Genre: Action/Adventure
Premise: (from IMDB) When the island’s dormant volcano begins roaring to life, Owen and Claire mount a campaign to rescue the remaining dinosaurs from this extinction-level event.
About: Three years ago, Jurassic World took the world by storm. The movie nobody thought they wanted became a mega-hit, grossing 1.6 billion worldwide. In a strange twist of fate, the first film’s director, Colin Trevorrow, was fired from his Star Wars Episode 9 job, allowing him to come back and spearhead the back end of the new film in a producing capacity. The sequel is directed by J.A. Bayona, who directed one of my favorite horror films ever, The Orphanage. The sequel grossed 150 million this weekend.
Writers: Derek Connolly & Colin Trevorrow (based on characters by Michael Crichton)
Details: 128 minutes
Jurassic Park has always felt like a hard franchise to embrace. For the longest time, I wondered why that was. After watching Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom this weekend, it hit me. Unlike franchises such as Star Wars, Marvel, Indy, Harry Potter, etc., Jurassic Park has always been about the dinosaurs. And as awesome as dinosaurs are, they’re not people. They’re not characters we can emotionally connect to. This is why no matter who we plop down into the park, we’re left feeling empty. The characters have always been interchangeable in this universe.
Fallen Kingdom tries to solve this issue with “Blue,” the velociraptor who Chris Pratt’s character, Owen, trained as a raptor pup. Maybe, the theory went, they could turn him into a Disney animal, like reindeer Sven from Frozen. But the problem with these darn dinosaurs is if you make them too cute and cuddly, they come off as dishonest. These are predators and you have to stay true to that. Which means we can only feel so close to them.
The plot for Fallen Kingdom isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. After the events of the previous movie, a volcano on the island has become active. Once it erupts, it’s likely that all the dinosaurs in the park will die. There’s a debate going on about whether we should save them from extinction, or “let nature take its course.” After an impassioned speech by Jeff Goldblum (who never liked us “playing God”), nature wins. It’s decided that they should be left to die.
The estate of the Jurassic Park’s creator, Hammond (the old guy who always said, “No spared expense”), doesn’t want this to happen. They’ve found an island to sneak the dinosaurs off to and let them live in peace. They can do most of the work themselves, but if they’re going to find the elusive “Blue,” they’ll need someone who can find him. Claire says, “I can’t catch him.” And they say, “But you know someone who can.”
So Claire recruits Owen to go to Jurassic World to help lure Blue, only to find out it’s all a sham. There’s no second island. They’re going to take these dinosaurs back to the mainland and sell them off to the highest bidders! After being jailed at the head mansion by the bad guys, Claire and Owen orchestrate an escape, and run to the room where the auction is taking place. Of course, a few dinosaurs get free, and then all hell breaks loose. Now it’s back to basics. Get the hell off this compound without getting eaten.
The plot is by no means perfect. But it’s hard to come up with sequels to “monster-in-a-box” scenarios. You can’t repeat the plot from the first film, even though that’s the only way to make these concepts work. So you’re stuck stitching together plots like these, which have sections that are fun, but don’t add up to a complete experience.
The best stuff in the film, by far, is the stuff on the island. There were four, arguably five, good set-pieces. My personal favorite was running down the hill of the island with all the dinosaurs while a volcano blows up behind them. But the set piece I was most invested in was the drowning scene. Claire and her assistant are stuck inside one of those glass bubble vehicles which has plunged into the ocean and it’s filling up with water. Owen is able to come down and jimmy open the door just in time to save them.
This was a reminder of something I preach all the time here. The simplest set pieces are often the best. There are no dinosaurs in this scene. Just characters. But the scene is so perfectly paced and the threat of death so prominent, that I was holding my breath along with them. Really good stuff.
Ironically, this placed the script in a huge predicament – how do you follow such a strong island sequence? Unfortunately, they failed with their choice, setting the second half of the movie in a mansion. You cannot, under any circumstances, make the second half of your blockbuster action movie smaller than your first half.
Yet that’s what happens. We regress into small rooms and small scenes (time to sell the dinosaurs!). The whole time I kept wondering how they were going to get all the characters and dinosaurs to a final location where the giant climax will be. But it never happened. The movie remains inside the mansion/compound the whole time. The choice was so baffling, I assumed it had to be a budget issue. But who puts budget constraints on sequels to movies that gross 1.6 billion dollars?
Another problem with this dinosaur world is that the writers try to have it both ways. When it suits them, the dinosaurs are nice loving animals that need to be saved. When it doesn’t, they’re cruel heartless predators that you have to run from. This happened all the time. Help the raptor, THEN RUN FROM IT! Help the T-Rex, THEN HIDE! In defense of Connolly and Trevorrow, I’m not sure this is any different from the original Jurassic Park, but I noticed it a lot more here. And it left me confused about what I was rooting for. Are these things good? Are they bad? What am I supposed to be feeling? And if you’re going to say to me, “That’s the point Carson. It’s complicated!” Give me a break. This is Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World. Not Jean-Luc Goddard’s Breathless.
The one big talking point coming out of this film is the ending (MAJOR SPOILERS moving forward). Some people have praised the film for finally “moving the Jurassic franchise forward.” I’m calling B.S. What happens at the end of the film is they let all the dinosaurs free, which allows them to scurry into the mainland, into society. For the first time, Jeff Goldblum post-scripts, man and dinosaur will co-exist.
Mark my words. This will doom the sequel.
Monster-in-a-box movies only work when there’s a monster and a box. You take either one of those away and you don’t have a movie. They’re taking the box away. So what’s the plot going to be? Are we going to cut between Japan, China, the U.S., France, and the U.K., observing how different nations adapt to the dinosaur phenomenon? That may work as a National Geographic series. But it won’t work as a movie, which needs something more contained, both in location and urgency. If you disagree with me, pitch your “Dinosaurs are everywhere in the world now” idea for Jurassic World 3 in the comments. Watch as it gets shot down. And it’s not your fault! There’s no way to make this setup work.
You may say to me, “But Avengers Infinity War, Carson! That took place all over the universe.” But that’s not a monster-in-a-box story. We’re dealing with characters there who have their own goals, their own flaws and fears and conflicts to overcome. That’s the inherent problem with dinosaurs. They’re not smart. They can’t have dino-arcs.
If I were grading this on the first half alone, I would say it’s worth the price of admission. But once we get to the mansion, each sequence is less compelling than the previous sequence. Not only that, but the writers didn’t recognize that while even though the dinosaurs are the stars of the show, the audience needs to connect with the characters. And they don’t give us anyone to connect to.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Never go smaller in your second half. Movies need to build. This was a problem I had with Looper as well. We went from this giant time-traveling world-traveling opus to hanging out on a farm.
A reminder that if you want to compete for a featured script review on Scriptshadow, e-mail me at carsonreeves3@gmail.com and include the title of your script, the genre, a logline, a pitch to myself and other readers on why we’d enjoy your script, and, finally, an attached PDF of your screenplay. Good luck!
Genre: Western
Premise: As a zombie plague spreads throughout the Old West, a reformed outlaw must escort a sick girl to sanctuary while being pursued by his old gang and the undead.
Why You Should Read: The first scene won the Opening Scene Contest right here on Scriptshadow. Thanks to some helpful feedback, both the scene and the script have come a long way since then. The concept is both simple and marketable: cowboys versus zombies. And Hollywood has yet to produce a feature film to mainstream audiences. With additional help from the Scriptshadow community, this could be that film. Thank you, and hope you enjoy.
Writer: Scott Eames
Details: 114 pages
Today’s writer enters into one of the most competitive genres in Hollywood – zombie horror. Everyone’s writing zombie movies so if you want to get your zombie script read, you have to do something unique. Is mixing zombies and the Old West unique? Not entirely. I’ve reviewed – I think – three Zombie Westerns on the site? But in Eames’s defense, it’s been awhile since the last one. So maybe there’s an opportunity to grab a hold of some market share here.
Let’s check it out…
Harlan Ellsworth is a wanted man. Of course, wanted men were as common as Facebook pages back in 1872. Still, our guy Harlan ran with one of the nastiest gangs in Arkansas, the Four Horseman. During one of their raids, he killed a Marshall. And now the whole of Arkansas wants him to pay.
But Harlan’s after something himself – the Marshall’s daughter, Wendy. Having since abandoned the Four Horseman, he now believes that they’re after Wendy, and wants to save her before they find her. If he can do a little good, it might make up for all the atrocities from his past.
Off he goes looking for her in a little town called Stillwater, but finds that the entire town’s been slaughtered, likely by Apache. Except when he gets a closer look, he realizes this isn’t the signature of the Apache. And that’s when the zombie humans come. AND the zombie animals.
During the commotion, Wendy flees out of one of the buildings, he scoops her up, and they make a run for it. They’re able to escape the zombies (as well as a pursuing sheriff), and later Harlan lies to Wendy, pretending to be someone else, saying he knew her father and promised he would save her.
Wendy says they should head to her Uncle at Fort Shepherd. If there’s any place that will be fortified from zombies, it will be there. Along the way, they run into Harlan’s old gang, the Four Horseman, and their fearless leader, Percival Douglass.
Percival kidnaps Wendy and brings her to his fancy riverboat, where he appears to have all sorts of plans for her. Meanwhile, Harlan’s been bitten, and could turn within hours. He needs to get to the riverboat in time, kill Percival, save Wendy, and ultimately tell her the truth, that he’s the one who killed her father.
I can’t remember the last time an amateur script got so much right. From a pure craft point of view, you’d be hard-pressed to find a single error here. We start out with a great teaser. After our two main characters are introduced, a clear goal is established (get to Fort Shepherd). Eames builds the entire central relationship around some shocking dramatic irony (Wendy doesn’t know that Harlan killed her father).
There are a series of fun and creative set pieces. The circus of the dead. The waterfall with the falling bodies. The riverboat. Later in the script, our protagonist gets bitten, adding a ticking time bomb to the mix. The arrival of the Four Horseman add an important goal that must be met (Harlan must save Wendy). This script feels like it was vetted by 10 of the best readers in Hollywood. Virtually EVERY choice makes sense.
And yet that’s probably the reason I wasn’t fully engaged. While I admired the plotting, something about the format felt too perfect. Like when the Horseman kidnapped Wendy. That triggered the thought: “Of course the bad guys kidnap the girl so that the hero has to save her.” It confirmed to me that I was too ahead of the script. There was nothing in the story that was surprising me.
Don’t get me wrong. This is one of the HARDEST things about screenwriting. A screenplay has a beginning (the setup), a middle (the conflict), and an end (the resolution). You only have so much room to play around with. And what most writers have found is that when they go outside of that room, it’s a fail. Which pushes them back to the safety of the formula. And this script is definitely textbook formula.
One thing I tell writers when they’re writing something formulaic is to put in 1 or 2 surprise turns in the middle of the screenplay. Do something we’re not expecting. A recent example would be the movie, Good Time., where at the halfway point, our hero goes to the hospital to jailbreak his face-casted brother, only to realize after he’s gotten him to safety, he jailbroke the wrong guy.
But there may be a bigger problem at play.
The more I think about it, the more I realize I was indifferent to our hero, Harlan. It’s not that his plight was uninteresting. He has a really intense backstory. But I didn’t FEEL anything towards him. Something we talked about a couple of weeks ago is that when you feel negatively (or apathetic) towards a character, it almost always goes back to their introduction. And Harlan’s introduction is strange.
We meet him borderline threatening a priest. So already, I’m not liking this guy. Furthermore, the longer he speaks, the less I’m buying the scene. I guess I understand wanting to repent for your sins. But let’s be real. The scene was created for the sole purpose of Harlan being able to drop a load of exposition on us. So you had an unlikable protag combined with Exposition Man. That didn’t sit well with me and likely colored the way I read the rest of the script.
Compare this to a recent Western I watched, High Plains Drifter, with Clint Eastwood. That movie starts with Eastwood riding into a new town, and everyone’s giving him the stink eye. Everyone’s being an asshole. Everyone’s giving him shit. So OF COURSE we’re going to sympathize with this character.! He’s the underdog to all these dickheads.
So perhaps Eames should try giving Harlan an introduction that creates more sympathy. I can’t promise that will work. But there was definitely something about his intro that didn’t click with me. It was one of the weaker scenes in the script.
I’m so torn about this one. I DEFINITELY recommend Scott as a writer. This guy knows what he’s doing. But if I gave the script a “worth the read,” it would be more for that reason than rewarding the script itself. I’ll finish with this. This is the kind of script that is a pebble’s toss away from pushing an amateur into professional territory. I mean, we’re so close, we can bite it.
Script link: Under The Vultures
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I love the use of COLOR in description. Color helps readers visualize better. That means they’re more likely to imagine the image up on the big screen. The opening scene here with its WHITE NIGHTGOWN and its YELLOW EYES and its RED BLOOD. I felt that scene more than any scene I’ve read in the past month. The use of color is a major reason for that.
The main reason this movie works so well is that it has a big concept and a simple execution. I will trumpet this advice until the day I can no longer type – keep your stories simple. A group of people get stuck on an island full of monsters. They try and escape. That’s all this is! This is why so many of the Jurassic Park sequels are bad, because they don’t use this format. And it’s why the most successful sequel in the franchise was a reboot, where, once again, a group of people are stuck on an island and try to escape. Here are 10 more screenwriting lessons you can learn from Jurassic Park.
1) Big movies need big teasers – If you’re writing any sort of blockbuster type film (sci-fi, superhero, action-adventure), you need to open your script with a teaser scene worthy of that idea. Jurassic Park has one of the most memorable opening teasers of any film. A group of men are unloading a mysterious caged animal. When they’re nearly finished, the animal is able to grab one of the men, pull him in, and kill him.
2) Exposition needs to be conveyed while something is HAPPENING – I’ve been seeing this mistake too much lately. Writers put two characters in a room or in a boring setting and have them set up the story for the reader. Pro writers convey exposition WHILE STORY IS HAPPENING. The second scene in Jurassic Park has two men discussing the lawsuit that is going to stem from the death we saw in the teaser. But they’re talking about this as they’re called to a cave, where a group of men have found something valuable, a mosquito encased in amber. In other words, the story is moving forward while the exposition is being given.
3) One key word in your character’s description can sell the entire character – “Dr. Alan Grant, mid thirties, a ragged-looking guy with an intense concentration you wouldn’t want to get in the way of.” What’s the key word there? “INTENSE.” That ONE WORD dominates Grant’s entire personality throughout the film. When you’re writing a description, try to find that descriptor that personifies who your character is. It isn’t easy. Here’s another description of Koepp’s, which isn’t nearly as good: “Dennis Nedry is in his late thirties, a big guy with a constant smile that could either be laughing with you or at you, you can never tell.” No key word. A confusing sentence (a smile becomes a laugh out of nowhere?). Find that word, guys. The right adjective can help you nail a character description.
4) Use your suspense rope! – When you have something cool at the end of the rope, make us pull on it for awhile. When the island’s creator, Hammond, comes to Grant and Ellie, he doesn’t immediately say to them, “Hey, I’ve got this dinosaur island! Come and take a look.” He remains mysterious, baiting them with, “It’s right up your alley. Why don’t you come down?” This keeps the suspense going.
5) Make sure a character goal is present for everyone – Every character needs to have a purpose in the story. You can’t have Hammond bring our paleontologists there for compliments. It’s not a vacation. Grant and Ellie’s goal is to give their endorsement so that the investors can sign off on the park and Hammond can open it. I see this mistake A LOT. Writers put their characters in a situation simply because that’s the movie they want to write, never asking why they’d actually be there.
6) After getting to the end of a suspense rope, add another one – So the suspense rope we referred to above was finding out that this was a dinosaur park. That rope reached its end when Grant and Ellie see their first dinosaur, a Brachiosaurus. After this, Koepp immediately replaces the rope with a new one, when Hammond says they have a T-Rex. “You have a T-Rex?!” Grant says. “Let’s go look at it.” “Relax, there’ll be plenty of time this afternoon.” This forces the reader to pull on this new rope for awhile before getting what he wants.
7) Simple easy-to-understand set-pieces – One thing I can’t stand about new movies are these overly complicated confusing set-pieces where we barely understand what’s going on. Early Spielberg mastered the art of simple set-pieces. What’s the most memorable shot of Jurassic Park? A T-Rex chasing a jeep. That’s it! That’s the set piece. A T-Rex runs after a jeep in a straight line. And the other T-Rex set-piece is simple, too. Characters stuck in cars with a T-Rex just outside, nudging and trying to get them. Or being stuck in a kitchen with a group of raptors. They’re so easy to understand which is why they’re so effective.
8) Even Lebron needs a breather – Sometimes you want to give your A-story (people visiting a dinosaur park) a rest. You do this by creating a B-story to occassionally cut to. The B-story here is Nedry’s plight to steal the dinosaur embryos and sneak them off the island. Every 4-5 scenes, we cut back to him and his plan. You’re going to gas your A-story if you don’t substitute in your B-story every once in awhile.
9) Be awesome by having your B-Story intersect with your A-Story – Just having a B-Story isn’t enough. If you want to show off your writing chops, look for interesting ways to connect your B-Story with your A-Story. Koepp cleverly has Nedry turn off the safety mechanisms in the park in order to hide his crime. This, in turn, allows for our characters to get stuck during their ride and for dinosaurs to have access to them.
10) External flaws vs. Internal Flaws – A flaw is a character defect that’s holding them back. The movie’s journey is then used to have them overcome this flaw. There are two kinds of flaws. An external one, which deals with stuff we can see (example: fear of heights). And an internal one, which deals with stuff we can’t (example: selfishness). Jurassic Park gives Grant an external flaw – he doesn’t like kids. And if I’m being honest, it’s one of the weaker parts of the movie. I suggest going with internal flaws (arrogance, stubbornness, inability to connect) as they connect on a deeper level.
BONUS TIP: Use weather to add more conflict! Doesn’t matter how bad things are for your characters. A little weather insert can make it even more interesting. Here, they add a storm. But you can throw a heat wave into the mix. Hail. Below freezing temperatures. Humidity. Anything that’s going to agitate your characters more is a good thing.
Genre: Family
Premise: A family grieving a loss hires a local company to help them create a haunted house for Halloween and get more than they bargained for.
About: Today’s script sold back in 2011 to Platinum Dunes. It comes from the writer of last year’s biggest surprise hit, “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” Scott Rosenberg. Talk about a wily old screenwriting veteran. Rosenberg cut his teeth back in the Bruckheimer days, penning such movies as Con Air, Gone in Sixty Seconds, and Kangaroo Jack. It’s a little confusing why a family film sold to Platinum Dunes, a well-known horror outfit, although if I remember correctly, they may have been trying to expand their brand at the time. With the ridiculous success of Jumanji, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see this old Rosenberg project rise from the dead. Hopefully with a new title.
Writer: Scott Rosenberg
Details: 113 pages
Trying to figure out why something sells can be maddening at times. Ideally it’s because the script is awesome. But sometimes it’s because the timing was perfect. Sometimes it’s because the writer and producer have a longstanding relationship. Sometimes a producer will literally tell a writer exactly what to write, semi-guaranteeing a sale. Sometimes it’s a young producer with terrible taste who buys a bad script.
That’s why you’ll sometimes read a script and say, “Why in the world did someone buy this?”
One of the most common reasons for a sale is because the writer’s had previous success. If you’ve got recent credits, virtually everything you write is going to be bought, even if the script isn’t good. Why? Because Hollywood values credits over the unknown. Why would you take a chance on a nobody when you can bet on the guy who wrote several 100 million dollar blockbusters?
Which leads us to today’s script. My first thought was, “This can’t be any good if it got bought seven years ago and I’ve never heard of it.” But I love reading old scripts from writers who’ve had recent success. Let’s see if this project is as lame as its title or if Platinum Dunes botched a potential Jumanji.
At one time, the Truckles were the perfect family. You had Marvin Truckle, who looks like Henry Fonda. Sue Truckle, the quintessential PTA soccer mom. 12 year old Doyle, a future James Corden. 10 year old Antonia (Ant), who puts the preco in precocious. And the Golden Boy of the family, 17 year old football star, Gabe. You’ve never seen a happier family than these five.
But then Gabe dies and the family moves six towns over so they wouldn’t be known as the “the family of that dead kid.” Since then, everyone’s been in a daze, especially Sue, who’s in such a state of depression she can barely operate. It’s unclear if they’ll ever recover.
Marvin gets an idea. When he was young, every Halloween, his family would turn his house into a haunted house and everyone in town would come by and it would be a party. Maybe, just maybe, this could bring the family out of its funk. So Marvin hires the only haunted house decorator in town, some guy named Zornelius Ravensbane, a mix between Beetlejuice and Willy Wonka. Or, as Rosenberg writes, a “whirling dervish of gibberish.”
The babbling insanity of Ravensbane freaks the family out, causing Marvin to ditch the haunted house idea. But after Ravensbane tricks Ant and Doyle to come to his secret warehouse, where they accidentally destroy some of his props, he blackmails Marvin with a lawsuit unless they let him do the haunted house job.
Ravensbane decorates the house, which looks great. But once everyone gets inside (we’re talking Act 3 here), the doors lock and it turns into a REAL HAUNTED HOUSE. The family, as well as the visitors, must defeat vampires and zombies and witches and ghosts and somehow escape the house alive. It’s through this experience that the mother finally wakes up, leading the family to safety, and we’re left to wonder… was this Ravensbane’s plan all along?
Would it be strange if I said I was SCARED of breaking this one down? Get it? Scared?
So here’s the deal. This script suffers from a faulty foundation. And the sucky thing about faulty foundations is that while they’re obvious to everyone else, they can be a blindspot to the writer.
This happens if a writer is so in love with a character or a major plot development that he can’t see his concept through the trees. It’s no different than when you fall in love with the wrong person. You’re so in love that it’s harder for you to notice that they’re selfish or don’t share the same values.
I could never understand why we were creating this haunted house in the first place. The dad having done this as a kid wasn’t a strong enough reason to base an ENTIRE MOVIE on. But even so, we lose that plotline when Ravensbane freaks everyone out, and replace it with this odd “blackmailing” plot, where Ravensbane threatens them unless he can do his job.
What’s frustrating about faulty foundations is that regardless of whether the rest of your script ideas are good or not, everything is going to feel weaker. Take Ravensbane. I could see this character working inside a different setup. But here, I kept thinking, “Why are they going to such elaborate lengths to decorate a haunted house? Hiring this random dude? Why not just do it themselves? Wouldn’t it make more sense as far as bringing the family together?”
And the thing is, the family stuff is good! I liked how Rosenberg went dark with this family and the mom who was in full-blown depression. And the daughter is dating losers because she doesn’t care anymore. And the younger brother is doing weird shit like walking around with bubble wrap wherever he goes. And Ant is trying to pretend everything is okay when it clearly isn’t.
If this were a drama, you’d have the foundation for a good story. I’d want to see how this family got out of this rut. And for newbie writers out there, this is what professionals bring to the table that newbies don’t. They get the character stuff right. Or, at the very least, they put a lot of effort into it.
But if I’m asking “What is the point of this movie” throughout the 60 page second act, that’s a concept problem. Let’s compare this to Rosenberg’s other script, Junamji, which has an ironclad setup. Four people, dropped in a video game, they need to get out. We don’t wonder FOR A SECOND what the goal is. There isn’t a single moment in the film where we don’t understand where we are in the journey and where we need to go to get out. That’s when you know your setup is great. When those questions are answered before you’ve even left the first act.
This was the opposite. You could feel the writer pushing us through a vague narrative just to have an excuse to write scenes for this Ravensbane character.
Can this be fixed? I don’t know. I can tell you that the bulk of the script’s problems revolve around the fact that a family is building a haunted house even though none of them want to build a haunted house. It doesn’t make sense. Maybe, then, if the haunted house was elsewhere, and our characters merely got caught up in it, that would work better. I don’t know what that means as far as giving Ravensbane screen time. But I’m sure you could figure something out.
That’s too bad. I was hoping to find a sleeper here.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: A grieving family is a good setup for any family-based movie – the reason being that all of your family members are going to be in a funk. This allows for what movies do best – take your character from a negative place at the beginning of the movie, to a positive place at the end. That’s their “arc.” The character arcs were the best thing about this script and that’s directly related to the choice of beginning the film with a grieving family.
Genre: Dark Comedy Thriller
Premise: (from Black List) A darkly comic crime thriller concerning three groups of people dealing with blackmail gone wrong.
About: Kill Shelter appeared on the bottom half of last year’s Black List. It’s written by newcomers Eric Beu and Greg Martin. The two won the 2015 Script Pipeline TV Writing Contest with a pilot called Beechwood. Martin was originally a composer and has gotten work on some major network shows. Eric Beu mainly wrote short fiction before moving to Los Angeles to team up with his friend Greg and start writing screenplays.
Writers: Eric Beu & Greg Martin
Details: 94 pages
Please be good Please be good Please be good Please be good.
Those are the words going through my mind whenever I open a script.
Why? Because MY JOB IS SO MUCH EASIER WHEN I LIKE SOMETHING. That’s why. Damn. You’re so pushy.
Here’s something you may not know. Screenplays? They’re time machines. No, I’m serious. They are. If you find your way into a bad screenplay? You will be reading for 5 hours and look up to see that you’re on page 12 and only 20 minutes has gone by. Conversely, if you read something good? You can be reading for 10 minutes and you’re already done with the script.
There have been times – times I’d like to forget – where I’ve actually gone backwards in time reading a script. I once read a script for 3 hours only to find out that I hadn’t made it past the title page. Those are the days I hate the world.
So color me Happy Henry when I time-traveled through Kill Shelter fast enough to finish in time for The Bachelorette. And can I just say something? Brett? You’re not there for the right reasons. You need to tell Becca.
Bennett, our shlubby un-hero, is a closed caption transcriber and a loser. But he’s going to be dead in a few minutes so it doesn’t matter. Bennett is visited at his home by an intimidating man named Gordon. Bennet gives Gordon a mysterious thumb drive and Gordon gives him 90 thousand dollars.
Except as soon as the trade is made, Gordon shoots Bennett dead. Gordon must now get this thumb drive, which clearly has some incriminating evidence on it, back to his employer. Except while he was shooting Bennett, he dropped the drive, and now there are four adorable Siberian Husky puppies standing side by side, as if in a picture, staring at him.
It takes Gordon a second to realize that one of these puppies ate his thumb drive. Shit. Now what? He grabs all four puppies and takes them with him.
Little does Gordon know, halfway down the block, pet vets slash scatterbrains Liz and Paola were coming to retrieve those puppies, as they had evidence Bennett was neglecting them (he was – stupid Bennett). Paola, a Game of Thrones enthusiast, brought a real-life Game of Thrones replica sword to intimidate Bennett into giving them the puppies. Except now the puppies aren’t with Bennett. They’re with this other guy. Who’s this other guy? They start following him.
We jump back a couple of days where we meet Bennett before all this happened, and learn that he was lucky enough to overhear a live-mic situation on a news show he was close-captioning where the head anchor, psychopath Grant, was banging an intern who’s not his wife. This, we realize, is how Bennett got himself into this mess. He tried to blackmail Grant with the audio.
We bounce back and forth between Bennett, Grant, Liz, Paola, and Gordon, as well as bouncing back and forth in time, gradually putting the puzzle pieces together just as all five parties (well, four, since poor Bennett’s dead) smash together in one final bloody battle. Of course, the only thing you care about is are those adorable puppies okay? They can’t let anything happen to those adorable puppies, can they? No way a writer would hurt even a fictional puppy, yes? Eh, you’ll have to read Kill Shelter and find out for yourself, sucker.
I really liked this.
For starters, I liked how the script was designed for us to play catch-up. We see Bennett. We see this mean dude. They make an exchange. We don’t know what for. He kills Bennett. We cut to three days earlier when Bennett is alive. Now we’re wondering, “What did this guy do to get into this mess?”
It’s simple but intriguing questions like this that buy you pages. And that’s all you’re trying to do as a writer. You’re buying pages of interest from your reader. If you can come up with one mystery here, another there, you can buy as many as 20-30 pages from the reader. So these guys had me right away.
I loved all the weird choices. I loved how Paola carried around a Game of Thrones sword that was so big and heavy she could barely lift it.
There’s this whole thread where Bennett has this bizarre Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat 30,000 dollar bullshit vest that supposedly cures back pain. It’s got a Siri operating system and it lights up and whines at anyone who enters Bennett’s place to please “plug it in.” How do people come up with this stuff?
And what a GENIUS move it was to take a comedy staple – two stoner dudes who stumble around aimlessly in pursuit of the MacGuffin – and turn them into women. I didn’t realize until reading this script that I’ve never seen that before. These characters have ALWAYS BEEN DUDES. Not only did it freshen up the story. Liz and Paola KILLED. They stole the script.
Usually when I read zany scripts like this, the writers aren’t good with the peripheral stuff. They don’t care, for example, about anybody’s backstory. They’d rather come up with the next zany plot point. But these guys are different. EVERYBODY has a motivation, sometimes elaborately so.
For example, we find out that these puppies came from Liz’s dog. But not just any dog, a dog that was dying. A dog that was able to have these puppies right before death. I mean, how much more motivation does a character need to save puppies?
And Bennett too! He’s got this entire backstory where his mom got in a car accident. There were complications. He had to put her in a home. And that home is costing him a ton of money. Which means he can’t keep up with his student loan payments. Which is why, of course, he has to blackmail the news anchor.
And no – in case you were wondering – it wasn’t endless chunks of exposition that gave us this information. These guys are masters at saying a lot quickly.
I have to give them props. Despite a potentially messy setup (time jumping and multiple protags) I was never confused. A big reason for this is they give each character a strong memorable introduction (remember when we talked about that?). When you DON’T have strong character intros and try to write these “bounce around” scripts, we always forget who’s who. Even if a character was introduced 10 pages ago.
The only gripe I have about this script is that they don’t know what to do with these movies anymore – the zany dark ensemble comedies. They’ve never done well at the box office outside of the Coen Brothers. But these days it’s even worse. They get discarded onto Netflix with barely any marketing, and you never hear about them again. I just don’t know that I would recommend writing a script like this unless you’re using it as a writing sample. With that said, I hope this one bucks the trend because it’s a darn good script.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Read this script STRICTLY for character introductions. Note how you know exactly who each character is after their first scene. I read too many scripts with boring, vague, or weak character intros and it’s always those scripts where I have to keep checking my notes. “Who’s this again?” “Wait, who is this person?” Once you learn how to write strong character introductions, you make the reading process a thousand times easier for the reader.
