It’s Unconventional Week here at Scriptshadow, and here’s a reminder of what that’s about.

Every script, like a figure skating routine, has a degree of difficulty to it. The closer you stay to basic dramatic structure, the lower the degree of difficulty is. So the most basic dramatic story, the easiest degree of difficulty, is the standard: Character wants something badly and he tries to get it. “Taken” is the ideal example. Liam Neeson wants to save his daughter. Or if you want to go classic, Indiana Jones wants to find the Ark of The Covenant. Rocky wants to fight Apollo Creed. Simple, but still powerful.

Each element you add or variable you change increases the degree of difficulty and requires the requisite amount of skill to pull off. If a character does not have a clear cut goal, such as Dustin Hoffman’s character in The Graduate, that increases the degree of difficulty. If there are three protagonists instead of one, such as in L.A. Confidential, that increases the degree of difficulty. If you’re telling a story in reverse such as Memento or jumping backwards and forwards in time such as in Slumdog Millionaire, these things increase the degree of difficulty.

The movies/scripts I’m reviewing this week all have high degrees of difficulty. I’m going to break down how these stories deviate from the basic formula yet still manage to work. Monday, Roger reviewed Kick-Ass. Yesterday, I reviewed Star Wars. Today, I’m reviewing The Shawshank Redemption.

Genre: Drama
Premise: Two imprisoned men bond over a number of years, finding solace and eventual redemption through acts of common decency.
About: Often at the top of IMDB’s user voting list for best movie ever, The Shawshank Redemption was released in 1994 and subsequently bombed at the box office. It later became an immense hit on home video.
Writer: Frank Darabont (based on a Stephen King story)

Degree of Difficulty: 5 (out of 5)

Why the degree of difficulty is so high:

The producers of The Shawshank Redemption along with Frank Darabont expressed shock at how badly their movie fared in theatrical release. Sometimes I wonder if anybody in this business understands how the public thinks. If you give us a boring title, throw two actors on a poster who we don’t know very well, set them in a gloomy shade of gray, have them look depressed and confused, then avoid giving us any clue of what the movie’s about…chances are no one’s going to see your movie.

And even if you did find out what Shawhank Redemption was about, did that help any? A couple of guys wallow in a prison for 25 years. Wonderful. Opening Day here I come.

Besides the depressing subject matter, the movie embraces a 142 minute running time. While that’s not in the same boat as Titanic, it’s a questionable decision due to just how relaxed the movie plays. In fact, this wouldn’t be a big deal except that The Shawshank Redemption is missing the most important story element of all: PLOT. That’s right. A nearly 2 and a half hour movie has no plot! There’s no goal for the main character. Nobody’s trying to achieve anything. There’s no inherent point to the journey. Contrast that with another long movie like Braveheart, where William Wallace is on a constant quest for his country’s freedom. He’s beheading Dukes. He’s taking over countries. That’s why we’re able to hang around for 3 hours. We want to see if he’ll achieve THAT GOAL. What is it the characters are trying to get in The Shawshank Redemption? Pretty much nothing.

So when a movie doesn’t have a clear external journey, the focus tends to shift to the inner journey. This usually takes place in the form of a character’s fatal flaw. A fatal flaw is the central defining characteristic that holds a person back in life. Gene Hackman’s coach character in Hoosiers is bullheaded. He does things his way and his way only. Through his pursuit of a state basketball title, he learns the value of relinquishing control to others, which helps him become a better person.

Neither Andy nor Red have a fatal flaw. They’re not forced to overcome any internal problems. I guess you could say Andy keeps to himself too much and eventually learns to open up to others, but it’s by no means a pressing issue. Red speaks his mind at the end and it gets him parole. But refusing to speak his mind never hindered him in other parts of the movie. In other words, there’s no deep character exploration going on with the two main characters. That’s pretty nuts when you think about it. You have an overlong movie with no plot and no significant character development. That would be like Rocky already believing in himself and not having to fight at the end of the movie. He’d just walk around Philadelphia all day hanging out. So the question is, how the hell did Shawshank overcome this?

Why it still works:

One of the main reasons The Shawshank Redemption works is because its characters are so damn likable. Let’s face it. We love these guys! There’s a segment of writers out there who break out in hives if you even suggest that their characters be likable. But Shawshank proves just how powerful the likability factor is. Andy and Red and Brooks and Tommy and Heywood. We’d kick our best friends out of our lives just to spend five minutes with these guys. And when you have likable characters, you have characters the audience wants to root for.

On the other end of the spectrum, Shawshank’s bad guys are really bad. I’ve said this in numerous reviews and I’ll continue to say it. If you create a villain that the audience hates, they’ll invest themselves in your story just to see him go down. Since Shawshank has no plot, Darabont realized he would have to utilize this tool to its fullest. That’s why there’s not one, not two, but three key villains. The first is Bogs, the rapist. The second is the abusive Captain Hadley. And the third, of course, is the warden. Darabont makes all of these men so distinctly evil, that we will not rest until we see them go down. If there’s ever a testament to the power of a villain, The Shawshank Redemption is it.

So this answers some questions, but we’re still dealing with a plot-less movie here. And whenever you’re writing something without a plot, you need to find other ways to drive the audience’s interest. One of the most powerful ways to do this is with a mystery (sound familiar?). If there isn’t a question that the audience wants answered, then what is it they’re looking forward to? The mystery in Shawshank is “Did Andy kill his wife or not?” Now it doesn’t seem like a strong mystery initially. For the first half of the script, it’s only casually explored. But as the script goes on, there are hints that Andy may be innocent, and we find ourselves hoping above everything that it’s true. The power in this mystery comes from the stakes attached to it. If Andy is innocent, he goes free. And since we want nothing more than for Andy to go free, we become obsessed with this mystery.

And finally, the number one reason Shawshank works is because it has a great ending. The ending is the last thing the audience leaves with. That’s why some argue that it’s the most important part of the entire movie. And it’s ironic. Because Shawshank’s biggest weakness, the fact that it doesn’t have an actual plot, the fact that virtually nothing happens for two hours, is actually its biggest strength. The film tricks us into believing that the prison IS the movie so escape never enters our minds. For that reason when it comes, it’s surprising and emotional and exciting and cathartic! There aren’t too many movies out there that make you feel as good at the end as The Shawshank Redemption. The power of the ending indeed!

When you think about it, Shawshank actually proves why you shouldn’t ignore the rules. Doing so made the movie virtually unmarketable. It’s why you, me, and everyone else never saw it in the theater. Let’s face it, it looked boring. Luckily, all of the chances Shawshank took ended up working and the film was one of those rare gems which caught on once it hit video. I’m not sure a movie like Shawshank will ever be made again. That’s sad, but it makes the film all the more special.

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

What I learned: Shawshank taught me that you can lie to your audience. If you can trick them into thinking one way, you can use it to great effect later on. When Andy asks Red for a rock hammer, the first thing on our minds is, “He’s going to use it to escape.” But Red quickly dispels that notion when he sees the rock hammer himself and tells us, in voice over, “Andy was right. I finally got the joke. It would take a man about six hundred years to tunnel under the wall with one of these.” And just like that, we never consider the notion of Andy escaping again. So when the big escape finally comes, we’re shocked. And it’s all because that damn writer lied to us!

In my eternal pursuit to keep you off-balance, I’m breaking out a Theme Week this week. The theme? Movies Roger and I love despite their nontraditional nature. The goal will be to figure out, to our best estimation, why these movies which strayed from conventional storytelling practices still worked. It’s also a very busy week, so expect updates at weird unpredictable times. I wouldn’t be surprised if all 4 of my reviews popped up at 3 a.m. Thursday morning. Roger starts us off with a movie he loved, “Kick-Ass.” Feel free to go back and enjoy my review of the script afterwards. :)

Genre: Action Comedy
Premise: Dave Lizewski is an unnoticed high school student and comic book fan who decides to become a vigilante.
About: Kick-Ass is Matthew Vaughn’s third directing effort (behind Layer Cake and Stardust). What some people don’t know about Vaughn is that before he became a director, he was Guy Ritchie’s producer, producing such films as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. Kick-Ass stars Nicolas Cage and McLovin, as well as Chloe Moretz and Aaron Johnson.
Writers: Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn
Director: Matthew Vaughn

Art is partly to entertain, but partly also to upset. You need those two. That’s vital to keep our society alive. –Yann Martel

This movie so offended Professor Stark, that he leaned over to me at one point and gesticulated, “This is fucking depraved.” I would have laughed at him, but I was too dazed to reply.

Kick-Ass shocked you into Stendhal syndrome, Rog?

I remember the moment in the theater when I started to shake.

My hands were trembling, and if I wasn’t captivated by what was happening on the screen, I would know that my lungs had tightened and that my heart was beating faster. My nervous system was having a definite reaction to the images and noises my brain was trying to process.

Sure, I was on the edge of my seat when Kick Ass and Big Daddy were being tortured on live television by goons who were working for the villain, the local mob boss. As they were being dramatically bludgeoned with every type of weapon imaginable, I asked myself, “Is that the same backdrop they used in one of the torture scenes in Scarface?”

Our heroes were up shit creek, and the tension was milked for all it was worth. These guys were going to die on live television. But at every showing I was, all the audience members knew that Hit Girl was going to arrive anytime now. Sure, Red Mist shot her in the chest and the last time we saw her she had fallen into an alleyway, but we knew that she was trained by her father to take bullets in the chest. My friend leaned over to me and said, “Man, that girl is going to show up and rape all of these guys.”

The power cuts out, the characters watching the online feed can’t see anything. And suddenly night vision goggles flick on. The sound reminded me of that terrifying sequence in Silence of the Lambs when Buffalo Bill is stalking Clarice Starling through the pitch darkness of his house. But then I noticed a HUD.

It reminded me of several videogames, specifically first-person shooters. Doom to Quake to Counter Strike to the USP with tactical knife attachment in Modern Warfare 2.

Yep, Hit Girl was here to save the day, and we watch through the eyes of a child who has been honed into a brutal vigilante by her father as she starts killing everyone in the room.

But then, the goons set her father on fire and a familiar song starts to play. I’m thinking, is this from the Sunshine soundtrack? This sounds a lot like Kanada’s Death Part 2. Holy shit it, is! I’ve listened to this song tons of times while I wrote.

And that’s about the point my geek brain starts to melt and I haven’t seen a firefight so emotional since John Woo’s The Killer. This shit is epic on a Ripley fighting the Queen level.

Well, it didn’t read like that on the page, Rog…

Of course it didn’t.

Those were just blue prints for the sound and the fury as told by filmmakers who knew exactly what they were doing. We didn’t have the performances of the actors, the soundtrack that triggered references to other movies and struck chords in the heart and mind and we didn’t have all the millions of flourishes performed by camera operators and film editors and costume designers and art designers and every single person that added their sweat and blood to the movie.

Kick-Ass is a screenplay that every studio hated. I can only imagine their reactions when they read it. It was probably a litany of, “No no no no no!” “Why is there a twelve year-old girl massacring people in this? You can’t have that! You have to change it!” “This thing changes perspective two-thirds of the way through! You have to change it!” “You can’t have a twelve year old girl say the word CUNT!”

Carson even rated it a [x] Wasn’t For Me.

I was blown away by the movie the first time I saw it. In fact, I saw it two more times the same week. I treated several friends to it, paying for their tickets, because they didn’t think it was going to be a good movie.

It looks so strange. How can it possibly work?

Nicholas Cage gives such an oddball performance, like he became the host body for the ghost of Christopher Walken, who in turn invited along the iconic television spirits of Adam West and William Shatner. And what a bizarre ride it is, with his weird fucking mannerisms that elevate theatrical camp to inscrutable avant-garde. In probably any other movie fantasy circumstance, you would hate this character for what he subjects his daughter Mindy to, running her through a reverse-Clockwork Orange gauntlet, absolutely ruining her life by sharpening her into a tool of vengeance, brainwashed by comic books, videogames and John Woo movies. You would call the guy a douchebag and applaud loudly when he dies.

Except, the guy has a reason for doing it. He’s an honorable cop that was fucked over by Frank D’Amico. His backstory inseminates empathy into the heart of the audience. Prior to his backstory, Big Daddy feels like a mystery, a puzzle piece. But then, his origin story is appropriately told through the device he used to brainwash Mindy, a comic book. And his origin story breaks the sympathy hymen. We start to feel for Damon Macready when we see how D’Amico’s scheme sends him to prison with a disgraced reputation, we start to feel sorry and care for Macready when we see his wife commit suicide as an escape from her despair and loneliness.

By association, we think of these tragic circumstances and Mindy’s birth, and although she’s already a loveable character, we want to see her take up the mantle and turn her family’s bad fortune around. When Big Daddy perishes, his mission not complete, he passes the baton to this little girl he poured all of his dreams into, including his vengeance. And isn’t that what parents are supposed to do? To dream a better life for their children, or to dream so big their goals can only be completed by a generational passing on of the flame?

By the time Mindy is knocking down the castle doors of D’Amico’s uptown stronghold set to the theme of A Few Dollars More, we have to stop and think what we’re really about to see. Are we really about to see a twelve-year old girl, armed to the teeth, walk solo into a secure condo full of mob enforcers? And we already know Mindy is like one of those spy-thriller assassins who has been wiped clean and programmed via secret government experiments, except she’s the freakish, geeky and bizarro Marvel Max Universe version of that. And we can’t forget, she’s a fucking twelve year old girl! Isn’t at least some part of your brain curious about what that sequence looks like? And if you’ve made it this far into the movie, isn’t your heart invested in the fact whether she’s going to be able to complete her father’s mission? I’m not even talking about the possibility of her dying. She’s willing to make that sacrifice. But is your heart involved in her journey of vengeance? If the answer is no, then maybe you don’t like revenge stories.

And what about Dave Lizewski?

Look, I have friends that are staunch superhero fans and refuse to see the movie. One has a compelling reason. She’s a huge Avengers fangirl. I remember talking to her and she said, “I just can’t do it. It’s not what I read superhero comics for.” And you know, I can understand that. Some people like their superhero stories and themes preserved in the purity that comes with the nostalgic and kid-friendly Marvel Universe.

They think Kick-Ass satirizes the world of superhero comics and its fans sans the courage, sans the heroics, sans the message that an ordinary person can rise up out of everyday circumstances and do something extraordinary. They think it’s just being ugly, potty-mouthed, catering to immature fanboys, and making fun. Well, if they sat down to watch it, they would see that the movie would not work if it didn’t have this courage, this heroism, this, “I’m an ordinary person but I am truly capable of super-heroic things.”

It’s a satirical, perhaps lunatic brew that possesses the same heart of the superhero tales that makes them mythic, iconic. The same blood pumps through Kick-Ass that makes our modern superhero mythology sacred.

Dave has a genuine sense of justice that seems hardwired into him, just like it may be hardwired into all of us. A moral, instinctual sense of right and wrong. How do we know? He doesn’t like being mugged. He doesn’t like seeing his friends being mugged. We see how upset he gets, that Travis Bickle inner-outrage bubbling underneath his skin when he witnesses lowlifes steal, cheat and murder.

It’s moving when he defends a man against a trio of thugs and says his name for the first time. Isn’t that weird? In any other circumstance, it would probably be cheesy. But here, it works. Out of breath, brutalized, but still fighting, he says with conviction through a bloody mouth, “I’m Kick-Ass.”

Why does it work?

Because it’s a nerdy kid with a sense of justice, who is tired of watching people be mistreated, who puts his life and the line and takes a stand for something he believes in. It’s an act of courage, of heroism, and that speaks to our hearts. And no matter how campy it can be, there’s something that still resonates with us.

The structure of the screenplay feels weird. It’s handicapped by the superhero origin structure, but the third act feels like it’s more about Hit Girl than Kick-Ass. If I wrote a spec that changed perspective and focus two-thirds of the way through, I’d be crucified on the spec market.

Maybe. But it doesn’t really matter. Vaughn and Goldman are making a movie, they’re not trying to sell a screenplay to a production company or studio.

And plus, it works.

The focus is flipping over to a character we haven’t quite seen before. Perhaps Hit Girl’s closest filmic prototype is Mathilda of Luc Besson’s Leon, but only after she’s been strained through a filter of Wuxia tales and first-person shooters. She has a strong heritage of badass female characters, everyone from Ripley of the Alien films to the femme fatales in Kill Bill, but the difference is we’ve never seen someone so young, someone that only a pedophile would view as an object of desire.

She’s unique.

As such, we are itching to watch this diminutive killer unleash hell on all of her enemies. Even if takes her half an hour of screen time, we are willing to watch her do this. If we were switching to a lesser character, this perspective and focus shift would be a miscalculation, indeed. The movie would collapse on itself and would become victim to our ever diminishing attention spans.

Carson writes about the difficulties in crafting an origin story in the traditional three act structure. He posits that in most screenplays, the first act is about setting up the main problem the protagonist has to contend with. But with the superhero origin story, this main problem gets postponed until later in the story because the first act is all about introducing the character and how he becomes a hero.

Well, what’s wrong with that?

Most of origin stories do both at the same time. While we’re introduced to Dave and his metamorphosis into Kick-Ass, we’re also introduced to Frank D’Amico, the mob boss, and the problem he’s having with some very good vigilantes. Isn’t that the introduction of the main problem? Everything is set up, and I can look at the structure of the movie and break down the three acts into three ideas: The first act shows us the dangers of being a vigilante in the real world; the second act is about smart, deadly vigilantes who are capable of heroics, and the third act becomes a paean to full-blown, mind-blowing superheroics we read about in comic books.

And although the third act focuses largely on Hit Girl, Dave must make a decision to accept responsibility and become a true hero. His actions have plowed through the city, exposing vigilantes who were effective in crippling a local mafia, and as a result his call-to-arms has gotten people killed, including Big Daddy. His courageous actions have tragic consequences, and instead of throwing in the cape, he chooses to accept these consequences by continuing to stand up for what he believes in, and in the process redeems himself by aiding Hit Girl in the completion of her mission (Dave is the audience’s avatar for this crazy world).

There’s a universal lesson there.

Sometimes, when we do the right thing, there’s collateral damage. When that happens, we can let fear take over, we can stop. We stop believing in ourselves. We begin to doubt. We let our dreams and goals die on the vine because we’re afraid of the consequences. The thing is, that’s usually the moment we have to keep pushing forward.

And that’s what Dave does.

Even in the face of doubting his own abilities, he continues to do the right thing.

The resolution is bloody, exciting, offensive, entertaining and satisfying. Hit Girl blazes and slices and dices her way through rooms and corridors full of bad guys. Dave gets to save her from a bazooka attack with jet-pack Gatling guns. Hit Girl goes head-to-head against the man who is responsible for the deaths of her mother and father, and Kick-Ass goes up against Red Mist. For a hymn to comic books, superheroes, John Woo movies, Sergio Leone and revenge sagas, the movie delivers on all fronts, emotionally and kinetically.

It’s a successful mash-up for fans of superhero origin comics and the cinema of violence.

[x] impressive

What I learned: When Carson told me we would be doing another Theme Week, he presented me with a list of movies he chose that tell their stories in a slightly untraditional manner. Part of me thought, well, what’s traditional? The other part of me knew what he meant. As a guy who studies modern spec screenplays, you could say I pay attention to mechanics, to formula, to pattern. If I read a screenplay and I feel that something isn’t working, I’ll dig in and try and find out why: nine times out of ten it’s because someone doesn’t have their storytelling basics down. Or they miscalculated and made a decision that hurts the story.

But it goes both ways.

In the screenplay world, there are oftentimes when the story isn’t allowed to just be the story. People will come in with different opinions, and they want to change it, make it adhere to Joseph Campbell or some narrative pattern that can feel by-the-numbers and cookie cutter.

And you know what?

You should listen to these people. Sometimes they’re right.

But sometimes, they’re wrong.

I wonder if a great screenplay guarantees a good movie. I remember reading Law Abiding Citizen and thinking, man, this is fucking awesome! Then I remember watching the movie and thinking, man, what happened!

I don’t think there’s a form of storytelling that is subject to more scrutiny than a screenplay. But it makes sense. They’re blueprints. You don’t drop millions of dollars into a building without studying the blueprints to make sure it’s sound and free of error.

But that’s something we ought to remember.

Screenplays are just blueprints for light and sound.

And sometimes, the sound and the fury jumps off the page like a miracle, defying people and narrative weaknesses they calculated as odds, and the celluloid burns like a star that induces Stendhal syndrome if you stare at it directly.

On the last Friday of every month, I review a Scriptshadow reader’s script. If you’d like to submit your screenplay for a review on the site, and you’re okay with your script being posted, go ahead and submit your title, genre, logline and pitch to carsonreeves3@gmail.com

Genre: Horror/Thriller/Mystery
Logline: (from e-mail) Following a series of ghostly encounters, a medical intern stationed at a colonial era hospital in a rural, south Indian town soon discovers that under the hospital’s dilapidated surface lies a dark and terrifying secret.
About: (included from Sarmad himself) I am a film school drop out who was forced to move from Los Angeles to a small town in south India for financial reasons. But I’ve always believed that everything happens for a reason and that if life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. At first I hated my situation. But then I discovered the century old C.S.I. Redfern Memorial Hospital in the center of town. That and a couple of trips into the back country where I observed the most bizarre occult rituals soon became the inspiration behind “Mission Hospital.”
Writer: Sarmad Khan
Details: 101 pages – June 8, 2010 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time of the film’s release. 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).

Okay so if there’s one thing I’ve learned about reviewing these amateur scripts, it’s to explain why I chose the script that I did. But first, let me explain why I didn’t choose your script. The most likely reason I did not choose your script is because there were a lot of submissions. It’s as simple as that. There were hundreds of submissions and I didn’t have time to go through all of them so I skimmed through as many as I could. For that reason, please don’t gum up the comments section with comments such as “Really, this was the best you could find?” or “You picked this over [whatever idea or genre the commenter wrote].” There were just a lot of scripts and a lot of e-mails and I wish I could’ve read them all but I couldn’t.

So what made me choose Mission Hospital? Well, you may have heard me mention a time or two that I’ve been looking for the next great ghost story. I want the next Sixth Sense. I want the next The Others. But outside of the awesome The Orphanage, the last decade has brought us nothing in the ghost genre. So I received an e-mail from Sarmad informing me that he had a ghost story set in India. It just so happens that India fascinates me. It’s a vastly different culture from what I’m used to and I’ve always been intrigued by it. A ghost story set in India is something I’ve never heard of before. It was original. So I decided to take a chance on it.

One last thing before I get to the review. I was kind of being facetious when I said to send me your sob stories. I was more interested in hearing your general arguments for why I should read your scripts. But you sent them to me anyway and many of them were hard to get through. I’m not going to lie. I got a little misty-eyed after a couple. So I just want to let you know that I understand your pain and you’re not alone. There’s one universal feeling I think all screenwriters can relate to, and that’s frustration. Putting so much work into something and not even having a single person to hand it to. That takes a special kind of dedication to push through.

But I’m going to give you a little kick in the ass here. You know how they say the worst kind of main character to write is a passive one? Well that holds true in real life as well. If you want to succeed, you can’t be passive. Just like your hero, you have to be proactive. The writers I see succeed aren’t people who write in their basement 365 days a year and casually mention a few times to their best friends that they’re a screenwriter. They’re out DOING things. They’re on message boards, they’re writing blogs, they’re entering contests, they’re shooting short movies, they’re posting them on youtube, they’re joining playhouses, they’re joining tracking boards, they’re following what sells, they’re cold-querying managers and agents, they’re joining writing groups, they’re putting their scripts on Trigger Street, they’re getting jobs in anything that has to do with the industry (personal assistant, make-up artist, camera operator, actor, etc.). Writing is such an invisible profession that you have to work twice as hard as every other profession to be seen.

If you don’t get a response from someone or you send your script away to a manager and never hear back, don’t give up. The number one reason people aren’t reading your script is because they don’t have enough time. That’s it. It’s as simple as that. So never take “no” personally. Just keep trying and keep trying and if you’re doing all those things I listed above, trust me, opportunities will start presenting themselves. So get out there. There’s power in numbers. Nobody can see you in your basement.

Phew. Okay, now that I got that out of the way, let’s discuss Mission Hospital…

Ashok Balan is a young Indian doctor who’s sick of working at the big city hospitals where you’re sidelined from the real action. Checking people’s blood pressure isn’t exactly demanding work. So he takes a big chance and travels out to a remote Indian town to work at an old hospital where he’ll actually get some hands-on experience.

The lead doctor at the facility is Dr. Anand Kumar. The charming Kumar is a bit of celebrity in these parts because not too many “real” doctors work in rural areas. But if the city had their way, they’d mow this place down in a second and replace it with something more profitable. Anand’s star power is basically the only thing keeping this hospital alive.

From the very first night, Ashok senses something strange about the hospital. It creaks. It groans. There are nuns roaming around in the middle of the night. And these small town hospitals are a package deal. The doctors don’t get an apartment off on the nice side of town. They live right here on the premises, which ensures that any creepy-crawlyness will be right at their doorstep.

Ashok meets and quickly falls for one of the nurses, the older Raziya, who can only be described as the Indian version of a Desperate Housewife. Her appetite for sex rivals porn actresses and the second she sees Ashok, she pounces. Of course we know that she’s really a black widow in disguise but Ashok’s in that early relationship stage where it’s impossible to see past the cute smile and the great sex – you know, where you’re unable to see the craziness? Don’t look at me like that. You know you’ve been there.

Unfortunately Ashok keeps seeing all these freaky people walking around, and that’s when he starts suspecting that something’s up with Mission Hospital. When a patient with a straightforward injury dies unexpectedly a couple of days after being admitted, Ashok decides to do some digging and figure out what’s really going on at this House Of Horrors.

Indeed after checking through some hospital records, he realizes that an entire heap of people with harmless injuries have checked into the Mission Hospital and never checked out. So what is it that’s going on here? Is Dr. Anand involved? And more pressingly, is Dr. Ashok in danger?

Mission Hospital wasn’t half-bad, but if I’m being honest, I had a hard time getting into it. And there’s a few reasons why. First, the story is fairly thin. The main character isn’t actively engaged in any pursuit or goal until halfway through the script. As a result, we’re just sitting there watching a whole lot of strange things happen around Ashok. In The Sixth Sense, Bruce Willis’ goal is to try and help Cole figure out what’s wrong with him. Not only that, but it’s his first patient since his previous patient killed himself. So there’s a lot at stake for Bruce Willis to succeed. If he can’t help this boy, he may never be able to help anyone again. Or take The Orphanage, the goal is for the main character to find her missing child. You can’t argue with how strong that goal is. There isn’t any story element with that driving force here, so it’s hard to immerse yourself in the script. Now eventually, Ashok’s goal is to find out what’s happening here at the hospital. And once we really get into that, the story finds its way. But because it’s not personal (his life doesn’t change one way or the other depending on the outcome) and because it comes on so late, the story isn’t nearly as powerful as it could be.

Second – and this is really an extension of the first problem – there’s too much emphasis put on atmosphere. A lot of that has to do with there being no character goal for so long. With nothing for Ashok to pursue, you have to find other things to write about, so we get a bunch of scenes where Ashok walks around seeing strange things. Ashok has an eerie walk to the hospital. Ashok has an eerie walk in the middle of the night where he follows a nun. Ashok has an eerie shower. Ashok has an eerie brushing-his-teeth experience. Because these moments are packed so closely together, they get repetitive and lose their impact. I’m all for atmosphere, but there has to be some variety to it and there has to be some story being it.

Third – The choices weren’t original enough. Now this isn’t a blanket statement because as the story went on, it began to find some unique territory, but a lot of these scenes are scenes we’ve seen before. I mean how many times have we seen someone in a shower with a spooky entity walking up just outside of the curtain? How many times have we seen the open-the-mirror-medicine-cabinet shot where there’s a freaky dead person behind them, only to have the character turn around and see nothing? A billion times, right? And since you’re writing these scripts for people who have not only seen everything, but read five times that amount of material, you’re going to get some frustrated readers.

Finally, I wanted to see more going on with the main character. These stories have to ultimately be about your main character overcoming something. Maybe it has to do with a death, such as what they did in The Sixth Sense. Maybe it has to do with some vice, such as drugs. Or maybe it’s some deeply embedded flaw that’s been holding them back their entire lives. For example, instead of Ashok CHOOSING to come to this hospital – which is kind of boring – what if he was SENT here against his will? What if he was some big hot shot up-and-coming doctor who had a major screw up at the city hospital and in order to keep his license was sent her to complete a sixth month stay? He has no respect for the peasant townspeople. He has no respect for the doctors. He’s only here to complete his service and get back to the city. This isn’t the best idea (you’d have to rearrange a lot of story elements to make it work) but do you see how now we have a character we can actually work with? Now this guy has to DEAL WITH SOMETHING. He has to overcome his arrogance and learn to help people and not just work for personal glory or career advancement.

Anyway, I’m done pontificating. There’s some really brilliant descriptive writing here and a couple of really nice scenes. For example, I loved the check-up scene where Ashok places the stethoscope up to the patient’s chest and hears no heartbeat or breathing. Freaky to say the least. But this script needs an aggressive storyline to emerge sooner, it needs stronger more original choices, and it needs a deeper more conflicted protagonist. With those changes, this could really be something. Because like I said, the setting is unique and intriguing, and Sarmad’s got a hell of a way with words.

Script link: Mission Hospital

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

What I learned: Whenever you’re treading through a well-worn genre, you have to push yourself to come up with original scenes/scenarios. It won’t be easy. When you’re competing with dozens if not hundreds of memorable films, it takes effort to come up with a scene the audience hasn’t seen before. Pick up your latest script right now. Go through every scene. Rate them on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being the least original and 5 being the most original. Certain transitional and perfunctory scenes don’t require originality. But the key scenes – car chases, set-pieces, important character interaction scenes, scare scenes – you should be striving for 4s and 5s on all of those. One thing I see all the time in amateur scripts is that writers don’t push themselves. They settle for 2s and 3s. It takes effort to come up with something unique, but in the end, it’s worth it, because originality is what makes your script memorable.

Genre: Action/Comedy/Heist/Sci-fi
Premise: (from IMDB) When a terrifying plague destroys crops and causes starvation on a global scale, the world’s greatest thief must break into the extremist-controlled Doomsday Vault to steal the one seed that could prevent the extinction of the human race.
About: Brian K. Vaughn is a comic book writer (Y The Last Man), a TV writer (Lost) and a screenwriter (Roundtable – recently reviewed on the site). The Vault is his newest spec, which hit Hollywood a couple of months ago and impressed many a people. It appears to be in one of those situations where they’re seeking out talent and/or a director before selling it.
Writer: Brian K. Vaughn
Details: 110 pages, January 2010 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time of the film’s release. 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).

One thing you gotta love about Vaughn. He doesn’t hold back. The man lets his imagination go hog wild and I think part of that is because he started in comic books. In comic books, every idea of yours can be realized by a jar of ink. You don’t feel the constraints because there are no constraints. Screenwriters don’t have that luxury because they know having their words realized as pictures is a virtual impossibility. Get too crazy with a character, location or situation (having your characters swoop in via space plane to a domed 2050 Tokyo for instance – one of the scenes in The Vault), and a producer might not be able to wrap their brain around it (or their checkbook). Hence a screenwriter is a mite more conservative.

That’s what took me by surprise with The Vault – is just how ambitious it was. This is basically Star Wars circa 2050. And we all know how eager Hollywood is to accept wild mega-budgeted material that isn’t part of a pre-existing franchise. But if there’s any one who can change their mind, it’s the man behind today’s script.

The year is 2050. Nearly all the crops in the world have been wiped out by something called “The Blight,” a malicious virus that has sent the entire world into starvation. Only the rich are holding on and even their stash is running out.

Introduce wisecracking Han Solo’esque Sebastian Card, a master thief. In fact, we meet Sebastian as he’s tunneling up and under Fort Knox, which doesn’t hold money anymore. It holds food. When Sebastian finally breaks in, we realize the whole point of this elaborate operation was to simply eat some cheese. No, I’m not kidding. He robbed Fort Knox for cheese.

Caught soonafter, the Secretary of Agriculture (the only 300 pound man left in existence – because he gorges on human meat) calls Sebastian in to propose a deal of sorts. In order to gain back his freedom, he wants Sebastian to go to an island near the North Pole where a vault is holding all the world’s seeds. Records have shown that the Vault contains a seed that is immune to The Blight. If they can get that seed, they can regrow the crop population and singlehandedly save the world.

There is a catch of course. The impossible to penetrate Vault is being guarded by someone named Baron, an African extremist with his own agenda. Baron is offering the seed to the first nation who gives him all of their nuclear submarines. He’s got the U.S. on the clock for 48 hours. If they don’t come up with the nukes, he’ll move on to one of the other superpowers. And if that happens, the most dangerous man in the world will have himself an arsenal of nuclear weapons which will allow him to basically make any demand he can think up. To put it simply, Sebastian has 2 days to break into the Vault and get that seed!

He’ll be joined by Maxine, a hot bald marine chick whose previous attempt at getting into the Vault resulted in capture by Baron. After months of torture she finally escaped. She knows the Vault inside out. Of course, Sebastian and Maxine dislike each other immensely, which makes their pairing entirely inefficient. However, since she’s the only one who knows her way around once they get inside, there’s nothing Sebastian can do about it.

The team zips around the world in a super plane capable of traveling thousands of miles in minutes, all in preparation for the biggest and most important heist in the history of the world.

Did you get all that?

The Vault is….weird. There’s no other way to explain it. Then again, I’m sure people described the script for Star Wars the same way. There’s a guy in a black mask and cape? There’s a giant walking dog who doesn’t speak? While The Vault not only embraces its absurdity but flaunts it, there’s no avoiding just how absurd it gets in places. From characters breaking into Fort Knox for cheese to the Secretary of Agriculture feasting on human remains ground up from the prison population to a band of snowmobiling eco-terrorist soldiers. Sometimes these moments are fun. Other times they have you wondering if you’ve stumbled onto another screenplay. For example, it’s implied that Maxine was repeatedly raped and defiled while in Baron’s captivity. For a movie which I thought was a fun comedy, wedging in the whole rape angle felt a little out of place.

For me personally though, I just wanted the logic to be sound. I understand this is a comedy and that some leeway has to be given, but there were definitely logic issues that bothered me. For example, I had a hard time believing that the U.S. couldn’t break into the Vault on their own. If they still have nuclear weapons, they can probably scrounge together an army of 100,000 troops and I’m pretty sure that army could break into a Vault guarded by a couple dozen eco-terrorists. You put “eco” in front of anything and it immediately makes that thing four times more wimpy. So I’m not anticipating much of a battle there.

Then there’s Japan. Tokyo has domed their city to protect itself from The Blight. There’s green grass everywhere and they can grow any plant they want. While I can buy into the idea that exporting these plants would still result in them being affected by the virus and therefore dying, the existence of thousands of healthy plants in the world, domed or not domed, made the pursuit of a single seed seem a lot less important.

And while I’m guessing Vaughn will fix this in rewrites, I wasn’t crazy about spending an entire sequence flying to Los Angeles just to walk through a replica of The Vault to see what they were up against, mainly because there was no drama to the sequence. It was obviously there for exposition and exposition only.

But I liked a lot about The Vault too. I liked the Han Solo/Princess Leia like banter between Sebastian and Maxine. Their whole relationship definitely felt like an updated version of that memorable duo. I liked how brave Vaughn was with his choices. He really wasn’t afraid to do anything that popped into his head. There are sword-wielding killer female androids for God’s sake. I love the discussion it inspires. This may be fiction but all it takes is watching one of those History Channel specials to realize that if the farming and food distribution system broke down in any significant way, there’s a good chance our government would fall apart within months, maybe even weeks. Seeing the extreme version of that here just got me thinking how thin the line between prosperity and chaos really is. And to top it all off, it’s a good time. Most everyone I’ve talked to trumpets how fun the script is, and I can’t argue that.

Still, I think Vaughn may have hit the streets with The Vault a little too soon. That may be due to his experiences with Roundtable, which was also a little rough around the edges when it was purchased. But the difference here is that this is an entire universe, an entire mythology that needs to be created. And as exciting and imaginative as it is, there are times when it doesn’t feel fleshed out. The pieces are there, but I wouldn’t mind seeing Vaughn take another couple of passes and really weave a tapestry as opposed to just laying out the yarn.

I think that anything Vaughn writes is worth reading, and The Vault doesn’t change that opinion. But there are a few too many puddles in the journey to make me go gaga. If you have it, read it, and tell me what you think.

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

What I learned: Vaughn uses a lot of underlining in his screenplays. A lot. And unlike how it affects most readers, heavy underlining, bold, or italics doesn’t bother me, as long as there’s a purpose and a uniformity to it. But I have to admit, the more you accentuate your text, the less effective the purpose behind it becomes. So if you underline 3 times a page, sooner or later I just tune out the underlining. As a reader, I’ve found that underlining works best when it’s used sparingly, and as a tool to set up an important moment later in the story. So for example, in Back To The Future, if you remember the opening scene, we pan around to all the clocks, then come down to the door as it opens and Marty’s foot appears. He kicks his skateboard over to the bed. And underneath the bed, we see a radiation suitcase. That radiation suitcase is the perfect thing to underline because everything else in the scene is so irrelevant. The reader’s reading fast and if you don’t bring to their attention this item that sets up a HUGE part of the story later, we might not catch it. Ideally, there are probably five or six of these “underline-worthy” moments in a story. I’m not going to say you can’t underline to your heart’s content like Vaughn – everyone has their own style – but in my experience, that’s the way underlining seems to have the most effect on a reader.

Genre: Contained ThrillerPremise: A newly married couple find themselves stuck in an elevator with a strange man.
About: This script was optioned recently by Relativity Media. Russo has spent a lot of time perfecting his craft, writing 8 screenplays before this one was optioned. You can learn more about Greg in an interview he did over at Go Into The Story.
Writer: Greg Russo
Details: 96 pages – revised draft, Feb 29, 2010 (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time of the film’s release. 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 think it’s crossed all our minds at one point or another. What if the elevator stops? What if we get stuck here? It actually happened to me briefly when I was a kid on vacation in Mexico. Luckily, the building was only two stories tall, and as soon as we started yelling, the elevator started back up again. I remember someone who worked there saying afterwards, “Oh, that always happens.” Yeah, uh, okay. Thanks for the tip. I’ll be using the stairs from now on. My story pales in comparison to this guy though…

Talk about a nightmare. He was in some building that hadn’t officially opened yet, and was leaving right before the weekend when the elevator got stuck. There was literally no one in the building and he knew no one would be there for another 48 hours. But he lived! And I heard he got a nice little settlement out of it. So don’t feel too bad for him.

That brings us to today’s script, Down. We’re back in the ultra-competitive “contained thriller” market, and what’s more contained than an elevator?? Well, besides a coffin of course. The question with these scripts is always, can you make it interesting for 90 minutes? That’s the challenge. Because making it interesting for 30 minutes is easy. Every minute after that gets harder and harder. So did Russo do it? Well jump in and we’ll head down to the lobby together.

Kevin is a young unemployed filmmaker who’s about to elope with Kelsie, a cheerful bank teller with rich parents. These two are gaga in love. The kind of love that makes you roll your eyes. The kind of love where every five minutes you hear the words “Get a room.” The kind of love that makes The Bachelor look like Fear Factor.

The two don’t have time for all that ceremony nonsense. They just want to get married and go on their honeymoon. And that’s the plan. They’re going to grab their marriage license downtown, then hurry over to the airport and catch a flight to Tahiti. They’re giggly, they’re bubbly. Things are looking pretty damn good for Kevin and Kelsie. Well, so far that is. Heh heh.

After they get their license, they hurry towards the elevator lobby and just barely make it into the closing doors of one of the elevators. When they squeeze in, they see that there’s already a man inside, a pleasant looking Irish fellow we’ll soon know as Liam. The doors close, and away we go…

How long is a 15 floor elevator trip supposed to take? One minute? 90 seconds? Well, we’ll never find out because a few seconds after the elevator starts, it STOPS. It’s not a pleasant moment no matter who you are, but Kelsie gets panic attacks in ball rooms, and this is a lot smaller than one of those. So she understandably starts freaking the hell out.

In the meantime, Liam is as calm as a 20 year old tabby cat. He politely introduces himself and informs them that he actually works on elevators for a living. He claims that this kind of thing happens all the time. Not to worry.

This was one of my favorite choices in the script. As soon as we realize Liam is an elevator expert, we know something weird is afoot. And even though we’re ahead of the story, that’s what makes it fun. We know this guy is bad news for Kevin and Kelsie, and we can’t wait to see how.

The conversation that follows is that awkward “getting to meet you” conversation you have with people who you have nothing in common with. You latch onto the tiniest common interests like a piranha, and when those nuggets dry up, the awkward silence drives you to do stupid things, like talk about your personal lives. And that’s where the script gets interesting.

It turns out that Kevin is a struggling filmmaker who hasn’t worked in awhile, while Kelsie not only slaves away at a bank job she hates, but her parents are super rich. Liam finds this quite amusing, and while he doesn’t make any direct accusations, he does bring to Kelsie’s attention that a man without a penny to his name and no desire to work just married someone with an unlimited bank account.

Awwwwk-ward.

I think we all know where this is going. Liam isn’t in this elevator by accident. He knew Kelsie and Kevin were going to be here today. He possibly even planned being on this elevator, at this moment, leaving it open as they ran to it. And if Liam has been doing all these things, then Liam must have a really big beef with Kelsie and Kevin. And that beef is exactly what’s going to be Kevin and Kelsie’s “down” fall. heheh.

I know I keep saying that the contained thriller cycle is near the end of its rope, but there’s one thing I keep forgetting. Contained thrillers are cheap to make. Really cheap. So if you come up with a concept that’s compelling enough and you do a good job executing it, I can see companies taking a chance on it because the financial burden is so minimal.

I think what also gives contained thrillers a distinct advantage is that they’re basically the perfect fit for the spec format. In specs you want everything to read fast, you want a low page count, you want a low character count, you don’t want to waste a lot of space describing everything. The very nature of contained thrillers help them meet all this criteria. It’s the peanut butter to the spec format’s jelly.

But even though you eliminate some problems, you add others, and those others can be extremely challenging. Since you don’t have the advantage of jumping from location to location, character to character – since the story is so contained, so minimal – you have no other choice but to litter your script with surprises and revelations. The surprises need to be character based, as the setting usually doesn’t allow many surprises on its own. And this can be challenging, because audiences have pretty much seen it all. Do it right though, and you can get rich. That little twist at the end of Saw where the dead guy gets up and walks away helped spawn five sequels!

I thought Down did a pretty good job in this department. I mean, we know that Liam is bad. So that wasn’t really a surprise. But Russo makes some pretty bold choices here and man are there some surprises I didn’t see coming. Further still, he takes the script into another genre in the last act, and while I may not exactly agree with the choice, I thought it was an interesting one, and it does what it needs to do to keep the contained thriller going. It changes the dynamics. It changes the story. It keeps everything fresh.

I know they’re still working on this so I’m not going to go into a lot of detail, but overall I thought it was pretty good. More importantly, I think it could be even better if they can focus that second half. It got a little wily at the end there. A strong premise, and a pretty good execution made this an interesting read.

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

What I learned: One thing that annoyed me in Down, and I’ve mentioned this issue before, is that the main characters’ names are too similar: Kevin and Kelsie. The problem with this for a reader is that a lot of times in a script, there’s a pause in the conversation, then the same character will start talking again. The reader doesn’t pick up on this right away because of the assumed “his turn then her turn” rhythm of the dialogue. So they end up reading the wrong dialogue for the wrong characters. If characters are named JAMES and OLIVIA, this is easy to spot. But if they’re Kevin and Kelsie, you may read a full page of dialogue before you realize you’ve mixed the two characters up. So it’s always good to make sure your main characters have easily distinguishable names. The only exception is if the sameness in their names plays into the story somehow.