Reviews are coming in. Here are some spoiler-free ones:

Slash-Film (positive).
AICN-Quint (positive though feels like he’s holding back).
AICN-Nordling (slightly positive to kind of negative).

What worries me is that the reviews have that “Prequel Reviews” feel to them. Remember those? “Oh, it was amazing. But there were a few problems here and there. But it was amazing!” Like, “I’m trying to convince myself” here.

But anyway, here’s my question. You’re Disney. You hold the world premiere of one of your biggest movies ever on a Monday. You then tell everyone who saw the movie that they’re not allowed to review the film until 12:01 AM on Wednesday (so effectively 9 am Wednesday, since that’s when the normal world will wake up and read the reviews). With showtimes beginning, I believe, Thursday at noon, this gives reviewers barely more than 24 hours to get their thoughts out to the general public before the public sees it.

Does that sound strange to anyone but me? Doesn’t it feel a bit like they don’t have a lot of confidence in the film? I mean why not just let people review it after they come out of the theater on Monday?? It seems so strange. I’d understand it if they screened the movie three weeks ago. But this is the same week it comes out.

Regardless of whether any of that is relevant, The Force Awakens’ fate will lie with something the general audience isn’t even aware of – the fact that its screenplay was rushed. I understand that corporations want their money now, but it’s so dangerous to rush anything that you want to be good. Especially when you consider that most movies which are terrible (Transformers) had trouble achieving even a mediocre screenplay with FIVE TIMES the amount of time Abrams and Kasdan had to write this.

The thing that suffers the most when you rush a screenplay is plot. It’s easy to come up with the grand sweeping centerpieces of your story. But it takes a hell of a lot of time to connect them all in a natural, convincing, invisible way. So what’s the common critique I keep hearing out of all the Force Awakens reviews? “Contrived plotting.” “Lots of coincidences.” “Things feel left out.” “Things don’t always come together naturally.”

I know, I know. I haven’t seen the movie yet. But this is exactly what I was terrified of when I heard how quickly they were writing the script. Good scripts always take time. Especially scripts that have a lot of moving parts (lots of characters, jump around a lot). You may be able to write something quickly that involves three guys in a barn (Untitled Contained Barn Movie – coming to a theater near you). But 50 guys, gals, and aliens spanning a couple of dozen planets and starships??? No, you’re going to need fucking time for that. And to think that Disney originally wanted to release this in MAY! What were thinking under that timeline? 5 days for the script? 5 and a half?

I’m seeing the movie Thursday night and I guess in a way, I’m glad I heard about these issues ahead of time. I went into The Phantom Menace with huge expectations and got boned. Maybe the cautious route will result in a more satisfying experience. Let’s hope. And may The Force be with us all.

p.s. I’m still reading and reviewing Scriptshadow 250 scripts for 2 weeks over on my Twitter. You can go there to get tips and updates. Also, you can go through the archives by searching for the tag #ss250!

Every year the Black List comes out, and every year there’s a debate around what happened to all the good scripts. Is the Black List getting worse? That’s not an easy question to answer. But there are a few factors involved to help you come to a conclusion.

For starters, Hollywood has become terrified of original spec screenplay ideas. And why wouldn’t they be? They’ve given them box office bomb after box office bomb (Draft Day, Transcendence, American Ultra, That Awkward Moment, 47 Ronin). If we, the writers, haven’t been giving them something they can make money off of, why should they keep buying scripts from us?

As a result, Hollywood looks almost exclusively to IP. Stuff needs to be proven in another form of media before they risk millions of dollars on it. This has caused screenwriters to adapt. We can’t give them original spec ideas anymore, so we have to give them a pseudo form of IP – biopics and “the true story.” It’s the only loophole we have. This is why you read The Black List and see all of these unimaginative uninspiring true stories/biopics. Because that’s the only thing the studio system will allow us to sell them anymore.

The original spirit of The Black List celebrated imagination, originality, and creativity, which is why we feel so robbed that those qualities no longer seem like priorities. And to that end, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Bubbles snagged the top prize. It was the only script that gave Hollywood what it wanted (a true story/biopic) and the Black List voters what they wanted (a fresh/original way of telling a story).

This could lead to a whole other discussion about why our original-idea specs have gotten so bad (because Hollywood has put so many restrictions on them. They must be quick reads, have low page counts, contain an overly simple premise, etc.). But to go there would be bitter and I don’t want to do that. Not on the same week that The Force Awakens opens!

So I’ll leave you with this – and it’s something I continue to believe wholeheartedly – if you write something really fucking good, no matter whether it’s a biopic or something insanely original, it will make The Black List. It will sell. It will get attention. Because there aren’t many really good scripts out there. Your content is needed. So keep writing my friends. Your time will come as long as you work your ass off for it.

Some Black List reviews of mine!

Number 1, Bubbles.
Number 3, The Libertine.
Number 5, Crater.
Number 8, Pale Blue Dot.
Number 11, Eli.
Number 12, Septillion to One .
Number 17, The Water Man.
Number 22, Hammerspace.
Number 25, The Virginian.
Number 29, Mayday.

Also, join me on Twitter as I live-tweet thoughts on the Scriptshadow 250 contest scripts I’m reading. You can access the archives of my thoughts via the hashtag #ss250.

I’m taking the next couple of weeks off to finish reading all the Scriptshadow 250 scripts. I’m going to try and publish mini-posts here and there but can’t promise a post every day. I’ll most certainly comment on the Black List, which I’m assuming will come out later today (I’ll comment on it the day after – so likely Tuesday). In the meantime, feel free to comment on Star Wars The Force Awakens (opening this week!!!), the weekend at the box office (a disaster!), or anything else screenwriting/movie related that sparks your fancy.

As far as this weekend goes, the big story was the box office failure of In the Heart of the Sea. Except the only surprise here is that Warner Brothers didn’t see this one coming from a mile away and kill the project.

Ron Howard is probably the nicest guy in Hollywood, but he still thinks it’s the 90s. His movies have an old-fashioned feel in a marketplace that wants fresh and new. And Deadline was right. Why would anyone think that Chris Hemsworth’s fan base would want to see him in non-fantasy driven over-serious period piece?

So how did he end up in the picture? This is one of the major chinks in Hollywood’s system, and something they haven’t figured out in 30 years. When you’re shopping a movie to actors, you have “The List.” “The List” consists of your dream casting choice for the lead that’s simpatico with the studio’s need for an actor who drives box office.

So it’ll go something like “1) Christian Bale, 2) Ben Affleck, 3) Leonardo DiCaprio” and so on down the line. The thing is, if none of those actors bite, you now dip into people who are no longer right for the role but who the studio will still greenlight the movie for. Because you want to get the movie made, you go with them, convincing yourself you’ll “make it work.” And while sometimes they work out (Keanu Reeves in The Matrix) they usually don’t.

When they don’t, you get something like In the Heart of the Sea, a movie that needed an older more established actor who audiences identified with in this kind of genre. Bale actually would’ve been perfect. Still, even if you get all these things right, you’re still making a movie where the main goal is to kill a beloved animal. This isn’t a shark. It’s a whale! I just don’t know why anybody thought this would work.

Speaking of whales, the trailer for the new Independence Day film just dropped and I have to say, something very strange is going on here. The initial reaction is over-the-moon when I could swear this isn’t even better than the trailer for Battleship. I started looking into the commenters, to see if, coincidentally, this is the first time they’d ever commented on something. But many of these commenters have established history. Am I off my rocker here? Do people actually think this looks good? It doesn’t even have that “must-see” shot that made the original’s trailer so famous. Help me understand, Scriptshadowers!!!

TWITTER FUN!

Moving on to a funner topic, The Force Awakens premieres TODAY exactly 6 blocks from my place! I’m going to try and make it up there and tweet a few pictures. And speaking of tweeting, since I’ll be reading contest scripts non-stop the next 2 weeks, I’ll be live-tweeting script-thoughts throughout. Just follow me at (@Scriptshadow) on Twitter to hear my sometimes insightful but mostly disposable thoughts. You can also search for the hashtag – #ss250 – to see all tweets related to the Scriptshadow 250 reads. Enjoy!

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: Comedy
Premise (from writer): Three socially impaired women, who think they have superpowers during PMS, believe they must find the remedy to menopause or risk losing their powers forever.
Why You Should Read (from writer): This is my attempt at a superhero script where there are no actual superpowers. It’s just three women who make some questionable choices because of issues with self-perception. It’s meant to be farcical fun so the humor tends towards sophomoric and crude. Curious what you think.
Writer: Stephanie Jones
Details: 91 pages

So a debate popped up in last week’s Amateur Offerings. Longtime contributor Stephanie Jones was getting a lot of votes, and some were saying that the reason was because everyone knew her, and that Amateur Offerings isn’t a “vote for your friends” contest, it’s a “vote for the best script” contest.

So here’s my take on that. I have not read all of the scripts so I can’t tell you which one is the best. But what I will say is that this is exactly how the real industry works. There are communities of people throughout Hollywood who work together. And when one of those people brings a project to the group, that project takes precedence over Rando Number 1’s project. It’s just how it is.

So how was anybody supposed to beat Steph this weekend? The same way you beat anyone in the real industry – YOU WRITE SOMETHING SO DAMN GOOD THAT THE GATEKEEPERS CAN’T OVERLOOK IT. And it doesn’t look like anybody did that last week. So tough cookies!

Weep, Crave, Loathe introduces us to the 35 year-old trio of lifelong friends, Ruby, Zora, and Peggy. Ruby is the plumper of the group, Zora is the crybaby, and Peggy is the angry one. There’s one important thing you need to know about these girls. They think they’re superheroes and that these traits (eating, crying, fighting) are super powers. They also believe that their periods bring out these powers.

All of this dates back to seemingly insignificant talks their mothers had with them when they were toddlers. But as you know, kids can take things literally, so when mom said that crying was a superpower, or that eating was a superpower, the kids just… believed them. All the way until they were adults!

But here’s the problem. At 35, the women are approaching menopause. And menopause means no more periods! And no more periods means no more powers! So they read about a procedure that allows doctors to slice off a piece of the ovary and save it for later, allowing the women to continue to have periods after menopause! All three women are in!

In the meantime, the group decides they need to spread their message to the world and therefore record a video of their powers in action. This video goes viral, and all of a sudden the entire world wants to know more. After going on a period-powers tour, the fame brings about issues in the girls’ friendship and the three break up!

We watch as they each learn to live life on their own, and to finally come to terms with the reality that their powers aren’t powers at all, just part of life. Or DO THEY???

Comedy is weird. It’s the only genre where you can break a bunch of the rules and still write something entertaining. As long as people are laughing, you’re doing a good job. Throw in subjectivity and grading comedy becomes a bit like grading a beauty pageant looking through a kaleidoscope.

I’m saying this so everyone knows this is just my opinion on Weep, Crave, Loathe, and if you want to know if this script is funny, you should read it and decide for yourself.

For me – I’m not going to lie – I struggled through it. And it came down to three problems. First, the humor was VERY broad. As in a character gets completely run over by a car and it’s played for laughs broad.

Second, the humor was very in your face. We only ever see Peggy, the angry girl, sharpening knives, watching shark videos, or trying to start a fight. Ruby, the fat girl, is only ever talking with her mouth full, or going to the supermarket to steal multiple boxes of pizza bites. To say that the humor was on-the-nose may be the understatement of the century.

But the biggest problem was that I never understood the concept. A 35 year-old woman believes that crying is a superpower because of a 3-second conversation she had with her mom when she was 5? Isn’t crying something you’d talk about thousands of times with numerous people over the course of 30 years, in which case you’d learn, at some point, that crying wasn’t a superpower?

Unfortunately, if the reader doesn’t buy into the concept, everything after that is a moot point. You’re building a story on a foundation that isn’t solid.

But even if I had bought into the concept, I still didn’t understand the goal. They’re going to have this surgery to take out a part of their ovaries so that they can continue to have their periods (and thus their superpowers) later in life? So when are they reattaching these ovaries? As soon as they get menopause? Is it then permanent? You can have your period and get pregnant indefinitely? Or does it only work for a limited time? And if so, how long? And if it’s only for, say, a year, then is making this the focal point of the plot even worth it? None of that was clear, which was a double-whammy as far as understanding what was going on in the screenplay.

In addition to this, the plot is stretched thin, giving everything a hurried “first-draft” feel. It’s something I talked about yesterday. Everything in first drafts takes too long. The big goal here is to have a surgery that will cut off part of their ovaries so they can continue to have superpowers after menopause.

The script takes up 16 ENTIRE PAGES of sporadic doctor visits just to determine if the women qualify for the procedure! Are we really going to spend 20% of the script just to get people approved for a procedure – in a superhero movie, no less, where audiences are expecting characters to go out and do superhero things? I think Steph could’ve gotten through this section in a page and a half with all three characters via a montage. It’s not the kind of plot point that warrants a huge chunk of screenplay real estate.

I will say this for Steph’s screenplay though. You won’t be able to predict where it’s going. Having the friends split up and figure life out by themselves for the last third of the script was an unexpected choice. But it also, once again, calls into question the concept. If you’re promising people a super-hero movie, even if it’s a different take on one, are they going to be satisfied moving into a character-piece that has little to do with the initial concept for the final 40 pages?

Put plainly, Weep, Crave, Loathe is a script that’s flawed at the concept level. Most of the script’s problems can be traced back to that shaky foundation. I’m trying to think of a way into this story that would work better. Maybe these three women really are superheroes? With REAL super-powers. But the only time they get these powers is during their periods, so they’re super bloated and moody whenever they’re out saving the world? I don’t know though. Is that sexist? The world is so sensitive these days I have no idea if that would fly.

So yeah, you can basically erase all of my issues if you go back and fix the concept. But that’s ultimately up to Steph and whether she thinks it’s flawed in the first place! What did you guys think???

Script link: Weep, Crave, Loathe

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

What I learned: The reason you hear myself and other screenwriting junkies tell you to write something great isn’t because the professional competition is great. It’s because everyone likes working with their own people on their own stuff. The only way to break through that is to write something so good that they’ll choose you over their friends. So write the best script you’re capable or writing and then you’ll have a legitimate shot.

What I learned 2: If a plot thread is going to take up a lot of time in a script, it better be important. Otherwise, we’re going to wonder why the writer is taking so long to tell a seemingly inconsequential piece of the story. I didn’t think getting approved by a doctor for a procedure should take 16 pages. We could’ve built in a much more important plot line that felt worthy of a 16 page investment.

We’re so close I can taste it! My favorite day of the year. A day when people come together to share love and food and joy. A day when a man dressed up in a costume can make even the most hardened Grinch melt into a warm puddle. A day when it seems like the universe is binding everyone together. I’m talking, of course, about December 18th, Star Wars: The Force Awakens opening day.

Which is what inspired today’s post. As I was going through all my Star Wars scripts, I found this, the very first Star Wars treatment from the bearded magician himself, George Lucas. And what did I notice upon reading this document? Genius? The future of a 20 billion dollar franchise? A slew of pop culture phrases that would permeate the very fabric of our society for 30 years?

Nuh-uh.

I found something that was going to require a ton of fleshing out before it approached anything remotely close to a ground-breaking movie. You can read it for yourself but here are the highlights…

1) The attack on the Death Star comes without explanation in the very first scene.
2) It takes place not a long time ago and not in a galaxy far far away, but in the 33rd century and in our very own galaxy!
3) Luke Skywalker is a full-formed general who’s guarding Leia at the beginning of the film.
4) There is no mention of “The Force.”
5) There is no Obi-Wan Kenobi.
6) There is no Han Solo or Chewbacca.
7) R2-D2 and C-3PO are replaced by two bumbling human bureaucrats.
8) Luke and Leia are transporting “spice” through an Imperial section of the galaxy.
9) Luke, Leia and the bureaucrats get marooned on a desert planet, where they must take a road trip across the planet to get to a spaceport and fly to the safety of a friendly planet. This desert planet is where the majority of the movie is set.
10) We never actually go to The Death Star.
11) There’s no Darth Vader.
12) They end up at the planet Yavin, where Luke and Leia get split up, and Luke must train a bunch of youngsters to help him rescue Leia.

This is what you get in your first treatment, your first outline, or your first draft. Ideas. But you don’t yet get something original that brings those ideas together. It’s a blob of first-take concepts in search of a structure. Each draft then allows you to get rid of pieces, add pieces, and move the remaining pieces around, until you find that great movie every good idea has the potential to be. In fact, here are five of the most prominent beneficiaries of multiple drafts.

ELIMINATING INFLUENCES
We are all slaves to our favorite films. They are the reason we got into this business. And whether we know it or not, every script we write is a version of one of these movies. That manifests itself in characters, plot points, and ideas from these films seeping into our first drafts. You see it here. A desert planet. Transporting “spice.” Our characters battling giant beasts in the middle of the desert. “Dune,” anybody? What subsequent drafts allow us to do is identify these influences and weed them out. Or at least push them into the background, away from the main plot. If you don’t go through this crucial step, you’re going to get a lot of people criticizing you for copying [insert your favorite movie here].

PLOT OVER CHARACTER
When you write an outline or a first draft, you barely know your characters. As such, you tend to focus on the plot. And we can see that here. This treatment is all plot and doesn’t mention once anything about the relationships between the characters. We don’t even know how Luke or Leia feel about one another. Subsequent drafts allow you to live with your characters for awhile just like living with real people. You get to know them, and once you know them, you can start building a life around them, as well as building the relationships between these people. There’s nothing that benefits more from rewriting than character.

IDENTIFYING WHAT’S COOL AND WHAT ISN’T
When you write a first draft, you’re not sure what’s cool yet. You have ideas, but mainly you’re just throwing a bunch of shit at the wall. In subsequent drafts, your goal is to identify which pieces of shit are sticking. You then start crafting your screenplay around these hotspots. A perfect example here is the Death Star. It’s mentioned at the beginning of the treatment then never again. Over the course of rewriting the story, Lucas obviously realized what am amazing and interesting idea this space station planet was. He’d make it the centerpiece of the villains’ story and build an entire sequence inside of it. Never get hung up on the ideas in your first draft. Be open to exploring new avenues, particularly anything that looks like it might have potential to make your script more interesting.

NO VILLAIN
I don’t know why this is, but it’s pretty common that first drafts don’t have villains. I think it has something to do with the writer concentrating so hard on their heroes and the journey (the plot) that they don’t think about creating a villain. I read tons of scripts that have gone into the 5th or 6th drafts that still haven’t included a villain. That’s not to say that every movie needs a villain, but usually when there’s an edge missing in your story, it’s because you don’t have a villain. And we see that here. This treatment is straight-forward sci-fi fodder with people driving across deserts and fighting aliens. Darth Vader had not been created yet. I want you to think about that for a second. The greatest villain in the history of cinema was not in George Lucas’s first treatment. Might you be depriving the world of the greatest villain in history?

COMBINING TIME
The biggest issue in first drafts is that everything takes 10 times longer than it should. And it makes sense why. Your brain is still working everything out and it extends the sequences in the film as a result. Subsequent drafts require you to compress time as much as possible. For instance, it takes Luke and Leia 45-60 minutes to travel across the desert planet and get to the spaceport of “Mos Eisley.” In the movie, it takes 1 second. We’re in Obi-Wan’s hut, and then a second later we cut to Obi-Wan and Luke, having driven to a cliff, looking over Mos Eisley. Here’s a phrase to remember: “Time combine.” Start combining that time, folks!

Hope this helped with your current script. May the force be with you, always!