We’re about to get weird today. Like Studio 54 weird. First offs, señor Carson apologizes about no post offices yesterday. He got stuck in the back room of a Chuck E. Cheeses for reasons he’d rather not divulge. But Paul Clarke’s winning Amateur Offerings script WILL get reviewed next Friday. And that means today’s winner will get reviewed THE FOLLOWING Friday. Confused? So am I. Yeah, so, today’s showdown has a subplot. In addition to voting for which of these five scripts is the best, Mayhem and Klmn have challenged each other to a screenplay Death Match. I’m not sure what the rules of this match are, only that the loser has to jump into a pool of expired jello or something. Hey, it could be worse. They could have to jump into a tub of jello pudding pops with Bill Cosby offering to take care of the drinks. Read and vote for your favorite script in the comments. And if you want to enter your own script, send it to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the genre, title, logline, why we should read it, and a PDF of the script. Good luck to all! And to all a good jello fight!
Title: ALEXXXA
Genre: SCI-FI
Logline: In the year 2122, an insane humanoid recounts his epic quest to save a troubled sex robot he won off a space lotto scratch card.
Why You should Read: I was standing in line at In-N-Out wondering how the hell I could bribe Carson to get on AOW to face my robot nemesis, Klmn Jong-Un. I then gotta brilliant idea: ATTACH IN-N-OUT!! So I ordered $70 worth of food (not 100% sure what he likes). “Want these to go?” they asked. “No, to EMAIL. It’s for someone who potentially only exists on the internet.” I hopped on Gmail and clicked “ATTACH”. I smacked Double-Double’s into the screen. I poured Neapolitan milkshakes into the USB port. I replaced the motherboard with grilled onions. I dumped a pint of “SECRET SAUCE” on the keys. Finally, something called the “White Screen of Death” popped up. It was THEN I knew: my email had gone through!!! At least, I think it did. The people in lab coats only let me use the internet twice a month.
Title: DESTRUCTO
Genre: Black Comedy
Logline: A young programmer uncovers a conspiracy involving murderous androids. As he digs deeper, his investigation endangers his job, his brothers, and the woman he loves.
Why You Should Read: Some time ago, Mayhem Jones threw down the gauntlet to me – her robot script against mine. Well, she has advised me that she is now ready. So, I’ve oiled up my ‘droids and I’m ready to send ’em into combat.
She has intended this as a package deal, so we’re each attaching both scripts to our respective emails.
I hope you allow this to happen, lest the wrath of Mayhem befall you.
Title: Bon Jovi Sucks!
Genre: Comedy
Logline: In 1987 New Jersey, an aspiring rocker can win the big break of a lifetime opening for Bon Jovi, but when handicapped by a life threatening hairspray allergy, he attempts to cleanse the world of all hair-metal, beginning with hometown heroes Bon Jovi.
Why you should read: So, did you see X-Men this weekend and say to yourself “Damn! They really nailed what it was like to be a teenager in the 80s!” Then have I got a screenplay for you.
As aspiring writers of film, we all love movies and have our concerns about the current state of cinema. If you’re anything like me, when you open up Rotten Tomatoes and see the latest 370 million dollar CGI crap-fest that was written and rewritten by a team of fourteen professional writers using source material that was based on a video game, that was based on a theme park ride, that was based on a cartoon, that was based on a Hasbro toy, that was based on a different Japanese toy, that was based on a religion, that was based on a fever-dream induced by syphilis, and it’s sitting number one at the box office with a very robust 18% on the tomato-meter, then a little piece of you dies.
Now imagine you wake up one day with a literal allergy to CGI. You can’t go to a Cineplex or pass a Redbox or “Netflix and chill” without developing a rash and having your throat swollen shut. Your dreams of working in Hollywood crushed, because movies are literally trying to kill you. Would you lock yourself in your basement and cry yourself to sleep every night on your pillow of unproduced, Oscar caliber spec scripts or would you do everything in your power to rid mankind of the Michael Bays of the world? Well, Bon Jovi Sucks! is a slightly more realistic version of just that but with rock n’ roll.
It’s a subject I think most of us can relate to on some level, even if you haven’t a recollection nor an opinion of 80s popular culture. Plus it’s a comedy so it better damn well be funny. I’m really looking forward to some of that always great SS community feedback.
Title: Killing Machine
Genre: Sci-Fi/Action
Logline: When an MMA fighter discovers that she has been infected with a nanotech that will transform her into the ultimate killing machine, she must regain control of herself in order to stop those responsible from launching a viral outbreak of the cyborg-creating technology.
Why You Should Read: Fourteen years of writing and about five years of following Scriptshadow have lead to this brash and edgy full-throttle action thriller.
KILLING MACHINE is roughly my thirteenth feature and the fact I’m actually submitting something to AF means I finally feel I’m onto something special. It is a project that is fun and exciting whilst being tough and grim in a manner that injects a FIGHT CLUB-style attitude into the skin of a Marvel origins movie.
If you’ve ever wondered what a movie focusing on the transformation of a Ronda Rousey-style badass into THE TERMINATOR looks like, then this script would be well worth your time.
Actions speak louder than words so I’ll let Deanna and her unique journey take it from here…
Title: Interloper
Genre: Action/Thriller
Logline: As a devastating storm isolates their small town, an idealistic cop must stretch her moral boundaries to team up with a brutal and relentless Interpol agent as they race against time to find a deadly assassin trapped in the town with them.
Why You Should Read: This story is based around the events of the 1987 hurricane that devastated England, my country of birth. I was only a young child at the time, and I remember quite clearly my house being obliterated by an oak tree that came through the window, smashing everything in sight.
I always wondered what other people must have gone through that night. I had an overactive imagination. What if there was a killer, trapped in my town on the night of the storm and everyone was in danger unless we found him?
Years later I took that concept and started to flesh out the idea a little more.
Earlier this year, I decided to adapt a sequence from this feature script and shoot a 10 minute short film, revolving around one of the main characters, The Stranger. It was played at the Cannes Short Film Corner, and received positive feedback.
Living in the UAE at the time, I was unable to truly capture the events and locations that I wrote in the original script, but I did the best I could with what little I had.
The trailer is here. Hopefully it gives you the kind of tone I was going for in this script.
Interloper by definition means “a person who becomes involved in a place or situation where they are not wanted or are considered not to belong.” Having lived in three different continents in the last 15 years, I truly understand what that means. This was a chance at some sort of catharsis.
If you’re into tense and uncomfortable situations, commentary on 1980s England, contrasting and challenged characters, and a few twists and turns on the way, then I would invite you to read my script.
I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing and filming some of it.
Wow, I can’t believe it. We’re only three weeks away from finishing a first draft!
As a reminder, you should’ve completed somewhere between 70-80 pages of your screenplay by this point, or, if you break your script into 8 sequences (each sequence lasting 10–15 pages), you should’ve just completed sequence number 5. That means we have 3 more sequences to go.
WEEK 0
WEEK 1
WEEK 2
WEEK 3
WEEK 4
WEEK 5
This is another little-talked about section of the screenplay, but I consider it a little easier than last week’s section, since we’re writing towards a clear story beat: the end of the second act. Any time you’re writing towards something definitive, it’s easier to figure out how to get there.
So what happens at the end of the second act?
THE LOWEST POINT
This is the point in the script where your heroes, in that big final push to achieve their goal, will definitively fail. While you, the reader, will know this isn’t true, the idea is to convince the audience that the movie is effectively over. They’ve lost, they’ve given up, they have no options left.
The trick here, like any creative choice, is to make it specific to your own movie. For Raiders of the Lost Ark, it’s when Indy and Marion get captured by the Nazis. In Deadpool, it’s when Ajax kidnaps Deadpool’s girlfriend. In Room, it’s when Ma is taken to a mental institution.
The operative word here is: DOUBT
This moment in the script should be the moment when the audience has the MOST DOUBT that the hero is going to achieve their goal than at any other time in the movie.
Now that you know what that plot beat is (and many of you should already know from completing your outline six weeks ago!), you can write towards it. If you know, for example, that you’re going to have Indy and Marion get captured at the end of the second act, you can construct an 8-scene sequence to get them to that point.
This is why movies with goals are so advantageous when it comes to structuring. If your hero is actively trying to achieve something, it’s easy to come up with ways to get them there. You just write another sequence with them trying to achieve that goal and have them fail.
When you’re writing a character piece, however, it’s trickier. The goals will be more abstract. But for the script to work, SOME sort of “this is what needs to happen” directive must be put in place by the writer so that he can work against it.
Again, let’s take character piece “Room” as an example. Once Ma and Jack get out of room, the abstract goal “for mother and son to survive in this new world” is what drives the story. That’s why we’re still reading – to see if these two are going to be okay.
Once you’ve established that, you can play against it, by infusing a major event that creates DOUBT (the end of the second act!). So what do they do? Ma has a mental breakdown and is forced to go to a mental institution. Our goal (for mother and son to survive in this new world) is now put into serious doubt. So of course we’re going to stick around to see if Ma’s going to make it out of the institution and reunite with her son.
The only way to understand how important that plot choice was, is to imagine the movie without it. If Ma stays on an even keel at this point in the story, or even gets better, we’re feeling GOOD going into the final act, and as counterintuitive as it may sound, if you make the audience feel good (or “safe”) for too long, they get bored. They need that doubt. They need that uncertainty. Which leads me to my next point. This moment in the script must feel like the pinnacle of uncertainty.
You should’ve been raising the stakes throughout the script. At this moment, we should feel like it’s all or nothing. Whereas in that first journey out into the world (sequence 3 – right after the first act), there’s still a feeling that they could somehow salvage their lives if this doesn’t work out, at this point it should feel like if they don’t achieve their goal, they lose everything, whether that be their literal life or their figurative life (their job, their family, their home, their reputation). If we’re not feeling that kind of pressure moving into the end of the second act, you’re not doing it right. Because then when they do fail (and reach their “lowest point”), it won’t really feel like they’ve failed.
That’s what’s happening on the surface. But if you really want to make this section sing, you want to be exploring the same low point BETWEEN your characters and WITHIN your characters.
So remember how we were talking about your hero’s flaw? Well, this is the moment in the script where overcoming that flaw must be at its lowest point as well. In essence, this is the moment when your protagonist should doubt himself the most. Are they good enough? Do they believe in themselves? Has their selfishness finally doomed them? In When Harry Met Sally, Harry’s flaw (his fear of commitment) has left him alone and depressed.
And finally, you want to do the same with your relationships. Every one of them should be on the ropes. In romantic comedies or dramas, this is easy. You just split the main couple up. But you should be doing this in every script. Friends, family members, lovers – almost every one of them should be at odds with your hero. Every relationship should be in jeopardy.
Again, remember what this is: THE LOWEST POINT.
That means your hero should be at his lowest point in every facet of the story: plot, relationships, himself.
You may be noticing a pattern here. In many ways, this sounds like what we did with the midpoint. The heroes hit a major speed-bump, fell into a mini-depression, had to regroup and go back after their goal. We’re doing the same thing here, just more intensely. Well, the reason these sections feel similar is because that’s what storytelling is. It’s a rollercoaster. You bring the audience up to a high (yay! everything’s great!) then pull them back down to a low (oh no, we’re screwed!). And as the story goes on, each high will get higher and each low will get lower. This moment in the script – the end of the second act – will be the lowest. Orrrrr…. maybe it won’t. More on that in a couple of weeks!
Minimum page number to meet: 90 (that’s 15 pages this week guys, less than 3 pages a day!)
Hey guys. Doing a lot of running around today so, sadly, no time for a review. Feel free to use this post to discuss your Scriptshadow 13-Week Scripts. Questions about the second act should probably be the focus, but feel free to bring up anything. Just remember that you want your characters pursuing a goal, lots of obstacles in their way, and for every scene to contain some kind of conflict, whether it be surface level or under the surface. If you’re in hardcore procrastination mode, check out this Brett Ratner speech at the New York Film Academy. No, I’m not a big Ratner fan. But the guy is charismatic as hell and routinely points out that if someone as talentless as him can make it in Hollywood, anyone can. Week 6 Post tomorrow!
Genre: Horror
Premise: When a young black man visits the rich parents of his white girlfriend, he begins to suspect that he was brought here for another reason entirely.
About: Key and Peele are two of the more active actors in Hollywood at the moment. After their hit Comedy Central show ended, they hit the town hard. Their most recent film, Keanu, didn’t turn the box office upside-down, but for a comedy about a kitten, it did all right. Key is now starring in the much-buzzed-about dramedy about improv actors, How to be Better. And Peele took a left turn with today’s script, a horror flick he wrote and will direct. Can the comedy-centric actor break out of that pigeon-hole? We shall see.
Writer: Jordan Peele
Details: 98 pages – undated
If you’re anything like me, and you probably aren’t (but let’s pretend you are), you heard that “Peele” from the hit comedy series “Key and Peele” was doing a horror movie called “Get Out” and you thought, “Like comedy horror?” Cause he couldn’t possibly be writing a straight horror movie.
And hence we venture into the pervasive universe of pigeonholing. This town wants you to be ONE WAY, and anybody who tries to be two-way gets a one-way ticket out on a Greyhound.
It’s one of the reasons I encourage writers to write in the genres they like most. Because if they try out another genre for the hell of it, and that happens to be the genre they break in with? There’s a very real chance that that’s the genre they will be writing for the rest of their career.
So I’ve got to give it to Jordan Peele. To convince someone to give him money for anything other than comedy is a huge win. This script must be great.
26 year-old photographer Chris Washington is in love. His girlfriend, Rose Armitage, is everything you’d ever want in a woman. She’s beautiful, sweet, cool, funny. Oh, and white. Chris, on the other hand, is black.
Now we live in 2016, so this kind of thing shouldn’t matter. But Chris is nervous because they’re visiting Rose’s parents for the first time and Rose hasn’t told her parents that she’s dating her first black guy. Maybe you want to give them a heads up, Chris suggests. But Rose says they’re totally cool and it won’t be a problem.
So off to the affluent suburb of Richville they go, and indeed Rose’s parents are great. They don’t even blink when they see Chris, and are busting jokes left and right as if he’s already their son-in-law. However, Chris can’t help but notice that the “help” around the house is all black.
The father picks up on Chris’s concern and explains that they cared for his ailing mother and father before they died, became family, and they couldn’t part with them. But Chris isn’t so sure. There’s something distant and weird about them, almost as if they’re… trapped.
The next day Chris learns that the Armitages are holding a party and a few hours later tons of rich white folk start rolling in. All of them seem fascinated by Chris, and have all sorts of questions for him. Needless to say, Chris catches on that something seriously fucked up is going on here and tries to leave. Only the Armitages were prepared for this, and have put in some safeguards that it doesn’t happen… EVER.
The first thing I noticed about Get Out was that it wasn’t written by a white male.
I bring this up because 9 out of every 10 screenplays in Hollywood are written by white males. There’s nothing wrong with this. I think a lot of white men just enjoy writing and therefore pursue it.
But when you read a good script told outside of that point-of-view, it becomes evident just how narrow the white male point of view is. Most white males enjoy the same things. Therefore we get the same genres, the same stories, the same characters. No one’s thinking outside the white box.
Get Out starts with a great scene following a black man jogging in an upscale white neighborhood and the sudden fear he endures because of the situation. This is followed by a scene of Chris voicing his fear to Rose that her parents should know her boyfriend is black before he shows up at their door.
These things aren’t thought about by the average white person because it’s not something they have to think about. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that either. You see the world through your own eyes so if you don’t experience conflict in an area, you aren’t as likely to explore it.
With that said, one of your jobs as a writer is to place yourself inside of different people’s points of view. And unless you do that, your entire story will be limited to the same generic shit that every other middle-class white dude is writing about.
Every story’s already been told. We’ve established that. It’s why all these sequels have been tanking. Uh, we saw that already. IN THE FIRST FILM! Therefore the only way to make something new is to find a new angle into it. I’m not saying race is the only way to do this but it’s one of the ways. So if you want to push your writing to the next level, exploring different points of view is a good way to do so.
Get Out is a really good script. And a big part of that is because of how fresh it feels. As this story goes on, we become acutely aware that Chris is being surrounded and that something bad is going to happen when that surrounding climaxes. To that end, it’s a pretty basic horror setup.
But the mystery about what’s happening to these black people who have found themselves inside the Armitage Home is what makes it different. And what’s great about this script is that you think you know what’s happening but when the explanation finally rolls around, you realize you had it all wrong.
I love when horror movies do that. When you think you’ve picked out the rug and then the rug is pulled out from under you.
I also love horror that takes place in non-obvious places. Anybody can throw a bunch of people into a dark old house and try out for the jump-scare olympics. But to place horror in broad daylight and still make it scary? That’s when you know you’ve written something good.
In fact, one of the script’s scariest moments – the opening scene – takes place in the middle of the day. A black man is jogging in the middle of a white neighborhood and a car slowly follows him along. Fed up, the jogger yells at the driver, only to be shot and dragged into the car in the middle of a beautiful suburban neighborhood on a perfect day. Nobody comes to help. Now that’s freaking scary.
Now there is a bit of “hold on, wait a minute” going on at the end. Writers over the age of 33 still believe that it’s possible for people to disappear and nobody will notice because they grew up in the pre-internet era when people really could disappear and that would be it. But these days, with cell phones and social media, if someone doesn’t post an update for 3 hours, a search party is put together to find them. So the idea that all of these black people disappeared and no one could find them… uhhh, I’m not so sure about that.
Still, the mark of any good script for me is, would I read to the end if I didn’t have to review it? I definitely would’ve read this whether I was reviewing it on Scriptshadow or not. I had to find out how it was going to end. This was good stuff!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you’re not a white male, EMBRACE that in your writing. I’m not saying you can only write about your culture. But if you’re from Ghana, at the very least, write a Ghanian character into your script. Your specific point of view is what’s going to make your story unique. I recently gave notes on a script from a Chinese screenwriter who was writing about a group of bar-hopping Chinese men living in the U.S. You could’ve swapped in white American men and nothing would’ve changed. I explained to the writer that he needed to embrace the cultural perspective he was writing from. Otherwise, he was rewriting Swingers with Chinese guys. And we’d already seen that movie.
Genre: Crime Drama/Thriller
Premise: When a pair of criminal brothers kill four cops during a robbery, the city orders all 17 bridges in Manhattan shut down until the men are caught.
About: This spec just sold last week to new studio STX, becoming well known for their good relationship with China. It’s being produced by Marvel’s new golden boys, the Russo Brothers (Captain America: Civil War). The writer, Adam Mervis, started as a playwright and, in addition to this sale, is currently developing a TV show for USA.
Writer: Adam Mervis
Details: 112 pages (4/21/16 draft)
The summer of shitty sequels continues. Turtles 2 made half of what the first movie made opening weekend. It joins X-Men, Divergent, Neighbors, Huntsmen, and Alice in Wonderland as movies whose sequels are dying at the box office (with potential catastrophes Star Trek and Ghostbusters still on the way). Could consumers finally be sending Hollywood a message? Will Tinsletown be forced to do the one thing it’s most afraid of? Come up with original ideas? And is Seventeen Bridges, the town’s most recently acquired spec, the answer to this problem? Let’s find out!
34 year-old Ray Fernandez is in deep to the type of folks who you don’t want to be “in deep” to. And when I say, “in deep,” I mean 200,000 dollars deep. So Ray visits his older brother Felix in Manhattan to ask for his help. Felix used to be a thug but is now on the straight and narrow, and normally he’d tell someone offering him a job to schlep off. But this is his bro, yo.
Ray’s got an idea. He knows of a cocaine delivery center nearby that fronts as a pizza joint. If they could rob that place after a shipment, they could clear 2 million bucks easy and go live on a Mexican beach somewhere for the rest of their lives. Felix finally says ‘fuck it,’ and we cut to the robbery going all sorts of wrong. Not only do they get stuck with a bunch of coke as opposed to hard cash, but they end up killing four New York cops.
Cut to Detective Spevack, a former top-level detective who lost it all after a bad decision. Well, lucky for Spevack, he’s being given a second chance and is named point on this case. The catch? He’s got to find these guys before morning.
So what is Spevack’s first order of business? He shuts down every single bridge in Manhattan. He makes sure these guys aren’t going ANYWHERE. And the manhunt begins.
Meanwhile, the Fernandez’s need to offload that coke they grabbed before they leave the island, since… well, I don’t know why, they just do. So the race begins. Bad guys try to sell coke and run before good guys are forced to open the bridges back up to an increasingly annoyed city. Who will win??
Look, we can’t all be the Golden Gate Bridge.
Some of us have to be that rickety old wood-and-rope bridge that a couple of sherpas threw together five decades ago to connect two mountain peaks.
Which bridge is 17 Bridges? Somewhere in between. But closer to the mountain bridge than the Golden Gate.
My first hesitation with 17 Bridges came via its first monologue. Spevack is telling some entitled dick that he needs to play by his rules if he wants to survive. The monologue is two pages long and covers a lot of shit. How Spevack lost his badge, how his father died of cancer, how he doesn’t drink anymore, how he met the guy who now holds the key to his life, what this dude can expect if he doesn’t cooperate.
And it’s not that you can’t make a monologue like that work. But monologues, like scripts, need a theme. If you’re going to talk forever, there needs to be a point, a feeling that it all connects. And this didn’t feel that way at all. Rather, it felt like a not-so-well-disguised attempt to pump out as much backstory about our hero as possible. In laymen’s terms? The monologue was all the hell over the place.
A good monologue, just like good dialogue, feels effortless. It definitely doesn’t feel like the writer is trying to stuff a bunch of information inside of it. That’s something you need to be aware of. If it ever feels like you’re trying to stuff a lot of shit into any part of your script, whether it be a sequence, a scene, a monologue… STOP. Cut out the 50% you know you don’t need, and then cut more.
One of the basic tenets of screenwriting is: Say as much as possible in as few words as possible. That applies across the board. The only people who can get away with more are geniuses. The Aaron Sorkins, the Woody Allens, the Quentin Tarantinos. And until you’ve come out with a film where everyone praises you as a genius? Assume you aren’t. And write the way that’s proven to work: Less is more.
What about the plot?
Unfortunately, I had problems with this too.
Why is New York being shut down to the tune of several hundred million dollars worth of inconvenience for two hack criminals? These guys are nobodies. And they’re worthy of shutting a city down? I know they killed four cops but within an hour, Spevack has the Fernandez’s names and faces. So if they make it out of Manhattan, is it really going to be that hard to find them?
This is a case of liking one’s concept so much (and it is a cool concept!) that the writer isn’t able to see the logic through the trees. The logic here being: Would New York City really do this? For a terrorist who blew up a bank? Maybe. For a man who shot up 30 people at a school? Maybe. But for a couple of losers? I don’t know, man. That doesn’t sound very realistic to me. And if there’s a lack of realism in the logline, there’s a good chance that the writer won’t establish a suspension of disbelief. If that’s never established, THE MOVIE DOESN’T WORK.
What did the script do right? Well, for starters this is a contained easy to understand high-pressure high-conflict situation, which is an ideal setup for a movie. Everybody’s goals are clear. Our cop-in-charge has to catch the baddies. The baddies have to escape the island. The writer even added a goal for the Fernandez’s – to sell the drugs they found before they leave the island. I tend to like choices like this because if all your characters do is run away, they’re passive. By giving them a goal to achieve, it makes them active.
The problem was, that choice brought up all sorts of questions. Like would they really be trying to sell drugs during the first time in history that Manhattan has closed down all their bridges to catch someone!? And that was my big problem with 17 Bridges. You could never just enjoy the story because you were constantly questioning it.
You’re probably wondering, then, why did it sell?
Easy answer. It’s a cool concept!
Cool concepts are the rose-colored glasses of the screenwriting world. They make all those mistakes look so much prettier!
I believe this project can be saved, much like the abysmal early draft of The Town turned into a solid heist flick when Ben Affleck rewrote it. But in its current form, it doesn’t live up to the promise of its premise.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Like I always say, a cool concept is the one area of screenwriting where you have a chance of selling something that’s not well-written. If someone loves your concept enough that they can imagine the poster, imagine the trailer, and imagine people paying to see it? They can forgive the writing, since all it means is hiring a new screenwriter for $200k-700k to fix the execution. And in the grand scheme of a 50 million dollar movie, that’s not that much.
This is why it kills me to see writers writing about characters traveling across the Sahara Desert on a journey of self-discovery. The execution for that kind of market-less concept has to be Oscar-worthy to even get looked at, much less purchased. It’s much smarter to start with a buzzy concept.
