Genre: Period
Premise: A priest is brought in to be the puppet Bishop for the Emperor of Rome. But when he sees the suffering that the Roman people are going through, he dares to disrupt the status quo.
About: Leo Sardarian used to work in casting and broke onto the scene in 2013 with this script, which made the Black List. He just sold another script yesterday, that one about a rookie female marine who gets stranded on a hostile planet during earth’s attempt at colonization. Is it even possible to sell a script with a male lead anymore?? Inquiring minds want to know.
Writer: Leo Sardarian
Details: 112 pages
Yesterday’s kick-ass script got me all riled up for some period piece action, baby! This time, however, it’s back in the time machine 1600 years to Rome! Rome’s always good for some spicy conflict and sassy drama. They practically invented entertainment (killing people for sport? uhhh, geeee-nius). Also, it’s been a while since we’ve had a Roman swords and sandals pic. So you know one is coming soon. It’s either going to be Nicholas or it’s going to be something one of you guys write. Let’s check out your competition.
A note before I start. I’m probably going to get some things wrong here. This script attempts to cover so much ground that you spend the majority of your reading time trying to keep up.
We’re in Rome in the 3rd century. We’re quickly told, via voice over, that Rome is in a state of flux. Things aren’t going well. One of the biggest problems is religion, specifically Christianity. Diocletian, the Emperor of Rome, hates the religion, and routinely plucks Christians out to be sacrificed in the gladiator ring.
But Christianity is growing, and more and more people are standing up to Diocletian’s harassment. So Diocletian hires some nobody Christian named Nicholas and appoints him to be the Bishop of Rome. The plan is to make Nicholas a puppet, have him calm down the Christians whenever they get out of line.
But Nicholas isn’t as passive as Diocletian assumed. In one of the Gladiator matches where some Christian thieves are being slaughtered for sport, Nicholas leaps into the ring and reveals himself to be a seasoned warrior, killing all of the Gladiators easily. This surprise only makes Diocletian more wary of Nicholas.
So one night while Nicholas is out, Diocletian sends a group of orphans Nicholas has been taking care of to Crete, where they’ll be sold into slavery. Nicholas goes after them and Diocletian celebrates the victory of no longer having to deal with this disruption.
However, Rome continues to clash from within, and it feels like only a matter of time before the Christians rise up. An unexpected Nicholas team-up with one of the most famous figures in Roman history, Constantine, fortifies an army that actually has a shot against Diocletian. Rome. Get ready.
I’ll give Sardarian this. He’s done his homework. This is one of the best-researched scripts about Rome I’ve ever read. Every single page is dripping with detail about the famous city.
But it was far from an easy read. In fact, Nicholas was one of those reads where you looked up expecting to be on page 60, only to learn you were on page 15.
Not all stories need to be fast. But if you’re writing something this complex, something that requires tons of exposition and dudes in rooms talking, you need a plan counteract the pace.
Overwriting was a key problem. The script would often lose itself in its desire to write the perfect line. “He divests his breast plate and stakes his sword into the mud. His blue eyes gaze west — where the lands beyond the mountains are awash in golden sun-rays… The sublime beauty slightly breaching the darkness that’s clouded his eyes.” That was par for the course. Lines like “Moonlight BEAMS through the oculus of the coffered rotunda…” were common.
The reason this is a problem is because the writer is trying to impress rather than convey. As readers, all we want is to understand what we’re seeing, understand what’s happening. And if we have to read every fourth sentence twice because the writer was trying to win the Pulitzer with it, it’s very easy to lose patience. And loss of patience is the final step before boredom.
Overwriting is a common beginner mistake and should be avoided if possible. No, we don’t want our stories told in cave man vocabulary. But over-vocabularizing is just as odious…err… I mean bad.
This wasn’t the biggest problem with Nicholas, however. The main problem is that the script is trying to do too much. One of the first screenwriting tips that really resonated with me was: ZOOM IN.
Tell a SPECIFIC STORY. Don’t try to cover too much ground. For example, if you want to cover terrorism, write Die Hard. Don’t write about the five biggest terrorist countries in the world, jumping back and forth between each one, introducing us to dozens of characters and a similar amount of plotlines.
I know what you’re going to say. “Tell a serious story about terrorism with a movie like Die Hard? You crazy Carson??” I’m not talking about the tone. I’m saying it’s much easier to explore terrorism through the tight lens of a single terrorist than it is trying to cover five terrorists. You use specifics to make a bigger statement about the world.
Can that intricately woven five terrorist movie be written? It can. But only the best screenwriters in the world – those who have seen every kind of story and understand what they need to do to counteract and rein in that that narrative will be able to pull it off. And even then, it will be a writing nightmare. There will be a bigger chance that they fail than succeed.
And that’s because movies were meant for tight narratives. If your idea doesn’t fit into a tight narrative, go write a TV show or a novel. Those mediums are built for that stuff.
There was this moment in “Nicholas” where the title character sails into Rome and Sardarian details the elaborate harbor of this ancient city. Capable of docking 1200 ships. Half the ships are out of business because times are so tough. So there are criminals and barterers. It’s its own little crazy city.
And I thought: THIS IS A MOVIE! This here! I’ve never seen a film about Rome’s harbor before. That’s how you ZOOM IN. But therein lies the problem with “Nicholas” as a script. There are so many lovely details like this that get lost due to its novelesque narrative.
As much as I tried to stay invested in Nicholas, the story was too sprawling, too unfocused, and too overwritten, to keep me around. It’s a script that tests your patience. Which is unfortunate, because there are obviously many stories within this setting worth being told.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: “The endless montage.” Guys, don’t write long montages. What you’re trying to do with a screenplay is DRAMATIZE EVENTS. That’s why we tune in! To be entertained by your dramatization. A montage is a list. ANYBODY CAN MAKE A LIST. Lists are the OPPOSITE of dramatization. I advise never using them outside of comedies. But if you are going to use them, keep them short. There’s a montage in this script with, like, 20 events. That’s a huge no-no.
**Alert to all major Hollywood studios – Your next war movie is here!**
Genre: War
Premise: A reluctant Sergeant in World War 2 must guide a ragtag group of soldiers to a small French town, encountering all of war’s glorious randomness along the way.
About: Man, I can’t find ANYTHING on this project. It seems to have fallen through the cracks. The script is written by Terminator 2 co-writer, William Wisher. I only read it because I was looking through my script folder and saw, “Wisher” in the file title. I said, “Hmm, I wonder if that’s William Wisher.” I then assumed it couldn’t possibly be any good or else I would’ve heard about it. I turned out to be way wrong on that one. This script is awesome.
Writer: William Wisher
Details: 114 pages
Over Thanksgiving, I took a break from the kitchen to catch some football, only to end up stumbling upon Terminator 2. As many of you know, Terminator 2 is the most impossible movie to accidentally stumble upon and not watch the whole thing. So while I kept saying I was going to watch “one more scene,” I ended up watching the entire film.
Most everyone gives the credit of that film to James Cameron. And why wouldn’t they? He’s James Cameron. However, there was always that other credit on the poster – William Wisher. Who was this guy? How come I knew nothing about him other than hearing his name associated with this movie? I figured he must be one of those lucky dopes who caught the coattails of a famous director in rare form and whose contributions to the screenplay were limited to slugline maintenance and character re-naming.
Boy was I wrong. “Combat” proves that not only is William Wisher a good writer, but that the Hollywood establishment missed one. This movie should’ve been made. And the powers that be still have the ability to right that wrong.
When we meet Private Charles Saunders, he’s in one of those gutted soldier-boat things they use to storm beaches. Which, coincidentally, happens to be exactly what they’re doing. They’re prepping to storm Omaha Beach, and when they get there, all fucking hell breaks loose. Everyone else on Saunders’s boat is killed. But he somehow survives.
Once he’s able to find cover, he’s told by a superior that he’s been upgraded to Sergeant, something Saunders is none too happy about since he has no idea what he’s doing. Before he can even find a gun, he’s got his first order: Find some other stragglers who’ve lost their platoons and cobble together a Survivors Team.
Saunders does as told, accumulating a handful of dudes you wouldn’t trust in your living room, much less trust your life to. There’s Littlejohn, a cook who barely knows how to operate a gun. There’s Cajun, an engineer from New Orleans. There’s Nelson, an intelligent guy cursed by cowardice. And a few others.
Saunders is given orders to head to a small town in France which they’ll be turning into a makeshift hospital for a battle to take place nearby. Their job is to secure the town and start preparing it. It seems like a relatively simple order. They get to travel outside the war zone and aren’t predicted to encounter any fighting. Of course, nothing goes according to plan in war.
The Germans are throwing everything at the Allies, including children and old men, who are fighting with a desperation that makes them scarier than even Germany’s best-trained soldiers. The Communists are also rolling in, and are said to be leaving a trail of destruction of their own. Let’s not forget the French Resistance, a rag-tag group of soldiers who are so filled with rage, they’re determined that everyone suffer their wrath. And finally, watch out for exploding cows. We’ve got those too. Nobody is safe during war, as all the glories and horrors of combat will be highlighted in one giant smörgåsbord of chaos.
If I haven’t been clear enough, I loved this script. Here’s why.
I was talking to a writer recently who’s writing a war movie of his own and having trouble with the soldiers’ dialogue. You see, when you write soldier dialogue, the temptation is to write a bunch of tough-guy-speak where all that matters is crude jokes and machismo. However, that’s not how the real world works. Not completely, anyway.
People speak because they want something. They speak to persuade others. They speak to try and impress someone. They speak because they’re nervous and want to fill in the silence. Take the one of the most common character archetypes. The Jokester. The Jokester’s not railing off jokes because this is a movie and it’s his character’s job to “be the funny one.” He’s doing it because he wants people to like him. The laughs validate him, make him feel good about himself. That’s why he jokes. The lesson being, as long as there’s a reason to speak, your dialogue will feel natural. And that’s the feeling I got here. There was none of this “try-hard” forced tough-guy dialogue. The soldiers all spoke like genuine human beings.
There are also a lot of powerful moments in the script – stuff that gave you insight into characters that the average writer wouldn’t have even thought about. One of my favorite moments is when Saunders tells his superior, Hanley, “I’m not cut out to be a Sergeant. I don’t even know what I’m doing.” Saunders’ flaw is that he doesn’t believe in himself. Hanley calmly guides Saunders’ attention to his team. “Do you think he should be in charge?” He points to the young scared kid. “No.” “What about him?” He points to the crazy guy. “No.” “What about him?” He points to the scatterbrain. “Well, no.” And Saunders finally comes to the realization that… wow, he’s right. I am the best man for the job.
I bring this scene up because most writers don’t go through the trouble of exploring a feeling. They have the character continue to say shit like, “I’m no good at this,” in subtle variations throughout the movie. By creating this moment that highlights the problem and attacks it head-on, it becomes concrete as opposed to abstract.
But that was just the little stuff. Combat has these brilliant sequences that highlight the randomness of war. I’m going to get into spoilers here and since I’m going to link to the script at the end of the review, I suggest you read it before you read this.
There’s this sequence where the soldiers, who are tired and hungry, walking through the countryside, come upon a… COW. The cow is just standing there like cows do. And the group tries to decide whether they should kill the thing and eat it, since they’re so damn hungry.
All of a sudden, the cow fucking EXPLODES! And they realize they’re in the middle of a mine field. At this moment, a German plane starts flying around and dropping bombs on them. They have to avoid the bombs while also not stepping on any mines. THAT’S A FUCKING SET PIECE!
This leads to a scene where they come upon a French house, see that the parents and the daughter have been gutted and hanged, discover a surviving 17 year old girl (the other daughter) hiding in the barn. She explains that the Communists – who, according to her, are far worse than the Germans – did this. The soldiers are devastated for the young girl. They then have her guide them to the town they’re looking for. But on the way, they’re attacked by Germans, who are in turn attacked by the French Resistance, who help the Americans defeat the German contingent.
The French Resistance leader, a woman, then comes over and casually shoots the 17 year-old girl in the head! The Americans all stare at her, gobsmacked. The leader explains that the girl’s family sold secrets to the Germans resulting in dozens of Jews being sent to concentration camps, all for money and land.
Take a moment and think about how complex this moment is. We saw this girl’s family not just murdered, but tortured and gutted. We feel terrible for this girl and want to do anything for her. Now, however, we’re wondering if she led us into a trap. Then this French woman kills her in cold blood. She tells us her family sold secrets to the Germans for money. But the girl was still 17. I doubt she was involved in any of those decisions. Does she deserve to be killed? And how do we even know this French woman is telling the truth??
That moment is what made the script for me. It siphoned all of the craziness into one moment that proved just how complex war is.
I mean, wow.
I know what some people are going to say. There’s some crossover here with Saving Private Ryan. In fact, that’s the only explanation I can think of for why this wasn’t made. That the script came out at around the same time as Saving Private Ryan’s (I don’t know if that’s true since the script’s undated). But here’s the thing. This script is a lot better than Saving Private Ryan from the 20 minute mark on. And a director with a unique vision could easily differentiate the film.
I want to see this movie. Who’s going to claim it?
Script link: Combat
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: “Combat” taught me that you can make subject matter the concept. It’s risky. Because “subject matter” is general and I typically encourage specificity in concept-creation. But that’s literally what Wisher does. He built a story around the subject matter of “combat.” The challenges of it, the unpredictability, the randomness, the fear involved. There isn’t a huge plot here. It’s about combat during war.
Genre: Dramedy
Premise: Based on the true story. The Disaster Artist chronicles the making of the worst movie of all time… The Room.
About: Been looking forward to this one for a long time! Franco’s getting the best reviews of his career (95% on Rotten Tomatoes). Franco directed and acted in the film, along with his brother, Dave Franco, his buddy Seth Rogen, Alison Brie, and Josh Hutcherson.
Writers: Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber (based on the book The Disaster Artist by Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell)
Details: 105 minutes
Hollywood’s got it all wrong.
They’ve concocted this ludicrously complex formula for making money, which includes coming up with a film idea that can be expanded into multiple product lines such as toys, music, and theme parks, when all along it was Tommy Wiseau who had the real vision.
Here’s his formula. Take note:
Overpay to make a movie so bad, barely anyone shows up for it, but just enough people to tell other people that it was the worst movie ever, which in turn drives their curiosity and gets them into the theater, who in turn bring their friends to show them how bad the movie is, a process that gradually builds and turns the film into a cult classic.
After six years of this, have one of the stars of the film, and the director’s supposed best friend, write a book that throws the filmmaker under the bus to such a degree and in such entertaining fashion, that the book itself becomes a best seller. Then wait for a Hollywood star to read said book, fall in love with it, buy the rights, then make a movie about the book about the making of the movie, finally bringing the story of the film to the masses, who now have no choice but to go rent the original film that this film was based on, turning said terrible film into a financial success.
That, my friends, is how you do it.
The Disaster Artist (here’s my old review of the book) is one of the most complex pieces of entertainment I’ve ever encountered. There are so many stories within stories here, so much inside baseball, all packed onto a story whose structural oddities make it a screenwriting nightmare, that there’s virtually no way to make it work. A recent test screening showed that the average audience member didn’t even know this was based on a real story. They just thought it was another wacky James Franco Seth Rogen comedy.
The Room was a movie made by an eccentric weirdo named Tommy Wiseau, a secretive wannabe actor who believed people would buy him as the next great American movie star. He befriended a shy 19 year old actor, Greg Sistero, who had Brad Pitt looks but Rob Schneider talent. The movie they made was so bad, it became a cult hit that many dubbed “the worst movie ever made.” This film is about the friendship between Greg and Tommy while making that movie.
Let’s be clear here. Franco deserves all the acclaim for this film. He wears all the hats. But screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber aren’t far behind. They did some amazing things with this. Give Franco credit. He could’ve hired some Rogen-Franco inner-circle assistants to write this film. But they spent the money to get it right.
How tricky was the script?
For starters, it takes place over a number of years. Movies work best with tight time frames (2 weeks or less is ideal). The main exception to this rule is period pieces (by that I mean hundreds of years ago, not the 90s). The reason long time-frames are bad is because it’s harder to sustain tension in a story if you’re always stopping and starting. An 8 month time jump is a momentum killer. I’m not saying it can’t be done. But trust me, it’s a huge challenge to make jumps like that seamless. And these guys did it.
Then there’s the movie-within-the-movie aspect, always a challenge to pull off because you’re figuring out how to divide time between the “real life” stuff and the making of the movie. Also, movies about Hollywood are always terrible. So you’re diving into those shark-infested waters.
The biggest challenge, however, is the tone. I can only imagine what the meetings were like discussing this. People who love The Room are coming into this film hoping for a lot of that goofy “so bad it’s good” comedy. However, The Disaster Artist can’t be that movie. It’s not The Room. So how do you appease those expectations? On the other side you have people who’ve never seen The Room. They’ll make up the majority of the audience. What movie are you giving them? Because it has to be a different movie than the one you’re giving Room lovers.
How did Neustadter and Weber solve this problem?
The answer is why these guys are making 7 figures a job and you’re not.
They anchored everything in the friendship between Tommy and Greg.
Here’s why that matters. This movie can’t possibly appease everyone. But the thing that EVERY audience member relates to is friendship. The struggles and complications of friendship are universal. This is why I tell you guys that while the plot is important, you gotta get the relationships right. That’s what’s going to hold your story together.
But this was one of the most complicated friendships I’ve ever seen. You have Tommy, who’s so socially unaware that he clings to anyone who gives him even a modicum of attention. And you have Greg, who you always get the impression doesn’t respect Tommy. I mean in real life the guy wrote a book exposing Tommy as a giant idiot.
So how do you make us believe that these guys are actually friends? The whole movie depends on it so you have to make that believable.
This is where lesser writers would’ve crumbled. Neustadter and Weber knew that the way to do this was with an early scene, preferably the first or second scene between the characters. If we convincingly establish this friendship early, we’ll believe it for the rest of the film. That’s how screenwriting works.
And they write this really clever scene in an acting class where Greg struggles to emote. He struggles to leg go. That’s why he’s a bad actor. Tommy, on the other hand, doesn’t give a shit. He emotes from the top of the Empire State Building. Sure, it’s uncalibrated and awkward. But that freedom is what Greg’s missing.
So Greg asks Tommy to do a scene with him to see if he can tap into that freedom, and Tommy challenges him, as they’re eating dinner later, to do the scene right there, in front of the restaurant. Greg is terrified. But Tommy pushes him, and as Greg does the scene, we see him free up and finally, for the first time in his life, let go. It results in a euphoria he’s never felt before. And that’s it. After that scene, we know why Greg will follow this man to the moon and back.
The film does hit some of those LA side-street speed bumps though. Franco’s Tommy impression is laugh out loud funny for the first half-hour, but loses its luster later on. Once those laughs were gone, the movie lost a step. The second half of the film becomes a lot more serious than I expected and I’m not sure that was the right choice. I was hoping for more funny moments of them making the movie. But the infamous, “Oh, hi Mark” scene was pretty much all we got.
This is what I meant when I said that the tone is tricky. You want to keep the audience emotionally invested, but not at the expense of the comedy. And you want to keep them laughing, but not at the expense of emotional investment. If there’s one knock against this film, it might be that it never established a genre. When you don’t have a genre, then when you run into problems, you don’t have a roadmap for where to go. Like, if you’re a comedy and you’re getting towards the end and you’re wondering, “Should this scene be funny or dramatic?” Well, it’s a comedy so it should be funny. This film didn’t have that clear answer and you could feel it at times.
But again, this goes back to the high-powered writing of Neustadter and Weber. They knew that if they got that relationship right, the movie would be able to survive these tonal miscalculations. And we see that in the final scene which is all about Greg convincing Tommy that while he may not have made the film he set out to make, he made something that affected people, and maybe that’s enough. And when Tommy then takes the stage after the screening and says he couldn’t have made the movie without his best friend, I got a little teary-eyed.
That moment alone let me know that this movie was a success.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: A compelling relationship at the center of a film can anchor a story to such a degree that the story itself can sustain an adequate amount of messiness and still recover. It’s a great way to hedge your bets if you’re writing one of those films that doesn’t fall into an obvious formula.
First off, an update on the Super Breakdown. A lot of submissions. I haven’t decided when I’m going to do it yet. Probably in the new year in the 2nd or 3rd week of January. But just know that I’m looking through all of the entries to try and find one. I don’t really know what the criteria will be. I’m not actually looking for a great script. I’m looking for something that sounds interesting and that I feel has the potential to learn from.
Moving on… Lol. Guys. To be clear. I’m JOKING about the micro-script craze. I don’t consider it to be a thing. A story should be as long as it needs to be. If you have 1 character in a coffin for the entire movie, that script’s probably going to be short. If you have a sweeping epic that covers three families over 100 years, that script’s probably going to be long. But don’t think everything has to be 80 pages.
Okay, on to this weekend’s offerings! Here’s how to play: Read as much of each script as you can and submit your winning vote in the comments section. Votes will be counted through Sunday, 11:59pm Pacific Time. Winner gets a script review next Friday!
For those who want to play in 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 really pitch your story). All submissions should be sent to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com.
Script: Plummet
Genre: Horror/Thriller/True Story
Logline: Lured by a sadistic killer, a young woman fights for survival in Central Park during the dead of winter. Based on true events.
Why You Should Read: Because this is a contained thriller that really happened about a real serial killer you’ve never heard of. It also takes place in one of the most original “contained” places imaginable. To say more would spoil the reveal. Thanks for considering.
Title: MONSTER ASSASSIN
Genre: Supernatural Action
Logline: When the love of his life is murdered by a group of demons, a legendary monster assassin sets out to exact revenge.
Why You Should Read: Because it’s a 90 pages micro script in the vein of “John Wick” with a supernatural twist. I poured into it my passion for the Gothic and macabre, my love of wildly imaginative action and my heart’s yearning for a magical world hidden within our own. Plus, you can play a game of spotting all the references to Edgar Allan Poe’s tales and poems…:)
Title: Righteous Anger
Genre: Thriller/Drama
Logline: A 17-year-old Syrian refugee becomes entwined in a dangerous world of deceit and human trafficking in his Atlanta community.
Why You Should Read: Atlanta is a hot market for filmmaking right now. It’s also home to one of the most diverse refugee communities in the nation — oh, and home to some of the worst human trafficking incidents in the country. All these ingredients combine to make a tense, difficult experience for our hero, Sammi, a newly arrived Syrian refugee. — As a team we spent weeks ensuring this story had movement, depth, and a topic that would hook today’s audience. You go in thinking your going to get a political diatribe, but you leave getting a tightly wound story following a young man’s experience with the criminal underbelly of a large US city. It goes from PBS to “Prisoners” real quick.
Title: Two-Time
Genre: Crime Drama
Logline: After allegations of game fixing derail his career, an ex-college football star is recruited by a disgraced university booster to steal the three National Championship trophies they helped win.
Why You Should Read: If the last decade’s taught us anything, it’s that crime and football go together like spaghetti and meatballs. It’s in this relationship that “TWO-TIME” lives, not as a cliche feel good sports story but a gritty breakdown of life after the money and pussy. This script plows head-on into a world lost in the arena-focused sports film, packaging a timely thematic take down of amateur athletics in a digestible crime narrative… “BLUE CHIPS” meets “HELL OR HIGH WATER.” — I hope that, beneath all of the cynicism in this script, you find a deep love of college football and all that encompasses it… Good and bad. — Thank you for giving “TWO-TIME” even a moment of consideration and I appreciate any and all feedback.
Title: …’Scape The Lightning Bolt!
Genre: Dark Comedy
Logline: Henry has the purest intentions. All he wants is to see his sister happy, but when he accidentally sets her up with a violent psychopath with a peculiar motto (‘Scape the Lightning Bolt)… his life takes an unexpected turn for the worse.
Why You Should Read: So a few years back you held a dialogue contest. A scene of mine was by far the unanimous favorite. You compared it with a famous scene from one of your favorite movies (Silver Linings Playbook) and said that my scene held up well. It was a big morale booster for me and I’ve never forgot it. So here’s the thing: I was young and, instead of making my script the best it could be, I gave into the pressures of people saying I needed to convert my story into a visual, action extravaganza (something that it was inherently not). You can’t make a cow bark and soon I grew frustrated with endless rewrites leading to nowhere. I ended up focusing on other literary mediums. But never could I purge this story from my mind. So that’s why I’m here now with a shiny new draft that finally leans into my strengths. I guess what I’m saying is that instead of trying to bark, I’m mooing really loud and you should check it out, cause it’s really fucking good.
Genre: Action/Thriller
Premise: As an ex-soldier interviews for a cushy corporate gig, the unstable Security Chief she’s there to replace seizes control of the high-tech industrial complex.
Why You Should Read: Hollywood’s overstuffed with Jane Wick specs, it’s time for Jane McClane to get her shot. In his recent article, “How to Jump Start the Spec Market”, Carson claims that a fresh spin on real world action can fire up the film industry. I believe a contained modestly budgeted female driven take on the original Die Hard hits that bullseye. Part of that fresh spin includes modernizing the setting. I chose the baffling Agile Scrum anti-privacy open space office design that’s been made popular by Apple and Google. I hope it achieves the same effect of an old school cop feeling out of sorts inside a high-tech skyscraper.
Writer: Brett Martin
Details: 90 pages
Excited to read Brett Martin’s latest. He always has a great attitude and is very professional. For those who read his script two weeks ago, note that this is a new draft he sent me where he incorporated your notes. So if I bring something up that you don’t remember, that’s probably why.
Also, before I get into the review, I encourage all of you to watch The Disaster Artist this weekend. I’ll be reviewing it on Monday. I CAN’T WAIT to see it!
20-something Naomi has just learned that she’s pregnant. Which sucks. Because she doesn’t want to have kids. That’s despite loving her boyfriend, Marcus, with all her heart. This is also the worst time to learn she’s pregnant, since she has a big job interview at a company called Poly Vac, which has figured out a way to airdrop portable surgery packs that allow doctors in isolated areas to perform complex surgeries.
But Naomi senses something is off the second she gets there. There are a bunch of soldiers in the waiting room, presumably up for the same job, and no one will tell her anything about the fired guy whose job she’d be replacing.
A former computer tech in the army, Noami stays professional, going to each and every station in the company to get interviewed by the company heads. But as she’s finishing up, the entire building is locked down, and everyone is locked in.
This is when we meet Griffin (well, sort of – more on that later), the disgruntled former employee no one would speak of. Griffin wants a pound of the CEO’s flesh, several million pounds of his money, and he’s not afraid to kill anyone to get it.
Oh, and those soldiers who were “up for the job?” Yeah, they’re on Griffin’s pay roll. Griffin then steals the CEO’s laptop and does one of those “money transfer from offshore accounts” downloads, which unfortunately takes awhile. This leaves time for people to act up.
When people start dying, Naomi has no choice but to get involved and fight back. She’s able to steal the laptop and isolate herself in another part of the building, temporarily preventing the money transfer. So Griffin sends his goons after her with next to zero success. It’s looking like Naomi will come away the victor until her boyfriend shows up to pick her up from the “interview.” Once Griffin gets his hands on him, the leverage pendulum swings back in his favor. And that means Naomi, as well as everyone else in the company she’s been protecting, is dead meat.
Let’s start with the good.
This is a very competent screenplay. It’s professionally written. It’s tight. It moves quickly. There’s a “writer who knows what he’s doing” sheen on the script. This isn’t someone who picked up screenwriting last week.
However, there were issues, some small and some big. On the small side, the script starts oddly. We have this weird opening scene where our villain, Griffin, basically tells another character what he’s going to do. It was difficult to understand the reason for this. It would be like in Die Hard if Hans Gruber showed up a week early, strolled up to the front desk, and said, “Watch out. Next week? I’m going to hold this building hostage. Here’s my resume, by the way. In case you want to know more about me.”
This was followed by Naomi’s job interview, which I spent half the time re-reading because I didn’t understand what was happening. Why are a dozen soldiers hanging out in the CEO’s office? Oh, wait. They’re job applicants? But… why are they dressed in their soldier uniforms? If that’s a requirement, shouldn’t Naomi be dressed in her military uniform as well? But again. This isn’t a military company. It’s about doctors and airdrops right? So what’s with the whole military job applicant theme? It was confusing to say the least. I got over it. I just hate when things are unnecessarily confusing, espcially early on in a script.
After that, the script gained clarity. But then it ran into its big problem. And I want to frame this in a way where it helps Brett. Because I know Brett wants to get good at this. But here’s the issue: There aren’t any original ideas in this script. It was almost shocking how by-the-numbers everything was. And I say that because Brett reads this site all the time and one of the dead horses I’m constantly beating is to ask yourself, “What’s new that I’m bringing to this concept?” “What’s new that I’m bringing to these characters?” “What’s new that I’m bringing to this scene?” To this set-piece, to this plot choice, to this dialogue, to this genre? And I can’t imagine any scenario where you’d evaluate this idea and say, “I’m bringing something new to this.”
If this were a court case, I suppose you could argue that some of the plastic-making rooms were original. And they were. But a couple of fun action scenes in unique rooms isn’t enough to save a script where everything else was so predictable. It was so straight-forward I actually thought I was being set up for a monster twist that was going to turn everything on its head. But it never came.
Contained location
Ex-military protagonist
Learns she’s pregnant
Angry ex-employee
Motivation is lots of money
Offshore accounts
The infamous “downloading” bar
Mindless minions with guns going after our hero
You gotta take chances. You gotta try new things. You can’t be too formulaic. One of the things I say here is that you find greatness through how you break the rules. This script never once stepped outside the lines and if you don’t do that, the reader gets ahead of you. They’re waiting for you to catch up to them. Cause they already know what you’re going to do 30 pages down the road. Your lack of surprises has guaranteed that no surprises are coming later either. The reader knew, for example, the boyfriend was going to come back and get mixed up in this.
One of your big jobs as a writer is to place yourself in the mind of the reader and ask, at every step, “What does the reader think I’m going to do right now.” And every once in awhile, you HAVE to give them something different from what they expected. And that never happened here. Which is surprising since Brett has been reading the site for so long.
So I’d like to ask Brett that question for the comments. Is that something you didn’t consider? Or did you think you had made original choices? And if you did, what were those choices? I know you said the rooms were different. But did you think that was the only difference you needed?
Maybe the community and myself can help you recalibrate what constitutes a unique choice. Because there isn’t enough imagination here. And that’s it really. I could go into more detail but everything from the concept to the execution was too formulaic. If that issue isn’t fixed in this or future scripts, you’re going to get a lot of the dreaded “polite no’s.”
I can’t stress this enough for ALL aspiring screenwriters. You need to write something THAT GETS PEOPLE EXCITED. The kind of thing that makes them want to leap out of their seat and go tell someone, anyone, what they just read. A by-the-numbers contained action thriller isn’t going to do that. You need a new angle, as well as a more adventurous approach to the plot.
Screenplay Link: Wrongful Termination
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you want to get noticed in Hollywood as an amateur screenwriter, probably one of the top 5 ways, if not top 3, is to consistently make original choices. It doesn’t seem that way because of the formulaic movies Hollywood puts out. But that’s not how new writers are judged. They’re not judged by their ability to also make formulaic choices. Producers are looking for writers who bring something new to the table as they represent the only opportunity to write stuff that stands out from the pack.
