Genre: True Story/Comedy
Premise: Facing financial ruin, auteur filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola is forced to direct the adaptation of Mario Puzo’s pulp novel, The Godfather.
About: Andrew Farotte is another fresh-faced writer no one knew about until he landed on the low end of last year’s Black List with this script. He’d done a few shorts, a tiny TV series, but this is first big breakthrough moment.
Writer: Andrew Farotte
Details: 107 pages (undated)

Personally, I’m not a fan of these “making of movies” scripts. My issue with them is that the writer is piggy-backing on top of something so gigantic, so successful, that all they have to do is stand around and let the story tell itself. They don’t have to display any skills of their own, which feels like a cheat.

Plus, let’s face it, these “making of movies” scripts are getting out of control. We’ve seen it with Star Wars. We’ve seen it with Jaws. I could’ve sworn one was written about Apocalypse Now. We’re teetering on the next biopic-era craze here.

But a script about the making of The Godfather has an ace up its sleeve. Robert Evans. Talk about a personality. He’s like the male version of Carrie Fischer. I figured, if there was any “making of” script that had a shot at entertaining me, it would be one with this guy. And so away I read…

It’s 1970 and director Francis Ford Coppola, as many of you know, was in the midst of his experimental hippy-ish studio project, Zoetrope (whose members included, among others, George Lucas). The idea was to move away from the corrupt profits-obsessed studio system and have a place where everyone just, like, shared, man.

Well sharing didn’t turn into caring as everyone in Zoetrope did a lot more taking than giving. As a result, Zoetrope was in some financial dire straits, which brings us to Paramount’s upcoming adaptation of the popular novel, The Godfather. Legendary weirdo/studio-head Robert Evans was ready to turn this into a hit, but nobody wanted to direct it for him. Reluctantly, then, he called up Coppola.

The funny thing? Coppola didn’t want to do it either! In one of the many surprising tidbits you learn from this script, The Godfather novel was considered trashy smut. Which is exactly why Coppola didn’t want anything to do with it. But with Lucas chirping in his ear about Zoetrope bills needing to be paid, Coppola finally relented.

Once committed, that’s when the real fun began, starting with who they were going to cast as the star, Michael Corleone. Evans was set on pretty boy, Ryan O’Neal. But Coppola wanted an unknown, a little mumbling troll of an actor named Al Pacino. This war would be fought viciously throughout pre-production.

In addition to worrying about Pacino, the local New York Italian League, fresh off being smeared in the media, was set on erasing Italian stereotypes, and when they found out about the mafia-sensationalizing Godfather, stopping the production became their number 1 priority. If Coppola and Evans even thought about filming in New York, they would feel the full wrath of the Italian community. It was ironic, to say the least, since this league also happened to be a front for a major Italian crime syndicate.

And who could forget Brando? Needing that big splashy name to sell tickets, Coppola went after Brando hard, who’d only recently started his descent into madness. At the time, Brando was set on giving the land back to its rightful owners, the Native Americans, and had scheduled regular Native American ritualistic dances at his Hollywood Hills home, which he procured by promising said Native Americans SAG cards (of which he had no sway to actually deliver).

After getting the mob off their back by promising them roles in the film, the final battle was whether Pacino or O’Neal would win the role. It would be a race that went down to the wire, and one that would end up affecting the history of film forevermore.

So what’s the first thing I noticed about “Francis & The Godfather?” The TIGHT SPACING feature on Final Draft!!! Guys, you think we can’t tell that the bottom of the letters and the top of the letters on the next line aren’t touching??? We know you want your page count to be low, but this attempted gimmick never gets past savvy readers and actually infuriates them.

Moving on from there, I have to admit that this is the best “making of movie” script I’ve read so far. Part of that is due to me not knowing much about the production. So when I read fellow Black Lister, Chewie, there wasn’t a single Star Wars production fact I hadn’t heard before. Here, I was learning something new on every page.

But it wasn’t just that. When you write these scripts, it’s important that you’re not just transcribing, but rather ELEVATING the material. And Farrote elevates. I’ll give you an example. This easily could’ve been a straight-forward facts-driven “making-of” project. But Farotte appears to bypass some of the hard facts in favor of humor, which gives the story a point-of-view, which makes it feel like more than a wikipedia entry.

The Italian League subplot was the perfect embodiment of this. That these guys were fuming about being portrayed as gangsters when they were, in fact, gangsters.

On top of that, there’s a nice theme woven into the story about art versus commerce. We tend to look back at the 70s as this “golden era” where people made movies without money in mind. But going off of this script, the argument was just as intense back then as it is now. I loved Mario Puzo’s (the author of the book) monologue that he’d tried to stay true to himself for his first three books and barely made 15 thousand dollars. Then he sold out, wrote The Godfather, and became rich. And his takeaway? So the fuck what.

If there’s a weak link in the script, it’s probably Francis himself. This is the risk you run when you have so many big characters in your story and your main character has to play the straight man. How do they not get swept away in the tornado of personalities? Especially since Francis didn’t want to make the movie in the first place.

I always have an issue with that – protagonists who don’t want to achieve their goal. Because then you can say, “Well if he fails, he gets exactly what he wants.” And if that’s the case, why would we care if he successfully directs the film?

But I realized through reading this that there’s an addendum to that rule: NEED. Francis may not have wanted to make the movie, but he NEEDED to make the movie because his business, with all his friends’ livelihoods, was at stake. My only issue is that they didn’t make this need powerful enough. If we would’ve felt Zoetrope’s potential collapse as inevitable without the success of The Godfather, we may have been more invested in Francis’s journey.

This was a really amusing screenplay nonetheless and of all the “making of movies” projects out there, this is the one I’d pay for in the theater. Definitely worth checking out.

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

What I learned: So just this week, I was giving notes on a script where there was an ensemble of characters, two of whom (both major), I kept mixing up. Didn’t matter if I was on page 20 or 80. Every time we’d cut back to them, I had to go back to my notes to remember who was who. And I wondered, “Why am I having such a hard time differentiating these two??” And I realized that both characters spoke EXACTLY THE SAME. There weren’t any differences in their cadence, speech patterns, vocabulary, demeanor. While it’s not a necessity, if we can identify a character through their dialogue alone, it’s a huge advantage. It doesn’t just make it easier to read, it makes the script better. I noticed here with Robert Evans, that he always spoke in the third person: “Robert doesn’t like that.” It was such a simple thing, and yet I could instantly identify him solely through his dialogue. Look for ways to differentiate your own characters through dialogue alone.

I just sent the newsletter out seconds ago. It’s got the Max Landis “Deeper” review, which is a VERY interesting review if I do say so myself. If you didn’t get the newsletter, check your SPAM and PROMOTIONS folders. If you still didn’t get it, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com and let me know. If you’re not on the newsletter mailing list and want to be, also e-mail me at that address with the subject line: NEWSLETTER. Enjoy everybody!

Congrats to yesterday’s “worth the read” amateur script. Lawrence e-mailed me to let me know he’s slogging through a particularly rough time in his life and this review helped him remember what he was doing this for. Let’s give more writers that moment. Bring your best stuff, guys. And if you’re new to Amateur Offerings and want a shot at getting your script reviewed, e-mail carsonreeves3@gmail.com with your title, genre, logline, and why you think your script deserves a shot. Don’t forget to include a PDF of your script. Now on to today. Read as much as you can from each script and cast your vote in the comments section (leave a comment with your pick). Let’s find an IMPRESSIVE! :)

Title: Vampire United
Genre: Comedy Horror Action.
Logline: A shamed ex-soccer pro must rise up against the new owner of his local team when he discovers he’s an Eastern European vampire bent on destroying the beautiful game.
Why You Should Read: I’m an English screenwriter living in Berlin aspiring to have a career in LA and would love to have my script reviewed to know if the script is ready to present to the industry, or not. I’m aware the story and its execution have to be amazing and I’m submitting the script in the hope I get notes to help reach that goal. The script is in the vein of Shaun Of The Dead, and The World’s End but with the heart of The Full Monty and Billy Elliot. I spent months in Whitby researching/writing the script. And for that I deserve good things to happen! Whitby is a small seaside town in North Yorkshire where Bram Stoker wrote and set much of Dracula. A goal I have is to make the association between Whitby and Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel more known. Why? Because despite there being 300 + movies, TV series, etc. made from the novel none have ever mentioned the location of Whitby, which I find incredible. Whitby is the place where Dracula landed in the UK from Transylvania on the Russian Schooner ship the Demeter to curse the nation with vampirism. Vampire United is inspired by that set up. I have an MA in screenwriting and attended the UCLA professional Program in screenwriting some years back. My previous script was a top 13 finalist of 4000 entries in the Scriptapalooza competition and Vampire United recently received three high grades on the Black List. I see this script as a perfect fit for Ben Wheatley and plan to get it to him when it’s ready.

Title: My Druncle Kevin
Comedy: Family Comedy
Logline: When her Mother goes missing on Black Friday, a strong-willed Teen is forced to quest into the shopping chaos with the person whose company she enjoys least – her perpetually immature and inebriated Uncle.
Why You Should Read: Why should you read My Druncle Kevin? I can sit here and make bold, downright blasphemous claims about my script being “Hughes-ian” or in the vein of a “Family Style Hangover,” but no one wants to hear that. Instead, here are ten stone cold bullet points…

1. It’s a comedy with heart for days.
2. It’s a script set during a time of year that is oddly underrepresented in movies.
3. It centers on a refreshing “buddy coppy” duo not often seen in film.
4. It’s all about family at its core.
5. It features the best dopey small car action since “The Italian Job.”
6. It cracked the ScriptShadow 250!
7. Too much pressure, skip to #8.
8. It’ll make you appreciate your mother.
9. My friend Joe said it was “pretty good,” and he doesn’t even read scripts!
10. It will put you in the holiday spirit just in time for… Spring. I’m nothing if not topical.

Title: The Mars Exploit
Genre: Sci-Fi/Action
Logline: After telepathic extremists seize control of the Solar system, an elite programmer must sneak onto occupied Mars and subvert the enemy’s communications network, or say goodbye to freedom of thought forever.
Why You Should Read: When Alex told me this story, I don’t think he had any idea what it would do to me. How I’d be up until three in the morning writing down every word he’d said, because I was too excited about it to sleep. After he graciously gave me permission to turn it into a screenplay, I spent many more sleepless nights, first teaching myself screenplay format (which, as a novelist, I hadn’t touched since college), then working out each new plot twist and character – because I just couldn’t wait to share this amazing story with everyone else. I hope I’ve done it justice!

Title: Refugee
Genre: Action/Adventure
Logline: A dishonorably discharged Marine breaks a stalemate between the US military and the gangs that inhabit what’s left of a flooded New York City.
Why You Should Read: I’m a Sydney based writer with a mixed background. With an Iraqi father and an Algerian mother, I was born in Poland, grew up in Australia, lived in Italy and the Netherlands and traveled most of the world. I’ve been held up at gunpoint, jumped from 70 foot cliffs and out of aeroplanes. I don’t say it to boast, but to show how varied my experiences have been. Refugee was written with input from actual US Marines and I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on it. If it doesn’t get reviewed, I at least hope you enjoy the ride.

Title: Punks
Genre: Comedy
Logline: Four friends try to have a normal day, until everything starts going wrong.
Why You Should Read: My name is Ty Brantley. I am 15 years old and I am also an aspiring writer just trying to get his script read. I think you should read my script because of my age and this will most likely help get my name out there. Also, most people who have read it say it’s pretty good.

Today’s amateur script was beaten out in the last amateur showdown. But today’s review will point out how wrong those voters were.

Genre: Heist
Premise: An estranged group of musicians, of a once successful band, reunite in order to pull a series of robberies at major concert venues, all in one night, in an attempt to take back the millions they feel were stolen from them by their ex-manager, who now runs the venues they target. Their greatest hits, are robberies.
Why You Should Read: I love heist films. Primarily, grounded heist films. Shit that could happen. Shit that, if we put our minds to it, and had just the right opportunity, for just the right reason, we might be able to pull off and would risk doing so. Any heist situation is absolutely nuts to attempt, so it has to be about more than the money. There has to be something so wrong with the system, the person, the past or the present where it seems there is no other choice. Vultures N Doves is unique twist on the heist film, something I’ve never seen in a movie before, it’s amped up fun, there’s a couple of outrageous set pieces, and most importantly, a main character with a rockstar ego, who is struggling to keep his band, marriage, and life together.
Writer: Lawrence Lamovec
Details: 115 pages

I’m not going to lie. I wasn’t thrilled with this premise. It’s the kind of thing you can see working as a real life story. A middle-of-the-road band spent the entirety of the 70s and 80s robbing the very venues they worked at. But once you turn this premise into a fictional story, it feels a bit absurd. I was wondering if I’d be able to suspend my disbelief.

On top of that, you have an endless logline, which almost always indicates a bad screenplay. Why? Because when writers can’t stop going on in their logline, it probably means they can’t stop going on in their script – that things are going to be uncomfortably unfocused and rambling. I’m not sure why this is such a problem for writers – eliminating extraneous words and phrases from their logline. It’s something that has to be done.

So for Lawrence’s logline here, I’d rewrite it as: A once successful band reunites to rob a series of music venues and take back the millions that were stolen from them by a corrupt concert promoter.

Now here’s the thing. We find out in the script that the “corrupt concert promoter” is actually their ex-manager, who happens to also promote these concerts. It’s a detail that can be explained properly over the course of an entire screenplay, but not so much in a brief logline. However, if you write, “…that were stolen from them by their ex-manager, who also happens to be a concert promoter,” it’s clunky as shit. Sometimes you have to sacrifice the small details of your story so that your logline reads cleanly.

While the logline itself may have been a bad experience, I was surprised to find that the script itself was not. In fact, Vultures ’N’ Doves surprised me on numerous levels. This was some damn fine writing, my friends.

35 year-old Cash used to be a rock star. His band, Vultures N Doves, played all the biggest venues in the world, and turned out numerous number hits along the way. The only problem is that they signed a shitty record deal when they were teenagers with a slimy Chicago manager named James Degrazia, leaving them broke and Degrazia a millionaire many times over.

If there were a face for “music industry corruption,” Degrazia would be it. Even worse, his father ran all the concert venues in the area, which Degrazia has since taken over. The borderline mobster basically owns the Chicago music scene.

When Cash and his band lose their final court battle to Degrazia to get the money they’re owed, Cash comes up with an idea. There’s nobody who knows how concerts work better than they do. What if they robbed two venues in town on the biggest night of the year?

His band, which consists of a British twerp named Legend, a scrawny sweetheart named Zero, and a tough-as nails Latino named Matador, think he’s crazy. But Cash is a brilliant pitch man. And as he points out, they’re not really robbing anyone of anything. They’re taking back the money that Degrazia owes them.

Complicating matters is the fact that Cash’s wife, Rosa, is secretly sleeping with Degrazia and thinking of running away with him. As much as she loves Cash, life with him has been one disappointment after another, and she needs someone who can take care of her, which Degrazia is more than happy to do.

The plan is to rob the United Center first where the Rolling Stones are playing, and then head up to Grant Park, where a younger crowd participates in Lollapalooza. The idea is, if they don’t hit up both venues on the same night, the robbery will result in bolstered security that will stave off any future heist attempts.

So in the course of 24 hours, Cash and crew are either going to get their revenge, or end up in jail. But it’s going to be a hell of a wild night either way.

One of the first things I realized with “Vultures” was how focused it was. We start off seeing Cash and company lose to Degrazia in court, then we’re right into “What now?” which results in Cash coming up with the heist scheme. As I’ve told you guys numerous times, you want to get into your story quickly. Show the reader that you’re not going to waste their time.

Another good sign was the dual-heist format. One of the things you get used to after writing a lot of screenplays is how long stuff is going to take. You know that a heist, for example, probably isn’t going to last more than 30 pages. That leaves you 80 pages left. Do you have enough story for those 80 pages? Are you going to give us 80 pages of the band preparing for the heist?

Of course not. Half of that will end up being filler. So to add another heist during the evening was smart. The heist just got twice as difficult (more uncertainty in the character’s goal is always good) and you’ve got 50 pages worth of heists (assuming each one moves a little faster) instead of 30.

That still leaves 60 pages though. So what are you going to fill that up with? Part of it will be preparation, yes, but I’m not sure we’ll be able to keep preparation alone interesting for 60 pages.

So from there, you go to subplots. Find the most interesting characters in your script and see if you can explore parallel storylines with them. One of the subplots Lawrence chooses is the Rosa-Cash love story. Making Rosa Degrazia’s secret lover made us hate him even more, and it made Rosa a lot more complex.

Lawrence also builds a subplot that involves some back-door corruption between the well-connected Degrazia and the Chicago Mayor. The duo have some shady dealings together that Lawrence cleverly links up with the money Cash is stealing from the venues. Degrazia realizes that he can’t just go to the police, as the dirty money is tied back to the mayor.

I think that’s the moment where the script truly came together for me. When writers can weave a subplot and a main plot together in an unexpected and satisfying way, it’s the sign that they know what they’re doing.

And Lawrence definitely knows his stuff. This premise still might be too weird for me, but I have to give Lawrence credit for executing the shit out of it. :)

Screenplay link: Vultures ’N’ Doves

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

What I learned: Try and plot out, to the best of your knowledge, how long each key event in your script is going to take to get an idea of how many pages will be left. So if your key events add up to 40 pages, that still leaves 70 pages to fill up. If you don’t have a solid plan for filling up 70 pages, you’re going to have a lot of filler. Either add another main event like Lawrence did here, or be prepared to include a wealth of subplots.

I’m sure every one of you asks yourselves some variation of How the hell do I break in? on a weekly basis. What is the damn secret sauce?? If someone can just TELL ME what I’m missing, I’ll start doing it! I promise! Since every writer is different, I can’t give you a universal answer to this question. But after reading 250 screenplays and watching 225 of those fall by the wayside, I can tell you the biggest difference between the writers who made it and the writers who didn’t. This, my friends, is the secret to the next level. Are you ready?

The human condition.

That’s it. That’s the secret. Until you start caring about the human condition, about people, about what goes on inside a person’s head, about how people affect each other on a psychological and emotional level, your writing will never be up to Hollywood standards.

This is why you see a lot of good scripts for 25 pages, and then they fall off a Yellowstone-sized cliff. It’s not just that after 25 pages, your script moves into the dreaded second act. It’s that in the first act, you don’t have to get into your characters much. You set up their issues, you set up their situation, and you prepare us for their journey. But most of that stuff is skin deep. Once you move to the second act, you need to explore your characters on a much deeper level, and if you a) don’t know how to do this or b) don’t have any interest in doing it, your scripts won’t resonate with people. Because the scripts that resonate with people are the ones that hit readers on an emotional level. They move the reader somehow. That’s the only way to write something memorable.

And the good news? Doing this is actually easier than you think. As writers, we write from a place of omnipotence. We see and know everything, like God. If you want to write an emotionally affecting character, however, you must move away from this vantage point and place yourself inside the character’s head. Then ask yourself, “What is going on in my mind as I try and deal with this situation?” Once you find the dominant fear/conflict/obsession in that character’s head, you blow it up and make it the theme of your character’s journey.

So let’s take The Martian. After you’ve put together your outline or even written the first draft of the script so your plot is in place, put yourself in Matt Damon’s head and ask what he’s thinking about at this moment. What is a man stranded on a planet who can’t be saved thinking? He’s thinking about his mortality. He’s lonely. He’s afraid. He’s wondering if he can survive. We have several directions we can go here.

Ultimately, the movie chooses to focus on the survival aspect. How does someone overcome certain death? They fight until the bitter end. They try to survive until they have nothing left to give. And when we watch The Martian, which has a wonderful plot, the part of the story we relate to the most is actually the main character’s fight for survival. That’s the human element. This movie doesn’t resonate in the same manner if Matt Damon isn’t worried. If he isn’t fighting to stay alive in every single frame.

Let’s take another recent film – Deadpool. I’m picking this one specifically because it’s a high-profile studio release that you’d assume could care less about feelings and emotions. Oh but contraire mon frere. We’re going to approach this in the same way. Wade (Deadpool) has been tortured, his face burned beyond recognition. Put yourselves inside the head of that character. What are you most afraid about? The way people would look at you. Of always being considered a freak. Of never being loved again.

Ahhhh, that last one hits hard, doesn’t it? When you find something that hits extra hard, it’s a sign that you want to build your character around it. So it’s no surprise that Deadpool’s emotional through-line is built around Wade’s fear that the love of his life will never love him again. So he avoids her to spare both her and himself. This inner conflict drives him mad. And it’s why this movie made 350 million dollars when the studio thought it would make 80. Because it got beneath the audience’s skin and actually made them feel something.

Where do people go wrong with this process? Where do they screw up? A good place to look is Zack Snyder. Zack is like a lot of young writers in that he thinks you stir up emotion through melodramatic imagery. A slow-motion scene where a man visits his parents’ grave, for example. On the surface, this seems like it should work. We have dead loved ones, which everyone can relate to. We see how sad the character is, which we can relate to. Theoretically this should create sadness in us, right?

The reason it doesn’t, though, is because it’s a trick, a calculated equation inserted specifically to milk emotion from the audience. Audiences are too savvy for that. They know when you’re manipulating them. The way you make characters resonate is by exploring what’s going on inside of them throughout the entirety of your movie. Issues need to be embedded into the character, not given a 2-minute highlight reel.

So again, learn to put yourself inside your character’s head. Figure out what they’re thinking, what they’re scared of. When you identify what that is, blow it up and make it the theme of the character, taking it all the way from the beginning to the end of the movie. That doesn’t mean every single scene will deal with the issue. But the issue should permeate every pore of the character’s body regardless of whether they’re dealing with it or not. For example, Deadpool may not be stumbling around the city in every scene lamenting the loss of his girlfriend, but his overuse of humor when he fights the bad guys is clearly a defense mechanism to hide the pain he’s suffering. So even though the issue isn’t technically there, it’s still there.

Now get back to your latest script and beef up those characters!