Search Results for: the wall
Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: A strapped-for-cash woman agrees to be part of a lab study where participants are placed in a room for a month, but begins to suspect that she’s been in the room for much longer than that.
About: Don’t know much about this one other than that the movie is being made by Vital Pictures and will come out sometime next year. You can see the writer’s early attempts at a Kickstarter page here, which has a trailer and some cool concept art.
Writer: Seda
Details: 108 pages
Liberace. Madonna. Beyonce.
And now…Seda.
Two names is so passé. These days, it’s preferable to cap it at one.
Okay, am I thrilled that a screenwriter has given himself one name? No. Does it scream pretentiousness? Yes. But I have to remember that this is the entertainment industry. You gotta market yourself to stand out. And maybe I have a teensy bit of sympathy since I’m not using my real name on this blog either.
One name or not, when I started reading Subject 6, a script heavily influenced by Cube and The Matrix, I started to exert all kinds of worriedness. I’ve read these kinds of scripts before. And when I say “these kinds of scripts,” I mean scripts with a bunch of fucked up things happening for seemingly no reason. The fear? That the “seemingly no reason” is because there IS NO REASON. The writer’s constructed a setting that allows him to make a lot of cool trippy fucked up things happen without having to come up with that all-important explanation Which is why I almost universally hate these screenplays. If you want to know what I’m talking about, read the pointless 2:22.
Now it started off okay, with our heroine, known only as “SIX” (in reference to the number listed on her fatigues), waking up in a bare-bones icy room that carries only the necessitates – bed, toilet, floor, ceiling. There’s also a TV, which inexplicably allows our subject to watch hundreds of other people in their own experiment rooms.
From what we can gather, the experiment is some sort of psychological test. Participants are paid 20 grand to come in and simply sit in a room for 30 days. You can opt out of the experiment any time you want by pressing a big red button in your room, but if you do, you forfeit your payment.
Naturally, there isn’t much to do other than sit around and talk to the other participants. Yes, for some reason, you have a video phone in your room that allows you to talk to any of the other rooms. Seems like an odd freedom for the experimenters to allow, but anyway, it introduces Six to 33, a strapping young slacker philosopher type.
The two hit it off and pretty soon they’re planning a rendezvous inside the walls between their rooms (they happen to be placed right next to each other). But the rendezvous goes bad when these things called “Technicians,” huge men in nuclear-fallout-type suits, intervene and shock Six, who wakes up once again in her room at the beginning of the experiment, as if none of her previous experiences happened.
Six grows suspicious and escapes through a ceiling vent. It’s there where she’s rescued by a group of people who tell her the truth. There is no 30-Day experiment. The people who are here are stuck here forever. The technicians just keep resetting them over and over again. Which is why this group has formed. They’re trying to find a way out – an escape. But this facility – whatever it is – is ginormous. So it ain’t going to be easy.
Another issue is that Six keeps flashing back to some psyche ward doctor’s office where a man is evaluating her. He asks her about this experiment, about these “technicians,” about her escape, and Six begins to doubt whether any of it is real. Is she crazy? Is she just a looney chick locked up in a padded room imagining all this shit? Her fellow escapees tell her “no,” that it’s all a part of the experimenters’ plan – to destroy the mind, to make you lose confidence in your reality. But Six isn’t so sure. And neither are we.
Is Six nuts or does this place really exist? And if it does, how did she get here? Or, if the psych ward’s real, what happened in her past that led to her insanity? All those questions are…sort of answered in Subject 6.
Wheel me in and call me Sally cause I don’t know what to make of Subject 6. There are moments where this script absolutely shines and there are others that left me searching for a bottle of aspirin. I’ll say this about the script. I rarely knew where it was going. And anyone who reads this blog knows that goes a long way with me. 90% of the scripts I read are as predictable as the sun setting, so when one has me genuinely wondering what the next page holds, that’s impressive.
BUT, the thing that kept bothering me was all the silly random stuff, like the repeated religious references that seemed to be there for no other reason than their inherent creepiness. For example, when we see a dead character in a hallway with the word “Foresaken” scrawled on the wall behind him in his blood? Commence the eye-rolling. What the heck does that have to do with the story? As far as I could tell, nothing other than it looked cool.
There was also one obvious derivative component that bothered me – the Matrix team. I mean, the group that takes Six in does so in a way that’s so eerily reminiscent of The Matrix that I thought I was watching an aborted take from the film. And then you have this really HUGE Jabba The Hut like leader man named “One” who weighs 800 pounds. All I kept thinking was…wait a minute here – this group has to go on super risky scavenger missions for food and one of them is 800 pounds? How exactly is this possible? Is he eating the other members when nobody’s looking?
Having said all that, I *did* want to turn the pages. I mean, the script genuinely had me wondering where the hell it was all going and, more importantly, I wanted to find out. But the big reason I’d recommend this to others is that the third act really comes together. Which was surprising. Because the third act is usually where these scripts fall apart, since the writer can’t answer all the questions he’s been asking.
But as Six keeps flashing back between the Insane Asylum and the Experiment, not only was I wondering which one was real and which one wasn’t, but I genuinely found myself empathizing with Six. I wondered what it would be like to go “crazy” in this manner. What if this really was your life? Is this what people with mental diseases really go through? Do they live this kind of life every day? How fucking terrifying.
Once the script crossed that fourth wall, it’d done its job with me. I didn’t agree with all the choices. I thought things got a little goofy in the second act when the team was introduced. But the recovery in the third is what saved it. For that reason, I say check this one out.
What I Learned: The introduction of One (the huge Jabba The Hut leader of the underground) is a perfect example of a writer wanting something so badly (the image of this huge overweight barely moveable leader) that he puts it in there without considering how illogical it is. I mean, from what we’ve been told, this group has to risk their lives going out to find scraps of leftover food to stay alive. Yet somehow we have an 800 pound man chilling out? Does that make any sense? These are the moments when readers lose faith in writers because they’re not doing their due diligence. We all want to include cool things in our scripts, but if you’re going to do so, they have to MAKE SENSE. If they don’t, ditch them or come up with an explanation.
(Thursday review up early since I’m on the road to LA baby!!!)
Genre: Action
I’m not sure it’s ever a good sign when a contest entry comes with the e-mail, “Sorry for any typos. I ran out of time.”
………..
You hear that?
That’s the sound of my chin hitting my chest accompanied by a long slow wheezing sound. I suppose I should be used to it by now – the lack of effort put into these Twit-Pitches. But yesterday gave me hope! It made me a believer in Twit-Pitch again! I had fallen down the Twit-Pitch mountain but I had gotten back up and I climbed, oh how I climbed, to the top of that mountain again and I said to the people in the valley, “HALLELUJAH!”
Only to get shot in the back and tumble off the cliff once more.
Now we’re not talking about a “Cut Copy Paste” reunion here. The writing was competent. And ironically, I only saw a couple of typos. But this script confused me. The first five pages were some of the strongest of the competition – with a group of 1901 terrorists breaking into a tower and stealing blueprints to the White House. But for some reason – maybe from the logline? – I thought this script was going to be an action comedy. But that’s not the case. It’s a straight action film. Which definitely took some getting used to (I think I gave up looking for laughs around page 30). But even once I realized it was a straight action movie, I was frustrated by how little freaking happened! I mean, there’s a TON of action in this script. More than a night in the Jersey Shore house. But there’s zero story. It’s as if Matt bought himself a case of Mountain Dew and wrote one giant 110 page action sequence all weekend. I’ll get more into that in a second.
Like I said, The Last Rough Rider begins in 1901 with a group of Columbians stealing the White House blueprints. The scene creates intrigue. It creates suspense. It sets up a mystery. What are they stealing the blueprints for? Whatever are they planning to do?
We then meet Theodore Roosevelt and his 12 year old son, Kermit, hunting. Teddy is big, tough and manly, whereas Kermit is weak, squeamish, and uncomfortable. He’s only here to impress his father but it’s clear he’d rather be reading books or playing ches—HOLY F*CK! OUT OF NOWHERE A BEAR LEAPS AT THEM! Teddy and Kermit roll out of the way. Now whereas most people would run AWAY from a thousand pound bear, Teddy Roosevelt runs AT the bear. And wrestles it. And kills it!
Yes, Teddy Roosevelt IS the last true rough rider. And to drive this point home, he hauls the bear carcass into a cabinet meeting and starts gutting it (strangely, this is the only comedic scene in the movie). Oh yeah, Mr. Roosevelt isn’t president yet. He’s only vice-president. And apparently he gets on a lot of people’s nerves, to the point where no one thinks he’s presidential material. He’s just not very…sensitive.
Anyway, while the cabinet bickers about a dead bear in the middle of the Oval Office, our evil Columbian terrorists sneak through the gate and take over the White House Hans Gruber style! You gotta remember this was pre 9/11….by 100 years, so security wasn’t very tight.
They hold everybody hostage in the Oval Office except for Teddy, who they send off to a remote room. Teddy isn’t there for long, as taking out two guards is the difficulty equivalent of eating a stack of pancakes for him. And from that point on….well…Teddy runs around the White House trying to save the good guys and kill the bad guys. That’s….about it. There’s nothing else that really happens in the story. Which makes it kinda boring.
Now you may be saying, “Well isn’t that exactly what Die Hard did?” Yeah, but here’s the difference. Die Hard had plot developments. Things were happening. They were trying to open the 7 layers of the safe. The media showed up. McClane befriended the cop. The power was cut.
Nothing happens in this story. It’s the most under-plotted script I’ve read all year. It’s just Roosevelt running around aimlessly. There’s no form to it. There’s no structure. It’s just the same scene over and over again. I know this because when I read these scripts, I take notes on all the major and minor plot developments that happen so I can write a summary of the story in the review. I went 80 pages here and didn’t write a single thing because there wasn’t a single development.
The only plot element driving the story was the admittedly cool X-Ray machine that the Columbian scientist was using to see what was inside the White House walls. This is apparently what they came here for. The problem is, we see this happen at the beginning of the takeover, and then we don’t hear about it again for another 90 PAGES! So the only interesting thing about the story was barely in the story!
It’s your job as a writer to make something happen every 10-15 pages. Give us a twist. Introduce an unexpected element. If the same thing keeps happening over and over again, we’re going to get bored. And that’s why this feels like it was written in a weekend. There just didn’t seem to be any thought put into the plot. It was just, “Let’s have Teddy Roosevelt run around.”
This is the kind of script that would’ve benefited greatly from clear “mini-goals.” Instead of only having a giant vague goal of “saving the White House,” which leaves open the possibility of too much general-ness, lay out specific tasks Roosevelt needs to accomplish one after another to GET to the point where he saves the White House. These mini-goals are the key to focus.
For example, John McClane’s first goal is to contact the police. Then it’s to stop the police from mucking up the situation. Then it’s to evade the terrorists Hans sends after him. Once you break your action movie down into these little chunks, giving your hero sequences to conquer instead of entire movies to conquer, the story becomes much more manageable.
To make matters worse, the only plot point in the movie (the x-rayed wall plot) didn’t even pay off in an interesting way. In fact, I don’t even know if it made sense. The Columbians were basically looking for the blueprints to the Panama Canal so they could…control it? Or something? How would blueprints allow you to control the canal? And why did blueprints to the Panama Canal need to be hidden inside the White House walls? And my history is shaky. Had the Panama Canal been built yet? Were they trying to control something that was already there or control something that would be there in the future? No idea. And why do we need an x-ray machine to check inside the wall to see if something is there or not? Why not – oh I don’t know – KNOCK DOWN THE WALL!?? Seems like it would be a lot cheaper and a lot faster.
I’m going to take a wild guess here and say this was written AFTER Twit-Pitch. Once again, I’ll remind you: We readers know when a script has been rushed. You’re not going to trick us. The choices are generic. The plot is basic. The characters are plain. To get that stuff right takes time and a lot of rewriting. So as much as you’d like to think you’ll be the exception, you’re not fooling anybody. If you don’t put in the work, it always shows.
This is sad because I was thinking Rough Rider would be a dark horse in the competition. Instead it’s a dead horse. :(
Genre: Dark Comedy
Hey, what do you know? More serial killers! These delightful little rascals are dark comedy gold, which is why they never stray too far from a slugline.
Problem is most writers think that their character being a serial killer is enough. As if that alone will capture our imagination. Nope. Fraid not. Just like any subject matter, serial killers need a fresh take. And today we get that fresh take. Sealed up in a giant zip-lock bag. Along with kittens. And anal fisting (more on that in a bit).
Yesterday I complained that serial killer spec “Crimson Road” made too many safe choices, taking what should’ve been an exciting premise and boiling it down to a generic version of Scream. If you’re going to tackle something as ubiquitous as serial killers, you need to give us more than that. You need to treat the idea in a unique way. When I pointed that out, I told everyone to tune into today’s review to see what I meant.
Fatties will offend a great portion of the people who read it. But one thing you can’t say about Fatties is that it’s predictable. Or obvious. Or generic. Imagine reading the same stories over and over and over again. That’s my life. So when a writer has the balls to try something different, it ALWAYS stands out. And I’m happy to have finally found a Twit-Pitch script that stands out.
Kathy and Linda are large and in-charge lesbian lovers. Actually, Kathy’s the one who’s in charge. She’s the one tipping the scales at 400, and she uses every one of those ounces to get what she wants. Poor Linda, who’s a comparatively slight 300, basically spends her days making Kathy happy any way she can – usually sexually. If the image of 700 pounds of naked flesh rolling around in a bed accompanied by phrases such as, “Yeah, that’s how momma likes it” terrifies you, you probably don’t want to read Fatties. Because there’s plenty of that. Way too plenty!
Oh yeah, Kathy and Linda are also serial killers. When we meet them, they have a cheerleader tied up in the basement. As you’d expect, this is mainly Kathy’s idea. Linda goes along with it because she’s terrified of making Kathy angry. She remembers what it was like before Kathy came along – how lonely she was – and if she has to support her lover’s little killing habit to keep her happy, well, it’s a small price to pay.
Unfortunately, Linda’s kindness allows the cheerleader to escape. But before she can get very far, Kathy pops out of nowhere and chops the bitch’s head off. The killing happens way sooner than Kathy would’ve wanted, and that means finding a new piece of meat to torture. Kathy turns to the Craig’s List personals where she finds a man in search of a large woman.
Enter Gary – the single nicest guy in the world. Gary’s skinny, wiry, and has a lot of the same problems these women have – mainly that he’s an outcast. Nobody pays attention to him. Nobody gives a shit about him. If he can just find someone – anyone – to talk to, he’ll be happy. So when he puts up a personals ad looking for a large woman (to cuddle with – Gary loves cuddling), he’s thrilled to get an e-mail back from a COUPLE. Two big and beautifuls for the price of one. Jackpot!
Gary heads over to meet the couple and is instantly smitten. Of course, Gary would be smitten with a wireless router if it showed interest but still. He really likes these chicks. Which is a bit of surprise to them since nobody likes them. But while Gary is looking for something more…emotional, Kathy is looking for something more… sexual.
She takes Gary home that night and completely degrades him, first by sitting on his face and second by…sitting on his face some more. She has no interest in giving Gary any pleasure in return. She just wants to treat him like the trash she believes he is. The problem is…Gary likes it. In fact, he LOVES it. This infuriates Kathy so much that she starts slapping Gary while forcing him into repeated acts of sexual depravity. But Gary likes it. So she starts beating the crap out of him. But Gary likes it. Gary is like the Life Cereal Mikey of subservient sex. No matter how many shades of gray Kathy throws at him, Gary likes it.
She finally stuffs him in their basement of torture, tells him he’s going to be their slave, and that at some point in the near future, they’re going to kill him. But Gary likes it. Humph. Kathy is at a loss as to what to do. She’s not used to any of her victims liking anything she does.
Now during these slave sessions, it’s Linda’s job to come down and feed the captors. Normally, Kathy’s able to control Linda – reminding her that these aren’t really people but rather playthings for their amusement. But Gary is just so darn earnest that Linda starts to like him. She begins to realize that the real enemy here is Kathy, who’s taken advantage of her loneliness all these years to essentially make her a “slave with benefits.” Once Linda gets this in her head, she starts planning an escape with Gary. Except Kathy’s no dummy. She figures it out and her plan to kill Gary turns into a plan to kill Gary AND Linda. Will Linda figure this out in time? Will her and Gary be able to escape? And how will Gary fend Kathy off with only one arm (more on that in a sec)? Fatties offers all these wonderful answers and more. Much MUCH more.
Did Fatties make me sick? Yeah. Did Fatties make me want to hurl several times? Yeah. But did Fatties make me want to keep reading? Yeah. And in the end, that’s all that matters. If the reader wants to keep reading, you’re doing your job.
But the reason this script stands above all the other Twit-Pitch entries (so far) is that it makes unique choices. Focusing the script around a large lesbian couple? Never seen that before. Making them serial killers and having them keep a wiry mustached chubby chaser as a sex slave? Never seen that before. A killer amputating a character’s arm and then using it to anally fist him, all shown lovingly via a shadow on the wall? Never seen that before.
But if this script were ONLY about the shock value, I wouldn’t have given a shit. What Matt does here is he actually creates characters. He actually incorporates theme! This script is about loneliness, and the depths humans will go to to avoid it. For some it’s being with a person they hate, if only because it’s someone to lay their head down next to at the end of the day. For others it’s allowing yourself to be murdered, if only so you don’t have to die alone. I mean, it’s freaking sad but you *do* sympathize with these characters because they’re experiencing real-life relatable problems. You feel their pain and care for them. Which is why, even though they’re being anally fisted with their own decapitated arms, you still want to see what happens next.
If I have a complaint about Fatties, it’s that Kathy was a wee bit over-the-top. And when I say “wee bit” I mean Mach 50 completely out of control batshit Gorilla-scary insane. I mean at one point when her and Linda need money, they pop by an ATM and Kathy stabs a dude to death and steals his cash. I know this isn’t reality, but come on. She’d be a little more careful than that seeing as she regularly keeps future murder victims in her basement. Matt did such a good job bringing out the humanity in Linda and Gary. Maybe a pass focusing on Kathy’s past and her own humanity will add some depth to the character so she’s not so dependent on shocking actions.
This script is weird. This script is disturbing. But I’d rather have weird and disturbing over “predictable” any day.
Today’s screenplay proves you can only hide for so long before something comes for you and makes you do something you don’t want to do…
Genre: Contained Horror
Premise: A family lives in a nuclear fallout shelter, hiding from a deadly race of mutated humans known only as, the breathers.
About: This is a script that’s been getting a lot of heat lately. Lots of people I talk to really love it. Hence, I had to read.
Writers: The Duffer Brothers
Details: 105 pages – undated (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).
There is one type of script that is absolutely perfect for the spec market – this one. If you come up with a contained horror scenario that’s intense, that has immediacy, and that’s a little bit different from what’s come in the past, somebody will buy it. Shit, I’LL buy it. You can make these movies for a cheap price AND they’re easy to market. So they’re always going to be in high demand.
But that doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want. You have to find that fresh angle. Hidden is by no means original, but it has just enough new that it doesn’t feel like yet another contained thriller clone.
For example, almost all scripts with people hiding from an unseen danger put several strangers together. It’s a smart way to go because you can create a mysterious backstory behind each character (that can be revealed over the course of the script) and the potential is high for conflict since you have a bunch of different personalities.
But Hidden took the unique approach of sticking us with a family. You definitely lost some potential conflict with the choice, but what you gain is an overwhelming sense of love between the characters and an “us against them” mentality. This created a strong bond between us and the characters, which meant we were rooting for them from Page 1.
And remember that when you have the audience rooting for your characters, you can pretty much get away with anything. You can even ignore some of the things I preach all the time because if we’re desperately rooting for the characters, the structure isn’t as important. We just want to see the characters win, regardless of the mechanics beneath them. The closeness of this family really helped in that sense. I read on because I wanted to see them survive.
Speaking of the family, it includes Claire and Ray Hewitt, former middle-class suburban parents, and their seven-year-old daughter, Zoe. They’re down in this shelter because a year ago, on an ordinary Sunday, a mass hysteria rose up when a unique virus started infecting everyone. The virus turned ordinary people into dangerous and uncontrollable beasts.
The Hewitt family tried to get away like everybody else, but when the military started attacking civilians, they fled into the woods and found this hidden shelter. They’ve been here ever since, hiding. And it’s gone pretty well. Except they’re finally running out of rations and will need to find food somewhere else – not an easy task since going to the surface is the equivalent of suicide.
But hunger is just one of many invisible clocks ticking down for this family. And those clocks start ticking a lot faster when an accidental fire sends smoke out the ventilation shaft up into the forest. It’s only a matter of time, now, before the breathers spot the smoke and seek out its origin. When that happens, it’s doubtful our family will be able to remain…hidden.
Lots to like about this one! The writing itself was top-notch. The brothers have an amazing ability to keep descriptions sparse, so that the script moves along quickly, yet still pack interesting shit into their action, so that the info both moves the story forward and paints a powerful picture of the situation.
I read lots of scripts from writers who hear their writing needs to be sparse, but they take it to the extreme. The writing ends up containing so little meat, so little detail or depth of information, that it’s as if the words disappear somewhere between the page and your eyes.
I loved how the brothers would take time, for example, to explain how a rat was able to get into their food supply and chew through the cans, cutting their survival time in half. It’s stuff like this that paints a detailed picture of their predicament – that shows the unique things a family in this type of situation would have to go through. There’s meat here. There’s specificity.
But the real power of the script came in the writers’ ability to tell a story. Again, so many new writers focus on how to string words together. And it’s not that that isn’t important. It is. But it’s not nearly as important as telling the story and keeping the reader interested.
Right away, we hear about these “breathers.” The way the family talks about them, you’d think that the devil himself was hunting them. And yet we don’t know what they are yet because the writers have chosen to make them a mystery. Well guess what? That mystery is a storytelling device to keep us, the reader, interested. We will keep reading until we see these breathers for ourselves.
Then there was the smoke that went up through the ventilation shaft. We knew that the breathers might see this and possibly find them. So from the moment that smoke went out, we’re in a deep state of anticipation as we hope against all hope that they’re not going to show up. That’s storytelling. You manipulate the plot in such a way where the reader *has* to read on because they *have* to find out what happens next.
And then there were, of course, the set pieces of the script. For a movie this small in scope, the set pieces are incredibly well-crafted. What I loved about the brothers was that they knew when they had a high-impact scene, and they milked the hell out of it.
Too many writers extend scenes that have no business being extended. You only want to milk scenes if the set-up is big, the stakes are high, and the situation is compelling. There’s a scene, for example, where the escaped smoke has caused the leaves hiding their doorway to blacken with soot. This means that the parents have to go topside to replace them with fresh leaves in order to stay hidden. So they do, leaving Zoe alone in the shelter.
This is the exact kind of scene you want to milk. You’ve set up a dangerous situation. The stakes are through the roof (literally). You’ve left your youngest character alone. Go to town with this scene. Zoe watches them, for example, from the underground “periscope,” and thinks she sees breathers running towards them. She has to warn them, but has no way to. We cut back and forth between the breathers getting closer and Zoe trying to open a hatch she’s not strong enough to open. The brothers milk every second of this scene, and appropriately so, as it’s the perfect kind of scene you want to milk.
What’s really impressive is they have about five of these sequences throughout the script, all about 10 pages long, all of which move like the Chicago wind. Truthfully, I was shocked at how quickly the brothers were able to make such a tiny movie move so fast.
For me, this was a guaranteed impressive through the first two acts. However, while I liked the twist ending, I’d heard there was a twist ahead of time, so I was anticipating something a little flashier. Unfortunately, while the twist did its job, it didn’t quite live up to the expectation in my head. Don’t get me wrong. It was cool. It just wasn’t “fall out of your seat” cool.
So even though that brought it down a notch, this is one of the better horror scripts I’ve read in a while. It’s a little different. The characters are compelling. The writing is great. You just don’t see all of those things in a horror script these days. For that, I commend these guys. A job well done!
[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Show and Tell. Any good screenwriter will tell you to SHOW things, not TELL things. But there’s actually a way to show while telling, and I call it the “Show and Tell.” Here, on page 10, the brothers want to establish how many days the family has been down here. So they highlight hundreds of marks on the wall (this is them showing). Zoe then asks how many days they’ve been down here. Claire answers, “Count for yourself.” Zoe counts, and tells us the number (301). So technically, since there’s a discussion about the days, we’re telling. But the conversation is motivated by a ‘showing,’ the walls. So it’s a combination of the two. Which is way better than someone going, “Man, if we hadn’t been down here for 300 long days already…” which, believe it or not, is the kind of clunky exposition I read all the time.
NEW Amateur Friday Submission Process: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, a PDF of the first ten pages of your script, your title, genre, logline, and finally, why I should read your script. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Your script and “first ten” will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effect of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.
Genre: Drama/Western/Period/Mystery/Thriller?
Premise: A left-for-dead rancher wakes up in the middle of the desert with no memory of who he is. He goes off in a search to find out what happened.
About: This script came to me via my notes service.
Writer: Ryan Binaco
Details: 104 pages
So at the last second, the writer who was having his script reviewed for Amateur Friday e-mailed to tell me that he wanted to rescind his review. Maybe he was afraid of trying to follow Kelly Marcel’s amazing interview, but whatever the case, this was a nightmare scenario for me. You guys can probably tell that I’m overworked as it is. Now I’m reading two scripts for one review.
But it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I’d just finished giving notes on a script which I thought was really interesting. I told him I didn’t know who to send it to because it doesn’t fit into any particular genre. But at the same time, it’s one of the few scripts I’ve read this year that’s kept me turning each page in anticipation.
So while the script isn’t easily categorizable (word?), there’s something about it where if it found the right person, someone who knew what to do with it, it could be special. And that’s why I decided to review it.
The script has a great opening. The year is 1846. We see the dead body of a rancher in the middle of the desert being pecked away at by buzzards, when all of a sudden his eyes shoot open. He’s still alive. The rancher stumbles up, swatting away at the birds, quickly noticing the huge gash on his head, something that whoever left him here did to him.
If only that was the worst of it. That gash – or the result of it – has left him without any memories. He doesn’t know his name, he doesn’t know how he got here, he doesn’t know anything. All he knows now is that he’s in the middle of the desert, dying of thirst, with no idea where to go.
So he just starts walking, eventually finding a disheveled man living in a cave. Cave Man, Damian, takes him in and shows him how to live off the land, even when the land has little to offer. The problem is that he’s very possessive. Every time the rancher tells him he wants to leave to find out who he is, Damian tells him that it’s a stupid idea. He has a safe place to live and is well fed. Why give that up?
Not only that, but there seems to be some animal/ beast stalking them on the outskirts of the camp. Even if Rancher did decide to ignore Damian and go out on his own, chances are this “thing” would get him.
At a certain point, however, Rancher discovers that Damian has a deep dark secret, one that explains why he doesn’t want Rancher to leave. This forces Rancher to high-step it out of there and, once again, stumble through unfamiliar terrain to find out who he is and where he came from.
Eventually, he makes it out of the desert and comes upon a farm. The farm’s owner, an older man named John, lives there with his daughter, Terry. Initially, John doesn’t believe the rancher’s story and locks him up in his barn. But over time, he loosens up and allows the rancher to stay with them. After a while, he finally decides to take John to town and find out if anyone recognizes him.
When the rancher does discover the truth, it’s not what he had hoped, but this will lead him down a new path, one where he’s accepted into John’s family. However it’s at that home that a dark secret threatens to destroy John, Rancher, and John’s daughter.
At first I didn’t know what to think of this script. Actually, that’s a lie. This script confounded me almost the whole way through. But in a good way. One of the things I’m always preaching to you guys is to take your stories in a different direction – one the reader doesn’t expect. That’s a lot easier said than done because the direction still has to make sense. It still has to feel like a logical story as opposed to a bunch of weird scenes blended together. I actually just read the first ten pages of a script over in Twit-Pitch. I was definitely surprised by the way the pages evolved, but it was too random to make sense of, too unfocused to be coherent.
With Ryan’s script here, we go from a guy stuck in the desert, to a guy being nursed back to health by a strange man, to a guy living on a ranch with an old man and his daughter. Each successive storyline was unpredictable, and yet it all fit together through the prism of this specific mystery our hero had to solve. I was really impressed by that.
Another thing that sticks with you when you read this script is Ryan’s voice. He has an uncanny ability to create atmosphere by finding the beauty (and the darkness) in seemingly mundane things. For example, he’ll highlight the way the shadows dance against the wall via moonlight right before Rancher goes to sleep.
This is another thing where if you do it wrong, it turns into a disaster. It’ll feel like a writer focusing on mundane details that don’t add anything to the screenplay other than a higher page count. But Ryan uses such a sparse writing style to begin with that this attention to detail adds instead of detracts from the story. Where this kind of thing becomes problematic is when writers are writing seven line paragraphs describing a room. Here, Ryan picks and chooses the “atmosphere” moments and keeps them very short. No more than a line or two.
Another thing I loved about the script was the way Ryan dealt with his amnesiac main character. I think when I read the logline about a man waking up in the desert with no idea of how we got there, I was expecting another Buried clone. It was going to be cliché – beginning with an intense first 20 pages, only to peter out quickly after the writer ran out of ideas.
But Ryan seems to be genuinely interested in how amnesia affects his hero. There’s a deep set need for Rancher to find out who he is. It isn’t just a function of the story – a goal without substance. It’s an organic character goal. I don’t often see amateurs caring so much about these things, yet these are the exact things that separate writers from the pack. You need to explore your characters on a deeper level and get into what they want. You have to commit to them.
And I like the little ways Ryan keeps you interested. When you have a “slow” script like this one, you must utilize tools like mystery and suspense and anticipation so that we’ll want to keep watching. Primarily, we’re interested in who the rancher is. But there are also other things that keep our interest. For example, John makes it clear that the one thing the rancher cannot do is look at his daughter in an inappropriate way. If he does, he’ll kill him.
Also, John has a room that he forbids Rancher from going into. It’s a small thing, but in the back of our heads, we can’t stop thinking about that room and what might be in it. By doing this, you don’t have to rush the script along at a breakneck speed. The mystery does the work for you. If we want to know the secret behind something, time will appear to move faster, so even though the script is “slow,” it seems fast.
I did have a few issues with the script, however. The first one was the beast at the beginning. I was never clear what the beast was – was it real or fake? To be honest, it kind of felt like one of those “film school” choices. Like, “Ooooh. Maybe the beast is him!” I don’t know, it didn’t quite fit for me.
But my big issue was the ending. At a certain point, we learn who Rancher is. Yet there were still 30-40 pages left in the script. This is always a dangerous choice. The primary problem you’ve set up at the beginning of the screenplay drives the story. If you answer it – what’s left for the audience to latch onto? Why do they want to keep reading if the main question has been answered?
For this reason, the final act essentially becomes a “wrapping up” of the family story. There is sort of a final twist, but I felt like it was telegraphed too clearly earlier on (it was really the only way for the story to go), so it landed with a whimper. This left the final act to be the weakest of the screenplay, and as we all know, you can’t do that.
But I’ll tell you this. Ryan is definitely a writer to watch out for. I’m not sure how to turn this into a sellable movie, again because the genre is so wishy-washy. But I’m hoping somebody out there “gets” Ryan and helps him maximize his potential. He has a ton of it.
This one is worth the read.
[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I’d be wary of answering the question that drives your story too early. It puts you in a bind for your third act because we already found out what we wanted to find out. I know who Rancher is, so I’m done. If you *do* need to answer the big question before the final act, replace it with another equally or bigger question. I think Ryan tried to do this with the mystery of who Damian was. But we already knew who Damian was, so it fell short. For example, maybe Rancher finds out what happened to him and who did it, but he still doesn’t know *why* it happened. And the *why* can be the big final act reveal.