In Bruges is one of those movies that you’re supposed to like if you’re a film nerd. Saying you don’t instantly loses you credibility. I guess I just lost credibility. I’m not sure it’s the script so much as Colin Farrell’s acting. I can never understand what the hell the guy’s saying and I don’t think he’s funny. If I need a guy to break girls’ hearts or make women swoon, I’ll hire Farrell. If I want an actor who can deliver jokes, Farrell is somewhere on the bottom of my list. But hey, people love In Bruges and I’m not going to rain on their parade. Even though I just sorta did. Today, Roger takes a look at another of McDonagh’s (the writer of In Bruges) scripts, Seven Psychopaths. If I ranked all the scripts I get requests for, this one is somewhere near the top. People love this guy. Let’s see what Roger thinks.

Genre: Crime, Drama, Black Comedy
Premise: A writer’s life is violently turned upside down when his friends kidnap a Mafioso’s dog.
About: “Seven Psychopaths” is McDonagh’s third film script. It’s his favorite unproduced script. And that’s all he’s gonna say about it. At the age of 27, McDonagh became the first writer since Shakespeare to have four plays performed simultaneously in London. His plays have been nominated for multiple Tony Awards. He won an Oscar for his short, “Six Shooter”. Nominated for Best Original Screenplay Award with “In Bruges”.
Writer: Martin McDonagh.
Details: 116 pages (undated)

Canto I.

The only writer other than Shakespeare to have four plays performed concurrently in London’s West End Theatre District is Martin McDonagh. That’s an almost four-hundred year disparity between quite possibly the world’s greatest writer and a modern day Irish playwright.

One writes in manacled iambic pentameter and the other writes in an idiosyncratic language that champions casual swearing.

Both are writers who tell stories that explore the immemorial facets of honor, love, loss, sorrow, ambition, wrath and madness with jewel-like illumination.

A Shakespearean sonnet might stir the pain that hides in scars by driving a rapier through your heart, but a McDonagh murder ballad will pummel that protective wall you constructed around your soul with the butt of a gun until it creates its own entrance, turning what was once a barrier into a gate.

And that thing you call manliness that is actually a buffer between you and the world will erode in the winds of a howling melancholy and screaming black drama, leaving you with wrists upturned and your veins exposed to the world, laughing all the while.

Canto II.

Now here’s a script that exists on the other side. The side where rules are broken and where the writer’s creativity and skill create a form that, double-fisted, punches and shoots its way through the parameter walls and stretches the tethers of the tenants to the point where they snap, the story refusing to be held in such confines.

The new form might frighten you. It might scare you away. But there’s no need to run. Read it. Don’t know how? Let it show you how. Give it a chance. Like Nabokov’s “Pale Fire” or Danielewski’s “House of Leaves”, McDonagh’s “Seven Psychopaths” is a work that showcases meta-literary pyrotechnics. You learn how to read it as you go along.

But here’s the thing. It’s actually a quiet display that does not get in the way of the story. There are points, especially near the mid-point, where it teeters on the brink, where McDonagh seems to mutter fuck-all while he tight-rope walks between pretentious disaster and pure screenplay brilliance, but then he makes it to the latter side and all you can do as a reader is shake your head in wonder and nod approvingly as you skim back over the pages you just read to see exactly how he made it across.

There’s a danger that comes with playing with the rules. But your reward, if you survive the attempt, is that you may achieve something much more interesting than what would be possible by opting to play safely in the life-guarded screenplay sandbox. There’s a part in this script where it seems like McDonagh is telegraphing the entire third act, but then he reels the story back in and we’re served with something completely compelling, fun, tense, violent and heartbreaking.

If you get to the mid-point and find yourself frustrated, like I did, just keep reading.

I promise that it’s not what you think it is.

Canto III.

Here’s the story. We have our writer Marty, who may or may not be Martin McDonagh. He’s a writer. He’s a bit of an alcoholic. He’s trying to write a screenplay he has entitled “Seven Psychopaths”. Yeah, I know. But hold on. Pay attention.

Marty’s best-friend is Billy Bickle. Billy…well…let’s just say that Billy doesn’t like Marty’s girlfriend, Kaya. Kaya doesn’t like Billy. But it’s okay, because Billy is concerned with being a good friend and he’s not afraid to tell Marty that Kaya is kindof a bitch. He’s looking out for his friend.

At one point we might even get a glimpse at Billy’s diary and learn that he’s made lists on how he can be a better friend to Marty and Hans.

Hans is –-

–hold on. Sorry. I’ll get to Hans in a second.

Did you catch the “Taxi Driver” reference there? Look again. Billy’s name. Billy Bickle.

Billy actually thinks that he’s the son of Travis Bickle, Robert De Niro’s character in Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver”. No, he doesn’t think he’s the son of De Niro. He believes he’s the son of the character, Travis Bickle. He thinks Travis Bickle is real.

But it’s not…it’s not something you want to ride into him for. Billy’s a sweet guy and it’s kind of painful to watch Marty get drunk and make fun of him concerning this character trait. It just makes Marty come off as cranky and mean-spirited. And Billy is an awesome friend. I would be honored to have a friend like Billy in my life.

You see, Billy is concerned that Marty is drinking too much and that’s causing problems with work on his script. And he’s not afraid to say it. As burgeoning scriptwriters, we could all use a cheerleader like this on our sides, alcoholic or not.

Now let’s get back to Hans.

Hans is an older guy, closer to sixty than fifty. He’s poor but always neatly dressed. He wears a distinctive cravat that might just be a stylistic fashion choice, or he might be using it to cover up a telling scar. He has a black wife named Myra, a victim of breast cancer who spends her painful days lying in bed at the cancer word.

Hans hasn’t worked in twenty years or so, and you get the sense he’s struggling to pay Myra’s hospital bills. So he’s come up with a dog-napping scheme to help him with his financial woes. Billy helps him out. They steal dogs from people at the local park, hold them in pens and wait for the missing-dog flyers to appear. And since this is a pretty rich area, they are able to score hundreds of dollars in reward money from suddenly ecstatic and wealthy owners.

But one day they make a mistake. They nab a cute, little three-legged shitsu by the name of Bonny that both men grow pretty fond of.

Except there’s already a guy who’s extremely fond of Bonny. Namely, his owner Charlie Costello. See, when we first meet Charlie, he’s at a double funeral for some mafiosos.

That’s something else you should note. Someone has taken it upon themselves to murder members of the mafia, leaving Jack ‘O Diamond playing cards on the bodies.

Anyways, Charlie is at this funeral, and he’s consoling the mothers of the fallen men. He’s telling me, with much passion, that he’s going to crucify the people responsible for this.

Then someone arrives to tell him that something has happened to his shitsu, Bonny.

And then we truly see Charlie’s true colors.

He goes apeshit and when the Irish priest at the funeral tries to calm him down, Charlie responds by pushing him into an open grave. Yep. He pushes. A priest. Into. An open grave.

And now worlds are about to collide. People are about to die.

And it reminds me a lot of McDonagh’s play, “The Lieutenant of Inishmore”. Which is about a psychopath named Padraic, a leader in a Irish National Liberation Army splinter group, who finds out his best friend has been killed.

His best friend is a cat named Wee Thomas.

Anyways, a bloodbath ensues as Padraic returns to his old stomping grounds as he avenges the cat.

So Charlie is a bit like Padraic. His interrogation starts with the woman who was walking Bonny when he went missing. She’s chained to a chair and he has a gun in his hand. And if we weren’t sure about Charlie’s sanity already, this scene provides us with frightful and hilarious clarity.

Canto IV.

It can be argued, that when it comes to plays, that what you need is three ingredients. (1) Quirky characters. (2) Good dialogue. (3) Interesting stories for each character. And off you go.

The idiom of McDonagh’s work is that, yes, he has quirky characters. And he also has dialogue that captures a sense of madness through speech. His characters express themselves through the oddness of their expressions. And not only do they seem to have interesting backstories, the stories that they are living portraying in the present to the audience are compelling and interesting as well.

But plays are different. You can tell more than you have to show, and you can get away with it.

Cinematically, it’s wise to show more than you tell.

And McDonagh has some great stories that he shows us here. You see, there are stories within stories here. The frame device is the screenplay Marty is writing, and he needs to find and populate his story with seven characters. Seven characters worthy of the title psychopath. Seven psychopaths with interesting stories to tell.

There’s a funny bit of business that involves a hungover Marty finding an ad in the paper, a call for psychopaths with interesting stories to be used in a film being written by Marty. He didn’t put this in the paper. Billy did.

And this is how we meet Zachariah. He’s very old. He arrives to Marty’s apartment to tell his tale to Marty’s tape recorder. Marty just wants to be rid of the guy, so he goes about his business making coffee and such when he hears Zachariah reveal that he lived his life as a serial killer who travelled the country killing other serial killers.

He didn’t do this alone. He had a girlfriend and partner named Maggie.

And it’s the type of well-told tale that catches your breath. And what starts out as a story about grisly serial killers turns into a sad tale of regret and love lost.

Zachariah’s motive for coming to Marty is so that Marty will post a note after the credits roll if his screenplay is ever made into a film from Zachariah to Maggie.

You see, he’s an old man looking for the woman that got away.

And it’s a powerful, touching sequence that made me cry. And then I was laughing while crying at the irony of shedding tears over the story of a couple that offed serial murderers.

And that’s what makes this script such a joy and pleasure to experience. It’s the stories and connections and reversals that rise to the surface as a man looking for his stolen dog wreaks havoc on the people responsible.

Canto V.

The characters speak dialogue that showcases McDonagh’s ear for elliptical speech. People often speak around subjects and the truth before they finally settle on it. It takes them a bit of time to figure out how they’re going to approach a subject or something that’s bothering them. But when they finally do, it’s a moment of connection that lights up the circuits and gets our agreement and empathy.

There’s a great line of dialogue, a line that resonates still:

“I think anything made with brains and heart is life-affirming, no matter how black the subject matter.”

Living in the Bible Belt, people like to make me feel weird.

Sometimes they ask me, “How can you like that? It’s not uplifting.”

Like this one time I was watching David Gordon Green’s “Snow Angels”, and after it ended, my roommate, who had been grading papers in front of the flat-screen, she says, “That wasn’t very uplifting, was it?”

And she scowled at me and told me it was a terrible, terrible film.

Not totally pleasant, yes, but it was totally captivating. It had things to say. Things about grief that spoke to me, calmed me as a person who was going through his own grief. But she clocked out and chose not to believe that it had things to say.

Why?

Now I’m a guy that likes somber, melancholy, dark fairy tales dripping with sparkled chiaroscuro and luminous tenebrae…I like stories with swearing and guns and knives and people behaving badly.

And you know, people will look at me and say, with a straight-face, that there’s no value to such stories. No artistic, humanistic, or moral merit.

Well, what a shitty stance that’s more a matter of taste and bias then it is of criticism. Than it is of giving a story a chance.

And it frustrates me, because I’m a person that tries to find the beauty and truth in everything. I want to say, didn’t you pay attention? There’s light here, there’s gem-like soul-stirring stuff going on here, and sometimes you need some of the darkness to accentuate the light, the life. It’s like alchemy, chemistry. You need the vile stuff, the dark stuff, to cull out the light.

Canto VI.

Because I’m going to tell you right now, there are multiple moments in this story that violates Stuart Beattie’s screenplay axiom: “Never kill the dog.”

Animals die in this thing.

And so do people.

Life is hacked to death with a machete. It melts in pools of acid. Flare guns are shot into mouths, bullets bounce around inside bodies. There’s fisticuffs and bloody physicality. Men break up with women. Women and men both die tragic deaths.

And I don’t really think there’s any bias or prejudice betwixt the things that die in this script.

Canto VII.

But there’s men professing love for each other. It’s not homosexuality. It’s the manly Romantic friendship found between two males in Victorian times and literature. You know how people would snicker in the theater during “Lord of the Rings” whenever Frodo and Sam gazed at each other? How people mistook that for them being hard and wet for each other?

There’s that except it’s not two dudes who want to fuck each other (it wasn’t in Tolkien either).

It’s a sense of honor, of loyalty, of friendship.

It’s also a meditation on Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai”. Chinks in the armor and macho exteriors that lay bare the insecurities, the tenderness, the red-beating hearts of these characters. Push past through the posturing and physicality to see these men naked, offering their beating hearts in outstretched supplicant hands.

There’s writer as warrior.

You fight for the time and dedication to write, and sometimes you lose the simple pleasures of life in exchange. If you’re in a relationship, it’s a hard juggling act. Because writing has become your mistress, and your stories have become your children. You have to decide, who is going to be the wife, and who is going to be the mistress? Your writing? Or your mate?

I think there’s a sacrifice that comes with choosing a path as a writer, with things like logophilia or cinephilia. When you’re so haunted and obsessed with words and images you find the rest of the world passing you by as you lose yourself in the loop. Sometimes it’s out of your control.

And sometimes when you’ve worked months or years to complete something, you’ve shed friendships and jobs. You’ve opted not to settle on a straight career path and a yuppie life because you’re working something minimum wage while you live in a ratty apartment with Good Will décor as you spend the majority of your time writing.

A lot.

Like Seven Samurai, these guys uphold their honor to each other, their friendships for the greater good, but it’s the warriors who ultimately lose. They have lost their lives and Marty has lost his friends. As Kambei muses, “Again we are defeated.”

Because in the end, Marty has even lost his girl because his writing is important, and she is, after all, a fucking bitch.

And with Marty alive, life-sustaining work has prevailed over war, left all warriors (Billy and Hans and the others) as the defeated party.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] barely kept my interest
[ ] worth the read
[xx] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: When you’re someone like Martin McDonagh, you don’t compromise. People don’t tell him, “That’s a great first draft.” He has the confidence and the stubbornness and the belief in his own work to say, “We’re shooting it my way and we’re not going to change a fucking word.” And you know what? That’s what’s gonna happen. If you’re going to last in this business, you have to believe in yourself. You have to believe in your scripts. The moment you lose belief, the moment you quit and give up. It’s over. Otherwise, how are other people going to believe in you? Are you writing for a paycheck? Or are you writing because you need and have to tell stories? Are you writing a story to tell it to other people, or are you telling it to yourself?

What do you say about The Boondock Saints? For those recently dipping their feet in the Hollywood pool, the story behind The Boondock Saints is one of the more fascinating in the town’s eclectic history. I’ll definitely be getting some details wrong here but for the most part, this is what went down: Troy Duffy was a no-name bartender in Los Angeles who wrote The Boondock Saints in his free time off a rented computer. He somehow got the script into Harvey Weinstein’s hands at the apex of Miramax’s power. Weinstein agreed to buy the script for 300k, allow Duffy to direct the movie for 16 million, and to sweeten the deal (and cleverly nab some media attention), he even bought Duffy the bar that he worked at for him. It was one of those Cinderella stories that everybody loved to talk about. Well, except that a few months later Harvey changed his mind and stopped taking Duffy’s phone calls. Duffy, not exactly current on Tinsletown protocol, didn’t understand this meant his movie wasn’t happening anymore. Now a lot of what follows is rumor, but supposedly Duffy started stalking Weinstein and threatening him for backing out of the deal. We all know that Weinstein isn’t the shyest mogul on the block, and according to Troy, he began threatening Duffy’s life. Duffy went from future filmmaker to caged animal as he holed himself up in his house with a gun, waiting for Harvey’s assassins. Of course Weinstein denies all of this. But Duffy swears it’s true. This is all documented in the documentary, “Overnight”, which, while not as good as my description makes it out to be, is still a pretty strong doc.

Eventually Duffy got someone to put up money for his film and the movie pretty much went straight-to-video. Now, according to lore, the movie is now a “cult classic” because it made over six million dollars on video. I’ve never seen the film, nor do I have any desire to, but whether you believe it’s a success or not, it was good enough that someone put up money for a sequel. Roger has dug up the script for that sequel, and he shares his reactions with us…

Genre: Action. Crime.
Premise: The MacManus Brothers are living a quiet life in Ireland with their father, but when they learn their beloved priest has been killed by mob forces, the duo return to Boston to bring justice to those responsible.
About: Troy Duffy makes his directing return in this sequel to The Boondock Saints.
Writer: Troy Duffy

I have a few friends who color themselves Boondock Fans. I don’t judge them. Instead, I try to understand them. To prepare myself for this review, I had a conversation with my buddy, Ira, about why he likes “The Boondock Saints”. He’s a quarter Irish, and in-between pints of Guinness and Smithwicks, I asked him to tell me why the flick appeals to him.

“First off, these guys are Irish. And what do the Irish do best? They fight. They bleed. They die. Those are actual song lyrics by the way.”

“So you like the movie because the heroes are Irish?”

“Sure. But what makes them so great is that they have no idea what the fuck they are doing. They win all of their gunfights purely by accident. Happy accidents. Who are they when we meet them? They’re workers in a meat factory plant, I think. And don’t they like beat the shit out of a health inspector or something?”

“I don’t really remember.”

“The point is, these guys are just blue-collar second-generation Irish immigrants in Boston. Yet God calls upon them to punish the unjust. They’re like these killer saints that deliver the justice of God by the barrel of a gun. And I think that’s something we can all relate to.”

“Religious vigilantism?”

“Why not? Look at Willem Dafoe’s FBI detective character. He’s this guy who can’t always catch the bad guys. He has to work through the American legal system, our imperfect justice system. And a lot of the times, he has to watch people escape the system just to go commit the same crimes. And that’s why he likes the Saints so much. They don’t have to go through our flawed legal system. They are God’s legal system. They are God’s executioners.”

“Sounds like the last season of Dexter.”

“I’m pretty sure the writers of Dexter stole that from Boondock Saints.”

“Is that a serious statement?”

“Steal. Reference. Cite. Homage. Whatever. It just goes to show you that Boondock was ahead of its time.”

“I never really thought about it like that. Okay. So what’s your favorite scene?”

“Everything you need to know about The Boondock Saints is in the final scene. You got the cops in the courtroom at a loss of what to do. They are fucking agonizing that this Mafia Boss is gonna get away. It’s fucked up, you know? This crime lord is going to walk the streets, basically a taint upon Boston. Everyone’s just pissed. The failure of the court system strikes again. But then the Saints walk in and fucking pop this dude. BAM! BAM! In the middle of a court room! Can you not see the brilliance in that?”

“Well…okay. I do remember that. Hold on – what was that?”

“What was what?”

“You didn’t hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Is that…is that a disembodied guitar riff?”

“I think…I think it is!”

Rockin’ music overtakes us as we DISSOLVE TO…

Just me at my computer. Thinking about this script.

Perhaps I just prefer my flavor of vigilante to be of the Charlie Bronson or Frank Castle variety, because to me, reading The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day was basically the equivalent of reading really horrible Quentin Tarantino fanfiction.

I kinda liked the first act though. Which just goes to show you guys I was willing to give the Saints a second chance. Everyone deserves a second chance, right guys?

This motherfucker starts off in Ireland. The boys are now rugged sheep-herders with piercing eyes and luxurious beards. Think Alan Moore without the wizard costume and with more muscle on his bones. If the locale doesn’t prove to you that they are Irish, why don’t you fucking take a look at the Celtic Crosses inked to their forearms. Do you doubt their heritage now?

I thought not.

And if you’re bored, don’t be. Because someone, let’s call him CREW CUT, fucking murders a priest in the first five pages. I know. It’s fucking brutal! And if it’s not brutal enough, what if I were to tell you that this execution is intercut with wolves attacking the sheep Connor and Murphy are trying to defend?

What if I were to tell you that the priest gets a bullet to the back of his head and pennies put on his eyes? What if I were to tell you that a sheep dies? What if I were to tell you that this dude, Crew Cut, is using the modus operandi of the Saints whilst killing a man of the cloth to lure them back to Boston? What if I were to tell you that the boys blast away the wolf that kills the sheep and that the rest of the wolfpack runs away?

Would you think it’s not brutal enough now, faggot?

I think my friend Ira would say that everything you need to know about The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day would be in this one sequence of glorious intercutting.

And he might be right. Because it’s fucking symbolism. And everyone knows that symbolism is the fucking shit.

Cue MOODY MUSIC…

As the boys cut their hair and luxurious beards with sheep shears.

Apparently, a disturbance in the Force has informed them that shit has hit the fan in Boston. They must meticulously groom themselves and ritualistically fill in each other’s tattoos as if they were completing pages in a Celtic-themed coloring book so they can sneak back into the States by stowing themselves on a cargo freighter, The Killian Farris.

Once aboard, they successfully watch a cage match between a swarthy French giant and a pony-tailed Latino with a perpetual smile. Fucking awesome, right? Well hold the fuck on, because it gets awesomer! The Latino, even though he has a ponytail, the sides are shorn! And his hands are chained behind his back! So it’s like a manacled David fighting a froggie seaman Goliath! No, not semen (faggot), seaman! And get this, if you didn’t think this Latino cat was suave already, bobbing and weaving those brutal blows from the giant, let me tell you his name. Then there will be absolutely no doubt in your mind that this kid is the fucking shit. Hold on…wait for it…and while you wait for it…try to imagine some fucking cool music setting the mood…okay…his name is…ROMEO!

Yeah Jefe, you should fucking cheer.

And if you don’t think Romeo is tough, then FUCK YOU, pal! Let me shove some of his dialogue down your ear-hole so you know that he’s tough:

“You should never fight a Mexican, Frenchy. Pound for pound the toughest mother fuckers on earth. Know why? We like pain. We like it, Pierre. I mean think about it, ‘Tabasco sauce.’ What kind of fucked up people would even invent that shit?”

It’s a good question. Whom indeed, Romeo? Whom in-fucking-deed. Because according to Wikipedia, it wasn’t Mexicans. It was this mother fucking Maryland-born former banker named Edmund McIlhenny. Which sounds suspiciously Irish.

But no matter, this is enough to impress Murphy. The MacManus Brothers need a fucking mascot and if you got brains you need not apply.

But hold on. What is Duffy trying to say? Is there something deeper going on here? Is the writer of The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day suggesting that all Mexicans really wish they were Irish? Or merely that they wish they invented Tabasco sauce? Yes, what exactly is the subtext of this relationship?

Does it fucking matter?

Because as I was reading the script, I literally felt the phantom of an astral-projected Duffy whisper in my ear, “When reading this script, your name is no longer Roger. It’s Peaches, faggot! So don’t ask questions, Peaches. I locked the door from the outside until you reach the end. Keep reading, bitch!”

I felt like I was about to go deaf reading this thing. Dialogue is not spoken, it’s shouted. Intimate moments involve brotherly roughhousing during hits on bad guys. Whispers are frothy epithets and spittle catapulted out of mouths. If someone raises their voice it’s accompanied by gunshots and questionable one-liners. Both make you flinch. So it’s kinda like a double flinch and then you die.

Where were we? Oh yes.

The Saints need Romeo. He has connections in the Boston underworld that can help them find the killer of the priest and exact revenge on everyone involved while simultaneously clearing their names of the crime. Yeah. I know. But sometimes you just gotta fucking murderlize other human beings to clear your name of a crime you didn’t commit. They call that cleaning the slate.

It reminds me of that classic 1988 beat’em up arcade game, Bad Dudes. “A fucking priest has been murdered in your trademark style from when you were a vigilante. Are you a bad enough dude to clean the fucking slate?”

Romeo needs Murphy and Connor because he wishes he were Irish. And he wants to prove to his Uncle Cesar that he’s a bad enough dude to be the third wheel to The Brothers Boondock. Because that’s how you prove you’re truly macho. Their company is the litmus test of your manliness.

And unfortunately, my patience.

What about Smecker you ask? The Willem Dafoe character from the first film? I’m glad you asked.

Cue AWE-INSPIRING MUSIC…

And meet Special Agent Eunice Bloom. Smecker asexually reproduced her, I mean…plucked her straight out of a class at Quantico. His protégé. This is the character he truly wanted to be in the first film, fallopian tubes and all.

All you need to know about Eunice Bloom is illustrated in the Act Two Climax.

WHIP PAN TO…FANTASY SEQUENCE…WITH COOL COUNTRY WESTERN MUSIC!

Eunice is now in full cowgirl regalia: Leather chaps, rawhide coat, boots, cowboy hat, and a pair of gleaming six guns on her hips. She’s going to visualize the crime scene The Boondock Saints and Romeo left behind in a luxury condo while trying to murder a crime boss who locked himself in his custom-built panic room.

She screams, “YEEEEE HAAAWWWW!!!!!” as this fantasy sequence is intercut with the boys and their awesome shoot-out.

You see, this fantasy sequence is required because Eunice’s boss, Kuntsler, is trying to take over her investigation from the inside. Julie Benz needs to prove to him that she is a better detective than her blood-splatter analyst boyfriend slash serial killer boyfriend on Dexter.

And what better way for Eunice to do it than to show the audience that all these characters are just modern-day cowboys and outlaws up to their same old shenanigans?

Roger, come on. You don’t have to make scenes up. Seriously, what was your main problem with the script?

Like I said, I was interested in the first act. But this thing just seemed to lose my interest afterwards. It’s a one-trick pony repeating the formula from the first movie. The action sequences feel one note. The cops and Eunice stumble onto a crime scene where bad guys died. Eunice visualizes the crime scene to tell the police what actually happened. Over…and over…and over again.

Sure, the tenuous villain who drew the Saints out of hiding has a master plan, and it involves the father of the Saints. But it doesn’t really work. It doesn’t so much unfold as it’s haphazardly shimmied into the 3rd act. It feels like it’s coming out of left field.

This story is about a character that’s only in the script for maybe two or three scenes. It’s just bad architecture. The payoff is limp.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] barely kept my fucking interest
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: If you want to be cool, you should rip the fucking period key out of your keyboard. That way you are forced to use more exclamation points. I think a ratio of 3:1, exclamation points to periods, is what you should shoot for. The more the merrier, right? Also, I think the more CUE ROCKIN’ MUSIC slugs the better. Except you should mix it up. Instead of ‘rockin’ you can substitute words like: ‘hauntin’, ‘festive’, ‘moody’, ‘hard core’, ‘pulsating’, ‘cool’, ‘Country Western’, ‘scratchy’, ‘thunderin’, ‘slammin’, et cetera. The possibilities are pretty fucking endless, if you think about it.

So I sat long and hard thinking of a way to do a Scriptshadow contest without monopolizing every hour of my day for five months straight, and I think I’ve come up with a solution. A staggered submission process that starts with a logline, and ends with me reading a select group of scripts. Here’s how it would work. The initial stage of the contest would be the logline. Anyone who wants to enter sends me a logline. Four weeks later, I announce the Top 100 loglines. The “winners” of that stage will then send me a 250 word paragraph summarizing their script. 4 weeks later I announce the Top 50 summaries. The “winners” of that stage will send me a full 1 page synopsis of their screenplay. The Top 25 synopses from that group will send me their screenplays. I’ll then pick a winner from that group. The winner will receive a review on Scriptshadow (which will almost certainly be favorable) and that review should garner, at the very least, a few requests from mangers and agents.

Now here’s the thing. The contest *is* free *if* you only send in one logline. For each additional logline you submit, it will be one dollar. You can submit as many loglines as you want. I figure this won’t only help me, but it will allow you to try a bunch of different loglines, even for scripts you haven’t written yet. If you make it to the final stage (final 20), I’ll give you an extra month and a half to turn in your script. That way, along with the two months you get during the initial stages, you’ll have enough time to write the script if you keep advancing.

I know some of you will probably want the additional logline costs to be cheaper. But I think it’s fair. The contest is free if you want it to be. For those concerned that I’m rewarding scripts that haven’t even been written yet (and therefore can’t possibly be any good) I’m fairly confident that the screening process will prevent any bad writers from getting into the Top 20. It’s kind of hard to fake being a good writer in a one page summary. So yes, it’s not perfect, but it’s a good compromise since I don’t yet have the time or the resources to run a “proper” contest. The contest would probably be announced in the next 4-6 weeks.

Suggestions? Improvements? What do you guys think?

Okay, I wasn’t going to post this because everybody in the world picked it up and, I feel, it’s already gotten its due. Even Nikki Finke posted it on her page. But I’ve received a ton of e-mail from people asking, specifically because I read so many scripts, what my opinion on the matter is. Josh Olson is the screenwriter of “A History Of Violence.” They posted this article of his in Village Voice. And I am re-posting it here. Read it (but remember I DID NOT WRITE IT) and I’ll follow with my thoughts.

I will not read your fucking script.

That’s simple enough, isn’t it? “I will not read your fucking script.” What’s not clear about that? There’s nothing personal about it, nothing loaded, nothing complicated. I simply have no interest in reading your fucking screenplay. None whatsoever.

If that seems unfair, I’ll make you a deal. In return for you not asking me to read your fucking script, I will not ask you to wash my fucking car, or take my fucking picture, or represent me in fucking court, or take out my fucking gall bladder, or whatever the fuck it is that you do for a living.

You’re a lovely person. Whatever time we’ve spent together has, I’m sure, been pleasurable for both of us. I quite enjoyed that conversation we once had about structure and theme, and why Sergio Leone is the greatest director who ever lived. Yes, we bonded, and yes, I wish you luck in all your endeavors, and it would thrill me no end to hear that you had sold your screenplay, and that it had been made into the best movie since Godfather Part II.

But I will not read your fucking script.

At this point, you should walk away, firm in your conviction that I’m a dick. But if you’re interested in growing as a human being and recognizing that it is, in fact, you who are the dick in this situation, please read on.

Yes. That’s right. I called you a dick. Because you created this situation. You put me in this spot where my only option is to acquiesce to your demands or be the bad guy. That, my friend, is the very definition of a dick move.

I was recently cornered by a young man of my barest acquaintance.

I doubt we’ve exchanged a hundred words. But he’s dating someone I know, and he cornered me in the right place at the right time, and asked me to read a two-page synopsis for a script he’d been working on for the last year. He was submitting the synopsis to some contest or program, and wanted to get a professional opinion.

Now, I normally have a standard response to people who ask me to read their scripts, and it’s the simple truth: I have two piles next to my bed. One is scripts from good friends, and the other is manuscripts and books and scripts my agents have sent to me that I have to read for work. Every time I pick up a friend’s script, I feel guilty that I’m ignoring work. Every time I pick something up from the other pile, I feel guilty that I’m ignoring my friends. If I read yours before any of that, I’d be an awful person.

Most people get that. But sometimes you find yourself in a situation where the guilt factor is really high, or someone plays on a relationship or a perceived obligation, and it’s hard to escape without seeming rude. Then, I tell them I’ll read it, but if I can put it down after ten pages, I will. They always go for that, because nobody ever believes you can put their script down once you start.

But hell, this was a two page synopsis, and there was no time to go into either song or dance, and it was just easier to take it. How long can two pages take?

Weeks, is the answer.

And this is why I will not read your fucking script.

It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you’re in the presence of someone who can write, but it only takes a sentence to know you’re dealing with someone who can’t.

(By the way, here’s a simple way to find out if you’re a writer. If you disagree with that statement, you’re not a writer. Because, you see, writers are also readers.)

You may want to allow for the fact that this fellow had never written a synopsis before, but that doesn’t excuse the inability to form a decent sentence, or an utter lack of facility with language and structure. The story described was clearly of great importance to him, but he had done nothing to convey its specifics to an impartial reader. What I was handed was, essentially, a barely coherent list of events, some connected, some not so much. Characters wander around aimlessly, do things for no reason, vanish, reappear, get arrested for unnamed crimes, and make wild, life-altering decisions for no reason. Half a paragraph is devoted to describing the smell and texture of a piece of food, but the climactic central event of the film is glossed over in a sentence. The death of the hero is not even mentioned. One sentence describes a scene he’s in, the next describes people showing up at his funeral. I could go on, but I won’t. This is the sort of thing that would earn you a D minus in any Freshman Comp class.

Which brings us to an ugly truth about many aspiring screenwriters: They think that screenwriting doesn’t actually require the ability to write, just the ability to come up with a cool story that would make a cool movie. Screenwriting is widely regarded as the easiest way to break into the movie business, because it doesn’t require any kind of training, skill or equipment. Everybody can write, right? And because they believe that, they don’t regard working screenwriters with any kind of real respect. They will hand you a piece of inept writing without a second thought, because you do not have to be a writer to be a screenwriter.

So. I read the thing. And it hurt, man. It really hurt. I was dying to find something positive to say, and there was nothing. And the truth is, saying something positive about this thing would be the nastiest, meanest and most dishonest thing I could do. Because here’s the thing: not only is it cruel to encourage the hopeless, but you cannot discourage a writer. If someone can talk you out of being a writer, you’re not a writer. If I can talk you out of being a writer, I’ve done you a favor, because now you’ll be free to pursue your real talent, whatever that may be. And, for the record, everybody has one. The lucky ones figure out what that is. The unlucky ones keep on writing shitty screenplays and asking me to read them.

To make matters worse, this guy (and his girlfriend) had begged me to be honest with him. He was frustrated by the responses he’d gotten from friends, because he felt they were going easy on him, and he wanted real criticism. They never do, of course. What they want is a few tough notes to give the illusion of honesty, and then some pats on the head. What they want–always–is encouragement, even when they shouldn’t get any.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to tell someone that they’ve spent a year wasting their time? Do you know how much blood and sweat goes into that criticism? Because you want to tell the truth, but you want to make absolutely certain that it comes across honestly and without cruelty. I did more rewrites on that fucking e-mail than I did on my last three studio projects.

My first draft was ridiculous. I started with specific notes, and after a while, found I’d written three pages on the first two paragraphs. That wasn’t the right approach. So I tossed it, and by the time I was done, I’d come up with something that was relatively brief, to the point, and considerate as hell. The main point I made was that he’d fallen prey to a fallacy that nails a lot of first timers. He was way more interested in telling his one story than in being a writer. It was like buying all the parts to a car and starting to build it before learning the basics of auto mechanics. You’ll learn a lot along the way, I said, but you’ll never have a car that runs.

(I should mention that while I was composing my response, he pulled the ultimate amateur move, and sent me an e-mail saying, “If you haven’t read it yet, don’t! I have a new draft. Read this!” In other words, “The draft I told you was ready for professional input, wasn’t actually.”)

I advised him that if all he was interested in was this story, he should find a writer and work with him; or, if he really wanted to be a writer, start at the beginning and take some classes, and start studying seriously.

And you know what? I shouldn’t have bothered. Because for all the hair I pulled out, for all the weight and seriousness I gave his request for a real, professional critique, his response was a terse “Thanks for your opinion.” And, the inevitable fallout–a week later a mutual friend asked me, “What’s this dick move I hear you pulled on Whatsisname?”
So now this guy and his girlfriend think I’m an asshole, and the truth of the matter is, the story really ended the moment he handed me the goddamn synopsis. Because if I’d just said “No” then and there, they’d still think I’m an asshole. Only difference is, I wouldn’t have had to spend all that time trying to communicate thoughtfully and honestly with someone who just wanted a pat on the head, and, more importantly, I wouldn’t have had to read that godawful piece of shit.

You are not owed a read from a professional, even if you think you have an in, and even if you think it’s not a huge imposition. It’s not your choice to make. This needs to be clear–when you ask a professional for their take on your material, you’re not just asking them to take an hour or two out of their life, you’re asking them to give you–gratis–the acquired knowledge, insight, and skill of years of work. It is no different than asking your friend the house painter to paint your living room during his off hours.

There’s a great story about Pablo Picasso. Some guy told Picasso he’d pay him to draw a picture on a napkin. Picasso whipped out a pen and banged out a sketch, handed it to the guy, and said, “One million dollars, please.”

“A million dollars?” the guy exclaimed. “That only took you thirty seconds!”

“Yes,” said Picasso. “But it took me fifty years to learn how to draw that in thirty seconds.”

Like the cad who asks the professional for a free read, the guy simply didn’t have enough respect for the artist to think about what he was asking for. If you think it’s only about the time, then ask one of your non-writer friends to read it. Hell, they might even enjoy your script. They might look upon you with a newfound respect. It could even come to pass that they call up a friend in the movie business and help you sell it, and soon, all your dreams will come true. But me?

I will not read your fucking script.

Josh Olson’s screenplay for the film A History of Violence was nominated for the Academy Award, the BAFTA, the WGA award and the Edgar. He is also the writer and director of the horror/comedy cult movie Infested, which Empire Magazine named one of the 20 Best Straight to Video Movies ever made. Recently, he has written with the legendary Harlan Ellison, and worked on Halo with Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp. He adapted Dennis Lehane’s story “Until Gwen,” which he will also be directing. He is currently adapting One Shot, one of the best-selling Jack Reacher books for Paramount.

©2009 Josh Olson. All rights reserved.

Carson back here. Okay, so here’s the thing. Josh brings up some great points. I have personally watched a couple of blossoming friendships destroyed because someone asked me to read their script and I gave them honest feedback. The problem is two-fold. Writers, particularly ones who are just starting out, tend to overestimate their ability to write. So when you give them feedback that says, “This wasn’t that great,” they take it as a personal attack and consider you (as Josh pointed out) an asshole. The second is that (also as Josh pointed out) people don’t seem to respect your time. Reading, thinking about, then coming up with constructive notes for a script can easily take 4-5 hours. Sometimes more. So let’s say I agree to read 4 of the 20 script requests I get in a week. That’s 20 hours right there. Who has 20 hours a week to spare?? It kills me that I have to say no to you guys when you write in, but at a certain point I have to stand up and say, “Hey, I haven’t been able to work on a script in 4 months. I need some me time!”

For that reason, I have to be choosy. I have to say no to people. I have to be the asshole. Because if I accepted every read request, it would be a full-time job (it should be noted that my situation is a little different from Josh’s. Reading scripts is kind of my job).

So I definitely understand where Josh is coming from. My advice for approaching people for reads is this. 1a) Be respectful of their time. Know that reading a script is a huge commitment, and be okay with it if they say they just don’t have the time. 1b) Show that you respect their time. Offer something in trade. If you work at a nice clothing store, offer them a gift certificate for a read. If you know they love the Dodgers, buy them a couple of tickets. Offer to babysit their kids. If you *show* them that you respect their time, they’ll be much more receptive to your request. 2) If someone in the industry does agree to read your script, you better be okay with them ripping it to shreds. You’re not asking them for a guaranteed referral to Spielberg, you’re asking for their opinion based on years of experience. If they say, “This isn’t any good. You need to do A, B, and C,” I would thank them for their time and start doing A, B, and C.

In all honesty. It’s not your fault. If you’re reading Scriptshadow, chances are you care enough about the craft to do what it takes to become a screenwriter. The problem people are the ones who come up with an “idea” for a script based on their and their friends’ experiences that’s just totally hilarious, have never written a single word before this, hit you up for a read, and treat you like an idiot for not seeing their genius. These are the people who have approached that industry friend of yours dozens of times before you came along. And since I can tell you from experience that only about 1-3% of scripts are any good, chances are every one of those scripts they read was terrible. Which means they’re expecting your screenplay to be terrible as well. If you come across as intelligent and respectful with maybe something to offer in return, you’re likely to get a much better response than High School Dropout John and his idea about a group of potheads who get stoned for 24 hours straight.

One final thing. I think Josh went about the article in the wrong way. Once you’re on the other side of the fence, it’s important to give back. And while you can’t help everyone, you should try and help where you can. Someone on a message board pointed out that Josh wouldn’t be where he was today if someone hadn’t read his script. It’s important for everyone with some level of success in the business to remember that.

Genre: Drama
Premise: Crash-like look at how technology has disconnected us.
About: Marc Forster will be directing this one. Forster’s trying to rebound from the backlash of the difficult-to-follow “Quantum of Solace”, a movie that many critics faulted for its plodding screenplay. Forster is on record as shaping the entirety of the script, so if you didn’t like it, he’s definitely the one to blame. The thing with Forster is that he’s always gravitated for the brooding, the sad, the depressing, and Quantum of Solace was all about the brood. In other words, if you hire a cow, don’t be surprised when you get milk. Anyway, “Disconnect” is much closer to his sweet spot. It’s got that indie feel, and plenty of depressed people to exploit. — Producer William Horberg will produce for Nala Films. Nala’s Darlene Caamano Loquet and Emilio Diez Barroso optioned the script and will act as producers. William Horberg and Brad Simpson will also be producing. Nala’s recent credits include “Dan in Real Life” and “In the Valley of Elah,”. They’re currently in post-production on the supernatural thriller “Shelter,” starring Julianne Moore and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, which I wouldn’t mind taking a look at (hint hint – ahem).
Writer: Andrew Stern
Details: 125 pages (July 11, 2008 draft)

Disconnect is what you might get if the founder of Google saw Crash and said, “Hey, we should do that… but with the internet!” The script is really trying to say something about the state of the world. But I’m afraid that in all its preaching, it may have forgotten to add an interesting story. I’m not going to discount Disconnect because I’m a fan of multi-storyline ensemble pieces, but I couldn’t help but feel, while reading it, that I was watching a play where all the characters were speaking another language. I witnessed the emotion. I witnessed the pain and the hurt. But because I couldn’t understand what was being said I wasn’t able to *feel* it. It just never allowed me in. Ah, but Carson, it’s called “Disconnect”. Isn’t that the point? No. Even in a movie about our lack of connection, we still have to connect with the characters. We always have to connect to the characters.

The first act of Disconnect is not unlike a college history lecture. Lots of people are introduced to us so if you didn’t break your notebook you’re pretty much screwed. You have Jay, a Wall Street prick who likes looking at young girls online. You have Mary, newly appointed Director of Investigation and Enforcement for the Federal Trade Commission. You have Cindy, whose ill-fated attempts to get pregnant have led her to an online message board for unhappy people. There’s her husband Derek, who’s so attached to his laptop he even surfs the internet during dinner (ugh, that one hits a little too close to home). There’s Rich Boyd, a brilliant tech entrepreneur. There’s his wife Lydia, who updates the most mundane things on her blog regardless of how personal they are. Their daughter Abby has 3000 Myspace friends and their son Ben uses the internet as a desperate bid for any friend, since he doesn’t have any in real life. There’s Peter and Keri Dunham, who just found out their 11 year old has been watching gang-bang pornos online. There’s Mike Dixon, a former cop who’s dedicated his life to helping parents monitor their children’s online activity. And that’s only the beginning. There are many more.

I don’t really know how to review Disconnect. Its stories are watchable, but never compelling, the way you’d expect observing a regular person through their daily routine might be. The most exciting thing about it might be checking their e-mail to find out an old friend said hi. It’s not as mundane as Gus Van Sant’s “Elephant”, but large chunks of screenplay do go by with very little happening.

The two storylines that take precedence are Ben Boyd (the son with no friends) being baited by two kids online to kill himself (one of whom is Mike’s son, the cop who specializes in monitoring children online). The other, and my favorite of the script, is when Cindy (can’t get pregnant) and Derek realize that their identity has been stolen and their entire bank account’s been wiped out.

Ben’s story was disappointing because it was blatantly ripped from the headlines (If you remember, there was that girl from Myspace who killed herself for the exact same reason). But the identity theft storyline was good. Part of its appeal is learning just how terrifying identity theft can be. It’s not just stealing a couple hundred bucks from the ATM machine. It’s someone having access to every single piece of information from your entire life. It’s people being able to become you, to open accounts in your name, to commit crimes in your name, to sell your identity to others. Anybody who knows how difficult it can be to get an incorrectly assigned parking ticket off their record can imagine what it must be like to get a crime erased that you didn’t commit . But what I really liked was that it was the one story that really *showed* how technology’s torn us apart. Cindy and Derek are the married couple who have drifted apart over the years. Forced to work together to solve the mystery of *how* their identity was stolen, the two must reveal to each other their extensive private online activities. In the process, they learn things about each other they never would’ve learned otherwise – both the good and the bad (but mainly the bad). It’s an extremely powerful point Stern makes in regards to how little we know about the person we spend every minute of our life with. I wish the rest of the stories could’ve made their point as effectively.

There are some other storylines as well. A reporter goes after an online quasi-porn webchat ring that exploits teenagers. A non-religious guy poses as Jesus in webcam chats to hawk faith-based merchandise to help his girlfriend pay for hospital bills for her cerebral-palsy infected sister. Mary (Federal Trade Commission job) is haunted by some sexually explicit e-mails she wrote more than a decade ago. She sees the job she’s spent her life trying to get slipping away in a matter of minutes. The threads range from obvious to imaginative, but never quite capture the personal wallop that the identity-theft storyline does.

I have a ton of respect for Stern because these scripts are a bitch to pull off. I know from experience. I think the big mistake writers make in approaching them is to focus more on how everybody is connected rather than making the individual stories as good as they can possibly be. Do that first and *then* try to connect your stories so you can have that Robert Altman “Short Cuts” moment where two people we know well but who don’t know each other, pass one another by in a store, obliviously.

Disconnect brings up that often-asked question: Is technology bringing us closer together or pushing us further apart? There’s a moment in the script where the mom doesn’t know where in the house her son is. So she IMs her daughter who in turn texts her brother to come downstairs. I think the intention of the sequence is to make us look pathetic. But is it really that much of a downgrade from: “BEEENNN! GET THE HELL DOWN HERE I NEED TO TALK TO YOU!!!”? That’s the way I grew up and I have to wonder, is it any better? Either way I applaud Stern for giving both sides of the argument, even if he makes it blatantly clear which side he falls on. As I lay back in my couch, typing away on my laptop, simultaneously checking my e-mail, watching streaming tennis matches from the U.S. Open, occasionally browsing new music on Itunes, preparing to upload this document to my blog…uh, I think we know which side I fall on too.

This script is still a few drafts away from achieving what it sets out to be. For that reason, I can’t quite recommend it, but it’s definitely interesting.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] barely kept my interest
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: When you have a million characters in your script, it’s okay to remind the reader who they are the second or third time around. For example, the second time we see Jay, Stern writes something like: “Jay (the Wall Street prick we met earlier) barrels down 5th avenue.” It’s definitely a judgment call but I recommend you consider it if you’re setting up a ton of characters in your first act. The reality is we’re probably not going to remember them all and will need a little help.