Genre: Thriller/Horror
Premise: A film scholar stumbles across an ancient print of a forgotten film, which he believes has the power to manipulate audiences into life-threatening violent episodes.
About: We got an interesting one today, guys. This is a Jim Uhls (the guy who adapted Fight Club) adaptation of a 1991 cult novel that… wait for it… Darren Aronofsky was going to direct. But as is the case with big time directors who have a lot of projects orbiting them, only the cream of the crop gets chosen. So Darren eventually moved on, leaving poor Flicker to fend for itself. Kenneth Branagh would later attach himself, but now the project seems to be without a captain.
Writer: Jim Uhls (based on the 1991 novel by Theodore Roszak).
Details: 117 pages (2011 draft)
Holy Moses of Mary Churchtree.
This was a bizarre one, dude. At times Flicker embraces the sophistication of a Quentin Tarantino production or a David Fincher flick, only to subsequently dip into The Ring meets Scream territory. It’s the screenwriting equivalent of a Nicholas Cage performance. You’re constantly asking: Is this genius or the worst thing I’ve ever read?
Since this is where the majority of great work lies, at the very least we’ve got something to discuss today. And since the only thing we have to discuss in screenwriting these days is how does Max Landis sell vomit drafts for 3 million dollars, I’d say that’s a nice change of pace.
Jon Gates may be the only 20-something guy on earth obsessed with film restoration. He currently works at the UCLA Film Preservation Project, spending the few hours of free time he has each night watching old films at his buddy’s private theater.
One day, while rummaging around the attic of that theater, Jon comes across a rotting print of one of his favorite films and takes it back to his lab to save it. When he gets there, he realizes there’s a different movie in the canister, a film from the 30s called “Judas Everyman” that was thought to have been lost forever.
Since this is the kind of thing film geeks live for, Jon puts together an impromptu screening with his friends, which includes a hot LA Weekly film critic he met named Claire Swann. After the film, everyone believes they’ve watched the most disturbing yet greatest movie of all time. But for some reason, they’re all in an incredibly violent mood. In fact, the youngest girl in the group gets so upset, she storms outside, where she’s promptly flattened by a truck.
Jon and Claire subsequently become obsessed with the film, along with its director, Max Castle. They find out that Castle made one other film, a sci-fi flick called, “Queen of Venus.” They go on an endless journey to find the film, learning some disturbing things about Castle and his movies along the way.
Castle was part of a cult called “Orphans of the Storm,” and this still-active cult has been obsessed with finding these lost prints, as they believe the films have the power to incite violence in audiences. If they can get these films screened, they can incite a revolution.
While Claire believes they’ve gone past the point of tin foil hats on this one, Jon is convinced it’s all real, and if they don’t get these stray films before the Orphans do, that the entire world could be in danger. Can they save the world from this film in time? Or, if not, at least save us from having to endure the next Adam Sandler movie? Read yourself some Flicker to find out!
Whenever you have an “out there” premise like this, you can take it in one of two directions. You can go further out there and be weird as shit (think “Fight Club” or “The Exorcist”). Or you can rein the weirdness in and embrace the more traditional trappings of a genre film.
Flicker takes the latter approach. This script starts off bizarre as shit. You have this weird film they’ve found. In it, mobs of people turn into demons and start killing each other. The director is using subliminal messages to incite violence in the viewer. I can only imagine what Aronofsky would’ve done with this.
But while that opening held promise, this becomes more of a traditional thriller/horror flick where our hero goes searching for the origin of the dangerous film (we even get the horror trope of Jon visiting an insane asylum to talk to a crazy old character who may have information they need), and for that reason, it feels more like a February release than a November one.
And herein lies the age-old question in screenwriting. Do you stick with one of the most time-tested formulas in history – the straight 3-act structure? Or do you ignore it, along with many other screenwriting “rules,” and do whatever the fuck feels right in the pursuit of coming up with something truly original?
Taking the latter route certainly gets you cool points. But it’s also infinitely harder. Everyone loves celebrating the Pulp Fictions, the Social Networks, and the Revenants of the world. But they don’t see what I see – which is the hundreds of scripts that aspire to be the next Pulp Fiction, Social Network, or Revenant. When those scripts are bad, they are worse than any script you could imagine.
That’s because many writers (typically newer writers) erroneously believe that as long as you’re weird and a little bit talented, you can do anything in a script and it will turn out genius. But the truth is, even the weirdos have a solid grasp on how to tell a good story. Tarantino may be nontraditional, but there’s no one out there who can build suspense into a scene like he can. And that’s a big reason why we stay so engaged in a Tarantino film.
On the flip side, you have movies like Rocky, Up, or The King’s Speech, which are simple 3-act screenplays, and proof that you’re not selling out when you go simple. You can still write an amazing film, even if it’s a little more predictable.
With that said, one should always take into consideration audience expectation. When you tell someone your idea, think about what kind of movie they’re expecting to see. If you pitch a producer a really fucked up premise then deliver a straight-forward 3-act hero’s journey, they’re probably going to be disappointed, right? With a fucked up premise, you want a fucked up execution.
One of the most famous cases of this is the still unmade “The Sky is Falling,” about a couple of priests who discover irrefutable proof that God doesn’t exist and go on a crazy drug-fueled killing spree as a result. Are you going to tell that story in a straight-forward manner? I hope not. You’re probably going to want to jump around in time a bit, throw in a series of unexpected twists, give us non-traditional heroes, etc.
However, if you’re pitching me a movie about a boy who befriends an alien, I’m totally fine with that being a simple 3-act story.
Getting back to Flicker, I think the script has potential. But it needs a fresh voice. It needs to be modernized. And it needs to stay away from the kind of second and third acts that you’d see in movies like Scream or The Ring.
This film, like The Exorcist, needs to embrace just how fucked up it is and stick with that. I mean, there’s a scene where Jon and Claire watch Queen of Venus, a film Castle designed to trigger the carnal side of the brain. So the two immediately start fucking like animals while an old man in a wheelchair (the one who showed them the movie) watches while attempting to jack off.
It’s one of the moments where Flicker truly embraces the absurdity of its premise. The next draft of this needs to do more of that, but not just in the individual scenes. It needs to do it in the way the script is structured, in the way the story is told. This really could be great under the right direction. But right now, it leaves you wanting more.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Make sure you’re giving the reader the movie you pitched them in your logline. I read a lot of bait-and-switch scripts where the logline promised me something unique and challenging, and instead I got something simple and formulaic (and vice versa!). Always be consistent with what you pitch.
Genre: Drama/Thriller
Premise: A young man raised by his overbearing father in a remote forest is forced to reevaluate everything he’s learned when his father goes to jail and he’s introduced into society for the first time.
About: This script finished low on the most recent Black List. Not much is known about the writer, Jacques Edeline, other than that he’s spent the last few years writing and making short films.
Writer: Jacques Edeline
Details: 98 pages – undated
As we come off a weekend where Batman vs. Superman, a film some believed would be the biggest movie of all time, was dethroned in only its third weekend by a second-tier Melissa McCarthy comedy, we have to ask the question: Are audiences finally getting tired of superhero films?
A producer was trying to convince me of this a few months ago – that once these superhero movies started to run up too close to each other, audiences would bolt. For the record, I told him he was crazy. Remember, people have been announcing the end of superhero films for almost a decade now. Director Matthew Vaughn famously predicted that his film, X-Men: First Class, would be one of the last superhero films. But the damn genre is like alien teflon – it doesn’t just repel. It grows stronger!
However, as I watched recent trailers for Suicide Squad and Captain America, I noticed a new feeling bubbling up inside of me. It wasn’t hate. It wasn’t apathy. It was exhaustion. I know I will see these movies. But I’m not sure I’m looking forward to them anymore. There are only so many colors you can use for a cape.
Make no mistake, there would be SO MANY PEOPLE in Hollywood THRILLED by this news. Contrary to popular belief, that all Hollywood cares about is moola, the creative side of the field – the people who love the process of making movies – they’re DONE with superheroes. They’re praying every day that they die.
And maybe if that happens, we’ll get more movies like today’s, a script I went into with zero expectations, and came out of with a giant smile on my face. Which is kinda disturbing once you hear what it’s about.
42 year-old Charlie Nasy lives out in the Appalachian wilderness with his 15 year-old son, Will, a young man who’s basically a clone of his father. And what a father that is. Charlie’s life is that of a “prepper” on steroids. They farm the land, they kill their own food, they read, they stockpile, they train.
As you’d expect, Will’s perception of the world is a little warped. Charlie’s taught him that society is evil, that everyone’s a puppet, that all people want to do is manipulate you, that you should never trust anyone about anything.
So when the cops show up one day and take Charlie away for a lifetime of not paying the tax man, Will’s placed in a temporary foster home, where an older couple watches over him. Will goes to school for the first time, and despite being miles smarter than everyone else, plans to lay low until his father gets out in a year.
That plan is thrown into disarray, however, when he develops a relationship with an offbeat artsy stunner, Renee. Renee starts to show him another side to life – namely that you can have fun – an activity Will’s never been privy to.
Through flashbacks, we learn that Charlie is way worse than being an overbearing abusive weirdo, and has actually been planning a series of terrorist attacks against the U.S. Call it serendipitous then, that Will is encouraged by Renee to try out for the Presidential Scholars Program, a program whereby if you win, you get to meet the president himself.
Charlie flips when he hears this, and through their weekly prison visits, comes up with a plan for Will to kill they president when they meet. Will is totally down at first, but as he falls deeper and deeper in love with Renee, he begins to question not just the plan, but everything he’s ever known about his father.
So before committing to this script, I actually read the first few pages of four other Black List scripts. I said to myself, whoever had the best first-3-pages would get the read. Homegrown won because it introduced me to the most interesting character of the bunch – Charlie.
Why was he the most interesting? Simple. The make-up of Charlie’s character brought conflict into every scene he was in.
Conflict, my page-filling friends, is the magical pixie dust that brings scenes alive. So you want to look for it wherever you can. We talk about goals, stakes, and urgency. But remember that the right dose of conflict can power a scene that doesn’t contain any of those elements.
This is actually what TV does. TV can’t always give you that strong goal, those high stakes, and that impending urgency, because the story needs to last for years. If you GSU the shit out of every scene, you’re going to burn the reader out. So how does TV keep you entertained? That’s right: CONFLICT. Find the conflict in the scene and you will have an entertaining scene.
What Jacques does here is he embeds resistance into the core of his co-lead, Charlie. Charlie hates people. He despises happiness. He’s always an ill-timed tap on the shoulder from snapping. So what happens when you place that kind of person in a conversation? There’s conflict! Right? Because he doesn’t want to be in the conversation.
We spot this mechanism in action right off the bat. Charlie’s forced to sell fish at the farmer’s market for extra dough. A flirty woman approaches him and asks him questions about his fish, about his process for catching them, and Charlie just shuts her down. We feel the tension in the conversation. We feel the conflict between them. It acts as current to electrify the scene.
And conflict’s important because the script doesn’t have urgency. “Homegrown” takes place over an entire year. It’s a reminder that screenwriting is a lot like cooking. You don’t always have the ingredients (in this case, urgency). But that’s okay. Because you can compensate by adding more of another ingredient (in this case, conflict).
Another thing I liked about Homegrown was that usually in these localized character-driven scripts, the stakes are low. I mean sure, the personal stakes are high. If the characters don’t get over their haunting pasts, they’ll never be whole again. All of that is wonderful and liberating. But what if you could do that AND make your story feel big at the same time? You can. Add a story element with high-stakes.
When we find out that Will could actually assassinate the president of the United States, this story goes up a level. Now there’s something on the line here. This kid could change the course of history. That was a clever addition.
And finally, this has such a nasty villain – Charlie. He’s easily the most vile character I’ve read all year. And I always say, if you can write one character into your script that the reader won’t forget any time soon, you’ve succeeded. Because most writers can’t write a character the reader will remember five minutes after they put the script down.
Homegrown is a great “break-in” script. It shows that the writer can write on a character level but also incorporate that bigger storyline Hollywood likes. And on top of all that, it makes you think. It’s a really smart screenplay.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Writers think that to pull a reader in at the beginning of a script, you need to do it with a murder, or a mystery, or a flashy scene. But don’t rule out hooking the reader with a unique character. That’s what drew me in here – Charlie coldly dismissing a beautiful woman hitting on him. Charlie depriving his son of any happiness or connection with the outside world. I wanted to know more about Charlie. That’s what pulled me into this story.
Genre: Period (Based on true events)
Premise: After a lifetime of failure, John Brown attacks the United States Armory at Harper’s Ferry in one last ditch effort to free the slaves.
Why You Should Read (from writer): In earlier forms, this script placed in the top ten in Final Draft’s Big Break, was a semifinalist in Page and received a “Consider” from Coverage Ink. I’ve worked hard on the notes I’ve received and I think I’ve made it better. I understand that it’s a period piece (but isn’t Catherine the Great?), however it’s a really cool moment in history that has been ignored on the big screen. I like to think of this story as the American version of Braveheart.
Writer: George Gier
Details: 110 pages
Little tip for those of you who want to be industry readers. Don’t watch a new Star Wars trailer 814 times and then try to read a slavery script. You kind of have to be in a certain headspace for slavery. And replaying Forest Whitaker saying, “If you continue to fight…” [wait, I forgot what he says next – an excuse to go watch the trailer again! – one second] oh yeah… “What will you… become?” When you get all warm and whitaker, it’s not easy to shift into slavery.
BUT I’M GOING TO TRY.
59 year-old Reverend Isaac Smith seems to be your average devoted man of God. His sermons are powerful and engorge local churchgoers with plenty of faith meals, important on the to-do list of most people living in 1859, especially since they didn’t have Uber Eats yet. But Smith has a secret. His real name is John Brown, an abolitionist on the lam, and he’s got a plan that’s going to change the United States forever.
Brown wants to invade a large armory in nearby Harper’s Ferry, steal all their guns, recruit local African-Americans to join him in his cause, then go from plantation to plantation to liberate those black men and women who are still being held by slave owners.
So Brown puts together a ragtag crew and heads to Harper’s Ferry. Here’s where things get dicey though. You see part of Brown’s plan is to simultaneously recruit local African-Americans while he’s taking over the armory. Without those men, he has nobody to carry out all those guns. So his plan is really two plans, and one will not work without the other.
Brown actually takes over the armory easily. But every local man his team tries to recruit tells them… well, they basically tell them to fuck off. In real life, the average person doesn’t want to join a revolution. They’d rather stick to what’s familiar, even if what’s familiar sucks. This recruiting delay allows a militia to sneak into town and challenge Brown, which, unfortunately, is something Brown’s not prepared for, and dictates the unfortunate series of events that follow.
You know, it’s funny. This setup is actually quite similar to Rogue One. A ragtag crew is thrown together to tackle an impossible mission. So maybe this wasn’t such a bad script to segue into after all. But there was a major difference. That was Star Wars. This was a period piece.
Today’s writer, George, seems well aware of the difficulties of writing period pieces, and I’ll get into one of the biggest challenges of tackling that genre in a second. But first I have to get this off my chest. When you write a script where race is a crucial component to the story, it is ESSENTIAL that you tell us the race of all the characters.
Because you know what? I didn’t know if John Brown was black or white! This in a story where it’s critical that I know the main character’s race. And it was a good 30 pages before I was able to guess.
This is a common problem, where the writer is so close to the material that they assume you know what they do. We don’t know. I mean, some people might know. But I didn’t. So I know other readers won’t either. And this kind of mistake isn’t forgivable. It’s a first class script-killer.
But back to period pieces. Here’s one of the reasons readers hate period pieces: They know they’re going to have to memorize 30 characters. And no one can memorize 30 characters. So one of two things happens. If the reader is considerate and has time, they’ll write down every character with a little description next to them so they can check back later if they forget who’s who.
Or they just keep reading and accept the fact that they’re not going to remember half the people they come across. This results in a strange pseudo-read, where the reader has a general idea of what’s going on, but all the subtleties and subplots are lost on them.
But even if the reader is taking notes, do you know how annoying it is when you don’t remember a character, and have to read back through a list of 30 people to figure out who they are? EVERY TIME you forget? Which is a lot? It takes the reader out of the script, which means instead of being fully immersed in your story, they’re playing “Who the hell is this guy again?” And that game’s only enjoyable when sex is involved.
This is one reason I encourage writers to read a lot of scripts. Once they’ve read a handful of huge-character-count scripts, they think twice every time they’re going to add a character to their own script. “Do I really need this character?” they ask. And often times they realize they don’t.
So what does this mean? Does this mean you can never write a script with a high character count? What if the story you’re telling naturally requires a bunch of characters? Yes, THERE ARE WAYS to make high character counts more palatable. I won’t go into all of them, but here are a couple. Develop a description hierarchy that you STAY CONSISTENT WITH. Big characters get longer extensive descriptions, medium characters get one sentence bare-bone descriptions, and small characters get one or two word descriptions. This is a nice subliminal way to indicate to the reader who they need to commit to memory and who’s okay to forget (if they must forget someone).
But the REAL key to making a big character count work is that when your characters are introduced, you need to introduce them with something MEMORABLE. If a character gets a distinctive memorable intro scene, I WILL REMEMBER THEM THE ENTIRE SCRIPT. If a character introduces himself with a nod, I will probably need to check who they are every time they reappear. And when I have to do that, I get really annoyed. And if I get annoyed a bunch of times, I take that anger out on the writer. I think to myself, “Why doesn’t this writer understand how to make characters memorable?”
Now you may say, Carson, I’ve seen plenty of movies where characters don’t have big memorable entrances. Shit, Neo is introduced in The Matrix sleeping in front of his computer. I’d say, first, a lot of those movies had smaller character counts. But second, you have to understand that THOSE WERE MOVIES. It’s a lot easier to remember a physical face. But we’re not seeing a physical face on the page. We’re seeing words. So you need to do other things to help us remember that face.
And that means, yes, you will approach your script differently than if you were writing an already-greenlit-movie. In fact, a lot of writers will write bigger memorable character intro scenes understanding that, once they film the script, they’ll likely get rid of that scene and bring the character in more naturally.
But getting back to John Brown’s Body as a story. I thought this had potential. You have a group of people with a clear goal and the stakes for that goal feel pretty high. But my big issue with John Brown’s Body was that John Brown’s plan kinda sucked. It didn’t seem well-thought-through at all. Other characters even tell him that. Which I guess is okay, but the thing is, it makes John look kinda dumb. If he doesn’t even know where he’s going to get his army by the time he takes over the armory, I’d say that most intelligent people wouldn’t go through with that plan.
This conceptual faux pas weaves its slimy tentacles throughout the rest of the plot. Because every thing that goes wrong reminds you just how ill-conceived this plan was in the first place.
So if I were Greg – and it seems like he’s open to criticism – that’s the first thing I’d fix. Give John Brown a stronger plan. The more solid the plan, the more delicious the drama when things start to go south. From there, I’d stop introducing so many darn people, especially since half of them never make appearances again. Place your focus on the key characters and make sure all those characters get the kind of memorable introduction a big character deserves. That’s going to help a lot of things here. I wish Greg luck. Many Bothans died to help this review get written.
Script link: John Brown’s Body
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Think of character introductions in terms of camera shots. If a character is important enough to get a close-up in the finished film, he/she’s important enough to get a proper description and memorable opening scene.
Alright, so the top 25 scripts in the Scriptshadow 250 Contest have been announced. And while I’m sure many of you are happy for the finalists, let’s be honest. You want to know why the hell your script didn’t make the list. I’ve already seen people complaining about the loglines. “This is it??” they’re saying, forgetting that we’re not running a contest for best logline here. If we were, yesterday’s list would be a lot different. We’re looking for the best scripts. And because of that, a lot of the best loglines fell by the wayside. Believe me, I was pulling for them. The holy grail is the great concept WITH the great execution. But those scripts are like unicorns, appearing once or twice a year.
But let’s get back to that question: Why didn’t I make it? In some cases, the answer was specific to the script. I had one script that didn’t advance because the character naming was so ridiculous, it became impossible to take the script seriously. Imagine someone named Clarkwardenfall. IN A DRAMA. Then multiply that by 20 characters. But for most of the misses, there were patterns. The same issues kept coming up. Maybe by highlighting these issues, I can help you do better in your next contest.
1) LACK OF CREATIVITY – By far, the biggest issue was a lack of creativity in the storytelling. Everyone’s writing the same scenes, the same characters, the same plot beats. Nothing fresh or creative or unexpected or unique is happening on any level. I was a million pages ahead of writers on so many of these scripts. This is why the industry values “voice” so much, since voice is the antithesis of this. Writers with voice are constantly making unexpected choices that are keeping the reader on their toes. But you don’t need to be blessed with a unique voice to thrive in this area. Creative choices can be learned. You have to a) be more aware of how original your choices are and b) hold yourself to a higher standard once you recognize low-quality choices (by digging in and coming up with something better). Be brave. Do a few things that surprise even you when you tell a story.
2) TOO MUCH CREATIVITY – There’s a type of writer who writes in the opposite manner to what I just described. They don’t see behind or in front of them, but focus only on the present, writing their stories “off-the-cuff.” Because of this, their screenplays keep the reader guessing (unlike the uncreative folks). But since the writer possesses no plan, their choices usually lead you down paths to nowhere. These writers need to learn how a story is structured (beginning, middle, and end) and they need to spend more time outlining, so that their choices contain a plan behind them. As soon as I realize you don’t have a plan or as soon as things get too scattered or unfocused, I’m out.
3) LACK OF SOPHISTICATION – In a good 20 of the scripts I read, writers tackled subject matter that was well beyond their level of sophistication. For example, a writer might have written about a tragic World War 1 story, yet the writing was simplistic, lacked detail, and didn’t possess the proper mood or tone to capture the period. If you’re going to tackle weightier subject matter, make sure you possess the writing skills to do so. If you want to get better in this area, read strong literary material, carry a curiosity for vocabulary and grammar, and practice your ass off.
4) SECOND ACT BLUES – There are still too many writers who don’t have a clue of what to do once they reach the second act. One of the scripts I read was cruising through its first act. I was like, “This might make the top 5!” And then the writer spent the first 25 pages of his second act giving us extensive background on his 12 main characters. The screenplay lost all its momentum and never recovered. The second act should be doing three things. 1) Every scene should be moving your hero closer to his goal. 2) The second act should be exploring the major lines of conflict between your key characters, and 3) The second act should be placing obstacles in front of your characters so that they have things to overcome in order to achieve their goal. The second act is the act of “conflict,” so every scene should contain conflict on some level. Even if it’s just two people in a room, there needs to be something unresolved there, something that starts off negative and poses a problem that must be solved, for one or both of the characters.
5) ROSES ARE RED, PROSES ARE DEAD – I read three scripts from writers who may have made the top 25 if they didn’t grind their scripts to a standstill with walls of text. And guys, just because you divide 50 lines of description into 3 and 4 line paragraph chunks? THAT’S STILL A WALL OF TEXT. I’ve found that these writers fall into two categories. The first is the “need to impress” category. These writers tend to be young and believe it’s their job to impress you with their word-skills. The second is the “show-off” category. These are writers who are genuinely talented writers and want to show that off, but don’t realize their scripts aren’t being read in a breakfast nook with a blanket and a hot coffee, like novels are. Screenplays are meant to be read quickly, in a high-pressure industry where people are constantly asking for the new hot thing. So fair or not, it feels like WORK if we’re reading a lot of words to describe simple things. Once your script starts feeling like work ON ANY LEVEL, you’re done.
6) LACK OF NUANCE – There were a lot of scripts where writers weren’t nuanced in their writing. So a character would be really angry one second, then really nice the next, with no insight into why their mood changed so suddenly. Or a character would wake up in the middle of the night, walk outside, and all of a sudden be fighting a bunch of bad guys. How did we get here? Where did these bad guys come from? How did this character even know to wake up and check outside in the first place? There was a TON of this, and I call it “In Your Head Writing.” “In Your Head Writing” is when you’re thinking about what makes sense TO YOU (in your head) and not someone who will be reading this for the first time. To you, you may have thought, “My angry character is done being angry, he’ll be nice now,” so you make him nice. But you never shared with us (the people outside of your head) why that transition took place. If you’re being told that your writing is confusing a lot, step outside of your head and see if your writing makes sense from a third-person’s perspective.
But the biggest thing, guys, is to keep practicing. As hard as this is to hear, you may not be ready yet. I know that sucks but you may need to work more on structure or character development or dialogue. All that stuff takes time to grasp. So keep writing, keep reading (scripts), and keep studying. I’d even add “get more feedback” to that list. How can you know if you’re writing “in your head” if you don’t have a third party giving you feedback? Now get back on the horse and write something great.
Here they are folks, in no particular order, the top 25 scripts from my contest. Congrats to to the finalists. I’ll be announcing the Top 5 in a couple of weeks. If you didn’t make it, don’t fret. That next script could be the one. Keep fighting!
Title: Albion
Genre: Period
Logline: The Dark Ages, 865AD, Britain: A sheltered scholar must unite his people and defeat the Viking invasions to become the first King of England: King Alfred the Great.
Writer: Blaise Hesselgren
Title: Fourth Time’s a Charm
Genre: Comedy
Logline: Tom is a thrice-divorced marriage therapist seemingly destined to repeat a Sisyphean cycle of superficial romances. But when a blind date with an uncouth woman named “Angus” highlights everything missing from his past courtships, Tom must choose between perpetuating his hollow past, or taking a walk on the wild side. The thing is, Angus might not give him a choice.
Writer: Steve Dente
(obviously submitted long before this year’s Oscars)
Title: Bait
Genre: Dark Comedy
Logline: When Leonardo DiCaprio believes he’s finally found the script that will win him an Oscar, he travels in secret to visit the unknown writer. What he finds instead is a serial killer, who keeps him captive with a group of other A-list victims, all tempted by the same script. Will Leo escape and, more importantly, will he get to make the movie?
Writer: Sam Boyer
Title: 19 Floors
Genre: Action/Horror
Logline: Against military orders, a Special Ops Sargent attempts to rescue his wife from a quarantined tower infested with monstrous creatures. He has 19 floors and 19 hours.
Writer: Lee Brandt & Christopher Lawrence
Title: This Close
Genre: Drama
Logline: Jeremy Pearl intends to shoot up his high school and take his own life. He comes ‘this close’ to proceeding, but the plot is thwarted before he can act. Seven years later, after coming out of prison a repentant man, Jeremy returns to his hometown to try to make a normal life for himself.
Writer: Randy Steinberg
Title: Drone
Genre: Action
Logline: A drone pilot in the Mojave Desert begins to question his strike orders when evidence begins to pile up of a government conspiracy to inflame tensions in the Middle East.
Writer: Justin Perry
Title: Jack Curious
Genre: Sci-fi
Logline: A legendary but drug-addicted cop tries to solve a murder using time travel.
Writer: Bryce McLellan
Title: Serpentine
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Logline: Upon realising she is reliving the last day of her life, an injured SWAT officer must protect her family from the dangerous cult that want them dead.
Writer: Paul White
Title: Lies, Blackmail, and other Egregious Behavior
Genre: Dark Comedy
Logline: When Sarah, a strong willed Pastor’s wife thinks her husband is cheating on her, she enlists the help of a charming young man to find out. When he catches the pastor cheating, he blackmails him behind Sarah’s back.
Writer: Aaron Brooks
Title: Disorder
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Logline: A recluse who suffers from random episodes – in which he commits violent acts without remembering them – is forced to babysit a neighbour’s 8 year-old daughter for an afternoon. After suffering an episode, he wakes to find the girl has disappeared – a violent wreck in her wake. With himself as the only possible suspect, he must retrace his footsteps to find the girl.
Writer: Zed Warren
Title: Flyuxaphine
Genre: Horror
Logline: Seen through the eyes of a mechanic as he makes his way through a Terraforming facility, with the help of his girlfriend by headset, after a malfunction has turned the crew mad.
Writer: Ellis Ripley
Title: The Passage
Genre: Adventure/Fantasy
Logline: Back in small-town Maine to bury his estranged father, a young man discovers the drawbridge his family tended is a gateway to the afterlife for spirits lost at sea. After a historic ghost ship wrecks on his watch, he and a few friends new and old must find passage for one of its crew before a malevolent spirit aboard can get in their way.
Writer: Paul Marchant
Title: Wars of Eternal Spring
Genre: Martial Arts/Period
Logline: A rebellious-minded woman in ancient China seeks the help of Shaolin Temple to save her family and village from a love-obsessed General and his bloodthirsty Captain.
Writer: Elizabet Barilleaux
Title: Wheelman
Genre: Thriller
Logline: An ex-con reconnecting with his fourteen-year-old daughter is forced to take a job as a getaway-driver to pay off prison debts when he gets hijacked mid bank-robbery by a mysterious caller who threatens his family.
Writer: Jeremy Rush
Title: Ghosts of Dickens
Genre: Biopic
Logline: Crushed by financial burden, evaporating success and increasing depression, Charles Dickens struggles to piece together A CHRISTMAS CAROL to regain his fleeting fame.
Writer: Matt Bishop
Title: The Coyote
Genre: Action/Thriller
Logline: An ex DEA agent turned Coyote is blackmailed to take on his toughest job yet; smuggling the man who killed his partner across the Mexican border.
Writer: Nir Paniry
Title: A Quickening
Genre: Drama/Thriller
Logline: A woman working as a surrogate for a powerful New York couple gets treated like dirty laundry, until the couple’s marriage falls apart and they ask her to abort the pregnancy, leading her to turn the tables on them and blackmail her way to the American dream.
Writer: Jacob Albert
Title: Seventy Times in Black
Genre: Crime Thriller
Logline: In the jungle-like heart of Arkansas, a resourceful young woman’s coming-of-age tale makes a terrifying descent into survival. Stripped bare by her own paralyzing fears, she must confront the deranged, familial obsessions of a rogue lawman, whose unchecked savagery threatens everyone close to her.
Writers: Kyle Rynicki & John Rodgers
Title: The Man Who Killed Samuel Lodge
Genre: Western
Logline: As a gang of outlaws chases him, a lawman with a mysterious past reluctantly partners with a headstrong widow so he can cash in the bounty for the man he killed.
Writer: Zac Lovelace
Title: Miss Universe
Genre: Comedy
Logline: A vapid beauty queen is abducted by aliens who think her title means she’s Earth’s ambassador to the universe.
Writer: Colin O’Brien
Title: The Watcher
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A middle-aged voyeur named Roman Powell witnesses his new tenant, young Jane Gordon, commit a grisly murder and struggles through his own urges of going down the evil path by being drawn into the murders himself.
Writer: Michael J. Klassen
Title: Liberty Island
Genre: Action
Logline: When domestic terrorists seize control of Liberty Island during July 4th celebrations and threaten to blow up the Statue of Liberty, a lone New York City cop trapped on the island must save his hostage-held family and foil a presidential assassination.
Writer: Jared Sandman
Title: The Pyre
Genre: Horror
Logline: A fragile young mother has three days to get the body of the immigrant she killed from the bottom of a deep dangerous lake and cremate it on a pyre, before its spirit destroys her.
Writer: Caroline Carver
Title: The Nothing Man
Genre: Action/Thriller
Logline: A secret Government crime solving division clones America’s most wanted criminal to be able to get into his mind and his memories to predict his future actions while being teamed up with the FBI Agent who has been hunting him for years.
Writer: Brian Penn
Title: Yesterday
Genre: Sci-fi
Logline: Randy had it all–a loving family, a dream job. But after a long, hard fall from grace leads to deadly consequences, he’s forced to relive his life backwards. Yesterday by yesterday, Randy tries to understand where it all went wrong, and how he can possibly put things right in a world where tomorrow never comes.
Writer: John Bradley
