Genre: Drama
Logline (3rd place): When a prison guard falls in love with the wife of a death-row inmate, he’s forced to choose between his love for her or reveal the discovery of crucial evidence that will save her husband’s life.
About: Welcome to the first annual “First Ten Pages Week.” What I did was have readers send in loglines then vote on their favorites. The top five loglines, then, would get their first 10 pages read this week. With any of the five reviews, if the comments are positive enough, I’ll review them in full on an Amateur Friday.
Writer: David Birch

I think The Oswald Solution may have the best *crafted* logline of the Top 5. Why? Well, there’s a clear and compelling dilemma at the heart of the idea. Would you save a man’s life if it meant losing the woman you love? That’s a question I’d want to find out the answer to. So I went into this one with a lot of hope.

The first 10 pages of The Oswald Solution introduce us to the Governor, Lamar Snyder, rejecting a stay of execution for a man named “Jefferson,” a former member of his organization. This leads the media to believe that there are ulterior motives going into Snyder’s decision. We then meet an alcoholic correctional officer named Melvin Delray who is sent to pick up Jefferson from the courthouse. When his car is attacked by a mob of ferocious protestors, however, he heads back to the jailhouse where he convenes with a bunch of fellow employees.

The Oswald Solution starts off bumpy. I don’t understand why writers refuse to describe their characters. If someone is out there telling you that you shouldn’t describe people because you don’t want to limit your casting options, don’t listen to that garbage. Right now, all that matters is you paint a picture of your story for the reader. And that means telling us something about your character when they’re introduced so we get a sense of them. Lamar might as well be invisible because I have no idea what he looks like or what kind of person he is.

A page after Snyder is introduced, I see him talking in front of a cluster of microphones as if he’s the Governor or something. Wait a minute. *Is* he the governor? He certainly wasn’t introduced as the governor. I went back to see if I missed something. I notice that in the slugline it says “Governor’s Office.” So technically I should be able to draw the connection between, “This is the governor’s office,” and “This is a man in the governor’s office.” Therefore he’s probably the Governor.

But “Governor Office” is sometimes used to refer to an entire building, so even though that’s a clue, it doesn’t definitively tell me anything. The bigger problem here is that we’re introduced to “Lamar Snyder.” We’re not introduced to “Governor Lamar Snyder.” Just that one single word could’ve taken care of this confusion. In fact, “Governor Snyder” is used one page later. Why would we do that *after* he’s introduced as opposed to *when* he was introduced?

You may think this kind of stuff doesn’t matter but TRUST ME, it does. The fact that I’ve already had to go back and check something two pages into the script is a tell-tale sign that I’m in for a bumpy ride.

On the second page, we use “anyone” instead of “any one.” Quickly after, a young reporter asks: “Jefferson was a high ranking member of your political organization, how do respond to the reports that he is requesting you attend the execution?” Not only is there a missing “you” in there but the comma after “organization” should be a period. An isolated mistake every 30 pages can be overlooked. It’s when mistakes compound that I get worried.

We then shift out of the office and meet correctional officer Melvin Delray. As he’s driving, he’s drinking from a flask. This was the first good moment in the screenplay. That’s an action that tells me immediately who this character is. This is someone in an authoritative position who’s drinking on the job. I like the irony. I like the complex character.

Unfortunately, I had no idea how Melvin was affiliated with any of this and where he was driving his car. We get a really confusing scene where he and his partner hear a bunch of sirens and then simply crash into a pole. I know he’s drinking but if you’re a professional driver, is it that hard to pull off to the side of the road? He’s then attacked by the giant mob right in front of the courthouse, and in the middle of this terrifying situation, we simply CUT to the jailhouse. Wait a minute. What just happened?? Did they get hurt? Did the crowd break in??

It was only afterwards that I figured out they were going to pick up Jefferson and it all went wrong. However, it looks like Jefferson was still transferred to prison. But how if these guys didn’t do it? I’m not sure since we cut away from that mob scene.

A lot of this confusion could’ve been avoided by Melvin making a call a block away from the courthouse and saying something like, “Pickup for Jefferson a block away.” But that still doesn’t explain to me who the police cruiser and ambulance were. Were they just a random police cruiser and ambulance speeding by? That’s kind of coincidental. With this huge mob scene, I’d think that if anything was speeding anywhere, it would be to here.

We then get back to the correctional facility and proceed to meet a dozen correctional officers within two pages. Names were coming at us faster than Trajent Future insults. This is almost always a bad sign. Professionals know that a reader only has so much space in their brain to remember people. On top of that, they know to never throw a ton of characters at a reader all at once because they’ll be lucky if the reader remembers 25% of them. Indeed, I’d forgotten over half these names less than a page after I’d read them.

In addition, the script doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anymore. We’re stuck in this correctional facility with a bunch of people talking. There is only so much time in your first act. Every scene needs to be pushing the story forward. You don’t have time to dwell on insignificant people and insignificant moments. And unfortunately, that’s what I’m seeing here. We’re just stuck in this place trying to remember people, trying to figure out who’s who, trying to figure out why we’re here.

These first 10 pages suffer from the same thing a lot of scripts suffer from – a lack of clarity. It feels like David understands what he’s trying to do, but he doesn’t understand what he needs to put on the page so that we understand it as well. David gives us clues and generalizations and pieces of what we need to know, but not enough for us to breeze through the read with no questions asked. These pages need to be cleaned up, streamlined, and clarified. Currently, it’s too much of a jumble.

WOULD I KEEP READING? – Unfortunately, no. Too many characters. Too confusing. Too many grammar and punctuation mishaps.

Link: The Oswald Solution (first 10 Pages)

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

What I learned: Clarity is such an issue for new screenwriters because they’re simply unaware of the fact that the reader isn’t in their head with them. They just assume that because it’s clear to them, it will be clear to everybody else. For that reason, it’s a good idea to take a chunk of your screenplay, say 10 pages like this, then give them to a friend and ask, “Is this clear?” “Do you understand everything that’s going on here?” “Did you have to reread anything to get it?” What you’ll find is that you actually have to give the reader more information than you think you have to. Now it’s a balancing act because you don’t want to burden your script with too much explanation. But you want to make sure that every key moment is dead clear on the page, or else you’ll lose your reader.

 Ahhhhhh!  I’m so excited!  The 2011 Black List is here (I have no idea what’s going on with their website by the way)!  And I don’t have time to snark today.  So many interesting loglines!  People keep e-mailing to ask me for links.  I have some of these but not nearly all of them.  If you have any of the scripts, agents, managers, writers, please send!  I want to start reading them all right now!  So happy to see Sarah Conradt (script about the daughter and step mother trapped in the mountains) make the list. I think all of your love helped out.  They even used the logline in my review. Oh, and what’s with the huge voting totals this year??  Imitation Game with 133 votes??!!  I think the last couple of years it was like 45 votes for the winner.  More people voting?  So much mystery here.  Ahhhhhhhhhhh!

133
THE IMITATION GAME by Graham Moore
The story of British WWII cryptographer Alan Turing, who cracked the German Enigma code and later poisoned himself after being criminally pros¬ecuted for being a homosexual..
AGENCY:  CAA
AGENT: JP Evans, Jacqueline Sacerio
MANAGEMENT:  The Safran Company
MANAGER:  Tom Drumm
FINANCIER:  Warner Brothers
PRODUCER: Ido Ostrowsky, Nora Grossman

84
WHEN THE STREET LIGHTS GO ON by Chris Hutton, Eddie O’Keefe
In the early 1980s, a town suffers through the aftermath of a brutal murder of a high school girl and a teacher.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Simon Faber, Sarah Self
MANAGEMENT: Tariq Merhab Management
MANAGER: Tariq Merhab
PRODUCER: Imagine Entertainment

59
CHEWIE by Evan Susser, Van Robichaux
A satirical behind the scenes look at the making of Star Wars through the eyes of Peter Mayhew who played Chewbacca.
AGENCY:  WME
AGENT: Mike Esola
MANAGEMENT: Industry Entertainment
MANAGER: Jess Rosenthal

53
THE OUTSIDER by Andrew Baldwin
In post World War II Japan, an American former prisoner-of-war rises in the yakuza.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Jay Baker, John Garvey
MANAGEMENT: Anonymous Content
MANAGER: Bard Dorros, David Kanter
FINANCIER: Warner Brothers
PRODUCER: Linson Entertainment

43
FATHER DAUGHTER TIME: A TALE OF ARMED ROBBERY AND ESKIMO KISSES by Matthew Aldrich
A man goes on a three state crime spree with an
accomplice, his eleven year old daughter.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: John Garvey, Stuart Manashil
MANAGEMENT: Silent R Management
MANAGER: Jewerl Ross
FINANCIER: Warner Brothers
PRODUCER: Pearl Street Productions

33
IN THE EVENT OF A MOON DISASTER by Mike Jones
An alternate telling of the historic APOLLO 11 mission to land on the moon that examines what might have happened if the astronauts had crash landed there.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: David Kopple, JP Evans, Matt Rosen
MANAGEMENT: The Gotham Group
MANAGER: Lindsay Williams
PRODUCER: FilmNation

30
MAGGIE by John Scott 3
As a “walking dead” virus spreads across the country, a farm family helps their eldest daughter come to terms with her infection as she slowly becomes a flesh-eating zombie.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Billy Hawkins, Dan Rabinow
MANAGEMENT: Sly Predator
MANAGER: Trevor Kaufman
FINANCIER: Pierre-Ange Le Pogam
PRODUCER: Pierre-Ange Le Pogam, Trevor Kaufman, Matthew Baer

30
THE CURRENT WAR by Michael Mitnick
Based on the true story of the race between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse to develop a practical system of electricity and sell their respective inventions to the country and the world.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Simon Faber
MANAGEMENT: Fourth Floor Productions
MANAGER: Jeff Silver

28
THE END by Aron Eli Coleite
Four people – a veteran broadcaster in London, a sixteen year old girl and her boyfriend 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.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Matt Rosen, Martin Spencer
FINANCIER: Warner Brothers

27
BEYOND THE PALE by Chad Feehan
Teenage siblings suspect they’ve been ripped off by the town undertaker, but what they discover is much more sinister than either imagined.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Matt Rosen, Jacqueline Sacerio
MANAGEMENT: Management 360
MANAGER: Guymon Casady, Mary Lee
FINANCIER: Vendome Pictures
PRODUCER: The Fort

27
EZEKIEL MOSS by Keith Bunin
A mysterious stranger who possibly has the power to channel the souls of the dead changes the lives of everyone in a small Nebraska town, especially a young widow and her 11-year-old son.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Rowena Arguelles
MANAGEMENT: Kaplan/Perrone
MANAGER: Alex Lerner, Sean Perrone
PRODUCER: A Likely Story, Mandalay Pictures

24
GRACE OF MONACO by Arash Amel
Grace Kelly, age 33 and having given up her acting career to focus on being a full time princess, uses her political maneuvering behind the scenes to save Monaco while French Leader Charles de Gaulle and Monaco’s Prince Rainier III are at odds over the princi¬pality’s standing as a tax haven.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Rich Green, Matt Rosen
FINANCIER: Pierre-Ange Le Pogam
PRODUCER: Pierre-Ange Le Pogam

24
HE’S FUCKIN’ PERFECT by Lauryn Kahn
A social media savvy girl who is pessimistic about love finds the perfect guy and decides to use her internet research skills to turn herself into his perfect match.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Cliff Roberts
FINANCIER: Fox 2000
PRODUCER: Gary Sanchez

23
BETHLEHEM by Larry Brenner
A group of people struggling to survive a zombie apocalypse make an alliance with a vampire, trading themselves as food in exchange for protection since zombies don’t eat vampire.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Martin Spencer, Jacqueline Sacerio
MANAGEMENT: Magnet Management
MANAGER: Mitch Solomon
PRODUCER: Roth Films

20
THE THREE MISFORTUNES OF GEPPETTO: by Michael Vukadinovich
A prequel to the story of Pinocchio in which
Geppetto endures a life of misfortune, war, and ad¬venture, all to be with Julia Moon, his true love.
AGENCY: ICM
AGENT: Ava Jamshidi
FINANCIER: Fox
PRODUCER: 21 Laps Entertainment

20
POWELL by Ed Whitworth
Based on the true story of Colin Powell questioning the Bush administration leading up to his United Nations presentation where he made the case for going to war with Iraq.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: David Karp, Cliff Roberts, Dan Cohan
MANAGEMENT: Circle of Confusion
MANAGER: Ashley Berns
PRODUCER: Spirit Dance Entertainment

19
THE KNOLL: by Christopher Cantwell, Christopher Rogers
A rookie cop and his potential flame witness JFK gunned down from the grassy knoll on November 22, 1963. Within hours, they’re on the run from the murderers who desperately need them silenced.
AGENCY: ICM
AGENT: Aaron Hart
MANAGEMENT: Management 360
MANAGER: Jennifer Graham, Chris Huvane
PRODUCER: Management 360

17
HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY: by Ed Solomon
A child prodigy tries to take control of his life away from his demanding parents.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Jay Baker, Todd Feldman, David O’Connor
FINANCIER: Sony
PRODUCER: Escape Artists

DESPERATE HOURS by E Nicholas Mariani
A small town crippled by WWI and the Spanish flu finds itself facing major moral questions and a brutal invading force when a young girl shows up on a rancher’s doorstep covered in blood.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Charles Ferraro, Jenny Maryasis
MANAGEMENT: Circle of Confusion
MANAGER: Britton Rizzio
FINANCIER: GK Films
PRODUCER: Infinitum Nihil

A MANY SPLINTERED THING by Chris Shafer, Paul Vicknair
When a charming heartbreaker finally meets a girl he can’t have, he discovers the true meaning of love by living out other people’s love stories and writing his own.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Jon Huddle, Jason Burns, Max Michael
MANAGEMENT: Brillstein Entertainment Partners
MANAGER: Missy Malkin
PRODUCER: Wonderland Sound and Vision

FLARSKY by Daniel Sterling
A political journalist courts his old babysitter, who is now the United States secretary of state.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Julien Thuan
PRODUCER: Point Grey Pictures

BLOOD MOUNTAIN by Jonathan Stokes After his team is ambushed and killed in Pakistan, a young army ranger must escort the world’s most wanted terrorist over dangerous terrain in order to bring him to justice. While being hunted by both of their enemies, they must find a way to work together in order to survive.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Ramses Ishak, Michael Sheresky, Geoff Morley
MANAGEMENT: Energy Entertainment
MANAGER: Brooklyn Weaver

BASTARDS by Justin Malen
Two brothers, raised to believe their biological father died, find out their mother slept with many powerful and famous men in the 1970s, and the siblings hit the road to find their real father.
AGENCY: Verve
AGENT: Bill Weinstein, Rob Herting
MANAGEMENT: H2F
MANAGER: Chris Fenton
FINANCIER: Paramount
PRODUCER: The Montecito Picture Company

CRAZY FOR THE STORM by Will Fetters The true story of Norman Ollestad’s relationship with his father, who thrust the boy into the world of extreme surfing and competitive downhill skiing at the age of three. But it was that experience that allowed an 11-year old Norman to survive a plane crash amidst a blizzard in the San Gabriel mountains.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Elia Infascelli-Smith
MANAGEMENT: 3 Arts Entertainment
MANAGER: Oliver Obst
FINANCIER: Warner Brothers
PRODUCER: Billy Gerber

16
THE SLACKFI PROJECT by Howard Overman
A hapless and broken hearted barista is visited by two bad-ass soldiers from the future who tell him mankind is doomed, and he alone can save them.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Julien Thuan
FINANCIER: Sony
PRODUCER: Matt Tolmach Productions

14
THE MUSEUM OF BROKEN RELATIONSHIPS by Natalie Krinsky
Lucy, a twenty-eight year old junior curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, is sleeping with her boss. When he dumps her she begins a collection of “break up items” and starts a blog which goes viral.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Jessica Matthews
MANAGEMENT: The Gotham Group
MANAGER: Jim Garavente, Jeremy Bell

ST VINCENT DE VAN NUYS by Ted Melfi
When a twelve year old boy in need of a babysitter moves in next door to a misanthropic aging retiree whose life mainly consists of gambling, hookers, and drinking, the elder becomes an unlikely mentor to the boy.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Ramses Ishak, Michael Sheresky
MANAGEMENT: Infinity Management International
MANAGER: Jon Karas
FINANCIER: Fox
PRODUCER: Chernin Entertainment, Crescendo Productions

DJANGO UNCHAINED by Quentin Tarantino
A freed slave named Django is trained as a bounty hunter by a German dentist named Schultz, and the two men set out to find Django’s enslaved wife.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Mike Simpson
FINANCIER: The Weinstein Company, Sony
PRODUCER: Double Feature Films, The Weinstein Company

13
THE ACCOUNTANT by Bill Dubuque
The Treasury Department pursues a brilliant, autistic accountant who doubles as an assassin and “problem-solves” with precision in more ways than one.
AGENCY: Paradigm
AGENT: Trevor Astbury
MANAGEMENT: Zero Gravity Management
MANAGER: Eric Williams
PRODUCER: Silverwood Films

SAVING MR. BANKS by Kelly Marcel
The story of how Walt Disney got the rights for Mary Poppins.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Phil Raskind, David Karp
PRODUCER: Ruby Films

12
BRIDGES ON THE FORT POINT CHANNEL by Chuck Maclean
An Irish family in the 1970s, dealing with the loss of their father and the busing of black kids into white neighbor-hoods, decides to blow up all the bridges in Boston.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Billy Hawkins
MANAGEMENT: Oasis Media Group
MANAGER: Allison Doyle, Ben Rowe

THE BIG STONE GRID by Craig Zahler
A cop is pulled into an underworld organization that brutally murders people to extort money out of others.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Julien Thuan, Emerson Davis
MANAGEMENT: Caliber Media
MANAGER: Dallas Sonnier
FINANCIER: Sony
PRODUCER: Michael De Luca Productions

CITIES OF REFUGE by Brandon Willer
A former FBI psychologist is called in to investigate when a young girl goes missing after the apparent murder of her father and brother by two strangers in a small Oklahoma town.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Phil D’amecourt, Jeff Gorin
MANAGEMENT: Benderspink
MANAGER: Jake Weiner
PRODUCER: Tower Hill, Benderspink, Charlize Theron

GOOD KIDS by Chris McCoy
Four overachieving high school students in Cape Cod reinvent themselves during the summer after graduation.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Simon Faber, Jeff Gorin, Sharon Jackson
MANAGEMENT: The Gotham Group
MANAGER: Shawn Simon
PRODUCER: Depth of Field

11
LEAVING PETE by Ali Waller, Morgan Murphy
A recently divorced author is stunned when his ex writes a popular book about their breakup, and he has to keep that fact secret from his new girlfriend, who works for the book’s publisher.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Bill Zotti, Andy Elkins

HIDDEN by Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer
An elevated horror-thriller about a family hiding in a bomb shelter after escaping a mysterious outbreak.
AGENCY: Paradigm
AGENT: Chris Smith
MANAGEMENT: MXN
MANAGER: Mason Novick
FINANCIER: Warner Brothers
PRODUCER: Mason Novick, Roy Lee, Lawrence Grey

DIRTY GRANDPA by John Phillips
A young groom engaged to a demanding woman is forced to spend the week before his wedding with his half-blind, half-crazy, and wholly horny grandfather. Through this wild journey, his grandfather shows him how to take life by the balls and lead with his heart.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Jon Huddle, Steven Fisher
FINANCIER: Universal
PRODUCER: Josephson Entertainment

GRIM NIGHT by Allen Bey, Brandon Bestenheider
A family has to defend themselves from the Grims, strange creatures who attack Earth and kill thousands one night every year.
AGENCY: Verve
AGENT: Bryan Besser
FINANCIER: Universal
PRODUCER: Marc Platt Productions, Unbroken Pictures

10
WATCH ROGER DO HIS THING by Michael Starrbury
A retired hitman gets roped back into his old trade in order to save his friend’s life and quickly finds himself caught in a struggle trying to finish the job, and get his family out of Chicago alive at the same time.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Bill Zotti, Dan Rabinow
MANAGEMENT: Caliber Media
MANAGER: Dallas Sonnier, Julian Rosenberg
PRODUCER: Tripp Vinson, One Race Films

THE FLAMINGO THIEF by Mike Lesieur
Grief stricken over his wife leaving him, a man finds solace in an odd activity…swiping figurines of flamingos.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Rich Green, Adam Kanter
MANAGEMENT: Kaplan/Perrone
MANAGER: Sean Perrone
PRODUCER: Kaplan/Perrone, Red Hour

TWO NIGHT STAND by Mark Hammer
After an extremely regrettable one night stand, two strangers wake up to find themselves snowed in after sleeping through a blizzard that put all of Manhattan on ice. They’re now trapped together in a tiny apartment, forced to get to know each other way more than any one night stand should.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Carolyn Sivitz
MANAGEMENT: The Safran Company
MANAGER: Tom Drumm

SEX TAPE by Kate Angelo
When a married couple make a sex tape to spice up their relationship, it disappears, and they are frantic to get it back.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Jason Burns
FINANCIER: Sony
PRODUCER: Escape Artists

THE GUN EATERS by Alex Paraskevas, Jordan Goldberg
Four hardened New York detectives race to apprehend a relentless spree-killer who’s executing victims from Queens to Southampton in the span of a single day.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Rebecca Ewing, Keya Khayatian
MANAGEMENT: Oasis Media Group
MANAGER: Ben Rowe
PRODUCER: Oasis Media Group

LITTLE WHITE CORVETTE by Michael Diliberti
A down and out brother and sister go to Miami to sell a duffel bag of cocaine that they found in the trunk of a corvette left them by their dead father.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Phil Raskind, Simon Faber
MANAGEMENT: New School Media
MANAGER: Brian Levy
PRODUCER: Scott Aversano Productions

9
JANE GOT A GUN by Brian Duffield
After her outlaw husband returns home shot with eight bullets and barely alive, Jane reluctantly reaches out to an ex-lover who she hasn’t seen in over ten years to help her defend her farm when the time comes that her husband’s gang eventually tracks him down to finish the job.
AGENCY: Gersh
AGENT: Devra Lieb, Bob Hohman, Bayard Maybank
MANAGEMENT: Circle of Confusion
MANAGER: Zach Cox, Noah Rosen

THE LAST WITNESS by Stefan Jaworski
An FBI Agent interrogates an amnesiac, sole survivor of a Boston bombing in order to prevent future terrorist attacks.
AGENCY: Paradigm
AGENT: Trevor Astbury, Valarie Phillips, Ida Ziniti
FINANCIER: Fox
PRODUCER: Davis Entertainment

MURDERS & ACQUISITIONS by Jonathan Stokes
The world of high-stakes finance collides with that of high-priced hitmen when an ousted CEO decides to hire an assassin to kill the corporate raider who stole his company.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Ramses Ishak, Michael Sheresky, Geoff Morley
MANAGEMENT: Energy Entertainment
MANAGER: Brooklyn Weaver
FINANCIER: Warner Brothers
PRODUCER: KatzSmith Productions

FLASHBACK by Will Honley
A former NASA pilot with amnesia — also the first person to travel the speed of light — realizes he has the ability to travel back in time and along the way rediscovers his love for his wife.
AGENCY: Verve
AGENT: Adam Levine
MANAGEMENT: Nuclear Entertainment
MANAGER: Nick Fariabi, Jesse Silver

THE LAST DROP by Brandon Murphy, Phil Murphy
A fully functioning alcoholic meets the girl of his dreams and soon discovers that there’s a lot more at stake than love if he doesn’t clean up his act.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Rich Cook
MANAGEMENT: Mosaic
MANAGER: Langley Perer
FINANCIER: Mandate Pictures
PRODUCER: Greg Shapiro

FRIEND OF BILL by Harper Dill
After a humiliating episode in New York, a young woman returns to her hometown and tries to deal with her alcoholism.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Sarah Self, Jeff Gorin, Sharon Jackson
MANAGER: Mike Dill
PRODUCER: Marc Platt Productions, Neda Armian

8
DEAD OF WINTER by Sarah Conradt
A teenage girl heads to a remote cabin in the moun¬tains with her father and new stepmother – an expe¬rience the father hopes will bond the two ladies. But when a mysterious wounded Park Ranger shows up, family bonding will be the least of their concerns.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Jacqueline Sacerio
MANAGEMENT: Hopscotch Pictures
MANAGER: Sukee Chew
FINANCIER: Lionsgate (distrib), Wind Dancer (financing)
PRODUCER: Sherryl Clark, Hopscotch Pictures

ON A CLEAR DAY by Ryan Engle
When a powerful and mysterious force invades an American city, a young father must traverse the battle-torn city in an effort to save his wounded wife and rescue their stranded children. In the process, our hero becomes the target of an enemy who will stop at nothing to kill him.
AGENCY: Original Artists
AGENT: Chris Sablan, Matt Leipzig
MANAGEMENT: Mosaic
MANAGER: Michael Lasker, Langley Perer
PRODUCER: Ombra Films

HOME BY CHRISTMAS – BOB HOPE IN KOREA by Ben Schwartz
Young Larry Gelbart goes on tour with his idol Bob Hope in the middle of the Korean War and learns the true price of patriotism.
AGENCY: The Nethercott Agency
AGENT: Gayla Nethercott
PRODUCER: Jon Shestack Productions, Pink Slip Productions

THE PRETTY ONE by Jenee LaMarque
When a woman’s identical “prettier” twin sister dies, the woman assumes her sister’s identity, moving into her apartment and the big city.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Carolyn Sivitz
MANAGEMENT: Management 360
MANAGER: Mary Lee, Daniel Rappaport
PRODUCER: RCR Pictures, Steven J Berger

BAD WORDS by Andrew Dodge
The bastard child of the organizer of the national spelling bee gets his revenge by finding a loophole and attempting to win the bee as an adult, only to find friendship in a young Indian contestant.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Carolyn Sivitz
MANAGEMENT: Fourth Floor Productions
MANAGER: Jeff Silver
FINANCIER: Darko
PRODUCER: MXN

JURASSIC PARK by Imran Zaidi
A high school couple and two of their friends ditch school to catch a special preview screening of JURASSIC PARK.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Jason Burns, Jenny Maryasis
MANAGEMENT: Management 360
MANAGER: Darin Friedman

GASLIGHT by Ian Fried
Secretly imprisoned in a London insane asylum, the infamous Jack the Ripper helps Scotland Yard investigators solve a series of grisly murders whose victims all share one thing in common: dual puncture wounds to the neck.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Dan Cohan, Mike Esola
MANAGEMENT: Prolific
MANAGER: Will Rowbotham

7
SUBJECT ZERO by Dave Cohen
A Frankenstein-like tale of a scientist who develops a powerful new drug that brings his son back to life after he dies in a terrible car accident. Unfortunately, the desperate experiment of a loving father leads to the creation of a flesh-eating zombie epidemic with horrific consequences.
AGENCY: ICM
AGENT: Kathleen Remington, Emile Gladstone
MANAGEMENT: Generate
MANAGER: Jeremy Platt

THE HITMAN’S BODYGUARD by Tom O’Connor
The world’s best bodyguard must protect his arch nemesis, the world’s top assassin…so he can testify against a brutal dictator and save his wife.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Charles Ferraro, Barbara Dreyfus, Emerson Davis
MANAGEMENT: Industry Entertainment
MANAGER: Andrew Deane, Jess Rosenthal
PRODUCER: Skydance Productions

CRISTO by Ian Shorr
A man is unlawfully sentenced to an infamous prison and escapes, then transforms himself into the mysterious Cristo and systematically destroys the men who manipulated and enslaved him.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Charles Ferraro, Jason Burns
MANAGEMENT: Mosaic
MANAGER: Langley Perer
FINANCIER: Warner Brothers
PRODUCER: Bellevue Productions, Langley Park Pictures

UNTITLED HLAVIN HEIST by John Hlavin
An American thief living in Paris is coerced into pulling off a complex heist in order to save his kidnapped wife.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Jason Burns
FINANCIER: DreamWorks
PRODUCER: Film Rites

LINE OF SIGHT by F Scott Frazier
After a military coup takes out the executive branch of government, the country’s survival depends on a Navy Seal sniper extraction team getting the Speaker of the House from Washington DC to New York.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Dan Cohan, Mike Esola
MANAGEMENT: H2F
MANAGER: Chris Fenton, Chris Cowles
FINANCIER: Warner Brothers
PRODUCER: Silver Pictures

PINOCCHIO by Bryan Fuller
A wooden puppet, Pinocchio, dreams of becoming a real boy.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Phil D’amecourt
FINANCIER: Warner Brothers
PRODUCER: Dan Jinks Company

THE WEDDING by Andrew Goldberg
A group of couples deal with their respective issues as they attend a wedding.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Rich Cook
MANAGEMENT: Underground Films and Management
MANAGER: Josh Turner Maguire
FINANCIER: CBS Films

77 by David Matthews
Two stories from 1974 are linked together – the unsolved murder of an LAPD officer and the nationally televised shootout in South Central Los Angeles between the Symbionese Liberation Army and the LAPD where 50,000 rounds of gunfire was exchanged. The events will be seen through the eyes of a pair of police partners, one black and one white.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Roger Green, Elia Infascelli-Smith
MANAGEMENT: The Schiff Company
MANAGER: Nicole Romano
PRODUCER: Wolf Films

6
GUYS NIGHT by Christopher Baldi
Sick of brunches, bosses, and light beer, four co-workers set out on the mother of all guys nights in an attempt to rediscover their manhood.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Bill Zotti
MANAGEMENT: New Wave
MANAGER: Mike Goldberg, Josh Adler
FINANCIER: Millenium Films
PRODUCER: Jim Valdez, Matt Bass

SELF/LESS by Alex Pastor, David Pastor
An extremely wealthy elderly man dying from cancer undergoes a radical medical procedure that transfers his consciousness to the body of a healthy young man but everything may not be as good as it seems when he starts to uncover the mystery of the body’s origins and the secret organization that will kill to keep its secrets.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Stuart Manashil, John Garvey
MANAGEMENT: Kaplan/Perrone
MANAGER: Alex Lerner
FINANCIER: FilmDistrict (distrib), Endgame Entertainment (financing)
PRODUCER: Ram Bergman

HYPERDRIVE by Alex Ankeles, Morgan Jurgenson
When a tough cop recruits a geeky sci-fi author to help him track down a mysterious murder witness, they find themselves in the middle of a space opera playing out here on Earth.
AGENCY: CAA/APA
AGENT: Bill Zotti (Ankeles), Ryan Saul (Jurgenson)
MANAGEMENT: Kaplan/Perrone (Ankeles)
MANAGER: Aaron Kaplan (Ankeles), Jonathan Hung (Jurgenson)
FINANCIER: Paramount
PRODUCER: Disruption Entertainment

BEFORE I FALL by Maria Maggenti
When a popular teen girl is killed in a car crash, she relives the critical day seven times and makes changes in an attempt to affect the outcome; in the process, she herself changes as she tries to make up for previous heartless, self-absorbed behavior and gains a better understanding of herself and others. As she evolves and makes the connections necessary to save a bullied, depressed girl’s life, she comes to accept her own fate.
AGENCY: Paradigm
AGENT: David Boxerbaum
MANAGEMENT: Madhouse Entertainment
MANAGER: Robyn Meisinger
FINANCIER: Fox 2000
PRODUCER: Jon Shestack Productions

BREYTON AVE by J Daniel Shaffer
A group of teens living without adults and under their own social order in a small fenced-in neighborhood are forced to face what they fear is the inevitable physical danger beyond the fence.
AGENCY: Verve
AGENT: Bryan Besser, Rob Herting
MANAGEMENT: Management 360
MANAGER: Mary Lee, Jill McElroy
PRODUCER: Unbroken Films

EL FUEGO CALIENTE by Ben Schwartz
A remake of SOAPDISH, a desperate telenovela star dreaming of Hollywood stardom has her life implode, making her real life crazier than the insane show she made famous.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Rich Cook
MANAGEMENT: Tom Sawyer Entertainment
MANAGER: Jesse Hara, Rachel Miller
FINANCIER: Paramount
PRODUCER: Reiner-Greisman

THE DUFF by Josh Cagan
Adapted from Kody Keplinger’s novel THE DUFF, the travails of a seventeen year old girl who believes she is the “designated ugly fat friend.”
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Rich Cook
MANAGEMENT: H2F
MANAGER: Chris Fenton
PRODUCER: Wonderland Sound and Vision

UNTITLED ARIZONA PROJECT by Luke Del Tredici
A satirically dark comedy about a homicidal foreclosure victim kidnapping a real estate agent and planning to kill her in the housing development where she finagled money from customers like him.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Roger Green
MANAGEMENT: Mosaic
MANAGER: Christie Smith
PRODUCER: Rough House Pictures

For those unaware, this week is First Ten Pages Week.  I’ll be posting reviews of the first ten pages from amateur scripts whose loglines won a Logline Contest.  For more info, check out the original loglines here and the Winners Post here.  You can also download the first ten pages of all five winners here. 

Genre: Comedy-Drama
Winning Logline: A businessman begins seeing Post-It Notes that give him directions on how to improve his life.
About: Welcome to the first annual “First Ten Pages Week.” What I did was have readers send in loglines then vote on their favorites. The top five loglines, then, would get their first 10 pages read. With any of this week’s reviews, if the comments are positive enough, I’ll review them in full on an Amateur Friday. But the reason I’m really excited about this week is because I get to do something I rarely get to do in reviews – and that’s analyze SPECIFICS. So let’s get started with the number one vote-getter, Stationary.
Writer: Daley Nixon

One of the things you learn when you comb through tons of loglines and read tons of scripts is that the more vague a logline is, the shakier the script tends to be. If you don’t lay out a clear goal and a clear line of conflict in the log, there’s a good chance you don’t know to do so in a script either.

That was my big worry here. It’s a neat concept. But where’s the goal? Is it to improve his life? That’s pretty vague. And there doesn’t seem to be any clear conflict either. What gets in the way of these notes improving him? I’m not sure. So I’m a little afraid we might be heading into choppy waters here.

The first 10 pages of Stationary follow our hero, 20-something Noah Greenwood, going about his daily routine. Not surprisingly, his daily routine is pretty shitty. He lives by himself in a dirty apartment. He seems to be late to work every day. Simple activities like getting a coffee at Starbucks appear difficult for him. Nobody at work likes him. There’s a hot girl in his department who he has no chance of getting. And after the day is over, he goes home, goes to sleep, and starts the cycle all over again.

So, were these pages any good?

Unfortunately, those fears I had proved to be warranted. This is something all writers have to battle. The person reading your script is judging you every step of the way, EVEN BEFORE THEY’VE STARTED READING YOUR SCRIPT. They’re looking for signs of whether this will be a fun 90 minutes or a miserable 90 minutes. In this case, it’s looking closer to the latter. Let me explain why…

We start off with “20-something” Noah Greenwood. My reading experience has taught me that writers usually write main characters that are the same age as them. So now I’m thinking Daley is 24-25 years old. 24-25 is usually the age most screenwriters start writing screenplays. So I’m already thinking this is probably one of Daley’s early efforts, which means it’ll likely be laced with a lot of first-timer mistakes.

That assumption is proven correct less than 3 words later. Here’s Noha’s introduction: “NOAH GREENWOOD (mid 20’s) falls out bed.” It seems like we’re missing an “a” in the very second sentence of the screenplay. I don’t even know how to say this without getting angry. How do you expect anyone to take you seriously as a screenwriter if you forget a word in the second sentence of your screenplay? My experience has taught me that there is now no chance of this script being good. So I’m bummed. Because I was hoping for more.

This is followed by Noah throwing a tennis ball at the alarm clock to turn it off. This isn’t as bad as missing a word in the second sentence, but throwing something at the alarm clock to turn it off is an action I’ve seen way too many times before. You gotta do something different. Have him use something to fish the alarm clock over so he can turn it off. Anything but throwing a tennis ball at it.

Adding to the clichés, we have a mid-20s character waking up inside a dirty room. Again, I’m not freaking out about this choice, but how many times have we seen a mid-20s character waking up in a trashed room? We’re less than a page into this script and I’ve already encountered two big clichés.

On the plus side, I like the decision of the mom leaving an answering machine message saying they need to talk later. It’s always good to set up future scenes so the audience has something to anticipate. We may not have a goal for our character yet, but that’s tempered by the fact that we know he has a future meeting with his mother, who obviously has something important to talk to him about.

Unfortunately, the grammar and spelling mistakes keep coming in Stationary. Someone takes “a centuries” to order coffee. Then we have “abit” of a problem at the Starbucks (instead of “a bit”). Still, I did laugh when Starbucks ran out of coffee beans. That was funny.

On page 3 we have a couple more grammar mistakes as well as a misused comma (which should have been a period). After that we have a parenthetical that’s formatted so that it’s aligned with the dialogue. This may not seem like a big deal, but when I’ve already seen all these mistakes, it’s a killer, because it confirms the writer doesn’t have any interest in putting forth his best effort.

I could keep harping on these mistakes which continue to show up throughout the 10 pages but I’ll just jump to page 8. At this point, we’re on our second day, and we still seem to be hitting on the same things over and over again. Why do we need to see Noah sitting at the lunch table alone a second day in a row? We’ve already seen it once. We’ve also already seen him get looked over by the girl. Why include an additional scene that repeats that information? This is a common mistake made in amateur screenplays. The writer believes that they have to tell you something seven or eight times for you to get it, even though we got it the first time. Professional writers jump right into the story. They tell you what they need to tell you and then they move on.

It was around this time that I realized I didn’t even know what Noah looked like because he was never described. This is a huge deal. Is Noah fat? Ugly? Handsome but doesn’t know it? Does he wear cheap clothes? Does he simply have bad fashion sense? This movie is about a man who’s going to change his life and we don’t even know what needs changing because we don’t have an inkling of what he looks like! You have to convey to us who your main character is. A good description is the very first (and easiest!) step towards achieving that.

The good news for Daley is that I see these mistakes all the time in amateur screenplays. He is not alone. This is the way a lot of new writers write. They don’t have a lot of respect for their work. They don’t really care if things look good or read well. They figure that as long as they get some semblance of what they’re trying to say onto the page then they’ve done their job. Unfortunately, that’s not what the industry is looking for. The industry is looking for professionalism. They’re looking for writers willing to go the extra mile. Who try to make their characters and their storylines unique. Who make choices they haven’t seen before. Who take pride in their work. Who want to be looked at seriously. Don’t just make things “okay.” It’s your job to give us 100% of what you have, whatever “what you have” is at the moment. I feel like Daley’s given us about 30% of what he has. You can do better than this Daley. Get back in there and really push yourself this time. Good luck.

Link: Stationary (First Ten Pages)

Would I keep reading? – Not with this many mistakes. The writer doesn’t take enough pride in his work. Too much stuff is repeated, which implies the story will be slow and repetitive. There were some laughs, but not enough to overcome these problems.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me (the laughs barely kept this out of the gutter)
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I Learned: One of the biggest mistakes new writers make is setting the bar too low. The bar they use is movies like Transformers 2 or Vampires Suck. They say, “Well those scripts weren’t anything special. Therefore I don’t have to be special.” This is what I want you to do. Take that standard you believe is the standard Hollywood judges its scripts by? Then multiply it by 1000. That’s the real standard you’re being judged by. I’m not going to get into how a big studio film is able to get away with bad writing. You just have to trust me when I say you’re being judged on an infinitely higher level. So don’t submit anything where you haven’t given your absolute best!

Genre: Period/Noir
Premise: (from writer) In wartime LA, a lounge singer falls for the detective hired by a vigilante group to investigate her gangster boyfriend’s treasonous activities.
About: Fatal Woman won this year’s Zoetrope screenwriting contest. – Every Friday, I review a script from the readers of the site. If you’re interested in submitting 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.
Writer: Laura Kelber
Details: 106 pages (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 loved what Laura had to say in her query letter. Not only was her attitude great but she had an interesting story to tell. This is what she said: “When this won the grand prize of a major contest back in February, I thought I had it made. I thought, at the very least, I’d get a mid-level manager. But there was zero interest. Zip. Nada. I didn’t get so much as a “what else you got?” query. In fact, I got a helluva lot more response when one of my comedy scripts made the Nicholl Quarterfinals. OK, I know exactly what you’re gonna say: amateurs shouldn’t write period pieces. I know! I’ve written 17 screenplays now, including comedy, drama, and supernatural, dutifully submitting them to contests. But it was an effin’ period piece that won the grand prize. It’s a sad fact (or maybe it’s a good one), that contest winners don’t always tend to be commercial. After the disappointment of getting nowhere with this script, I’ve moved on to others. I like to write. So this one is more or less dead to me. Tear it to shreds!”

Well Laura, your wish is my command. :)

No, I’m not going to tear Fatal Woman to shreds. But I do think it has some significant problems. Having said that, I have a pretty good idea why it won. I talk to a lot of contests readers and I’ve held a couple of contest myself. There’s this wide-held belief that if you have a thousand screenplay submissions to anything, that at least one of them is going to be great. Not true unfortunately. You have to remember that like 80% of the scripts are from people who’ve never even read a screenwriting book before, which makes the pool of relevant scripts considerably smaller. And even then, as you all know by reading this site, it’s still incredibly hard to write something great. So what ends up happening is that it isn’t necessarily the best script that wins the contest, but the best writer. And I think that’s what happened here. The writing here is great. But the story itself is often muddled and confusing. Let’s take a look.

It’s Los Angeles circa 1942, the middle of the war, and Monique is a Veronica Lake-like lounge singer who’s nearing that age where people will start seeing her as a Ricki Lake-like lounge singer. In fact, her thuggish boyfriend who owns the nightclub, Flip Foster, is already moving on to the new hot younger version of her, creating all sorts of tension at work. Rrrreow!

One night after a set, Monique is approached by private detective Dan Armstrong, a handsome bloke (they used that word back then right?) who lost his leg in an accident and is therefore unable to fight for his country. Dan thinks that Flip is involved in some suspect illegal activity and wants to know if Monique will help him get to the bottom of it. Since Flip no longer wants to make sexy time with Monique, she decides, “Why not?”

Unfortunately, that’s where I started getting confused. A bunch of strange plot points are thrown at us one after another and we’re stuck trying to figure out what the actual story is. It starts when Flip takes Monique out on his ship and Dan sneaks onto it as well, only to get captured by Flip and questioned as to who he’s working for. In one of the more bizarre moments, they actually make him take a truth serum. I think that’s the official moment where I started pulling away from the script.

Eventually Flip, who I’d assumed was this terrifying dangerous crime lord, politely shuttles Dan back to shore and lets him go without a scratch. Since when are bad guys so nice? In the meantime, Monique finds out that Flip is using the roundup of Japanese Americans at the time (For those who don’t know, our racist 1942 government rounded up all the Japanese-Americans and put them in concentration camps on the off chance they were spies) to change their identity into Chinese-Americans, release them back into the general population, and make a nice chunk of change out of it.

At some point, Monique decides she’s in love with Dan and wants to run away from him, but when Flip hears about this, he’s furious and refuses to let her go. Because Flip is footing the bill for Monique’s ailing brother, she has no choice but to stay with him, and that means she’ll never get to be with the man she’s fallen in love with.

As she alludes to in her e-mail, Laura starts off with a concept that has such narrow audience appeal that the majority of people who hear the logline aren’t going to be interested in reading it. Literally the only way you can write one of these scripts and get others interested is if the script is absolutely flawless. That’s the only way. You get an L.A. Confidential, what, once every 20 years? That’s why I try and steer you guys away from this stuff because I don’t want to see you waste your time.

As for the script itself, I think it gets buried under too many plot threads and too many ideas. One of the ways I measure a script’s potential is I imagine somebody asking me what it’s about. If I have trouble with that explanation or the explanation itself doesn’t sound very exciting, there’s a good chance that the script is in trouble. If you asked me what Fatal Woman was about, I’m not sure how I would answer. I would say something like, “It’s sort of about a lounge singer in 1942 who falls for a private investigator. But it’s also about trafficking Japanese-Americans for money. Though not really because that plot doesn’t really play into the ending.” You get a semblance that there’s something there but it’s not concrete. It’s not clear or “hook-y” enough.

Let’s use that old trick of trying to find some irony in the premise and see if we can’t come up with something better. What if a guy who was trafficking Japanese-Americans during World War 2 ended up falling in love with one of them? That’s not great and I would brainstorm it extensively to find more conflict and higher stakes, but already I think it’s a more interesting story. I mean what does a lounge singer have to do with trafficking Japanese-Americans? There’s too big of a disconnect between the elements (stealing a phrase from yesterday’s logline article). This seems so much cleaner.

Now I’m not saying everything’s bad here. I thought Dan was a really interesting character. I like the idea of a man who desperately wants to fight for his country but can’t because he’s handicapped. I thought it was interesting seeing the shame and guilt he lived with every day. So I really felt that character was well developed.

And the writing itself, as advertised, was very good. I mean here’s Monique’s character introduction: “She’s talented and perky enough to please the audience, but would draw yawns from any passing talent agent.” I mean that told me everything I needed to know about the character in one line, which is the mark of a great screenwriter.

But this script suffers from too many problems, the biggest of which is that I’m not sure it knows what it’s about. There’s only a semi-commitment to the Japanese-American smuggling subplot, and that leaves the bulk of story to rest on the Dan/Flip/Monique love triangle, which I don’t think has the muscle to keep our interest. We’re also confused about what characters are doing and why they’re doing them half the time. I had no idea why Flip would just let Dan go. Why not kill him? I’m still not sure who was fighting at the end of the script. Was it Dan’s people versus Flip’s people? If not, who were these other guys? And what did any of it have to do with the Japanese-American smuggling plot? Why is it that that plot became a big deal in the middle of the second act and then simply vanished? And why have the climactic scene in the movie take place in a tiny office? Since I wasn’t clear about a lot of these things, Fatal Woman basically became a bunch of characters wandering around talking to each other. The goals weren’t clear. The stakes weren’t clear. So no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get into it.

My advice to Laura would be this: “You’re a really good writer. I think trying to fix this story is more trouble than it’s worth. Move on to the next script and kick ass with it.”

Script link: Fatal Woman

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

What I learned: One thing I’m sure people will bring up is the 5 to 6 line unfilmable asides Laura uses throughout the script, such as this one on page 38: “Wait a minute! What happened to that steamy lip-lock? Apparently, afterwards, they hopped into the cab and drove all the way back to Dan’s place. Obviously, they’ve had sex. It might have been a long night of Kama Sutra passion, or maybe Dan thinks a simple wham-bam routine’s all he needs to impress a dame. We’ll never know, because it’s the ‘40s and the Hays Code is in full swing. Why else would Dan use a word like “heckuva”?” For the most part, I found these asides charming and fun. But here’s my theory on this. Your primary goal as a screenwriter is to make somebody believe that your story is *real*. If you can convince somebody that a made-up string of sequences from inside your imagination REALLY HAPPENED, you have reached the mountaintop as a storyteller. That’s what we’re all trying to do. The second they’re aware they’re reading a script, you’ve lost that spell. You’ve brought them back to reality. So why put anything in a script that’s going to facilitate that? It’s the equivalent of walking up to them and saying “Hey, you know this is all fake right?” Ironically, the reason I didn’t mind the asides here was that I wasn’t really into the story to begin with, so they were a welcome distraction that made me smile. But had I been engulfed in Fatal Woman, I probably would have had a big issue with them. There are exceptions to this rule of course. For example, I don’t mind them much in goofy comedies when we know what we’re reading isn’t real anyways. But I do have problems with them in almost every other genre.

For those of you unfamiliar with the First Ten Pages Experiment, what I did was have long time Scriptshadow readers send in a logline for their screenplay. The top five loglines, voted on by those readers, would get the first 10 pages of those scripts reviewed on the site next week. Of those five, if any of them were well-liked enough (by you guys), I’d review them on a future Amateur Friday. Now in a last second surprise (hey, every contest has to have some drama right?), CLOTH removed themselves from the competition due to the production team deciding it’d be best to keep the project under wraps. I was kinda bummed cause I wanted to read the script but that just means one of YOUR scripts gets to take its place. If you’re interested in becoming a part of future private contests such as this one, e-mail Carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the subject line, “Include.” Here are the top 5!

WINNER!!!
STATIONARY (54 votes)
GENRE: Comedy-drama
LOGLINE: A businessman begins seeing Post-It Notes that give him directions on how to improve his life.

2nd PLACE
THE FOURTH HORSEMAN (35 votes)
GENRE: Action/Thriller
LOGLINE: Hired by Homeland Security to envision terrorist attack scenarios, a skillful ex-soldier turned novelist, must battle anarchists when they hijack his nightmare plot to destroy new York

3rd PLACE
THE OSWALD SOLUTION (21 votes)
GENRE: DRAMA
LOGLINE: When a prison guard falls in love with the wife of a death-row inmate, he’s forced to choose between his love for her or reveal the discovery of crucial evidence that will save her husband’s life.

4th PLACE
NICE GIRLS DON’T KILL (20 votes)
Genre: Action Comedy
Logline: When a meek and universally abused copy editor is mistaken for the professional killer she accidentally bumped off, she decides to take on this violent new identity until the killer turns out to be not so dead, and very pissed off.

5th PLACE
DEEP BURIAL (17 votes)
Genre: Thriller
Logline: Posted out to a remote nuclear waste dump site in the Australian Outback to secretly assess the mental state of the ex-addict Aboriginal worker who mans the plant, an anxious young female psychiatrist is forced into a fight for survival when they find a mysterious stranger stranded in the desert.

Since I know you guys just couldn’t survive without knowing who finished 6-10, the rest of the top 10 went like this: The Wreckage, The Lost Colony, Sagittarius and The Crab, The Wake, and then we had a three way tie between Plurally Inclined, The Accidental Lawyer, and Long Way To Tippery. I would be more than happy to read any of these for future Amateur Friday reviews so if any of you are interested in submitting, let me know.

Anyway, this little experiment took on a life of its own and I came to realize just how opinionated people were when it came to loglines. Particularly when their own logline was ignored in favor of someone else’s! But I think there’s a bigger lesson to be learned here. When you start looking through a lot of loglines you begin to see them through the eyes of an agent or a producer or a manager. You start to understand that this is the process by which you’re being judged. And if you come up with a concept that’s only “decent” or “pretty good,” you’re going to be out-shined by loglines that are of lot more exciting, even if your script itself is better. It helps you realize just how important concept is.

And really, it begs a bigger question, which is that, “Is it my logline that’s the problem or is it my idea that’s the problem?” And that’s one of the hardest questions to ask yourself as a writer. Because nobody likes to work on something for a year only to find out that nobody’s interested in reading it. Yet I see it happen all the time. I would go as far as to say it happens to 75 percent of the writers out there. This is why I tell you to test your logline BEFORE you write your script and not after because if you wait until after, you may find out that you’ve just wasted a year of your life.

So with that in mind, I want to look at the 9 loglines that got 3 or less votes and give you my opinion on why they didn’t garner more attention. The objective here is not to embarrass anyone. One of the problems with this business is that nobody tells you WHY they didn’t like something. How can you fix something or move on from something if no one’s explaining why it isn’t working? I want to explain – in my opinion – why these loglines aren’t working. Now some of you are probably asking, “Well if these loglines weren’t working, why did you pick them in the first place?” As I stated to the people submitting, I didn’t just include my favorite loglines. I included loglines from longtime readers who I felt had earned a chance, as well as top commenters whose scripts I was interested in reading. Anyway, let’s look at the logs…

GENRE: Action
TITLE: HELL AWAY FROM HOME
LOGLINE: An unhinged former DEA agent sneaks into Mexico (all the while being hunted by his ruthless ex partner) to get revenge on the Chief of Police/Narcotrafficker who captured and tortured him nine months earlier.
Patrick is one of the most knowledgeable commenters on the site. So why didn’t his logline attract more attention? My fear is that there isn’t anything that stands out or sounds original in the logline. DEA, Mexico, ex-partner, revenge, Chief Of Police. How many movies have you seen that have included this exact set of variables. A LOT. You gotta have that ONE thing that truly stands out about your logline or else you’re fighting an uphill battle.

GENRE: Sci-Fi/Action
TITLE: Foe
LOGLINE: In a near-future world shattered by an alien invasion, a lone Special Forces soldier stumbles on a group of military veterans holding their abandoned VA Hospital as the invaders lay siege.
I’m a big sci-fi fan so at first glance, I see this as something I’d want to read. But a closer look gives me pause. “Lone Special Forces solider” is a very generic sounding character. It seems like every character in an action movie is a lone special forces soldier. Then you have a bunch of military veterans trying to protect their hospital. So now I’m imagining a bunch of old guys fighting aliens. I suppose that might be cool but it almost seems like two different movies – aliens on the one side and military veterans on the other. I can see why this logline would confuse people.

GENRE: Science Fiction/Thriller
TITLE: SCINTILLATION
LOGLINE: A disturbed woman fleeing an abusive marriage finds work at an observatory in New Mexico where she discovers a relativistic attack is about to be launched against the Earth — and she’s the only one who can do anything about it.
One of the commonalities I see in non-hooky loglines is a disconnect between the elements. For example, here, we have a disturbed woman fleeing an abusive marriage. Then all of a sudden she’s the only one who can stop the world from being destroyed. What do those two things have to do with each other? Why do we need to know that she’s fleeing a marriage? I’m not saying that her failed marriage isn’t an important part of her character but we only have one sentence to convey what our movie is about. Why point out something that, relatively speaking, is so unimportant?

GENRE: Comedy
TITLE: Finger Lickin Code
LOGLINE: Once the two most senior members of a famous chicken organization are murdered by a one-legged man, a disturbed puzzle solving whiz finds himself with a possibly schizophrenic sidekick, 11 sealed cryptexes, and one secret recipe he must save.
I haven’t really figured this out yet so maybe somebody can help me, but there seems to be a real abrasiveness towards wacky comedy ideas. However, we know movies like this get made, so who are the people who like these ideas and where are they hiding? Keeping that in mind, this might be one of those loglines that suffers from information overload. It’s just a lot of stuff going on and you can’t really wrap your head around it all.

Genre: Drama, Crime, Sports
Title: Short of a Miracle
Logline: A basketball prodigy escapes the inner city to play collegiate basketball, but the actions of his father, a corrupt NYPD officer, threaten to derail his promising career.
I’ve had this conversation with the writer before (very cool and nice guy) and he seems to be aware of it even though he’s still pushing the script. People just don’t seem to be interested in fictional sports movies unless they’re comedies or boxing films. It’s as simple as that. I’m not saying this script can’t be great, but everybody in the business knows you can’t get these movies financed so they’re never going to read it. You can drive yourself insane trying to push this idea out there.

GENRE: Contemporary Noir Thriller
TITLE: ELLA CINDER
LOGLINE: When a sexy female private investigator in Los Angeles tracks down a femme fatale for a playboy from a famous family, she uncovers a deadly conspiracy to rob the family’s fortune that may be linked to her own mysterious childhood as an abused orphan.
There’s too much going on in this logline. By the time you get to the end of the logline you don’t even remember the beginning because there’s so much stuff in between. We have a female private investigator, a femme fatale, a playboy, a deadly conspiracy, the robbing of a family fortune, and a mysterious childhood as an abused orphan. Where is the person reading the logline supposed to begin? This logline needs to focus on the core concept of the story and strip everything else away.

GENRE: Horror
TITLE: Fetalgeist
LOGLINE: A pro-life student group finds itself trapped inside a long since abandoned yet very much haunted abortion clinic.
You know I actually thought this one would do better. It has some nice irony in it and a great spooky setting. But maybe the biggest lesson I learned from this process was to stay away from subject matter that divides people so much. That sounds contradictory even as I’m writing it because I’ve always learned that you SEEK OUT subject matter that causes conflict and brings out passion. But when you’re talking about abortion, you’re talking about something people just get really wound up about.

GENRE: Heist Movie
TITLE: The Inside Job
LOGLINE: To save a sick little girl, a master thief must team up with his doctor ex-girlfriend to steal stem cells from a vicious mobster who can’t know he’s had surgery.
I thought this would have potential but I think it runs into trouble in the second half. The second you use the word “mobster” in your logline, you’ve stepped into an arena of cliché that a lot of people dislike. That’s not to say to never put mobsters in your movie. But I find it’s a word that turns people off for some reason. Maybe others can chime in on this and let me know if they feel the opposite. But it’s the last part: “vicious mobster who can’t know he’s had surgery” that’s the real confusing part. The mobster can’t know he’s had his own surgery? If your logline is even a little confusing, you’re screwed. Because how can somebody expect you to write a clear story if you can’t even write a clear sentence? That’s why it’s so important to workshop your logline and get others opinions on it so you know that it works.

GENRE: Horror (Realism ala “Carrie”)
TITLE: Deafo
LOGLINE: In a town torn apart by enforced pit closures, a deaf teenage loner sets out on a dark journey of violent revenge against everyone who has ever wronged him
Again, look at the disconnect between the elements here. The first half of the logline is about a town torn apart by “Enforced pit closures (a clunky phrase that probably shouldn’t have been included). Then the second half is about a deaf teenage loner who goes out for revenge. What do enforced pit closures have to do with a deaf teenage loner? Guys, the elements in your logline (and story for that matter!) have to connect. They have to be cohesive. The Matrix isn’t about a circus trainer who learns that he’s living inside of a computer program. It’s about a *programmer* who learns that he’s living inside of a computer program.

Those are my thoughts on the loglines. But really, I’m just one opinion. Let’s go to you guys, the people who voted. Why did you pass up on these loglines? Try and be constructive and not just tear them to shreds. Remember, we’re trying to help each other here. Let’s learn what people dislike so we can all avoid these mistakes in the future.