Genre: Comedy
Premise: (Original Twit-Pitch Logline) Two partners in the newly created Douche Patrol try to expose a plot to douchify the masses through a reality TV show.
About: For those recently joining Scriptshadow, I held a contest a few months back called “Twit-Pitch,” where anyone could pitch me their screenplay on Twitter, as long as it was contained within a single tweet.  I picked my 100 favorite loglines and read the first 10 pages of each (which I live-reviewed on Twitter), and then from those, picked the Top 20, which I’ll read the entire screenplay for.  This is one of the finalists.
Writer: William A. Lawrence
Details: 103 pages

We’re back with another Twit-Pitch contestant.  There are 20 finalists and as of now I have…….18 left to read. I’m so cruising.  And I’m not going to lie – there’s a bit of planning involved in reviewing these scripts.  I’m saving the ones I think are going to be best for last.  That’s not to say I’m expecting the scripts I review early to suck.  They just have little things that concern me here and there, like today’s script, Douche Patrol.

Douche Patrol has one of those loglines that makes you laugh but also makes you wonder, “Is this an entire film?”  I mean can you extend a premise like this out for a full 100 minutes? That’s what I was worried about, even though I laughed my ass off during those first 10.  Well, let’s hope William pulls it off.  He’s been the epitome of an anti-douchebag to me on Twitter, so I’m rooting for him.

Late 20s Ryan Connor has a problem with douchebags.  His parents were killed by one.  Which is why he’s the star cop in a new police division specifically built to take down douchebags.  If you’re driving a lime green Honda Civic, blasting obnoxious music, reclined 70% back, talking on your phone?  The Douche Patrol is going to get you.

Ryan’s partner is the alcoholic overly shy Jenna Snow.  Jenna believes just as much in taking douches down as Ryan.  She’s just not as vocal about it.  In fact, Jenna has such a problem voicing her opinion on anything, she’s turned heavily to the drink and secretly goes to public speaking courses at night.

After a routine takedown of a douchebag, Ryan and Jenna are led to a sex bomb MILF named Marlene Cardrow (think Sharon Stone).  Marlene seems to be associated with a lot of douchebags, and they want to know why.  But Marlene is cool as a cucumber.  It turns out she’s a casting director for reality TV shows.  It’s her job to go out there and look for douchebags to put on these shows.

That’s good enough for Ryan, who’s instantly smitten by Marlene, but Jenna’s not swayed.  Something more is going on here.  It takes her awhile to convince Ryan, but she finally does, and this leads them to realize Marlene is working for a huge reality TV show producer who’s using reality TV to douchify the masses so that he can get them to buy all the stupid douchey things that douchebags buy.  It will take everything in Ryan and Jenna’s arsenal to eliminate this producer’s douchiness and stop the douchefying before it’s too late!

I’ll be frank with you – I’m still not sure what constitutes being a douchebag.  I think about this often actually.  Isn’t the saying that if you don’t see the big deal about something, then maybe you ARE that something?  So maybe I’m a douchebag.  I don’t know.  I mean I definitely don’t own a lime green Honda Civic.  So I’m probably not a major douchebag.  But still.

All right, we’re getting off track here.  Which is douchey.  Douche Patrol is pretty much what I was afraid it was going to be.  It’s a funny idea for about 25 pages, and then when story and character development need to kick in, it loses steam.

That’s not for lack of trying on William’s part.  He does his best to add a story here.  But the thing with really broad premises is that it’s difficult to add depth to them.  Broad and depth just don’t mesh.  That’s why broad usually works best in a half hour format (Seinfeld, Family Guy, etc.) where it doesn’t have to come up with some big elaborate storyline to keep you involved.

I mean take Jenna for instance.  William worked really hard to create a developed character here, but it just didn’t fit.  Jenna is an alcoholic??  In a movie about douche patrolling?  That doesn’t work.  Indeed, her storyline (where she sneaks off after work and downs bottles of whiskey) feels as awkward as cleaning up a used douche.  In a drama, sure.  But not in a kooky broad comedy.

Speaking of Jenna, if I were William, I would turn her into a guy.  I know making her a girl is unique – but different doesn’t always mean better.  In addition to that, the whole thing where she’s quiet doesn’t play.  Scripts don’t work well with silent characters because we just end up forgetting they’re there.  And again, in a movie as broad as this, you want the sidekick to be fun, not mute.  Turning Jenna into a guy and making him a lot funnier is definitely the way to go here.  Jenna, as she stands, is the worst part of the screenplay.

The plot also had problems.  Once we arrest Lime Green Honda Civic Dude, Ryan seems hellbent on finding and questioning Marlene.  But it’s never clear exactly why.  She’s been seen in a picture with him, but I don’t know why that constitutes concentrating an entire investigation on her.  Also, because the reasoning for questioning her is so murky, I’m never sure what he’s asking her for or about.  I get that in general it’s about her hanging around douches, but again, that’s not enough.

If I were William, I’d establish that they’ve been looking for a MYSTERIOUS SUPER DOUCHEBAG (possibly the producer) for a long time.  But as of now, he’s just a mystery man to them.  There are no leads. When they find Marlene, there’s some suspicious backstory on her that alludes to her maybe knowing this Super Douche, and that’s why they go after her.  There are fragments of this approach in the script, but they’re too vague.  They need to be clear.  Remember, this is the plot point that’s driving your entire investigation.  It can’t be confusing.

This is where a lot of comedy scripts end up.  They have funny moments, but not enough story.  Coming up with a comedy interesting enough (and with high enough stakes) to last an entire 100 minutes is one of those challenges that screenwriters get paid the big bucks for.  Make us care beyond the gimmick and you’re golden.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: (original Twit-Pitch logline) With his favorite fast-food sandwich facing its final week before it’s phased out forever, an obsessed man leads a protest to save it.
About: For those recently joining Scriptshadow, I held a contest a few months back called “Twit-Pitch,” where anyone could pitch me their screenplay on Twitter, as long as it was contained within a single tweet.  I picked my 100 favorite loglines and read the first 10 pages of each (which I live-reviewed on Twitter), and then from those, picked the Top 20, which I’ll read the entire screenplay for.  Yesterday I thought, “What better way to kick off the reads than to review one of the finalists on Scriptshadow?”  So here we are.  Welcome…to the first entry in the Twit-Pitch Top 20!
Writer: Jerry Hernandez.
Details: 103 pages

I met today’s writer, Jerry Hernandez, AND his beautiful wife, at the Scriptshadow meet-up last week (at a bar called The Village Idiot – keep all jokes to yourself please).  Like everyone I met, he was extremely nice and fun to hang out with.  Which of course means I won’t be able to say anything bad about his script.

However, this is a competition, which means not everyone wins the gold medal.  And there were some things that worried me going into a full Gravy Train feast.  I love Jerry’s opening scene, which is why I advanced it.  But the end of the ten pages started to peter out just a little, and it had me wondering: Can Jerry extend this premise out to an entire feature-length film?  Let’s find out.

Rough-around-the-edges Middle School teacher Bronson Matas has one love in his life – Going to his favorite fast food restaurant, DJ’s, and ordering the “Gravy Train.”  Sure, the Gravy Train (a mound of turkey, gravy, bread and grease) is 4000 calories and cuts a month out of your lifespan whenever you eat one.  But dammit, isn’t that the American way?  To be able to physically watch yourself get fatter during a meal in hopes that one day you can be one of those Walmart shoppers riding around in those shopping scooters?

Bronson thinks so.

Unfortunately, DJ’s doesn’t think so.  Lawsuits from overly obese customers who somehow weren’t aware that 4000 calorie meals make you diabetes-ridden Jabba the Hut clones, have destroyed store margins, leaving DJ’s on the brink of bankruptcy.  One of the execs has an idea though.  The Veggie Train.  Not only is it healthy, but it costs 1/4 the budget of the Gravy Train to make!

And so the unthinkable happens.  An announcement is made that The Gravy Train will be phased out.  Well this, like turkeys, just doesn’t fly with Bronson.  The Gravy Train is his f*cking LIFE!  So he grabs his best friend and roommate, Randy (who ironically hates the Gravy Train) and begins a campaign to save the sandwich.

However, things get tricky when PETA clone “Animals Are People Too” come out in droves to make sure the Gravy Train stays dead.  Bronson realizes that if his campaign is going to get noticed, he’ll have to add numbers.  So he launches a Twitter campaign that finds him…well, the exact kind of people you’d expect to find wanting to save a 4000 calorie sandwich (a bunch of losers).  

Concurrently, Bronson is trying to get with his old high school flame, Golda, who’s since gone on to create a Tia Tequila-like empire for herself, singing pop songs as deep as desert puddles.  Bronson and Golda used to make love while eating Gravy Trains, so there’s obviously a personal attachment here.  But when Golda switches allegiances and sides with the Veggie Train, Bronson will have to make the most difficult decision of his life – Love…..or sandwich.

Usually when I go back to a script I liked, I see the flaws more clearly, since I’m more concentrated on the writing than the story.  But surprisingly enough, I actually liked Ridin’ The Gravy Train’s first 10 BETTER the second time around than the first.  It’s my kind of humor.  And there was just an effortlessness to the way Hernandez wrote his pages.  One of the most powerful tools a writer can possess is the ability to make a screenplay not seem like a screenplay, but rather real life happening before our eyes.  And I felt that during those first ten.

But things did start to get bumpy after those initial pages, some of which had to do with the thin premise and some of which had to do with the hero himself.  First of all, I’m not sure we like Bronson.  That’s not to say we NEED to like the lead in a comedy script.  The funnier a character is, the more we’ll put up with.  And Bronson is funny.  But he’s just such a loser and is so selfish and so mean-spirited, I had a hard time rooting for the guy.

In fact, Bronson gets more unlikable as the script goes on.  He becomes more selfish (never once listens to his friends and only looks out for his own interests), more angry (thinks all his students are idiots and treats them like shit) and consistently acts like a loser (his only real goal besides saving the sandwich is getting high).

And I understand it’s a delicate line.  A lot of humor can be mined from anger/cruelty/selfishness.  Look no further than Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.  But I think that character is the exception to the rule.  Most heroes, particularly when they’re not yet embodied by an actor America’s familiar with, need at least one thing to make us like them.  Because if we like them, we want to root for them.  I’m not sure what that trait needs to be with Bronson, but I’m pretty sure he needs it.

Another issue was the structure.  The Gravy Train sandwich is eliminated from the menu about 12 pages into the script.  However, after another 12 pages, it’s put back on the menu, and we go from “Gravy Train is gone” to “Gravy Train is back for a month and gets a farewell tour.”  I don’t think Jerry meant for it to come off this way, but it felt like the plot was stalling.  It was a weak development, since both issues were essentially the same.  Why not have him come in the first time and learn that the Gravy Train is starting its farewell tour?  Then you’re not wasting 12 pages.  It’s not a huge deal, but in a script where people are going in questioning the premises’ legs, it looks bad when you’re already repeating similar plot developments in the first act.

The last couple of issues I had were motivation-based.  I wasn’t sure why the bad guys wanted to eliminate the Gravy Train so badly.  Yeah, there’s the cost-cutting thing, but that was a throwaway line.  These guys are fighting our hero tooth-and-nail throughout the screenplay to eliminate this sandwich.  If I’m not sure why they’re doing it, then the conflict between them and Bronson feels manufactured.  Why not make it so a new evil Vegan CEO takes over the company, and it’s his idea to turn the franchise vegan.  I’m not sure a Vegan villain has been done before, so that could be kind of funny.

The other motivation issue was the road trip.  I’m not sure why we went on it.  Yeah, it was a way to introduce some entertaining set pieces (I particularly liked the Anti-Mexican Infestation Militia – self-proclaimed protectors of the Border), but I wasn’t clear on why the characters didn’t just stay in LA.  It felt like they would’ve gotten a lot more publicity there.  Maybe if, say, they realized they needed to drive to the company headquarters in Omaha to make a real impression, that would’ve made sense.  But the way it came off in the script was, “Let’s go on a road trip.” “Why?” “Because I want to.”

Now all of this might seem like nitpicking, but motivation is actually very important in comedy.  If we’re not convinced that the characters need or desperately want to do what they’re doing, then the situations aren’t nearly as funny.  For example, in Bridesmaids, when Annie and Helen are trying to out-toast each other at the wedding shower, that scene doesn’t work unless we know how deeply each one wants to prove that they’re Lillian’s best friend.  Without that motivation, they’re just two characters on a stage goofing off.  So you want to make sure motivation is always strong in a comedy.

Having said all of that, Jerry’s a good writer and this script has some great moments.  The character of Courtney Langdon, an overtly angry FBI agent who’s torn between his love of the Gravy Train and his duty to the FBI, was a highlight.  In fact, there was never a moment during this read where I didn’t have a smile on my face.  I’m just stuck wondering if there’s enough of a story here to carry an entire movie.  Either way, I’ll be looking forward to Jerry’s next!

Script Link: Ridin The Gravy Train

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

What I Learned: The title of Jerry’s document is “RTGTNicholl,” which I assume means this is his Nicholl draft.  Here’s a tip folks.  Never submit a comedy to Nicholl unless you’re doing something TOTALLY ORIGINAL with the script.  Tell your story backwards, out of sequence, in a made-up language, in the first person, whatever.  But I have never, in all the years Nicholl’s been running, seen a traditional comedy win.  They’re just not comedy-friendly over there.

For those playing catch-up, Twit-Pitch was a contest I held where anyone could pitch me their screenplay on Twitter as long as it was contained within a single tweet. I chose the top one hundred loglines from those pitches and read the first 10 pages of each, which I live-reviewed on Twitter every evening (join me on Twitter – just yesterday I reached 10,000 followers!), giving writers a rare look into a reader’s head as the screenplay was being read. It was an interesting experience. To read the original discussion of the loglines and contest, head over to the 1300-comment post that occurred afterwards.

So where are we now? Well, the contest resulted in seven scripts whose first 10 pages were so good, they automatically advanced to the finals. There were then twenty “maybes,” pages that were good enough to catch my interest, but not good enough to automatically advance. I went back through those 20 “First Tens” and read them again, picking 13 to join the other 7 in the finals.

Now before I get to the finalists, I want to point out the biggest problem I ran into while reading everyone’s first ten pages. It’s something that happened too many times. There were a LOT of great first scenes, but a lot of bad SECOND scenes.

This is a devastating mistake to make because it speaks to a bigger issue. New writers LOVE writing first scenes. They LOVE pulling the audience in with something wild or weird or different or exciting. But the second they get to their second scene, which usually involves meeting their main character, they stumble around a formless scenario that only barely resembles a movie scene.

In other words, they don’t approach their second scene with the same gusto and “this has to be great” approach they do their first scene. And not surprisingly, this approach continues throughout the script. There are key scenes (the inciting incident, the scene where the hero gets his powers, the scene where the hero meets the female lead, the final battle) where the writer puts everything he has into them. But every other scene? They’re just trying to get through it.

Please – CHANGE THIS APPROACH! Sure, a scene where we meet our main character may not initially seem as exciting as that opening scene where the aliens land on earth. But your job as a writer is to make it JUST AS ENTERTAINING!

Out of curiosity, I watched John Carter yesterday, and was shocked to see that even the highest level professionals make this mistake. We start off with some sort of Mars battle (which wasn’t very good – but at least something was happening). Then we cut to our main character, John Carter, being secretly followed by someone through an Old West town. Carter realizes he’s being followed and knows he has to ditch the tail. So what does he do? He darts behind a group of people. The tail keeps walking, losing him, and we see that John Carter has blended in by keeping his back turned towards us while flirting with a random woman.

THAT’S YOUR FREAKING ESCAPE SCENE???? THAT’S HOW YOU INTRODUCE YOUR MAIN FREAKING CHARACTER??? BY COMING UP WITH THE MOST UNINVENTIVE STANDARD DITCH SCENE IN THE HISTORY OF MOVIES??? HE BLENDS IN WITH THE CROWD AND FLIRTS WITH A GIRL???

At that moment, I knew the movie was screwed. If the writer wasn’t trying to come up with an inventive ditch scene in the very second scene of the movie, then how could I expect him to try on the 20th scene in the movie, or the 30th? I mean look at another chase scene – the Millennium Falcon trying to ditch a Star Destroyer in Empire Strikes Back. You know what happens in that scene? Han Solo turns around and ATTACKS A SHIP 10,000 TIMES BIGGER THAN HIS. The Empire is so surprised, they don’t know what to do. Then, the Falcon disappears from their radar. We eventually learn that Solo has attached his ship to the side of the Star Destroyer, making him invisible. THAT’S a clever scene. THAT’S a scene where the writers actually tried.

The point here is that you can NEVER TAKE SCENES OFF IN A SCRIPT. There shouldn’t be a single scene where you say, “I just need to get through this.” You should try to write the best scene possible every time out. Even if it’s a freaking exposition scene. You need to try and write the best exposition scene you can possibly write. Because I guarantee you, if you take scenes off, we’ll get bored. Don’t EVER let the reader get bored. Always do your best.

Okay, sorry about that. Done with my rant. Here were the original Top 100 of the First Annual Scriptshadow Twit-Pitch Contest. And now HERE are the Top 20 finalists. I will be reading these scripts in full (possibly on Twitter – but still haven’t decided yet) and announcing a winner in 6-8 weeks. Read the first 10 of each yourself and let me know who your frontrunners are.

DEFINITES

1) RE-ENACTMENT – A civil war expert and his son must fight to survive a reenactment organized by a dangerous southern cult.

2) THE TRADITION – 1867 After losing her father, a woman unwittingly takes a job as a maid at a countryhouse of aristocratic cannibals.

3) SECOND CHANCE – After winning a nationwide lottery a man must decide what to do with his prize, fifteen minutes of advice to give to his younger self.

4) THE PROVING GROUND – 9 strangers wake in a deserted Mexican town besieged by killing machines: they must discover why they’ve been brought there to survive.

5) TUNDRA – When a U-Boat vanishes in the 1940s, it leads a team of American GIs to a terrifying secret trapped beneath the ice of Antarctica.

6) GUEST – After checking into a hotel to escape her abusive husband, a woman realizes guests in the next room are holding a young girl hostage.

7) GUNPLAY – A terrorist with a $10 mill bounty, a callous soldier of fortune and a mysterious man with no name walk into a bar in Afghanistan.

MAYBES THAT MADE THE CUT

8) FATTIES – When a lonely masochistic chubby chaser is abducted by two fat lesbian serial killers, it’s the best thing that ever happened to him.

9) RING OF LIAR – A lifelong bachelor accidentally proposes to his clingy girlfriend then tries to trick her into dumping him, but the tables soon turn.

10) THE MAN OF YOUR DREAMS – Man loves woman whose dreams predict future, but future she sees isn’t with him. Can he convince her to choose love over fate?

11) THE LAST ROUGH RIDER – It’s 1901. Terrorists have just taken over the White House. And only Theodore Roosevelt can stop them.

12) WOODEN – 22yrs old and tired of the pain and suffering of being a real boy,Pinocchio embarks on a journey to get turned back into a puppet.

13) EVERYTHING FALLS APART – When the world’s biggest superhero agreed to grant a dying boy’s last wish, he didn’t count on the boy wishing for all his powers.

14) UNTITLED WRIGHT BROTHERS – In 1903 North Carolina, the Wright bros attempt the first flight, but shenanigans arise when they fall in love with the same woman.

15) CUT, COPY, PASTE – A group of friends returns from a time-travel fieldtrip to find a nerdy student has altered his past turning him into a living legend.

16) CHAMPAGNE HIGHWAY – A man trying to solve the mystery of his con artist grandfather must overcome his own beliefs and the resistance of his broken family.

17) RIDING THE GRAVY TRAIN – With his favorite fast-food sandwich facing its final week before it’s phased out forever, an obsessed man leads a protest to save it.

18) SANTA MUST DIE – A group of last-minute shoppers trapped in a mall on Christmas Eve are stalked by a demon-possessed Santa. Horror/Comedy.

19) CRIMSON ROAD – Can it get any worse than living next door to a serial killer? It can if you live on CRIMSON ROAD… the whole street is full of them.

20) DOUCHE PATROL – Two partners in the newly created Douche Patrol try to expose a plot to douchify the masses through a reality TV show.

The writers of these scripts have 2 weeks FROM TODAY to get their full scripts to me. If they don’t, I have one alternate ready to take their place, “The Giant’s Passage.” –  So hurry up guys!

Note: No review today.

For those playing catch-up, Twit-Pitch was a contest I held where anyone could pitch me their screenplay as long as it was contained within a single tweet.  These are the Top 100 from a list that included nearly1000. These 100 will send me the first ten pages of their scripts, from which I’ll pick 20-25 full scripts to read.  To read a discussion of the loglines and contest, head over to the 1300-comment post that occurred afterwards.  You should also follow me on Twitter for updates, as I’ll occasionally be tweeting my responses to pages. 

There’s been a lot of discussion about what I picked and what I didn’t pick and I wanted to give you guys some insight into why I chose what I chose. I’ve run a few logline contests now and I’ve learned a few things in the process. The first is, wacky comedies tend to be the worst written scripts I read. The more broad something is, the less the writer seems to care about character and story (instead focusing solely on the jokes). And as you know from reading the site, character and story are the most important things to me. So that might explain why I didn’t pick that many comedies despite the fact that there were some pretty funny ideas out there. I was tired of getting burned.

The other thing I learned is that loglines that end with a vague mystery usually result in vague unsatisfying screenplays. So if you wrote something like, “A man discovers a secret room in his house that leads to a horror that he could’ve never imagined.” There’s just not enough information there. If I’m going to take two hours to read a script, I want to know what the script is about. So many of these loglines didn’t get chosen.

Now let me get into why I chose some of the ideas I did. You’ll notice that a lot of the ideas I picked contained irony. A writer who understands the value of irony in storytelling is usually ahead of the writer who doesn’t. In other words, if I was to come across this logline…


A lawyer wakes up on the day of his biggest trial only to learn that he cannot tell a lie.

I’d pick it over this one…

A lawyer wakes up on the day of his biggest trial only to learn that he can hear people’s thoughts.

Both of those ideas are high concept but the second one doesn’t contain any irony. The lawyer can really be anybody. So it’s not nearly as exciting of an idea.

Also, since everything that happened with The Disciple Program, I’ve been fortunate enough to talk to a lot of producers in the industry. And the thing I continue to hear is, “Bring me a movie I can sell.” Not “Bring me a movie that can win a BAFTA.” Not “Bring me a movie that will fill me with emotion.” But, “bring me a movie I can sell.” That’s not to say that emotion and character development and plotting aren’t important. You guys know now how much I value all of these things. But if those things aren’t inside a package a producer can put on a poster, or sell to the next guy above him, then they’re not interested. Remember, Good Will Hunting sold as a thriller. It wouldn’t have sold as a character piece.

So when I looked through these loglines, there was that little voice in the back of my head reminding me: Is this something you can give Producer A or Producer B and they’ll be interested? The only real producer in town who can get significant character development movies made without having to jump through a million hoops is Scott Rudin. And it’s hard to get to that guy.

Finally, my taste factored into this. You guys all know that I like time travel stuff. I’m also a bit of a sci-fi geek. So you saw a lot of those ideas here. I’m not really into witches and covenants, so loglines like those were at a disadvantage. And you know, sometimes I just took chances. I know the loglines weren’t traditionally ‘sound,’ but something said to me, “This sounds like a unique writer.” The Detroit salt mines one. It felt different. The dwarf opening a pizza shop. It felt different. The dead whale one. It felt different. And those were simply chosen on gut. Unfortunately, that’s not something you can predict when you’re constructing your idea. You never know which gut is going to be looking at your logline.

Now, on to the Twit-Pitch 100. The first 76 were my original picks, and the last 24 were new picks. I chose these by going back through the comments section in the massive Twit-Pitch post and seeing what people liked. I also browsed back through the pitches myself and added a few that didn’t hit me the first time.

I decided to bypass the direct-messaging I promised earlier because it takes a ridiculous amount of time to direct tweet on Twitter for some reason. Therefore, anybody who was favorited and anybody who shows up in the 23 alternates here, you have until Sunday midnight (pacific time) to send me your first 10 pages (to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with subject line: TWIT-PITCH). I’ll let you know next week what the due date is for the entire script, which will be roughly 2 months. Enjoy the pitches!

1) A pill-pushing psychiatrist must connect with his patients when a dissatisfied customer curses him with all of their disorders.

2) Early 1980s New Jersey: a 12-year-old decides to profile the local mob boss for his seventh grade English project.

3) North Atlantic, 1825. A whaling Captain and his mutinous crew are trapped on the body of a dead whale and must fight for survival.

4) A “This American Life” type documentary covering a monster attack on NYC, using found footage, like the 1st anniversary of 9/11

5) Werewolves on The Moon: It’s always a full moon on the moon.

6) After winning a nationwide lottery a man must decide what to do with his prize, fifteen minutes of advice to give to his younger self

7) Genesis Y2K: A Christian broadcasting network hires two failed filmmakers to create a TV series of the Bible before the apocalypse

8) After being framed for his father’s murder, an ex-Army medic goes on the run and uncovers a vast secret buried in Detroit’s salt mines

9) West Side story but hip-hop. Rival barber shops: Hella Cutty vs. Get Faded. Step it up 3 meets Leprechaun in the hood

10) On a dare, a young woman shaves her head… only to discover a pirate’s treasure map tattooed onto her scalp

11) When his fiancee gets promoted, a man must plan their wedding on his own. But he risks losing his bride when he becomes a groomzilla.

12) A troubled teen suspects his father may be trying to kill him for a life insurance payout when he’s involved in several “accidents”

13) A man trying to solve the mystery of his con artist grandfather must overcome his own beliefs and the resistance of his broken family.

14) An uptight half-white half-Latin man confronts his repressed heritage when he’s mistaken for a druglord while on business in Guatemala

15) An orphan grows up in a projection booth. He must use all he learned from movies to survive outdoors or lose his true love

16) A group of friends returns from a time-travel fieldtrip to find a nerdy student has altered his past turning him into a living legend.

17) A hoarder finds the girl of his dreams only to lose her in his apartment.

18) A TV executive is held hostage by the characters from a show he recently cancelled, who demand they be put back on the air.

19) An astrophysicist Jesuit priest suffers a crisis of faith triggered by the discovery of a destroyed civilization lightyears from home.

20) One man unaffected by a world inexplicably frozen in time, seeks a way to end the stasis, and finds to his peril that he’s not alone.

21) Firstclass: Mailmen vs. meter maids, battle in the secret civil servant war for control of the streets while trying to get disability.

22) A down on his luck Ice Cream Man agrees to transport stolen stem cells to Mexico only to find these cells are not from this planet.

23) A team of animals organize to fight the omnipotent Taxidermist after he inflicts their community with a deadly parasite

24) A 30 year old woman who dated twins in college believes that one of them was “The One”, if only she could remember which.

25) Two guys have one weekend to battle for the coveted ‘Godfather’ title to their best friend’s new daughter.

26) A terrorist with a $10 mill bounty, a callous soldier of fortune and a mysterious man with no name walk into a bar in Afghanistan

27) Secrets revealed, lives evaluated and relationships SLAUGHTERED after a small town reality cast deals with the murder of their lead.

28) A paranormal debunker is unknowingly invited to investigate a home by a ghost who is terrified by another evil entity lurking upstairs

29) Ex-CIA assassin unionizes an eclectic group of freelance hitmen to “negotiate” with their mob employers. Norma Rae meets RED

30) When the world’s biggest superhero agreed to grant a dying boy’s last wish, he didn’t count on the boy wishing for all his powers

31) When a suicide cult oddly resurrects in a small town, an ex-cop must uncover the truth, and find his own dead son has also risen

32) 9 strangers wake in a deserted Mexican town besieged by killing machines: they must discover why they’ve been brought there to survive

33) In 1903 North Carolina, the Wright bros attempt the first flight, but shenanigans arise when they fall in love with the same woman

34) The ghost of a legendary star gets tangled up in his own biopic when he needs the help of the heartthrob cast as him

35) Small town funeral home begrudgingly inherited is failing so the owner starts killing for business. Soon, his model goes national.

36) Can it get any worse than living next door to a serial killer? It can if you live on CRIMSON ROAD… the whole street is full of them.

37) Driven into exile by a goblin invasion, a mythological dwarf struggles to adapt to life as a pizzeria owner in upstate New York

38) When a lonely masochistic chubby chaser is abducted by two fat lesbian serial killers, it’s the best thing that ever happened to him.

39) Determined to find a date for his high school reunion, a loser hires a lifecoach who turns out to be his old school bully

40) An imprisoned Japanese-American doctor and a Caucasian nurse fall in love amid mounting tension inside a WWII internment camp

41) ORBIT – A team of astronauts orbiting the Earth find they may be the world’s only hope during a devastating alien attack.

42) When a billionaire sociopath is sent to death row, he offers $100 million cash to anyone that can successfully break him out

43) SPECIMEN – An amnesiac surgeon who wakes up chained to a steel slab must uncover why doctors are performing grisly operations on him.

44) While investigating a popular student’s unexplained disappearance, a high school psychologist realizes her stepson is a prime suspect.

45) After a series of murders, three survivors must help police piece together the previous night’s events. Rashomon meets Reunion

46) RE-ENACTMENT: A civil war expert and his son must fight to survive a reenactment organized by a dangerous southern cult

47) Douche Patrol: Two partners in the newly created Douche Patrol try to expose a plot to douchify the masses through a reality TV show

48) An ex-cop awakes in an alternative reality where normal people are locked up in mental institutions and society is runned by lunatics

49) After checking into a hotel to escape her abusive husband, a woman realizes guests in the next room are holding a young girl hostage.

50) 3 days after his wife and child die, a man discovers he can travel into the past, one day at a time, as long as he never falls asleep.

51) ActingCoach:a hi-school drama teacher becomes coach of the varsity basketball team, forcing his theater philosophies on the jocks

52) With his favorite fast-food sandwich facing its final week before it’s phased out forever, an obsessed man leads a protest to save it.

53) 3 men kill a friend for suspiciously losing their winning lotto ticket, only to later discover the missing ticket was in fact a loser

54) Head of time travel program learns world’ll be destroyed in 25 years and must stop the terrorist responsible: his 25-year-older self.

55) Desperate to divorce but cash-strapped, ornery newlyweds must put their feuding aside to sell their house, much less agree on a price.

56) AIRBORNE An outbreak of a lethal, unknown virus threatens the passengers and crew of a commercial airliner, forcing it to stay aloft

57) Futuristic re-imagining of SLEEPING BEAUTY. A young woman, cryogenically frozen for 100 years, is discovered in deep space.

58) A warrior sets out to track and kill the last giant – a lonely, anguished creature… and last link to an ancient, beautiful world.

59) The little known true story of how Matisse & Picasso went from being fierce rivals to BFFs.

60) To save his Mom’s home, an obnoxious 40 year old is given one chance: enter the teen TV quiz he had a meltdown on 25 years ago.

61) A group of last-minute shoppers trapped in a mall on Christmas Eve are stalked by a demon-possessed Santa. Horror/Comedy

62) A lowly museum curator races to find Pandora’s box before the resurrected Greek gods destroy the modern world.

63) A famous chef has a nervous breakdown and recovers while working at McDonald’s, where he rediscovers his love for food.

64) RomCom-Man loves woman whose dreams predict future, but future she sees isn’t with him. Can he convince her to choose love over fate?

65) A car thief finds a drug mule tied up in the trunk of his latest grab, then finds himself in the sights of the man who wants her back

66) Emilie can control time at will. When she’s hired to change a key event in a mathematical genius’s life, time begins to collapse

67) A lifelong bachelor accidentally proposes to his clingy girlfriend then tries to trick her into dumping him, but the tables soon turn

68) After forced to choose between her two children during a fire, Sarah fears she is now being haunted by the dead son she left behind.

69) A divorced dad adopts a puppy to fix his family but troubles arise when his ex’s new boyfriend joins his Puppy Kindergarten class

70) DEVIL’S DUE: A cave rescue team fights to escape a collapsing abandoned mine stalked by inhuman ghouls who can mimic victims.

71) After running away from home, an eight foot tall teenager stumbles upon a retirement town for sideshow performers.

72) When a U-Boat vanishes in the 1940s, it leads a team of American GIs to a terrifying secret trapped beneath the ice of Antarctica

73) A dwarf on the run from the mob impersonates the 7-year-old host of an irreverent children’s TV show.

74) After thwarting a terrorist hijacking, passengers debate what to do with the surviving bomber, who’s still set on finishing the job

75) ‘The Tradition’ 1867 After losing her father, a woman unwittingly takes a job as a maid at a countryhouse of aristocratic cannibals

76) After perfecting the ability to send data backwards in time, a brilliant quantum physicist must avert his future murder.

AND NOW – FOR THE ALTERNATES (YOUR PICKS!)

77) The Lipschitz Affair: When an art heist interrupts a wedding at the Guggenheim, everyone’s a suspect — even the bride and groom

78) The Shit List: With the help of his best friend, an underachiever seeks revenge on the people he blames for ruining his life #tp12

79) When a solar storm strands a lonesome geologist in the Canadian wild, she must journey through the dark to survive. “Borealis”

80) When fired by God, a hardworking guy decides to change path and ends up appointed CEO of Hell (, Inc).

81) A bridge appears over the Miss. river. A city official forms a blockade, but news that it travels you back in time starts a hysteria.

82) A chicken farmer watches in horror as his simple life is manipulated by a documentary filmmaker into a feature film.

83) Documentarian interviews Environmentalist Leader only to discover he’s a pawn of the Mob, disposing of bodies in newly created parks.

84) 22yrs old and tired of the pain and suffering of being a real boy,Pinocchio embarks on a journey to get turned back into a puppet.

85) A team of scientists lands on Mars to begin the terraformation process, but Mars fights back in RED MENACE.

86) A mundane father returns to his childhood imaginary world, only to find it has been corrupted by his life as an adult.

87) After a chance encounter, a young couple reunites a few months later only to find their love threatened by a dark secret.

88) It’s 1901. Terrorists have just taken over the White House. And only Theodore Roosevelt can stop them.

89) A high school senior discovers there is a conspiracy to stop him from having sex before graduation.

90) 3 girls spend their last summer before high school rebuilding a old fort and their crumbling friendship.

91) A bounty hunter has 30 days to catch his nemesis before the last spaceship departs, leaving him stranded and alone on a dying earth.

92) BLACKHATS: A hacker for hire finds himself in a deadly web of corporate espionage after being hired to steal the 1st sentient A.I.

93) Haunted by his daughter’s death, a reclusive CIA interrogator saves a suspect he’s ordered to torture; a young girl of alien origin.

94) Ecotourists stranded in a radioactive ghost town at Chernobyl face the threat of wolves, disfigured locals & their own social meltdown

95) 1022 BC. Family corruption and fierce enemy tribes plague the young warrior David as he plots his own rise and ascension to Israel’s throne.

96) Chris Kartje ‏ @chriskartje
When, on Xmas Eve, Santa lands on a frat house & eats all the pot cookies, itʼs up to the last sober Jew to be his designated driver.

97) A failed Elvis impersonator travels back in time to steal the life & career of the real Elvis.

98) New York 2029. The whole city is a walled in maximum security town for the wealthy. The world most dangerous criminal just dropped in.

99) Trapped in an increasingly nightmarish limbo, a dead boxer keeps returning to the ring, desperate for the win that’ll change his fate.

100) A rising young actress struggles to keep her sexuality a secret while falling for her female castmate & trying to succeed in Hollywood

Hey guys.  I’m going to do a little shifting around this week.  I’m moving my Tuesday review to Wednesday so I can do a full post about Twit-Pitch on Tuesday.  I want to answer some questions, explain why I chose the loglines I did, and just shed a little more light on the process.  I’ll also be revealing the 25 alternates that made the list.  In the meantime, I’ve been closely monitoring the comments section.  I’ve picked 13 of the 25 based on your collective enthusiasm so far.  So keep the discussion alive.  Oh, and thanks!  That post will be the first ever 1000 comment post in Scriptshadow history!!!