Genre: Dark Comedy
Premise: In this “The Burbs” meets “Horrible Bosses” meets “Homeland” mash-up, three middle-aged men suspect their new neighbor of being a terrorist.
About: We’re looking at a sure-fire 2015 Black List entry here. Jeff Lock made his first Black List last year with his meaty absurdist comedy, Beef. Since then he’s obviously been busy. “See Something” hit the town in July with a lot of buzz. And while that buzz hasn’t panned into a sale yet, you get the feeling that has more to do with its box office jinxed genre (black comedy) than the quality of the script. If it does well on this year’s Black List, a sale should follow quickly.
Writer: Jeff Lock
Details: 113 pages – July 13th, 2015 draft
Not that there’s any “best” way to break in as a screenwriter, but if you’re looking for that ideal track, it’s my opinion you want to sneak on the scene with a good but not great script. Sure, it’s bubalicious to get that half-a-million dollar check your first time out. But if you do that, the pressure’s on to deliver on your next script. And if you fail, the industry goes colder on you than Lake Michigan in February.
Jeff Lock did it right. He came on the scene with Beef, a solid but not spectacular script that landed him on the Black List. This allowed See Something to hit the town with a lot of fanfare but no ridiculous expectations. It’s sort of like starting your acting career on one of those good but not phenomenon shows. That’s where you find your Johnny Depps and your Jared Letos.
I liked Lock’s first script, Beef, and mentally tabbed him as a voice to watch out for. What surprised me about his follow-up effort was just how mainstream it was. And I mean that in a good way. See Something definitely embraces a non-PC sensibility, but in the end this exists in the same universe as Horrible Bosses. And that’s not a bad place to be.
30-something Ryan Appleby has just made the transition from working in an office to working at home. He’s not sure how to approach this newfound freedom, and his wife and kid aren’t helping, repeatedly asking him what it is exactly that he does.
To battle the boredom, Ryan hangs out with his two best suburban buddies, Clay and Adam. Adam is one of those fake progressive types who thought buying an African baby would enrich his life, and Clay is that socially unaware hick who thinks that any place that isn’t America is Mexico.
Well, Clay’s about to learn that the new neighbor isn’t Mexican. Pakistani couple Sam and Yasmina look like your typical middle class Americans. But Clay is convinced that because they’re Muslim, they must be terrorists.
When Sam gets a suspicious package delivered to his home, Ryan is curious enough that he joins the trio’s impromptu “Is Sam a member of ISIS?” neighborhood watch campaign. The three begin their investigation by breaking into Sam’s home, move to tracking his car, and eventually come to the conclusion that he’s planning to assassinate American icon, Joe Montana.
While the evidence for terrorist involvement is mounting, the group must weigh the price of freedom against the right to privacy, and that’s something Ryan is never completely comfortable with. Then again, if they can prevent a terrorist attack, isn’t all this moral compass hogwash justified?
See Something had me DYING in the first act. Through the first 30 pages, I was ready to anoint this the best comedy screenplay of 2014 AND 2015. Clay is absolutely hilarious as the dadbod version of Donald Trump: “I know you socialist pansies won’t understand this, but this is America. Other heathen countries in the world are poor, dysfunctional, and living in a big pile of their own shit. (quickly to Adam’s black son) No offense, Abel. (back to guys) They see how awesome America is and they hate us. But, being this awesome comes with a price. You have to watch for all the haters trying to tear you down to get to the top. So we gotta look out for the #1 Emcee in the game… Uncle Sam.”
Even the straight man, Ryan, comes up with some great zingers. His response to Clay’s rant: “You are like some sort of Drake-Rush Limbaugh hybrid.” I’d say I laughed out loud 25 times in the first 30 pages. That is a HUGE number. On the average professional comedy script I read, I might laugh 5 times total. And on the average amateur comedy script, I might laugh once (I’ll be honest, more than often I don’t laugh at all).
But I’ll tell you where See Something (a reference to the government’s message of “If you SEE SOMETHING, make sure to tell the authorities.”) began to lose me. A comedy only works when the plot is working. If the plot is naturally suspenseful and the characters are active and the stakes are high, I laugh at the jokes. Because it all feels real and reality is where the best comedy lies.
But 50 pages in, our guys let Sam know that they think he’s a terrorist. This ripped away the best part of the script, that our trio must sneak around to investigate our potential terrorist without him catching on. Because once he’s onto them, they’re no longer preventing anything. If Sam WERE a terrorist, he now has the option to cancel the mission. Doesn’t this effectively end the story?
The best scene in the script is in that first act when our guys sneak into Sam’s house to look for evidence when he’s out shopping. Why is this a great scene? Because there’s the threat that Sam could come home at any moment and catch them. Once you eliminate the fear of being caught, you eliminate all the conflict and suspense driving the story.
Lock replaces this with a mystery ticking time bomb – the group finds a calendar in Sam’s house with an upcoming date circled. While the looming date does create suspense, it never reaches the previous level of suspense where we were freaked out that Sam might figure out what our guys were up to.
So while the jokes were still sharp, they never hit as hard as they did when I was invested in the story. This is something that comedy writers never consider. If the structure and plot and story aren’t firing on all cylinders, the jokes don’t matter. Jokes only hit when the reader’s invested.
With that said, it’s an easy fix if the producers want to fix it. And I definitely think this should get made. It’s one of the few comedy premises that feels different from all the derivative garbage that’s been hitting the market lately. And I could see top talent dying to play these roles, especially Clay. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens!
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Beware the THIRD LAME FRIEND. One thing I’ve found with these “three friend” comedies is that the writer always neglects the third friend. The reason for this is obvious. The first two friends write themselves. There’s always the over-the-top guy and there’s always the straight guy (Phil and Alan in The Hangover). The third friend is the only one in the group whose identity isn’t clearly laid out, so writers are never sure what to do with him.
To fix this problem, I advocate the “label” approach. Label your three friends. So here, Clay is the over-the-top racist. Ryan is the sensible grounded one. Now do the same for the third character. The Hangover is one of the rare comedies that did this well (Stu was the easily-freaked-out pushover). Once you’ve labeled your character, you can focus on demonstrating their identity on the page. But if you never label them and instead write the character on “feel,” I guarantee the character will feel mushy. Adam wasn’t the worst version of this problem. The Ned Flanders label helped a bit. But there was something mushy about his identity that never allowed him to hit as hard as Ryan or Clay. A clearer label at the outset would’ve helped.
Genre: Thriller/Serial-Killer
Premise: A killer exploits society’s over-reliance on mobile technology to pick off his victims one by one.
About: Today’s writing duo is one of the hottest in Hollywood. They shot onto the scene with their heavily hyped debut spec, “Die in a Gunfight” (straight out of college, no less). Unlike a lot of writers who get a sale and disappear into obscurity, they parlayed that sale into a few writing assignments, eventually landing one of the coveted Marvel projects (Ant-Man). That job has led to a job on Transformers 5. Make fun of Transformers all you want (I do) but landing a writing job on a summer franchise film is a huge freaking deal. Low Tide is a script the writing team sold to 20th Century Fox last year. This is a more recent draft.
Writers: Andrew Barrer & Gabriel Ferrari
Details: 121 pages – 3/21/15 draft
What in the sam hell?? We’ve got a sequel-free, remake-free, biopic-free, not a true story, based-on-absolutely-nothing official spec screenplay here! If I weren’t such a cynic, I’d say that we’re reviewing a piece of original fiction. It’s been so long since I’ve actually done that, I’m not sure I’m qualified to do it anymore.
The way the spec market has gone, the buyers want you to stay in HARDCORE genre lanes. Like “Bed Rest,” which sold to MGM last month. That’s a clear horror genre flick that can be marketed right out of the Final Draft box. I was just reading an article about Robert Zemeckis’s new film, The Walk, and he said that every single production company and studio in town turned the project down. When asked why, he said, simply, “It doesn’t fit into any slot, if you know what I mean.” That’s the way this business works. So for Barrer and Ferrari to go against the grain and give us an offbeat serial killer flick, you gotta give’em knuckles.
But The question that kept popping up while reading Low Tide was, how far off the beaten path can you take a genre? Did these two go too far?
30-something Shae White is not your average detective. Not only did she lose her sister in a murder-suicide when she was just a girl, but she spends her off-time going to sleazy Atlantic City hotels and banging strangers with the explicit rule-set that they tell her they love her, despite her wanting nothing to do with them afterwards. She even keeps the dirty panties from the sex-sessions in a giant drawer in her bedroom. Hash-tag naughty.
Shae is assigned to a strange case where her daughter’s future boyfriend is attacked by a shark and loses his leg. When the police go fishing for the leg, they instead find another leg, that of a recently deceased female.
When the police find the rest of the female, they learn she was murdered, but they decide not to share this detail with the public in fear of wiping out 4th of July tourist traffic on the Jersey Shore.
Shae teams up with another detective, Pete, and the two discover that a man named Robin Goodfellow is texting young women from the fake accounts of their lovers in order to lure them into murderous situations. Goodfellow is sort of a cross between Jigsaw, Scream-Villain, and Hannibal Lecter, a philosophizing recluse who enjoys playing people for chess pieces.
It isn’t long before Goodfellow begins targeting Shae, texting her and calling her with an untraceable fake electronic voice. But Goodfellow may be targeting someone above his pay grade this time. Shae gradually puts the clues together and finds our psycho recluse, leading to a showdown that will leave only one of them able to keep texting those “lol’s.”
There’s a part of me that respects what Barrer and Ferrari have done here. One of the hardest things about screenwriting is walking that fine line between embracing traditional screenwriting structure, and adding just enough messiness to keep your script unique.
This is often what leads to that coveted “voice” we hear so much about but rarely understand. The way in which you break those well-worn rules is what makes your voice different, is what makes your work feel like you. But here’s where the “fine line” thing comes in. Those detours only look good if they work. And I’m not sure they worked in Low Tide.
Right from the start, I had a hard time finding my footing. We start with a cool scene where a girl gets a spooky text from someone while with her boyfriend. The text says only, “He knows.” It turns out our girl has been unfaithful, and now she’s in an isolated area with a guy who, if the texter is to be believed, plans on harming her. So she runs, and it doesn’t end well.
We then go to a woman throwing her dirty panties into a post-sex dirty panty pantry. We then jump to a girl who may or may not be her daughter (it isn’t made clear) who watches as the boy she has a crush on gets his leg bitten off by a shark. We then watch the police fish out the boy’s leg and bring it to the hospital to be reattached, only to realize it’s a different leg. We then find the source of this different leg – the now-murdered girl from the opening.
I suppose it sort of makes sense but it was all so disjointed that 30 pages in, I still didn’t know where the script was going. Eventually our killer, Robin Goodfellow, is introduced, and he provides some connective tissue to all this madness, but Low Tide spent the majority of its tide just trying to make sense.
I mean I’m still not clear on how Goodfellow kills his victims. He doesn’t do it himself, since he stays in his little room the whole time. I guess this means he recruits others to do it. But that’s pretty far-fetched, the idea that you can recruit random people willing to partake in your weird text and fake-electronic-voice phone murders.
That wasn’t the only sloppy part. One of the ways you can tell a script’s not working is if key characters disappear for long chunks of time. This indicates the writers weren’t thinking things out ahead of time or don’t know what do with the characters. Nancy, Shae’s daughter, gets a couple of key scenes early on (saving our shark-attacked boy), and then disappears for 40 pages at a time.
I know there’s an ongoing war in the screenwriting community between outliners and non-outliners, but this is where outlining really helps. You can see exactly where characters need more time and where they don’t.
The movie inspirations here were also too heavy. The shark attack and subsequent “hidden from the public to keep profits up” storyline was ripped straight out of Jaws. The electronic voice stuff was taken straight out of Scream. And our serial killer manipulating our female lead was too similar to Silence of the Lambs.
Look, it’s hard not to include plot points and characters from our favorite movies. That’s why we became screenwriters in the first place. Because we love movies! But the way you want to approach imitation is the way actors study subjects they’re going to play. They don’t ape their mannerisms or do impressions of those people. They take the ESSENCE of the person and let it inspire their own unique performance.
Take the ESSENCE of what you see in the filmmakers and writers you enjoy and apply that to your script. Avoid applying direct plot points and characters. I particularly see this problem with young screenwriters. For whatever reason, they’re more prone to bring in stuff from the movies they love. Veteran screenwriters actively look to create their own storylines and strive to be different from their predecessors.
The good news is, these two are visual writers. They’re definitely thinking about what’s going to be up on that screen. And that’s important. A woman stalking around in a sex-dungeon wearing a half-destroyed Pinocchio mask while an electronic voice taunts her is major trailer material.
And Shae’s weird sex addiction was compelling as well. The whole insisting on people telling her they loved her, while actively avoiding love, while also keeping this bizarre panty memoir. That had me wondering what this woman was going to do next. If you can write characters that have readers turning pages because they want to know what they’re going to do next? That’s a rare talent.
But in the end, this felt too patch-work for me. And I couldn’t get over the stuff taken from other movies. These guys are definitely talented and have a unique voice. But you can’t be unique if you’re blatantly bringing other movies into your story. I’ll be interested to see what you guys thought. There’s a bit of True Detective in Low Tide’s DNA. And I know you all loved that show (me, not so much!). This cold be one of those “Carson hates, but everyone else loves” scripts??
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Don’t write like a virgin. – There’s an old saying that pops up every once in awhile: “Kiss like a virgin.” It refers to the over-the-top, heavy lip and tongue, intense over-compensating kiss you give when you haven’t had sex yet. There’s an equivalent in screenwriting. “Write like a virgin.” This is when writers use big words, throw in a lot of heavy “look at how smart I am” philosophizing by characters, rounded up with lots of references to historic literary titans (both Twain and Nietschke get some love in Low Tide). This kind of writing, if overdone, makes the writer look insecure. The veteran pros know that it’s all about story. They don’t need to prove their worth in every line. If the sentence, “He walks over and grabs his wallet” is all that’s needed for the moment, despite it being an overly-simplistic presentation of the action, that’s what they’ll use. I wish Barrer and Ferrari would stop trying to prove how much they’ve read or studied or how many big words they can use and just write. They’re talented guys. Why all the fireworks?
Hope everyone’s enjoying their weekend. Just one week away from the 250! Writers who made it into the coveted top quarter-thousand will be notified by the end of next Saturday. In order to distract you from that looming announcement, here are some amateur script entries to get your bloody analytical hooks into. As always, let’s find something good! Scriptshadow points to the first person who guesses my favorite logline of the pack (if you’ve been a longtime Scriptshadow reader, this should be easy). I’ll reply to the winner. :)
Title: She Wants to Have My Babies
Genre: Rom-Com
Logline: A perfect couple’s relationship becomes a rollercoaster when she wants a baby and he flat-out refuses to start a family.
Why You Should Read: The baby conflict. Now who doesn’t know a couple that struggle(s/d) with this issue? You – yes you – who answered “me”, go back to your cave. Now you, in-touch people, do you think such an emotional topic can be dealt with humorously considering the stakes? No, don’t answer. Can’t you recognize a rhetorical question when you see one? Now after you read “She Wants to Have my Babies”, and only then, will you be allowed to answer my question based on your experience of the read. You will be welcome to in fact. I know, I’m a prince.
Title: Shotgun Wedding
Genre: Action / Comedy
Premise: A timid guy from a small town gets cold feet on the eve of his wedding and incurs the wrath of his bride’s unhinged religious family.
Details: 91 pages
Why You Should Read: I love fun, quirky movies with plenty of silly jokes and cool action scenes, and Shotgun Wedding is chock full of both! It’s tone and sense of humor has been compared to films like Raising Arizona and Hot Fuzz. It’s a light, entertaining read and would definitely be a crowd pleaser on the big screen. Thank you for your consideration and I hope you enjoy my script.
Title: Game of 72
Genre: Sci-fi
Logline: In a future where robots run grisly human-fighting rings for sport, any human who survives 72 matches is given 72 minutes to win their freedom–or die.
Why You Should Read: I moved to Los Angeles to specifically pursue a career in waiting tables. I was originally gonna write a biopic about Nikola Tesla’s chef, but figured this would be more interesting. This script has such a big fat concept, that when it took a selfie, Instagram crashed. Do not read it if you hate: space, hyper loops, nihilism, invisible architecture, and futuristic theories. FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m an alien that’s trying to blend in with everyone.
Title: #uCantMakeThisUP
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Logline: After a sour exchange online, a military wife must protect herself and her daughter from an anonymous poster’s offline threats.
Why You Should Read: I wanted to explore a section in horror without the supernatural bent, thus UCMTU was born. I’d pitch it as a character-driven piece that’s grounded in realism. I believe it checks off the list of things needed to sale: Female Protag; Thriller; Present-Time; and Few Locations (HELLO BLUMHOUSE!!!). Any feedback to help strengthen the script is appreciated.
Similar films: Catfish, Unfriended, Ex Machina.
Title: EXTRACTION
Genre: Action/Sci-Fi
Logline: Two military veterans with PTSD scan an abandoned war zone for technology that will remove their war experiences. But other forces are at play…
Details: 108 pages
Why You Should Read: I’ve been destined since I was in elementary school to write screenplays. It was a combination of watching kung-fu flicks with my grandfather, and writing 90 paged graphic novels that were side-sequels to the movie “Twister.” Since studying screenwriting in college, I’ve been hammering away at the craft for almost ten years now, and 24 scripts later I can say I’m closer than ever to finding my voice, and the feedback has been consistently good. I’ll be taking a trip to LA soon to meet film industry friends, and feedback from scriptshadow will certainly let me know what I need to get to the next level. I hope you’ll find something to enjoy here! Love the site.
Genre: Comedy/Sci-fi
Premise: A pregnant woman’s world is turned upside-down when a group of hungry aliens invade her suburb.
About: “The Shower” finished with 10 votes on last year’s Black List and just recently got everyone’s favorite thespian, Anne Hathaway, to sign onto the flick. While screenwriter Jac Schaffer may not be a well-known commodity to most, her first film, Timer, which she wrote and directed, became a surprise hit on Netflix. This put her on the Hollywood map, getting her more reads for her next script (this one), which helped get her on the Black List, which helped get her script in front of Hathaway. Which is what turned this into a Go Picture. That’s how you do it, boys and girls!
Writer: Jac Schaffer
Details: 102 pages (March 26, 2014 draft)
Are writers even allowed to write male-driven comedies anymore? It seems like the unofficial rule is that if it’s a comedy, it needs to star women. And hey, why not. We have 75 years of comedies starring men and, to be honest, we haven’t broken a lot of new ground lately.
But here’s my beef with this trend. I don’t like it when studios make female-driven comedies just to make female-driven comedies. Like this Ghostbusters thing. There is NO STORY REASON to make all the Ghostbusters women. It’s a straight-up lazy choice brought on for no other reason than to have an all-female cast.
At least with The Shower, the concept is female-specific. It’s about a pregnant woman in the midst of a baby shower she never asked for. You can’t do that with men. But does this make the script any better? That’s a question I’ll be answering after the commercial break.
30 year-old Mary Kopecki is 32 weeks pregnant, which I guess in the female world means she’s due for a baby shower. Ironically, Mary is the last person who wants a part of this shower. Her pregnancy is a unique one, in that after her divorce, she decided to go the whole artificial insemination route.
It’s her best friend Erin, married and BABY-LESS, actually, who’s the most excited about this shower. You can tell that Erin is dying for her husband Chuck to impregnate her so they can start a family herself. The only problem is that Chuck is the world’s biggest asshole, and everyone seems to know this EXCEPT for Erin.
Rounding out the 3-chick crew is Liv, who’s described as, “if Bill Murray were trapped in the body of a hot girl in a leather jacket.” Liv is the most progressive in the group, and you get the feeling that if Liv found out she was menopausal tomorrow, she’d do some blow, some shots, and wake up the next day with a smile on her face.
The three friends are performing typical shower duties when all of a sudden, boom goes the dynamite. A meteorite lands in the backyard, and when Erin’s dog inhales its gases, it turns into a hulking crazed killer dog-alien that starts chomping off chunks of shower guests’s flesh.
The girls jump in their car and try and drive away, only to find these meteorites crashing all over the place. While Erin tries to find her husband, Chuck (who ends up being at a strip bar – surprise surprise), they realize that the alien gases infect women, who then pass the gas off to men, who then turn into hulking alien creatures, who in turn kill anyone they can find.
For a woman who’s already having doubts, this event puts a lot of stress on Mary, who must come to terms with whether she’s really ready to have a child or not.
The Shower reminded me just what a coup Bridesmaids was. Because here’s what I learned reading this script. When a script is TOO female-specific, it alienates the male audience. While I’m sure women find something relatable about pregnant women always having to pee, or that they poop during delivery, those experiences are a bit foreign to me as a male (not to mention, disgusting), and therefore not exactly funny.
With Bridesmaids, they took a female-specific experience (that of being bridesmaids) and still created comedy that appealed to both men and women. Everyone can relate to the half-crazy weirdo friend (Melissa McCarthy’s character) who is socially unaware on every level. That’s funny no matter what sex you are. I’m not sure ankle swelling jokes are going to do it for most male audience members.
Speaking of the female slant here, there’s a bit of man-bashing in The Shower. The most dominant male character is Chuck, Erin’s husband, and he is literally the worst human being on the planet. He’s a total fucking dickhead. And the only other male, who’s actually nice, is a stripper! Believe me, I’m sick of reading tons of male-authored scripts where NO EFFORT was given to building depth into the female characters. But it doesn’t make female writers look good when they do the same thing.
That’s not to say I’m shower bashing here. There were some things I liked about the script. We always talk about the importance of creating UNRESOLVED REALTIONSHIPS in your screenplay. Unresolved relationships not only infuse conflict (the life-source of drama) into the script, but also drive your second act. You’ll find your script dying quickly in Act 2 if you don’t have plenty of unresolved relationships to explore.
But what I really love is when writers get creative in this area. Which is why I loved that Schaffer created an unresolved relationship with a character who wasn’t even born yet! Yes, one of the critical relationships in the script is the relationship between Mary and her unborn baby. It’s clear that she’s not ready to have this child, and watching her battle those feelings was one of the high points of the story.
And it was a brave move! This is a wacky sci-fi comedy you’re writing here. Yet you have the balls to suggest that our main character is disgusted by the child growing inside of her? That’s kind of badass.
Schaffer also included a clever little twist in how she constructed the aliens. It’s actually the women who exhale the alien gas into the men’s mouths, making the men “pregnant,” which is how the aliens are born. A script always looks better when you can tell the writer went that extra mile and thought about their concept. That addition proved to me that Schaffer wasn’t throwing random shit on paper here.
In the end though, despite really wanting to, I couldn’t get into this. That was mainly due to the humor being heavily slanted towards women. But also, the jokes weren’t that sharp on a general level. But this should appeal to the xy crowd. And Hathaway is a good choice to play Mary.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Pregnancies are number 2 on the “perfect ticking time bombs for movies” list, right behind weddings. Make a key female character ready to pop and you have your timeline built into the story for you, which should give your script lots of urgency. I know writers are terrified to include either of these options, less their script be considered “cliche,” but in a comedy, where the plot usually isn’t the star of the script, readers won’t bat an eye at either of these options being used.
Today the “spotlight” is on a new Liam Neeson thriller. But can Carson recover enough from yesterday’s script to enjoy it?
Genre: Thriller
Premise: A commuter gets a phone call informing him that if he doesn’t find a specific man on that train before the last stop, his wife and daughter will die.
About: I remember when this script hit the scene forever ago. Like a lot of scripts in Hollywood, it made some noise and then disappeared into the ether. What’s crazy about this town, though, is that if you don’t give up, if you keep improving and pushing the stuff you believe in, sooner or later, something good comes of it. And that’s exactly what happened here. The Commuter has caught the attention of one Liam Neeson, who’s just turned this into a Go picture. Writers Byron Willinger and Philip de Blasi have patiently waited 7 years, not securing a single credited writing assignment in TV or film in the meantime. And now, finally, their lives are about to change. Don’t you love this business?
Writer: Byron Willinger & Philip de Blasi
Details: 101 pages (3/28/08 draft)
In retrospect, could a script titled “The Commuter” have starred anyone other than Liam Neeson? It’d be like naming a script, “Quick Kill,” and expecting anyone other than Jean Clade Van Damme to be the lead. Neeson seems to be tailor-made for these one-word vague action-esque titles. But is the world getting sick of the “Neeson setup?”
I mean, in Non-Stop, Neeson gets a series of texts telling him he has to act or something terrible will happen. Here, he gets a series of calls telling him he has to act or something terrible will happen. Does that make this an unofficial sequel? Is part 3 that Neeson receives a series of tweets that he must act or something terrible will happen? “Liam, you must visit 100 websites before the end of the hour or death. #hurry.”
Truth be told I needed this script after yesterday’s monstrosity. I still don’t know why people are defending Spotlight like it’s some amazing script. There isn’t a single good moment in the script that isn’t purely due to the true story it’s based on. In other words, every good part is a part the writers had no choice but to include. As for everything else, stuff that needed to be writer-generated (like character exploration and character conflict) there was NOTHING. Ugh. I so needed some empty commutering to move past it. Please be good straight-forward Liam Neeson thriller. Please be good.
Michael Woolrich is a former cop famous for solving one of the city’s most notorious murders. But he’s moved past that life for reasons we’ll find out later. Now he works a calm office job, gets to spend a lot more time with his wife and daughter, and he’s happy. In fact, he’s going out to dinner with his wife tonight.
All he has to do is do what he does every evening. Get on the train and travel back from the city to the suburbs. Seems innocent enough. Well it ISN’T INNOCENT MOTHERF&^%ERS. Cause Liam Neeson is in this movie. And when Liam Neeson takes transportation somewhere, something always happens.
Indeed, Liam – I mean Michael – gets a call informing him that he needs to find someone named “Devlin” on the train before the train gets to its last stop. Apparently, there are two Feds at the last stop, waiting for Devlin to show up, because he witnessed a big murder. Once Michael finds Devlin, our phone-caller (and his mysterious crew, who are also on the train somewhere) can kill him to make sure he doesn’t tell the Feds what he knows.
Being the star detective that Michael is, this should be easy. The problem is that Devlin is an alias. And Devlin doesn’t WANT to be found. So this is going to be a little more challenging than your average investigation.
Throughout the 60 minute train ride, Michael will misidentify several Devlins, make some horrible mistakes, get booted off the train, and almost get his family killed several times. When he finally does figure out who Devlin is, mere minutes before the train reaches its destination, he will have to make the most difficult decision of his life. Should he kill Devlin himself to save his family?
The Commuter is bit like a game of monopoly. When someone mentions you should play, you hem and you haw and try to get out of it, but 45 minutes later, you’re excitedly rolling the dice, hoping you land on Boardwalk so you can take everyone’s money. This little script really does grow on you.
I think that’s because I had no fucking idea who Devlin was. Usually in these simplistic thriller “mysteries,” you know the killer before we’ve gotten out of the first act. But as Michael continues to bounce around well into the second act, you realize you don’t have the slightest clue who Devlin is.
If there’s a takeaway from this script, it’s that. If you’re going to write a simplistic thriller premise, then you better be WAY THE HELL AHEAD OF YOUR READER. Because if the reader gets ahead of you in a script like this, they’re going to be sooooo bored. There simply isn’t enough complexity in a plot like The Commuter’s to withstand a lot of other script issues.
I must admit, though, that I’m tired of the “random person calls and tells the protagonist he must obey” plot device. Starting all the way back with Die Hard 3, moving into Phone Booth, and more recently with, well, a dozen films over the last decade – there’s something lazy about it. It doesn’t take a whole lot of creativity to come up with the setup.
A man is on a Cruise Boat and gets a call that unless he commandeers the ship within the next 45 minutes, everyone on the ship will die.
See, I just did it.
Maybe it’s because the main character becomes a reactive pawn. They’re not pushing the movie forward. They’re following orders. I mean, how much more badass is John McClane in the original Die Hard as opposed to Die Hard 3 where he’s running around like a chicken with his head cut off, doing whatever this loser tells him to do? And that’s because when you’re following orders, you’re a reactive little bitch. It’s not hero-ish.
So again, if you’re going to go with this setup, you better be ready to execute. You better have a mystery that’s truly a mystery, and not just a “passing-the-time” Screenwriting 101 plot outline that any screenwriter could come up with.
Commuter shows off its metal when we finally find out who Devlin is. It forces our main character to make an IMPOSSIBLE choice. And that’s always good writing, when the writers put the main character in a situation where there is no right answer, where even the audience isn’t sure what they would do.
There were other nice touches here as well. In the B-storyline, which is the bad guys kidnapping Michael’s wife and daughter to motivate him, I liked how they didn’t already have the wife and daughter when they first made their threat. They were merely AFTER the wife and daughter.
So early in the script, we see the wife and daughter shopping, and then one of our bad guys watching them, planning how he’s going to kidnap them.
The reason this is such a smart move is because it adds uncertainty to the B-plotline. We’re still hoping that, against all hope, the wife and daughter might be able to escape. When you create uncertainty in a plotline, you get more mileage out of it. If, when the bad guys originally called Michael, they already had the wife and daughter in the basement, well, there isn’t a whole lot of uncertainty or hope in that storyline now is there? Its dramatic potential is at the end of the line. So yeah, I like how they gave us another exciting plotline to jump to.
And the script throws in a few nice surprise twists as well, specifically on the character front. One of my big beefs with Spotlight was that we knew NOTHING about the characters. They didn’t even try to make them real people, despite the fact that they were real people! And yet here, with Michael, a completely fictional person who’s never existed in the real world, we learn a HUGE revelation about his past that makes us rethink his entire character.
Do I think The Commuter is going to challenge Spotlight for an Oscar anytime soon? Of course not. People vote for movies like Spotlight because they’re important movies telling an important story. But if you’re looking to be entertained and thrilled, The Commuter will do the job.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Guys and gals, stop describing your characters with some variation of the description: “She looks worn down and tired, but you can still see her once-prominant beauty underneath.” “Tired/worn-down but still beautiful” is one of the most overused description-types I see. I guess it’s not the worst way to describe someone. Just know that it’s not exactly original.
