  People have noted that I’ve been giving tons of “wasn’t for mes” lately and the reason is…well…I haven’t been reading any good scripts!  It seems like everything I read is either sloppy or really predictable.  And the scary thing is, these are both elements that can be addressed with EFFORT.

Sadly, this is yet another subpar script.  Hopefully the Wachowskis bring some game tomorrow.  I’m STARVING for a good screenplay.

What I Learned: In regards to the two issues I mentioned above.  Sloppiness (which wasn’t a problem in Gun Eaters, but in other screenplay I’ve reviewed recently) is mainly about lots of rewriting and making sure your reader always understands what your characters are going after at all times.  And predictability comes down to challenging yourself – constantly asking yourself, “Have I seen this choice before?”  “Have I seen this idea before?”  “Have I seen this scene before?” “Have I seen this character before?”  If you’re answering “yes” to a lot of those questions, chances are you’re writing another “been there, done that” script.

A good blogger never lies.  So I’m not going to lie to you today.  Last night I watched the video for Gangnam Style 213 times.  I just…I just couldn’t stop.  I memorized the lyrics.  Practiced the dance moves.  Wikipedia’d “Psy.”  And you know what?  I feel like I’ve learned something.  So much so that I almost ditched today’s script review to review the Gangnam Style video instead.  However, I realized that the video was so amazing that no amount of analysis could do it justice.  It would get a [xx] genius rating without question.  I mean the video not only makes a profound statement about horse dancing (one that puts the Chik-Fil-A debate to shame), but also the power of “sexay lady.”  It teaches us that when you have a “sexay laday” dancing next to you, you can act like a total lunatic and it doesn’t matter.  These are life lessons we’re learning here, kids.  Life lessons.

Where does that leave us today?  With a script that has a really tough act to follow, that’s where.  The last 12 hours have brought me so much joy, that La Mujer would have to take me through a life’s worth of emotions and back again if it was going to have a shot at “worth the read” status.

I will now channel the elevator shot from Gangnam Style to review La Mujer.

La Mujer is about…well…La Mujer!  A beautiful “sexay laday” who walks around South America whispering profound statements into people’s ears that change their lives for the better.  We don’t hear any of these profound statements – not yet anyway – we just see people’s eyes light up and their world’s rocked.

In the meantime, we meet Thomas Kemp, a journalist for the New York Times who seems to be going through some mid-life crisis.  Despite having tons of work to do, he’s obsessed with finding his birth records, to the point where he assigns an intern to take care of his work while he heads down to South America to find them.

Unfortunately for Thom, his boss, Clara, doesn’t have…what are those called again?  Oh yeah, FEELINGS!  She could give a shit about Thom’s soul-searching.  It just so happens that a prominent Ecuadorian ambassador, one who was best friends with the U.S. president in college, has been slaughtered, along with his family.  Clara wants Thom in Ecuador now to get the story.

Thom begrudgingly goes, and along the way hears about this La Mujer woman.  She’s becoming a sort of traveling celebrity, instantly changing the lives of everyone she comes in contact with.  Thom thinks that sounds like a much better story than the slaughtering of a prominent family for some reason, and unofficially decides to focus on her.  Maybe she can clear up this whole birth certificate thing he’s been obsessing over while he’s at it.

Problem is, there are some people who don’t like the fact that La Mujer’s alive.  I’m a little unclear on the specifics, but I think she was supposed to be killed some time ago, along with her daughter.  The bad guys who did this, then, are shocked to learn she’s not only alive, but going around whispering in people’s ears!!  So they regroup to find La Mujer and kill her off for good.  Which means if Thom’s going to get the birth certificate thing figured out, he’ll have to move fast!

In the immortal words of Psy, the genius behind the greatest song ever conceived: “Beautiful, lovable, yes you, hey, yes you, hey, beautiful, lovable, yes you, hey, yes you, hey. Now let’s go until the end.  Oppa is Gangnam Style.”

That actually has nothing to do with this review.  I just wanted to quote Gangnam Style.  Anyway, while La Mujer gets some points for its mystery elements, such as who this La Mujer lady is and why is it that everyone freaks out when she whispers in their ear, the script as a whole suffers from two tried and true beginner mistakes which I harp on all the time here at Scriptshadow…

Clarity and Focus.

The story is unclear. The plot is unfocused.  Add those two mistakes together and it’s hard for a script to recover.  Let’s start with the clarity thing.  I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what Thom was looking for.  Something about his birth certificate?  But his birth certificate was being kept from him for some reason?  Maybe because he was adopted?  Did he just find out he was adopted?  Does he only suspect he was adopted?  Or has he always known and just now decided to look into it?  I have no idea.  Because the script is unclear about it.

And because it’s unclear, there are no stakes attached to his success or failure.  If he doesn’t find out who his parents are, what happens to him?  As far as I can tell, nothing.

La Mujer’s storyline is also unclear.  She seems to be roaming the countryside, telling people secrets about themselves that are impossible for her to know, which was a little intriguing.  But where is she going?  What’s her goal?  In the end, she ends up at the home of one of her attackers, but I can’t tell if that’s where she was always going or if she was just wandering around aimlessly and eventually ended up there.

This leads us to the issue of focus – if we don’t know what your characters are doing – what their goals are – then the story is going to seem random to us.  I never knew what La Mujer was doing.  I never knew what Thom was doing.

The only time the script took on any type of focus was when Thom’s boss ordered him to investigate the massacre (which happens around the midway point).  FINALLY, the story seemed to have a clear objective.  Unfortunately, that storyline was dealt with in the same unclear manner as everything else.  There was some confusion as to whether 8 people or 6 people were murdered, but I couldn’t ever figure out what that had to do with anything.  In addition to that, Thom didn’t even care about the investigation, so we had an unclear set of circumstances and an unmotivated protagonist.  Not exactly the stuff great stories are made of.

If I were Steve, this is what I’d do.  Have the massacre happen RIGHT AWAY.  Maybe it’s the first scene of the movie.  Then, have Clara assign the story to Thom, who goes down there to investigate it.  Drop the weird birth certificate stuff.  It was confusing and not very interesting anyway.  What this will do is tell the audience from the get-go that THIS is the story’s focus – the investigation of the massacre.

From there, you can weave in the mysterious La Mujer.  Maybe, on the day of the massacre, a lot of people claim to have seen her around town.  So Thom wants to talk to this girl for his investigation.  Now we’re not playing “Guess the motivation.”  Every plot point is clear from the get-go.  You can still keep La Mujer’s goal a mystery to the audience.  The reason it was a problem before was because both her AND Thom’s objectives were mysteries and it just led to a whole lot of confusion.  Since you’ve established Thom’s goal right away, the audience will be more tolerant of a secondary character being a mystery.

However, make sure that YOU know where La Mujer is going and what she’s doing.  Her ending has to make us go “Ohhhh, of course!” instead of, “Uhhhhh, what??” which is unfortunately how I responded to her climax in this draft.

Script link: La Mujer

What I Learned: When someone complains that your script is “unfocused,” it usually boils down to one of two things – the goal for the main character is unclear, OR, there’s no goal in the first place.  Think about it.  If your main character has a clear objective (or “goal”) then the story automatically stays on track, since the character is focused on achieving that goal.  In La Mujer, Thom does have a goal – to figure out who his parents are I think?  But it’s unclear as hell, so we’re not really invested in it.  This makes the story seem unfocused and we eventually check out.