Genre: Science-Fiction
Premise: After earth becomes uninhabitable, a ship is sent into deep space to look for mankind’s next planet.
About: S. Craig Zahler is back. For the holidays! I mean what says “holidays” better than the man who brought us death by hamster insertion? The Brigands of Rattleborge and They Repair Us writer hits us today with some hard sci-fi. Let’s see how juicy an S. Craig Zahler science-fiction script gets! This seems to be an early draft (it’s called “Draft A”) so take that into consideration ya little turkey thieves.
Writer: S. Craig Zahler
Details: 156 pages (c’mon, what did you expect) – “Draft A”
It only makes sense after the last couple of days at Scriptshadow that we’d want to get as far away from planet earth as possible. And who better to take us there than the Director of Description, the Pioneer of Prose, S. Craig Zahler himself.
Before I summarize the story, I want to say that the “Leave Earth To Find A New Planet” scenario is one of the oldest plots in science-fiction. We saw it with Avatar. We saw it with Interstellar. I’ve even read three amateur scripts dealing with this subject matter in the past six months.
This setup requires embracing the un-obvious. Just like a romantic comedy writer has to find new ways into a romantic comedy so that it’s not just another romantic comedy, you, as a science-fiction writer, need to find new ways into old setups like this one so they’re not just another “leave earth and find a planet” flick. And since Zahler invented the un-obvious, I’m hoping he can do just that.
The first ten pages of “Conflicts” thrusts us through 150 years on earth. Our environment is going to shit cause we’re lazy assholes, which gives rise to fringe religious groups who take advantage of peoples’ fears. Religion meets terrorism. Attacks on the rich are made. It turns out Leo was right, and it’s only a matter of time before this garbage can we call “home” is uninhabitable.
So we build Elysabeth, a self-sufficient self-intelligent ship that’s capable of putting a thousand bodies on ice while it searches the universe for habitable planets. This is one weird ship. They’ve peppered it with hundreds of HUMAN EYEBALLS that stare out into the nothingness of space while we jet-set around on our intergalactic road trip.
Eventually, after 600 years, we find a planet that, because the ship is run by a bunch of boring scientists, we name, “Option 1.” Option 1 is not ideal. While it’s got rocks and water, it also has temperatures that swing 100 degrees in a matter of minutes. Not exactly beach living. Unfortunately, Elysabeth is falling apart, so they’ve got no choice but to make Option 1 their only option.
After exploring Option 1 for a few weeks, they come across a tiny group of intelligent beings who live inside a hollow mountain. These brash beasts invite the humans to build their own village next to theirs.
Meanwhile, a few religious nuts who stowed away in the cryo-beds want to kill everyone on Elysabeth then hijack the ship back to earth, where they plan to unfreeze their cryogenically frozen children that they’ve hidden underground. Yeah, cause that sounds doable. “Hey guys, I know it’s been 1700 years. But wake up!”
All of this implies the inevitable, that mankind is probably going extinct. If it’s not the planet, it will be the aliens. And if it’s not the aliens, it will be each other. Unless, of course, our crew can pull it together. But with noted pessimist Zahler at the controls, I sincerely doubt that’s going to happen.
I don’t know what to make of “Conflicts.” Either it’s an early draft or one of Zahler’s rare misfires. Notice how in my breakdown, I didn’t mention any characters. That’s not by accident. I couldn’t find any.
We bounce around between so many people that we never identify a protagonist. And I’ll tell you right now, if there’s one choice a screenwriter can almost NEVER recover from, it’s not having a clear protagonist. Readers are desperate to identify with and see the story through someone’s eyes. If you don’t give them that, they’re confused. But more importantly – DISTANCED.
Think of a story as a mother. And you, the reader, are a baby. If you don’t have your mom carrying you around, taking you from place to place, you don’t know what the fuck to do. You sit on the sidewalk and cry.
And the basic tenets of storytelling go out the window without a main character. You don’t have an active person driving the story. Which means you don’t have a strong goal. Which means no urgency. Which means no stakes. I guess you can include these things in the abstract. The “goal” is for the crew to find a place to settle. But without that one person who we feel close to leading the charge, it’s hard to care whether they succeed or not.
It’s the exact opposite of yesterday, where Ingelsby LOCKS US IN to one character and makes her SO DAMN SYMPATHETIC that even though nothing is technically happening, we still wanted to see what she’d do next.
That’s why, if someone were to put a gun to your head and say your script could only include character development or plot, not both, I’d tell you to go with character. Because people want to connect with other people, even if they’re imaginary. Nobody wants to find the Ark of the Covenant if Indiana Jones isn’t taking them to it.
There isn’t a single character in Conflicts who’s explored with any depth besides maybe Sven, a spoiled kid in his 20s whose father was a big-shot back on earth. And yet we barely know the guy cause we’re jumping around to so many other characters.
Another issue I ran across with Conflicts was backstory. And this goes back to yesterday’s script as well. One of the first things you learn in screenwriting is to come into the story as late as possible.
In other words, if you’re writing Star Wars, you don’t start six months ago, getting to know Darth Vader during a week-long vacation on Endor. You start ten minutes after the Death Star plans have been stolen with Darth Vader chasing your thieving ass.
Ingelsby threw this rule out yesterday, leisurely taking us through Deb’s daily routine for 27 pages before her daughter went missing. Zahler takes that to another level as we traverse 800 years in 30 pages before finally discovering Option 1.
In both cases, an argument can be made that we should’ve come in later. Do we really need 27 pages to set Deb and her daughter up? Do we really need 30 pages to set up how and why we left earth? Wouldn’t it have been easier to start with the characters waking up from cryo-sleep outside their new planet?
The reality is there’s no right answers to these questions. It’s a judgment call made by the writer. If you feel like you need extra setup, include extra setup. But I will say this. In screenwriting, it’s best to err on the side of less rather than more. It’ll benefit you to come in too late rather than too early.
But if we are going to come in early, I’d argue the long setup of Deb and her daughter was way more important to its story than the long setup of leaving earth was to Conflicts.
And I’ll tell you why.
Deb’s character is DEFINED by her loss. Everything she does is based on that loss. So it makes sense to draw out the relationship that led to that loss. With Conflicts, there’s no crucial character being built up here. In fact, all we’re doing is highlighting the same thing that happens in every “leave earth for other planets” story. The earth is dying. People are fighting each other. Build a ship. Leave.
That’s a key difference that I need you guys to realize. If your backstory is something the reader could’ve assumed on their own, you don’t need to show it. And, in this case, that could’ve saved “Conflicts” 30 pages.
With that said, I know we’re talking about Zahler. He doesn’t follow screenwriting rules and is usually better for it. Indeed, some of the trippy stuff he adds to our exit (spaceships with eyeballs??) can be used as an argument for their inclusion. But it’s always a balancing act. You have to balance what you like against what’s best for the screenplay. And I don’t think a backstory that’s 95% the same as every other backstory we’ve seen in these movies was best for Conflicts.
This early draft of Conflicts needed two things – a later entry into the story and characters we actually got to know. I have a feeling that if all Zahler had to concentrate on was getting us onto this planet and having strange shit happen to our characters, he could’ve written to his strengths, which, ironically, are really weird and powerful characters encountering memorably detailed fucked-up situations.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: One of the first things you should ask yourself when you come up with a movie idea is how late can you start your story and how soon can you get out of it? I’ll give you the perfect example. Star Wars. That movie could’ve taken place over 2-3 years. Instead, it took place over 1 week. Contrast that with, say, Revenge of The Sith. Remember how wonky that plot felt? A big reason for that is because Lucas came into the story too early and got out too late. All in all, it took place over 8 months I believe? Yikes. That’s Disaster Sauce when dealing with plots. “Conflicts” could’ve benefitted a ton form this line of thinking, at least on the front end, when we came in way too early.
P.S. I’m not saying all movies need to take place over a week. I’m merely warning you that the longer you spread your plot out, the harder your story will be to tell. I guarantee that. So get in late and get out early. Even if it means changing your planned plot. For example, I’m sure George Lucas would’ve argued, “It had to be 8 months. Queen Amidala was one month pregnant at the beginning of the movie and the ending is her giving birth.” Okay, so get creative then. Ask yourself if you can start the movie with Queen Amidala already 8 months pregnant. That’s what this line of thinking is all about.
Genre: Drama
Premise: After a young mother’s teenaged daughter disappears one night, the mother rebuilds her life one step at a time.
About: We’re less than a month away from the 2016 Black List, so what better script to review than one from frequent Black List contributor, Brad Ingelsby (Into the Furnace, Run All Night)? This latest script of his finished with 13 votes on last year’s list. As of a year ago, it had Anne Hathaway attached to play the lead.
Writer: Brad Ingelsby
Details: 123 pages
I have a love/hate relationship with the holidays.
I love the disruption.
I spend the majority of my life feeling guilty about not doing enough work. There’s always something that I haven’t done that needs to be done.
This time of year eases some of that guilt. Everybody makes a wink-wink agreement with each other that we’re not going to hold ourselves to March, June, or September work ethic standards. For once, you feel like you can breathe.
The downside of this is that it gives you more time to reflect. And that opens up its own can of worms. What if, upon reflection, you don’t like what you see? What if you’re nowhere close to your life plan? What if you don’t have your dream car yet, your dream spouse, your dream house? What if you don’t have two kids and a summer home? What if you haven’t paid off your student loans yet?
For this reason, Burning Woman may be the perfect script to read over the holidays. It’s all about life’s trials and tribulations. It’s about the passing of time and space and people and the desire to control what you can’t control.
But it’s tough, man. This script digs under your skin like a tick on crack. I guarantee you’ll feel something when you read it. The question is, does it reward all that you invest into it? The answer to that question will determine whether this script gets an “impressive” or a “genius” rating.
32 year-old Deb Connor got pregnant the second time she ever had sex. That mistake gave her her daughter, Bridget, who, not surprisingly, also got pregnant when she was 16. 17 now, Bridget has a one year-old son, Jesse, and is struggling with the reality that life’s fun cupboard has been closed.
One night, Bridget goes on a date with her ex, the father of her child, and never comes home. As the days pass, Deb becomes convinced that the ex did something to her. But the police can’t make anything stick with him, or anybody for that matter. Bridget has simply… vanished.
What follows is not what you’d think. Deb doesn’t buy a gun, learn Krav-Maga, and hunt down the killer. Deb just… lives her life the best she can. She keeps dating the wrong men. She struggles through community college so she can support her grandson. And she tries to keep it together.
Years pass and Deb eventually meets Chris – not the cool bad-boy type she’s gotten in trouble with in the past, but a sweet slightly nerdy guy who’s charming enough to convince her to marry him. Chris brings some stability to the household. He and Bridget’s son become close. Everything is going well. Or at least, as well as it can.
(spoilers) Then one day Deb gets that call. The one every person in her situation dreads. The police have found her daughter’s remains. They also know who killed her. All Deb has left is to speak to her daughter’s killer. She needs to find out what happened that night. Will it bring her peace? There’s only one way to find out.
This script is fucking beautiful.
And yet the closer I got to the end, the more I wanted to strangle it.
What makes this script so great is also what makes it so frustrating. We’re used to spouses with murdered family members charging off and getting revenge. Not only does this give us some measure of satisfaction, but it gives the script purpose. The plot is dictated by a goal. The character is actively pursuing something.
By not having that in place, Burning Woman doesn’t move like a traditional script. It’s slow. Characters sit down and talk to each other a lot. There’s no urgency because there’s no overall objective.
But because we don’t have that, we have something else: No idea what’s coming next. And that’s a superpower in storytelling, when the reader can’t outguess you. And as I looked up from the script at the midway point, I realized that’s why I was still engrossed. I had no fucking idea where this was going.
Make no mistake though. We still have that big open question that the audience wants an answer to: What happened to Bridget? We’re assuming we’re going to be rewarded with that in the end. If we erased the disappearance of Bridget and tried to build a story ONLY on a 35 year-old woman trying to survive in a small town? Burning Woman doesn’t work.
I bring that up because I’ve read versions of this story without the disappearance. Small town tales about hardship. That’s not a movie guys. As I’ve stated before, at the VERY LEAST you need a dead body to have a movie. Movies about people doing normal people things aren’t enough anymore.
Look at The Edge of Seventeen, the highly hyped film that came out this weekend. These teen movies used to be good for 25 million bucks opening weekend. Seventeen barely embezzled 5 million out of America. And it’s because it’s a movie where the only thing that’s going on is people talking. There’s no concept. Which means I can go watch the same shit on my television for free. In fact, I have 400 shows to choose from.
Anyway, back to Burning Woman. Another reason I couldn’t stop reading was because I had so much damn sympathy for Deb. Here’s this woman who loses her daughter. Her boyfriend dumps her. The next man she’s with abuses her. She struggles through community college classes to pay the bills. I just wanted her to find happiness. I knew by page 30 that I would read until the last page because I wanted Deb to regain a sense of hope. I wanted to know that she was going to be all right.
But in the end, Burning Woman’s decision to take the less traveled road bites it in the ass. And I have to bust the spoilers out to explain this so you’ve been warned. This script is 123 pages. There was therefore plenty of time to explore the characters and then, say on page 75, Deb finds a clue that someone she knows was involved in Bridget’s disappearance. And she spends the rest of the script looking into it.
It didn’t even have to be that. It could’ve been someone she didn’t know. And I’m not saying she had to become The Equalizer either. Even if she figured out who did it and alerted the police, that would’ve been satisfactory. There’s an old screenwriting rule that applies here. An audience is willing to follow a passive protagonist as long as they become active AT SOME POINT.
That’s the only thing that bothered me. I needed that plot point that activated Deb. As much as I loved her, as much as I wanted to see her happy, I also wanted to reach into my computer, pull her out, and scream, “You need to do something about this! Don’t sit at home all day. Go find him.”
(major spoiler) And yes, we do finally meet the killer. So we do get closure. But it was a letdown that Deb had nothing to do with him being in prison. Even if Ingelsby was going for a “real-life” vibe, I think the audience wanted to see that.
That’s why Burning Woman didn’t get that perfect rating from me. We invested all this time and effort in Deb, and the payoff to her misery is this sad man’s confession, whose capture she had no part in. Still, if you want to read one hell of a character piece, check this out. It has some of the strongest character-writing of the year.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: You need to give your hero likability or sympathy or else it’s hard for us to root for them. For lighter fare, likability is your best bet (Forest Gump, Seth Rogen in any Seth Rogen movie). The darker your movie, the more you’ll use sympathy as a way to make the reader root for your character. Sympathy can be created in a lot of ways, but one of the easiest ways is to have the world shit on your hero. We naturally root for people who are beaten down by life unfairly. And boy does Deb get beaten down on in this movie.
THE WINNER HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED BELOW
A recap for those unfamiliar with the Scriptshadow Tournament. The first round went for 8 weeks, with you, the readers of the site, voting for the best script each week. Those 8 winning scripts are now competing in the Quarterfinals. To spruce things up, we’ve added a wild-card entry to each Quarterfinal week. Wild-Cards were scripts that garnered a lot of votes on their respective week but fell short of the win. The best of those near-misses have been voted into the Quarterfinal round.
Last week, we had a major upset, as a wild-card script beat out both of the seeded entries. This just proves that NO ONE IS SAFE!
Here’s how voting works. Read as much from each script as you can then vote in the comments section which script you think deserves to go into the semifinals. Please explain why you voted for the script so that we know you’re a real voter and not a friend of the writer. It should be an interesting week. Some contestants have had a long time to rewrite. Some have had no time. I’ll leave it up to the writers if they want to summarize their changes in the comments.
Voting closes at 10pm Pacific Time Sunday evening.
Good luck everybody!
#4 SEED
Title: Jump
Writer: Andrew Bumstead
Genre: Thriller
Logline: After losing their loved ones in a terrorist accident ten years ago, three strangers get the chance to rewrite history by transferring their minds back in time to that fateful day.
#5 SEED
Title: Log
Writer: Alison Parker
Genre: Horror Comedy
LOGline: A weekend of debauchery turns to terror for a group of friends staying at an old lumberjack camp when a bloodthirsty log springs to life and embarks on a murderous rampage.
WILD CARD
Title: Cratchit
Writer: Katherine Botts
Genre: Mystery & Suspense/Fantasy/Horror
Logline: “A Christmas Carol” reimagined, told from the point of view of Bob Cratchit as he and Ebenezer Scrooge race to track down Jacob Marley’s killer — the same killer who now targets Scrooge and Cratchit’s son, Tiny Tim.
Okay, so before I announce today’s winner, I want to say that I love all three contestants. I’m not mad at anybody. I’m not calling anybody out. But I have received e-mails in regards to the voting this weekend. While I believe it’s natural for there to be campaigning in any contest (heck, it’s an integral part of one of the biggest movie contests in the world – The Oscars!), I agree with the e-mailers that the campaigning may have been the difference between the winning and losing script this weekend. We’ve never had a vote with so many people that was this close before, so this is a unique situation. But taking everything into account, I’m calling Quarterfinal Round Week 2, and the winner is: CRATCHIT by Katherine Botts. Congrats, Katherine! You’re an official semi-finalist! Excellent showings for both Andrew and Alison. Keep in mind that you guys beat out half-a-thousand entries to make it to the top 8. So keep writing and keep getting better! A reminder that next week THERE WILL BE NO CONTEST due to the holiday. I’ll be alerting the three entrants for Quarterfinal Week 3 next Sunday.
1) The revelation: Holy shit. That movie I just saw sucked balls. Hollywood makes shitty movies. I can do a better job than these guys. I’m going to write a movie.
Reality: I guarantee you have no idea how to keep an audience’s attention for 2 minutes, much less 120. There is so much going on in even a bad movie on the script end to keep you interested, I don’t know where to begin. But I do know you have no idea how to do it. You’ll be lucky if your first efforts at screenwriting don’t result in the reader wanting to stab you by page 5.
2) My first script: What should my first screenplay be? My friends and I always talk about how “my life is basically a movie.” I’ll write a screenplay about my life!
Reality: Unless you survived the sinking of the Titanic, your life is boring. Trust me. People are out there getting shot by cops and you think because you woke up in some strange girl’s apartment at 4am, that that deserves to be turned into a movie? Your first script will have endless random scenes of you and your buddies hanging out and it will go nowhere.
3) I know better: Page count?? Why the fuck do I have to abide by a page count? Hollywood has such stupid rules. No wonder their movies suck. I’m going to write my drama about a 22 year old drug dealer taking on the Mexican mob and it’s going to need every one of those 170 pages.
Reality: Having a “break the rules” mentality isn’t a bad thing. But it’s deadly if you don’t know the rules in the first place. A lot of the rules are there for a reason. A tight page count, for example, is there to force you to make every scene matter, so you don’t write extraneous scenes that slow the narrative down. Rules are there to guide you into a more readable exciting script.
4) My first contest: This is strange. Whenever I show my screenplays to my friends, they’re always weird about it. They say stuff like, “Dude, that was hilarious. You’re totally going to make it,” even though I gave them a drama. You know what? They don’t understand movies anyway. I’m going to enter that big contest, the Nicholl, and win it so I can get into Hollywood that way.
Reality: Your script will not make it past the first round and you will use many popular screenwriting message board conspiracy theories as to why, such as “they didn’t read it” or “my script is too commercial for them.” Trust me, they read it. If your script doesn’t make it past the first round of the Nicholl, it means you still don’t understand the basics of the basics of screenwriting. All you have to do to advance to the second round at Nicholl is have a properly formatted screenplay, an un-ridiculous page count, an okay concept, and a reasonable understanding of the 3-act structure.
5) Maybe I should study: Maybe this screenwriting thing is harder than I thought. I’m going to read a few books and see if I’m missing something.
Reality: Admitting to yourself that screenwriting isn’t as easy as it looks and that you need help is a pivotal moment in your development as a screenwriter. It literally places you in the top 60% of people writing screenplays. If you have reached this moment, there is hope for you.
6) The over-reaction: What’s wrong! I included an inciting incident. My first act break was where it needed to be. My dialogue wasn’t on-the-nose. I wrote in a character with that fatal flaw thing. Why the hell isn’t my script selling?? I did it the way Hollywood books said to do it and I’m no better off than when I was doing it my way. I knew the Hollywood way was bullshit. Fuck this shit.
Reality: You’re applying the guidelines too overtly. The mechanics of what you’re doing are so transparent that your script feels generated from a script-bot. You will need to learn to apply the rules invisibly, which will take time and practice.
7) The over-reaction to the over-reaction: Since I’ve proven that the Hollywood way sucks, I’m going back to writing what I want to write about. I’m going to write that passion project that everybody says can’t sell because whenever I read an article about people breaking in, it’s cause they followed their heart and wrote what they wanted to write, not what Hollywood told them to write, like Matt and Ben with Good Will Hunting!
Reality: This script won’t do anything for you mainly because it won’t have a concept. This will discourage and confuse you. But what you don’t know is that your writing is improving. When people read this script, they’ll say something to the effect of, “It wasn’t bad,” which will piss you off because of how much you put into it. But what you don’t know is that this is a huge improvement over your previous works, where people hated your script more than a Trump sandwich. They just didn’t tell you because they didn’t want to hurt your feelings. Being able to write something “not bad” actually takes tons and tons and tons of practice.
8) All-In: I don’t know why I’m doing this screenwriting thing anymore because all it does is fill me with misery. But I want to figure it out. I’m going to read more screenwriting books, read more scripts, and not treat every script like a do-or-die scenario. I’m going to respect the rules but not hold myself to them if I believe my story can benefit from a different direction. I’m in this for the long-haul and now consider myself a student of the craft.
Reality: Congratulations. You’ve just become a screenwriter.
9) Careful consideration: I realize that writing a screenplay flippantly is probably a bad idea. I need to carefully consider whether each concept is marketable and has the relevant amount of plot, character, and conflict, to fill 110 pages. Each of my screenplays going forward will be more calculated, as will my writing preparation.
Reality: Holy shit. You’re actually giving yourself a shot at becoming professional!
10) The golden idea: I’ve found that idea I believe is both marketable and contains an emotional core. I’m going to meticulously outline as much of the story as I can. I’m going to have the ending mapped out before I write the beginning so that I know where I’m going. I’m going to explore every character on a deeper level. I’m going to let their conflicts drive the second act. I think this is going to be the one.
Reality: I don’t know if this will be the script that breaks you through or not. But I know this. If you keep writing screenplays like this, you WILL break in at some point. Good luck!
Mileage may vary.
Genre: Sports/Drama
Premise: An aging motorcycle racer decides that before he retires, he wants to race in the most dangerous motorcycle race on the planet, the mysterious “Isle of Man.”
About: Yesterday I was scrolling through Slash-Film and I came upon this bizarre news story of a motorcycle drama starring Matt Damon and Liam Neeson. That made zero sense. First, the “motorcycle drama” part. Hollywood doesn’t make motorcycle dramas. And two, the part about Damon and Neeson acting in the same movie. These two were as movie-starish as movie stars get. They don’t share credit. They are the credit. So I did some digging to figure out how this came together, and that’s when I saw the writer-director, Ben Younger, just came out with this Miles Teller boxing drama that’s been getting a lot of buzz – Bleed For This. When you got buzz, people want to be a part of your shit. This project appears to be a long-time passion for Younger. And I only say that because the script was scanned manually, which means it was written before screenplays went digital in 2007. There is no published date for this draft, though.
Writer: Ben Younger
Details: 154 pages (yikes!)
We haven’t seen a movie about motorcycle racing done on a large scale yet. And you’re always looking for that as a producer – that cool thing that nobody’s figured out how to turn into a film. But there’s a caveat when you find one of these magical missed ideas – what if the reason nobody’s made a movie about it is because the subject matter is stupid? Or boring? Or doesn’t translate to film? I mean, nobody’s made a large scale movie about polka before. Does that mean I should make an 80 million dollar polka movie?
But Younger may have stumbled upon something here. Racing is inherently exciting. Racing is what created one of the biggest franchises in Hollywood at the moment in The Fast and The Furious. And motorcycle racing is like the next level. Unlike car racing, where if you crash, you hop out and yell at your pit crew, a motorcycle driver is very likely to be yelling at God.
Then on top of that you have this mysterious weird race, the Isle of Man, which I’d never heard of before yesterday. Anything that makes your idea unique is a plus. Had this been, say, the motorcycle version of Days of Thunder, I would’ve rolled my eyes. But this bizarre race in the middle of nowhere where only the craziest of the crazy compete? That’s something I can get behind. Let’s see if the script lives up to the potential.
38 year-old Colin McMillan is one of those guys who can’t let the dream go. He’s been trying to break into the top tier of the AMA motorcycle racing circuit forever. But it’s always been out of reach.
And the thing with Colin is that he’s always got an excuse for why he hasn’t made it. If it isn’t the lower-tier motorcycle he’s forced to race with, it’s his day job that takes time away from practice, or the corrupt circuit that favors flashy new riders over highly skilled veterans.
Despite that, Colin finally decides to hang’em up. Before he settles into a life of boring monotony, however, he fulfills a lifelong dream to go see The Isle of Man race, a near mythological motorcycle race on a remote Irish island. The Isle of Man isn’t about flashy cool riders with sponsorships. It’s about crazy amateurs willing to risk their lives on one of the most unpredictable courses in the world.
Colin is on the island no less than two hours and he already knows – he needs to compete in this race before he dies. So Colin gets a job at a local farm, rents out a basement apartment for a few hundred bucks, and uses the next 11 months to train for the race.
Along the way he meets Kathleen, a nurse who’s none-too-fond of motorcycle racers, and Jon, the owner of the farm he works at, who was once a racer himself. He develops a relationship with both, along with everybody else on the island, all of whom’s lives are dictated by this quirky bizarre race known as Isle of Man.
Much like its subject matter, the Isle of Man script doesn’t go according to plan. Here I was ready for this cool-ass story about a retired bike rider who shows up at the Isle of Man and gets a last second bid in the race, and then miraculously wins it somehow, when I read this line: “I want to live here a year and train for the race.”
I’m sorry but wuhhhhhh…?
Yes, Isle of Man eschews the importance of urgency and sits you down with the characters on this island for a full 362 days before we get to our race. Not gonna lie. I was thrown by that. But once I accepted it, I realized it worked. By building up this race for an entire year, we give it the kind of importance it never would’ve achieved had we only known about it for 20 pages.
However, not every writer can pull this off. I’ve seen it go the other way where a writer takes his time and it’s a deadly decision. We’re bored as shit within 30 pages, wondering how we’re going to get through another 80 without ripping our hair out.
What helps in Isle of Man is Younger’s endless knowledge of the race. And when I say knowledge, I mean knowledge with a capital KNOW. This guy knows everything about Isle of Man. He knows everything about motorcycle racing. And I always say, when it’s clear that the writer knows more about the subject matter than you, you’re in good hands. It means they know how to tell a detailed realistic story as opposed to some fantasied assumption of how motorcycle racing works from someone who’s never done it before. Trust me, the reader ALWAYS KNOWS when you’ve never come close to the subject matter you’re writing about.
But it’s not just that. The characters are really strong too. Colin’s a little cliche (the aging rider who’s making one last go of it), but he grows as the script evolves. Younger’s good at being specific with his details and his backstory. Colin doesn’t have some advertising job he hates, for example, which is what 90% of Hollywood writers would’ve written in. He works at a children’s furniture store. I mean, how unique is that? And one of the critical scenes isn’t some cliched shout-off with an evil racing nemesis. It’s when Colin’s forced to help a cow give birth all by himself.
That’s not to say there aren’t tropes. We have the love interest who hates racing because her dad died in The Isle of Man. And yet, even these choices made sense. Everyone on this island lives this race. It’s what the island is known for so it makes sense that they’re all a part of it. For that reason, it isn’t far-fetched to believe her father would die in the race. That’s the thing about tropes. If they’re organic to the story, they can work. It’s when they feel like something a screenwriting teacher told you you have to include that they give you away.
What ultimately works about Isle of Man is that it’s a deep rich character piece wrapped around a motorcycle race as opposed to a motorcycle race wrapped around a group of tiny insignificant characters (known as “the Godzilla treatment”). No doubt that’s what Damon was attracted to. This isn’t a Tom Cruise “I’m a movie star” turn in Days of Thunder 2. It’s a story that allows the actor to embody a character in a unique setting building honest compelling relationships with other characters who have deep interesting backstories. You don’t get that often, which is why this project is finally going to get made.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The biggest thing I took away from this script was the power of specificity. There wasn’t a single general detail here. From the bikes to the island to the characters on the island – everything here is unique and specific to the world. It’s what sets this apart from your average sports script.
