Is it possible for a script about the high school experience to feel original anymore? The Spectacular Now says, hell yeah.

Note, this review was first posted awhile back, but I re-read the script and added some new thoughts to the review in anticipation of its release.

Genre: Dark High School Dramedy
Premise: A popular alcoholic high school student starts dating a nerdy girl, possibly out of pity.
About: The names of today’s writers, Scott Neustadter and Michael H Weber, may sound familiar.  That’s because they broke onto the scene with the structure-defying spec, 500 Days Of Summer.   One of their first jobs after the success of that film was adapting The Spectacular Now, a book by Tim Tharp.  The film recently debuted at Sundance and won awards for both of its leads, one of whom is Shailene Woodley (Clooney’s daughter in The Descendents), who’s gotten a lot of press lately for being completely cut out of the new Spider Man movie.  The Spectacular Now will debut in limited cities this August.
Writers: Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (based on the novel by Tim Tharp)
Details: 119 pages – July 23, 2009 – first draft

It’s been awhile since I was in high school. I was there before Twitter and Vine. I was there before you knew you were in a relationship (We didn’t have “Facebook status” to confirm that stuff. We had, “Uhh, are we going out n stuff?” “Uhhh, I guess so.” Bam. Sorta-relationship). And the more I think about it, should high school kids even get relationship titles? I mean come on. High school relationships have the same lifespan as a fruit fly. Who cares who’s going out with who? It’ll be over tomorrow.

Oh yeah, NOW I’m remembering. Back then, every single moment was the most important moment EV-ER. If you accidentally walked into Homeroom with a smidge of jam on your face from breakfast that morning, your life was destroyed for the next two weeks. You’d meticulously break down who in the school saw the .1 millimeter of jam. Did Julie see it? Did Claire? Did Kenny? He would surely tell everyone about the glob of raspberry jam pouring down your cranium like blood from a bullet wound.  That image would be stuck in your head.  The giggles that were going on behind your back you didn’t see.  Ahhhh!!!

You have to remember this when reading a high school script. You have to transport yourself back to that frame-of-mind, even though in hindsight, all those things you obsessed over were so ridiculous (although I do wonder sometimes if the reason Becka Madel never went out with me was because she saw the jam on my face that day). Now the bar for high school movies this decade is low. I mean what do we got? Perks of Being A Wallflower? (How exactly was it a perk seeing that again?) So “Spectacular” doesn’t really have a lot of competition. I hope it takes advantage.

Sutter Keely is a complicated individual. He’s somehow managed to become “the popular guy” without carrying the dubious title of being “the popular guy.” Watching him walk into a room is like following Obama into the White House. Everybody knows him. Everyone wants to be around him. So it shouldn’t be surprising that Sutter is dating the hottest girl in school, Cassidy.

But Sutter has some other sides to him as well. First off, he’s a drunk. He keeps a flask and a buzz with him wherever he goes for the explicit purpose of being able to see the world through rose colored glasses. Sutter doesn’t keep any “real” friends either. He’s the guy who knows everyone but nobody knows him. And Sutter doesn’t plan ahead. His life’s goal is to cruise around and bring smiles to people’s faces. Sutter lives his life in the “spectacular now.”

But Sutter’s 18 years old and on the verge of the biggest decision of his life: What does he do next? Does he go to college? Does he get a job? These are things Sutter wishes he never had to deal with. Yet here they are, closing in on him like a coffin, forcing him to do what he hates to do most: commit.

This is probably why Cassidy dumps him. She’s sick of the fact that their relationship holds no meaning to him, and as if to prove her right, Sutter barely blinks afterwards. The way he operates is to never get too close. That way he never feels anything when they leave. Little does he know that that’s the very reason they do leave.

The post-breakup phase doesn’t last long. Sutter randomly runs into a girl from his school, oddball Aimee Finicky. Aimee’s the nerdy girl who sits in the corner of the room, hoping nobody notices her. There’s some cuteness there but Aimee’s complete lack of personal style destroys any chance of it coming through. Out of a combination of pity and curiosity, Sutter starts hanging out with her.

This seriously unbalanced relationship goes the way most of these relationships do. Aimee falls madly in love with Sutter, while Sutter goes along with it only because he’s got nothing better to do. At a certain point, he realizes he either has to stay in or get out, and he decides to stay in. Aimee’s love eventually seeps through the walls he’s put up, helping him get to the root of his issue, which is that his father left him at a young age.

Aimee encourages him to go see his father, and while initially reluctant, he realizes that if he’s ever going to grow up, this is what needs to happen.

The biggest trap you can fall into with these teenage high school scripts is cliché. Since most real-life high school kids mimic pop-culture, they actually live a life of clichés, making cliche movie versions of themselves “technically” authentic (everybody’s using the same catch phrase, kids identify themselves via film stereotypes). Regardless, you want to avoid any kind of cliche you can when writing these scripts.  Cliche equals flat and flat equals boring.

What you have to do then, is move away from the high school and see what defines these characters as people, as individuals. You need to find out what parts of their lives make them unique, what specific challenges are theirs and theirs only. Once characters start to feel like individuals (real people!), it doesn’t matter where you place them, high school, a Fortune 500 Company, or a job at the local 7-11,  the story will be interesting because we’re interested in THEM.

Take Cassidy for example, Sutter’s ex-girlfriend. The easy way to write this character would be to make her the “hot popular bitch.” And to a degree, she is. But when she and Sutter break up, she doesn’t fuck the first dude she sees to piss him off. She’s still concerned about him, about his drinking, about his choices. She still has feelings for him, but has met someone else as well, and isn’t really sure what to do. Or take her new boyfriend, the popular jock, Malcom. When Malcom finds out that Cassidy’s still talking to Sutter, we think he’s going to kick his ass. And at first, that’s the plan. But he ends up breaking down to Sutter and admitting that he wishes he could be more like him, more relaxed, more fun. He’s afraid that if he doesn’t do so, he’s going to lose Cassidy. In other words, the characters aren’t acting like stereotypes.  They’re breaking those stereotypes and acting like people.

The Spectacular Now also does a great job with dialogue. Whenever Sutter and Aimee were having conversations, I believed what they were saying. And that might not seem like much but most of the time when I’m reading words on a page, that’s exactly what I’m feeling: words on a page. It takes a lot to break that spell.

So I spent a few minutes trying to figure out why these particular words (which weren’t mind-blowing by any means), felt so real. This is what I realized: The more real you make your characters (their goals, their flaws, their backstories, etc.) the less convincing the dialogue has to be. The most important thing about dialogue is that we believe it. So if the audience accepts the characters, it doesn’t matter what they’re saying. They could be bumbling morons. But since you already believe in their existence, the words themselves are an extension of that existence. I’m not saying dialogue doesn’t matter, of course. I’m saying develop your characters and your dialogue will emerge naturally.

And the last thing that really surprised me was how well the father stuff worked. The “father who deserted his family” thing can be quite the cliché in movies. But I liked how Neudstater and Weber gently weaved that storyline in here. Usually these things hit us with the subtlety of a church bell, but Sutter’s father isn’t even mentioned until the second half of the script. It had a real-life feel to it. Nobody blurts out their family problems to you on the first day. It takes time to open up. And I like how these guys mirrored that approach here.

Don’t have a lot of bad stuff to say here. I guess Sutter is such a complex character that I never understood exactly what his problem was. He drank too much? He lived in the present too much? He was too nice to people? He never allowed himself to get close to people? These flaws overlapped each other at times and made him a little confusing. Luckily, we like the guy enough to overlook it.

I thought the plot could’ve been a little stronger (it’s really threadbare), his relationship with Cassidy wasn’t all that clear to me, and the final father meeting was maybe a little too on-the-nose. But hey, it’s a first draft. You can’t ask for the moon. This was really well done. If you like your screenplays character-driven, check this out.

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

What I learned: Whenever your main character is gearing up for a big moment (a speech, a confrontation, a race, whatever), throw something unexpected at them. If it’s a speech in front of a hundred people, have them get there to find out it’s now in front of 10,000 people. If they’re confronting their girlfriend about cheating, have them bang down the door only to find her parents with her. If it’s a bike race, have them get there only to find out their bike is broken and they’ll have to ride a shitty second rate bike. – You want to make things difficult for your characters. It’s always more interesting. (spoiler) After Sutter sets up the big meeting with his dad, he gets there to find out his dad’s forgotten about it. Now the dad wants to meet a friend and drag Sutter along. You see how much more interesting the dynamic becomes as opposed to if they’d sat down and had a predictable boring heart-to-heart? Think about real life. Everything that goes according to plan is uninteresting. It’s only a story when the unexpected happens. You need to think that way in your screenplays.

URGENCY solves all your screenplay’s ills!

Genre: Zombie/Horror/Thriller/Action
Premise: (from IMDB) United Nations employee Gerry Lane traverses the world in a race against time to stop the Zombie pandemic that is toppling armies and governments, and threatening to destroy humanity itself.
About: World War Z, the movie, has had its own apocalypse leading up to its release. Its well-publicized awful third act (which forced the studio to rewrite and reshoot the whole thing) steered buzz on the film towards Death Valley. Things didn’t exactly get better when geek screenwriting whipping boy Damon Lindelof came on to “save” the movie. But just like a zombie, the film came back from the dead and started building positive word-of-mouth with strategic early screenings and that cleaned up ending. Projected by much of Hollywood to bomb, the film made $66 million this weekend, 16 million more than the studio’s best case scenario. It looks like all aspects of World War Z got an improved ending.
Writers: Matthew Michael Carnahan and Drew Goddard & Damon Lindelof (story by Matthew Michael Carnahan and J. Michael Straczynski) (based on the novel by Max Brooks)
Details: 116 minutes

I’m not sure why everyone thought this was going to flop. The trailers looked awesome. It had Brad Pitt in it. What else do you need to get butts in seats?

I actually read an early draft of this script a long time ago and there were textbook problems with it that needed changing if this movie was going to have a shot. They made those changes (nailed them, in fact) and voila, we have a MUCH BETTER script and therefore a MUCH BETTER movie.

World War Z follows United Nations agent Gerry Lane as he and his family (wife and two daughters) are beginning their day. As they’re driving through the city, chaos erupts, with crazed possessed people attacking and killing everyone in sight. Those victims then turn into attackers as well, creating an exponential path of destruction.

In a harrowing opening 20 minutes, Gerry leads his family to safety and eventually to an extraction point where the government picks them up. They head to the only safe area on the planet, military boats in the middle of the sea, and everyone starts trying to find out what’s going on.

What’s going on is a particularly lethal strain of zombie. One that’s making quick work of the planet. If they don’t do something soon, these boats may be their final destination. Just like any plague, if you find out the source (Patient 0), you have a chance of coming up with a vaccine. Because Gerry’s job is to go into dangerous places and get answers, he’s a natural fit to go searching for this patient.

Problem is, every country is being overrun by zombies. So it’s sort of like sending a tree into a field of chainsaws. The chances of making it out with all your bark in tact isn’t very good. Gerry starts his investigation in South Korea, which experienced the worst of the attacks. Clues there eventually lead him to Israel, which somehow knew to build a zombie wall before the zombie outbreak even began. These guys were onto something and Gerry wants to know what.

While there, however, our clever (and quite energetic) zombies, figure out a way to scale the walls and overrun the city, forcing Gerry to make a harrowing escape on a passenger plane. That plane eventually leads him to a World Health Organization center where Gerry uses the clues he’s gathered to (spoiler) come up with a vaccine.

Okay, are you guys ready for today’s big screenwriting lesson?

URGENCY!!!

This script proves how important urgency is to a story. Why do I say that? Because I have the old script to compare it to.

In that version, the script tried to stay true to the novel. The novel was more about the AFTERMATH of the zombie outbreak. It took a “Post-Hurricane Katrina” approach to things, with Gerry trying to find who was to blame for the outbreak rather than Patient 0.

That’s fine for a book. But shit like that don’t fly in movies. In a movie, you need urgency. I’m surprised they didn’t figure this out right away – that they paid a writer to write a draft that had no hope of pleasing audiences. But someone finally got it right. They realized that telling everything in flashbacks and having Pitt strolling around countries leisurely without a single immediate threat didn’t lend itself to an exciting flick.

The brilliance of World War Z, the movie, is that it never slows down. Outside of the opening scenes establishing the family together, once the zombies hit, they never stop hitting. And for that reason, Gerry had to do his investigation WITH THE THREAT OF BEING KILLED AT ANY MOMENT as opposed to the threat of getting a paper cut at any moment. And everywhere he went, the zombie threat was right behind him. I know some people don’t like fast zombies, but they multiplied the urgency in this case a thousand fold and really made things exciting.

The best example of this was in Israel. We saw these zombies clamoring to get inside the country and we knew it was only a matter of time before they did. So when Pitt’s investigating, he doesn’t have time to hop around the country meeting numerous people and getting detailed rundowns. He talks to one dude before the zombies scale the wall and he’s running for his life.

World War Z is actually the prototypical GSU script. You have the Goal (find Patient Zero so you can create a vaccine), the stakes (Gerry being reunited with his family AS WELL AS the fate of the human race) and the urgency (zombies always on their tail).

Speaking of, that was another great change Damon Lindelof and Drew Goddard made. They actually suggested going back and adding the family scenes at the beginning of the movie, as well as another phone call between Gerry and his wife during the second act. They wanted more stuff between the family. They know that GSU doesn’t work unless the audience CARES ABOUT THE CHARACTERS and WANTS THEM TO REUNITE.

One of the best ways to create that caring is to create a family unit, a pair (or a group) of people who we want to see reunited. You do this by showing the family together, show how much they care for each other, then rip them apart. If Gerry is ONLY trying to save the world here, this movie doesn’t work. It’s that we want to see him back together with his family that keeps us so invested.

As for the ending, I don’t know what they changed the script from, but you can tell where the split happened. Clearly, that plane was going somewhere else in the old film. Now the plane crashes and Gerry comically walks over to the World Health Organization, which just happens to be a pleasant 5 minute walk form the crash site.

But once Gerry’s in the building, things pick up splendidly. Lindelof and Goddard create their own little mini-movie with new GSU. The goal is for Gerry to get a special bottle the scientists need in B-Wing, the stakes are, once again, survival of mankind, and the urgency isn’t as prominent, since the situation is so fraught with tension (the zombies potentially spotting them at any time). For coming up with this ending as quickly and under as much pressure as they did, they really did a great job.

You know, I got to thinking about this movie and wondering why it was so good, despite its mechanics being so simple. There are no real surprises in this script, no x-factor. It was all straightforward. I was reminded of a movie from earlier this summer that had a similar structure, yet wasn’t nearly as good: After Earth.

In that movie, we have the family unit (Dad and son) and a clear goal with high stakes and lots of urgency (son must get to the tail section to retrieve the S.O.S. beacon). So why did it fall so short of this one? A few things stuck out to me. The first was that the stakes were so much higher in World War Z. In After Earth, only the father and son’s lives were at stake. World War Z had the lives of the family at stake AS WELL AS the entire world.

A second problem was that the obstacles were so much greater in World War Z. I always talk about the value of creating big impossible obstacles for your characters and I never saw that in After Earth. Everything the son ran into was bad, but never “Oh shit ohmygod holy shit we’re fucked” bad. Contrast that to World War Z, which has tons of these moments. I mean at one point Gerry is watching the plane he’s on be overrun by zombies and must decide whether to blow a hole in the side of the plane with a grenade, effectively crashing it, or take on the zombies in close combat. Now THAT’S what I call an obstacle.

The other problem was that After Earth’s storyline was too simple. You were always way ahead of the story. World War Z squashed that issue by creating a central mystery to the storyline: What happened? Pitt needed to put together clues to figure out what happened in order to get to each successive clue. In After Earth, the kid didn’t really have to figure out anything. His father just told him where to go and he followed orders.

And that’s ANOTHER reason why this is such a great screenplay to study. On top of all this, we have a snapshot of the proper way to write a protagonist: HE’S ACTIVE! Pitt is making his own choices, figuring things out himself, and charging forward. Isn’t that a way more interesting protagonist than one who just follows orders from his dad the whole movie?

That’s not to say World War Z was without fault. What keeps this from being impressive are some of the glaring logic oversights. Israel is being heralded as this genius country for building a wall before anybody else to keep the zombies out. Yet they’re allowing random planes to land on their runway and random people from those planes to hop into their city without enduring – oh, I don’t know – a QUARANTINE.

Ditto for the random folks they’re letting through the wall. If someone can take as long as 10 minutes to turn, why are you allowing people into your city after a Q & A session that basically amounts to “Are you a zombie?” The plane that Gerry and crew stop and board is the worst example of this. Gerry’s helping along a pale sickly woman, who’s coming with him. She never turns into a zombie, but if you’re those pilots, aren’t you thinking she might?? And yet they never blinked. Yeah, sure, come on in.

I understand why they did this. They balanced the audience’s need for logic against the audience’s need for urgency. It’s a problem screenwriters are constantly faced with. You could have had Gerry and crew placed into quarantine for 12 hours after they landed in Israel to be more realistic, but it would’ve killed the momentum. I’m not sure there’s a universal solution for this. It needs to be addressed on a case by case basis. But my gut tells me they needed it here. Because everybody looked like morons for never once considering the fact that the new guy they’re letting in the room might be infected.

The thing was, everything else was so damn well done that I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I mean there isn’t a slow moment in the movie. So congrats to the writers who worked so hard on this. It paid off!

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

What I learned: I always talk about giving your protagonist a difficult choice at the end of the movie, something that challenges their fatal flaw. This reminded me that you don’t want to ONLY wait for that ending to do this. You should give your characters difficult choices WHENEVER YOU CAN in the script. I loved the scene in the plane where Gerry is watching the zombie mayhem get closer and closer, and must make an impossible decision. He’s got a grenade he can throw at them, which will crash the plane and probably kill him, or he can try and fight the zombies off, which will probably kill him. Those are the great moments in scripts, where you see the character battling that impossible choice.

Can this writer pull off one of the more ambitious concepts I’ve seen all year?

Genre: Thriller
Premise: (from IMDB) If on one night every year, you could commit any crime without facing consequences, what would you do? Over the course of a single night, a family will be tested to see how far they will go to protect themselves when the vicious outside world breaks into their home.
About: Writer James DeMonaco got his career started by writing the 1996 Robin Williams vehicle, Jack, about a child who ages four times faster than other children. He went on to write The Negotiator and the remake of Assault on Precinct 13 and executive produce the TV version of “Crash.” He appears to have a good relationship with Ethan Hawke as they’ve been involved in several projects together (Assault, Little New York, and now The Purge). DeMonaco made his directing debut with Little New York, and appears to be going a lot darker with his sophomore effort. The Purge stars Ethan Hawke and comes out later this summer.
Writer: James DeMonaco
Details: 94 pages (July 6, 2011 draft)

I was very confused while reading this. The story was compelling, packed with conflict, explored its characters, moved along quickly, all things you’d expect to see from a professional screenwriter, yet it instituted the “WALL OF TEXT” method of writing, with endless paragraphs dominating every page. Okay, maybe not “endless.” They were 4-6 lines long. But if you pack enough 4-6 line paragraphs together, the task of reading becomes unbearable. It takes twice as long as it should to get through every page. So I was wondering why someone who so clearly understood drama and how to craft a story was making such a basic mistake.

Ohhhhhh, I said when I did research on the writer – he was directing the script too. Now it made sense. The director wanted to be as specific as possible so he could remind himself what he was trying to do when filming began. Well, don’t let that fool the rest of you spec writers. If you’re not directing your own material, you want to keep it lean – way leaner than this.

Now heading into The Purge, I was dying to figure out one thing – how the hell they were going to pull off this premise. One of the things you’re taught when you first start writing is the idea of “suspension of disbelief.” You have to create a scenario that an audience will buy into, that they’ll “suspend their disbelief” for. If you make it too hard for people to believe in your story, nothing else matters. They check out before the story’s even begun.

And this idea had “disbelief” written all over it. Under what circumstances would a country willingly allow its people to rape, maim, torture and kill for 12 hours a year? Well, the script answers that question in a semi-satisfactory way in that it introduces a world pretty foreign to our own. We’ve gone through TWO more world wars (not just one), which has left the U.S. government money-strapped. They agree to be bought out by one of the largest corporations in the world, who then go to work on solving the biggest problem on the planet – crime.

They realize that we, as humans, commit crime, in part, due to our biological needs. We are a savage species, and therefore need that outlet. That’s how the company, Arcon, comes up with the idea to “purge” this need once a year, for 12 hours. It’s a bit of a stretch but DeMonaco is a good writer. His attention to detail and the extensive backstory behind the corporation and how it operates makes the situation fairly believable.

The story centers around James Sandin’s upper class family. James lives in a perfect suburban community with his wife, Mary, his 16 year old rebellious daughter, Zoe, and his bizarre 12 year old son, Charlie. James sells upscale home security systems, almost specifically for that one night a year of The Purge. His security system basically turns a house into a fortress, and it isn’t just others’ homes he does this for. He’s fortified his own house with the Purge Stopper as well.

And you know what? That fortress works. What James has to worry about, however, are the members of his OWN family. As The Purge begins, James quickly finds out that Zoe’s boyfriend, Henry, is hiding inside the house so he can kill him, his logic being that James is preventing Henry and Zoe from being together.

Then his semi-retarded son, Charlie, notices a bruised and bloodied man running from, what he assumes to be, hunters, and actually OPENS THE DOOR for him. So now we have crazy Henry the boyfriend inside AND this mysterious bloodied stranger. As James tries to get a handle on the situation, Henry tries to kill him. James survives, but this allows the stranger to disappear into the house.

Soon after, a band of 20-somethings dressed in some really spooky outfits surround the Sandin house and begin demanding the release of the victim (our mysterious stranger). If James doesn’t return him alive, they will infiltrate the house and kill everyone in it. This task is made harder when Charlie rebels against his father and helps the stranger hide. And then when a third faction of people move in to also have their way with the Sandins, we get a front row seat to just how crazy The Purge can get.

Okay, first thing’s first. When you have a really big concept, it’s my belief that your first scene must represent that concept! You have to show off why the concept is so awesome and therefore why we should keep reading. This is a movie about people being able to commit crimes unimpeded. So this movie should’ve started with someone performing some horrifying crime on the streets, doing something unimaginable to someone, and a police officer standing nearby just watching, not doing anything. Show off your darn premise in that opening scene!

On to the actual story. The Purge was pretty good. But here’s my issue with it. When you’re doing something dark, you gotta go dark. If you go that “safe dark,” it always feels a little cheap. What I mean is, James kills someone in the early part of the story, as he’s participating in the Purge. But it turns out the guy WANTS to be killed because he has cancer and wants the life insurance to go to his family. He’s willingly offered himself to be killed. I think it would’ve been more interesting if our main character took full advantage of this day and committed some horrifying crime himself. Now I know how difficult that would be. It makes our hero “unlikable,” but you have to figure out a way around that. This is such a nasty premise. If you’re tip-toeing around it, you’re not getting the most out of it.

But the reason it still works is because DeMonaco knows how to keep the story moving (despite the wall of text). He does a great job building the suspense. We know the Purge is coming and we know it’s going to be crazy. So that first act zips along. Then when the Purge arrives and we find out Zoe’s boyfriend is in the house to kill James, things pretty much motor along from there. There is literally never a dull moment. Something is ALWAYS happening. And that’s not easy to do when you contain your story to a single location the whole movie.

To be honest, where The Purge starts to stumble is that TOO MUCH starts to happen. I mean we end up having four different factions looking to Purge at one point, and instead of achieving the desired chaos the script is going for, it just begins to feel sloppy. I’m not saying it’s bad. I just noticed my attention starting to wander. And the third act is where the reader’s attention should be its most focused, not its least.

I also had a huge problem with Charlie, the 12 year old son. I love when writers add depth to their characters, give them quirks and characteristics that make them stand out, that make them unique. But if those characteristics are never explained, the character ends up feeling false, like they were added to check some screenwriting book boxes, not because they were required for the story. Charlie “layers” here. He wears like 4 or 5 shirts and underwear at a time. A big deal is made out of this early on, so you’re expecting to get an explanation at some point. But it never comes. I also didn’t understand why he was so adamant about letting this criminal into the house, then hiding him, even though he understood that doing so meant his entire family would be slaughtered. It’s not like we experience some early scene where we see how important life is to Charlie. We instead get him putting on 20 t-shirts…????? This character just needed some damn explanation. You can’t create a weird character for the sake of creating a weird character.

But in the end, this “Hunger Games” meets “Funny Games” concoction has just enough to keep us entertained. I just wish the story was a little cleaner in the final act.

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

What I learned: This is a GREAT reminder that a cheap-to-shoot high concept idea will always be the most likely spec to sell. This idea is huge, yet its contained to one house. Someone was guaranteed to buy and make this, even if the writer wasn’t the director.

I’m not sure what I was expecting from a January horror film. But it certainly wasn’t what I got. Everybody say it with me: “MA-MA.”

Genre: Horror
Premise: (from IMDB) Annabel and Lucas are faced with the challenge of raising his young nieces that were left alone in the forest for 5 years…. but how alone were they?
About: “Mama” seems to be the result of a growing trend of directors showing their chops via short films, then expanding those short films into full features or feature assignments. Mama started out as a 2008 short and has now been brought to the big screen, at least in part by Guillermo del Toro (it’s unclear how involved he was with the production). Co-writer Neil Cross is the creator of the show “Luther,” with everyone’s famous Prometheus captain in the lead role, Idris Elba. Andres Muschietti is the co-writer with his wife, and also the director of the film, which stars Jessica Chastain, the Academy Award nominee from Zero Dark Thirty.
Writers: Neil Cross and Andres Muschietti & Barbara Muschietti

Warning.

This movie is scary.

This movie is really scary.

But this movie will also make you cry.

It will hit you on an emotional level that you were not prepared for.

You will be in the theater doing your best to suck back tears before those dreaded lights come on in the end and everybody can see how much of a wuss you are.

In other words, it’s the ideal screenplay that I always ask for in the horror genre but never get. I get cheap scares. I get cheap thrills. I get cheap characters. I never get horror that makes me feel something. And I sure didn’t expect it from this film. I remember seeing the preview in the theater a month ago and laughing. You had kids crawling around like spiders while the word “Mama” was echoed theatrically in a child’s voice. I didn’t see any way this could be anything other than awful.

Boy was I wrong. Mama is the best movie I’ve seen in half a year. It would’ve been in my Top 5 of 2012 easily. Instead, it was released in the studio dumping ground of late January and February. But this is far from a piece of studio trash.

Mama starts with a harrowing opening scene featuring a deranged suburban father breaking down after the 2008 financial meltdown. He kills his wife, a couple of his co-workers, then grabs his two young daughters and starts driving. Where? He doesn’t know. He just needs to get away from here. His disorientation eventually results in his car shooting off a ledge in the mountains. The family survives the fall and starts marching through the woods, looking for shelter.

They find it in a small dilapidated cabin. But soon after going inside, they realize that somebody else lives here. And when Daddy decides to take the rest of the family with him to that big suburban block party in the sky, that house host (who we only see parts of) rips his head off and starts raising the girls herself.

Five years later, the father’s brother, who thankfully still has his head on straight, is desperately looking for the family. Miraculously, after looking everywhere in those mountains, he finds them. Except the girls are anything but the ones who left on that fateful day. They’re alone, malnourished, dirty, and, well, “feral” would be the only way to describe it. They scamper about on all fours and haven’t seen a bottle of Head & Shoulders in quite some time, as you can confirm below.

Over the next three months, a psychiatrist and his team carefully work the kids back into society and eventually the daughters are able to move in with their Uncle and his girlfriend, the too-cool-for-school Annabel. Annabel has her own shit going on. She’s a guitarist in a rock band. She’s used to living life on her terms. She was just dating this guy cause he was fun. Now she finds herself in the unenviable position of playing mother, a role she’s clearly not ready for.

After the girls move in, strange things start happening. The couple begins to hear noises, and the girls can be heard playing and laughing with somebody. One night, the disturbance becomes so intense, the Uncle gets up to see what he can find. He sees something that can’t be explained, stumbles backwards, over the railing, and slams headfirst into the stairs below, the force so great it sends him into a coma.

You know what that means . Annabel is now stuck on her own with the kids. And I don’t care if you’re mother of the year. No one wants to get stuck with kids who scamper around on all fours and tell you things like, “Don’t hug me. She’ll get jealous.” At least no one I know. While Annabel’s simply trying to make it through each day, the children’s psychiatrist has been studying the children’s tapes, and becomes interested in the girls’ repeated references to a woman who raised them in the cabin. At first he assumes that woman is part of their imagination. But the more he looks into it, the more it looks like this woman may in fact be real. And that she’ll stop at nothing to get her kids back.

Ma-ma.

The structure behind this screenplay was exceptional . I can’t remember reading a horror script that had this much forward momentum – that never got boring – that never got weak. There were a lot of things that contributed to that. Let’s see if we can identify some of them.

As you all know, I like screenplays with strong character goals. And that doesn’t change when it comes to the horror genre. I love Naomi Watts desperately trying to solve the “7-Days” tape in The Ring. I love the family trying to get their daughter back in Poltergeist. I love the mother trying to exorcise the demon inside her daughter in The Exorcist. But with the horror genre, you occasionally get the type of movie where a force is haunting our characters and we just sort of sit back and watch it happen. You see this, for the most part, in movies like, “The Others” and “Rosemary’s Baby,” and more recently in the Paranormal Activity franchise.

These are much harder stories to pull off because nobody’s going after anything. By including a character goal, your story gets pulled along the track by someone seeking to solve a problem. When you don’t have anyone pulling, your’e obviously stuck in one place.  And how interesting is that?

So what Mama does is really cool. It does both. Within the house, Annabel is taking care of these girls while all this crazy shit is happening. That’s the “haunting” section. Then the psychiatrist has a goal. He suspects that the “mother” these girls are referring to wasn’t made up, as he originally suspected, but that she might be real. So he starts investigating that possibility. This works really well since we’re able to cut back and forth between the haunting and the investigation, allowing a sort of “cheat” where we get the best of both worlds.

Another real strength of Mama is its main character, Annabel, and the situation it places here in. We establish early on that she’s a terrible parent and is only in this thing for the Uncle. So when the twist comes with the uncle falling into the coma, the story switches gears to place the worst character for the job in a position where she has to do the job. What a great story choice! I mean how much more compelling is that than having the loving doting perfect Uncle around all the time?  If that were the case, there would be no conflict, because Annabel would never be forced to deal with the children. This was one of several really slick story choices I give the writers credit for.  Get the fucking uncle out of the picture.

Then there was the brilliant integration of the subplots. You had the psychiatrist. You had the Uncle in the hospital. You had the grandmother, who wanted custody of the kids. Then, of course, you have the girls’ own interactions with Mama herself.

And the reason I’m going gaga over all of this is because I read the bad versions of these screenplays every day. Where there are no subplots. It’s just people in a house with something weird attacking them. And that gets boring after 30 pages. Here we have so many subplots to keep weaving in and out of the main plot, that the story always remains fresh.

I also loved the decision to use two children. 99 out of 100 writers would’ve made the more predictable choice of going with one child, because one spooky child is what we always see. Of course, one spooky child is also cliché and therefore boring. By adding a second child, it opened up all these new avenues, and boy did the writers take advantage of it. One of the most brilliant choices in was to have one of the children pull away from Mama (and gravitate towards Annabel) and the other prefer Mama.

(spoiler) This created the all important CONFLICT that you want in every character dynamic (even if the dynamic is two young children) and led to a shocking, emotionally satisfying climax, one that you never could’ve achieved with a single child. And it’s why I keep going on about this same old advice – AVOID THE OBVIOUS CHOICE. Not only is it boring, but when you push yourself to go with the non-obvious, it almost always opens up new story directions that you never could’ve predicted. Why? Because nobody else has gone down that path before!  so they’ve never found those choices.

There were only a few minor things that bothered me. I didn’t understand how this thing could travel from house to house through the walls. That was vague. The moths seemed more spooky than story-relevant (although I did like their payoff). And there was a laughably clumsy moment late in the story where Annabel is driving to the forest and nearly runs over the Uncle, who just happened to be stumbling onto the road at that moment. But other than that, this was a GREAT cinematic experience, the kind you dream of having every time you pay 18 bucks. Top-notch storytelling, top-notch movie-making. I will go to see this one again!

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[x] impressive (go see it now!)
[ ] genius

What I learned: I absolutely LOVED the execution of the character flaw here and it fits in perfectly with the article I wrote the other day. Annabel’s flaw is that she doesn’t want to parent. She doesn’t want that responsibility. You’ll notice that the entire story, then, is designed to challenge this flaw. Annabel is thrust into the position as the sole parent of two young girls. They’re resisting. She’s resisting. But as the script goes on, she starts to change, begins to care for them, and in the end, (spoiler) she’s willing to fight an otherworldly creature with her life in order to save them. It’s the ultimate character transformation, and it’s a big reason why this ending was so emotional.

Amateurs don’t get much love in the screenwriting business. UNTIL TODAY! Here are 15 amateur screenplays that caught my attention in 2012. Let’s find a home for some of them!

Gangnam Style Top 15 Breakdown!

One of the cool things about The Black List when it first came out was that you truly felt like it was celebrating the underdog – the guy who couldn’t catch a break – who couldn’t get his script read by the right people. Over time, as the list grew in popularity, so did the profiles of the writers who landed on it. There were still some little guys, but they were now overshadowed by much more accomplished writers. I think The Hit List has filled that gap to an extent, celebrating only spec scripts (as opposed to assignments, which is where all the high rollers play), but a lot of those writers still have agents. Which means there isn’t any list that celebrates TRUE amateur writers. We’re getting closer to that point, with amateur screenplays being tracked at a pace unheard of five years ago. There are just so many places online to get your script read and noticed. Still, how you siphon all of that into one bottle remains a tricky proposition. While we wait for that process to improve, I can at least give you MY favorite amateur scripts of the year. Keep in mind I’m including scripts that have since garnered representation. To be on this list, all you need is to have been a true amateur (no reps or managers) when your script was discovered this year.  Oh, and all of these scripts are available except for The Disciple Program. Here we go…

#15
Title: The Wall (not reviewed)
Premise: A cheating husband’s desperate attempt to keep his son from dating his mistress goes horribly wrong when his son turns up dead. As he clambers to cover his tracks, his life spirals out of control, while his wife searches for revenge.
Writers: Jon Bachmann & Katherine Griffin
How I found it: Consult service
About: This script made the list because of its meticulous plotting. Jon and Katherine really know how to weave characters in an out of each other’s lives in interesting ways. The only reason it didn’t rank higher was because it didn’t have a hook or a juicy role for an actor to play. If you write a character piece, you need at least one of those things, and preferably both.

#14
Title: Guest
Premise: After checking into a hotel to escape her abusive husband, a woman realizes guests in the next room are holding a young girl hostage.
Writer: Matthew Cruz
How I found it: Twit-Pitch Contest
About: Whereas “The Wall” had no hook, this has a great hook. And the idea is catnip to the spec buying world. Producers love contained situations with lots of conflict because they’re cheap to make and easy to market. I don’t think the current draft had enough meat to it, but I hear Matthew’s hard at work improving the script. I’m interested to see what he’s done since the review.

#13
Title: Eden’s Folly
Premise: A left-for-dead rancher wakes up in the middle of the desert with no memory of who he is. He goes off in a search to find out what happened.
Writer: Ryan Binaco
How I found it: Consult service
About: There’s something about Ryan Binaco’s writing that I find intriguing.  I’m not a drug-addict, but I imagine this is what it must feel like to be high on peyote.  You just get sucked up into another plane when you read Ryan’s work.  Sometimes that’s a weird thing.  But usually it’s good.  There are so many less interesting ways this story could’ve gone. I’ve seen those versions hundreds of times from lesser writers. But you’d be hard-pressed to guess where this one’s going. I wouldn’t say that all the choices are satisfying, but they’re certainly unique.

#12
Title: Fatties
Premise: When a lonely masochistic chubby chaser is abducted by two fat lesbian serial killers, it’s the best thing that ever happened to him.
Writer: Matthew Ballen
How I found it: Twit-Pitch Contest
About: Fatties may be my most controversial script endorsement of the year. Say what you will about the disturbing subject matter, but I dare you to stop reading Fatties once you’ve opened it!  There’s a scene in here you will never forget no matter how hard you try. And somehow, at the end of the rainbow, is a love story you’re kinda rooting for. This script made me feel slimy, but in an ooey-gooey way.  Yummy.  More Fatties!

#11
Title: Nine Twelve
Premise: A man embarks on a relationship with a 9/11 widow after claiming to have lost his brother in the attacks.
Writer: Edward Ruggiero
How I found it: Consult Service
About: Dramatic irony, dramatic irony, dramatic irony. Nine Twelve shows us how powerful the tool can be. It’s why I highlighted D.I. so extensively in my book. Here, we can’t look away from this relationship because we know something this poor woman doesn’t – that our hero is lying to her about everything their relationship is based on. The script is an incredibly difficult sell because the main character is so unlikable. But it manages to keep our attention all the way through. Can’t wait to see what Ed comes up with next!

#10
Title: 3022 (not reviewed)
Premise: The crew members on a space shuttle 600,000 miles from Earth must question their individual fates and fight for their lives after their home – Earth itself – is destroyed.
Writer: Ryan Binaco
How I found it: Consult Service
About: Ryan is back with a second script in the Top 15! This one is a cross between Solaris, 2001 and The Fountain, with just enough “mainstream” to keep it marketable. I’ve actually read a couple versions of the script, and I hear the latest version (which I haven’t read yet) is doing really well over at the Black List site. I’ve hinted to Ryan that he’s gotta make the story accessible if he wants someone to snatch it up. But at the same time, I don’t want to stifle the craziness that goes on in his head too much. That’s what makes his scripts so different!

#9
Title: Proving Ground
Premise: 9 strangers wake in a deserted Mexican town besieged by killing machines: they must discover why they’ve been brought there to survive.
Writer: James Topham
How I found it: Twit-Pitch Contest
About: Proving Ground was the winner of my Twit-Pitch contest. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a really cool idea with a sound execution. The reason this one makes the Top 10 is because I want to see this movie! I want to see these people being attacked by these giant machines. I want to see them trying to figure out how they got here and how they’re going to get away. There are too many spec scripts in Hollywoodland that are well-written but not “big” enough to be made into movies (I liked Nine-Twelve, but its too small to get a producer excited about it). Proving Ground is not one of those screenplays!

#8
Title: Saving Lexie Lee (not reviewed)
Premise: When a popular high school girl looks into some mysterious murders happening around town, she’s shocked to find out that she may know the killer.
Writer: Michael Morra
How I found it: Consult Service
About: I really liked this one, so much so that I asked Michael if I could come on as producer. We’ve since played around with the script and while we’re getting close, there’s something that isn’t quite there yet with the ending. The thing I liked about the script was that it had this really weird structure that you never see in these types of films. That’s proven to be a roadblock for some, since it requires a complete rethinking of how these movies work. But I still have faith in its unorthodox approach.  “Lexie Lee” is basically “Scream” but with a really fucked up second act. We’ll figure it out eventually. And when we do, I have a feeling this could sell.

#7
Title: Lovin’ Brooklyn (not reviewed)
Premise: When her rich step-dad cheats on her mother, a young girl is forced to move into her aunt’s home in Brooklyn, where she’s introduced to a “player” pizza boy who needs her to help him win a dance competition.
Writer: Guy Guido
How I found it: Consult Service
About: The thing that kills me is finding a really good writer who’s written a script that’s tough to sell. Guy is a kick-ass writer. He’s the kind of guy you’d want to write your next romantic comedy or “Save The Last Dance.” But Lovin’ Brooklyn is so specific, you’d have to find JUST THE RIGHT buyer for it, and it’s never easy finding that buyer. With that said, the success of Silver Linings Playbook gives me hope for Lovin’ Brooklyn, as there are some definite similarities between the two.  This could be the next cool dance flick that breaks that “on the bubble” young female TV star.

#6
Title: Keeping Time
Premise: A for-hire time traveler who specializes in “preventing” bad relationships meets his match with a mysterious woman who claims to also be a traveler and is determined to stop him from completing his mission.
Writer: Nathan Zoebl
How I found it: Amateur Friday
About: After my review of this script, Nathan snatched an agent at WME (Mike Esola) and went through a couple of close calls getting talent attached. I couldn’t resist being a producer on this one either as I’m always looking for the next great time travel comedy. Now it’s a matter of stepping back, possibly doing another rewrite or two, and getting this script back in the game. I really want to make this one happen so if you’re interested, e-mail me!

#5
Title: Fascination 127
Premise: A group of men are hired by a mysterious client to remove Jim Morrison’s casket, give it to him for 24 hours and then return the casket into the ground before it is publicly exhumed to be moved to the United States.
Writer: Alex Carl
How I found it: Amateur Friday
About: This script totally took me by surprise. I thought it was going to be a half-assed weed-driven series of college conspiracy theories on what happened to Jim Morrison. Instead, it was a taut highly-engrossing heist film. But even better, Alex and I took everyone’s feedback from the review and incorporated the best notes into the script. Alex is almost done with his latest draft and I can confirm that it has gotten a LOT better. Once it’s finished, we’ll go out there and, at the very least, land Alex an agent.

#4
Title: Reunion
Premise: At their ten-year reunion, a formerly bullied outcast decides to enact revenge on the cool kids who made his life miserable.
Writer: Adam Zopf
How I found it: Amateur Friday
About: I know, I know. This is kind of a cheat. I originally aired this review in 2011. But since I didn’t have an official “Best Amateur Scripts” list for 2011, I decided to move Reunion to 2012. So what’s going on with the script? Some good stuff, depending on how you look at it. The production company that optioned Reunion wasn’t able to get it going in time, so the script’s reverted back to Adam! That means it’s back on the market. I’m going to meet with Adam some time this month and we’ll discuss Reunion. Who knows? Maybe we’ll end up working on it together.

#3
Title: Rose In the Darkness
Premise: A secluded boy’s way of life is threatened when he befriends Rose – the girl whom his parents have imprisoned in the family attic.
Writer: Joe Marino
How I found it: Amateur Friday
About: To think that Joe wrote this and he isn’t even finished with college yet! The review led to Brooklyn Weaver at Energy Entertainment reading and loving Rose. We’re pairing together to produce and Brooklyn is also managing Joe now. Some folks have been put off by the ultra-dark subject matter in the script but I think it’s only a matter of time before we find a home for this one. If you’re a production company who’s not afraid to take chances – if you want something on your slate riskier than the typical garden variety horror fare we’ve seen as of late, let me know. I’ll get you Rose and we can take it from there.

#2
Title: 300 Years (not reviewed)
Premise: After waking up 300 years in the future, a San Francisco bike messenger learns that the world has been taken over by aliens, and that these aliens now keep humans as pets.
Writer: Peter Hirschmann
How I found it: Consult Service
About: What I love about Peter is that he’s gone all in after getting an agent (at Verve) and manager (at Kaplan/Perrone) since 300 Years broke. This man is furiously working on his new spec, as well as flying in and out of LA to take meetings for potential assignments. The assignment market is very competitive, but Peter’s gotten super close on a few big ones. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before he scores one. In the meantime, I wait with baited breath for his new spec. Peter keeps his ideas close to the chest, but from the bits and pieces I hear, they sound awesome. And yes, I’m still a producer on 300 Years, along with Jill Messick. We’re going to push this script hard again once we get a director attached. :)

#1
Title: The Disciple Program
Premise: A man wakes up to find his wife dead and no memory of the night before. His investigation into her death will lead him to a top secret government-sponsored program.
Writer: Tyler Marceca
How I found it: Consult Service (later reviewed on Amateur Friday)
About: Lots of people ask for updates on Disciple. This is all I can tell you. Morten Tyldum, the director attached to Disciple, recently signed on to direct The Imitation Game. So it looks like that’s his priority now. I think they were shooting for a tiny opening in Whalberg’s (also attached) schedule early this year, but they weren’t able to make it. What does this mean? Well, Whalberg has 10 billion projects lined up, so I’m not sure. But hopefully they figure out a way to make it work, or if they don’t, another package comes on board and gets it rolling, sort of like what happened with Prisoners. You’re always hoping for that dream scenario where you get the spec sale and then six months later, you’re shooting. But usually, you have to endure a few speed bumps along the way to the promised land, so I’ll keep hoping and wishing Tyler luck!

Again, all of these scripts except for Disciple are available. Feel free to e-mail me if you’re a producer/agent/manager and I’ll send you copies of the scripts you’re looking for. Sorry there are still no comments in the reviews I sent you back to. I still have to transfer Disqus comments over from the old site! Oh, and if you’ve read any really good amateur scripts yourselves, don’t hesitate to mention them in the comments section!