Genre: Drama/Thriller
Premise: (from IMDB) A lawyer finds himself in over his head when he gets involved in drug trafficking.
About: Okay, so here’s the deal. Famed author Cormac McCarthy (The Road, No Country For Old Men) sold his first spec script last year, The Counselor. The movie quickly mobilized with Ridley Scott directing, Michael Fassbender playing the lead, and lots of other stars playing the supporting parts (Javier Barden, Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz, Penelope Cruz). Now I didn’t know this, but apparently Cormac McCarthy is a huge movie buff and wrote a bunch of screenplays before this (you wouldn’t know it by looking at the script, which is a cross between a treatment, a play, and notes scrawled on a napkin). He needed a break from writing novels so I guess he banged this out in a few weeks. You can actually read more about McCarthy’s exploits into screenwriting in this Wall Street Journal article (where Scriptshadow is mentioned – yeah!). Anyway, the film debuted this weekend to a disappointing 8 million bucks. Critics didn’t like it either (it’s currently at 35% on Rotten Tomatoes). Let’s see if we can figure out what went wrong!
Writer: Cormac McCarthy
Details: movie was 117 minutes. Script is 115 pages.

Cormac McCarthy has been hit with the same criticism over and over again this weekend regarding his film, The Counselor: Nobody knows what the hell is going on in the movie. That is definitely an issue that needed to be solved at the script stage. However, Ridley Scott and Fox weren’t about to tell a Pulitzer-prize winner how to write. So when he turned in his script, they were pretty much shooting what was on the page.

And that’s too bad, cause even though this script is such a mess, it could’ve been fixed with some guidance and some development. I mean, people ask why projects get stuck in development so long. It’s because when they don’t, they end up like this. A script that has some good ideas in it, but which is anything but a finished product. I mean I can tell you one thing RIGHT NOW that would’ve made this script infinitely better. Something that most amateur screenwriters (which McCarthy definitely is) don’t know. I’ll get to that in a bit, but first, let’s deal with the “plot.”

So we got this guy, The Counselor. I guess that makes him a lawyer of some sort. The Counselor is really good friends with a dude with wild hair named Reiner. Reiner hangs out with a vamped up Cameron Diaz (Malkina), whose favorite past time is watching her cheetahs hunt down rabbits in an open field. It’s unclear where all of these characters live. It’s either in Mexico or in a U.S. state close to Mexico.

Anyway, the Counselor has a really long unclear conversation with Reiner about something he’s going to do. It’s not clear what that is, nor is it clear if it’s supposed to be unclear what that is. But the Counselor seems nervous about it. The Counselor zips around the city after this chat, ending up at a diamond place. Okay, maybe that hush-hush conversation was about the diamond trade? Maybe the Counselor is trying to steal diamonds?

No! He’s actually getting a diamond ring to propose to his girlfriend. Yay! The Counselor continues to jet around the city, eventually meeting up with Brad Pitt, who warns him away from this terrible thing he’s planning to do (even though we still don’t know what that is). He then visits a mother in jail who wants the Counselor to free her son, who’s in jail on a motorcycle speeding ticket. (?????)

After a few more talks with Reiner, we watch some dude on a motorcycle get decapitated via a metal wire on a highway. Ah-ha! I remember Mother Jail Chick talking about her son the motorcycler so I’m assuming this is the same guy. The man who decapitates Motorcycle Dude then takes something that was inside his helmet. But what!? (no really, what?  can’t anything be clear here??)

Brad Pitt then calls The Counselor and says, “Dude. Baaaaad news. We’re all fucked!” Now up until this point, Brad Pitt was presented as a friendly mentor who had no connection to whatever The Counselor was doing. So I don’t know why he’s, all of a sudden, in trouble. But it’s enough to freak The Counselor out, who runs over to Reiner’s place and says, “Yo, we’re screwed!” Except we’re still not sure what’s going on or why anyone’s screwed.

Oh wait! The people who decapitated Motorcycle Dude are going to get a truck. I need to make some assumptions here because this movie is so vague about what’s going on, I really have no other choice. It APPEARS to me that the Counselor has gone in on a huge drug deal. It just so happened that the Motorcycle Dude he released for Mother Jail Chick was some sort of courier for the bad guys who dealt these drugs. When that Courier was killed, he had a message on him for where the drugs were (the truck!). This allowed this third party to steal the truck (and hence the drugs).

Of course, since The Counselor is responsible for releasing the motorcycle guy in the first place, the Mexican drug cartel who made a deal with The Counselor believes he’s orchestrating some sly double-cross move where he kills Motorcycle Dude and takes the drugs himself. For that reason, they order a hit on him, which is why he, Reiner and Brad Pitt have to scatter. That, my friends, is the best I can do on the plot for The Counselor.

Okay, so how bad is this script? Pretty bad. It certainly does feel like it was written in three weeks. Nothing is really connected. Everything feels thrown together. This is not something McCarthy put very much effort into – and it shows. It reads like a what’s what on amateur screenwriting mistakes. Let’s look at some of these mistakes, shall we?

MISTAKE 1 – Establish your main character.

McCarthy never showed us the Counselor in his natural habitat. Therefore we never really knew what he was or what he did. Sure, he’s called “the Counselor,” but in movies we need to SEE things in action for them to really stick. We needed to SEE this guy in court. This contributed to a good deal of the confusion in the film. Since we never knew what he did, we never knew what he was doing. I couldn’t tell if he was visiting all these people for his job (whatever that was) or for something else entirely.

MISTAKE 2 – Your main character should not be the least important character in the script.

Ouch, you learn this in Screenwriting 101. Don’t make your main character uninteresting. And now that I think about it, this is a classic novelist mistake. See in novels, you get to tell us what the main character is thinking. You don’t get to do that in screenwriting. The only way for us to know what a character is thinking is if he says it or he does it. And novelists will wrongly assume that because THEY know all these deep thoughts going on inside their main character’s head, that it’ll somehow ooze out as they speak or act. WRONG. You need to give us some quirks, some problems, some personality – anything to BRING THIS CHARACTER TO LIFE. It was painful watching Fassbender after awhile because his character was sooooo boring. And audiences don’t care about boring people. They want their main characters to be interesting!

MISTAKE 3 – Keep the philosophizing to a none-imum.

Granted Cormac McCarthy’s monologuing philosophizing characters who drone on about women, the world, death, grief, and happiness are going to be a little more interesting than Screenwriting John’s, who just wrote his first screenplay last night. But that doesn’t matter. It’s never about how interesting or uninteresting a philosophy-based monologue is. It’s the fact that when characters start philosophizing, IT STOPS YOUR STORY COLD. Everything is put on hold so we can hear some random Mexican bartender explain that grief is a bad thing. Okay, WHO THE F*CK CARES? We don’t care. We just want to see a good story. And because your character can’t shut up, we’re not able to do that. There were something like a dozen philosophy-laden monologues in this script. I would advise never going above zero.

MISTAKE 4 – Don’t include unneeded characters.

Can someone tell me what the HELL Brad Pitt was doing in this movie???? He seemed to be a sort of mentor? A friend who gave our main character advice? Um, okay, here’s some screenwriting advice. If you can take a character out of your screenplay, and nothing about the story changes, you don’t need that character. I call these “Island Characters.” Because they’re off on their own islands and have nothing to do with the story at hand. This character was pointless and should’ve been removed.

MISTAKE 5 – If you’re going to set something up, pay if off.

Okay, you’ve got TWO CHEETAHS featured prominently throughout the film. Two dangerous wild animals who get a TON of screen time. If you’re like me, you can’t wait until later when these giant cats are let loose in some uncontrolled environment and they begin wreaking havoc on some poor helpless character. Nope. These cheetahs were just… window dressing I guess. They do get away under uncontrolled circumstances later in the film. But they simply walk off. That’s it. That’s their big finale. If you’re going to set something up, PAY IT OFF!

But see, all of these mistakes paled in comparison to the one big one – the one that may have actually saved this film. It was one of these simple problems that every veteran screenwriter knows but writers who HAVEN’T BEEN AROUND THE SCREENWRITING BLOCK yet don’t. The big problem with The Counselor was that nobody knew what was going on. And the REASON nobody knew what was going on was because the writer never TOLD US what was going on.

When it comes to plot points and motivations THE WRITER MUST BE CLEAR. You can’t dick around with that stuff. Writers think they’re catering to the smarter upscale viewer when they keep their plot points subtle.  But the reality is, the audience (even the smart ones) need that moment where a character says, “I’m doing THIS so I can have THIS.” That’s all we needed here! A scene where The Counselor told us THAT HE WAS GOING IN ON A HUGE DRUG DEAL. But we never got it. For some reason that was just assumed. Which meant for the first 70 minutes of the movie, we had no idea what was going on.

This practice continued throughout the script where too many plot points were glazed over. We needed characters who clarified who the motorcycle guy was and who told us what the truck was about. Because we were never told, we were left out in the cold, and if you do that one too many times in a script, we check out. I mean it seems like the most obvious advice in the world and yet I still see writers make this mistake all the time: BE CLEAR! That’s all. Just BE CLEAR with what’s going on. We don’t know what’s happening UNLESS YOU TELL US.

Now there were a few good things here. I liked Cameron Diaz’s character. She was fun. (spoiler) Brad Pitt’s death scene was cool. And I just like Ridley Scott as a director. But man, he was given a really bad script here. The writing was on the wall before this was shot.

Script rating:

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

Movie rating:

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

What I learned: Scripts written quickly always FEEL like they were written quickly. So don’t think you’re fooling anyone. Scenes go on for too long. Characters talk too much. Everything feels loose and unfocused, leading to a lot of confusion. There’s a clear lack of setups and payoffs. Not surprisingly, all of those problems were on display here.  Coincidence?

Genre: Thriller/Drama
Premise: (from IMDB) When Keller Dover’s daughter and her friend go missing, he takes matters into his own hands as the police pursue multiple leads and the pressure mounts. But just how far will this desperate father go to protect his family?
About: This script sold for roughly a million dollars 4-5 years back. It was one of those dream scenarios as it was the writer’s (Aaron Guzikowski) first sale (a later script of his, Contraband, ended up getting made sooner). Who gets paid a million bucks their first time out?? Not only did he get the big money, but guys like DiCaprio and Bale wanted to star in his movie. Eventually, the musical chairs casting ended up with Hugh Jackman and Jake Gylenhaal in the lead roles. The film finally came out this weekend, finishing number 1 at the box office with 22 million dollars. There are some who say this is the first real Oscar contender to be released. Let’s find out if that’s the case!
Writer: Aaron Guzikowski
Details: 153 minutes!! Yowzers!

Okay, so here’s the deal. Five years ago, everybody was talking about this script. While it didn’t end up number 1 on the Black List or anything, a lot of folks tabbed it as their favorite script of the year. I read it and thought it was good. I even gave it an impressive rating (I was a little less discerning back in those days). What I remember is that the script had a strong sense of tone. It led us to a dark place and we believed in that dark place. That’s not easy to do.

I also remember that the ending completely fell apart and if they were going to make a good movie, they’d need to completely rewrite it. There was a common amateur mistake at play. Guzikowski set up a lot of fun little mysteries, but didn’t pay them off. In fact, the climax felt like a completely different film (the maze stuff came out of nowhere). I was interested to see how they would fix that in the rewrites.

Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) and his family head to Franklin Birch’s house for some Thanksgiving activities. The neighborhood they live in is a nice, respectable middle-class suburb. You’d feel safe raising your kids there which is probably why neither the Dover’s or Birch’s think twice about letting their 10 year-old daughters play outside.

But as the day turns to night, the families notice the girls haven’t returned and begin a frantic search for them. When they realize they’re gone, Keller’s son remembers a strange RV camped out down the block. Lonely Detective Loki, no relation to Thor, is called in to find the van. When he does he’s shocked to learn it was being driven by Alex Jones, a local man with the IQ of a third grader. Jones doesn’t seem to know anything about the girls so they let him go.

This infuriates Keller, who’s convinced that Alex is their guy. So he takes matters into his own hands and kidnaps Alex, locking him up in an abandoned apartment building he owns. With the reluctant help of Franklin, the two begin to torture him in hopes of learning where their daughters are. The question is, does Alex really know? Is he their guy? Or does Keller want him to be the guy so badly that he’s unable to see the truth?

In the meantime, Detective Loki suspects that some other weirdo is the kidnapper and eventually finds out where he lives. When he gets there, the walls are covered with mazes. Coupled with the man’s propensity for buying children’s clothes despite not having kids, Loki’s pretty sure he’s got the guy. When Keller hears this, he freaks out. Is he torturing the right man? Before anyone can get a definitive answer though, Second Suspect OFFS himself! This leaves everyone rolling in a heap of hearsay. It isn’t clear who’s telling the truth, who’s lying, and who has the girls. But they’re going to have to find out soon, because the clock is ticking, and without someone to provide food or water, the girls don’t have long.

Here’s what I liked about Prisoners. The setup was unique. And because the setup was unique it allowed for a lot of unique situations that we don’t usually see in these kinds of movies. A straightforward kidnapping story goes like this: A girl gets taken, they search for her, there are twists and turns and false leads along the way until they finally save her. This is the boring traditional blueprint for this kind of film.

But Prisoners institutes what I call the “Silence of the Lambs” approach. It adds a secondary element that throws all your expectations for the genre off. In Lambs, obviously it was Hannibal. Here, it’s Keller’s imprisonment of Alex. This isn’t something we typically see, so it confuses us, intrigues us, unsettles us. It’s not just about finding this girl. It’s about “IS KELLER TORTURING THE RIGHT GUY??”  Is what he’s doing “right”?  Is Keller going to kill the wrong guy? Is Keller going to get caught? What happens if he does get caught? These are all questions we don’t typically deal with when we’re watching a mystery procedural.

I think that and the dogged determination of both Keller and Detective Loki to do their respective jobs is what made this film so watchable. I always tell you guys – the more determined your characters are to achieve their goal, the more we’re going to care. I mean Keller is ready to move mountains to find this girl. And Loki is going to stay up all night 7 nights a week until he’s got his man.

Which leads me to another thing Prisoners did well. It explored that gray interaction between the detective and the victim’s family we don’t typically get to see. Many times the victim’s parents are so mad, so angry, that they endanger the investigation, themselves, even innocent people. They believe vigilante investigation and justice is the only way to go. And since they place emotions before logic, they’re often wrong. This leaves the detective in a position of not only trying to find the victim, but trying to keep the family from hurting themselves. Prisoners did a really good job looking at that.

Here’s my big problem with Prisoners though. They never figured out the ending. It’s better than it was. But there are too many unanswered questions after the movie’s over (spoilers follow). Okay, so this Second Suspect had the girls’ clothes. How? As far as I could tell, he wasn’t affiliated with the real killer so why in the world would he have the girls’ clothes? And how did one of the girls escape? That was NEVER explained. And why wasn’t she able to tell them who she ran away from? Oh, and who was this mystery child killer the priest murdered? Or did he even murder him? That was never stated. Was he Alex’s mother’s ex-husband? If so, why wasn’t this clearly explained?

Sadly, the reason the first ¾ of this movie worked so well (its zig-zaggy plot) was because they never had to make the dots connect. Of course it’s a great twist when Second Suspect has the girls’ clothes if you NEVER HAVE TO EXPLAIN HOW HE GOT THEM. Certain choices seemed to confirm the director’s lack of confidence in the script. As we got closer to the end, we’d get more and more “artful” fades to black. These seemed to be used to cover up or divert our attention away from these emerging plot holes.

I’m not going to lie, there were things in that third act that upset me. But for the majority of its running time, Prisoners kept me on the edge of my seat. I think it wants you to believe it’s bigger and more complicated than it is, which is where the frustration sets in (because you want it to be big!) but the reality is that it’s a solid non-traditional thriller and that’s it. But hey, I’ll still take that over Transformers 8 any day!

[ ] what the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Breaking the fifth wall! Oh yeah, you guys have heard of breaking the fourth wall. That’s when one of the characters talks directly to the audience. But do you know what the fifth wall is? It hit me while watching Prisoners. At a certain point, I began to wonder what I would do if I were in a Keller’s position. My daughter is kidnapped. I think, but am not 100% certain, I have the guy who did it. Would I go to the same extreme Keller does? See, the fifth wall is the wall that invites the audience TO PARTICIPATE in the story. When they start asking, “Hmm, what would I do if I were in this situation?” you’ve officially sucked them in. This isn’t for every screenplay. But it’s a very powerful tool in the right script.

Welcome to the week where I review Amateur TV pilots. This competition was held exclusively through my weekly newsletter. To make sure you’re aware of future writing contests and opportunities, sign up for the newsletter here.

Genre: TV pilot – comedy half hour.
Premise: An unlucky-in-love American man inadvertently ends up becoming a Chinese Mail Order Groom.
About: A few hundred TV pilots were sent in. My assistant and I went through all of them. These are the five I chose to review. There was a lot of competition for the last two or three slots. I could’ve easily substituted in a dozen scripts. But these are the ones I chose to go with. My hope, as always, is that we find something great.
Writer: Alberto Valenzuela
Details: 27 pages

Off the wall Scriptshadow Choice For Doug: Donald Glover?

People always ask me: “Why does Hollywood continue to make all these crap movies?” “Why don’t the studios take more chances?”

The reason the studios don’t take more chances is because they don’t have any competition. There’s no one else out there making giant effects-driven movies besides them. Which is why all these movies either literally or virtually recycle old been-there-done-that ideas.

On the flip side, the reason TV has gotten so good lately is because the big 4 networks don’t control all the original programming anymore. Cable networks have loads of original programming to offer. And it’s forcing that world to be more creative, to take chances. With Netflix in the mix, the game is REALLY changing. I love how Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said, “I want more content. If we’re not coming up with some huge failures, we’re not taking enough chances.” Holy shit. When would you ever hear THAT from a Network??

And he’s backing it up, too. My favorite new show, Orange Is The New Black, is about a female prison focusing heavily on the racial politics and rampant lesbianism that goes on inside of these prisons. Not sure NBC would’ve green-lit that.

Which brings us to today. The reason I picked this pilot was because the first 10 pages had NOTHING to do with the main character. I’ve just never seen that before. I don’t know if it can be done, if one of these networks would allow that. And because we’re talking about taking chances, this lit a fire under me. I was in!

Darcy Fitzgerald is about to get on a plane when it hits him all at once. He’s leaving the woman he loves, Veronica. And by the powers that be, he can’t do that. So he leaps out of line and darts through the airport. Airport Security snags him. But when he tells them the story of his lost love and how they’re meant to be together, they change their tune and clear a path for him.

The cab driver does the same. When Darcy tries to pay him, he says “No.” He couldn’t possibly profit off of love this perfect. Even Veronica’s protective roommate melts when Darcy begs her to let him see her. She relents and informs him Veronica’s out on a date. So Darcy runs to the restaurant, confronts the love of his life, apologizes for ever even THINKING of leaving her, and PROPOSES to her, right there in front of everyone! Unable to resist the man she’s fallen so deeply for, she says yes. YES, she will marry him. Everybody claps! After which…

TITLE CARD: Darcy and Veronica lived happily ever after.

TITLE CARD: Probably.

TITLE CARD: Who knows.

TITLE CARD: Who cares.

TITLE CARD: This isn’t their story.

At that moment we meet Doug. Doug is the man sitting across from Veronica, her date. Doug is the main character of our story.

To add insult to injury, this Darcy guy came right before the food was served. Which means Doug is starving. So he wanders into the city, eventually coming upon a hole-in-the-wall Chinese buffet, with no one at the register. He heads to the back room, where the owner is conversing with a live Chinese woman via a virtual porn site. The man explains that he’ll make food for Doug, but that Doug must keep the woman entertained in the meantime.

Doug doesn’t really want any of this but the man doesn’t give him a choice. Once he starts chatting, the girl’s porn pimp comes onscreen and starts yelling at her. Doug tries to stop him but the man won’t shut up. When Doug gets really upset, the man offers to stop only if Doug gives him money. He tells Doug to hold up his credit card, and to stop him, Doug obliges. After that strange interaction, Doug gets his food and leaves.

The next day he’s kidnapped by a strange man, thrown on a boat that sails to China, and bussed to a gas station in the middle of nowhere. It’s there where he re-meets the quiet Chinese woman he met online. He’s informed that he was paid to become her husband. And that he now will live here, with her, for the rest of his life.

I loooooooved the first ten pages of Mail Order Groom. After those ten pages, I knew that I was including it in Pilot Week. I thought: This writer is hilarious.

However, after that opening, Mail Order Groom started heading in the same direction as China, south. What was so great about that opening was that it was fast-paced, a fun story, and had an unexpected ending. I wanted to see more of that. Instead, I often found myself confused.

For example, I had no idea why an intelligent person in this day and age would give a random person (particularly a person affiliated with porn) their bank account number over the internet! And because they were yelling at a person? That didn’t make sense.

I also didn’t understand why this person in China was paying Doug to come be this woman’s husband. Do all women in rural China have 10gs to drop for an American husband? Some of you may point out, “But that was the logline, Carson.” I didn’t read any of the loglines when reading the pilots. I would just go straight to the script. I wanted the writing to speak for itself.

I mean it would probably make a better sit-com if this woman was in a really dangerous situation in China and, to save her, Doug paid for her. She then came to America and he was basically now married to this woman that he didn’t even know. At the very least, that would make sense.

Another issue I had was that those last 20 pages didn’t pull anything from the first 10. It was a completely different story. Not that it’s a necessity, but you’d like to create some sort of connection between the opening and the rest of your story if possible. What if, for example, after Doug is screwed over, he just shakes his head, gets up, and walks out of the restaurant. It turns out this happens to Doug ALL THE TIME. He’s the unluckiest man in love ever. Every single way you can imagine losing a girl, it’s happened to Doug. And that’s the show. Following the dating life of the unluckiest dater in history. Yeah, it wouldn’t be as risk-taking as this idea, but I’m not sure this current idea makes a whole lot of sense.

Yet another problem I had here was that the script got sloppier as it went on. I’d read sentences like, “As you say, we’ve pasted the middle of nowhere,” and references to shows like “Locked up aboard” (instead of “Locked Up – Abroad”). Whenever I see this, I know the writer isn’t trying hard because he hasn’t even read through his script enough to notice these obvious mistakes. Before you send a script to anyone, you should go through it at least 50 times.

For this pilot to work, Alberto’s going to need to put a lot more thought and effort into it. On the thought side, he has to be sure that all the actions that are happening in the script actually make sense. Your supposedly intelligent lead is not going to give a sketchy Chinese guy his bank account number over the internet. And people in rural China need to have reasons for buying an American husband besides the fact that it sets up a fun situation for a TV show. As far as effort, that’s the one thing there’s no excuse for. Effort needs to be a given on everything you write. As soon as a reader senses you’re not giving 110% effort, they’re through with you.

I’d encourage Alberto to keep writing. The opening was great. Take these lessons learned and use them to become a better writer on your next script.  Good luck. :)

Script link: Mail Order Groom

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

What I learned: Alberto made a classic mistake. At the end of his submission e-mail, he says, “Overall, I just want to get a laugh.” Now obviously, whenever you’re writing a comedy, that’s what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to make people laugh. But I call this approach “Scriptus Relaxitis Syndrome.” It’s when a writer convinces himself that because all he’s trying to do is “get a laugh” (in a comedy) or “scare someone” (in a horror script), that he doesn’t have to try hard. It’s like he’s giving himself permission to not put as much effort into the script. And what do you know? As this script continued, that’s exactly what happened. It got sloppier and sloppier. A comedy or a horror script is no different than any other script you work on. You need to obsess over every little choice, every little joke, every little sentence and comma, until you believe you’ve put forth your absolute best. Never settle for anything less.

I must apologize about the late post. You know, ever since it was announced that Kate Middleton went into labor last night, I’ve been unable to eat, sleep, or concentrate. Just like all of you, life cannot go on until this baby is delivered. I mean so many things can go wrong in childbirth. Is it not natural that one need to know that the baby is okay? And then of course we all need to know if it’s a boy or a girl. Well, she’s FINALLY delivered. And it’s a boy! (spoiler alert) So everyone can take the rest of the day off and relax after all that intense anxiety you’ve been under. I know I will.

But that’s not the only thing that happened this weekend. R.I.P.D. was officially R.I.P.D. upon its own delivery. I reviewed the script a year ago and thought it was pretty good. But man did it land with a thud. I’m trying to glean some lessons for writers from this but I’m not sure I have any. On the one hand, I encourage writers to come up with high-concept ideas, like R.I.P.D., but I think in this case it was so similar to Men In Black that audiences had no interest in seeing a lower-rent, lesser-cast version of that film. I mean, people aren’t even interested in seeing sequels of the original M.I.B. Why would they be interested in seeing a copycat film? If there’s a lesson here, it’s to write something familiar but different, with a little more emphasis on the different than the familiar.

Speaking of, R.I.P.D. is yet another example of the Ryan Reynolds Isn’t A Movie Star Paradox, which was most famously explored in an article written by sports/entertainment writer Bill Simmons. Indeed, it is strange that Reynolds continues to be so popular amongst studios when he’s never been able to open a movie on his own (his biggest successes like The Proposal and Safe House have him coupled with bigger stars). I like Reynolds. He seems like a good guy. I love that he takes chances in his career, and I think some of his movies have been really good, like Definitely, Maybe and Buried. But he’s gotta take advantage of this time. Unless he starts giving a better return on his investment, I’m afraid he might go the way of Ben Affleck in the first phase of his career.

Also, in news that has nothing to do with that, I’m hearing an awful, awful rumor. JJ Abrams is thinking of quitting Star Wars. The main point of contention is that Abrams has a family here in the States but will have to shoot the movie in England. It’s something I actually worried about as soon as Abrams took the job. He stated that he really wanted to shoot the movie here because of his family and an issue like that just doesn’t go away. Imagine being away from your wife and kids for a year. This isn’t a simple 3 day business trip to Cedar Rapids. We’re talking AN ENTIRE YEAR.

If he drops out, I don’t know who the heck is going to take his place. But the mad scramble will probably dictate a less-than-desirable replacement. Nightmare names like Rian Johnson and Edgar Wright popped into my head. I know those names bring about happy thoughts in certain geek circles, but trust me, those guys would destroy Star Wars. That’s why JJ was so perfect. He was a big director who knew what he was doing and also had that sensibility that could make Star Wars great. I’m afraid if he leaves, there are no super-big directors who would be interested, which means taking a shot in the dark on one of these lesser guys who hasn’t proven himself. Ugh. May the force be with us.

So, in slightly less depressing news, I saw The Conjuring this weekend with Miss Scriptshadow. We’d both read the script, both liked it, and so were interested in seeing the finished product. Well, long story short, Miss Scriptshadow hated it. Which kinda baffled me because she loves scary movies.

The scene that set her off was the opening one, in which paranormal investigator husband and wife team, the Warrens, investigate a creepy doll that keeps writing to its owners, “Miss me?” in really bad crayon handwriting. Indeed, the scene felt like it was part of another movie. Coupled with its cliché scary doll cheesiness, there was a goofiness to it that contrasted heavily to the otherwise “take me seriously” tone the rest of the film exhibited. It just goes to show how powerful an opening scene is. Give us the wrong one, and we could decide we hate your film within a couple minutes. The scene didn’t turn me off as much as it did her, but something did feel off about it.

My problem with the film had more to do with the same issues I saw in the script stage. Now to their credit, the writers did eliminate a lot of the “one month later” and “two months later” stuff they had in the screenplay that gave the story a laid back feel. Instead, after the opening scene, they kept everything in one continuous timeline and made it build. In other words, they added URGENCY, which is important in any movie, but especially a horror film, where you should feel the danger increasing at a scary rate.

But getting back to my main issue, it really bothered me that every time the Warrens saw something freaky, they went, “Oh yeah that. Ppffhhh. That’s just the demon wanting attention.” “Oh, the reason the clocks stop? That’s just because it’s the time the ghost died. No biggie.” Even when they’re researching the haunting, the answers seem to bore them. “No wonder these guys are experiencing hauntings. A witch used to live here and killed her child.” I don’t know about you, but I’m scared when people have no fucking clue why they’re being terrorized and they’re freaking the fuck out about it. Everybody here was too damn calm. We needed the Warrens to be like, “Yo, we’ve never seen this before. We’re scared. We don’t know what to do.” Remember The Exorcist? Part of what made that so scary is that the priests themselves seemed terrified. We never get that with the Warrens, who always seem to be in control. That was a super-big issue with me. If they could’ve fixed that, this might’ve been a classic.

I did learn something cool from the script-to-screen translation though. One of my favorite moments in the screenplay was when Lorraine Warren was in a crawlspace in the house, and starts pulling on this rope, and pulling on it and pulling on it, and all of a sudden, at the end of it is… THE WITCH’S HEAD (who had hanged herself when she was alive – hence the rope connection). It was terrifying. But they didn’t do that in the movie. Instead, she lifts the rope up and sees at the end… a noose. Scared for a moment, the floor of the old house then breaks beneath her, and she goes shooting down through the walls into the basement. Injured and unable to move, she starts hearing scary-ass shit. She now must fend off potential danger from every side of her. In other words, the writers sacrificed what was originally a jump scare (the witch’s head), and milked an entire scene of scares out of it. There’s your lesson. If you have a choice, no matter how good your jump scare is, see if there’s a way to milk one long scene of scares instead. That’s always the better option.

Finally, I still think the script itself, while interesting and original, was clumsy. I was never entirely sure who the main characters were. Was it the parents in the house or was it the Warrens? It felt like the writers weren’t sure either, as we’d occasionally jump back to the Warrens’ home where a barely-there subplot was happening with their daughter. The entire Warren’s Home storyline felt like that friend who nobody wants to bring to the party. “Oh man, I guess we have to call Bill.” Everybody rolls their eyes. Yeah, I guess so. Everything that happened over there felt like an afterthought. But in retrospect, I’m convinced that the studio sees the Warrens as their franchise. They’re the ones with all these scary stories to tell. Sequels upon sequels upon sequels. Therefore, they have to give them weight in the story. The problem with that was, because we had to spend so much time with the Warrens, we didn’t really get to know the Perrons. I mean, somebody tell me anything about the father in this script. You can’t.  There was nothing. But hey, The Conjuring 2 is already ramping into development so it ended up working.

With The Conjuring and The Purge being two of the biggest return-on-investments this summer, you best start thinking about writing that horror spec. People love to be scared, so scary movies will always have an audience. Just try and come up with an idea that’s either based on a true story (Conjuring) or that has a really high concept (Purge). You do that, we’ll be analyzing your film here on Scriptshadow soon.

The weekend is here. Writer Jay Eden would love if you busted out your old record player and took a trip into the past. Vinyl lovers unite for… WHITE LABEL!

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

Genre: Dark Rom-Com
Premise: (from writer) When a young vinyl music store owner loses everything — love, friendship and vinyl records — he struggles to rebuild his life, hindered by pimp-like friends, a beautiful agent provocateur and an ex-girlfriend who refuses to let their relationship die until she finds a suitable successor. In the vein of HIGH FIDELITY and 500 DAYS OF SUMMER.
About: (from writer) WHITE LABEL landed me a Blacklist manager for three days when I sent it out last year. We had a weekend love-in, swapped lots of emails, planned a campaign to attach a director and talent — then she emailed back the following Monday and said she was simply too busy to take on another client. The script (under a different name) got a professional rating on SPEC SCOUT, and was ranked on the TOP 10 list of the best scripts of 2012 by a Scriptshadow reader (someone I have never met, honestly!).
Writer: Jay Eden
Details: 113 pages

One of the cooler things you can do in LA is head up to Sunset and Vine and visit Amoeba Records. It’s this huge sprawling store with about a billion records. It’s kind of amazing to think about. Vinyl died off a long time ago. In fact, it’s died many deaths. First by cassette, then CD, and now digital. Many people who swore by the vinyl listening experience watched helplessly as their flagship sound experience was ripped away from them.

So to think that there’s this entire store that still sells these things. And not just that – they’re ALWAYS packed. It’s baffling. With that being said, I have to admit I’ve never been a music geek. I mean don’t get me wrong. I’ve bought a hell of a lot of songs on Itunes. But I’m not someone who can tell you what venue Led Zeppelin first played in. Or what studio Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” was recorded in. It’s just not my thing.

Music is something for me to experience and enjoy, not dissect. And really, I wouldn’t have it any other way. One of the downsides of being in the movie business (and I use that term loosely, don’t worry), is that in order to survive, you have to dissect, you have to watch things over and over again to understand why they do or don’t work so you can talk about them intelligently, as well as apply that knowledge to your work. I’m not going to lie, that takes some of the fun out of it. It’s hard for me to just sit down and enjoy a film these days. I’m too busy thinking about all the shit that’s gone into it.

With music, I don’t have to worry about that. It’s why I can enjoy “Satisfaction” and “Gangnam Style” in equal measure. I don’t have to bring any of that judgmental snarkiness over from the film world. Which leads us to White Label. This is a script written by a music geek for music geeks. And for that reason, while I appreciated it, it never truly resonated with me. It sort of drifted around me. I enjoyed some moments, but was never totally enthralled.

White Label puts us back in the decade of big hair and male mid-riff shirts (the 80s) and follows a guy named Matt. Matt is the owner of a store named Urinal Vinyl, a record shop famous for its giant urinal in the middle of the floor, where those desperate for rock schoolage can sacrifice their old shitty records and be given the truly best rock in return. In other words, it’s a gimmick that separates UV from every other record store in town.

But the fun and games of the 70s and early 80s are coming to an end. That’s because a new medium is hitting the streets, the compact disc. And they’re making their way into every record store in California. Every record store except for one. Urinal Vinyl. That’s because Matt refuses to bend to the constraints of capitalist America.

Cut to our romantic foil, the royally fucked up but unimaginably beautiful Charlie, one of those women who could find trouble in a church. Charlie works for one of these compact disc companies and realizes if she could infiltrate Matt’s little store, she could find out what they’re up against. So that’s exactly what she does, hoping to rope Matt in and get all the information she needs and use it against him. But it’s not that easy. Matt is still in love with his dead wife (who he’s able to physically see and talk to by the way) and just getting an uninterrupted moment with him is like trying to get some one on one time with Madonna (80s reference).

There are tons of other people coming in and out of the shop with their own stories as well. There’s Ray, Matt’s best friend, who’s in love with an Argentinian woman he can’t have. There’s Bunker, a 15 year old kid who’s so obsessed with the Goth girl working at the store he comes in every day and stares at her from the corner. There’s Todd, Charlie’s married boss whom she erroneously believes will leave his wife. There’s Phil, who’s married to Matt’s sister. There’s Maddie, who’s trying to rope in Matt as well. Oh, and of course there’s Emma, Matt’s dead wife. Shit, there’s a lot of people here!

Charlie eventually finds a provision in the rental agreement on the building that will close the place down unless Matt finds 30k. All this espionage is getting harder and harder to do, of course, since she’s falling for Matt. And in the end, Matt will have to call on all the famous rockers who once graced one of the greatest record stores in the world to rock out and raise money so they can save the place where they got their first rock education!

I feel really bad about reviewing White Label because there’s more passion and depth in this script than most of amateur scripts I read in a month. You can tell when a writer really loves his subject matter. He gives the words a power you just don’t see when a writer’s writing for the market. I can vouch for that here with Jay. I felt the sweat he laid out on the page. But this just isn’t my thing. So no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get fully into it.

Regardless of that, there’s some really great character development here. Every single character has something going on, from the best friend (who’s obsessed with the coffee shop girl) to Charlie, who has several different people she’s trying to please. I’m a big fan of writers who give every character something to do, something important happening in their lives.

Here’s the irony in that, though. There are too many characters here to begin with. And because Jay is so good with character-building, it actually ends up working against him. Because he’s adding storylines for characters that probably shouldn’t be in the script in the first place. Start with Emma, Matt’s dead wife. I’ve seen the “dead wife who talks to the lead character” half a dozen times before in the last two years alone. We even reviewed a script with this exact hook a few months ago.

Then we had characters like Jake (a late boyfriend for Charlie), Charlie’s sister (who has very little to do with anything), Matt’s semi-gf Maddie, and Bunker’s late girlfriend, Christy Turlington. I didn’t care about the specifics of any of these storylines. All I care about are the main characters’ plights. I want to see THOSE characters interacting with one another, not some late “thrown in” character who I barely know or care about.

To me, White Label’s biggest problem might be that there’s TOO MUCH going on. And some of the more important character storylines get lost in the excessiveness of all the subplots and tangents. This script needed someone to come in there and straighten out all the curls. It needed a “simplification comb,” or, to use a music reference, it needed a simpler beat.

Another thing I’m worried about is how similar this is to High Fidelity. It’s music geeks hanging out in a record store talking about music. Clearly, this was an influence for Jay. But there’s a fine line between influence and “the same thing,” and while there are portions of this story that are its own, there are way too many that feel like excerpts from that film.

Moving forward, here’s what I’d recommend to Jay. Streamline the character count (starting with Emma – represent her with a unique record they used to listen to or something, not a physical talking person) and remember that you don’t have to go into every little detail in every little character storyline. The big storylines should take precedence. Drop stuff like Jake and Christy Turlington. We don’t need them. I’d also bring up the story problem earlier. Right now, it’s introduced at the midpoint and that leaves the first half of the script without a story. Introduce their need to save the store at the end of the first act. Also, make “White Label” a bigger part of the story. It sounds like these “white label” records are worth a lot of money. If they went on a search to find one to save the shop (or he had to, say, decide whether to sell the super-valuable white label record he found with Emma that represents their relationship), that’d be more interesting than the cliché “hold a concert to save the shop” climax. Finally, do everything you can to make this NOT feel like High Fidelity. I’m not even sure how you do that, but the more you separate the two, the more this will feel like your own movie as opposed to a homage to the movie you loved.

This script deserves to be read. Jay has some real talent. The only reason I’m not personally recommending it is because it’s not my thing. But do yourself a favor and check it out so you can form your own opinion, especially if you’re a music geek.

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

What I learned: I learned this from a recent TV-related article on Vulture, and it stuck with me. If you’re setting your story in the past, try to set it during a transitional time. Transitional times are usually the most exciting and are well-springs for conflict and drama. In this case, we cover a record store during the CD revolution, which is what creates much of the conflict that drives the plot.