Genre: Comedy
Premise: Best friends and former time travelers Bill and Ted are called back by the heavens to save the world. All they have to do is write a song that unites every single person on the planet. And they’ve got 77 minutes to do it.
About: They have been trying to make this movie forever. I think since the late 90s. But Keanu was becoming a huge star and didn’t have the time. I believe that changed when Keanu hit that rough patch, doing 10 years of DTV work. Finally, he had the time to do another Bill and Ted movie. Ironically, that’s right when his career picked back up again with John Wick. But Keanu kept his promise to his buddy Alex Winter and here we are. These are also the original screenwriters from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
Writers: Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon
Details: 90 minutes

The Keanusance?

Is that what they’re calling it?

Hey, as long as I keep getting Matrix and John Wick movies, I’ll call it whatever you want me to. The Keanuback. Return of the Kean Bean. Kicking it with Keanu. Tune My Piano Keanu. Hmm… maybe not that last one.

Bill and Ted are in their 50s and still plugging away as the group, “Wild Stallyns.” But things aren’t going well. The former Billboard-topping Stallyns can barely get wedding gigs these days. To make matters worse, they were told as teens they would write the song that unites the world. Except they still haven’t written it! Here’s co-writer Solomon on this writing choice (via Daily Dead)…

“I’ve always felt that comedy is best when it comes from one of the more negative, let’s call it emotions: sadness, despair, anxiety, fear, whatever. And the guys were feeling those things. In a weird way, we said from the beginning, “Let’s make a feel-good comedy about failure. Let’s make an absurd, silly, ridiculous, funny movie about dashed dreams and disappointment. And let’s have it end where you feel really good.”

Bill and Ted are then visited by an agent of Heaven (I think Heaven?) and brought to the city in the clouds, where they’re informed by some queen woman that time is up. They must write the song that unites the world… WITHIN 77 MINUTES! Should they fail, time and space, which are already starting to implode, will cease to exist.

Freaked out, Bill and Ted have no idea how they’re going to write a song in 77 minutes that they’ve been trying, and failing, to write for 30 years. But they realize they have a hack. The time machine! They can go into the future and take the song FROM THEIR FUTURE SELVES, who have already saved the world. Isn’t that stealing, wonders Ted. “Not if we’re stealing… from ourselves,” Bill points out.

This begins a trip deeper and deeper into the future to find the Bills and Tedss who have written the song. But the more Bills and Teds they visit, the more they’re lied to. It seems like nobody has the song. Could it be that they actually have to figure it out for themselves??

Meanwhile, Bill’s and Ted’s excellent 20-something daughters, Billie and Thea, who happen to be aspiring musicians, sense that their dads are in trouble and hijack a second time travel machine where they go BACK in time and recruit some of the best musicians ever – Mozart, Jimmi Hendrix, Louis Armstrong, Kid Cudi – to help their dads. Of course, we begin to suspect that this crazy adventure was never about the dads in the first place. It was really about… THEM!

Oh, and let’s not forget that Heaven secretly needs to kill Bill and Ted so they create a killer robot and send him through time to chase and assassinate the Stallyns. You read that correctly. There’s a killer robot in this movie. So, can Billie and Thea save the world and, with it, their dads? By golly, I hope so.

That’s right astute movie nerds. The actress who plays Bill’s daughter here is the real-life daughter of Agent Smith in The Matrix, Hugo Weaving!

Bill and Ted Face The Music will win you over by the end. But it sure tries its hardest to shoo you away in the meantime.

This was an odd project from the outset.

The fact that Keanu Reeves never makes sequels (that used to be his defining m.o.) yet he wanted to make a Bill and Ted threequel? Odd. Why Bill and Ted of all his properties? It’s not even like he made the first movie then wanted to revisit the fun of it, like Jim Carrey did with Dumb and Dumber Too. He’d already made a sequel.

As one of you pointed out after the latest Kevin Smith debacle (“Moochie and Spoochie Road Trip Shenanigans”), watching 20-somethings curse up a storm is funny. Watching 50-somethings do the same thing isn’t nearly as funny. Same problem here. Bill and Ted talking like dumb 20-somethings when they’re in their 50s makes for an uncomfortable experience.

Speaking of uncomfortable, did Keanu film all his scenes right after doing a day of John Wick stunt work? Why is he limping around half the time? Or struggling to walk from one end of the room to the other? It certainly doesn’t help sell the nonchalant “Yeah dude” persona he’s supposed to be exuding.

Something I realized while watching Face the Music, though, is that time travel works better with comedy than it does straight sci-fi. That’s because time travel never makes sense when you think about it. You go back in time to fix something but, by doing so, don’t you alter the course of history, essentially creating a second timeline? And doesn’t that mean the original timeline still burns? A butterfly flaps its wings and all that?

The nice thing about comedy is the audience doesn’t hold you to that same impossible standard. That’s because, in a comedy, laughing is more important to the audience than logic. In other words, you have more leeway.

But even Bill and Ted leaves you stumped at times with its time travel paradoxes. We’re told they only have 77 minutes to find the greatest song ever (the “U” in GSU – “Urgency”) yet they can travel through time. So doesn’t that mean they have unlimited minutes? Why does every minute that passes during time travel equal an actual minute in Heaven? Isn’t Heaven timeless?

Again, it’s annoying, but if you’re laughing, it doesn’t matter.

And Face the Music starts making you laugh later when it loosens the reigns. The daughters are surprisingly fun to watch, especially the one who plays Ted’s daughter. She somehow both sounds exactly like Keanu circa 1991 and adds her own weird take to the impersonation. I also loved Death’s scenes. One of my favorite lines is when they catch him playing hopscotch by himself and Ted realizes, “He’s cheating!” Death cheating at hopscotch when no one else is around is hilarious. But my favorite character was the one I initially hated the most – the killer robot. Once he fails at his mission and just wants to be one of the guys, I fell in love with him. He was so funny.

Also, some movies are lucky to come out at the exact time they’re needed. And Face the Music fits that description to a tee. Things are a bit charged up in our world to say the least. Having two goofballs go on a mission to unite the planet… well that’s a bit serendipitous don’t you think? Even the subpar “song that unites the world” couldn’t derail the good vibes that flowed from the final scene.

The strangest thing about this movie is that it tells us nothing about the movie business. It’s such an outlier in so many ways that it’s hard to formulate any “larger picture” thoughts on the film. And maybe that’s the point. This movie was made for one purpose and one purpose only – to bring a smile to your lips. And at that, it succeeds.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the rental (at 6 dollars, not 20 dollars)
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: When you write comedy, you have to be willing to take chances on the absurd. Comedy is the one thing in writing that you can’t argue with logic. Something is either funny or it isn’t. So if you’re stringently controlling every joke you write so that it works on a technical level, expect audiences to be unimpressed. A killer robot makes ZERO SENSE in this movie. It’s a “way out there” idea. But it ends up being the most interesting and funniest part of the movie. So play with absurd ideas in comedy. That doesn’t mean some of them won’t be stupid and you shouldn’t come to your senses and ditch them later. But if a joke/choice shouldn’t technically be working yet it is? Don’t question why. Keep it in there.

We’re going to have some fun today.

I want you to rank, in order of importance, these three screenwriting categories.

Plot
Character
Concept

Tell me which of them you believe is most important to a screenplay’s success. Then rank the other two in order of importance. There ARE right and wrong answers here so don’t screw up. You’re being graded.

Okay, do you have your final answer? Go ahead and display it to the class in the comments. Yes, BEFORE I tell you what the correct order is, go down and leave your order in the comments. Just like any good screenplay, we have to up the stakes. We do that by having you risk public shaming for being wrong. :)

Now before I give you the answer, I want you to either mentally of physically write down ten of your favorite movies. It doesn’t have to be your FAVORITE TEN OF ALL TIME. Just ten movies you liked a lot. Now, what’s the very first thing that comes to mind when you think of any of these movies? Cause I’m willing to bet that in every single case, it’s the characters.

When I think of The Matrix, I think of Neo.
When I think of Die Hard, I think of John McClane.
Shawshank, Red and Andy.
Nightcrawler, Louis Bloom.
Aliens, Ripley
Deadpool, Wade Wilson
The Martian, Mark Watney
Guardians of the Galaxy, Peter Quill (and Rocket, and Groot)

So the top spot on your list should be CHARACTER. Character character character. Character trumps everything. If you get the character part right, nothing else in the script needs to be great. How do I know this? Because you can name plenty of movies with weak concepts or weak plots that you still liked because of the characters.

Swingers, great characters bad plot. Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, strong characters janky plot. The Wrestler, great character weak plot. Yes, even the juggernaut that was The Joker, strong main character, forgettable plot.

But you’d be hard-pressed to think of any movies where you didn’t like the characters but you still liked the movie. I can think of a couple I guess. Mad Max Fury Road. I didn’t dislike those characters but they weren’t memorable to me in any way. The Thin Red Line. I love the feel of that movie but I don’t know a single character’s name. Dunkirk to a certain extent. But it’s rare. You’re more likely to fall in love with a character than a plot.

Let me share with you my most recent experience with how important characters are. I have been OBSESSED with the concept for the show, “Beforiegners” ever since I saw the trailer last year. Beforiegners is set in Oslo and follows a strange phenomenon where a bunch of Vikings from 500 years ago begin inexplicably showing up in modern day. We then follow what happens when these inadvertent travelers are forced to integrate into society. I absolutely love this concept. I’ve been impatiently waiting for it to come out on HBO but I was lucky to get my hands on some episodes ahead of time. I’m telling you, I can’t convey enough how excited I was to sit down and watch this.

And it was a total effing bore.

Why was it bore?

Because the characters were lame as hell. The two main characters, one a male cop, the other a female viking who’s become his partner, are beyond boring. They’re both quiet. They’re both methodical. They approach their job in the same way. There’s zero contrast. Zero conflict. But, worst of all, neither of them have any personality. Which killed the show. And it wasn’t the actors faults. It was 100% the writing. They never sat down and tried to create two great characters.

We’ll get back to character in a bit.

But now that we’ve established our top dog, we need to figure out who gets the red ribbon, concept or plot.

My answer might surprise you. But I’m going to say concept. And I know that sounds crazy to some of you because concept is just one overall idea whereas plot is something you meticulously work out over numerous rewrites until everything in your story is woven together in the most entertaining and harmonious way.

But here’s the little secret about concepts. They inform everything about the plot. Let me give you an example. Back to the Future is probably my favorite movie of all time. But for a moment, I want you to imagine if there’s no time travel in Back to the Future. Instead, it’s a high school teen comedy set in modern day called “The Power of Love.” It’s about Marty trying to make it as a singer in a band. Think about how much you just limited your plot. You’ve taken out the opportunity to do so many of the cool things that Back to the Future did. And it’s because you now have a much weaker concept.

Using that logic, you’re always going to have a hard time plotting screenplays with weak concepts. It can be done, of course. Mean Girls was a teen high school comedy and a lot of people liked that movie. But having a good concept is like showing up to a race with a jetpack. It’s going to make things so much easier for you.

None of this is to say that plot doesn’t matter. Even if you have a great concept like Back to the Future, you still have to come up with the plot ideas that elevate that concept, that make the read exciting. Remember that, originally, the time machine in Back to the Future was a refrigerator. That severely limited the time travel plot points of the movie. Once they switched it to a car, however, all sorts of great plot ideas emerged. You will slave away to get your plot right. But I still think it sits behind both character and concept.

So that means we have our order.

1 – Character
2 – Concept
3 – Plot

What does this mean for you, the screenwriter? It means you have to put a lot more thought into your 2-3 main characters. They will be the most critical components to making your script work. And here are some things to consider – things that weak writers overlook.

First and foremost, you must think of your character as their own story, independent of the story in your movie. To understand this best, think of all the challenges and failures and successes and highs and lows you’ve had in your own life. That’s YOUR STORY. You need to give your characters that story as well or else they’ll never pop off the page.

The more you know about your character’s story, the stronger the character will be. Your character story should be divided into two parts. The story that led up to the beginning of the movie, aka the ‘backstory,’ and then the story of your character DURING the movie.

Let’s use the most famous action character ever, John McClane, as an example. He became a New York cop. He married this woman. She got a job opportunity in another city. He hoped she’d fail and come home. Instead she succeeded, which means now their marriage is on the rocks. And I’m sure the writer knew 100 times as much about John McClane as we’re told in the movie. That’s your backstory. And it’s where strong writers separate themselves because they’re willing to do the deep dive into how the character became the person they are even though 99% of that won’t directly show up on the screen.

Once the movie starts, you’re talking about a new character story, a story all of us get to see. You will draw from all the things that happened in the backstory to create the most entertaining John McClane story for the movie. If you realized McClane grew up as a wise-ass who challenged authority in his backstory, you now get to feature that in this story. But if you never did the work and figured that out, it won’t be there in the character. Even if you say to yourself, “This character is going be a wise-ass who challenges authority” but you don’t know how he became that person? Or what led up to that? Then the wise-assery is going to feel cliched.

I don’t think a lot of you realize how important this is. If you want a character to feel authentic, you need to figure out why they became the way they are. The more specific, the better. For example, maybe when John McClane was a young New York cop, he watched as, time and time again, him and his fellow officers were being put into dangerous situations by their Captain, some of which ended in friends of his dying. McClane knew that if he didn’t speak up, nothing would change. He HAD to challenge authority or he’d lose more friends. Once you’re able to ground your character’s identity in real events that you know the specifics of, I guarantee you your characters will come off as more authentic.

A few other things. You want to find character personalities that audiences either like or, if the characters are reserved, that we understand and sympathize with why they’re that way. In that Beforeigners show, they didn’t have either. They were boring people and there wasn’t a lot to sympathize with. You should also have a curiosity about human psychology. In order to get into why we are the way we are, you need to understand how we tick. A person isn’t just a drug addict. Their addiction is their way of coping with something. Find out what that something is. And, finally, you should be fascinated by interpersonal social dynamics – the way human beings interact with each other. Why people are mean to others, why they’re nice, why they’re guarded, why they’re happy.

I read this story recently about this woman who yelled at a random man for not wearing a mask. If you think that this woman is yelling at this man specifically, you don’t understand social dynamics. She doesn’t know this man. She’s spent the last 20, 40, 60 days bottling up her anger at people who don’t wear masks. This man merely represents everyone who’s not wearing a mask in her eyes. To tell him to wear a mask is to tell everyone to wear a mask. That’s what you have to realize about human interaction. It’s rarely about what’s happening on the surface. There’s always something going on underneath and you should have a curiosity as to what that underneath stuff is.

Finally, just to be clear, the ideal situation is that character, concept, and plot are effortlessly woven together so that each one depends on the other equally. You can’t imagine the characters without the concept and you can’t imagine the concept without the plot and you can’t imagine the plot without the characters. That’s the goal. If you’ve done it right, everything is so immaculately connected that it’s all one living breathing organism known as your story.

But just because I like a little controversy, I’ll finish with this: Pay a litttttllllllllleeee extra attention to characters above everything else.

:)

You still have until tomorrow (Thursday) night at 8pm Pacific to enter your action spec for Amateur Action Showdown!

One of the most frustrating things about pursuing screenwriting for a majority of people is screenwriting contests. A lot of these feel like a crapshoot. Who knows who’s reading your script. That horror script you wrote that’s going to make IT’s box office look like Charlie’s Angels could end up in the hands of someone who detests horror movies. And who knows what order a reader reads your script in. Is it his second script of the day, where he’s alert and hopeful? Or his sixth script, where he’s exhausted and thinking about the three chalupa special at Taco Bell? And the whole thing just seems so SUBJECTIVE amirite? Does the best script win? The best idea? The most woke socially conscious biopic concept? Navigating this world can be equal parts frustrating and depressing. But I’m here to help you do better in these masochistic merry-go-rounds of mayhem. With a few tips and the right outlook, you’re going to start seeing results. Let’s get to it!

1) Most screenwriters enter contest scripts that aren’t ready – Look, I’m all for deadlines. Without deadlines, I’d never post anything on this site. But there’s a difference between a realistic deadline and a deadline where all you’ve done is put words a page. Nobody is going to give you points for getting a messy rushed script in on time. And I was guilty of this too. I would use the Nicholl deadline to finish a script and literally send the script on the final date at the last mailing pickup time of the day. And then I’d be mad when my script didn’t win. You are up against 100 to 7000 other scripts in a contest. Do you really think your rushed first draft of a script is going to do well? Nicholl gets rich off of people like you. While story will always be subjective, sloppiness is not. I want you to tattoo what I’m about to say to the inside of your eyeballs because it might be the best advice you’ve ever received: Contests are not about showing the world that you can write a screenplay too. They’re about writing something that STANDS OUT from the pack.

2) Tell a great story with your first scene – While contests are different from “real life” in that the reader will read the entire script, that doesn’t mean they’ll pay attention the entire script. If they’re not impressed with your first scene, their overworked reader brain will switch into skim-mode. Notice I’m giving you a very specific directive for the first scene. I’m not just saying, “Write a great first scene.” I’m saying: “Tell a story.” In other words, hook the reader with something, then make them have to keep reading the rest of the scene to find out how that hook concludes. A female hacker must escape a group of men who have come to capture her (The Matrix). A man calling a babysitter and telling her he’s going to kill her then hanging up (Scream). A man wakes up on a train with no idea why he’s there or who he is (Source Code). The reason to do this is because it’s one of the easiest ways to pull someone in quickly. And contests readers are exhausted so you want to pull them in quickly.

3) Professional presentation – Correct formatting, no misspellings, no grammar mistakes, no punctuation mistakes, no light text from cheap screenwriting programs, no ultra-wide dialogue margins, no “condensed” mode to turn your 130 page script into a 110 page script regardless of the fact that all the lines overlap each other vertically. This one seems obvious but as someone who’s read a lot of amateur screenplays, I can tell you that a lot of you who think you’re being professional aren’t. If you’re someone who has written under three screenplays, you are probably making some mistakes in your presentation. Become OCD about your presentation. It’s one of the most reliable ways for us readers to spot bad scripts.

4) Your dialogue is thin, obvious, and on the nose – While there’s plenty of debate about what constitutes the difference between good and great dialogue, everybody knows what bad dialogue is. Bad dialogue is characters saying exactly what they’re thinking in simplistic uncreative ways. It is characters espousing exposition like robots. It is characters who are speaking directly to the reader as opposed to the other character in the scene. It’s a long road to become good at dialogue but the starting point is your characters. If the characters are fun talky types, they’re going to have more interesting dialogue. If you know the character well, you’ll be able to write more specific dialogue for them (example: If you know your character once lived in France, they may occasionally throw a French word into a sentence). And if you know how to inject conflict into a scene, your dialogue will improve exponentially.

5) Know your audience – There’s an old documentary with Vince Vaughn where he takes a group of young comics out on the road to do stand up. One of Vince’s comedian’s central bits was about how real men don’t wear sandals. At their first show, he went on about how sandals are for wussies. The problem? They were at a Colorado college campus where 90% of the college men in the audience were wearing sandals. The boos from that crowd still echo in his ears to this day. What’s the lesson here? STOP SENDING GENRES TO CONTESTS THAT DON’T CELEBRATE THOSE GENRES. The Nicholl doesn’t celebrate horror scripts just as The Tracking Board doesn’t celebrate two American Indians trying to start a rug business in 1865. You live in the age of the internet. Do not send your script ANYWHERE until you go to their website and find out every script that has won and placed in their contest for the past five years. You’re going to save yourself a lot of wasted money. Trust me.

6) Contests tend to reward ingenuity – Most scripts read like every other script. The contained thrillers, the biopics, the Westerns, the guy with a gun, the buddy cop, the heist movie. There isn’t anything wrong with writing one of these scripts and executing it well. You can start a career with a great version of any of these genres. But in contests, these scripts blend into the background because they’re so common. The scripts that rise up tend to be those that try something different. For example, Shimmer Lake, which won Austin years back and later became a Netflix movie. That was a mystery that was told backwards. Stuff like 500 Days of Summer. Or yesterday’s and Tuesday’s scripts. There’s so much of the same in these contests that you stand out with a creative storytelling take.

7) You need at least 5 contests (with a single script) to know where you stand – A single contest not liking your script isn’t enough to identify where the script is or where you are as a writer. There are too many variables involved. However, if you send your script to five contests and it doesn’t advance in any of them (even to the second round), there’s likely something wrong with THE BASICS OF YOUR SCREENWRITING. We’re talking bad presentation, a huge page count, a vague concept, misspellings and grammatical errors, not understanding the basics of scene-writing (beginning, middle, end), lack of clarity in the writing, an inability to set up your hero effectively, no concept of what conflict is or how to use it. Good screenwriters have all the basics down. If you’re not advancing at all in contests, I can almost guarantee you it’s because you don’t know all of these things. So learn them and get back in there with your next script.

8) If you’ve written more than six scripts and still aren’t placing in any contests, GET FEEDBACK – I know I’m expensive so you don’t have to use me. But find SOMEBODY who understands screenwriting and can be honest with you. Otherwise you’re flying blind. You have no idea what to work on or what to improve. About five years ago, this writer came to me with this very problem. He’d been writing for 15 years and had never placed in a contest before. So he ordered a consultation and his script was this completely zany out-there concept. It was so weird. Out of curiosity, I asked him to send me the loglines for his previous five scripts. They were all really weird and out-there. It would be the equivalent of writing Armageddon and adding a cannibal storyline where one of the cannibals was a ghost. I said to him, dude, you’re all over the place. You need to simplify your concepts and stop trying to be so zany. And the next script I read from him was a major improvement. And he admitted to me that he would’ve never known his ideas were too weird had he not gotten feedback. He had been told early on that you have to write something that’s unique to get people’s attention and he mistakingly took that advice and applied it 1 million percent. The point is, you could be making the most obvious mistake with your script but if you don’t get feedback every once in a while, you’ll never know.

9) If you’ve consistently placed in contests (top 10 or 20%) but can’t get any further, you’re probably in one of two positions – a) You’re extremely talented but raw. Half your script has flashes of Tarantino but the other half feels like a compilation of Donald Trump’s tweets. b) You’re a screenplay technician who’s mastered the formula, but your script lacks big risks and stand out moments. There’s not enough creativity in your storytelling. If you’re the former, put aside six months and learn the nuts and bolts of screenwriting (especially structure). If you’re the latter, watch all of the weirdest (good) movies you can find and study the choices the screenwriters make that result in such a unique viewing experience.

10) Your script is only going to be as good as its concept and main character – Lame uninspired concepts do not turn into good scripts. Boring/weak/lame main characters don’t all of a sudden become interesting on page 90. You can be a good screenwriter but if you’re entering contests with one of these two problems, your script isn’t going to do well. Period.

I hope this was helpful. Leave your favorite contests in the Comments Section and I’ll put together a master list here.

SO FAR

Nicholl
Austin
Page
The Tracking Board

So I watched that Blurry Man Twilight Zone episode you guys recommended last night and now I’m furious with you. That episode was the definition of a “biding time until the twist” script. They literally hit the same beat 50 times in a row. And the big twist wasn’t even a twist. It was more of a shocker. Anyway, you now owe me a suggestion. I’m going to check out at least one Black Mirror episode this weekend. If you see them, let me know which one it should be. And for everyone else – IT’S TIME FOR THE SCREENPLAY SHOWDOWN!!!

If you haven’t played Amateur Showdown before, it’s a cut throat single weekend screenplay tournament where the scripts have been vetted from a pile of hundreds to be featured here, for your entertainment. It’s up to you to read as much of each script as you can, then vote for your favorite in the comments section. Whoever receives the most votes by Sunday 11:59pm Pacific Time gets a review next Friday. If you’d like to submit your own script to compete in a future Amateur Showdown, send a PDF of your script to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the title, genre, logline, and why you think your script should get a shot.

Good luck!

Title: An Invitation to You
Genre: Dark Comedy
Logline: A bitter empty-nester begrudgingly heads to a secluded resort for solo travelers and is introduced to herself — literally. Awkward dislike gives way to all out warfare when she discovers that only one version of herself will leave at the end of the weekend.
Why You Should Read: The dramatic question at the heart of this story is “Can/should I love myself as I am?” I think it’s a relevant question, because people suck. I know I let myself down all the time. When they first meet themselves, some of the characters in this story detest themselves. Others depress themselves. And others are so infatuated with themselves that they jump right into the sack. I honestly don’t know how I would react if I met myself, which has been part of the fun of writing this story — I get to inhabit every possibility.

One of the big challenges of this story has been figuring out how to present six pairs of “doubles” in a way that isn’t infuriating for the reader (I’m dying to read Jordan Peele’s script for US to see how he did it). I hope I’ve succeeded, but I am very open to feedback!

Also, the action lines of this script aren’t written in first person, so hopefully it will piss fewer people off than my last AOW script. :)

Title: Once Upon a Time in La Mancha
Genre: Western/Comedy
Logline: An old rancher obsessed with dime novels and cowboy stories heads West with his trusting farmhand to offer his own brand of unneeded justice.
Why You Should Read: A Western retelling of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, I wanted to translate the chivalric ideals the eponymous character had 400 years ago to a more American and recent setting, transporting the hapless knight near the Mexican-American border to a time when the mythical Old West was dying. Hope you read and enjoy my interpretation!

Title: THE KEEPERS OF THE CUP
Genre: Action/Comedy
Logline: Two die-hard hockey fans thwart a Russian terrorist attack by stealing the Stanley Cup and travel across North America to deliver it in time for Game 7… It’s GET HIM TO THE GREEK meets CELTIC PRIDE.
Why You Should Read: What if I told you amidst a world of boozing, fighting, trash-talking and hockey, there were two men who were the calm within the storm? And what if I told you that these two men were at the center of an outrageously funny story? Would you believe me? Would you believe them? Now if you’re looking for a script with award winning credentials, this won’t be for you. It has too much personality. (Though it did get me named a Universal Pictures Emerging Writers Fellowship finalist if that means anything. (It doesn’t.)) But if you are looking to be entertained, to laugh, and to wonder how on Earth two life-long best friends at the breaking point of their friendship find themselves on the run from Russian terrorists with none other than THE STANLEY CUP, then this is for you. No! This is meant for you. This is the fictional, true story of how these two friends assume the role of “Keepers of the Cup,” a real job where employees of the NHL guard the NHL the legendary Stanley Cup with their lives 365 days a year. This is a story about friendship, this is a story about duty, this is a story about country, and this is a story about becoming the best version of you. This is “The Keepers of The Cup.” I hope you enjoy. If you don’t, well, the Stanley Cup Finals are on.

Title: 48 Hour Token
Genre: Thriller
Logline: Whilst performing an autopsy, a forensic pathologist suspects the body is from the future on a failed mission to prevent a world catastrophe. He must now decide whether to continue the mission, a task that requires bombing a commercial airliner on a transatlantic flight.
Why You Should Read: Money problems. Custody battles. Drinking on the job. A penchant for violence. 48 Hour Token is a high concept thriller that demands a common but deeply flawed man to prevent a world catastrophe whilst fighting to keep his sanity. To save the world, it’s usually expected you must don the spandex to fight the battle between good and evil. In the real world, the protagonists often come with baggage and the room for failure is non existent.

This isn’t a blind submission. In preparation for this Amateur Offerings, I have utilised several coverage services that most followers of this website would be familiar with. 48 Hour Token has been labelled a ‘well constructed thriller’ with ‘multiple, diverse elements’ whilst containing ‘realistic dialogue for the genre’.

Title: Sib
Genre: Psychological thriller
Logline: A young bride’s dream wedding descends into a nightmare after her estranged sister shows up and desperately tries to convince her that the charming groom is actually a sadistic psychopath.
Why You Should Read: One of my previous scripts, an hour long pilot, was optioned to a successful producer out in LA. The project quickly fell into limbo though, so I decided to refocus on my first love of writing features.

My next project, a horror/dark comedy, was chosen to compete in an ‘amateur offerings’ round a few months back, where it ended up finishing in second place. This was slightly heartbreaking but it definitely gave me inspiration to finish up this current project and resubmit, in hopes of potentially landing a review from Carson this time around.

With ‘Sib’, I really aimed to write a concise and continuously moving story. Clocking in at 93 pages, it’s a quick read. I drew inspiration from some of my favorite filmmakers such as Darren Aronofsky and Lars Von Trier, and tried to take the story to some dark and strange places, culminating in an unsettling and hopefully unexpected third act. I’d appreciate the opportunity to participate in another amateur showdown, everyone’s feedback last time was very insightful. Thanks for your time!

My friends, it’s going to be a loooooong weekend. That’s right. It’s Memorial Day this Monday. Which means no Scriptshadow until TUESDAY!! How are you going to survive? No idea. But Tuesday I will be reviewing the Netflix movie, “The Perfection.” I heard it was totally bonkers and that you need to go into it knowing nothing. So that’s what I’m going to do. Oh, and you must watch it while eating grilled hot dogs if you want to participate in the discussion. That’s Scriptshadow law.

It’s going to be a fun weekend as I’ve included lots of familiar faces. Should make for a lively discussion.

If you haven’t played Amateur Showdown before, it’s a cut throat single weekend screenplay tournament where the scripts have been vetted from a pile of hundreds to be featured here, for your entertainment. It’s up to you to read as much of each script as you can, then vote for your favorite in the comments section. Whoever receives the most votes by Monday 11:59pm Pacific Time, gets a review next Friday. If you’d like to submit your own script to compete in a future Amateur Showdown, send a PDF of your script to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the title, genre, logline, and why you think your script should get a shot.

Title: ROXBURY MANOR
Genre: Contained Thriller
Logline: When burglars invade her secluded country manor, a stubborn elderly widow must use her intimate knowledge of the building and her collection of ancient weaponry to defeat them.
Why You Should Read: This script is the result of some real world pain and the desire to understand the grieving process, combined with the commercially appealing idea of Home Alone with a stubborn elderly woman. I think there are a great many talented senior female actors who would love to have a little fun with a role like this. Of course I first need to make sure the script fulfills that potential, so I am turning it over to the SS faithful in the hope that they share their wisdom.

Title: Special Report
Genre: Sci Fi/Action
Logline: After discovering that a new teleportation technology has the power to rid the world of pollution and disease, an ambitious field reporter races to make the information public before the corrupt Secretary of Transportation can stop her.
Why You Should Read: What would happen if a transporter machine actually existed? How awesome would it be to be able to instantly go from one place to another? How would it affect our day to day lives? Air quality? Our economy? These are questions I would ask myself after getting a job that took me far away from my friends and family for years at a time. The answers came to me as a thrilling adventure story that takes place in the near future. Special Report leads you on a race around the world from the transporter’s origins while a corrupt government sect tries to prevent its knowledge from being released to the public. This combination of sci-fi and action became an exciting way for my protagonist to tell her story of the century. I would be extremely grateful for any notes/constructive criticism you would be willing to share with me. Happy Reading!!

Title: Deepfake
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A film school dropout with a talent for producing AI-generated “deepfake” videos is caught in a global conspiracy when he receives a disturbing commission from a mysterious online stranger.
Why You Should Read: If you haven’t yet seen deepfakes in the news, you will. This emerging AI-powered technology lets anyone with an average gaming PC churn out eerily lifelike fake videos of people. The social and political implications of this technology are huge, and it has politicians, generals, artists, and celebrities freaking out. Someone is going to make a movie about deepfakes. I hope it’s this one, and I think my background in tech makes for a story that’s plausible and well-researched while still being thrilling, unpredictable, and character-driven.

Title: The Profoundly Vulgar Gospel According to Lucy
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy
Logline: In the spirit of Monty Python, God’s wild and foul-mouthed daughter tells her absurdly comic story to a young priest as he wrestles with the idea that she’s actually Lucifer himself.
Why You Should Read: Look: I fully believe I’m going to catch a certain level of hell for this one. But I set out to write a story about fathers and daughters (on a cosmic-scale, mind you) with a tremendously complex and funny female lead role. What resulted is an epically-structured, dialogue-heavy, unabashedly sexual, politically incorrect, profanity-filled and perverse retelling of the whole of Western Civilization from its beginning to its end. Still on board? Well, have fun. I certainly did.

Title: We Are Not Safe Here
Genre: Horror Anthology
Logline: Nine short stories spanning all genres of horror, each following a traveler in search of sanctuary.
Why You Should Read: It’s time for a new FIRST on ScriptShadow: an anthology! WE ARE NOT SAFE HERE is a collection of nine unique horror shorts, each penned by a different writer from the Screenwriters Network Discord server. We teamed up, brainstormed, wrote, workshopped, and wove our stories together with seamless transitions similar to SOUTHBOUND and LOVE, DEATH & ROBOTS. The end result: nine terrifying tales of characters seeking safety from the horrors hot on their heels. Good luck to all the participants!