Genre: Horror
Premise: A group of paranormal researchers move in to the most haunted mansion in the world to try and prove the existence of ghosts.
About: One of our longtime commenters has thrown his hat into the ring. Very excited to finally be reviewing Andrew Mullen’s script! — 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.
Writer: Andrew Mullen
Details: 146 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).

Andrew’s been commenting on Scriptshadow forever and I like to reward people who actively participate on the site, so I was more than happy to choose his script for this week’s Amateur Friday. Seeing that Andrew had always made astute points and solid observations, I was hoping for a three-for-three “worth the read” trifecta over the last three Amateur Fridays. What once seemed impossible was shaping up to be possible.

And then I saw the page count.

Pop quiz. What’s the first thing a reader looks at when he opens a screenplay? The title? No. The writer’s name? No. That little box on the top left corner of the PDF document that tells you how many pages it is? Ding ding ding! I saw “146” and my eyes closed. In an instant, all of the energy I had to read Shadows was drained. I know Andrew reads the site so I know he’s heard me say it a hundred times: Keep your script under 110 pages. Of all the rules you want to follow, this is somewhere near the top. And it has nothing to do with whether it’s possible to tell a good story over 110 pages. It has to do with the fact that 99.9% of producers, agents, and managers will close your script within 3 seconds of opening it after seeing that number. They will assume, rightly in 99.9% of the cases, that you don’t know what you’re doing yet, and move on to the next script.

Which is exactly what I planned to do. I mean, I have a few hundred amateur scripts that don’t break the 100 page barrier. I would be saving 45 minutes of my night to do something fun and enjoyable if I went back to the slush pile. But then I stopped. I thought, a) I like Andrew. b) This could serve as an example to amateur writers WHY it’s a terrible idea to write a 146 page script. And c) Maybe, just maybe, this will be that .01% of 146 page screenplays that’s good and force me to reevaluate how I approach the large page count rule.

So, was Shadows in that .01%?

Professor Malcom Dobbs and Dr. Butch Rubenstein are founders of the premiere paranormal research team on the planet. They’re the “Jodie Foster in Contact’s” of the paranormal world, willing to go to the ends of the earth to prove that ghosts do, in fact, exist. And they’re currently residing in the best possible place to prove this – a huge mansion with sprawling grounds known as Carrion Manor – a house many consider to be the most haunted in the world.

But with their grant running out, so is their time to prove the existence of ghosts, so the group is forced to take drastic measures. They head to a local nut house and ask for the services of 20-something Brenna, a pretty and kind woman with a dark past. Her entire family was slaughtered when she was a child, and that night she claimed to have heard voices, whispers, contact from another realm. This “contact” is exactly what our team needs to ramp up their experiments.

Basically, what these guys do is similar to the “night vision” sequence in the great horror film, “The Orphanage,” where they use all their technical equipment like computers, and cameras, and microphones, to monitor levels of energy as Brenna walks from room to room throughout the manor. This is one of the first problems I had with the script. There isn’t a lot of variety to these scenes. And we get a lot of them. Brenna walks into a room. The levels spike. Our paranormal team is excited. Some downtime. Then we repeat the process again.

During Brenna’s stay, she starts to fall for one of the team members, a child genius (now 27 years old) named Dr. Schordinger Pike. This was another issue I had with the script, as the development of Pike and Brenna’s relationship was way too simplistic, almost like two 6th graders falling in love, as opposed to a pair of 27 year olds (“She’s way out of my league. Right? Right. Not even the same sport!” Pike starts hyperventilating). Also, I find that when the love story isn’t the centerpiece of the film (in this case, the movie is about a haunted mansion) you can’t give it too much time. You can’t stop your screenplay to show the two lovers running through daisies and professing their love for one another. You almost have to build their relationship up in the background. Empire Strikes Back is a great example of this. Han and Leia fall in love amongst a zillion other things going on. Whereas here, we stop the story time and time again to give these two a scene where they can sit around and talk to each other. Always move your story along first. Never stop it for anything.

Anyway, another subplot that develops is the computer system that’s monitoring the house, dubbed “Casper.” Casper is the “Hal” of the family, and when things start going bad (real ghosts start appearing), Casper wants to do things his way. You probably know what I’m going to say here. A computer that controls the house is a different movie. It has nothing to do with what these guys are doing and therefore only serves to distract from the story. You want to get rid of this and focus specifically on the researchers’ goal (trying to prove that there are ghosts) and the obstacles they run into which make achieving that goal difficult.

I will say there’s some pretty cool stuff about the eclectic group of former house owners, and the fact that a lot of them had unfinished business when they died clues us in that we’ll be seeing them again. And we do. The final act is 30 intense pages of paranormal battles with numerous ghosts and creatures coming to take down our inhabitants, some of whom fall victim to the madness, some of whom escape.  But there are too many dead spots in the script, which makes getting to that climax a chore. 

So, the first thing that needs to be addressed is, “Why is this script so long?” I mean, did we really need this many pages to tell the story? The simple and final answer is no. We don’t need nearly this many pages. The reason a lot of scripts are too long is usually because a writer doesn’t know the specific story they’re trying to tell, so they tell several stories instead. And more stories equals more pages. This would fall in line with my previous observation, that we have the needless “Casper” subplot and a love story that requires the main story to stop every time it’s featured.

Figure out what your story is about and then ONLY GIVE US THE SCENES THAT PUSH THAT PARTICULAR STORY FORWARD. Doesn’t mean you can’t have subplots. Doesn’t mean you can’t have a minor tangent or two. But 98% of your script should be working to push that main throughline forward. So if you look at a similar film – The Orphanage – That’s a film about a woman who loses her son and tries to find him. Go rent that movie now. You’ll see that every single scene serves to push that story forward (find my son). We don’t deviate from that plan.

Another problem here is the long passages where nothing dramatic happens. There’s a tour of the house that begins on page 59 that just stops the story cold. We start with a couple of flirty scenes between Brenna and Pike as we explore a few of the rooms. Then we go into multiple flashbacks of the previous tenants in great detail, one after another. After this, Pike offers us a flashback of his OWN history. So we had this big long exposition scene regarding the house. And we’re following that with another exposition scene. Then Pike shows Brenna the house garden, another key area of the house, and more exposition. This is followed by another character talking about a Vietcong story whose purpose remains unclear to me. The problem here, besides the dozen straight pages of exposition, is that there’s nothing dramatic happening. No mystery, no problem, no twist, nothing at stake, nothing pushing the story forward. It’s just people talking for 12 minutes. And that’s the kind of stuff that will kill a script.

Likewise, there are other elements in Shadows that aren’t needed. For example, there’s a character named Lewis, a slacker intern who never does any work, who disappears for 50-60 pages at a time before popping back up again. We never know who the guy is or why he’s in the story. Later it’s discovered he’s using remote portions of the house to grow pot in. I’m all for adding humor to your story, but the humor should stem from the situation. This is something you’d put in Harold and Kumar Go To Siberia, not a haunted house movie. Again, this is the kind of stuff that adds pages to your screenplay and for no reason. Know what your story is and stay focused on that story. Don’t go exploring every little whim that pops into your head – like pot-growing interns.

This leads us to the ultimate question: What *is* the story in Shadows? Well, it’s almost clear. But it needs to be more clear. Because the clearer it is to you, the easier it will be to tell your story. These guys are looking for proof of the paranormal. I get that. But why? What do they gain by achieving this goal? A vague satisfaction for proving there are ghosts? Audiences tend to want something more concrete. So in The Orphanage, the goal is to find the son (concrete). In the recently reviewed Red Lights, a similar story about the paranormal, the goal is to bring down Silver (concrete). If there was something more specific lost in this house. Or something specific that happened in this house, then you’d have that concrete goal. Maybe they’re trying to prove a murder or find a clue to some buried treasure on the property? Giving your characters something specific to do is going to give the story a lot more juice.

Here’s the thing. There’s a story in here. Paranormal guys researching ghosts in the most haunted house in the world? I can get on board with that. And there’s actually some pretty cool ideas here. Like the old knight who used to live on the property who was never found. There’s potential there. But this whole story needs to be streamlined. I mean you need to book this guy on The Biggest Loser until he’s down to a slim and healthy 110 pages. Because people aren’t going to give you an opportunity until you show them that you respect their time. I realize this is some tough love critiquing going on here, but that’s only because I want Andrew to kick ass on the rewrite and on all his future scripts. And he will if he avoids these mistakes. Good luck Andrew. Hope these observations helped. :)

Script link: Shadows

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

What I learned: This script was a little too prose-heavy, another factor contributing to the high page count. You definitely want to paint a picture when you write but not at the expense of keeping the eyes moving. Lines like this, “A dying jack o’ lantern smiles lewdly. The faintly glowing grimace flickers in the dark as if struggling for life,” can easily become “A flickering jack o’ lantern smiles lewdly,” which conveys the exact same image in half the words. Just keep it moving.

So you want to write an Oscar-winning screenplay. Well, I thought I’d have a little fun this week and look back at the last 25 Oscar winners in the best Original Screenplay category and see if I can’t lock down a pattern or two as to what kind of script wins this most prestigious of competitions. If this is, indeed, a collection of the best writing over the past 25 years, it wouldn’t hurt to figure out what these writers are doing. So below, I’ve listed the last 25 Oscar Winners in order (from 1986 to 2010) and afterwards, I’ll share with you nine observations I found from combing through the list. Your Oscar winners ladies and gentleman…

1986 – Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen)
1987 – Moonstruck (John Patrick Shanley)
1988 – Rain Man (Ronald Bass and Barry Morrow)
1989 – Dead Poets Society (Tom Schulman)
1990 – Ghost (Bruce Joel Rubin)
1991 – Thelma and Louise (Callie Khouri)
1992 – The Crying Game (Neil Jordan)
1993 – The Piano (Jane Campion)
1994 – Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary)
1995 – The Usual Suspects – Christopher McQuarrie
1996 – Fargo (Joel and Ethan Coen)
1997 – Good Will Hunting (Matt Damon and Ben Affleck)
1998 – Shakespeare In Love – (Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard)
1999 – American Beauty (Alan Ball)
2000 – Almost Famous (Cameron Crowe)
2001 – Gosford Park (Julian Fellowes)
2002 – Talk to Her (Pedro Almodovar)
2003 – Lost In Translation (Sophia Coppola)
2004 – Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind (Pierre Bismuth, Michael Gondry, Charlie Kaufman)
2005 – Crash (Paul Haggis)
2006 – Little Miss Sunshine (Michael Arndt)
2007 – Juno (Diablo Cody)
2008 – Milk (Justin Lance Black)
2009 – The Hurt Locker (Mark Boal)
2010 – The King’s Speech (David Siedler)

DISPARITY
First thing I noticed about the Oscar winners is how much disparity there is in the genres. We start with an ensemble comedy, move to a romantic comedy, then to a road trip buddy drama, then to an inspirational teacher movie, then to a supernatural romantic drama. Our most recent five are a “wacky family” movie, a teenage comedy-drama, a gay rights leader biography, a war film, and a period piece. Naturally, my first inclination is to say, “There are no patterns in this! The Academy just picks whatever the best script is that year.” Kinda cool. But wait, I looked a little deeper and, what do you know, I was able to find some commonalities…

DRAMA!
Fifteen of the 25 scripts listed are dramas. That’s an even 60%. This would make sense, as drama is the genre most reflective of real life and therefore the vessel most likely to put us in touch with our emotions. Unlike thrillers and horror and action movies, which take us to places we’ll never go in our real lives, drama places a mirror up to us and says, “Hey, this is you buddy.” From losing your job like Lester Burnham in American Beauty to taking a stand for an issue you believe in like in Milk. This is the most affecting genre in film when done right, so naturally, it’s going to result in some of the most affecting films. Now while this DIDN’T surprise me that much. The next trend I saw did. Because this is the last thing you’d expect the Academy to celebrate….

HUMOR!
The Academy has a bad rap for not recognizing comedies the way they do other genres. But take a look at the movies on this list. Almost all of them make you laugh. Sure, most of the time, the humor is dark, but Almost Famous, Rain Man, Moonstruck, Pulp Fiction, Ghost, Fargo, Good Will Hunting, Juno, Crash, Eternal Sunshine, Little Miss Sunshine. There is a lot of humor in those movies. This is a huge revelation for me. Because when you think of the stodgy Old Guard that is the Academy, you think you have to go all drama all the time. This proves that infusing your script with comedy, albeit balanced with drama, is just as important.

DON’T BE AFRAID TO ENTERTAIN
One thing I expected to find when I pulled this list out was something akin to the Nichol Winner choices – since they’re operating under the same umbrella – scripts that specifically focused on a deeper element of the human condition (and I did find a few: Milk, The Hurt Locker). But I was surprised at just how many films wanted to entertain you. Juno, Fargo, Gosford Park, Pulp Fiction, Ghost, Almost Famous, The King’s Speech. These movies just want you to have a good time in the theater first, AND THEN if you want to look deeper, they serve you an extra helping of warmed up leftovers to dig into later. I think when people sit down and think, “I want to write an Oscar screenplay,” they get into this mentality that they have to change the world with every word. But there’s enough of an entertainment factor to all these movies that I think the old saying, “Entertain first, teach second,” is the way to go.

THERE’S AN ELEMENT OF LUCK TO WRITING A SCREENPLAY
One of the scariest realizations I had going over this list is that there is a huge amount of luck involved in writing a great screenplay. And I don’t mean that writing doesn’t require skill. What I’m saying, rather, is that sometimes a story just comes together and sometimes it doesn’t. And we don’t always know if it’s coming together until we’re well into writing it. I say this because in the last 25 years, there has been a different winning screenwriter in the original screenplay category every single year. And there is only one writer (or pair of writers) who have won twice if you include the adapted category, and that’s Joel and Ethan Cohen for both Fargo and No Country For Old Men. You would certainly think that, if you’re good enough at your profession, you would continue to win at least somewhat consistently over the course of your career. But the opposite is true in this category. What this tells me is that the screenplay is the star, not the screenwriter, and I don’t say that to diminish the work of the writer, but rather to remind you, if you come up with a good idea that seems to be working on the page, nurture that thing and make it the best you possibly can. Because like it or not – even for the best screenwriters – the great idea combined with the perfect execution just doesn’t come around very often.

LEARN TO DIRECT
Nine of these winners directed their screenplays. That’s 36%. Although I sometimes question the writer-director approach (writer-directors may be too close to the material to be objective), it’s clear from this number that the approach pays off. This is probably because directors write with a director’s point of view, which is a little different than a writer’s point of view. They can visualize cinematic sequences they know will work, whereas a screenwriter might know that sequence will read terribly on paper and ditch it. Take the 12 minute dialogue scene in Jack Rabbit Slim’s in Pulp Fiction for example. That would never survive in a spec script. The producers would scream foul at a 12 minute dialogue scene with 2 people sitting at a table. But Tarantino can visualize the setting, the characters, the mood, the tone, and know it will work. This freedom allows the writer-director to write things differently, and the Oscar-voting crowd likes rewarding things that are different.

TRENDING TOWARDS THE SINGLE PROTAGONIST
A lot of these winners consist of an ensemble cast (American Beauty, Crash, Gosford Park, Little Miss Sunshine, Fargo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Pulp Fiction). Cutting back and forth between multiple storylines seems to get the Academy’s juices flowing. However, I noticed that the past four winners more or less follow the traditional singular hero journey that is so often taught by screenwriting books and gurus. They may not be executed on the same basic level as Liar Liar or Taken, but the single hero journey it is. So don’t feel like you have to populate your story with multiple characters and multiple intersecting timelines to get the Academy’s attention. You can follow just one guy. Just make sure that guy is interesting!

NEVER FORGET THE POWER OF THE IRONIC CHARACTER
Robin Williams is a therapist who doesn’t have his shit together. Matt Damon is a janitor who’s a mathematical genius. Dustin Hoffman is a mentally challenged man who’s a genius at black jack. Colin Firth plays a king who’s unable to speak to his people. Audiences are fascinated by ironic characters, those who are in some way opposite from the image they project. These characters are by no means necessary to write a great script, but if you can work one into your story, it’s going to make you and your script look a lot more clever, which should give you a bump come Oscar time.

TAKE HEED LOW-CONCEPTERS
For those of you out there worrying that your script is too low concept, you might want to toss your hat in the ring for an Academy Award. Truth be told, very few of these loglines scream “I have to read this now!” The exceptions might be Ghost, Rain Man, Eternal Sunshine, and Shakespeare In Love. However, it’s important to remember that almost everyone on this list had a previous level of success in the industry which guaranteed that their screenplay would get read by others. Who knows how long these great scripts might have sat on a pile unread because the loglines were average and they were written by Joe Nobody. So I still think the best roadmap to success is to write that high-concept comedy or thriller first, THEN bust out your multi-character period piece about a prince suffering from whooping cough second, in order to snatch that Oscar you so richly deserve.

So, that’s what I found. Did I miss anything? I noticed that a lot of these scripts were written by a single person as well, so time to dump your writing partner (kidding). I still feel like there’s a magical formula here as there definitely seems to be a similarity with all these scripts that I can’t put my finger on. So I’ll leave that up to you. Enjoy discussing.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A high school girl getting ready for the biggest party of the year is tasked with taking her young brother on a quick trick or treating run. But when he goes missing, the entire night is thrown into disarray.
About: Fun Size made the bottom half of the 2010 Black List and is being produced and directed by Josh Schwartz, the O.C. creator and writer of a high school script I reviewed awhile back called “Providence” that wasn’t too shabby. This is Max Werner’s first feature sale. He got his break writing on The Colbert Report, on which he won an Emmy. Victoria Justice will be playing the lead character, Wren. No, not Victoria Jackson. Victoria Justice.
Writer: Max Werner
Details: 105 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).

Within the “collective things that happen to a bunch of people on a single day” mini-genre, I’d have to say that Dazed and Confused is the crème-de-la-crème. That film just has an energy to it that very few films have. I think a lot of that had to do with the casting at the time.  Now all anyone wants to do is cast spray-tanned glossy Hollywood actors in these roles.  Linklater wasn’t afraid to cast people that actually looked like real people (okay, except for Ben Affleck).

I guess my first thought when someone created a Dazed and Confused for Halloween was, “Hey, why didn’t I think of that?” Halloween is a great night to center a movie around because…well because it’s inherently theatrical. Everyone’s dressed up and they’re all acting like somebody they’re not. The problem with this bite sized script (besides the title – for which I suggest an immediate change), is I’m not sure what it wants to be. Does it want to be a family film? Does it want to be a raunchy teen movie? Or does it want to be Dazed and Confused meets Sixteen Candles? I’m not sure I’ll be able to answer that by the end of the review. But I’ll try.

Wren is pale and pretty and awkward and the kind of teenager who would rather crush on her really intelligent History teacher than one of the immature douchebags she shares hall space with on a daily basis. April, her best friend, is pretty much the opposite. Described as a “future girl gone wild,” (great description!) she’d rather crush on *every* douchebag she shares hall space with. If it’s cute, chances are April wants to fuck it.

Naturally, the too-mature-for-her-age Wren can’t wait to ditch this prison and head off to her dream school, NYU. Problem is she has these dreaded loans to take care of, and can’t do anything without her mother’s support. And right now, her mother’s making a very unfair demand – to take her plump annoying little brother Albert (aka, the devil), out for Halloween trick-or-treating while she goes out to her own Halloween party with her newly minted uncomfortably younger boyfriend.

Wren’s obviously furious, particularly because super-cute emo Aaron, the only boy her age who’s actually worth the effort, just invited her to his party for the evening. And taking Albert out means missing a prime time last-minute High School make-out (or more) opportunity that, if missed, she’ll end up regretting for the rest of her life.

So Wren and April formulate a plan where they’ll loop Albert around the block once, get him back home so he can gorge himself into a diabetic coma, then run over to Aaron’s party so the macking can begin. Sweet plan, except Albert, decked out in a spider-man costume, takes all of five minutes to wander off during the trick-or-treating, and DISAPPEAR. Just like that, Albert is el-gone-o.

Luckily, Wren and April run into ultra-nerd duo Roosevelt and Peng. Roosevelt plays the flute for fun and has two moms who force him to speak Latin. Peng is from Korea and immediately makes you think of Long Duck Dong (oh the days of 80s movie stereotypes). Never in a million years would April and Wren be caught with these two, but they have a car, and a car means finding her brother faster, which means hooking up with Aaron sooner, so they join forces and away we go.

Fun Size starts off really strong. If there’s one thing that Werner has going for him, it’s dialogue. I loved lines like this, when Aaron (the guy Wren likes) says in all earnestness, “I’m writing a power ballad about you. It’s called Mystery Meat.” Or when Wren, who’s always heard Roosevelt talk about his “moms,” realizes when she finally meets them that he really has 2 MOMS. Shocked, she observes, “I thought he was just talking like Ludacris.”

But sometimes the dialogue feels too clever. Wren creates these weird lists in her spare time which allow her to do these funky play on words such as: “Bullet Points on a Fluffer’s Resume: Team player, stick-to-it-ive-ness, conceive and implement strategies for sustaining growth during periods of inactivity.” I knew all the while that someone out there was laughing at this, but it was all too heady for me.

What’s strange is that the humor seems to move further down the evolutionary chain as the script goes on. Whereas we start out with a lot of clever witty dialogue – a sort of sister script to the well-loved “Easy A,” – things become considerably more low brow after we hit the mid-point. We have bully humor, car chases, my boyfriend is still in college stuff (for the mom). It’s not that I didn’t like it. It just seemed to shift in tone, and that contributed to me struggling to find out exactly what tone Fun Size was going for.

On the structural side, it passes inspection. I love the one night thing. Keeps the narrative nice and clean. We’re not questioning when it’s all supposed to end. The stakes are laid out clearly. Wren’s mom lets her know she needs to start acting more mature if she’s going to spend 40,000 a year on her. So if Wren comes home without her brother, chances are her NYU dream is kaput. Again, not mind-blowing, but that’s what you have to remember with structure. It just has to fit with the story you’re telling and be believable. It doesn’t have to be the most original thing in the world. As long as it shapes the story and doesn’t draw attention to itself, you’re in good shape.

Where I think the script falls short is in the emotional department. Near the end, we find out Wren’s father died. And it doesn’t feel natural at all, particularly because we’ve just spent the previous 60 pages drowning ourselves in wacky 80s teen humor. But as I read on, I thought, this is exactly what the script needed, only a lot sooner. We needed something to ground the craziness, and her father’s death and how that’s affected this family – had that been instituted from the get-go, I think it would’ve given this script a whole nother much-needed layer.

Dazed and Confused did this masterfully, where it had a lot of wacky moments (stealing beer and then being shot at in the car) but the story was so well grounded that instead of those moments feeling like Date Night 2, they felt like something that could’ve really happened. The trick was in how much importance Linklater placed on theme. Dazed and Confused was about “moving on,” or “moving to that next stage of your life.” Every scene was dripping with that theme, so when characters did things that they’d never normally do, it made sense, because that’s the way you act when it’s the last day before the next stage of your life. Here in Fun Size, when the car chase scene happened, it felt more like a writer trying to come up with a funny scene for a movie. Had they explored the theme of the father’s death (or – ironically – “not being able to move on”) early and often, it would’ve grounded the narrative and given Fun Size the earnestness I think it was looking for.

I like the concept here. Follow a bunch of connected people around during the craziness of one Halloween night. I’d just like more emotion and theme woven into the story, as right now it’s a little too broad and messy.

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

What I learned: Someone mentioned this in the comments of Bass Champion and I thought it was a great point. Make your stakes strong by giving your hero something to gain AND something to lose. So in Bass Champion, Tate had something to gain – the audition with Nolan – but he didn’t have a lot to lose. If he lost the championships, he just went back to his show, putting him right back where he started. Here, Wren GAINS something by finding her brother (she gets to go to the party and be with Aaron) and loses something by losing her brother (she doesn’t get to go to her dream school). Stakes can work with only something gained or only something lost, but tend to work best when there’s something to both gain and lose.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A Twilight-like actor becomes the face of Bass Fishing in a desperate attempt to get an audition for Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Old Man And The Sea.
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.
Writer: Gayne C. Young
Details: 105 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 got two words for you: colostomy bag.

If that doesn’t get your rotors revved up and ready to go, you might not want to “dive” into today’s amateur offering, Bass Champion. But if you choose not to take that leap, you’ll be missing out on one of the few worthy Amateur Friday screenplays I’ve read.

The first thing you gotta get right with a comedy is the premise.  The premise has to be funny.  And this premise passes the test.  I’m not sure why, but it’s probably due to the insane combination of the Twilight world and the Bass Fishing world, which just don’t go together at all. And yet our author, Gayne, finds a way to make it work, deftly poking fun at both the ridiculousness of tweenie vampires and the hickishness of bass fishing. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s talk plot.

Tate Blocker is a hot young “Robert Pattinson” like actor on a vampire TV show called “Forever Youth.” Tate takes method acting to the extreme, going to whatever lengths he needs to to become the character, including believing he’s an actual vampire. The problem is, it’s all a bag of tricks. Tate doesn’t understand what it’s really like to “get dirty” and sacrifice yourself to something.

Which is exactly why Christopher Nolan won’t even consider him for a roll in his new adaptation of The Old Man And The Sea. And it’s killing Tate. He’ll do anything to get that audition.

Halfway across the country, Bass Fishing champion and overall stupid-ass Bud Milton has made the inopportune mistake of sticking his pecker inside a fish’s mouth for a few laughs. Problem is, one of his cronies taped it, and now it’s all over Youtube, creating some really bad press for the sport, culminating in PETA swooping in and demanding nothing less than the shutdown of Bass Fishing.

Tate’s agent realizes this is the perfect opportunity to bust her client out of the TV world. If Tate can become the new face of Bass Fishing, it will refocus the media away from PETA, and in the process win over Christopher Nolan to get Tate that audition. It’s the perfect plan! Well, sorta.

If Tate is going to compete, he’s going to need a partner. And that partner comes in the form of anger-management poster child Rod Bender, a one-eyed alcoholic former Bass Fishing champion whose repeated fighting got him kicked off the tour years ago. Rod’s the only partner good enough to make up for Tate’s unsettling lack of skill.

The problem is that Bud, our oral fishing friend, is dead set on making sure Vampire Boy doesn’t win jack shit, and he’ll do anything to make him and his washed up partner disappear. And to make things worse, Hark Herald, who plays Tate’s werewolf co-star on Forever Youth, is pulling his own publicity stunt to win over the lead role in Christopher Nolan’s film. With escalating pressure from PETA, Rod’s physically abusive teaching methods, backstabbing from his female co-star at Comic-Con, and Bud’s never-ending dirty tricks, does Tate stand a chance of becoming the ultimate Bass Champion and winning the role of Santiago in The Old Man And The Sea?

So, is Bass Fishing perfect? No. Gayne is clearly still learning the craft and maybe leans a little too heavily on cheap humor (colostomy bags in two of three scripts this week!). But what I like about this week’s comedy script is that finally we have an amateur writer who’s put his story on the same priority level as his comedy.

You can see that in how deftly he’s structured his script. We have a main character with a clear goal (get an audition with Christopher Nolan). We have high stakes (Bass Fishing gets shut down and Tate loses the role of a lifetime if he loses). We have a ticking time bomb (Nolan choosing Santiago soon). We have a great central relationship in Rod and Tate, two completely opposite characters who must learn to work together to achieve their ultimate goal. Every character here is properly motivated. Rod wants back on the tour. Bud has to win or his career will be over. Tate’s agent wants to leave behind her soul-sucking child-actor agency. Everything that happens in this comedy has a reason for happening. Structurally, this is one of the best amateur Friday screenplays we’ve had.

Another thing Gayne’s got going for him is he understands his material. He gets these two competing worlds (the vain-ness of Hollywood and the trashiness of the South) so well that when he brings them together, you feel like you’re reading a script that you haven’t read before. True there are some familiar elements, but who the hell places a Twilight actor in the middle of the deep south?? I just haven’t seen anything close to that idea explored before. And everything here is like that – existing in that coveted “familiar but different” bullseye territory that every screenwriter should be aiming for.

I also loved the little touches in the story like Hark and Tate going after the same role. And the Comic-Con stuff had me dying (guys wearing “I’m a Tate-o-Sexual” shirts and Rod beating the shit out of a girl in a wheelchair after being mistaken for a homeless person from one of Tate’s Forever Youth episodes). Tate’s dedication to researching his roles, like going to a castle and living with roaches for a week. I really felt like Gayne pushed the comedy limits and never got bogged down in the obvious (well, almost never).

On the downside, I can tell he’s still learning some things. The opening of the script doesn’t move us into the story as smoothly as I would like. Setting up a story is deceptively hard because it’s when you introduce all the artificial elements (the goal, the ticking time bomb, etc.) that make the car go. Introducing these elements in a manner that’s not herky jerky and doesn’t draw attention to itself isn’t easy to do. If you’re too lazy about it, the reader quickly becomes aware that he’s reading a script. For instance, when Rod is being recruited from Outdoor Empire, we’re very aware that this is the “recruit the crazy partner” scene. It doesn’t “flow.” It doesn’t just “happen.” You have to keep writing these scenes to death until they feel effortless, until they feel like a natural extension of everything around them, because if the audience doesn’t believe your setup, it’s going to be hard for them to believe everything that follows.

The other stuff I wasn’t so hot on was the crass-ness of the humor. But I’m torn about it. On the one hand, a lot of it stemmed from the characters. The word “fuck” is used in Hollywood and the South a lot, so it makes sense that it’s used a lot here (and I mean A LOT). As for the shit jokes. Well…hmmm. This seems to divide audiences. But for me, now that I’m no longer in high school, it doesn’t really make me laugh anymore, so when we basically extend a 15 second scene to 3 minutes so we can draw out a shit joke where the wheelbound president of Bass Champions dumps his colostomy bag into a urinal, I’m inclined to say, “Lose it and move on.” Then again, one of the funniest jokes ever onscreen was a shit joke, that being the blanket flinging scene in Trainspotting. I think the lesson here is that you do have to listen to other people when they say you’ve gone too far with a joke. But in the end, because humor is so subjective and comes down to personal taste, you gotta stick with something if you believe it’s funny. So in that sense I respect Gayne’s choices.

In the end, I just love this premise (Did I mention I love this premise?). And the fact that Gayne actually built a story around it as opposed to stringing together a bunch of one-off sketches, puts him in a league above other aspiring comedy scriptwriters. Bass Champion still needs some work. I’d like the setup to be smoother and it gets a teensy bit repetitive in the middle. But concept wise, story wise, and execution of the premise wise, it does a really solid job. I’m thinking Gayne has a shot in this crazy business.

Script link: Bass Champion 

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

What I learned: All of your characters – not just your main character – should have something at stake. So here, the central stakes are for Tate to get an audition for Santiago. But his agent also has something at stake. If her client doesn’t get the role, she’s stuck in a shitty agency forever. For Rod, this is his last shot to get back into the sport he loves. For Bud, losing to Tate means he’ll lose the only thing he cares about, his fame. Even the sport itself has stakes attached to it. If Tate doesn’t win and squash PETA’s media attention, then the entire sport could close down. So add stakes wherever you can in your script, not just to your main character.

Genre: Black Comedy
Premise: After a high school kid finally lands the girl of his dreams, she becomes severely crippled in an accident, and fully expects him to continue with his boyfriend duties.
About: Head Injury made the lower half of the 2006 Black List. I don’t know much about the writers though, other than they have one project set up at Dreamworks called “Bromance.” I’d heard of the script but figured it to be yet another run-of-the-mill comedy. However, after reading Head Injury, I’m not so sure that’s the case. These two are not afraid to explore the deepest darkest corners of the mind.
Writers: Barry Schwartz & Raza Syed
Details: 104 pages – July 11, 2006 (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).

Ho. Ly. Shit.

Black (or “Dark”) comedies never do that well at the box office, but the screenwriting world loves them. From The Voices to The Beaver to Heathers to Election, each of these scripts seeks to dig deep into our psyche and test just how fucked up the chewy center is. If you’re laughing when a deranged lunatic who talks to his cat lobs off his girlfriend’s head and keeps it in the refrigerator…well, that means you got problems dear. But don’t sweat it, because it means I got problems too.

The question with Black Comedies is “How far is too far?” What is the line that can and cannot be crossed? To me, that line is Peter Berg’s “Very Bad Things.” If you become too relentless in the darkness. If every scene pushes the limit of taste. If there’s no balance whatsoever. A black comedy can quickly turn into a piece of shit. I still remember that final scene in Very Bad Things where they’re on the lawn in wheelchairs. It gives me the shivers to this day. If they ever make a sequel to Being John Malkovich, please don’t let the person’s head they go into be Peter Berg.

I bring this up because Head Injury is daring enough to walk that line. And while at its best it reminds you of films like Election, at its worst, it brings me back to the overbaked weirdness of Very Bad Things.

10 year old Ethan is a fatty. And 10 year old fatties, as you know, are easy targets. So every day at school, Ethan’s life is a living nightmare, with bullies stacked on top of bullies rearranging their schedules to bully him. And yet all Ethan can do is think about beautiful Kaitlin, the most popular and beautiful (if not the nicest) girl in school.

So one day, after getting embarrassed during one of those dreaded “climb the rope” sessions in gym class (no climbing of any rope can end well for a fat kid), Ethan decides to change his life. He starts exercising. He starts eating better. He starts lifting weights. And by the time Ethan hits 17, he’s one of the most popular kids in high school.

It is at the height of his powers then, during a school field trip, that the sparks between him and Kaitlin finally fly, in the back seat of the bus no less, and Kaitlin decides to orally reward him for his newfound popularity.

And then, during this exchange, the bus crashes. Everybody ends up being all right. Everybody, that is, except for Kaitlin, whose body has been mangled and twisted beyond recognition. But the good news, she’s still alive!

Or is it?

What Ethan doesn’t know is that by engaging in this act with Kaitlin, he has unofficially made himself her official boyfriend. Parents, teachers, friends, all look to Ethan to stand by Kaitlin’s side, and boy is that stand going to be tough. Kaitlin has a myriad of health issues, not excluding a “collapsed vagina,” whatever that means. And to make matters worse, Kaitlin, who’s now essentially the female version of Stephen Hawking, decides to come back to school.

Here’s the thing though. Kaitlin still acts like the same popular bitch she was before the accident. She still bosses people around, still expects everyone to bow to her, still wants to be part of the cheerleading team. But worst of all, she still treats her boyfriend (or in this case, her new boyfriend) like a puppy that must obey every command or feel her wrath.

Ethan has no idea how this all happened. He’s been chasing Kaitlin his entire life. And now, when he’s finally got her, she’s……this??? And he never even officially became her boyfriend! He was getting a blowjob from her on the bus! Problem is, he can’t break up with her. Kaitlin’s friends, her parents and school faculty, all keep telling him what an amazing person he is for sticking it out and helping Kaitlin through this horrible time.

In the meantime, Ethan’s former best friend from grade school, Sela, who he ditched when he became popular, has grown up into Alternative Hot Girl, and become the only person Ethan can confide in about all this. The two start sleeping together and plotting a path to freedom. Except that with each passing day, it becomes harder and harder to push Kaitlin out of his life. So if he doesn’t act soon, he’s going to be stuck with this…thing…forever.

This script is harsh. I mean it really pushes the boundaries. Kaitlin is the foreman of ultimate bitches. At one point, she tells Ethan that if he doesn’t have sex with her, she’s going to report to the police that he raped her. It’s reverse rape. And that sex scene (or attempted sex scene) has to be one of the most awkward unpleasant disgusting scenes I have ever read. It’s not for the faint-hearted, that’s for sure.

The problem with Head Injury is that all of the characters are either unlikeable or weak, so you don’t really have anyone to root for. Kaitlin is obviously the worst person on the planet. But Ethan just goes along with it. He’s such a weak individual that after awhile you want to punch him in the gonads and say, “Dude, stand up to her already!”

Sela represents an opportunity to salvage this, but then she too becomes difficult to like. She begins the movie as a calm cute slightly nerdy best friend. And when they’re older, she’s much the same way. But then out of nowhere she becomes this sex-addict triple-nympho who goes psycho ballistic at the mere mention of Kaitlin’s name, who she proclaims destroyed her life.

Herein lies the issue with Head Injury. Dark comedy can be great. But you need at least one character to latch onto.  I’m not saying they have to be “likable” necessarily. But someone you care about enough to root for. And I didn’t see that here. Everyone was either despicable or annoyingly passive. And this goes back to something we always talk about. If your main character is too passive, it’s only a matter of time before the audience grows frustrated with them.

Technically, Ethan does have a goal – to dump Kaitlin. But the application of that goal is so wimpy as to be non-existent. He only tries to do it a couple of times, and the rest of the script is Kaitlin pissing on him in every way imaginable.

But there were character choices I liked. Such as keeping Kaitlin a bitch even after she’d become handicapped. This movie would have just been sad if she’d gotten injured and gurgled her way through conversations and ate everything through a straw. We wouldn’t have been able to handle that without wanting to slit our wrists. So the fact that she still thinks she’s little miss popular and that the world should revolve around her was kinda funny.

I can’t recommend Head Injury because it crosses that line I mentioned earlier. The reverse-rape scene pole-vaulted this thing to Disturbedville. But I will say this about the script. You remember it. I forget 90% of the scripts I read within a week. This script I will remember, and I suppose that’s why it ended up on the Black List. What did you think?

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

What I learned: Character consistency. You can’t just change your character’s behavior at whim. A character’s actions must stay consistent with their personality and motivations throughout the screenplay. Kaitlin and Selma are perfect examples of violating this rule. Kaitlin is the world’s most heartless person. She doesn’t have an emotional bone in her body. So in that reverse-rape scene, when she starts crying about how difficult it is to be crippled, we don’t believe a word of it, because it’s not in her nature, as set up in the previous 90 pages. Likewise with Sela. This girl is nice and sweet and thoughtful and smart one moment. Then the next moment she becomes a raging lunatic nymphomaniac. It was like reading an entirely different character. Always keep your character’s behavior consistent. If they are going to change, you must take the time to set that up, or else it’ll feel like it’s coming out of nowhere.