He claims his script is better than every script sale out there. He repeatedly trashed Disciple in favor of his own masterpiece. But does writer Jai Brandon deliver on the goods?

Amateur Friday Submission Process: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send it in PDF form, along with your title, genre, logline, and why I should read your script to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Keep in mind your script will be posted in the review (feel free to keep your identity and script title private by providing an alias and fake title). Also, it’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre: Thriller/Crime/Serial Killer
Premise: (from writer) The lives of two opposing forces collide, after an argument escalates between a telemarketer and the recipient of his phone call – an active serial killer. Unfortunately for this serial killer, the man that he threatened is no ordinary telemarketer.
About: Jai Brandon has been pushing me to read his scripts for over a year. His constant hyping of The Telemarketer has made him impossible to ignore.
Writer: Jai Brandon
Details: 100 pages

I have experienced my share of confident screenwriters. I, like most of you, lived through Trajent Future (for the time of your life, grab some popcorn and read through the 500 comments of that post). The House That Death Built taught us that the quality of a man’s script is dependent not on one’s bravado, but rather one’s writing. Jai Brandon seems to have ignored this lesson. He places his screenplay up on the highest pedestal, betting that it’s not only better than recent entries such as The Disciple Program, but even some of the classics that have graced our movie theaters for years.

I’d tell Jai that’s a recipe for disaster, but I don’t think he’d listen. However, I’ll give Jai this. At a time where I’ve received more script submissions than any other time in Scriptshadow’s history, this man figured out a way to get me to read his script. True it was done through incessant badgering and enough e-mails to break Gmail’s servers (true story – I opened one of his e-mails and Gmail crashed), but you gotta get your name out there somehow and Jai did it.

Of course, this brings us to the actual script, and I’m not going to lie. I was expecting it to be somewhere between really bad and extremely terrible. My experience has taught me that those who yell the loudest usually have the least to say. The good news for Jai is that the script did not fall inside that category.

But it did fall inside a new category I like to refer to as, “Logic, flow, and tone be damned.” This has to be one of the strangest scripts I’ve read in a while in that Jai actually has a lot of talent, to the point where you occasionally wonder if you’re reading a pro. Unfortunately, that talent is eclipsed by a poor story sense. The script has so many weird combinations going on as to make it almost indecipherable. I’ll get into that in a second but let’s deal with the plot first.

20-something James Walker is a deliveryman. Well, that’s not entirely true. He’s a telemarketer. He’s a telemarketer/deliveryman, working delivery by day and telemarketing by night. Confused? So am I. I guess James doesn’t have to sleep. But neither did Edward Norton in Fight Club so I’m going to let it slide.

Our favorite telemarketer/deliveryman goes to deliver a package at a house only to see three burglars holding a woman hostage inside. Since James is not the kind of person to sit back idly, he sneaks in through the window and systematically kills the men. Add ass-kicker to James’ resume.

Later, a couple of detectives stop by to try and figure out what happened but come to the conclusion that no man could have taken these burglars out the way they did. It would have been impossible.

Off in another home we meet a man known as The Clown Face Killer. This Caucasian fellow likes to dress up in blackface and an afro wig and kill African American women. He also has Alopecia (he’s hairless) which means he never leaves a single trace of DNA evidence wherever he goes. He’s the perfect killer. The perfect CLOWN FACE KILLER.

In the meantime, those “savvy” detectives find a delivery notice on that burglarized lady’s front porch. So they head over to James’ telemarketing job to ask him some questions, namely why the notice is marked with the exact time this burglary took place. But James is as cool as a Kumquat (and as sarcastic as a snapping turtle) and convinces the doofus detectives that he wasn’t involved.

Across town, Mr. Clown-Face Killer continues attacking young unsuspecting African-American women, but during one of these attacks, James calls the house as part of his telemarketing gig. He and Clown Face have a brief conversation and the clown killer decides he’s going to make this personal. He then begins killing everyone in New York named James Walker – our hero’s name!

In the end, the Clown-Face Killer with alopecia gets so worked up that he actually targets James’ own mother. James will have to call on not only his telemarketing and delivery skills to take this man down, but his mercenary skills as well. Wait, what?! Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. James used to be a mercenary too! Will he succeed? I’m not sure. Nothing is certain in…..The Telemarketer.

Okay, so like I said, Jai shows a lot of skill in his writing. Open up this script and read the first scene and you’ll notice the writing is crisp, lean and professional.

The problem is, Jai’s lack of storytelling sense becomes increasingly problematic as the story goes on. What I mean by “storytelling sense” is the combination of structure, tone, understanding of genre, and how to build a story in a believable, compelling and logical way. The Telemarketer builds, but nothing is ever believable. And rarely is the tone of the story consistent. It kind of feels like a pastiche of several different genres slapped together in no particular order.

But let’s back up for a second and start with the title. The reason I resisted reading this in the first place was that the title and the logline didn’t jive. It sounded like a set up for a comedy as opposed to a thriller. A telemarketer taking on a man with alopecia who dresses up in blackface and an Afro wig? I don’t know. That just doesn’t sound like a subject matter you can treat seriously. So that was the first problem I had, and that was before I even opened the script (again – why testing your concept is SO important!).

The next problem I had was the dual jobs. I understand some people work two jobs to make ends meet, but in this case, the two jobs were obviously created for the purpose of instituting key plot points. Jai needed James to be a deliveryman/vigilante killer in order to get the detectives after him. And he needed his hero to be a telemarketer so he could call the woman that would begin Clown Faced’s obsession with him.

My question is, since the deliveryman job has absolutely nothing to do with the story, why not ditch it? Just make him a telemarketer. That’s the name of the movie anyway. By calling a movie “The Telemarketer” and starting off with your hero as a deliveryman, you’ve already confused your audience. In the very first scene! That’s a big problem with the writing here. It just seems to go wherever it wants in order to make the story work for the writer.

In addition to these problems, we just have these really weird scenes that appear out of nowhere. For instance, in addition to being a telemarketer and a deliveryman, it turns out that James also used to be a mercenary. So right in the middle of the script, for no discernible reason, we jump back to James during his mercenary days taking down Somali pirates. To the writer, this may all seem completely logical. “Of course he’s a mercenary. That’s my hero’s backstory!”

But to a reader, it’s utter confusion. We’re adding on to a character who already feels schizophrenic the title of mercenary??? How can an audience take that seriously? It would be like in Silence Of The Lambs if, 60 minutes in, Jodie Foster participated in a local disco competition, won, then went right back to hunting Buffalo Bill. You can’t just do whatever you want in a story. It has to make sense, it has to feel natural, it has to fit within the theme. If it doesn’t, it just feels random.

Another scene that came out of nowhere was James driving his delivery truck and getting stopped by some detectives, but it turns out those detectives were fake and actually robbers! Who rob him! The scene is just some random isolated incident that has NOTHING to do with the plot at all! These moments kept coming in The Telemarketer. Which was a big part of what made the read so frustrating.

The thing is, Jai really does have some talent. And despite his insane bravado, he actually seems like a nice guy. I don’t think he’s going to be telling everybody here (along with myself) that we’re all worthless and don’t know what we’re talking about and he does, a la Trajent Future. But he needs to back up and study storytelling a little more. Storytelling isn’t about throwing a bunch of shit on the page you think is cool. It’s about slowly building up a story where all the pieces fit together in a natural way. There are very few pieces in The Telemarketer that fit together and that’s why, despite the talent, the story doesn’t work.

What did you guys think? Is this better than The Disciple Program, as Jai claims? Or is my review completely off?

Script Link: The Telemarketer

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Be elegant in your plot construction. The more you strain, the more we’ll notice. In other words, never push an improbable or illogical plot point onto your story just because you *really need* something to happen. Here, Jai wanted these detectives to pull his hero, James, into the story. So he created this deliveryman job, which allowed his hero to murder these men, so that the detectives could question him. Keep in mind this job has NOTHING TO DO with the rest of the story. Never once is delivering something ever broached again. So it obviously feels false. You easily could’ve achieved this plot point without adding another job. Why can’t James be the woman’s neighbor? He’s about to go to work and sees something suspicious going on? Or maybe part of the telemarketing gig is delivering flyers about the service. You must be elegant in the way you weave things into your story or you’re going to pull your reader out of that story.

Allan Loeb embodies the dream scenario for any screenwriter.  Well, sorta.  After having inconsistent success in Hollywood for awhile, he fought through a crippling gambling addiction that nearly sent his life spiraling out of control. He eventually recovered, writing two scripts, The Only Living Boy In New York and Things We Lost In The Fire, that finished Top 4 on the inaugural Black List in 2005.  The buzz around those scripts began an insane hot streak for Loeb, who sold six projects in a single year. He’s since went on to write many movies, including 21, Wall Street 2, and Just Go With It.  In addition to feature writing, he has moved into TV producing, and is looking to have the same success in that medium.

SS: I originally heard it took you 12 years to finally sell something. Is that accurate? Can you tell us how you fought through that and were able to keep writing?

AL: I actually sold a pitch my fifth year writing, then a script two years later (guild minimum) and another (guild min again) a few years after that. So my career has actually been lived in three stages, five years of total rejection, about six or so of being on the bottom rung as a “baby writer” and finally eight years now of success. I didn’t actually fight through it, I — more or less — avoided the scary real world by doing the only thing I felt comfort in doing… making shit up.

SS: What did you do to pay the rent and what do you suggest other writers do job-wise to pay their rent yet still have time to work on their writing?

AL: I’m reluctant to say how I paid the rent for fear some of your readers may try it. It wasn’t smart and it should’ve ended in disaster. I gambled, day traded, ran through an inheritance and lived off credit cards. I sold my car in 2002 to pay rent and spent two years walking/taking the bus in LA. I sold an X-Box to a UCLA college student in 2005 for $90 and signed at CAA a week later. If I didn’t sign there or sell Only Living Boy shortly after… that $90 would’ve been my net worth.

SS: There seem to be levels for a writer. There’s the “get noticed with a good script” level. There’s the “get an agent level.” There’s the “sell your first script level.” Those are the levels I’m familiar with. What levels come after that? How many are there?

AL: There are so many levels after that. Most people are so consumed with the initial three that they never consider all the rungs in the middle. I’d say after “sell your first script” there’s the “do the rounds around town and get these people to like you” level. Then there’s the “get a job or sell something to them” level.

Then comes the most important level of all… “DELIVER!” This involves making your partners (producer, studio, director, movie star) feel heard and happy without compromising the quality of your work and your voice. It’s extremely delicate and challenging and if you can do it… you’ll work for a long time. It’s my opinion that most writers get spit out of the business at this level by the way.

From there the result in the market place matters. So the levels are “the box office gross level” and the “critical acclaim level” I have failed up at this level many times (but fortunately succeeded a bit too) and it’s extremely painful.

SS: My favorite script of yours is “The Only Living Boy In New York.” What inspired that script for you and when am I finally going to get to see it?

AL: I wanted to write my version of my favorite movie “The Graduate” with kind of a “Manhattan” love-letter to New York flourish to it. I went to New York in 2004, leased a loft for the summer with no air conditioning, cable or internet. The shower was a big sink I had to climb into. I just read everything I could about the city, met some really cool New Yorkers, partied till morning on the Lower East Side and somehow came back to LA with that script.

I’m hoping you’ll see it soon… it has new life to it that may finally get it made. Stay tuned.

SS: “Things We Lost In The Fire” was an independent movie script. But I remember it was very celebrated at the time. Without getting into specifics, can you sell those types of scripts for a lot of money or is every independent script more likely to result in a small sale?

AL: You can sell dramas like Things We Lost but you really need big talent attached. What drove that sale for me was Sam Mendes and his sway at Dreamworks. Sam loved the script and at first wanted to direct it. (He ended up producing it with me) 

SS: Can you take us through the specific process that led to Things We Lost In The Fire being found, bought, and ultimately made? It’s always fun to know the details of how these things come about.

AL: I gave it to my agents on Friday. Sam had read it and was attached by Monday. Dreamworks paid me a lot of money for it with-in a week. I’ll give credit where credit is due… CAA.

SS: When you first break out as a screenwriter, you’re the new guy and everybody wants to meet you and know what else you have and if there’s some way you can work together. What can you tell us, from your experience after your break out, as far as what opportunities came up and how future screenwriters should handle that situation should they break in? Should they be taking advantage of every opportunity and trying to sell every pitch they can because they’re hot, or should they just focus on meeting people and developing relationships?

AL: Yes, yes and yes. This is such an important part of the business. It’s as important as the words on the page. Connect with these people you’re meeting on a human level. See what movies they love and where your tastes align. Get their email addresses and follow up and update them to what you’re doing… stay on their radar.

Most of them are smart, most of them are perfectly nice, most of them want to make good movies… they are not the enemy. If they believe in you, if they genuinely like you, if they think you’re going to make a good partner… they will stop at nothing to pay you real money to make shit up on a computer (while drinking coffee in between naps.)

SS: What do you think is the toughest thing about screenwriting?

AL: Handing the shit in.

SS: I’d love to get two pieces of advice from you. First, what’s the most important lesson you learned about the craft of screenwriting? And second, what’s the most important lesson you learned about the business side of screenwriting?

AL: The most important thing about the craft… economy/befriend the reader.

Say it with economy… don’t over describe. They get it. They’re reading quickly. They want to know what happens next. They don’t give a shit about most of the things you think they do… they just want to know what happens next.

The most important thing about the business… fun, enjoyable collaboration/be a pro.

Be open, be collaborative, they’re your partners, this is not poetry or Ibsen… it’s a business and you’re building a product with a team of people. Have fun, don’t freak out and be open to what your partners need or they will find someone else. Now you have to do that without totally killing your voice and particular story and that’s the dance… that’s where the game gets really fragile and difficult. You have to defend what makes this story great and make them happy. You have to play offense and defense… you can’t win by just playing one.

And it’s critical to be a pro. Hit every deadline, be calm, be available, be Kevin Durant at the foul line, don’t be an emotional basket case. You’re their doctor. Be their doctor… don’t be their frantic child.

SS: Now I don’t know this from any personal experience but I’ve heard that once you have a couple of hit movies, people just throw gobs of money at you to write their screenplays. I imagine that presents some dilemmas for you. Like getting offered, say, a million dollars to write something big and marketable yet artistically unfulfilling, and $250,000 to write something smaller and less marketable but very artistically fulfilling. Have you been in that situation before and how do you handle it?

AL: This is an issue for many writers but not for me so much. I’m a lover of movies of all genres and I write in all genres. I’m not precious and I see as much merit in a big rom-com as I do in a Terrence Malick film. There’s something for everybody and people simply get too judgmental when it comes to what stories they believe people should be told. It becomes a personal thing. I’m lucky that I get as excited about a big commercial idea as I do a small character piece… they’re just two different types of food to me. One is not inherently better than the other. I’m just as proud of “Just Go With it” as I am about “Things We Lost” — who’s to say which has more merit? To me… that’s arrogance.

So I can cash a big check and be fulfilled at the same time… I guess that’s called being a hack :)

SS: Having spent that early part of your career struggling for so long, what advice can you give writers from that experience so that they don’t make the same mistakes that you did, and can break out sooner?

AL: Don’t chase the market. Work on your specific voice and not what you think they want. Keep your day job.

Don’t get to the point where you’re selling your X-Box to a UCLA kid because getting lucky from under that stupidity only happens once and I already cashed that chip.

SS: Now I know you do a lot of assignment work. Are you able to still find time to write your own material? Are you still putting your own specs out there? What are you working on now?

AL: It’s a good question. I don’t spec. I’m transitioning a bit into writing a script a year for me and seeing where the chips fall but it’s been hard. I truly love what I do and most of that is incoming work.

I’m currently rewriting an action movie for Universal, finishing up a baseball comedy for Disney and working on a pilot for 20th/NBC.

Day 2 of The Gauntlet is here! Yesterday, we looked at a contest winning script. Today, we look at the contender!

This is the second day of “The Gauntlet.” The Gauntlet is when an amateur script takes on a pro script to the death. Yesterday’s script was the Amazon Studios Contest winner. Robert’s script, Flat Pennies, did not advance in the same competition. But that didn’t affect Robert’s belief that his script was better. And he was willing to put it up here for all of you to see to prove it. Once again, you can download the winning script here and today’s script, Flat Pennies, here. For future Gauntlet challenges, e-mail me at Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. You must take on a script that has not yet been reviewed on the site. Be sure to include the genre, title, logline and a pdf of your script. Keep in mind your script WILL be made available in the review.

Genre: I would say it’s a drama but Robert characterizes it as a “Psycho-noir.”
Premise: A troubled teen becomes the errand boy for a former train engineer living in a world of heroic fantasies and untold guilt until a revelation ends it all.
About: Robert’s script didn’t advance at Amazon. But that doesn’t mean it can’t advance in the minds of Scriptshadow Nation! Seeing the way a lot of you reacted to Origin Of A Species, it might actually be a close competition.
Writer: Robert Ward
Details: 116 pages

There are two words every screenwriter dreads: “Nothing happens.” Of course “happens” is a relative term. As long as you’re writing about a character doing something, something is “happening.” Even if he’s just reaching for a beer. So maybe the more appropriate phrase should be “Nothing interesting happens.” And in my opinion, nothing interesting happens in Flat Pennies for way too long.

Now here’s the funny thing. You could make the same argument for yesterday’s script, Origin Of A Species. We meet some people. Some dogs escape. There ain’t a whole lot going on there. So how come I liked yesterday’s script so much better than I liked this one? Read on and find out.

Flat Pennies introduces us to Alex Rutledge, a 17 year old kid, kinda hip-hoppy, drunk on whisky, yelling at some train tracks about how his life sucks. From what we can gather, Alex has been adopted and he’s pissed off that his real parents left him. He wants some answers dammit!

Across town we meet Ian Crocker, a recluse of a man who spends his days working on an elaborate model train set inside of his apartment. Ian used to be a train engineer but was injured during a massive crash, relegating him to a wheelchair. Now he collects disability and uses the money to buy new pieces for his set. But all is not well in Ian’s hermetically sealed train station. Looks like they’re cutting down his disability. Which means his train set is at a standstill.

Despite household budget cuts, Ian needs a new errand boy and guess who gets the job? That’s right, our booze-loving teenager, Alex. After a rocky start, the two begin an awkward but fulfilling friendship.

The thing is, they don’t really do much. They mainly sit around and talk about their lives. Alex, at every opportunity (and I mean EVERY opportunity), brings up how his birth parents left him. And Ian keeps going back to that damn train crash. It so bothers him that he’s plagued with strange daydreams, many of which revolve around people dying. As we choo-choo towards their final destination, it becomes evident that their meeting was not by accident, and that the two have more in common than they ever could’ve predicted (no, Ian is not his father).

I already contacted Robert and told him some of my problems with Flat Pennies and I’m going to repeat those here. The script’s biggest problem is how on-the-nose everything is. And its second biggest problem is how melodramatic everything is. Both of these things are HUGE amateur tells. So you want to avoid them at all costs.

Let’s listen to some of Alex’s dialogue in the opening scene, where he’s drunk near some train tracks, yelling to himself. “Why did you pound me into a pile of dirt!” “I’m not even worth a mosquito’s ass.” “There was no reason for what you did. No reason!” “Was I a piece of litter to throw away?” “How could you…leave me, the boy who made the papers?! I was such a good boy. Should’ve never abandoned me.”

First we have melodrama. A drunk guy crying about his life. Ehh, not good. Then we have loads of on-the-nose dialogue. Alex says no less than five times, directly to the reader, that he’s been left. This is the equivalent of lacing your screenplay with anthrax. You don’t want ANY of this stuff in your script. Ever.

And yet it continues. On page 21, Alex picks up a puppet and has a conversation with it where he asks, “Why did my parents desert me?” and the puppet replies. “Alex, you weren’t worth keeping.” Whoa.

On top of that, there’s no drama to any of the scenes (recognize the dramatize!). It’s just Alex coming over to Ian’s and the two talking about their lives, their pasts, and their feelings about one another. They don’t do anything. There’s no goal driving them forward. It’s just a continuous string of “scenes-of-death” with no conflict or purpose.

This is why I always tell you to give your characters a goal, no matter how mundane. Because if they don’t have anything to do, you won’t know what to do with them. Which leaves you writing scenes with people talking to each other even though nobody has anything to say. There are like 10 screenwriters in the world who can make a dialogue scene work with no goals or drama. And even they’d prefer to avoid them. So you gotta stay away from this situation.

Why not make Ian’s problems more urgent? His late rent is hinted at here but never takes center stage (so we don’t take it seriously). Maybe he’s got a week before he has to be out. Now he has a goal – find money or find a new place to stay.

Or, if that’s too obvious, give him something he has to focus on. Maybe his landlord just found out about his elaborate train set and considers it a fire hazard. He wants it out of the apartment within a week or Ian’s out. Now Ian has something to focus on – figure out what to do with his train set. Taking down the set also symbolizes moving past the accident.

Another issue is Ian’s daydreams. We’re not sure if they’re real, if they’re flashbacks, or if they’re made up. Because they’re so different from everything else in the script (Out no nowhere, Ian will be climbing a mountain), they never feel organic, and therefore leave us confused. Now they do pay off, but to just randomly cut to Ian climbing a mountain without cluing the reader in as to what’s going on is a bit jarring.

And this is the thing with screenplays. These kinds of things are forgivable when the script is popping. But when the pace is slowed by a lack of narrative drive, urgency, drama, or conflict, it’s much easier for the reader to get tripped up by these moments.

So this script has a lot to fix. Moving forward, I’d tell Robert to learn how to dramatize scenes (people talking about their lives is not a scene!). I’d tell him to ditch all the melodrama. I’d tell him to get rid of all the on-the-nose dialogue. And I would add some bigger character goals for both Ian and Alex. By making those changes, this script would improve drastically.

And here’s why I care. Despite how boring this script is, it actually has a great ending. Like “holy shit” level ending. I was shocked. But the problem is, nobody’s going to get to that ending because everything that precedes it is too boring. If Robert can somehow nail the first 100 pages of this script – no small feat, I know – he has a story worth telling.

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

GAUNTLET WINNER: ORIGIN OF A SPECIES (Who was your Gauntlet winner?)

What I learned: If you have an interesting question you’re bringing up in your story, don’t answer it right away! Keep your reader curious by drawing it out for 5, 10, 15 scenes. Here, we have a nice reveal when we see that Ian’s in a wheelchair. Alex immediately asks him what happened, and Ian launches into the story of the train crash. Noooo! Ian needs to not answer him! He needs to tell him much later in the story! Keep the reader curious!

You know, it’s harder giving interviews than you think!  It’s hard to come up with unique questions and such.  So I decided to mix it up a little bit with today’s guest and ask some questions that usually don’t get asked.  Hopefully you enjoy it.  John Swetnam’s name might sound familiar to you.  He’s the Found Footage king.  Well, maybe not the king.  Oren Peli owns the copyright on found footage.  But he’s pretty darn close. He’s sold two found footage specs, Evidence and Category 6 (a found footage tornado spec) and, as I just found out via this interview, is coming out with another, “Genesis: Dawn,” that he hopes will change the found footage game. I talked with him after the interview and I don’t think I’ve ever heard somebody as passionate about something as he is about this spec. I wanted to go to the nearest theater and see it right now!  Need more John Swetnam? You can follow him @JohnSwetnam on Twitter .

SS: How is a working writer’s life different from a non-working writer’s life? How are your days different?

JS: The biggest difference in my life now is that pants are mostly optional. I can’t tell you what it’s like to commute from my bedroom to the computer in by boxer briefs, spike a cup of coffee with some Jack Daniels and spend my hours just making shit up. It’s amazing. All the years of struggle, of waiting tables, of making minimum wage are definitely worth it. It is the greatest job on the planet and I just try to be grateful every day. I even had that tattooed on my chest. Literally. Be Grateful Every Day.

SS: Everybody has a bad first script story. What was your first script about? Was it bad? When you go back to it, what kind of sounds do you make?

JS: My first script was called “Fifty Yard Gain”. It was a teen drama that I based on the small town in Tennessee where I used to live. We had an East and West High School in the same town, which was pretty nuts. HUGE rivalry. So the script was basically Romeo and Juliet in the world of High School Football. I actually went back to check it out recently and of course it was awful, but there was this energy in the writing that I thought was cool. Back when I had no idea what I was doing, I just poured my soul onto the page. But of course, my soul is twisted and insane, so the script is a complete and total cluster fuck. I still think it was a pretty good idea though. It would be like High School Musical but instead of singing, there would be drugs, abortions, and armed robbery. Somebody put in a call to Disney…

SS: I’m hoping you visited Scriptshadow before you sold Evidence. Is there anything you learned from this wonderful little blog that helped your own screenwriting?

JS: Dude, you probably don’t remember this but way back in the day you read some of my stuff. There was one script called RAPTURE, which was like this Midnight Run at the end of the world thing. Again, it was a steaming pile of shit, but you had some very encouraging words about the writing. And I’ve never forgotten that, even though you have– dick.

And yes, I’ve followed the blog since its conception. And one of the greatest things I’ve learned, or at least reconfirmed, was from reading all the comments from your readers. And that’s that this business is SO subjective. One guy may hate something while another loves it. And neither one of them are wrong (except for the pricks who railed on EVIDENCE). But us, as writers, need to remember that. You’re not gonna please everybody and somebody IS going to hate your stuff. But that’s okay. Just know who your audience is and write it for them… even if that’s just you. You can’t please everybody so don’t even try.

SS: Wait a minute wait a minute. I think I remember that script. This was back in the Done Deal days right? Maybe when I had just started the site? I remember that. The writing was good. Definitely not a steaming pile of shit. So if you wrote that script now, what would be different? How would you approach it now as opposed to then?

JS: Yeah, it was back in my DDP days. The idea for that script was actually pretty good butt I’d completely have to rework it to fit certain marketing parameters. That was a 150 million dollar post-apocalyptic dark comedy. Not really an easy sell. If I were to do it today, I’d do a Zombieland version. Small and fun with action. Midnight Run at the end of the world. It practically sells itself!

SS: You wrote 16 specs before you got your first sale. How did you keep the faith? And how did you pay for rent?

JS: I always tell people that there is no right or wrong path to making it in this business. We’re not lawyers. Some guy can write one script at 19 years old, sell it for a million, and be off and running (of course we all hate that guy, but still). And for some it may take three or four scripts. And for some stubborn idiots it may take 16. But the thing is, for me, I needed ALL of those scripts. Because I got better with each and every one. Obviously when I started I was the equivalent of a brain damaged sloth, but slowly and surely I got better and better, until finally I had enough skill to become a bonafied hack and sell a script.

But in all seriousness, through all the ups and downs, what I know for sure is that I believed in myself. From my first script to my latest, number 22. I know deep down that I can be good at this and I’m determined to prove that to myself. I have no backup plan. If there are any doubts, I squash them (or drink them away). But this was, and continues to be, the greatest and most satisfying challenge of my life. Can I succeed? Can I make awesome movies that make shitloads of money? The answer may be “no”, but I promise you I will keep trying until the day I die. I always tells my buddies that “this is the year”. And if that’s what it ends up saying on my gravestone… that “this is the year”… I’m okay with that because it means I never gave up.

And to all your readers, if you look deep down in yourself and you honestly believe you can do this and this crazy dream is what makes you happy, then just go for it. Do it. Go all in. And don’t doubt yourself. I know that’s hard to do, but trust me, in this business there’s gonna be enough people out there doubting you… don’t be one of them. Your passion and confidence are what will get you through. Just know that it’s hard, and it may take one year and two scripts, or ten years and twenty scripts. But that shouldn’t matter. Just keep writing. Keep fighting. And keep believing in yourself.

And to answer your question about paying rent. I will now give your readers the greatest piece of screenwriting advice ever. Two words. APARTMENT MANAGEMENT. I got free rent, salary, had a roommate that paid me cash, and I spent all day writing. Your toilet needs to be unclogged? Fuck off, I’m writing. Did it for 7 years. That’s the trick. You’re welcome.

SS: A question I’m CONSTANTLY asked is “Should I go to school for screenwriting?” You went to Chapman (a beautiful little school btw – I visited there myself). How would you answer that question? SHOULD someone go to school? Or should they just visit screenwriting blogs every day and save their money?

JS: Getting a master’s degree is a very strange thing. I already had a bachelor’s so there I had a base of knowledge and education. For me, going to grad school was not so much about learning the craft, but being surrounded by it. And by that, I mean, you’re talking with people every day about movies. You’re writing on deadline, interacting with professionals, networking, etc. And of course there’s the student loans that you can use to fuel all those weekend binges in Vegas.

So for me, in my particular situation, it was cool. I met some cool people and it really threw me into the world of film like nothing else. Would I do it all over again? Probably not. I would probably write my ass off, move to Hollywood, and get a job as an apartment manager while interning and visiting Scriptshadow and GITS every day. (Are you gonna pay me for all these plugs?)

SS: By the way, how does the money work for a script sale? Everybody hears about the numbers but, like, when do you actually get paid! How does that whole process work?

Ah, the money question. My favorite. To be honest every deal is different. The option is what happens to most people on their first “sale”. And if you can get into production you’ll see a fat check on day one of principal photography. For outright sales you get a big fatty check about 3-4 months after the sale (it takes a while to get all the contracts worked out) and then another chunky pay day on day one of shooting. Plus there are bonuses built in, some back end possibly, etc, etc. Let’s just say the money beats apartment managing.

SS: 3 movies that you think would be awesome remade as Found Footage movies. Besides When Harry Met Sally. Go.

JS: I actually wrote down 3 answers to this question but then I erased them all because I realized how fucking awesome they were. I’m literally gonna pitch them now. Sorry.

SS: You’ve had multiple agents and managers. It sounds like the early ones didn’t do a whole lot. Could you tell writers what to avoid when looking for an agent or manager, and some of the issues to expect once you do become a client?

JS: I can tell you from my experience that 99% of any issues I ever had with any of my previous reps fell completely on my shoulders. Believe me, if I would’ve given any of those guys a good damn script they could’ve sold it. But I never did. So it’s really hard to judge anyone on representing me when I didn’t yet have the ability to represent myself in my work.

As for issues with reps, I always tell people to forget about the letters on the building or the promises and the smoke that will inevitably be blown up your ass. Trust your gut. Do you believe that they believe what they’re saying? I mean, just take your time and really get a feel for the person and if you feel that connection, then go for it. If it doesn’t work out you can always leave. Nothing personal. You have to remember that this is your career so if you’re not feeling it after six months or a year… just bail and start again. No shame it that. I know that when you’re starting out it’s terrifying to go from repped to unrepped, but if you can find that manager/agent once then you’ll be able to do it again. Be confident in your ability, or at the very least, be confident in your ability to get better.

SS: How did you get your early agents/managers btw? I know Jake Wagner found you after being a finalist on the Tracking B contest. But before that, what was your trick to getting repped?

JS: After grad school I moved to Hollywood and got an internship. I worked hard and tried to figure out what the producers at the company were looking for. I became friends with the assistants who were genuinely good guys and I asked their advice as I generated concepts. Finally I had a concept that they loved. I wrote the spec script and the assistant showed the producer. He liked it enough to want to develop it so I asked him to call his friend who was a manger, which he did. Then when I signed with the manager I asked him to call his friend who was an agent and he did. Boom. Repped.

Of course, the script turned out awful and I never made any of those guys one dollar after years of bitching and complaining. I still feel like I owe all my old reps a drink or ten. I mean, I was so cocky back then with absolutely zero skills. I must’ve been a pain in the ass to deal with. (I still am but at least now they’re getting paid). 

SS: What is a writer/agent writer/manager relationship like? Do you talk every day? When you do talk, what do you talk about? Can you give me a typical conversation?

JS: Again this is one of those questions, like most, where every time it’s different. Every relationship I’ve ever had, whether it was with a girl, a guy friend, an agent, or whatever… they’re always different. Some good and some bad. My relationship with my team right now is fantastic. I consider them both friends and when I need something they are there for me. I’m really, really lucky.

A typical conversation might go something like this…

ME: Yo, let’s sell this script and get me paid. THEM: On it. CUT TO TWO WEEKS LATER where I’m either making it rain at the strip club, or back on the computer working on a new spec.

But seriously, they’re great. I owe a lot to them both. And right now… it’s all good.

SS: What are your thoughts on Tyler coming out of nowhere this past week with The Disciple Program? Pretty wild, huh?

JS: Fucking loved it! These are those stories that I would dream about when I was starting out. I’m a little pissed and super jealous that this kind of shit never happened to me, but I was never as good as a writer as he is. The guy put the words on the page. He created a product and then you created a demand. The product lived up to the hype and dude’s gonna have a hell of a year. My advice to him is just to keep his feet on the ground and write, write, write. I’m excited to see how his career progresses. No doubt he’ll be getting all the good jobs and exposing me for the fraud that I am.

SS: Speaking of, Tyler is taking a bunch of meetings over the next two weeks. Can you give him any advice? I mean, what did you learn from that first wave of meetings?

JS: Enjoy the hell out of it. It’s a once in a lifetime experience because it’s only “new and exciting” once. I mean, it’s always exciting but that overwhelming, surreal world he’s about to step into is soooo much fun the first time. It’s a trip. The studios. The fancy restaurants. The praise. Oh man, do I miss all that praise. But like I said before, hopefully he meets some reps, clicks with them and trusts his gut, and they’ll get him a ton of opportunities. Just have fun, order the lobster, drink the single-malt, and then get back to writing. Create more product. Cause without it… we got nothing.

SS: You seem to be on the cutting edge of technology. You have a Twitter account. You write found footage. Are you actively thinking of the next trend? What is it? Can you tell me?

JS: I’m on the cutting edge of technology because I have a twitter account? Sweet. And yes, I write Found Footage. As for the next trend… I could tell you but I’d have to kill you.

SS: How do you think found footage is going to evolve? What’s the next phase?

JS: Found Footage has a long way to go before it fades away. There are so many writers out there experimenting with the genre that I think it’s really exciting to see what comes out of it. But you really wanna know what I think the next phase of found footage is. Two words. “GENESIS: DAWN”.

SS: So what are you writing now? What have you finished recently? You got any cool scripts we should be aware of?

JS: Oh, funny you should ask, but I just finished a new spec that’s the next phase of found footage called “GENESIS: DAWN”. I’m actually really stoked about this one because it’s literally like nothing that’s ever been done before.

Tonally, I wanted to do a franchise starter like Resident Evil or Underworld. But mine is the sci-fi action-thriller version of that.

Here’s the logline to peak your interest (hopefully): After her daughter is abducted, a young mother wakes up on a spaceship and must traverse a hostile landscape while battling alien creatures in order to find her. It’s basically Taken meets Aliens POV style.

Hopefully you can do a review on it soon. Just make sure it gets an “Impressive”.

SS: Finally – since you love to reminded – you wrote 16 scripts before you found success. If you could go back and do it all over again, what would you change to speed things up!?

JS: Here’s the fucked up thing about this question… there’s nothing I could’ve done different. For me, it took 16 scripts before I got to a place where I felt like I knew what I was doing. If I could go back and make myself smarter, maybe that would work. Or I could’ve told myself not to drink so much beer or smoke so much weed, but what’s the fun in that? I really just think there is no secret. No magic bullet. There are tons of concepts, theories, ideas, guidelines, etc, that will definitely help you. But I think every writer has to just keep writing. And keep writing. If you stay focused, work hard, and work smart, you will succeed at some point. And it will be at your own pace. I’m proof of it, because I’m not a talented writer. I wasn’t born with a gift. I just know that I will not be outworked. As Big Willy said, “I’m not afraid to die on the treadmill”.

Anyway, thanks for the interview. It was fun. Hopefully I didn’t come off as too much of a d-bag. I wish nothing but the best for all of us. It’s an amazing dream that we’re chasing and it won’t come easy, but it will come if you believe in yourself and KEEP WRITING!

A fellow screenwriter who burst out of nowhere with a 750k sale returns with his newest spec, which sold last month.

Genre: Crime/Drama/Thriller
Premise: A washed up hitman is pulled back into the game when his estranged son accidentally gets tangled up in a bad situation with his former employer.
About: Brad Ingelsby jumped onto the scene when he sold The Low Dweller a few years ago. The 750,000 dollar spec sale was spearheaded by getting Leonardo DiCpario attached. This is his new spec, which he just sold last month.
Writer: Brad Ingelsby
Details: 107 pages – 1/3/12 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

What better word-lover to follow Tyler than ANOTHER word aficionado, Brad Ingelsby! With these two on the Hollywood Scrabble board, it’s like a word-topia. It’s like a word-a-palooza. I have a feeling if it was just me, Tyler, and Brad at a bar, I would quickly be nudged out of the conversation. They’d be like, “Carson, could you parsimoniously pass me my drink?” And I’d counter with one of six four-syllable words I know – something like “affirmative” – and that would be it. I’d be out.

Anyway, this is Ingelsby’s second big script. I may not have been The Low Dweller’s biggest cheerleader, but hey, you know me. It’s hard for a slow-paced script to pull me in. Maybe that same thought nudged into Ingelsby’s noggin, because he did title this one, “Run All Night.” Promises of something faster paced? Read on to find out.

Jimmy Conlon is a hitman in Philadelphia. To give you an idea of what Philadelphia’s like – they boo Santa Clause there. No, I’m not kidding. Santa Clause showed up to an Eagles game once and they booed him. So the kind of people who live in this city? Not the huggable types. Important to know for later.

Anyway, Jimmy’s finally hung up the gun (do you hang up a gun) and spends his days in cushion land getting wasted all day. While I understand this is the de facto writing method for 30% of the screenwriters out there and can be really fun when combined with the internet, it definitely doesn’t suit our friend Jimmy. Clearly, he’s wasting away.

So Jimmy’s got a son, Mike, who he hasn’t stayed in touch with. Mike drives a limo. Has a family. Lives a clean life. He’s basically the opposite of his father.

That’s about to change, however. Mike is unknowingly tasked with bringing a couple of low-lives to a guy named Colin McGuire’s place, who’s also a low-life, but with lots more money and guns. And when these guys ask for their payment, Colin gives them a bullet sandwich instead (yes, I just used “bullet sandwich” in a sentence. Roll with me here. I’m still upset about being kicked out of Tyler and Brad’s conversation).

Once Colin realizes these guys came in a limo, well naturally he has to kill the limo driver too. Which is exactly what he tries to do. But Mike narrowly escapes. This leaves Colin with a problem. A virtual eye-witness to his murders. Now here’s where things get interesting. Jimmy, Mike’s father, used to work for Shawn McGuire – as in COLIN’S FATHER. That’s who he used to kill people for.

So now Mike has no choice but to go to his father and ask him what the hell he should do. Jimmy, back in business mode, says he’s going to try and take care of this diplomatically. So he calls his old boss, explaining that it’s all good – that his son isn’t going to say anything. But while this is happening, the loose-cannon Colin sneaks in to kill Mike. When Jimmy realizes what’s going on, he runs into the room, just as Colin is about to pull the trigger, and shoots him dead.

Jimmy then tells Shawn what happened – that he just killed his son. Shawn agrees that he did the right thing. If he were in his position, he would’ve pulled the trigger too. But he follows this with a really chilling sentence: You know how this has to end, right? Jimmy knows. So he grabs his son, and the two have to “run all night,” and not just from Shawn, but from everyone in the town that Shawn owns, which is everyone, including the cops. Will they make it out alive?

Run All Night starts with a very un-reader friendly gaggle of Irish names. Everybody’s named Shawn or Frank or Collin or Conlon or Maguire or Dorsey. My guess is Brad doesn’t read a lot of scripts or else he’d know how difficult it is for a reader to keep track of that kind of character spread. If I’m looking at a large character count, I’m using everything in my arsenal to make those names individual and memorable. I’ll use nicknames, unusual names, monikers (Fat Bill). I’ll push unimportant character intros to later so they don’t get lost in the slog. But it really gets hard if all the names are one nationality like this. I was checking my notes every 30 seconds to keep track of who was who.

But after that…Run All Night gets good. Really good in fact. I got goosebumps after Jimmy kills Colin, makes the call to Shawn to tell him he just killed his kid, and Shawn, somewhat understanding, replies, “You know how this has to end.” That was my official “sit up” moment (Whenever I sit up, it means a script’s got me).

Brad also makes the wise decision – WHICH I ALWAYS TELL YOU GUYS TO DO – to create an unresolved relationship between Mike and Jimmy. Once you have an unresolved relationship, the audience emotionally invests themselves in the journey until it’s resolved. So it’s one more way to pull the audience in besides the cool plot of running from the bad guys. Was the relationship here a little too familiar at times? Yeah, probably. But Inglesby added just enough of his own spin to make me believe these two were real people with real issues.

And, you know, I always like when a writer throws in the wild card character. I remember how this very device SAVED a script that I would have otherwise forgotten. We also saw it work for Everly. Here, it’s Andrew Price, a trained killer who looks like he never outgrew his high school mathlete days. Shawn hires him to dispose of his son’s killers and boy does he pull out every trick in the book to do so. I don’t know what it is but there’s something about the wild card character that just shakes shit up. You don’t feel like you have as good of a beat on what’s going on. They create uncertainty and unpredictability and I love that.

Scriptshadow vets (not to exclude the Disciple newbies) may have also noted a key Scriptshadow truism– our character’s goal. Remember, if you just have the characters on the run the whole time, it’s probably going to get boring. Your characters need a purpose! They need somewhere to go! So Ingelsby uses the kid who witnessed the murder as the character goal. They need to find that kid so they can prove that Colin, did indeed, kill those men.

Did I love this goal? No, I didn’t “love” it. I kept flashing forward to the court room with Shawn using one of the best lawyers money can buy to discredit the shit out of this boy. So I think something stronger could be used. But the point is that there’s a goal in the first place. Beginner writers wouldn’t even use a goal in this scenario so the characters would just be running around aimlessly with the audience asking, “What’s the point of all this again? Where are they going?”

But I was definitely entertained bythis one. It feels like Ingelsby is growing as a writer. Let’s hope that continues cause he’s frighteningly talented.

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: You never want your characters wandering around aimlessly for too long in these “on the run” movies. They can be running from someone. But within 2-3 scenes, you want to give them a plan, something to do – because wandering around aimlessly gets repetitive. For that reason, always be asking yourself, “What can my characters be *after*? What can they *need to do* right now?” The sooner they have a plan in place, the sooner your script gains that essential focus that all good screenplays have.