Get Your Script Reviewed On Scriptshadow!: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and finally, something interesting about yourself and/or your script that you’d like us to post along with the script if reviewed. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Remember that your script will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effects of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre (from writer): Euro Horror
Premise (from writer): A Transylvanian Countess struggles to conceal her dark inheritance from
two investigators when she finds herself drawn to a bereaved English girl. A love
letter to European vampire cinema of the 1970s.
Why You Should Read (from writer): Because I’d love to see Carson plunge into the hypnotic, eroticized world of Euro Horror! Sure, LET US TOUCH THE SUN is a zillion miles and at least 40 years removed from multiplexes and opening weekends; but I’d like to think it can find an audience among the fanatical followers of dvd labels such as Blue Underground, Redemption and Shameless. Indeed, LET US TOUCH THE SUN was my attempt to write something I would purchase myself from one of these labels, a film possessed by its mysterious female vampire, unerring sense of place, and all-pervasive sensuality. —The script also represents my learning and assimilation of craft techniques over the past four years (I’ve been working on other projects in that time, but nevertheless this one has been through 100+ iterations!) Certainly, its pages incorporate elements I probably wouldn’t utilize again in a hurry; but ultimately I hope the reader leaves with something not dissimilar to the feeling expressed by Linkthis83 last time around: “… I’m adrift in realms, and being guided towards moments where I’m privy to exchanges and happenings that once all these moments are totaled I will have experienced something that I can neither quite describe nor possibly express in a manner that exhibits understanding… but a knowing that something occurred because I felt it… and struggle to define it.”
Writer: Levres de Sang (selected dialogue from J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” (1872)
Details: 102 pages

Jessica Chastain for Valerie?

Scriptshadow Nation has finally been heard! If I had a dime for every time someone asked me to review amateur entry “Let Us Touch The Sun,” I’d have a big jangling jar full of dimes to take to the grocery store to put in that coin machine, which would then return 20% of my money and give the other 80% to orphans and spit out a special receipt which stated that if I did not cash the receipt within 90 seconds, I not only wouldn’t be able to receive my funds, but I would now owe the supermarket money.

I’m not going to lie. I’m a little scared here. I’m not entirely sure what “Euro Horror” is and I’ve never read a script before that included selected dialogue from another source, much less a source from 140 years ago! I feel like Snoop Dog walking into Carnegie Hall. But as has been the case in the past, you can experience a lot of great things when you go out of your comfort zone, so let’s see if Let Us Touch The Sun does so for me……

It’s 1978 and Countess Valerie Kristeva is under suspicion for the disappearance of four young women. Detective David Chang from America and Inspector Rollin from Interpol are closing in on Valerie’s trail of death, but there’s no way to connect her to these women. It’s gotten so weird that Rollin has come up with this cockamamie idea that Valerie might be a vampire!

Valerie, of course, is a vampire, and not a very patient one. She has a weakness for young women and her latest target is a beautiful 19 year-old hottie named Malika. Valerie invites Malika on a voyage across the sea and when you’re 19 and a beautiful woman invites you to travel the world, how can you possibly say no?

While Valerie plots her seduction of young Malika on the boat, David Chang and Inspector Rollin are off following their respective leads in the killings of the previous girls. Valerie will eventually take Malika home to her castle, where she’ll either turn her into vampire lunch meat or Malika will finally figure out that it’s a little weird a random woman has invited her to a castle and run the hell out of there.

This is going to be a tough review because I love how much Levres has contributed to the site. He’s an invaluable part of the daily conversation here at Scriptshadow. But I’d be doing a disservice to him if I reviewed the script with kid gloves and it sounds like Levres understands that this script is a little… offbeat. So I’m going go at these notes like I would any other script and Levres can determine if they’re relevant to what he’s trying to do or not.

I’ll start by saying, I could see this movie in my head. Levres has a very distinct style that echoes a 1970s casualness, an almost presumptuous pace that assumes you’ll spend the rest of your day sipping a coffee in the park and then writing in your diary. There is a patience to the story and boy is that brave in this day and age. I commend Levres for it.

But it should be noted that this style is hard to make work no matter what era you’re in. A story is a story is a story, and stories need to move. If Let Us Touch The Sun were a blender, it would be turned to the lowest setting, and I had trouble waiting for my drink to be ready.

The CAA coverage department’s first note of Let Us Touch The Sun would likely be: “Overwritten.” And I wouldn’t argue with that. A quick look through the pages and here are some words and phrases I pulled out: Photogravure, Casa Angola, Cossack style, Foster Grants, Noh mask, perspex screen, slimline Dunhill, somnolent lapis lazuli, afga c60 cassette,

I don’t mind a flourish here and there but when there are a 100+ words I’ve never seen before in a screenplay, or that I’ve seen infrequently enough that I have to read them twice to place them, that can take its toll on a read. I like to enjoy a script, not work for it. And too much of the writing here made me work – squinting through the fog of prose to discern what was really being said.

Indeed by page 50, I was only understanding around 60% of the information on the page. For example, I didn’t understand why Valerie was waiting to turn Malika into a vampire. Why not just turn her into one right away? To be honest, I didn’t even know where they were going on their trip. I know that information is in the script somewhere but that’s the danger of stressing purple prose over clarity, is that the reader is more likely to miss important details.

And that’s how this read. Every 10 pages, I felt like I understood the story less instead of more. I knew there was an internal logic to the plot and I knew that Levres knew where he was going. But the fog-like prose really made it hard for me to keep up. I feel guilty about this and I considered going back and re-reading the script to fill in those gaps but I realized that the average reader isn’t going to do this, so I can’t either.

On the story side, I thought Levres could’ve done more with the detectives. Here we had Valerie on the boat with Malika for a majority of the script and the two detectives were halfway across the world doing their own thing. I wanted them to be closer. I wanted Valerie to feel that pressure, of them putting the pieces together. And really, I wanted there to be only one detective. Having two was confusing and spread the inspection storyline too thin.

What about putting the inspector on the boat with them (I know he starts out there but then he leaves early on)? And actually, if we’re using yesterday’s article as a guide for how to improve a screenplay, what about making the victim and the inspector one and the same?

So you make the Inspector a woman, the female version of Michael Douglas’s character in Basic Instinct. Valerie, who would now play the Sharon Stone black widow character, invites (the now older) Inspector Malika on the boat trip to question her about the missing girls. The two then engage in a twisted game of deception where the lines keep crossing.

That’s off the top of my head but still, I guess I’m looking for ways to beef this story up. Everything here comes across so subtle that too much tension is left on the table.

In Levres’ defense, this is not a “screenplay friendly” movie. It’s clearly stylized in a way that only film can capture, like the difference between reading a Terrance Malick screenplay and seeing a Terrance Malick movie. So that has to be factored in here. Still, I think the script is focused more on imagery than story and when I sit down and read a script, I want a good story.

Screenplay link: Let Us Touch The Sun

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

What I learned: There’s a famous story about an agent who told a screenwriter client of his that his script was “too smart.” And that makes for a funny story but I understand what he meant. Hollywood isn’t looking for high art, perfect prose, or the painting version of a screenplay. They’re looking for a great story. Let me repeat that. THEY’RE LOOKING FOR A GREAT STORY. And if anything in your script takes precedence over that, they’re likely to dismiss it. Here, it seems like Levres is more interested in how his script reads than how his story is told. Strip away all the prose here and ask yourself if the story mechanics (what happens and when it happens) are compelling enough. I think everything’s happening too slowly, even for an inherently slow film, and that more plot can be packed into the pages. Of course, this isn’t a genre I understand well so I’ll gladly leave the final decision in Levres’ hands! I wish you the best of luck, Levres, and keep commenting!

With indie sleeper “Ex Machina” kicking ass this weekend at the box office, I thought those who missed my script review might want to check it out. Enjoy! And now on to Black Mass…

Genre: Drama/Biopic
Premise: The real-life story of Whitey Bulger, a notorious Boston gangster who became an informant for the FBI to help take down the mafia.
About: If you’re a screenwriter and you haven’t explored writing a biopic, what’s wrong with you?? The genre is taking over the industry. And I think I know why. With the “star system” in Hollywood declining, biopics have become the one remaining area for movie stars to shine. Nobody goes to American Sniper if Ted Danson is playing Chris Kyle. Black Mass stars Johnny Depp and was to be directed by journeyman filmmaker Barry Levinson, but they decided to go with hot new shiny object Scott Cooper instead, who directed the gritty Christian Bale flick, “Out of the Furnace,” and the Jeff Bridges country music feast, “Crazy Heart.” Final screenplay credit was split between Mark Mallouk, who’s making his screenwriting debut here (he was previously a producer) and Jez Butterworth, who’s credited for such films as Edge of Tomorrow and Get on Up. Interestingly enough, this script notes that Johnny Depp has final say over the screenplay. I suppose this is more common than we know but it was a little surprising to see it in writing.
Writer: Mark Mallouk (this draft doesn’t yet include Butterworth) – based on the book “Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, The FBI and a Devil’s Deal” by Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neil
Details: 115 pages – undated (looks to be a late 2012 draft)

After the recent trailer for Black Mass hit, I had to read the script. I love that they did something different with the trailer, focusing on a single scene instead of a bunch of them. And Johnny Depp. Whoa! The guy is practically unrecognizable as Whitey Bulger. And he’s acting again! I’m not sure you can say that about his previous five movies. Johnny Depp is the most kind, gentle, soft-spoken person in real life. But that man in the trailer? That was someone entirely different. That man was terrifying.

It’s 1974 and FBI Agent John Connolly has just moved back to Boston as the self-proclaimed “savior” of the city. The Irish and Italian gangs have turned the town into a hell-hole and he’s going to be the one to clean it up. His fellow Feds are skeptical, but Connolly’s got a secret weapon. He knows Whitey Bulger, the man running the Irish gangs.

Connolly’s idea is this. The FBI really wants the Mafia (the Italians). He recognizes that getting them out of the way is good for the Irish. So why not use the Irish’s knowledge about the Italians – the kind of information the Feds don’t have access to – to take them down? So Connolly goes to Bulger and asks him if he wants to be an informant.

It takes some convincing on both sides but soon everyone’s in, and thus begins a working relationship between Connolly and Bulger. Bulger feeds Connolly info and the FBI looks the other way when Bulger does unsavory deeds.

The problem is, Whitey Bulger works on his own time frame, not the FBI’s. He wants to know he can trust Connolly before he just starts throwing information at him. So there’s this constant tug-of-war between Connolly and his bosses regarding time. He needs more. They give him less.

Eventually the plan starts paying off, with Bulger giving the FBI the mafia’s hideout. But it’s a double-edged sword. With each new thing they learn about the mafia comes a new tidbit about Bulger himself, who they’re learning is a MUCH bigger criminal than anyone knew. And thus the question is asked. Are they getting rid of a demon only to replace him with the Devil?

Joel Edgerton will play John Connolly.

Black Mass starts out with a great opening sequence. It’s 2011 and one of the FBI’s ten most wanted men, Whitey Bulger, has been spotted living in a small apartment in Santa Monica. The man who’s reported him to the Feds, the apartment manager, is tasked with tricking the notorious gangster to come outside his apartment so the FBI can scoop him up and arrest him.

Whitey is a man who used to have people like this manager sawed into pieces for even considering such a thing. But when the Feds tell you you have to do something, you do it. The scene is not only packed with suspense, but it brilliantly sets up our subject, conveying just how much of a badass Whitey Bulger is.

At the end of this scene, I scooched into my chair with a smile, ready for a long exciting adventure about the man who many feel was the most violent and dangerous in Boston’s history. You can color me disappointed, then, when that adventure never came.

Black Mass makes a shocking choice early on that ends up neutralizing its biggest asset. Instead of telling us the story through the eyes of the legendary Bulger, Black Mass focuses on the vanilla Jack Connolly to tell its tale.

This may have worked had we seen enough of Bulger’s antics to satisfy our morbid curiosity. But the script adds this storyline by which Connolly thinks Bulger is a harmless second-rate criminal. That’s how he was able to sell to the Feds going after the Mafia and not Bulger himself.

For that to work though, Connolly (and by association, us) can’t see Bulger do anything bad. As you’d suspect, this has a catastrophic effect on the level of drama in the film. Since Bulger can’t do anything bad, Bulger can’t do… well, anything at all! All of Bulger’s scenes are relegated to him nodding and doing whatever Connolly asks of him. I hate to put it this way, but 80% of this movie is Whitey Bulger being the FBI’s bitch.

I was shocked. Where was this terrifying legendary criminal I’d heard about? He wasn’t in this film. Which means Black Mass runs the risk of being the single biggest example of false advertising in biopic history. It would be like making a movie about Michael Jordan and never showing him play basketball.

As for that great scene in the trailer – it’s in this draft. But it’s an outlier. We don’t get any other scenes like it (save for 1-2 generic kill scenes) to show how terrifying Bulger is.

The plotting had issues as well. There’s a distinct lack of BUILD as the story goes on, and I think that’s because the script failed to establish the stakes of getting rid of the Mafia. I barely knew anyone in the Mafia here and it was never conveyed to me why getting rid of them was so important.

Lots of writers mistakenly believe that just saying so is enough. So if a character says, “Man, that Mafia is bad. They killed that woman last week,” then we’ll want the Mafia taken down. But that’s not how movies work. Movies work by SHOWING. Not TELLING. If you show the Mafia rip an innocent man to shreds because he looked at them the wrong way, NOW we’ll understand why the FBI needs to stop them. We’ve seen how dangerous they are with our own eyes.

But that’s a small part of a much bigger problem. Nobody really does anything bad in this movie. Not Whitey. Not the Mafia. It’s the PG version of the Boston crime story. Sure we hear about some bad things, but I don’t go to a movie to hear about something. I go to SEE it.

Of course, the nature of development is that you keep working on a script until it’s the best that it can be. And they did bring on another writer to do some drafts after this one. But something tells me the current approach of this script is unfixable. You can’t neuter and borify the most ruthless killer in Boston history. You have to let a character like that loose.

I went into this script thinking Whitey Bulger was a major badass. I left thinking he was just a regular guy who occasionally committed crimes.

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

What I learned: Use visual cues to convey time passing. There was a moment in Black Mass where the FBI director tells Connolly, “It’s been six months and Bulger hasn’t given us anything!” So poorly was the passage of time conveyed, that had that same character said it had been “2 weeks,” I wouldn’t have batted an eye. Improperly conveying time can make a script feel drifty and sloppy. So use visual cues to help the reader along. For example, you might make a key female character pregnant. A tiny bump one scene and a big bump another scene instantly conveys 6-7 months have passed. A family gets a puppy. A few scenes down the line, that dog is now full grown. Highlight seasons changing. It’s sunny and 85 out. Cut to next scene, it’s now snowing. These are the most obvious examples so I actually encourage you to be creative and come up with your own. But if we have no idea how much time is passing in your story, we can become confused. And confusion often leads to frustration.

What I learned Two: If you have a compelling character, you want to construct a storyline that allows that character to thrive. For example, if you’re writing a story about the greatest astronaut in history, you probably don’t want to set the entire movie down on earth.

Genre: Sorror (Sort of Horror)
Premise: The illustrious “Fevre Dream” steamboat’s maiden voyage is disturbed by a mysterious passenger who may or may not be a vampire.
About: With Game of Thrones coming back to TV this week, I thought it’d be the perfect time to review a script by… George R.R. Martin??? Yes, believe it or not, Martin wrote a screenplay. It was adapted from one of his own books, Fevre Dream, and written back in the 90s. The script received renewed interest, obviously, when Game of Thrones became big, but apparently missed a window with a big-time director (who Martin wouldn’t reveal) in 2013. Still, Martin is hopeful, and says if the movie ever gets made, this is the draft they’ll use.
Writer: George RR Martin
Details: 129 pages (undated draft, but was written at some point in the 90s).

So when I was researching this script, I came upon a 2013 quote where Martin sounded very hopeful about an A-list director who wanted to make this film. That never came to light. And it reminded me that even when you’re as hot in Hollywood as someone like Martin was in 2013, it’s STILL tough to get a director attachment.

Getting a major director to attach himself to your script is one of the surest ways to get your movie made. BUT. Getting a major director to attach himself to your script is also one of the HARDEST things to do in the business. Actors can make three movies a year. A director will spend three years of his life on a film. Think about that for a second. That means in a, say, 20 year career, a director can only make SEVEN MOVIES. So he has to be very very very choosey. Yet when a director does commit, you’re golden. Your movie is greenlighted and it gets made and your life changes.

So if there’s one question that I think we should try and crack here on Scriptshadow, it’s: How do you get a director to attach himself to your script? What kind of scripts do directors like to direct? Obviously something visual. Something that allows the director to play, possibly try new things that haven’t been done before.

We were just discussing this with Ready Player One in my newsletter. If you’re going to get Spielberg interested in a sci-fi or adventure script, you can’t give him your version of an Indiana Jones type movie. Spielberg’s already done that. If he’s going to commit to that genre, you have to give him something he hasn’t done before. A race in the middle of Times Square with the Back to the Future car and dinosaurs on the course? That’s something he hasn’t done before.

The tricky thing is that every director’s different. Nicolas Winding Refn doesn’t want to make the same movies as Clint Eastwood who doesn’t want to make the same movies as James Wan who doesn’t want to make the same movies as Martin Scorsese.

Muddying the waters more is that some directors are just interested in character. And actors like these directors because they’re more likely to bring them accolades and respect. Damien Chazelle isn’t the kind of guy who’s going to make Jurassic Universe. Yet two of the hottest stars in Hollywood, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, just signed on to his latest project because J.K. Simmons won an Oscar in Chazelle’s last film (Whiplash) and if he can win Simmons an Oscar, then maybe he can win them an Oscar. So maybe that means you should write for character to indirectly get to the director.

I don’t know the answer to this question but I do think you should always keep the director in mind when writing a script. Whatever types of movies you like, study the directors who direct those kinds of movies, figure out what things they’re drawn to, and then make sure you include those in your own script, only do it with a new twist or with even more imagination. Again, you can’t just give directors the same thing. They want that “next thing.”

Today’s script, Fevre Dream, is very director-friendly. I haven’t seen this kind of attention to detail since James Cameron’s infatuation with the Titanic. The story follows an uptight steamboat captain named Abner Marsh. The burly Abner lost a fleet of his ships recently in a series of crashes and has put all his remaining money into the Fevre Dream, which he claims is the fastest steamboat in the country.

One of the fun things you learn reading Fevre Dream is that there used to be these unofficial steamboat races down the river, with every captain trying to prove his dick, err, his steamboat, was the biggest, err, fastest. The faster the steamboat, the better the reputation, the more customers, the more money you made.

But Abner has to make a deal with the devil to get this speed. Short on cash, he brings in a partner, the mysterious Joshua York, a fair-skinned Englishman who has only one rule. He needs to conduct business in every town they visit.

Seems like a small favor to ask, but Abner soon finds York disappearing into these towns for 2-3 days, holding up his boat, starting the Fevre Dream off with a bad reputation. Not only that, but he always brings mysterious characters back with him. These individuals, like York, are never seen during the day. And their social skills are so serial-killer-like, they begin scaring the other crewman.

It doesn’t take a White Walker scientist to tell that these folks are vampires. But what are they doing on the boat? What is it they want? That becomes clear when York finally confronts another vampire, a gentleman named Damon Julian who’s lived for THOUSANDS of years to York’s hundreds. These two will eventually square off. And the Fevre Dream, unfortunately, will be caught in the crossfire.

I’d like to begin by saying: THIS IS HOW YOU START A SCREENPLAY.

If you can’t grab your reader right away, why would the reader believe you could grab them for an entire story? And a great way to grab a reader is to make them feel EMOTION.

Fevre Dream starts with a black teenage girl being auctioned as a slave. Men bid on her heartlessly, as if she were an object. And when the money gets higher, so do the demands. The men want to see “what she’s working with.” And so the girl is required to disrobe and stand completely naked in front of these men.

It’s a scene so unsettling that you can’t help but be affected by it. So affected are you, in fact, that you don’t realize Martin’s roped you in.

But what really sets Fevre Dream apart is its attention to detail. I recently read a script about a game designer. My big complaint to the writer was that at the end of the script, I didn’t know any more about what a game designer did than what I knew at the beginning of the script. That’s a big fail. Whatever your subject matter is, you better make sure the reader leaves the story knowing more about it.

And here, the way Martin lovingly describes the design of the steamboat, how it runs, how it’s managed – it made you feel like you were back in 1850, like you really knew what riding on these steamboats was like. That’s what great scripts do. They bring you into their reality.

Where the scripts starts to get shaky is in its depiction of vampires. So much time is spent explaining to us what these vampires weren’t (they’re not affected by holy water. They don’t need to sleep in coffins. They don’t leave a pair of bite marks on your neck), that I was never sure what they were. I didn’t know the rules. They drank blood. They could walk around in light sometimes. Other than that, they felt ill-defined. And that’s when I realized why Fevre Dream wasn’t the kind of hit Game of Thrones was.

I don’t think Martin knew what he was writing here. Is this a steamboat movie with vampires or is it a vampire movie that takes place on steamboats? It feels to me like Martin was fascinated with steamboats but knew writing a story JUST ABOUT THEM would be lame. So he decided to add vampires.

The results are uneven, but that doesn’t mean the script doesn’t work. Martin has such a love for everything he writes that that love washes over you. He makes you a believer.

Martin’s also really good at shocking you. There’s a scene in this script that is one of the most shocking I’ve ever read. It’s so disturbing that most of you wouldn’t be able to handle it so I’d suggest you never look into it.

But in a strange way, I admired the scene. So many writers know where the “Hollywood Line” is. And by “Hollywood Line,” I mean that line that Hollywood doesn’t want you to cross less the audience gets offended. It affects everything we see because we know that in the end, it will always be okay.

But when you decide to cross that line? When you ignore it? You force the reader to revaluate everything they think they know and now they have no freaking idea what’s going to happen next. That’s territory rarely explored in screenwriting. So it’s refreshing when I see it.

Fevre Dream is a strange tale. I’ve seen some odd mash-ups before (Hansel and Gretel as gun-slinging killers?) but steamboat porn and vampires is a first. If you’re weird and have a high tolerance for one extremely violent scene, this script is out there. Grab it and take a read.

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

What I learned: Sounds. A lot of screenwriters are so focused on the VISUAL side of their screenplay that they forget about the audible side. Sounds add dimension to the read. And the more dimensions you add, the more you can trick the reader into believing in your world. Key in on any important sound and describe it as well as you can. For example, when Damian (one of the vampires) is first introduced, Martin reserves a line just for his voice: “His voice is dark and sensuous, rich as a fine cognac.” A tiny line but I could hear Damian’s voice after that.  It broke down one more brick between reality and fiction.

Get Your Script Reviewed On Scriptshadow!: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and finally, something interesting about yourself and/or your script that you’d like us to post along with the script if reviewed. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Remember that your script will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effects of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre (from writer): Action/Adventure
Premise (from writer): Back-stabbed by his employer and marooned in Mexico, a tough, drug-running pilot struggles to fly himself and the family that rescued him back to America alive.
Why You Should Read (from writer): Growing up on the border, there are lots of crazy stories you hear about trafficking (mostly from your friends that are doing it). With this story I wanted to take a lot of that raw material and structure it with an action adventure spin and a solid protagonist while still having some of the authenticity of experience. It was a trickier line to walk than I imagined, but I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback about the script so far so something must be working. I’m excited to see what the SS readership thinks (and if they think I pulled off the balancing act) and I’m pumped to use any and all feedback to keep improving the writing!
Writer: Jeffrey Doka
Details: 109 pages

Renner for Runner?

Today’s script comes from a former reader so I’m not surprised at all that it won Amateur Offerings. When you read a lot of scripts, you get a feel for the rhythm of a screenplay. With writers who don’t read, I often notice their scripts move slower. They don’t know what it’s like to read five scripts in a row where nothing happens for 30 pages, so they make the same mistake themselves.

I’ve also given notes to Jeff on this script, although sadly those notes haven’t been applied yet. If I remember correctly, I thought more could’ve been done on the character front and that the ending was  messy. I’m also wondering if The Runner satisfies the “larger than life” rule I talked about yesterday in my concept post. Does this concept feel big enough to be a movie? I’d like to hear your thoughts on that in the comments.

32 year old single-living Rich Davison is a drug runner. He flies Cessnas so packed with weed, the exhaust gets you high. His life seems to be going great until his latest shipment is revealed to be a scam. Inside the weed-bins is cold hard white powder. That may not seem like a bad thing. Drugs are drugs, right? Nosiree. If Rich were to get caught with cocaine instead of weed, he’d be in prison for life.

So Rich lets his employer, Juan Montero, have it, and to Montero’s credit, he apologizes for his “calculated risk.” But Rich is done. He’s ready to go off to a beach somewhere and drink Long Islands all day.

Not so fast, says Montero. You still have one job left before I let you go. Rich begrudgingly accepts, but on his subsequent flight into Mexico, he finds that his plane’s been rigged with a bomb (courtesy of you-guessed-it). He grabs a parachute and leaps out just in time, drifting into Mexican territory, territory it just so happens Montero runs.

A beautiful young woman, Elena Santiago, saves Rich and brings her to her small farming home, where she lives with her father and daughter. As she nurses Rich back to health, he plots his escape via a nearby airfield. But it turns out everybody’s got an angle here. Elena only rescued him so that he could fly her and her family to America, away from the oppressive Montero.

Soon Montero, who’s been searching for his former employee, descends upon the town, where he knows someone is hiding Rich. With both his and Elena’s family’s lives on the line, Rich orchestrates a daring escape amongst Montero’s ruthless gang. But nothing about the escape goes as planned.

Reading this again, I realize that Jeff and I see this film a little differently. I see this as a potential version of the Harrison Ford film, The Witness. A selfish thrill-seeker used to a fast and furious lifestyle is forced to live in a simplistic Mexican farming town while he heels. At first he’s resistant to the lifestyle but as time goes on, he starts to understand and appreciate the people and their way of life.

It works ironically as well. The script is called “The Runner” and yet our “runner” is forced to stay still in this community for the whole movie. He gradually, then, connects with the family, and as soon as he’s healed decides to save both himself and them.

The way the script is now, Elena is basically holding Rich hostage under the agreement that he has to fly her and her family (and friends) out of here. I don’t think that’s the way to go. I think Elena should be happy with her life here. Rich, in the meantime, is all about himself. He’s trying to heal as soon as possible in order to get the hell out.

Meanwhile, Montero (who wouldn’t be associated with this community in the new draft) has been slowly putting together the clues of this crashed plane, getting closer and closer to where Rich is located. When he finally gets to the town, Rich realizes that even if he escapes, Montero will find out Elena housed him, and he’ll kill her family. So for the first time, Rich must think of someone other than himself. He has to orchestrate an escape for all of them, which is way more complicated than the escape he planned (stakes have been raised!).

The script then, becomes more of a character piece. The second act begins with his resistance towards these people and their way of life, and as time goes on, he makes a connection with Elena and her daughter, and starts to understand this world, and even appreciate it. I mean, it’s basically Witness, which was a great film and they haven’t really made anything like it since. So its structure is ripe for the picking.

I stress that angle because my biggest issue with The Runner was I never FELT anything. I wasn’t connected to these characters enough. And I think that’s because the second act is focused more on the escape than it is the conflict between the family and Rich. And remember my article from a couple of weeks ago.  That’s where you want to focus your second act. Create a series of unresolved relationships and use the middle act to resolve them.

But yeah, Jeff is a good writer. I would recommend him to others. I don’t think this version of the script is where it needs to be yet, but I’m betting once he integrates both yours and my feedback, it’s going to be really good.

Script link: The Runner

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

What I learned: You hear me talk about it all the time – way too much in fact. But as long as writers keep making the mistake, I’m going to keep bringing it up. WHEN IN DOUBT, KEEP IT SIMPLE. Writers think they need to make things really complex to be good, but you don’t. Usually, the simplest option is the best. Something I brought up to Jeff in the notes was his ending. The whole movie has been building up towards this plane escape. So what happens when it finally comes? Well, Rich escapes in the plane, goes to America, ends up coming back to save more people, is forced to take Montero back to America instead, and then, once in America, we take off one MORE time before “the end.” That’s three separate flights! It’s way too complicated. You have to structure this ending so that getting to the plane and leaving is it. Once they get up into the sky, that’s the movie. Casablanca doesn’t have Ilsa and Laszlo leave, come back, leave again, land somewhere, and then leave again. Just keep it simple!

Genre: TV Pilot – 1 hour Comedy
Premise: When the Devil gets bored with the goings-on of Hell, he decides to pack up, head to Los Angeles, and open a bar. What he never expected was to start caring about the people in the city.
About: Born in New York, Tom Kapinos moved to Los Angeles in the mid 1990s, got a job as a reader at CAA, and parlayed that into a script sale that got Jennifer Aniston attached. The movie was never made, but the spec was read by the Dawson’s Creek folks, where Kapinos soon became one of the writers. After the show was over, Kapinos fell into the Tinsletown Purgatory but five years later emerged with the hit show, Californication, on Showtime. Kapinos has now, smartly, jumped onto the comic book bandwagon, taking the DC character, Lucifer, and turning it into a TV show which will debut on Fox, probably as a companion to Gotham.
Writer: Tom Kapinos
Details: 55 pages

Okay, so I’ve just started Season 3 of House of Cards, and I’m worried. For those planning on watching the show in the future, avert your eyes, I’m about to get into spoilers. Basically, when you have a particular goal driving a TV show, the show will encounter a crossroads when the protagonist achieves that goal. Frank Underwood’s (Kevin Spacey) goal has always been to become president. That’s why we watched for the first two seasons – to see if he could do it. Now that he’s done it, where does the story go?

Now there are a million new story challenges you can create for the president of the United States. But no matter what you do, it’s hard to recapture the excitement of the underdog trying to become the top dog. I’m worried that the show will start focusing on plot (We must improve our relations with Russia!) as opposed to character, which is what makes all TV shows, and this one in particular, so good. Whatever the case, I’m eager to see how they solve this problem. It could lead to either some really good or some really bad screenwriting. I’m sure those who have already seen Season 3 will offer up their thoughts in the comments.  I only ask that they do so without spoilers.

How does this tie into today’s pilot? Well, Frank Underwood is a morally corrupt individual. He will do whatever it takes to get what he wants. It’s become apparent to me that these types of characters are great for TV shows. Someone who’s a little bad is so much more entertaining than someone who’s pure good. And today, we have a character who’s probably about as bad as they get. The devil himself. Let’s take a look at Fox’s upcoming show… Lucifer.

When we meet Lucifer Morningstar, he’s been chilling in LA for a good year, running his hot nightclub, Lux, and basically doing whatever naughty thoughts come into his head. The reason Lucifer has so much fun is that he’s devoid of that part of the body that actually cares about things – what is it called again? – oh yeah, the heart.

That’s about to change, though. One of Lucifer’s pet projects has been Delilah, a talented musician who debuted at his club and who has since become one of the biggest musicians in the world. However, like a lot of musicians, she makes terrible dating mistakes, and on this particular night at Lux, one of those mistakes drives by the club and guns her down.

What starts as anger eventually becomes sadness in Lucifer – a feeling he’s totally unfamiliar with. It bothers him enough that he insists on joining local hot but uptight cop, Chloe, on her investigation into the murder. Chloe doesn’t like the candid and sexist Lucifer, but she’s amazed by his Jedi-like power to get anybody to tell him what he wants to know.

The two go from Record Company owners to rap stars to movie stars as they trace Delilah’s sordid relationship past, before finally discovering that the wife of one of Delilah’s lovers got her bodyguard to do the hit. It’s a satisfying conclusion for Lucifer, who can now go back to his debauchery-laden ways. Except there’s one problem. He actually finds himself caring for this Chloe woman. Humph. Why does the real world have to be so complicated??

Let’s start off today talking about Investigation Simplicity Syndrome. 50% of the TV shows out there revolve around some kind of procedural format. Characters go on an investigation, usually to find a murderer. It’s a tried and true format where the goal and stakes are built right there into the genre.

But Investigation Simplicity Syndrome can destroy a procedural. This occurs when the investigation is too simplistic. Here Lucifer and Chloe go to a record producer, who says he didn’t do it and offers, “It was probably that rapper.” They go to the rapper, who says, “It was probably that movie star.” They go the movie star and, after talking to his wife, realize she was the one who did it.

It was so basic as to seem purposefully boring. Now when you’re writing a comedy series, which Lucifer basically is, you get a little more leeway in this area. If people are laughing, they’re not demanding Fargo-like complexity in their plot. But you have to put a LITTLE effort into the investigation.

Another problem with Lucifer is Lucifer’s key power – his ability to get people to tell him the truth. It makes things too easy! Characters throw the answers at him without any effort on his part: “Oh yeah, you should go check out that guy. He’s suspicious.” With any movie or show, you want to make things DIFFICULT on your characters – not simple – because then your characters have to struggle, and characters who struggle are always more fun to watch than characters who are handed everything.

So the combination of Investigation Simplicity Syndrome and Lucifer being handed all the information without having to work for it made for an incredibly boring investigation.

Which means I probably hated Lucifer, right? Not exactly. What Lucifer lacks in plotting it makes up for in fun. Lucifer is a funny character, throwing out punchlines faster than Mayweather throws punches (when an Angel visits his club: “Amenadude! How’s it hanging, big guy? Didn’t you see the sign?” “No angels allowed?” No? Hmm, maybe we should be using a bigger font.”)

And let’s not forget the wish-fulfillment, one of the more underrated components of character creation. We all wish we could do bad things and not have to suffer the consequences for them. That’s what’s so fun about watching Lucifer. He’s bad and he doesn’t give a shit.

That alone wouldn’t have been enough though. Kapinos smartly realizes that every good TV character needs somewhere to go. If there’s nothing they’re struggling with, then they’re basically a robot. So what’s hinted at, here, is Lucifer’s growing introduction to feelings – something he never had to deal with down in Hell. Once a character must deal with consequences, their choices become a lot more difficult, and we sense that’s going to be Lucifer’s journey as a character.

The script also benefits from Protagonist Dramatic Irony. This is when we know something about the character that nobody in the story does. This typically works best with serial killer protagonist flicks (American Psycho), but here, it’s simply that Lucifer is the devil. Therefore, whenever someone challenges Lucifer, or gets in his face, or gives him trouble, our superior knowledge allows us to delight in what’s about to follow. This happens several times in the script, such as when Scrip9 (the rapper) tries to intimidate Lucifer, only to end up on the floor crying like a baby when the conversation is over.

So what Lucifer lacks in plot, it makes up for in character. And for this reason, I give the pilot a passing grade. This is television, and in television, character is king. So if you nail that, you get some slack on the plot front. Still, if Kapinos thinks this show is going to last with investigations like this, Lucifer’s going to be buying property back in Hell before sweeps week. I hope that doesn’t happen because this series has potential.

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

What I learned: An easy way to avoid Investigation Simplicity Syndrome is to add COMPLICATIONS to the investigation. Just look for places to make things more difficult for your investigators. They go to their next lead – but the lead turns out to be dead. They go to their top suspect, but a lawyer opens the door and says his client won’t be talking to them. The chief of police tells them to stop investigating – the case is closed. It can be anything, as long as it throws the investigation off its typical path.