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Screenplay Review – The Counselor (The Return Of Roger!!!)

Posted on February 21, 2012 | by admin

An old friend drops by Scriptshadow to review a screenplay from one of the biggest writers in the world, Cormac McCarthy!

Carson here.  Lots of interest in today’s script.  I was going to review it but I know next to nothing about Cormac McCarthy.  I knew if I was going to do this right, I would have to find the greatest living Cormac McCarthy fan in the world, a man who used to grace Scriptshadow with his presence on a weekly basis. But how to find him?  Last I’d heard, Roger Balfour had conned his way onto the set of The Hangover 2 as an extra.  Not sure if he made the cut.  Well, after exhausting my entire Rolodex, I finally found him, dehydrated and half-comatose in a South American dog breeding clinic. When I asked him to review Cormac McCarthy’s first screenplay he replied, “Where are my pants?”  That was good enough for me.  — Now I’ve been hearing all sorts of things about this script.  Some have called it unreadable (literally! – Cormac invents his own screenplay format!).  Some have called it genius.  And the people who call it unreadable can’t fathom how anyone could like this script.  They think the lovers are reading it through Cormac-tinted glasses.  Anyway, I’ve been too afraid to open it.  I’ll let Roger take care of that.  Oh, and just a reminder.  The Disciple Program debuts in three days!!!!!!

Genre: Crime/Drama/Thriller
Premise: A respectable lawyer gets in over his head after becoming involved in the illegal drug business.
About: Deadline Hollywood described this script as “No Country for Old Men on steroids”. McCarthy was at work on three different novels when he turned this screenplay into his agent. Ridley Scott soon attached himself to the project as director, with his Prometheus star Michael Fassbender in mind to play the lead. Interestingly, there are also two female roles up for grabs “who intrude to play leading roles”.
Writer: Cormac McCarthy
Details: PDF created on January 20, 2012
Now this is what a writer looks like!
This script made me want to commit suicide. It was so bleak, it made me want to overdose on heroin while skydiving into an avalanche of naked women.
Whoa. Rewind. Roger, where have you been the past year and a half?
Brian K. Vaughan says that the ages between 22 and 27 are important years in a male’s life. The things that happen during that timeframe shape and guide the transformation of a boy into a man. I spent the past year and a half becoming a man.
My journey started in the Philippines, where I worked in the anime industry as a Foley Artist. It was here that I learned someone has to create the sound fx for a tentacle violating an orifice. That someone was me. Sometimes I would do nothing but stand on a soundstage and plunge my hand in and out of a peanut bar jar for fourteen hours straight. I grew a beard and air-licked microphones, the resultant sound was used in children’s cartoons in Australia. But life couldn’t be squishy and honey-roasted forever. 
You can only hide from your destiny for so long before it comes looking for you. And if your destiny is writing, then your destiny kicks you in the teeth, yanks you out of your cushy Foley Artist gig and turns you into a creature of dreaming and longing. 
I spent a lot of time writing poems about He-Man while sitting alone in hotel rooms eating Ritz crackers. I snorted chamomile tea and cat nip through rolled-up Bukowski poems and called it the hipster speedball. The hipster speedball helped me write and publish an Animorphs novel that was about a boy who grows an owl’s beak that was really a Bildungsroman about first boners. I posed for my author photo in front of a shelf full of Star Trek novels and was called gorgeous. I wanted to write a sequel but couldn’t. I got fingered by the ghost of Hal Ashby and for a week all my dreams were like Wes Anderson movies yet to be made. I watched the first season of Downton Abbey in one sitting with a 20-year old girl who thought she was the fifth Pevensie sibling. We held hands the whole time and shared an Edwardian world together but afterwards we never saw each other again. Like Tom Hanks in Cast Away, I made my own Wilson out of a prenatal body pillow and dealt with my sadness by straddling Wilson and making Wilson watch me punish my Sailor Moon bedsheets. I read fantasy novels and ate confectionaries and did p90X. I became better, stronger, faster and wondered how Tron Legacy got made and if Oblivion would be better. I wondered why they never did a storyline on The Gilmore Girls where a guy dates both the mom and the daughter at the same time. I decided to amend this oversight and wrote the teleplay on spec with me as the guy and when I presented it to Amy Sherman-Palladino she politely informed me the show had been cancelled and she consoled me as I wept into a burrito by saying, “There there, young Balfour. There there. You wrote a Gilmore Girls script. You are a true man, now.” 
Sorry we asked. So, you read Cormac McCarthy’s The Counselor?
Twice. The first time because I’m a legitimate Southern-fried McCarthy scholar and the second time because I only vaguely understood it the first time. Have you ever tried to watch a movie and halfway through, think, “Man, I don’t think I understand the plot but I’m pretty excited by all the violence”? I did that a couple weeks ago when I saw Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire. Sometimes when I see art films, I think, “Man, this is pretty unconventional but I also feel sad and I kind of want to stick my head in an oven like Sylvia Plath.” I did that a couple of weeks ago when I saw Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine. The Counselor kind of combines both of those ambivalent sensations and does so with Faulkner-in-Sanctuary-mode panache. 
You ever receive a screenplay and open it up and think, “What the fuck is this? A play?” Because I did that, too. As someone who works as a screenwriter, as someone who took many years to adapt to the industry’s formatting and conventions, my first instinct was to scream, “Fuck this guy! How dare he invent his own screenwriting format! Who the fuck does this guy think he is?!”
Oh, it’s Cormac McCarthy. He won the Guggenheim Fellowship, also known as The Genius Award. In addition, not only has he won the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN Award, but he also won Pulitzer Prize for fiction for The Road. With those kind of laurels, you can kind of do whatever you want. 
Still, this raises the question, in the world of screenplays, do we still hold such an author to the same standards as everyone else? When it comes to story and character, yes. But, when it comes to formatting and breaking rules, you’re just gonna have to leave your specialized mindset at the door. There’s an excellent article on creativity in Psychology Today that says, “The more expert and specialized a person becomes, the more their mindset becomes narrowed and the more fixated they become on conforming what they believe to be absolute. Consequently, when confronted with new and different ideas, their focus will be on conformity. Does it conform with what I know is right? If not, experts will spend all their time showing and explaining why it can’t be done and why it can’t work.”
I’m not here to do that. Look, even in the world of novels, McCarthy has always gone against the grain. The man doesn’t like semicolons and uses commas sparingly, so the glue holding all the sentences together are contractions. He never uses quotation marks either. Why should we expect anything different in one of his scripts? He doesn’t see the need for slugs. Diagramming some of his sentences in the AD lines is like a choose-your-own-adventure story. He still writes on an Olivetti typewriter. These pages were probably collected in a shoebox and then quickly retyped by an assistant into MS Word. 
It’s kind of like having a not-playfully racist grandfather who is set in his ways. Sure, you can try to tell him that the word “negress” is not considered proper lexicon in polite society, but what’s the point? He’s just gonna keep on truckin’ till his number’s up. (Double Cliché). 
So, what’s the story about, Rog?
Think Body Heat or the Edgerton’s The Square but set against the backdrop of the border world McCarthy explores so well in his Border Trilogy and novel, Blood Meridian. If these stories exist in a Venn diagram, they take place inside the circle where the not so insulated worlds of Mexico and the United States collide. This territory is a no man’s land where characters from the so-called civilized world experience great violence and brutality, where destiny has its own gravitational pull and the best at surviving the territory are those who are so damaged they’ve transcended polite society’s moral code. It is a place heroism is not rewarded. It’s punished. If you don’t believe me, look at the ending to No Country for Old Men. In the face of evil, only other predators have a chance at surviving.
So, it’s no surprise that McCarthy chooses to tell a cautionary tale set against the drug war violence that is taking place in Mexico right now. In Mexico, murder has become a national pastime. It is a collective enterprise. And, it is spilling over into our border towns. 
Who are the characters?
This is the tale of the Counselor, a man, who when we first meet him, is in bed with the love of his life, Laura. We see him in Amsterdam, in a jeweler’s shop, procuring the perfect diamond for his bride to be. We’re treated to a philosophical and prophetic lesson from the Dealer. He tells the Counselor the Jewish civilization is the only true civilization, and that any country that has driven the Jews out has never been the same. He waxes a McCarthy monologue about the one true God, who is immovable, and tells us that stones are the true witnesses since they’ve been around since the beginning. When the Counselor picks out his diamond for Laura, the Dealer says, “This is a cautionary stone. You will see.”
Intercut this with the intriguing couple of Reiner and Malkina, who are in the Southwest desert hunting with their pet cheetahs. Yes, this couple, who seem like some kind of S&M Hemingway power-duo, own cheetahs. More specifically, they are Malkina’s cheetahs, and Malkina is the one we ought to be paying attention to. A native of Buenos Aires, we notice the Egyptian cat tattooed on her brown skin. She’s sexy, possessing a Moriarty-like intelligence so cunning even her beau, Reiner, is terrified of her. Another important note about Malkina is that she knows her way around technology, around computers. She might also be quite mad. Perhaps we’re supposed to think she makes Lisbeth Salander seem like a Disney princess in comparison.
The third strand in this tapestry is a septic tank truck that is making its way from Mexico to the United States, which we can assume is loaded up with about twenty million dollars worth of Colombia’s finest. All these elements we are introduced to as the opening credits are playing. 
What’s the caper, Rog?
Much like the protagonists in Body Heat and The Square, the Counselor is motivated by his love and lust for a woman. Because of her, he wants to get rich quick. He decides to go all in concerning a business venture with Reiner, who has learned never to speak in arraignable phrases. Reiner is filthy rich because his demeanor and surroundings and the gifts he provides for Malkina tell us so. And it’s easy to see that Reiner’s source of wealth comes from mines that aren’t always legal. 
The idea is to get into the drug business unnoticed while all the cartels are busy killing each other. That septic tank truck from earlier? It’s carrying 625 kilos of cocaine from Mexico to Chicago and will sell for two grand an ounce on the street, meaning this is a twenty-million dollar payload for all involved. The Counselor asks, “If the drug wars stop this will dry up, right? “Yeah. Bad times are good times for guys like us.”
But, what happens if the cartels find out about this new start-up company? The answer to that question, as we learn in the second half of the script, is very bad things. The characters tell us that three thousand people were killed in Juarez alone last year. We learn something about the nature of the men in these cartels. Before the drug wars, thousands of young and attractive factory workers were being kidnapped and sexually mutilated. The maquila girls, they were called. 
The money trail led to the men in the cartels. “So much cash you’re using it to insulate your own house and you’re morally depraved out of all human recognition, what will you spend your money on?” The answer to that, is snuff films, and we learn that we’re probably not separated more than two degrees by someone who has seen a snuff film. 
When it comes to men who have kidnappers on full retainer, even the smallest little detail becomes life or death for the Counselor and everyone he knows. There’s a lot of talk about the dangers of dabbling into this trade, and in fact, most of the scenes in the script are characters warning the Counselor. One of the characters even quotes Blood Meridian at one point, “Yet even the smallest crumb can devour us.”
So, what’s the crumb that devours everyone, Rog?
There’s a drug runner, a character named Young Man, who is to rendevouz with the septic tank truck and presumably drive it to Chicago. Except, you know, he never makes it to the truck. 
There’s another problem. Not only does the Counselor have to worry about what may become of the drug runner, there are complications with the money people. He has to get money into Mexico and get it back out again. In order to do this, one has to filter the money through a corporation, which means there has to be a money person on the inside handling all of the bank transactions, “The biggest issue is that your guy is not going to fall in love with a pole dancer and go south with three million of your ducats. The biggest issue is that someone is going to find out who he is and what he’s up to.”
In one of the more creative ways of killing a drug runner I think I’ve ever heard about or seen, we learn that there are other parties looking to intercept this shipment of drugs and ruin everything for the Counselor. To complicate matters, the Counselor is linked to the drug runner in a way that is most unfortunate and may redefine dramatic irony. 
It’s interesting to note that the main story involves all of the men in the script, and it dovetails with character revelations concerning Malkina, as shown by her scenes with Laura (she has an ominous dream about Malkina; pay attention to the scene at the confessional) and the stories Reiner tells about her. Although Reiner, being a criminal, is concerned about the cartel men, he is genuinely frightened of his own girlfriend. His views on women could probably be called misogynistic, and it’s the type of misogyny only a man who has been twice divorced can really relish. 
Of course, everything goes wrong for our guys and the most exciting part of the script is seeing how that all unfolds. I’m not exaggerating when shit hits the fan and a line forms to kill the Counselor. My favorite part was seeing how one specific character reacts to all this misfortune and how they enact revenge on some of the parties responsible. 
What do you think attracted Ridley Scott to this script?
Ridley Scott has been trying to adapt Cormac’s novel, Blood Meridian, for a long time now. There’s even a draft floating around penned by William Monahan, but even Scott can be quoted as saying that adapting McCarthy is a difficult gambit because the work is so prosaic, and much of the power comes from the violent beauty of his language. The sentences weave a spell, and I think the closest we get to that in The Counselor are the strange monologues that hint at some darker premonition. 
Take for example a tale by Reiner about his girlfriend, the mysterious Malkina. She’s a lover of fast things. Not only does she own two cheetahs, her club is decorated with actual racing cars. Reiner is scared of Malkina, and he tells the Counselor a true story about how she fucked one of his cars. Here’s his description of her bumping her ugly against the windshield, “It was like one of those catfish things. One of those bottom feeders you see going up the side of the aquarium. Sucking its way up the glass…hallucinatory…You see a thing like that, it changes you.” 
Or, it reminds you of a face hugger sucking at the glass of a specimen jar in Alien, and you can’t help but think McCarthy was trying to seduce Ridley Scott as he wrote this fucking thing. 
So, what’s the verdict, Rog?
I think McCarthy fans, who relish the poetry, tone and cadence of his language, and appreciate his stylized and precise dialogue, will love the movie. And, I’m mainly talking about those who are fans of his play The Sunset Limited or the film version of No Country for Old Men. Because The Counselor has a lot of dialogue, and a lot of the scenes feel play-like in the same way that Tarantino conversations feel play-like. I think it hearkens back to older movies, where there are more scenes of simply people sitting in diners or at tables and desks, talking. 
It’s a challenging piece of art, thought-provoking, no doubt, but I also think it may just be this strange and alienating movie to people who aren’t already fans of McCarthy. It feels exhausting and was certainly a punch to the gut. 
If you subscribe to the Chris Columbus philosophy, the one that says, “I can understand the validity of showing people the ugliness of the world, but I also think there is a place for movies to leave people with a sense of hope. If your film isn’t going to do that, I just don’t think it’s worth making,” then you may be turned off by this work. Cormac writes about life and death, and the concept of hope is often a foreign one in his tales, more the subject of philosophical debate between characters.
My interpretation, after having a chance to let this thing settle for a few days, is that Cormac is making a point. Violence overtook Mexico because so many people closed their eyes to it. If America continues to close our eyes and ignore the drug war violence, it will only be a matter of time before it overtakes us, too. 
On another level, according to the finale, I saw The Counselor as a woman’s revenge story, a femme fatale fuck-you to all the violence done against women in Juarez, Mexico. The Counselor is kind of like the Cormac McCarthy version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. 
[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Rewarding VS Punishing the Protagonist. Usually, in movies where the hero is being an actual hero, you know, making the right kind of decisions, doing heroic things like be willing to put his life in danger and even sacrifice his well-being to achieve a goal, the common thing to do is to reward the character with victory at the end of the story. But with stuff like Body Heat, The Square, No Country for Old Men and this script, these are all about guys motivated by their lust and love for a woman. They want to spend the rest of their lives with this woman, and they want to illegally land a nice nest egg on which they can retire on with this woman. They compromise their own sense of morality and ethics, and in the audience’s eyes, do something that is considered illegal to obtain this nest egg. Thus begins the downward spiral of making bad decisions that always leads to death, or punishment, for the protagonist. Things just get worse and worse. The rule of thumb for protagonists that do something that upsets the collective audience’s sense of ethics or morals or code of conduct, is to punish the protagonist. If the protagonist were to get away with the caper, this would upset the audience on some level. McCarthy is interesting because he pits this character making bad decisions against predators who just might be the embodiment of evil, so deep down you kind of want these guys to win, but it’s always the most fucked-up person that gets away with their lives in the end and wins the game. It’s something to think about.
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Screenplay Review – Abomination

Posted on February 20, 2012 | by admin

One of the most successful Nicholl Fellowship winners in history hits Hollywood with his brand new Yeti spec.

Genre: Horror
Premise: Sent to a remote arctic outpost during World War 2, a disgraced soldier learns of a giant flesh-eating beast killing the locals, and decides that defeating the monster is his one shot at redemption.
About: This script has not yet been purchased, but was written by Bragi Schut, who penned 2011’s Season Of The Witch, a former (2003) Nicholl winner. As you can see by my review of the script, I really liked it. Unfortunately, the filmmakers misjudged the tone of the script and what I saw on film was not what I read on paper. BUT, it officially put Bragi on the map, and now he has another big film lined up, The Voyage Of The Demeter, about the ill-fated ship that transported Dracula’s coffin. The film stars “Dragon Tattoo” star Noomi Rapace, Jude Law, and Ben Kingsley. Abomination is his latest spec script, which he hopes will continue his hot streak.
Writer: Bragi Schut (story by Bragi Schut and Chato Hill)
Details: 112 pages – undated (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).

This week is about as delicious as it gets. Not only is one of the top living authors in the world getting reviewed tomorrow with his first script, and not only is that script being reviewed by a long-time-in-hiding Scriptshadow Reviewer from the past, but we also have our first amateur script going into the Top 10 this week! And I’m talking AMATEUR amateur. No agent. No manager. This guy’s a total unknown. I can’t WAIT to tell you guys about it. Friday can’t come soon enough!

So how does our friend Bragi hold up on one of the biggest weeks in Scriptshadow history? Read on to find out.

Sergeant Harry Wilkins arrives in the Arctic Tundra a disgraced man. He hasn’t been sent to this remote outpost to fight any battles. You don’t get to fight battles when your cowardice led to eight of your fellow soldiers dying. Nope, you’re sent to Bumblefuck, Antarctica. All alone. Where you can’t hurt anyone. All you can do is think. Think about how bad you screwed up.

And think he does. Outside of the snow, the whistling wind, and the whines and barks of the snow dogs, there isn’t much to do here. It’s 1944 remember. There’s no playstation.

But then one day Wilkins receives a surprise visit from some Eskimos. They look worried. They look afraid. And through their broken English, tell Wilkins he has to come with them. He has to help them stop a beast that’s been killing their people. Wilkins is intrigued by the offer but going AWOL after, you know, killing eight people, isn’t exactly the best route to a promotion.

Still, there’s something telling Wilkins that he needs to do this. So he treks the 20 mile trail to the Eskimos’ isolated village and meets up with the men who visited him. Time is short so almost immediately they begin planning for the beast’s arrival.

Their first plan is to trap it. So they set out some bait and wait for Mr. Snowshoes to fall for it. Unfortunately, when the beast shows up, it’s unlike anything Wilkins imagined. It’s part polar bear, part human, part beast. And it’s all angry. You could shoot this thing til you ran out of bullets. It wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t go down.

So after the trap fails, they realize the only way they’re going to kill this thing is if they find its lair and take it on there. Not surprisingly, there aren’t a lot of Eskimos eager for Operation Lair Battle. Might have something to do with a beast who treats humans like Pringles chips. But Wilkins will go even if he has to do it alone. He needs to kill this thing. He needs to find redemption.

If you’ve been paying attention for the last two years, you already know I’ve been looking for the preeminent Abominable Snowman screenplay. We reviewed one a long time ago on Amateur Friday.  But that one never quite made it out of the snow.

Here, we’re obviously being guided by much more skilled writer. And you feel it. I loved the set-up of Abomination. I loved that this took place in the 1940s. I loved the World War 2 connection. Something would’ve been lost had this been happening in the present day. Making it a 70 year old tale gave it real texture and weight.

But I think the biggest difference you’ll see in this script (compared to Ascent: Day 3) is the character development. This isn’t so much about a scary beast killing people as it is about a man’s redemption. It’s about accepting responsibility for your failures and trying to atone for them. There’s some real meat to the character of Wilkins here.

Not only is redemption a great character trait to explore, but it’s perfect for a screenplay, since if your character’s seeking redemption, he has no choice but to be active. He has to go out there and make things happen, which in turn propels your story along.

Where I think the screenplay stumbles a bit, however, is in the Eskimo storyline and the second act in general. We’ll start with the Eskimos, who I thought were fine. But “fine” was as intense a feeling as I felt for them. Looking back, they were all pretty much the same. I don’t feel like I got to know any of them well.

I thought Avatar did a good job of this actually. We really *spent time* with the Na’Vi and got to know their culture and their way of life. The scene where they climb the floating island and Jake Sulley tries to connect with his first dragon – I really got a sense of what these people valued – what their world was like. I never got that sense with the Eskimos. There was nothing unique or interesting or new or exciting about their lives that made them stand out. I had a very general understanding of Eskimos going into this script. And I have just as general an understanding of Eskimos leaving it. I don’t think that can be the case in this movie.

This affected the story because the story is about saving these people. And if I don’t really know the people being saved – I hate to be crass but – I don’t care if they’re saved or not.

So if I were Bragi, I’d look to get Wilkins to the village sooner. I’d look to create more of a bond between him and the Eskimos. I’d look at create a couple of original/unique experiences with the Eskimos so that they really stick out. It feels like there needs to be more here. I mean there’s even a hint of a love story with one of the women, but as soon as it arrives, it’s gone, erasing yet another opportunity for us to connect with and care about these people.

It’s funny because a part of me was bored by the Eskimos, so my initial reaction was: we have to get to the monster sooner. But when I stepped back and looked at it, I realized it wasn’t that I wanted to get to the monster quicker. It was that I didn’t know or care about these people enough to be around them. So if that can be fixed, I think the whole script improves.

I also would’ve liked a scarier buildup to the beast. I wasn’t afraid in this draft. There’s a moment early on where Wilkins is scouting the footsteps of the beast, and he puts his hand down onto the beast’s footprint. I don’t remember exactly how the wording went, but it was something like “the footprint is a little bigger than his hand.” Now I don’t know about you, but footprints that are barely bigger than my own hand aren’t scary. If the footprint were FIVE TIMES bigger than my hand, THAT would be scary! (like the picture I posted above!) And that was par for the course with this thing. The beast had me worried. But it never had me TERRIFIED.

I’ll tell you what though, this script really picks up in the final act. When our hero decides to take on the beast through hell or freezing water, I was into it. And when he finally battles that thing in its lair, it’s pretty freaking awesome! That whole final act almost made up for the problems above. It’s a good reminder that if you can write a great ending, it can cover up a lot of faults. So, indeed, the ending was just enough to pull this into “worth the read” territory. I just feel like the script can be so much bigger/better. I hope Bragi takes advantage of that potential and kicks some Yeti ass in the next draft.

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

What I learned: The thing I take from this script is that if you create a movie where you place your hero inside a unique culture, like Avatar, like Dances with Wolves, like Abomination – you need a few scenes that show the characters experiencing the unique aspects of that culture together. Knock Avatar all you want but it had a TON of these scenes. From the dragon scene to learning how to run through the trees to learning how to ride horses to shooting arrows to killing animals the right way to learning about the Tree of Souls to learning about “the bond.” I truly felt that Jake Sulley was embedded into this culture after those scenes. That wasn’t the case in Abomination. I sort of remember a hunting scene but overall, I never got a sense of the Eskimos’ culture, never got a sense of them as a people, and as a result, I didn’t care if they were saved or not. And I know this script is more about Wilkins’ redemption than it is about a man learning the Eskimo culture. But if you’re going to design a movie where a man saves people, we have to care about those people.

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Screenplay Review – Fifi, A Monkey’s Tale (Amateur Friday)

Posted on February 17, 2012 | by admin

Today’s amateur screenplay offers us the rare combination of Nazis and children’s books. Can these two elements coexist? Read on to find out.

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 that your submission stays near the top of the pile.

Genre: Biopic/Action/Drama
Premise: (from writer) With only the clothes on their backs, and a Manuscript in-hand, a Jewish-German couple narrowly escape the 1940 Nazi March on Paris, thus beginning an odyssey to save themselves and one of the most beloved children’s book characters for generations to come. http://www.sendspace.com/file/jo6f6n
Writer: Brantley Edwards
Details: 110 pages

Uh oh. What’s wrong. Why am I reviewing a biopic? Have I been held at gunpoint? Maybe I’ve gone insane. It wouldn’t be the first time. Everybody remembers my Super Bowl Tweet Party. Maybe this time I’ve gone LIN-sane!

For those of you visiting this review for the first time, I posted today’s AF script WITHOUT A REVIEW earlier in the day, allowing you, the readers, to weigh in on it first. Sometimes I feel like I influence your opinions and, for once, I wanted to get your thoughts before I gave mine. Well, now that the opinions are in, it’s time to give you my take…

It’s January, 1940. Paris, France. 38 year old illustrator Hans Reyersbach has everything going for him. He’s got a new wife (the beautiful Margaret), a baby on the way, and he’s about to release a successful children’s book. He’s like the 1940s version of Lady GaGa! Actually, disregard that analogy. He’s not like that at all.  That was dumb.

Anyway, what’s putting a dampener on all this happy-time is this pesky European war going on. You know, the whole World War 2 thing? Those meanie Germans just can’t keep their paws out of anything and rumors are they’re snatching up Jews in the night. As Hans is Jewish, he’s not a fan of these rumors. But at least he’s in Paris. The Germans would never invade Paris. Would they?

Actually, it turns out that’s the least of Hans’ worries. A Nazi special agent named Wilhelm Schultz has been sent to Paris to retrieve Hans at all costs. Apparently, the infamous Joseph Goebbels read Hans’ book to a group of children at a publicity event, only to find out later that – gasp – it was written by a Jew! Embarrassed beyond belief, and in trouble with the Furher, Goebbels decides to get a hold of this author and make him dead.

Ironically, Hans and Wilhelm actually knew each other as children, even used to play together. This allows Wilhelm the opportunity to befriend Hans – then lure him into his trap. The problem is, just before he executes his plan, word of Germany’s arrival sends Jews fleeing south. Hans decides it’s a good idea to go with them. So he and Margret flee.

But not before Wilhelm, posing as a fleeing Jew himself, gains Hans’ trust. The trio travel by foot, bicycle, and train in hopes of catching a boat to America, where Hans has a once-in-a-lifetime chance to publish his new book in the biggest book market in the world. But will his childhood friend prevent that dream from coming true? Will he snatch Hans and Margaret away in the night? Oh, and who is this Fifi fellow? Is he related to Jeremy Lin? All these questions will be answered in, “Fifi, A Monkey’s Tale.”

Fifi has a lot going for it. We have a clear goal (escape!). The stakes are high (getting caught by Nazis is typically a bad thing!). There’s tons of urgency with them always being on the run.

There was some nice use of dramatic irony as well. Wilhelm joining the fray, pretending to be “one of them,” but secretly planning to capture and ship Hans and Margaret back to Germany. That led to some suspenseful scenes early on.

(spoiler) And the twist at the end – that this is in fact E.E. Henry, the famous author of the Curious George franchise, was also a highlight, and something I wasn’t expecting at all. So all those elements made for a fun read…at times.

“At times” is the key phrase here. Because there were other times where it became clear that Brantley was still a young screenwriter finding his way, starting with the relationship between Hans and Margaret.

There just didn’t seem to be anything to this relationship. Which is a strange thing to say because the two experience a miscarriage, several near-captures by the Nazis, and Margaret almost dying. So how can I possibly say that?

Well the main issue was their dialogue. It was too on-the-nose, too generic, too bland. They were either talking about how they felt towards each other (“I love you.” “But I love you more.”) the logistics of getting to the next destination (“We have three days to get to the Brazil port..”) or the occasional exchange about how hungry they were. But that was it. Honestly, those were the only three topics of conversation for about 80% of the film. There was no drama in any of these conversations, no internal relationship issues that needed to be resolved. Just two people talking about matter-of-fact things for 100 minutes.

And since this relationship took up the majority of the script, it was impossible for the script to recover. If the central relationship isn’t interesting, there’s no way your movie is going to be interesting, no matter how cool the plot is. And I’m not saying that the characters needed to be arguing or fighting, but there needed to be SOMETHING there.

For example, Margaret has had a couple of miscarriages. So what if she’s told by the doctor that if she tries to carry a baby to full term, there’s a high probability that she’ll die (which, so far, is in the script)? Then, early on, have Margaret get pregnant, and she still wants to have the baby. Hans, on the other hand, does not, because of the danger it poses to his wife.

Now, instead of a gaggle of “I love yous” and “No, I love you mores,” the two have something to disagree about (conflict!). You could complicate this by the pregnant Margaret starting to bleed as the journey goes on (I think some of this is in here – but it’s not given the right focus). The stress has increased the chances of another miscarriage, and now there’s a very real chance Hans is going to lose both his unborn baby and his wife.

Still – even if you nailed that – there was still something missing in this relationship. I didn’t know these two *at all*. They spoke to each other so generically, in such basic terms, that I never got a true sense of the pair and therefore never cared for them. And obviously, if I’m not caring for the characters being chased in a movie, there’s no movie.

So I believe a couple of big long character biographies need to be written before the next draft. Hans and Margaret’s entire lives need to be documented by Brantley. They need to have issues which need to be worked out. They need to have character flaws, which I don’t believe they have now (character flaws are basically a prerequisite for biopics – the genre was designed to explore character – so if we’re not sure what’s going on internally with the character, there’s no movie).

Another problem for me was the logistics. Despite there being a lot of chatter about where people were heading, and which boats they were getting on, I constantly found myself confused as to where we were, where we needed to go, and by how much time. I think there were a couple of boats they needed to get on but then they missed one, so now they were going to catch another one? Maybe? It was confusing and because I was never quite sure where they needed to get, it was hard to care.

There were some other things I had issues with as well. In a thrilling ride like this, it’s hard for me to imagine the characters on bikes. There’s something so…I don’t know…I kept visualizing the “Singing In The Rain” sequence in Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid. Like they’re just biking away, backs erect, smiles on their faces. I couldn’t match that image with Nazis chasing them.

Commenters have mentioned the characters changing back and forth between languages. I agree that it’s too confusing. Any time you have to read something twice to get it means the writer hasn’t done their job. And every time someone would speak in a different language, I would have to read it twice. If this served some purpose, I could let it go. But the read would’ve been so much easier had we stayed with one language the whole time.

And then there are the clarity and dialogue issues commenters have brought up. The dialogue does feel stilted and on the nose here – most of the time repeating things we already know. This goes back to learning how to dramatize a scene. If there’s no drama in a scene, there’s nothing for your characters to say. So if you put words into the mouths of characters who have nothing to say, you’re going to get bad dialogue.

But if you *dramatize* the scene, it’s a different ballgame. Now the characters HAVE to talk because they need to deal with the situation. For example, let’s say Hans and Margaret are on a train. However, that’s *all* the scene is about – them on a train. Go try and write that scene. I’ll wait.

Let me guess. Not a very good scene right? I mean you might add some exposition there (“We have to get to Spain by Monday”), and to fill up the rest of the scene, your characters may talk about each other (“Are you doing okay? How is your wound?”). But this is just logistical stuff. You can’t build an entire scene around logistical stuff.

However, let’s change the scene around and say that, earlier, Margaret snuck on the train because they didn’t have enough money. So she doesn’t have a ticket. Her and Hans are sitting there when they notice the conductor coming down the aisle checking for tickets. Uh-oh. Oh, and did I mention that a minute ago, two Nazi officers just sat down next to them?

Go write that scene. I’ll wait.

A million times better right??!! These are the things you learn as a writer making those first steps. I know it sucks because you want to convince yourself you’ve figured it out already. But it takes time to learn these things. It takes trial and error to realize, “Oh, if I just have two people talk to each other about stuff that’s going on, it’s boring.” But when you do learn this stuff, your writing really takes off. So like Matt pointed out yesterday, keep writing!

I think Brantley is where a lot of writers are who come to Amateur Friday. They’ve got some good things going on in their writing. They’ve learned to write a cool character or a cool scene here and there. But there’s still a lot to learn before their scripts can truly shine. So I’m just going to say: Stay at it Brantley! Jump to that next script, write something new, learn more, do it again. Come back to this script afterwards and apply what you’ve learned. Right now, Fifi is a fun ambitious little script. But it’s not there yet.

Script link:  Fifi, A Monkey’s Tale

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

What I learned: I’m going to dish out some really important advice here: The opening scene of your screenplay is CRUCIAL. Why? BECAUSE IT’S THE OPENING OF YOUR SCREENPLAY! It’s the very first scene the reader will read. They’re going to form an opinion on you as a writer and this story as a story before the scene is over. So why would you open with a scene that lacks drama, conflict, suspense, action, or anything that would draw an audience in? Fifi opens with two people sitting at a zoo watching animals. You do *not* want to open your screenplay with a scene that uneventful. You have to give us more! Give us a reason to want to read the next scene!

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Screenplay Review – The End

Posted on February 15, 2012 | by admin

Red-hot screenwriter Aron Eli Coleite bursts into the Top 10 of 2011’s Black List with his end-of-the-world screenplay, “The End.”

Genre: Drama/Sci-fi/Apocalypse
Premise: (from Black List) Four people – a veteran broadcaster in London, a sixteen year old girl and her best friend in Ann Arbor, and a devoted family man in Shanghai – each try to make peace with their lives before an interstellar event ends the world in six hours.
About: This script was purchased by Warner Brothers and made the 2011 Black List, finishing with the 9th best tally of the pack (28 votes). Writer Aron Coleite’s career has really picked up in the last year. The former Crossing Jordan and Heroes writer recently wrote an episode of ABC’s new show, The River (co-created by Scriptshadow Top 25’er “The Voices” writer, Michael R. Perry), sold a pitch to New Regency for mid-six figures (a supernatural prison break movie), and also sold a new procedural to Jerry Bruckheimer. I’d say that’s a pretty good year. Too bad he’s chosen to end the world before he can enjoy all that success.
Writer: Aron Eli Coleite
Details: 104 pages, September 23, 2011 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).

I used to love end-of-the-world screenplays. We all know how I feel about Seeking A Friend At The End Of The World (which just came out with its first trailer! Hooray!). And then of course there’s Top 10 script How It Ends. Since then, however, I’ve read about five of these puppies, and for whatever reason, my Apocalypse funny bone isn’t being tickled anymore. I don’t know if I’m looking for a new angle (puppets maybe?) or if the effect has simply worn off, but I just don’t get jazzed for life as we know it being scrambled in a galactic frying pan anymore.

Part of the reason this script didn’t work for me was because it was a real downer! I mean, this is an extra large serving of depression, hold the onions. Not that that can’t work. Deep Impact – another depressing end of the world movie – brought in a lot of dough. But after reading this I was just like….I need to go buy some ice cream or something. I’m depressed!

The End follows three main characters (in three separate storylines) six hours before the world’s obliterated by a gravitational black hole or something. It’s not clear when the information of the world’s demise is received (Are they just learning about it now or have they known for days – not sure) but the point is, time’s running out!

The first of our characters is a 35 year old Wae, a janitor at a Shangai Wal-Mart who only cares about one thing, finding the perfect egg (the egg must be a very specific measurement – still not sure what that was all about). It’s the middle of the night in Shanghai, and Wae plans to walk home, with the world crumbling around him, so he can make his son an egg for breakfast.

Next there’s Sir John Bainbridge, a 70-something BBC radio personality. While everybody else in the world has run home to their mommies, John’s decided to stay on the air. He is, therefore, the only person on the radio, which means everybody’s tuned into him. What starts off as one man’s assessment of the world’s destruction (and a clever way to dish out exposition) eventually becomes an exploration of a broken old codger’s dysfunctional family.

Finally, there’s Olive, a 16 year old Christian whose family is struggling to make it to church for the End Of Days sermon, which I’m hearing is one of the most popular of the year. It might even beat Christmas. However, as she gets closer, she thinks that instead of spending her final moments listening to some boring priest drone on about, like, death and stuff, she should spend that time with her secret (older) boyfriend! And maybe, if she can find a way to him in time, she can marry him, lose her virginity, all before she’s beamed up to Cloud City. So she enlists the help of her childhood best friend, the goofy “Zebulon,” and the two race against time to make it happen. Of course, while locating everything they need for the wedding, it becomes clear that Zebulon’s secretly in love with Olive.

Okay so we have three separate storylines here. Here’s my opinion on multi-storyline scripts. You better make sure each storyline kicks ass. Cause if even one is average, your movie will suck. Nobody goes to see 2/3 of a good movie.

What USUALLY happens in these scripts, actually, is that the writer has a main storyline idea, but since he wants multiple narratives, comes up with two or three lesser storylines to fill out the script. These stories are never as good as the first one, because they were added after the fact.

Whether one thinks that’s what happened here will depend on the individual, but personally, I thought the only story worth telling was Olive’s. We have a goal (get to the boyfriend and get married), stakes (this means everything to her), and if I have to tell you where the urgency comes from, you’re going on a permanent screenwriting sabbatical. There’s also conflict and dramatic irony (we know Zeb loves her, but she does not), so this storyline really shined.

The next best storyline was Wae’s. Wae does have a clear goal (get back to his kid) but it doesn’t carry the same weight as Olive’s (make breakfast for his kid?). Also, he’s not traveling with any other characters, so there are no opportunities to explore his internal conflict through his relationships, like we see with Olive and Zeb. Instead, the only conflict he experiences is external. This results in some cool sequences (a jousting sword-slicing motorcycle duel), but overall, his trek is relatively uneventful.

That leaves us with the third and least interesting storyline, John the radio personality. To me, this storyline’s purpose was expositional (to give us a running play-by-play of the events as they unfold) with a family storyline shoe-horned in to make it SEEM like it was more than that (something about a brother he never talked to or something). There were no goals, no stakes, and somehow no urgency (despite the world ending in six hours). On top of that, it’s an old man sitting in a room for two hours. So that one was hard to get up for.

That said, there were definitely some cool moments in The End. The gravity bumps will guarantee some “holy shit” moments in the trailers. Watching two people float up above the ground as they kiss with rain shooting upwards around them, yeah – that should sell a few tickets. And when you juxtapose that with a jousting motorcycle duel to the death, I can see some teenagers saying – “dude, we gotta go see that!”

The question is, what will they be seeing? No matter which way you shake it, The End is depressing as hell. It’s like a sci-fi Babel. It makes The Grey look like a bunch of dudes who just won the Anchorage lottery. Not sure how eager people will be to run off and get depressed for two hours. Of course, I could be looking at this the wrong way. Maybe this is about the triumph of the human spirit amongst the end of times. I don’t know. I just wish I didn’t want to curl up with my teddy bear afterwards and cry myself to sleep.

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

What I learned: The best character goals meet two criteria. First, the character must desperately want to achieve the goal. So in Zombieland, even though Tallahassee’s goal was “just” to find a Twinkie, he so desperately wanted to find that Twinkie it was still compelling. Second, the goal itself must be big. So in The Hangover, the goal was to find Doug and get him back to his wedding in time. That’s a big goal. The combination of a BIG GOAL that your wants along with that goal being one he DESPERATELY WANTS TO ACHIEVE is what gives a story the most pop. That’s not to say you always need both of them. Like I just said, Tallahassee’s goal wasn’t big at all. It was merely personal. I’m just saying that your goal won’t be as powerful if it only meets one of those two requirements. That’s how I felt with Wae. I knew how important it was for him to make his son breakfast (personal side of the goal). But just the act of making breakfast wasn’t big enough for me. So I didn’t care if he achieved it or not. Olive’s goal, on the other hand – to get married – that was a goal that was both big (getting married is a big deal!) AND personal (she really really wanted to do it!).

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TV Pilot Review – Full Tilt Boogie (Amateur Friday)

Posted on February 3, 2012 | by admin

What better screenwriting treat is there than a pilot…about a pilot! I ditch the normal screenplay review today to take a rare look at a teleplay.

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 that your submission stays near the top of the pile.

Genre: (TV pilot) – Crime
Premise: From the writer: Based on a true story, Full Tilt Boogie follows Danny, a middle-aged pot pilot who juggles his life as a smuggler busting the US/Mexican border with his responsibilities as a father and ex-husband.
About: This story is based on the writer’s own father! The script was a top ten finalist in the Scriptpipeline TV competition. It’s also been a finalist in several other competitions.
Writer: Amber Crawford-Idell
Details: 59 pages

How about today’s pilot? The author is the daughter of our hero! I actually didn’t know that when I first read it. It definitely colors my perception in retrospect. But after thinking about it for awhile, I believe Amber’s closeness to the material is both its biggest strength and its biggest weakness. This is no doubt a fascinating situation with writing that leaves most amateurs clutching their bags in the standby line as their plane speeds down the runway. But on the storytelling end, I’m not sure this one ever gets off the ground. It’s not time to cancel this flight yet though. I think with a little help, it can still get to its destination.

48-year-old Danny is a pot smuggler. He shuttles weed back and forth across the Mexican border in a small airplane with a small crew. But on this particular evening, his plan has gone haywire and he and his buddies find themselves in the Mexican desert running from the authorities. They’re just barely able to get away, but the next day, when they head down to their plane, IT’S GONE!

Strangely, Danny doesn’t seem too concerned about this. I don’t know about you, but when I’m flying a couple of million dollars’ worth of weed around, I get upset when it disappears. To Danny’s credit, he does want to get to the bottom of it, but man does it not seem like a priority.

After questioning several folks, he ends up at a large private party in Mexico where he’s offered the lead pilot job on a big operation. But Danny’s not interested in getting bigger and instead heads back to America to explain to his business partner that his plane vanished.

Shockingly, when he gets there, he finds out his plane – with the marijuana and everything in tow– has just SHOWN UP. Nobody knows how it got there. Nobody knows who flew the thing. It simply arrived without a trace.

It isn’t long before this intriguing mystery is answered, and not in a very satisfying way. Apparently, a Mexican child saw Danny flying through the mountains late at night many years ago. After seeing how happy Danny was, the young man decided he was going to grow up and work with Danny. So he’s been researching/stalking Danny ever since. Now a man, he’s taken it upon himself to prove to Danny he’s worthy, I guess by stealing his plane?

Hmm, I’m not sure that’s the best way to get someone to hire you. Steal a couple million bucks of their property. Why not just approach him and ask for a job? I had some other problems with this section as well. How do you even see a man, at night, hundreds (thousands?) of feet above you, flying by at 200 miles per hour? Much less how happy they are? Wouldn’t that be impossible??

Anyway, the twist is that the man is the son of Danny’s drug rival, and he wants to take down his father just as much as Danny does. At the end of the episode, Danny flies back to America and it’s there where we realize he actually has a normal family life with a son and a daughter, who have no idea that he’s secretly running drugs across the Mexican border every day.

There’s lots of fuel for a TV show here. Combined with the high level of writing, Amber has a genuine reason to be excited about Full Tilt Boogie.

But what this pilot lacks is storytelling. There’s never a clear through line to the story. Danny’s in Mexico, he goes back to America, he’s back in Mexico, then he’s back in America, then he goes back to Mexico, then he goes back to America. I understand the nature of this show requires our character to fly around a lot but because we’re never in one place for very long, the story never gets a chance to establish anything.

I was particularly confused by a sequence where Danny flies to some random town – either in America or Mexico – and just randomly bumps into a Mexican girlfriend who he throws a roll of money at and then flies away. You can’t waste scenes in your script, ever. What did this have to do with anything?

Granted, I’m not as savvy about TV writing as I am features, but this script needs a clear goal with some high stakes. What I would do is focus the entire pilot on the disappearing plane. Instead of that being solved by the midpoint, I’d draw it out until the very end. That, then, is your hero’s goal – to find out what happened to the plane.

But where I’d really change things up is in the stakes department. Right now, Danny doesn’t care about his 2 million dollar payload and plane being stolen. And neither does anyone else to be honest. Not only does that not make sense, but it’s boring.

Obviously, this marijuana is someone’s. And if there’s someone who just lost $2,000,000 worth of marijuana, they’re going to be angry. And they’re going to take that out on whoever lost the marijuana. Which means our buddy Danny needs to be in BIG TROUBLE. If he doesn’t find that plane and those drugs soon, he’s dead. NOW you have yourself a story!

Stakes need to be raised in other places as well. For example, in another scene Danny steals an airplane from one of the biggest drug dealers in Mexico. Does the dealer get angry? No, not at all. He actually forgets about it. And when Danny brings it back, the dealer doesn’t even mention it.

I don’t know about you, but the Mexican drug cartels I hear about don’t forget about stuff like that. They decapitate stuff like that. Then throw the bodies on the local highway. In other words, they’re fucking scary. All the drug people in this script are like your best friends from high school. That needs to change.

Amber’s got some major writing talent. Now she just needs to focus on the storytelling component. When in doubt, always go back to GSU!

Script link: Full Tilt Boogie

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

What I learned: This is a HUGE problem I see over and over again with young writers: Lack of clarity in the writing. If a reader misinterprets one plot point, they might be confused for the rest of the script. Therefore you have to be clear about what’s going on! For example, in the opening scene, Danny and several other drug runners are being chased by Mexican agents. As they’re running, we see their plane down by an airfield with a bunch of marijuana beside it. Danny and the men hide in a hole, barely escaping the agents. The next day, Danny comes out to see that the plane and the drugs are missing. Now with what I’ve told you so far, what would *you* assume happened to the plane? The agents took it, right? That’s what I thought at least. But Danny seemed shocked that the plane was gone. Well isn’t that the whole reason the agents were chasing you? Because you were smuggling drugs? Therefore if they saw your plane full of drugs, wouldn’t they confiscate it? That lack of clarity resulted in me being confused for the next 20 pages. I just kept thinking, why doesn’t he know that the agents took it? — There’s another scene later on where Danny is at a big Mexican party. He’s offered a job and a brand new plane, but it’s never made clear whether he accepts the job or not. We next see him on the outskirts of the mansion, talking to his buddy. They then hop into the plane that was a part of the deal and fly off in it. But because it wasn’t adequately explained whether he turned down the job or not, I couldn’t figure out if had just stolen the plane or had taken it for the job. This is a big deal! Because it’s a totally different story if he’s given the plane or he’s taken it. It’s your duty as a writer to make all of these things crystal clear. The murkier your writing is, the more confusing, and therefore less enjoyable, your script will be.

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