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Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise (from writer): When a young man serving on the zeppelin Hindenburg discovers that a deadly, shape-shifting alien is hidden on board, he must defeat it or the girl he loves will suffer a fate worse than death.
Why You Should Read (from writer): I already sent you two of my other scripts for the Scriptshadow 250 contest, but what you wrote about the lack of big idea scripts inspired me to send you my biggest idea script. With its love story on a doomed vessel coupled with an alien which can assume the form of anyone it devours, it’s like TITANIC meets THE THING… I worked hard to make the script as easy to read as possible (no paragraph over 2 lines, only 97 pages) and to keep it moving and entertaining. If you’ll like it I’d really love for you to come on board as a producer!
Writer: Tal Gantz
Details: 97 pages
I’m throwing EVERYONE for a loop today. There was a lot of discussion over last week’s group of scripts, but not a lot of voting. I think that says something. If people aren’t compelled enough to even type “I vote for [x]” in a comment, then something’s missing from your script. So I decided to look into it more deeply until I finally figured out what the problem was. I can’t believe, in retrospect, how obvious it was.
The writers didn’t center their title pages.
As we all know, the most important part of any screenplay is not just the title page, but how well you center that title. I try to get this across to new writers all the time. It’s not about character or dialogue or structure. It’s about centering. Think I’m exaggerating? Let me put it this way. I heard that the best script ever submitted to the Nicholl Fellowship was rejected because the title wasn’t centered properly.
Yes.
I got in touch with the writer and apparently his centering was 4 and a half pixels off. In his defense, his title included a hyphen and an ellipses, which confused the matter, but you know what? That’s no excuse. He should’ve known better. You can’t have an improperly centered title page and expect this industry to take you seriously.
All of this forced me to go back a few Amateur Saturdays to find a script that DID center its title properly, and boy am I excited. This script exuded one of the most center-positive attitudes I’ve ever seen. So much so that I’m nominating it for the prestigious “Center Award,” which as you all know rewards the most centered objects of the year. It is time, my friends, to review a script that dares to care about the things that really matter. Let’s take a trip back to… The Hindenburg Alien.
It’s 1937, a year before the world lost its innocence, and when Germany graced us with the largest flying machine anyone had ever seen, the Hindenburg. We join this gargantuan airship while its loading up passengers for its impending flight. This is where we meet 20 year-old David Grant, a ship hand who’s trying to kick ass and not be a Nazi.
David is joined by his comic relief co-worker, Harry, and the demonstrably stodgy captain, Mr. Lehman, along with a host of other worker bees that make flying the Hindenburg so exciting, when it’s not bursting into flames and roasting its passengers alive that is.
Shit gets Nazi-real when a professor rolls up a giant iron box that looks like it could be a Steampunk transformer “before” picture. Following him is 19 year-old Anna, the girl of David’s dreams, who is unfortunately followed by Hans Muller, her Nazi fiancé. So much for that love connection. I’m guessing that’s nazi-gonna happen.
After the Hindenburg takes off, David wanders downstairs in time to see a co-worker, Eric, get pulled into the iron box and EATEN by whatever’s in there. David runs upstairs to tell the captain, but when they come back down, it appears that Eric is fine. OR IS HE? Eric’s acting strange, and after a bit of sleuthing, David figures out that whatever was in that box has taken the form of Eric.
David eventually finds Anna, and because she’s just so darn dreamy, he informs her of what he saw. She believes him and wants to help, but her evil fiancé, Hans, keeps hanging around and being all clingy. Those Nazis. We eventually find out that Anna is only marrying this jerk because he’s agreed to smuggle her father out of the country to safety.
While evil alien-monster thing jumps form one host to the next, David realizes that if this planet-hopper lands, there’s a good chance it’s going to spread its seed and earth as we know it will turn into an intergalactic truck stop. So David must overcome his fears and take Alien Yucky Head on. One on one. May the best… biological… living creature win.
I’m digging the concept here. Tal’s obviously been influenced by Titanic, but he knows if he takes that approach, it just becomes Titanic on the Hindenburg. And we’ve seen “Titanic on the…” films before and they never end up well (Pearl Harbor). So he wisely turns this into a sci-fi film and makes it more of a monster-in-a-box movie.
Here was my issue while reading The Hindenburg Alien though: It was too darn simplistic. And I know this might sound confusing because I’m always harping on you guys for being too complex. But rarely does ANY extreme work well, and that includes being too simplistic.
I don’t want this to come off the wrong way but “Hindenburg” felt like it was written by a third grader. That’s not to say there were a lot of spelling or grammar errors. But the grammar was devoid of any color or nuance. There was no flavor to the way anything was written, leaving the script feeling so basic that it was hard to get excited about anything.
Here’s an example: “David and Harry sneak into the deck. All is silent and still. Eric is nowhere in sight.”
You see how rudimentary and lifeless those sentences are? Even the book our romantic lead is reading is titled: “Romantic Poems.” The only title I can think of more generic than that would be, “Written Stories.”
I can overlook colorless prose sometimes if the character work or dialogue is exceptional. But both of those suffer from the same problem. Here’s a dialogue exchange from when David meets up with Anna. David: “How did you know it was me?” “Your footsteps gave you away. Quiet, but strong. Just like you.” Is it just me or does that sound like it was spoken by an animatronic automaton?
You know, it’s funny. Technically speaking, Tal does what myself and many screenwriting folks teach in regards to dialogue. Keep the lines sparse and to the point, usually under three lines. But while this sounds great in practice, if EVERY SINGLE SPOKEN LINE OF DIALOGUE is like that, it feels generic and lifeless (and worse – predictable). And plus, in the real world, everyone talks differently. Some do keep it short and to the point. But others can’t shut up. I didn’t get enough of a sense of different personalities and talking styles here. To that end, changing up the dialogue length for each character would’ve helped a ton.
But yeah, in general, we needed more color to everything. In the description, the dialogue, the backstory, the plotting. A basic plot point would be “Let’s follow Eric” and at a certain point I felt like I’d asked for a Chinese chicken salad and they’d brought me a head of lettuce and a few ketchup packets.
I will say this about The Hindenburg Alien. It’s not as simplistic as Monday’s “Free Fall,” which sold. And Tal’s got the right idea here. This is a big enough concept that it could be turned into a movie. But if he wants to improve his chances, he needs to add more complexity to the characters and the plotting, and he needs to add some color to the writing himself. I would recommend he check out Osgood Perkins’ script, “February,” for how to add color through prose, and Aaron Sorkin’s, Jobs, for tips on how to write more colorful dialogue.
Good luck, my friend. You’re on your way to something here. ☺
Screenplay link: The Hindenburg Alien
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Be mindful of long absences by your characters (30+ pages). You can’t just bring them back whenever. It’s very likely we’ve forgotten who they are. Or even if we remember their name, we’ve forgotten the exact circumstances by which they’re attached to the story. That’s what happened here. We meet Anna’s father, Rosen, when he arrives on the ship, but I’d forgotten about him by the time he showed up again 50 pages later. I thought to myself, “Wait, did we see him board in the opening?” I wasn’t sure. And because there were a lot of dream-scenes in The Hindenburg Alien, I thought she may have been dreaming about her father. To eliminate confusion, add another scene with Rosen somewhere between those two scenes. That way he stays prominent in our minds, and we’re not playing the “Who’s This Dude Again?” screenplay game (a game I have to play way too much!).
Today is a day for you guys to do some writing! I’m holed up reading Scriptshadow 250 scripts all day and haven’t been able to come up for air long enough to write something of any substance. If it helps, I will let you in on what kind of scripts I’ve been reading that haven’t been making the cut. The scripts tend to fall into two categories.
1) Way too complicated (too much going on).
2) Zero voice (extremely standard executions that display nothing in the way of a unique point-of-view).
At first glance, these may seem to contradict each other. To create something with a unique voice, don’t you need to move away from simplicity? Give the story more variables? In short, NO! What you need is to come at your idea from a unique angle. Steve Jobs could’ve written “Jobs” as a cradle-to-grave biopic. Instead, he chronicled the 45 minutes before the three most important product launches of Jobs’s life. As you can see, the story was still very simple.
Feel free to comment about that or use today’s post to pitch potential ideas you’re working on or ask the community for help on specific problems you’re dealing with in your current screenplay. I’ll see you tomorrow!
Poor Richard’s Almanac, with its “Lost meets True Detective” vibe, has the potential to be one of the hippest shows ever put on television. But does it put the cart before the horse?
Genre: TV Pilot
Premise: We observe the rise of a series of terrorists attacks inside the U.S. both in the present and 15 years in the future.
About: Today’s pilot will be joining Mr. Robot on USA as part of the cable network’s new edgier approach to content. The series comes from Jim Danger Gray, who served as a producer on Orange is the New Black, and Miguel Sapochnik, who directed a couple of Game of Thrones episodes.
Writer: Jim Danger Gray
Details: 56 pages (March 2015 draft)
It took USA 30 years, but Mr. Robot has finally made them cool, and they’re so confused about the endeavor, they’re not quite sure how to keep the looks from the ladies coming. All they know is that “cable cool” requires they continue taking chances, and so we get something called “Poor Richard’s Almanac.”
You know, it’s funny. Yesterday, I railed against a script for being too safe – for following all the beats yet disregarding the melody. Today’s script is all about melody – a very weird melody. But the beats? They’re not here. And part of that is due to the looser TV format and part of it is due to Jim Danger Gray being a fucking maniac. Maniac in a good way? Bad way? Only one way to find out.
It’s the present day and three buildings in downtown Philadelphia have just been blown up. It’s clearly a terrorist attack, but from who? We follow an eager reporter, Brooke, who’s made her mark mostly by being gorgeous, as she tries to get some gritty footage from the scene in a desperate attempt to get taken more seriously.
Meanwhile, across town, a CIA agent named Darwin is picking his sister up from the local nuthouse. Madison has always been a little off. But these days she’s spouting out every cliché homeless man conspiracy she can wrap her tongue around. You know – the New World Order, how Obama and Bush are in cahoots, that she’s been implanted with a chip from the government.
Elsewhere in the city, we meet Matt, an FBI agent desperately trying to figure out who just attacked the United States. Lucky for him, amidst all the bomb rubble, our bomber – or one of our bombers – is holding onto his last shred of life. Keeping this gentleman alive is crucial, since Matt’s just been informed that more terrorist attacks are coming. Terrorist Shithead here could be the only way to stop those attacks.
Poor Richard’s Almanac is already a whirlwind. So when we start getting randomly thrust 15 years into the future, we realize that the show has been specifically constructed to deconstruct our equilibrium. In the future, all of these characters are still alive, but working on different things.
Matt, for instance, is stealing some odd circular machine from a local government caravan, utilizing a group of rebels to do so. Brooke is now apparently his girlfriend and partner in crime. Darwin is now in a prison being water-boarded for information he contains. All of this is glimpsed through 2-3 minute flash-forwards, and as we bounce back and forth between the past and the present, it’s up to us to find some semblance of connectivity between it all.
In the end, it’s determined that whoever’s orchestrating these attacks is doing so from inside the United States government. Which forces the country to turn on themselves in order to find the moles. But what they find instead will reshape America in ways that would’ve been impossible to foresee. What this means is that our group of men and women, the ones we meet on this journey, are to become the new founding fathers of an America very different from our own.
Okay, so if I haven’t made myself clear already: Jim Danger Gray lives up to his name. This man is dangerous with a capital D. Poor Richard’s Almanac feels like it was written during an all-night coke party while binge watching True Detective, Lost, and 12 Monkeys. I’ll give the script this – it’s relentless. It grabs you by the throat and never lets go. But I’m not sure I’m being spoken to in a known storytelling language here. It’s more like someone’s grabbed me by the face and screamed at my eyes for 50 minutes. Not going to lie. I cried in fear a few times.
That relentlessness brings up an interesting question. Should we be careful what we wish for? Everyone’s saying we need NEW FRESH voices and stories. But what happens when stuff’s so fresh it isn’t even ripe yet? Yesterday, I got my standard little mountain climbing thriller where I was so far ahead of the writers, it was like watching a rerun. Here, it’s the opposite. This is a writer taking every risk in the book. We don’t know what’s going to happen from line to line, much less page to page. Is that a good thing?
What I’m always looking for in every story is FORM. Or “a plan.” If I feel like the writer has a plan in place, whether that story is conservative or crazy, I’m likely to keep reading. It’s when the writing feels made up as it goes along that frustration kicks in. The thing about Poor Richard’s Almanac is that it’s one of the few times I’ve ever read something where I DON’T KNOW IF THERE’S A PLAN IN PLACE OR NOT.
Everything is so relentless, so mystery-boxy, so “in the moment,” that it really does feel like it was written in one night. But I suppose if we’re periodically cutting to the future, then Gray has to know what’s going to happen. There has to be a plan in place.
Another issue with Poor Richard’s Almanac is that we never know normal. We’re thrust into the problem immediately with no chance to find our bearings. For all you Breaking Bad fans, I want you to imagine the series starting during the 5th season episode where Walter White is in the desert in a gun battle with those criminals. Would you care about Walter? Or isn’t it the gradual build-up, learning about this man’s situation and slowly watching him get to this point, that makes us give a shit?
And look, there are no rules to storytelling. You can start slow and introduce us to your hero or start fast with them hopping into a Cambodian village killing everyone Rambo style. But there’s a reason 99% of the first acts you see in film establish your hero’s everyday normal life. There’s a reason we meet Luke on Tatooine grumbling about picking up tashi converters, as opposed to in an X-Wing fighter in a space dogfight with Darth Vader. So we can get to know the dude and care for him before we’re asked to give a shit during a major battle.
If you want to compare apples to apples and look at TV, well, in that case there’s even more evidence that you need to start slow and get to know everyone. Isn’t that the whole advantage of TV? Is that you have time? That you can explore character before having to engage in anything action-related? Another pilot that starts with a terrorist attack and does a little bit of jumping back and forth in time is Quantico. But even that show knew it needed to introduce us to all its characters and their current lives before it was all thrown into a blender on the highest setting.
To be fair, I suppose Lost threw us into the shit right away, but then it took a step back, slowed down, and let us meet everyone. Poor Richard’s Almanac is all high octane fuel all the time.
I guess in the end I just wanted a little prep-time. Get in the cab before I was thrown on the airplane. Maybe I’m being too “rules-y” or maybe this is a preference thing, but whereas yesterday I felt way ahead of the writer, today I felt way behind. And at a certain point I stopped trying to catch up.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The opening is when you establish your character’s everyday world. This is important as it’ll help us get to know the character – their flaws, fears, strengths, weaknesses – before the shit hits the fan. This is not to say that what Poor Richard’s Almanac did today was wrong. But anything where you go against traditional structure is risky. So just know what those risks entail, how they affect your story, and try to make up for them in some way. So if this pilot would’ve found another way to introduce us to these characters (the way that Lost, for example, would flash back to their lives before the plane crash), then it wouldn’t have mattered as much that we were thrown into the mix without getting to know anyone.
Genre: Thriller
Premise: A young woman and her estranged father go rock-climbing to try and repair their relationship, but when they get stuck, it doesn’t look like they’ll survive the night.
About: This script sold to Blumhouse earlier this year. The writers, Gregg Maxwell Parker and Sean Patrick Finegan, two young men who are big fans of the middle name, have one produced credit, the recent Ethan Hawke – Selena Gomez starrer, Getaway.
Writers: Gregg Maxell Parker & Sean Patrick Finegan
Details: 94 pages
I’m a little nervous about the fact that today’s writers scripted the Selena Gomez-Ethan Hawke movie, Getaway, which, on last count, had a 2% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Now to be fair, I haven’t seen the movie so I don’t know if it’s any good, AND the writing process on every movie can be chaotic, so who knows if some producers didn’t demand ridiculous changes, screwing up the next Citizen Kane.
That may sound ridiculous but I happen to know of a movie that came out recently (I have to be vague cause I don’t want to get the writer in trouble) where the writer told me that they carefully orchestrated a screenplay over an entire seven months before the producers decided with two weeks left before production that they wanted to scrap the whole thing and start over. So they did a page 1 rewrite in two weeks. The results, as the writer informed me, were about what you’d expect. And he didn’t love that his name was attached to it (outside of the paycheck, of course).
I know why this sort of thing happens. When people get to a decision point where they actually have to do the thing that starts costing money – shooting – they start doubting everything out of fear. And all those risks they took that made the script so unique? Those go out the window in favor of a safer more traditional story.
You’re probably saying, “Surrrrre Carson. Getaway was probably genius before the ‘system’ – quote unquote – ruined it. Only then did it tumble to Adam Sandler Rotten Tomato territory.” And I’d say you had a point. But the reason I still want to review Free Fall is because it exists in one of the most bankable genres still available to spec screenwriters – the limited-location thriller and/or horror with a hook. If you can write one of these (The Gift, The Purge, Creep, the upcoming Bed Rest), you can sell it and begin your career. So I don’t know about you. But I’m going to go into this one with an open door mind. I just hope Selena Gomez doesn’t shut it in my face.
18 year-old Grace hasn’t been back to school since her mother died a few months ago. She stays at her grandparents’ place, and the only time she gets out is to do her favorite thing in the world: rock climbing. Her grandparents are concerned enough about her mental health that they engineer a meet-up with Grace’s estranged father, Matt.
Matt’s 38 and is about as successful in life as he is as a parent. He’s one of those guys that gets a lot of big ideas, starts on them, before quitting every single time. It may go unspoken, but both Matt and Grace know that Matt’s quit on their relationship too.
Which is why he’s here. He wants to give it one last shot. But Grace isn’t hearing it, and after daring her father to join her for a practice climb at a local-indoor facility, she decides to take it one step further. She’s doing a climb a local rock-face and if he’s serious about mending their relationship, he’ll join her.
The two meet up with a local instructor, Jason, and start the climb. As you might imagine, there’s a storm moving in (there’s always a storm moving in!), and they have to get to the top before it pummels them. But when Matt makes a crucial mistake, it results in Jason falling to his death, leaving Matt and Grace up on a rock-face alone, a thousand feet from the ground, and on the most difficult leg of the climb.
Things get worse when Matt breaks his leg during an accidental plunge, descending his already low climbing level into “I’m fucked” territory. Oh, and did I mention Matt is afraid of heights? While the two map out their impossible escape, they rehash old family problems, Matt’s failure as a father, and mom’s death. If they don’t figure something out, these might be the last conversations they ever have.
When you look at Free Fall as a screenplay, you’re amazed at how much it does right. It’s got the trendy hot female lead. It’s got a marketable concept. It’s got a budget-friendly contained location. Despite that contained location, it manages to feel like a bigger idea. It’s got a ticking time bomb. It’s got a classic unresolved relationship between its two leads. It’s got impossible odds, lots of obstacles, lots at stake. And the writing? You could teach a class on how to write a lean and mean spec with this script.
But here’s the reality of this climb: A script still has to have a heart. A lot of people think I’m all about the rules and the technique, and make no mistake, that stuff is important. But a script still needs a heartbeat. It needs to be alive. And more importantly, it needs to feel like it’s REALLY HAPPENING.
When you write with great technique, you can craft a solid story. And like Free Fall proves, if you combine that with a solid marketable concept, you can sell a script. But if you want to make it past 2% on Rotten Tomatoes, you need to give your script a heart.
So how do you do that? Well, the first thing you do is you don’t treat the character aspect of your script like a box that needs to be checked. Structure? First act turns? Midpoint twist? Upping stakes? Sure, you can treat those things like checkboxes. But the characters and the emotional component they bring to the story? That’s where you have to check in with your own life experiences.
I say things on here like “create a key relationship in your story that’s unresolved.” And “make sure there’s conflict in that key relationship.” Those things are true. And that’s exactly what we get here. Grace HATES her father. Matt screwed up father duties.
BUT THOSE ARE JUST CHECKBOXES. Now it’s time to bring your own life into it. You have to find something in these characters that you yourself are going through or have been through and EXPLORE THOSE ISSUES THROUGH YOUR CHARACTERS. Then, and only then, will they feel authentic, will they feel honest, will they have a heartbeat.
A maybe not-so-perfect example is the new Aziz Ansari Netflix show, Master of None. I say “not-so-perfect” because it’s a comedy and Free Fall is a thriller, but it’s the freshest thing in my mind since I just watched it so go with me.
For those who don’t know Aziz, he’s a stand-up comedian. And his most famous bit is the miscommunication between men and women that occurs on a daily basis through the muddled world of texting. He relays multiple texting adventures where potentially wonderful relationships fell apart due to misunderstandings that you could only have through a text exchange.
Naturally, then, there’s a lot of this on his show. He keeps messing up dates or potential romantic connections because he doesn’t know what to write next or doesn’t know what the girl means with a text. And for anyone who’s gone through this ritual themselves, it’s a hilarious portrayal of one of the most frustrating aspects of dating in the digital age.
But here’s my point: Every one of these moments on Master of None feels honest because they’re clearly things that Aziz deals with in his daily life himself. You know he really spends an entire day mentally weighing what the best return text should be to a girl saying, “Hi.” So when we see it in the show, there’s a truth to it that elevates the story beyond a technical checking of the box.
And that was my issue with Free Fall. I never got the sense that Grace or Matt was a real person. And I certainly didn’t feel like the relationship was real. I felt like they were crafted for the sole purpose of fitting into the ideal screenplay algorithm. I never got any specificity out of their relationship, like a nickname or a truly unique situation they’d experienced together. When they yelled at one another, because the writers weren’t digging into their own troubled relationships with their parents, all I’d hear was, “Conflict conflict conflict!” “Conflict!?” “Conflict conflict con….flict.” It wasn’t REAL. It was “What do the screenwriting books say we have to do now?”
And I feel bad because I don’t talk about this stuff enough on the site. That’s because what these guys have accomplished technically is great and something 90% of amateurs haven’t figured out yet. And since you need to learn that stuff before you can even get to the character stuff, I focus on that a lot. But once you’ve made it to the lucky 10%, and you’re trying to get to the final 3-5% (aka, when writers get paid), you have to figure the character stuff out.
With that said, Free Fall is a reminder that you can game the system if you’re really proficient at the craft. Come up with a good hook and write something that’s technically perfect and you can sneak in the back door. But if you want to stay inside once they find you, learn to add a heartbeat to your story.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Trying to explore a broken relationship in a realistic manner without basing it on your real-life experiences is nearly impossible. If you don’t feel, your characters won’t feel. This can actually help you, though. Identify the relationships in your life that contain the most conflict and use those as inspiration for the relationships in your script. Spielberg is famous for creating a disconnect between parents and children in a lot of his movies because of the scars left from his own parents divorcing when he was a child (see E.T. or A.I. to start). That’s where you’re going to find your best stuff emotionally.
As I’m sure all of you are running off to watch the new Bond film this weekend, you’ll have to tell me if my script review was correct or not. If you’re like me and staying farrrrr away from that Octapussy, here are a few amateur scripts to read and vote on. We’ve got selections that contain something for everyone: magic, the devil, poems, a writer even drops the gauntlet! So start the downloading and the evaluating. Oh, and PLEASE open your comment with your vote! And if you can, let us know how far you read and why you stopped.
And if you want to submit your script for future Offerings, e-mail carsonreeves3@gmail.com with your title, genre, logline, why we should read, and a PDF of the script itself! Let’s find the next Unlawful, which finished on this year’s Blood List!
Title: Otherside, INC.
Genre: Action/Adventure Comedy
Logline: While working as henchmen at a magical security firm, a young witch and her rakshas friend must overcome interspecies politics, supernatural bureaucracy and a handsome jewel thief to stop a product-launch from snowballing into the apocalypse.
Why You Should Read: Through most of Thor: The Dark World, Supriya believed she was watching an anti-imperialism tale that would end in Thor returning the Dark Elves’ sacred magical relic, restoring balance to the world, and learning why appropriating another culture’s artifacts is wrong. After Ibba finished laughing at her, they decided Supriya’s misconception would make a great film. Otherside, INC. is the result. Combining their love of genre adventure stories with their day jobs as marketing hench-women they created a supernatural satire for fans of superhero blockbusters and office comedies alike.
Title: Dan Demonic
Genre: Adventure/Comedy? (writer did not say)
Logline: Years after the Devil himself has conquered Earth, an ornery demon and his equally belligerent sidekick are mistaken for the saviours of mankind. Together, they must rediscover their own humanity in order to save the world.
Why You Should Read: Writers like Max Landis have long lamented the death of non-IP in Hollywood- especially in an era when franchises are king. In writing Dan Demonic, I set out to not only captivate an audience with a thoroughly original and engrossing story, but to create a world that could support multiple films within the same universe. Things were tried and rules were broken, but Dan Demonic is a script I’m proud of for its unerring commitment to craziness. If stories about demon strippers, undead Nobel Prize winners and 50-storey flying dogs don’t appeal to you, stay away from this one. However, I hope that those who do give this Guardians of the Galaxy-meets-Beetlejuice hybrid a shot come away from it entertained and enthralled. That would be the biggest compliment of all.
Title: The Iliad
Genre: War epic / Sword and sandal
Logline: A gritty adaptation of Homer’s epic, following the exploits of the (anti)heroes and gods who fought in the last days of the legendary Trojan War.
Why You Should Read: Longtime lurker, never-time poster. Hopefully a few people have read / are familiar with the ILIAD and its impossible to adapt content. I appreciate any (except the bad) feedback. Thank you.
Title: American Funeral
Genre: Horror
Logline: “An agoraphobic 12 year old who suspects his mother and siblings of murder also suspects that he’s gonna be their next victim unless he does something about it, fast.”
Why You Should Read: I noticed that on Monday you said that ELI is the “last” horror script that you were going to be reviewing (I presume for the year) but before you do that I was hoping to take it on in “The Gauntlet” with my horror script AMERICAN FUNERAL. From your review of ELI, I noticed that it has some similarities with AMERICAN FUNERAL. Both scripts have preteen boys as the protagonists. Both boys have “disabilities” that prevent them from leaving their “homes.” And both boys discover some shocking truths about themselves and their families.
However, one of the scripts here is a pro script that made it to the top of the Blood List while the other script is by an unknown writer and it’s still trying to worm it’s way on to the Amateur Friday list. But I have faith in my boy Dougie and I believe he can take on little Eli. So, I’m dropping the gauntlet!
Title: S M A R T H O M E
Genre: Drama, Mystery
Logline: While visiting Tokyo on business, JIM STARR gets trapped in a dangerous Smart Home with a mind of its own.
Why You Should Read: Please help me. I’m stuck in this Smart Home and I can’t get out. I don’t know if it’s an iOS system failure or was hacked by a human out for blood? Oh, God. I hope this message goes through, the Wi-Fi fades in and out. On purpose. I’m being cooked alive. HELP ME! Is anyone there? Is anyone reading this? Hello? Did it go through?? Please! The house knows things about me that may or may not be true. I don’t even know anymore…[DISCONNECT].
