Genre: Crime/Thriller
Premise: After being left for dead, a man plots his revenge against the Chicago mob family who killed his wife.
About: 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: Erik Fredsell
Details: 104 pages

I have a feeling that this script is going to generate some interesting discussion. This is what Erik, the writer, wrote in his query letter: “I’ve asked you to review this script before-about a year ago. I thought it was the most erudite piece of writing that has ever been produced in the history of screenplay writing…I was wrong. I was forced to go back and take a look at it because a producer contacted me about it. The screenplay was filled with superfluous scenes that ate up pages and pages. The dialogue was far too pretentious, and the narrative structure was pedestrian. I spent months redrafting the script. I’ve brought it down to 104 pages from 139.”

First of all, I want to applaud Erik for making these changes. This tends to be one of the more monumental steps amateur screenwriters make in their journey. We all start off believing our scripts are worthy of being 130, 140, and 150 pages. The second we realize that we don’t need all those extra pages, all those extra scenes, and all that extraneous dialogue, is the second we become better storytellers. The problem here is that, even at 104 pages, I’m still seeing a lot of those same problems. There are still extraneous scenes. There is still extraneous dialogue. And there are still traces of pretentiousness. So while I’m guessing this is way better than the previous draft, some pretty significant changes still need to be made.

I know this because, normally, it’s easy for me to summarize a story. But when I have to stop, think about how I’m going to convey things, stumble through the points I need to make, and am constantly trying to remember the plot, that’s an indication that the story was too confusing or too muddled. I’m still not exactly sure what happens in Manchester Black, but I’m going to give it my best shot.

Michael, our main character, is mistaken for somebody involved with the mob – I believe somebody who was supposed to deliver something called a “mandori box.” So the mob takes him and his wife, tortures them to find out where the box is, but since Michael doesn’t know what they’re talking about, they end up killing his wife and leaving him for dead.

We then follow Michael through four very torturous years where he rehabilitates his body, all in preparation to get his revenge on the people who did this. The thing is, we don’t go about this linearly. Nor do we always stay with our protagonist. In fact, the movie starts with us seeing our protagonist enact his revenge, and then we go back in time, bit by bit, to see why he enacted his revenge.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Erik is a huge Quentin Tarantino fan, and I have a strong feeling that he’s going to get bashed by the commenters for it. I mean we have influences from Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Kill Bill blanketing the script at almost every turn. You have to be careful when paying homage to icons, because if you do so too blatantly, you’re seen as a copycat, and people are just pissed that they have to trudge through a not-as-good version of a far better movie. That’s not to say this is straight Tarantino. I found this script to be darker and less forgiving than Tarantino’s work, sort of Tarantino by way of William Monahan. So Erik does have his own voice. But I’m not sure it shines bright enough to outweigh the clear influences in the screenplay.

Getting back on track, once Michael takes out some of the key men responsible for killing his wife, their mob boss, Vincenzo, orders some of his top hit men to take Michael out. We intermittently cut to these groups of hit men, sometimes on their way to kill Michael, and sometimes just hanging out shooting the shit. Eventually, they all fail, and Vincenzo will have to do the deed himself. Theoretically, this should be easy. He’s one of the top mob bosses is in the city. But Michael has something going for him that none of these men can touch – the desire to avenge his wife’s death.

I have so many things to say about this script, I don’t even know where to start. First of all, I already know what commenters are going to say. They’ll start with the script being overwritten. And they’re right. Here is one of the very first sentences in the screenplay: “Michael, draped in an exanimate black suit, inexorably walks past the eponymously embossed window, towards three thuggish men sitting at a table.” I’m not even sure what half of those words mean.

The reason overwriting is a problem is that it takes the reader’s focus off the screenplay and places it on the writing. Screenplays aren’t a writing contest. They’re a storytelling contest. Outside of Scriptshadow, these words will never be published anywhere. So it doesn’t matter if you’re a walking thesaurus. The goal of writing a story is to bring the reader into your world. If you try to be too flashy or too wordy, you’re constantly pushing the reader out of that world. You want to be visual with your writing, yes, but the second it looks like you’re trying too hard, you’re dead. And it feels like the writing is trying way too hard here.

Second is degree of difficulty. Ambition is good. Trying to do something different is good. But tackling a degree of difficulty higher than your ability level is suicide. We have two things here that make telling this story extremely difficult. The first is an endless character count. The more characters you have, the less time you have to develop your main characters, and the more likely you’re going to have a reader who’s confused as hell about who everybody is. I couldn’t remember half the people here, and even worse, I don’t think a quarter of them were necessary. We’d occasionally jump to characters who didn’t have anything to do with the story. They’d just talk. So that led to a lot of confusion.

The second problem is all the time jumping. Manipulating time is one of the coolest things film allows you to do. But conveying it on the page is way more difficult than conveying it onscreen, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re going to confuse the hell out of the reader. It took me about 40 pages, for example, to figure out what was going on. A big part of the problem was, I didn’t understand why we were telling this story out of order. I kept thinking to myself, would this lose anything if it were told linearly? It might be more predictable, but it’d certainly be less confusing. So the jumping around felt like a cheap manipulative trick just to make the story different. It’s a better idea to have your time jumping motivated in some way. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind is a perfect example. We jump around in time there in order to take advantage of the characters’ memory loss. Stories always work better when choices are motivated.

The thing is, I can understand a guy like Erik’s frustration. There is some serious talent on display here. I’m not an authority on mob flicks, but the dialogue here was pretty damn good. When these guys spoke, I felt like they were really those people – and I don’t often see that in screenplays. Also, he’s well read and intelligent. You can see that intelligence on every page. So here’s this guy, with all this talent, looking out there and seeing scripts like the dumbed down “Nonstop” sell, and wondering, how the hell are these guys making a living at this and I’m not??

Here’s the reason. Because the story has to come before everything. You have to display storytelling skills and not an ability to write random monologues, or crazy characters, or jump around in time a lot. I don’t care how well you describe that stuff, or how different you can be. If it’s not serving the story, if it’s not easy to follow, if it isn’t building the stakes, etc., etc., then it won’t matter. There are pieces of this story that are really good. There are scenes in this story that are really good. But on the whole, it’s a garbled mess. It’s too difficult to follow and has too many unnecessary tangents. Say what you will about Nonstop, but the storyline is always clear, the stakes are always clear, and you can see it as a movie. With Manchester Black, at least in its current form, it’s too hard to follow.

So how would I fix this screenplay? I’d start by cutting the character list by half. It would force you to only use the characters you absolutely needed to tell the story. The next thing I would do is cut out any scene with a monologue in it. I don’t remember a single monologue in this script that was necessary. I’d then focus on the story elements that have the most punch. For example, this mandori box sounds interesting. But it’s essentially treated like the suitcase in Pulp Fiction (another reference people are going to kill you for). Let’s make that box a bigger part of the story. Finally, continue to focus on the components that bring out the most emotion – avenging his wife’s death for example. You do that well here. So I’d continued to feature it in the next draft. Once you strip the movie down, and we don’t have to keep track of so many people, the time jumping should be easier to follow. I’d still like it to be motivated, but I could see it working a lot better if your script were streamlined.

And finally, don’t end your mob movie at a warehouse. That’s where every mob movie ends! :-)

Script link: Manchester Black

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

What I learned: I’m gonna say this again. A scene where all that’s happening is one person giving another person their theory on life is a scene of death. Here’s a monologue from one of the characters on page 49. It happens as two characters we don’t know very well are randomly driving their car somewhere: “You’re talking about evil like it has any inherit meaning beyond its limited definition. My view is that if God is truly omniscient, he can see things from all perspectives. He knows why I do what I do just as well I do. And what is evil but perspective. It isn’t tangible, and there’s always a reason behind it, even if it can’t be seen. Look at it with total honesty-this whole argument. How do we weigh a man’s actions? He provides for his family, gives to charities, volunteers, but one day he murders his wife. You don’t even need to examine his reasoning. Just look at it like this: He built up a lifetime of goodwill, and does one moment negate all he has done throughout his life and make him evil? Same thing goes for terrorists. They’re freedom fighters and liberators to many people. Serial killers-sufferers from severe psychosis. Child molesters, rapists-an outgrowth from years of sexual abuse. There is no evil my friend just perspective.” Well-written? Sure. Does the story lose anything if the scene is erased? No. And that’s the problem. If the scene can be erased and absolutely nothing is lost, you don’t need the scene. Does that mean you should never have a monologue in your screenplay? No. Of course not. But you have to find a way to weave them into the story – to make them matter. Now I didn’t love this scene in The Matrix, but it’s adequate enough to make my point. There’s a scene where Agent Smith has Morpheus chained up to a chair and is trying to get him to give him the codes to Zion. He goes on a rather long monologue about how humans are actually a virus. Let’s apply the same test here. Does the story lose anything if the scene is erased? Yes. One character is trying to obtain highly important information from another character before his friends come and save him. Drop the scene and the movie doesn’t make sense. So you can have monologues in your screenplay. They can even contain philosophical meanderings. But they have to be an essential part of the story to work.

Genre: Comedy?
Premise: A male stripper mentors a young impressionable kid, who ends up enjoying his new job a little too much.
About: This is the new exciting project from Steven Soderbergh, the man who’s retired more times than Brett Favre. It will star Channing Tatum (of course), Matthew McConaghy, and the new bad boy on Hollywood’s block, Alex Pettyfer.
Writer: Reid Carolin
Details: 114 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).

Ahhhh, Steven Soderbergh. One of the most controversial noncontroversial filmmakers alive. He’s responsible for movies like Traffic, Oceans 11, and Sex, Lies & Videotape. Unfortunately he’s also responsible for movies like Bubble. That’s why I’m always reluctant to open a Soderbergh project. I’m afraid of artsy-fartsy Soderbergh, the Soderbergh who doesn’t give a shit about entertainment. I’m even more scared of that Soderbergh these days, since he doesn’t have to worry about his next job.

But when I reached out to Scriptshadow Nation on Magic Mike, I was surprised to hear feedback like “Funny.” “Touching.” “Heartwarming.” It sounded like a real heartfelt character piece, not a glorified student film. And hey, Sex Lies & Videotape is still in my top five independent films of all time. So maybe this was going to be cool.

28-year-old Mike was born with something special. He’s got charm. He’s got looks. He’s got work ethic. And he’s got big dreams. He wants to open a restoration business that he’s been saving up for forever.

During the day, he’s a roofer, scraping by on 15 bucks an hour. But on the weekends, when the sun goes down, he’s a stripper at a hot Tampa Bay strip club. “Magic Mike” is the headline act – the one the ladies save the big bills for.

One day, during a roofing job, Mike meets The Kid, a 19-year-old bad boy in need of direction. He lives with his older sister, who may love him more than anything, but is frustrated he’s drifting through life aimlessly. Mike likes The Kid, probably because he reminds him of himself when he was younger, and introduces him to the stripping life.

The Kid immediately falls in love with it. Whereas before he was barely able to afford toothpaste, he’s now got more money than he can stuff in his pockets. Being 19 with money to burn is sort of like waking up in a candy store all alone as a 10-year-old. Where do you begin?

When The Kid’s sister, who Mike’s sweet on, finds out that her baby brother is stripping, she’s mortified. Mike assures her that he’s going to keep an eye on him. But eventually, The Kid runs into some trouble he can’t get out of. It will be up to Magic Mike to save the day. The question is, will it mean giving up all of his hopes and dreams to do so?

I wasn’t sure what to make of Magic Mike. It’s sort of like Coyote Ugly meets The Full Monty meets a trashy reality show. The biggest achievement of the screenplay is that it flips a well-known character type on its head. We’ve seen the stripper with a heart of gold a thousand times before. But have we seen the male stripper with a heart of gold? I don’t think so. And that’s what makes this script unique.

Probably the strangest thing I noticed while reading Magic Mike was that there’s so little conflict in the script. Remember, movies are about drama. And you can’t get drama unless you have opposing forces consistently clashing with each other. Somebody wants one thing, somebody else wants another. There isn’t a whole lot of that in Magic Mike.

I mean, the first three quarters of the screenplay are like a dramatized version of a Jersey Shore episode, with the characters running around, partying, and having the time of their lives. The Kid is introduced into this world and he just has a blast with it. Mike runs around unimpeded as well. He enjoys watching The Kid flourish. And he enjoys the fruits of his own labor, hooking up with endless women, and making tons of cash.

The only real conflict throughout the first three quarters of the screenplay comes from the sister, who throws Mike for a loop when she becomes the first woman in history who doesn’t go gaga over him, mainly because she considers herself above strippers. I suppose she’s also frustrated with her brother getting involved in a shady profession, so you could argue that there’s some conflict there.

But the thing is, she’s only passively interested in stopping him. She doesn’t like it, but as long as her brother’s happy, she’s happy. There’s a little bit of conflict in her rejection of Mike, but there was something missing from the relationship. I don’t know if I wanted them to have more chemistry or if their relationship wasn’t explored enough, but I didn’t care whether they got together or not, and I don’t think a situation like that works unless that’s the case.

You could also argue that there’s conflict within Mike, who wants to do something bigger with his life. The reason that conflict didn’t work either, though, is that Mike loved stripping. He seemed to have such a great life that if his dream of opening up his own business didn’t work out, you got the feeling he was going to be fine. I mean, this guy is smart, nice and good looking. Whichever way it goes for him, life is still going to kick ass.

Now eventually, we do get to some serious conflict, but it isn’t until the final act, when everything falls to shit. I admit it gets interesting, but I kept asking: Is it worth wading through 90 minutes of pure unadulterated partying for?

If you look back at what I believe is Soderbergh’s best film, Sex Lies & Videotape, you’ll notice that there’s conflict from the very first frame. The wife is living a lie – she’s frustrated with her marriage but she’s not admitting it to herself (conflict from within). Her husband is cheating on her (conflict). An old friend of the husband’s comes to stay with them. The two of them have unsettled business from the past (conflict). The friend is a sex addict who can’t have sex (conflict from within). And the friend and the wife start to have an emotional relationship (conflict) which causes even more conflict between the old friends and the wife and husband. That’s why that movie is so good – because no matter where you turn, there’s conflict. I’m not saying that Magic Mike needs to be the same way, because it’s a different movie, but I just found it strange how easy the movie was for all its characters.

Where the script really impressed me, though, was in the writing itself. The other day, we celebrated how fun and exciting the visual writing style of Christopher McQuarrie was. Here, the writing is as sparse as I’ve ever seen it. Carolin really stands by the rule of only writing what’s absolutely necessary to convey the story. Part of this is that he doesn’t have a lot of action to describe like Christopher McQuarrie did in his script, but that’s part of being a good screenwriter. You assess the kind of story you’re telling, and if it’s a story like Magic Mike, that’s more about the characters than the action and the visuals, you don’t include a lot of description.

When you take Magic Mike as a whole, I think there’s enough here to recommend it. It’s not filled with a lot of drama but it’s an interesting angle to a familiar subject matter. There’s nothing bad about the story. There was never a time where I wished I didn’t have to finish the script. And I suppose enough happens in that final act to sort of make up for all the coasting in the first two. So while I wouldn’t call this a home run, I’d probably say it’s a solid double. Worth checking out if you can find it.

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

What I learned: The less description you use, the more powerful and memorable your words will be. We all have a person in our lives who doesn’t talk very much, so when they do, it’s usually because they have something to say. For that reason, we listen. You wanna treat the action/description in your screenplay the same way. Only talk when you have something to say. There’s a moment early on in the script where Mike is leaving his place, and we catch a glimpse of his small business sign that says “Mike’s Detailing.” It’s a small but important character detail that tells us one of Mike’s passions. Now I might’ve missed this if this script was blanketed with descriptive blocks of text. But because it wasn’t, because Carolin only wrote what he had to, that detail stuck out. There’ve been a lot of times where I’ve pointed out to writers that I didn’t understand something in their script. They’ll say to me, “What are you talking about? It’s right here on page 36! It says right there that he walks into the barbershop! See??” And the page they show me has like five 4-line paragraphs on it. And the previous 35 pages all look similar. Of course I missed it. That detail is buried under a mountain of text. So be smart about what you include when you write. Because the less you write, the more your details will stick out.

Genre: Thriller
Premise: An ex-military man is brought in to help figure out the mystery behind a mass sniper shooting.
About: This is going to be Tom Cruise’s next, after that strange musical he’s making. It’s based on the book of the same title written by Lee Child. Cruise brought in his Valkyrie writer, Oscar winner Christopher McQuarrie, to adapt the book. McQuarrie is best known for writing The Usual Suspects (for which he won the Oscar).
Writer: Christopher McQuarrie (novel by Lee Child) (previous drafts by Josh Olson)
Details: 122 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).

Let’s get this out in the open right away. Christopher McQuarrie can write. After reading last week’s offerings, you forget what real writing looks like. This is it. The man has such a visually exciting style, that even mundane scenes have an energy to them that you just don’t see with other writers. And he does some controversial things to get there. For example, McQuarrie uses camera directions (you see “extreme close-up” several times in the opening pages), which is supposed to be a big no-no. But he likes how they orient the reader’s eye to what’s important, and if they don’t bother you, they definitely achieve that (having said that, it should be noted that most readers will tolerate professionals doing this, but get annoyed when amateurs try it).

He also writes some pretty big paragraphs. We were just ragging on Montana the other day for doing the same thing. But the difference is, McQuarrie rarely writes anything unnecessary, so even the big paragraphs work. Is this a double standard? Probably. But hey, Brett Favre threw off his back foot into double coverage for over a decade. A rookie quarterback should not be afforded the same leniency. He hasn’t earned it yet.

So what is this script about? It’s actually a fairly basic plot. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I guess I thought since Cruise was making it a potential franchise, there was going to be more action. But this story is more a procedural. It starts off with a mysterious man pulling up into a parking garage overlooking a heavily trafficked pedestrian area, pulling out a sniper rifle, and randomly shooting five people dead.

When the Feds investigate, they trace the shooting back to a man named James Barr. But when they bring him in, he insists he had nothing to do with it. When they try to get a written confession from him, he gives them three words instead: “Get Jack Reacher.” So they send James off to jail and start looking for Reacher. After figuring out he’s an ex-military special something or other who’s an expert at pretty much everything, including staying invisible, they conclude that there’s no way they’ll ever find him. Which is the exact moment they get a knock on the door. “Someone’s here to see you.” “Who?” “Jack Reacher.”

It turns out Reacher knows this guy from the Army, and that James did a lot of bad things there. Reacher wants to make sure he goes to prison for a long time. But before he can talk to James, James is beaten to within an inch of his life at jail and is now in a coma. So Jack teams up with James’ plucky female defense attorney to cross the T’s and dot the I’s on the investigation.

But one look at the crime scene and already Reacher knows something’s off. It turns out, for example, James paid the meter before he shot everyone. Why would a man pay a parking meter before he was about to kill five people? It also starts to look like this was less a mass shooting and more a targeted shooting. The question is, how are all these people related, and why did James, or whoever killed them, want them dead? Of course, the closer Reacher gets to the truth, the more sketchy people come out of the woodwork trying to kill him. But if there’s one thing you find out pretty quickly, it’s that you don’t fuck with Jack Reacher.

The biggest surprise with One Shot is that there’s almost nothing new here, and yet it’s still pretty damn exciting. You have a couple of choices when you write a script. You can write something that’s been done before and try to execute it perfectly or you can write something unique and execute it adequately. McQuarrie does the former.

That’s not to say One Shot is totally by the book. In a typical procedural you have police officers or the FBI doing the investigating. Here, we have a defense lawyer and a mysterious ex-military man. This allows McQuarrie and Child to play fast and hard with the rules. Not everything has to be by the book because neither of these two belongs to a body that follows a book. It gave the script just enough freshness to differentiate itself from similar screenplays.

As far as GSU, the goal here is clear. Figure out who killed all these people and why. The stakes and urgency aren’t as clear. The stakes are the safety of our protagonists, since the deeper they dig, the more the bad guys want to kill them. And the urgency is also vague at first. There’s no real ticking time bomb. Instead, the urgency comes from the bad guys closing in. We know they’re always close by. We know they plan on killing our heroes. And that’s what keeps the momentum up.

One of the bigger lessons to come out of One Shot is one that Leslie Dixon reminded us of in an interview leading up to the release of her movie, Limitless. When asked why she chose to write the movie, she said she was tired of writing movies with main characters that movie stars didn’t want to play, because they never got made. She knew that the only way her movie was going to get greenlit was if she wrote a main character for a star. Say what you will about Limitless, but the movie definitely has an intriguing central character that a big Hollywood star would want to play.

We have the same thing here. Jack Reacher is a man with a mysterious past who plays by his own set of rules – who isn’t afraid of anything. I mean how much more appealing can you make a character for a movie star? It’s Han solo. It’s Indiana Jones. It’s the template for every character you ever pretended to be when you were a kid. So as important as the craft itself is, never forget that you have to wrangle in a movie star to get your script made. So that main character better be interesting.

There were a few things that bothered me, notably that a big deal is made out of James Barr saying “get Jack Reacher” (which, let’s face it, is an awesome moment) and yet it’s never clear why he did this. We find out later that Reacher hates James. So why in the world would James call him in? I guess James thought Reacher was the only one who could prove he didn’t do this, but since Reacher had been trying to get this guy behind bars for years, who’s to say he wouldn’t use this opportunity to finally do so? Maybe someone can explain this to me.

Also, the bad guy here is too cartoonish. As writers, we can get so carried away with trying to come up with somebody different, that we forget that that person still has to exist in the universe we created. The idea of somebody known as The Zec being stuck in some prison to the point where he started eating off his fingers… I’m sorry but that’s just silly. That was the one area that really disappointed me with this because when you have such a cool hero, you want him going up against the best. And if the best is Zec The Finger-Chewer – I’m just not sure that’s a matchup I’m looking forward to.

But man, the writing here is good. I’m so happy this came around when it did because when you read a lot of subpar scripts in a row, you start to think that there’s no good writing left. This proves that there is.

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

What I learned: Here’s a scene that always works. Have your protagonist go talk to somebody suspicious, and have that suspicious person handling a gun for an innocuous reason. For example, Reacher believes that our bad guy did some training at a gun range, so he goes out to the range to ask the owner if the man he’s looking for was there. On its own, it’s a basic question and answer scene. But McQuarrie gives the gun range owner a gun he’s cleaning. This adds a whole new dimension to the scene. Whenever things get testy, you cut to the gun, and a normal conversation is layered with all sorts of subtext. Is he going to pull it out? Would he try and shoot Reacher? These are questions the audience is asking while watching the scene, making the scene much more exciting.

Genre: Romantic Comedy
Premise: (from writer) A marine biologist, up to her ankles in oysters, flounders on Capitol Hill trying to save the Chesapeake Bay from a silk suited, Republican lobbyist.
About: 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: Montana Gillis
Details: 96 pages

Montana is probably one of the nicer funnier guys who e-mails me. He just seems like a real genuine person interested in bettering his craft. He also has an interesting backstory, in that he was a Marine, if I’m not mistaken. Which makes this review all the more difficult. Like every Amateur Friday screenplay I pick up, I want to love it. And while Montana can definitely write, I think he gets in his own way at times. This script is really dense, which isn’t what you want if you’re writing a romantic comedy. The number one thing I want to say to Montana going forward is: less is more. Everything needs to be pared down and the story itself needs to come to the forefront. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Dr. Turner Dixon, a 30 something “fresh-faced shapely stick of dynamite” is doing her best to try and save the Chesapeake Bay. Like a lot of bays in the US, this one is being polluted to the point where all the marine life has disappeared. So Turner is trying to pass a bill on Capitol Hill that will get all these greedy corporations out of the water.

In the meantime, we meet Jack Ward, 39, roguish, and very handsome. A lobbyist, Jack owns a breathtaking boat (the “Influence”) that he takes a lot of political bigwigs out on, presumably to wine and dine and get his way from.

Anyway, Dr. Turner is that annoying thorn in all the Senators sides, always pushing one of those liberal “save the world” agendas that will destroy the very economy allowing the town she lives in to thrive. So when Turner heads to a big Capitol Hill party and starts talking up the Senators to vote her way, she’s pawned off to Jack, who just the other day nearly killed her when his boat almost slammed into hers.

Naturally, the two get to talking, one thing leads to another, and the next thing you know they sleep together. It’s only after this, of course, that Turner realizes Jack is a lobbyist for the bad guys, and therefore her enemy. There’s also a group of shady characters behind the curtain who are aggressively trying to get rid of this annoying Turner and her stupid bill – the very people who allow our Jack to live such a wonderful life. So at some point Jack will have to decide between the cushy life he now lives or the woman he has fallen for.

Okay. I’m going to prep this critique by saying I know very little about how things work on Capitol Hill. So while this script is titled “Influence,” you might be able to title me “Ignorance.” I just don’t know how lobbying and all of that other backroom stuff works. So at least some of my confusion regarding this plot has to do with that. Having said that, I don’t think this story is nearly as clear as it needs to be.

Let’s start with one of the main characters, Jack. I originally read the logline for this eight or nine weeks ago. So when I picked Influence up the other day, I didn’t remember exactly what it was about, which is how I like it, because I want the script to speak for itself. However, I had absolutely no idea who Jack was for half the screenplay. It was only after I went back to the logline that I realized he was a lobbyist. One of the things I just pointed out yesterday was you have to make it clear who your character is as soon as possible.

So how is Jack introduced? He’s introduced on a boat barely saying or doing anything. The entire scene focuses on the other character on the boat, the senator, leaving me with no idea who Jack was. In fact, his entrance was so weak, I just figured he was the driver of the boat and therefore a character we’d probably never see again. If the reader thinks one of your two main characters is nobody important in their introductory scene, you’re in trouble.

But this continues on for the rest of the script. Jack barely ever says anything. He doesn’t have any defining characteristics. He never does anything unique. It was impossible to get any sense of him at all. I mean take the first scene with Richard Gere in Pretty Woman. You see him in a big business meeting. You see that he’s frustrated. You see that he wants to get away from this world. You see that he’s been so pampered his entire life, he doesn’t even know how to drive a car. I mean we learn so much about that character in that first sequence. And I don’t know anything about Jack after this entire screenplay.

Personally, I think the big mistake here was making him a lobbyist. It just doesn’t have any “oomph” behind it, particularly because he never seems that interested in lobbying. In fact, I don’t remember a single scene in the entire screenplay where I see him lobbying for anything. That’s awfully strange for a lobbyist, don’t you think? Why not just make Jack a Senator? It would instantly give him more clout and clarity as a character. It would force him to be more active. The stakes would be higher since he’d have more to lose. It just seems like the much more powerful choice. I guess the lobbyist angle could work, but not as it’s currently constructed, with a weak character who doesn’t seem interested in lobbying and isn’t active in any sense of the word. Still, I would strongly consider the Senator option.

The next huge issue here is the writing itself. It’s way too dense. It seemed like every single scene was over-described. It felt like there was a line of description or action between every single dialogue utterance. There was just way too much writing going on here. We only need the essence of the scene, just enough to fill in the rest of the gaps ourselves. Let me give you an example. Here’s a paragraph from the script:

“A four story behemoth rises up behind Turner as she stands at the curb. Bright sunlight reflects off car windows and the white stone building. Turner pulls a small purse out of her large bag. She sets the bag down on the edge of the street as she digs in the purse.”

The paragraph should probably read closer to this:

“A four story behemoth rises up behind Turner. She digs her purse out of a large bag then places the bag on the ground.”

Actually, I probably wouldn’t even mention the building, as it’s not a necessary component to understanding the scene. I’m going to tell you why this is such a problem. When every single description is a bunch of details that don’t matter, that aren’t essential to understanding the story, the reader starts skipping over them. So after reading 20 paragraphs like this, I just started skimming because I just assumed all of them weren’t important. Then, when you actually do have a paragraph with some important plot information inside of it, the reader’s going to miss it. It’s the screenwriting equivalent of crying wolf.

I would try to cut down the amount of description by 50 to 60% here. That’s not an exaggeration. Everything needs to be pared down. Not just big paragraphs, but all of the needless descriptions in between the dialogue. Not only would this be a problem in a normal screenplay, but this is a romantic comedy, which should be one of the lightest flowiest screenplays out there. It should be the essence of minimalism. And yet the approach here is the opposite. So I’d definitely encourage Montana to fix that.

There were a lot of little problems here as well. For example, we have a scene where Turner gets out of a car and bumps into Jack. Okay. We create a little conflict between the characters. That’s fine. Except then we also have a scene where Jack’s boat almost runs over Turner’s boat a scene or two later. Why do we need two separate scenes showing the exact same thing?

Also, never give your female character a male name in a romantic comedy. It’s too cute, every beginning writer does it, and it drives readers nuts. I mean I’ve seen readers explode over this because it’s done so often. But even besides that, it’s confusing. It always takes me 5 to 10 pages to get used to associating a female with a male name, so even if you don’t care whether you get the reader upset, you should care that it hurts the reading experience, which is the last thing you want to do in a screenplay.

Lastly, I don’t think this script is fun enough. This is supposed to be a romantic comedy and yet the majority of the script focuses on boring backroom politicking. I’m not saying that that stuff can’t be interesting, but it’s false advertising. People don’t come to a romantic comedy to learn the specifics of what goes on behind the pushing of a bill. They come for romance and they come for laughs, and both of those things take a back seat to a lobbying plot here. To use Pretty Woman as an example again, it would be like if they erased half the scenes of Richard Gere and Julia Roberts, and replaced them with the details of Richard Gere’s business deal. So unfortunately, even though I love Montana, these issues really affected my enjoyment of the script.

Moving forward, I would focus on a few things. First, pare all the description down. You have to make this script more readable. Second, go back over yesterday’s article, specifically how to introduce characters, and make sure we like these characters right away. I never ever felt like I knew Jack and a big part of that was the way he was introduced and the lack of characterization. He just didn’t have any defining characteristics. Finally, I would cut out 75% of the bill plot. We only need the key scenes revolving around that plot. If you want to get into the details of that kind of story, I would recommend writing a drama or a thriller. But here, people are going to be more interested in the romantic comedy aspects of a romantic comedy. This was a fun exercise Montana. Hopefully you don’t hate me after this review. All I care about is making the script better. :)

Script link: Influence

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

What I learned: I want to introduce a new term: Readability. As writers, it’s our job to get carried away with every detail. We want to make sure we get this important plot point in and that this character arcs correctly and that our theme is consistently hit on. We become so consumed with all the minutia of our script, that we lose the ability to perceive it as a whole. When this happens, we’re not able to judge how readable our script is. So after you’re finished with your screenplay, you need to ask, “Is this readable?” Not, are all the plot points in the right spot and are all the characters perfectly drawn? But simply, when somebody sits down to read it, is it easy to read? I’m not sure that question was asked here. So save a couple of passes at the very end of your process just for that question. If the read is taking too long or you’re not flying through it, ask why? It might be that your description is too thick. It might be that you have too many needless lines gumming up the spaces between the dialogue. It might mean you have scenes that don’t need to be in your screenplay. But this is a question that definitely needs to be asked because it’s not just about getting everything into your screenplay, it’s about how quickly the reader’s eye moves down the page.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A pair of pharmaceutical reps, one crazy, one conservative, travel to a drug expo to try and land the most important deal of the year.
About: This finished on the lower half of the 2009 Black List. Outside of that, little is known about the script. It appears to be Eric Lane’s breakthrough screenplay.
Writer: Eric Lane
Details: 116 pages – December 1, 2009 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

Today’s script is a comedy so I’m going to take this moment to talk about another “comedy” that I saw last night. After all of this hype, I decided to watch the “Two And A Half Men” season premiere. I’d never watched Two And A Half Men before, so I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but what I got was quite possibly the worst 22 minutes of television I’ve ever witnessed. I’m not sure if it’s possible to die just by watching a TV show, but I’m pretty sure I came close a couple of times. I’ve never seen anything more juvenile, more stupid, more on the nose, and more insulting than those two and a half men. I’ll tell you when I turned it off. That would be when the kid answered a question by farting. I don’t have any other words. I’m just baffled that people watch that show and enjoy it.

Anyway, that leads us into today’s script. Yay! The good news is, this is way better than Two And A Half Men. Then again, so is soaking your eyeballs in sulfuric acid. But at least Con Men doesn’t try and insult your intelligence. Well, actually, that’s not true. Maybe I should just get to the review.

Con Men is about 25-year-old Greg Weinstock. Greg is really good at what he does, which is sell prescription drugs, and all things considering, he’s got a lot going for him, except for his material girl who lives in a material world girlfriend, Tiff. Tiff’s big beef with Greg is that he’s not really a take charge guy. He’s too comfortable with his lifestyle.

So when the boss man asks Greg to join up with the company party boy, Kevin, and try to land the biggest deal of the year at the Milwaukee drug expo, his initial reaction is, no way. The reward may be high but so is that damn risk. However, after Tiff dumps him, Greg gets it into his head that if he lands this deal, maybe he can prove to her that he is a risk taker, and she’ll end up taking him back.

Like the recently released Cedar Rapids, Greg is all business and Kevin is all party. In fact, as soon as they land, Kevin heads straight to the bar and starts having sex with as many women as possible. A scary prospect if you’ve ever been to Milwaukee before.

Anyway, they eventually run into the reason that they got this job in the first place – Sheera and Mandy. These two used to be the top pharmaceutical reps at their company until they quit and started working for the competition. Because they are hot and because they will do anything to get the sale, they are every pharmaceutical rep’s nightmare. Our guys basically have no chance against these two. And to make matters worse, Sheera is Kevin’s kryptonite – the only girl he’s ever truly loved. He basically turns into a drooling half-witted Nerf Herder whenever he’s around her, which Sheera uses to her full advantage.

I’d detail more of the plot but that’s about it. There’s a lot of double-crossing. A lot of sex. A lot of drinking. A lot of lying. Each side tries every trick in the book to land the big fish but only one will come away with the prize.

Con Men is a script from an extremely talented writer who has a huge future ahead of him. I say that mainly because his dialogue is so strong, some of the best I’ve read in a while. Here’s one of Kevin’s many meanderings in the script: “A few months ago Lindsay came over. She’s a middle reliever I keep in the bullpen for weeknights. Anyway, we’re changing the batteries in the smoke detectors. One thing leads to another. You lick a nine volt battery and put it against your chode during sex. Turns out, when you climax, fireworks. Buttermilk into thunderbolts, lead into gold. You can literally singe the minge. It’s a K Russell Orig. But yours if you need it. Point is, Lulu dug the spark. Lucha libre.”

I don’t know how to put it other than to say his dialogue has a lot of texture. It’s interesting and unique and, most importantly, memorable. Which is going to make it all the more confusing pointing out Con Men’s biggest weakness: the dialogue.

What? Carson, have you gone mad? Didn’t you just tell us the dialogue was great? The content of the dialogue is great but it seems like Eric knows this and as a result goes way too far with it. There is so much needless dialogue here that pages upon pages go by where nothing happens but people talking (about nothing). Every time someone speaks it’s a mini monologue. We’re consistently getting 10 to 12 line dialogue chunks and it just kills the momentum. There’s a reason this script is a needless 120 pages. It’s because people talk for too damn long! I don’t care how good your dialogue is. You have to show restraint. Everybody loves cake. But nobody wants to eat cake for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Unfortunately, there are a ton more beginner mistakes in the script. Character actions don’t match up with their motivations for example. When we meet Kevin, he’s the one dying to go on this sales trip. He’s the one who wants this more than anything. So it’s beyond strange that the second he lands in Milwaukee, he doesn’t spend a single moment trying to land the sale. You could even argue that he could care less about the sale. If a character really wants something then does the complete opposite, you have character problems.

The character flaws are also clumsily executed. When you have a character flaw, the best way to convey it is through action. So if you have a character who’s selfish, you want to show them encountering a situation where they can either help themselves or help someone else. You show them helping themselves and you’ve conveyed their flaw. The lazy way to do it is to have somebody come up to that person and say, “You know what. You’re selfish,” which is exactly what happens here when Tiff tells Greg exactly what’s wrong with him. This is okay if you’ve already shown the flaw in action. But here, all we’ve seen from Greg is how awesome he is at his job. It’s not like this is Seth Rogan in Knocked Up. Greg has a high-paying job with a great future ahead of him. So his girlfriend telling him that he doesn’t have his shit together doesn’t make sense.

And outside of that, this story is just all over the place. Once they actually get to Milwaukee, there’s no form. There’s no structure. It’s just a series of repetitive sequences where people get drunk and try to bang each other. Combined with an extremely inconsistent tone, the script never finds itself. I mean, Con Men starts off feeling like a sophisticated comedy. The first 10 scenes convey tasteful and occasionally sophisticated humor. Open the script to the middle however, and you’ll read a scene where a character shoots his sperm up into an exposed wire, which starts a fire and turns on the entire hotel sprinkler system. That’s Scary Movie 5 territory there and an example of a young writer just trying to make anything funny without thinking how it fits into the bigger picture.

I will say that I loved the inclusion of Sheera and Mandy though. Usually in these scenarios the competition is two men. So to make it two women was a good twist as it created a whole new dynamic between the main players. Now sex could be used as a weapon. An old relationship that still had ripple effects on the characters could be included. It just gave everything a fresh feel. I wish Eric could have brought more of that freshness to the rest of the screenplay. But I still think he has a great future. He just needs to learn how to hone the rest of his craft.

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

What I learned: Less is always more when it comes to dialogue. If you bust out screenplays for your five favorite movies, you’ll probably find that the large majority of time each person speaks, they’re doing so in 3 lines or less. Not 10 to 12 lines or more, which is the problem with Con Men. Now obviously, each story is unique with unique requirements. Some characters talk more than others. Some stories require more exposition than others. But I promise you that your dialogue will be a lot better if, on the whole, you show restraint.