Genre: War-Action
Premise: Shot down by the Red Baron, a Nurse with a photographic memory must navigate the perils of no-man’s land to transport critical intelligence to the Allies that will save countless lives and shorten the Great War.
About: This is one of the four Mega-Showdown finalists. It finished with 16 votes, tying it for second place. You can read the winning script review, Hard Labor, here. You can read finalist, The First Horseman, here. Each review contains a script link so you can download and read the scripts yourself. I’d call Smokescreen the biggest underdog of the four finalists. It has the most non-Hollywood subject matter and yet, still, it beat out a ton of other screenplays to finish in the top 3. Excited to find out what the hype is about!
Writer: Nick Philippa
Details: 110 pages
I know World War 1 doesn’t have the same technology as World War 2. It can feel a little dated in that sense. And I know that it doesn’t have the biggest bad guy of all time in it, in Hitler. But I think too many history/war screenwriters automatically default to World War 2, when World War 1 has so many more stories that have never been told. So I always perk up when World War 1 enters a logline. And this one sounded interesting.
It’s 1914 and 30-something James Warn is a fighter pilot. He’s currently at an Allied base that’s in the thick of it with the Germans. There’s a giant swath of no man’s land between the two sides and, like a lot of fronts, nobody’s making any progress.
One day, James is sent out to do some reconnaissance with his plane’s camera. He has to go take some pictures of the enemy base so they’re updated on what they’re up against. It’s never an easy mission to take pictures because the Germans use smokescreens to hide their ground formation and, oh yeah, the greatest fighter pilot ever, in the Red Barron, happens to be flying for the bad guys.
Despite that, James discovers the Germans are bringing in a giant gun like no other. One that may be able to cover the distance between the two bases. Currently, though, it’s stuck in a giant mud bank and they’re having a hard time getting it out.
When he brings this intel back to his captain, the captain is all gung-ho on learning more. The only problem is, their plane camera was destroyed by the Baron. And the next camera can’t get shipped out here for another two weeks. But they don’t have two weeks!
When James notices that a local nurse, Edna (nickname: Eddie), has a talent for drawing, he comes up with a crazy idea. He’ll replace his gunner with Eddie, they’ll go fly over the German base, and she’ll draw out a map of the land, including exactly where that gun is so that the Allies can destroy it before it’s put in use.
Eddie hates this idea, as does the Captain, but what choice do they have!? So the two go on several missions, each of which is complicated by that stupid Red Baron flying around. On the final mission, the Red Baron hits pay dirt, shooting them down. They crash right there in the middle of no man’s land, a completely inhospitable area of land, and must find their way back to their side without getting massacred.
Smokescreen is a tale of two scripts.
There’s the first half of this script, which is a completely different movie than the second half. And let me put it this way. If I weren’t reading this script for a review, I never would’ve made it to the much cooler second half.
So, what’s wrong with the first half?
A lot.
It has this weird pattern where the story keeps starting and stopping. Let’s go on a plane run. Come back. Talk about it. Let’s go on another plane run, this time with a nurse. Come back. Talk about it. Let’s get grounded because of a pissy captain. Then let’s go on another plane run. Come back. Talk about it.
It felt like a car that could never start. I kept waiting and waiting and waiting for some big plot beat to arrive and it never did.
Until the second half. That’s when James and Eddie go down in No Man’s Land. And this is where the story picks up. I mean, it gets so much better.
When you’re writing a story like this, you want four things going for you.
One is obvious. Make sure we like your characters as much as possible. Because, regardless of what predicament you put your heroes in, we have to like them to want them to come out of that predicament. And the more we like them, the more invested we’ll be in them doing that.
Two is to make the mission feel impossible. Most writers create a main obstacle that is 50-60% as hard as it should be. You want something to seem 100% impossible. And that’s because the more impossible it feels, the more doubt there is in the story that your heroes will succeed. This is what makes for compelling reading because the reader will think the heroes can’t possibly win, and will turn the pages like crack to see how they do it.
Three is to give us something unique. You can do one and two really well but if you place your characters inside a situation that we’ve seen a million times before, or a situation that doesn’t have a lot of inherent drama to it, then it doesn’t matter that you got one and two right.
Finally, you need the stakes to be really high in a movie like this. You’re asking us to care so much about your heroes surviving. But what is it that they’re surviving for? If their only purpose is just to keep breathing, sure there’s going to be interest in seeing that happen. But it won’t be nearly as much interest as if there’s something bigger at play that needs to be satisfied.
Let’s look at how the script ranked in these four categories.
1 – Make sure we like the characters
Rating: 6 out of 10
Analysis: There is nothing special about James or Eddie. They were the most generic versions of these characters possible. There was nothing unique about either of them. Nothing memorable about either of them. They didn’t have any flaws that I related to. If anything, Eddie’s flaw of not killing, only saving, was too forced. And their personalities were as vanilla as my protein powder.
2 – Make the mission impossible
Rating: 8 out of 10
Analysis: If we had crashed into no man’s land at the end of the first act, this rating would’ve been a 10 out of 10. This mission truly felt impossible. The writing regarding how awful no man’s land is was excellent. I truly felt like there was no way out of this. Unfortunately, the first half of the script was a vacation. I’ve never felt more safe in my life than when I was at that Allied camp. I felt like they should’ve been serving Mai-Tais between missions. This was the weakest part of the script. I understand it’s required to set things up but it needs to be massively shortened.
3 – Give us something we haven’t seen before
Rating: 9 out of 10
Analysis: I’ve read over 10k scripts. I’ve never read anything like no man’s land was described here. With the craters filled with water and the impossible terrain and barbed wire everywhere and crazed dogs. I’ve never been in that environment before when reading something like this. But the plane stuff? I’m sorry but it was boring. I don’t know, I just felt like I’d seen that so many times and every time we were up in the air it felt like generic flying time. Uh oh, here come the bullets! Oh, there they go, through the plane wing. You could predict every moment. But in no man’s land? I couldn’t predict what would happen in the next second.
4 – Stakes
Rating: 6 out of 10
Analysis: The stakes were confusing pretty much throughout the script. I understood that there was some big bad gun. That they needed to know where that gun was, which is why they needed to bring in Eddie the artist. But it wasn’t clear what power she possessed that others didn’t. Sure, Rootin-Tootin Gunner Ronnie may not be the artist that Eddie is, but could he draw you a rough estimate of where the gun was in relation to other things in the area? Probably! It wouldn’t have been as pretty but so what? As long as it gets the job done, right? And then, when they’re shot down and trying to get back, she wasn’t carrying any critical information that would help the Allies win the battle. So then what are the stakes to her making it back besides being alive? (Spoiler) We do get her drawing something at the last second but I didn’t know that she was carrying any important knowledge up until that point. So, the stakes were low throughout that whole section.
As you can imagine, I’m very torn about this script.
There’s some good stuff in here. But it’s a structural miscalculation that severely hampers the finished product. Not to mention, these characters need to graduate from 1 scoop of vanilla to AT LEAST two scoops of salted caramel. Because it doesn’t just hurt the characters as individuals. It hurts the love story. If we’re not that into them, (suggested spoiler) we don’t care if they end up together, or even die. Which was the case for me. I didn’t care.
Fix the structural problem. Fix the characters. And this is a ‘worth the read.’ Maybe more. But in this state, it’s still a ‘wasn’t for me.’
Screenplay link: Smokescreen
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I feel like war movies need to physically move. Saving Private Ryan. 1917. Fury. We’re always moving towards something in those movies. The more you stay in one place, the lower the story engine revs. Until you risk it stopping altogether. The exception would be if you’re in one place and in constant danger, trying to survive. But when we were at the Allied base, even when the Germans showed up tunneling, I always felt safe. Which was a big reason why I couldn’t ever fully get into this story.
Genre: Thriller
Logline: At the height of World War 2, a young Japanese-American investigator must race to prevent a terrifying Japanese plot to unleash a devastating plague on the United States. Inspired by true events.
About: This is one of the four Mega-Showdown finalists. It finished with 16 votes, tying it for second place. You can read the winning script review, Hard Labor, here. You can also download the script for yourself, as there’s a link in the review. This script first broke onto the Scriptshadow scene when it won the First Page Showdown. It used that status to become one of the early favorites in the Mega Showdown Screenwriting Contest. And it rode that wave all the way to the finals.
Writer: Finn Morgan
Details: 85 pages
I’ve been intrigued by this one ever since I read the first page.
Let’s see what happens afterwards!
It’s 1944. We’re in an internment camp in Northern California, where Japanese Americans are being kept imprisoned. One of these is 22 year old Laird Tanaka. And one night, Laird sees something in the windows of one of the workshops on-site and goes to check it out.
What he finds, impossibly, is a Japanese submariner, who’s been ravaged by hundreds of fleas. Before he knows it, the submariner is attacking him and he shoots him dead. This gets him in a lot of trouble with the soldiers running the camp, who don’t seem nearly as concerned about why a Japanese soldier would be holed up in one of their buildings as Laird does.
Laird is thrown into the camp jail, where Sheriff Bill Jefferson is intrigued by the story and wants to look into it. He deputizes Laird so he can bring him with, despite the fact that Laird wants nothing to do with this. They follow the clues to the nearby ocean shore that night, where they find a giant Japanese submarine washed up.
Jefferson forces Laird to follow him inside the sub and that’s when they find more dead submarine people with fleas all over them. Out of nowhere, a still fully alive soldier decapitates Jefferson with a sword and Laird jets the hell out of there. He runs into the forest, where he finds evidence of more Japanese heading towards town.
He eventually figures out that these fleas are carrying a plague that the Japanese are trying to unleash on America. But a storm crashed their sub before they could get to San Francisco. So now they want to get on a train and get to their original destination, on New Year’s Eve of all times, when people are everywhere, ready to spread some plague!
Laird will have to battle American racists and Japanese allies to get to the plaguers and stop them himself!
What I liked best about The First Horseman was how relentless it was. Finn calls this a thriller and it sure is plotted like one. It is impossible to go into a scene where something big doesn’t happen.
That’s actually one of my… what’s the opposite of pet peeves? Pet pariahs? It’s one of my pet pariahs. I like when period pieces move fast. Cause, traditionally, the further back you go in history, the slower a movie moves. So I loved that this had such a relentless pace.
And I loved that it was never boring. I suspect that that was one of Finn’s driving directives and why the script is only 86 pages. I sense that any scene, no matter how short, that could be considered unnecessary, was cut without a second thought. Leaving us with a lean and mean screenplay.
Despite that, I still struggled to get through The First Horseman at times. I would often be reading a scene and knowing that it was a technically sound scene for a thriller. Our hero needed something. There was always something interesting trying to prevent him from getting it. But I noticed my brain drifting during some of these scenes and I didn’t know why.
Things started off strong. I loved the stuff with the washed-up submarine. Just lying there on the shore. That was badass. I loved walking through that thing. Talk about freaky. That scene could’ve gone toe-to-toe with any scene that’ll come out of Blood and Ink Showdown.
And I loved how relentlessly cruel Finn was to his characters. He wasn’t afraid to kill them off, no matter how big of a character they were. We get one of those scenes in the submarine and it was just like, “Wow.”
But then later in the script, there’d be a scene in a house and I’d find that I just wasn’t that invested. Which perplexed me because not only did we have a plague on the loose. But it was an original ‘end-of-the-world’ threat. These de facto kamikaze sub pilots had come here to kill themselves in order to spread this unique ‘flea plague’ to take down America.
Maybe that would be my first question for Finn. These fleas are carrying the plague. The Japanese are trying to bring them to San Francisco to let the fleas loose. Except there are already fleas that have gotten loose everywhere. They climb all over Laird numerous times throughout the movie. How is he not infected?
And how bout the tens of thousands of fleas that have been transferred wherever else these fleas were found? You’re saying that you can just side-step these things and you’re okay? Or that if they get on you, you could potentially still be fine? If so, that’s not a very threatening plague, is it? It should’ve been that if one of those things even grazed you, you were fucked. That’s what the opening scene indicated, right? Which is why the worker in contact with the virus was immediately shot.
Another thing about this script that I couldn’t figure out was that, for a fast story, it sure read slow. I was constantly checking what page I was on and would be shocked that I wasn’t nearly as far into the script as I thought I was.
This phenomenon can be hard to measure because whenever you have problems with a script, it will read slow. So maybe that’s what I was experiencing. But I still think there was something else going on. Reading the text, even though it was kept sparse, didn’t keep my eyes moving quickly enough. It could be something in the writing style. It’s hard to tell.
I’m not sure where I stand on this script, to be honest.
The setting is cool. The set-pieces, like the sub and the train, were cool. I liked some of the recklessness of the creative choices, like killing off characters you didn’t expect to be killed. But I can’t deny that, towards the end, I wasn’t as invested as I should’ve been.
Maybe it’s Laird. Maybe he needs to be more likable or interesting or deep or have more personality. Because, in the end, for any movie to work, we have to be behind the main character and want him to succeed. I don’t know if I was ever a Laird fan. Starting with the stuff at the internment camp. Maybe that was the problem – that Finn thought that just being an internment camp prisoner would be enough for us to want to root for this guy.
It really isn’t a bad script. It just didn’t pull me in enough. I know some of you have already read the script so I’m curious to hear what you thought. What you liked and disliked as well. And if anything I said here resonated.
Good entry overall for Finn. Just needed something extra!
Script link: The First Horseman
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: One of my biggest pet peeves is when the hero asks for help from a cop and the cop says he doesn’t believe him. Why? Because it’s a lie. A cop’s job is to believe people. Not only that. But if America is so afraid of Japanese people that they’ve put them in internment camps, then how does it make sense that someone calling 911 saying there’s a Japanese invasion that’s happening, that that cop blanketly dismisses it. Worst of all, writers do this so they don’t have to deal with the logical consequences of the police getting involved. They want only their hero involved. So it’s a cheat. Please don’t use movie logic like this in your scripts. It’s lazy.
Wow.
I’m both excited by how much enthusiasm there was for this opportunity and also a bit frustrated as some of my weekend plans had to be canceled so I could respond to all the entries. :) And a big thank you to Scott for keeping track of all of the madness. I almost felt guilty giving maybes after a while cause I knew how much work it made for him.
If you’re just now coming to the site, I did a pitch session this weekend for horror loglines. If you come up with a good enough horror movie idea, you are in the official screenplay competition. I discuss the specifics on how this works in the original post.
This weekend was always going to be the test bed for this challenge and now that I have a better understanding of how things are going to go down, I can adjust the parameters accordingly.
Don’t worry if you didn’t get through on the first try. We are doing this for three more weekends. You have more shots.
Let’s start with the good news. If you received a “Yes” or a “Strong Maybe,” you are in! You can start writing your scripts RIGHT NOW. And I recommend you do that. As in, START TODAY. The more time on task you get with these scripts, the more ready they’ll be for the official showdown. If you don’t remember, you have until middle to late February to finish.
So, congratulations to everyone who made it through.
A quick piece of advice. If you received a strong maybe (or even a yes), e-mail me at carsonreeves3@gmail.com and I will let you know what I think is the best direction and tone for the story. You don’t have to use my advice. But it’s probably a good idea that you know what I liked about your idea.
Also, if you don’t know where to start with the writing of your script, just follow the Scriptshadow Write-A-Script schedule, which instructs you on how to write a first draft as well as one rewrite…
Week 1 – Concept (you’ve done this)
Week 2 – Solidifying Your Concept (you’ve done this as well)
Week 3 – Building Your Characters
Week 4 – Outlining
Week 5 – The First 10 Pages
Week 6 – Inciting Incident
Week 7 – Turn Into 2nd Act
Week 8 – Fun and Games
Week 9 – Using Sequences to Tackle Your Second Act
Week 10 – The Midpoint
Week 11 – Chill Out or Ramp Up
Week 12 – Lead Up To the “Scene of Death”
Week 13 – Moment of Death
Week 14 – The Climax
Week 15 – The End!
Week 16 – Rewrite Prep 1
Week 17 – Rewrite Prep 2
Week 18 – Rewrite Week 1
Week 19 – Rewrite Week 2
Week 20 – Rewrite Week 3
Week 21 – Rewrite Week 4
Week 22 – Rewrite Week 5
Week 23 – Rewrite Week 6
Now, I will say this. If you received a maybe or a soft maybe (or any other type of maybe), you will have one shot to pitch that concept again (with a revised final logline) next weekend. I will make a final decision on those concepts from that logline. After that, those concepts are dead. You can’t keep pitching them.
If I were one of the writers with a maybe, I would go to your other writing friends and workshop your logline until it’s the best it can possibly be for next weekend. I will even allow you to workshop it in the comments this week if you don’t know a good writers’ network and the Scriptshadow community is the only community you know of that gives good screenwriting advice.
If you want help direct from the horse’s mouth, you can order a logline consult from me. The benefit of that is that I can tell you exactly what my issue with the logline was and what I need in order for it to cross the ‘yes’ threshold. Those are 25 bucks and include a single reply. You can also order a deluxe consult which gives you unlimited e-mails to figure out the best version of the logline. Those are 50 bucks.
It doesn’t guarantee you’ll get through. Some of these maybes I gave thinking, “There’s something here but I don’t know what.” We may not find the answer in a consult. But at least you’ll be able to adjust the logline with a little more clarity compared to going in blind. Now, I realize that some people may have ethical issues with me charging for these. To be clear, you don’t have to hire me. I will still read your logline for free next week in the comments. If I had the time, I would workshop all of these maybes in the comments but I just don’t. Weekends are supposed to be my free time to get away from work. So I’m already spending time on these that I’m supposed to be spending on myself.
With that said, I’m okay with you approaching it either way. And anyone here can order a logline consult, even if you got a ‘no.’ One of the best things about this weekend has been that a lot of writers have learned what a bad logline looks like. I can give you even more clarity on that difference between good and bad. So, if you want a logline consult, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com.
Okay, moving on to next week…
Unlimited pitches are over.
You will now receive FIVE logline pitches per weekend. Which I think will be good for you. Now you have to think harder about what your best ideas are and think harder about how to put the loglines together so that they maximize their chances. I would, again, encourage you to workshop these loglines all week behind the scenes with your writing friends so that you’re coming to the table with your best.
Another thing I’m going to be encouraging next week is upvotes. Upvotes on loglines you like will increase the chances that that logline gets through. I know that my bias and my personal likes are influencing some of my choices and that I may be missing good ideas because they’re not typically my jam. So, please, upvote any idea that you like. That helps me.
NOW! I’m not going to be fooled by “friend-voting.” So I’m not guaranteeing a highly-upvoted logline gets through, particularly if every upvote looks like a buddy of that writer. But it will influence me overall.
A couple of final thoughts about the loglines themselves.
I’m sorry that sometimes I just have to write “No” without an explanation. I hate doing that (and it was one of the reasons I almost didn’t post this challenge) because I know it feels harsh. But I often had to come in and get through a lot of loglines fast before leaving again so it’s all I had time to do. Please don’t take it personally.
Next, we gotta stop with the vagueness, especially at the end of loglines. Any logline that ends with some approximation of, “…and our heroes must outwit a sinister emerging evil,” is an easy “no.” You have to tell us what the “evil” is if you want a shot. Cause if the rest of the logline is generic and the “evil” is the only unique thing that makes your idea stand out, and you’re not telling us what that “evil” is, I don’t care about the idea. BE AS SPECIFIC AS POSSIBLE, especially in the second half of your logline.
Also, the beginning of your logline is often your HOOK. The second part of the logline is often YOUR ACTUAL MOVIE. As in – what the characters will be doing throughout the second act. So, you don’t want to be vague about that. You want to tell us what they’re after and what’s in the way. The more specific, the better. Of course, it’s still gotta be a lean and mean presentation, which seems contradictory. But that’s logline-writing. You gotta figure it out.
Generally speaking, I glaze over words like ‘the Devil,’ ‘Satan,’ ‘go to hell,’ ‘come back from hell.’ Over time, I’ve found that writers who use these words/phrases, on average, construct very lazy ideas, which is why I’ve become so numb to them. So, if you’re going to use any of these words/phrases, make sure your idea is actually clever. It can’t be something like, “Two high school kids make a deal with the devil to become popular but when they change their mind, they risk getting dragged down into hell.” It’s got to be thoughtful and have some sophistication behind it. It can’t rely on those words to do the heavy lifting.
I’m very close to banning serial killer loglines. There were a million of them and 99.9% of them felt lazy, like putting “serial killer” into a logline all of a sudden made it interesting. Not to mention, serial killers aren’t really horror. Just make sure that if you’re bringing a serial killer logline to the table that it’s something clever, and something you feel passionate about – a story you really want to write.
And that’s it!
I am NOT responding to pitches in the comments until this weekend. So, feel free to use today to workshop some of those maybes. Good luck to everyone and thanks for participating in such a fun exercise, even if it did steal my precious weekend away from me. :)
PITCHING CLOSED UNTIL NEXT WEEKEND!
Big announcement today, everyone.
I had so much fun with the showdown that it got me thinking about the fact that I have a direct line to, arguably, the biggest person in horror in all of Hollywood. And this person trusts my taste implicitly. If I send him a script, he’ll literally start reading it within 10 minutes.
And I thought, why aren’t we taking advantage of this on the site? He’s wanted us to work together forever assuming I can find a script he likes. But that’s the catch. He’s also known as the toughest grader in Hollywood. If you think I’m tough, this man is like the Stanford professor who’s never given an A before. But when he really likes something, HE MAKES IT. He’s one of the few people in Hollywood who can ensure a movie will get made.
That’s where my idea for the Blood and Ink Showdown stemmed from. The blood is the script. You got to come up with a great horror script. The ink is when you sign on the dotted line of that spec script sale contract.
How is this going to go down? We’re playing the long game here, folks. This showdown will happen on Friday February 26th. Which gives you six months to write the script. And you will be writing it. You’re not going to be able to enter an already written script. Why?
Heh heh heh.
Let me explain.
One of the things I realized with these showdowns is that 90% of the contestants take themselves out of the running before they write a word of their script. Their concepts are insanely weak. I already know this person won’t look at a script if the concept isn’t good. So I have to make sure the concept is worth writing in the first place.
Hence, you have to EARN your way into the showdown. How do you do this? You have to pitch me a horror script idea that I approve of. For the next four weekends, you will pitch, in the comments, your title and logline for a horror script. I will answer “yes” or “no.” I will occasionally answer “maybe” if the idea has potential but needs to be tweaked. In that case, you’re going to want to keep pitching different versions of that idea. If I keep saying “Maybe,” you can keep going. But if I feel the idea is toast, I’ll “no” it. You are allowed to pitch as many ideas as you want.
BUT!
If I feel like you’re spamming concepts in the comments or just running over to ChatGPT and copy-and-pasting whatever it comes up with, I will stop responding to your pitches, which I’ll first warn you about, then confirm. I need to feel like these are genuine pitches that you’ve thought about in good faith. I suggest you privately vet your loglines with friends from the site and only pitch the best ones. Again, if I see someone just mindlessly pitching garbage, they’re out.
If you want more of a conversation about your logline pitches, rather than just a ‘yes’ or a ‘no,’ or you want to pitch your ideas in private, you can order my logline service. It’s $25 for a logline analysis (along with a yes or no) and $50 for unlimited e-mails where we potentially workshop a weak logline into something that is contest worthy. There are no guarantees though. You can’t put lipstick on a pig. If you want to use this service, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com.
Once we get through the four weekends, that’s it. Whoever makes the cut is in. From there, you’re going to write the script over the next five months. I will be integrating that process into the site occasionally. For example, we may have a First Scene Showdown for the Horror contestants. And I’ll be setting some checkpoints for you along the way to make sure your script is ready come showdown time.
Obviously, the pool of entrants is going to be much smaller. But, since every entry will be a good movie idea, the chances of finding something worthy of being produced will be much higher. There’s an off-chance that if someone comes up with a gangbusters mega-awesome horror idea that this person might fall in love with it and buy it off the idea alone.
I’m also trying to promote good screenwriting practices overall. Too many writers spend years on a script that they never idea-tested. It’s insane to me. You just wasted two years of your life working on a terrible idea, making the writing of the screenplay pointless. What I’m asking you to do here is how you should do it. Get your ideas out there in front of people and test them to see if they’re any good! Only write something when you get good responses from it.
To be clear, I’m not sending this guy an okay script. I’ve sent him scripts before that I thought were good but not great. He responds, in a polite way, with “Don’t waste my time.” So, you have to deliver. It’s not a foregone conclusion that I’m sending this if the winning script is just the best of a bunch of okay screenplays.
The good news is, even if he doesn’t like it, there are other people I can send it to *if I like it*.
So, when does this experiment start?
RIGHT NOW!
You can start pitching horror script loglines in the comments immediately. I will be checking in periodically. Don’t worry if I don’t respond to your idea right away. I *will* get to it by the end of the weekend.
All right. Let’s rock’n’roll!
The big project that landed over at Paramount with Timothee Chalamet and James Mangold
Genre: Crime/Heist
Premise: A guy who uses motorcycles to rob banks recruits his brother to join the party.
About: Timothee Chalamet is reteaming with his “Complete Unknown” director, James Mangold, to make this film for Paramount on the heels of its recent sale to Skydance. The short story was written by Jaime Oliveira, who is adapting it into a script. Oliveira has no previous credits. Which is yet another reminder that you can be a nobody writer and land a big project. It appears that this will be a priority for Mangold and Chalamet, which means that Mangold’s Star Wars project has likely gone the way of every other Star Wars project at Lucasfilm – into the Death Star trash compactor.
Writer: Jaime Oliveira
Details: 50 pages
I was told that this movie was the next “Heat.”
I would agree with that but I would add a slight caveat. It’s the Gen Z Heat. It’s soft. It keeps checking in on you. It gives you warm hugs when you’re feeling down.
The reason Heat was so awesome was that it was relentless. It didn’t care about you. It cared only about being the most visceral experience you were going to have that decade.
If Heat wants to fuck you, High Side wants to cuddle with you afterwards
Which I guess is sort of Timothee Chalamet’s brand. This guy isn’t exactly DeNiro. But I was hoping for a whole lot more than I got with High Side.
When ex-bike racer Billy Miller’s father dies, his older brother, Cole, shows up after ten years and says he’s got a new job for him. Billy’s been waiting with baited breath for his brother ever since he left, so he doesn’t put up much resistance.
Cole takes him to his hideout in the middle of Texas, where he introduces him to the crew. There’s the handsome Ricky, the gorgeous but 100% trouble Emily, the mother of the group, Liv, the hacker, Dusty, and the ubiquitous “Chief” characters who’s in all of these movies.
They’re all tough guys and they follow Cole who has created the perfect bank-robbing scheme. Go to a city big enough to have lots of money in its banks, but small enough not to have police helicopters. They don’t need to worry about cop cars because they escape on motorcycles, which no car can catch.
Cole brought Billy in because Billy is the fastest of the fast on a motorcycle. Of course… Billy can’t drive all of the motorcycles at once so I’m not sure why that matters. But anyway.
The group robs a bunch of banks with no problems whatsoever – riveting storytelling when there are no obstacles to your heroes’ objectives. I suppose that maybe the love story between Billy and Emily is supposed to alleviate this. I would most certainly argue that it does not. Eventually, Cole gets word that there’s a fox in the henhouse. One of the group members is an undercover agent. Cole’s response to this – I kid you not – is to do one last job – their biggest yet – in Fresno California, with a haul of 15 million dollars.
This job is the climax of the story and because Cole is the dumbest person in America, he can’t foresee that the entirety of the FBI is going to be waiting for him, seeing as they have a direct line into their plan. This ending is basically the whole reason this movie concept was conceived of – to rip off the famous bank robbery in Heat. Does it succeed? Based on what I’ve told you so far, what do you think?
The greatest heist scene ever, from Michael Mann’s “Heat.”
I don’t even know where to start in explaining how by-the-numbers this was.
It began like literally every movie ever. Dad dies. Brother recruits other brother into crime. Meet the crew. Go do crimes. Hero falls in love with the girl on the team. I was so far ahead of this story that I swear, at one point, I was reading it in Times Square on New Year’s Eve 2026.
It somehow only got more predictable from there. Bring in a parallel FBI agent storyline, which was botched to the nth degree. They introduce this Agent Lennox character like he’s going to infiltrate the motorcycle robbers, only to have him do NOTHING. It turns out his only purpose was to show up at the last second and tell Cole that ANOTHER FBI AGENT had infiltrated his gang.
This then becomes a mystery in the story. Who is the mole?
Which creates an unfixable story situation. Because when you’re saying there’s a mole in the operation, you have to ask as the writer, which character would create the biggest problem as the mole? (Spoilers) Of course, that would be Emily. Because Billy has fallen for her. So, her being the mole creates the most conflict within the group. But that’s also the most obvious person! So we all know it’s Emily immediately. This leaves the writer to either go with the obvious choice or go with a choice that doesn’t matter.
Everything about this story was more vanilla my dance moves.
Here’s a snippet from the story that encapsulates my reading experience.
“One more job,” Cole said. “Then we ride off into the sunset.”
Nobody cheered. Just nods and silence.
Where is the LIFE???????
This is supposedly the biggest moment in the script so far. The response? “Nobody cheered. Just nods and silence.”
That’s how I felt when I read this. A lot of silence. A lot of lifelessness.
Does this story have hope as a movie?
I suppose that if they make some truly memorable motorcycle getaway set pieces, at least the movie will give audiences something to talk about. That’s something that’s hard to measure in a script. The way the motorcycle scenes were described here were vanilla, like everything else in the story. But James Mangold might come in and have some ideas to improve them.
And then you have the final bank heist scene, which is striving to be the Heat bank heist. I don’t know why directors, or writers, do this to themselves. Well, I do. Like I always say, we’re all here to rewrite or remake our favorite movies. And so I’m sure James Mangold is thinking, “I get to do my Heat bank shootout!” But it’s never going to be as good, James! It just won’t be. Even if you do the best job you can possibly do. You can’t beat the scenes and the movies that are in the pantheon. It is IM-POSS-IBLE.
So why not, instead, create your own great scene? Something nobody has done yet? Be a trendsetter, not a trend-follower.
For this script to have any hope, it needs a massive rewrite from someone who understands clichéd and obvious choices.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: This is an absolutely terrible way to introduce a character: “Then came Emily. She moved quiet, calm. Wore her gear like it was part of her. Her eyes—dark, unreadable—found mine without blinking.” What in the world have we learned about this character from this intro? NOTH-THING!!! Nothing. That’s the only criteria that matters when introducing characters is – DOES THE DESCRIPTION TELL US WHO THEY ARE? This description does not and therefore it is a failure.
What I learned 2: You’re probably wondering, after this scathing review, “Well then why did Timothee Chalamet sign onto it?” Simple. Motorcycles. Seriously! That’s it. He gets to ride motorcycles and the director promised him that he’ll get to be in his own Heat bank shootout scene. It also helps when you have 4 months to pitch someone an idea (as Mangold did on the set of Complete Unknown).
