Genre: Action
Premise: When a Florida Keys bar starts attracting the wrong crowd, they hire a reclusive ex-UFC fighter who had a traumatic exit from the sport, to get things back in order.
About: Based on the original film from 1989. This is the movie that director Doug Liman fought the evil Jeff Bezos over. Liman made the movie for MGM right before Amazon bought MGM. So the film went from a theatrical release to a streaming release in a heartbeat. Which destroyed Liman. You can watch a fun little vignette of the story over on Casey Neistat’s channel. Fun note here. The script was written by two guys with almost no credits. Anthony Bagarozzi only has one other credit in The Nice Guys and Chuck Mondry is credit-free. I point this out because it means that YOU could be the next writer of an 80 million dollar film. You just have to write a great spec script that impresses folks like Doug Liman. Now if only there was someone out there helping you write a great screenplay…
Writer: Anthony Bagarozzi & Chuck Mondry
Details: 120 minutes

Best casting of the year?

I know I’ve demolished The 3-Body Problem enough already. But I just saw the latest promo picture for the ill-fated show: a woman with a sword.

Isn’t this a movie about aliens coming to earth?? What is even going on with this show!!??

Anyway, let’s come back to the present. Or should I say, the past. That’s because today’s movie might as well be set in 1989, when the original movie debuted. This is a throwback if I’ve ever seen one, which is ironic to say, since I never saw the first film.

Alas, that made this movie fresh to my eyes and I couldn’t be happier, cause it was like getting to see a 1989 movie made in 2024 for the first time, if that makes sense.

I get Doug Liman’s frustration with this film being released on streaming. It’s not an ego thing like it is with most filmmakers. This film was genuinely made to play in front of an audience. It’s got a lot of those silly lines that work well in a theater (Dalton crawls into Knox’s boat and Knox squares up against him. Knox: “Looks like we’ve got our own little octagon.” Dalton: “What?? Who taught you shapes?”).

And then it has these big fun fights in the bar that are practically begging for audiences to “oof” and “ohhhhh” while watching. It also has way bigger production value than your typical “dudes fighting” movie. It truly feels like something that was meant to be seen in the theater. And it would’ve crushed Ghostbusters Afterlife if it went theatrical. I’m guessing it would’ve had a 75 million dollar opening.

Alas. I’m sure everyone involved in the film will be just fine.

A woman who’s inherited a Florida Keys bar called The Road House shows up at some back door fighting bar in the middle of nowhere where she watches a fighter walk away when he realizes his next opponent is Dalton (Jake Gylenhaall). Wherever Dalton goes to fight, potential fighters walk away. As for why, we’ll find out later.

She recruits the reluctant Dalton with hard cash to come protect The Road House against its increasingly violent clientele. Long story short, a local jerk face named Ben Brandt is trying to scare the owner off so he can destroy the bar and develop the land into something more profitable.

Dalton shows up and immediately makes his mark, taking down five of the town’s toughest thugs while barely breaking a sweat. When this gets back to Ben, he isn’t sure what to do. But then the choice is made for him. His super-thug father, from behind bars, hires a guy even more dangerous than Dalton, Knox (Connor McGregor), to come in and take Dalton down.

Knox shows up and challenges Dalton immediately. The two fight to a stalemate but you get the sense that Knox was only in third gear. The promise is that another fight is coming. And when it happens, Knox is going to go all out. Along the way we learn that the reason everyone’s afraid of Dalton is that he willingly killed his best friend in the ring. So if he can do that, what can he do to someone he *doesn’t* know? We’ll see when these two psychopaths square off in a final battle.

GOOD MOVIE!

Good. Movie.

As I watched Road House, it occurred to me that the movie was quite different than a lot of Hollywood films I watch these days – the main difference being: it was stationary.

We’re not going anywhere. We’re stuck in one location. The reason that’s relevant for screenwriters is because it can be difficult to power a narrative that stays in one place.

But there is one tried and true way to do so. And that’s through CONFLICT.

For stories that stay in one place, you need to pack them with more conflict than your average script. Because, otherwise, where is the entertainment going to come from? In a movie like The Beekeeper, we’re always going somewhere. In a movie like Wonka, we’re constantly traveling around the city.

But The Road House takes place… AT THE ROAD HOUSE. So there isn’t as much to work with.

Therefore, the writers pack the script with conflict. When Dalton comes in, he immediately has to clean up the thugs that have infected the bar. Once he does that, Big Bad Ben comes in and threatens him. After that happens, a local mobster comes in and tries to kill him. After that happens, Knox comes in and starts threatening him.

And then, of course, Dalton has his own inner conflict to deal with. He killed his best friend in the ring and it haunts him every second of his life. It’s the reason he hates fighting, he hates doing this. Because every time he beats someone up, he has to be reminded that he killed his own friend in the same way.

Dalton’s entire character journey is resisting going “over the top.” He knows if he gets pushed too far, he will crack, and turn into the same guy that killed his best friend. There’s a great moment later in the movie where Dalton finally admits to the bad guys that “he’s afraid.” We’re sitting there thinking, “Oh no. Dalton’s given up??” But then he finishes the thought. “I’m afraid of what I’ll do to you now that you’ve pushed me too far.” It is the culmination of his inner conflict. He has no choice but to give into it if he’s going to save The Road House.

That’s the reason this movie works. The main character works and the writers pummel him with conflict. Things are never easy for Dalton, even as the best fighter in the world.

You know what else I liked about this movie? It harkened back to a time when bad guys were just bad because they were bad. Knox is such an over-the-top villain with no other motivation than he wants to crack some skulls and I loved him for it. It was total 1980s villain energy.

There’s a moment (mini-spoiler) where Knox has essentially defeated Dalton in the final fight and Ben Brandt, who’s injured, stumbles up and screams, “Finish him! Take him out!” You might as well have just copy and pasted the final tournament battle in The Karate Kid. It was the epitome of 1980s one-dimensional villainy.

You may be thinking, “But Carson, don’t you like complexity in villains? Shouldn’t screenwriting purists be promoting depth and motivation in their antagonists?” Sure. IF THE MOVIE CALLS FOR IT. Every movie is different. This is a movie about protecting a bar. It’s not that deep, nor is it trying to be. When you write something like that, you don’t need outrageous character arcs for your villains.

In fact, they can hurt your script if you’re not careful. I’ve seen writers try to imprint elaborate character arcs onto characters in simplistic stories and it’s like dressing up in a tuxedo for dinner at McDonald’s.

The only thing I didn’t like about the movie was that some of the fighting mechanics felt fake. It’s funny because, back in the 80s, the fighting was fake as well. The actors swung, purposefully missed, and we used camera angles and punching sound effects to make it look like a real punch.

Nowadays they’re doing this weird thing where it looks like they’re punching the air and then they’re retroactively digitally placing the actors faces in the punching line so it, theoretically, looks like a real hit. The problem is that the actors who are hit aren’t reacting to being hit properly. That’s the fake part.

To be fair, sometimes this was less apparent than others. But they need to perfect this technology if these fights are going to resonate.  We have all this technology.  The fighting in movies can’t be going backwards.

All in all, a VERY fun viewing experience. I say you all check it out.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: To create a character that pops, contrast their external with their internal. Dalton is the most dangerous man in the world. Yet he walks around smiling and being nice to everyone. Before he beats up the five thugs in his opening scene at The Road House, he pauses and asks them, “Does everybody here have health insurance?” He wants to know that they’ll be okay once he beats them up. He even drives them to the ER afterward!

Tis here!

Movie Crossover Showdown, baby!

We learned that just this weekend, the seemingly impossible-to-please Lucasfilm head, Kathleen Kennedy, greenlit The Acolyte based almost entirely on this movie-crossover pitch: “Frozen meets Kill Bill.”

It goes to show just how powerful movie crossover pitches can be in this business. Something about the right one CLICKS with readers. There have, for sure, been instances when I was on the fence with a logline and a cool movie-crossover pitch sold it for me.

Alas, I quickly learned from the entries that movie-crossover pitches aren’t as easy as they seem. I got a lot of entries where one of the movies in the pitch WAS A BOX OFFICE FAILURE. Never ever pitch movies that did poorly at the box office. Or even neutral. They have to be big box office winners or major awards winners.

Also, I got a lot of movie crossovers that were basically the same movie! I.E. “Joker meets Taxi Driver.” The power of the crossover is that you’re pitching two movies that aren’t the same, however, when combined, create something that sounds exciting.

I also encountered several entries that included very obscure movies. You might get some points in your film school class for including “Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?” in your pitch. But it’s not going to get anyone to read your script.

With that said, there were some really fun entries! The hardest part was when someone had a strong crossover pitch but the logline itself didn’t hold up. One of my favorites was, “THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS meets THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW.” That was great.  And there were others.  So I want to thank everyone who took the time to send their pitches in.  If you didn’t make the cut, feel free to offer your pitch in the comments for feedback.

Again, guys, when you’re cold-querying people, a great movie-crossover pitch could be the difference between them requesting the script and not requesting it. So this is important!

We have some very movie-friendly ideas this month. Maybe more so than ever before in Logline Showdown. These ideas are big and they’re sexy.

As far as how you should vote, I want you to vote on the whole package! The logline should still be the focal point of your vote. But if a movie-crossover pitch helps elevate that logline, that should factor into your vote!

If you haven’t played Logline Showdown before, read all the entries below and then, in the comment section, vote for your favorite. The entry that gets the most votes receives a script review next Friday. If you have extra time, tell us why you voted and why you didn’t vote for the others.

You have until 11:59pm Pacific Time Monday Night to vote.

May the best logline win!!!

ENTRIES

Title: Recursion
Genre: Action/Fantasy
Logline:  A female reporter desperate to rescue her kidnapped friend from a Tijuana drug cartel, teams up with a mysterious man who claims to be stuck in a time-loop – where every day ends in his death.
Movie-Crossover: Sicario meets Edge of Tomorrow

Title: Goblin In Love
Genre: Family/Animation
Logline: A young goblin travels with his friends across a suburban fantasy world to meet the love of his life – a fairy who’s he only ever seen in one social media post.
Movie-Crossover: ONWARD for the TikTok generation.

Title: INHUMAN
Genre: Sci fi Horror
Logline: An estranged married couple get attacked by three psychotic men who claim the wife has been replaced with an alien clone and they must kill her to prove it…
Movie-Crossover: The Strangers meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Title: Lockdown at Hell High
Genre: Horror
Logline: Twenty years after a tragic shooting, a high school reopens with state-of-the-art security, only to find history repeating itself when students are “locked down” with a sadistic killer using the technology against them.
Movie-Crossover: Riverdale meets “Saw.

Title: ECSTATIC
Genre: Drug Dramedy
Logline: In 1985 Dallas, a young psychotherapist discovers a new drug that could be a life-saving treatment for PTSD, but she falls for the DEA Agent tasked with finding evidence to ban this abused club drug nicknamed “Ecstasy.”
Movie Crossover: What if TRAINSPOTTING partied with ERIN BROCKOVICH?

I said I would include one entry this week SOLELY on the movie-crossover pitch, regardless of the logline.  Here is that winner.  And to be honest, it wasn’t close!

Title: She’s Got Claws
Genre: SUPERNATURAL THRILLER
Logline: A young war widow awakens naked on an Alaskan military base and fights for survival as she’s hunted by her father’s vengeful soldiers after a whole platoon was ripped apart overnight.
Movie-Crossover: American Werewolf In London eats Memento

A reminder that you have until 10pm Pacific Time tonight to get your entries in for March Logline Showdown, aka “Movie Crossover Showdown.” If you need to know how to enter, here is the post that gives you the instructions!

Week 11 of the “2 Scripts in 2024” Challenge

As a reminder, we are writing a screenplay! That is correct. Over the first six months of the year, I am helping you write an entire screenplay. We are over halfway done. Don’t worry. If you missed out, you can go write your screenplay right now because I’ve included every article on the timeline right here.

Week 1 – Concept
Week 2 – Solidifying Your Concept
Week 3 – Building Your Characters
Week 4 – Outlining
Week 5 – The First 10 Pages
Week 6 – Inciting Incident
Week 7 – Turn Into 2nd Act
Week 8 – Fun and Games
Week 9 – Using Sequences to Tackle Your Second Act
Week 10 – The Midpoint

Today, we are taking on one of the least defined areas of the screenplay: The section of the screenplay that follows the midpoint. I believe “Save The Cat” calls this the “Bad Guys Close In” section. However, when I looked through a bunch of movies, I didn’t see a whole lot of bad guys closing in.

Instead, I saw one of three things happening. Either the characters chilled out, things ramped up, or we cut to subplots.

Let’s start with Zombieland. They finally get to California at the midpoint, which is a big accomplishment. The writers follow this by placing their four main characters at Bill Murray’s house and having them get to know each other. We get several scenes of the characters splitting up and chatting.

This happens in Leave The World Behind as well. We get the big Teslas Gone Wild midpoint scene, then we spend the night with everyone at the house. The dad gets to know the house owner’s daughter. And the mom gets to know the house owner. Each scene has a deeper dialogue-driven focus.

I get the sense that the writers of these movies know they’re going to ramp things up soon and build toward a rousing climax. So they treat this section as the “calm before the storm.” It’s the final attempt by the writer to do some real character work before the sh*t hits the fan.

The next option is to Ramp Up. This is the one I like best because it keeps the narrative moving and it focuses on the primary goal. In Back to the Future, the midpoint is Doc and Marty realizing, when they go to the high school, that Marty’s mom has fallen in love with him.

Notice how this gives us the opportunity to create an INTENSE GOAL that will be used to propel the story to the endpoint. The overarching goal in Back to the Future is for Marty to get back to the future. Duh. But now he can’t do that until he makes sure his mom falls in love with his dad as opposed to himself. THAT’S THE GOAL THAT GETS US TO THE GOAL.

So the very next scene after the midpoint is Marty approaching his dad at the cafeteria during lunch and trying to convince him to ask Lorraine to the dance. Notice how we’re jumping right back into the story after the midpoint. We’re not screwing around. We’re getting to the goal.

In my experience, the best screenplays are the ones where there isn’t a whole lot of dilly-dallying. Meaning, there aren’t a lot of scenes that aren’t pushing the story forward. When I look at Zombieland and Leave The World Behind, I find them both to be strong movies. But they are definitely not as good as they could be. And the reason for that is they have dilly-dallying scenes, scenes of the dad and the owner’s daughter smoking pot and discussing life (funny enough, Zombieland inserts a pot-smoking scene after the midpoint as well). Neither scene pushes anything forward. So why include it?

Whereas, with Back to the Future, which is arguably the tightest screenplay ever written, we see that there is zero dilly-dallying after the midpoint. We’re right back in the plot. And we’re back in it because they have a story to tell and they don’t have time to waste.

By the way, this is why, when you have plot issues later in your script, it’s usually because of mistakes you made earlier in the script. If you didn’t do a great job establishing a big goal with huge stakes and a lot of urgency, don’t be surprised when, later in your script, you’re struggling to figure out exactly what your characters need to do, to give those actions consequences, and to insert urgency.

Finally, you have subplots. All this option means is that, in stories where there are multiple plotlines going on separate from your main plot, this is a good time to cut to those subplots. You just showed us a major scene with your main characters via the midpoint. Give those characters a quick break to recharge and, in the meantime, get us up to date on the other storylines.

I suspect this is where Save The Cat’s “Bad Guys Close In” beat makes sense. Cause I pulled up Empire Strikes Back. The midpoint has Han Solo escaping an attack from an Imperial Star Destroyer. And then we cut to the main subplot, Darth Vader’s pursuit of them, and he angrily tells the ship’s captain to find Solo immediately.

I don’t remember exactly how No Country For Old Men was structured, but I would guess that that would also fall under “Bad Guys Close In.” We cut away from Llweyn Moss to see that Anton Chigurh is getting closer.

But you can also cut to other subplots. Jurassic Park actually does the opposite of Bad Guys Close In. Nedry (gotta love that name), the guy who steals the embryos, makes a run for it in his jeep, only to crash and get attacked by a mini-dinosaur. In that case, Bad Guys Run Away!

So there are plenty of options to work with here. It’s yet another reminder that screenplays are complex. There is no one-size-fits-all template. Nor should there be. Anyone But You is trying to do something different from The Beekeeper which is doing something different from American Fiction which is doing something different from Oppenheimer.

Despite that, I always find that it’s advantageous to have guidelines to work within. If you’re out there blind in the dark waving your hands around, it will show in the script. I read amateur scripts every single day and it’s one of the most common things I see. You can tell the writer isn’t sure where to go in the latter stages of their story.

I was just reading an amateur script the other day with this problem and the writer made up some side-quest that had no basis whatsoever in what had been set up previously. We do that when we don’t have a clear plan. No goals, no stakes, no urgency.

So figure out which of these options best fits YOUR script, and then have a plan. As long as you have a plan to keep pushing your story forward, you should be okay.

Once again, write 2 pages today, 2 pages tomorrow, 2 pages each Saturday and Sunday, 2 pages Monday, and then you get Tuesday and Wednesday to rewrite or catch up.

What are some of your strategies when writing directly after your midpoint?  Do you have a plan or do you just wing it?  Inquiring minds want to know!

Seeya next week when we take on pages 71-80.

Genre: Horror/Religious
Premise: An inexperienced priest and a charismatic possessed woman form a dark and dangerous bond while on the run from sinister forces within the Catholic Church.
About: This writer has been writing for over a decade. He had some scripts on the Blood List all the way back in 2012 if memory serves correctly. And he wrote one of the more underrated horror/thriller films of the last five years, “The Night House.” This script finished with 9 votes on last year’s Black List.
Writer: Luke Piotrowski
Details: 110 pages

I’m kinda in a religious horror mood because I’m seriously considering watching the Sydney Sweeney religious horror film, Immaculate, this weekend. That one has an interesting development story behind it. Sweeney read the original script all the way back when she was 15! She tried to set it up to star in it but never had the cache.

Once she hit it big, she phoned the screenwriter and asked him if she could buy the script from him. Of course he said yes and then Sweeney recruited her Voyeurs director to direct it.

From everything I’ve heard, the movie is just okay. But it’s supposed to have the ENDING OF ALL ENDINGS. The question then becomes, do I want to go to a movie just for the last three minutes of a film? Normally, the answer would be no. But this is Sydney Sweeney, which makes the answer more difficult.

We’ll have to see. But in the meantime, I’ve got another religious horror script for you, Blasphemous. Ironically, it has a role that could’ve also worked for Sweeney.

When we meet 50-something priest Alan Villars and 30-something priest Ed Kerrigan, they’re picking up a strange woman in a cult compound. There’s a lot of eeriness surrounding their late-night arrival and the compound members who are eager to get rid of this woman.

Villars and Kerrigan throw her in the back of a U-Haul trailer and drive off. They’re taking her to an arch diocese. Although details are sparse in the early-going, we get the impression that she’s possessed.

They don’t get far before they hit a giant bull that happens to be in the middle of the road, crashing their car and trailer. Both of them are fine but when they come out, they see a man in a pickup approaching. The man stops and tells them he’ll help them get their car set back on its wheels but they keep telling him no thanks.

The man gets suspicious, starts poking around, and that’s when the girl, whose name we learn is Paula Jean, starts calling for help from inside the trailer. The man runs to his truck and pulls out a gun but not before Villars shoots him. During the chaos, Paula Jean escapes the trailer and runs into the forest.

Kerrigan runs after her, following her to a gas station food store. Paula Jean puts her hand up and says she’ll gladly go wherever Kerrigan wants to take her. But just not with that Villars guy. There’s something off about him. Kerrigan reluctantly agrees and the two steal the cashier’s car and head off on the rest of the trip.

Villars later catches up to the gas station, where he proves Paula Jean’s suspicions about him correct. Villars shoots the cashier dead. You see, this thing that’s going on with Paula Jean is so top-secret, nobody can know about it. That’s why anyone who sees her must be eliminated. But what is Paula Jean’s deal? Is she just a woman possessed? Or is she much more?

One of the most challenging lessons I ever learned in screenwriting is the concept of my script “feeling written.” You’re reading the script and it doesn’t feel like what’s happening is really happening. Instead, you can feel the screenwriter working it out and forcing his thoughts into the script in a way that comes off as artificial. That’s how Paula Jean felt in this script.

I wish there was a clearer way to explain it because it’s something that every screenwriter has to learn at some point. But I’ll tell you the moment in this script where it became “written” to me.

Paula Jean has cornered Kerrigan in the gas station store and after making him promise that he won’t team up with Villars again, she wants to “seal” the promise with a kiss. So she goes in for the kiss, moves her mouth to his earlobe instead, then BITES OFF his earlobe. THEN she kisses him, pushing his earlobe into his mouth, and then after the kiss is over, telling him he now has to swallow it.

I don’t know about you. But that just feels highly artificial to me. It doesn’t feel natural to the moment at all. It’s a writer who’s deliberately thinking, “How do I write something SHOCKING here?”

To make these moments work, you have to do a ton of backstory work to figure out exactly who this person is. Those details would then creep into each scene and then when the character needed to do something big and shocking, it would be a payoff to all those little things that were set up earlier. It can’t just be, “EARLOBE BITING TIME CAUSE EARLOBE BITING TIME IS SHOCKING!”

I know this isn’t the best example but even if you had Paula Jean mention her love of Mike Tyson in two earlier scenes, NOW having her bite someone’s earlobe off makes so much more sense.

That’s a microcosm of my bigger issue I had with the screenplay. Which is that I don’t get the sense that the writer truly understands the world he’s writing about. I think he SORT OF understands it. But when you only “sort of” understand your world, the execution of your story only “sort of” works.

I look back to the gold standard of “EFFED UP SH*T” in Silence of the Lambs, and I remember reading the amount of research author Thomas Harris did on serial killers to ensure that both Hannibal and Buffalo Bill came off as authentic. As I read Blasphemous, I felt like the writer had done maybe 1/5th of that work.

With that said, the script has an undeniable momentum to it. It takes place in, virtually, real time. And it’s always propelling forward. That’s the nice thing about a story on wheels, is that it naturally feels like it’s going somewhere.

Never is this more apparent than right after you’ve read a script that stays in place, which I just had. I read a script about a group of people in a small town and it just SAT THERE. It had no momentum whatsoever.

If you can get your story on wheels AND add some urgency to it, which this does, you’re cooking with gas. It’s very easy to keep the reader invested.

I’m just not sure I was ever onboard with these characters. Paula Jean is supposed to be this captivating mystery of a character. Yet I saw her as more of an artificially constructed vessel for the writer to bang out a series of shocking moments, or say a series of shocking things. I suppose that’s what we’re all doing as writers to a certain extent. You’re constructing characters to affect the reader. But you have to do it invisibly. Organically. And Paula Jean was anything but.

Curious what others thought of this one as I get the impression mileage may vary.

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

What I learned: I believe that it’s very difficult to make a scary character who TALKS A LOT. It can be done, of course. But most of the characters we fear in horror films don’t say a whole lot, if anything at all. Michael Myers comes to mind. It’s the mystery of what’s going on in their heads, the things we’ll never know, that make them so scary. The longer this movie went on, the more Paula Jean spoke, and the less I became scared of her.

Is this the genre every writer should be writing in right now?

Genre: Action/2-Hander
Premise: A green FBI agent is sent to Miami to retrieve a criminal for prosecution. During the return trip, the fed and the thug each learn there’s more to the other than expected.
About: Fox bought this script back in 2005 as a vehicle (no pun intended) for Hugh Jackman. But it was not to be, as Jackman eventually backed out to do other projects. Screenwriter Dario Scardapane would go on to have a solid working career in Hollywood, working on The Punisher series and Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan.
Writer: Dario Scardapane
Details: 108 pages

I don’t believe in luck insofar as it determines who “makes it” or not in the industry. If you have the talent, you will “make it.” However, where your career goes once you’re in the industry is a different beast.

I’ve seen so many people become big due to lucky timing or a lucky break. And then I’ve seen people miss out on that big opportunity because of elements outside of their control.

I was thinking of this today because I was reading an article in The Hollywood Reporter about Sydney Sweeney’s latest movie, Immaculate. I didn’t know this but Sweeney was on a show called Everything Sucks! on Netflix but it was surprisingly canceled after one year. It was a blow at the time for Sweeney. But guess what? It opened up the chance for her to be on Euphoria, the show that broke her out as an actress.

Think about that. If Everything Sucks! continued, it’s highly likely there would be no Sydney Sweeney mania right now. And that would make me, and a lot of red-blooded American men, very sad.

When I came across this script, I noticed that it originally had Hugh Jackman attached. But he would later leave the project. This happens all the time in Hollywood and the actor leaving the project drastically changes the paths of the writer who wrote the script. Had this been made, writer Dario Scardapane very well might be an A-list screenwriter.

As it stands, he’s done some TV and had a decent credit with the Liam Neeson thriller, Memory. But, he’s not John Spaiths.

By the way, Hugh Jackman had his own fortuitous lucky break. The original guy who was supposed to play Wolverine, Dougray Scott, couldn’t do it because of a scheduling conflict. Would Hugh Jackman have anywhere close to the career he has today if he hadn’t gotten Wolverine? Methinks no.

And it’s not that that Scott had a bad career. He’s been steadily working ever since then. He just doesn’t have 100 million in the bank.

Then again, maybe this script will tell us that there’s a reason Jackman left. Let’s find out for ourselves.

Antwan “The Swan” Carter is a gangster to the highest degree. He’s one of those dudes who’s spent just as much time in prison as outside of it. When we meet him, he’s trying to get the F out of Miami. But TSA at the airport notice blood on his shoes and start questioning him. He makes a run for it but they catch him and take him in.

Cut to New York where we meet uptight youngster FBI agent Miles Vreeland. Vreeland is shocked when he gets the orders from his boss to go down to Miami to pick Carter up. Usually, they’d send a senior officer. And the method of delivery is odd as well. They’re going to be taking the train (the ‘Fed-X’) instead of a plane.

Vreeland shows up with two US Marshalls, picks Carter up, and begins the delivery. Vreeland doesn’t like Carter. He challenges him on the fact that his MO for his crimes is to recruit 15 year old kids. That’s what led to Carter making a run for it. He and four kids robbed a Brinx truck but the robbery went sideways. All four of the kids were killed.

Just as the two finish talking about that, one of the Marshalls pulls a gun and starts shooting… AT VREELAND! WTF?? Vreeland and Carter improvise and take the guy down. But then the other Marshall comes in guns-a-blazing as well. This right after he sabotaged the train, which goes spinning off the track and crashing.

Once everything settles, some black ops dudes in Yukons storm into the train wreckage, ALSO SHOOTING at Vreeland. What’s going on here!!?? Vreeland and Carter make a run for it, hurtling into the forest. Carter keeps demanding that Carter free his handcuffs so he has a fighting chance but Vreeland says there’s no way I’m letting you free.

They make it to a store and Vreeland calls his boss to tell him what happened. His boss says not to worry about it. He’ll have men pick him up in 15 minutes. Hold tight. Except his men don’t pick him up. Those Yukons come back. That’s when Vreeland realized that this goes way deeper than he thought, and that, ironically, the only person he can trust right now is the killer he’s escorting. Will the two be able to work together and get out of this? Or are these forces too big to escape?

You know what I realized while reading this script?

The market is ripe for a 2-Hander. That’s when you have two people – a team if you will – leading your script in some sort of crime related storyline. This is a movie blueprint Hollywood has been printing money off of for 50+ years. But, for whatever reason, there hasn’t been a big one for a while now.

There are two main ways to break into Hollywood with a script. One is to write something completely new and fresh. The other is to figure out what successful genre is lying dormant at the moment and write a script in that genre. The 2-Hander is lying dormant right now. So, whoever comes up with a good one could have a sale on their hands.

One of the things I love best about the 2-Hander is when it incorporates the “reluctant team-up.” The good guy and the bad guy will often have to work together. And it’s just so much fun when that happens! And this script does a good job building that relationship. The key is, we have to like them together. And we definitely like these two together.

The script does get bumpy in places. I wasn’t exactly thrilled that the bad guys were Bolivians. Although I guess back in 2005, that choice would’ve been on brand. It’s funny how hard it’s become to come up with a country for villains these days. But this tells me that it’s always been a challenge.

Most of the story revolves around a plot that had Carter stealing this money and then hiding it. These bad guys seem to be after that money. Although for the majority of the movie, Carter keeps those details from Vreeland.

This script is an example of: if you get the main variables right, you’ve got a lot of leeway to make average choices. I personally push writers to make as many strong creative choices as they can. But you don’t have to if you get the main character right, his partner right, their relationship right, the mystery of why they’re being chased right. And all of that was solid. Which resulted in a solid script!

Which you can read for yourselves: Screenplay for Fed-X

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

What I learned: An action scene is always more exciting when you can add a second front. Normally, in gunfight scenes, it’s our guys versus the bad guys. But in that early train-crash scene where Vreeland is taking on the fake US Marshalls, he’s also having to deal with Carter. A second front. A lot of times, writing is about building complications into scenarios that are too familiar. That’s what the “second front” does.