Genre: Comedy
Premise: (from IMDB) A woman struggling with insecurity wakes from a fall believing she is the most beautiful and capable woman on the planet. Her new confidence empowers her to live fearlessly, but what happens when she realizes her appearance never changed?
About: I Feel Pretty is the newest Amy Schumer vehicle. Assuming that didn’t send anyone hurling themselves off a cliff, I’ll sweeten the pot by raising you the writers of How to be Single, who have moved into the directing chair for the first time with this film. The movie comes out April 19.
Writers: Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein
Details: 113 pages

Personally, I find Hollywood’s new obsession with making 90 percent of their comedies female-driven a little weird. Are male actors incapable of being funny all of a sudden? What’s the logic on that exactly? With that said, I like my reviews to reflect the market so you guys know what’s selling. And the female-driven comedy is still a trend. So let’s take a look at this latest one.

Renee is a New Yorker who works at an off-site office for one of the biggest beauty lines in the country. Renee is obsessed with the fact that she’s not hot. And when I say obsessed, I mean she spends every waking second agonizing over the fact that every other woman is hotter than her.

One day Renee is doing Soul Cycle and while the instructor is spouting the usual nonsense about believing in yourself and being confident, Renee falls off her bike and hits her head. When she wakes up, she believes that she’s the hottest girl in the world. Her self-esteem is transformed and all of a sudden she’s super-confident.

Soon after, she gets called to the main office of her company – on 5th Avenue no less – and manages to finagle her way into the open receptionist job. It’s there that she meets Avery, the head of the company, and impresses her with her knowledge of how the “average” girl sees beauty products.

Meanwhile, she meets a guy at the dry cleaners, Ethan, easily picking him up. He’s enamored with her confidence, and for one brief moment, it looks like Renee has everything she’s ever asked for. But soon Renee starts seeing “ugly” people the way she feared beautiful people used to look at her. So naturally, this utopia she built for herself starts crumbling down.

This may be the first comedy script I’ve ever read where I didn’t smile. The only joke I spotted is the one where the writers try to convince the world that this is a comedy.

Put simply, nothing works here.

It starts with the concept. It doesn’t even make sense. A fairly attractive woman falls off a soul cycle and believes she’s gorgeous. Maybe if she started off ugly, the concept would make more sense. But the effect would’ve been minimal because the writing isn’t funny. The humor bounces back and forth between two types. The first type is Renee falling down. And the second type is when she brashly acts hot in front of people when she’s just an average girl. Neither of these options are funny when we first experience them. So you can imagine how funny they are on page 80.

In addition to this, we don’t like the main character. All she does is whine whine whine whine whine about how she’s not hot. Why would anyone like that person? One of the ways to know if your main character is likable or not is to ask yourself, if this person existed in the real world, would people like her? Who would want to hang around a woman who spends 90% of her existence complaining that she’s not hot?

Yet I understand why the mistake was made. The writers were likely saying to each other, “We HAVE to make it clear that she wants to be hot or else the movie doesn’t make sense when she all of a sudden thinks she’s hot.” Being so focused on getting one angle of your script right often blinds you to how it’s affecting other parts of the screenplay. If the writers would’ve taken a second to step back and look at this character objectively, they would’ve realized she’s unbearable.

As I’ve stated before, once your reader hates your main character, there isn’t any way to save the screenplay. You could write an Oscar-worthy plot. It doesn’t matter if we hate the person who’s in every scene of that plot.

I feel bad pouring it on but there’s nothing to celebrate here. The main character isn’t even described when she’s introduced! We don’t even get an age! The ENTIRE CONCEPT is built around how the main character looks and you don’t give her a description? Some people may say, “Well maybe they didn’t want to limit their casting options.” That doesn’t mean you can’t give SOME description. Even a “objectively average” would’ve helped.

On top of this, I don’t know how they get a single man to show up to this movie. Look, I get it. We’re putting more female-led movies out there. Women are finally getting a chance to even the playing field. But that doesn’t mean you should actively make movies that discourage men from showing up. Why would you deliberately eliminate 50% of your potential audience? The movie business is the most competitive business in the world as it is! And it’s only getting worse! Your solution is to handicap yourselves? I don’t get it, guys. I’m at a loss with this one.

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

What I learned: If you write a comedy, the one rule you HAVE to follow, no matter what, is to MAKE THE READER LOL ON THE FIRST PAGE. This is a comedy. People expect to laugh when they read a comedy. If you can make the reader laugh on that first page, you gain so much trust from them. I know that if I don’t laugh on the first page – and I didn’t here – that the script probably isn’t going to be funny.

Genre: TV Pilot – Drama/Horror
Premise: After the brutal murder of their father, the Locke family move into his old family home, a mansion that is filled with numerous hidden keys.
About: This is a brutal business. Joe Hill, Stephen King’s son, writes a pilot that’s a go at Hulu, the same place that just did a giant deal for a “Stephen King Universe” TV show coming out this summer. But then they turn on him and tell him “No thanks.” If the hottest name in movie and TV properties right now can’t get his own son a guaranteed show, what hope do the rest of us have? — Oh, who are we kidding. If shows like Orville and Santa Clarita Diet are on television, Locke and Key will find a home just fine.
Writer: Joe Hill
Details: 54 pages

A lot of writers complain about the whole nepotism thing. Writers or actors or directors get free passes into the business because Daddy’s already in da club. But would you really want to make it into the business that way? Sure, you get to make a living in the wonderful world of entertainment without having to exert a fraction of the blood, sweat, and tears. But you spend your entire life trying to live up to an impossible bar.

Let’s look at the best case scenario for Joe Hill. You write a book that sells 20 million copies. That’s virtually impossible. But let’s say you miraculously beat the odds and pull it off. Oh, well, all dad did was sell 350 million copies of his books. And it’s not just that. Every time you read a Joe Hill book, you’re comparing him to his father. So nothing you ever write will be judged on its own merit. That’s gotta be tough.

With that said, King is sort of on auto-pilot these days. So when you’re reading one of his son’s stories, you’re at least getting a fresh excited “out to prove himself” voice. But is that enough? I’ve never read anything of Joe Hill’s before so I don’t know. But I’m about to find out.

Locke and Key starts off with a strange girl, potentially a ghost (?), who lives in something called a “wellhouse,” which is like a guest house with no windows? She tells some gawky teenager through the walls that she needs him to find a special key in the main house. He follows her orders for reasons that are unclear, and we watch him walk through the house, looking for this key, while various other keys are revealed to us, but not to him (for example, a key will be hidden on top of a doorway ledge).

He finally finds the key the girl wants but is immediately attacked by a giant door with teeth, and we cut to several months later, where a “school shooter” type kid named Sam walks up to the Locke family’s house, beats the mother, Nina, over the head with a hammer, shoots the father dead, and goes hunting for the other three children, 17 year old Tyler, 7 year old Bode, and 15 year old Kinsey. Luckily, the strong-as-an-ox Tyler is able to overpower Sam, beating him to within an inch of his life.

The Locke family, devastated by the loss of their father, decide to get as far away from this town as possible and forget what happened. So they move into… the Key Mansion we saw at the beginning of the pilot. It turns out that’s the house their father grew up in.

We cut between the family moving into the strange old house, as well as Sam, now permanently maimed from Tyler beating his face in, locked up in a high-security juvenile detention center. Oh! And that girl who lived in the wellhouse? Well, even though she’s still in that wellhouse 2000 miles away, she’s somehow able to talk to Sam through his sink. Uh-huh. The implication is, she wants him to finish the job on the family and finally get her key.

Locke and Key is a primary example of how important it is to understand the craft of screenwriting. I don’t know if Joe Hill has ever written a screenplay or teleplay before, but I’m guessing he hasn’t.

And it’s not even the fact that the prose is overcooked (there are numerous paragraphs that last 10 lines long). I can accept that if the story is good. It’s that there’s zero structure to this pilot.

Take the fact that the best part of the story happens in the first 10 pages. We get a fairly interesting “walk through a haunted house” scene. This is followed by a family getting brutally attacked by a psychopath. But after that, absolutely NOTHING happens. The family grieves. The family moves. The family gets used to their new house. And that’s it! A story is supposed to build. Every five pages it should feel like a big puff of air has been added to the balloon. Then, in the final scene, that balloon must pop. The pacing here is the opposite. With each scene, air is let out of the balloon, making the story less and less appealing.

I suspect that Hill coming from the world of novels is part of the problem. For example, he would occasionally put lines like this in the description: “When she scrapes a match along the friction strip, we see the Inferno Key quite clearly, and that’s good… because in the next episode, Sam Lesser will use this key to escape prison and kill about two dozen people in the process.” You can’t do that. Why? Because any important information must be conveyed to the audience watching the show. This information is only being shared with the reader. That doesn’t make any sense.

Also, any top-level screenwriter would have had this family moving into the house by page 15. Hill doesn’t move them into the house until page 38!!! Not only does this drag the story along at too slow of a pace, but it leaves an awkward amount of time (17 pages) to finish the story. Since we just moved in, it’s impossible to build up a whole new storyline in just 17 pages. This forces Hill to rattle off a bunch of vaguely connected scenes that contain more of a “just get me out of here” feel than a carefully crafted buildup with a satisfying resolution. Now had we gotten to the house by page 15, we would’ve had plenty of time to build a story into the rest of the pilot.

Another problem here is the concept. I’m not sure what it is exactly. A house with a bunch of keys hidden in it? First of all, why would a house have a bunch of hidden keys? There’s no clear logic as to why that would happen. And second, how is that a concept? Is the show going to be about finding these keys? Why do I care about that exactly? A good TV or movie concept is crystal clear the second you hear it. “A family is forced to live in silence as they hide from creatures that hunt by sound.” That idea was worth a 50 million dollar opening weekend because it was so clear. “A family moves into a house that has a bunch of keys hidden in it and there’s a girl who might be a ghost who lives in the adjacent wellhouse who wants one of those keys for reasons we don’t know yet” doesn’t exactly have the same ring to it, does it?

I wish I could get more behind this but I don’t see a concept here. And while sometimes, a well-written show can overcome that, the structure is so wonky in the Locke and Key pilot that I don’t see an execution either. This is the problem with these Hulu and Netflix people. They don’t have anyone in development to get messy pilots back on track. Television is so starved for content these days that I’m sure Locke and Key will find a home. But it needs someone who can guide Joe Hill to a more structured story.

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

What I learned: Just because a pilot is one fraction of a bigger story, that doesn’t mean you should use it solely as set-up. A pilot is tricky in that it needs to be its own contained story IN ADDITION TO being the beginning of a bigger story. That means you should treat your pilot like any story. There should be a goal. The stakes should be high. Time should be running out. There should be a climax. And you should top things off with a giant question that intrigues the audience enough that they’ll want to come back next week. For example, the new AMC show, “The Terror.” The whole first episode is gearing up towards these ships trying to get to a safe part of the sea before it freezes over, trapping them there for the winter. That’s the goal. And it culminates in them choosing the wrong direction and therefore getting stuck. That’s the climax. We then get one final question mark – a strange nearby animal has attacked someone. And that’s it. We want to come back for episode 2 to see what happens next.

Genre: Horror
Premise: (from IMDB) A family is forced to live in silence while hiding from creatures that hunt by sound.
About: A Quiet Place has finished the weekend with a box office bang, pulling in 50 million dollars. That’s double what the original box office tracking numbers were saying it would pull. The film was sold as a spec (yay!) and rewritten by John Krasinski, who also took over the directing reins. I’m telling you guys, if you want to fast-trak your way up the Hollywood ladder, a clever horror script is the quickest way to do it.
Writers: Bryan Woods & Scott Beck (rewritten by John Krasinski)
Details: 90 minutes

This movie made me angry.

At the halfway point of A Quiet Place, I thought I was witnessing a classic, the kind of horror movie that was so good, it would be discussed 30 years from now. I’m talking Exorcist level. I’m talking Halloween. I’m talking Rosemary’s Baby.

But as A Quiet Place settles into its second half, its hopes for classic status become as quiet as the farm its characters live on. How did something so great go so wrong? Good old sloppy screenwriting, folks.

A Quiet Place follows a family of four (well, a family of 5 actually – I’ll get to that) living on a farm in a post-apocalyptic world that’s been ravaged by vicious alien monsters. These monsters can’t see you. But they can hear you. In fact, they can hear noises so faint, that if you speak above a whisper, they will arrive within seconds and tear you to pieces. So word to the wise: Shut up.

The family – dad, mom, teenaged daughter, and 11 year old son – live a completely silent existence. They communicate through a butchered version of sign language. For the most part, they spend their days prepping for the baby. That’s right, the mother is pregnant. And when she finally goes into labor, all hell breaks loose, which leads to a chain of events that draws all the nearby monsters to the farm, signing the family’s death warrant.

Okay, first let’s talk about the good. The best change Krasinski made to this script was the opening. The scene shows FIVE family members (a 4 year old boy included) in the nearby abandoned town, scavenging for stuff they need. The 4 year old sneaks out a toy shuttle that makes sounds. Halfway home, he unknowingly turns it on. It starts beeping wildly. And within seconds a monster scoops him up and shreds him to pieces.

This scene is great for a couple of reasons. First, it establishes the RULES. When the family silently invades the town, the focus is on how everything they do revolves around staying quiet. So right from the start, we know NOISE = BAD. More importantly, the STAKES are established when the son is killed. We now know how dangerous this world is. I mean, if cute 4 year old boys aren’t safe, who is?

The second big change Krasinski made was to the mother’s labor scene. The scene was already great in the script. But he decided to milk it for everything it was worth. And I encourage writers everywhere to do the same. If you have a kick-ass scene, milk every drop out of it. If I remember correctly, in the script, the scene is focused solely on the mom having the baby. In this version, the dad is trying to get to her to help. He also has to coordinate with his son to launch some pre-planned noisy fireworks to distract the monsters. Krasinski turns the scene into a giant production and it was great.

Also, something I didn’t pay attention to in the script but which was so effective in the movie was just how scary this setup is. This might be the scariest situation of any horror film ever. Because in any other horror film, you can hide. You can’t hide in this movie. You are never safe. No matter where you go. Realizing that freaked me the hell out for this family and it gave every scene a level of tension that I haven’t felt in a movie since I was a kid and I actually believed in monsters.

There were other things I liked too. I liked that when the younger son died, it wasn’t just a cheap gut punch to the audience. It became part of the story. This is something newer writers don’t get. They’ll kill a kid in a scene like this then it’s never mentioned again. When you include something this affecting, it has to become part of your story’s reality. And we see that in A Quiet Place. The daughter feels like she’s responsible for the death (she handed her brother the shuttle). There’s a scene where the mother sits in the boy’s old bedroom and just cries. The son’s loss is felt on every page.

Okay, Carson, so you like all these things. What were you crying about at the beginning of the review then?

Glad you asked.

After the labor scene, two things happen in A Quiet Place. The writer gets lazy. And the writer starts cheating.

Now some of these problems were apparent in the pre-Krasinski draft. But it was his job to fix them.

The biggest cheat of all is the baby. Baby’s cry. They cry a lot. And instead of coming up with a clever way to address this, they cheated. After being born, the baby doesn’t cry for hours! And when he does cry, it’s conveniently VERY QUIET. As in, the sound editor turned the crying volume down.

Look, you’re the one who established that anything above a whisper gets you killed. You can’t change the rules when it comes to crying. You cheated. Point blank, you cheated. And it sucks because the baby’s birth establishes the whole second half of the story. So you’ve set a precedent for Half 2 that cheating is okay. Luckily for the film, it’d built up so much good will, that we were willing to overlook it. Unfortunately, A Quiet Place kept pressing its luck.

After the dad gets the mom and the baby and runs back to the main barn, they go down some stairs, slide a twin mattress over a hole, and all of a sudden, for the first time in the film… THEY CAN TALK NORMALLY??? “It works,” the dad says. You mean this whole time all you needed was a mattress??? These two years since the arrival of these aliens, and the solution was the discount section at Bed, Bath, and Beyond??

Grrr… now I was angry.

But things got sloppier. After the labor, the kids get split up from their parents. Now in the original script, the girl gets lost. I think she was running away or something. I loved that because how do you find someone in a world where you can’t yell out for them?

That was changed here. The kids weren’t lost. They were up on top of the mill at the north end of the farm. They knew exactly where they were. They could get home whenever they wanted. They just had to wait out the night and not make any noise. Instead, it’s decided that the dad “must save them.” Why? I’ll tell you why. Because in the original script, it was written that the dad had to save the daughter, and Krasinski kept that beat, but without the motivation. The hero had to save the day so the hero could save the day.

By this point, I’m checking out. It’s getting too sloppy.

And then there’s the whole: daughter turns her hearing aid up to send a high-pitched signal into the monster’s ears, which helps the family defeat them. This wasn’t the worst part of the movie. But it didn’t make sense. You’re telling me that a 13 year old girl figures out that high-pitched noises affect sound-sensitive aliens but none of the smartest scientists in the world thought of that? I suppose there’s a certain amount of “just go with it” that needs to happen at this point but that’s the thing. The script had gotten so sloppy that you’re only bringing more attention to that sloppiness with yet another lazy development.

What does all this mean?

What it means is that I don’t know how to rate this movie. It’s such a unique film-going experience. I mean the sound design alone is worth seeing the movie for. And the first half of the movie is so good. But I subscribe to the theory that it’s what you leave the audience with that counts most. And I left feeling like a huge opportunity had been missed.

I guess I’ll still recommend it. There’s a chance I’m being too harsh (the audience I was with really liked it – some were even clapping at the end). Just go see the thing and tell me if I’m being an overly analytical horror scrooge.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: I made a joke the other day that “A Quiet Place” was like “It Comes At Night” but with a plot. The thing is, I wasn’t joking. The difference between these two concepts is the difference between a script that a studio gets behind and one that has to scrap together funding from 10 different places and pray it gets purchased by an indie studio after a film festival. In one, you have a clever concept you can market (the “stay quiet” angle), as well as monsters. Monsters are HUGE when it comes to movie marketing. In the other, you have no monsters – just people talking in rooms and being scared. And while it’ll win Movie of the Year in your Film School Class (“Don’t you get it! The whole point is that nothing comes, man!”), it won’t win anything from the people who count most – the ones who spend money to see your movie. Those people aren’t interested in discussing films. They’re interested in being entertained. Never forget the difference.

What I learned 2: You have to follow the rules of the universe you’ve set up. You just have to. If you go against them, all trust in the storytelling is lost.

The weekend is here and I’m celebrating it by… shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh… going to see A Quiet Place. Gonna see how it holds up to the script, which I loved. This film is like They Come At Night… but with a plot! I heard some crazy things happened during the making of this movie, including director Krasinski changing the entire look of the alien with less than a month til locking film.

Good for him. The film looks great. But now let’s switch to future films. As in YOUR future films. One of the reasons A Quiet Place rocketed up the Hollywood ladder and got into Krasinski’s hands in the first place was because it had a clever premise. Are there any premises today that fit that bill? That’s up to you to decide. The rules to Amateur Offerings are simple. Read as much as you can from each script and vote for your favorite in the comments section. The winner gets a review on the site next Friday.

If you believe you have a screenplay that will light the world on fire, submit it for a future Amateur Offerings! Send me a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and why you think people should read it (your chance to pitch your story). All submissions should be sent to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com.

Title: 1500°F
Genre: Survival Drama
Logline: An estranged father takes his two children for a weekend retreat in the wilderness only to find their excursion turning into a frantic struggle for reconciliation and survival as the local area is consumed by a massive wildfire.
Why You Should Read: Well considering the horrendous fires that ripped through California recently, I thought I’d shoot you over my new micro-script, 1500°F. Word is that the Ventura Thomas fire was burning an acre a minute! To give you some perspective, the entirety of NYC’s Central Park would be consumed in fifteen minutes. This script moves just as fast. And more importantly gives the characters just as much focus as the spectacle. A film that inspired me was Norway’s official submission for the 88th Academy Awards, The Wave.

Title: Labyrinth 2: The Goblin Queen
Genre: Fantasy/Adventure
Logline: When the Goblin King abducts a nine-year-old troublemaker, her teenage brother is given 13 hours to find her or else both will be trapped forever inside an otherworldly labyrinth.
WhyShouldAnyoneReadIt: I know, I know. But hear me out. This is not a piece of fan-fiction and I’m not obsessed with the original movie (flawed but enjoyable as it may be). I’m just a writer who saw the potential it had and that’s what pushed me to write this. I knew I had to fix the tone, define the world’s mythology, remove the musical aspect, keep the beloved puppetry magic and continue the narrative from the first movie. And this challenge proved to be quite rewarding for me. Let’s hope anybody out there feels the same way as I do. Doesn’t anyone miss a good old-fashioned adventure? I know what you’re gonna say next, so just in case, here are my replies:

“This will never be made” – Never say never. We’re artists and we’re better than that word.

“David Bowie is dead” – Sadly, that is true. But Tilda Swinton isn’t.

“Nobody cares about Labyrinth” – I’d disagree. When it came out, it was a financial disappointment, but over the years, it has become a beloved cult-movie.

“This is not the kind of thing for Amateur Offerings” – Wasn’t there a Star Wars Episode IX script in the mix not too long ago?

Title: The Call of Cthulhu
Genre: Mystery/Drama
Logline: When a Boston archaeologist is appointed executor of his late uncle’s estate, he begins an investigation into a collection of strange manuscripts and weird art indicating Cthulhu, a mystical deity worshipped by an apocalyptic cult, has returned from the dead.
Why You Should Read: They say that Lovecraft is impossible to adapt. I went back and again read Del Toro’s version of his Lovecraft passion project, Mountains of Madness. There were many flaws in his attempt to adapt Lovecraft. I won’t list them all but his biggest flaw was that he picked the wrong Lovecraft to be tentpoled and brought into the mainstream. It’s a hard sell to the studio for a lot of reasons, but I believe by exploring the Cthulhu story-world first, it would then allow him to piggy-back its success to make his dream project. There is untapped potential into what I call a Lovecraft Cinematic Universe, but introducing him into the mainstream as a franchise takes a certain strategy. That strategy must begin with his watershed, quintessential story, the one that lays out the Lovecraft world that we are essentially selling to the public, the one that an entire franchise can be built off of–The Call of Cthulhu.

This is a true adaptation of the source material, which is in the public domain. Lovecraft already does all the work for us with his great stories, he just needs someone to be able to tell them through a visual medium by beefing up his protags and their journey. I believe I have done that with not only this story, but a few others as well. This script explores very real and important aspects of modern man. It asks questions about perception, reality, truth, value and many other cornerstone concepts that philosophers ponder.

I approached The Call of Cthulhu for what it truly is– an epic adventure disguised as a detective story. A Fincher-esque low-lit investigative thriller punctuated with shocking moments, some strong violence and of course, madness. In the end, that’s all it really is. And it definitely won’t need Del Toro’s Hard R rating or $150 million dollar budget.

Title: Stamps
Genre: Comedic Action
Logline: When his surprisingly valuable stamp collection is stolen, an autistic young man uses his unique abilities in a relentless, indefatigable pursuit to retrieve his stamps before morning, before they are stuffed into Fedex envelopes and shipped to private collectors around the world.
Why You Should Read: Reading this script is not going to change your life. It will not give you some esoteric insight into the godhead, improve your vocabulary, grammar or syntax, motivate you to get into politics or heal that grisly rash. You won’t read lines like “The lavender tinged tendrils streamed from the effervescence dawn into the still room like bells in search of angels.” not because I don’t mix my metaphors (I do), but because that shit’s for pussies. It is not the next Star Wars or Chinatown; it is more Adventures in Babysitting than it is Rainman, and it’s not even close. It was designed and written with one goal in mind: To make you LAUGH out LOUD. My promise to you, young reader-san, comes with this guarantee: Three solid lols or your download free.

Title: Greenhorn
Genre: Horror
Logline: A PTSD-afflicted Marine must fight for his own survival when he finds himself held captive in the Alaskan wilds by a family with a horrifying secret.
Why You Should Read: This script has done well in some notable contests and I’d like to see how it fares in the AOW battlezone. Clocking in at a lean and mean ninety pages, Greenhorn is crammed with GSU, moves at a swift pace and has the kind of deeply flawed hero an audience wants to root for. Thanks in advance for the reads.